Tubing - Laos Style
Sunday, July 26th, 2009
posted by Simon Buckley @ 07:32:28 AM
Vang Vieng is about tubing, you float down the river on an old tyre tube and stop off at bars along the way. Sounds both simple and fun.
We were on our way back from lunch heading back to the hotel to get organized and we met Fi and Scott, who had been living in London and saw our bikes parked in the hotel. They were riders so we got chatting about riding and we invited them to come along with us.
We headed back to the hotel and there was talk of sharing tubes, and of not even getting them – I was getting a tube regardless. I came to tube. So all loaded up on a TukTuk, tubes on the roof and of we were. Dropped at the first bar I got a feeling for what it was all about. Of course the drinks were at a premium, but we hooked in. All I had to look after was my camera, some cash and my sandals.
You could look down the river and see the bars, they all had a rope swing, or a zip line or mud pit or something suitable dangerous given the water and booze combination, none the less we swung, zipped and drank beer and buckets. The second bar was about 7 meters from the first, so close that after a rope swing I got out on their ladder. After a while at the first bar we headed down the river.
The guys at the bar threw life rings out to pull you into the bar. That is when most people came off the rings, because the force of the guys dragging you in pulled the ring under you. I had a system where I lent away. We had a bit of a crew by now, Fi, Scott, Kate and Sibhbh (Sive). I had a beer with the owner of the next place we went to, he was a pretty happy fella, and no wonder, a constant stream of western travelers buying his beer at inflated prices and loving it. It was a great vibe.
Fi and Scott accidentally floated past the next bar so we followed them to the Mud Bar. There was a zip line over the river and a mud pit complete with slide. Reminded me of the mud party at Drury College in Missouri when I was at Uni. Of course it got messy, mud flinging and wrestling. We were the only ones in there, and Todd and I got into a slinging match, and Fi copped an ear full (which later required a visit to the pharmacy but funny at the time). We cleaned off with a zip line into the river and another bucket. We were down to four rings then, and two of us swam – the 15 meters, to the next bar. By this stage the six of us were into the buckets. This bar had free drinks for the ladies and they ended up in the buckets as well. There was no jump rope or zip line at this bar so we headed to the next one, the last one with a huge water slide.
We just walked to this one. The rings disappeared as people just grabbed one as they left, and no doubt there was a bit of a racket going with the tube guys for the security deposit, but it was no big deal. Someone died on this slide a few months earlier, but with the cocktail of safety issues it was no wonder. You had to buy a beer and get a fingernail painted to have a go at this one, a lovely shade of poo brown.
It was dark by this stage and we were all a bit tipsy ;-) but the slide was awesome, it did claim one of my sandals though.
Celebrations turned to worry when Fi asked if anyone knew where Scott was. We all had a bit of a look around, wet, muddy, drunk and dark she started to get really worried. I ran down to the bridge to where TukTuks were lining up to take people back into town to see if he had gone ahead, and there he was. I told him Fi was really worried and he took off, I assumed back across the bridge to tell Fi he was alive.
I ran back (across the rope bridge for which I was severely chastised by the ‘bridge guys’) to see her and Scott all happy and he wasn’t there. “I saw him and told him to get back over” I implored, buggered if I knew where he went though. By this time she was in hysterics and we took her across the bridge to where I had seen Scott. Scott wasn’t there. There was a time in Amsterdam when I was there with Gav, that after leaving a café to sit by a canal to wait for Gav, I saw a little guy with a beard walk along carrying an old TV set and put it down at the end of the bench. About two or three minutes later a punk couple, boy and girl, Mohawks, piercings and all, came along, saw the TV, picked it up and walked off. When I told the others they didn’t believe a word of it. Well it felt the same this time. “He was here, he came up to me!” By this time it was raining as well, we just wanted to get back into town to the hotel.
In reality, all of this took about 30 mins, but seemed to take forever. Scott turned up in town, was served the obligatory telling off from Fi and, apart from the cheeky comment from Todd and myself, was all but forgotten after a couple of beers. Thank God we scheduled in a rest day!
Happy Laos
Friday, July 24th, 2009
posted by Simon Buckley @ 11:22:02 PM
I’ve got this thing about paying bribes and getting ripped off, in so far as that I don’t like it, and vow not to if I can avoid it. There is a pretty well known scam at the border between Cambodia and Laos where they ask travelers for a ‘stamp fee’ of a dollar or two to get your passport back once they have stamped it and they are holding it. I can see how for some travelers who haven’t spent much time at borders it would be quite confronting and they just hand it over, but I wasn’t having it. The Cambodian side was easy, “I have already paid my stamp fee on the way in!” about three times and we were through. The officers on the Laos side were a little more demanding, asking for three USD, and refusing to give my passport back until I gave in. I knew too well that a 6’5” guy blocking the window would get pretty annoying after a while and about 10 minutes later they threw my passport back at me. Ha!
It’s not about the money, it is about supporting something that is wrong, and as those ads on TV when I was younger said “Wrong is wrong, and rationalization doesn’t make it right” (can’t belive they had TV ads, but it stuck in my head).
Customs for carnet stamps and we are in Laos. It is interesting to note that immigration has been more corrupt than customs, the customs guys were cool, showing us their bird collection, stamping our docs and sending us on.
No too far down the road we headed for some waterfalls, the entrance marked by a big red soviet flag. The waterfalls were pumping and there was a little fella (could have been anything from 15 to 30 – hard to tell) just hanging out at the lookout holding an AK47.
We spent our first night in Laos in a big hotel on the Mekong, across the river from Thailand. It was a pretty flash affair but it had been a big day and we didn’t want to bother spending 2 hours finding a cheap hotel or guesthouse with a space for the bikes. It was a beautiful view from our floor, with the temples lit up across the river and lightning in the sky down the river, spoilt somewhat by busloads of Vietnamese businessmen filing into hotel and adjacent massage ‘spa’.
The next day we headed for Vang Vieng for a little floating, about two hours nth of Vientiane the capital of Laos. I was pretty keen to have a look at town because the plan was to continue nth and head back into Thailand at the Golden Triangle through Chang Rai, Chang Mai and then Katchanaburi and maybe a day trip to Burma. We stopped in town at the river after finding an Aussie fella and his son with a map of town.
People often Ask how we get around and find places, I mean we have been supported by TomTom, but there are no maps in Asia, I have the Asian map that spent the last two years on the wall of my flat in Melbourne whilst I was planning, and the good old Lonely Planet. For those uninitiated the Lonely Planet is a very well respected travel guidebook, based in Melbourne actually, that you find everywhere. You even get the ‘Lonely Planet Tourers’ who live by it as the gospel. These tourers start most sentences with “Lonely Planet says…”. Just like any gospel, it tends to work better if you take a general ‘gist’ from its pages. The prices are usually higher, guesthouses the most expensive but in areas with heaps of accommodation and the maps are terrible, but used for an overview it is very handy.
So anyway the way that we navigate is by locals. It isn’t too hard to get from town to town, but getting through or around towns is hard without detailed maps, funnily enough though, the people who live there know their way around and are a great resource. You just have to be careful not to ask them about places they would never have been, no point asking “which way to Tokyo”, just ask for the next town on the way.
Vientienne
Vientienne, the capital of Laos, is a city. It has a river so we headed down there for lunch after passing the big archway on the way into town. We chose a vendor by the river and sat down for a noodle soup by the Mekong. It was a lovely spot with rubbish and debris in the river bed, flys crawling over the food being prepared for us and an excavator building some kind of retaining wall in the river. They were building it backwards and it wasn’t much higher than the river level. Trucks were driving down the wall in water, dumping loads of rocks and the excavator was pushing them around. There didn’t seem to be any plan or order, but it was more comfortable to watch than to watch our food being prepared, I had already resigned to the fact that it was going to cause me issues later in the afternoon, but who am I to judge, this is Laos!
As we polished off the noodle soup and 7up, all of the vendors along the river started to cover their stands with plastic sheets – mostly all old advertising banners for Pepsi or Beer Laos. Now I am no meteorologist, but looking down the river it was pretty easy to see the rain on its way. Awesome, the last couple of hours were going to be wet ones, Todd and I raced to get our gear on and get moving before the storm got to us, and we did, then we were off. Didn’t get too far down the road, we were still saturated, and stopped for fuel. By the time we had got fuel and Todd and done his thing the sun was out again.
We rode right through Vang Vieng, this awesome town that people keep talking about that you can’t miss, with tubing and bars and fun, without even noticing it. In fact, I had to ask someone if we were even there. We doubled back into another road and found our ‘little slice of Koh San Road’ (as per the Lonley planet), complete with a guesthouse that let us park our bikes right outside out hotel room door. Tomorrow is tubing.
Cambodia
Thursday, July 16th, 2009
posted by Simon Buckley @ 04:31:30 PM
Siam Reap
Siam Reap is a tourist town. Heading into town there were huge hotels on the highway, the kind you might expect bus loads of tourists would stay in, ‘do’ their tour of the temples and head straight home. Thousands of rooms worth. Into town, stopped at ‘Pub Street’ we attracted a lot of attention from the locals. The undercurrent of angst was clearly visible here, people knew enough English to ask you to come to their bar and where you were from, but it wasn’t genuine at all and felt uncomfortable.
We found a place to stay, ate and bedded down for the night, we planned a rest day and then a bit of touristing it up the following day.
Sunrise at Angkor Wat was a surprisingly small affair, there are a line of little cafes nearby, and the staff were ‘welcoming you’ as you entered the compound in an effort to get you to come and have a bite after the sunrise. It was quite beautiful, although the sunrise wasn’t spectacular, the reflection off the lake made it visually special, an omelet baguette and off we went to explore the area.
I wasn’t too keen on looking at each and every of the dozens of temples in the area, I just wanted a taste of a the temples and to enjoy the associated tourist buzz. I am almost more interested in seeing the associated tourist infrastructure and the way that locals behave around the tourists.
We pulled over just near a string of shops, come cafes pretty early in the morning and the women running the stalls got pretty excited, almost screaming at us to come over and drink, eat, buy souveniers, give them money whatever, but screaming. We pulled out pretty quickly I must say, a little too full on that early in the morning.
We spent a bit of time in the ruined temple of Ta Phrom where the trees have literally been tearing the temple apart. While most of the main temples in the immediate Angkor area have been cleared of vegetation leaving only cold lifeless stone, it was decided to leave Ta Prohm untouched as a testament of the forces of nature. It was an awesome sight. What is also amazing about that temple in particular is the lack of control. People just climb into and over whatever they want to, so dangerous in a temple where big heavy blocks of stone are falling away from the walls and here we are sticking out heads through the holes for a picture opportunity.
Phnom Penh
As we were crossing a land border with Laos that didn’t have visas available, we had to head to Phnom Penh to the Laos Embassy to sort out the visas there. It was Saturday when we left Siem Reap, so we thought it would be nice to head to Sihanoukville and spend the weekend on the beach, but decided en route that rather than ride an extra 700km we would have another rest day in Phnom Penh and then hook into the visa first thing Monday morning and then head nth.
There was a short lived glimmer of hope that we would be able to get into Vietnam with the bikes (against all other information and advice, a visa agent at the Cambodian Border said it was possible), but no go.
Heading towards the Lao border from the capital, we stopped off in a town 40km short of the border and spent the night so that we could make some ground from an early start in the morning. We ran into a couple of Canadians travelling the other direction and picked their brains whist they watched us have dinner and decided we would head for Vang Vien for a spot of tubing, we were told you hire tyre tubes, jump on the river and float from bar to bar along the river. I couldn’t think of a better way to spend the afternoon.
South East Asia
Tuesday, July 7th, 2009
posted by Simon Buckley @ 08:25:12 PM
Having very little to no luck with contacting the people I had emailed in Bangkok, we decided to head on our SE Asia loop and sort out the shipping on our return to BKK, as it would probably be a matter of go tomorrow. I ran into this problem throughout all of the planning, people didn’t understand that - or why I wanted to sort things out so far in advance. It was straight away or it just didn’t compute. Visas, shipping, web, prostate cancer orgs, sponsors, everyone wanted to wait until the last minute.
Not a big deal if it was just the one of them, but when you are trying to juggle everything, work and pack up your life at the same time it gets pretty rough.
Anyway, we left BKK and headed for Cambodia. Our destination Siam Reap, to visit Angkor Wat. We hit the border in the late afternoon and were accosted on the Thai side to organize our Cambodian Visas.
OVERLAND TRAVEL LESSON 1: Be sure to get your head around the scams with borders so as not to get ripped off. Well we were taken for a bit of a ride, the visa should have cost $20USD and we ended up paying about double that in Baht, but having said that, we just sat in front of the fan, and after 6 hours riding in our full kit in 30+ it was almost worth it to let the little freakers run around and get things sorted for us.
Mo Mans Land
‘No Mans Land’ between borders are not often an interesting place, but between Thailand and Cambodia they have 7 Casinos, with another one being built. As there is no legal gambling in Thailand, the Thais come here for a fix. There are streams of people walking around, getting off busses on the thai side and walking into the casinos. No shortage of people interested in the bikes either.
An interesting point, there are posters around the border post, as well as big billboards about respecting children, and reporting pedophilia to authorities, and it was the first time in the trip that it even came up, made both of us sad and angry at the same time. Next stop, customs to get the bikes cleared and we’re in, too easy!
As I rode away from the border post around a big roundabout, a bike headed straight for me. I assumed that it was just another crazy driver, but why was he flashing and beeping like “I” was doing something wrong – idiot. Customs was about 50m up the road, and we headed in to get our stamp. Looking back at the traffic I realized that the idiot was me, Cambodians drive on the right hand side of the road, no doubt all the signs were in Thai and Cambodian at the border, or maybe it was just the flashing lights of the casinos that stole my attention, either way, no harm done, except to my ego that is.
Customs Cambodian Style
Pulling into the Customs carpark there was a game of ‘tennis’ underway. A cross between Hacky Sack, soccer and volleyball, two teams of two to five guys (I have yet to see a girl playing) kick and head a round wicker ball over the net. Looks pretty interesting, and furthermore it looked like everyone from customs was involved. We asked about getting our paperwork stamped, but as it turns out, the only person able to do it was playing sport “down the road” and wouldn’t be back for “maybe at least an hour”.
It was all a bit of an interesting cultural experience, we watched the guys play, Todd got a lift down to an exchange place on the back of a guys scooter to change some Thai money, I hooked in and played a game with some of the guys (which we won 15 – 11 incidently, boo-ya!) On second thoughts, playing in my riding pants and boots got a little hot, but was worth it at the time.
We were lucky enough to enjoy 3 hours of this cultural feast before the stamp guy returned from his game of tennis. By now it was about 7pm and dark.
Stamps and off we go, en route to Siam Reap.
We were told on many occasions that the roads in Cambodia were abominable, and that travel was pretty slow, so we prepared for a long night, but as it turned out the roads were fantastic, and apart from a few high beam happy drivers coming the other way surprisingly safe.
In Bangkok there are stalls of all kinds of things, one of which were fried bugs – all sorts from grasshoppers to scorpions. Over the next hour we saw how they caught them. At first I thought we had ridden into some kind of bizarre Christian sect, with blue fluro lights in the shape of the crucifix lining the roads, pitch black everywhere else, and just people wandering around the lights. Then there were more and more, straight lines of lights, thousands of them on both sides of the road set out in squares – which I decided meant they were lining the rice paddys. All blue. Then I noticed plastic sheets hanging off the lights – BINGO – bug catching. Apparently they are worth about $2.50USD a kilo, I think the catch on our visors would have bought us a few nights accommodation. I stopped to take a photo and lost a glove in the blackness, no one wanted to scrape the bugs off our headlights either.
Thailand Bound
Sunday, July 5th, 2009
posted by Simon Buckley @ 01:30:02 PM
Heading to Thailand, our first stop was Surat Thani, the gateway to the islands Samui, Phangan and Tao. A veritable playground of fun and debauchery, well last time I was there anyway! A long ride saw us arrive at the port in the early hours of the morning to the news that there were no ferries until daybreak and we laid down to sleep right there at the port. I wasn’t going anywhere!
After all that work in KL, I had an issue with my bike. The battery, the NEW battery, was flat. It did give us the opportunity to use the Anderson plug jump start system that Allan put together for us, but I guessed that a few hours of driving lights and my new high powered headlight was too much for the battery. I didn’t care, I was tired and cranky. We were Koh Samui bound at 8am, a two hour trip on the ferry. When we arrived, we approached the ticket office regarding the onward trip to Koh Phangan. No Luck. We needed to head back to Don Sak on the mainland and then use a different ferry company. There was no way to get our bikes to Koh Phangan without going back.
Two Hours back and three and a half hours to oh Phangan and we made it, exhausted we headed for Haad Rin beach. The place was dead. No one around, but we had been given a tip on accommodation and ended up at Coral beach resort – Home of the Original Pool Party.
Not too sure about their claim to fame but hey, I was knackered. The rooms were discounted by more than 60% due to it being low season, and pretty good if you weren’t one of the poor sods who had their room broken into and robbed. There was a restaurant, a pool, and a dirty beach. I was tired, I wanted to rest. We did no touristing in Koh Phangan, had a few beers, a mushroom shake and watched the fire dancing, and it was fun. A great place to chill and have a good old fashioned relaxing/ party holiday. We ran into Dazza who we had previously met in Bali and team France and just enjoyed doing nothing.
We escaped Koh Phangan and headed nth towards Bangkok. We spent the night in the Port town of Chumpon which was a great relief after being on an island where everybody just wants to rip you of and sell you things. Chumpon is one of those cities that doesn’t survive on the tourist dollar and so people are genuine and friendly.
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Making a b-line for Bangkok nice and early, with great roads we were in town early in the afternoon. On the way, at a point about 70km from the city the traffic all but stopped. I was expecting to see an accident or roadworks, but as it turned out, the left lane became a carpark because there was street racing happening next to the road. People just stopped their cars, got out and went for a look. We followed suit and stopped for a look, hotted up cars, some missing panels presumably from earlier in discrepancies, drifting and power sliding around corners on a track. Not a race at all. It was really loud, and attracted a lot of attention, kind of like a “Welcome to Bangkok”.
Until this stage we have been able to avoid dodgy cops and bribes, navigating by instinct, the sun and local peoples directions. Unfortunately, without a good map we ended up at the start of the ring toll way of Bangkok. No motorbikes are allowed on the tollway, and by this stage we were heading towards the toll booths. Luckily there was a slip road on the left and we made a move to head off when we saw a traffic cop gesturing for us so stop. Thinking he was offering help we pulled over and he asked us for our licences. “Big Problem”
Righteo, I knew this was going to be the first test of my ‘I’m not paying a bribe until Russia’ strategy, and after the best part of a week saying NO in a polite yet convincing and authoritative way I felt I was up for the challenge.
So… little tubby copper no. 1 (Tubby) heads into the office to sort out this “Problem” of us nearly joining a road which we weren’t allowed to. While he is away helpful copper no.2 (Helpful) comes over from somewhere else for a chat and to help with directions, not realizing that Tubby was in full swing sorting out the “problem”. So during the discourse involving sign language, maps, guidebooks, notes and motorcycle revving, Tubby came out and had a quiet chat to Helpful, who then told us that we would have to come and pick up our licenses from the station unless we paid a fine on the spot. Luckily I had an empty wallet and explained to the cops that I had been robbed in Koh Phangan (may not have been entirely true, well not at all true) and had no money. We kept the ruse up and when he asked Todd, Todd directed him to me and I opened my wallet again, appealing to his Helpful side. He must have outranked Tubby, because after about 10 minutes of discussion which could easily be summarized as “You have money?” And my reply whilst showing an empty wallet “I have none, I was robbed in Koh Phangan” , he walked back to the office.
I took the opportunity to use the old talk fast in English, pointing and asking for my licence to show some details. What do you know it worked, he handed my lecence back, at which point Todd asked for his back as well. Once we had our documents back we were on the bikes and out of there in under 30 seconds. I have never actually seen Todd move so fast.
It took three hours to find accommodation with a space for us to park the bikes in Bangkok. Where we ended up was not the most flash accommodation, but it had a carpark and was a regular haunt for local police we were told. At first I thought it a little dodgy, I mean why would the local police hang out in a hotel carpark? And why would this guy, who revealed in conversation that he wasn’t a policeman or staying at the hotel just be hanging around. It was 7:30pm and I didn’t care, I needed a shower and a bed.
The hotel it’s self looked like it could well have been in Russia, quite modern in the 60’s. Rock hard beds, dribble shower and massive A/C unit, a fan that didn’t work and an ashtray. Home for the next few days. Showered and hungry, we headed down to Koh San Road.
For those uninitiated, Koh San Road is the centre of the F.I.T. (free independent traveler) market for South East Asia. There are tours Tuk Tuks, clothes, beers, food, scams, Tuk Tuks, Beers and Tuk Tuks. ‘Mister you want Tuk Tuk?’ ‘Hey Mister where you go?’, ‘You want ping pong show?” “Mister, Mister, my friend, you look!” “You come in my shop, you look!” “Mister you want …..(insert any kind of merchandise here from fishing pants to pineapple shake)?"
You don’t have to think in Koh San Road, only react. It is about employing your instincts, sliding from one offer to the other, hand up, head shaking, Chang firmly in grip.
Thailand Part 1
Thailand Part 2
