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On the way to Cambodia the Intrepid 8 became the Secret 7 as An had to go home to Belgium. The journey was tough, we had to go back to Bangkok first meaning we were in 3 different countries in the space of 2 days! On top of that our bus crashed leaving Bangkok, nothing serious as we were going really slow, but the driver just drove straight into another bus, I have no idea how he didn't see it, it was bright yellow. We also met some corrupt Cambodian policemen at the border who demanded $5 from each of us to cross. I know its not much money but over here $5 goes a long way and it was more the principal. We refused and were promptly told “ no pay, go back to Thailand” so we realized we’d have to play their game. If they do that to every tourist that crosses the border they must be the richest men in Cambodia! Our hostel more than made up for the journey though and was so luxurious compared to what we’d been used to. We had a balcony, air con and a pool!
Unsurprisingly most of our time in Siem Reap was spent at Ankor Wat which is hard to describe in words. Immense, magnificent, epic, the scale of it is completely indescribable. This paragraph cant really do it justice but hopefully some of the photos on Facebook will.
As we’d been making our way south from Chiang Mai through Laos it had been getting slowly hotter and hotter and by now the heat was ridiculous. Seeking refuge in our air conditioned dorm became an increasingly popular activity and Dan bought a rather fetching local hat to make trekking around the temples more bearable.
Dan trying to disguise himself as a rice farmer
St Paddy’s day was just as big in Cambodia as it is at home. We came down to the hostel bar that evening to be surrounded by Irish men dressed head to toe in green, drinking green beer. We headed out to the famous “Ankor what?” bar where 2 jugs of cocktails gets you a free t shirt. Our aim was to furnish all 7 of us with a t shirt but unfortunately we only got as far as number five before we had to give up for our own good. Then for some strange reason we decided to go to a local Cambodian club. At first we thought they were all really drunk as everyone in there was going crazy on the dance floor, but then we realsied they couldn't afford the extortionate drinks prices, we were the only ones drinking in the entire club. We tried to join in the dancing and got up on the stage but I don't think they were very impressed with our moves and spent most of the night laughing at us.
Dan got so drunk on St Paddy's night he lost his beard
On the day we left for Phomh Penn the heavens opened and there was a proper monsoon rain. Like the locals we were so happy, but slightly worried the rainy season had come a month early. We only spent two days there, mainly to visit The Killing Fields and S21, the Khmer Rouge prison. Both were horrifying. We were expecting S21 to be a bit like Auschwitz but somehow it was worse, it was much less like a museum, and a lot more real. You could walk into the cells, the torture chambers and it made it a lot easier to imagine what went on there. The setting is also very surreal, it used to be a school so its in the middle of a suburban neighborhood right in the centre of the city, and you can still see the childrens writing on the walls.
Detention cell in S-21
Other major things to note was the fact that it was getting even hotter, which we didn't feel was possible, and the traffic. We thought Bangkok was bad but Phomn Penh was something else. The complete lack of rules of any sort made going anywhere by tuk tuk a memorable experience, I had my eyes shut on numerous occasions.
A near miss with a truck
We treated ourselves to beautiful bungalows right on the beachfront and spent a very lazy 4 days chilling out. Being able to jump in the sea again was amazing, although it was more like getting into a warm bath so not very refreshing, but I know we shouldn't complain! We also managed to get into the $1000 dollar a room mega resort down the road, we’d heard they had a pool and were desperately in search of a way to cool down. We spent a day lounging by the pool pretending to be rich, but getting a bit hungry as we couldn't afford any of the food there!
Flashpacking at the beach bungalows
And then somehow it was the last night before the 7 of us went our separate ways. 1 month, 2 fractured ribs, 3 countries and 100 beers later it was all over. It was very sad but a 25c a beer happy hour meant the evening finished on a high with us all in the sea sans our clothes singing to Aretha Franklin. Dan and I were the only ones who hadn't decided where we were off to next (see, we haven't changed!) but a quick look on Air Asia for the cheapest flights meant we were headed for Ho Chi Minh City, with the worst hangovers we’ve had for a long time.
Its hard to describe Vang Vieng but I’ll give it a go. Its a small town 5 hours south of Luang Prabang built up on the banks of the Mekong river. It was first famous for its really beautiful setting with its huge limestone cliffs and caves, but now its more famous for the tubing that goes on down the river. Its attracted loads of backpackers to the area so its like a section of the Khao San road has been transplanted over to this tiny town in Laos. Its not just normal tubing however, the river’s lined with bars and as you float past kids throw ropes out to you and pull you in to sell you buckets of vodka redbull, so absolutely everyone on the river is completely drunk. Its a bit surreal as come 6 o'clock the town is filled with people in their bikinis stumbling round the town on their way home. We watched with disdain the first day but sure enough a few days later and that was us!!
Our first day in Vang Vieng was meant to be the grand tubing adventure but a few of us were still feeling ill so we decided to postpone and hired some scooters to visit the surrounding countryside .This turned out to be a great day, cruising along in the valley of the enormous mountains stopping to explore caves and swim in the blue lagoon. We decided not to get a guide for the caves which may sound a bit dangerous but it was great being able to explore by ourselves, not knowing what we’d come across. At one point we found a completely isolated chamber and all turned our headtorches off, the darkness and quietness was so intense (until Dan tried to jump on me).
Finding a reclining Budha in the middle of a cave
Daylight, at last!
On the way back home however we missed our turning, despite my marvelous map reading skills, and ended up going the very long way round. This would have been fine but then Lukas’ bike broke, it just wouldn't start, some friendly locals stopped to try to help us but no luck. It was getting dark now and we didn't want to leave Lukas in the middle of no where by himself while we went to get help so we pushed the bike to the nearest village and tried to explain what had happened.
This was quite an amusing site – the only westerners around, and completely caked in orange dust from riding on the dirt tracks all day, like we’d been the victims of really bad spray tans. It was also really hard work as no one spoke any English at all, and the helpful phrases in the back of Lonely Planet didn't really deal with this situation. Eventually we were saved when a young girl who’d learned English at school explained t her parents that we needed to use their truck to get the bike back to town, phew.
5 minute cow delay
The next day we were ready for tubing! We set off from out hostel wearing just our swimming stuff and with nothing more than some money sealed in a plastic bag and met up with Mike, another friend from SpicyThai. We got to he first bar and broke ourselves in gently with a few beers before starting down the river. All around there were these obscenely high rope swings held up by not very sturdy bamboo stilts and operated by Laos school children. The type of thing you immediately know there's no way you're going to do it, we all looked at them in disbelief and vowed we wouldn't do them. After a leisurely float down the river we got pulled out at bar no. 2 – it was 2pm now which we decided was late enough for a bucket and a drinking game, and suddenly the highest swings didn't seem that high any more! We continued on like this for a while - float, drink, float, drink and by the last bar everyone was loving the death rides. How silly we were to be so scared at first we thought.
Well, it turned out we weren't actually that sillyto be hesitant, it took until the alcohol had worn off the next morning for us to realise our injuries, we all felt a bit worse for wear. An had purple bruises all down her back (a week later when she was back in Bangkok she went to the hospital and found out she’d fractured two of her ribs) and Dan and I both thought we had minor concussion, mine from a rather spectacular face plant coming off a water slide. One day was definitely enough for us!
Unfortunately there’s no pictures at all of this day as no one had a waterproof camera, which makes it into even more of a surreal place for me, it really has to be seen to be believed. Here’s a link though to give you a bit of an idea.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ysU28U6_rrE
We’d planned to kayak down to the capital Vientiane the following day as a change from getting the bus but given the state of us we decided against it! Vientiane didn't seem that special after the rest of Laos that we’d seen. Luang Prabang was beautiful with its french colonial buildings, Vang Vieng was just crazy, and Vientiane seemed a bit dull in comparison. We only stayed for two nights, one of them was An’s birthday so we treated ourselves to a posh french restaurant. Fillet steak was £5 which was three times what we’d normally spend on dinner but then we thought what we’d pay for it at home! I also had a glass of wine for the first time since we left England MMMMMMNN!
We had three options of how to get to Luang Prabang in Laos – the slow boat down the Mekong river which takes 2 days, a speedboat that covers the same distance in 6 hours but is notoriously dangerous, or a 13 hour bus journey on a winding dirt road through the mountains. We chose the safe but slow river boat option – I’m really glad we did as its been one of the highlights of the trip. I wont pretend it was fun being on a boat for two days but sitting on the edge watching the mountains, water buffalo and fishing villages slip past was magical.
Our luxury yacht to Luang Prabang
In true Spicy hostel style as soon as we arrived Pong, the guy that runs it, told us he’d arranged dinner at the village chiefs house for the annual ‘Celebration of the Snake’ festival. We were made to feel extremely welcome by the locals who prepared us an amazing dinner, and who were all a bit drunk after drinking solidly for two whole days. They tried to teach us how to dance Laos style which was a bit of a disaster but very amusing – later on we tried to teach them the macaranna but that didn't really work either. Before we went home the grandmother of the family performed a ritual where we were all blessed to give us good luck and happiness, which was amazing to be a part of.
The next morning we went off to the Kuang Si waterfalls which were stunning, 5 different tiers culminating in a 60m drop. We amused ourselves with diving and rope swings for half a day and then went to visit a fishing village where one of the hostel staff grew up on the way home.
Girl Power!
The children were really excited to see us at first and ran down to meet us, but they got a bit naughty after a while and started pulling the legs off live frogs and throwing them at us, eurgh. The boys also took part in some mud wrestling.
Mekong mud bath
On day three we got up at 5am to watch the monks on their alms round – this is when the monks walk through the town and all the locals line up on the street to offer them food. Its quite a sight to see hundreds of saffron coloured monks at that time in the morning, really peaceful. But it seemed to have become quite a tourist attraction with some people going right up to the monks and taking photos in their face as if they were animals which was a real shame to see.
Monk breakfast
The hostel we stayed at in Chiang Mai was amazing (SpicyThai Backpackers), the atmosphere was so welcoming, after an hour we knew everyone in the entire place and over the week we made some really good friends, 7 of whom we’re still traveling with now. The guy that ran it organized activities for us everyday, stuff that you’d never normally get to see as a tourist. On our first night there he brought the whole hostel to his home village (this involved fitting 22 people into a tuk tuk), we had a traditional thai dinner at his mum’s house and drank (lethal) thai whiskey with his dad and the locals. Dan tried some local delicacies, fried pig intestines and crispy bamboo worms, but I declined. It was like we were part of a big hostel family, we could have stayed forever. Unfortunately we realised too late that our visa ran out two days earlier than we had thought, so we had to make a trip to the immigration office and ask for it to be extended. We were told to dress smartly which is easier said than done when you’re traveling but we must have made a good impression as for a hefty fee they let us stay for an extra week, thai prison successfully avoided.
Thai Dinner at Noom's House
We had a pretty action packed week, visiting temples, lakes, universities, playing minigolf, eating bbq's, indulging in massages and, the best thing of all, shopping. I have never seen a shopping mall so big in my life! Chiang Mai’s also famous for cookery courses so we decided to indulge and increase our culinary repertoire. The cooking school was set in an organic farm so we got to see all of the lemongrass, kaffir lime leaves, galangal, papayas, mangoes etc actually growing, the herbs looked so different to the dried stuff we get at home I hardly recognized them.
Then it was time to cook, a frenzy of chopping, stirring and grinding, trying to keep up with our teacher. At one point i turned round and Dan was concentrating so hard he hadn't realized that his wooden spoon was on fire! We made so many things, curry paste, chicken with cashew nuts, pad thai, tom yum soup, sticky rice with mango, and then we had to eat them all, it was all so tasty even if I do so say myself. Hopefully we’ll remember all of this for when we get back home so we can impress you with our new skills!
After a week we thought it was time to drag ourselves away from SpicyThai and make our way to Laos - we couldn't get too homesick as we were heading for the sister hostel SpicyLaos. Six of our friends from the hostel also decided to some too, so now there were eight of us – Lukas and Matthias, 2 guys from Austria, Matt and Kath, a couple from London, An from Belgium and Mark from America, you'll hear lots about them later.
The intrepid 8 head for Laos
Wow a long time has passed since we last wrote, a combination of laziness, adventure and sickness. We spent a further 3 weeks island hopping, from Koh Lanta we crossed to Phuket which was a big shock to the system for us, full of bright lights and very different to the laid back lifestyle we’d been leading. There was even a cinema showing English films so on Valentines day we treated ourselves to The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and some popcorn, it seemed just like we were back home at the cinema in Reading until we had to stand to salute to the King before the film started.
Safety First - Improving our motorcycling skills on Koh Lanta
Dan enjoying tropical paradise on the Similan Isles
After another bumpy speedboat ride back we were meant to cross straight over to the Gulf coast on the way to Koh Pagnan but we missed our bus by about 1 minute and so were stranded in Khao Lak for the night, a bit of a strange place, its where the tsunami hit worst and was still like a ghost town. We set off bright and early the next morning but accidentally got on the wrong bus, the locals bus rather than the air conditioned VIP bus we’d planned on. It rattled along stopping every 20 minutes or so and by the end I had a thai lady asleep on my shoulder, but we did finally reach Koh Phangan. We weren't there for a full moon party but the place we were staying at had crazy pool parties every two days so we managed a few buckets of sangsom and redbull anyway. What a lethal combination, after the first one we found ourselves still wondering round the town at 4am wondering what to do next.
Watching the sunset from Sunset Rock
At this point we decided that a month of islands was enough and that we’d head north to Chiang Mai. We decided not to fly as it was too expensive but I don't think we fully appreciated that it was 1500 km away from Koh Phangan, this turned out to be the journey from hell! The first 6 hours on the ferry was fairly uneventful, and luckily we managed to buy the last two sleeper bunks for the overnight train to Bangkok (organised as ever we’d forgotten to book in advance) but this train turned out to be delayed meaning we missed our connection in Bangkok. After a night of no sleep we trudged to the bus station instead and sat on the coach for 10 hours, finally reaching Chiang Mai 32 hours after we’d set out!
Unsurprisingly most of our time in Siem Reap was spent at Ankor Wat which is hard to describe in words. Immense, magnificent, epic, the scale of it is completely indescribable. This paragraph cant really do it justice but hopefully some of the photos on Facebook will.
As we’d been making our way south from Chiang Mai through Laos it had been getting slowly hotter and hotter and by now the heat was ridiculous. Seeking refuge in our air conditioned dorm became an increasingly popular activity and Dan bought a rather fetching local hat to make trekking around the temples more bearable.
Dan trying to disguise himself as a rice farmer
Dan got so drunk on St Paddy's night he lost his beard 
Detention cell in S-21 
A near miss with a truck
Flashpacking at the beach bungalows
