Day 11 Easy Rider - The unexpected!

We had more or less gone through 11 days of riding without any major hiccups or accidents. Lewis and I had felt that we were more or less naturals at riding motorbikes and we had been filming a lot of it on our cameras for the last 11 days.

We proceeded on to our last leg of our journey from Hoi An to Hue where the famous top gear mountain pass was filmed. We decided that we also wanted to film this part of the journey, in doing this Lew tied the camera to his neck, but this time tieing it too close to his body and was looking at the camera whilst moving. By the time he looked back up the bike slipped, stacked and fell on to his foot. His foot took all of the fall from the bike and scrapped his foot along the floor, pulling flesh and skin off. Bleeding badly, he washed his leg and was determined to carry on, but Phuc and I said, that it had to be washed and cleaned before we moved on. A big downer on the trip. But nonetheless we were determined to carry on and after having it washed and cleaned progressed to go through the mountain passes seen on Top Gear.

Having reached the top of the mountain, our guide told us to turn off our engines and coast down... and what a way to enjoy the views, no noise from the engine, but just the wind blowing pass your ears....

End of Easy Rider - On to Hanoi.

Easy rider had come to an end after 11 days, we managed to reach as far Hue but due to time restrictions and Lew's foot, we'd had to get a sleeper bus to finish the last 700 odd km to Hanoi.

So it was a 15hour sleeper bus all the way to Hanoi. This is where I met up with Maysan, Minh, Sam, Shelly and Jason. We spent a couple of days together before Lewis and I went to ha long bay for a 2 days and 1 night.

Another one on my to do list was to find a Wing Chun school to train in whilst I was in Hanoi. It did mean I had to miss out on exploring north Vietnam but I guess it was just an excuse to come back to Vietnam again. Having looked at several schools I came across this school through a local who we met in Hanoi.

The training was very different from what I have done in London but was very good for fitness and building strength and conditioning. Where in London my training was based very much on forms such as Siu Lim Tao, they did less on this and concentrated on lots of Chi Sao. Training was only 2 hours a day but was a killer, all the Chi Sao was so draining.

Day 6 Easy Rider

An earlier start than normal as there's was a lot of kilometres to kill. Morning coffee was followed by a short ride to our first stop was at a sea lake, so called due to it's size. The lake is actually a result of a dormant volcano. Some great scenery.

We progressed on to visiting another ethnic minority village, the bananh people. We had coffee in a beautiful bananh building with carefully crafted wooden architecture. There was a wall full of letters from people that have visited and trekked into the forest to live with the bananh people... All saying wonderful things about the people and experiences, something definitely to consider in the future.

Our day was easily delayed with some unfortunate events, first Phuc was pulled by police for speeding, for this we lost almost two hours of time. It was followed by me having a flat tyre, and almost stacking my way down a hill.

It was a mind blowing day of views with the most part of the day sunny and scorching hot, but as we entered the mountain path at 5pm it was getting dark and the rain was pelting down. Riding through the heavy rain with no street lights in pitch black had adrenalin running through the body, was an exhilarating ride!

Day 4 Easy Rider

Another 180km down, and going into our 4th riding I've had to avoid many things whilst on the bike. Main obstacles are the bloody potholes, which can be huge going over them at 50-60mph ain't good... Almost stacked a few times!!

Things I've had to avoid today...
A funeral procession going 10mph
A cow running towards me whilst going downhill.
A small pig running across the road

This is aswell as the potholes, oncoming traffic and adjoining traffic. There aren't many rules when it comes to biking in Vietnam... So you have to keep your wits about you!!

Day 3 Easy Rider - Buon Mai To

Arriving in buon mai tou, phuc kindly took us to a friends place for dinner.

We were welcomed with beer, rice wine, a hotpot and a very nice family. Phuc, our guide has many friends all over Vietnam which was a great chance for me to get to know the culture and the people. The family was extremely friendly and welcoming. The head of the family, Thanh, tried his upmost to communicate with us with his broken english picked up from when he worked for an American company 40 years ago.

He asked us about our families, what I did for a living and about our trip. He was interested about every aspect of our lives as well as sharing his own experiences about his own life.

A very interesting and humble man, that welcomed me back to his home if I ever came back to Vietnam. By the end of he night he was calling us his sons and that he wished us luck and good health on our onward journey.

Day 1 Easy Rider - Ride to Da Lat

Our first day on the open road was a 140km ride through the mountains to a small town called Da Lat. It was probably my favourite place in Vietnam. It had a totally different vibe from anywhere in Vietnam, it had an amazing 2nd hand market, where you could pick up clothes for $1-$2.

Da Lat is situated in the mountains and at night can get pretty cold. Having done our first full ride through the mountains in the pouring rain with no waterproofs, our first port of call was to buy some jackets and gloves for the rest of the journey so I wouldn't be freezing again riding through the mountainous rain.

I stayed in Da Lat for the evening, so that the next day I could explore more of the town and do some abseiling and canyoning, recommended to us by our hostel. It was an amazing $30 I'd ever spend. Starting off with a few easy 3-4 meter abseils down rock faces, we ended up cliff jumping and finished with a abseil through a waterfall of about 10-12 meters. You can never imagine the power of water, but when abseiling down and there so much water pounding down at you, its quite a scary experience.

Easy Rider - Nah Trang

I've now moved up north of Saigon to Nah Trang on a sleeper train but watching top gear the Vietnam special, touring Vietnam on motorbike was something I wanted to do instead of all the buses and trains.

Arriving in Nah Trang there was two options, one was to buy a bike for around 250-300 dollars and sell it off when we arrived in Hanoi or to hire a guide and a bike (easy rider) to take us around from Nah Trang all the way to Hanoi.

Easy rider was recommended to me by a friend who went traveling last year, and Lewis and I decided to hire a guide for 12 days to take us on a motor bike journey from Nah Trang all the way to hanoi. Easy rider was a way to not only travel through Vietnam by bike but also to experience the real Vietnam, the culture and spending time off the beaten track with the locals.

It came at a price of 40 dollars a day each, but it included accommodation, bike hire, petrol, entrance fees to all places we would visit but most important of all the knowledge of our tour guide. Unsure of whether the forty dollars a day would be worth it we decided to hire Phuc (our guide) for the day and asked him to give us a taster of what easy riding was about in Nah Trang. Phuc was the 2nd person in Nah Trang to be an easy rider after his brother, and it proved that our forty dollars would be well spent.

We started at 1030 riding for around 45 mins to an hour stopping at various famous locations in Nah Trang including the famous Pagoda with wooden Buddha as well as the nearby fishing village. After our ride we hiked for about 40mins upstream to a waterfall. Climbing over seriously big boulders and walking through deep jungle was hard but extremely good fun all followed by a refreshing swim in the river!

Our day moved on to riding to the other side of town to one of phucs friends leaving drinks... Another experience of how welcoming the Vietnamese are. We sat down with some of his friends, eating, drinking and talked about what we did back home and our future travels.

A great days experience of Vietnamese culture and adventure and on this basis Phuc was hired!

Easy rider here I come!!!

Saigon / Ho Chi Minh City

I've just arrived from an epic journey from Koh Rong Island - Sihanoukville - Phnom Penh - Saigon.

It was a mission, first the boat from Koh Rong island arrived back to the Sihanoukville at 7ish, and being low season, thought it was going to be relatively easy to book a bus ticket back to Phnom Penh. Indeed I was wrong and the only bus going back to Phnom Penh was fully booked. I really wanted to get out of Cambodia and the quickest way of doing that was traveling back to Phnom Penh in the evening, arriving about 1am and then waking up at 630 to catch the boat down the Mekong towards Saigon.

Having missed the bus our only way back to Phnom Penh that night was to arrange a taxi, we ended up paying $40 USD between four of us only a couple of bucks more than the bus ticket for a more comfortable journey.

Having slept for 5-6 hours I woke up waiting for our bus outside the designated hotel, it was supposed to pick me up at 7am, but didn't actually arrive til almost 8am, which meant... yes you guessed it, we missed our connecting boat down the Mekong! So instead of the bus driver taking us to the port, it instead bombed it down alongside the Mekong for a good 2-3 hours looking for the missed boat trying to catch it up.

It managed to catch up with the boat and I crossed into the Mekong waters of Vietnam, coming to a stand still at a small town called Chau Doc. Vietnam here I am... Saigon still had to wait a few more hours as we had to get our connecting bus. Another 4-5 hour journey, which wasn't too bad, but the boys and I were the only foreigners on the bus, and we stood out like a sore thumb. It was so bad, this woman in front of us was staring.... seriously just staring at us through the whole journey... here's a picture of what she was doing. Note: She didn't know I took this photo....

Everyones out to make a quick buck!

I've now crossed into Vietnam and leaving Cambodia has come to a bit of a relief after two weeks in the country. I loved Siem Reap and Koh Rong, but Phnom Penh and Sihanoukville wasn't really my cup of tea.

There's a huge striking difference in poverty between Cambodia and Vietnam. There are less people hassling you in Saigon, whereas in Cambodia, someone is trying to sell you something at a ridiculous price.

They really take advantage of the US dollar and the foreigner. If you've ever been to Cambodia you know that you're being charged 2-3 times more than the local which after 14 days gets really frustrating! One downside to being a backpacker in a foreign country.

Koh Rong - Monkey Island

I arrived in Sihanoukville feeling pretty ill, lucky for me at Serendipity beach there wasn't anything special to do here except drinking and playing pool, nothing that I hadn't done for the last month so it was good to rest up.

I was quite disappointed at Sihanoukville, the beaches were dirty, you had to pay to sit on the chairs by the beach and it was as though I'd arrived in Magaluf as all i could see were bars selling cheap booze. Cheapest price I saw for a beer was 50cents!! It seems that people are now using sihanoukville as a passage to islands such as Koh Rong and Koh Rong Soleum, which was exactly what I intended to do as well.

Our early morning boat left at 730am, and it was a 2 hour slow boat ride to Koh Rong. After the horrible bus ride the day before I could appreciate any new form of transport. We had a few choices of islands to chose from, but Monkey Island resort on Koh Rong was recommended by a few people at Sihanoukville and it was an awesome choice.

Monkey Island resort has only been open for less than a year, it has 19 bungalows situated along the beach front. Our bungalow was $15 between four of us and was 10 meters from the beach. The bungalow was very basic, just two large double beds, a private bathroom but with no air condition or fan, but for one night and $3.25 I couldn't complain.

After checking in and dumping my bags, it was time to soak up some rays. This was the real travelling life I was after, away from the hustle and bustle of cities that I had been seeing for most of the last month, away from places where people want to earn a quick buck, trying to sell you food, manicures, pedicures, paintings, bracelets, books, weed and even tuk tuk rides! You can't believe how peaceful it is, stepping out of your bungalow and not be hounded by the nearest local to get in their bloody tuk tuk!! It was great to get away from all of this, the beach was so secluded I could count the number of people on the beach with one hand. The was sun beaming down on my shoulders as i strolled up the beach, apparently we just caught the beginning of some gorgeous weather, having just missed three weeks of heavy rain.

The guys at Monkey Island recommended a couple of things to do on koh Rong, one was to walk 5 mins to a small waterfall, it was very small but was worth the walk through smelly water to have a cold soak and cool down. But it was the evening swim which was pretty amazing. Come 9-10pm the four of us went for a dip. Pretty damn cold but with a pair of snorkelling goggles, youd put your head into the water, move your hands around and the water would come alight. The micro organisms in the water react to movement and light up the water very similarly to fire flies, definelty worth the cold swim!!


Sun rise at Koh Rong

Build Your Future Today Orphanage

As part of my travelling, an important part of my itinerary was to include some sort of charity work / volunteering.

We were extremely fortunate to stay at the nicest guesthouse, Bun Kao Guesthouse. If anyone is going to Siem Reap, I'd highly recommened this guesthouse. The owner, Bun kao, genuinely one of the nicest people I've ever met, so much so I now call him uncle Bun Kao, previously worked for BFT for 10 years, an organisation that helps with orphans left from the wars that have torn Cambodia apart.


http://www.bunkaoguesthouse.com/

We had an informal meeting with Sedtha, the director of the organisation to get some information and background of the company. There are lots of orphanage charities in Cambodia and not all are genuine so it was good to have a talk with Sedtha and for him to explain how he came about setting up the orphanage.

BFT originally started out as an orphanage for those who had lost their parents during the time of the Khmer Rouge and war with Vietnam, but it soon turned into more than this. It now also helps with community projects and schools outside of siem reap. My first taste of volunteering came in the form of teaching English, not my strongest subject by all means, but I said to myself to give anything a go. 


I got plunged straight into the deep end, I was teaching a range of kids aged 13-17 and the lesson was about past and present tense.... I almost froze!! They had formulas on how the tenses worked and I was completely baffled! It was a huge struggle but managed to scrape through with some dignity, I had learnt that teaching English was definitely not one of my strong points, let's hope the kids are better off with my advice and not worse off!

The following days volunteering was even more rewarding than the first day. The children at school had just returned from a 3 month holiday and at the beginning of each new school year the children's BMI is measured to keep an eye on their health and if there are any signs malnutrition. It was an early start of 630 and a 2 hour drive in the back of a pick up truck through some of the roughest and remote roads out of siem reap.


Crossing potholes like this....

We arrived at a school of about 150 children and after having a spot of lunch, we began measuring their height, weighing them and measuring their arms. The children were very happy to see new faces at the school and there was an immediate soft spot for all of them! An extremely rewarding day, and something to pursue in the future if I'm in Siem Reap again.

http://www.center-bft.org/

Angkor Wat

Angkor Wat... a whole day of temples.

Was very templed out after this, but some amazing sights.

Poipet

Getting to Cambodia was our first real taste of being on our own... And it sure showed, 4 headless chickens in south east Asia!

There are a couple of ways of crossing the border from Thailand to Cambodia, one of the most popular is to use the Poipet border crossing.

Poipet itself is a very weird place, it's literally a small stretch of road which has a several casinos. Gambling is illegal in both Thailand and Cambodia, but as Poipet is inbetween the two it is deemed legal to gamble here. You get lots of Cambodians and Thais that come into the area to gamble, but it's not like las Vegas where there are shiny lights and attractions on the road, Poipet is a dirt road, with huge potholes. Either side of the road are casinos with the worst taste in decor you can imagine.

As I've read in some guides, the best thing about poipet is leaving it!

Trying to leave it was in itself difficult! We crossed into poipet early evening and being clever thought of having a spot of dinner before we moved across into Cambodia.

It was even harder to organise transport to Siem Reap from Poipet as it was a public holiday and the taxi driver was charging us $50US!! But as we attempted to cross into Cambodia, the border had shut and we were refused entry, so we had to take shelter in Poipet for the evening before setting off first thing in the morning.

Possibly a huge blessing in disguise!

22 hours on a train....

We left Penang for Bangkok Sunday morning, embarking on an epic 22 hour sleeper train. Having family in Malaysia has made the first 3 weeks seem a holiday, relatives and friends transporting me around, taking me to eat local foods at local cost rate making sure that I wasn't going to get ripped off, but getting on this train made me realise, this is IT... I'm on my own, with the rest of the guys of course... but we were going into unchartered waters!

The train was initially delayed for 50mins, but after finally boarding the train I was extremely scpetical, the train wasn't clean and had a few cockroaches running around, albeit small ones, I guess this was the reality check and I had to just get on with it!

Just before reaching Hat Yai, the border for Malaysia and Thailand, a waitress walked through the train with her old, tacky, plastic laminated menu asking people what they would like for dinner. RESULT!!...Just before getting on at Penang, I'd stocked up on snacks, fruit and some bakery items at the local Tescos, but to get hot food on the train was a result!! To top this, after passing through Hat Yai and having dinner, the train inspector came round setting out every ones beds, I was pleasantly surprised at the new clean sheets that were provided, and for sure I slept for a good 10hours!...

Penang Laksa

One of the most exciting things for me about travelling is local foods. Since arriving in Malaysia all I have been doing most of the time is eating, Malaysia's population has a mix of Malay, Chinese and Indian people and it really reflects in their local foods. Curries, noodles, rice, rotis, all have their twists of different cultures. One word.. Amazing!!

Penang is most famous two main foods, it's Penang laksa and the char kwai teo. Laksa is basically noodles in assam flavoured fish soup with chopped chillis, cucumber, pineapple, onions and mint. All mixed together gives a wonderful, tangy and spicy flavour. Laksa is one of my favourites back home, so I was determined to try the stuff that was so rated. A famous Laksa was recommended to us 20mins away from town centre. 


Like most good foods in South East Asia, it was a street vendor that was serving this so called amazing Laksa. Having ordered our Laksa for 3.50RM, the soup was runny, clear with hardly any taste, took a lot of chilli sauce to give it the kick I wanted. It was pretty disappointing, but I guess you can never compare it to dad's home made cooking!

Tawau Hills Park

As we were in tawau for a week my cousin and aunts had plans for us to go and see a couple of parts of Tawau.

Morning breakfast at my aunts was followed by a short drive to Tawau Hills Park which is home to the largest tropical tree in the world, unfortunately we didn't go and see that but instead hiked a 90 min journey through the forest to the natural hot springs.

The hike was very humid but cooler than normal due to the high coverage of trees and vegetation blocking the sun to the floors of the forest. Nevertheless I sweated big time, we hiked through some thick vegetation, moving through small streams and steep hills, not one for those brand new trainers! 


The closer we got to the springs, the smell of sulphur was pretty powerful, ignoring the smell and the yellow covered water, I dipped my feet in for a quick and well needed cool down session.

Kota Kinabalu

Ive now moved on to the east side of Malaysia. Yesterday I arrived at Kota Kinabalu, after having a dinner a family friend, Wesley, took us to a local drinking hole which followed up by our usual and really unhealthy late supper... I'm hoping that my family travels will move on swiftly as all the eating I'm doing is turning me into a fat boy!

Just before sending us back to my aunts place, Wesley did a quick tour of KK, showing us a couple of famous sights, including the local ladyboy prostitution area... almost made me throw up what I just ate...

Congratulations to wesley who's wife went into labour and gave birth as soon as he dropped us off! It was a pleasure to spend your last night together before becoming a father!!

Tonight will be a short flight to tawau, a small town in the south east region of east Malaysia.

F**K the PO-LICE - except you with the MP5!!

Having been to Malaysia many times before, I've heard numerous stories from friends and family about the corruption and policing techniques. On Friday and Saturday evenings, road blocks are often set up to catch drink drivers, but instead of arresting them and banning, the police are just waiting to be paid off. The police are paid peanuts by the government and the way they earn more money is to extort the public in the way of bribery. Apparently it depends on the individual cop, but I've heard of people hiding all their money as soon as they see the police and saying all they have is 3RM (just over 50p) on them and getting away with that.

The situation we found ourselves in on Wednesday night was a first hand experience of how the corruption system works and seeing the "ugly side of Malaysia".

We'd finished drinking in Changkat around midnight and our friend kindly offered to give Lewis and I a lift to meet my cousin. Arriving near the destination, our slightly drunk friend jumped a red light thinking no police in sight only then to find blue lights and sirens coming towards us.

I was told under normal circumstances, the police would have let her go for nothing, but as she had foreigners in the car, with no passports, they used the opportunity to get some money out of us. There were two police officers, one who came to check the driving license and one holding an MP5 and checked our ID, something I didn't really want to mess with! Initially asking for 2000RM, with the police's excuse being, your friends are rich, they can pay. my friend bargained her way down to 100RM before they let us go!!... Cheeky bastards!!

As Malaysians say......Malaysia BOLEH!!

Ready to go...?

It's finally the day to leave for the big trip, I still remember I was up late one night reading Patrick's blog about his round the world trip, sometime about a year ago. I then thought to myself... I have to be doing this too.... Thanks Patrick... this is very much down to you and your travels.

I've tried to cram in as much as possible in the last 2 weeks to prepare myself for this trip, plan where I'm going, what I'll be doing, but I've finally got to a moment, where I don't have enough time to do anymore and am just going to let everything hit me full in the face! I guess you're never going to have enough time. But I can anticipate long train and bus journeys where I've got plenty of time to read!

So after a year of planning, applying for visas, looking for routes, reading about where to go, the time has finally come to say goodbye to London, and hello to an exciting 5 months!