What would you choose?

In Luang Prabang, apart from visiting the not-so exceptional, exceptional waterfall (we think we were spoilt in Vietnam) the only thing to do there is to plan your escape....(to Chiang Mai)

a) take the slow boat which takes 2/3 days and involves sitting on wooden benches the whole time
b) take the speed boat which involves sitting crouched in the same position for six hours with a crash helmet on and your bag between your knees - i.e. risking death
c) fly with Laos Airlines - i.e. risking death
d) take the bus for a whole day and night and another day

Since we didn't have too much time available, none of these options were too appealing, so change of plans. We can get the bus to Bangkok in one day and one night, then we can head to Kanchanaburi from there. If time and cheap internet flights allow we can fly to Chiang Mai later.

So once this dilemma was sorted me and Amy were going to climb the big hill in Luang Prabang called Phousy Mountain, really we were - but it started to rain and so instead we found the cinema where you hire your film and room and get a million cushions to lay on and veg out. We watched Walk the Line (Madtin - you might even enjoy that one :) and Jarhead (James Maggot - excellent review from you, just like you said it would be ;)

We visited the night market and purchased some paper lanterns which every traveller needs! Honestly! We met Alex who we first met in Halong Bay, he is from Scotland, so we hung around with him for a while too.

And then here begins the mammoth journey from Luang Prabang - Vientiane and Vientiane to Bangkok. The bus to Vientiane had some colourful characters on it....one guy sat in front of me kept leaning over the sleeping woman next to him to throw up out of the window - eventually she caught on and swapped seats with him. By the end of the journey he was coughing up blood, nice! Me and Ayms were lucky enough to have most of the back seat to ourselves apart from the man carrying the AK47 under his jacket - there for our own protection don't you know, from bandits who attack tourist buses in the mountains. Every now and again people would get on the bus and come and share the back seat with us. At one point a family of four; mother, baby, toddler and child squeezed onto the one and a half seats left (the gun is taking up half a seat), the toddler looked absolutely petrified at the sight of Amy but that didn't stop her from gripping into her arm for the duration of the journey!

Trying to fit the world inside a picture frame...

There are some places you come across that you know photos will never do justice - but you try anyway! We met some girls in Vientiane who told us about riverside bungalows in Vang Vieng, when we got off the bus the sign said 600m, at this point me and Amy nearly gave up on the idea...we started walking...200m, 100m, 50m, 50m...hello!? What is this...50m to the next sign? or is 50m just a complete lie altogether? Eventually, past the temple, along the dirt track, down a steep slope and a meadow comes into view, then some little white huts, then the mountains, then the river....it's like we just stumbled into paradise (after 600m anyway!)

We checked into the bamboo huts and take in the scene, we cant quite believe the place exists or that we get to stay there! Amy heads off to check out the facilities and I hear some rustling in the hut, luckily its only a really big lizard running across the floor...by the time I call Amy back the lizard has disappeared and she's not quite sure how big a lizard i mean. Off she goes again and lo and behold it comes back again, doing rounds of the room...I'm not quite sure whether paradise is worth it if we have to share our hut with that creature. Amy comes back again and it disappears again! Luckily she catches sight of its head and realises I'm not talking about a ghecko. Thats the last we see of him though, thankfully.

We head out to discover the town, turns out we discovered most of it when we walked to the guesthouse. It has one main street, pretty much a dirt track lined with cafes and restaurants showing Friends on repeat all day, all evening, everyday. Some places break from the norm and show The Simpsons or put films on, but most of them show Friends.

It's Saturday - the bank is closed. We were hoping to go tubing (see later) on the Sunday and be leaving by the Monday, but since we didn't bring enough pennies from Vientiane we either have to survive on $5 for two days, thus having enough money to buy tubing tickets, pay the accomodation and the bus ticket OR spend some of the money we might need and assume we can get money out of the bank on Monday, pay for everything and get on the bus in about an hour, if there is a problem at the bank then we'd have no chance. Since mine and Amy's budget skills consist of - having a certain amount to spend and when we spend more than that we subtract things like accomodation/transport costs of the day from the amount until we are under budget...so we decided to stay an extra day in Vang Vieng and be sure that the bank would give us some money. In the meantime we have accomodation and bus fare to go and spend :)

Tubing and kayaking are about the only things to do in Vang Vieng, unless you are interested in experimenting with magic mushrooms on pizza, in shakes, in sandwiches, in salad....all of the above are readily available on the menus and when I ordered a pizza with no mushrooms the waitress said "no magic mushrooms", "damn straight love - this is my dinner we are talking about!". So we ended up going tubing two days because it is the most fun you can have with a rubber ring and a river. You get your ring and they drop you off at the river and in you get....you float about 50m downstream and you arrive at the first bar...beer and zip lines are the order of the day here. Another 50m and another bar, this time with a rope swing that no-one seems to be able to hold onto, least of all the weedy girls. Belly flops galore! About two hours in and you can still see the starting point in the river! The next bar has food and the biggest rope swing of the lot, we saw some girls basically fall from the platform because they couldn't hold their own weight and winded themselves pretty badly - this quickly deterred us from having a go.

A couple of drinks in and everyone's already planning to be back again tomorrow! The rest of the river was a string of more bars and jumps and then you reach the end of the line. But there isn't really anything to say it's the end of the road - if we weren't following some people who knew where to get off, it could have been a disaster! The only downside is that at the other end you have to walk your ring back to the shop through the middle of town...and since these activities rarely allow for you to bring a change of clothes, it was a bit like one of those nightmares when you are standing in the middle of the street wearing fewer clothes than you'd maybe like?! :)

We also had our final farewell with Jim and Charlie who we first met in Siam Reap, they were heading home in a few days time back to sunny(?) ol' England.

Welcome to Laos

Rumour has it that the border crossing into Laos is worse than the one into Cambodia...fortunately since me and Ayms needed to start making some time back, we had the perfect excuse to not spend 24 hours on a bus (and the next 24 hours recovering) and we booked some flights. It was bliss, we left Hanoi in the morning and arrived in Vientiane a couple of hours later!

Vientiane is the capital city and is really quite small and peaceful (and you can see the stars!) - you don't realise how noisy Vietnam is until you leave it. We booked into the cheapest place we could find - another box with iron bed frames and matresses made for toddlers and stairs that would require safety harnesses were we anywhere else in the world. We took advantage of our extra day and went wandering around the city. Our map reading skills should be improving but we managed to go the long way round to get to Laos' answer to the Arc de Triomphe, stumbling across the black stupa along the way.

In the afternoon it was too hot to anything so we went in search of the swimming pool. In the evening we hung out by the river and had some good food and drink for another measley sum of money. Day 2 in Vientiane was spent at the Buddha park, which is a field full of concrete statues representing Buddhism, Hinduism and Islam (I think) - including a hell mouth with morbid sculptures of skulls inside and yet another reclining Buddha.

Hanoi not to be confused with Hoi An

Hanoi is a lot less built up than Saigon and much less chaotic. Although motorbikes still line the streets wherever you go and crossing the street is still a potential death trap. Since Vietnam is all geared up for backpackers - you get on a bus outside your hostel and it drops you off outside another hostel, so unless you have a strange desire to wander the streets of a new city with a heavy rucksack, it's easy enough to just follow the trail of breadcrumbs that they leave.

The hostel was in the old quarter which is made up of hundreds of streets each selling one or two products. Rumour has it that the streets are or used to be named after whatever product is being sold. Since we can't read vietnamese we cannot confirm or deny these rumours. Can't be too good for business though when you are trying to sell mops and the twenty stores either side of you are also trying to sell mops!?

We spent one day looking around the city - there's the famous lake where the golden tortoise..."Legend said that in the first of 15th century Heaven gave a precious sword to Le Loi who rose against Ming. With the sword he drove Chinese out of Vietnam. After the war he returned the sword to familiar of divine the giant golden tortoise lived in the lake. Since then the lake has had a new name Ho Hoan Kiem (Lake of Restored Sword). " (quote from someone else's blog) We visited this lake which is a lot smaller than you'd imagine it to be and the temple on an island where they supposedly have an embalmed giant tortoise but the signs are a bit vague and just say "it was made...." and it didn't look to real either - not that I know what an embalmed giant tortoise should look like mind.

We visited the cathedral and walked to the Temple of Literature in the rain which wasn't the most enjoyable experience of my life but we did see a fallen down tree on the way back (it just fell down for no reason whatsoever), the firemen were there cutting it up to get it out of the road...not that this stopped the traffic from getting by - they used the pavement instead and had the cheek to look at me and Ayms as if we were stupid for walking on the path?! Hello! So it took us a while to realise that there was actually a motorbike underneath the tree, it's miracle that there wasn't anymore considering how busy it seemed. There was nobody with the bike though, so they must have made it out ok.

The highlight of our stay in Hanoi was meeting up with James and Rachel again - we met them in our first few days in China and have been a few steps behind ever since. They had discovered the cheapest drinking establishment in all of Hanoi which looked a bit like the plastic chairs you get at playgroup on the pavement outside someone's shop/house with a beer barrel and a lady selling glasses of beer for 2000vnd (7p) the bottles of vodka 1 pound and sprite 5000vnd for a bottle. Bargain huh! We sat there till closing just in time for the rains to start again and then we parted ways once again. Since the "pub" didn't have any toilets you were pointed in the direction of the public toilets which were situated down an alleyway not far from the "pub". FInding this alley was an experience in itself, as was peeing in the dark and then having to pay for the privelage!

Our last two days were spent in Halong Bay. The trip could take up to 15-20 people, our boat had five people on it. Me, Amy, Gerry (guitarist in The Belushis, in case they ever get famous), Roland and Kathryn. We spent the first day visiting a cave and the afternoon swimming in the bay and jumping off the boat. There was another boat that also had a small group of people and in the evening we joined up with them and spent the evening not doing karaoke even though there had been promise of it earlier on. So the only reason I mention that is because we met the funniest Italian man ever who resembled the cartoon character from the halifax adverts and made us cry with laughter - and I can't even remember what was so funny anymore :) It rained most of the two days we were on the boat so we never really saw Halong Bay in all its glory but we got eaten by mosquitos instead which was equally as exciting.

Hoi An not to be confused with Hanoi

Hoi An and Hue were stop breaks so we didn't have to spend 24 hours straight on a bus to Hanoi.

First port of call in Hoi An was to find some food which didn't resemble noodles.....lot's o' chips please :) We were a little tired of thai food by the end of the motorcycle tour. We stuck around for a couple of days and had some clothes made for cheap cheap cheap...these things have to be done!! We went out in the evening and you may not believe this but Amy ran into someone from her home town, Ellon!! She ran off to speak to some really tall guy with a lot of facial hair and I really wondered what was going on for a second - then she introduced me and all became clear. He was called Andy Watt in case anyone's interested :) Then we had to walk home in the rain and try and find our hotel - not an easy task in the dark when we found it the shutters had been pulled down and the gates locked. Apologies to the man we had to wake up to let us in!!

In Hue the first thing we saw was James and Rachel!! They were about to get on the bus headed for Hanoi - "we'll see you there kids"! We ventured to a street cafe and had some weird deep fried noodles - which was about as filling as eating air and about as tasty as dust.

The Motorcycle Diaries

Five day tour of the Central Highlands in Vietnam, starts in Dalat on Sunday morning at 8am, finishes at 2pm on Thursday in Hoi An - 1000km covered roughly! First task is to strap our bags to the back of the bikes and then work out how we also fit on! It all works out fine...HELMETS ON!...and away we go.

Here's a list of things we did (in an attempt to reduce the size of this blog!)

1. Crazy House in Dalat; a house created by a politicians daughter (no doubt the only reason it got built in the first placeit's a little wierd with attriubutes like a Kangaroo room with a stuffed kangaroo in it with red eyes...nice to wake up to in the middle of the night! a Giraffe room, one with giant ants...
2. The tofu making factory AKA a converted back room of a house, tofu is mingin'
3. Greenhouses where they grow and supply flowers to parts of Vietnam
4. A house that breeds silkworms
5. A house that makes the bamboo plates that the silkworms live on
6. A factory that turns spins the silkworms silk and makes material
7. The elephant waterfall where we got to stand inside in the spray (amazing!)
8. A clothes making factory
9. A minority village where families live in stilt houses (animals live under the house) and kids come sream "hello" "bye-bye" at you excitedly
10. People separating rice using a machine
11. One lady separating rice by hand! (Beating it with a stick)
12. One lady dropping her rice on the road?!?! So the cars and bikes drive over it and separate it for her!
13. A house in the minority village
14. Tea plantations
15. Coffee plantations
16. Coffee Villas...if people hold a plantation for 15 years under the government then they get a house built for them. So there are many roads lined with wooden shacks interspersed with these huge brick built, colourful, rich-looking houses!
17. Passionfruits on trees
18. Avocados on trees
19. Pineapples (grow on top of the ground)
20. Cinnamen bush
21. Deep heat comes from weeds!
22. Blacksmiths
23. Resevoirs
24. Banana plants
25. A motorbike with a passenger holding a door upright between him and the driver! We are no longer surprised by anything that we see here!
26. Shrapnel damaged buildings
27. How to make rice wine
28. Brickmakers
29. Granite being split and collected on the roadside
30. Picture perect rice fields with worker's in Vietnamese hats
31. Drove through herds of cows and buffalos on their way to the grazing fields
32. A church ruined in the war
33. A mushroom farm (with a pet python)
34. Cement pottery for Bonsai trees
35. Market
36. A natural pool which we could swim in
37. More waterfalls
38. War memorial
39. Pick up some petrol...sit and have some tea in the forecourt with the owners...oh and some cigarettes too! Safe as houses!
40. How noodles are made
41. Peppercorns being grown, dried and made into pepper
42. Cashew nut trees
43. Rubber trees where latex comes from when you strip back the bark
44. Sea lake in Kontum
45. Drank sugar juice from sugar canes at the market
46. Another minority village
47. An old man playing us some music
48. The biggest pig ever (alive) wrapped in mesh wiring and sat on the back of a motorbike
49. Round house where minority people celebrate big events
50. Wooden Church
51. Orphanage
52. Another war memorial
53. Ho Chih Minh Trail
54. Tapioca being made
55. Parts of metal/weapons collected from the countryside to be sold
56. Monkey bridges- bridges made by the minority people who dont look too skilled at bridge making to be fair...although however unsafe they looked or felt four kids came bounding across the bridge without a care in the world
57. A truck which had tipped over on it's side when it hit a ditch...it was one of those moments when you round a corner to see an accident and your heart leaps into your throat then you realise that the driver has strung his hammock up on the underside of the lorry between the axels and looks fairly content!
58. People panning for gold
59. Cham Tower
60. Rice paper being made

And that was about it...we arrived in Hoi An! The jungle views were stunning and it was much nicer seeing it from the back of a bike rather than being on a bus and sleeping through it all! And we only found out afterwards that there are some attempted attacks on tourists from people that hide out in the jungle...Titi and Hiep were very Dad-like though so we had nout to worry about.

Mini Paris

Whilst in Dalat we visited the Valley of Love, which if the founders of Great Yarmouth had been asked to come up with a "Valley of Love" then this tacky-ish attraction is probably what they would have built! Swan boats, horse and carriages covered in pink flowers and ribbons, hand knitted toilet roll covers in the shape of little ladies (?), heart shaped statues, gnomes on mushrooms (?)...couples strolling hand in hand along the lake. It was just beautiful...NOT!

And so it goes, Dalat is a slightly classier version of the Valley of Love, with less plastic statues, still a lake with couples strolling, trees with fairly lights, a telephone tower posing as the Eiffel Tower, flowers everywhere...you get the idea. Quite a bit different from the hectic Saigon but still characteristic of Southeast Asia in that women still walk about in there pyjamas and whole families are still crammed onto one motorbike.

We fortunately ran into Titi and Hiep here...the Easyriders, guys who have been giving tours around Vietnam for the last 13 years and are very eager to take me and Ayms out on one of these tours. We already had the idea that we wanted to do a five day tour so their over-eager sales techniques were lost on us! We managed to organise the tour we wanted to do, asked some questions and got answers to different ones! Job done! We leave the day after tomorrow.

To fill a day we go on a one day tour of the city and surrounding area (including the Valley of Love) the rest of the tour didnt get much better! We went to Lang Biang mountian and got a jeep up to the summit only to be faced with Vietnamese cowBOYS...young boys dressed in cowboy outfits dragging ponies behind them. Next we went to the dragon pagoda...which is possibly even tackier than the Valley of Love. Plastic dragons, cement dragons, gold dragons, yellow and green dragons, huge dragons, small dragons, metal dragons, pictures of dragons, dragons on the roof, dragons on the floor, on the walls, on the steps! Brilliant!

The Lat village was where we met the village chief who played some music for us on a weird flute and a gong and told us about his village, hs family, his house (he talked a lot). Then we shared some potent homebrew with him which then meant we were his cousins! The most normal thing we did that day was visit the Pongour Nam waterfall where you can swim if you are an eager fan of swimming in dirty water...maybe not huh!

On the way home we were supposed to go to the Ostrich farm but weren't allowed in because of the Bird Flu...we weren't sure if they had it or were just being overcautious about getting it so we didn't stick around too long to find out. We took comfort in the fact that the guide didn't seem to bothered about it all!

Then all was left to do was prepare our bums for the next five days of sitting on a bike....good luck with that one :)

Saigon

Next stop Vietnam, so we need to head on back up to Phnom Penh to catch our bus. Arrive around 6pm and expect to do not much at all as our bus out is at 6am. Check into the guesthouse and half of Sihanouk Ville is there, including Nico and a couple of Irish folk (who ask me if I'm Irish??? :) Llyod and Niamh. Pretty entertaining evening follows as we try to come up with ways to make our millions in the travel industry - as yet we havent come up with anything that would actually work.

Next day the border crossing is fairly uneventful - well, most definitely if you compare it to the first one - until we reach Vietnam. First off, at the border point to get in to Vietnam two men greet you and ask for your passport so they can fill your form in for you. Of course, we could do this ourself but they then wouldnt be able to charge you for this privelege. And maybe you wouldnt mind if they didnt jsut make it up. One of the guys on the bus had the female box on his form ticked??? Try and explain that one if your asked later???

Move on to the line where you are invisible and every other person who isnt a travelling tourist gets rushed through, although this may have had somethign to do with the money sticking out their passports also :) And then to the row of 5 tables and 5 men who all each need to check your passport and of course charge you a small fee for doing so.

We're in, on the next bus and our Vietnam guide dude on the bus wants to sing us a song???? Em, ok!! He starts, finishes and then asks if we would like to hear another one. Hillarious!! Maybe you had to be there but 5 songs later and after we hear a couple in Engish too he tells us we can go to sleep. Oh, thanks very much, very kind of you.

And then the travelling thing in Vietnam just gets easier they drop off at their office and can find you hostels, they pick you from your hostel, organise you day trips etc etc and you can afford to get lazy.

The traffic in Saigon is crazy - if your a pedestrian, the rule is, just to walk slowly and everything will move around you. Under no circustances is there to be any sudden movement.

First night, we go for dinner, as per usual, but this is only worth mentioning this time round cos a cockroach fell on Gem :) She screamed, I didnt know why she was screaming, the owners laughed, we ate quickly and left. We then turn the corner and walk into Jim and Charlie (who we first met in Siem Reap). Would be rude not to go for a drink and so we find some plastic playschool chairs at the side of the road and settle in buying bags of prawn crackers (Gem loves!!) and large poppadums (We all hate!!!) from random food seller people.

Next day we go wandering round Saigon and find the market and go shopping, find some more shops, do some more shopping, visit the cathedral and another random park. Along the way stop off at some cafe and gem goes into buy some fruit - I asked for plums (which we agree are on the left) gem comes back with grapes (that were on the right) ???? :) - and get speaking to some Vietnames people who want us to try Durria fruit. Well ok!! First off you need to put a plastic glove on?? what?? and it absolutely stinks???? It tastes foul but we're told it is very good for you. Of course it is, if it tastes awful but we eat it anyway - dont wanna seem rude.

The following day we're on a day trip to the Mekong Delta. Get to the boat and head off to the fruit market. Loads of oppurtuinty to take photos and then its off to Turtle Island for lunch - all pretty good althogh we are know eating tofu without even realising it. And I learnt that pineapples do not grow on trees!!!

Afternnon is spent on smaller rowing boats and visiting smaller islands, listening to traditional Vietnamese music and drinking tea. Oh, and we also visitied a Coconut Candy workshop in the middle of one of the islands. We werent exactly fans of the candy.

That night go out for some drinks and get talking to the waiter Han. Seems harmless and we cant shut him up. Next day we arrange to meet him so he can show us where the swimming pool is. First pool, closed!!! Second pool, closed!!! Excellent guide he is and this is costing us a fortune in taxi fares. All ends well at the third pool though and afterwards we head on down to the War Museum. Another interesting place to visit although pretty horrific in parts.

That night we head on out again and get talking to a group of Irish folk. Great bunch of people, the vodka and redbulls flow and the next thing you know its 5am - we're meant to be up at 7am for atrip to the Cu Chi tunnels. Lets just say Gem is the only one who made it. I slept through the alarm and Gem's atttempts at waking me. Oops!!!!! Sure I wouldnt have liked it anyway - crawling through small dark tunnels does not sound like fun!!

Gem comes home and we go in search of the water park. En route on the back of motorcycles the thunder and lightning begins. Within seconds out of nowhere the roads are flooded - is crazy but we carry on. Arrive at the waterpark soaked so head on in anyway. Might as well seeing as we're already wet. Find the first slide and through ourselves down it. Bad move!!! This was the Kamikaze ride!!! We will not be going on that again.

Sihanouk Ville

And let the holiday begin! So after however many weeks on the run me and Ayms decided that maybe we could set up home for a few days and what better place to do it than in a bungalow where they serve Heinz baked beans and the beach is a mere 5 minute walk away!

So we spent a few days (planned) and then a couple more (unplanned) lounging around on the beach (watching the thunderstorms roll in every afternoon to then run and take cover!), laying in hammocks, reading books, eating a lot, playing pool - enter Amy the hustler who can suddenly play like...a really good pool player! (insert your own name pool fans!), swimming in the sea and there may or may not have been a night out or two.

The only problem in Sihanouk Ville is the beggars and the constant hassling - in our first five minutes of reaching the beach there was about 12 children surrounding Amy trying to pull hairs out of her legs with string! Yep that's right...de-hairing, manicures, bracelets, bookmarks, paintings, fruit, you name it, they can do it for you. A lot of pinky promises later, some chasing the kids down the beach trying to retrieve Amy's flip flops and awkward questions later("Where are you from?" "England" "No you're not, you're from your Mum and Dad"..."If I name the capital city of Scotland, you buy from me?" "I know the capital city of Scotland, so no" "what about Madagascar?"..."You buy from me?" "No I don't need one" "You need two?") we manage to get rid of the small people. The beggars are unbelievable, people drag their not so fortunate relatives around with them...when in truth both parties look like they should be taking bedrest.

So we managed to set some roots down for a few days, met some good people (including the prettiest french boy in the world - Nico and his not so welsh, but actually Dutch friend!), ran out of money, visited the bank, discovered Mekong buckets (Mekong whisky, Red Bull, Coke) and there was a little incident with Gem, the dance floor and some falling off of it! Just a couple of scratches though...and it wasn't entirely my fault since the dancefloor consisted of a large table placed on the beach, 3ft away from the main bar...I blame my small legs :) and the red bull "giving me wings"...it didnt! So we danced on the beach, watched the fire dancers, paddled in the Sea and made it home just in time to watch the sun rise. A good night all in all. The next day however was not so good and we didn't surface till late on in the day thus missing our one day tour to the islands, dóh.

The bar staff at Monkey Republic were a comedy act in themselves as well, they played the game of pin the tail on...well, just about any unsuspecting victim available. The idea, Dave and Martin - you will fully aware of the rules, is to peg some string with toilet paper attached, to the back of somebody in the bar and see how long it takes them to notice, which is never very long considering the entire bar ends up staring at one person trying not to laugh too hard!