Last few weeks in Vietnam

We've been traveling quite a bit recently and have covered quite a lot of the country since the last post...

We caught a plane from Saigon up to Hanoi, where we stayed for a few days before going so Sapa which is a mountain town right on the border to China. The surroundings are stunning here and quite unique to anything else we've seen on our trip. The landscape has plenty of mountain slopes where terraced rice paddies are cultivated. We did a two day trek here into the local tribal villages (predominantly Block H'mong people), and came back with these photos:-
























An unusual site for a westerner to see, a toddler riding an ox while eating sticky rice as if it was the most natural thing in the world (he seemed rather perplexed as to why we were staring at him!):-















A dog trying to eat my bag while we rested are tired legs:-














After arriving back in Hanoi after the trek we made a beeline for the world heritage site of Ha Long Bay and went on a three day tour of the place. It's a bay surrounded by thousands of Limestone Islets and Islets rising out of the sea, we stayed on a traditional junk boat for one night. Here's Chrissy at the front of the ship at sunset:-













On the second night was stayed on "Monkey Island" in familiar bamboo hut beach bungalow accommodation, it was here that we spotted the largest spider of the trip (see if you can see the smaller spider behind it!):-













We're now in the world heritage town of Hoi An, and have a fitting appointment at 7pm for our tailored suits we ordered earlier, get us!

Last few weeks in Vietnam

We've been traveling quite a bit recently and have covered quite a lot of the country since the last post...

We caught a plane from Saigon up to Hanoi, where we stayed for a few days before going so Sapa which is a mountain town right on the border to China. The surroundings are stunning here and quite unique to anything else we've seen on our trip. The landscape has plenty of mountain slopes where terraced rice paddies are cultivated. We did a two day trek here into the local tribal villages (predominantly Block H'mong people), and came back with these photos:-

An unusual site for a westerner to see, a toddler riding an ox while eating sticky rice as if it was the most natural thing in the world (he seemed rather perplexed as to why we were staring at him!):-

A dog trying to eat my bag while we rested are tired legs:-

After arriving back in Hanoi after the trek we made a beeline for the world heritage site of Ha Long Bay and went on a three day tour of the place. It's a bay surrounded by thousands of Limestone Islets and Islets rising out of the sea, we stayed on a traditional junk boat for one night. Here's Chrissy at the front of the ship at sunset:-

On the second night was stayed on "Monkey Island" in familiar bamboo hut beach bungalow accommodation, it was here that we spotted the largest spider of the trip (see if you can see the smaller spider behind it!):-

We're now in the world heritage town of Hoi An, and have a fitting appointment at 7pm for our tailored suits we ordered earlier, get us!

Good Morning Vietnam

Now that the Dengue fever has been and gone we've moved onto Vietnam. We stopped off at Koh Tonsay (aka Rabbit Island) in Cambodia before leaving the country, and this island was lovely, really quiet and the village island life has really been preserved on this tropical island. The boat journey out to this island was a bit scary due to a combination of strong cross winds and being in a small fishing boat, the boat came close to capsizing a few times, but luckily we made do with a thorough soaking from the waves.

Here's a picture of Chrissy carrying her backpack through the water to the little fishing boat to take us back to the main land (sea was much calmer on the way back as you can see!):-












We left Phnom Penh (capital of Cambodia) on the 1st of July for Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) in Vietnam, this was the earliest we could get across due to visa validity. This border crossing was interesting (in fact all Asian over land border crossings are interesting!), we didn't have to bribe our way through this time, but the Vietnamese officials were super scared of us coming in with Swine Flu, so before we were let off the bus to go through immigration officials entered with full face masks and proceeded to check all foreigners (it seems Cambodian and Vietnamese don't carry swine flu...), normally i'd have no problem with this, however they were doing it with a thermometer that goes in your ear, and they weren't cleaning it let alone sterilizing it between use! This was grim, and one English guy kicked up a huge fuss saying it wasn't going anywhere near his ear, and that if she preferred she could stick it up his a*se! This started comically, but the border official was in no mood for this backchat (probably not used to her authority being challenged) and continued to yell at him in Vietnamese! This went on for about half an hour, and all the other foreigners just sunk deeply into their seats not trying to get involved. Amazingly they let him through after half an hour of arguing.

We arrived in Saigon at 3pm, and went about trying to find some accomodation, after we established where in the sprawling city we were (three requirements for this: map, compass, and land marks!). Saigon has been a lot of fun so far, a lot of travelers we met didn't like it but we quite enjoy the madness of the place. It has a population of ~6 million and most of these citizens ride mopeds. If theirs one thing which symbolizes Saigon it's the moped, they are everywhere, driving in all directions on the roads, and theirs quite a few rogues on the pavement too! The place is so busy that it has an electric buzz to it, this is something we enjoy for small amounts of time.

Here's a shot of traffic waiting for the red light to change (well some people wait and some just go anyways!):-










We couldn't resist this uber communist/socialist photo op:-










Vietnam is currently a socialist country with liberal economical laws, since they noticed pure communism wasn't working they introduced economic reforms to allow individuals to own businesses, and since then the country has been growing steadily. Although there are red flags everywhere and Uncle Ho is reveered like a deity, the country (some would say) is capitalist with socialist leanings. Quite interesting for the outsider to see.

Earlier we got on two cyclos to take us back to our hotel, this had to be done, not only because we were shattered, but also this is the slowly dying form of transport that once represented Saigon. The guys left eeking out a living with these cyclos are mostly old guys that have done it all their lives, and once that generation ceases the cyclo maybe lost forever.

The cyclos are a lot of fun and very scary at the same time, you're mounted at the front in a chair with the driver behind you, facing oncoming traffic head on, and in fact from all directions! You get to experience the hectic city in a slowed down state just cruising through, it's quite strange, and of course you need to watch out for bag snatchers on mopeds (a bit too common here). Here's Chrissy on the cyclo with her driver, who had been doing this for 55 years, experiencing the struggle against Northern Vietnam, the Americans, and the eventual fall of Saigon, quite a life:-










Tomorrow we fly all the way to the North of Vietnam to the capital Hanoi, from here we will work our way back down south over the next month before flying back from Saigon.

One bus crash, one tropical island, and one dose of Dengue Fever

Recently our experiences have been a little bit mixed. Some great experiences and some not so great...

We left Battambang and took the 13 hour bus journey to the south coast city of Sihanoukville this in itself would be bad enough but around 11 hours in we were involved in a bus crash. The bus in front of us crashed into the back of a car, and we in turn smashed into the back of this bus. Throughout our trip we've had a number of near misses and now are well accustomed to assuming, what i call, the "brace, brace" position ready for impact, by grabbing the seat in front of us. Normally the bus drivers always manage to avert the situation, but our one wasn't so lucky and the front of our bus smashed into the back of the other bus (where the engine is!), we were in the second to front row and were showered with glass shards, but other than that luckily everyone seemed ok if a little shook up. We thank our lucky stars we were on one of the newest buses we've come across on our trip, because on some of the death traps we've been on elsewhere i don't believe we'd have been so lucky. Anyways we ascertain that we're both ok and then look around to make sure no one else is seriously injured, which their not. It's then that we see a load of liquid spilling out of the bus in front of us (eekk!), so this ensured we got off extra quick however the door was just tangled steel, so had to jump out of a smashed window above the front wheel arch, which you can see in this delightful little photo:-
















We then noticed behind us the VIP bus that we had previously shunned in favor of the local bus had pulled in behind us. I was not keen on getting stranded next to bus wreckage for hours so approached the bus driver and asked for a lift, i explained the situation and he must have even seen us pull our selves from the bus wreckage, and then instinctively asked for $6 to take us, i then instinctively started bargaining down - this was the point that we realised that we've been in Asia for too long, we've just escaped by the skin of our teeth and there we are bargaining already, crazy! We got a good price in the end, and gave the conductor the tainted money as we were picking glass shards out of each others skin and skull. We had our second taste of shock on the trip as well, i get nauseous and Chrissy cries! These near death experiences are a bit too common on this trip, and although they make for cool stories we could both do without them now!

From Sihanoukville we decided to escape to a tropical island to relax for a few days, we chose a really small island called Koh Ru (aka Bamboo Island - ironically we didn't see any bamboo!), we caught a little fishing boat across and arrived at the most perfect unspoilt beach we've seen on our trip. Now the beach only has ten bamboo bungalows on the beach and one restaurant to get food from, so it's majorly underdeveloped and amazingly quiet and hassle free.

Here's some photos of the beach:-



































Ice Delivery:-

















Rush hour on Koh Ru (goat army):-

















This was all perfect except one day into Koh Ru i started feeling really ill, with the worst headache of my life, this i initially thought was severe dehydration, until it was followed up by bouts of a high fever, severe pains in the head, bones & muscles, vomiting, oh and not being able to move! We put all the symptoms together and came up with Dengue Fever (aka Brokebone fever), this is really quite prevalent in Cambodia and is spread by day-biting mosquitoes particularly in rainy season (which it is now). Here's my laying in a Hammock waiting for the return fishing boat to take us back to the mainland from paradise:-

















I look so happy don't i? The boat back was a nightmare, a storm had picked up as well as the wind so we had an hour and a half in a fishing boat going through crazy waves, getting sprayed until soaked with saltwater while my body was trying to fight this, not cool!

We eventually got back and we got ourselves to a guesthouse, and i didn't move again that day, thankfully Chrissy could get food for me, but the rest of the day was spent shivering in bed with all covers on and a hooded top (it's still 35 degrees in the room!) and then far too hot the next minute.

Thankfully after three days of unpleasantness it seems to have gone, leaving me feeling quite lethargic (apparently this can last between a few weeks and a few months!), but that's better than what i had before. Adults generally survive Dengue Fever, and normally takes between 3-10 days for it to go, there's no vaccine for it, and there's four varieties of it. I'm now immune to one strain it would seem!

We've decided to move onto Kampot tomorrow. Vietnam is also well on our radar now, and today we booked an internal flight from Ho Chi Minh city (Saigon) to Hanoi, as we'll arrive from Cambodia in Ho Chi but we actually fly back to London from here so we need to make a beeline for the north and work our way back down the snake country.

The land of smiles

We're now 8 days into Cambodia, and so far we're loving it!
After visiting Phnom Penh and it's very saddening remnants of Pol Pots regime, we were glad to move on. S21 detention camp and the killing fields were a brutal reminder of mans inhumanity,the killing fields still have human bones and clothes rags sticking out of the ground along the path, really sad to think thousands were brutally murdered here for very little reason, other than a small groups zealously pursued "ideals".

Our next stop was Siem Reap, the home of the ancient Khmer temples and the mighty Angkor Wat temple, which is the largest religious (Hindu) structure in the whole world. We spent three days exploring the amazing temple complex exploring them all by bike, cycling up to 40KM a day - a tiring three days!

Here's Chrissy at Angkor:-











Yesterday we travelled by slow boat through some of the best scenery in Cambodia, to Cambodia's second largest city (only a population of 140,000) Battambang. The boat journey normally takes around 3 hours, but at is it's dry season the river is really low and the journey was an agonizing 8 hours on wooden benches, a screaming car engine, and 45 degrees of scorching heat - suffice to say every non-Cambodian got burnt!

Today we've been on a visit around the countryside visiting two temples and finishing up riding the bamboo train. Some enterprising locals have taken over an old section of rail track and built bamboo "trains" out of little more than metal train chassis, a motorbike engine and a bamboo platform, which looks exactly like this:-

Now some people in more developed countries would call this majorly unsafe, and certainly it breaks every health and safety law under the sun, and we'd probably agree. However with more danger comes more fun,and this was certainly a lot of fun. You zip along through amazing landscape at 20KM per hour having to dismantle the "train" if something is coming the other way. One of the joys of travelling through developing countries is enjoying such (probably quasi-legal!) activities, where health and safety means nothing!

Tomorrow we head for Sihanoukville, which is in the very south of Cambodia on the coast, from here we're going to explore some of the remote Cambodian islands, where paradise still exists relatively untouched by the ravages of tourism - we'll see!
Here's a scene which greeted us this morning while eating breakfast, Buddhist monks collecting alms, a scene so common in South East Asia it's almost part of the fabric of the place:-

Cambodia

We've been and left Si Phan Don ("Four Thousand Islands") in southern Laos, and are now in Phnom Penh, in Cambodia, our sixth country on the trip.

The four thousand islands is located at the very south of Laos where the Mekong becomes wider and shallower and where literally thousands of islands and islets exist in the middle of the river. We stayed on one of the three inhabited islands called Don Det, which showed Laos at it's most relaxed (imagine everyone on sedatives)! The island is the cheapest place we stayed in Laos, with accommodation costing about 80 pence per night, and our daily spending was around four pounds including all food. The type of place you could stay for weeks, providing you had no inclination to continue into Cambodia and little motivation. In fact a lot of travellers seemed content lazing around in hammocks, after consuming Happy Shakes/Pizzas/Cakes. Anything prefixed with "Happy" in these countries means basically it's laced with Cannabis, there's also similar phrases for magic mushrooms as well. One traveller told us he was really touched that one restaurant was offering "Happy Birthday Cake", thinking Laos people were baking cakes for peoples birthdays, only for me to shatter the illusion and inform him he was slightly incorrect! In Vang Vieng we were offered a glimpse of the "special menu" after ordering our evening meal, only to see such healthy things as "Bags of Happiness" (weed), Speed, and Opium! This was around the time we looked around and noticed most of the travellers around us had passed out!

The islands were beautiful and almost unspoilt, where you can witness traditional village life, and of course hordes of fisherman casting their nets into the mighty Mekong river at sunset (and maybe sunrise - if only i could get up at that time!).

Here's some photos of the area:-































Yesterday we undertook a 13 hour bus journey from Si Phan Don in Laos to the capital of Cambodia - Phno Penh. We crossed at the Nong Nuk Khiene border crossing at the very south of Laos, we're still not sure if this is an official border crossing!

On the Laos side we were required to supply a $2 "processing fee" to get an exit stamp out of the country, Chrissy tried to negotiate this to $1 but they held on to her passport and demanded $2, worth trying! We then coughed up and paid, looking at them with as much disgust as we imagined we could get away with. We then proceeded to walk across the "no mans land" road separating Laos from Cambodia, we presented the three Cambodian border officials with our passport complete with Cambodia Visa (pre-applied for in Bangkok, much bribes required on the border i believe!), where they also demanded a $2 "processing fee". While filling in our arrival details we witnessed an Israeli guy refusing to pay, to which the officials kept his passport and told him to wait one hour, as he was in "their country now". Based on this we decided to just pay the $2 and smile at them to just get through the border. Of course bribing is never good, and you dislike it, but these are two of the worlds poorest countries, so you expect a certain level of corruption among officials. The final thing that made us laugh was that all the dollars collected from us, were put in a briefcase, which they probably take home at the end of the day.

End result however is that we're in Cambodia (legally - i think!), and $4 each poorer, but a funny experience none the less!

Yesterday we rocked up at Phnom Penh at around 9pm in the backpacker ghetto known as "Lakeside" and were glad to get some beds with minimal hastle.

Today we walked around Phnom Penh and were glad of the hustle and bustle of the place, something that was missing in Laos, even in the capital! We visited the S21 Genocide museum where thousands of Cambodians were detained and tortured before being murdered by Pol Pots brutal regime. The place is obviously a sad and extremely moving place, and a gruesome reminder of how cruel and deluded humanity can become in pursuit of "ideals".

A moving picture from S21:-




















Tomorrow we visit the killing fields where more atrocities took place, depressing, but a vital part of any trip to Cambodia.

Logistical Planning of Border Crossings

Hey Everyone,

Just a short post to let you know of our plans for the next 1-2 weeks. We're currently right in the very south of Laos (after two grueling days by local bus - and my backpack got soaked in fish water on the last local bus, everything smells quite fragrant now!) and soon we'll be heading into Cambodia over land from Laos via the Dom Kralor border crossing, recently becoming the first official international border crossing, although dollars could always get you through before!

Lonely Planet and Rough Guide both advised against doing the overland crossing, due to very unscrupulous boat drivers on the Cambodian side charging $40-$50 for a $5 boat crossing! But this new crossing crosses the river via a bridge, cutting out this con. All details can be found here, which hopefully will be useful to the travelers not looking forward to this previously bad crossing.

Our original plan was to cross back over into Thailand, travel south, then cross into Cambodia at the Trat border, which was much more official and far less hassle. But now we don't need to, awesome!

Within Laos our next longer stop will be in Si Phan Don (Four Thousand Islands), which is a cluster of islands and islets surrounded by the mighty Mekong River, we're looking forward to relaxing here a bit, as the past few days have involved extermely painful bus journeys and little sleep. Imagine being stuffed into a local bus for Laos people (who are not European size!) with all their luggage, 35+ degree heat without any windows let alone a fan, for 5-8 hours a day! Only to discover your backpack is wet with fishy water and crawling with ants at the other end. That was a bad end to a bad day yesterday, the only thing reconciling me was the first pizza i've eaten in several months, the noodle and rice diet is starting to wear on us now!

James & Christina

p.s. Here's a typical scene you see while travelling the length of Laos:-

Hill Tribe Trekking in remotest Laos

Me and Christina have just returned from a raw four day trek into the remote hill tribes of Laos and had an awesome time.

The trek was arranged through an eco tourism company called Tiger Trail where the money you pay is distributed to the villages that you visit and the local community.

The trek was four days long and involved some stunning jungle scenery, a lot of walking in 40+ degrees and a lot of curious stares from the local Hmong and Kamil tribal villages we stayed at. Me and Christina were quite concerned that it might feel like a zoo, where we just stare at them like animals, but it was indeed the complete opposite. Everyone looked at us, and we wouldn't have drawn anymore attention to ourselves if we'd been dressed in crab suits with a squirrels tail and and a space mans helmet!

The villages we visited cannot be reached via road, and involved some arduous trekking up and down remote hill slopes of Laos. The villages were really simple, no electricity, no running water, and the people don't even speak Laos let alone English!

Our guide was originally from the Kamil tribe and could speak the tribal dialects which was very handy.

Our accommodation was with the local families in the villages, so much of the time this was a bamboo hut with a mud floor. It was really the authentic experience we were looking for.

The following picture is of the local Hmong children who were fascinated by us, and even more by my camera:-

















It seemed like they had never seen white people before, and i managed to make many tribal babies cry because of my beard, it got to the stage where i would cover it up with hands!

Here's the first village we stayed in:-
















On the last day we were both feeling quite sick, we'd eaten something dodgy at some point and had been sick during the night, but luckily we met some other "falang" (Lao word for foreigners) who had some antibiotics to kill stomach bacteria. We chased these industrial strength Thai made pills with a few glasses of Lao Lao (home brewed rice whisky!) offered to us at the local village party. These combination was surprisingly effective!

Here's a picture of Christina dancing with the locals (these people know how to drink, and were pretty much drunk at 3pm!):-

















Tomorrow we leave Louang Prabang and head down to Vang Vieng, where we plan to do some kayaking and tubing (essentially where you sit in an inflated tractor inner tube and float down the river).

Laos is proving to be a very nice country so far, and should prove to be a highlight of the trip. We only have Cambodia and Vietnam left after Laos, and the end of the trip is nearing. We'd probably both agree that six months is a perfect amount of time, we both start to miss the stability of a home, and just knowing where you're going to be sleeping tonight!

Laos Incoming!

Hello Everyone,

We've now crossed over into Laos, our fifth country on the trip, and have thankfully avoided all the trouble that was kicking off in Thailand.

Before leaving Thailand we visited the far north of the country, and stopped in Chiang Mai for a few days for the Thai New Year (called Songkran), this pretty much involved a full on water fight for five days to celebrate. So in good humour we armed ourselves with water guns and took to the moat side, and soaked and got soaked! The festival was a lot of fun, and most of the days were spent soaking wet, as people patrol town throwing buckets of water over each other, and obviously as a foreigner you're a big target.

Here's a photo of Chrissy, post water fight, and on the quieter side of the moat:-
















After Songkran we headed to the Thailand-Laos border and crossed over via Chiang Kong, across the Mekong to the Laos town of Houyxai. While filling out immigration forms at the Laos border we were sweating so much the sweat was falling onto the forms. It's starting to get really hot now, in the real hot season before the Monsoons break.

We then floated down the Mekong river for two days on a slow boat, which took us through some amazing scenery through the interior of Laos.

Here's a late afternoon shot i took from the boat:-
















After two days on the most uncomfortable converted rice barge boat ever we disembarked at the second biggest city in Laos - Loung Prabang. This place is actually really quiet and laid back, and it says something of the small density of the population of Laos (around 6 million in all!). It's got touches of French here mixed in with Laos architecture, and the whole place is a UNESCO world heritage site.

A picture of Chrissy on the river bank of Louang Prabang:-
















We had a relaxing day today and visited the Laos Red Cross centre where they offer an hour long Laos/Swedish massage and a herbal sauna for around 4 pounds! The best thing is all profits go towards the charity. We're about as relaxed now as we've been so far on the trip!

After Louang Prabang, we're heading into the remote Northern provinces of Laos to do some trekking among the hill tribes. After this we'll be heading down south passing through many places, and within about 3-4 weeks time will cross from Southern Laos into Cambodia.

Someone explained to me today that the Laos PDR, doesn't actually stand for the "Peoples Democratic Republic", but actually "Please Don't Rush", this makes a lot of sense in this extremely laid back and relaxed country!

Diving, Culture and Myanmar

Firstly just to let everyone know, we're ok and safe. The protests and the newly announced national state of emergency sounds a lot worse than it is here in Thailand. We just caught some protests in Bangkok, but here where we are there's nothing to tell that there's anything wrong. Thailand gets a new government every couple of years, by protest, so this is nothing new!

Well it's been a crazy couple of weeks since we last had a chance to use the Internet properly. Much of the time has been spent on the southern Thai islands such as Koh Phi Phi, Koh Tao, and Koh Payam (an undiscovered gem near the Myanmar border). It's suffice to say that me and Christina are as tanned as we have ever been.

Here are two typical views from Koh Phi Phi:-










































Koh Phi Phi is an amazingly beautiful island, with surrounding limestone islets included Phi Phi Leh, which is were they filmed one of my favourite films "The Beach". The lagoon here is amazing. The only problem with Koh Phi Phi is that post-tsunami it's gone upmarket, so it's quite expensive and there are a lot of tourists.

Koh Tao was less developed than Phi Phi, especially as always we headed to a quiet bay that other people don't seem to bother with. Koh Tao is where i gained my PADI Open Water diver certification. This is done over four days, which includes reading a 300 page book, answering several exams, and completing 2 closed water dives (in a swimming pool) and 4 open water (the sea) dives, and demonstrating you can carry out several practical tasks underwater. The course was harder than i imagined and was quite full on, i passed in the end though and saw a lot of amazing coral reefs and a lot of sea life which was mostly amazingly beautiful or amazingly ugly, and to be honest a lot of the time deadly (Lionfish, Scorpionfish, Stingrays etc...).

Here's an action shot Chrissy took, just as i rolled off the back of a long tail boat...



















After completing the Open Water course i was certified to dive to 18m, where there's a lot of interesting stuff in these countries, however if i want to dive in England i'll want to go to a ship wreck as some point, and these are between 18m-30m.

I resolved this situation in Koh Phi Phi where i enrolled to do the PADI (Advanced Open Water) certification course. This course consists of five adventure dives (two compulsory: Deep Dive (down to 30m) and an underwater navigation dive), the other three dives are optional and i selected to do the Underwater Photography, Peak Performance Buoyancy (controlling buoyancy and your water level based on your breathing, very useful!), and my favourite the Night dive. The course also involves reading another 400 page book and completing a number of knowledge reviews.

The night dive was especially special, we dived in a group of five, with one instructor and one dive master to ensure no one got lost and took underwater torches. The sensation at 18m underwater at night is scary and amazing (which is why i liked it so much), when you turn your torch off and move around in the water loads of bio-luminescent creatures light up, and you can see small jellyfish which are clear but have many small different coloured lights tracing up their bodies. It's the most amazing thing to wave your hand in the water and see all these organisms light up around it.

The deep dive went down to the desolate abyss at 30m, where there was little life (we only saw one stingray), and where the current was crazy. We stayed at this depth long enough just to feel and test the effects of nitrogen narcosis. Nitrogen narcosis effects people in different ways, where some people just can't handle it, and either flip from euphoria to complete irrational behaviour (forgetting all their training and do stupid things). We tested for it by timing how long it took to write our names down backwards at 30m and then again on dry land after wards. The time difference for me was only 4 seconds, which seems to be good.

After completing this course I'm now a certified Advanced Open Water PADI diver, certified and trained to depths of 30m. To go deeper will require technical dive training and nitrox training (special tanks containing a higher percentage of pure oxygen). This would allow me to go to 45m, but there's poor visibility and little to see at these depths, and already i feel a little bit too much like Jacques Cousteau !

After the islands we passed through Ranong and Koh Payam, both on the Myanmar border. These places have interesting people, with a 50% Thai, 50% Burmese population.

Koh Payam was lovely and undiscovered, where we relaxed for two days before heading north. It was also where i was hit by a motorbike. This is pure irony, because this was the quietest place we've been to on the whole trip, and survived unscathed against the ferocity of the Indian city traffic! So me and Chrissy are walking along keeping in to the side to allow room for motorbikes to pass (this island doesn't have cars, only motorbikes and tractors!), when i'm suddenly flying through the air, with a million thoughts going through my head (like oh no this is where my trip finishes!), and then worrying because i'm heading straight for Chrissy who is in front of me, i hit her and we both fall to the ground. Kind of luckily she broke my fall (thanks!), and we both only had shock and some minor cuts and bruises. What made matters worse was when i get up to give the driver a piece of my mind i see a young boy looking very scared and apologetic, this was the driver of the motorbike! The irony is unbelievable, and we can only laugh in hindsight!

We then passed through Kanchenaburi, Bangkok, Sukothai and we're now in Mae Sot. Mae Sot is another border town, with only a river dividing Thailand and Myanmar. Today we took the plunge and visited Myanmar (Burma) for the day, this involved a mostly moral dilemma, which is if we go we have to pay a 10 pound visa fee which goes straight to the Myanmar dictatorship, which we don't support in any way. However we also really wanted to see it for ourselves. So today we did.

Instantly life the Myanmar side of the river seems harder, it's noticeably less affluent than Thailand, cyclo-rickshaw and self proclaimed guides gather around you (which is where we remembered our training in India!) trying to earn some money. The people are also so, so not used to seeing foreigners, we received constant bemused/inquisitive stares from people, which we returned with beaming smiles, which they then reciprocated. We visited a number of stunning Buddhist temples, and happened to experience some kind of celebration, where we quickly became the biggest attraction, scores of Burmese people now have mine and Chrissies faces on their cameras!

Here's a photo:-



















The town called Myawadi, is a kind of edgy border town where there's quite a dark undercurrent of illegal activity. The main economy here is of the smuggling nature (teak wood, gemstones, and copious amounts of Meth-amphetamines (known locally as Yabba, ominously also the Hindu goddess of death, but also similar to Crystal Meth obtainable back home). So it was with a little relief we reclaimed our passports (held by Myanmar officials as insurance so we come back) and crossed the bridge back into Thailand (where we got a new 15 day visa for free)!

In a few days the Thai new year festival celebrations begin called Songkran, this is based on the lunar new year, and coincides with the hottest time of year, so the Thai have combined the two which involves people throwing loads of water over each other for several days. It seems to have already started as we've had several bucket loads of water chucked at us today (foreigners are a big target!), it's very refreshing in the heat of the day and it's all done with good humor.

We head to Chiang Mai tomorrow where we will be for most of the festival, which is supposed to be "the" place to be for it.

Laos is now on our radars, and we'll be crossing over in between one to two weeks.

Relaxingh Thailand

Hi All,

Just a quick update to let everyone know we're ok, given that riots kicked off in Bangkok yesterday. By chance we were actually just passing through while getting to the North of Thailand.

We're up in Sukothai now, and in a few days are debating whether to cross in Myanmar (Burma) for a day or not. In around 1-2 weeks we'll cross over into Laos.

Everything is going well, considering i was hit by a motorbike the other day (minor cuts only, and shock), also my day pack fell out of a local bus the other day and hit the road at 30KM per hour, ironically after these two incidents the only damage to my camera is a dent in the LCD cover, result!

More coming soon!

Steamy Bangkok

We're now in Thailand our third country of the trip. We flew out of Kathmandu yesterday and everything went surprisingly well, despite an upset stomach.

We arrived in Bangkok at 7pm and proceeded to head to China Town which was an experience, as we wondered down labyrinth like streets in the dark, while one old man tried to feed me sweets, very surreal!

The heat here is crazy compared to Nepal, and the humidity makes it feel very tropical.

The thing we noticed the most when arriving in Thailand is how much more money there is here, for the first time since leaving Europe we've seen good roads, and many skyscrapers. Everything seems to be so organised as well, cars even slow down to let you cross the road! We didn't notice it the last time we visited Bangkok, but i think India and Nepal show a much bigger contrast.

Today we sorted out our Laos visa, and just have our Cambodian visa to obtain tomorrow before we can leave Bangkok, and head to a nice island. We're not sure of our route through Thailand yet, but we'll add something later. Roughly we're heading south to the Islands, and then all the way back up to the north of Thailand where in one months time we'll cross into Laos.

We had chicken for the first time in ages yesterday, it was gorgeous. I also samples a curious flavour of crisps: "Garlic Soft shell Crabs", made by Lays (or walkers), that can only exist in Thailand!

Paragliding, Buddhism and Holi

We've had an exciting and mixed time since getting back from our trek.

I (Christina decided against it) took advantage of the word class paragliding from Pokhara and took the leap from an over sized hill with an over sized kite. Paragliding is an awesome experience, although not utterly serene, as you have a reoccurring thought that if these kite strings break i fall 2000 metres to my death. Here's one photo i took of the view when i looked down (yes- those are my feet):-


The 30 minute tandem flight gave really nice views of Pokhara and the surrounding Himalayan mountain range, and gave me an experience as close to be a bird as i'm ever going to get minus feathers!

Straight after take off my camera batteries died (typical!) so while in mid-air i went about changing them, without dropping the batteries let alone my camera! Here's another photo just after take off whilst in midair:-

On Friday me and Chrissy started a three day Buddhist meditation retreat, which was really nice and provided a good foundation in Buddhism and meditation.

We finally left Pokhara on Monday and travelled to a small traditional Newari town called Bhandipur. This town was ultra traditional and didn't seem as though it had really changed in hundreds of years!

Yesterday was the Hindu festival of Holi, which is a big deal in Nepal and India, especially for kids, who throw paint and water at each other and hapless travellers like ourselves! Here's a photo after a good mornings paint fight with the locals:-

We of course armed ourselves with much powder paint to return fire, it was a very amusing morning. The laundry service are not going to be happy when i hand over my pain stained clothes though!!

Today we travelled to Kathmandu, and have 7 days remaining in Nepal before we fly to Thailand. I'm dying for some decent food, let alone some meat!!!

Trekking in the Himalayas and the art of surviving

We've just successfully finished our Annapurna base camp trek within 10 days and are now resting up in Pokhara, quite frankly thankful to be alive.

Based on our understanding and stubbornness we rejected offers of porters and guides for our trek and decided to do it independently, which is quite a decision when you're both carrying 15kg backpacks for ~7 hours walking a day!

The trek started beautifully with nice warm weather, and a lot of climbing up and down hillsides at relatively low altitude, four days in we reached Machapuchare base camp (MBC) (at 3700m), this is the day the trek got serious as it snowed all day from 11am, this was on top of already deep snow. As the storm clouds had well and truly gathered we had to stay here for 2 days and 2 whole nights (with the effects of the altitude disturbing any kind of sleep!), we sat out intense snow with all day thunder and lightening right above us, and the very real risk of avalanche in the back of our minds. After the second night we woke up at 6am and to our delight the storm had cleared meaning we could do the last climb to Annapurna Base camp (ABC) (4130m!), this entailed endless falling into snow up to our waists and complete wonder as we could finally see all the mountains that surrounded us.

This is a picture of the lodge we were staying in at MBC (snowed in!):-















The mountain range at Annapurna base camp is a 360 degree panorama of some of the highest mountains in the world let alone the Himalayas, we stayed at Annapurna II base camp, with the mountain behind us at 7,937m! Life is different at this altitude, you can't breath very well due to the thinness of the oxygen, you're surrounded by the most alien landscape and nothing really grows or lives, except for a group of backpackers well out of their depth!


Reaching base camp was a massive achievement for us, and ranks up their as one of the most important things i've done in my life, let alone the most beautiful, and it also provided the biggest high (in both senses) of our lives. Here's a picture of me enjoying a beer (well deserved!) at base camp. Alcohol has a much bigger effect at this altitude, so only one beer :)



After 11am that morning the storms came in again, with much more snow, thunder, lightening, and the constant rumble of avalanches. This is the type of situation that me and Chrissy haven't faced before, the type of situation where you could very much live or die based on your decisions. Psychologically it's quite tough, but we just had to sit it out and hope for the best.

At 6am the next morning we all woke up and observed that it wasn't still snowing, we made the decision of getting back down at least to MBC if not further. We were the only people at ABC, so we had to rebreak the path down, which was filled in with deep snow, this was made only trickier by the chances of avalanches, and a big avalanche having already fallen over the previous route. We took it in turns to break the path, which involved testing the ground to feel for yesterdays icy path with sticks, we re-routed at times to avoid causing avalanches, most of the trek down was exhausting as you continually lost a leg or two to deep snow, sometimes you had to pull half of your submerged body from the snow to continue. We also had a guy with us who was majorly ill, either AMS or some parasitic stomach bug, who kept curling up in pain, and looked quite close to death. We took it in turnsto carry him down. After all this a trek which normally takes 1 hour took s about 3 hours of hardcore effort to get down to MBC. The ill guy had to stay at MBC as he was going nowhere, and some of his friends stayed to look after him.

Me and Christina decided to press on down and not risk getting snowed in again, but we both knew the next part was a high risk avalanche zone and should be passed before 10am, it was 9:50am! We decided to take the risk, as if it snowed again it would just become even more dangerous the next day. We essentially ran through this 2 hour trek, listening out for avalanches and moving even faster when we saw them starting near us. The ironic thing was this was some of the most beautful winter scenery i have ever seen in my life, but also some of the most dangerous, as a number of people have been caught in avalanches here. We trekked for a huge amount of time this day (~9 hours) without break to get out of the snow covered areas.

We finally reached a lodge that was out of the snow, and were thankful to still have our lives intact!

Michael Palin also did this trek for his Himalaya series, however he had 35 porters and guides, got dropped off 3 days into the trek, picked up from annapurna base camp (by helicopter), and didn't have much snow to contend with. I've just read this section of his book, and he moans a lot about the difficulty of it, Michael you were lucky! As were the people we've met who did the trek prior to us, their experiences were very different, and a lot easier.

We got unlucky with some heavy end of winter snow storms, it was just the timing that was wrong, but now we're safe in sunny Pokhara, i'm glad it all happened as we're both still alive and we have a hell of a story about the time we went trekking in the Himalayas!

Bus Roof Surfing in Nepal

We made it to Nepal! We crossed the border on Sunday (Valentines Day) and were glad to escape the mentalness of India for the relative clam of Nepal :)

We first visited Lumbini which is one hour from the India/Nepal border, and is the exact birthplace of Buddha, which was an awesome thing to see. The garden around it is covered in Buddhist prayer flags and many pilgrims.

We then left here for a small undiscovered town of Tansen, where we only met two other white people in 2 days! This town was a really nice introduction to the Nepalese people and culture, without the usual tourist trappings.

We left here for Pokhara on a local bus at 5am in the morning, and today have just sat outside in our accommodation garden relaxing, due to possible exhaustion. Maybe the stresses and the constant travel and changes have exhausted me, because today I've hardly been able to muster enough energy to get up. This does not bode to well as we wanted to start a 10-14 day trek into the mountains in a few days! Maybe one day in one place doing absolutely nothing will be enough?!

New experiences in Nepal are varied and many, just within the first day i did four new things i've never done in my life before:-

1. Visited the birth place of Buddha

2. Rode on the roof of a packed local bus (more on this...)

3. Had water-buffalo for tea

4. Crossed the Nepal/India border

This was all on Valentines day and i don't think i'll ever have such a varied one again.

Riding on the roofs of buses in Nepal is awesome, the Advantages include:-

1. The best air conditioning

2. The most leg room (inside the bus is always packed well beyond capacity!)

3. Stunning scenery

4. You get to keep an eye on all your luggage (theft is a real problem on the Nepali buses, Chrissy already foiled two attempts of theft, while she was trying to pay for tickets!)

5. You get to meet interesting characters (like the smiley Tibetan who was doing a circuit of the four major Buddhist pilgrimage sites)

The dangers however are... everything! Bus crashes are common in Nepal, and most roads travel along mountain passes, and of course you're not strapped in, hold on tight! Also the practice seems quasi-illegal, traffic police don't like it at all, and motion for you to get down, until the conductor intervenes and sorts it out!

As soon as i have energy again we'll be departing for the Himalayas trekking along the Anaapurna base camp trek, so this will probably be the last post until Kathmandu in about 14-18 days time.

So for now we just need to focus on getting a warm sleeping bag, trekking shoes, warm clothes, let our embassies know and organize a trekking permit!

Naked Sadhu kisses Christina!

We reluctantly left Dharamsala a few days ago on an over night bus to Rishikesh. Dharamsala was quite literally a breath of fresh air, the mountains and gentle spirit of the Tibetans helped a lot as well.

We actually saw the Dalai Lama as well! Completely by accident we were walking close to his residence after breakfast, and there was a crowd of people waiting, we waited for a while and a convoy of cars came along with the Dalai Lama in one of the cars, waving (just like the queen!). This was as much as we could have hopped for considering his schedule and less than optimal health. It was a very special experience to see and have the Dalai Lama one meter away from you!

We arrived in Rishikesh at about 7am after getting multiple buses and rickshaws, the place is nice, but a bit cliche in all of it's yoga/hippy vibe. It claims itself to be the worlds yoga centre, where every self-professed guru offers a class for the right price. Although i could imagine staying in one of the Ashrams might be rather more authentic. The place is probably most famous for The Beatles visiting an Ashram and writing most of the White album there. This is also the first place where we saw the Ganges river, and as such is considered a very holy town.

The surrounding hills out of the valley offer some nice walks, and it was on one of these walks that we encountered our first naked Sadhu (Hindu holy man), he was just walking along the quite cliff road, completely naked, walking towards us, he then proceeded to talk to us in maybe Hindu or maybe even Sanskrit, and either blessed or cursed me and Christina. It's hard to tell, my powers of discern were blunted by the real fact that he was wearing no clothes at all, and covered in some kind of white powder, which I'm really hoping was not human ashes, as some Sadhus seem keen on this practice. In hindsight this should have been the strangest encounter we've had in India, but at the time it kind of made sense, which leads us to believe we've been in India for far too long!!!

We left Rishikesh quite happily feeling a kind of urgency to leave, you could call this being scarred by naked sadhus or the encroaching storm. By the time we reached the train station in Haridwar the storm had started with much rain and lightening all around, we got very wet and muddy in a very short time.

The train from Haridwar to Varanasi took much too long (22 hours), and as usual was filled with the joys of traveling sleeper class (cockroaches/beggars/weirdos...). It reminds me of a conversation Christina had with a Sikh in Delhi which went something like ....

"What! You're taking sleeper class!!? But you're white, you must have enough money for AC!"

We arrived in Varanasi yesterday to much hassle at the train station, as soon as we stepped off the platform, a guy tried to befriend us, asking us where we're staying and which guidebook we have (tip: try and confuse them by saying you are traveling by the guidance of the gods instead of lonely planet!), he then proceeded to wait while we booked our onward train ticket, and followed me out to the main car park while i was scouting for the pre-paid auto-rickshaw booth, i made it very clear he was getting no money from us and we didn't require any of his "services", i also suggested a visit to the nearby tourist police, at the mention of which he turned and left me alone! Only to see him another ten minutes later waiting for us outside the ticket booking office again! When we left here he followed me, along with five other hustlers through the car park to the pre-paid rickshaw booth, where i made it very clear in public to all that i did not want to get into a Rickshaw with him. At some point we arrived at our chosen accommodation in Varanasi, without paying anyone commission, quite an achievement in Varanasi!

We leave for Nepal in two days time, and to be fair we're done with India, it's an amazing country but we're exhausted by all the travel and (a minority) of the people, and most of all the crazed traffic!

A slice of Tibet in Dharamsala

Yesterday we left Amritsar for Dharamsala, this involved three separate local buses and one rickshaw! The local buses are a lot of fun but quite painful, the total journey time was around 10 hours, and we're now at an elevation of 1770 meters, which means there's snow and it's really cold!!!

We're staying in McLeod Ganj which is 10km further up the mountain from Dharamsala, and the views down into the valley are amazing and the views up to the mountains are even better, it's a nice taste of the Himalayas before we head to Nepal soon.

Dharamsala is the residence of the Dalai Lama and Tibetan Government in exile, and as with all of the holy places we've visited in India, it has a special atmosphere. The atmosphere is very different to the Golden Temple in Amritsar, there the atmosphere was one of intense devotion and worship, where as here it's one of complete peacefulness and tranquility, both very special, but for different reasons.

We arrived in the dark last night and looked for a hotel, we found one quite quickly called the Hotel Om, which is run by a really sweet old Tibetan couple, in fact most of the people up here are Tibetan, and it's really like a little slice of Tibet, but probably in some ways more Tibetan than Tibet, due to the Chinese occupation.

We're going to stay here for a few days because it's so unlike the rest of India, this could quite easily be a different country than India, it makes heading down to busy Varanasi seem quite daunting! We've been looking for meditation courses here but there's not that much, due to it being low season here. We may head down to Rishikesh, to continue our spiritual trail, then after that into Varanasi and then towards Nepal.

India is without doubt the craziest country with the widest facets of contrast maybe in the world. It's mind blowing that you can travel a few hours by bus and feel like you're in a new country with different people/religions/temperatures/landscape. My mind is constantly reeling at the speed of change!

Did i mention it's freezing up here, first purchase this morning was a woolly hat from a Tibetan lady.

India so far

Here's an overview of where we've been so far in India...


View Larger Map

Desert Safari!

We've finished the desert state of Rajhastan now, and befitting of a desert state we had to go out into the desert!

Through our hotel we organized a two day and one night trip into the desert on camels. We went especially far into the desert via jeep to get away from the usual tourist routes, and were in fact only 20Km from the Pakistan India border. We didn't see any other tourists in the whole trip it was just us, the guide, the camels, and the occasional nomad! We each had our own camel to ride, which we learnt how to control and ride pretty much without assistance.

After the first day we stopped riding and set-up camp in some very nice sand dunes, and spent the night under the amazing night sky, with zero light pollution! I've never seen so many stars, satellites and shooting stars. That was the highlight for me. On the second day we proceeded to ride through a lot more desert and we visited several small villages, where life seems especially tough as pretty much nothing will grow in the heat they have. By 5pm on the second day we'd had enough of riding camels, it really really hurts!

After Jaisalmer we traveled back to Delhi on an overnight train, stopping in Delhi for just a few hours before carrying on another over night journey to Amritsar. The strangest thing happened (well many strange things happen on Indian train journey!) i woke up at 5am to see some random bloke wearing my sandals, no idea what he was doing with them, but i grabbed them back, glared at him and that was it! So random, i was just completely shocked. Everything else we had was locked up and secure except my sandals, a lesson learnt for next time! It seems Indians don't have the same boundaries as Europeans, we've had other passengers sit down in our carriage complete one of my sudoku puzzles and then move on again without saying a word, we've had numerous inspections of the books we've been reading too, sometimes it feels like we're a travelling library :)

Today we arrived in Amritsar which is most famous for the Sikhs most holiest of temples, the golden temple ! We're staying within the temple grounds where it's free to stay and eat, and we've met a lot of friendly Sikhs, even one on a pilgrimage from Southampton back in England! He was cool and helped me put on my turban, some people even claimed i looked Punjabi, the long beard is starting to pay off!! It's an awesome temple, surrounded by a lake and covered in 750KG of pure gold, and the place has an atmosphere, unlike the last ashram we visited.

Earlier we took the bus to the small village of Attari (a short distance from the Pakistan/India boarder) where we watched the boarder ceremony, which was hilarious. The Indian army and Pakistan army try and out do each other with macho poses and posturing, both sides has scores of spectators/supporters which are on each side of the boarder and there's a lot of national pride visible within both sides.

Tomorrow we're heading for Dharamsala, home to the Dalai Lama, and the tibetan government in exile. We look forward to that, but not the drop in temperature.

Just in case you were wondering, i'm still wearing my turban now, whilst writing this :)