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Tuesday 6th – Friday 9th December: Han Oi
Arrived in Hanoi on Tuesday evening – ‘visa on arrival’ process at the airport fairly straightforward – we had the letter from the embassy saying we were entitled to a multi-entry visa but to be honest we got the impression that even without it, if you had the dollars they would have the stamp. Another full-page visa sticker…starting to run out of pages! In the queue we met a guy who was working in Hanoi who advised us that the taxi service into town was a fixed price service so to ignore all the touts, which we did, but our driver still tried to rip us off by asking for another 100,000 VND (about £3.30 or about 1/3 again of the cost of the ride) for the road toll – we got around this by taking a photo of his taxi license when he wasn’t paying attention…that got him to back down 🙂 Still, after laid back and super honest Luang Prabang it was a bit of a culture shock.
The Old Quarter – where our hostel was located – is a maze of mayhem – winding streets that change name every 30m or so because they are named after what they sell, plus thousands of mopeds, the odd car and bicycle all competing for space on the pavement and road with pedestrians…it seems to work though (as in we only saw 2 accidents in 4 days!) – the trick to crossing the road being to launch yourself into the traffic and everyone does their best to avoid you.
The buildings in the Old Quarter range from shacks to gracious old colonial buildings (even if the colour-scheme is distinctly Vietnamese:)
The utilities were also somewhat Heath Robinson:
While most of the Old Quarter was fairly authentically about local people going about their business, the edge near the Hoan Kiem lake was where you could find all sorts of tourist tat for sale, including this rather splendid ensemble:
However the Hoan Kiem Lake itself was very much a locals’ haunt, with Vietmanese people jogging, power-walking and simply strolling arm-in-arm around it at all times of day and evening. At one end is an island with the Temple of the Jade Mountain on it:
The rather lovely pagoda of the temple:
The Old Quarter in the evening was just as hectic; Hanoi seems to be one of those cities where even the locals dine out every evening, so there is a glut of super-cheap pavement eating stalls serving various noodle dishes, where you sit on a tiny child’s plastic stool and slurp your noodles with the locals:
or like us you can stumble upon the only tapas restaurant in the city, run by a guy from Valencia and his Vietnamese wife, and eat huevos rotos, bravas and tortilla de patatas.
Later we found this excellently named restaurant where we had a few beers and watched the chaos unfold on the street below – my favourite moment being when two small children decided it would be a good idea to have a game of badminton on what passed for the pavement.
In a bid to be a bit more authentic, the next day we had lunch at Cafe Smile, a branch of the Hoa Sua foundation, an organisation that trains ‘disadvantaged’ young people for careers in the hospitality industry – a bit like Jamie Oliver’s ‘Fifteen’ (except ‘disadvantaged’ kids in Vietnam don’t get universal free-at-point-of-access education, healthcare, unemployment benefit, legal representation etc).
Overall they did a good job – the layout of the place was good and the service was courteous and efficient if a little nervous. The food was tasty and well presented:
and the pastries (Hoa Sua started out as a bakery/patisserie) were superb.
If anything it could have been a bit cleaner but obviously after they receive my feedback I’m sure they will sort that out 🙂
After completing our Xmas shopping next door at Craftlink Vietnam – a fair trade organisation that helps traditional handicrafts producers market and sell their wares – we crossed the road to the Temple of Literature, a Confucian temple which we had been recommended as one of the ‘places to see’ in Hanoi. It was interesting, but mostly interesting in a rather sad and cynical way as we reflected on the similarities between humanist philosphers like Confucius, Buddha and Jesus whose teachings on living and ruling ethically and with humanity have been twisted into weird rituals that require priests and incense in order to interpret them. The astonishingly tacky gift shop in the midst of this temple to learning was the cherry on the cake.
Still, it was interesting to learn about the history of the place. We particularly liked the stelae on turtle’s backs that recorded the names of all those who had achieved their doctorates between 1442 and 1779.
The lake of literature was a bit murky. Not sure what this is symbolic of.
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Randall musing that a stone stele on a turtle definitely wins over getting a copy of your thesis in the British Library when it comes to being given kudos for getting your doctorate:
No idea what the book thing says.
We think this is the great hot stove that you have to be able to lift in order to pass out of the Shaolin monastery. Or maybe I’m getting confused with Kung Fu:
This rather splendid item is apparently a sign requiring you to dismount from your horse before you enter the temple. You’ll be pleased to know that we remembered to do this.
The other side of the Hoan Kiem lake from the Old Quarter seemed like a completely different city; all wide boulevards and gracious buildings, not to mention high-end luxury brands. This is the Opera House:
And a mittel-europa-style Grand Cafe just opposite the opera house:
In the small park next to the Opera House we saw what we thought was a wedding photo-shoot, so were surprised at how harsh and physical the stylist was being with the bride and groom until we saw another, and another, until we realised it was actually a fashion shoot for meringue-style frocks. Very strange.
That evening we ate at another ‘foundation’ restaurant: KOTO or ‘Know one, teach one’. This is a VERY professional operation that has catered to world leaders visiting Vietnam – highly recommended if you are in Hanoi and we fully intend to check out their restaurant in Saigon. I had big ravioli stuffed with Ha Long Bay crab and Randall had Stir Fried Duck with chilli, roasted peanuts and basil served with steamed rice – both were superb and the puddings (dark chocolate mousse and passionfruit marshmallow respectively) were also excellent.
As I had singularly failed to get a massage so far, even in Thailand, land of the massage, I booked myself in to Just Massage, another foundation providing skills to disadvantaged youth, and got a fantastic 60 minute Swedish massage for 175,000 VND, or about £5.30. The place is in a lovely old colonial house; all dark wood and high ceilings. It’s a bit out of the centre in Tay Ho which is a residential area on the West Lake, so while I got massaged Randall went and explored:
After my massage we caught a taxi back to our hostel to collect our luggage then on to the station as we were booked on the 19.00 overnight train to Da Nang. We’d booked the 4-berth soft sleeper (see The Man in Seat 61 for information about trains) so we knew we would be sharing – always some trepidation about sharing an enclosed space with strangers of course, but our cabin-mates turned out to be Christine and Marco, a German couple from Leipzig, so the evening passed quickly in a haze of beer, chatter and amusing toilet experiences:
Friday 2nd – Tuesday 6th December: Luang Prabang
Lovely, laid-back Luang Prabang was a delight. We stayed in the Villa Merry Number 1 which we had booked on-line;
when we arrived the charming but very business-like owner managed to upsell us to a superior room for an extra $10 a night…definitely worth it:
Our huge room with attached dressing room 🙂
It was very comfortable, and every morning we had free breakfast (eggs, bread, coffee and fresh fruit) on the hotel terrace overlooking the Nam Khan river, a tributary of the Mekong.
The city is small but bustling, although very chilled out, no hassle from tuk-tuk drivers etc, and very honest people who always give you the right change (even when you mistake a 100,000 VND note for a 10,000).
The lovely old streets of Luang Prabang – bicycles, low-rise buildings, bougainvilla and the odd brightly-coloured tuk-tuk.
Oh, and flags – lots of flags:
We noticed lots of excellent and sophisticated restaurants, and there is quite a vibrant cafe and bar scene over a couple of streets in the old city, but they manage to avoid the ‘Australians in Bali’ syndrome by having a curfew – all bars in the old city (which is a UNESCO world heritage site) to be shut by 11.30. I realise I am showing my age when I say that I think that this is a very good thing.
This is the marvellously ricketty bamboo bridge over the Nam Khan river (just round the corner the Nam Khan meets the Mekong). In rainy season you cross on a bamboo raft:
Another ‘to do’ in Luang Prabang is the tribal crafts night market, where mostly Hmong tribal crafts are sold.
As well as wandering along the side of the Nam Khan and Mekong rivers stopping for Lao Coffee (yum) in one of the great restaurants with riverside terraces:
We paid a visit to the Royal Palace – a museum now as the monarchy was kicked out in 1975.
Although unfortunately you can’t take photos inside the actual palace, I rather liked it – it was a liveable size and I think I could have been quite comfortable there. One of the displays was of gifts given to the royal family over the years by various nations; my favourite was a paperweight containing actual specks of moon rock, a gift from Mr Richard Nixon.
In the evening after drinks at the Coconut Garden we skipped dinner and instead grabbed a sandwich:
and sat in the square watching an outdoor cinema screening of Lumpinee – a quite shocking and moving Thai film about kids in Thai boxing part of the Luang Prabang Film Festival.
This is the road bridge – also ricketty – near our hotel. The wooden planks are the ‘pavement’. You can just about see our hotel tucked away on the river bank, but close enough to hear the traffic rattling across the bridge at all hours.
And this is the fantastic street-food stall near our hotel, serving the usual rice and noodle dishes as well as fruit smoothies and crepes. Yum. We probably ate here 7 or 8 times…
Although we did go for a slightly more sophisticated dining experience at Cafe Ban Wat Sene:
On our last morning we did a bit of volunteering; we’d donated some money to ‘Big Brother Mouse‘ the day before, and had been told about the English reading and conversation classes that they run from 9 to 11 every morning. They really like it when ‘farang’ come and help out as it encourages more people to attend, so we said we would go along. It was an interesting experience as it was totally unstructured, we were just given a seat at a crowded table and expected to get on with it. The attendees were mainly teenagers and young adults including several novice monks, and they had varying degrees of proficiency, so we just did what we could.
Luckily I had come prepared with props – a Welsh flag (which I’d had for the Rugby in NZ) and a Spanish flag (left over from the footy World Cup last year when we were in Serbia) plus assorted family snaps, so managed to get through the 2 hours of conversation practice without too much trouble and learned a bit about Laos, buddhism and the day in the life of a novice monk in the process.
Interesting fact about Laos: For their partial support of North Vietnam during the Vietnam War, Laos is the most heavily-bombed country per capita, in the world, hit by an average of one B-52bombload every eight minutes, 24 hours a day, between 1964 and 1973.
US bombers dropped more ordnance on Laos in this period than was dropped during the whole of the Second World War.
There is still a massive unexploded ordnance problem in the country due to the use of cluster bombs. The Plain of Jars is currently on the list to become a UNESCO World Heritage Site but won’t be assigned this status until the UXO is cleared.
Thursday 1sts – Friday 2nd December: Slowly down the Mekong
There are two options for travelling by river from Houay Xai to Luang Prabang: the fast boat and the slow boat.
The fast boat zips down to Luang Prabang in 7 hours including an hour’s lunch break at Pak Beng – however by all accounts it’s a fairly unpleasant, not to mention potentially fatal, experience; the operators pack you in, and non-asian (or non-constantly yoga-ed) knee and other joints don’t fare so well under such conditions. Also hitting a rock or standing wave at 50mph and the boat disintegrating is a genuine risk – lonely planet reckon there are fatalities every year and frankly looking at the way they drive it’s not surprising.
The slow boat is a different prospect – long boats with more space that take 2 days to do the trip, with a stopover at Pak Beng village overnight.
What a slow boat looks like – they all crowd up to the jetty to punt for passengers.
They are usually family businesses – the family lives aboard.
We saw a woman cooking on an open fire on the back of this slow boat. Erk!
We opted for neither of these, instead ‘going private’ with the semi-luxury, fully catered, forest-lodge-overnight trip. Well after all that trekking and zipping we deserved it!
After an evening of recovery on Wednesday night, we had an 8am pick up from our hotel by the Luang Say Songthaew.
The porters boarded our bags and we boarded ourselves – as everyone else was faffing around with chairs an tables deciding on the best spot, Randall and I investigated and found a cushioned area at the back which we bagsied as our private cabin – we were later joined by a Swiss couple who were very jolly and amenable to sharing a couple of bottles of wine with us; we definitely had the VIP area!
Our boat. Note the uniformed minions and the bar.
Randall in our VIP area
Me in our VIP Cabin
As well as the tourist boats the port jetty was packed with cargo ships, mainly transporting trucks to and from Thailand across the river – it was pretty chaotic:
This slow boat is about to have a prang with a truck ferry.
Trucks boarding the truck ferry
Truck ferry across the Mekong
Assorted traffic to be avoided.
Riverside scenery
More scenery
More scenery
Day 1 was broken up by a trip to a village to see how local people live:
Arriving at the village
Beastie-proof village food store
Village piggies
Village ducks
Then after another couple of hours on the river we arrived a beautiful Luang Say Lodge at Pak Beng:
Gateway to the lodge
Welcome drink on the terrace
Terrace of the lodge
Our bungalow overlooking the river
Our bungalow
The gorgeous view from our bungalow across the river
Civilised dinner at the lodge.
After a lovely evening and night we had an early breakfast and were back on the boat by 8am.
First stop for day 2 was a village that depends on the river for everything as there is no road nearby. The boat company has a deal with the village in that they maintain the village school and contribute in other ways in return for being able to troop groups of tourists through. The villagers also obviously get the chance to flog stuff – the speciality of this village being silk weaving:
Typical Laotian village house on stilts
Village children
Randall tries the local rice ‘whisky’. Brave man.
Silk weaving in progress
Very good salesperson.
Confused small child
Village temple
Then it was back on the boat for lunch and another couple of hours motoring, before arriving at the Pak Ou caves
Entrance to Pak Ou caves
A few of the 4000+ Buddha images
We got back on the boat just in time for beautiful sunshine to accompany the last hours of our trip to Luang Prabang:
Monday 28th – Wednesday 30th November: The Gibbon Experience
After a 5 hour bus trip from Chiang Mai to Chiang Kong on the banks of the Mekong, we exited Thailand,
Thai customs house from the river
crossed the mighty Mekong on a long-tail boat,
Luggage piled on the boat
and entered Houay Xai, Laos;
The dock, with road leading to main street via customs house
30-day visa on arrival @ $36. Houay Xai (Sai/Say/ assorted other spellings) is a bit of a one-horse border town but the base for The Gibbon Experience and the starting point for the Fast and Slow boats down the Mekong to Luang Prabang.
This is the view from our hostel window – that’s Thailand on the other side of the river!
We dropped into the offices of The Gibbon Experience to confirm our start time in the morning then pre-ordered our sandwiches (we’d been warned the food on TGE was not up to much, which turned out not to be the case) from The Mad Sandwich People – a couple of Lao in a small shop with comedy signs pre-written on big, hand-shaped bits of card that they waved frantically at all new arrivals off the boat: “We have sandwiches”, “We have everything for Slow Boat”, “We have everything for Gibbon Experience” etc. Very enterprising and entertaining.
Sandwiches ordered, we had an unsuccessful dinner attempt at The River City Restaurant (avoid)
and a better one at The River View, a ramshackle, cat-and-kitten-infested family business with a swish-looking new hostel/hotel being built out the back between the street and their river-facing terrace and a nice line in thin-crust pizza, pasta and burgers as well as the usual staples. This will definitely be the place to stay as well as eat when the building work is finished.
River View
Up early the next morning to drop our bags at the hostel luggage room (actually the owners’ house), collect our sandwiches and gloves – we’d been warned that we needed gloves, and the same gardening gloves seemed to be on sale in every shop in town – grab some breakfast and turn up at The Gibbon Experience by 8.30 for a safety briefing. The safety briefing lasted all of about 20 minutes, most of which was a promotional video, then 8 of us bundled into the back of a double-cabin HiLux which had been converted to a SongThaew by having a rather Heath Robinson contraption welded to it that also served as a roof-rack and very possibly a roll-cage.
After a couple of hours of fairly hairy road-driving we had a tea-and-wee break in a small cafe/shop next to a river:
after which to all of our surprise we then drove down to the river, crossed it (which was a surprise to the big fat ducks) and drove for another hour on 4-wheel drive territory to get to the village at the entrance to the Bokeo nature reserve.
From here we started our hike into the forest:
Randall inspects the buttress roots of a tree.
Loo with a View – on the way to the waterfall.
After a reasonably challenging 2 hour hike we arrived at the waterfall/swimming hole and all changed into swimming stuff; Randall found a leech stuck to him – ick. It had obviously gone down the gaiters, up the tracksuit bottoms and down the sock – tenacious little bugger. He wasn’t the only person to have one and of course we all got paranoid about them after that. Didn’t stop us from all jumping off a rock into the cold water though:
Swimming at the waterfall: ‘pedicure fish’ nibbling you, cold water hydrotherapy under the waterfall, and mini-zip rope swing. VERY cold water!
Rope zip/swing – long bamboo pole and plenty of upper body strength needed to retrieve it from the middle of the pool each time!
Then, after a steep climb up from the waterfall it was time for our first zipline experience:
Wheeeeeeeee!
Delicate arrival (clonk/ouch!)
We soon discovered what the gloves were for: if you didn’t make it all the way to the end of the zip you had to pull yourself in to the end by quickly grabbing the cable in front of you once you had come to a stop (but before you started to roll backwards), turning to face backwards, and pulling ‘hand-over-hand’ into the end platform. One of our party didn’t grab the cable in time and rolled halfway back down the cable before she stopped! We were all willing her in as she ‘hand-over-hand’-ed but our lovely guide Lu helped her out by zipping out to her and pulling her back. Phew!
Randall zipping!
After 3 zips with short walks in between we arrived at the final short zip into the tree house. That’s right…the tree house was 50 metres up a tree, and the only way in and out was by zipping:
The way out!
Exit #2.
Home sweet tree.
It really *is* in a tree…
Sink and shower in the ‘downstairs’ (trapdoor in the main platform floor) bathroom. Plumbed and with water piped from a spring.
View from the shower in the morning…mist from the valley floor.
The lovely (but cold) shower.
3 impossible things before breakfast.
As well as zipping out of the tree we had to zip three wires to get to the kitchen area back at the waterfall where they served us breakfast. Luckily we were fortified with fruit and coffee in the treehouse first, as the guides came zipping across bearing hot kettles (no cooking/fires allowed in the tree house for obvious reasons)!
Breakfast is served.
The long and winding (and steep) road from the kitchen.
Bamboo thicket
Amazing tree roots
Another stream to tramp through…thank goodness for gaiters! Leeches be damned.
Loo stop at the kitchen near the way in to the next tree house.
Water supply to the kitchen for this tree house, pumped from a mountain spring.
Next tree house…quite high up (50m or so again) from the valley floor!
REALLY high up!!
Zipping into the treehouse.
The ‘kitchen’ of our second treehouse.
Second wire *in* to the tree house, so you could do the ‘long loop’ out and back in again that took in two long zips.
Anna gracefully landing on the..errrrr…landing.
View from my bed!
Randall on the scariest launch platform of the 3 days…out of the second tree house. You have to climb down to this wooden step suspended 50 metres above the ground and then just leap into space! (Attached to the wire first of course, but still…).
Randall zipping back in to the bottom platform on the tree house.
Bathroom in second treehouse – quite a gap between the floorboards!
Shower in second treehouse
Reverse angle
The loo – rather close to the edge…
…with a view 50 metres straight down!
Morning mist
Helen coming in for landing!
Treehouse for lightweights – not high up and with a tin roof – pah! (for the ‘classic’ tour not the ‘waterfall’ tour that we did).
Way out to the village – a terrifying ‘double zip’, the first stretch of which was 600m long, up to 200 metres off the valley floor…
…and ended up at a rickety tree platform over 100m off the ground, with the second zip launching off the same platform down a wooden ladder from the landing platform. On landing I hugged the tree and refused to let go until someone came up and unclipped my safety line off the zipline and on to the tree platform safety line! Eeeek Was very glad to zip my way off that one!
Finally it was time to hang up our harnesses and hike our way out of the forest reserve via the village’s fields where people were harvesting and threshing:
to the village where one enterprising family had set up a shop selling cold Beerlao and soft drinks to hot, sweaty, stinky and exhausted by happy Gibbon Experience veterans:
Purveyor of well-deserved cold ones to sweaty foreigners, with associated small child.
Yay! We did it!
Thursday 24th – Sunday 27th November: Chiang Mai
After our adventures with elephants the rest of our time in Chiang Mai was mainly a chill out and chance to catch up on postcards, reading and laundry. Our hotel had a relaxed courtyard:
Breakfast in the courtyard of our hostel in the old city.
but for food we preferred the tiny cafe run by the enterprising Eing just down the road:
Chiang Mai by night was very lively:
The canal that surrounds the old city, lit up by night.
Enterprising ‘mobile bar’ set up on the back of a Songthaew, not licensed, but moves around the city.
The huge night market – housed in a warehouse-type building as well as running along the street -mostly sells generic tourist tat, although if you look hard there are a few interesting stalls, such as one selling hand-made clothes from natural dyes and fabrics, or the paper stall selling hand-made paper made by Burmese refugees to raise money for their community. The best thing we saw was this live blues band who apparently play most nights – the Thai guy has a blues club in the night market building:
However the depressing number of ‘English bars’ and ‘Pool bars’ that were basically hostess bars didn’t say much that was complimentary about the ex-pat community; there are obviously ‘issues’:
On balance I would love to spend more time in Chiang Mai province, but I’d skip the town and stay in a boutique hotel such as Limeleaf Eco-lodge outside.
The journey to Chiang Kong on the Thai-Laos border on Sunday took only 5 hours including a stop-off at the bizarre White Temple in Chiang Rai:
Thursday 24th November – Patara Elephant Farm
The train journey from Bangkok to Chiang Mai was long but picturesque – 15 hours instead of 12 because of flood-related diversions. On the way we saw some of the devastation caused by the flooding. The railway tracks were now obviously above water, but next to them and all around were homes and small businesses, and of course agricultural land, completely swamped. On the houses we could where the high water mark had reached – at least a metre higher.
We arrived in Chiang Mai around 23.30, hopped in a Songthaew (shared taxi/minibus thing) and checked into the Awana Guest House.
Early start meant grabbing a packed breakfast from a restaurant down the street and getting picked up at 7.30 by a minibus from Patara Elephant Farm to be an ‘Elephant Owner for a Day’. Their philosophy is based around rescuing and recovering, then breeding healthy Elephants to build the population, as the Asian Elephant population has been declining significantly in Thailand.
First we got to meet some of the elephants:
Did somebody say bananas?
Just a few months old. One of 6 babies they have on the farm at the moment.
Overfamiliar baby elephant!
Then we got to put on stylish mahout smocks:
Randall not sure about this as a fashion statement…
We all had to get to know our elephant, learn how to check their health, and then do the ‘Elephant Skincare’ (cleaning and bathing the elephant) before we got to go on the trek to the waterfall for lunch:
Helen gets to know Mah-kah-su. The mahout smock is supposed to help.
OK, she likes me. Even in this outfit.
Dusting an elephant is harder than it looks…
Randall takes the lead.
Randall’s big pregnant elephant.
Poo checking. Part of the overall health check. At least that’s what they told us.
Scrubbers
You can do it, put your back into it…
Yes, ALL of the elephant needs washing…
Mum and baby elephant. Baby elephant…toooo cute for words!! (They have several, a testament to their breeding programme)
Very funny. All wet. (Elephant humour)
My elephant wouldn’t do either the foot thing or the trunk thing so my ascent was rather less elegant than it might have been. Remember that scene from ‘Temple of Doom’??
That’s better.
Phew!
It’s a long way down from here!
Riding an elephant is harder work than it looks, particularly on the steep up and down track we took, so lunch break at the waterfall was very welcome!
As was a chance to swim with the elephants:
First, mount your elephant. Elegant, no?
See – he couldn’t stay on either!
Mahout on poo-fishing duty.
Beautiful waterfall. And Randall.
Baby elephant got the job of hoovering up the leftovers.
Randall finds a soulmate.
Mum gets a share of leftovers too.
Posers.
Posers #2
Even elephants need a kiss from time to time.
Finally it was time to say goodbye to our elephants and hand them back to the experts, the guides who had looked after us all day:
The Experts.
And give them a final feed. Easier said than done – it’s difficult to get elephants to share:
This was a really wonderful day – we can’t recommend it enough – a must do if you are in the area. Book in advance via their website – they limit numbers to ensure one elephant per person and plenty of attention. Thanks Pat and Dao, Jack, Ben and all the team at Patara!
Tuesday 22nd November: Grand Palace & Wat Pho, Bangkok
These two get a post all of their own.
There is a dress code, but the management have a very organised system where inappropriately dressed tourists get a loan of ‘suitable items.’ Apparently Randall’s ankles and elbows weren’t going to offend anyone, but the shawl I usually wear over head and shoulders didn’t cut the mustard. I’d been wondering why I’d seen so many frumpily-dressed people wandering around:
Lovely loan shirt from the palace wardrobe.
A ‘properly dresses’ apparently.
All worthwhile though: Grand Palace of Bangkok:
Anti-capitalism warning…they might rise up against you, apparently.
Tales from the Ramayana, Thai Buddhist style. Renovation in progress.
Incredible details
Grrrr, where’s my tea!
Scale model of Angkor Wat
OK, so I was a bit Wat-ed out by this point and getting bored…
Time to head to Wat Pho to see the enormous Reclining Buddha:
Big fella.
Saturday 19th – Tuesday 22nd November: Bangkok
Our E&O package included a night at the Bangkok Peninsula hotel where they dropped us after the interminable bus trip from Kanchanaburi. It was utterly fabulous so we immediately rejected any thoughts of checking into a Khao San Road hostel the next day, and broke the bank by extending our stay for the next 3 nights. Naughty but very, very nice.
The Peninsula and one of it’s river shuttle boats that take you across the river for free. We were on the 30th floor so great views!
View from / our lovely room.
Valet call button over the bath, to our amusement.
Randall on one of the shuttle boats
The skippers of the river shuttle
Shuttle boat at the hotel pier
‘long tail’ boats (with huge diesel engines on board and a massive long rudder/propeller) used for transporting small cargo up and down the Chao Praya river
Huge barge on the river. They go up- as well as down-stream. Up requires a team of tug boats.
Sandbags on the river bank
Randall slightly underwhelmed by his Del-Boy stylee mixed fruit juice.
That’s more like it.
Bangkok ‘shop houses’
Street maintenance, Bangkok-style
Ronald McDonald on the Khao San Road (we didn’t go in)
Answers on a postcard, please…
Randall took some persuading to get into a tuk-tuk, but enjoyed it really…
Royal Fields at night, complete with piped music.
Surprising number of sleek but healthy looking cats in Bangkok – very at home in this bar/cafe off Th Sukhumvit – presumably they keep the mice, rats and cockroaches down as the place seemed pretty clean once you got used to the moggies climbing over everything!
Sign in our taxi. Not sure what happens if you do.
Sunset over the Chao Praya from the pier, waiting for the river taxi.
Thursday 17th – Saturday 19th November: Eastern & Oriental Express
After an early morning swim in the glorious outdoor pool at the Ritz Carlton:
and a very slightly rushed breakfast, we were picked up and taken to ANOTHER 5-star hotel for check-in to the Orient Express – this turned out to be because the actual station is right on the slightly sensitive border with Malaysia and they are not keen on lots of people and bags milling about. The hotel is also rather more comfortable to wait in as the train can of course be delayed, particularly *at* said border because all the staff have to clear immigration too. As it turned out the train *was* delayed for about an hour, which was fine as The Regent Hotel had laid on coffee and rather lovely snacks, and we had wifi access. We handed over our check-in bags and also our cabin bags which were duly labelled and spirited away, and completed our immigration cards for Malaysia. Finally we boarded shuttle buses to the train station, exited Singapore and entered Malaysia, and were escorted politely to our home for the next three days:
Carriage entrance
Carriage outside
WANTED ON VOYAGE
Cabin (en-suite with loo, sink and shower plus hairdryer & Bulgari complimentary bits and bobs)
Cabin – in daytime configuration
Surprise!
No sooner were we underway than we were summoned to our respective dining cars (having been given our assignments by our lovely cabin steward):
Full 3 course meal, coffee and petit fours. Fresh flowers on table. Beautiful table linens and E&O stylish porcelain. Gorgeous. Oh and Randall.
We explored the train which has various public areas; a reading room, a small shop selling train-related knick-knacks, a main bar with piano (sadly not a grand as it wouldn’t fit!) and a smaller inside bar attached to the observation car:
Bar area
Bar area again
Observation Car
The observation car gets busy at cocktail hour!
Observation car just after sunrise…nice and quiet!
Much like The Ghan, it seemed as if the main aim of the train staff was to keep us constantly fed, so no sooner had we come back from our wander around (and Randall had had a little snooze) than it was time for afternoon tea served in our cabin:
Then not long after that it was time to dress for dinner – as the train was slightly delayed, our arrival in Kuala Lumpur station co-incided with the dinner sitting, so we were all dressed up and only got a short leg-stretch at the station rather than the 90 minute scamper around KL we were hoping for.
Tarted up for dinner. Sadly this one’s a bit blurred (taken by random punter on the station) but you get the idea!
During dinner the steward changed the cabin over to the night-time configuration – sweet bunkbeds (only the ‘presidential cabin’ has twin beds not bunks) with fresh flowers and stylish linen robes for those Noel Coward impressions:
Before retiring we were reminded by the train manager that the train would be crossing a rather picturesque lake around 6.30 in the morning, so we duly managed to get ourselves up just in time for sunrise:
View from the observation car
Sun rising over the lake
Assorted poses
Huge sun.
After breakfast we pulled into Butterworth station – sounds as if it should be a typical colonial town but it’s basically a big industrial centre from what we saw. We were summoned onto buses and crossed the Penang bridge to Penang island where we got a tri-shaw tour of historic Georgetown. I felt at least 75:
sharing the road with other, much larger and faster, vehicles!
Monday 14th – Thursday 17th November: Singapore
We arrived in Singapore on Monday evening suitably refreshed after our BA Club World flight from Sydney, and with something of a bump down to earth checked into the River City Inn – a perfectly lovely hostel in reality, but on the top floor of a building in Chinatown with no lift, so dragging our luggage up the stairs (well, me dragging, Randall carrying!) was a bit of a sweaty mess.
Both our hostel and the one on the floor below it had a ‘no shoes’ rule, with lockers for shoes outside. This was a charming idea, but they had obviously had issues with people’s stinky feet before now, as they had stuck nasty solid air fresheners into the lockers. Result: shoes that stank of men’s toilets.
On Tuesday morning after the free breakfast in the hostel (coffee and toast, but perfectly adequate) we braced ourselves and headed into the 80% humidity, 32 degree heat as a far as the next street from whence we caught an air-conditioned taxi to Mohan’s Custom Tailors, a recommendation we had received for getting Randall a suit made, given that we needed smart clothes for the next leg of the journey. After deciding to go for the full-on formal dinner suit (with 2 shirts, bow tie and cummerbund thrown in) Randall got measured up, which even for someone with Randal’s personal space issues was apparently quite bearable. We had to go back for a first fitting later in the afternoon so spent the intervening time looking for shoes for Randall (tricky as he is a size 14) and a second cocktail dress for me, the first having been delivered to our next hotel by post care of my fabulous and stylish mother (it’s her dress!).
The Singapore shopping experience is heavenly or hellish depending on your stance on the whole shopping thing. Personally I can’t stand shopping so the prospect of Orchard Road, a kilometres-long thoroughfare consisting entirely of massive shopping malls, made me feel a bit itchy. After traipsing through a whole stack of shops I didn’t recognise or like the look of much, finally found a fantastic 1950s style frock in no other than M&S while Randall was buying socks and t-shirt…result! Next up was shoes for Randall, so after his suit fitting we walked the full length of Orchard Road, finally finding a really nice pair that actually fit after being talked into trying them on by a very firm but polite sales guy…well done that fellow!
With these goodies we headed back to the hostel and booked ourselves onto the Singapore Zoo ‘night safari‘ – it seemed that everyone who had been to Singapore had recommended the zoo to us, so it seemed churlish not to give it a go, even though neither of us are particularly fans of zoos. We then managed to grab some lunch in an Italian place on the riverside (extra 10% off for paying with Amex – brilliant!) before hopping on the tour bus to the zoo. It was OK – the ‘creatures of the night’ show was a bit weird as it involved animals doing tricks for treats, but the ‘tram ride’ meant we got to see plenty of nocturnal animals in their fairly decent-looking habitats, and the well informed guide told us about various breeding programs they have etc (obviously the baby elephant was a big hit). Probably better if you have kids in tow, to be honest.
The next morning we checked into the Ritz Carlton, a complimentary night included because we had booked our upcoming trip on the Eastern & Orient Express so far in advance. Hoorah for advanced planning, I say:
The view from our room on the 12th floor of the Ritz Carlton Singapore:
The Marina, the bizarre Marina Sands hotel complex and our gorgeous hotel pool.
The ‘helix’ bridge across to where our hotel is / construction work on the harbour area / container ships and oil tankers.
The Singapore Flyer observation wheel / view from the Skypark / view from the Skypark in the other direction.
Complete weirdness.
While we were contemplating said weirdness over a bottle of wine, we watched a tropical storm approaching from some distance away across the city, which was quite exciting. When it got a bit *too* exciting (the umbrellas over the outside tables were threatening to fly away, taking us with them) the staff hustled us inside where we finished our wine to the sights and sounds of being lashed by a tropical storm at 190 metres above ground. Yeek.
Once it stopped raining we headed downstairs and hopped in a taxi to collect Randall’s suit (taxis are super-cheap rather surprisingly) which makes him very happy indeed…Mohan’s are recommended.
After vowing that when we come back to Singapore at Xmas we will see more of the city such as Sentosa island, Little India and Kampong Glam (sounds like a Thai drag club but is actually the old Malaysian area apparently), we lazed around the hotel for the rest of the evening making the most of being in our vast and splendid rooms. Tough life.
Helen and Randall on the road 