"All good things . . . "

God! This really is a cheap place! After the Cavs left we went back to one of the few "proper" restaurants we came came across during the previous night's exploration, the Aroy (which I understand to mean "delicious" -- certainly was!). A large beer and G&T for £2.50 and the food prices to match. Yesterday, we said farewell to a largely empty Cha Am; the Thai weekenders having poured into their family four wheeled pick ups or brightly painted Happy Coaches and gone home and the festival dismantled, emptied and hosed down. We found a minibus service halfway up Narathip Road that provided a cramped shuttle the 100 or so miles to Bangkok's Victory Monument for £3.50 each, as opposed to the £50 the local taxis were asking. After that it was a quick BTS Skytrain back to Chez Cavs and a much needed shower and change.

Our last proper night with Mike and Carolyn was a low key, cheap-but-alcoholic affair. Mike met me after work for happy hour at Durty Nellies (a sort of Robin Hood-ish bar on Ekkamai) while the girls demolished a couple of bottles of wine at home. Through the miracles of our alien overlords we met up at the end of Soi 59 and mooched off to a tiny street restaurant run by some pretty miserable Burmese immigrants. The food however, was excellent (even if I do have some difficulty remembering what the dishes were as we also demolished a bottle of what was probably pure methyl alcohol). This morning, as I write this with the nearest thing I've had to a hangover in the last seven weeks while Linda performs the arduous chore of packing the suitcases, I contemplate the end of the adventure. Tomorrow, we get up at dawn and fly home to exciting downtown Totton.

And that, as they say, was that! After seven weeks of running around Vietnam and Thailand we face the depressing prospect of it all ending. Thanks for all the banter guys and for joining in (c'mon: who WAS the Doctor and the Iceman?). And thanks to Carolyn and Mike for putting us up (and putting up with us!). After spending the entire calendar year of 2012 doing nothing and going nowhere to fund this trip, I've decided life's too short to do that again. So, in six month's time, stay tuned for Texas and Hawaii!! That adventure promises to be a whole different kettle of elephants.

yetanotherescapetothebeach.com

Cha Am: now here's another interesting place. Take the Rama IX Road south west from Bangkok over the Chao Phraya River and carry on vaguely westwards past the salt reclamation flats on the edge of the Gulf of Thailand. Veer south on another long, straight road until you get the the bay of Cha Am. This place is different to the other beach locations because, essentially, it is a Thai holiday destination. In fact, it seems to be a Thai weekend getaway destination. It can be described best as a series of strata. First, the sea. Then a long beach culminating at the north end by a man-made rock breakwater protecting a thriving, if rickety, fishing community. From the sea and the beach, you then have a looong strip of deck chairs covered thoroughly by umbrellas ("tent city" as Mike calls it). Then, a mini-forest strip of trees, mostly pine, that provide additional shade. Then the beach road of which North Beach and South Beach are split between the one main road, Narathip Road, leading away from the beach area some miles to Cha Am town proper. Then a plethora of tiny restaurants that own the deck chairs and provide runners to supply the visiting, multi-generational Thai families grouping in the covered deck chairs with food and drink. Accordingly, there are few multi-storey hotels and none of the recognisable international brand names. Having said all that, there is one obvious exception. The few larger hotels are pretty much dominated by Scandinavian tour companies and so, in contrast to all the Thai families picnicking under all those umbrellas, there is a large, semi-decrepit colony of ancient Norwegians lurching about on the sunnier stretches of beach (Gary: think about the Saga Louts we experienced in Chiang Mai all those years ago). In twenty year's time (Okay, ten) we could end up here too.

We arrived almost precisely at Beer o'Clock so Mike headed off to a fish restaurant at the north end for lunch. Bearing in mind that we'd existed on a diet of ice cream and a shared bowel of chips the previous day, this was a welcome decision. And what a meal it was! Notwithstanding the many bottles of Singha Beer we ordered, the seafood we shared was the best yet: squid in yellow curry and eggs; prawns in pepper sauce; mussels; spicy vegetables; fried rice with crab (which we have learned is called, if only unforgettably phonetically, "cowpat poo"). Not only was it the cheapest food yet but it was fresh because of the local industry. In fact, as a holiday destination for those poor retired farangs on a tight budget, everything is cheap here!

We finally checked into the hotel we'd booked a few days earlier and tried the pool. Pity about the incessant angle grinding noise, which was replaced by a pneumatic drill during the next few days as the owners tried to complete the building of their new, flashier pool (but that's Thailand for you). That drove us out for an early evening exploration to find that, coincidentally, Cha Am was hosting a festival on their one sea-front promenade. Hundreds of tables and chairs facing a stage and speakers for a local pop group surrounded by food and drink vendors. (Mike has an ever-so-slightly demonic picture of me struggling with a 3 litre tower of Singha trying to get it back to our table in front off the speakers that threatened to disrupt the air cavities in our lungs.) Great night!Mike and Carolyn have since headed back to Bangkok while Linda and I continue to emulate life as a pair of Thais on a weekend break. We're getting there . . .

"The invasion is a success, Overlord!"

In the '50s Heinlein wrote an SF story called The Puppet Masters where the human race had been enslaved by squishy parasites that lived on the back of the neck. The reality is similar: except that the aliens assume the disguise of hard little rectangles made of Cerium, Yttrium and Neodymium. The alien's success can be seen all over the world. Take Friday's visit to Bangkok's enormous Chatuchak Market. Everywhere we went the indigenous life forms were communicating with their alien masters. Walking along the street, setting up market stalls, sitting opposite on the Skytrain, standing in a queue; the entire human race is dreamily plugged into their little metal rectangles. I once thought the invasion was limited to the West, especially after my retirement when, every six months or so, I would meet up with a couple of guys from the "old job" only to find that, halfway through a conversation (that I, at least, was finding interesting), their eyes would glaze over, they would shuffle and, simultaneously, they would pull out their rectangles and commune with their overlords. It would seem that the phenomenon is pandemic: the invasion is complete world wide. Mike now has an iPhone with which, halfway walking down a street engaged in conversation, he will just stop and pull out his phone. It doesn't matter if he is in the middle of a road. Carolyn also has an iPad now and will open it up and talk to it out loud. This is Dave & Linda, the last free, rational Humans, signing off.

Okay, perhaps this is not the place for a social rant. The last night in Bangkok, then. Mike had buggered off to Pattaya on business, a beach holiday resort he describes as "Soi Cowboy, Pat Pong and Nana Plaza combined and merged to make a zoo" (we haven't been there yet). That left me with the two wine lovers who suggested we visit the Long Table at sunset "for the view" and happy hour. As it turned out, it inhabits the 25th floor of a skyscraper and looks out, next to an infinity (swimming) pool to the Bangkok skyline. The "happy hour" hook was "buy one get one free". Just as well as the wines were £11 a glass (a bottle of Carlsberg only £5!!). "But look at the magnificent view", cried Carolyn. "Yes", I replied, sipping my Carlsberg a molecule at a time and eyeing the long-legged, impressively corseted beauty gliding by with the menus. In fairness, it was a good spot: the sun had turned into a dull crimson sphere as it hit the evening haze reflecting reds off the glass buildings of the Bangkok skyline. If only I had a Farang's expense account I could have enjoyed it all without the financial guilt. We hurried out of the building after our "get one free" and headed to a nearby pub called the Black Swan which, an internet article earlier assured me, was still engaging in a more pedestrian happy hour. Alas! Only for beer, as it turns out, so my two wine lovers offered to pay the final bill for their slightly more acceptable £4-a-glass of wine(s) and my far more reasonable £2-a-pint of unsophisticated brew(s). Eating, for the duration of the day, was even less than admirable. Lunch consisted of a bucket of ice cream at Emporium's Swenesen's after a hard slog round Chatuchak Market (Gary knows what that's like) and dinner was a third of a bowl of chips each at the Black Swan because the three of us were too drunk to find a proper restaurant.

Luckily, Mike is taking us to Cha Am tomorrow so maybe our hedonistic lifestyles will improve. Maybe.

Unplanned!

After all these weeks of a completely planned travelling infrastructure (Tuesday - go there; Friday - live there; Monday - fly there) I find myself at a bit of a loss. Mike duly organised a speedboat to evacuate us all from the island of the lotus eaters in his usual GI Joe fashion and then drove us all back to Bangkok. Since then, there hasn't been a master plan. Mike and Carolyn have returned to doing all the many and varied things they usually do. Linda and I have sorta drifted from pool to bar to restaurant. Even our gourmet delights have shifted from Thai to Italian. Sunday night saw us in an Italian chain of restaurants, more because the ladies craved a sophisticated glass of wine rather than the unsophisticated rubbish we had been drinking (I doggedly stuck with the unsophisticated (i.e. cheap) stuff).

On Monday, we were invited to a birthday party at Big Mama's Pizza Place on Soi 19. Some readers might remember a cautionary tale about Lois in my last blog a couple of years back. Lois had has found herself completely paralysed in a Thai hospital running up huge medical bills having contracted Guillain Barre Syndrome (see link if you've never heard of it: I hadn't), possibly contracted via food poisoning, possibly from swimming in the local lakes. It was great to see her fully recovered, in great spirits and enjoying life again. She's still working for Mike's replacement in his "old job" and, like everyone else in the civil service, not enjoying it much. Tuesday took Linda and Carolyn off for Afternoon Tea at a swanky hotel. I declined in favour of unsophisticated rubbish at The Robin Hood for happy hour(s).

On Wednesday, boredom and the need to escape the oppressive heat drove us to the air conditioned luxury of the immense Cineplex at the Saigon Paragon mall. It was actually a great afternoon. We saw Life of Pi (the Ang Lee film that came out just before Christmas, if you are interested in that sort of thing) having paid a whole £3 each for a ticket to sit alone in a near-empty cinema in soft, roomy reclining seats sharing a huge bucket of popcorn like a pair of teenagers. Today is Valentine's Day so I took Linda  to Bangkok's Dusit Park zoo. She claimed it wasn't a very romantic location, possibly because of the sight of reptiles eating live mice or the constant smell of animal dung, so I bought her an ice cream by the river and offered to treat her to a pedalo ride. Me? Not romantic? Preposterous! After three hours of wandering about we grabbed a taxi to the Victory Monument and a BTS Skytrain back to the roof swimming pool.

Taking pity on our appalling lack of decision making, the Cavs have offered to drive us down to Cha Am Saturday morning (but we have to find our own way back). More anon.

The Land of the Lotus Eaters

Whoosh. There goes another week. The Cavs arrived as expected on Thursday afternoon, intercepted before they could check in and dragged kicking and screaming to the nearest beach bar. (Okay, we waved from the bar as they clambered off their speedboat and they came over, ordering G&Ts as they sat down!) Since then we have met up for breakfast, Beer o'clock, pre-dinner drinkies, and a late night feast on the beach under the stars on a daily basis.

Last night the tide has gone out and all the restaurants had laid out tables on the damp, packed sand. Dinner was a mix of prawns, BBQd fish in a vegetable soup, Penang curry, sweet and sour stir fry, and other stuff I can't remember. Mike persuaded me to share a 70cl bottle of Sang Som with him as "it works out cheaper in the long run". It's the local sugar cane rum but I'm not sure how much methanol there is in there or whether it would be legal in the EU. Mix some coke and soda in with it and its fine: doesn't seem to have impaired my mental faculties at all . . . . . 

. . . . . . .

 . . . . where was I? Oh yes, where has the week gone? Koh Samet is more or less as I remember it (apart from the size of  the beaches but they all looked pretty big last night as Linda guided me home!) Clear waters -- good for swimming as long as you avoid the steady procession of arriving speedboats. Fire dancers who spray burning lighter fluid about as they hula hoop with rings of fire while you eat (don't take the tables nearest the beach -- some of the dancers are as young as 10 and very enthusiastic). Spirit lanterns gently sent aloft to disappear into the night sky. Flotillas of squid ships on the horizon glowing furiously with a hard green luminescence, presumably to attract the cephalopods but looking to have enough wattage to light a small city on Halloween. A general mixture of music, easy listening or dance floor bass: choose according to your mood. Barbecues and grills and stews and soups and stir fries of every imaginable combination of sweet or savoury or curry or chilli meat, fish or crustacean you could want. And alcohol, of course. Lots of that!

So. One more night of this hell and it's back to Bangkok tomorrow although I doubt if our livers will mind. Like the eponymous Lotus Eaters, you could conceivably stay here forever and lose your mind -- there are certainly some examples of those wandering about.

Life's a Beach and then you die!

As before, when one is trapped on a beach, life becomes a daily holiday iteration. Not much different from our last beach log, in fact (those easily bored should give up now). Breakfast can be anything from green curry to something wonderful from the egg chef (why is it that fried eggs with a dash of ham and cheese tastes so much better in foreign countries?). If we sit in the outside restaurant the insects can be a pain but luckily Linda is a white witch and has brewed up aerosols made from natural essential oils that forms a protective repellent barrier . . . OH GOD IT'S BURROWING INTO MY LEG!

Next it's battling with the towel-placing morons for a sunbed on the rocky shore outside our seaward-facing villa. There are plenty of empty sunbeds on the Samet Villa's sandy beach but we prefer the partial shade of a tree to an umbrella. Luckily, the insects aren't a problem thanks to Linda's concoctions . . OUCH, WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT!

It's a bit hot at the moment thereby confounding my earlier weather forecast. Sometimes there's no breeze at all so I feel the need to take a walk along the available bays and beaches this side of the island and examine the wide variety of beached sea mammals along the shore, and all other things mammalian, I suppose. And tattooed. And, sometimes, damned strange. On my weary and sweaty return Linda will rather kindly declare it Beer o'Clock and we order cold large Changs on a rickety wooden bench in the sand at a nearby beach restaurant. Afternoon brings a respite from this hectic lifestyle when we rest for a few hours or, like now, I'll find an air-conditioned room to write rubbish like this. Then its shower and least smelly clothes for an evening's pre-dinner drinkies before another simple evening supper. 

Just to deviate from this boring perambulation, two nights go we walked back up the coast to the Sunrise Bar, a place we spent a memorable New Years Eve with Mike and Carolyn and Louise. Now, to us, the area where we had sprawled out on cushions on the beach five years ago now looks considerably, well, truncated. And lower. In fact, thinking it over, the whole bay looked a bit smaller than we remembered. We asked our friendly hippy host about this and, as best we can determine, a "big wave" hit the beach "next month" (I assume he mean't last month as I doubt the local ganja is that powerful). Curious, I tried researching this on the net but could only find one reference to a "small tsunami" (like, four inches high) hitting Thailand on the 24th January after an 8.4 earthquake in Indonesia. It certainly would have been the right time if we understood the owner but it  effectively wiped out half the sand in the bay on this island. Where there was once an unbroken stretch of sand leading 20 or 30 meters out to the shoreline there is now a six inch drop in the sand revealing rocks that hadn't (I'm sure,) been there before, like someone had taken a bite out of the bay. Maybe the Cavs can shed some light on it when  they arrive tomorrow.

Exiled!

Well, our last night in  Bangkok was the usual eclectic mix of drink, discussion, food (Tapas in this case), more drink, more lively discussion, petulant argument (me, of course; told you the dreamy Dave wouldn't last), more drink and bed. Believe it or not,  the Lampens did make it up in time to get the 8 o'clock bus out from Ekkamai, tippy-toeing out from Chez Cavs so as not to wake our weary hosts up (do you think they're getting fed up with the latest infestation yet?).

More surprisingly yet, the whole manoeuvre down to Ban Phe was painless. The bus was just a little late which, to be honest, is why we managed to catch it. It was roomy and air conditioned; unlike their Vietnamese knee-crushing counterparts. The four hour journey was interesting; outer Bangkok Japanese investment areas (plant like Komatsu, for example) giving way to acres of rubber trees and pineapple plantations. In Ban Phe, a quick walk from the bus station got us to Nuantip Pier where we boarded an over-stuffed, under-life-vested, chugging and wheezing ferry to take us to the brand new Samed Port Pier (capitals required!). They are very proud of their pier as, up 'til now, our total costs to get this far was about 5 quid each. Then there is an additional 200 Baht (around £4) payable before you get on the ferry for entering the "national park". And now there is a mandatory 10 Baht "passenger tax" designed to annoy people like me rather than pay for the new Pier, methinks. So  annoyed was i that I refused to pay the 100 Baht taxi fare to our resort and as a result made Linda walk through a soggy dirt road for a half hour (it seems to have tipped down in the last 24 hours!), both of us sweating rotten, in order to get us to the Samet Villa. Luckily, they were expecting us, which was good as I had forgotten to print the e-mails!!!

So here we are with all the other imaginary exiles on this island. People of every size, age, weight, colour, origin, gender and preference (!) you can imagine. Plus dogs and cats and puppies and lizards and squirrels and some strange mutants that are part human and part crane. Its a bit less of a beach as I described in Hoi An where you can walk the length admiring the beautiful young things. Maybe more of a zoo. A large 40 Ml bottle of Chang @ six.4% (sorry, the keyboard's knackered) will break you for £2; a meal for just over a quid (except fish, which seems to go for around £7). Weather's slightly overcast and looks to remain for the next week, but there's still enough UV coming through. And, as I have said, it's hot and sweaty but our sea-facing room has air-con and a fan and now a bottle of Bacardi which cost us £13 in a local's supermarket in a back street.

And that's it. After all the running around of the last month we are now sitting by the beach with our books looking for unusual wildlife.  No doubt things will pick up when the Cavs arrive in a few days' time.

I got those Bangkok blues

How to describe yesterday . . . Shall I tell of my day with Linda and Carolyn? We went shopping. Carolyn guided us to the Ekkamai bus station to see if I could make sense of it. We are planning to go to Ban Phe by bus tomorrow and thence to the Island of Koh Samet where, hopefully, we'll spend an idyllic week in a bungalow on the beach. I'm pretty sure I know how to buy a ticket but not sure what happens after that. No doubt we'll find out. Then we wandered round a Japanese mall and saw a thousand Japanese restaurants. Not sure what the hell they sold as all the menus were in Japanese or Thai. We then went shopping for cleaning materials and had lively discussions about the various brands of detergents available. It was my job to carry a humongous packet of toilet rolls under one arm back down the 300 meters or so of Sukhumvit Road. Afterwards, the girls took me for lunch in a nearby food court (curry and rice for 80p) and as a special treat, an ice cream sundae at a local Swensens.

Or shall I tell you about my night out with Mike on the wild streets and alleyways of Bangkok? No, perhaps I'd better not. Suffice to say my good behaviour during the day earned me a much coveted free pass which I promptly abused by not coming home until five this morning. I can say it was an interesting night, however, (how the hell does Mike find these places?) and dimly remember us sitting in a makeshift bar on the side-walk of Sukhumvit at four in the morning drinking cheap whisky and a makeshift evening meal-cum-breakfast (since I hadn't eaten anything since that curry for lunch the previous day) thinking we'd better call it quits. I'd run out of money anyway.

So we've been back in Bangkok for three nights and now face another early start tomorrow and, probably, a very uncomfortable bus ride down south for three and a half hours. Hopefully, if all is successful, the pace of life can calm down a bit.

"One of our T-shirts is Missing."

OK guys, Basil is somewhat suppressed, I'll agree, but this country does that to you after a while. What they lack in money and infrastructure they make up for in charm. Mosly in smiles. It's very difficult not to respond in kind when every woman you come across is beaming from ear to ear. Indeed, the people who inhabit the Salmon Leap would not recognise the miserable ani-social retired git who prefers to sit in the beer garden reading obscure sci-fi books rather than join in on an enlightening argument about the merits of the local football club. At the end of our sojourn we are again in Saigon, waiting for a flight out and reminiscing over the people we have met. The lovely Nhung in the Bamboo Bar in Da Nang who taught us how to say "please", "thank you" and "how much" properly in Vietnamese (which even now remains the sum total of my fluency) and who surprised the other predator males in the bar by giving us (yes, Linda was there before you wonder) her mobile number. The incredibly efficient Cem in the Orchid (by far the best hotel we stayed at) who told us "we were the nicest tourists" and gave Linda a hug when we left and solemnly shook my hand before laughing at my reaction. In the Vinh Hung III hotel in Hoi An, the capable Emily kept grabbing me an apologiesd profusely for losing my Galapagos T-shirt over a laundry mix up. She was so worried we'd put a bad report in Tripadvisor (that website has so much power over here) that she'd phoned the guy who had my T-shirt (I now possess his -- not as good of course) who had left at 0700 that morning and arranged for him to ship it back from wherever he was (around 500 km upcountry, I gather). Didn't make it by the time we left but I am left feeling guilty for causing so much trouble. Even the damned peddlers who hassle you for sitting at the street entrances of the cafes we frequented make you feel guilty: softly smiling and saying in perfectly-practised English, "I know you are going to say 'no" but before you do could I just show you what I have please?". You know it will be exactly what the last woman or child had 10 minutes earlier and 10 minutes before that but you still feel like twenty kinds of asshole for not giving her a measily 60p for a knickknack. The problem is, everyone in an average Vietnamese hotel will smile at you: the serving girls practice smiling and saying "Good morning. How are you? Did you sleep well?". The room cleaners stop and smile as you go by. Everyone greets you as you go in and leave. Compare that to the fact you are lucky the average person in the English service industry barely condescends to acknowledge your miserable existence when you are paying anything up to 10 times the price for the same service and you wonder why I am turning into a nice(r), happ(ier) person over here? Don't worry, it can't last.

Still, even an infusion of happiness didn't stop me from going into Paranoid Overdrive when we exited Saigon Airport. I'd done some research into taxi scams on this site and what it says didn't make me feel much better. I'm sure Mike knows all about this stuff and, now, so do we!! Following the good advice and not acting like a senile old fool got us back to the Elios Hotel without misshap. I confess I didn't plan this last section of the tour too well. Having been here before what I should have done is booked a transfer direct from Da Nang through Saigon airport to Bangkok. Instead we've got a whole day to kill and another bloody early start tomorrow to get back to Chez Cav. So, it looks like wasting time in the bars ad restaurants in An Lac alley until we can go to bed. Life's hard sometimes . . .

Oh those Americans!

One sunny day; one rainy day, so far. And on the third day . . . it was hot, muggy and sunny. This was the day we'd pre-booked a tour to My Son, an archaeological site 50 klicks south west of Hoi An and the location of one of the holiest places of the ancient Champa Empire. We'd already seen some of the Hindu-based artifacts dug up from this site at the Cham Museum in Da Nang. This time, there was a chance to see the site for real. However, as with most things Vietnamese there wasn't much left to see. The architecture was originally of a similar nature to that unearthed in Angkor Wat only much older; well over a thousand years. Again, the site was discovered by French archaeologists who, having successfully revealed the temples and tombs of the ancient god emperors, promptly cut the heads off every Hindu statue, carving and figurine adorning said buildings and transported them to Paris museums for the delectation of French society. Accordingly, the Viets are trying to replace the heads piecemeal but with not much aesthetic success. Then came the Americans who did what Americans do best -- bomb the shit out of the place. The result is very unlike Angkor in Cambodia: there's not much left  to see and the jungle surrounding the tourist pathways is still said to contain US-strewn land mines. Again, paying the extra from a hotel-sponsored tour gave us a knowledgeable English-speaking tour guide which always provides an added visual dimension to the rubble.

They also gave us a boat ride back to Hoi An which was a lot cooler and more comfortable than the Viet tourist buses. Of course, there was an obligatory stop at a crafting village which was noteworthy if only because that walls of the town displayed the high water marks of flooding over the last 50 years. Like Hue, this whole region gets swamped every year, sometimes devastatingly. The local populace has to get moved out in much the same way as New Yorkers and New Orleanians and Queenslanders do when they get hit by the occasional hurricane (only you don't get to hear and agonize over that on the BBC news 'cos it happens all the damn time!). Finally arriving into the Hoi An by boat gives the whole town, with its islands and bridges and waterways, the look of a teeny weeny Venice.

A shower was called for before rushing back to one of the many street bars on the main river walk. Cold beer and margaritas while an orange ball of a sun dipped behind the buildings on opposite An Hoi Island. A mini-bar crawl later led us to the Faifoo Restaurant where we had a smorgasbord of local dishes culminating in a Vietnamese Hot Pot: a bubbling soup of seafood and vegetables in a large tureen surrounding what looked to be a piece of lava. Accordingly, we were in bed and asleep well before 9 o'clock proving, once again, that we're getting too old for this!

"Singing In The Rain"

Seems like we were lucky with the Hoi An Beach component of the tour. This morning it chucked it down and it aint looking much better this afternoon. Still, my sunburn could do with a break. Back when I was planning this adventure I asked the TripAdvisor forums whether it was better to stay in Hoi An town or on the beach. As you see, the results were a bit bipolar. The assertion that it is the wrong time of year for the beach just isn't true . . . but only if you get lucky and miss the rainy days, methinks.

Neverthe less, Hoi An is a fascinating place; different yet again in character from Da Nang and Hue. One of the complaints of the town is that is has become too touristy. Plenty of gift shops, tailors and art galleries. Personally, I think the galleries add to its charm as there are plenty of paintings on offer that one thinks would look nice on their walls (of course, its never the same when you get them home). One thing's for sure, you will never go hungry or thirsty in Hoi An. As I am sure Steve will attest to, there are hundreds of tiny bars and restaurants that face the river complex that offer cheap happy hours beers, cocktails and Viet snacks but, of course, also means that you will inevitably be subjected to the roving peddlers at a rate of one every 10 minutes. Cue dismissive imperial wave.

Last night we met up with the Wandering Jan, the Flying Dutchman, and exchanged stories of our travels (Melissa, Jenny and Paul having moved on to pastures new). It would seem that there are few places we have been to that Jan has not also got a story to tell; even in Alaska! It made for an entertaining few hours. This evening we hope to make it to Cam Nam Island to a bar recommended in our outdated Rough Guide as being a "chilled sunset bar", the evocatively named Sleepy Gecko. That pre-supposes a sun in the sky to set in the first place but, as I write this, there is more light streaming through the window than there was a couple of hours ago. Might even get my camera out . . .

Food, Glorious Food!

And so our Vietnam adventure has devolved into a simple daily holiday iteration. How easy it is to revert to slob mode . . .

Breakfast: Complimentary, of course. Chilled peach nectar; coffee; freshly baked croissants and jam; cereals; peppered rice soup with pork or shrimp; a course of Viet hot dishes like pork and stir fried rice with obligatory bacon; a variety of eggs from the egg chef; a plate of mixed fresh fruit - pineapple, mango, dragon, papaya and water melon; pineapple juice to wash it down.
Pool or Beach: Complimentary towels laid out on sunbeds by the riverside pool; walk across the road to private beach and watch the waves; couple of hours Kindle-reading; couple of hours walk along the endless beach (you can see Da Nang in the distance) watching the young and beautiful splash about in warm waters.
Balcony: afternoon Bacardi Gold & Coke on the room's balcony facing the ducks and occasional solitary fishermen on the calm De Vong river behind the hotel (one bottle @ £7 courtesy of a local supermarket); air-con handy if it gets too hot.
Evening: drinks at one of the many cafes and bars on the road to town; sit at the roadside and watch the world go by.
Dinner: pick from one of the above-mentioned cafes or back to the beach to one of the dozen self-styled Seafood Restaurants. Last night we went back to a little bar called The Grasshopper to try a selection of Hoi An specialties. Cao Lau -- chewy noodles topped with pork slices, herbs, crunchy offcuts, pork broth and chilli jam. White Rose -- small dumplings filled with shrimp according to a secret 120 year old recipe. Rice paper tortillas -- roll up your own tortillas using rice paper, vegetables and meat and then dunk in a peanut sauce (we first discovered this at the Lac Thien Restaurant in Hue that Steve recommended in his comment, without actually naming it or supplying directions of course! Never mind, found it next to the Citadel in the end). The meal, together with a couple of large Saigon beers and Margaritas came to around £12.

Now re-apply the above treatment until all aching feet, swollen knees, head colds and chest infections have disappeared. Repeat again just to make sure.

*Sigh* Unfortunately, our time is up. Four nights later and the power of pre-booking hotels on the internet on the cheap forces us to pack our bags again tomorrow and move on to Hoi An town. Farewell fellow beach bums!

'Cos we're worth it . . .

. . . as the annoying woman's advert says (yeah, too much daytime TV in Retirement Land). Here we be, sitting by a pool at Cua Dai Beach a mere 5 kms from Hoi An. Temperature in the mid 20s and I've gone a bright crimson all over. After all the sojourning and culturing, with their attendant swollen feet and knees, it's good to chill out at the seaside on a balmy January morning. Our hotel is the Hoi An Beach Resort, a cut above the medium-priced fare we've been enjoying. The resort is across the beach road from the sands themselves but backs onto an extensive river network. All the TripAdvisor forums, therefore, recommended an upgraded room with a river view. And Lo! a splurge of valuable pension income later, here we be. Swimming pool in the morning; a walk along soft sands lunchtime; and Bacardi and Cokes on our balcony overlooking the river this afternoon. Am I annoying anyone yet?

Our last night in Hue saw us a again in the DMZ. This time, however, it's gravitational field (which, I must emphasise, is of truly Jovian proportions) captured all the single guys on our river trip earlier that day. So, being incredibly convivial (and not a little drunk) we opted to join them: Melissa, a Jewish North London girl who is a Blue Badge Tourist Guide in Central London: Paul, a retired Ontarian Canadian who left his wife and dog at home to tour the Far East on a strict budget for 5 months; the delightful Jenny (real name unpronounceable apparently), a Chinese girl who lives just outside Hong Kong and speaks excellent English; and a peripatetic Dutchman called Jan (yes, really!). Turns out we were all travelling to Hoi An the next day by various means (except Jan, being true to his adjective) so our resident Tour Guide suggested we meet up in a bar there. We got the 1050 train to Da Nang (which was an hour and a half late) for about £2.50 and collared a taxi (metered this time) to take us the 30 kms the rest of the way to Hoi An. Still cost us £18 but felt more honest than my earlier experience. We duly met up with everyone at the funky "Before 'N Now Bar" in Hoi An, after cadging a free shuttle from the Beach Resort (I thought we could walk into town when I'd planned this but, no way! Too far!). There, the canny Jenny told us she'd caught an earlier train, came across a fellow countrywoman who was living here and caught a bus from Da Nang to Hoi An negotiated for a measly US Dollar. Damn those clever Chinese! Proves you can do all this a lot cheaper than we've been doing it! 'Twas a good night, though. Picture an eclectic mix of travellers comparing notes about everything from Religion to Politics to The Economy all in a spirit of curiosity and good humour. A rare experience.

Tonight, methinks a couple of beers in the cheap bars surrounding these big resorts and a meal in one of the many "Seafood Restaurants" lining up along the beach. Ahhh!

Escape from the De-Militarised Zone

I hadn't actually planned to do this when I first visualised this VietTour but Gary's comment about Apocalypse Now and the fact that the hotel offered a trip to the DMZ really forced our hand. Not sure I'd recommend it. First off, it's a bit of a hike: as far from Hue as Hue is from Da Nang. Second, after all the bombs, the napalm and the defoliant (not to mention half a century of time), there isn't really much to see. The history of the area really only exists in the minds of the still-living inhabitants rather than in the geography. We picked up a good guide in Dong Ha, a town that sits on the juncture of Highway 9 to Laos in the west and Highway 1 running north to the old DMZ. He was old enough to remember living in a village taken over by the Americans in '68 and seems to have spent his life collecting interesting US documents about the war and running tours. One we looked at was about the extreme chemical toxicity of dioxin in Agent Orange. Another was the famous Legacy of the Vietnam War interview of Norman Chomsky (follow the link if you are interested). Highway 9 offered us sights of the Rockpile, the mountain peak used by the US to direct artillery strikes, and the old Khe Sanh military base that was famously attacked by Charlie in a feint to divert the US from the Tet Offensive and famously defended (I think) by John Wayne in "The Green Berets". It was hard to believe, looking at the acres of forest around us, that the whole area we were driving through was barren until a mere 20 years ago, permanently blighted by the toxicity of Agent Orange until the Vietnam government instituted a successful reforestation project. After lunch we were taken further north through the DMZ to Vinh Moc on the coast to see a themed museum rivalling that of the Cu Chi tunnels outside Saigon. Whereas the latter tunnel systems were designed to aid fighting, the Vinh Moc tunnels were designed to protect 600-odd civilians during the truly hysterical carpet bombing that only ended in 1972. Huge craters are still preserved that sit alongside 10 - 20 foot deep tunnels. Amazingly, 17 children were born underground during those years. It is hard to credit the tenacity of these people: guns against more falling ordnance than all the bombs falling on all the countries of the whole of the Second World War!

The trip was 12 hours long, though, and like most coach tours, were not kind to long-legged western tourists. A long drive, bumcheeks hurt, back hurts, feeling old beyond measure. The seating was so cramped: it made British Airways cattle class feel luxurious. And the driving! Everyone on motorbike, car or bus operates on a "food chain" basis when overtaking, no matter what is coming in the opposite direction. Unfortunately, we saw first hand evidence on the way home. From the back of the coach I saw a scooter driver leap of his bike and run to the ditch in the road and, as we sped by, a car, its front engine steaming the wrong way round up against a crash barrier in the ditch. Later at the Vinh Moc tunnels our drivers had got together with the water sellers to tell the story. The driver was alive but with a severed foot. Difficult to say what the whole story was but our guide reckoned the car overtook us only moments before.

We fell off the coach at Hue at seven in the evening and drank too much at the DMZ Bar before going back to the Orchid. We got told off by the woman in charge for drinking (and since she sold us the tickets, she knew what time we should have been back!). The next day we missed breakfast. She knew that as well!.Dammit, she's been so nice, though! It was a bit of a wasted day, really: "lunch" at the DMZ Bar and then back to bed for a nap and . . . er . . . "dinner" at the DMZ Bar and another early night.

Today is our last in Hue so we felt obliged to do another culture tour. By boat up the Perfume River this time to take in a variety of  temples, pagodas and tombs of ancient (and not so ancient) emperors. Not so lucky with the weather this time. It's still 20 degrees C but was very misty in the morning and drizzled on and off all day. Slightly more interesting travelling companions this time: an Essex girl, a Thai-Australian, a Dutch guy, a Canadian, a Chinese girl and a smattering of Spanish, French and Italians. Always makes for interesting lunch times. We resisted the intense gravitational field of the DMZ Bar walking back (even though Linda got accosted by our two adopted bar girls, "Hello mama. You come in. We save your table!". How embarrassing!) as we have to pack again. Tomorrow, we get a train again to Da Nang and then negotiate a taxi to the Hoi An Beach Resort. The objective there is to give our feet a rest but we'll see, we'll see.

GO AWAY!

Having bemoaned the lack of tourist facilities in Da Nang we now find that we're swamped by them; all in competition for what are basically the same offers. Consequently, the average tourist is approached, or just yelled at, every ten metres down the street. The cyclos are the worst as they easily pedal next to you chanting, "One hour. Where you from?", until you are forced to bark back. I caught Linda doing a "GO AWAY!" more than once. It's back to the imperiously dismissive wave we perfected in some of the more aggressive Turkish markets, I'm afraid.

On the plus side of the tourist trap, there is a greater preponderance of cheap 'n tasty bars and restaurants. Steve, when you were here did you make the seemingly famous DMZ Bar on the corner of Le Loi (the main road running alongside the Huong River) and Pham Ngu Lao? It's this last street that's the Hue equivalent of Pub Street in Siem Reap. We did make it past all those establishments, believe it or not, to eat at the Rough Guide recommended Viet restaurant, Mandarin Cafe. Besides providing simple and tasty local food, the restaurant is also noteworthy for doubling up as Mr Cu's photography gallery. While you are waiting for your courses, the girls pass out thick binders of his best work. Try the link above and check them out.

More Culture: the first day took us to the 19th century walled citadel on the north side of the Huong (Perfume) River. Within that are the remains of the once magnificent Imperial City. Within that, the remains the homes of nine ranks of royal concubines and associated pleasure palaces known as the Forbidden Purple City. Unlike many of the archaeological sites in the SE Asian region, this is not so old and didn't weather the American War too well, but efforts are being made to restore it to its former glory. The eighty ironwood pillars in the emperor's throne room, for example, survived the bombs but were just about eaten away by termites and humidity. We were told that during the restoration, every column, weighing two tonnes apiece, had to be replaced manually and then painted with 12 coats of lacquer, each coat taking one month to dry. And that's just one room. There's a lot of rubble to recreate yet!

Early night tonight. Gotta get up by 6 tomorrow.

Gosh, we're in heaven

Let's face it, Da Nang is a bit run down and not the place you can recommend to people who are looking for a fun time. Our hotel, the Da Nang Pacific, while deliberately not the most expensive in the Agoda catalogue, was about as run down as the rest of the town. Gloomy bathroom, only one bedside table (bed pushed up against the wardrobe on other side), quirky air-con, and staff who only spoke at one default volume (LOUD) when coming to work at 6 in the morning and going home at night. Apart from the silent curfew moments between midnight and six, sleep was pretty much guaranteed to be broken. Of greater affront was the free Internet computers, buggy and running on Windows XP ferchrissake! (I mention this for a reason; bear with me.) We've just checked into the Hue Orchid Hotel. Wow! Charming, fluent English-speaking hostess; cold drinks and fruit while they copy the passports; huge double bed with the towels folded up like mating swans; a TV and a DVD player; room safe; bottles of wine for sale for only 2-4 quid; and, wait for it, MY OWN GODDAM PERSONAL COMPUTER! In the room! Running on Windows 7 broadband! I'm writing this rubbish now while Linda has her shower. Before we go out and find a bar! I'm so happy I could relocate permanently!
*Sigh*
The train ride, it may come as a surprise, was also a delight. We got to the station early and so had time to work out how things work. The timetables were easier to decypher than I had first thought, and we had no problem finding our coach (Toa #1). Our seats were on the right side of a large, air conditioned, slightly rough-around-the-edges carriage which was great as the scenery on the three hour ride to Hue was marvellous. Rugged coastline giving way to unspoilt sandy coves and bays giving way to fishing villages giving way to towns on peninsulas giving way to paddy fields giving way, finally, to the Hue shanty suburbs. It strikes me that one could plan a tour of the whole of Vietnam, Nanoi to Saigon, by just using the railway to jump from places of interest. Only one thing marred the day so far and that was the idiot who insisted on targeting us as soon as we got off the train with our bags, obviously aiming to sell us a hotel room/unmetered taxi ride/mother's jewellery/whatever. He obviously didn't know he was dealing with a paranoid schizophrenic (after Saigon) but soon did when, after repeatedly telling him I wasn't interested, I lost it. "GO AWAY!", I shouted at him in front of a crowd of people. He jumped visbly and everyone else left me alone after that. Ha! Felt much better.

Well, the sun is shining down on the Perfume River and what looks like a beautiful long grass esplanade following the length of it. The hotel owner came over and said we were lucky as, before today, it had been raining and overcast. So. Best go out and do some exploring!!

So that was Da Nang . .

The problem with travelling on our own with no support infrastructure (like the world-famous CavTours) is that it takes days and many miles to get to grips with the best ways of doing things. We're on our last evening (of four) and today I dominated a little taxi driver and took money out of his hand (legitimately, I might add) and told him which way to go. Ha! It's fair to say that Da Nang is not yet equipped to deal with the expectations of the average western traveller. We tried a number of times to find a tour operator open for business so we could thrust filthy dollars at them for a local tour. We even got talking to a nice old guy called Tung who flashed some pamphlets at us (they don't normally do pamphlets here) and tried to get us to buy a tour. Too paranoid to pay him in the street I got him to point out his office on my well-folded paper map. When we eventually made it there, the office didn't exist but the hotel desk clerk seemed to know Tung and offered to phone him. We said we'd think about it.

Language is a bit of a problem in Da Nang. English is not spoken much and they have difficulty understanding one-word questions. It doesn't help if I pantomime (in fact, Linda reckons I probably shouldn't -- too much like a manically-smiling John Cleese). In fact, they look positively panic stricken if you look as if you are going to start a conversation. To be fair, they all try their utmost to help out. Take the local pharmacy. I've been slowed down with a pain in the chest and dizziness for the last few days - a definite chest infection. But even writing "antibiotics" on a bit of paper didn't elicit understanding until Linda recognised Amoxicillin on a packet on a shelf did she remember using that for tonsillitis in Bangkok a few years ago.So, that problem solved. I'm still looking forward to getting on the wrong train tomorrow.

Lest anyone thinks we've spent the entire stay in the Bamboo Bar all week, we have tried to take in some cultural "stuff" too. First off was a visit to the Cham museum. The Champa (it says here) actually had a flourishing trading culture lasting some 14 centuries since AD 192 until it became marginalised as a Viet vassal state.. It followed mostly a Hindu religion until Islam made inroads in the 14th Century and all the relics recovered reflect worship of Siva, Vishnu, and the like. There's a archaeological dig in My Son south of Hoi An that we may try to fit in.

There's also a Cao Dai temple in Da Nang, Steve. However, it's nothing like the psychedelic wonder that exists outside Ho Chi Minh City and I waxed lyrical about that on a previous blog. Having failed with the tour operators, we jumped into a taxi today and demanded to be taken to China Beach, the place where the US grunts went for R&R during the War. It may seem that we are trying to recapitulate Apocalypse Now, Gary, but for all the locals refer to it it might as well be Apocalypse Never Happened. China (or My Khe) Beach was a bit of a find, though. Miles of empty sands with very little development blotting the landscape and no one on the beach. A good choice if Blackpool or Bournemouth doesn't float your boat and you don't mind staying out of the water (bad rip tides). Mind you, it is considered the middle of winter by the locals so that would explain the emptyness.  I say winter, but the temperatures are in the 20s (in Saigon the 30s; in Hanoi the 10s). The days have been overcast in the mornings and bright in the afternoons. If anyone is thinking of doing this trip, I would recommend doing the cultural stuff in the morning and chilling out on the beach PM. It cost a whole £2 for a taxi to the beach and £1.50 for two bottles of water and two rare rickety deck chairs under a tree. Ah well, better think about packing again. Off to Hue tomorrow (we hope).

Mama, aliens are living in our hotel!

We get used to being stared at when we're abroad (hell, I get used to being stared at home). In Da Nang, it was getting a bit weird. After a couple of days, we gathered it was down to so few white western travellers who actually stayed and walked around Da Nang as opposed to using the bus or airport terminal to get to the more popular towns of Hue or Hoi An. It was breakfast that clinched it. When we walked through the glass doors the young girls waiting the tables took a picture. And laughed a lot. ("Eat your greens child or you'll grow up like that!"). Getting gently hassled in the street for rides is commonplace enough as are kids shouting out "Hello. Where you from?" (I don't tell them any more as all they want to do is talk rubbish about football -- "I'm from Ceti Alpha V!") However, it was when a bloke shouted hello from a building site as we wandered past while his fellows stopped work, turned as one and stared impassively like the pod people from Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Linda said, "I don't think we're in Totton any more, Toto!".

We arrived in Da Nang in late evening. It proved to be a marked change to the bustling cosmopolitan avenues and alleyways of Saigon. During our last night there we had dinner at the Asian Kitchen, a tiny restaurant off An Luc that specialised in crocodile dishes (tempura, stir fried, sauces, you-name-it). I figured they had a bigger problem than the usual rat surplus but it took longer to arrive than Linda's more pedestrian stir fry chicken dinner. Either that or they were fed up with the "Make it snappy" joke. After that we sat on the hotel's rooftop restaurant watching the ever changing Saigon skyline. One building in particular looked like Rimmer's holoship in Red Dwarf. It must have been built with embedded LEDs so that the whole building looked ethereal, changing colours and shape and sometime disappearing altogether. Cosmic, man!

By contrast, Da Nang at night was reminiscent of the more Communist-leaning city of Hanoi. Dimly-lit streets with broken pavements and empty family-run concrete cafes with none of the western flash of the other big Asian cities. By day, however, you get the feel that the city is at the cusp of a change. For example, we were depending on a four-year old Rough Guide to Vietnam to get our bearings. After around four hours of traipsing in the Da Nang gutter (NB: There's two rules in Vietnam -- roads are for driving motorbikes up and down on; pavements are for parking them! Good luck walking tourist!) we found only two out of five of the bars, restaurants and travel agents recommended all those years ago. Most of them had been replaced by holes in the ground advertised as foundations for a new Hilton or some such megastructure or Scotch Whiskey outlet. We have been treated well by everyone we have met, though, (if you discount the frequency of them laughing at us -- or is it just me and my Glasgow World Sci-Fi Convention t-shirt?). All in all, this is very pleasant.

We did find one bar mentioned in our pretty-much-useless guide, the Bamboo Bar. A tiny bamboo-decorated ('natch!) corner establishment on the river front selling cheap bottles of Tiger to a backdrop of Pink Floyd and Pearl Jam. As Sheldon Cooper would say: "This is my spot!" Still, we did find the railway station and successfully negotiated the purchase of some tickets to our next destination on Tuesday -- Hue -- so we achieved something today. For now, my feet hurt and the Bamboo calleth!

Gettng too old for this?

Arrgh! Dammit! Got scammed by a taxi rip off merchant at Saigon airport. I should know better than this! Don't take the offer of a ride from the first guy who picks up your bags (we did). Don't get into an unmetered taxi (we did). Don't pay a second guy up front after the bags were placed in the boot (we did). And work out exactly what you are giving him (I didn't). As it was I was having trouble working out decimal points in my head: 33,000 Dong to the GBP or 20,000 Dong to the USD. You have to use all three over here. My first attempt at getting money out from the ATM netted me a single bill worth 3 quid. The second attempt to change some US Dollars at the Bureau wasn't much better. I'm too embarrassed to say exactly how much I gave the guy (but it was a lot of beer tokens) but he did take us to the hotel we told him to I suppose it could have been worse. Left me angry with myself all night, though.

Linda tried to calm me down by taking me to the Le Pub in Chua An Lac, one of our favourite drinking n' eating alleyways in South East Asia. A few cold draught Tigers and Long Island Iced Teas later and my annoyance was muted to a dull roar. We had another at the Allez Boo, a sort of bamboo furniture street corner bar that plays ancient 70s pop rock, where a tiny thing who was all teeth, and smiles, and hope for the future got our drinks wrong in a delightful way. She wanted to know: "Where you from?"
"England." Wondering quickly whether we'd upset Vietnam recently along with the other Middle East countries.
"What you do?" She showed no sign of serving anyone else. As it turned out, she'd only been doing the job for for nights. Don't think she was enjoying it much. She was, apparently, learning to be an accountant.
"Nothing." Which was completely true. She looked at me sideways, as they do over here.
"You are lying." Still beaming away but with a sort of frown. Everyone has to work, don't they?
"You must be very rich." She concluded. Not as much as I was before we got in the dammed taxi, I muttered to myself. Thanks for bringing it up.
Taking the hint, we paid up, gaving her an ernormous tip amounting to around £1.50.

So now I was feeling guilt as well as anger. To top it all, we both had a crappy night's sleep as the hotel, one we stayed in last time we were here, put us on the top floor right under the breakfast cum evening meal dining room and next to the stairs everyone used noisily to get there. To be honest, the adventure wasn't getting off to a brilliant start.

We successfuly changed rooms the next day and, after an interesting breakfast (deep fried tofu in plum sauce, anyone?) set off in the lunchtime humidity to see if the upmarket Dong Khoi area had changed much in two years, walking carefully (i.e. nervously) between the swarms of motorbikes and scooters as being run over would have improved our moods much. It hadn't -- changed much, that is -- apart from one of the roadside wine bars turning into another Armani outlet and the building of another couple of corporate skyscrapers. Tonight, I think it's back to An Lac in the De Tham area which is much more downmarket and suited to our tastes. Tomorrow, we're flying to Da Nang. 'Ware Taxis!!!

Onward already.

Dammit! We were just getting into the sleep-swimmingpool-suds routine but now we have to pack our bags to move on. No, this is planned; we haven't been kicked out Chez Cav for misbehaving just yet. Last night saw us follow a now-familiar routine. Happy hour - in an Irish bar on Ekkamai would you believe - then eats in a nearby rather smart Cajun-Mexican restaurant. Yup, stange mix of culinary delight but the food is marvelous and the restaurant, called Bourbon Street, is somewhat famous having been relocated after the destruction of Washington Square on Soi 22. I mention this in order to draw your attention to this article. Apart from being quite a funny piss-take on the western (male) tourist it is also quite spot-on! Linda and I think we actually met Melvin Summerville when we wandered down the Square looking for a place to have a drink during a local election lock-down. He was an old American geezer we got talking to who rambled on about his "local" -- the Lone Star -- as they were one of the few bars that let him smoke inside. (And no, we didn't get a drink: see the other link below! And yes, I realise that could be me!) If you do find the article funny, take a look at two of the articles on the right hand sidebar referring to the woman on the go go stage or the expat sobriety riots, As I say, sadly it is all mostly true.

This morning, we took a stroll down to the wonderfully posh, air-conditioned (have I mentioned yet that it is hot and sunny here? Over 30 degrees C!) shopping mall called Emporium. On the top floor is a huge food court where, giggling like naughty schoolkids, we had breakfast at an ice-cream parlour. A strawberry 'n banana cream scoop with chocoltae chips and a squirty cream iced cappachino for me and a fudge moca scoop with almonds and iced tea for Linda. Bart and Lisa Simpson on a sugar bender! Hyperactive for the rest of the day! This is what holidays are all about! Tonight, we think we'd better tone it down a bit and avoid the happy hours. Just have tea at the Ekkamai Beer Garden (where we went on the first night) but without the 3 litre Singha beer tower since we've got to go to the airport tomorrow. Anyway, Mike is still in KL.

Tomorrow it's Vietnam. Flying to Saigon for a two-night stopover then onward to Da Nang courtesy of Vietnamese Airlines, so we'll probably be off the grid for a bit.

God! I love this place!

A brief word on where we are living for the next few days. Since Mike did the honourable thing and quit working as a corporate stooge for the government he discovered a downside: the Cavs had to find somewhere else to live. So here we are at the end of a truncated Soi 59 off Sukhumvit, midway between the pre-mentioned Soi 63 (Ekkamai) and Soi 55 (Thonglor) arterial roads. Although technically "downsized" from their apartment on Soi 39, it still features a huge living/kitchen/diner area, three bedrooms and, most importantly to parasitical house guests, a modest swimming pool on the roof. The latter featuring in our post-hangover afternoon recovery plans. There is also a very loud Mynah Bird somehwere that I have never seen that likes to wish me Happy Birthday at innappropriate moments.

Having recovered from our "jet lag" (and Carolyn still stuck in the South of England) it fell to Mike to further entertain us on Saturday night. Dinner was on a street across Sukhumvit Road on Soi 38. There's a grouping of mobile street food vendors that share a communal table-and-chair area behind their industrial-sized woks. We ordered deep fried seafood starters from one, a variety of soft and crispy noodle dishes from another, and four extremely large bottles of Singha from presumably whoever runs the seating area. All for around £10 for the three of us. AND the food was delicious, so who's gonna argue with that!

Mike, in his usual inimitable style, suggested touring a few of the more interesting bars. Linda, having been there before, demurred. We, quite properly, escorted her home in return for which she gave me a highly valued Free Pass. (It needs to be mentioned, I suppose, that said Free Pass was unilaterally revoked when we both came home slightly before 4 the next morning!) The pub crawl was as interesting as ever in Bangkok. We clutched a couple of Beer Laos in a bar on the corner of the entrance to Nana Plaza watching a varying assortment of people going to work the night shift (this, my friends, is Diversity In Action!), follwed by a tour of some wierd and wonderful establishments (I'm not going to spell them all out here -- use your imaginations!). We did drop into Mike's local where the waitresses claimed to remember me from two years ago and told me how great I was looking. Of course, I had to buy them all a drink (it's a dirty trick, stroking the masculine ego, even at my age, but when has it ever failed? Foolish Old fart!).

It's been unkindly commented that I'm not up to this sort of lifestyle. Okay, I didn't surface 'til one in the afternoon and admit I didn't look quite as "great" as I imagined I did ten hours earlier but, hey, no head down the toilet yet! In any case, Mike has left for Kuala Lumpur this afternoon so that's one degree of temptation removed. Last night, Linda and I revisited an old haunt -- the Robin Hood pub -- for happy hour Tiger Beer and G&Ts and a green curry and Ceasar salad (and chips). Still as we remebered except the girls were wearing functional trousers and aprons instead of bright green Heinekin miniskirts. Hope the place is not going downhill. Well, this place is seven hours ahead of England so it's 4 o'clock in the afternoon. Somewhere, there's a happy hour  just starting(y'know, sometime we've got to get some cultural stuff in, methinks . . .).

Not lost . . . Just waking up

We left the developing-country disaster called LHR Terminal 3 an hour late at 2200 hrs which was a bit worrying as we were only due for an hour transfer time at Muscat (and it normally takes that long to get off the bloody plane!). Considering that our taxi picked us up before 1600 hrs that left five hours kicking or heels at the airport. Of course, security queues kindly filled up a lot of it. Grrr! There's a crappy bar called the Bridge that discouraged you from drinking by charging £4.50 for a pint of Stella (although we found a slightly more trendy Italian bar called Oriel that sold one for £3.95) . And as for shopping, do 99% of economy class travellers really need 1000 square metres of Harrods floorspace to browse? A truly soulless experience that only British corporate greed can design. Oman Air, on the other hand was a delight. 34 inch leg room, for crying out loud. No sharp pain when the idiot in front slams the chair back. Movies all the way (check out Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter!). And the outbound flight was only just over 6 hours so we had plenty of time to dash across Muscat airport. The second leg was even shorter: just over five hours to Bangkok arriving earlier than predicted. Curious in some ways: we set off just after dawn over Arabia, charged spinwards across the globe and arrived just after dusk in Thailand. Missed a whole day. Now if I could just learn to sleep upright . . .

Mike was a star, already waiting at the airport with his trusty pickup and ferried us to their new domicile. He suggested we go out for a beer as it was only eight in the evening of the 4th January (although, subjectively, it was still midday for us. Either way, it was two days without sleep but having driven up Thonglor Road (great name that; sounds like a '70s sword 'n sorcery hero) with Mike pointing out all the bars and restaurants, we discovered a new lease of life. A quick tour of Ekkamai (read: bars with prospective happy hours) we ended up in an outdoor restaurant on Ekkamai junction. Great place! Favoured by the Thai young set, festooned with coloured lights and lanterns, entertained by a Thai pop/group and a three litre tower of Singha beer we spend far too many hours wading through the menu. By one o'clock the next morning (that would be the 5th now) we were feeling some pain (or is that no pain!) and called it a day (or two). Ten hours' coma later we are up and raring to go for real!!

The Power Of Prophesy

 . . . or rather, the lack of it. Well, the world didn't end as advertised and the entire country suffered from Neptune's Revenge after I was uncharacteristically upbeat about the unseasonal sunny weather in December. And as for predicting our imposition on Mike and Carolyn in Bangkok . . . well, they got one better and descended en masse upon Chez Lampen on Christmas Day. I had to sacrifice the Doctor Who Christmas Special (my version of the traditional Queen's Message) as there was no way I was going to try and watch that in front of Mike. (I'm not being unreasonably mean here: we all went to see Avatar in 3D in a Bangkok Imax a few years back and he was a nightmare. "What's happening now?" "How come they can all speak English?" "Why are they blue?" That was before and after falling asleep in the middle of it and snoring. Never again!) In fact, the only thing predictable about Christmas was that it was alcoholic! A couple of hours round the local pub at lunchtime and then down to the serious business of emptying the fridge 'till midnight. Christmas dinner went the way of Christmas Doctor Who as well. 'Twas fun, tho'.

Hmm. Wrote the above in 2012 and today in 2013 it's sunny again (*shakes fist at sky*). If my random burbling hasn't given it away; yes, I'm bored. Having dipped a toe into the seasonal sea of affability I find myself fed up with all the dutiful partying (my age, you know!). Last night (that would be New Year's Eve) I found I couldn't even make it to 12 o'clock, having watched the Prince of Persia film on BBC1 and realising it took me the entire two hours to drink a single glass of leftover Christmas wine. Finally gave up at 2330 hrs only to be woken up by off-key female singing, a strong but boring base beat and rather too-loud firework explosions from the Salmon Leap pub at one minute into 2013 (don't they realise the Earth is spherical and it is already half a day into 2013 in Australia!!??).

Deity! I need a holiday!

This all seems spookily familiar . .

2012: the end of the Mayan Calendar and, if you believe the hype and Roland Emmerich, the end of civilisation as we know it! Therefore, it is with and enormous amount of optimism that we have plundered our savings and blown a few grand on yet another tour of South East Asia in 2013. Of course, this uncharacteristic feeling of slightly-more-than-half-full glassware could be due to a Christmas-infested December where the sun is actually shining for once, or that the winds are bracing but not actually freezing the roads and paralysing the country's airports, or that the volcanoes in Iceland are quiescent for a change, or that the Christmas commercial hype is not as mind-numbingly oppressive as usual (hmm - perhaps the recession has some benefits after all). Or maybe its the alcohol. Or maybe I've had a stroke and haven't noticed.

The demise of Planet Earth notwithstanding, we plan to escape Dreary Britain on the 3rd January 2013. If this all feels spookily familiar it's because we are flying to Bangkok again, imposing ourselves on long-suffering friends, invading their newly rented apartments (you can run but you can't hide - muhahaha!) and planning all sorts of adventures in obscure places. Our seven week mission is, again, to explore strange new bars, to seek out new food and ancient civilisations, and to boldly split infinitives where no blog has gone before.