Around the world (sort of) in 180 days (ish): September 2011

Thailand

Thailand: 5th September 2011 to 25th September 2011

Total days travelled: 162

I had previously been to Thailand a whole 10 years ago for about two months and absolutely loved the place and this time was no different. OK, so 20 days is not quite two months, but, having been before, I took some pressure off myself from seeing every sight and going to every bloody night market!

We crossed in from Cambodia and went straight to our hotel in Bangkok which was handily situated about 2 mins from the (in)famous Khao San Road, full of backpackers, scuzzy hostels, tattoo parlours, bars, pad thai stalls etc. It's changed a fair bit in 10 years (no surprises there), with MacDonalds, Subway etc to add to the Boots that was previously there, but on the whole it's pretty much the same place. And most importantly the pad thai and banana pancakes from the street vendors were as remembered!

The boys went for a boys night out (which can only mean one thing in Bangkok) while I escorted Jenn out to get her new tattoo done; much more civilized!

Jenn's new, and rather gorgeous, tattoo

Jenn and I then spent the next day shoe shopping in the lovely malls of Bangkok, being a little cultured-out after Cambodia and we all had our girls' night out, starting at the Vertigo Bar on the roof of the rather fancy (too fancy for me!) Banyan tree hotel.

Super expensive cocktail at the Vertigo Bar

With Jenn

The rest of the girls then sampled all that Bangkok had to offer, but I left at that point and get a mototaxi back to Khao San Road to meet up with the lovely Alice Orton and another of her Edinburgh chums for a fantastic meal and a beer or two in a blues club. It was really nice to see Alice and so kind of her to take me out on a school night.

The next day was cultural day, taking in the Grand Palace, and getting local ferries back to the hotel.

We got the sleeper train up to Chiang Mai and it was quite a different journey from that 10 years ago, but surprisingly, a fair bit less entertaining, with fancier (but not as fancy as the Chinese train) sleeper compartments and some irritating ladyboy waitresses.

Chiang Mai is a lovely city up in the north. It was pretty much as I remembered it and I had a great time just hanging around, eating cheap food and drinking beer. Perfect. Jenn and I also managed a wee wander round town and visited a couple of wats, but we didn't go crazy!

A picture of the King (Elvis) with the King (of Thailand)

Wat Chedi Luang, Chiang Mai

Chiang Mai

Wat Phra Singh, Chiang Mai

The truck (which Jim had picked up in Vientiane and driven into Chiang Mai in one mammoth day) then headed south to Kanchanaburi and the Bridge over the River Kwai, but I'd been before and I wanted to get some diving in, so I took myself off on a plane to Koh Samui and boat to Koh Tao, a diving island in the Gulf of Thailand.

The place is super famous for diving, but it's a bit like Utila in Honduras - nice enough, but clearly more famous for dive schools and number of students than fantastic dive sites. I managed to squeeze 5 dives in over 2 days (including a night dive) and saw reasonable amount including barracuda (on the night dive and wreck dive), a fairly big turtle and other bits and bobs. I also managed to squeeze in about 15 green curries, a massage, and a bit of sunbathing in the few days I was there, before catching another boat to Koh Phangan where I met up with a fair few of the group for the much anticipated "beach week".

Beach in Koh Tao

Koh Tao

Beach Week was our chance to pick for ourselves where we wanted to go (never mind I'd picked where I wanted to go with Shanghai, Beijing, Hue and Koh Tao anyway!). A fair few of us followed Zoe & Susan like sheep and booked in at the same resort which turned out to be lovely. I spent the week mooching by the pool, eating, drinking, learning to drive Jim's moped (and almost killing Jim - sorry!), watching some of the rugby (thankfully not Scotland - far too depressing). Jim and I did manage to squeeze in a day's diving out at Sail Rock, supposedly (and correctly) regarded as the premier dive site in the Gulf of Thailand. The place was absolutely teeming with life and we were swimming through vast schools of Barracuda, Spanish Mackerel, Travellys and all sorts of other things I can't identify.

Beach Week was absolutely glorious and was over far too soon. And I took no photos - sorry.

We then drove down to Malaysia, via the Khao Sok National Park (jungle) where it rained and we got bitten by a thousand bugs (also no photos).

Cambodia

Cambodia: 30th August 2011 to 5th September 2011

Total days travelled: 142

We were only in Cambodia for a few short days, but managed to see one of the most harrowing sites and awe inspiring sites I've ever been to.

We started in Phnom Penh with a trip out to S21 which was a prison based in a school building during the Pol Pot years. Of the 20,000 or so people imprisoned there just seven survived. Of them three still live and hopefully at least two of them (who we were lucky enough to meet) will still be well enough to testify at the war crimes trials that should finally happen later this year. The place was absolutely harrowing. The schoolrooms had been turned into torture rooms where the educated and skilled were imprisoned until it was time to be shipped off to the killing fields. I think somehow the place was that much more moving as it all happened so horribly recently, even within my lifetime. What's worse is that we don't seem to learn - similar horrors are still ongoing in the world.

I didn't take any pictures, but you can read and see a bit more if you follow the link above.

From there we went off to one of the Killing Fields. This is where prisoners were taken to be beaten to death (partly at least to save on the cost of bullets) and tipped into mass graves. Again, it was harrowing.
Some of the graves have been excavated and for a while the skulls were stored in wooden huts (and certainly that was the image I had), but they've now been placed in a large stupa in the middle of the site. Walking around the place was awful, with bones, teeth and clothes emerging from the mud - apparently more surfaces every rainy season.

After a truly horrible day we met up, dressed in our finery, for some drinks at the Foreign Correspondents' Club on the river to celebrate/commiserate the last 6 weeks of the trip. All I can really say is that a good time was had by all and it was a lovely reprieve from the morning's activities.

Gin martini at the FCC

The following day I forced Jenn and her hangover for a quick trip round the palace before the heavens opened again (and when the heavens open in SE Asia in the rainy season it gets a little damp).

Palace, Phnom Penh

We then headed off for Siem Reap which is the town from which you access what I think is one of the most amazing places I think I've ever visited, Angkor Wat. The place was built as a truly enormous temple complex about 900 years ago, when we were still scrabbling about in the mud, and supported a huge population. Amazing.

And some other pictures in Cambodia:

A civilised glass of wine

With Jenn on a tuktuk

"Master of Auditing"

Roadside food - deep fried bugs

Roadside food - deep fried spiders

Roadside food - baby chickens or similar small bird

Just Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore to go before this particular trip finishes. But, fear not, I'm not planning on being back in the UK til Xmas. Laters, C

Vietnam

So, no surprises here, but I also LOVED Vietnam. It's a bit less chilled out than Laos (back to lots of horn hooting and nearly getting run over a lot) but it's really really lovely.

We arrived off the night bus into a nothing town called Vinh and were all a bit pleased to move on the next day up to Hanoi which is a great place. We were staying in the old town which is a warren of narrow streets, filled to bursting with scooters, snarls of overhead wires, touristy and also non touristy shops etc. We stayed in a hostel (which suited me down to the ground, but others were less impressed to say the least) and it was possibly the nicest hostel I've ever stayed in (and those that know me know I've stayed in a few!). There was a great bar/restaurant on the ground floor, another lovely bar and hangout zone on the 5th and inbetween the rooms had aircon and hot showers. And the food was great too.

Door at the Hanoi Hilton

Hanoi Hilton

The lake in Hanoi

One of the city gates, Hanoi

Think someone's got the scale a little wrong on this map
- not sure you could really swim from Vietnam to Oz!

After a day of wandering round the old town, the Hanoi Hilton (a jail where American POWs were held during the war, and interesting not least for the different take they have on the "American" war) and the lake we pootled off to Halong bay for an afternoon/night/morning. The bay is absolutely stunning and we had a lovely time messing about in the water, kayaking and eating great food.

Halong Bay

We headed back to Hanoi for another night and then got another night bus down to Hue. This time I was up the back with 4 others in a 5 bed bunk. Luckily they were people from the trip rather than randoms, but the air conditioning was working and I slept much of the way so the journey wasn't too bad. This being the night before my birthday the guys had put together a "Clare" package for my journey consisting of Pringles, Oreos, vodka, diet coke and a sweet book mark.

I stayed at the Hanoi hostel's sister hostel in Hue which ended up really well as I ran into the UK to Oz truck. They're a group doing a very similar thing to us, but with a slightly different route. We'd run into them briefly in Turkey as well. It was really great to meet other people that understood the trip, but were new as well! We spent quite a drunken evening sharing horror stories which was a lot of fun. And kind Mark, the Kiwi that runs the Hanoi hostel had arranged for a birthday cake for me at the Hue hostel so that was really sweet too. I even managed to leave the hostel long enough at one point to take a wander round the huge, and ruined citadel in town.

Citadel in Hue

Citadel, Hue

Minor misspelling of my name, but not the worst! My lovely birthday cake.

Happy birthday to me,
Happy birthday to me,
Happy birthday to meeeeeeee,
Happy birthday to me

Ever onwards and we headed off for Hoi An, a little further south, and famous for its clothes shops. You can just turn up, tell them what you want, pick a fabric, get measured and turn up the next day to pick up your new spangly clothes, and all at a reasonable price. I thought I was being well behaved, just getting a suit dress made, but then I bought some ready made tank tops and a white dress, which meant I had to order up a white bikini to wear underneath. And then, (and I'm blaming Jenn for this) I got a couple of lightweight skirts made on the last day.

Hoi An

Temple in Hoi An

Ooopsie. Purchases in Hoi An
L-R Vietnam flag t-shirt, long tank top, bikini, tank top, white dress, 2 skirts, suit dress

Needing a holiday (because I've not spent enough time in the last couple of years relaxing), we found ourselves at a wee place called Jungle Beach where the highlight (other than being at the beach of course) was the cocktail competition Zoe & Susan set up whereby, in our tent teams, we had to design, name and present a bucket cocktail to the rest of the group. Aoife, my tent buddy, who has been known as "Mrs Doyle" for the whole trip on account of being Irish, came up with the blinding idea of making a Craggy Island Nice Tea (based on a Long Island Ice Tea, but with Lipton teabags added) which she presented as Mrs Doyle herself. Cracking!

Cocktail competition on the beach. Aoife as Mrs Doyle with her "Craggy Island Nice Tea".

A bit of nightswimming

Jungle beach

And so to our final stop in Vietnam: Ho Chi Minh City aka HCMC aka Saigon. The main sight there was the War Remnants museum which dealt with the Vietnam war aka the America war. There was lots of American military hardware parked outside but the main exhibits were series of harrowing photographs both of war and of the effects of Agent Orange. Full marks go to the American education system at this point as I overheard an American girl in her 20's standing in front of a picture of a victim of Agent Orange asking if "this was anything to do with the war?".

Ho Chi Minh bothering a small child

Cathedral, Ho Chi Minh

War Remnants museum, Ho Chi Minh/Saigon

Billboards, Ho Chi Minh