We flew out of New Zealand on Saturday 27th December and after a 12 hour flight from Auckland found ourselves in Los Angeles 4 hours before we left….which was weird. After getting over our Time-Travelling experience we spent the next three days waiting in line at LAX passport control to have our photo’s taken, fingerprints scanned and an anal probing. I swear security gets tighter every time I come here. We finally made it out on to the streets of LA in our Chrysler Hire Car and spent a few hours driving around the block trying to find the interstate over to Santa Monica. We learnt the hard way that LA is quite a difficult city to navigate without a map after narrowly avoiding spending the night hanging out with the Bloods in Compton. But we finally stumbled on to our Motel and went to a café to eat the best beef burger in the world. The side order of fries were the size of my head and when the waitress brought out the burger it was so big it caused a total eclipse, temporarily blocking out the sun…welcome to excess America.

A 15 hour kip recharged the batteries and the next day we headed out to Hollywood for a walk down the Boulevard and past the Puerto Ricans hanging around the Ricky Martin star over to the Chinese theatre to see the hand and footprints of people we’ve never heard of. A quick stop at the Hollywood Museum then on to drive around Beverly Hills and Rodeo Drive. The second day we ticked off the other sights, Walt Disney Hall, a church, the library, Venice Beach and other things I’ve already forgotten about, then spent the afternoon and evening hanging out in Santa Monica. Disappointingly, in the two days we were there we didn’t see one police chase, nor even a drive-by shooting, but what was surprising was how much we enjoyed LA…shhhh, don’t tell anyone but we kinda liked it.

Destination number two was Vegas, a place that needs to be seen to be believed. This was New Year and like everywhere in the world at this time it was insanely busy. But we fought the crowds and spent the next couple of days drinking free Budweiser and Miller light (the worst beer ever) while playing the 1 cent slots in Venice, then Paris, Luxor, Rome and New York. We watched the high rollers gamble away a years salary on the turn of a card, while a volcano erupted and the fountains danced outside the Bellagio. Weirdly a highlight here may not of been the casino’s or the free beer or the Lions in the MGM or the Flamingos in The Flamingo, it was probably the best buffet ever in the Bellagio hotel. What other buffet do you get Shrimp Nigiri, Hungarian goulash, grilled swordfish, roasted mussels, Chilean sea bass, African Bluenose, lobster, lavender scented quail, Kobe beef, Alaskan snow crab legs and many things served with Jus, not sauce, jus!…and if that’s not enough, just look at the photo’s of the deserts…crème brulee, chocolate covered strawberries, pies, tarts cakes and cookies…And all this for a measly $19.95! I bow down to the Chefs of the Bellagio. Remember if you’re eating a buffet, rule number one is find the most expensive thing offered and eat your money’s worth, after that everything else is a bonus! Of course the buffets here are so popular you’ll have to queue for ten hours and it will be a battle of nutrition just to get a seat, but once you do, it will be a taste sensation. If you’re ever in Vegas I demand you eat here.

After the New Years celebrations we left Vegas with our clothes smelling of fried food, beer and fags and drove over the Hoover Dam towards destination three, the Grand Canyon.

We didn’t read about snow in the brochure, but there was definitely plenty of it here. None of that slushy crap we get at home, this was Columbian Class-A winter wonderland stuff. Unfortunately we hadn‘t planned for the -19 degree temperatures, but as wise man Sir Rannulph Fiennes once said “There is no such thing as bad weather, only inappropriate clothing”. So after putting on every single t-shirt we had plus wearing a pair of socks on our hands like mittens we ventured out to the Grand Canyon. Now it might be blasphemous to say, but even with all the stunning and majestic scenery around us (it is very grand that canyon) the highlight of the trip might not of been the canyon but rather the snow around it. I think we were like the kid at Christmas who unwraps his expensive present only to spend the day playing with the box. We even built a life-size Joe Pesci Snowman.

After we’d had our fill of the Canyon and the snow we started the very long drive back past Vegas up to San Francisco. On the way we spent one night sleeping in a Fairytale Castle on the Vegas strip, then just as a contrast spent the next night in a Truckers Motel off the dull, nothing to see here, Interstate 5.

For our last day with the car, we drove north of San Francisco to Muir Woods to see some Redwood trees, the tallest living thing in the world, then down across the Golden Gate Bridge, around a big park, over to a Japanese Tea garden and through a modern art gallery. As usual we did other touristy things I don’t really need to describe, but our favourite place by far was Vital Tealeaf in Chinatown. Owned by 76 year old Uncle Gee, officially the nicest man in the world, we sat and drank free Chinese tea for hours while he explained about tea and its place in the world. It almost turned me in to a tea drinker…almost. If you’re ever in San Francisco I demand you go there. Other notable mentions in the city are the Museum of Modern Art and Alcatraz. If you fancy mixing with homeless people, drunks, beggars, prostitutes, tuneless buskers, weirdoes and screamers, have a walk around the Tenderloin area. You might even be lucky enough like we were to have a guy stop in front of you, pull down his pants, squat and take a piss in the street. Fortunately we were around the block before the turtle came out of his shell, if you know what I mean. Now that’s the real San Francisco right there.

Sadly this is the end of the blog and the trip, as tomorrow we leave America with a couple more inches around our waists, thinner arteries and the bank manager calling every five minutes wondering where all his money is. We come back to a different world from which we left all those months ago. Without MFI, Woolworths, Jeremy Beadle and Captain Birdseye, I just don’t know how we’re going to cope in 2009.

See you all soon no doubt and if anyone has a job lying around the house that you’re not using anymore give me a call.

And they all lived happily ever after. The End.

Cheers,

Joe n Rachel.x

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After spending the last 5 or so weeks driving around the north and south islands of New Zealand, I guess it’s probably time for an update. I’m writing this sat in our hotel in Christchurch on Boxing Day. There’s not much to say about it so we’ll go back to the end of November when interesting stuff was happening.

After picking up the campervan in Auckland (upgrading to one with a heated towel rail…an essential item on every great intrepid explorers wish list) we spent the next five weeks driving a lap around the north and south islands.

This is a beautiful country, no if’s or but’s about it, it’s just beautiful. Unless I say otherwise you can almost guarantee that every place we went and everything we saw, from the volcanoes of the north to the glaciers and mountains of the south it was well worth spending a few seconds of our short lives standing and staring at it. They also have some fantastic drives and with road names like ‘The Forgotten Valley Highway’, ‘Twin Coast Discovery’ and the ‘Thermal Explorer Highway’…how can you not be tempted to take a detour just to see what’s down them. Even the photo’s don’t do the country justice, but they do present it better than I could ever describe so have a look if you want. If you can’t be bothered, but you’ve watched Lord of the Rings, or Narnia, or one of the other films shot here, then you already know what I’m talking about. One thing we thought we had left behind in Australia though was the stupid town names. Looking back now, Wagga Wagga sounds quite sophisticated next to some of the rubbish places here. It’s like the Kiwi’s commissioned a 12 month old baby to name each town…Wahwewoowoo and Whangamumu, and even Taumatawhakatangihangakoauauotamateapokaiwhenuakitanatahu!

During our quick drive around the north Island, we tried to visit as many highlights as we could.
Our first stop was at the Springs on the Coromandel Peninsula, where natural hot water seeps up through the sands on cleverly named ‘Hot Water Beach’ (in some points it’s hot enough to burn your feet). There’s something cool about digging a hole, letting it fill with warm water and sitting in it looking out to the sea…if only the other 98 people hadn’t had the same idea.

Next stop was Rotorua and one thing I can confidently state about Rotorua is that it smells terrible. There is a very good reason why it smells, it’s the Sulphur, but that doesn‘t make the eggy odour any easier to digest. So after the “was that you?” joke wore a bit thin we walked around looking at the geothermal pools, steaming lakes, bubbling mud and spouting geysers at Te Puia. After spending the rest of the day Mountain biking around the forest we chipped back to the caravan park to a very welcome hot spring bath and a beer. After a couple of days just sat in the hot pools we realised we could wilt away if we didn’t get out and move on, so we drove on to Lake Taupo via a ridiculous detour to the Waitomo Caves. These caves are the best place in the world to see glow worms, even Sir Richard Attenborough thinks so, so it must be true…they were very glowy.

As the wind picked up and the rain swept in making the volcanoes and mountains disappear quick enough to make David Copperfield jealous, we spent our time playing cards and drinking hot chocolate in true British caravan holiday stylee. When the sun finally came out and the cloud cleared we found just enough time to hike around Mt Ngauruhoe, which played the part of Mt Doom in Lord of the Rings and look up at Mt Taranaki, which won an Oscar for its role as Mt Fuji in the Tom Cruise film The Last Samurai. We even managed to squeeze in some canoeing down the grade three rapids (some going backwards) on the Wanganui River, which was fun. Our final stop was Wellington to visit a museum, drink some Mac‘s beer and catch the ferry across to Picton on the South Island.

The ferry journey was as it says in the brochure, very scenic, and whoever writes these things is probably right saying it is one of the best ferry journeys in the world. Although I think Phuket to Ko Phi Phi in Thailand was better, this one was definitely a lot safer as it didn’t constantly break down and float aimlessly in the water until the engines kicked back in.

Our first South Island stop was the Marlborough Wine region and I’ve just realised who got the short straw here…Rachel got to drink free wine and fall asleep in the van, where as I had to drink water and drive us hundreds of Km to our next camp site! What’s that about?!? Oh, and Rachel’s favourite wine here was Matua Sauvignon Blanc if you’re interested…hint, hint.

Our next stop, Abel Tasman Park, is one of the best National Parks we frequented. The weather was perfect and the beaches beautiful. We only wished we had taken our swimming stuff, especially after getting a wet arse from trying to cross a low-tide only crossing at high-tide.

Before heading on down to the Glaciers we popped up north to Golden Bay to see some Sea lions, stopping en route at Waikoropupu springs, the worlds clearest freshwater outside of Antarctica (I think you need a keen eye to spot the difference though).

After a few more miserable days of wind and rain (we’ve had 50:50 good to bad days here) we found ourselves heading off to hike up the Frank Josef glacier. We had a bit of a stuttering start to the morning when the guide said to the group, “You can put your crampons on when we get to the glacier face”. We both looked at each other and said under our breath “what crampons?”. We had to fess-up that we didn’t have any after our plot to steal the weedy kids crampons was foiled when we realised we were the weedy kids. But after that little hitch (solved by another guide driving from the office and running a couple of Km to catch up and give us some) it was an amazing day, squeezing through little crevasses and clambering over the glacier ice. It was tiring, but definitely worth the effort. It makes you laugh when you look at the old Victorian photo’s back in town and compare yourself to the old Hikers. There’s us, all dressed up in our flash gortex coats, gloves, boots, and crampons when the moustachioed guys back in the day were climbing up to the top wearing just a woollen suit and some hobnail boots…and doing it all while smoking a pipe!

After stopping over in Wanaka to watch the new James Bond film we pulled in to Queenstown, the self proclaimed adventure capital of the world. Here I took the decision to jump off the 109 meter high Shotover Canyon swing where I developed my own jumping style called ‘the cat falling out of a tree’, I think they were most impressed. The day didn’t start too good when we though we had locked the keys inside the van, only for me to find them in my pocket just before I smashed the window…my bad. It ended up a great day though, riding the Shotover Jetboat and watching buskers in the street as well as jumping off the cliff.

We moved on to Te Anau then up towards the Milford Sound (which if it wasn‘t a big lake, would be a great new romantic’s band). The drive up was so great, through the tunnel and past the snow covered mountains and parrots, it was actually better than the cruise on the Sound (which isn’t really a Sound anyway, it‘s a Fiord - I can’t be arsed to explain the difference - although Milford Fiord would be a good name for a Pulitzer Prize winning author). The weather was rubbish, but they kept telling us it looks better when it‘s like this anyway…Yeah, right, find me a postcard that has Mitre Peak half covered in cloud and pissing rain, rather than with blue skies and its reflection in still crystal clear waters, then I’ll believe you. Bad weather wasn’t that surprising around here though as they get 7 meters of rain annually on the west coast. London’s 1.5meters now seems like the Sahara in comparison. So to sum up: The drive brilliant, cruise so-so, weather crap.

From here it was on to the Catalins via Invercargill just to see Burt Munroe‘s Indian bike (of the film ‘Worlds Fastest Indian’ fame) on display in a tool shop. We stayed the night near Porpoise and Curio Bay, a wicked spot where you can see Hector dolphins playing just off the beach and Yellow Eyed Penguins (the worlds rarest penguin) waddling past you on the rocky bay. I even got chased by a Sea lion. Honestly, they make look like big balls of blubber, but they can run like the wind! Less than 24hours after seeing the worlds rarest penguin, we had driven up to the Otago Peninsula to see 100 Blue Penguins (the worlds smallest penguin at 25cm tall) waddle up the beach to their nests and a couple of Royal Albatross (with 3 metre wingspans) gliding around the cliff edge…you don’t get that in Trafalgar Square.

After the towns of Dunedin, Oamaru and Twizel and with a brief stop to help a couple of guys unhitch a jack-knifed trailer from their car, only to see it roll down in to a 20ft ditch, we headed up to Mt Cook National Park. This is one of the most beautiful places in a beautiful country and a great place to hike around the Hooker Valley and Tasman Glacier, which is what we did. The next day we woke up to a fine crisp cloudless morning, a perfect day to climb a mountain….obviously not Mt Cook, we’re not crazy. Only last week two mountaineers have died in separate incidents on the highest peak around these parts (12,246ft). Instead we climbed Mt John, which is a little smaller, but if you squint and tilt your head a little it almost looks as tall and has good views over Lake Takapo and the Southern Alps...oh, and there’s a café on top, which is one thing Mt Cook doesn’t have! From here we headed over to Christchurch via Akoura. A former French settlement, it was built back when New Zealand was first populated. Unfortunately I think it has as much in common with France as Tesco Value French Salad Dressing, but maybe it was just the miserable weather clouding my judgement.

The five weeks went fast and we had a great time driving around and experiencing all that we have here. Even sleeping in the van was as fun even if it just made us appriciate a comfy bed and hot shower. One day you think you’ve discovered the most perfectly beautiful campsite in the world, the next day you’ve paid $40 to camp in a glorified carpark and get bitten by sandflies while stood under a cold shower that must have been built for an Aqua-phobic. Our last couple of nights with the van were spent at a ‘Qualmark 2 Star’ caravan park in Christchurch. Looking around the horrible place that’s three stars too many if you ask me. Anyway, we took in all the usual sites, the river, the art gallery, the cathedral, the Museum...If there is one thing I’ve learnt on this trip that is that every Museum around the world has a bloody Egyptian Mummy! We sent the van back on the 23rd and spent the last few nights locked in the hotel watching the Sky Movie channel. We did manage to venture out for a few hours on Christmas day to eat at a Bengali restaurant (the only one in Australasia) and to watch some Carol singers. But just sitting in the room, eating chocolate and drinking beer has been as good as any other day we’ve had here.

And you’ll be relieved to know that this is the end of this blog entry and the Australasia leg. Now it’s time for continent number three and Los Angeles and our last few weeks of the trip. We’ve updated the photo’s and the Beer diary is looking better than ever. We’ll update this again soon, maybe.

Laters,
Joe.n.Rachel.x

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Well, what can you say about Bangkok that hasn't been written before? Nothing, it's a steaming pile of poo. Actually that’s a bit harsh, I’ll try again…..

We dropped our bags in a hotel right on the Koh San Road, which probably would not have been our first choice if we’d planned ahead, but it was dark, everywhere was fully booked and we didn’t know where the hell we were. Plus the glow of neon beckoned us in, a bit like a saggy old prostitute would to a drunk outside a Soho strip joint…you can’t come all this way and not visit the Koh San! We popped down to Chinatown, but it was nothing special, just a market selling tat you would never want to buy unless you had to. The Grand Palace and the Temple of Doom, or whatever it was called was passable, but we’ve spent the last two months looking at temples, pagodas and wats all of varying degrees of decoration, grandeur, age and repair. By this point we just wanted to sit down in the shade and have a cold drink.

The newer part of town around Siam Square is all very Cosmo. Rachel had her hair cut at a hip ‘n’ happenin’ salon all the cool Thai kids seem to go and it cost a reasonable 8 pounds, so you can’t argue with that. We also popped in and played a bit of Ten pin bowling and succumbed to the fact that we are both pretty rubbish at it. So, bang goes my idea of hustling in the bowling dens of America when we’re skint. I'll just have to sell a kidney to some poor Latino in downtown LA who hasn't got health insurance.

We also liked travelling on their River Taxi, Sky train and Metro. The Metro carriages are so well air conditioned that condensation drips off the hand rails and it’s like sitting in a fridge. With it being 38degrees outside you could happily ride around all day. The only way they could make the journey more enjoyable would be to serve beer, I’ve put it in the suggestion box so fingers crossed.

The hassling in Bangkok gets a bit too much though. It‘s not just shouting out from stalls hawking for business or passengers for their Tuk Tuk's or Moto’s like in Cambodia or Vietnam, which although annoying at times is quite easy to ignore. These guys have taken it to another level. They stop you in the street and tell blatant lies, trying to con trusting tourists into either a. getting an overpriced taxi just down the road or b. taking you to a crappy gem store where they can get commission from the owners. "Where are you going?…oh that shopping centre doesn't open until (checks his watch) 3pm, it's a Buddhist holiday!" What?!?!?!? Another one is telling you the temple you want to see is closed because the queen died two weeks ago, or they won’t let you in dressed like that so better to go this way. We got stopped by three different people within 100 yards trying that…one even stood outside the gates to the temple where you could clearly see people walking in to the bloody thing! It's just so boring to have to put up with. So, if you ever come here remember one thing…Stranger Danger!

After faffing around in Bangkok we decided to jump an overnight train and go up to Chiang Mai in the north. So we went to the station, bought two ‘cockroach class’ tickets and sat out our last day in a Bangkok bar with our eyes closed.

Chiang Mai was like a breath of fresh air...not in the literal sense as the town sits in a valley so during the hot, dry months smog originating from forest fires and minority tribes slashing and burning their land is trapped and hangs over the town like a thick hazy blanket. It’s a lovely town though and much more affordable than Bangkok, a very agreeable $10 a night room doesn't lie.

The main reason why most travellers come up here is for trekking. You can’t get from your bed to the bathroom to take a piss without passing a guide trying to sell you a tour through the jungle. For us the choice was so overwhelming reverse logic dictated that we didn’t do any of them. So that’s what we did. Instead we decided to go to an elephant sanctuary, ride an ATV quad bike, go to a Thai cookery school and hire out a moped to ride around town like the cool kids. We definitely wanted to see some Asian elephant’s while we were here, but we had heard that they are mistreated and overworked on some tours, so we went to the Elephant nature foundation (www.elephantnaturefoudation.org) instead. It does exactly what is says on the tin: it’s a sanctuary for elephants, saved from maltreatment in villages and from logging companies etc. Its been on the Discovery Channel among other things. The photos speak for themselves so I won’t go on about it, but I will say it’s an amazing place and although quite expensive for SE Asia standards, worth every penny. We fed the elephants and gave them a bath in the river…Yes it is a bit girlie I know, but who cares. Giving a four ton elephant a back scrub with a broom is one of those moments that makes you sit up and realise you really are a million miles away from everyday life back home…unless washing elephants is your job back home that is, then it would be exactly like being at home and that would be rubbish. Lek, the founder of the sanctuary, then turned up with a newspaper reporter dude and gave us a little talk about the place. Rachel also made friends with a baby elephant and received a few elephant kisses. He even stole a hat off a guys head and gave it to her as a preset. At one point I thought he was going to throw her on his back and run off like King Kong in to the sunset. Unfortunately he didn‘t……I mean fortunately he didn’t…..that was spell check’s fault, dammit. Definitely another highlight of the trip so far.

On the second day we booked ourselves in for a Thai cookery course at the cleverly named ‘Thai farm cooking school’. Rachel made spring rolls, we ground our own paste to make green and red curries, and stir fried some other Thai meals, which I can’t remember the name of. I won’t say the dishes I cooked were good because ‘good‘ can’t describe the complexity of flavours that infuse on the taste buds from my curries. Just wait until we get home and I will amaze and confound you. We cooked our food and ate it that day.

On the Third day we hired out a 125cc moped, dressed up in our best Mod gear and had a fun ride up a hill overlooking the town. We then stopped at another temple and a minority Karen village...I say minority village but it was as authentic as those you find at Epcot in Disney World. We also popped in to a Bug Museum which is owned by a lovely and slightly eccentric old Thai man, who is one of the leading authorities on all things Mosquito. He has personally discovered many different varieties over the years and the museum had an assortment of bugs and butterflies all nailed on the walls or in glass cases for you to look at. He had loads of facts and figures too: Did you know that some species are vegetarian and others are actually helpful to humans by eating the larvae of the harmful mosquitoes that carry dengue fever and malaria?. If he’s around he will talk to you until you slip out the back door when he’s not looking...or into a coma, which ever comes first.

On our last day we went on a half day ATV tour. Pretty average for an off-road tour and pretty expensive, but it was a change from what we have done before. In the early evening we wandered around the Sunday market, which was fantastic. They shut off a long street to traffic and it seems like the whole town comes out and sets up a stall. Good food and drink and just a good atmosphere. If you ever head up to Chang Mai plan in some time to wander through the Market, in our humble opinion it’s the best in Thailand.

Heading back to Bangkok we were forced to get an overnight bus because they had cancelled most of the trains (on the news they said they had to pull them out of service to be fumigated as they were all infested with bedbugs and cockroaches…which didn’t really surprise us). We bought a Government 1st class ticket, not really knowing what to expect, particularly when we upgraded ourselves to super duper VIP’s and the woman behind the counter gave us ten tickets each, all written unsurprisingly in Thai. Happily, not only was the bus faster than the train, it was comfier, cheaper and not infested with cockroaches…although we never found out what all those tickets were for.

Back in Bangkok we checked in to a hotel not far from the Ko San Road and that night we had a nice surprise, hundreds of bedbugs. There where so many we had a fat Gecko sat on the pillow gobbling them all up like it was Gecko Christmas….actually thinking about it that wasn’t really nice nor much of a surprise, with this being a sh*tty Bangkok hotel...ah well. We decided to head for the Andaman islands as soon as possible.

Getting from Bangkok to the islands seemed at first like it was going to be a ball-ache of a journey. We heard stories about Bangkok travel agencies being crooks and on the bus down they would rifle through your bags and steal your pants. After careful consideration weighing up our other options and being way too lazy to make our on way down, we decided to risk it. But, you know what, after all our reservations we had no problem getting to Koh Tao bang on time and in possession of all our pants, so you can’t say fairer than that.

Koh Tao is a beauty of an island. Probably the main diving hub in Thailand, but there are loads of quiet beaches that are pretty much deserted with not a wind break in sight, a shock to us being used to Bournemouth on a Bank Holiday. We stayed at the quiet end of Ao Chalok Ban Kao beach in a hut on the hill overlooking the sea. It had it’s own resident spider, which we christened ‘Freddy’ after that song by the Who….well I thought it was a Who song then realized it’s ‘Boris the Spider’ not Freddy…ah well, stupid brain. Not unlike Chang Mai where we didn’t trek, we didn’t dive in Koh Tao either. Instead we spent our time snorkelling with the fishes in Shark Bay during the day and sipping cocktails watching far away thunderstorms by night. The best bit was probably stepping of the beach in to 2 feet of water and having a small black tip reef shark brush past our legs. Oh and if you go, there is a wicked place called Chopsticks, near where the ferry drops you off, that does Chinese food just like it is back home.

Four days later we packed our bags again, said goodbye to Freddy and hop skipped and jumped on to a ferry to Koh Phangan. A larger and more popular island than Koh Tao and home of the Full Moon Party (where apparently up to 40,000 people have been known to parrrt-aaay the night away on a beach). Unfortunately we got there and there wasn't a full moon in sight, which was a shame. We could of rocked out at the half moon party, but what’t the point? Full moon or nothing, is my mantra. So instead we headed up to the quietest beach at the opposite end of the island.

We stayed in a resort on Hat Chom beach managed by a lovely lady with the lovely name of Bovi. Only pick-ups can navigate up and down the crappy roads at this end of the island, plus they also only have electricity between 5pm-8am. Our hut was massive, with hammocks on the balcony and sat right on the beach front. The weather was great, the water was clear and warm, you could snorkel right off the beach, the food was tasty (the restaurant served the best Massaman curry I’ve ever had) and the beer was cold. Looking back we should of stayed here for four weeks instead of four days.

You couldn’t question Bovi’s commitment to the good health of the Island either. While giving us some advice about where to stay in other parts of Thailand she excused herself and ran fully clothed in to the sea, where she swam over and confronted two Thai guys in a small boat who were hanging around the reef. After a few minutes of arguing they skulked around the corner and Bovi came back dripping wet but carried on like nothing had happened. Apparently the guys were farming for sea cucumbers (big fat worm-like things that roll around on the sea bed cleaning the sand, which in turn keeps the reef healthy). They sell them to the Chinese, who stick them in tins and sell them to Beijingers as a tasty nutritious meal.

One night the whole resort shut down and everyone went to see some Muay Thai boxing. One of the German guys staying at the resort was fighting, so to show support all the staff and guests jumped in to the back of a couple of pick-up’s to go and watch him. It’s a popular sport here and quite a few foreigners come over, train for a few weeks and then fight a local Muay Thai boxer if they so wish. Now I’ve never been to a Muay Thai fight before and still don’t really know much about the sport, but I’m going to give it a go and describe it to you as best I can. To a few some of my observations are very uneducated and possibly slightly insulting to an ancient, spiritual and graceful martial art ……for that I humbly apologise, honestly I’m not worth it.

There was six fights on this card, each of which consisted of five 3 minute rounds. It was a small venue, with the fighters on one side of the ring getting their pre-fight massages and on the other three sides sat or stood the crowd getting pissed on bottles of Singha and eating popcorn. There were also a few ‘VIP’ plastic chairs and fold-out tables set up at ringside if you needed somewhere to lay down your pizza.

Before it all got underway pop music blared out over the tannoy. How in God’s name can they expect the contenders to psych themselves up for a fight when they have to listen to ‘One Love’ by Blue I don‘t know. They should be playing survivors ‘eye of the tiger‘.

The fighters walk into the ring wearing the obligatory dressing gown and what uncannily looks like, what I can only describe as, a stringless tennis racquet on their heads. Before the fight starts they pay homage to their teacher by performing a little dance in the ring. These got more extravagant as each fight passed, and for a minute I thought we were watching American TV show ‘So you think you can dance’ instead of a brutal martial art. I swear one guy was actually doing the hand jive!…maybe his coach was a Grease fan?

As the fights start they play some cool Indian stylee Thai music with which the fighters sway their head's in time to, just like snake charmers hypnotising their opponents. At times the fights seemed a little sloth like, with the competitors moping around the ring like sulky teenagers between flurries of kicks and punches. They did play up to the crowd though. One fighter gave a WWF Hacksaw Jim Duggan stylee “hayoooooh” salute and the crowd responded back, it was bloody brilliant...or you would think so too if you are my age reminiscing about watching wrestling on TV when you were younger. After the first round they went to their respective corners, and the trainers brought out huge paella dishes to catch the water and sweat dripping off the fighters, which they then sold to a Tapas restaurant in Phuket. After a quick mop of the brow the bell rung and they were all back up on their feet ready to go again. The best bit was probably when the referee, who was weirdly dressed like a postman, broke up clenching fighters with a few flying kicks of his own. I also liked it that the supporters really got in to the fights and any punch or kick that made contact got recognition. In what other sport would repeatedly kneeing someone up the bum not only get a huge cheer from the crowd, but a point from the judges?! After a few fights it was our guys turn. He was an older guy, who unfortunately couldn’t have look more German if he had parachuted in and goose stepped around the ring. After a wobbly start he kicked some arse and was the victor. Then we all cheered and went home happy.

Other than that we didn’t really see the rest of the island. We took a stroll down the road and saw trained monkey’s knocking coconuts out of the trees, but spent most of our time not doing much on the beach. After the four days we decided to pack our bags and head for Phuket on the other side of Thailand.

The ferry journey to the mainland was pretty dull, although there was a girl on board with an extraordinary large suitcase. Now a suitcase wouldn’t normally hold my scarily ever-decreasing attention span long enough for me to comment on it, but this was no ordinary suitcase. I’m not exaggerating by saying this was probably the biggest thing Thailand has seen since the dinosaurs. It was so big it had its own gravitational pull…I swear there were actually smaller Louis Vuitton bags orbiting it! The only reason I can fathom to have a bag that big is either to A: smuggle large quantities of drugs or B: to smuggle Eastern Europeans into France. It only just managed to fit down the corridor of the boat and when we disembarked the hobbit sized girl had to actually drop it and let it roll down the stairs because it was too big to control. What was that about!?! It’s called BACKpacking fo a reason dummy.

Sorry I went off on a tangent there, where was I? There’s not a lot to say about Phuket Town. It’s a pretty average place with no real sites of interest. I guess you would normally use it as a base to go off and explore the beaches and it’s probably the most cockroach infested town we’ve visited so far. It was a lovely hostel we stayed in though. They had DVD players in your room and a huge library of films to watch, plus free internet. We stayed a couple of nights before heading over to Ko Phi Phi Don by, you’ve guessed it, another bloody ferry.

On your way to Phi Phi Don you pass by the other island Phi Phi Ley, which looks just stunning. Sadly, on Don, we parked ourselves just outside the small port town, which is probably one of the most overrated places ever. I would suggest avoiding this place like the plague, if anyone was stupid enough to ask my opinion. It looks nice, but it’s over priced and over populated and the local’s aren’t that friendly either. During our short stay, we booked a half-day snorkelling trip around Koh Phi Phi Leh with a company that only takes out small groups at a time. The total opposite to one of the boats you see taking out 200+ people, who then spend the whole time kicking each other in the head with their flippers rather than seeing any fish. It ended up being a very small group as no one else booked on, so it was just us two and the guide! We saw the Viking cave with swift nests and snorkelled in areas where no one else was snorkelling. There were so many different fish, large and small. I don’t know what they were all called, but type ’colourful tropical fish’ in to Google and what comes up we probably swam with it. We also popped over and looked at Ao Maya beach, where ’The Beach’ was filmed. A quite frankly shit beach, spoilt by the hundreds of tourists crammed on it at any one time and all the speed boats flying around. The trip was all going great until I felt seasick, threw-up while still wearing a snorkel and nearly choked to death on my own vomit while floating in the sea. Unfortunately after that we had to cut the trip short, but it was fun while it lasted. It was coming to the start of the monsoon season so we saw some spectacular rainfall and lightening storms, but being tight on time (because we had to be back in Phuket for Songkran, Thai New year…yes another bloody one!) we got back on a ferry and headed for Koh Lanta.

Rachel pulled a muscle in the base of her back while picking up her bag on Phi Phi, which slowly got worse to the point where she couldn’t walk. We managed to make it to Koh Lanta and the pleasant Hat Khlong Dao beach, but after that it completely seized up and unfortunately she had to spend nearly all our time on Koh Lanta holed up in our chalet with no TV. Luckily the staff at the resort were unbelievably helpful and even brought Rachel’s dinner to her bed a few times! We popped in to a clinic and Dr Halitosis gave her a prescription of very strong painkillers, which help ease the pain a little. She did see our second wild snake of the trip though. A small Red and Black venomous one, which I nearly stood on, because even though it was curled up on the porch of our hut I didn’t see it…I could have been bitten and died! After the drama of staring death in the face for a second time in a week, we just sat out a few days and headed back to Phuket Town in time for the Water Festival. Songkran is just one big water fight with everyone walking the street with super soakers and buckets of water drenching each other. Probably the only time and place where after throwing a cold bucket of water over a stranger you are met with a huge grin and a thank you. For those couple of days just popping to the corner shop becomes a military operation if you wanted to stay dry.

Rachel’s back was slowly getting better, but we used it as a bit of an excuse and took advantage of the great DVD collection in the hostel, watching all the Indiana Jones films back to back, and living off 7/11 microwave pizza. We took a day trip by Songtaew (the local bus) over to Hat Karon beach. Nicer than I was expecting although slightly overpriced and full of Dutch and Swedes on package holidays and fat old Germans with their Thai ‘girlfriends’…Plus it rained.

After a lot of contemplating about what to do next we decided to jump on a bus and head straight for Malaysia. We had planned on going to Railey and Krabi but there was a climbing festival on so accommodation would have been scarce and expensive and although Thailand has some of the most amazing beaches we have ever seen, it was time to see some civilisation again.

To get to Malaysia we had to go through a town called Hat Yai. Being in the Southern end of Thailand it’s seen some Islamic separatist unrest in the past - bombings of the train station, arson and shootings, that sort of thing. Both the UK FCO and US Dept of State websites for Thailand advised that only necessary journeys should be taken through that area. But experienced, hardened explorers like us laugh in the face of danger, so we pooh-poohed their advice and ploughed southwards. We were in Hat Yai a death defying 2 minutes for a quick bus change, but sadly it all seemed quite normal…so we just smirked in the general direction of danger and moved on to the border. The border crossing was very simple and easy again and we were in Georgetown on Penang island before we knew it. Now it’s was time to pass the travel baton on to Malaysia.

We had a lovely time in Thailand and the biggest tip we could probably give anyone travelling here is; if you find an island or beach that you really love and feel at home, it’s probably best to stay there because the sand is not always whiter on the other side.

That’s all for now. Bye. Joe and Rachel.x

Take Five - Thailand remains copyright of the author shoeless, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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The biggest attraction for me in Kampong Cham, and the main reason why I wanted to visit, was the Bamboo Bridge. A bridge that's rebuilt by hand every year in the dry season to connect an island, home to Cham villages, and the mainland for the few months when the river is too low to row a boat across. Check out the photos but it’s a pretty cool bridge and impressively built. When we hired bikes and cycled across it Rachel was almost pushed off in to the water by a guy with a horse and cart coming the other way...which she wasn't too happy about and you can't blame her really because there would have been a pretty good chance of her falling to her death. That’s probably why, if you speak to her, the bridge isn’t one of her fondest memories of Kampong Cham.

On our first afternoon there we headed up two hills called ‘man’ and ‘woman’. On top of Man Hill there was a Wat, which the Khmer Rouge used as a prison and to kill people. There is a statue that the Rouge used to sharpen their knives on before they hacked people to death. We also fed bananas to some wild, but very passive monkeys, which was pretty cool (see the photo's) and climbed up a few hundred steps to another Wat on Woman Hill to have a look at the nice view and then climbed back down again. We then headed over to see some orphan kids (or former orphans) do some traditional dancing. Their teacher was a nice guy who also performed with them. He mostly played a woman's role, but as our amused driver Mr. Buth pointed out, "it's okay for him to do it, because he's gay!" Maybe he thought we would have been offended if he wasn’t gay and doing a woman’s dance, I don’t know, but we nodded in an approving way. We also visited a small pre-Angkorian temple. Mr. Buth snuck us in the back because there was a policeman at the entrance asking for payment to visit. Don’t think for one moment that we were being skin flints by not paying, it's actually free to visit the temple, the policeman just drives past on his bike and demands 'entrance' money from tourists. If there's one thing you can say about the Cambodian Police it's that they're pretty good at being bent.

On the second day we drove passed the Chili and Peanut farms and the Lotus flower fields. You can actually eat the peas which are in the pod of the lotus flower; they have a runner bean-like taste to them. We bought some scarves from a family in Prey Chung Kran weaving village. We saw them weave the scarves we bought, which was nice. Plus they were cheaper than in the market, another bonus! To cap our tour off we drove out all the way to Mha Leap pagoda complex (with a short detour to see a Rubber Plantation), which is one of the last remaining wooden pagodas in the country (the Rouge didn’t burn it because luckily they used it as a hospital). The Pagoda floor was covered in pigeon poop, which was nice to walk in, especially as you have to leave your shoes outside. We got there just as the local school had a lunch break so all the kids ran over to hang around us while we looked around. They posed for photo’s and enjoyed looking at themselves on the camera screen. They only left us alone when a guy with a horse and cart caught their attention and they all ran off trying to jump on the back of it. Then the school bell rung and they all went back in to class. Only one kid stayed outside and when we asked why he wasn’t going in with the rest of them we were told us that the kids are given a small amount of money each day by their parents to pay the teacher. Some days the kids use the money to buy some food so can’t give the teacher any money and therefore are not allowed in to the class rooms. Of course they can’t go home because there parents would find out, so they hang around outside the classrooms instead. Before we left we popped in to the village doctor’s surgery, where we had a lovely chat with the doctors and nurses, even though they only spoke French.

Mr. Buth, our Tuk Tuk guide, was heading over to Ireland soon to visit his friend, so while he drove us around he was asking us all sorts of questions about home, the schools, the money, the government, the monarchy and the history of the UK and Ireland. Obviously we were no real use to him and most of his questions were met with 'errr dunno' and we would then stare blankly at the sky and pick our noses. I hope he didn’t think we were idiots.
As soon as he found out we were heading up to Siem Reap the next day, he gave his friend (a fellow tuk tuker) a call to arrange for him to pick us up from the bus station.

On the way to Siem Reap the bus driver noticed one of the wheels wasn’t right and would need to be replaced. We pulled over and all the Cambodian men and me got off the bus to inspect it. After 5 minutes of looking, pointing, raising eyebrows and shaking our heads, we were all in agreement that the wheel did indeed need changing. We then stood around supervising the mechanic and nodded our approval as he changed it. I won’t lie there was a bond between us for those magical 10 minutes.

When we got to Siem Reap, in the 38 degree heat, noise and pure madness of Tuk Tuk drivers and moto taxi guys crazily hawking for business, at the back of them all, stood Chan, with a big grin across his face, holding up a sign saying ‘welcome to Siem Reap Rachel and Joseph’. Which was rather refreshing don’t you think?

"There are 7,000 tuk tuks in Siem Reap, that's a fact..." Kate Melua probably wouldn't have sung if she had been to Cambodia. Our Tuk Tuk driver was number 6064. I wonder if it's like that TV series 'The Prisoner' from the 1960's. Who is number 1? Can you work your way up? I kept looking over my shoulder, paranoid that a giant white balloon was following me. You will also be glad to know that by the time I got to Siem Reap my Laughing Cow consumption has dramatically decline to almost zero. Which is good because at one point I thought all the cows in the field were laughing at me, and when that happens you know you have problems. I was almost tempted to head back to Phnom Penh and shoot one at the shooting range, just to even the score a little. But I thought that might be a little dangerous as I could break out of the range and start mowing down innocent cows in the fields while madly cackling to myself and then running down the street doing a little jig...if you’re ever going to be famous for something the 'homicidal Cambodian cow killer' is never a good look.

We spent the first afternoon checking out the town. In the supermarket we stood behind the most stupidest French person, who would easily win 'most stupidest person of the year' award if they gave one out. She tried to buy her beer and snacks with Euros. This is Cambodia, they accept Riel, Dollars or even Thai Baht at a push, but Euros? The checkout girl just stood their not knowing what to do. In the end they were way too polite and accommodating and found out the exchange rate from a shop outside and accepted the Euros. I think it's because it was a new shop and they wanted to make a good impression, but I would have taken the note, shoved it up her arse and told her to come back when she's crapped out a few dollars. Maybe that's just ‘westerner’ talk, although I’m sure that’s what they would have done in Paris.
We were also told before we arrived here that there would be loads of beggars. But looking around we couldn't see any so joked that maybe they had rounded them all up in a truck and taken them away....we found out from Chan that that's just what they did, a few months before we got there.

Chan was going to be our driver and guide for the next three days, and he turned out to be one of the nicest people we have met so far. He was pretty new to Siem Reap. His mother-in-law had told him to move there when he got married. His new born kid and wife are now back in Kampong Cham while he’s here making some moolah. His mother-in-law used her house as collateral with the bank to get a loan to buy his tuk tuk so I guess she gets to call the shots.

There’s not a lot I can say about the temples other than they’re pretty spectacular and there are loads of them. Look at the photo’s if you want to know what they are like and buy a history book if you want to know about how, when and why they were built. I can’t explain it all here because there are oodles of facts and figures about them and quite frankly this blog is long and boring enough thank you very much. Therefore I’m afraid you’ll just have to believe me when I say they were all rather lovely. We got up early one morning (5am) to see sunrise at Angkor Wat, but it was too cloudy so didn’t see much. We then stayed out two days running to see a sunset, one evening climbing up to the top of a hill, but it was too cloudy so there was no sunset. But even though we didn’t get to see a sunrise or sunset over Angkor Wat (which is supposed to be the highlight of the trip) it was still worth the admission price of the three day ticket we bought. Our favourites were the Bayon (the one with the faces), Ta Prohm (where all the overgrown trees are literally strangling the temple to rubble) and Banteay Srei (which is quite a way out, but has loads of amazing intricate carvings). After two full days we were seriously templed out so spent the last day visiting a crocodile farm (not the most safety conscious place I’ve ever been too) and a cultural show.

We were a bit skeptical about going to this show, we had already sat through a few traditional dances and although interesting they could get pretty boring after 5 minutes, plus the tickets were pretty expensive for non-Cambodians. But Chan was very eager that we go and the look of excitement on his face (which was only matched when we asked him to take us to the crocodile farm earlier in the day) persuaded us to give it a go. And we were glad we did, because it was spiffing entertainment. Basically it’s spread out like a Disney style theme park but minus the rides. There were different minority village reconstructions each with a little stage where young actors and actresses would act out scenes from different aspects of Cambodian culture and minority village life. It was surprisingly funny and the audience really got in to the spirit of it all. It was mainly Cambodians there, young and old, families and groups of friends and very few tourists. As there were very few white faces whenever it came to audience participation (which happened a lot) you sort of stood out from the crowd and made yourself a target. We had a right ruddy good larf at some poor sods expense when he was dragged out, made to dress in a loin cloth and dance around on stage. I was still looking back at the photos, chuckling to myself when I looked up and got dragged out to appear in the next scene. Dammit! Luckily I didn’t have to dress in a loin cloth. When the guy took me backstage he said “have you ever ridden a water buffalo?” I said’ “no” thinking I’m going to have to act like I was riding one. He then took me around the corner and I was suddenly stood eye to eye with a real buffalo, which took me by surprise a little. I had to ride it out on stage and then dance and act in a few scenes for the amusement of a few hundred Cambodians watching. Now I’m not saying I was good, but I’m up for an Olivier award in the summer.
I can now cross ‘water buffalo’ off my ‘animals to ride on before I die’ list. Only that elusive Pigmy Goat to go.

On our last day we headed off to do some horse riding around the countryside. It was a 2hr circuit which took us through a few villages to an old temple and then back to the stable again. Rachel was in her element here, being actually able to ride a horse, where as I on the other hand took the ‘let the horse wander off and do what he pleased’ approach to horse riding. This was my first time riding a horse and I learnt two things. One, all horse riders must be eunuchs. And two, they must have arse cheeks of steel. In fact after all the abuse my own buttocks had been given over the last month, the bumpy bus rides, the cycling, the walking around the temples and then the horse riding, they decided they had had enough, detached themselves from my body and booked a ticket on the next flight home. If someone wouldn't mind keeping an eye out for them. They haven't called to say they got back safe so I’m afraid that they've been picked up by a scrupulous Russian Taxi Driver and they are now working in Staines as a Sex Slave. I've seen the news, I know what can happen.

Anyway, Siem Reap itself was a lovely laidback city, which is surprising considering the amount of tourists that come through its doors. You can officially say this place has the Joe and Rachel stamp of approval.

Before we headed out of Cambodia we decided we would pop over to Battambang for a couple of days just because we could. It's nice old city which has lost its 'Mojo' a bit. It reminds me of the furniture you get in old B&B's, it’s tatty, dusty and a bit wobbly but you can tell it had some class back in its heyday. Here we headed out of town to see a Killing cave (again see the familiar words here to describe the Khmer Rouge years) where kids as young as 10 or 11 were forced to kill their own parents. A pre-Angkor temple, which influenced the architecture of Angkor Wat and some mahoosive fruit bats. These things were huge and there were hundreds of them all hanging in the trees near a pagoda. We were told they are a bit of a delicacy apparently and cheaper than chicken. We didn't eat one.

We had Moto drivers as our guides here. They were lovely guys, but unfortunately not the brightest. At one point Rachel was asked by her driver, "why is it dark in Cambodia when it's light on the other side of the world?" He just couldn't understand it. She had to try and answer using basic pigeon English while sat on the back of a speeding moped with no props at hand. Even Steven Hawking might have a bit of trouble explaining that one.
At one point my guides moped ran out of fuel in the middle of nowhere. So Rachel's driver had to go off and find some petrol. But unfortunately he didn’t take the money. So he used his fare (Rachel) as leverage and left her with the lady while he rode off to give us the petrol. I'm not too sure what she would have done with Rachel if the guy never came back, but she had a look that told me she probably would have cooked and ate her.

After that slight delay we then headed off to take a ride on a Bamboo train. Cambodia has a few train lines, but there are no passenger trains and only one cargo train running once a week. This means the tracks are pretty redundant. The enterprising people in the surrounding villages of Battembang though saw the lines as a quick and easy way of getting around, so they built small self assembly Bamboo trains to transport themselves from one village to the next. Take a look at the photo's to see what it's like, but they are small bamboo platforms with attached train wheels and a moped engine (although I think they used to be hand driven a few years ago). They are easily disassembled and reassembled, which is convenient because if a proper train is on the track they have to quickly get off and get out of the way. If two bamboo trains come head to head it's whoever has the lightest load that has to get off and take their train apart, which is very civilized don't you think?

After a couple of nights here (there wasn't a lot to do and the beer shortage was beginning to hit hard) we decided the way to get to Bangkok with the least amount of hassle would be to head back to Siem Reap and get a private bus all the way from there. So back on the bus we went....

We were only in Siem Reap one night to organize the bus and to eat the garliciest chicken kiev you can imagine at Molly Malones Irish pub. We then took a lovely 13hour bus journey across the border to Thailand. When filling in a visa application form at the border, why do they make you put the hotel you are staying while in Thailand? Even if you don’t know where you are staying and have nothing booked they get really annoyed and send you to the back of the line until you’ve filled in all the boxes. So you write 'The Mickey Mouse Hotel, Willy Wonka Drive, Bangkok' and they don't even bat an eyelid, it's bureaucracy gone mad I tells ya! Other than that we had no problems and we got to Bangkok bang on time and with it brought the curtain down on our Cambodian travels.

Like Vietnam, we wished we had longer than a month but I’m sure we will be back. Things are developing so fast here that we will have a whole new Cambodia to explore.

How different is Cambodia to Vietnam I here you shout? Well Cambodia is still a third world country for a start (80% of the population are farmers) and the roads and infrastructure in Vietnam is much better. Vietnam is also far better geared to deal with tourism (and the money making scams they can pull on tourists), although I’m sure Cambodia is catching up fast (I don't know if that's a good thing or not). Cambodia has many more cars and trucks on the road and the land is more parched (it was the middle of the dry season) where as Vietnam was pretty lush all the way down the length of the country with water being more abundant and better irrigation in the fields.
There are three things I've noticed that apply to both countries though. Firstly: There are dogs everywhere. Not just a few, a full-on Moses style plague of them. They're not homeless, the majority actually have owners, it's just that they let them out to wonder off and prowl around town on their own. Most are completely comatose and harmless because of the heat. They just lie there, whether that be on the path, beach or in the middle of the road. Others play and chase each other and some, well they do stuff that would even make the Dutch blush. We actually saw two dogs have sexual relations while they were crossing the street. Crossing the street! Cars had to actually stop to let them pass. How mad is that?! And all this in a country that doesn't like public displays of affection. No wonder they get eaten. It's not because they like the taste of dog, it's a punishment!
The second thing is the rubbish. They are prolific litter bugs (for want of a less childlike phrase). If there was an Olympic event of fly tipping they would be a shoe-in for gold and silver. With a serious shortage of landfill sites most of the household waste just gets left by the side of the road and sporadically burnt. Everywhere you go you see huge piles of carrier bags scattered all over the floor. They recycle glass and plastic bottles better than most (definately better than us) and they don't generate anywhere near as much waste as most western countries, but I’m sure it's not the most hygienic or eye pleasing way of getting rid of your rubbish. But that's not for me to sort out.
And lastly, in both countries we've seen some massive cockroaches, so big and numerous you feel you're in a 'Men in Black' film and huge scary Hornets and ants that want to bite your face off. Thus we have found we are both officially rubbish when it comes to dealing with large insects and quick moving reptiles. This doesn't bode well for when we get to Australia. A place where insects hang around in gangs at bus stops mugging old ladies. I'll be stocking up on the Deet insect repellent at Singapore duty free me thinks!

So this is it then. After a month in Cambodia we find ourselves in Thailand. Many more photos have been uploaded on to photobucket (Thank you Tracy and Duncan) if you wanna have a looksy:

http://s260.photobucket.com/albums/ii40/rachelandjoseph/?albumview=link

Bye for now,
Joe and Rachel.x

Take four - Cambodia remains copyright of the author shoeless, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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Hello again,

Sadly this isn't going to be the most sophisticated or free flowing travel blog you will ever read. We are watching Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, so the mind isn’t totally focused on the task at hand I’m afraid. Therefore please forgive the constant shift from present to past tense, the poor sentence structure and below par spelling. Also please be aware, this blog entry is going to be colossus. You might want to print it off and spend a few hours reading it on the toilet. You can then show your appreciation by wiping your bottom with it if you so wish. I would.

Unfortunately we are so far behind we've been in Thailand for over a month and I’m just getting time to write about Cambodia now. I've browsed the web and there are some people who update their blogs everyday...EVERYDAY! These people need to get off the computers and into the Pub a bit more....and that leads me nicely to my beer collection. It's coming along at a steady pace (over 40 now I think), but sadly I still haven't put them up on Photobucket yet. But don't panic they will be up soon, I promise. There are some lovely beers in there (Beer Lao, Saigon Red, Anchor from Cambodia and Chang being some of the best) and there are some nasty tasting ones too, normally the stuff I’ve picked up from the supermarket for 5p. The Palm beer was probably the most undrinkable. Anyway Sorry I lost track for a minute, where was I? ah yes, sadly Cambodia was too long ago now so I won't bother describing all the hotels we stayed in or every meal we ate, every beer we drank or everyone we met, it would just take too long and be a bit boring. Plus I'd have to make most of it up because I can't remember it. We did travel everywhere by bus though. The most interesting journey we had was probably from Battambang to Siem Reap on one of the worse conditioned roads in Cambodia that you don’t need a 4x4 or Trail bike to get down (we took this road three times in four days). It was bumpy, slow, dusty and the bus almost toppled over a couple of times (if you’ve always wanted to know, buses really don’t like being up on two wheels). At one point the driver needed to pee so stopped by the side of the road. Half the bus (men, women and children) jumped out (not wanting to pay to use the toilet at the rest stop further on) and decided to go in to the field with him. One old guy sat next to me decided squat and take a dump right next to the bus. "It's the dry season you fool, there are no leaves hiding you from view!" I didn't shout. That reminds me, over here only shake hands with people with your right hand.

So, taking the bus, it has its’ flaws….firstly they sometimes do a pick-up service, which is handy, but once you are on the bus you will then spend the next 2 hours driving around the block picking up passengers from other guest houses. You will inevitably drive passed your old guest house at least 3 more times before you finally leave town. If the Aircon works, the dial will be set to minus 10degrees and at the end of the journey you will look like you have just come back from an ill advised Captain Scott expedition to the arctic. There will be eye gougingly awful Karaoke video's played on the TV and there will always be more passengers on the bus than there are seats. The less fortunate will sit in the aisle with the various bags of rice, fruit and veg they are transporting that day. At a Rest Stop, when he wants to leave, the driver will sound his horn then drive off. If you are unfortunate enough to still be in the toilet with your pants around your ankles don't expect them to wait for you. But for all it’s faults it’s easy and really is the only way to travel across country (unless you fancy taking one of the overloaded pick-up trucks (see the photo in the Kratie folder) or get a shared taxi with 7 other passengers plus the driver - 3 in the front seat and five in the back!). Plus it’s like the budgie........Cheap.

We got in to a nice little routine while traveling through Cambodia. We arrive in town by bus, find a guesthouse and hire either a local tuk tuk driver or a couple of Moto (moped taxi) riders to act as a guide and take us around for a day. Then in the evening find a nice bar or restaurant, have some food and a few beers while watching the sun go down…sure beats working any which way you look at it. After a day or two we would look at the map, buy a bus ticket and move on to the next town that took our fancy. Most towns or cities are pretty similar in some ways. All have a few grand (if a little battered) colonial buildings, all have a central market where the locals can buy their food, clothes and odds and ends, some roadside stalls selling the cheapest and freshest sea food money can buy and topped off with a few decent and a few not so decent local and western run bars. So on the surface they all look very similar, but when you get out and take a long look around they all have something that distinguishes it from the other towns. For example Kratie has its fresh water dolphins, where as Kampot has world famous pepper farms and Bokor Hill Station close by, Kampong Cham on the other hand has a Bamboo Bridge where as Battembang has the Bamboo trains. One thing though, no matter where we went or whatever we did stayed constant throughout the month we were there. The locals. In some of the towns they are the friendliest people you could ever wish to meet and they are so damn happy to see you (which is not something you can say about most European towns). Actually there are two things that stayed constant throughout the month. The other was the weather. It’s so damn hot. Real hot. And dry. Hot, dry and dusty. They call the dust ‘Cambodian snow’ and when a few trucks go speeding past it can turn in to a right Pea Souper. It's a proper choker as well and by the end of the day all your clothes are covered in a fine red dusting. I’ll tell you another thing as well…Gavin from Autoglass would have nightmares if he saw the amount of cracked windscreens on the buses and cars out here...don't they know they should get the chip fixed for free, before it turns in to a crack and then they have to replace the whole window!

Anyway, now I’ll go all Adam Hart-Davis on your ass and take you back six and fifty days ago, when the moon was fat, the rivers had run dry and we had just arrived in Phnom Penh.....

We stayed along the river front, hired a Tuk Tuk driver for the first day to take us out to the usual sights, Royal Palace (a large compound of temples and pagodas etc) Toul Sleng Museum which was a former school, but used by the Khmer Rouge as a prison. It was a pretty gruesome place, where they tortured prisoners until they signed fake confessions and then killed them. Apparently only 7 out of the 20,000 prisoners held there survived. Then we went up to the Killing fields (where they killed up to 100 people a day. Mostly beaten and hacked to death rather than shot to save the bullets.) I won't go on about the whole Cambodia/Khmer Rouge history thing as I’m sure you can all read up on it using the wonderful thing called the internet if you want to. But the guesthouse summed it up on the back of the door to our room in their 'tips and advice about the city': "Remember the Khmer Rouge killed off all the smart people". A quite depressing start to our time in Cambodia really, but something you have to go and see to understand the country and the Cambodian people. We then popped to the market to haggle for some t-shirts and a Khmer Scarf. Neither of us are born hagglers. In fact we are so crap it ends up being like that scene from Life of Brian where he wants to buy a fake beard. Our driver also wanted to take us to a shooting range where you can pick a live animal and kill it. I'm not talking endangered species here or even exotic animals, basically you just get to shoot a cow……….Who the hell wants to shoot a cow with an AK-47?!? It's not the most agile and nimble of creatures is it, and they're definately not the best at hide and seek. And another thing, it’s not something you can even boast about, “It almost got away from me, but I used the old ‘roll and shoot’ technique and it went down like a sack of spuds”. So I’ll say again, who the hell wants to shoot a cow!?!
We passed up his offer to go to the shooting range and instead went to look at a Wat on a hill, which was very Wat like, saw an elephant giving rides around the Wat, which was very elephant like and then went for a beer and play some pool in the Hope and Anchor, very English pub like.

There’s not a lot I can say about Phnom Penh. It’s pretty much like any other city in that you can feel like you’re just one of a million faces in a crowd. It had a slight unsettling edginess to it when the sun went down, but by no means did we have a miserable time there, but we couldn’t see anything that we would miss or want to come back for.

After a few days we wanted to get away from the city and head for the beach, so we jumped on a bus to Sihanoukville. Down on the small stretch of Cambodian coast this place is rather ratty looking town with a few beaches of varying quality. At first we stayed with a lovely family in a small guesthouse (although we never saw any other guests). Our bedroom was right next to their front room, which sort of made us part of the family for the few days we were there. It was on a quiet section of the coast between Sokha and Serendipity beaches and near a very nice bar attached to the bungalow resort next door, which we felt inclined to frequent regularly. We then moved up in to the very noisy Monkey Republic bungalows in the heart of the ‘action’ in town, just off the back of Serendipity beach.
Unfortunately the main problem I can see with this place is two fold: The foreigners who have frequented Sihanoukville over the years (mainly idiots) and the locals who harass you every 5 minutes. You can’t have a relaxing read of a book without being interrupted by people wanting to braid your hair, give you a massage, sell you a sarong or a necklace or some beads or fruit to eat or a hammock to lie in, or sell you sunglasses, even if you are already wearing a pair, some want money to pull the hair out of your legs or arms or even cut your toe nails. And it’s not just adults it’s kids who are persistent and a few get abusive if you don’t buy anything off them. Then sadly there are the beggars (this is a touchy subject as there are those (handicapped mostly) that really do need to beg to feed themselves (there’s not a lot of government welfare support), but there are others who actually make more money begging in a week than some people (including police officers) do working for a month…not the best base for a fair and uncorrupt society!). I’m glad most are being enterprising and working for a living, but because it’s so full on, every second you are on the beach, it means you can’t relax, which is surely what going to the beach is all about? We also heard a couple of stories while we were there of tourists getting mugged by locals with screwdrivers, which doesn’t fill you with confidence about the place.
There are a couple of quiet beaches you can go to get away from all the hubbub; we particularly liked the small public stretch of a mainly private Sokha beach owned by luxury hotel. It’s quiet and you could have that small section just to yourself to relax and have a swim.

We also took a boat trip to see a mangrove forest in Ream National Park (move over Keith Richards, this is the rock ‘n’ roll life we’re leading now. We sleep all night and visit forests to look at different fauna by day!) With a non-profit tour company, who uses the money raised to run a school for under privileged children. The tour was pretty dull and uneventful (Rachel got attacked by a huge army of ants. You can actually see their teeth biting into you, not pleasant) but we saw the school and the kids, plus they showed us how they extract the bio diesel fuel from the cooking fat which they collect from the local restaurants. Quite informational, in a Discovery channel kind of way.

After a pretty underwhelming time in Sihanoukville we headed off down the road to Kampot/Kep.
Kampot is home of the famous Kampot pepper farms and Kep is a quiet old beach resort which fell in to disrepair when the Khmer Rouge moved in and decimated it. It’s a sorry looking place that’s seen better and richer days (we visited mid-week and it was almost desolate), but there is a hint of regalness, which hopefully will come back to the place. I hope so because it’ll be a darn sight more attractive proposition than Sihanoukville down the road.
Kampot is a small town running along the Teuk Chhou River, with Kampot pepper farms dotted around the province as well as all the other types of farms you usually get in this type of temperate country. Apparently Kampot pepper is one of the finest peppers and used in the fancy restaurants in Paris, or so the book reads. Our Tuk Tuk driver was a friendly young chap who had only been a tuk tuk driver for a few days (before he was a moto taxi driver). He used his bosses Tuk Tuk to drive us out to a few interesting sights for the afternoon and it turned out in to a great day out. He was even going to take us to his family home to have some tea. In search of an elusive pepper farm we went down roads that were definitely not Tuk Tuk country. At points we had to get out and push it up the hill, and one time get out and actually kick the wheel back on the axel. We also stopped at the Phnom Chhnork cave, which was very cave-like (the friendly young kids hanging around follow you up and act as ‘guides’, whether you like it or not to be honest, but we didn’t mind as they were quite amusing. In turn we gave a few thousand Reil to share between them) before driving us on to Kep for some lunch and a beer.
At the end of a few of these trips around the country, we realized the best part wasn’t always the sights we had set out to see, but the getting there. It's a relaxing life, sat in the back of a Tuk Tuk, driving through small rural villages, and then parking up to chat to the driver about Cambodia and his life over a few cold beers in a restaurant. Lovely stuff.

The second day, with Rachel being ill, I headed up on a tour to Bokor Hill Station. A deserted 1920’s, French built, Casino Resort that sits, unsurprisingly, on top of Bokor Hill. It was deserted when the French withdrew from Cambodia in the 40’s. The retreating Khmer Rouge also fought the Vietnamese here (One side shooting from the Casino and the other returning fire from the church a few hundred meters away). Gamblers, when they had lost everything, used to jump to their death off the back of the Casino down the mountain. It’s a ghostly place when the mist rolls in off over the top of the mountain. A few landmines are still dotted around here though and soldiers walked passed holding a sign saying ‘Danger. Mines’ (at first glance I thought it said Danger Mouse, which amused me for the rest of the day).
On the journey back to town on the back of the pickup truck, we all got talking and the subject inevitably got on to football. As I mentioned Swindon, the guy next to me sat up surprised and with what must be at least a million to one chance said he was a Swindon fan too. I then found out he lives in Cricklade. Since then we have overheard a couple of other travelers from Swindon. Isn’t it encouraging knowing we are all getting out and seeing the world?! It brings a small tear to this old Swindonian's eye.

After a day or two we decided to move over and see some of the east side of the country. To do that we had to head back to Phnom Penh, so we did. In Phnom Penh we went to the Foreign correspondents club (fcc) for dinner and beers, which was very nice indeed before heading up to Kratie.

We found ourselves another MP3 player down for this part of the trip, as the last standing MP3 player decided it didn’t like the songs we had put on in Sianoukville so deleted them, and just for good measure, some of the old ones as well. It left us with what seemed like an album titled ‘50 off the worse songs to listen to on any bus journey, ever’. We were left with Bon bloody Jovi for 5 hours (this came off Duncan's computer by the way). When it's a choice between Bon Jovi (thanks again Duncan) and the TV showing cringe worthy blue screen Westlife style karaoke videos, with a very heavy heart you have to choose the Jovi. If there was a third option of gouging out my eardrums and letting spiders eat my eyeballs I wouldn't have even hesitated, but you can never find a man-eating spider and a spoon when you need one. To be fair it wasn’t just Jovi on there, we also got to listen to 'Dude looks like a lady' by Aerosmith about 30 times. The tune is so drummed in to my head, I now find myself singing it in a stupidly high pitched voice at inconvenient and unfortunate moments (normally standing at a urinal or ordering a beer from an unnaturally large barman).

Anyway, the main thing here we wanted to see were the fresh water Irrawaddy dolphins at O Kampi and as a bonus Sambor, the largest Wat in Cambodia. The photos don’t do them justice (it’s bloody difficult to take a photo of a dolphin. It’s not like in Flipper, they don’t come up on to the boat and start juggling with beach balls), but we saw loads of them. They don’t jump out the water, but have to raise their head out every 20seconds or so to breathe. Some came pretty close to the boat and although they weren’t doing much apart from swim around you find yourself quite transfixed by them.
Heading away from the water we visited the Wat, that was like any other Wat really, but a bloody big one. Lovely inside with the walls covered in colourful paintings which told Buddhist stories. The guys in there couldn’t really speak English, but they were nice and let us sit down with them and browse through a book about Buddhism. On the way back to the hotel, we also went up to a meditation temple on top of a hill. That sentence pretty much sums up how interesting it was. Not very.

From here we headed south back down to Kampong Cham. On the way we stopped at a rest stop and saw a lady selling deep fried spiders, which in Snoul (a small town in the same area) is apparently a delicacy. We didn’t eat one.

Please turn over.......

Take three - Cambodia remains copyright of the author shoeless, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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As i write this i am in an internet cafe in Phnom Penh, Cambodia sat next to a Buddhist Monk, who seems to find whatever website he's browsing very amusing. So much for a simple, humble way of life. Even the Monks can't resist the might of Facebook.

Sadly looking at the first entry in the blog we seem to be way behind...again. But we will step back in time anyway and i'll try and recap the last few weeks in as much detail as i can.

So where did we leave off? Ah yes we were in Nha Trang going to head up to Dalat in the Central Highlands.

We took a bus up to Dalat from Nha Trang, which cut across the country from the coast up to the highlands (for the journey we bought some Doritos, Cookies and shortbread to eat, which in total cost the same as two nights accomodation). The views as we wound are way up on narrow roads to the second highest peak in Vietnam (after Sapa in the north) were pretty good. Which was lucky because it distracted most of the passengers from the weird noises and copius amounts of steam coming from the bus engine. This bus was damn slow. It's a pretty bum clenching sight to see a bus overtaking your bus on a blind bend with a good 200ft drop on the other side of the road. As the buses passed i swear i saw the Grim Reaper on one, looking at me, shaking his head and tapping his watch.
About half way up our bus decided it didn't want to go any further and finally collapsed at the side of the road. If it was a horse it would of been Pritt Stick by now, but the determined (or demented depending on the light) driver was not about to give up on it and attempted to, well, flog a dead horse. Whatever he did it seemed to work (i think it involved pouring water over the engine and giving it a good kick) as after about half an hour the bus jumped back in to life and dragged us up the last few hours in to Dalat. We all piled off the bus as another bunch of unsuspecting passengers were ferried on and sent off down the hill to Saigon.

Time for some tourist office rubbish about Dalat now. It's a charming french designed town, built high up in the central highlands of Vietnam. Surrounded by forests and vegetable fields and frequented by friendly locals and with the cooling breeze it all adds up to a relaxing and mediterranean syle town...blah, blah, blah. The Vietnam Paris it's been called with its own 'eiffel tower' (a rather smaller version that you can't climb up). It's a pretty lame tower actually, but it's been given this tag and now has to live with it. It just stands there looking slightly embarrased, knowing that everyone who looks up just feels rather dissapointed. Anyway, Dalat has a big lake (Xuan Huong Lake) in the middle which is rather Riviera-like (although i've never actually been to the Riviera, so don't really know what it's supposed to look like), but more excitingly has Pedalo Swans for hire. If i ever wrote a book on the 10 best lakes in the world I would demand they all had Pedalo Swans on them. During our short time in Vietnam we haven't seen any real swans though, so these might be Pedalo Geese, which in my book would put it 'top 5' easy.

It was still Tet new year, which as I've mentioned before is a time when all of Vietnam is on holiday. This meant Dalat was heaving with Vietmanese families. This not only meant we found it a little bit difficult to find decent accomodation (if you've seen the film 'The Beach' you can imagine what our room was like) it also meant the prices of everything went up. Hotel rooms, bus and train tickets, Oreo's, everything was double the price. The standard reply when you ask the price was "well it is Tet so..." accompanied with a Gallic shrug. This went on for about two weeks around the actual new year's day. A cynic would say it just seems like a good excuse to put prices up for a couple of weeks a year, but maybe that's just being a bit 'bah humbug' about it, after all there was a decent fireworks display in Nha Trang and all the flowers in bloom and kumquat trees look lovely. In our Guesthouse there was a guy staying there who had been born in Yorkshire, had Irish parents and lived for half his life in Australia. This guys accent was the best i have ever heard, even better than Pee Wee's. I swear if i had hung around listening long enough he would of said "alrite our kid, u wan t' throw another shrimp on t' barbie, to be sure to be sure". I thought it was brilliant and he has inspired me to mash some other accents up. At the moment i'm trying a Geordie/German mix. I'll let you know how it goes.

While in Dalat we hired a couple of 'Easy Riders' (old guys with motorbikes) to drive us around the sights for a day. The 'Easy Riders' are supposedly a group of former South Vietnamese Soldiers who fought alongside the Americans in the Vietnam War. After the war ended they found themselves unemployable so they set up this group to use their local knowledge and act not only as drivers, but tour guides for the tourists who came to Dalat. It became quite successful and now (this being Vietnam with no copyright laws) any old Tom Dick or Pee Wee with a moped call's himself an 'Easy Rider'. We chose a city tour and happily drove off in to the sunrise to see the sights of Dalat. Happily drove off for about 20 minutes that is, then Rachel felt ill (sun stroke from our marathon walk around the lake and flower garden the day before) and we had to go back to the hotel. Not the best start to the Tet New Year. After a day's rest in bed we ventured off again, this time seeing the sights just outside the city centre. The guides (Mr Hien and Ba) knew where to stop for the views and tell stories from the war and point out the devastation caused to the surrounding countryside by the Agent Orange dropped to flush out the VC (Mr Hien was an ex-helicopter pilot of the South Veitnamese army). They also guided us around to a Pagoda, the Elephant Falls (with a hazardous dice-with-death path to the bottom), all the Coffee and Tea Plantations and the Silk Weaving factory. Vietnam is the second largest exporter of Coffee in the world after Brazil and you can see it as you travel through the small hamlets. There are large impressive houses (in complete contrast to the neighbours shack's) whos owners have literally grown fat off the land. Vietnam is also the fifth largest Tea Exporter and, as i've said previously, the 2nd largest rice exporter in the world. So nobody can accuse them of not working hard. The tea they grow is split three ways, with the last cheapo crappy part of the leaf, (the end of the stalk) used in Lipton Ice Tea. So remember that when you next buy a packet. We also stopped off at the Hang Nga Crazy House. It was designed by Mrs Dang Viet Nga (now 80 years old but still living there), who's dad was a big cheese in Ho Chi Minh's government back in the day. Have a look at the photo's, but imagine a concrete Disney themed guesthouse, designed by Blackpool council and built by Frank Spencer. I haven't seen building work that shoddy since school when we tried to make a bird table in woodwork class.

With our visa coming to an end, we headed down the hill for our last couple of stops in Vietnam...Saigon and the mighty Mekong Delta.

Saigon is like the bigger brother of Hanoi who has travelled the world and got rich on Wall Street. In contrast to Hanoi it's a hell of alot more globalised (A massive Louis Vuitton store was just the tip of the iceberg). Although we didn't venture too far out of the tourist area of the city, it had a completely different, cosmopolitan feel to it compared to the rest of the country. Lonely Planet described it as the most crime ridden part of Vietnam, but we found it all quite plesant. Not too unlike many cities around the world, maybe just like a Vietnamified Paris.
We took the usual route to all the museums and other touristy things. The trip to the Museum Of War Remnants (formerly called Museum of American War crimes) being probably the best of the bunch. It houses some amazing photo's taken during the war by American and Japanese photographers (including the last photo they took before they were killed). The photo's taken at the massacre of 'My Lai' and the after-effects of agent orange were particularly disturbing and heart wrenching.

As Rachel thought it would be a little too clastrophobic for her, I took a trip out to the Chu Chi Tunnels on my own (type 'Chu Chi tunnels' into wikipedia if you want to know about them). The guide on the trip was an ex River Boat Captain for the U.S army and worked with the Commando's. His first hand account of the war and emotional connection made the whole trip come alive. As these guys are getting old now, in a few years most of them will be retired and the tours may feel slighly cold and detached. Anyway, these tunnels are bloody small, and that's after they've been widened for fat arsed westeners. Even though you only crawl through a few metres of one of the tunnels (there were about 250km of them) it's a sweaty and back breaking experience.

Back in Saigon we booked a 3 day cycle tour of the Mekong delta. The trip took us to MyTho, Vinhlong, CaiBe, CanTho and CaiRang floating market. We saw villages of brick, terracotta and pottery kilns, cycled through riverside villages and Rice fields and along some pretty hair-raising highways during rush hour. This is a beautiful part of the country (even more beautiful-er than the other beautiful parts that i said were beautiful earlier). We cycled alot (up to 60km in one day), saw some lovely scenery, ate some lovely food, drank some lovely beer, conversed with some lovely (and sometimes weird) locals and it was all bloody knackering. We wore some proper cycling shirts and even had a back-up support van, which drove behind us carrying water and supplies. This made us look like a bunch of bewlidered competitors from the Tour De France who had taken a wrong turn somewhere around the Alps. Sadly only our clown-like cycling gave us away as amatures. Even so, it was one of those days that you would be quite content for it to be Groundhog day.

After the Tour de Delta and a day of rest, we crossed the border in to Cambodia by bus...and this is where we are now.

Over the last month we have met many people that have made the trip even better than we thought our first foray in to Asia could be. Now after just settling and adjusting in to one countries way of life, customs, money and food we move on to another and have to start over again. But i guess that's what this travelling lark is all about.

The weirdest thing we seen so far on our journey (and which i would say is up there as one of the weirdest things i have ever seen in my entire life) was a small dog dressed up in kids clothes, wearing a hat and riding a tricycle in the town of CanTho. I am not kidding, look at the photo in the Mekong Delta folder! At first i thought it was a stuffed toy untill it started moving and slowly turning its head a la Exorcist, to intently stare at us. It was pretty scary stuff. I can see it Chuckie-like, murdering a whole town while it sleeps, then casually cycling off to the next town laughing to itself. We don't know why it was there or what it was doing. It wasn't outside a pet shop or anything remotely linked with animals. I think its owner must of just been a bit mental.

Our top 4 'must see's' in Vietnam:
Hanoi old Quarter (there is nothing like it anywhere else in the country)
Halong Bay
Hoi An
Mekong Delta

We have noticed over the last few weeks or so that large sections of the Lonely Planet guide books are complete rubbish. Most of it is at least a year if not two years old and some of the maps aren't even to the correct scale. It's a bit frustrating, but maybe we sould see this as a sign and free ourselves from the shackles of the Lonely Planet Sat Nav and venture out in our own way. But maybe not. So if you would like to know where we go next and what we'll probably see and do, please turn to pages 123-145 of your Lonely Planet Cambodia travel book. There will be a test later.

I'm definately no Adrian Mole, but i will try and keep this diary a little more up to date and a bit more frequent from now on (although saying that it's already behind because we have been in Cambodia for 9 days)

One fact before we go: Did you know one person a year dies in the good ol' U.S of A from the Plague! I'll have to look up to make sure our travel insurance covers that one for when we get to California.

Rachel has uploaded a load more photo's in to the folder for you to look at if you like. Here's the link again: http://s260.photobucket.com/albums/ii40/rachelandjoseph/?albumview=grid

See you soon.

Joe and Rachel.x

Stats:
Most people seen riding on one moped: 5 (five!)
Amount of Laughing Cow Cheese eaten: 223 triangles
Snakes seen: 0

Take Two - Vietnamish remains copyright of the author shoeless, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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Hello everyone.

For numerous reasons too long to list (although lazyness being a big one), this is the first real chance we've had to write down anything we've done since we started travelling a few weeks ago. But now we have some photo's you can look at (to make this a little less dull) and a computer that nearly works (if words run in to each other it's because the spacebar doesn't work too good - although that doesn't account for the terrible spelling, so sorry about that) this is what we have been up to so far. I will be throwing in random facts and figures along the way, not that any of them will be of much interest to you, but i'm going to do it anyway for my amusement...and to prove we've been places and not just sat in the pub playing pool for the whole time. Sorry it's also a bit long, but hang on in there and at the end you can leave abusive responses untill your hearts content.

As you know we are in a town/city/whatever it is called Nha Trang, which is about three quarters of the way down (or a quarter of the way up - depending on how you look at it) the coast of Vietnam. It's nice and hot, it has a beach and a few decent cafe's/restaurants/bars and well errrrrrr that's about all that's worth mentioning really. It's not a bad place by any means and a good place to relax for a few days before we head off to Dalat in the Central Highlands for more adventure/playing pool in a different bar. We did go on a boat tour, which turned in to some 18-30's holiday hell on a boat, but it wasn't that bad, more amusing and relaxing than i'd imagined (although i did snorkel with a wallet full of money and credit cards in my pocket and forgot to bring the towels). We are just spending today writing e-mails and catching up on a bit of TV before we head of to a micro brewery pub along the beach as i want to try some of the beer they are brewing. I have decided to take a photo of every different brand of beer i drink over the year from all the countries we visit. So far i have a few and there will be a photo folder of them soon, if you are in anyway interested in that sort of thing. An interesting fact i did read the other day though was that San Miguel beer was first brewed in the Philippines long before it was in Spain. So there you go.

TV wise, Vietnam is a football fans paridise. All the hotels (well, the half decent ones) show nearly every Premier League/FA cup/Champions league game. It has shed loads of highlight programmes aswell, so just by having the Tv on in the morning or evening for a few minutes a day i've probably seen more Premiership football than i ever had at home. The other english speaking channels are CNN Asia, BBC World News and the Discovery Channel. And with this i have realised that these are all the channels you need for a happy Tv viewing life. In fact if i ever decide to become morbidly obsese and spend my final days gorging myself on Laughing Cow Cheese, Oreos and Pringles (that's all the western food they seem to sell here) in front of a Tv, my last physical effort would be to jump (or waddle) on to a plane and head over here. That reminds me, on another side note (sorry i will get to the the point of describing the trip soon, just keep on reading) I don't know how it is across the rest of South East Asia (although i've heard it's the same in every country) but for breakfast in a hotel/guest house they give you a foot-long baguette and one (yes only one!) Laughing Cow cheese triangle. How the hell they expect you to spread one traingle over that much bread with no butter is a miracle on the same level as when Jesus fed the 5,000 followers with a couple of kippers and a piece of mouldy bread. In fact if Jesus did return and spent a few weeks of his precious time in Vietnam this would be his modern day equivalent - feeding 5,000 hungry travellers with one Laughing Cow cheese triangle and an Oreo.

Anyway i digress......

We started off in Hanoi up t' north of Vietnam (flying in from Singapore with Singapore Airlines and the best breakfast ever!). We stayed in the Old Quater of the city (dating back to the 13th century). A crazy, but strangely beautiful place, which would remind me of old medieval Europe if i had ever been alive then. It's a mentally busy and congested part of the city, not made any better by narrow streets and alleyways. Oh and it's smells weird. We saw many Pagodas and Temples and Museums and other old things, many of which were dedicated to or about that great Communist Revolutionary and French Ass-kicker, Ho Chi Minh. We saw a WaterPuppet performance (think Punch and Judy on water, but without the mild domestic violence and rubbish crocodile/sausage storyline) and walked around a very big pond called Hoan Kiem Lake. There are tortoises in this Lake and apparently it's very lucky to see one. After about 20seconds of waiting to see if one of the little fella's would kindly pop his head out of the water for us, a Vietnamese lad strolls over to the edge of the lake, casts out his homemade rod (a coke can and a bit of string) and drags out a tortoise. After a quick shifty look around, he sticks it in his jeans pocket and runs off. On the Buddhist scale of luck I'm not too sure how lucky that is for us, but i'm sure that tortoise has seen better days.

From here we went on a two day trip to Halong Bay. No1 tourist attraction in Vietnam i think, and probably righly so. It's a stunning place with over 3000 small limestone islands around the bay. The tour we went with (Handspan if you care) and their guide made it probably the highlight of the trip so far, even if it was bloody freezing and a bit wet. Staying on a Junk boat in the bay and visiting the caves over the two days was a good break from the madhouse of Hanoi. Although if you ever go, don't stay in Halong City. We drove through it on the way back to Hanoi and it's a sh*thole. Oh and Rachel just told me to tell you we saw some monkey's on one of the Islands and fed them Bananas (threw Bananas at their rabid heads from our boat would be more of an accurate description mind).

From Hanoi we took a very long overnight train (suprisingly comfortable staying in the soft sleeper aircon coaches - nothing like what the local Vietnamese were sleeping on a couple of carriges along mind) down to Hue and spent a few nights there. Compared to Hanoi it's a bit quieter and smaller. You don't get hassled as much by Xe om (moped taxi) drivers or Cyclo's. I've learnt there are two rules to driving in Vietnam. Rule 1: Press your horn every 10 seconds to make people get out of your way. and rule 2 is....errrrr okay there isn't a second rule. Aparently they use the horn just to let the other drivers aware of their actions, rather than in anger. I can't see how this works if everyone is pressing their horn at the same time, but they seem to enjoy it.

Hue (a walled city or Citadel) is pakced full with more Temples, Tombs, Palaces and Pagodas than you could shake a Spring Roll at. It's not a bad stop on the way down the coast though, so we did. It's not far from the DMZ (the Demilitarised Zone) from the American (or Vietnam depending on how you look at it) War. From Hue we took a moped tour around some of the sights just outside of the city, with a great guide from a cafe called 'Cafe on Thu Wheels' (they also do the best Garlic Bread if you're every in town and need a Garlic fix - which you probably wouldn't as they put garlic in everything here). This was another highlight of the trip, and one which Rachel enjoyed, being her first time on the back of a bike...and one which i enjoyed becuase i saw a live pig tied up on the back of a moped....trust me when i say you haven't seen anything in life untill you've seen a live pig, looking very sorry for itself tied up in a wicker basket on the back of a Vespa. It's like a farmyard Quadrophenia over here.

From Hue we headed off by bus to Hoi An, a bit futher down the coast.
Hoi An old town is an Unesco World Heritage site (there are quite a few of them in south east Asia) and probaly the most laid back and hassle free place in Vietnam. A lovely little city, although very touristy. This is the capital of cheap tailors. If you ever want any clothers made, bring along a photo and they'll make made-to-measure-fitted-top quality (depending on what store you go to) rip off's. It's a shoppers paradise and not just because of the tailors. You could quite happily furnish your whole house and your neighbours with all the crap they sell here (to be fair it's not really crap, but that's the only collective noun i could think of). This probably explains why we bought two bedside lamps, some very old Ying and Yang coins (made around 1509-1516 from 'Le Tuong Due' dynasty aparently) to wear as a necklace and Rachel had a lovely fitted dress made. Although this wasn't made by any old fly by night tailor..oh no....she only went to a tailor who the Sunday Times recently voted the second best in the world! (Check out the website if you don't believe me http://www.thanhniennews.com/travel/?catid=7&newsid=35369 ) and guess what, it only cost 13 (yes thirteen!) of our good English pounds. You don't get that down Saville Row. Unfortunately in our smugness, we didn't realise the tailor shop the Sunday Times voted the greatest was just next door (only kidding).

We took a quick trip to My Son (another world heritage site and apparently the Ankgor Wat of Vietnam, although we haven't been there yet, so can't really compare). It was bombed a bit during the wars and was left to ruin for a good few years so there's not much left of the thing sadly. We also took a short paddle boat tour down a small part of the Thu Bon River with one of the poor mad old guys who tout on the river banks in Hoi An. This included going under two of possibly the lowest bridges in the world (wait for the photos, if they were any lower we would of been in a submarine).

After Hoi An and a good day-long train ride we ended up here in Nha Trang (sat at the train station in Danang I've never seen 100 people so engrossed watching a Tom and Jerry cartoon before...and all of them adults. Afterwards they put on Mr Bean and everyone left...and some people say the Vietnamese don't have good taste!). On our arrival at the train station the Hotel didn't pick us up like they said they would, we got taken by a taxi driver to another hotel as he tried to palm us off in that one to make a few quid on commission. We walked off down the road to the hotel we originally booked and found they had given our room to someone else (probably why they didn't bother coming to pick us up) so they put us up in a friends hotel for one night. This was run by a very lovely women, but the room had a fridge which probaly hadn't been open since the 1968 Tet offensive and stank like it had held an American prisoner of war in the ice tray for the last 40 years. The Tv didn't work so we couldn't watch the Discovery Channel and the bathroom had no window....not in the usual sense that it had no window, it had space for a window in the wall, but had no actual window in it, just a massive gaping space looking out to the world. We moved on from there to stay in a great hotel right by the beach with a lovely room and Tv that has the Discovery channel. And now i'm sat writing this e-mail so that's the story so far.

Vietnam is a beautiful place (landscape wise very much like you would imagine if you've only seen Platoon) where i'm told 60% of the population are still farmers. You can see them all in the rice/vegetable fields if you go 2 minutes out of any town or city. We hope to see some minority villages when we head up to Dalat in a few days, before we head on down to Saigon (or Ho Chi Minh city, depending on how you look at it) and then on to the Mekong Delta. Oh and i almost forgot, it's Tet New Year's Day here today so "Chuc Mung Nam Moi!" ('Happy New Year' in Vietnamese). It's like Chinese New Year, which handily is also on the same day, so it's easy to remember the date.

Here is a link to the photo's on Photobucket:

http://s260.photobucket.com/albums/ii40/rachelandjoseph/?albumview=grid

It isn't all of them by any means (Halong Bay and Hanoi so far plus a bit of Hue) as the internet conection is pretty slow here (it would be faster to make brass rubbings of all the buildings and post them home by sea mail). Plus i forgot the USB cable for the camera so we have to get photo's burnt on to a CD. Doing this in Hoi An meant an exciting day spent sat waiting for hours in a shop while the owners, their friends, a random stranger and next doors dog attempted and failed to burn a few Cd's worth of photo's. Then, comically, they gave us blank CD's while deleting half our photo's off the memory card, which was nice. In the end i had to sit at the computer and search for them myself. Luckily the ones they had deleted were still in a folder, hidden deep on their computer...which we found just before we were going to give up, buy a gun and shoot the owner in the balls.


That's all for now. Hope everything is all cool at home and everyone is well. We'll catch up again...probably just before we head in to Cambodia.


Stats:
Most people seen riding on one moped: 4
Amount of Laughing Cow Cheese eaten: 153 triangles
Snakes seen: 0

Yours Sincerely,

Joe and Rachel
xxx

Take One - Vietnamish remains copyright of the author shoeless, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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