Best Laid Plans

Not sure how long this entry will be as I am tired from an 8 hour trek and also the keyboard is stiffer than a body at the morgue.

After leaving Vang Vien I went down to the capital of Laos Vientianne which was quite boring but they had the 25th Asian games (Sea games) taking place so it was a little more lively, everything there can be seen in a day so I hired a tuk tuk driver and went to Buddah park and went to the main Wat (temple) which looked exactly like every other Wat or Pagoda I have seen in Asia. I also obtained my Cambodian visa here. From here I got a sleeper bus down to 4000 islands, the sleeper bus was double beds and you had to sleep next to strangers, I was at the back with 4 other strangers on the one big bed, lucky for me 2 people decided they could not do that so left leaving 3 people to 5 beds, I thought this would have been ok but the person next to me had to sleep like a star and take up all room and he even tried spralling over onto my part until I pretended to stir and áccidently' elbow him. I could also tell the people who had never been on sleeping buses as they were eating and drinking lots, school boy error as they were complaining that they could not go toilet.

I went to Don Khong the main island and I cylced round it on one of those push bikes with no gears, I should have taken the oppertunity to get a semi auto bike and learned to ride that as the roads were empty. There was nothing to do here so I left the next morning on a boat and headed to Don Det where there were more backpackers, I done a kayaking trip to see the dozen Irrawaddy dolphins left in the river, it took 4 hours and we stopped off in Cambodia (Illegal) for lunch. Lucky for us we saw the dolphins as I would not been pleased to have kayaked that far (20km) for nothing. After making some more friends (have litteraly met hundreds of people) we got the bus to Pnom Penh in Cambodia, the first stop however was a rest station where kids had bags of tarrantuals where they would put them on you if you wanted or didnt want them, heart attack does not even come close.

Pnom Penh or Sean Penn as we called it due to convincing some girls because he was concieved there thats how its pronnounced was a bustling dirty city that remdinded me in parts of Bagdad, this was the only place in Asia where I have felt weary. I visited the killing fields where you get to see where the khamer rouge killed over 8000 people in the mass graves, bones and clothing still sticking out the floor where the mass graves havent been dug up. Themagic tree where they beat cambodians heads against to save the bullets. There is a monument there of skulls which goes sky high. I also visited S21 detention centre where a former school was turned into a torture centre where cambodians were tortured and killed so this was not a cheery day. I did plan to shoot an AK-47 but due to illness this didnt happen.

The plans I made have not gone to plan I never intended to go to Laos or Cambodia but here I am, now im thinking about on the way home, I am thinking South Americas would be good before England but who knows, all I know is that I will never have a normal beach holiday again as travelling is so addictive. Russia, China, Mongolia who knows where.

Everyone have a great New Years

Apocalypse now and then

Headed on a excursion to Halong Bay which included a nights stay on a boat and a night in a hotel on Cat ba island. Well tourist is not the word, the whole place was swammped with boats and tourists doing the same thing however I had a plan as I knew that they would charge top dollar for alcohol so we nipped to the shop and bought some vodka and decantered them into water bottles. I was right! They had the cheek to charge over $2 for a small 300mm can of Tiger beer comapre this to the 40cents in certain places and you can see why we were all becoming smugglers! Well that night inclueded many a rendition on karaoke even thought the machine was 'retarted' as one peson described it and we also had to get the deck hand to choose the song even though we gave him this anallergy - Give a man a fish and he can eat for a day, give a man the means to catch his fish and he can feed his family for a life time. Give us the means to choose our song and we can sing for a lifetime! Needless to say the next day we had to be up at 0730 to go for a trek and I had 8 loo visits before 0900 so the trek was a make 0r break for my hangover!!! The trek took 2 hours and was well worth it. We went to some caves on one of the 1600 islands in Halong bay and walked around the caves to which we learnt that Halong bay means decending dragon and our guide also pointed out some features of the caves that looked like buddahs or lions, none of them looked like what he said apart from one that was lit up red and orange that could of been E.T's finger or male genitalia. I found the caves boring as it was too easy to walk around and there was not much adventure. We also had some time to kayak which we kayaked to a floating village, this was the same place that Top Gear went on that classic episode, it was amazing to see the people living on this island, they make there money by loading up their boats with all manner of things that the tourist would want, like Oreo cookies, booze and more booze, they row up to the larger boats on the sneak and sell tourists contraband. Halong bay was nice but it was far to touristy for my liking as we had to be regimented with our movements e.g. get up 0730, breakfast 0800 and so on....with this in mind we ditched the trip to monkey island (monkeys after India have lost there effect on me) and opted to explore Cat Ba Island where we ended up on the beach. We headed back to Hanoi to where we lost Peter who went into Laos but after being over priced on the Halong bay deal we decided to get to Sa Pa by ourselfs. We got the overnight train to Lai Cai which is about 1mile from China and got a transfer up the mountain to Sa Pa, immediatly it was bloody cold and wet and visability was about 12ft so we could not see the beauty of the place. We hired a kid to take us on a trek to her village, this trek was 25k in total and took the best part of 4 hours and cost me my trainers. We could not see much and I would have been really annoyed if we spent the $140 that most places were charging for the trips lucky our whole trip cost about $50.

From there we had to get a bus to Dien Bien Phu which is a boarder town and is really rubbish, we were there for only one night so we could get the bus into Laos (0500). One thing with these local buses is you cant prepare for the stuff that happens. I had one woman dry humping my leg for most of the journey and my friend had someone leaning over them to be sick out the window. Come to mention it I think that Asians must suffer really badly from motion sickness as thats all they seemed to do on buses. Some buses we had tourists wearing crash helmets as the boxes from above were falling on them frequently ha ha ha ha.

Now im glad that I have left Vietnam as I have picked up more viruses than an African hooker, it has now come to light the 1200 pictures I have I can not upload or download as the memory card is corrupted and picked up a virus. I can view them on the camera so I am hoping that all is not lost and I can some how restore the photos using some software. To say im livid is an understatement.

So the trip into Laos was a usual local bus trip, uncomfy, noisy and smelly but it is well worth it as we got off at a small village we were approched by 2 Australians and a French guy who had been there a few days waiting for some tourists who wanted to charter a boat down the river instead of getting a bus....this was music to our ears and we agreed so we chartered the sea vessel down to a sleepy picturesq village of Nong Khiaw which I could of stayed at for a week if only for the fact there is no bank or ATM there so I ran out of money very quickly. We stayed in bamboo huts overlooking the river surrounded by palm trees and friendly locals. Oh the worst thing about Nong Khiaw was getting a haircut and shave there, normally a wet shave with a cutthroat is a nice relaxing and generally quick affair, not in Laos where it was done with a single blade razor which went blunt after halfway and a drizzling of cold soapy water. Needless to say it was painful and even after saying dont be shy with that water she opted to shave some parts dry. I did have an audience as many of the locals came to see this wonderous performance. Next was the haircut and I knew something was up when she put lots of clips in my hair as this has never been done before.....how silly of me to think she would use scissors to cut my hair, it was a razor that looked more like an inmate at Belmarsh had constructed using a toothbrush and a blunt razor, again this hurt as the razor got blunter and blunter. Never before would I have had to think to ask a barbers if they have scissors but now in Asia that is my first question.

With money running out we got the bus to Luang Prabang and immediatly drew some kip out and headed to the night market. I felt like I was in some sort of twilight zone walking through the market no one hasseled us to buy at very cheap price or man handle us into their store the Laos people are the most laid back people in Asia which after India and Vietnam is very refreshing although trying to exchange something for a larger size was just pointless as she wanted 30,000 kip to exchange it I tried to tell her that was 10,000 more than I originally paid and she was reluctant to give me my original too small tee back so I snatched it off her and she said too small why want.....I replied so I could bin it just so you cant re-sell it. Just booked our bus to Vang Vien to take part in the legendary tubing! I have my beerlao vest although to wear it anywhere in SE Asia would be uncool like wearing a band tshirt to a gig but when I get to Australia (3rd Feb) in Melbourne it will be super cool!!! That is right I have booked my flight to Oz and I cant wait for sun sea and surf or is that spiders sharks and snakes either way im looking forward to it but I have a feeling that I will have to rush certain countries as I have only got Cambodia and Thailand left in Asia. I still dont know where I will be for Xmas and New Years so may not be contactable if I am in South Laos.

*ALL PHOTOS ARE NOT MINE DUE TO AFORE MENTIONED PROBLEM BUT ARE FROM FRIENDS ON SAME TRIP* Same memories seen through different eyes!

The pictures are from Hoi An, Halong bay, Sapa, and Hanoi, hopfully now I have new memory card it will not get a virus or corrupted but I dont hold my breath!