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May 18, 2014

Halløj, Hanoi!

christinelouise Asia, NovaTOURient, Travel Talk 2014, Asia, Hanoi, hanoi hilton, pho, vietnam

I feel like a greater power is trying to warn us. First, there was the earthquake while we were in Chiang Mai. Then, we decided against taking the 30 hour bus ride from Vang Vieng to Hanoi as we had planned, and Sara told me one of those busses had driven off a cliff. We had decided to just fly to Hanoi, and less than 12 hours before our flight, there was a plane crash in Laos. Jeez.

After we arrive at Hanoi Hostel, it starts raining for the first time in two weeks. As we’re out looking for an ATM. The ATM we find is out of order. We feel like the bad weather is just following us around! We take a cab to a mall with a cinema, thinking that Maleficent has come out. It hasn’t. So we watch Godzilla instead, and I once again think that God is trying to kill us, because I am almost bored to death. People around us are on Facebook during the movie, or have brought their 6 year old kid to this thing. It’s just odd.

After the movie, it’s still raining, so we get another cab home. We have a map and an address, which we have to show the driver several times, but he tries to drop us off at two hostels that are nowhere near ours – and of course he wants us to pay for his mistake. We end up getting our receptionist, because the driver doesn’t speak english, and they argue for like half an hour before we convince him to get the price down just a bit.

The next day we are supposed to do some sightseeing. Supposed to. Apparently, everything is closed on Mondays – except the Hoa Lo Prison Museum, also known as the Hanoi Hilton. Since I enjoy that kind of stuff, we go there.

One of the big cells

I guess we should have bought the guidebook, because this is confusing. What were the prisoner’s crimes? There isn’t much information to find here. The death cells are super creepy, and there is a room dedicated to stuff about American prisoners during the Vietnam war – they even have John McCain’s uniform that he wore when he was shot down. So yeah, I guess you could say it’s sort of interesting, but nothing like I expected. We are there for like an hour.

We do some walking for hours around town, trying to find a decent brashop, but give up and go for a brazilian wax at a spa, that has hard, green wax, and Sara and I get to lie right next to each other, admiring our Shrek vaginas. That’s always fun. Then, we go for cheap sushi. The chef doesn’t speak english, so the waiter tells me that the chef think I am “vewy biootifull“, and he makes me an extra piece of sushi – yep, a heart! Sweet. And awkward.

We go back to the hostel and enjoy an hour of free beer on the roof with out kiwi roommate Jenna, before we head to Purple Cherry to get pho.

It’s a much nicer restaurant than we thought, on the roof of a nice hotel. And in a pretty bad neighbourhood. We can’t finish our huge portions and hurry home to relax.

Two of our roommates (we are a total of 8 in the room) are Danish, and they are super talkative when we come back. Honestly, I don’t really like Danish people when I’m travelling, but also the conversation can get really weird when you are both from the same place, so I see if I can get away with pretending to be Californian (since I’ve only been to LA). And it works, and of course they are being totally Danish and bragging about free education and healthcare and how they don’t even have to think about what they want to do for the rest of their lives, they can just get as many free degrees as they want. See, this is why I hate Danish people. I want to brag about that!

So now we’re just chilling until we catch a night bus or train to Hue. That’s going to be fun.

Oh, by the way, I’m officially a millionaire.

May 18, 2014

Final thoughts: Laos

christinelouise Asia, NovaTOURient, Thoughts on Things, Travel Talk 2014, Asia, final thoughts, laos

I have spent so little time in Laos and barely seen anything, so I don’t have much to say about the place.

One thing is for sure: It’s a very beautiful country, green hills everywhere you look. Such an attractive place.

I mean, WOULD YOU LOOK AT THAT?

Kids are everyhere. They are running alone in the streets, or with their parents at work. Honestly, I saw more kids than I saw adults. And they were all adorable.

Service was non-existent, but even worse than ever before. We once sat in a restaurant for over an hour without even ordering. If you try and call for a waiter, they are out pretending to be Waldo, or they completely ignore you. Shame, because this country had potential to be an awesome place to visit, but it’s hard booking tickets, getting a room or ordering food.

All in all, I know that I could have seen or done more, but Laos wasn’t really for me.

May 16, 2014

That time I thought Sara was dead

christinelouise Asia, NovaTOURient, Travel Talk 2014, Asia, Drinking, laos, scary stories, tubing, unfortunate happenings, vang vieng

So, on our first day in Vang Vieng, we pretty much think there is only really one street here and tha’s it. We stay at Easy Go, which seemed nice at first, until we have to endure another night in a fan room, which makes us soak the beds in sweat. I wake up, feeling severely dehydrated and unable to do a simple task like showering or brushing my teeth, so we decide it’s time to check out and go to Central Backpackers. Most restaurants play Friends all day and night, so we honestly spend two days just chilling on a bed of pillows, watching TV. I’ve been in this weird state of laziness since Bangkok, and I haven’t wanted to drink or really meet people since then. It’s quite awful.

This is what paradise looks like to the lazy backpacker

On our third day, we decide to go tubing, which is what this place is known for. We meet two Danish girls, Siw and Christine (random that I found another one, since it’s such a rare name back home), and an American guy, Tyler. We all go to the first bar, shotgun a can of beer, have shots, play beerpong and then we go out on the water.

At the next bar, I play flipcup, have cocktails, more shots and probably another beer. You get a nice little bracelet for every shot you do. By the third bar I am wasted. I lose Sara in the grass somewhere between the third and fourth bar, and after drinking at the fourth for a while, I get worried. I have just assumed she was going to catch up anytime, or maybe she’s met some of our friends on the way on gone back to the other bar. A guy I’ve been drinking with goes out to find Sara, but after 10 minutes it starts raining. A lot. He doesn’t come back, and the girls at the bar start to get pissed with me that their friend in’t back, so I decide to swim against the current in the rain to find her.

I am calling out her name, but nothing but the hard rain responds. The river is cold and dark, sometimes really deep, sometimes I can feel my feet stick in the gooey mud. I am scared, because I don’t like deep and dark waters, and because all that I can think of, is how I have to call Sara’s parents and tell them that their daughter has drowned. I swim for at least half an hour (since I wma searching very hard, and the weather makes swimming more difficult) before I reach the last bar we’d been to. It’s packed with people, and I look everywhere, crying hysterically. Suddenly, a few of the people I have been drinking with see me, and run over to see what’s wrong. They try to comfort me and tell me that she’ss alright, but I don’t believe them. I’m drunk and scared. A couple of french guys come around and jokingly say (in a french funny way – so without a smile on their faces) that she is probably dead and it’s my fault for not taking better care of her. Of course this upset me even more, and one of the girls takes me away from the crowd and tells me to go home.

I cross the river to get to a bar with no people in it. A big local family is sitting there, and as I approach them for help to get a taxi, I break down. Still, they take me to a taxi and demand 20.000 kip. I am tired, sad and desperate, so I just hand the driver money. As he’ss about to drive, three very demanding spanish girls jump on board and only pay 10.000 each. They keep asking him to drive faster so they can get their deposit for the tubes back – I realise I have lost mine at the fourth bar, when I went out swimming to look for Sara. After they’ve been dropped off, the driver doesn’t bother stopping at my hostel: he tells me to get off at the same place as the girls and walk in the rain. I try to argue, after all I have paid double, but he lets me out, and I walk barefoot in a bikini in the rain, crying.

I walk up to the room to find Sara asleep. I don’t even feel relieved, I just feel anger. I startethrowing things at her to wake her up and show how upset I am, but her side of the story is different than mine. She feels that I have abandoned her, and I am the bad guy. More upset than ever, I walk out, go to a restaurant and have dinner and watch Friends for hours. I calm down quite a lot, but not enough. I stay up till about 3 at night, still very drunk, and buy an amazing burger on the street just before falling asleep.

Best burger ever

Bracelets from tubing

The next day, I get Sara’s version of the story. She called for me while we were approaching the fourth bar, passed out in the tall grass by the river, then was taken to some local’s home, where she vomited, before being driven back to the hostel and helped to bed.

The yearly rocket festival Bun Bang Fai is happening that day to celebrate the beginning of rain season, but we don’t bother leaving the restaurants.

At night, people get what they wished for: rain. And lots of it. It’s storming, massive lightning bolts appear all over the sky, and the rain is brutal. The power goes out for quite some time. The ground floor is flooded. The door to our room on the third floor can barely stay closed from the strong wind. I guess no street food for me tonight.

All in all, Vang Vieng was an experience.

May 14, 2014

Slowboat to Luang Prabang

christinelouise Asia, NovaTOURient, Travel Talk 2014, Asia, Drinking, laos, luang prabang, slowboat

This is such a boring thing to write about, much like the trip itself. It takes two days of sailing on the Mekong River to get to Luang Prabang, only broken up by a night in Pakbeng.

The slowboat trip is fairly uneventful. Beautiful view, but 8 hours on a boat isn’t purely entertaining. On the first day, Sara, Kaleigh, Max, Andrew and I bring a bottle of vodka and end up having quite the party in the back of the boat. On the second, I sleep as much as I can. Oh, and we pass a dead, skinned animal in the river and I’ve finally learned that death smells foul.

I’m not really impressed by Luang Prabang. We check into SpicyLaos, in a decent dorm with no AC, which is awful. We decide to upgrade and get AC, even though it costs extra.

The hostel offers a free cup of snakewhiskey to the ones who dare. I dared, and my mouth tasted like rotten meat for the entire evening. That’s what happens when a snake has been in there for 5 years, I guess.

The next day, we go with a group from the hostel to Kuang Si waterfalls and it is so amazing. I’ve never seen anything like it. First, we go to the bear sanctuary.

That’s a bear cage

We then go swim in one of the pools with a smaller waterfall, which makes it OK to cross off another thing on my 22 things list:

#17: Shower under a waterfall

At night, we have some beer and a hookah at Utopia, which is a really cool bar, and also the only one of two bars in town. And it closes at 23.30! Fuck that. But at least the view is nice.

Sunset at Utopia

Besides the waterfalls, there is a nightmarket and some temples, all things that we are bored of. We’ve spent three days here and now we are heading to Vang Vieng, which I am just so ready for. I am so bored!!

May 13, 2014

Final thoughts: Thailand

christinelouise Asia, NovaTOURient, Thoughts on Things, Travel Talk 2014, Asia, final thoughts, thailand

In India, I was addicted to my Lonely Planet book. Here, we just went with the flow. I haven’t looked through my 40 pages of notes about what to do and see in the places we planned to go to. Instead, we did some island hopping, then went to the mainland to be productive. And boy was it a great way to do it.

A few things were different. This time, we barely learned the language or the history of this country. We didn’t do many cultural things or much sightseeing. We partied a lot, and actually met people. We got addicted to 7-11 toasties and Chang beers, chicken with cashewnut and pad thai. I slept in dorms that others would describe as nasty, but I had some of the best times in those. The nature here is beautiful, although we didn’t see a lot of it, and it rained a lot in the month and a half we stayed there.

When I first arrived in Thailand, I was surprised to see so many women – I barely saw any men the first few days. They all spoke almost perfect english, until we started island hopping. I really felt safe at all times, even walking home by myself at three in the morning in Bangkok, partying alone at full moon party, and doing a lone toasty-run during a pubcrawl in Koh Tao. I rarely locked up my belongings, and didn’t sleep with my fanny pack stuffed with passport and money. I felt safe and comfortable.

Service is horrible, as in India, and the waiter usually forgets at least one thing – but in most places they serve everything at once instead of as soon as its been made, which was the case in India. We didn’t tip once, which we always did in India. We learned that you must always take a cab with taximeter if you have the option – a tuk tuk is more than double the price!

Generally, Thailand is expensive – especially on the islands. It must be the fee to ship it from the mainland that does it, and the more north we traveled, the cheaper it got.
The islands are paradise. Not neccessarily visually, but the atmosphere and the people really make the place what it is.

On the mainland, the partying seems more aggressive (I’m thinking of Bangla Road and Khao San Road), but I generally really liked that atmosphere and the options to do things during the day, like going to the movies and nice stores for purchasing electronics, for example.

Oh, and everything is whitening. Creams, sunscreens, deodorants… Wtf!?

I fell in love with Thailand (and elephants) and I would go back in a heartbeat. I am, because my flight home is from Bangkok.

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