And good
morning BLOG FANS!!
I love the
smell of BLOG in the morning ;) Haha
So, enough
of that shiz blog fans... Lets get down to business...
We got to
Hanoi on a warm summers day... And by warm, I mean ridiculously f***ing HOT!
RIDICULOUS!!! It was like Darwin... in an oven... With a fever... To be honest,
the weather in Hanoi wasn’t the only thing that I wasn’t overly impressed with.
Just the city itself didn’t have TONS to do. We wondered round the markets, but
didn’t really wanna buy much. The price conversion was still too confusing at
that point anyway. You get the price in Vietnamese Dong, which is like a
billion million to every dollar. Then they tell you in USD, but you have to
make sure they aint lying. Then we convert in our head to Aussie Dollar, coz
our bank and money is Australian. Then we end up converting it to Pounds, and
say “It’s pretty cheap in pounds to be fair....” And buy it... Walking around
was also a nightmare for the traffic too. Every time you crossed the road, you
had a 50/50 survival rate. Because the motorbikes were MENTAL! Apparently 40
million motorbikes in Vietnam... We also ate a lot of street food, and drank a
LOT of beer! Its literally cheaper than water there. On average we were paying
maybe 30cent for a beer? Like 18p lol... Crazy... We got up early one morning
to see Ho Chi Minh’s body at the mausoleum. We were warned that it would be
busy, but when we got there, OMG blog fans... It was like Thorpe Park on a
sunny bank holiday. CRAZY! Que literally went on for MILES! So we didn’t even
bother waiting to be honest... IN FACT, we didn’t even make it to the end of
the que. After walking on and on and on and on for about 20mins, we thought
f*** it. Let’s just go and see the museum instead lol...
From Hanoi,
we then got a bus up north to Sapa... Sapa was lovely. It actually reminded me
of Peru a lot. The landscape was very similar, and also the traditional
clothing they wore around there was pretty much the same as the Peruvians
wore... Strange... People usually go to Sapa hike in the hills, and see all the
rice paddies etc, then do a homestay with a family in the countryside. We had a
TINY little tour guide called “Ha”. That was her name... Ha... Haha...
HaHaha!!! LOOOL!!!! :-l
Its not that
funny blog fans, calm dooowwn... Anyway she was about 2foot and 1inch... But
she was really funny, talkative, and cool... She took us to her family home at
one point, spoke about her future plans, and boyfriend etc. Was good. Felt more
like a chat with a mate than a tour guide. The homestay didn’t turn out to be a
REAL homestay. There was a few beds in the building which looked like a horse
stable, and a good handful of backpackers staying there with us. To be honest,
I was quite relieved. Wasn’t in the mood to make awkward small talk with a
family over dinner, after invading their home for the night. We did that before
in Peru, ironically... I also treated myself to a massage in Sapa. Dont usually
like getting massages. Maybe coz the only other time Ive had one, I got my
groin rubbed up by a hairy sweaty Turkish man, in a Turkish bath... But that
was 2009, and my back was really killing me from backpacks, crammed buses, and
working in Australia... This one was down by a woman, which is already an
improvement. It started off nice enough. Then she stood on my back, and cracked
it. Getting me in Bret Heart submission moves, and pinching me and shiz... lol
Think it did the job though...
We got a
luxurious bus from Sapa back to Hanoi. Had aircon, free bottles of water, wifi,
nice seats... Big pimping man... When we arrived the lady at our hostel had
dinner on the table waiting for us :-) The next morning we got on a not so
luxurious bus to Halong bay. It was ok, but it was one of those crammed mini
buses, and i was sitting between 2 seats. So a belt buckle was penetrating my
anus for 4hrs. Fantastic...
Halong Bay
was awesome though. We got on the boat, and got lunch straight away. The boat
was floating past some of the best scenery ever, and we were all around a
dinner table, indoors, stuffing our fat faces... Big pimping lol... After the
feast, we got a key to check in to our room. I was like “whaaaat!?” :-0 I was
expecting the sleeping conditions to be similar to what we had on the
Whitsundays in Australia. 12 bunkbeds, in a little box... But when we saw it,
it was like a 4star hotel or something. Really nice bed, en suit bathroom, hot
water, views of the Bay out of our window... I was shocked... BIG PIMPING! We
kayaked, swam, did a walk to two... Not too much else I can say about Halong
Bay really. Just check my photos lol. We got back to Hanoi for the THIRD time
to our hostel. We had a bus leaving that night, so we didn’t have a room. But
we were able to shower which was nice. The lady working there told us the bus
was coming at 7:30pm, and she would cook us a soup. So we got our bags
together, half packed, put phones on charge for music, Cat got the laptop out
to book our next room... THEN just before the soup was served, one HOUR before
schedule, the bus guy came in shouting “BUS! LETS GO LETS GO LETS GO!!” We were
like WTF!!? Is this military training or something?? Grabbed our bags (not
knowing if we had anything in them), sweating our balls off (we both have
balls), and hungry as FUDGE! We got on the sleeper bus, and we were like “Was
this bus built for Ha or something?” The smallest beds, and no leg room, or
space to put your bags... On top of that, as it was so bloody hot, I drank
about 6000 litres of water just before... I got off my midget bed to walk to
the toilet... “Where’s the toilet?” NO BLOODY TOILET! “How long is this bus
journey Cat??”... “14hrs”... FML!! LUCKILY the bus did stop after the first
3hrs. My bladder was seconds away from exploding...
We arrived
in Hue not knowing too much about the city. But the first thing I noticed
was... It was BLOODY HOOOTTT!!! :-( It was like 40+ degrees every day, and
super duper humid. I seem to cope with it a lot worse than Cat. I get weak, out
of breath... Drink about 4 big bottles of water... Cat just has a small can of
Coke Zero, and shes good to go :-/ We did a tour of the Hue temples by boat
which was cool. Met a few people there, then went to a Vietnamese restaurant with
them. It was PACKED full of locals. We got funny looks being there. We didn’t
even know what we ordered. Some sort of hot pot thing, and a little 13yr old
girl sitting next to us showed us how to cook it. Had a few drinks after that.
The mixture of the heat, and only having soup for dinner meant we got drunk
pretty easy :-) The guy we were with educated me on some Vietnamese street food
for our drunken munch. “Banh Mi”. OMG its amaaazing blog fans! Its like the Vietnamese version of
a drunken kebab. Its essentially just a pork sandwich, with salad, and a really
nice hot sauce... and fresh baguette... Fresh as a daisy! Double yum blog
fans... Last two days I got a bike and drove us to the beaches which was really
nice, then the day after we did the “DMZ tour”. Which is the De-Militarized
Zone. Basically saw and learnt a lot about the war between the north, and the
south, and the involvement of the Americans etc. We got to walk through the
tunnels they built underground too. So that was interesting... Also sweated my
arse off there... Literally... I had a shower later that day, and my arse must
of been half exposed from the towel as I was lying on the bed... Cat was
checking it out like a pervert, and noticed I had prickly heat rash. ON MY
ARSE! So thats an example how hot it was blog fans... Luckily we heard it was
gonna be a bit cooler down south, and thats where we were heading next! We got
a “Easyrider” tour from Hue to Hoi An. Easyrider is basically motorbike guys
who strap down your backpacks and stuff, and take you to your next destination
via a beautiful scenic route. And it WAS beautiful. Took the whole day passing
little villages, grassy hills, beaches, etc. As we got to Hoi An, I noticed Cat
was asleep on the back of her bike lol. She managed to stay on, but Cat falling
asleep on the back of a motorbike in Vietnam, would be a classic Cat way to
die... Hoi An seemed to be a lot of peoples favourite place in Vietnam, and I
could see why. The old town was really nice and pretty. Looked a little bit
European. They had a lot of good restaurants and bars, and A LOT of shops. Its
a really famous place to get tailoring done. LOADS of shops around doing tailor
made clothes, suits, shoes, bags, coats... anything... Cat and I both have
siblings getting married this year, so we felt we kinda needed to get a suit,
and just buy what we really needed. I also needed a pair of cheap shorts for
travelling. Went in the SuperDry shop asking for the black shorts in a size 34
waist... They only had 30 max... Too fat for Vietnam. Shameful. Had to get
shorts tailor made in the end lol. Fat bastard... But we got PROPER carried
away blog fans! This is what the total splurge ended up looking like:
CAT:
1 tailor
made suit
1 handbag
1 leather
jacket
1 bikini
1 pair of
Aladdin pants
4 pairs of
shoes
ROB:
2 suits (one
with waistcoat, both with shirts)
1 extra suit
jacket
1 pair of
black shorts
1 pair of
Aladdin pants
1 tshirt
3 shoes
Crazy... And
we’re the type of backpackers that say shit like “Lets walk an extra 20mins, to
the next restaurant, where its 10p cheaper”. Then we go mad like that. Sent 16
kilos home by boat! Shameful behaviour blog fans! Dont even ask what we spent...
I said to Cat “Hoi An is like a female. Looks good, and can be fun... But it
rinses your MONEY! Biatch!” :-o
So we got
our arses out of Hoi An, and down to Nha Trang... Aka Russia land... We got
there really early from the night bus, and chilled on the beach before we could
check in to our hostel. The beach was FULL of Russians. You could point them
out from their weird, 1970s, Bonnie Tyler, Mullet Man, Jake the Snake Roberts
shit going on lol... I swear they vary from the ugliest, to the most beautiful
race of people too... So weird... Some girls look like Anna Kornikova, and some
look like Matt Lucas... We checked in to our hostel, which was apparently “the
best hostel in 2015 in ALL ASIA”... MASSIVE HYPE!! It was good, and the staff
were really really nice... But didn’t have shit on some of the hostels we had
in Japan. Japan is always number 1 lol.... We wanted to get day time drunk. So
we went to a restaurant that had its own brewery. Nice place, with loads of
beers and cocktails to try. We saw they had half price cocktails to 4pm, and it
was about 3:45... So we got sat down and the lady said “the waiter will be
right over”. (You can see where this is going blog fans) We chose our cocktails
and waited for him to come... It got to about 3:55, and I was like “Shall i go
to the bar? Where do i order from?” I decided to wait saying “Im sure he’ll let
us off if its 4:01”... He comes over at 4:01 blog fans... Just after he wiped
the table next to us...
“Can we
still get the half price cocktails yeah?”
“That
finishes at 4pm”
“Yeah....
What time is it”
“4:03”
“So you can
let us off yeah”
He goes and
grabs a leaflet and points to the text “Look, 4pm finish”
I wanted to
f***ing punch him blog fans... I closed my menu and threw it against the chair
in front of me. I reluctantly ordered the beer tasting, where we could try 4
mini beers they brewed for pretty cheap. Wasnt happy though. After that, me and
Cat went to get a shisha and cheap cocktails and got smashed... Got one of
those Banh Mi baguettes on the way home ;-) Big pimping...
On the last
day we hired a motorbike and drove to some really nice beachy area. Looked like
a beautiful part of Greece or something. Was really nice, but I started to get
chronic diahhrea at this time. Was literally shitting liquid gold all day...
Not good considering we were getting a night bus to Saigon that night :-/
Arrived in
Saigon aka Ho Chi Minh City, with clean underwear... Thank the lord... Cats
tablets must of worked... On the first day we went to the War Remnants Museum.
Was pretty bloody morbid to be honest. But what do you expect. Saw lots of
photos of war victims, and all the figures and numbers of the people killed
etc. They also had a section where they had photos of kids born with defects,
and mutation from the “agent orange” chemical Americans dropped. Pretty
f***ed... Cat went out with some guys we met that night. I couldn’t manage it.
Still felt shit (literally). So i went home with no food or alcohol... The next
day we went to see a “water puppet show”. They say “If you haven’t seen a water
puppet show, you haven’t seen proper Vietnam”.... It was shit... SOOO shit
lol... Shit steak with spicy shit sauce... Shittier than my toilet bowl (and
thats saying something)... Super duper shit stains... But, whatever... It was
something to do lol... That night I managed to stay out. We were with a girl
from Singapore, celebrating her 22nd birthday. We didn’t do much...
Just a few drinks blog fans...
It was then
time to LEAVE VIETNAM! We decided to do it in style... We got a boat down the
Mekong River, straight to Phnom Penh (Cambodia) and crossed the border that
way... We did a few stop offs, made a couple of friends, and stayed in a hotel
over night. The next morning our tour man arranged a tuk-tuk driver to take us
back to the boat. Literally was about.... 10yards away, then he goes “tip”.
Wanker... But we got to the border OK... I didn’t have a passport photo for my
visa, so I had to go to some random house to pay for my photo to be taken. Was
a bit weird. The kid there was laughing and my hairy kneecaps, touching them as
the photo was being taken... I lifted my shorts to show him my thigh tattoos...
That shit blew his mind blog fans hahaha....
:(
:)
So... We’re
here in CAMBODIA!! Loving it here already.. Got smashed last night and
chundered EVERYWAAHHHH!!! Hahaah!! But thats for NEXT episode blog fans ;-)
Keep your
shorts tight for that!!
Thanks for
reading again blog fans... What will I do when I go home, and have no “robcat
travel”?
Suggestions
please... For your sakes as well as mine haha...
Speak to you
soon!! Cambodia is gonna be epic booooiiiiii
Keep them tiiiiiiiight!!!
Zooooooooooooooooooooooooooooop!
x
