Independent Forever!

At the very start of our trip- 4 months ago- some people recommended we come to Ko Chang and stay at Independent Bo's. So we did. And stayed for over 2 weeks!
It's a bit of a crazy place, built into the hills back off the beach and the whole place has been painted up by a German artist. Except for the bungalow we stayed in, which had a few gaps- so we asked if we could add our own touches. The dudes who ran the place (and these guys epitomised the word 'dude') loved our stuff and commissioned us to paint two new bungalows they had just finished building.

So we slipped into a comfy routine of getting up and walking down the beach for breakfast, swimming, then painting, then swimming and at 6 pm we'd be called for dinner, which would be followed by hanging out with our favourite friend there Taer, drinking a few beers and challenging each other to Connect Four. Taer is the Connect Four Guru and consistently whipped my ass! "You want to lose?" is his catch phrase!

Bo's was a special experience for us both. The people there were incredible. I miss it already.

Pirates!

Hanoi was cool - the hustle and bustle of Saigon but a more traditional Vietnamese feel - lots of crowded little alleyways off alleyways with motorbikes zooming past and street stall and lots of noise and colour confusing sights - I love confusing sights!

We spent a few days cruising around Hanoi avoiding dodgy taxi drivers, refusing to buy hats and visiting a few sights with Ann and Shane. The strangest was the mausoleum (and accompanying museum) of Ho Chi Minh. Old Uncle Ho has become much more than a person in Vietnam - he is a symbol of freedom, national pride and (as the museum repeatedly told us) 'explemparily revolutionary morality', and the reverance, pomp and ceremony the place exudes is amazing if slightly surreal. Huge crowds get single file marched through a theatrically sombre chamber containing his body while severe guards in strict white uniforms make sure you don't smile or your hands don't leave your sides. For the Vietnamese it borders on a religous experience - we found it slightly morbid and surreal.



The other thing you have to do in Hanoi is take the lucky dip and hope you get a decent boat to take you around the beautiful Ha Long bay. Luckily we got a good one, nice food, comfy little cabin and no rats but the joyless staff and their dictorial control of all liquid consumed on the boat threatened our planned starlight drinking session. The boats there are dirt cheap but make their money on drinks at extortionate prices, and even if you bring your own, the corkage they'll charge you will be twice what you paid for the booze in the first place! We were travelling with Shane and Ann and nothing can stop the irish when it comes to having a tipple so we make some eyepatches out of postcards and dental tape and took to covert drinking methods with our smuggled on whiskey and vodka. Yee-arrh!

Ha Long Bay was stunning. Like lots of things in Vietnam you do feel like you're being lead by the hand down a well-worn path with thouands of other tourists going the exact same way at the same time, but with Ha Long Bay its beautiful enough that it doesn't matter. We had a top class swim off the boat of the first night at sunset in a beautiful bay among huge sheer limestone cliffs. A newcomer to the top swims of the trip top ten, possibly even number one.

Our last day in Hanoi we had a crazy day bumping into a whole buch of people we'd met in our travels including Jason and Rochelle from Jungle Beach and Danielle the kiwi motorcyclist we'd hung out with around Cambodia. The evening ended with street stall beers, a big dinner and a fun night out at a great little bar. A perfect night to say goodbye to Vietnam and some of the aweosme people we travelled with there!

Hoi An and Hue

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After a sad goodbye to Jungle Beach (our fav place in Vietnam) we boarded the Night Bus From Hell (actually Hoi An). We stupidly booked ourselves in for a 12 hours overnight bus ride but didn't book a sleeper bus. 12 extremely uncomfortable hours later- we arrived in Hoi An and bumped into our friends from Jungle Beach- Ann and Shane who looked pretty fresh and clean compared to us as they had taken the overnight sleeper train.

Hoi An is the tailor capital of the world and I promptly kicked it off by putting in some orders that very night. There are 100's of tailors in Hoi An and it's all a bit overwhelming- especially when you've been living in one pair of shorts and 3 t-shirts for 3 months.

I think I was even having nightmares about fabric choices at one stage... cashmere or linen?

It kinda did my head in. But Toby got a me a dressing gown for my birthday embroidered with what would be my pro-boxing name- if I ever took up the sport!

To relieve the stress, we met up with Ann and Shane, an Irish couple who we first met in Dalat, and were travelling north through Vietnam like us. They were good fun and led us to the King Kong bar one night which served free rum during happy hour. This led to some piratey plans being laid and a nasty hangover the next day.

One day later we hit Hue- the imperial capital of Vietnam. And somehow the Irish and Toby convinced me to come on a day tour of the DMZ- the demilatarised zone where large chunks of the Vietnam War (called the American War here) was fought. It was 12 hours on a bus. It rained. It was very, very average.

The citadel in Hue was cool..very Imperial. Did some pretty walks about- saw some greedy fish.

But we jumped on the sleeper bus to Hanoi pretty quickly....I was keen to leave the memories of that DMZ tour far behind.

Jungle Beach Forever

Imagine this....
a white sand beach
perfectly clear calm blue water
palm trees
bamboo huts open to the sunrise
being called to remind you to come to meals
friendly dogs
bonfires every night
no other people on the beach
but the best thing was swimming at night, there was phospheresence in the water, so when you swam, trails of light would follow in your wake

it's the closest we've come to a tropical paradise...

I Loike Ut

After a week of big city living in Saigon we finally decided we'd better get out see some more of Vietnam. Our flair for timing with big public holidays continued and instead of going straight to Dalat as we'd wanted we ended up having to spend a couple of days in Mui Ne while Saigon invaded Dalat for the Liberation Day/Labour Day long weekend.

Mui Ne I could take or leave. Its literally a town with one road - straight along the edge of a beautiful beach for ten kilometres. Thing is, the beach side of the road is lined with resorts ranging from the stupidly expensive to the crappy-but-still-overpriced, and to get to the beach you have to go through the resorts. If you're not staying in a resort (and guess who wasn't) you'd better be ready to buy some expensive lemonades if you wanna be going anywhere near that water. We hired a motorbike and found the beach around the headland where the locals swim (much to their amusement) and explored the sci-fi looking red sand dunes with the help of a local kid who claimed he was David Beckham. Weird.

Dalat, however, was a real gem. High in the mountains, its a windy sprawling little city set around steep hills with the cool weather and the improbable roads of our beloved Wellington. We spent an awesome day hooning around on the back of some pretty sweet big roadbikes with two Easyriders - a Dalat instution reknowned for their mix of tour guiding and comedy - who took us on a stunning trip around the area visiting all kinds of silk factories, flower farms, waterfalls, coffee plantations and even a mushroom farm. Mainly we just enjoyed riding on some sweet motorbikes around mountain roads and our guide had some hilarious stories and did a spot-on impersonation of an old kiwi farmer he'd taken a while ago. "I loike ut" he'd say, and so did we.

Beep Beep

Xin Chao!
In Saigon and sweating it up- so so so hot and the motorikes are going mental and the fans are blowing and the kids are yelling and there's steam coming out of weird places and the noodles are yum and the beer is cheap and the coffee is GOOD and people are mental and friendly and funny and toby has a tummy bug! So I went to the markets and took a cyclo and lots of photos on a funny little camera I bought real cheap and ate some awesome pho which is now my new favourite food.

Package from Ho Chi MInh City!

Floating at sunrise

After revisting Phnom Penh for the 3rd time, we took a slow boat down the Mekong and crossed the border into Vietnam. We stayed in Chau Doc and then in Can Tho, where we did a tour of the floating markets and around.
Vietnam is a different world to Cambodia. The whole place is just buzzing with people and motorbikes and boats and bikes and buses and cars and cyclos and more people. It makes you realise how poor and small Cambodia and Laos are. There is a constant drone in the back of your skull from the reverberation of motorbikes.
Floating down the Mekong was pretty relaxing though- the people were super friendly- especially all the kids waving out at us. Our guide gave us an impromtu Vietnamese lesson while crouching the roof of a shop boat, writing with a pineapple core- HEO! is PIG!
It was all riduclously photogenic and I got all snap happy.
In Saigon now- and the roar of the motorbikes at 5pm is phenomenal. Crossing the street is mental. You have to just go for it- as you start trying to wait for a 'gap' you're doomed. Moving slowly, motorbikes whizz past you at every angle.
I think I really like it!

Bokor Chainsaw Massacre

Right now I'm sitting in an internet cafe in Can Tho, Vietnam and all around me kids are smoking and playing some kind of futuristic online dancing computer game. Cambodia was crazy but Vietnam is something else altogether - we're in the south right now, in the Mekong Delta, which is supposed to be quiet and slow compared to the rest of the country but after Laos and Cambodia even this town feels frantic, bustling, fast and electric.

Our last mission in Cambodia was a strange one. We spent a couple of days in Kampot along the south coast and got to visit the Bokor Hill Station - once a top-of-the-line French holiday outpost complete with luxurious art deco hotel and casino, now an abandoned ghost-town. It's a spooky place - since the French got run out in the 40's its been a battleground several times over, with the clifftop hotel providing an ideal strategic fortress for various versions of both Cambodian and Vietnamese government and guerilla armies right up to the 80's. Bloody, bloody history there.

To visit there now is like living a horror movie. You can walk right through the shells of the hotel, the casino, the post office and a catholic church perched right up this spectacular hill, and needless to say it's pretty eerie experience. The day we went up there were even thunderstorms, as if the atmosphere wasn't quite horror-movie enough.

Khmer New Years

From the first day we arrived in Cambodia every local we've chatted to has been talking about one thing: Khmer New Years. For these guys its the big one, like all our holidays rolled into one: three solid days and nights of family, feasts, drinking, water fights, fireworks, music and whatever other crazy ideas drunk Cambodians might come up with along the way.

As the day grew closer it was obvious we'd have to find somewhere fun to be to see the celebration out. We wouldn't be able to travel during those three days as the whole country stops to party, so we'd have to stop and party too. Tough life this. The obvious choice was Sihanoukville, Cambodia's most popular beach/party town which was being swarmed by thousands upon thousands of Khmers from Phnom Penh and other inland cities.

Well, I think Sonya's earlier post proabably summed it up well. Sihanoukville is place of crazy extremes - stunning beaches, covered in rubbish, bars all along the edge of the beach, hundreds of charming and quick witted (and bloody persistant!) little entrepeneurs hustling you to buy bracelets and shorts and mangos, and landmine amputees begging as you sit and sip shakes or cheap beer and wath the beautiful sunsets over the water. Perfect place for a crazy party.

And party they did. By day thousands of Khmers filled the beach, the water and every available space of ground with huge picnics, lots of drinking and laughing and shouting. In the afternoons the water/talculm fights broke out, people lining the roads pelting waterbombs at passing motorbikes (including ours, hard to steer straight while trying to dodge flying waterbombs!), kids running around tipping buckets over picnicing families and girls running around covering the recently soaked in liberal handfulls of talculm powder. Great fun!

By sundown each day the fireworks were out and the drinks were starting to kick in and thats when it really got crazy. I'm sure you can imagine.

Now we're in sleepy Kampot, dragging ourselves back to reality and good health. Wish us luck!

Thanks, for living

Sihanoukville.
Hot and noisy.
Water bombs and talcum powder wars.
Slick kids and rude ladies commenting on my leg hair.
Beautiful beaches, lots of rubbish.
Mad fireworks.
Cool cinema.
Hot.

Sticky Rice

Angkor Wat. There aren't words big enough to sum it up.

We got picked up by Mr Hun, (our tuk tuk driver who came recommended and he was great) at 5am and got out to the Angkor Wat in time for sunrise- which we watched overlooking the reflecting pool- it was a magnificent sunrise- reds and golds and crazy ancient ruins. It was worth the ungodly early start to wander through the temples in the quiet time just after dawn.

I'm not going to bore you to death with a indepth recout but here's a few highlights of our 3 day adventure:
Bayon Temple which has 216 giant carved smiling faces watching you suffer in the mad heat- a bit creepy.
Ta Phrom- where the jungle is taking over the ruins and trees are growing up all over the temples (where Tomb Raider was filmed).
The kids- who drove us mad but also cracked us up yelling at us:
Lady, you wanna cold water?
Lady, you wanna bracelet?
Mister, you wanna tshirt?
Mister, you wanna flute?
Lady, you wanna carving?
Mister, you wanna pineapple?
Lady, you wanna fan?
And Mr Hun, who enlightened us with his theories of the ancient sticky rice building technique.

But I think the best experience was on our last day. We went a bit further than most tourists out to Beng Melea, 2 hours from Siem Reap- where none of the jungle has been cleared away from the ruins. It looks as if it had never been discovered and thanks again to Mr Hun, we got there before anyone else. Crawling over broken carvings and stuggling over vine strangled wreckage with just the sounds of the jungle in the early morning was mystical and awesome. Definitive Indiana Jones moment.

Loved it.