the globeTROTTERS

Post-Gibbon Experience, we were supposed to head back down the Mekong and into Vang Vieng, a backpacker's  mecca with lovely surrounds and tubing. The destination sounded delightful, but the journey didn't. I looked at a map. "Hey Bill, Chiang Mai [Thailand] looks like it's right here". Bill looked and agreed. We were both tempted. A few more inquiries and we learned that it was a mere border crossing and 4 hour minivan ride away. It took about 3 seconds to decide.

We went back to our favorite city thus far and just lounged for a few days. Back to our old food haunts, specifically Chiang Mai Saloon. Faang, our favorite waitress, was excited to see us. A few tacos later and we were in heaven.

Somewhere along the way, our air ticket got screwed up. It's a complicated ticket and a lot of people have had their hands in the pot and it was inevitable. It had been screwed up for months and we realized it about the time when we were sitting in Thailand waiting to fly out of Bangkok for India. Bill, thankfully, looked at the ticket and realized - oops - that we were now flying out of Singapore. Hmm. Just 2 countries away. Calling the airlines was fruitless; there was no record of the change. We went through a flurry of emotions but resolved to make the best of it. Bill had never been to Malaysia (I went once a couple of years ago for work) and Malaysia was between Thailand and Singapore. It's not perfect logic, but we aren't perfect (despite what my mother may tell me).

We bought an Air Asia ticket from Chiang Mai to Kuala Lumpur (KL). KL is a futuristic looking city. Like Singapore, it is clean, full of nice restaurants and in my opinion, rather unremarkable. Don't get me wrong, I like the place, but there's not a ton of stuff to go see or do save for the Petronas Towers (formerly the tallest building in the world, but now usurped by a larger one in Taiwan) and KL Tower.

Bill in front of Petronas Towers, the world's largest, er, second-largest building after another one in Taiwan

We cashed in some Starwood points and stayed at the Sheraton Imperial, where I had previously stayed on my work trip. Malaysia does have phenomenal deals on hotels and this was categorized as the least expensive hotel category. In fact, when I last stayed here I paid a corporate rate of $45 USD a night! Awesome prices aside, this also just happens to be one of the best hotels in the world. The service is impeccable and the rooms are a delightful retreat for a world weary traveler...make that 2 world weary travelers.

The KL Tower as seen from the view in our hotel room

I am a little ashamed, but not too ashamed, to say that we did absolutely nothing noteworthy by our own volition (actually we did go to the Little India market one night). Our brief stay in KL involved the hotel pool, electronics shoping, Starbuck's, TGI Friday's nachos and KFC (Bill said a bucket was overkill for 2 people). We have really enjoyed eating food everywhere that we go and Malaysia was no exception, we did have several Malay dishes. But a little taste of home was sinfully delightful.

On our last day, we hopped on a luxury bus to Singapore, just a short six hours away. The 16-seater bus had seats that resembled your dad's Laz-Z-Boy as well as on-demand videos, music and games. Imagine Bill and I's delight when we found the original Super Mario Brothers as a gaming choice!


Bill in his happy place on the luxury bus from KL to Singapore

When we arrived to Singapore , we hopped in a taxi that immediately took us to our slum hotel, recommended by Lonely Planet. [Sometimes, I really question the criteria for making a guidebook.] A good meal down the street and a lucky find of a wine bar next door made the stay palatable (pun intended).

Bill and I both found ourselves getting excited. Nearly Christmas-morning-excited (but everyone that knows me also knows that it is impossible to rival that feeling). We started thinking ahead to India, our next destination. We had heard so much, but we knew so little. Would children and poor men and women be clinging to us for money? Would the smell be awful? Would the dress really be as colorful as we expected? How would the food taste - would it be as good as what we think of as Indian food at home? These were all unanswered questions in our mind.

We were nervous, we were excited. Everyone says you either love it or hate it. We were ready to start a love affair with India...

- Chrissy

Most trekking and tourism companies across Asia promote themselves as being ecotourism-friendly. We knew the concept - a positive or neutral effect on the environment – but we did not really feel like any of the companies that we had worked with to-date really met that mandate - and then we came across The Gibbon Experience.

 

The project is based in Houay Xai, a border town to Thailand, in the northwest corner of Laos. Most agriculture in this area relies on slash-and-burn farming to cultivate rice paddies. The idea is that along the buffer zone to the jungle, young trees and the surrounding land is burned so that hill rice and corn can be planted. After this first stage, an irrigation system is put into place and rice is planted in the rice paddies.

 

This buffer zone is an important part of the Bokeo Reserve eco-system but it’s encroachment into the jungle could be detrimental to existing flora and fauna. About eight years ago, a frenchman saw the potential of the area and created a business plan that the Laos government supported. He and Laos villagers built a system of cables across the forest canopy. Each set of cables ultimately led to five treehouses that were placed at the top of some of the valleys within the jungle. The plan was, and is, simple and complex at the same time. Some of the main principles are:

 

1. Protect the existing flora and fauna from poachers, logging companies and the negative effects of slash-and-burn agriculture
2. Provide locals with sustainable income
3. Employ locals for the project as cooks, cleaners, guides and reserve guards
4. Give a one-of-a-kind experience to tourists without endangering the environment
5. Invest one euro for ever hectare in the reserve (123,000 hectares)
6. Guard the entire reserve (currently only 25% can be protected by the guards)
7. Eventually, turn the whole project completely over to the Laos people

 

The project’s ambitious goals also include relying purely on word-of-mouth. In the three years that they have been running, The Gibbon Experience is consistently booked and has managed not to be mentioned in any guidebooks (even Lonely Planet!). Their web site is (http://www.gibbonx.org) is purposely ambiguous – they want people to enter the experience with little pre-conceived notions and discover everything along the way. They currently make more money every year than a logging company could do once. Not bad.

 

Bill and I had tried to book in advance, but getting a response via e-mail or phone was getting frustrating. Houay Xai does not have a reliable internet connection. We further suspect that the super-sized laid back attitude of Laos people also plays into this. So we sat in Luang Prabang and waited for a few days. We didn’t want to take a 2-day slow boat trip up the Mekong only to show up to a booked program. This was, after all, the complete opposite direction that we were ultimately heading. Our next stop was to be Vang Vieng and Vientiane, Laos.

 

Finally, we got a note about a cancellation and an open spot for us. Some of our best memories from this trip has involved animal encounters and we were really excited and jumped on it. Well, I was excited about it and I thought Bill was as well. He was too busy contemplating the high wires that we would be riding and staying in treehouses hundreds of feet up in the air. For the umpteenth time, Bill was cursing that too many cool things were so high up.

 

The boat trip up the Mekong was sloooooow. There was a speed boat, but it’s not what you’re thinking. It was more like a canoe with a lawn mower motor on back where you had to wear life preservers and crash helmets. It’s the dry season, so hitting a rock at high speed didn’t sound overly appealing to either of us.

 

Two hours in, we were enjoying the scenery, but our butts hurt and we were hungry. There was no food and we had to sit on benches with a small cushion. We ate what little food we brought, but we were both dreaming of Peanut M&Ms.

 

That night, we had to overnight in a small town named Pakbeng. It was a delightfully cute town that relied on generators for power. Late at night, all power is turned off. We had a great Laotian meal and played cards until the lights went off. We even tried to tell ghost stories, but both realized that they aren’t quite as scary when you are 30 years old. I thought I was looking scary with my head lamp wrapped around my chin with the light facing up but Bill informed me that it was not a good look. He couldn’t remember any of the endings, but that didn’t stop him from telling me half of it.

 

If anyone has any good stories, please enlighten us.

 

The next day we stocked up with more food and asked the lady at our guesthouse to make some chicken baguette sandwiches. Laos has yummy fresh baguettes everywhere and we later found out that we had some really frigging good sandwiches. Three hours further up the Mekong I pondered whether or not we could call the lady and have her deliver us a couple more of her sandwiches in a speedboat. She may not like the crash helmets either though.

 

Houay Xai was a two-street town and the only question was what direction to go. We made a guess and it worked out. This was good because we had to walk a kilometer before we got into town.

 

We checked in at The Gibbon Experience and then headed out for dinner. One of the ladies working at the office had mentioned a festival going on at the top of the hill at one of the pagodas. We decided to check it out. Aside from the humor of seeing monks manning the soundboard, the festival was rather unexciting. We had some good fresh egg rolls made with something that was tasty but had gelatinous meat product and then played an immensely popular Laos game that has a name, just not one that I can remember right now. The rules are simple; you get 3 darts and get a prize according to how many balloons you pop. My lame one balloon got me a piece of candy, but Bill was quite satisfied with his 2 balloon pops. He missed out on a jar of bird’s eggs, but got something that tasted like Kool-Aid. He does truly love Kool-Aid so at least one of us left satisfied.

 

The next morning, we met at the office and watched the safety video for the zip line cables. No one was particularly thrilled that the contract mentioned the possibility of bears eating us or being personally responsible if someone else kicked the bucket, but we all wanted to see some gibbons and ride zip wires so we signed it.

 

Our group included 2 Swedish girls, 2 Brits, a German and another girl from the US. Halfway into our 3.5 hour trip we all realized that we were missing the obligatory Aussies. Aussies are everywhere and I mean everywhere and we didn’t have any. We felt shafted. Just then we stopped to stretch our legs and two Aussies hopped in (apparently they had pre-arranged to meet us there). We all breathed a sigh of relief and headed on our way.

 

After a one hour walk through the small village, we arrived at a small hut known simply as “The Kitchen”. A small Laotian girl was sitting outside on the ground feeding a small creature a bottle. On closer inspection, we realized it was an Asiatic black bear! The month old baby had been found in the arms of probable poachers and been rescued from the forest guards. The whole group immediately fell in love with her, but had to find off the also cute, but completely jealous macaques.

 

Me playing with a macaque and asiatic black bear while Lao villager looks on.

 

I never dreamed I'd marry a man who had a monkey on his back

 

We got geared up with harnesses and headed out to the first zip. One of the macaques jumped in my arms, snuggled up and I ended up carrying him up the hill.

 

The first zip was a short distance and a good warm-up for the whole group. Safety in back, roller in front, check them both and GO! Bill wasn’t the only nervous one in the group. After one zip, he was loving it.

 

We all zipped to Treehouse #1 and then took a rest. It was quite strange zip-wiring into a treehouse. It was also strange to be in a tree house. The day only got stranger. It took a bit to figure out who was staying where, but Bill and I ended up in Treehouse #3. We traversed a really, really long zip en route to treehouse #2 and ended up on a really scary small platform overlooking trees WAY below us. You didn’t have to have a fear of heights to want to get the heck off of this thing. We latched in, did a leap of faith and ended up just one more zip away from #2.

 

Bill zipping away

 

The Aussies were staying there, so we bid “G’day” and hiked another 20 minutes to get to our zip. Ours really flew and I almost went through the place. Bill and I were immediately greeted by Dale and Kenny, two English blokes that had arrived the day before us. One look out at the view and we were smitten. We were at the top of large tree overlooking a valley way below. The guide said he’d be back in the morning and then was off.

 

Our whole group hanging out in Treehouse #1

 

Dale and Kenny wanted to get back to the zips and asked us to join them. We wanted to as well and we were off.

 

If you don't make it all the way, you have to manually pull youself the rest of the way. This is not fun for many reasons with the number one reason being you sway a lot as you hoist yourself over 450 feet of valley below with nothing but two cables attached to a wire

 

That night, we played cards and listened to the sounds of the jungle. Bill and I have trekked numerous times throughout this trip and all throughout Asia, but we had not encountered such beautiful sounds. We were truly away from it all and loving every minute of it.

 

I’m not sure who, but one of us decided to shine lights at the top of the treehouse near the tree. We were greeted with the eery red eye of the resident spider. It was on the move and big. Really big. Kenny jumped under his mosquito net and asked for someone to pass his bag. He was in for the night.

 

At 6 a.m., we awoke to the strangest, most beautiful song that I have ever heard. One of the selling points of the Gibbon Experience is to hear the singing (most people do not get to actually see the gibbons). With that said, we didn’t have any idea what a gibbon sounded like. We didn’t even know what one looked like until recently. The only way that we can think to describe it is like a cross between a Texas Aggie “Whoop”, a car alarm and a police siren. This clipping is close, but not quite as cool as the sounds we heard, but here is a recording of the same species of black-cheeked gibbon (nomanus concolor) that we observed:

 

Gibbon recording, courtesy of the Gibbon Research Center in Germany

 

As usual, I was attempting to sleep. “CHRISSY. GET UP. CHRISSY, CHRISSY. GIBBON.” Bill was yelling and whispering at the same time. I got up. We were fortunate to catch 3 gibbons (2 males and 1 female) sitting in the trees in the valley below. We watched them for a few minutes before they carried on their way. We were very lucky to see these elusive animals.

 

Black-crested gibbon, courtesy of wikipedia.org. Although we got a great glimpse of them, we were unable to get a good photo ourselves.

 

The afternoon was spent zip-lining with Rob and Dan (the other Brits) and Camilla and Karin (the Swedes). We all had a blast. Later, Bill and I attempted to find out how to zip into Treehouse #2. We eventually found the zip, but not before getting lost. We stopped for 20 minutes as we listened to what sounded like a low growl. There was a large animal on the move and the birds were going nuts. We never did see it, but suspect it may have been a bear. When we felt it was safe, we continued on and eventually zipped over to #2 to greet Elizabeth and Daniel (the Aussies).

 

Bottoms up view of Treehouse #2

 

A cicada and her eggs that we spotted as we walked through the woods

 

No one wanted to move treehouses, and Dale and Kenny had left that morning, so Bill and I got our own treehouse that night. We enjoyed a good sunset followed by a nice, quiet meal by candle light. We were both reading with our head lamps when Bill suggested we look for the big spider. We both shone our lights up to the ceiling and spotted an eye. And another and another and another and another. Then we literally found the mother of them all. And she was right above us! The fun had now worn off and we both pulled a Kenny and jumped under the mosquito net.

 

Sunset view from our treehouse

 

Hanging out by candlelight in treehouse #3

 

The next day we awoke to the gibbons singing again and were lucky to spot two more males. We were amazed at their dexterity, especially the way their long arms could twist at the wrist into a near 360 degree turn.

 

In preparation for leaving, we started to make the hour long trek back to Treehouse #1. The reserve was going to be closed the following week for a group of hot air balloonists that had reserved the place. As we zipped back, we both noticed a white hot air balloon in the distance.

 

Arriving into the treehouse, I snapped some pictures of the balloon. I couldn’t believe or luck and then Bill told me to hurry down from the top level (yep, a 3-tiered treehouse!) to see the gigantic squirrel. I’ve never seen a squirrel like this and the Aussies had never seen squirrels so it was quite exciting.

 

The giant flying black squirrel outside of treehouse #1

 

As we say nearly every entry, we were sad to leave. We were supposed to head south to Vang Vieng, Laos for some tubing, but had a change of heart. We were just five hours away from Chiang Mai, one of our favorite stops in Thailand. With only 10 days left in SE Asia, we decided this would be a fitting end to a great run. With Camilla and Karin, we hopped on a boat and did a five minute boat ride across the Mekong. The Thai transportation system is amazing and a van was waiting. Four hours later, we arrived in Chiang Mai.

 

Gibbon Facts (source: Wikipedia):

• The can swing up to 50 feet in one swing
• They travel at speeds up to 35 mph
• Their wrists are comprised of a ball and socket allowing them great dexterity

- Chrissy

 

We rolled into Hanoi by bus when it was still early enough in the morning to be dark out.  It had just finished raining and the roads were a little wet.  We got two guys on motorbikes to take us to our hotel.  Hanoi has a nice Hilton that we used points to pay for.  It would be an average hotel back home, but we had been roughing it for a while and this place seemed magnificent.  Clean white sheets, plenty of hot water (in a clean bathroom), just what we needed.

 

We harass the front desk guy into checking us in early and go relax in the room and get cleaned up.  Feeling like new human beings we head out to see some Hanoi sights.  First stop is to pay our respects to Mr. Ho Chi Minh.  Being good communists, the Vietnamese have got his body preserved in a big mausoleum.  It's free to get in too.  We take a bike cycle rickshaw over there and move through a very quick line to get into the chamber where they have his body.  The whole place is very well done.  The path leading up to the mausoleum and along the hall inside is all lined with ceremoniously dressed solders.  These guys keep you walking, you don't even get to stop when you get to Ho Chi, just make a quick half circle around him and out the door you go.  He looks pretty good.  Too good.  Almost like a figure in wax museum.  They send his body to Moscow for a couple of months each year for maintenance.  Creepy.

 

After the mausoleum, we also tour Ho Chi Minh's house and a Ho Chi Minh museum that are nearby.  The house is small and simple.  I think made to show him as "one of the people".  I am somewhat skeptic of anything presented in Vietnam or any communist country for that matter.  Propaganda is everywhere.  The museum actually wasn't that bad.  I expected a joint Ho Chi Minh Is Great/Americans Are Evil theme, and there was some of that but it wasn't over the top (like the war museum in Saigon).  We enjoyed the tour.

 

The next day we take our time getting up and enjoy a civilized morning at the Hilton.  We get a proper breakfast (provided free) each morning complete with good coffee and newspapers.  Much of the day is spent lounging around before we meet up with our Aussie friends Ryan and Mel for dinner.  Chrissy planned the evening.  We had a nice wine and steak dinner at Bobby Chin's (this is an international chain, if you haven't heard of it).  It was the eve of Tet, an important Vietnamese holiday so there were fireworks and other festivities that evening.  The streets were full of vendors selling stuff like cotton candy and really big balloons.  Chrissy had a good time buying balloons and giving them to kids. 

 

These balloon vendors where everywhere because of the Tet holiday.

 

We eventually found a place on the sidewalk that sold beer and sat down on stools to wait for the fireworks.  I was hoping that being in Asia would mean that the firework show would be spectacular.  Didn't the Chinese invent fireworks?  Anyway, the show was good, but not that different than what we get at home.  Other than the fact that fire safety isn't as big a concern as what you would expect.  They fired off huge fireworks right over the city and the crowds.  Cool.

 

The following day was more quality "Hilton time".  We watched a replay of the Grammy's on the large flat screen TV in the guest lounge.  We have the schedule of free hotel stuff down solid at this point:

 

• Free breakfast 6-10 AM each morning
• Snacks and sodas all day
• Afternoon tea and desert at 4 PM
• Free beer, wine, and appetizers at 6 PM

 

After milking free stuff for most of the day again, we go out with our friends for bia hoi (this is local Vietnamese draft beer).  We run into the English people we hung out with in Saigon.  Can always find all the travelers around the cheap beer.

 

The next day we leave on a two night, three day, packaged tour we had arranged to Halong Bay.   This is one of the sites I have been most looking forward to in our trip.  Halong Bay is directly east of Hanoi.  The bay is supposed to be a beautiful series of small inlets and coves that wind through small islands and huge jagged rocks that stick out of the water.  It is a UNESCO World Heritage site.  Some other facts:

 

• Lies within the Gulf of Tonkin near the border with China
• The Bay consists of a dense cluster of 1,969 limestone monolithic islands, each topped with thick jungle vegetation
• It is one of Vietnam's most popular tourist destinations

 

The tour people are supposed to pick us up at our hotel.  They arrive two hours late.  It was kind of funny because the Hilton bellman isn't accustomed to having guests picked up two hours late.  I gave him the tour people's card and he kept calling them every fifteen minutes.  Was nice, but didn't help much.  We didn't book a cheap tour.  Had paid more than most other people we know that have done a similar trip.  Anyway, more on that later.

 

It is a three and a half hour ride from Hanoi to the bay port.  They have packed the bus beyond what should be possible.  Every seat was full; they put our luggage in the aisle and then sat other people in plastic chairs on top of the luggage.  I had the tour guide almost in my lap for most of the ride.

 

We finally get down to the port and have to wait around some more.  This is typical Vietnamese organization.  They do everything real time.  I bet they organized the bus that morning and then arranged boats for us when we got to the dock.  Its nuts.  They are combining bus loads of people and then separating them into different boats depending on what kind of tour you booked.  Two days over here, three days over here, kind of thing.  Chrissy and I are waiting around in the three day crowd.  Another bus had just arrived and the new people to our group included this extremely drunk Swedish guy (we keep running into crazy Swedish people).  The guy is visibly stumbling.  He is holding a plastic bag with about 10 beers in it and a bottle of vodka.  Apparently, he was pounding drinks back the whole ride over from Hanoi.  The people from his bus are raising a big stink.  They don't want him on the boat out in the bay and are demanding the tour people get ride of him.  This sounds reasonable until we hear why this guy is all boozed up (we didn't get the story until after we get on the boat).

 

Apparently, as he got drunk on the drive down from Hanoi he proceeded to tell the whole bus his story.  The main point was that he had just recently lost his wife and four children in a car accident.  After the accident, he took to drinking and lost his job.  Now he was just wandering around different countries drinking not sure what to do with himself.

 

Knowing this tragic story, the selfish bastards on his bus were still raising a stink with the tour people.  Sadly, one of the loudest voices was a young American girl, one of the few Americans we had seen in Vietnam.  It didn't help that she had on a t-shirt that said "Impeach Bush".  Between her and this Italian guy, they succeed in getting the tour guys to tell the drunken Swede that he can't get on the boat.  He doesn't get angry, just gets kind of sad and asks everyone to give him a break.  The group ignores him and we all get on the boat.  There is a Belgian guy who is unhappy with abandoning the Swede and calls the Italian a "little bitch" to his face.

 

Here is a short description of our motley boat group:

 

• The asshole Italian: this is a tall skinny guy in his late thirty's or early forties.
• The annoying American girl from Alaska:  She kept saying things such as "Alaska is like America, but better".  She also had exceptionally hairy legs and arm pits.  Nasty.
• Two hottie Russian girls: they didn't say much but were very nice and were always changing into new outfits
• Two German boys: these guys kind of did their own thing, but were very nice (more on that later).
• Two friends from Hong Kong: We hung out with these guys a good part of the time.  They were really cool, and gave good tips on what we should do when in HK.
• One Australian chick: Chrissy played cards with her, she was cool.  There's always at least one Australian everywhere you go.

 

This isn't a complete list of everyone, but it includes the key players.

 

Part of the attraction of the Halong Bay tours is that they are done on replicas of old Chinese junk boats.

 

Chrissy on Rear Deck of Junk Boat

 

There is a huge fleet of these boats that work the bay for tourist purposes.  Most of them have sails but are actually powered through the bay by motor.  We set out on our boat and soon are enjoying pretty amazing scenery.  It is a foggy morning which gives the place an almost mystic feel (think Pirates of The Caribbean, which consequently was filmed in Halong Bay).

 

Chinese Junk Boat in Halong Bay

 

Our tour of the bay on the first day consisted on a couple of hours just riding around, broken up with a stop on an island where there are some caves.  We get to the caves and all pile out.  The caves are nice.  Not quite as good as Luray caverns in Virginia, but still nice.

  

While doing the cave tour we run into some other people who had been watching the whole deal with the Swede at the port.  Apparently, after our boat left and he wasn't allowed on board, the guy just jumped into the ocean.  So no we are wondering if he drowned.  This didn't seem to bother the unfeeling people who got him kicked off the boat.  We end the first day at a hotel which is located on a large island in the bay.  This is all included in the tour we are on, dinner too.  The food isn't that great and the hotel is on the rough side but is ok.  With nothing much to do around the area, Chrissy and I hit the sack early.

 

 

Sunset At The End Of Our First Day

 

The next day we get up early and pack up our stuff to be ready and down in the lobby at the 7:30 AM pickup time.  We wait on the front hotel steps for two and a half ours for the bus to come pick us up.  As with the rest of the tour so far, I think they probably organized the bus that morning.  When we do finally get picked up by the bus we are taken only a short way to a small number of local houses in the woods.  This is the starting point for a morning trek in the island’s hills.   We wait another 45 minutes by these houses for other tourists to show up and complete the group.  The group’s patience is mostly gone and there is constant complaining from everyone, Chrissy and I included.

 

The trek is pretty good.  The island has some moderately steep hills which we huffed our way up and there was a good view of the bay from the top.

 

View From Hill Top In Halong Bay

 

Post-trek we return to the hotel and wait for another two hours to be taken back to the boat for another cruise in the bay and some kayaking.  These guys are without a doubt the worst tour operators we have ever seen.

 

The ride in the bay is beautiful and we stop in a secluded bay where they have kayaks waiting.  Some people don't go kayaking, but just swim around the boat, jumping from the second story into the water.  Chrissy and I go kayaking.  There are whole groups of floating villages out here in the bay.  The local people live out here and have fish farms set up.  It is hard to imagine living on these tiny platforms floating out in the water.  Chrissy has a fascination with caves that I was not aware of, and we have to paddle over to every little dark nook she thinks may be hiding treasure.

 

Our kayaking adventure finishes and we get back into the big boat which is going to take us to a different boat, where we will be spending the night.  A night on a Chinese junk boat out in the bay is the highlight of a visit to Halong Bay.  After several boat/bus type transfers we get from our day-outing kayak boat to a small ferry boat which is going to take us out to where we are going to spend the night.

 

Trouble had been brewing since early afternoon.  Some people who had not originally signed up to sleep on the boat were trying to get a spot, and there were rumblings that there wasn't going to be space for all of us.  Sure enough, as we are sitting on the ferry, the tour guy comes over and says that not only is there not room for additional people on the boat, but that some of us that signed up days ago, didn't have space either and needed to get on the bus and go back to the hotel.  Now, like I said, the night on the boat is the big highlight of this tour.  Add with that the knowledge that we had just spent an hour on the bus getting to this ferry from the hotel and would have to ride an hour back (it was already late evening).  Add to this, that having just come from the hotel, we knew that there wasn't any space there.  We had heard some guy in the lobby yelling at the front desk people and I quote:

 

"You have no morals, I reserved a room"

 

This is because he had just traveled the many hour trip from Hanoi only to find out there were no rooms.  So the fact that there wasn't space for all of us on the boat was a definite problem.  It was the last straw in a series of bunglings by these tour guys over the last two days.  They wanted two people to get off the ferry.  Nobody was getting off.  We sit on the ferry for forty-five minutes while the tour guy begs and pleads.  I feel sorry for him.  It isn't his fault that his company is a fly-by-night setup that organizes every detail of its tours at the last minute.  Eventually, the ferry just leaves with us all on it and heads out into the bay to the big boat.

 

We get to the big boat and carry on all of our luggage; the boat captain is counting heads and of course figures out that there are too many of us.  The captain does not speak any English, but it is easy to tell that he is not happy with the tour guide and wants him to get two of us off his boat.  More pleading from the tour guy.  We are telling him that he needs to fix the problem by getting a spot on another boat for two of us.  He is saying that this isn’t possible.  We go back and forth for an hour.  The boat captain is getting really angry and so is the lady running the ferry.  Our tour guide is getting desperate.  He attempts to facilitate our getting off by gathering up the bags nearest to him and hauling them out to the ferry (these happen to be Chrissy and I’s, I go and bring them back).  The poor man is about to lose it.  We tourists decide that there is no way the guide is going to resolve the situation and that we must do it among ourselves.  I suggest drawing straws to determine who gets off the boat.  The group agrees to this.

 

We draw straws and Belgian dude/Taiwan lady get the short straw.  Belgian dude makes a big fuss and tells the tour guide that it is their honeymoon.  This isn’t true; he is only saying that to get more of a refund.  The group doesn’t know that though, and the two German guys feel bad and offer to leave.  Belgian doesn’t stop them.  So off the Germans go, to face an hour ride back to the hotel which is full.  Not very cool of Belgian man.  We all settle in to what is a nice evening on the boat.

 

The next morning we pick up the Germans at the dock and have a pleasant ride around the bay.  They tell an interesting tale of how their evening played out.  They were taken to a new hotel, different than the full one where we had been staying.  Upon arriving in the lobby, they witness an argument/fight between a tour guide and tourist that were not part of our group.  Apparently, it got so bad that the tourist punched the tour guide, who then pulled a knife and stabbed the tourist in the hand.  This tour has been a nightmare for everyone involved.  We end our boat ride back at the main port and eventually get fed lunch and board a bus back to Hanoi (this process takes several hours, of course).  We arrive back in Hanoi without any additional issues and start drinking heavily.

 

 
View Of Halong Bay On Our Last Morning

 

Chrissy and I have been in Vietnam for over a month at this point.  Aside from the Halong Bay debacle, it has been a good visit.  We had intended to travel to two additional towns in Vietnam, but truth be told fleeing the country sounded pretty good after what we had just experienced.  Traveling to the two additional towns required a lot of expense and we would need to get a visa extension.  Next stop was Laos, which was sounding really good.  We bail on Vietnam and buy plane tickets to Laos.  Vietnam is a fantastic place, but we will need to come back to visit these other places.

 

We spend our last day in Hanoi shopping and eat one final bowl of Pho soup before flying out the following morning. 

 

A Delicious Bowl Of Pho

 

Laos here we come!

 

- Bill

Hoi An is a quaint little town just south of the center of Vietnam.  The town is known for it's historic buildings and cool architecture.  For budget minded folk, it is also the cheapest place in Asia to get clothes custom made.

We rolled into town after another killer overnight bus ride (these are frequent when traveling in Vietnam).  So it's 6 AM and we are doing the usual wander around to find a place to sleep.  One particularly persistent guy is following us on his motorbike as we walk down the street.  He wants us to go check out this one hotel and won't go away.  Chrissy is just about to punch the guy in the face before he gets it that we aren't going to his hotel and drives off.  We do find a place which turns out to be really good, a top floor room with a balcony.

 

After showers and dropping off our dirty clothes to be laundered, we head out in search of a tailor.  Chrissy and I have adopted a new rule of checking out three places before committing to anything.  This has worked well for pretty much anything (guest houses, stores, bus companies, whatever).  We apply our rule here and go to three different tailors before deciding on one (which happened to be the last one we went to).  Hoi An is silly with tailors.  Every street in town is lined with them, one after the other.  Truth be told, we think they are all pretty much the same.

 

We do some serious damage in this place:

 

• Three suits (one for me, two for Chrissy)
• A tuxedo for me
• Three dress shirts for me
• One blouse for Chrissy
• One traditional Vietnamese outfit for Chrissy

The lady running the shop is very happy with us.  She kept pushing me on the shirts though, just couldn't understand why I didn't want ten of them.  I would have gotten ten, but I couldn't find ten fabrics that I liked.  Chrissy and I being the snobs that we are we get high dollar everything.  Our suits are made from Italian cashmere wool.  My shirts were the best cotton and Chrissy's Vietnamese outfit was 100% silk.  We had read that real silk will burn while fake stuff melts.  The shop lady obliged us and cut off some silk for the burn test.  It went up in fames quick.  Chrissy better watch herself around candles and such.  We ended up getting all of this stuff for less than 350 bucks.  Crazy.  

 

I have had alterations done before but have never been measured up full body for anything.  It is an experience.  One lady goes at you with the measuring tape, measuring all over the place while another lady is writing it all down in a book.  Everything is done in Vietnamese.  I found it to be a little intrusive, if you know what I mean.  These ladies are not shy.  The whole deal was over so quick, Chrissy and I were both wondering if we were going to get what we asked for.  Our concerns increased when the lady wanted almost all of the money up front.  What the hell, if none of it turned out, it was an experience.  I didn't have that kind of cash on me and needed to go to an ATM.  The shop lady, all business, quickly had one of the shop girls rolling out from the back with a motorbike and I found myself on the back with this girl cruising down the street to the bank.  The wad of cash required took three separate ATM withdraws and was so thick that I couldn't put it in my wallet.  It takes a ton of Vietnamese notes to make up any significant amount of money.  Back we speed to the tailor shop and soon Chrissy and I are out on the street, a little shocked on how quick that all went.  We were to return later that evening for a second fitting.  They were going to have this stuff all put together in a few hours.  Nuts.

 

Fast forward 5-6 hours and we are back at the tailor.  They have everything ready.  Chrissy and I try on each of our items one by one.  I think these ladies are a bit crazy.  There isn’t a dressing room in the shop.  You are expected to just stand in front of this mirror in the shop and drop your drawers and such.  I didn’t care that much, with boxers on, but it was still a littler weird because the place opened right on to the street.  Chrissy stood behind the mirror for most of her changing.  Anyway, our clothes turned out great.  I couldn’t even find anything that needed alteration before they sewed everything up.  I think Chrissy had one change.  The crazy ladies can put clothes together.

 

 
Chrissy getting the final touches on her custom made threads

 

After our appointment at the tailors, we meet up with our SWB crew (read this if you don't know what the SWB is).  Apparently Chrissy and I have paid more for our clothes than most of the group.  Course, they all think that we got screwed.  We don't think so based on the quality, but we keep that to ourselves. We were quite stringent on the details and had them do some extra stuff for us. As one example, we had talked our tailor into fully lining all of our stuff.  This must be a pain, because she wasn't happy about it.  Anyway, we were happy with the deal we had made.

 

The next day, more shopping was in order.  Chrissy and I wandered around buying stuff.  She went crazy in a lantern shop.

 

Too many choices in the local lantern shop

 

I also saw a casual shirt which caught my eye.  It was hanging in front of a tailor shop.  Most of these shops had a few ready-made things that you can buy as well.  Turned out that this shirt which I was interested in didn't fit, and the ones that they had which did were funky colors.  No worries, the lady measured me up and would have one sewn up in two hours.  Cost me eight bucks and is made of silk.

 

It is February 10th, which is the date of Chrissy and I's very first date, a very short twelve years ago.  We skip out on drinks with our buddies and have a nice dinner by ourselves on the river front.

 

The following day we spend a hectic morning getting our purchases in the mail towards home.  No way am I carting a tuxedo around.  We then get into a big shenanigan with A bus which took our bags and then decided to leave earlier than scheduled and forced me to chase it down the street a couple of blocks before it stopped at a traffic light.  I am starting to seriously dislike the bus guys at this point.  They are all pretty much bastards, with a few exceptions.

 

We are now headed to Hue, central to the DMZ area during the Vietnam War.  Should be interesting.

 

- Bill

We had spent a relaxing few days in Saigon, Vietnam.  The town is really nice and well set up for travelers.  One of the things we needed to do was get our India Visa sorted at the local Indian Consulate.  This crazy process takes a whole week (who knows why).  We didn’t want to waste all this time in Saigon (even though it is nice) so we arranged a trip through the Mekong Delta to an island off the southern coast called Phu Quoc.

 

We don’t normally like prearranged “tourist” type trips.  But even our budget oriented, independent travel guide said this is the best and cheapest way to see the Mekong.  Here are a few Britannica (actually Wikipedia, who uses Britannica anymore?) facts about the delta:

 

Definition: “The Mekong Delta ("đồng bằng sông Cửu Long" in Vietnamese-Nine Dragon river delta) is the region in Southeast Vietnam where the Mekong River approaches and empties into the sea through a network of tributaries.

 

• The Delta produces about half of the total of Vietnam's agricultural output
• The Mekong delta region encompasses a large portion of southeastern Vietnam (39,000 km²)
• The area actually covered by water depends on the season

 

So you get the picture that the Mekong Delta is an important agricultural area.  We headed into the area by bus, which took a few hours from Saigon.  Our bus unloaded into a series of small boats of the type they use to navigate the small local water ways.  This was a pretty staged ride for us tourists but the boats looked legit and so did the ladies piloting them.

 

Don't I look like a local?

 

After the boat ride we made a few other stops including a place to watch a taffy type candy being made.  For entertainment at this joint they had a few Python’s to pass around.  Random, but fun.

 

Chrissy loves snakes

 

The next day we toured what was described to us as the “floating markets”.  These are a long series of boats parked in the river, each there to sell a specific type of goods.  There would be the watermelon boat, for instance.  If you want a watermelon you just pull your boat up next to the boat selling and buy away.  It seemed like you could buy just about anything.  A boat even came by to offer us beers; we passed because it was Seven AM.

 

You can get whatever you want from the boats on the Mekong

 

That night we were finished with the Delta and with the organized tour.  We found a hotel in the town of Racha Gai.  This turned out to be a big hassle:

 

1. the motorbike guys that took us to one place ripped us off
2. the hotel we decided on didn’t want to give us a room without seeing a passport (ours were back at the India Embassy in Saigon)

When this was all sorted out we were ready for a beer and headed out to find some other travelers from our tour to commiserate with and put a few back.  We found our Australian friends Mel and Ryan and this guy Nikolai from Sweden.  After a few beers we all decided to go for dinner and found a locals place on a side street that was packed.  It was apparent that this place didn’t get a lot of westerners, which was cool.  We would order food and the guy cooking it would come over to see if we liked it.  The food was excellent.  Nikolai ordered some steamed mussels in garlic for the group and they were fantastic.  All of the food was delicious which was good because at this point we had been pretty disappointed with our culinary experiences in Vietnam.  Soon we were toasting drinks with the Vietnamese men the next table over.  One guy drank half his beer and then handed me the glass indicating that I should finish the rest.  They like to do this in Vietnam.  I slammed down the other half and we all yelled, good fun.

 

Similar to Cairo, the local people were very interested in our motley crew of foreigners.  Everyone stared and said “hello” as we walked the streets.  We were the center of attention.  It was almost like being a celebrity.  We all ate it up.  The night ended at some local disco tech that couldn’t quite get the party started.  Maybe it’s that crappy techno music.  It was a wonderful evening, none the less.

 

Phu Quoc Island

 

After our cool night out in Racha Gai, we awoke early to catch the ferry to Phu Quoc Island.  This island is the southern most point in Vietnam.  It is actually closer to Cambodia than Vietnam and the Cambodians think it belongs to them but they can’t take it back from the wacky Vietnamese.

 

Anyway, the ferry was not a very comfortable affair.  The thing was called the “Super Dong”.  Very cramped, and cold.  The dudes running the boat liked their AC and they also like these horrible Vietnamese music videos that were played one after another for the whole ride.  This is the trials of travel.  Three hours later we made it to the island.  We then took a minibus from the dock across the island to where all the good beaches are and hired two motorbike guys to ferry us around while we decided on which guest house to stay at.  We got this all sorted and ended up at a very cozy place with our own bungalow, complete with two hammocks on the porch.  Our bungalow didn’t look right out on the beach, but what do you want for fourteen bucks a night.

 

Nothing like a hammock by the beach

 

Chrissy and I spent the rest of the day lounging on the beach eating pineapple sold by some old lady and then retired with books to our porch when the sun went down.  It was rough.  The following day we got up reasonably early and had coffee accompanied by fairly good banana pancakes.  More beach time was in order.  The beach on Phu Quoc is pretty nice.  Clean, light brown sand.  The waves are not big enough for surfing (which is ok, we get to body surfing later in Vietnam) and it is a good temperature for cooling off.  Our big discovery that day is a nice restaurant called the Palm Tree just a little ways down the beach.  This place was awesome.  We are talking Glass noodles soup with crab meat, various duck dishes, grilled prawns, etc.  Quite tasty and cheap.  No more eating at the bungalow restaurant for us.

 

That evening we also found a bar that sets out seats on the beach just to watch the sunset.  They line the place with tiki torches and all that.  It also helps that they put the fruity drinks on sale for happy hour and play good music to boot.  We were in heaven and coming to this place became a nightly occurrence.

 

By the next day we had our schedule down:

 

1. Moderately late breakfast
2. Beach/porch time
3. Late lunch and/or early lunch at the Palm Tree
4. Sunset drinks
5. Beers on the porch

 

The only other exciting thing happened when I let Chrissy go down to the beach by herself with money to get a massage (never send Chrissy off by herself with money).  She has been gone about an hour and a half before I left the hammock to go looking for her.

 

Don't ask me what is going on here

 

I find her down on the beach with a whole army of women working away.  She doesn’t even know what she has signed up for them to do to her.  Turns out that they have been plucking her leg hairs out one by one using thread.  They are also doing her nails and toes and somewhere in there did a massage.  I don’t know what any of this is about, so like a good husband I snap off a few pictures and return to my hammock.

 

The next day we make the trek back to Saigon in the hope of retrieving our passports from the India Consulate.

 

I have lost track of the number of beaches we have managed to fit in on this trip, but southern Vietnam was definitely one of the more relaxing.

 

- Bill

We had just taken a bus from Phnom Penh to the town of Siem Reap.  The trip was a rather long eight hours.  The bus seats were damn hard and uncomfortable.  We also had stopped at a few exceptionally nasty "rest stops" along the way, if you can call them that.

 

The bus was greeted by the usual crowd of eager motor-rickshaw drivers.  Several of these offered to take us to a hotel for free, which means that they get a nice commission from the hotel.  We went with a driver that was offering to take us for what sounded like a reasonable price.  We still ended up driving all over town looking for a place before deciding to take the first place we had seen.  What a hassle.  We also agreed to meet this guy in the morning outside the hotel so that he would drive us to the Angkor temples.

 

Angkor is one of the big sites of our trip.  Considered one of humanities greatest architectural achievements, Angkor is in the same category as The Egyptian Pyramids and The Great Wall of China.  Here are some quick facts about the area and the temples:

 

• The site is made up of hundreds of temples (the most famous, Angkor Wat is just one of the many temples)
• The temples were built between the 9th and 13th centuries by a civilization called the Khmers
• Angkor Wat is said to be the world's largest single religious monument

 

The approach to Angkor Wat

 

The town of Siem Reap exists pretty much as a jumping off point for the temples.  Our guesthouse was quiet and clean, a nice change after the nastiness in Phnom Penh.  We got a good night’s sleep and were up early to meet our driver and head over to the temples. 

 

To our surprise, some unknown dude was waiting for us in front of the hotel.  Apparently, the guy that had driven us the day before was too busy to take us now.  Whatever.  This did a good job of irritating Chrissy.  We had three days total at the temples and had been planning on hiring the same guy for all three days.  Lost business for this guy, not our problem.

 

These little motor-rickshaws are pretty nice to ride in.  They usually have a nice padded, covered seat in that you can lounge in and put your feet up.  They don’t got overly fast but aren’t slow either, just a nice leisurely pace.

 

Here is our motorized rickshaw.  It broke down, but our handy driver quickly fixed it

 

We liked our new driver.  He didn’t talk much, but was friendly, and at least he showed up.  We hired him for our other two days at the temples.  Getting into the main temple area is not too unlike entering Disneyland.  They have these really fancy booths where you walk up and pay to get your ticket.  Angkor even takes your picture and laminates it into your pass, if you buy one for more than one day.  This is Cambodia’s national treasure and they aren’t messing around.

 

Most people do either a one, two, or three days at the temples.  Temple crazy people can do a whole week, but that is a heck of a lot of temple touring.  Like I said, we were going to do three days and they have a route that is pretty standard for people doing three days.  A very rough summary of what we did would be as follows:

 

Day One:  The Small Circuit – this is a relatively small loop at the front of the park which includes Angkor Wat.

Day Two:  The Grand Circuit – a significantly larger loop that encompasses The Small Circuit.

Day Three:  Outlying Temples – there are temples for miles and miles, on your last day you spend a good hour driving to a particularly pretty temple far away from the others.

 

If you would like more detail on the Angkor Monuments, here is a good online guide.

 

In general, the temples are pretty amazing.  Cambodia is a very poor country now but at one time it had wealth beyond belief to be able to build something as massive as a thousand plus complex of temples. 

 

Here is but a small sample of the temples we visited and some of the things we saw:

 

 

   
The steap steps of one temple and the silk cotton trees demolishing another

   
Even more steap stairs (I hate these) and some monks

   
The Japanses tourist horde and a lonely deaf girl who begs at one of the temples

- Bill

There were about 200 too many backpackers in Pai for my liking.  Place was crawling with our fellow foreigners.  We wanted to do some hill trekking, which can be done from Pai, but only alongside the 200 other happy jokers.  So, we left Pai behind and took a bus to Mae Hung Son which is a three hour ride to the west of Pai.

 

We had to get there first and all the local buses that run between the towns in northern Thailand are pretty crazy.  Each driver plays their own flavor of pirated music at high volume.  The drivers all drive way too fast on the windy mountain roads.  Someone actually counted the number of turns between Chiang Mai and Mae Hong Son and there are over 300.  There isn't any air conditioning, so the windows are all down and the bus door is usually open.  This all makes for a breezy, loud, ride.  Good fun.

 

We survived the bus and got into Mae Hong Son in early evening.  Immediately, we could tell it was very different than Pai.  There were about a tenth of the tourists for one thing.  It looked like a proper Thai town that actually had Thai people living there.  We found an out of the way guest house called the "Johnnie House” (the first guy who stayed there was named Johnnie) and booked a room for the pricey cost of eight bucks.

 

After setting up sleeping arrangements, we took a walk around town.  They call Mae Hong Son the Switzerland of Thailand.  I don't think I would go that far, but it is a city surrounded by pretty hills.  Just behind our guesthouse was a nice lake complete with a Buddhist temple on the shore.

 

When we checked into the guesthouse the lady running the place indicated that we could talk to someone about trekking into the hills when the guide returned later that evening.  After our city stroll we arrived back at the guest house to find that the guide was this ladies husband and that he was busy cooking his family a dinner of chicken over a small fire in the driveway of the guesthouse.  We booked a trek into the hills the following morning with this guy.  The dudes name was Noi and he invited us to dinner with the stipulation that cooking the chicken was going to take a while longer.  Chrissy and I curled up on a nearby porch with books while we waited for Noi to indicate that dinner was ready.

 

Not too far into our reading, other people started to arrive.  We discovered that Noi is a popular man and invites his buddies over for dinner.  Seemingly random people from the surrounding hills and around town soon were gathered around Noi's fire.  Chrissy and I were given a special spot at a picnic table, complete with blankets to pad our butts on the hard seats (everyone else was squatting around the fire or sitting in plastic lawn type chairs).  Another trekking guide sat next to us and answered all our questions about Thailand and Mae Hong Son.

 

Dinner was still a ways off, but the drinking had started.  The local liqueur of choice is called Sangsom.  It is this fairly potent stuff that has some similarities with whiskey.  Noi is a big fan of the stuff and makes sure that all his friends/guests are well supplied.  He had to send some guy off on a motor bike before dinner to buy more.  The stuff is only a couple of bucks a bottle but this isn't insignificant in local currency.

 

The chicken was finally ready.  Noi had experienced all kinds of difficulties with the chicken (him being hammered probably didn't help).  The fire was too hot for his original plan of cooking the chicken over the fire wrapped in a large tin can that had at one point contained some kind of oil.  He eventually steamed it using a couple of actual kitchen pans.  This was not the preferred method and the chicken was presented with all kinds of apologies about the lack of flavor and such.  Thais love food.  They are very particular about spices.  The chicken could have used more spice, but it was still very good.  It was moist and cooked to well.

 

The group had loosened up at this point.  We are still all chatting around the fire, but a good number of folks (host included), are hammered.  Chrissy and I did pretty good on pacing our consumption of the Thai whiskey and our friends didn't push it.  After the chicken Noi asked if we would like to taste a local specialty.  We said yes (of course) and were soon presented with a bowl of deep fried silk worms.  This is a very expensive dish.  We both choked down a few of the little buggers.  I remember a mostly peanut flavor.  Chrissy compares them to pinto beans.  The family eventually politely took the bowl from us and finished them off.  We crawled off to bed to get some sleep as we would be heading off into the hills early the next morning.

 

We were late getting our stuff together the next morning and Noi was impatient to be off.  Our trekking group would be just Chrissy, Noi, and me.  A bit scary but better than with twenty other backpackers from Pai.  Noi had a truck pick us up at the guesthouse and we drove about thirty minutes to get outside of town to the edge of the hills.  The bottom of the hills are all populated with small villages of local folks.  We got out of the truck and started without ceremony walking through the village towards the forest.  Children were running around all over the place and most people gave us a good stare was we walked by. 

  

There weren't any other foreigners around and it didn't seem like many came through this particular village.  This would be one of the best things about our trek with Noi.  He was taking us up into the hills to a village close to where his family is from.  This wasn't a spot widely exposed to tourism.

 

It was quite hot as we left the village behind and made our way on a narrow but well worn path through a green forest.  Noi explained that this was one of only two routes to the village that we would be visiting.  He called it the local equivalent of a freeway.  We passed quite a few people on the path headed in the other direction into town.  It was Sunday, and this is the day where parents walk their children into town where they stay for the week attending school.  The children all live in a house with their teacher.

 

We didn't get too far into the forest before we were instructed by Noi to remove our hiking boots and put on our sandals.  We had arrived at a small stream which we would follow for the rest of the day, crossing back and forth through the water.  The water was damn cold, the first time we waded in.  It went up to our knees.  We quickly got used to the cold and it was fun to splash through the water.  The path we were following was kind of crazy.  Like I said, this is the path that local people must use to get to town, to come and go on a daily basis.  To me, it brought Peter Pan to mind.  The stream was the center of the road and every few hundred feet you crossed through the water.  Sometimes in the water, sometimes on boards that had been balanced on rocks to keep you out of deeper stretches.  Getting in and out of the stream was often done by climbing over rocks a good number of which were very steep.  Many of the rock walls had make-shift wooden ladders in place to help you over.  Vines hanging from the trees were left in place to give you something to hold onto.  Chrissy and I were having a great time.

 

 
Chrissy and I next to a small waterfall

 

We stopped for lunch along side a pretty pool made by the stream.  Noi produced containers of fried rice which were somehow still warm.  Noi had small little baggies of hot peppers which tasted good dumped on the rice.  He also had some fruit for desert.

 

The sun was setting as Noi finally indicated that we were close to our destination.  I was beat.  Chrissy and I had consolidated our stuff into one pack and left one at the guesthouse for purposes of the trek.  We had been told that it would be really cold up in the hills and we wanted to be prepared so we had packed a ton of clothes.  I was being stubborn and wouldn't let Chrissy take a turn carrying the pack.  So here we were at the end of the day and I was dragging something serious behind Noi and Chrissy.   My shirt was drenched with sweat.  For about the tenth time on this trip, I was wondering why we keep signing up for these treks.

 

The last part of the hike into the village was the steepest part but we finally came over a hill and walked into a village that was made up of less than ten houses on stilts.  Noi introduced us to our hosts which were an older couple that had lived their whole lives in the hills and spoke no English.  There are a number of ethic groups that live in the Thai countryside.  Noi and the village we were visiting are part of a group called "White Karen".  Chrissy and I were given our own stilted hut.  Our host’s home was made up of three separate huts; all stilted about six feet off the ground.  The couple (we never learned their names) lived by farming and their animals lived right there with them.  Cows, buffalo, pigs, and chicken all lived in the space under the huts.  The huts were made of a mix of wood and bamboo. 

 

The village sat on top of a hill and there was a great view of the surrounding hills.  Poinsettias also grow wild in the area and were in full bloom making the place very beautiful.  Our hosts had a three-hut setup, their hut/kitchen, the hut we were staying in (which was storage at other times), and another hut for their children (who are grown and have their own children).  In the center area between the huts was a fire used for warmth and cooking tea.  This family was considered very wealthy because they had many buffalo, pigs, and cows.

 

Noi set about cooking us dinner as we wandered around the village.  We came back as he was mid-way through the cooking and sat down on the floor to watch.  Dinner was to be fish in a curry sauce over rice with vegetables and egg.  Our buddy Noi had started drinking samsum as soon as he started cooking.  He was pretty drunk by the time the meal was ready.  He had given one of the village men money to buy some of the locally made hooch which was to be had in the next village over.  Apparently, he was concerned that what he had brought would not last evening.

 

Dinner was good.  Noi is a decent cook, even when drunk.  We sat around in the older couples hut for a while after eating shooting the bull with Noi.  His English is pretty good.  He had all kinds of interesting stories to tell.  Mostly about him drinking with his buddies and riding motor bikes while being wasted.  We did learn some things about the local villages and such.  I don't mean to portray that Noi is a bad guy, on the contrary.  We had seen him giving money away on several occasions on our way to the village.  I think he is pretty well off comparatively and is generous with the local folks.  The guy definitely has a good heart, just likes his drink as well.

 

After a good two hours of chatting it up with Noi, we left him to clean up and went to sit outside by the fire.  The stars were out and it was quite nice.  Later we were invited over to the grown children's hut where they had a television of all things.  These guys were given a solar power setup by the government.  This allowed them the luxury of electric lights at night and a television.  The tele was the only one in the village, so all the young people were there.  Chrissy and I laid on the floor with about twelve other people and watched a Thai soap opera type show.  We couldn't tell what they were saying so we had to use our imagination to fill in some of the gaps in what was going on.  The key soap elements were there.  Some guy was after this girl.  She wasn't sure if she liked this guy and was treating him badly but it was apparent that they were going to hook up at some point.  Not this episode though.  When the show was over Chrissy and I said good night to our Thai family and went to sleep in our hut.

 

Hill Tribe Hut Complete With Solar Power

 

The bed was a woven mat on the bamboo floor.  Stuffed rice sacks were the pillows.  The whole setup was covered with a mosquito net.  It wasn't as cold as we had expected, so I had hauled all this stuff up there for no reason.  With no mattress, lying on the floor made a hard bed, but we fell asleep anyway.

 

Fast forward to four am when the damn roosters started making a racket.  The whole deal about roosters announcing sunrise is crap.  They make a ton of noise way before then.  The whole village was full of roosters and they were taking turns crowing.  Was driving me crazy.  I seriously considered killing one of them.  I eventually got out of bed around 6:00 AM.  The old couple was already up doing all kinds of stuff.  I sat by the fire and watched them.  The lady was feeding the pigs.  The old man was making a knife sheath for Noi.  This was pretty cool.  He had started it the night before and was now almost done.  The sheath was carved out of wood and had plastic loops used to hold the wood together and to attach the thing to your belt.  Nice.  I sat around toying with my Swiss army knife while the man worked on the sheath.  I ended up giving him my knife, which he indicated would be good for shaving.

 

 
Noisy Bastard Rooster and Hill Tribe Man Making a Knife Sheath

 

Noi got out of bed about thirty minutes after I got up.  We aren't sure how long he stayed up drinking.  He made me some coffee over the fire then went and got what looked to be a flint musket out of the house.  He spent the next hour wandering around under the trees near the village shooting at birds.  He got one which the old man had de-feathered and in the kitchen about five minutes after it hit the ground.  We didn't eat the bird so I don't know what they did with it.  Saved it for later, I guess.

 

Chrissy was awake and drinking coffee by this time.  Noi made us breakfast.  He had invited me to try my luck with the musket after breakfast.  I thought this would be interesting.  The thing looked like it could be from the American civil war.  I was going to give it a go before I noticed that Noi was drinking again as he eat breakfast.  No thanks.  Chrissy bought a handmade satchel from the old lady.  We took a group picture and headed out.

 

Our Hill Tribe Hosts

 

We were going to take a different path back to town.  This is the only other route, like I said.  It was much steeper than the path by the stream.  The highlight was the view of the town on the way down.

Noi made us lunch on the way back.  This consisted of several nasty cans of some kind of fish product that we dumped over rice.  Nasty, Nasty.  It was much quicker going down than it had been coming up.  We made it back to town by four and had time to stop and pound some beers in the outskirt village before the truck came to pick us up.  Noi procured beers by going up to people’s huts and just asking for them.  He is definitely a well known guy is those parts of the hills.  Chrissy and I both laid down for a nap when we got back to the guesthouse.  We went out to a restaurant for dinner and turned in early.  Next day we said goodbye to Noi and his wife and caught a bus back to Pai.

 

This was basically the end of our tour of Thailand.  We had been in country for over a month.  Thailand was the part of our trip which I had been most excited about.  It lived up to expectations.  Thailand is a fantastic place.  The people are wonderful.  The country is beautiful.  The food is excellent.  On top of all that, it is very cheap.  The only problem is that about a million other tourists know these things as well.  It is still possible to get off the tourist path though, which is great.  I hope to get back here again, if for no other reason than to eat more Thai food.

 

Bill

Chrissy and I booked a flight from Phuket through Bangkok to Chang Mai.  We had just spent several weeks in various beach locations and were actually looking forward to doing something else.

We got to Bangkok without incident but then had a long layover while wating for the flight to Chang Mai.  We made efforts to get on an earlier flight but, no dice.  The Bangkok airport is very modern and well stocked with stores and such so we dumped our stuff on a luggage cart and began wandering around looking for something to pass the time.  The airport had a Toni & Guy hair salon and we decided to treat ourselves to nice hair cuts.  Neither of us had cut our hair in the six months since we left home.

Getting pampered at the salon was great.  I have never been anywhere that took as long to do a haircut.  I got two shampos (one before, one after) and then an hour long cut.  What a great way to kill time.  Chrissy was pretty happy with hers as well.  All was good until we went to leave and Chrissy started manuvering the luggage cart through the door to the salon.  It was a tight fit and the cart wasn’t easy to stear.  She hit one side of the door and chiped a glass panel that was fixed on the wall.  It was a fairly embarrasing thing to happen.  We apologised and eventually got the cart through the door and left.  We were halfway across the terminal when the hostess lady came running up saying that the manager had decided that we would need to pay for the damages.

 
Toni & Guy "damaged" glass panel

I am thinking to myself “you have got to be kidding”, the damage wasn’t that bad, and even if it was, it was an accident.  They had told us to wheel the cart into the shop.  I ended up speaking with some manager guy over the phone.  Apparently no one on site there had any power to make decisions.  This guy was claiming that the glass panel was worth 150 bucks (my ass).  Anyway, he wanted us to pay $75, which we eventually did.  Looking back I probably could have just told him to bugger off.  But I wanted to avoid any kind of discussion with the police.  I made the lady in the shop sign a statement saying we had paid the $75.  We then went to an airport administration office and filed a formal complaint.  Not that that is going to do anything.  It made us feel better.  I won’t be going to any other Toni & Guy’s, in or outside of the USA.  Bastards.

We did finally board our plane and made the short flight to Chaing Mai.  We got in late that evening and hired a taxi to take us to a guest house we had chosen.  This whole process is usually a royal pain, but Chang Mai is a laid back place and even the taxi dudes are laid back.  This was very nice after all the crap we went through in Bangkok.  After we got in and dropped our stuff in our room we had a nice Thai dinner,  then found a bar.  The rest of the evening was spent drinking beer and bad mouthing freak'n Toni & Guy.

The next day we got up fairly late (as usual) and surveyed our new suroundings.  Chang Mai is a cool place.  It is in the far north end of Thailand.  There are small mountains surrounding the city.  Chang Mai has the distinction of being Thailands second largest city, but is still much smaller than Bangkok.  It is well setup for tourists.  Want a cheeseburger?  No problem.  Want TexMex?  No problem.  There is even a Starbucks on a prominent corner.  I wouldn’t want every town we visit to have these things, but they are definitely appreciated every now and then.  The guest house where we were staying was also very nice.  We had a corner room on the top floor.  It was quiet, clean, and comfortable.  We were happy.

That night we tooled around at this really big market that only runs at night.  Chrissy’s mouth was watering.  Cool looking furniture, pottery, clothes, etc.  All to be had for cheap.  I was starting to get nervous.

The following day we had signed up to do a cooking class at this famous cooking school.  We canceled the class because we needed to head over to the Indian Consulate to apply for a visa.  We had been working on the Indian visa since Bangkok.  It was really starting to be a pain.  The consulate only accepts applications for three hours a day and they are always located in some far corner of the city.  Ugh.

Still no dice on the visa.  They want a whole week to process.  Crazy.  Guess we will try in Ho Chi Minh City.

At least the visa business didn't take very long.  We still had the day to sight see.  So we head over to the Doi Suthep Wat.

Doi Suthep Wat

The Doi Suthep Wat is a very special place for Thai people.  It was founded in 1383 and has several beautiful temple buildings.  It also sits atop a hill and provides sweet views of Chiang Mai.  After returning from the Wat we walked by a cooking school which has night classes.  A class was just starting, so we joined in on a whim.  This school had a pretty informal setup, which was nice.  We had a group of five students and one instructor.  They even took us to the local market to buy all the ingredients before we started cooking.

 
Chiang Mai Food Market and Night Cooking School

The next day we went to a fancier cooking school, where they had more professional instructors and did cool stuff like vegetable carving.  It was an all day class, with about 25 people.  Pretty much opposite of the class you did the night before.  Good for different reasons.  You eat all of the food you cook and every dish at this place was wonderful.  We were also given cook books with all of their recipes.  Good times all around.

 
Chiang Mai Cooking School with vegetable carving instruction

After the fancy cooking class, we had enough cooking instruction, cultural experiences, and such, so we went shopping.  It is new New Years Eve.  We bought a fancy tapestry at the Ratchadamnoen street market.  The tapestry depicts a Myanmar war scene.  After walking around the street market for a good couple of hours we returned to our guest house and were welcomed with glasses of whiskey courtesy of the owners, Gerad and his wife.  When toasting with Thai's you say "Chokdii" which means good luck.  In the front of the guest house we met Evan and Allison from Canada.  They joined us to hit the town and celebrate the new year.  We all headed over to the Tae Phae Gate, which is the central part of historic Chaing Mai.  All the locals we buying this huge paper lanterns.  They are like hot air ballons with a flame in the bottom which causes them to rise into the sky. 

 
New Year's Eve launching paper lanterns

There were hundreds of these in the sky.  It was a specail experience.  Probably the coolest New Year's Chrissy and I have had.

After playing with the lanterns, we sat down high on one of the old city walls to watch the festivities going on in the court yard below.  Unfortunately, we soon had to leave because of a bomb scare at 11:30 PM. 

We went to small bar and had a few drinks as the new year rang in.

Chaing Mai is a really relaxed cultural experience.  A great place to spend a few days and was really special with all the New Year's celebrations.  We were very sad to leave.

Bill

Having just spent over a week in traffic crazy Bangkok, Chrissy and I were ready for a change of pace. We took an overnight train south to the town of Surat Thani. This is where you can catch ferries out to the islands off the eastern coast. We were headed to the island of Ko Tao. Ko Tao is the cheap diving capital of Thailand. It has abundant reefs all in short boating distance, cheap living, and cheap dive instruction.

The train down had been a bit of an experience. It was our first train in Thailand and was an overnighter. We had bought second-class tickets, which meant we got sleeping bunks. These were actually quite nice. The train car had forty plus bunks stacked two high along both sides with an aisle in the middle. Each bunk had a curtain you could pull shut and it was fairly cozy in there. The problem was that we had the last bunks in the last car of the train. So right next to our bunks was a door which lead to a small room and then you were outside. The stupid door wouldn't stay shut and repeatedly slammed open and closed all night. It was exceptionally loud, even with earplugs. Some bastard was always smoking in the little room too. The smoke continually wafted through the open door. Chrissy didn't get any sleep and I got very little.

But we did survive the journey and we did make it to the early morning ferry which dumped us off in the port on Ko Tao. We then paid some guy with a pickup truck to cart us from the port to some beachside bungalows. The place was called "Simple Life Bungalows" and also had a dive shop. We plopped down our stuff in a fairly sketchy looking bungalow costing twelve bucks a night and I went over to the dive shop to see about doing some dives.

We were kind of in a rush because the Christmas holidays were approaching and we had reservations in a resort on Thailand’s west coast. To make the island hops we wanted each day had to count. With this in mind, I wanted to go out on a dive that afternoon. This turned out not to be possible and I got penciled in for the following morning. Chrissy and I had been discussing getting her scuba certified on Ko Tao but had decided that if she wanted to do that there would be more time at the resort over Christmas. We drank some beers and laid on the beach to finish up the afternoon.

That night we strolled around town and found a Mexican restaurant of all things. They made a decent plate of nachos and Chrissy was happy.

Early the next morning I headed over to the dive shop to get geared up. For twenty bucks you can rent a full set of scuba gear and go out on a boat dive. The dive place wasn't too thrilled that I hadn't been diving in over a year. They wanted me to do a refresher dive course. I have done one of these before and didn't think it was necessary. I talked them out of it and we hauled all the gear to a waiting boat. I was being careful about my relative lack of diving experience and decided to go with a group that was doing a shallow first dive. The dive boat and all the gear was good stuff. They do a ton of diving on Ko Tao.

I was set up to do two dives that morning. The first dive was a shallow one around the reef. We saw a huge school of barracuda. It was pretty good. Water is nice and warm.

The second dive was also shallow because your first dive of the day is always the deepest (saftey thing). We saw a good number of fish and some nice coral. This was a good dive as well. It is hard to complain about the diving on Ko Tao because it is so damn cheap.

On both dives there was only another diver, the dive master, and me. Small groups are always nice. After the morning dives it was time for more beer and relaxation on the beach. All the topless European women scandalized Chrissy. This has never made sense to me either (not that I have been complaining about it).

The Simple Life Bungalows turned out to be pretty "rustic". It was really hot in our room and there were a lot of bugs. We did have a huge two-foot long Gecko that lived in the bathroom.

Tokay Gecko who liked our bathroom.

The Thais believe these guys bring good luck. They make a crazy noise that sounds kind of like a bird. The bungalows did have a sweet covered deck down by the beach which served food and drinks. There were several other good places along the beach as well. All complete with burning tiki torches at night.

I would have hung around and done more dives the next day but we wanted to be off to the next island and the bungalow bugs made it an easy decision to head out.

Ko Pha Ngan

Next stop on our Thai island tour was Ko Pha Ngan. Ko Pha Ngan is famous for these "full moon" parties that occur every month. These events consist of thousands of people dancing on the beach all night in a general state of drunken, drug-induced debauchery. The parties have become so popular that they now also have half-moon parties and dark-moon parties. We caught a fast ferry from Ko Tao and were soon wandering around the port on Ko Pha Ngan.

We didn't manage to show up during a time when one of the parties was happening so the plan was to head to a quiet part of the island for yet more beach time. We apparently had picked a part of the island which was very quiet, because we couldn't find a taxi that would take us there for less than fifty bucks. This took a couple of hours to work out and we eventually found a pickup truck that takes people to that part of the island for cheap.

The ride over was interesting. The road was a very rutted, dirt/mud affair that required all those in the back of a pickup to hold on tight. I got mud sprayed all over my top half facing the side of the truck. After a couple of hours we arrived to the far side of the island and were dropped off in a small-protected bay with two different bungalow establishments. The bungalow we rented was on the far side of the bay facing the other side and had a small river in front of it that emptied into the ocean. To cross the river/ocean mix in front of our place you had to cross this rickety bridge appropriately called "monkey" bridges in Asia.

Night-time view of the bridge to our bungalow.

The bungalow was rustic but nice with a attached bathroom which was completely outside.  It also had a nice two-level porch which faced the beach/river.

Like I said, the establishment we were staying at was one of only two in the bay.  We spent the next few days sitting on an almost empty beach.  There was a nice restaurant with cheap, but good Thai food.  We often stayed there late into the evening drinking beers.  One night in particular we stayed well after the place closed along with a German guy and a teacher currently working in Qatar.  We bought several extra beers and the bar guy little candles for us because they kill the power generator once everyone goes to sleep.

Ko Pha Ngan was one of the best beaches we have seen and the cozy bay and bungalows was a great setup.  I did almost fall into the ocean with my backpack and all our gear on the last trip over the monkey bridge the morning we left.  One of the boards broke under my weight.  Did some good damage to my right leg.  Not bad enough to need stitches or anything.  What kind of adventure would this be without a few scrapes and bruises?

Bill

We had just finished up a fast paced few weeks in Egypt and next stop was Singapore.  Our round-the-world air ticket has some crazy segments with a large number of connections and lengthy layovers.  This segment was one of the worst and we were not looking forward to it.  We had signed up for these brutal connections and crazy flight routes because it was the only way we could use frequent flyer miles for free tickets.

 

The flight plan:

 

• Cairo to Madrid (sixteen hour layover in Madrid)
• Madrid to Frankfurt
• Frankfurt to Singapore

We got to Madrid from Cairo at 3:45 AM and napped on the hard plastic airport seats until 7:30 AM when a comfy lounge that we had access to opened up.  From 7:30 AM until shortly before our flight left at 8:05 PM we camped in the airline lounge.  These lounges are pretty sweet.  Free food, drinks, computers with Internet, and sleeping rooms are all there for a crowd of mostly traveling businessmen.  They are very nice, but spend ten hours there and you start to go a little crazy.  We started drinking mimosas mid-morning and had switched to wine by evening.

 

It was finally time for the flight to Frankfurt and we boarded the plane only to sit at the gate for an hour before they decided that the plane had a mechanical problem and couldn't fly.  They were pretty quick about rounding up a new plane, but at this point Chrissy and I had missed our connection in Frankfurt to Singapore.  This was a bummer because there is only one flight a day from Frankfurt to Singapore.

 

We continue on to Frankfurt anyway and the airline gets us a free cab to a nice hotel (which they footed the bill for).

 

You have to respect the Germans for being clean and efficient.  The hotel we were setup in was the cleanest we have seen on our trip.  The whole place was spotless.  The bed was decked out with a down comforter and down pillows.  Missing our flight started to not seem so bad.  We lounged around in our hotel room until mid-morning and then headed back to the airport.  Our flight wasn't until that evening but we wanted to see if we could get upgraded to business class and they would only do this at the airport.  So we checkout after a nice free lunch and take a shuttle back to the airport.  This turned out to be a bad decision because the Qantas counter wasn't even open until that evening.  Now we had lost our hotel room and were homeless for the day.  We tooled around the airport for a bit and then went looking for a way to spend the day.  I wanted to go see a movie and steam rolled Chrissy into boarding the subway headed into town.

 

We got off in the city center and it was immediately apparent that a movie was not in my future.  The city of Frankfurt was holding a Christmas bazaar in the historic downtown area.  Think old German buildings decked out in Christmas lights and booths setup selling Christmas ornaments.  No way was Chrissy going to pass this up.

 

There were as many food stalls as there were stalls selling other things.  They had a cool setup where you put a deposit down on a mug and then went from booth to booth paying for warm refills of apfelweiss (spiced wine).  We wandered around listening to Christmas music, sipping wine while looking at the crafts.  It was both very enjoyable and sad.  We were reminded that it was the holidays and we weren't at home with family and friends.  We stayed at the bazaar as long as we could before we had to catch a train back to the airport for our flight to Singapore.

 

After a killer long flight we arrived late the next evening in Singapore.  Our bags were of course misplaced and it took another couple of hours after our arrival to sort that out.  Lovely.

 

I had already booked us a nice hostel in the suburbs of the city.  We finally made it to this place and plopped down our bags before heading out to get something to eat.  We walked around in awe of being in a clean, organized, place that has niceties like a 7-11.  We sat down at a street side café and ordered from a picture menu that was on the wall (this was good because we had no idea what anything was).  A couple of foreigners living in the area invited us to eat at their table.  They were quite intrigued with the concept of taking a year off to travel and we spent all of dinner telling travel tales.  One of the guys even paid for our meal.  This was a very friendly and nice welcome to Asia after all the trials of our journey.  After dinner we crashed hard in our small but cozy room.

 

The hostel was Japanese style with everything (bed, etc) on the floor.  They also had two "Fancy Feast" Persian cats that Chrissy immediately fell in love with.

 

This guy's name was Romeo.

 

We got going late the next morning and hit the town.  After the fiasco in Frankfurt, this would be our only full day in Singapore so we had to make it count.  Our whirlwind tour included:

 

• China Town
• Little India
• Chinese Temple
• Hindu Temple
• Shopping

 

We shopped at this crazy store that sold a little bit of everything and had an amazing selection.  Think three aisles of bar soap.  Coming from Africa, all this commercialism was welcomed.  Hearing about all the crazy laws in Singapore, I was a bit scared that I was going to get in trouble and wind up with some dude beating me with a cane.  Thankfully, this didn’t happen.

 

Here is a sign posted in the subway.  Don't want to be caught on the subway with a stogie, the fines are in Singapore dollars (1.00 SGD = 0.65 USD).

 

The next day we did more huffing around the city and ate lunch in one of the famous Singapore "hawker" stalls.  These are tiny booths all bunched together that sell incredibly cheap food.  We also hit a fancy mall before packing our stuff and jetting to the airport.

 

Singapore is an impressive contrast to much of Asia.  I have no idea how they managed to build a modern, wealthy, prosperous, place amongst mainly developing countries.  Our time here was short, but I wouldn't mind spending a bit more, maybe next time.

 

Cheers,

 

Bill