Going Out With a Bangkok

I flew yesterday to Bangkok. For some reason it took six hours between leaving one hotel and arriving at a new one, despite the fact that it's only a one hour flight.

Bangkok is a rather large city. I shared a taxi with a French woman into the city centre and, when we got out, she said she thought the Khao San Road was nearby. I ambled for a while through a very busy food market, since it was right there and smelled good, but I had all my luggage with me so hailed a taxi after a short time. When I eventually arrived at the Khao San Road, we had driven 16km. Either the driver was taking me for a ride, both literally and figuratively, or the city is simply bigger than it looks on a map.

Not that I have a map. For the first time on this journey, I am without a Lonely Planet. God I miss that book.

Since it was late, there weren't that many places with room left, and certainly none at a price I wanted to pay. Then I decided that I was coming home under-budget, so I could treat myself for my last two nights. Then I found a really cheap room, so took that instead.

I'm staying on the Khao San Road. It's noisy, but I can sleep through anything and I'm only here for two nights, so wanted to be where the action is. And it is active. The picture below is a taster. There are loads of farang getting wasted and loads of tuk-tuk drivers offering to take them to various sordid establishments. I walked up and down a few times taking it all in but went to bed early.

This morning I hired a tuk-tuk to take me around the city's sights. I then went and got a massage. Now, when he offered to take me to a massage parlour, I mentioned that I didn't want any "boom-boom". This is an accepted international term for sexual dalliance. The Indians prefer to say "hank-panky", probably due to their colonial heritage, but "boom-boom" is universally understood.

So we ended up at a brothel. I had never been in a whore-house before, but this was unmistakable.

Toby: "I said no boom-boom."

Tuk-tuk driver: "You no wan' boom-boom?"

Toby: "No. No boom-boom."

Tuk-tuk driver: "I thought you like boom-boom."

Toby: "I do. I like boom-boom. Just not now."

Tuk-tuk driver: "Ah, because you have girlfren?"

Toby: "No, because they're prostitutes." [confused look from driver] "I just wanted a massage."

Proprietor: "Yes, you get massage, 2500 baht [about 50 euro]"

Toby: "Eh, yeah, OK, it's because I have a girlfriend, if that means we can leave."

Well, that was awkward. I got my massage eventually. 300 baht for one hour and it was provided by a fat middle-aged woman. Thank God.

I next went to the city palace, got a personal guided tour around there (since I have no guide book and am feeling flush, having acidentally taken out too much from the ATM, because I failed to work out beforehand how much Baht I needed) and then walked back to my hotel to hide from the rainclouds overhead.

The plan for tonight is probably to generate enough of a hangover for tomorrow that I'm still feeling lousy by the time I board my plane to Kuala Lumpur at 17.10. I like feeling crap on planes. It gives me something to do. And if that's not true, then why do I keep doing it?

This is looking across the Mekong in Vientiane. In the foreground is Laos. The other side of the river is Thailand. It's a bit like in New Ross, where one side of the River Barrow is in Wexford, where the other side is Waterford. Yes. Exactly like that.

The Khao San Road in Bangkok. It's busy...

The statue is of an ancient Thai Hippocrates character, whom they refer to as "The Doctor". The guy in the hat is a doctor also.

Mini Angkor Wat.

The Thai Royal Palace, built by a king in the 19th century upon his return from Europe. He wanted the whole thing to look Eurpean, but they wouldn't let him so he made the roof Oriental. The rest looks French.

Me under a Thai bonsai tree. They're bigger than Japanese ones, lest you think I've shrunk.

Going Homer

I have finished Homer's Odyssey, and have decided to elevate my standard of language and frequency of classical references. I have cast off the superfluous ejaculations of youth and have become as a man, like the thoughtful Telemachus, when he fought with Zeus' favourite, the lion-hearted Odysseus and his father, the steadfast Laertes. It was with this in mind when I set off, bound for Vang Vieng.

As Dawn appeared, fresh and rosy-fingered, I acquired a chariot and departed the happy home I had enjoyed in Luang Prabang. I approached Vang Vieng from the North, helped by a strong wind raised by the mighty earth-shaker Poseidon. Thereupon, I rested for some days, enjoying the warm hospitality offered there. I feasted like a king, on the fattest calves, and the wine flowed ceaselessly. And when the libations had sufficiently addled my wits, I would return to my bed, where the aegis-bearing Athene would close my eyes in blissful sleep until golden-throned Dawn would appear once more.

Alas, I grew restless once more on my long journey home and once more set off from my kind hosts. This time, with a favourable wind, I found myself in Vientiane, the capital of the country of the Laotians. This citadel has little to recommend it to a weary traveller on his way home. Zeus, who marshals the clouds, has seen fit to conjure a dark storm on the distant horizon.

I will arise and go on the morrow and will fly to Bangkok, like Hermes, the keen-eyed Giant-slayer, flies to Hades.

Tobius.

This is me during our 20km kayak (downstream) into Vang Vieng. The scenery was spectacular.

This a picture of my near-perfect dismount from the 'Flying Fox', the biggest rope swing I have ever seen.

Lessons Left Unlearned

Laos is a great lesson in when a country should just be left to do its thing. I mean, it may look quite sizable on the map, and that's probably as far as the President of the United States of America looked when he decided that its communist movement was dangerous, but this population of four million (compare with Vietnam's 80 million) had to endure the American air force dropping bombs on them throughout the American presence in Indochina. Laos had been declared neutral by the Geneva Accords, so the USAF pilots were dressed in civilian garb and flew single prop aircraft. The mortality for these pilots was as high as 50%.

As the Americans pulled out of Vietnam, more aircraft were available for Laos. In the end, there were 50% more sorties flown in Laos than Vietnam - a total of 580,944 for this diffusely populated country. That's the equivalent of one plane-load of bombs every eight minutes, 24 hours a day for the nine years from 1965 to 1973. B-52 bombers dropped 500kg of explosive for every man, woman and child in Laos, making it the most bombed country on a per capita basis in the history of warfare. What's more, up to 30% of the ordnance is still unexploded. Even given this (probably excessive) figure, a 350kg bomb exploding next to you is more than sufficient to kill you.

We can deduce two things from these figures. Firstly, that American bombs are badly made. Secondly, the pilots are rotten shots.

Finally, when the Americans were leaving, the area was divided up into 13 provinces whose borders were identical to those before war. Before the Americans bombed the life out of the proletariat, the communist Pathet Lao controlled two of the 13 provinces. By the end, they controlled 11. It just goes to show that fighting a population is going to drive them even further towards your enemy's ideology. This should come as no surprise. You can't convince someone of your argument by bombing them. If only that were the last time an American President were to make that mistake.

The main strip in Luang Prabang turns into this market at night. The street is named after a king called Sissavang Vong. I mention the name merely because I think he sounds like a character from Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

21 people on a tuk-tuk. New record baby! After taking this pciture the guy set off, so I had to run after him whilst putting my camera away and hop on the back.

I booked my bus to leave Luang Prabang one morning. Then I was hungover so had the date changed to the next day. Instead of sitting on a sweaty bus for the day, I went with some people to a waterfall. We swam here for an hour. Notice the rope swing in front of the waterfall. Today, my hands are covered in friction burns and my shoulders are killing me. Good time though. Something that looks like a praying mantis just flew over the keyboard and landed on the floor next to me. I swear it's looking at me. Ew.

This was my Luang Prabang gang. Maria (Danish), Dave (Irish), Tess (Swedish, Other Dave's Bird), Other Dave (Irish) and Greta (American).

I had a choice of posting this picture or a similar one where I was obviously sucking in my beer gut. I decided to stay true to myself and my alcoholically enhanced abdomen.

I was happy when I found somewhere to hang up my hammock that I bought in Siem Reap, Cambodia four weeks ago. I was happier still when I climbed in and cracked open can of (warm, cheap, Vietnamese) beer. Notice anything about the ring-pull? Remember the 80s?

In Vang Vieng there are 'cafes' like this one that do nothing but show episode after episode of the american sit-com, Friends, and serve idiot back-packers tasty treats. Once my brain had been sufficiently massaged to goo, I ordered a cheeseburger.

Laos

So Laos anyway. Really not a very stressed out place. I had two itineraries planned for this country. One was going to be a bit of a mad dash, but would mean that I could take in the mysterious Plain of Jars. More used to less mysterious but equally tempting Jars of Plain, I decided that I would take the slow route. The decision was really made for me, since I'm finding it hard to get up the motivation to do anything. In the afternoon, the people here lie down in their places of business and just point to whatever you want. It's bit like a siesta, and it is pretty warm here, though it's not as humid as Vietnam, so a fan works wonders and I don't have air conditioning for only the second time since leaving Dublin.

I flew from Hanoi to the capital Vientiane, but boarded a connecting flight from the domestic terminal, which looked more like a bus station than most bus staions, to Luang Prabang, and it's here I have been. An interesting thing happened on the way here though. Perhaps because I was in transit no one got the opportunity to tell me, but the plane first flies 200 kilometres north of here, to a place that looked like the end of the world, called Udomxai. So, upon arriving in Udomxai, I got out, wandered around and figured that I was in the wrong place. Now, I could say that my heart sank, but that would be a very mediocre sort of metaphor, so let me get something clear. I know, as a student of the human body, that the heart can not feasibly escape the chest and end up somewhere around one's kdneys, but, I swear, my heart sank at the prospect of being 200 km from my rucksack and the 12 hour bus journey I would have to take to get it back. But then a Japanese man who was in an identical situation asked someone where he was and I overheard the helpful air hostess telling him to get back on the aircraft and that it would be departing for Luang Prabang shortly. So I grabbed my passport back from the guard who was taking my details down in a large ledger and ran back to the plane.

Luang Prabang is the laziest little town I have ever had the good fortune to come across. I've been here a while, but I don't remember much of what I've done. I started off realising what it was that was amiss from my trip from the airport. The minivan, upon coming across a slow motorboke simply followed at that speed. No honking of horns or radical overtaking manoeuvres, commonly involving hairpin bends and large trucks coming the other way, that was the specialty in Vietnam. Nope. We were getting where we were going and were bound to get there eventually and in one piece - a guarantee often missing from the Vietnamese equivalents.

The second thing to realise is that there are loads of Wats (Buddhist temples) about, and so there are loads of novices around - teenagers with shaven heads dressed in garish orange. A bit like parts of Dublin really. The are two next to me right now, checking their email. It's quite a sight.

I get a bus in the morning to Vang Vieng, which has a reputation as being a backpacker stopover between Luang Prabang and Vientiane and little else, but if I'm going to stop over somewhere, it may as well be there.

And if it's anything like here, it'll be hard to leave there too.

The hill station of Sapa.

The major ethnic minority in Northwest Vietnam is the Black H'mong tribe, so called because they dye their clothes black with indigo. See how they're black? And not blue, as I thought at first? You'll get used to it. And becuase the dye isn't set, they're skin always has a vague azure hue, and they wash their clothes only once every few months. Delightful.

Same same but different.

Stairs. These hill stations are always littered with stairs.

This is an indigo field without a man in it. And if you don't know why that's important, you probably never will.

I can say, without a hint of hyperbole, that I took about a squillion pictures down hill-sides and that they just didn't capture what I saw. Above this was Mt. Fansipan (3143m) disappearing into the clouds and below was the river that had carved the valley. Across the river were, as far as the eye could see, terraced fields being tilled by locals, and, every now and then, one could see a lone house or school or village hall. And this is the best picture I could come up with because... wait for it... this one has cows in it. Wow.

Here I am stopped for a well-earned rest.

The water pours in to a little bucket at the far end. When it is too full, the arm it pivots around the middle and pours the water out. That raises the arm at this end, which then comes crashing down and crushes the grain in the bucket. That happens about once every five seconds, so by hand is quicker, but you have to admire their resourcefulness.

You were kept awake by the crickets until 04.00, woken by the rooster at 04.30 but the worst was when, at 06.00, these lads thought that the one thing this already virtually impassable road needed was a good old-fashioned noisy hole-digging. Can't beat it.

This the family we stayed with on our first night.

Black H'mong girls.

The familiar five-fingered leaf of the hemp that grows in field around Sapa. They don't ingest it, but exclusively use the plant to make clothes.

Women of the Dzao tribe.

Here we are descending into Ban Ho where we would spend the second night.

I went swimming near the waterfall, but couldn't shake from my mind the knwoledge of what I had just contributed to the river about 500m upstream...

The village of Ban Ho was a bit of a menagerie.

On the way back up the hill we met this pair. They were sheltering from the rain as Mum and Dad built a fence aound a field. The boy on the left said bye-bye as we approached. The girl, on the right, waved and said hello and burbled adorably if you reciprocated.

When we got back to the train station at Lao Cai, I realised just how close we were to the Chinese border, so I took a taxi to see it. This is me attempting to walk into China without a visa. They didn't see the funny side.

I've been sitting in the internet cafe for 6 hours and can't think of a quippy title. Answers on a postcard.

I said goodbye to Deirdre at Hanoi airport and found my way back to town. I was to leave that evening for a three-day trek in Northern Vietnam.

Upon arrival in the travel agent's that evening, the lady behind the desk informed me gleefully that I was a very lucky boy. The balance of my group of six was to be made up of five pretty girls. I was aware that this was going to go one of two ways. There was that slim possibility that the five pretty girls would be of the ilk that drinks ambitiously and plays strip poker into the night, but the more likely scenario, and the one that did indeed present itself 15 minutes later, would be that they were quiet and a bit dull.

They were three Singaporean girls, one of whom was outgoing enough to chat away to me.

There was a Manchunian woman in her thirties called Jo, who had recently given up managing the McVities factory in Manchester.

(Aside: she confirmed for me that Jaffa cakes are in fact cakes and not biscuits. Firstly, she informed me, one is made out of a dough, the other of batter. But there have also been a couple of court cases over this issue, since there is no VAT applicable to chocolate on cakes but there is to that on biscuits. McVities saves three million pounds per year on VAT on chocolate based on the fact that Jaffa Cakes are cakes. If I've had this argument with you before - you know who you are - then let us never have it again, safe in the knowledge that I was right all along.)

She was pleasant and talkative but just a bit dim, and would, at the end of a conversation, say with confidence that which was a basic precept upon which the preceding conversation was based. For example, upon discussing the virtues of different types of massage available (Thai, Chinese, Turkish etc.), she announced at the end that she thinks it's "quite nice to get a massage out here". No shit.

Maybe it was the Manchester accent. Maybe it was the hard trekking that had me tired and irritible, but for some reason this grated on me terribly.

The last member of the group was an American. She too was in her thirties and was obviously well-travelled. Her saving grace was perhaps that she was quiet, because that which spilled from her mouth was often the sort of touchy-feely crap in which Americans specialise. It's just that they speak in terms that I simply, through no lack of trying, fail completely to understand. Deirdre blames my medical training, but I'm pretty sure my mind was constructed in too straightforward a manner to understand their pinko nonsense long before I started university. I find it very hard to come up with an example of this tosh, but I think I can sum it up by saying that I meet beautiful people and have amazing experiences where these people meet amazing people and have beautiful experiences. If anyone knows what I mean and can articulate it better than I, feel free to leave it as a comment and I'll incorporate it later.

She had one more annoying trait where she would be self-aggrandising in confusing ways. When she was buying something from one of the locals, our tour-guide (a lovely and sensible Vietnamese woman called Nu) told me to tell her that she should haggle. The guide reckoned the locals might be offended if this advice came from her. The response from the American, and I'm still not entirely sure what it meant, was:

"I know how to bargain - my ex-husband was Mexican."

She also, at one stage, said the poor locals, who were trying hard to sell their wares, didn't know that they were dealing with a stubborn Swede. I knew exactly what she meant, so delivered my usual response when colonials hint at atavistic traits from their perceived homeland, and said "That's funny, you sound American". Nauseating.

So they were the people. I usually give out the URL to this blog to anyone who'll take it, but I decided not to give it to them so I could bitch about them. And it felt great. Thanks for listening.

We set off from the travel agent's in Hanoi on a bus, arrived at the train station, caught an overnight train to Lao Cai on the Chinese border, and from there got a bus up a mountain to Sapa. The town reminded me very much of Darjeeling, with its colonial architecture, steep streets and cool climate. We had a bite to eat and then set off.

The trek took us down along a road for about one kilometre, at which point we turned right and down into the river valley that we were to follow for the next three days. At times there was a well-worn path but at others we were walking along dried-up riverbeds or picking our way tight-rope style along the parapets at the edges of paddy fields. We stopped for a picnic lunch in a shed that seemed designed for such things and then continued on to the house in which we would be staying that night.

Our guide made the dinner, which was some of the best food I've had since arriving and was far too much for us to eat. It consisted of rice, a pork dish, a beef dish, tofu and a bamboo and noodle concoction, with fruit for dessert. We slept soundly in the attic of the big house that night and woke at seven for breakfast.

We were soon off again. We covered roughly the same distance on the second day, but the going was undoubtedly tougher. We made it down to a road and the most friendly of the Singaporeans was chatting to me as we strode ahead of the others. We turned back after a few minutes and realised there was no sign of them. We backtracked some way and eventually found them stopped and the English girl had a dressing on her head. Apprently, she had felt nature call, gone and squatted behind a shed that was beside the road, and, just as she was coming up, she was struck in the forehead by a rock thrown innocently by a youngster. She was very pragmatic about the whole thing and was thanking her god that it wasn't an eye or a tooth that was injured. Just her head. It could have been worse.

I thought it hilarious, but kept this to myself.

Lunch was similar to the previous day and we did the last 5km after eating. This was probably the hardest bit, since, after we left the road, it was quite a steep descent into the village. It took us about an hour to amble down. We rested, we ate, we went to the local 'bar' which even had a 'pool table' of sorts. We were overcharged for beer and got rained on on the way home.

Indeed, it hissed rain all night and the steep slope that we had desended the previous day was now muddy and slippery and we were being picked up from the road at the top. After a hearty breakfast of banana and chocolate pancakes (I had five so as not to appear rude), we set off.

It was a bit of a muddy climb up the hill, and I was the only one who hadn't brought hiking boots, but we scaled the hill in about 90 minutes, climbed aboard two 'jeeps' and I was just congratulating myself on not getting too muddy when this Ford Everest, which for some reason didn't appear to have four-wheel drive, got stuck in the mud. It's seldom that I'm the biggest or strongest in a group, but the Vietnamese are a somewhat diminutive race, so I was in the prime position to push this thing up the road and get simultaneously splattered with mud and have my leg turned black by the exhaust fumes.

I showered in Sapa. I put on the same t-shirt I had worn for the first day's trekking, using the few dry corners of my other t-shirt as a towel.

I felt much better.

I finished my book in time for the bus ride back to Lao Cai, where I took a trip to the Chinese border for a look, and persuaded a couple of friendly Germans to do likewise. We then sat and ate good food and drank good beer and generally had a splendid time until the train came to take us back to Hanoi. We bought some more beer in the station, I drank them, fell asleep and awoke with a decpetively clear head; I shared a taxi with the friendly Germans, picked up my rucksack, went back to my hotel, had a sleep, went for a walk, had some lunch, bought a book and have been on the internet for a long time now. And some people say travel is stressful.

I have really enjoyed to opportunity to read something other than medical texts on this trup. In the last three weeks, I have read The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime, Captain Corelli's Mandolin (which is truly excellent), The Adventures of Sherlock Homes, Bill Bryson's Notes from a Small Island, and have just bought Homer's Oddyssey (for some reason).

I am now going to go and have my last taste of Bia Hoi, which is the world's cheapest beer at 10-25 cent per glass. It's tastey, not very strong and is served to tourists and Vietnamese who sit on small plastic furniture that is just hard enough to sit on that the first time you fall off indicates when it's time to go home.

And tomorrow I fly to Laos.

Deirdre says we don't have enough pictires of Hanoi on the blog, so I took a walk around with my camera this morning.

More motos.

This is the rather pleasant lake that sits in in the Old Quarter of Hanoi.

Communist propaganda by the lake, lest the red flags that adorn the city are too subtle.

This is me, having just bought a wee tripod for my camera (for about a quid) and am trying it out having just eaten a rather good pizza.

4,000 islands? Ha Long do we have?

We have just returned from Ha Long Bay, where we explored some of the 4,000 islands that jut inexplicably from the South China Sea. It was an amazing place, the pictures below do not do it justice and, once again, I'm going to have to recommend visiting it yourself, should you want to know what it looks like.

We were picked up from the hotel, driven to Ha Long City, we boarded the boat and were fed lunch before we visited a big cave on one of the islands. We reboarded the boat, sailed away for a while and anchored in a secluded area for some swimming. However, the surroundings became less secluded as more and more boats arrived with the same idea. Predictably, the locals had little rowing boats from which they sold the usual tourist fare - beer, cigarettes, pineapple, etc., etc. The illusion of isolation dissolved rapidly.

The first night we spent on board the boat. The next morning, we visited the largest island, known as Cat Ba Island, and checked into an hotel there. He went on a wee hike up a steep hill which had some great views from a tower at the summit. Later that day, we went kayaking to a small but empty beach and then to a lagoon that was inside a donut-shaped island. The tide was high, so we had to hop out of the kayaks, swim them through a small opening and jump back in them once inside. It was worth the hassle though.

We went back to the hotel for dinner and then on to a kareoke bar. Kareoke is very popular here. Unfortunately, no one seems able to sing. What's more, eight hour bus journeys, with maniacal drivers, on barely passable roads are only just about bearable before the kareoke starts up. Also, for some reason, it's considered very cool to put bits of English into songs. There was one particularly popular song in Cambodia whose chorus began with the classic line

"I love you, loving you, like the mouse so loves the rice"

and ended with the words

"Everything, I do it for you"

which had the same tune as a certain Brian Adams song that was UK number one for 17 weeks in the early 90s. Bizarre.

After some beer and kareoke, we retired early to bed, but woke up again at 01.45 to watch the Champions' League Final.

We came back to Hanoi today. Ha Long Bay was the best thing we've done on this holiday thus far. If you want to know why, all you have to do is come and visit Vietnam. It's after midnight and I'm tired, so I'll leave it there.

Shopping will be done tomorrow and Dee is going home the day after.

Toby.

We went to Ha Long Bay for two nights. This is the marina at Ha Long City, which was buzzing with tourists ready to detract from eachother's sense of isolation. If there's one thing tourists hate, it's other tourists.

This is the roof of our boat on the way towards the 4,000 islands that jut vertically out of the water.

We got to go swimming at regular intervals. We also spent an afternoon kayaking. I spent the following day unable to move my arms.

Junk. And stuff.

The following are some pictures I took to try and capture the majesty of Ha Long Bay. To see what people who are better at this sort of thing than me did, try here.