Vietnam, The Return!

I worried a lot about the next part of the trip; the border crossing from Cambodia to Vietnam. Did I have the right visa? Would I get across the border? Would I get the right bus? Would the bus drop me in the right place? The bus was 11 hrs long from the Khmer capital to Ho Chi Minh. In that time I almost missed the bus because my transfer didn’t show, we got stuck in a 5km long queue for a ferry which we bypassed in 5mins by each paying an extra USD2! The bus then got stuck half-on-half-off that ferry with smoke billowing into the bus, I almost got left behind at a toilet stop; the bus had started moving when I got on and my seat wasn’t fixed to the ground properly so I had an extra bit of swivel and bounce and squeak for 11 hours! Thankfully it all went right in the end, the bus even stopped in the street that I was looking for, the heart of backpacker area. Now I will tell you why Vietnam is awesome; the hostel cost me £5, I got invited out for a few drinks with my two roommates, we had a greek meal for £1, went to the local pub (hundreds of asian sized chairs lining the streets with alcohol being served from peoples houses), drinks cost 30p per beer and 60p per spirit and mixer! The next day I met Libby concluding my solo adventures but starting the next part of the holiday as the 3 mat salleh from Outward Bound. We spent time catching up and going to the War Remnants Museum which was quite harrowing as it has exhibitions on Agent Orange and some graphic stories and photos from photographers in the Vietnam War. The lifestyle of the Vietnamese is something else, we passed a park at around 6pm and there were hundreds of people there playing football, aerobics, badminton, roller skating, jogging, outdoor gym and the Vietnamese game which is like playing volleys with a giant shuttlecock! We met Alistair later on and he was buzzing from his time in Thailand. 3 mat salleh reunited for a week in Vietnam! We caught an overnight bus from HCM city to Mui Ne which is famed for its beach, sand dunes and watersports. Generally the strip where all the hotels are is just tourists but once we hired motorbikes to go explore we found more of the real Vietnam. A couple of miles inland there are some spectacular sand dunes, one lot are red the other white. I’m sure you’ve seen the pictures on fb. Sadly all the watersports were very expensive so we were spectators only. We all managed to get sunburnt despite wearing suncream and being used to exposure to the sun. One night in our dorm Alistair must of sleepwalked because he went to sleep in the bottom bunk and got woken up in the top bunk by our roommate coming in and asking him to move back to his own bunk! Luckily for Alistair we made friends with the roommate, Kat, and spent the next few days with her as we headed up to the hill station Dalat. The bus ride to Dalat was unforgettable, the road was in such a state of disrepair, I think only about half of the road was tarred, the rest was potholes! I still managed to sleep! Dalat was a little bit of a disappointment, it had been described as the Alps of Vietnam however the hills weren’t very steep or imposing and the town was fairly big. We still found some impressive waterfalls, crashed a wedding photo shoot and got a little too drunk after not very much; quite embarrassing really! Waiting for our bus back to Ho Chi Minh City a 9year old girl came up to us and just started having a conversation, she was practising here English for school. Incredible confidence from a 9 year old to approach 3 foreigners. She was a pretty cool kid, especially because she was a Phineas and Ferb fan. We stayed a night in HCMC where just wandering around the busy streets you would get offered cannabis from old men on street corners! Don’t worry of course we didn’t buy any! Libby got herself a new tattoo which she thinks says “love” in Arabic, poor soul, it actually says “Scotland”! We checked out Chu Chi tunnels the next day before we flew home. They are where the Vietnamese lived for years to avoid the Americans. Most of the tunnels are too small for western people to fit in, specially designed so as only the small Vietnamese could go in. The camouflage is incredible too, we couldn’t recognise any of the trap doors. The Vietnamese were brutal too, they set bamboo traps in the ground which to the Americans were invisible but once they stood on one they would fall through in to a pit of bamboo spikes! All in Vietnam was awesome again!

Cambodia: The Solo Venture

Since the three of us all know that we are hilarious we decided to play some April Fools! We fooled everyone hehe but apparently PT office staff managed to find out about Libby “going home”! I also got a wonderful rope burn during rappelling rescue training  After a week on-course the big travelling adventure was upon us. I was going to Cambodia on my own and Alistair to Thailand on his own for a Muay Thai camp, a week later we would both meet up with Libby in Vietnam. Leaving Alistair at the airport was quite daunting, for the next week we would both be in a foreign country alone for a week, knowing no-one and not understanding the culture or speaking the language. Our objectives were simple: Ali was aiming to be beaten up and I was avoiding it at all costs! I had an incredible experience in Cambodia and from what I hear so did Ali in Thailand. Almost immediately in the airport I got talking to people, it carried on from there; I met so many cool people. Although a lot of them were on similar itineries; travelling for a few months in Thailand, Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia; everyone had different experiences and perspectives. The highlight of Cambodia was definitely Angkor Wat temples. They are stunning! When I visited there was a lot of restoration work going on so parts of some temples were out of bounds. I went in at 5pm one night to see the sunset from a hilltop temple, after waiting over an hour it was clear it wouldn’t be very spectacular; the sky was cloudy and the horizon hazy, but at least there was a decent view for miles across the surrounding jungles and plains. I was up at 4:30am the next morning in the hope that sunrise would be more impressive; it was! I sat just outside “the” Angkor Wat with the sun rising behind it and reflecting in the pool in front of the temple. I got some pretty good photos on my phone camera and attempted to take some on my broken compact camera, unfortunately the camera on my phone malfunctioned that night so I only have one photo of my whole week in Cambodia; the one I posted on facebook! Strangely the main currency used is US$ but you get change in Khmer Riel. I hired a motorbike driver for the day to take me round all the temples. He took me to a lot of smaller temples without many tourists. The most spectacular temple in my opinion was Ta Prohm, the set for Lara Croft’s Tomb Raider (which of course I haven’t seen!), it was set in the middle of the jungle with the jungle completely taking over the temple. There were trees growing over the top of walls and fallen rocks everywhere, it felt otherworldly when I left the usual tourist track through the temple to explore other parts. At nearly all of the temples, street corners and many restaurants there are young children selling souvenirs although I'm not sure how much they personally benefit from the money they earn. I got a bus from Siem Reap where the temples are to Phnom Penh the capital and the views from the bus were extraordinary. I wasn’t sure whether I was travelling through SE Asia or the Middle East at some points, the land was so flat and dry and dusty. The sunset over the dusty plains was quite a site too. I’m not joking when I say hammocks are probably more popular than chairs in Cambodia, everywhere you look people are chilling in hammocks; side of the road, their houses, in cafes, in tuk tuks! Most of my time in Phnom Penh was spent visiting the S-21 prison and the Killing Fields of Choeung Ek, although I’ve already covered that in a separate blog post. The rest of the time I just wandered the streets getting to know the city and how it works. One thing I didn’t understand was the food; normally its quite obvious what the local food is but here it just wasn’t so I ended up eating a lot of western food or expensive restaurant food, which was delicious but it was expensive and not really what Cambodian cuisine is like.