The Bus

The bus ride from Nah Trang to Hoi An was 13 hours long and boring as hell so I'm gonna write about it in great detail for you.

As expected the busses are not made for people my height so I was squashed. I was still in a t-shirt and shorts from the boat and the air conditioning was stuck on so I was cold. I was sitting under the main airconditioning vent which poured out water every time the bus turned a sharp corner so I was wet. We were driving past some of the most amazing coastal scenery in Vietnam but it was night time so I couldn't see it. This lasted from 6.20pm to 7.00am.

The roads in Vietnam are not good and at one stage we were driving on a single lane, muddy, dirt track in thick bush along the side of a mountain. In one little town we got completely lost. The Bus drove twice round a roundabout while both drivers, who usually took it in turns to sleep on a hammock ingeniously strung up across the middle of the bus, argued about where to turn. We reversed about 100 metres down a small lane after the drivers realised they had, after all, taken the wrong turn. And we sat in the middle of an intersection as the drivers got out to hold a conference with a group of passing locals. Eventually we did find what we were looking for in this town which was "Barbara's Kiwi Cafe" where we stopped for a midnight rest break. Here I did something that could be seen as kinda funny.

Earlier in the day I had cut my foot on some sharp rock or coral while swimming round some island. It wasn't at all bad but as I'd been walking around with bare feet for most of the day I'd gone to the bathroom to wash my foot where it was cut. As there was no bath or shower I lifted my foot up to the sink and washed it there. That is, until the sink fell out of the wall bringing pipes and plaster down with and causing a huge noise and another bruise and cut to my arm as I tried to catch it.

I calmly turned off the tap, dried my hands and walked out of the bath room where I found a Vietnamese girl who seemed to work at the cafe and pointed out the sink on the floor and hole in the wall where it had been. By the way she said "thats ok" I got that she either didn't quite get that it had just happened or that she didn't know that it had ever been any different. Oh well. I went back downstairs, finished my drink and got back on the bus.

Then, as I was getting over the strange fact that I had just ripped a sink out of the wall a women got on the bus who hadn't been there before. With a strong New Zealand accent she asked if there was a spare seat next to me. Introducing herself as Barbara we had a great chat about the 10 years that she'd spend running her cafe in Vietnam and the trouble she's had recently with the government and everything. I didn't mention the fact that I'd just ripped the sink from her bathroom wall.

Nah Trang

After 2 nights in quiet Mui Ne we've now come up to Nah Trang. We had our own little bungalow about 10 metres away from the beach. In between was a little Palm leaf thatched shelter with deck chairs, hammocks and tables where we would eat, drink and do nothing. It had an open restaurant with great vietnamese food for less than a dollar a meal. It was almost empty of others and the white(ish) sands and clear(ish) water, the coconut trees, the little fishing boats floating by and everthing else made it perfection, or close it to it.

But now in Nah Trang, we were back to the hard life of tourism. That is, we walked to some big old Cham ruins then spent the rest of the day at a spa. For $20 we had a mineral mud bath, mineral water bath, high pressure hosing (surlely mineral too), 45 minute massage, sauna and then a couple of hours in a standard warm pool. The only bad thing was that after noticing that we were surrounded by picturesque Gum I couldn't get the song "gimme a home among the gum trees...". Oh well, close to perfection again.

The next day was one of the best though. A simple 6 dollar whole day boat tour of some local islands had some surprisers that made it pretty memorable. Firstly, to go with the perfect (no 'ish' this time) water and weather came Bob Marley playing loudly over the boat's speakers. The first indication that the day was gonna be good.

The boat had about 13 Aussies, 2 Swedish girls, 2 Danish guys, 2 Vietnamese guys, 1 German, 1 American bloke who was not the only person to point out that although he was american we shouldn't hold that against him. The Vietnamese guide, named Tan, was great. Breaking out an Aussie accent from his repertoire of Irish, English, American and three words of New Zealandish, he spent the day telling stories of the 11 years he'd spent on the boat since he was 13. Saying,

"You know the Kangaroos footy team? 4 years ago they were on this boat. Drank so much! You know Wayne Carey, yeah? He's a wanker, but drank 28 beers! But tell me, why do all you Aussies always get naked? The whole team, naked. You Aussies are even worse than the Spanish blokes and their G-strings. I say to Wayne, you gotta be careful here the police'll lock you up, but they spent the whole day naked. But, big bananas though, you know what I mean."

On the second of our 4 swimming stops we were served the usual huge Vietnamese feast where it is considered impolite if the host runs out of food whether the guests are full or not. Seafood, salads and beer went down really well and were followed by one of the crew bringing out a rusty old drumkit, another got a guitar, another a kids tambourine and the captain a microphone. The following Karaoke with Tan and the Captain poledancing on the table we'd just had lunch from and singing old vietnamese classics, unidentifyable songs that were supposed to be classic western songs and, of course, The Beatles 'Yesterday' which is so far the only song known to all people SE Asia.

After the concert the Captain yelled "FLOATING BAR", grabbed an orange life-saver and jumped into the water where a slab of polystyrene was floating with about 6 bottles of red wine on top. The crew threw in all the remaining life-savers and made us follow. The Floating Bar consisted of about 15 people floating in life-savers around a crazy old Vietnamese bloke who was desperately handing out and refilling plastic cups of a sickly sweet mulberry wine. As the stuff was so bad he couldn't even give it all away, so when he floated past me he grabbed me and asked my name and where I was from. While yelling "Lady and Gentlemans, this is Anger from the land of too many Kangaroos. Everybody now say go, go, go!" he indicated, quite persuasively that I should drink. And I did. About half a bottle of it. After a few others, and then the captain himself were coerced into doing the same the wine was gone and we got back on to the boat to wash away the bad taste with another Tiger Beer. Fortunately the wine must not have been strong and we were all perfectly sober through the afternoon.

The day continued with more sunbathing, swimming, snorkelling and diving off the top of the boat, and Tan's admission that he had a wife and daughter and acted, "differently at home". Then at 6.30 when we were back in Nah Trang and only an hour later on the bus for the 13 hour bus ride to Hoi An, but thats another story...

To Vietnam

Now in Vietnam having stayed at Nat's house for 2 nights in Bangkok. It was fascinating and made so much better (and cheaper) by the friends that I've got there through living at International House. Firstly, to be able to stay with a Thai family and eat some homecooked Thai meals was something that most tourists don't get and definitely worthwhile. Secondly, the day out with Tee Wee was one of the best days so far. Since he left Melbourne at the start of the year he's been living here and working for UNESCO. Being taken round a city by someone who lives their is the best way to see more than just what is in the tourist guides. So apart from the mandatory markets and stuff we went to an amazing food court better than anything in Australia, the interesting shopping centres and the cinema, which was worth it just for the paying respects to the king bit at the start. However, we are now in Vietnam and have just left Ho Chi Minh City or Saigon for a beautiful little town on the coast called Mui Ne. Ho Chi Minh City was interesting because of how busy it was, the remnants of the War and the attitude that the people themselves showed about the war. But I guess its always interesting to be in a place where any person who killed an american (in the war) is a hero. Our welcome to Vietnam was great as our taxi from the airport got stuck in a traffic jam caused by people on bikes having just stopped all across the road to watch Vietnam play soccer against Singapore on a big screen. I still don't know the score of the game as the taxi driver said it was 'one, one, zero'. Also went on a day trip to a Cao Dai temple and the Cu Chi tunnels. About 90% of southern Vietnamese people follow the Cao Dai religion which is a unique mixture of Taoism, Buddhism, Hinduism and a couple of others. Every day at 6am, midday, 6pm and midnight they hold a ceremony in their colourful church. About 100 of the locals in either all white, red, blue or yellow robes slowly parade in and sit in perfect order and prey for a while with the backing of traditional vietnamese music being played at the back of the church. However there are about 300 tourist who all stand on a balcony that goes round the inside of the church and take photos and talk about how nice it looks then get bored and leave within 5 minutes, taking more photos while walking out. More important to take a trophy-photo as proof that they were there than to actually take any interest in what is there in the first place. The music was the most interesting part and I stood by the group playing for quite a while. However it was hard to justify my close position to those who had cameras and pushed me out of the way to get the perfect shot as the walked past. It was strange. The Cu Chi tunnels were good. Anyway, now I am sitting about three metres away from the beach just outside our little bungalow. You've probably seen the perfect beach image before on postcards or travel shows so I don't really need to tell you about the one I'm in now. I'll elaborate on the tunnels and Mui Ne later, right now I'm gonna kick back and listen to the Beautiful Girls, read 'Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance', drink a 50 cent bottle of beer and watch the lights of the fishing boats as they return to shore. I seem to be doing a lot of this. Oh well...

All Hail The King- They Really Do

The first experience I hadin Thailand was in hte train station after having come straight from hte Airport. It was a large hall and we were with many people all sitting and waiting. Without warning 5 soldiers marched in, weapons and all, and stood at attention in front of a huge portrait of the Thai King which was at the front of the hall. The blast of a fanfare and everyone calmly standing up heralded the beginning of the National Anthem. We stood too and looked at everyone as they stared at their King with genuine looks of reverence and appreciation. The kind of look I've only really ever seen (or had myself) at the Football. Then the anthem stopped, the soldiers marched back through their little door and everybody snapped out of their reverent trance to go back to their routine. This came again at the start of a movie we saw with Tee Wee. Just as interesting as the film, which was 'Alexander' with Thai subtitles, was another bit of King honouring. In between the adds for popcorn and pepsi and the ads for the upcoming releases a message appeared which said "Please stand to pay respect to the King". A presentation followed with feel good music that seemed much more likely to be from one of those expensive car ads than the Thai national anthem. The screen showed pictures of kids, old people, sick people and hard working people all looking up to the king and smiling with absolute delight as if for the first time in their lives. It was technically very moving but reminded me of the old Mao Tze Tung propaganda posters with titles like "Mao assists our farmers bring in their large crop" or "Mao helps our scientists solve a tricky problem" or "Mao tells our economists the best way to manage China" or "Mao raises the dead while teaching quantum physics, juggling and just looking plain cool". The third and most remarkable experience I had with the King was at his birthday party on the night of December the 5th. We were told that there would be a bit of a celebration with fireworks and stuff going on down by one of his palaces. This little celebration, however, was fucking huge! Not only were there 4 stages with Thai boxing, traditional dancing, pop music and something else that I didn't get close enough to see, but there were what must have been a couple of hundred thousand people all struggling against each other in different directions but without a clue of where they were trying to get (someone should look up an official number for me because I could be way off). There was meant to be a parade and the road was cleared for it until the people, trying to get somewhere where they wern't, flooded through the barriers and hundreds of military looking guys and swallowed the road and the small groups of uniformed people gathered under banners who were evidently trying to be the parade. The whole thing was just like Yasser Arafat's funeral for those who saw shots of the crowds there desperately trying to touch his coffin and swamping the helicopters and police in the process. In the middle of all this and not knowing anything about what was going on was us, Nat, Penny, Erin having joined us the day before, and me. What was great for me about being in such a tremndous crowd of Thai people is that the average Thai person is not quite 6 foot 2 inches, like me. In fact, the entire crowd was about a foot below me. This meant that although in the hot weather I attracted quite a nice breeze that noone else got I also attracted a lot of attention. Almost every person I was pushed into by the currents of this sea of people would look up at me and with a mixture of humour and jealousy would say what must have been "I bet you're not having any trouble seeing" or just "what's the weather like up there". The thought of which made me laugh because the weather really was better. However, not only was I a beacon in this crowd but was also a bulldozer as one little old woman who must've been having trouble getting anywhere leant her shoulder against my lower back and pushed me through the crowd with the rest of her family following in my wake. We eventually drifted close enough to the stages to weigh anchor and stop for the others to see what was happening on them which Erin could only do after jumping on my back. After ten minutes there we turned around to see the only break in the entire crowd was in a V shape directly behind me. It took another hour or so to get out of the crowd and head back to Nat's place. It was a fair bit different to the Queen's Birthday celebrations in Australia as I've never heard of any Queen's Birthday celebrations at all of any kind. Thailand really seems to be unified and indentified by their King who, just like our Queen, has been on the throne for over fifty years but unlike our Queen is respected by everyone, and not just because you get thrown in gaol if you say anything bad about him. It doesn't matter how different Thai people are they generally see themselves as one under the King. I can only imagine how weird that would be in Australia with our Queen who doesn't come close to unifying our country or giving us an identity. The fact that she is a remnant of the time when we were nothing but a colony of the British empire and that she has nothing to do with Australia or Australians as they are now means that the creation of a strong Australian identity to be proud of is impossible until we become our own republic.

The Land of Double Takes

When I told an old Thai woman who was renting out deck chairs on the beach in Cha Am that we were headed to Phetchaburi she quickly said "Phetchaburi, no beach, no happy". And after spending 4 of the hottest hours of the day travelling on a crowded 3rd class train further and further inland we could see exactly what she meant. Purely because it is slightly inland, Phetchaburi is worlds apart from the touristy coastal towns. It is (relatively) famous for its unusually large number of impressive Wats (temples), its huge caves containing hundreds of old buddha statues and shrines, and its mountain covered in yet more temples and buddha statues as well as a palace as well. This panoply (as soon as I thought of this word I couldn't think of a less ridiculous or pretentious one so I'm keeping it) of culturally significant stuff ("panoply of stuff" is beautiful english), however, is just not enough to attract the tourists, either Thai or international, as much as the salty water and sand at the beach. What shows up most about this difference is the reaction that the people themselves have upon seeing westerners. In Cha Am and Hua Hin the majority of people would either ignore as normal or yell out 'hello' from a hundred metres away to try to sell you something. In Phetchaburi, however, we were something of a novelty and while walking around a festival of local art and music, obviously put on for the locals themselves, I noticed with a bit of a laugh that the most common reaction was that of a double take. That is, they would glance at me as the would any other person and look away before registering, only a split second later, that I was a foreigner and would look back with more interest. If I looked directly at someone they would invariably realise that they were staring at me and would smile with a bit of a nod and say hello and would keep looking. They would take an interest in everything that I looked at and even at how I would react to it. It was kinda embarrassing but more funny as I sometimes became as much of an attraction as the stuff that was on show. One group of guys about my age became very excited when I walked past and pointed and said what must have been "hey look, here comes a Farang". Farang is a word that I've heard a fair bit by people as they point me out to their friends and I was told back in Australia that it is an almost derogatory and impolite term for westerners or white people. One old guy in one of the temples having just finished preying to a 300 year old statue of buddha, ran up to me to shake my hand for good luck. But the best reaction occurred when we had accidentaly wandered into the middle of a crowded school just as the children were being let out. We were heading towards a big Wat which we could only get to after doing 3 decreasing circles around it past classrooms and down little alleys. One girl walked past and almost yelled "Farang, hello" which made the surrounding teachers and parents laugh with embarrassment. It was great.

Itinerary

This is just a quick itinerary of what we may be doing over the next two months. Again, our plans are flexible and I'd welcome any suggestions from those who may know of something we should see.

5-7 Dec: Bangkok- Staying with Nat (from International House) and her family

7 Dec: Fly to Saigon, Vietnam

7-9 Dec: Saigon

10 Dec: Dalat

11-13 Dec: Nha Trang

14-15 Dec: Hoi An

16-17 Dec: Hue

18-19 Dec: Hanoi

20-24 Dec: Halong Bay

25-27 Dec: Hanoi

27 Dec: Fly back to Bangkok

After this we're teaching at the school in Nang Rong, East Thailand until the beginning of February, 2005.

Hedonism

Those of you who know Penny, the person i'm travelling with, know that there are certain differences between the two of us. Although I must stress that this has not been anything like a problem. To me, these differences are summed up by my the fact that I am ruled by hedonism to an extent that Penny can't match.

I have only been in thailand for 2 and a half days but i think that what i like best is to just completely stop and give in to soaking up whatever it is that is coming n to one of my senses.

It could be the sight of the sun setting behind a sparkling old buddhist temple sitting on top of a mountain that extends into the ocean. It could be the feel of the sea washing away the heat of walking up the mountain with the temple on it during the hottest part of teh day. It could be the sound of two old thai guys playing thai love songs mixed interspersed by one of the best renditions of 'hotel california' that i've ever heard, played on a tinny old electronic keyboard with equally tinny artificial drumbeat. Usually, however, it is the taste that really gets me into the hedonistic mood.

Walking around the night market in Hua Hin last night I wanted to stop at every little food vendor and try everything they had. As it was I had to settle for Duck Noodle Soup, some kind of meat on a stick, 2 kinds of Chinese fried dough balls, fried banana thing on a stick and some king of ice drink with a flavour that I couldn't work out. Penny just had the soup and waited untill she was in an internet cafe before I got the dough balls and banana thing.

Although I may not always get the third street meal, spend that third hour on the beach or stay out late with other tourists at places such as 'Heidi's Musikgarten' or 'Coconuts'. This morning we caught a rickety bus with a wooden floor about 9km south of Hua Hin and walked and swam about three km to a mountain, had just the one squid salad for lunch then walked up and down and through a mountain covered with temples and hidden passages, monkeys and monks.

I can't help but think of what I'd be doing if I were here with friends like Tim or Ines. After walking round the Spanish festival in Melbourne eating at least three sausages, ice cream with a whole lot else I can only imagine what she'd be like here. And the sort of sitting on the beachfor hours with fish and chips that we've done on South Melbourne Beach would work much better here.

Oh well, as Penny is asleep upstairs I am sitting in the restaurant of the Jolly & Jumper Restaurant and Guesthouse in Cha am. It is 9pm and I am looking across a dusty road lined by sweet smelling food vendors, talking to German backpackers, listening to 'Hotel California' being played amongst crazy Thai love songs by two old Thai guys on a tinny little synthesiser and guitar, and I am raising my glass of Singha Beer to everything that the first three days in Thailand has offered.

And Dad was worried?!?

Penny and I landed in Bangkok this morning at 6. Our plans for the next few days were 'flexible'. That is, we had no idea where we were going to spend the night. We didn't even know whether we would stay in Bangkok, go to the River Kwai or go just south of Bangkok to the beach towns or cram all three.

We got to the airport and were forced to go to the tourist help desk but couldn't really make a decision. At this stage we did, however, rule out staying in bangkok because we would spend a bit of time there next week with Erin. So we went to the train station.

At the train station in Bangkok we decided to go to the beach towns, and see how long we wanted to stay there and wait and see if we want to go up to river kwai in a day or two. We still havn't made this decision. We bought our third class tickets for 88 baht ($2.50) and were once again forced to go to a tourist help desk.

They helpfully decided to help us find and book accomodation which they said did not exist in Hua Hin (the town we got our ticket to) for under 1000 baht ($35) and that even then we'd be pushing it. We decided we didn't need no fancy tourism office, we'd do it ourselves.

So we did. And now we are in Hua Hin, on the beach south of Bangkok, with a room for 250 baht ($8) a night.


I wonder where we'll be tomorrow night?