Category: Round The World 2004

The bus journey was absolutely fine and the road in really quite good condition all the way, despite the pikey $3-50 bus company I’d sought out. Ironically we passed the gold plated $6 bus which was full of westerners on the road, it had stopped as it had been involved in an accident – I bet that held them up for hours, heh heh…. I was the only westerner on my bus which was otherwise full of locals. A nice spin off effect is that we stopped for lunch in a lovely local’s caff set on water with great food, I bet the western bus gets taken to the usual overpriced slop bucket. Only when we arrived at the bus station outside of Siem Reap did I know how much trouble I was in….

There were hundreds of touts, motorbike taxis, tuk-tuks, vendors, you name it, banging against the window pane beside me as the bus pulled to a stop, holding up cards of their guest house. The local guy that was sitting beside me was absolutely horrified by what he saw happening to me. With a deep breath I got off, and I can only liken it to some of these scenes you see on TV where a famous criminal is being hounded by hundreds of papparazzi as he’s led out of court, or football players from the team that just won the world cup as they leave the playing field. With no exaggeration, I was totally surrounded by 25 – 30 of these guys, all yelling at me, shoving cards and leaflets right into my face and hands all over my body. My backpack from the hold was quickly whisked away and I had to rip that out of the grip of the “lucky” guy that got to it first, then as the only means of escape I had to throw a few people to the floor and tip one guy on a motorbike over into the legs of some others and then run. It wasn’t overly pleasant but I was in genuine fear of being robbed. Thankfully I’m about a foot taller than most of them, how someone small would have supposed to have managed is a mystery!

It didn’t end there as I still had to find a way to town. I eventually got a moto-driver (hopefully not the one I tipped over!) to take me for 500 riels which is way under what they’d even take a local for. Another scam of course, they’re after commission from whichever guest house they take you to, apparently it can be as much as half of one night’s rent. Craftily I told him to take me to a bank I picked from the guidebook in the region where I wanted to be. He wouldn’t let it lie of course, insisting he take me to a guesthouse afterwards, and then to be my driver for the next few days. This is bad news of course. At the bank I paid him off with 4000 riels if he’d leave me alone, which he did. So my freedom cost me a dollar – not bad! Hotels that I subsequently walked into to check out were amazed and bemused that I’d managed to make it in the door, on foot, alone with a backpack. Normally the driver will follow the tourist in, demanding commission which the hotel has to pay just to get rid of him.

Anyway, the town seems nice enough if a little touristy. I’ve found out that there is another branch of Happy Herb’s here which is great news! You’re not allowed to ride your own motorbike to the temples here which is a shame, so tomorrow might see me on a push bike doing some sightseeing, otherwise I’ll have to take a moto-taxi all day which I hate.

I’m very impressed with Phnom Penh, I really didn’t expect too much from what I’ve heard and read, but it is quite an attractive clean city as far as I can tell, with quite a few interesting things to see and decent food (particularly the special pizzas!) and nightlife. I’ve stayed on an extra night, but am leaving in the morning by bus to Siem Reap. It’s meant to be a 7 hour journey, but from what I can gather that can go horribly wrong sometimes…

Meanwhile I’ve contacted BA and my insurance company to see about extending the trip a little bit, I’ve given into temptation! Details to follow once it’s all confirmed…

I somehow succeeded in getting up at 6:30 and caught my tour bus down to the Saigon river from where we went by boat to the estuary, then up the Upper Mekong to My Tho in the Ben Tre province where we took in a few local sights. Then we went across by bus to the capital of the delta, Can Tho, which was home for the night. I went out for dinner with a mad German that I was also sharing a room with, we expected it to be low key so we were still wearing our minging shorts and flip flops and stuff. However we somehow ended up in the Golf Club (odd name as it was in the centre of town with no sign of a golf course nearby) which was rammed with affluent young, trendy Vietnamese. We did stand out just a little bit, being the only two westerners in there and also the only people in shorts and flip flops, and with me being about 6 inches taller than the next nearest person in there. At 11pm they shut off the music and brought out a spin-the-wheel type thing which seemed to cause great excitement, which was followed by a slow song under soft lighting which was immediately followed by super-loud techno and flashing lights. All very strange..

Next morning we pottered about the floating market nearby and visited various coconut processing factories and a rice mill and all that kind of thing. This was followed by another boat trip up the lower Mekong to Chau Doc for our second night, in a beautiful thatched hotel complex a bit out of town. Local transport to and from town was quite fun, mostly by motorbike towing a trailer. I ended up sitting on the front of the trailer, just balanced on a little shelf of a seat, legs dangling down beside the back wheel of the bike which was quite a cheap thrill. The town seemed to shut down my 9pm so we went back to the hotel by push bikes which also tow trailers for you to sit in and forced the hotel to reopen their bar for a few more.

For the last day we started off in rowing boats, ours was being rowed by this pregnant woman which was a bit of a guilt trip, but the look of delight on her face when I tipped her 5,000 dong (15p) was well worth it as she was jumping up and down with joy. Later we reckoned that was probably somewhere between half and one day’s wages. Finally we caught our boat up the Mekong once more to the Cambodian border, at which point your moor up and go through your immigration formalities in a shed on the river bank, then on to Phnom Penh.

Dinner last night was hilarious – 4 of us went out to “Happy Herbs Pizza Place” which has a fairly bog-standard Italian menu, but if you precede the name of any dish by “Happy” or “Very Happy” when you order then you get an extra ingredient free of charge – marijuana. They forgot this vital component in one of the girl’s lasagne so the friendly waiter brought over a pot full of it for her to sprinkle on top, apologising profusely for his error!

The agency came through with the passport and so I have my Cambodian visa! I’ve also found out that the Laos visa-on-arrival stamps are small enough to fit in a gap that I have (from a very amusing bloke in the Lao Consulate here, he was fascinated by my passport. I suppose he doesn’t get to see many….) so all my options are open again. Tomorrow morning I’m leaving bright and early for a 3 day trip across the Mekong Delta and up to Phnom Penh by river.

Other than running around embassies, today has been fairly quiet. I did go for an 85p haircut and shave though. The haircut is good but the shave was fair agony, as I think the blades they use are not really up to Western-man stubble. He got through 3 blades on me and it felt like he was using a machete.

Had my lazy day yesterday and changed hotels to somewhere quieter and cheaper, and today have just got back from a tour of the Cu Chi tunnels, another relic of the American War (that’s the Vietnam War to me and you). A pretty good day out and you get to crawl 90 metres through these tiny little holes, most of the group bailed out through a side exit as soon as they got in as it was all a bit too much for them! There was also a chance to fire an AK-47, M-16 or a machine gun which I didn’t bother with myself but some people did. The noise they make is absolutely deafening!

Meanwhile I’m having potential problems with my Cambodia visa – as I think I mentioned before most immigration officials are retarded, and insist on putting their stamp on a completely blank page instead of using some of the other acres of room where existing stamps are. So far in Indonesia and Vietnam they happily buried some American stamps for the visas, but they are fussing for Cambodia even though I’ve got a page with just a poxy smudged Mexican stamp on it. I’ll find out my fate on that in a short while when I go to pick it up from the agency I found that was willing to go to the consulate and try. All being well I’ll probably up and leave tomorrow morning for a 3 day boat trip on the Mekong Delta and then up the river to Phnom Peng in Cambodia, if not then I’ll probably go back to Thailand and sit on an island 🙂

The slow trains are not half as nice as the expresses it turns out, but still fine. I shared my cabin with a German bloke and a 137 year old Vietnamese gentleman. I felt so guilty when he was trying to climb up the pegs they give you to get to the top bunk that I ever so generously let him sleep on mine. But it was good in a way as I didn’t have to look at the German bloke all night from the top 🙂 Just along from the door of our cabin which we kept firmly closed was the so called hard seat car, which is pretty much exactly what the name suggests. This was just a sea of Vietnamese people all piled up sleeping anyway that they could. Not pretty..

I’ve ended up in the backpacker zone of Saigon, can’t remember for the life of me what the road’s called but’s it’s the Khao San Road of Saigon. Not the prettiest of cities I don’t think on the whole so not too much point to hang around too long. I went to the palace today which is actually fairly modern, built in the 60’s or so, and is the root of much more Vietnam/American history of course with a rabbit warren of basement tunnels where the top brass could hide from bombs. It’s rather reminiscent of the Cabinet War Rooms in London for anyone that’s seen them.

Tomorrow I’m going to take it easy and lie in I think, and find ways to circumvent the problem of my bank card that expires in 2 days (how the hell did I not notice this before I came away!?) then I might take a day trip to the Chu Chi tunnels a little way out of town the day after. Then I’m considering a 3 day boat trip up the Mekong Delta, home of many floating markets and all that stuff which will end me up in Phnom Peng, capital of Cambodia. Then it’s a case of juggling dates to see if I can still fit in Angkor Wat, Laos and North Thailand or whether I need to bin Laos and North Thailand, or extend the trip. Too many decisions to make, *** sigh ***…

Had a lot of fun on the bike yesterday, went about 25Km north of Nha Trang to find the Ba Ho waterfalls and swimming holes, it was most interesting trying to find the dirt track that leads off the main road as nothing is signposted, but with the help of about 300 locals I eventually got there. Lovely little spot, there’s no track really, just some red arrows painted on the rocks here and there and a few staple hoops to help you climb the steepest bits. I managed to secure a waterhole to myself which was nice, lovely warm water but somewhat full of algae, so who knows what new diseases I’ve picked up now. Later I went to a couple of big Buddhas that are hanging about on a hillock.

After that had an early night, as the previous night I accidentally got talking to some people in a beach bar called the Sailing Club and crawled out at 4am. I had a reasonably early start today anyway to go on the boat trip, which was OK but nothing spectacular. There were a lot of Vietnamese on board, many of whom seemed to be seasick so we missed out some of the things we were meant to be doing I think for their benefit.

I’m going for a bit of food now and a couple more beers to try and get in the mood for the night train, I’m pretty tired so it should go well. I’ve deliberately chosen a slow train this time as the expresses are too fast and arrive at Saigon too early! (hard to believe in Vietnam, but..)

I shared the 4-man cabin with three senior Vietnamese hydro-electric engineers, on their way to Nha Trang to check on another new dam/powerstation in the south here somewhere. They were friendly enough but the dodgy English was hard work after about the first 8 hours.

Now I’m in Nha Trang, the bloke that was meant to pick me up from the station last night to take me to a hotel I reserved never materialised (big suprise) so I found somewhere else and stayed there instead. Today I’ve moved to a lovely place with sea views and all mod-cons. The weather is fantastic and ridiculously hot, for some reason Nha Trang’s dry season is the reverse of most of Vietnam so we’re basking in it at the moment. The beach is beautiful too, with the brochure-style turquoise seas and all of that. I think tomorrow I’ll get another death bike and do the local-ish sites which consist of various pagodas and waterfalls and stuff, then the day after take a boat out to the islands. The tour I’m looking at is renowned for the pisshead Vietnamese guide they have!

Not the most exciting day out ever, the DMZ tour to be brutally honest. Not for the amount of driving involved anyway. Would be better for yanks to be patriotic I’d imagine. We went down the Vinh Moc tunnels in a very spectacular coastal setting, a very well preserved rabbit warren of tiny passageways going down to 23m below surface. There were built by the Vietnamese civilians for shelter purposes. Next we stopped at the Rockpile, which is, errrrrrr, a pile of rocks but was the site of some serious battles apparently. Then there was the site of some bridge which is no longer there, over the river dividing north and south vietnam. Next was a minority village stop which is really nothing more than a chance for the annoying kids to try and extort money from you. Final stop was the famous Khe Sanh American airbase, but again there is little of it left, apart from a huge area where nothing can still grow after the huge bloodshed, and loads of bullet casings strewn all over the place.

Chickened out on a Minsk but have got a little Honda bike for today, so have toured around some tombs near to Hue. It’s been quite interesting trying to drive around here, as there is basically only one road rule – try not to hit anything. Tomorrow morning I’m catching my trusty E1 “express” train from here down to Nha Trang, it’s a 12 hour journey starting at 11am, and I have a sleeper car, so I’ve got 36 hours in bed starting from tonight! I could have got an overnight bus instead, but the lure of a full bed in a train is just too tempting…

Time for the first dinner of today. I’m having to eat four meals a day as the portions are so small!

The Halong trip was absolutely amazing! There were 8 of us on it out of a possible 16, two English lads, an American and English girl, another older English bloke with his wife who quickly turned out to be total wankers, and a rather strange Czech bloke from Prague, called “Czech” who spent the entire trip either drinking beer, smoking or videoing anything and everything. The boat was incredible and rather like a floating 5-star hotel (relative to traveller’s terms, anyway) brand new but done in traditional style and extremely large and comfortable. We had a great guide, crew and food as well. We cruised out into the bay on the first day and did some swimming in the very warm waters, Czech providing much amusement in his Speedo. Then it was mealtime, which turned into a game of “who can avoid sitting with the wankers” from there on. Czech had paid an extra wedge for air conditioning, and whilst I was up on the sun deck at night with the other lads and Czech, drinking beer, the girls stole the air con remote from Czech’s cabin and turned on the units in their cabin and mine as well which was blessed relief. Unfortunately they turned it on at 16C so it was bloody freezing but still probably better than sweating it out all night.

Next day we stopped off at a big limestone cave, in keeping with the ruggedness of the 2,000 or so limestone islands that make up Halong Bay, then went kayaking across to a floating community. We stopped off at the (floating) school because our guide fancies the teacher there and so he stops every day to ask her some irrelevant question. They were tandem kayaks and of course, I had Czech in mine who was something of a nutter behind the paddle. All of us easily managed to leave the Wankers well to the rear, even though they are allegedly “experts” in the field.

Arrived back to Hanoi in the evening and went for dinner with the new gang, and just managed to leave in time to catch my 11pm train. This was yet another very pleasant night train journey, with a nice rough track so you really get some good rocking motion going on. So now I’m in Hue which seems to be a pretty reasonable small city and certainly a lot cheaper than Hanoi. Tomorrow I’ve stupidly booked myself on a DMZ (DeMilitarised Zone) tour which picks me up at 6am – what was I thinking! It takes you to various tunnels and whatnot, will find out exactly what tomorrow I suppose. Next day I might rent a Russian Minsk death trap motorbike and check out the tombs a little way out of town, but not too sure yet.