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Our long ferry voyage down the coast of Thailand from Krabi finally ended and we crossed the border into Malaysia between Koh Lipe and Langkawi. One last boat trip brought us into Georgetown, Penang on 26th February. In the planning stages it had seemed so adventurous to travel down through the Andaman Sea by public ferry, but in fact we realised that thousands of intrepid travellers are jumping on boats between the islands every day. Not quite as adventurous as we thought we were!!

On arrival we spent a couple of days staying in Georgetown checking out practical stuff like the main tourist attractions, where to find the best food and how the public transport worked. It felt important to be organised, as a long awaited day was just around the corner – Darcie would be travelling out to meet us to spend a couple of week’s holiday in Malaysia and Singapore.
We did a bit of sightseeing but found it quite difficult as Georgetown was not just hot, but sweltering hot – the hottest place we had been to so far! Between about 11.00 am and 4.00 pm the sun was so intense that we literally ran between any available patches of shade. We managed to do a bit of sightseeing and shopping around town, but two days later it was up with the backpacks again to take the bus along the coast to the resort of Batu Ferrenghi beach and our apartment at the “By The Sea” condo style complex .

THE NEXT DAY DARCIE ARRIVED!!!

What a long time we had waited to get a big hug from our lovely daughter! We went down to the airport to meet her and were so excited to see her eventually emerge from the arrivals hall.
In spite of having travelled for around 20 hours, Darcie didn’t seem too tired and actually managed to get a couple of hours around the pool on her first afternoon. In the evening we just had to to celebrate properly, so we temporarily gave up our frugal, backpacking ways and took her for a meal at the fanciest restaurant in town.

As Georgetown is famous for its eclectic foodie culture, we explored Little India and Chinatown and ate local street food specialties with Danny, who is a historian, artist and food enthusiast.

Another thing the town is well known for is it’s street art so we followed the “trail” around the most well known pieces:-

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The next day we got a ride on the funicular which took us up to the viewpoint of Penang Hill for fantastic views over the city and across Penang Strait to the mainland.

Our apartment complex opened right onto the beach and had a lovely pool area which was a good thing as Darcie was able to have some “proper holiday” time relaxing on a sun bed and soaking up some rays!

One day we took a trip into the hills to visit a stunning butterfly park and check out a tropical fruit farm.

We have had difficulties with cyclone, political unrest and pandemic so far on our travels. We didn’t think we would need to add fire to the mix, but in Batu Ferrenghi it was so hot and dry that one day, the bush to the side of our apartments burst into flame. The fire spread incredibly quickly and at one point the flames were about 20 feet high. This picture was taken from our balcony; that’s the other side of our building on the right. We thought the blaze might spread to our apartment building, but the “BytheSea”staff were brilliant – they dragged big fire hoses out from the basement area and managed to get the fire under control long before the Fire Engines eventually turned up from Georgetown.

On our last evening in Penang we met up once again with the Hartshorn family were travelling in the opposite direction up from Singapore, so luckily our paths crossed once again. We had an authentic local Nyonyan meal, and then went to a special “dessert restaurant” where we tried sticky black rice pudding with coconut cream and weird looking cubes of rubbery lemon herb jelly served in sweetened rose water with ice cubes. It was refreshing and actually tasted quite nice!

Our first week with Darcie seems to have gone by incredibly quickly, but at least we still have a few days and some exiting sights and activities to look forward to in Singapore!

….. in Koh Adang

So sorry to everyone who has to earn a living, but this is what we came for!

Koh Adang is in the Tarutao National Park. The only island in the Park that has been permitted to develop as a tourist destination is Koh Lipe, and that is the place that the ferries stop. When you arrive there the ferries dock onto a floating pontoon and long tailed boats come out to take you into the shore. Then to get to Koh Adang, you have to traverse Koh Lipe. As it was only a 15 minute walk to Sunset Beach, we marched across with our backpacks in spite of the mid-day heat. Our resort sent another long tail boat to pick us up from the beach and transport us across the channel to Koh Adang.

Tomorrow, 26th February we will be sad to leave Koh Adang and head off on another ferry across the Malaysian border to Langkawi and then straight on to Penang, arriving in the evening – it’s going to be another long travel day!

OK, we might have to back track a little here to get the trains part of our title for this post in.

As you will know if you are a regular reader, on 17th February we got the Train back from the River Kwai to Bangkok. It was a long travel day, as that evening we went off to the airport to catch a late Plane to Krabi – arriving at about 1.00 am. Luckily the nice airport taxi driver who took us to our overnight hotel was also happy to collect us the following morning in his Automobile for the hour’s ride to Kong Ka Pier in Krabi. We got the 11.00 am Boat to our first island destination – Koh Lanta.

Koh Lanta is a relaxed, laid back place (quite windy at the moment), with many small resorts, casual bars and restaurants all down the long west coast beaches. At the moment the island seems to be full of French people, which we weren’t really expecting and which can be just un petit peu irritating when they take over nearly the entire pool and common areas of our small resort.
Mind you, we have been a bit boring while we have been here and haven’t explored too much as we have both had HEAD COLDS!! NOT Coronavirus as neither of us has had a cough or any hint of a raised temperature, just a bit snivelly and feeling sorry for ourselves for a few days.

Whilst travelling in South East Asia we have worked out we need to become competent with riding mopeds, as in spite of the safety issues, these are indisputably the best way to get about and explore the more remote beaches and places like the National Parks and mountain areas. This will be something to get our heads round before we take off on our next trip!

Quite excited as we are going off tomorrow (22nd February) to an almost uninhabited tropical island. Ko Adang is a National Park and we are staying at the one and only small resort on the island. It’s completely jungle, there are no roads and the only way in is by boat. Apparently the reef, and snorkelling around the island is very good, so we are hoping to take the GoPro out and have some colourful underwater pictures for our next blog.

We took our first local train journey in Thailand from Thonburi station in Bangkok to Kanchanaburi, the site of the famous Bridge.

Arrived in Kanchanaburi late morning and had a long hot (34C) walk with backpacks to our guest house. It was a wrench to walk back out into the blazing heat, but later we marched off to the Death Railway Museum and War Cemetery. We seem to have developed a bit of a World War II theme for parts our Asian travels.
As previously, we found our introduction to the events on the Death Railway moving and interesting. Apparently the famous 1958, David Lean film about the bridge was not all that realistic and life and death during the building of the railway was unremittingly awful – definitely no singing or whistling!

Later that afternoon we got a tuk-tuk out to the Kwae Yai (River Kwai) Bridge in time to watch a train coming over. We were surprised by how touristy the area round the Bridge was, with many food and souvenir stalls and people of all nationalities walking along the tracks taking pictures.

Next morning we jumped on an early local bus from Kanchanaburi, out past the village of Nam Tok to the Hellfire Pass Interpretive Centre, only 45 miles from the Myanmar (Burma) border. Here we had an opportunity to walk along the most tortuous part of the Death Railway where thousands of British, Australian and Dutch Prisoners of War, along with tens of thousands of South East Asian conscripts lost their lives. In this section the prisoners had to hack cuttings out of solid rock using only hammers, spikes and shovels. In other areas they needed to build up to the level of the track using wood cut from the forest. We learned that they received very little food and often worked 20 hours a day. Diseases such as malaria, beri-beri and cholera were rife, and in their malnourished and weakened state the men had little resistance. As a tiny tribute to their suffering, we walked the whole 5km of the memorial route in the fierce, middle of the day sunshine.

The next day we took the train back to Bangkok and met another great travelling companion – Akeem was in Thailand to attend a friend’s wedding but had decided to take a few days out to visit the National Parks in the west of the country. We enjoyed his company so much, the 6 hour journey went by quickly. We missed the opportunity to get a picture, but if we are lucky our paths may cross again in Penang!

We had a couple of spare hours in Bangkok to grab a meal before catching a plane out to the beaches and islands of southern Thailand.

We arrived late on the evening of 11th and went straight to our hotel which was close to the backpacker area of Khao San road. We didn’t like our hotel room much as it was decorated in so called ‘designer’ concrete without a window, unrelievedly dark and oppressive – it ended up being referred to as the prison cell. We needed an alarm clock on for the morning as there was no idea if it was light or dark outside.

As always the first day in the city was a confusion of trying to suss out the transport and sites. We grabbed a tuk-tuk to see a couple of attractions, the Lucky Buddha and the Big Buddha, but as usual ended up in an argument with the driver who wanted us to take a long tail boat ride at £60 – they always push you to places that give them a backhander – and get stroppy when you refuse.
We managed a pizza lunch and a beer, but after that surprised ourselves by heading back to the prison cell about 4.30pm. We were so tired we slept through to 8am the following morning.

By the next day we started to get our heads around the city and we bought a Bangkok Tourist Boat pass and spent a lot of the day on and around the beautiful Chao Phraya river. As Ali needed contact lenses we hopped onto the SkyTrain (MRT in Bangkok) to one of the big shopping centres and then traveled on to the famous Jim Thompson House and Museum. (American Thai silk merchant, possible spy, disappeared in unusual circumstances) Bangkok has lots of canals that cut between the districts and we managed to get back to the river on a canal boat.

As we wanted to make the most of our boat ticket, in the evening we caught the ferry back down the river to the huge shopping and entertainment area, Asiatique. After a nice stir fry duck with pack choi, and chicken noodles at the food court we caught the last ferry up the river in time for bed.

On Friday 14th February we left Bangkok early on the local train to head off into the countryside towards the Burmese border and the Bridge on the River Kwai.

We seem to have a penchant for scrambling around old buildings and temple sites around the world. We enjoyed it in Mexico and Hampi (India), and Angkor Wat, the biggest temple complex in the world didn’t disappoint.
We arrived in Siem Reap on 4th February on the very efficient Grand Ibis coach service from Phnom Penh. On first acquaintance Siem Reap seems to be a bit of a dusty and not very glamourous town, but we soon discovered it to be a laid back and welcoming place. It probably helped that our fabulous hotel (Tito Suites) sent a tuk-tuk out to collect us at the bus station and this was just the start of the brilliant care and service they provided during our week’s stay. It was great value and nearly the best hotel we have stayed in on our travels.

We were surprised when we spoke to other travellers who’d only spent 1 day viewing the temples at the vast Angkor Archeological Park and wondered how interesting it was likely to be. On our first day we visited the main temple which was great, and surprisingly not too busy – perhaps because there are very few Chinese tourists in Cambodia at the moment. However we really started to enjoy our explorations when we visited Ta Prohm, the “Lara Croft temple”. This has been left in quite a wild state and offered lots of clambering and exploring opportunities. We actually ended up spending 6 days visiting the different ancient and far flung sites, including a place in the hills where carvings have been cut into the bed of a river. We found the Angkor Archeological Park every bit as impressive as expected, but were disappointed that a lot of our photos just looked like piles of rocks! They definitely do not reflect the artistry and grandeur of the ruins.

Our favourites were Bakong and Ta Nai Temples, but we probably enjoyed the latter most because there was almost no one else there when we visited. We were taken around the sites by our helpful tuk-tuk driver John, who we hired for 3 whole days, but towards the end of the week we decided to rent mountain bikes to go off exploring on our own. On our last day we used a car and driver to take us the 60km out to the river carvings at Kbal Spean and to Beng Mealea temple in the jungle.

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HeroRATS of Cambodia

Cambodia still has a problem with landmines left over from the recent conflicts and many thousands of people have been killed or injured through disturbing old landmines or unexploded ordinance. It was discovered in Africa that giant pouched rats can be trained to sniff out TNT and locate landmines. There are now 53 HeroRATS located in Siem Reap that are active in clearing the countryside. The rats only weigh 1.5kgs, and as 2kgs is the threshold to set off a mine they can run over the ground safely. We were happy to support the work done with the rats and went to the APOPO visitor centre to find out more.

Other things we enjoyed we enjoyed in Siem Reap were vegging out in the restaurants and bars, drinking incredibly cheap beer, an ‘eat-all-you-want’ cultural evening buffet and going to the Phare Circus.

Phnom Penh feels like a capitol city that is still trying to establish its identity. It seems caught between its ancient and traditional Khmer past, the aftermath of the more recent terrible events in Cambodia, and the business of becoming a modern 21st century capitol.

The city is a mixture of opulent palaces and temples, French colonial architecture, monumental communist era public spaces and ultra modern buildings which contrast starkly with the rubbish strewn, run down streets that form the larger part of the city. We didn’t find it to be a particularly tourist friendly place; it was expensive and several times we felt we were being slightly ripped off with charges for transport, attractions and food.

The Royal Palace is the foremost of the tourist attractions in Phnom Penh with a visit costing US$30 including a guide. The Cambodians have great respect for their King who still lives in the Royal Palace, so tourists have access to only a limited number of buildings on the site. Even after paying for a guide, we didn’t find that much of interest there – there were a number of temple areas housing many solid gold statues of the Buddha, some decorated with many massive diamonds. The Silver Pagoda is also so called as it has floor made from thousands of solid silver tiles weighing a kilogram each! However most of the floor was tarnished and largely covered in carpet, and the jewelled gold Buddhas were all so dust covered and dirty that it was hard to appreciate their gorgeousness! Also such ostentatious displays of wealth felt incongruous to us in a country where most of the population still lives in significant poverty.

The other big attraction is the Wat Phnom Temple which, legend suggests, was founded on a small hill in the city in 1372 after a middle aged lady called Grandmother Penh or Lady Penh found 4 statues of the Buddha in a tree trunk floating in the river. The site is now a Buddhist Temple visited by many Cambodians to make offerings and prayers, but we were shocked by the dirt and plastic waste strewn all around the place of worship.

In Phnom Penh we were reunited with the Mekong River, which had become truly enormous since we last saw it in Laos. One of the most fun things we did was to enjoy a sunset boat trip at the confluence of the Mekong and Tonle Sap Rivers. We booked an “Unlimited Beer” cruise and were lucky enough to meet up with Simon and Tracy, a fabulous and fun British couple on an extended holiday to Cambodia and Vietnam. We had a great time drinking beer with them, watching the sun go down and later, eating dinner. We’ve said it lots of times but one of the best things about travelling is definitely meeting up with fellow travellers!

The Visit to the Toul Sleng Prison and The Killing Fields
We knew we needed to visit these sites, although after our visits to Hoa Lo Prison in Hanoi and the War Remnants Museum in Ho Chi Minh City, we have to admit we were not really looking forward to the experience.

Toul Sleng is the name of the former school in Phnom Penh where the Khmer Rouge regime held and tortured thousands of their fellow countrymen and women during the years 1975 to 1979, before sending them out to the Cheung Ek Killing Field for extermination. Visiting the prison was an intense emotional experience, particularly as our guide was a lovely lady, a little younger than us who had lived through the horror of the regime and lost her father and at least one sister and brother, before escaping with her mother, across the border to Vietnam. She told us she had worked as a guide at Toul Sleng for the last 5 years so the pain and suffering remains fresh and is present everyday for her. Talking to her was heartbreaking and we were both pretty much moved to tears – this was probably our hardest experience, even more so than visiting Cheung Ek. As we were teenagers in the 1970’s, we can remember hearing news reports from Cambodia and this visit really brought that limited knowledge to life for us.

17,000 men, women and children were believed to have been murdered and buried at The Killing Field at Choeung Ek. This was the largest and most notorious of over 20,000 “Killing Fields”, or sites of mass graves across Cambodia.

More cheery entries on the next blog!

We had been told that HCMC was busy, chaotic, crazy and it would be impossible to cross the road. Anyone who thought this had obviously not been to Mumbai! We were only there for 3 days and enjoyed our time.

We’ve found that student walking tours are a reasonably cheap way of getting insights into the cities we visit and our lovely guide Kim spoke good English and provided an excellent introduction to the city.

Later in the day we visited the War Remnants Museum, which incorporated part of a prison. There were artifacts such as a guillotine and reproductions showing the barbarous conditions originally imposed on Vietnamese independence fighters by the French colonial power, and more recently used by the American backed South Vietnamese government. The exhibits in the main part of the museum were predominantly contemporary images of the Vietnam War taken by internationally renowned war photographers of the day. It felt very uncomfortable to be be presented with the terrible images and consequences of American actions during the war. The information was obviously provided from the Vietnamese (Communist) perspective and gave us a different viewpoint. As people who can remember the TV news coverage as well as the attempted justifications by Western governments during the 1970’s it really challenged our views.

The following day we felt we needed to cheer ourselves up a bit so we visited the Saigon Zoo and Botanical Gardens.

On our final evening we treated ourselves to dinner at a nice vegetarian wholefood restaurant, then headed off for amazing night views of Ho Chi Minh City from the Eon Heli Cocktail Bar on the 52nd floor of the Bitexco Financial Tower.

Our next journey involved another bus, this time it turned up – Hurrah!
After a 6.5 hour journey and another border crossing, we arrived in the Cambodian capital Phnom Penh.

We need to have a quick rant about our journey from Nha Trang down to Ho Chi Minh City.

Because of the New Year, we had booked a bus well in advance to take us on the next 10 hour leg of our journey. Imagine our frustration when, after arriving in good time, well before 8.00 am at the bus stop, the wretched thing just didn’t turn up! We were left on the street with our backpacks, a destination over 300 kilometres away and no idea how to get there during the busiest travel time of the year.

We couldn’t book another bus or a train as we already knew they were full and needed 24 hours notice to buy a ticket. So the only alternative was to look at the possibility of flying; we hauled up at a coffee bar and within the space of an hour had managed to book a flight to Ho Chi Minh City which left in only 6 hours time! Luckily the buses from Nha Trang out to Cam Ranh airport, one hour’s journey away were actually running.

It cost us 5 times as much as we had already paid for the bus tickets which was a bit maddening!

To save a bit of cash on finally arriving at Ho Chi Minh airport we decided to take the bus from there into the city. But guess what? As it was around 7.00 pm by now and still Tet New Year, the buses had stopped running! After a bit more frustration we palled up with a hilarious Spanish lady who spoke no English but also wanted to get (cheaply) into town. We shared a Grab cab (like Uber) with her and after being dropped off, we had a long 20 minute walk through crazy Beer Street in the backpacker area before arriving at our AirBnB around 8.30. We were so knackered, hungry and fed up by this time! However, there is a light at the end of every tunnel and around 9.30 we managed to persuade a local restaurant to feed us.

Hey, all’s well that ends well on a travelling day!

or Happy New Year in Vietnamese!

When we arrived at our hotel in central Nha Trang there was a big group of people waiting to check in. As we were very early we waited patiently and began to notice that most of them were overweight, pasty and a bit unhealthy looking; lots of jogging bottoms and tattoos in evidence. Overhearing conversations we worked out that they were all Russians.
The receptionist told us that most of their guests and indeed nearly every other visitor to Nha Trang came from either Russia or China. This was to be our first exposure to Russians en-masse! All of the signage and information around the city was in Vietnamese, Russian and Chinese, with very little in English. The Chinese were no trouble, but the Russians tended to go around in loud talking, heavy smoking, beer swilling groups and they weren’t all that friendly towards other nationalities.
On the other hand, once we got to the beach front we realised why Nha Trang is so popular. Beyond the big city boulevard and the promenade there is a long stretch of reasonably clean golden sand and the water in the bay is a deep aqua marine topped by foamy white wavelets. The view along the coast and over towards Vinh Nguyen island and the massive Vinpearl Theme and Water Park was spectacular.

As many shops and tourist attractions were closed for the Tet New Year celebrations we were happy to ignore our fellow tourists, rent a sunbed with an umbrella and veg out in the hot sunshine for the 3 days of our stay