Hong Kong (1)

Got into hong kong and took a bus from the boarder to the main city center. The trafic was awfull but I was admiring the views of the appartment blocks, they were quite impressive (not in design but in the sheer number of them).I got droped of in probably the most upmarket street in hong kong with lines of shops along the lines of Armarni/gucci/prada and they were huge. each one of them was about the size of a small supermarket. There were ques of peple waiting outside to be let in.
i got a boat across the river to hong kong island as this was where my accomadation was for the next night. i was in hong kong a day early because I was bored of hanoi and i hoped i could find a dorm bed somewhere. i got to the hostel that i had booked for the next day but they were full.apparently the celebration of hong kongs indipendence was either that day or the day after so seemingly everwhere was full. I asked in what looked like a high end hotel for a room out of curiosity and they did have a spare double room for 200 pounds but i passed. There were a few 24 hour MD's about so I went to sit in one of them and wright this. so I'm wrighting this now and its about 2am. I didnt sleep at all last night and barely got a chance to sleep the night before. I'm not going to be sleeping tonight either so when i do get a room tomorow i think i'm gona be gone for a good few hours.

A glimse of China

got the night train from hanoi at about 10pm, and got to the vietnamise customs at 2am, it was misty and the station was a very old building causing it to feel like the set from a WW2 filmgetting of the train involved walking onto another train track, it felt more like a train yard than a train station. everyone was walking in single file and the vietnamise army were staring silently as everyone walked into the office. everything whent smoothly. we got back on the train for another 20 minutes before we got to the chinese boarder. I expect it would be a really bad place to be if the chinese denied you access (it can happen even if you have a valid visa) as you cant get a visa for vietnam at the boarder so there is a very strange no mans land. in an airport you can just get a flight back home and most of the airportcounts as a nomans land so its not so bad.anyway, as we aproached china (we were going very slowly as we passed the line) you could see a fence with barbed wire stretching further than you could see (it was misty so you couldnt see much) and there were guards in towers with torches that resembled something from Metal Gear Solid.when we were in the chinese imigration center though it was surprisingly relaxed. some of the security were joking with eachother in the corner and another guy was sitting on a chair looking like he was bored to death and he was making the physical body movements to emphasise this.Visualy it had the look of a very modern airport customs, There was an X-ray machine that we were orderd to que behind, but after 10 minutes we were told we could just get back on the train (I assume the X-ray machine was broken). we got our pasports back on the train by the chinese security.
I arrived at nanning (as my map spells it, though some people call it namning) at about 7 in the morning, i booked a train straight to gouangzhou (spelling propably wrong cuz im tired az, more on that in the Hong Kong section later) but it was due to leave at 7 in the evening, it cost 10 pounds but it was a hard seat (other options were soft seat, hard bed and soft bed) because all other options were booked. I had heard about needing to bok train tickets in advance but i didnt have much abillity to bo0k this ticket before i got to the station. It was cold so i went out and bought a coat from the market. The shopping district was huge and there were thousands of people, it felt even more crowded than central bangkok. The one thing that stood out to me was the lack of foriners, thjousands of people were there but i only saw two other white people in the entire time i was there (and i'm fairly sure one of them was a native chinese albino).
The coat cost me 13 quid, it seemed like good quality and the difference in temprature it gave was impressive, most of the shops were all mid-high end and i got the coat from a very small market section. The coat blew my daily budget when combined with food and the train ticket but i guess its something i needed. I seem to be breaking my budget more and more frequently, but its all for stuff i think i need like transport and clothing.I do have enough money to spend a little more each day but im a little worried about japan as i want to be able to splash out a bit there and its one of, if not THE most expencive city in the world.
The night train with a hard seat was awfull, not so much because of the seat but more because of the other passangers. In our coach there were about 5 people playing conflicticting music on their phones all night, I think a few of them were gambeling and drinking, then there were guys (not official staff, just random guys) walking up and down the coaches trying to sell stuff to you like toothbrushes/books/noodles/books/bottles of brown stuff with foliage in it and chinese symbols all over the lable.I stayed in gouangzhou for even less time. I was a little stuck on how to get to hong kong though. Chinese trainstations (big cities might be ok like bejing) are almost impossible to use if you dont speak/read chinese. Every time i wanted a ticket i just pointed at the map with the location on it. the one time I found a member of staff who spoke (some very limited) english and asked him which train station i was at when i arived (there are about 4 in gouangzhou and all the symbols on the front of the station were in chinese)his responce was "No", he then closed the desk and walked away. I Origionaly intended to get the train to hongkong from gouangzhou but I found it too dificult. There was a bus station about 400 meters away (I found it after I took a walkabout looking for food) with some limited english on the signs. It didnt have a bus to hongkong, but it did have a bus to the closest chinese city so i took it. i figured the closer i get the easyer it will be to get across.I got to the next city and then got another bus to the boarder. The boarder crossing was fine other than the chinese pasport control guy didnt like my photo and went to get his superior. Though I'm still managing to get into every country so far, I think i will need a new pasport for my next trip.
At a glance China apears to be one huge construction site with very developed city centers. When you were traveling there were cranes in ever direction from right next to the train tracks all the way to the horizon. There were even a couple of storage yards for diggers and dump trucks with lines and lines of hundereds and hundereds of them. New flats seem to be what they are building. I remember watching a documentary about how the chinese goverment was moving people from rural villages into city appartments and this seems like it could be happening on a huge scale. I get this feeling because all around the appartment blocks is small patches of land that are being farmed. Lots of little spaces that are very small and arkward are being farmed. There was one stretch of about 500 meters along the side of the track where they were growing stuff and it was only about 1ft wide due to buildings on one side and the track on the other. To me this doesnt seem like the doings of someone who is used to city living.

Harlong bay

I booked a trip for two days and one night for 34 dollars. This included absaloutly everything other than drinks. It was about the cheapest priceavalible and id heard some bad reviews about the cheap trips in terms of quality but I decided i would be happy if i was on a boat and the food didnt make me ill.Normaly on cheap trips all the food is just rice and vegetables anyway. Also when you book cheap trips the oparators swap customers about to fill the boats up so there is no guarantee which boat you will be on anyway.
It turned out that i was sharing a boat with some people who thought they had paid for a middle range boat, They paid 40 dollars more than me and they were on the same trip. Whether i was moved to a middle range boat or wether the middle range boats are a hoax is something to debate.
Ha long bay was good. It was crowded in places but still worth going to. On the trip we spent a night on the boat, a trip to a cave, saw a floating village, went kayaking and went swimming in the dark at about 8PM.
The worst part was that the drinks prices on the boat were very high and there was a fine if you brought stuff on the boat from a shop or something. If you brought a bottle of vodka you were meant to pay the crew 25 dollars to drink it. You were even meant to pay the crew a dollar so you could drink a can of coke purchased away from the boat. I ended up storing bottle of water in my bag and taking swiggs when the staff werent looking.
If you bought drinks on the boat the prices were also high, a can or coke was like two dollars.
the boat trip was cheap though and worth it overall. It would probably be much less anoying if they just added like 15 dollars to the price and included a few drinks. It probably works out beter for them and worse for us financialy.but the perspective of the tourists would swing from the boat being stingey with overpriced drinks to the boat being cheap and generous. You can get a good sized beer in a cheap bar for only 30p so its not like everyone on the boat would drink 15 dollars worth of booze in just one evening.

Hanoi

The bus from Hue to Hanoi broke. Stopped in the midddle of the night for about 4 hours while a tire was changed.The city seems ok. The market is good to walk around and sells everything from sun glasses to sharks.
Ive been trying to mooch about a little and give my wallet a rest. Saw the rugby and had a couple of cheap drinks. sat in the park for a while.When you are in a tourist destination you are aproached by someone every minute or so normaly trying to sell you something. In the middle of the day in a park you were aproached more often by young people who claimed to be students. Most had a survey they wanted me to fill out and sign that involved questions like "How long have you been in Vietnam?"and "what do you like best about Vietnam?", They were so boring i only got through one of these. I had little better to do and I was happy to try and help them with their english, but when the survays and questions theyasked were so generic and boring I tended to cut them off short. However there were a couple of girls who were quite fun to talk too and i ended up spending about an hour helping them with their pronunciation and sentence structure.It was refreshing to be able to talk to a local without them demanding money from me. At this point It wouldnt surprise me if they wanted me to pay them for the privalage of trying to teach them english but that was not the case. Obviously they were only talking to me becausei spoke english but it was fun to do and they tried to teach me a little vietnamise.
Saw the HO Chi Minh museum and it was a little different to what i expected, the first floor was full of quotes and black+white photos but the second floor appeared to be more like the tate modern
On the last day before leaving there were people on the street burning envelopes and photocopies of US dollars, this seems farmilliar to me but i'm not exactly sure what purpose it serves. Im pretty sure its not the chinese new year or anything. Waiting for a train was a little dull, the hostel check out was at about 11 and the train was at 21:40. I was carrying myu large rucksack around all day and had already seen the sights. Spent a fair amount of time going into a coffe shop buying the cheapest drink on the menu and spending an eternity to drink it.
Geting the train ticket into china was a littl;e difficult because you need to give your chinese visa number to get it. I booked the ticket at the hostel because i wanted to book it in advance but didnt want to collect it myself from the train station. It cost me an extra two dollars but if i had collected it myself it would have cost about 6 dollars in taxi fares. Anyway, the difficulty was that the girl at reception looked at my chinese visa and declared that it had expired. I still dont understand how/why she thought that. On the visa it states that all entries must be utilised before march 2012, which is like next year. Even the date of issue was only about two weeks ago and it was a 30 day visa with two entries. Anyway, It took about another five minutes for her to realise it was valid and continue to book the ticket.
The last couple of days in vietnam were also a little difficult due to money management issues. I needed to have spent all my Vietnamise dong before leaving, but i needed enough money to last me untill the last evening. I was on budget, but then ended up going out drinking and spending all my money with an entire day left. i needed money for a taxi and some food and i had litteraly nothing.i ended up having to get another 500,000 dong (bout 15 quid) out on the last day. This was way more money than i needed and I needed to spend it all as its fairly useless outside vietnam. I ended up spending some of it on a mandarin phrase book with chinese symbols that i could point too rather than phoanetical spellings in english (I have completely given up with pronounciation of asian languages).I also bought a jumper and some more socks. I would have liked to get some better walking shoes but all the stalls seemed to sell were flat sole shoes (converse/lecoste style stuff) and sandals. My walking shoes were haggard but i still had some fairly sturdy sandals that i bought in siem reap for the floods.
I might have to go shopping for some tough shoes in china,... and probably a coat. All i brought with me were clothes for south east asia where the weather is warm and it dawned on me that north china and japan will probably be quite cold in late november.
I'm a little nervous about entering china but i have printouts of my flights out and reservations for hong kong. I dont have any hotels booked in mainland china yet but i have a few adresses of hostels just to fill in the gaps on the forms that I may or may not need to fill out.

Hue

I blasted through hue because the sand timer was starting to fill my mind. I arived at 6am, stayed one night and left at 5pm the next day. Hue probably had the most stuff to see out of everywhere i had been so far but i spent the least time there. I still probably spent enough time to see the main attractions though. It was the old capital of Vietnam and had a huge fortress palice thing. there were also several elaborate tombs around the area that varied in age. at a glance they wouldnt look completely out of place at siem reap with the ankgor temples, but dispite how they looked some of them were fairly new. one of them was only 90 years old.

I also found a supermarket. This was good to see how different real vietnamise prices were compared to foods with a tourist tax. Luxury items like nutella were still hella expencive (about 3 pounds) but you could get a good sized stick of french bread for about 20p.

Hoi an

the bus i took from mai ne ended its journey in a hotel courtyard. the hotel staff were quick to lock the gates to the enterance once the bus drove through itand a dosen hotel staff swarmed around the bus door as everyone got off. A few people barged through the staff and just walked to the enterance at the other side of the building and left while others walked to the rooms with the staff. I talked to one of the staff about prices but then walked out to take a look round the area. The prices for that hotel were reasonable but I was unsure about the location. The bus companies often have deals with hotels that are in a bad location to boost the hotel buissness. I took a walk in a random direction and ended up in the old town.It seemed the hotel was about a 15 minute walk from the main tourist location. I asked a few other hotels in the tourist area for their prices and the private rooms were cheaper than the hotel i was dropped at. But the hotel I was dropped at seemed to be the only one with a dorm room. I ended up staying at the origional hotel as the dorm room was about 5 dollars cheaper than any price i had been offered anywhere else. A 15 minute walk to the main tourist area was better than spending the extra money to stay inthe tourist area.
The tourist area is an old harbour town that was full of 300 year old buildings, It felt like europe other than the temples that were scattered about along with the japanise bridge. It was nice to walk through but it seemed that every building other than the temples were used to sellcheap suits/dresses, paintings or coffee and food. When you werent looking at temples the only other thing to do was eat or shop for generic tourist merch. I struggle with this. I need stuff to do and if i dont have stuff to do i go and get something to eat.I'm trying to stick to a budget but its quite hard to do this when you have a big wad of cash in your pocket. I was slightly annoyed because i blew nearly 5 quid at a resteraunt in one meal, It was still super cheap compared to european prices but it was pricey for vietnam.I had noodles, soup, two big bottles of beer (big bottles of reasonably good beer are like 30p in cheap bars but go to about one pound in posh places) and ice cream.
I took a bike ride around the town and area and biked past a local rat hunt. a bunch of locals were cutting grass and catching and killing rats. it was one guys job to de-tail them.

Mai ne

Huge sand dunes are the reason i whent there and they were really huge and awesome. they were only in a relatively small areabut they were big enough. It was way too much effort to walk from one side to the other. Also saw a beach where the fishing boats were unloading their catch and women were sorting it. and some other river thing
A beach is a beach is a beach. Mai ne has a nice beach, but its just a beach. There are many hotels along the coast just for beach holidaysand many people seemed to be there for kite surfing as it was hella windy.

Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon)

started by walking about the local area then chose to go to a museum. It looked like a long way on the map so I chose to get a taxi there and walk back. I had only been in vietnam about an hour and I was still learning the value of the money. I got a bike driver and got asked for 800 thousand dong, using my experience from in thailand/laos/cambodia I had come to expect to pay about half of what they ask for. I setteled on 250 thousand after a minute or two of bartering. The trip was only about 4 minutes but my feet were hurting at this point. A few minutes after I got off the bike and walked along the street I realised I had made a mistake, I agreed to pay the guy 250 thousand when I should have paid more in the area of 25 thousand (a dollar is about 23 thousand).Forgetting the value of the currency was a pain, and the fact the guy asked for 800 thousand at first threw me right off.
The traffic is mental with scooters everywhere, crossing any street takes a fair amount of skill and patience.
The next day I went on a tour to a temple and the tunnels from the war. they were interesting and worth seeing, but you only spend a short time there compared to the bus trip. There was even a shooting range at the tunnels where thewy had a selection of guns to try out for 1 dollar a bullet.but the 10 bullet minimum meant I didnt have enough money on me at the time. I quite fancied trying out the AK-47 and/or what i think was a Garland rifle? I cant remember the name.
had a few drinks with a group of people from croydon (one was staying in the same dorm as me)
The City itself has enough stuff to keep you ocupied for a couple of days but the overall atmosphere is nothing special (though a few people I was with loved it) The one thing I missed that I probably shouldnt have was what i think was called the presidential palice. A building kinda like the white house in the USAthat had been untouched since the vietnam war. Board rooms and hallways in an old style and a hellicopter sitting on the roof.

Bangkok wait.

chinise visa, easy but they were on holiday for a week so took forever.pickup was a pice of piss(took under a minute).
found the central plaza shopping center and tescos for the first time after days in the area.
Took a walk down to chinatown and it was all closed, sandbags all along the front of the shops.
really cool new stuff in the art/culture museum.
slept in the airport,got seat stolen when going for a piss,double prices in duty free as usuall.

ko samet

If anyone tells you navigating rock pools whilst holding a beer in one hand and selecting tunes on an ipod in the other hand in almost pitch black darkness is a good idea... theyre wrong.The third casualty to hit by water damage is the iPod. My foot sliped on a rock and i fell into a rockpool, it was only shallow so i didnt get that wet but i got a slight cut to my hand.As i fell I made a split second dessision, I had a beer in one hand and my ipod in the other, I needed one hand to break my fall and try to catch a rock before i hit my head so I made my choice.My gut instinct was to save the beer. About a second after i made my choice to save the beer i started to regret it. The ipod made a nice glow as the screen lit up the water from inside the rock pool, this lasted forabouth three seconds then the light went out. I hoped this was just because it was unlocked and i didnt press a button but after picking it up and checking it it was definatly dead.
On the island I walked down to the southern tip and back from the beach in the far north. It was about 7 kilometers each way so it was easy enough when you have time to do it. at the southern tip there were a load of cool towers made from rocks that must have been made by many different people. There was also a small stretch of rock on the east side just a little bit before you reach the southern point that was really cool.
The beaches in the far north were a little crowded but the beaches in the south were very nice. Theyre a little hard to get to and they mostly seem to be private but I went into a few of the resort beaches anyway on thebasis that at most they would ask me to leave or buy a drink. They were fairly empty and nobody gave a shit about me just claiming a deckchair for an hour while i went swimming.
The evenings went a little slow as i was all by myself. I found myself eating in one resteraunt, then getting a drink in another, then getting another drink in another resteraunt/bar just to get a change of scenery. I walked into one with a firedancer guy that was entertaining to watch.
i also tried wakeboarding which was fun. i only managed to stay above the water for about 40 seconds in a 20 minute session and my hands clawed up for a few hours after i had finished but i would do it again

Back in BKK 2

CBA to do owt now.

Siem reap (The temples part 3)

Later

Siem reap (The temples part 2)

again.... later.

Siem reap (The temples part 1)

will post pics later

Siem reap (2)

Did some other stuff and saw a minature model of ankgor

Siem reap (1)

I was greeted by a friendly tuk tuk driver that followed me almost all the way from the bus station into the main town as i walked. I booked a room for 5 dollars with a fan and wifi and then went out to explore and have another cambodian curry.
the next day i got up early (8am) to see the temples, i put my sandals on and waded down the street through waist deep water to get a tuk tuk. overnight almost the entire street flooded with water, everyone was still working through it and most shops were still open, even if they just had a few items on a table in the doorway of the shop.
i still managed to get a tuk tuk and agreed on 15 dollars for the whole day driving round the temples (the temples were dry).

Phnom pen (1)

Phnom pen seems like an ok place but nothing special. The grand palice is worth visiting i guess but its not as interesting as the one in bangkok.Its simmilar in size but not in the volume of sculpture and crazy shiny stuff. I walked round it and was finished with it in under 1 hour (i spent about 3 in the BKK palace).The silver pagoda with a floor of entirely silver tiles was the standout feature only 98% of the tiles were covered with carpet for people to walk on.
The tourture camp and the killing fields are the only real reason to visit phnom pen in my opinion and i spent about an entire day doing both.
In the town i found i quite liked the khimir curries (A fair bit more than any thai curries i have tried) and ate one every evening at a different venu.I also found myself drinking coffee as a time killer, I have been forced into drinking it against my will a few times since i arived in asia and I havent started liking it yet...but I have developed an attitude of indifference towards it. I spend money on it because it gives you something to do. Its too hot to drink in five minuets so it forces you to sit in one place for about half an hour and just people watch. If i werent drinking it i would just be walking up and down the streets on my already hurting feet wearing them down to the bone.
One thing that is quite usefull to know is that many of the kids walk about selling books as a way to earn some money, amoung these books were a few up to date lonely planet books for a few neighbouring countries. I bought a copy of the cambodia edition for 3 dollars.some of the colour pictures were poor quality but the black and white maps and text were all acurate and printed clearley.

Phnom pen (2)

pixorz ^^^