Sunday, November 9, 2008

Tailors in Hoi An

After 16 hours on a bus up the coast we arrived in Hoi An a smaller
town known for all it's tailors. It was raining the whole day we got
here and the only thing we did was to go to the tailor. It's really
crap and I ordered a suit and five shirts. We also had time for a
first fitting and we have our second fitting at noon today so they are
really fast.

We are going to try to leave for Laos tomorrow if our clothes are done
by then. Then we have atlest 16 in a bus again before we reach
Savannakhet in Laos.

Tuesday, November 4, 2008

Mui Ne

So we have arrived in Vietnam and have already finished Saigon. Now we
are a few hours up the coast at a beach city called Mui Ne. It's a
real turist place with resorts all along the beach. Our plan here is
mostly to relax at the beach
>
> But today we went on a tour to the sand dunes around here. It was
> really fantastic. We could slide down the slopes and we got to see
> the sunset at re sand dunes. We also saw a really poisinous snake,
> we don't know the name of it but it's supposed to be really dangerous.

Bruce Lee

When we got back a tuk tuk driver who called himself Bruce Lee picked us up at the bus station. We had met him before we left for Angkor. He took us around Phnom Penh. We got to we the cruel S-21 prison and the mass graves from the civil war in the 70s. They had a big house where you could see the skulls from the victims they hard dug up from the mass graves. It can't understand how they can put them in display like they.

Later in the evening after we had dinner Bruce joined us for a couple of bears in the bar before we sad god buy to him. Today when we woke up it was raining so we stayed in bed late. Tomorrow we are leaving for Vietnam and I can hopefully find a wireless Internet so I can upload all the blog posts I have been writing on my iPhone.


Angkor

We went up to Angkor to see all the temples they have up there. It was really impressive to see them, they are huge. We saw all the big must see temples and we had our own tuk tuk driver that took us around the whole day. We only spent three days up there including the buss ride there and back to Phom Penh.


Change to the travel plan

So today was our last day in Hong Kong. We are sitting on the plane to Bangkok as I'm writing this. At first we had planned to stay in Hong Kong until Saturday and spend Friday on the beach but since Hong Kong was really expensive we decided we could spend that day on the beach in Vietnam instead and save the extra money it costs in Hong Kong. We also needed to switch hostel today (Thursday) since our reservation only was for 2 nights and the where fully booked after our reservation so we couldn't extend our stay.

So we woke up today with the intention of moving to another hostel for one night before taking the train on Friday. But it turned out we couldn't find a hostel this morning so talked about leaving today and we decided to look and see I'd we could find a cheap flight to Hanoi, Vietnam. Because if we would take the train to Vietnam it would take at least two days and 3 different trains and one bus just on the Chinese side. We found a flight to Hanoi through Bangkok that was cheap but then we couldn't book it online the same day so we had to go down to the airlines office downtown to book it directly from them. So we did that and also decided to only go to Bangkok and go through Laos to Vietnam and then down through Vietnam to Cambodia to Thailand.

After we had booked the flight we walked around on Kowloon island and Frida did some shopping. It was extremely hot so we went to an Internet cafe to try book a hostel for Bangkok. And while Frida did that I looked at the visa rules for Thailand and noticed you need and exit ticket to get a visa. So we has to rethink our plans again. Eventually we found a ticket to Cambodia for tomorrow so now we are going there instead. And then we'll  go up through Vietnam and Laos to Thailand. So it's almost the same plan but we are coming from the south instead.

We just started our resent for Bangkok and after our arrival we have 14 hours to kill before the next flight. We don't know how we will spend them yet but maybe at the airport but we have to see.

Hong Kong

So we arrived in Hong Kong after 20 hours on another train. Hong Kong wasn't as beautiful or clean as I had expected. We stayed on Hong Kong island where all the big skyscrapers are located. The hostel was fine but very small which is what you can expect in Hong Kong.

The first full day in Hong Kong was spent shopping and I bought myself a iPhone. In the evening we took the tram up to Victoria Peak to watch Victoria harbor in the sunset and later the light show they have there every night, "the symphony of lights". It was a real disappointment and not ass impressive as we thought it would be.