Good Morning Vietnam...

We bused it again from Cambodia and into our 7^th country of our travels, Vietnam.

Our first stop was Saigon in the south of the lanky country. Except it’s not called Saigon anymore, it’s now called Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC) after the bloke on all the money. Oh by the way the money here is ridiculous; one squid is 33,000 Dong. Not only is that a hilarious exchange rate but the word Dong never, ever, ever gets unfunny! The issue is however that the notes vary from 500 Dong to 500,000 Dong, this means that you end up with a shit heap of notes worth nothing. For example this is £2.50.

So on our first day we thought we would head out see the sights, this includes The American War Museum, some shit palace thing and a typical South-East Asia stinky market. The Museum is pretty good actually, lots of good pictures and old guns and tanks and that.

I will say that it’s very biased but I guess you would expect that but by the end it felt like anti-American propaganda almost. In one instance they had a pistol on a wall (Colt .45 for enthusiasts) and it had a little blurb underneath saying “this is a Colt .45, Americans used this to kill thousands of Vietnamese women and children. Vietnamese people used it for self-defense and occasionally in the police force”.

We moved onto the Palace, I won’t go too deep into this one but just imagine a big house with 600 living rooms and tons of those old fashion dial around telephones. Highlight: this tree, no jokes.

The market was stinky as previously mention and when we walked past it at night we must have seen 400 billion rats kotchin’. Our reaction was to sprint away from it like a couple of really hard hardnuts.

On our return to the hotel after our day of looking at things we hit rush hour. This meant that our pavement became a road. I was perplexed at the thought of navigating our way through this mess.

The next excursion was to go and look at some jungle warfare tunnels where 16 thousand Vietnamese people lived in during the war and rinsed bare Americans in. These tunnels were proper small. You could go through them for about 60 meters with a chance to get out every 20m. I was like 20m is nothing, I could jump that far. But when your down there its proper dark, sweaty, stinky and cramo so I think I did 40m and felt like I had done enough.

Our tour guide was a Vietnamese geezer who fought for the Americans and killed his countrymen, quite the insight. The edge was only slight taken off by the fact that we had to call him Mr Bean. A favourite of his was saying "M16, very bullshit gun." he said this over 100 times and ended every sentence with "you know, you understand".

After Saigon the next stop was Da Lat, a mountain town 1500m above sea level and a welcome cool climate.

Our hotel ran a “secret tour”. I still don’t know why they called it the secret tour because it was fairly heavily advertised but anyhow it was decent. It would involve driving in convoy on mopeds through the hills to visit various points of interest for 12 (!) hours.

Before we left, a hotel staff person asked a pertinent question; “have you driven a motorbike before?”

Jack said yes, and I naively said no, then looked at JB whilst he stared at me angrily. “I mean yes but, ages ago”

When I referred to ages a was talking about the adventure holiday week thing that me and Pat did back when we were about 12 I think. This was your typical PGL or outward bound sort thing but revolving around riding motorbikes and quads as well as the usual rock climbing and whatever. I’m not sure if any of the following is true but hopefully Pat will verify it; I remember staying in a dorm with about 6 other lads, and one them had an obsession with throwing rubbish out of the 3^rd story window, including a full pipe of Jaffa cakes. Also I’m pretty sure on the last night we all shaved of this one kids eye brow (just the one) as a team; and in the morning no one said anything and he even went to the toilet and didn’t say anything – surely he would have noticed a missing eyebrow. I do however definitely remember getting a wedgey so high that my nob popped out the bottom of my shorts and I was given the nickname “Pecker” for the rest the week.

Nether the less we boarded our mopeds and the our guide for the day told us to have a little spin around the street to practice. I nearly crashed right there and the guide asks “are you sure you have driven one these?”, “yeah ‘course… just need to remember, its just like riding a bike!” she didn’t get it.

I can’t remember her name so I’ll call her Pauline. Pauline was fucking mental, just shouting shit like “lap lap la” all the time a laughing incessantly for absolutely no reason at all. Our first stop was at a cricket farm… yeah a cricket farm! It stank and Pauline was grabbing them and being mad. She then brought out a plate of cooked crickets and started gobbling them like they were going out of fashion. I made the huge mistake of trying one; the overwhelming taste of lemongrass was unbareable. This is the perfect spot to point out to you if you weren’t already aware that lemongrass is awful and tastes like a hand towel that you mind receive after a curry, or actually a shredded KFC “freshen up” wipe!

Next was a waterfall, very lovely and watery but insanely dangerous to get to; I would be surprised if Pauline told me that no one had died clambering down slippery rock steps to see it. My concerns were realised when I fell over round the back of the waterfall and really hurt myself. I hurt myself a second time by falling over trying to get up from the previous fall, this made climbing out with a limp incredibly difficult and painful. But knowing me and my unwavering resolve and dedication to not complain, I just got on with it like a champ! This is the moment just before it happened. Pauline laughed for about 10 minutes without helping. Cow.

Silk factory was next. Little Asian birds messing around with worms. Pauline ate one, of course.

The trapse around the local market was an eye opener. Basically Pauline showed us some typical veg that they eat, weird potatoes and manky cabbage. I didn’t have the heart to tell her that I already knew was a broccoli was.

After we left the meat section I had to ask Pauline a burning question,

“Where were the steaks then?”

“They were there” she said, “on the table”

“oh right… between the bowl of intestines and the cows nose?”

“yes of course… lap lap la!”

Here’s a picture of a heart in a bowl, why not.

Our final stop was for lunch in the hills cooked by an authentic Buddhist monk woman, I guess that makes her a nun but she had all the gear, shaved head, she looked the bollocks! Food was lovely also. We had a look around some village full of old ladies making shit and had chat to them through Pauline who made them try and speak English saying stuff like “darling… you want to come live with me?” but unfortunately there family did have enough buffalos to pay for me, that isn’t even a joke, its completely true.

Here's another summary video. If you weren't aware you can't watch these on a smart phone :(

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One Week in Cambodia...

Q. How many people can you fit on a moped?

A. 5: One driver. Two other adults. One baby stood up between the two adults. One toddler sat on the handle bars.

Welcome to Cambodia.

They will quite literally put anything on a moped.

We arrived in Phnom Penh (PP), the capital, after flying from KL with the intention of looping round and up through Vietnam and Laos before meeting up with P Money in Bangkok. We collected our bags which were literally the world’s wettest items as some Malaysian spazlord had left them out on the runway I guess when a monsoon hit and delayed our flight!

Our first cab ride through the city during rush hour taught us an unbelievable amount about the traffic laws in this country, primarily that there are no traffic laws in this country.

When you are sat in a cue of traffic, you have a number of options. Either wait in the traffic like a sensible, normal human being, (ultimately that is a mugs game); or drive on the opposite side of the road in to head on traffic. You can also opt to mount the pavement and weave between ordinary pedestrians.

Junctions are quite probably the biggest joke going as they are a free-for-all of mopeds and tuk-tuks barging, undercutting and generally being unsafe. Quite literally mental! (Obviously not actually “literally” but people say “literally” all the time now.)

It is well documented that shooting guns in Cambodia is readily accessible and offers the westerner with enough dollar to shoot chickens with an AK47 or fire an RPG at a cow. I didn’t really fancy this, maybe I’m going soft; so instead we just fired rifles and machine guns at coconuts.

On the way there our tuk-tuk driver nearly plowed into a 3 year who as just going about her business playing in a mound of gravel!

Also during our stay in PP we went to see an animal sanctuary, this included tigers, leopards, lions, bears, elephants etc. Jack though this was a brilliant trip, I thought it was a shit zoo. After much consideration I have actually decided that this was in fact… a shit zoo and I’m ashamed that I ever doubted myself over it.

The tour guide for the trip just felt dodgy, we can’t put our finger on why but just something about him. He was Dutch but moved to Cambodia after meeting his now wife on the exact same tour 2 years previous. He had a cloth water bottle holder/handbag. He had a very odd handshake come greeting. Also there was a child knocking around that wasn’t his and Jack thinks he was a bit paedo-ish with it, I didn’t see it that way myself but Jack says there is a limit to how much you can interact with a child, and he was on it. He was alright though.

We went to a market to get some ridiculously cheap but pretty good fakes. Yes the fakes were good but this was so overlooked due to the incredible smell. And by incredible I mean horrendous!

Imagine this combination. Piles of pale meat covered in flies, old women cutting out fish guts on the floor, open sewage drains and for garnish, tones of incense. I actually though I was going to be sick on some little Cambodian birds head when I got penned into a narrow alley way. Still we did get to the best name for a shop I’ve ever seen!

I will say that we had one of the best meals we have had travelling. It was local Cambodian food (which is pretty good in general, although a lot of it tastes like Sambuca) cooked and served by disadvantaged Cambodian youngsters training to work in the hotel industry. Lush and morally satisfying.

The final trip for us on our tour of PP was to see the Killing Fields and a quad bike drive round some poor villages. The Killing Fields were, I’m sorry to say, pretty dull. I mean it was unlikely to be a barrel of laughs anyway but tbh; cba

Just so you’re aware, the Killing Fields are a site where the evil dictator Pol Pot killed some of the 25% of all Cambodians alive during the late 70’s.

The Quad bikes however, were awesome. We headed through remote little villages with kids just running around waving and the like. I managed to get this picture which could be on the front of National Geographic or some shit, just Saiyan. I was so surprised to see that Cambodia kids are well happy, they bloody love it.

We got really muddy and had a short stint driving on the main roads of PP, after all that noticing how dangerous it was… I shat myself.

The next stop was to head to Sihanoukville, a coastal town that was supposed to be good. About 4 hours away and we were feeling flash so we got a taxi the whole way. It cost about $50 (£30). Oh yeah I forgot to mention that the currency in Cambodia is Riels and you get 6000 to the quid; but actually everything is paid in US dollars, even the VISA. Anything less than $1 is in Riels so you basically end up carrying around two different currencies, slightly bizarre.

Anyhow in Snooky we basically just went to the beach and drank in the evening, nothing too interesting.

 At the beach I got approached by a vendor selling bracelets:

“You want to buy bracelet?” he asked firmly

“no” I replied calmly

“you want play game?”

“what?”

“you want play noughts crosses?”

“no”

“you want buy bracelet?”

“no”

“yes”

“no”

“yes”

“no”

This went on for at least 3 minutes I’m not even exaggerating”

I finally said “no, no, no, no, no”

The vendor cocked his arm and squared up to me as I sat in a deck chair, I looked at him perplexed.

He then drew his thumb across his neck saying “I kill you!” before he walked off to his next victim.

I would estimate that the vendor was 8 years old, maybe 9, not sure. LAD

 Drinking included beers for 60p or less and vodka cokes for about £1.50. This led to Jack losing his iPhone. We are not sure of the exact moment when; but I think it was when this happened:

It also led to the inadvertent texting of Jack’s dad:

 

And it led to bumping into Catrin from Uni who I promised would get a shout out, so here it is.

The bars were cool and had some different features like puppies and kittens walking about on bars looking bewildered.

I really liked Cambodia, and here’s another typical video to highlight some highlights that you may or may not want to watch. Key an eye out for a high 5 fail, completely embarrassing.

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Kuala Lushpur...

We headed from Singapore to Kuala Lumpur and had a bus booked to leave from outside a Hawker Center. Hawker Centers are, according to Tripadvisor, the best things to see in Singapore and they are basically food courts. We ate in a restaurant in there and had some Chicken Thai Curry; I say chicken and by chicken I mean pieces meat from parts of a chicken I didn’t know existed and are unfathomable and completely uneatable. Within the curry there was also approximately 14 limes and two fistfuls of chicken pubes. Not our best meal.

We got the bus and it was lush. You know on normal coaches there are 4 seats in a row, well this had 3! That mean they were super wide and even had massagers in them, lovely stuff. They even put on one of my top 10 favorite films; The Fast and The Furious: Tokyo Drift. It was playing in English but for some reason I still can’t work out it had English subtitles, unfortunately those subtitles didn’t exactly match up with what was being said. For example when in the film the protagonist says “wow, you can read the brochure” the subtitle said “woah, you read book show?” and every time someone said “ride” (which was extremely frequent, once you noticed) it displayed “rack”.

Our hostel in Kuala Lumpur was ridiculous, but in a totally awesome way. It was a converted mansion called “Reggae Mansion” and our room had flat screen TV with a USB port so I could plug in my hard drive and watch Inbetweeners loads. It had a roof top bar where you could enjoy £2 vodka cokes, shisha and see the Sky Tower and Twin Towers, which are now called the Petronas Towers (gay)

We went to see the towers in the day time, and they are frapping massive, but also look spectacular.

 

We headed in with the intention of getting to the top, no chance. We had to go there at like 8am to queue up to get a ticket to go up 3 days later, I said “not worth it”. In the tower we found a cinema and watched Skyfall, however I guess because of the muslimness of Malaysia they cut out the sex scenes and what really took me by surprise was how the locals were in stitches at all the jokes and inuendo.

Skyfall, hmmm… I really like bond. I really like Home Alone. Do I like them together? Not much. Where were all the birds, glamour, beautiful locations and all round bondness? Bleurgh. Ok though I guess. And quite cool to watch it in the towers.

We also went on a mini tour to see monkeys and fireflies. Fireflies are nice but need to be renamed for sure. Christmas tree light flies is most accurate but less catchy. The monkeys were fun.

We got there and there wasome geezer hitting them on the head with a squeeky crocdile toy as a crowd control device, seemed odd.

I had brought a bag of nuts and the monkeys went nuts; climbing up us and pissing on my leg. Well not sure it was piss but one sat on my leg for a while but then when it got up I had a wet patch. I really really hope it was just a bit of piss; not poo, spunk or monkey period.

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