Blog That Wasn't

It turns out that the biggest 'muppet' moment of our trip so far wasn't one we made on the spur of the moment whilst getting off a bus, tired after hours of travelling. Instead, it was a decision we could have corrected at any time during our planning in the run up to this trip! When we looked at flights, we found that Air Asia didn't fly from Siem Reap to Bangkok, it only flew from Siem Reap to Kuala Lumpur or Phnom Penh to Bangkok. As we weren't going to get time to visit Phonm Penh, the flight to Kuala Lumpur and then on to Hong Kong was the obvious choice, turns out we should have thought more carefully. After dragging our bags full of mountaineering equipment around South America (bear in mind this is equipment we won't need until the end of our trip in Nepal) the realisation hit us that it would be much easier just to leave it all in Bangkok and travel round South East asia with our small backpacks. Of course this would mean returning to Bangkok and then flying onto Hong Kong rather than going to Kuala Lumpur. As it was only a five hour drive from Siem Reap to Phonm Penh, turns out we could easily get there before the flight, and so the correct option all along was get the bus to Phnom Penh and fly to Hong Kong, something we only realised during the trip and so then had the hassle of changing all the tickets!

Anyway, in summary, we changed the flights, ended up back in Bangkok rather than flying to Kuala Lumpur, and so there is no blog entry for Kuala Lumpur!

Mandi has, however, been to Kualal Lumpur in the past and so asked me to add that it is a really nice place and worth visiting. Although saying that, there have been places we have visited on this trip that Mandi has been to before that have changed completely (e.g. Lima airport apparently resembled a war zone last time Mandi was there, now it resembles the Trafford Centre!) so take it with a pinch of salt!

Steve

Bayon, Ta Prohm, Wat (Angkor)

Really starting to cheat with the BTWs now I'm afraid! But we've started so we'll finish.

Having so little time in Indochina we flew straight into Siem Reap from Saigon and our first impression was how commercialised the town is. I guess in many ways the temples at Angkor are the Machu Picchu of South East Asia, but Siem Reap makes Cusco look off the beaten track. So we headed straight out to the main temple, Angkor Wat and the first thing that hit us was the Indian influence, which could only be a good thing, and the grandeur of the complex, and after all, it was the temples we had come to see, not the town. We knew we were never going to have time to see anything of the "real" Cambodia, so that will have to wait for another trip, but I think it is safe to say Siem Reap is not representative of the rest of the country.

Having said all that, as we had so little time to see the temples, we had very long days and it was great to have places like the Blue Pumpkin to come back to in the midday heat for a refresh! We definitely had the best tuk tuk driver in Cambodia, who probably thought we were crazy going to see so much in such a short time, but helped us plan it all in anyway.

The only disappointment with the temples was the number of tourists, but the advantage Angkor has over places like Machu Picchu is the large area it covers, which allows it to absorb more people. We were impressed to see they are at least taking the effect of such huge numbers of visitors seriously and have closed the steps up to some of the main temples to build mobile wooden stairways that can be placed over the top. Sunrise over the temple was impressive and as always, getting to these places early is always a good idea to avoid the bus loads, so we had relatively few people wandering around with us and it was very atmospheric.

We managed to visit all the temples at the top of our list and my favourites were Bayon (with all the faces), Banteay Srei (beautifully restored carvings, a great drive out of the town to see a bit more of the countryside and, a bit like Nefatari's tomb in Luxor, helps picture all the other structures as they once were) and Ta Keo (big pyramid) purely for the scramble up! My favourite experience though was being in Ta Prohm just after sunrise and having it to ourselves - although needless to say that didn't last long!

East Mebon was also a great temple - we had to see that one because of the great elephant statues which are impressively intact. Also Preah Khan was good to see for the interiors and colours. We also went up in the balloon which is great for seeing the whole layout of Angkor Wat, even though we did it a bit too late in the day for good light and it was already a hazy day. A visit to the landmine musuem on the way back from Banteay Srei was eye opening and unusually for our travels, gave us a reason to be proud of being European as most of Europe has signed up for the Mine Ban Treaty, unlike the US, China, India, Russia and 35 other countries.

We drove to Phom Penh to catch a flight to Bangkok and had hoped to visit the killing fields, but we hardly had any time and then discovered that the management of that site has been sold to a Japanese company - needless to say the people are outraged that effectively their government have made huge profits out of their tragedy and now a Japanese business is benefitting too - another of those dilemmas that you often face when travelling. We don't ever want to support corruption in governments but want to show our support for the local people and their history. It is a tough one.

Brilliant Tiny Water (puppets)

Before we arived in Ho Chi Minh City, I was already preparing to write a blog which went something along the lines of the middle bit of Vietnam being great, but just a shame that you generally had to enter or leave through one of the big cities in the north or south. The Lonely Planet had not painted Ho Chi Minh City (or Saigon as most of the locals still call it so which I'll call it for the rest of this blog - easier to type!) in a very good light, and considering the same book has a fairly high opinion of Hanoi it didn't leave us optimistic that we would enjoy the big city in the south. It just goes to show that you need to visit places and form your own opinion rather than just reading someone elses as, for us, Saigon is far and away the better of the two.

Saigon feels like a capital city should feel with its wide streets and old architecture mixing with modern business and commercial areas. Although not every capital in the world has old abandoned American air force fighter jets, helicoptors and tanks just sitting around in numerous courtyards - I guess they just didn't know what to do with them after reunification! We didn't have much time to see the city, but managed a quick tour to see the main sights such as the reunification palace (the old palace building for the south vietnam government that has been left exactly as the northern troops found it when they rolled the tanks thorugh the gates in 1975 to officially end the Vietnam war), the history museum and a number of the old colonial buildings. We also found time to finally see a water puppet show (after being unable to book seats for one in Hanoi) which is something every visitor to Vietnam should see.

Overall, Saigon left us a little surprised. It, along with Hue and Hoi An had certainly gone a long way to improve on our initial introduction to Vietnam, but I guess it was always going to be a tall order to follow our fantastic experience of Lao, and so it was always going to struggle in comparision. Vietnam is an interesting country that is certainly worth the visit, I just wonder if it is possible to do so whilst never setting foot in its capital!

Steve

Built To Withstand

After the contrasts of Hanoi and Ha Long bay, we made our way by overnight train to Hue and after a couple of days there, by bus to Hoi An. Considering the history of this country, the lovely old temples and buildings that are still standing in such great condition in both towns are symbolic of the people's resilience!


The citadel in Hue is particularly impressive and was a favourite of mine, not least because so much of it is yellow! We visited late in the afternoon which meant there were relatively few tourists there and we were able to enjoy the atmosphere and get lost in the various complexes. There are also many temples at Hue and those of Tu Doc and Minh Mang were our favourites.


Hoi An was a bigger town than we expected, with temples, the Japanese bridge and lovely old buildings, plus great food! (Try the white roses if you like sea food). Near to Hoi An are the My Son ruins from the 4th - 14th century where we were surprised to see the Indian influence - proves how bad our world history is that we had no idea that influence had reached so far East! The marble mountains are also close to this town and the temples and pagodas dotted around these hills are great for exploring. From the top we looked out to the South China Sea and the coastline here, between Danang and Hoi An has miles of beautiful white beaches. Not surprisingly there is also a significant amount of construction going on as big hotels and resorts are appearing fast.


Our only disappointment here was discovering that blogger was a banned site - being big internet fans (not to mention freedom of speech fans!) this didn't go down well but served to remind us how lucky we are. It also meant we had to resort to writing blog entries on paper (heaven forbid!) to be typed up later!


Mandi

'Bout Time We...

...found a place that didn't captivate us!


When we first arrived in Hanoi, we passed through immigration and baggage collection into the arrivals area where we were immediately approached by a man claiming to be a taxi driver but who seemed very keen to avoid the nearby secruity guards and so would suddenly disappear and hide behind groups of people before then coming back to try and find us. When we finally did get an official taxi, two minutes after asking us which hotel we were staying in,the driver was on his mobile and sure enough, we pulled up outside a completely different hotel where the manager was waiting outside to inform us that our hotel was full but that he was the manager of both hotels and would instead like to offer us a room at this much nicer sister hotel for a good price. Maybe we would have fallen for it 7 years ago, but these days we just walk away. We made our way to the original hotel and when we got to it, unsuprisingly, there was room available. Luckily several travelling experiences in the past have prepared us well for this sort of thing so it was more of an inconvenience than anything else, but it began Hanoi and Vietnam on a sour note that it would struggle slightly to climb back out from.

We met lots of people in Vietnam who thought that Hanoi was great, and it gets good reviews in the Lonely Planet, but unfortunately, our experience was little better than an OK city to visit but nothing special and not a place I'd be in a rush to go back to. We went round the sights that we wanted to see on our first day there and then we were pretty much ready to leave. Luckily though, the main reason to visit Hanoi isn't because of what is in the city, but instead, because of what is a few hundred kilometres down the road next to the town of Ha Long.

Ha Long bay is a place I have wanted to see for a few years now ever since I first saw a picture of its hundreds of tall sided rock formations soaring up out of the Gulf of Tonkin. It is a UNESCO world heritage site and rightly so as, despite there being similar rock formations in other parts of south east asia (especially around Krabi), there is nothing that is quite on the same scale as Ha Long. Just the shear number of these rock islands is impressive as they appear one after the other forming a bay that is well worth the hassle of Hanoi to come and see! The trip to Ha Long Bay includes an overnight stay on a Junk (a traditional Vietnamese style of boat) and visits to some of the islands and a floating fishing village. Swimming in the sea and kayaking into some other parts of the bay were also options to fill the time, but unless you take a moment just to sit back, stop and enjoy the view, I'm not sure how you'd fit it all in. But then we did have a really nice Junk from which to enjoy it from so I'm a bit biased about the kicking back on the boat and enjoying the view approach (plus the sea was a bit cold at this time of year)!

After we returned to Hanoi, we got the overnight train heading south to begin our trip into the rest of Vietnam, already much happier after our initial introduction to the country and cautiously hopeful that it was now only going to get better...

Steve

Beautifulest Town Worldwide (excuse the making up words!)

Through previous travels, we can predict fairly accurately which places will grab us before we see them. Of course occasionally somewhere isn't quite what you expected but usually that's because expectations are exceeded. Lao was definitely a case in point for us. Anyone who has been to Lao and hears that we were only there for 5 days will be incredulous and all we can say is we know! In our defense, the British ridiculous red tape we've had to go through to get married has taken a good 3 weeks off us in this region and so left us with less of a taster and more of a nibble of Indochina, but it is better than nothing and we're not complaining!


I need to give this a bit of context so please forgive this diversion. When I visited India in '98, the only place outside of Europe I had been to was Eastern Canada. For as long as I can remember I'd had a list of places in the world I wanted to see and Bangkok was at the top as it sounded the epitomy of exotic. But India wasn't on that list and it was only thanks to my friend Priya, to whom I shall be forever grateful (cheers big ears!) that India was my first "non western" (terrible term but the best I can do) experience. Despite some pre-trip wariness, from the moment we got off the plane and into the hot, spicy air of Delhi, I was hooked on the high of culture shock, of seeing, absorbing, learning about cultures as different from my own as possible.


I finally visited Bangkok the year after this, and have to admit I was a little disappointed, purely because it wasn't "as different as Delhi" - very ungrateful I know. I was a bit reluctant when we planned our current trip to return to places I've already been, but it has turned out to be fascinating to see how much and in what way these places have changed in such a relatively short time. Bangkok is even less "different" than it was 9 years ago, but I hope I have a better view of developing cities than I did before - the rate of change is incredible but generally it brings better education, healthcare and associated infrastructures that are fantastic for the people living there.


However, (finally getting to the point, sorry!) when you visit a place like Lao which is still relatively untouched by "western" influences, it can take a hold of your heart in a matter of days, largely because it has kept its own character. That's not to say it is off the beaten track any more. Every facility a tourist/traveller could ask for is available in the main towns of Vientiane and Luang Prabang. Having seen the changes in other places, I imagine even a small town like Luang Prabang could have been even more charming 10 years ago, but it is hard to see how!


The phrase "templed out" is often used in this region and Luang Prabang really is a city of temples, but each one is unique and it is incredible to see so many, so well preserved, so close together. Like the town as a whole, they are each surrounded by an inimitable peacefulness. But the icing on the cake are the monks in their beautiful orange robes. As you wander down a quiet street of colonial buildings and temples, a young monk will cross the street in front of you and the vibrancy of that colour hits your eyes like a drug (or I should say, I assume it is like a drug!). After spending a day in the town seeing them going about their day and spending an hour talking with a young novice at Phu Si who wanted to practice his English, it was a surprise to find that on the following day, the first sighting of those orange robes was still a shock in its intensity.


The Kuang Si waterfalls were more beautiful than we expected and spending a lazy morning on a boat up the Mekong to the Pak Ou caves was perfect. This is another of those places that is so hard to describe in words and impossible to capture fully by camera. I'd say everyone should visit Lao, but to be honest, and totally selfish, I'd rather they didn't!

Beach + Turquoise Waters

In the film "The Beach", Leonardo De Caprio begins with a monologue in which he talks about people who travel but want wherever they go to have all the comforts of home and asks "what is the point of that?" It is the start of the films initial theme that everyone tries to do something different but everyone always ending up doing the same. Is it ironic then that the location they used for the isolated, secret beach in the film was perhaps the place we have found so far that is most symbolic of everyone doing the same thing?!

The Beach, or Maya Bay to give it it's proper name, is on the island of Koh Phi Phi Leh, part of a national marine park just 10 minutes boat ride from Koh Phi Phi Don - its sister island which is not part of the marine park and is therefore free from development restrictions and so provides the location for the majority of hotels and guest houses in the area. Koh Phi Phi Don is also home to countless tour providers offering boat rides around the marine park, and more specifically to see "The Beach". One of the things Mandi and I have found in the past when travelling is that we aren't great at enjoying group tours. It's not that we aren't sociable and don't get on with the other people (at least I hope that isn't the case), it's just that as a group, you are restricted by a timetable and the schedule of your guide. You can't always just wait somewhere to try and get a picture, or skip past something that you're not too interested in. We have therefore gradually adopted an approach that if it is possible to do it ourselves we generally will do. In the case of Maya Bay, i'm very glad that was the case. Rather than using one of the local tours, we instead got up early and wandered to the pier where we paid a longtail boat owner to take us over. We arrived just after 7 in the morning and were fortunate enough to find that hardly anyone else was there and so we had a couple of hours to take pictures and enjoy the surroundings in relative peace.

It is no surprise that Maya Bay was chosen as the location for the film, it is close to being a perfect beach - calm turqoise waters turning to clear waves that gently wash up onto a white sand beach in a bay almost completely enlosed by high sided rock faces that cradle the entire setting. Unfortunately, this natural beauty, along with the fame it now has for being "The Beach" meant that by the time we left at 9 o'clock in the morning, as the first tours arrived, it was quickly filled by hundreds more people and the perfection of the scene vanished under a blanket of towels, snorkel masks and far too many speedos!

Whilst on Phi Phi, we also took the opportunity to get in some more diving. The marine park has some fantastic dive sights and so we went out for a couple of dives with a local company. It was great to be back under the water again (even though it had been less than a few days since we last dived - we're definitely hooked!) and the dive sites around Phi Phi certainly lived up to expectations. I do have to say though that before we arrived, we also heard that some of the dive companies on Phi Phi are, well if they were plumbers or electricians they would be referred to as cowboys! Unfortunately, we too found that the company we went out with was nowhere near as good as Planet Scuba who we were diving with on Koh Tao. Maybe we just got a bad company on Phi Phi or maybe we were just spoiled with how good our instructor, Barry, had been on Koh Tao, but whatever the reason, if I were advising anyone who is going to Thailand to scuba dive in the future, I would definitely recommend going to Koh Tao to learn, but then making time to go to Phi Phi to just dive in some of the amazing sites (once you know what you are doing). One other thing that we saw on our scuba diving trip was Maya Bay again. When we had a break for lunch, the dive boat anchored in a bay on Koh Phi Phi Leh that was close to Maya Bay, and it was possible to swim to a cave that provided a passageway through, so we decided to nip back and have another look - that was just after midday, and by that point, it was even more rammed that it had been the day before at 9. There were easily more people per square metre on that small beach than anywhere else we have been on the trip. Obviously, it is a little disheartening to see such a perfect scene becoming so ridiculously overcrowded, but there are some good points. Because "The Beach" is such an attraction, people always go there and so often don't bother to visit the other bays and beaches in the marine park. Therefore, although Maya Bay may be suffering from the effects of tourism, its huge draw protects the rest of the marine park from damage. The second positive is that it brings money into an island that is still recovering from being devastated in the 2004 Tsunami.

People don't visit Maya Bay just because it was the setting for a film, they visit because it is such a beautiful place to see - the film just happened to act as the biggest advertising campaign for the beauty of the area - and that is something that the message in "The Beach" overlooks when it critisises people for doing the same thing. The reason so many people go to the same places is because they are places that are well worth seeing. That is what makes them tourist attractions, and although it would be great to find somewhere as fantastic as Maya Bay, or Torres del Paine, Iguacu Falls, Salar de Uyuni or Easter Island that nobody else knows about, the chances of doing that on such a well mapped and well explored planet are pretty remote, and to miss out on seeing the wonderful places we do know about just because lots of other people have also been there and done that, well, what would be the point in that? Just make sure you get to them early!

Steve