Archive for the ‘General’ Category
We arrived in Ho Chi Minh city pretty tired from our three day trip through the Mekong-Delta (which dad has filled you in on) – and were happy to indulge ourselves in the three star comfort that Matt had organised. By far the nicest hotel that we have stayed in to date (however the price tag also reflected that).
Ho Chi Minh was an interesting city – they have a saying throughout Asia “Same, Same – But Different”, usually people who are trying to sell you something will use it to get a better price (it is cotton not silk, same same but different). But it could also be used to describe most of the big cities that we have visited. When you have worked out some basics like how to bargin and to watch where you are walking when going down the street you can survive in any Asian city, however there are always little customary things that you stumble upon, only through embarrassing yourself or others. So Ho Chi Minh – same, same – but different. One thing that really stands out in a city of similar size to Bangkok is the lack of development, much fewer shopping centres, high rises and general sight seeing attractions.
After meeting up with Matt he took us to the best budget restaurant in town, that he specifically sussed out for our arrival. It was very nice – on Matt’s recommendation I had an Aussie burger for dinner. We visited the Reunification Palace the next day and got our dose of propaganda – which I suppose just balances out the propaganda that we are indoctrinated with through other sources. The Vietnamese propaganda is just so blatant – and it leaves me feeling sad, because it appears to leave room for only one way of interpreting history. This has developed what appears to be a very patriotic nation – but some of the distorted facts that it (“The Peoples Party”) comes out with are almost laughable when you take into consideration other nations perspective…come to think of it there are a number of nations that you could charge with the same crime :) This is a very strange, complex community – in some ways as Matt has commented we feel very at home here, but in other ways we are really struggling to understand it. You only hear quietly from some people about the hard years – no museum we have visited or famous war site have spoken of the the severe rations on the people which lead to starvation or the “re-education” camps.
The next day Dad and I spent a half day cruising around on the back of motor bikes seeing the sites (while Matt was having his turn of fighting off the food poisoning) – the highlights included some Chinese pagodas, visiting some shops that sold Chinese medicine (I bought Matt a small vile of wine with a cobra in it – medicine), a floating market on the blackest river I have ever seen (pretty much an open sewer), a visit to the Chinatown (every country has one) and a stroll along the river front. It was really good to get out of District One (tourist central) and get a look at how people live in Ho Chi Minh. Dad and I hit the central market that afternoon, I think that dad is now at the stage were he requires a candy bag to get all his wares home! I never realised how much of a shopper he is – and he wouldn’t buy anything for more than half of the original price! The shop keepers often look impressed at his bargaining skills. By the time we got back from shopping Matt was was begging to go to KFC – it was good that he had his appetite back!
The next day we visited Chu Chi tunnels – an area 60km from Ho Chi Minh city were the Viet Com built complex tunnel systems to live and fight from. These systems had everything from a hospital, an ammunition manufacturing factory, kitchen and sleeping areas. It was very eye opening, even frightening to see the way that these people lived. One thing that the Vietnamese people do very well is get across the horror of war! Our guide was an ex-south Vietnamese soldier (another contradiction that it is hard for us to get our head around), who appeared almost pro-vietcom. He was an old guy that would go off on tangents and then come out with really inappropriate jokes and you would wonder if he was joking. He loved the microphone and spent the 90 minutes bus trip telling us stories of the war. Next to the Chu Chi tunnels was a rifle range – so as we were walking through the forest and looking at the tunnels, you could hear the constant sound of gun shots…. A little too realistic for my liking. But never the less Matt was able to satisfy one of his goals for this trip – he shot off 20 rounds on an AK47, at the cost of US$1 a bullet. You can’t be too trigger happy! This was all a bit surreal.
That afternoon it was Matt and my turn to go shopping and we headed down to central market to make some purchases. Afterwards we decided to catch a Cyclo back to our hotel – we were quoted 15,000VND for both of us, which is a bit expensive (about US$1). But we were tired and wanted a lift back to the hotel about 800 meters away, so we agreed to the price. When we arrived around the corner from the hotel we were told that the drivers were not allowed to cycle down the main street at that time of day (about 200 meters left to our hotel) – which was all good, then Matt went to pay them – when he handed over 15,000 they complained that they had asked for 50,000 (just under US$4) for their 4 minutes of work. Matt had been ripped off by a cyclo driver two days prior, so we were very careful to be clear on the price before we took this trip and we felt as though these men were playing us (wanting 50,000 – for a trip that we had received for 5,000 a number of times prior). Feeling disappointed – because we hate the feeling of being ripped off, we explained that we felt that this was a bit a rich. When they dug in and said that they would starve if we did not pay them – a card regularly played with tourists, we also dug in and I said that if they wouldn’t take the 15,000 we would not pay them at all. They threatened to call the police at which I said I would be happy for this to happen as it was clear that we were the ones being ripped off (how self righteous was I). At that they played a different tact and asked for 15,000 each, to which I stated no – then they said 10,000 each and Matt being the wise man he is paid up (as by this time nearly the entire street was involved) to dissolve the situation. Sitting in the hotel room, I felt crap – quivalling over such a small amount of money! How far do you push principles? They were ripping us off – it is so hard to swallow your pride and just pay up! It takes away from the joy of travelling and it leaves you feeling cynical about the general population.
On Monday we jumped on a bus and travelled north to Da Lat – in the high country. Da Lat is much cooler than Saigon and I felt cold for the first time in a while on our first night here. We are staying in a lovely little guest house for US$7 a night. Soon as we jumped off the bus we were recruited for a “cooking class”, which turned out to be five tourists crammed into a one room “house”, watching the “chef” and his 5 assistants help prepare a meal on the floor. The learning side of the evening was pretty light, but the hospitality and the humour of the people made the evening one that we wont forget! The food was also fantastic. Today we took a tour (with the chef of last evening now turned tour guide) around the hills on the back of three motor bikes. It was great fun! I can see why people like riding – you feel a lot closer to it all. Da Lat is a funny mixture of the natural and the really tacky. With theme park like attractions set in the hills amongst a thriving farming community. Tomorrow we head to Nha Trang on the coast.
So if you have gotten this far I have to commend you for getting through my late night babble – we are off to pack our packs and tomorrow is an entirely new adventure :)
The Mekong Delta down stream from Cambodia.
Starting out from Phonm Pen, the bus ride to the first big boat was full of excitment as we left the centre of Phonm Pen. Traffic only as you can find in Asia surging in all directions taking on a life pulse all of its own, bikes loaded with everything inmagineable [up to 5 people, livestock, building materials or the latest purchase's from the market, boxes and boxes on one bike] weaving in and out on both sides of the road with constant blasting horns to let everyone know that they are there and are coming thru regardless, all this on bikes 50cc to 200cc in size.
Interspaced with this was the local taxis [utilities or small minivans] with loads of up to 20 persons plus all thier gear, we saw two mini buses with approx. 15 people on the roof this was not unusual what made us look again this time was the motorbike sitting upright on the roof of the minibus surrounded by people.
Arriving at the Mekong river we walked thru a small village then down a muddy bank to walk a narrow plank to board our first big boat. Arriving at the border we wondered what awaited us as we passed thru the Cambodian border to Veitnam, officials we discovered are the same the world over, they like to be official, the border crossing went without a hitch except one of our group who was given a hard time for a few moments.
The Mekong river has fishing villages scattered along its bank and a lot of houses built on it, they were ranging from very basic, built in the old style and looked to be quite impovised to houses built out of modern building materials and reflected a higher standard of living. One interesting thing we noticed was that all the huts and houses along the bank of the river had tall T.V. antenas , how did they supply power to thier tellys? with car batteries, when the battery needs recharging they take it to the nearest settlement and swap it for fully charged one.
The river at this point is up to one kilometre wide growing to three kilometres wide two hours down stream. Canels naturaul and man made branch off both sides of the Mekong it was up one of these canels that we left the river to go to Chau Doc where we were to spend the first night the canels kept getting smaller and smaller with the banks closing in on the boat, this gave us a very close look at the communties that resided on the banks and the houses that were built on the water, these houses have fish farms underneath them, we were to visit one the next day. All along the trip people were waving to us from the edges of the waterway with big smiles on thier faces, particularly the children.
When we disembarked from our first big boat, we were met by a small motor bike with a covered in tralior, this bike was 50cc. At the front of the trailor was placed our luggage and into the back hopped 8 yes 8 people all europeans [big people] and we set off to our nights accommodation attracting a lot of attention along the way, locals pointing and having a good laugh. There is one hill in the delta and you guessed it, that was where our nights accomadation was, so as we started to go up we came to a stop, poor little bike couldn’t cope, from there we hoofed it. After we surrendered our passports which was requested of us now that we were in Vietnam, and settled in to our rooms, we with others climbed Sam Hill to look out over the delta, rice paddies and canels as far as we could see, the rice is been harvested at the moment so we saw a lot of activity with it been transported along the waterways. This was typical of the next four days as we navigated our way thru the delta, which is called the nine dragons delta by the locals.
*yawn* – will finish this post tommorow!
Vietnam is just like I remember it,… back at home! The smells, the food, the smiles and the crazy driving. I’m not trying to be funny, but I feel very much at home here in Ho Chi Minh City!
I should probably back-track a little bit. We last left you in Siem Reap, ready to board our plane back to Phnom Phen. The flight was rather uneventful, just your regular short trip (a 30 min flight sure beats the 6 hours drive on bad roads in a crowded bus) in a small Boeing. We did however get a free upgrade to business class – but so did the other 9 people on our flight! We arrived safely back in Phnom Phen and caught a taxi back to our hotel.
The following day we casually decided to take in a couple of tours – The Killing Fields and the S21 Prison (“the place where people go in but never come out”). It was very confronting seeing these sites and knowing that these atrocities had occurred in our life time. The S21 prison was mostly left in tact and of the 17,000 people that were imprisoned and tortured at S21, only 7 survived – the artists making busts of Pol Pot. We were dumb founded at Pol Pot’s cruelty and the measures that he took to ensure his power. Our guide informed us that 10 to 15 year old boys were used to perform the killing – this was viewed as an impressionable age where the superiors could mold the boys minds. We saw the mass graves and the bones that show up after every wet season as the topsoil is washed away (we accidentally stood on some loose teeth and exposed clothing). Shovels and axes were used to slaughter the people because bullets were too expensive. Any ideology that Pol Pot had worked to was lost by the time he reached power and his rein seemed to be purely about self preservation – even killing his own men when he suspected that they knew too much. Our taxi driver gave the best description of this man – “Pol Pot was a psychopath”. The killing field that we visited is one of 400 that have been discovered so far. Over Pol Pot’s rein, 3 million Khmer people died (with a total population of only 8 million) – from butchery, starvation and as a result of the American’s secret carpet bombing campaign. During this time rice and food production increased, however the Khmer people where only provided two bowls of watery rice soup – as the food was sold to China by the officials.
Being a little emotional, I decided that I had had enough of “roughing it”, and decided to fly to Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) and camp out in a nice hotel after Philippa and Rob made up there mind to “float” to Vietnam. Their trip took four days (mine took one hour), and from what I hear was a lot of fun (Phil/Rob will post a separate blog about their trip later).
While waiting for them to arrive, I did the usual… Watched a lot of TV, sussed out the local KFC (several times) and did a bit of a walking tour which resulted in me getting very lost. A friendly “Cyclo” driver offered to show me around,… I promptly instructed him to “head for the nearest McDonalds”. 10 minutes later, we arrived at KFC (again) – apparently KFC is the closest thing that HCMC has to a McDonalds. I thanked the Cyclo driver for the ride and asked him how much I owed him; the ride *should* have cost 5,000 Dong and I was not surprised when he said 50,000 Dong (all I heard was the “5″) – I promptly paid the man, and realised that I had been ripped off while chowing down another Zinger burger! Groan – all these different currencies are giving me the irrits.
Cambodia was again a real culture shock at first, however the beautiful people with their warm hearts have given me a real passion for the country and I suspect that we will be back sometime soon. Vietnam so far has been a lot of fun, and I am finally leaving the hotel now that Philippa has returned (God, I missed her). I think the next three weeks here will be great if the past few days are anything to judge the country by!
Now onto some serious news! Why the hell is Philippa getting 2-3 emails a day and none to me… Starting to think you buggers don’t love me! :P Miss you all sooo much and looking forward to getting home, sometime in the next couple of years!
Matt and I have tried to keep the blogging pretty balanced – taking turns to give our perspective about the places that we visit and the things that we have experienced. Matt has begun this blog three times and has been unable to finish it because in his words “they were too negative”.
Cambodia!
I think that so many myths precede visiting here that it is hard to come with an open mind. Pictures of Khmer Rouge, the killing fields, mugging on the street, sex tourism and land mine victims. But a lot has changed in Cambodia over the last five years and there is definitely hope here. That is not to say that you do not see land mine victims begging in the street every day and hear terrible stories of corruption that make your blood boil.
Actually pretty much everything that we saw on our first day in Phnom Phen reinforced our preconceived ideas. Walking off the plane from Bangkok the second billboard that we saw read “Sex with children is illegal – 940 people have been prosecuted and imprisoned – UNICEF”. What is this place that we are visiting?? Matt and I bought a book from a landmine victim entitled “Off the Rails in Phnom Phen – Guns, Girls and Gunja” – a book that details what expat could get away with in Phnom Phen in the 90’s. So at this point we were ready to sit in our hotel room until our Vietnam visas had become valid on the 7th of March. That same day, while we were walking through a market a drunk/mental ill man hastled Matt and dad – they were lucky to get away only with nipple cripples…then later that evening some very interested, sleezy boy tried to pick me up until he realised that my big burly dad was sitting next to me…actually that didn’t really slow him down that much either! Reading the Phnom Phen Post the next day didn’t help either – as they detail all the crime that has occured over the two weeks – like the classified at home. The pages were filled with grenades going off and police men accidently shooting themselves and their friends dead when playing with their guns while drunk.
But our anxiety settled as we talked with expats and local at our hotel (ironically the Hotel California2) and we began to venture a little further out and see another side to Cambodia. We visited the royal palace and the silver pagoda – what a beautiful palace amongst such decay! Later that day at the central market we bargained hard – Matthew was ready to disown dad and I – rightly so, it seems trivial when you are quivalling over one US dollar.
After a few days in Phnom Phen we caught the boat up the river to the major lake in Cambodia (the name of which escapes) – as the tide was low we had to transfer to a local boat and we travelled through a floating town – it had everything from department stores, milkbars and a church! When we arrived at the muddy bank our driver Rou was there to meet us – what a gem he turned out to be! In his semi-proficient english he was able to answer many of our questions. His honesty and frankness was a breath of fresh air. From local politics and customs, to translating Khmer music, to organising our itinerary for the four days of visiting the Angkor temples he was a God send! That day he drove us to our guesthouse situated in Siem Reap while filling us in on the illegal imigration of Vietnamese people into the area and their “electric fishing” methods that were making the locals angry”. Our guest house was very comfortable for a mere US$15 a night, complete with TV and A/C.
Siem Reap is the town closest to the Angkor Temples, at any given time I think that there is almost as many foreigners as locals! Rou took us out to the see the sunset the same evening we arrived – it was the first time we viewed Angkor Wat (the most well know of the temples), it was one of those take your breath away moments. They rank this engineering feet up there with the pyramids and when you read the specs on this building you understand why. The photos cannot really capture the grandness of this building that is over 1000 years old, and once was the “capital of the world”. We walked up a very steep hill, to see a very ordinary sunset, over very amazing buildings. Over the following three days we visited about 15 of the 100 temples – everyone of them was worth visiting. The temples are huge and not close enough to walk between so we had lots of conversations with our driver Rou. How posh does that sound “our driver”, we actually found it a little uncomfortable – but you can get used to anything.
I will not bore you with the details – other than saying WOW and if you come to Cambodia for no other reason, this is a good reason to visit! On the final evening we took Rou out to dinner to say thank you – we asked him where he wanted to go and being the typical obliging Khmer person, he took us to a place that he thought that we would like – it was to the shadow puppet theatre restaurant. We had had plenty of conversations about this on previous days as Rou happened to have travelled to France and Japan to perform in the shadow puppet theatre. Aside from this he also taught the local children in his village English and had a vision of opening a centre for children one day which could teach them about Khmer culture (something that was lucky to survive the Khmer Rouge times). What a top bloke! It was a pretty emotional goodbye – we exchanged contact details and promised to keep in touch.
The plan was to depart from Siem Reap this morning to Phnom Phen, but unfortunately I became unwell yesterday morning and decided to bring up the content of my tummy – for everyone that knows me it will not be a surprise that it was quite a lot. So under orders from Matt and dad I spent the day in bed, which was wise because everytime I got up I felt queasy again. Dad caught the bus as planned this morning (as we had non refundable tickets) and Matt stayed behind to look after me. I feel heaps better, and had to break out of the guest house because staring at the yellow wall was driving me crazy. I have had my first real meal in 48hours this evening and am still feeling fine – fingers crossed. Matt and I decided to treat ourselves to a bit of luxury and have booked a flight to go back to Phnom Phen tomorrow, rather than braving the bus.
So that brings us up to date. Sorry about the big gap between entries. It sometimes takes us a bit of time to process our own experiences. We will be travelling to Vietnam early next week.
Hope all are well!
We finished our stay at Koh Phangan zipping around on a motor bike with our very our cool crash helmets. As we were not allowed to go on dirt roads we spent a lot of time back tracking (as made roads would abruptly finish without warning or notation on the map). Having a motor bike gave us so much freedom and as the roads are fairly quiet on Koh Phangan we felt confident to venture out a bit. And that we did for a steak dinner that Matt claims is the best he has had in months.
On our last morning the concierge of the hotel abruptly burst into our room as we were packing and said that we had to catch a taxi in 10 minutes, (despite being told earlier that we had a midday taxi booked), as we don’t like being rushed when we are packing we declined the offer of the taxi, to which he stated that the midday taxi would be fine, the driver would just have to make two trips.
So there we were all packed and ready to go at midday with our boat and bus transfers. We jumped on the back on the ute and held on tight as the taxi fish tailed its way down dirt roads. We arrived at the ticket counter for the boat and bus and Phil, that’s me who was holding onto the transfers for safe keeping, discovered that the pink bits of paper were no longer in her pocket! After some panicking Matt said calmly, “Phil it only costs $12 each”! After a couple of beers on the boat, I had calmed down – really when someone says 600baht, it just feels like so much more than $24!
The train ride back to Bangkok was without killer bugs – but we did get of the train pretty red eyeds and were snapped up by a crazy tuk-tuk driver in our haze. Matt agreed to pay him 120baht for the trip because the driver called him his friend. This driver I think was trying to break land spead records while dodging traffic on the Bankok highway (while we had our packs on our knees). We arrived at our hotel paled faced…but alive!
Our hotel is amazing – in this short amount of time I will not be able to do it justice – but to get a feel for the place have a look at http://www.theatlantahotel.bizland.com/ . It doesn’t look like it has changed much since the 1950’s!
While in Bangkok we have taken in a couple of movies and visited the Grand Palace – which is the number one tourist attraction in Bangkok and rightly so – it is pretty spectacular. Matt managed to miss the “Jade Buda” which is the most renound Budda in Thailand…but I thought he was pretty cute. Matt spent some time gaining enlightenment under the Banyan tree decending from the one that Budda sat under.
The most exciting news is that my dad joined us yesterday – just in time to be taken to a few local pubs, having a kid make a grab for his watch (luckily it was on securly), go for a tuk-tuk ride and catch the sky train before being whisked away to Cambodia.
As you can probably tell I am punching this blog out at a frantic pace because we have to catch a taxi to the airport in 5 minutes – off to Cambodia.
Hope that my jibberish makes some sense, I will edit this blog when I get a chance. Please pray for a safe transfer to Cambodia!
Welcome, to Fantasy Island…
Well, after spending a few more days on the beach relaxing and reading (with one night of doof-doof and cheap beer) we caught our “speed” boat at the un-godly hour of 7.00AM to Koh Phangan, a slightly smaller island just north of Koh Samui.
After clamouring off the boat onto the pier (which was no easy feat as the tide was down, everyone else still on the boat got a good look at our bums), we were greeted by our pre-arranged “super cheap” taxi – turns out they were a whole 300 Baht more expensive with the average going rate being 100 Baht) which promptly took us to our hotel, the Phangan Cabana (at the Copa,… Copacabana).
Koh Phangan is fantastic! I recommend this place to just about everyone! The island itself is a lot less developed than Koh Samui and as such has everything that is nice (the beach, the food, the bikinis) without all the rubbish (the drunk Poms, the sex tourists, street pole-dancers, the crowd). Truly and amazing place!
The biggest disadvantage to a small island is the irregular power. Within our first few hours, there was a blackout! This wouldn’t usually be a problem – however, it occurred just after I had entered my PIN number into an ATM machine! Damnit – there’s a few hundred dollars lost! Luckily the security is a little looser – a bank clerk was able to crack open the ATM and retrieve my card!
The Phangan Cabana is a sweet little place, about 20 mins from the main city (the city being about the same size of say, Inverloch). The room is all pretty basic, not much bigger than the bed – we have aircon and they installed a CD player the day we arrived. We think that they are in cahoots with the guy next door who sells pirated CDs for 100baht, ($3.20) – we’ve already purchased two! I can’t believe however that they expect to run a respectable business without any television! Groan! We do have our own toilet and shower,… outside! One advantage of an outside shower is the wind on my bum when taking a shower in the heat of the day!
I’m getting pretty good at zipping through the streets on our rented scooter, a little 120cc Honda; it’s a shame nobody here knows any road rules! Philippa seems to trust me sitting on the back (silly, silly girl!). When we upload the photo’s, you will see how cool our helmets are (note: we are the *only* people on the entire island in jeans and wearing a helmet when on a bike).
It’s a little scary how much I miss all you buggers, keep up with the news from home and send off a prayer that we will get to Bangkok safely tomorrow (don’t want the boat to sink).
Matt made me drag out my bikini that he bought me for christmas. It is great after four years of marriage that he still wants to see me in a bikini! Out came the sunscreen and the spatula to apply it thickly over my poor white skin!
The beach was great fun, little fish darting everywhere, it was shallow for about 100m, which created a great playground for kids, even us big kids, and it was soooo warm (I smiled as I thought about running into the freezing water of Wilsons Prom in Spring)! Matt and I decided earlier that playing in swimming pools is just no fun unless you have a game to play or people their to entertain you – but playing down the beach was a entirely different experience! We jumped out of the ocean into the hotel pool and then back to the ocean!
That night I had the beer bottles wrapped in wet towels tending to my sunburn…the sunburn marks suggested that I had been burnt before we went swimming (as they followed my T-shirt line). I had been in the sun for about 10 minutes earlier that day getting lunch…there is not justice for the pale skinned!
I have finished my second book for the holiday – it is great having so much time! Today I spent 30 minutes eating a calipo (the Thai equivalent) – and was remembering as a kid how such basic things once entertained me for the same length of time. I think that Matt and I have entirely wound down and are enjoying the pace of life at the moment!
We hired a motor scooter (120cc) yeasterday, as we are sick of negotiating our fair home late at night which seems to attract about a 500% premium. The cost of the motor scooter was $8 for 24hours – the same fair we paid to a taxi driver three nights ago to get us home at 11:30pm! We filled the tank of our scooter for $1! Matt was a bit white after our first trip, first time that he has taken a passenger and apparently I wriggle around a bit. He is cruising along now though – I feel a bit dorky with my closed toe shoes, jean jacket and helmet compared to others that get around in shorts and thongs! But hey, I’ve got a little more travelling that I want to survive!
Matt and I are being a little bit more adventerous and are trying to eat more local food – the food here is very tastey! We have a few select street vendours that we feel have pretty good hygiene standards and we watch them prepare their food. Don’t think that there is any chance of us loosing weight in Thailand, we have fallen in love with Banana, Coconut and Choclate rotti! We watch as the chef calves up the fresh ingredients, grating the coconut for us to see. Fresh mango juice, pad thai and assorted stir fry curries are all prepared on the street for the customer to see. The fresh seafood in Koh Samui is a real treat, though we are treading carefully (not past the king prawns though).
Few more days here before we head off too Koh Panang on Friday. I have a few post cards to write – to those who haven’t received one yet I am working on it!
The beats of the street bars are floating in as I type this message in sync. We are currently in Liaim – one of the night life centres on Koh Samui. As I look out the window I see a number of open air bars with holiday makers (from families with young children, to middle aged men looking for partners) enjoying local beer and the cool of the evening.
Well Koh Samui is everything that you would hope a holiday resort would be plenty of blond haired, big breasted women with great tans accompanied by their six foot companions who get around in tank tops (if your lucky) and stubbies. Matt seems to have a finally tuned radar for the topless bathers (lucky for him) and his half blind wife has to wait until she trips over them to get a thrill. Unfortunately Matt and I haven’t gotten into the topless bathing scene because our fair skin seems to be repelled by the sun.
Not much to report really…it is exactly as the postcard depict it…coconut trees everywhere silhouetted against the sparkling blue ocean and white sand beaches. The rolling mountains in the center of the island are quite picturesque and the view of the surrounding eighty islands makes you realise why so many people come here for holidays. Prices are a little more expensive, but if you shop around you can still get “Thai prices”. Matt and I are relaxing and trying to recover from our spending spree in Chiang Mai – we loved the markets!
…gee life is tough…
I think that we will wonder out and get a cool beer and some corn off the barbie, followed by banana and chocolate rotti!
Wish you were here…really…but not spending too much energy worrying about it :P
Don’t want to bore you with any more boring details of this place…until next time…
I’m officially sick of travelling! Lucky we are on the beach now for 7 days in Koh Samui :P
Our last day in Chiang Mai was rather un-evenful; Philppa got a Thai massage and than we saw a movie – Kung Fu Hustle (dubbed in Thai with English sub-titles). Was really bad,… yet really good (in a bad way) :P The sub-titles were sporatic at best, and our fellow movie-goers were laughing out of sequence with us! If it gets to Melbourne – a must see!
We boarded our 9.50PM sleeper train from Chaing Mai to Bangkok after an hour of arguing with the station master about getting our tickets chainged (we were originally going to get off before Bangkok). Finally he told Philippa that you could change them on the train and didn’t need to see him at all, groan! The crowd gathering behind Philippa wanting to purchase tickets were relieved to see her go!
The train trip was hot, smelly (gotta love the waste disposal system of the Thai trains – it all goes out the side, including the poop which gets caught in the wheels and stinks out the place) and full of killer bugs – somehow we ended up on a train without A/C (even though we paid for it)… someone asked us later if we were Americans (as we were whinging so much),… I replied with “hell no” and promptly shut up and enjoyed the rest of the trip :P
We arrived back in Bangkok about 15 hours later and promptly sought out the nearest fast food joint (which was KFC) – Speaking for KFC, its just not the same in Asia – kinda tastes like, ummm, Marathon Chicken (as dad once explained KFC in Asia to me)! McDonalds and Burger King is good though, its pretty much the same everywhere!!
We caught the next Tuk Tuk to Wat Po. When we got out of the Tuk Tuk we were promptly told by a man on the street that the temple was closed and that it would re-open in a few hours; he suggested that we visit his friends Suit Tailor shop to pass the time :P – we told him to go away and continued on to the very much open temple! Inside we saw the famous giant reclining Buddha which was, well, big and pretty impressive – apparently it is older than Bangkok as it was made in the 17th Centuary, well before the city was established – to date the oldest “thing” I have ever seen! Wow!
Next was a taxi ride with a friendly driver to an air-con shopping centre in Bangkok – he was realy nice untill we tried to pay with a 500 baht note (about AU$18.00) – he called us all sorts of names and got realy angry as we didnt have smaller notes (and was outraged at us thinking that he would be able to change it). The taxi fare was a little under AU$3.00 for over half an hour in the taxi; its a different world huh! We tipped him generously once we got change :P
We past the rest of the time, waiting for our next train to Koh Samui (due at 7.30PM) by watching another movie – Finding Neverland! Oh – here’s a travel trip for you, the toilets at nice shopping centres are greeeaaatt!! Much better than train stations or smelly trains! Heh – I went twice just for the fun of it!! :)
The train to Koh Samui was a little late, but was much nicer than the one from Chaing Mai – we at least had snooty, posh air-con this time! The trip was also somewhat shorter, our train arrived at its destination at about 7.00AM; we than caught a bus and a ferry boat to the Koh Samui island (sounds more exciting than it was, promise!)
We were ripped off as soon as we arrived; we paid at least double what we should have for a shuttle bus to our hotel – pffft, …and they made me get our bags off the roof of the bus! Mongrels!! :P
The hotel is great, the Samui Orchard – its also a zoo and bird park and everything, sleeping with tigers is great! The rest of the day was catching up on sleep and sitting on the beach, nice and relaxing!
That brings us to today, again, nothing exciting – we caught the hotel taxi into town and had lunch and jumped on a computer! Thats all folks – miss you all more than I would dare admit! — Matt
Well it seems that we have a bit of catching up to do!
So Matt and I collapsed on the beds at the hotel when we arrived in Chang Mai, recovering from the hotel California and the sleeper train trip with the horrible, abnoxious, drunk English men!
We didn’t have much time to rest because the next day we jumped on a mini bus and weaved through the streets of Chang Mai picking up guests for our day trip. Our gorgeous (not looking) tour guide was Kon, who was jovial and seemed to know a bit about the places we visited. Our first stop was a hilltribe the Mao people, from Lao I think. It was a forty minute walk up hill. Matt got to the point where he dug in his heals and said “I am not going any further” and we happened to be 10 meters away from the tourist sign welcoming us to the village. From what we could tell, nobody actually lived there it was purely set up for the tourists! So why not 10 meters from the road :) It was an old village that they had preserved, which made us feel a little more comfortable rather than it being a “Human Zoo” experience. We both had turns at shooting a cross bow. Matt shot a bulls eye, through target on the mellon that was hanging.
We then set off to go elephant riding. It is hard not to fall in love with the elephants. I was a big skeptic, but when you have two little cubs following beside you and then go walking and playing in the river your heart melts! There is something about the way that there trunks grab the bananas and manovour it into there mouths that gets you!
After our traditional Thai lunch we went bambo rafting, which isn’t quite as exciting as it sounds. Though it seems to take more skill that you would think from observing. Matt ended up in the drink after having a go, it was the rapids that caught him out. We all got wet, which is always fun.
We visited the Karen tribe (one of the versions as you will read later), and purchased some weaving – a piece that took three days to weave. When we paid the lady 140Baht ($5), she looked at us as though we were gullible for paying so much. We did pay alot because at the market the next day we saw similar pieces for 65Baht ($2.20), but as Matt said “I’m not going to pay someone 3 dollars for 3 days work!”.
Somehow I persuaded Matt to walk down to the waterfall that we visited. You couldn’t see the waterfall for all the tourists swimming in the water! I think that Matt was pleased with the view (*Matt elbows Phil*). That night we went out to the night markets – the markets are soooooo much fun here in Chang Mai and had Burger King for dinner – too much culture for one day :P
The next day Matt couldn’t get out of bed for our 7am start to visit the Golden Triangle and more hill tribes. From his lips I could make out “No more walking” in a faint wisper. God love him he was exhausted and the Burger King was playing havock with his tummy – figures. I spent the day on the mini bus, over 7 hours of driving (lucky Matt didn’t come). The golden triangle is nicely set up for tourists, I caught a speed boat over to an enclave in Lao that you do not have to go though imigration in order to go shopping. It was a bit of a joke. The speed boat also took us to see the Paradise Casino set up at the norther tip of Myanmar.
A lot of tourist take this day trip in order to get their passports extended. I met some young Aussies that had run out of money and time, waiting for money to clear from their parents at home.
The rest of the day was filled with visiting hilltribes. We visited another two versions of the Karen tribe, affectionately known as the long necks and the big ears. This felt a bit more like a human zoo, but the village have a cover charge for visitors and plenty of sovineer shops. There where another two tribes living by there side, one which only washed twice a month because they believe that the spirits recognised them by their sent. The hilltribes are all refugees from countries such as Tibet, Myanmar, China and Lao, some have been here for only a couple of years, others have been here for hundreds of years.
Since then….hmmm…we have been relaxing, marketing, enjoying Chang Mai. We love it up here and could easily stay another week however we are catching a train tomorrow and heading south to Koh Samui, two overnight sleepers. Please pray for no drunk English men :P
Thank you for all your emails and comments. I am trying to get through them and answer them individually, because we really appreciate the news from home. It is good to hear that the water catchments are filling up – I just feel sad for all the little kids that have just started back at school. That is enough ranting from me.
Puff,… what a week!
After tromping around Bangkok for 3 or 4 hours, we finally found a TAT (Tourism Authority of Thailand) Travel Agency who promptly booked us on some tours for the following few days and than a train to Chaing Mai.
We woke up the following morning nice and early and boarded a mini bus which took us to the Bridge on the River Kwai (go on, start whistling the tune). There was a small museum set up there which was absolutley facinating (however slightly unconventional – we weren’t entirely convienced that all the ehbits were what they claimed to be). We saw the final resting place of hundreds of Australian (and Dutch, English and US) soldiers and the now re-constructed bridge. Next was the Hell-Fire Pass, where another museum was set-up (this one was constructed by the Australian government and was realy slick) – we learnt about the role of the allied POW forces in constructing the infamous railway line and the horendus conditions they lived in (well, those that DID live). Seeing the actual cutting (which was a short walk away) actually brought a tear to my eye.
Than we saw some waterfall (more like a rapid), which was apparently beautiful :P
A local dinner followed on a raft-boat and then we were taken (by jet-boat) to our accomodation – which was nothing more than a shack floating on the river and a mattress on the floor with a door that would not shut properly, let alone lock! We nick named it the hotel California, because the host could not stop singing the song. We had a lot of fun chatting with the other tourists (mostly Dutch) and managed to get a few winks of sleep before we were whisked off to some more *wonderful* waterfalls! (7 actually – I only saw 4, but Philippa saw them all). We had a lot of fun on the tour, packed a lot into the two days. The most amusing part of the whole trip was a couple of French tourists (hippy backpackers) who where happy to try anything – even Cobra mixed with mull!! I’m sure that they will spend a lot of time in the loo on their trip :)
The trip back to Bangkok was long and uneventful; we were finally dropped off at the train station for our trip to Chaing Mai at about 6.00PM. We waited at the train station for what seemed like a month; I paid a total of 6 baht to use the toilet (2 baht each time) – I kept chickening out as they where that gross! We finally borded our overnight *express* train at about 10.00PM.
The train was clean, and turned out to be a relatively fun ride except for the fact the it seemed to stop at each station along the way; the train got lost and headed back the direction we come from for a few hours; the drunk brittish tourists (brickies) and of course – they only had squat toilets! We had a ball!!
We finally arrived in Chaing Mai and was greeted by our hotels driver, who was somewhat anoyed at the fact that the train was 2 and half hours late (and he had been waiting for us the whole time). We slept for the rest of the day, ready for a next set of tours the following day!
More to come soon…love all you guys and miss you heaps. Sorry about the spam on the comments site, we have kinda fixed the loophole.
Thailand…well the story if I had blogged two days ago would have been very different to the story that I am going to share with you today.
Arriving in Thailand was the biggest culture shock we have faced to date. After being in Singapore for a week and quite comfortable, to arrive in Thailand was a bit of a shock. We walked the streets the first day in absolute shock at how overt the sex tourism industry is over here. The images that we saw on our first day included many older western men with young asian girls in bars, walking down the street, at restraunts; many young girl scantly dressed hanging out in bars, flashing other customers; men on the street flashing cards of children “for sale” to westerner walking by… it was a bit of a shock after being in such conservative Asian countries. After the initial outrage – and Matt wanting to beat up some middle aged western men with young Thai girls – we have realised that it is quite a complex situation.
The next morning we sat in our quaint little back packers “Suk 11″ and spoke with a lady who is doing research into people trafficing. She is actually here to see what NGOs are doing to work on the issue inorder to impliment some interventions in Australia, where apparently we have our own problems! Talking with our friend Wei who has been working in Bangkok for the last twelve months, she said that most of the women that we see as tourists are there (to some degree) of their own volition. It is seen as a big status simble for Thai women to marry western men and the western men generally help the entire families. From what we can gather it is not uncommon for lonely western men to come to Thailand in search of love. Love is a concept for those who can offord it and many of the Thai women see it as their duty to their families to make a good match with a wealthy westerner. So that begs the question who is using who…etc, etc…it is only when you are on holidays that you have time to think about these things.
There is a problem with people trading here, however, apparently they are the “workers” that you generally don’t see on the street. Generally it is the women, girls and boys that “service” the Thai population that are the ones bought from the poor rural families. It makes my blood boil and hence my 10 year plan to change the world is beginning to take shape :) …in Maccas were we took refuge – somewhere familiar and safe.
So that was our first day. Since then we have realised that there is a bit more to Thailand – thank God – because we were wondering what we were going to do for our four weeks that we are here for! Our mate Wei took us out to a restraunt last night called Condoms and Cabbages, which was established to raise awareness of family planning and combat the spred of HIV. It was a very classy restraunt with a bit of a fun twist – the food was fantastic too! It was great to see Wei and she was very generous with her local knowledge, letting us know the amount we should pay for a Tuk Tuk ride and telling us the places to visit around town. She also took us to the largest open air market in the Southern Hemisphere today – it was great! There is a really good range of clothes, homeware…everything, things are cheep and they seemed to be a decent quality. I am beginning to see why people recommend Thailand for good shopping. As Matt and I have been saving so much to go away we are finding it difficult to get back into buying things, especially for ourselves. So in four hours of shopping all we bought was a singlet top for $3 for myself!
This evening we caught a movie…”Meet the Fouckers”…prior to the movie we had to stand for about a minute while a tribute to the king was played prior to the feature. They love the king over here. The really beautiful thing is that the king really seems to love his people as well. He has no problem speaking against the corruption in the government, though I think that he has little real power.
Tonight we were feeling a little home sick so we decided to dine at the Outback Aussie Restraunt. We learnt a bit about what Australian cuisine is :) I think that I will stick with the local tucker from now on.
We are heading to the travel agents tomorrow to make some plans for the next three weeks, I can see beaches and northern hill tribes will probably enter into it.
Thanks for the emails, prayers, SMSs, phone call…we feel very loved…even if we do get a little home sick from time to time. Oh and my registration has come through from the UK!
We are sitting at the FREE Internet terminal at the Singapore airpot, about to board our plane for Thailand and I thought it was appropriate to write a quick blog about how wondeful Singapore is. The streets are clean, the people are wonderful and the services are exceptional – where else can you get FREE Internet access.
Yesterday we thought we better venture out a little beyond Orchard Road and the Sim Lim Square (more on Sim Lim Square later); we decided to go to Santosa Island — A little island just south of mainland Singapore (a bit like Phillip Island cross with an amusement park). Santosa was great, we caught the cable-car from the mainland and explored the island on the free mono-rail. Our first stop was the Santosa beach, with it’s beutiful sand and clear water – we decided to relax for a few hours in an outdoor recliner with a few beers as we watched the sun go down. Second stop was the amazing sound and light show (apprently it cost 4 million to produce) – it was truely incredible, I could just imagine my nieces screaming with delight at the show!
Sim Lim Square is one of the many IT shopping centres, 6 floors of IT goodness! There were litterally hundreds of shops selling every gadget you could possibly imagine. I was in heaven!! After about the 5th hour of window shopping, Philippa mentioned to me that if we stayed for another minute she would jump over the edge of the 4th floor. I guess I was a bit selfish :P
Our plane leaves in 20 mins, so I better scoot. Love you all heaps and will try and upload the pics of Santosa in Thailand!
I would like to make it clear that I’m not trying to claim that the Indonesian’s have developed a fantastic Time Machine hidden in a phone booth that can zoom us to any place or time in history, but where else in the world can you complain when you pay 40c for a bottle of coke (which is in a glass bottle, and requires a bottle opener to open) as it is to expensive. Bali is amazing, and not what I was expecting at all (pffft… Lonely Planet Guide… You SUCK!!).
Last night we were invited to a “special school function” by Jimi Hendrix himself. Apparently some of the local school kids had put together a show of local Balanise dancing and Kung Fu. We were offered a lift by Jimi and were told that there was no cost (which obviously made us VERY suspicious). At anyrate, fearing for our lives we agreed… but weighing up the pros and cons we realised that there was little chance of anything happening as we knew that other westerners would be attending and also the fact that Jimi was pretty well known around town – he is the barber, taxi driver and music club teacher; fortunately we accepted the offer – we had a great time watching the four and five year olds perform. I hope that the photos (when we get a chance to upload them) do the evening justice, so far the highlight of the trip!
I decided to follow my big brother Miks lead and get a hair cut the following morning,… how many people can say they got their hair cut by the one and only Jimi Hendrix!
At 11.00AM our lift arrived and we headed towards Ubud, the trendy arts district of Bali (a bit like Daylesford or Montville). Thr trip took about 5 hours via the famous Bali volcanic hotsprings (*yawn*), waterfall, water temple and monkey forrest (which was soooooo cool). Philippa won’t let me get a pet monkey ;(
Off to McDonalds, umm, I mean Singapore tommorow. Looking forward to the Gin Sling and will try not to get arrested for ashing in public :P Miss you all heaps and can’t wait for my first bloody email (you slackers)!!
So we have gotten a little streetwiser since our last blog. A little wiser at identifying scams and at engaging in the art of barginning. We hit Kuta art market with a new fury bargining, haggling and walking away with our 2 dollar T-shirts.
We have learnt a new phrase which seems to stop people from hasseling us, not because our Bahasa is great but because they kill themselves laughing – Tidak, Terima Kasih, which literally means “No, thank you”. We seem to be the laughing stock of the market, which we don’t mind, we’d rather be clowns than prey! We were doing so well until we went to post a present home for our nephew and it hit home that we should have bought him something a little smaller (I will not disclose what we bought because it is in the mail), the postage cost four times what the present cost!!! Another lesson learnt, when buying presents to send home keep them small!!
Yesterday we packed our bags and boarded a bus to Lovina (via many craft shops, temples and apparently a volcano which we couldn’t see because it was fogged in). It was a really interesting day learning about the impact the Hinduism has on the Balinese everyday lives, from the way they build their houses to the way they conduct business.
Lovina is a sleepy little town – and apparently we are pretty sleepy too! After getting caught in a tropical down-pour this morning we decided the day was against us and went back to bed for three hours! We have a very fancy garden view room in a very fancy resort for USD$17, because it is the low season at the moment. Our resort is right on the beach, however the beach is a bit off putting because it has black volcanic sand and doesn’t appear as inviting as our Australian beaches. It is beautiful here though, it is much more tropical than the southern part of the island, with surrounding hills, banana trees, coconut trees and rice fields everywhere. Loving it!! The pace is a lot different here than Kuta and Matt and I are soaking it up!
Love you all (sorry if we haven’t replied to your emails, we are having trouble opening g-mail at some of the internet cafes). Will post soon – promise the next one will be from Matt! And photos coming soon also, probably when we hit Singapore in a couple of days with faster internet connections :)
Phew…Kuta…what can we say???
In 48 hours we have been the major prize winner of a hotel giveaway and then had it declined because we are not over 28; we have walked km’s of dusty roads looking for an air conditioned shopping centre; we have paid US$35 for a manicure and peticure for both of us (they saw us coming); and have paid at least double what we should have for all of the souvineers that we have bought – and we’re loving it! Well it took us a little while to recover when we realised how much we had been ripped off by….we just had to get it all into perspective again! We have been offered drugs and sex more times than you can count on all our fingers and toes combined…
Kuta beach isn’t much to write home about, Matt has taken some photos that only Tom would appreciate (artistically speaking of course). The $14 dollar a night hotel is comfortable and the complimentary “American Breakfast” sometimes comes as we ordered it and tastes, um…..um…okay. But we’re having the time of our lives!!!!
Last night we stumbled past Poppies and the name sounded familiar…some famous restraunt…then Matt realised the reason it was so familiar is that we had read about it in the travel warnings before we left home :) seasoned travellers we are, going to all the places that we shouldn’t go. It is very quiet over here at the moment, which makes us a little sad for the Balanese who primarily rely on Tourism for their income. That’s why we don’t mind being ripped off so much.
We’re heading up north in a couple of days to see the country side and the northern, quieter, dutch built resorts…the pictures look amazing!
Love you all and am really enjoying reading your comments.
Just a quick note to anyone who may checking here that we have arrived safely. We are sweltering in a dodgy little internet cafe here in Kuta that won’t let us check our email (the browser is too old). Will write again soon with a proper update and hopefully some photos! xxooxx
We are still putting the finishing touches on our site, please stay tuned cause there is going to be something really exciting here soon. (Mondayish)
Matt and Phil