Tuesday, June 16, 2015

Good Morning Vietnam!!

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....

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:)

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