Back in Nam.. Ho Chi Minh, Nah Trang & Hoi An

Vietnam was probably one of the top travel destinations on my South East Asia adventures. Not only did I get to meet up and travel with my brother again who I hadn't seen in 8 months! but I got to do a ton of things I've always been too chicken to do in the past. Three weeks seemed like a lot but I honestly could have stayed there for ages.

We started in Ho Chi Minh city where I had just taken an overnight bus to from Sihanoukville in Cambodia. The ride in wasnt the worst I had been on but super long, although when we realised the size of Vietnam, overnight bus rides were going to become the norm. I met my brother when his flight got in and we had to venture off to the market to buy him some slops and shorts because his bag hadn't arrived.. shame, the jeans he arrived in weren't going to cut it! We spent a couple of days in Ho Chi Minh checking out the War Museum, visiting the zoo, crawling through the Cu Chi tunnels and eating all of the food, seriously Vietnamese food has got it going on! I also did the first thing I'd always been too chicken to do, I got a tattoo! My brother had the idea of getting a brother sister tattoo sometime in Vietnam. I thought it was a dumb idea at first, I actually think the literal words that came out of my mouth were "no that's dumb, I'm not doing that", but fast forward a few weeks later and we were both sitting at a Saigon ink in Ho Chi Minh deciding on the exact design of our little idea and then half passing out when the very nice Vietnamese man started sticking needles in us. It was a terrible but pretty exciting experience to say the least but I now have a little reminder forever of our Vietnam experience:)

We continued on to Nah Trang from there, the first of the 10+ hour long bus rides.. We arrived in the pouring rain, got ripped off by a taxi and had our bags soaked through.. but still pretty excited to explore the first of the many beach towns we would visit. Nah Trang was a bit of a strange place. A complete beach town with massive hotel developments forming on the beach front and resorts all over but not full of just any tourists, the tourist population there is probably around 80% Russian. All the shopfronts and menus include Russian writing with Vietnamese and English being second to that. A bit of a culture wobble. We managed to go on a pretty great snorkel trip complete with the best lunch on the boat, because travel really is all about the food right?

After making some friends in Nah Trang and realising we were all going the same route we headed off to Hoi An. Turns out everyone we met was staying in the same hostel. Win! Hoi An is the sweetest little place. It felt a lot like real Vietnam. There were no massive buildings, overly priced shopping malls or fast food restaurants but there were still tons of people and a million scooter drivers everywhere:) Besides being the best place to get custom clothes made from the tons of dressmakers there, I got the best jacket and a dress and skirt made for super cheap, it was a real relaxing place to be in. Easy going days visiting the markets, trips to the beach, and cycling around town was pretty much the gist of it. Going out in Hoi An proved to be loads of fun too. One bar owner decided to draw people in by making all drinks $1... the entire night. Needless to say we had no problems with that :) Go Hoi An!

 

Back to Thailand, Koh Tao!

I'm home!!!! Back in Joburg after what can only be described as the best 18 months I could ever imagine! I did try my best to keep everyone up to speed with my 3 and a bit months in South East Asia but that didn't exactly go according to plan soooo I figured I'd just keep going now as I have tons of free time (unemployment! woo!)

After a super cool trip to Myanmar I had to say laters to Teddy Chesnut and was on my own again. One thing I really wanted to do on this trip was learn how to dive and get my open water license. I ran out of time before because I decided to go get hammered on Koh Phi Phi and Koh Phangnan before Burma, as one does. So I decided it was now or never. I got on the first night bus out of Bangkok and headed back down south for round two. I arrived in Koh Tao to my name on a piece of paper and got taken to the dive school. After a quick nap it was time to start the course. It pretty much consisted of videos and tests for the first two days and then the real diving began. I honestly can't put words to how cool it is being under water and being able to breathe and see the most beautiful ocean life like its no big deal. After four quick days of videos, tests, pool practice and amazing ocean diving I had become a PADI open water diver! I get a card and everything! The pretty fantastic instructors at Davy Jones Locker and my awesome dive buddy Femke made it super easy and a lot of fun:)

Because the dive course had taken up most of my first four days on Koh Tao, I decided to stay an extra two days to explore the island a bit more. I moved to a new backpackers, a bit further inland from the beach. The first day there turned into a pretty unforgettable Koh Tao holiday. Met some brilliant people, the unofficial but also totally official pres crew. If you're unfamiliar, pres: noun, the act of drinking cheap as chips booze before going out and drinking more/turning a hostel room into a war zone/creating a shit show. This happened for the next 3 nights teamed with snorkel trips and beach bumming. Koh Tao was definitely one for the books and further threw out every fear I had before about travelling alone because no matter where you are you're guaranteed to meet amazing people that you'll definitely keep in touch with for a long time:) Koh Tao, you were lovely...

Mingalabar Myanmar!

After what felt like the longest journey up from Koh Phangan, ferrys and sleeper trains and busses included, we finally ended up in Bangkok. Had a Korean reunion and met up with Jason for the first time in 5 months! We quickly got to work on our Myanmar visas and were off to Yangon. The sad thing about traveling is that you're seeing people off all the time... This time was my two Canadians Alysse and Ronak. We'd spent a ton of time together since meeting in Kuala Lumpur so it was a little sad going our separate ways but an adventure nonetheless.

Our 8 days in Burma started a little rocky as Jason got a weird sickness.. A teeny bit worrying when that happens in South East Asia. After a couple of days he was back to normal though, just in time to explore the most amount of temples I've ever seen in my life. We flew into Yangon and made sure we went to the amazing Shwedagon Pagoda. It was pretty incredible. Some parts made from solid gold it almost blinded you if you looked directly at it. We also got really really 'shwedy' too in our skirts. Yip, boys wear them too. We had lunch at the palace on the water boat thing and got back to get on a night bus to Bagan.

Bagan was a whole different Burma from Yangon. We stayed in the small town of Nyaung-U. Our days consisted of renting bicycles and riding the temple streets stopping over and climbing up some of them to get a better view. We got electric bicycles for one of the days. The highest powered vehicle foreigners are allowed to rent. Makes sense if foreigners and motorbikes are anything like Thailand. I still managed to fall off the electric bike though, highly embarrassing.. Meryl and vehicles of any kinds don't mesh so well..
Pictures of Bagan really don't do it justice at all. Being there really was something else. To see temples and pagodas that go on forever as far as the eye can see, temples that have been there for centuries, temples that are occasionally restored but for the most part have been left as once were. It was really quite spectacular. The only downside was not seeing a hot air balloon as shown in every Googled picture of Bagan ever.

Myanmar was really different to places I've visited so far. The tourism industry is still growing and things aren't as convenient to find and do. Seven Elevens and Mcdonalds are mystery words. But it is definitely becoming more and more popular. The people are fantastic though, super friendly and accommodating, made being away from everything for a while pretty nice:)

That time I went to Phuket, Koh Phi Phi and Koh Phangan... again!

I was so ready for beach time after spending time in the cities of Kuala Lumpur and Singapore. Eager to go back to Thailand, I wasn't at all that excited for Phuket. A travel plan that didn't quite work out left me with an Air Asia flight to Phuket that I couldn't cancel or change to somewhere else. I booked a hostel on Kata beach to try escape the crazy wild Patong beach that we stayed at last time. I'd love to say that my thoughts on Phuket beaches have changed this time around but that's unfortunately not the case. A walk down to the beach consisted of not one word of English being heard, literally only Russians were there buying into all the tacky touristy shit imaginable, not batting an eyelid at prices and making everything there pretty expensive. The sleazy girly bars that I thought I'd be skipping in Patong were still there too. Sorry Phuket but I don't think I'll be seeing you again.

After spending a day there I made my way to Koh Phi Phi to meet up with friends I'd made in KL. We had a lot of fun. Phi Phi was still a party beach as I remembered it with people riding their bikes through the town going beep beep instead of bells lol. Still a lot of fun:) I made some new friends, had way too many drinks and was eventually roped into going to Koh Phangan for the Full Moon party... again.

Koh Phangan did turn out to be a whole lot of fun. I had originally planned to go to Krabi to do my dive course but worked out that I wouldn't have enough time before I'd have to be up in Bangkok to go to Burma. After a long trip of ferries, buses and ferries again we made it to the land of Fullmoon, Halfmoon and Jungle parties, all of the parties. We did them all, as one does in Koh Phangan. The Full Moon party was pretty wild. Lumo, trance music, crazy people, all rolled into one. I definitely think its the last time I'll be doing it though. Think twice in your life is enough lol. The crazy week of partying on the islands definitely called for some down time in Bangkok, or something like that :)

Beijing!

After a pretty fantastic time spent showing the family how I had been living for 6 months and exploring Seoul with them it was time to move on to our next destination together,  Beijing!

The trip didn't start out as smoothly as hoped for, well for me at least. Leaving the day Chuseok started in Korea meant pretty much everyone and their uncles dog was at the airport that morning. The rest of the family left from Gimpo, another airport in Seoul, so they had didn't have as much trouble leaving Korea. To cut a long story short, the delay meant I missed the connection in Shenyang in China and got on the next available flight to Beijing, which ended up being 9 hours later than expected :| Not ideal..

Even though we missed a day of exploring we still managed to visit a bunch of different sites. We started with Tienanmen square and the Forbidden City. It was great to see so much cultural history in one place. Mao's mausoleum unfortunately wasn't open for viewing in the square that day so no creepy old dictator dead body viewing for us but it was still a really interesting place to be at. The size of the Forbidden City was insane and the stories behind what happened there are never ending too. Its great to be able to be in a place and learn its history at the same time so I tried my best to understand the history of the different dynasty's throughout Beijing but jeepers the amount of information that goes with them proved to be a little more than my brain could handle in a day.

Starfish, taratulas, snakes, and cockroaches at Wangfujing night market

Our Great Wall trip included a visit to the Ming Tombs, lunch at a Jade factory and a trip to a silk factory too. The Great Wall was something else! It was pretty incredible to be standing on it and walking along it like its no big deal. We managed to get a day with perfect weather too! It really made the views from the lookout towers kind of postcard perfect. Blue sky and mountains for days. We got  to toboggan down the mountain on the way down too, so much fun!

Some other things we did included visiting the Yonghe, or Lama Temple as its known today, which was once home to a large number of Tibetan Buddhist monks. We got lost for a couple of hours at The Temple of Heaven and fitted in a whole day of shopping at the silk street market, because what would a trip to Beijing be without having shouting matches with shop attendants to get the best deal on sweet sweet cheap as chips knockoffs! Brother went home with about 5 pairs of shoes, no lies.

Throwing coins for luck at Lama Temple

All in all Beijing was really great. I mean don't get me wrong it isn't the cleanest city I've been to and yes it is true, mothers do let their babies poo in the streets (forever scarred) but the cultural history and the sights outweigh all of that! If sightseeing is your thing, and there is a ton to see, then Beijing is your place!

Some videos I made using Roadmovies: