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Just a quick one – I have been replicating this blog on my travelpod site because that has a better map on it and I can put in our future plans on there, so if you’d like to see where we’re going please go to:- http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog/sbarnett/1/tpod.html So the big news is that we have completed a border crossing with almost no mishaps or ripoffs – apart from running out of money! But more on that later. Our final day in Hoi An began with the man from the post office coming to our hotel to wrap up the mountain of clothes that Annika had purchased ready to be put on a slow boat back to Blighty. Hoi An doesn’t have a train station but Danang, 40km away, does and the trip from there to Hue up the coast was supposed to be fantastic so we decided to do that rather than take yet another bus. The taxi to Danang drove along next to the beach for a distance, giving us a glimpse of what the Danang of the future will look like – most of this stretch of beautiful beach has been sold to the big hotel chains like Le Meridien and Hyatt and vast, soulless hotel complexes are emerging from the sand to make the area look like an identikit beach resort – what effect this may have on tiny little Hoi An down the road over time is anyone’s guess but it can’t be a good thing for it, surely? After purchasing a baguette and some suspicious looking meat product wrapped in banana leaves for lunch, we boarded the train along with the hoardes when it lumbered into the station. The train had come from Saigon the previous night and there was a tangible feeling of exhaustion and misery amongst the passengers that were already spread out into every space available on our carriage and we had to cram our bags into our tiny seats along with us, making for a less than comfortable journey. The journey and the scenery were, however, fabulous – the train hugs the coast almost all the way, no matter what and with the coast twisting and turning as it moves north, so did we, sometimes climbing up hills, sometimes chugging through tunnels cut into the mountains and all with views of huge bays, rice paddies and sometimes the front or the back of the long train as it crawled around the corners. After 3 hours, we disembarked with some relief however, as the bags made things quite awkward. Stepping out of the station, we were virtually knocked off our feet by a scrum of taxi drivers desperate to take us into town but luckily our hotel had arranged a free pick up so we managed to escape. Our hotel was a Vietnamese attempt at boutique hotel luxury and for only $35 a night it was a bargain. Some of their efforts were very odd, such as the ‘toilet roll cover’ style dress type things which disguised the complimentary water, the provision of scales and the 1970’s style ‘control console’ next to the bed which meant that only one person (me!) had the ability to turn the lights by the bed on and off but the addition of our own personal PC in the room was extremely well recieved by the geek of our party and I immediately began using it to upload all of our photos so far, which took all night but hopefully was worth it. Click on the photos link at the top to see them all. Next morning, we’d booked on a tour of the local sights as we only had one day to see everything. It was another scorching hot day and tour buses are always quite tiring so it was a very exhausting day but the guide was excellent. The morning consisted of three visits to the final resting places of past Vietnamese kings. First, the tomb of ‘The Smallpox King’, so named because he failed to have any children, despite his 100 concubines, owing to his condition. Next it was ‘The Sexy King’ (these are not the real names by the way, just the ones used by the guide), who had more than 500 concubines, taking on 5 every night and managed to produce 74 children. Finally there was ‘The Homosexual King’ who was so effete that he is often mistaken in photos for the Queen Mother (theirs, not ours, obviously – that would be wierd) or his own mother. These were all well worth seeing and we learnt an awful lot about Vietnamese history before the American War too. After an exhausting evening trying to get hold of some US dollars for the Laos visa the next day (they only accept dollars, but no bank in Vietnam will give you dollars in exchange for any other currency – mental) we watched a DVD in our room and went to sleep early, prepared for the usual challenge of border crossings which awaited us. Our bus to Laos took 4 hours to get to the border at Lao Bao at which point we had get off in order to be stamped out of Vietnam. I’m sure it’s not legal but the border guards charged us a dollar each to leave the country – a nice little earner for them, I’m sure, but it almost proved crucial to us when we tried to enter Laos, 500 yards down the road. We’d been told that a Visa would be $35 each and dollars were so hard to get hold of in Hue the night before that I’d only got $70 on me. I had some Vietnam Dong but not much because the cash machines wouldn’t let us draw out any more money the day before due to the daily limit. When we asked the predictably grumpy border guard how much it was, he typed ‘40′ into a calculator which made my heart sink. I gave him our $70 and informed him that it was for two but that we had Vietnamese currency, he calculated the difference and showed us that we now owed D195,000 – we had 189,000! D6,000 short (about 15p)! Luckily, a Canadian guy next to us lent us the rest and, after filling in the requisite forms, we got a Visa! Much relief but now we had precisely no money to our names, a 5 hour bus journey to our destination and less than 300ml of water between us. Still, we’d got into the country and that’s what mattered. No-one ripped us off and no-one tried to kidnap anyone to travel with us so I rate that a success! We spent one night in Savannakhet, withdrew some cash and are now in Tha Khaek after an extremely cramped minibus journey which feature no less than 25 passengers in a 12 seater bus for 3 1/2 hours! Tomorrow we’re off to a homestay with some local people, hopefully, and to see some more caves – then it’s off to the capital, Vientiane. But for now, it’s sleep time.  Show on map
Greetings everybody! Annika here again. Simon suggested I do the post for Hoi An on account of the shopping aspect – it being one of my key skills you know! Well, as Simon said, we arrived in Hoi An after a pretty hellish bus journey and then had a nap for a few hours until I decided that we should really go and check out the town so managed to rouse sleeping beauty and make it down to the town…..(lets be clear, for my own reasons entirely, which will be become clear soon) Hoi An is known for 2 things really ( well 3 including the food specialties) 1. the lovely old town, a combination of Chinese, Japanese and Vietnamese influences and 2. Tailor made shopping. I’ll say that again, Tailor made shopping – how exciting! So… having done the prerequisite research on the internet i chose the most expensive place and we launched ourselves into the world of getting clothes made for us.. a little bit more bewildering for Simon than me but not by much! After carefully reviewing their detailed books of clothes ( a selection of pages cut out from catalogues and magazines ), and Simon narrowly having discounted choosing a shirt similar to the one that Rod Stewart was wearing in an article of him showing off his lovely home…., we set about choosing materials and getting fitted. But a matter of 24 hours later the shell of the clothes had been done, in my case they had managed to recreate a dress from a picture i showed them from a uk website and we just had to tailored from there- checking the length etc. The whole process is pretty amazing i have to say, when we first left the shop i was a little concerned that they would have got something wrong / not been able to make the dress i wanted but i was really amazed by the skill that these people have and the finished product was better quality than what you get in UK and quite a bit cheaper. I’m kind of hooked now to this tailored clothes thing and will be trying to recreate it in London! Anyway, a total of 2 days later and the whole lot were done – wow … I’ve sent them back to London by sea mail so apparently they will take a max of 4 months ( although with that kind of delay you would think that someone’s grandmother is carrying them from Hoi An to London) so when we get back they will be waiting for us… The rest of the time spent in Hoi An was wandering through the old town and visiting the local beach which was rather spectacular with a rather amusing woman that got our attention by shouting ‘ Oi, you come here’ . And of course our stay in Hoi An wouldn’t have been complete with a 4am start to go and see dawn over the ruins of My Son ( Vietnam’s best archaeological site). The morning started well when we managed to get out of bed and navigate through streets with no signs in the dark to get to My Son but it didn’t go quite to plan.. as dawn broke we were about 10k from the site and due to the clouds there was no actual sunrise as such. Arriving at the site we were the first people there and had to wait till it opened. We had a slight technical issue with the camera not having any batteries and, unlike Angkor Wat ( although My Son is a lot smaller), there were no signs in badly translated English to help us and we wandered around the site not really knowing what any of it was. At some of the sites we could see that most of the ruins were still hidden under mountains of vegetation. Also, the place had been heavily bombed by the Americans during the war as the Viet Cong had used it as a communication centre ,so there had been a lot of damage ( huge bomb craters and crumbling walls) which didn’t appear to have been repaired so far or made safe . Still, it was further evidence of the amazing architectural feats that the people of this area had achieved over the years. All in all Hoi An was great, if a little touristy , but without the craziness of Saigon (aka much less motorbikes) and a lot more relaxed. Simon reckons it’s somewhere he would like to come back to and I guess I could be convinced if I had to, to get a few more items of clothing. Show on map
I usually write these posts whilst we’re on a bus or train from one place to another as the journeys can be quite long. But the journey from Nha Trang, which I’d picked out as the one in which I was going to write about the last few days was so spirit-crushingly uncomfortable, I couldn’t bear the thought of writing anything and in truth, anything I did write would have been quite miserable and negative so I thought I’d save it for Hoi An. I will talk more about that journey later but for now, I’m hoping that sitting next to the pool whilst many locals set up a wedding for this afternoon around me will inspire some more positive thoughts than might otherwise have been forthcoming. Going back a few days, we visited the Cu Chi Tunnels near Saigon. As was previously mentioned, the journey took forever due to some roadworks and the insane attitude to traffic in Vietnam. This, coupled with a tour guide who started off quite interesting and informative but slowly turned boring and bitter as his available material began to run dry in the rush hour traffic made the experience quite draining, but the tunnels were certainly very interesting and crawling through them for 120 metres was totally exhausting. They were dug just after the 2nd World War but more extensively used and expanded by the Viet Cong to transport weapons, food and supplies from the North to the freedom fighters in the South. Made for the tiny Vietnamese that were to use them, they are extremely cramped for a big fat Westerner like myself and I was quite relieved to escape after a brief period. The VC virtually lived in these tunnels for months on end. They also showed us some of the top class, almost cartoon-style booby traps that they used to catch the Americans, most of which involved soldiers falling into pits of rotating spikes and all of which filled the VC with much pride. The introductory video talked of several VC who were decorated as ‘American Killer Heroes’. Next day, we took the bus to Dalat in the Central Highlands, 7 hours away. We’d bought an open tour bus ticket which allowed us to get on any TM Brothers Cafe bus to get first to Dalat, then Nha Trang, Hoi An and finally Hue and this was our first mistake. The bus was ancient and had dreadful suspension, bouncing around like a weeble after every bump in the road was encountered. Many hours later, after having stopped to pick up various collections of locals, we bounced into Dalat which is set in the mountains. The town itself is not lovely but the area is beautiful and much cooler than Saigon. The highlands look and feel like the Alps in the Spring which was a nice change from chaotic cities in stifling heat. First day there, we took a motorbike up to the base of Lang Biang, the tallest peak in the area, looking forward to a bit of exercise and a decent climb. Two hours later, after walking for miles, up some incredibly steep, slippery and muddy paths, we reached the top, exhausted and sweaty. Relieved that we’d brought food and drink with us, we devoured it all in seconds, relaxed for a while and the began the descent, which turned out to be just as hard, in a different way, to the journey up. By the time we’d reached the bottom, we were too late to get to go on a cable car across some valleys nearby and so ended up just scooting around pointlessly, ensuring that bums were as sore as legs and feet when we fell, exhaustedly, into bed that night. Our much anticipated sleep was sadly interrupted around 1am by the banging of doors and the shouted voices of drunken Australian men, however and a nice few hours of recuperation were ruined when they talked (shouted) to each other long into the night. We were due to go on a tour with the manager’s cousin at 7am the next morning but, thanks to our Antipodean friends next door and some other ‘unspecified’ issues, we decided to leave for Nha Trang instead. It was a shame because the area was lovely and we’d like to have spent more time there but we would have been wasted had we done the tour and we haven’t got time to waste days so we had to push on. After our unpleasant journey with TM Brothers, we chose to buy new tickets for the trip to Nha Trang with a much nicer local bus called Phuong Trang. Much more comfortable at first, this really seemed worth it, and it was – overall. The bus wound it’s way down the mountain and through valleys and hills to reveal some truly stunning scenery which made me wish even more that we could spend more time there. After a stop for some food however, we seemed to find oursleves on a road which wasn’t exactly being repaired, more being built in the first place! Travelling in a bus, rather than a 4×4 or a tank did not make the route any easier and some unbelievable and, frankly, sometimes terrifying scenes followed as we bounced and leapt through muddy trenches and round bends which had sheer drops on both sides with no barriers. Lots of other buses were taking the same road so I’m sure all this was just normal for the locals amongst us but I, for one, was extremely relieved to see tarmac at the bottom and the arrival in Nha Trang was more than welcome. Nha Trang is all about it’s beach – a long stretch of beautiful, white sand which runs along the front of the city, which appears to have mostly been built in the 1960’s. As such, there is not much to report other than the fact that the weather picked up again and 2 whole days were spent soaking up the sun and drinking the beer from a local micro brewery which offers loungers on the beach and waiter service. In between the 2 days of beach, we hired another motorbike and visited a local hot springs and mud bath – just for a change, you understand. After having read some real horror stories of the tour bus we were booked onto for the trip to Hoi An, 10 hours North, we tried desperately to get onto another bus but conceded defeat in the end and gave ourselves to TM Brothers once more, this time for a night bus. Picked up at 6.15pm, we tried to get the vaguely less uncomfortable seats at the back but were told, sternly and uncompromisingly, that our seats were elsewhere. Having grumpily moved, the bus rumbled off around town to pick up the remaining passengers until every seat was taken and then off we went. Barely 1 mile down the road though, we stopped to fill up with petrol and off we went. Another mile and another stop, this time so that the driver could have a cigarette and a chat with some friends. Eventually we really did get moving though, 11 1/2 hours of confined hell followed. Annika described the beds as narrow hospital beds and, as we had top bunks, we had to keep our rucksacks in the seat with us. The bus rocked and rolled and bounced over the uneven road all night and only trundles into Hoi An at 7.30am, despite the predicted 6am arrival and the early departure time. After spending the night in a narrow hospital bed on a rollercoaster in a nightclub (the constant beeping of the driver as is the way with the Vietnamese) I was more tired than I have ever been so when our hotel offered us breakfast as we checked in, I was very happy indeed. I have just regained my energy now, 24 hours on and am looking forward to spending time in Hoi An which seems lovely so far. We’ve eaten some superb food and ordered some bespoke clothes and have just now been to see the ancient ruins of My Son, an area of Champa temples which are older than Angkor Wat. Having left the pool due to what turned out to be some sort of party for the employees of a local cooking school, which started with bad karaoke (‘We Are The World’) and is now in the throws of excitable party games, I am heading to the beach for some serious reading. On Sunday, we have yet again forfeited our prized tickets on the tour bus and are going to Hue by train. Then we leave Vietnam for Laos and country number 4. Show on map
Our last evening in Kep turned out to be quite an eventful one – we went for dinner at a restaurant down the road run by a Hungarian man with a vast beard and no top. We chatted to him for an hour or two (well, he talked at us really!) which was fascinating – he’d come to Kep 5 years previously to start a new life with his wife and he’d built the restaurant himself – but his wife had died and he can’t go home to Hungary, for the cold weather will make his joint problems worse so he stays in Kep, talking to tourists and guarding his property by sleeping outside in a hammock with only a guard dog for company. He says that he has been burgled several times and that he will kill anyone else that tries, telling us that if you kill someone in this area, a $1000 bribe to the local police will magic the problem away. Just as we were thinking about leaving, the dog barked and the waiting staff made a fuss and we saw what was apparently a poisonous snake on the ground near the kitchen. A few minutes with the implement he uses to shove pizzas into the oven though and our host had flung it into a nearby tree where it lay in wait for us as we edged past it to get home. During the night, we both heard the usual set of animal noises outside our wooden hut but at one point my shower gel dropped onto the bathroom floor. In the morning, I picked it up to use it and found that it had a 2 inch hole in the side which had been clearly chewed into existence by “something”, which Annika is convinced was a monster. Probably a lizard or a rat, it damn well ruined my shower! Our journey from Kep to Can Tho the next morning didn’t start in the most promising style. Our “minibus” failed to turn up at the time we’d been told to be ready for – 7.30am and so we waited outside the hotel for a good 45 minutes, wondering why we didn’t get to sleep just a little bit more. Eventually a car turned up, we got in and, bizarrely, it drove us all the way to the border with no minibus in sight and no explanation. Very odd. Still, the journey was quite pleasant, through small villages and past rice paddies and salt marshes to Hat Tien. Then the pain began. This border has only been open for around 2 years so there was very little information available on how to continue our journey on the Vietnam side. We were taken to, and over, the border by two enthusiastic motorbike riders, happy to earn $5 each for the trip. An easy crossing was then followed by a 10km ride to the town of Hat Tien where we were told that the buses don’t go from here but go from another town further on which would cost another $4 each to get to. It was early and we were tired and we fell for it. And so began the worst journey of the trip so far, being led from place to place by friendly “guides”, waiting at roadside cafes for the bus and so on and so on. By this time we kind of knew it was a scam but once they’ve got you, they’ve got you. When the bus turned up, a very obnoxious young tout led the bargaining and conned us into paying an exorbitant (for this country) amount of money to get to our destination, Can Tho, in the Mekong Delta. We reluctantly climbed aboard the decrepit minibus, ruing the moment we ever got into this. If it hadn’t been for the scam, the bus journey might have been quite amusing, if a little (a lot!) uncomfortable – the bus frequently stopped to pick up passengers and cargo, including around 10 massive bags of rice, several enormous boxes of stuff and, staggeringly, a caterpillar track from a bulldozer (this was a 15 seater minibus remember!). But we were just fuming for being ripped off and the discovery that our bus only went as far as Long Xuyen, 60km from Can Tho only compounded matters. Luckily, a very kind man understood our plight and convinced the bus driver to pay for our onward tickets. Another 3 hours on a similarly cramped bus followed, and we arrived at our hotel, exhausted and fed up at around 5pm that night after a journey of more than 9 hours which couldn’t have been much more than 250 miles. Can Tho is in the heart of the Mekong Delta, the area that provides most of Vietnam’s rice. The city itself is unremarkable but the fascinating rivers and rice paddies that surround it are well worth a visit. The standard tourist thing to do here was to visit the local floating market which we did the next morning. The market itself was slightly disappointing as it wasn’t as busy as I’d imagined but it was interesting seeing the locals going about their daily business. Our guide then took us down a few of the more narrow parts of the river and we ended up going to his family’s house by the river. We were given fruit, shown around their land and introduced to the family, including his mother chopping wood and his daughters playing games and being generally young and excitable. The two girls, accompanied by one of their friends tagged along for the ride back to town, continuing to play the kind of games that little girls seem to play the world over in the boat – paper/scissors/stone and various pattacake type things, you know the type of things. We then took another very cramped bus journey up to Saigon, which was renamed Ho Chi Minh City by the government in honour of the former leader of the North of the country. Saigon is quite, quite mental. There are apparently 3 million motorbikes in this city and, if anything, that feels like a bit of an underestimate! Everywhere you look, there are seas of heads waiting at junctions to try and squeeze through gaps in the traffic to get to where they’re headed. As far as traffic rules go, there are none – the idea is, as long as you don’t actually kill anyone, you can do what you want. Crossing the road is like trying to walk across the junction of Oxford Street and Regent Street on a Saturday at Christmas wearing a blindfold. No-one cares about traffic lights and certainly not about the pointlessly painted pedestrian crossings, the idea being that you just walk into the mass of vehicles and weave in between them all. It’s quite fun at first, if a little unnerving, but it gets really tiring after a day or two, especially if you’re tired as it takes quite a lot of mental energy to avoid getting run over. Last night, in the rush hour, we took around 5 minutes to cross a tiny crossroads which was gridlocked only to find, when we reached the other side, motorbikes 3 abreast driving towards us on the pavement! As I write this, we are on a coach on our way to see the famous tunnels that the Viet Cong used in the war but we have been sitting on the same piece of road for the last 90 minutes without a single move in any direction, as there are some roadworks and the whole area has ground to a halt, with no-one stopping anyone from desperately squeezing through any gap they can find, resulting in cars, buses and mainly motorbikes pointing in all directions on both sides of the road trying to force their way through. Despite all this I do really love the place – it’s got a very friendly feel and there is quite a lot to do whatever your preferences. We’ve done the usual tourist things like the museums and the shops and bars and markets but we also went to a cinema on the 13th floor of an upmarket shopping mall and saw Sherlock Holmes (pretty good) on one night. We are not sure what our plans are next but we will probably be leaving for Dalat in the Central Highlands tomorrow and then on to Nha Trang. Just one sentence to mention the fact that the marvellous gooners are now top of the league so I will take all the credit for that as my leaving has obviously spurred the boys on! Long may it continue. On you reds! We chose the luxury bus from Siem Reap to Phnom Penh at only $11 each for a 6 hour journey. After a mosquito killing contest which resulted in an 8-2 victory for me, the journey was uneventful, save for the smartly dressed Cambodian girl whose job it was to make announcements and hand out free snacks. She was full of useless information about all the provinces we travelled through but, due to being barely understandable, most of these facts passed us by as serenely as the Cambodian countryside. We found Phnom Penh to be a little underwhelming to be honest. The National Museum wasn’t bad but the Royal Palace was pretty dull (and expensive at more than $6 each!) and there is not a lot else to do here other than the two principle sites to visit, both related to the horrors of the reign of the Khmer Rouge. First was Tuol Sleng – a school which was hastily converted into a prison in which the educated classes could be tortured and forced into confessions by the new government under the command of the recently tried Duch, one of the only members of the regime to show any sort of remorse for his actions. Some truly horrific stuff happened there in the name of creating a new, agrarian, self-sufficient society overnight and the experience of looking around the adapted classrooms at the faces of the 20,000 that were sent there can only be described as emotionally exhausting and harrowing. The fact that it was a school that was in use right up until the day the Khmer Rouge emptied the city in 1975 served to make it all the more horrific I think. Exhausted by the experience, we decided to leave the famous Killing Fields until the next day which, I think, was a good decision because if anything, this was harder on the senses than the prison. After spending what could be months in the prison being tortured, inmates were taken to these fields 15km south of the city in trucks, where they were led to ditches, made to kneel and simply bludgeoned to death by various blunt instruments to the side of the head, bullets being deemed too costly to waste on killing people they thought were just not worth the expense. The worst experience came when our guide pointed out that there are still some 10,000 bodies under the ground here, some of whose clothes, bones and teeth are beginning to surface as the tourists walk around the place. Realising that that piece of cloth you can see sticking out of the ground under your shoe belonged to a victim of the genocide was particularly disturbing, as was seeing the tree on which the troops reportedly smashed babies heads against to kill them before dumping their, and their mothers’ bodies into the ditches. In the evening, we ate at a restaurant in town which employs street kids and teaches them (in several different restaurants) the trade including waiting tables and cooking, which gives them a leg up and gives them the chance to get a job using their experience once they have qualified. It felt like a tiny contribution to help these people out and I suppose our mere presence here, spending our pounds on tuk-tuks, night markets and hotels helps them out too. Next day, we travelled down to Kep, a small town on the south coast where the wealthy used to come to relax in their big houses and villas back in the 60’s. During the years of the Khmer Rouge and civil war, the place was virtually destroyed and today the place is littered with deserted shells of old hotels and houses. The town is growing again and there are a few tourists here but it’s still very quiet and we’ve enjoyed relaxing here for 3 days, staying in a wooden hut up in the trees. We’ve also me some really nice people from all over the world, one of which actually MET the King that day when we could only stand and watch him swish by in his official car in Siem Reap so that trumped Annika’s excitement at just SEEING him and I think she’s finally coming to terms with the fact that she’s not going to become Cambodian royalty on this trip. Cambodia has been a fantastic experience – the people are great and very friendly, despite the very recent traumas that almost all of them have come through. Everywhere you go, there is evidence of what happened here, land mines leaving many amputees and orphaned children begging on the streets and yet there are a lot more smiling faces around the place, particularly children who are very happy to wave and shout “Hello!” to every foreigner they see. The food has been really good and it has to be said that Angkor Wat and the other temples were the highlight of the trip so far. Tomorrow morning we are off to Vietnam, starting in the Mekong Delta, heading to Can Tho before travelling north to S-s-s-s-Saigon where, I’m led to believe, the average age is 19. Hmmm. Show on map
The boat trip went on forever! 8 hours in total in the end, the last hour and a half bouncing around in the waves on Asia’s largest freshwater lake, the Tonle Sap. It was an amazing trip, winding along a narrow river for a few hours in the early morning past some very poor looking riverside people who all waved at us with big smiles on their faces and then out into a wider stretch of water, through floating villages and more waving children. Once across the lake, the boat dived into the mangroves and fought it’s way through reeds to get to Siem Reap, Annika having to swerve out of the way of whipping bamboo and other wildlife as we picked a careful route through. A silly argument with a tuk-tuk driver later and we arrived at our hotel. Next morning, we were up at 4am again to go and see Angkor Wat appear at sunset, along with most of humanity. Well OK, there weren’t THAT many people there but photos were hard to get due to the people insisting on standing up and sitting down all the time whilst preparing their tripod-mounted cameras at the front. It was an amazing sight, the 5 towers which represent the 5 peaks of Moint Meru (Everest) slowly revealing themselves, reflected in the pond that sits just in front. As soon as the sun had risen, the camera papps all packed up and left and our guide began delivering his encyclopaedic knowledge to us. By the time we’d walked round Angkor Wat I was beginning to really feel the effects of so many early mornings though and breakfast was a welcome fuel boost when it came. Once revived, we set off to one of the far flung temples in the area, Banteay Srei which was quite small and very interesting, The Citadel Of Women apparently. Lunch was followed by a visit to Ta Prohm, the temple used in the filming of Lara Croft apparently. I’ve not seen the film so that side of things was of little interest to me but this is probably my favourite of the area as it’s buried in the jungle and is in the very slow process of being eaten by the various trees that have sprung up in the short time (900 years or so) since it was built. Apparently, once the temples were abandoned, seeds dropped by birds in their droppings landed on the temple walls and began to grow. Gradually, their roots have reached down towards the ground, strangling the temple below, sometimes knocking parts down as it goes, creating some astounding combinations of nature and human creation. Our last stop was Bayon in Angkor Thom which was the source of much historical information for the Cambodian people – a lot of Cambodian history had been lost and the carvings in this temple provided historians with a lot of useful knowledge. I, however, was flagging in the heat by this point so you’ll have to ask Annika if you want to know any more! All I can remember are tons of nutty stories about gods and demons churning milk in the sea to make a potion which would make them live forever and, my personal favourite, Kala, who was greedy and hungry so decided to eat the head of one of the gods (Vishnu) but, when Vishnu discovered this, he punished Kala by making him eat himself (why didn’t Kala think of that before?!) from the feet upwards and now his little grinning face sits atop almost every lintel as a demonstration of what happens when you get greedy. As I said, mental. It was a truly exhausting 12 hour day of sight seeing but unlike anything I have ever seen and it just has to be done if you get a chance – fantastic. Our guide was a genius of the highest order and has asked me to set up a website for his (only exists in his head at the moment) tourism business as he only earns $15 per day for giving us rich people the benefit of his knowledge. Anyone fancy lending their skills as I am not exactly a web design expert (as can be seen by this site!) ? An early night and a change of hotel and we hired some old, crap bikes and set off for the temples again next morning. Believe it or not, there is much more to see here than you can comfortably fit into a day or even two. We pedalled our aching buttocks around like crazy but there are still bits we failed to see (Preah Khan for example, which is massive) and we managed to get to the traditional sunset viewing spot just in time to see it close which was nice. After a week of early mornings and exhausting days we decided to stay in Siem Reap for another 2 days and rest as our hotel was very nice and fairly cheap. We spent Saturday by the pool, Annika had another (!) pedicure and in the evening we went to the Kantha Bopha Children’s Hospital for a cello recital by the guy who founded the Kantha Bopha hospitals, Dr. Beat Richner who calls himself Beatocello. The guy is amazing, not for his cello playing (which apparently was very good though what do I know? I played recorder at the age of about 8, that’s my musical background!) but for his commitment to the children of Cambodia. He has pioneered and founded 5 hospitals (4 in Phnom Penh, the other here in Siem Reap) which provide treatment, free of charge to children who have any health problems, most of which are tuberculosis and Dengue Fever – he has apparently reduced the mortality rate in children from 6% to 0.5% since the first one opened in 1997. Amazingly, only 5% of his funding comes from the Swiss government (he is Swiss) and 5% from the Cambodian government – the rest is donations. The evening consists of a few cello pieces dotted in between his views on world health, particularly his scathing opinions of the way that the WHO and UNICEF are run. Without knowing much about the subject, it is hard not to see his point of view – his hospitals look superb, he pays his staff (who are 98% Cambodian) a more than decent wage (in order to prevent corruption) and they even give the remote farming families the price of their travel back to the hospital to ensure that they can afford to return for out patient treatment – the average income of a farmer here being around 50 cents a day. He’s the sort of individual who ought to get a lot more coverage for his work and yet I’ve never heard of him – I suppose there’s tons of people like this around the world doing just as vital work for people who need it without any recognition and yet people who win X Factor are lauded as heroes for overcoming some private personal tragedy at some point. Bonkers. Donation donated, we left feeling rather pointless but at least we’d done something, even it was a relatively small something. Sunday was unremarkable, save for a visit to the National Museum which houses a lot of the relics that were found in the temples and an unexpected glimpse of the King! As we left our hotel to go to the museum, there were tons of police around a nearby school and quite a few onlookers. Deciding that, even if we hung around to see who it was going to be we wouldn’t recognise them, we wandered off to get ourselves a tuk-tuk. “Maybe it’s the King?”, I said to Annika as we strode across the bridge as she quite fancies him, having seen him in the film Dr. Richner showed us the previous night. “I don’t see why it would be”, came her reply. Our tuk-tuk driver did his best to nip through the traffic which was all being held back by the police to keep the roads clear but in the end, he failed and we were forced to stand by the side of the road and wait until the mystery celebrity had passed. Barely 5 minutes later and his motorcade glided past, King Sihanouk leaning out of the window of his state car, waving at the crowds. Annika maintains he waved and smiled at her so everyone prepare yourselves to greet Queen Annika I in July! It seems a shame to leave Siem Reap. Our 5 days here has been so nice and so varied, I’ve really enjoyed it. But leave we must and we are now on our way to the capital – Phnom Penh. Show on map
Well this has to be the most bizarre location to be writing a post for my website – we are currently on an old boat, slowly cruising up the Stung Sangker river from Battambang to Siem Reap (Adele, this is your chance for the second instalment of the ‘following waterways on Google Maps’ after your virtual trip down the Suez Canal!). For those that have seen it, think Martin Sheen in the boat in Apocalypse Now – “That’s Cambodia, Captain”. But more of that later. Monday began with yet another early morning and a 4 hour bus ride from Bangkok to the border with Cambodia at Aranyaprathet – then the silliness began. The guide books all talk about the various scams on offer around this area, the first of which was the tuk-tuk driver who promised to take us from the bus stop to the actual border 5km away taking us to a fake ‘Cambodian Consulate’ to get a visa before we’d even left Thailand which we saw coming and managed to avoid. The border itself wasn’t too bad if you just ignored all the touts (save for the interminable wait for a passport stamp, caused by 30 or so Russian tourists barging their way to the front of the queue. We bought a ticket for a shared taxi in Poipet (the horrible border town nearby) to Battambang and jumped into the car. We drove around the corner and stopped by the side of the road, 500 yards away, apparently to pick up 2 more people. After a 20 minute wait, the taxi driver and his mate suddenly sprinted off in the direction of what appeared to be local who’d just come over the border and had grabbed a moto taxi to the town. They then seemed to sort of wrestle the guy off the back of the bike, one man grabbing the ‘lucky’ passenger and the other grabbing his bag and led him to our car. At which point, another taxi driver laid claim to the vital human cargo and tried to steal the unperturbed local’s bag from our man. A sort of schoolboy tussle ensued, won by the imposter, and we lost our chance of immediate departure. A 30 minute period then followed during which ‘we’ attempted a couple of other minor kidnaps and drove around the dusty back streets picking bags and other people up but eventually we were off, and after a very squashed couple of hours, we arrived at our destination. Initially, Battambang (inexplicably pronounced BattambOng) didn’t fill us with much hope. Fairly dirty and quiet, a little bit shabby and quite dull we thought. But after a drink on the rooftop of our hotel and a chat to some of the locals, it sounded like there was much to see in the local area and motorbikes was the best way. Nex day, I attempted to ride a manual gear motorbike to the end of the road and back with, err, limited success. So we each took a guide with us for the day who drove the bikes and led us to the best sites which were down bumpy, dusty, unmarked roads so I think it was best we didn’t attempt it on our own. The first site, some caves used by the Khmer Rouge to kill hundreds of people during their short reign of power in the late 70’s, was reached by driving down an incredibly dusty road, orange dust covering everything in sight including trees, houses and people! “Cambodian snow”, my driver told me – it is a joke they are very proud of but not a bad one in truth and very apt, given what we are reading about conditions back home. A day of arse-punishing roads, local temples and amusing times teaching our guides some English slang (“she is fit”, “big tits” etc. was the general theme) left us exhausted and quite, quite orange from the ’snow’. Another early morning and now we are on our way to Siem Reap, home of the famous Angkor Wat on the river, which is such a good way to travel, seeing the people living by, and on the river going about their daily chores and small children waving enthusiastically at the site of the farangs chugging past. In 7 hours time, we will be there – we intend to stay for a few days as Angkor apparently takes 2 days to see properly and we could do with a rest (these early mornings get a bit silly after a while). Our hotel has a pool and Annika is 2/3 of the way through War and Peace so some reading shall be done. Show on map
Happy New Year everyone! We spent 3 days on an island called Koh Yao Noi for New Year, staying in a wooden hut near the beach on the east coast in a place called Pasai Cottages. It was pretty basic stuff but very nice all the same. On New Years Eve, we hired a mountain bike each and cycled round the island which was no mean feat! It is flat for most of the south east and west of the island but as we made our way towards the north it began to get hilly. Timing it perfectly for the midday sun, we ended up inching up and then inching down some very steep dirt roads looking for somewhere, anywhere, to get a drink and some food and maybe even a beach to sit on for an hour. The road continued like this for around 7 or 8 miles though with nothing but the odd shack hidden in the jungle and several times we considered giving up and going back. We got to the end though, and found a posh exclusive resort on the beach called Paradise Beach Resort. We had some decent food there but it cost a fortune compared to the rest of the island and water was 6 times as much as it was when we left! We looked at the New Year menu and noticed that it was £90 per person which is an incredible amount in this country. The island is mainly Muslim so we were expecting a pretty dry New Year party but things didn’t quite turn out that way, sadly. We had 2 large bottles of Chang down the road before wolfing down a rather drunken (I may have mentioned it before but Chang is evil) green curry with a bottle of Singha each. We go back to our bungalows to find Thai dancing, fire jugglers and “Balkan Beats” (as Dun, the resident Turkish German DJ referred to them) thumping out from the bar as well as a pretty terrible band playing barely recognisable cover versions. A few more Changs were sunk and New Year was welcomed in whilst standing in the sea which was a new one for me. I think we went to bed at around 2 but I don’t recall much and me and the lady had to piece the evening together the next day using the photos on the camera to aid our sore, hungover brains. Whoops. I think we only had about 4 pints each but, as I said, Chang is evil. New Years Day was wasted and the next day we were off in the direction of Bangkok as our time in Thailand was nearly over. An unremarkable day in Phuket Town was followed by a flight to the capital early next morning and, by now, tiredness was really kicking in. We slept for 3 hours when we got back to our hotel that morning and then did one more palace and the insane Chatuchak Market (is there ANYTHING you can’t buy here?!) before attempting an early night and we’re now on a bus heading towards the border with Cambodia at Aranyaprathet to start the ‘proper travelling’ part of the trip. Thailand has been fantastic, particularly the food and the people. Everyone is so friendly and smiley, it’s almost unnerving at first. Hardly anyone has tried to rip us off or mess us around, transport actually leaves EARLY (which is annoying sometimes) and you only have to ask anyone for help or directions and they are more than happy to help. The Thais really know their food and some lovely meals have been had in almost every place we’ve been to, even if some of them (last nights in particular!) have left me gasping for a drink to cool my burning mouth down. We’ve seen some beautiful places and relaxed on some lovely beaches and it’s a shame to have to leave – I’ll definitely come back, Koh Lipe and Ban Krut stand out as my favourite places. But now it’s off to Cambodia and this evening we will be in Battambang. Show on map
We will probably not stay anywhere for as long as we stayed on Koh Tao and I have to say, it was lovely to unpack completely and do nothing but relax and read for a week. But you can have too much time on the beach and it’s nice to be moving again. It took most of the day to get from the island to Krabi via catamaran and minivan but it didn’t feel like a long trip, save for our first experience of loud, obnoxious Americans in our minivan who must have had some terrible hearing problems as they insisted on yelling to each other despite their close proximity and bought a small stereo and played crap music on it for most of the 4 hour journey from Chumphon to Krabi. At this point may I give a big shout out and an appreciative thank you to whoever it was that invented noise-cancelling headphones. We checked into our hotel, ate some food at the night market and had an early night. Next day, we hired our first motorbike of the trip (£4 for the day!) and sped off to a local national park to do a bit of hiking and to see a waterfall or two. Arriving just in time to catch the midday sun, we climbed through the jungle up an insanely steep hill for around an hour until we reached the top. Nice view but the theme for the day had been decided on – sweat. After another trek through the trees, we found the top of the waterfall and then had to clamber further up to get across it and then, eventually, down to see the other 10 levels as it cascaded down the mountain. Suitably stinking, we jumped back onto the bike and set off in search of some caves. Guarded by a short, rather rotund old woman, sat on a tree stump in the woods like some troll from a children’s fairy tale, the caves were set into the side of a hill, requiring yet more climbing (up rotting wooden stairs etc. this time) to reach them. Before we found the cave entrance though, there was just time for an action thriller when I managed to knock my sunglasses off my head as we inched down a steep path. They bounced twice in front of me and leapt, lemming-like, over the edge and landed 15 feet below on a steep bank. I tried to reach down to them but the ground kept falling away and I couldn’t get near – but not to worry, it turns out I am going out with the real life Lara Croft and the heroic lady clambered around another way and managed to rescue them, watched from the bottom by the strange troll woman who must have thought we were mad or possibly that we would find some of her hidden treasure by leaving the (not at all) designated path. The caves, once we found them, were superb – after crawling into them on our bellies (more sweat, more dirt) they opened out a little bit into almost complete darkness, lit only by the torches provided by Troll Woman. As soon as we lit them up, the many bats which were asleep in there woke up and started flying around us which was amusing. 15 minutes were then spent clambering around the various chambers and we were only stopped by the fact that the wooden bridge across a small lake had collapsed into the water (the troll later explained to us that we were supposed to get off the broken bridge and walk through the water – of course!). The whole thing was great fun in the end, despite us being filthy dirty and (according to Annika) me smelling like a gerbil. Back on the bike, we trundled back up the elephant dung littered path – they do some sort of elephant safari nearby – and sped off to a local temple which is also home to hundreds of monkeys which are fed by people buying bananas in the small shop. Before you are even aware that someone has bought some, the word goes round the monkey community and all hell breaks loose, monkeys careering down from all angles to fight for the bananas on offer. As usual with monkeys, they are fascinating to watch, scooping and licking the flesh out of the bananas and then just dropping the skins wherever they are at the time, the unfortunate losers trying to eat bits of paper etc. All in all, our day out in Krabi was excellent fun and not a little exhausting. This morning, we took a speedboat to the island of Koh Yao Noi where we are staying in yet another wooden hut just across from the beach. No Internet though so I’ve no idea when this will be posted so Happy New Year everyone. We are on a Muslim island so our New Year celebrations may well be less boozy than yours – but then it may also be hangover free so hey, you takes your choice. Show on map
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