To Kampuchea and Beyond

Sihanoukville is probably the best place we've been to so far. Probably.

Our direct bus across the border to Sihanoukville via Phnom Penh turned out to be a change of bus in Phnom Penh with a 2 1/2 hour wait. Oh well, bit of time to scope out Phnom Penh before we returned (every cloud...). The bus eventually got to Sihanoukville around 10:30pm. We got taken by a tuk tuk to a hotel/bungalow near the beach. To be honest, it could have been anywhere, we just wanted somewhere to sleep that wasn't on a bus. Was a pretty epic day, so we were pretty exhausted after it. Got picked up at 8:00am in Saigon and eventually arrived in Sihanoukville at 10:30pm. 14 hours. I did manage to smash a book on the journey - Dan Brown "Digital Fortress." Not his best, but OK.

Sihanoukville is one pretty awesome place. Very chilled beach place. We stayed down in the Serendipity Beach area. The beach is lined with bar/restaurants and beach loungers. Tuffy and I found a perch on the beach-side and pretty much didn't move from there for a good 8 hours. Why would you? They bring your food to your lounger; bring your drinks to the lounger; ladies wander to you and massage you if you want; if it's hot, you can just get up and fall in the water. This place is high on the recommendation list. These little kids rock round with coathangers ladened with bracelets. If none take your fancy, they have bags with different coloured threads and will make you one on the spot. They seem innocent enough, but they are damn persistent. From not wanting any, I ended up with three and Asty ended up with 2 and a bookmark (which he's already lost). I got a pretty sweet bracelet with "GEAR" written on it (which I've now lost). Asty got one with "ASTY" in the colours of the ABs. One, this little kid who made our bracelts, kept hassling us about playing games, where if he one, we'd have to pay his price for bracelets, or if we won, we got our price. I beat him in a best of three game of Paper, Rock, Sissors, so ended up with a Cambodian flag for $2. Asty bought a pair of "Oakley" polarised sunnies as well (which broke today).

As the sun goes down, all the restaurants start cranking the BBQ. You can get a BBQ feed of whatever from $3. Pretty legit feed, once you add the salad and fries to the place. We perched up at one restaurant, had our $3 seafood BBQ and our countless beers, and watched the fire dancers do their thing (made even more awesome after we sampled a "Happy Shake". We were pretty leered up by the time we decided to leave, but called into one last bar before the night ended.


Next morning, fairly hung over, we woke up and pretty much boarded our bus back to Phnom Pehn. Joslynn (Canadian girl) gave us a heads up about where to perch in Phnom Penh, so as soon as we got off, we could tell the Tuk Tuk driver where to take us. The tuk tuk driver (Bora, rhymes with Dora) ended up being a sweet chap, who ran tours round Phnom Penh, so we sussed for him to pick us up the next morning to check out the killing fields, tuol sleng (S-21), and some other sites.

Pretty intense shit went down in Cambodia not that long ago. We got to the Killing Fields at Choeung Ek (around 15km South-west of Phnom Penh) and followed an audio-guided tour around the killing fields. Pretty chilling thing. Mass graves everywhere, the biggest held 450 bodies. The big memorial stupa hold the remains of the bodies of the people exhumed. Around 20,000 plus people were executed there and buried across 129 mass graves. some pretty intense stories are told in the audio tour.

After lunch, the intenseness continued when we visited the Tuol Sleng prison (formerly a high school). This was the torture, interrogation, detention centre during the Pol Pot era. People where arrested/caught, interrogated and tortured into confessions (true or untrue) and then sent to Choeung Ek to be executed. It was pretty creepy walking round, looking into rooms that once held thousands of people. There was barbed wire fences covering the higher levels to stop the desperate prisoners from committing suicide. not a nice place at all. When the Vietnam Army finally got to the prison, they found 14 people dead there. These were the last of the people tortured in Tuol Sleng. Their bodies are buried on-site and a memorial has been set up. It was bloody hot inside the buildings, I can't imagine what it would have been like to be kept prisoner in one of those rooms with hundreds of others. One of the famous quotes from that Pol Pot era was "No loss if killed, no gain if kept alive."

We are now in Siam Reap. Picked up at 7:45am, arrived at 4pm. Damn these long-haul busses... i think a traditional Khmer massage is justified!

p.s. photos will be added to photoless posts when i find some decent internet.

Saigon or Ho Chi Minh City?

The bus down from Saigon was sweet. Aircon was good, seats were comfy. Wasn't so good for a couple Vietnamese girls tho - one was throwing up into a bag, and the other kept scuttling past to the on-bus toilet. We got dropped in District 1 round 7pm and first priority was to find somewhere to crash for the night. We just started looking when we bumped into Joslynn and Stacey (the canadian girls) again. They were looking for accom as well, so all four of us started checking some places out. They locked one in pretty much straight away. Stacey was sunburnt as (lobstered up real good) from the day before in Mui Ne, so i think she was just keen to find somewhere and dump her stuff. We carried on looking. This random old-ish white dude asked what we were looking for, and lead us round to another side street away from the madness, where there were a bunch of other places. Kim's Hostel offered free wifi, hot shower, aircon and free breakfast - so we locked this in. Pretty sweet for $16 per night. We were pretty hungry by now, so we got a feed and went for a wander through district 1. On our way back to the room, we bumped into Joslynn and Stacey again. They were checking out other pads, as they regretted locking in their first one - they were looking for a place with a bath, so Stacey could soak in it. They eventually moved into a place across the road from us.

First proper day in Saigon, Al and I went to check out the War Museum here. We grabbed our legit free breakfast and had a yarn to the couple guys there (Malaysian dude and a Finnish dude). They gave us a rough circuit of sights to check out in town that day. So we had a rough itenary to run by. Joslynn said that she was keen to tag along with us the night before (so Stacey could take some time out), but instead her and Stacey went to try find a medical clinic. On the way to the war museum, this hawker was walking along next to us. He amdired the size of my arms, so asked if i wanted to carry his load for a bit. We obliged. Damn, those things are heavy. He reckoned they're around 40kg, man, it felt like it.The War Museum was intense. Pretty eye-opening stuff in there. A little Vietnam biased tho - it definitely left you with the feeling that Americans were in the wrong, the bad guy. We didn't see the whole museum as they kicked everyone out at 12pm. We managed to cover most of it, so we didn't bother going back. We took a long wander back to district one, passing a few other sights around Saigon. It was midday, so the sun was pretty intense. Real hot and sweaty walking round town, so we stopped in this local convenience store to get a drink. They sold NZ Natural Icecream, so i felt obliged to buy one. Was real average - the ice cream had icicles, and the cone was chewy and soggy... oh well, can't expect much more. The canadian spotted us from the taxi, so jumped out and chased us down. I'm pretty sure they were stalking us, but apparantly the clinic was right by where we were. Made plans to meet up that night for dinner and check out the night market. Asty managed to finally get hold of some decent earphones. Sennheiser CX215, decent set of phones. He was stoked, after his previous "sony" ones started falling apart as soon as he took them outta the packet.

Met up with Joslynn and Stacey for dinner. Heard the run down from the doctor, Stacey's sunburn was classed as second degree burns! She did a good job at getting herself sun burnt. Was pretty bad - she had a huge blister on her shoulder. She had put on SPF 60+ on in Mui Ne - didn't no the numbers when that high! Didn't seem to really do its job. We checked out the night market, was pretty small compared to the day market, but still worth a look. The girls were looking for loose clothing that Stacey could wear. We realised our mistake in taking girls to a clothing night market, they'd even warned us. Luckily we were able to locate some beers. they pretty much saved us. Alex did manage to score himself a Rolex tho - fake, but A-class imitation.

Day 2 was an early start. The bus came at 8:15am to take us out to the Cu Chi tunnels - the old attack tunnels the Viet Cong used during the war. Met these two Dutch girls, Fredderika and Anna, at breakfast who were doing the same tour. We piled onto the already full bus, but manages to find seats. I managed to lock in the shotgun seat next to the driver. Opened my eyes to a whole new experience of driving in Vietnam cities... We stopped off at this craft/art making place. Pretty cool, but we just wanted to get to the tunnels. Randomly, Anton (the aussie guy we'd met on the boat in Halong) was there, dressed in a suit... We were like "what's with the suit" and he was like "I wanted to get a photo of me firing an AK47 in a suit. How sweet would that be?"... beauty.

We got to the tunnels and our guide, Slim, joined us up with another group for the introduction and video. The guy who took us through the intro was actually a Viet Cong veteran. He'd spent time in the tunnels and was shot twice by an american machine gunner on a helicopter, once in the shoulder and once in the foot. Most of his family, except his dad, was killed in the war. Sad, but awesome dude. The tunnels were tiny. First, we were asked to spot a hidden entrance. Was pretty well concealed and the entrance was tiny. There was no way I'd fit in there, Alex managed to squeeze in tho. Some of the traps the vietcong had were intense. The bamboo traps (covered holes in the groud with sharp bamboo sticking up from the bottom) were pretty scary. wouldn't wanna step on those. But some of the other traps they had were brutual. They had ones similar to bear traps; ones that were rollers with spikes, so that once you stepped in it, you were spiked all over as you fell through; ones that fell from doors; ones that were hidden in rice fields... all sorts of brutual traps man. We were then taken to where we could shoot some of the guns that were used. Minimum purchase of 10 bullets, at either 20,000 or 35,000 dong a bullet. bit pricey on the budget we've got left, so we didn't fire any. In fact only one guy from our whole tour did. The guns are all mounted, so you can't actually pick it up and hold it. not worth it. After that, we were finally able to crawl through a part of the tunnels, which they had widened out for tourists. 100m long. It was still prett cramped in there. Needed to duck-waddle through it, was a killer on your quads. Soem of the Viet Cong spent 20 years in those tunnels. I was over it in a couple minutes. We popped out and the guide provided us with some snacks that the Viet Cong used to eat - boiled tapioca root. Not that tasty, similar to a really bland kumara. they gave us this crushed peanut/salt dip which kinda saved it... just. That was pretty much the end of the tour, they lead us back to the bus through the souvineer shop.

We're back in district one now, heading to a water puppet show tonight, before we get on a 10 hour day bus to Sihanoukeville in Cambodia tomorrow morning at 8:30.

Cheers Vietnam for an awesome two weeks. Definitely a special place. Food is awesome, people are awesome, and history here is awesome. Definitely see myself coming back.

Is that Nha Trang? Nah, it's Mui Ne.

We splashed out on a $20 USD hotel for the night. Nice Swan Hotel was by far the nicest accomodation we've stayed in so far. The offered us an $8 boat cruise that went round 4 islands in Nha Trang. Nothing else planned, and it sounded alright (snorkelling, lunch provided, swimming, etc) so we locked it in. The bus would pick us up at 8:30am and take us to the boat - this gave us enough time to squeeze some breakfast in before departing - a cheap chicken pho for me, and Alex scored an awesome looking seafood filled crepe.

The boat cruise was pretty full, about 40 people. There was me and Alex, Canadian dude Shannon, English chick Izi, a group of 10 Japs, and the rest were locals. Handsome Tommy and Hai were our tour guides. Both were hard cases man. Handsome Tommy began the formalities by introducing himself and asking people where they were from. Once you said where you were from, he'd start singing a song from your country. I thought we had him stumped, but then he busted out Po Kari Kari Ana! Awesome. The first island we stopped in was the aquarium island. Just an aquirium with some fish, sharks, turtles. Nothing amazing, the holding tanks were ridiculously small for the number of fish in them. The sweetest thing thre was probably the shark that was riding round on a turtle.

On the second island, we were able to get off and snorkel round some coral, where there were some tropical fish. The masks and snorkels the boat provided were shit. Most of the masks leaked. We ended up with these old school as masks - you know the whole round viewing glass with no separate nose piece. They were actually the best, but equalising was a bit tough. Handsome Tommy kept saying that the water wasn't that warm, but man, it was sweet as. Visibility was alright, but the actual coral reef wasn't that amazing. Still worth a look tho.

After snorkelling, it was time for lunch. We had this on the boat. Was a pretty epic feed, but they said it was so that we could replenish the energy we lost after snorkelling. After lunch, they set up a band on our boat, and another boat tied onto our. The band were pretty sweet, just a guitarist and a drummer. The gear was pretty wrecked by the salt water, but still sweet. It seems that all vietnamese can sing. All the crew were pretty good singers. After the band packed up, they threw a floating bar in the water, with Hai floating on it with bottles of red wines. This was when our boat cruise turned into a booze cruise. We were allowed to jump off the top of the boat, and if you jumped into the water and swam to the floating bar, Hai would pour you a free drink. Epic times. The cranked the pop music and we were downing quite a bit of free booze. I felt sorry for the vietnamese on the boat, as none of them probably signed up for the madness. Especially sorry for the family of four... oh well. Don't come on booze cruise if you ain't gonna party! haha. At first, I thought it was just gonna be me, alex, shannon and izi, but the japs got in on it and it pretty much made the trip. We got back on board and they'd cleared all the lunch stuff away, so there was this massive table top to dance on. This was when shit got weird. Hai (after a few too many wines) came out from the back wearing a towel round his head, topless with cups on his nipples and started dancing on the table. Then everyone seemed to get in on it... well everyone being us and the japs.

We then went to a killer resort island, that had pools, beach, water slide, etc. We were there for about an hour and a half. I think there was a golf driving range and tennis courts that we cud hav used, but we stuck to the pools and water slide. Was good times. Two of the japs were real good value - Hiro and Rejima. Their crew were all from the same class at uni and had just finished - so the were on their graduation trip. Hai disappeared for most of the time on the island, i think he went to sleep off whatever he was on.

At round 4:30pm, we boarded again and headed back for the main land. Was a sweet trip in the end, but if it wasn't for the booze cruise, it would've been a bit lame. the comment sheet had "Excellent" ticked by a most, but there were a number of "Average" boxes (i assume were from the locals). When we got back to land, we arranged with Shannon and Izi to meet up later for some beers and a feed, but this turned out to be a slight blow out, as all of us overslept, so by the time we headed out it was near closing time (around 10:30pm).

Day 2 in Nha Trang, Me and Alex decided to hit up the water park we'd heard about that was on at Vinpearl island resort. Vinpearl was an epic cable car ride across the bay away. We got up and headed there round 10:30am, but the cable car didn't operate til 2. blow out. luckily there was a ferry that could take us across and then we could get the cable back later. Nha Trang turned on a stunner for the second day, so by the time we crossed the harbour, we were definitely ready to get in some water. The water park was awesome man. there were a number of slides going. We made it a mission to get on each slide we could. Started with the Multislide. This was the classic slide that had bumps on the way down. Followed up with the two three bodyslides. These are the classic tube types, with turns etc, and then spit you out. got pretty disoriented after these. We then hit up the wave pool for a bit, before the tsunami slide. This one rocked you back and forth. Me and Alex doubled on this, pretty sure we pushed it to it's limits. we were hitting all sides, whereas most would stop before the top.
Next were the two kamakazi slides. These were the highest and pretty much just straight drops. You get some serious pace up on these. I was humming by the bottom of one of them, almost shot out the side at the bottom, got a sweet burn to show for it. ha. The family slide was this wide berth slide that whole familys could slide down in this massive round floatie - similar to some rescue boats on some planes. Cos there was only 2 of us, we cudn't get one, so we got the double floatie. Man, we pushed it to the extreme. We were almost shooting out the sides of the ramp and nearly flipping over. madness, but good fun. After the four rafting slides, where u sat in a single floatie and boosted down these slides, we hit the space hole. This one was mad, you go through a hydroslide and at the end it spits you out into this wide funnel and you spin round and round and eventually fall thru the hole at the bottom. we were pretty knackered at thi stage. 4 hours on hydroslides takes it outta ya. man. the water park was only one part of this island. there was still the adventure park and indoor gaming area. so we boosted to these; jumped on the rollercoaster, punched some punching bags, rode these mechanical horses, wacthed a show of some blatant animal cruely, and then jumped on the cable car back to Nha Trang. What an epic day. If you ever hit Nha Trang, then Vinpearl Resort is definitely worth the $20 USD is costs. Definitely.

By the time we got back, we had about 2 hours til our bus to Mui Ne. We headed to the Louisiana Brewery where they brew their own beers. We enjoyed a couple pints. The Louisana Dark Lager is epically good. very tasty. No time to enjoy more than 2 tho, had to fit a feed in before jumping on the bus to Mui Ne.

The bus arrived in Mui Ne round 1am. We were still half asleep when it arrived and basically checked into the first place we could find. When we got up today, it was hot. real hot. we were a little burnt after the water park the day before, so had to cover up today. Alex heard some good things about the sanddunes here, where you can slide down the dunes, so we went hunting for this in the morning. We got a jeep to take us out to the dunes - a four hour tour, that included the white dunes, red dunes, fishing village and a canyon. Was overrated man. We went round lunch time, so the dunes were pumping with heat. The sand boarding was terrible. You pay for these mats, that just sink into the sand. Also, they charge you to use a motorbike to get up the dunes. Ridiculous prices as well. We blew all our money at the first stop, so the rest of it was pretty quickly done. The red dunes were on the side of the road - these little kids ran up trying to get us to buy sand mats again, but we had no coin left. The took photos for us then tried to get us to give them money for the service. We could've given them something if we had anything, but unfortunately, we were a lost cause for them. The fishing village was just a view of the huge number of fishing boats moored up. not that awesome. They canyon was kinda cool, but we were told there was a waterfall, but after walking up it for about 20mins, we found nothing, so turned back. Average trip really. The saving factor for Mui Ne is the beach. that's pretty epic. You can learn to kite surf, kite board, wind surf, anythign really. Alex rented a sailing boat and went for a cruise. I wasn't so keen, so just chilled on the beach and swam. The water here is warm man. I'm talking round 28-30 degrees at a guess. it's cooler out of the water... which doesn't say much, cos it's hot out. Anyways, chilling at the hotel now. gonna go out later and try meet up with these Canadian girls we met on the overnight bus to Nha Trang.

Hitting up Saigon tomorrow. Will be there for a couple days. Will be nice to be in one place for more than a day!

Suit Up!

We arrived in the city of tailors around lunch time and checked into a $12 a night hotel that had a pool, wifi, aircon, the whole shabang. Hoi An is small enough that you can pretty much walk everywhere, but we decided to get bikes (was $1.50 for 24 hours - well worth it). After check in, we wandered into town to have a look round. Tailor shops are everywhere - if you want anything tailor-made, this is the place to come to. Al booked in a leather jacket for $170 USD, turned out pretty awesome. I locked in a cashmere wool/cotton blend suit for around $250 USD (that included a second pair of pants and postage to UK). Gonna look pretty slick when i touch down - everyone's gonna wanna employ me! haha, hopefully...

Hoi An is a pretty sweet lil place, chilled, but equally busy. We explored the city for the rest of the first aftanoon and did some well overdue laundry. The weather turned crap late afternoon, so we retired for an early one.

Since we only had one day really in Hoi An, we got up early. 6:30am early. We mish'd into town on our bikes to grab some brekky, before we rode the 5km (seemed a little shorter than that) to Cua Dai Beach. Mint beach, but was pretty deserted at 8:30am. No time to waste tho, we only had one day. After a quick dip and perch, we cycled back to town. Alex had a jacket fitting at 10, and I had the first of my suit fittings at 11. Day 2 in Hoi an was a scorcher. They had all fan blowing when I was trying on my suit - luckily (for me, not for them) they provided a shirt for me to wear while i tried on the suit. The tailor came in to make some adjustments, and i'd have to come back at 3:30 for my final fitting. We grabbed lunch at the Banana Leaf Cafe - set menu lunches. Epic feed, but we splashed out after eating fairly cheap so far. We cycled the peninsular in hoi an, be fore we had our final fittings - Alex for his jacket and me with the suit. 

By the time we were done it was time to jump on the night bus to Nha Trang, but not before we stopped in for a "New Zealand Ice Cream" - bit dubious whether it was actually NZ ice cream, but it was pretty good. The sleeper bus was worse than the last one. this one had only fan, no aircon. Everyone down the back were dripping and it was pretty sticky for the whole trip. Sleeping was an issue. we stopped at about 11pm for a feed, mostly just a respite from the bus tho. everyone cringed when we got back on, we still had another 6 hours in the stench pit to go. We met these two canadian chicks, that we'd seen on Monkey Island in Halong Bay. They were cool. Pretty much doing the same trip as us from here, so we may see them quite a bit more. Also met this dude from Auckland. He was aiight - bit of a muppet, but tolerable. 

Anyways, we've just arrived in Nha Trang, Its just got 7:30am - the bus dropped us off at 6am. We checked in to a bit more plush accom - $20 USD a night - clean, aircon, pool, wifi, beach view. Mint - will update ya on Nha Trang soon. 

Hue in a Day

Our boat brought us back from Halong Bay at around 1 and we transferred into a minivan for the 4 hour trip back to Hanoi. Alex had a close call after starting the journey, but managed to make a "Happy House" (toilet) just in time. We all knew why our tour guide (Cuong) called it a "happy house" after Al came back to the van (massive grin on his face). Anyways, 4 hours later, we were back in Hanoi and got dropped off at the bus stop, where we would get picked up by our sleeper bus for the trip to Hue.

At 6pm, our sleeper bus turned up. It wasn't what we thought it was gonna be - from the pictures, it looked like we were gonna get something similar to lazy boy seats, but in actual fact, the seats were much much smaller (and two storied...) I was ok with length, but was pretty snug width-wise, Alex battled with length. They were definitely vietnamse sized seats. After figuring out how to make ourselves semi-comfortable, we started our 15 hour trip to Hue from Hanoi. The road was pretty bumpy, and the driver was loving his airhorn, so the sleep was fairly rubbish. We stopped somewhere along the way for a feed - 2 Pho Bo (beef rice noodle soup). Met an Austrian dude, Helmut, who was on our bus and he shared round his bottle of local red wine. Tasted ok, but pretty sure it was a rice wine, not a proper red.

We arrived in Hue at around 9:30am and the moment our feet touched the ground outside, we were instantly accosted by hotel reps. We talked to a guy who said he had a free taxi to his hotel and that it would cost $15 a night. Not too bad a deal, so we took him up on his offer. Sweet room with aircon, hot shower, fan, and wifi. I won the coin-toss again, so got the double bed, while Alex had to resort to the single. I'm sure his time will come, but for the moment, i'm loving the coin-toss system, much better than the rock-off system from our last trip to SE Asia. Hue was a warm change from the coolness up north in Hanoi/Halong. By now, it was about 10am, so we went to grab a feed. As soon as we walked out onto the main drag, Happy Thuan (a local tour guide) started talking to us. Classic dude - he had a notebook full of comments from all the people he's taken around. Apparantly, he was the number 1 tour guide in the city and he's on wikitravel. Anyways, we had a yarn to him, i thought he was legit as he was wearing a Sydney Roosters cap, and he said he could take us on his motorbike to a local joint to hav a cheap as Pho for breakfast. Cos it was so late, we had missed all the proper tours to see the DMZ (demilitarized zone) and all the old war sights, but Happy Thuan said he could organized us a car that would take us where we wanted for about $40 each. Was a sweet deal as most places were charging a bit more than that for same same but different. We first checked out Khe Sahn (the combat base of the Americans in the Vietnam War). It was a massive drive to get there, about 150km (so Thuan reckoned). There were some old tanks and planes there, you could see the old runway and where the barracks etc used to be. There was also an old american war vet there that was visiting the site for the 11th time. He served in the Vietnam war, but was based further south in Da Nang. He had some interesting chat about the war and the hills surrounding Khe Sahn. We could've stood there and listened to him a bit more, but Happy THuan was hungry and wanted to get us to the DMZ and Vinh Moc tunnels - so we jumped back in the car and headed north (stopping for a feed along the way).

We stopped for about 10 mins to check out the DMZ (5km north and 5km south of the old border between North Vietnam and South Vietnam. There was the old bridge there that we walked halfway across - but due to time constraint, we had to boost to the tunnels. The Vinh Moc tunnels were pretty sweet. They were Vietnam-sized (about max 1.6m high by 1.2m wide. Was sweet for our guide, but a bit cramped for Al and I. It was pretty buzy seeing how small the family rooms were (for a family of 5, you would get a space about the size of a single bed. We could only explore a small portion of the tunnels (about half of the top level) due to the rain. it was still about 12-15m below the surface, but the third level went down to about 23m. After the tunnels, Thuan took us back to Hue via the coastline, where we passed some fields full of american bunkers. By the time we got back to Hue, it was about 7pm and dark.

It was an epic amount of time to be sitting in a vehicle - 4 hours from Halong to Hanoi, 15 hours from Hanoi to Hue, and 8.5 hours cruising round seeing the sights round Hue. Showers were well overdue, so we showered up and check-in online. Matty Mee is currently in Vietnam, and he happened to be in Hue the same time we were here. Managed to get hold of him and met up at Bar Why Not for a few beers. He's got about 4 days left on his tour before he heads to singapore and then thailand. Hopefully we'll catch up with him in the Southern islands in thailand - get him across for the full moon party on Koh Phangan. We called it quits around 11pm, Matty Mee had a flight out of Hue at 6:30am, and we were leaving on the bus to Hoi An at 8am.

We arrived in Hoi An, the city of cheap suits, round lunch time. Will give you an update on Hoi An later. We're here til tomoro evening (bus leaves at 6pm) and head to Nha Trang (550km away - about 12 or so hours on a sleeper bus). Oh yea, Facebook doesn't seem to work that well in Vietnam, so will only be on there sporadically.

Two week down - time's flying pretty quick!

Good Morning Vietnam!

 ...well more like evening...

We arrived into Hanoi at around 6pm to a welcoming 17 degrees. A cool drop from the heat in Laos. Hanoi is madness, there are only really two road rules: 1. Drive on the right most of the time, and 2. use your horn. Don't even get me started on trying to cross the roads here, basically shut your eyes and walk. hopefully most of the traffic will swerve round you.

Thien Trang Hotel would be our perch for the next two nights. It's located just outside of the old quarter (where most of the travellers crash). The front deck dude was super friendly and real hard case. You could tell he was trying to practice his english ("You going to get dinner? I have been working very hard and very busy, and so I am very hungry also." good dude tho. We went for a wander to the old quarter to try find something to eat, it was about 8pm and we had no idea where we were going. all the locals were perched on the path on little stools chewing these seeds, some were drinking. The footpaths aren't really footpaths. Everyone parks their scooters on the path, or sits and eats on the path, or drives on the paths. If you want to walk, you have to do it on the road. Horns go off all the time. i mean ALL the time. Our best gap has been 13 seconds between horns.

Day 2 in Vietnam, we went to see the sights of Hanoi. The Hoan Kiem Lake, a couple of temples and a whole bunch of museums. pretty much museum'd out now. The best of all of them was probably the Ho Chi Minh Museum. That was epic, especially the grounds. If you're considering visiting the museum of ethnology, make sure you agree to a price to go out to it, some wacko driver tried to charge us 900,000 dong (about $45 USD) just to go out there. The driver had locked us in the car, so there were some heated words between the two parties, but eventually we settled on 200,000 dong. we still got ripped off, but better than being stuck in the car with this wacko. We taxied back to the old quarter for dinner and then checked out the night markets. If your into phone covers or clothes, then the markets will be awesome. although, if your anything bigger than a 12 year old, you're in for a tough time trying to find stuff that'll fit. All in all, it was a pretty productive day in Hanoi. We covered a lot of ground, and lucky we did, as we sorted our trip to Halong Bay, which includes the overnight bus down the coast of Vietnam when we return.

Ha long Bay is epic. I recommend anyone coming near here to get to Ha Long bay. There's epic caves to go see, kayaking round the islands, swimming if you're brave, and epic nights on Karaoke. Once you get a few cocktails in ya, you pretty much become inseperable from the mic. We locked in a 3 days, 2 nights package, which includes a night on the boat and a night in a garden bungalow. All our feeds are included, and you just pay for any drinks you have.

Met this Aussie from Perth, named Anton. He was good value - not so great with the singing (but neither were we). He had a few too many cocktails and had to put himself to bed before he comad. There were three frenchies on board - they were... french. Nah, they were all good, but kept to themselves. Also, there were this couple (i think) - an italian dude, Daniele, and a local Hanoi chick (Trang My). Man, the Hanoi chick can sing man. She nailed "My Heart Will Go On" by Celine Dion. Seriously impressed. We also had a Russian and a Vietnamese couple on our boat, but they were pretty quiet - they must have suffered when everyone was singing... meh. Today, we climbed this epic hill in the National Park in Ha long bay. Was tough work, got fairly muddy and sweaty by the end of it. We made it to the peak (225m up) but the view was ruined by the mist. Now that i mention it, it's misty everywhere here. Still epic, but i could imagine the view in summer it would blow your mind.

I'm currently perched up in the Garden bungalow on Monkey island. we just got back from a hike over the hill to another bay. We found out why this place is called monkey island - monkeys everywhere across the ridgeline. apparently they attack you if you shwo fear. we didn't, naturally, so we were sweet.

Anyways, that will do for now. Travel is pretty sweet. Catch you in Hue!

Home of the Chill

It's been a few days since the last post, been stuck short of internet.
We're up in Luang Prabang at the mo, one of the most awesome kicked back places around.

Anyways, the day after tubing, we rented motorbikes and went looking for some caves. The owner of the restaurant we'd been eating at recommended getting a scooter and riding out to the blue lagoon - which is about 7km south of town. We had to pay to ride across the bridge, but after that we were sweet to go whereever. the road was pretty dusty, so we were glad we had motorbikes, as opposed to push bikes. those guys got caked in dust whenever something went past! ha We had what was probably the worst map ever made, a few lines on a piece of paper. We followed it to what we thought was the blue lagoon... well the sign pointed us this way. This "blue" lagoon in reality was more brown and there was no way were going to swim in this mud hole - so we got on our bikes and headed off. When we met up with the main road again, a tuk tuk full of people came past, so we followed them. They led us to the actual blue lagoon, which was awesome. The water was clear, you could actually see your feet - a huge improvement over the other "blue" lagoon we'd found. Oh, if you ever decide to rent motorbikes in Vang Vieng, make sure you wear shoes, unless you don't mind having feet covered in dust. Obviously, we had some fairly dirty feet by the end of it.

we jumped on the bus headed north to Luang Prabang. VIP bus with aircon. The driver must have been trying to save petrol or something, cos the aircon was only on intermittently, so there were some fairly sticky periods along the way. The bus took 6 hours to wind its way through the hills to Luang Prabang, pretty good quality road, but man, there are some hairy corners. you wouldn't wanna drop a tire off the road, cos you'd end up a couple hundred meters down the cliff! we got held up about 10km from the end due to a truck vs truck crash, didn't see it, but we were stuck there for nearly an hour. We ran into John (the american guy we met at Vientiane) on the bus and he knew of a sweet guesthouse to crash at, so we tagged along. Later that night, we ended up going for dinner and a few drinks round town with him and this canadian girl Erika.

Second day in Luang Prabang, the four of us (John, Erika, Tuffy, Me) rented bikes for 10000 kip and road round the city checking out the sights and wats. Luang Prabang is epically chilled (as i said earlier). Most of the locals are doing little chores or just sleeping. Also, if you're ordering food, be prepared to wait. all the river-side restaurants are run by single cooks, with only one or two cookers. the food is awesome and fresh, but takes a while to come out. One thing i've discovered up here are the fruit shakes - these are off the meter! they cost 5000 kip (roughly 60 cents) and are fresh fruit blended with ice. you choose which fruit you want and they blend it all together. It was John's b'day today as well, so we went out for a few beers that night. I highly recommend getting a Tiger Tower of Power. Pretty much a 3L jug with a tap on it. fair to say, it was a slow start the next morning.

Day 2 in Luang Prabang ws a slow start, but tuffy and i sorted out a minibus trip to the Kuang Si waterfalls. Awesome waterfalls that you can swim at. The swim is even more awesome after you climb to the top of the big waterfall and come down all sweaty. there are a bunch of fish in the swimming areas there that nip at your feet, but they're harmless. The drinks places near the big waterfall fleece you tho, so if you go either take your own drink, or be prepared to pay for it - although we're talking about payin $3 for a drink as opposed to $1.50... still it's the principle.

Anyways, i feel i'm rambling on now. No photos this time as i've had to use public computer.
We're flying out to Hanoi this afternoon. One country down. BOOM.

Friends, Family Guy, Fun

Day 4 of our trip was probably the most epic day so far.

We met this Irish couple (Ronan and Lindsay) in our tuk tuk in Vientiane, and then bumped into them up here again. Had an epic night on the buckets first night we got to Vang Vieng - pretty rude not to when there are free buckets @ Bucket Bar from 9-10pm. So we all got buckets of Whisky, Red Bull and 7up. Dangerous combination. After 2 of them you're pretty well floored. Ended up at Limbo bar, where if you could successfully limbo under the lowest height, you got a free bucket or beer. Oh, did i mention the bar was on fire? Ronan decided he'd jump over the bar. This was sweet for him - he got a free beer from it, the guy who tried it next wasn't so successful... he landed straight on the flaming bar and had to be dragged off it... he won't be feeling to great in the morning. Anyways, the last drink ruined Ronan and was on verge of comatose by about 2am, and Tuffy and I called it quits round 3ish. Oh, one strange thing is that all the restaurants seem to either play Friends all day or Family Guy all day. Random, but awesome.

Tubing has got to be one of the most awesomest things going man. how did it take this long to discover? Floating down a river on an inflatable tube with beers, riverside bars pumping music and dragging to for free shots, rope swings, flying foxes... the list goes on. I was feeling like rubbish from the night before, but we manned up, got our tubes and after about 3 or 4 beers, was back on it. We started round 1pm and by the time after our second bar, it was 5pm... tubes had to be back by 6 to reclaim your full deposit. there was no way we were gonna make that, but if we had them back by 8pm, we would only lost 20,000 kip. We left Ronan and Lindsay at the second bar, while Asty and I decided to tube the rest of the river. Most people tuk tuk back, but we thought it'd be no prob to float the whole way back... we shud hav listened to the crowd. As light started to fade, and we had to start dodging the long boats coming up stream, we pulled to the side of the river, where another keen tuber, was perched up. She tried to do the same with her mates, except she had boosted ahead with no money, so was stuck. All three of us were bartering with this tuk tuk driver to get him to take us back to town. He eventually caved an gave us a ride. Apparently, we still had about 2.5 km to go on river before we'd get near town... We made it back to town and managed to get part of our deposit back. great success!

Anyways, we were pretty knackered after a day on the beers and tubing, as well as being horrendously hungover, so we called it quits.

Last day in Vang Vieng today, before heading up the road to Luang Probang tomorrow. Yeaaaooww!

Vientiane - The home of sweet eff all

Air Asia has hot air hostesses. Ha.

Anyways, we arrived in Vientiane yesterday morning. The first blow out was the fact that half the people who were applying for visas on arrival had left their money in their check-in luggage. This was sweet for us, as I had USD conveniently stored in my document holder, so the wait time was instantly halved. We got our visas no problem, cleared immigration and got a taxi into Vientiane city. The first this that buzzed me out was driving on the right-hand side of the road - crossing roads was a nightmare!

The money in Laos is wack. the smallest denomination is 1000 kip. why don't they just re-base everything? it would make converting back in NZD so much easier... oh well, at least I feel like a rich guy, walking round with several hundred thousand in my pocket. High roller.

The Lonely Planet guide's pick for accom in Vientiane was Chantha Guest House. I have no idea why it was their number 1 pick, cos it was a shitter - the doors didn't close properly, but at least we had a balcony and aircon, so i wasn't complaining... much. The room for the night was 120,000 kip, which is roughly $15. pretty cheap at $7.50 each. We dumped our packs and went for a wander round the city. The Mekong river passes right by the town, so we checked it out. Got the the edge, but there was no water. walked to the base of the banks and still no water. Went on an adventure to try find water, and about 300m later we made it to the edge of the Mekong. Thailand was on the other side of the river, and that was only about 200-300m away. There was this sweet statue at the river-side (see right).

Dripping with sweat, and with burnt feet from the sand on the river base, we decided to grab a feed and a first Beer Laos. Having conquered the city in about half a day, we decided to book a bus ticket to Vang Vieng for the next morning. The tickets were pretty cheap, 35000 kip (around $4) for a 3-4 hour trip. this happened to be the same price Asty paid the tuk tuk to take us to the Morning Market in Vientiane (about a 10 min ride) - i think we got a bit ripped off there. To drown our sorrows, we hit up happy hour at one of the pubs in town. Large Beer Laos for 10,000 kip (about $1.20). fair to say, these went down pretty sweet. by the time we finally retired back to our room, the ladyboys and other women of the night were out in force, but we managed to stave them off... just...

We're currently at Vang Vieng. Our mini-van turned up at 10am and picked us up for our 3 hour trip. 3 hours turned out to be more like 4... and on one of the most bumpiest, pot-holed filled roads i've ever been on... was pretty stoked when we finally pulled into the city. The streets here are lined with bars and guest houses. Most people are away tubing at the mo, we're gonna go sort tubing for tomorrow.

Tune in next time for details on the tubing and other antics.

chur.

Two posts in two days!

(well i think it's two days, i've completely lost track of time...)

Sleeping wasn't so great at the airport (see right), but Asty seemed to find it OK... i battled. It was a lengthy flight from MELB to KL, around 8 hours. Again, I battled to sleep. The flight wasn't too packed, so i was pretty jealous of the dude in front of us who had a row of 4 seats to himself!

We arrived in KL at 8am local time. By the time we got on the train into the city, it was 9. We checked into the Prescott Inn, but the room wasn't ready. I wasn't too phased, more relieved to just get inside an air-conned building. 

We left our bags with the hotel and went to check out KL. We headed north of the hotel, towards Mederka Square. We decided to bypass the KL tower and Petronas towers, since we covered them last time. Our little venture ended up being a bit of a mish. We covered a lot of the city. Somehow we found Chinatown, so we checked out the markets and had a feed there. "Cheap cheap, you buy" and "Hey man, you want to buy DVD? Come check out my shop" were coming at us left right and center. The walk back to the hotel after Chinatown was a mission. After our best efforts of following our noses, we gave up and referred to the map. Turned out we'd done a few unnecessary sweaty blocks of walking, but meh, we had time. Also, i think we took sweaty balls to a whole new level...

Anyways, we've just showered and changed (after a good amount of time in the same clothes) and are about to monorail out to Bukit Bintang for a look and a feed. Flying out to Laos tomorrow morning to start the real trip. Zul, our teksi driver, is turning up at 4:30am to pick us up.

nite y'all!

Leaving on a Jet Plane

So this is my first post on this blog and I'm not 100% sure on how it all works, but hopefully i'll be a pro soon enough.

Today I left the fine shores of NZ and have began my journey to the UK. I'm currently sitting in Melbourne airport awaiting boarding for the connecting flight through to Kuala Lumpur. We landed at 8:50pm and boarding is at 2:40am... only 4 more hours... There weren't too many tears at the airport. To be honest, it still hasn't sunk in that i've left. I guess the hangover from the leaving drinks last night, coupled with a gutwrenching, emotional rollercoaster warriors season opener probably distracted me enough not to break down into a sobbing piece of work. Oh and cheers to all that came to the Fox last night. was a good night, good yarns and good send off!

Before I get too far ahead of myself, I should probably give you a run down of the rough itinerary... The trip starts with a day in KL tomorrow, before flying out on the 6th Mar to Laos. When we get to Laos, we've got roughly 5 weeks to get through Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia, and finish off with the Full Moon party in Thailand. According to the cambodian taxi driver in Wellington, we're hitting the hottest time to go to SE Asia so i'm predicting some very sweaty times ahead...

The flight to Melbourne was pretty painless, well for me; Asty smacked his head on the overhead carry-on baggage perch. I managed to squeeze in a couple movies on the way over (the Muppets and Crazy, Stupid, Love). both were a bit "meh", but still enjoyable. One thing that was mean was the feed. Emirates put on a pretty stellar feed. Fish (Salmon and some other type) on wedges and roast pumpkin, Lamb on a rice salad, cheesecake, and cheese and crackers. meeeaaannn. Also, We had some Aussie netball team on our flight over. the debate between asty and i is still going as to which sport they played, but they were epically tall, so i'm going with netball. Also, once we cleared customs, the Manly seaeagles were hanging round. pretty short turnaround for them, after just playing that aftanoon. Tuffy gave Kieran Foran the classic "Well played today, boys" line. what a muppet...

not much else exciting to write about so far, thought i'd just suss out how to actually write a post, and it cost me $4 to get these 15 minutes of internet, so better send b4 time runs out.

Oh, Happy B'day Petey Weepu. Hope it's a good one bro!

Chur.