Backpacks, Buses & Burpees

Singapore

3/16/2015

The last stop in our year long backpacking adventure was Singapore. We were met at the airport by Allen, a Taiwanese college friend of Cindy’s who is living and working in Singapore these days.

As well as offering us a place to stay (a big help in a city famous for having the region’s most expensive accommodation), Alan was a very enthusiastic host. After shouting us a Singaporean Laksa lunch, Alan took us to Sentosa, a glitzy small island featuring Singapore’s first casino, a Universal Studios theme park, shopping malls and hotels. We headed straight to the Skyline luge (a copy of the one we enjoyed on our first holiday together in Queenstown in 2008) for some fast paced fun.

Later that night we walked the glitzy shopping district of Orchard Road. After 12 months on the road, anything more than window shopping at the hundreds of designer stores there was out of the question. We did, however, indulge on some fantastic (and very affordable) Malaysian and Indonesian food at a fancy food court in one of the bigger malls.

The following day we wandered through Little India and China Town (the latter was our favorite) before visiting a famous hawker centre for lunch. That night we caught up with Alan for some delicious Taiwanese dumplings at an award winning chain restaurant, Din Tai Fung (two of its Hong Kong branches have been awarded Michelin stars).

For the last night of our year on the road, we had something really special in mind. The Marina Bay Sands hotel is the second most expensive building in the world, and was number one on our hotel bucket list. A month or two earlier we decided to throw out the backpacking rule book and, with the help of generous birthday and christmas presents from Sam’s grandparents, booked a club (VIP) room there for our last night.

Check in wasn’t until 3pm but we showed up at 9am hoping we could get in early. We were a little embarrassed approaching the VIP check-in desk laden with backpacks and tired clothes, but when we explained that this would be our last night of a year-long trip the friendly staffer said he’d do all he could to make it special. The result, a free upgrade to a massive top floor suite, an early check in and a late check out!

After spending lots of time enjoying the views from our massive suite, we spent most of the afternoon making sure we got good value for the $160 we paid to access the top floor club room. There, we enjoyed an indulgent high tea before returning a couple of hours later for french champaign and canapes.

The main attraction at the Marina Bay Sands is its iconic 150 meter long rooftop infinity pool that floats across the hotel’s three towers.

The pool is only accessible by hotel guests and plenty of people book a room just to be able to experience the pool. We thought it was every bit as spectacular as the photos suggest. Luckily it wasn’t as busy as we feared it would be, but we suspect this is due to the water temperature being at least 5 degrees lower than we’d expected. We’re sure most pools in equator-proximate Singapore are not heated, but this one, in a different climate at 57 floors up, definitely should be! Thankfully there were also a couple of jacuzzis facing the ocean where we were able to defrost after taking our many pool pictures.

At night we admired the views from the rooftop observation deck before retreating one floor down to our room to admire the same views from our bed.

The next morning we enjoyed a nice sleep in before returning to the club room for an elaborate breakfast. After checking out we explored the financial centre, the riverside Clarke Quay, the historic fullerton hotel and the futuristic gardens by the bay.

Before long it was time to head to the airport, which, much to the surprise of the bell boy we did using Singapore’s fantastic metro system. It is true that accommodation and many restaurants in Singapore are extremely expensive, but we found plenty of cheap hawker food options and the trip to the airport was the cheapest (at just over a dollar each) we encountered in our entire year on the road. Just one tip - don’t get caught eating or drinking on a train or even at the station (if you do you might get lashings).

We took off with mixed feelings. Our excitement to see Sam’s family when we landed was certainly tempered by our disbelief that our dream year on the road was coming to an end.

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South Vietnam

3/9/2015

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After landing at the tiny Dong Hoi regional airport, we took a makeshift taxi towards the Phong Nha-Ke Bang National Park, home to the world’s largest cave. Tourism in this area is still relatively new, with only half a dozen nearby accommodation options. We stayed at a farm stay surrounded by rice fields and owned by an Aussie who has been rightly credited with driving international tourism to the area.

On our first afternoon, we visited Phong Nga cave, which although relatively small and old news compared to some of the other caves in the National Park, is still spectacular. Seeing the cave means hiring a long boat for a fixed fee, so the more people you can find to share the boat the cheaper the trip becomes. Having round up a multinational group of 10 people, we started the slow scenic journey towards the cave. After arriving at the cave’s dramatic mouth the engine was cut and we were paddled through the beautifully lit flooded cave. The experience was so beautiful and romantic that it almost seemed fake (if you’ve been to Disneyland, imagine a much grander version of Pirates of the Caribbean, minus the queues and pirates). At the end of the tour, we were dropped off and allowed to explore the front of the cave by foot.

The largest cave in the national park (and the world), Son Doong, was only discovered in 2009 and requires a multi-day trek, several months’ planning and some serious rock climbing/abseiling to gain access, so we gave that one a miss. The nearby Paradise cave, which was also discovered in the last decade and is almost as big, is much more accessible. Paradise cave is deep within the national park, and in a sign of how immature tourism is in the area, there are only really three ways of getting there; a single overpriced tourist minibus (which included other activities we weren’t interested in doing), hiring a motorbike to try to self-navigate there (which Sam ruled out after seeing dozens of tourists with cut up legs over the preceding couple of months) and jumping on the back of a non-English speaking local’s bike. We decided the last of these options was the least unappealing so we went with that.

After an hour long motorbike ride and a half hour walk, we arrived at an entrance so tiny that its a wonder the cave was ever discovered at all. Once inside, the sheer scale of the cave is breathtaking. The cave continues for 31 kilometers, but we just walked the first kilometer along pristine wooden staircases and walkways. As spectacular as that kilometer was, it was enough for us, so we made our way back to the farm stay and on to Dong Hoi in time for a late afternoon walk on a nearby white sand beach.

The next morning we took a train through the former demilitarized zone (that separated Communist North Vietnam from the South) to Hué, a 19th century imperial capital that is now a popular World Heritage site. That afternoon we toured the expansive and heavily fortified Citidel, focusing on the inner Imperial Enclosure (which at 6 square kilometers requires a fair amount of walking). A lot of the buildings were a little worse for wear, courtesy of heavy bombings during the French and American wars, but ongoing restoration works are slowly repairing the damage.

From Hué we took a scenic train ride south to Da Nang, before arranging a makeshift shuttle on to Hoi An. Hoi An’s World Heritage protected Old Town is not huge (you could walk it in an afternoon) but it is really pretty and unique, and on the recommendation of family and lots of backpacking friends we set aside three full days to enjoy it. We’d been told that Hoi An is the best place in Asia to get clothes tailored, and after spending a lot of time shopping around and kicking tires we were really happy with the results. In between clothes/shoe fittings, we had some fantastic food at a few pretty restaurants. Our favorite meal though, was a street-side Banh Mi from a nice old lady who has developed a cult following on trip advisor, and we ended up going back there every day.

Hoi An was at its best at night, when the temperature drops a few degrees and a combination of candle and lantern lighting gives the old town a beautifully romantic feel.

For our last full day in Hoi An we rented some bikes and rode through rice fields to the nearby beaches (which although pretty didn’t quite stack up to the ones we’d seen Thailand a few weeks earlier). On the way back, we stopped for lunch at a cute restaurant that grows all its vegetables on site.

From Hoi An we took a short flight to our final Vietnamese stop, Ho Chi Minh city (formerly Saigon). A reputation for chaos and crowds had tempered our expectations, but we really enjoyed our two-night stay in the buzzing district 1 at a hotel owned by the family one of Cindy’s Californian friends. While there, we visited the War Remnants museum, Independence Palace and a busy souvenir market. We spent our last night in Vietnam at a local bar watching Australia win the Asian Cup. The following morning we caught a flight to Singapore, the last country we visited in our year-long adventure.

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North Vietnam

3/4/2015

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We arrived at Hanoi airport a little less prepared than we perhaps should have been. The Vietnamese embassies in Canberra and Washington D.C. told us we should arrange visas through them before arriving in Vietnam, but traveling for 12 months through 24 countries (many of which require visas) means we can’t afford to send our passports to various embassies and stay put while we wait to get them back.

An alternative (which the official website strongly advised against) is to organize a pre-approval letter through a Vietnamese agent, then bring that letter, two passport photos and cash to get a visa on arrival, so that was our plan. Running around on our last morning in Malaysia we were only able to arrange odd-sized photos and a pre-approval letter printed on half-used paper, but we had the right amount of US dollars and on arrival that seemed to be all that mattered. We got through immigration in no time.

Having come in late at night and crashed straight away, we didn’t get a chance to experience Hanoi’s famously chaotic downtown until the next morning. Immediately after leaving our hotel we decided that it was the right kind of chaos, with pretty buildings, busy streets, countless vendors and more motorbikes and scooters than you can imagine contributing to a fantastic atmosphere.

The buzz was best at night, when locals and tourists sit on tiny plastic stools that should never be expected to hold an adult’s weight drinking dollar beers facing the street. On Friday night the streets closed to make way for hundreds of market stalls. We discovered on our last night that this all stops at midnight, when huge numbers of police appear from nowhere to make sure street bars are packed up. Locals jumped up quickly and sculled their beers while tourists (like us) who are used to a more relaxed attitude to compliance in other third world countries couldn’t understand why bar owners were so keen to take out half-full beers off us. For us, this was the first of many little reminders that Vietnam was the first communist country we’ve visited.

Hanoi ended up being one of our favorite food cities, as we enjoyed amazing food in a variety of settings. We had a few multi course meals at a very affordable fine dining restaurant, but also did the more modest and more atmospheric street side barbecue. For snacks on the go we started a two-week love affair to the king of all street foods, the Banh Mi (a fresh baguette filled with pate, cucumber, cilantro, carrots and either chicken or pork).

From Hanoi we headed to Vietnam’s most famous tourist attraction, Ha Long Bay. There are now hundreds of boats touring Ha Long Bay offering day, overnight and two night cruises with varying levels of comfort. After doing a lot of research we ended up going with the only company that has access to the much larger Bai Tu Long Bay. Although the price and resulting accommodation was a little extravagant for a backpacker budget (many of our peers would spend a fraction of what we spent on a one night party cruise), it meant we were able to avoid the crowds.

We spent most of our time on the cruise enjoying relatively unspoiled views of the thousands of limestone islands dotted around Bai Tu Long Bay. Each day we jumped in kayaks to get a closer look at some of the islands, and on our last morning we toured a local fishing village.

The main attraction of our cruise was dinner in a candlelit cave, which no other company include in their cruise package. The beautifully romantic setting blew away our very high expectations, and the meal was also fantastic (as was the case with all our other meals back on the boat). To top it off the chef had spent days preparing sculptures of a dragon and a sail boat (among others) from simple vegetables to display on the table.

After returning to Hanoi, we took a flight south to the small town of Dong Hoi to continue our Vietnam adventure. More on that in our next post.

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Malaysia

2/24/2015

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Our flight from tourist-centric Buddhist Thailand to Muslim Malaysia was less than an hour long, but soon after arriving the stark differences between the two countries became pretty evident.

Malaysia gets a lot less tourists than it's northern neighbor, and the tourists that do come are certainly not greeted with ping pong shows, lady boys and cheap alcohol they can drink on the street. Instead, they find a conservative society where most woman wear head coverings, politicians are prosecuted for gay sex and visitors are expected to conform to modesty standards not seen on Thai beaches. Sharia law forbids Muslims from drinking, while thirsty non-Muslims are forced to pay heft alcohol taxes.

After landing on the island of Penang we headed straight to Georgetown, which has built a reputation as the food capital of South East Asia. Over the course of three days we enjoyed some great food from small restaurants and various hawker stalls, but it certainly wasn't the best food we had in the region. We were also a little disappointed with Georgetown's other main draw cards, the historic buildings of its colonial downtown (scorching heat didn't help). Unfortunately, Penang's northern overdeveloped beaches were also a bit of a let down. Even though Penang didn't prove to be the highlight we hoped it would be, we found enough good food, historic streets and friendly people to make us glad we visited the island.

Next stop was Langkawi, a large tax-free (so affordable alcohol) resort island in north-west Malaysia. We stayed at Pantai Cenang, which is the most lively beach on the island but still offers a nice relaxed atmosphere. We spent a day and a half at the beach and a nearby small island, where Napo launched a scenic parasailing flight. While not the most spectacular beach we'd visited, it was certainly pretty and enjoyable enough, at least that is until we started spotting jelly fish in the water.

We had set aside a full day on our Langkawi schedule for an island day trip. The island all the locals raved about, Ko Lipe, happened to be in Thailand, so we packed our passports and took a high speed ferry there first thing in the morning. After arriving and speeding through a relaxed immigration process, we set about enjoying what turned out to be the most beautiful island we'd seen on this trip, and the second most beautiful we've ever seen (after Bora Bora). Ko Lipe offered three beautiful beaches, all which amazingly clear turquoise waters but a slightly different charm, and we were careful to split our time between the three. We would've loved to have stayed for a few days on the island but after five hours had to catch the ferry back to Langkawi.

From Langkawi, we flew to Kuala Lumpur, the capital of Malaysia. On our first afternoon we took a train to the iconic Petronas towers, marveling at them under the sun, wandering through the luxurious adjoining mall during sunset and enjoying seeing them all lit up at night.

The following day we visited the Batu caves, which were unique and impressive enough for them to be worth doing, even though we'd already seen dozens of Hindu temples in the preceding few months. Unfortunately the oppressive heat and pesky monkeys we'd encountered at most other Hindu temples also somewhat limited our enjoyment of Batu caves.

Our last night in KL was Napo's last night with us in Asia, and we celebrated accordingly at the rooftop of our party hostel, which is known as one of the city's liveliest night spots. The next day we said goodbye to Napo and took a short bus ride to our last stop in Malaysia, Melaka.

Melaka is a pretty coastal town with over 600 years of multicultural heritage, and has become popular with both weekending locals and international tourists. We only had 24 hours there, but that allowed us plenty of time to wander through the old town, focussing on the pretty riverside and vibrant Chinatown. We were also able to enjoy a couple of final typical Malaysian meals before catching a bus back to KL to fly out to Vietnam.

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Thai Beaches

2/17/2015

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Plenty of people have told us that Phuket has had its day, but we decided to check it out anyway. We decided to stay at Karon beach, 10 minutes south of the madness of the much busier but much less pretty Patong beach. Even so, after a nice afternoon on Karon beach we decided to take a taxi to Patong to check out the famous nightlife on Bangla Road. At the end of the night we certainly had no regrets about staying further away. The best atmosphere was found on the street, where you could freely drink 7-11 bought $1 beers. The less interesting and stuffy bars didn’t even allow free access to restrooms in exchange for overpriced drinks.

At the end of the night we decided to see a ping pong show, not because we wanted to but because it’s what everyone else does. As expected, it wasn’t one of life’s must have experiences, but there’s probably no need to go into too many details on this blog (might save that for a future therapy session).

The next day we had a nice sleep in before heading to a well-hidden local Pad Thai shop for the best, and cheapest, Pad Thais we’d ever had. That meal ended up being the first of many, as we planned the rest of our time in Phuket around the shop’s limited opening hours.

That afternoon, we wandered to the nearby Kata beach, which we felt lived up to its reputation as the prettiest on Phuket island. There’s been a lot of press back in Australia about beach vendors being swept of Phuket’s beaches, and although we don’t like the threat to locals’ livelihood, we did enjoy the relaxed atmosphere on the beach and thought the balance was about right (since we only had to walk a couple of meters off the beach to find someone selling cold fresh coconuts).

For our last day in Phuket, we took a day trip on a tourist boat to ‘James Bond island’, the pretty limestone island featured in the movie ‘the Man with the Golden Gun’. The trip also allowed us to go for kayak rides and swims around other limestone islands and caves, and despite big crowds was a lot of fun.

The following morning we took the first ferry to the famous Phi Phi island, where we’d arranged to stay one night (we couldn’t justify paying the daunting prices to stay longer). After a nice long swim in Phi Phi’s largest turquoise beach, we had an amazing curry lunch from a tiny street food stall in the middle of the island. Later in the afternoon, we hired a private boat to get to Maya Bay, the idyllic paradise immortalized by the Leonardo DiCaprio film, ‘the Beach’. We arrived at 3:30pm when most of the day trippers had left, allowing us to enjoy two hours leading into sunset in relative peace and quiet.

We knew we only had one night on Phi Phi to enjoy it’s famous nightlife, so after returning from Maya bay we set about making the most of it. After several beers and cocktail buckets, we ended up at a unique beachside bar featuring fire jugglers, skipping ropes and a limbo bar. The only thing the bar didn’t have going for it was proximity to our hotel, which made for a long stumble home at the end of the night.

We spent most of the following day recovering by our hotel’s pool and on Phi Phi’s pretty beaches, before taking the late ferry to our last Thai destination, Ao Nang beach (the main beach town in Krabi). Ao Nang has lots of nice bars and restaurants, but the beach itself is not spectacular by Thai standards. Like most other tourists, we used Ao Nang as a base to explore the much prettier nearby beaches of Railay and Pranang.

Throughout our time in Southern Thailand it seemed that every beach we visited was prettier than the last, and, true to form, the Poda and Tup island beaches we visited on our last afternoon were our favorites. We were also really impressed with Krabi generally, and would recommend it to anybody turned off by the more tourist affected (but still, we thought, enjoyable) Phuket and Phi Phi Islands.

After a little over a week touring the most famous beaches in south west Thailand, we flew to Malaysia. More on that in our next post.

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Xmas & NYE in Thailand

2/9/2015

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We normally spend Christmas with family, either in Australia or the US. That wasn’t going to work for us this year, but we knew that as long as we could enjoy a good christmas meal and have good enough internet to call home we’d still have a good day. When it became apparent that it’d be impossible to find either of these anywhere in Myanmar, we decided to flee to Chiang Mai (Thailand) on Christmas eve, where luckily we were able to find both (particularly excellent food).

For our Christmas lunch, we booked a beautiful riverside French restaurant, indulging on some of our French favorites, including a duck salad, steak frites, beef bourguignon and a chocolate fondant. We spent the rest of the afternoon and evening wandering around street markets. This routine of overindulging on delicious, mostly Thai, food and walking it off (by visiting many markets and temples), was the norm for us for most of our time in Chiang Mai.

On our last full day in Thailand’s food capital, we attended an excellent cooking class, which included a market visit to buy supplies, really helpful demonstrations, and 4 courses of surprisingly delicious Thai food chosen and cooked by us. At the end of the day we left with recipes for everything we cooked, so hopefully we are able to recreate them back home.

From Chiang Mai we took a mini bus to the nearby town of Pai. The small laid back town and its surrounding hills are attracting more and more tourists (particularly backpackers), many of whom stay for up to a week. With not much to do there other than ride bikes around town and unwind we, having well and truly unwound over the course of the preceding 9 months, just stayed for two days. This was plenty of time for us to enjoy some of the sights around town (highlights being a small Chinese village and tranquil hill-top waterfall) and to understand Pai’s increasing popularity.

Our next stop, Bangkok, promised a dramatic change of pace. Arriving at our hotel we met Napo, Cindy’s brother, who had flown in to join us for just under three weeks in Thailand and Malaysia. To mark the reunion we planned a big night touring Bangkok’s famous night spots, starting at the Lebua sky bar (of Hangover 2 fame), have plenty of much more affordable drinks at the backpacker hub Khao San Road and finishing at Soi Cowboy (the red light district, which hosted one of the more cringeworthy scenes of Hangover 2).

We woke up the next morning, New Years Eve, knowing that we’d need to back up again for another big night’s drinking (which was never a problem when we were in our early 20s but all three of us have now passed 30). Thankfully, after watching a movie in our dark hotel room and having a couple of cheap Red Bulls (the original, non-carbonated, Thai stuff, not the more famous and much more expensive Austrian copy), we bounced back reasonably quickly.

We’d done plenty of research on the best places to spend NYE in Bangkok. It seemed that foreigners with plenty of cash mostly spend big on glamorous rooftop bars (Lebua, where we’d been a night earlier, was charging $300 to get in and $13 a beer) or get on a stuffy river cruise. All the locals we spoke to said they were going to Central World, the Thai equivalent of New York’s Times Square, for the countdown, so we decided to do the same. Arriving just before 10pm we spotted a massive Heineken oasis in the middle of a crowded alcohol (and, it seemed, bathroom) free zone. After spending our 10 minutes queuing time debating how much we were prepared to pay to get in, we were relieved to hear the admission price was just to buy a $3 beer (much cheaper than we expected and it saved us one of many trips to the bar).

The atmosphere in the Heineken bar was fantastic with a really good DJ playing up to the fireworks and more than an hour into the new year. The fireworks themselves were spectacular, making for a really memorable NYE. When the bar closed at around 1:30am we decided we’d had well and truly enough to drink, so after a quick McDonald's stop (not proud of that) we successfully (albeit slowly) managed to navigate our way back to our hotel using Bangkok’s impressive metro system.

After a much needed sleep in, we spent our first day of 2015 touring through the Bangkok Royal Palace and surrounding temples, followed by a busy ferry ride down the river. We went to bed much earlier that night, knowing we had an early flight to catch the following day to Phuket. More on that, and a dozen (give or take) southern Thai beach destinations, in our next post.

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Myanmar (Burma)

1/30/2015

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Our next destination was one that Sam in particular was really looking forward to. For most of our lifetimes, Burma has been controlled by an undemocratic military government and has been the subject of harsh western sanctions. In 2010, the country started slowly re-introducing democracy, in 2011 it changed its name to Myanmar and in 2012 it opened its doors to tourists. The advice from all the experts was now is the time to visit (before it gets overrun with tourists).

We flew into Yangon, which until recently was the nation’s capital (in 2005 the capital was relocated, at great expense, to a new purpose built city called Nay Pyi Taw). Yangon is the largest city in an impoverished country that has seemingly gone out of its way to discourage foreign investment, so we had pretty low expectations. We were only there to use its airport (when we booked our tickets Yangon was the only place where we could get a visa on arrival, but this has already changed) and to visit its two main pagodas, and we’d recommend that others do the same (or avoid it altogether if you can). The Shwedagon pagoda was impressive, but it was the sole highlight. Most frustrating for us was the horrendous traffic, worse food, and the slowest internet we’ve ever encountered (and we grew up using dial-up connections). It took us over two hours at our hotel and an internet cafe to not be able to send a simple email!

From Yangon we took an overnight bus to Bagan. The bus was the most luxurious we’ve encountered in all our travels; a product, we’re told, of the current (still military) government’s determination to present Myanmar to tourists as a modern, developed country (we weren’t fooled and personally would prefer that the government spend the money on feeding its people).

Bagan is an ancient city located roughly in the centre of Myanmar. Between the 9th and 13th centuries, the city was the capital of the first unified Burmese kingdom, and during the 11th, 12th and 13th centuries over 10,000 Buddhist temples, pagodas and monasteries were built there. Today, the 2200 remaining temples are Myanmar’s major tourist drawcard and they, along with Cambodia’s Angkor temples, are considered to be the most significant archeological attractions in South East Asia.

The best way to see the temples is by hot air balloon, but the cost is massive and the same for all three ‘competing’ companies (if it wasn’t for a generous 30th birthday gift from Sam’s parents we would have struggled to justify the outlay). On the morning of our ride, we were picked up at 5am, arriving at the launch site just before sunrise. After a safety briefing we watched the balloon inflate.

As we climbed on board the sun was just rising. Hot air balloons are not particularly maneuverable and so are at the mercy of the wind. Our morning, although perfectly clear, was quite windy, so we ended up getting a quicker, shorter and more elevated ride than we would have liked. Even so, we really enjoyed the once in a lifetime experience, and were grateful that our experienced pilot was able to land us safely in the right area (many balloons from another company ended up on the wrong side of the river, with apparently no support crews, bridges or boats to bring them and the balloons back).

We spent the rest of our three-day stay in Bagan exploring the temples by bike (both the electric and old fashioned varieties). Spread over an area of 100 square kilometers, this proved to be good exercise, especially when Sam’s electric bike ran out of juice. Many of the temples offer great viewpoints, but the best view (not powered by propane gas) is from an ugly 60 meter viewing deck that money and corruption built (this viewing deck not only offered the highest viewing point but also the added advantage of being the only place where the view isn’t spoilt by the viewing deck itself).

After enjoying the relatively relaxed pace of Bagan, we took a minibus to Mandalay, Myanmar’s second most populous city. Mandalay used to be the centre of a grand empire (and the namesake Las Vegas casino is a nod to the city of that era, not the current one). Nowadays its a crowded city with bad traffic and worse drivers, many of whom inexplicably drive at night without their lights on (resulting in multiple daily road deaths).

We toured all the main sights, including Mandalay Palace, the Golden Palace Monastery, the Kuthodaw Pagoda, Mingun Zedi, Inwa Ava and the U Bein Bridge. Some were impressive, but to be honest by that point we were a little sick of being in Myanmar and so perhaps not in the best frame of mind to enjoy the sights of Mandalay. Apart from the temples of Bagan, we didn’t think that Myanmar had much going for it. The food is atrocious, especially when compared to the delicious offerings of neighboring India and Thailand. We had heard stories of friendly and welcoming locals but this wasn’t our experience (the people we encountered seemed to be generally indifferent to, or even annoyed by, the growing presence of tourists).

We should note that we didn’t get to Inle Lake or any of Myanmar’s beautiful beaches, where the atmosphere and people are supposed to be more relaxed. We had allowed time to do so, but were put off by the cost and travel time involved and after nine days in Myanmar we were honestly ready to go. The unattractive prospect of eating Burmese food for our Christmas dinner spurred us to move our flight to Thailand forward, allowing us to leave the country on Christmas eve. We felt at least as relieved flying over the border as we did when we left India, and to be honest we won’t be going back to Myanmar in a hurry (if anything it’ll be a beach holiday, but the availability and affordability of quality transport, food and accommodation would need to improve dramatically first).

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Cambodia

1/25/2015

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We had heard mixed reviews about Cambodia, with lots of people telling us a week would be more than enough to see the main sights, so the week is all we allowed. We ended up loving the country and really wished we'd allowed a few more days.

Soon after arriving in Siem Reap we caught a minibus to the capital, Phnom Penh. The road linking the two cities is perhaps the most important, but is certainly not the best, in the country. As part of an aggressive, largely Chinese funded, modernization project almost the entire stretch of road is a work in progress, making for a bone jarring 5 hour drive.

Apart from breathtaking scenery and friendly people, we find that what puts us in the best mood while traveling is really good food and drink. On our first night in Cambodia we got plenty of both, starting with an ice cold free welcome drink at our hostel (just one of the reasons we rate it as one of the best we've stayed at). We had read a lot about Cambodian 'training restaurants', not for profit venues giving disadvantaged youth a start in the growing hospitality industry, and on our first night we ate at one near our hostel. The food was amazing and incredibly cheap!

When many people think of Cambodia they think of the Khmer Rouge, the brutal communist regime that killed around 3 million people (a significant proportion of the country's population at the time) during its relatively short 4 year period in power. The regime's main policy was to move people out of the cities to work on rice farms, leaving Phnom Penh to be used most notably for torturing and executing anybody even vaguely suspected of dissent. The torturing mostly took place at Tuol Sleng (a school turned into a prison in 1975) and the killing happened out of town at the killing fields. Both have been turned into museums but we chose to just visit the former (the main attraction at the latter is a wall of skulls, which Cindy in particular didn't think she needed to see).

We spent the rest of the day visiting more cheerful sights in the capital, including the National Museum, Royal Palace, Silver Pagoda and Wat Phnom. We found the city to be really green, clean and spacious (at least compared to Sri Lanka, India and Nepal), so we were more than happy to turn down countless tuk tuk approaches in favor of touring the city by foot. We found the Sisowath Quay walkway on the banks of the Mekong particularly pleasant.

From the capital we took a mini bus four hours south west to Sihanoukville, Cambodia's main beach destination. We chose to stay centrally, close to lots of really nice restaurants. We hadn't seen a beach since Goa (India) five weeks earlier so we spent as much time as we could at the surrounding beaches, including the exclusive Sokha beach (which is mostly occupied by a five star hotel) and the more laid back Otres beach. We also took a day trip out to Ko Rong Island, although that was cut short due to rough seas resulting from a typhoon in the Philippines. We really loved the beaches and laid back atmosphere in Sihanoukville and of all the places we visited in 2014, this is probably the one that we really wish we'd allowed more time to enjoy.

Our last stop in Cambodia was Siem Reap, home to the Angkor group of temples. The temples are really spread out, so to see best of them you need to hire a car, tuk tuk or bike. We chose to take a full day bike tour, which allowed us to get off the beaten track to visit some less popular temples, as well as the must sees of Angkor Wat (the most famous and most popular), Angkor Thom, Bayon and Ta Prohm (famous for being featured in the Angelina Jolie movie, Tomb Raider).

The temples were certainly impressive, although for us they didn't make as strong an impression as the Taj Mahal or the Macchu Picchu. Big crowds didn't help and the combination of neglect, civil war (many temple walls are littered with bullet holes) and graffiti have taken their toll, particularly on Angkor Wat.

After the 40 kilometer ride around the temples, we decided to spend the rest of our time in Siem Reap treating ourselves to some massages, cheap local beer and a final few amazing meals (the best was at another training restaurant). In what seemed like the blink of an eye our week long Cambodia trip was over and it was time to catch an indirect flight to our next stop, Myanmar.

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Nepal - Kathmandu Valley

1/19/2015

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Our Himilayan trek (see our last post for details) started and ended in Pokhara, a lake town about 200 kilometers, but a 7 hour drive, from Kathmandu. There's not much to say about Pokhara other than it is a relatively chilled out town full of trekking tourists that offers lots of nice restaurants, cafés, bars and handicraft shops. Some tourists use the surrounding mountains to launch paragliding flights but we were more than happy to just relax for a couple of days by the lake.

We spent the rest of our time in and around Kathmandu, enjoying the buzz of the tourist district (Thamel) at night and exploring the temples and palaces of the surrounding Kathmandu valley during the day.

The first temple we visited, Swayambunath, sits on top of a hill and would offer fantastic views of the Kathmandu valley on a clear day (but thick smog means there aren't many of those). The temple is home to hundreds of monkeys (so is often called the monkey temple), which didn't exactly help our enjoyment of the place. After several months in countries full of monkeys we had come to look at them not as cute little furry animals but as often aggressive rabies carrying thieves.

Our favorite temple in the Kathmandu valley was the Bodhnah stupa, one of the largest Buddhist Stupas in the world. The absence of pesky monkeys and the presence of an adjacent rooftop bar/restaurant meant we were more than happy to spend a couple of hours there.

Hundreds of years ago, the now unified Nepal used to consist of hundreds of small kingdoms, each centered around a 'Durbar Square'. Each square features temples, open courts, water fountains and a royal palace. We visited the three most impressive Durbar Squares, starting with Patan.

Next up, we visited Kathmandu Durbar square, which due to its central location is the most popular among both locals and tourists.

Finally, we traveled out to Bhaktapur, which is the most expansive of the three, featuring several squares and hundreds of historic buildings spread out across dozens of ancient streets.

After seeing the best Buddhist temples Nepal had to offer we headed to the airport, taking an indirect flight to the ultimate Buddhist temple destination, Myanmar.

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Nepal - Annapurna Circuit

1/3/2015

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Tourists visit Nepal for two main reasons; to trek through the Himalayas and to visit the country's many Buddhist temples and towns. We did a bit of both, but we'll cover the trek first.

The peak trekking season in Nepal is quite short, limited to the months of October and November. At this time the rain has mostly stopped but the cold of winter hasn't set in yet. We arrived in early December, which meant that many of the country's longer treks (including the insanely popular everest base camp trek) were already not a good idea (particularly for increasingly unfit backpackers only carrying summer clothes).

Trekking enthusiasts (not us) can hike for weeks or even a month in Nepal. We chose to do the shorter Annapurna circuit, which offers lots of beautiful Himalayan viewpoints in a relatively short trek (usually 5 days but we did it in 4).

Starting from Nayapul, a small town near Pokhara (Nepal's 2nd largest city), we climbed steadily uphill. We regularly passed through small villages, each offering basic food and 'tea house' style lodging to tourists. The residents of these villages live pretty simple lives, trying to grow as many vegetables as they can (using buffaloes to plow the fields), and carrying all other supplies up the hill (often with the help of reluctant donkeys).

We were given the choice of two villages to spend our first night, with the two separated by 3000 steps. We decided to power through to the second village (Ulleri), and when we arrived at the top were rewarded with our first snow-capped Himalayan views.

The highlight of the Annapurna circuit trek is seeing the sunrise from Poon Hill, so day two involved a short trek to Ghorepani, a small town just below the peak of that hill. In December, mornings are reliably clear but clouds roll in from the mid-afternoon, so we kept a reasonably swift pace to make sure we arrived at Ghorepani by 1pm. From there, we saw beautiful panoramic views of the Annapurna mountain range, including several mountains over 7000 meters high. For us, the most impressive mountain was Fishtail, which although not one of the tallest offers the most impressive silhouette and has never been successfully climbed.

Over the course of the afternoon and evening, temperatures steadily dropped to below freezing, and we put on all of the layers we had been carrying (including lots of cheap pants, gloves, beanies and socks we had bought in Kathmandu and some down jackets we had rented from Pokhara).

After a cold and not particularly comfortable night we woke up at 5am to make the short, but challenging (particularly without a head light), 45 minute climb to the top of Poon Hill. We arrived just as the sun was starting to rise and stayed for about an hour, enjoying spectacular 360 degree views. The experience was everything we'd hoped for, offering the feeling that the huge snow capped Himalayan mountains (some 4000 meters higher than Poon hill) to our north and west were almost on top of us. Reminding us that we were already 3200 meters above sea level were the views to the south and east, with a thick layer of cloud hovering over the lower valleys and perfectly framing the rising sun.

The hour on the peak was the only part of our four day trek that felt crowded, with almost 100 people joining us at the top. Even so, we're told that was nothing compared to crowds of 500 regularly seen during peak season (only a couple of weeks earlier).

After descending and having a quick breakfast we embarked on the longest and most interesting day of our trek. We hiked up and down along a scenic ridge line, enjoying particularly impressive views at Gurung hill and Tadapani (our lunch stop) before making a steady descent to Ghandruk, where we spent our last night.

Along the way, we ran into a group of small children carrying huge stacks of firewood on their backs, so we stopped to give them some candy to keep them going.

Over the course of the previous three days we had seen some beautiful villages, but Ghandruk was our favorite. Our lodge for the last night was also our favorite, offering a nice hot shower and beautiful Himalayan views in a building worthy of a two star rating in a larger town.

Our last day involved a steady downhill trek, which was easy on the lungs but not so much on the legs. By lunchtime, we were back in Pokhara. More on that, and the Kathmandu valley, in our next post.

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