Chris' Travels

More Vietnam!

chrismoon — Sun, 8 Feb 2009 22:33:00 GMT

Right, so i've not been updating for a while, mainly as Vietnam and Laos have been incredibly hectic with not a moment to spare to use the internet.... or something like that!

So we went on a three day tour of the Mekong Delta leaving Phnom Penh finishing up in Siagon, it was a bit different from the other parts of our trip as the entire thing down to accomodation was organised for us (a bit like our trip in Rajasthan). It was good as we didn't really have to make any arrangements, didn't get harrassed by a hundred tuk-tuk drives wanting to show us there guest house, got to say in decent hotels, see several different towns, traditional activities such as weaving and rice paper manufacture and the whole thing cost $39 (we got a massive $1 discount using my incredible negotiation skills).

On the last leg of our journey into Siagon we were in the same restaurant as Na & Nita, who we'd bumped into a couple of times and Laura had been travelling in Cambodia with, and we traveled up through Vietnam & Laos with them!

Right we're eating into valuable drinking time right now, so i'm off, but i'll try and write more on Siagon, Na Trang, Hoi An, Hue and Laos in another post. Plus looking back on this it's actuallly a really boring post, anyway better hopes for next time!

Vietnam!

chrismoon — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 21:26:00 GMT

So we've spent the last few days in Phnom Pehn (the capital of Cambodia) staying in the backpacker filled area of Lakeside. Whilst there we celebrated our 2 month traveling anniversary by doing the unusual activity of getting wonderfully drunk, shocking huh?

We also visited the Killing Fields and prison camp S-21, both of which were harrowing experiences, reinforced by the fact that these atrocities happened only 30 years ago which is incredible when you look at Cambodia now. For a country that suffered so much, today it is vibrant and fun, filled with wonderful people. It's one of my favorite places so far!

We received our visas for Vietnam yesterday, and just to prove how small a place South East Asia is, whilst researching our options for traveling to Vietnam on-line I spotted our friend Alice walking past, who we'd last seen on New Years Day in Thailand! So we ended up having a beer with Alice and Laura, and (as if more proof that it's a small world were needed) they were sitting with two of the people we got the bus from Koh Phangan with (the same people we'd bumped into in Siem Reap!) anyway Laura turned out to be heading down to Vietnam as well, so in the end the three of us ended up booking the same boat trip down to HCMC and we've now spent a leisurely day cruising down the river and chilling out, we've arrived in our first overnight stop in Chau Doc and have just checked into our hotel.

Right, I’m dying for a drink and I’ve got a stinking cold coming on :( so I’m going to head out of here! The internet connections here in Vietnam seem to be better than Cambodia, so I’m hoping to be able to reply to people who I’ve not been able to for the past couple of weeks soon, sorry for the delay!

See ya, Chris

Heading for Phnom Pehn (or not in this case!)

chrismoon — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 02:08:00 GMT

Yesterday we booked our bus tickets down to Phnom Penh, leaving the Dead Fish at 7:30am, for a 4-5 hour trip down to the capital of Cambodia. Having booked our tickets (and setting my alarm) I headed downstairs for a drink. For some reason I was craving a Gin & Tonic, which is frankly bizarre as I don't like Gin or Tonic, and certainly not mixed together! Anyway a few G & T's later Alan turned up and we headed into town for something to eat, and really getting into the Cambodian culture, we had Mexican.... washed down with a few beers at Viva, and then headed over to Papier de Tigres for a few more beers ($0.50 per beer), and finally heading over to Angkor What? and bumping into our German friends and meeting some Irish nurses. At this point sticking to beer would probably have been advisable, however we decided to switch to buckets, so I was back on the G & T's, and then eventually back onto the beers. Now we reckon we headed back to the Dead Fish at about 4am. Still having my wits about me somewhat, I plugged my phone in and dropped asleep dead to the world.

Now the next thing I'm aware of is slowly waking up with the sun shining through the window, and the dawning realisation I had no idea where I was, we don't have a window in our room! After a minute or so I came to the conclusion that I was in our hotel, just not our room and wearing nothing but my boxer shorts! I quickly remade the bed (don't want to pay for another room) and headed out into the corridor to our room. Luckily Alan woke up when I knocked and let me in at which point I discovered it was 11am and we'd missed our Bus ($22 wasted!) so I promptly went to bed (my own this time) and feel back asleep.

Finally waking up I came to the conclusion that I'd gone for a piss, taken a wrong turn afterwards and locked myself out of the room! Alan quickly dispelled that by informing me that when the alarm went off for us to go to the bus I was gone and the bedroom door was wide open!

God only know what kind of drunken logic was going on when I decided to leave our room and go sleep in the one across from it, perhaps Alan was snoring! So anyway, the moral of this story is don't drink a shed load of gin the night before you're supposed to catch an early bus! So we've got another bus booked for tomorrow morning, and I'm now going to head over to Angkor What? for a drink, although not as many as last night!
It also occured to me last night, that plenty of people would have walked past the room to see a semi-naked Chris sprawled out drunkenly on top of the bed in an empty room, what a lovely sight for them!

Hopefully my next blog post will be from Phnom Pehn.....

Cambodia - Siem Reap

chrismoon — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 02:12:00 GMT

Hello!

Right we're in Cambodia now and the border crossing was surprisingly smooth considering what we'd heard! We avoided the Khoa San Road buses and got ourselves a government coach up to Aranyaprathet and spent the night there, quickly realising how cheap the place was compared to Bangkok and Koh Phangan!

The next day we crossed over the border and other than the Cambodian visa office refusing to accept our visa applications unless we paid extra for a 'helper' (in fairness it wasn't that much more than the visa should have been without his help). We then ran the gauntlet of Casino's and entered Cambodia, bumping into a couple of other travellers who we ended up sharing a cab with down to Siem Reap.

Once there (and having managed to escape the attempts by our Tuc Tuc to take us to other hotels) we managed to check-in to the Dead Fish Guesthouse (http://www.deadfishtower.com), connected to the famous Dead Fish Tower restaurant, a converted crocodile farm (which still has some of the crocodiles!) and set out to explore Siem Reap.

It's amazing how many people we've bumped into on just the first 24 hours here, first we bumped into the two girls who sat in front of us on the bus back from Koh Phangan, then the two guys I was drinking with at a VW bar in Bangkok, two people who had been staying in the same bungalows as us in Koh Phangan and finally the next morning two people we'd shared the taxi from the border with, it seems South East Asia is much smaller that I'd thought :)

We've spent the last couple of days wandering round the Angkor temples and we've got a final day of that tomorrow, so when I get to a computer that's got a decent connection and can actually cope with it, I'll upload some of the huge number of photo's I’ve taken. So far in two days I’ve managed to use up my camera battery three times, and fill up one of my memory card! I reckon it's got about 1200+ photos on it, which isn't bad for a little under 2 months!

Right well tomorrow is our last day at the Angkor complex, so on Tuesday we'll be heading down to Phnom Penh and hopefully sorting out our visa's for Vietnam!

And now we've off to Angkor What? (http://www.ivebeenthere.co.uk/tips/4062) for a beer or two!

Cheers

Chris

The Bangkok Trap

chrismoon — Wed, 7 Jan 2009 20:39:00 GMT

After our last visit to Bangkok when we barely left the Khao San Road area and drank most of the time we resolved that this time was going to be different, we would see the sights, tick all the boxes in the attractions section of the book and then head off to Cambodia. We managed the first day (after my last blog post) and headed off to the Moon Bar (on the 59th floor)and wandered around Siam Center.

After getting a very expensive meal at Siam Discovery and trying (in vain) to buy some compression sacks we headed back to Khao San Road and back to the room about 10:30 pm. This is when the determined plan falls apart, I wasn't tired and rapidly got bored of being sat in the room. So i figured I'd go out and have a beer of two, come back and sleep getting up early the next day to visit the Grand Palace, etc.

After a few beers in Center Khao San I headed back, only to get waylaid by spring rolls and a VW bar, cue finally getting leaving only when the rooster began to crow, and then sleeping for a frankly ridiculous 14.5 hours! Basically totally writing off yesterday! Ah well, we'll try and escape Khao San Road tomorrow for Cambodia, having once again failed to visit the Grand Palace!

For now I think i'll just see what Alan's up to and head off for a beer, or maybe two.....

Back in Bangkok

chrismoon — Mon, 5 Jan 2009 11:43:00 GMT

Morning,

We've arrived back in Bangkok for a couple of days before we head off to Cambodia; unfortunately we arrived at 4:30am, but can't get into our rooms till 11am!

So we've been trying to find ways to occupy our time, beer, breakfast, internet, beer, etc. I didn't sleep on the night bus so there's the constant risk of falling asleep to cope with, I’m shortly heading back to the pub for a few beers, which should help me sleep later on, so long as I make it too the hostel!

I've also been looking through my pictures and out of the 300 odd I put up the other day I’m in about 7, so I’m going to have to start getting my picture taken more or I'll end up with loads of pictures of other people travelling around the world!

Right well it’s 8am, so only three hours till we’ve got the room and can sleep, so time for a beer for this unbelievably slow computer drives me completely nuts!

Have a good first week back at work everyone :)

Oh and annoyingly, on the day we left Koh Phangan the sun came out for the first time in about a week! A day earlier and my diving trip wouldn't have been cancelled!

See ya,

Chris

More Pictures

chrismoon — Sat, 3 Jan 2009 21:59:00 GMT

Right, so we've spent Christmas and New Year in Koh Phangan and tomorrow we leave to go back up to Bangkok for a few days!

I was supposed to be going diving today at Sail Rock, but it got cancelled last night due to the weather, and then was sunny all day today :(

So i've consoled myself by uploading 300 odd pictures and drinking beer in the internet cafe!

Right for everyone who's not got facebook, here's links to the photos:

Cheers guys!

Rajasthan

chrismoon — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 19:33:00 GMT

Ok, so it's been a while since I updated this so apologies for being crap, i'll try to pack as much information into this one as I can!

After our first few hectic days in Delhi we decided to go on a tour of Rajasthan which is a large state bordering Pakistan, we were originally planning to do this (or ar a similar trip) by train, but after shopping around a bit we found a 12 night trip that covered everything and was quite cheap, and following on from a long discussion with the company trying to convince us to go to Kashmir instead, we finally managed to book it so our route was now going to be:

Bikaner
Jasilemer - Camel Safari
Jasilemer
Jodhpur - 2 Nights
Ranakpur
Udiapur - 2 Nights
Pushkar
Jaipur - 3 Nights
Agra

This totals a ridiculous number of miles (I think about 900-1000 or thereabouts) so we spent plenty of time on the road between cities!

Bikaner

This was our first stop and after a long travel, we left Delhi at 7am and got there at about 5pm! We settled into our room and had a few beers. The next morning we got up and headed off to Junagarh Fort, pictures here (http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=180447&l=787bc&id=783495322) this took a up a few hours before we headed off for our next stop of Jasilmer.

Jasilmer & Camel Safari

Camels - http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=180450&l=a0fe5&id=783495322
Jasilmer Fort - http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=180453&l=6fc54&id=783495322

We stopped off in the desert for a camel safari, this involved us going out into the desert for a about an hour to watch the sunset (managed to get some pretty cool pictures too!) we then headed off for a meal and some Rajasthan folk dancing, followed up by venturing into the desert to sleep on the sand for the evening and watch the sunrise. After the Camels we went off to our hotel in Jasilmer to shower and relax, the desert was fun, but not exactly comfortable and sand got everywhere! After this we then meet up with a guide who showed us around Jasilmer Fort, which is quite unique as it has 2000 people still living inside the fort! Jasilmer is known as the golden city as it's virtually all made out of sandstone and hence is golden.... We also took a tour of a Haveli, which are basically houses built for the wealthiest families.

Jodhpur

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=184516&l=b4194&id=783495322

Following Jasilmer, we hit the road again to Jodhpur, which is known as the blue city as most of the buildings in the old town are painted blue (as you can see in the pictures) this had a large palace/fort to look round and one of the most impressive tours we did, and yet I don't seem to have that many pictures!

Ranakpur

After Jodhpur we hit the road again for Ranakpur where we stopped in this hotel in the midst of a really green valley, with lakes on two sides, which we later found out are populated with crocodiles and so decided to wait till morning and sobriaty before going to look for them, we then headed off to a massive fort in the mountains called Kumbalgarh, the walls around this place take two full days to walk, it encompasses a massive area and we only managed to see a small bit of it before the heat started to kill us off!

Udiapur

Next we landed in Udiapur for a few nights, this city is features in the James Bond film Octopussy, so if you head to any of the travellers cafes in town the film is playing every night. So the second evening there we ventured up to a roof top cafe for a dinner and to watch the film. Udiapur is a fantastic place and has several hotels and palaces in the middle of its lakes, which look incredibly beautiful, and no doubt cost incredible amounts to say in!

Well i've got more to say about Pushkar, Jaipur, Agra, the 38 hour train journey we had to get down to Goa, the diving here in Goa, and our plans for Thailand but the internet cafe has filled up so the internet is slow as shit and Facebook just cancelled my photo upload after 50 minutes and about 40 photos, so there's none there, marvelous. So i'm going to head to the beach to book our bus up to Mumbai (we're only there for the day before we fly!) and have a beer or two.

Cheers
Chris

Quick Update

chrismoon — Mon, 1 Dec 2008 15:48:00 GMT

Right just a quick update, we're on the last day of our tour of Rajasthan, this afternoon we start a 30 hour train journey to Goa where we've booked some diving!

We've just visited the Taj Mahal, but unfortunately it's really foggy here today so some of the pictures won't be great :( . Good news is i've managed to upload quite a few pictures to Facebook and hopefully in Goa i'll have enough free time to write up about Rajasthan and send some more pictures!

We're both following the situation in Thailand and Mumbai as we're supposed to fly out of Mumbai to Bangkok in a couple of weeks!

Right, that's it for now! Wow only 25 days till Christmas!

Cheers

Chris

Pictures

chrismoon — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 16:48:00 GMT

Photo's

Well i've tried to put up some pictures but Facebook seems to be playing up, but hopefully they've worked. I'll put up more if these work! These are mainly monuments and temples, etc. I'm sure by the end of Goa there will be plenty of drunken ones too!

Jama Masjid

Old Delhi

Red Fort

Days 2 & 3 with details!

chrismoon — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 02:26:00 GMT

Right, sorry it's taken me so long to get an update online, we've been out in the Rajasthan desert and an internet connection was rare to say the least, I'll try and get as much detail up now as I can, I’ve been trying to upload pictures to Facebook for the last 40 minutes and have managed a mighty ZERO, fantastic access speed we have here :) I'm never going to get them all up! That's the only problem with this great new camera I've taken 1.5Gb of pictures in a week I don't think I’ll every get them uploaded, thank god for the 8Gb memory stick!(Thanks again for the camera RDF).

Day 2 (Monday)

Ok, so our second day in Delhi, we decided to visit some of the monuments and other sites as the previous day we'd just explored the general vicinity of our hostel. So we got a tuc-tuc over to Old Delhi train station with the intention of walking down to the Red Fort (there was a link in my last post) so once we’d seen the massively underwhelming sight of the Old Delhi station we decided to head over to the Fort and after about a walk of 30 minutes during the middle of the day (which was kind of warm…) we found out the Fort is shut on Monday  (should probably have read the guidebook a bit better…). So after this wonderful start to the day we grabbed a cycle-rickshaw and headed off for a tour of Jama Masjid and Old Delhi.

Jama Masjid is a large mosque (I think it’s the biggest Mosque in India) and was impressive although packed with people and loads unofficial guides. Luckily Alan and myself are at the peak of physical health, otherwise the climb to the top of the tower would have really knackered us out! (This is the first set of pictures I’ve been trying to upload completely unsuccessfully, so far after 1 hour; this machine has managed to upload absolutely no pictures!)

Once we’d finished at the Mosque our rickshaw driver took us on a tour of Old Delhi, and believe me it’s an experience, I’ve got some pictures… but the number of people, buses, trucks, rickshaws, camels, cows, dogs and monkeys is unbelievable, it’s like rush hour from hell, but from an outsiders point of view great fun to see, I just wouldn’t want to live there! That occupied most of our afternoon and in the early evening we headed down to India Gate to have a look at the Rajpath all of which was built as part of New Delhi and looks incredibly similar to Washington DC’s mall, we finally headed back to our part of Delhi and had a meal in a later bar called “Gem Bar”.

Day 3 (Tuesday)

We’d arranged a car for the day as some of the monuments are miles outside of the city centre and the tuc-tuc would have taken ages! We got picked up at 10am and headed over to the Red Fort (which was open this time….) it took us about an hour and a half to wander round as it’s massive, we never got to the outer sections as it’s just two big! It was quite impressive; up to 1947 it was used as a British army base, and then used by the Indian Army until the late nineties. Again, plenty of pictures of this too, just no way of getting them online.

After the Red Fort we headed down to Humayun’s Tomb, which was (and still is) the most impressive monument we’ve seen, we initially went into one of the older tombs which looks very similar to several over temples/tombs, and was quite neglected and having spent some time exploring it thoroughly we headed over to the second tomb expecting much of the same, and we couldn’t have been more wrong. The main tomb complex is amazing and has only recently been restored, it’s an early version of what eventually became the Taj Mahal, and looks truly stunning, it’s still being restored which means you can’t access all of it, but what you could was really impressive if you’re ever in Delhi I can’t recommend it strongly enough check out it’s Wiki page hopefully some of the pictures there do it justice!

Next on the agenda was the Qutb Minar complex which features the tallest stone tower in India and again is awe-inspiring as it towers over the whole area and is incredibly ornate, there are several other buildings around it, (including an unfinished second tower that would have been twice the size of the current one) however none of them are in anything like the condition the tower is (it looks almost new!).

By this point we were both getting knackered and overheated, so our next stop turned out to be perfect, we headed to Baha’I Temple (the Lotus Temple) which was completely different to the other monuments as its only recently been built and is very much still in use. Once you head towards the entrance the volunteers ask you to remove your shoes (in fact lots of temples seem to do this) and you can head inside in silence (they’re extremely strict about this with people patrolling the aisles scorning people silently!) it’s extremely relaxing inside, nice and cool with a very peaceful atmosphere, so peaceful in fact we had to leave for fear of falling asleep!

Finally we had a quick drive past the President’s palace and then headed back to the district where our hotel is, booked a 12 day tour of Rajasthan (which we’re now about halfway through) and had something to eat and a few beers before heading off to pack for our early start.

So far on our tour of Rajasthan we’ve been to:
Bikaner
Jaisalmer (where we slept in the desert for a night)
Jodhpur
Ranakpur
And we’re now in Udaipur, unfortunately details of the past few days will have to wait as I’m starving and we’re about to walk into town!

Cheers
Chris

Days 2 and 3

chrismoon — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 02:25:00 GMT

Sorry if anyone was expecting anything more exciting than this, but I'll write something longer and upload some pictures tomorrow, as it is we're struggling to fit everything in tonight as we have to leave at 7am tomorrow and everywhere round here shuts at 11!

Anyway, in summary the last two days have consisted of:

And a few other bits, there's loads of pictures and I'll try and get them up when I've got a reliable internet connection!

Cheers

Chris

Landed in New Delhi

chrismoon — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 02:45:00 GMT

Well we've completed our first flight, and have now landed in New Delhi!

The flight was great as once we'd got settled, someone else had been double booked into our seats, so next thing we know we've been upgraded! Seriously everyone should fly business class!

Once we landed at the airport and spent an hour or two waiting for our bags :( we headed out and got a taxi to our Hostel, as we left the airport we were greated by the sight of elephants on the motorway! (Well one elephant anyway)

Our hostel is basic but clean and has the unexpected bonus of a en-suite, reasonably good for £3 a night! The area isn't fantastic but there seem to be quite a few travellers around so we'll hopefully bump into some in a bar later!

We spent the morning sleeping and then in the afternoon headed out for a quick wander which turned into about 5 hours wandering round, it's very weird to see cows just wandering round the place as if they own it and they're totally unfazzed by hundreds of people surrounding them and cars and bikes passing within inches!

Anyway, we're trying to decide if we should do a trip, and I think the best way to discuss it will be at a bar...

Cheers,

Chris