[Preface: The following journal writing of a one month trek through Asia, from New Year's Eve of 2011 on into the month of January 2012, is presented here completely unedited, as it is written directly from my Fourth journal book. It is [52] hand written pages.]
Thailand
New Year's Eve - from 2011 on into 2012, my wife and I sat on a ten hour direct flight from Oslo to Bangkok. I was a bit sick - bad sinuses and a headache, I was exhausted.
Our flight was on Thai Air - an afternoon flight in which we would be in Bangkok very early in the morning on New Year's day. We were doing this Asia trip Backpacker style. To start with, going through passport control at Gardermoen airport in Oslo, the discovery was made that the Follo Police department in Ski did not update and change the expiration date on my renewed residency sticker in my passport - leaving the date as December 22, 2011 - instead of 2012. At this point in the journey I have no idea how this will affect my return home in Norway.
On the plane Elin and I had technical difficulties with our video screens - the picture and sound was not working right, so we could not watch any inflight movies. It seemed we were the only two on the flight that had this problem. Then around half way through our flight they ran out of any alcoholic drinks. No beer or wine or anything. The next glitch in our travel that hit us was we also realized we left the paperwork printed from my e-mail at home which had our reservations and the address for the Victoria Residence hotel. And for anyone who knows about international travel, one must fill out declaration forms upon entering a country and having the name and address of where you are staying is needed. This may get interesting. It's almost like London all over again when Elin and I didn't have Ryan and Jose's address - just Ryan's cell phone number.
Only a couple of hours left till we land in Bangkok, and breakfast is about to be served. We had a sunrise landing New Year's morning into Bangkok. At the airport I was able to check my e-mail for the correct name and address for our hotel - it turned out I did have the name wrong. The hotel was called the Victory Executive Residence. Also at the airport we took care of our money exchanges, ending up with three thousand Thai Baht. We did two days and two nights in Bangkok. The taxi from the airport to our hotel cost us five hundred Baht. Thailand is a very interesting, crazy, hectic city. Everyone drives insane and fast. I really loved the Tuk-Tuks (motorcycle taxis) - those guys really drove crazy. The city was also real cheap. Elin and I could eat out at small food stands and cafe type places - full meals, big bottles of water and beer each - all for around $5 to $6 U.S. - so about 20 Kroners (or so).
Tuesday the third of January we left Bangkok around 7:30AM by a mini-bus to head to the Cambodian border. It cost us 2,400 Baht - and ended up being a big hassle of a six or seven hour trek - the full journey of Bangkok to Siem Reap. It was suppose to be the mini-bus to the border, then a taxi into Siem Reap, but what the reality was - what happened - it took around four hours to go from Bangkok to just outside the Cambodian border, the mini-bus took us to some random café type of place and this is where we were to handle all of the passport, visa paperwork and payments. I had already had my visa paid and had the e-visa. Elin had to do all of her paperwork and pay there. This is when and where the hassles and scams began. It was suppose to only cost Elin $20 U.S. but they took the payment in Baht and it cost us 1,300 Baht. Then we had to wait almost an hour for our taxi - which got switched up to another mini-bus that was fully packed. When we got just outside the border crossing, we had to walk a bit to just outside the money exchange, and this is also where Elin and I, with about ten other people, had to again wait, and our organizers/tour guides "explained" (gave us bullshit) the money exchange and that since Cambodia accepts U.S. dollars, that it's better to use dollars over the Cambodian Riel. There was a lot of crap they told us and made us always wait and stay as a group. From this point, after about another twenty or thirty minutes of waiting we had to walk across a parking lot, part way up another street, we walked through crowds of people, cars, motorcycles, passed streetside food carts, markets, and small shops - to get to passport control just to leave Thailand. Yes, we were still on the Thai side of the border, and of course more waiting in long lines at passport control. Once we finally got across and into Cambodia - at Poi Pet - we still had to go through the passport control for the stamp into Cambodia. More waiting in long lines. So now, Elin and I thought we would get our taxi and head off on the two hour drive it takes to get to Siem Reap. But our Thai and Cambodian organizers/guides - still wanting to keep us all in one big group - of course made us wait almost another hour, then stuck us on a run-down bus which took us about thirty minutes or so out to the country - middle of nowhere to some international bus and taxi station. About another half an hour or so of waiting around which lead to shouting arguments with the seven remaining in our group and our so called organizer/guide. The situation got a bit tense and heated. The outcome ended with three people staying behind, and Elin and I with two others finally got a taxi to be headed off on the two hour drive to Siem Reap. We shared the taxi with fellow Backpackers, an Italian girl who was a scuba diver and teacher - who slept most of the ride. And the other was a young guy also from the States - from Virginia, who also skated. He and I talked most of the way - about skateboarding. - Finally in Siem Reap, but we still had to take a Tuk-Tuk to the Central Boutique Angkor hotel where we were to meet up with Elin's parents. Our Tuk-Tuk driver's name was Som An. He was nice.
Cambodia: Part 1.5 & 2
In Siem Reap Elin and I stayed at the Im Malis Guest House, which was just a two minute walk around the corner to the Central Boutique where her parents were staying. We lived there for two nights. (Bangkok was cheap, Siem Reap was even cheaper. And as far as I am told or know of - Vietnam should be even cheaper still.) In U.S. dollars it was $15 for the room per night at Im Malis. When we ate out at the cafes and food stands the meals were $2 to $4 U.S., $0.50 to $1 beers. Our first night in Siem Reap the dinner for the four of us was $14 - of course including the beer - (around 84 Kroners).
Three days and three nights in Siem Reap. Wednesday 4th of January - Elin and I with her folks (Ingrid and Egon) paid $12 U.S. to a Tuk-Tuk driver to take us out for the day around to three of the main big famous Buddhist temples. Som An, our Tuk-Tuk driver from Tuesday - (the first day we got into Siem Reap) was to arrange his friend to be our Tuk-Tuk driver for that day on Wednesday. He was suppose to pick us up at the Central Boutique by 12PM noon. He was almost ten minutes late and we had the guy at the front desk call Som An - we actually called him twice. By fifteen minutes after noon, Ingrid asked me to just go get us another Tuk-Tuk. When I came back with another Tuk-Tuk - as we pulled into the Central Boutique, Som An's friend showed up - driving in right behind. We all got in the other Tuk-Tuk and as we drove off, Som An's friend watched - giving us a look. The three temples we visited were Ta Prohm, Angkor Thom, and Angkor Wat.
I felt like I went through some kind of personal struggle or conflict of thoughts or beliefs - within my spirituality. It was like I wasn't as moved as I thought I should have been. Visiting these temples (really any ancient Buddhist temples) has been a dream for me. It was very amazing to be there, to walk the steps and corridors of these places...the sun was shining bright that day and the temples were peaceful. In always having considered myself a spiritual person, believing in Gods, and especially more so with Rastafari and Buddhism - I got lost in so many of my own thoughts - as if I had wanted to be an old monk in a past life, and thinking about my actual real life heritage of being half Swedish descent - the Viking heritage - (and yes maybe Christianity), then for some moments those ancient temples I dreamed and longed to visit just seemed to become some old relic buildings that I was mindlessly walking through and taking photos of. It was like I had lost appreciation of a dream. This wasn't me. There was also a thought of - I almost felt rushed to get through each temple so we could move on to the next one, or where ever else to go. I realize it is negative to say - yet the rushed feeling did kind of feel like it came from Elin's parents. Maybe if I could have had time, more time for myself in those temples. Those temples of Angkor are very powerful. I would love to visit them again in this life. (There should have been quite a bit more on all of this thought process - travel exhaustion, lost thoughts and not enough times to get writing done. Confusions - interruptions).
Next day - Thursday 5th of January, that morning Elin and I checked our of the Im Malis and went around the corner to the Central Boutique - checked in there because they had a pool. It was $40 U.S. for the night at the Central Boutique. We relaxed that day, just mainly hanging out at the pool. That Thursday night was our last night in Siem Reap. Elin and I had dinner at the Silk Lounge with this guy named Ben Chapman - he was Australian. We had actually met Ben on that Tuesday going into Cambodia - in the passport control line to leave Thailand. Then by some kind of chance he ended up staying in the room next to ours at the Im Malis. He was living in Brunei, working a civilian job for the military as a helicopter mechanic. He too was leaving Siem Reap the next day - 7:30AM morning - heading to Phnom Penh to see the Killing Fields.
Friday, 6th of January, our flight to Hanoi - North Vietnam wasn't until the evening. Elin and I took a late morning swim in the pool, and then a bit after noon we took a Tuk-Tuk out of Siem Reap, through the country - way out, passed rice fields, along a very narrow river that led out to the Tonle Sap lake. The Tuk-Tuk ride was around a half an hour. From there we took a boat through a narrow channel of mangroves and out to the floating village. We ate lunch at a café in the floating village and then headed back to shore. The boat ride out to the village also took around a half an hour. Back on the Tuk-Tuk - as we headed through the country back into Siem reap - some chickens and baby chicks were crossing the dirt road, our driver tried to swerve and dodge them but unfortunately ran over one of the baby chicks - killing it. He stopped and asked us if he had hit it and was it dead, we answered yes and he bowed his head - doing a little prayer, then we were back on our way to our hotel - back for one last dip in the Central Boutique's pool.
It was an hour and forty minute flight from Siem Reap to Hanoi, N. Vietnam. We landed around 9:30PM. At baggage claim it was hectic, chaos - they had three different flights worth of luggage coming off the belt at the same time. We took a taxi into Hanoi to a hotel - at the airport they told us it would be $16 U.S. for the taxi, but when we got to the hotel the driver wanted $25 U.S. plus 372 Vietnam Dong (which was on the meter). Ingrid and I split the cost in dollars and only paid him the $25. Hanoi was cold, gray, and foggy. We only spent that Friday night there. On Saturday morning Elin and I had to go find jackets to buy - there was no way we could've stayed in N. Vietnam without jackets. We found a store and Elin picked out a sweater, but I still needed to find a jacket. We didn't have so much time, we had to check out of the hotel, so Elin went back to finish packing our gear. (The sweater Elin wanted was seriously totally Norwegian style with reindeer pattern) - I had the sweater laid over one of the racks as I continued my search for a jacket. I had my back turned - I turned around again and noticed the sweater was gone, I looked up and saw another woman trying it on and I told her and one of the women working in the store that I was going to buy the sweater for my wife. The girl working in the store realized and understood and was helping me out, but the lady trying on the sweater seemed pissed. It kind of caused a slight scene. My time was running out. I really didn't like any of the jackets but I needed one, so I ended up with a crappy thin nylon track style jacket. I paid $40 U.S. for the jacket and sweater, and I ran back to the hotel. - A taxi ride to the bus station. (It was Saturday the 7th of January), the bus trek from Hanoi out to the coast of Ha Long Bay took four and a half hours. At the bus station, we sat on the bus just waiting, not going anywhere for about a half an hour. About two or three old Vietnamese women came on the bus selling loaves of fresh bread. We didn't really know how long the trip would really take or how many stops there would be, so we bought two loaves. The bread was good. The day remained cold, gray, and foggy. It was late in the afternoon when we got to Ha Long. And another taxi to get us to a hotel. The taxi driver took us to a hotel that he owned with his sister. There was one more slight hassle and a bit of a scam with the price, he had told us it would be $10 U.S. for the room with breakfast included, but the breakfast was not included and the room was going to be $15 per night. We did still get the rooms for $10 in the end. We were also going to stay there for two nights - which didn't happen. The room really was not so bad but it was very cold, the bathroom was even colder and it smelled terribly awful. Elin and I had a heater in our room but Ingrid and Egon did not. North Vietnam was cold yet for some reason it seemed colder indoors, in the buildings, and no one seemed to use the heaters or they didn't have heat, they all just wore jackets and hats - beanie caps. Elin and I had to go buy even thicker jackets, the jacket and sweater we got in Hanoi wouldn't have been enough to keep us warm. We took a motorcycle taxi to a big market area - which was actually in walking distance. There we bought two thicker jackets. We paid 1,000,000 Vietnam Dong (VND) for both jackets which we thought was still a bit expensive but it turned out - we later found out - it was a good deal as most people, even Vietnamese, pay 1,000,000 VND for one jacket. Walking back to the hotel, we stopped for dinner at a real dive spot - that probably wasn't the cleanest place to eat. We drank Ha Long's own hometown brewed beer and I ate probably the best fried rice and vegetables ever - which also may have been real bad, making me sick in the stomach. That night turned out to be real rough for me. I do think it was a combination of travel exhaustion, the cold, beer, and food from an unclean place. We had the heat on the highest setting - thirty degrees Celsius plus three blankets, we kept the bathroom door shut to try to keep the smell out of the room - that only helped a little bit.
Sunday 8th of January, we all had originally planned to stay two nights at that hotel but with the nasty smell of the bathroom, and the no heat in Ingrid and Egon's room, we decided to check out of there and go to another hotel right around the corner. That other hotel actually did not turn out to be so much better. The bathroom still had a horrible smell - (not as bad as the first hotel, but still bad), and there was no heat at all in any of the rooms. That night we started out with three blankets and despite no heater, we started to sweat in our sleep, we had to go down to one blanket - we ended up being warm anyway. Sunday - during the day we took the boat tour of Ha Long Bay. I'm not sure how to describe and put into words how amazing and majestic the limestone cliff - mountainous islands of Ha Long Bay are. They are an incredible wonder to see. The tour was for four hours. There is a floating fishing village among the islands, I saw a small Buddhist shrine set in among the rocks and cliff just above shore level, the water was a beautiful emerald green in colour which Elin and I figured would be amazing to swim in - in the Summer, warmer weather of course. We docked at one of the islands - there were stone carved steps that led up near the top of the mountain and into the limestone caves. (I know I should probably write more about the Ha Long Bay islands, but like I said - I find it pretty difficult to do so. They are something one should see for themselves). Just so majestic! Walking through the market in Ha Long, at one of the meat butcher stands we saw a chopped up dog - including the head which seemed to have been smoked. Ingrid and I both thought about taking pictures of it - we talked on it and figured it was a bit too gruesome and inhumane to do so.
Monday 9th of January, we left the cold and gray and fog of N. Vietnam - a two hour taxi ride to (the smallest airport in the world that I have ever been to) Hai Phong. It was an hour and forty-five minute flight from Hai Phong to Ho Chi Minh city (Saigon). In Saigon, just the same as Hanoi - we landed at 9:30PM at night. This time, instead of just randomly finding a hotel, we had booked one - the Phoenix 74, and they were suppose to have had the taxi waiting at the airport to pick us up - which did not happen. The Phoenix 74 turned out to be on a street in a hardcore Backpacker area. Lots of tourists, noise, bars, loud music, etc. It wasn't so cozy. Also just like in Hanoi, we only just stayed the one night in Saigon (HCMC), not exploring the city at all. But we do have the plan on going back to the city - seeing as Ingrid and Egon fly home to Sweden on the 19th of January from HCMC. Elin and I would like to see the tunnel systems from the Vietnam war.
Tuesday 10th of January - back on a mini-bus for a few hours...Saigon to the coast - the beach, finally! We are now in Vung Tau - South Vietnam. - A few days have passed by, it's been mellow, days of just relaxing at the beach and drinking beer.
Friday the 13th of January - and in stupid superstitious terms, yea it was kind of a random weird day. Elin and I rented a motorbike from our hotel (The Victory) for 150,000 VND. Our plan was to head to the white sand beach area in Long Hai, which is suppose to only be 15 KM away. It was sometime around noon when we headed out on our adventure. In some kind of unorganization, leaving in a hurry, just unprepared - the map got left in our hotel room. The night before I did read over the map quite a few times. I did have a good idea of the general direction we needed to go - all off memory. I believe we started off doing ok, I did stop a few times to ask directions and make sure we were still headed in the right direction. And overall we were. Yet any time I did stop and ask for directions - it was a very difficult struggle with communicating. We were out in towns, in the country - we were pretty much the only tourists in the area and Vietnamese don't know English - but they still try to help as much as they can. We rode through small villages and towns, dusty-gravel covered, bumpy roads, past fields and temples, swampy areas that stank of shit, at one point in getting lost we found ourselves on a heavily travelled road going North - the complete wrong way to Ba Ria. We even almost ran our of gas. At a gas station I paid 400,000 VND and it didn't even fill the tank all the way. Eventually - somehow, after several U-turns and more miscommunicated directions, we did find ourselves in the town of Long Hai but still no where near the white sand beach area. The traffick was intense and chaotic - I know Elin was nervous and freaked out at certain moments, I was a bit too. We were getting a lot of people staring at us - giving us looks. I guess in Long Hai they don't get so many tourists. We seriously just gave up on trying to get to the beach. We turned back, heading back to our hotel. We had only been gone for around two - maybe three hours. It was still early afternoon, we got back to the Victory hotel and met back up with Ingrid and Egon, and we just stayed at the beach there in Vung Tau. After a few hours of hanging out on the beach, Egon left to go back up to the room in the hotel, Ingrid, Elin, And I stayed on the beach. A short while after - several minutes after Egon left, some random Vietnamese guy just went crazy - he was yelling and jumping up and down almost like a monkey. All of this happened right behind us, very close. He started by grabbing a plastic shovel that had a short thick bamboo handle - he smashed the shovel head to pieces, breaking it all away from the bamboo, then he used the bamboo stick to smash apart a plastic chair, he was walking fast paced up and down the beach waving the bamboo stick, yelling and shouting, and jumping up and down. Everyone on the beach - most all Vietnamese - just watched in awe, either laughing at him or ignoring him. Regardless, no one did anything, no police showed up, they all just let him have his freak out moment. Ingrid, Elin, and I never saw the final outcome of what happened. After a few minutes of his ranting we left the beach and went back to the hotel. We told Egon what had happened, and Egon told us that when he had left to go back to the hotel, he saw that Vietnamese guy having an argument with another guy, and that a security officer had intervened to break it up - I guess whatever the argument was, whatever happened, that's why the guy flipped out.
Today is Sunday, 15th of January - our last day at the beach in Vung Tau. Tomorrow - Monday the 16th we are taking a boat back to Ho Chi Minh City. It's suppose to leave at 10:30AM and only take around an hour and a half - but we'll see what the reality will turn out to be.
(Random notes and other memories: left out of the written story - Bangkok, at the Victory Executive Residence - the pool was on the 15th floor - rooftop, the patio deck area was very cool and Elin and I could catch the scents of spices from the food stands on the streets below from the city winds. I loved walking through all of the street markets and food stands. So far Thailand had the best food. Siem Reap was my personal favorite place to be. That Wednesday in Siem Reap that we visited the temples of Angkor - later that night, in a Tuk-Tuk with Ingrid and Egon, Elin and I decided to have dinner alone so we got dropped off somewhere on the streets of Siem Reap...after dinner, then just walking around aimlessly for a while, we wanted to go back to our hotel, we knew we were real close but we weren't sure how close. We got a Tuk-Tuk - the driver wanted $2 U.S. to take us - I talked him down to $1, he agreed. We got in the Tuk-Tuk, drove about twenty feet and made a right turn, as soon as we turned onto the next street I saw the Im Malis sign - we were just a few minutes walk from the hotel - I wasted a dollar. Still in Siem Reap - I ate the best mango I've ever eaten from a food cart at the Angkor Thom temple. In Ha Long Bay, on the boat tour - our tour guide guy got into some heated shouting matches with the boat captain. - Bangkok: taking the water taxi - boat on the river, drinking fresh made juice from a streetside cart. - Ha Long, at the first hotel we stayed, a Saturday night - sitting at patio tables drinking hot Vietnamese green tea and talking with the woman and her brother who owned the hotel. She was thirty-one, same age as Elin. She told us she had family in Canada, England, Germany, and there may have been other family in more places around the world, I can't remember. Good conversations - they were nice. - Vung Tau, buying a pair of bootleg Ray-Ban sunglasses for 50,000 VND. Sitting at the beach - the food stands and ice cream mo-ped carts, drinking beer, old Vietnamese women walking around selling fruit, Elin and her parents eating fresh seafood: octopus, mussels, crab and shrimp. All of this right on the beach.)
Feeling like I got a bit of my old hippie status back - getting a couple of handmade leather woven and Buddha style beaded bracelets. A haircut in a Vietnamese barber shop. Elin woke me up one morning right at sunrise to take photos - a S. Vietnam sunrise, it was so beautiful, amazing, and it really was one of just a few sunrises I have seen in my life - to date. Forget sand castles - seeing five or six boys on Vung Tau beach making three pyramids and sphinx of Egypt, and a sand Buddha temple with a dragon snaking around and through the temple - with the body of the dragon hunching up in areas and with the water streaming underneath, and around the temple - only to be washed away back into the South China sea as the tides came in. - At Vung Tau, we swam in the South China sea. - Siem Reap, at the Im Malis hotel - finding a copy of the Motorcycle Diaries from Che (in English), I've been wanting to read that book for a long time. - Bangkok, the Florida hotel!! Doing laundry Backpacker style - in Siem Reap there was a laundry spot on the street that charged $1 U.S. per kilo, in Vung Tau even though the Victory was a nice hotel and cheap, the hotel laundry service seemed kind of pricey so Elin and I washed our clothes in the sink. - All the fresh fruits: mangos, pineapples, papaya...fresh made juices - sugar cane juice - from the food stands and carts.
Lost conversation with Egon in the Victory hotel restaurant, Friday 13th - Jan. - Elin and I were finishing dinner when Ingrid and Egon came in to have dinner, we all shared two bottles of wine and good conversation. Egon and I talked about spirituality, God, good hard work, life and things related in all of this. He said God is love - it's kind of a cliché, many of us have heard those words before - God is love. I like that anyway and I told Egon I liked those words. There was something else he had said about God and love - in a spiritual sense that I really did like...maybe it was too much wine, drunkenness, but I can't remember his words and I wish I could. In the aftermath - a day or so later, I had another self realization about my mixed feelings I had at the temples of Angkor, along with the forgotten words from Egon, maybe it all needed some time - maybe I needed some time, for it all to set in then make sense. (Always too much self conflict!)
Monday 16th of January - the ferry from Vung Tau to Ho Chi Minh City was actually a fast, smooth ride. We got back into HCMC in the middle of the afternoon. That night for dinner Ingrid and Egon wanted bar-bq, and Elin had actually found a Texas style bar-bq restaurant in one of the travel books Ingrid had - it wasn't so far from our hotel so we could walk. It turned out that the original place that Elin found in the book was apparently out of business, but we did find a bar-bq spot called Houston - it was on the same street and kind of close to where that other place once was. It actually had another (Vietnamese) name besides the name Houston. The bar-bq menu turned out to not be so good - not so Texas style, in fact they had three different menus all together. It was kind of strange. The service there was not so good either. They had completely forgotten about Egon's food - we had to wait a while too for them to make it. The place had real horrible painted murals of cowboys and Indians on the walls - Western themed and done bad!
Tuesday 17th of January - Elin and I walked around the city for a couple of hours, just checking things out. Later in the afternoon we went to the war museum - about the Vietnam war. It was only a couple of blocks from our hotel. Ingrid and Egon walked down there with us but they didn't go in. It was a lot to handle - very emotional, heavy, and depressing. There were moments I almost cried, Elin said the same for herself. It was a lot of photos, powerful and sad photos. The horrors and crimes that so many American troops committed. I did have my G10 with me and of course - at first I thought of snapping some photos, but once in the museum - (I kind of thought about the chopped up dog at the market in Ha Long) - I just could not bring myself to shoot anything. It was all too much. Too gruesome, inhumane, and it felt a bit like it would have been disrespectful to shoot any photos. - It rained quite a lot this day.
Tomorrow - Wednesday 18th - we are going to take the tour of the tunnel systems from the war. It will be our last full day for the four of us to be together on this trip. Ingrid and Egon fly home (to Sweden) the day after - Thursday 19th, in the evening. Yes, it will be very nice for it to be again just me and Elin - some alone time - but I do also have to admit I will miss the travels with Ingrid and Egon as well. For me and Elin, I do believe it is going to be back to Thailand - to the beaches. The Cu Chi tunnels. I don't know yet what or how to write about this yet. Elin and I do leave HCMC tomorrow - Thursday the 19th. Our flight actually goes one hour before Ingrid and Egon's. We're flying back to Bangkok, then from there - I guess - we are going to the island of Ko Samet, back to beaches.
-
Two days and two nights in Bangkok.
Three days and three nights in Siem Reap.
One night in Hanoi.
Two days and two nights in Ha Long Bay.
One night in Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon).
Five days and six nights in Vung Tau.
Three days and three nights in Saigon.
One night in Bangkok.
Five days and sixe nights on Koh Samet island.
Three days and three nights in Bangkok.
The Last Nine Days of Asia
Friday 20th of January - the night before - (Thursday night) - we stayed at the Victory Executive again like we did at the beginning of our trip. On that Friday we took a late morning bus - just before noon, heading to the coast to catch a ferry out to Koh Samet island. The bus ride was another long one, around three and a half hours, yet unlike the other bus treks, this one wasn't so bad. The seats were more comfortable, we had a bit more leg room, and we could recline the seats back a lot more too. The bus route took us out through Bangkok, through small country towns and villages that reminded me a lot of some of the small Mexican towns in Florida - making me a little bit homesick (again), I even spotted quite a few lowrider pick-up trucks. Pick-ups seemed quite popular in those small country Thai towns. We went through industrial - warehouse areas, passed Buddhist temples, farms of fruit trees and forest farms of rubber trees and palms. The distant mountain lines drew in closer as we came to the coast. (We hit patches of rain storms). We got to the pier around 3PM and the ferry went at 3:30PM so we had a half an hour to wait. Everything was old, worn, and kind of sketchy. The two by four wood planks of the pier had big gaps between each and some were splintering and cracked. To get onto the boat from the pier we had to walk across a single loose two by eight plank. The ferry ride was forty-five minutes long, and when we got to the island we didn't even dock directly to the pier, we were along side another ferry that we had to cross over to, then walk across another two by eight loose plank over to the pier. The plank was not at a level angle, it was slanted, on the pier side a Thai young man was standing with one foot on the end of the plank to do his best to steady it in place which really didn't help much. The woman who was in front of me, when she went to cross, the loose end that was on the ferry slid, shifting to the left - luckily a huge cement pillar of the pier caught and stopped the plank - she almost lost her balance. As we crossed over, we had to sort of hug and hold ourselves - our balance on that pillar, which was a bit difficult due to how big the pillar was, the angle of the plank (and the size of it only being a two by eight), and the movement of the boat on the water. When it came to my turn to cross over, my backpack was quite heavy and I felt really nervous that I was going to lose it and fall into the Gulf of Siam. All I could think about was the two cameras and my iPod in my pack. We were now on Koh Samet island, Thailand at Nadan pier. The taxi at the pier was a small pick-up truck with two benches along the sides of the bed of the truck. They packed eleven of us with our gear in the back. The taxi was free to Had Saikaew, any further than that it was 100 Baht per person. Elin and I paid the extra 200 Baht to head a bit further South on the island. The taxi ride on Koh Samet - the road was very narrow, almost only one lane, two cars could barely pass by one another. It changed back and forth from paved to dirt, and no matter if it was paved - it was still extremely bumpy, filled with potholes, mud puddles that were quite deep with water. The ride was a bone rattler. (As of the moment I'm not sure where on Koh Samet we are).
Today is Saturday the 21st of January. We are staying in a pretty nice bungalow just a bit off the beach. It was suppose to be 800 Baht per night which the old Thai lady at the front desk said was already a discount, but we negotiated the price down to 700 Baht a night for five nights - 3,500 Baht total. The bungalow was nice, clean, we had a nice cozy garden in front, yet it was also a bit weird - off - the T.V. only had six channels that were only in Thai and they didn't come in so clear - all fuzzy, static. Our shower head was broken and the hot water actually wasn't so hot, and the bathroom sink stopper plug did not come all the way out of the drain - it was built stuck in the sink, and it wouldn't stay up - open for the water to drain out. So the sink would fill up with water and we had to pull up the stopper and hold it open for the sink to drain. Then there was no plumbing or pipes hooked up to the sink. When we would drain the sink the water would just drain out onto the floor - but there was a drain in the floor behind the sink.
Acceptable spellings I have seen for Samet island: Ko Samet, Ko Samed, Koh Samed, Koh Samet, Samet, and Samed. A lot of the resort bungalows on Samet seemed to run together and also named along with the restaurants/bars - all tied in together...we stayed at Tom Pizza.
Sunday 22nd January - our second real full day on Koh Samet - like Vung Tau, we are just sitting on the beach - sun bathing and swimming. The waters here of the Gulf of Siam remind me a little bit of Anna Maria island back in Florida. Clear, that tropical greenish-blue. It really is a paradise here. My Rum Diary. Elin and I both got half hour Thai massages on the beach today. It turned out to be amazing. Drinking Chang beer, eating fresh mango with the spicy chili powder and papaya salad, Elin had grilled chicken. Books read and photos taken.
Monday 23rd January - day three on the island, this morning is very overcast and gray. Just like it was in Vung Tau - it is very easy to lose track of the days and dates, and with it now being our last days - within a week left here, I'm trying to keep good track of the days.
(Random notation: In all the hotels in Asia we stayed, all the beds and pillows were very firm, stiff and hard - quite uncomfortable. And the bathrooms - they all (for the most part) had showers that were just open to the entire bathroom - not shower stalls, they had drains in the floor usually either near the toilet or the sink for the water to drain. There was usually only cold water in the sink, and there would be an electric water heater for the shower which even those worked kind of weird - usually the water would get too hot or you would have to keep it cold - there wasn't much for in-between. The bathrooms always seemed to be moist, damp, or wet. A lot of times too - they smelled really bad - (this was mostly in Vietnam as for the smell.) - Yet over all the rooms were clean and quite nice.)
I need to do some research - my homework, it seemed the Chinese Lunar New Year was happening, or at least very close.
Tuesday 24th January - Tomorrow - Wednesday the 25th is our check out day at Tom Pizza, of course things are open, we don't have any real plans. We figure on spending the last couple of days back in Bangkok - things there seem cheaper than here on Koh Samet, (eating and the hotels). Our money situation is now kind of tight, maybe it's a good thing that we will be going home in five days. What to do now? If we do stay another one or two days on the island, we will have to find another bungalow, (or add the nights staying at Tom Pizza). If we head back to Bangkok tomorrow that will give us extra days in the city - more than just the couple of days we originally talked about.
I'm having those lost feelings again - the kind I hate having. Maybe it is just again the travel fever since we leave soon. My stomach is in knots - anxieties as always. I put up the front of remaining calm because I do know how badly Elin can worry and stress. It seems she does not realize or understand how badly I too can worry and stress - even though I'm always telling her to relax. This time, our money situation really does have me tense. I just really don't want her to worry, stress or be upset. - To continue on...sitting on the beach on Koh Samet with Elin and reading books... Tonight in the bungalow, after dinner, drinking Chang beer, I finished reading Che's Motorcycle Diaries. I loved it. It was like a (Spanish) Kerouac book. Left me in a bit of sadness too like Kerouac, (or even Bukowski) - I didn't want the adventure to end. At dinner tonight, at Samed Cabana, Elin and I had the best - great conversations, the kind I love and I know she does as well, the kind of conversations (I Know) we need to have more often. An after thought of this day - Tuesday 24th, the memory of swimming in the Gulf of Siam, already in the water as Elin walked out - wading, into the waters - swimming out to meet me - she, in her pure honest beauty, the most absolute beautiful woman in my eyes - and me - undeserving of her.
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Wednesday 25th January - we were suppose to check out of our bungalow at Tom Pizza today, but instead we added one more night. We will leave the island tomorrow and go back into Bangkok. Laying on the beach again - I read through my story and notes of this travel, to add to my favorite memories (like how I've written that Siem Reap was my favorite place to be and that Thailand has the best for food) - on Koh Samet the best breakfast and fresh orange juice was at Blue Sky, the best lunch or dinners were at Samed Cabana.
[Random Notes and Memories]
(I do seem to keep forgetting some things in the story and notes...) In Vung Tau, the Vietnamese swim in full clothing - jeans, pants, shorts, T-shirts, button down long sleeve collared shirts, etc. The second day at the beach there I had a conversation with an old Vietnamese man who told me his name was Danny, he was in his sixties. He had fought in the Vietnam war on the U.S. side, (I believe he said in 1973) well it was sometime in the mid-seventies anyway and he had to go into hiding from the North Vietnamese Communist army, leaving behind his wife and eight month old daughter who he did not see for four years. He did re-unite with his family. In 1981 they fled Vietnam for the U.S., starting out in Pennsylvania and moving across the states. He told me he had also lived in Iowa and Arkansas. He said he was now (for the past seventeen years) living in San Jose, California. He designs wedding dresses. This was his first time home to Vietnam in thirty-one years. He was from the Vung Tau area.
- The Motorcycle Diaries by Che: Elin found it for me in the lending library/book swap in the Im Malis Guest House in Siem Reap, Cambodia. I finished reading it on the beach on Koh Samet and left it in the book swap at Samed Cabana - where it seemed most all of the other books there were in Swedish. - On Koh Samet, the area of the island where we stayed at Tom Pizza was at Ao Vongduean (I believe) - other acceptable spellings: Ao Wong Deuan, Aow Wongduan. It's pretty much in the middle - half way down the island on the West coast, the Gulf of Siam. There were always swarms of mosquitos right outside the door at our bungalow so we couldn't really sit out on the little porch area we had and enjoy the cozy garden. We did buy citronella oil spray and sticks of incense to burn, which seemed to work the first night to ward off the mosquitos - but only that first night.
(Earlier, in the writings of the Koh Samet part of the trip, I called it my Rum Diary - we had been drinking Chang beer which seemed to be Thailand's best beer - so really it would be the Chang (beer) Diary. Or also, in an honor or tribute to Che's Motorcycle Diaries - I could call it the Asian Bus Diaries. Of course we did two flights (Siem Reap to Hanoi, and Hai Phong to Saigon), and we did ferry treks, but the most part of our travels place to place was by bus. Lots of bus travel.) The bus travel log would read: mini-bus from Bangkok to the Cambodian border - about four or five hours plus a two hour taxi ride to Siem Reap. Bus from Hanoi to Ha Long Bay - four and a half hours. Bus from Saigon to Vung Tau - about three and a half to four hours. (In Vung Tau we took the ferry back to Saigon which only took about an hour - hour and a half.) Bus from Bangkok out to the coast so we could catch the ferry to Koh Samet - three and a half hours. And that one is a bus trek we will have to repeat going back to Bangkok.
Tomorrow - Thursday the 26th of January, I guess it has been decided we will leave the island and go back to mainland Thailand, back to Bangkok - to the city. (Making it five days and six nights on Koh Samet island). So we shall leave paradise. Thursday the 26th will be another day of travel. We left Koh Samet around noon - I had the Rolling Stones Ruby Tuesday running through my head, Good Bye Ruby Tuesday...as we left that island paradise. Just being on the ferry and still in the cove of Wongduan I already missed the green-blue water. Back on mainland at Nuanthip pier, Banphe it was just about 1PM and we had time to catch the one o'clock bus back to Bangkok, but Elin and I wanted to eat lunch first. So we opted to eat, then take the 2PM bus. We ate at a small place right next to the bus station where the food actually was not so good. Then again, that three and a half hour bus trek back to the city. It was evening, some time near 6PM and it was just starting to get dark out. For the third time on this one month Asia journey, we are back in Bangkok and at the Victory Executive Residence. We started off this journey, and ended it with staying at the Victory Executive - (I was kind of reminded how my one and a half year life of living in San Diego, California had also started and ended in the same hotel).
Friday 27th of January - we slept in quite late in the morning, waking up at 11:30AM, it had been raining outside, everything was wet and it was still overcast and gray out. I made us some coffee and we sat in bed watching a movie on T.V. Around 1PM we went across the small alley street that the hotel is on to the laundry place to pick up our laundry that we dropped off the night before, then just back across the alley to a small restaurant for lunch. After we ate and dropped off the laundry in our hotel room, we went back out on foot - walking about some of the street markets and even hitting up a couple of malls. Elin bought two shirts and a dress. The rain was gone, it was still overcast, gray but the air had a touch of cool breeze - the heat and humidity was almost none. We went back to the hotel and spent the rest of the afternoon drinking beer and sitting by the pool.
(More continuing random notes: The Asian skys remind me a lot of Florida sky. - And it took three times of being in Bangkok with numerous times walking past the Florida hotel to realize the coffee shop that is a part of the Florida hotel is called Tampa Coffee Shop.)
Saturday 28th January - another overcast, gray with rain day in Bangkok...we had a wake-up call ordered for 9AM - we were awake yet we laid in bed watching T.V. and drinking coffee for a while. After breakfast we took the sky train to the stop at Mo Chit, to the street markets. We walked about the markets for a couple of hours - the sky went dark gray again and the rains came back, so we went back to the hotel. The rain didn't last long, but the sky remained overcast, gray. We bought some beer and sat by the pool for a while. It was still only mid-afternoon. We ate an early dinner around 4PM, then we took a Tuk-Tuk out to Khao San road. Khao San road is kind of well known in Bangkok as the heavily travelled Backpacker, tourist, trendy area - lots of bars. Elin had stayed on Khao San road her first (and only other) time to Bangkok which she told me was about eight or nine years ago. The place was crazy hectic, chaos. We walked around for a while, had a beer at one of the bars, then took another Tuk-Tuk back to the hotel. The rest of the evening into the night we just relaxed in our room.
Sunday 29th of January - our last day of our Asian journey...it was still quite a bit overcast in Bangkok but no rain - the heat and humidity was back. Again we awoke kind of late in the morning and had our cups of coffee sitting in bed, flipping through channels on the T.V. We went back to the street markets of Mo Chit. Ate lunch, got some beer, and sat by the pool for a while just as we did the day before. In the late afternoon/early evening we took a Tuk-Tuk out to go see the Marble temple. Our flight was scheduled after midnight - 12:40AM. A little bit before 10PM we checked out of the Victory Executive (for the third time), walked to the Phaya Thai station and caught the express train out to the airport. (Remembering at the beginning of this journey it had been found out that my residency sticker in my passport had an expired date - I figured if any problems, it would be upon my return into Norway - in Oslo.) At the airport in Bangkok - at the ticket and baggage check in - not even at passport control yet - the woman at the counter notices the expired date. I explain my situation and she has to talk to a manager/supervisor - someone higher up. I got nervous, thinking I wouldn't even get out of Bangkok. I got the clearance to go. - In Oslo, at Gardermoen, I had no problems at all.
Monday 30th of January, just after 6AM we were back in Norway. Our car had been sitting, parked at the airport for a month - buried in snow. We had to call the Europark services to come with shovels to help dig the car out. Then the car would not start. I had to disconnect the battery, then take the distributor cap off to dry out any moisture inside it - put the distributor cap back on, hook the battery back up, plus we had to jump start the car. It took us probably around an hour or so to get the car started. When we got home, the apartment was ice cold.
