Asia by Hammock

We arrived on Koh Phangan after an incredibly packed ferry (where are all these people headed?) and were quickly whisked away to Had Yao. Those of you familiar with Koh Phangan, or handy with a map, will quickly realise this is absolutely the furthest point you can get from the full moon party. Despite the scary old man's / walking advertisement for why drugs are bad (1) advice that there were no rooms closer and that it would be no problem to get a cab past the police barricade and to the party, we decided to try our luck in Had Rin (where the party is).

We found a room in approximately 7 minutes. Celebrating our good fortune, I went down to the supermarket/laundrymat/safety deposit boxes and decided a beer was in order. The look on the clerk/cleaner/banker's face when I tried to purchase it was a mix of disgust, empathy and finally sadness. It was, of course, Buddha Day and I would be promptly arrested for drinking a beer. Approximately 10,000 people have descended on Had Rin to drink, smoke, trip and otherwise alter their conciousness, and I can't even buy a single beer. Luckily all was not lost, after her severe admonishing against drinking on such a holy day, the clerk took my money, popped the bottle open, took a giant swig and handed me my beer.

What follows is a hazy and tumultous three days. Somewhere there was four hours of sleep in a forty hour period, enough UV light to tan all of Ireland, fire dancers, hippie drug twirlers (colored balls on pieces of string that are strangely transfixing) and about 10,000 really messed up people. At least the people passed out on the sand had a relatively comfortable place to sleep, others were literally relegated to sleeping the gutter. And through it all were two of Had Rin's finest, the great women at the 24 hour chicken sandwhich and crepe shop, who probably enabled us to survive this mess of humanity.

We took the first boat out of Had Rin the day after. Everyone seemed to have the same idea, get the hell out of there to never come back. Except Tom, Richard and Becky / walking advertisement for why drugs are bad (2,3,4) . They informed us they had been in Thailand for around 8 months and this was one of the best of the five full moon parties they had been to. Becky then passed out (drooling) for the remainder of our thoroughly uncomfortable journey. And remained passed out (drooling) when we arrived. And remained passed out (drooling) while people shook, pinched, tossed water and generally tried to revive her. We both shared a terrible moment when it looked like this girl was in fact dead. She was not, and was dragged (and I do mean dragged) back to her bungalow. We saw them two nights later, Tom was in a leopard print thong playing with hippie drug twirlers on fire. Drugs are bad.

The next four nights we spent on the lovely Thong Nai Pan beach relaxing. One day we went swimming. One day we played volleyball. That was about the extent of it. You know when you are paying two people $5 to slather you in pounds of fresh aloe vera then literally stand there and fan you, that you are onto something.

Now we're on Koh Tao sitting out the typhoon (probaly accumulated bad karma from the outright rejection of all that buddha held dear a few days earlier) that is swirling around the Phillipines. While we'd love to do an overnight diving trip to Ang Thong Marine Park (think: The Beach) or a deep sea fishing expedition, instead we are stuck deciding whether to drink our cases of beer at the pool or the beach and what type of massage to get. Tough life.

Cheerio
Steve + British Eddie

PS> We get four years of decent baskeball, Ludicris and Richard Lagos and 2006 gets a championship and The Stones?

We just finished three exhausting days in Siem Reap climbing up temples and barely escaping gigantic rolling boulders. Angkor Wat is a huge temple complex, dating back to the 800s and is remarkably well restored. Theres nothing really that funny about it, especially when you wake up at 4:30am everyday to see the sunrise and try to convince the hawker children that you don't really need one bamboo flute, let alone two. But a few tips for anyone who may be in the area:

• Get a guide book, Ancient Angkor was good, and even though we left it behind on the last day, we had turned into Indiana Jones wannabes identifying lintels, shiva-ite sect markings and the omnipresnt "gore"uda the steed of vishnu with a certain nerdy abandon.
• Ta Prohm was really neat early in the morning (they filmed Tomb Raider here)
• Ta Keo was great for sunset, almost as good a view as Bakheng and no people
• Kbal Spaen is worth going to if you go to Bantrea Srei (which you should), go to Kbal Spaen first then Bantrea Srei around lunch time
• Budget $5 to buy a fake "authentic" Cambodian National Police Badge from a Cambodian National Police Officer
• Know your geography and capitals, you feel really stupid when the 12 year old Cambodia girl informs you that Springfield, not Chicago, is the capital of Illinois.

Angkor was really awesome, definitely worth seeing if you are in this part of the world. The bus rides were less awesome and the layers of grime we wiped off our faces afterwards were even less awesome. The Cambodian roads supposedly are equivalent to the Congo jungle tracks.

During our day in Bangkok, we made a remarkable discovery. In a country that has no word for "refill", yet alone free refills, Outback Steakhouse offers you bottomless beverages. I've never drank so much Sprite in my life. Its also billed as America's #1 Steakhouse which is close enough for me. Of course we didn't eat anything beyond a jacket potato and a slice of bread because it was too expensive. (pushing $10..)

We're in Ko Phangan now with the Full Moon Party tomorrow night. Fear And Loathing: Ko Phangan? I hope not... or do I?

Steve and Eddie and Fran is wandering around somewhere

That really sums up my thoughts while bike riding down a road in Phonm Penh (capital of Cambodia), with an ox cart careening down the other side, a motorbike passing me on my right and a car coming directly at me (honking its horn of course). That of course is an exaggeration, what we were going down was nothing even close to a road. Sure there were huge potholes, rocks scattered across the track and a bridge of questionable stability, but the real kicker of this road was that it is the rainy season in Cambodia. If the water hadn't been mixed with dirt, garbage and other dodgy things, you could have literally gone swimming in parts of the road. People were cultivating rice in the middle of intersections.

Business as usual for the residents of Phonm Penh. The semi trucks simply barrelled down the sidewalks, traffic zigged and zagged through the more passable sections of mud (only two or three inches deep) and the unlucky motorbike driver who got stuck simply laughed, smiled for a picture and went on his way. It was a phenomenal (get it?) bike ride.

This came on the heels of another wonderful (and only slightly less wet) trip: the river crossing from Vietnam into Cambodia. We took the slow boat (they have a way with words) from the Mekong Delta up to its confluence in Phonm Penh. It was quite a trip reading a book on the Vietnam war (Dispatches by Michael Herr for anyone who is interested), listening to the Stones and cruising up the Mekong. So imagine my surprise when I heard what could only be the whirr of a low flying chinook helicopter come to complete the Vietnam experience. Of course,
I have never heard a chinook helicopter and it was in fact a diesel engine on a fishing boat. It still completed a good Vietnam experience this one only 40 years later.

We're up at Angkor Wat (and by up I mean up at 4:45am for sunrises) and hopefully will have some pictures. Cheers

Steve (and in absentia Ed and Fran [an english girl who for some mysterious reason has decided that the two of us make good travelling partners])

The chief attractions (if you can call them that) of Phonm Penh (for us) were the Tuol Seng Genocide Museum and the Choeng Ek Killing Fields. Between 1975 and 1979, the Toul Seng prison held over 40,000 men, women and children. All but a dozen were executed at the killing
fields.

At the fields, you can literally feel death in the air. People walk slowly, carefully stepping over pieces of clothing and human bones. There are literally bones of murdered people lying in the ground and 8,985 skulls form a memorial stupa. While Auchswitz/Birkenau was
staggering in it size, the killing fields are staggering in their closeness, their intimateness. The skulls bear the marks of victims who were killed by pipes, axes and gunshots. Over 100 women and children were buried in a space smaller than my room.

I don't mean to write on war or murder or genocide, but it was interesting to visit this place after seeing some of the Vietnam war history. In Cambodia the question is how could these people do this to eachother. In Poland it is how could these people do this to my
people. And in Vietnam it is how could WE do this to other people. It seems like people always talk about learning from the past, learning from mistakes, learning from atrocities, but does it ever really happen?

Steve (and only steve)

• 'Philately'
• The Swedish man who was too gay for words
• Shrimp Cocktail in a Coconut
• Pho' schizzle
• Gas in individual 5 liter pumps on street corners in Hoi An
• Gas in individual 1 liter bottles on street corners in Nha Trang
• The smell of dried squid in the morning

Sorry for the list, I promise to do better in the future

It had taunted us since the moment we showed up Nha Trang. Not on the regular menu but hidden on the bottom of weekly specials was the devilish cretion known as the "Real Nhatrang Bucket". Sure, there were lots of buckets there, ones in jars, ones in coconuts, blue ones and green ones but only one really deserved the name "bucket". Made with a bottle of vodka, two of rum, one of gin (just for good measure), some sprite and juice, they promised us it would hurt.

One of the proudest moments of my life was handing the bartender 600,000 Dong (about 40 bones) and casually informing him we we'd like to try one of those little real nha trang buckets. Armed with a platoon (we've been reading war books), they presented a bucket that was more of a hollowed out cofee table and proceeded to pour alcohol for well over two minutes. It was done with the flair and class only seen in over indulging in alcohol. The straws were actually fleixlbe tubing and I think a piece from a motorbike (I really wish that was a literary exxageration).


We made quite a few friends over that bucket, including an unlucky man turning thirty who enjoyed the closest thing there is to a "bucket-stand". A poor unlucky Englishman spent the entire next day booting (he claims it was something he ate), two people missed their dive course, I jot chased home by a persistent whore on a motorbike and Ed lost his wallet.

In more constructive events, Ed got his open water padi certification (which he lost about 18 hours later with wallet) and I did some pretty nice diving - except the one where I ran out of air and couldn't inflate my BCD on the surface.... but the weather was nice, water pretty warm and vis probably 20meters down to about 12. Fish and corral were decent, there were neat little caves and tubes you could through and the floating bar (literaly: styrofoam floating on the water) was stocked with cheap wine. We also did Mama Hahn's island tour which was fun and gave us the willpower (and friends) for the bucket extravaganza. I think one of the coolest things about Nha Trang are the old women that walk around with a pot full of raw lobsters, prawns, oysters, musells, etc in one hand and a barbeque in the other. I don't think the travel nurse would approve.

Turns out the key to overnight busses is getting really drunk the night before and then taking sleeping pills. We're in Saigon for two days then the Delta then Cambodia. Hi to everyone at home and that we've met. Boo Lions Go Lance

Steve + Eddie

Would be Hoi An. Take the open bus tour they said. Air conditioned comfort they said. We'll give you a ticket they said. So we did, and none of those statements proved to be accurate. We boarded the Camel Travel bus last Wednesday for Hue without anything even resembling a ticket. Which, you'd imagine, would be somewhat of a problem. Surely at some point during a 12 hour bus ride the "operators" would find time to check that the passengers actually paid for their bus ride. But, of course, they did not check our tickets and were quite happy simply tormenting us for twelve hours with an average of sixteen honks per minute and a new found obsession for finding every pothole in the street.

After arriving in Hue the lady issued us tickets without even calling the head officee. We just told her we hadn't been given tickets and she fixed it like it happens every day. I imagine it does. We've decided that Veitnam's tourism motto should be "Vietnam: where everything works but nothing works as it should" (or "Vietnam is for lovers" after our boat trip). With only four hours to kill, we hopped on the back of motorbikes (perfectly safe: there is a driving test you have to pass, or you have to carry enough money to bribe the police) and headed to Tu Duc's tomb. A tomb's a tomb. Then we went to an awesome pagoda down a dirt road and watched monks chanting their daily prayers. Back onto the bike then back onto the bus and we arrived in Hoi An.

Hoi An is an awesome city. The rivefront is full of a little cafes serving great Vietnameese and French food, the "country pancake" was surprisingly delicious. The bars have long happy hours and the patissere has a cake happy hour. The beach is a leisurely 5km bike ride away which gives you a good amount of time to think up witty responses to hawkers. Our newest one is saying we are from a new country each time though Guam did not seem to translate well. The Vietnameese have a knack for putting seventeen shops selling the same thing on one block and in Hoi An they've taken this a bit further. There are well over two hundred tailors in the city which is more than many continents can boast. Naturally, we got suits made by the crappiest one here with the worst prices and while Ed is a little disappointed, I couldn't be happier about my custom tailored Hawaiian shirt and tie (both made out of board short material). After his initial dissapointment, Ed went on a three hour shirt binge fueled by Larue (beer) and Passionfruit Cheesecake. We have yet to see the finished product but I have a sneaking suspicion (blogger needs a spell checker) we will see fitted metalic shirts.

We're off to the beaches, islands and booze cruises (and 12 hour bus rides) of Nha Trang. Happy 4th of July to everybody and Happy Birthday Alex!

Steve and Ed

Imagine mixing one part Robin Williams, one part Ozzie Osbourne with two parts grain alcohol and you would come up with someone very close to Ray. He would look at you with a crazy glint in his eye, crack a one-liner about the tsunami (I didn't even know there were tsunami jokes) or his fat son and then pound his beer. Ray was so passionate about drinking he brought his own koozie to Vietnam (and left his wife), which might be acceptable for a twentysomething but was quite remarkable for a man who had pickled himself to nearly 60 years old. Ray also left about twenty five school kids waiting for their bus driver (him) when he decided to turn his weekend in Bali to a month in Vietnam. We liked Ray very much.

Ray took a liking to us as soon as we produced the Rice Wine/Rocket Fuel/Devil Juice we had bought from a floating market. And by floating market what I mean is a mad old lady on a row boat whose eyes lit up when we asked for whiskey, kicked a floorboard and started pulling bottles out of the secret hold in the bottom of the boat. The process was phenomenal, the liquor left something to be desired. The only english on the bottle read "Ethanol=39.87%" and that was good enough for us. We drank with Ray, an American couple (Hi Dawn and Andrew) and two English girls (one who criticized McDonalds beef - see: Fast Food Nation - then told of the wonders of picking magic mushrooms in the morning dew back home, the irony was lost on her) and then retired to our cabin on the boat. There is a fighting chance that the cabin was big enough for two midgets or one medium sized dog, and the one bed simply did not cut it for us (though it did live up to the promise of a "romantic night on the boat"). In the end, Ed and I ended up in hammocks on the back of the boat and were lulled to sleep by the dulcet tones of the generator.


In all seriousness, Ha Long Bay was great. The sunset on the first night was incredible and the people we met were really neat. The scenery was great, the kayaking fun and the food fried. We did a hike the second day and I honestly thought I was going to die (see: afermentioned rice whiskey) though the view from 250 meters (covered in less than a kilometer) was breathtaking. Literally. On Cat Ba island we had drinks in a floating restaurant, we're still not entirely sure the management knew we were there but Vilam, our rather drunk ferryman who didn't speak a word of English, took it upon himself to sit us down and fetch us three cold beers - one for himself. The ordering process for food seemed simple enough, you walked to the big hole in the middle of the restaurant, pointed to the live fish still swimming in water and moments later it was cooked and ready for your consumption. Getting a menu was considerably more difficult and took well over twenty minutes and two tries.