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How much does a day in Vietnam cost?

Posted: February 3, 2012 in Southeast Asia, Vietnam

It’s groundhog day and we have a heck of an idea.

Phil? Phil Connors?

We’re going to run you through how much we spend in a typical day here. So, yesterday we kept track of every penny we spent. EVERY PENNY. Keep in mind that $1 = 20,500 Vietnamese Dong-ish. Here is the run down:

270,000 Dong ($12.91) – Hotel Room in Da Nang City (A/C, hot water, cable TV, nice bed)

60,000 Dong ($2.87) – Breakfast (I had rice w/ pork and veggies and Meg had rice. Tea to drink for both of us)

36,000 Dong ($1.72) – Coffee x2 (We splurged and went to a hip coffee shop. How hip, you ask? They serve their coffee in martini glasses).

400,000 Dong ($19.13) – Taxi (We took a taxi to a new city 30 km away. I bargained and this was the best price I could get). Isn’t that dirt cheap for a 30km taxi ride. I can hardly get home from the Crown and Anchor for that price….

369,000 Dong ($17.65) – Lunch (We really splurged here. Lunch at the upper scale “Streets Restaurant”. Jason’s meal: Banana shake, coffee, grilled panini sandwich, and bread pudding for dessert. Megan’s meal: Coffee, summer rolls (shared), and noodle salad bowl w/ chicken. Nom nom nom…..

40,000 Dong ($1.91) – Pedal bike rental for that day (both of us).

40,000 Dong ($1.91) – Drinks while chilling out on the beach (rum and coke for Jason, tea for Megan (yes, tea).

260,000 ($12.44) – Dinner (This was delicious. Appetizers: Spring rolls, Main Course: Jason – 2 meals (roasted duck w/ potatoes and sweet and sour pork with steamed rice), Megan – Sauted vegetables and steamed rice. Drinks: 2 “fresh beers” (who the hell knows what a fresh beer is? It was questionable).

GRAND TOTAL = $70.54 (for both of us)

Not to mention that on a typical day we wouldn’t have to pay for a 30 km taxi ride…..

Being in a cheap country is …

Excellent

Southern Laos on 2 Wheels!

Posted: January 29, 2012 in Laos, Southeast Asia

Apologies for the delayed blog folks (part of the reason is laziness and part is explosive Asian diarrehea.)

So much to say. I guess I’ll start by saying that we were slightly underwhelmed by Luang Prabang (which we were thinking was going to be a highlight of our trip). Partly because we were sick and partly because tourism had completely overrun what would be a stunningly beautiful little town. Nonetheless we used our time wisely in Luang Prabang – playing cards, drinking coffee, and never straying more than 50 meters from the nearest toilet. Yes, it was that bad.

One productive thing we did manage to do was make our way 40 kilometres out of town to Kuang Si Waterfalls – they didn’t dissapoint. The rope swing was the best part.

After Luang Prabang, it was time to head South to the Town of Pakse. We had a one day layover in the capital of Laos – Vientiane. We used our time to visit “COPE”, a place that builds prosthetic limb for Laotians who have lost limbs from UXO’s (unexploded bombs) or land mines.

A quick history lesson for those that don’t know how these bombs got there. During the Vietnam War, Richard Nixon went bomb happy on Laos. Why? Because the North Vietnamese were transporting arms and troops through Laos. So much so, that when it was all said and done, the US had dropped more bombs on Laos than the total number of bombs dropped by the US, UK, and Russia combined during WW2. Wrap your head around that one. The Laotians basically did nothing wrong. They were simply the victim of unfortunate geography (next door neighbors to Vietnam). Now here’s the kicker – The American public had no idea that this bombing was occuring. It was not sanctioned by congress – hence why it’s called “The Secret Bombing Of Laos”.

There are still thousands of tons of unexploded bombs laying around in Laos. Out of all the bombs dropped, an estimated 30% of them still haven’t exploded and the Laos bomb squad has such poor resources that they will be clearing bombs well after the year 2050 at this pace.

To compound the problem, one of the only ways for rural Laotians to make money is to collect scrap metal. Therefore, when someone stumbles up a 3 ton bomb in the forest, rather than report it to the proper authorities, they try to salvage the metal – which often ends in a deadly explosion.

After our quick stopover in Vientiane, we booked a “sleeper bus” for our next leg of the journey to Pakse. For those of you curious about what a sleeper bus may look like, here is a quick pic that we snapped from our bunk.

Upon arrival in Pakse we formulated a plan to get us off the tourist trail for a few days. We rented a motorbike and cruised the rural countryside for 3 days.

We biked 300+ km through some of the most secluded and remote areas in Laos. In fact, we just got back a couple hours ago and we’re both BAGGED and looking forward to a cold beer and a good sleep.

The area we explored is better known as the Bolaven Plateau – Famous for its coffee plantations, waterfalls, and smiley faces.

We quickly understood that our biggest obstacle would be avoiding the goats, pigs, chickens, and cattle that think that they own the road as much as the motorists do…..

Here are some of the sights we took in along the way…

Some of the places we stopped definitely didn’t see many tourists. This picture was taken in the sleepy, riverside town of Sekong. This girl acted like she hadn’t seen a white person before – maybe she hadn’t.

We made a quick stop by UXO Sekong to see some of the progress they were making in clearing the local area of bombs. Here are some of their recent findings.

Megan snapped this picture from the back of the motorbike as we passed this farmer heading to market.

In case you missed it, that’s a live goat strapped to the back of his motorbike.

My morning bath. Seriously.

The owner of our guesthouse found a rather creative use for this bomb.

Before finishing the trip, we stopped by a farmers coffee plantation to learn about the process of making coffee. I never expected that it involved so much labour – gives a new perspective to the coffee I drink every morning.

The children of the village gathered to stare at the “white people” as we learned coffee harvesting 101 from a local farmer of the village.

That’s where we are now. Sitting in an internet cafe in Pakse, waiting for leave on our motorbike at the break of day to explore the nearby temples of Champasak.

The End

That wasn't half bad...

That was all bad!

DO HO HO HO HOHOHOHOHOHO!

Laos: Welcome To The Jungle

Posted: January 18, 2012 in Laos, Southeast Asia

Meg and I with guesthouse owner "Nine"

After bidding farewell to the eccentric owners of The Green Tulip Guesthouse, we decided to book it for Laos by way of minivan. We made the right decision.

5 hours later we had arrived at the border – The Mekong River (below)

Before we could stretch our legs from the long bus journey, we were on a long-tailed boat being shuttled across the Mekong river to the Laos border control. In minutes, we had cleared customs and checked into our ~~dump~~ guesthouse for the night “The Friendship Guesthouse”. Friendship guesthouse? Who makes friends here? The guests and the cockroaches? I digress.

Upon waking, we boarded a van full of French people heading for Louang Namtha, Laos. One of them squawking at the van driver: “Allo? Deed you know dis bus waz zupposed to live an hour ago? Allo? Maybe you deed not know that.” Jackass. My patience was growing ever thinner. I had thoughts of asking him if he had an important business meeting in Northern Laos that he was running late for – and if so, where was his labtop and briefcase? Sorry, I’m venting.

ONWARD AND UPWARD, we have arrived in Louang Namtha. We’ll pause now for a brief geographical lesson:

As you can see, Louang Namtha is very close to the Chinese border – 50 km in fact. The town market (called “The Chinese Market”) is full of Chinese merchants who make the trek over the border to peddle their respective product.

The difference from Thailand is immediately noticable.

Rolling Green hills of Jungle seem to go on forever, interupted only by the odd bamboo hut that breaks up the landscape. On one side of the road, colorfully dressed women are scrubbing their daily washings in the river, on the other, an old woman and her young grandson are embraced in a tug o’ war, fighting to gain control of a large pig that seems to want none of their attention. Children run beside the road in filthy clothes, and all around us families are building fires in front of their huts in preparation for dinner.

This is what travelling is supposed to look like.

Settling in our new home was a breeze. The helpful manager “Noo” helped us with our belongings into our riverside bamboo cottage. Beautiful scenery and a comfortable, clean room had never looked so good (maybe because we had just left the “Friendship Guesthouse”). By this point, Megan is getting used to the cold showers and I can hardly even detect a whimper from the shower room during her morning showers.

Later in the evening, the guesthouse owners invited Megan and I to join them in eating a more traditional style dinner – NOM NOM NOM. The food was great. A giant hot-pot was placed in the middle of the table and all types of meat were strewn over the center of the “pot”, while assorted veggies and noodles were placed in the nearly boiling moat around the edge of the dish. Several Beer Lao later made the night a….

Our guesthouse, the Laos Hilton.

Dinner must have went well, because we were invited to a Laos wedding the next day. But I’ll leave that story for another time.

Here’s the pic of Meg and I before heading to the Laos wedding – The “after” pic did not quite look like this…….

To celebrate our 3rd and final day in Louang Namtha, we hired a local guide to take us on a jungle trek and to meet some of the local ethnic villages. This blog is getting lengthy so I won’t go into huge detail, but here are some of the highlights.

Above: A rice grainary. If you look close, the support are wrapped with slippery bamboo so the mice can’t get at the harvest.

Above: Our guide slowly barbeques some fish for the lunch feast.

Our guide “Gell” whittles a flute out of a bamboo shaft.

Done! 8kms later. Our buffet dinner at the “Banana Restaurant” will be well deserved tonight….

Chiang Mai

Posted: January 14, 2012 in Southeast Asia, Thailand

After wolfing down as much food as our ~~ever-expanding~~ waistlines could handle and snapping a quick picture in front of our guesthouse, we set off on a sketchy 10 hour long night bus journey to the Northern Capital and 2nd biggest city in Thailand – Chiang Mai

The semi-sane owner of our favourite restaurant - "Jok"

Our guesthouse - "Sam Sen Sam"

The bus journey ended with us being dropped off at 6AM on a ghostly quiet street in our new hometown of Chiang Mai. Excited and not able to sleep, we rented peddle bikes and set off to explore new territory. Weaving through narrow alleys and chaotic streets buzzing with life, we stumbled upon a few diamonds in the rough. The first being a small market where the physically and mentally disabled residents sell their crafts and other works of art – That’s where I picked up this hand carved wooden tuk tuk (my prized possession thus far in Thailand – Seen Below)

Oh, I should have mentioned that along the bike ride we made a stop at house that provides post-school programs for the development of handicapped people where we made the first of many donations to their cause thanks to the money we were given at X-mas time by my parents. We’ll make sure it goes to good use.

All that biking left us with dangerously low energy levels. The only reasonable thing to do was to replenish our energy levels with beer at the famous “Night Bazaar” in Chiang Mai.

The next morning we hit the cliffs for some rock climbing at “Crazy Horse Buttress” in mountains surrounding Chiang Mai. This was Megan’s first attempt at climbing so she was understandably hesitant, but in little time she was climbing like a pro.

The 50 meter cave rapell (seen from below in the first pic) at the end of the day had her looking about as white as Michael Jackson and put her heart into some funky rhythms I’m sure, but she pulled through. Here are some pics of the day (none of the ones of Meg turned out)……(actually they did but she said they made her bum look funny so I couldn’t post them on the blog)…. (no, she hasn’t proofread this yet)….:

The 50m cave rapell as seen from the bottom of the cave. You can see the rope we came down on if you look hard enough.

Me again...

The next day we set off to Baan Chan Elephant Sanctuary where they rescue abused elephants from bad owners and give them a proper home. They day started off with us feeding the elephants to get them used to us. Our elephant was named “Madame”.

Megan and Madame had a rocky relationship.

Followed by a short elephant ride through the forest.

The day ended with us bathing and scrubbing the elephants

After all that elephant business, it was time for the Saturday market which meant one thing……. STREET FOOD!

Touchdown in Bangkok: Part 2

Posted: January 10, 2012 in Southeast Asia, Thailand

FINALLY a rest day!

Finally I can slump down on my chair and write a proper blog (that last one was crap wasn’t it? Be honest). We’ve been so damn busy the first 4 days we’ve been here that we’ve literally been red-lining our tachometers and had little time for updating the gang back home.

Frick… where to start?!

Well….. Me and Meg made a commitment that we would try to stay in shape this trip. Why? – Personally, I suppose I’m sick of my body looking as skinny as an Etheopian who has been run over by steam roller when I get back from my yearly trips. With this in mind, we set out for Bangkoks famous Lumphini Park (picture below) to get our daily dose of exercise.

What a park it was! Blew my expectations right out of the water. Thai people, young and old, dashed around the running track in the latest Thai fashions. Children zipped around on their scooters screaming. Old men played board games under the shade of an umbrella. Massive 3 foot long lizards (more like Commodo Dragons) darted in and out of the water looking for their next meal. I’m sure these suckers could take down a little kid if they wanted to.

Below: A young boy rides his scooter past a prowling lizard in Lumphini Park.

Along the running track, Me and Megan stumbled upon a Flintstone-esque outdoor gym. Where the weights had more rust than paint on them, and shirtless Thai musclemen flexed in the broken, full-length mirrors. We approached the owner and paid him 30 baht ($1) to use the “facility”. Surprisingly, we had a hell of a workout.

Megans overhead press

After the workout, we explored the bees nest that is Chinatown and settled down in the evening for some outstanding Thai Food at what is now our new favourite restaurant “Jok”. For an idea of how cheap it is to eat at a hole in the wall type restaurant like “Jok”, here is our bill.

2 Crabs (steamed then grilled) = 250 baht

1 Chicken Red Curry dish = 70 baht

1 Vegetable/Fried Rice dish = 40 baht

2 large 640ml bottles of Chang beer = 180 baht

So our grand total for this feast was a wopping 540 baht (or $17.50)

The next day we got up early (yes, we actually get up early here) and set out to see some of the many temples and monuments of Bangkok. Even though I’m not big on this stuff, it is really incredible how much work they put into their religious monuments.

Below: Megan though the 200ft tall Buddha was the highlight of her day.

Below: Wat Arun, near sunset – as seen from the river

This morning we booked a cooking class near our guesthouse and it completely exceeded both of our expectations. The class starts out with the chef taking us through the local markets and telling us how to select the freshest produce and meats. Then we head to a kitchen to cook 6 different dishes from Curries to Desserts. Here are some of the pics.

A Thai sells meat in an secluded, hole in the wall market near Samsen Road.

Below: Chef Lee preps us on how to pick out the finest tasting shrimp.

Below: Megan – so proud of her Chicken Phad Thai dish.

Sticky rice with mango dessert. Before you turn up your nose at it, try it. Without question, the best dessert I’ve ever tasted.

And finally, us with the chef. Off to “Jok” again tonight for the 3rd time – Makes for a great fairwell to Bangkok, as we’re moving on to greener pastures via the night bus to Chiang Mai tomorrow night. We’re both pumped for what’s to come.

Hasta La Vista……

Touchdown in Bangkok

Posted: January 8, 2012 in Southeast Asia, Thailand

After haggling with the taxi driver over prices, we took the 1:30am ride to our guesthouse: “Sam Sen Sam”. Our room didn’t exactly look like the pictures on the internet but nonetheless it was clean, had helpful staff, and looked awfully comfortable to two people who had just spent 24 hours on flights.

Excited to explore, we awoke early and went for a walk. “I think I’m in for an eye opener” was one of the first things out of Megan’s mouth. She’s probably right. Our senses were overstimulated as we walked deeper into the city. Street vendors vying for our business, dogs barking, horns honking, “the smell of old stale water” in Megans words, the proletariat rushing through the streets tending to their work, an old man doing a pelvic thrust workout in the park (No joke – I had to cover Megans eyes). The WTF factor is as high as it’s ever been in Bangkok.

What better way to introduce Megan to the city than by a river taxi ride down the famous Chao Phraya river. We piled onto the worn 70 passenger taxi boat like cattle and the exact second the last person steps on the boat, we are headed down river. As we float down the river, it’s impossible not to notice the staggering contrast between the “Have’s” and “Have Not’s” in Bangkok. On one side of the river we have a slum. Filthy, battered, wooden shacks, chicken wired together. On the other, the immaculate 50 story Hilton Hotel……. literally. No BS.

Here are some of the sights from the view of the river taxi:

From the river taxi, we hopped on the newly built Bangkok skytrain and arrived at our destination “Rajawongse Clothiers”! This father-son “hole-in-the-wall” tailor shop is highly regarded as one of the best in the world. They have a loooooong list of VIP clientel as seen by this picture:

After being measured for my 6 dress shirts and 2 pairs of pants, we hailed a tuk tuk, hopped on, and proceeded to the largest weekend market in the world – Chatuchak.

For those of you not familiar with what a tuk tuk is, allow me to open “Jason’s Dictionary” and tell you:

Tuk-Tuk (pr.tuck tuck)

>Noun

A small, 3 wheeled, golf cart looking contraption, usually sporting a flamboyant paintjob that acts as a taxi. Get on and hold on for dear life….

After slogging around the market in the sweltering heat with Meg (who was surprisingly non-Shopzilla that day), we decided to sit down at a comfortable riverside restaurant on bean-bag chairs for some great food and cold beers. Nom nom nom…….. I have a ton of other stuff to post, bu that will have to wait as I’m being drug out of the hostel for another day of exploring!

Oh, and ask Megan if she likes banana pancakes……….

The Next Chapter: Southeast Asia

Posted: January 1, 2012 in Laos, Southeast Asia, Thailand, Vietnam

The road is beckoning again and Megan and I have chosen Southeast Asia to cure the travel bug.

Why? It’s got everything. The best street food in the world, banana pancakes…. nom nom nom, painful but good Thai massages, a culture that will leave you scratching your head (in a good way), a twisted history, scenery like something out of a Lord Of The Rings movie, insane traffic, muay thai kickboxing, the best (and cheapest) tailors in the world, great hostels, and better beer.

Our Plan? Migrate 1500km from Bangkok, Thailand ——-> Saigon, Vietnam by train, plane, automobile, tuk tuk, and boat.

Central Highlands, Vietnam

Bangkok, Thailand

Laos

Some interesting facts:

Thailand:

65.5 million people

The worlds 2nd largest pickup truck market (after the US)

3912 7-Elevens (basically one on every block)

Laos:

5.6 million people

Communist

More bombs have been dropped on Laos than any other country on Earth (Mostly during Richard Nixons “Operation Menu” bombing campaign ’69-’70)

Vietnam:

86 million people

They drink Snake Wine – You heard right. It’s rice wine with a pickled snake floating in it.

Home to the Vietnam War – or as the Vietnamese know it “The American War” 1955-1975 (3 million dead Vietnamese/58 thousand dead Americans)

Communist state with a steadily growing economy

We leave in 4 days! Until then, stay classy Grande Prairie.

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