I was still feeling nervous about these ‘tours’ and being with lots of other people that I didn’t know. You see one of the reasons that I left to go travelling is that I had been treated badly by a few people, bullied I suppose and it had left me very very wary of new people. I didn’t want to have to deal with confrontations or conflict, I was still finding it hard to trust people. But thankfully as I found out later, these were the nicest and most friendliest people I had met so far (apart from awesome jenny and her family of course!) and we all got on well from the get go.

We started off by meeting our guides at the reception lobby, the hotel was very old style and continental – it reminded me of Budapest actually, which was strange seeing as Sapa is situated on the Chinese border. There is a new film out at the moment called the Grand Budpaest Hotel (with the exception of the rooms being very grand in the film) the hotel was similar to The Summit Hotel Sapa. We were lucky that it had changing rooms/shower facilities and a luggage store as we had to get changed quickly and leave our things before checking in and get straight onto our trekking day.

Our guides were from the Black Ha’mong tribe, which is one of 6 ethnic tribes that reside in Sapa. They were all dressed in their traditional tribal clothes, which were made from hemp and had brightly coloured hems and trimmings around their black trousers, skirts and wrap around tops. They also wore colourful necklaces and earrings and each had beautiful long , black, thick hair that reached almost to their waists. They were tiny, graceful and elegant and so polite. I got the impression that a lot of the girls were from the local school, or studying – they were at least 16+ – as they spoke good English and were here to practice it. After conversations with three of them I figured out that they were definitely part of a school programme, as they all asked the same questions: how old are you? What is your name? How tall are you? (?!) do you have any brothers or sisters? Where do you live? That was the extent of our conversation.

However our guide May was a lot more coherent in her English and was extremely funny and bubbly. A real bright spark and she made us laugh so much. It was when Joe, myself and Alex were walking in a three, chatting about travels and life that Joe suddenly said to me ‘btw chels, you know we are doing the home stay tonight?! I only just found out! Shit’ I stopped and looked at him ‘whhaatt?!’ Joe and I hadn’t realised this, we thought we were going back to the hotel and doing the homestay the next day, so we hadn’t brought anything with us, no clothes, no toiletries…nothing. ‘Haha! This could be interesting’ I said, to be honest me and joe weren’t too worried, we were travelling after all and what difference did it make if we wore our underwear twice? We were here to have fun so we didn’t let it bother us. We carried on walking and chatting, for a while Joe, Alex and myself segregated ourselves from the group, we knew everyone’s names but I guess we all stuck together in our ‘designated’ groups, much like you do on your first day at a new school. Eventually we came off the dirt track and walked towards the hills. The view was nothing I had ever seen before, huge mountain peaks towering above and reaching right up into the clouds where the blue sky was lost, this then bought your attention to the sides of the hills – every single one had pathways carved out so they looked like they were ridged, these were the rice paddies. The farmers had gone around the mountains (literally as far you could see) and carved out each individual paddie, this must have taken hours. The time in the season that we were there was after the harvest, so there was no rice to be seen but it was incredibly interesting to see how it was done. Until then it hadn’t really occurred to me where rice actually came from.

Our petite guides then led us up the side of the mountain to the left of us, you weren’t actually aware of ‘climbing’ up the hill but it was more just vigorous walking at an angle, their little light feet skipped over the rocks and vegetation like pros, where as us westerners thought carefully about every step we took, careful not to fall into the watery rice paddie. Occasionally a buffalo would cross our path and we would have to make way for it – they defiantly had right of way here. We came to a clearing and some children came up to sell us bracelets, we managed to politely decline but they were rather persistent but eventually gave up. We all stood and looked at the view before us, absolutely breathtaking, no buildings in view at all just the rice paddies below us and the beautifully carved hills, the sky was blue, dotted with a few clouds and the sun shone just for us it seemed. This is where we all started to talk to each other more and bonded, we all posed for photos together, realising that this would be one of those defining moments of our trip together that were happening in our individual lives, quite incredible the impact other people can have on your experience. After a while admiring the view and taking our last photos, our guides walked us on and we carried on upwards, we soon came to a concrete road leading down towards a grey building. As we approached it, it looked more like a car port on the side of a very steep mountain, it was most likely an old restaurant but it was now derelict but it made a fantastic look out point. Here is really where my breath was taken away, the view was so mesmerising that I didn’t speak for a bit and actually started to feel a bit emotional. In front of me were all the mountains that were too big to be used as rice paddies and their peaks were hidden by the clouds, below them were smaller mountains with roughly carved out ridges and below them were smaller mountains with perfectly carved ridges all the way down them – they reminded me of the Aztec temples. However this indicates how far up we were as these ‘smaller mountains’ were still huge and next to them way down below was a big dam and a little way up from that a smaller river with lots of rocks, it looked more like a lagoon from where I was standing. I went right to the edge of the building and looked down, there were no barriers and it would have been very easy to have fallen off but only if you were an idiot that would have happened. Joe, Alex and I sat down together and looked at the view, then we all took as many photos as we possibly could, all of each other together, on our own, selfies, view points, everything we could think of. The others caught up with us as we were doing this and we all got involved, us girls sat together and had pensive photos taken of us looking out to the view, I asked Matt to take some photos of us and when I got my camera back, they were all selfies of him, this was a regular occurrence throughout the next month or so. It was pretty funny though – I like a cheeky selfie.

Some little kids joined us – native of course and started running around the place, not a care to anything and least of all to falling off the edge. One of them picked up a huge stick and took a run up and threw it off the edge, as you do?! They played near us and let some of the others take photos with them. When the whole group had got together we all took in the view again one last time and carried on, downwards this time though, we were now walking down the huge steep hill we were worried about falling down, we were taking a more hospitable path to the one leading from the building but it still wasn’t easy, our guides were almost floating down the path while we were taking tiny tiny steps, almost shuffling down this huge great hill, Joe took one step and stacked it in spectacular style…the perils of having long long legs I think. He was helped up by May and held by the hand to help him down, I laughed at him and as I did so, I slipped, I didn’t quite fall over but it was enough for one of the older guides to take my hand also, I didn’t laugh again. We walked on for a bit longer and came to a rope bridge – much like one you’d see in an Indiana jones movie, I was thrilled, I couldn’t wait to cross it. Once we were all over (after surviving the boys wobbling the bridge) we walked on and came up to a village, however there was no time to stop but it was an indication of how close we were to our destination, after another mile or so we came to big open plains with a big metal over pass for us to cross. Joe and I were lagging behind at this point, not from being tired but just from wanting to savour the moment, although the landscape was pretty much the same throughout, none of it was boring and I felt like I couldn’t open my eyes wide enough to look at it all. We stopped on the over pass and took some photos of us each and carried on walking. I started to open up more to Joe about my life back home and about one particular relationship that had been troubling me but was also incredibly important to me and I felt the familiar anxiety rising up inside me about it, I knew deep down that I wasn’t cured yet of the issues that I had to come away to work through, I knew that things had been easier but the feelings of worry, anxiety, stress and despair were very much still present under the surface, bubbling away but a new thing had started to happen recently, I was learning how to separate my emotions from what I was experiencing right there in the moment so that I wouldn’t let it consume me, I was learning how to put it to one side. The fact that I knew I would only be here once in my life, with this view, with these people and at this age, made me not want to waste it. My thoughts of worry would have to wait to be entertained this time.

We caught up with the group and found ourselves in what I assumed must have been the village square, this was where we were stopping for lunch. Before I could even think a huge group of children ranging from 3-12 came up to us, or more like surrounded us and started trying to sell us bracelets, headbands, purses, bags, anything they had. They were all chanting the same thing ‘buy from me, buy from me’ waving whatever item it was in your face, it was hard to get away, I didn’t want to buy anything as mean as it sounds but I just didn’t need it all. Joe and I sought refuge inside the building…big mistake as there were more children in there! I made my way to the edge where there was a ledge you could sit on to look out on and we got cornered, in the end we ended up buying 6 bracelets for 10,000 dong each (about 20p) the others had bought purses and headbands, the three Aussie boys had actually bought a lot but they were incredibly good at bartering and bought 1 or 2 things things for 10,000 dong altogether. Just because we bought something didn’t mean they stopped selling to us though and many of them just stood there looking at us and repeating the same chant over and over, eventually Joe and I couldn’t take it anymore and got up to escape, luckily at that moment we were called down for lunch. We all walked down the staircase and came to a big open space overlooking more mountains, pots of chicken and rice were cooking in the corner and we were getting hungry. We all sat down at a large white plastic table, the children still followed us though and kept chanting at us but they were shooed away by the adults while we ate lunch. Lunch was chicken and rice and vegetables, which was as always gorgeously scrumptious, however soon after lunch the children were back and in force! They all came up to the table chanting and waving their goods in our faces, I said no thank you to them and they said ‘yes thank you’ back to me, which was quite funny. The Aussie boys were encouraging them by just talking to them, they kept saying no but then after a while they were starting to relent and bartered with them. Harris suggested he would buy one bracelet for 1,000 dong, they said no but eventually agreed to a deal of ’10 for 10′ which was 10 bracelets for 10,000 dong – I was amazed….I’d bought one for 10! Once Harris had bought them the children moved onto Matt and Liam and more children had witnessed what was going on and they all came up chanting ’10 for 10” like we were in village of the damned, it was a bit creepy actually. After a while they stopped being so persistent as they could tell we weren’t buying anymore and then another western tour group arrived so they scarpered off to them. I got a fantastic picture of Liam being mobbed by these crafty little kids.

After lunch we carried on to May’s home village, we were all to be staying with her, we came to the beginning of the village which was like going back in time. All the houses were wooden and more like huts, open living almost and animals roaming everywhere, little piglets and ducklings were around every corner, which of course us girls all swooned over. We were taken to a shack and shown how they made flour, it was an old contraption of a long wooden leaver with a pointed end, a stone bowl was on the floor at one end where by turning a stone wheel very fast would make the leaver slam down into it, crushing the substance in there into powder. While we where doing this a chicken kept putting its head into the bowl to get the grains but would always snap it’s head out just in time before the leaver came down. We were led into the shack where we saw that it was a hemp making shack, hemp is a material made from a plant, a bit like bark from a tree and it is treated and dyed indigo by using dye produced from the natural juice from certain plant leaves (as we had been walking we had noticed some ducks had been dyed a blue/purple colour and we thought it was odd- we realised that they had been in contact with theses plants that grow all over the place so hence had dyed themselves) once the bark is dyed it is then pressed and softened into material and the way this is done is by placing it on a hard surface and a woman then places a flat stone on top of it (bringing literal meaning to the term ‘stuck between a rock and a hard place’) and stands barefoot on the stone, holds onto the beam above her head and wiggles the stone back and forth so that with each movement the bark is weakened and the desired texture is achieved. A lot of hard work goes into this way of making clothes and it’s strenuous and requires a lot of energy and it’s amazing to see that traditional practices like this are still very much alive and haven’t been driven out by modern technology. We all were invited to try to play their native instrument which is a bit like a flute, I wasn’t so good, there was also another huge contraption that unfortunately I cannot remember what it’s purpose was but it consisted of an enormous wheel that had a smaller wheel attached to it and a long thing wooden pole attached to that pointing to the side, to make it work you had to grab it with both hands and push and pull it to get some momentum going, it was definitely harder than it looked and I could hardly push it forward when it was my turn but like everything in my life I gave it a good go and moved it a few inches. A local woman took over from me and pushed it like it was made of air!

After this we walked out of the tiny shack and stood in the sunlit veranda (of some sorts) and waited for the others to finish looking at the equipment, I noticed the girls standing around a child that was naked and sat on one of those plastic cars that you would move with your feet to make it ‘drive’ I walked over and stood next to Kiki and Natasha, I looked at the child and saw that it was wearing a metal necklace which sat tightly around his neck, I then noticed a lot of marks on his chest and arms and a big red spot on his forehead, he had a snotty nose and dirt on his face. I was shocked and didn’t know where to look, had this child been abused? It certainly looked as much, but then it was explained to us that in their culture if a person is sick then it is pinched and scratched out of them and they are given the necklaces to draw the poisons of disease out of them, the reason for the red circle mark on his forehead was if a person had a fever or headache they would try to suck it out like a vacuum and this left a red mark, the process was done everyday until the ill person started to get better. I was horrified and couldn’t believe that this is how they treated people who were ill, especially children, but then this was where I saw how different cultures were. Here they still used shamans and witch doctors to cure illness. To them illness is a sort of demon, so by carrying out these practices, they are getting rid of the evil spirits dwelling inside the ill human.

After this we were led down a few narrow streets and past more stalls of things to buy, which we all hurried past as quick as possible for fear of being mobbed again, we made our way out of the initial village area and started onto the outskirts, we passed a bar on the way that looked extremely inviting and had a few western people sat outside and the signs where written intricately on blackboards in chalk In English and Vietnamese, offering hot chocolate and other yummy sounding drinks as well as alcohol. A Dutch man called out to Kiki as he must have realised she was Dutch too – I don’t know how?! But turns out he owned the bar and invited us to come back there. We realised this was the place to go out here and we thought we would take a trip there later, it turns out we wouldn’t have to walk very far, as the place we were staying was about a minute away, we pretty much turned a slight corner and there was the house.

We walked up some small stone steps that led onto a big concrete seating area with a big dinner table in the middle, and saw the front door. We followed May into the house and saw to the left was a staircase which led up to the bedrooms presumably, then beyond that was the families living area, kitchen at the back and t.v at the front, with a few plastic chairs. In the space between the stairs and the front door was a huge area connecting the family bedrooms downstairs and the toilets outdoors. There was one toilet and a shower room – when we went out to look at it there was a corridor leading to the left, which went outside, I craned my neck around and saw their farm just next to us and their land behind the house, thick with vegetation and plants, I realised that we were in a very remote area indeed. We were encouraged to go upstairs to leave our things and pick our beds. We were instructed to leave our shoes at the bottom of the stairs and told that we had to wear sandals on our return downstairs and in the house (they were supplied for us but because they were second hand, there was a struggle to find ones that fitted – well not for me but Joe ended up with some that were two sizes too small but they were the biggest. Joe had big feet) we had to take the sandals off though if we wanted to go outside and could put our normal shoes on, I found this confusing and kept mixing it all up and tried not to get caught doing the ritual wrong. With all our ‘borrowed’ sandals on we made our way up the wooden staircase that was rather like a ladder leading up to a hay loft in a barn, I was excited to see where we would be sleeping.

We touched down in Hanoi 2 hours later and were picked up by Hanoi backpackers hostel airport transfer. This was pretty cool as when we walked out of the arrivals section there was a man with a sign saying ‘Mr. Chris’ which was funny and made us feel important. We were driven to the old town of Hanoi (more popular with the backpackers) and I immediately felt a difference here to Ho Chi Minh. The streets were smaller and more like little back alleys with little shops selling intricate and exotic things as well as the usual tourist tat that one would always find in a market stall, there were little restaurants all huddled together and hidden from view selling wonderful smelling food, mopeds were everywhere as well and you had to be super alert to make sure you weren’t run down by one. It seemed to be a game for the Vietnamese, they would go very fast down a small alley and beep at you loudly and just miss you, scaring the life out of you while they laughed. Me and Chris dragged our suitcases to the hostel and checked in, we were staying in a mixed dorm and I needed to lie down, the next day we would be up and early to go on the castaways tour around Ha Long Bay – essentially a booze cruise for three days on a massive boat.

I was still feeling ill but when we got into the dorm I started to perk up a bit, here is were I met Joe Balls (Joe was to become my travel buddy for the next 7 weeks) we immediately struck up a conversation as I made it my mission to introduce myself and be outgoing in a social situation, you have to while travelling or you miss out. Joe was really friendly and so easy to get on with, I could hardly believe he was only 20! Joe had been travelling since August 2013 and had been to Thailand and had just got back from spending a few weeks travelling up from Ho Chi Minh city to Hanoi. He had also been to Cambodia and was deciding where to go next, I asked if he was going on the tour the next day and he wasn’t…boo I thought! The dorm was quite empty and I was glad, the other three people seemed like a nice bunch of guys and it turned out I was the only girl…in a mixed dorm, I wasn’t complaining though, I normally get on with guys better. So Chris and I went to get some food after locking our stuff away, we walked down the little street the hostel was on and found a charming little restaurant tucked away in the building opposite it was called ‘Geko’ and had two tables in the front with the windows opened up so it was almost open air, up a little tiny winding staircase was more seats but we chose the one downstairs, the tables and chairs were old and mismatched and the table cloths were ones that your grandmother might have made out of old curtains. On top of the tables were little lamps for lights, which cast a warm glow all over the area, I was starting to feel better and happier here, I had heard that the old town of Hanoi was an old French colonial town and I could definitely see its influence here. We had some food and went to get an early night, back at the hostel I went to get my wifi to work and headed down into the communal area and came upon an incredibly drunk idiot guy who was talking to the Vietnamese girl who worked there like she was a piece of shit – he was demanding water and swaying all over the place. I rolled my eyes and tried to distance myself from him, too late, he spotted me and started trying to talk to me, in a drunkun slur he asked if he had met me before and where I was staying and then if he could stay with me! Wow I had only been here 5 minutes and already the sleaze bags were out, he looked like he was going to throw up so I backed away from him. At that moment joe came downstairs and rescued me, realising defeat where the wifi was concerned I went back up to the dorm.

Me joe and Chris chatted for a bit longer and then settled down for bed. I was feeling lucky to be in a dorm with so little people in it and they were all asleep already, yes finally I can sleep!! Only an hour later and the peace was disturbed in a most obscene and major way, four guys who had been out on the piss that night came bursting into the room with no concern for anyone else, turns out the dorm was full, I had been naive to think that we were the only ones and I remembered why I didn’t want to stay in dorms in the first place. These guys were the most rude and arrogant bunch of idiots and of course they were English….obviously thought they were in Ibiza didn’t they, no wonder Asians don’t like westerners, we are twats. So the one sleeping above me on the top bunk was actually not too bad and did keep apologising but loudly so it kind of defeated the purpose. The guy who was the worst though was this absolute loser who literally stripped off and was walking around naked with his tackle out for all to see, he started to bend over and look for his…well Im not sure what he was looking for but I had to put the covers over my head as all I could see was bum hole in my face. He then turned around and was practically waving his willy in my face, his mates were cracking up with laughter and taking photos…admittedly it was funny at first and shocking but after 10 seconds I was getting fed up. Suddenly the guy stops and just stares at me and says ‘you’re a girl, you’re looking! Don’t you look at me!’ I was taken aback…I wasn’t looking and retorted back ‘well done, I am a girl. it’s hard not to look when you’re waving it in my face, I don’t want to look, I want to go to sleep. Shut up’ the other boys started apologising but weren’t being any quieter, eventually they calmed down but let’s just say I didn’t sleep much. Just as I was going to bed the naked guy pipes up again and says ‘there’s a slut in that bed’ meaning me and then said ‘that bitch would get it’ I was silently boiling over with rage but given the circumstances, I wasn’t about to rise to it. This guy was thick headed and not worth the aggro. Pity he was on the castaway tour tomorrow as well.

27th October 2013

I must have slept a bit because I was suddenly woken up by being smashed in the face by a full water bottle. It had fallen from the top bunk and the guy was actually really sorry but that was it, damage was done, it was 5.45am and I was feeling so rough again. We all got up at 6.30am – the whole dorm apart from joe and two other guys were booked onto the castaways tour and we were due to leave at 7am. I was not feeling fresh and really wished I could stay in bed, we said goodbye to joe and exchanged Facebook details and dragged ourselves downstairs to check out and get breakfast, Chris was feeling equally rubbish I think but we didn’t tell each other. I eyed up the rest of the people at the hostel and who was going on our tour and noticed that everyone was really cliquey and I had a feeling of dread that I was going to be stuck with idiots for three days. I must be getting old because I wasn’t keen on drinking so much and actually wanted to see ha long bay for its beauty not so I could get smashed. My feelings on this were reinforced when I met Jodie, a team leader and who worked and lived at the hostel, she had come for a holiday there and then decided to stay and work, she was telling me all about her first experience on the tour and showed me pictures and seemed proud that she couldn’t remember anything about it and looked like a mess. I wasn’t so impressed, I’ve had my fair share of getting so wasted I can’t remember what I’ve done and made a fool of myself and luckily I am well travelled enough so I didn’t need this experience. Who really wants to go all the way to Vietnam, to ha long bay one of the 7 natural wonders of the world and spend it fucked up with some English larger louts?! I think that’s the chav mentality all the way isn’t it? I mean don’t get me wrong, I want to have a good time too but this just seemed like a waste.

So there we were waiting for everyone to arrive and I notice one girl in a blue dress, make up smeared all over her face, hair everywhere, no shoes on and swigging beer (it might have been water but beer seems more appropriate) she was Geordie and loud and had clearly just come straight from a night out. CAN NOT DEAL with this I said to myself. We all piled onto the bus and made our way to the second bus with all the others that were being picked up from different places, there was a bit of readjusting and everyone was ready to go on two separate buses. Unfortunately Fiona (girl in blue dress) was on our bus and wouldn’t shut up – she wasn’t just loud, she was louder than hell and extremely oblivious to other people. She put her feet up practically by Chris’s head and they were black….from not wearing shoes of course, the Vietnamese bus driver screamed at her to move her feet off his seats and she immaturely said ‘alright calm down! They are only seats’. I felt sorry for Chris having to put up with it. The whole way we tried to sleep but just couldn’t because Fiona kept droning on to anyone who would listen about how eating is cheating and that she is going to get so drunk and will probably miss all of ha long bay….I put her in the traveller dick category with the other knobs I had met along my way. I felt even more sorry for the Vietnamese tour guide who was standing at the front of the bus trying to give us some history on Vietnam and telling us about his family who were murdered in the war, because everyone was pretty much trying to sleep or Fiona was either talking over him or asking if she could call him Steve. I started to panic and knew I didn’t want to spend three days with them on an island in the middle of Vietnam and what’s worse is that I was beginning to deteriorate again in health, I went downhill quickly, my breathing was terrible and I was so weak. I gazed out of the window wondering what the hell I was going to do, when I suddenly saw a man driving a tiny moped with a full size dead pig strapped to the back of it! Wtf?! I was to learn that the Vietnamese were very good at carrying almost anything on the back of their bikes, defying gravity and physics – I think we once saw a full on fridge on the back of one.

After this bit of surrealism my mind turned to if I was actually going to be able to make it to the island, I knew my asthma was getting worse and I felt panicky, my inhalers weren’t working and I was trying to imagine being on this boat full of people drinking, smoking and being loud, when all I wanted to do was curl up in a ball and sleep this horrible illness off. I had been ill for almost 5 days now and it had shown signs of getting better but then was starting to come back in force, which is what dengue fever does. We arrived at the port and we got off…I turned to Chris and said I couldn’t go on the trip and burst into tears. Luckily we were able to get a refund for both of us and they fully understood that I was sick and could see I was being genuine. Feeling relieved we grabbed a taxi to Ha Long Bay city when we decided we would stay the night there as a 3 hour trip back did not excite me and I couldn’t face it or the hostel either. I remembered joe saying he was going to cat ba island which is an hour boat trip from ha long bay the next day, I messaged him and said we hadn’t gone, we arranged to meet up the next day in cat ba and stay there – sorted! We left in the taxi and arrived in the city half an hour later and stepped out by the beach front, we looked around to get some bearing on where we were and decided that it might be best to find a hotel straight away. While we were walking we passed a kiosk on the side of a road, a Vietnamese girl started laughing at me and started to follow me when her Asian friend held her back, I was slightly alarmed and then even more so when an older Vietnamese man started following us, we noticed a hotel just opposite from us called ‘the dream hotel’ we walked in just to get into the safety of it. The reception was impressive, we walked into a huge reception hall that had a beautiful painted ceiling of the sky, stars, moon and sun with a massive chandelier hanging in the middle. At the end of the hall was the reception desk and some big comfy stylish chairs for guests to use the wifi. We sat down and started to compare hotels, there was a Novotel just 15 mins away but for the same price so we just decided to stay here.

We were checked in and I went straight to sleep – on further inspection this hotel was shabby and run down and a complete rip off but we had no choice but to stay. A few hours later I awoke and started to panic about what a waste this was and that we needed to arrange something. I hadn’t come all the way to ha long bay to just go home because I was sick, Vietnam was not turning out to be a good experience and I was wondering if weather my illness was making me see it more negatively, I was determined to change this, dengue or no dengue. I left Chris sleeping in the twin bed next to mine and went for a wonder and some fresh air, there was a roof top pool so I went in search of that. I found it and revelled in the fresh air, I lay down on the ground and just listened to my breath and the feeling of my chest moving up and down while doing so. I was thinking about life again and my future, wondering if I was running away, had I made a mistake, was everyone right to call me a flake?, maybe I should come home and start my life, maybe this was all meant to happen to show me that I had people who loved me at home and I was wrong to have left. In reflection I was delirious and being analytical, it’s a frequent occurrence for me but it can have impulsive consequences when displayed at the wrong time. I was being bitten by the Mosquitos as it was dusk and that’s when they love to come out and destroy you, so I made my way back to the room. I messaged joe asking what his plan was and waited for his reply, while doing this I suddenly started to feel shivery and hot at the same time and my breathing became worse, I was coughing and couldn’t move. I lay back down on the bed acknowledging that I was extremely hungry as well, but I couldn’t go anywhere. To take my mind off it I started to watch coronation street via YouTube, catching up on the things I had missed, Chris watched football and kept an eye on me. My chest infection was definitely getting worse and I couldn’t stop coughing, I then decided I was too hungry and had to go get some food. I wondered slowly down to the restaurant….which was deserted and looked closed and I would have thought it was if it hadn’t been for the little tv blaring out some obscure Asian soap opera in which all the waitresses were enthralled by. As soon as I approached they switched it off, I was handed a menu and within 5 minutes I had ordered a Thai curry (I was missing Thailand) I paid what I thought was an extortionate amount for this and made my way back upstairs. Turns out they had ripped me off and had charged me extra for everything but I was too ill to protest it, half an hour later and my food arrives, it’s devoured within 15 minutes and I start to feel better, this was short lived and suddenly the night turns into the worst I’ve ever been while I’ve been ill. It started with sweating and then being extremely cold, then the coughing and the raging fever, I was wrapping myself up tightly in my duvet because I was freezing cold and then would be throwing it off 5 minutes later because I’m too hot!

28th October 2013

I didn’t sleep that night at all and I don’t think Chris did either, I woke up at 5am and just cried. I was feeling the worst I had in my whole life and I wasn’t sure if I should go to hospital or not. I made it through the night though and we checked out and had some lunch, I was taking long deep breaths and trying not to get impatient with the waitresses, we were the only people in the restaurant and it took them at least 15 minutes to come and take our order. I had to actually go get them to come over in the end, I was like a bear with a sore head, food came and I managed half of it before I had to step outside and get some fresh air for fear of being sick. I was snapping at Chris and generally being a moody cow with everyone, poor Chris what a nightmare holiday for him. Finally we set off for cat ba island and left the horrible hotel, we decided to get on a speed boat instead of the ferry as it only took 30 minutes as opposed to the 3 hours on the ferry, plus when we got to the ferry we weren’t even sure if it was running. We walked into the big open air waiting area and came across a lady in what looked like a ticket booth and asked her for tickets, she didn’t know when the boat was leaving and pointed to the crew that were sitting around the plastic dark green table in the middle, I asked one of the men when the boat was leaving and he put up three fingers, they all bored their eyes into me with distaste, I could feel it and I wasn’t enjoying the experience. ‘Ok where do we pay?’ I asked, it was clear the ticket lady wasn’t selling tickets, they looked at me blankly, ‘pay now?’ I said more simply. One of the men cracked a smile, looked at his friend and mockingly said in a girly voice ‘pay now?’ And burst out laughing. I had had enough, screw this I said to Chris, come on let’s go check out the speed boat situation and we wondered to the main boat station at the front of the dock.

We walked in and in front of us was a long desk in what looked like different boating sections, I walked up to the first Lady and asked about prices and times etc, she looked at me laughed and just ignored me. What the hell?! I was getting incredibly impatient with this treatment from everyone so I walked to the other end and tried there, luckily the girl spoke perfect English and within half an hour we were on a speed boat and whizzing through the cliffs of ha long bay. Chris and I were sat on opposite sides of the small vessel to keep the balance and had our orange life jackets on, we drove through the port and onto the big open ocean and suddenly out of nowhere almost a huge cliff loomed out of the water, it’s jagged rockface towering high above and up into the clouds, it’s limestone colouring was magnificent in the sun and I marvelled at how much greenery was on it. I looked beyond this one and noticed many more coming into view, we were weaving in and out of them at full speed but we were able to take in its full beauty. I couldn’t wait to see it properly the next day.

We arrived at cat ba island in no time at all and I noticed a white mini van waiting for us on the dock, this wasn’t surprising as I had noticed the driver had made a quick phone call on his mobile. The prominent thing about this is that what I had discovered since being in Asia and from doing some research, that this is common practice, wherever you are being dropped off or going to, your tour guide or driver will always call their friends to offer you a taxi or a service first before you go to anyone else. The actual issue with cat ba island when I was researching how to get there, was that it is notorious for being met on the other end at the ferry port by taxi drivers being very aggressive and ripping you off for a taxi into the main part of the island. In fact the stories I had read had been horrific accounts of westerners literally being bullied with force and violence into paying well over the odds for a taxi and if they refused and got away without the bullying behaviour, then there was no other option other than to walk and this took longer than half a day to get there. So I had spent hours finding out where the best place to get the ferry from was and it turns out that most of these experiences happen from ha long bay city port, which is the most popular port and probably the only one tourists knew about, however thanks to other traveller bloggers I found out about another port called ‘Tuan Chau Island’ this takes 15 minutes to get from the beach front (less time than the half an hour it takes to get to ha long city port) and is less well known and more quiet, the speed boat wasn’t cheap though, so if you can get the ferry I would advise it. Plus from this port you arrive in a different location to the ferries that leave from ha long city port, which means no aggressive taxi drivers, of course it means that there is likely only one taxi here to take you, which leaves you no choice but to go with them. Luckily they didn’t charge anything silly and were actually quite helpful.

We started driving and soon found ourselves on little dirt roads and going through the jungle it seemed, it was so beautiful and the little huts and houses we passed were so interesting and wonderful to look at in real life.
A short while later and we arrived at le ponte hotel, a slightly run down little hotel, but charming and efficient. It was probably one of the best hotels in the area though, the area wasn’t big and had one main street. We walked into reception and enquired about a room, the receptionist spoke very good English and was very helpful, which was nice for a change. Our room cost $11 a night for three people, this was unbelievably cheap for what we got and there was wifi too. Our ensuite bathroom didn’t have a working light so we had to use a minors light on our heads to see at night but that was all part of the fun. I went straight to sleep as I hadn’t really slept that night and I wasn’t feeling much better. Chris just hung out in the room and used the wifi, maybe an hour later I was woken by the loud sound of school children singing, I thought I recognised the song, I did recognise it! It was ‘gangnam style’ by Sy. The school must have been nearby because it was incredibly loud! But it was really funny and sweet to listen to these kids energetically singing. After that it was a bit difficult to get back to sleep and just as I was drifting off again, a knock on the door came, I opened it and there stood Joe, yay! I flung my arms over him and gave him a big hug! I was a bit relieved that there were three of us because as I was being lame at least Chris had someone to hang out with. Joe had been true to his word and had met us and was surprised about the room being so cheap as well. We even had a T.V, we all had a bit of a nap ad watched some tv and then I went down to the reception to find out about ha long bay tours, as on trip advisor I had actually stumbled across a tour by an Aussie called Jim and his was a small tour for maximum six people but came highly recommended, so I thought I’d find out what tour this hotel did and then see what the price difference was between it and Jim’s one. Coincidently this hotel is where Jim’s tours were booked and left from. We booked it up as it was incredibly cheap and I had a chat with Jim, he explained that we were to be picked up from the hotel at 8am (I don’t know why we have to always leave so early but there we are) and that we would be boarding a traditional Vietnamese fishing boat, would go kayaking in the caves, have lunch cooked for us by the crew, see the fishing village and then go to his restaurant at the end to have a beer and watch the sunset. It sounded perfect, and not a loudmouth douchebag in sight.

After booking the tour we went in search of the night market and some dinner, we walked out of the hotel, turned left and carried on towards the pier. Down this road were a few little shops and restaurants but all quite run down and not very inviting. We reached the pier and in neon lights were the words ‘welcome to cat ba island’ over the entrance, opposite were a bunch of restaurants and a big flashy hotel, the restaurant next to the hotel was actually very pretty and had fairy lights and plants everywhere, I pegged that one as the one I wanted to go to. We carried on walking to the night market and realised that a lot of it was food and not many clothes shops. However we looked in a few as Joe was looking for more shorts, but to be honest it wasn’t great stuff so we walked back to the place next to the hotel to have some dinner. The boys ordered beers and I had a Banana smoothie without any alcohol whatsoever, as I didn’t think alcohol would do my illness any good. Once we were sat down I was feeling pretty ill again and noticed that the restaurant also did massages and for a very cheap price. So I went to the spa that was situated in the hotel (they were both connected) and got a shoulder neck and head massage. This place wasn’t set up to be relaxing and was full of men, thinking about it maybe it wasn’t a totally innocent massage place but either way I was given the best massage I’ve ever had. I thought maybe a massage would help release the horrible toxins in my body and the aching all seemed to be in my shoulders, so I told her to go hard and she didn’t hold back. She started on my head and started massaging my forehead and my temples, most bizzare experience but it was amazing! She was massaging my cheekbones, eye sockets, chin, nose and scalp and it was very effective, I then got a proper beating on my shoulders and back but it was the kind of pain that did good and felt brilliant afterwards. After this I went back to join the boys and explained that it was the best one I’d had yet and that I was feeling better but I knew I had to get back soon because all those toxins being released were going to cause some kind of relapse as my body recovered from the powerful massage.

We walked back to the hotel and passed the same eateries and shops as we did the first time but on our way back we noticed a little boy literally kicking a puppy for fun while his parents just looked on. I stared in disbelief, I’m not a dog person but the way the little thing yelped every time this kid slammed his shoe into its side was heartbreaking, Joe is a big dog and animal person and wanted to go kick the kid a few times to see how he liked it, but all we could do was walk away. We all piled into bed and fell straight asleep and ready for our tour of ha long bay the next day!

29th October 2013

My alarm goes off at 7.30am – I’m still not getting used to these stupid early tours. We get dressed and make our way down to the reception to wait for the bikes to pick us up. They take us past the pier and up to a restaurant/bar on top of a hill overlooking the bay. Here we meet Jim and I was surprised at how young he was, he was to go on to tell us that he owned this bar, the le ponte hotel we were staying at (hence the tour being booked from there) three hotels around the area and another restaurant. The bay tour was his starting point but now he only really does it if he has time or has people keen enough to go. In our case it was low season so he had time to take us, we were lucky then. We were introduced to his friend’s brother called ‘Xin’ who was doing a tourism degree in the mainland and was doing a placement with Jim to gain work experience. We all stepped into the beautiful fishing boat and settled ourselves on the two benches that were standing opposite each other with a table in the middle. Feeling excited we set off, as soon as we did ‘Xin’ had to go inside as he was getting sea sick, Asians get sea sick often (an Asian told me this so that why I’m mentioning it) poor guy I thought. Jim was telling us about the island, when suddenly one of the crew (who were all Vietnamese) warned Jim that the beach I was sitting on was broken, not wanting to risk me going overboard, I went to the helm of the boat and lay down and watched the scenery. Jim pointed out hills and cliffs and explained that many of the mountains were hollowed out and were used in the war as hideouts and to store artillery and hospitals. He said that most of the mountains we could see had tons of live artillery and that his own restaurant is placed on top of what used to be an army hideout and lookout and he purchased the land with lots of live artillery underneath it, however he doesn’t own that and isn’t allowed in there, it’s all locked up. I wondered how safe it really was under there? The whole of cat ba island was actually an old army base and although it’s beautiful it hides theses weapons of war, if they were to one day explode the whole island would go up.

As Jim was talking I was staring in wonder at the huge cliffs that were starting to emerge out of the water, they were huge and loomed over us as a display of nature vs man and time and showed that these spectacles of beauty were more enforcing than we were and it simply demanded respect. We were then told about the famous golden bob cat that lived on one of the islands that we passed by (I can’t remember the proper name of the creature unfortunately but it’s basically a bob cat….but Vietnamese) Jim told us that only 200 of these cats were left on the island and were protected because the Vietnamese used to kill them by the thousands to sell to the Chinese and other Asian countries for medicinal purposes, which bought them in a fortune, however now the one time poachers of these animals are now their protectors as it was explained that they would make more money from protecting them than shooting them as when they shoot them all….then what?! Funny way to look at things but it works and the island is now a nature reserve. Joe and Chris swapped places with me at the helm so we all got to see the view from that point and I sat on top of the boat were the sail was. The view was so magical and transported me far away that all I could think about was the wonderful surroundings that I was so lucky to be witnessing. I was still very sick but I was feeling loads better and I did not want to miss this. Then we all took turns in having some ‘Titanic’ posing pictures and came to a stop at a little make shift harbour in the middle of the bay near some islands, it was peculiar, a kind of boat watch house, there were three men who each had a bedroom and there was a kitchen a sort of outside area. The whole thing was made by wood strapped tightly together and barrels as floats – like a raft, but more sophisticated – and anchored down, there were two little dogs running around as well. It struck me that these men lived on this raft house and it was their home…I was stunned.

Jim instructed us off the boat and onto the raft to get into our kayaks, the weather hadn’t really cleared up at this point so it looked like it was about to rain, which was disappointing but it wasn’t going to ruin our day. We got in our kayaks, me and Chris in one, Jim and Xin in one and Joe on his own in the other, we kayaked to the island ahead and went through tiny little caves filled with bats but the water was clear and the cave was beautiful, I couldn’t believe I was here. We then came out to a clearing and it was here that I realised that we weren’t on the tourist path and Jim was showing us ha long bay from a locals point of view and I was grateful because it was unspoilt, no other tourists and it felt like we had gone back in time. This clearing was a like a mini lake surrounded by high mountains which had monkeys living all over and apparently on a clear day you can see them but today wasn’t to be one of those days. The heavens then opened and poured down on us, Jim hates the rain so we all kayaked back through the cave and waited in there. So while we were waiting Chris and Joe decided it would be a great idea to get into the water and have a bit of a swim, I thought it was a great idea but I couldn’t go as I knew if I got wet and then spent the next few hours damp it would be asking for more illness. So out jumped Chris and joe and they swam through the caves and into the open water, where they started jumping off the rocks and although Jim did warn them about rocks cutting their feet they ignored him and did end up with shredded feet but they said it was worth it. I didn’t expect anything less from them to be honest. Safely back in our kayaks the rain had stopped and we went back to the boat, where we had discovered that the crew had been cooking us yummy lunch. I think it was the best food I’ve had on my whole trip, they cooked prawn with the shell on (which are meant to be eaten whole as the Vietnamese do – I tried it but it wasn’t the best) there were grilled sardines with a beautiful tomato and herb sauce, plenty of rice, chicken, fantastically cooked tofu, vegetables and because we are westerners they had also made us some hand cut chips, which were incredible. We sat there for a good while munching down this beautiful Asian feast and then once we were done, we were off again.

This time we stopped for a bit of a swim, which was lucky because the sun had decided to come out! So we all scrambled up to the top of the deck and then the top of the boat above the captain’s dock and sat on the bright green wooden top ( the colour of this wood was painted a fantastic shade of green, which I had never seen before) and then one by one we jumped in and swam around the boat, I enjoyed this a lot and tried to entice Xin in but he couldn’t swim so he declined. I was shocked! He couldn’t swim? Then I remembered that I had been told many Asians didn’t know how swim, it was then that Jim told me a sad story about two women who lived on the water in the bay and made their living by selling drinks and food to tourists when on tours, they would sidle up to the big boat on their tiny boat and sell them what they had. Well one day as it was getting to evening they loaded up their boat and apparently had put some chairs on there which had made the little boat too heavy and it started to sink, the two women didn’t know how to swim or even tread water and because there was no one around to save them, they drowned. So sad, after that story I stopped pestering Xin to get into the water. Jim said he was giving him lessons anyway. After swimming we all thought it was time to go home, the weather was turning again and I was getting a bit cold and shivery. I sat up on the deck again and Xin sat with me and we talked a bit, he explained that he had been so nervous about this trip as it was his first trip where he had to speak English to tourists that he hadn’t been able to sleep properly, this was adorable!

As we were sailing back the weather started to get grey and stormy and the waves were getting bigger and rougher. I closed my eyes and pretended I wasn’t on a tiny fishing boat in the middle of the sea because I was starting to get scared. I then heard a noise and we saw a little row boat with about six people in it all trying to navigate over the waves, they looked like they would be swallowed up by the monster waves, they were struggling so Jim told his crew (in perfect Vietnamese) to stop and tie them to the boat. We chugged along with them in tow and braved the waves, finally we got to a clear patch and to the village that our stowaways belonged to, so we dropped them off – as we did I noticed that the fishing village was much like the kayaking place we had seen, all built up on rafts and dogs everywhere, I still couldn’t understand how they all lived here. I then noticed some rubbish floating by and felt sad that us westerners couldn’t be trusted with anything beautiful and we have to littler everywhere but then to my surprise I saw a Vietnamese woman tipping all her rubbish into the water. I looked on gob smacked and Jim explained that they didn’t understand keeping it clean etc – it was theirs to litter in. How sad.

We got back to Jim’s bar and our starting place and had a few drinks on the terrace and watched the sun go down. It really was a beautiful sight. Chris had an excellent time and told me that he had never jumped into the sea from a boat or gone into caves and he was so happy he had done it. I was really pleased to have shared that with him, as I had done things like that plenty of times and you forget what it’s like for someone who’s never done it before. After our drinks we walked back to the hotel, stopping off for a few more in a bar with a pool table while I went to go and sort out my phone, O2 were messing me around again…no surprise there. When it was apparent I couldn’t do anything about it, we headed back and the boys went to get changed and meet joes friends who had also come to cat ba, I stayed at the hotel though as I was totally wiped out and thought it best to get some rest. My breathing was still pretty bad and I wanted to take it easy. I was still contemplating going back to Thailand but so far joe had convinced me to stay, for a bit at least. The boys went out and I snuggled up to watch some movies and fell straight to sleep.

30th October 2013

I’m woken up at about 3am by Joe coming back home but without Chris…oh god it’s happened again hasn’t it?! I asked Joe where Chris was and Joe said he had left him chatting with some English guy at the bar and he seemed alright so Chris was probably fine. I think at this stage I just left the situation alone as I reckoned Chris would be ok, I went back to sleep.

5.30am and Chris is back – I vaguely remember waking up and being happy to see that he was home but went straight to sleep again. A few hours later and we are all awake, it is a beautiful sunny day and I’m feeling less like death and felt a bit more energetic but my chest was still very tight and I still had a lingering infection making me cough at every movement. Joe and Chris wanted to go to the national park which had a look out point, I really wanted to go but this would require a long trek up a mountain and in the heat and my state I knew that I wouldn’t be able to do it, so I stayed behind in bed trying to build my strength up for the journey home. Chris and Joe rented bikes for the day and drove up to the park, while they were out I packed my bags and checked that their bags were ready for the bus that we were catching at 3ish, I then wondered down to the restaurant we went to the night before last and had some breakfast/lunch, I really craved tofu like we had had on the boat yesterday and ordered tofu and noodles with veg. I waited for what seemed like ages and was getting a bit conscious of time (I was also the only person there) I asked how long the food was going to take, when a big pot of boiling water was bought out to me and a plate of veg, plate of noodles and then a plate of tofu. I was very confused to say the least and couldn’t really understand what to do with it – I still wasn’t 100% and wasn’t up for having to cook my own food, which is what this looked like. I asked he guy who looked like the manager what to do and he came over and started putting all the food together in the pot. It turns out I had ordered what they call hot plates which is where you are meant to cook it yourself. Damn it I thought, not only did I have to cook it but the tofu wouldn’t be the way it was yesterday as that was fried. Feeling a bit disheartened I carried on cooking it and put it in a bowl and ate maybe half of it. I realised I had only half an hour till the bus and needed to get there. I went to go pay and realised that I didn’t have enough, oh dear how was I going to play this one? I told the man I didn’t have enough money and that I was staying at le ponte and would go and get the rest and be back in 5 minutes, at first he almost didn’t want to let me go but I managed to persuade him and started to hot foot it back to the hotel. As I was walking up the hill, I heard a ‘beep beep’ and saw Joe and Chris coming down the road, Joe stopped and I got on the bike, he then took me back to the restaurant and we paid the rest. As I pulled up the manager gave an amused laugh and waved us off after we paid him. Once back at the hotel we grabbed our stuff, checked out and raced to the bus station.

Half an hour and some fantastic scenery later we arrived at the harbour and boarded a small little boat that was to take us to ha long city port. We all got on and went down below deck to where the seating was but after 10 mins Joe and I went above deck to look at the views, the sun was setting and cast a beautiful pink glow over everything, the shores were lined with trees and what looked like seaweed farming contraptions, at the beginning of the journey there were some local villagers in the middle of the water collecting whatever it was they were collecting….it was too hard to see exactly what it was but obviously it was for farming purposes. The little boat was speeding away and fast approaching the open ocean, we took a quick picture and headed back inside as it was starting to get dark and there was no seating. An hour or so later and we had arrived at the port and boarded the bus, this bus was a local one and was more like the public transport you would get in London than the tourist coaches you have. So we set off, Joe and Chris on the back seats as they needed more room, me with two seats on my own by the window, luckily it wasn’t that busy but as the journey went we on we picked up more people and suddenly we were all huddled up next to each other and the locals. I was fortunate and had someone next to me that was little and didn’t make much noise but Joe had a local next to him who was literally disgusting and although there were a few seats in between them, this guy decided to sit right next to joe and quite often he coughed and coughed and sounded like he was spitting out flem into his mask that the Vietnamese (and some Thais) wear. Every time he did this I flinched and turned around, not quite believing that he was doing this, it was so rank. Anyway finally he got off the bus and that just left most of us westerners and we stopped for a toilet break. Joe stayed on the bus and me and Chris went in search of the toilet, we crossed the road and went to the first restaurant we could find and because there is always an opportunity to make money, this place charged us a fee for using the loo, it was 100,000 dong each. We only had enough for one person but we both waked in anyway and used the toilet…I figured what would they do, throw me out mid wee? We walked through to the back and walked straight into the kitchen, which was literally like a kitchen you would find in a house, I was amazed. Toilet trip done (no loo paper….this was a common theme, Asians don’t really use paper) we headed back to the bus, but it had gone….panicked griped me like an icy hand and I tried to think rationally about where it might have gone and what we would do if it had gone, luckily Chris spotted it parked next to some other ones, I guess it was his turn to be the sensible one in a crisis!

Bus boarded again and we were on our way and travelled for ages it seems until we came to a stop and were made to get off the bus again. Realising that this wasn’t a toilet stop I started to wonder why we had been abandoned here, my mind started racing and I was convinced that this is where we would all be ambushed and mugged or murdered. I calmed down when we were told that a connecting bus was coming to pick us up and take us the rest of the way back to Hanoi. I think I had been watching too many movies about travelling backpackers…and the unfortunate things that have happened to them….have you seen hostel?? Anyway we were on a better bus this time, more like a coach and me, Joe and Chris nabbed the back seats and all snuggled up together using each other’s bags as pillows…for some reason I was squashed up against the window with both of them spread out kind of using me as a pillow! Anyway eventually we got the Hanoi bus station, I rubbed my eyes and looked out of the window as the bus pulled to a stop and what I saw filled me with panic, there was a mob of Vietnamese ‘taxi drivers’ all shouting and pointing, ready to pester us when we got off the bus. There were more people than theThailand bus situation and I was worried, I noticed a group of men point at me animatedly, I pulled the curtain across the window and braced myself for what was to come. We all got off, Joe didn’t seem fazed and I was glad to be with him because he did all the bartering and at first got approached by a few drivers all offering stupid prices for our drive back to the hotel, he said very firmly ‘no! That is not cheap, you’re ripping me off! We are not going with you’ finally we got a good price and arrived at our hotel.

As we had a big family room I said Joe could stay with us if he needed to, I liked having him around and wanted him to stay with us. He was happy with that and said he would from the next night as he was already booked into the Hanoi backpacker hostel, which was the bigger one down the road to where we had first stayed. So we proceeded to check in and discovered that because we hadn’t turned up and had missed our first night there, they had cancelled our booking. I understood but I thought it was a big excessive that they had cancelled the whole thing, I explained I was sick but they didn’t believe me at first, which annoyed me. I then went into great detail about not being able to travel and not being able to call the hotel to let them know, they still weren’t convinced and the manager turned up. He was short and stout with a bald head and a wide smile, with a scar above his right eyebrow but he spoke good English, he asked me what had been wrong with me and I contemplated telling him about the dengue fever but I wasn’t sure they would believe that or worse they might think I was contaminated and not let me stay, so I pulled out my inhaler and told them I had been unable to travel due to an asthma attack in cat ba island. This was a lot easier to explain and they immediately understood, they had no rooms at the hotel until the next day so they put us in their sister hotel ‘The New Star’ up the road and would move us tomorrow. After getting settled we all went down to the place joe was staying and had dinner, this place was a massive piss up building and I could imagine it being fun but I don’t think I could have handled staying there. I really am a flashpacker. Anyway after we ate, me and Chris went back to the hotel and slept, I wanted to rest as much as possible as tomorrow was Halloween and Oh my god was it to be a big one!

24th October 2013

At 9am I wake up and I feel awful, this is a familiar feeling, cold seems to have filled every muscle, sense and surface of my body. I’m aching and feel short of breath, ‘maybe some green tea will help me feel better?’ I make a pot and drink the whole thing trying to sweat whatever parasite that has entered my body out, this made a slight improvement but I needed to do something else. I dragged myself to the shower and turned it on, making sure it was almost scolding and sank down to the floor and sat there letting the hot water run over me. While I sat there I was thinking about all the plans I had for the next few days, going to the Mekong delta to see the markets, the museums, the palace, the chu chi tunnels and generally look around Ho Chi Minh City, there was no way I was going to let this little cold get the better of me…I’m travelling for good sake, toughen up princess I thought.

So I finished showering and got dressed, admittedly that took a little while but I achieved it, I wasn’t feeling too bad after the shower and some more tea so I was convinced that if I just went to war museum today and then rested I would be better for tomorrow’s plans. I ordered a taxi from the front desk – in Vietnam all the taxis are scammed and corrupt, sometimes if you haven’t negotiated a price or got a meter taxi and your luggage is in the boot of the car they will literally hold your luggage hostage until you pay them the inflated price they are demanding – and asked to be taken to the war museum. Fifteen minutes later and I’m there, the sun and the heat hits me, I take a breath and fill my lungs with fresh air, which is rare for Ho Chi Minh City as it is more polluted than Bangkok – everyone drives on mopeds here and the driving is insane, cars and bikes weave in and out of each other on both sides of the road, beeping at each other to move out of the way, there seems to be no actual road law – I bought a bottle of water and some crisps from the lady who was also selling entry tickets in GBP it all amounted to 60p….mental!

In the courtyard outside the entrance were lots of tanks and helicopters all from the Vietnam war, some of them you could sit in. I was taking my time looking around as I wasn’t feeling great again and was tying to save energy, as I was sort of standing there aimlessly I must have looked like I was lost because this jolly and plump Australian man said in his Aussie drawl ‘hello, and where are you from then?’ I explained my whole story in very few seconds and said that it was my first day in Vietnam and after his reply I realised that he was one of those rich guys that marries an Asian girl because it’s guaranteed pretty much. He had been married before and had a daughter who lived in England and was a doctor, he was staying out here with his friend and his friends Vietnamese wife and had been introduced to their Asian friend and he had only been there for a few weeks but already they were planning on marriage and her going to live with him in Australia. I silently laughed at the predictability of it all but he seemed like a nice guy, he was about 55 years old so he wasn’t someone to be wary of, he even outlined some the things I should avoid and watch out for, the taxis and illegal motorbike taxis, the street sellers, not to walk alone at night, being ripped off at every opportunity and keeping your money and phone secure in a tightly zipped up bag. I Was feeling a bit scared at his point though and he must have realised he was freaking me out because he offered to walk around the museum with me to make sure I safe, now the funny thing about this, is that this situation has happened a few times since I set off, people just helping me out and looking after me, starting to think someone up there is looking down on me. However nice this offer was though, I just wanted to be on my own and enjoy the museum at my own pace but I couldn’t really say no as it would be rude. So we walked up the museum steps in the blistering hot sun and walked through to the big air conditioned ground floor.

The museum was less like a museum and more like a school exhibition, it was primitive and slapped together but it had a big impact. The first floor was full of propaganda posters from both sides, newspaper articles on the Americans and the war, many of the news paper articles were about how many of the soldiers refused to fight after serving some time in action because they didn’t agree with what they were fighting for, there were photos of protests in America and Vietnam and many other countries who didn’t support the war. Then there were the articles about the killings and the bombings accompanied with more propaganda. I was fascinated, history is a big passion of mine and I hadn’t really touched on the Vietnam war so I didn’t really know what had happened. I wanted to carry on looking for a bit longer but my Aussie guide wanted to move on…this was the drawback of not being on your own. The second floor was all about the actual war events and war crimes, there was also a section dedicated to agent orange and it’s after effects. Guess it sounds a bit morbid but I was interested in this section more as I think I have an aspect of my personality that is sympathetic to events that have happened and I have a big connection with people. Looking at photos and accounts puts me right in the past and I can almost feel what has happened, I read the paragraphs and descriptions over and over to make sure it sinks in and give it the respect it deserves. To me going to different countries isn’t just about meeting new people and getting smashed every night I want to learn something new and respect what has happened in each different place, that is what makes history so interesting. So I went around the large white room very slowly and inspected each picture and description carefully, reading it again once or twice and what I read was horrific. I had been warned that this museum was very biased towards Americans….I’m not bloody surprised, even their own soldiers didn’t want to fight. I don’t think it was being biased I think it was fact.

What I found out was that the Americans were ordered to go into villages and completely obliterate them to the ground, killing entire families to make sure that in the future no one would come back for revenge and also to make an impact on the population. Pictures upon pictures of dead people were displayed, all taken by the war photographers. What’s interesting about this, is that the war photographers (not only of this particular war) all try to say that they weren’t part of it, they were just abstract, documenting history, but they were never to know the outcome of the war and my theory is that they were just as much on the American side (or whatever country involved in the war) as the soldiers were, they would have had to agree with it on some level and I find it ironic that when it all comes out that the offending country is the one they were ‘documenting’ for, most of what they say is about how they didn’t agree with it, how tragic it was but their work was crucial to letting the world know what was happening. All a bit pompous in reality. Anyway after looking at countless shells, guns and bombs all displayed in glass cases and bullets out for you to touch I came to a big round circular piece of concrete, it was white/grey with green mouldy smears down the sides – the kind you get from years of water damage – and I put my hands on it and looked in side, it was wide and tall but I would only say wide enough for maybe three people to fit in there, now the reason I say this is because there were in fact 6 people hidden in this tube at one point and the tube itself used to be a part of sewage pipe connected next to a house on a farm. Next to it was a picture of the family and the house they lived in and below it was the description of how 6 soldiers arrived at this house, raided it and burnt it to the ground and then managed to stumble on the families hiding place and dragged them out one by one, there were three children and three adults and all of them expect one were killed but in the most brutal way possible. Two of the children were practically babies one was 3 years old and the other was about 6 months old, both of them were disembowelled and stabbed. The adults much the same, the little girl who escaped is still alive and donated the sewer tube to the museum with her story.

Aussie Dave (I’m not sure that was his name but it sounds Australian) wasn’t enjoying this much and said he’d seen enough. I hadn’t, I wanted to see everything as I didn’t want to just turn my back on it when it got uncomfortable. I carried on looking, and Dave went into the agent orange exhibition. I soon joined him and he was on his way out, told me he couldn’t read anymore and he would be waiting for me outside. I wondered what was more horrific than what we had just seen….I soon found out, Agent Orange was a chemical weapon and used by the Americans to poison the towns, many people didn’t die but were left with awful disfigurements and the worst thing about it was that this chemical affected unborn children and was absorbed into the blood stream, so even if you had no outside affects on the inside you could still be greatly affected. An example of this is the generation that were born soon after and lived in the contaminated areas, they would go on to pass it onto their children and they would then pass it on their children. So the aftermath of agent orange is still being passed through and at the end of the exhibition were pictures of the children affected by it now, the ones who attend school in this year 2013, they are the ones who have to deal with the consequences of hatred and war. I can understand why Dave didn’t want to see anymore, it was an awful symbol of what humans and hatred are capable of. Right at the end were the letters from the children to the United Nations appealing for help with cleaning up the damage that the chemicals did and the damage it is still causing and also help with supplying aid to the children that have been affected. One girl who has no legs or hands appealed to Barack Obama to send help to Vietnam to ensure that every child born in the future does not have to suffer with these awful disfigurements and the children who suffer from them now can try to live normal lives, in my opinion it is Americas duty to help these children, it wasn’t their fault and they are the ones suffering, they should clean up their mess. This little girl who wrote to the president of the United States of America had come top of her class and has own awards in Asia for poetry and writing. I hope Mr. Obama replied to her and agreed to help her….the was no reply displayed though.

I started to look around the rest of the room but suddenly my eyes started to see white and I felt very dizzy, it was extremely hot although I was standing in a well air conditioned room and I thought I was going to pass out. I felt like maybe I needed some food or just to get out of the there, as I walked outside Dave was waiting for me and he was talking to two young people wearing the mc hammer pants and their backpacks, ‘here she is’ he said and introduced me to the two English backpackers, I immediately knew they weren’t my kind of people, they were very prim and proper but I suppose nice enough, I think Dave was trying to make sure I was connected with some friends in Vietnam, I had said I was with friends but they were at home (I never ever say I’m travelling alone unless it’s safe to do so) but I wasn’t interested in making friends with these people, more because I felt like I was about to pass out any moment, I got the feeling they weren’t so interested either. I made polite conversation with them for a little bit and mentioned I wasn’t feeling well, they then made their excuses and walked on, I turned to Dave ready to press on to the last floor but I knew I couldn’t go on, I told him that I was feeling incredibly ill and I had to go, he looked slightly crestfallen but hoped I would get better. I ran out of there and sat on the steps outside catching my breath….what’s wrong with me? Maybe I was hungry, I hadn’t really eaten yet, I crossed the road to a cafe that looked fairly normal and it had mist sprinklers over the seats cooling you down. I took a seat and put my head in my hands breathing deeply and slowly and out through my mouth, a menu was put in front of me and I chose the easiest thing I could find – Singapore noodles- and water, 5 minuets later and the plate was set down with delicious food on it and I did my best but I could only manage half of it, my chest was hurting and I had a headache coming. I paid and left grabbing a taxi outside and asked to go back to my hotel, fifteen minutes later I was there and walking up to my room as quick as possible. As soon as I got in I sank onto the bed, sweat pouring off me and my whole body aching. I wanted to cry. I turned on the tv ordered soup and hoped this would just be a 24 hour thing.

25th October 2013

After an awful nights sleep where I must have woken up 4 times, in sweat and shivers I woke up at 10am wishing I hadn’t, I wanted to sleep all day! I lay there wondering what on earth was wrong with me, I had had a flu jab before I came out here so how could I have got the flu? I then started to research dengue fever.

Dengue fever is contracted through mosquito bites, it’s considered worse than malaria due to its rise around the world and the fact it can’t be cured but it’s not fatal. Dengue fever is sometimes referred to as broken bone syndrome as it gives you the feel of not being able to move. This was currently how I was feeling, I couldn’t move, every part of me ached and I needed to drink an incredible amount of water, but I couldn’t eat, I managed a club sandwich for the carbs but I couldn’t eat anything again after that. I abandoned all my plans and spent most of the day in bed with the air con off because it was making me worse, which just made me sweat profusely. I wasn’t winning at life at this moment and I surrendered to spending my time coughing and watching tv. My chest was tight and I knew I was developing a chest infection, from being a chronic asthmatic for my whole life I knew this feeling, what I couldn’t understand was how or why I had got one. It wasn’t the right weather for it, I had only been out twice since travelling and I wasn’t in a dirty hotel room so what was it?! After lying there and having to get up repeatedly to cough up the never ending amount of flem in my wind pipe I had had enough and decided to go outside, the stuffy, dark room with no window was depressing and unhygienic. I got dressed, which again took a stupidly long time and made my way to the door, before I did, I realised I had left my purse on the floor by my bed, I bent down to pick it up and noticed a plastic container underneath one of the beds, I stopped and just stared at it, I pushed it with my finger and there was liquid inside it….I had no idea what it was but it looked brownish and I didn’t get closer to it. Clearly it had been left by another guest, but surely the cleaner would have spotted it? Well I was pretty angry, my room smelt smokey too, which was not good for someone with a chest infection.

At reception I told the front desk about my grim discovery and asked them to clean it, making it really clear that I hadn’t left it there. I then went outside in search of a pharmacy, I walked past the bell boys who I had tipped nicely the day before, enquired where I could find medicine and then walked out through the doors. The smell of the city hit me hard, petrol and smoke, cooking meat, baking bread, fruit and sweets. The sounds of the city were even harsher, beeping and the trundle of vehicles, voices chattering and whistles being blown, it was all in your face and there was no escape. I crossed the road, well I say cross the road I meant got across with my life, in Vietnam there aren’t any crossings and the bikes and cars do not stop for you. Running out and hoping for the best is really the only way, I picked my moment a bit more carefully though and waited for some kind of gap but it was still a dice with death. I went down the street I was pointed to and as I did I noticed people squatting on the pavement cooking their dinner on makeshift stoves and families waiting patiently sitting on tiny little plastic stools and tables. Although I’m sure they were making something lovely and healthy, the smell was making me gag, I hurried past and almost collided into a woman wearing her cone hat and holding a long piece of wood over her shoulder, suspended from each end of the piece of wood with lots of string were big circular dishes with corn in them, later on through my travels I would see lots of these contraptions and each carrying something different, from fruit to meat. I avoided the long wooden thing and looked around the street searching for the pharmacy sign, my eyes were starting to glaze over again and my breathing was worse, I was starting to feel faint again, I went up to a group of Vietnamese men and asked them where the pharmacy was, they didn’t understand so I used some kind of made up sign language and coughed animatedly so they knew I was talking about being sick. They laughed but stepped back from me and pointed to the pharmacy right behind me….’oh….right, there it is. Thanks’ idiot I thought to myself. I walked in and just said to the women I’m sick.

She asked me my symptoms and diagnosed me with dengue fever…I wasn’t quite so sure as I think this is a common diagnoses but as there is no cure and all you can do is rest and let it pass I let her prescribe me some flu tablets and she advised me to drink lots of water. I walked back to the hotel, dragging my feet and breathing deeply (unfortunately breathing in the heavily polluted air while I was at it) coughing and generally feeling like I was about ready to collapse. I waited at the roadside opposite the hotel and looked for a space to run across the road, but there wasn’t a safe gap and I just stood there for ages trying to cross, the bell boy must have been watching me as he came to my rescue and stopped the traffic for me to pass, holding my arm while hurrying me across. I was grateful to him. I wondered if they had a roof terrace that I could sit on to get some fresh air as I couldn’t bear to go back to my windowless and airless room. I asked the front desk and explained about my illness and that I would pay extra for a better room, all they had with a window was the rooftop room. It was £20 extra…I took it! Within half an hour I was lying on a huge bed with the windows open and relishing in the fresh air. My chest was rasping and my breathing was worse and I started to panic a bit thinking I might need to go to hospital but I managed to calm myself down and looked forward to watching my new favourite programme ‘The Blacklist’ plus my friend Chris was coming out to see me and was arriving that night so I at least had someone to make sure I was ok. I lay there in the dark and tried not to move very much, I must have slept for a bit because it was dark outside when I got up, I made my way to the bathroom and got into the jacuzzi bath (plush I know) and soaked myself for an hour hoping that this would make me feel better and luckily it did but not for long. I rolled back into bed and waited for Chris to get here.

An hour later and Chris had arrived! I was happy to see him as being this ill had made me miss home a lot. We went and sat out on the rooftop terrace and ordered some food through room service. Now I was still feeling like absolute death so I told Chris I wasn’t going out but seeing as this was his first and only night in Ho Chi Minh City, he really must go out and see some of it. He got changed,adamant that he wouldn’t need sleep and wouldn’t be jet lagged (yea we’ll see about that later on in the night/day!) and went to walk out of the door but before I did I gave him the map that I had and outlined where the backpackers road was and that it was best to go there and then I outlined the dangers of he city:

Don’t get into an illegal taxi or on an illegal motorbike taxi
Keep your belongings zipped up tight
Order a taxi from the hotel and book one back
Don’t go anywhere dark and deserted
Don’t hang out with the locals
Don’t display anger because it upsets south East Asians as they think it’s weakness

So with that advice off he went into the night. I settled down in my huge bed to watch a load of American crap but I was starting to feel better. I finally went to sleep about 11.30ish and woke up at 2.30am with a start, I checked my phone and was worried Chris hadn’t returned yet but I guess it was still relatively early for the backpacker clubs and bars so I went back to sleep. I then woke up again at 4am, Chris still wasn’t back….no I was beginning to panic, there is nothing open in Vietnam at this time of the morning, what the hell has happened to him? Suddenly all sorts of terrible things were running through my mind, worst was that he had been murdered, Vietnam is hostile at the best of times and Chris hasn’t been out of Europe before. Where the hell is he? What do I do?

And what did I do? What happened? Well that for next time.

17th October 2013

The sound of my fog horn alarm on my iPhone wakes me up and I feel sick again…..sleep deprivation! It’s 6am and I needed to get my bum down the stairs and ready for the minibus to take me to get the bus to Krabi. I’m just packing the rest of my stuff and I hear the sound of a rattling bus, I look outside and see it pulled up outside where I was dropped off outside – shitballs! I had never moved so fast. I chucked the rest of my stuff in my suitcase, grabbed my bags and attempted to run down the stairs as fast as possible. If you can imagine a little girl with a suitcase that she could probably fit into trying to literally run with it down three flights of stairs….that was my situation and I reckon it would have been pretty funny for someone watching, however I was struggling and couldn’t breath trying to carry it down, I’m pretty sure I sprained my neck in the process.

Finally I get downstairs and take a few seconds to catch my breath and some kind of composure and rush over to the bus. As I’m scurrying across the road I hear my name being shouted, I whip round and see Antonio standing on the balcony of my room – how the hell did he know I was leaving I thought?! He must be connected on the island I suspected, it was odd though as he’d said to me when he took me to my room to not worry about paying until the next day and that it wouldn’t be until after 12pm, but here he was chasing me. I called to him and said I was going to drop the money through the letterbox (I was seriously thinking about not paying at all but he had caught me) he came down the stairs and quickly met me at the van, at this point I noticed an English guy in the mini van and asked him if this was the bus to Krabi….it was going to koh phangan. I had rushed for no reason! While finishing up the mini conversation with the guy from the van, Antonio was pestering me for the money, I turned around and in my best no shit voice (that I used to use when talking to investors when I was a P.A in London) I explained how disappointed I was with both the rooms and I’d rather not pay anything at all but he wouldn’t budge on the idea of course and said i could pay 300baht instead of the 350baht it originally was. I didn’t agree and said 250baht, he got angry – while this was happening I’m pretty sure the people in the van were sympathising with me because I heard someone yell in agreement with me when I said poo in the sheets was unacceptable haha! But Antonio was not a man from Thailand so I could not barter with him and conscious of time I gave him the 300baht but told him how bad his hotel was and I won’t be leaving a great review.

He finally relented and went back to his crummy establishment and I went to wait outside it for bus. 20 minutes later it turned up..,.it was late, I was pissed off by this point. A short ride later and we are at the pier and load onto the boat for phi phi island which will then take me to Krabi. I get on and I’m absolutely shattered, there are hardly any seats left, so I wonder all the way down to the middle of the boat and manage to find a seat next to a Chinese kid (about 15) and his family in front of him. Immediately I fall asleep but no sooner had I done so and I’m woken up by the kid and his family tapping me firmly to wake me so he can get out to use the loo, I really wasn’t happy about this obviously, but what can you do? Needless to say I couldn’t get back to sleep again. An hour later and we had arrived in phi phi, while trying to get off the boat, I was queuing up and this 60 year old Asian lady literally barged me out of her way and so did her family, this was a theme that I would experience a lot while in Asia…I’m guessing they were the elite Koreans that think they can man handle you with their solid gold watches and multi coloured shell suits….obviously the 80’s had only just arrived for them…..or maybe it had stayed for a bit too long. After being pushed to the back of the queue I waited patiently and checked my ticket time for my next boat, to my dismay it said 3pm, it was 10am now, I really didn’t want to wait around for that long (In hindsight I should have done as phi phi was meant to be better than Krabi for staying) as soon as I got off the boat I marched up to the ticket collector and asked if I could get an earlier boat, he explained that I could but it would be the 1pm boat…that was still too late but better than nothing I suppose, so I went to go wait at a little seating area over looking the water. I suddenly thought….’it’s Thailand! Why am I waiting?!’ and I walked straight over to the boat ticket sellers that were by the Krabi ferry and asked to get on the next one, they pointed to the boat next to us and said quickly get on that one. I jumped on it and threw my suitcase onto the deck.

I was sat on the open bit and you could actually sit over the edge and dangle your feet into the sea. People were sat everywhere and most of them were European backpackers, with dreads and wearing hemp (a kind of material – more on this later) I had positioned my suitcase so that I could lie on it and sprawled myself out. Perfect, I could relax now…well kind of, the fact I was in front of the engine and the doors were open so that the noise was louder than hell didn’t help, but I was incredibly comfortable and soon fell asleep (I must have been soooo tired because honestly i don’t know how anyone could have slept through that, I think I actually got tinnitus from it) the views were pretty beautiful too. An hour or so later and I was in Krabi, I stepped off the port and walked through the winding rows of trees and plants that lined the walkway to the exit. Finally I got to the end and was immediately accosted by taxi drivers….’oh god does it ever stop?!’ I was saying no to every driver, mostly on principal I think, I have a theory that if I want to get a taxi from someone I will ask the, not go with the one who shouts ‘taxi? You want taxi? YOU WANT TAXi?!’ in my face. However it was flattery that got my attention, a taxi rank owner grabbed my arm and said ‘you are very white’ from being constantly teased in England for having whiter than white skin I was about ready to boil over with rage and being over tired from this Thai man getting involved as well! But what he said next surprised me ‘it is very beautiful, I wish I had skin like yours, you are beautiful’ well that did it, I stopped and thanked him and organised a cheap taxi through him to my hostel.

Half an hour later and I’m at the b+b inn in the beach area of Ao Nang in Krabi, recommended by lonely planet, however I soon found out that this place was actually a hotel resort with a hostel in its basement (a nice hostel though) and they actually didn’t have a room available for me even though I had booked it at 1am in the morning. Considering the circumstances I think I was doing incredibly well at not losing it but I held my composure (a reoccurring theme) and asked what they could do for me, the helpful hotel clerk said that I could have a discounted room at 300baht more than the room I had booked, I wasn’t happy but I had to agree. I couldn’t face going to find somewhere else, so I followed him to my room and I couldn’t believe the size of it and the fact that I got it for only a little bit more than the hostel (this was probably the best hostel I stayed in the whole trip) it had a huge kingside bed, t.v, beach towels and room towels, room service, beautiful bathroom and a lovely view and it was almost a sort of a hut and was outside. I dumped my stuff and jumped straight into the bed and slept for about 5 hours.

I woke up and it was dark, oh well I had the next 2 days so it didn’t matter too much. I ordered room service (which was about £2) and settled down to watch movies. I was happy to have left Phuket.

18th October 2013

I woke up at the reasonable hour of 10am and got straight into my beach clothes and packed my beach bag. I had been doing a bit of research the night before and had read about a few little beaches that I could get to easily from the longboat station by Ao Nang beach. I walked down to the main road and scoped out the area, I stopped at a little bar and bought a coconut juice drink….out of the coconut again. It’s the most refreshing drink you’ll ever have. I carried on down and walked past all the shops and came to the beach front, Ao Nang beach is pleasant but it’s not really what I would call a ‘typical’ Thai beach, it was a little bit like Brighton in the sense that it was surrounded by a sea front not the bohemian setting that you associate with Thailand. I spied the the long tail boat station and asked to go to Railey beach (pronounced ri – leigh) and got in an amazing looking old fishing boat that is used to escort people to the different islands in Thailand. These boats are exactly the ones you see in all the tourist brochures that you see back home, and they are just as beautiful. I was sat near the front with a group of guys who were from Malaysia. They were friendly and one of them called ‘Adrian’ spoke to me a bit and asked me where I was from etc and we had a nice chat about his country and which beaches we thought were the most beautiful we had ever seen, I couldn’t name one yet as I hadn’t been to enough, but I was hoping that Thailand would provide me with some options. When we got to the beach we had to stop halfway from the shore because of the tide, I was a bit worried that I would fall in or get swallowed up because I’m so short but there was no other way, I gave my stuff to Adrian to hold so I could jump down, I gingerly stepped down onto the ladder steps and prepared to jump into the water…..embarrassingly it wasn’t deep! The boys laughed and followed me with my things. We all walked to the shore and I went to a separate little spot to the guys as I wanted to catch up on my reading and I like to be on my own on the beach.

I read for a bit and although I did think this beach was lovely, it lacked something and in my opinion it wasn’t as nice and the beaches I’ve been to in the Mediterranean and I was wondering if I was going to find what I was looking for. In fact a thought popped into my head that this is very much how I live my life, I seem to search for something I think I want, the image I have in my head and if I find something that is close to it it’s never enough. I was starting to think that this is a destructive way to live, that maybe it takes the beauty out of what I’ve got in front of me, that maybe everything is enough if you can learn to appreciate it in different ways. While lost deep in thought I am suddenly aware that I am being sort of shouted at in Thai by the hotel waiters who are trying to set up tables and chairs in the sand and in the area where I’m lying. I understand I’m being asked to move so I pick up my towel and decide its time for lunch, I walk into the courtyard overlooking the beach only in my bikini, which I can’t be sure is ok in Thailand, it’s still not as western as other beach destinations but when I walk past to get a menu and the wifi code a waitress…..yes waitress…..stops me to tell me how sexy I am lol. I get more compliments from the Thai girls than I do any men. I order a banana lassie as my mum had just text me to recommend I have one and some pad Thai and I settle down to read my book and take a few snaps of the scenery and I have to admit I felt pretty damn lucky to be there. The cliffs rising out of the water and decorating the skyline with the blue blue sky and fluffy clouds either side was so beautiful and with the blue blue sea and the sun making it glitter was enough to make you overwhelmed. I sent a picture to my friends and one of the delicious banana lassi to my mum.

I finished my meal and got up to leave and hurry back out to the beach, I made my way further down the beach and found a nice sandy spot to laze on and sat there staring at the waves. It was then that I noticed that there were lots of patterns in the sand where the tide had gone out, they looked a little bit like mini drawings of the sun, the sight was spectacular and I went to have a closer look. I soon realised that these patterns were made by tiny little crabs and they did it by cleaning the sand and little tiny sand balls were left and this is what made the patterns. I went to go and sit on the shore and sit in the sea but it wasn’t as nice as I thought it was going to be, there were little sea snails that were crawling everywhere….I couldn’t handle this so went back on my towel! At that moment it started to gently rain but the sun was still shining brightly and it was more of a relief from the heat instead of it ruining the day, I didn’t mind it at all. I felt really peaceful and happy to be here, with myself and happy with the world, I felt miles and miles away from all the past that had held me back for so long in England, the mistakes, the people who were better out of my life, the memories of the last year, washed away with the sea and all that was left is me. I felt more solid in who I was in that moment and although that feeling would be short lived it was the starting point to an inner strength that I developed in the next few weeks. I got up and went for a swim, the tide was out so the water was very shallow and i went miles out it seemed but the depth didn’t change, the water was beautifully warm and clear and I enjoyed just floating. I looked up and saw two of the girls who had been my waitresses at the bar I had just had lunch at and saw them walking up and down hand in hand and I thought how lovely would it be to work here on the beach and in your break go for a little stroll in the water with your friend. I got up and started to walk back, as I was walking they called out to me ‘for god’s sake I’m not safe anywhere I thought! Always being sold something’ I wondered weather to ignore them but I figured it would be difficult to do that and too rude so I turned around and they said that I had walked off without paying for my lunch and was I going to pay? ‘OH SHIT!’ I exclaimed (Without even thinking about the rudeness of it’) I apologised profusely to them and said I had just forgotten and hadn’t meant to walk off and gave them the money and a bit extra for their trouble, they seemed satisfied but it was clear they didn’t really believe that I had forgotten. I couldn’t believe I had done that and felt terrible! Not to mention completely embarrassed!

After that I decided to get the boat back and while I was waiting for it to return the guys from the boat trip over came to talk to me, we all got into the boat and made our way back, Adrian was chatting to me about his job and life back home etc and the fact that they had come over for a four day holiday, much like we Brits do when we go to Europe, I explained to them that having Thailand and Bali as their weekend breaks were pretty amazing and I was jealous. We all got off the boat and walked to the station, the other guys walked off and Adrian stayed with me to talk some more and came with me to the travel kiosk so i could book my island tour trip the next day. I went to the first kiosk I found, they are pretty much the same and Adrian helped me book a trip – I had chosen the 8 island tour, with free transfer and lunch which sounded good. I asked if there were any young people on the trip as so far most of the tours I had been on had been made up of more mature people and I was looking for some people to hang out with, the agent didn’t really understand what I meant and I decided to take a chance. After that was booked (and a nice discount later) Adrian and I walked up the street to where our hotels were, he invited me out with the others for dinner and drinks so we arranged a time to meet and I went to get changed.

Back at my hotel I had changed rooms into the hostel bit and I was completely alone, I had no one with me, which was both a good thing and a bad thing, I liked my own space but at the same time it’s good to meet people. I showered and got dressed and decided to go out for food as I was starving and the guys had changed their time and I couldn’t wait. I wondered up the road and past the long tail boat station to where all the restaurants and bars were, there were loads of them to choose from and I carried on walking right until the end where I came to a little street food place and had some noodles with won tons – yummy – I then went back the way I came and passed a reggae bar with a man with dreads standing outside it trying to get people in and I soon understood why, only a few bars up was another reggae bar which was in my opinion more enticing and seemed to be a lot more going on. I declined and walked on, I noticed a big group of English guys walking down the road with one blonde girl who must have been one of the guys girlfriends, I contemplated introducing myself and seeing if I could drink with them, but decided I actually couldn’t be arsed, I had to get up early and plus maybe it would be a bit creepy? I made a mental note though that if I did meet some people at my hotel I would suggest going there.

I had successfully avoided the street sellers and shop sellers again which I was proud of, they weren’t as relentless as the ones in Phuket but they were still pretty persistent and just when I was making my way back to the road to my hotel I saw about 5 or 6 lady boys all dressed up in extravagant costumes, cabaret dancers! They actually looked pretty convincing and they tried to get me to go to their show but I wasn’t interested. I got back to my hotel and got straight into bed ready for my early start tomorrow.

19th October 2013

So again another incredibly early start and I drag my suitcase up to the hotel desk and check out and ask to leave my luggage in their store room. I was staying at a bungalow on the beach that night on a beach a bit further up and was excited to be in a place surrounded by nature and no wifi so I could get some writing done and chill out.

I walked down to where the kiosk was as I was being picked up from there (they couldn’t locate my hostel for some reason) and I waited for about 20 minutes until a young Thai man named Alex introduced himself and asked me to walk down to another hotel to pick up the other guests. We chatted a bit and I didn’t mind too much but the guy wouldn’t shut up and it was too early in the morning for this much interrogation and the constant stories about his friend who has married an English girl and they both live in Thailand….yawn. I think my animosity came from the fact he kept calling me his new girlfriend to other people, that pissed me off, I just wanted to enjoy the tour, why do I have to put up with all this sleaziness.

Anyway eventually this big tuk tuk pulls up (it resembled a big cattle truck) and we all pile into it and drive away, we got 10 minutes down the road and and the exhaust fell off and the driver merely gets out and ties it with some string and sets off again. Perfect example of Thai mechanics. We finally get to another bus and then drove to the pier, as we all got off we met up with a big group of people who were also joining us on our trip but almost everyone was older than me and there were no English people but this as I found out was better. So as we were walking to the boat I manage to meet two lovely girls from Kazakhstan, Gulim and Kristina, they were air hostesses and stunning girls. We got on straight away (Alex was sleazing on them too) and as we boarded we were asked if we wanted to sit at the front of the speed boat and we all eagerly exclaimed that yes we did….big mistake! As we sat down, a lovely family from Calcutta sat down, along with two guys from Singapore who had been travelling on their motorbikes and finally there was a couple from Malaysia . We were all sat at the top and excited about going to see the islands that are so famous, phi phi being one of them. I got chatting to the girl opposite me, she was called Ayonina and was part of the family from Calcutta, she was really friendly and very pretty too. As we were driving through the waves, the sea suddenly became rougher and we were smacking the waves like smashing through brick walls, it was beginning to get a bit painful and Ayonina was falling all over the place as she was so tiny, it was funny but a bit worrying at the same time. We were all getting really fed up with the smashing and bouncing up and down and we realised that we had made a massive error by going at the front as no one else was having a bad time inside the boat. Anyway after half an hour we finally got to our first island, it was called ‘bamboo island’ and to be honest, it wasn’t all that. Maybe it was because the weather wasn’t great at that time in the morning and also because the sand wasn’t white, it was peppered with twigs and rocks and it wasn’t really what I was expecting. It was still pretty hot at 11am but there was no sun, however I still got into the water with my new friends in tow and we took some photos. The water wasn’t very nice though and it was incredibly rocky and with lots of dead coral, so it wasn’t much fun to swim in. We were only allowed 40 minutes on the beach anyway so we weren’t there for long.

We all piled on the boat again and the bumpy ride resumed, which was awful again. We then stopped at Viking cave, which looked to me like a big opening in a cave where the Thai’s store their boats and I think it was meant to be a ship wreck but it just looked like a mini harbour. The tour guide didn’t tell us anything about it, so I have no idea what it was, but the sea was an incredible colour and with the cave as a backdrop it was a pretty fantastic sight. We carried on past it and went into an opening that was surrounded by big cliffs rising out of the water, it was beautiful and it felt for a few moments I felt that we were far far away in the depths of the ocean, removed from civilisation. Us girls at the front of the boat wanted a picture of all of us but Alex was getting a bit pushy and was trying to get a photo of everyone by the cliffs, which wasn’t very easy so I understand but he was very rude, almost shoving and pushing people to get out of the way and go sit in the boat when they were done. Ayonina’s parents wanted to look at the scenery but they were told to go sit inside, which sparked a mini row between her dad and Alex as quite rightly her dad didn’t want to be told to get inside! After this palaver had finished, me and the girls posed for a picture and before we did Gulim gave him her iPad and I gave him my brand new iPhone 5S to take a photo with and he held the iPad and literally threw mine in the seat to the side of us, causing it to bounce of it and fall onto the hard floor, which made it bounce once or twice….I was livid! This arrogant, rude and sleazy idiot had just thrown my brand new phone onto the floor! Everyone gasped and made noises at the Alex and asking him what he was doing! He apologised but the damage was done, he even said that if it was broken he would buy me a new one ‘yeah right!’ I said. We had some photos taken but the experience was a bit sour after that.

We were then taken past monkey island (yes just taken past it) and some more openings inbetween the cliffs and then we were informed we were sailing towards Maya Bay, which is where the film The Beach was filmed, and we all got excited. I had been told how beautiful this beach was and couldn’t wait to see the ‘real Thailand’ but it was PACKED! I wasn’t surprised but couldn’t believe that we were in what is know as low season and that in high season there are actually triple the people here. What a shame I thought, it was still nice though and I jumped into the warm sea and was happy that I was able to see it! Ayonina, Teerin, Gulim, Kristina and I all went swimming and took photos together, I noticed we were next to a group of Aussie guys throwing a ball around and thought it would be fun if we all played, I went to go and ask them if we could join in, I broke the ice by asking where they were from and they hardly responded and were dismissive. I was a bit taken a back and thought that most of the westerners I had met had been douche bags but all the Asians I had met were incredibly friendly. Wow we really do give ourselves a good name don’t we!

Anyway after this trip we went then sailed past a few more islands that were supposedly included on our tour of the 8 Islands and I realised that by just sailing past them technically meant they were included. Sneaky bastards. Next stop was snorkelling, now I have a big fear of snorkelling, I tried it once in Ios, Greece and got really freaked out by the only being able to breath through my mouth and this was due to my asthma so I since then I haven’t really been able to do it. We stopped and no one would get off the boat, I don’t know why but they just sat there like idiots, so I jumped in, sparking people to finally start getting in the water. I immediately got out though as I was looking forward to sunbathing on the top of the boat, which is exactly what I did. While I was snoozing on the deck and the others were looking at brightly coloured fish I felt something near me and opened my eyes to see a terrifying creature being held in my face, it was a sea urchin!! A big black spiky thing, with an actual sort of face. It’s smaller spikes were moving like legs, I screamed as soon as I saw it and backed away, I knew they were poisonous and didn’t want to get to close, Alex was completely pissing me off so I didn’t find this funny or playful, I found it dangerous and inappropriate. I think he got the hint as he quickly went to show some other people who were more appreciative. After this everyone got back on the boat and we made our way to phi phi island for lunch, on our way Alex came up to the front deck and offered us coca cola, so while the boat was bouncing all over the place and we could barely hold on we were expecting to open a fizzy drink and drink it?! Well the boys from Singapore thought this would be hysterical and took a video of one of them trying to open it and drink it, they were right, it was hysterical, cola went everywhere! I think we were all in agreement that this was a pretty unorganised and rubbish tour, but we were happy to be in each other’s company.

We arrived at phi phi and had lunch, which was a buffet style hot lunch, it wasn’t nice and Gulim, Kristina and I just sat up at the rooftop bar and took photos of the beach. We then went and got more coconut water drinks and took some photos of all of us with our new made fiends and then had to walk through the town back up to the port so we could get the boat home. The weather had cleared up this point and a stroll through the town was lovely, it was a complete diving town and had some pretty cool looking bars and the beach was beautiful but we didn’t stay long. Once we were back on the boat we made our way back to ao nang and luckily we had missed the rain clouds that had been desperately trying to catch up with us all day and only as soon as we got back onto the bus home it tipped it down. as we were driving out I noticed that the beach we were on was the beach I was staying at the bungalow on…..hmmm didn’t look much like paradise to me, the beach was dirty and the weather was almost flooding the area. So I made a snap decision to see if there were any rooms available that night before I check out and go to Krabi town and by luck there was and for $1000 baht got me a bigger room than the last one. It had a huger than huge bed and t.v! While it was torrentially raining I couldn’t think of anything better to do than to sit in this luxury room and enjoy the t.v and room service! Which is exactly what I did until I couldn’t keep my eyes open anymore.