Bangkok

After spending the last 2 weeks on a beach, we were ready to hit the big city and get to some nice, clean, cheap air conditioned rooms!

We were a little nervous heading into Bangkok, knowing about all the red shirt protesting going on, but had asked around lots on the situation before going, it sounded like the protesting was limited to certain areas of the city, thankfully, not near the Khao San backpacker area where we had planned to stay. We did find out they were at one of the biggest shopping areas where we had wanted to visit, so had to cancel those plans and limit our shopping to Khao San Road.

We spent most of our time here just walking around buying t-shirts, having some beers at night, and visited the Grand Palace (lots of really nice temples and the King’s Palace). The dress code restrictions here were pretty strict (must cover elbows to knees...in 36 degree heat!) , so Kendra and Kyle ended up having to borrow some nice clothing (you’ll see Kyle’s karate pants in the pictures, and Kendra’s skin-toned dress shirt), haha. Made for some good pictures anyways.

One thing we really noticed was how much the red shirt protesting is hurting tourism in Thailand...especially Bangkok. While we didn’t see any red shirts ourselves, we noticed Khao San was DEAD – eerily quiet compared to what it normally is. And people in the tourism industry are trying even harder to make a buck, i.e, trying out every scam in the book. Normally, tuk tuk drivers (small motorbike taxis) are known to try and pull a scam, telling you the Palace is closed, but they’ll take you to some jewellery shop where you can buy really cheap gems. We have read about this scam in every travel guide, so generally avoided tuk tuks all together and used metered taxis. Only this time, even the metered taxis were trying the same scams! Needless to say, we felt like every cab we got into we were somehow going to get ripped off. The drivers were desperate to make some extra cash.

On our last day in Bangkok, we were sitting on our rooftop pool and noticed the skyline of Bangkok had turned ugly. This was the day all the fires had been set by the protestors, so black smoke clouds in every direction. We headed out for one last dinner, and found out a city wide curfew had been set for 8pm. Our flight out was just after midnight, so thought we should just try and get a cab and get to the airport early, didn’t want to risk not making it there. On our way back to the hotel to quickly pack everything we saw most of the shops were closing up and the streets were nearly deserted. Was very creepy scene for a normally extremely busy area. We knew it was time to get out of the city! So, on that note, it was a good feeling to be leaving Bangkok (even though we had a long wait at the airport). We were looking forward to heading to Bordeaux for some good wine 

Perhentian Islands (Malaysia)

We decided to spend the last 2 weeks in Asia on a beach and soak up as much sun as possible before leaving, so we headed to the Perhentian Islands, just off the north eastern tip of Malaysia. Beautiful beaches – white sand, clear water, awesome snorkelling. These islands are far from developed, not a single road on the island, and the resorts are scattered on different beaches between the 2 islands (Kecil & Besar). We spent most of our time on the small island, Kecil.

The hotels on the islands are mostly budget huts with interesting accommodation standards (1 and 2 Star Beach Bungalows!!). We spent our first few nights on Coral Beach, which was one of the quieter beaches, with only about 5 hotels, few restaraunts, and dive shops. No nightlife whatsoever...we found it hard at first to find beer anywhere on the island, but managed to sniff some out (you really had to ask as it wasn’t displayed). So needless to say, we were able to cut down our average daily beer intake. We ended up meeting a few people who had asked if we’d want to go on a snorkelling trip/beach hunt with them. So we rented a boat, and about 8 of us went to “shark point”, a snorkelling area where we supposedly were to see sharks. This place ended up being probably the most dangerous place we’ve seen in Asia. As we pulled up in our boat, a girl was screaming at us for help, she was almost drowning, had no life jacket, and was far from her boat. Another couple was having the same issue, as boats were ripping through the area and the current was strong, so we ended up staying only 15 min maybe...and saw no sharks.

Next we found a secluded beach, Romantic beach. This was the beach Kyle had been searching for his entire life! Whitest sand we’ve seen, nicest water, and no people, no hotel, no road to it – we had found pure paradise! We spent the afternoon hanging out there with a bunch of ice cold beers we managed to scavenge ($3 per can), went snorkelling, (where we saw about 5 baby sharks), and enjoying the scenery. Romantic beach had an amazing coral reef with all sorts of stuff underwater, swim with about 5-7 baby sharks all the time, stingrays, many many clownfish (nemo) hanging out in the anenomi coral, and tonnes of other tropical fish. Kyle vowed to make it back to this spot a lot over the next two weeks!

After Coral Bay, we went to Mira Beach, a few shanty bungalows on its own private beach. This was our favourite place in Perhentians. Accommodations were very basic (wooden huts, shared bathrooms which was pretty much a hole in the ground, no fan in our room, and power for only a few short hours at night). However – it was the people that made all the difference for us. The 4 people that worked there seemed to just enjoy life, and we had lots of fun with them. One of the guys, Mohammed, was definitely a free spirit – always laughing, making us laugh, and bringing us lychee fruits. This guy seemed to have the personality of a 10 year old sometimes, knew how to have fun everyday. He would bring out his mattress every night and just sleep on the beach – living a simple but happy life.

Kyle was on a mission to swim with a big shark, so as he was out casually looking for it snorkelling around the point, he turned to come back, and a large black tip (reef) shark swam only a few feet in front of him, excitement and panic took over, and he hi-tailed it back to shore. It was 2 metres long, and fairly thick (small in the shark world, but large for what we are used to). After that, Kyle and a Spanyard we met, were on a constant hunt for this shark, they searched sunrise and sunset, only to spot another one on the reef about 1.5 metres long. While at Mira, we constantly jetted over to Romantic Beach to soak up the sun and peacefulness.

After a few nights at Mira, we decided to check out Long Beach – the main backpacker beach in Perhentians. However, I got an ear infection – so when we went to Long Beach, Kyle and I decided to drop Kendra off and hunt for some accommodation while Kyle and I tried to find a doctor in the village. Overall, this seemed to be the worst day for all of us. Comforting to know with all the deadly animals in the jungle and in the sea that there is no doctor to be found!

Kyle and I came back from the village (where we found there was no doctor around, and told to come back later – after another expensive taxi boat ride) to find Kendra red faced and exhausted from walking up and down the scorching beach looking for a room. Long Beach is by far the hottest beach on the islands, the sand is so hot you can barely walk on it, so felt like 40 degrees, and Kendra had been trucking her backpack around, so we felt a little sympathetic but thought it was a good intro to backpacking in Asia. Yet again, we had found interesting accommodation (room looked fairly clean, but later found out lots of mould in bathroom due to no windows, and even mould on the pillows – bonus!) However, room was cheap! But with my ear still infected, we wanted an AC room for the next couple nights – no matter what the cost! Ended up finding a decent place with AC, big room, felt like luxury. (But was still only about a 1 star hotel)

After Long Beach, we decided to check out the other island and stayed at Flora Bay. Was a nice beach, but still couldn’t compare to our Romantic Beach. We spent most of our time here sleeping on the beach, reading, and playing crib at night. One day we hiked through the hot mosquite infested jungle to arrive at another secluded beach surrounded by big rocks, not as nice as Romantic, yet still relaxing.

After Flora Bay – we decided to spend our last 3 nights on the islands back at Mira Beach. We were excited to get back and see our new friends, and they were just as excited to see us again (well at least Mohammed was) He came up and screamed when he saw us “My friends my friends! My darlings! You came back!!” . He came up to our shack, swept up the deck and the room, told us he was happy we came back. While at Mira, we headed to Romantic Beach, again of course, and decided to do a dive the next day. On our dive we all saw a 1.5 metre shark – was pretty cool to all see that. Kyle and I also noticed a large trigger fish (which we didn’t know what it was at the time), was such a cool looking fish, big and colourful, so went swimming towards it – our instructor started telling us to get out of there. Apparently, they are aggressive and will come and bite you. Good to know for next time I guess!

Back at Mira, Mohammed was screaming something, so went to check it out, on a stick he had a very poisonous viper snake on the end of stick.....and of course it was on one of the decks of the huts just behind ours, if we weren’t creeped out enough at night, we were now! We got the typical Asian local response “No problem”! Our last night on Mira Beach, the staff prepared a BBQ on the beach. Lots of food (mostly fish), was really good and we were really appreciative as it took a lot of prep work. We tried some Reef shark, quite good actually, and barracuda is excellent. Our last day, we spent the day at Romantic Beach (again), didn’t go too deep though, as have heard in Asia, you can get bad karma from eating shark.... we also saw a fairly big monitor lizard eating a smaller baby, weird to watch, but the little one did put up quite a good fight. When it came time to leave, we got a bunch of pictures with our friends at Mira. They helped load our bags on the boat and gave us a big hug. I think Mohammed teared up when he said bye to Kyle. We got on the boat and he was screaming “I love you – I love you”! We were sad to leave them, but were ready to leave the beach.

We then were on our route to Bangkok to stock up on some cheap clothes and souvenirs before leaving Asia and heading to France to meet up with my brother, and say bye to Kendra.

Kuala Lumpur

We arrived from Bangkok during the day, found a place in Chinatown (backpacker area) went through market, ate and went to the Reggae Bar some happy hour. Malaysia is not a typical place to drink! Beer in Vietnam is $.50 for 500ml bottle, Thailand $1.00 for 500ml bottle, Malaysia Kuala Lumpur $4 per can during happy hour. Ouch! Guess that’s culture shock at its finest! Ha ha. There are only 2 bars in area, as Muslims are not huge fans of alcohol...and Malaysia is mostly Muslim.
Next day, went to Petronas Towers as typical tourists. They used to be the highest buildings in world (even higher than world trade towers) but now Tapei and Dubai have upped them. Still amazing at the height of them. We then went to Menara Tower which is 4th highest free standing tower in world (after CN tower in Toronto that is!). This gives you about the best view of the city, KL has a pretty cool cityscape as it is very large and spread out with many high rises. Makes Calgary look like a small town. After that, went back to Reggae Bar again.
After KL the three Houstons’ headed to Island Paradise in Perhentian Islands (Kecil and Besar) to kick back, relax, and get all of us a tan! Stay Tuned.

Chiang Mai

Flew again on a plane that had only 4 people, Kyle’s backpack even got its own windowseat. Arrived at night and had about 4 full days to take in the city. Checked in, then headed out to the Sunday Night market, loads of people, food, local goods, music etc. Chiang Mai has tonnes of stuff to do, 4 days would not be enough.
First day, went to the Tiger Kingdom, didn’t know what to expect, but pretty cool place, paid about $50 and chose to hang out with the smallest tigers, and the biggest they had. You get about 15 minutes with each. They said they don’t drug them, and tigers sleep 18hrs per day, and that’s about what they did while we were there, but they would wake them up when we came in, pretty lazy animals. We were laying with a big cat, when it was sleeping, and the guy there slapped a bush in front of its face to wake it up, pretty intense when it looks around thinking you did something to it, ha ha. Overall, pretty friendly.
Next day, we decided to live like monkeys, and take a tour called Jungle Flight zipline, supposed to be the longest in asia. Had to wear cool hairnets, but the ziplining was exciting. The longest line was 300metres and all are pretty high up in the jungle. But there were a bunch of 150-180m lines as well. A few drops around 50-80m where they pretty much let you free fall until they lock the carabineer. Had to deal with a typical American on the tour, one time he got an elbow to the head as he crashed into the platform, everyone admitted after they enjoyed seeing that, ha ha. Later had some “sodas” with a few people we met on the tour.
Third day, went to BaanChang Elephant conservation Park. Essentially at this park, each elephant has 1 Mahout (pretty much the elephants fulltime caregiver and buddy, they take care of the elephant 24/7 every day, no days off, 3hrs of sleep per night, so a huge life commitment to become one of these). So each person has built a good relationship with their own elephant. We signed up to be a Mahout for the day. Picked up a lot of bananas on the way, got there, the owner told us all about his park, and how it came to be etc. Then we fed them breakfast, the little baby took quite a liking to me wrapping its trunk around my neck. They won’t put seats on elephants back, as not natural, so you have to ride with nothing, so we learned how to do that. Then ate, and hopped on for a trek through forrest. Kyle got a huge mama elephant with a baby attached by chain, she didn’t seem to like him too much, the whole trip growling, farting, disobeying. Luckily the Mahout was there to guide the “naughty” elephant as they call it. My elephant wasn’t bad, but enjoyed scratching its a$$ on every second tree. After a walk, the elephants needed a bath, so we headed to their “tub” and rode them in, one Mahout rode around on a little elephant and could pull its ears a certain way and it would spray like a supersoaker on command. Pretty funny, but gross when you get sprayed in the face with that water! We scrubbed them, and got off, showered up, and that was the end. Elephants eat 300kg of food per day! So you can imagine how much drops out during the day as well : ).
Last day in Chiang Mai, I wanted to learn how to cook some Thai food, so I made Kyle come along, and we learned how to make a bunch of good local eats, but had to cook in about 35degree heat, and then had to eat the food we cooked. Washed it down with a cold Big Chang beer, and all was well.
Kyle ended up sniffing out some Stanley Cup Playoffs...of course! We coaxed a Scottsman out to watch game 7 of Montreal vs. Washington, was good to see as brought a bit of home in the mix. Good for the Canadiens!
From Chiang Mai we flew to Bangkok to meet up with Kyle’s sister Kendra. We flew in around the same time, so picked her up at midnight, and were almost blinded by her absolute Canadian whiteness! Ha ha. Went to hotel, then out for some cold beers, and local food.

Vientiane, Laos

We caught a flight out of Siem Reap to Vientiane (capital of Laos). There was 4 of us on the plane...never seen that before. Made it safely to Vientiane..people are always concerned about the safety of Lao Airlines, but seemed ok for us. We spent 3 nights here, and really didn’t do too much! We would have liked to spend more time in Laos, and had planned on it, but we didn't think we'd spend so long in Vietnam, so had to cut Laos down to only the few days. Maybe another time we'll see the rest of the country....
Vientiane is very French-influenced. Lots of cafes and French restaraunts, and the people are very laid back. Was quite the change from Vietnam and Cambodia where someone was constantly trying to sell you something. We pretty much went from cafe to coffee shop to restaraunt to pub...all day. Oh and got a Traditional Lao massage in between. We did end up going bowling too...(there’s pretty much nothing else to do...), where I waxed Kyle both games! Guess I have a natural talent for bowling!

As of now, we are back in Thailand in Chiang Mai...doing lots! Next post will be more interesting....

We posted more pictures : http://picasaweb.google.com/kyle.houston

Cambodia (Phnom Penh, Siem Reap & Temples of Angkor)

Phnom Penh

We originally didn’t plan on going to Phnom Penh – we had wanted to go directly to Siem Reap to check out Angkor Wat, directly from Saigon. But flights were very expensive, so we decided to bus it from Saigon. It was supposed to be a 6hr ride to Phnom Penh....for us, it was 12! It turned out we were travelling on the last day of the Cambodian New Year, so we hit a point where we moved about 4 km in about 4 hours (and we complain about Calgary rush hour??!). The reason for the backup was a ferry that crosses the Mekong River. It is about a 2 minute ferry ride, but only about 6 cars can fit at once and there’s only 5 ferries going back and forth. So, the trip was painful...
When we finally made it to Phnom Penh, we only had half a day to see some sites. We went to the Choeung Ek Killing Fields. This was a very disturbing place. We had known very little about the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia before coming here, but now understand how difficult of a past Cambodians have had. Essentially, a group called the Khmer Rouge (led by Pol Pot)took over the country and planned a massive genocide of anyone who refused to follow their regime to create an agrarian society (ie. If you were a doctor, teacher, or any intellectual). Well, 2 million people fit this mould, and were all killed between 1975-1978, which ended up being ¼ of the Cambodian population. A lot of people were forced to kill others, just to stay alive themselves. We also learned that people that killed during the Regime of the Khmer Rouge are still living amongst all other Cambodians today (could even be our tuk tuk driver).
After the Killing Fields we went to Tuong Sel Museum. This was also a disturbing place where the Khmer Rouge kept and tortured people before being sent off to the Killing Fields to be executed, if they didn’t die from torture here.
Overall, we were glad we made the trip to Phnom Penh – made us understand a lot about Cambodia’s history, and again, makes us appreciate our lives.

Siem Reap & Temples of Angkor

Took a 6 hour bus ride to Siem Reap (actually was 6 hours this time!) We were amazed at the amount of littering and garbage we saw along the way. You’ll see in our pictures...We also happened to find entertainment along the way. Found some local kids at a bus stop restaraunt with a pet goat....the pictures will explain the rest...Kyle’s work, not mine.
We got in to Siem Reap in the evening, so didn’t do too much, just checked into hotel and crashed. We got up early the next morning (5AM) to catch the sunrise at Angkor Wat. Was quite the view and worth the early morning wake up. After went to our favourite one the temples of Bayon, which is about 57 faces built all over the temple looking every which way...was pretty cool. We spent the rest of the morning touring around about 10 different temples, all of which are from the 10th – 12th century. Really impressive and so unbelievable to see in person...can’t even capture how cool they were on camera. The only thing was it was REALLY hot out. I think it was 37 above, with no cloud, no breeze. Just HOT. So we were burnt out by about noon and went back to hotel to cool off and nap, then went back out for sunset. The next day, we pretty much did the same thing, but mentioned to the tuk tuk driver something about a cooler full of cold beer for the days journey, and he came through for us. That night we ended up meeting up with a couple we met in Halong Bay in Vietnam. Was good to catch up with them and share stories about where we’d been over some beers.

Next, we were off to Laos....

Mui Ne & Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City)

Mui Ne

When we got to Mui Ne, we were looking forward to seeing a nice beach again. Wasn’t the case here, beach was not that nice, so we ended up finding a hotel with a pool, where we spent most of our 4 days here.
We ended up meeting a few other couples, some Germans and Brits, so decided to go with them to rent a scooter for the day and check out the sand dunes that are famous in Mui Ne. We ended up going to the white dunes (there’s red ones also), which turned out to be really cool. The dunes were massive, and in our Vietnam travels have seen a lot of dry hot deserts throughout the country, never would have known it. You could rent a plastic sheet from a kid and slide down about 110-120 feet slide, and really steep. We found the best way to slide down was on our stomachs, problem was we’d end up with a mouthful of sand by the time we got to the bottom. Was worth it though!
We also thought it would be a good idea to try and get a round of golf in. We always talked about doing it in Asia, and looked up the course in Mui Ne. It seemed really nice, not too difficult or anything, and not a bad price. So we showed up at about 2pm thinking it would be cool enough out. There was no one else on the course so we got on right away. They also provided us with our own personal caddies (2 vietnamese girls). Didn’t mind, they were nice and helpful, but kept us honest with our scores...which was a bad thing!(I think Kyle’s caddie got extremely tired of raking all the sand traps the whole round!!!) I think Kyle and I both golfed the worst we have...EVER. We only did 9 holes and that was MORE than enough. It turned out to be a very tough course, and realllly HOT. I don’t think either of us have sweated that much since we’ve been in SE Asia. Oh well, we can say we golfed seaside in Vietnam at least. Our scores will never be shared!

Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City)

We had talked to other travellers who had been to Saigon, and almost all of them recommended a short visit. So we ended up only staying 2 nights there, and spent 1 day hitting the sites. We went to the Cu Chi Tunnels just outside of the city. This is how the Viet Cong hid from the US bombing during the Vietnam war. Was crazy to see how they had miles of underground tunnel systems – the tunnels were very small, the only way we actually were able to crawl through them was because they had been made bigger after the war, for tourists to be able to fit through. We also saw all the “booby traps” set up by the Vietnamese and were able to fire a gun at the shooting range. Kyle chose the M16 – was very loud! Funny to see a video on how the US tried everything to get into these tunnels, but could not for the life of them figure it out during the war.
After the Cu Chi Tunnels, we went to the War Remnants Museum. Was very shocking and disturbing. We read about the effects of the Agent Orange (apparently the most toxic chemical to that date) sprayed by the US during the war, and saw how it is still affecting people today. The chemical totally deforms people from birth in ways you can’t imagine. We saw a lot of shocking photography of the war, a lot of it was disturbing, but at the same time it opened our eyes and made us realize how lucky we are to live in such a safe and peaceful country.