Ko Phi Phi

Phi Phi (technically 2 islands, Phi Phi Don & Phi Phi Ley) is one of the most stunning naturally beautiful places I've ever been. It is spoiled only by the visitors, which (a combination of backpackers and day-trippers from Phuket) are unfortunately quite numerous. We had heard the nightlife could be very noisy, so on arrival manage to secure a bamboo hut just out of the town, right on cliffs by the sea. It didn't have any windows, air-con or hot water, but was cheap, seemed clean enough, and had a beautiful breezy veranda for hanging out. We could even climb down to the rocks below and watch the sunset. We'ed lucked out...

Our balcony and the bungalow next door

    

... or so we thought. The beautiful arching beach we could see from the room becomes Phi Phi's party central every night. There is no sleeping here, even with earplugs, and listening to 5 bars simultaneously playing what appeared to just be Fatman Scoop's greatest hits can get tiresome after a while. Still, the place was so nice we just tolerated it. The first night we grabbed a cocktail bucket or two and joined in.

Cocktail buckets (150baht = 3 pounds)

The day after the day after the night before, we went scuba diving around Phi Phi Ley (the smaller of the 2 islands). It was the best scuba trip we've taken, partly because it was a really friendly company - we were the only customers on the boat, so it was just the divemaster, the boat guy and us - but also because of the amazing amount of wildlife! The highlight probably was seeing about 5 Hawksbill turtles right up close - they didn't seem to bothered and just carried on chomping away at the coral or whatever it was. To top it off we stopped at Maya bay (the beach from The Beach) for a lunch break. Not quite as good as the film due to the tourists knocking about on it but it was still awesome!

Our dive boat, Maya Bay

Cath and 'the beach'

Trang & Ko Lanta

After landing back in Thailand at Hat Yai we got on a minibus to Trang, which we understood to be the hub from where one visits the nearby islands. Trang is a pretty irrelevant small town, but luckily there was a food market that night which was awesome. There didn't seem to be many foreigners there so we got quite a bit of attention, presumably roughly translated as "hey, everyone come and look at these two white people, one even has blonde hair. QUICK! LOOK! Look how ridiculous they are, yeah I know they are idiots, they don't even know what this food is! They must be so retarded!" We tucked in.

Quails eggs & chilli sauce

Next day we got a minibus to Ko Lanta, after being informed that, with the exception of a few pricey resorts, the Trang islands were basically closed for low season. Ko Lanta was extremely quiet. The island is about 30km long and at least half the hotels and restaurants strung along the east coast were closed for the low season. We took a day trip to visit some of the Trang Islands where we had intended to stay. Apart from the truly deafeningly loud longtail boat (little wooden boat with unsilenced truck engine bolted on a bit of scaffolding to the back) it was cool. We stopped at 2 fairly average snorkelling spots, but then stopped for lunch on a breathtakingly beautiful beach on Ko Ngai:

   

In the afternoon we went to this awesome cove on Ko Muk where you swim 80m through a dark tunnel (luckily the guide brought a torch) and emerge in this tiny little crazy paradise beach area, surrounded on all sides by cliffs and jungle.

The rest of our time in Ko Lanta was fairly uneventful as there just wasn't a huge amount going on. We took a motorbike up and down the island one day, and were able to enjoy sunsets from our hotel (below). 4 nights was maybe a little too long but it was nice to have time to do nothing for a couple of days before moving on a getting the ferry to our next island, Phi Phi.

Kuala Lumpur

We only spent 2 nights in Malaysia (the story why is long and uninteresting). After our initial confusion at not landing at the international airport (AirAsia's hub is totally separate it turns out) we got a taxi into town and a budget hotel in Bukit Bintang, Kuala Lumpur's charmless version of London's west end. Cath and I had been to Malaysia before so we didn't feel obliged to 'do' the tourist stuff. Number one priority was to eat delicious beef satay from one of the cheapo street resturants, so we had that for dinner both nights. They didn't do it at lunchtimes otherwise I would have had more.

Fortunately our first night was the 55th anniversary of Merdeka (Malaysia's independence day, which they LOVE) so the crowds were out on force. We celebrated in true Malaysian style, with some overpriced cocktails in some expat bars.

Before

Shortly after

Ok, we did a bit of tourist stuff

Chiang Mai/Pai

We had become accustomed to arriving in new cities feeling exhausted after horrible bus journeys so it felt quite novel to arrive in Chiang Mai relatively bright eyed and bushy tailed after a short flight.

We checked into the cheap but very friendly Kavil guesthouse towards the east gate of the old town. We were immediately struck by how we were a) treated as valued customers (instead of huge inconveniences) and b) treated as normal people (rather than completely mental foreigners who might as well have been from Mars.) I guess tourism is much more established in Thailand compared with other parts of south east Asia and after 6 weeks in Vietnam/Laos we found the change refreshing.

We booked ourselves a taxi (which turned out to be a brand new hilux much to Chris's delight) to 'Tiger Kingdom' which promised the opportunity to play with tigers. Helpfully, the tigers were categorized as 'smallest', 'small', 'medium' and 'large'. Being incredibly over excited we decided to splash out and see them all. The smallest tigers were just 2 months old and the large ones were, frankly pretty large. Needless to say an obscene amount of photos were taken.

If there is one thing (other than tigers) that is plentiful in Chiang Mai, it is cookery schools. Literally every other building seems to be one so we dutifully enrolled ourselves at Baan Thai Cookery School. It was a full day, including a market tour and the making (and eating of) six dishes of our choosing (think pad Thai, green curry, Tom yum soup as well as some local specialities such as Hung Lay curry).

It was here we were introduced to the concept of 'foreigner spicy' and 'Thai spicy'. We stuck with the foreigner spicy which was usually limited to just 3 or 4 hot Thai chillies per portion! It was a really fun day, the food was really tasty (even if we do say do ourselves) and we were incredibly full by the end!

Buying the ingredients at the market

Chris looking very pleased with himself

Expertly wrapped spring rolls

Pad thai

Unfortunately that evening Chris was struck down by a stomach upset (which we are confident was not caused by his cooking but by a questionable squid skewer he had consumed at a market the previous evening) We think this is probably the offending squid:

Uh oh

With Chris feeling somewhat recovered, we followed the foodie trail to Tannin Market in the north of Chiang  Mai  (featured on Masterchef). It was predominantly a fresh food market; we were the only white people there and nobody spoke much English so we really felt we were getting in with the locals.

Live frogs

Huge mounds of curry paste

Mmmm entrails

After satisfying our food cravings in Chiang Mai we booked ourselves onto a minibus a few hours north to the town of Pai (pronounced more like 'bye') near the border with Burma. Pai is clearly geared up for tourists with plenty of bars and restaurants but still manages to maintain a super relaxed small town feel. We hired a motorbike one day and explored some of the gorgeous surrounding countryside.

Unfortunately it was then my turn to be struck down by a stomach bug which pretty much put an end to the fun in Pai. All to soon we had to leave to catch the bus back to Chiang Mai in order to get our flight to Malaysia.

Laos

We arrived in Vientiane exhausted after a 24 hour never-to-be-spoke-of-again bus and got a tuk-tuk into what we guessed was the centre of town. Vientiane is pretty small for a capital city with only about 200 thousand people, and it's the only capital city I could think of which borders another country (google tells me there are quite a few more, there's even a sporcle quiz). We spent a few days doing very little there other than drinking beerlao and waiting for the rain to stop. There was a surprisingly nice cocktail bar next to our hotel, but it was generally pretty quiet. We visited the thai consulate to get a 60-day visa, but that was going to take 4 days to process so we gave up and headed off on the (3 hour only) minibus to Vang Vieng.

Number 1 thing to do in Laos

Vang Vieng is a unique place. Its popularity is almost entirely built around tubing. If you come to Laos to get drunk, cheaply with a bunch of other brits, look no further! Basically you hire a big inner tube, they take you a couple of miles up the river and you float down, stopping at bars along the way who throw out ropes and help drag you in. The Lonely Planet describes these bars as 'amphetamine fuelled rave platforms' but really it's fine - more like a university freshers week.

Apart from tubing, the town specialises in bar/restaurants with low tables & cushions, playing either Friends or Family Guy on the tv. The shops were similarly homogenous, selling beerlao vests, shorts and waterproof bags for tubing. We shamelessly bought the lot. Vang Vieng, or VV, is meant to have a problem with drugs and booze. In my opinion the booze was fine, mostly beerlao with the odd cocktail bucket. Drugs-wise I was operating on a heady mix of anti-malarials and nurofen. The latter in order to stave off a man-cold that I would later pass on to Cath. We ended up spending about 5 nicely unproductive days in VV before taking a slightly hairy 7 hour coach trip north to Luang Prabang.

If Vang Vieng's typical visitor was 20 year old british student, Luang Prabang's is a 60 year old frenchman. Despite it being a bit of a pain to get to there were lots of expensive looking hotels aimed at the more discerning traveller. We spent a morning at an elephant camp, which was pretty awesome, as we were able to ride an elephant bareback into a river! It was more fun than it sounds:

When walking around Luang Prabang you are constantly assaulted by tuktuk drivers. "Boat trip! Cheap cheap" or most often just "You! Waterfall!" It's pretty annoying. What they mean by this is "excuse me sir but would you like to go to a nearby waterfall, it is very nice". We decided to rent a motorbike and do the 30km each way by ourselves, which was pretty good fun until we decided to climb to the top of the waterfall (no path) wade across the top (no bridge) and stumble down, most of this barefoot because it was too muddy for flipflops. Good waterfall though:

 

 

From Luang Prabang, we were planning to go to into Northern Thailand, after looking at the ways to get to the border, (2 full days on a boat or yet another overnight bus) and much discussion, we decided to splash out on the 1 hour flight to Chiang Mai: Luxury!

Vietnam Recap

Oops, about a month behind on the blog, so doing a bit catch up here before I forget everything.

We took a much more bearable (if still 12hr) sleeper bus from Nha Trang to Hoi An, and ended up spending 5 or 6 nights there. Hoi An is a beautiful Ex-french-colonial type town and from what we saw, well geared for an older, more affluent breed of tourist. Even so we really enjoyed it. The food especially was better than we had found up until now, and Bia hơi was widely available at 14p per glass - not bad! The town is largely devoted to tailor shops, so I ended up getting a suit & shirt made, and Cath got a jacket and coat. Hopefully these will arrive in the UK in a few months! One thing I didn't realise about Hoi An is it has a beach, which elevated in my mind from a place worth visiting to an awesome destination. We were a able to rent a motorbike for $4 a day and found a quiet part of the beach. There are some photos of Hội An here.

Next on route was Hue, where we stopped off before another 14hr bus to Hanoi. The feeling of arriving exhausted in a new city at 7am was now getting familiar. We found Hanoi to be an awesome bustling maze of activity, and found it easy to get hold of delicious, cheap vietnamese food unlike the watered-down pseudo-vietnamese tourist food peddled in so many other places. One thing we learned: if a place only sells chicken noodle soup, you can expect they know how to make a damn good chicken noodle soup! Our first visit to Hanoi however was only 24 hours long though as we the next day we went to Halong Bay for a 2 night boat trip.

Halong Bay is awesome! It was the best thing I did when visiting in 2007 so we went back with the same tour company I'd used before. Apart from stopping off at some pretty busy tourist spots in the bay, it was great. Just such a stunning place (and the boat was really comfortable too). We took a few hundred photos I think but I'll try and choose a few of them to go on here at some point.

On returning from Halong Bay our second visit to Hanoi was even shorter (like 5 hours) because we were booked on the sleeper train to Sapa. Sapa (or Sa Pa technically) is up in the mountains, so is a bit cooler than the coast we had been travelling along until then. The landscape was of incredible terraced rice fields, rolling with the shape of the hills. It was beautiful. We also took a 'trek' through the countryside to a few villages where they attempt to sell things to tourists. It seems to me that walking-for-fun is an entirely foreign concept in this part of the world, so it is called 'trekking' whether it lasts 30 minutes, or a week. Anyway Sapa was a pretty and peaceful place to spend a few nights before getting the sleeper train back to Hanoi.

Our third and last visit to Hanoi was the longest at 36 hours. We arrived even earlier than usual this time at 5am and had to sit on the street for a while waiting for the hotel to open. I never realised the city slept, but it does, and we were able to watch it wake up at 6-7am as peoples houses were opened up, their motorbikes/tables/barbeques etc unloaded onto the pavement and the family business whatever that might be starts up for the day. I put a few photos of the activity here. Our last night in Hanoi was lubricated by some more Bia Hoi and ended with terrible attempt at a pepperoni pizza. The next day we just hung around in dread until 5pm and the impending 20-30 hour bus trip to Laos!

Trung Yen Lane, Hà Nội

***Vegetarians may want to look away now***

Our hotel in Hanoi is in an alleyway where there are all kinds of food on sale during the day, much of it still alive! Check it out:

Fish preparation is messy, get those wellies on!

 

Best friends

Chicken Giblets

Angry looking chickens

Eels and Frogs

This lady is shelling prawns, they are still alive

These crabs also get shelled alive