What We Did on the Way to Borneo

What We Did on the Way to Borneo? It’s a bit like what I did on my school holidays... except with better weather. Well the last Blog entry told you all about the New Year epic trek and Danny's food fear. This blog is all the bits that have happened since then that got us to Borneo now.

Well after we left Laos for the last time we both went back to Thailand to meet up with our respective friends who came out from the UK to get in on the travellers lifestyle... which was basically being hot, dirty and skint :)

Danny met up with Sarah and Anne and went off to Krabi climbing, I followed on a few days later and met Shane in Bangkok. He had jet lag, no sleep and the airline had lost his bags so the solution was to start drinking as soon as possible. They do something called a tower of beer in Thailand and it holds 4 litres of beer... we had 2, then nearly died when we had to get up at 7am the next day for an outing to the Bridge over the river Kwai and some really cool elephant trekking. Lucky for us the elephant trekking fun was the day after the world’s worst hangover.

So we leave the flumps and head down Thailand to the coast on the night train, this also happened to include a lot of beer... we arrived having not slept to find that Danny who we were supposed to meet had headed off back up the coast to Ko Tow. Nevermind we had a nice hotel and of course cheap cocktails.

So we did sun sea and snorkelling in the amazingly nice islands of southern Thailand. We even spent a couple of hours on the beach where they shot the film The Beach. Shane managed to damage his foot on some coral and ended up a few days later having the rotting flesh cut away from his toes in the local clinic... I’ve never heard a man laugh so much... he must of really enjoyed the experiance.
Danny rejoined us for the trip back to Bangkok where we said our goodbyes to Shane and took the bus to the Cambodian border.


The Ruins of Angkor

We did a tour of Cambodia which lasted 7 days. We arrived in Siem Reap to visit Angkor Wat. I've wanted to see this place since saw it for the first time on TV when i was a kid. I was fascinated by the trees that had enveloped the old temples.

They resemble some kind of alien tentacled creatures who spend their slow lived days devouring the last pieces of a human civilisation. The temples of Angkor are a feet of human engineering and civilisation. At its height Angkor Thom city housed a million people and that was about 1000 years ago.

The city, it's thought was abandoned when its success killed it... too many people and not enough water or food. There are two, 2 mile long lakes on either side of the city complex but one is now completely silted up but the other still holds some water. The area Angkor covers is immense. We spent 3 days exploring by local tuk tuk and our own peddle power.

One of the most arresting temples beside Angkor Wat is the Bayon which is inside the old city walls. This summer palace complex had been adored by several dozen carved stone faces who have the most serine and enigmatic smiles.

It felt very peaceful being at Angkor which was such a contrast to the modern day horrors of Pol Pots Killing Fields.

 Khmer Rouge and the Killing fields

We travelled to Phnom Penh capital of Cambodia and stayed in a hotel that was directly opposite the Genocide Museum; Tuol Sleng. This was a former school building that was taken over as a ‘security office’ called S.21. What we didn’t know at the time was that this museum/former school was the centre of torture and murder of at least 10500 men, women and children. We saw it in a different light after that.


The people sent to S.21 were disposed of in the countryside in what has become know as the killing fields. We took a moto ride out to the site that was used as a killing ground for the S.21 prison. The area now houses a memorial tower of human remains found in the mass graves. There are still graves there that haven’t been excavated and it’s very strange now walking around both the killing fields and the prison as it’s very quiet and almost peaceful. Out of the 10500 people to go into the prison only 7 came out alive.

The museum now hosts many of the photographs of the inmates and shows the way in which they lived and died between 1975 and 1979 in the then ‘Kampuchea Democratic’. In all Pol Pot murdered 3 million of his own people in a twisted ‘social experiment’ lasting 4 years. It is good to see that the Cambodian people have not been twisted by the slaughter and still remain kind and caring although deeply scarred.

 From one former war zone to the next – Vietnam
 

We thought it would be nice to travel into Vietnam via the Mekong river from Cambodia. It takes about 5 hours and is a nice relaxing way to get into the country. The problems only started when we got into Vietnam. We arrived at a place called Chou Doc, a run down little boarder town with a very limited charm and a million mosquitoes. We foolishly decided that a nice way to get up to Saigon (now Ho Chi Min City) would be to book onto a 3 day Mekong delta trip. What a nightmare, it was so badly run and none of the guides/idiots took any responsibility for the passengers. At the end of day 2 the bus pulled up in the middle of nowhere and told us to get off and take a taxi to our hotel. This is the point where both me and Danny went metal. We refused to get off the bus until a tour guide with proper information came and took us to our hotel. The bus guy and Danny were toe to toe and I was sure it was gonna come to blows. I was very proud of Danny he was 'battle squirrel' ready for the kill.

We eventually got to Saigon after another awful days touring only to find that in 2 weeks it was Tet New Year (the lunar new year) and all and I mean all the transport up to Hanoi where our flight was due to leave from was fully booked. There were no trains; or they wouldn’t sell westerner the tickets, no busses and only really expensive flights. So here we were trapped in Saigon, with the whole country about to shut down on us.

This might not have been so bad if it weren’t for the fact that the Vietnamese people really really hate the westerners, I think after what the US did over there they have no respect, no time and no thought for tourist except to part them from there money as fast as humanly possible. I can’t blame them for this attitude after visiting the war museum and seeing the photos of what the US dropped on the people over there it’s horrifying. Just the Agent Orange and the Napalm alone was enough never mind the hundreds of tons of bombs. It will take Vietnam longer than it’s already had to recover from the devastation the US caused and having seen its fallout first hand, it makes me afraid for the consequences of what will come to us from Iraq.
 So, as we couldn’t get to Hanoi for the flight out we booked new flight out to Borneo, I’ve never been so relieved to get out of a country as I was from Vietnam.

New Year Survival Trek – Laos

Well after the excesses of Christmas day we decided that having a quiet New Year would be better. So we left Vientiane the capital of Laos to try our luck at finding a trekking guide in the Phu Khao Khuay national Park.

You can do this trek through a company called green discovery, which is fine if you have a shed load of money to burn, which we didn’t. So we took some advice from the tourist office and decided to wing it.

We caught a local bus to a small place called Thatbot. The local bus was so amazingly slow and filled to the rafters with not only the passengers but the large array of goods they were also transporting. We had at least 3 full car exhaust systems laid out in the aisle, nestling alongside the sacks of rice. Each bus also carries a small contingent of women selling food for the journey. They get on and off the buses at different places and that’s what they do all day. We bought some baguettes but there was BBQ chicken, sticky rice and other items not identifiable to us.

We were safely unloaded at the right stop where were had to find some kind of transport to the village of Ban Hatkhai about 8km away. We had tried to phone the village elder who organises the treks but couldn’t get through the day before, so we had no one to collect us. We walked into Thatbot village and were told that a bus would be about a 3 hour wait so we persuaded a local guy heading towards the village to take us… cost us 20,000 kip (£1.60) for the ride. So there we were speeding up this dirt track sat in the bed of a pick up truck feeling very intrepid but still not sure if we had a trek or place or stay that night.

Lucky for us the pick-up driver dropped us off at the headman’s house who understood that the only reason ‘falang’ (white tourists) come to the village is to trek. His English was about the same as our Laos, Danny resorted describing the trek we wanted in pictures and that seemed to work a treat. That night we stayed in the headman’s house; a privilege for us and he was very generous with the rice whisky called ‘LaoLao’. We ended up having a great time trying to teach each other our languages. We weren’t feeling so happy the next morning when the village awoke with the dawn and therefore so did we.

There are a great many puppies in the village, during the night one of the little buggers had run off with Danny’s walking socks. Only the night before we realised that there were a lot of puppies and not many grown up dogs… We decided that Puppy Pie must be a village favourite, Danny wasn’t so happy about it… until the morning when he was sockless :).

Unsure how the days trekking was due to start we hung around, until a guide appeared. We had established that during the 2 night trek we would like to stay out in the wilds rather than back in a village. To do this we would have to sleep under the stars something I’d never done before. We had all the gear and borrowed a mosquito net. Our guide took us down to the river where we would begin our trek by travelling up stream for about 50 mins by canoe.

The guides carried all the food we’d need for 2 days away. They showed us a very small basket that contained two dead ducks that we would BBQ for the next few days. It was only when we got out of the boat at the other end we realised the ducks weren’t dead at all… how they got them into the basket I never want to know but their poor carriage conditions started to wear on my conscience by the time we had stopped for the day.

The boat we were to use for the next 2 days was a thin plank construction which was very low in the water with all the bags and food. The river level was also very very low so at times the boat had to be pushed off the sandbars that caught it as it was propelled up river by the ‘longtail’ motor. I was in charge of bailing the water out of the boat as we moved along.

The first day we trekked to a large 7 tier waterfall where we made camp for the day. After a simple luch of local foods, we went off to investigate the area while the two guides we had with us ‘Bundee’ and ‘Bundeyang’ dispatched the ducks and built a fire.

We were looking forward to BBQ duck roasting over the fire… but, it was not to be. For dinner the guides had made a very nice noodle soup with the carcass of the ducks the backbone mainly. And the heart, liver and lungs were given to us to eat along with the ducks head and feet. Never in the history of man was has one man been soooo disappointed with his dinner. I tried a little of the duck head, a bit of brain an beak but Danny was not feeling like eating wobbly bits he couldn’t readily identify.

It really bought us down to earth as nothing is ever wasted when the Lao people kill and cook an animal, it made me realise how much we throw away as inedible in the UK. Mainly the bits we were now eating. What we really wanted to know was what had happened the meat? We joked that they throw the good bits away as rubbish.

Soon after dinner the boys clean a nice rock by the river for us to sleep on and Danny set about building a frame to house the mosquito net. It was quite impressive and worked a treat. We spent a very comfortable night out on our rock listening to the frog chorus.
We were treat for breakfast to boiled river shrimp that the guides had caught overnight. I little over powering for me in the morning but Danny scoffed the lot.



Today was New Years Eve and we had another boat ride up the river to where the rapids started. At this time of year the water was very low so it was easy to scramble over the rocks to find ourselves a campsite for the night. The guides were worried it would rain so they found us a spot under a large bolder. We left our gear in camp and after lunch started the walk up the side of the gorge. We were heading up the steep side where we’d be rewarded with a view across the gorge and the Mekong river plane.

The walk up though the jungle was hard work in the heat. We followed a tiny path though the thick bamboo, which took us across dry river beds and eventually we followed a dry bed which bought us out of the jungle onto a very old lava flow. We weren’t expecting this as there are no volcanoes in Laos but it was unmistakeable. We followed the lava flow to the top of a cliff which dropped away dramatically in front of us to reveal the river way down in the bottom.

It was a real breathtaking view and Danny managed to scare the crap out of our guide by getting to close to the edge… as usual.

That evening we were treated to the remained of the duck, the good bits of meat this time, as well as some homemade soup and sticky rice. I’d of given anything right then for some mashed potatoes or some custard, I know strange choices but you get some weird craving s for western food. So there we were New year eve laying on a rock by this river watching the full moon rise over the jungle.

Earlier we’d used the river as our bathroom and jumped into a large pool and lathered up. It was all a great experience and the guides gave us some LaoLao, which kept us happily singing songs sat on our rock, till not quite midnight, but we were very tired.

The whole experience of the trek and village stay was so memorable. We had found some of the realness of Laos after the unrealness of the bars and drunk English that we had found in the bars of Vang Vieng at Christmas. I enjoyed being in Laos more than Thailand and Nepal, the Laos people are the ones that make the difference and for me these memories will stick with me the longest.

Vang Vieng Trek Laos

Laos - Mekong to Luang Prabang

 Click here to see to the Photos on Photobucket site...

So we left Thailand and crossed the boarder into Laos by boat, a very cool way to cross a land border we thought. We then had to pass though Laos immigration, which was quite a laid back affair, $35 for the visa not $60 as we were quoted in Thailand, but as we crossed on a Saturday we had to pay the ‘official’ overtime fee of $1 per person.

So the plan was to travel for 2 days on a slow boat along the Mekong River until we reached the UNESCO world heritage town of Luang Prabang, the ancient royal capital of Laos. We found our boat which was a long, flat bottomed, wooden barge type thing. We were given very tiny wooden benches to sit on. It was very clear to us the boat was full, with all benches taken up but the captain kept trying to cram more tourists on board. This was the point where we started a mutiny… we began shouting for another boat as there were no seats. This was quickly taken up by the rest of the passengers and very quickly another boat was made available… Power to the people! In a communist country eh?

So the journey still wasn’t comfortable but it was a definite improvement, as we set of along the Mekong we soon forgot about the discomfort and began a love affair with ‘Beer Laos’ and the gorgeous scenery along the river. The night before in Thailand we had teamed up with an Aussie called Vic, an English guy called Andy and a German named Rene, and man could they all drink.

So we had a nice time floating down river to our over night stop in Pek Beng. The guide book had given the impression that this place was a bit of a truck stop for the river boats and that accommodation was a little iffy; to find and in it’s quality. So we formed a plan, when we reached Pak Beng Danny and Vic left the boat at high speed to get us some rooms and we stayed to get the bags off the boat. When we arrived it was dark, trying to find your bags in the darkness and total chaos was an adventure, it didn’t help matters that the local kids were climbing on board the boat and taking any bags they could carry off the boat and then asking for money. This was easy to cope with IF and only If you could see where the little buggers had gone!

So, all worked out ok and we headed off to our very basic but only thing around accommodation, We went straight over the road to a nice looking bar/restaurant for food and were welcomed very warmly by the owner and staff. We had a great time with them and the local whisky (Lao Lao) stared to flow, then the local weed was offered about and it was rude to say no really as they were being so nice :). We left Pak Beng with a very favourable view and think it deserves a much better rep in the guide books.

The next day we arrived in Luang Prabang, and were very pleasantly surprised as to how pretty the town was. We got somewhere to stay and then sought out the local night market, not as vast as the Thai markets but very good food all the same. You can get any bit of meat on the many BBQ stalls they have and the river fish was amazing. We also got offered a lot of shots of Lao Loa whisky again to the point where I was quite drunk, hic.

We chilled out the next day, and took it easy with an excellent Lao Massage… they really do pummel you but you feel great afterwards and it was an hour for the equivalent of £3. We joined the others for a drink later more Beer Lao was consumed and as the town has to shut its bars at 11:30 we teamed up with some locals that the guys had met earlier and went ‘Bowling’. We really did go ten pin bowling but as it is just outside the town limits all the ‘falang’, foreigners go there to drink. I of course won the bowling but everyone so utterly pissed on the return that we crammed as many falang into, and onto the tuk tuk as we could for the return. How we didn’t get arrested for breaching the peace I’ll never know.

So, today we visited the local waterfall and it’s is the most amazing place. It has so many tiers and due to the mineral content is turquoise blue and the minerals have formed gentle pools that work there way back up the hill side. We had a swim in one of the lower pools and Danny seeing the rope swing kept launching himself into the air and dropping into the pool below.

The water wasn’t that warm but we felt better afterwards for the dip. We will be staying here another day or so before moving onto Vang Vieng, where we will be doing a lot of outdoor stuff. Look out for the links to the photos on Facebook and I’ll hopefully remember to add the links to them here as well.

Merry Christmas everyone!!

Thailand Continued...

So the last blog entry was back on the island of Koh Samet, We had such a great time there, it couldn't have been more different from Nepal, we left Samet and took a 3 hour bus ride to koh Chang the biggest of the island that are on to the south of Bangkok.

The best part about Ko Chang was the amazing sunset from our hut on the cliff top and the fact that it had a hammock which i couldn't prise Danny out of for 3 days. The seafood was great there if a little expensive for our very small budget of £5 for a meal for 2 lol. ko Chang was very 'resort' centred and we didn't like that so much so we bought a ferry ticket from a nice ladyboy who gave us a 100bt discount... Danny smiles at him/her nicely :)

So we took the ferry to Koh Wai a very small island that was about 1 hour away. We had a little hut on the beach and at hide tide the sea was just below our bedroom window. We were happy stranded on our desert island for 4 days, we spent most of our time sunbathing and snorkeling and we had great fun with the underwater camera taking pictures of the fish. There is a marine conservation project running on the island where they are building new coral reefs and its a great place to see all the fish. The little Damsel fish were like a pack of dogs and as soon as you got in the water you had a little shoal of them following you around :)

So, we left Koh Wai and stayed in a little town called Trat, where we discoverd the 'night market' Danny has decided that night markets are the best place on earth, they sell so much amazing food and they are sooo cheap. You could happily eat yourself to death at them and Danny seems determined to try to do jsut that. We spend a total of 12 days in the islands whic was jsut what we needed after weeks in Kathmandu.

The return to Bangkok was a Long 7 hour bus journey, followed by a local bus ride from some remote bus station north of the city centre. By the time we got back to central Bangkok we were both ready to drop, Danny was in pain and i was in need of a serous amount of beer.

We had a day or so in Bangkok traveling around on the water taxis, which is really the only way to travel round Bangkok. The Tuk tuk scam makes that form of transport not viable, and the taxis are metred when they feel like it and you don't look like a tourist. Otherwise you end up paying a fortune as tourist equals money in downtown Bangkok.

We, had a tour booked with TAT the Thai tourist office who are very efficient. We took a day train to Ayuttaya the old capital of Thailand which you'd think was interesting until you get there and realise it's a shithole with some ruins in the middle of it. It was baking hot and not the weather for stumbling though ruins of buildings that all look the same. Danny was so unimpressed, although we saw 1 cool thing the Buddha head covered in tree roots. That was it for the whole town.. so don't go there!

After we left the boring towns behind we took the night train direct to Chiang Mai in the far north. We have hired ourselves a moped and we have found the local climbing site which is really nice. All sport routes but great quality rock and really well looked after areas for belaying. photos of this will follow I'm sure.

When we arrived we took a 3 day jungle trek which is worth a blog all of it's own. It was good fun and it was great to see the countryside of north Thailand as opposed to the coast.

So that's about it for the Thailand story, we will be leaving for Laos in 4 days where we take the slow river boat (2 days) to the city of Luang Prabang which is supposed to be lovely. We should be spending Christmas in a place called Vang Vieng, lots of rock climbing, river rafting, trekking and the most important of all 'tubing' floating down the river in a tractor inner tube stopping for beer all the way.., we've even bought the Santa hats to where on the way!

Merry Christmas folks!

The Full Tharpu Chuli Epic Climb

Here is the full story from Danny's and Akhil's Epic Climb

Ko Samet Sunshine

After the cold weather started in Nepal we decided that it was time we had a beach holiday. We arrived In Thailand after a 7 hour delay in Kathmandu while Royal Nepalese Airlines trained there first pilot and bought a plane…. Don’t ever fly on a Nepalese plane… ever!

So we had 1 day in Bangkok and booked ourselves the bus down to the islands near the mainland. Ko Samet and Ko Chang. We had nowhere booked so it was a bit seat of the pants kind of thing. We arrived and headed to a place that the lonely plant guide told us was 300/400 baht (our budget was 400 = £8 a night) the cheap place turned out to be 800 baht per night, which blow us out the water. They told us there was cheaper place in the next bay to Danny revved the hamsters and ran round the headland. I sat and guarded the bags and had a beer.

Lucky for us, the next place wasn’t so posh and Danny got us a room with fan and a toilet for 400baht (£8). The place is a bit run down but they make the most amazing breakfast, we’ve been eating, toast with jam, fried eggs and bacon each morning all for £4. After the food in Nepal we’ve been in breakfast heaven!

The 2^nd night what I thought was Danny fidgeting woke me up but on closer inspection next day we discover that we were sharing our bed with a critter (mouse). It was living inside the headboard, which had an open space behind it. So, we stared operation ‘mouse trap’ Danny got the broom from outside, with the broom ready we pulled back the bed so we could see the space, in the far corner I spotted a little twitchy nosey, Danny immediately swooped in a hit it with the broom, the mouse jumped valiantly to the floor running for cover under the bed. But Danny was too quick for him and blasted him with all bristles. The brave little fella ran for a chair but to no avail as Danny deftly remove the chair I open the door and the mouse was swept to freedom.

We were pretty happy with ourselves until later that evening we hear a rustling in the eves above us…. He was back!

It seems no matter where we eat in the bay the food is always amazing, if the Thais know how to do one things it make great food, although Danny has to have a large rice, which makes the girls serving us laugh as large rice here is for at least 4 people.

We have both reverted to 8 years olds, Danny a lot quicker than me as he was a child anyway… we have been snorkelling and playing with sea cucumbers (Danny calls them something else) we’ve been playing around in the sea on rubber rings, diving off the pier and even have taken a day out on a sea kayak, which was really great paddling down the coast of the island stopping at the little bays as we went.

We move next to the island Ko Chang and here we might do a little hiking…. Maybe J