Same, Same...But Different?

HELLO! Well this time around, i actually AM in Cambodia! Apologies for the silent treament, the reasons for this are two fold. Number 1: We havnt actually been doing much over the last two weeks apart from relaxing on a beach. And 2: ALL INTERNET PLACES IN ASIA ARE GIGANTICALLY SHIT. My goodness it's irritating i tell you. We have a squillion delicious photos to put up and make everyone jealous, and every single sodding computer we go has massive issues handling just the Facebook home page let alone recognising a camera and displaying images. Oh well, i guess once i get to a more developed part of planet Earth i will have to spend two days and one meeellion dollars uploading all my photos. Joy. Mind you, i just had a nosey around the desktop of this computer and someone has managed to upload a load of their photos, so maybe i'll just put them online and we can all pretend they're mine. Yes, lets do that. Just ignore the fact im not a fat, chillian looking fellow with a skin head and a lopey eye and you can get a sense of the wonders ive seen.

Anyway, i'll stop moaning. So last time i wrote we were heading out of Laos, into Vietnam. Wow, that was a long time ago. OK, well i'll try do my best from then until now...which is basically a whole country. Oh well. We arrive in Hanoi, the capitol of Vietnam, after a lovely short flight with incredibly rude flight attendants and a landing so bumpy i nearly swallowed my iPod. Hanoi was MENTAL. I guess i can liken it to Bangkok, but messier and OHMYGOD so loud. Its quite incredible actually. The streets are constantly packed with mopeds and the odd car. And i mean constantly. There is NEVER a break in traffic, and the most irritating/fascinating thing about it is the way the Vietnamese deal with this fact. They use their horns not as a warning for you to move, but they actually just drive along with their hands on their horns. All 3.4 million of them. At the same time. Jo and myself were sitting in a cafe watching the madness of these people attempting a round-about on the road beneath us and in one minute we each counted over 60 beeps. Thats a beep per second dontchaknow. The other fun part of this strange traffic behavior, is crossing the road. The ONLY way to do it, is to walk. Don't look at the traffic, or run across, just walk, slowly and steady in a straight line, and the traffic moves around you. Its a terrifying and fascinating thing at once beacuase even though you feel death is imminent, you also feel like your parting the red sea. Its most similar to that bit in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, when he has to walk out across that canyon, only to discover a hidden path. Powerful stuff. Another thing thats instantly noticeable about Vietnam, is they have no concept of bins or rubbish disposal, so when you are navigating the raging traffic, you also have to navigate the piles of stinky goop littered everywhere. Saying all of this though, i actually enjoyed Hanoi, yes it was busy, smelly and messy. but it seemed fun too. The people were lovely, not the terrifying, brainwashed sociapaths i presumed they would be. It seemed Communism bought a smile to most of their faces, and ours in return. perhaps, the reason i liked Hanoi the most, is that it was COOL. It actually RAINED when we got there. Amazing! I was thrilled with this precipitation. I actually even embraced a corny 'Shawshank-esque'pose as it started raining. Lish. So, thing we saw in hanoi? Well apart from some awesome shopping (SOZ about two pairs of Converse trainers for 4 quid!) we took a stroll to see this old fella pickled in a box. This dude, called Ho Chi Minh liberated Saigon from some bad dudes a while off, and basically saved Vietnams bacon, so when he died, they pickled him in a box for you to solemnly walk around in a big mouselium. This was when we got a view of the real communist Vietnam. On every street corner around the mouselum, stood a little box with two soldiers eyeing you up as you wandered past, and giant red Vietnamese flags billowed from every building. Even the people seemed to walk in single file, all chanting ÖNE OF US. ONE OF US. ONE OF US' and when they saw our Western faces, they all pointed in unison and emitted a high pitched scream from their open mouths. OK, not really but that was the general vibe of the area. As we qued for the ho Chi MInhs mausoleum, i wondered what we would see. I imagined a big pickle jar with a huge lid and this old guy floating around inside with his eyes shut, and maybe a couple of gerkins and eggs bobbing about too. But alas, there was no Jar. Just a HUUUUUGE room with a glass coffin and a spooky looking old man asleep inside. Still really weird though, as the majority of the people visiting him were Vietnamese! And we had to queue for about an hour to get in, so this guy must really have been a hero. On the way in, we were laughing about the Big Brother style antics that the government could have employed over us Westerners since we arrived, such as Cameras in our spring rolls and other bugs and such, when all of a sudden, this guard stepped forward and told us to stop laughing, stop talking and walk with our hands by our sides. Woah. Scary stuff. Anyway, after Mr Minh, we went and watched some strange Water Puppetry show. It was ODD. Imagine a puppet show, but in a swimming pool. With authentic Vietnamese music. very strange. Interesting though. The music however - if you have never heard traditional Vietnamese music, just imagine a cat, that has had its head transplanted onto the body of a very moany woman (Dr Moreau styleee) and is still writhing in tremendous pain from the operation, whilst being burnt by cigarettes. Oh and with twingy-twangy string instruments playing along. Thats probably the best way to describe it. After this day of Tourism fun, it was sadly our time to say farewell to our group. Long gone are their LOST pseudonyms, and we all said goodbye really good friends. The nicest part about it all is the fact that we will be seeing eachother along our routes throughout our travels. We plan on seeing our Canadian buddy Jo for our travels through southern Thailand, and our friend Jess in New York, and some others in Canada and we are actually still travelling with some other buddies we met. Once the group left Hanoi, it was me and Jo, and the Great Danes. Three beautiful Danish girls called Mia, Stena and P (I dont even want to attempt to spell P's name wrong so i just call her P)'and it was from Hanoi, that we got our bus to a trip to Ha Long Bay. However, before our bus trip, Jo and myself decided to collect our laundry the hotel had kindly completed for us. Sadly, there were two problems with it. All of it smelt clean which was good, and it was all folded nicely, but poor Jo, upon examining one pair of her frilly M&S knickers, it appeared one of the cleaners had also examined these knickers. With her dirty crotch. Brown stained and smelling highly of body odor, these poor white panties were quickly disposed of. Dirty woman. As for me, my only surprise was what only can be described as a Molusk attached to one of my tshirts. A crusty, white shell of a molusk was firmly attached to the shoulder. I have NO idea why or how it got there, but we quickly deiced, the Vietnamese cannot do Laundry.

Now, to Ha Long Bay - a coastal area about 6 hours drive from Hanoi. Its most famous for its bizarre outcroppings of rocks that shoot out of the water like strange stone icebergs. We decided to do the tourist thing and spent two days and a night floating between these giant rocks on a big boat with nice curtains and lost of tables. It was actually a really awesome trip. When we arrived in Ha Long Bay it was the MOST humid weather i have ever experienced. I think i actually lost about 18 stone from sweating that day. It was really cloudy, and very misty though, so as we sailed along the eerily calm water, it was so awesome to see these giant mountain tops come out of the mist, towering out of the water. I actually worried we had sailed into the Bermuda Triangle at times becuase it was so surreal. On top of that i had nicknamed our ship the black pearl as it was black. And a ship. It made sense at the time. After doing some cave hunting (Awesome, HUGE caves) and a little sightseeing, we decided to go for a swim. by jumping off the top deck of the boat. It wasnt until i realised, still falling, kicking the air and grasping to hold onto something that the jump was actually terrifyingly high. But once we spalshed into those cold dark waters, it felt SOOOOOO good. Nice and cool. It wasnt until i noticed the giant mountains around me, very dark, deep, calm water beneath me, and towering black boat next to me, that i started freaking out and had to exit the water immediatly. Other than that tho, great fun.

After Hanoi, and Ha Long Bay, we made our way via a very bumpy, messy noisy sleeper train to Hoi An. Oh, on the sleeper train, we had to sleep 6 in one room. SIX! There was five of us so we only had to share with one stranger, but whata stranger. We christened him Mr Badoingy, a Vietnamese chap who loved Tennis and guffing in his sleep. It was with him that i noticed a radical difference in the Vietnamese, and mostly Asian peoples attitude towards what you can and cant do in public. Something you can't do is wave your feet around. Its rude apparently. So we have to keep them down on the floor, and never point or put them over someone else. As i was chatting to a steward on the tarin, i noticed something that apparently is acceptable. Whilst trying to communicate with her about my ticket, as we are chatting away, up shoots one of her fingers, straight into her left nostril and she has a good old root around whilst chatting with me. I mean, she was REALLY going for it, she had a biggun she was dying to get. All mid-convo. I gave up trying to chat after she successfully removed the blockage and began rolling it around in her fingers. And as for Mr Badoingy, my god that man enjoyed a guff. his was paring away all night.

Anyway, to Hoi An - this was our favorite place by far. Quiet, clean, and so so beautiful. FINALLY, we found paradise. We stayed for three nights, enjoying the crystal waters, white sand, and amazing people and shops. Check out the photos when we upload as they will just speak for themselves. We spent our days wandering the wide, empty streets, getting some clothes made by the local tailors, and enjoying coffees and cakes at an AMAZING cake shop. We even managed to meet up with our old group who were hanging around so that was good fun. After these three days and nights of Paradise (including the Oscars, HOW AWESOME WERE THEY?! Loved loved loved watching them in our room with pizza and free wifi) myself, Jo and the great Danes headed south via sleeper bus to Nah Trang, another seaside town. Notice how i say Sleeper Bus? well, there was NO sleeping going on. Imagine lining up 10 bunk beds, then shoving them on a bus, three in a row. That was the sleeper bus. put with it, three crazy drivers who continaully stepped into the drivers seat (without letting the bus stop or slow down), Vietnamese beepy crazy traffic and bunk beds with no sides and it proved to be a horrific journey. Thank god for Vallium. each time the bus went onto two wheels round the corner, or the driver emitted a GIGANTIC HONK every two minutes, Mr Diazaphan allowed me to lay back and enjoy the fact my face kept smashing into the window. At 5 in the morning, we arrive in Nah Trang, we quickly pointed out our hotel we wanted to stay in, and out of no where, a man resembling Quasimodo with a tan popped up and got a taxi for the girls, and a moped for me. Whizzing through the streets with extreme wind in your face is the best way to remove the sleep from your eyes i can assure you. We spent two nights in Nah Trang, one consisting of good food (We found Fajita's!) and the other constsing of waaaaaaaaaay too much drink. But ill get to that in a minute. After spending one day on the pretty average beach, we ventured across the waters of Nah Trang to a mysterious island with the words VINPEARL written across their hillsides in Hollywood Hills type writing. What is this Vin Pearl? Well as far as we could figure out, IT is a he, who is a multimillionaire who bought the island, and by the looks of our visit, is attempting to create a Disney World kind of place for the Vietnamese. Expect, he failed. Well, it wasnt that bad, but the majority of the rides, and water slides we went on nearly killed us. Especially the water slides. One of the great Danes, P, went down one of the slides and got off with half the skin on her back missing. After that, we stuck mainly to the wave pool, sympathetically called TSUNAMI which had a wave machine so powerful i'm starting to wonder whether i had found the real cause of the dreadful 2006 event. My god those waves were big. Great fun though, in a kind of OHMYGODIMGONNADIE kind of way. After that day of fun, we decided to head out on the twon for the night. BIG MISTAKE. What was going to be a pleasant drink, turned into a fairwell bash from the Great danes that lasted until 3 in the morning. And Jo and I had to get up at 9 for a sleeper train to Ho Chi Minh City. NOT GOOD. Lots of drinking and meeting other travellers went on, which was great fun, and horrifying in equal measure. I met a lovely chap. called Brian. he was 28 and had been travelling on and off since he was 17. ''Man, i really used to be into me drugs" brian would say. Over and over again in fact. It seemed Brian was STILL really into his drugs. Especially when he kept trying to grab my coconut bucket drink (Imagine a cocount, hollowed out with lots of rum added to it) and rip the top off of it spilling it everywhere becuase he thought i couldnt fit my straw in. I could fit my FIST into the drink, so im pretty sure i was fine. brian is one of MANY of these kinds of people we have come across on our travels so far. I call them THE LOST. They seem to be travelling all the time, but never really with any kind of destination. Tell tale signs include glazed, red, beady eyes, SCORCHED skin either brown or red and very messy hair. I actually cant stand talking to these people most of the time, because all they ever have to say is what you have missed on your journey so far. or they just breathe pure drugs in your face. Anyway, sometime around 3 Jo and i decided to make our way back to the hotel, only to realise we had no idea how to get there. Then, all of a sudden, Quasi with a tan turns up again! In the middle of the night! With his moped! god bless that wonky faced guy. he zoomed us back to our hotel, and very nicely, decided to roll us a joint. This wasnt a good idea. For one thing, it seemed to be not marijuana in it, but dirty hair. We also noticed his rolling paper was a page from a magazine. And on top of that the next day me and Jo realised we might have spent about 5000 Dong on it (Vietnamese money which equates to about 20 quid). And it tasted foul and made us feel grim. We are fools. So, the next morning, we both awoke, with the WORST hangover, and made our way for 9 hours on a train to Ho chi Minh in southern Vietnam. For most parts, the train was fine. We slept all day on our beds, waking for drink and sleeping again. For some reason, the Nausia stayed with me BIG TIME, so by the time we reached HCMC, io felt massively grim and booked into our hotel and slept forever. The next day, we met up with our New Yorker buddy, Hanif (Pure New Yorker who loves to party and sight-see and party) and we all headed via a bus to Cambodia! Totally uneventful, easy and quick, we crossed the border (after stopping at a cafe that sold deep fried curried frogs BEEEEURGH) and now here we are in Phnom Penh, capitol of Cambodia which i will write about another time as i think my fingers are about to fall off.

So thats where we are up to. Again, apologies for bad grammar, but its so hot im wearing a wet flannel round my head, and im typing on a keyboard half written in Cambodian, and im conscious of an ever dwindling amount of money in my wallet due to stupid internet prices. Expect photos soon, and from the 10th March onwards, i will be making phone calls again as we will be back in Thailand, on our way to Paradise and relaxation! WOOO!

Cheerio!
xxxx

(P.S - Anyone who has been to Asia will get the 'Same Same but Different' thing. It's their way of dealing with communicating to tourists. For example, TOURIST: Éxcuse me Sir, which one of these is the Chicken Curry, and which is the Tarantula Curry? ASIAN WAITER: 'Uhhh, Same Same, But Different.'' TOURIST: ''Great. Thanks.'')