Day to Day

I received these pictures from eh.... an "unnamed source", and thought it was my duty to put them up. The pictures speak for themselves..
Happy belated St. Patrick's Day guys!

P.s. - Apologies for not updating this more recently . Expect another large update tomorrow!

Due to a mixture of circumstances we ended up staying in Bangkok a little longer than was planned... On our second night in Bangkok we found a place on Khao San Rd that did very cheap and tasty cocktails (wasn't difficult as they were all over the place). The receptacle of choice in a classy establishment such as this is a sand castle sized plastic bucket. Another advantage of this location was the excellent people spotting opportunities that it afforded. During our watch we spotted: two girls from Dundalk, two girls from Aoife's year in Engineering, and about 10 people we'd met (on the circuit) during the course of our travels. If you're trying to get away from it all - don't go to Khao San Rd. Sitting next to us (on the next set of plastic chairs on the street) were a very nice dutch couple who we got chatting to. They were wolves in sheeps clothing though - the cunning swines bet us that the land area of the Nederlands was smaller than that of the Republic of Ireland (although to be fair we may have been the ones who thought of the bet..). A quick visit to an internet cafe and search on Wikipedia confirmed that we owed them two beers.. On the plus side Ireland isn't as midgety as we imagined.

Needless to say that me being the old fogey that I am had a very sore head and a stomach that felt like a washing machine the following day.. (i'm sure I just had a bad kebab or something... ) That day our diet consisted completely of items only available in burger king. With a diet like that it will come as no surprise that my stomach wasn't fully recovered the next day (much to the amusement of young Aoife).. That night when we were out for dinner the calamities continued... A girl knocked into Aoife's elbow while she was drinking out of a beer bottle and she chipped her front tooth (that'll teach her for drinking beer out of the bottle - not very lady like... ). Luckily (if you could call it lucky) it was the same tooth that had been broken before in her horrific biking accident of 2004 so major reconstructive surgery would be avoided. We just needed a dentist. Preferably one that could speak english...

Next day with the aid of our trusty guidebook (the book knew we'd come crawling back...) we set off for Bumrungrad International Hospital with our fingers crossed that they wouldn't take all our money. Our first impression was that we had been taken to the wrong place and that it was actually a hotel. No - it was just the fanciest hospital we've ever been fortunate / unfortunate enough to have to visit. On the way to the dental clinic on the 4th floor we passed Starbucks, McDonald's, a few other restaurants and a few shops.. Definitely Health Care - Consumer Style. Aoife was given an appointment for 5 o' clock so we had a few hours to kill.

We decided we would check out nearby cinemas in the internet cafe downstairs. This was a very good move on our part as one hour later we were in the coolest cinema ever - The Paragon Cineplex on Siam Square. Our viewing options were a bit limited as it was Saturday afternoon (and therefore jammers) and because we had limited time but we ended up seeing Pan's Labyrinth (with Thai & English subtitles). Cool, weird movie - we enjoyed it a lot (definitely enhanced by the reclining leather seats though!). We were frozen by the end of the movie, not having expected air-condition induced arctic conditions Woolly hats next time..

After that we hopped on the Skytrain (a very spacy sounding, efficient, air conditioned, sardine-esque way to get about the city) back to Bumrungrad for Aoife to enjoy half an hour of dental work, while I enjoyed half an hour of Sherlock Holmes. The good news is Aoife again has a complete set of teeth and it didn't cost an arm, leg or black market kidney. Great success.

To celebrate Aoife's new biting abilities and my new found ability to eat food again we decided to treat ourselves to some real thai food (or its closest approximation on Khao San Rd.) - was very tasty and we haven't looked back since.

On Monday morning we moved on from Bangkok by way of a "VIP" Bus / Boat ticket that we bought to take us to Ko Chang. We were highly skeptical of the VIP-ness of the bus but it was fairly swish as backpacker buses go. The most comfortable so far. No knees touching my forehead / chin on this occasion. 12 hours travelling later we arrive on Lonely Beach - Ko Chang.

I didn't take that picture (my camera was dead until today) but its a pretty close approximation. It's seriously hot here! We went down to the beach yesterday morning in excited anticipation of a nice refreshing swim. It was not to be. The water was like a bath - how we miss the atlantic (yes - we have atlantic envy!). We're beginning to acclimatise now a little and our plan of not setting foot outside between the hours of 12 and 3 has so far proved a success We're staying in a hut about one minutes walk from the beach - life is good. The plan now is to relax for a while after all our, eh.. stress.. Camera is charged again so expect lots more photos!

Take it easy,

Tadhg & Aoife

People spotting on Khao San Rd.:

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We have gotten behind a bit in keeping this up to date so we'll try and squeeze in the Mekong Delta and Cambodia into one post

We started into our 2 day tour through the Mekong Delta with some trepidation, but after the first few hours we realised that it was going to be the fun alternative to getting the bus that we had hoped. The plan for the first day was to visit some floating markets, have a few boat rides on the Mekong, and generally make our way through a mixture of boats and buses to Chau Doc - our exit point from Vietnam.
Along the way we stopped at a few places making various sweets and actually saw Rice Crispies being made (see photo) which was cool! We got into Chau Doc that night tired but very happy

Next day we started out early from Chau Doc for what would turn out to be a very long day! It started out great - each pair got assigned a rowing boat (including somebody to row it!). Very cool way to get around - we recommend it. We were taken down the river to see some floating houses. The houses had fish farms underneath (see photo) which held thousands of fish. All very interesting. We were then rowed up the river to visit a Cham village (Muslim minority people in Vietnam). Along the way our "driver" took a small detour to her mate's boat and before we knew what was going on I was slurping down a free bowl of chicken noodle soup - yummy

After the Cham village we began to get to the business end of things - crossing the border to Cambodia. We boarded Boat No. 1 for a 3 hour long meander up river to border. When we got to the border we found out that it was lunch time and therefore the border was shut. We could see the legs of a guard having a nap sticking out of a window but there was no moving him... When we eventually got through the Vietnam end of things we plodded down the road to the Cambodian border. No hassles there - didn't even get our bags checked... Next the plan was to get on a different boat (which we'll call Boat No. 2) which was to take us further up towards Phnom Penh. After about an hour and a half we were beginning to get annoyed (especially when we were told that the reason for the holdup was that the driver had lost the key for the boat!!) but on the plus side we were beginning to get to know our fellow travellers quite well - there's nothing like something in common to moan about to bring people together. Another hour and a half passed before a boat finally turned up - it was Boat No. 1.. We all got on with high hopes but were turfed out of it after about 45 minutes and told to wait on Boat No. 3.. This boat also took its sweet time arriving but in fairness - at least it arrived..

Another 3 hours passed before we were on terra firma again. We then hopped on our "air conditioned bus" (non air conditioned minibus). Sardines would have complained about the amount of space on the bus. If you wanted to get our it had to be done via a window as the doors we totally jammed shut by rucksacks. We got about 45 mins up the road before we stopped. We didn't move again for almost an hour and a half. It turned out that it was the Khmer (Cambodian) New Year and that everybody in Cambodia had decided randomly to take to the roads on minibuses (more specifically - on top of minibuses.. there must have been forty people riding on them!). This, combined with "road works" (not that there was actually a road to work on - just mud), meant that many of us were losing hope of ever seeing Phnom Penh. At one stage our mini bus was towing a 54 seater bus with us in an attempt to get it unstuck from the mud.. was all totally mental. We eventually pulled into Phnom Penh about 5-6 hours late and pretty tired / smelly.

Next day Aoife was sick so we didn't do anything apart from me doing a valiant scouting effort to locate a supermarket for much needed supplies. It was scorching hot and humid but I prevailed

The following day we went to The Killing Fields of Cheung Ek just outside Phnom Penh. Pretty grim experience (as is to be expected) - especially the thousands of humans skulls stacked in chronological order inside a commemorative tower. After a day trip like that it was no surprise that we did nothing else with our day.

Next morning we got another "Air Conditioned Bus" up the country to Siem Reap where the plan was to take in Cambodia's premier tourist attraction - Angkor Wat. We had booked a place to stay through our guesthouse in Phnom Penh and they were to collect us from the bus. When we got off the bus we were very pleased to see a guy cheerily waving his "Aoife Grennan" placard and we were loaded and off in a jiffy. Two minutes down the road we ground to a halt again - always an ominous sign. Firstly our driver said that Smiley's was full because of Khmer New Year (it goes on for days!!!) and tried to clumsily hustle us into going to another guesthouse. When we informed him that we had a booking with Smiley's our driver then said that he would like to take us to the temples the following day. When we told him that we were unsure of our plans and therefore were not ready to commit to anything he said that he wouldn't take us to Smiley's and promptly brought us back to the bus depot! Here we got loads of hassle from him and his mates - all of which refused to take us into town unless we agreed to let them take us to the temples the following morning. We walked away from them and managed to get a guy to drop us to the hotel for $2 - he was very friendly, didn't even mention the temples, and even tried to teach us some Khmer (he was wasting his time it would appear because we forgot after about 30 seconds but it was nice all the same). The hotel was great incidentally (see photo).

Due to the Neverending Khmer New Year we had to delay our plans of leaving Siem Reap by a day as bus drivers were doubling their rates. On Tuesday morning we headed out reasonably early to see the temples. We procured ourselves a driver for the day called Mr. Lucky that we had happened to read about online and happened to be outside our guesthouse when we walked out the door (pretty lucky in fairness). We also came upon this quote from the official Angkor Wat website during our research and thought it merited inclusion:

The information found on this page is outdated and totally inaccurate. This is especially true where monetary value is mentioned. We apologize for any inconveniences. For a serious traveller, please consult your tour agent for details.

We both decided on Day Passes to see the temples ($20 each - another scandalously overpriced tourist attraction) because we had neither to funds or the inclination to plump for the 3 or 7 day passes that were also available. It was one of the busiest days of the year as a result of, you guessed it, Khmer New Year! The first site - Angkor Wat itself, was absolutely thronging with sightseers (a large proportion of which were Cambodian due to the national holiday). The highlight of the first site was definitely climbing up the extremely steep crumbly steps to the centre of the temple. It was horribly hot (even at nine o' clock!) but worth it. The temperature climbed and climbed as the day went on - was definitely pushing 40 degrees by lunchtime. Our driver ferried us around from temple to temple but both our favourites was the Bayon temple in Angkor Thom (followed by the jungle encased Ta Phrom). At one of the outlying temples that we saw towards the end of the day we were approached by a little girl who was hawking t-shirts. On our answer from the customary "Where are you from?" question we got the best reply yet - "Conas ata tu?" - class!!! If we had been able to carry any more junk in our backpacks we would have bought a t-shirt from her! She didn't seem to bothered either way - she walked us down the road waved us goodbye yapping all the way..

We both had a good day seeing all the temples, and it was even worth the inevitable sunburn, but ultimately we were glad with our decision just to take in the highlights in one day. We didn't even hang around for the tourist circus that is seeing the sunset over Angkor Wat. Through a mixture of the searing heat and all the walking we did we were thoroughly exhausted at the end of our day but happy with our lot.

Yesterday, having purchased a ticket to Bangkok from our hotel, we got a bus from Siem Reap to the border. Even as the roads go in Cambodia this one was bad - completely unpaved, dusty, and full of pickup truck sized potholes. The mind boggles as to what it is like during the wet season. We arrived at the border after about 6 hours looking like we were wearing bad fake tan as a result of all the dust coming in the windows - honest. We were then kicked off our bus and made wait for 30 minutes to get on another bus which took us the 30 second drive up top the border.. Despite it having the words "Shuttle Bus" plastered all over it, and the driver informing us to take off all our bags, it was all a bit much to comprehend for some of our fellow travellers who were under the impression that this bus was going to shuttle us the 4 and a half hour drive to Bankok (as shuttle buses do...). The result of which was the shuttle bus (inexplicably) returned to the point from which it had collected us with a bus load of new passengers, and several of our fellow travellers bags. Drama.

We were all a bit unclear about what we were meant to do on the other side of the border as we had lost our english speaking guide at a restuarant (presumeably on purpose). It was blind leading the blind stuff but we eventually all managed to float our way to the bus on the other side without incident (nicest bus so far to boot - hurrah!).

We arrived last night in Bangkok and were dropped off at the infamous Khao San Road, backpacker mecca of the city. We found our hotel, grabbed a quick shower and took a walk about in the madness of it all.

Still in Khao San Rd. - planning our next move (what beach to go for...?). We're going out now to look for a hotel for tomorrow night and we're thinking of splashing out on one with a pool (pun intended)

So like we were saying.. Hoi An was fun. It was quite touristy but it was lively, the weather was good and there was plenty to do. The only big activity we did (apart from visiting tailors..) was signing ourselves up for a cookery course. Unfortunately it turned out to be a bit of a disappointment - we enjoyed the day but we would have preferred it to be a bit more hands on and a little more advanced.. We'll try again in Thailand...

Our next decision was whether to move to Saigon by bus or by train. Our options were either a 24 hour air-con bus ride or to catch a bus to Da Nang and hope to get a berth on the last train to Saigon (which was going to take 20 hours). We opted for the latter - BIG mistake! All was going to plan wonderfully. We hopped on a bus and made it to De Nang in plenty of time. When we got off the bus we were both whizzing our way to the station within 30 seconds (in great discomfort I might add due to the combination of having 20kg backpacks on our backs and the drivers' tendancy to lean the motorbike to the side on corners). However, things started to go wrong when we arrived at the station - no berths left. They had "soft seats" left so we decided we'd take them rather than waste a night in Da Nang. In short it was the worst journey yet. Was smokey, noisy and the seats were soft in the same way as you think of rocks as soft. Matters were definitely not helped by the crazy old guy sitting next to us who veered wildly between fits of cackling, heavy red bull drinking, loud snoring and bouts of babbling unintelligibly (toothlessly) to Aoife who had ended up with the seat next to him (and perhaps even the locals..). For those of you who have seen Kill Bill 2 he was very like the old kung fu master Pai Mei, but was craggier and seemed infinitely more crazy! Like this:

Aoife (in an uncharacteristic display of tolerance and patience) endeavoured to politely smile and say "I'm really sorry but I can't understand you". Needless to say than after the 5 minutes of this she realised that the man was clearly crazy (or to put it another way: his cheese had slid off of his cracker) as he was liberally spraying his fellow passengers with raw corn on the cob fodder. The moral of the story as far as Aoife is concerned is that all patience and tolerance gets you is heartache and eh... corn.

We arrived 20 sweltering hours later into Saigon two very stiff, sore and relieved backpackers! We got our taxi to a non guidebook hotel (how intrepid and cool are we??!) and plumped for an air-con room - plush The only problem was that we were seven flights up extremely gruelling stairs - lets just say that we were not glad for the "free workout"

As we failed in our efforts to see the DMZ we decided that a trip to the Cu Chi Tunnels was a touristy must. We booked a tour the day we arrived at the hotel and were picked up the following morning at 9am. Our tour guide was a Vietnamese guy who was in the American army so we thought we were going to be in for an interesting day.. However, when he still hadn't seemed to have drawn breath after 1 hour of mindless blabber (pocketed with only flickers of anything interesting) we realised that this was going to be a long day (the fact that Aoife was all out of patience following her encounter with her buddy on the train didn't help). The day was unbelievably touristy but the tunnels themselves were an interesting experience. I'm also pleased to report that Aoife (claustrophobe extraordinaire) managed to make it through the 1st section of the tunnels after overcoming her initial instinct to bolt when she saw how small they were. Afterwards I crumbled to peer pressure and testosterone when offered the chance of firing an AK-47 (sorry Mum!). It was cool and surprisingly loud but not an experience I'll be in a rush to try again..

That evening we booked ourselves on a two day trip to Phnom Penh in Cambodia via the Mekong Delta. The description of that mammoth journey is a whole other days discussion!

(Again I'm afraid photos are to follow as we are having problems uploading here!)

Hello from Saigon! We've swept through the whole length of vietnam this week so it's been go go go We grabbed an overnight sleeper train to Hue from Hanoi with a mind to visiting the DMZ and then moving on. The day we arrived it was a scorching 41 degrees. Dara O Briain says the melting point of an Irish male is 32.4 degrees celsius and it turns out he is absolutely correct. For the record, from our experience Irish females are no better equipped to handle high temperatures without a sea breeze and a cold drink.. We booked ourselves into a motorbike tour of the DMZ and then scurried back to the shade in our rooms.

The following day as we prepared to lather on the suncream we took a cursory glance out the window.. The temperature had dropped by 20 degrees and it was lashing rain - more Dundalk than Vietnam. Poor us The motorobike tour was also a washout as we would have had to spend about 5 hours on the back of a bike. Being Irish (sure a bit of rain never hurt anybody) we were actually fairly game for giving it a go but they were having none of it.. We spent the day instead plodding around Hue getting drenched. It wasn't all bad though - serendipity intervened when we came across some unattended tanks - hooray! We couldn't get any of them going so we just took a few photos and went on. I was beginning to get over vocal on animal rights and felt like hugging trees for some reason so I thought it was time to get my hair cut asap. We wandered into the first place we found - much to everybody's amusement. The girls in the shope eyed Aoife's hair greedily but she was having none of it given that they didn't speak a word of english. By contrast, I was able to sit down on the chair and make the "snip snip" gesture with my hands and away he went. I only got a bit nervous when they produced the cutthroat razor to tidy the edges. The fact that the girl doing it was giggling manically did not help to put me at ease but I escaped with ears intact.

Next day it rained again so we took it as a sign to move on to Hoi An. We caught a 4 hour bus (four hours is for wimps we know..) down and got dropped off right to our hotel door. We have been trying to do independent research for our destinations as a bit of a lashback against the book AKA Lonely Planet. We strolled in to our hotel well chuffed with ourselves for being "off the beaten track" Turns out the hotel was in it all along - foiled again. We then commenced hard bargaining for the price of the room. He may have weakened his position by conspiratorially informing us that he had charged "some old guy outside" $15 dollars for the room and that that was "waaay too much". Hehe - wally.. We got ours for $8 air conditioning included We also had a tv, private bathroom and minibar - backpacker heaven!

Hoi An was pretty cool - almost any girl's dream given that it has about 500 tailors who'll happily copy any design from a magazine, photo, napkin diagram.. I would be lying if I said that Aoife managed to resist completely but she didn't lose the run of herself

We have to go now as we are leaving early in the morning and are being kicked off this pc...

To be continued!