South East Asia on a shoestring
I’ve had to reconstruct this from emails to friends and families as my diaries got lost on their voyage home from Europe a couple of years ago, along with 10 photo disks of South East Asia. So please bear with me when parts of this don’t seem so together – it’s been almost 3 years since my incredible journey through this beautiful part of the world.
Leaving China
Sometime in the middle of January 2005 I officially left China. I kept an incredibly detailed diary but in typical fashion of keeping something so detailed it got lost in the post, and though known at the time for incredibly irritating group emails, I barely sent any… or updated my site as the technology at the time deemed it too slow (broadband what?). My dear friend Rachael Moss, “best friends forever since we were seven!”, decided to put behind her one disastrous trip to Queenstown when we were 18 and desperately poor students and join me for my final days in China and six weeks in South East Asia.
Both incredibly nervous about things we overcompensated from the moment we saw each-other at Changzhou’s railway station and would end up having one heck of an unforgettable trip all the way from the depths of Shanghai through the paddy fields of Vietnam to the divine beaches of Ko Pga Ngan in Thailand.
It began with screams of “OH MY GOD! YOU LOOK SO HOT THESE DAYS! IT’S SO EXCITING TO SEE YOU! WOW! YOU MADE IT THROUGH BEIJING! OH MY GOD OH MY GOD OH MY GOD YOU’RE IN CHINA, WE’RE IN CHINA! OH MY GOD!” I’m sure you get my drift by now. It had been 3 years since we’d seen eachother and not much had changed except a few lines around the eyes and a really dodgy Chinese cut bob on my behalf.
After a few days of doing my final rounds of goodbyes, blunt honesty in drunken parties and one good old final pole dance (a normal thing in Changzhou to which Rachael looked on in shock horror) we set off for Shanghai.
Well, so we thought. Rachael remembered just as we got to the train station that her money belt with all her important documents, travellers cheques and credit cards, had been left in my drawer back in Changzhou… So the taxi turns around and we speed at something so unimaginable I’d rather not remind myself of it. I have never seen Rachael with knuckles gripped so tightly to the seat and I can’t imagine I ever will again. “Katherine, you must know the word for slow down.” And me being cocky in my SOOOO GOOD Mandarin seemed to be inadvertently yelling at the driver “FASTER! FASTER!” Rach runs in, gets her passport and then the taxi goes faster than a speeding bullet (I am not kidding here) back to the train station. With 2 minutes to spare we make it to the station. My backpack strap then breaks and with 2 minutes past the departure time we have missed our train and are stuck in Changzhou for yet another 4 hours. I thought I would never escape that place…
We eventually did leave… Somehow made it to Shanghai with our dignity in tact and checked into the obnoxiously hot Captains Hotel (http://www.captainhostel.com.cn) and spent the next few days doing what I’d done in Shanghai several times over. We had a total blast there.
After a couple of days in China doing our moment of Western-ness we flew to Hong Kong, a place in which we would shop til we drop but more of a brief stopover having been there before. We were yet again in Dragon’s Hostel – a place with internal rooms where you think you’ve woken up in the middle of the night but you’ve actually missed most of the day as it’s 3pm, doh! We did the looking at skyscraper thing, I ate an awful amount of salad having been denied it for 12 months and Rach sampled all the street-food delights that she could come across. But our highlight was Macau – wow, Macau.
Most people hate the place, full of casinos and tourists rah rah rah, but our 8 hours there was fantastic! A total fusion of East meets West – Portuguese architecture combined with a complete and utter Chineseness of people – the food was some of the most curious I’ve ever tasted and the colours that you would expect to find in Portugal or Spain were all over Chinese style apartment buildings – ochre, yellow, cornflower blue. Bizarre. It’s quite hard to describe Macau but in a word or two, I found it completely and utterly charming. Advice to tourists – don’t bother with the casinos, go to the outer island and check out the little old Portuguese villages – brilliant.
We hadn’t quite escaped China yet. The day after Macau we had to get ourselves to Guangzhou for a day to get a flight to Vietnam. No one had bothered to inform us until I checked my emails about 2 hours before we were due to leave for the airport… so we spent our time there actually exploring the city – not a bad little place, but how weird is it seeing all the Americans there to adopt? Was I not the only person feeling like I was in America-town?
VIETNAM
This is where my mind boggles – all I have to go from here is a series of 6 2 paragraph long emails spread over the space of a month – and most go “Dear Dad, I have run out of money, I promise to pay you back but can I please borrow some? Luv Katherine”. Don’t worry Dad, I’ll look after you when you’re old and I’m rich…
Vietnam was not expensive, dirt cheap in-fact and so rich in culture and life that I would find this one of the most enriching places I would ever go along the way. When people ask me what my favourite place is I still struggle to think of anywhere that took a hold on me like Vietnam did. From the moment I got there until the moment I left I was in awe of the people, their smiles, their styles and their attitude to life. In my very first email to Dad I wrote “The lady who runs the guest house is singing” – it would eventually seem very very normal. I was also left in awe of how on earth someone could navigate their way across the road – the streets can only be described as complete and utter chaos – I have never in my life seen so many speeding scooters and been petrified to cross a road – again, after a day the chaos would seem totally normal.
From an email on day 1 of Vietnam:
“The lady who runs the guest house is singing beside me -
there is so much life in this city. The streets are chaos - scooters
everywhere - almost as many street vendors selling cheap food too.”
The emails of my first few days in Vietnam seem to all be about the food… I think the more I travel the more fundamental food becomes – it can tell you so much (or in some places so little) about a country and a culture. In China the food seemed uniform everywhere but with its distinct regional characteristics, but mostly I could guarantee I could get the same good dishes everywhere I went with only a slight variation. Of course, there was always the odd dud. In Vietnam I did not have one single bad meal. Much like the culture the food isn’t intense, the flavours are subtle but lovely, the aromas follow you for days and several years later I can still taste it, whether it be a big bowl of phỏ in Saigon, a fresh spring roll in Hoi An or a Crème Brulee made by former street kids in a posh restaurant in Hanoi.
When we first arrived it was late, we were tired but we were hungry. Using the at times frustrating (actually, most of the time) South East Asia on a Shoestring we somehow navigated ourselves to a food market on the opposite side of town where we had this meal I will never ever forget – the biggest king prawns I’ve ever seen with a side of frogs legs and fish sauce. We were the only people in this market which was almost shut and boy, did we munch down. This started off our Vietnam experience. Over the following 10 days we would eat better than we ever had in our lives (sorry Mum).
Another excerpt from bad group emails:
“Rach and I had 1/2 a kilo of the best prawns we've ever had for US$2. YUMMY. And, I tried frogs legs with insect semen dip (actually kinda good surprisingly enough!)...”
I realised about a week later that the insect semen dip was probably just fish sauce… oh dear.
“Then we found this French cafe which is run by former street kids - over 1600 people have been through their school to be trained in French/Vietnamese hospitality. For US$3 I got a glass of Cabernet Savinigon and Creme Brulee... And Rachael paid so it was even better.”
How we actually managed to fit the rest of that in I still marvel at… today that would all mean an extra week at the gym running my guts out.
After a day rummaging around Hanoi we were keen to get exploring the country. First stop: Halong Bay. I have nothing written down about this but its eerie silence and beauty with mist cloaked limestone peaks seeming coming out from everywhere. We must have been there on the coldest day of the year. Completely unprepared I think we shivered the entire time – the photos are good at least! We overnighted on this boat and I spent the night silently hoping that Rachael would not get sea-sick while desperately trying to remain warm. The pictures can describe Halong Bay much better than I can but to this day I still think it’s one of those places everyone must go once. It was the perfect place to wake up on my 24th Birthday – my god, I felt so old. I spent the morning grumbling away that I was ancient and that I could see wrinkles starting. If I could go back in time I would tell my 24 year old self to SHUT UP – at least I hadn’t sagged into oblivion and didn’t need support garments to hold oneself in place…
I think it goes down in history as the best birthday I have ever had – we woke up in this place of incredible beauty, spent the day sailing through it, spent 6 more hours in Hanoi, had an incredible birthday meal (back to the French café run by former street kids) and moved on that night to Ninh Binh.
Waking up in Ninh Binh on the day after my 24th Birthday would again prove to be an incredible day. Rather than re-writing it I’ll leave it to the email below:
24 Jan 2005
“…But this place has blown me away!
…That night we got on the slowest bus ever to Ninh Binh checked into
our hotel and had a great sleep, unfortunately followed by the coldest
shower ever on Sunday morning... (Oh how naïve I was back then…)
Yesterday is probably one of the best days of my travels so far. We spent the day riding our bikes through Tam Coc National Park which is this rural area full of limestone mountains coming out of the rice paddies. We were met by this lady who took us the long way to her house through rice paddies where Rach got the lucky experience of falling off her bike nearly losing her bag, camera and freshly washed hair to the mud. But she carried on like a trooper and the next thing we were at this ladies 2 bedroom house where 4 of them shared a bed and about 20 chickens. Her kids were really cute and they later cooked lunch for us which was nice.
Huong (I think that's her name) then put us on her row boat and we went on a tour of her village and the surrounding wet lands. That was incredible until after lunch when she tried to charge us twice as much as she originally quoted - we gave in and kinda figured it could help in her getting another bed or some exercise books for her kids. And she did teach us a cool song "Vietnam, Vietnam, Ho Chi Minh, Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam Vietnam, Ho Chi Minh..." so we taught her "If you're Happy and you know it" in return... Wow, we were couth back then.
After we left Huong's village we went on our own through the National Park which is filled with tiny tiny villages and breathtaking scenery. The kids would come out of their houses and wave and shout "HALLO!" as
we went by but the village elders did not seem impressed at all. After 7 hours of biking through this place we finally made it back to Ninh Binh having seen trillions of rice paddies and ladies with cone hats for a good 35kms and gaining the sorest thighs in history. This email so does not do it justice but you all should go there if you ever come to Vietnam.
Last night we jumped on a bus to Hoi An and 15-16 hours later we finally got here. Hoi An is really cool and there are tailors everywhere making clothes within a couple of hours. I'm currently having a suit and a dress made but the shoes look even more tempting...
The food here is intensely good and as a result I'm now finally going to stop boring you guys and go and get some spring rolls.”
Again, it was all about the food! To this day I still talk about Ninh Binh, Huong really struck a chord with me. I think it was the closest I’d ever been to seeing how many people really live. That park was unbelievably lush and I still laugh at Rach’s trip into the paddy fields head-first and managing to retain a smile almost as big as the Vietnamese.
I forgot to mention it was Rachael’s first time getting on a bike since the age of 10 – wow, that girl can really go for it! After spending the first 10 minutes being petrified we’d both get run over by the obnoxious motorbike traffic and oncoming Mac trucks she was off speeding ahead of me and being a right BMX Bandit! Rach – you rock.
We spent a couple of days in Hoi An, mostly in the clothes shops (I can’t get over how superficial I used to be) where they can tailor make anything for mega cheap. I’m shocked that I can still fit into the summer dress I got made there. It was the place I would get sick for a couple of days so I spent most of my time in bed while there. Rachael had a ball and for the few hours I did get out I was totally impressed – the street kids were hilarious! I’ve never heard such great catch-phrases “Open your heart, open your wallet.” “Don’t be lazy, be crazy!” Along with several marriage proposals from cheeky 10 year olds (I still get weirded out by that) and a look of complete heart break upon the answer of “No”.
It was a stop in Mui Ne that would leave us stinking of fish sauce for what felt like weeks on end. Mui Ne was interesting but we only needed a day there – the beach (apparently some paradise beach) was littered with rubbish, the people were unfriendly but the sight of a harbour full of fishing boats which seemed to number in the hundreds of thousands. I think it’s the South East Asia Fish Sauce Capital. It’s famous for it and the entire way there and out of it you can see vats and vats of the smelly but delicious stuff that makes those curries and soups so great. I recall some very red sand dunes there but Mui Ne (apart from the smell and the site of the boats) left us rather unimpressed. It would be Saigon and the Mekong Delta that would give us a truly awesome send off from Vietnam.
 Mui Ne
I refer to another rather excitable email from my 24 year old self:
“2 Feb 2005
Well, here's another long email from me but this time I'm in another country!
I've just arrived in Phnom Penh after 2 unbelievable days on the Mekong
Delta from Saigon. We arrived in Saigon on Friday night after a few days at nice beach destinations with awesome food.
Saigon was cool. We spent Friday morning at the Cu Cui (pronounced Gucci) tunnels which is where the Viet Cong hid during the war - they're tiny but very long and people lived in them for very long spaces of time. We got to climb through them 6 feet under for 120 metres. Felt like an eternity but I was left very impressed. Then we went back to our hostel and Rachael took a nap while I went to explore - ended up in the war museum which made me feel rather ill as it showed very graphic pictures and described stuff in the nastiest details... So what does a superficial traveller do when depressed about humanity?? Finds the market! Yeah, Saigon has an awesome market so I dropped in and picked Grace up a present (Grace, you'll be impressed!) and a couple of other souvenir type stuff for myself and tried to forget about my day in the Vietnam war. Nasty stuff.
(2007) I recall not being able to breathe in that long very hot dark tunnel and having big South African guys in front of me and freaked out American girls behind… And I think I ended up keeping that bag I got for Grace… sorry!
After a nice walk around Saigon it was time to go back to the hostel to pick up Rach and have one last really good Vietnamese meal before jumping on the boat the next day for an ovrenight trip to Cambodia. Oh my god, the Mekong Delta is amazing!
We got picked up early in the morning and spent forever on this bus over some of the bumpiest roads ever before we got to this crocodile farm (really dull!) and then jumped on a boat. At first the scenery was really boring but then we started to go through these water towns where their lives are purely based on the Mekong. We happened to be in one while the water market was going on - basically a massive market but on boats here they sell everything from watermelon to electric mosquito killing tennis racquets (could have done one myself as again I've turned into a buffet house for the damn things). So we got through that and read for a while until it was washing time on the Mekong river. Basically everyone comes out and has a bath or washes dishes and clothes around 5pm. Yep, the water is filthy but they manage to do everything related to cleanliness on it. Absolutely fascinating to watch - I was quite impressed as the idea of even being splashed by the river water sent shivers down my spine.
So after 4 hours of sitting in a boat going up this amazing river we finally arrived at our port for the night where we were ushered into tuk tuks and taken to our hotel - really nice considering the price! We had a really late dinner where we were given massages afterwards and then collapsed into bed around 10:15 feeling like it was at least 1am.
5:45am today my alarm goes off and it was onto a wicked day on row boats exploring the Mekong villages. I just happened to have a row boat driver (I don't know what they're called!) who is just as nutty as me and as she was shaking the boat in the aim of Rachael and I losing our cameras she yelled out "YO YO YO I NUMBER ONE!" and so we're going back""Yo yo yo number one number one!"" She successfully terrorised us like this for a good 30 minutes until we picked up her grandson (the cutest kid I've ever seen) and suddenly she was actually quite nice to us. The water villages were awesome - they live such delicate yet simple lives. It's really amazing how some people live.
After meandering through the waterways we got to this Cham village which is a small Muslim society where the children learn the Koran and actually speak a different language to the Vietnamese. Their school house was tiny and simple but their smiles massive and so friendly.
Our boat rower "NUMER ONE!" was still with us and occasionally she'd again yell out YO YO YO NUMBER ONE and we'd turn around to her laughing but on the third time her grandson came and dragged me back into the boat here it was time to say goodbye and row up the river to our big boat where we'd spend the day crossing the border and sleeping in the sun.
Number One...
We got to the border where this girl kept bringing me coconut pancakes and going on about how I'm her new friend which was cool – those pancakes were great and cheap and then we had to cross the most random border crossing ever. It's just a dirt road on the side of the Mekong with a bunch of little kids selling stuff to you. It took us a good hour or so as bureaucracy doesn't change anywhere and then we were finally in Cambodia. Suddenly there were no water villages or ladies in cone hats but the scenery was some of the lushest greenest stuff I've ever seen also dotted with random gold pagodas along the way. We were then back on dry land and onto another bus (if I never ride another bus in my life again I will be happy!) along a pot hole infested road. 2 hours later at 5pm we were finally in Phnom Penh having been in mini vans, row boats and big river boats for 2 days.
PP is cool. There are kids everywhere! 50% of Cambodia's population is under 15. Tomorrow we're site seeing around PP and then on Wednesday we're off to Siem Reap where we'll spend 3 days checking out Angkor Wat.
Loved Vietnam and was sad to see it go but this country looks to be
just as fascinating and cool.
Thanks for enduring the long email!!
Wowza, that was a long email. To anyone who is still my friend these days and had to endure that email – I AM SO SORRY.
We ended Vietnam on a very high note. I am so gutted that I no longer have my photo disks of it. Only the 20 pictures that I printed out at the time and what I stuck on my site. I can’t wait to go back there one day and really explore it off the fancy tourist bus, away from the people pretending to be friends so you’ll buy their pancakes, postcards, swatch watches, pirated DVDs etc… But as the first place I’d properly backpacked outside of China it really did charm me. Back then I wasn’t cynical and everywhere I went seemed perfect as it was so different and unusual. Thanks Vietnam.
Cambodia
For some reason the emails to Mum and Dad all refer to Rachael’s awful case of Gastro… But we did have a fantastic (albeit short) 5 days in Cambodia. Angkor Wat blew me away – what a place. See emails below from my superficial 24 year old self:
”4 Feb 2005
Today we started doing Angkor Wat - it's MASSIVE. Lucky we brought a 3 day pass as we're going to be lucky if we see it all even with that. It's ridiculously hot here and I had to buy a Cambodian scarf to hide from the sun - got burned but I'm starting to go brown so it doesn't hurt anymore...
Angkor is amazing and we're having a really great time. We hired a tuk tuk driver called Mr Live who absolutely adores Rachael - he flirts with her non-stop - quite funny really. He's hilarious - used to be a monk and now devotes his time to learning English and driving tourists around.
(2007)The next bit goes on about my severe lack of funds so I’ve taken that out… and now back to Rach’s tummy. Rachael Moss, I AM SO SORRY for broadcasting your case of reflexology to the world…
Rachael is currently getting a reflexology massage - she's having trouble shitting so that's her last resort - poor thing. I've been stuffing her with tropical fruit but it's just not helping – nothing is!
(2007) – Again, Rach, I AM SO SORRY! And now back to harping on about the food…
The food here is amazing though. Had a great green curry for lunch today and tom yum soup for dinner - so yummy. Looked at some of the photos Rach took of me today and I'm half the size of what I was a year ago... excellent stuff. Won't be able to afford to eat in London due to this trip so hopefully will stay this way!!! Oh well, better to be broke and enjoying yourself than not doing anything at all.
Anyway, better go - I'm shattered so should probably get some sleep.
(2007) And yet another email about Rach’s tummy. Again, Rach, I AM SO SORRY! But it then I go on about my 24 year old views on healthcare.
5 Feb 2005
Rachael has got a nasty case of Gastro so we may be here for one more day, not sure yet. Loving Cambodia - my favouite place yet because the people are so overwhelmingly nice. Went and saw the sunrise over Angkor Wat today by myself - amazing but very scary walking through it in the dark because you could hear the bats and rats but not see them...
Sunrise was gorgeous and then I went and donated blood to the children's hospital - broke my heart walking through as the kids were really malnourished and in a very bad state - 95% of Cambodian children have no access to health care - the country is much poorer than I imagined. They were really grateful and gave me a t-shirt and some biscuits. Was going to save my blood for the tsunami victims but these kids are desperate.
Have enjoyed a couple of days on my own. Rachael is actually an excellent travel partner and we're having a fabulous time. Poor girl getting gastro - I feel fantastic on the other hand.
Leaving Bangkok for London on Feb 23rd. Will arrive 6am the morning of
the 24th. If we leave here tomorrow we'll be in Bangkok tomorrow night
before heading to Chang Mai the day after. Having an incredible time.
Have a good day. I'm going to get a massage now.
2007
I loved Cambodia and definitely didn’t get enough time there. Those temples were something else. I was starting to learn about the world and a bit about myself. If I could go back in time I wouldn’t have wasted so much money on massages and certainly wouldn’t have harped on about poor Rachael! The hospital was an experience that made me really consider why I relied so much on material things when there was so much suffering going on. It would strike a chord in me that I would take to England – suddenly nice clothes and good makeup didn’t seem so important. It was the people I was meeting along the way who had so little but were willing to give so much that would start to be the centrepiece of my travels.
The ride from Cambodia to Thailand was nuts. I haven’t sweated and bounced around like that since. We somehow made it to Bangkok in one piece after meeting a very very catty Nowegian girl who thought she was the patron saint of travelling and had the nerve to talk to us like we complete bimbos – case number one of the evil hippie traveller who thinks they are holier than thou. We’ve all met them and I would meet many more along the way, especially in India a couple of years later.
Thailand
To be honest Thailand didn’t blow me away. I felt like I was constantly being scammed and it didn’t charm me like everywhere else I’d been. Here’s a good one:
“8 Feb 2005
We're in Chang Mai now. Yesterday in Bangkok we got fully scammed by these fortune tellers who dragged us down this alleyway (separately) even though I'd been told my fortune just 4 days ago by a monk...
Anyway, they wanted heaps of money which I refused to give them because I didn't want it told in the first place (in the end I lost 150bhat (about $5), nothing compared to what others have lost!) and he then told me that my boyfriend's name is John, that my mother hates me! (I hope you don't!) and that someone very close to me is very jealous and will deceive me in the near future... Great! Charming.
My one the other day was much nicer. I'm going to live well into my eighties and die in my sleep. I'm going to be a millionaire and I'm getting married in 2006 (don't expect anything!). I prefer the Buddhist fortune tellers way more than the Hindu ones!
Fortune tellers are crap. Don't go to them!”
2007
I didn’t get married in 2006. I’m nowhere near close to making millions and I’m pretty certain Mum doesn’t hate me, unless there’s something I’ve been missing along the way…
I’m not going to go on about Bangkok – I found it sleazy, smelly and overcrowded. I’m sure there’s some sort of charm in it but in the 3 times I had to stay there it didn’t grow on me.
We would spend the next few days hill tribe trekking in Chiang Mai. (Well, more like ½ day for me as a friend we picked up along the way managed to knock her teeth out by diving into a waterfall and as I was the only one who knew her I got to accompany the girl to the most amazing dentists I’ve ever seen). Tip to the uninitiated – if you don’t have travel insurance you’re bound to do something stupid. This person was the only one in the group in Chiang Mai who wasn’t insured.
Chiang Mai had a brilliant night market. And also some great street bars – thanks Rach, Pip and Victoria for a great night of drunken bargaining! (Whoa, like I am like, succchhhh a great bargainer… not). The next day we did a cooking course which well made up for my lack of experiences in Chiang Mai – to this day I still have that tom yum soup memorised and it’s still the best I can find around here.
We spent the next day and a half getting ourselves to the South of Thailand where we would spend a week doing literally nothing but relaxing on the beach.
Loving this excerpt from an email dated 13 Feb 2005 yet again to my parents:
I'm in Bangkok about to jump on a train to the islands. Having a great time apart from that I'm running out of cash very very quickly... Thailand is way more expensive than the Lonely Planet says too.
Rach and I both have the shits... Luckily it's not as bad as it could be and hopefully am through the worst of it. Don't combine hot curry with alcohol if you don't want to be up with cramps running to the loo at 4 in the morning...
19 Feb 2005
The island has been fantastic. We have literally done nothing but sleep, eat and swim. Went snorkelling the other day which was awesome. Saw heaps of tropical fish in the coral but also got very burnt even though we wore a ton of sun block. Rachael has blistered on her back the poor thing.
Not much else to tell really. Rachael and I might rent a motorbike later on.
We never did get round to renting motorbikes…
Thailand was a great wind down to the end of our 6 weeks around South East Asia. When I look back on it we really did have a brilliant time. The next stop was to be London and that will be left to another blog. This is my almost 27 year old self signing out.
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