We've
been on the road much more these last few weeks since Koh Lao Liang
compared with our time in Tonsai. This was always what we intended, a
long stay climbing around Tonsai and getting to know the area for the
first half of our travels, before sightseeing around other areas of
south east Asia in the second. This means less climbing, but our
plans do include a few days around Halong Bay in Vietnam and some
climbing in Laos and northern Thailand.
Bangkok
After
leaving Lao Liang we were off to Bangkok, a short stop of just a
couple of days to see the city, before continuing up to Hanoi to meet
up with Ellie (my sister) and Son (her boyfriend). We enjoyed our
short stop in Bangkok, one day was spent in the city centre visiting
the massive market of IT stalls so that we could get Cat's laptop
screen repaired. Afterwards we found some good streetfood and also
caught a glimpse of the protests that have been taking place in the
city for the last few months at least. Other activities included
getting scammed by a smartly dressed man claiming to work at the
museum who told us that the Buddhist temple we wanted to visit was
closed. A random tuk-tuk then turned the corner (his accomplice) and
he proceeded to barter for us to obtain a unbelievably cheap price
(which we believed) for a tour of everything worth seeing in the
city. What this really entailed was being driven around to various
places to pretend to be interested in tours or in buying suits, so
that our driver could get 'free gasoline!'. When we realised what
massive suckers we are we got dropped off back at our guesthouse,
after only one more 'free gasoline' stop where we pretended to be
interested in tours around Chang Mai. We then had a fun evening
mooching around the tourist quarter and eating scorpions. I remember
reading about that exact scam in the lonely planet that morning
before heading out and thinking, 'pah, I would never be so stupid'.
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| Bangkok |
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| Going mad eating streetfood |
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Hanoi
The
weather in Hanoi was pretty miserable while we there, I'd even say
British, everyday it was chilly and drizzly. We had a few days there
and it was great to catch up with Ellie and Son. Ellie's got a nice
flat in the city and has been teaching English there for about the
last year. Me and Cat didn't really take to Hanoi too much, perhaps
this was partly because of the weather, but it's also smelly, has
terrible traffic, few parks that we saw and being on foot is a
nightmare. However, El and Son did take us for some amazing food
while we were there. After a few days we got the bus across to Halong
Bay and then the boat over the Cat Ba island, the biggest island in
the bay.
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| El and Cat cruising around Hanoi |
Cat Ba
Getting the bus to the main town on Cat Ba the island looked very
beautiful. I gather that it is a popular destination for all types of
tourists as well as being known for it's climbing. There have been a
few climbing movies made about the deep water soloing in Halong Bay,
so it's somewhere that I've known about a long time and was excited
to finally climb there. Our first couple of days we headed over to
the main area of inland climbing on the island, a place called
Butterfly Valley. To do this required scooters, neither of us had
ever ridden scooters/motorbikes so we were both a bit nervous.
Luckily the roads there are fairly quiet and it is not a bad place to
try and work it out, compared with say Hanoi for example. The
scootering went really well and we loved our rides to and from the
crag. The crag itself was pretty good and is in a lovely setting in a
secluded valley. There are maybe about 50 routes, single pitches and
grades ranging from about 6a – 8b. We thought Elephant Man (6c) and
Dreamweaver (7c+) were two good routes that we did there, but there
were many we didn't have time to try.
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| The Butterfly Valley |
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| Exploring the hospital cave |
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On our final day there I was desperate to check out the deep water
soloing and we booked a trip with Asia Outdoors. We were unlucky in
that this day had the worst weather of all, non-stop drizzle and poor
visibility, not ideal for climbing or for being in the sea. Surprised
the day was still going ahead, Asia Outdoors took us out on their
junk-boat that all the kayakers, climbers and dwsers are on before
splitting up. This boat, which you come back to at lunch, is very
spacious and comfortable. We then took a long-tail boat to reach the
climbing. The first crag, which serves as an intro/warm-up area, was
ok. But just after three of us pulled on the long-tail engine broke
and the boat drifted off in the currents! So I and two others were
left hanging on, not having been in the sea yet, in the drizzle,
getting cold in the middle of the bay somewhere. I managed to
traverse the crag far enough to find the boat jump in and catch them
up. After about half an hour another, much smaller boat – more a
few planks with an engine – came to pick us up. We then went and
rescued the others and went back for lunch. Fortunately lunch was on
the comfy boat and was very tasty. Time to head to the next area
arrives, but nothing happens, it turns out that the engine on the big
boat has broken – ah.
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| Cat scooting around |
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| Me happy to have mastered the scooter |
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We head out again on the planks with an engine to get to the next
area, while Cat wisely opts to stay aboard the comfy boat and fall
asleep. The boat ride takes about an hour and by the time we get
there, I and the other dwsers are cold and wet and not much in the
mood for soloing. Luckily Antoine, one of the Swiss climbers, mans-up
and does some soloing. I'm inspired and decide to follow and we both
manage to fall off a few good routes. This second crag is much better
than the first and were the weather warm and sunny, would have been
amazing fun. Throughout the day we was disappointed by the state of
the sea around Cat Ba, the area is beautiful but the water is
disgusting. We spied many things such as bags of rotting tissues,
rubber gloves and cigarette packets. I'm sorry to be down on Halong
Bay, on the whole our day was only marred by bad luck with the
weather and with engines.
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| Cat climbing at Butterfly valley |
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| Dreary but beautiful Halong Bay |
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| Climbing after the broken long-tail |
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| Engine trouble... |
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| Taking flight |
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| Feet together... |
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Siem
Reap
We were both keen to visit Cambodia, but had only allowed for a short
visit. Our main aims were to visit the temples outside Siem
Reap and to go to Phnom Pehn to visit the S-21 detention centre used
in the 70's by Pol Pot. We decided to fly to Saigon and then get a
bus to Phnom Pehn followed by another bus to Siem Reap, as
this looked like the cheapest option. We spent a nice day in Phnom
Pehn, which had a nice feel to it, and briefly visited the museum at
S-21 which was very interesting but also quite depressing.
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| S-21 museum in Phnom Pehn |
Upon arriving in Siem Reap we took a tuk-tuk to the guesthouse where
we planned to stay but found that it was full. Ambling around looking
for an alternative, very tired and dirty after an unpleasant journey
in an overfull minibus we were becoming quite grumpy. We eventually
settled from the Bayon Shadow guesthouse round the corner which
seemed reasonable. It turned out that this guesthouse was attached to
quite a nice hotel, the Bayon Boutique, which had a really nice
restaurant (where we didn't eat) and a cool and refreshing pool. I'd
recommend this place to anyone stopping in Siem Reap looking for a
nice room from around $10-15 (with breakfast).
We had arranged to meet our tuk-tuk driver at 4:30am so that we could
watch the sunrise from Angkor Wat. We started to panic when he didn't
show up, but luckily a nearby guesthouse were happy to help find us
another. There was still plenty of time to watch the sunrise over
Angkor Wat with the other hundreds of people doing the same.
Unfortunately, on this day, it was not the spectacular sunrise that
we'd seen on postcards. Instead, the sky went through several
different shades of grey until finding a light shade that it
maintained all day.
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| Monks at Angkor Wat |
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| Grey sunrise over Angkor Wat |
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The temples are incredible and they cover such a large area, that it
never really felt crowded. It would take a long time to explore all
the different temples and their complexities. We did, however,
experience some temple fatigue after about 5 hours, and although we
had the tuk-tuk booked for the whole day we asked if we could head
back to the hotel at about 11:30! After all the bus journeys of the
last few days and the early start that day we were in desperate need
of some rest, and spent the rest of the day by the pool.
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| Making faces at statues |
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| A very splendid temple, I can't remember the name |
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Checking for any on-line check in for our flight the next day I
noticed that the date was a actually a day later. The mistake was
actually a big relief and we were really glad for the extra day of
comfort and relaxation to be had in Siem Reap. This was spent mainly
by the pool or mooching around the town markets and eating tasty
food. We both thought Siem Reap was one of the nicest towns we had
visited on our travels. Next it's Loas and the Bolaven Plateau.
