The Travel Thread - Second Destination

[Jackal]

I'm in Siahnouk Ville. It's fucking beautiful (and pretty deserted in off season too. and good accommodation is only $5 per night.

The beaches are lovely here and the wather i shamshing, so I'm getting the chance to tan my torso to the same level as my legs, arms, face ad neck already are

I hired a 125cc Honda for $3 this morning and visied about six absolutely pristine sandy coves with not a body in sight and got to overtake about a million rucks while dodging massive potholes.

Then I went to serendipity beach, by my guesthouse, in the evening to bathe and drink beer in a shack at $0.50 a pop.

When I had drank enough beer I drove off to have dinner and another few beers before doing a run in the dark out of town on some nice S-bends I drove earlier.

Returned the bike just now, as I felt it could be bad for the health in a few drinks time when I go down the beach huts again.

There's a bar on one of the beaches here, independence beach, going for rent of $360pcm. I am going to view the premises in the morning. Just a pipe dream but I am moving back here in November and my bar sounds better than TEFL teaching . . .

EDIT: @ SHM: They are filling in Boing Kak lake, they have constructed a huge sandbar right down the middle of it and are slowly draining the water as the government (read PM for his own personal gain) sold it to Koreans for $9m.

Guesthouse guys estimate they have 6 months to 12 months left before the police descent with riot squad and kick them all out. It's a shit deal.

 

[TheSpade]

There's a bar on one of the beaches here, independence beach, going for rent of $360pcm. I am going to view the premises in the morning. Just a pipe dream but I am moving back here in November and my bar sounds better than TEFL teaching . . .

How cool would that be if you bought that bar. I would make a point of coming to see you and having a drink in your bar whilst over at that side of the world. :D

 

[stimutant]

i`ve got some spare time and money. if you were in north-western europe, were would you travel to, and why?

(btw., im not interested in cheap drugs or so... more in getting away & seeing (real) things)

 

[TheSpade]

How much money do you have? The world really is your oyster if you have plenty of cash.

 

[stimutant]

luckily its really more the question "where do i want to go?" than "what will it cost?"

 

[TheSpade]

Well go where ever you want to go then.

Why not list some places you'd like to visit and we can maybe offer advice on them if any of us have been.

 

[stimutant]

south-east asia would be great, but i think that deserves a bit more planning than such a spontaneous trip, or what do you think? vaccinations and so on come to mind... thats the problem, i cant really say where i want to travel to, or i wouldnt have to ask
the iberian peininsula would be great, maybe someone here knows a place on the coast thats not plastered with hotels & mcdonalds-restourants?

 

[TheSpade]

Go to SE Asia then, you don't need to do much planning. Just get the neccessary jabs, sort out the visas and book a flight. Away you go.

 

[stimutant]

the more i think about it the more logic sounds it to just do it.
thx for the advice.

 

[Bella Figura]

Sweet

 

[DS_]

^ It's what I did.

When we were finally rested we went out for lunch in Hanoi’s Times Square which was alright. Lounged about for the rest of the day then I bought a hop on, hop off bus ticket to Saigon. The first stop is a place called Hue about half way down the coast of Vietnam. The bus there was an overnight sleeper bus which was a lot better than the bus we had got back from Sapa but it was still pretty uncomfortable. It had three rows of beds which were three berths high. I sat near the front of the top of beds so that I wouldn’t be near the toilet and I wouldn’t have many people close to me because I’m weird like that. The beds were okay but predictably too short and there was no space to stash my day bag so I had to sleep with it resting comfortably on my forehead almost. The entertainment system on the bus was thankfully not karaoke but a really violent soft porn movie from China.

I woke up in the middle of the night to this Argentine woman I had spoken to earlier nudging me telling me that my “duvet” was almost completely fallen onto the floor and that I would be the same if I hadn’t secured my seatbelt. Because of my size and the bad design the seatbelt actually gripped me across the top of my chest underneath my armpits.

When I arrived in Hue I checked into the newly opened Hue backpackers hostel, run by the same group of people as the one in Hanoi where I stayed. Because it was new it was very nice and clean and was also half price. $3.50 a night with free beer every evening from 6pm wasn’t half bad!

In my dorm were a couple of English girls so we rented some bicycles and rode around Hue, stopping off at the citadel of the old palace thing. It was pretty nice looking but there was a fair amount of building work going on so it spoilt it a bit.

When we left it was close to dusk and there were a lot of young Vietnamese people flying kites in the square where the flag tower is. It made for quite a sight, seeing all these colourful dragon shaped kites over the old city. On a slightly less cheery note I also saw a fight between two motorcycle taxi people but it wasn’t very serious, just a bit of girly fist throwing and some angry sounding shouting (nothing out of the ordinary in Indochina) and then it petered out.

After we had ridden our bikes back through the hectic rush hour traffic we made us of the free beer and played some drinking games and then headed about 10 metres down the street to a restaurant for dinner. Back home I am a miserable bastard and don’t like drinking games but out here it’s more fun because no one knows each other and it’s not really about the drinking, more about the banter around it. Highlights of the night include meeting a spitting image of Jimmy Carr (with the voice to match) who would do impressions on demand and having a laugh with a woman from Brizzle who used to partly organise the Tribe of Frog parties.

The next day I booked tickets for a bus tour of the DMZ. The DMZ was the artificial border created during the Vietnam war to mark the boundary between north and south Vietnam. It was also the site of some of the fiercest battles of the war so is naturally steeped in a lot of history.

I went to Thuan An beach with Frances with Brizzle woman on a motorbike we rented in town. She’d never ridden a motorbike before so when we got back she gave it a go on the street outside our hostel which was mighty dangerous but always entertaining. I have developed a deep seated hatred for drum brakes. We had some seafood for lunch on the beach but it was pretty expensive. At first they brought out a live crab which they wanted 100,000VND for (about 3 quid 30) which is cheap for back home but expensive here. Got some squid in the end but also a fuck ton of flies who would not stop trying to land on the food.

Whilst swimming in the otherwise beautiful sea we kept coming across loads of rubbish like empty cans and plastic bags. One particularly amusing moment was when Frances shouted out that she’d found a tuna so I swam over and it was a plastic packet of microwave tuna lulz.

Because we’re white we automatically make Vietnamese people laugh and when we complied with their request to do the obligatory stand on shoulders and jump into the sea thing they nearly wet themselves.

On the way back from the beach on the motorbike some Vietnamese girls on a bicycle decided to randomly swerve into our path and I came about an inch from killing them. Had I not slowed down and moved into the middle of the road already I’d probably be at their funeral right now.

Had a curry for dinner. Combined with the squid at lunch my bowels were close to death the next day. Taking a shit in a hole in the floor toilet with no paper and realising there was a fuck off spider behind you afterwards is the downside to asia/France.

Until the next time!

Sounds fun, boss!

 

[Jackal]

Sounds good Kara.

I'm back in Siahnoukville, having rented a big fuck-off trail bike yesterday and driven halfway to Phnom Penh before I looked at a map and realised that my intended destination, Bokor/Kampot was nowhere near where I was as I should have turned off route 4 about 60k outside Siahnoukville but I was so fucking busy dodging mopeds, kids, cyclists , pedestriand, landcruisers, minivans, chickens and cattle that I hadn't noticed.

I turned around and got to Bokor at noon, which was too late to be allowed to take the bike up the 24k dirt track up the mountain to this:

It's an enormous national park on a large plateau with eerie old french colonial buildings lurking in the fog, also there are Tigers and Elephants and other friendly animals. The guy said to come back at 8am the next morning so I traveled onward to Kampot where I got a room overlooking the river for $5

It's small and poor but, my fuck, is it beautiful. Nestled right at the base of mountains with nice little cafe's and old french colonial buildings along the riverbank.

Couldn't get up Bokor today either as it was closed because of a Buddhist ceremony so I came back to Siahnoukville. Got quite reckless on the road today as no policeman that I have seen has anything capable of catching my bike, so I pulled my baseball cap down over my eyes, put my head down and screwed it on. Raced a landcruiser for about 50k on the way back and only came close to death once:D

It's fucking scary when you are coming up to a bend on a bastard trailbile with no fairings or aerodynamic abilities at all at around 150kmph and two buses come around the bend, side by side with one in your lane and the other not giving an inch at all, despite whatever may be coming the other way, but that's how they drive here.

Spent the afternoon on a deserted beach that I hiked to, away from all the shacks, hawkers and people to work on making my chest the same colour as my my arms, face and legs after a few days on bikes and tonight I will probably be down the dolphin shack and meet up with some Canadians I've been drinking with.

I met the English and Scotsman who I traveled with from Poipet to Siem Reap again the other day too, so we were drinking a lot of 25c Anchor Draughts and eating a few Barracuda's together. Good times.

Those two went on to Vietnam the other day and I am in the process of deciding whether I should extend my flight back to Engerland from next Wednesday until the 10th of of next month and head on there myself or not.

I really want to, and I have a Visa also, but I have two car's that need to be fixed and sold, a course I need to finish and the BL Amsterdam thing, a wedding, rent to pay and lots of other tedious shite to sorth by the middle of July.

Plus I'm coming out here for a long time come October.

My camera is broken again Bought an instant one yesterday, though it's not the same. I'm not going to rent the particular business I looked at the other day. Instead I will move here first and spend some months teaching/doing bar-work and laying the ground for maybe opening one next spring.

Having spoken to a few people who are already out here, it seems that jumping head-first into something like that here would be a recipe for disaster, but I've got time.

 

[TheSpade]

Both your stories are making me VERY jealous. Thinking maybe I should have arranged to go to Asia first for a few months before going to Aus. Guess I'll need to do it afterwards.

 

[LivingInTheMoment]

Sounds good Kara.

I'm back in Siahnoukville, having rented a big fuck-off trail bike yesterday and driven halfway to Phnom Penh before I looked at a map and realised that my intended destination, Bokor/Kampot was nowhere near where I was as I should have turned off route 4 about 60k outside Siahnoukville but I was so fucking busy dodging mopeds, kids, cyclists , pedestriand, landcruisers, minivans, chickens and cattle that I hadn't noticed.

I turned around and got to Bokor at noon, which was too late to be allowed to take the bike up the 24k dirt track up the mountain to this:

It's an enormous national park on a large plateau with eerie old french colonial buildings lurking in the fog, also there are Tigers and Elephants and other friendly animals. The guy said to come back at 8am the next morning so I traveled onward to Kampot where I got a room overlooking the river for $5

It's small and poor but, my fuck, is it beautiful. Nestled right at the base of mountains with nice little cafe's and old french colonial buildings along the riverbank.

Couldn't get up Bokor today either as it was closed because of a Buddhist ceremony so I came back to Siahnoukville. Got quite reckless on the road today as no policeman that I have seen has anything capable of catching my bike, so I pulled my baseball cap down over my eyes, put my head down and screwed it on. Raced a landcruiser for about 50k on the way back and only came close to death once:D

It's fucking scary when you are coming up to a bend on a bastard trailbile with no fairings or aerodynamic abilities at all at around 150kmph and two buses come around the bend, side by side with one in your lane and the other not giving an inch at all, despite whatever may be coming the other way, but that's how they drive here.

Spent the afternoon on a deserted beach that I hiked to, away from all the shacks, hawkers and people to work on making my chest the same colour as my my arms, face and legs after a few days on bikes and tonight I will probably be down the dolphin shack and meet up with some Canadians I've been drinking with.

I met the English and Scotsman who I traveled with from Poipet to Siem Reap again the other day too, so we were drinking a lot of 25c Anchor Draughts and eating a few Barracuda's together. Good times.

Those two went on to Vietnam the other day and I am in the process of deciding whether I should extend my flight back to Engerland from next Wednesday until the 10th of of next month and head on there myself or not.

I really want to, and I have a Visa also, but I have two car's that need to be fixed and sold, a course I need to finish and the BL Amsterdam thing, a wedding, rent to pay and lots of other tedious shite to sorth by the middle of July.

Plus I'm coming out here for a long time come October.

My camera is broken again Bought an instant one yesterday, though it's not the same. I'm not going to rent the particular business I looked at the other day. Instead I will move here first and spend some months teaching/doing bar-work and laying the ground for maybe opening one next spring.

Having spoken to a few people who are already out here, it seems that jumping head-first into something like that here would be a recipe for disaster, but I've got time.

That first picture is awsome and fearsome! Feeling as if you can fall off and into the clouds.

 

[Jackal]

I spent Sunday night in a drinking frenzy, first on the beach, and then on the bar of the freedom lounge with a fella from New Zealand who, it turned out, had mat the same English and Scotsman that I had been traveling with.

So we drank like soldiers until almost closing time when I devoted all my attention to the hot Khmer bartender, who I took for a walk, then to the beach, then to a bar, then to my room where no sleep was had until I had to extract myself, pack quickly, and bolt to the bus-station at 6:40am.

Kiss goodbye, scribble down e-mail and hope she isn't pregnant. Sailors life.

Got to Bangkok at 10pm, been sleeping for an unbroken ten hours since then despite staying on noisy Khao San. Stiff as a plank today, must go for a real massage after breakfast then do a little shopping, ENGLAND ON THURSDAY

 

[TheSpade]

It's not her being pregnant you need to worry about, better hope she didn't have aids.

Sounds like fun mate. :D Unlucky that your due home soon, stay longer?

 

[Jackal]

Given the amount of time since my last test, it's probably the other way round spadey

I had "protection" about a foot away but she didn't want. Plus she wasn't a professional

Yeah, back on Thursday.More's the pity.

Though I'm not saying that out of love for feckin Bangkok

 

[TheSpade]

Never mind what she wanted, she could be riddled with all sorts.

Bangkok, it's horrible yet wonderful at the same time I think. Wouldn't want to spend a great deal of time there though.

 

[Riklet]

Ah i've been to Kampot (and up Bakor, really eerie and amazing), it was fucking cool, zoomed around on peddle bikes rather than motors though, but shit some good stories there guys, i too am pretty fucking jealous.

Going to France, Nice area in a week's time, should be good craic, got the offer to stay in Barcelona in the next month or two, too. Fucking wicked. I am quite tempted to just say fuck it to getting ripped in the Euro zone and toodle off to Asia though, I can just about afford it. ...Tempting!! :D

 

[TheSpade]

Go to Asia you know it makes sense!