It’s late afternoon now, and we’re at the free internet cafe in Narita airport, contemplating the end of our extended little jaunt around the Far East. Surprisingly little to say: of course we wish we were still on the road for another 4 months like we’d originally envisioned, but in the end, sprinkled with mosquito [...]
Our last few hours in Bangkok were spent on a computer terminal frantically hunting for accom in Hong Kong. We ended up not prebooking anything, deciding to wing it and head back to the hotel we’d stayed at before. Big mistake.
So our first 3 hours were spent back at the Mansion, with Nazma guarding the [...]
Arrived at Ko Lanta yesterday afternoon and brought the storm with us: within a half-hour of arriving, the fastest thunderstorm we’d ever seen blew right over us and headed out to sea. It joined up with two other storms somewhere south of Ko Phi Phi, we figure. Nice dinner entertainment!
Well, we arrived in Bangkok safe and sound and it’s been a wild last few days. Songkran did indeed begin in earnest the evening of the 12th, and it’s just been getting crazier and crazier. But in the end, it isn’t the drunken falang-fest, nor the massive unauthorized groping we’d feared. 99% of the people [...]
After a comfortable (!) overnight train ride we arrived tired but jubilant in Sapa, in the northwest corner of Vietnam close to the Chinese border. Mountains, terraced agriculture, and clouds, clouds, clouds.
We arrived at the last of three hotels we’d inspected and found wanting, and trudged dutifully up the stairs to look at the [...]
We’re pretty dumb. Our clever little scheme to escape Vietnam by retreating to safe, familiar Thailand has totally backfired, as we forgot about a little thing called Songkran.
Songkran is the Thai New Year, and is characterised by:
everyone travelling everywhere at the same time (i.e. no transport or hotels)
everyone throwing buckets of ice water [...]
After a long afternoon of internetting and agonising on the couch of a JAL office, we’ve finally set a return date to Canada: 25th April. This will involve evacuating Hanoi (by plane, not by chopper) on the 10th April to a rather unexpected destination: back to Bangkok. There we’ve got 11 days to delay reality [...]
So for whatever reason, we are getting booted out of the country (along with everyone else who got their visa at embassies in Cambodia) on the 10th April. Ostensibly some big National Congress meeting or something (btw, did I mention that the Party is Life?), though now that we’re in Vietnam no one has heard [...]