By this Author: isabellepurcell

Before we start you all need to be aware of the rules

1. No drinking with your right hand...if you do, down your drink. Buffalo!
2. If you say the words 'mine' or 'ten' do ten push-ups
3. If you say something stupid someone will 'copy' you and can 'paste' you at anytime to repeat what you said

Everyone with me?

And that pretty much sums up that 48hours from the first shotgun to the last shot

Drinking games (there were many) aside, Halong Bay truly is one of the most beautiful places and I'd keep forgetting where I was, look around, and be in awe. After kayaking around (with beer, I mean it was a whole hour we partied and counted down to midnight. After a scarily early start the next day it was onwards to castaway island to laze on the beach and be dragged around on a tube by a speedboat...awesome fun!
Another crazy night later...it was back to the harbour and Hanoi, everyone a bit worse for wear.

Cheers to the group for an awesome New Years...definite highlight and amazing memories!

Sorry sorry I know I've been rubbish at keeping this updated...but it's hard...I legit spent tons of time in Nepal catching up on about 2 months of my own diary (by torchlight...but we'll get to that) let alone blogging :/ and you know what they say...spend the time making the memories to capture, not capturing the memories...or I'm just lazy...yeah more likely that :/
Anyhow I'm in Lombok and it's been absolutely bucketing down so I thought I'd try and properly sit down to write so here goes...back where we left off...Hanoi.

I arrived in Hanoi exhausted but excited to spend Christmas in the capital of the most Christian country of south east Asia and New Years on a boat on Halong Bay?....hell yes!
Hanoi is much smaller and less westernised than Saigon which was lovely, I stayed in the old quarter near Hoan Kiem Lake which although chaotic was very atmospheric. Big shout out to Hanoi Backpackers, these guys run an awesome hostel, incredible tours are are just generally all round fantastic people.

The first couple of days was a blur of exploring the city and hitting the sights.
Honestly I can't remember what was on what days so in no particular order:

Women's museum: Interesting...essentially a museum on Vietnamese culture and traditions of different ethnic groups

Hoa Lo prison: contrasting on areas but a good overview of large parts of Vietnamese history

Temple of Literature: really pretty area but I think I must have lucked out with tour bus hour...it was so.crowded.

Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum: Reaalllyyy spooky...you had to get there super early, go though more security than an airport...line up...walk across a massive complex that was all misty and had a huge building set in the middle. Once you walked past the extremely heavily armed guards you couldn't stop moving as you filed around Ho Chi Minhs body which looked extremely wax like. Weird but cool.

....and simply meandering the lanes of the old quarter

I also managed to drink wayyy too much highlands coffee and eat far too many tuna toasties from Joma and Bun Cha (BBQ pork)

Christmas Eve pub crawl was a crazy night involving trying to buy Santa hats off innocent bystanders, free shots for Aussies, clubbing Vietnamese style and kebabs before we got (very!) lost on the 2min walk home that meant at 20min cab to get us back...oops...Merry Christmas!!

After a late start the next morning and much skyping we had the most massive lunch on the roof and with free flow beer and sangria we were all in bed by 8pm...woo so much class right there.
Scored some cotton buds in the secret santa...so useful!

Came down with a cold over the next couple of days so instead of heading out of the city for a couple of days I stayed in bed...awesome. That was a fun story. I did however manage to drag myself out to Joma (what a surprise :/ ) and skype Immy for a record breaking 3.5 hours while she was in Spain...good grief.

There was a night out somewhere here worth mentioning. The curfew in Hanoi is midnight when everything closes...we all headed across the highway to a club ran by the mafia and kept on going. On the way home one of the guys was asked if he wanted a ride by a moto driver who then tried to pickpocket him...much persuading and fight breaking up later we were followed all the way back by said driver which did not help any of the guys patience or testosterone levels!

I couldn't sleep one night and around 4.30 am I decided to get up and head over to the lake as many people had said it was really interesting pre dawn and I knew I'd never wake up that early!
So so glad I did...despite the freezing cold, everyone and anyone was out exercising and socialising and it was more crowded than during the day!

New Year's Eve came around and it was time to head off to Halong Bay and that is another post in itself I've decided! Sorry this is so rambly, it was a while ago!

Stay smiling xx

This is my current view....

Pai is beautiful and chilled out and not a place conductive to thinking too much..so instead of me actually using my brain and writing here is a collection of things that I've come up with over the last few months that I've called 'You know you're a traveller when'

- When you know your passport number and expiry but not your phone number
-When hot water is worth getting excited about
- When getting blankets on buses is the height of luxury
-When you know the date but not what day of the week it is
-When wifi = antisocial to the max
-When clean clothes makes you happy
- When sharing rooms with people you have known for 5mins is the norm
-When you pull money out of your pocket and you're not quite sure what currency it is
-When you have the same conversation with everyone you meet (1. How long have you been travelling? 2. where have you been? 3.where are you going?)
- And you don't know their name till 3 days later
-When you realise you will never convert people who call soccer, football to call it soccer
- When being around people smoking no longer bothers you at all
-When you start to get picky about visiting temples to avoid getting further 'templed out'....it has to be a pretty amazing temple
-When you realise you know Bangkoks mass transport system better than Melbourne's
-And that you call it a mass transport system
-When you embrace constantly dirty feet because flip flops are too dam comfy
-And you start to instinctively call them flip flops to avoid offending the majority of travellers that aren't Australian

Stay smiling xx

I did some calculations and in the last couple of months I've spent 170 hours and travelled just under 7,000 km (feels a lot further on some of the dodgiest roads in the world) on local and sleeper buses from Bangkok, through Cambodia, Vietnam and Laos back to Bangkok. Not only is it the most cost effective way to travel, but also the most interesting and cliched as it is, you do see more. Nevertheless, long hours on often dodgy buses with a vast array of locals and other travellers has made for some interesting situations.
Back at the start, I remember complaining about a 6 hour train ride followed by a 3 hour air-con minibus trip...little did I know. I did learn one very important piece of life knowledge on this trip. Do not sit next to the toilet. No matter how much you want a window seat.
In Cambodia, the trip from Siem Reap to Phnom Pehn is supposed to take about 6 hours, ended up taking 12, due to the drivers very frequent smoking habit and when it began to pour, apparently the bus couldn't work in the rain so we waited undercover for 2hrs until it stopped.
Vietnam honestly has some of the best buses in the world. Clean, comfy seats that actually go all the way flat and wifi! Nevertheless, the Vietnamese population seem to be chronically motion sick and I've seen and heard things I never ever need to again (why am I studying nursing?).
The journey from Hoi An to Hanoi was an absolute saga. We were picked up 2 hours late from our hostel before getting on the crappiest bus I've ever seen. Thankfully this was only to Hue, about 3 hours away. However in this 3 hours we stopped 3 times for 3 flat tires, there was a gap between the roof and the window so I was soaked from the rain and had some random literally pass out on my shoulder. At Hue, we were so late it was mad rush to get on the sleeper bus, but we couldn't leave because there was some disagreement over seats between three people who didn't speak a common language. No one had any idea what was going on and it went on for about an hour. Eventually someone stormed off the bus in a fit. Finally we could leave. I'll literally sleep anywhere, but its pretty disconcerting to have two Vietnamese guys stare are you literally non stop for the entire 12 hours. There was another girl with me and we both felt really uncomfortable. So that was fun. Couldn't have been happier to get to Hanoi.

Known as the 'bus ride from hell' the 30 hour trip from Hanoi to Luang Prabang was the next undertaking. It absolutely was not THAT bad. Its just a hell of a long time. The seats were set up though so that I couldn't sit up without hitting my head which meant I had to lie down the entire time, and I was so so glad to have people I knew on the same bus. The border crossing was nowhere near as bad as I'd been told it would be, I really don't know what people were on about. Quite a plesant suprise really, although I did sleep an awful lot so that helped.

From there two overnight buses in a row got me to the south of Laos. And a couple more back to Bangkok.

Circling Myanmar by bus was more or less uneventful apart from two main things. Apparently the standard temperature in buses overnight is sub 0, it didn't matter how many blankets you could get your hands on it was fricking freezing. And that all their overnight buses arrive at 2 or 3am which leads to wandering (or taking a horse and cart) around cites in the dark trying to find somewhere to sleep...or you know...sleeping on a park bench..that happened.

All in all though, I'd never choose a different way to travel.

Ha Tien:
- The border town near Cambodia
- Did not see another westerner in the entire time I was there
- Spent a lovely day cycling through local fishing villages
- Got what I thought was an ear infection and brought some ear drops that later turned out to be water
- Ear got worse so got on bus to Saigon (HCMC)

Saigon:
- Arrived super late and went straight to international medical clinic. Not an infection but don't know what it is. Brilliant.
- World food festival on opposite my hostel...so much good food! And singing and dancing

- War Museum - so moving. I didn't find it as propagandist as I had been told to expect, the photos just speak for themselves. And I had to sit down a few times.
- Ben Thanh Market
- Met the lovely Sammie and her family for dinner

- Best Bahn Mi and ca phe sua da for breakfast
- Post office (designed by same guy as the Eiffel Tower), Notre Dame, local mosque and Reunification palace.
- The Reunification Palace was great, but quite surreal as it still seems as though someone is living there
- It was amazing going through the basement, used as a bomb shelter and seeing the actual maps and communication technology used to run and command the war.


- Japanese! for lunch and highlands coffee
- Snails and squid for dinner (still the best meal I've had to date)
- GO2, cocktails and shisha

- Opening a corked bottle of wine with a knife, nail file and scissors

- Crab soup in the Chinese quarter for breakfast (yeah not a fan)
- Korean food for lunch with Sammie and her family
- Back to GO2 for copious amounts of cocktails
- Ear magically better now

- Tour de Jours bakery (worth the walk) and the Jade Emperor pagoda (not so worth the walk)

- Tour of the cu chi tunnels - very touristy and more guns, tanks and weapons than tunnels. Nevertheless, glad I've seen it!
- Drinking games, pho and dancing with half the hostel, crazy!

Mui Ne:
- Quiet beach town with so many wind and kite surfers
- There's no hostel here, so got a good deal on a room at an actually decent hotel (thanks agoda!) with a pool! and it was lovely to have my own space for a bit, however after a night, I realised how much l loved having people around me and meeting other people and was just lonely
- So I skyped everyone at home
- And did a tour of the sand dunes, driving a 4WD dirt bike type thing over them was amazing!! So impressive!
- And of the fairy stream...where you can walk down a little river, through a canyon to the waterfall.
- And then got the bus to Dalat

Dalat:

- Former French Hill station
- So much colder than the rest of the country due to the elevation - a welcome change.
- Absolutely beautiful architecture and cobbled alleyways - so easy to get lost which happened a lot!

- The beds at Enjoy Dalat hostel are described among backpackers as being 'like a morgue' - and they are set into the wall, but I actually really liked the fact that it was like you had you own little room.
- Did an motorbike tour of the countryside tour with Briar from NZ. Bo our guide was fantastic, highlights were trying weasel poop coffee, standing under and getting soaked by the elephant waterfalls, running into Jesse and Amy again, trying 80% alcohol rice wine and surviving the 'Chicken village', which for anyone who knows me was my own personal nightmare.

- Went out with Bo, everyone from the hostel and the gorgeous family who run it for dinner at the most local place. We had what was basically a cook it yourself BBQ to make into rice paper rolls, so much rice wine and beer. Amazing!

- In the absence of anything resembling a bar, we got some beer and sat by the lake sharing stories and playing games...before one of the hostel owners brothers remembered he had an exam at 7.30am and had to be taken home.

- Next day Briar, Zorsia and I visited the crazy house (Gaudi-esqe architecture in the weirdest location) took a cable car across the valley and had corn icy poles by the lake

- After another local family dinner we had the most crazy session of karaoke ever! It's taken really seriously over here and is really sophisticatedly set up with private rooms, sounds systems, a TV, lighting and an iPad to control songs all
linked in. So bad but so good.

Nha Trang:

- To Russians what Bali is to Aussies
- You could pay hundreds of dollars and stay at the highest class hotel and I bet you wouldn't get service even near equal to the lovely staff at Mojzo Inn. They remembered everyones name from the word go, we so concerned, helpful and questioning and made you feel so at home.
- So that was nice
- Unfortunately the weather wasn't exactly beach appropriate so day 1 was spent being a typical tourist at the Cham Towers and White Buddha.

- I also went to the gallery of photographer Long Tan. He's quite well known and had an exhibit in Melbourne a while back, and it was amazing talking to him about Melbourne and how he found it. His B+W portraits of people and Vietnamese life are incredibly moving, and something he said really stuck with me. "When you take a photo in colour you photograph someone's clothes, when you take it in B+W you capture their soul".

- Next day I went on a snorkel trip to surrounding islands. It was cold but so worth it. It was so beautiful and full of life. Oh and everyone else only spoke Russian.

Hoi An:

- Spent a few days here just relaxing, as I'd been to the main sights when I was here with the fam a couple of years ago.
- Ran into Amy and Jesse again and had a afternoon Bia Hoi bar crawl
- Did an evening cooking class and now can cook spring rolls, beef and banana leaf salad and lemongrass marinated fish in banana leaf...ok not actually..but it was fun...and I realised how much I missed having a kitchen.
- Got up for a 5am for a tour to the MySon ruins..so worthwhile as the fog rose out of the valley and the sun rose. it was very atmospheric, albeit small. And we were the only people there, so that was cool.

- The old town of Hoi An is heritage listed and so beautiful and charming, easily killed a couple of hours just wondering around taking it all in.

...and then I got on the bus to Hanoi

...to be continued.