Hello party people,
I am gonna try my best to move through these rigs real quick so I can finish before I get back home. However, right now, at the speed I'm going it doesn't look like that's gonna happen! Oh well I shall try my best. At any rate, Brit and I are now in Costa Rica and are moving our way through Central America. The place is hella pricey so we'll probably only be here a minute before gettin to Nicaragua where it's cheaper.
So today I'm gonna write about Vietnam and Cambodia. I'm gonna combine the two so I don't gotta do two updates and because we ripped through the places pretty quick. Away we go!
After the long bus journey from Laos to Vietnam we ended up in a city called Vinh which was a diiiiiive. We weren't planning on staying there but were worried we might have too cause we couldn't really find a bus to where we wanted to go. We lurked around and luckily we found a couple buses that were headed to Hoi An overnight. Problem was we had no Vietnamese currency (which is named Dong...heheh). So Brit got sent out on the journey to find some while I waited and watched our bags. She was gone forever and I started to get worried someone had kidnapped her. After waiting for what seemed like hours she strolled back and let me know she had to search the entire city to find a bank machine. We had to wait some time for our bus and we thought it left without us at one point which led to me chasing it down the street only to find it was a different bus. We snagged the bus and cruised overnight to Hoi An.
Hoi An was a super nice place. Probably one of the most pleasant looking cities we have been to on our whole trip. Many of the streets are blocked out from cars and scooters so you can just walk leisurely around without horns blaring in your ear every 5 seconds. Everyone comes to the place to get clothes made cause there are custom tailors on every block. We found one and each got some stuff ordered up. Brit got some girly clothes like dresses and stuff and I got a slick suit measured up for myself. The stuff was super cheap compared to what you'd pay for a custom made suit back at home. I got all the fixin's too, I'll be looking super snazzy. Now I just gotta get invited to an event where wearing a suit is acceptable...We bummed around in Hoi An for awhile just cruising on a scooter going to beaches and checking out some temples and that kinda thing. After that place we caught our next bus down to Nha Trang.
Nha Trang was a bit more built up that Hoi An and the tourist thing to do seemed to be going diving. We weren't certified for diving at the time and really didn't have any plans to do anything like that till we got to Thailand and could do it for cheap. However, with all the dive shops around and tourists touting dive gear all over we were feeling like it was something we had to do. First though, we decided to check out the beach to see if we could just hang there while we were in town. We got there and found the beach was nice for lounging in the sun but not so nice for swimming. Also, all the places along the beach to eat and drink were quite pricey. We paid like 4 bucks each for shakes! Crazy in Asia. So we decided to look into the diving. When we did we found it was out of our price range since we weren´t certified. Instead we booked a snorkeling tour. The next day we went out on the boat and discovered we were the only two people snorkeling and everyone else was gonna be diving. It sucked cause they were all off having their own little talks and being in their secret cool club and Brit and I were totally forgot about. Everyone got suited up and the instructors barely even acknowledged we were there and didn´t even realize we had no snorkel gear. It seemed like we were a burden to them. Despite this we still had a good time and saw quite a bit of fish and coral. I´m glad we didn't pay to dive as the sites we went too didn't seem so good and the instructors were complaining about poor visibility. So yea we ended up having a good time and the dog at the dive shop was insanely big and we got to play with him so that was a plus. We spent a couple nights in Nha Trang and then caught an overnight bus to Mui Ne.
The bus was funny cause it was sold to us as an overnight trip so we got all settled into our seats/beds on the bus and drifted off into dream world expecting to wake up in the morning at our stop. This didn't happen though since we were woken up at about 2am and told we were at our stop. Everyone else on the bus was sound asleep and continuing on to Saigon. Only Brit and I got off in Mui Ne. The town was dead and not a thing was open. We didn't have any idea what we were gonna do but some guy came up and said he had a hotel we could stay at. We got there at like 3am and he said we could either pay for the night or wait till 8am and check in then for the following night. Since we are cheapo's we decided to wait till 8 which meant we had to sleep on the floor of reception in our sleeping bags till then. We got munched on by mosquitoes and had to hide under the covers till "morning."
Mui Ne was super nice and we kinda bunged up cause we only spent a couple days there when we coulda spent longer. We were in a rush to get to the islands in Thailand to lay on the beaches not realizing the beaches in Mui Ne were just as nice. While we were there we went to the fairy stream which ran down through some mountains and you could hike up and get covered in red mud. We also checked out the sand dunes there (weird that a desert is in Vietnam) and did some hiking. We didn't even go swimming on the nice beaches! We did however meet a cool German couple Natalie and Lukas. Lukas looked exactly like my friend Conner Wear. From Mui Ne we caught the bus down to Ho Chi Minh aka Saigon.
Saigon was a zoo. The city has millions of people in it and I am pretty sure every single one of those people drive a scooter without even knowing how. It was a risk every time we tried crossing the street! It was kinda cool getting there though cause it was a pretty modern place and quite built up compared to the other places we had been. We even enjoyed some Subway for dinner, tasty. We went out to the Cu Chi tunnels which is where the Vietcong hid out from the Americans during the war. Pretty wild place. They had tunnels underground all over the place and lived under there for long periods at a time. We got to go in some of them and it was so squished and hot in there I couldn't imagine living down there for longer than the 10 minutes I was under. They also showed us the traps they had setup during the war. Things such as pits full of spikes, holes with bamboo designed to rip your leg off or big blocks of wood with nails that dropped down if you tripped a wire. Didn't look like much fun. Brit and I also went to the shooting range there and got to unload a clip with an AK47. Some badass shit right thurr! We met up with the German couple again and he told us stories about his job as a penis doctor back at home. Some of the operations he had to do made me queasy. Fun stuff like batteries up the dick and people having some weird sex that resulted in broken dicks (didn't know that could actually happen but apparently they break right sideways...ooooooof). Since this made me a bit queasy I started feeling all light headed and weird and had to run to the bathroom. I got mad sick in there as usual and almost blacked out and fell into the toilet that had no seat on it. People kept trying to come in as well cause the door had no lock so I had to tell them not to while struggling to keep conscious. I guess I am not cut out to be a doctor for wieners.
After Saigon we burned into Cambodia. We got to the capital Phnom Penh (where I think I wrote one of my blog updates ha). The trip there was pretty heavy cause we were there to check out the killing fields. For those of you that don't know...a few years back (1970's) there was a guy named Pol Pot and his following known as the Khmer Rouge came to power in Cambodia. The guy had a skewed view of Communism and wanted the country to return to a communal type society that focused on agricultural labour rather than business, education and the things more associated with a Capitalist society. He went about this by killing off countless numbers of people in his own society. People who were deemed to be against his communist rule, which seemed to be everyone, were taken to these killing fields and either forced to work insane amounts or murdered and buried in mass graves. It seemed like no one was safe from him and his army. People with glasses, degrees, diplomas, worked in business or spoke out against his rule were all killed. Even the children of these people were killed so no one would be out for revenge later in life. The killing fields themselves were pretty wild to see and definitely made you feel weird. You could still see the big holes in the ground where people were buried and there were remains of people on display all around the grounds. Things like bits of clothes, bones, teeth and skulls were everywhere. Pretty intense stuff. Worst part of it all was that the Khmer Rouge and Pol Pot pretty much got away with it all. The dude lived till he was like 80 with grandchildren before he died a few years back. His trial just took waaaay to long. To offset this sad day that had me and Brit in a very downer mood our tuk-tuk driver thought it would be a good idea to take us to a shooting range where we could shoot guns and even blow up a cow with a bazooka if we wanted. We declined all those offers.
From Phnom Penh we hit the next highlight in Cambodia which is Siem Reap and the temples of Angkor Wat. Siem Reap itself was a cool town and obviously very built up due to all the tourism. There were markets, restaurants, shops and massage parlours everywhere. Brit and I got some massages one of which was a fish massage where you dunk your feet in a pool and the fish nibble on em to clean your toes. I couldn't handle it. It was just way too tickly for me. Brit was liking it though and enjoyed laughing at me with all the other massage girls. After that we got a real massage which was good except I had gas and the girl pushing on me kept squishing them out. So I was pretty much farting on my masseuse the whole time.
Angkor Wat was really good and much bigger than I expected it to be. I thought it was just a few temples to check out but it was like an entire city spread out with what seemed like hundreds of ancient ruin looking temples. We both enjoyed it as you can climb around on them and there are giant trees growing in and out of these huge rock buildings which makes it look like something outta Indiana Jones. The days were way to long though as we were pretty much all templed out by this point. After seeing countless temples in India, Nepal, China, Thailand, Laos, and Vietnam we just couldn't give Angkor Wat the time and appreciation it deserved. After two days of cruising all the temples there we grabbed a bus to Thailand, much to my arguing. I wanted to take a flight cause Thailand only gives ya a 15 day visa if you cross in by land and a 30 day one if you go by air. We were gonna be there longer than 30 days so I knew we were gonna have to leave and come back and the flight wouldn't have been much more expensive...but Brit insisted so we ended up taking the bus. Which gave us a real "fun" day later on down the road.
So that's all she wrote from Vietnam and Cambodia. I wish we had more time to spend in each place since I really don't think they got the attention they deserved. We were just too rushed to get to the beaches in Thailand and looking back now, we woulda had lots of time to stay a few days extra in each place. Oh well though that's just the way the dog reads the novel, if you know what I mean. I hope you enjoyed reading this cause it was a bitch to type. I wrote it over the span of a week on three different computers cause I would either get kicked off, the power would go out or the computer had to be shut down due to lightning (I dunno what the deal was with this last reason) but anyways it was a lot of work so you best enjoy it! I only got a few more updates till I am finito! Then all you readers can stop frequenting my blog cause it'll be all shit like "Yea...today I played video games with Ramsay while Con talked about weed and cats." Who knows though some of you may be into reading that shizzzzzz, but probably not cause Ramsay and Con are my two biggest readers.
Seriously though I love all ya'll who are reading this and am psyched to see you soon! Enjoy your time without me cause it's coming to an end soon hahahaha! I hope you all will enjoy the gifts I'm getting you.
Love forever,
rDwArNw
Ps. Have a good holiday!
I am gonna try my best to move through these rigs real quick so I can finish before I get back home. However, right now, at the speed I'm going it doesn't look like that's gonna happen! Oh well I shall try my best. At any rate, Brit and I are now in Costa Rica and are moving our way through Central America. The place is hella pricey so we'll probably only be here a minute before gettin to Nicaragua where it's cheaper.
So today I'm gonna write about Vietnam and Cambodia. I'm gonna combine the two so I don't gotta do two updates and because we ripped through the places pretty quick. Away we go!
After the long bus journey from Laos to Vietnam we ended up in a city called Vinh which was a diiiiiive. We weren't planning on staying there but were worried we might have too cause we couldn't really find a bus to where we wanted to go. We lurked around and luckily we found a couple buses that were headed to Hoi An overnight. Problem was we had no Vietnamese currency (which is named Dong...heheh). So Brit got sent out on the journey to find some while I waited and watched our bags. She was gone forever and I started to get worried someone had kidnapped her. After waiting for what seemed like hours she strolled back and let me know she had to search the entire city to find a bank machine. We had to wait some time for our bus and we thought it left without us at one point which led to me chasing it down the street only to find it was a different bus. We snagged the bus and cruised overnight to Hoi An.
Hoi An was a super nice place. Probably one of the most pleasant looking cities we have been to on our whole trip. Many of the streets are blocked out from cars and scooters so you can just walk leisurely around without horns blaring in your ear every 5 seconds. Everyone comes to the place to get clothes made cause there are custom tailors on every block. We found one and each got some stuff ordered up. Brit got some girly clothes like dresses and stuff and I got a slick suit measured up for myself. The stuff was super cheap compared to what you'd pay for a custom made suit back at home. I got all the fixin's too, I'll be looking super snazzy. Now I just gotta get invited to an event where wearing a suit is acceptable...We bummed around in Hoi An for awhile just cruising on a scooter going to beaches and checking out some temples and that kinda thing. After that place we caught our next bus down to Nha Trang.
Nha Trang was a bit more built up that Hoi An and the tourist thing to do seemed to be going diving. We weren't certified for diving at the time and really didn't have any plans to do anything like that till we got to Thailand and could do it for cheap. However, with all the dive shops around and tourists touting dive gear all over we were feeling like it was something we had to do. First though, we decided to check out the beach to see if we could just hang there while we were in town. We got there and found the beach was nice for lounging in the sun but not so nice for swimming. Also, all the places along the beach to eat and drink were quite pricey. We paid like 4 bucks each for shakes! Crazy in Asia. So we decided to look into the diving. When we did we found it was out of our price range since we weren´t certified. Instead we booked a snorkeling tour. The next day we went out on the boat and discovered we were the only two people snorkeling and everyone else was gonna be diving. It sucked cause they were all off having their own little talks and being in their secret cool club and Brit and I were totally forgot about. Everyone got suited up and the instructors barely even acknowledged we were there and didn´t even realize we had no snorkel gear. It seemed like we were a burden to them. Despite this we still had a good time and saw quite a bit of fish and coral. I´m glad we didn't pay to dive as the sites we went too didn't seem so good and the instructors were complaining about poor visibility. So yea we ended up having a good time and the dog at the dive shop was insanely big and we got to play with him so that was a plus. We spent a couple nights in Nha Trang and then caught an overnight bus to Mui Ne.
The bus was funny cause it was sold to us as an overnight trip so we got all settled into our seats/beds on the bus and drifted off into dream world expecting to wake up in the morning at our stop. This didn't happen though since we were woken up at about 2am and told we were at our stop. Everyone else on the bus was sound asleep and continuing on to Saigon. Only Brit and I got off in Mui Ne. The town was dead and not a thing was open. We didn't have any idea what we were gonna do but some guy came up and said he had a hotel we could stay at. We got there at like 3am and he said we could either pay for the night or wait till 8am and check in then for the following night. Since we are cheapo's we decided to wait till 8 which meant we had to sleep on the floor of reception in our sleeping bags till then. We got munched on by mosquitoes and had to hide under the covers till "morning."
Mui Ne was super nice and we kinda bunged up cause we only spent a couple days there when we coulda spent longer. We were in a rush to get to the islands in Thailand to lay on the beaches not realizing the beaches in Mui Ne were just as nice. While we were there we went to the fairy stream which ran down through some mountains and you could hike up and get covered in red mud. We also checked out the sand dunes there (weird that a desert is in Vietnam) and did some hiking. We didn't even go swimming on the nice beaches! We did however meet a cool German couple Natalie and Lukas. Lukas looked exactly like my friend Conner Wear. From Mui Ne we caught the bus down to Ho Chi Minh aka Saigon.
Saigon was a zoo. The city has millions of people in it and I am pretty sure every single one of those people drive a scooter without even knowing how. It was a risk every time we tried crossing the street! It was kinda cool getting there though cause it was a pretty modern place and quite built up compared to the other places we had been. We even enjoyed some Subway for dinner, tasty. We went out to the Cu Chi tunnels which is where the Vietcong hid out from the Americans during the war. Pretty wild place. They had tunnels underground all over the place and lived under there for long periods at a time. We got to go in some of them and it was so squished and hot in there I couldn't imagine living down there for longer than the 10 minutes I was under. They also showed us the traps they had setup during the war. Things such as pits full of spikes, holes with bamboo designed to rip your leg off or big blocks of wood with nails that dropped down if you tripped a wire. Didn't look like much fun. Brit and I also went to the shooting range there and got to unload a clip with an AK47. Some badass shit right thurr! We met up with the German couple again and he told us stories about his job as a penis doctor back at home. Some of the operations he had to do made me queasy. Fun stuff like batteries up the dick and people having some weird sex that resulted in broken dicks (didn't know that could actually happen but apparently they break right sideways...ooooooof). Since this made me a bit queasy I started feeling all light headed and weird and had to run to the bathroom. I got mad sick in there as usual and almost blacked out and fell into the toilet that had no seat on it. People kept trying to come in as well cause the door had no lock so I had to tell them not to while struggling to keep conscious. I guess I am not cut out to be a doctor for wieners.
After Saigon we burned into Cambodia. We got to the capital Phnom Penh (where I think I wrote one of my blog updates ha). The trip there was pretty heavy cause we were there to check out the killing fields. For those of you that don't know...a few years back (1970's) there was a guy named Pol Pot and his following known as the Khmer Rouge came to power in Cambodia. The guy had a skewed view of Communism and wanted the country to return to a communal type society that focused on agricultural labour rather than business, education and the things more associated with a Capitalist society. He went about this by killing off countless numbers of people in his own society. People who were deemed to be against his communist rule, which seemed to be everyone, were taken to these killing fields and either forced to work insane amounts or murdered and buried in mass graves. It seemed like no one was safe from him and his army. People with glasses, degrees, diplomas, worked in business or spoke out against his rule were all killed. Even the children of these people were killed so no one would be out for revenge later in life. The killing fields themselves were pretty wild to see and definitely made you feel weird. You could still see the big holes in the ground where people were buried and there were remains of people on display all around the grounds. Things like bits of clothes, bones, teeth and skulls were everywhere. Pretty intense stuff. Worst part of it all was that the Khmer Rouge and Pol Pot pretty much got away with it all. The dude lived till he was like 80 with grandchildren before he died a few years back. His trial just took waaaay to long. To offset this sad day that had me and Brit in a very downer mood our tuk-tuk driver thought it would be a good idea to take us to a shooting range where we could shoot guns and even blow up a cow with a bazooka if we wanted. We declined all those offers.
From Phnom Penh we hit the next highlight in Cambodia which is Siem Reap and the temples of Angkor Wat. Siem Reap itself was a cool town and obviously very built up due to all the tourism. There were markets, restaurants, shops and massage parlours everywhere. Brit and I got some massages one of which was a fish massage where you dunk your feet in a pool and the fish nibble on em to clean your toes. I couldn't handle it. It was just way too tickly for me. Brit was liking it though and enjoyed laughing at me with all the other massage girls. After that we got a real massage which was good except I had gas and the girl pushing on me kept squishing them out. So I was pretty much farting on my masseuse the whole time.
Angkor Wat was really good and much bigger than I expected it to be. I thought it was just a few temples to check out but it was like an entire city spread out with what seemed like hundreds of ancient ruin looking temples. We both enjoyed it as you can climb around on them and there are giant trees growing in and out of these huge rock buildings which makes it look like something outta Indiana Jones. The days were way to long though as we were pretty much all templed out by this point. After seeing countless temples in India, Nepal, China, Thailand, Laos, and Vietnam we just couldn't give Angkor Wat the time and appreciation it deserved. After two days of cruising all the temples there we grabbed a bus to Thailand, much to my arguing. I wanted to take a flight cause Thailand only gives ya a 15 day visa if you cross in by land and a 30 day one if you go by air. We were gonna be there longer than 30 days so I knew we were gonna have to leave and come back and the flight wouldn't have been much more expensive...but Brit insisted so we ended up taking the bus. Which gave us a real "fun" day later on down the road.
So that's all she wrote from Vietnam and Cambodia. I wish we had more time to spend in each place since I really don't think they got the attention they deserved. We were just too rushed to get to the beaches in Thailand and looking back now, we woulda had lots of time to stay a few days extra in each place. Oh well though that's just the way the dog reads the novel, if you know what I mean. I hope you enjoyed reading this cause it was a bitch to type. I wrote it over the span of a week on three different computers cause I would either get kicked off, the power would go out or the computer had to be shut down due to lightning (I dunno what the deal was with this last reason) but anyways it was a lot of work so you best enjoy it! I only got a few more updates till I am finito! Then all you readers can stop frequenting my blog cause it'll be all shit like "Yea...today I played video games with Ramsay while Con talked about weed and cats." Who knows though some of you may be into reading that shizzzzzz, but probably not cause Ramsay and Con are my two biggest readers.
Seriously though I love all ya'll who are reading this and am psyched to see you soon! Enjoy your time without me cause it's coming to an end soon hahahaha! I hope you all will enjoy the gifts I'm getting you.
Love forever,
rDwArNw
Ps. Have a good holiday!
The big dog
Brit got some sun
Mui Ne
Another malaria test
Saigon scooter gang
Waterbottle size dog
Come on in!
Brit's new man
Fairy Stream
Taking it like a champ
Cambodia is hot
Mass graves
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