Pulling into Phnom Pehn I was pretty hesitant as to what to expect. Our bible the lonely planet warns potential visitors that it's an intoxicating place that you'll either love or hate, or maybe even both but just on different days. The journey into Cambodia from the Mekong Delta wasn't too long or painful but for some reason felt exhausting. There was a lot of climbing in and out of a miniature speed boat and the hot sun felt doubly strong on the skin as we waited for our passports to be stamped and returned at the floating boarder.
Our bus dropped us off at the corner of a particularly dingy road and aggressive tuk tuk drivers were falling over themselves to get our business. The constant shouts of "LADY, LADY, LADY" were tiresome to say the least.
Eventually we found a nice guy to take us to a guesthouse and we checked in just as the skies opened and emptied the equivalent of the Pacific Ocean on us.
On our first day there we had planned to visit the 'Gold and Silver Temple' in town but soon realised we were a. inappropriately dressed and b. not that bothered about seeing yet more gold buddhas. We still had Angkor Wat to visit up in Siem Reap and were trying to avoid 'temple burn-out'.
Instead we got a lift to the renound Killing Fields where thousands upon thousands of people were massacred and buried during the era of Pol Pots Khmer Rouge regime in the 70's. There were 9,000 skulls on display as a tribute to the dead but I couldn't work out whether it was a tasteful of not.
Still, the museum was interesting and I managed to top up my historical knowledge. On the journey back our driver offered to take us to a firing range to try out some AK-47's or other equally traumatic weapons, I think his offer could have been timed better to be honest, there was already too much death in the air.
The other thing I immediately noticed about Cambodia were the number of disabled people on the streets. Everyone seemed to have been affected by war or tragedy and it was sad to witness, especially when trolleys of amputees and writhing children with contorted bodies were wheeled right past your restaurant asking for money.
On day two it was off to yet another site of sadness, the S-21 Genocide Museum where more poor innocent Cambodians were captured, held and tortured for months before being shipped off to the Killing Fields to be finished off and buried in the mass graves.
The S-21 building was originally a school for the local children which had been transformed into an eerily disturbing prison of barbed wire and wooden boxes to house the men, women and children. It really was disgusting to see and made my stomach turn that people were, and still are, capable of inflicting so much pain and anguish for no reason at all.
We had a couple of nice dinners and walked around the town a bit but those were the two main things we did. It was obvious that the area was soaked in poverty and needs a lot of TLC before it and its people can recover.
After Phnom Pehn we headed north to Siem Reap, home of the mighty Angkor Wat temple and many, many others We only spent a couple of days there, one doing the temple rounds and another chilling in the town, getting a nice cheap swedish massage.
Although Angkor Wat was amazing and very stunning I think I was more captivated by the two I saw back in Indonesia, the buddist 'Borobodur' and Hindu 'Prambanan'. I guess that's the problem of having such a reputation, there's a hell of a lot to live up to. I particularly liked the temple where Angelina Jolie was taken for the film Tomb Raider. It was a natural film set in itself and ancient trees had grown round and swallowed up the brickwork and carvings of the place. Doorways leading into pitch black were framed by gigantic roots that looked more like octopus tentacles than vegetation, loved it.
Tina and Matt chose to stay up in Siem Reap for a third day but I left alone on the night bus to get down to Sihanoukville on day 2. It was a fairly uneventful night time journey but I enjoyed the solo adventure and got quite a few reality checks when I found myself standing in the middle of nowhere at 4am surrounded by nothing but Cambodian goats!
I arrived into the beachy coastal town at sunrise and felt really liberated to be back by the sea again, especially as the inky black sky merged into a rainbow of navy blue, purple, pinks, oranges and yellows. I did the usual business of grabbing my bag and bartering a price with a motorbike driver and in no time at all was whizzing through the empty streets to my guesthouse, wind in the hair and smile on the face.
It was only 6am but I knew where some friends were staying and what room they were in so I made sure they got a nice early awakening to the day by sneaking in and jumping on their beds haha.
Sihanoukville went really fast, we spent 5 days there but they all merged into a bit of a drunken blur. There was a good group of people to hang out with and it was really nice to do the social thing again. It's apparently the 'place to go' for some beach action so that's exactly what we did, some beach action combined with some Cambodian style holiday vibe.
It was pretty sad leaving Jon and Craig on the 18th, we'd been travelling with them from the day we entered Laos and although we had to move on, so did they. We said our goodbyes and then that was that, we started the long process of getting down to the Thai island of Koh Phangan in time for the full moon party.
We caught a bus to Phnom Pehn (which broke down twice, lost it's air con half way through and was full of screaming babies and brown nappies), got a tuk tuk to the airport, a plane to Bangkok airport, a taxi in to Bangkok city, a taxi back to Bangkok airport (15 hours later), a flight to Surat Thani in southern Thailand, a coach to Don Sak pier, a ferry to Koh Phangan and FINALLY a jeep truck to our hotel.
All that took about 36 hours.
From that moment on, carnage ensued. It was just ridiculous. The thai redbull out here really does contain all sorts of illegal things because anyone who drinks it just goes loopy...it's great! I'll skim over the details but on our first night which was supposed to be a quiet one we went down to Haad Rin beach and didn’t get back till 6am. Our second night, the night before the big party which we were going to 'take easy' we ended up at a pool party and very much IN the pool until 4am, and then it was full moon day where we didn't hang up the dancing shoes till 11am the following morning.
After those three days I was finished, a walking zombie. Koh Phangan had had its way with us and spat us all back out.
We all felt bad for not really seeing any of the island except the party area so on our 5th and last day we hired a 4x4 jeep to take off road and into the jungle. It was an awesome day full of highlights but hanging onto the back of a truck while whizzing through rainforest meant i've now got about 400,000 big, fat, red, angry, itchy mosquito bites which look atrocious :(
I loved hiking up to the highest viewpoint on the island though where we found a tiny wooden shelter complete with pillows and hammock and a local guy serving iced tea, beer and playing Bob Marley. So cool.
From Koh Phangan we very groggily made our way to Koh Tao by the sea sick making, packed to the rafters ferry. Ever wanted to feel what its like to be squashed into a space smaller than your skull? Take this ferry.
We've been here a few days now and the group has been split up for a bit while we all do our own thing. I'm doing my SSI diving course for the next 3 days so am currently holed up in a little one bed wooden bungalow which I THOUGHT was cute and charming until I woke up covered with another million bites, this time from disgusting bed bugs. They’re all over my legs and body and have sort of merged with the huge mozzie ones so now I just look truely rank.
I'm actually lying on the bug ridden bed now typing this and can almost feel the parasites tucking into dinner as I type. Tomorrow, after my 2 dives i'm packing up my bags and getting the hell out of here and over to where Tina and Lottie are staying. It's annoying though as my accommodation price is included with my diving course....bed bugs included too though, not worth it.
Anyway, all is going well, the diving is going great. It'll feel good to finally be a fully certified diver and being here has put yet more ideas for the future in my head. To be continued...
Time for bed now, along with my microscopic little friends. Night night.
Friday, 26 November 2010
Sunday, 7 November 2010
Is it Lizard Proof?
Bangkok was crazy, Kanachaburi chilled, Chiang Mai historic, Pai a hippy haven, Laos...well that was completely Laos. Blog over.
Ah only kidding, but in all seriousness it does seem that Central and Northern Thailand has a lot to offer to people seeking all types of adventure. One of the hardest things about 'travelling' in my opinion is the deciding on where to go. You've got thousands of tiny villages, hundreds of well known towns and more than a handful of 'must see' cities in a potentially unexplored country. Now add the temples, waterfalls, canyons, mountains and activities into the mix and there's just too much to consider. Infact, it's an indecisive persons nightmare, and that's only for one country!
I'm now 1 year 5 months and 8 countries into this incredible journey and still have 2left (both months and countries) to come. How have I got here (on this 11hr night bus filled with cinema style red leather recliner seats and not very friendly locals to be specific) and how did my brain cope with the decisions to be made up until now??
I'm thinking like this because Tina and I have had time to kill where we are and have used it to plan our itinerary up until we fly to the Thai islands in late November. We're going to be pretty short on time in Vietnam and Cambodia because we want to be on Ko Phangan for the full moon party and my head is swimming with dates, places, times, modes of transport, place names, accommodation names, peoples names, it's crazy!
Nothing an iced coffee (2nd of the day) can't sort out though.
We arrived into Bangkok on the 24th September and it was just what I expected, chaotic. We'd chosen to stay in the most chaotic area of town of course as that's the quickest and easiest way to get the vibe of a place but still, adjusting to the pace was something we had to do pretty quickly. The other thing about Bangkok was the weather, it's still monsoon season down there and the humidity levels were through the roof. You only had to turn off the cold shower and you were dripping again before you had dried off! With the heat came amazing thunder and lightning storms every single evening though which I loved and watched from the hotel balcony.
One evening we had left the guesthouse to brave the rain (thinking the worst was over) and look for a restaurant when the clouds let loose even more and a huge flash cut open the sky right above us. I was absolutely soaked even
though we'd only been walking for 5 minutes, Tina less so in her poncho(!) and we were both shielding ourselves from the storm with flimsy miniature umbrellas. Mine was particularly crap and gradually buckled under the weight of the water until I was left trying to shelter myself under 6 metal spikes sticking into the air at stupid angles like some kind of deformed metallic spider.
Bangkok seems like ages ago now but there was ALOT of shopping combined with some sightseeing and after 5 days (which felt like 5 weeks) we were ready to go. On our last day we had the added stress of trying to send home yet another parcel before closing time and having absolutely no money to do so. It was one of those moments where you think 'what the hell am I going to do now? We're absolutely screwed.'
It all started when Tina realised she'd lost her bank card in the post office and didn't have the cash to send her parcel. Although a bit of a bad shock we still had mine as a back up and planned to withdraw cash for the both of us with that.
That was until the ATM sucked mine into oblivion for no good reason less than 30 minutes later.
Here we were in Bangkok with no cash and no cards to get any with. I was f-r-e-a-k-i-n-g out with glazed eyes staring into space picturing all the terrible things that were coming our way and Tina was laughing hysterically at the stupidity/desperation of the situation.
In a strike of inspiration she realised she had one more unused Barclaycard hidden away in her bag and that we might be able to use that...but then the ATM refused to give us the cash and said we had the wrong pin!! It doesn't sound very stressful writing about it now but trust me, it was.
It was 4.56pm, the post office closed at 5pm, we were soaked through with the humidity, people were yelling at us in Thai from all directions and I was about to explode.
To cut to the chase, yes we eventually worked out the pin and got some cash but I had to have my bank courier out a new card to a random depot in Laos and get there on tuk tuk to collect it...another adventure right there!
After the drama of Bangkok we were pleased to escape to Kanachaburi, famous for its River Kwai and the bridge over it. We checked into a very cute little guesthouse called Sugarcane Lodge II and all was good until Tina walked into the bathroom and let out a huge scream before walking back out again with fear in her eyes. She said there was a lizard the size of a small dinosaur on the wall behind the door but it was long gone when I went to have a look.
After that incident her trust in Thailand was gone and when the loo started smelling like a regurgitated sewer it was game over for Sugarcane Lodge. We did move to another bungalow but there were mini lizards on the windows there too!
The next day we took the 'Death Railway' train over the River Kwai all the way up to a place called Namtok which was a nice journey and took us past some imposing mountainous type scenery. It's called the Death Railway because of all the men (mostly POW's) who died in the process of building it under Japanese supervision during World War II so it was quite a sobering trip when thinking about the history behind it all.
Once in Namtok I had a nice coconut/chicken soup and saw some German tourists strip down and bare all under a massive waterfall which was rather comical.
The rest of Kanachaburi was spent eating nice curries and having a massage and pedicure. I can't get enough of the massages even though it was a little weird and a big reality check lying virtually naked on the floor in a dimly lit room while a little Thai lady rubbed oil into my legs.
We took a 12hr bus north to Chiang Mai after a couple of days there and settled into a nice guesthouse only to unsettle out of it the next morning when I discovered another of our little lizard friends sitting underneath the loo seat waiting to share it with us. It wasn't the best start and when Tina found out we were as good as gone.
I really liked Chiang Mai, it was much more chilled than Bangkok and much smaller, it felt historic and was made up of 4 city walls that encircled the 'old town' which we were staying in. The streets were small and windy and cafes and bars more intimate. My only criticism was that it felt very empty and needed more people floating about for an atmosphere to build. There were a lot of older white men around with their wrinkly arms draped around much younger Thai women though which was quite disturbing to the eye.
We did some activity type stuff in Chiang Mai, the first was a 1 day trek in which we walked up to a hill tribe village, went bamboo rafting and unfortunately, rode an elephant. I say unfortunately because although hesitant about doing it in the first place, when we got to the elephant park (a patch of mud at the side of the road) they were bound to disgustingly short chains, were being hit by Thai idiots and looked very worse for wear. I absolutely hated it and have to admit, shed a few tears as we reluctantly climbed onto the poor things back :(
The bamboo rafting was pretty funny though and helped raise the spirits as we floated down the river getting soaked at the mercy of our 11 year old driver and guide.
The next day Tina went on a cooking course and I did the Jungle Flight zip line which is basically flying from platform to platform through the jungle at tree top level, it was great!
Our next stop was Pai, a little hippy town even further north and up in the mountains. We had planned to rent mopeds for our time there so as soon as we'd found a room we hired some out and whizzed up to a little waterfall a few kms out of town. We'd unknowingly timed our spontaneous ride with sunset and on the way back found a cafe balcony to sit on and sip some drinks while overlooking the golden fields of Northern Thailand below us. That definitely got us excited for the full days riding we had planned for the next day.
Things got off to a bumpy start with Tina falling off her moped at the first junction, I hadn't noticed so sped off alone with the wind in my hair and a smile on my face. It was only 5 minutes later when I turned around and saw a bunch of asians behind me I knew something had gone a miss.
Eventually we got underway with map in hand and sped down the windy roads to a number of local spots such as a little canyon, some hot springs and another waterfall. The weather couldn't have been better which made the exploring extra fun, it was a very good day!
Pai was our last stop for the first part of Thailand and after 4 days there we booked ourselves onto the notorious 2 day slow boat which goes from Chiang Khong down the Mekong River and into Luang Prabang in Laos. The boat cruises for 2 days with a bunch of other travellers and I found the whole thing really cool. The best bit and what we'd hoped would happen was to meet some other like minded people along the way and within 10 minutes we got chatting to 4 others sitting nearby. (We ended up travelling all of Laos together and will do some of Vietnam too i'm sure which is cool).
The 2 days went surprisingly quickly and we passed the time by playing cards and admiring the gorgeous Laos views. Infact before we knew it we were pulling up into Luang Prabang, Laos's jewel of the north and our new group of 6 began the hunt for some decent accommodation.
Ironically (and this always seems to happen) we ended up back at the very first place we checked out and set up camp there. It was a big old house made up entirely of rich dark wood like boat cabins so I nicknamed it The Titanic which kinda stuck with everyone.
You could really see the French influence in the architecture of Luang prabang and a lot of the restaurants were trying (some more successfully than others) to recreate European style menus. We had great weather and visited a gorgeous waterfall area on our second day which had a rope swing and rocks to jump off which of course we did.
On our third day Tina and I split from the others for a bit to hire some battered old bikes and cycle round the town to get a feel for the 'real Laos'. It was the best way to see things and we even bumped into a cute little sunlit grotto where some of the bright orange monks robes were hanging out to dry on a washing line, it made a good photo.
I hadn't felt particularly well that day and by the time we got back to the guesthouse a really nasty bug had taken hold and had me doubled up in a cold sweat with serious sickness. The next 12 hours were miserable and I moved out of the bedroom to spend the night living in a crumbled heap on the bathroom floor :(
Fortunately the whole thing passed within 24 hours and we were still able to leave for Vang Vieng late the following day.
The minibus journey down took about 6 hours and showcased some of the best mountain scenery yet, really dramatic panoramas and a chance to see tiny rural villages come to life as we bolted through. We had yet another insect dilemma that night when we returned from dinner to find a GIANT grasshopper climbing lazily across our duvet as we opened the door. Tina didn't see it and picked up a pile of clothes inches from it's long spindly legs.
'Step away from the bed. I repeat, step away from the bed' was the only instruction I could think to give! (We resolved this one by kidnapping a drunk backpacker from the street outside and holding him hostage until he removed the offender).
The highlight of Laos, actually, of Asian backpacking was tubing the next day, it's one of those things you can only hope exists and when you get to do it feels like a weird dream because it's just sooooooooooo good.
You basically get in your swimwear, hire a large inflatable tube of the day and get a tuk tuk up to a point in the Mekong river a few kms up to a start point. From there you spend the day drifting from bar to bar, rickety wooden huts on stilts serving potent vodka/redbull buckets and shots of local whisky. There's music banging out from each one and by the 4th one everyone is completely wrecked! Good times :)
Apart from tubing there's not a lot to do in Vang Vieng so we moved on to the capital, Vientiane. There was even less to do here and apart from some ten pin bowling with the locals and a mini adventure I went on to retrieve my bank card from a DHL depot in the middle of nowhere not a lot else happened. The highlight was jumping on the back of a scooter with Craig and exploring the crazy roads on wheels.
We got our Vietnamese visas sorted and booked ourselves onto the 24 hour bus from Vientiane to Hanoi, Tina decided to get there by plane so we split for a day (the first in 10 months!).
The bus journey actually went ridiculously quickly and I really enjoyed it, probably because John, Craig and I had the best seats at the very back which was like a big sofa. John, who makes me laugh way too much popped 8 Valiums and was out for the count most of the time anyway!
We stopped at some extremely random 'restaurants' on that journey, one which had a bag containing a big live lizard thing trapped in it (for eating?!) and another with a jar of dead snakes decomposing into a yellowy fluid, supposedly for drinking but the thought makes me want to vomit.
After successfully crossing the boarder and being let into Vietnam we cruised on into the capital of Hanoi and I was reunited at the hotel with Tina.
It was all a bit non-stop because less that 12 hours later we were up at 4am to catch a 10hr train with the locals up into the mountains to a place called Sapa. Tina and I were to spend 2 days there before returning back to Hanoi to meet up with Matt, a friend from home who's spontaneously come out to join us for the next 2 months.
Unfortunately the weather in Sapa took a turn for the worst and the thick white fog obscured any kind of spectacular views for most of the time. We did take a hike down to a local mountain village which was worth the effort though and also got chased by a tiny little tribal woman with one tooth. She was surprisingly scary.
We returned to Hanoi by night bus and decided to sample the Valium we'd bought back in Bali, 2 of those later and we were out for the count until the rude driver shook us awake and shouted "HANOI, HANOI, HANOI" in our faces at 4am.
I never did go back to sleep that night but the next day we somehow dragged ourselves around the Temple of Literature which was pretty and did alot of organisation for the upcoming weeks including booking ourselves onto a 2 day boat cruise in Halong Bay.
Matt arrived the following day and just like that 2 became 3! The beer out here is 8p a glass.....yes, 8p a glass. So we thought it'd be rude not to sample some while playing cards in the old town. I was happy because Matt has brought out his new Pentax DSLR and let me run around the city like a kid in a candy shop snapping away like the paparazzi.
Our boat cruise in Halong Bay was really nice and scenic, we got to sleep on an old Vietnamese junk boat and the area is an absolutely stunning collection of 2,000 limestone cliff islands jutting out of the sea at all angles. There are over 750 traditional boats that take hoards of tourists like us around the area and you get to visit an hugely impressive cave as well as watch the sunset while kayaking about the bay and eat lots of seafood type stuff on board. It was a nice 2 days and good to access to a different side of Vietnam.
From Halong we flew down the coast to Danang airport (skipping the historical town of Hue due to central coastal flooding)and went straight to Hoi An. Here we were reunited with the boys, had a few good nights out and explored the old town which is a protected historical site.
After a couple of lazy days there I managed to persuade Craig to split from John for a while and join Me, Mich and Matt in Delat for a few days. Once again we boarded a night bus and began travelling even further down the coast but this time more in land and back up into mountain territory. We arrived there 24 hours later and were soon to discover that we had been the last bus allowed up onto the dodgy roads because of the weather.
Aside from the rain Delat was a great way to see yet another face of the land and we found a great motorcycle tour company to hire some mopeds from with a local guide for a day. There was just the 4 of us cruising around these tiny villages and riding round bendy desolate roads, our guide described the areas, told us myths and temple tales and even took us to a local friends place for a fantastic lunch of traditional Vietnamese food which was delicious. I really, really enjoyed that day.
Time as ever seems to be speeding up again and after Delat the four of us grabbed a 12hr bus down to Ho Chi Minh city, formally known as Saigon. It felt quite a bit more western than Hanoi, more touristy which wasn't a bad thing just different.
It wasn't a grotty or crazy as i'd been warned and we spent our time there sightseeing, all the usual things. I particularly enjoyed visiting the Vietnam War Remnants Museum where there's a massive collection of photographs, information and artefacts from the war on display. It was shocking but extremely interesting at the same time.
And FINALLY, that brings me up to the present day, this is a blog that has got completely out of control in length! We left HCMC this morning and have decided to do a 2 day Mekong Delta tour as a way of getting up to the Cambodian boarder and into the capital.
Today we visited a local floating market, saw coconut candy and rice paper being made and then got taken on a little boat cruise amongst the Mekong islands. Unexpectedly we were then told to jump on battered bicycles and cycle down dusty roads to the restaurant we were having lunch which was another fun bonus.
Right now i'm seriously lacking in sleep and wish I wasn't sitting on this random boat being dive bombed by mosquitoes but ah, it's all part of the fun right?!
Ah only kidding, but in all seriousness it does seem that Central and Northern Thailand has a lot to offer to people seeking all types of adventure. One of the hardest things about 'travelling' in my opinion is the deciding on where to go. You've got thousands of tiny villages, hundreds of well known towns and more than a handful of 'must see' cities in a potentially unexplored country. Now add the temples, waterfalls, canyons, mountains and activities into the mix and there's just too much to consider. Infact, it's an indecisive persons nightmare, and that's only for one country!
I'm now 1 year 5 months and 8 countries into this incredible journey and still have 2left (both months and countries) to come. How have I got here (on this 11hr night bus filled with cinema style red leather recliner seats and not very friendly locals to be specific) and how did my brain cope with the decisions to be made up until now??
I'm thinking like this because Tina and I have had time to kill where we are and have used it to plan our itinerary up until we fly to the Thai islands in late November. We're going to be pretty short on time in Vietnam and Cambodia because we want to be on Ko Phangan for the full moon party and my head is swimming with dates, places, times, modes of transport, place names, accommodation names, peoples names, it's crazy!
Nothing an iced coffee (2nd of the day) can't sort out though.
We arrived into Bangkok on the 24th September and it was just what I expected, chaotic. We'd chosen to stay in the most chaotic area of town of course as that's the quickest and easiest way to get the vibe of a place but still, adjusting to the pace was something we had to do pretty quickly. The other thing about Bangkok was the weather, it's still monsoon season down there and the humidity levels were through the roof. You only had to turn off the cold shower and you were dripping again before you had dried off! With the heat came amazing thunder and lightning storms every single evening though which I loved and watched from the hotel balcony.
One evening we had left the guesthouse to brave the rain (thinking the worst was over) and look for a restaurant when the clouds let loose even more and a huge flash cut open the sky right above us. I was absolutely soaked even
though we'd only been walking for 5 minutes, Tina less so in her poncho(!) and we were both shielding ourselves from the storm with flimsy miniature umbrellas. Mine was particularly crap and gradually buckled under the weight of the water until I was left trying to shelter myself under 6 metal spikes sticking into the air at stupid angles like some kind of deformed metallic spider.
Bangkok seems like ages ago now but there was ALOT of shopping combined with some sightseeing and after 5 days (which felt like 5 weeks) we were ready to go. On our last day we had the added stress of trying to send home yet another parcel before closing time and having absolutely no money to do so. It was one of those moments where you think 'what the hell am I going to do now? We're absolutely screwed.'
It all started when Tina realised she'd lost her bank card in the post office and didn't have the cash to send her parcel. Although a bit of a bad shock we still had mine as a back up and planned to withdraw cash for the both of us with that.
That was until the ATM sucked mine into oblivion for no good reason less than 30 minutes later.
Here we were in Bangkok with no cash and no cards to get any with. I was f-r-e-a-k-i-n-g out with glazed eyes staring into space picturing all the terrible things that were coming our way and Tina was laughing hysterically at the stupidity/desperation of the situation.
In a strike of inspiration she realised she had one more unused Barclaycard hidden away in her bag and that we might be able to use that...but then the ATM refused to give us the cash and said we had the wrong pin!! It doesn't sound very stressful writing about it now but trust me, it was.
It was 4.56pm, the post office closed at 5pm, we were soaked through with the humidity, people were yelling at us in Thai from all directions and I was about to explode.
To cut to the chase, yes we eventually worked out the pin and got some cash but I had to have my bank courier out a new card to a random depot in Laos and get there on tuk tuk to collect it...another adventure right there!
After the drama of Bangkok we were pleased to escape to Kanachaburi, famous for its River Kwai and the bridge over it. We checked into a very cute little guesthouse called Sugarcane Lodge II and all was good until Tina walked into the bathroom and let out a huge scream before walking back out again with fear in her eyes. She said there was a lizard the size of a small dinosaur on the wall behind the door but it was long gone when I went to have a look.
After that incident her trust in Thailand was gone and when the loo started smelling like a regurgitated sewer it was game over for Sugarcane Lodge. We did move to another bungalow but there were mini lizards on the windows there too!
The next day we took the 'Death Railway' train over the River Kwai all the way up to a place called Namtok which was a nice journey and took us past some imposing mountainous type scenery. It's called the Death Railway because of all the men (mostly POW's) who died in the process of building it under Japanese supervision during World War II so it was quite a sobering trip when thinking about the history behind it all.
Once in Namtok I had a nice coconut/chicken soup and saw some German tourists strip down and bare all under a massive waterfall which was rather comical.
The rest of Kanachaburi was spent eating nice curries and having a massage and pedicure. I can't get enough of the massages even though it was a little weird and a big reality check lying virtually naked on the floor in a dimly lit room while a little Thai lady rubbed oil into my legs.
We took a 12hr bus north to Chiang Mai after a couple of days there and settled into a nice guesthouse only to unsettle out of it the next morning when I discovered another of our little lizard friends sitting underneath the loo seat waiting to share it with us. It wasn't the best start and when Tina found out we were as good as gone.
I really liked Chiang Mai, it was much more chilled than Bangkok and much smaller, it felt historic and was made up of 4 city walls that encircled the 'old town' which we were staying in. The streets were small and windy and cafes and bars more intimate. My only criticism was that it felt very empty and needed more people floating about for an atmosphere to build. There were a lot of older white men around with their wrinkly arms draped around much younger Thai women though which was quite disturbing to the eye.
We did some activity type stuff in Chiang Mai, the first was a 1 day trek in which we walked up to a hill tribe village, went bamboo rafting and unfortunately, rode an elephant. I say unfortunately because although hesitant about doing it in the first place, when we got to the elephant park (a patch of mud at the side of the road) they were bound to disgustingly short chains, were being hit by Thai idiots and looked very worse for wear. I absolutely hated it and have to admit, shed a few tears as we reluctantly climbed onto the poor things back :(
The bamboo rafting was pretty funny though and helped raise the spirits as we floated down the river getting soaked at the mercy of our 11 year old driver and guide.
The next day Tina went on a cooking course and I did the Jungle Flight zip line which is basically flying from platform to platform through the jungle at tree top level, it was great!
Our next stop was Pai, a little hippy town even further north and up in the mountains. We had planned to rent mopeds for our time there so as soon as we'd found a room we hired some out and whizzed up to a little waterfall a few kms out of town. We'd unknowingly timed our spontaneous ride with sunset and on the way back found a cafe balcony to sit on and sip some drinks while overlooking the golden fields of Northern Thailand below us. That definitely got us excited for the full days riding we had planned for the next day.
Things got off to a bumpy start with Tina falling off her moped at the first junction, I hadn't noticed so sped off alone with the wind in my hair and a smile on my face. It was only 5 minutes later when I turned around and saw a bunch of asians behind me I knew something had gone a miss.
Eventually we got underway with map in hand and sped down the windy roads to a number of local spots such as a little canyon, some hot springs and another waterfall. The weather couldn't have been better which made the exploring extra fun, it was a very good day!
Pai was our last stop for the first part of Thailand and after 4 days there we booked ourselves onto the notorious 2 day slow boat which goes from Chiang Khong down the Mekong River and into Luang Prabang in Laos. The boat cruises for 2 days with a bunch of other travellers and I found the whole thing really cool. The best bit and what we'd hoped would happen was to meet some other like minded people along the way and within 10 minutes we got chatting to 4 others sitting nearby. (We ended up travelling all of Laos together and will do some of Vietnam too i'm sure which is cool).
The 2 days went surprisingly quickly and we passed the time by playing cards and admiring the gorgeous Laos views. Infact before we knew it we were pulling up into Luang Prabang, Laos's jewel of the north and our new group of 6 began the hunt for some decent accommodation.
Ironically (and this always seems to happen) we ended up back at the very first place we checked out and set up camp there. It was a big old house made up entirely of rich dark wood like boat cabins so I nicknamed it The Titanic which kinda stuck with everyone.
You could really see the French influence in the architecture of Luang prabang and a lot of the restaurants were trying (some more successfully than others) to recreate European style menus. We had great weather and visited a gorgeous waterfall area on our second day which had a rope swing and rocks to jump off which of course we did.
On our third day Tina and I split from the others for a bit to hire some battered old bikes and cycle round the town to get a feel for the 'real Laos'. It was the best way to see things and we even bumped into a cute little sunlit grotto where some of the bright orange monks robes were hanging out to dry on a washing line, it made a good photo.
I hadn't felt particularly well that day and by the time we got back to the guesthouse a really nasty bug had taken hold and had me doubled up in a cold sweat with serious sickness. The next 12 hours were miserable and I moved out of the bedroom to spend the night living in a crumbled heap on the bathroom floor :(
Fortunately the whole thing passed within 24 hours and we were still able to leave for Vang Vieng late the following day.
The minibus journey down took about 6 hours and showcased some of the best mountain scenery yet, really dramatic panoramas and a chance to see tiny rural villages come to life as we bolted through. We had yet another insect dilemma that night when we returned from dinner to find a GIANT grasshopper climbing lazily across our duvet as we opened the door. Tina didn't see it and picked up a pile of clothes inches from it's long spindly legs.
'Step away from the bed. I repeat, step away from the bed' was the only instruction I could think to give! (We resolved this one by kidnapping a drunk backpacker from the street outside and holding him hostage until he removed the offender).
The highlight of Laos, actually, of Asian backpacking was tubing the next day, it's one of those things you can only hope exists and when you get to do it feels like a weird dream because it's just sooooooooooo good.
You basically get in your swimwear, hire a large inflatable tube of the day and get a tuk tuk up to a point in the Mekong river a few kms up to a start point. From there you spend the day drifting from bar to bar, rickety wooden huts on stilts serving potent vodka/redbull buckets and shots of local whisky. There's music banging out from each one and by the 4th one everyone is completely wrecked! Good times :)
Apart from tubing there's not a lot to do in Vang Vieng so we moved on to the capital, Vientiane. There was even less to do here and apart from some ten pin bowling with the locals and a mini adventure I went on to retrieve my bank card from a DHL depot in the middle of nowhere not a lot else happened. The highlight was jumping on the back of a scooter with Craig and exploring the crazy roads on wheels.
We got our Vietnamese visas sorted and booked ourselves onto the 24 hour bus from Vientiane to Hanoi, Tina decided to get there by plane so we split for a day (the first in 10 months!).
The bus journey actually went ridiculously quickly and I really enjoyed it, probably because John, Craig and I had the best seats at the very back which was like a big sofa. John, who makes me laugh way too much popped 8 Valiums and was out for the count most of the time anyway!
We stopped at some extremely random 'restaurants' on that journey, one which had a bag containing a big live lizard thing trapped in it (for eating?!) and another with a jar of dead snakes decomposing into a yellowy fluid, supposedly for drinking but the thought makes me want to vomit.
After successfully crossing the boarder and being let into Vietnam we cruised on into the capital of Hanoi and I was reunited at the hotel with Tina.
It was all a bit non-stop because less that 12 hours later we were up at 4am to catch a 10hr train with the locals up into the mountains to a place called Sapa. Tina and I were to spend 2 days there before returning back to Hanoi to meet up with Matt, a friend from home who's spontaneously come out to join us for the next 2 months.
Unfortunately the weather in Sapa took a turn for the worst and the thick white fog obscured any kind of spectacular views for most of the time. We did take a hike down to a local mountain village which was worth the effort though and also got chased by a tiny little tribal woman with one tooth. She was surprisingly scary.
We returned to Hanoi by night bus and decided to sample the Valium we'd bought back in Bali, 2 of those later and we were out for the count until the rude driver shook us awake and shouted "HANOI, HANOI, HANOI" in our faces at 4am.
I never did go back to sleep that night but the next day we somehow dragged ourselves around the Temple of Literature which was pretty and did alot of organisation for the upcoming weeks including booking ourselves onto a 2 day boat cruise in Halong Bay.
Matt arrived the following day and just like that 2 became 3! The beer out here is 8p a glass.....yes, 8p a glass. So we thought it'd be rude not to sample some while playing cards in the old town. I was happy because Matt has brought out his new Pentax DSLR and let me run around the city like a kid in a candy shop snapping away like the paparazzi.
Our boat cruise in Halong Bay was really nice and scenic, we got to sleep on an old Vietnamese junk boat and the area is an absolutely stunning collection of 2,000 limestone cliff islands jutting out of the sea at all angles. There are over 750 traditional boats that take hoards of tourists like us around the area and you get to visit an hugely impressive cave as well as watch the sunset while kayaking about the bay and eat lots of seafood type stuff on board. It was a nice 2 days and good to access to a different side of Vietnam.
From Halong we flew down the coast to Danang airport (skipping the historical town of Hue due to central coastal flooding)and went straight to Hoi An. Here we were reunited with the boys, had a few good nights out and explored the old town which is a protected historical site.
After a couple of lazy days there I managed to persuade Craig to split from John for a while and join Me, Mich and Matt in Delat for a few days. Once again we boarded a night bus and began travelling even further down the coast but this time more in land and back up into mountain territory. We arrived there 24 hours later and were soon to discover that we had been the last bus allowed up onto the dodgy roads because of the weather.
Aside from the rain Delat was a great way to see yet another face of the land and we found a great motorcycle tour company to hire some mopeds from with a local guide for a day. There was just the 4 of us cruising around these tiny villages and riding round bendy desolate roads, our guide described the areas, told us myths and temple tales and even took us to a local friends place for a fantastic lunch of traditional Vietnamese food which was delicious. I really, really enjoyed that day.
Time as ever seems to be speeding up again and after Delat the four of us grabbed a 12hr bus down to Ho Chi Minh city, formally known as Saigon. It felt quite a bit more western than Hanoi, more touristy which wasn't a bad thing just different.
It wasn't a grotty or crazy as i'd been warned and we spent our time there sightseeing, all the usual things. I particularly enjoyed visiting the Vietnam War Remnants Museum where there's a massive collection of photographs, information and artefacts from the war on display. It was shocking but extremely interesting at the same time.
And FINALLY, that brings me up to the present day, this is a blog that has got completely out of control in length! We left HCMC this morning and have decided to do a 2 day Mekong Delta tour as a way of getting up to the Cambodian boarder and into the capital.
Today we visited a local floating market, saw coconut candy and rice paper being made and then got taken on a little boat cruise amongst the Mekong islands. Unexpectedly we were then told to jump on battered bicycles and cycle down dusty roads to the restaurant we were having lunch which was another fun bonus.
Right now i'm seriously lacking in sleep and wish I wasn't sitting on this random boat being dive bombed by mosquitoes but ah, it's all part of the fun right?!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)