Whilst the bacteria from Neil and Emma's chicken currys were busy festering and reproducing inside their tummies, we caught the evening train to Agra. They mustn't see many white people at Agra railway station because we spent our entire two hours there (waiting for our late train) being gawped at by mass crowds of Indians, having our photographs taken and being hounded (and attacked) by grubby street children.
Our Indrail Passes allowed us to travel in 2AC class, a two-tier air-conditioned sleeper carriage with surprisingly comfortable bunk beds hanging by chains from the ceiling. Clean bedding and good food were provided; it was all very civilised. The train had to go slowly because of the thick fog and we didn't arrive in Agra until 4:30am, four hours behind schedule. We reached our hotel at 5am and fell into bed exhausted.
Neil started vomiting at 10am. And other things. And Emma too. They spent the whole day in bed, and in the bathroom. I spent the day chatting to other travellers on the rooftop terrace, chortling at the antics of the monkeys climbing on the surrounding buildings, and squinting through the mist at the Taj Mahal nearby.
The next day Neil and Emma were still very poorly but they managed to get out of bed for our one-day tuk-tuk tour of Agra. First we visited the Taj Mahal, an exquisitely beautiful mausoleum rendered in white marble and semi-precious stones. The entrance fee was a con; 25p for Indians and 9.75ukp for tourists. The freezing shroud of early morning mist made it impossible to take any really good photographs but it heightened the mystique and deadened the din of the traffic buzzing and peeping around in the streets outside the perimeter walls.
From the Taj Mahal we went to see the so-called "Baby Taj", a smaller and older, but in my opinion more satisfying (cheaper and less crowded) mausoleum on the other side of the river. We had a foggy look across the river at the back of the proper Taj Mahal and I had a go at driving the tuk-tuk (great fun), then we visited a carpet factory. Neil and Emma came over all poorly again so we headed to the railway station for our night train to Bombay, with a connection at Matura Junction. Predictably, the connecting train was two hours late, which caused us more than a little stress, especially considering Neil and Emma were still rather loose in the toilet department.
I didn't see much of Bombay but the bits I did see seemed quite nice. We'd only been there a few hours before it was time to catch yet another night train to Goa. We arrived at our (pre-booked) hotel in Candolim at 11am on the 23rd. Time to relax at last.
I have to say, Christmas away from home/clip was absolutely rubbish. I won't be doing it again. I'm sure it would have been better if clip had been here with me but, and nothing against Neil and Emma, it was very lonely. Christmas might as well not have happened. Christianity is a minority religion in India so Christmas is not celebrated to the same extent as it is in England, but for those that do celebrate it, it is much more about goodwill and sincerity than about present-giving and over-indulgence. We spent Christmas day sunbathing on the beach and paid 7.80ukp each for Christmas dinner. We built a sand snowman and the puzzled Indians stood around staring and asked, "What are you doing?"
Neil had only booked us into our (old people) hotel for five nights so after Christmas we had to find somewhere else to stay. We chose Anjuna, a more traveller-orientated beach village further north. It took us a while but we managed to find a decent room with a double bed and a single bed for 250rp (3.16ukp) per night.
Lying on the beach in Goa is not as relaxing as you might think, because you are pestered by a steady stream of fruit sellers, trinket sellers, henna tattooists, drum sellers, sticker sellers, nut sellers, masseurs/masseuses, cheap tat sellers, drink sellers, icecream men and ear cleaners who pretend to be able to see soap or wax in your ears from ten yards away. The ear cleaners are particularly amusing because they always carry a notebook of accolades, supposedly written by satisfied customers, but the comments never seem quite genuine somehow.
Typical examples include
"My ears were so clean I could hear a mouse fart from three hundred miles."
and
"This was the most beneficial biological enquiry I have ever had performed on my head."
Ha ha ha god that makes me laugh.
24 December 2003
23 December 2003
I have been home now for six days and I am just starting to settle in. I felt very much like I did the last time I popped home. Very floaty, as though I didn't fit in anywhere, just visiting. I have had a bit of trouble chatting with friends and family. I feel as though I have lost my ability to chit-chat. But, that too after a few days is starting to come back. I think I probably chose the best time to return home. It's Christmas time and everybody is happy and friendly. A lot of people have already finished work so I have plenty of people to see. And of course there is Christmas food shopping to do, and that sort of thing, that I love.
I was less excited about coming home this time than the last, probably because it is the end and I now have to settle down and find a job, somewhere to live etc. And that is a bit scary. I have grown to love not having to work, and the thought of having to wake up early every morning to go somewhere I don't really want to go, for not much money, just seems rubbish.
It is strange being without clop but I am really pleased he's spending Christmas with his friends, away from all the things he hates about this time of year (presents, false friendliness, over-eating etc.), in fact all the things I love. It seems like a long time till he gets back. But it's much more bearable than the last time.
It feels a bit like the trip never really happened, because I don't really have anybody to talk to about it. Friends and family ask questions but it's not like fully discussing where you've been and what you've seen. I've tried but it ends up sounding really dull or as though I'm a bit up my own arse. The only person I've come close to talking about it properly with was a taxi driver who had travelled to a lot of the same places. It was nice to swap stories. I'm looking forward to chatting properly about our trip with clop when he returns at the beginning of January.
I was less excited about coming home this time than the last, probably because it is the end and I now have to settle down and find a job, somewhere to live etc. And that is a bit scary. I have grown to love not having to work, and the thought of having to wake up early every morning to go somewhere I don't really want to go, for not much money, just seems rubbish.
It is strange being without clop but I am really pleased he's spending Christmas with his friends, away from all the things he hates about this time of year (presents, false friendliness, over-eating etc.), in fact all the things I love. It seems like a long time till he gets back. But it's much more bearable than the last time.
It feels a bit like the trip never really happened, because I don't really have anybody to talk to about it. Friends and family ask questions but it's not like fully discussing where you've been and what you've seen. I've tried but it ends up sounding really dull or as though I'm a bit up my own arse. The only person I've come close to talking about it properly with was a taxi driver who had travelled to a lot of the same places. It was nice to swap stories. I'm looking forward to chatting properly about our trip with clop when he returns at the beginning of January.
22 December 2003
In order to annoy me as much as possible, the air traffic controllers at Delhi International Airport specially arranged for my flight (which was packed full of Indian people who complained about everything and never said thank you) to land a few minutes behind two other immensely-full passenger jets. As a consequence the queue to clear immigration was wrist-slittingly long. It wound back and forth across the entire width of the concourse eight times, then right back to the far end of the immigration hall, then right back to the bottom of the staircase and then all the way up the stairs and into the arrival gates. I was worried about keeping Neil and Emma waiting too long. I needn't have. The traffic around Delhi was so bad that their 17km taxi ride from the city centre took them an hour and a half, and they walked in almost as I walked out.
Seeing my friends again was strange but not as strange as I had been expecting. Things between us weren't much different to how they had been a year ago (though they did seem rather white).
Once into town our taxi ran out of petrol in the middle of a busy street and we had to walk the rest of the way along the Main Bazaar to our hotel. It was 12C and misty and I still had my shorts on from Singapore. It was perishing. After a chat and a beer and some dosas we went straight to (triple) bed.
The next morning our priority was to go to New Delhi Railway Station to try to buy me a ticket for the evening train to Agra (Neil and Emma already had their tickets) and to reconfirm all our Indrail Pass reservations (Agra-Mathura, Mathura-Bombay, Bombay-Goa, Goa-Bombay) which Neil had cleverly organised from Leeds.
In the station two Indians stopped us from going up the stairs to the official ticket office. They said the office was closed and "proved it" by pointing to a Danger! sticker on a nearby lift. They said we should go to a different (ie con-artist) ticket office outside the station. We ignored them and went upstairs to the official ticket office which was, of course, open.
With over 1.2 million employees, the Indian Railway company is the biggest employer on the planet. Given the size of the country and its incredible population (over 1 billion) I can well believe it, though the term 'employee' must be applied in the vaguest sense - there were a dozen staff present in the ticket office but only three of them actually appeared to be doing anything and it took us over an hour to get served.
I managed to get the last remaining seat on the train to Agra, which was handy, and then we had to go to a different desk to sort out our Indrail Pass reservations. This second desk was cluttered with tickets, teetering piles of paperwork and battered record-keeping books. We handed over our passes and looked on with considerable skepticism as the clerk uncovered one such knackered book (seemingly at random) and started thumbing through its torn and ragged pages (some held together with yellowed sellotape) as though he knew what he was doing. It was therefore a shock to suddenly see our names and all our details handwritten on a fresh page in the book, and even more of a shock when the clerk quickly extracted our pre-printed tickets from several whopping great bundles he produced from the depths of a chaotic drawer. We were very impressed.
We spent the rest of the day walking around Delhi city centre. It is the filthiest, busiest, most appalling, disgusting place I could ever have imagined. The streets are very narrow and they are full of workers, touts, beggars, cripples, rickshaws, cars, hand-carts, cyclos, mopeds, horse-drawn-carts, cow-drawn carts, cows, pigs, dogs etc. There is no open space, just people shoving to get through any possible gap. There are many open street latrines (which stink to high heaven) but everywhere you go there are also people urinating or defecating along the sides of the road so that urine flows across the pavements. The air stinks of piss and shit. Nobody gives way to anybody at any time - everyone pushes only for themselves. The road junctions are all snarled up and nobody can move but nobody will give way. We had to climb through vehicles to cross the road. The buildings are literally crumbling all around. Piles of rubble everywhere. People living under tarpaulins along the road-sides. People shouting and pushing and touting. And the constant stink of piss and shit.
We managed to walk as far as the Red Fort and back before we were too exhausted by it all to go any further. We decided to eat some food before we had to catch our train to Agra. I chose vegetable noodles. Neil and Emma chose bowls of tasty chicken curry. This unfortunate decision was to have catastrophic consequences, as they would discover fourteen hours later.
Seeing my friends again was strange but not as strange as I had been expecting. Things between us weren't much different to how they had been a year ago (though they did seem rather white).
Once into town our taxi ran out of petrol in the middle of a busy street and we had to walk the rest of the way along the Main Bazaar to our hotel. It was 12C and misty and I still had my shorts on from Singapore. It was perishing. After a chat and a beer and some dosas we went straight to (triple) bed.
The next morning our priority was to go to New Delhi Railway Station to try to buy me a ticket for the evening train to Agra (Neil and Emma already had their tickets) and to reconfirm all our Indrail Pass reservations (Agra-Mathura, Mathura-Bombay, Bombay-Goa, Goa-Bombay) which Neil had cleverly organised from Leeds.
In the station two Indians stopped us from going up the stairs to the official ticket office. They said the office was closed and "proved it" by pointing to a Danger! sticker on a nearby lift. They said we should go to a different (ie con-artist) ticket office outside the station. We ignored them and went upstairs to the official ticket office which was, of course, open.
With over 1.2 million employees, the Indian Railway company is the biggest employer on the planet. Given the size of the country and its incredible population (over 1 billion) I can well believe it, though the term 'employee' must be applied in the vaguest sense - there were a dozen staff present in the ticket office but only three of them actually appeared to be doing anything and it took us over an hour to get served.
I managed to get the last remaining seat on the train to Agra, which was handy, and then we had to go to a different desk to sort out our Indrail Pass reservations. This second desk was cluttered with tickets, teetering piles of paperwork and battered record-keeping books. We handed over our passes and looked on with considerable skepticism as the clerk uncovered one such knackered book (seemingly at random) and started thumbing through its torn and ragged pages (some held together with yellowed sellotape) as though he knew what he was doing. It was therefore a shock to suddenly see our names and all our details handwritten on a fresh page in the book, and even more of a shock when the clerk quickly extracted our pre-printed tickets from several whopping great bundles he produced from the depths of a chaotic drawer. We were very impressed.
We spent the rest of the day walking around Delhi city centre. It is the filthiest, busiest, most appalling, disgusting place I could ever have imagined. The streets are very narrow and they are full of workers, touts, beggars, cripples, rickshaws, cars, hand-carts, cyclos, mopeds, horse-drawn-carts, cow-drawn carts, cows, pigs, dogs etc. There is no open space, just people shoving to get through any possible gap. There are many open street latrines (which stink to high heaven) but everywhere you go there are also people urinating or defecating along the sides of the road so that urine flows across the pavements. The air stinks of piss and shit. Nobody gives way to anybody at any time - everyone pushes only for themselves. The road junctions are all snarled up and nobody can move but nobody will give way. We had to climb through vehicles to cross the road. The buildings are literally crumbling all around. Piles of rubble everywhere. People living under tarpaulins along the road-sides. People shouting and pushing and touting. And the constant stink of piss and shit.
We managed to walk as far as the Red Fort and back before we were too exhausted by it all to go any further. We decided to eat some food before we had to catch our train to Agra. I chose vegetable noodles. Neil and Emma chose bowls of tasty chicken curry. This unfortunate decision was to have catastrophic consequences, as they would discover fourteen hours later.
17 December 2003
Vietnam Immigration Officer: "Your passport and boarding card please."
clop hands them over.
Vietnam Immigration Officer stares disdainfully at the documents and his little screen for a while, with a face like a half-sucked lemon.
Vietnam Immigration Officer: "What was the name of the hotel that you last stayed in?"
clop: "I have no idea."
Vietnam Immigration Officer: "I need to know the name of your hotel."
clop: "I have absolutely no idea what it was. It was in Vietnamese."
Vietnam Immigration Officer: "Well, what was the address of the hotel?"
clop: "No idea. I have no idea what the address was."
Vietnam Immigration Officer: "You've no idea at all?"
clop: "It was in Saigon."
Vietnam Immigration Officer, making a face as if he's doing something in his pants: "OK. Through you go."
Vietnam and its pathetic bureaucracy. Why even bother asking questions when it doesn't matter what answers you get?
Looking down from the plane as it roared up through the Saigon skies gave us an uninterrupted view of a surreal flat landscape of tiny pale pastel-coloured concrete buildings stretching in every direction as far as the eye could see.
Landing in Singapore was like being transported forwards through time to a squeaky-clean, super-efficient, futuristic space colony. Three months in the less-developed countries of Southeast Asia make you forget what Western civilisation is like. Everything is so neat and quiet and clean and easy and smooth and unfriendly and expensive. It's amazing.
Our last few days in Singapore have been horrible. Like waiting for your own execution, it's very hard to enjoy yourself when you know the axe is about to fall. We tried sunbathing but it started raining. We went to the Asian Kennel Association Championship Dog Show at Expo 3 - the little dog agility events were very entertaining but the show was essentially an exercise in avoiding puddles of dog urine. We visited Orchard Road to see the Christmas lights (it's very weird seeing Christmas trees and Santas and fake snow and reindeer and hearing carols when it's 32C - impossible to feel Christmassy at all really) but it started raining. We went to see a laser-light show at the Fountain Of Wealth at Suntec City, supposedly the biggest fountain in the world - very nice. We went to hear some carol singers at Downtown East Resort which was also very nice but again weird because it was hot and humid and I was sweating throughout the performance. Their rendition of "I'm Dreaming Of A White Christmas" seemed particularly futile. We visited Little India and ate dosas off banana leaves. We watched television. We played Boggle. We waited. We waited.
And now clip has gone home. I do not feel as bad this time as I did the last time she went home, because this time I know I will see her again quite soon, but I feel bad all the same. We have spent every minute of every day of the last six months together and it is quite a wrench to lose something so intrinsic to your everyday life.
Today is a traumatic day for clip, more traumatic than I think her friends and family might appreciate. It's the end of her adventure and she has to go home (it's impossible to convey the stomach-churning emotions of this event), she's flying all the way around the world on her own (quite a feat for someone who still can't go through car-washes on her own) and she's having to leave me behind again. She was the best travelling companion I could have wished for. I hope everyone is nice to her when she gets back.
Tomorrow I fly to Delhi.
clop hands them over.
Vietnam Immigration Officer stares disdainfully at the documents and his little screen for a while, with a face like a half-sucked lemon.
Vietnam Immigration Officer: "What was the name of the hotel that you last stayed in?"
clop: "I have no idea."
Vietnam Immigration Officer: "I need to know the name of your hotel."
clop: "I have absolutely no idea what it was. It was in Vietnamese."
Vietnam Immigration Officer: "Well, what was the address of the hotel?"
clop: "No idea. I have no idea what the address was."
Vietnam Immigration Officer: "You've no idea at all?"
clop: "It was in Saigon."
Vietnam Immigration Officer, making a face as if he's doing something in his pants: "OK. Through you go."
Vietnam and its pathetic bureaucracy. Why even bother asking questions when it doesn't matter what answers you get?
Looking down from the plane as it roared up through the Saigon skies gave us an uninterrupted view of a surreal flat landscape of tiny pale pastel-coloured concrete buildings stretching in every direction as far as the eye could see.
Landing in Singapore was like being transported forwards through time to a squeaky-clean, super-efficient, futuristic space colony. Three months in the less-developed countries of Southeast Asia make you forget what Western civilisation is like. Everything is so neat and quiet and clean and easy and smooth and unfriendly and expensive. It's amazing.
Our last few days in Singapore have been horrible. Like waiting for your own execution, it's very hard to enjoy yourself when you know the axe is about to fall. We tried sunbathing but it started raining. We went to the Asian Kennel Association Championship Dog Show at Expo 3 - the little dog agility events were very entertaining but the show was essentially an exercise in avoiding puddles of dog urine. We visited Orchard Road to see the Christmas lights (it's very weird seeing Christmas trees and Santas and fake snow and reindeer and hearing carols when it's 32C - impossible to feel Christmassy at all really) but it started raining. We went to see a laser-light show at the Fountain Of Wealth at Suntec City, supposedly the biggest fountain in the world - very nice. We went to hear some carol singers at Downtown East Resort which was also very nice but again weird because it was hot and humid and I was sweating throughout the performance. Their rendition of "I'm Dreaming Of A White Christmas" seemed particularly futile. We visited Little India and ate dosas off banana leaves. We watched television. We played Boggle. We waited. We waited.
And now clip has gone home. I do not feel as bad this time as I did the last time she went home, because this time I know I will see her again quite soon, but I feel bad all the same. We have spent every minute of every day of the last six months together and it is quite a wrench to lose something so intrinsic to your everyday life.
Today is a traumatic day for clip, more traumatic than I think her friends and family might appreciate. It's the end of her adventure and she has to go home (it's impossible to convey the stomach-churning emotions of this event), she's flying all the way around the world on her own (quite a feat for someone who still can't go through car-washes on her own) and she's having to leave me behind again. She was the best travelling companion I could have wished for. I hope everyone is nice to her when she gets back.
Tomorrow I fly to Delhi.
16 December 2003
15 December 2003
Posted by clip
I feel very strange. It is very nearly time to go home and although I am excited about seeing my family and friends, and there isn't anywhere I'd rather be at christmas time than with my family, I am very nervous about it too. Travelling has been our life for so long and going home doesn't feel like going home; it's like planning to go away from what we know all over again.
I too am very proud of what clop and I have done. It's surprising how you can get used to living out of a bag, moving on every few days and learning new languages, and after so long it doesn't feel strange anymore. It also doesn't seem like a year since we were planning it and packing our bags. We've seen and done so much and I don't think people at home can fully appreciate what it has been like. It's just been clop and me together as a team and it will be odd mixing with other people I know and including them in my life again.
I am worried that I will get home and everything will go back to how it was before we went away. I don't want to fall back into old routines but I do think it will be difficult not to. I am worried about getting a job. The easy thing to do is to go right back to what I was doing before we left, but I don't want to. I need for this trip to have changed my life, not just while I was away, but at home too. Otherwise, it's just been a nice long holiday.
I think I would feel a little bit better if clop and I were returning home at the same time so that we could get used to being at home, and try to fit in, together.
In an ideal world I think I would rather be going home for a two week holiday, and to see friends and family, and then return to my life travelling. I never expected to feel like this a few months ago.
I feel very strange. It is very nearly time to go home and although I am excited about seeing my family and friends, and there isn't anywhere I'd rather be at christmas time than with my family, I am very nervous about it too. Travelling has been our life for so long and going home doesn't feel like going home; it's like planning to go away from what we know all over again.
I too am very proud of what clop and I have done. It's surprising how you can get used to living out of a bag, moving on every few days and learning new languages, and after so long it doesn't feel strange anymore. It also doesn't seem like a year since we were planning it and packing our bags. We've seen and done so much and I don't think people at home can fully appreciate what it has been like. It's just been clop and me together as a team and it will be odd mixing with other people I know and including them in my life again.
I am worried that I will get home and everything will go back to how it was before we went away. I don't want to fall back into old routines but I do think it will be difficult not to. I am worried about getting a job. The easy thing to do is to go right back to what I was doing before we left, but I don't want to. I need for this trip to have changed my life, not just while I was away, but at home too. Otherwise, it's just been a nice long holiday.
I think I would feel a little bit better if clop and I were returning home at the same time so that we could get used to being at home, and try to fit in, together.
In an ideal world I think I would rather be going home for a two week holiday, and to see friends and family, and then return to my life travelling. I never expected to feel like this a few months ago.
13 December 2003
Today's blog episode nicely illustrates the continuous perils of travelling.
It was Monday morning. My passport had already been at the Indian Embassy for five days but would not be ready to collect until Friday evening. Singapore Airlines had kindly arranged for us to fly for free to Singapore on the following Monday. We had booked accommodation in Singapore for Monday night. Everything seemed to be under control.
Hmm, almost a week to kill. What should we do? We've seen the local sights. How about a few days sunbathing on the beach at Mui Ne, three hours north of Saigon? What a great idea! And why not see if we can collect my passport on Monday morning instead of Friday evening and spend even longer on the beach? Another great idea!
And so we walked to the Indian Embassy and were made to wait for fifty minutes before Mr Murli Nair deigned to see us and answer our simple question. We walked into his office. There, lying in his desk drawer, untouched since the day I'd handed them over, were my passport and visa application form. Does this man have any idea that he has already ruined our travel plans in Cambodia?
"Yes," says the unlikeable Mr Murli Nair, "you can collect your passport on Monday morning."
Oh wow, thanks Murli.
So, on Tuesday, we got a bus to Mui Ne, spent half an hour finding a nice beachside guesthouse, chose a room, haggled a reasonable price, left our rucksacks on the bed and went to reception to check in.
Check-in Woman: "Can I have your passports please?"
clop: "This is (clip's) passport. My passport is at the Indian Embassy in Saigon having a visa processed. This is a photocopy of my passport and this is a photocopy of my Vietnam visa and this is my immigration form."
Check-in Woman stares blankly at the photocopies and speaks in Vietnamese to a surly bloke drinking beer at a table.
Check-in Woman: "Sorry, we need your passport."
clop: "It's at the Indian Embassy in Saigon."
Check-in Woman: "You can't stay here."
clop: "Why?"
Check-in Woman: "You no passport."
clop: "It's at the Indian Embassy! Look, here is a photocopy of my passport and here is a photocopy of my Vietnam visa and here is my immigration form.... and here is my driving licence.... and here is an identical copy of my passport photograph."
Check-in Woman: "Sorry, you can't stay here."
clop: "Fucking hell."
And so we had to leave. What a stupid rule. Where are foreigners supposed to sleep while they wait for visas to be processed?
After a while we found another, cheaper beachside guesthouse and checked in with no problems.
Then we realised, somewhat belatedly, that our Vietnam visas would expire on Sunday, the day before we were due to leave the country. There would be no time to apply for extensions. How would be able to get accommodation on Sunday night? Would we be fined and/or arrested at the airport on Monday? Immediately we rang Singapore Airlines in Saigon and asked if we could change to a flight on Saturday or Sunday; they were already full. We asked to be added to the waitlist for Sunday's flight.
A day later and we were still waiting. In desperation we sent an email to the Singapore Airlines staff in the UK, asking them to help. They wrote back within an hour to say they had confirmed two seats for us on the Saturday flight. Michelle Dee and Iona Payne are brilliant.
As we were leaving Vietnam unexpectedly early we tried to extend our accommodation in Singapore to include Saturday and Sunday nights. The hostel was already fully booked. It was a struggle to find a room in a different hotel for Saturday.
After a couple of relaxing days on the beach we returned to Saigon to collect my passport on Friday. We arrived at the Indian Embassy at 4pm, the time we had been given by Mr Murli Nair nine days earlier. We walked into his office. There, lying on his desk, untouched since the day I'd handed them over, were my passport and visa application form. We could not believe it.
The Unlikeable Mr Murli Nair looked up at us as though we were imposing on him, opened his hands and gestured towards the pile of passports: "Well it's not ready yet."
clip and clop, gobsmacked.
The Unlikeable Mr Murli Nair: "Which one is it?"
clop, gobsmacked: "That's me on top."
The Unlikeable Mr Murli Nair: "Can you wait ten minutes?"
clop, gobsmacked: "Right."
clip and clop return to the hot waiting room, speechless.
Ten minutes later we went back into his office.
clop: "Is it ready?"
The Unlikeable Mr Murli Nair, working on someone else's passport: "No. It will be ready at 4:30pm. I will call you."
clip and clop return to the hot waiting room.
Ten minutes later he came and gave me my passport with the Indian visa stuck in it, but turned his back and walked away before I could ask him why he'd kept my passport for nine days, ruined our travels in Cambodia, wasted the money we'd spent on our Cambodian visas and even then not had it ready on time, when it took him less than ten minutes to process.
We do not like you Mr Murli Nair.
We fly to Singapore this afternoon. Dam biet Vietnam and good riddance.
It was Monday morning. My passport had already been at the Indian Embassy for five days but would not be ready to collect until Friday evening. Singapore Airlines had kindly arranged for us to fly for free to Singapore on the following Monday. We had booked accommodation in Singapore for Monday night. Everything seemed to be under control.
Hmm, almost a week to kill. What should we do? We've seen the local sights. How about a few days sunbathing on the beach at Mui Ne, three hours north of Saigon? What a great idea! And why not see if we can collect my passport on Monday morning instead of Friday evening and spend even longer on the beach? Another great idea!
And so we walked to the Indian Embassy and were made to wait for fifty minutes before Mr Murli Nair deigned to see us and answer our simple question. We walked into his office. There, lying in his desk drawer, untouched since the day I'd handed them over, were my passport and visa application form. Does this man have any idea that he has already ruined our travel plans in Cambodia?
"Yes," says the unlikeable Mr Murli Nair, "you can collect your passport on Monday morning."
Oh wow, thanks Murli.
So, on Tuesday, we got a bus to Mui Ne, spent half an hour finding a nice beachside guesthouse, chose a room, haggled a reasonable price, left our rucksacks on the bed and went to reception to check in.
Check-in Woman: "Can I have your passports please?"
clop: "This is (clip's) passport. My passport is at the Indian Embassy in Saigon having a visa processed. This is a photocopy of my passport and this is a photocopy of my Vietnam visa and this is my immigration form."
Check-in Woman stares blankly at the photocopies and speaks in Vietnamese to a surly bloke drinking beer at a table.
Check-in Woman: "Sorry, we need your passport."
clop: "It's at the Indian Embassy in Saigon."
Check-in Woman: "You can't stay here."
clop: "Why?"
Check-in Woman: "You no passport."
clop: "It's at the Indian Embassy! Look, here is a photocopy of my passport and here is a photocopy of my Vietnam visa and here is my immigration form.... and here is my driving licence.... and here is an identical copy of my passport photograph."
Check-in Woman: "Sorry, you can't stay here."
clop: "Fucking hell."
And so we had to leave. What a stupid rule. Where are foreigners supposed to sleep while they wait for visas to be processed?
After a while we found another, cheaper beachside guesthouse and checked in with no problems.
Then we realised, somewhat belatedly, that our Vietnam visas would expire on Sunday, the day before we were due to leave the country. There would be no time to apply for extensions. How would be able to get accommodation on Sunday night? Would we be fined and/or arrested at the airport on Monday? Immediately we rang Singapore Airlines in Saigon and asked if we could change to a flight on Saturday or Sunday; they were already full. We asked to be added to the waitlist for Sunday's flight.
A day later and we were still waiting. In desperation we sent an email to the Singapore Airlines staff in the UK, asking them to help. They wrote back within an hour to say they had confirmed two seats for us on the Saturday flight. Michelle Dee and Iona Payne are brilliant.
As we were leaving Vietnam unexpectedly early we tried to extend our accommodation in Singapore to include Saturday and Sunday nights. The hostel was already fully booked. It was a struggle to find a room in a different hotel for Saturday.
After a couple of relaxing days on the beach we returned to Saigon to collect my passport on Friday. We arrived at the Indian Embassy at 4pm, the time we had been given by Mr Murli Nair nine days earlier. We walked into his office. There, lying on his desk, untouched since the day I'd handed them over, were my passport and visa application form. We could not believe it.
The Unlikeable Mr Murli Nair looked up at us as though we were imposing on him, opened his hands and gestured towards the pile of passports: "Well it's not ready yet."
clip and clop, gobsmacked.
The Unlikeable Mr Murli Nair: "Which one is it?"
clop, gobsmacked: "That's me on top."
The Unlikeable Mr Murli Nair: "Can you wait ten minutes?"
clop, gobsmacked: "Right."
clip and clop return to the hot waiting room, speechless.
Ten minutes later we went back into his office.
clop: "Is it ready?"
The Unlikeable Mr Murli Nair, working on someone else's passport: "No. It will be ready at 4:30pm. I will call you."
clip and clop return to the hot waiting room.
Ten minutes later he came and gave me my passport with the Indian visa stuck in it, but turned his back and walked away before I could ask him why he'd kept my passport for nine days, ruined our travels in Cambodia, wasted the money we'd spent on our Cambodian visas and even then not had it ready on time, when it took him less than ten minutes to process.
We do not like you Mr Murli Nair.
We fly to Singapore this afternoon. Dam biet Vietnam and good riddance.
12 December 2003
"This table ok? Sit here yes? Scramble egg? Vesheytaybull? With noodle? Vesheytaybull with noodle? Two bottle Spite?"
This is the sound of a person who can actually speak English perfectly well but is ordering some food from a foreign waiter and thinks that by adopting an extraordinary accent, making everything into a question and talking as if they're addressing a three-year-old they will help the waiter to understand the order and allow him to improve his English for the future.
The 22nd SEA (Southeast Asia) Games are well underway here in Vietnam, this year's host country, and the football tournament is attracting a lot of attention. Vietnam are doing quite well. Minutes after they had beaten The Philippines the roads of Saigon erupted with mopeds ridden round and round and round for several hours by a million over-excited, hooting, peeping, bandana- and cap-wearing, pan-banging, flag-waving, ecstatic screaming Vietnamese citizens. We sat on the pavement and drank beer and watched everyone zipping past. A waitress said, "It's funny. It's not that they like football. They just like riding around and making a noise."
Just south of Saigon the Mekong River completes its 4000km journey through Tibet, China, Burma, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam as it spreads out across the Mekong Delta and drains into the South China Sea. Continuing our recent lives as package tourists we did the only decent thing and signed up for an all-inclusive organised two-day tour of the delta. I had expected a rural paradise of green rice fields, narrow waterways and earthy tracks. In fact the delta was more like a vast industrial estate studded with decaying cities and criss-crossed by ridiculously-wide muddy rivers and busy highways. We went to a rice noodle "factory", drank some snake wine (yes, it did), walked around a rice-husking mill and visited a floating market (pineapples were 8p each). We sailed up and down rivers in a variety of boats and saw the delta people going about their daily lives - mainly washing clothes, swimming in the water, lying around in hammocks and cooking. We saw riverbank petrol stations with their watery forecourts.
Everywhere we go in Vietnam we see many people with facial injuries, or with arms and/or legs missing. This is the legacy of the mines that still lie scattered around much of the country. The victims beg from tourists but not from Vietnamese people.
Our adventure is rapidly drawing to a close. The end of our trip is looming like a horrible sickening wall. clip flies home in just five days time. I fly to Delhi the following day to meet my friends Neil and Emma for our three-week Christmas Bamboozlement Tour of India.
I am very very proud of what clip and I have done together this year. All the incredible places we've been, all the amazing things we've seen, all the people we've met, all the things we've done, all the risks we have taken, all the problems we have overcome; there is enormous sense of achievement and I am proud of us. Well done sweetheart xx
When we first made the decision to leave home people said, "oh you lucky things!" and, "wow! I'd love to do that!" and, "oh I wish I could do that!" But whenever I asked, "well why don't you do it then?" they replied, "oh I can't afford it," or, "I'm too old, it's too late," or simply, "I can't."
Absolute rubbish!
We are not particularly young or brave or rich or lucky people. If you want to do it, you can do it; it really isn't difficult. And it's not as expensive as you might think. Our average spend during the last three months in Southeast Asia has been 8.89ukp each per day. This includes accommodation, food, drinks, beer, clothes, toiletries, insect repellant, internet, phone calls, entrance fees, tours, trekking, bicycle hire, motorcycle hire, motorcycle petrol, maps, books, games, laundry, haircuts, medicines, batteries, train fares, bus fares, taxi fares, boat fares, country visas and all other day-to-day living expenses. Two of us could travel comfortably for a whole year here, staying in hotels every night and eating in restaurants every day, for just 3240ukp per person. Start saving up!
As a life experience it must be hard to beat. This is the best thing I have ever done! If you are considering going travelling, I urge you to take the final step. Anyone can go. There are thousands and thousands of other people out here doing it right now. Some are 18, some are 30, some are 60! Nothing has happened at home while I've been away. I haven't missed anything. What did you spend your money on this year? What on earth are you waiting for?
But after a whole year of travelling, travelling becomes normal life. Going home will not be a return to normality because normality has become constant sunshine, 34C, living out of a bag and moving on every 2.03 days (our average this year so far). I am typing this into my palmtop whilst sitting alone on a beach in Vietnam at 6:30am, quietly watching the sun rise over the fishing coracles in front of me. I can hardly believe that I ever lived and worked in the UK at all. It's like a dream of somewhere that doesn't exist anymore, and I am scared to go home. I feel that I won't fit in when I get back. I expect to be bored and fed up. I don't know what I will talk about with my family and my friends. You can't appreciate the feelings of alienation unless you have travelled for a long period of time yourself. I am more frightened about going home than I was about coming away.
This is the sound of a person who can actually speak English perfectly well but is ordering some food from a foreign waiter and thinks that by adopting an extraordinary accent, making everything into a question and talking as if they're addressing a three-year-old they will help the waiter to understand the order and allow him to improve his English for the future.
The 22nd SEA (Southeast Asia) Games are well underway here in Vietnam, this year's host country, and the football tournament is attracting a lot of attention. Vietnam are doing quite well. Minutes after they had beaten The Philippines the roads of Saigon erupted with mopeds ridden round and round and round for several hours by a million over-excited, hooting, peeping, bandana- and cap-wearing, pan-banging, flag-waving, ecstatic screaming Vietnamese citizens. We sat on the pavement and drank beer and watched everyone zipping past. A waitress said, "It's funny. It's not that they like football. They just like riding around and making a noise."
Just south of Saigon the Mekong River completes its 4000km journey through Tibet, China, Burma, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam as it spreads out across the Mekong Delta and drains into the South China Sea. Continuing our recent lives as package tourists we did the only decent thing and signed up for an all-inclusive organised two-day tour of the delta. I had expected a rural paradise of green rice fields, narrow waterways and earthy tracks. In fact the delta was more like a vast industrial estate studded with decaying cities and criss-crossed by ridiculously-wide muddy rivers and busy highways. We went to a rice noodle "factory", drank some snake wine (yes, it did), walked around a rice-husking mill and visited a floating market (pineapples were 8p each). We sailed up and down rivers in a variety of boats and saw the delta people going about their daily lives - mainly washing clothes, swimming in the water, lying around in hammocks and cooking. We saw riverbank petrol stations with their watery forecourts.
Everywhere we go in Vietnam we see many people with facial injuries, or with arms and/or legs missing. This is the legacy of the mines that still lie scattered around much of the country. The victims beg from tourists but not from Vietnamese people.
Our adventure is rapidly drawing to a close. The end of our trip is looming like a horrible sickening wall. clip flies home in just five days time. I fly to Delhi the following day to meet my friends Neil and Emma for our three-week Christmas Bamboozlement Tour of India.
I am very very proud of what clip and I have done together this year. All the incredible places we've been, all the amazing things we've seen, all the people we've met, all the things we've done, all the risks we have taken, all the problems we have overcome; there is enormous sense of achievement and I am proud of us. Well done sweetheart xx
When we first made the decision to leave home people said, "oh you lucky things!" and, "wow! I'd love to do that!" and, "oh I wish I could do that!" But whenever I asked, "well why don't you do it then?" they replied, "oh I can't afford it," or, "I'm too old, it's too late," or simply, "I can't."
Absolute rubbish!
We are not particularly young or brave or rich or lucky people. If you want to do it, you can do it; it really isn't difficult. And it's not as expensive as you might think. Our average spend during the last three months in Southeast Asia has been 8.89ukp each per day. This includes accommodation, food, drinks, beer, clothes, toiletries, insect repellant, internet, phone calls, entrance fees, tours, trekking, bicycle hire, motorcycle hire, motorcycle petrol, maps, books, games, laundry, haircuts, medicines, batteries, train fares, bus fares, taxi fares, boat fares, country visas and all other day-to-day living expenses. Two of us could travel comfortably for a whole year here, staying in hotels every night and eating in restaurants every day, for just 3240ukp per person. Start saving up!
As a life experience it must be hard to beat. This is the best thing I have ever done! If you are considering going travelling, I urge you to take the final step. Anyone can go. There are thousands and thousands of other people out here doing it right now. Some are 18, some are 30, some are 60! Nothing has happened at home while I've been away. I haven't missed anything. What did you spend your money on this year? What on earth are you waiting for?
But after a whole year of travelling, travelling becomes normal life. Going home will not be a return to normality because normality has become constant sunshine, 34C, living out of a bag and moving on every 2.03 days (our average this year so far). I am typing this into my palmtop whilst sitting alone on a beach in Vietnam at 6:30am, quietly watching the sun rise over the fishing coracles in front of me. I can hardly believe that I ever lived and worked in the UK at all. It's like a dream of somewhere that doesn't exist anymore, and I am scared to go home. I feel that I won't fit in when I get back. I expect to be bored and fed up. I don't know what I will talk about with my family and my friends. You can't appreciate the feelings of alienation unless you have travelled for a long period of time yourself. I am more frightened about going home than I was about coming away.
09 December 2003
The other morning clip woke up with a look of relief on her face and gasped, "Thank goodness you woke me up! I was just about to have to do a tumbling skydive for Noel's House Party. And the worst thing was that there was only half an hour left before I had to do it and they still hadn't shown me how to work the machinery!"
Women eh?
Women eh?
08 December 2003
I'm pleased to say that Vietnam is slowly growing on us.
We've had some extremely bad news and some extremely good news recently, and there have been a number of both frustrating and facilitative developments. On to those after a round-up of our travels through Vietnam so far.
Call us Mr and Mrs Lazy but, having struggled more than two thousand miles through Southeast Asia on public transport and with only a few weeks to go before the end of our year away, I think we deserve to relax and let somebody else do the hard work for us. In Hue we gleefully purchased two Sinh Cafe open tour coach tickets and have since been whisked around Vietnam in convenient air-conditioned comfort.
Moving south from Hue we spent a couple of hassle-rich days in Hoi An, a quaintish (if you screw your eyes up and wave your fingers about in front of your face as you might do for a scrambled porn channel) seaside city stuffed with cobbley streets, colonial-style buildings and hordes of irritatingly-persistent street vendors. We looked at the Japanese Covered Bridge and walked to the beach and back. Sheer adventure.
Next stop was windy rain-swept Nha Trang, another, slightly less quaint, seaside city. We attempted to walk to the market but got lost and spent half an hour staggering around lost in the heartbreakingly-poor riverside slums area. The people living there were very surprised to see us but were friendly nonetheless. Having said that, it was still a relief to finally find an exit (via some rotten planks bridging a stinking watercourse between two shacks) and clamber up a riverbank to the main road. We stood for a while and watched all the huge rats scurrying around the slums, then caught a cyclo back to our guesthouse - me and clip sitting on top of each other in what is essentially a pedal-powered pram!
From Nha Trang we tracked inland and upland to a place called Da Lat, a city originally founded as a mountain retreat by the French in 1893. Along the way we stopped at a lookout and bought fruit from some street vendors (surprise surprise) - I was disgusted to see fellow travellers bartering the vendors down from 3000D to 2000D for a bunch of bananas and still complaining that they were too expensive. 1000D is 4p. I sometimes think people take haggling too far.
Da Lat was very nice indeed - there were many man-made lakes and lots of beautiful alpine scenery. It was sunny during the day but chilly at night. The region is well-known for flower horticulture. By a stroke of luck we arrived on the penultimate day of Da Lat's 110 Year Birthday celebrations - there were fireworks and bands and crowds of people in the streets. We paid to go on a day tour of some local sights - a Buddhist meditation monastery (where we saw a hundred-year-old bonsai tree), the Flower Gardens (where we saw nine snakes basking on the grass between the plants), the Valley Of Love (where French newly-weds traditionally spent their honeymoons), the Crazy House (a guesthouse of bizarrely shaped and furnished rooms designed by an old lady who was too poorly to speak to us), the Last King's Palace (where we had to wear slippy shoe-gloves and where clip lost her jumper) and an ethnic village famous for its gigantic cement statue of a cockerel (the statue is to commemorate two local lovers who starved to death in nearby woods because they couldn't find a chicken with nine toes).
And then to Ho Chi Minh City, formerly known as Saigon until it was renamed at the end of the Vietnam War in 1975. Nowadays only the central area of Ho Chi Minh City is known as Saigon but it's shorter to type so I'll use Saigon instead.
Saigon is a vast sprawling low-rise metropolis with a population of ten million people. There are three million mopeds. There are lots of crossroads and junctions and roundabouts but there are few road markings and there are no Give Ways. People drive aggressively on whichever side of the road they like. The result is absolute bedlam. The traffic on every single street is a cross between the Stoke-on-Trent Easter Egg Run and the start of a GP500 race. The only way to cross the road is to shuffle forwards with your arms squeezed in and grit your teeth while the mopeds (hopefully) dodge around you.
Soon after arriving in Saigon we walked to the Indian Embassy and applied for my Indian tourist visa. The sign in the hot room said it would take four working days to process. We handed in the application form and the application fee and were told to ring a Mr Murli Nair the next morning to find out when the passport would be ready for collection. When we rang he told us, "Next Friday." This means that the visa is taking seven working days to process, a farcical total of nine days including the weekend. And this means that we will not have enough time to visit Cambodia unless we fly in and out, which we can't afford. Recently we have been in regular contact with the Public Relations department of Singapore Airlines in the UK and they had offered us a discounted fare on a SilkAir flight from Siem Reap to Singapore. Had the visa been ready earlier we would have taken them up on their offer but as it is we have had to turn them down. The good news is that they have agreed to let us exchange the voided/cancelled/unused sectors of our Round-The-World tickets for two free seats on a Singapore Airlines flight direct from Saigon to Singapore. This has saved us 360ukp! We are very pleased with the airline but sad that we cannot see Cambodia this time.
We visited the War Remnants Museum and learned about the Vietnam War. Most of the museum displays were galleries of black and white photographs taken by various wartime photographers. We saw photographs of American soldiers laughing and holding the heads of decapitated Vietnamese men. We saw photographs of Vietnamese men tied to the backs of American army vehicles and being dragged along until they were dead. We saw photographs of children burned by napalm and phosphorous bombs. We saw photographs of the massacres of South Vietnamese villagers. We saw pickled foetuses malformed as a result of the defoliant dioxins sprayed across the country. It's difficult to see how the museum can be biassed when the photographs show the evidence of what really happened. It was horrible.
We spent a day visiting the Ben Dinh tunnels near Cu Chi. This 200km network of interlocking, three-levelled tunnels was built during the French War and expanded during the Vietnam War. They were used by the Viet Cong when the Americans were trying to approach Saigon. We looked at some gory home-made traps and crawled through a 100m tunnel and a 60m tunnel. They have been widened so that big Western tourists can get in them but they were still very hot and narrow and claustrophobic. The Viet Cong sometimes stayed underground in them for months at a time. We don't know how they did it. Near the tunnels there was a shooting range where you could pay a dollar a bullet to fire any of the guns used during the war, but at distant cardboard animals rather than at innocent villagers and children.
We've had some extremely bad news and some extremely good news recently, and there have been a number of both frustrating and facilitative developments. On to those after a round-up of our travels through Vietnam so far.
Call us Mr and Mrs Lazy but, having struggled more than two thousand miles through Southeast Asia on public transport and with only a few weeks to go before the end of our year away, I think we deserve to relax and let somebody else do the hard work for us. In Hue we gleefully purchased two Sinh Cafe open tour coach tickets and have since been whisked around Vietnam in convenient air-conditioned comfort.
Moving south from Hue we spent a couple of hassle-rich days in Hoi An, a quaintish (if you screw your eyes up and wave your fingers about in front of your face as you might do for a scrambled porn channel) seaside city stuffed with cobbley streets, colonial-style buildings and hordes of irritatingly-persistent street vendors. We looked at the Japanese Covered Bridge and walked to the beach and back. Sheer adventure.
Next stop was windy rain-swept Nha Trang, another, slightly less quaint, seaside city. We attempted to walk to the market but got lost and spent half an hour staggering around lost in the heartbreakingly-poor riverside slums area. The people living there were very surprised to see us but were friendly nonetheless. Having said that, it was still a relief to finally find an exit (via some rotten planks bridging a stinking watercourse between two shacks) and clamber up a riverbank to the main road. We stood for a while and watched all the huge rats scurrying around the slums, then caught a cyclo back to our guesthouse - me and clip sitting on top of each other in what is essentially a pedal-powered pram!
From Nha Trang we tracked inland and upland to a place called Da Lat, a city originally founded as a mountain retreat by the French in 1893. Along the way we stopped at a lookout and bought fruit from some street vendors (surprise surprise) - I was disgusted to see fellow travellers bartering the vendors down from 3000D to 2000D for a bunch of bananas and still complaining that they were too expensive. 1000D is 4p. I sometimes think people take haggling too far.
Da Lat was very nice indeed - there were many man-made lakes and lots of beautiful alpine scenery. It was sunny during the day but chilly at night. The region is well-known for flower horticulture. By a stroke of luck we arrived on the penultimate day of Da Lat's 110 Year Birthday celebrations - there were fireworks and bands and crowds of people in the streets. We paid to go on a day tour of some local sights - a Buddhist meditation monastery (where we saw a hundred-year-old bonsai tree), the Flower Gardens (where we saw nine snakes basking on the grass between the plants), the Valley Of Love (where French newly-weds traditionally spent their honeymoons), the Crazy House (a guesthouse of bizarrely shaped and furnished rooms designed by an old lady who was too poorly to speak to us), the Last King's Palace (where we had to wear slippy shoe-gloves and where clip lost her jumper) and an ethnic village famous for its gigantic cement statue of a cockerel (the statue is to commemorate two local lovers who starved to death in nearby woods because they couldn't find a chicken with nine toes).
And then to Ho Chi Minh City, formerly known as Saigon until it was renamed at the end of the Vietnam War in 1975. Nowadays only the central area of Ho Chi Minh City is known as Saigon but it's shorter to type so I'll use Saigon instead.
Saigon is a vast sprawling low-rise metropolis with a population of ten million people. There are three million mopeds. There are lots of crossroads and junctions and roundabouts but there are few road markings and there are no Give Ways. People drive aggressively on whichever side of the road they like. The result is absolute bedlam. The traffic on every single street is a cross between the Stoke-on-Trent Easter Egg Run and the start of a GP500 race. The only way to cross the road is to shuffle forwards with your arms squeezed in and grit your teeth while the mopeds (hopefully) dodge around you.
Soon after arriving in Saigon we walked to the Indian Embassy and applied for my Indian tourist visa. The sign in the hot room said it would take four working days to process. We handed in the application form and the application fee and were told to ring a Mr Murli Nair the next morning to find out when the passport would be ready for collection. When we rang he told us, "Next Friday." This means that the visa is taking seven working days to process, a farcical total of nine days including the weekend. And this means that we will not have enough time to visit Cambodia unless we fly in and out, which we can't afford. Recently we have been in regular contact with the Public Relations department of Singapore Airlines in the UK and they had offered us a discounted fare on a SilkAir flight from Siem Reap to Singapore. Had the visa been ready earlier we would have taken them up on their offer but as it is we have had to turn them down. The good news is that they have agreed to let us exchange the voided/cancelled/unused sectors of our Round-The-World tickets for two free seats on a Singapore Airlines flight direct from Saigon to Singapore. This has saved us 360ukp! We are very pleased with the airline but sad that we cannot see Cambodia this time.
We visited the War Remnants Museum and learned about the Vietnam War. Most of the museum displays were galleries of black and white photographs taken by various wartime photographers. We saw photographs of American soldiers laughing and holding the heads of decapitated Vietnamese men. We saw photographs of Vietnamese men tied to the backs of American army vehicles and being dragged along until they were dead. We saw photographs of children burned by napalm and phosphorous bombs. We saw photographs of the massacres of South Vietnamese villagers. We saw pickled foetuses malformed as a result of the defoliant dioxins sprayed across the country. It's difficult to see how the museum can be biassed when the photographs show the evidence of what really happened. It was horrible.
We spent a day visiting the Ben Dinh tunnels near Cu Chi. This 200km network of interlocking, three-levelled tunnels was built during the French War and expanded during the Vietnam War. They were used by the Viet Cong when the Americans were trying to approach Saigon. We looked at some gory home-made traps and crawled through a 100m tunnel and a 60m tunnel. They have been widened so that big Western tourists can get in them but they were still very hot and narrow and claustrophobic. The Viet Cong sometimes stayed underground in them for months at a time. We don't know how they did it. Near the tunnels there was a shooting range where you could pay a dollar a bullet to fire any of the guns used during the war, but at distant cardboard animals rather than at innocent villagers and children.
04 December 2003
Vietnam is a major disappointment. We won't come here again.
In Vietnam many people capture wild monkeys and keep them locked up in tiny bare cages or chained together in the open so that they spend every minute of every day of the rest of their lives fighting each other, trying to hide under rags and rocking back and forth in frustration.
By Southeast Asian standards Vietnam seems to be quite a rich country. Almost everyone is well-dressed and lives in proper brick buildings rather than wooden huts. The roads are all surfaced and in good condition. Mains electricity is supplied twenty-four hours a day.
From Vinh, route one runs all the way south to Ho Chi Minh City (formerly known as Saigon), just north of the Mekong Delta. The main places of interest to tourists are Hue, Hoi An, Nha Trang, Da Lat and Mui Ne. There are several tour operators offering open tickets along this route, so that you can get on and off the coach when and where you choose to. This is a very convenient way to travel but the constant stream of wedged-up tourists passing through and staying in these towns has now made spending time in them almost unbearable. All we get is constant hassle from street traders. Cyclo riders, motorbike riders, taxi drivers, photocopied-book sellers, hammock sellers, cigarette sellers, sunglasses sellers, flashing-lighter sellers, sweet sellers, newspaper sellers, chewing gum sellers, fruit sellers, camera film sellers, tiger balm sellers, postcard sellers, bracelet sellers, drink sellers, picture sellers, map sellers, shoe shiners. It is impossible to sit down or walk anywhere without being hassled. The traders even come into restaurants and queue up at our table to badger us. It wouldn't be so bad if they went away when we smiled and said, "no thank you," but they don't take no for an answer and stand there for ages showing us things that we don't want. It is fantastically irritating. Whenever we do buy something they try to rip us off.
Another irritating thing about Vietnam is that there are two fares on public transport - the Vietnam Fare and the significantly higher Foreigner Fare. Coming from much poorer Laos, where everyone pays the same price and where travellers are respected as people rather than being seen solely as easy targets for salespeople, Vietnam seems greedy, racist, tedious and actually quite dull. The only redeeming feature is that, unlike in Thailand, the Vietnamese people are not lying to us at every available opportunity.
Most Vietnamese people speak excellent English. In Hue we were approached by a straight-backed, toff-dressed, umbrella-twirling teenager who started thus in a plummy English accent: "Excuse me sair. Are you looking for some accommodation? My family runs a hotel near here. If you would care to take a look at our rooms I think you'll find that they compare very favourably."
It seems that every Vietnamese male chain-smokes cigarettes. Seeing as everybody smokes there is no need for a No Smoking rule anywhere. Of course this is entirely shit for non-smokers like us - we cannot eat or use the internet without people smoking all around us. Western smokers evidently love this state of affairs and are happy to puff away in places which would be considered anti-social back home. Thanks guys.
In Vietnam many people capture wild monkeys and keep them locked up in tiny bare cages or chained together in the open so that they spend every minute of every day of the rest of their lives fighting each other, trying to hide under rags and rocking back and forth in frustration.
By Southeast Asian standards Vietnam seems to be quite a rich country. Almost everyone is well-dressed and lives in proper brick buildings rather than wooden huts. The roads are all surfaced and in good condition. Mains electricity is supplied twenty-four hours a day.
From Vinh, route one runs all the way south to Ho Chi Minh City (formerly known as Saigon), just north of the Mekong Delta. The main places of interest to tourists are Hue, Hoi An, Nha Trang, Da Lat and Mui Ne. There are several tour operators offering open tickets along this route, so that you can get on and off the coach when and where you choose to. This is a very convenient way to travel but the constant stream of wedged-up tourists passing through and staying in these towns has now made spending time in them almost unbearable. All we get is constant hassle from street traders. Cyclo riders, motorbike riders, taxi drivers, photocopied-book sellers, hammock sellers, cigarette sellers, sunglasses sellers, flashing-lighter sellers, sweet sellers, newspaper sellers, chewing gum sellers, fruit sellers, camera film sellers, tiger balm sellers, postcard sellers, bracelet sellers, drink sellers, picture sellers, map sellers, shoe shiners. It is impossible to sit down or walk anywhere without being hassled. The traders even come into restaurants and queue up at our table to badger us. It wouldn't be so bad if they went away when we smiled and said, "no thank you," but they don't take no for an answer and stand there for ages showing us things that we don't want. It is fantastically irritating. Whenever we do buy something they try to rip us off.
Another irritating thing about Vietnam is that there are two fares on public transport - the Vietnam Fare and the significantly higher Foreigner Fare. Coming from much poorer Laos, where everyone pays the same price and where travellers are respected as people rather than being seen solely as easy targets for salespeople, Vietnam seems greedy, racist, tedious and actually quite dull. The only redeeming feature is that, unlike in Thailand, the Vietnamese people are not lying to us at every available opportunity.
Most Vietnamese people speak excellent English. In Hue we were approached by a straight-backed, toff-dressed, umbrella-twirling teenager who started thus in a plummy English accent: "Excuse me sair. Are you looking for some accommodation? My family runs a hotel near here. If you would care to take a look at our rooms I think you'll find that they compare very favourably."
It seems that every Vietnamese male chain-smokes cigarettes. Seeing as everybody smokes there is no need for a No Smoking rule anywhere. Of course this is entirely shit for non-smokers like us - we cannot eat or use the internet without people smoking all around us. Western smokers evidently love this state of affairs and are happy to puff away in places which would be considered anti-social back home. Thanks guys.
27 November 2003
I can't believe it's time to leave Laos! :o( It turned out to be the prettiest and friendliest place by far. I would definitely go back there for a holiday. The people were great - so happy and always smiling. Even the language was fun, it's really springy and easy to learn. Well, clop struggled a bit with the numbers which was a shocker, but I thought it was a doddle. Vietnam next. Neither of us are wanting to leave Laos really, we've both fallen in love with the place which means unfortunately that it's putting a bit of a downer on Vietnam.
Only three weeks to go until I head home. It's gone so quickly. It's going to be a bit of a rush through Vietnam and Cambodia, so a lot of travelling days ahead. Let's hope our travelling isn't as disastrous as Adrian and Cally's.
Only three weeks to go until I head home. It's gone so quickly. It's going to be a bit of a rush through Vietnam and Cambodia, so a lot of travelling days ahead. Let's hope our travelling isn't as disastrous as Adrian and Cally's.
Yesterday morning an intense stinging pain woke me up at 4:40am. It felt like somebody was sticking a hot pin into the top of my shoulder. I frantically flapped myself with my sleeping bag liner and leapt out of bed. My shoulder was still stinging but there was no mark to be seen in the bathroom mirror. I turned on the bedroom light and woke clip up, worried that whatever had bitten me was still in the bed. We were gingerly moving the sheets and pillows about, not really knowing what we were looking for, when a chunky, three and a half inch centipede ran across the mattress and disappeared behind the headboard. It took us twenty minutes of dithering with a torch, a big cup and a tupperware box to catch it, after which neither of us felt like trying to get back to sleep. The bite area went red and bruised, and the stinging pain got progressively worse throughout the day, peaking around 7pm. Today it is weeping fluid from the two fang puncture holes and the surrounding skin is starting to blister and slough. For the love of God, what wirrig are we going to get next?
Further post by clip below...
Further post by clip below...
25 November 2003
Well, it's taken almost a year but at last her patience has been rewarded - clip has finally managed to get her hands on some fresh dong.
Ha, ha, ha. More rubbish jokes about Vietnam's currency later.
Before leaving Vang Vieng we made the mistake of walking around the local open-air market. This is what we saw: a bucket of live frogs with their legs tied together, dozens of live bats with their legs tied together, bowls of live fish bubbling in an inch of water, neat rows of pared skinned barbecued rats with the tails still on and various other feathered and furry, live and dead, raw and crozzled morsels, some of which we couldn't even identify. Like clip said, "Lao people don't eat Milky Ways between meals, they eat rodents."
After one more lovely day of river-tubing on the Nam Xong we took a posh minibus south to the Lao capital of Vientiane. Heh heh, well Vientiane does not look like a capital city - it is about the same size as Horsforth! How cute. We spent most of our only day there arranging bus tickets to Hue in Vietnam.
We were both very sad to be leaving Laos and both very worried that Vietnam might turn out to be another Lieland. Laos had been a refreshing change compared to the rest of Southeast Asia; an utterly gorgeous landscape with a primitive infrastructure and the people friendly, genuine and honest without exception. I would highly recommend northern Laos as a holiday destination.
Our first impressions of Vietnam were not encouraging. We had chosen to take a direct, long-distance (23 hours) bus from Vientiane to Hue, a service provided by a Vietnamese bus company. When we purchased our tickets we were shown a photograph of the bus we would be travelling on - a nice-looking VIP model with reclining seats, air-conditioning and a television.
A courtesy sawngthaew delivered us to the "bus depot" at 6:15pm, where it quickly became apparent that we, along with another English couple and three travelling Malaysians, had all been duped. The bus depot was a dark yard with one bus in it. The bus was an utter wreck. Plastic and metal, loosely-mounted seats positioned so close together that even my stumpy legs would not fit between them. The only seats that reclined were directly in front of us; one permanently in recline and the other sometimes in recline and sometimes not, depending on how jerky the road was. No air-conditioning and, of course, no television.
The Vietnamese driver shouted, "Hanoi! Hanoi!" and lobbed our bags in the back. Hanoi is in the opposite direction to Hue which was a bit worrying but nobody could speak any English to let us know what was happening. clip started crying. With some difficulty we gathered that the bus would take everyone as far as Vinh, where the Hanoi-bound passengers would change buses and our bus would continue to Hue.
At 6:40pm the bus filled up with chain-smoking Vietnamese people and we set off. The bus lurched and crashed and rattled loudly all the time. The driver was obviously in a hurry. For the most part he drove down the middle of the road with the airhorn on. All oncoming vehicles had to frantically flash their headlights to make him move over for them.
At 9:45pm the bus stopped somewhere in the dark. The bus staff spent ten minutes loading sacks into the storage compartments. We set off again at 10pm.
At 10:15pm the bus drove down a dark alley and stopped in a yard. This time the bus staff spent fifty minutes loading sacks into the storage compartments and onto the roof. We set off again at 11:15pm.
At 2am the bus stopped outside a shack in some mountains. The bus driver walked down the aisle and said, "Leave." Everyone got off and went into the building. We were served tea and super-sugary coffee, which we made the mistake of drinking, and were over-charged for. The bus driver pointed to the bus and said, "Sleep." Everyone except the driver, who slept in the house, got back on the bus and tried to sleep, which was impossible because the Vietnamese were chatting and chain-smoking and gobbing out of the windows all night and the door was left open and it was freezing cold and the seats were too small and uncomfortable and there was nowhere to lie down.
At 5:45am everyone got up and got washed and weed outside the bus. A few of the Vietnamese were vomiting without ceremony. We set off again at 6am.
The road winding up to the border crossing turned into a dirt track - the kind of rubbley cloggy muddy thing you might expect to see running through a quarry. We arrived at the Laos checkpoint at 7:15am and had to wait until half past for it to open to have our passports stamped, then we walked through the drizzle to the bureaucratic nightmare of the Vietnam checkpoint.
First we had to fill in arrival cards and health cards. We were charged 4000D (about 16p) for filling in the health cards, though the other English couple didn't fill them in and didn't get charged. The immigration official checked our visas, checked our arrival cards, signed them and stamped our passports. He placed our passports on the desk in front of him, looked coolly through the security window at us and said, "Stamp Fee, one dollar." There is no such thing as a "Stamp Fee" but there was no point in arguing. Basically we had to pay a bribe to get our passports back. Then we had to go back to the bus and bring our rucksacks in for the customs people to inspect. After everything had been x-rayed the customs man signed our cards, then they were signed again by the man operating the x-ray machine, then they were signed again by the customs supervisor. Then we had to take everything to the customs declaration desk where the cards were signed again and stamped again and we were given the top copies to keep. Everything was re-checked by an official at the exit.
Meanwhile the bus was being emptied and searched. A bottle of whisky and two hats were stolen from the overhead racks, presumably by border officials. The bus was reloaded and everyone got back on. An official boarded the bus and inspected everyone's passports. The bus drove across the carpark. Another official boarded the bus and inspected everyone's passports. The bus drove into an inspection bay. The storage compartments and the sacks on the roof were searched again. Another official boarded the bus and inspected everyone's passports. Finally, after an hour and a quarter, we left the checkpoint and started down the long steep road towards Vinh. The narrow road, which was cut into the mountains and had an abyss on one side, was still under construction, so we had to stop every few minutes for the scores of JCB's and bulldozers scooping mud and rubble in the middle of the road to get out of the way and flatten the surface enough for us to drive over it. The bus was boarded and searched several more times.
We arrived in Vinh around noon. The Hanoi-bound passengers got off. We continued south towards Hue, stopping at a transport cafe partway for dinner. We were served boiled spinach, plain rice, an omelette and a dish of raw beansprouts and plant leaves.
My first impression of central Vietnam, other than the ridiculous amount of bureaucracy and mild corruption, is that it is very flat. Route one south was flanked by endless plains of rice fields with herds of water buffalo strolling around in them.
Twenty three hours after leaving Vientiane we arrived in Hue in the pouring rain at 5:30pm, sick with tiredness and suffering from smoke inhalation. After walking around for an hour and getting soaked to the skin we managed to find a nice quiet room for 2.65ukp in a hotel next to a dogmeat restaurant. And we've got satellite television! Yey!
Ha, ha, ha. More rubbish jokes about Vietnam's currency later.
Before leaving Vang Vieng we made the mistake of walking around the local open-air market. This is what we saw: a bucket of live frogs with their legs tied together, dozens of live bats with their legs tied together, bowls of live fish bubbling in an inch of water, neat rows of pared skinned barbecued rats with the tails still on and various other feathered and furry, live and dead, raw and crozzled morsels, some of which we couldn't even identify. Like clip said, "Lao people don't eat Milky Ways between meals, they eat rodents."
After one more lovely day of river-tubing on the Nam Xong we took a posh minibus south to the Lao capital of Vientiane. Heh heh, well Vientiane does not look like a capital city - it is about the same size as Horsforth! How cute. We spent most of our only day there arranging bus tickets to Hue in Vietnam.
We were both very sad to be leaving Laos and both very worried that Vietnam might turn out to be another Lieland. Laos had been a refreshing change compared to the rest of Southeast Asia; an utterly gorgeous landscape with a primitive infrastructure and the people friendly, genuine and honest without exception. I would highly recommend northern Laos as a holiday destination.
Our first impressions of Vietnam were not encouraging. We had chosen to take a direct, long-distance (23 hours) bus from Vientiane to Hue, a service provided by a Vietnamese bus company. When we purchased our tickets we were shown a photograph of the bus we would be travelling on - a nice-looking VIP model with reclining seats, air-conditioning and a television.
A courtesy sawngthaew delivered us to the "bus depot" at 6:15pm, where it quickly became apparent that we, along with another English couple and three travelling Malaysians, had all been duped. The bus depot was a dark yard with one bus in it. The bus was an utter wreck. Plastic and metal, loosely-mounted seats positioned so close together that even my stumpy legs would not fit between them. The only seats that reclined were directly in front of us; one permanently in recline and the other sometimes in recline and sometimes not, depending on how jerky the road was. No air-conditioning and, of course, no television.
The Vietnamese driver shouted, "Hanoi! Hanoi!" and lobbed our bags in the back. Hanoi is in the opposite direction to Hue which was a bit worrying but nobody could speak any English to let us know what was happening. clip started crying. With some difficulty we gathered that the bus would take everyone as far as Vinh, where the Hanoi-bound passengers would change buses and our bus would continue to Hue.
At 6:40pm the bus filled up with chain-smoking Vietnamese people and we set off. The bus lurched and crashed and rattled loudly all the time. The driver was obviously in a hurry. For the most part he drove down the middle of the road with the airhorn on. All oncoming vehicles had to frantically flash their headlights to make him move over for them.
At 9:45pm the bus stopped somewhere in the dark. The bus staff spent ten minutes loading sacks into the storage compartments. We set off again at 10pm.
At 10:15pm the bus drove down a dark alley and stopped in a yard. This time the bus staff spent fifty minutes loading sacks into the storage compartments and onto the roof. We set off again at 11:15pm.
At 2am the bus stopped outside a shack in some mountains. The bus driver walked down the aisle and said, "Leave." Everyone got off and went into the building. We were served tea and super-sugary coffee, which we made the mistake of drinking, and were over-charged for. The bus driver pointed to the bus and said, "Sleep." Everyone except the driver, who slept in the house, got back on the bus and tried to sleep, which was impossible because the Vietnamese were chatting and chain-smoking and gobbing out of the windows all night and the door was left open and it was freezing cold and the seats were too small and uncomfortable and there was nowhere to lie down.
At 5:45am everyone got up and got washed and weed outside the bus. A few of the Vietnamese were vomiting without ceremony. We set off again at 6am.
The road winding up to the border crossing turned into a dirt track - the kind of rubbley cloggy muddy thing you might expect to see running through a quarry. We arrived at the Laos checkpoint at 7:15am and had to wait until half past for it to open to have our passports stamped, then we walked through the drizzle to the bureaucratic nightmare of the Vietnam checkpoint.
First we had to fill in arrival cards and health cards. We were charged 4000D (about 16p) for filling in the health cards, though the other English couple didn't fill them in and didn't get charged. The immigration official checked our visas, checked our arrival cards, signed them and stamped our passports. He placed our passports on the desk in front of him, looked coolly through the security window at us and said, "Stamp Fee, one dollar." There is no such thing as a "Stamp Fee" but there was no point in arguing. Basically we had to pay a bribe to get our passports back. Then we had to go back to the bus and bring our rucksacks in for the customs people to inspect. After everything had been x-rayed the customs man signed our cards, then they were signed again by the man operating the x-ray machine, then they were signed again by the customs supervisor. Then we had to take everything to the customs declaration desk where the cards were signed again and stamped again and we were given the top copies to keep. Everything was re-checked by an official at the exit.
Meanwhile the bus was being emptied and searched. A bottle of whisky and two hats were stolen from the overhead racks, presumably by border officials. The bus was reloaded and everyone got back on. An official boarded the bus and inspected everyone's passports. The bus drove across the carpark. Another official boarded the bus and inspected everyone's passports. The bus drove into an inspection bay. The storage compartments and the sacks on the roof were searched again. Another official boarded the bus and inspected everyone's passports. Finally, after an hour and a quarter, we left the checkpoint and started down the long steep road towards Vinh. The narrow road, which was cut into the mountains and had an abyss on one side, was still under construction, so we had to stop every few minutes for the scores of JCB's and bulldozers scooping mud and rubble in the middle of the road to get out of the way and flatten the surface enough for us to drive over it. The bus was boarded and searched several more times.
We arrived in Vinh around noon. The Hanoi-bound passengers got off. We continued south towards Hue, stopping at a transport cafe partway for dinner. We were served boiled spinach, plain rice, an omelette and a dish of raw beansprouts and plant leaves.
My first impression of central Vietnam, other than the ridiculous amount of bureaucracy and mild corruption, is that it is very flat. Route one south was flanked by endless plains of rice fields with herds of water buffalo strolling around in them.
Twenty three hours after leaving Vientiane we arrived in Hue in the pouring rain at 5:30pm, sick with tiredness and suffering from smoke inhalation. After walking around for an hour and getting soaked to the skin we managed to find a nice quiet room for 2.65ukp in a hotel next to a dogmeat restaurant. And we've got satellite television! Yey!
22 November 2003
Sadly, it is almost time to leave Laos and go to Vietnam. Now decisions, decisions, decisions - which border crossing shall we use? We have a choice of two well-established checkpoints, one across the mountains to Vinh and another further south to Hue, or one recently-opened, dodgy-sounding crossing further north at Nong Het, east of Phonsavan and the Plain of Jars. This last crossing would be a very handy shortcut for access to Hanoi but the logistics and transportation sounded unreliable and vague. Which should we choose? We cunningly sent ahead two Nong Het route-testing guinea pigs in the form of our trekking friends Adrian and Cally. This is the email they sent us when they arrived in Hanoi...
To clip and clop
Our route:
Laos - Louang Phabang to Phonsavan to Nong Het to Nong Can to
Vietnam - Muang Xen to Vinh to Hanoi.
Do not take the new border crossing, especially if it's only two of you.
We left Phonsavan and headed for the border on the public bus at 7:30am which cost peanuts. They drop you off at Nong Het and from there you take a songthaew for the last 23km. The driver tried to rip us off.
Then we waited at the border for two hours before it opened. They stamped us out and we crossed over to Vietnam. The Vietnam checkpoint wasn't open for business yet so we waited another hour before starting the lengthy immigration process. After a quick geography lesson about the existence and location of Ireland they proceeded to empty our bags, completely, guffawing at Cally's underwear and such.
All this was quite daunting as we were alone, but just as we were about to leave, along came a bus of Swedes and Israelis. We waited around for them so we could all catch a bus together. But there was no bus, only ten motorbikes to take us the 25km to the nearest town. They drove fast and Cally had an accident. The drunk driver in control of the bike didn't see a dog sitting in the middle of the road and they took a tumble. She is ok, a few grazes and a few bruises. She was a bit shocked for a while.
After the hair-raising ride we were again ripped off but in the light of Cally's shock we were unconcerned, paid up and we were delivered to a tailor shop. The tailor shop owner was a frantic lady who insisted on encouraging all the hick locals to surround us and offer us a cheap bus to Vinh, twenty times the price of the local bus. We declined politely and continued on down the road.
We found the public bus and agreed the price of US$5 to Hanoi. They told us the bus would be leaving at 10am and that we were to leave our bags on the bus. At this stage there were only five of us. We did as we were told. Then we went for some food, valuables in hand.
On return, no bus. Two hours later, no bus, no bags and nobody with a clue. Nobody in the town could speak English. One of the Swedish guys lost the plot and started banging on doors, which attracted a crowd. Luckily the crowd consisted mostly of kids, who through gestures told us the bus would be back. Then they hung around for an hour using us as climbing frames.
When the driver eventually showed up the angry Swede forced him to show us our bags. The bags were in the tailor shop with the Israelis who had just come on the scene and through powerful negotiation arranged a fantastic price, US$2 each more than our arranged price.
All aboard and off we go at 11pm, sixteen hours after we set off from Phonsavan. We picked up more passengers and a few tons of rice.
After half an hour the bus stopped. The man in the passenger seat stood up. We all recognised him as the chief immigration officer from the border crossing. The news he delivered was that the price was now double for everybody. Right there in the middle of the night in the middle of nowhere they gave us an ultimatum: pay now or go back. After a lot of shouting, and threats, we convinced the driver to turn around, much to his disbelief.
Under these circumstances everybody decided that the bus staff were not to be trusted and we were better off sleeping on the dusty road of the one-horse town. The money wasn't the issue - it was our safety and the integrity, or lack thereof, of the driver and his assistants.
We arrived back at the town and got out of the bus, and with a few unsavoury words hit the road to who knows where. Who knows where arrived in the shape of a thirty-seater bus with recliners in the back! They agreed to take us half the distance (Vinh) for US$5 each. They bauked when they heard that we were promised the complete trip to Hanoi for that price. We all got in, followed by the driver of the first bus who was intent on having a price war with the big bus driver, by which time we were chanting for him to get out. Israelis, Irish and Swedes all shouting... and Cally snapped.
She demanded that the immigration officer leave the bus, who in turn threatened to arrest her but that wouldn't really have gone down well. So we won. They left and our driver went to get petrol. We began our journey at about 1am. Each with a cigarette given to us by the driver, which in Vietnam seals any deal. And off we went. Only to be stopped by the other bus pulling in front of us with its cargo of dickheads and a few scooters to boot. Eventually, after a heated debate featuring our driver and the old driver and the immigration officer, they drove off, but insisted on stopping us threateningly a few more times. Our driver decided to do a lap of the town and picked up a few more locals and a policeman and off we went again. Uninterrupted for five hours of off-roading with Vietnamese ska gracing the airwaves and a bus full of weary smoking and spluttering non-smokers deprived of sleep.
We got to Vinh and caught a bus to Hanoi at 9am. We arrived in Hanoi at around 2pm.
Adrian and Cally
Riiiight... so we've decided not to use the Nong Het crossing after all.
To clip and clop
Our route:
Laos - Louang Phabang to Phonsavan to Nong Het to Nong Can to
Vietnam - Muang Xen to Vinh to Hanoi.
Do not take the new border crossing, especially if it's only two of you.
We left Phonsavan and headed for the border on the public bus at 7:30am which cost peanuts. They drop you off at Nong Het and from there you take a songthaew for the last 23km. The driver tried to rip us off.
Then we waited at the border for two hours before it opened. They stamped us out and we crossed over to Vietnam. The Vietnam checkpoint wasn't open for business yet so we waited another hour before starting the lengthy immigration process. After a quick geography lesson about the existence and location of Ireland they proceeded to empty our bags, completely, guffawing at Cally's underwear and such.
All this was quite daunting as we were alone, but just as we were about to leave, along came a bus of Swedes and Israelis. We waited around for them so we could all catch a bus together. But there was no bus, only ten motorbikes to take us the 25km to the nearest town. They drove fast and Cally had an accident. The drunk driver in control of the bike didn't see a dog sitting in the middle of the road and they took a tumble. She is ok, a few grazes and a few bruises. She was a bit shocked for a while.
After the hair-raising ride we were again ripped off but in the light of Cally's shock we were unconcerned, paid up and we were delivered to a tailor shop. The tailor shop owner was a frantic lady who insisted on encouraging all the hick locals to surround us and offer us a cheap bus to Vinh, twenty times the price of the local bus. We declined politely and continued on down the road.
We found the public bus and agreed the price of US$5 to Hanoi. They told us the bus would be leaving at 10am and that we were to leave our bags on the bus. At this stage there were only five of us. We did as we were told. Then we went for some food, valuables in hand.
On return, no bus. Two hours later, no bus, no bags and nobody with a clue. Nobody in the town could speak English. One of the Swedish guys lost the plot and started banging on doors, which attracted a crowd. Luckily the crowd consisted mostly of kids, who through gestures told us the bus would be back. Then they hung around for an hour using us as climbing frames.
When the driver eventually showed up the angry Swede forced him to show us our bags. The bags were in the tailor shop with the Israelis who had just come on the scene and through powerful negotiation arranged a fantastic price, US$2 each more than our arranged price.
All aboard and off we go at 11pm, sixteen hours after we set off from Phonsavan. We picked up more passengers and a few tons of rice.
After half an hour the bus stopped. The man in the passenger seat stood up. We all recognised him as the chief immigration officer from the border crossing. The news he delivered was that the price was now double for everybody. Right there in the middle of the night in the middle of nowhere they gave us an ultimatum: pay now or go back. After a lot of shouting, and threats, we convinced the driver to turn around, much to his disbelief.
Under these circumstances everybody decided that the bus staff were not to be trusted and we were better off sleeping on the dusty road of the one-horse town. The money wasn't the issue - it was our safety and the integrity, or lack thereof, of the driver and his assistants.
We arrived back at the town and got out of the bus, and with a few unsavoury words hit the road to who knows where. Who knows where arrived in the shape of a thirty-seater bus with recliners in the back! They agreed to take us half the distance (Vinh) for US$5 each. They bauked when they heard that we were promised the complete trip to Hanoi for that price. We all got in, followed by the driver of the first bus who was intent on having a price war with the big bus driver, by which time we were chanting for him to get out. Israelis, Irish and Swedes all shouting... and Cally snapped.
She demanded that the immigration officer leave the bus, who in turn threatened to arrest her but that wouldn't really have gone down well. So we won. They left and our driver went to get petrol. We began our journey at about 1am. Each with a cigarette given to us by the driver, which in Vietnam seals any deal. And off we went. Only to be stopped by the other bus pulling in front of us with its cargo of dickheads and a few scooters to boot. Eventually, after a heated debate featuring our driver and the old driver and the immigration officer, they drove off, but insisted on stopping us threateningly a few more times. Our driver decided to do a lap of the town and picked up a few more locals and a policeman and off we went again. Uninterrupted for five hours of off-roading with Vietnamese ska gracing the airwaves and a bus full of weary smoking and spluttering non-smokers deprived of sleep.
We got to Vinh and caught a bus to Hanoi at 9am. We arrived in Hanoi at around 2pm.
Adrian and Cally
Riiiight... so we've decided not to use the Nong Het crossing after all.
20 November 2003
The other day I had my hair cut in a wooden shack. Then we watched "Matrix: Revolutions" on a television set in a bamboo hut bar.
Yesterday we went tubing on the Nam Xong river. A tuk-tuk took us, and two bright pink tractor inner-tubes, 5km upstream of Vang Vieng and dropped us off near the riverbank. We spent the next three hours floating lazily back downstream in the sunshine, avoiding submerged rocks and stopping off occasionally to buy beer at floating wooden platforms. It was the most relaxing thing I have done all year.
Everywhere we go in Laos there are people, some wearing camouflage jackets and some in normal tatty clothes, wandering around the countryside carrying dangerous-looking automatic weapons. It's not clear what they are doing or why they are there. I doubt they're hunting animals because there are even more people carrying hunting rifles. Fortunately, they have all smiled and waved back at us so far.
Recently someone told me that when a person stops wanting material possessions they lose their personality.
Yesterday we went tubing on the Nam Xong river. A tuk-tuk took us, and two bright pink tractor inner-tubes, 5km upstream of Vang Vieng and dropped us off near the riverbank. We spent the next three hours floating lazily back downstream in the sunshine, avoiding submerged rocks and stopping off occasionally to buy beer at floating wooden platforms. It was the most relaxing thing I have done all year.
Everywhere we go in Laos there are people, some wearing camouflage jackets and some in normal tatty clothes, wandering around the countryside carrying dangerous-looking automatic weapons. It's not clear what they are doing or why they are there. I doubt they're hunting animals because there are even more people carrying hunting rifles. Fortunately, they have all smiled and waved back at us so far.
Recently someone told me that when a person stops wanting material possessions they lose their personality.
18 November 2003
Louang Phabang is Laos' second-largest city but that doesn't say much. It is about the size of Market Weighton and sprawls dustily along one side of the Mekong River immediately downstream of the confluence with the Khan. As usual in Laos, most of the population lives in little wooden huts and cooks on open fires. Louang Phabang attracts hundreds of Western tourists - the scenery and ancient temples were spectacular but the town is rapidly losing its Lao identity.
I've noticed that many backpackers spend a lot of time complaining about "tourists" and "touristy places." The way they talk you'd think they were some kind of incredible superior race of travelling beings who consider it beneath themselves to mix with "tourists" or visit tourist hotspots. Oh and of course they went to so-and-so years ago and oh yes wasn't it beautiful but oh no now it's all touristy and spoiled and there are so many tourists and we can't get away from them they're taking over god it's just so touristy. These are the same sort of twerps who think they're cool because they liked a band before anyone else had ever heard of them and now oh they're so mainstream and popular and everyone likes them and I'm so cool because I used to like them before anyone else had ever heard of them and for the sake of the lord why don't you shut your stupid whining gobs.
In actual fact, these backpackers are tourists too, only arrogant.
But what luxuries! Louang Phabang had mains electricity (though prone to three hour black-outs) and, more importantly, a reliable telephone exchange which meant we once again had contact with the outside world.
We visited an impressive waterfall at Kouang Si. We spent a day cycling around the town on rented bicycles. clip was poorly for two days with a bad cold. We looked at the town's ancient temples. We ate a lot of Indian food (Lao food is rather dull).
Filthy snobs that we are, we splashed out 10ukp on minivan tickets south to Vang Vieng. We spent most of the journey staring open-mouthed out of the windows. The scenery in Laos is beyond comprehension. It is by far the most beautiful place I have ever been. clip described it as "absolutely nuts." It is emotionally-moving. In every direction there are severe knobbley 2000m-high craggy limestone mountainous towers with white cliffs and velvet-like tree cover. And behind those mountainous towers, the greyish silhouettes of more knobbley mountainous towers. And behind those, the black silhouettes of more knobbley mountainous towers. And beyond those, yet more of them fading away right out to the horizon. And the sun shines severely through the gaps and lights up the valleys like distant searchlights beaming through mist. And rivers race along the gaps between the hills. And the little roads through the little hut villages wind up and round and over everything. It is amazing.
Vang Vieng is a Lao version of Haad Rin. The whole town is geared towards backpacker hedonism. There are quite a few drugs available. Many restaurants sell "Magic Shakes." On menus - "Add 10000kip to any pizza order if you want to get stoned." Accommodation is very cheap though - our fantastic double en-suite hotel room is 1.76ukp per night!
Yesterday we hired a motorbike and rode it around the hills with no helmets on. Fifty kilometres away from Vang Vieng, in the middle of nowhere, in the scorching heat, we stopped for a rest. And heard a loud hissing noise. And the front tyre deflated. And no traffic came past. And we pushed the bike for a kilometre, wondering what to do. I thought I was dreaming when we came to a tiny ramshackle bamboo hut with a motorcycle workshop inside. An old sweating lady in a sarong who couldn't speak a word of English levered the front tyre off, found the hole in the inner tube, stuck a bit of grass in it, filed it, glued it, clamped a patch on it, lit some kind of pyrotechnic backing strip, removed the clamp, replaced the tyre and re-inflated it, all in about ten minutes. She charged us 10000K (59p) but we were so relieved we paid double! :oP
I've noticed that many backpackers spend a lot of time complaining about "tourists" and "touristy places." The way they talk you'd think they were some kind of incredible superior race of travelling beings who consider it beneath themselves to mix with "tourists" or visit tourist hotspots. Oh and of course they went to so-and-so years ago and oh yes wasn't it beautiful but oh no now it's all touristy and spoiled and there are so many tourists and we can't get away from them they're taking over god it's just so touristy. These are the same sort of twerps who think they're cool because they liked a band before anyone else had ever heard of them and now oh they're so mainstream and popular and everyone likes them and I'm so cool because I used to like them before anyone else had ever heard of them and for the sake of the lord why don't you shut your stupid whining gobs.
In actual fact, these backpackers are tourists too, only arrogant.
But what luxuries! Louang Phabang had mains electricity (though prone to three hour black-outs) and, more importantly, a reliable telephone exchange which meant we once again had contact with the outside world.
We visited an impressive waterfall at Kouang Si. We spent a day cycling around the town on rented bicycles. clip was poorly for two days with a bad cold. We looked at the town's ancient temples. We ate a lot of Indian food (Lao food is rather dull).
Filthy snobs that we are, we splashed out 10ukp on minivan tickets south to Vang Vieng. We spent most of the journey staring open-mouthed out of the windows. The scenery in Laos is beyond comprehension. It is by far the most beautiful place I have ever been. clip described it as "absolutely nuts." It is emotionally-moving. In every direction there are severe knobbley 2000m-high craggy limestone mountainous towers with white cliffs and velvet-like tree cover. And behind those mountainous towers, the greyish silhouettes of more knobbley mountainous towers. And behind those, the black silhouettes of more knobbley mountainous towers. And beyond those, yet more of them fading away right out to the horizon. And the sun shines severely through the gaps and lights up the valleys like distant searchlights beaming through mist. And rivers race along the gaps between the hills. And the little roads through the little hut villages wind up and round and over everything. It is amazing.
Vang Vieng is a Lao version of Haad Rin. The whole town is geared towards backpacker hedonism. There are quite a few drugs available. Many restaurants sell "Magic Shakes." On menus - "Add 10000kip to any pizza order if you want to get stoned." Accommodation is very cheap though - our fantastic double en-suite hotel room is 1.76ukp per night!
Yesterday we hired a motorbike and rode it around the hills with no helmets on. Fifty kilometres away from Vang Vieng, in the middle of nowhere, in the scorching heat, we stopped for a rest. And heard a loud hissing noise. And the front tyre deflated. And no traffic came past. And we pushed the bike for a kilometre, wondering what to do. I thought I was dreaming when we came to a tiny ramshackle bamboo hut with a motorcycle workshop inside. An old sweating lady in a sarong who couldn't speak a word of English levered the front tyre off, found the hole in the inner tube, stuck a bit of grass in it, filed it, glued it, clamped a patch on it, lit some kind of pyrotechnic backing strip, removed the clamp, replaced the tyre and re-inflated it, all in about ten minutes. She charged us 10000K (59p) but we were so relieved we paid double! :oP
15 November 2003
Why do tourists in Asia insist on buying and wearing complete wardrobes of ill-fitting, half-mast, itchy, threadbare, toggle-necked ethnic clobber which gathers uncomfortably around the crotch, interferes with their normal gait and makes them look like a cross between Worzel Gummidge and Coco The Clown, despite the fact that not a single one of the ethnic people selling the gear ever ever wears any the stuff themselves.
12 November 2003
Hello from clip.
After spending a month somewhere you begin to think of it as home. That is how I felt about Thailand. I know clop wasn't too enamoured with the place, but overall I thought it was rather nice. The people were very smiley, especially the kiddies, and the food was great. The licensed tourist offices were very cheeky, constantly trying to get more money out of us, but compared to them we are extremely wealthy and they just want some of it. In the end I just began to accept their blagging as part of Thailand. So when it came time to move on again I was kind of sad. For some reason Laos really worries me. I can't give you a good reason, it's just a feeling I have. clop is really looking forward to it. Maybe it's because it's going to be real travelling. The guide says getting around takes forever, is uncomfortable and to expect many punctures and breakdowns wherever you go. Hmmm... Oh and they eat dog! In all the guide books they give you useful phrases in the various languages, usually things like Hello, Do you have a room for two people for tonight? etc. For Laos one of the useful phrases is Help I've been raped!??? Great eh!
Further post by clip below.
After spending a month somewhere you begin to think of it as home. That is how I felt about Thailand. I know clop wasn't too enamoured with the place, but overall I thought it was rather nice. The people were very smiley, especially the kiddies, and the food was great. The licensed tourist offices were very cheeky, constantly trying to get more money out of us, but compared to them we are extremely wealthy and they just want some of it. In the end I just began to accept their blagging as part of Thailand. So when it came time to move on again I was kind of sad. For some reason Laos really worries me. I can't give you a good reason, it's just a feeling I have. clop is really looking forward to it. Maybe it's because it's going to be real travelling. The guide says getting around takes forever, is uncomfortable and to expect many punctures and breakdowns wherever you go. Hmmm... Oh and they eat dog! In all the guide books they give you useful phrases in the various languages, usually things like Hello, Do you have a room for two people for tonight? etc. For Laos one of the useful phrases is Help I've been raped!??? Great eh!
Further post by clip below.
Greetings from Laos!
First, let's catch up... Back in Lieland we caught a bus along a circuitous route from Chiang Rai to Chiang Khong and walked 3km along the south side of the Mekong River to the border checkpoint, the only Thai/Lao border crossing open to Westerners within a radius of over two hundred miles. There was nobody else crossing the border. Alone, we clambered down the bank and traipsed across the dry mud to a small wooden boat at the water's edge, and were taken across the wide brown river to Houayxai in Laos. Once there we sat at a picnic table and filled in our arrival cards in the sunshine, had our passports stamped by an immigration official, circumvented the fast-boat touts and checked in at a very nice hotel up the road (3ukp).
The Lao currency is the kip. There are 17000 kip to the pound and there are no coins in circulation. We changed just over 20ukp and received a stack of 390 1000K notes, two and a half inches thick. No wonder there are no ATM's in Laos - the money slots would need to be a foot high and in any case the machines would run out of money every ten minutes.
From Houayxai we decided to take a bus north to Louang Namtha. There are no set departure times so we arrived at the bus station at 7:45am to make sure we didn't miss it. In fact the bus wasn't a bus at all, it was a small sawngthaew - a 4WD truck with a couple of short benches facing each other in an open cage on the back. The "bus" wasn't leaving for a while so, after buying our tickets and loading our rucksacks on the roof-rack, we had a look around the morning market nearby. We bought twenty bananas for 30p. We didn't buy any whole shaved gutted roasted guinea pigs. We saw a woman urinating in full view. At 8:30am we crammed onto the "bus" along with six other people, a 36kg gas bottle, a bucket of water, two huge sacks of rice and a sack of bamboo shoots.
Northern Laos is like a gigantic hilly farmyard. It is much less developed than Thailand. The "road" was a very rough and dusty, unsurfaced cart track which wound up and down mountains, through rivers and across partially-collapsed bridges made from tree trunks laid lengthways. Some passengers wore bandanas to avoid breathing the dust; everyone else had to cover their mouths with their hands, screw their eyes up and cringe forwards behind the cab. The track was busy with buffalo, boar, pigs, ducks, cows, turkeys, goats, chickens and dogs. The most popular mode of transport in Laos (other than moped) is a wooden cart pulled by a tiny tractor engine mounted on a wooden chassis. The wilderness scenery was absolutely stunning with blues, greens and browns everywhere. Laos beats New Zealand hands down in the scenery stakes. It's difficult to appreciate that this region produces the vast majority of the world's supply of heroin.
We stopped for one of the passengers to buy a stickful of raw fish from a group of boys carrying homemade wooden harpoons. The bus driver bought a harpoon.
Later we stopped for everyone to have a wee. There are no public toilets in Laos so everyone just ran off into the bushes. Not too far into the bushes though - 25% of Laos villages still have unexploded mines, bombs and mortar shells in them, left over from the Second Indochina War. There are currently two hundred accidents per year.
We passed through numerous ethnic hilltribe villages of rustic bamboo huts lit by candles. More people with more huge sacks of rice climbed onto the bus. Eventually they had to lie on the sacks down the middle. The bus was searched at various police checkpoints; drug smuggling is rife in the area and Lao people need permits to travel.
After eight hours of banging and lurching through potholes, painfully squeezed together on an unpadded bench with our legs trapped under the sacks of rice and the edges of the metal cage bruising our backs, we arrived in Louang Namtha having covered just eighty miles.
And then we got straight onto another bus for the two hour journey across a mountain range to Muang Sing, a small town just eight miles south of the Chinese border which started life as an opium weighing station. Muang Sing is located in the middle of a wide flat valley, 650m above sea level, and is surrounded by mountains containing scores of hilltribe settlements populated by Akha, Tai Leu, Hmong, Tai Dam and Mien people, most of whom moved into Laos from neighbouring countries. Only one company is allowed to organise trekking in the area and they have only been operating since 2002. Just forty people went trekking in this entire region during the last month so we thought it would be the ideal place to do it ourselves. We signed up for a two day trek with Adrian and Cally and our guide, Ay.
Our trek started with a couple of hours easy walking across rice fields on the valley floor followed by dinner in the headman's hut of a low-altitude Akha village, then a four hour climb to another Akha village on the grassy summit of a 1400m-high mountain. Along the way we met a group of traditionally-costumed Akha children carrying baskets of goods back up from Muang Sing market 12km away, and feeling sorry for them we offered to carry their baskets. The baskets had shoulder boards and headstraps - clip looked like a crazy witch in a pillory.
The mountaintop village was straight out of Populous. It contained sixty raised wooden huts with bamboo flooring and thatched roofs, each housing an extended family of around eight. There was no electricity and all water had to be carried up the hill from a stream. Cooking took place over open wood fires inside the huts. Hundreds of cockerels, hens, chicks, pigs, piglets, cows, dogs, puppies and goats wandered loose around the village. Beneath each hut lurked a large wooden pedal-powered rice-pounding machine. There were no toilets - everyone went wherever they liked. Rice and cotton were laid out to dry on big woven bamboo squares.
We entered the village through the spirit gate (the Akha believe that the gate keeps out evil spirits) and were immediately mobbed by tatty Akha children, some hand-spinning cotton onto spindles, many with babies slung across their backs, all screaming "sabai dee!" (Lao for "hello!"). White people are evidently still something of a novelty here and we soon had a large group of people standing around us, staring silently with expressionless faces.
A fourteen-year-old boy called Noi was put in charge of our visit. Whilst we attempted to communicate with the staring Akha throng (they don't speak Lao, never mind English), Noi got a fire going, swept our hut, brought twenty litres of water up from the stream, caught a chicken, killed it, plucked it, then helped Ay butcher it and cook us a fantastic meal of sticky rice, chicken broth and vegetable omelette.
Whilst everything was cooking clip and I decided to go for a "shower". A group of Akha children led us out to the bathing waterhole and watched silently as I stripped to my boxer shorts, stood in ankle-deep mud and attempted to wash myself properly using a scoop made from half a plastic tub lashed to a wooden stick whilst struggling to retain some decency. What fun.
Back in the village a swarthy Akha guy came over and offered us some ya baa - pink pills of methamphetamine manufactured in Burma and smuggled in across the border. We declined his offer.
After we'd eaten our tea, by candlelight, again with an audience, Noi laid out our beds on the bamboo floor of our hut and we all received traditional massages from village girls wearing their Akha costumes. The massages involved a surprising amount of bottom manipulation. Meanwhile the assembled onlookers took the opportunity to investigate our belongings, squeezing suncream on their hands, putting toothpaste in their mouths, playing with our torches and painting each other with insect repellant.
It was difficult to sleep in the cold hut with pigs grunting and chickens clucking directly beneath our heads. The raucous cockerel cacophony began at 4:30am. At 5am Noi stomped in, lit our fire and kicked Ay to wake him up. At 5:30am the rhythmic thumping of the rice-pounding machines started up. By 6am most of the villagers had left for the market, the fields or to go hunting.
During breakfast a major argument broke out in a neighbouring hut. A man had done something terribly wrong (we never discovered what it was) and was being thrown out of his home. There was an awful lot of shouting. Suddenly an older bloke ran out brandishing an extremely large knife and chased the man away.
After a furtive wash in some bushes we set off down and around the mountain to the next Akha village. Ay had not guided this trek before so we had to hire some machete-wielding children to cut back the undergrowth and show us the way. We ate our dinner in an Akha hut then continued to a Hmong village before returning to Muang Sing.
The trekking experience affected us a great deal. The hilltribe people lead a simple life but it is a life of pure survival. It was very humbling to see young children coping effortlessly with huge responsibilities as part of their everyday life.
From Muang Sing we caught a sawngthaew to Louang Namtha and spent the night there with Adrian and Cally. They had a rat in their room. We were kept awake by the rats nibbling inside our bamboo walls.
In the morning we caught a bus east to Oudomxai (four hours including searches) and then a sawngthaew to Nong Khiaw (another four hours). The roads were surfaced but rough; progress was slow due to all the sharp bend and steep hills. We stopped at a road-side "butcher shop" stall selling dead parrots and roasted squirrels. The sawngthaew had no headlights so when it got dark one of the passengers had to hold a torch out of the window to light the way.
We spent a couple of relaxing days in Nong Khiaw, a dusty village on the Nam Ou River surrounded by towering misty mountains and massive blue-green limestone escarpments. We visited some caves and wandered about in the sunshine. Lovely. Then we chartered a slow-boat with Adrian and Cally and sailed south down the Nam Ou for five hours to Louang Phabang. The scenery along the way was gobsmackingly beautiful. The steering system on the boat (a wheel with old ropes attached to a flap of metal via bent hooks) fell apart halfway through a set of particularly dangerous rapids and we almost smashed into some rocks. Once in calmer waters we pulled in at a muddy shore where the driver spent quarter of an hour banging nails on rocks to straighten them, hammering the rudder and cobbling together a repair. Later we stopped at the "Buddha Caves" - a couple of subterranean grimey-Buddha-statue graveyards. They were absolutely rubbish.
Laos is much poorer than Thailand but in eight days nobody has lied to us or tried to cheat us. Bus prices are the same for everyone. When we've accidentally overpaid for things the Lao people have just laughed and handed the money back. There is no atmosphere of taking advantage of travellers. The scenery is by far the best I've ever seen. As a former French colony Laos has retained much of the French influence - cars drive on the right, French is taught in schools, Lao people play boules and accordian music is very popular. The lack of mains electricity and not having a telephone system is a bit of a problem but I love Laos so far.
Further post by clip below.
First, let's catch up... Back in Lieland we caught a bus along a circuitous route from Chiang Rai to Chiang Khong and walked 3km along the south side of the Mekong River to the border checkpoint, the only Thai/Lao border crossing open to Westerners within a radius of over two hundred miles. There was nobody else crossing the border. Alone, we clambered down the bank and traipsed across the dry mud to a small wooden boat at the water's edge, and were taken across the wide brown river to Houayxai in Laos. Once there we sat at a picnic table and filled in our arrival cards in the sunshine, had our passports stamped by an immigration official, circumvented the fast-boat touts and checked in at a very nice hotel up the road (3ukp).
The Lao currency is the kip. There are 17000 kip to the pound and there are no coins in circulation. We changed just over 20ukp and received a stack of 390 1000K notes, two and a half inches thick. No wonder there are no ATM's in Laos - the money slots would need to be a foot high and in any case the machines would run out of money every ten minutes.
From Houayxai we decided to take a bus north to Louang Namtha. There are no set departure times so we arrived at the bus station at 7:45am to make sure we didn't miss it. In fact the bus wasn't a bus at all, it was a small sawngthaew - a 4WD truck with a couple of short benches facing each other in an open cage on the back. The "bus" wasn't leaving for a while so, after buying our tickets and loading our rucksacks on the roof-rack, we had a look around the morning market nearby. We bought twenty bananas for 30p. We didn't buy any whole shaved gutted roasted guinea pigs. We saw a woman urinating in full view. At 8:30am we crammed onto the "bus" along with six other people, a 36kg gas bottle, a bucket of water, two huge sacks of rice and a sack of bamboo shoots.
Northern Laos is like a gigantic hilly farmyard. It is much less developed than Thailand. The "road" was a very rough and dusty, unsurfaced cart track which wound up and down mountains, through rivers and across partially-collapsed bridges made from tree trunks laid lengthways. Some passengers wore bandanas to avoid breathing the dust; everyone else had to cover their mouths with their hands, screw their eyes up and cringe forwards behind the cab. The track was busy with buffalo, boar, pigs, ducks, cows, turkeys, goats, chickens and dogs. The most popular mode of transport in Laos (other than moped) is a wooden cart pulled by a tiny tractor engine mounted on a wooden chassis. The wilderness scenery was absolutely stunning with blues, greens and browns everywhere. Laos beats New Zealand hands down in the scenery stakes. It's difficult to appreciate that this region produces the vast majority of the world's supply of heroin.
We stopped for one of the passengers to buy a stickful of raw fish from a group of boys carrying homemade wooden harpoons. The bus driver bought a harpoon.
Later we stopped for everyone to have a wee. There are no public toilets in Laos so everyone just ran off into the bushes. Not too far into the bushes though - 25% of Laos villages still have unexploded mines, bombs and mortar shells in them, left over from the Second Indochina War. There are currently two hundred accidents per year.
We passed through numerous ethnic hilltribe villages of rustic bamboo huts lit by candles. More people with more huge sacks of rice climbed onto the bus. Eventually they had to lie on the sacks down the middle. The bus was searched at various police checkpoints; drug smuggling is rife in the area and Lao people need permits to travel.
After eight hours of banging and lurching through potholes, painfully squeezed together on an unpadded bench with our legs trapped under the sacks of rice and the edges of the metal cage bruising our backs, we arrived in Louang Namtha having covered just eighty miles.
And then we got straight onto another bus for the two hour journey across a mountain range to Muang Sing, a small town just eight miles south of the Chinese border which started life as an opium weighing station. Muang Sing is located in the middle of a wide flat valley, 650m above sea level, and is surrounded by mountains containing scores of hilltribe settlements populated by Akha, Tai Leu, Hmong, Tai Dam and Mien people, most of whom moved into Laos from neighbouring countries. Only one company is allowed to organise trekking in the area and they have only been operating since 2002. Just forty people went trekking in this entire region during the last month so we thought it would be the ideal place to do it ourselves. We signed up for a two day trek with Adrian and Cally and our guide, Ay.
Our trek started with a couple of hours easy walking across rice fields on the valley floor followed by dinner in the headman's hut of a low-altitude Akha village, then a four hour climb to another Akha village on the grassy summit of a 1400m-high mountain. Along the way we met a group of traditionally-costumed Akha children carrying baskets of goods back up from Muang Sing market 12km away, and feeling sorry for them we offered to carry their baskets. The baskets had shoulder boards and headstraps - clip looked like a crazy witch in a pillory.
The mountaintop village was straight out of Populous. It contained sixty raised wooden huts with bamboo flooring and thatched roofs, each housing an extended family of around eight. There was no electricity and all water had to be carried up the hill from a stream. Cooking took place over open wood fires inside the huts. Hundreds of cockerels, hens, chicks, pigs, piglets, cows, dogs, puppies and goats wandered loose around the village. Beneath each hut lurked a large wooden pedal-powered rice-pounding machine. There were no toilets - everyone went wherever they liked. Rice and cotton were laid out to dry on big woven bamboo squares.
We entered the village through the spirit gate (the Akha believe that the gate keeps out evil spirits) and were immediately mobbed by tatty Akha children, some hand-spinning cotton onto spindles, many with babies slung across their backs, all screaming "sabai dee!" (Lao for "hello!"). White people are evidently still something of a novelty here and we soon had a large group of people standing around us, staring silently with expressionless faces.
A fourteen-year-old boy called Noi was put in charge of our visit. Whilst we attempted to communicate with the staring Akha throng (they don't speak Lao, never mind English), Noi got a fire going, swept our hut, brought twenty litres of water up from the stream, caught a chicken, killed it, plucked it, then helped Ay butcher it and cook us a fantastic meal of sticky rice, chicken broth and vegetable omelette.
Whilst everything was cooking clip and I decided to go for a "shower". A group of Akha children led us out to the bathing waterhole and watched silently as I stripped to my boxer shorts, stood in ankle-deep mud and attempted to wash myself properly using a scoop made from half a plastic tub lashed to a wooden stick whilst struggling to retain some decency. What fun.
Back in the village a swarthy Akha guy came over and offered us some ya baa - pink pills of methamphetamine manufactured in Burma and smuggled in across the border. We declined his offer.
After we'd eaten our tea, by candlelight, again with an audience, Noi laid out our beds on the bamboo floor of our hut and we all received traditional massages from village girls wearing their Akha costumes. The massages involved a surprising amount of bottom manipulation. Meanwhile the assembled onlookers took the opportunity to investigate our belongings, squeezing suncream on their hands, putting toothpaste in their mouths, playing with our torches and painting each other with insect repellant.
It was difficult to sleep in the cold hut with pigs grunting and chickens clucking directly beneath our heads. The raucous cockerel cacophony began at 4:30am. At 5am Noi stomped in, lit our fire and kicked Ay to wake him up. At 5:30am the rhythmic thumping of the rice-pounding machines started up. By 6am most of the villagers had left for the market, the fields or to go hunting.
During breakfast a major argument broke out in a neighbouring hut. A man had done something terribly wrong (we never discovered what it was) and was being thrown out of his home. There was an awful lot of shouting. Suddenly an older bloke ran out brandishing an extremely large knife and chased the man away.
After a furtive wash in some bushes we set off down and around the mountain to the next Akha village. Ay had not guided this trek before so we had to hire some machete-wielding children to cut back the undergrowth and show us the way. We ate our dinner in an Akha hut then continued to a Hmong village before returning to Muang Sing.
The trekking experience affected us a great deal. The hilltribe people lead a simple life but it is a life of pure survival. It was very humbling to see young children coping effortlessly with huge responsibilities as part of their everyday life.
From Muang Sing we caught a sawngthaew to Louang Namtha and spent the night there with Adrian and Cally. They had a rat in their room. We were kept awake by the rats nibbling inside our bamboo walls.
In the morning we caught a bus east to Oudomxai (four hours including searches) and then a sawngthaew to Nong Khiaw (another four hours). The roads were surfaced but rough; progress was slow due to all the sharp bend and steep hills. We stopped at a road-side "butcher shop" stall selling dead parrots and roasted squirrels. The sawngthaew had no headlights so when it got dark one of the passengers had to hold a torch out of the window to light the way.
We spent a couple of relaxing days in Nong Khiaw, a dusty village on the Nam Ou River surrounded by towering misty mountains and massive blue-green limestone escarpments. We visited some caves and wandered about in the sunshine. Lovely. Then we chartered a slow-boat with Adrian and Cally and sailed south down the Nam Ou for five hours to Louang Phabang. The scenery along the way was gobsmackingly beautiful. The steering system on the boat (a wheel with old ropes attached to a flap of metal via bent hooks) fell apart halfway through a set of particularly dangerous rapids and we almost smashed into some rocks. Once in calmer waters we pulled in at a muddy shore where the driver spent quarter of an hour banging nails on rocks to straighten them, hammering the rudder and cobbling together a repair. Later we stopped at the "Buddha Caves" - a couple of subterranean grimey-Buddha-statue graveyards. They were absolutely rubbish.
Laos is much poorer than Thailand but in eight days nobody has lied to us or tried to cheat us. Bus prices are the same for everyone. When we've accidentally overpaid for things the Lao people have just laughed and handed the money back. There is no atmosphere of taking advantage of travellers. The scenery is by far the best I've ever seen. As a former French colony Laos has retained much of the French influence - cars drive on the right, French is taught in schools, Lao people play boules and accordian music is very popular. The lack of mains electricity and not having a telephone system is a bit of a problem but I love Laos so far.
Further post by clip below.
03 November 2003
Oh, woe is me. Tomorrow we leave Lieland. I'll share my thoughts on this tragedy later.
In the UK it's generally considered desirable for white people to have a sun tan. A nice healthy glow. Attractive and sexy. Well here in Southeast Asia it's the other way round - it's considered more attractive to be whiter, partly because a darker skin is associated with field labourers who work in the sun all day. The pharmacies are full of skin-whitening ointments and make-up. It's not uncommon to see Asian people with unnaturally white faces, like oriental Pierot dolls. It's an interesting slant.
We took a normal (hot and crowded) bus from Sukhothai north through the mountains to Chiang Mai, Lieland's second-largest city and set in a two-kilometre-square walled moat next to the Ping River. Chiang Mai is Lieland's hilltribe-trekking capital and though we had planned to go trekking there, the high number of trekking tours (100+) operating in the local area put us off. Our plan is now to go trekking in Laos or Vietnam where everything is a bit quieter.
We walked 3km to look at a temple but in the opposite direction. Quite annoying, that.
In the evening we went out for some food. Unattracted by the utterly gross fried Giant Water Bugs we ate raw whole green chillies instead and suffered the most horrific untreatable mouth pain for three-quarters of an hour. We met up with Matt (who had spent the week following the Full Moon Party on an island with bacterial dysentery), got drunk and ended up locked out of our guesthouse at 2am.
And then even further north on a cockroach-infested bus to our current home in Chiang Rai, high up in the mountains near the Laos border on the banks of the Kok River. Funnily enough, there is a Wang Come Hotel here. As towns go, Chiang Rai is excellent. Small enough to walk round easily and lots to see and do. We've been to a temple of concentrically-arranged colourfully-ribboned stone penises and visited the Hilltribe Museum to learn about the local ethnic mountain peoples. At the night bazaar we saw piles of pig intestines coiled on trays of ice.
The lifestyle in Asia highlights certain aspects about the way we live in the UK. In Asia people always seem to be really enjoying their day. Four people on a moped. Musical bells on trishaws. Flowers hanging in cars and buses. Policemen playing with puppies on the floor of a train station. It makes the actual second-to-second life we lead in the UK seem very very dull. We often think that having fun has to involve shopping, going to the cinema, eating out, watching television or getting drunk. It's as if we've developed past fun, to the point where we've introduced so many rules that we've cut ourselves off from the simple enjoyment of living.
My thoughts on Thailand are mixed. It is a relatively poor country and this has badly affected the way Thai people see Westerners - we might as well have signs glued to our foreheads saying "MONEY! KERCHING!!" With very few exceptions the Thai people have been friendly to us only when they've been trying to get money out of us. Being seen solely as a source of income is depressing. Walking along the street means being constantly beeped at, hassled and shouted at by taxi drivers, tuk-tuk drivers and shopkeepers, none of whom beep or shout at any Thai people.
The Thai people call foreigners farang and we are treated differently. Admission prices to national parks, temples and attractions have been up to ten times higher. We have been overcharged on buses and then seen the conductor pocketing the money whilst Thai passengers smirked. We were moved from our seats midway through a journey on a full train by a ticket conductor who made us sit apart in another carriage under the pretext that we were in the "wrong seats", despite the fact that there were no seat numbers allocated, so that two Thai people who had just boarded the train could sit together. Shopkeepers have told us the wrong prices. So-called officials have simply lied to us.
Having said all that, every single Thai person we have smiled at has smiled back at us. Try smiling at strangers on a bus between Gipton and Holbeck! Cynically, maybe they're smiling because they know we're in their country being scammed. Sadly, my overriding impression of Thailand has been of people lying and cheating us. Being relatively poor isn't an excuse for blatant dishonesty.
In the UK it's generally considered desirable for white people to have a sun tan. A nice healthy glow. Attractive and sexy. Well here in Southeast Asia it's the other way round - it's considered more attractive to be whiter, partly because a darker skin is associated with field labourers who work in the sun all day. The pharmacies are full of skin-whitening ointments and make-up. It's not uncommon to see Asian people with unnaturally white faces, like oriental Pierot dolls. It's an interesting slant.
We took a normal (hot and crowded) bus from Sukhothai north through the mountains to Chiang Mai, Lieland's second-largest city and set in a two-kilometre-square walled moat next to the Ping River. Chiang Mai is Lieland's hilltribe-trekking capital and though we had planned to go trekking there, the high number of trekking tours (100+) operating in the local area put us off. Our plan is now to go trekking in Laos or Vietnam where everything is a bit quieter.
We walked 3km to look at a temple but in the opposite direction. Quite annoying, that.
In the evening we went out for some food. Unattracted by the utterly gross fried Giant Water Bugs we ate raw whole green chillies instead and suffered the most horrific untreatable mouth pain for three-quarters of an hour. We met up with Matt (who had spent the week following the Full Moon Party on an island with bacterial dysentery), got drunk and ended up locked out of our guesthouse at 2am.
And then even further north on a cockroach-infested bus to our current home in Chiang Rai, high up in the mountains near the Laos border on the banks of the Kok River. Funnily enough, there is a Wang Come Hotel here. As towns go, Chiang Rai is excellent. Small enough to walk round easily and lots to see and do. We've been to a temple of concentrically-arranged colourfully-ribboned stone penises and visited the Hilltribe Museum to learn about the local ethnic mountain peoples. At the night bazaar we saw piles of pig intestines coiled on trays of ice.
The lifestyle in Asia highlights certain aspects about the way we live in the UK. In Asia people always seem to be really enjoying their day. Four people on a moped. Musical bells on trishaws. Flowers hanging in cars and buses. Policemen playing with puppies on the floor of a train station. It makes the actual second-to-second life we lead in the UK seem very very dull. We often think that having fun has to involve shopping, going to the cinema, eating out, watching television or getting drunk. It's as if we've developed past fun, to the point where we've introduced so many rules that we've cut ourselves off from the simple enjoyment of living.
My thoughts on Thailand are mixed. It is a relatively poor country and this has badly affected the way Thai people see Westerners - we might as well have signs glued to our foreheads saying "MONEY! KERCHING!!" With very few exceptions the Thai people have been friendly to us only when they've been trying to get money out of us. Being seen solely as a source of income is depressing. Walking along the street means being constantly beeped at, hassled and shouted at by taxi drivers, tuk-tuk drivers and shopkeepers, none of whom beep or shout at any Thai people.
The Thai people call foreigners farang and we are treated differently. Admission prices to national parks, temples and attractions have been up to ten times higher. We have been overcharged on buses and then seen the conductor pocketing the money whilst Thai passengers smirked. We were moved from our seats midway through a journey on a full train by a ticket conductor who made us sit apart in another carriage under the pretext that we were in the "wrong seats", despite the fact that there were no seat numbers allocated, so that two Thai people who had just boarded the train could sit together. Shopkeepers have told us the wrong prices. So-called officials have simply lied to us.
Having said all that, every single Thai person we have smiled at has smiled back at us. Try smiling at strangers on a bus between Gipton and Holbeck! Cynically, maybe they're smiling because they know we're in their country being scammed. Sadly, my overriding impression of Thailand has been of people lying and cheating us. Being relatively poor isn't an excuse for blatant dishonesty.
31 October 2003
After leaving Kanchanaburi (for the second time) we shared a train carriage with some cockerels and monks to Bangkok Noi station, took a boatbus down the Chao Phraya River to central pier, then the Skytrain across town to Chatuchak to visit the famous weekend market. Chatuchak Weekend Market has over six thousand stalls and it was extremely interesting. It was not, however, very relaxing. There was a whole section devoted to fighting cockerels and another devoted to large wooden penises. The heat was unbearable and there were too many people and the tiny grubby alleys between the stalls were not wide enough to stop in without blocking them.
In Bangkok we used flushing toilets for the first time in two weeks. Recently we have been using the scoop and slosh variety. There is something satisfyingly feral about using squat toilets. Flushing toilets now seem unnecessarily bulky and waste a lot of water. Toilet paper rarely features in Asian bathrooms either - instead we use a miniature jetwash attached to a short length of hose. Again there is less cost and less waste, and you come out the bathroom cleaner than you would if you'd used paper. And we think we live in a more developed country?
I liked Bangkok. It is very large, very dirty, very stinky and very noisy. The traffic is appalling. Driving in London is nothing compared to driving in Bangkok. There are no road rules except that the biggest vehicle always has right of way. Red traffic lights and Give Way signs are always ignored. The pollution is so bad that the streets are constantly filled with a horrible dark haze. Because of it, the traffic policemen (a very smart but essentially impotent lot who do nothing but blow annoying whistles all day), motorcyclists and tuk-tuk drivers have to wear surgical facemasks. Just the sheer number of two-stroke motorbikes is incredible. There are hundreds of thousands of them. Helmets are compulsory on main thoroughfares but this is clearly an unpopular rule because everyone deliberately leaves them unfastened (including the police) or just balances them on top of their heads, then takes them off as soon as they turn down a side street.
Our day of sightseeing began in Bangkok's Chinatown district. We visited the "Golden Buddha" at a temple called Wat Traimat. This sixteen-feet-high, twelve-feet-wide statue is made of solid pure gold and weighs five and a half tons. It was made in Sukhothai (Thailand's first capital city) in the 1300's and was encased in plaster to hide it from invaders. Somehow they forgot what they had done. Much later the plaster Buddha was moved to Bangkok and installed in a temple but it was not until 1955 when some of the plaster fell off that everyone realised what was underneath. The discovery launched a country-wide craze for tapping away at plaster Buddhas.
We wandered aimlessly for an hour through Chinatown's narrow sidestreets; colourful and atmospheric alleys lined with shops selling things like spices, rice, fruit and cloth. Then we took the boatbus to Wat Po temple to see the "Reclining Buddha" statue. As we walked towards the entrance we were accosted by a tuk-tuk driver:
TT Driver: "Hello. Where you going?"
clop: "Hello. The Reclining Buddha."
TT Driver: "Ahh. Is down there but is closed today."
clop: "Closed? Why?"
TT Driver: "Today is special day. Reclining Buddha closed. No tourists allowed. You visit Grand Palace instead. I have tuk-tuk. You want tuk-tuk to Grand Palace?"
clop, smelling a rat: "Actually I think I'll go and see if the Reclining Buddha is open."
TT Driver: "No, no. Is closed today. No tourists. Is special day."
clop: "Well I'm going to look for myself."
And of course it was open, as it apparently is every day of the year.
The (indoor) Reclining Buddha statue is made of plaster-covered brick and entirely gilded in gold leaves. It is ridiculously big. It is one hundred and fifty feet long and forty nine feet high. Buddha's smile is seventeen feet wide! It was so big it was funny. The soles of his vast, seventeen-feet-long feet are beautifully inlaid with mother-of-pearl.
After leaving the temple we walked back to the tuk-tuk driver.
TT Driver: "Is open?"
clop: "Of course it's open. You know it's open. It's open every day."
TT Driver: "Really? Someone told me is closed today."
clop: "No they didn't. You're a liar. Why did you say it was closed?"
TT Driver: "No. Someone told me."
clop, raising his voice: "No they didn't. You know it's open. The man in there says you stand out here every day and tell people it's closed. He says you're a liar. Why did you tell me it's closed?"
TT Driver looks flustered and moves behind a food stall. A group of people are listening.
clop: "You're a liar. You shouldn't do that. It's bad. You're a liar."
TT Liar, shrugging: "I'm a liar."
I could have wrung his stupid lying neck.
We walked up past the Grand Palace and had a look at Khao San Road, Bangkok's main backpacker area and a bit of a culture shock, before walking to Hualam Phong and getting a taxi back to our hostel. And yes, we had to ask to get the meter turned on.
The next morning we took a taxi to the new Northern and Northeastern Bus Terminal at Mo Chit II. It was massive. I have never seen so many buses together in one place. There were more than six hundred departure bays. It took us a while to find the right ticket desk (as everything was written in Thai script) before we could buy our tickets to Sukhothai. The only bus departing in the next couple of hours was a first class air-conditioned one so, what a pity, we were forced to travel in comfort for the next seven and a half hours (cost: 3.80ukp). Our tickets came with "Food and Beverage Coupons" attached to them but, as there was no other English written anywhere on the tickets or the coupons, we had no idea what to do with them. It all became clear when we pulled in at a remote bus station during the afternoon and everyone lined up in front of a serving hatch. We were given a plate of Pad Kra-Prao Kai (an extremely yummy Thai dish of chicken fried with chopped beans, basil leaves and chillies) with rice. It was incredibly spicy, almost too spicy for me to eat, but it wasn't hot enough for the Thai people. They poured bowls of chilli oil over theirs before eating it!
Arriving at New Sukhothai bus station at 6pm we were mobbed by the usual gang of lying taxi drivers and accommodation touts. For once we'd rung ahead and booked a room but none of the touts were from our guesthouse. The taxi driver told us it was a 4km walk to the guesthouse; he said he'd take us there for thirty baht. Sadly, we no longer trust anything taxi or tuk-tuk drivers tell us. We said, "Sorry but we're walking," and asked, "Which is the best way?" The taxi driver produced a map and showed us the route. He said, "It's four kilometres. It's a long way. I'm only trying to help. Come in taxi?" We replied, "No thanks. Thank you. Bye." He shouted after us, "I'm only trying to help!" We set off walking down a very long road and were starting to wish we'd taken the taxi after all when a lad pulled over and offered us a lift for ten baht. His "taxi" was a jumbo, a type of samlor consisting of the back end of a moped with a square cage attached to the front, in which we sat. It was a fun ride despite the worry that the driver couldn't really see where he was going. When we arrived we discovered that the guesthouse was actually about three hundred metres from the bus station - there was a path straight across the field to it. Yet again we had been lied to by Thai people trying to cheat us.
Our room in New Sukhothai was a wooden hut on wooden stilts in a bog. The door, walls, roof and window shutters were made of woven bamboo strips. There was no glass in the windows. The scoop and slosh toilet was unenclosed inside the hut. The shower and sink drained through a pipe into the bog. The bed had a straw mattress. clip had an extremely painful accident with her razor. At night rats and geckos scrabbled around the walls. Strangely enough, clip loved it. She didn't love the pigs squealing and being shot in the next field though.
Sukhothai was the capital of the first Kingdom of Siam (now Thailand) in the 13th and 14th centuries. We caught a songthaew from New Sukhothai to Old Sukhothai and rented some bicycles for the day. We cycled around the ancient ruins of the old city to see the various temples and Buddha images, and visited the nearby museum. Our songthaew back to New Sukhothai stopped at a school and picked up some school children. I counted thirty four people in the songthaew. Bear in mind this is a standard ute with benches in the back. At the guesthouse in the evening we counted forty four geckos on the ceiling.
It is now forty days since we have had any hot water. This isn't such a bad thing as the temperature is still averaging 34C during the day and 30C at night.
In Bangkok we used flushing toilets for the first time in two weeks. Recently we have been using the scoop and slosh variety. There is something satisfyingly feral about using squat toilets. Flushing toilets now seem unnecessarily bulky and waste a lot of water. Toilet paper rarely features in Asian bathrooms either - instead we use a miniature jetwash attached to a short length of hose. Again there is less cost and less waste, and you come out the bathroom cleaner than you would if you'd used paper. And we think we live in a more developed country?
I liked Bangkok. It is very large, very dirty, very stinky and very noisy. The traffic is appalling. Driving in London is nothing compared to driving in Bangkok. There are no road rules except that the biggest vehicle always has right of way. Red traffic lights and Give Way signs are always ignored. The pollution is so bad that the streets are constantly filled with a horrible dark haze. Because of it, the traffic policemen (a very smart but essentially impotent lot who do nothing but blow annoying whistles all day), motorcyclists and tuk-tuk drivers have to wear surgical facemasks. Just the sheer number of two-stroke motorbikes is incredible. There are hundreds of thousands of them. Helmets are compulsory on main thoroughfares but this is clearly an unpopular rule because everyone deliberately leaves them unfastened (including the police) or just balances them on top of their heads, then takes them off as soon as they turn down a side street.
Our day of sightseeing began in Bangkok's Chinatown district. We visited the "Golden Buddha" at a temple called Wat Traimat. This sixteen-feet-high, twelve-feet-wide statue is made of solid pure gold and weighs five and a half tons. It was made in Sukhothai (Thailand's first capital city) in the 1300's and was encased in plaster to hide it from invaders. Somehow they forgot what they had done. Much later the plaster Buddha was moved to Bangkok and installed in a temple but it was not until 1955 when some of the plaster fell off that everyone realised what was underneath. The discovery launched a country-wide craze for tapping away at plaster Buddhas.
We wandered aimlessly for an hour through Chinatown's narrow sidestreets; colourful and atmospheric alleys lined with shops selling things like spices, rice, fruit and cloth. Then we took the boatbus to Wat Po temple to see the "Reclining Buddha" statue. As we walked towards the entrance we were accosted by a tuk-tuk driver:
TT Driver: "Hello. Where you going?"
clop: "Hello. The Reclining Buddha."
TT Driver: "Ahh. Is down there but is closed today."
clop: "Closed? Why?"
TT Driver: "Today is special day. Reclining Buddha closed. No tourists allowed. You visit Grand Palace instead. I have tuk-tuk. You want tuk-tuk to Grand Palace?"
clop, smelling a rat: "Actually I think I'll go and see if the Reclining Buddha is open."
TT Driver: "No, no. Is closed today. No tourists. Is special day."
clop: "Well I'm going to look for myself."
And of course it was open, as it apparently is every day of the year.
The (indoor) Reclining Buddha statue is made of plaster-covered brick and entirely gilded in gold leaves. It is ridiculously big. It is one hundred and fifty feet long and forty nine feet high. Buddha's smile is seventeen feet wide! It was so big it was funny. The soles of his vast, seventeen-feet-long feet are beautifully inlaid with mother-of-pearl.
After leaving the temple we walked back to the tuk-tuk driver.
TT Driver: "Is open?"
clop: "Of course it's open. You know it's open. It's open every day."
TT Driver: "Really? Someone told me is closed today."
clop: "No they didn't. You're a liar. Why did you say it was closed?"
TT Driver: "No. Someone told me."
clop, raising his voice: "No they didn't. You know it's open. The man in there says you stand out here every day and tell people it's closed. He says you're a liar. Why did you tell me it's closed?"
TT Driver looks flustered and moves behind a food stall. A group of people are listening.
clop: "You're a liar. You shouldn't do that. It's bad. You're a liar."
TT Liar, shrugging: "I'm a liar."
I could have wrung his stupid lying neck.
We walked up past the Grand Palace and had a look at Khao San Road, Bangkok's main backpacker area and a bit of a culture shock, before walking to Hualam Phong and getting a taxi back to our hostel. And yes, we had to ask to get the meter turned on.
The next morning we took a taxi to the new Northern and Northeastern Bus Terminal at Mo Chit II. It was massive. I have never seen so many buses together in one place. There were more than six hundred departure bays. It took us a while to find the right ticket desk (as everything was written in Thai script) before we could buy our tickets to Sukhothai. The only bus departing in the next couple of hours was a first class air-conditioned one so, what a pity, we were forced to travel in comfort for the next seven and a half hours (cost: 3.80ukp). Our tickets came with "Food and Beverage Coupons" attached to them but, as there was no other English written anywhere on the tickets or the coupons, we had no idea what to do with them. It all became clear when we pulled in at a remote bus station during the afternoon and everyone lined up in front of a serving hatch. We were given a plate of Pad Kra-Prao Kai (an extremely yummy Thai dish of chicken fried with chopped beans, basil leaves and chillies) with rice. It was incredibly spicy, almost too spicy for me to eat, but it wasn't hot enough for the Thai people. They poured bowls of chilli oil over theirs before eating it!
Arriving at New Sukhothai bus station at 6pm we were mobbed by the usual gang of lying taxi drivers and accommodation touts. For once we'd rung ahead and booked a room but none of the touts were from our guesthouse. The taxi driver told us it was a 4km walk to the guesthouse; he said he'd take us there for thirty baht. Sadly, we no longer trust anything taxi or tuk-tuk drivers tell us. We said, "Sorry but we're walking," and asked, "Which is the best way?" The taxi driver produced a map and showed us the route. He said, "It's four kilometres. It's a long way. I'm only trying to help. Come in taxi?" We replied, "No thanks. Thank you. Bye." He shouted after us, "I'm only trying to help!" We set off walking down a very long road and were starting to wish we'd taken the taxi after all when a lad pulled over and offered us a lift for ten baht. His "taxi" was a jumbo, a type of samlor consisting of the back end of a moped with a square cage attached to the front, in which we sat. It was a fun ride despite the worry that the driver couldn't really see where he was going. When we arrived we discovered that the guesthouse was actually about three hundred metres from the bus station - there was a path straight across the field to it. Yet again we had been lied to by Thai people trying to cheat us.
Our room in New Sukhothai was a wooden hut on wooden stilts in a bog. The door, walls, roof and window shutters were made of woven bamboo strips. There was no glass in the windows. The scoop and slosh toilet was unenclosed inside the hut. The shower and sink drained through a pipe into the bog. The bed had a straw mattress. clip had an extremely painful accident with her razor. At night rats and geckos scrabbled around the walls. Strangely enough, clip loved it. She didn't love the pigs squealing and being shot in the next field though.
Sukhothai was the capital of the first Kingdom of Siam (now Thailand) in the 13th and 14th centuries. We caught a songthaew from New Sukhothai to Old Sukhothai and rented some bicycles for the day. We cycled around the ancient ruins of the old city to see the various temples and Buddha images, and visited the nearby museum. Our songthaew back to New Sukhothai stopped at a school and picked up some school children. I counted thirty four people in the songthaew. Bear in mind this is a standard ute with benches in the back. At the guesthouse in the evening we counted forty four geckos on the ceiling.
It is now forty days since we have had any hot water. This isn't such a bad thing as the temperature is still averaging 34C during the day and 30C at night.
29 October 2003
I have received an email from the government of Western Australia.
Dear (clop),
Attached please find the acknowledgement letter for your complaint received by the Department on 27 October.
Your enquiry has been allocated to Mr Gary Boyd, (telephone 9282 0661, email gboyd@docep.wa.gov.au) who will contact you within the next 10 days. We would appreciate it if you would advise the officer of your contact telephone number(s) and postal address, if you have not already done so. Your reference number for this enquiry is 185/06216/2003. Please quote this number in any future telephone calls or letters.
Marian Foster
Divisional Support Officer
Motor Vehicle and Travel Industries
Department of Consumer and Employment Protection
Tel: (08) 9282 0629
Dear (clop),
Attached please find the acknowledgement letter for your complaint received by the Department on 27 October.
Your enquiry has been allocated to Mr Gary Boyd, (telephone 9282 0661, email gboyd@docep.wa.gov.au) who will contact you within the next 10 days. We would appreciate it if you would advise the officer of your contact telephone number(s) and postal address, if you have not already done so. Your reference number for this enquiry is 185/06216/2003. Please quote this number in any future telephone calls or letters.
Marian Foster
Divisional Support Officer
Motor Vehicle and Travel Industries
Department of Consumer and Employment Protection
Tel: (08) 9282 0629
25 October 2003
And so the two and half hour train journey from Bangkok to Kanchanaburi cost 38p each, third class wooden seats all the way. On arrival we ignored the lying taxi drivers and walked the short distance to Apple's guesthouse, crossing a road in front of two elephants on the way. Apple's was a great place to stay and their Thai food was fantastic.
For those of you that have never heard of Kanchanaburi (like me) here's a bit of background: During World War II Japan invaded Burma, Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore. To facilitate the movement of supplies, the Japanese used 60000 Allied prisoners of war and 200000 Asian labourers to build a 415km railway line linking Burma and Thailand. The terrain was almost impenetrable and most of the work clearing the jungle, cutting 27m-deep cuttings, building 7m-high embankments and constructing wooden trestle bridges was done by hand. During the fifteen months it took to complete the "Death Railway" 16000 (27%) of the Allied POW's and 100000 (50%) of the Asian labourers died from malnutrition, mistreatment or disease. Kanchanaburi was one of the many POW camps along the railway; it is also the site of the Bridge Over the River Kwai, where the line crosses the River Kwai Yai before continuing north-west along the valleys towards Burma. Nowadays the Thailand part of the Death Railway operates only as far as Nam Tok, about 80km north-west of Kanchanaburi, after which the line has been dismantled and, in some places, flooded by a reservoir.
We rented some mountain bikes and spent a day cycling around Kanchanaburi. We visited the moving JEATH museum, set in a reconstruction of a POW camp hut, and learned about the building of the railway. We visited two war cemeteries, together containing the graves of 7000 of the Allied POW's. It would appear that the 100000 dead Asian labourers have been largely forgotten.
We crossed the Kwai via a road bridge and visited Wat Tham Khao Poon, a surprisingly large cave system stuffed full of shrines and religious objects, where we were given a guided tour by a six-year-old girl whose running commentary in Thai was wholly incomprehensible.
We cycled through the countryside up the west bank of the Kwai, with local people shouting hello to us from their gardens, and back over the famous railway bridge. There is no walkway so you actually have to walk or cycle between the rails. Luckily, a train didn't come along. It seemed a little weird to see so many Japanese tourists on the bridge, particularly as these were the only Japanese tourists we had seen in Asia, taking smiling group photos and flicking their fag ends into the river.
Back at Apple's we met Bruce, a Kiwi who has spent the last two and a half years working in the UK after a year long visit got a bit out of hand. He had stopped off in Thailand for a few days on his way back to Dunedin - his parents didn't know he was on his way home!
We also met David, a very interesting and animated history teacher from London who has been travelling through North and South America, New Zealand, Australia and Asia as part of a six month sabbatical.
A frog made itself at home in one of my boots. It lived there for the next three days. We found a big black scorpion outside our cabin. It was very aggressive. We saw a food-stall owner disembowelling a large frog.
We took a bus to Hellfire Pass, an 18m-deep cutting on part of the now-dismantled railway line, twelve miles from the Burmese border. We visited the memorial museum and walked 5km along the original route of the track to see the cuttings, embankments and trestle bridge sites (long since taken down). We took a bus to Nam Tok and then a train on the Death Railway back to Kanchanaburi. It was a very scenic journey. At Wang Po we crossed a 300m-long trestle bridge viaduct built into a cliff face, suspended over the River Kwai Noi. I'm surprised it's still open. The wooden struts are splitting or rotting or have bits missing from them, and there have been so many repairs that there's hardly room left for any more. As the passengers hung out of the windows and dangled out of the doorways the driver inched the train along the creaking cracking viaduct at walking pace, continuously scrutinising the line ahead and occasionally checking that the trailing carriages were still there. The train also crossed the Bridge Over the River Kwai.
And then it was time to return to Bangkok. We took the train back to Bangkok Noi station and bartered a tuk-tuk driver down to B100 for the journey east across the city to Sala Thai Mansion, our guesthouse near Lumphini and the various foreign embassies.
This is where clop turned into Mr Doilum. Mr Utter Thicky. At check-in I reached into my rucksack for the photocopy of my passport details for the guesthouse register. It wasn't there. In fact the entire plastic wallet containing our travellers' cheques, plane tickets, loose cash, passport photos, vaccination records and insurance documents wasn't there. Sudden panic. Where was it? Yes, I had left it hidden under the mattress in our room at Apple's in Kanchanaburi. Two frantic telephone calls later we were extraordinarily relieved to hear that it had been found intact and was now safely locked inside Apple's safety deposit filing cabinet. We would have to go back to collect it.
We picked our passports up from the Vietnam Embassy and took them to the Cambodian Embassy. It was shut. The next day we went back and it was open. The service was amazing - the visas cost 15ukp each and only took eight minutes to process! We went to the Marbleklong shopping centre and bought a new battery for my camera; recently we have not been able to switch it on, now it is working again.
Bangkok transportation = fleecing gits central. Every taxi and tuk-tuk driver we have encountered has tried to cheat us. Attempting to reach the rather distant Laos Embassy we flagged down a tuk-tuk and told the driver our destination.
TT Driver: "Eighty baht."
clop (expecting a fare of at least B150): "Eighty baht? To the Laos Embassy? Are you sure? It's miles away."
TT Driver nodding a lot: "Yes. Laos Embassy. Eighty baht."
clop: "OK!" And we get in.
TT Driver drives to the bottom of the street and turns the wrong way. clop examines the map on his lap.
clop: "Stop."
TT Driver stops the tuk-tuk.
clop: "Where are you going? Look. We are here. The Laos Embassy is here. You're going the wrong way."
TT Driver nodding a lot: "Yes. OK. Laos Embassy. OK."
TT Driver sets off again and takes another wrong turn, then pulls into the forecourt of the Regent Hotel.
TT Driver: Lots of indecipherable Thai jabbering to the concierge, presumably asking for directions.
Concierge: "Sorry, he thought the embassy was near here but it's a very long way away."
clop: "Yes I know it is. I told him that when we got in."
Concierge: "He says he'll take you there for one hundred and fifty baht."
clop: "No. We agreed eighty baht."
Concierge: "I'm not getting involved. Sort it out with him."
Lots of futile arguing with a driver who can't understand any English.
clop: "Right we're getting out. We'll walk back."
Concierge: "He wants eighty baht."
clop: "What? He wants eighty baht for bringing us further away from the Laos Embassy and making us walk home?"
Concierge: "I'm not getting involved."
So we paid the stupid grinning driver twenty baht and walked half an hour back to our hostel.
In the evening we went to the local Indian restaurant for a curry but, as we approached the door, we saw an S-shaped camp karaoke singer slinking about between the tables (and nobody was eating) so we went to a road-side restaurant instead. There are several brothels on the street outside our hostel.
In the morning we decided to take a taxi to the Laos Embassy. We had been assured by some other backpackers that taxis are always cheaper than tuk-tuks because they are metered and the drivers can't over-charge you.
clip and clop walk out into the street and flag down a taxi.
Taxi Driver: "Hello. Where you want to go?"
clop: "The Laos Embassy."
clop hands Taxi Driver the address written in Thai on a piece of paper.
Taxi Driver: "OK."
clip and clop get in.
Taxi Driver sets off.
clop: "Turn the meter on."
Taxi Driver waves his hand dismissively.
clop: "Turn the meter on."
Taxi Driver: "Two hundred baht."
clop: "Turn the meter on."
Taxi Driver: "OK. One hundred and fifty baht."
clop: "Right. Stop the car."
Taxi Driver: "One hundred and fifty baht."
clop: "Stop the car."
Taxi Driver stops. clip and clop get out. Taxi drives off.
Unbelievable isn't it?
Finally we found a taxi driver who agreed to turn the meter on. The fare to the embassy was only B105! The driver stopped to ask directions from a man urinating against a lamp-post. The Laos visas cost 21ukp each and took forty minutes to process.
We reserved a room at Sala Thai Mansion for Sunday night, left our big rucksacks in their safe room, took another metered taxi to Bangkok train station, took a train to Nakhon Pathom, took another train to Kanchanaburi, walked to Apple's and were successfully reunited with our important plastic wallet again. Even my pet frog is still here. He was back in my boot last night!
Other news: We wrote a letter of "feedback" to Singapore Airlines' head office in Singapore and have received an extremely prompt and sympathetic reply from the London branch of their customer relations department. They have agreed to reinstate all clip's flights. This would have been great news five weeks ago. Sadly, it is now too late to take them up on their offer.
For those of you that have never heard of Kanchanaburi (like me) here's a bit of background: During World War II Japan invaded Burma, Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore. To facilitate the movement of supplies, the Japanese used 60000 Allied prisoners of war and 200000 Asian labourers to build a 415km railway line linking Burma and Thailand. The terrain was almost impenetrable and most of the work clearing the jungle, cutting 27m-deep cuttings, building 7m-high embankments and constructing wooden trestle bridges was done by hand. During the fifteen months it took to complete the "Death Railway" 16000 (27%) of the Allied POW's and 100000 (50%) of the Asian labourers died from malnutrition, mistreatment or disease. Kanchanaburi was one of the many POW camps along the railway; it is also the site of the Bridge Over the River Kwai, where the line crosses the River Kwai Yai before continuing north-west along the valleys towards Burma. Nowadays the Thailand part of the Death Railway operates only as far as Nam Tok, about 80km north-west of Kanchanaburi, after which the line has been dismantled and, in some places, flooded by a reservoir.
We rented some mountain bikes and spent a day cycling around Kanchanaburi. We visited the moving JEATH museum, set in a reconstruction of a POW camp hut, and learned about the building of the railway. We visited two war cemeteries, together containing the graves of 7000 of the Allied POW's. It would appear that the 100000 dead Asian labourers have been largely forgotten.
We crossed the Kwai via a road bridge and visited Wat Tham Khao Poon, a surprisingly large cave system stuffed full of shrines and religious objects, where we were given a guided tour by a six-year-old girl whose running commentary in Thai was wholly incomprehensible.
We cycled through the countryside up the west bank of the Kwai, with local people shouting hello to us from their gardens, and back over the famous railway bridge. There is no walkway so you actually have to walk or cycle between the rails. Luckily, a train didn't come along. It seemed a little weird to see so many Japanese tourists on the bridge, particularly as these were the only Japanese tourists we had seen in Asia, taking smiling group photos and flicking their fag ends into the river.
Back at Apple's we met Bruce, a Kiwi who has spent the last two and a half years working in the UK after a year long visit got a bit out of hand. He had stopped off in Thailand for a few days on his way back to Dunedin - his parents didn't know he was on his way home!
We also met David, a very interesting and animated history teacher from London who has been travelling through North and South America, New Zealand, Australia and Asia as part of a six month sabbatical.
A frog made itself at home in one of my boots. It lived there for the next three days. We found a big black scorpion outside our cabin. It was very aggressive. We saw a food-stall owner disembowelling a large frog.
We took a bus to Hellfire Pass, an 18m-deep cutting on part of the now-dismantled railway line, twelve miles from the Burmese border. We visited the memorial museum and walked 5km along the original route of the track to see the cuttings, embankments and trestle bridge sites (long since taken down). We took a bus to Nam Tok and then a train on the Death Railway back to Kanchanaburi. It was a very scenic journey. At Wang Po we crossed a 300m-long trestle bridge viaduct built into a cliff face, suspended over the River Kwai Noi. I'm surprised it's still open. The wooden struts are splitting or rotting or have bits missing from them, and there have been so many repairs that there's hardly room left for any more. As the passengers hung out of the windows and dangled out of the doorways the driver inched the train along the creaking cracking viaduct at walking pace, continuously scrutinising the line ahead and occasionally checking that the trailing carriages were still there. The train also crossed the Bridge Over the River Kwai.
And then it was time to return to Bangkok. We took the train back to Bangkok Noi station and bartered a tuk-tuk driver down to B100 for the journey east across the city to Sala Thai Mansion, our guesthouse near Lumphini and the various foreign embassies.
This is where clop turned into Mr Doilum. Mr Utter Thicky. At check-in I reached into my rucksack for the photocopy of my passport details for the guesthouse register. It wasn't there. In fact the entire plastic wallet containing our travellers' cheques, plane tickets, loose cash, passport photos, vaccination records and insurance documents wasn't there. Sudden panic. Where was it? Yes, I had left it hidden under the mattress in our room at Apple's in Kanchanaburi. Two frantic telephone calls later we were extraordinarily relieved to hear that it had been found intact and was now safely locked inside Apple's safety deposit filing cabinet. We would have to go back to collect it.
We picked our passports up from the Vietnam Embassy and took them to the Cambodian Embassy. It was shut. The next day we went back and it was open. The service was amazing - the visas cost 15ukp each and only took eight minutes to process! We went to the Marbleklong shopping centre and bought a new battery for my camera; recently we have not been able to switch it on, now it is working again.
Bangkok transportation = fleecing gits central. Every taxi and tuk-tuk driver we have encountered has tried to cheat us. Attempting to reach the rather distant Laos Embassy we flagged down a tuk-tuk and told the driver our destination.
TT Driver: "Eighty baht."
clop (expecting a fare of at least B150): "Eighty baht? To the Laos Embassy? Are you sure? It's miles away."
TT Driver nodding a lot: "Yes. Laos Embassy. Eighty baht."
clop: "OK!" And we get in.
TT Driver drives to the bottom of the street and turns the wrong way. clop examines the map on his lap.
clop: "Stop."
TT Driver stops the tuk-tuk.
clop: "Where are you going? Look. We are here. The Laos Embassy is here. You're going the wrong way."
TT Driver nodding a lot: "Yes. OK. Laos Embassy. OK."
TT Driver sets off again and takes another wrong turn, then pulls into the forecourt of the Regent Hotel.
TT Driver: Lots of indecipherable Thai jabbering to the concierge, presumably asking for directions.
Concierge: "Sorry, he thought the embassy was near here but it's a very long way away."
clop: "Yes I know it is. I told him that when we got in."
Concierge: "He says he'll take you there for one hundred and fifty baht."
clop: "No. We agreed eighty baht."
Concierge: "I'm not getting involved. Sort it out with him."
Lots of futile arguing with a driver who can't understand any English.
clop: "Right we're getting out. We'll walk back."
Concierge: "He wants eighty baht."
clop: "What? He wants eighty baht for bringing us further away from the Laos Embassy and making us walk home?"
Concierge: "I'm not getting involved."
So we paid the stupid grinning driver twenty baht and walked half an hour back to our hostel.
In the evening we went to the local Indian restaurant for a curry but, as we approached the door, we saw an S-shaped camp karaoke singer slinking about between the tables (and nobody was eating) so we went to a road-side restaurant instead. There are several brothels on the street outside our hostel.
In the morning we decided to take a taxi to the Laos Embassy. We had been assured by some other backpackers that taxis are always cheaper than tuk-tuks because they are metered and the drivers can't over-charge you.
clip and clop walk out into the street and flag down a taxi.
Taxi Driver: "Hello. Where you want to go?"
clop: "The Laos Embassy."
clop hands Taxi Driver the address written in Thai on a piece of paper.
Taxi Driver: "OK."
clip and clop get in.
Taxi Driver sets off.
clop: "Turn the meter on."
Taxi Driver waves his hand dismissively.
clop: "Turn the meter on."
Taxi Driver: "Two hundred baht."
clop: "Turn the meter on."
Taxi Driver: "OK. One hundred and fifty baht."
clop: "Right. Stop the car."
Taxi Driver: "One hundred and fifty baht."
clop: "Stop the car."
Taxi Driver stops. clip and clop get out. Taxi drives off.
Unbelievable isn't it?
Finally we found a taxi driver who agreed to turn the meter on. The fare to the embassy was only B105! The driver stopped to ask directions from a man urinating against a lamp-post. The Laos visas cost 21ukp each and took forty minutes to process.
We reserved a room at Sala Thai Mansion for Sunday night, left our big rucksacks in their safe room, took another metered taxi to Bangkok train station, took a train to Nakhon Pathom, took another train to Kanchanaburi, walked to Apple's and were successfully reunited with our important plastic wallet again. Even my pet frog is still here. He was back in my boot last night!
Other news: We wrote a letter of "feedback" to Singapore Airlines' head office in Singapore and have received an extremely prompt and sympathetic reply from the London branch of their customer relations department. They have agreed to reinstate all clip's flights. This would have been great news five weeks ago. Sadly, it is now too late to take them up on their offer.
17 October 2003
We didn't sleep very well at the Rattanapong Hotel because our room overlooked the main road and Thai motorists do not believe in replacing broken exhaust systems. We booked ourselves onto a half-day tour of Phang Nga Bay with the local Delboy, Mr Kean. Phang Nga is a national park - the entrance fee for Thai visitors is B20 (30p), for foreigners it is B200. What a con. Our tour of the bay was by longtail boat, a huge pointy wooden canoe with an old unsilenced V8 car engine driving a big propeller on a long shaft. We buzzed through a maze of mangrove-lined rivers, sailed under a limestone arch and out into the bay. Phang Nga Bay is extremely cool. Everywhere you look there are dozens of weirdly-shaped tree-clad limestone karsts jutting up 300m out of the sea. We stopped for a while at Khao Phing Kan, better known as "James Bond Island" because it was used as Scaramanga's hideaway in The Man With The Golden Gun. Nowadays it would be better-named "Tat Stall Island." We also stopped at Ko Panyi, a floating Muslim fishing village with wooden walkways between the houses - it was very interesting and clip got to hold a gibbon, but sadly most of the village was tourist-oriented souvenir stalls.
From Phang Nga we caught an incredibly garish local minibus to Takua Pa. The scenery was unique and incredible. We drove along lush green valleys stuffed with banana trees and tall palm trees, and all around us the jagged limestone karsts piercing the sky like massive crumbling shards of chalk. Along the way an old man with a wooden urn boarded the bus and sat next to us, and jabbered at clip in Thai. We couldn't understand anything he was saying and he couldn't understand us either, but he carried on regardless. We think he was laughing that our rucksacks were bigger than his urn.
Our bus out of Takua Pa never showed up. One of the local motorcycle taxi drivers told us it was "dead", possibly involved in an accident, so we had to wait two and a half hours for another bus. Then we were up into the hills on a twisty road to the karst-studded jungle of Khao Sok National Park, where we planned to go walking and do some wildlife-spotting. As soon as we'd climbed down from the bus we were surrounded by a gaggle of screaming grinning portfolio-wielding locals, each trying to persuade us to choose their accommodation. In fact we had already chosen before we arrived and I told them so. "Where you stay?" they shouted in unison. There was an expectant pause. "Nung House," I announced. A huge cheer went up and everybody congratulated the Nung House representative as she led us away to her pick-up truck.
We trekked 14km through the tangled jungle of Khao Sok, scrabbling up and down muddy gullies and wading barefoot through rocky streams. We saw lizards and frogs and many large and beautiful butterflies. We did not see any tapir, loris, bears, gibbons, monkeys, barking deer, snakes, spotted leopard cats, tigers or elephants. Just before we reached the halfway point a torrential downpour began and soaked us through. (The rain was to continue until after midnight - Khao Soak more like.) We were soon wet and tired and miserable, but things were about to get even worse. It wasn't until we sat down on a rock for a rest and a drink of water that we noticed all the leeches on our shoes. One of the leeches managed to get inside clip's sock which initiated an immediate shoe-and-sock-removal emergency. Our rushed squelch back to park headquarters was punctuated by frequent stops to remove leeches from our legs, fingers and necks. As soon as we arrived back at our cabin we stripped naked and used a torch to perform full-body leech checks on each other. Despite not finding any it was less than a minute before I had another one sucking blood out of my shin. We couldn't work out where the pesky things were coming from. When I went in the shower I found two more leeches in my hair.
In addition to following Buddhism most Thais also follow Animism, the belief that spirits live in all natural things, such as land, rocks and trees. It is important not to upset these spirits or they will become malevolent and cause bad things to happen. Therefore, when Thai people build a house, they always provide little ornamental houses nearby for the displaced spirits to live in. These take the form of colourful wooden dollshouses raised up on four to six foot platforms; the higher house for the more-powerful spirits of the land, the lower house for the less-powerful spirits of the home. The lower house often has a cute ladder so that the spirits can get in and out easily. The Thai people regularly put water and rice and flowers on the platforms to keep the spirits happy. The grandness of the spirit houses is supposed to mirror the grandness of the Thai house; therefore, if any improvements are ever made to the Thai house, the spirit houses must be similarly improved.
We caught a bus from Khao Soak to Surat Thani train station and bought tickets for the 2015 overnight train to Bangkok. All the sleepers were full so we ended up in second class seats. Now I don't know if I suffer from a genetic abnormality but, unlike other passengers who seem to start snoring before the train has even set off, I find it impossible to sleep sitting upright in a chair. First my head falls one way, then it falls the other way, then my neck starts to hurt so I try to sit sideways in the seat, but then the chair arm presses into my leg and I know full well this position isn't going to work but I stick with it anyway just in case I'm wrong, but then my feet go funny and I feel like I want to go jogging, so then I move my foot an inch and my pillow falls down and my neck stretches too far, and then my bum starts to hurt, so then I sit up and look around in exasperation to see if anyone else is having the same problems but everyone else is fast asleep already, so then I lie my head on the tray table and it feels really great for about ten seconds until I realise that the top of my skull is pressing painfully against the back of the seat in front and the edge of the tray table is digging into my ribs, so I sit back and think I've found a whole new comfortable position, but then my nose starts itching and I try to ignore it but eventually I have to rub it and so I lose the new comfortable position for ever, and then clip starts moving about, and so on for the rest of the journey.
At dawn, as our train jolted and creaked through Bangkok's northern suburbs, we saw real poverty. Mile after mile of densely-packed deprivation. Two- and three-storey slums made from bits of wood, worn thatching and panels of rusty corrugated iron, backing onto rancid watercourses and stretching up to the railway line. And filthy barefoot children in torn clothes, standing silently beside smoking fires and piles of rubbish, watching the train go by. We squeaked to a halt in Bangkok at 0630.
We walked 5km to the Vietnam embassy and arrived just as it opened at 8am. Visas for Vietnam cost 29ukp and take four days to issue, so to avoid having to hang about, our plan was to leave our passports in Bangkok and visit Kanchanaburi for a few days.
Thai people are forever nodding and smiling at each other; it's as if they all know each other from school. Instead of living they seem to be playing. Riding around on mopeds with no helmets on, hanging off songthaews and out of train doorways, shopping at the market for bagfuls of vegetables; everyone is happy and having a good time. Unfortunately, apparent-friendliness towards foreigners often comes at a price. No matter how genuine someone appears to be there is always a hidden agenda involving a "friend's accommodation" or a commission scam. A bloke stopped to chat to us in Bangkok and we thought he was just being helpful when he got us a cheap tuk-tuk to the local TAT (Government Tourist Association of Thailand) information office, until we arrived at a TAT-licensed information office. The licensed TAT offices are not there to dispense impartial information - they're there to make money out of ticket/tour booking fees and minivan fares and they're quite happy to lie to get money out of you. And so, at 10:30am, the following conversation takes place:
TAT man with big smile: "Hello. How are you? Welcome to Thailand. How can I help you?"
clop: "Hello. Today we want to go to Kanchanaburi. How do we get there?"
TAT man looks vaguely towards the clock and frowns dramatically.
TAT man: "The train has, ahhh, gone today. It left this morning so you've got two options."
TAT man develops troubled tone of voice.
TAT man: "Number one, (sigh). Get a local bus from here to the Southern Bus Station which will cost B120-150 per person and be very busy because it's a big Thai holiday, and then another bus from the Southern Bus Station to Kanchanaburi which will take three and a half hours because it's always stopping stopping stopping and it will cost B200-300 per person. A total of B640-900."
clop: "Aha."
TAT man: "Or..."
TAT man suddenly develops a brighter tone of voice.
TAT man: "Number two. You take a minivan from here directly to Kanchanaburi which will be very fast and cost B385 per person! A total of B770 and you will be there at 1:30pm!"
clop undergoes sudden dawning realisation.
clop: "Right, well time isn't a problem and the minivan is too expensive. Actually, our guide book says there is a train this afternoon."
At this point TAT man's memory strangely returned.
TAT man: "Yes, the train is at two o'clock."
And then he started sulking.
TAT man with his lip out: "Can I help you with anything else?"
And so we took the train directly to Kanchanaburi and it cost us B25 each.
From Phang Nga we caught an incredibly garish local minibus to Takua Pa. The scenery was unique and incredible. We drove along lush green valleys stuffed with banana trees and tall palm trees, and all around us the jagged limestone karsts piercing the sky like massive crumbling shards of chalk. Along the way an old man with a wooden urn boarded the bus and sat next to us, and jabbered at clip in Thai. We couldn't understand anything he was saying and he couldn't understand us either, but he carried on regardless. We think he was laughing that our rucksacks were bigger than his urn.
Our bus out of Takua Pa never showed up. One of the local motorcycle taxi drivers told us it was "dead", possibly involved in an accident, so we had to wait two and a half hours for another bus. Then we were up into the hills on a twisty road to the karst-studded jungle of Khao Sok National Park, where we planned to go walking and do some wildlife-spotting. As soon as we'd climbed down from the bus we were surrounded by a gaggle of screaming grinning portfolio-wielding locals, each trying to persuade us to choose their accommodation. In fact we had already chosen before we arrived and I told them so. "Where you stay?" they shouted in unison. There was an expectant pause. "Nung House," I announced. A huge cheer went up and everybody congratulated the Nung House representative as she led us away to her pick-up truck.
We trekked 14km through the tangled jungle of Khao Sok, scrabbling up and down muddy gullies and wading barefoot through rocky streams. We saw lizards and frogs and many large and beautiful butterflies. We did not see any tapir, loris, bears, gibbons, monkeys, barking deer, snakes, spotted leopard cats, tigers or elephants. Just before we reached the halfway point a torrential downpour began and soaked us through. (The rain was to continue until after midnight - Khao Soak more like.) We were soon wet and tired and miserable, but things were about to get even worse. It wasn't until we sat down on a rock for a rest and a drink of water that we noticed all the leeches on our shoes. One of the leeches managed to get inside clip's sock which initiated an immediate shoe-and-sock-removal emergency. Our rushed squelch back to park headquarters was punctuated by frequent stops to remove leeches from our legs, fingers and necks. As soon as we arrived back at our cabin we stripped naked and used a torch to perform full-body leech checks on each other. Despite not finding any it was less than a minute before I had another one sucking blood out of my shin. We couldn't work out where the pesky things were coming from. When I went in the shower I found two more leeches in my hair.
In addition to following Buddhism most Thais also follow Animism, the belief that spirits live in all natural things, such as land, rocks and trees. It is important not to upset these spirits or they will become malevolent and cause bad things to happen. Therefore, when Thai people build a house, they always provide little ornamental houses nearby for the displaced spirits to live in. These take the form of colourful wooden dollshouses raised up on four to six foot platforms; the higher house for the more-powerful spirits of the land, the lower house for the less-powerful spirits of the home. The lower house often has a cute ladder so that the spirits can get in and out easily. The Thai people regularly put water and rice and flowers on the platforms to keep the spirits happy. The grandness of the spirit houses is supposed to mirror the grandness of the Thai house; therefore, if any improvements are ever made to the Thai house, the spirit houses must be similarly improved.
We caught a bus from Khao Soak to Surat Thani train station and bought tickets for the 2015 overnight train to Bangkok. All the sleepers were full so we ended up in second class seats. Now I don't know if I suffer from a genetic abnormality but, unlike other passengers who seem to start snoring before the train has even set off, I find it impossible to sleep sitting upright in a chair. First my head falls one way, then it falls the other way, then my neck starts to hurt so I try to sit sideways in the seat, but then the chair arm presses into my leg and I know full well this position isn't going to work but I stick with it anyway just in case I'm wrong, but then my feet go funny and I feel like I want to go jogging, so then I move my foot an inch and my pillow falls down and my neck stretches too far, and then my bum starts to hurt, so then I sit up and look around in exasperation to see if anyone else is having the same problems but everyone else is fast asleep already, so then I lie my head on the tray table and it feels really great for about ten seconds until I realise that the top of my skull is pressing painfully against the back of the seat in front and the edge of the tray table is digging into my ribs, so I sit back and think I've found a whole new comfortable position, but then my nose starts itching and I try to ignore it but eventually I have to rub it and so I lose the new comfortable position for ever, and then clip starts moving about, and so on for the rest of the journey.
At dawn, as our train jolted and creaked through Bangkok's northern suburbs, we saw real poverty. Mile after mile of densely-packed deprivation. Two- and three-storey slums made from bits of wood, worn thatching and panels of rusty corrugated iron, backing onto rancid watercourses and stretching up to the railway line. And filthy barefoot children in torn clothes, standing silently beside smoking fires and piles of rubbish, watching the train go by. We squeaked to a halt in Bangkok at 0630.
We walked 5km to the Vietnam embassy and arrived just as it opened at 8am. Visas for Vietnam cost 29ukp and take four days to issue, so to avoid having to hang about, our plan was to leave our passports in Bangkok and visit Kanchanaburi for a few days.
Thai people are forever nodding and smiling at each other; it's as if they all know each other from school. Instead of living they seem to be playing. Riding around on mopeds with no helmets on, hanging off songthaews and out of train doorways, shopping at the market for bagfuls of vegetables; everyone is happy and having a good time. Unfortunately, apparent-friendliness towards foreigners often comes at a price. No matter how genuine someone appears to be there is always a hidden agenda involving a "friend's accommodation" or a commission scam. A bloke stopped to chat to us in Bangkok and we thought he was just being helpful when he got us a cheap tuk-tuk to the local TAT (Government Tourist Association of Thailand) information office, until we arrived at a TAT-licensed information office. The licensed TAT offices are not there to dispense impartial information - they're there to make money out of ticket/tour booking fees and minivan fares and they're quite happy to lie to get money out of you. And so, at 10:30am, the following conversation takes place:
TAT man with big smile: "Hello. How are you? Welcome to Thailand. How can I help you?"
clop: "Hello. Today we want to go to Kanchanaburi. How do we get there?"
TAT man looks vaguely towards the clock and frowns dramatically.
TAT man: "The train has, ahhh, gone today. It left this morning so you've got two options."
TAT man develops troubled tone of voice.
TAT man: "Number one, (sigh). Get a local bus from here to the Southern Bus Station which will cost B120-150 per person and be very busy because it's a big Thai holiday, and then another bus from the Southern Bus Station to Kanchanaburi which will take three and a half hours because it's always stopping stopping stopping and it will cost B200-300 per person. A total of B640-900."
clop: "Aha."
TAT man: "Or..."
TAT man suddenly develops a brighter tone of voice.
TAT man: "Number two. You take a minivan from here directly to Kanchanaburi which will be very fast and cost B385 per person! A total of B770 and you will be there at 1:30pm!"
clop undergoes sudden dawning realisation.
clop: "Right, well time isn't a problem and the minivan is too expensive. Actually, our guide book says there is a train this afternoon."
At this point TAT man's memory strangely returned.
TAT man: "Yes, the train is at two o'clock."
And then he started sulking.
TAT man with his lip out: "Can I help you with anything else?"
And so we took the train directly to Kanchanaburi and it cost us B25 each.
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