Hiding from the real world

Villa in Manila

youngjo23 — Mon, 3 Aug 2015 16:21:00 GMT

(We didnt stay in a villa, we stayed in a hostel..)

Sitting on a bus back to Manila after a great month holdayz in the Phillipines. Defo one of our favourite Asian countries... Perhaps because its a bit less Asian than the others?! The people are extremely friendly, have fantastic English and don't have that 'I'm about to scam you' air about them as much! Also their star football player is Phil Younghsband so for the first time ever we were met as celebrities rather than "what kind of a name is that?!"

Typhoon season is not an ideal time to visit the Philippines, as we discovered in week #1 when it just didn't stop raining and the outlook for our wonderful trip on paradise beaches was looking dismal! One day in Maolbaol, the weather seemed to be clear so we got a scooter and went to a lovely waterfall....then the water started falling out of the sky so much you couldn't see in front of you so we ended up having fried chicken watching the local team play basketball in some random village hall for the afternoon.

Luckily it stopped raining and we got our paradise...just in time for Lottie's visit! Off we trotted down the coast of Cebu and Wimbledon final night it seemed not one place in the village of Boljoon would serve food let alone have cable. About to give up and go back to the ridiculously priced hostel fried rice, we spotted a few westerners (and a tv!) through a window crack of a run down looking place and asked how we can get in. Someone had to get someone to wake up someone to let us in and the whole family were brought into action to feed us all. Just when it was one set all, we were told to leave as they wanted to go to bed. Walking back up the hill, we hear chants of "Andy, Andy", which was strange as Andy had left an hour previously because he was tired and couldn't see the TV anyway. Lowandbehold he was in a little wooden shack drinking rum singing kareoke with the locals. Naturally we join in and consume many bottles of ridiculously cheap rum (the rum is cheaper than coke here!) and take over the kareoke with our new Dublin friends whilst roaring out awful renditions of 'Hey Jude'.

The following evening, further down the coast, Jo and Lottie go for a run after sunset. While deciding which way to go, a young local chap asks if we are going jogging and can he come too. So he joins us the whole way...in his flip flops! He comes back later to show us the food market for BBQ fish and (probably) dog and then he comes with us at 5:30am to go and see the whale sharks, loving all the street cred hanging with the backpackers! Whale sharks were amazing-and massive! While trying to take some pictures underwater on Jo's phone, it started playing the Beatles and we couldn't get it to stop which got a good laugh out of the Koreans on our boat!
After a bit of eenie meanie minie mo we decided to go to siquijour island which involved quite a few buses and boats and trikes to get to, considering we could see it from Oslob. How and ever we made it and rented ourselves the finest scooters you ever did see. Pink for Lottie, Yellow for Jo and Purple for Andy. Accidentally did a 74k lap of the island whilst looking for lunch but had a great few days exploring, going to a 'healing festival' with witches to cure you and going down caves and swimming in waterfalls. A Scottish and English couple arrived on the second night and after searching for a bar with people in it in low season, we had a much better night with a few bottles of rum playing drinking games on the beach!

The overnight ferry we got back to Cebu was hilarious. 200+ bunk beds on each deck pushed together in fours. They had a little shop to get your beer and after a couple of games of cards we all settled down for bed... After the prayers over the loudspeaker to bless our voyage, not sure if it was reassuring or worrying?!

Away we flew to Boracay-paradise...if you were there 20 years ago. 'Johnson's' aka Asian tourists everywhere taking selfies ruin the view somewhat. Met a great group of people and we were the best 12 friends or so that anyone could ever have. Much pool playing, various ball games, banana boating, sail boating, go karting and other organised fun activities. Let's not forget the free dumplings/pasta night at the hostel with happy hour which inevitably ends messily with sand wrestling/best animal impersonations/sexy dance contest/tattoos/ tattoos done by friends you met a few days before and Mr Belly! And in Will's case a hospital visit, losing all your clothes, and then losing your wallet and its entire contents the next night.

Ten days and maybe four or five missed flights later (mostly deliberately) everyone made it out. Sad goodbyes with Lottie who has gone down under with her proper job in Perth, but at least we overcame the milestone of getting pedicures before she left!

A flight back to Manila and then (on Jo's insistence not to spend any more time in Manila) off we went again on a jeepney (elaborately decorated old war Jeeps used for public transport at 8pesos a ride and called things like 'Renegade' and 'Bad Boy') followed by a bus and boat to Puerto Galera because Jo's mum got a towel from there 30 years ago so we had to get one too. Had a good couple of days chilling out and having some rums and cards on our porch.

Now it's back to Manila and end of our holliers. Andy flies back tonight and Jo is tomorrow night despite confirming with the eejit loads of times the date he booked!! Back to Ho Chi Minh for now but defo wana come back here again- tis only gorgeous!

*Update; The final night involved refereeing midgit boxing & more karaoke with the previously mentioned amd notoriously irresponsible Will...A day with a very drunk Irish man seding in requests to spin south west radio station and having to ditch the taxi in rush hour and run across several highways to get to the airport in the nick of time! Maybe next time Andy will get the dates right to fly back together!!

#hi5sallround

youngjo23 — Tue, 24 Mar 2015 02:43:00 GMT

Yay I'm a teacher!! (Teacher Jonanana apparently)

Backtrack a few months, after a fab time at home and skiing with the

fam for Xmas (first Christmas with them in four years!),

back to Vietnam I came! A very bleak and disappointed Jo Jo I was

getting on that plane, after such a great time in the snowy

mountains of Austria, the filthy sweat box of Ho Chi Minh seemed

positively gross. A three hour visa hassle at the airport didn't

help, despite Andy's best attempts to cheer me up with beer and

ice-cream! I was grand though and soon settled back into Asian life.

And by that I mean 50c beers and $2 meals.

The job hunt was short lived after every company said they all had

a job for me...after the new year holidays in Feb!

After a couple of cockerel infested/miles away from anywhere/windowless

pit house searches, we came upon our new

abode which is delightful...a huge improvement on the tiny box room 7

floors up (no lift) on the busiest backpacker street.

Big room with a balcony, kitchen, lounge with tons of English movie

channels and a rooftop-aint bad for $150 a month! And we have new

friends now yay! Hannah - an Irish mate Jo met in America and

hadn't seen for three years, moved here after Xmas too and it just

so happened she was looking for a place the day someone moved

out of our gaff. Great craic despite her being a veggie! Then there's

Sergey a Russian IT dude, enjoys drinking and girls.

Steve from Tennessee, was in the unemployed group before the holidays,

went to Cambodia to get a new visa..over a month ago and hasn't been

seen since! A Japanese guy called Cookie who we hardly ever see and

doesn't speak much but Andy had to leave a note for to remind him to

flush the toilet after a few too many gross encounters in the mornings!

A Russian girl called Maria who enjoys yoga and eating bowls of lettuce!

In our alleyway, we have many Vietnamese friends, they have little English

but nod their heads and mumble and smile or wave.

All the kids hi five us and run after us saying hello. The crazy lady next

door is always dragging us into her hut (seems the whole

extended family all live in these huts/on the street in our alley) and offers

us beers trying to get us to join in the awful and

ridiculously loud Vietnamese karaoke parties! Someone recently

got the cutest little fluff ball puppy that Hannah and I keep kidnapping

and bringing into our gaff for cuddles, we also have various cats that jump in

our window (no walls in the kitchen,just some wide metal bars). Now that

I have put it in writing, our street does seem a bit strange, I must take some

photos...when coming back late at night you have to be quiet as several of

our neighbours are sleeping on old sun loungers outside, they don't

even seem that poor either! They live on the street and cook and eat in one

pot on the pavement but then they wop out their iPads and laptops and hop on their motorbikes!!

So day 1 after the holidays proactive Hannah set me up with one of her unwanted jobs,

I rang them, went for an interview and 10 minutes later was en route to a

'demo class'....3 classes actually! 35 5 year olds singing head shoulders knees and toes and

learning the letter g....a great success, I got the job!! It may be because I'm not exactly

full time, a few hours here, a few hours there...in fact 9 hours in total-but on $16 an hour

that's 32 beers an hour here so I'm still living the life! Got my first paycheck last

week...for 4 days (6 hours work 1.8million :) oh and I caught one of the kids paying

his mate to let him sit at the front of my class after a bit of a scuffle over who

could sit there! #mostlovedteacher #theylovehi5s

Edit Notes, as I wrote this two weeks ago and forgot to post it;

The bathroom note worked
The fluff ball puppy is getting much bigger and less cute by the day
I'm now on antibiotics from a chest infection not helped by roaring old MacDonald all day!

Back on the beaten path

youngjo23 — Wed, 17 Sep 2014 12:29:00 GMT

The last month has been spent heading up and down the mostly sunny coast and beautiful halong bay of Vietnam along with many other backpackers (our official vocation in life it seems) including our mates Ben and Vicky, a Northern Irish couple we met while working together in a roadhouse in oz (for a week,before they got the sack and we quit several weeks later!) As they were on holiday just for a couple of weeks on their way home from Australia, and coming straight from such an expensive country, $50 seemed an absolute bargain for a 4* hotel. Which it is but you cant be doing that if you're in it for the long haul, so you can see where differences arose but we reached a happy medium (mostly) and slept and dined and wined in very fancy places for us and quite disappointing but absolute bargain spots for them! After they left (to spend a week in a $2000 a week resort on kho samui Thailand!!) we met wee Jessie Lalor for an evening then began the long journey south again. After learning our lesson a few times that the 11 hr journey will probably take 18 overnight on the dirt road, we invested in some sleeping tablets and they flew by! On return to Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC), after some lovely beachie weeks, we met up with Jo's old pal Neville, his girlfriend and what seems to be most of his dorm mates from Wilsons Hospital School, all out here teaching English. Over several evenings drinking bottles of ridiculously cheap rum, we hear wonderful stories involving them earning $16 an hr to be worshipped and make animal noises. When a beer is 50c, that's 32 beers an hr!! We are sold and see currently doing our TEFL (teaching English cert) online to join them in this wonderful life living like kings.
It's not all sitting indoors on computers however, we are now trundling around Cambodia. I say this as I am very much trundling at the moment, on a very rickety bus on an extremely potholed road! Despite booking our bus ticket at the busiest hostel in Phnom Penh, opting for the cheapest bus must not be an popular option as we are the only westerners on board, as usual! We decided to stay in said hostel after a couple of nights in a very cheap but pretty out-of-the-way guesthouse where once again it was tricky to get fed, all the restaurants had a big bowl and stove on every table where customers got a massive plate of everything imaginable and put it in this pot themselves to make some sort of soup. We did find a place that had some nice normal fried rice, quite the special occasion having us there it seemed as the place was packed but the manager lingered beside our table the whole night to make sure we had enough of everything at all times! The hostel wasn't all that, more expensive to be in a 12 bed dorm than our en suite room previously and if you don't happen to be the last one to bed, you are woken every time someone comes in, stumbling all over the place clattering about and the same again at 5-8am when everyone seems to get early buses. We did find a sports bar playing the football next door which we were all ecstatic about-lots of cheering, jugs of beer and general football chat with other northern English blokes! Needless to say tonight we are booked in to 'Tom and Jerry guesthouse', $5.40 for private room! En route to Siem Riep (if we ever get there) to see the temples of Ankor, supposedly the 8th wonder of the world. From the bus window, Cambodian village life seems very like what Ireland, or maybe France would have been a century ago, little wooden shacks with thatch or tin roofs. Except they are on stilts and the whole extended family plus a few cows, pigs and chickens , mull about under the shack sheltering from the sun/monsoons doing not a whole lot. A great way of life and nice to see after visiting the genocide museum and killing fields where the Khmer rouge tortured and killed anyone they didn't like or was educated or wore glasses basically and turned the rest of the county into slaves...and this was only in the 70's! The Vietnam war museum in HCMC was also a horrifying experience but interesting and worth seeing.
On a brighter note... 6 days til my birthday!!!
Over and out.

Difficulties on the road less travelled

youngjo23 — Sat, 16 Aug 2014 19:35:00 GMT

Made it out of the Czech dungeon and on to four thousand islands on the Mekong river bordering Cambodia. The boat ride over was touch-and-go, a tiny fishing boat suitable for one man perhaps, carrying 8 backpackers plus their backpacks against the current across the wet season mass of fast flowing water! We ran in to Aidan, an English chap who we met in Pakse but didn't feature in the previous story because he claimed to be extremely hungover and refused to partake of a beer with us. However, upon arriving in Don Det and realising there was little to do, 'lets have a beer' seemed like a good idea and at $1 a pop it set the theme for the next few days. A Swiss guy called Matteo who we got chatting to having a curry joined our party and we all went on Mr.Mo's kyacking trip to see waterfalls and rare Meking dolphins and have 'The Battle of the Mekong' a fiersome waterfight involving strategic tactics and trying to not capsize!
After many days of hammock dwelling, the unmarked route to Laos lay before us. Having a vague idea of where there was a border crossing, we caught a bus to Attapeu. After 2 hours we were shunted off the tourist bus and had to get the local bus which involved having many boxes around our feet and all down the aisle. At 6:30, (we were supposed to arrive at 5pm) with broken sign/pointing language we had to get off the bus for them to unload. An hour and a half later, wondering if we will have to sleep in the bus station, another bus pulls up and we gather we are to get on. Bit tricky as we had to bring our backpacks on and there were sacks of sugar all down the aisle seat high so a lot of squatting and shuffling was required to get to a seat! Two nights in Attapeu where everything was a struggle. Nobody would sell us a bus ticket, even at the restaurant where the bus stops and has a sign, nobody could speak English and kept pointing to somebody else or waving at us. Similar problems trying to get food, eventually found an old couple who understood noodles and fired up a concoction for us and understood 'Beerlao'. 😄
A lovely Vietnamese woman who had a guesthouse sold us a ticket to Vietnam, not sure where it went but grateful to get a ticket, we showed up at hers at 5:30 am and she gave us breakfast! The border crossing was hectic and reminded us of a badly behaved school lunch queue, so much pushing and queue jumping. Andy had a bit of a showdown with a tiny Asian woman who was very forceful and a sly little yoke pushing through with 10 passports in hand! Managed to get through and get stamped in. Several hours later, everyone gets off the bus at a restaurant so we sit at a table until we are invited to sit at the tiny table the 12 other passengers are at and numerous odd looking dishes are brought forward and everyone starts tucking in. After some sniggering at our chop stick handiness (though we reckon we are quite the masters now) they bring forth two spoons for the foreigners!
The bus stops in Gia Lai and we mention Saigon suspecting the Vietnamese still call it that and are told there is a bus at 6. Some chap in a scooter appears and gives us a ticket, not understanding any of our questions/motioning about what kind of bus it would be or how long the journey took, we paid the 600 grand. Turns out we lucked out on the bus front, every other bus (all going to saigon at 6 it seemed) looked like a glamorous beautiful space machine with double decker bunk seat/beds with private tvs and a table and lovely lights, we looked on from our crappy average run of the mill bus windows-at least we weren't in the one with goats strapped to the roof! A very bumpy brake screechy horn honky journey we got to ho chi mihn city at 7:30am and thanks to a nice security man got the local bus for 5 instead of the 200 dong the taxi wanted! Found a place to stay, had a shower and off to mcdonalds for the best meal we had in ages...its good to be back in civilisation where everyone tries to sell you something and there are Starbucks on every corner! Having my handbag grabbed by a passing biker wasn't so pleasant but as a kind English girl had warned us of this two minutes earlier I was prepared and hung on, nearly falling over and losing sunglasses in the process! Andy now desperate for someone to try it again so he can push them over and have a go at them...I've resorted to just keeping a small amount of money in my pocket but on the hunt for a fetching bum bag!

Laousy Travels

youngjo23 — Sun, 3 Aug 2014 23:18:00 GMT

Laousy Travels
The travels aren't lousy...it's just a hilarious play on words. Crap I know but at least you don't have to experience the equally humorous punching/slapping/hair pulling so the punchee screams "ow", then with a snigger the puncher exclaims "haha- owie in laos-ie" Great fun.
Arrived in a town called Pakse yesterday (again-a wacksie in packsie, sorry) after getting dumped on the side of the road in an unknown location as is customary. One then has to pay about half the cost of the bus fare again for the driver's mate to bring you to the actual town you already paid to get to, said mate in tuc tuc brought is to the 'centre' and we were wandering down the main street, lonely planet book 'south east Asia on a shoestring', hereinafter referred to as 'the bible', in hand, lugging our backpacks around in search of a room when a pick-up reverses back towards us and a strangely facial haired man, who shall be called dodgy Czech man, asks whether we coming or going. Without much choice, we follow him to his place, which incidentally is a massage parlour with several young lao women mulling about and a distinct lack of any signage resembling a guesthouse or similar. Nonetheless, we are shown the room which will be ready in 20 minutes (no sheets or pillows or power working) and as it costs $6 (all prices will be referred to in Australian $ as € and £ are now foreign to us), and we see little option for getting out of it, we take the room. Later on, as we head out, dodgy Czech man (DCM) asks if we want to go for a drink, he knows a great French place that has great whiskey but not to let his wife know. We politely decline this most enticing offer and say maybe tomorrow. However, as we sit in a cute little bar with a beer, we realise we may be said French whiskey bar.
A little side note here to mention the fabulous game we played here, inspired by a tail-less cat passing by. The title is 'If I had a cat with no tail, id call it...' and some corkers emerged; Tail(or) Swift, Catniss Everdeen, Catamaranovermytail, have a break have a kit kat, cat me of you can, like a cat out of hell...ok you get the gist.
Anyhow upon returning to turn in for the night, DCM was waiting for us and somehow knew we had been at the bar and asked us to go back with him just for one to hand out massage flyers. There was a huge storm raging at this stage. Jo heads off to bed and the boys go for one. An hour later, Jo is woken by DCM and Andy who has apparently be forced to have 5 of these Laos whiskeys and told we are all going to a Laos disco. No amount of declining works and Jo and one of DCM's various girlfriends/wives are forced to get dressed and all head back again to the bloody French bar. The poisonous whiskeys come out (in pineapple and mint flavour!) and some nice English and Irish backpackers there attempt to save us but no luck, its off to the disco we go in DCM's pick-up, miles away in the sticks so it is and we are assured there will be no tourists there, only locals, wonderful! So we go, we dance, we have every person there wanting to be our friend and dance with us, DCM chips a tooth, we manage by the skin of our teeth (teeth don't have skin) and thanks to girlfriend/wifie who is very reluctant, not to have to go to some other 'boom boom' place afterwards.
It is now the following afternoon and he barged in about an hour ago telling us we are going for a drink so Andy had to bravely go down and tell him we didn't want to go, to which he made much angry growling noises and we are now in hiding.
Heading to a place called four thousand islands tomorrow-if we manage to get out of DCM's captive den!