Cambodia & Vietnam

Phew. So as you can see, there's a lot to cover, and not even sure I can remember it all!

Angkor Wat in Siem Reap was brilliant. The temples were beautiful and the information about the empire and how the temples were constructed was fascinating, particularly how they mixed Hinduism and Buddhism depending on the particular kings religious leanings. In the carvings on one of the later temples, Angkor Thom, from the 12th century they even mixed in scenes of every day life with the more standard myths and battle scenes, showing things such as women giving birth, a "china town" market, people playing chess, fishing, etc. We went up on our own the afternoon we flew in and just walked around, but got a guide for the next day which was absolutely worth it. Our guide was incredible, he had this encyclopedic knowledge of the Kmher Empire, and also spent hours telling us about Cambodia's more recent - and tragic -history. Apart from the rule of the Kmher Rouge and genocide which were obviously horrible, they really aren't too fond of the Vietnamese.

Oh yea, and there were some monkeys running around and on the first day, in trying to entice the monkey closer to me for a picture, I accidentally gave it a beer (yes, I just figured out that I could add pictures to the blog):

And, technically, it wrenched it from my hands, so consider that before you judge me.

From Siem Reap we took a boat to the capitol Phnom Penh which was sunny and quite nice (brushed up on the tan - finally). In Phnom Penh we went to the Teul Sleng Genocide Museum, which is actually on the site of the high school that was turned into the prison where over 20,000 people were imprisoned, tortured and eventually killed. It was turned into a museum only a year after the Khmer Rouge fell, so it's basically all still in tact and is extremely eerie, sad and disturbing, but definitely worth the trip. We were also going to make our way to the killing fields, but it started to monsoon when we left, so, since we were pretty wrecked, we just headed back to the hotel.

From Phnom Penh we took a bus to Ho Chi Min City (Saigon) in Vietnam. We loved Saigon, it's a really cool, bustling city and - as you can see from the picture, the traffic there is crazy. There's about 7 million people in the city and over 3 million motorbikes, so you can basically do the math.
We spent 3 days there and had a great time. One of the highlights was the War Remnants Museum (formerly the "American War Crimes Museum," which is unfortunately pretty apt). It was very well done, although again, extremely sobering and depressing. Still it was probably the best museum I've been to on the entire trip. We also took a day trip out to the Cu Chi tunnels which was good, and we went to the "Worlds Only Water Puppet Theatre." It consisted of live musicians on either side and then about 10 short acts with these "magical" puppets that came out floating in this big pool of water - "how do they do it?!?!?!." Surprisingly, "Boy Returns to Village After Winning First Prize in National Exam" was quite boring, while "Protecting Ducks and Chasing Foxes" was hilarious (yes, I've also just realised that you can use italics).

From Ho Chi Minh we took a lovely night train to Nha Trang. On Keith's advice we skipped Nha Trang and went straight to Paradise Resort on a little beach 45 minutes away, Doc Lech. We were there for a couple days and it was great to just relax, swim and read. There was very little around, so all 3 meals were included. The place is run by Cheri, an eccentric and hilarious croatian-french 82 year old man, now living with his 30-something year old "wife." He has 4 kids, all boys, the first two in their 60's and the second two 8 and 10 years old! Apparently living on a beautful beach in Vietnam with a wife 50 years your junior is a great way to stay young!

The meals were great and we met some nice people, particularly a middle-aged Texan who had sold his house and was travelling around S.E. asia for a year. Poor guy was too nice for his own good and had some incredible stories about getting ripped off in Vietnam, but these are probably better told in person with a lilting Southern accent. He was really interesting though, and great company.

From Doc Lech it was a night bus (slightly better than the one in Laos, individual seats that go all the way back, about the size of the passenger seat in a car) to Hoi An, a little tailor town, which was quite beautiful. I got a coat made and Michael had some shirts done, and we splurged on some seriously delicious crab. From there, we went on to Hue and My Son (the very old temple remains from the Cham Empire - which they keep telling you not to compare to Angkor, probably because it's not nearly as good).

Like Saigon we really liked Hanoi, it's quite beautiful with a lake in the centre of the old town and a French area with old colonial architecture. We had some good food and visited temples, museums, etc. It was raining like crazy though, so one night we sought refuge in the Hanoi Cinemateque. Everything is either subtitled in English or in Vietnamese (if originally in English), so it obviously doesn't cater to the local crowd, but it was really cool. It's this artsy cinema set in an old French-style building with a cafe in the courtyard. When we went they were having a Mexican film festival, so we went to see "El" by Lusi Bunuel from the 1950s, which was brilliant - kind of like the original Sleeping With The Enemy.

Once the rain cleared up a bit we were free to book our 2-night, 3 day cruise in Halong Bay. This was probably one of the highlights of the trip so far. Halong Bay was beautiful, with these massive limestone carsts jutting out of the water. We had one night on the boat and another night on a large island, Cat Ba island, where we also got to cycle during the day. The weather was great and we had a good crowd on the cruise, particularly these two Danish guys who insisted on a " Booze Cruise!!" - Michael and I backed out after the 2nd bottle of whiskey was ordered! They ended up with a 3rd half-empty one in the morning that neither of them remembered ordering...Booze Cruise!!!

After Halong Bay we were back to Hanoi in order to fly to Hong Kong to meet Keith and Lindsay!

Since in reality I'm already in Shanghai at this point and this post is already ridiculously long and I need to run (we're going to go splurge and try Kobe beef for the first time!) I think I will leave China for another day, perhaps even some good ol' face to face conversation :)

Hope all is well and can't wait to see everyone! xx Jo

Laos: Vang Vieng + 4,000 Islands (Don Khone)

Woahhhh...it's been a long time since I last posted! Will try to piece it all together - apologies if you've heard some of this before :)

So....after Luang Prabang, we got a 7 hour bus south to Vang Vieng - the tubing capitol of Laos. I'll let Michael describe the bus trip, as it had a more profound effect on him:

"The road which looped up and down and round and around the mountains provided some absolutely magnificent views. Unfortunately, I spent a good part of the journey sitting down stairs with a middle aged Chinese woman, each alternatively vomiting into our own tiny plastic bags. I'm not sure whether she realised it but we were actually racing to see who would fill their bag first, and thanks to a traditional Laos stew of basil, coriander, lemongrass, dill and what looked like ragwort, I won!

Feck the Chinese! That night the medal for the 200km Hurl went to Ireland."

During this ordeal a man across the aisle also passed me a note behind michael's back as he was hunched over and looking queasy: "What's his problem?" Michael was not impressed, but as it turned out later he was a very nice Turkish guy who was wondering if he could offer assistance - so it was all just lost in translation.

The thing to do in Vang Vieng is tubing down the Mekong river surounded by the gorgeous mountain landscape. You basically get pulled into a bar every 50 meters for a drink, free shot of Mekong whiskey (if you want it - we didn't!), and a giant swing or zipline into the river to cool off. It was a great day, perfect weather, and we met some really nice people along the way.

After Vang Vieng it was on to Vientiane, Lao's capitol, where we caught an overnight bus down to the 4,000 islands in the Mekong River. The bus was composed of two rows of beds with both a "top bunk" and "bottom bunk." Seemed comfortable enough, but to my uncontained amusement we soon realised that the beds (about 3 1/2 feet by 5 feet) were actually meant for 2 people, rather than one. Not exactly "western style proportions." At least we weren't one of the 10 unfortunate people who were put at the back of the bus in rows of 5 - like a giant slumber party full of German strangers!

My plan to work on my tan in the islands wasn't exactly the best, particularly because of serious rain, but nonetheless it was a lovely couple of days on quite a rual and beautiful island (electricity only from 6-10 pm, and most of the island used for farming rice). It was mainly just reading and relaxing between meals, but our 2nd day was a little more adventurous than we had planned.

We rented bikes and rode down to the south of the island, where it's possible to rent a small boat to go out in the river to see the rare and nearly extinct fresh-water irawaddy dolphins. It had been showering a bit, but didn't seem like it would rain. So we went out in the little boat with a local guy and about 30 seconds out it started to rain...and then pour...and then hail. Suddenly we were out in the middle of the relatively wide river in this tiny boat, the mist and rain preventing us from seeing the shore, being hammered by rain. As we laughed nervously and gestured that we should go back, the motor suddenly puttered out and wouldn't restart. Hmm. the "skipper" went to the front and began paddling - forward, rather than back. I handed michael a board on the bottom of the boat to paddle with and tried to help out with my hands as we scrambled, totally soaked towards shore, where there appeared a little hut with a woman and a baby and the standard packages of food and cans of soda and beer.

We smiled and sat under the hut, out of the rain. Looking around I suddenly noticed something -- the typical signs and cans of beer Laos were instead Angkor beer - "My country, my beer." Hmmmmm.The skipper smiled, "Oh yea, this Cambodia!" Holy illegal border crossing!

Luckily the border police never came, and on the up side, we were actually able to see a lot of dolphins from the shore - seemed like they were almost playing in the rain, and we made it back safely to shore once the rain had subsided.

After our adventure in Laos (that actually continued with "scary-dilapidated-bridge-crossing-in the-pouring-rain-with-a-bike + leech," which I've decided to leave out for our mothers' sake) it was on to Pakse to fly to Siem Reap for our legal border crossing to Cambodia. Siem Reap is the city closest to spectacular Angkor Complex, which consists of lots of temples built by the former Kmher empire kings - the main attraction, Angkor Wat, is the world's largest religious monument.

More on that soon!

Chiang Mai + Luang Prabang

Hey everyone!

So, been a while now since the last entry and I'm sure you've all been waiting with baited breath for the next installment...brace yourselves, it has arrived!

We took the overnight train with cool sleeper bed/seat contraptions to Bangkok from Ko Tao (which was perfect as I mentioned before - found this little rasta bar with friendly staff and fire spinning and we went snorkeling and I saw 3, count them, 3 sharks!). We then flew from Bangkok to Chiang Mai, in the north of Thailand, a.k.a the "cultural capital of Thailand" or, where everyone goes to trek. In Chiang Mai we stayed at this nice laid back guest house where we organised whitewater rafting+home stay+"flight of the gibbon."

Whitewater rafting was a lot of fun, in large part due to the hilarious antics of one of our guides, Ping Pong. Oh, Ping Pong! After that we went to the village where flight of the gibbons operates and where we learned, to my immense disappointment, that there weren't actually any Gibbons. Apparently they all got freaked out by everyone growing tea and coffee in their home and moved to Laos. "Oh, you'll see why it's Flight of the Gibbon, you move among the trees with your feet never touching the ground..." gee, thanks. After this crushing development, we met our homestay host, an extremely friendly woman named Arun (sp?). She was a great cook and the majority of the evening was spent eating her delicious food and using a thai-english dictionary to communicate word by word. We were "feeling" "happy."

In the morning we went to get strapped in for flight of the gibbons--basically a series of zip-lines through the jungle canopy - which was actually quite cool and a lot of fun, despite the aforementioned false advertising re: gibbons. After that it was back to Chiang Mai for a day of relaxation and shopping in the Sunday market. Special deal for us!

After that we signed up for an all day cooking class and learned the secrets of Thai cooking (hot wok, oil, sugar, chilies and coconut milk from what I could see). We got to eat everything we cooked so all around it was a delicious experience, and we both passed the course with a certificate to prove it. One of the highlights of the class was the sassy female chef, Meow. She gave us the classic line that thai ginger was "good for boom-boom," but then also added that she had tried it on her boyfriend and it was "bullshit, only make him gassy!" Oh, Meow!

We capped off our time in Chiang Mai, meeting up with a friend of a friend, Brent, who was practically a local after 9 years there. We went to a typical Chiang Mai bar complete with pool hustling waitress for some Thai beer and Whiskey (which is actually rum), and then dragged Brent to a thai boxing match. Brilliant.

We're just finishing up our time now in Luang Prabang (northern Laos), which has been great. Luang Prabang is a beautiful little world heritage town, where, somehow, everything - the slightly crumbling french buildings, cafes, and silk/craft shops - seems to be incredibly well-lit, like the whole place is an art gallery. Laos is more laid-back then Thailand, less hassle from people on the streets, and really beautiful landscape with lots of families and kids everywhere.

We chilled out for the first day (more shopping...must avoid night market in future) and then booked ourselves onto a two day tour to see the caves (lined with Buddhas), waterfalls, kayaking, and a morning "mahout" or elephant-keeper course and elephant riding. The elephants were the highlight. We woke up at 6 to give them their morning bath and then after breakfast went for a ride through the jungle (note to self: observing giant spiders somehow less scary when atop an elephant...). Then we got to feed them and the 6 month old baby elephant bananas! The baby also tried to nibble my sandal and toe - OMG.

Definitely hoping to have more close-encounters with animals. One of the women that we met on the tour had just come from volunteering at the Tiger Temple in Thailand for 3 months...I'm profoundly jealous still.

Now we're taking the bus down to Vang Vieng for some tubing, and then on to the Mekong Islands to try to bolster my fading tan.

Hope all is well back at the homestead(s)!

xx Jo

Bangkok + Ko Tao

So...Michael and I arrived in Bangkok last Wednesday and spent two nights there in this super nice hotel, Siam@Siam, with an infinity pool on the 11th floor....sweet. We met up with a family friend of Michaels, Rory, who's been travelling for the last year, which was cool. Went to this swanky rooftop bar called the Nest, and avoided the ping pong shows :)

After that we took an overnight bus/ferry from Bangkok to an amazing Thai island, Ko Tao. Today, we just abandoned a perfectly decent hostel for a nicer cabana down the road! We are some seriously classy backpackers :)

Basically have just been lying around in the sun for last couple days, and didn't do much more in Bangkok either --apart from getting some tailored suits made and getting drunk on "pina coradas" in Koa San road-- but it's a welcome change to the hectic last week in Dublin! (We just managed to move our lives into Michael's parents' attic, in not so clearly labeled bags and boxes).
After a little more sun and relaxation and snorkeling down here, we'll head up north to Chang Mai, where we'll be trekking, white water rafting, and zipping through the jungle canopy with the Gibbons! Much more active, but I'd say we'll be ready for it after our beach time.

Hope all is well at home! xx Jo