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Published: July 12th 2006
Greetings from Saigon, Vietnam (or Ho Chi Min city, if you wan't the proper name)
WARNING This blog is really, really long, sorry!
Where to begin?! How about the 5 days we spent in Phuket sunning ourselves? I know we are supposed to be backpacking on this trip, communal showers, dreadlocks, dirty hostels, that sort of thing. But the Karona Beach Resort & Spa was fantastic! Four star, walk in shower, marble free standing basins, waterfalls in the two-tier swimming pool......It was a glorious way to wind down after a few frantic cities.
I say wind down, we didn't cool down of course as the humidity is on the silly scale here, but we got the above hotel for 22quid per night, well under our budget. And not another 'traveller' in sight! Now, I'm not one for laying on the beach, which is a good job as Karon beach itself scores 1/10 at the moment. It's the low season, but you still wouldn't expect to see a beach covered in quite THAT much rubbish. I even wondered if it was left over from the Tsunami, that's how dirty it was, but was told it's just the low season! Luckily, Kata beach, 5 mins walk away was a lot nicer. The red flags were up, meaning swimming wasn't recommended, but most people seemed to ignore the 2 & 3 metre high waves and just had a splash, so we joined them. Got enormously sunburnt, one day on a sun lounger is more than enough for us two.
I must say, although Phuket was great fun, I can't help but wonder why people fly 12 hours from the UK to visit, if all they want is a sunny beach resort. For me, Phuket was just an Asian version of say, a Greek island, the same shops selling beach towels, the same sort of hawkers flogging you everything on the beach and the same sort of ice cream. I'm not sure if I was expecting too much, and while it was a great place to spend a few days, I'm not sure we'll hurry back. It is a total tourist trap. But the 3 t-shirts Ju bought for less than a fiver were a bargain, I'm sure they're all real and not copy cat makes at all.......
The best day we had, incidentally, was doing the very touristy James Bond Island tour, at a bargain of 550 Baht each. It's basically a trip in a longtail boat to the island where they filmed the Man with the Golden Gun in 1975. It's a magnificent setting, even though Nick-Nack wasn't there to greet us! The island has been spoiled somewhat by the 50 or so stalls that line the beach, car-boot style. And they're not quaint, traditional stalls selling hand made silk - they're trying to flog you pringles for 2 quid a tube!! No thanks!!
So, from Phuket, we flew on Air Asia again to Bangkok, only an hour away. I wasn't exactly looking forward to Bangkok, it has always sounded like a dirty, smelly hole, which people only visit on their way to someplace else! And while nothing about Bangkok made me want to hurry back, we still had lots of fun on our 4 days there.
The hotel definitley fell into 'budget' and I won't publish photo's of the bathroom in case any of you are eating right now. Suffice to say, every time you ran the tap, a small troupe of performing insects paraded out of the plughole and around the basin for our entertainment! Not roaches or spiders, otherwise I would have fled screaming, but yucky nonetheless. The room was secure though, and the bed was comfy - like Ju said 'what do you expect for 12quid a night?' ( No bugs, and preferably not a window held on with gaffer tape actually!! but there we go).
We arrived on the day England played Portugal, so after finding a decent looking Engrish bar, we showered (AGAIN!) and got to the bar for 8pm, k.o. being at 10pm here. For entertainment, we people-watched. Oh boy, loads of 50-something western men (most of them engrish, sad to say) with what I referred to as their 'rentals' (rent-a-date) or thai brides. Well, Thai hookers, lets not beat about the bush! It was so cringey, but hilarious as most people were just there to watch the footy but these sad losers were desperatley trying to talk to their very bored thai 'ladies'. Cringe! Anyway, the whole pub supported Engrand, and, well, not going to talk about the game except to say 'Ronaldo, you are a greasy, cheating, diving, show pony and I hope Rooney flattens you when the season re-starts'. There. Got it off my chest. Hope he cried when Cheat-ugal went out.
So, while waiting for our next tour of Cambodia & Vietnam to begin, we saw Bangkok's sights. Like a huge shopping mall called the Paragon! Not remotely an Asian thing to do, but we went to the cinema at Paragon to see Superman, just to escape the heat (and our hangovers). We were the only westerners in there, and we all had to stand to salute the king of Thailand (on screen, he obviously wasn't there in person!) before the film started. But hey, at just over 2 quid a ticket, we weren't complaining.
We paid the Grand Palace a quick visit - not because it was dull, but because you had to wear trousers and sleeves as a mark of respect, and it was BOILING, hence the whistlestop visit. We had a flash of inspiration too, and went to get our Cambodian visas at the Bangkok/Cambodia embassy. I was expecting it to be the ritz, but it was a guard dog, some barbed wire and a crappy shed of a building!! In we went, all nervous, because if they don't like you, they just don't give you a visa (!) and we were delighted when he stamped the paperwork and told us to come back at 5pm to collect. Result! Except a chinese man in a shed now had our passports all day....all's well that ends well though, otherwise I wouldn't be writing this now! The alternative was to get our visa at Poipet, the border, but we didn't fancy that as it can take upto 4 hours. eeek!
So, enough rambling about Bangkok, and it's many smells! Durians reek!
We got a cab across the city to check into our tour starting point hotel. This is when the fun started - the taxi driver bowed his head slightly at Ju, and then asked if he was a Kung-Fu master, completely with a straight face!! After I burst out laughing, and Ju had asked why he thought that, the now embarrased cabbie said 'because you big man - like Shaolin master'. WHAT!?!?!??!? Brilliantly funny moment and distracted us both from the fact it was taking an hour to get across town - Bangkok is a car park, with millions of moped scooting in between traffic, horns honking, chickens running around and little kids banging on the windows shouting 'coke!!You buy?!?!' Fantastic. The pictures dont do it justice.
We met up with our Intrepid tour leader (Intrepid being the company, and not an assessment of the guy's ability!), whose name was Ainsley. Nice chap, except he is a walking talking, Ricky Gervais look-a-like. So of course I told him that, no point getting off on the wrong foot! He's from Colchester, so much banter about footy etc. The rest of the group are - Neal & Caroline, she's a jock, he's English but with a Glasgow accent?! but very nice. Andrina & Simon from New Zealand - she's louder than me!! And, if anyone from NU is reading, she's Karen Auckland's double. Collette & Pierce from the USA - brother and sister. She's a blonde lollipop head, everything's 'Awesome! Yeah! Gonna be grrreat!!' but is actually very nice and Pierce has a bushy ginger beard and doesn't seem to drink. But we like him, because he truly is the only yank on the planet to understand sarcasm, and therefore me. Hurrah!
The rest are Megs from Adelaide (didn't like her at first because she said we couldn't call her Megan, because English people can't pronounce it properly...?! She says it ' Meeeaghan' and we say it Megggan'. Big Woop.), Jade & her mum Violet from Kent, although Violet is Malaysian and I have this huge desire to call her Iris.??. Jade is very quiet, haven't heard a great deal from her yet. Last, but not least is Alice, from DenverColorado. No, there shouldn't be a space there, that's how she says it, although everyone has to know she's a Noo Yorker, born and bred. She even says' Korrfeee' instead of Coffee, brilliant. Wasn't sure if I could cope with her at first, she's always asking what I think of Tony Blair - I couldn't give a monkeys about the smiley tw@t to be honest but I didn't want to get into a political debate about him & Bush with a yank!!! She's ok really.
We had to get from Bangkok to Cambodia, and you basically do that by taking a bus for 10 hours, over the border to Siem Reap, a town in Cambodia. Bear in mind, the first 2 hrs are in the Thai side, so, tarmac roads, toilet stops, petrol, that kind of thing. Then Poipet. Wow. It's like a scene from a war film. Mud everywhere, beggars, cows, chickens, bits of car, diesel in the air, people with limbs missing......not your usual holiday hotspot. I half expected someone to shout 'Mine!" and we'd all duck for cover. Essentially, you have your bags taken away (please dear god, don't let anyone stuff 40kg of crack into my bag!!), sweat it out in a shed while some fat, moustached official perused your passport and visa, while stamping away at it with various scary red-ink stamps. Then, triumphantly, you are allowed through.....to emerge into a sea of kids selling bananas, old ladies with limbs missing, traffic, more goats, chickens, mud etc and wait for the rest of the group while trying desperatley to spot your luggage.......It wasn't so bad really. Back on the bus, the fun really starts. It was more of a rebuilt 1950's milk float, than a bus, a bit like my dad's truck! It was air-con, but the road to siem reap has no tarmac, it's orange mud and holes. Big holes. The driver swerved to avoid them, making everyone feel a bit sea-sick, but when he did smack into a pothole (more like a bloody crater), someone usually got whacked by a falling suitcase. So, a fun 8 hours, but stunning scenery, paddy fields, ox-carts, more 4th world than 3rd world.
Siem Reap is the base for visiting Angkor Wat and the Temples of Angkor. These are basically enormous, old, amazing temples from centuries ago, that have mysterious faces carved into them. Some are semi-covered by the jungle too. Angkor Wat is considered number 2 on the list of places to see before you die. (Think Maccu Picchu is the current number 1). Is it really someone's job to complile an official list? There's a job i want!
We got up at 4.30am (!) and saw the sunrise over Angkor Wat, which was fabulous, as there were very few tourists around at that time. Again, the photo's are amazing, like something from a distant planet. In amongst all this stunning scenery, you can climb up the middle of the main temple, although there's no hand rail and the steps are 11th century. Alice went first, a gust of wind blew her skirt and everyone yelled 'black knickers!! She was more worried about not plummeting to her death though, as we found out, scrambling over loose rocks and bits of broken step. Ju then topped it all by managing to fall out of the window, landing on his nose!!! I must stress, it was an internal window frame, he didn't bounce down the outside of a temple. However, his nose has a nasty cut, and his ego is slightly bruised. I'm grateful he kept hold of the camera though, there's not a mark on it! For real fun, I got to put Germolene on him too, don't think Nursing is really my calling (Eh, Heather 😊 !!)
After the temples, Ainsley arranged a dinner for us all witrh a local family in a house on stilts. That was very humbling, sitting in this woman's house, eating the most scrummy potato & coconut curry (even Ju!) and various pork, garlic and noodle dishes. best food I've had in SE Asia. Afterwards, 20 or so of the local kids arrived and wanted to hold our hands, ask us our names and for us to genertally entertain them, which we happily obliged. We all agreed to dance with them, thinking it might be some traditional Khmer dance, but no. They put on the bloody Crazy Frog!! DING!DING!
After 30mins of literally throwing the kids around, the tuk-tuks arrived to take us back. Best Friday night out we've had in ages!
Off to the airport the next day, for a flight with Siem Reap airways (Yes, I panicked & sweated all the way there!!) to the capital of Cambodia, Phnom Penh. Can't say i really liked this place too much, the hotel had a seedy casino built into it and the breakfast may as well have been dog food. Hmm, actually....?! We did have a night out at the Green Vespa, and Ju & Neal were invited to play Hackysack with the locals. It's basically kicking a shuttlecock/beanbag thing up in the air and not letting it touch the ground. Caroline & I didn't see them for about 45 mins, until they returned covered in dust & sweat, turns out they'd been playing in the middle of the road!!!
We were in Phnom Penh to see the Genocide museum and the killing fields, where Pol Pot, the nut job dictator basically thought he'd slaughter nearly 2 million Cambodians in the space of three years, in the 1970's. I won't say much about it here, but it was very sobering & very sad. Kids were turned into soldiers and had to kill their families, that sort of thing. Then they were all buried in mass graves (the killing fields) and the bones are all still there, gruesomely on display. Luckily, Pol Pot is dead. Allegedly. He could be working with Elvis at Asda in Cambridge, but I think someone may have recognised him by now!
Phnom Penh was quite seedy, and nowt special in the food dept, so I was quite glad when we left, sailing down the Mekong Delta to Vietnam. We had to leave Caroline & Neal behind at the dock though - their visa was wrong by one day, meaning they had to fly down to Saigon! Vietnamese customs are buggers apparantley. Ainsley even tried a bribe, but to no avail. So the rest of us sailed along for 4 hours, did passport control surrounded by yet more lovely kids, all wanting to sell us stuff, for $1, hence the blog title. Adorable really, they just wanted to practice their English, which is much better than my Vietnamese! We got to Chau Doc, our bed for the night and stayed at a lovely hotel, overlooking a crazy market place. Ainsley organised a cyclo tour for us, basically an armchair strapped to the back of a push bike which a very small Viet guy pedals you along on! Good way to see the place, Vietnam is cleaner and more modern than Cambodia. Well, so far. Got a lot more of the country to see yet. Incidentally, we stopped for some Bia Hoi, the local firewater, and the barman produced some nibbles for us. Rat!!!!! I had to try a bit, it tastes like spare rib, but most people declined. That's yet another weird thing I've eaten, along with worm, lotus seeds and custard apples. Bia Hoi was 40p for 2 pints too! Brucey!
After another 5 hour bus journey, we arrived here in Ho Chi Minh city. I prefer to call it Saigon, (the old name) as it sounds nicer. Six million people live here, and so far most of them have stopped to stare at us or offer us a taxi. Used a local travel agent to book us a flight to Hong Kong too, cheaper than Expedia, I just hope she's got it right......
Had a bit of a big night last night, the last night of the first half of our tour. Most of us got in at 2am after an awful lot of Tiger beer! Six people leave today and three new ones join, so tonight will be interesting, I hope they're 'characters' so I can write about them!!! We go from here northwards, hoping to see loads more of the country, although they can keep their orange bumpy roads in Cambodia..............
Take care, hope some of you managed to read it all, I MUST get stricter and update this more often, but I actually filled up the diary NU bought for me, and I need a new one, to keep track of everything!
As always, leave comments on this blog or email us
Love Kelly & Julian xxx
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Vonnie
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For One Dollar - I Buy!!
Hey Kel! GREAT blog!!! I feel as if I am there with you!! You certainly seem to meet some characters along the way!! Loved the photos as well! A Karen Auckland look-a-like eh? Scary stuff!!! Can't believe you have filled up your diary already!!! We should have got you a 5 year one!!! Keep up the blogs!!! I really look forward to reading them and seeing the photos!! Vonnie x