The Last Supper

Well it's nearly over, tomorrow night I'm stepping on an Etihad plane once again. I'm actually looking forward to the 15 hours- so many films to choose from and so many free drinks and food! In fact I'm planning on eating very little for the next day and a half, the amount of food they force on you with Etihad I have to save some space!

I didn't go to Koh Tao in the end, preferred to have another day sitting in my hamock (I'm gonna miss that hamock so much! But it's ok, I've bought my own to string up at home!).

Yesterday afternoon I cought the ferry away from the islands, pretty impressed with myself for surviving nearly a week without getting a "Koh Phangan Tatoo" (otherwise known as a motorbike accident scar). The trip up was the easiest I've ever experienced. After a few false starts - they kept picking us up in mini busses and driving us from one cafe to another, hoping we'd buy something and they'd get some comission - we got onto the bus.

On the bus I met my 3rd and 4th Welsh speakers of the trip (the first being Carwyn, the 2nd and 3rd being friends from home we bumped into in a Bangkok cafe). The two Geordies, two English girls and the Irishman I'd been talking to for the previous 2 hours were instantly forgotten! I'm glad to have the practice actually, after the past week I wouldn't have been suprised if my Dutch was better than my Welsh!

We watched The Last Samurai on the way up - totally pointless as half the film is in Japanese and the subtitles were in Thai! Let's just say that the day I spent learning Japanese in Vietnam wasn't much help!

So I'm back in Bangkok, back in the hotel I spent the first night in (the one I stayed in with the English guys who called me Peter) and the next 28 hours I'm gonna spend just waiting for my plane really. It does kinda feel like the holiday is just melting away instead of finishing with a bang, but I honestly don't care. Actually forget that, the holiday will end on a high - I have 15 hours worth of Etihad flying in front of me! That's 10 films, 30 free drinks, 8 meals, another free toothbrush and who knows, maybe they'll give me four seats again!

It's a Dog's Life

Bore da! For those of you who's getting the results today - good luck! (Although by the time anyone reads this you'll already have them!)

I've been in Ko Phangan for 4 days now and I'm enjoying the easy life. The Full Moon party was a bit of a let down really. It was OK, but nothing to live up to it's legendary status. In fact everyone I meet here agree that the night before was ten times better.

Since the party the English have gone (quite a good thing, one or two of them were worse with my name than the boys in Bangkok. One of them settled on "Sanjay" for some reason!). The morning after the party i woke up in one of the bar's hamocks and got very confused. I wasn't rerady to open my eyes yet, but all around me I was convinced that I could hear the strongest Merthyr accents! Turns out that a bunch of Hwntws were travelling round Asia and kept coming to Ko Phangan on every full moon!

I left that place by midafternoon and moved up the beach to what is pretty much a Dutch colony. The Dutch guy from the bus down is in the cabin next to me, there's two more on the other side, and there's 5 more just round the corner! Basically it's 8 Dutch, me and an Austrian! And bloody hell do the Dutch live up to their stereotype, they seem to always have a joint in their hand, even when they wake up! I've noticed since I got here actually that EVERYONE is smoking something or another. From the 30 or so people I've gotten to know on the island I remain the only one who doesn't smoke, bit bizzare really!

A lot of people are leaving today going to another island, Koh Tao. I wasn't planning on leaving, but my sister's been recommending it so I might change my mind at the last minute! I'm loving it here but every day is pretty much the same. Dates and time doesn't factor here. You sleep when you want to sleep, eat when you want to eat and drink when you want to drink. Between those three things you do very little - play cards, read and, if you'r feeling very adventerous, maybe a game of volleyball!

The island is covered with dogs. They roam in packs of about 5 and all have their own beach. It's pretty bizzare to see a labrador, alsation and tiny terrier patrolling our beach 24 hours a day! The locals arn't too keen on them, in fact they used to have annual culls until a few years ago. Every year they went out with poison darts and bamboo peashooters and killed as much dogs as they could. It seems awful to us, but compared to Vietnam it's nothing. In Vietnam dogs are just another delicacy, along with snake, pidgeons, lizards, seahorses and scorpions! When a litter is born they put the dogs on a table, the ones who fall off are the stupid dogs and will be tomorrow's lunch, the ones that stay on get to become pets!

It's a dog's life alright!

Howling at the Moon

Greetings from Ko Phangan. I've a few hours to spare before the Full Moon Party tonight so I thought I'd do a quick post.

Came down to the island night before yesterday, another 12 hours on a bus but this time it was comfortable and they showed us a film. Even better they sghowed us an Arnie film! (True Lies). Met a group of English and a Dutch guy on the bus and we got a place together once we reached here. It's total paradise. A little hut right on the beach, sand as far as the eye can see!

Last night was the Full Moon Warm Up party, and that was superb in itself, let alone tonight! Buckets of Vodka red bull (3 quid) and hundreds of people. I can't say I remember much so I can't really tell you what happened, but somehow I broke my camera :-S (probably something to do with the cut on my knee, I'm guessing I fell!).
I lost everyone else and tried to walk home at 7am, not reralising that our place was 10 miles away! In the end I hitchiked back here, took 2 hours! I got two moitobike rides, one back of a lorry and a taxi took pity on me and took me the rest of the way! I would have paid him but all I had on me was some Cambodian money!

The English are leaving tomorrow, after the party tonight and I'm moving to a better hut just up the beach. The island pretty much empties after a Full Moon Party so I'm going to have a relaxing few days before heading back to Bangkok. Isn't life great!

I'm Going on Holiday!

Tonight I'm going on holiday. I know that I've already been away for some time (don't ask me how long, I have lost all perception of time, I know it's the 10th today but I have no idea what day it is - I have a feeling it's Sunday?) but travelling through Vietnam and Cambodia gives you little time for rest and relaxation.

I had to get up at 6am today (after going to bed at 4am, damn extra time and penalties), 7am the two days before, 10am the two days before, slept 4 hours on a bus night before, 7am the night before and 6:30am the night before that. I think it's fair to say that I need a lie in! I won't get it tonight as I've got another 18 hours on a bus ahead of me, but then I have 7 days of island paradise with no plans, no early wake up calls and no alarm clock.

While Vietnam was superb, I've also had enough of saying "Kom Gammon" (no thank you) to every man, woman and child on the streets, whether they were selling moto rides, hotels, resteraunts, fake books, lighters, watches, sunglasses, sweets, roses or just begging! I'm not a beach man usually, but a quiet day doing absolutely nothing sounds perfect at the moment!

Cambodia was totally different again from Nam and Thailand. They were poorer than Vietnam, but hadn't encountered so many tourists and therefore didn't hassle us half as much. Not that we got to see a lot of the country, from the moment we walked across the border to getting on the plane this morning, we spent no more than 16 hours in the country. And just for that country, forgetting VAT on the hotel and food we bought, the Cambodian government managed to screw us out of 65 USD (35 quid) in taxes! They also managed to fill up two pages of my passport with stamps and visas, it looks much more impressive now!

To be honest it was quite amazing to see how the country had recovered after so many people had been killed and tortured just 25 years ago by Pol Pot and his friend. In case you know nothing about Pol Pot (and since one Group 1 blonde who's reading this thought Ghandi was the man who opened up the red sea, it's pretty possible that some of you havn't heard of Pol Pot!) he "liberated" Cambodia at the end of the American War and tried to create a society ruled by peasants.
To do this he decided that all educated people had to be killed. The way he decided who was educated and who was not was simple, if you spoke two languages or wore spectacles, you had to be killed (If you were THAT intelligent, surely you'd take off your glasses whenever Pol Pot was around!). He also wanted monks and cripples dead. Out of the 8m people living here at that time, 3m were killed and many more tortured in 3 years. They didn't even bother shooting them, this was considered a waste. Instead they made their victims dig their own graves then either beat them with a iron bar or just burried them alive.
In the end Vietnam invaded, deposed Pol Pot and and Cambodia got a new government. Pol Pot still managed to fight, helped by Thailand, China and the US. In the end even his family defected to the Cambodian government and Pol Pot died in 1998.

You see, by reading this not only do you get to be jelous of me, you also get to learn more about this world we live in!

Pol Pot at his best - i.e. dead

As I said, the second holiday starts here, in a few hours I'll be all alone for the first time proper. I might not write so much here, after all when there's sandy beaches and crystal clear seas to enjoy, why sit in an internet cafe! On the other hand July can be a pretty wet month in Thailand, so maybe I'll be stuck in cafes all week waiting for a glimpse of the sun!

Goodnight and Goodluck

Well this is pretty much it for Vietnam, 8:30 sharpish tomorrow morning I'm off to Phnom Penh (pronounced - Nom Pen) in Cambodia. There better not be any Yanks on the bus because I've just had a whole day of anti American brainwashing!

First we went to the Vietcong tunnels in Cu Chi. This was one of the strongholds of the Vietcong, and the dying spot of many an American. The Vietcong lived underground in 250km of tiny tunnels. The entrencesd to the tunnel were too small to be found and surrounded by traps that wouldn't seem out of place in medieval times. Our guide must have been a Vietcong veteran No one else would have the glint in his eyes as he described how 4 Americans had died in the tank I was standing on, nor the proudness in his voice when he demonstrated how the spike traps worked!
We walked, well crawled, through 90m of the tunnels and they were pretty damn small! Most people exited about half way through and my bravado in going on nearly brought me troubles as the tunnel kept on narrowing! At one time I thought I was stuck, but somehow I slithered through!

After getting back to Saigon we went to the Museum of War Remnants. As this museum is in Vietnam it was pretty obvious that the Americans would not be portreyed as heroes! In fact they might as well call it the "Museum of Horrid and Unethical War Crimes Committed by the Satanistic American Scum Against The Brave Liberation People Of The Mighty Socialist Republic Of Vietnam" (It was actually called the Museum of American War Crimes until political correctness (and American tourist money) reached the country!).
There was detailed accounts of massacres against women and children, photos of jouranlists dying, kids burned down to the skull by Napalm, children born deformed due to the effects of Agent Orange and, most harrowing of all, a jar containing dead Siamise baby twins. I have absolutely no idea whether they were dolls or real, and to be honest I don't really want to know!

I've spent most of tonight packing my 51 fake DVD's carefully to make sure they don't get confiscated. Buit to be honest seeing as hoe pirate DVD's are all over both Cambodia and Thailand (the two borders I'm crossing in the next day and a half) it's more of a practice before bringing them home! I'm absolutely shattered but there's no time for a good night's sleep. It's the Fourth Place Play-off between 2 and 4am. Then up at 7am for the bus to Cambodia, followed by the Final at 2am. I've then got to be in the airport byt 7am, and hopefully by the end of Monday I'll be on the bus down south, with carwyn on his flight home.

So from Communist Vietnam, goodnight and goodluck.

I'm Alive! (But Uncle Ho isn't!)

It's a miracle! I managed to fly without my ear exploding, there wasn't even a trickle of blood coming out of it! Bit of an anticlimax actually! I have to admit I was pretty nervous sitting on the runway, not really because of my annoying pressurised ear but because we were flying with the classy Vietnam Airlines. Now that's a name to put the fear in any flyer! I think I'd have had more confidence in Air Khasakstan!

Before we left Hoi An I bought a suit. Now I know there was a very good chance it would turn out to be a piece of junk, but at 20 pounds it was worth the risk. Since I'm shit with anything to do with fashion or clothes quality (let's be honest, my fashion sense consists of looking out for anything that has the words Cymru or Wales on it!) I still don't know whether I've just chucked 20 pounds down the drain or if I'm in possession of the most classy suit in the known universe!

Now I know that I've mentioned the Vietnamise driving before, but it just keeps getting worse and worse! In Hoi An the horn is king. At home the horn has one meaning - "watch where you'r going you prat!" - and is only used in extreme circumstances.
In Hoi An the horn has many meanings "I'm about 200 metres behing you" - "I'm in a bigger car than you so move it" - "I'm turning at the next junction" - "do you want a taxi ride" are just some of them.
My favirotes though are the "I'm driving round this blind corner on the wrong side of the road so watch out" and the most common, the "I'm going to/in the middle of/just finished ovetaking you". Since this horn is used everytime a car/bus/lorry/motobike/pedal bike passes any other vehicle/bike or pedestrian it's pretty much pressed continiously for the whole journey! The noise on the streets is just staggering, there's so many horns they just drown each other out!

Of course, when we hired pedal bikes for the day (for 33p!) I was more than ready to copy them and rang my little bell at every opportuinty! I can't say that anyone heard it, let alone took notice, but in Vietnam that's no reason to stop ringing it!

The taxi driver to the airport loved using his horn, and what a great driver he was! When he came up behind a clearly drunken moto driver who was swaying over the road with no headlight, he decided to switch his own lights off. The drunk drove blind for a few seconds and missed a group of pedestrians by a few centimetres - our driver laughed his head off!

To be fair to Vietnam Airlines they didn't do too bad. The flight was only an hour long and they were adamant they'd do everything like a proper airline. So straight after take-off, before the plane had started to level off, it was meal time! Watching the poor stewardesses navigate the trolly down the aisle when the plane was still at a slope was better entertainment than any personal television Etihad had to offer!

So we're now in Ho Chi Min City so here's a (very) quick history lesson for you. Ho Chi Min (Uncle Ho) is the most famous Viuetnamise ever. Actually I don't think it would be too unfair to say that he's the only famous Vietnamise ever. He didn't do much during the American war, probably because he died soon after it started, but he had already done enoiugh to become the closest thing to God in Vietnam. He was the man who led their independence struggle against the French and held the first elections in Vietnam. But the South refused to take part because they knew Uncle Ho and his communists would win, that's pretty much how the American War started. Although we all know the war as the "Vietnam War" that term would mean nothing over here. Throughout history, Vietnamese people seemed to love war, they've been fighting with the Americans, french, China, Thailand, Cambodia, Japan - pretty much anyone and everyone. Peace with one country just meant they could look around for a different enemy!
Uncle Ho is still loved here, more in the North obviously. His face is on every bank note and his picture up in pretty much every building in the North. His body is on show in Hanoi for anyone to see (it was closed the day we were there though) Straight after the American war the government chganged this city's name to Ho Chi Min, the locals still seem to call it Saigon though, which is the name most foreigners know it by.

Boring history lesson over.

Chupa Chups Temples

Well, I'm still in Hoi An! Half an hour before catching a 24 hour bus down south I changed my mind and booked a seat on a plane! It might not be the cheapest way down, in fact the two seats costs us around 2 million. I know that that's just 60 pounds between us, but handing over 2 million in cold, hard cash is still a little unnerving! We're flying out tonight (6th) so we had another night in the nice hotel yesterday. Well actually we stayed next door because the other one was full. But since the names of the hotels are the ultra-imaginative Thanh Binh 2 and Thanh Binh 3 there wasn't any noticable difference!

I know that they say ït's a small world", and I'm pretty sure that Vietnam is a bit smaller again, but since getting tyo Hoi An we've bumped into four people that we met in Halong Bay, 24 hours away by bus! I got lost the first night (it's a tiny town, but I've managed to get lost twice already!) and was quite glad (suprised, but glad!) to hear an Aussie voice shouyting "Gitso" from across the street. Turns out that two of the Aussies from the boat had just flown down and even more miracously managed to direct me back to my hotel! And then when we came back from booking the plane yesterday, the italian couple were just standing outside out hotel, having just checked in as well!

To be honest though it isn't as much a coincidence as I first thought, the Australian girls who had recomended the hotel to us had done the same to pretty much everyone else on the boat trip, there's two more Australians heading down to the hotel tomorrow, but we're not going to be flooded with Aussies again, we'll be long gone by then!

Yesterday we went to see the ruins of some ancient civilisation with a name that reminded me of Chupa Chups (Don't quite remember what, Chaps, Champers, Champ, something like that!). To be honest there wasn't much to see, the Americans had bombed the ruins repetedly during the war, you could still see the bomb craters! The place was called "My Son" so I took the obligitary photo of me under the My Son sign as a present for mam and dad.

It's stiflingly hot here, I know you lot are having a so-called "heatwave" back home, but compared to what we're enjoying/suffering here you might as well be in Antartica! When we woke up at 8am today it was already way too hot! It's only 11am now and we can't bear to be out in the sun, and it's going to get hotter and hotter for the next 3 hours! I never thought I'd miss good old Welsh weather, but when I come home, can someone arrange some rain for me?

Moto Mania

It seems that there is only one job suitable for a Vietnamise man, driving. Most of them drive motorbikes and wait on every street corner offering you a lift around town. Crossing a Vietnam road is not an easy task with all these motorbikes flying down. First of all there is no such thing as traffic lights so at crossroads you have to look four ways, secondly the idea of waiting for a "gap" in traffic is a myth, there will never be a gap. That picture to the right isn't rush hour or a particulary busy street, that's how the whole bloody country is! Therefore the only way to do it is to treat it as a lifesize game of Frogger, take one step at a time and make no sudden movements. As long as you shuffle along slowly enough, with no sudden movements, the bikes wil swerve either side of you!

Women on the other hand have two jobs open for them. Work in shops or work the streets. They seem to prefer the former, but probably only because that shop customers don't complain if they sleep on the job, and believe me they do a LOT of sleeping. The Vietnamise can sleep anywahere, anytime. Their philosophy is simple, if they fell tired then they'll sleep. They sleep on street corners, they sleep on top of the products they're selling, they sleep hanging off bannisters! On the bus down last night the locals managed to curl into some kind of foetal position and just sleep, I was pretty jelous!

The bus drive down last night was yet another experience. In Wales we drive on the left, in France they drive on the right, in Australia they drive on the left and in Vietnam they drive on whichever side they feel like. Technicaly I think they're supposed to drive on the right, but why bother with mere technicalities!

The minibus to Halong Bay was bad enough, we spent about two thirds of the time on the left side. To be fair to him the driver did take some precautions, when rounding blind corners on the wrong side of the road he sometimes bothered to sound his horn. The ride down to Hoi An was ten times worse though, mostly because we were in a proper 50 seater bus which took up two thirds of the road even when on the right side (which wasn't very often). If any car happened to come towards us while our bus had strayed onto their side the bus driver just honcked his horn at them! And this went on for the 20 straight hours we were on that bus! What's more my record of still not meeting any Amerians collapsed with three of them sitting between Carwyn and me on the first leg of the ride. Fair play to them though, they were'nt the sterotypical Yanks, not one of them tried to kill any of the Vietnamise communist scum on the bus!

I'm now in Hoi An, the shopping capital of Vietnam. Every street is filled with clothes shop with women begging you to come in and buy a suit. One of the many Aussies on our boat trip had recommended a hotel to me, and bloody hell is it good! Clean room, double bed for me and a small one for Carwyn (I won with paper, scissors, stone - always go for paper!), buffet breakfast, laundry and a swiming pool - three pound fifty each! And what's more there's a toilet roll and no jet wash in sight! I wish we could stay here and re-energise for a bit but we're running out of Vietnam time so we've got to rush on to the next stop tomorrow. Don't ask where that is, we don't actually know, all I do know is that another night on a bus is a guarantee!

7 Aussies and I!

Since I'm not a man for being happy in other people's sorrows I'm not going to mention a certain football match, a certain country on the Iberian peninsula nor a certain hot tempered arrogant player.
Since this computer I'm on (which is closer to an Amstrad than a PC!) won't let me put pictures in I won't even put up a photo of a certain captain close to tears!

I'm back in the Vietnamese capital, Hanoi, but just for a couple of hours. Any fears I had about the trip to Halong Bay were compleatly unfounded, it was the closest thing to paradise I've ever encountered.
It didn't start too well, we woke up (late) to a thunderstorm and had to listen to a loud American girl scream at the tour guide. She didn't want to go in the rain, it was dangerous to be out on a boat, she wanted to go another day, she wanted her money back, she wanted, she wanted (typical Yank!)

On the bus we didn't manage to start a conversation with anyone and it seemed like we were in for a long two days. But by the time we got to the boat the sun was out, the boat itself was wonderful and we'd even managed to mingle with other people! Out of the 14 people on the trip, there were few too many Australians for my liking (5, with two more joining half way through) but not a single Englishman or American, so I wasn't complaining too loudly!

By the end of the first night (after some massive meals and the so-called "Astonishing caves") the six of us who were only supposed to stay one night decided to add another. We did some swimming in the deep blue sea, diving off the top of the boat. I somehow managed to hurt my eardrum, I'm told it has something to do with a change in pressure and being too stupid to hold my nose! And then at night, with the beer flowing we watched some football match ;-). The Australians, Welsh and French supported the Iberian team, the Japanese girls supported the "other" one.

The next day we did some sea Kayaking then went for lunch on the beach. It is the most absurd thing I've ever seen. A tiny beach only accessible by sea with a big table, chairs, serviettes and mountains of food! It felt like something from a film.
Then came the not so perfect bit, a 3 hour trek over mountains and rocks. The tour guide had conviently forgotten to tell us how hard a trek it was and so I was a little caught out in my sandals! One girl had to do the whole damn thing in her flip flops! There was a rather fat French woman with us who we had to pretty much carry up and down the mountain!

Finally we landed on an island last night and went out to a restaurant. Carwyn and Andrea, the Italian man (yes I know it's a girls name!) tried some snake whisky, with the cobra still fermenting in the bottle. I'm afraid to say I didn't go near the stuff, not because I was a wimp who was too scared to try it mind you, I'm a veggie aint I ;-) Before going back to a hotel we had time to see the tour guide try to sneak out of a "massage parlour"!We stayed up in the hotel drinking and when the guide finally stumbled back he was a little embarassed to say the least!

On the way back today I've done my very best to learn Vietnamise, Italian, Japanese and touch up on my French. I can't say I had much success on the Japanese, the way the girls kept laughing at me I imagine my North Walian accent didn't quite fit the lingo!

At the end everyone invites everyone else to come stay with them "next time you happen to be in Italy/France/Japan/Australia"! If I ever go to Australia I'm pretty sure I could see the whole country without paying for a hotel!

In about an hour we're stepping on to a bus and going towards South Vietnam, it's a SEVENTEEN HOUR journey - what fun! So goodbye, hwyl fawr, au revoir, sayounara, Tam biêt, Arrivederci and G'dday to all of you!