Asia Travel Diary – Thailand (Part Two: The South)

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Chilled out bar on Ko Samui

Our favourite place to chill out at the end of a long day relaxing on Ko Samui.

From Siem Reap in Cambodia we took a coach, a bus and a taxi-bus-thing to our hostel in Pattaya, Thailand. We booked it all through the hostel in Siem Reap (shop around for the best deal as usual). This is how my other half and I crossed the border into our final destination of our SE Asian adventure, and this is the final entry for the Asia Travel Diary.

We had of course already seen a bit of Thailand before, but thanks to our highly original plan to go around in a giant circle, this would be where we would end our trip; amongst the islands. But before we get there, a little tip about crossing the border.

It wasn’t explained to us what it would entail, and though you’ll undoubtedly be able to work it out for yourself a little heads-up is never a bad thing. First, as is usual with budget border crossings, the bus you’re in to get to the border won’t be the bus you’ll be in to leave it. You’ll alight at the border and then you’ll queue for a rather long time, outside, before queueing again inside. When you finally get through the metaphorical gates, it’s then a hell of a long walk to the other side of the border. When you think you shouldn’t walk any further, just keep walking.

When you leave your original bus you’ll be asked where you’re headed and given a colour-coded sticker, keep a hold of this as it’s what everyone seems to use to determine which bus you get on the other side and where that bus leaves from.

Pattaya

Heralded as one of Thailand’s best know party places, this town ultimately stole the excitement I was feeling for returning to Thailand. Again, like Nha Trang in Vietnam, we found ourselves questioning if the Russians had invaded, but Pattaya is also, as we found out, possibly Thailand’s number one destination for sex tourists.

There’s actually a road here called “Walking Street” which, as the name implies, is closed to vehicular access, but I don’t think that’s why it’s so named. You have to visit this street just for the experience, but I think going for the experience is exactly why it’s so named. You’ll walk down it, mouth agape and amazed at the spectacle around you, but you won’t want to stop. You’ll just want to keep on walking until you get out the other end. Bearing in mind I’ve just named the town as the number one destination for sex tourists, I think you get the reasons why.

We actually stayed outside of the main town on Jomtien Beach. It is a lot cheaper to do this, but beware you are a taxi-ride away from the “fun”. Even at its height, Jomtien Beach is hardly bustling but that might be a good thing. There is, however, everything you need for a couple of days.

Needless to say we got out of Pattaya pretty quickly. However, by now we were on a tight schedule. Our plane tickets had been booked and we had no funds left to change them again. What’s more, Christmas was around the corner and due to prices and availability (“high” and “not much”, respectively), we had our Christmas accommodation pre-booked and had only a couple of weeks to get there, via all the other places we wanted to see.

Bangkok (Again)

From Pattaya we took a coach to Bangkok. It took a good half-a-day but was easy to book from the main station in Pattaya (buy your tickets there). We had no accommodation booked (we didn’t truly know what we were doing at this point), but upon deciding to stay the night we easily got a place through Hostelworld the same day. Our reasons for staying was for my other half to get an emergency Vietnam Visa, as she was going back to her ancestral country for a wedding. For those in need, you can get a Vietnam Visa from the Vietnamese Embassy on the same day if you’re willing to pay the price, but you’ve got to get there early.

With that little problem taken care of, it was time to head down to the islands.

Krabi

Sunset on Ao Nang Beach

Enjoying the sunset over Ao Nang Beach, Thailand

Okay, so Krabi isn’t an Island, but it’s a stop on the way, and in some cases a necessary one. We took another sleeper train from Bangkok down to Surat Thani. This is where you can get connections to Ko Samui, Ko Pha-ngan and Ko Tao. They all exist on the east side of the mainland. But if you want to get to Phuket and Ko Phi Phi, you need to do what we did and, after alighting the sleeper train in Surat Thani, get a bus to Krabi. Stay there the night and then get your connection to the island of your choice.

We actually stayed there for two nights. Krabi isn’t the most exciting of places, and most people who stay on the mainland in this area head to Ao Nang. It’s a small beachside suburb but it’s better and more “happening” than all of Krabi put together, and the beach there is quite something.

Ko Phi Phi

A place I’ve wanted to visit ever since reading and watching The Beach, I was overjoyed to finally be going to the set of islands that were featured in the film (for Ko Phi Phi is actually two islands, – Don and – Le, the former is where you can stay, the latter is where the iconic scenes were filmed).

The (Crowded) Beach

After a little photoshop magic to fill in the gap, you wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between this and a still from the film The Beach.

Ko Phi Phi Don ended up being a far bigger party island than I was expecting. The habitable part of the island is actually the small strip of land between the two larger land masses, and this is where a city’s worth of bars, clubs and restaurants are crammed in. No matter where you stay on the island, you will hear the music until it’s turned off at around two or three in the morning.

For boat excursions to Ko Phi Phi Le you can’t walk ten yards without finding a shop that will offer the trip. All trips are pretty much the same, though some offer free food and drink, others may offer a slightly different itinerary, and then other than that it’s the type of boat you’ll be going in. As always shop around, not just for the best deal, but for the itinerary that suits you.

Ko Tao

My favourite place in Thailand, and possibly responsible for me holding the whole of Thailand in such high regard, I couldn’t wait to return to this island and bring my other half with me.

In one day we got the boat back to the mainland from Phi Phi, the bus back over the mainland to Surat Thani, and that night we took a sleeper boat (oh, yes) all the way up past Ko Samui and Ko Pha-ngan to Ko Tao. The boat is an experience in itself, taken mostly by budgeting backpackers (check :-) ) and you do need to be a little prepared. You are sandwiched together like sardines in a tin, the length of the boat.

The fun really starts when people get sea-sick.

We bought the boat ticket on the night, but you can (and probably should) get it beforehand.

Landing on my favourite island I still can’t recommend the place enough. Like all of Thailand it’s grown more commercial and so on, but to be fair, it’s grown less than everywhere else and has managed to retain, thus far, it’s chilled-out reputation; long days on the beach, soaking in the warm ocean that’s shallow for about a mile out, before chilling out in the bars at night. There are late-night bars if you want them, but the best thing is there’s usually only one or two, and they take it in turns to be open late. How good is that?

Ko Pha-ngan

We bought all our tickets from Ko Tao down to Ko Samui, including the transfer to Surat Thani and the train back up to Bangkok from the Hostel in Ko Tao. Originally we weren’t going to stop off at Pha-ngan, but after making up a day or two we decided to check out what all the fuss is about.

This is where the infamous moon parties take place. The most famous is, of course, the Full Moon party once a month, but there also two Half-Moon Parties a month and a Black Moon Culture party. In between these four tent-pole parties are other parties on various nights of the week. They take place in slightly different spots over the island, but for the most part, the island is quiet aside from the four big parties. Haad Rin is the area you’ll be wanting to stay in or near for the big parties, Baan Tai is a nice small area, very quiet, and only a taxi-ride away. Don’t go any further than that, though.

Ko Samui

And so finally we made it Ko Samui in time for Christmas. It was our last destination. We had always wanted to spend Christmas together on an island, and though Samui wasn’t our first choice, it ended up being a darn good one.

We stayed in the Chaweng area. It’s a big island and you’ll probably want to decide which part of it you want to stay in before booking accommodation and going there. We didn’t, as always flying by the seat of our pants, but we got lucky. We found a place that was on the beach, and a short walk down to a great restaurant where we had Christmas dinner literally on the beach.

Fireworks went off a lot, some of them were even good. But it made a fitting end to our adventure, spending the chilled out nights smoking a shisha on the beach after a hectic two months of travelling.

We did obviously go on from there. We did go back to Bangkok and ultimately to the airport, but why dwell on such things.

For us, we’ll forever be together on a beach in paradise.

The End

The End

Asia Travel Diary – Cambodia

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Phnom Penh Night Life

A rare, expensive club night out in Phnom Penh, Cambodia.

Landing at the jetty on the banks of Cambodia’s capital city, Phnom Penh, we were looking forward to getting to our hostel and relaxing; we’d just spent two days using all manners of road and river transport to get there from Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City) in Vietnam.

Cambodia, while more visited than Laos, is still thought of as being a relatively new travelling destination. Yet, in the capital at least, it was easy to see that tourism was something they got to grips with quickly and service can be a bit hit or miss. The currency in Cambodia is the riel, however there are so many of them to one US dollar that they’re used as small change only. Think of them as the cents to the dollar or the pennies to the pound. As mentioned in the last post, that’s why you can’t have too many dollars in your pocket, because that’s what’s used here. Visit the cash machine and dollars are what you get.

Phnom Penh

The first thing that hit us as we got to solid ground was, bizarrely, how much we got hounded by the locals to take their tuk-tuk. For a second in our dazed and confused states, we thought we were back in India. At one point, we had three men literally follow us down the road, demanding us to use their service.

Unfortunately, here, I have no tips. It’s one of those things you have to put up with as we did in India. At one point I did turn around and sternly tell them all to leave us alone (without swearing—I impressed myself), and while two of them finally got the hint, that left the third to realise he had no competition and, inevitably, we used him to get to our hostel.

Perhaps it was because we were expecting the place to be a cheap location that we ultimately found it very expensive. What’s more, when going out on our first night in Phnom Penh and ending up, totally unwittingly, in “a bar targeted at men” and being surrounded by girls who wouldn’t leave us alone (not just me, but my other half, too), it didn’t add anything good to our impression of the place. Fortunately, on this particular night and after seeing some questionable shenanigans, we met other travellers who’d made the same mistake we had, and in force we left. We all ended up in one of the city’s premier nightclubs.

Expensive? Very. But you gotta have some fun, right?

Quickly deciding that Phnom Penh just wasn’t for us, we booked ourselves a bus to Siem Reap, but before we went we visited the Killing Fields. This, like the war museum in Vietnam, is the kind of place you don’t want to go to, but it’s important that you do. Without launching off into a history lesson, the Killing Fields is the name given to a collection of locations where civilians were brutally executed in their hundreds and thousands under the dictatorship of Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge. Latest figures have the number of those killed to over 1,300,000. It was genocide, and it happened only comparatively recently.

Unfortunately, what makes the experience even worse happens when you leave, getting back into your tuk-tuk. Here the driver will likely offer to take you to a shooting range to have some “fun” firing guns. It’s wrong on so many levels, and worse still is that there is a demand for it.

Eating A Spider

A quick snack (in this case deep fried tarantula) on the way to Siem Reap, Cambodia.

Siem Reap

After a bus ride that took most of the day, we arrived in Siem Reap in total darkness. I think most if not all buses drop passengers of at a small station, which late in the black of night can be a bit daunting. Fortunately the hostel we’d booked the day before included a pick-up, and I certainly recommend this if you can find it. It made life a lot easier after a long journey.

Located in the north west of the country, Siem Reap was, in a word, fantastic. In such contrast to the expensive, hectic, unfriendly Phnom Penh, this place was chilled to the max.

Don’t worry, there’s still fun to be had, in fact there’s a street specifically for it called “Pub Street” (no, I’m not joking). The great thing about it is that it is just the one street. Everywhere else is simply chilled out.

The bulk of the bars and shops are in a triangular formation in the town centre. Stay anywhere just on the outskirts of this and you can’t go far wrong.

We actually ended up staying there for a week (after planning for two, maybe three days). So much cheaper than the capital, it’s not paradise, but for a traveller it is pretty special. Outside the aforementioned triangle there are no street lights, so you’ll likely be walking back to your hostel in the dark of night, your way lit only by the passing scooters and cars. There’s plenty of them so don’t worry, but it makes for a slightly eerie (and awesome) experience.

Famous Angkor Wat Tree

A famous and familiar sight of a tree growing out, in, through and over a temple in Angkor Wat.

The big thing to do in Siem Reap is to go and see the Angkor Wat. This is a vast site of temples, spread out over many square miles. If you’re on a budget then you’ll only want to do one day. You can drive around (either by tuk-tuk, your own car or scooter or even bicycle) for free and stand outside the temples, but if you want to go into even just one of them you need to get yourself a pass. These come in the form of 1-, 3- or 7-day passes.

Your hostel will undoubtedly be able to sell you a deal if you want to go around by tuk-tuk, but as always shop around. There are bus tours, too, but I recommend staying away from them if you only do the one day as you won’t be able to dictate which temples you see. In a tuk-tuk, though, you tell the driver which one’s you want to go to and in which order if you really want. This is great as there are absolutely loads of temples, and you might want to spend more time in a bigger one than see a smaller one (a lot of them are simply ruins of outer walls and, to be honest, will be visited only by the most avid of temple-seekers or purists).

My last tip for Siem Reap is a bit of a plug. I love mini-golf (aka crazy golf), and there’s a good little course just outside the city limits. It’s called Angkor Wat Putt and it’s worth the trip and small price for a little bit of fun, putting balls through replicas of temples. Plus, get a hole in one and get a free beer. Oh, yeah (no, I didn’t).

And while I’m at it, I may as plug the hostel we stayed in, too: Angkor Wonder. It’s no 5-star resort but it’s a great family owned and run place where you actually do feel at home.

Onward Travel

With our time coming to an end, it was time to leave the chilled out Siem Reap and head back into Thailand for the final leg of our South East Asia tour. Timing by this point was essential. We had a certain amount of days to do specific things, get to specific places for Christmas, and get it all done on a very small and specific budget.

Would we make it? Would we have a desert island Christmas like we wanted?

Find out along with more opinions and tips in the next and final instalment of the Asia Travel Diary.

The Happy Couple

Mr and Mrs Indiana Jones?

The Unmagical Magical Childhood

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Knight Rider

Oh, the memories!

Even then I was a perfectionist. It may have been where it first began, but I doubt it. I probably came out of the womb scowling at the doctor because that round metal thing he wore on a strap around his head was wonky. And before you question it, of course he had one of those round metal things. All doctors do. Don’t you watch 80′s television?

So when I opened a particular boxed-shaped present one Christmas in my very early youth to reveal a three-foot long model replica of the truck from Knight Rider, containing inside it a model replica of Kitt, I was overjoyed.

Kind of.

I wasn’t at all, actually. I was a brat and I could quite clearly see that this imposter was not a model replica of the truck and car from Knight Rider, but a model car carrier with a model corvette… in black.

I seriously questioned my parent’s intelligence that Christmas, for they insisted it was what I knew it wasn’t.

Thank your chosen deity that I had, like most children, an imagination. My mind turned that pretender into what I wanted, and the truck and car became prized toys. But I think back now and I compare those days with the present. I’m wiser (I certainly hope). Every TV show has licensed merchandise and back then it was no different. Yeah, there was less merchandise but let’s be fair, there were a lot less shows… which was a good thing.

I think back to that toy in particular. I think my parents probably told me that no replica existed, that it was the closest thing there was. That probably wasn’t true. I know now that a lot of wool was pulled over these eyes of mine in days gone by. But while this realisation takes away, to some extent, the magic of childhood, realising what your parents went through and how they struggled is very sobering and, for me, makes me appreciate my childhood that little bit more.

I don’t invest much time in reflection, it paves the way for things like regret. But every now and then it happens, and reflecting on you childhood, thinking of all those times that you hated your parents for things they didn’t give you or didn’t do for you, can be really rather heartwarming.

Putting yourself in other people’s shoes is something I advocate, and to put yourself in your own parents shoes and seeing the young you through their eyes I think is a very humble thing indeed. They had it tough, yet still bent over backwards to try and make me feel like the only person in the world.

I don’t have any children but others in my family do, and I can now look at things through both their child eyes and my adult eyes, and compare what they see to what I see. And it’s amazing, because you realise what they see is this sparkle-coated world, making everything ten times more interesting.

I wonder what age the sparkles start to fade, and I wonder what state the world would be in if they didn’t.

 

Asia Travel Diary – Vietnam (Part Two)

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Bike View

The view from a bike on the way back from the beach.

It turned out we spent more time in Vietnam than we originally anticipated (as I discovered writing this post and requiring to split it in two). But after the delights of Ha Long Bay and the crazy communism of Hanoi, we headed south down the coast—Vietnam being the elongated country it is there really isn’t much choice in the matter.

After a quick stop back in Hanoi (primarily to have another Ban Me—a baguette filled with all kinds of meats, street food at its finest), we took a sleeper bus to Hoi An (and yes, I ended up confusing the two names the entire time). Here we actually did a little planning and determined before buying the ticket which places we wanted to stop at down the coast. This way you can get a better deal and there’s plenty of buses that provide what is essentially a hop-on-hop-off service. You’re not restricted to when you stay or go, all you have to do is inform the operator (normally) the day before you want to travel to your next stop.

The best thing about sleeper buses in Vietnam, though, is they’re actually sleeper buses. You get beds, not seats. Be warned though, there’s pros and cons to every seat. Here’s a good site I found that discusses these pros and cons in alarming detail.

Hoi An

The River in Hoi An

The river in Hoi An in the evening.

Hoi An turned out to be one of my favourite places in Vietnam. It left a lot of the in-your-face communism behind and it was actually, for me, a very chilled out place. Yes, it was geared up for tourism, but it was geared up for it in a nice way. It’s a small place and you’ll want to spend most of your time near the river where the shops and restaurants are best (remember to cross the river for a couple of hidden gems including our recommendation: “Wrap & Roll”). There are a few bars which open until the early hours for the younger backpackers (they have a definite 18-30 vibe about them), and they do tend to get a bit messy (which may be your thing but not ours).

There are also two fabulous beaches which you can get to by bicycle. Push-bikes can be rented for dirt cheap (and probably from your hostel), much cheaper than a taxi, and it gives you a chance for yet another experience, seeing a place a different way. Bikes can be a little, um, shoddy, but that’s all part of the fun. Be warned though, if you’re not too confident on bikes in traffic, avoid the rush hours at all costs.

Nha Trang

Next we went down to Nha Trang and upon entering my better half and I looked puzzlingly out of the window. We were stumped. Every shop and hotel had its name written first in Russian. English and even Vietnamese seemed to be an after-thought and we wondered if our bus had slipped through a wormhole while we were sleeping.

It turns out that there are cheap flights from Moscow to Nha Trang, and over the period of only a few years the southern coastline of Vietnam (and even Pattaya in Thailand) has been turned, essentially, into “Russia with beaches”. It’s important to note here that I have nothing against Russians and I look forward to the day I finally visit their beautiful land, but that’s just the point—I hadn’t visited Russia yet and so I was confused as to why I felt like I was already there.

The place appeared to be taken over by Vodka-drinkers, but of course it’s not them that are doing the taking. In order to make the most of the influx of Russian holidaymakers, anyone in Nha Trang with a tourism-based business has targeted and honed their venture to accommodate them. Locals don’t speak pigeon-English, but pigeon-Russian.

What we found to have happened is that there was anger brewing within the community. All the shops have to compete so it only takes one to cater for the Russians for the rest to follow suit so that they don’t miss out. Thus they feel forced into it.

As for the Russians, from what we saw this adaptation of culture wasn’t doing them any favours either, because they felt they were in their own country and as such acted that way. What I mean here is that they had no regard for Vietnamese culture or tradition and expected things to be done like they would be back home. Whether it’s simply their culture or not, according to some locals we spoke to they’re not the most polite of people.

All in all it was not a great experience. Nha Trang was my least favourite in Vietnam by a mile. We couldn’t wait to get out of there. However, just before we did, we went to the one thing that might make you grin and bear the town: the Vin Pearl resort. This is first and foremost a water park with a hotel resort and small amusement park all rolled into one on a small island linked to the mainland by a cable car. The good news is that though it’s expensive (even by Western standards), you can take a day trip there which is far more agreeable to the wallet. Don’t go for the amusement park, though, do it for the water park. It’s the best I’ve ever been to and I’m told it’s up there on the world chart.

Saigon

You may know it as Ho Chi Minh City, and indeed it is officially called that, but it’s only called that in respect of Ho Chi Minh who was the late president and founder in no small part of Vietnam’s modern principles. The south never cared much for his ways, and so I see the renaming of the city in his honour as a two fingers up to the southerners. I don’t like that sort of behaviour and as such I prefer to call it by its traditional name, Saigon.

Saigon has many things to do and places to see, but if you can stomach it the War Museum should be at the top of your list. The reason being is because of another one of my little travel tips, and that’s to respect the country you visit. That includes learning about it and its culture. The harrowing events of the Vietnam War are hard to hear about let alone visually experience, but that’s what you get in the War Museum and it’s important to know what these people have been through, and are still going through.

The Mekong Delta

Mekong Delta

Cruising up the Mekong Delta

It would be very easy to simply get a bus across the border into Cambodia, but that’s just not the travelling way when there’s a an alternative that can expose you to more culture. For this reason we decided to do a two day one night trip over the Mekong Delta, a vast network of rivers that helps form the border between the two countries.

This was, yet again, booked through our hostel literally the day before we left, but if you want to do this shop around and make sure you get a deal where you do what you want to do and do it comfortably. Most of our trip was spent travelling, with short stops here and there to see things like a floating market or locals making traditional Vietnamese snacks. I loved it and yet again got to see more of the culture, but be prepared to be sitting down for a long time. Oh, and if you get the one where you stay a night on a floating hotel, a heads-up: it’s not floating, it’s built into the water.

Onward Travel

Crossing the border into Cambodia was part of our Mekong Delta trip, and it’s certainly cool to be able to say you crossed a border by boat. Again, be prepared. There are no ATM’s at the border (at least not when you cross it this way) and so make sure you have dollars on you. You can’t have too much because the US $ is legal tender in Cambodia, and if you find at the border you’ve overstayed your welcome even by one day, you’ll be glad you have those extra bills on you.

Once we got our passports stamped we boarded a fast boat (I recommend this for a $10 upgrade fee from the slow boat) and sped up the river to Cambodia’s capital, Phnom Penh.

Asia Travel Diary – Vietnam (Part One)

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Temple of Literature in Ha Noi

Incense sticks burning in the Temple of Literature

We’d established that the road (there is no train) from Laos over the border into Vietnam is one not to be taken lightly. If you’re the gambling kind you’d be spoilt for choice; will you break down on the way? How many times? Will you be able to sleep?

Will you make it without blowing chunks?

Needless to say the first of Vietnam’s soil we touched was in Ha Noi’s airport. To get there by plane from a neighbouring country, check the local agencies of wherever you are to see if they have any good deals, but don’t say yes until you’ve checked the internet.

As far as VISA tips go, the only way you’re gonna get in is if you already have it. You can pay for one to pick up from the airport (VISA on arrival), but this still requires pre-planning. If you haven’t got it yet look at your options for where you are, for example if you’re in Bangkok you can get a speedy one-day express service for your VISA from the Vietnam Embassy. Be warned, it isn’t cheap (2700 baht) and you must get there early in the morning (08:30 – 11:30) to pick it up in the afternoon (13:30 – 16:30).

Ha Noi

First, a little history of my travel companion; my better half. She’s Australian—she grew up there, she ends all her sentences like they’re questions even when they’re not, she abbreviates every word in the English language and she thinks she’s awesome (okay, so she is awesome, but for jumping joey’s sake don’t tell her that). But her background is Vietnamese, and while I was looking at a city for the first time, she was recognising streets and landmarks. She’s fluent in the language, too, and that was especially useful for me and my first impressions of the capital.

As it happened I was reading “1984″ by George Orwell at the time and it was quite the coincidence. Billboards and banners covered the city with party slogans, a popular one saying “The voice of the party is the voice of the nation”. In no small thanks to my own personal translator, it was the first time I’d ever visited a communist country and really felt it.

I also got to see a side that most travellers wouldn’t as I had the privilege of meeting my partner’s family. They spoke no word of English and my beloved had the arduous task of translating, but I still learnt a lot from the experience. Being the only westerner her family’s neighbours had seen, especially within their community, I had no end of curious stares, but I got to try some intriguing local cuisine (half-fertilised eggs, anyone?) and gleemed traditional local life where the rich rub shoulders with the poor and the community spirit is everything.

Ho Chi Minh's Tomb in Ha Noi

Ho Chi Minh’s tomb

Getting back to the city, though, and one of the must-do things is visit Ho Chi Minh’s tomb. For those who don’t know who he is read this, for those who do some of you may wonder why you’d want to go. Truth is that as a visitor you’ll get something totally different from the experience than a native, who’ll go almost like a form of worship. Those in the north of the country really do revere him so. But you as a visitor will want to go just because it’s a bit freaky and creepy, for the president—dead now for almost 45 years—is preserved and lies in a glass grave for all to see.

The biggest tip I can give, however, regards something so simple as crossing the road. Don’t.

The first thing that will astonish you in Ha Noi is the sheer volume of motorcycles on the road. Streets are more like rivers, the thousands of scooters the free-flowing water. Oh, you’ll wish there were bridges. Traffic lights and especially zebra-crossings mean absolutely nothing to the locals and you literally have to make a well-judged march across what can sometimes be four or even six lanes of flowing traffic. The good thing, though, is that speeding is not a problem, traffic goes relatively slowly.

My tip, then, is to treat the traffic like a pack of wild animals and don’t show fear. Simply walk out slowly, aim for the gaps and let the scooters do the work of going round you. Whatever you do don’t make any sudden movements or try to rush across. The first time, you might actually want to wait for a local and just watch, no, marvel at how they sail across unflinchingly. Give it a few days and you’ll be a pro, too.

Ha Long Bay

Yet again we got a good deal for this tourist hotspot through the hostel at which we stayed in Ha Noi (“Little Hanoi Hostel” and we fully recommend it). We did a two-night trip, spending the first night on a boat and the second on Cat Ba Island. It was a fantastic little trip, doing a bit of walking, canoeing and enjoying some first class food.

Ha Long Bay in Vietnam

One of many islets of Ha Long Bay

We also visited an island known as “Monkey Island” (because, well, it has monkeys on it). There are, however, many “Monkey Islands” around and off the Asian coasts and I can only assume the same advice can be given for all of them, which is be careful. Don’t bring food or drink with you and if you bring your camera, phone or anything else you’d rather not lose, keep it safe in a bag securely on your back or gripped tightly in your hand.

Bits and pieces are fanciful to the monkeys, but if you keep a close eye on them you should be fine. Food and drink, on the other hand, are things the monkeys will do anything for and they won’t stop until they have it. They are so used to humans they have no fear and will climb on you and even bite and scratch you to get to that bag of crisps or take that can of soda.

Apparently if you walk around with a large rock in your hand or a big stick they get the idea and won’t come near you. But if you’re going to do this you have to promise yourself you won’t actually use what’s in your hand—it is only supposed to be a deterrent.

Cat Ba Island in Vietnam

The view from a peak on Cat Ba Island

And my last tip for Ha Long Bay is one I keep droning on about, but for a good reason. If you can, take as little as you can with you. It’s a two day trip and you won’t need most of your backpack, so—and especially if you’ve booked through them—leave your big pack at the hostel for a couple of days and make life a lot easier for yourself with a small pack. Just make sure you have sun cream and a swim suit. For the forgetful there are a few shops at the port, but they are small and sell only essentials.

After monkeying around and taking in some amazing views of the some 2,000 islets (small islands) of Ha Long Bay, we headed back to the mainland to continue our southward journey.