Monday, February 27, 2006

BANGKOK (2nd visit)

So as already said in the previous post, the plan was (as this was visit 2 from at least 4) to get in and out (and shake it all about) as quickly as possible.

So, because of this there's not so much to report as one of my usual posts, but as I've posted at every place so far I thought I could come up with something worth mentioning.

My last stay in Bangkok was on the East outskirts of the city, and as it turns out this was a great deciusion (if not an accidental one) as the central backpacker district is filled with bars and shops, meaning that my entire trips budget would have been in jeopardy within the first week!

However, my Bangkok stay did also provide me with the opportunity to correct another failed mission in Cambodia - the spider!
As it turns out, the places I stayed at in Cambodia aren't in 'spider country' where they eat the little (or big!) critters, menaing that my random acts of weirdness / stupidity in Cambodia have been a complete failure.

This particular one has left me with the desire to eat something truly filthy, and with the lack of English doner kebabs (the filthiest of filthy food) meant that the 'bug man' who wheels his cart up and down Kaho San Rd was going to get a visit!

However, I must confess that at this stage my dish wasn't quite as hardcore as the spider. As always (!) my malaria medication left me feeling pretty sick (20 mins of pain everyday, is Malaria better?) so all I could handle was a smallish deep fried bug.

"No worries" I thought, "nice and tasty in a deep fried frog style"
First picture shows my misplaced confidence in the cooking techniques of small bugs, second pic shopws the gallon of beer I swigged afterwards after getting into the soft chewy centre of the little critter!! Just like one of those strawberry sweets you get in boxes of Roses chocolates. Grim.

Although it wasn't that unpleastant, just unepxected which is probably worse. However, in the absence of any 8 legged friends (enemies!) to eat I've decided to set a new goal...the new top of the nasty food chain is the humble Scorpion!!

Now is something that if I don't do I deserve the abuse that comes my way as these little critters are available from 'bug man' which means no excuses on availaibility! Damn.

So only the one night in Bangkok as planned sees me heading off to Koh Samui tomorrow where I am attempting to be a beach bum for a whole month. Not sure if boredom will set in before then but will give it a try.

I also have afew more rnadom trips planned 0n my route anyway as my circular tour of asia seems to have gone out of the window....next update could be from anywhere!

Until then...

Saturday, February 25, 2006






SIEM REAP

So, again not sure what to expect from the Angkor area given that all I know is that it houses the best temples in South East Asia. The bus drops us off in a Shanty town and you can tell that my lack of information on the area isn't unique with everyone else asking eachother "is this the place?, are we there?".

Thankfully the less than developed area turns out to be about 5km out of Siem Reap and once I've wrestled past the Tuk Tuk drivers and choose one the area I get dropped off at is very nice, with many of the bars and restaurants not looking out of place in any city in the world.

Besides a couple of late(ish) nights out my time in Siem Reap was pretty much the same as that of Phnom Penh and Cambodia in general - the place is great and the people are so friendly although besides the obvious tourist traps that bring people here I didn't find myself wanting to stay any longer unlike the time I spent in Laos and Vietnam.

With that in mind, as well as some persuasion from others, I have decided to cut my time in Cambodia short from the orginal 3 weeks to 1 month and head to the beaches in Southern Thailand.
With other plans I have, it means that I'll be a beach bum down there for just under a month, not sure if the lack activity will get me before then but at least I might actually get a tan in the process!

My travel plans beyond there are a little skecthy at best, as my nice neat circle acros South East Asia appears to have gone out of the windo so am now kind of just looking at countries / places I like the look of and heading there - random changes of direction of course will be updated as I take them!

Pics attached show Angkor wat at sunrise - (first time I've actually got up at 5.30 am and not had to!) as well as a school stop sign I liked and an example of the vertical steps you need to climb to see some of the places - not good in 35 degree heat with a hangover!

Heading back to Bangkok next for a short a time as possible but will update from there as well if anything of note deems it necessary....

Thursday, February 23, 2006

THE TOUR IS NO MORE

So after hinting at the demise of the 'Tour de Cambodia' in my Mekong post I thought I'd better explain the circumstances in which the most sensible 400km bike ride across undeveloped, sketchy and potentially dangerous terrain become no more.

The first issue was the size of the group halving from the original 4 (2 boys, 2 girls) to just myself and the other English guy Dave...we were just clearly too hardcore for the others! Not a great start.

All was not lost at this point, as I had managed to recruit one other who was brave (stupid) enough to join us, and I also still had my puncture repair kit i bought in Saigon. This istelf took 1 hour of the most painful translations (impression of nails flattening tyres, bicyle pumps etc.) before I was able to get my hands on what would surely be a valubale piece of kit.

So, next thing and perhaps crucial to the mission was to source some bikes. After searching around the travel places extensivly and shaking my head at several bikes that ranged from E.T style BMX's to ''Blue Rinse shoppers' it wasn't looking good.

However, we perservered and managed to find some places downtown that rented out half decent mountain bikes. After the owners of several of these stores had finished wetting himself at the thought of us peddling 380KM to Siem Reap, myself and my new found Canadian colleague rode out of there on the best of what he had....10 year old mountain bikes.

The sheer quality of our purchases fortunatley became clear early on, when cycling back to our guest house a moto brushed the back of my bike no harder than a gust of wind...this was obviously too much for my ageing equipemnt and the backwheel promptly folded faster than superman on laundry day and all of a sudden I wasn't going anywhere!

This, I'm ashamed to say is where my common sense kicked in for probably the first time on my trip (or longer than that maybe!) and I admitted defeat. I put my excuse of a bike on the back of a moto and returned it back no more than 5 minutes after we'd hired them.

The fact that the bikes lasted less than a mile out of downtown Phnom Penh, and that a road map was proving harder to find than a Scotsman at the bar, the trip was ended there and then.

This has now left me jaded, and with the overwhelming urge to do something random / stupid to try and fill the void...no ideas as yet but will keep you posted!

Wednesday, February 22, 2006




PHNOM PENH

After the great passport / visa debarcle I wasn't sure what to expect of the capital of Cambodia...dust tracks? Small huts?
As it turns out, although the outlying areas are what you would expect for somewhere like Cambodia, the actual centre of town was as developed and lively as anywhere I've been so far - which is pretty amazing really given the short amount of time you have to go back when the whole country was in ruins.

Although the area was more developed than my misconceptions, it appears that a special area of ghetto has been reserved for backpackers....tiny dusty and winding streets with every place being either a guest house, bar or restaurant - awesome!


Although I did enjoy the down to earth social scene when there (pic to prove it), it's difficult to be in too much of a party mood when you're surrounded by constant reminders of how far the country still has to come to repair the damage of the Khmer Rouge regime.

Aside from land mine victims and beggars on the street of all ages, the most obvious example of this is the visits made to the killing fields and S21 prsion which fetured heavily during the conflicts. I won't go into massive details as to what happened etc. as you can read up for yourself, but needless to say I defy anyone not to be moved by what there is to be seen there.

Photos attached aren't the prettiest I've put on the blog so far, but thought it best to show the good, bad and ugly as I see it over here.

Although you can't really escape any of the problems Cambodia currently has, my next stop is Siem Reap which I've been looking forward to since planning my trip (even when it as only supposed to be 6 weeks!) to see Angkor Wat and the surrounding temples.

So I may not be leaving Phnom Penh in my usual blur of late nights and random stories, but the sobering experience has been more than worth it, and is something that really needs to be seen if you find yourself anywhere close.

In typical style pics to be added soon, no internet troubles this time, just left my CD with them on in my room....will upload today once my brain is functioning!

Monday, February 20, 2006

THE MEKONG DELTA ( A REAL MISSION THIS TIME!)

OK, so much to update after my positive end to Saigon and the adventure that lay in wait. Before I get to the tragic (and frustrating) demise of the 'Tour De Cambodia''in Phnom Penh and in keeping with the rest of the entries I need to update on my latest SBE (schoolboy error to the unaware).

In typical style so far on this trip an early wake up the next morning for my 2 day trip down the Mekong meant only 1 thing - go massive the night before!
Again in typical smile, I gave the person next to me a cursory attempt at a smile and promptly fell asleep there and then.

It was only about 30mins out of Saigon that I realised something wasn't quite right, I had all my bags, money belt...oh yeah......PASSPORT!!!!
As I found previously with the episode with the orange bike in Laos, frustration seems to oversome me without any slef restraint and I again found myself shouting (well talking quite loud) a profanity amogst a crowded tourist bus rather than a desolate island!

This was made all the wore as I interrupted the tourist guide in mid flow presumably talking about the surrounding area.
After some panicked discussions, we agreed the best thing to do (after arguments between my hotel and the tour company) would be to get my hotel to send my passport by bus ahead of us and I would pick it up at our overnight stop in Vietnam, thankfully a couple of hours before the Cambodian border.

At this point I was now able to semi relax, semi secure on the knowledge that my passport would be waiting for me at my hotel.
The first day trip itself was very nice and sure enough we arrived at out hotel that evening as I described in detail to my hotel on the phone, although no passport to be seen!

After some slighlty more heated discussion (involving them hanging up on me twice) it transpires that my hotel lied when they said they sent it on a bus, instead in their wisdom keeping it hoping I would return and spend more money in the hotel!

An interesting approach to repeat business I thought, lieing and cheating the customers...I mean who wouldn't come back and enjoy their stay??

This now meant that at 7.30pm I needed my passport in my forgetful handsby 7.30am in order to leave for Cambodia the next day with my group.
Feeling hope was gone, we all went out as a group and despite the desolate tyown, had a good night involving lots of beer and karaoke.

At this point I feel I must apologise to Greenday, Bob Marley and George Michael (I know!)... I have ruined yours ongs for those poor people listening forever!

SO after waking up at 6.30 not expecting to see my passport ever again let alone before 7.30 - it turns up....with a whole 20 mins to spare!!
I've never been so glad to look at my dodgy 18 year old picture in my passport!

So that was major SBE #1, SBE#2 was on a smaller scale but basically was that I miscalculated (or forgot - whatever) my visa date in Vietnam, meaning I had stayed 2 days longer than legally allowed!
So just when I thought my border crossing to Cambodia was safe, I then had to hope my boat driver could sufficiently negotiate past a hefty fine, being sold for street food or whatever they do to overstayers!

Thankfully, after this eventful trip (that was supposed to be realxing) I made to Phnom Penh on the same day as planned to meet up with the other riders.....I will update the tragic loss of any hope for the 'Tour De Cambodia'in the next post.

Thursday, February 16, 2006
















HO CHI MINH CITY

OK, so after my rather dismal experiences (besides late night ones) in Nah Trang, my time in HCMC (Saigon to the old skool) has been pretty different.
Whilst I've still enjoyed the social scene until less than sociable hours, I've actually managed to cram a lot into my time here - which is less than planned - reason why to be explained below.

I was invited here to do some tours with some other people I met further North, which despite their good company was also good thing as I might have never left Nah Trang!

I also neglected to mention in the previous post that as well as my camera, I'd also managed to 'relocate' my open bus ticket, which gets me from Hanoi to HCMC. Nice.

As it turned out, it gave me an opportunity to skip the 12 hour buses for a change so I decided to fly.
As my misfortune seems to make for interesting reading I can also tell you that after arriving at the airport and checking my guide book to find my hotel I found my bookmark neatly placed in the Nah Trang section....a flippin open bus ticket!!

Probably serves me right on many levels, having killed the brain cell that knew where it was, and also getting up to nothing touristy in Nah Trang that would have justified a look in the book!

So after all that messing about, I hooked up with my friends later that evening who said that one of their friends knew some good places to try one of the Vietnameses delicacies - dog.

Although I've only gone so far as crispy frogs so far on the culinary path to my eventual spider in Cambodia I was up for giving it a try.

For those that probably don't want me to describe the meal and restuarant in great detail I can say that there were several different varietes of the meat on offer that night (photo attached is steamed meat), all of which our group tried, which to take things a stage further was washed down with a couple of shots of snake wine!
You would think that the dog meat would have been the worse of the two, but actually it had a good pork / game taste...the snake wine on the other hand was so strong it deserved a skull and cross bones on the bottle!

So, not a bad start then considering my lack of adventure culinary or otherwise in Nah Trang! The following day was a to the Cu Chi tunnels used by the Vietnamese during the war, which was also an interesting experience...the best bit however was the army shooting range on site where you can fire the big bad A-K47's!
Needless to say I shot my hand up in the air when asked to fire them like astupid kid in school who actually knows the right answer.

Although I'm still fully ware that I'm a terrible shot from my Laos efforts it was still awesome firing that gun, I didn't even try to aim at the targets - it was just too powerful and loud to conecntrate on small matters like aim or direction!
So as in Laos, my targets (small wooden animals on boards this time) survived another round of bullets unscathed by my efforts! Pictures attaches show me trying not to look scared when fiinrg as well as one of the other crazy equipment they'l let you fire.

I've also kept one of my empty shells as a souvenir which I might get added to a necklace in a 'Top Gun dogtag' style!

The discussion of the evening following this is why I'm now leaving HCMC for Cambodia ahead of schedule. Over some Bia Hoi (as you do) Myself and another English guy (Dave) got chatting to these 2 American girls who were contemplting doing some cycling in Cambodia - long story short the 4 of us are now all meeting in Phnom Penh in 2 days time to start a 400km cycle ride to Siem Reap!

Planning is still in it's infancy despite the timleine, although I am personally working on several of the key issues, such as "how can I get a sound system on my bike?" and "can I get one in chrome with old skool white wall tires?"
The trvial issues such as how many days it will take and where to stay are also being figured out I believe.

So, what was going to be sevreal days in HCMC sees me leaving tomorrow via the Mekong Delta, which is something I've been looking forward to as it's the route in the film Apocalypse Now, and much of the scenery seems the same.
I will obviously makes sure not to get captured and end up in any huts talking to an overweight Mafia Don in the dark!

So, with my departure of Vietnam iminent I went round today with a quality moto guy (ther are plenty of honest nices ones, despite my stories!) and crammed in as many sights as possible today. Picture attached is one of the many pagodas, this one being the 'Beehive Pagoda' Nice.

I will update the 'Tour de Cambodia' in more detail once I arrive there in a couple of days, although it will mean that an update of the entire trip may have to wait until it's done...not sure if many of the minority villages will have boradband!

Tuesday, February 14, 2006












NAH TRANG

After leaving Hoi An behind in a blur of heavy spending (Alcohol and clothes) I was looking forward to Nah Trang to chill on the beach for a bit as that was all I really knew about the place....once I got here though the place is PARTY CENTRAL!

Arriving from the 12 hour bus journey with no sleep and straight onto the booze cruise starting at 8.30 kind of set the standard really for what turned out to be a week of late night antics, 100% in keeping with my time in Vietnam so far!
My quiet chilled beach place actually more closely resembles the Magalluf of Vietnam. Excellent.

Besides the obvious downsides to this approach to travelling of empty wallets and an empty head the next day, I also managed to 'relocate' the camera from my pocket one night to a location that is unknown, meaning I will never see it again.

The reason I don't say that my camera wasn't stolen was that I had all other valuables on me the next day, including my phone which I keep in the same pocket as my camera!
That and also the fact that the specific details of that particular evenings antics remain sketchy at best! Oops.

So after all the messing around that goes with claiming it back, and another hefty purchase on a new all singing, dancing, cooking, cleaning etc. camera I don't have to much in the way of pics to update with for Nah Trang.

As for Hoi An you're going to just have to go with any mental images of the place that my update conjures up!

All theft / loss incidents aside the place has been great fun, which meant my 2 or 3 day stay actually turned into a week!

Photos are from my last couple of days there, which from the description of my time there probably gives you a fair refelction of what I got up to!

Saturday, February 04, 2006

HOI AN

The lack of updates to the blog since my poor effort in Hue goes to show how good I'm finding Hoi An at the moment.
A dangerous combination of good bars and restaurants, cheap tailoring and the first beach I've seen on my trip so far has meant a financially painful time here, but worth the copious dong, hangovers and sunburn!!

It's also been quite a social scene here, with the majority of travellers (like myself) using the stop here to get some clothing made and have a good time in the bars (what else is there to do!?!) before the various fittings the next day.

Although, think I have enjoyed quite a lot of the latter, a clear indication coming to me last night when I introduced myself to a couple of people and was greeted with the response "are you the Ian I heard about the other night??"
Nothing too controversial by the way, just a bit of cheek and an incident or two recruiting people to a chosen late night venue to make for a better party than me going alone!

So several late nights, 3 suits, 9 shirts, 6 ties and 4 pairs of cufflinks later I think it's probably a good time to move on, as at my current rate of spending I will have got through more than the third world debt (or GM's debt!) by the end of next week!

Have another less than comfortable 12 hour bus trip to Nah Trang tomorrow, and have come to realise how spoiled I was with the luxury coaches in Laos...the buses here are just that, buses and nothing else...so as I haven't yet perfected the art of sleeping with my head rattling against a window or getting my head clattered by passers by in the aisle I don't think I'll arrive in Nah Trang full of enthusiasm!

However, Nah Trang looks like a nice beach town so will be a good chance to kick back on the beach for a few days and catch up with the people I've met here....the good thing about Vitenam is that the majority ofpeople are heading North to South (as I am) meaning you bump into familiar faces the whole way long -nice!

As always, pics to follow soon...
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