Feeling Krabi

Bangkok

Not to suggest that it’s likely, but if you’re ever in the position to cross the land border between Cambodia to Thailand, a word of advice: don’t! We travelled 3 hours by bus from Siem Reap to the border and then we queued for what must have been 2 hours in the border terminal, edging slowly along a few feet at a time, crying on the inside. Eventually making our escape, we waited roughly another hour before we were allowed to leave for Bangkok, as the driver of the mini-van wanted to squeeze in every last person that he could.

Arriving back in Bangkok, something felt different. The last time we’d been here, I was ready to move on pretty quickly. But now I was happy to be back among the hustle and bustle of the city, no doubt travelling for over 2 months had softened my attitude to the gateway city of Southeast Asia (and it probably had a lot to do with spending time in the ridiculously loud Hanoi). Although we did very little in Bangkok barring visiting our favourite Pad Thai place and going to the cinema (again), it was great to go back and made me realise that perhaps I had grown a little from all of our travelling in the last few months.

Krabi

We left Bangkok again by bus (VIP apparently) and headed to Krabi town, a small town on the south-west coast of Thailand, which is used as a gateway to the south-west islands. We left Bangkok at 6pm and arrived at 5am in Suratthani, where we were transferred to another mini-van at 7:30am, which meant a 2 ½ hour wait outside with hungry mosquitoes. We arrived exhausted in Krabi at around 10am and set about gaining back some sleep that we’d lost, but unfortunately we were challenged by the noisy builders working on the hotel where we were staying.

Krabi is a strange little town. Due to its proximity, it is used as a stopping off point for tourists looking to spend time on the south-west islands of Thailand. But it is a small town with very little to do, and so there are lots of westerners and very few Thais.

On our last full day in Krabi, we booked onto a tour of the beach islands surrounding the coast and set off early to get there. Much like the beaches in Otres and Koh Rong Samloem, the water was a beautiful blue/green and great for swimming (It was actually possible to walk between some of the islands!). We spent time snorkelling off of the boat and saw amazing marine life swimming past our hands and faces, including what looked like a very small barracuda. I’d had problems with my mask and had to spend most of the time holding my breath under the water and as a result I swallowed a few pints of the stuff. This made the swim back to the boat an absolute nightmare as I was completely out of breath and retching and Jane thought for a while that I might drown, but now she finds the whole incident hilarious. She’s so sweet. 

Angkor Wat??!

Siem Reap

We don’t seem to have much luck with transport in SE Asia. The journey from Otres beach to Siem Reap was a long one indeed. We were advised beforehand that it was supposed to be 10 hours overnight. 10 hours became 13 hours due to the fact that our drivers were swapping every 30 minutes, as well as stopping for cigarettes constantly. Our journey was made even less enjoyable by the size of the ‘beds’ on the bus, as they were about ½ the size of a comfortable single. Also, to add to the annoyance, we had some locals talking to the bus drivers throughout the night and due to the fact that our beds were right next to ours at the front of the bus, we were left frustratingly tired and unfortunately angry. We were very grateful that the tuk-tuk driver who worked for the hotel where we were staying decided to stick around, even though we arrived over 3 hours late.

Siem Reap is a lovely city, especially in comparison to somewhere like Phnom Penh, and it is clearly being set up as a tourist destination for westerners with the major fast-food chains evident again throughout. It also has the grand ‘Angkor Wat’ complex only a short 20-30 minute tuk-tuk ride away. It took us 2 days to see the temples of ‘Angkor Wat’, soaking up the history and magnificence of the temples and it is clearly a place that the Cambodian’s have great pride in as the name Angkor is everywhere, from billboards to beers. On the second day at ‘Angkor Wat’ we set off at 5am to view the sunrise with what appeared to be thousands of other people. As we walked in darkness with flashlights leading our way, the only thing that we could make out was the pond where we stopped and waited for the rising run. Although our view of the sunrise was obstructed by cloud cover, it was still a glorious experience to appreciate and to see the sky lighten with every passing moment and watch as the temple appeared magically in front of us. After the sunrise at Angkor Wat, we visited another temple which Jane assures me was used for the films Tomb Raider and Raiders of the lost Ark. As I still haven’t verified this we will just have to take her word for it on this one.

We spent New Year’s eve in Siem Reap at a fittingly named place called ‘Pub Street’ and drank until the early hours along with a friendly Canadian chap and his girlfriend, beating them convincingly several times at connect4 and discussing our teaching plans for the future. At this time we were considering the real possibility of teaching in Korea and funnily enough he had been teaching there for the last 13 years. Unfortunately Korea is not for us at this time (we are heading to Barcelona instead) but I think long term it will be a likely destination and we are grateful for all the advice we received that night. We left Cambodia after Siem Reap to return to Thailand but due to its history and the Cambodian people it has truly left a mark on me in a way that I didn't think it could.  

Merry Christmas Y’all!

Otres Beach & Koh Rong Samloem

I’m putting the next two places into the same blog, simply because I can only write: ‘We lay in the sun all day’ once or twice before everyone starts sending me abuse on Facebook, Twitter and Blogger. So forgive me and I hope you’re all enjoying the snow J.

Otres Beach is a very small beach resort (who’d have thought it?) on the southwest coast of Cambodia, near the larger town of Sihanoukville. All of Otres’ bars and restaurants are based around the strip of beach which runs around 1km long, meaning there is very little to do but eat (BBQ Seafood), drink and sunbathe. This was exactly what we needed after the travails of Phnom Penh and the city life of HCMC. For several days in a row, we sat and drank cocktails, whilst watching the sunset over the horizon, truly appreciating how lucky we were to be there.

Every Saturday evening in Otres they run a market, surprisingly called ‘Otres Market’, which is a few stalls of food and knick-knacks, gathered around a bar where people congregate, drink and listen to music performed by locals, travellers and ex-pats. On our return to Otres after Koh Rong Samloem (more on this shortly), we were treated to the wonderful show of a man trying to set himself on fire whilst dancing to the sounds of a didgeridoo.

So, after several days of lying around on a beach, we set off early (7am) one morning to catch a dive boat to Koh Rong Samloem, a very small island off the coast of Cambodia, next to its more famous twin island ‘Koh Rong’. The (very choppy) journey took around 2 ½ hours but thankfully our walk from the pier to our hut was a very short one across the beautifully soft white sands. Our accommodation at ‘Robinson’s Bungalows’ was positioned right on the beach on the west of the island, with its back against the jungle that separated us from the eastern side.

Now, when I describe our accommodation as a ‘hut’ I am not exaggerating or underplaying what it was. It was a hut, with a balcony and two hammocks. It had a gap of about a metre from the top of the hut to the roof, which was exactly where a bat decided to fly into the room on the first evening, scaring the bejesus out of Jane in the process. As well as the bat, we had a pet lizard (called Lizzie) who would make an appearance from time to time in the corner of the room. We lived off of generator power in the evenings, which meant that the walk from our hut to the restaurant/reception area required a flashlight, otherwise it was total darkness and the generator went out about 11pm. Unfortunately on the first evening, I was suffering from some pretty bad sunstroke and spent the evening either sweating (no fan & no A/C) or freezing cold and totally unable to sleep. As was Jane, who spent the entire evening worrying that I might need to be airlifted to hospital at some point.

Thankfully, I felt a lot better the following day and we spent the next few days relaxing and swimming in the sea with only a handful of other people around. We also walked through the jungle to the other side of the island, which took around 45 minutes each way and was a great experience (in hindsight obviously).

Along came December 25^th and we had a wonderful Christmas dinner of BBQ meats and seafood, and I have to say that all of the food we had at Robinson’s was absolutely delicious, including the best Chicken nuggets ever! (I’m not even sorry McDonald’s), however I could have absolutely destroyed a Christmas dinner. Nonetheless, it was worth it just to be there.  

A reality check…

Phnom Penh

We travelled by bus from HCMC to Phnom Penh, which took around 6-7 hours in total. Crossing the Vietnam-Cambodia border was an experience in itself as we had been told that our driver would arrange our visas and return our passports to us on the bus. However, when we arrived at the border we were ushered from the bus and given no further instructions, which led to us standing around for quite a while having no idea what to do. Eventually our driver returned and we were quickly swept through the customs offices for exiting Vietnam and entering Cambodia (with customary eye scanning on arrival).

We arrived at our hostel in Phnom Penh a few hours later and as usual we dropped our bags and went exploring. In Phnom Penh I learned a lot about the history of Cambodia (which I will come to shortly) but I also learned a lot about the predicament of the current Cambodians too. Poverty is unfortunately everywhere, as large numbers of people are sleeping on the streets. Rubbish piled waist-high was strewn all over the city, which obviously made for a highly unpleasant odour no matter where you went. This was contrasted starkly by walking 30 seconds to the riverside area which is clearly more affluent and where the majority of travellers/holidaymakers seemed to be situated. As we wandered the streets offers of tuk-tuks were always no more than a few seconds away, which did became tiresome but we had become accustomed to it by this point of our travels.

One of the main reasons we had decided to visit Phnom Penh was to tour the famous killing fields, remnants of Khmer Rouge rule in Cambodia (Kampuchea) in the 1970s, with Pol Pot as its figurehead. Pot’s Khmer Rouge took control of Cambodia by force in 1975 and instigated a totalitarian system based around agriculture, creating forced labour camps in rural areas. The majority of people that lived in cities such as Phnom Penh and Siem Reap were sent to ‘Killing Fields’ where they were brutally murdered for simply being city dwellers. Some of the stories we heard were truly heart-breaking and I won’t repeat a lot of the specific information for this reason. However, it is estimated that during the time of the Khmer Rouge from 1975-1979, over 3 million people were murdered or died as a direct result of their rule, out of a population of 8 million!! As clichéd as this may sound, it really did make me appreciate where we are from and the fact that we are so fortunate to have the lives that we do. Although it’s all relative, a reality check like this can really open one’s eyes.

Cambodia may have escaped the Khmer Rouge in 1979 when the Vietnamese helped oust them from a position of power (although they were still officially recognised as the leading political party by the UN up until 1997!) but there is a strong sense of corruption that still encapsulates it, which is especially apparent when you can see such a huge poverty/wealth divide in just a few short steps. 

Fun with Rum and Truly eye-opening!

Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon)

We decided to fly to Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC), as a bus journey from Hoi An would have taken at least 15 hours, whereas the flight only took around an hour. We flew from Danang airport which seemed to have a million different flights to HCMC all going at the same time, which led to our flight being delayed several times. Eventually we arrived and I was taken aback at how westernised the city is, especially in comparison to Vietnam’s capital, Hanoi. Thankfully, HCMC is nowhere near as loud as Hanoi but it is just as busy! It reminded me of a lot of major cities in Western Europe, with tall cathedral buildings fronted by western franchises like McDonald’s, KFC and Burger King but all mixed with local shops and restaurants selling customary street food.

Yet again we dealt with a taxi driver that was just desperate to rip us off and tried to add another 100 thousand Dong (around £3) to the cost of the journey. Thankfully our street-smart, super-travelling, spidey-senses were tingling and we paid the originally agreed price. We dropped our bags off at our hostel and went to explore the local area, which is renowned as the ‘backpackers area’ of HCMC and we could soon see why, with bars galore stripped across several streets in the surrounding area. We stopped for food at a small street-food place which was selling BBQ and ended up eating nearly everything, which included kebabs, giant shrimp and huge squid rings! The food here was delicious (again) and we ended up visiting briefly the following evening. After food we went to a nearby bar, which we soon realised was the type of bar that lonely western men would go for the “company” of young Vietnamese women to buy them drinks and whatever else (ex-pats or sex-pats?). We finished our drinks quickly and got out quicker than you can say: “You’re getting your wallet stolen tonight.”    

We visited the Vietnam War remnants museum which was both fascinating and truly harrowing. As well as having U.S tanks, helicopters and fighter jets it contained lots of information and images of the war itself with disturbing images of U.S and Vietnamese soldiers with the remains of fallen enemies. The museum also contained images of the aftereffects of the war and in particular the use of ‘Agent Orange’, which was used in chemical warfare by the U.S against the Vietnamese with the aim to destroy crops, thereby depriving the Vietcong of both food and shelter in urban areas. The ramifications of this assault has led to millions of Vietnamese suffering from excessive scarring, deformities and death.

The following evening we met up with Steve, a friend of Jane’s, who has been living and teaching in HCMC for a while now and he gave us lots of teaching advice, as well as a tour of the city especially the drinking establishments. After eating at a Vietnamese street-food place, which included squid Jerky (which I wouldn’t recommend), and frog (which I definitely would!), we set off drinking and learning a little Vietnamese along the way. After several beers we settled in a local bar, ordering and finishing off a full bottle of rum (for a bargain £8).

HCMC was truly eye-opening in gaining an understanding of the recent history of Vietnam and the effects it still has today. Our next stop in Phnom Pehn, Cambodia unfortunately was to prove very similar…

Food, glorious food!

Hoi An

After our experiences so far of travelling on uncomfortable buses, it was a pleasant surprise that our bus transport from Hué to Hoi An was spacious and relaxing, and actually allowed you to lie down (as well as you could hope anyway). On arrival in Hoi An we definitely overpaid for a taxi to our accommodation, which still frustrates me to this day, as we should have known better by this point in our travels. Nonetheless, we arrived at our ‘homestay’, which was essentially a large house with a handful of private rooms for guests. Our host, Ms. Ann was extremely friendly and helpful and gave us lots of advice about the area and always offering bicycles for travelling around. Hoi An is known as the place to go in Vietnam if you are looking for custom-made clothing at reasonable prices and most places will make direct copies of clothes if you provide them a picture of what you’re looking for. After suffering the pain of breaking my flip-flops in Hanoi (I loved them flip-flops!), I set about replacing them. Thankfully my replacements are now my new favourites and definitely the most comfortable I have ever had!

Hoi An is a small-ish town with several parallel running streets set against a small riverside, which itself contains lots of bars and restaurants. At night the town is lit up beautifully and makes for a very atmospheric setting when relaxing with food and drinks, and it is one of my favourite places in all of Southeast Asia. We also experienced some truly wonderful food in Hoi An, and certainly some of the best Phó soup in all of Vietnam (courtesy of Ms. Ann’s restaurant). I can’t emphasise enough how good the food in Hoi An was in general, at every place we ate and if we’d stayed any longer than a few days we would definitely be working our way back from obesity.

On our last full day in Hoi An we were finally treated to some glorious weather and walked to the beach, which took around 45 minutes plus another hour of walking along the beach. Jane had wanted to take up Ms. Ann on her offer of the bicycles to get there and in hindsight we probably should have when we realised that we’d walked nearly 6km!! (I’m still very sorry ;-)). We ate (more wonderful food) at a restaurant on the seafront and basked in the glorious weather and beautiful views of the ocean. 

Dong Hoi and Hué Man!

Dong Hoi

We decided to stay a few days in Dong Hoi whilst travelling down the east coast of Vietnam so that we could visit the national park of Phong Nha, which are based around caves similar to the ones that we saw at Halong Bay. Dong Hoi is a coastal town which has yet to be truly impacted by the growing tourism in Vietnam, but whilst we were there we could see hotels being built and it appears that it may not be long before it becomes another stop on the traveller’s map. Truly at this moment in time there is very, very little there barring a handful of shops and cafes, but it is one of those sites that was clearly affected by the Vietnam War, with chunks of buildings missing as a result of bombing by American forces.

The guesthouse where we stayed was run by a local family who were very friendly and were helpful in arranging our trip to Phong Nha, which was a 45 minute bus journey away. On arriving we were taken on a golf buggy to the bottom of the cave and had to travel the rest of the way by foot (it may have only been 1km but it felt like a hell of a lot more). The caves in Phong Nha are humongous, with some running up to 32km long and absolutely beautiful to look at. It was truly awe-inspiring to remember that we were inside of a mountain, a few thousand kilometres above sea level. It was an especially fun moment when we were walking through the cave that the electricity abandoned us and we were left in utter darkness for 2-3 seconds but possibly the longest few seconds of our lives. Again the pictures that we took unfortunately don’t do the place justice, I wish that they did.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                 Hué

We left Dong Hoi the following day and were picked up by a little minivan to take us the short (so we thought) 3 hour journey to Hué, just south of Dong Hoi. What we didn’t realise was that we were on another local transport bus, which would stop every time someone would want to be picked up, even when there was actually no space left on the bus. It was a 14 seater bus and at numerous times there were 21 of us, crammed in like sardines, with some making seats out of other people’s laps. Also enjoyable was the young woman sitting to my right who clearly didn’t like bus travel and began vomiting whilst her friend (sitting next to me) began retching every time she would heave (all part of the travelling experience I guess!).

We arrived in Hué (pronounced H’Way!) and immediately realised that it had a lot more about it in comparison to Dong Hoi and much more of a tourist destination. Unfortunately, the weather had decided to change for the worst and began to rain incessantly for several days, (no doubt you have seen the glorious pictures of our colourful rain coats). Hué was the former capital of Vietnam up until 1945 and is mainly known for its huge citadel and Imperial city in which the Emperor would reside and receive guests. Again Hué, like Dong Hoi, is another example of somewhere that was majorly affected by the Vietnam war and was bombed heavily, destroying a lot of the history of the citadel and its surrounding areas.  

Hué was the setting for a lovely moment for me as I got to watch the Newcastle/Chelsea (2-1) game in a local bar (DMZ), sat next to a growingly frustrated Chelsea fan. He was actually a nice guy but his constant screams of “Come on Chellsss” became increasingly hilarious and he made a quick exit at the final whistle. Hué the lads!!

Good Morning Vietnam! Could you keep it down a bit?

Hanoi

Firstly, apologies for the delay in the posts, it has been hard to find enough time to dedicate to the blog and I am now about a month behind, but travelling is hard work! I am hopeful that the next few posts will arrive quickly and get us back up to date in the near future and as an aside, I hope everyone had a great Christmas and New Year!

So we arrived in Hanoi on the back of almost 24 hours of travelling which involved: Sleeper-bus from Chiang Mai to Bangkok from 8pm to 5am, arriving at Bangkok airport at 5:30am when our flight wasn’t until 12:40pm and then the 2 hour flight from Bangkok to Hanoi. Despite its name, sleeping on the sleeper-bus just isn’t possible for more than an hour or two at best and as a result we arrived in Hanoi exhausted but ready to experience it in all its glory.

The first real thing I noticed about Hanoi was how loud it is. It seems to be that in Vietnam when you are learning to drive it is essential that you use your car/motorbike horn at every single opportunity. Initially I thought that this was just a feature of the bus driver when we first arrived but soon I realised that it was every single person on the roads. As trivial as this may sound, it can become very hard work especially when one is dealing with a lack of sleep and as a result, patience. There are also a hell of a lot of motorbikes on the roads, like biblical swarms at times and navigating the roads can be very dangerous.

The food in Vietnam, and Hanoi in particular, is nothing short of fantastic. We ate at a lot of street-food vendors with a lot of the local people and I was blown away by dishes like Bun Cha (Pork with noodles in a sweet soup) and Bun Bo Nam Bo (Pork, noodles and vegetables with peanuts) as well as many other dishes where we have no idea what we were eating but the taste was incredible. This was my food heaven.

We booked a trip to Halong Bay, a world heritage site with huge caves which have grown inside rocks that formed out of the earth’s core some 100 million years ago. The caves were fantastic and awe-inspiring due to the sheer size and unfortunately the pictures that we have taken really don’t do it justice. For our trip to Halong Bay we were due to spend a night on the boat but due to unforeseen monsoon conditions, we were taken back to shore at around 5pm. However, we did have time to take a bamboo boat around more of the caves which was steered by one of the local people who lives on the local fishing village. The village itself is just a large pier which has been built on top of with a few homes and somewhere to eat. It was truly eye-opening to see people living like this and I’m pretty sure they didn’t have wi-fi.

Arriving back in Hanoi after Halong Bay, we decided to attend a Vietnamese tradition of Water puppet theatre. Something that developed in Vietnamese culture for hundreds of years, it began as a result of farms being flooded and so the local farmers built little wooden puppets to entertain the children, and slowly the tradition grew over time where they now perform several times a day to tourists.

The following morning we were up at 5am to begin our journey to the small town of Dong Hoi on the east coast of Vietnam. We arrived at the train station and realised that we were on a train for locals and nobody on the train appeared to speak any English at all, especially the ticket inspector who thought it was appropriate to keep turning his back on me every time I asked how long it would take to arrive. To make our journey even easier, the train stations don’t display the names of each station very well, so you have very little idea of where you are at any given time. This led to an exhausting 10 hour journey, where thankfully we were able to realise that we had arrived at Dong Hoi, thanks to some quick google maps deciphering by yours truly. :-)