Travel Log 16

The day after I arrived Sab, Luke and Harry arrived and off we went to Halong Bay for a few nights.

The tour was nice – Halong bay was amazing, even though it would have looked better if the sun was shining. The tour included a trip to a very large cave, a trek up a slippery hill and a visit to viscous monkey island, a night on the piss and food which was … well – same same.

When we returned home the others had to leave to go south and I stayed in Hanoi to wait out the Tet holidays (Vietnamese new year holidays) . On new years eve I joined some other couchsurfer’s and had dinner around Thao’s house and then watch fireworks light up the cloudy nights sky. New years day I had a peaceful walk around the quiet ,chilly city, watching the locals in the temples and seeing some city sights.

After new year I hung around waiting for information when Hanoi would resume its services again. Unfortunately none of the locals seemed to know for sure. Three days after Tet I walked into the bus tours office and asked "do you have any buses to Vientiane, Laos" Bus tour guy: "we do but I am not sure when they are going to leave, maybe in 3 days time" Leon: "so buses will leave in 3 days, so they'll leave on the 20th" Bus tour guy: "well I can't be sure" Leon: "when will you be sure" Bus tour guy: " maybe on the..." pointing to the 23rd on the calendar Leon: "oh I see...??" and then I walked out. The whole town was like this no one seemed to know when businesses started again – it was very frustrating. If I hadn’t been in Hanoi during Tet I probably would have liked the city more.

On the plus side since everything in the city was closed and most couchsurfers were busy I did get to download 4 seasons of ‘The Wire’ and spent the spare time I had watching them.

Eventually services resumed and I headed to the Laos border.

Travel Log 15

So I quickly zoomed up the coast of Vietnam at about 30 mph – the speed limit here is silly slow. Nha Trang was my first stop – just a beach resort town nothing special – nice beach café. Hoi An next – pretty old town where apparently you can get cheap suits. The a quick five hour stop in Hue – here all I did was sit in a café as I hadn’t had much sleep on the bus journeys or the night before in the hostel and I found out that they pay the staff ridiculously small salary - £40 a month and charge £40 a night for a room.

Then it was off to Hanoi to meet up with the others.

Travel Log 14

In Saigon I couchsurfed at Hui’s place. Hui lives in a one room appartment with her Mum. So in the room was Hui on her bed her Mum on a fold-up bed and myself on the floor. Hui is an Architect and we had long discussions about the good and bad bits about Saigon, which I think is my favourite city so far mainly because of the obvious French influence. Saigon is swarming with motorbikes and scooters and it is really the only way to get about as walking is quite hazardous and travelling by bicycle means you can’t keep up with the traffic which again is a little dangerous.

The first day I was their Hui had to work so I borrowed her bicycle and when site seeing. On my way to the war museum the bike decided to automatically change gear from the one working gear to the gear which didn’t work. The chain slipped of the gear and my foot fell off the peddle. The bike didn’t have working brakes so I couldn’t stop the bike and lost balance falling from the bike in the middle of about 20 motorbikes. Luckily the riders have amazing hazard awareness and all flowed around me as I bounced along the ground, scraping of a nice layer of skin off my arm. I got up and took the bike to the side of the road put the chain back on and went to the war museum. In the toilets I cleaning my wound and a kind Japanese guy gave me a number of antiseptic wipes to properly clean the cut.

After that we both decided that the bike wasn’t the best option for travelling around the city and as Hui was off work at the weekend we both travelled on her motorbike. Hui also let me drive as she didn’t really like driving with both of us on the back – High five. Riding around town in amongst thousands of other mototbikes, driving up on pavements (they drive motorbikes on the pavements here Dad – you’d love it!) Great fun.

Oh yeah and this picture reminds me – I also went to a barbers for a shave in Saigon – my first ever shave by someone else and although he did slit my throat – he was a good experience. I also had a hair cut (first by a hairdresser for a long time) and a head massage. All for about £3.50.

After Saigon I zoomed up to Hanoi to meet Harry, Luke and Sabrina.

Travel Log 13

The Angkor temples are truly amazing. There are about … um … lots of temples in the Angkor Archaeology site and most people hire tuk tuks to cart then from temple to temple but being a loan traveller this was a little too expensive for me so I hired a bicycle for $1 and biked around the park.  There are lots of kids that hassle you at every temple and they always sell the same stuff, postcards, bracelets, water etc. They also always ask the same questions – like “where are you from?” and then when you reply England they say “Capital London, population 65 million people”. Its nice that they know this but its a shame they all say exactly the same thing. It is however quite nice talking to them about their school, their English is very good and they understand almost everything you say to them. In fact Cambodians have the best English out of any of the countries I have been to so far.

After spending 3 days wandering the temple sites and a few more days resting I headed off to the capital - Phnom Penh. Although quite nice Phnom Penh doesn’t really have many attractions – there is the Prison where the Khmer Rouge killed prisoners which is quite horrific. I decided to take a trip to the coast to hire a bike and ride up a mountain there to see a deserted French casino resort. Unfortunately when I got to Kampot I found out that a rich businessman has decided to build a modern super casino resort at the top of the mountain and is building a new road up the mountain. This meant that the only way to to get to the top was to take a tour for $17. This included a trek for 2 hours and a 40 minute ride in the un-cushioned bed of a truck. On the trek there were some really whiney German girls who moaned that they didn’t expect the trek up to the top of a mountain to be uphill!

The old French casino was interesting and had an amazing view over the surrounding valley over a high cliff edge.

  

After Kampot I headed back to Phnom Penh for a night, where I went out for Italian food with a couchsurfer and some of her friends.

Then I got a bus to cross the border into Nam

Travel Log 12

I caught a bus to the Thai border town of Aranya Prathet where I was going to stay for the night and cross the border in the morning in order to catch the bus to Battambang. However when I got off the bus I got a tuk-tuk (the first on my trip) and said Great Hill Hotel, the tuk-tuk driver said yes yes and off he drove to the Cambodian border. Once here I quickly changed my plans to stay on the Cambodian side. So having read that I should avoid the agencies selling Visas at the crossing I proceeded through the immigration controls. On the other side a tout, after some time, found me a taxi to Battambang which would save me having to stay at the border town. The road from Poipet to Battambang is notoriously bad and the taxi ride was a little hair raising – travelling at 100km/h in a rightside drive car on right side drive roads past bikes with no lights, carts with reflectors made from CDs and motorbike accidents. Scary stuff however I arrived at my destination – The Royal Hotel where I am renting an amazing room for $10 (£6) which has two beds a bathroom, tv and a fridge. Tomorrow I’m going to get my Vietnamese visa and maybe go to the circus.

The circus was fun, the performance was by teenage kids and all proceeds  from the performance go to help disadvantaged children of Battambang.

The next day I hired a manual motorbike and headed out to the Khmer Rouge killing caves. The receptionist told me that it was easy to get there “just head down highway 10 for 30 minutes and you can’t miss it”. So off I headed onto what I thought was highway 10. This soon turned into a dirt track, thinking that this can’t be Highway 10 I turned back and went back to the hotel to make sure of the route. Of course it was the right road they had just neglected to tell me that highway 10 was actually  dirt track 10. So I headed back and had a lot of fun biking down the dirt track , getting dust in my face from all the passing cars and looking at the Cambodian countryside. Cambodia is incredibly flat.

At the killing caves I hired a 12 year old guide to hop on the back of the bike and take me up the hill. We had a nice little chat about school what he wanted to be in the future and his family, which he carried a picture of around with him to show the tourists.

I then biked to a peaceful temple of top of a hill. On the way back I passed a dog which had been hit in the road. I stopped to help it off the middle of the road so that it didn’t cause an accident. However the locals came out of the house and looked at me as though I had hit the dog. So I thought I should probably leave and get back to town.

The next day I took a bus to Siem Reap for the wonder of the Angkor temples.

Travel Log 11

Traffic was terrible in Bangkok and so the bus from Koh Phangan dropped us off at 7:15am by a ditch out of town so that we could try our luck getting to the train station by 8:30am on the back of a donkey.  Although this seemed impossible the donkey, with lots of pointing a watches and ass whipping, managed to deliver us to the train station at 8:35am where since this is Thailand the train was delayed - “That’ll do Donkey”.

I stayed in Bangkok for a few days to figure out what to do next, buy a new phone and go to a nightclub. Nicky was in town and she decided to join me on my next trip to Khao Yai, a national park in which the waterfall from ‘The Beach’ is. The national park was very well paved which allowed Nicky and I to bike around the park to the most impressive waterfalls. Unfortunately since this is dry season the waterfalls weren’t as amazing as they look in the film but the were still very impressive. Another disappointment is that you are no longer allowed to swim in the lake under the waterfalls and you are definitely not allowed to jump off the top and I think had I tried I may have soiled myself before making the jump (it was a long way down – 25m about a 7 storey building).

I left Nicky behind and continued alone to Phimai, a small quiet town that has ancient Angkor style temple ruins. I stayed here for a few days to properly plan where I would go in Cambodia my next port of call.

Then I set off for Cambodia.