Hue We Go!

4/1/13

Our last day in Hoi An and time to (carefully) pack our suits and get ready for the next bus journey/hurt locker to our final destination in Vietnam, Hue! Ofcourse no bus journey would be complete without a little drama and whilst the bus to Hue turned out to be a comfortable and relatively painless experience the 'mislaid' ticket by GR made the booking slightly tricky. A big thank you goes out to our hostel reception team who solved our bus issues and also baked a cake for GA for his birthday...delicious!

Goodbye Vietnam!

5-7th/1/13

Our last stop in Vietnam was the slightly damp Hue. Unfortunately our visit to this city was a slightly 'luke warm' affair, with our increasingly relaxed attitude towards forward planning leading to a missed opportunity to see the DMZ (de-militarised zone) in the surrounding countryside. The inclement weather conditions also meant that for only the 2nd time we had to don our child fit ponchos in order to explore the city. We also had our first real taste of the slightly unwelcoming side of Vietnam in the form of a refusal to sell or even talk to us by some of the local market merchants - maybe we should have worn the suits!

Destination Unprepared

7/1/13

It was time...the bus to Laos was calling - 23 hours, 100 bags of lemons, 45 people (capacity 30), 1 border crossing (and no money to pay for it), no toilet and no headroom. A lot has been made about buses on this blog and whilst this wasn't the most painful bus experience it was the longest and strangest. 100 bags of lemons lined the walkways and the people that would normally sleep on the floor had to sleep on the lemons instead - 'When God Gives You Lemons, You Sleep On Them'. The baggage storage and the row of seats at the back were also full of lemons meaning that our bags had to be strapped to the roof, along with more lemons. The border crossing is relatively straightforward if you do just 5 minutes of research, unfortunately GAG had been far too busy to spare such a ludicrous amount of time and so we had a rather hectic 45 minutes trying to get money out and get everything sorted. I would like to say lesson learned but we will see...

Laos/Lao/Lao's

8-11/1/13

Laos or any of the above spellings, according to who wrote which road sign, was a a fairly relaxed affair. The capital city of Vientiane played host to our visit and involved; a stay in our first dorm room, a visa aquisition by GR and AT, some quality pool time and a trip to Laos' 1st western style gym. The latter of which weighed in at 65000kip, roughly 5 pounds sterling, and included a 1 hour massage, gym usage and pool, sauna and steam room access.
Considering that Laos is one of the poorest countries in the world the huge number of cars as apposed to the usual motorbike scene and the general cost of eating out was quite surprising. However, learning that around 90% of the population live in the country along with the wild tigers it's easy to see that there's a fairly uneven distribution of wealth - that 10% of city dwellers holding the keys to the bank. 

The Return To The Kingdom

12/1/13

Back to Thailand and our first stop Chang Mai. This was to be the place where the GAG would be separated, GA embarking on a 4 day round trip to Heathrow for a job interview (it's not the team leader role at St. Albans Tesco Metro) and GR and AT taking a 3 day trek into the jungle to ride some elephants and lose ourselves in nature. First though, it was time to pet some tigers and watch some Muay Thai. GAG took the 'red car' to the Tiger sanctuary and chose the Tiger's we wanted to see - the biguns weighing in at 150kg at only 21 months old, incidentally 3 months away from no longer being allowed to be with humans due to increasing testosterone levels rendering them 'unfriendly'. An initially tense affair we can safely report that no humans were hurt in the making of the following photos despite some racing pulses and the occassional look of distain from the cats.
After Tiger watch it was time for some Muay Thai. The crowd was ready, the lady boys were everywhere and the fighters were primed. 2 hours and 8 fights later we were thoroughly satisfied by a solid evening of brutality, with particular enjoyment coming from a blindfolded multi-man crowd pleasure. Into the ring stepped 2 blindfolded fighters and a Muay Thai dwarf without blindfold...the funniest 5 minutes of our lives followed and the fighters earned their 60pence tip.

by GR