Koh Phi Phi - 2 Tuk tuks, 2 coaches, 2 minibuses, a bus, a taxi an aeroplane and a ferry

The start of this blog is the story of the worst bit of travelling that we have done so far. We were up at 6 in the morning (after my last night sleeping in the bar) to take a Tuk tuk to town to catch our bus to Bangkok. Everything was going smoothly for about 2 hours... then one of the tyres disintegrated with a huge bang and we spent the next hour sheltering from the sun in the forest by the edge of the road.

Only being stranded for just over an hour is relatively good for Asia so we were still in a good mood when we set off again. This time we got as far as the border where we were transferred to minibuses for the rest of the trip to Bangkok. This was OK until, for no reason, the minibus stopped at a petrol station and drove away without telling us anything. Nearly an hour later we were told to get on another minibus (that had been sitting there all along) and we carried on. We finally arrived in Bangkok and the next step was a taxi to the airport, being such a simple task how could this go wrong? Easily. There are two airports in Bangkok and taxi drivers aren't that bright. Still this wasn't the end of the world we had time to kill and he took us to the right airport for no extra charge (once we had told him we wouldn't pay the extra charge). Then was time for the next disaster; the old Bangkok airport is not open 24 hours a day. There are no departures between 10pm and 6am so the airport closes for the night. Awesome if you are arriving at half 10 at night. Luckily one set of doors downstairs was still open so we could get in and sleep in the deserted place until our flight at 7. We even had our own personal security guard who came over and slept nearby!

In the morning the flight went without a problem and from Krabi airport it was just a case of taking a bus, a coach, a tuk tuk and then a ferry and we arrived on Phi Phi... simple as that, and it had only been 36 hours since we left Sihanookville! Things didn't get much easier on the island as we had to spend about an hour sweating our way around until we found a place to stay that wasn't fully booked. This place was a tiny box above a shop with only a double bed, cosy. Our accommodation was also just around the corner from the location pictured below. 

Looks like a beautiful, lush, green park... that's because it is the waste disposal area and so the plants are being well fertilised by the island's many tourists (check the "water" under the summer house thing). Unfortunately though the plants hide the visuals they do absolutely nothing for the smell. All in all our accommodation was so bad that moving the next day to a place called The Gypsy Bungalows was a huge upgrade.

The rest of Phi Phi wasn't too interesting really, we took a boat trip to do some snorkelling and to see the beach from The Beach. The snorkelling was quite good fun as the water was crystal clear but the beach that was the main attraction of the day was far too busy to be impressive. The most interesting part of the day was back at our bungalow, a random Thai man rode a push bike into the middle of the green area the bungalows were set around, pulled a chrome handgun and fired a shot straight into the sky. We asked the receptionist what the hell it was about but he just chuckled and ignored us!

On our last day there we realised that we had managed to lose the key during a drunken rampage the previous night involving a child's bike and a fire extinguisher. Anyway our way to avoid the lost key charge was to check out before returning to our room to quickly get changed. We then ran past reception when we were supposed to be giving our key back, a quick check to make sure the gun maniac wasn't following and we were free! 

Sihanookville

The night bus from Siem Reap wasn't all that bad, probably because I had drunk so much before setting off. The bus was due to arrive at about 8 in the morning so I was annoyed when the bus stopped at about half 5 and interrupted my sleep. Then I realised that we had actually arrived a couple of hours early. I took a moped taxi to the far end of town (after a quick stop to replace the bike which broke down halfway there) where Pete was staying. I arrived just after sunrise and nothing was awake and apparently wouldn't be for a couple of hours so I crossed the road (dirt path) to the beach and sat there staring at this until I could get breakfast.

The next 8 days I spent living in a small room above one of the bars on the beach front for only $5 a night. This was our holiday from a holiday and we spent pretty much every day lying on the nearly deserted beach and watching the perfect nightly sunsets. (This section of the trip is definitely going to help the blog catch up).

After the 8th day on the beach it was Chinese new year and my room had apparently been booked out whilst I was in it... again. Because of the new year everywhere else on the beach was also full so I ended up staying on a bamboo bed and being the night watchman in one of the bars over the road.

Sleeping there wasn't too bad apart from the animals the bar owned. They had two puppies and a kitten called ninja that spent all night fighting under my bed and up the sides of the mosquito net. As well as them there was also a chicken that had been hand reared on the bar from birth and so every night at sunset would jump to the back of one of the bar stools and sleep there for the night.

Siem Reap

Next stop on my trip was what ended up being a very fleeting visit to the famous temples outside the town of Siem Reap. Even though the trip was short you should prepare yourselves for the number of photos that this blog will contain. I arrived in Siem Reap on one of the greatest buses I have ever traveled on; only 3 seats per row and each one the size of a reclining sofa. All of that for a $1 premium over the standard bus that happened to be sold out. Anyway that "interesting" story out of the way, I booked into a hostel for the night and then went to get drunk. The next morning the first hostel that I had checked into kicked me out as they had booked out the bed I was in. I wasn't too unhappy when I managed to find a new place to stay for $2 a night... even if it did only have 3 walls and half a roof (I wish I was exaggerating).

Once the new place was secure me and Megan, a girl I had met in Phnom Penh, grabbed a Tuk Tuk who would be our temple tour guide; for the next two days. The first day the plan involved doing a short loop around some of the temples including Angkor Thom (below) and the "Tomb Raider" temple (above).

The next day we were supposed to be up at 4:30 to get to Angkor Wat for sunrise. Of course this seemed like the perfect time to go out and drink until after half 1 in the morning. Sleep was made even less likely by what I can only assume was some sort of dinosaur, rawr'ing (spelt how Fil would approve) on the half roof. Either way after about 2 hours of sleep I was up and off towards the temple.

Thanks to performing my standard level of research on what to do at the temples when we arrived at Angkor Wat we had no idea where to go in the pitch black (obviously I didn't take my torch). Eventually we found the temple and a small lake outside the front of it, the bank of which proved to be a great place to watch the sun rise from.

After the sunrise we went in to explore the rest of Angkor Wat and inside discovered a monk praying at the feet of a large Buddha statue. Not an uncommon sight in Asia but nice to spot whilst at the largest religious building in the world.

The rest of the day was filled with temple after temple after temple... This was interrupted only by a few reminders that we were in the middle of a forest visiting temples that had only partially been reclaimed from the trees.

Towards the middle of the second day I realised that I was looking forward to the Tuk Tuk ride between temples rather than the temples themselves. At this point Pete's suggestion of meeting him at the beach seemed pretty irresistible and when I got back to town I booked the night bus for that evening.

The final day I was in Siem Reap happened to be Australia day so drinking 3 pitchers of cheap beer proved a  suitable way to celebrate, and also helped the night bus to go much more smoothly!

Phnom Penh

Leaving Vietnam towards Cambodia was actually quite a painless border crossing compared to all the things people usually say about it. The trip didn’t take that long and the bus was really comfortable. The only problem we had was that the place in Phnom Penh we wanted to stay in had been recently evicted so there was apparently nothing there but a dried up lake being filled in by Koreans! Instead we went towards the centre and settled for a place there for one night.

In the morning Pete just about (muted iPod = no alarm) got on a bus to Sihanookville and we were both alone for the first time on the trip so far. Most of the sights in Phnom Penh revolve around the atrocities committed by the Khmer Rouge regime in the 70s. In the morning I visited one of the killing fields, used for prisoners who had committed “crimes” such as being literate, where there is a memorial built in memory of the thousands of people who were killed there.

In the afternoon we returned to Phnom Penh to visit S21, a former high school converted into a prison for “offenders” who would later be sent out to the killing fields. I have noticed Pete has started adding more text to some of his blog entries so I’m evening the score by putting an arty photo up here.

To deal with the days depressing tone me and a few people staying in the same hostel went out to get some alcohol and stumbled upon some Cambodian alcohol called simply "White Spirit". It sounded like a terrible idea but at $1.20 it seemed too good to miss. It smelt pretty much exactly the same as paint thinner and got us all incredibly drunk. It was quite a shock to wake up in the morning and discover that I wasn't blind.

The final day I was there we visited the kings palace, which turned out to be a massive disappointment. It cost a lot to get in and the biggest attraction was massively underwhelming. The silver pagoda has a floor made of about 5 tonnes of solid silver. Unfortunately this isn't very impressive when 3 quarters of the floor is hidden under carpets and the bits that are exposed are held down with duck tape. No wonder they won't let you take photos in there!

The last interesting part of Phnom Penh is the synchronised night time dancing that takes place on the riverside and in the parks every night, weird.

Saigon

After finishing the huge journey to the city we took a day off to chill out and fully relax for the first time in a while, not having a bike to ride in the near future seemed to take a weight off our minds.

The main sights in and around the city are Vietnam war related, the first that we went to see being the Cu Chi Tunnels. These are a network of underground tunnels formed by the north Vietnamese as places to live and hide from the American forces and their bombing attacks. We learnt all about the tunnels from a highly propagandist video before being shown around and moving through some reconstructed tunnels. The small diameters of the tunnels makes it really hard for a tall person to get through though I guess that isn’t such a problem for the average Vietnamese…

The mystery of the holes in my legs was also solved. I must have gone for a walk into the jungle and stumbled upon an old booby trap like this set up in the war:

The whole time you are in and around the tunnels the sound of gunfire is in the background getting louder throughout the day. At the end of the tour it was revealed why… they have a shooting range at the end of the day where you can fire leftover weapons from the war! Kind of like visiting Flanders fields and at the end of the day shooting a Mauser. Still we weren't going to turn down the opportunity and both had a go on Rambo’s gun, the M60.

Thanks to a balls up with timings for our bus and the fact it had a 3 hour lunch break I didn't make it to the war museum in town but I did get to visit the Reformation Palace. This was where the war was finally ended when north Vietnamese tanks stormed the gates in 1973. Since then most of the rooms have been untouched, left exactly as they were on the last day of the war.

To balance all of the war stuff we were seeing we treated ourselves to the best ice cream in the world, at a place called Fannys, and picked a 20 scoop sharing platter between us. The waitresses laughed at our order but 10 minutes later when we had left nothing on the plate we were sure they were impressed. 

One of the most interesting things about Saigon (that is what we were told to call it by the people in the South...) is their approach to wiring... I wouldn't want to be an electrician there!

The Top Gear Challenge Part 8 (2029.3 - 2277km) The End

We left Mui Ne reasonably early for the final approach to Saigon, as we were expecting the last 30km to be ridiculous. In the morning the journey was a straight forward ride along quite quiet roads following the coast so that we could again avoid highway 1. We had our final bowl of Pho Bo (a meal I will not be sorry to see the back of) for lunch and then left town to find the roads had suddenly taken a turn for the worse. Luckily we had set off early enough to allow for this and we were soon on the edge of Saigon.

Though the traffic was insane and probably a lot worse than in Hanoi, the last leg of the trip didn’t actually take us that long, probably due to the fact that we had gained a little bit of confidence and knew how the roads worked a little better by this stage. We also saw our second bike crash whilst checking where we needed to head. Again it was a low speed crash between 2 bikes and within seconds both parties were helped to their feet and were on their way with no fuss (though bleeding slightly).

The feeling of finally arriving was amazing; we had covered exactly 2277km in 11 days of riding on some of the most dangerous roads in the world, using only a small scale tourist map to navigate and without any major incidents. 

The complete route we took is shown on the map below (the map we actually used was nearly as good as this one!)

The last thing to do was to sell our bikes, now a little worse for wear, to some travellers planning to do the same trip in reverse.

The Top Gear Challenge Part 7 (1744.6 - 2029.3km) - The Mystery Holes

The only real activity we did in Nha Trang was a boat trip around a few of the local islands. During the trip we managed to consume a lot of beer. Upon returning to our hotel we had a nap for a few hours and when we got up apparently forgot that we had been drinking all day. This meant that when we went out again later we carried on drinking at a regular speed. The result of all this drinking is shown in the picture below (skip past if you are squeamish). 

To this day I have no idea how this happened all I know is it led to me getting 2 stitches in my right leg, 3 stitches in my left and losing the feeling in half of my right foot for about 3 weeks! I also got to experience Nha Trang’s hospital which was interesting to say the least. I was even taken to a special room with the sign “foreigner room” above the door to be charged £12 for the stitches. 

Gratuitous photo of a car made from a 2cv...

After Nha Trang our next stop was Mui Ne (luckily I could still ride my bike). This was one day where nothing actually went wrong and we made it comfortable into town with enough time to find somewhere quite nice to stay. There wasn’t much to do in town except sit by the beach. Whilst we were there some kite surfing championship was occurring so we spent an afternoon watching the mayhem that they called a race. 

On our final day in Mui Ne we were unpleasantly woken by an explosion in our room. It seems the cheap iPod charger that I bought when my cable broke wasn’t really up to standard and it had blown up sending half of itself flying across the room!

We used the wake up call to go and visit the main attraction of the area, the sand dunes. On the way we stopped off at the fishing village where the banks by the sea are used to create the worst smell in the history of noses. They dry out huge quantities of shrimp in the sun which fills the air with a smell so thick that you feel like you can see it! 

It the sand dunes we were attacked my about 20 small children all trying to get us to hire small sheets of blue plastic off them to go and slide on the dunes. We decided it was something that we had to try so got a couple. It seems that we had also hired the child as a guide and he followed us up into the dunes to help us find the best spots to slide (as well as trying on all our stuff).

 










The sledging wasn’t as good as we had hoped mainly because it is so dam tiring running up sand dunes. The sand was also really fine and got everywhere, nearly killing my camera again (luckily it still seems to be indestructible).