Gooood Morning Vietnam

Slick’s House (Melbourne), Wednesday 26th October, 11:35

Howdy y’all! Well, it will come a s a relief to many of you that I have successfully made it back to good old Australia without cuasing some sort of international incident. Every border guard from here to Thailand looked at my emergency passport funny, but ultimately H.R.H The Queen’s heartfelt imprecation to allow the bearer to pass wihtout let or hindrance held good and I was allowed back into my temporary home. Apologies for the delay in posting also; I have spent pretty much the whole time I’ve been back in a kind of vegetative fugue state of relaxation.

Now, however, I’m going to cast my mind back across the mists of time to early September, where our intrepid travellers had made the decision to leavce their passports in the hands of the Vietnamese Embassy in Bangkok while they went to soak up some sun on the island of Koh Chang….

There is nothing quite so wearing on the human spirit as constant, unrelenting rain- except perhaps for cold, unrelenting rain. I know this because my companions and I spent an entire day on an open-topped boat, with absolutely no shelter whatseover, in a tropical monsoon rain, laughably attempting to snorkel in extremely choppy seas. Before long you get to the point where you’d gladly sell your soul in exchange for just a place to sit and be dry. I’m not kidding. I swear, if it hadn’t been for the fact that the rain- and indeed the ambient air temperature- was quite warm, we wuld doubtless have succumbed to hypothermia.

But I’m getting a little ahead of myself. First we had to get to Koh Chang, which we did in a tiresome but uneventufl bus/ferry combo. I won’t bore you with the details. Having arrived on the ferry on the island- a journey of 5 or 6 hours from Bangkok- we got a “taxi” (rather a misleading name because there was a flat price per passenger and it travelled on a set route. So, a bus, really, but “taxi” was definitely written on it) to our accomodation on the well named Lonely Beach. Koh Chang is very beautful- winding jungle paths alternate with gloriously uninterrupted ocean vistas. We found our hostel (which was actually just a collection of huts. Very nice huts, but huts nonetheless) and had a very pleasant dinner in a traditional reclining type restaurant, the kind where you are not allowed to wear shoes. Then we made our way along dark dirt tracks to the seafront, where we sat on a balcony in a completely deserted hotel bar (I mean totally deserted- no lights or staff) and watched a warm tropical storm play out over the gulf of Thailand. It was genuinely awe-inspiring- and it should have given us a little hint of what was to come. Having spent the following day chilling out, maxing and relaxing on the beach, we made the ill-fated decision to take a day long boat/snorkel trip.

And it was about 3 hours into this trip that the revelation about rain occured to me. For a short while between getting on the boat and, say, 10 am, it was a glorious sunny day, but when the rains came, they never stopped. They just never stopped. At the end of the day, completely sodden, we comforted ourselves with some nice if highly overpriced Irish style pub grub ($9 a meal! Extortion) before retiring to our hut for the last time. Goodbye Koh Chang.

The return journey to Bangkok was similarly uneventful. We had a few days in hand before our flight to Saigon so, after we collected our passports (Keep it safe, past Slick. It is more precious than you can know) we took a day trip to the ancient capital of Ayuthaya (sp?). Well, first we wasted most of a morning navigating the Bangkok subway system with the “help” of it’s ostly non-english speaking staff. But we got there. And the 2 hour or so journey cost about the same as a can of coke (15 baht, to be precise). Rail companies of England, take note. I appreciate that there is a great deal fo difference in standard of living- I don’t expect you to sell me a rail ticket for less than a pound- but surely we can get some sort of middle gorund here? Surely I could get a rail ticket for a two hour journey for say, the price of a pint of beer in London? Just a thought…

Ayuthaya is a very scenic, historical old city full of atmospherically crumbling ruins. For a few hundred baht you can buy a day trip around the river in your own personal little boat (which is powered by a car engine mounted to a really long stick/propeller). It was certainly an interesting and diverting way to spend a day- although it rained quite a lot, we merely scoffed at it’s ineffectuality form behind umbrellas. We had already seen the worst rain could do.

The next morning we were once again up at 4am (which is rapidly becoming a hallmark of my travels and I’m not a big fan) to get a short flight into the People’s Republic of Vietnam, Ho Chi Minh city (Saigon). We arrived, were completely baffled by the currency (how much should I withdraw from this machine? Do I need 1,000,000 dong, or would 5 million be more appropriate? How much can one buy with a dong? Heh, dong) and found a taxi who, for the extortionate price of about 10 us dollars, took us to the main backpacker/tourist area- District 1. We stomped around for a little while, torn between our desire to trust strangers to lead us there and our suspicion of everyone (sad but true), and we saw a local brutally execuate a cool looking yellow insect (they claimed it was poisnous) until we found our hostel (or, more accurately, hotel. There was a mini-fridge and everything, alll for about 3 quid), tucked away in a back alley. We had arrived. We had 11 days to make it from Saigon to Hanoi, with no idea of the crazy journey which lay ahead of us.

Stay tuned,

Slick

Bangkok has him now…

Vientiane, People’s Democratic Republic of Lao, Saturday 8th October 14:36

Greetings, Constant Reader. Due to a series of unfortunate events worthy of a Lemony Snickett novel, I am temporarily trapped here in Lao without a passport. There is no British embassy here (yet another thing to blame the French for) and everything’s closed till Monday. Don’t worry about me though; I’m bound to muddle through somehow.

So, when we last left out intrepid heroes, Slick and Rebel, they were leaving the shores of their temporarily adopted homeland in Australia far the mysteries of the Far East, specifically, Kuala Lumpur.

Kuala Lumpur- or KL for those in the know- is a very interesting blend of different cultures which quite neatly typifies this part of the world. The dominant force is Islam; calls to prayer echo across the city 5 times a day, alcohol is unnaturally expensive and a lot of the women wear veils. However, there is also a very large Hindu/Indian community (who we accidentally mortally offended by walking into a sort of outdoor temple with our shoes still on. Not entirely our fault guys- if there’s no walls or door, it’s a part of the street and I will keep my shoes on!) and an equally large Chinese community. Walking through the night market, eating a sweet barbecue pork bun and haggling over some knock off levi’s, one could be forgiven for believing oneself in Shanghai. Not that I’ve been to China… yet.

On top of this, there is a very obvious Western influence here. Nowhere is this more obvious than in the KL central mall, a giant monument to consumerism which takes up a large part of the city centre- with, it has to be said, some very attractive gardens. It ‘s air-conditioned halls are an excellent place to escape from the oppressive Malaysian humidity. This was the site of by far one of the strangest experiences of my life to date. Rebel and I were sitting on some steps, drinking some Big Gulps (thank the Gods for 7-11), when we noticed that everyone was watching us, and then some of them started taking pictures. Shortly, a guy came up and asked if he could have his picture taken with us, which we accepted, with much bemusement. After that, the floodgates opened and a veritable host of Malaysian people appeared, queuing in an orderly fashion to have their picture taken with us. Somewhere, possibly on the internet, are well over 100 photos of myself, Rebel, and randomly assorted Malaysians. After a little while we got too weirded out  and went to get some lunch. After lunch we decided to take a quick stroll through the gardens and- perhaps predictably- the exact same situation repeated itself. To this day I have no idea what was going on- we asked around at the hostel and it didn’t happen to anyone else- although it was Malaysian independence day (independence from Britain) so perhaps it was something to do with that? Or maybe we just looked exactly like some Malaysian celebrities. A boy band perhaps.

We spent too long in KL- in our time they we; went to the park, went up KL tower, watched a film, went to a “Book Festival”, walked endlessly around the mall- and still found time enough to be bored. I hear tell that some parts of Malaysia- the Cameron Highlands or Penang- are very nice, but we didn’t get a chance to explore them; we were on a deadline. By the 5th of October we had to be in Bangkok, so we flew from LCCT airline, central hub of Air Asia- which, by the way, is the shoddiest budget Airline I have ever encountered (the departure hall was literally a massive shed, the planes all clustered around 3 or 4 gates so that we literally had to guess which one was our plane) and arrived in the capital of the Kingdom of Thailand.

Bangkok is far and away the maddest city I have ever encountered. It’s massive, loud, smelly, alternatively hideous and very beautiful, and I loved it. On Khaosan road you can buy anything you could ever possible want- and a whole range of things you don’t, from a comedy t-shirt, to a tailored suit,to a woman, to a man that looks like a women, to a fucking degree certificate from Oxford university or a diving qualification- all for the change in your back pocket. The city never sleeps; it is always awake and always insane. My one complaint is that you can’t walk anywhere, there are no real provisions for pedestrians, placing you at the mercy of the taxi drivers (which are very cheap) and, if you are brave, the Tuk-tuks, who are, predictably, insane. Having collected Schlafmouse , our new traveling companion, from the airport, we hit the town for a few drinks- which, as result of a series of events which I am bound by my honour as a gentlemen not to reveal (giggity) involved me taking a crazy journey back across the city via water and motor bike taxi to the hostel, where my companions were contemplating the possibility that Bangkok had me now.

In a way, it still has.

In the hostel we made plans for the rest of our trip: we would go to the Island of Koh Chang while we waited for our visas to Vietnam to be processed, and then fly to Saigon. All of that, and more, in the next installment of Slick’s blog….

Peace,

Slick