Hanoi to Savannakhet...man, that's a lot of honking

Okay, first of all, oops...

Monday Tracy and I actually landed in Hanoi, not Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam. Kind of the difference between Florida and Maine. So that's a good start.

We are freezing, got off the plane in flip flops and shorts to the Vietnamese people in the airport pointing and laughing at us, we really expected to be in the South but didnt realize until we were literally standing in the airport in Bangkok that we were actually headed for Hanoi in the north.

In Hanoi, we stayed in the Old Quarter, the street markets were madness. We watched a woman strangle a turtle to death while her partner, squatting next to her on the sidewalk, butchered another turtle for sale. We also saw dog meat for sale, and have a pretty sick picture of dog heads on the butcher's block. The local currency, by the way, is the dong, which did lead to my unfortunate statement in front of a grocery store checker: "I hope they take credit card so that I don't have to pull out my dong".

Motorbikes are EVERYWHERE, and everyone honks, just, constantly. People drive whichever direction they want on whatever side of the street they want, and the two stoplights we did see are just blatantly ignored. Tracy and I learned that the only way to cross the street is to just start walking, staring down the hordes of motorbikes screaming at you, and hope they don't try to take you out.

After our dinner, we hit a pub where we met Tim, an Australian ex-pat who has been teaching English in Vietnam for 3 years. He agreed to meet us the next day, and give us a small tour of the city (and buy our lunch of frog legs!).

After checking out a water puppet show (the puppeteers stand waist deep in water!) we went back to our hostel to catch our night bus to Hue. We were transported to the "sleeper bus" we had booked, and this is where the travels started getting interesting. There were approximately 50 of us standing on the corner looking at this bus, which had maybe 10 seats left. We could do the math, so we ran to the luggage rack, tossed it on, and elbowed our way on to the bus. The bus was insane- 3 sleeper seats across, 2 levels high, and in the very back were the only two remaining seats- on the second level, slammed against 3 others. We climbed in next to what would be our bunkmakes for the next 14 hours- James, Tara and Allen, all students from Australia. We climbed up, and I shook hands with James, saying "hi, I should introduce myself, since we'll apparently be spooning tonight". Immediately, the bus driver turns on blaring club music, and starts honking merrily away.

After playing a couple of card games, we all eventually fell asleep, elbow to elbow with our new bunkmakes, and woke up at 4 am to our driver honking continuously. And I know I like to exaggerate, but this is no exaggeration- he honked constantly for at least 4 hours straight. I'm not sure how he had the stamina. It sounded like he was trying to communicate via morse code to the road.

We eventually stopped in Dong Ha for some breakfast, and Tracy and I took our chance to leave the bus and travel straight to the Lao Bao border rather than traveling down to Hue and having to travel back up. Our driver calls his "friend" who will drive us in a "bus" to Lao Bao, where we'll transfer to another bus.

5 minutes later, a rusted out van pulls up and they start yelling at us to hurry up. We load on, and watch as the driver peals around Dong Ha, screaming "Lao Bao!" to everyone we pass on the street (honking the whole way, of course). As if he's hoping that we'll just drive past someone thinking "man, I'd like to get to Lao Bao, I hope someone drives by offering a ride!" I wish I had a picture of this ridiculous van, but I was too scared of the driver (and our other passengers- one woman with fingers on only one hand, one who sat eating some sort of seed and spitting the shells on me while staring at Tracy and I, and at one point up to 5 people sitting in 3 seats, feet propped up on boxes, bags and groceries).

We got to the Lao Bao border, unloaded, and wandered to the gate, not exactly sure what the next stop would be, or if our "tickets to Savannakhet" were even legit. A woman ran up to us, pointed down the road, told us "take motorbike one kilometer, then bus!", hopped on a separate motorbike, and disappeared. So we got our passports stamped, walked down the road, hopped on the backs of two motorbikes, packs and all, and did just that- a kilometer down the road, we stopped at the "bus station" (the picture is fantastic- it's basically just a wood hut) where an open-air bus awaited us.

Our only extended stop was for small girls to hop on the bus and try to sell us corn on the cob and some sort of meat on a stick (again, I have a picture, and if you can tell me what kind of meat it is, you're better at this game than I am).

Now we're in Savannakhet, and it's so peaceful here compared to Hanoi that I already feel by blood pressure dropping.

Our wallets are currently filled with this:


The exchange rates are very hard to keep track of:

Thailand- 31 Baht to 1 US Dollar

Vietnam- 16,000 Dong to 1 US Dollar

Laos- 9,000 Kip to 1 US Dollar

So it appears as if we have loads of money when actually its worth shit.

-Posted by Katie

best birthday ever

Our last day in Koh Chang (my birthday) we spent riding elephants and touring the island, then we had a nice dinner and partied. Its safe to say it was the best birthday of my life.

Iain took us to the Koh Chang Father Wat, a chinese temple to pay homage and say a prayer in respect of Koh Chang by lighting candles and incense. Jen said this is especially good luck to do on your birthday.

This is how the Thais sell gasoline on the island, in glass jars:

A shot of Iains car arriving to the elephant park:

I was a bit nervous to ride the elephant, especially when I saw this:

Holy shit you dont see that everyday. That belongs to a massive elephant named Rambo that we thankfully did not ride. We had two nice older females but I never caught their names, bitches.

The top of their heads had black hairs sporadically sprouting up, kind of reminded me of my dad.

The Thai elephant handler caught a great video of us-http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=QCX1eL2gxHg

After the elephants we went for a night swim to cool off and watch the fire baton twirlers from the water, so rad. Later Iain and Jen bought me a latern for my birthday. You light the bottom and it sails into the air over the ocean, was very pretty.

Then we went for an awesome dinner, Iain secretly told the cook to make a cake for me. Well in Thailand they dont really have things like birthday cakes, so it ended up being a pancake with bannanas and flower petals spread all over, tasted yummy!

After dinner we went to our two favorite beach bars Nature and Treehouse. We saw off the Canadian girls, Paul and Hannah from England and Laslo the creepy eyed weirdo bartender. Also met new people, Alan from England:

and Asa from Maine:

Got more travelling tips and got more drunk. Sitting in the treehouse drinking all of a sudden a very inebriated Thai guys runs over to me and sings me Happy Birthday. Turns out he was the cook at the restaurant who made the cake, we all laughed, and got drunk.

Here is a fantastic shot Katie got of our Isralie friend Itamel, and I watching the sunset.

We are now back at Kao San road:

Tomorrow we continue to the next leg of our journey, Vietnam to Loas, then to Cambodia and back to Thailand. Wish us luck, hope to post again soon!

Posted by- Tracy

Current location: Koh Chang Island/ Heaven.

This past week we have been relaxing on Koh-Chang Island. I have never used the word perfect so accurately in my life. This is the place you visit and never return from.

Bungalows line the beaches, ranging from luxury resort style with air condition and TV to ones made completely of bamboo where you are lucky to have running water. We have chosen the bamboo. We have our own bathroom and shower, if you can call it that, one bed, one enormous mosquito net, a porch, and an amazing view of the ocean. At the Siam Huts we pay roughly $15 a night, which is exorbitant for Thailand but who can really complain.

This is a shot Katie took while in the ocean, we are the second hut from the left:

Our favorite restaurant/ party place the TreeHouse:

Our days consist of swimming, sunbathing, snorkeling, boating, visiting other islands nearby, meeting and talking with other backpackers, and just basically having the best time.

The boat we took to surrounding islands, Koh Khum, Koh Rung, and Koh Wai to name a few:


We jumped off the top of the boat at every island stop to snorkel or lay on the beach:


Making friends with crazy Sweedish guys and some other backpackers on our boat:

One of the most amazing things has been people attitudes here. Thai people are historically laid back, but they have such an affect on all the visitors everyone is just so happy, calm and content.

I saw monkeys this morning across the road playing in the rain forest. They were too far to get a good picture but I promise monkey pictures are coming!

Iain and Jen arrived yesterday to spend the weekend. Today we will ride elephants then tonight celebrate my birthday with more buckets of rum and more parties on the beach. Life is pretty good here.

Tomorrow we are off by bus back to Bangkok, then Monday fly to Vietnam, train up the coast for 17 hours, across the border at Bao Lao into Loas then into Cambodia and back to Thailand. I cant tell you how hard it is to leave Koh Chang!

Posted by- Tracy

Lots of trees but not so many monkeys

Before anything, I do have to admit...I finally caved, and bought into the most recently ugly, ugly trend...but man, are they comfortable. Tracy finally broke me down. I'm so sorry, mom:

Today we got to explore the Chanthaburi region of Thailand- Iain and Jen's hometown. We had another lazy start to the day, finally heading to the beach area in the afternoon, where we got to see the Asian side of the Pacific Ocean for the first time:

Where we ate at one of the huts on the beach:

We then visited an aquarium and a mangrove plantation, which was more amazing than I thought it would be- it was started to rejuvinate the land and pull resources from the local shrimp farms:

Then we bought some bushels of bananas to see our first wild monkeys, but the preservation area wasn't open...so sad, so we'll have to try to see monkeys at some other point on our trip. So we drove back to Iain and Jen's place, where we've spend the last 4 hours or so planning our trip to Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. We've gotten a lot of good information from Iain, other travelers, and websites, in order to see what our transport would be location to location, and estimated time travel, which through Laos and Cambodia will likely involve largely pickup trucks that also like to stop for men with chickens, and the below picture kind of sums up what we've been up to tonight:

Possible scam and hour-long massages

After another cool shower this morning, Tracy and I went with Jen and Iain to the massive “computer mall”. While Tracy and I hung out in the food court, we received a phone call on our temporary cell phone from an unknown number.

Now, I really don’t want to get into too much detail, but basically the night before we met a Scot named Mark, who was on a year-long honeymoon with his wife, Claire. They had recently visited Laos and had a ton of currency left over, which cannot be exchanged outside of the border. We told him to give us a day so that we could check out the conversion ourselves (we’re not TRYING to get scammed, after all).

So we received the call, told him where we were at, and it turned out he was in the same building (roughly a 20 minute cab ride away from where we had met him the night before). We had one moment of “wait, did he follow us here? Is this how Brokedown Palace started?” but then told him to come find us in the food court. He ended up exchanging it to us for roughly half its value, then proceeded to hang out with us for the next half an hour and give us tons of good information regarding places to go and things to see.

So after leaving the mall, Tracy and I went back to take a riverboat tour. We can finally add pictures! Here's the boat Tracy and I had to ourselves (apparently, sponsored by Pepsi!) :






Here's a shot of a floating market woman:




We had decided not to buy anything from the woman until she asked us if we wanted to buy a beer for our boat driver. Well, you can’t turn down an offer like that, and you can’t let your driver drink alone (poor alcoholic driver, toasting us in the shot below) so we bought two for ourselves as well.

After this clearly exhausting day, we needed to relax, so we had an hour long traditional Thai massage for roughly $5 US. That will definitely become a more regular part of our trip.

First possible scam and hour long massages

The second full day in Bangkok started with another cool shower and some shopping. Tracy and I followed Iain and Jen to this massive computer store (by "computer store" I mean "they sell everything, but they also sell computer stuff in a really pushy and in-your-face way"). Tracy and I finally found new ripoff sunglasses, then while Iain and Jen shopped we hung out in the food court. We received a phone call on the phone Iain lent us from an unknown number. Now, I don't want to get into too much detail here, but it was this guy Mark we had met the night before, a Scottish guy on his year-long honeymoon trek with his wife, Claire. Basically, he had a bunch of Laos money (currency exchange: $1 American equals approximately 9500 Lao kip) that outside of Laos becomes completely worthless, so Tracy and I purchased it off of him for approximately half of its value, which was nothing and will (again, if this is legit) allow us to live like absolute kings while in Laos (typical cost per day for average living, including accomodation: $8-$15 US).



The funniest part, however, was when we received this call- we told the guy to give us 24 hours to make up our minds so we could check out the conversion and make sure we were getting a good deal and his story checked out- we were sitting in the food court of this computer mall. When we told him where we were, it turned out he was just downstairs- and this place was a good 20 minute cab ride away from where we had met him the night before, at our hostel the night before. So after a quick "wait, did he follow us here? Is this how Brokedown Palace started?" we told him to come up and meet us. We ended up having an absolutely fantastic half-hour conversation with him- he and his wife were heading to Australia then New Zealand next, so we were able to pass on recommendations we heard and we exchanged email addresses to get any recommendations from him regarding New Zealand if he's there before us.



Afterwards, Tracy and I decided to do our first thing alone on this trip, which was to take a tuk-tuk back to our hostel. Of course, our first time doing something without Iain, and the guy doesn't know how to get our tuk-tuk to our door. He ended up dropping us off at the end of an alley and pointing down it. Luckily, we found our way back and didn't end up sleeping in a ditch.





Okay, stupid blogger and stupid computer and stupid blah blah blah...it's not allowing me to post any pictures to the site. I'm just going to tell stories for now and hopefully we can add the pictures later, sorry about that. I know you'd love to see how we're still glaringly, pasty white, but it'll have to wait another day.



After our trip back to the hostel, Tracy and I took a quick walk to the river for a riverboat tour. Pretty sure we technically got ripped off, but I don't even care, because I loved it so much. Now this, we have a million pictures from that I'd love to share, but stupid blogger...the conditions some of these people live in is unbelievable. They're literally shacks barely hanging over the river by some wobbly wooden poles, and I'm not quite sure how they haven't already collapsed, but it was also strangely beautiful. We also got to see a mini version of the "floating market"- women in their little boats, floating up to our boat, to sell us stuff. We did say no, all until she pointed at the beer and asked if we wanted to buy one for the driver. Well, we can't turn down an offer like that, and we certainly couldn't let our driver drink alone (poor alcoholic driver) so we both got beers for ourselves, as well. We also paid to feed some crazy-ass fish, which apparently gave Tracy flashbacks to Smith Mountain Lake. Not a lot of similarities between Thailand and Virginia, but apparently Tracy found their common ground.



After our clearly very stressful day, we needed to relax, so we got traditional Thai massages for an hour (roughly $5). That will definitely have to become a more regular part of our trip.



After that, we were like two floppy dolls, so instead of another night out in Bangkok, we grabbed a night bus back to Chanthaburi, to spend the day here with Iain and Jen before we leave them for the next 2 1/2 weeks. We're going to attempt to drive their motorcycles or

Bangkok

After leaving Bangkok for Iain's on Wednesday when we flew in, we turned around and came back on Thursday night in order to meet Iain and Jen's students for a field trip on Friday. We took a bus, about 3.5 hours, air conditioned and pretty comfortable.

We had to stop at several hostels before finding one with rooms available and that weren't directly opposite the toilets and/ or smelled of mold. We are right off Kao San road at a hostel called "My House". It is not what you would call luxury. There is no hot water and no electrical outlets, shared bathrooms, no sheets, and one towel. Believe it or not we are loving every minute of it. The place is filled with backpackers from all over the world, its amazing.

Thursday night we walked Kao San road which is famous for its vendors selling everything from watches to crickets. I got both. Katie and I went to a bar filled with farangs (foreigners) and drank Thai Rum by the bucket. Incidentally two bucket drinks is the same price as our hostel for a night, roughly $8.

Iain came by with a bag of fried crickets which after some coercion I tried one (Katie ate them happily along with several grub worms). The taste wasn't so bad, it was only when the leg got caught in my throat that I nearly gagged. Iain said I didn't chew enough. I think I will be sticking to eating rice.
Friday morning early we met up with the school children at the Kings temple, Wat Prakeow. Because the Kings sister died recently everyone was dressed in black. I specifically wore long shorts to my knees because I knew our knees had to be covered in addition to wearing all black. At the gate I was told I was dressed inappropriately. Katie gave me a black pashmina I wrapped around my waist as a skirt which worked perfectly although made me feel about eleventy billion degrees hotter.

The temple was amazing, we lined up with all of Iains students and waited to get in to pay our respects to the deceased sister. Everyone assumed Katie and I were teachers which worked out well because we were ushered in for free and got to participate in the memorial service. There were some famous Thai movie stars ( I couldn't tell you who) but the students absolutely freaked out when they passed us. Iain and Jen were interviewed by Thai Channel 3 News several times. We got a call from his friend in Chantaburi later in the day saying we were all on TV more than a few times! After the temple we headed with the students to the Suan Lum Bazaar in Pathumwan (still in Bangkok) and went to a traditional Thai puppet theatre. These puppets are famous and one of a kind. Three traditional Khon dancers hold each puppet in the air and dance and act out the stories, it was very cool. This particular story had a white monkey called Hanuman as its hero. At the end of the performance the dancers brought the puppets into the audience and played with the children who were absolutely having a ball. When they moved around to us the monkey snuggled up to Jen and kept kissing her, then all of a sudden he grabbed her purse and ran on stage while everyone roared. Jen was shy, but finally went on stage to retrieve her bag. They later asked all of the teachers on stage to take pictures, including Katie and I!
Your average traveller would not have been able to do the things we did yesterday, it was unbelievable and thanks to Iain and Jen we get to experience such things.

We are staying in Bangkok until Sunday and are trying now to get Visas to visit Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam. Its a very tall order and we only have 10 days to do it being that we want to spend the end of our trip relaxing on the beach at Koh-Chang.

Some interesting points:

-Thai people have trouble pronouncing my name, Katie comes out fine, like Kaydee. Mine comes out more like Crazzy, which Iain finds very amusing.

-Thai people use no toilet paper, there is usually a water hose for washing yourself. We still cannot figure out how they go about drying themselves. I imagine all Thai's just walk around with wet asses.
-Posted by Tracy

Our new home

Tracy and I are officially in Thailand- after 19 hours of flying (and approximately 8 sleeping pills and a Xanax) , we landed in Bangkok where Tracy's brother Iain and his wife Jen picked us up. Tracy did end up sitting next to me the entire time and somehow managed not to tear my arm to shreds when the plane took off.


I've now learned two words in Thai that I remember- farong (foreigner) and of course the all-important dum (drink). Our most valuable new phrase is "dum free"- next week when we're out on Ko Chang we're going to try to befriend a local bartender and offer to teach him English in exchange for as many free drinks as we want. According to Iain this might also signal to him that we're prostitutes, but apparently tank tops, shorts, ankle bracelets do this as well. I just met my first Thai person (he came in to visit Iain) and I'm currently sitting at the computer in a tank top, shorts and an ankle bracelet. Good to know I'm making a good first impression on this country.


Thought I would share our new home in Thailand, the guest house off to the side of Iain and Jen's house- you can see the river through the slats in the floor. The only sounds I could hear when I woke up this morning were birds chirping and the sound of the wind going through the palm trees. It's just awful.


By the way, thanks again everyone who came out Saturday night and Monday night (even though Tracy didn't even make it to Monday- and yes, Lisa, I told her "bye, and fuck you" for you).


Here's our room:

Off the back of the guest house is a porch over the river, and this is our view:

On our way to Bangkok this afternoon, we'll do our best not to get sold into slavery.

Posted by-Katie

1st Day in Thailand

We arrived safely in Bangkok yesterday afternoon. Iain and Jen greeted us at the airport and took us on the 3+ hour drive to their home in Chantaburi.



By the way, Thailand is exactly 12 hours behind the US, so its about midnight (wed) for you guys.



Iain and Jen were kind enough to set up their river house for us, they normally use this as their living/ TV room. Its very nice and even has its own porch looking over the river.



Its pretty chilly here by Thai standards, to them this is freezing winter. Its a comfortable 70 degrees.


Posted by- Katie

good bunnies

Thanks Elaine and Zander for the picture send off!

love, the bunnies

PS people- If you tried to call or text my cell in the last 48 hours you may not have got me, verizon has this awesome policy of suspending service whilst on the phone with them scheduling suspensions. If you called or texted, please email me at tracyeliza@aol.com to reach me from now on!

Posted by- Tracy

Begin the Beguine

We embark on our travels tomorrow early AM. Thank god my father decided to make a visit to Connecticut this weekend to drive us up from VA last Friday and to take us to the airport tomorrow.

Fortunately my parents will be reading this blog, 1) because they are not ministers and 2) because they already know I am a drunk lush and are more worried about me travelling than ever due to the fact that I cannot go one weekend back in NYC without losing my credit card. Thanks again for the going away party on Saturday my friends.

We had a great turn out and thank you to all for wishing us farewell. If you were unable to make it (Megan, Gary, Jacob and Lauren) I hope to see you when we return before our move to the old south.

After a brief layover in London tomorrow we arrive in Bangkok Wed 3:40pm, 3:40am US time. My brother and sister in law will greet us at the airport and take us to a hotel. Then on Friday the entire school my brother and sister in law teach at are due to arrive for a 2 day field trip. We will be visiting the WATS (temples) in Bangkok with a hundred Thai school children, should be very fun and completely crazy.

I hope to post again when we arrive and frequently throughout depending upon where our travels take us.

Wish us good luck (god knows I need it on the flights).

Posted by-Tracy