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So my promise to update the blog sooner was complete and utter lies yet again and to be honest I can think of no other reason for this other than my laziness! Although we have spent most of Ireland's 'toughest ever winter' lying on a beach in +30 degree heat which, in fairness, can take it out of you. I can practically hear the sympathy from here so yes, it's completely down to my laziness!
The last time I was writing, we were in Hong Kong and were about to embark on what we had deemed to be the trickiest part of the journey so far which would involve an overnight train to Nanjing, a bus from here to the Chinese/Vietnamese border and another bus from there to Hanoi. It took about a day and a half in the end, which wasn't too bad and I suppose we would have seen the hardest part as getting through Nanjing which was fine in the end. Some times getting through the smaller Chinese cities (smaller in Chinese terms-it still has a population of about 8m!!) can be a bit tricky due to the lack of people that can speak english but we got a guy in Hong Kong to write out all the Chinese we needed so we were grand. Believe me, trying to explain to a Chinese taxi driver that you want to go to the bus station with only the aid of sign language is not easy!
So we arrived in Hanoi anyway and it wasn't long before you'd notice the remnants of french colonialistion in everything from the architecture to the street names and more crucially to the fact that there were loads of baguettes for sale everywhere. When you've been eating noodles and rice for the previous month, a baguette is much appreciated!
After spending a couple of days in Hanoi, we took a trip out to Halong Bay, a World Unesco Heritage Site and probably more famously for being that place where they finished up their challenge in the Top Gear episode in Vietnam! It was pretty spectacular although we did get quite unlucky with the weather. We stayed overnight on the boat and could have stayed on one of the islands for another day but it was raining so we said we'd head back to Hanoi.
Over the next few days, we went to visit the Hoa Lo prison where John McCain amongst others was held captive during the Vietnam War, we posted home our winter clothes and learned how to cross roads again! If you can cross a road in Vietnam, you can cross a road anywhere. Basically you can throw the safe cross code out the window, pick a point on the other side of the road, walk towards it and the on coming traffic will avoid you. I've never seen so many motorbikes in one place, some times with up to three or four people on them, and if there happens to be a set of rules of the road in the country, the people are blatantly ignoring them! What ensues is a general havoc on the roads which some how seems to work, not once did I see an accident or even an ounce of road rage while I was there!
Also whle having a pint in Hanoi (Bia Ha Noi), I did something that only an Irish person can do. We had barely met another Irish person since we had left Dublin, but when we eventually did start chatting to a fella from Donegal, within a minute we were able to name off about two ot three people that we both knew!
So after Hanoi, the next stop was Saigon courtesy of an overnight train down the east coast of the country. A far more relaxed city than Hanoi, it was a stronghold of the anti communist and thus the American army during the Vietnam war. We went to the presidential palace, where, when barricaded by communist rebels the war ended and just south of Saigon we went to the highly impressive Cu Chi Tunnels. They're basically a series of underground tunnels where the Viet Cong lived and fought against the Americans during the war and you were still able to crawl through sections of them if you didn't suffer too badly from claustrophobia! We finished off our Vietnam War exploration by visiting it's main museum in the centre of the city. It was definitely one of the better museums we've been to although as we've learned, you have to take some of these communists views with a pinch of salt as it could also have been called the anti-american museum!
We left Saigon and spent one more night on the Mekong Delta. We did a tour around it by boat, seeing the floating markets and the different ways of how the people live off the delta itself. From here, we were also able to enter Cambodia by speed boat!
This dropped us all the way to it's capital, Phnom Penh. We were staying in the heart of the city, walking distance to most of the cities major attractions. This didn't stop the many tuk-tuk (taxi) drivers, who literally seemed to be camped outside the hostel, from constantly harassing you to get a tuk-tuk even when you just wanted to go to the shop next door! Anyway, once we got past their first line of defence, we were able to make our way down to the Tuol Sleung Prison, the scene of mass genocide under the Khmer Rouge regime in the mid to late seventies. Led by Pol Pot, the Khmer Rouge attempted to rid the country of it's cities, it's money and it's industry and basically turn it into an agrarian society where the sole purpose would be to produce rice. To achieve this, they felt they had to imprison and murder the country's most intelligent people (doctors, engineers, even people that just wore glasses!) to reduce the risk of revolution. In just over three and a half years under Pol Pot's reign of terror, an estimated 2.5m Cambodians were killed. The prison documented everything that ever went on there, and what made it more shocking was that they had pictures of everybody that was ever kept there. Out of the 20,000 people who were imprisoned in Tuol Sleung, only 7 survived. It was undoubtedly the most disturbing place I have ever been but at the same time very informative and interesting.
So we spent a couple more nights in Phnom Penh before we made our way up to the country's pride and joy- the Angkor Wat. As the largest religious building in the world, the northen city of Siem Reap hosts the country's main tourist attraction. It's on everything from the national flag to the currency and they've even named the national beer after it- a pint of Angkor will set you back just under 2 euro!
We had intended to return to Phnom Penh to collect our Thai visas but alas due to the opening times of the Thai embassy among other things, we were unable to, so unfortunately we had to book our first flight from Siem Reap to Bangkok. Before we got that, we finally gave into the tuk-tuks and rented one for a day to go around the Angkor Wat. People say you could spend a week there and not even see it all! Our tuk-tuk driver also doubled up as a tourist guide, he didn't have the best english in the world and we did spend a lot of our time nodding along while not having a breeze what he was saying but we understood enough to know what was going on! There were obviously a lot of children selling souvenirs around the temples and one girl in particular stood out as I was able to have a full on conversation with her as Gaeilge! Honest to God, she asked me how I was, where I was from, what age I was, what my name was and she was able to answer all of them when I asked her. She must have just picked it up off Irish tourists passing through, but it was funny to think that an 8 year old girl in Cambodia has a better grasp of the language than the average Irish 8 year old, a point that really should be raised with the Minister for Education!
So after all of our trains, buses and boats, it was sadly time to get our first flight. Still, Dublin to Siem Reap wasn't bad going!
We arrived in Bangkok where we would be staying for a few days before we made our way down to the islands. We were staying on the Khao San Road which is pretty much at the heart of the action. O'Malley's girlfiend, Niamh arrived for a couple of weeks. We went out a few times, did some shopping and hopped on a train to Chumphon, about six or seven hours south of Bangkok. From here, we were able to get a boat to Koh Tao.
After staying in hostels from Dublin to Bangkok, we upscaled slightly to a villa with a pool in Koh Tao, courtesy of Niamh! So the next few days involved a lot of swimming in the pool and lazing on the beach (while the snow poured down back home!)
O'Malley and myself also did the PADI open water diving course, which took about 4 days. There were all sorts of classes and pool work for the first few days and then we did four dives, up to twenty metres deep over the last two. So we're now qualified to dive by ourselves to 20 metres and hopefully we can do some more diving once we get to the coral reefs in Australia. It was definitely one of the best things I've ever done.Álthough, I suppose the one bad thing about it was that the beard had to go as it was interfering with my snorkel and mask which was a very sad moment as you can see in the photos!
We spent the rest of the Christmas period on Koh Tao and we even managed to get the full Christmas dinner and all! A couple of days later we got the boat to Koh Samui. Again, we spent a lot of time lying on the beach and we also went across to Koh Phan Gan for the full moon party on new year's eve which involved thousands of people on a beach drinking from buckets which was a bit crazy. Great night in the end though!
Just before we left Koh Samui, we did a bit of a tour of the island and saw the waterfalls, buddhist temples a monkey show and the must see grandfather and grandmother rocks which to be honest, is just a pile of rocks. Fair play to them though, they've managed to make a full on tourst attraction out of them as the place was packed!
At this stage, Niamh left us and we got the bus to Phuket. If you're ever in Koh Samui, never get the bus to Phuket. I Think it took us 5 hours more than expected after changing buses about ten times. Anyway, after a few days here, we were on our way to Perth, Australia. There was no real reason for picking it other than it was a good bit cheaper to fly into than any other Australian city, plus, it would also be a good chance to see the west coast. We'd be based here for a couple of weeks until Taz came across from Sydney so we could start our road trip up the west coast. We spent the few weeks between the city itself, Fremantle and Scarborough. There's some great beaches around Perth and it's a really nice city with loads to do. The temperatures were hitting the fourties for a few days though which was a bit tough!
While in Perth, we went to see Perth Glory play in football, Perth Wildcats play in basketball, the horse trots in Gloucester Park and cycled and snorkelled around Rottnest Island for a day. When Taz arrived a few days back, we went to the Australia/Pakistan cricket match followed by the Wolfe Tones which was great craic altogether!
Our plan is to make our way up to Broome (in our camper van), fly across to Darwin from there and then to Cairns and then head down the east coast to Melbourne from there. We've already passed through Cervantes, Geraldton and Kalbarri but I'm not making any promises about keeping the blog updated, but I'll do my best!
Henry
- comments
sara o'malley Well done Henry, especially on the blog!!!!!!!! Sounds like a marvellous trip.
Kathleen Counihan Great blog H. It would be a shame not to have documented that very interesting trip.