Travel Logbook

Bangkok, Similan Islands & Khao Yai National Park, Thailand: 25th April-8th May.

One of the reasons I headed to Thailand in such a hurry was that I'd heard that the diving in the Similan Islands was some of the best in South East Asia, but that the season finished at the end of April. I arrived in Bangkok and headed for the infamous Khao San Road. It lives up to its reputation; it's a horrible place but it really does provide everything the backpacker needs, from cheap banana pancakes and cheap shoebox rooms through to cheap e-mail and cheap pirated Bob Dylan tapes (well, not many backpackers need Bob Dylan tapes but then they're not all as cool as I am :] )

I spent one night in Bangkok before getting on an overnight bus headed south to Phuket Island. Once I got there I hunted for a cheap liveaboard dive boat to the Similans. I decided to go with SeaHawk divers on a 4 day/4 night trip to the Similans and also the Surin Islands. Things started badly as the customers assembled on the boat at 7.00pm ready for an overnight sailing to the Surin Islands; I discovered I was the only one who wasn't Japanese. I have nothing against the Japanese but all the same... Things got worse as the boat was forced to turn back to harbour because the sea was so rough. The sea was still causing problems when we set off in the morning, causing the boat to make an 11 hour journey up the coast and then out to the islands instead of sailing straight out. The upshot of all this was that we lost a day's diving and never went to the Surin Islands. Once we did get in the water, though, the diving was good; the underwater visibility was as good as I've ever seen and the coral was in excellent condition. I was hoping to see some large marine life, maybe a whale shark or a manta, but sadly we didn't. The Similan Islands themselves are beautiful, although look beyond high tide line and you find a lot of plastic bottles and other crap that's been dumped, presumably by dive boats.

After the diving I returned to Bangkok to meet up with my friend from home, Jim, who was flying out on the 2nd May. Jim had to return to the UK on the 25th to start a new job so we planned a 3 week whistle-stop tour of Cambodia, Vietnam and Laos. First step was to get visas for each country, a process that took about five days. In the meantime, we headed out of Bangkok, towards Khao Yai National Park. To get there you have to go to a place called Pak Chong, where there are a few guest houses and tour operators. Jim's Let's Go guide recommended a place called the Jungle Guest House that ran one-and-a-half day tours of the park for 950 baht (about fifteen quid). so we went there. While we were deciding whether or not to take the tour two Danish guys, and a bloke from Holland who thought everything was "too exshpensive", turned up. They had the Lonely Planet guide which didn't exactly shower praise on the Jungle Guest House's tours ("floods of complaints" was the phrase used), but had booked the tour in Bangkok before reading the guidebook. The tour included a visit to a Buddhist cave, a bat cave, a trek through the jungle to some muddy waterfalls, and a night safari. I won't go into details except to say that if I could only be bothered I would be writing to Lonely Planet to add to their "floods of complaints", although we did get half our money back.

Angkor & Phnom Penh, Cambodia: 9th May-13th May.

Once our visas were sorted, Jim and I took a bus to the Thai-Cambodian border at Poipet. From there we took a pick-up for the 6-hour ride to Siem Reap in Cambodia. This was the bumpiest road I've ever experienced in my life. At times the truck left the road and drove through the fields because that was the quickest way. Luckily, Jim and I managed to sit inside the cab rather than on the back because it bucketed down and the poor people on the back were drenched to the bone. At regular intervals along the road we would come to a bridge where a plank had been strategically removed, and only replaced on the payment of "road tax" to a gun-toting villager.

Siem Reap is the base from which to visit the ancient ruins of Angkor. The site contains dozens of temples, dating from the 9th century to the 13th. The most impressive are the Bayon, which contains lots of gigantic smiling faces, and Angkor Wat. Many of the temples contain intricate bas-relief carvings depicting scenes from Angkorian life and ancient Hindu legend, but those on the walls of Angkor Wat are the most impressive. I can't really describe Angkor and even begin to do it any kind of justice so just take a look at the photos.

From Siem Reap we took a 600hp fast boat (that's a real fast boat) down the Tonle Sap river to Phnom Penh. Visits to Tuol Sleng and Choeung Ek are sobering experiences. Tuol Svay Prey High School was converted in 1975 by Pot into S-21 Tuol Sleng prison, the largest and most notorious of his torture chambers. 17,000 people were imprisoned and tortured there between 1975 and 1979. Inside you can see a few photos of victims as they were found when the place was liberated by the Vietnamese at the end of 1978, as well as various instruments of torture. There are numerous graphic paintings of the methods of torture employed by the Khmer Rouge and, particularly disturbing, paintings showing how babies were murdered in front of their mothers. But the biggest impression of the horror of Pol Pot's regime comes from the thousands of prison ID photographs of the victims; the men mostly looking resigned; the women (hair shorn to jaw length) mostly looking frightened, but no-one looking defiant or showing any sign of hope.

Choeung Ek, or the Killing Fields, is set amidst rice paddies a few kilometres outside Phnom Penh. All but a small handful of the 17,000 inmates of Tuol Sleng were taken here and executed before (or by) being buried in communal graves. The grassy knolls in Choeung Ek are littered with fragments of human bone and a large glass stupa contains hundreds of exhumed skulls, segregated into infant male/female, adolescents, mature and senile, as well as Europeans. It's unbelievable to imagine that this happened less than 30 years ago, but of course it's still happening in other parts of the world...

Saigon & Nha Trang, Viet Nam: 14th May-20th May.

From Phnom Penh, Jim and I took a taxi across the border to Saigon, or Ho Chi Minh City as it's officially known these days. We'd been recommended to a place called Miss Loi's Guesthouse so we headed there. We got a huge room on the top floor, windows on three sides, luxurious velvet drapes hanging from the ceiling and a gigantic photograph of wild stallions covering the wall. Miss Loi's was staffed entirely by women and felt more like a brothel than a guesthouse.

Venturing out onto the streets of downtown Saigon, we decided we wouldn't be staying too long. Lots of bother from rickshaw drivers, prostitutes on motorbikes, and hawkers who enter restaurants and try to sell you photocopied books and zippo lighters while you're trying to eat. Crossing the road in Saigon was a skill that needed to be quickly mastered. 90% of the traffic is of the two-wheeled variety, and the best method for crossing was to just stare at the other side and walk. It was important to maintain a steady pace so as to allow the motorbikes to swerve around you. For this reason the best idea was to cross with your eyes closed to avoid panic.

We made a trip out to the Cu Chi tunnels, north west of Saigon. These tunnels were started in the late forties when the Vietnamese started their guerrilla war against the French colonialists. They were expanded by the Viet Cong during the Vietnam war until they stretched for 200km from Saigon to the Cambodian border. A small section of the tunnels has been rebuilt and made wider to accomodate the extra girth of the average American tourist compared to the Viet Cong.

After a couple of days in Saigon, we headed up to a beach resort called Nha Trang. Here we went on a boat trip with the infamous (well, in Nha Trang, at least) Mama Hanh. This involved a tour round some of the local islands, a huge seafood lunch, dessert of every kind of fruit you can possibly imagine, a floating bar, and loud music to annoy the locals. "Everything is free, even Mama Hanh...except beer." You helped yourself to beer and were supposed to remember how many you had had, then you paid for it at the end of the day. Yeah, right... It was all a bit immature really I suppose, maybe I'm too old for that sort of thing...

The next day I did a couple of dives with the local operator, the Blue Diving Club. Highlight was a huge Moray eel living under a coral bommie. The divemasters had him trained to accept bits of fish, and he even allowed us to stroke him under the chin.

From Nha Trang we took a minibus north, heading for Danang from where we would get a bus across the border into Laos. The bus to Savannakhet in Laos took twenty hours, on top of the four hours it took to get to Danang.

Savannakhet, Vientiane, Vang Vieng & Luang Prabang, Laos; 20th May-4th June.

Arriving in Savannakhet, Jim & I shared a tuk-tuk with two girls, Sandy & Caroline, from the bus station to a guesthouse in the town. While in town for an ice cream, we met an Australian traveller, a professional rock photographer (he photographed musicians, not big lumps of stone). That evening we all headed out for something to eat. We went into a local restaurant, and with the help of a phrasebook and lots of pointing at things, we managed to order some food, and of course, lots of jugs of BeerLao (which incidentally is one of the world's best beers, even better than Cambodia's Angkor). At about 11 o'clock all the locals had left and it was clear that the owners wanted to close. We were still keen for more beer but reluctantly asked for the bill. It came to 51,000 kip (about five quid - for five people including lots of beer). But they would only accept 50,000 and seeing our desperation for alcohol, threw in a free bag of beer for good measure. It was clear that Laos was going to be an enjoyable country!

Michael, the Aussie photographer, had lots of stories about how honest and generous the Lao people were, and how the only hassle and dishonesty he had come across in Laos had been from Thais and Vietnamese. When he asked to borrow my alarm clock to help him make his 5 am bus the next morning, I readily agreed. He promised to leave it outside my room. Guess what... it wasn't there. Maybe he did leave it and someone else took it; I'll never know.

Jim and I headed up to the Lao capital, Vientiane, the next day. From there we went to the eco-tourism resort of Lao Pako, a small rustic place set atop a river bank in the midst of the Lao jungles. While there we met an American from LA called Jeff. Back in Vientiane a couple of days later, we met up with Jeff, Sandy & Caroline and a couple of Irish Man U haters who Jim and I met while watching a replay of that game. Our search for some nightlife took us to a night club under the impressive Lao Plaza Hotel. We'd not long been there when Jim pointed out that Jeff was dancing with "the hottest bird ever". I looked over and indeed he seemed to be, although something didn't seem quite right... A few minutes later Jeff came and sat down at our table and said, "Dudes, that was a dude!".

Our next stop was a place called Vang Vieng. Here we took a tour with Mr Keo to some local caves. We followed an underground stream into the limestone hills, eventually coming to an underground pool where we could swim in complete darkness, a really odd sensation. After the cave we were given a rubber inner tube each and floated back down the Nam Song river to Vang Vieng.

After that we headed north to Luang Prabang, an ancient town full of historic Buddhist wats. Our bus stopped half way up for lunch. Sitting down in a little food shack, I was asked what I wanted. I didn't know what to order so I just pointed to what the local guy sitting next to me was eating. It was a kind of meat soup. The meat was grey, chewy and mostly bone. I asked someone what it was and they said "Dog". I don't know if it really was, but if so I'll be happy if I never eat dog again as long as I live.

Whilst in Luang Prabang Jim & I took a day trip to the Kuang Si waterfalls, the most beautiful I've ever seen. You could climb to a splash pool half way up and sit under the crashing water. Back in the town we visited the Royal Palace Museum. One room is full of gifts given to the Lao royal family by various countries. Most interesting was a piece of moon rock given by Richard Nixon in 1972, presumably at the same time as US B-52 bombers were pounding Eastern Laos into a moonscape whilst making the country the most heavily bombed in history.

After a couple of days in Luang Prabang we went back down to Vang Vieng. I was running out of Lao kip so after one night I went down to Vientiane and crossed back into Thailand. Jim decided to go tubing on the river again with Sandy & Caroline, so I left him for the time being.