Pai was a good place for it: very relaxed and cool… in both senses: freezing cold at night (well relatively speaking: it got down to about 15deg) and so chilled: Pai is really a tourist town for Thais who seem to visit just to walk around the night market, effortlessly oozing arty sophistication.

On my first full day I woke to a lovely crisp morning, foolishly thinking that the whole day would be as cool and refreshing, and padded down to a bicycle hire (and laundry/internet cafe/pharmacy) shop, hired something that probably once vaguely resembled a bicycle to head off to a waterfall “6kms” outside town. There were several factors I hadn’t thought through before setting off on my expedition, most notably that waterfalls by their nature are in the mountains, ie UPhill. Well I am quite pleased to say that I made it, encouraged mostly by the foul language that came from somewhere near my head; and the misleading distance signs along the way (initially only 4kms away, then 7kms, then about 500m later only 2kms… etc)

The next day I hired a motorbike – the fanciest, fastest, biggest one I could find (ok, only 125cc but it got up to 120km/h quite easily…) and headed off into the mountains towards Myanmar (Burma). Stopped at Tham Lot cave which was surprisingly impressive and so well organised compared to other caves in SEA; and a tiny hamlet called Mae LaNa which was so pretty, more so as it was tourist-free. After a quick map check, I headed off to the Burmese border. Oh, the Lonely Planet mentioned something about fighting, terrorists and refugees etc etc but hey, I thought I’d give it a whirl. I won’t build it up too much: it was late in the day, I was running low on petrol and the road was bad, so I didn’t make it… but so close! Instead I rode the 150kms back to Pai recklessly fast thought the mountains… reckless, and deliciously exhilarating…

Over the next 2 days I went for long walks outside of town (dehydrating quite badly one day when I forgot to take water with me – dangerously close to turning into a crinkle paper version of me), and hired a piddly puttering bike to visit a couple of non-descript “tourist attractions” in the area.

In the evenings I went to the night market, to pick up a few kebabs, and wander around the stalls selling mostly t-shirts. I found one that I thought was quite nice, but didn’t have my size. When I asked the lovely man if he had one size up he told me in stilted English that no he didn’t but I should “cut my body so it would fit”. When I laughed he didn’t. I walked away quite quickly.

Each evening, after my kebabs, I would settle down at one of the bars/cafes to listen to live Thai jazz and slurp mojitos. Inevitably I would have someone try to be friendly, but I was quite content being a recluse and really not interested in people (especially not the German bankers from London: too much reality… shudder).

Rereading that now, I realise that makes me sound a little socially peculiar. Oh well.

Mae LaNa village

I checked myself into a hostel (my last hostel. I’ve already started doing that: “my last… my last…” Stop it!); picked up an English girl called Lucy and a Dutch guy called Jerone, and hit Chiang Mai’s nightlife. Started with a few gay clubs (…) and found some new friends who were on a gay package tour. Their tour guide was a complete hoot and included us in the group for the evening, tempting us not to go home with the promise of a straight club. Straight it was, classy it wasn’t, but really good fun, complete with “pashing police” (not official name, obviously) who go up to you if you’re having a snog, shine a torch in your face and wag their finger at you. No smooching allowed!

The next day started too soon for my liking and delivered a pretty feisty hangover that only kicked in at about 1pm. A very mooching sort of day that ended up with a cookery course with Lucy in the evening. It was a test to how much food any one person can squeeze in your stomach: all the food was so good (as I am now a brilliant chef), and the enormous quantities sorted out my hangover.

Over the next 2 days Lucy, Jerone and I did a trek in the jungle, 2 hours north of CM. We were skeptical on the first day regarding how much trekking we would actually do: we were taken to an orchid & butterfly farm, went elephant riding, a local market (blah blah) and only started walking at 2pm. Early enough! Stunning, gorgeous, beautiful scenery, but so steep! And hot! All contributing to a very sweaty Alex. Eeeugh!

That evening we stayed in a very rickety bamboo hut in a tiny hamlet on top of a hill, lulled to sleep by too many Chang beers and the echoes of “Why Why, Miss American Guy”; “Hope, Jovanna” and other mispronounced popular round-the-fire-even-if-there-is-no-fire songs, which the guide and his friends (er, and some of us too) warbled out.

The second day was less of the inclining variety of walking (having stayed at the top of the hill), but no less taxing was the descent, stopping at a waterfall on the way. Note: standing under a waterfall is not glamorous: it is very painful, cold, messes up hair, and has the capacity to remove bikini bottoms (not mine, thankfully).

After a spot of white water rafting and bamboo rafting we headed back to CM.

On my last day in CM, Lucy and I dragged our near-paralytic legs out of bed and hired a motorbike to visit a wat on top of a mountain and another in the forest. (Perhaps my last wat? To be honest, that’s not such a catastrophe), and then off to Chiang Mai Prison for a massage. I was a little nervous when I saw a strapping woman lumber towards me with her meaty hands (how many people’s necks had she wrapped them around? I kid), and my trekked-out thigh muscles trembled when she looked at them… but it was a really good massage, probably the best I’ve had in SEA.

Ended the evening off with the night market (fab, but SO many people) and a few drinks.

All civilized and well-behaved: off to Pai the next day early-early.

No remarkably witty stories to divulge, apart from my going into an internet cafe and asking if they had a printer available… only to cause much confusion before being given a panty-liner….??

I did however do a 2-day mahout training course – learning how to drive an elephant – which was really good fun, but I didn’t actually learn much, other than “HOW!” (stop!), which the elephants didn’t listen to anyway, and that when you feel like you’re about to fall off, hanging onto short spiky elephant hair will not help. First I was jostled about on the back of an elephant on a seat, and then moved up to sit on the neck to take a dip in the Mekong for some elephant washing. Its hard work though, trying not to fall off elephants and your biceps really ache after pressing on its head for a couple of hours. I had been in a group of about 8 people, but I was the only one staying for the night (on the floor of a shelter with no walls, under a giant netted cake tin lid). So after I “put the elephants to bed” in the jungle, Ticky(my guide) and I went off to the owner’s house for dinner and then back to the shelter for a few beers around the fire with Nong, a carpenter who had come to join Ticky and I for the night in case “anything-bad-happened-but-it-won’t-don’t-worry”, then under our cake tin lids for possibly the most restful sleep I’ve had in years.

The next morning a new group arrived after I had washed the elephants some more (the cleanest elephants in Laos?) who I got chatting to – they were very interested (horrified) to learn where I had slept. Have I become a scungy traveller? Should I consider dreadlocks and a tattoo? After they had been jostled around on the elephants, we all went off to visit a waterfall and then back to LPB. Met up that evening and the next few days with 2 Aussie girls, Daphne and Louise, really good fun and completely normal… not like the weird taggers-on they kept bringing along when we met up (who we did manage to shake off most evenings)

On my last day in Laos I woke early (5:15am. groan) to watch the monks receive alms. What an awful experience: all the Meryls and Chads get up early too to shove their fancy SLR cameras right in the monks’ faces, blinding them with flashes and blocking the way so they can’t get past. I would imagine it would be quite a beautiful thing to watch, but I went back to bed at 6:30 feeling slightly dirty for also having taken photos. To attempt at making amends I went to Big Brother Mouse, a place where tourists and Laos locals meet to talk so they can practise their English, talking about how old I am and where I come from.

Or so I thought…

I had low expectations. Its where the cool kids with their brightly-coloured sunglasses go to get high on spliff/mushrooms/opium and float down a river on inner tractor tyre tubes. The journey from Vientiane didn’t help to dispel my fears: a guy started drinking as soon as the bus left at 8am, but hadn’t thought through the whole process of liquid intake (and consequent output), so a few drunken hours later merrily stood up and showed the whole bus his 3 newly-filled bottles only to drop one of them on the floor. Hmmm…

The tourist area in VV is pretty weird. In the middle of gorgeous countryside, the town has heaps of bars and restaurants all showing repeats of Family Guy and Friends – presumably everyone is so trashed from tubing and the lure of mind-numbing entertainment is too hard to resist. That evening I got together with a couple of people I had met in Vietnam and Cambodia who had gone tubing for 5 days in a row (not as bad as one guy who was rumoured to have been on his 324^th consecutive day); they were leaving the following morning, so I was going to have to do this tubing thing on my own – a daunting prospect, like going to a party and being the geeky girl in the corner…

I put off tubing for as long as I could the next day and lay in my hammock, watching people skip past, shrieking with excitement. At about noon I reluctantly dragged myself into town to get a tube and go up to the start point. While I was signing my life away (there’re at least 2 deaths per year), I met 2 Kiwi couples who immediately attached me to them.

What a funfunfun day! The stretch of river where the tubing action happens is only about 400m long and crammed with bars on each side, each with free shots of hideous LaoLao whiskey, zip lines over the river / mud pits / volleyball / slides / music and makeshift dance floors. The LaoLao took its effect quickly and the 4 of us were wrestling in the mud, whizzing down the zip lines (I only regained full hearing in my right ear after a week as I fell off one, splattering into the water), and dancing like lunatics. It all got very blurry towards the end: it turned out that I had had a few sips of what I hadn’t known to be a “happy” mojito. Scott (one half of one of the Kiwi couples) and I somehow became detached from everyone else (totally innocently) and shivered down the river to Vang Vieng town, pulling ourselves out of the water at 10pm.

The next day I felt really strange: my body was totally battered – bruises and scratches all over from the river, and my brain had gone on holiday in a different hemisphere (not in an unpleasant way). And so I watched 4 hours of Friends like all those space cadets I had seen when I first arrived.

Met up with Clare and Scott and the other couple who were also confused about how it all got so messy, but were undeterred by the experience and asked me to join them for a joint later. My brain and I had begun a happy reunion which was quite nice, so I declined… which was fortunate because when I met them the next day they told me they had been found by the police, marched to an ATM and ordered to pay a 5,000,000kip ($600) “fine” (almost twice the yearly wage).

On my last day in VV I hired a motorbike and wobbled around the area on bumpy roads (so bumpy I had to rescue a French couple who had a puncture), watched the tubers stumbling in, and caught up with a few people in the evening for a few mellow drinks.

I left VV with a sore throat and many peculiar bruises, but grandma definitely had a good time!

After exhausting Vientiane’s delights, I hopped on a bus to Ban Khoun Kham, a very tiny village in central Laos that sees 3 tourists a week. I arrived in the afternoon and headed off to the tourism office to pick up a guide (Keh) to check out a waterfall. Keh ran up the mountain like a goat, with me in my flip-flops trailing after him, crashing into spiders and even a snake (lucky me, apparently). That evening, while I was having dinner with the family who ran my guesthouse, 2 elephants came trumping past with a flock of little children following. The kids were actually more excited to see me than the elephants, which goes to show how remote Ban Khoun Kam is, I guess.

The next day I woke early to hire a bike and putter off to Tham Kong Lo, a 7,5km underground river in a limestone karst. Pretty stunning scenery on the way to the cave: the road runs along a fertile valley between limestone cliffs, dotted with tiny hamlets and shepherd’s huts. The cave itself was impressive – it takes 2 hours to pootle upstream in a leaking boat from one side of the karst to the other in total darkness. I did note and enjoy the irony of my spending considerable time and money to get there and sit on a boat for 2 hours on a river in complete darkness, occasionally having to get out in the river and pull the boat over rocks.

That evening Keh invited me over to the tourism office for dinner; he had made laap, a spicy meat salad. When I asked what sort of meat it was, he answered, “Sandal!” I looked down at the bowl of mashed flip-flops in front of me. “Sandal?” I asked. “No! Scandal! Scandal!”. I did indeed think it was a terrible scandal that this man had been reduced to eating footwear, but before I could say anything he leapt to the fridge and got out a very stiff, bald squirrel (it could have been rat, but I’m going with squirrel). Anyhow, it was pretty tasty whatever it was, albeit a little hot for my wimpy taste buds.

The first bus back to Vientiane was scheduled to leave at 7am the following day, so I naively woke early to catch it… when it arrived at 8:15am. Well at least it came and at least I got a seat, not a little plastic chair in the aisle, but it did mean that I had to spend another night in dreary Vientiane, rather than heading north to Vang Vieng that afternoon (missed the Vang Vieng bus by 12 minutes. Hmmm…)

So I checked back into the guesthouse I had stayed in before and wandered down the road where I met up with Alicia, the owner/manager of the hostel where Gillian and I had stayed in Hanoi. She was over with her mother and step-father and the 3 of them invited me to dinner on the riverfront; a nice, mellow end to Vientiane.

Cambodia is HOT. Gillian and I crawled to a couple of sites, found a market selling crispy tarantulas and cockroaches (I chickened out), fixed my camera, and then slithered back to the guesthouse to read and try to be cool. Played pool (or snooker… what IS the difference?) very badly with a few guys at the guesthouse on “the best table in Cambodia” (if you’re looking for a pool table made from bags of frozen vegetables).

The next day Gillian and I tagged along with a few guys we had met the night before for a pretty full-on day. First to see the S21 Prison: a school turned prison/torture house during the Pol-Pot era and then on to the Killing Fields (presumably no explanation needed?), just outside of Phnom Pehn. All pretty gruesome and heavy stuff… There was an offer from the tuk-tuk driver to take us to an orphanage, but we agreed that would be overkill, so back to the guesthouse to continue melting.

I perked myself up that afternoon by getting a massage from a blind man (trained masseuse, I should say, not random blind man on the street), which was gorgeous and floaty, and then wandered over to the Foreign Correspondents Club, where I was told I would be hit on by “a sleazy journo”. However 2 prostitutes got in there first… they headed straight for me and asked me if I would help them learn English. Weird book they had: A is for Antelope; B is for Baguette; C is for Computer; D is for Danger. I would not make a good teacher: no patience.

Back to the guesthouse that night for more Shithead with Gillian and Rich, and a wee sample of Cambodia’s gardening produce (never offered to Gillian or me, only to guys, we’d noticed, along with prostitutes).

The next morning the 3 of us took the bus to Siem Reap (for Angkor Wat), which is just as hot as Phnom Penh, and checked in to another nasty dirty hotel on the advice of the bus driver. We were too tired to look around for better digs, so showered and went into town for dinner and a drink(s) in “Angkor What?!” (As you would imagine, many puns made about Angkor Wat… endless mirth over the next few days: Whaaaat?).

The next day the 3 of us went on the hunt for a tuk-tuk driver to take us around for the day and came across Mr Batman (he wouldn’t actually tell us his real name over the 2 days he took us around). Mr Batman had put a disturbing amount of effort into turning his tuk-tuk into the batmobile, which of course elicited covetous looks from other Wat tourists. Heh heh.

Anyway, temples: I had been looking forward to this part of the trip since before I knew I was going travelling, so of course I was expecting to have the whole place to myself and not another 12 billion tourists. It was nice enough, but lacking in that mystical creepy atmosphere I had hoped for. (Difficult to please, I know.) The second day of our Batman Experience was less dominated by the click of Japanese cameras as the 3 of us were batted (haw haw) out to the more remote temples and then on to another temple for sunset. However, heading back into town, the batmobile puttered, spluttered and came to a smoky halt, so Mr Batman got on his batphone to call for assistance. His brother, Mr Superman! (… in a decidedly poor imitation tuk-tuk. Admittedly, Superman never did have a Supermobile). The evening ended very messily back in “Angkor What?!”, all of us bumping into different people we had met while traveling and Gillian and I drinking one too many little pink cocktail thingies.

Needless to say the next morningday was a write off: Gillian and I watched 5 films on HBO, while Rich got on a bicycle to carry on Watting (show off). We even got to see the Sex in the City film that HBO had been tantalizingly advertising throughout the last month while travelling with Gillian. A fitting end to our time together – the next day I caught the plane to Laos and became Norman-no-mates again. Had to adjust to travelling on my own after spending time with other people.

Queue violins…

Angkor Wat

The next day, after 3.5 hours sleep (enough time for a hangover to kick in); we went to the police station THREE times. Cushy job, being a police-person in Vietnam. Desks in the interview room acted as beds for a few policemen while Gillian was interviewed, and it’s a strict rule that no more than one person may actually do anything constructive at any one time. Not much achieved that day, except dressing up in donut suits we found in a coffee shop and trying on bike helmets coloured as ladybirds.

The following day was crammed with culture. Attached ourselves to a tour to a Cao Dai temple (mad religion which kind of makes sense till you hear that Victor Hugo is a patron saint, alongside William Shakespeare and Napoleon Bonaparte…), then on the Cu Chi tunnels; tunnels where Vietnamese hid from the “mad, crazy, American devils” (quote from a film at the Cu Chi Tunnel centre) during the Vietnam War. There was an option to pay a heap of money to shoot a couple of rounds of an M60 automatic… which OF COURSE we had to do!

I wouldn’t make a good soldier: very noisy, guns.

During the next few days we wandered around HCMC, becoming regulars at the night market (mmmm, bbq “meat” on noodles…); visiting the War Museum (sad place, but a bit of a one-sided story, no?), the Reunification Museum (unofficially Vietnam’s largest collection of disconnected telephones and the most boring museum in the world), discovering coconut candy and Fanny Ice-cream (…); finding the Jade Emperor Pagoda (again and again and again); and getting stuck in a massive rain storm, hiding under a pagoda in a park for 2 hours with a soap opera film crew, singing songs about rain (just Gillian and I, not the film crew).

HCMC: Done! Next: Mekong Delta!

Cao Dai Temple

So! Arrived in MuiNé around lunchtime and checked into the hotel. Nice, with a swimming pool right on what would have been a beach if the sea was not doing a remarkable tsunami impression for the first 2 days we were in MuiNé (the walls of our room would shake each time a wave crashed against the sea wall… imagination would run riot in the middle of the night: convinced we would be swept out to sea).

The weather dictated that we do nothing for the first day or so – lots of red wine, Shithead, reading, watching HBO and BBC World (catching up on all the natural disasters we’ve missed). On our third day the storm quietened down long enough for us to hire a bike to see the sand dunes MuiNé is famous for (famous for dunes and wind surfers. Saw none of the latter, sadly…) Very odd scenery, like the Karoo or Namibia, in between tropical bits. On our last day in MuiNé we made a half-hearted attempt at finding a salt pan as well as breaking the bike (and I locked the key in the seat, which caused great excitement for about 10 minutes while a small boy tried – successfully – to retrieve it. Just goes to show how easy it is to nick things in a motorbike “boot”). Didn’t find the salt pan, so lay by the pool, minus tsunami-style waves, to slowly incinerate while waiting for the bus to Ho Chi Mihn City (HCMC) / SaiGon. (ouch ouch)

People definitely less aggressive, shouty and pokey the further south you go in Vietnam. Thank goodness.

PS that’s ouch ouch to getting burnt, not HCMC…

Whatever.

After lunch on the last day (lunch, er, at 10:30am) we zoomed back at HaNoi at a snail’s pace to phaff around for 6hrs to get a train to HoiAn. Gillian and I tried out the “hard bed” option on the sleeper train to save… oh, about 7GBP each. Mistake. We had another 4 Vietnamese people in our (very small) cabin, 2 of whom looked like they were about to expire on the journey, and all of whom woke up at 5:15am with much shouting and rushing in and out, only to go back to sleep at 8am (honestly, is that necessary?). Gillian and I collectively hit our heads 9 times. It was not a fun journey.

From Danang, where the train delivered us (to platform 9, although I still haven’t seen a single platform in Vietnam yet; you must tumble from the train like a broken sack of rice), we caught a minivan that ran out of petrol a few times to HoiAn. The journey there was quite an eye-opener: the central coast of Vietnam was hit badly by Typhoon Ketsana and there were piles of debris along the roadside, under palm trees battered by the storm. HaNoi itself seemed to have sprung back to life easily and the Vietnamese Sales Force was in full swing: “buysomethingfrommeee!” squeals at every turn. Gillian came across the best sales pitch though:

• Gillian: “How much is this book?”
• Lady: “Fifty thousand”
• Gillian: “How about I give you forty?”
• Lady: “Fifty-five”
• Gillian: “But it was just fifty!”
• Lady: “You don’t like fifty, I don’t like forty”

Gillian bought the book.

Although its pretty, there’s not a heap of things to do in HoiAn, but the thing to do is get clothes tailored. We both got a couple of dresses/skirts made. 3 dresses and a skirt, custom-made by hand (there’s that sales pitch again), all for $38. Bargain!

We went for a little walk out of the “tourist area” on our last day. You could tell by walking though the streets how high the water had risen and how much damage had been done. Apparently the worst flood in central Vietnam for 3 years, with over 100 dead, mostly children. Pretty sad.

From there we hopped back to the other side of the river for our cooking course. I am an expert… chopper! And eater! I didn’t learn much, but who cares! The chilly and lemongrass snapper and deep fried wantons with sweet and sour sauce was delish. Don’t ask me to make it again though…

From the cooking course we rolled each other back to the hotel to pack in anticipation for The Sleeper Bus to MuiNe. We had discovered the most uncomfortable way to get around the country! The times I did get to sleep I woke up with my legs dangling over the side and the safety belt under my arms. Probably quite comfortable if you are the shape and size of a chop stick.

Which I am not, after eating noodles for the last 5 months.

sneaky junk in ha long bay