May 2009

Hello! As pictures speak a thousand words, that's a lot more than our haggard selves can put together at the moment, so please follow our travels through the medium of art. (as we can't muster up basic English at the moment due to extreme Zen/traveller state).

HALONG BAY
was quite possibly the most incredible sight to behold. Amongst kayaking and prodding jellyfish with kayak paddles, we met an Aussia who looks AND sounded like Will Ferrell. We also met 3 Aussie Sheilas (average age of 55 years old) that said we can stay on their farm near Brisbane, do a days work and eat some home cooked food! (probably cheese on toast)

floating village

jumping- nick jumped off the top of the boat because he is brave, phil did a dive off the second level and everyone applauded and coops can bomb like an obese child in a public swimming pool

a casual view from the bed

CHIANG MAI
flew here from vietnam through air asia. coops had his hair cut at Toni and Guy Essenuals (not gay) and the result was a look very similar to a certain german dictator...

chiang mai itself is a splendid city, very chilled and has a moat surrounding it to stop nutters from getting in. we did a lot of exciting things like elephant trekking in remote unprofessional environments, trekking, and by trekking I mean help a local man search for vegetables for his dinner because he was too hungover and cooking school. coops could not partake in this as he was violently ill from phils recommendation of dodgey mexican, and in true karma style phil followed suit.

Heather Mullins?

gold

temple - tuk tuk drives love to pester you at the temples and ask where youre going. make NO eye contact and you wont have to listen to how great their friends suit shop is

phil on elephant - he didnt change this pose the entire ride

cooking school with NAN - her child is called PAN and her husband is called POT. cooking on the brain...

getting to know the ingredients

interacting with locals

at the highest point of chiang mai 1363m (coops said that this still wouldnt be a mountain in the Alps therefore its not impressive and chiang mai should chill out calling this a mountain)

blending in

MOVING ON...

We got a VIP local bus to Bangkok last Friday which was brilliant. It would've been even more brilliant if we could've appreciated the local Thai Karaoke that was played on full blast every two hours when we were trying to sleep. We leave for KHAO TAO on Thursday on a far less impressive bus and will give a Bangkok blog low down before then. This is too much fun for one day.

Stay classy! nic phil and coops xxx

Sup fools! Its been a while since we have updated this badboy so we have decided to take some time out of our busy lives to regale you with tales of the Vietnam Coast.

Nha Trang
has a fantastic beach with wonderful clear waters. It also has a disgusting array of naff bars and shops to rival Blackpool and managed to rain pretty much the entire time we were there. Our hotel room had a balcony, which overlooked a building site, and the additional bonus of geckos and damp walls. Apart from playing football on the beach until phil cried, eating the worlds best seafood dinner and whinging about the rain little else happened. So we moved onto...

jealous?

Hoi An
Having been shown the back 3 sleeper bunks on the bus we were pretty pleased with ourselves, as they seemed spacious in comparison to some of the others. However there was a distinct lack of working air conditioning and we were sat above the engine. Arriving sweaty and irritable Phil managed to shout at a man trying to get us to stay at his hostel. He failed to understand our mantra for the trip, that is basing our accomodation decisions on the rough guide book "if its not in the good book, its not good" (Luke 5:2).

Lanterns

My Son (Dont worry mum its a temple)

Hue
Half an hour from leaving Hoi An, our bus ground to a stop as the axel snapped whilst manoeuvring a crazy roundabout. The driver attempted to rejoin the broken steel with....... a hammer but worked to no avail! A replacement bus quickly came and we were surrounded by smelly tourists again.

broken bus

1 of 100 temples

2 of 100 temples

3 of 100 temples

On arrival in Hue we were instantly disppointed by the souless atmosphere that greeted us in the form of incessant hostel representatives and taxi drivers following us down the street. Thankfully, the following day redeemed our warped view of the city after we visited the Citadel and old city where we managed to get our daily quota of 10 temples and 10 pagodas in. The highlight of our day was going to the Co-Op to get Infadel supplies for the 16 hour bus journey that awaited us for Hanoi. Safe.

Hanoi
After a beautiful sleep on the night bus (apart from lanky coops) we were ready to hit Hanoi. We thought it would be much cooler up here but funnily enough...... I'm pretty sure we are even sweating through our eyeballs. We're in a decent hostel but they keep trying to sell us unusually cheap tickets for tours, can't imagine how they get them that cheap?!?! Safe to say we're staying well clear. We've had a good few days here though, had some awesome food and been productive on the sight-seeing front, yes more temples. The most interesting thing we've seen may have been Uncle Ho's mausoleum, we didn't go inside though because you need to be in trousers and me and Coops may have passed out (Nick was up for it though, got a thing for dead bodies apparently.) We also saw the President of Vietnam drive past in his sweet Mercedes just before going into his massive palace. All the things that socialism brings.

Sweet bridge

Cross legged meal

We're booked up for Halong bay tomorrow for a two day trip, then we fly to Chiang Mai on Saturday to partake in massages, mini treks and cooking schools. All with happy endings. We therefore will be off the radar for a few days but we'll update again once we've more fun tales to tell

Hope all family and friends are ok and coping without us, it must be tough.
Nick, Coops and Phil
xxx

Hello everyone
As we write this masterpiece we're taking in some beautiful culture..... aka chelsea vs. fulham.
We've been in saigon for two full days now and have done some hardcore sight-seeing around the city. On the first day we went to reunification palace which was cool, the best bit being the not at all one-sided video summary of the war. Coops is now a raging commie and keeps refering to me and nick as "capitalist pigs".
It's an amazing city, high-rise fancy offices and hotels on one street and then hap-hazzard busy shops and stalls crammed into the next.
We're leaving for some beach fun in nha trang tomorrow on a sleeper bus but before we do a visit to the cu-chi tunnels is needed, should be interesting to see how the viet-cong lived underground for weeks at a time. (if we can fit in).

Will be in touch again soon.