When we finished our 5 day visit of Van Vieng, my travel mates Barny and Mills wanted to go to 4000 Islands in southern Laos. I decided at this point I wanted to head back to Bangkok to relax for the final few days. I couldn't handle another 12 hour bus journey and I much preferred to take the train back as there was no train towards 4000 Island.
When my mates return to Bangkok I was filled in on the journey from hell. When Mills left Van Vieng, he took a Malaria tablet and on an empty stomach. Apparently this is not advised. To cut a long story short, as Barny and Mills were in the mini bus on a 6 hour journey to the next change over, Mills decided he needed to fart, so to be clever, squeezed a silent one out only to his horror had realised he had promptly shat himself.
As the mini bus was plodding along, there was a very loud shout of the following 'STOP THE BUS!' As the bus slowed down and pulled over, mills leaped out faster than Usain Bolt could have done. As he was disembarking the vehicle, diarrhoea was pouring down his legs and then he stepped out of a mini bus in full view of everyone that he just met. He promptly dropped trou right in front of the group and the whole world apparently had just fallen out of his arse. Mills is a big fella who eats his fair share! Barny was apparently wetting himself with laughter. A few minutes had passed and things settled down, order was restored by a change of clothes and underwear. A nice German girl offered Mills a diarrhoea tablet which he duly accepted. Barnys laughter had soon warn off as the realisation that the bus ponged of foul smelling s**t which was all over the carpets and some of the seats. It was cleaned up as best could but the smell of s**t was still very evident for the next 3 and half hours of the journey in the mini bus with no air-con! As Barny says, one of the worst Journeys he has ever been on.
Monday, 19 November 2012
Laos and Van Vieng Tubing Backpacking Blog
From North Thailand, we were ushered onto another train to Vientiane which is the capital of Laos. It seemed like an age waiting at the train station somewhere outside Vientiane sorting out Visas etc. I remember being annoyed having to pay more than the ozzies simply for entering their country. Just bloody let us in! I'm not sure why the train doesn't go directly to the capital. Being the capital, you would thought it would have a train station but being Laos, things happened differently.
We had to get a taxi into the capital and they always quote you a ridiculous price so you spend about 10 minutes negotiating. The good thing is, there's usually only a couple of them and a group of about 10 of you. Having just entered the country and now on Laos money, we found it a little strange and difficult to convert the exchange in your head, you can quickly become a millionaire by simply exchanging 100GBP or so.
Once in the centre we had to wait for a bus to Van Vieng. Of course it left about an hour later than promised and made a few extra stops to squish as many more people in as possible. After collecting all the other tourists in the van, it turns out we all paid different prices for the same journey. The journey is not for the faint hearted. The roads are of a very poor standard with pot holes and cracks everywhere. The bus often has to slow down for very large creators and go over them at an angle to stop the suspension from breaking. The last hour of the journey is made up of mud tracks. As back seat passenger, I watched nervously as the driver overtakes about 100 Mopeds and lorries.
Vang Vieng is a fairly small town that consists of several long streets. With a beautiful river and massive limestone mountains surrounding the town, it is a pretty place.
But like many tourist hubs, it’s charm has been squashed a little by the massive influx of young party goers invading the town to sleep in cheap hotels, partying and of course for the tubing. We were in that bracket of course, we didn't got to Van Vieng just to sunbathe!
Vang Vieng is most known for tubing. I had heard lots of thing from my mate Mills who with us and he had been passed on many good stories about it. On the first day we decided to chill out and not go tubing and instead we had a meal in one of the many restaurants followed by several drinks. We decided it was best to wait for the next day so we would get a full days tubing in. We were going to be there for 5 days so there was really no rush.
The next day, we went to rent a tube from the rental place, there is only one tubing rental place in town. We then piled into a tuktuk with our tube and get dropped off a few kilometres upstream, and join into the Nam Song River. When you get dropped off, there is immediately two very loud bars which are probably the best two on the river, so its best not to jump straight into your tube and head down the river. Booze is cheap and readily available but it really is sensible not to get too drunk and be very be conscious of your surroundings as best you can. It is very easy to fall off the high rise platforms on the bar platforms which have no safety barriers. If you fall off you land onto rocks and I'm sure loads of have been killed this way. The high rise rope swings and slides are also another danger if you dont jump at the correct point. You hear of plenty of accidents and deaths on the river so take my advice! If you go to the river just to drink, I would stick the first two bars and avoid the river altogether and get a Tuk Tuk back to Van Vieng.
As you go down the river, there are more bars and each bar will try and chuck a rope out to you and try and lure you in to spend money. Each bar has loud music, some with themes and if you go to the tubing more than one day, your hear the same songs being played. Buffalo Soldier being one of my favourites in the Reggae Bar.
After the tubing and all the partying, we headed back to town where there is ample eateries, bars and chill out places where you can wind down. However, we were there for 5 nights and we went out pretty much every night. All the bars are really friendly and its easy to get chatting to other backpackers. They have tables in most of the bars where beer pong is very popular and competitive amongst all the backpackers
In general I don't think Laos food is no where near as nice as Thailand but you will find some good restaurants among the busy streets. I cant really comment on the rest of Laos as we didn't see much else of it but coming home for my 2 other friends was a real drama. If you are the squeamish sort, its probably best not read the next my blog post
We had to get a taxi into the capital and they always quote you a ridiculous price so you spend about 10 minutes negotiating. The good thing is, there's usually only a couple of them and a group of about 10 of you. Having just entered the country and now on Laos money, we found it a little strange and difficult to convert the exchange in your head, you can quickly become a millionaire by simply exchanging 100GBP or so.
Once in the centre we had to wait for a bus to Van Vieng. Of course it left about an hour later than promised and made a few extra stops to squish as many more people in as possible. After collecting all the other tourists in the van, it turns out we all paid different prices for the same journey. The journey is not for the faint hearted. The roads are of a very poor standard with pot holes and cracks everywhere. The bus often has to slow down for very large creators and go over them at an angle to stop the suspension from breaking. The last hour of the journey is made up of mud tracks. As back seat passenger, I watched nervously as the driver overtakes about 100 Mopeds and lorries.
Vang Vieng is a fairly small town that consists of several long streets. With a beautiful river and massive limestone mountains surrounding the town, it is a pretty place.
But like many tourist hubs, it’s charm has been squashed a little by the massive influx of young party goers invading the town to sleep in cheap hotels, partying and of course for the tubing. We were in that bracket of course, we didn't got to Van Vieng just to sunbathe!
Vang Vieng is most known for tubing. I had heard lots of thing from my mate Mills who with us and he had been passed on many good stories about it. On the first day we decided to chill out and not go tubing and instead we had a meal in one of the many restaurants followed by several drinks. We decided it was best to wait for the next day so we would get a full days tubing in. We were going to be there for 5 days so there was really no rush.
The next day, we went to rent a tube from the rental place, there is only one tubing rental place in town. We then piled into a tuktuk with our tube and get dropped off a few kilometres upstream, and join into the Nam Song River. When you get dropped off, there is immediately two very loud bars which are probably the best two on the river, so its best not to jump straight into your tube and head down the river. Booze is cheap and readily available but it really is sensible not to get too drunk and be very be conscious of your surroundings as best you can. It is very easy to fall off the high rise platforms on the bar platforms which have no safety barriers. If you fall off you land onto rocks and I'm sure loads of have been killed this way. The high rise rope swings and slides are also another danger if you dont jump at the correct point. You hear of plenty of accidents and deaths on the river so take my advice! If you go to the river just to drink, I would stick the first two bars and avoid the river altogether and get a Tuk Tuk back to Van Vieng.
As you go down the river, there are more bars and each bar will try and chuck a rope out to you and try and lure you in to spend money. Each bar has loud music, some with themes and if you go to the tubing more than one day, your hear the same songs being played. Buffalo Soldier being one of my favourites in the Reggae Bar.
After the tubing and all the partying, we headed back to town where there is ample eateries, bars and chill out places where you can wind down. However, we were there for 5 nights and we went out pretty much every night. All the bars are really friendly and its easy to get chatting to other backpackers. They have tables in most of the bars where beer pong is very popular and competitive amongst all the backpackers
In general I don't think Laos food is no where near as nice as Thailand but you will find some good restaurants among the busy streets. I cant really comment on the rest of Laos as we didn't see much else of it but coming home for my 2 other friends was a real drama. If you are the squeamish sort, its probably best not read the next my blog post
Saturday, 17 November 2012
Thailand & Koh Pangan Full Moon Backpacking Blog
A group of 3 of us went on a 3 week adventure around Thailand and Laos. It was a whistle stop tour of both countries. Unfortunately our travels are restricted to our holiday time available from work.
We still had an amazing time and we found both countries to be an amazing experience. We started on Boxing day I met up with a couple of mates at Heathrow. We flew to Thailand to Bangkok via Beijing. We had a quick look around Beijing as we had about 5 hours to kill but we found the place to be cold and a bit depressing really. Wouldn't recommend it but if we had more time, I may have changed my opinion. I can imagine Beijing being a lot nicer in the summer.
We got a taxi to hotel our hotel from the air pot which took about half an hour. It was in the middle of the night which enabled the driver to drive about 100mph so we told him to slow down. We arrived at our hotel in Khaosan Road which is a very touristy street in central Bangkok. We arrived about 2am and the place was really buzzing. We stayed at the D&D Inn hotel which was adequate and had plenty of facitlities including a roof top bar and swimming pool with good views of the city. On Khaosan Road, there is a really diverse range of travellers from old men from Western Europe looking for there next wife to young Americans/ Australians, Chinese, many Europeans along with plenty of Brits. The street is a good first port of call for any traveller due the wide range of hotels, bars, restaurants and souvenirs. The bad points are that you will be hassled many times to buy a suits, lady boys, tuk tuks, ping pong shows and everything under the sun!
We had 1 night in Bangkok before leaving to go South. We had bought our train tickets back in the UK as train tickets can sell out in Thailand (buy here), especially around the time of the New years eve Full moon Party. We got the train around 4pm and we had something to eat before the guards came round about 8pm to put the sleeper beds up. The beds are comfortable and clean but the sleep wasn't great, the journey lasted around 12 hours but I woke about 6 times in the night. Even though the trains travel fairly slow in Thailand, the state of tracks are poor and some parts of the journey are very bumpy.
We got to Surat Thani around 5am as the journey was delayed at some point. We were exhausted and had to get a short bus journey to the ferry port where we were getting the train to Koh Pangan. We boarded the ferry which took about an hour to get to the Island. We had a few days before new years eve to relax and chil although we decided to head to Haad Rin on our first night which is one of the main towns on the island and where the famous full moon parties are. We stayed at a lovely resort on the north of the island called Serenity Residence, the food was amazing wherever we went in Thailand but especially at the hotel we were staying in. It was a small family run hotel but they catered for our every needs. Our room was meters from the beach with sea views from the balcony.
We had a great time on New years eve, we headed down in a taxi from the resort and we met some other revellers who we actually ended up staying with. We met a great funny guy from Brazil who spent the rest of the evening with us. We decided to dress up in traditional face paints and colourful head bands. In the picture below, my arm reads 'Mr Happy Ending' . We got down to Haad Rin very early as we had heard the roads can get jammed up by taxis and many people ending up missing out on the full moon party. We arrived around 6pm for dinner and it was a totally amazing night. My memories are fairly vague but the Thai red bull sends you crazy (which is actually banned in the UK). In fact its so strong that I ended up drinking not as much I usually would on New Years as it gives you a great buzz. The buckets (drinks) are really cheap where you basically can purchase from about 100 booths and shops. You can negotiate with some if your in a group so always start the bidding low!. The good thing about the buckets is that you get to poor your own drink as you get a bottle of vodka or whisky with a choice of lemonade/coke and customary red bull. I think it works out about £3 per bucket and trust me, you don't need more than 2 unless you are a very hard core drinker, in which case you may manage 3. The beach's are packed with 1000's of people, I didn't see any fights/troubles/drugs or anything that made me feel unsafe. Just go easy with the drink and you wont have any problems.
After New Years eve we spent the next couple of days chilling out. We went to book our train journey back as we didn't pre-book tickets. What a mistake that was! So our only option was a gruelling 13 hour bus journey back to Bangkok. The coach was a good laugh for the first couple of hours as we had decided to sit down stairs with a group of people we met on the ferry coming back from Koh Pangan. Downstairs had a large communal table in the middle with long bench style chairs. We thought, great we had the VIP party section which we made a concerted effect to get. Most of bus was on the top deck with reclining chairs. So after the novelty had worn off we tried to sleep which was nye on impossible. We realised by this time we had definitely made a massive mistake and we ended up sleeping on top of each other, and at times taking turns to lie down. We arrived in Bangkok with severe sleep deprivation and we then found a hotel and went straight to bed!
Our next destination was Laos. We had to spend an extra night in Bangkok as the trains were full again but we managed to get trains tickets the following day to North Thailand and Laos. See next blog post for Laos backpacking trip
We still had an amazing time and we found both countries to be an amazing experience. We started on Boxing day I met up with a couple of mates at Heathrow. We flew to Thailand to Bangkok via Beijing. We had a quick look around Beijing as we had about 5 hours to kill but we found the place to be cold and a bit depressing really. Wouldn't recommend it but if we had more time, I may have changed my opinion. I can imagine Beijing being a lot nicer in the summer.
We got a taxi to hotel our hotel from the air pot which took about half an hour. It was in the middle of the night which enabled the driver to drive about 100mph so we told him to slow down. We arrived at our hotel in Khaosan Road which is a very touristy street in central Bangkok. We arrived about 2am and the place was really buzzing. We stayed at the D&D Inn hotel which was adequate and had plenty of facitlities including a roof top bar and swimming pool with good views of the city. On Khaosan Road, there is a really diverse range of travellers from old men from Western Europe looking for there next wife to young Americans/ Australians, Chinese, many Europeans along with plenty of Brits. The street is a good first port of call for any traveller due the wide range of hotels, bars, restaurants and souvenirs. The bad points are that you will be hassled many times to buy a suits, lady boys, tuk tuks, ping pong shows and everything under the sun!
We had 1 night in Bangkok before leaving to go South. We had bought our train tickets back in the UK as train tickets can sell out in Thailand (buy here), especially around the time of the New years eve Full moon Party. We got the train around 4pm and we had something to eat before the guards came round about 8pm to put the sleeper beds up. The beds are comfortable and clean but the sleep wasn't great, the journey lasted around 12 hours but I woke about 6 times in the night. Even though the trains travel fairly slow in Thailand, the state of tracks are poor and some parts of the journey are very bumpy.
We got to Surat Thani around 5am as the journey was delayed at some point. We were exhausted and had to get a short bus journey to the ferry port where we were getting the train to Koh Pangan. We boarded the ferry which took about an hour to get to the Island. We had a few days before new years eve to relax and chil although we decided to head to Haad Rin on our first night which is one of the main towns on the island and where the famous full moon parties are. We stayed at a lovely resort on the north of the island called Serenity Residence, the food was amazing wherever we went in Thailand but especially at the hotel we were staying in. It was a small family run hotel but they catered for our every needs. Our room was meters from the beach with sea views from the balcony.
We had a great time on New years eve, we headed down in a taxi from the resort and we met some other revellers who we actually ended up staying with. We met a great funny guy from Brazil who spent the rest of the evening with us. We decided to dress up in traditional face paints and colourful head bands. In the picture below, my arm reads 'Mr Happy Ending' . We got down to Haad Rin very early as we had heard the roads can get jammed up by taxis and many people ending up missing out on the full moon party. We arrived around 6pm for dinner and it was a totally amazing night. My memories are fairly vague but the Thai red bull sends you crazy (which is actually banned in the UK). In fact its so strong that I ended up drinking not as much I usually would on New Years as it gives you a great buzz. The buckets (drinks) are really cheap where you basically can purchase from about 100 booths and shops. You can negotiate with some if your in a group so always start the bidding low!. The good thing about the buckets is that you get to poor your own drink as you get a bottle of vodka or whisky with a choice of lemonade/coke and customary red bull. I think it works out about £3 per bucket and trust me, you don't need more than 2 unless you are a very hard core drinker, in which case you may manage 3. The beach's are packed with 1000's of people, I didn't see any fights/troubles/drugs or anything that made me feel unsafe. Just go easy with the drink and you wont have any problems.
NYE - Koh Pangan 6pm
2 days before NYE
After New Years eve we spent the next couple of days chilling out. We went to book our train journey back as we didn't pre-book tickets. What a mistake that was! So our only option was a gruelling 13 hour bus journey back to Bangkok. The coach was a good laugh for the first couple of hours as we had decided to sit down stairs with a group of people we met on the ferry coming back from Koh Pangan. Downstairs had a large communal table in the middle with long bench style chairs. We thought, great we had the VIP party section which we made a concerted effect to get. Most of bus was on the top deck with reclining chairs. So after the novelty had worn off we tried to sleep which was nye on impossible. We realised by this time we had definitely made a massive mistake and we ended up sleeping on top of each other, and at times taking turns to lie down. We arrived in Bangkok with severe sleep deprivation and we then found a hotel and went straight to bed!
Our next destination was Laos. We had to spend an extra night in Bangkok as the trains were full again but we managed to get trains tickets the following day to North Thailand and Laos. See next blog post for Laos backpacking trip
Thursday, 8 November 2012
Inter-Rail Trip Amsterdam-Berlin-Bratislavia-Prague
Me and friend from work (Ollie) decided to go on an inter-rail trip around some countries in Europe on the train. We flew from Bristol to Amsterdam where we stayed for a few days.
Amsterdam is very expensive and you can easily burn money on just living; accommodation, food and drink are all expensive. My mate Ollie tried some Cannabis in the afternoon on the first day, however he suffered a massive head ache which I think has put him off drugs for life! We stayed very near the red light district which is really a strange place, we had a good look around but taking part was not on our agenda. We stayed in a 6 bed mixed dorm with 2 girls from Bath, and 2 Israelis. One of the Israeli guys moved out on the 2nd night and an Ozzie girl moved in. We had a good look around Amsterdam including all the famous sites, its very easy to get lost, so take a map at all times.
The next day I had noitce the ozzie girl was waking up as me at the same time. I was on the top bunk about 3 meters away when I jumped off my bed to go and introduce myself. Unfortunately for me, I was wearing boxers and as I was jumping off the bed, my little member decided to unpack him self for everyone to see including the Ozzie girl who's eyes were just about to pop out of her sockets. Thankfully we were leaving that morning, so we packed our stuff and headed off to the train station to experience inter railing for the first time.
So our first train journey was to Berlin, the journey took about 5 hours and was pretty straight forward filling out train passes and getting a seat. We had found all the train times before we left England but the trains seem to go every hour anyhow and you dont need to pre-book. When we got to Berlin, we got a Taxi to to Wombats Hostel which we had also pre-booked. This hostel is one of the best hostels I have ever stayed in! Large rooms, clean, nice showers and a great bar on the top floor. We were meeting up with Mills the next day so we decided not to go out that evening, even though it was a Friday night! We also wanted to recover from Amsterdam. On the Saturday when Mills arrived we had a good look around Berlin by foot and by some bicycles we rented. We looked at some sites including the not so very fascinating Berlin Wall. We went out in the evening, me and Ollie took it fairly easy as we had a 10 hour train journey the next day but we had great fun and we met up with Calum who we had met when we were travelling in South East Asia. I don't think that would have happened if facebook wasn't invented! He was living in the city and he took us on a very long pub/bar crawl and we met some others in the hostel before and we dragged them along. Mills stayed out a little longer than us and I don't think he got in until 5am!.
The next day we took about 2 hours to trying to find a decent breakfast joint, it seems Germany does not do breakfast on a Sunday! Mills was extremely hungover and looked like he was about to through his guts up at any moment. We said farewell to Mills and me and Ollie headed off to the train station again.
We were really not looking forward to the next journey as it was an 11 hour mission down to Bratislava. Inter railing can involve long hard journeys at times! We spent 4 days in Brat, it is a really nice city and we were pleasantly surprised by the place. We were there during the week so the nightlife was very tame and we didn't stay out late any of the nights we were there. The woman are amazingly hot! that's one memory we have from Brat! We definitely have a bum deal living in the UK!. Not a fat person in site.
We then got another train journey up to Prague which took 4 hours, we stayed for 5 nights, the first night we got fairly drunk and went to a 5 story club called Karlovy Lázně which is most definitely worth a visit. The last 3 days was great fun as my then sisters fiance decided to have his stag in Prague and so we purposely re-arranged our schedule so we could be there at the same time. I don't really have any memories apart from drinking TBH!.
Another train back to Bratislava for a our flight home and we landed about midnight getting back to Dorset around 2am. I thoroughly recommend inter rail trips around Europe but I would suggest mixing up with flights if you can afford it.
Amsterdam is very expensive and you can easily burn money on just living; accommodation, food and drink are all expensive. My mate Ollie tried some Cannabis in the afternoon on the first day, however he suffered a massive head ache which I think has put him off drugs for life! We stayed very near the red light district which is really a strange place, we had a good look around but taking part was not on our agenda. We stayed in a 6 bed mixed dorm with 2 girls from Bath, and 2 Israelis. One of the Israeli guys moved out on the 2nd night and an Ozzie girl moved in. We had a good look around Amsterdam including all the famous sites, its very easy to get lost, so take a map at all times.
The next day I had noitce the ozzie girl was waking up as me at the same time. I was on the top bunk about 3 meters away when I jumped off my bed to go and introduce myself. Unfortunately for me, I was wearing boxers and as I was jumping off the bed, my little member decided to unpack him self for everyone to see including the Ozzie girl who's eyes were just about to pop out of her sockets. Thankfully we were leaving that morning, so we packed our stuff and headed off to the train station to experience inter railing for the first time.
So our first train journey was to Berlin, the journey took about 5 hours and was pretty straight forward filling out train passes and getting a seat. We had found all the train times before we left England but the trains seem to go every hour anyhow and you dont need to pre-book. When we got to Berlin, we got a Taxi to to Wombats Hostel which we had also pre-booked. This hostel is one of the best hostels I have ever stayed in! Large rooms, clean, nice showers and a great bar on the top floor. We were meeting up with Mills the next day so we decided not to go out that evening, even though it was a Friday night! We also wanted to recover from Amsterdam. On the Saturday when Mills arrived we had a good look around Berlin by foot and by some bicycles we rented. We looked at some sites including the not so very fascinating Berlin Wall. We went out in the evening, me and Ollie took it fairly easy as we had a 10 hour train journey the next day but we had great fun and we met up with Calum who we had met when we were travelling in South East Asia. I don't think that would have happened if facebook wasn't invented! He was living in the city and he took us on a very long pub/bar crawl and we met some others in the hostel before and we dragged them along. Mills stayed out a little longer than us and I don't think he got in until 5am!.
The next day we took about 2 hours to trying to find a decent breakfast joint, it seems Germany does not do breakfast on a Sunday! Mills was extremely hungover and looked like he was about to through his guts up at any moment. We said farewell to Mills and me and Ollie headed off to the train station again.
We were really not looking forward to the next journey as it was an 11 hour mission down to Bratislava. Inter railing can involve long hard journeys at times! We spent 4 days in Brat, it is a really nice city and we were pleasantly surprised by the place. We were there during the week so the nightlife was very tame and we didn't stay out late any of the nights we were there. The woman are amazingly hot! that's one memory we have from Brat! We definitely have a bum deal living in the UK!. Not a fat person in site.
We then got another train journey up to Prague which took 4 hours, we stayed for 5 nights, the first night we got fairly drunk and went to a 5 story club called Karlovy Lázně which is most definitely worth a visit. The last 3 days was great fun as my then sisters fiance decided to have his stag in Prague and so we purposely re-arranged our schedule so we could be there at the same time. I don't really have any memories apart from drinking TBH!.
Another train back to Bratislava for a our flight home and we landed about midnight getting back to Dorset around 2am. I thoroughly recommend inter rail trips around Europe but I would suggest mixing up with flights if you can afford it.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)