14.12.10 - 09.02.11

Asia's final port of destination was to be Thailand, which proved to be a great emotional rollercoaster of reunions, goodbyes and making new friends. To begin we got there without James as he left Laos a few days before to meet his girlfriend, Poppy, and they went north to Chaing Mai together. The rest of us spent a day in Bangkok (more than enough time) before the long journey south to Phuket to reunite with our good pal Irish Neal, who we last saw in Vietnam. Seedy Phuket was good fun but was only made special by the fact Nealo was there. Having said our goodbyes we ventured to the travellers' haven that is Phi Phi, where we drank, beach bummed, and even went on a boat tour around the smaller islands (first activity for a while!). We left there on Christmas Eve to sleepy Koh Lanta, where we met up again with James accompanied by Poppy and new friends they met. We had a sunny Christmas on the beach and a beach-side rasta bar provided the Christmas dinner, barbecue barracuda and turkey. Most the following days and nights were spent there. Next was Koh Samui, where not only did we meet Jay's brother and his girlfriend, but we met up again with the "Predator" lads who we first met in Vang Vieng. Samui was okay but a bit "same same", as the Asians like to say, as many other built up areas you'll find in Thailand. New Year we got dressed up in silly clothes and got a scary little speed boat over to Koh Phangan for the infamous Full Moon beach party, where we spent most the night around the proximity of Mushroom Mountain pratting around in the sand. Enough said. It took another night or two in Samui before Pete and i decided we had had enough of the place and we made our way to the smaller and friendlier Koh Tao, again we met up with the Predators. It was here we got our Predator initiation and tattoos (there only tiny, Mum and Dad). The others soon got here at different times, but it wasn't long before we made our very sad goodbye to Jay and Butler who we have barely separated from since our meet in China. Hopefully it will not be long before we see them again. So we were back to the original foursome. As we were all pretty skint we chose to return to Phi Phi in search of work.

It didn't take us long to get jobs outside bars flyering/getting pissed and messing about. Here we met once again with the Predators; Tino got initiated, James got out of it as he has three moles resembling the tattoo. I don't think his "Godly" status helped his ego. Here we made some great new friends and ended up staying over three weeks, our new record amount of time spent in one place. Just as the place was starting to feel like home, it witnessed the saddest farewell so far this trip: the separation of the Baldies. Tino and James decided to go Australia to work for the following year, whilst myself and Pete chose to stick to the original plan of New Zealand. It was an emotional last night together, luckily though we will not forget one another in a hurry, because James had the bright idea of branding a number four into each other's legs. Nice one, Madge!

So this is it for the Baldies! For now anyway. We didn't last the full twelve months in Asia as originally planned, but we lasted a damn sight longer than most anticipated. Asia is a fantastic place and we had the best of times. Despite missing out on some places and probably spending far too long in others, I wouldn't have done it any other way. I can't thank my friends, new and old, who have shared the experience with me for making it what it was, and i cannot wait for what is to come!

11.11.10 - 13.12.10

For those who have been following our escapade, you may have gotten the impression that i have got a tad lazy in terms of updating this blog... and you are quite right, but you must appreciate i live a very busy lifestyle. However, i apologise if these next three posts are brief on some details.

The majority of our group made it safely to Laos, making our way up to Pakse in search of a cash machine where we spent a couple of nights trying to contact the sixth member of our clan before going south again to the Four-thousand Islands of the Mekong River. For those who don't remember i left you with the cliffhanger of leaving Tino in Cambodia, who had sobered up and decided to meet us, but we fretted because we told him to meet us on one island but we changed our mind on arrival. We headed to Dom Det only to find the lucky little bugger roaming the streets. Only Tin would end up on the one right island out of four-thousand. Happy to be reunited we spent a hazy few days there chilling in the Sun and eating "happy food" all day, as that is all there was to do.

We then ventured up through Laos, spending many nights in random places in search of the Konglor Cave. After finally finding it we got there too late to take the boat tour through, but did not remain to do it the next day as the North London derby was on, so we went to the capital city of Vientiane instead where we would instead find satellite television. Well worthwhile: 3-2 Spurs!

The next stop was the much anticipated Vang Vieng. For those who have not heard of it, it is a place to drink buckets of alcohol and float down a river in a tractor inner tube. Along the way there are rope swings and mud volleyball and music and dancing and games and everything else you might think of which is fun... then there is night time. James and I got jobs there where we were paid in food and buckets to basically go around and talk to people. Our plans to go northern Laos for jungle treks and home-stays were unfortunately abandoned because tubing was far too much fun and we spent two weeks there. Loas certainly lived up to the hype.

11.10.10 - 10.11.10

Cambodia began easily enough, as soon as we got off the bus in Phnom Penh we were surrounded by tuk-tuks drivers wanting to whisk us away to a hotel. Being the trusting fellas we are we got in the first one to approach us and we were on our way. Having settled in we discovered the locals are all good humoured and the friendliest we have came across since India. Phnom Penh was a funny old city considering it's the capital, really quiet and vast open roads. Whilst here we saw the Killings Fields of Choeung Ek, where the Khmer Rouge took victims for the slaughter. I won't go into detail on here, but the history of Cambodia is horrific. Pol Pot made Hitler look like an alright chap. Before doing this we went to a firing range, we began by sitting down and we were handed menus. We were glad as we were a bit peckish, but the main courses consisted of machine guns, and for dessert were various rocket launchers. We ordered a few rounds on an M16 and AK-47, though chose to shoot coconuts rather than cows or chickens. The last day in Phnom Penh we watched a kick boxing match which was rather entertaining.
Next stop was Sihanoukville, where we managed to spend ten days beach bumming and partying. On our last day here we decided to go to one of the many islands, where we chilled out and had the whole place to ourselves, with the exception of a few stray dogs, Scrap being our favourite, and our least favourite we named Ratdog. On our way back from the Island we were caught in a storm, being scared of deep water i wasn't looking forward to the trip anyway, but the six-hour trip was my worse experience of the trip. Our little boat was tossed around all over the place. We spent another night in Sihanoukville for a Hallowe'en party before moving on to Koh Kong.
Koh Kong was a pretty dead town so we didn't stay for long. Whilst there though we visited the Tatai Waterfalls which were just lovely.
Lastly we stopped at Siem Reap, a base for seeing the Temples of Angkor Wat. It took us until our last day here to visit the Temples, which were incredible. As nice as they were though, we weren't quite sure how people spend a week exploring them without getting bored. Siem Reap turned out to a bit of a boom town, not what we expected of it at all. So we spent a few fun days here before getting the bus out of Cambodia into Laos.
Our time here ended with a bit of a twist. The morning we got up to leave, Tino decided against coming as he wanted to accompany a young lady he met to Bangkok. We had a go trying to get him to change his mind, but he had none of it. We said we'd get in touch once we arrive in Laos. Good luck Tinny!
Cambodia: my favourite place we have been to so far, a sentiment shared by most of us. The people were really nice and the country is beautiful, a place I would certainly go back to to further explore.

17.09.10 - 10.10.10

We travelled to Vietnam by train and arrived in the capital, Hanoi, in the early hours of the morning. We were all a bit confused to why it was so quiet and taxis were so expensive before we cottoned on that we were pretty far out from the city centre. After much waiting around we made our way to a busy backpacker hostel, spending just one night before making a trip to Ha Long Bay. There wasn't a lot to see in Hanoi which really appealed to us.
Ha Long Bay turned out to be great fun. We began by taking a small boat out to a pirate ship, which was to be our place of residence for the night. Everyone had lots of fun diving and flipping into the water from the top deck (i just pencil-jumped) before we got into canoes and paddled to a cave in one of the many karst peaks. I was partnered with a retarded Ukrainian girl who had the cheek to keep telling me i wasn't working hard enough, i may have stopped for a few beer breaks but i was definitely doing all the work! The caves were fun, we had to duck down pretty low at some points, particularly hard for Jay who is 6'6" tall. At the end of the cave we emerged at a beautiful enclosed lake where we had a mud fight. Once back at the pirate ship we had a mass game of Ring of Fire which our tour guides' sole aim was to get us very drunk and very naked. Probably would have been more fun if there wasn't four fellas to every female, but a good game none the less.
Our next destination was Hoi An, where we stayed a few days to celebrate James' 21st birthday. James seemed to have a nice day, the hotel even supplied him with a cake... which Neal smashed his head into. The next five nights there we carried on celebrating and hardly left the hotel (it had a pool and free cocktails!), apart from to go on a fishing trip and for a couple of nights out. Hoi An seemed a nice town though.
Nha Trang was nice next on the agenda, a beach town where we managed to get our first sun tans for what seemed like months. We had good intentions to have a bit of a detox, but Nha Trang turned out to be the party town of Vietnam so that one kind of went to shit. The organised bar crawls kept us busy at night, and during the day we would have fun on jet-skis and banana boats and having fun bartering with the many sales people on the beach.
We got our much deserved detox having arrived in Mui Ne. Again, another beach town, but due to poor weather we didn't spend any time on the beach. The highlight was when we hired out motorbikes and ventured to the red and white sand dunes which were pretty impressive. We had plans to spend the day tobogganing, but after one attempt it seemed the dunes were too wet and it wasn't all that fun. On the way home though we noticed a five-a-side tournament going on, so we stopped to check it out. Before we knew it we were handed a kit and we were up against a team of Vietnamese. After going 4-0 down after a matter of minutes we realised our opponents were super fit, and with the crowd jeering us we thought it was going to be an embarrassment. We got it back to 6-6 and played the rest of the game out to penalties as we were completely knackered. It turned out to just be half time and we had another half hour to go! Luckily we pulled out our A game and conquered 16-12. What a game! We got back to our hotel for James to find out they washed all his clothes pink. He was not a happy bunny...
Last stop in Vietnam was the busy city of Saigon. The highlight here was first running into friends from Ha Long Bay and visiting the Cu Chi Tunnels. The tunnels were really interesting, we got a taste of how the Vietnamese army lived during the war and how they kicked the crap out of the yanks. The tunnels spread out miles and we had a chance to crawl hands and knees through them, another struggle for Jay, James too as he's claustrophobic. The rest of our time in Saigon was mainly spent in our room watching DVDs, we got threw about five series of entourage.
Vietnam was really good, perhaps some regrets for not getting off the beaten track, but to be honest we like the beaten track. Everywhere we stopped we had a great time, more than what could be said about China. Next stop is Cambodia!

04.08.10 - 16.09.10

Having arrived in China we quickly discovered that our suspicions were confirmed, Facebook, Blogger and any other social network-style websites are banned by the government. Weird bunch of commies. So forgive me if this post is lacking on details, as it is going to cover our whole six weeks in China.
The first stop was Beijing: really expensive and we all got ill... so we started off pretty badly and were all a bit fed up. Had a couple of good nights out though. Whilst here we saw The Great Wall, which was without a doubt one of the highlights of the trip so far in terms of the sights, also to get up and down we took and roller-coaster cart... great fun. We finished up in Beijing by exploring the markets and eating weird things like scorpions and other creepy crawleys.
Next we ventured to Xi'an for the Terracotta Warriors, but having checked in to a hostel with a lively bar and met some fun people it took eight days before we saw the Warriors (Pete and Tino still decided not to see it), these eight days were a bit of a blur. We planned to leave Xi'an for Chengdu to see pandas but left it for another day as we had hangovers, turns out someone was looking down on us, because the train we had booked had fallen off a bridge which had been hit by a landslide. Hhmm, we decided not to attempt fate and chose to take Chengdu off the list of things to see.
We got a train to Yichang instead with our new best buddies: Jay and Neil from Kent who we will be travelling with now for the best part of Southeast Asia. We got there late at night to the worse city we've seen so far and were scared shitless when our taxi dropped us off at a dark alley to where our hostel was supposed to be. It turned out to be the right place and we checked in. The next day we walked around trying to find where to get a boat to see the Three Gorges River but by the time we found it was getting dark so decided against it.
Next stop was Yangshuo via Guilin. We took a river cruise to travel between the two places which was pretty and looked a lot like Jurassic Park. Luckily no dinosaurs were there. We had booked four nights in Yangshuo but it turned into a twenty day stay. Yangshuo was definitely the highlight of China for us, a beautiful town surrounded by karst peaks with plenty to do which could be compared with Queenstown, or possibly even Magaluf. Unfortunately due to the party scene we did not do a massive amount of activities, but we made good friends with the hostel owners and pretty much took over the place, in particular the rooftop bar. We were also asked to organise a beach party which attracted a good two or three-hundred guests.
We finally left Yangshuo for Vietnam to get to some good weather and cheaper prices. Our six is now seven as we are being accompanied by a crazy Irishman named Neal. China was fun, but we were glad we cut down the three months we had planned there down to six weeks: not everywhere in China was our cup of tea.

24.07.10 - 03.08.10

Arrived in Varanasi late at night and checked in to what appeared to be a zombie prison, the gaumless staff showed us to our windowless rooms and once we shooed out the cockroaches we settled in. We made our way up to the rooftop bar and sampled the famed 'Bang Lassis'. Having highly underestimated the potentcy of them we realised we could not move our legs and spent a good deal of time up there in our seats and laughing at our surroundings... i needn't elaborate on what the last ingredient was along with yoghurt and bananas.
The next day we went on a sunset tour along the Ganges. Watching the burning ghats where the Hindus cremate their dead was interesting and it was strange to see the locals swimming and drinking the water of a river filled with corpses. We made our way to the other side of the river where the bank was a beach with grey sand where many bones were washed up, we were debating wheather it would be insensitive to pick up the bones just as our guide through a femur at us and went on to ask us if we fancied a of football... with a skull. On the way back down the river there was a religious festival going on which we stopped to watch, after we had enough of the bells and creepy chanting we made our way back to the zombie prison.
Next stop was Agra for the Taj Mehal. The first day there we went and saw it just from the outside. It was quite a beautiful building, but without sounding too ignorant for something which is supposed to one of the seven new wonders of the world it wasn't all that wonderful, I could probably name seven more wonderful things... and cheese sandwich for instance. The next day we had planned to wake up at sunrise to appreciate it in a different light and venture inside, but after having overslept we decided to sack it off, if the outside was this disappointing we were unlikely to be impressed with the inside for a ten quid entrance fee (extortion for India prices).
Last stop in India was back to Delhi again to catch up the Heather and the Kashmir Crew. We spent a couple of days working for their tourist company trying to lure poor unsuspecting tourists, much like us on our first day, into the office to book tours. We all got rather excited at the promise of big wages and nearly extended our flights to begin careers in the tourism industry. After two days of what was supposed to be work we realised the only fun of it was chatting to random strangers and taking them for drinks, which we will doing in different countries for the whole trip, so we stuck to our plans and left for China when originally scheduled.
All in all India was a funny old place, an experience to say the least. The locals were on the whole very friendly people (some a little too friendly), but it took some time to get used to some of their habits, for example the strange head wobble they do which seems to mean yes, no or maybe. Also the fact that nothing runs on time and random power cuts which often occur, particularly annoying when watching football! Cows everywhere was something we adjusted to as well: in the roads, in the rivers, even in some folks houses.
So we had a blast! Got off on a good start to our travels... so let's see what China has to bring us.

08.07.10 - 23.07.10

It was a complete write-off of two days but we got ourselves down to Kerala without any problems. The train journey wasn't too bad as we were expecting the worse after the Death Bus up to Kashmir... but it was relatively painless in comparison. We arrived first in Varkala where we got straight ourselves straight to the beach. There was a few locals kicking a football about so we couldn't resist but get involved, we got a match organised: India vs. England. We had a plan of playing silking one touch football round them, but typically English having gone a goal down we switched tactics to route one football and lost the game 5-4. In our defence we were outnumbered about twelve players to four. Still, we took the loss pretty badly... it had been a bad month for English football. We then proceeded to swim in the sea which was fun, the waves were absolutely crazy so we couldn't go far out at all without the lifeguards blowing whistles at us. After befriending the lifeguards though we learnt that the reason behind their extreme safety conciousness is that no-one is India can swim (them included). They eventually allowed us to swim but we'd have to get out if any locals started to copy us.
Next in Kerala we ventured up to Kollam where we went on a backwater boat tour through the rivers of the jungle. Due to time and money we just went for a half-day, but it was beautiful and well worth while none the less.
Another monster train journey got us to Goa, there was no sleeper tickets left though so we we're pretty squashed sardine style in the carriage. James and Tino did well to get up on the luggage rack, Pete and I were not so lucky. We decided against going via Hampi as we didn't want to cut ourselves short with our plans back up North, so went straight to Goa. This is my first major regret of the trip as we have heard really good things about Hampi, whilst Goa was out of season so it did nothing but piss down with rain the whole time. Not great weather for a beach resort. We tried to make the best of it though... the highlight probably exploring the countryside on mopeds and making friends with some old English hippies with funny northern accents who had been living there for years.
Next stop is to Varanasi to see the Ganges, looking forward to doing something a bit more cultural!