The end of the last hurrah....

This post has taken a while to write, because as soon as we got back to Australia we landed in the chaos of wedding preparations and catching up on 2 months of work, so we got distracted. Anyway, it's time to write about the last few days of our trip. but first, we have put some videos up on youtube from our travels:

http://www.youtube.com/smellandsnott

We spent the last few days of our trip just chilling out on Ko Chang, an island about 6 hours from bangkok. While we were there we did a lot of serious relaxing, lying in hammocks, playing cards, swimming at the beach, drinking with other travellers, and even one infamous karaoke session in a local bar....

We did also get a bit active - we went on a jungle trek one day, through some gorgeous forest - we visited a waterfall and even got a chance to see a tarantula - we thought the guide was joking when he said he would show us one, but he got us all to squat down quietly near a hole (well the girls all stood around at the back!) while he poked into it with a stick, and the tarantula sprang out to the front of its hole, fangs bared! After we'd taken some photos the guide blew on it and it ran back inside. We were very wary of small holes for the rest of the day.

Tarantula!!

Scott the monkey

Another day we went to play with elephants! As has previously been explained on this blog, Shelley loves elephants, so she was in heaven. We got to swim with them, feed them and go on a trek - our elephant was the young naughty one who kept veering off the path to try to find some food in the trees nearby, but we still liked her. We like the naughty ones.

Finally, on our last full day we went on a snokelling trip where we had a couple of great snorkels around the islands - so many colourful fish and coral! The black spiky anenomes and the long skinny pointy fish were our favourites. We also tried some fishing - no luck, although shelley wasn't sure what she would have done if she'd caught anything - and went for some swims near a beach. There was also much beer drinking and it was a really fun relaxing last day.

Then that was it! Back to the boat and the bus and the plane and back to Australia! We did have a great time on our trip and were reluctant to come home - but we do have a lot to do now!!

Totally Terrific Thailand!!!!

We crossed the border over to Thailand a fair bit earlier than we had planned, but we simply could not resist the red curries and tom yum soups any more, plus we were sick of the Laos buses and wanted to get our arses on some good old reliable Thai trains, so we quickly and very easily crossed the Friendship Bridge from Vientiane to Nong Khai.

We spent two nights in Nong Khai, checking out a couple of cool little temples but the highlight was a sculpture park built by this ex-monk, non-believer in marriage, guy who created the park in some sort of abstract attempt to display all the different forms of religion in a washing machine mix of sculptures. His messages were a little unclear but the grandure of the sculptures was second to none. There were at least 5 stone sculptures in the park over 20 metres tall and dozens more over 10 metres. They displayed mainly a mixture of buddha and hindu gods but with a twist, some with massive serpents around them, others in unusual positions, a big wheel of life and our favourite, a large stately elephant surrounded by small aggressive dogs doing a range of ‘bad’ things like gambling, drinking, smoking, copulating etc.


The rest of our time in Nong Khai was relatively uneventful except when the old English guy in the room next to us decided to bring a prostitute back to our hotel for some ‘boom boom’. The thins walls gave us a ringside seat, and Shell was not impressed to say the least.

Next we went to Khon Khaen for a quick 1 night stop over, where Shell was excited because she got to feed an elephant some sugar cane. That girl does love elephants. If we spot one in the street we normally have to follow it for at least 20 minutes, with Shell beaming the whole way – it’s pretty cute really. Other than that we had a quick look around the night markets and had a fairly early night.

Ayutaya was where we spent the next couple of nights. This town has a special place in Scott’s heart because it was the first place he went to when he began his travelling escapades about 6 years ago. The city has grown over the last 6 years but the many charming wats scattered around the town had not changed much and we had loads of fun riding around on a bike seeing the many beautiful ruins that are dotted around the country’s old capital.


After that we headed to Lopburi, which is we like to call monkey town. There are hundreds of monkeys that live in one of the temples in the centre of town and because of Buddhist belief of not killing creatures (combined with the income the monkeys bring through tourism), they are allowed to pretty much roam free. This puts them in the same category as you see many of the animals throughout the small villages (part domesticated and part wild) but none the less still very cheeky and amusing.

Needless to say we had a great time watching the monkeys eat, swing, fight and play, sometimes with each other and sometimes with us. They climbed up both Scott’s and Shelley’s backs on several occasions, elevating themselves to our heads where they proceeded to groom and pick at our hair. They especially loved Shell’s dress and Shell enjoyed swinging them around playfully. It was always the little ones that wanted to play, the big ones had obviously outgrown that type of behaviour – unlike us :) You have to be careful though, once Shell swung one of the little monkeys a bit fast and it’s mother came up and showed us her teeth unappreciatively. Also the monkeys sometimes want to keep playing when you don’t and like to continue to jump on you even though they know that you don’t want them to. Little guys are so cheeky and human like it’s almost unbelievable.




So then after monkey town we spent one night in Bangkok where we did too much shopping for Scott’s liking (he is so not a shopper), went back to our favourite Bangkok bar for a few drinks and a couple of games of pool, then took the bus the next morning back to Kho Chang where we plan on chilling out for the rest of our trip, which is less than a week away – oh well it’s been a good ride :)

Valour, velocity and vodka in Vang Vieng

After our epic bus journeys down through Laos, we finally arrived in Vang Vieng!! Yay! It was definitely a change from northern Laos, a lot lot lot more touristy but the town is surrounded by impressive limestone mountains and so it has a really nice feel to it. A lot of the restaurants in town have TVs playing the simpsons or friends 24/7, which is a bit perturbing, but there are also a lot of bars and more nightlife than we've seen on the rest of our trip combined! We spent a lot of time drinking in Vang Vieng, met some English guys and Aussie girls and had lots of fun dancing around with them and drinking strange cocktail buckets.

But we didn't just drink in Vang Vieng, we also had fun exploring the area and getting pretty active! Which wasn't easy when you're hungover, but we're tough. Our first day we went for a walk to a big cave just out of town, which was great to explore because there weren't many other people there, so it felt quite eerie. There was also a spring flowing out of the cave and we swam up that for a while - well shelley made scott go first and whinged all the way about how scary it was, but she still enjoyed it - it was pretty scary to swim through a cave filled with water in the half-light, it felt like a monster was about to come up below you and swallow you whole. But we survived somehow.

The second day we went on a big expedition with a few other people - first we went to another underground cave, but this one was heaps bigger, and you went through it on an inner tube with a head torch on, pulling yourself along by a rope. At some points you got out of the tube and went crawling through the cave, squeezing yourself through little gaps and under ledges - it was hard on the knees but felt very adventurous! Scott was at the back so Shelley had fun laughing at the image of him - a small head lamp in the darkness illuminating Scott cramming himself through some ridiculous gap. Then Scott would start laughing and get stuck, so we were always trying to catch up with everyone else!

After another cave and a yummy lunch - much better than the trekking food!!! - we spent the afternoon kayaking down the river, with a stop off at one of the tubing bars for some sliding, volleyball and beers. The scenery was gorgeous and there were a lot of rapids on the way, plus it was fun to watch the English guys sink their kayak! But our arms were tired by the end of the day.
Our last day in Vang Vieng was the best - it was Shelley's birthday!!!!

So after Shell had opened her presents and we had pancakes for breakfast we ventured out for our tubing day. It didn't take long for us to get stuck into a few drinks and enjoy the tubing down the river. It also didn't take long for Scott to do something stupid and hurt himself...

At the first bar we stopped at they had this flying fox thing that hung out from a platform from one of the bars and had a stop that made it stop suddenly half way across the rivers. The girls were smart and let go before the flying fox hit the swing but the guys were stupid - I mean brave, yeah that's it. They held on until the swing hit the stop and the suddenly deceleration would send fling them into a backflip. Scott thought that looked like fun, but forgot that unlike the other guys he only weighed a puny 64kg and hence was flung a lot faster than the other guys, was flipped one and a half turns and came down at top speed onto his head. Five days later he is still feeling the pain and hopes he hasn't broken his arm - Shell says he's just a big wuss bag.
The rest of the day was filled with more rope swings, lots of dancing, drawing silly pictures and pirate faces on each other and birthday messages on Shell, a fair bit of boozing, very little actual tubing, which is what the day was supposed to be about and a cool big water slide that is similar to a home made speed slide from Wet and Wild but instead it ramps up at the end and launches you about 4 metres into the air before you crash in the river - it was awesome fun. Needless to say Shell had an excellent day.

The end of our time in Laos was a couple of days spent in Vientiane, mostly recovering from Vang Vieng! We also managed a bit of a walking tour to explore some wats and a strange Laos replica of the Arc de Triomphe, as well as a visit to their huge gold national monument. We amused ourselves by calling each other stupa-heads.

Wat?

Lots and lots of tiny Buddhas in the alcoves

Stupa-head at a Stupa

But that was it, the end of Laos, we crossed the Friendship Bridge into Thailand and will now spend the next 12 days travelling down to Bangkok for our flight home. Laos was good to us but we are definitly happy to be in the land of red curry - so long sticky rice!!!

Mellowing in Muang Sing

After Luang Nam Tha we headed even further north for a couple of days to stay in Muang Sing. This is our favourite place so far on our trip – just a small town with hardly any tourists, surrounded by mountains and rice paddies. Scott found us a great room with a balcony that had a gorgeous sunset view, and we had a relaxing couple of days wandering around the area. We hired bikes on one day and cycled to China (it was 12km to the border) where we turned around when we saw the scary looking guards. We also visited the morning market where all the different hill tribes around Muang Sing come to sell their wares – lots of weird and wonderful spices, vegetables, sweets, textiles and many unidentifiable objects. There were no other tourists at all and we spent a while wandering around looking at all the different people and goods.

Finally we began to head back south. It was only a two hour bus ride to Luang Nam Tha but after we arrived there, had lunch and a nap, we realised we’d left our laptop charger in our hotel room in Muang Sing – oops. So The Intrepid Scott hired a motorbike and zoomed back to get it, racing the sun – he had to do the last half an hour in the dark with a motorbike light that only illuminated his motorbike basket, so he was tired when he arrived back 4 hours later (but triumphantly holding the charger!) and we headed for the herbal sauna. We haven’t mentioned the Laos herbal saunas yet, but they are amazing, we love them! It costs you 10,000 kip ($2) and they give you a sarong, then you can go in and out of the sauna as many times as you like, and they give you tea when you come out for a break. So nice and relaxing, and very hot!

It was a good idea to have the sauna because then we ended up doing two huge bus rides in a row – 9 hours back to Luang Prabang, and then another 7 hours the next day to Vang Vieng. These buses were not as good as the first ones – a lot slower, bumpier and with one constantly sniffing Laos guy behind us, who Shelley was ready to throttle. But we got there eventually! In between the buses we crossed over with Lana and Molly in Luang Prabang, so we had dinner with them and then got up early before our bus ride the next day to see the ceremony they have in Luang Prabang –every morning the monks file down the main street where the locals (and some tourists) give them an offering of food. It’s quite a sight to see a long line of orange-robed monks being handed sticky rice, and a really touching ceremony – monks are highly respected in Laos society.

So now we are down south in the traveller’s haven and amazingly touristy Vang Vieng, where we plan to get up to a lot of general debauchery!

Trekking in Northern Laos

Despite the events (or non-events) of new year’s eve, Shelley, rough and tough as ever, bravely boarded the bus up north on new years day. This was to be the first of our encounters with the infamous Laos bus system. We turned up at 10.45am for the midday bus – luckily as it turns out because it actually left at 11am. We were the last two passengers (they were waiting for two more even though there were already 12 people in the 10 seater minivan when we got there). The 5 hour ride only took 4 hours, which was good once you stopped holding your breath and closing your eyes at every corner. The day after we took another 4 hour bus ride and eventually turned up in Luang Nam Tha.

The North part of Laos is really nice – a lot less tourists around, and gorgeous scenery of mountains, jungle and rice paddies everywhere. However the people are a bit of a mixed bag – there is a lot of Chinese influence because it’s very close to the Chinese border, and some of the people seem to be less friendly than the Laos people everywhere else. Anyway, we didn’t stay too long in the town, we quickly organised a 3 day trek for the next day, in a group with a swiss couple and a german guy.

It was so nice to get out of the towns and go trekking. We did about 6 hours of walking each day, mostly through the jungle – and often along precariously narrow paths on the edge of mountains! It was great fun, and we remembered how much we love trekking around all day. Our guide told us a lot about the plants in the jungle that are used by the local people for food or medicine, and a lot of the products they collect to export to China! It seemed like pretty much everything they could find or make, they exported to China. The food on the trek was traditional Laos food of the villages we stayed in, so it was...er...interesting to say the least (strange green sticks, banana flower paste, mushy white vegetables, chicken hearts) and some of it was really nice, but after three days we were sooooooo sick of sticky rice! Cold sticky rice and banana flower paste is not the most appetising breakfast ever.

Other than the food, it was great to stay in the little villages in the middle of the jungle. The first night we stayed in an Akha village where we made friends with a bunch of the kids – Scott taught them some English and tried to teach them how to do his hand-whistling trick (no one could, including Shelley and the other tourists), and they taught Shelley one of their Akha songs. The village was quite picturesque – lots of bamboo huts in the middle of the jungle, with kids and piglets and chickens and puppies running around everywhere.

After dinner the village chief kept feeding us lao lao (rice whiskey) and made us all sing songs. The Laos people are great singers, we think it might be because their language is tonal, and also because they are brought up with singing as their main communal entertainment. Even the kids have great voices and know lots of songs! We couldn’t think of many so we sang “In the jungle” with Scott doing the wimoweh part, and then “I still call Australia home” and “Kookaburra sits in the old gum tree” which they really liked. The chief was also very impressed with Shelley’s singing of the Akha song the kids had taught her! It was a great evening and then when we left the next day the chief gave us all bracelets as a souvenir.

On the second day we had more trekking, more sticky rice, and we also played a fun Akha game which involved two seed pods that you threw, flicked and then hopped along with one seed pod balanced on your foot to kick it at the other seed pod. It was fun for a while but then we got a bit over it – but we had to keep playing because our guide was really enjoying it and wouldn’t let us stop! The second night the village we stayed at was similar to the first but we think they get more tourists staying there as they weren’t as interested in us. We still had some singing and playing with the kids (and more lao lao – our guide loved lao lao!) but it was a quieter night. Scott also had a tummy bug so he had an early night. Finally we arrived back in civilisation on day three, happy and tired and very eager to get some non-rice food in town!

Loving Laos

We are so happy to be in Laos. Vietnam was ok, but Laos seems great already – so much quieter, and the people are really friendly – everyone is ready to smile and say ‘sabaidee!’

We flew into Luang Prabang on the 27th and spent 5 nights there – a little longer than we had planned but we wanted to be somewhere fun for new years, and they were gearing up for it in a big way in Luang Prabang. On the night we arrived our usual search for hotels was thwarted by everywhere being full – eventually we found a place where they let us have a tent outside. It was cheap though! No sooner had we settled in to our tent than we found out the hotel owner was taking some of the other guests out to a local Laos disco, so we tagged along. It was just a tad different from a Western nightclub, mostly dark couches with a dancefloor in the middle, where the Laos youth did line dancing to a live band alternating with dj music. We joined in with the line dancing after a while, it was lots of fun!

Our days in Luang Prabang were mostly spent moseying around. We did a lot of walking around to different Wats (temples) and some museums, drinking beer and watching the sunset. We also visited a nice waterfall just outside the city (took some sweet talking to get in as we didn’t know it had an entry fee and hadn’t brought enough money) where Scott went swimming in the waterholes (Shell was too wussy – it was freezing!) and we visited some bears that were in a sanctuary after being saved from illegal wildlife trading. While waiting for our fellow minibus passengers to come back we also had fun watching baby chickens and puppies running around in the carpark. It’s always hard watching the way animals are treated in Asia. Some seem to be happy – dogs and pigs and chickens that get to roam around wherever they want – but others get treated really badly, like the little birds in tiny tiny basket cages they were selling at a temple we visited, presumably for worshippers to set free as a gift to buddha. I don’t think he would have liked the idea.

We also spent a day cycling around the countryside, and it was great to get out of town and do some decent exercise. We had lunch in a tiny village and visited some more wats – one of which was 5 levels high and was covered inside with ornate paintings of buddha’s life, and also the different types of hells! A friendly well-meaning monk offered to explain the paintings to us, but his limited english combined with his enthusiasm for the subject matter meant it was a a slow and painful process and so we escaped as soon as we could without offending him. We are enjoying seeing the monks everywhere again, the town looks so much nicer with orange-robed monks wandering around everywhere. Apparently they have a ceremony every day at 6am where all the monks walk down the main street and the villagers offer them food – we meant to go really we did but we are just too lazy for 6am.

Finally, after chilling out in Luang Prabang for a few days, it was New Year’s Eve! We were so excited! We watched the sunset with a beer and had some dinner and cards, then called our parents just after New Year’s in Oz, and headed to the pub. All was good – loads of people out, we met a few groups of people and started chatting and playing pool...

And then, at 10:30pm, Shell’s tummy decided it wasn’t happy. She thought it was the dodgy Laos cocktail she had just had, and even after we headed home at 11pm for a quick vomit, it all seemed better and we went back out to the pub. Met some more people, everywhere was packed and getting ready for a lot of partying. However, shell’s tummy didn’t want to party. In fact, it wanted to be a party pooper. At 11:50pm, it just couldn’t wait any longer, and so we ended up having our new year’s countdown in our room, in between vomits. Woooooooo!!!!! Lucky we stayed in Luang Prabang for those couple of extra nights. What a gut-wrenching story – that’s for you Brian.

Don’t worry, Shell was much better the next day, and even managed to brave a 5 hour bus trip. She’s saving her partying for later on in this trip!

Hannoying Hanoi

Ok, so our time in Hanoi has been fairly up and down. Generally up in the night time and down in the day. Things started off in the usual manner. The guesthouse we wanted to stay at was full and the surrounding ones were either full or out of our price range, so Scott did the usual wandering around for an hour in the beep beep of the traffic (to be honest the continual sound of horns and dodging through crazy motorbike drivers has slowly started to send us crazy. It was fun for a while but now the thought of stepping outside to face the chaos gives Shell a small twitch in her left eye). Anyway, Scott found a pretty good, cheap and QUIET (Oh my god such luck!!!) guesthouse. We then booked a trip for Halong Bay for the next morning.

Our Halong Bay trip was not as much of an up as we had hoped. After being an hour late to pick us up and overbooking the boat, then trying to blame the guests for "making things difficult" for all wanting to actually go on the boat, having 2 stand offs on the port, 1 stand off on the boat in the port (with a break from the stand offs of a nice pleasant lunch of peanuts, cucumber and rice for the vegos), we finally left the port for the legendary Halong Bay approximately 3 hours later than scheduled.

We then got dropped off at some big cave thing, which was an impressive series of quite large limestone caverns, but then our boat broke - are you serious!!! The guide made some feeble excuses about the port being too shallow to bring the boat in but we noticed that from that moment on we found our boat being towed by another little but hopefully more reliable boat.
After that we cruised round the bay for about an hour - which was quite beautiful. We spent the night playing cards with the other guests. Made some friends with a nice NZ couple and a gang of 6 nice English lads (and one lass). Woke the next morning for a quick kayak session around the islands, which was pretty, jumped back into the big boat being towed by the small boat, back to Halong Bay City, into the bus and back to lovely Hanoi. Actually, Halong Bay itself was nice, but the organised boat trip was a bit of a cock up.

We then spent the next 4 days in Hanoi, because we decided to fly to Laos - yay - but the earliest plane was on the 27th - poo, stuck in Hanoi-ing. Everywhere we go people tell us how horrible the buses are and how difficult the border crossing we planned to use is, so bugger it, we bit the bullet and bought the flight.

The days in Hanoi were a bit frustrating - lots of wandering around avoiding traffic and being beeped at. We did get to see Ho Chi Minh stuffed in his mausoleum (which Scott thought was interesting, but just gave Shelley the giggles), and some cool markets. But the nights in Hanoi have been much more enjoyable - we spent the first night after Halong Bay going out to some pubs with the English guys we met on the boat, had 1 litre "Big Man Beers", played some pool and had a dance - it was nice for us both to have some other people to play with!
The next night was also fun as the soccer final (Vietnam and Thailand) was on, being watched by everyone in town, and luckily Vietnam won, so the streets were full of motorbikes and people waving flags, everyone driving round and beeping for hours after the game! Since it was Christmas eve there was a mixture of Vietnam flags and santa balloons being waved around, and our waiter was a santa who gave us lollies - yay. Christmas is celebrated heaps more than we thought it would be here - well at least the commercial aspect is everywhere, with tinsel, santa suits and christmas trees in almost every shop. Our Christmas day was nice and relaxed - we had bought each other some cool little gifts, then we rang our parents and went out for a decadent Christmas breakfast of pancakes and chocolate ice cream -yum!!

Last night was also fun - we went to see a water puppet show, which was entertaining and very pretty, accompanied by a band of traditional vietnamese instruments. So now it's off to Laos - Gooooooooooood Bye Vietnaaaaaaaaam!!!

The High Road to Hoi An

After the excitement of Dalat we decided we needed some relaxation, so we headed to the much-rumoured (but difficult to track down) Jungle Beach resort. While the water wasn't as clean as we hoped and it was a bit on the expensive side, it was still nice to chill out there for a few days, away from the constant horn-tooting that pervades the rest of Vietnam. We had sent our trusty guinea pigs (Sarah and Chantal) on ahead so we knew how to get there and we managed to convince them to stay an extra day so we could pester them. Notable events at Jungle Beach included lots of reading, card-playing and beach-walking up to the local fishing village, as well as the appearance of a cobra (very exciting) and shelley getting bitten by a dog (small panic until we found out it gets yearly rabies shots). Shelley is now banned from hurting herself any more for at least another week.

Our hut at Jungle Beach

We then sent our faithful guinea pigs off again ahead of us, to discover that the night bus was not a very good idea (something to do with drugtaking bus driver and plentiful horn beeping) so we backtracked to nha trang and got the overnight train to Hoi An instead. This turned out to be a great idea since we spent a lovely afternoon in Nha Trang visiting a big buddha and a great photographic exhibition and walking along the seaside, and the train was quite comfy. We took our poor guinea pigs out for dinner in Hoi An to thank them for their suffering on our behalf :)

Big buddha in Nha Trang

So we finally arrived in Hoi An, which has turned out to be a great little town, full of life and little streets, old buildings and most of all - clothes shops! There are no photos of our (many) purchases yet as they are still being altered to our size, but we have definitely done our share of shopping for the year! It's quite fun being measured and getting things made especially for you. Scott especially looks very spiffing in his wedding tux!

As well as shopping (it takes lots of time!) we have been wandering the streets of Hoi An and eating the yummy and cheap food here (3 course vego meal for $3!!). It's great seeing the pretty temples and just watching the street life go by - yes pretty much everyone wears the pointy conical hats and they manage to balance ridiculous amounts on motorbikes and bicycles! We really like the Vietnamese, they have a good sense of humour and seem to be very playful and friendly all the time. Bargaining involves lots of laughter (what! noooo! i not buy the material for that! You help me, you no worry! you give me little bit more!)

Boats on the river in Hoi An

Pretty pagoda

We have managed one side trip while staying here - to the ancient Cham ruins of My Son. They were pretty (very old and covered in grass and ferns) but the girls had most fun taking photos with the large Lingum statues :)