Ko Pha-Ngan

I've done a lot of moving since the last post. We're now in Ko Pha-Ngan, an island in southern Thailand. Been here for about 3 days so far. It's nice here, but very quiet.

After we left Ho Chi Minh, we went to Cambodia and spent about 4 days travelling through - seeing the ancient temples at Angkor along the way. That was very interesting to see. Wasn't that impressed with Cambodia apart from that, to be honest. It's a lot poorer than Thailand and Vietnam, and therefore a lot more underdeveloped - the roads etc are shockin'. The people there seem to resent foreigners (even me) a bit as well.

We had quite a nasty 24 hours of bus travel after we left Siem Reap in Cambodia! It took about 10 hours to get to Bangkok and then another night bus south which took +12 hours and then a 4-hour ferry to the island we're on now. A bit crazy doing it all in one go, but we're getting short on time now in Asia. Going to Sydney on Monday week. Time's really flying.

Gonna spend the next week sitting on the beach, reading and drinking Snickers Milkshakes. Indeed.

Biking it to Saigon

We arrived yesterday in Ho Chi Min (Saigon) after 3 days of traveling across the country with motorbike guides (calling themselves "Easy Riders"). It was great fun. The drivers were experienced and very good. There were four of us traveling: Me, Jo, Dan and Sarah, so there were 4 bikes and each of us had a driver/guide. It was a lovely way to see the countryside.

On the first day, we went from Nha Trang to Dalat, the drive to which is amazing. There's a great new road that winds up around mountains and you get spectacular views for hundreds of miles around in some parts. The drive was about 3 or 4 hours. The scenery around Dalat was good, waterfalls, lakes and so on. At the moment, it's the Vietnamese holiday season and a lot of native people visit Dalat (partly because it's cold). The town itself is a bit tacky with a lot of bad market stalls etc.

The next day we made the journey down the mountains to a small beach town called Mui Ne. One of the main attractions there are massive sand dunes that people slide down. Unfortunately I was feeling pretty sick after a dodgy omelette I had for lunch. What we saw of the town was nice, it's a fishing town and the seafood was very fresh and cheap. We had a good laugh with the guides who were anxious to try out their English phrases. "Aw right, mate!", "Why not?!!", "Gorgeous, mate!".

Then yesterday, we made the 5-hour journey from Mui Ne to Ho Chi Min. This went smoothly enough, the traffic got busy as we got near to the city, but the drivers were very careful so we weren't worried too much. After 3 days on the back of motorbikes, we were all walking like John Wayne.

After we checked into our guest house and said goodbye to our guides, we went to meet up with Dave and Moninne, who we were traveling with earlier and had a good night out. Resting up today, and hopefully going to do a good bit of sight-seeing tomorrow. Hope you're all fine and dandy.

Hi, my name is ________. Nice to meet you.

We just spent the morning helping out at an English school for Vietnamese children. It was good fun. The first class was teaching the alphabet and simple sentences to young kids and afterwards teaching prepositions to teenagers. Their level of English was impressive.

At the moment we're in a coastal resort town called Nha Trang. It's pretty nice here, but a bit manic as they're starting a big summer festival here tomorrow. Since my last post we did a good bit of travelling in Vietnam. We got an overnight train to Hue, a small sleepy enough town about midway through the country. It was nice and relaxed there so we stayed 2 nights there, visiting a cool citadel. Also enjoyed watching 3 back-to-back Star Wars episodes on cable TV!

We then travelled to a place called China Beach, which is near the city of Danang. Think it was probably the nicest beach I've seen yet. It stretches for about 30km. We stayed at a great guest house called Hoa's Place, run by a nice man (surprisingly) called Hoa. Unbelievably cheap for food, accommodation etc. He was very obliging, organising flights for us to Nha Trang (where we are now).


We've been travelling with 2 other couples since we left Hanoi. Dan and Sarah from London and Dave and Moninne from Mullingar/Dublin. Getting on really well with them. The Irish couple are just on holidays for a few weeks (heading back next Monday) so they're going to Saigon tonight, whereas the rest of us are travelling for 3 days to get there. Hopefully we'll see some cool stuff along the way.

Strangely, since I left Hanoi, I've been unable to view my blog in any of the Internet cafes I've been in. As you can see, I'm able to log in and write them but I can't view it, or any comments. Weird. Maybe I said something offensive! Can't view Spoiled Metropolis' blog either. Anyhoo...