Angkor What?

Well Cambodia has now been and gone and we are well into our Vietnam leg. We're currently heading up the Ho Chi Minh Trail and have done, Saigon, Mui Ne and Da Lat (where we are now), and off to Nha Trang tomorrow.

Cambodia definitely had it's good bits and bad bits! The bus ride from the Thai/Cam border to Siem Reap is possibly the most uncomfortable ride ever! We were crammed into a mini bus for the 6 hour dirt road ride. I got lumbered with a broken chair and we were attacked by grasshoppers flying into the minibus from outside. One managed to fly right at me from outside and clock me one right in the eyeball! So I sucessfully smeared him on the van floor with my flip flop - there's one that will be hopping no longer! :o)
Jade and 2 blokes in the back were having a fit as one was hopping around all over them and they couldnt see it because it was dark - I found it pretty hilarious!

We visited the Angkor temples in Siem Reap on the first day, putting in a solid 8 hours, followed by the notorious "killing fields" which was really sad. I don't know if any of you know about this, but basically Cambodia was under rule by the Pol Pot as recently as 30 years ago and all citizens were made to work the rice fields. People who were too intelligent or were lazy were basically killed, and this wiped out somewhere in the region of half the population. This museum coupled with the one in Phnom Penh is a tribute to the killing and they have a monument that contains 5000 skulls which were uncovered in the fields. Not a nice thing to see, but it really makes you realise how terrible some people have had it, and so recently too.

Anyway, the temples were amazing, and if any of you have seen the first Tomb Raider film, this is where they filmed a lot of it. It's really hard to explain what it was like (just think Tomb Raider come Indiana Jones!), but hopefully the photos will help with that when I get around to uploading them. We went to Angkor Wat, Angkor Thom, and a few others that I can't remember what they were called. We hired a tuk tuk driver who carted us around all day and pretty much for the whole time that we were in Siem Reap - he was like our personal chauffeur! :o)
We also met up with Tommy, Renee and Jan (from the Laos boat) here which made Siem Reap more fun. Our nights were filled with beers, good food, cards and football! What more could you ask for!?!

Next stop was Phnom Penh which was a nice enough city, but more of the same. Cambodia is full of people begging and latching on to tourists which is soooooo annoying! Fair enough there are some that genuinely can't work or whatever, but 99% just walk around and hold there hands out to you to give them money because you are white! Really started to p*ss us off in Cambodia. It wasn't like Laos where they are just as poor, but no one begs. People actually try to make the best of a bad situation and make things to sell etc, but the Cambodians just like to get something for nothing! Oh yeah - would you believe a lady on the street actually tried to sell her baby for $20!!!
We didn't really to do much here as we just wanted to get to Vietnam, so we just visited the Russian market where there is amazingly cheap knock off CD's and DVD's and I nearly came away with the Simpsons series 1-16 boxset for 30 quid. The will power was strong that day, so managed not to buy it, but they had sooo many to choose from. Lost series 2 was as fiver - sooo tempted!
Oh yeah, and because I didn't buy the Simpsons boxset the women in the stall started yelling "You are bad man" over and over, even after we had left her stall and were walking away! Oh the guilt - not!
We also went to Tuol Sleng (S21) which was a former prison for the people arrested during the Pol Pot regime. The prison was left exactly as it was when it was shut down with blood on the walls, all the rooms still with the beds that people were tortured on, all the cells etc. Again very disturbing. Apparantly 14000 people were killed here by the Pol Pot soldiers.

I had a rather annoying incident at our hostel, where the guy that did our laundry managed to dye 2 of my white tops a nice shade of patchy dark pink and then proceeded to blame us for it! One had to go in the bin and one I had to re-wash myself about 4 times to get the dye out. So my rucksack is now one top lighter! :o)

Enough of Cambodia, we are now in Vietnam and loving it! The place is really cool, but very hectic. When we were in Ho Chi Minh (Saigon) there are 4 million mopeds and crossing the street is a literal nightmare! You basically just have to walk out slowly and they drive round you - scary the first few times but you just have to get used to it.
We did a Mekong Delta trip in HCM which was cool and got to go to a coconut candy mill, went on a row boat through coconut orchards, saw some vietnamese traditional singing etc. All in all a good day. We also went to the Cu Chi tunnels which are the tunnels that the Vietcong used in the war with America. Got to crawl through some very small tunnels and then I got to shoot and AK47!!! How cool is that!?!
We went to the War Remnants musuem too which showed all the atrocities that occurred during the war with America including all the deformities caused by the notorious Agent Orange. They even had 2 foetuses in jars showing just how bad the birth deformities were - really gruesome!

Next port of call was Mui Ne which is a really nice beach front town with loads of cool places to eat, drink and chill. This is a famous place for windsurfing competitions. We hired a moped here to check out the sites (sdand dunes, canyons) and basically just relaxed for a couple of days. We then got the bus to Da Lat, where we are now, which is 1500m above sea level and very cold - actually wearing trousers and jumpers! It's like being back in England, and it's raining! I suppose it'll be good to help ease us back into to it before we get home. Pretty cool place, but the rain is stopping us seeing it, so hopefully it'll stop soon.

That's as far as it goes. Off to Nha Trang tomorrow.

Hope everyone is well - that is if anyone actually still reads this anymore! :o)

Take care
K&J
xxx

PS It's stopped raining - woo!
PPS 22 days left..... :o(

Bad BeerLao!

Well guys, we've travelled far and wide since the last update with many a long journey!

After Bangkok we got the bus to Chiang Mai (Northern Thailand) for a couple of days where we did a hilltribe trek, an elephant ride through the jungle and bamboo rafting. All were really good and the photos have been updated to show what we did.

It was pretty cool to get out in the jungle visiting hilltribes after spending so long lazing on the beach. We went to two tribes at seperate locations each having their own special trades.
After this we went for the elephant trek in the jungle which was great fun - and also a first for both of us. We had "the Daddy" of the pack who insisted on trying to climb up really steep hills to munch on the bamboo! Naughty Dumbo! It got a bit hairy when our guide decided to jump off our elephant leaving us to fend for ourselves!!!
We then went bamboo rafting down a river which we have no idea what it was called, but was an experience to remember! We thought it was going to be relaxing but ended up going through some rapids and getting drenched, as well as seeing quite a few people fall off the raft into the rocks! :o)
Jade also had a little visitor on the raft when we went through some bushes. We all know how Jade is petrified of bugs, well a big spider jumped off the bush onto her back then crawled into her hair! She nearly capsized the raft screaming and jumping around trying to get me to get it off! Girls eh!!! She sure does attract them!

We then booked ourselves transport into Laos to Luang Phabang, which took 3 days - the longest journey ever, but turned out to be good fun because of the people we met.
We had 1 day travelling in a minibus to the border, followed by a 2 day, 1 night trip down the Mekong River on a longboat.
We stopped off in a small town in the middle of nowhere, where we still managed to catch the opening games for the world cup! :o) They don't have electricity at night there but, a guy put on a generator just for us!
The two day journey was really good fun and we saw some amazing scenery. It also helped that two of our boat gang had guitars to help pass the time!

We finally arrived at Luang Phabang and rewarded ourselves with beer, shooters and the England game! We drank a considerable amount of BeerLao which leaves you with the worst hangover!!! Didn't stop us drinking it every night though!
We spent a fair amount of time chilling here (as the place was really cool) after the long journey but still managed to catch a few of the sights too. We went to Khong Si waterfall (which was amazing) where our Tuk Tuk broke down and filled with smoke, climbed up Sacred Hill for a panoramic view, shopped at the night market, walked around the penninsula etc etc...

The whole gang from the boat stuck together and we all travelled to Vang Vieng by bus.
There wasn't much to this town and Jade saw even less as she was ill here and spent the day in bed. I however, went tubing down the Nong Xai river with Tommy, Renee, Chris and Mike. The river is lined with bars and loads of bamboo structures to throw yourself off after having a few BeerLao's. Very cool and very relaxing and Jade was very jealous she missed it!
As this was pretty much the only thing to do here, we decided to move on to Vientiane. Instead of taking the incredibly uncomfortable and boring bus, we decided to kayak our way there down the Nam Lik river. This was sooo much better than the bus and we wish we could travel between more places like that instead.
We stopped off for a BBQ after negotiating some rapids, where only Mike fell in, followed by some cliff jumping (check out the photos).
On the whole it was a great day until we had to get a tuk tuk for the last part of the journey, where they crammed 18 people into this pick up truck plus all their luggage - and if you know how much just Jade and I bought travelling then you'll know just how crammed that would be!!! Tuk Tuk's don't seem to be loving us all that much lately as this one nearly conked out too. The driver then foolishly decided to take off the radiator cap with a very hot engine and also while the engine was still running, which resulted in the cap shattering and covering Mike with boiling hot water!

Vientiane was pretty drab compared to the rest of Laos and we were expecting more from the capital. We only stuck around here for 2 days as there really was nothing to do! The group finally split up here after hanging around wathcing the world cup and playing cards. We all headed in our seperate directions, although have planned to meet up with a few of them in Cambodia and Vietnam.

Which brings us back to Bangkok after another 11 hour bus journey! We are just stopping over night here before yet another 11 hour bus journey to Cambodia tomorrow morning! Oh the joys!

Hope all is well with everyone.

Speak soon - only 5 weeks until we are home! :o(
K&J
xxx

Anyone for Ping Pong?!?

We've now done all the islands (Samui, Phan Ngan and Tao) on the Gulf coast of Thailand which were amazing. They all had their good bits and would highly recommend them to anyone who's heading out this way.
We spent about 6 days on Samui staying at Chaweng Beach. We lived it up a bit here compared to the rest of Asia and treated ourselves quite a lot. We had a really nice room with a/c that had a daily cleaner (which is almost unheard of in most accomodation over here), en-suite bathroom, and situated in a really nice resort. We bought quite a lot of stuff too, but wont bore you with the details!

We mostly just relaxed in Samui, hitting the beach when the weather was good enough. We had a fair amount of overcast and rainy weather while we were here, so just had to sit it out in bars watching movies!

After Samui we caught the ferry to Ko Phan Ngan, which is the island famous for its full moon parties. There wasn't one on when we were there, which I reckon is a good thing judging from the pill popping ravers that were dotted about there anyway! Losers!
The beach here was a lot nicer than the one at Samui but the place on the whole was quite a lot smaller. We travelled around a bit here in the Songthaews to see a bit more of the island, but generally just lazed around on the beach again! :o) We even had a bit of a car chase as well, as some guy hit the side of the van we were in while we were driving, then our driver chased him! Bit scary as the roads are appalling! Another funny thing about it was the guy that hit the van looked like Claude the Scuba instructor from Along Came Polly (Ben Stiller/Jennifer Aniston film). We saw him get away, and then saw him walking down our road about 10 mins later, so he obviously ditched the moped and went to hide. Anyway we left the next day for Koh Tao and who should turn up when we got there - Claude - and guess what, he was a scuba instructor! Guess you really had to be there, but it was very funny!

There was also another funny incident here, which was more funny for Jade than me, which involved a pizza, a lizard and 2 poo's! We were watching a film and I was eating a pizza when I caught something out the corner of my eye and I felt a wet sensation on my leg. I looked at my food and saw something really smooth and brown on the top, which I assumed was a mushroom (No I didn't eat it before you start thinking that!), but was still puzzled about the small wet patch on my leg! I started poking around at the "mushroom" as it looked very suspicious and after closer inspection, and checking the ceiling, we realised that this pretty big lizard had just left me a present on my pizza and weed on my leg! So that was the end of the pizza. The fun didn't stop there though, as after I'd given up on the pizza and just carried on watching the film, another present was kindly given to me in the form of a splat just next to my plate on the table and another wee on my leg! Jade was finding all this very amusing, so I cut my losses and moved seats! Don't I just have all the luck! :o(

Next stop was Koh Tao which is the island more known for its Scuba Diving. I was planning on doing the advanced open water certificate here but money and time was running a little short so just opted for some fun dives. The diving here was pretty good, but it still doesn't live up to Raro standards! I definitely think we were too spoilt going there first!
Other than the diving, we just lazed.......yeah you get the idea!

We then had an 11 hour trip to Bangkok where we are now. The place isn't nearly as bad as everyone was making it out to be. Yeah some areas are a bit annoying offering you ping pong (if you don't know, you don't want to know!) shows, live sex shows, sex movies, and all this was being offered to me while Jade was with me. Although this only happened in one part of Bangkok where we went to a night market at Pat Pong. Other than that, it's a lot cleaner than we expected and were told to expect, and it's not nearly as hectic as Kuala Lumpur.
We are staying on the road just behind Koh San Road which is pretty famous if any of you have heard of it.
Everything is dirt cheap here too and we wished we'd waited to buy some of the stuff we had already bought - oh well!

We've been to the Grand Palace which is amazing, Wat Po which is the reclining Bhudda (45m long), which is also pretty amazing, we saw some other big landmark just across the river from there too, but can't remember what it is called. We've been to Chatachak market which has over 8000 stalls and was a bloody nightmare to try and find anything or even how to get out of the damn thing, Pat Pong market, MBK center (I had to use some serious will power here as the 4th floor is dedicated to gadgets!!!), the whole Siam area, Koa San Road area and loads more. It really is a shoppers heaven here - maybe even more so than Singapore!

We're now just waiting until 6pm for our 11 hour/700km bus journey to Chiang Mai that cost 2.80 pounds, so thought we may as well update the blog!

Not much else to report. Hope everyone is well, and we'll see most of you soon! Only 7 weeks left! :o(

Take care
K&J
xxx

PS I must be browner than I thought I was as I've had 3 or 4 people ask me if I'm Israeli! :o(