International Sampoon's vacation 2007

London, the land of Royality, free art, tea and soccer. I should be dead tried after the probably worst plane travel of my life, but with a new city and a new culture at hand I still manage to kick around after my 30 hour hell. I normally look forward to flying, I get to sit down and read, watch all the new films, have food bought to me continiously and grog if I want - but this flight was different.....
With a killer hangover and a touch of food poisoning I spent most of my time with my head in the sick bag depositing massive amounts of radioactive green fluid. The only thing powerful to numb the pain was the hours and hours of blackjack and poker played on my little tv screen on the back the seat in front of me. Most of the trip inbetween the sick episodes was fine, except for that arsed faced women smoking in the toilets, this time I didn´t get the usual crushed knees, we stole the vacant seats in the very front as soon as the seatbelt sign turned off making us very unpopular with the crowd behind us who where secretly plotting the same plan of action.

So, with Vietnam 'done' (taking the piss) I had planned to be entering the UK tanned golden brown and verging on a size 6 (yeah right), but thanks to all the drinking efforts, lazy afternoons and sleep-ins it so happens I am arriving as white and flabby as the Poms are! Well, at least I will fit in, finally no more stress from the thousands of street hawlkers ····

We arrived into Earl's Court a good 30 hours after leaving Hanoi. We stank real bad. I had a pale drawn face, baggy eyes and oily drab hair, the look of a smaky without a hit. Desperate to hit the bed, so relieved to be at the last leg of our journey, only to be told our room was not ready yet! to wait half and hour and to come back! (big sigh) We wandered about the main strip in the shitty rain getting mud spashed up the backs of my jeans, found some great restaurants, too bad we can never afford to go to them with the pound and all. We trogged back to the hotel only to discover more bad news of an early checkout time, a rediculous breakfast slot and the smallest room in the word, so small I could touch both wall with my feet and hands. I lugged my 20kg worth of luggage up the millions of stairs and forced in a couple of hours of snoozing, we where anxious to see what all this London fuss is about.....

The London Eye

With our drooping puppy dog eyes, we where determined to get the most out of todays Underground Pass, we braved the London chill and doned our coats and umbrella. 1st stop, Westminster, we galwked the at the impressive London Eye and took a few snaps at the massive Big Ben. The wind was so strong we where being literally blown off our feet. Street performers where 'frozen' all along the dirty Thames as we made our way to Trafalgar Square where I desperately tried to convince Sam to ride the Loins cause thats what you do at Trafalgar Sqaure, you havent been to London is you havent ridden the Lions at Trafalgar Square. Sam climbed up, its harder than it looks, he gave one of the Lions a quick pat on its butt and scrambled down with just enough time for me to take a photo. We made our way towards Leicester Square passing the famous Sherlock Holmes pub on the way.
London is so big and beautiful, full of giant impossing architecture, cobblestoned streets and beautiful old English pubs on almost every corner. Flea markets, flowers in the streets, masses of restaurant, sandwich joints and bars. We walked for hours checking the phenomanal british prices along the way....it converts to....$7 for a cup of coffee, $10 for a beer, at least $50 for a main meal and $10 or more for a sandwich... everything slaughtered our poor Aussie dollar.

Leicester Square, the broadway strip, choked full of theatre ticket offices, cheap pizza, cimemas and resturants. After an extensive search for the best and most budget comedy play we decided on 39 steps at the Criterion theatre in Piccadilly for only 19 Pounds. The show was pretty funny with only four actors playing at least 140 roles, it kept us laughing all the way though. We made our way along Convent garden, stopped to watch a street performer ride a one-wheeler whilst juggling a machetti, a bowling pin and eating an apple all at once, bits of apple slobber dribbled all over his face, of course he couldnt whipe it off, very funny. Convent Garden is a pretty place, a lady sang opera in one of the little stairwells, echoing all though the streets.
We ate our lunch in the park (marked down sangas from the supermarket) before whipping thought the National Gallery spotting some Monet and Renoir and then detoured home for a good nights sleep.

The next day I awoke, a little brighter than yesterday. my watch read 11.30am, Oh my gawd, we've missed half the day! Gotta get up only in London for three days! I showered, stirred Sam and we were both dressed and ready and f#*k it was cold! We trogged down stairs and stepped out into the frosty air.....and stopped. We both just stopped and looked about. Then we looked at each other. Bikes where still tied to the railings, last nights garbage still lay in the gutter, the street a little desolate with a few people passing the closed shops on their way for their mornings coffee.

"What time is it?"says Sam

I check my watch.... 7.30am.
This morning in my comorised slumber I must have checked my watch upsidedown. I though it said 11.3o when in fact it read 5.30! I now feel like a dickhead. Big sigh, at least we made breakfast. : )

London starts last and finishes late, the sun goes down past 8pm and stuffs up my body clock... nothing was open yet, we wondered about until 10am waiting for some action, found a cute little flea market in a georgous old church near piccadilly where thay sell antique jewelry, stamps and all sorts of second hand goods. along the same street is the largest bookstore in the world. On the 5th level is a trendy looking bar, we spent a good hour and a half flicking though travel guides, photography and of course cook books.
Today we did the most walking in a day on this whole trip. We where out for 12 hours and at least 8 of them where spent walking about. Staint Pauls and along the Millenium bridge to the Tate modern to look at some amazing art and film, ants scattering around with peices of confetti, cameras attached to bike wheels riding though the city. We also looked at some not so interesting art such as fluorescent lights arranged in the shape of a rocket, a poo brown canvas of seemingly nothing and a couple of kindergarden look alike paintings (Sam mumbling - even I could do that!)

Tate Modern

The afternoon was spent in the Sussex pub scoffing down some very fat and homemade wedges with sourcream and tomato sauce and the night was spent in a pub in Earl's Court. It was filling up quite quickly, we where lucky to find a seat. I looked around to notice it was filling up rapidly with only with men, although I didnt feel uncomfortable, the percentage of men to women was 20 to 1.
By now the pub was completely chokked, a man from Perth who grew up in London told us it was Chelsea V Manchester United tonight and that he was lucky enough to score some tickets. His 'cringo' friend from up north who was speaking fluent english (though we could understand a word of from his thick accent, only 'sheep shagger' every now and then and I had to keep reminding him that was the Kiwi's) He spent most of his time uncontrolably slobbering and laughing in my ear in his foul English and I tired of it quite quickly.
But our Perth friend saved us, said it was time to go to the game. he warmed us to watch for fights, red against blue. Him and mates where going for red, Man.United. Apparently it gets quite violent, they bash the shit out of each other just for the simple fact the other guy is baracking for the other team (boys eh) They wear 'microbadges' showing support for their team, no other colours at all, no scarfs, no hats with the teams colours, just plain clothing and 'microbadges' so when a brawl breaks out they clip off there badge rendoring them neutral do the other team doesnt know who to bash.
We move futher to the seats on the outskirts of the pub, thinking he must be over-reacting but anyhow. But when looking out the window I find a convoy of police wagons, and then more police.., then more.., and then more with full raid uniforms...., and then police horses...!

The next day we did skip breakfast and had a good sleep in cuddled within my red silk sleeping bag I bought in hanoi, turning the sheets pink. Today we are ditching the idea of the Underground. We walked up through Boxtom to south Kensington to the natural Museum.
Sam had left his stinking shoes on the windowsill along with the Camembert cheese the birds had picked to death. His shoes where soaked through (not used to the shitty weather yet) so today he sported about in shorts and his 50 cent thongs bought in vietnam in the drizzling 11 degree London weather. Our feet where aching, so sore from the hours of walking over the last couple of days. feels like I have a broken big toe, shin splints and a ripped tendon in my right hip.
The Natural History Museum felt like that new movie that is out, cant remeber the name, where at night all the dinosuars come to life. It was housed a massive old beautiful church and had such things as a 1300 year old tree trunk, human skulls and a life sized moving model of T-Rex.
We though we might as well drop into the Science Museum, its just next door. Its filled with old gadgets, rocket cars and trains...our favourite exhibit was the hands on flushing toilet sectioned to see all the inner workings. After the first flush I was astonished to find a turd in there! Sitting right down at the bottom of the S-bend. And I even more astionished when Sam had successfully flushed him away! Anxiously awaiting for the refill to deposit Mr.Hanky again for a second go... it took too long. (I´ll get him on the way back) After playing with all the gadgets, the fat and skinny mirrors, the electricity orb we headed back to the hotel. Raining and Sams feet frozen and ready to snap off we managed to get lost after I discovered the map had wriggled out of my back pocket.
Tired and completely stuffed we decided to stay in the night. Shopped at Marks and Spencer for a whole chicken and colesaw, we laid back to watch Home and Away on the tellie as the screen did laps over and over again f@#king with our eyes until we felt like we'd had a large mushy shake and the curtains where sucking us in and the light shade was moving across the ceiling......

We have decided to stay on Cat ba island for two weeks, its the perfect place in the north to really chill out. Lifes pretty tough, most days we walk along one of the 3 boardwalks streatching around the mountain cliffs that connect all 3 of Catba´s beaches, we sit and swim and watch the staff sweep the beaches clean (yes, they sweep the beaches, with staw brooms, very funny) We bum about, eat lots of tastey Vietnamese fair for lunch and then drink beer all afternoon, either on our varandah overlooking CatBa bay or at the Aussie or Kiwi bar along the main strip.

Today we did a trip to the markets to buy some veggies for a sanga, it has been very quiet on the island, but now the tourist season is just kicking in we are starting to see more 'farangs' showing up. Anyhow, the market ladies rise their prices rediculously high to any farang. One lady tried to sell us a cucumber for $2.40! I mean, I wouldn´t pay $2.40 in any country! We ditched her buisness and spent up at the store across the street. Today we have been very lazy, watching the movie channel and drinking beer in our hotel room out of tiny glass teacups. So, in the end we played some shithead at the kiwi bar and watched sleezebags looking for STD´s hovering around the brothel next door.

18th april
Today we hired a moto and rode through the lush national park in the middle of the island and then rode up through the mini farms and the flocks of goats and followed the coast half way around the island. The Island landscape is very rugged, a cross between Jarasic Park and Lost, eagels circle above and you see tiny glimpes of weird little animals scrurring off the road at the last minute. We parked the bike to have some lunch, again fried rice, shrimp Pho and some tofu (which they had to drive to the markets to get) The guy who lent us his moto left his hat clipped into the front of the bike and it was stolen while we where eating lunch. We didn´t say anything about it when we gave the bike back.

22 april
Its a glary hazey day today on CatBa, mostly the island carries a permanent creepy haze across its mountain tops and along the bay giving it an eerie effect. Last night the island had come to life. Outdoor 20 cent beer stalls had set up with their little plastic chairs along the main strip, selling peanuts and pineapples. The ladies pulling the trolleys where about selling clothes and bits n pieces. The corn lady was full up, also selling bags of fairy floss. Thousands of Japanese tourists were riding up and down the strip on gay looking double seated bicycles but they normally dissapear by 8 oclock. We are noticing the light cargo wearing, strappy sandle, day packers who are usually sporting a guidebook looking lost. They are typically of English decent, but also some Swiss and German,..and of course the place is filling with the unwashed bed bug, dready, scarf wearing traveller who gets by on two pairs of undies and 1 pair of trousers of which the crutch hangs loosely down near their knees to give a 'I just shit myself' appearance. (Why do they do that?) Generally they identify themselves with masses of cheap jewelery knotted and twisted at every link of their body and cling to their once colourful woven moinority sholder bags. Help!! They are taking over the island! My beautiful peacefull Cat Ba! We hid away at the 'Green Mango', a more upmarket bar and restuarant where thay scatter rose pettles across your table before ordering. But tonight we just wanted to laze in their lounge area and drink their very potent long Cat Ba island iced teas, although their Cuban bean soup is very tastey.

23 april
This morning, headache and all, I am awoken by open air opera style kareoke coming from one of the floating restaurants on the bay. Hmm, kareoke at 9 in the morning? They just love it, dont they. I poke my head out to see what all the fuss is about and i am suprised to find in the middle of the main road that runs along the bay, right on the grassy patch in the medium strip, a circle of Vietnamese men -with some open jawed farangs hanging about with their cameras falling out onto the road - egging on two ugly and very angry looking birds trying to rip each others heads off! I am more shocked to find they even have their own corners. At the end of a round they grab the cocks and wash them down and pat them with towel and prop them up again making them seem refreshed and ready for the next round. I had they best seats for the fight, seated on my little stool, 9 floors above all the action. I soon get bored and scramble off to find some lunch, but 6 hours later they are still going! Cruel I say.

24th
Back at the Green Mango for more Cat Ba island iced teas. We just hung about in a daze and chatted about animals walking through the kitchens and what we'll be doing in Barcelona. We ended the night getting kicked out of the dingy nightclub at the end of the street that we swore we'd never step foot in, and ended up back on the baguette ladies street corner drinking pissweek homemade beer and stuffing our faces with sausage and quail eggs. The tasteless beer was so flat and horrible but we kept on drinking it.

Its now 3.30 in the afternoon, we've pigged out for lunch and Sam has gone back to bed and will probably stay there for the rest of the day. We will probably be doing nothing at all for a while as we have spent our quota all on food and grog. we are staying on catba for another 2 nights and then are heading back to hanoi and then Sapa for a bit of trekking, need to get some exercise.

25th
It stormed last night and we sat out on the roof top, 12 stories up, and watched the lighting crack over the bay while chugging down some cold tigers. So today is not humid at all and even though I'd planned a day at the beach, the weather is a refreshing change. Tonight is our last night on the island and I´m sorta glad we are leaving as I have become amazingly lazy on this island. We spent the day walking about the boardwalks before it started raining giant freezing cold drops of icey rain. Oh well, will have to sit down at one of the 40 cent beer stalls at the western end of the beach up near the markets. We have made it a bit of a habit. We love sitting there in the arvos spending next to nothing cracking peanuts with the locals. We just begin to relax, soaking up the last of our Cat Ba island atmosphere and just as we sat back we noticed the crazy Vietnamese chick who lives in Newtown and supposively teaches French. We saw her on the back of a moto and just when we had though she haddn´t seen us....

'HEY FRIEND!' ..'HA'

She is so loud and continuosly laughs at absoluely nothingto the point where you just have to stare at her and you feel a little uncomfortable. She raves on in spasmotic fits of excitement about the cost of living just like and Australian pensioner living in the back of Warrawong, she blabbs on about the 5 cent bargin peanuts, and that we had paid double for the same boat fair as her the other day.
We met her in HaiPhong on one of those alful slow boats, we actually, we met her in the boat directors office while waiting for the slow boat for two hours drinking shout after shout of the directors homemade family recipe rice wine (that blew your head off) Then, she was with Albert, an unfortunate German man, triple her age who had a child and a girlfiend up in Sapa. He says Mika (the crazy lady) only travells with him for his money. Mika tells me she dumped him because he shoots up, which looked pretty obvious to us. Anyhow, we where just kicking back and she shows up with a much younger German character who turned out to be quite nice... if only we could have warned him!

The beer stalls on the street dont have any toilets so we waddled up to the kiwi bar and had two shots of vodka just to use the loo and then set out to find a restaurant. It turns out we always seem to find the best restaurant on the last night of our stay. it was called Vien Dong, up past the main supermarket. It was jam packed with fish tanks full of fresh seafood. There didnt seem to be any menu, and the family where all sitting around a large table eating there dinner. We looked in and when they all gave us a friendly smile we sat down to order.

The beer was average, sometimes it tastes like soap, so was the restaurant - filled with petrified frog and snakes in jars - but the food was amazing. saute squid, tender in a spicey tomato sauce with chunky onions and a hint of confit garlic. We were not very hungry but we just had to try another dish. More squid in a delish garlicey sauce. Mmm. They where obviously proud of there cooking, they keep on asking us 'if we like' smiles, more smiles, and we told them is was the best food in Vietnam.

We left for the supermarket for some beer and chocolate to help us in packing tonight. I would have changed my mind to stay another night just to eat in that restaurant again, but we have already organised to check out. Tomorrow we join the end of another tour group, our way of getting back to Hanoi, so we have to tolerate fellow travellers again and be polite and have meaningless converstation with strangers - 'I dont know you, and I'm particularly not interested to hear about all your travelling tales, how you concured the world, your 'living the dream', giving your 20 cents to the locals, making all the difference to their economy'
How rude of me...!

My favourite photo this far. I call it 'Corn Lady' She walks the strip selling loads corn steamed fresh on the cob, this is her stopping for buisness out the front of the beer stalls late one night.

Its been a small gruelling journey into HiaPhong.
We decided on the 'slow boat' instead of the 'hydrofoil' and saved ourselves 60,000 dong. The boat was smelly and full of 'off-their-face' Vietnamese construction workers who continuously stared quite rudely.
After the very uncomfortable boat trip of 3 hours we arrived at HiaPhong. I patiently waited untill all the eel juice was splattered out the door over my feet and while the next set of workers boarded before I could get off. The usual moto rip-offs occured then we found ourselves in a city where we felt like complete aliens.

I have never in my life walked down the street and have everybody look. Not only did they look, but they stared. Not only did they stare but they stared for a very very long time. The children yelled 'hello, hellooo' causing more attention and the young boys pointed and laughed. A lady even picked up her small child so she could see me from a higher view!
Whats wrong with us! Are we ugly? Maybe its our clothes? We asked the taxi driver who spoke english just fine but he avoided the question. Maybe he didn't want to be rude.
So with this constant awkward attention I gradually became very uncomfortable. I tried to make light of it, being overly nice to people, and smiling a lot, poking my tongue out at the kids, most of the time it worked, but as the sun went down we really started to dislike being the oddballs in a strange city.

The supermarket as our safeguard, we dawdled about in hope to find something agreeable so we could go back to our hotel room and hide hideous bodies from the rest of the world.
The supermarket was the best one yet. We spent a total of $12 and that included pate, 4 breadrolls, a small loaf of bread, salami, sweets and a bottle of vodka! Barginatious. Still, we couldnt make our breadrolls without tomato, which the supermarket, inconveniently, did not stock.
Lucky us, we stumbled upon the market street. Sam keenly spotted some sausage from a lady across the road. It was dark now and she was set up under a torch light. She looked like she had been standing there for a week. She held out her arm to offer us some stuffed pork trotter from a grimey rusted up cleaver. It wasnt bad. We opted for the pork belly with cripsy skin and the greasy grisly black sausage which she erratically smached into pieces on her festering chopping board before stuffing it into reused plastic bags for us to take home.
Happy with our purchases we finally headed back to our cheap and musty hotel room, hoping our passport and money was still there. It was. We played canasta, ate sausage sangas and went to sleep.

The morning after.......
I guess your waiting to hear of some horrible food poisioning story, how very shamefull of you sitting on the edge of your seat eagerly waiting to hear how I was bent over the toilet bowl all night and twisting and turning in bed with excruciating pain, well ha HA. Sam and I can survive ANYTHING. We have stomachs of STEEL. We are masters of our of intestines. We have successfully adapted our systems to prolonged feeding of unidentifiable phenomenon. We reign SUPREME.

I am deffinately starting to look like a traveller. Dirty clothes, dirty hair, thong tan. But gosh, I am really starting to smell like a traveller. Phew. My shorts smelt so bad yesterday that I almost threw up! At home, I would have soaked them for a week. I wore them today anyway. I figure everything around me smells much much worse so nobody will know the better.

We managed to catch the bus to Nimh Bimh, so happy not to be staying in HaiPhong another night. It was a local bus, filled with local people. One lady couldnt give me the peace sign enough and of course everybody else was picking their nose. When the lady with the bad teeth boarded we started to worry we would miss our stop but then we saw the driver throw a man off followed by his bike being pegged from the roof. I guess they will tell us when its our stop.
He did, and after all my freaking out from the dirty curtains touching my head and suffocation from grotesque Vietnamese flatulence I was more than glad when we finally arrived into Nimh Bimh.

I've had a toxic night, we did the typical thing; plan to go out for dinner, forget to have dinner, go to a bar, come back to hotel hungry, broke and drunk.

We loved the feel of Cat Ba Island and have decided to come and chill out on the island for a few days. The Junk was happy to drop us off, just give them a call and they'll pick us up and take us back to Hanoi.

We have discovered new drinking spots on the island and have found a NZ run bar called 'The Flightless Bird' where I swapped my book and had my first Vodka. Dissapointed with the lack of a pool table we walked along the bay and found the 'Koala Bar', of course an Australian run bar run by a guy from Sydney who sports the most ridiculous haircut. I won the first game of pool and looking forward to not being 'game bitch' if I win. Two half Aussie and half Pom Harry Potter lookalike kids from Hong Kong took over our game halfway through! They kept us entertained for a while until sam eyed the Wild Turkey up high on the shelf. We haven´t seen a sight like that for a while. The next thing I know I´m drinking 20c beers with the locals, peeing in the gutter and eating 4 dollar baguettes full of diahorrea bugs.

Today we spent most of it bed watching crappy MTV shows. We finally felt well enough to walk up and down the strip cheaking out some of the menus. We spotted some Goat and Sea Snails, couldn't do that today. Fried noodles and Springrolls. We checked out the markets and found the strangest creature in a tank in a dodgy restaurant nearby. Looked like an Armadillo cross stringray. Very strange, I've never seen anything like it. We came across some IPOD speakers although the lady tried to charge us $90 US! We told her we saw them for $10 in Hanoi and when we went to walk away she said OK $10, $10! We said no way!, Look at your profit margin! Im sure she doesn't know what a profit margin is. She had the shits anyhow.

So, now Ím on a detox. I have successfully grown a beer belly and now sleep thoughout the day. If we stop drinking so much we might see more of the island. No more grog for me!

Cat Ba is just like all the other little islands in Halong Bay squished up together to form one big one. Our first impression of the island was that it is over populated with hotels and under populated with tourists. After seeing lots of plastic chair restaurants and a few bars, I thought, this place could be alright.

Teaming up with our German/Irish friend Carson, we wondered out to see what this place has on offer. The first place was closed. The second had 3 pool tables and absolutely no women. The 3rd seem ok 'Blue Note'. We all sat lined up at the bar and ordered longneck sized Tigers and had a laugh about the Vietnamese way of doing things, the copious nose picking addictions, public transport and food. Our converstaion was abruptly cut off by the rude interuption of ear peircing 80's ballads! Oh my gward! Never thought it would happen to me, but yes, here I am in a desolate bar in the middle of the South China Sea, on a Jurrassic Park like island drinking longnecks, listening to 'Time of my life!' Yes I am a victim of true Vietnamese Karaoke!

But we couldn't stay to hear it, the pain was just to much and we moved on to a much larger bar with 90's thumping music and no karaoke. I hated it, Sam hated it and Carson hated it, and after visiting the worst toilet in the word (think of the scene out of Train Spotting) I was more than happy to head back to our hotel.

Our hotel was ok, not exactly what I would call a 3 star. Much excitement with the high pressure shower. Too bad that it was salt water though. They had cheap coconut nuts and bottled tiger (canned tastes like ashtrays) and the beds were comfy and i could have slept in but have to get up at 6.30am to climb up a stupid mountain (tours not for me)

6am: The morning was difficult. Very difficult, getting up I mean. We have decided tours are not for us. No more tours.

I loved the trek, apart for the fact no-one bothered to tell me to leave all my luggage at the hotel and I had to lug all my books up the mountain with me, most of which are 10 pages from being finished.
100% of the way was a steep incline and 90% of the group wore the wrong shoes. One girl had very bad asthma and our guide who had spent 12 years in the army and smoked alot did a weird acupuncture thing on her, I dont thing she appreciated it but she put up with it anyhow.

The island was very beautiful from the top, I spent most of my time wondering how the lady from NZ can breathe inbetween all that jabbering, and the rest of the time trying to squash a killer bee.
Sam wore his footy jersy and sweated to death, not matter, we were on the decline and before we knew it we were in familliar territory where strangers force you to buy things you do not want. We climbed into our mini bus, the whole 18 of us, somehow we fit, they made us fit.
The NZ lady gabbed all the way back and I wondered if she was going to be sleeping on the Junk tonight.

Lunch was at a fish farm come restaurant at the port. The chunky fish they served us was delishously crispy on the outside and soft in the middle, mmm haddn´t had a nice piece of fresh fish in a while. Carson is allergic to seafood, so more for me.

The rest of afternoon was filled with listening to Modonna songs skipping along to the same verse for 2 hours, to the point where I had to walk up to the fish farmer with my hands over my ears frantically pointing towards the speakers. We taught Carson to play Shithead (which he calls Shitface, very funny) and after that I spent time discovering tiny shards of fibreglass sticking out of the backs of my calves (from the kayaks)
The bus was 3 hours late to take us back to the boat and I was getting bored. Tonight we were going to be sleeping on the boat. The driver finally showed up and he certainly made up for it with hairiest mini bus ride of my life to the other side of the island slightly missing a dog and a small child.