Tag Archive: Arrival


Jelly Belly

Filed Under: Thailand
Mar.17, 2010

Blah Blah Blah, long travel story, confusion, ferries, blah blah blah…

So we roll up to our “resort” and my god… it was amazing. The bungalows themselves, not so stunning, nice, but basic… but the beach. My god the beach was stunning.

We didn’t waste much time. A quick change in the bungalow and we hit the water. The water was nice, warm, clear… but as I swam it kept feeling like my hands were running through clouds of invisible somethings. Small stings started happening, but I sort of assumed it must just be a cut or something with the salt water. Once Amy got in the water, there was no more time spent questioning — we were swimming in a huge cloud of tiny little jelly fish thingys.

In the water you couldn’t even see them, but on the beach, where the waves washed them on shore, you could see huge strips of them. Not much bigger than a jelly bean, but so many.

We were kinda disappointed. Such a picturesque beach, and we couldn’t swim in the water without getting stung. Of course, being southeast Asia, no one mentions that they are out there, no word of warning, no claims of how long they will be there, if it is normal, if there are beaches without them…

So for the rest of the day we just lazed around, walked the beach, then in the evening we checked out a place called “ting tong bar” which was having a st. patrick’s day party (right next to our resort, on the beach) so we had some appetizers and listened to the live band until the free BBQ started. It didn’t come till much later than advertised, so it wasn’t more than a couple of chicken wings before we headed off to bed, tuckered from our travel.

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On The Road Again

Filed Under: Cambodia, Thailand
Mar.14, 2010

Another early morning. The hotel tried to charge us for food we didn’t eat (it was eaten on a day when we were still in Vietnam) which wasn’t what we wanted to deal with in the morning while we were rushing to a bus.

Again we did some take away food deal so we could eat on the bus. This bus cost 7 dollars and it showed. People and luggage piled everywhere. I ended up in the back with a bunch of Japanese people who were really friendly, and Jen and Amy were up front. The food stops were horrible, and the eventual border crossing took forever. We stood in lines for at least 2 hours.

The bus in Thailand was better. The 7 hour trip ended up taking about 13 hours. When we got back to the hood, we found a really nice new guest house. We had some food and slept.

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Bus Luck

Filed Under: Cambodia, Vietnam
Mar.12, 2010

We got our first good bus of the trip! Leg room, AC, it was like a REAL bus! We were so excited as it was a 12 hour trip, and trips never take as long as they are supposed to. 12 hours is always at least 16 hours.

Not much to say, border crossings are always a little awkward, but this one was pretty easy over all. When we rolled in to Siem Reap, we got a tuk-tuk into the city, clearly to some place where he would get commission, but at 10 dollars a night, it seemed worth it. The guy seemed nice too so we hired him for the next day so we could see all the temples and ruins around Angkor Wat.

We had a little dinner across the road, and then went to sleep.

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The Day That Still Isn’t Over

Filed Under: Vietnam
Mar.10, 2010

When we rolled into Saigon (Ho Chi Minh city) it was about 4:30 in the morning. As we worked out where we wanted to go in the lobby we got a really dirty glare from one of the people waiting there, and Jen came back from the washroom with a bit of a story about the people in there… we had to laugh to ourselves a bit.

Finally ready to brave the wall of taxi drivers outside the train station with our destination in mind, we settled with a driver finally and headed off to Pham Ngu Lao which is Saigon’s backpacker’s area. Most places were still closed and one lady tried to sell us a place way up in a building which seemed like one heck of a dump. We checked it out but quickly headed off in a new direction to find something new.

After waking up a few night watchmen to look at rooms, we eventually left Jen with the bags and went on a real hunt. Eventually we found a really nice place over looking the busy alleyways below. We ate some food, and started knocking off our list of things to see in Saigon. The trips to see the Cu Chi tunnels leave early in the morning, but you need 1 day notice, so that was put off until tomorrow. Instead we wandered off to see the War Remnants Museum. It was by far the best museum we went to in Vietnam, some of the stuff was really hard to look at or read though.

The museum was hot and filled with people, so we headed for the first restaurant with AC. After some food we grabbed a taxi to bring us to the water slides. We were pretty excited about it having read about their toilet bowl slide. The taxi only brought us close, we had to wander the rest of our way based on intuition and hope :P Eventually people started making swimming motions and pointing us in the right direction. When we got there it looked almost deserted. Middle of the day, during the week, makes sense, but still made us wonder a little bit. When we got in, we were told to go to the “foreigner bathing area” were we could lock up our stuff separate to the locals and the girls could lay in the sun in their “skimpy” bathing suits (compared to the essentially fully dressed Vietnamese girls.)

The slides here are fast. Fast like you are out of control fast. So much fun! There were some “black hole” type slides, some straight speed slide, zip lines, tube rides, the toilet bowl, one named “a giant slide”, crazy carpet slides… everything. It was all fun, and we escaped essentially unharmed. We met an American/Vietnamese girl who was pretty surprised we found the slides on our own. Then it was time to head back.

Outside the slides we were lucky to find some cabs waiting. We knew the price we paid to get here, and in Vietnam, it is common for metered cab rides to take a lot longer than ones where you decide on a price up front. We did our best to stick to our guns and eventually we convinced the guy, who seemed a fair bit insulted when we said we don’t want to be driven in circles on a meter, to take us back for no more than what we paid to get there. He drove with the meter to show us how honest he was. On the way we really got to like the guy. He knew very little English, but was very happy to be able to communicate with us in any way possible. Then he busted out his music. Karaoke in the local languages is all over, and hard to listen to after a while, so we prepared ourselves for it, but when it came on… we heard Hotel California!

He LOVED north american music apparently. One of his best lines was “I do not know English, but I do know this!” as he busted out his best air guitar. A few more songs, and lots of busy city streets later we rolled up by our hotel. We was a little bit over on the meter, but only asked for the amount we agreed on before. Of course after such an awesome ride we tipped him well, and he again tried to reassure us that his cab company was regulated and didn’t scam tourists.

We changed, washed, ate, wandered around, Amy shopped, we made sure our tunnels and trip to Cambodia were all figured out, had a snack, had a drink, and then around mid night, finally called it a night. Back at the hotel room we watched some TV, and settled in for a few hours of sleep before getting up at 6:30 to be ready to go see the tunnels.

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Sleepless in Vietnam

Filed Under: Vietnam
Mar.07, 2010

Well, the train has to this point been a favorite mode of transportation for us in Asia. It is usually the most comfortable, it is continuous, there is food and drink available, you can walk around, and when it is for 14 hours… you can catch some sleep.

Unfortunately the train books up quickly here in Vietnam. Travel agents buy up all the tickets and then sell them back to you at really high rates, and that is if you can find one with some left. We managed to find some soft seat (think like a greyhound bus seat, but smaller, Asian sized) tickets and that is what we used. We had planned on sleeping over the night, but there are nothing but warnings when traveling with locals on buses and trains because of the amount of things which are stolen. Jen fell asleep pretty quickly and Amy eventually got some sleep around 4:00am. I think I was waking up every 15 minutes for most of the night just to look around and see how things were. The lights were never off, and the ride wasn’t the smoothest ever, so it was fairly easy to keep this pattern going.

Eventually we rolled in to Danang, Vietnam’s 4th largest city (1 million people.) Our goal was to rent scooters and ride down to Hoi An ourselves. We left Amy with the bags and Jen and I set off in the heat to try and find somewhere to rent them, but after a kilometer or so with no luck we went back to get Amy and find a new way down to Hoi An. The cheapest option was the local bus. We had no idea what it was, and even less of an idea where it was exactly, but we headed off in what we figured was the suggested direction of the guidebook. When we got to the spot, a man came up and asked us where we were from (Canada… ahhh Quebec *french french french french*) when telling him we were headed for the bus to Hoi An, he took us to where we needed to go.

Now we have been scammed so many times (or attempts made at least) that we are a very skeptical group. I didn’t have a horrible feeling from him, but we just kept waiting for it to happen. Eventually he saw us off and it was all fine, he was just being nice (I got to use some of my French with him which was fun.) We regretted not offering him some money after we realized that it was all just to help us, but the opportunity was gone. Up rolls the local bus and it is a dash on to the stairs as it just keeps rolling by. The system is, listen for the continuous horn, wave when you want it, run like hell to get on it, and grab something when you make it in. It was about 30 – 45 minutes of this and then we got to Hoi An.

A German girl named Mascha got off as well, and she joined us on the hunt for a guest house. After finding one, showering, and dropping off laundry, we headed off to find some food. They have “fresh beer” which is made daily and disposed of at night if there is any left. It costs about 20 cents a glass and it is very tasty. We had a set menu at a place by the river and everything we were brought tasted fantastic. The restaurant was empty when we arrived, but through the magic of having tourists sitting at at table in your place of business, soon after there were 7 other tables filled.

The evening was spent shopping with Amy (custom tailoring is huge in Hoi An) and topped off with a massage. The goal tomorrow is to rent the scooters we wanted earlier and check out the My Son ruins.

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The Amazing Race

Filed Under: Laos, Vietnam
Mar.01, 2010

We squish back into the bus, drive for a while, hit the border, go through the checks upon checks, visa, passport, form, passport, bags, bags, passport, passport, load the bus, get off the bus… it was very involved.

There were three old French people and they eventually gave up when we stopped for food and charted a mini-bus privately from some guy who was eating in the restaurant. We drove through what seemed like an endless city just on and on and on. I would fall asleep for a couple minutes, only to wake up as large parts of my body were senseless and numb. Amy and I ended up in some ridiculous positions trying to keep each other comfortable.

To make the title make sense, parts of the trip I recognized from out of the Amazing Race. It was kind of a double take for me. Anyways, to make a long ride short, we got to the bus station in Hanoi… eventually got a semi-legit cab, were followed to the hostel by a creepy guide that liked lonesome sally (to much to write but I will remember to tell you later.) The place is called The Drift, and it was suggested to us by a guy at the bus station in Laos. We got a 2 nights for one deal, which no matter the quality made it worth while.

We checked it out, the rooms were amazing. There was another Canadian already in the room. We headed out for some food had Italian of all things (we couldn’t find the place we were originally looking for.) Amy and I went for a sauna massage without knowing what it really was and ended up confused and laughing afterwards. Then it was time for sleep!

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Mountain Goat

Filed Under: Laos
Feb.23, 2010

Well, I have a lot to catch up on, so I might try and make these quicker… unless I get distracted.

We woke up, eventually got piled into a tuk-tuk which took us to a bus station… there we were crammed into the remaining seats of a really not great mini-bus. I got the center seat next to the driver, stick shift and center console are not great additions to my knees. Luckily some one in the back got car sick on the amazingly winding roads, so I was able to switch seats with them and get a cramped seat in the back, but at least no center console or gearshift to contend with.

The trip took about 6 hours, not all horrible in itself, but the constant sway from left to right, with no straight aways (no joke) was a lot to deal with even if you were one of the few not getting sick. It was like an ab workout the whole way. When we eventually got in to Vang Vieng, Amy was still pretty Gravol’d up and we ended up in the second guest house we found just to get in somewhere. Amy napped while Jen and I checked out the area. It was essentially a big dirt pile with a mess of guest houses and restaurants with seating set up so that you can watch friends on their TVs from everywhere really comfortably (lounge seats only.)

We were quite unimpressed with our guest house so Jen and I scoped out like everywhere else to find a new place for the next night. After seeing some neat bungalows we eventually settled on a guest house on the river which was apparently brand new, and looked it. It was by far one of the nicest guest houses we had stayed in and it fit the price point we wanted to.

After reserving the place we went to look to see what there was to do. The big thing in Vang Vieng is tubing, where you drift down the river and drink buckets of booze from the river side bars where there are zip-lines, trapeze things, and massive slides to send you flying back into the river. Definitely not something that would ever fly back in Canada. We found a tour that would take us to some caves, and then kayaking (what looked like the same river and area as the tubing) and it looked pretty good so it was off to wake up Amy.

After getting her, she was convinced and so we signed up. We showed Amy the new place and then we went back to sleep.

I forgot to mention, the whole way, seemingly hanging off the side of the mountain were these little villages.. amazing how some people live.

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Hello, Hello, Tomorrow! You want omelet?

Filed Under: Laos
Feb.18, 2010

That was the wake up call. “Egg fried rice? Chicken fried rice? Buffalo fried rice?” It was an early 6:00 am start, still in the dark, no one knowing if we would make it all the way down today. Some rumours were going around that we would stop in Pak Beng, but then the guy said it was just to let the people get their money back if they paid for accommodation (nice twist.)

We got to Pak Beng, and people off loaded to go get their money back, 20 minutes later they returned (without their money… the hotels had no idea what they were talking about) and we continued down the river with renewed doubt. I have been sick the pack couple days. Sort of a head/stomach thing… not bad, but not making the trip any more fun either. It clouded over and it really didn’t seem like we would have enough light to make the distance we needed, and a lot of us really started expecting another night in the sand, and we didn’t expect this one would be as much of a party. All of sudden there was a massive cloud burst, rain came down in buckets and it was really beautiful. The smell of rain was refreshing and it was neat to see all the locals continue to work as if nothing was changed.

We pulled into Luang Prabang in the dark, it was not at all what we expected. Laos, the untouched, untouristed country; Laos, where the roads are horrible, and travel is a nightmare; Laos, where everything is less civilized, less western. Apparently not. There was a huge river side strip of beautiful restaurants, guest houses all over, the roads were better than back home… maybe it looked even better considering what we had slept in last night.

We happened across a nice place for what turned out to be a really decent deal. We showered, watched TV and headed out for food. On our way out, we saw some boat people (as we call anyone who rode the boat with us) getting off a tuk-tuk… apparently we had much better luck finding a place than they did. Then we found a restaurant, and there were more boat people. We had a crepe for dessert, heard some people who were at the restaurant comment “look, they are eating again already” and went back to sleep. On the way back it really seemed more like we were walking down a street in Victoria… like walking down around the cook street village or something.

Oh, and we had a small pest in our room… a little tiny lizard. He doesn’t have a name, but we did build him a house.

By the way, happy birthday dano!

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Chiang Mai

Filed Under: Thailand
Feb.09, 2010

Not a lot happened our first day here. Just getting settled in, and slightly disappointed with our guest house choice. Sarah Guesthouse felt a little more like Sarah Prison Cell Block C, it was a concrete bunker with little light and a pathetic (yet clean) bathroom. Sarah also seemed disinterested in everything going on around her, so we chose to look for a new place for the next day. We didn’t have any real luck but thought we would try again in the next day.

Amy and Jen signed up for some Thai cooking classes, I decline, 1000 baht could be 10 massages and I know what my priorities are.

I’m writing this several days late, and I don’t remember much more, which probably means it was likely just food, laundry and other fun things.

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Hot Hot Hot

Filed Under: China, Thailand
Feb.02, 2010

After traveling through Hong Kong airport we got into Bangkok around 9ish. It was nice to see the city through the window as we came down unfortunately this was the first time we didn’t have window seats in a plane. About 30 or 40 minutes by cab and we were at the New Siam II, our guest house. 29 degrees Celsius at night… this will take a bit of acclimatizing. We wondered about looking for Khao San road and happened across it really quickly, no more than a minute walk from our place it turns out.

Everything is so casual here. Everything and everyone is laid back, no real hustle and bustle. This is clearly not China any more. We had some food before heading back to the room… turns out spicy thai food is really really spicy :) We cranked the AC and fell asleep. Amy shows up tomorrow… I think she will be really excited to see this.

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