The Beach Party Ends

We prolonged our stay on Ko Lanta as long as possible, not wanting to give up the laidback island lifestyle we were living there.  But other islands beckoned, so eventually we had to go.  Our next stop was Railay, the rock-climbing capital of Thailand. 

So in Railay, we rock-climbed.  The climbing cliffs here are either right on the beach, or in the sea. It’s really quite stunning – and I promised myself I’d never use that word in the travel blog (it’s just so cliché).  Maybe that’s why it’s so popular with climbers…. and why it’s also so popular with non-climbers.  I’m not sure what category we fit into, having climbed 3 times before, but we definitely didn’t want to associate with the newbies.  So, after being reassured by the tour agency that we would get VIP service, we hit the cliffs…. and so did fifty other people.  It was mass chaos.  We also spent a day deep water soloing – for those not in the know this is when you climb with no ropes over water so when you fall, you fall into the water – where Gully climbed to dizzying heights and I didn’t even get up to a meter, due to my panic-inducing fear of free-falling into water.

No pier in Railay - they prefer to make the tourists wade to shore with their bags

Here comes Gully with his luggage

Railay's wild monkey troop - watch out for rabies!

Climbing pandemonium

He fell about 0.2 seconds after this was taken

After Railay we had a few days left in the south of Thailand, so we decided (against our better judgement) to head to party island Ko Phi Phi.  We figured ‘How bad can it be?’.  Sipping cocktails on a party beach for three nights seemed like a fine way to finish our last days in tropical paradise. We found out that this is the place you come if you want to chug buckets (yes, literally, buckets) of cheap thai rum and redbull, try your hand at double dutch skipping or fire twirling on-stage, and engage in questionable activities in the sand with the opposite sex that you are definitely going to regret in the morning. I don’t think I’ll be able to handle the sight of another bright red Westerner with a sweaty face and ridiculous tan lines swigging beer while roasting themselves in the sun for a long time to come.

-E

Even with all the partying, it's still a gorgeous island

PS: We had so much to say about Vietnam that we totally forgot to blog about one of our favourite parts of the trip, our excursion to Halong Bay.  I’ll let the pictures do the talking.

Swimming in the frigid, polluted waters

Ladies from the floating fishing village doing some unknown fishing related task

One of the floating fishing villages in the bay

Fishing village commute?

The beach on Halong Bay where we went rock climbing

Rock climbing

Thailand Loves a Good Song(kran) – Part 2

The other diversion that kept us busy during our first week in Thailand is my budding music career. That’s right. I make up one third of a Thai-Canadian-guitar-harmonica-Neil Young-cover-trio. (Tone, you and Heather would have KILLED to be there…). We play – surprise surprise – mostly Neil Young (with a Thai twist), although NOT entirely by choice. Long story long, the police chief of Ko Lanta Island was celebrating three days of Songkran (see last post)  at our resort and when he heard me and another Thai guy jamming he INSISTED that we set up a little concert for the revellers at the restaurant. In reality, I was playing the harmonica under duress – but the police chief loves Neil Young and the harmonica so Neil Young and harmonica is what the police chief got! Next thing I know he’s feeding Elise and me Johnny Walker Green Label by the glass-full (Green Label??) so I HAD to let him sing (you’ll have to watch the vids below to hear it for yourself). I guess he took a shining to us since he gave us his phone number and told us to drop his name if we ever get into any trouble over here, wink wink. Translation: we have carte blanche to commit crimes in Thailand. That’s the second police chief we’ve befriended on this trip (recall the gun-toting police chief at grandma’s house in Peru). Oh, and for the record, I eventually managed to appropriate the guitar to get a few lesser-appreciated, non-Neil Young solo numbers in there without offending anyone. No tour was planned at the time of writing.

-G

The show must go on...I had to improvise a pick and capo.

Solo debut

Thailand Loves a Good Song(kran) – Part 1

Is it April already? No matter how long a vacation is, it always seems to fly by. We’re disappointed/delighted to report that we booked our flight home to Toronto. I know which thought first crossed your mind at hearing this news just now: “how will I go on living if I don’t have Gully and Elise’s blog to read?!!!” I know, I know. It’s not going to be easy, but you have another three weeks to find a therapist and prepare for the grim reality of life without our semi-weekly musings; we don’t fly home until May 10th. Oh, and we decided to throw in one more unlikely destination on our way back: Tokyo. Anyone know where to buy a good Geiger counter?

Our first week in Thailand was filled with stuff to take our minds off the fact that this charmed life we’re living is about to come crashing down in three weeks. (OMG!!! Three weeks! That’s, like, the length of a NORMAL vacation!). First, there was Songkran. Those of you who have been to Thailand might know that Songkran is the Thai New Year celebration. And, since April is the hottest month here, what better way to beat the heat on New Year’s than a massive-no-holds-barred-country-wide water fight. Here’s how it works: get all your buddies together and load up a pick-up truck with about 1000 L of water and proceed to drive around town throwing buckets of water on anyone you drive by. If you don’t know anyone with a pick-up truck then you can station yourself road-side with a garbage can full of water (ice water is preferred) and throw buckets of water on passers-by. Awesome fun. Our preferred tactic was the motorbike drive-by using water guns. The only problem with the motorbike is that little kids are constantly flinging bowls of water in your face as you go by – hilarious, however it starts to get a bit painful at around 20 km/h.

-G

The teddy bear water tank really instills fear

We commandeered a water station. I love that backpack water tank. 

More Reasons to Love Vietnam

We’ve made our way to Thailand but there are a few last thoughts on Vietnam that we want to squeeze in.

1. In Vietnam, we’re fat.  Both Gully and I have repeatedly had the shameful experience of being laughed out of the store when we ask for an item of clothing in our size.  Or the shameful experience of watching the shopkeepers dig for ten minutes through their storerooms of clothing for one pair of jeans in our size, and usually the jeans are circa 1992 (the last time they had a fat customer).  Or for me, the shameful experience of digging through the size 26 jeans, looking for a bigger size, only to realize that I was looking through the men’s jeans and I was still too fat for them.

2. In Vietnam, every day is Christmas day.  Without fail, every hotel we stayed at was festively decorated with Santas, tinsel, ‘Merry Christmas!’ signs, mistletoe, etc etc.  Many bars and restaurants too.  What’s up with that?  It’s April! Someone please explain this one to me.

3. In Vietnam, stray dogs are few and far between.  All our avid blog readers will know that we love to talk about stray animals in our blog.  It’s a passion.  So why aren’t there any stray dogs here?  We think it’s because they eat them.  I say good riddance.

4. In Vietnam, they are looking for good ESL teachers.  Check out this picture of our impromptu English class in Hanoi.  We were just sitting in the park on a Sunday afternoon, minding our own business, when we got accosted by hordes of eager university students, practically begging to try out their English skills on us.  They were particularly happy that we spoke ‘American’ instead of ‘British’, because they wanted American accents.

Gully & Elise's Class of 2011!!!

Vietnamese lady selling street wares

Gully selling street wares

So on to Thailand.  We stopped long enough at the Bangkok airport to grab a McD’s burger, then headed straight for the islands.  There we met up with a couple of my friends, kicked back with a cocktail or two and relaxed in the warm tropical breezes.  What a welcome change after the frantic pace of Hanoi.
-E

 

Another country, another motorbike

Thai island sunset

Thai island after sunset

Safety First!

Gonna try to make this a short post since NHL playoffs are starting and I need to make my pool picks. I wouldn’t be a good Canadian boy if I didn’t let hockey take top priority even here on the other side of the world.

I’ve mentioned earlier in this blog how crazy the motorbike driving is in Vietnam. Equally insane is the way people transport goods around town. For those who haven’t been to Asia and witnessed these high-speed balancing acts first-hand, consider this: what if all of a sudden your car was replaced with a chintzy little motorbike? No trunk. No back seat. Chances are you don’t even have bungee cords on hand. (Great on gas, though!). How would you get your clubs to and from the golf course? How would you get that full propane tank home for tonight’s BBQ? How would you help Elise and me move to our new apartment when we get back from this trip? (That reminds me, you’re all on the hook to help us move next month). Check out the pics below. Unfortunately, we weren’t quick enough to capture some of the funniest things we saw strapped to a motorbike, like the twenty live, squawking ducks and the four caged dogs – all on their way to become dinner, no doubt. My all-time favourite, though, has gotta be the family that mistakes their 100 cc motorbike for a minivan. Two adults and two children on a motorbike? What could possibly go wrong?

-G

Happy family

This was how the postal employee carted away our new tailored clothes to send home to Canada

Smart

Intelligent

Genius

I love how the dad is on the phone and the kids have no helmets!

Our taxi from the airport

Counterfeit Kingdom

Let me tell you something I’ve noticed about the people of Vietnam.  They look good.  They might just be the most fashionable people I’ve ever met.  They are always dressed for success, especially the women.  It’s hard to find a Vietnamese girl not dressed in a carefully put together outfit, with high-end brand names and spike heels and a flashy purse, even if she is out toiling in the rice paddies.  We went on a hike a couple of days ago, a couple of sweaty Westerners in sporty clothes hiking up a mountain, and passed hordes of intrepid Vietnamese hikers wearing designer jeans and swanky footwear prancing down the mountain without breaking a sweat.

At this point, you might be asking yourself – isn’t Vietnam a relatively poor country?  How can they afford the Miss Sixty’s and Ray Ban’s?  The answer, of course, is they can’t.  But in a culture obsessed with looking good, there’s always a way – just fake it!  It turns out that there isn’t anything that can’t be copied for a much cheaper price.  And they’re SO good at it! We scrutinize everything we buy, but mostly can’t tell the difference between the original and the copy.

It is hard to comprehend the scale of the counterfeit industry here.  Let me give you a few examples.

1. The first thing we bought in Vietnam was a Lonely Planet guidebook – perfectly bound, with colour pages and (almost) perfect English. Fake.
2. Then we bought three pairs of jeans – Guess, Dolce & Gabbana and Diesel.  Fake, fake, and probably fake (it’s really hard to tell).  Total cost: $95.
3. Prescription glasses with frames by Burberry.  Fake.  Probably fake lenses too…
4. DVD’s.  All fake, of course.
5. Bottled Aquafina water.  Fake.  After we bought it, we realized that is was Aqualifa water.

And those are only the obvious examples.  The ‘faking it’ here in Vietnam gets much more insidious. A traveller arriving in a Vietnamese city might be confused when he finds three versions of the hotel at which he made a reservation.  Guessed it? Fake hotels, cashing in on the good reputation of the original.  And the reviews you read online for that great hotel?  Fake.  Most online reviews for hotels, restaurants, and tour operators are written by the owner, or if it is a bad review, then it was written by the competitor.  What’s a tourist to do?

-E

What three things are wrong with this picture?

My eye exam in the fake glasses store

They use state of the art technology to determine my prescription

And some other pictures of our Vietnam travels:

Gully is enjoying the fresh air

And he found a friend

The streets of Hue

A rare peaceful moment

Statues guarding the emperor's tomb

A Buddhist shrine near the city of Hue

Strolling in the gardens of the Buddhist temple