Adventures in south-east Asia 2010

Days 56-70 – The Last Chapter

carrhaughan — Sat, 8 Jan 2011 04:14:00 GMT

Well, we did say things would be minimal J The last couple of weeks have been pretty relaxed (for the most part) and have been all about quality time with family. We got back to Pattaya on Christmas eve, and it felt like we’d been away forever, not just seven weeks. Wayne had sorted us a room to stay in the same apartment block as his, but unfortunately that fell through due to someone not leaving when they said they would, so we ended up trawling the local area and found a room in a place a couple of hundred metres away – pretty nice too, no cooking facilities but nicely furnished and free wifi included for 6000 baht per month – we only wanted it for a couple of weeks but monthly hire is cheaper, so it worked out at around £10 per night.

Christmas day is quite different in Thailand – it’s celebrated, but there are no holidays, everything carries on as normal, as we found as we wandered round Carrefour mid-afternoon! We ended up heading down to Bali Hai pier on Christmas night where the whole ‘Pattaya countdown 2010’ was in full swing – big formal celebrations, markets, fun fair stalls, food, that sort of thing. It was all really nice, laid back but interesting, we bought a few beers from the 7-11 and sat down and watched a very impressive fireworks display. A very good night.

The next few days were spent doing various things: we did some diving with Wayne, some shopping, some eating, some drinking. All good stuff really, and pretty gentle compared to most of the last seven weeks, but not in a bad way.

On the 29^th my mum and auntie Sue arrived from the UK, desperate for some of the south east Asian sun we’d been talking about – unfortunately, thanks to Air France, their luggage didn’t make it with them, mainly due to a hurried transfer at CDG in Paris and it not being shifted across in time! Still, they were here and that’s what’s important! It was great to see them both! Wayne had sorted them a room in the same apartment block as him and this time it all came through – their room was nice, and directly below Wayne and Nok’s! New Year’s eve was a really good night – we were originally going to head down to Bali Hai pier and join in the celebrations directly, but realised that the traffic was crazy busy and that we’d probably end up with a long walk home at the end of the night, so we headed down to the beach, hired a few deckchairs, popped across to the local 7-11 for beers and spent the night there instead. It was great – chatting, watching all the locals and farang launching fireworks (some tiny, some genuinely ordnance-like) and sky lanterns from the beach, and enjoying the Countdown fireworks compete with the Hard Rock hotel fireworks at midnight. We all agreed that Hard Rock probably took it! Then we headed back and spent a few hours in mum and Sue’s room chatting and drinking Sangsom, the local Thai rum! It was a genuinely great night, best NY I’ve had in a while!

We needed to shop a bit more, as the missing luggage was nowhere to be seen – in fact, it eventually arrived down in Pattaya some three days after they did, fortunately all intact with nothing missing! That created two very happy people J Again, the next few days were spent on the dive boat (this time we actually got to dive with Nok as well!), wandering round, shopping, eating and drinking. Well, until the 5^th of January when the pair of us plus mum and auntie Sue headed up to Bangkok for a few days (Wayne and Nok were unable to make it due to work commitments).

We spent three nights in Bangkok, at Bossotel in Silom, near the Shangri La, right by the river; we did the usual stuff for a few days in Bangkok – a visit to Patpong (which has calmed down immeasurably since we last visited just over five years ago), the grand palace via the river, the Khao San Road to shop and people watch, and some shopping at MBK for last minute bargains! All good stuff, and very pleasurable with the exception of the cab driver who tried to fleece us 400 baht for a 60 baht cab ride because he thought we were staying at the Shangri La!

It’s now day 70 and we’re heading back to the UK tomorrow. We’ve been away a long time but it feels much longer than it actually is. It’s odd – we’ve lived out of a few bags with 50kg of possessions for the past ten weeks, yet I’m not sure I miss all the other stuff... Anyway, a few stats:

Number of distinct locations we’ve stayed: 12

Number of different places we’ve slept: 15

Top 3 hotels (and relative cost): 1. Blue Lime, Phnom Penh, Cambodia (2^nd most expensive); 2. Beach Club, Phu Quoc, Vietnam (2^nd cheapest); 3. Mandala House, Chiang Mai, Thailand (4^th cheapest).

Bottom 3 hotels: 1. Paris Beach, Phu Quoc, Vietnam (middle); Nai Yang Beach Resort, Nai Yang, Phuket, Thailand (most expensive); 3. Bossotel, Bangkok, Thailand (3^rd most expensive).

Top 3 experiences: 1. BLES; 2. Diving the Similan islands; 3. The temples at Angkor.

Different forms of transport used: 19 (foot, pedal bike, moped, moped tuk-tuk, tuk-tuk, songthaew, car, minibus, bus, train, SkyTrain (LRT), bamboo raft, inflatable raft, rib, speed boat, dive boat, catamaran, turboprop plane, jet plane).

Biggest surprise: Vietnam – an amazing place and one we’ll be back to very soon.

Biggest disappointment: Phuket.

Top 3 useful items we found for travelling: 1. Leatherman; 2. Netbook computer; 3. Decent hat and shades.

Top 3 least-useful items: 1. Mosquito net (everywhere we needed them had them); 2. Raincoats (not much rain and just too warm to wear them anyway!); 3. Trousers (one pair each is definitely enough!) (Linda also adds: make up).

Number of books read: Linda – 9; Vin – 10 (For Vin – John Grisham books read before 30/10/10: 0; John Grisham books read after 30/10/10: 4).

In 30 hours or so we’ll be back in the cold of the UK after 10 weeks basking in temperatures that haven’t dropped below 20 degrees Celsius or thereabouts – we both know we’re going to struggle! Still, that’s what we signed up for, and this trip has consolidated in our heads that we need to do more of this, so when we get back we can maybe start planning the next one...

Days 53-55 – The Last Real Part of the Adventure

carrhaughan — Fri, 24 Dec 2010 00:15:00 GMT

A reasonable start for once – our flight isn’t until 12.50 and given we’re 5 minutes from the airport we don’t have to leave until after 11.00. Our flight’s slightly delayed but we’re back in Bangkok at 14.15 or so – this is the fourth time we’ve hit BKK in the last eight weeks, but the first time we’re actually staying here even if it is only for one night! We’ve booked into a cheap ($25) guesthouse and it’s not bad – modern and clean, even if it is a bit quirky (the decor is stark concrete and whitewash – it’s not unlike staying in a prison I imagine!) We have a great view of the fort – marred only by the 24 hour petrol station right in front of it! We were going to get the train to Kanchanaburi tomorrow but we discover that the minibus is quicker and more direct, even if it is more expensive, so we book a 09.00 pick-up (the train would’ve gone at 07.45 so that gives us more sleep time) and head out. We’re only 10 minutes from the Khao San Road, so we head over there for a couple of beers and to people watch.

We’re picked up fairly promptly the next morning, and are soon heading off, though we’re confused by the fact that we seem to be the only ones heading to Kanchanaburi – everyone else is off to the airport! A quick u-turn later and we realise why – there were two 09.00 pick-ups from our hotel, one for the airport and the other for Kanchanaburi – the driver didn’t bother to check our receipt, he just saw the luggage and assumed we were airport-bound! Still, we’re dropped of on the Khao San Road and finally get on the right bus, and a couple of hours later we’re in Kanchanaburi. We’ve picked a fairly cheap place to stay here – around $40 per night – and we’re both really pleasantly surprised at how nice the place is – it’s very clean and modern, low-rise, and is all based around a garden courtyard with a nice pool. Our room is overlooking the pool with full-width floor-to-ceiling windows/doors at the front – OK, so no privacy without shutting the curtains, but it feels really nice – definitely one of the better places we’ve stayed in.

Kanchanaburi is the nearest town to the ‘death railway’, made famous in David Lean’s epic 1957 film The Bridge on the River Kwai. We’re actually staying north of the main part of town, and given we’re only about one kilometre from the actual bridge we decide to head out and take a look. It seems Kanchanaburi is a pretty laid back place – there’s barely any traffic on the road we’re staying on, and everyone seems friendly. The bridge itself is surrounded by the usual tourist tat – market stalls, shops, food stalls, hawkers, even a rep from the local zoo who’s brought along a fully-grown tiger and a leopard cub to try and encourage visitors to the zoo, which is very depressing. As seems to be the case with these things, the bridge is a fairly unimpressive structure, but it’s the symbolism that’s important – this was a vital crossing on the river for the railway. (Fact fans may be amused by the fact that the bridge isn’t actually ON the river Kwai – well it WASN’T anyway, it actually crossed a different river that merged with the Kwai nearby, but after Lean’s film was released to critical acclaim and the tourists stared to flock to the area, the Thai government renamed this part of the river as the Kwai!) It was actually bombed by the allies during WW2 and taken out of service but has subsequently been repaired and still operates commercially as a railway bridge (though there are only 3-4 trains each way per day across it, if you discount the noddy train that transports tourists across for 20 baht!) Returning back to the hotel then heading out, we also discover that we’re now back in the cheaper part of Thailand again – we eat at a local restaurant next door and enjoy three large bottles of beer between us and a huge plate of fried rice each and the bill comes to less than 200 baht – that’s more like it!

We’re only in town for a couple of days, so given the relative inaccessibility of some of the sites outside of Kanchanaburi, we opt for an organised tour the next day. This starts out by heading north west to Erewan national park, home to an amazing set of waterfalls – seven in total. It’s a bit of a trek to get there – we’re pretty close to Burma now – but it’s well worth it. Due to Linda’s knee we only make it up to fall number four (though we’d really have only had time to make one more anyway given the tight schedule we were on) so we head back down to fall three which has a large pool underneath it, and more amusingly is also populated by a large number of fish that appear to be one of the ‘cleaner’ species – we dip our feet in and are treated to a free fish foot spa for 45 minutes or so (and it had me giggling like a girl!) After lunch we head to Hellfire Pass, a notorious stretch of the death railway that is now home to a museum and memorial site dedicated to those that died here. The railway lines have now been removed from most of the route to Burma, but the rail bed still exists. If you want the details about what happened then Google ‘death railway’ or check Wikipedia, but in summary: the Japanese needed a secure supply route during WW2 and decided to use allied POWs (some 60,000) as well as local labour (250,000-300,000) to build a railway line between Bangkok and northern Burma; the brutality of the Japanese engineers and their Korean guards combined with the lack of food, medicine and the harsh working conditions and extremely long hours resulted in the death of some 100,000 of those involved. All work was purely mechanical – there were no machines used here. Hellfire pass is so named due to the image that was presented to those outside it – emaciated workers with hammers, chisels and manual drills – working long into the night lit only by the burning fires of bamboo lanterns. Dante springs to mind. We walk the pass. It seems so serene now, but you can see how much work was involved – the rocks tower some 15-20m above us, so this would have all had to be removed by hand – you can still see the tool marks on the rock. This section is around 75m long, and was dug out completely in just 12 days – an astonishing amount of work. It’s easy to see why there were so many deaths attributed to it. Just the day before we’d commented on the fact there were Japanese tourists on the bridge – it’s notable that there are none here today. We look around – this would have been a very different place 70 years ago.

We end the tour with a trip on the section of the railway line that is still being used today – complete with rickety wooden bridges! The line from Nan Tok to Bangkok still runs commercially (if we’d have travelled in by train then we’d have come in along this line) – we’re on the train for half an hour or so. It’s a weird feeling, the whole line wouldn’t exist but for the efforts and lives of so many people – allied POWs plus Thai, Vietnamese, Burmese, Malay, Javan and other locals. The savage cheapness of human lives once again. We knock the tour on the head at this point and head back home.

This is pretty much the end of the adventure for us. We’ve still got a couple more weeks out here but this will be quality time spent with family, catching up and chilling out. My mum and auntie Sue are heading out next week (assuming the weather out there gets slightly better!) which will be a lot of fun, we’re both looking forward to it. We’re off back to see Wayne and Nok tomorrow, just in time for Christmas. Expect future updates to be minimal – maybe a couple more, we’ll have to see!

Here’s wishing you all a very happy Christmas – lots of love from the both of us.

Days 47-52 – Deep Blue

carrhaughan — Tue, 21 Dec 2010 22:00:00 GMT

It’s a very early start today – up at 05.30 for pickup around 06.00 or so. We have to wake the duty manager to check out! We’re collected and on our way up to Tap Lamau pier in Phang Nga – this is due east of the Similans, but is a good two hour drive from Kata, up on the mainland and well away from Phuket. We soon have a very full minibus, most of whom are day trippers – some diving but most will be travelling to the Similans to snorkel. We realise later that it’s a mighty long way to go for a day trip – probably a 7-8 hour round journey from the main areas of Phuket, and that’s just travelling time.

We arrive at Tap Lamau and it’s a busy place – lots of dive and speed boats, most of which are heading in the same direction. We jump onto a speedboat and we’re off – it’s a bumpy ride, mostly full of snorkelers, and an hour and a half later we sight the Similans. We approach a dive boat – not the one we’re staying on, this is a day trip vessel which will be used as a brief intermediary for us. We’re straight off onto a dinghy – just the two of us it seems – then heading for our liveaboard. We spy some divers who’ve surfaced nearby and slow down then stop – it turns out they’re from our boat so we pick them up and head off to NV Scuba Cat. Once we get they’re we’re all introduced. It seems the Scuba Cat is very quiet – in fact, the divers we picked up are the only ones there and they’re heading back to the mainland today, meaning we’ll be the only ones onboard, which is fine by us as it means plenty of space on the boat and ultimate flexibility for the diving!

The boat itself – NV Scuba Cat – is actually an old modified catamaran. It’s big, heavy, and uses a lot of fuel to move, so it spends all of the high season out in the Similans (divers transfer here via speedboat like we did), and all of the low season moored in Racha Yai (the primary day dive site for Phuket) with a month off between each in dry dock for maintenance. However, the design is of big benefit for us, as it’s extremely stable – even in strong winds (and we did encounter some...) it remains pretty stable while all the other boats tend to list quite heavily in the water.

And then we’re into a routine we’ll get used to very quickly – dive, eat, dive, eat, dive, eat... On our first and last days we do three dives, the other days we do five dives per day. Which, by any stretch of the imagination, is a lot of diving – 21 dives in five days for us. We’re on our own for the first day, then the next day three Americans come out for three days – one of them is a recently qualified dive instructor who’s trained with Scuba Cat, the other two are his buddies on holiday. No-one else joins us until the day the Americans leave when we are joined by two Finnish divers who live in KL and are down for one night (the weekend) only. All in all, it’s a pretty small group which is really good for the diving. Our instructor and dive leader is Gerry, a Malaysian woman who’s travelled a lot and only a year ago was working for the Marriott group and was actually a customer (over Xmas and NY) on the same liveaboard we’re on now! She’s a great diver and a really nice person – very easygoing with a great sense of humour and lots of amusing stories. The boat crew are excellent and very helpful, while the cooks manage to deliver excellent meals every time, they are not even phased by the fact they were given ten minutes notice that we are vegetarian – and, as usual, the boat captain (Cap’n Pip) is a real character!

The diving is genuinely amazing. The weather on our first day is glorious and for the first dive we have beautiful crystal clear waters and 40+ metres of visibility – that’s almost infinity from a diving point of view! In fact, even when the weather turns (as it seems to be doing a lot out here – you Europeans aren’t limited to the ‘bad’ weather you know!) vis doesn’t drop below 30 metres or so. It makes for really great diving. The boat stays in the Similans but moves from island to island to vary the diving – there’s a little repetition, usually for the night dives where we dive the same site as the previous dive but generally take a different route, but also to revisit some of the better sites. As well as excellent visibility, the sites themselves are amazing – I’m not sure what geological processes were involved in creating the islands but the underwater topology is gobsmacking – huge boulders and enormous granite slabs, which form the basis for the coral reefs (plus also a number of fun swim throughs!) Even without the sea life, just diving through the huge rocks – which look as though they’ve just been dropped in the sea by some behemoth – is really awesome. Adding the sea life into the equation brings this up to the level of just about the best diving we’ve ever done – which is no mean feat given we dived Sipadan in Borneo three years ago and that ranks as one of the best dive locations in the world! The sea life is also pretty good too – probably not quite up there with Sipadan, but very special compared to most locations we’ve dived. Over the five days we saw a leopard shark, several black tip reef sharks, a nurse shark, a greenback turtle, a number of stingrays (no mantas though sadly!), a couple of octopi, huge numbers of triggerfish (including the dangerous titan triggerfish that attack divers), mantis and dancing Durban shrimps, loads of pufferfish, porcupinefish and boxfish, barracuda, tuna, groupers, plus loads of schools of the more common fish in these waters: parrotfish, sergeant majors, angelfish, bannerfish, fusiliers, sweetlips, rabbitfish etc. Huge numbers, and the variation across each dive site was pretty good. Also, it seems like the fish out here were on steroids – there were huge versions of stuff we’ve seen before: massive pufferfish (maybe 60cm long), huge parrotfish (50cm versus the standard 12cm elsewhere): really, really big fish! No-one is sure why, maybe because the Similans are protected (it’s a marine park policed by the Thai military) and therefore it’s not overfished?

The night dives were also exceptional – due to the visibility, it was possible to night dive without a torch, though we decided to forgo that option! The night dives were generally 10-15m max (compared to the day dives where the first three would be around 25-30m while the fourth was around 20m) so well into the coral reefs where most of the sea life is. We saw plenty of crustaceans (huge lobsters, reef and other crabs, shrimps), cuttlefish (including a juvenile), porcupinefish, and stingrays (one of which swooped over me in my torchlight which was really cool!)

Overall, the people we were with were great fun, and generally were very good divers – I think liveaboards tend to attract divers at a slightly higher level of competence. The boat itself was fairly basic, and would probably be much less fun if it were completely full (it can accommodate up to thirty people at one time) so we timed it well – with just a few of us onboard everything was much more relaxed, the crew were always there to help, and the cooks were less stressed and always produced really good food. I’d definitely come back to the same boat if I wanted to dive the Similans again, and it’s pretty obvious that liveaboards are by far the best way to dive these islands – one night we counted 15 other boats moored round us, the majority of which would have cost a lot more than ours did. Surprisingly, given the large number of liveaboards in the area and the number of dayboats that came in each morning, we only saw other divers on two out of 21 dives, and that was at two of the most popular sites.

Finally, we did our last dives and headed back via the speedboat to Tap Lamau – along with all the other divers and Gerry, as her replacement Vince had arrived that morning, though he was on his own there for a day at least! The trip back was quiet and calm – it was almost possible to sleep! Dry land seemed weird after five days on a boat – you get used to stuff moving all the time, suddenly it’s not and your body tries to compensate which is amusing!

It’s an hour transfer down to Nai Yang which is where we’re staying for two nights. We pushed the boat out a little and booked into what looks like a nice place, though it’s also the most expensive place we’ve stayed at in seven weeks. On arrival the place looks OK, but we soon realise that we’re not the typical visitor – it’s mostly package tourists. We soon find our room is at the arse end of nowhere, and while it’s OK it’s far from being the best we’ve stayed in – and while everywhere else (even the $25 a night places) have provided free wifi you have to pay (through the nose) for it here. Overall, very disappointing. Nai Yang itself is pretty nice though – it reminds us of Koh Phi Phi and Koh Samui, not busy and fairly laid back with a decent selection of bars and restaurants right along the beach. I’d consider staying in this place again should I find the need to head down to Phuket, but I’d definitely avoid the hotel (sorry, ‘resort’) we’re staying at! Finally we pack once again, our dive gear still a little bit damp – we’re heading to Bangkok for the night tomorrow before a couple of days over in Kanchanaburi. Saying goodbye to Phuket isn’t hard, though after the diving and a couple of chilled out days in Nai Yang, the trials and tribulations of downtown Phuket seem a long way away. I think the diving around the Similans probably just about compensates for the hellhole that I consider most of Phuket to inhabit, but only just.

Days 40-46 – From the Sublime to the Ridiculous

carrhaughan — Wed, 15 Dec 2010 01:09:00 GMT

We’re flying from Sukothai airport to Phuket, so Kat drops us off at the airport, hugs us all and heads back to the elephants. We’d got the train down here so this is our first view of the airport and it’s amazing – absolutely tiny (there are probably more staff than passengers!), security is relaxed, and the ‘gate’ is a handful of rows of wooden seats with complementary drinks and snacks for all passengers. The grounds are also beautifully manicured. It makes Koh Samui airport (which again is tiny and really nice) look like Heathrow! The airport is only used by Bangkok Airways, and numbers are low (there are about 10 of us that get on the plane) so it’s another turboprop to Bangkok before switching to a jet plane to Phuket. We head off and are in BKK an hour later. We hug Penny goodbye and move gates for our Phuket flight. BKK seems enormous (it is I suppose) and the crowd waiting at our gate is large and very different to what we’ve been used to for a while.

Being honest, we’ve both got very low expectations for Phuket. It’s by far the largest tourist hotspot in Thailand and is likely to be very commercialised and over-developed compared to where we’ve been (for the most part) to date. However, we consider it a necessary evil – we’re planning to do a lot of diving out here and Phuket rates in the top 10 dive places in the world. We’ve booked a two day overnight dive trip to Koh Phi Phi in two days time, and very early in trip planning we organised a liveaboard for five days in the Similan Islands out in the Andaman Sea. The main ‘resort’ in Phuket is Patong (any resemblance to the legendary Patpong in Bangkok is entirely intentional!) but we’re further south – we’ve booked to stay in a hotel on the outskirts of Kata Beach which is almost at the far south of the island. Hopefully it won’t be too bad.

It almost feels like we’ve moved to a different country when we land in Phuket – we realise our budget will need to increase significantly! The cheapest way to get to Kata is via minibus at 180 baht each, and that includes the inevitable stop at a tour agency for hard sell of hotels and excursions. We then head off and hit Patong, and appears as bad (if not worse) than the really big tourist hotspots in Europe – Magaluf, Falaraki etc. Most of the people on the minibus are staying here – we’re both really thankful we’re not! In fact, we’re the last drop-off, pretty much what we were expecting. Our hotel is OK – it’s attempting to be slightly corporate but in entirely the wrong location. Still, it has all the amenities we need, though when we find out breakfast is from 08.00-12.00 we realise exactly the sort of crowd being catered for. The rest of the day involves unpacking, and eating dinner at a local Italian place where the food is pretty good but we vow not to return to due to the arrogant and rude owner – something you’d think he couldn’t afford to do with only half a dozen customers! The next day we’re up late and we head out to explore. We’re about 10 minutes walk from the centre of Kata, not a bad distance as the place itself is pretty lively, though nothing like Patong. We head to the beach and walk along it from one end to the other. It’s not really what we’d want – it’s pretty much like all the busy European resorts, huge numbers of sunbeds lined up tightly, and very busy with people. To be expected really, Phuket is a popular package location from both Europe and Asia. Personally, I’m a bit saddened – Thailand is an amazing and beautiful country and it feels like a bit of a waste to come all this way then sit on a crowded beach. Linda reminds me that everyone’s different but even so... We head back and get everything sorted for our dive trip to Koh Phi Phi tomorrow.

We’re up early for the dive trip. It’s going to be long and busy days – four dives today, then overnight on Phi Phi, followed by three dives tomorrow. The weather is a bit overcast but it soon clears. We get to the pier and the boat is really nice – probably one of the nicest we’ve been on. We also realise it’s going to be uncrowded – there are a total of three boat crew, two dive instructors, and five divers: us, a couple of Germans and an Italian. The Germans are with the German instructor while the rest of us are with the Belfast-born Kerry. We’re basically heading south to Phi Phi hitting dive sites on the way, ending with a night dive just outside Tonsai Bay, the main bay on Phi Phi Lei. The diving is pretty good, visibility varies from dive to dive, starting better and generally getting worse throughout the day. There are a few problems: we have to abandon the first dive as Linda has equalisation problems (due to her very persistent cold!); our Italian co-diver, Alessandro, is a bit of a novice and has zero concept of spatial awareness WRT other divers (and his finning technique needs improvement!) – but overall it’s a good day, and the weather has been excellent. The night dive is also pretty good, though I think Linda still needs some convincing about these. We hit the mainland of Phi Phi around 19.30 or so and walk through the main town to head to our hotel which is at the far end of the beach. Phi Phi was hit VERY hard by the tsunami in 2004, but has recovered very well since then (Phuket was also hit pretty hard too) – Kerry has some friends who were diving when the tsunami hit and they ended up in a hotel swimming pool! It’s also the place where the film The Beach was filmed, and since then tourism here has boomed. The town is pretty busy but is quieter than anywhere else we’ve seen in Phuket – we’d originally considered coming here for a few days during our early planning of the trip and we think in retrospect that it might have been a good idea having seen Phuket now! Our hotel is very nice – we’re in a bungalow overlooking the bay – but given the tiring day and early start tomorrow we’re pretty soon asleep. The next day brings poor weather – it’s rained heavily overnight, and there’s still very heavy weather lingering around. We head out fairly early towards the first dive site – the sea is very choppy with heavy surf and swell – we’re really bouncing around on the ocean, which is unnerving given the size of the dive boat we’re on! The dives today are also pretty good, but visibility is worse today – inevitable given the weather conditions really. Over the course of the two days we’ve seen some pretty good stuff – black tip reef sharks, pipefish, tubefish, moray eels, barracuda, lots of schools of rabbit fish, jack fish and others, plus lots of nice macro diving stuff: tiny seahorses, nudibranch, shrimps etc. It’s been good, but vis has limited photo opportunities unfortunately. Given the choppy conditions most of us are happy to get back to Phuket late afternoon.

The next few days are a mix of chilling out, a little bit of travelling, and a little beach time. We eventually hit Patong (we’ve got dive paperwork to complete for our liveaboard). We decide to spend a little time wandering around Patong, maybe get lunch. We change our plans very quickly. Frankly, it’s a shithole, full of touts trying to sell timeshares, tuk tuk drivers desperate to get business (maybe you should reduce your fares – 400 baht for a few miles is taking the p*ss, but then it’s inevitable given the spineless authorities do nothing to crack down on the ‘tuk tuk mafia’) and shop owners trying to flog dodgy DVDs and overpriced fake tat. We’re there for one hour and we decide to leave – it’s really that bad. Kata seems like bliss in comparison, well, until we get hassled by more timeshare touts anyway. Phuket is not making a great impression on us! The weather in Phuket has been pretty bad – it’s supposed to be the cool season but it’s rained heavily every day since we got back from Phi Phi. We finally get a reasonable day and actually hit the beach eventually – only for a few hours, but we do some snorkelling and it’s not bad, but the beach is strewn with litter and debris, not nice really. The sea is also relatively calm, which it hasn’t been for a few days – we passed through Karon on the way to Patong and this beach has terrible rip currents: red flags were up as we went past but the sea was still full of people, I’m guessing that’s how Phuket manages an average of 20 drownings each year.

Finally we pack ready for our liveaboard in the Similans. We’re both looking forward to leaving Phuket, although we’ve still got a couple of days on our return from the Similans (we’ve booked into a much quieter place up north!) Phuket has been a real eye-opener for us – it’s much busier than any other beach place we’ve visited and neither of us really like the vibe of the place – we agree that if we hadn’t been here for the diving we’d have left and gone somewhere else pretty quickly. It’s very disappointing for a number of reasons: Thailand is an amazing place and Phuket really doesn’t feel part of that; we’ve just come from some great places and Phuket just feels like a real step down; but, oddly, I think it’s because we both had very low expectations and it still didn’t manage to meet even those. I think I prefer Pattaya, as at least it doesn’t have any pretensions to be anything special – Phuket pretends to be a special place and it really isn’t. This is our first visit here and it’ll definitely be our last – prior to this, if someone had told me they were heading to Phuket I’d have been jealous – now I’d just warn them off. Overdeveloped, overpopulated, overpriced and overrated – that sums Phuket up for us.

Days 37-40 – Bliss at BLES

carrhaughan — Thu, 9 Dec 2010 21:26:00 GMT

(Written by Linda)

So our earliest start yet – up at 5.30am to get to the train station to catch the train to Uttradit, the nearest station to BLES (Boon Lott’s Elephant Sanctuary). We should have remembered we are on Thai time as we actually don’t set off until 7.15am!!. We are in the second class seats (no first class on this train) and it is pretty comfortable. We settle back for what is allegedly a 5 hour journey. Me being me, I thought I would be super organised and write down all the stations we should stop at. Only six on my list – all was going well for the first three stops, but then we started stopping at lots of little stations in between that weren’t on my list – added to this the random stops on the line and instead of arriving at 12.30pm – we pulled in at 2.30pm. We were really hoping that the driver sent to pick us up would still be waiting. Poor chap had had to sit there for two hours and was apparently on the verge of giving up. Anyway finally in the car and on our way to BLES about an hour from the station.

We arrive at BLES and are shown to our guesthouse. There are only three on the property as the owner likes to keep the sanctuary from becoming too touristy. You can soon see why. This place is an oasis in the jungle. The guesthouse is a beautiful bungalow with a bathroom that has one way full windows overlooking the jungle outside.

We head over to the main building to see if anyone is there and are met by the housekeepers and the two children of the owner Katherine, Hope who is 3 and Noah who has just turned 1. Hope is very shy at first but as soon as she gets us to the main building she produces three new born kittens and the ice is broken. I had read about these kittens on Kats journal, but did not expect to meet them immediately! However they are so cute it is impossible to say no to them and we bond with Hope through the kittens.

Katherine returns shortly from the afternoon walk with the elephants. With her is the other guest who is staying here at the moment – Penny a New Zealand girl who arrived the morning before us. We are introduced and will proceed to get to know each other over the next few days.

I should probably introduce the concept of BLES and Katherine to you. Katherine is 29 years old and has lived in Thailand for 8 years. She started out travelling as we have done and became a volunteer at an Elephant hospital in Lampang, Thailand. Here she met Boon Lott a small elephant calf who had a lot of tragedy in his life (read her website). Ultimately despite her efforts Boon Lott died, by which point she had utterly fallen in love with the elephants of Thailand as well as Anon, a Thai national who shared her loved of the elephants and vision for saving abused and mistreated animals and a passion for giving them a better life. Hence Boon Lott Elephant Sanctuary was given life. I knew that this was the sort of place I wanted to visit in our travels in Thailand, but it was only when I came across an article in the Daily Mail earlier this year which highlighted the work Katherine does that I started to investigate BLES. It soon became apparent that the work she did was so wonderful and she was a truly admiral person and someone I would like to see close at hand. She now has 12 elephants in her care (6 rescued this year alone) and saves them from the hands of abusive owners – whether it is that the elephant is involved in illegal logging or begging in the streets of some Thai city. It would seem her caring attitude is not restricted to Elephants as she now has six dogs, numerous cats, as well as the aforementioned kittens (a new addition abandoned at the local market) and tortoises! I won’t bore you with the details of her work, but suffice to say that she is a genuine animal lover that has a mission in life.

Unfortunately we had missed the afternoon walk with the elephants, but we sat back and got to know Kat and Penny. We were treated to a fine Thai dinner, made by her housekeepers, mainly from vegetables that they grow there. Katherine herself is vegetarian, so we have feast J We slowly get to know the names of all the dogs and the kittens and we chip in and help feed them. It soon becomes apparent that they all have individual personalities, not least Stud, the alpha male dog, who is a softy, but a grumpy old bugger. He likes to plonk himself in the most inappropriate places and then snarl at anything that comes near him! We also feed the kittens and of the three little Pepper is the runt of the litter. She is tiny and fragile and looks like a gremlin. She has obviously had a rough start in life and had to scavenge for food as she wolfs down her dinner as quickly as possible. It soon becomes apparent that this is not a good idea as she regurgitates most of it down Vin’s trousers!! She is so helpless though that you can’t help feeling sorry for her and she quickly becomes my favourite.

Anon returns from gathering some flowers and orchids to make offerings. It turns out it is father’s day in Thailand and also the anniversary of Anon’s father’s death so he is making a special offering to him in front of his picture, including the flowers and a can of beer!. He presents us both with some flowers and as he cannot speak English Kat translates for us and says he is welcoming us to BLES.

BLES is not a place for late nights and we soon retire to read a little. This place is so tranquil and as there is no light pollution the stars are fabulous. All we can hear is the jungle nightlife and we soon drift off.

We awake early and find one of the dogs outside our door to welcome us. We trot over to the main house for a cup of tea. It is not long before the Elephants are brought down from their jungle resting area for their morning shower. Kat asks us if we would like to help. Both of us can’t wait, although it soon becomes apparent that wearing swimmers would have been appropriate. I hold the hose whilst Vin gets busy scrubbing the elephants down. For something so big – we are talking four+ tons, they are so gentle. I never thought I would be stood so close to one and not feel in the slightest bit nervous. Don’t get me wrong, you must give them a healthy respect, but we both feel very relaxed. I think we also both realise that the elephants also have their own personalities too. Pang Suai takes great delight in nicking the hose off me so she can have a drink. Poor old Pang Dow only wants to cool down, but she is not getting a look in with the water! We all have great fun and get very very wet.

Breakfast is ready so we sit in the sala overlooking the pool that the Elephants take great delight in getting into for a mud bath. Whilst eating we sit and watch as they come down in their little groups (they seem to form friendships with certain others and always seem to stay in these groups – which did make it easier for us to identify them). They have so much fun wading about and filling their trunks and then splashing it over themselves. Pang Noi even comes out if the pool next to sala and stands straight in front of us wanting some breakfast too.

Kat tells us that there is a bull elephant in the village that she is negotiating to buy. His owners want to sell him as there really is no logging work for him and they cannot afford to keep him. Kat knows that he has been well looked after for 10 years by them, and they want to sell to her, but if she cannot negotiate a fair fee and raise funds they will sell him to the highest bidder and he may well go to someone that will not look after him so well. She asks if we would like to go with her to see the bull and its owners and carry on the negotiations. We jump at the chance and after about an hour on bumpy forest roads we find him. His name is Seedor Gam and he is a magnificent animal and huge. You can tell he is well cared for as he looks mighty healthy and well fed. His owners want 600,000 baht for him, which equates to about £12,000. Kat needs to negotiate probably paying some amounts monthly as she will need to raise the funds needed. It seems to go quite well and she is happy that Seedor Gam will be at the sanctuary in the not too distant future. There is a very sad story behind the fact that she can take the bull in. At first Kat was going to have to say no (something she finds very difficult to do), as she simply did not have the room to take in another elephant (she is in the process of raising funds to buy more land). One of Kat’s earliest rescues was an old matriarch elephant called Boon Mee. She had been taken in about 3 years ago after 30 years as an abused elephant in the logging industry. She was about 77 when Kat took her in, so a grand old age for an elephant. She had always been the grandmother of the sanctuary, a grand, grumpy, fragile old lady and had recently shown signs of her age, getting very frail and thin. Well last week she decided that her time was up and promptly marched in to the forest to her favourite spot, started grazing and then laid down to die. She was 80 years old and everyone at the sanctuary was devastated by her death. I had read Katherine’s journal on the website the day before we arrived (it is very moving and I cried), so I knew everyone would be a bit raw, but as Katherine said, it is almost like Boon Mee had listened to her about Seedor Gam and had thought ‘I can make room here’. Katherine has a lot of followers of the sanctuary and some very generous people donate. She is staggered when we sit down for lunch and she checks her emails and one of the people who follow her work (but has not been to visit the sanctuary yet) emails to say she is so moved by the death of Boon Mee and the plight of Seedor Gam that she would like to donate the whole amount to be able to give him a home. Sometimes things can restore your faith in people.

After lunch (again spent watching the elephants having huge amounts of fun in the mud bath, including watching the little one Mee Chok (2 year old) dunking a much older elephant) we set off on our first walk with them. All the dogs join us too and we walk in to the forest with six of the elephants, Pang Dow, Pang Suai, Mee Chok, Bong Beng, Tong Juai and Somai. We walk alongside them and get to know them and about them a little more. Pang Dow for instance is a recent rescue and is again an ex logging elephant. The abuse is very apparent as her front left leg was broken during her working life, but she was just continually worked and it was never allowed to heal, hence she now walks very awkwardly, every step looks painful for her and you can’t help but feel for her. She also had a constant parasitic infection which was not treated so has nasty looking skin. This does not stop you from falling in love with her instantly as this does not stop her doing anything. She will do everything the other elephants do – although it just may be a little slower.

We come to a clearing in the forest which is a favourite grazing spot for them. The bamboo trees don’t stand a chance and we are both amazed at how dexterous they are with their trunks. We sit for hours watching them strip the leaves from the trees and generally having a real feast. It is wonderful to watch and also to watch the interaction of the mahouts with their elephants. You can see that they really care for these animals. All instructions are a gentle vocal call, no prodding with sticks or pulling of chains. Kats final goal is to have elephants roaming her land freely 24 hours a day, as near back to wild as they can become. It is really relaxing just sitting watching the animals, including the dogs who are having a great time in the long grass and digging for rats, and getting to know more about Kat and her goals.

You only leave when the Elephant have decided they are full, you are on their time now. We walk back alongside them and they are walked to their stables, where they will stay until they are led to their forest sleeping area.

A quick (incredibly cold) shower is very much needed and welcome, and we are then treated to another feast by the cook. We try deep fried Banana Flower, which is delicious and massaman curry. We are certainly being fed very well. Kat has the ability to very quickly make you feel like part of the family. We play with Hope and Noah and the kittens for a while. Whilst Chilli and Spice the two other kittens are putting on weight and progressing very well, Pepper is really struggling. She basically fits into the palm of your hand and when she walks across the floor she looks like a little mouse. I take it upon myself to feed her tonight and try to stop her gobbling the food. It seems to work as she is not sick tonight, but she does not look well and I think we all fear for her a little.

Kat seems to run the business side of the sanctuary single handed and we do not want to stop her working as the evening seems to be the only time she can catch up with her journal, emails and fundraising, as well as time with her kids, so we leave her to it.

This morning we are greeted by a cat at the door. We again have a delicious breakfast by the pool and have great fun observing the elephants. Pang Noi again comes looking for food, she is always very polite. She is another sad story as when she was rescued she was pregnant (and still being worked). Little Star was born at the sanctuary and was a great delight to everyone there. I think she was a bit of a favourite as she had been born there. Tragically she was struck by lightning in a storm in May this year and died. All the elephants leave their mark, but none more than Star and there are pictures of her everywhere. Pang Noi I think is still grieving and tends to spend a lot of time on her own not letting the others get close – quite sad really.

This morning one of the Elephants with us is Somai. There seems to be certain identifying factors which makes it easier to identify some of the Elephants. With Somai it is the fact he has big raggedy ears, caused by being caught in a forest fire. He actually went in to the fire and saved a lot of people, but was badly injured in the process. They did not think he would survive, but he did and he is a fine specimen today. They do not bat an eyelid that you are walking beside them. I would recommend not walking behind them as elephant farts stink!

They graze quite happily beside a stream. The dogs spook a couple of them and they run off a little, squeaking and trumpeting. You have to be aware where they are at all times just in case this happens, but we are in no danger. The quickly go back to what they do best – eating J

The afternoon walk takes us up to the tree house that Kat has built. It is a bit too high for me – so Vin, Kat and Penny go up there. I take a walk with Boon Mee’s mahout to her grave, where they have planted a tree for her – he wants to water the tree. It is a really beautiful are and a great tribute to the old lady. You can see that he is still visibly upset by it all – it has only been a week, and I feel a little intrusive – he tries to tell me that Boon Mee has died and this is her tree.

Nearby they have excavated a pond – so much more mud here, and three of the Elephants, including little Mee Chok are in there having a whale of a time. They are not quite so elegant getting out of it though! This place just can’t help to make you smile. I am sure however hard a day you are having, just coming out for a walk with them would make it all so much better.

This evening, as it is our last one, after dinner the mahouts come over and we sit on the floor having a chat with them. They are asking about our lives and travels. Someone then produces a bottle, which has rice whiskey in it. Before too long the shots are being passed around. I am sure they get bigger by the time they get to me! The mahouts have great fun watching our reactions when we drink the whiskey. It is not actually too bad – although I am sure 3 shots is enough! It makes for a fantastic last night though. All the dogs have joined us in the house and make themselves very comfortable around me and my cushion. At one point I have five dogs sleeping round me and two kittens sleeping on me – Heaven J

The drama is not over as Kat thinks she can hear an elephant chomping on the banana plants near the guesthouses! Both Vin and I hear something too, but the mahouts assure us that there is no sign. We head of to bed and are promptly escorted by Cha Cha, one of the dogs (and my favourite). She heads over to the bungalow with us and then settles herself down on the seat outside, where she stays all night.

Next morning we watch the elephants have their shower from the distance of the main house. We cannot join in this morning as we are ready to leave. We go down the car and are greeted by Tong Juai who wants to say goodbye. She touches us all with her trunk and then trumpets a little. This reduces me to tears so i jump in the car. We are setting off just as Pang Dow is coming for her shower. She has touched us all so much we want to say goodbye to her so we jump out of the car. I was also just saying to Vin that we hadn’t said a proper goodbye to the dogs, particularly Cha Cha, when I see them all come running over from the main house. It is a very poignant goodbye to a very special, magical place, one that has touched me in many ways.

From Vin: BLES is a genuinely special and amazing place and Katherine is an amazing woman. Linda was concerned that I’d be a bit bored while there, but it’s such a privilege to be able to spend time with the magnificent elephants, all of whom have their own personalities and character traits, and also to be welcomed into Kat’s home with her family. We’d previously visited ENP in Chiang Mai, but BLES makes ENP look like a big tourist attraction – this is the real deal. Kat is so dedicated to what she does that it’s all about the elephants and not her or anyone else (she’s been nominated for a CNN award but doesn’t even mention it until Linda does, and she’s recently turned down a Hollywood deal to make a film about her story as she’d only agree to an animated film “to avoid the use of elephant actors”.) After BLES it’s hard to imagine anywhere else in Thailand living up to this, and the fact we’re off to Phuket next – a busy, overpopulated tourist hotspot – isn’t lost on us.

Days 32-36 – Further Exploration of Chiang Mai and Surrounds

carrhaughan — Tue, 7 Dec 2010 11:54:00 GMT

Tuesday is an early start, as we’re heading out to the Elephant Nature Park. The elephant is the Thai national symbol and has been an ingrained part of the national culture for a very long time. As a consequence, many elephants are used domestically, primarily in the logging industry with large numbers in the tourism industry too. Logging was banned in the 1990s (due to the impact it was having on flooding during the rainy season), and this meant that many domestic elephants were now out of a job – some were moved into the tourism business while others were smuggled across the borders into Laos and Burma where logging still continues. Domestication of elephants is unpleasant – look it up on the internet if you’re interested, but it’s pretty barbaric. Additionally, domesticated elephants are generally not treated well – some are treated OK, but many are badly treated. Tourism generally involves elephant rides for tourists, ‘mahout training’, plus elephant shows where elephants perform tricks, paint etc. It’s all a bit grim, is not great for the elephants, and is mostly done because there are lots of tourists who want to ‘tick a box’ and say they’ve done elephants in Thailand. Given this, certainly around Chiang Mai, there is a large industry to serve this market. Elephant Nature Park does not subscribe to this world view.

Elephant Nature Park was set up in the 1990s by Lek, a Thai woman who hated the treatment of elephants in her country, is based around an hour or so north of Chiang Mai, and now houses some 34 elephants (plus some 70 dogs, lots of cats, and other hangers-on too!) The shtick is that, as a tourist, you can go along and help out by feeding and bathing the elephants, and also gaining an education in the process – essentially, it’s the very definition of eco-tourism. It’s all very good and very interesting – we’re shown around and introduced to some of the elephants, and we’re able to get very close to them pretty quickly, though usually they’re behind a fence or we’re higher up on a feeding platform. They’re amazing creatures close up – the skin is really thick and rough, and what looks like downy hair is actually very coarse, like a hairbrush. The trunks are great – they’re very dextrous and also possess great agility and strength, delicate enough to pick up a grain of rice but strong enough to knock you over (or pull down a sizable tree). Feeding them is very interesting – you hold out the food and they take it very carefully, curling the end of the trunk around the food to transport it to their mouth. They’re very gentle. Following this, we humans feed, then we’re off to the river to bathe the elephants – this involves bucketing water over them, and given there are quite a few elephants and probably around 30 people, everyone involved ends up getting very wet! The elephants then roll around in mud and dirt for a bit (to cool themselves down), and we get the opportunity to bond with them a little – including receiving a ‘kiss’ from one elephant (it’s very amusing and odd – like having a soft wet vacuum cleaner hose stuck to your face briefly!) Following this we watch a documentary made for TV about Lek and the sanctuary, where we learn more about the domestication of elephants. We also learn about those that are used to beg in tourist resorts – baby elephants are led around and tourists pay money to feed them, to have photographs taken with them, or to see them perform tricks. The documentary was made in 2002, and we’ve never seen this anywhere we’ve been in Thailand, so we conclude that things are at least changing for the better – the practice is now banned in many places in Thailand. Then there’s a bit more feeding, some more bathing, then we head back to Chiang Mai. It’s been a great day, meeting the elephants up close and interacting with them on their terms. When we leave Chiang Mai at the end of the week, we’re heading down to Sukothai to stay at Boon Lott’s Elephant Sanctuary (BLES) for three nights – BLES operates on the same principles as ENP but is much smaller and doesn’t take day visitors – we’re hoping it’ll be a special place. Amusingly, one of the people we pick up on our way to ENP is an Australian who apparently is an actor in Neighbours – he plays a character called Lou Carpenter. Linda recognises him straight away, I’ve still got no idea who he is!

Wednesday is the start of a two-day trek into the jungles of northern Thailand. We’re going ‘off-the-beaten-track’ and have gone for a walking-only tour (many others include elephant treks, rafting etc. – more examples of box ticking). We’re also overnighting at a camp in the jungle, which should be interesting. We pick up four others, all French blokes, who are doing a three-day trek. They look quite serious about their trekking, kitted out in all the gear. We drive north, heading out way past where we were yesterday at ENP – stopping off at a market along the way for provisions – and end up at a hill tribe village for lunch, then finally we head off on the trek. It starts off pretty gentle. Our guide is called Chad, and he’s a real character – his English is pretty good, he’s a bit of a local, and as he heads out in his oversize jeans and shirt and flip flops, he starts singing! It’s very warm and humid, moreso as we get into the jungle, and even moreso as the trek starts to get harder – which it most certainly does! We are definitely off the beaten track – we’re heading up very steep inclines and down equally steep ones, along very narrow paths some of which are along the edge of fairly steep drops. It’s a beautiful place to be trekking, but conditions make it pretty tough, particularly for Linda who is not happy with the steepness of some of the slopes (both up and down), the fact that some are only a foot wide (and that’s not a unit of measurement!), and the amount of trees we have to scramble over/under! We stop for a break in a local hill tribe village to get a drink and catch our breaths, then head off again via a shortcut to our camp. The shortcut drops steeply down the side of a valley and is painfully narrow – we’re glad to reach the end of it, though Linda panics slightly at one section (crossing a massive downed tree) and manages to twist her right knee. Still, we reach the end.

The accommodation is basic – mattresses on the floor and mosquito nets above – but comfortable. All six of us are sharing one large room, but it could probably house another four others so the French blokes grab one end and we grab the other. We change out of our dirty sweaty clothes and hang them to dry – swimmers are now order of the day as there’s a small waterfall nearby where we can take a natural shower. Unfortunately, the waterfall is also a small trek away, along a very narrow and steep path, and while the fall itself is very pretty it’s also very difficult to get down to, along slippery rocks. Only half of us head into the water, and it’s pretty damn cold but very refreshing after the long hike. Then we head back and chill out for a while before dinner. Sadly, the place we’re staying isn’t as remote as we’d expected – it’s close enough to the road to the local village to be able to hear mopeds, and we can hear neighbours playing some dreadful 80s compilation CD! Still, dinner is welcome and very nice and after a couple of 50 baht beers all seems well. The sky is really clear and when we turn the lights out and our eyes adjust we can see so many stars in the sky. Bed comes early after a long day and it’s lights-out by 21.00 or so. It’s actually surprisingly quiet, with the exception of one very large buzzing insect and the omnipresent geckos. Oh, and the camp cat (well, one year old large kitten) which is noisy when it wants attention – it’s very cute!

We rise at around 07.00 the next day – well, Linda does, I’m up half an hour later, while the French blokes eventually rise around 09.00 or so! Linda’s knee is hurting and she doesn’t want to risk damaging it further and jeopardise the rest of the trip so after a chat with Chad he arranges a lift for her to a local hill tribe village where we’d be heading for lunch anyway. So after breakfast the rest of us bid farewell to Linda until lunchtime then head out on the trek. Within five minutes Chad has broken his flip flop and I have to provide an emergency repair with a zip tie! The trek out of valley is really tough, it’s very steep and narrow with some really shear edges at times – no-one’s chatting, we’re all too busy trying to control our breathing whilst dealing with the oppressive heat and humidity. Things get a little more gentle and we have a short break when we discover a banana tree horse and banana leaf hat (don’t ask) then we head down a very steep slope to a much bigger waterfall. This one has a pool at the bottom, and is much more accessible – Chad, myself and two of the French blokes change into swimmers and jump in. The water is freezing, but ultimately very refreshing after the trek this morning. Then another trek group turns up and joins in – obviously this is a popular place! Then we re-dress and climb back up steeply to get out of the valley, before heading along a few miles until another steep shortcut down to the village where we meet up with Linda for lunch. The other group follow behind 30 minutes later and it turns out they’re part of the same company that Chad works for, and Linda and I agree to head back with them to Chiang Mai – it means that I’ll miss out on a trek to see a bat cave, but as a consequence we’ll both be able to do a bit of rafting (at no extra cost) so it’s an opportunity for Linda to be able to salvage something from the day. We head back via minibus to the river just up from ENP, then do some white water rafting for about half an hour followed by 15 minutes or so of bamboo rafting. It’s all a bit noddy really, slightly interesting but obviously added as ‘filler’ for the box-tickers. We’d actually planned to do some white water rafting in a couple of days, on the day before we leave Chiang Mai, but this would be a whole day activity starting on the same river but much closer to the Burmese border. We decide to can it – not because we’ve ‘done’ the white water rafting now, rather, we’re fed up with tourist minibuses and particularly doing the trip north out of Chiang Mai – we’d be looking at a 5-hour round trip by road on Saturday and neither of us can really face that right now! We then head back to Chiang Mai.

One thing that has galled Linda about CM is the shopping – there’s some genuinely beautiful stuff available at very cheap prices. The problem is that we’re here for another 5-6 weeks and don’t have the room to carry stuff with us. We decide to ship some stuff back to the UK – OK, costs aren’t cheap, but we can offload some 6kg or so of kit that we’ve bought already or that we brought out with us and just don’t need anymore, and it also allows Linda the opportunity of doing some shopping! So we head out to the night market and Linda shops like a demon! In the end, by close of play Thursday, we’ve got around 10-11kg of stuff to ship home, which we’ll sort out tomorrow. As we head back from the night market we stop off for a beer at a local bar. Depressingly, given we’d visited ENP a couple of days previously, we see for the very first time a baby elephant being dragged around outside for the ‘benefit’ of the tourists, most of whom seem to be lapping it up. Linda finds in very distressing, we genuinely thought this sort of thing didn’t exist anymore – it turns out it’s still legal to do this in Chiang Mai, we’ve just been lucky not to see any so far.

Friday is kind of a catch-up and doing-stuff day. We don’t need to be up early so we aren’t, and we have a leisurely morning followed by a trip to the local post office to ship our stuff back to the UK. It’s all fairly painless, but we’re both hoping we’ll see all our stuff again once we hand the box over – I’ll guess we’ll know in 2-3 months after it’s travelled several thousand miles by sea! Then we find a local coffee place and take advantage of the free wifi to sort out our car insurance (exciting stuff!) and other organisational stuff we need to do. Friday night we hit a local veggie restaurant – Taste of Heaven – where all proceeds go to ENP and where the food is excellent and great value!

Saturday was due to be white water rafting day but we’ve now canned this. Linda’s not too bothered about doing anything too much (her knee’s OK but she doesn’t want to push it too much) so gives me permission to head out and try the downhill mountain biking route four (the one I’ve been thinking about since Monday!) while she heads out for a wander to the local market. The biking group is much smaller this time – in fact, I’m the only one doing route four! Amusingly, I’ve also got the same guide, Lewis! We kit up (full body armour this time) and I get my bike – given I’m on my own I’ve got the best bike in the shop and it’s actually a pretty decent bike: a Giant Faith with Rock Shox Boxxer forks on the front and a nice Fox coil/oil rear suspension unit, plus decent hydraulic disc brakes. I set it up for purely downhill use, as this route is described as 100% DH. Then we set off. Firstly, there’s definitely some uphills, as we take the same route at the start as we did on Monday, but the climbs aren’t too steep, which is a good job as the bike is definitely not designed to be ridden up hills! Then we hit the proper downhill singletrack and WOW, it’s good! It’s much tougher than the stuff I did on Monday, but then the bike is much more capable. It’s a lot of fun, and as we get further in things get even tougher – we’re talking about steeps, rocks (including some very big ones), roots, water, ruts and big holes, sand, drop-offs, loose surfaces, and all stretched along very twisty singletrack – it basically had everything except mud! Route four splits at different sections to allow guides to split riders of varying abilities – if you do OK on one section then you can proceed to the next, otherwise you head down the ‘easier’ route. I must have been doing OK, as we always took the harder routes! A couple of observations: firstly, it’s not 100% downhill – there are definitely uphill bits, we just don’t ride them, we have to push the bikes up; and secondly, Lewis is an excellent downhiller, his skills are really good and – while I acknowledge he’s done the route a lot so knows it very well – he hardly dabs at all. Me? Well, let’s just say that this is unquestionably the hardest downhilling I’ve ever done in my life – without a shadow of a doubt – I’ve never ridden anything as technically demanding for such a prolonged descent. It’s relentless – each section is followed by another even harder section! It’s physically very demanding – I’m much more knackered riding this than I was on Monday despite there’s much less ascending required – in fact there are times when I need to call a time out and get my breathing sorted out! I certainly dab a few times, and have proper crashes maybe four or five times – pretty low speed but I’m thankful for the body armour and even then I’ve got some impressive bruises to show for it! It’s genuinely the hardest mountain biking I’ve ever had to do – some of the sections were just scary, I wish I’d taken a few pictures to demonstrate! However, I still had a big grin on my face all the way down and there was a big high-five awaiting me at the bottom from Lewis! Followed by a ride back into Chiang Mai then through the traffic to the company’s office (the hard DH route ends at a different place to all the other routes so we have to make our own way back into town!) I’m really glad I did it, it was much much harder than I’d anticipated but really good fun and at the end of the day, we all need to push ourselves from time to time. I’ll definitely do it again if I ever get back to Chiang Mai in the future.

Saturday night involved packing then food – we’re in bed fairly early as we’re both tired and we’ve got an early start in the morning as we’re getting the 06.45 train out of town. We’re now halfway through the trip and it feels like we’ve been away for such a long time – equally though, neither of us wants it to end. Chiang Mai has been a lot of fun, we’ve spent a long time here and – despite the occasional problem – we both like the place: there’s good veggie restaurants, good markets, it has a pretty laidback vibe and there’s loads of really cool stuff to do in the mountains outside of town. Things are likely to be a bit more gentle after this, but it’s nice to mix things up a bit y’know!

Days 27-31 – Into Northern Thailand (aka Thailand’s Hippy Hangout)

carrhaughan — Wed, 1 Dec 2010 04:30:00 GMT

We’re up early and off to the airport for our return to Thailand. We’re both pretty sad to be leaving – Vietnam and Cambodia have had that effect on us. Still, more adventures await. Our plane is delayed slightly (and more disconcertingly has no vegetarian not pot noodles available) but we arrive in northern Thailand late afternoon in the former capital city of Chiang Mai. CM dates back some 800 years or so and is based around a central walled old city some one square mile in size (roughly the same as the City of London). It’s fairly low rise though – most corporate buildings are based away from the centre of town and while there are a few big hotels they’re small in number and are no more than around 20-25 storeys max. We’re staying in a small guesthouse called Mandala House which is based approximately midway between the eastern wall of the old city and the night bazaar. Pretty quickly we realise it’s a good location.

Our return to Thailand is odd – prior to leaving, we’d thought of it as being a typical chaotic southeast Asian country, but on returning from Vietnam and especially Cambodia it actually seems extremely westernised, almost civilized! The number of cars is pretty much on parity with two-wheeled transport, and it’s actually unusual to hear a car horn (the opposite is definitely true further east!) It’s weird really, even the tuk tuks seem ‘safe’ compared to their counterparts elsewhere! We also realise that Thailand is quite a bit more expensive that the previous two countries we’ve visited. Not crazily so, I mean, paying the equivalent of a quid (or more) for large beer is fine, but when you’re used to paying well under a dollar you start to notice it more!

Our first evening is spent mostly exploring locally, as is the next day with the field expanded somewhat. We quickly realise that this part of Thailand is definitely where all the hippies now hang out – at times it’s like walking round Glastonbury! There are large numbers of veggie restaurants, lots of bookshops, and loads of shops selling ethnic goods (though at least they’re authentic and locally-produced here!) Chiang Mai has a very strong cultural heritage for the Thais – it’s a national treasure – and as such there are huge numbers of temples here: CM has as many temples as Bangkok despite being significantly less populated. Wandering round we see beautiful temples everywhere, and some of them are genuinely magnificent. There’s also quite a bit of traffic, but compared to Bangkok and more so the previous cities we’ve visited it’s pretty sane really.

After a day of wandering round, sightseeing and getting our bearings, Saturday is also fairly laid back as we’ve got a Thai cookery course booked for the day. We’re picked up at a sensible time and we head to a local market to collect ingredients. After doing the same thing in Phnom Penh we know what to expect, but the local market we’re taken to is an order of magnitude more civilised than the one in Cambodia – there’s no live fish decapitation and wandering ‘free range’ chickens here! The school itself is also a bit more civilised – we can all pick and choose specific dishes we want to cook (six in total) from an extensive list, and actually we participate very closely so see how to cook the stuff that others have chosen too. The ingredients list is very similar to the previous course which is unsurprising given that Khmer cuisine influenced the now-more-famous Thai and Vietnamese food. What is surprising though is the amount of chilli that seems to be added. We were using tiny (and incredibly hot) birds eye chilis and the minimum for more dishes (for one person) seemed to be at least 1-2 (for flavour!) – beyond that the sky was the limit, I used a max of half a dozen in one dish, previous participants had used 40+, and while I consider myself a bit of a chilli head I found the incredible heat (and they really were very very hot) rendered some dishes almost inedible! I may have to customise the chilli suggestions when cooking these back in the UK! The cooking was a lot of fun though (particularly the bits where we got to set everything on fire!!) and if anything, the course was worthwhile purely to learn about the various curry sauces used in Thai cooking (for those who don’t know, red curry is the basis for all other Thai curry sauces). Great fun and well recommended. After we finished the cookery school (and most of the food) we headed back then out to the night market/bazaar. Most places like this in southeast Asia are pretty rubbish – mostly fake goods and overpriced tourist tat – but we were both genuinely surprised by the quality of stuff available. Don’t be mistaken, there was plenty of rubbish (and fake stuff available) but this was mostly outside on temporary street stalls – inside, where the permanent stalls sit there was a lot of good locally produced items including artwork, carvings, hand-painted stuff – kinda like Camden but better and cheaper! Much to my chagrin (and Linda’s joy) we also found a local shipping office and this gave us indicative costs for shipping stuff back to the UK – not cheap, but we’re running out of space (and weight) and there’s so much really good stuff available to buy in CM it’s very tempting to think about shipping stuff back home (and that includes stuff we brought with us that we’ve subsequently realised we don’t actually need!)

Sunday sees us head out of town into the mountains for the first time – we’re off into the hills quad biking! It’s a bit of a trip, maybe 45 mins or so from CM. I last did this in Las Vegas a couple of months ago so had a fair idea of what to expect. Unfortunately, standards we’re not at Vegas levels. The intro and safety briefing last about 15 minutes (accelerate, brake, lights, that’s all you need) and the rider testing was fairly primitive, but hey ho, we’re not in Kansas anymore. Linda and I have buddied up on one bike and we seem to inherit the packhorse – the one carrying all the supplies. It looks OK, but looks can be deceiving. We head out. Sadly, the Vegas comparisons don’t end there – that ride was 95% offroad, this is maybe 25% offroad, which renders things a little, well, unchallenging. The bikes are also a lot poorer – ours has a gearbox malfunction 10 minutes into the ride which eventually gets fixed, but the bike is seriously underpowered for 2 riders – on the steeper hills at full throttle it’s struggling big time, which is a bit of a worry. Still, the actual offroad sections were a lot of fun and it’s definitely nice to get up into the hills even if most of it is onroad. However it’s not an ideal intro to ATV for Linda so we’ll have to try again somewhere a bit better.

Monday is better. We’re off mountain biking down the mountains outside Chiang Mai, with emphasis on the word DOWN – we’re dropped off at the top at around 1800m and descend to around 300m, so 1500m of vertical descent. We’ve picked the ‘easy’ route as we want to ride together. It’s probably 80% offroad and 90% downhill (though the 10% uphill is tough given the heat and humidity). As we head up to the top, one of the guys on our bus tells us he’s heard the route we’re doing is actually “really hard”. These things are always relative – one man’s meat etc. The safety briefing at the top is amusing (I’m in the beginner’s group after all!) then we head out. Truth be told, from my point of view anyway, the route is pretty easy. The scenery is beautiful and amazing to see, but the track itself is unchallenging for anyone who’s done any downhills anywhere in the UK. We pick up a couple more riders (and another guide) partway down but unfortunately we’re a bit late so I miss my opportunity to jump ship and join a different group. We continue down, I’m right behind the lead guide – he’s a decent rider but it’s obvious this ride isn’t testing him either. The guide we picked up partway down is a Danish rider called Nicolai, and he’s a very good rider indeed. A few of us branch off at a couple of points early on and hit some slightly technical singletrack – it’s twisty and fast with a few drop-offs, good fun but only briefly. After exiting the first section Nicolai tells me I should have gone for route 4 instead (the full-on super-technical downhill route!) He’s probably right. Still, we carry on – the route is interesting, sometimes steep, rocky, rutty and/or slippery, but never really too challenging (well, for me, but then I’ve been riding stuff like this for years!) Further down though, the group splits – there’s some really technical singletrack and Nicolai and I depart from the rest of the group and head that way. This part of the ride makes my day completely – it’s genuinely really challenging, super-tight twisty singletrack with lots of roots and drop-offs, it’s also pretty steep and we’re both riding, frankly, fairly shitty hardtail bikes: this is the sort of thing I’d want to be riding on my normal full sus bike. Still, it’s a great test of skills, and with just the two of us we’re able to hit the trails at full tilt, caning everything at top speed – it’s REALLY good fun and has me grinning from cheek to cheek. At the bottom Nicolai tells me this is the sort of stuff they normally ride on route 4 with full suspension bikes (and full body armour!) It leaves me wanting to come back and ride route 4! We regroup again at the bottom – Linda’s ridden down really well, with just a couple of bruises (and an annoyingly late puncture) to show for it – hardly any dabs at all which is genuinely excellent! We stop for a very late lunch by the lake then back to town. We’re almost halfway through our time in Chiang Mai but we’ve still got a lot planned to do here – it’s proving to be a great place!

Days 24-26 – Exit Vietnam

carrhaughan — Fri, 26 Nov 2010 23:55:00 GMT

So we’ve had a great time so far in Phu Quoc, and don’t really want to leave. We pack up at Beach Club and move next door, and within an hour we both REALLY want to leave! We realise pretty quickly we’ve made a mistake – you know when you get a bad feeling about a place, well we’ve both got it and in spades. Our “bungalow” is actually an end-of-terrace, and given it’s apparently the biggest and best (read: most expensive) room in the place we’re surprised to see it’s less than half the size of the (real) bungalows next door (for a 50% uplift in cost). In fact, the only redeeming feature about the room is that it has AC, but this is a moot point when the power fails and they don’t bother to put the backup generator on (power failure is a fact of life on Phu Quoc, there are brown- and blackouts all the time, but all businesses have generators that they can turn to to provide power during these times – unfortunately Paris Beach don’t seem to value their paying guests that much!) The staff are just too friendly – really overbearingly so to the point of being extremely intrusive. I don’t like this too much and quickly get a reputation for being “serious” which I don’t mind as it keeps them away from me! Compared to Beach Club this place is really not great at all, and we’re both seriously questioning the reviews (we’ll fix that later, don’t you worry...) – I mean, even getting down onto the beach requires climbing gear and a healthy attitude towards personal disregard for safety! We decide to do a Bo Peep and head down to the town to pick up our dive kit from Rainbow and grab a couple of beers and maybe an early dinner. But even then, the Gods are not looking down on us favourably. It’s still the tail end of the rainy season and we’ve had quite a few big storms (and I mean REALLY BIG thunder storms) but they’ve mostly been at night. Unfortunately, as we head down the road to town we get caught out in one and by the time we can find a place to jump into for shelter we’re both properly soaked – from the front anyway, we’re OK from the back! Still, like most of the storms, it disappears fairly quickly, we enjoy a beer while drying off (even though we’ve just jumped into a restaurant to avoid the weather, the typically helpful staff offer us towels etc.), then pick up our kit (Rainbow’s new generator is working very well!) and head out for food and beers, then back for sleep!

We’d got plans to avoid Paris Beach the next day by renting a bike and seeing a bit more of the island, but we have a massive storm overnight and it doesn’t properly let up until late the next morning – this isn’t helping Linda who’s now got a bad cold and chest infection, courtesy of Thom the Rainbow DM. After the storm finally subsides we decide to chill out some by leaving Paris Beach and walking up long beach into town, grabbing late lunch (and a nice swim) on the way, then grabbing some beers and dinner on the way back, prior to packing and getting ready to leave PQ. We’re almost caught by another torrential downpour but get lucky this time and dive into a local bar which turns out to be pretty good. Then we head back, pack, and drop into bed ready for an early start.

We leave PQ, and while we’ve had a great time for the most part, we’re not sad to go – we both ponder what the future holds for the place: from our trips down the beach and into town, it seems obvious that there are already tour packages available to come here and this market will definitely grow as there are new hotels being built right now and a new (international) airport is planned for the near future. I think Phu Quoc’s quiet time has been and gone, but it’s still possible to get bungalows on a beach at a pretty decent price if you know where to look so it’s still a long way off the busier places in Thailand.

So we head back to Saigon, and it’s like greeting an old friend. We go back to Saigon Mini Hotel 5 and the staff recognises us when we enter – it’s genuinely touching, and they’ve actually given us the same room! One thing I should mention about Saigon, and particularly the backpacker areas in district 1, is the concept of the mini hotel. Essentially, these are very narrow, quite long and pretty tall buildings – by narrow, I mean the width of one room, our hotel was narrower than our house at home, but 10 storeys tall! It’s quite unnerving, particularly when you take breakfast on the top floor! We then head out to sort out final bits and pieces before departing for Thailand in the morning. We also dress up and head out for a nice dinner – it is our 9^th wedding anniversary after all!

We’re both genuinely sad to be leaving Vietnam. It’s fair to say that when we booked up the trip and sorted out our schedule, we we’re both very comfortable with the Thailand stuff but didn’t know what to expect of Cambodia and Vietnam, and both countries have surprised us inordinately. In fact, we’re now regretting being slightly too prescriptive in our scheduling as given the option, we’d have both opted to head up north and see a lot more of Vietnam – we both agree it’s probably the best country we’ve been to in a very long time and we’ve already decided that we need to come back here and see more of the place – and we also need to get over into Laos too before that becomes too busy. The people are hugely friendly, everything is pretty laid back, and the cities feel organic and full of life – and the strength of the £ (or almighty US$) versus the VND makes it a very cheap place to visit. Get yourselves out here before it becomes as busy as Thailand! (Incidentally, Facebook is banned out in Vietnam, but we’ve managed without it for a couple of weeks so it’s not too much of a bind really!)

Days 18-23 – A Little Downtime in Phu Quoc

carrhaughan — Mon, 22 Nov 2010 18:52:00 GMT

Firstly, apologies for the delay in posting the next instalment – we’ve been busy doing nothing! Actually, a few days by the beach doesn’t really hold much of interest so we decided to roll-up the whole chunk into one journal.

We have a leisurely start on leaving Saigon as our flight to Phu Quoc does not leave until 12.10. Our last ride in the manic Saigon traffic and it does not disappoint. We would be nervous wrecks if we had to travel in this every day, London traffic is a breeze in comparison. The flight itself is only a fifty minute journey and we know it’s going to be a turboprop plane, but Linda’s still unaware how small the plane will be. Imagine the look on her face when we are bussed to the arse end of nowhere at the airport and she is faced with a very small plane – it’s nicely old school, good old-fashioned propellers, none of your fancy jet engines here. Linda is not the greatest fan of flying – particularly the start and end bits – and the prospect of travelling even the short distance to Phu Quoc on a plane that seats a maximum of 68 people (it’s not full) fills her with dread. I’m still trying to work out how the flight is commercially viable given that we’ve paid about £25 each for a ticket...

The journey is short and uneventful and we get a full view of the island of Phu Quoc as we bank to turn around to land. The island is only 30km long and 19km in width at its widest point, and is still fairly unspoilt (but getting busier with each season it appears). As we taxi off the runway it almost looks like the terminal will be in someone’s house – it’s not quite Stonetown in Zanzibar but not far off! The vehicles they use to unload the baggage are simply standard luggage trolleys that you get at all airports but there is at least a carousel for collecting your luggage – albeit only one, and pretty short at that.

We’re staying at Beach Club Vietnam for 6 days. We’ve changed our plans slightly in the past few days (we were planning to head back via the Mekong Delta, but after reviewing the trip we’d got booked we realised we wouldn’t get as much out of it as we initially expected so decided to cancel it and stay a couple more days on Phu Quoc, as, unfortunately, we’ve only got a single-entry visa for Vietnam so we can’t leave the country and we don’t have the time to travel further north). We can’t extend our stay at Beach Club as it’s fully booked but we’ll sort out the extra days later.

Beach club is a very laid back place – four bungalows and six rooms, all based around a central garden area with a nice bar/restaurant in the centre. It’s all right on the beach – the furthest room is maybe 10m from the sea. The vibe is good, the staff are friendly but not intrusive and we know we’re going to get on well here. A few years ago we stayed at a place called Moonhuts in Thailand and the setup was very similar, which is a good sign.

The next few days are a mixture of beach, chilling out, books, and scuba diving. We’ve booked a couple of days of diving on Phu Quoc, and I’ve also booked do my night diving speciality which involves another 3 dives and a lot of homework. Vietnam is described as Thailand 20 years ago, which is probably about right. Phu Quoc is described as Vietnam 10 years ago which I’m not sure about – a few years ago it may have been pretty quiet but it’s definitely getting busier, and there are some large hotel complexes on the main beach – long beach – on the island. Saying that, away from the beach there’s little development, but you kinda feel you’ve missed the boat by a couple of years on this one in terms of discovering something untouched. The capital Duong Dong really is a one street town, and it’s not much of a street at that. There’s very little to do there, most stuff revolves around the harbour and the slightly overrated night market. Even most of the independent restaurants are based out of town on the road down the back of long beach. Beach club is based more or less at the end of the developments on long beach so it actually is pretty quiet, and the food/beer is good and pretty cheap so we’re happy not to venture too far.

The diving is not too bad, but not great – but we’re in the gulf of Thailand so that’s not too surprising really. We do a couple of dives at sites to the north and a couple at sites to the south. The dives are all pretty shallow – maybe 12m maximum – and are mostly macro dives, looking for small stuff rather than the bigger pelagics. There’s a lot of coral (of varying quality), lots of nudibranch, plenty of small fish (and a few larger ones hiding away), a few crabs and that’s more or less it. Well, apart from the ever present urchins and the occasional bright anemone and accompanying clown fish. We do also see a crown of thorns starfish which is a nasty predator – it eats the coral and unless properly killed will multiply – ours is killed properly. The diving is not bad, but two days is about right to get an impression of the dive sites in both areas. Our dive leader is an instructor called Huang, who jointly runs the company. He’ll also be instructing me for my night dives. We’re accompanied by other divers on the two days: a German, Mattius, on the first day plus a Rainbow divemaster Thom, both of whom are very competent except in their ability to buddy up effectively. The second day we get a French diver, Alberto, who was less than competent – after a few occasions of getting hit by his fins we both learn to give him a wide berth!

The night dive spec. Involves 3 dives and a whole lot of homework beforehand. It’s all pretty interesting stuff, and fairly typical PADI it places great emphasis on safety first. The dives themselves vary from dive to dive. The first one is OK, but the vis is pretty awful – maybe a few metres at the start and end, but it drops to almost nothing in the middle, and this is quite disorientating at night. The first two dives are orientation dives to get used to diving at night and in the local conditions. The final dive will be a test of my underwater navigation at night – I have to lead the dive and return back to the dive boat. Neither of us do much navigation, we leave that to the locals who know the dive sites intimately, but I have little choice here. Regardless, I plan for a simple reciprocal route, I mean what can go wrong with that? Well, come the final dive, the water conditions have improved considerably, vis is really good and conditions are excellent. I head east – and plan to keep going that way until we return via a 180 turn. Unfortunately, 10 minutes in, I realise the local topology makes this impossible and we move away from my carefully planned route. Fortunately it doesn’t present too many problems, and after 40 minutes I signal to Huang that we’re heading back and within 10 minutes we’re back under the boat and I’m pretty stoked – navigation during the day is hard enough! We’ve still got decent air left so Huang decides to see if we can find some elusive bamboo sharks, and within 10 minutes we do so! It’s pretty cool, overall one of the best dives I’ve probably ever done.

The thing about diving on Phu Quoc is that you need to get a dive boat (and a good sized one at that) out to the dive sites, and for the night dives the boat was going out just for me. It makes you feel slightly special (and maybe a bit greedy) to know that you’ve got a full dive boat, two dive crew and three boat crew and they’re all making a trip of several hours just for you. Plus, conditions for the dives were not ideal – the first night we were diving in a thunder storm (lightning underwater looks cool) – and the crew have to suffer all this without the benefit of actually getting under the water! Still, it was all good fun and I’m glad I did it – more than likely we’ll be doing night dives down in southern Thailand, both off the Similans and off Koh Phi Phi.

Following the diving we spend the next few days chilling out. It’s much needed. Linda also takes advantage of the local women and has her leg hairs threaded, and has a massage. Even compared to Thailand the costs are very cheap. We’ve also sorted where to spend our final two days on Phu Quoc – the place next door, Paris Beach, comes well reviewed on Trip Advisor and is reasonable value so we sort a room out for a couple of days prior to our trip back to Saigon.

Days 16-17 – A Long Weekend in Saigon (Part 2)

carrhaughan — Wed, 17 Nov 2010 23:16:00 GMT

A very early start today, as we’re off on a bike ride down through the Mekong Delta. There’s five of us on the ride, plus our guide Thai. We drive down out of Saigon and head down into the delta itself, through to Long An province. It turns out that this is where Thai grew up, so he knows the area like the back of his hand. We’re a bit fearful at first, mostly due to the very high temperatures and humidity, but also due to the local traffic which – while not as terror-inducing as Saigon – is still fairly busy, but we pull off down a small side road before we stop to kit up, and the traffic down here is much better. The bikes are OK – fairly standard low-level Marins – but much better than most bikes available in Vietnam, and perfectly adequate for the slightly rough conditions we’re likely to encounter. We set off and enjoy the beautiful scenery, journeying through local villages and farms. We stop off at a place growing dragon fruit (this part of the delta is known locally as the dragon fields) and marvel at the plants which look a lot like drooping cacti. There are a lot of fruit plants round here growing many different types of fruit – dragon fruit, pomelo, mango, papaya, tamarind, banana, coconut, langtan amongst others. This is also a big rice growing region – most families have a hectare or so of rice paddy which is all harvested manually, so while they’re not rich they generally don’t go hungry! There are also lots and lots of ducks – non-flying ones at that – that are kept for egg production rather than for meat, plus plenty of chickens and the occasional pig and cow! It’s all fascinating stuff, and the ride itself is turning out to be pretty easy despite the heat as the land is flat and the pace is gentle. The people we encounter round here are also amazingly friendly, probably a lot more so than in the city – we stop for a drink of water and the local kids are fascinated by us, playing a game of peek-a-boo and finding it hilarious; pretty much everyone we pass shouts hello, even people on passing mopeds. We encounter a group gathered round a wheeled machine in one village and Thai stops to explain what it is – it produces tubular rice cakes from rice and palm sugar. We try some and it’s delicious, much nicer than the cardboard stuff we get in the UK. It turns out we’re lucky, the bloke only brings the machine round once per week on a Sunday (his payment is half the rice used). We stop for some iced tea at a ‘cafe’ which turns out to be the front of someone’s house! The total ride length was around 30km, and we finally end up in My Tho, a large city down in the southern delta – we mix it up with the local traffic for a couple of kilometres which is fun, it reminds me of my daily commute! The ride ends near a very large – and spectacular – local temple which also has three very large statues of Buddha. Lunch is at a local restaurant, and it really is local – you’d never be able to find it unless you knew about it and we were the only non-locals in there. We were served a feast of dishes, including a lot of slightly weird veggie dishes that were the Vietnamese equivalent of Quorn or similar – vegetarianism is popular in Vietnam so these meat substitutes (shaped like shrimps, squid etc.), made from gluten, tofu etc. are common, but we hadn’t encountered them in Saigon. We take some convincing that it’s actually veggie but he manages in the end!

And we’re still not done. We head down to the port and we’re off on a boat out into the delta. Our captain is a real character – he’s about 80, fought in the war against Cambodia (he shows off his war wounds!), and starts singing songs about Ho Chi Minh and the Khmer as we chug through the port! We’re heading to an island within the delta, but as we make our way there we see once again how busy the delta is, and how important it is to the local people – everyone relies on the water from it. The Mekong is one of the longest rivers in the world, around 4500km, and starts in Tibet then flows through China and many of the countries of southeast Asia (Burma, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam) before emptying into the South China Sea (which we’re only 30km or so from). The Chinese want to dam it close to its source and reduce the flow by around 40% - unsurprisingly there’s fierce opposition to this. We reach the island and swap boats to smaller local paddle boats (sampans) – which Linda’s not happy about – where we continue towards the interior of the island. It feels a long way from other people but we’re not at all – there are lots of buildings here, they’re just hidden behind the palms. We stop near a local bee farm and depart the boat, where we’re treated to an elaborate tea ceremony (local honey, lime juice and hot water – delicious) plus lots of local fruit, all while being entertained by local musicians. I think it’s fair to say that the Vietnamese are not renowned for their music for a good reason! Then we head back to the main boat via donkey and cart (poor thing!), then try coconut candies which are so utterly delicious that everyone in the group buys at least a couple of packets, then we’re back on the boat and speeding back to the port in My Tho, following which we head back to Saigon in the minibus. We get back around 18.30, it’s been a long day but everyone agrees it’s been excellent. We’re pretty tired so we grab a few beers and some food then head back to bed.

We’ve spent three nights in Saigon now but the two full days have so far been spent outside the city and we haven’t really wandered very far from where we’re staying, so Monday brings a day of city exploration. We head out to Ben Thanh market which is only a few blocks away from us – it’s a pretty busy place, not as busy as central market in Phnom Penh but definitely more crowded. We wander round taking in the sights (and sounds and smells) but it’s absolutely baking hot inside so we can’t spend too long in the central area that has very narrow passageways between the stalls. We buy a couple of small things (weight’s an issue given we’re here for 8 more weeks so we have to limit ourselves when souvenir shopping) then head out. We move up past a couple of museums that are closed (Saigon is amusingly old-school – most public places close for lunch!) then head to the large Catholic cathedral of Notre Dame and more importantly the very impressive central post office opposite it. OK, ordinarily post offices aren’t places to detour towards, but this is to post offices what Grand Central in New York is to railway stations. Then we head north-west towards the War Remnants Museum (ready for opening time at 13.30).

Due to the sanitised nature of Cu Chi, we’d were a bit dismissive of Vietnam’s coverage of the Vietnam war, but the War Remnants Museum would change that (it was formerly known as the American War Crimes Museum). There are quite a few military vehicles (tanks, helis, planes etc.) outside but the main draw is inside. The main part of the museum covers the brutality of the war, and does so with no-holds-barred photos and accompanying stories and exhibits to bring everything in context. It’s horrifying, some of the pictures are utterly brutal and shocking. There’s also a large area devoted to the devastation caused by the numerous defoliating agents used by the Americans (most famously Agent Orange) which contained large amounts of dioxins (the most toxic substance mankind has ever created) and the affect this had on the people then and which is still ongoing now with large numbers of miscarriages and birth defects. The photos are very hard viewing. There are also exhibitions upstairs, one of paintings done by Vietnamese artists during the conflict and most notably a photo expo by photo journalists that were killed (or went MIA) during the conflict. Given the journalism aspect (a number of the exhibits were from Time and Life magazines and similar) there are themes based around collections and photographers, but the explanations with each picture provide context and we spend a long time in here – it’s haunting. We consider that there are people brave enough to do this, to go into conflict zones and document the events that happen there, and even though a number of the journalists are American, they report from a neutral point of view. We spend a lot longer than expected in the museum, it’s fascinating, compelling and nauseating at the same time. We’re reminded once again of the atrocities that people seem able to commit against each other and it doesn’t become any more palatable. The Vietnam war represented a seismic shift in the way that wars were fought, both on the ground and in the media, and this is still very true today (despite the west’s attempts to still try and fight ‘conventional’ wars). Most people’s first thoughts when they consider the country Vietnam is the conflict – we both hope this changes as it’s a genuinely interesting and great place that’s changed enormously since it opened up to international tourism in 1995 and we agree that we can’t think of anyone we know that wouldn’t really like the place.

We head back to pack and eat and drink. We’ve only been here a few days but we’re already loving the place and can’t wait to see the other side of Vietnam!

Days 14-15 – A Long Weekend in Saigon (Part 1)

carrhaughan — Sun, 14 Nov 2010 23:54:00 GMT

We’re up early for the bus. Not sure why, we know almost for sure our transfer will be late – which, of course, he is. We head out into the Phnom Penh rush hour, then realise that it’s no different from the regular traffic – do they ever actually have a rush hour?! We realise that we’re actually properly late when our final pickup is after our bus to Saigon is scheduled to leave, then suddenly our driver is in a rush. Understand: the drivers may seem rash and crazy but actually there’s a laissez faire attitude to driving; we’ll get there whatever happens. Our driver was suddenly in a rush and this added a new – and genuinely terrifying – element to the trip – he was rushing through the traffic without the right attitude and it was white-knuckle-ride crazy. Ask us about it later! I’d made the assumption that the bus would wait for us – after all, there’s a full list of paying passengers, we’re on it, and we’re on the official pickup for the bus. But no – we realise this as we start to head out of PP at breakneck speed, and we finally get our bus down to Saigon – not at a bus station, but at a petrol station, some 30 minutes after it left PP! Still, we got it...

Here’s a travel tip: if you need to bus anywhere across southeast Asia, and you have the option then use Mekong Express. They cost a couple of dollars more than the competition but are head and shoulders the best bus company out here (and you’ll probably end up spending the couple of dollars on beers while you wait for your broken-down-bus to be fixed with A.N.Other!) After we boarded the trip was excellent – onboard water and food for free, but most importantly the staff onboard deal with your border transfer which makes things a whole heap easier. Don’t get me wrong, we still had to disembark and proceed through Cambodia exit then Vietnam entry, but the onboard staff dealt with all the passports and paperwork for you, making it all trivially easy – unlike the border crossing from Thailand to Cambodia!

We finally arrived in Saigon around 14.45 or so. For the purists, officially we’re in Ho Chi Minh City, but district 1 – the downtown part in which we’re staying – is still called Saigon, and the locals still refer to the city as Saigon, so we will too! The first obvious difference from PP is that it’s much more westernised – more Bangkok than PP – but also that there are utterly stupid numbers of people on mopeds – numbers that make even PP seem sane! Fortunately there seems to be some vague order and control to the roads in Saigon which means that things run, well, vaguely smoothly, but it’s still a challenging place to cross the road! In fact, even the pavements didn’t seem to be safe – a number of folks on ‘bikes seem to use them as shortcuts!

Our hotel is well downtown – in fact, compared to the last few places we’ve stayed this is bang in the middle of everything, right in the heart if the backpacker area. The hotel is not bad – it’s actually completely booked which is normally a good sign, and we’ve got it for a decent price. The room is OK – it’s nothing compared to the previous hotels and is overlooking the street, but the soundproofing is good and it’s a decent size, it seems fine. We wander out to get our bearings and to see what’s round us and we realise it’s a million miles away from PP (metaphorically). It’s fairly westernized, but still has that distinctive southeast Asian city vibe which keeps things real – things are ALWAYS real when you’re dodging traffic in the streets! I quite like it. The juxtaposition with PP is monumental, but that’s how it should be – it’s nice when things change, it marks progress. We’ve now been away for almost 2 weeks, but in that time we’ve hit 4 locations in 3 different countries. It feels like we’ve been here forever, yet we’re still only 2 weeks in – 8 weeks to go!

We’re up early for our first full day in Saigon, as we’re on a trip to the Cu Chi tunnels further north – this is the largest surviving Viet Cong tunnel complex in Vietnam, some 250km long. Most trips from Saigon go by minibus and it takes a couple of hours or so but we’ve decided to push the boat out (no pun intended) and go by speedboat. Sadly, the boat is a bit more full that expected (“10 max, current average is 6” – we had 15) and mostly people on the boat are here in Saigon on business and looking for a day out, but the trip up the river is nice and affords better views than you’d get from a minibus.

The tunnels – or rather, the tunnel complex we see – are fascinating. The level of ingenuity and planning that went into building them – 3 different vertical levels, multiple redundancy in the routes used in the tunnels, everything from kitchens to workshops and hospital facilities - is amazing. The walls are rock hard, almost like concrete and very straight. Consideration had to be given to things like cooking (which generates smoke that needs to be dealt with) and how to deal with the possibility of discovery by the enemy or by their sniffer dogs – all of which were dealt with using simple but ingenious solutions. Additionally, the VC created a very large range of traps, most of which were incredibly simple but gruesome – it’s a wonder any Americans returned home at all! The actual tunnels themselves are very cramped and claustrophobic – we crawl through a short section and it’s amazing how little space there is – until we’re told that this section has been widened for western tourists, the real sections are quite a bit smaller. No wonder the Americans didn’t like to enter them and resorted to dropping grenades and other ordinance down there.

However, Cu Chi itself again highlights more of the differences between Vietnam and Cambodia – it’s a good place to see, and the tunnels are fascinating, but it’s all a bit sterile, as you’re led through almost on a conveyor belt from one section to the next. Don’t get me wrong, well worth doing, but compared to Cambodia, where you’re just dropped in a place with information provided and then they leave you to explore and use your imagination – well, that’s better than 4^th rate animatronics. We’re then treated to an excellent lunch before heading back and chilling out. The day finishes with dinner which involves quite a few beers and some excellent noodle soup (and some less than excellent tempura), all for less than $10 in total.

Day 13 – Something a Little Easier

carrhaughan — Sat, 13 Nov 2010 02:30:00 GMT

Right, this should be somewhat lighter than the last journal. No apologies for that, certain things have to be said.

Today we’re learning to cook Khmer food. Being honest, Khmer is not a culinary style that is world renowned – many people in western Europe are familiar with Chinese and even Thai food, and some may even have a passing knowledge of Vietnamese food, but Khmer food is relatively unknown. Which is somewhat ironic given that Khmer food has influenced all the major cuisines in the region – Thai, Laos, Vietnamese – from the 13^th century. However, we’ve only been in the country for 6 days and we already love the food – it’s tasty, great for veggies, very healthy and unlike most of the other cuisines of the region doesn’t require chillis for flavour (I realise I’ll be shot down for this but there are so many other subtle flavours that sometimes a little chilli-resistance can help!)

The day starts with a trip to the local market. And this is a proper southeast Asian market – we are literally the only westerners around the place and there’s some bemusement with our presence. The place is fantastic – this is truly a seasonal market, we can’t even plan what we’ll be cooking until we’ve seen what’s available as ingredients. It’s also truly fresh – just ask the flailing catfish and the caged free range chicken. The range of ingredients is impressive, but it’s all local and seasonal – we could learn from this in the UK... We pickup what we need and head back to the cookery school.

The school itself is part of a decent restaurant, Frizz, on 240 street. It’s right at the top of the building on a breezy rooftop terrace – a great place to cook. There’s been a slight issue given that we’re both veggies, but it’s readily resolved. The other folks in the group – a couple of Aussie women in their 60s and a guy from NYC around our age – seem pretty cool, and we all get along very well in the class.

It’s probably not wise to go into the detail (hey, we’ve got the recipe book if you’re interested, and we’ll undoubtedly force elements of it on you at some point in the future!) but we work our way through a decent range of recipes – fresh spring rolls, pomelo salad (awesome!), Khmer curry and Amok curry, pumpkin custard and sticky rice with mango – plus accompaniments such as sweet and sour chilli sauce (very easy and very awesome!) A pretty decent day really, we’ve definitely learned a lot.

From there we head back and pack for the bus tomorrow – 07.45 pickup apparently... Tomorrow brings another country and culture, the third in 2 weeks. It’s flying by, but also it feels like we’ve been away a very long time already.

I think we’ve both got mixed feelings about Phnom Penh – on one hand there’s a lot to love about the place, on the other it feels like a city that’s still got to find its feet... It’s certainly very different to every other southeast Asian city we’ve ever been to – it’s decidedly un-westernised, indeed it’s very third-world in many places, and the first and third-world parts seem to co-exist slightly uneasily side-by-side. There’s also a very evident disparity in wealth between the haves and have-nots in PP – without wanting to go into detail there are too many very large expensive (and I mean expensive by western standards – we couldn’t afford them) cars driving past very young playing in fairly squalid conditions. But, it’s a city that’s the centre of a country that’s trying to overcome its horrific recent past, and as such we can forgive it for not being perfect. We both agree that we like the place a lot, though neither of us are sure why. However, what we do agree on is that Cambodia is a genuinely wonderful country and we’ll both definitely be back here in the not too distant future.

Day 12 – Phnom Penh Proper (and then some)

carrhaughan — Thu, 11 Nov 2010 03:53:00 GMT

Our first full day in PP, and the first morning in almost a week where we haven’t had to set the alarm to get up for something specific. Ironic then that we both wake up fairly early (around 06.00) and struggle to get back to sleep, then are awoken at 08.00 by hammering nearby – turns out there’s a building site next door – so much for the oasis! Breakfast is excellent, then we’re off out to book a Khmer cookery course, which is only a couple of blocks away – we sign up for tomorrow. Our afternoon is already planned so by 10.30 we’ve got some time to kill so we head to the Royal Palace. Well, that’s the plan anyway, as it turns out it’s closed until 14.00 so we’d better think again! We walk down the riverside, and welcome the wind that comes with it – temperatures are well above 30 degrees already. We’re constantly accosted by tuk tuk drivers who seem amazed that we want to walk anywhere! We decide to head to central market, a busy place characterised by a beautiful art deco dome. We’ve miscalculated and it’s slightly further than expected and by the time we arrive we’re both dripping – temperatures are definitely rising, so we head into the shade. The market itself is a brick-built building with an amazing central dome and entrances along the cardinal directions, surrounded by a large ‘proper’ market (the central area is reserved for jewellery and electronics stalls). We’re just browsing for now and start to wander, but soon realise the place is a maze – there are probably double the number of stalls we originally envisaged due to the narrow passages between them. We wander to a food area and see, for the first time, a sight that Linda is definitely not happy with – deep fried spiders! These are big things too – imagine your quintessential tarantula and that’s basically what you’re looking at – fried and piled high! We move on... Our hotel room has got a beautiful silk runner on the bed and Linda has decided she wants something similar for our table, so we start hunting. There’s no shortage of takers, though unfortunately the language barrier and lack of available merchandise is something of a hindrance. We do find one place though that has cushion covers in a colour that Linda likes and the haggling starts from there! We also find some runners that are almost right, so we sort out a price that’s mutually agreeable for those too, and end up with what we reckon is a good deal. Still, buying homewares in Cambodia didn’t seem high on my list at the start of the trip! Job done though, we head for some lunch before the afternoon’s ‘entertainment’.

Here’s where things get altogether more serious. This afternoon we head out to the killing fields outside Phnom Penh (Choeung Ek) and we also visit Tuol Sleng, or S21 – security office 21 – the Phnom Penh genocide museum of the Khmer Rouge. This will not be a history lesson, most of you will be aware of this and if you are not then I recommend you jump elsewhere on the web and find out ASAP – the atrocities of the Khmer Rouge are well documented and are as bad (if not worse) than many or all of the other genocides that have been committed around the globe over the last 70 years or so. As we head out to Choeung Ek, we’re treated to a video that suggests but doesn’t deliver in terms of what happened. The killing fields themselves definitely do and then some. We arrive in time to see a 15 minute video outlining the history of the site. The video itself is very badly made, it must date from the late 90s, but the content is extremely disturbing and highlights the area of Choeung Ek and what it was like back then. We move on to see the place. It’s very emotional, the stuppa (or shrine to the dead) has many hundreds of human skulls and other bones excavated from the site, plus piles of clothes that were removed from the mass graves. We walk round the fields. There are indentations in the soil. These are the mass graves. Tens of thousands of people were murdered here, and – unlike nazi Germany – each one was done by hand, one person literally killing another, usually with a basic tool – club, axe, whatever. It’s heartbreaking. There’s a tree where many of the deaths took place, and where the KR would literally take children and swing them round by the legs hitting their heads against the tree until they were dead (quote from the KR: “why leave the children alive, they might come back to you later for revenge.”) We try to reconcile it but we can’t – it’s impossible, there’s such a gulf between what we consider acceptable and what happened – it almost hurts just thinking about it. A number of the mass graves remain in situ – why disturb them. However, a function of this is that when it rains heavily (and it does, they have a whole season for it in Cambodia) more things start to surface – bones, clothes, that sort of thing. Disturbingly, as we move through the fields, Linda sees something she thinks is a bone. It is, it’s a skull, still filled with soil, teeth visible (I’m shaking my head in disbelief as I write this). We head back. This is just part one, the genocide museum will not be any better or easier.

Tuol Sleng is a former school in Phnom Penh that was converted to the primary PP interrogation centre, or security office 21 – S21 as it was known. There are four three-storey buildings onsite that housed prisoners and were used for torture from 1975-1979 during the reign on the Khmer Rouge. To say it’s stark and grim is something of an understatement – most of the rooms in the buildings remain as they were when they were discovered by the Vietnamese when they took PP in 1979. Building A was used for interrogation (read: torture) and the evidence is still there, it hasn’t been moved since. You see a steel-framed bed, and above it on the wall is a photograph of a corpse still attached to it (there were 14 bodies found in S21, the last of the KR’s victims). Most of the photos and pictures here do not pull any punches – what’s the point in beating round the bush when the subject matter is this serious? Building B housed prisoners, and the rooms were hastily converted – via bricks and wood – to house 6’x4’ cells. The contents, minimal though they are, still remain – and this includes blood pools. It being Cambodia, this is not a museum – you can go anywhere and see anything, it’s a place to see exactly what happened. It’s refreshing but nauseous. A constant theme throughout buildings B-D (for they all had the same basic function) is photographs of all the internees at S21, and there are a very large number of them – some 20,000 people passed through the gates of which only 7 survived (though most of the rest were taken to Choeung Ek to be killed). Viewing the pictures is uncomfortable viewing – it’s all in the eyes – fear, defiance, ignorance and who knows what else. So many of them are so young – well, most are very young, but to see pictures of small children with ‘prisoner’ numbers round their necks is very very disturbing and heartbreaking. There are no smiles. We see the torture instruments and techniques used. All barbaric, though we learn where the CIA might have discovered waterboarding. We finish with a photo expo with former members of the Khmer Rouge trying to justify what they did (many are still alive). Again, this is hard to reconcile.

It’s been a tough afternoon. I’m thinking back to famous psychology experiments I’ve read about (e.g. the Stanford Prison Experiment) that have determined that given power, people will basically do anything and given appropriate guidance from an authority figure the same is also true. What is it about us that causes ordinarily normal and sane human beings to do utterly and unquestionably unspeakable things, acts that they know are absolutely wrong (e.g. killing children) and yet are able to go through with such acts and – I assume – justify it to themselves. Maybe it’s the herd mentality, I don’t know, but it’s really scary and history has shown us that we’re not learning from our mistakes – even in the last 40 years we’ve had Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia and Sudan – what’s next, and when will we learn? I’m not sure we should even use the word civilization any more...

Day 11 – Bye Bye Siem Reap, Hello Phnom Penh

carrhaughan — Wed, 10 Nov 2010 01:39:00 GMT

Another fairly early start, up at 06.30 ready to get the 08.30 bus down to Phnom Penh. Bit knackered, and slightly annoyed when the transport to the bus station turns up late but hey ho – it could be worse, we could be at work! Traffic seems unusually busy – it turns out it’s Cambodian independence day, celebrating the fact the country became independent from France in 1953. The bus station is dusty but surprisingly well organised and we’re soon onto the bus and off on the road. The trip to PP is a good 5-6 hours so we settle down for a long trip. It’s actually pretty comfortable, and water and cold towels are included which is nice. We stop off partway in a town called Komplong Thom, which looks like a bit of a dump on entry but seems OK – not sure I’d stay there for any time though. We’ve got 30 minutes here so we have a bit of a wander but there’s not much to see. We buy some fresh pineapple which is amazingly sweet out here, then gawp at the trays of fried insects (grasshoppers, beetles and something else unidentifiable) for sale. People are buying them, one woman seems particularly taken and is coming back for more bags and chowing down while paying for them. Linda doesn’t seem happy and is not facing the stall. I find it amusing, particularly given we love stuff like prawns in the west and these are nothing more than sea insects. Still, even if I wasn’t veggie I wouldn’t – there’s something about a tray of shiny black fried beetles that is distinctly unappealing!

Back on the bus and 3 hours later we’re in PP. If the tuk tuk drivers in Siem Reap were bad then this lot are mental – as soon as we acknowledge we want a tuk tuk we’ve got four drivers surrounding us touting for business, we pick one and head off knowing the price is definitely right. The hotel we’re staying at – the Blue Lime – is down a small alley which looks slightly dodgy, but the place itself is a real oasis – it’s classy, calm, and is far enough away from the road to drown out most of the noise. It’s got a beautiful pool area (popular with expats apparently!) but that’s not an issue for us as we’ve pushed the boat out at this place and booked a room with its own plunge pool J PP seems to have a rather unusual penchant for hotels with concrete furniture (seriously!) and this place is no exception, but it seems to work rather well. After unpacking and having a swim we head out into PP proper.

Most southeast Asian cities have interesting (read: chaotic) traffic as anyone who’s been to downtown Bangkok or KL will testify. PP, however, raises this to a new level. The traffic is Utter Fucking Madness (excuse the language but swear words are truly justified). We’ve genuinely never seen anything like it, crossing the road is like playing a game of chicken on the M25. We swear to never try and walk around after a few beers! We wander round for a bit and it gets no better – the opposite in fact, we’ve been wandering down backstreets, the riverfront is an order of magnitude worse again! We sort out a visit to the killing fields and a bus to Saigon in 3 days (it’s peak season so we have to!) then grab some food, and we’re treated to an independence day firework display over the river Tonle Sap which is actually pretty impressive and, amusingly, it causes some of the traffic to stop almost literally in place, adding a new variable to the traffic equation! Then we run the gauntlet of traffic (and it’s definitely getting worse), and the casual sweeping up of a very large dead rat on the street as we head back to the hotel – it’s been a long and interesting day!

Day 10 – Sunrise at Angkor Wat

carrhaughan — Wed, 10 Nov 2010 00:42:00 GMT

An early start, up at 04.00 ready to see the sunrise at Angkor Wat. Sip has turned up in a jacket – apparently it’s ‘cold’ this time in the morning, despite being well over 20 degrees C! We head over to the temple and even beat most of the security we’re so early! We cross over the moat at around 04.45, we need torches to see anything at all. We cross into the main courtyard, ready to pick a spot Sip has got selected already as the best – and find that we’re pretty much the first ones there! We sit down and power down the torches and it all goes pitch black – our eyes get used to it fairly quickly and we can see the silhouette of the temple against the night sky – it’s very magical and peaceful, though this will change soon enough... Within 15 minutes or so others start to arrive, starting with smaller groups. 15 minutes after that the big groups start to arrive and shatter the atmosphere completely, shouting, waving torches around and generally behaving like ignorant cocks. We feel they might be doing this as a tick-in-the-box rather than for the experience it should be and it certainly diminishes things for us. Without wanting to introduce xenophobia to this blog, big shout downs go out to Malays, Japanese, Chinese, Koreans and Russians – please stay away next time. It’s actually a long while before we start to see the sun come up – maybe 06.15 or so, and we’re in the perfect spot to see the first orange glow. Unfortunately, cloud cover is a bit heavy so the colours are mute and it’s the wrong time of month for the sun to come up directly behind the central towers of the temple, but it’s still special. We move past the thronged masses and move round to the side, towards the ponds to get a reflection of the temple while the light is good and the water still. It’s hellishly busy though to my mind, I guess we’re several decades too late to experience this perfectly.

It’s still early but we head off fairly quickly towards another smaller temple that’s a distance from Siem Reap – Banteay Srei (“Citadel of Women”). It’s a 32km journey, but well worth it – the temple is very small and until the late 1990s still had minefields surrounding (and through!) it, but it dates back to the 10^th century and is built completely from pink sandstone and has the most beautiful, meticulous and amazingly detailed carvings – easily the best of any of the temples and in staggering condition given that it’s more than a millennia old. We’ve arrived early so there are only a handful of people who’ve beat us to the place and this is a good thing – it’s very photogenic and it would be very hard to appreciate its beauty when filled by the masses – Sip’s made a good call with this one. We head off just as the first of the big coaches start to arrive and see many many more pass us as we head back towards Siem Reap – we timed that well! We journey back via another temple, Pre Rup, but after the morning we’ve had this is fairly unremarkable and we don’t even venture inside.

We’ve decided that, give this is our last day in Siem Reap we’ll finish early and we’re actually back in time for breakfast, then a snooze before heading into town to sort bus tickets to Phnom Penh and the usual scouting around. We find a great Khmer restaurant for lunch (and end up having dinner there too!) and are so utterly impressed by the Khmer food we’ve had so far that we dig out details for a Khmer cookery school in PP – if we get any idea how to cook the noodle soup it’ll be money well spent!

Siem Reap is a great town, the temples are amazing, the food is great and Cambodia is shaping up to be a place we wished we’d visited much earlier – we’re starting to regret not leaving our travelling schedule a bit more flexible than we did, it might have been nice to head down to the coast and spend a few days there – maybe next time!

Day 9 – The Big Ones: Angkor Wat and Angkor Thom

carrhaughan — Tue, 9 Nov 2010 00:39:00 GMT

Today we cover the classics at Siem Reap. Even driving up the road to Angkor Wat raises the hairs on the back of your neck: it’s iconic and it doesn’t disappoint. Unfortunately, it’s also a mecca for everyone else in Siem Reap (1m visitors per year) so there’s a fair few tourists around, including some sizable coach parties. We learn today that the Koreans more or less do their own thing (own guided tours, Korean reps, their own hotels and overpriced shops) and the Vietnamese aren’t particularly well-liked either (the temples are leased to a private Vietnamese company for just US$7m per year, and we end up pulling off the road several times to let through VIP Vietnamese coaches). It’s kind of a weird southeast Asian hierarchy made more bizarre for us by the fact the Cambodians seemed low-down in the pecking order yet were BY FAR the most likable and friendly.

Angkor Wat is colossal compared to most of the other temples – the moat alone is 200m wide and 5km round. We cross the ‘rainbow’ to get to the outer temple – the 3 gates are again iconic, and look magnificent. We head through to the main area and it’s only as we get through do we realise the true scale of one of the most photographed buildings in the world – it’s very big indeed! The two libraries here are huge and in exceptional condition. A causeway leads to the temple itself – sadly (for us) restoration work is taking place so there is scaffolding and netting over large areas of the front of the temple – this threatens to spoil photos but Sip is very clued-up and, like all the other temples, leads us to places that maximise the view of the temples while minimising man-made intrusions! The carvings inside the temple are genuinely gobsmacking – huge in scale and detailed in their vision. You need a guide to, well, guide you through the background to the stories and legends – otherwise all you’re doing is photographing carvings with no context. We head to the central tower, and it’s busy – it feels like everyone is here! The numbers climbing to the top are strictly controlled which is good, and there’s a (still steep) wooden staircase to the top which replaces the hellishly steep stone staircases that are now out-of-bounds due to tourist accidents! We climb to the top (Linda LOVED this bit, but not quite as much as coming down!) and the views over Angkor Wat are exceptional – it’s well worth it. We drop back down then walk round the outside. It’s truly an amazing building, an iconic monument that actually delivers on its promise. We head back to the front, then head off for lunch. This needs to be mentioned as we went to an amazing Khmer restaurant and had fantastic noodle soup. We’ve never really heard much about Khmer food before, but it’s truly fantastic, better than Thai or Vietnamese food, the best thing we’ve had in a long while.

Straight after lunch we head towards Tongle Sap, a huge lake outside Siem Reap which is fed by the Tongle Sap river and is part of the Mekong Delta – this waterway stretches all the way up to Laos and down through Vietnam to the sea. We’re heading to the lake to hire a boat to take us out to a floating village, Chong Khneas. Tongle Sap – the lake – is home to around 80,000 people who live permanently on the water. The vast majority of these people are Vietnamese – they arrived here during the Vietnam war and have never returned to their home country. Oddly, the Cambodian national census doesn’t count any Vietnamese or Thai people, so at 96% Khmer is the most ethnically non-diverse country in southeast Asia – the fact that it contains 12m Khmer, 5m Vietnamese and more than 1m Thais seems to have escaped those who perform the census. The journey to the lake is striking – the countryside in this part of Cambodia is utterly amazing, but we’re also heading further from the city and hence towards the poorer parts of the country. This is obvious from the quality of housing – mostly stilted here, it varies from quality concrete-and-wood buildings to little more than shacks with corrugated roofs. The kids look happy playing in the streets but you know malnutrition is probably not far away (I sit here writing this drinking a beer and feeling somewhat guilty...)

We hire a boat and head out onto the water. The boats are basic but functional – there are much larger boats for the big groups of tourists, but this feels a bit more real, and by hiring a local boat we’re contributing to the local community. The water is busy – given the floating villages all around there are many people who see this as their lifeblood and rightly so. We head out towards the lake proper. We pass through the first village and it’s enlightening – just like the ride to the lake, there are a variety of floating houses, some large and beautiful, some little more than floating shacks. Given the vegetation there are obvious boatways, some congested some not – we head down one of the former and incur the wrath of a boat owner when we scrape alongside here boat trying to avoid a few rowers.

It is certainly an educational trip and an eye-opener to how other people live – this is definitely not the decadent west. It is also quite amazing to pass a number of boats that have TVs, perhaps also explained by the few boats that have generators on board that are charging the car batteries to power the TVs! We are surrounded by a number of the boats that quickly appear with a child on board with a python around their neck ‘one photo one dollar’ – we decline!

We head out in to the open water of the lake so Sip can explain some of the history. We notice a young child in a boat getting into what can only be described as a large aluminium washing bowl and start to paddle his way towards us, we assume this will be another photo op, but he is somewhat crestfallen when our boatman starts the engine short of him getting to us - you can almost sense his deflation!

We carry on round to the next floating village – seeing similar housing and working conditions, many of the families make their living from fishing the lake and selling the fish to the city. We park up at the ‘crocodile farm’, the animals are caught and again sold for food – not something we would readily choose to visit, but all part of the experience. Vin climbs to a vantage point to take some pictures and it becomes apparent that we are being surrounded by the long boats. Sip advises that this is common if large Vietnamese tourist boats moor here, the locals all come along as they can communicate better. We head back to the port, it’s been a very moving experience, a kind of beautiful chaos.

Mid-afternoon brings Angkor Thom, the largest of the cities – this place housed over a million people back when London could barely scrape 50,000 together, though you’d never know it as there are no remnants of where the commoners lived – only the gods could live in stone buildings, everyone else made do with wood, which tends to have a slightly shorter lifespan... This place is huge, really, you enter one of the gates (which are scaled for elephants not big tourist coaches, so the tourists have to decant to tuk tuks – ha ha!) and you’ve still got quite a distance to reach anywhere. The first temple we head to is Bayon. This one is a real crowd-pleaser, one of the best temples at Angkor and our guide’s favourite and we can see why. The site was only cleared a century ago, but the place looks utterly ancient. It’s the only temple that’s dedicated to both Hinduism and Buddhism (half and half), and it has three tiers and 49 towers, all of which have 4 faces. It looks amazing, particularly in the late afternoon light. The carvings inside are very good, but climbing to the top reveals a very impressive place. It’s undergoing restoration which limits the photo opportunities, but Sip finds some decent spots, even one where Linda can go nose-to-nose with Buddha! A great place, truly impressive.

Next we move to the Terrace of Elephants, a low-level structure some 300m long that has several hundred elephant carvings on it. We also see opposite the ‘jail cells’ that were used for the city’s more wealthy residents! We then move onto the terrace of the leper king, a restored section of the temple dating back to the 13^th century. From there, we drive out to the gate, and view the sun setting over the moat while tuk tuks drive backwards and forwards through the impressive gate itself. We also see cows swimming across the moat which is more amusing than it should be – though not as amusing as the 3 live pigs we see strapped upside down on top of a moped on their way to market (Linda thought they were dead and their legs were flailing in the wind – bless!!)

Evening brings beers, curry and tuk tuks, but mostly midges and flies - damn the cloud and humidity! An early night beckons due to a 04.00 start to see the sunrise over Angkor Wat...

Day 8 – An Introduction to Siem Reap and its Temples

carrhaughan — Mon, 8 Nov 2010 23:20:00 GMT

Be prepared, this is going to be a LONG one...

Not such an early start today, we’re collected from the hotel by our guide and driver at 09.00. Our guide is called Sip (pronounced sepp) and a car with AC is very welcome – even this early the humidity is rising and it’s starting to get very warm. Thailand was deceptive with the northerly winds cooling things down – this is more like we expected the weather to be! We’ve got the guide and car for 3 days, so we discuss our itinerary with Sip as we head off on our Angkor temple marathon.

Day 1: Pre-Angkorean Temples (Roulos)

Temple #1 – Preah Ko. This place dates back to the ninth century (the Angkor temples date from the early twelfth century). The first thing we notice is the Cambodian kids as soon as we emerge from the car, trying to hawk stuff to us. It’s hard to resist but we must – as soon as you get dollars out you’re marked as a target – we’ll soon get used to the ubiquitous cry of “one dollar, one dollar” wherever we go! As an introduction to the temples in the region this place is pretty impressive. Classically laid out with 3 ‘male’ towers in front and 3 ‘female’ towers behind and some impressive carving. Like most of the temples it’s sandstone-faced with igneous rocks underneath for strength. It’s also not too busy, unlike some of the more famous temples we’ll encounter later...

Temple #2 – Bakong. Another 9th century temple, this one is much more impressive – it’s much bigger with five levels. Most of the temples of this age are Hindu, the later ones are Buddhist, with one very impressive temple (Bayon) dedicated to both religions. It’s bizarre to realise that two of the most peaceful religions in the world were at war with each other back in the 11th century in southeast Asia! There are also a number of features of Bakong that we later realise are a ‘standard’ feature of most temples in the area – three entrances (one for the king, one for the priests and one for the commoners), a moat with a single crossing, then the walled temple itself with numerous towers (and a minimum of two libraries!) The moat represents the path to Heaven, the crossing itself is akin to the rainbow so passing over the moat is like crossing over a rainbow to Heaven. We are both blown away by the temple, it has 10 small temples surrounding a central tower but the architecture is beautiful. Most people talk about Angkor Wat when they consider the temples of Cambodia, we can’t wait to see how impressive that place will be.

Temple #3 – Lolei. This is a tiny temple, which still has an active Buddhist monastery beside it. At Lolei we got introduced to the ‘sexual’ aspects of the Hindu temples – Linga (male) and Yoni (female) – these concepts crop up at every other temple from now on! Lolei is very small, and feels very old. Nice as it is, the Buddhist temple next door is more impressive – it’s not quite the Cistine Chapel but it’s still very beautiful inside.

Temple #4 – Ta Phrom. This place truly is impressive. We’re now into the Angkor era of temples. The temples around Siem Reap were discovered in the mid-nineteenth century, and a huge effort took place to recover the temples from more than 800 years of jungle intrusion. Most of the temples were cleared and restoration of the temples took place – Ta Phrom was different, a brave decision was made to leave this to the mercy of the jungle and this gives the temple an ancient, almost primeval feel. Growing throughout the entire complex (which once housed 10,000 people and Buddhist monastery) are huge silk cotton trees. In places these are destroying the temple, while in others they are serving to keep it held in place. It’s genuinely awesome. Linda suggested that the trees looked like the Ents from the Lord of the Rings film trilogy, climbing over the rooftops – it’s hard to disagree. You can see why they filmed part of the Tomb Raider film here (though the less said about that the better!)

Temple #5 – Ta Keo. This one’s a quick one – it’s fairly impressive in terms of height, but actually remained unfinished as it was struck by lightning when nearing completion so was abandoned. This one has REALLY steep steps up – Linda and the guide stayed behind, I climbed up like a mountain goat  The steps were each around 15-18 inches high, about 4 inches wide, and nicely rounded off due to centuries of weathering (and decades of tourism!) Climbing up was OK, coming down was definitely interesting – a few people were abandoning all semblance of dignity and crawling down on their arses, I at least remained on my feet but decided that holding onto the side (where available) was sensible. Good view from the top though!

Temple #6 – Preah Khan. Again, a very impressive Angkor temple. This is a sizable place, which has been well-restored in a number of places. This was formerly a religious university with in excess of 1000 teachers. The libraries were impressive, double-tiered structures. This place also introduced us to the concept of the Naga (dragon) – used in many carvings and there are a number of large Naga sculptures used as balustrades, predominantly at the entrances to temples or cities as we’ll learn later. There are still a number of silk cotton trees growing over this temple, but it feels more orderly than Ta Phrom.

The day finishes with a trip into Siem Reap for a few beers and dinner. We head to the famous ‘Pub Street’ which is flowing with tourists. Characterless, but OK for a cheap beer or two, and we’re becoming better at haggling with the tuk tuk drivers!

Day 7 - Holiday in Cambodia

carrhaughan — Sat, 6 Nov 2010 02:46:00 GMT

Early start today, up before 06.00 for final packing before a little breakfast and pick-up by the visa run minibus. By way of background, visas are very important in Thailand, and for most visitors this is gained on arrival. However, given the pretty cheap cost of living there are a lot of westerners (farang) who almost live out here permanently on tourist visas, and these people need to renew their visas from time to time which involves a trip over the border: from Pattaya, the nearest border is with Cambodia which is just a few hours away, hence the reason an entire industry has sprung up to support this. From our point of view, this is great - there are loads of buses to the border from Bangkok but none from Pattaya, so we've been able to sort a couple of one-way seats on a visa run minibus to get us to the border over to Cambodia.

It's an early start, but all good as the minibus is pretty good. There's also very few of us on there - just the pair of us and a couple of eastern European girls (who looked ill-prepared for the border crossing with their big wheely-suitcases and teeny-tiny shorts. Still, each to their own. The trip itself is actually surprisingly quick - three hours maybe, including a couple of stops. The big advantage with the minibus is it drops you right at the border, whereas the buses from Bangkok go into Aranyaprathet and from there it's a 6km tuk tuk ride to the border. Well, this is what we thought anyway...

Background: the border crossing from Thailand to Cambodia at Poipet is legendary - it involves negotiating areas which have zero in the way of signage or help (western Europe this is not) and where everyone (official or otherwise) is trying to scam you. Plus the ubiquitous beggars, hawkers and 'afflicted' - this creates an overall experience that can generously be described as interesting...

SCAM#1: The minibus pulls up outside a cafe in Rongkluea Market (the border area on the Thai side). We're still 6km from the border. The cafe has visa signs on it, but, well, it's evidently just a cafe. The scam is that the proprietors get you to complete the visa forms, they then take your passports over the border and get your visas for you, charging you through the nose for the privilege. But they hide this, pretending to be the official visa place. Because, of course, the official visa place looks just like a cafe... We spot the scam instantly, the two girls don't and start scribbling away at their visa forms. Meanwhile, we're trying to get the driver to take us to the border while the owner of the cafe tells us of the wait we've got ahead (thanks ladies!) Fortunately, we eventually win and the driver take the girl's luggage from the van and drives us to the border.

We've been to some real shitholes in our time, and Rongkluea Market is right up there. We're accosted as soon as we leave the van, but quickly head to where we assume the border is - fortunately we're right, and we clear Thai immigration easily. From there we enter Poipet proper: ostensibly it's part of Cambodia but really it's a no-mans-land of casinos where the usual rules don't apply. While not quite as bad as Rongkluea Market, it's not far off, and people actually STAY here!! We pass quarantine and head through the Khmer gate. After some slight tribulations we eventually find the visa place...

SCAM#2: Visa on entry for Cambodia is $20 (Cambodia uses the Riel as currency, but don't bother, US$ is king over here). The immigration officials want an extra 100 baht each to expedite our visas (this is AFTER Linda's passport is back with us...) I start asking what the 100 baht is for. Chai comes the response. I wonder if this is like east Africa (where chai is a small fine to oil the wheels of bureaucracy - just enough for tea, hence the name). I ask further and it becomes a little intimidating when we realise we're the only ones in the visa hall and there are several immigration officials wanting cash. We eventually give in and give them the 200 baht. I'm gutted, it's only four quid but it's the principle...

The rest of the journey through passport control and over the border is actually fairly painless - we're really not given too much hassle, and we're on the transfer bus to the bus station pretty quickly. We're constantly expecting scams and they're not forthcoming - maybe we've been a bit cynical? Even the bus station is quite nice, and after a 45 min wait we're on a shared minibus down to Siem Reap for $10 each. Admittedly, there are still a few attempts to get us to part with our money before we get to our final destination, but it's all good-natured which is fine with us!

We finally arrive at our hotel, Angkor Spirit Palace, just outside Siem Reap and a bargainous $35 per night. The room is huge (3 beds!), the beer ("Angkor: my country my beer") and food (Cambodian veg curry) is excellent, and we've got a guide sorted for the morning - time to start seeing some of the real southeast Asia!

Days 4-6 - Bye Bye Pattaya (For now...)

carrhaughan — Sat, 6 Nov 2010 01:20:00 GMT

This will be a short one, because days 4-6 mostly seem to involve sleeping ;-) We're definitely still playing catch-up, but it's nice that we've got this downtime at the start to make sure we're ready for the rest of the trip. It's fair to say though that we're not getting value for money from the free breakfast provided by the hotel!

The winds have been pretty bad from the north, really chopping up the water, so we've decided not to dive again in Pattaya until we return just before Christmas. Wayne took us on a trip out of Pattaya, to Nongnooch Gardens, which are about 20 miles south of Pattaya. Fortunately we discovered a friendly songthaew driver who took the other passengers on a minor detour (a couple of miles!) from the main road to deliver us directly to the door of the place, and all for less than 40 baht each (though Wayne did overhear him on the phone to the Gardens, I'm guessing the 20% incentive for delivering passengers might have helped!) Beautiful place though with some genuinely spectacular (and also some genuinely unusual) garden areas - very tranquil, and a massive juxtaposition with Pattaya. Marred somewhat though, by the entirely unnecessary elephant show (avoided) and chained up tiger cubs ready for photo ops ("just 50 baht" - seriously...) Given the above, the unpleasantness that is ignorant Russian tourists is almost forgivable, though I'm not sure the "butterfly house" with 6 butterflies was ;-)

Had a great couple of nights out with Wayne and Nok (including a ridiculously good Mexican in Jomtien), and they (mostly Nok) sorted out our bus to Poipet at the Cambodian border, which Linda was slightly concerned about given we hadn't got anything sorted! Turns out the flooding has receded and there are no problems with the roads, but there are no easily accesible public buses so we've bought a couple of seats on a "visa run" minibus to the border (to be continued...)

Days 1-3

carrhaughan — Tue, 2 Nov 2010 02:50:00 GMT

Finally arrived in Thailand after many months of preparation. Eva air contrived to make us miss our bus down to see Wayne, but fortunately that too was late running so we made it after a slightly mad dash through the (nice new) BKK airport!

Our first hotel of the trip is pretty good, though there's a slight cock-up re: our room, but it's resolved fairly painlessly. Hotel is set back from the main area which is good, though Wayne, a 6-year resident of Pattaya, has trouble finding it :-) See Wayne for the first time in 5 years, he hasn't changed at all! Head down to Beach Road for beers and a bite with Wayne and his girlfriend Nok.

Pattaya can best be described as 'colourful' - it's the sort of place that has given Thailand something of it's party reputation, and some parts of it - particularly the infamous Walking Street - are a sight to behold. Fortunately we head north rather than south and find somewhere a bit less mad on a Saturday night. 250 baht (~£5) for a 3 litre tower of Chang seems reasonable to me! Nok, being Thai, is very handy to have around when there are language problems, particularly when trying to sort some veggies food - LInda toys with the idea of packing her in our bag for the rest of the trip - not infeasible given how tiny she is ;-)

Tiredness finally kicks in, we head back and sleep for an eternity. Well, til the next afternoon anyway! Wander round Pattaya for a bit - away from the crazy areas, it's like most other south east Asian cities - utterly mental from an outsider's perspective, but actually completely organic and definitely interesting. I think we'll see more places like this over the next few weeks. Meet with Wayne and sort diving for the morning, then head back to his place for a few beers and some catching up. Wayne's place is tiny but very south east Asian - practical, and great 4th floor views over the local markets and bars. I'd just stand at the kitchen window and watch the world go by if I lived there.

We've not dived for a couple of years, so there was some nervousness on Linda's part, but that was soon resolved. This time of year there are strong northerly winds, so we look to head to a dive site called Hat Nuan which is sheltered from the winds, but conditions look favourable on the journey and we head further south instead. Bad idea - once out of the shelter of the island the winds properly hit the boat and we start properly listing, rolling madly on the waves. Linda is sat on a (non lashed) deckchair which is sliding across the boat with each wave - she doesn't look happy and mentions something about the Titanic... The captain decides to turn around, and everyone breathes a sigh of relief as we head back to Hat Nuan.

We finally kit up and hit the water - we're both testing out new lightweight kit (BCD and regs) for the first time, and it's great - no drop in performance at all. The first dive goes pretty well considering it's been a couple of years, though the swell and current is kicking up the silt so visibility is pretty poor (< 5m). Still, even the worst day diving is better than the best day in the office ;-) We move further north to the second dive site (Koh Kroc) and this is slightly better - vis is stil poor but the currents are less noticable and there's more wildlife, notably loads of anenome (clown) fish, dwelling in some beautiful blue anenome, a good-sized scorpion fish, some small eels, and Linda even saw a boxfish. Not a bad dive, ending slightly early when Wayne got too cold as he decided he was too cool for his wetsuit ;-) (The water temp was 28 degrees C - Wayne has obviously lost his northern roots via 6 years in Thailand!)

Then mostly sleep, which is not such a problem when you know you've got 10 more weeks off! For those who are unaware, diving is surprisingly knackering (it's a very calorific activity despite seeming sedate) so sleep tends to follow dives! Right now we're looking at the overland border crossing from Thailand to Cambodia which we'll be making in 4 days - the "worst Thailand flooding in decades (C)BBC" looks like it might have affected the roads around the border and over in Cambodia too, so we'll need to do more research over the next couple of days. Worse case we have to travel to BKK and fly to Siem Reap. I'm loathe to do this for 2 reasons: it's stupidly expensive for the very short hop; but also, because the overland crossing at Poipet is legendary and I'd hate to miss out :-)

We'll see what tomorrow brings...