One Week in Bangkok...

Bangkok; where you can do anything. Jack and I got there and we wanted to sleep. So we did; for 17 hours.

Essentially Bangkok is like any other big city. Well developed, plenty of amenities, massage parlors and ladyboys knocking around.

Taxi drivers are also massive nob’eds. They don’t know where anything is, and it’s not a language barrier thing because you show them Google maps and they are baffled. When they do know where something is they tend to not want to take you there because of the bad traffic which is unavoidable and GAY!

Another issue is that when you do you will often be faced with a difficult decision; which of the following would you like to see?

We choose neither and elected to move hotels 3 times to soak up the city living. Our third hotel was half way down what Jack and I referred to as “Prozzer Street”. This meant that every time we walked to or from the hotel we were solicited for massages by beautiful women who may or may not have been beautiful men. Sometimes it is really obvious, for example stubble and built like a brick shithouse; other times its less obvious, big fake tits and genuinely looks like a bird.

We headed out that night to the Khao San Road which is where you find the tourists drinking buckets and general “Bangkok night out” stuff you would expect from reading around or watching films. Including fake clothes and crass wristbands (if you are able to zoom in take a look at what you can wear on your arm.)

At one stage Jack was getting the drinks in and three Thai teenagers strolled past, they were munching on a bag of mushrooms. I could see through the clear plastic bags and fancied some of the sautéed shrooms. So I asked one of the girls, “Are those mushrooms?” she looked perplexed, so I rephrased the question “those? Mushrooms?” She understood and quick as a flash popped one in my mouth. (a mushroom that is)

This was by far the worst tasting mushroom of my life, crunchy and sour with an awful consistency. The group laughed, hard. They tilted the bag towards me so I could have closer look… fucking fried grubs. I had eaten a bloody fat worm thing and to top it off I was a laughing stock for these little idiots.

Jokes on them though, they had a whole bag of that shit! Which I later realised, they sold all over the place.

Jack returned with the buckets and explained that there had been a confusion at the bar and as way to say sorry the manager had made his drink super strong and I had to try it. Now, Jack has previous of making a bigger deal about things than they are. So I took the bucket, thinking to myself “oh yeah, bet this is nothing” took a huge sip through the straw… and insta sicked into an empty bucket on the table. Jack laughed. I was sick again. Although this seems like a bad thing, in the rush I did manage to break a decade long habit of throwing up in my hand that has plagued me on nights out over the years.

J Bird headed off to get me some water but I could hear laughter from across the other side of the street, I looked over and a woman shouted “you have puke in your beard!” One of my lowest moments.

Next was time for P Money to arrive and to welcome him we had booked a fancy hotel, this ended up being at the end of Prozzer Street by accident which meant we were to walk past even more massage parlors. There were three with the prefix Dr BJ’s but one was called Dr BJ’s Bargain Bangers, we are still not sure if that meant that the birds were rougher.

When we checked into the hotel, the welcome pack made interesting reading:

We went out again, set up a kitty, lost Jack, which meant lost the kitty but still had a good night:

Bangkok was a great experience and we reveled in it before moving to Laos. The highlight however was when J Bone needed to buy some new earphones and inadvertently bought 5m long ones, what a spazlord!

Typical video summary below

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One City & 1600 Islands...

NOTE: This post is pretty long so to save time just scroll to the bottom and watch the suammry video.

We headed to our final stop in Vietnam; right in the north is the capital Hanoi.

Hanoi is a super ramo idiot town, where walking from A to B is made incredibly difficult by the fact that the pavement is not allocated to walking. Instead pedestrians must walk along the road with the minimal cars and ample mopeds weaving in and out of women and children as they hustle about to go and get their next awful meal – probably chicken feet covered in pork semen wrapped up in a squids scrotum, or something equally unappetising to anyone who shits sitting down.

The pavements are reserved for restaurants to display their miniature stools and to cook unknown piles of mess; or used for shops to display their generic wears and piles of unknown mess; or for moped drivers to park their mopeds in a mess.

The streets of Hanoi are quite obvious, I realise that that doesn’t make a lot of sense but bear with me. Each street sells something different which makes them easily identifiable and means that if you want something specific you know where to go. If you were to go do a Sunday Big Shop however you would be in a lot of trouble.

Specific areas include: The men’s clothes area, the women’s clothes area, the children’s clothes area, the children’s toys area, the baby products area, the bank area, the cigarette corner, the sunglasses area, the hairdressers area, the shoes area, the flip-flop area, the motorbike parts area and the door locks and handles area. There are more areas but I suspect you get the idea.

Still though within these areas no one shop is different from the other, they all have exactly the same stock and this has been true across Asia and Mexico. What is the USP here? What is Vietnamese for “diversify”? How can I make a street vendor realise that if I said “no” the first man selling a shoe shine for my trainers that 10 more vendors down the line I still down want (or need) my trainers polished?!

To top off Vietnam before flying to Bangkok we had one last trip planned to Ha Long bay. A soup of a billion islands or so in the sea. If you have ever seen the Vietnam Top Gear episode then it’s the end but in the water.

To do this we went on the “Castaway Tour” organised by one of the hostels which promised to be a fun filled romp amongst the islands. After a 4 hour bus we boarded a boat for another 4 hours. As the boat set off a few ground rules were set for the boat.

“Rule #1: No drinking with your right hand. If you do and someone shouts buffalo then you have to neck your drink.”

Oh right, I thought, what a funny joke and it’s one of those trips. I’ve never really been a fan of this sort of drinking game; it always seems to me that the people who are most keen to play are also the ones who seek attention by getting caught the most and then going “oh what, me? Oh well” with a stupid look on their face saying “silly me, I guessed have to drink this drink now” and then only take like a couple of sips. Gay douchebags. The lack of people actually downing their drink was pitiful, especially considering they were serving drinks in such tiny cups filled with ice.

“Rule #2: You cannot say the word T-E-N. If you say the word T-E-N then you must do T-E-N press-ups”

How this improved the speed of drinking and getting people drunk, I don’t know? nether the less this was quite a funny rule in hindsight

“Rule #3: You cannot say the word M-I-N-E. If you say the word M-I-N-E you must do T-E-N press-ups.

Similar to Rule #2, but a welcome addition.

Those were the rules so once the guide stop talking we hit the bar (LOL) on the boat, 3 for 2 drinks, and to avoid getting caught in the games we utilised our natural left handedness and used words like TENt and MINEfield.

The group got settled and were mingling but before people could get too acquainted and have too much of a laugh everyone was called upstairs for some forced fun, generic ice-breaker shit that everybody hates. Whats your name? Where are you from? Tell us a fact about yourself.

It went round in a circle as people told us where they were from in as broad a sense as “Australia” and “England”. The facts were also rather tame with examples like “this is my sister”, “my favorite colour is orange”, “I am a homosexual” and “I’m an alcoholic (in a jokey sense)”.

Hang on a second… everyone looked round at each other… did that guy actually say he was gay, and is he gay? He said it so nonchalant that it could be a joke or that he is very comfortable. I would later refer to this man as “Batty Twat” because he was an idiot.

After a swim en route we were about to arrive at our beach residence for the next two nights situated on one the numerous islands, but not before more forced fun. Our guide (still can’t remember his name) said that the group from the day before were already on the island and would be planning a welcome for us so we should do the same on the boat.

The ideas were flying; “everyone do a moony” one person said, “Gangnam style” said another, “sex positions” said a third. Finally the group settled on a human pyramid… oooooh what a great idea. Except there were 40 of us. I’ve never seen anyone even attempt one so big on land let alone of a boat. Low and behold after 12 people were involved there was no space so me and Jack sat at the side and leant into make the pyramid look more slopey.

To top it off the other group were brilliant and didn’t even plan anything, well they sort of hid, so they completely did us as our pyramid was all for nothing.

On the island the drinking continued.

It continued much later for many others including Batty Twat who had unfortunately ended up in our hut along with 8 or so others. His bed was located around my head and next to the side entrance allowing him to enter and leave his domain approximately every 5 minutes, I guess to seek attention and be a bell end, making a racket and trying to talk to people.

The next morning the group arose and one of the camp called “ladyboy”; due to a story he told about a night in Thailand, asked “what happened to my mosquito net." It had been completely ripped from the 8 foot ceiling… oh look Batty Twat was using it as a pillow.

Batty Twat also complained about how there was mud on his bed and that people had been walking on it, when I told him that he had caused it all himself, he ignored me and carried on being a dick. Jack made sure that every time he entered the hut he was sure to wipe his shoes all over it from then on. It was completely coated by the end (LOL)

That day was a bit wasted really, I went wakeboarding and stood up for approximately 3 seconds, but enough to get a picture making look like I’m a pro. I asked Jack if he wanted to go wakeboarding and he said “Do I Fuck”.

In the afternoon we went kayaking for about 2 hours, shattering and insightful. All the floating fishing huts had dogs on, as if they expected you to board and steal the copious plastic baskets of shite. Also underwater were tied down plastic boxes of mold, like tones of them.

 

That night was very subdued with the next group arriving being quite sparse in number. A mass drinking game with 50 people was alright and got everyone involved but the guides were being a bit gay asking for absolute silence as they took their turns, no one cares lads just get on with it.

Anyhow we left the islands, it was a good trip and everyone was shattered, myself included. From too much alcohol and far far far too many press-ups.

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Nha Trang, Hoi An & Hue...

Middle Vietnam and the first stop, Nha Trang.

Kind of like Benidorm but with way more Russians, all the signs are in Vietnamese, English and Russian; they should call it Little Russia or Russian Town. Anyone who has visited the delightful Slough in last 5 years will understand the feeling, except in Slough its Polish. I’m fairly sure I am not being racist when I say they are exactly the same; shiny clothes, peroxide blonde hair and kids spouting off in foreign wearing Reebok Classics.

The beach was mediocre and the water brown so we looked up good places to go in the area. Near the top of the list was a beach “untouched by man”. This seemed like the ideal location for a couple of lads just looking to have a can of Coke, a chick burg and a lie down followed general wave based activities; so we took a 30 minute cab down the coast. When we arrived at said “untouched by man” beach we were a little disappointed:

Some of the items we found on the beach “untouched by man” included hundreds of flip-flops and sandals, mattress innards, arm chairs, wood, empty bottles, general tat and an abandoned army barracks!

The night life in Nha Trang was your usual backpackery scene mixed in with locals hovering. One place called Why Not Bar offered a bucket like I’ve never seen for just 800,000 Dong or £20ish:

In one of the bars was a pool table, a kind of winner stays on set up with the option to play doubles. It was the turn of the J Bird and T Money to take the cues and rinse some local douchebags for control of the table. As it stood our success in doubles matches had been non-existent, losing all around the world to Brazilian women in Florida whose breasts were so large that they knocked the balls out of position and old men in Sydney who literally couldn’t have been any drunker chatting up truly horrendous looking women.

Two chaps rocked up and they seemed like…. Oh no wait… hang on… is that geezer… yeah… yeah bloke is wearing a glove! One of the two men had a 2 fingered, 1 thumbed glove on. As in he has brought it to the bar to play pool at midnight, who does that. Anyway he was shit, but his mate was good so we lost and added it to our growing tally.

Hoi An further up the coast offered a better setting for our planned laziness with a much nicer beach, warm town feeling with plenty of decent food (fairly difficult to find in ‘Nam) and an outrageous amount of tailors.

To get there we had to voyage on our first sleeper bus, named as such due the strange set up of 3 rows of collapsible beds for you to sleep in on the treacherous journey around the mountains.

This would end up taking 16 hours instead of the advertised 10 due to typical Vietnamese mis-selling of tickets and the driver hitting something (possibly an animal) and having to change some part of the coach whilst he left the door open and lights on; allowing 95% of all Vietnams insects into the cabin feast on my delicious skin! The view in the morning however was rather nice.

Our hotel was lovely offering a huge room with two double beds, two balconies and two bathrooms for just £10 a night each. We also had to opportunity to rent mopeds and go exploring around the town and off towards Da Nang.

We scooted over to the Hyatt to see if we could use their beach. So we strided in like a couple of likely lads and made ourselves at home. We noticed that the fuel gages were on empty but I convinced Jack that the gages were broke because they went further than zero and why would someone rent you a moped and not put fuel in it so we continued. Jack had mention earlier that the bloke in the hotel had said that we did need to fill them up with petrol but I again convinced Jack otherwise claiming that he must have misheard the man.

We reached a mountain just sticking up in the middle of flat land, apparently this was Marble Mountain.

A network of Pagodas and caves used by Buddhist to do they’re praying shit or whatever they do. It was rife with school kids, some found Jack very interesting for some reason and insisted on having pictures with him, bare hilare.

The view from the top was lovely, able to see the coast and other good stuff in one. You could also use the binoculars except for one slight hitch. There are no coins in Vietnam, and if there are they are rarer than a good meal… which is extremely rare!

We also go this snap:

This was taken by a ladyboy. Some lad with tits said that he would take the pic for us as I was struggling with the timer. For some reason the tranny decided to squat to take the picture. Jack later informed me that the ladyboy had had all the bits removed, when I asked how he knew this he simply said “no bulge”

We headed back to town… oh wait… shit. My moped started spluttering. The unimaginable and unbearable had happened. Jack was right about something.

We abandoned the scooter at the side of the road and went twosies for some ten minutes to a shack that sold us 2 liters of petrol in a water bottle and got back home.

The next night we just had the one moped and went to town. After a food we returned to where we parked it to find it had been nicked! Apparently you can’t park there and the police had moved it. I was super annoyed but a local helped us and we got it back free of charge.

At night Hoi An has a good array of places to drink with some offering beer for just 12p a glasses and 6x Vodka cokes for £1.20. This obviously resulted in drunkenness but I was able get a couple of pics of this lad:

And this graffiti which was approx 4ft in length:

 Next was Hue, the former Capital. Rubbish. Went to a tomb, looked really nice and we were going this is in good nick. Then we read it was made in 1930s, all of a sudden if wasn’t in good nick it was just cack. Tombs need to be at least 1000 years old to be called a tomb imho.

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