TravelStream™ news feed for member finola on TravelPod's free travel blogs service http://www.travelpod.com/syndication/rss/finola en-us Copyright ©2009 TravelPod.com Thu, 20 Nov 2008 17:15:20 -0500 http://www.travelpod.com http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/finola/1/1216816680/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/finola/1/1216816680/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/finola/1/1216816680/tpod.html Thu, 20 Nov 2008 17:15:20 -0500 Wherever I lay my head....

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Hanoi, Vietnam

Ok so I know this blog has been neglected for a hideous amount of time, but I think it would only be fair to finish it out for the last 6 weeks of the trip now that I'm home in Cork with a decent internet connection and my very own laptop. Plus I get closure on my trip to spur me into action for looking for a job!! Vietnam was dissapointing in a way, over-populated, mega noisy (the horns NEVER stop tooting), irritating touts ("Buy something!!", "Buy from me!!" etc!) and polluted but in another way a very interesting spot. In fairness you are the big rich westerner who they are trying to dupe money from anyway so you have to look for the humour in it. There are lots of pretty poor people and you will see alot of people with severe deformities (most likely from Agent Orange being liberally used during the Vietnam war).
Our last stops in Vietnam were Hue, Hanoi and Ha Long Bay. We stopped off briefly in Hue to visit the ancient citadel which was impressive, although much of it was bombed in the war and was now being rebuilt. Plus they didn't seem to be doing that good a job on rebuilding putting plastic laminate on everything instead of wood carving. After Hue it was onto the Hanoi, the capital after a 12 hour bus journey, with the bus driver picking up random people and they lying on the floor of the bus again - not very comfortable for them, but I was ok in my bunk bed type seat thing. I'd heard about alot of scams in Hanoi so we booked a hotel as you can get tricked by touts into going somewhere else when you get off the bus. I had though the south of vietnam would have been more capalist that the communist north, but actually I got the vibe it was the other way around when I got off the bus and all the taxi drivers were ripping off because they knew that it was about to rain. Quite the entrepreneurs! Hanoi was an interesting city, if you could block out the countless fruit basket ladies and cyclo drivers whistling at you the who time trying to attract your attention. They have a lovely, if not murky lake (Hoa Kiem) in the middle of the city where the legend of the turtle and the sword came from. Rumour has it that giant turtles still like there, but really, I think the pollution would have killed off any turtles long ago ;) We of course had to go see Uncle Ho in the Mausoleum, there was a massive queue to go in and you can't even stop to look at him, you have to keep moving all the time. To be honest he looked a bit waxy to me but I guess he did die quite some time ago! Then afterwards we had to go to Uncle Ho's house and museum, he really is a talisman to the vietnamese people. We checked out the famous water puppet show as well, have to say for $1.50 its very good value for money and quite entertaining. Ferg wasn't too impressed with his cramped seat though! Enough sightseeing done it was time to hang at the "bia hoi" corner for the super cheap beers at 4000 dong each - about 25 us cents. Possibly the cheapest beer I've ever had and definately better than alot of more expensive crap!! Very good for people watching, some unfortunate girl walking past had her skirt tucked inside her knickers which attracted quite the few laughs!
One of the most famous sights in Vietnam is Ha Long bay, so we headed out for a two days trip. Now you could pay about $30 for a two night trip but we decided to splash out and do it luxury style as cheap trips in Vietnam are just a bad idea. So we had a great two days in Ha Long, thought the weather would be crap,it being wet season and all, but it was really good, lots of sunshine. We stayed on a private island the first night, and I decided that it might be nice to have some pringles to snack on. Went off to dinner and on my return to the bungalow the pringles were spread over the floor as we must've had a pet rodent hanging out in our room. Delightful! The next day after chilling out on the island, we hopped onto our junk where we were spending the night. Quite a few people were jumping off the boat so I thought I'd give it a whirl too even though there were one or two jellfish lurking around the place. First time I hopped in it was really nice. Second time I decided just to hop in from a sitting position on the edge of the boat. This turned out to be quite a bad idea as there are quite a few loose nails and one decided to grab my bikini bottom and rip it!! Luckily I managed a graceful exit out of the water as Ferg found my spare pair! Quite embarrassing really, but everyone on the boat got a laugh. I actually preferred this to the night on the island, even though I'd heard bad things about the boat, I actually thought it was really comfortable and very relaxing to be out under the stars at night!
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Siem Reap, Cambodia

Woke up early on a Saturday morning to get our tourist bus from Ko San Road in Bangkok to Siem Reap in Cambodia. Now we kind of knew that getting the tourist bus to Cambodia was probably not the best idea but it was cheap and right from where we were staying as opposed to it taking over an hour to get to the public bus station. So we waited outside our hotel at 8am and an hour and a half later a guy showed up to bring us to our bus. Was getting a little worried that he was not going to show up. However turns out, I never changed my watch time when we left Malaysia (apparently there is a one hour time difference) and we had been on the wrong time for about a week!! Had a bit of a laugh at that one...... So off we went and hopped on the tourist bus with the barely working air conditioning. There was also a bunch of irish lads extremely drunk in the backseat, shouting and roaring and luckily for everyone on the bus they had an ipod with speakers, so everyone got a nice dose of IRA rebel songs. I maintained my theory that they would conk out after an hour or two and luckily they did or I think they might have got beat up by some other very cranky looking tourists on the bus! So after the bus took off so did the money making schemes began. First our bus man took all our passports and got our visas en masse so he made $3 per tourist on that one. Then as we finally reached the border the air conditioning took a turn for the worse and everyone was passing out. So it was time for the bus man to mention that it took like 6 hours from the cambodian border to Siem Reap and the buses and roads were crap but you could always get a taxi for 2000 baht each and it would only take like 3 hours. And that cambodia was a really poor country and there was no ATMS and accomodation was expensive and that he would give you a good exchange rate for your money (yeah right!) Thinking they were pulling the piss we decided to stick with the bus. Turns out the people who opted for taxis got there about 30 mins faster than us as they were stopped off at the restaurant as well!
Unpleasantries aside, the reason that we made this trek to Siem Reap was of course to visit Angkor, the famous hidden temples in the jungle. Definately one of the highlight of my Asia trip, as there are just tons of these temples all over the place. We spent two days exploring around. One day we took bikes much to the amusement of the locals as most tourists take a tuk tuk as its about 10km each way on an ancient, single gear bike. Angkor is not that easy to find if you don't have a clue where you're going but the locals pointed us in the right direction. My favourite temples would have to be Bayonne or the overgrown Ta Phrom with these massive trees sprouting out of temples, really impressive. Ferg even found time to befriend some monkeys, deciding that a monkey on one's back was really the latest trend. I opted out, didn't really fancy getting bitten by one of these potentially rabid creatures!! Got completely addicted to the men's wimbledon championship in Siem Reap, staying up to watch the final until some ridiculous hour. I did bail in the sixth set when the rain delay kicked in though. Was sure Federer would pull through, but Nadal somehow won it. Next stop Phnom Penh...........
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Hoi An, Vietnam

After HCMC we headed onto a beach resort called Mui Ne. It was a pretty enough beach except that there was white gunk everywhere on the beach which turned me off swimming there. Of course the day that we were leaving the beach was completely pristine but what can you do. There are also some pretty cool sand dunes and some fishing villages that we checked out. There was also the pervasive smell of fish sauce in the air which is pretty nasty smelling stuff, I'd rather the smell of slurry to it any day! The night life in Mui Ne was pretty crap though, they tended to close up the pubs around 10:30 much to our dismay!
After Mui Ne it was onwards to Hoi An via a not so pleasant 16 hour bus journey. The sleeper buses in vietnam are like minature bunk beds, design for people around 4 foot tall. The drivers also have a nice trick of picking up all the Vietnamese people they can fit in the back of the bus to supplement their income. Fergus spent the whole trip with some dudes foot in his face on both sides, I luckily had a window seat so could avoid the foot by sleeping by looking out the window. Journey survived, Hoi An was the place I'd been dreaming about for quite some time, full of tailors who are more than happy to make pretty much anything you want for pretty rock bottom prices. So I came away from Hoi An with a jacket, 3 skirts, 2 dresses, sandals and a suit for when I have to try to find a job! Ferg splashed out on a grey suit also (apparently light grey suits are the new black) so we had fun times at the post office trying to post all the stuff home! Hoi An is a really nice town anyways, you don't really get hassled at all and the food was really good too. It was really hot in Hoi An though, about 37 degrees C during the day with not a cloud in the sky, the hottest place I'd been in Asia so far. Next stop the Ancient City of Hue....
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Phnom Penh, Cambodia

Headed to Phnom Penh by bus after leaving Siem Reap. The bus journey was much more pleasant than the one to Siem Reap, just about 5 hour with working a/c and all! Phnom Penh isn't the prettiest city in the world, and its a bit eerie to think how the Khmer Rouge emptied the city of all its resident and made them live in the countryside and killed anyone they could find that had an education and alot of other people for even stupider reasons as well. So this is probably why Phnom Penh isn't the prettiest city in the world and why Cambodia is quite poor. Checked out the Grand Palace in Cambodia, which was nice but not half as impressive as the Grand Palace in Thailand. The next day we visited the S21 museum, basically a former high school that was converted to a interogation/torture prison during the Khmer Rouge and also took a tuk tuk to the Killing Fields. Oddly enough our tuk tuk driver wanted to take us to a shooting range en route there, which we thought was a tad inappropriate but each to their own! Phnom Penh had some good markets such as the Russian and Central markets which some of the cheapest stuff we'd seen in SE Asia. Everything is priced in dollars which suited us down to the ground!
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Bangkok, Thailand

Got an overnight train from Malaysia up to Bangkok which took about 20 hours. Being the posh travellers that we are we decided to go first class so we were fine and comfortable and despite the vicious rumours, nobody offered us anything dodgy to drink or decided to throw a sleeping gas cannister into our berth! So after we exited the train station the chaos began of people doing their very best to rip us off. Apparently the taxi drivers in bangkok are supposed to run meters but we only managed to get them to run a meter once, and during this cab ride our taxi driver put up onto a guy who told me I had to pay whatever the driver told us to pay and not what was on the meter. Well unlucky for him, he just got what was on the meter! Then there is the lovely tuk tuk drivers who will give you a free tour of Bangkok, oh but guess what, they will bring you to all these shops and pretty much force you to buy something. Again we managed to avoid this but it leaves a bit of a bad taste in your mouth all the same. We ended up staying in Ko San Road, which I think every backpacker in Bangkok stays in, so as you may guess it was super touristy. I even saw more western guys with asian women than I had imagined, its quite a pathetic sight about seeing an old western guy with his teenage thai "girlfriend".
The Grand Palace is a must see in Bangkok, it was beautifully maintained and I hadn't seen anything like it before. We ended up staying 5 days in Bangkok, waiting for our Vietnam and Laos visas to come through, and I have to say I was glad to see the back of the place by the time we were leaving......
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Pulau Perhentian Kecil, Terengganu, Malaysia

Originally I had thought we would head straight to Bangkok to Singapore, but then we decided to check out what Malaysia had to offer first. Definately was a good decision as the weather is really good this time of year (not like monsoon everywhere else we will be going) and the people are lovely. Our first stop was to Pulau Tioman, supposedly one of the top 10 islands in the world, althought it was given this title in the 70s so we were a little aprehensive. Decided to stay in a place called Salang, which my rough guide described as "very developed with hotels all along the beach", however upon arriving its possibly the smallest beach place I've ever been with about 4 bars! Its a very beautiful island, pretty much completely covered in dense jungle and loads of monkeys and monitor lizards and large bats (argh!). Not so many western tourists either, mostly malaysians and singaporeans! Did some snorkling here and really enjoyed being on the beach after not seeing very much of the beach in south america! Randomly bumped into a guy who I knew from college, Shane O'Neill so thats two people I've met so far that I knew! After Tioman Island we headed to Melaka which was supposed to be a nice colonial town. The highlight here for me had to be the hostel we stayed in, run by a bunch of fruit cakes! Melaka is a nice town, but after being in so many towns and cities, they all start to look the same to me! We decided to skip Kuala Lumpur as the only thing I wanted to see there was the Petronas Towers and again, have seen a good few skyscrapers at this stage! So after a miserable 10 hour bus journey (with broken a/c for the most of it) we landed in the Cameron Highlands. Main reason for visiting here was to see the tea plantations and for the cooler weather. Its probably the only time in asia that I will put on a jumper and jeans in asia and still be cold. Was even able to get tea and scones with jam and cream so I was in my element! Also was really bold and had starbucks in cameron highlands, shame on me! Being a bit offput by a the previous bus journey that could have been done in three, I was dreading the next journey to the Perhentian Islands. However we were delighted to discover that there was a mini bus shuttle service directly instead of going by public transport which would have taken ages! Spent most of the bus journey debating whethere we would do a Padi open water scuba course or not. We had planned to do it in Ko Tao as its a popular place to doing but after talking to a few people they recommended to do it on Pulau Perhentian. So after much humming and hawing we ended up signing up for the course, doing it in three days and it was just myself and ferg with one instructor so we got plenty of attention. I was a bit nervous about doing it, but its great fun. We had to do six dives in three days to get certified so I was knackered after it. You have to do a bunch of skills, one of them being floating for 10 mins in the water which I just about managed to do! And we had to study as there was a written exam as well, never thought I'd have to study on my trip, but really it was pretty easy stuff!! There was quite the motely crew at the dive place but they were really friendly folk, two brits, an argentine, a spaniard and our guide Jimmy who was Indonesian. We got to see loads of fish and a really cute turtle which was my favourite thing! They have these things called cleaner shrimp which will pick off all the dead skin on your hands, a manicure of sorts. Before our last dive, we hadn't seen any sharks. Our guide made a sign with his hand which I thought was for some kind of fish, but then a reef shark just appeared, swam slowly by and disappeared off into the blue again. I got a bit of a fright so ended up inhaling a load of air and started floating up to the surface much to everyones amusement. Also learnt that laughing underwater is a bit dodgy, ended up swallowing water!! So after a day lazing on the beach ended up leaving Pulau Perhenthian with a Padi Open water certificate and some sunburn! Next stop is Thailand on the night train!
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Perth, Australia

From New Zealand we travelled onto Australia for three weeks. Aw Yeah!!!
I'd fallen in love with New Zealand so was a little reluctant to move on to its bigger neighbour but I soon got over it when were were collected at Sydney airport by Ferg's cousin and hubbie, Daniel and Aideen. They whisked us off to their apartment in Balmain East which had a lovely view of Sydney Harbour and all! So spent a few days knocking around Sydney, hitting up the usual spots like Bondi, The Opera House and the harbour view bridge. Decided not to do the Bridgewalk as it was quite expensive and I didn't think it would hold the same thrill as the week before! Spent a weekend down in Sussex Inlet, south of Sydney and went to a lovely beach by Jarvis bay, even trying my hand at fishing off the beach but they weren't biting , mind you my casting skills leave alot to be desired! Another of Ferg's many cousins in Oz is in the Navy so he took us to the Navy base which had a load of wild Kangaroos just lazing around on the lawns there. So cute!! After Sydney we headed up to the Blue Mountains and checked out the famous Three Sisters Rocks and had yet another free place to crash with one of Ferg's uncles!
We had planned on driving up the coast to Brisbane but decided to fly last minute as the weather was poor and didn't fancy the 1000km drive if it was going to be raining! Sadly this meant that we missed out on visiting where Home and Away is filmed, but I guess it gives me a good reason to come back to Oz! So another one of Ferg's magical relatives put us up in Brissie and even gave us the use of his spare car which was sweet. Headed to the late Steve Irwin's Australia Zoo, where I got to hug a koala bear. He decided to poop on the person who held him before me, but managed to behave himself for me!! However, the croc show was a little disappointing, nobody can put on a show like Steve could!! We checked out Byron bay (savage) and the Gold Coast (like Miami, only not as ritzy!) and visited another of ferg's rellys in the rainforest nearby. After that it was onto Perth, in Western Australia where you guessed it, Ferg's cousin put us up again! Perth and Western Australia seems to be booming at the moment and is a nice spacious city! Visted Rottnest Island and a few other sights around Perth, but spent most our time stuffing our faces with Katie's food and drinking her husband's wine (well he did have a wine cellar after all!). Met up with Maggie, a school friend, who is out in Perth for a year, nice to see a familiar face! So we managed to do three weeks in Oz and only paying for two night accomodation which was really great, and it was great not having a check out time for once!
Still have to visit Ayer's Rock, Cairns and the Great Barrier Reef and of course the set of Home and Away, so Austrailia, as a famous robotic assassin once said, "I'll be back".
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Singapore, Singapore

After landing in Singapore after a pretty quick 5 hour flight, the first thing that hit us was the heat and humidity. Having got used to being put up for the previous few weeks, we'd forgotten to book any accomodation for Singapore but a few phonecalls later we managed to find a place. Singapore is a very slick city and very easy to get around and pretty much very little culture shock from Australia. So if you want to go to Asia and have all your Western comforts, Singapore is the place for you! Ended up staying there for three nights, checked out the sights of Orchard Road, Little India, Chinatown and the Night Safari and then it was time to move on up to Malaysia!!
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Christchurch, South Island, New Zealand

So I've been neglecting this blog for a while but finally I get a chance to do a bit of updating. We originally thought we had about two weeks in New Zealand, but forgot to account for the whole crossing the international date line so we lost a day and a half, so we had just 12 days to see what we could of New Zealand. So after landing in NZ at about 5am, the first task was to pick up our trusty camper van, which fergus had decided to christen "Bertie" in memory of our former Taoiseach! Now this was no ordinary campervan, it was basically a hiace van with a bed in the back and a "kitchen" consisting of a hand pumped sink and various pots and pans. Best of all, it was brand new, which made us a little nervous as we had decided additional insurance was a complete waste of money. So off we set in our camper, skipping Auckland as we had enough of cities at this stage and headed straight for Rotarua on North Island. On the way we stopped off in Subway and a big outlet mall that reminded me of Wrentham. I was well happy to see nice american-esque shops where I knew what my size was. After a few hours we landed in Rotarua, completely wrecked. We parked up our camper and surprisingly it was quite comfortable. We got our first taste of the gap year english on tour (en masse) , that being very immature and generally ignorant, but kind of entertaining at the same time! Next morning we checked out Wai-o-taipu geyser and its surrounding park, it was really impressive. The only bad thing about Rotarua is the stink - nice rotten egg smell that I'll never forget. We also stopped off at the famous Waitomo caves to check out the glow-worms. To make it more interesting we decided to go blackwater rafting, which is an exciting way of saying floating along in a tube in a cave. The water was quite chilly but we weren't too bad with the wet suits. However, there was a lovely eel waiting for me when I entered the cave, so I had to get the guide to shoo him away before I got in. EEK! However, it was quite fun really, and the glowworms were class, even if the glow is actually caused by their poo! After this it was straight onto Tongario, where we were hoping to do a 7 hours hike at the famous tongario crossing. However, the weather gods were unkind so we weren't able to hike that day. We decided to head on to South Island seeing as our time was short, overnighting it in Porirua, just outside wellington. Of course, not having insured the van, I managed to get a nice chip on the windscreen, which we had to get repaired in case the rental company decided to take a chunk out of our 1000 dollar bond we had to pay them! The next day we caught the ferry to South Island, and it was great to be able to boil some tea and make sandwiches in our camper van while we were waiting to board the ferries. I'm turning into more of an itinerant every day now!!! Do you like dags I say! After arriving in South Island we headed to Abel Tasman Park which was amazing, it was like some part of asia. We did meet a few interesting Kiwi characters in the campsite, one of them who was trying to bum some dinner and kept telling us how much he hated Australians and wanted to nuke them all. Turns out his ex-wife was an Aussie - hmmm! Next day it was onto Franz Josef glacier where we did a glacier hike! To make the hike a bit more challenging our guide decided we should squeeze through a crevasse! Now I'm not claustrophic but it was a slightly stressful moment, being squeezed by two walls of ice! That night we stayed in haast, where we met a french couple who were cycling around new zealand (nutters!). Wasn't envious of them the next day, seeing all the nasty hills and empty stretches of road we had already been though! For some reason, I decided it was finally time I did a skydive, so we stopped off in lake wanaka to see if we could do it that day. After much humming and hawing, and seeing a few people go up in the plane and come back down in one piece with a smile on their face, I finally decided that I would go for it. Mind you I was having second thoughts on the plane, but out I went, attached to my tandem dive expert and what a buzz it was! It was surprisingly enjoyable and by the time the parachute opened I had a nice dry mouth from keeping it open during the free fall! Well worth it and I even have the dvd to boot! That night we stayed in lovely queenstown. Ferg wanted to do a bungee so we heading to Kawaru Bridge the next day. I decided I didn't really need to do that after the skydive the previous day! So after surviving the bungee (although he did flash his chest to everyone during the bungee) we headed jetboating, which I have to say wasn't all that exciting after the previous events. After this it was onto the famous Milford Sound, which in one word was amazing! We were lucky with the weather too, the next day, it had a snow storm so we just got to see it. Did my mandatory horse-riding in Te Anu, some of the horses at the horse farm had been featured in lord of the rings so I was well amused by that! Next stop was Dunedin, which is a nice town, and the best thing to do there is to visit the Cadbury's factory, which of course we did. And they gave us a nice load of chocolate to chew on as we toured around! Irish cadburys is still better though - I think, but I'm biased! We decided to abandon bertie for one night, and stayed in a hostel as it was a bit wet and miserable outside! Next day, was our final stop in NZ, Christchurch. I still hadn't seen a Kiwi bird, so we headed to a reserve, where we got a private night tour and got to see some! Of course none of my pics came out because it was so dark (they are nocturnal - after all) and we weren't allowed to use our flash! So after an action-packed trip in NZ it was onwards to Australia to rest up for three weeks before we hit Asia!
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Santiago, Chile

So its our final port of call in South America and I´m sad to be leaving here just as I can somewhat string some spanish sentences together without being laughed at!! Heading to New Zealand and renting a camper van for two weeks so getting really excited about that now! More updates to come soon once I get some quality time with the computadores. Chao chicos!!
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