closing

I’m back in Norway, and it’s good. The summer here is beautiful, and if I think about it I wouldn’t want to spend it anywhere else. To those who have been following this blog; I’m sorry it’s taken me so long to post a closure.

My last week in Thailand was spent in Bangkok, which is, according to Lonely Planet, the cookiest capitol on earth. Malin stayed for two days before she had to get on a plane back to Sweden, so we checked out the malls, got cheap hair cuts, roamed around Khao San and went to see the Reclining Buddah (sleeping, 42m long).

After Malin left I met Taya (to some of you Rita or Cream), who I hadn’t seen since we left North Carolina in 06. She invited me to stay at her house, so I packed up my stuff and left not-so-nice Khao San (probably not for good though). Hanging out with Taya for a few days was really fun, and for the last 40something hours busy law-studying Tawan skipped school to chill with us as well.
Hanging out with Taya and Tawan made me like Bangkok a lot more than I had from arriving in the Khao San area and not getting the very best first impression. Taya took me to the weekend market one day, and I think anyone who have been there before will understand that it is now my main reason for going back to Bangkok (+ of course visiting Taya and Tawan again, and having some of the delicious thai bbq I miss oh so much). We spent the nights in nice little botique cafès, we found a blues bar, and an arabic garden where they had huge pillows, waterpipes and really good bagels.
I actually grew to like Bangkok a lot, and I had such a good time those last days I really didn’t want to leave.

I came home on June 24th, but after 5 days I packed up, and together with a group of good friends I headed for Denmark and the Roskilde festival, where we stayed for a week, listening to great bands and music, dancing, singing, drinking and soaking up the sun that shone bright every day but the last one. It was such a good week, seeing Radiohead from 300 feet away, Duffy, Grinderman, Neil Young, SOLOMON BURKE, Jose Gonzales and the funky Black Seeds, among others. Just hanging out in the world of Roskilde. I’m definitely going back next summer.





Right now I’m living up the mountain, and it’s kinda like a working holiday. Days here are lazy, nights are not. I’m enjoying it. Laying in the grass reading, enjoying the sun and the smell of the ground, spending time with good friends/colleagues hanging out at the view tower, or the roof, listening to music and watching the sunset, biking, making tea, painting and decorating the shitty rooms we have up here. Hiking, or just going on walks with no real destination. Life is good up here when it’s summer.

Koh Pangan and it's love for the moon

We're back in Bangkok after 9 days on beautiful, quiet, crazy, cooky Koh Pangan - the island with something for everyone. We spent the first rainy days on Haad Gruad beach resort, a negative place where only dogs knew how to behave. We met some cool people there though, and togther we did cross the line to excitement a few times (playing cards and, well, playing cards).

After having had enough of the rude owner of the place, everyone left on the same day. Malin, Josefien (a dutch girl we met there), and I went to Bottle Beach up on the northern tip of the island. It's supposed to be one of the most beautiful places on the island and you can only get there by boat. Unfortunately it continued raining for the whole time we were there, so our days were spent lying around on cushions in the restaurant, reading, and playing cards and 4 in a row (which Malin found so exciting she later bought one to take on the plain home).

We also walked up to the view point one day, and swam in the rain with the flying fish.

On the 15th we travelled down to Haad Rin, the well-known full moon party beach. It's a crazy, crazy place, but so wonderful. The days we spent there were definitely our best days on the island, and we were sad to leave yesterday morning, the day of the full moon party.

We'll come back some time though.

On the bus back up to Bangkok we ended up, by coincidence, in the V.I.P lounge, thanks to two british girls who managed to talk the seating woman in to letting them sit in there (though it was "only for staff"). It made the trip a lot more comfortable than it could have been.

Laos, the Mekong and back to Thailand

I've been too lazy to blog ever since we left Laos, but I'm still alive and well.
We left Luang Prabang on the 30th of May, on a slowboat up the Mekong to Huay Xai; a two day journey. We were told it would be hard on our behinds, so we all bought either pillow covers or big lao bags from the night market that we stuffed with clothes to prepare ourselves. The boatride turned out to be pretty comfortable though, compared to what we had imagined. It wasn't at all crowded as we had been told, in fact, the only foreigners on the boat were Malin and I, Krishna and Yushan, Jenny and Grace who we met climbing in Vang Vieng, and Nanna and Bjarke from Denmark who we had met the day before at Big Brother Mouse (a children book publishing place where Krish, Yushan and I went to help teenagers with their english. http://www.bigbrothermouse.com/ We played scrabble and had fun for half a day).
The two days on the boat were some of the most realaxing days we've had on this trip. There wasn't really much to do but read, listen to music and watch the scenery. We spent the night in Pak Beng, at a hostel run by women who took us to a restaurant where we all got free LaoLao (local rice whiskey) after dinner. It's a disgusting drink, it really tastes aweful, but Grace, Jenny, Malin and Bjarke stood up and finished it, though in the slightly strange combination of LaoLao, sticky rice and mashed potatoes. All at once.

We also had to spend the night in Huay Xai (no LaoLao here), Malin and I had planned to do the Gibbon Experience (http://www.gibbonx.org/gibbon_rehabilitation.php), but after visiting the office we decided it was too expensive for us, so we joined the others back in to Thailand instead. Once there, we made our way to Chiang Rai, where we walked around and found nothing to do but buy t-shirts, and then on to Chiang Mai.
Chiang Mai is in my opinion a too big small town, though it's still nice and quiet (and full of temples). We spent three lazy days there, and two sort of productive days. The lazy days were spent mostly in the many bookstores, just walking around, consuming food or hanging out in coffee shops and what came to be our "regular bar", The Wall. There we played pool and drank colorful alcoholic drinks (almost) all named after Pink Floyd songs.
Krish, Malin and I went to the Doi Suithep Temple one day. It lies on top of a mountain right on the outskirts of the city, and it's said that you havn't been to Chiang Mai before you've visited Doi Suithep. Unfortunately we were there on a cloudy day, so we didn't get to see the view that I'm sure is beautiful when the sun is out.
On our two last days in Chiang Mai, Malin and I did a massage course. Mainly thai massage, but also a little oil massage. It was interesting, getting a thai massage is kinda like stretching without having to do anything yourself. They don't actually walk on you, but it's not far from it. It's good in a strange way.

From Chiang Mai we took a bus to Sukhothai. We spent a day there biking around the historical city, which is an old capitol, like Ayuttaya (sp?), and it was nice to see all those temples that were so well preserved.
We got on a night bus to Bangkok the same night, got no sleep at all and were almost falling asleep standing up when we arrived at the northern bus terminal at 5 a.m the next morning. We managed somehow, by using the international sign language/hand gestures and pointing, to order some breakfast; fried noodles and vegetables, from a woman who didn't speak a word english. Then we got a taxi to the southern bus terminal, booked tickets for another night bus further south, left our (by now) big-ass, heavy backbacks there and jumped on a city bus headed for Lumpini park. We were both unable to stay awake, but the nice ticket lady woke us up at the right stop, and we went straight to the nearest tree and fell asleep for two hours among other people taking their Sunday nap on the grass.
After sleeping in the park, and in Starbucks, we went back to the bus station and got on a more comfortable night bus. Woke up in Surat Thani and took the boat to Koh Pangan where we'll be living an extremely laid back life until the 17th.
:)

Four days in Luang Prabang!

Window seat view, Vang Vieng - Luang Prabang

Luang Prabang night market

Luang Prabang

Elephant riding!

Mekong river

5.10!

Malin, Krishna and Yushan (two girls we met in Vientiane who we've been hanging out with) and I went climbing yesterday (23-05) with Green Discovery, and it was one of the best days I've had so far on this trip. We were with a group of 9 people in total, plus 3 guides and a dog, and it was really good to be climbing outdoors again. The cliff we were at is right on the other side of the river from Vang Vieng, and it was nice because there was something for everyone there. We all got to try all the climbs we wanted, and I got my first 5.10! :)


Today (24-05) Malin wanted to go tubing, but Krishna, Yushan and I weren't that excited about it so we decided to have a long breakfast instead (not watching Friends), and then rent bikes and go look for the blue lagoon.
We never found the "blue" lagoon, but we did have a very fun day.
Krishna started it off by crashing in to a brand new, red and shiny moped parked by the bridge (turned out the bike she got didn't have any breaks). We got sort of lost on a field, stuck in mud and bitten by cave mosqitoes, but it was all fun so we kept going. We figured that anyhow it would be good fun exercise, and though we didn't find a real lagoon we did find something cool at the end. We'd passed two signs along the way that said "natural swimming and jumping", wich we found under a scetchy, very high hand-made bamboo bridge. We also adventured inside a cave, and at the end of it (not very far in), we found a little transparent lake wich was extremely cool and definitely made up for not finding the blue lagoon we had such high expectations of :)

Vang Vieng, Laos

We're in beautiful Vang Vieng, and loving it. The days are spent chilling in hammocks down by the river, drinking Lao Beer, going caving, trekking, tubing and kayaking (and maybe some climbing), and of course, watching Friends. Nobody goes to Vang Vieng without spending at least one evening lying on cushions in a restaurant watching Friends. Every single restaurant here are showing reruns of every season all day long (except from two who are showing Family Guy).
It's a beautiful, though a touristy place.

Crazy Beautiful Vietnam

After being on the road in Vietnam for about 10 days now I've come to the conclusion that people here buy their driver lisence on the street. Driving here is litterary "TUT OG KJOR", it's worse than Bangkok insane.
The way to do it in the city, as far as I've understood, is to honk as much as you can and just go. The more and louder you honk, it seems the more rights you have. The roads are packed with mopeds, cyclos and kids riding bikes, and crossing on foot is a really interesting adventure the first time you do it. Saigon is especially busy, and as the bible says; "wherever you go you're gonna have to cross the road eventually, so do as the locals do and just start walking". We did, as slow as possible, and after many small steps we arrived safely and intact on the other side.
The worst, in my opinion, is the motorway. The white line in the middle doesn't seem to excist here, or they use it as a guideline for where you should be when cars are coming the opposite way. Everyone (but an occasional roadtripping foreigner, mopeds and pedestrians) drive in the middle of the road. About 2 seconds before hitting the vehicle coming the opposite way (also in the middle), they both honk and make a sharp turn out to the right, only to make a sharp turn back on to the middle as soon as they can. It makes travelling more fun, in a sick way, but also a little more terrifying.

From Hue we took another night bus directly to Hanoi. It ended up being the worst bus trip any of us had even been on - 12 hours of being thrown back and forth, sliding up and down in the long seat, and no sleep at all.
The plan was originally to go straight to Halong Bay, but when we arrived in Hanoi at 6 in the morning and neither of us could keep our eyes open we went with the first guy offering us a place to stay (wich wasn't too bad, a 10 dollar room including cocrooches(kakerlakker), free internet and breakfast). Despite a tiring start, it ended up being a pretty good day. After 6 hours of sleep on above average comfortable beds we spent the rest of the day realaxing in the sun by one of the lakes.

The next morning we got up (an hour early), and left for Halong Bay. (We have now officially given up on time zones, as they seem to change day by day). Instead of doing the whole thing on our own, which would have been more expensive, we joined a two day-one night trip on one of the big Halon Bay boats you see on all the post cards. All meals included (good ones too), kayaking, disco-caves (lacking the music though), and swimming. One time only, for more we were told to pay 5 USD extra on each spot. Halong Bay is really amazing. It looks a little like Krabi in Thailand, just a lot bigger, and it's so beautiful. There are people living on the sea, in tiny houses floating around, and on our kayak adventure we found an old pirate cave.
All in all it was two GOOD days. Being away from all the noise and pollution in Hanoi was maybe the best thing about it, and also seeing the stars again.
All the star formations, like Little Bear, Big Bear, Orion etc are all upside down here by the way.

I hope all is good back home in Norway and NC. We are leaving to Laos tomorrow and I have no idea about how easy/hard it is to find internet access there, but we'll keep staying alive and having fun :)

Ruins, tombs and mopeds

The feeling in this country is so different from the other places we've been so far. I can't really describe it, it's just special.

We're in Hue right now, only a 12 hour bus ride from Hanoi. We arrived this afternoon, and spent the rest of the day zipping around on mopeds with two aussies, getting lost in the countryside and visiting old (and not so old) tombs. That's about it for what to do in Hue, so after some more tomb-exploring tomorrow we're going north on another night bus.

The tomb of some emperor. Looks like it's the age of Angkor, but it's actually only about 100 years old.

Meeting Vietnam

Our first meeting with Vietnam was a fun/crazy/interesting/good one. We arrived in Ho Chi Minh City around 6.30 p.m yesterday, excited to see if they'd let us in to the country or not (originally you have to apply for a visa before you get there, but some new rules we came across online say Scandinavians are granted one at arrival). Luckily the man in the passport control, who looked really grumpy and mean from far away, turned out to be the nicest passport controller we've ever met. He didn't speak much english, but smiled and said "my friend, your friend" while pointing to Malin who was doing a silly dance because she has ADD sometimes :p He let us in to the country and we walked downstairs to locate our backpacks among all the suitcases lying around on the floor.
As we needed some money for the bus I changed 10 US dollars and got 150 000 dong, and a 5000 coin (the currency here is ridiculous, but sort of fun. Yesterday we withdrew 3 millions each (a week budget)). Unfortunately though there was no bus to be found outside the airport, and the taxi drivers around all had different stories, like "no bus, this new airport", or "no bus, finished today" etc, etc. Not wanting to be fooled, we (and two brazilian guys who came on the same plane), decided not to believe them, so after barganing the price for a taxi (for a loooong time), we started to walk out towards the city instead. Some of the taxi drivers followed us, honking and laughing and trying to make a deal, but they turned around when we got to the motorway, and old men on crappy motorcycles took over instead. After a while we got tired of walking, and ended up taking a 10 dollar taxi to mini-hostel street.
Mini hostels are pretty interesting, and all very cute. The bigger ones are run like any other hostel/guesthouse, and have "normal" sized bedrooms and baths, but you can also get a room in a real mini hostel, which is how we understood it; a family living in a 2x2m room and renting out the other floors to tourists. The cheap ones you can get down to 5-6$, but you have to climb x# of stairs.
After setteling in to a nice little room we went out and bought dinner for 2$ each. Very cheap, but very good.

We're spending one more day in Ho Chi Minh, and then we're taking a night bus up to Hoi An. It takes 22 hours, -two nights and one day in Nah Trang, which is supposed to be beautiful.

Cameron Highlands <3

Teatime

Land of teas

Malaysia is wonderful. We ended up staying at Perhentian Kecil for almost a week. Most of the time was spent on the beach reading books under colorful umbrellas, but we also had fun playing beach volley with the guesthouse crowd, some island exploring, underwater headstands and body surfing. On wednesday Malin and I went on a snorkelling tour around the island, and got to see giant turtles, big sharks (1.5 m) and parrot fish. The parrot fish was the most scariest as it would swim straight against us moving it's jaws up and down as if it was gonna eat us.
On thursday we left the island to go to Cameron Highlands. Maria stayed behind but we're hoping she'll meet up with us later.
I think Cameron Highlands might be my favorite place on this trip so far. Not only was it good to see real mountains again and breath in some cooler air, the mountains were all covered with either jungle, strawberry farms or tea plantations. You might have thought England is the tea's national state, but in my opinion England is no longer even high on the list. Malaysia, on the other hand, is on the top. We stayed at a place called Father's Guesthouse in Tanah Rata (highly recommended), and thank's to their awesome tours (and funny tour guides), we managed to, all in one day, visit a tea plantation, a tea factory, have some local tea and scones, climb(in Malay; drive up) the highest mountain in the region, do a jungle walk, learn how to survive in the jungle, and visit a tribe village.

Right now we're in Kuala Lumpur, realaxing and being real tourists. We're flying to HCMC, Vietnam on the 7th, our plan is to go north to Hanoi and then cross in to Laos. It's not a very detailed plan yet, so if anyone has any suggestions on interesting things to do, let us know.

pictures

From the train on the Death Railway in Kanchanaburi, Thailand













Khao San Road, Bangkok during the waterfestival (Thai New Year, April 13th - 16th)















Maria and Malin after walking 100 m on Khao San Road on April 14th :)















Freedom Beach, Koh Tao











Krabi, Thailand
















Our outdoor bathroom in Koh Lanta :D

















Long Beach on Palau Perhentian Kecil, Malaysia.
This is where we are at the moment, and we'll probably stay for 4-5 more days because the place is so great :)

Koh Tao

Originally the plan was to go north from Bangkok and in to Laos, but we ended up changing our plans at the last minute and went south instead.
Escaping the water crazyness in Bangkok we went to Cha-Am, a little colorful town on the east coast. We had intended to spend a few days there to realax, but because of dirty water and stinging gellyfish we decided to go further south after only one night. We ended up on Koh Tao, an island north of Koh Panang, and I can only say Koh Tao is my favorite place so far on this trip.
1st, we got a bungalow at FREEDOM BEACH. It had cracks in the floor, cocrooches (sp?) and a crappy fan, but still - the prettiest place so far. The beach (100 m from our bungalow) was pretty small, but there were palm trees, white sand and turqoise water, and the beach bar (decorated with Bob Marley posters and flags) played (of course) Bob Marley and Jack Johnson all day long.
On day two it rained as we woke up, but after breakfast it cleared up and we walked to another beach where there was supposed to be some small sharks and giant turtles. We didn't see any, but went to the city later to buy snorkelling gear so we can go looking later.
The food at Koh Tao (and in all the other places I've been so far) is delicious. We're being careful and only eating at restaurants (which is cheap anyways), and no one's gotten sick yet. The restaurant at Freedom beach is the perfect place for chilling, they have pillows on the floor and every night we lie down and listen to the animals making noises in the dark. Last night a lizard ran across my stomach and onto Malin's leg. We screamed and people gave us weird looks :)

This morning we took the boat to Koh Pangan and on to Surat Tani, from where we were put on a minibus to Krabi. We got a really nice hotel room with a beautiful bathroom and a toilet that flushes, for only 450 baht a night. Tomorrow we're going on a boat tour to 4 different islands, one of them is Koh Poda, which according to Vagabond is supposed to have psychadelig snorkelling, so we're excited :)
I'll try to post some pictures, but so far I havn't found a computer where I can easily plug in my camera.

Happy new year!

Discoveries so far:

# There's a thai version of Hana in Kanchanaburi.
# Chips have really weird flavors over here ("Seaweed" and "Spicy Seafood")
# The mountains around Kanchanaburi look a lot like the Appalachians.
# In Thailand they celebrate new years in April, and between the 13th and the 16th everybody goes crazy with water and some kind of chalc (sp?) mixed with water which they rub on everybodies faces, smile and laugh.
# New years celebrations are great fun, but only for so long when you're chuggalugging all your stuff around.
#Thailand is great :)

"Vi befinner oss naa over Nordpolen. .. altsaa den nordlige delen av Polen.."

I made it from Bangkok to Kanchanaburi without any major difficulties.
After being positively suprised by SAS on the way over here (excellent food, Juno, and a humorous captain) I fell in love with Bangkok the second I got out of the airport.
After some wandering around the bus stop and dodging sneaky taxi drivers I found a guy with bright pink lipstick on, selling bustickets to Khao San Road for only 150 baht (4$, 18 NOK).
From Kaho San Road I tried to find bus 155, which supposedly goes to Bangkok's southern bus terminal, but after walking back and forth on the same street a couple times I gave up and got in a tuktuk instead. I quickly discovered the driver didn't speak a word english, but thanks to the map lipstick-guy gave me (with both thai and english names on places), he got me to the bus terminal. I did concider spending the night in Bangkok earlier, since I didn't know if I would have enough time getting to Kanchanauri, but I ended up making the very last bus (with about 5 minutes).

Kanchanaburi has been great so far. I've spent the day biking around town, going to museums and other tourist attractions, drinking as much water as I can and trying to get used to the heat.
Tomorrow I'm doing a tour to one of the famous waterfalls around here, some hot springs, the hellfire pass, the death railway and the bridge over the river Kwai, and on monday I go back to Bangkok to meet Maria and Malin.