My Love/Hate Relationship With Saigon

So now I've left the wonderful land of Vietnam, I am now able to convey to you why I loved and hated this city all at once! There really was no in-between feeling. It was either one extreme or the other!

Lets start with HATE because I would like to end my Saigon blog on a high note.

My top HATE, the thing that frustrated me the most, was the spitting. So the Vietnamese have this awful habit to clear their nasal passages at any time and place. It's doesn't matter whether it's into the street next to wear you're eating, on the path where you're just about to walk, IN THE WORK WASH BASINS!!!!! They just do it and they do it at all times of the day. It's possibly one of the most disgusting things to listen to (oh the noise!) and see. WHY? Obviously a difference in culture (although there are tons of English chavs that should be shipped over there) but I just wish it wasn't SO public. I think I almost threw up at work once when I walked into the toilet and the beautiful, pretty teaching assistants were hacking up their lungs into the sinks.

OK so my next hate, another cleanliness issue, was the chucking of any liquid into the street. This was absolutely fine IF they looked where they were throwing!! I was in Hanoi walking down a street around 11pm and a women decided chucking a glass of something (I still don't know what it was) off her balcony into the road below was a good idea! It hit us OF COURSE because she didn't look! And it's not only liquid substances...I actually saw a woman hold her baby (no nappy) over the curb, to do a runny poo. I was totally horrified. I had been in Vietnam around a year when this happened and I was shocked. And that's saying something!

My third hate was the mugging. I was drive by mugged twice, which means a motorbike drives past you and snatches your bag or tiny little almost invisible purse in my case! It was just extremely annoying because after the second mugging I had to resort to putting EVERYTHING down my bra. It's find if you have large boobs (= large bra). But my boobs are pretty small so items were kept to a minimum. Pain in the ass if I wanted to bring my camera! I had one deformed boob.

Street sellers were a massive annoyance! Every single bar/restaurant you were sitting in you would here 'you buy something?' 'hey lady buy something'. Ahhhhhhhh their voices haunt me in my sleep. You would think after a year of asking us everyday...they might recognise us? Also there were EVIL street kid sellers. Most were lovely but there were a couple that just had attitude coming out of their ears. One girl shouted at me 'Hey you', I looked over at this cute, tiny little girl. She then stuck her middle finger up at me an ran off. I took a massive disliking to her from that moment on. Let's just say NO ONE bought her chewing gum.

Thieves! The ones that pretended they were hookers. I will be starting a new blog talking of my travels around Cambodia, Thailand, Laos and Vietnam and there is a wonderful story of how I battled a hooker/thief. Basically these girls would walk up to the men and grab their packages asking if they wanted a girl that night. The boys would be so preoccupied with getting the girls hands off their willies that they would miss the girls stealing their wallets! By the time they did realise the bitches were speeding away on a motorbike!

Finally, my last and least hated hate, although most would have it in their top two, were the rats and cockroaches. Saigon was riddled with the buggers...you'd be sitting in a bar when you'd feel a tickle on your leg. ALWAYS CHECK YOUR LEG! Don't assume it's fly, a hair or something else non-threatening, because it won't be. It will be a cockroach. Little shits love climbing bare legs. We also played 'thrown the lighter at the rat'. I never saw one explode though...others had.

Now onto LOVE.

I may bitch and moan about Saigon but there really is no where in the world like this city. It has very original qualities that hook you!

I loved the traffic! Most people visiting Vietnam hate the traffic, but I found it so amazing! I hardly ever saw accidents and driving around the city was the funnest thing to do! There are no rules but there are unwritten ones that all drivers seem to just know. Also no road rage. If you clip somebody else's motorbike no fights broke out because of it. Usually you would just continue driving. IT'S GREAT!

My second favourite thing (some might be puzzled why this wasn't my top love) was the cheap alcohol. The cheap alcohol coupled with the 24 hour bars. I mean I think the most I ever spent in a night in Saigon was 500,000 Dong. That's about £15 - and I was derrrunnnk! 15 quid would get me 3 glasses of wine in Dunstable...not nearly enough to be derrunnnkkk! Although I forgot to mention in my HATES that Vietnam is the worst place in the world for hangovers. Bad cheap alcohol mixed with heat and garbage smell = sick every 5 minutes!

The Vietnamese clubs were awesome!!!! We'd walk in get loved by everyone because we were white. We'd then be invited over to drink all 10 bottles of whisky they'd bought that night before throwing some shapes (thanks rich) on the flashing dance floor to Vietnamese trance. I believe this to be the epiphany GOOD TIMES. Didn't spend a penny. Cheap cheap cheap.

Whilst sitting on the side of the street drinking dirty 'Hanoi' vodka from things called 'buckets' (but they weren't buckets, they were plastic bon bon jars) we would often find ourselves in conversation with the street kids. These conversations were brilliant! They would usually lead onto to playing Connect 4 for hours and hours in which I belive Sophie is the ultimate champion! How can someone be so good at Connect 4 whilst so drunk???

We'd also make bets with the kids - so for instance if the kid won the game we'd pay double the price for chewing gum, if they lost (which they never did!!) they'd give us chewing gum for free. NOTE TO SELF: If a Vietnamese street kid asks you to play rock/paper/scissors DO NOT INDULGE. They are Jedi's and they always win.

My fourth favourite thing was the weather. I LOVE THE HEAT. Even if there was no sun, which there often was because Saigon's full of smog, it would still be hot! Not having to worry about a coat or jumper when going out at night was awesome. Walking home 5 in the morning and the temperature being 25 degrees already was again, awesome! As I sit here writing this blog in the -55 degree winter (or thats what it feels like) i'm becoming very jealous of the people still in Vietnam.

Finally to end this emotion filled blog, my favourite thing of all was meeting all the people I did. I made so many friends in my year of living in Saigon that were all so amazing in their own quirky ways. I feel very honoured to be your friend and guys - even though this is the end of my blog this is not the end for us!

Till we meet again in that crazy playground we call - Saigon.

I had a ball!

Love Alison xxxx

Be still my beating heart.

So haven't blogged in a while and I feel you deserve to know the crazy happenings of my life in the last 2 months.

You will have to bear with me because I've been partying a lot recently and I think I've killed a few of my brain cells. Ahhh I didn't need them anyway!

So the first thing I can remember doing in the last two months is eating snake. This doesn't sound that weird at first but it will when I tell you that it was killed in front of us. Now I understand a few of you reading maybe be vegetarian (then acceptable to look down on me) OR think it's cruel BUT I'm pretty sure the chickens you 'ethical' eaters eat are probably kept in the same conditions as the snakes. ANYWAY rant over.

So the snake...was bought out in a bag. At first they bought out an effing Komodo dragon lizard thing!!! But there was no way I was eating that. That was too much for my heart to handle. I kind of love lizards a little. The waiter took the snake out of a bag, held it on a chopping board, then took a massive meat cleaver and whacked it off. Next - no messing about - the guy took a knife and cut out the heart STILL BEATING and dropped it into a glass of vodka.

"Who wants this then?" They said.

"Let's play fives for it" Steve replied. (aka BIG DOG - a self given name)

Yes we were playing a game to see who got the heart. Rich won! And I could see in his eyes he was excited to the MAX! not.

When Facebook stops being a bastard I'll upload the video and the photos. The video's amazing because Rich's face actually goes through about 7 different emotions after swallowing the still beating heart. We then continued on to drink the blood and bile (which by the way is the most disgusting thing I've ever put in my mouth).

Snake tastes like chicken of course.

The next thing worth mentioning is my awesome trip to Dalat! Me, Eileen and Jamie (two girls I know, who work at another school) went to Dalat primarily to participate in a bit of Canyoning! This is basically where you make your way down a canyon/gorge by walking, abseiling, swimming, jumping off cliffs...

It was amazing. We did 3 abseils down into the river, slid down natural water slides, which were so much fun! And jumped off a small cliff - which scared the crap out of me. Not that great with jumping of high things. The day before hired bikes and drove around Dalat. It's amazing. SO SO beautiful, so much green. Also pretty cold! Had little taster of what it will be like to return to the Northern Hemisphere.

Next came the ending of our contract. Me and Sophie had been talking about tattoos but we decided that Wednesday would be the day. Sophie went first, and because she was a tattoo virgin I wanted to take pictures of her experience. I was second and my tattoo took considerably less time but MY JESUS GOD IT HURT. Like 10 times more than my first tattoo. Maybe it had something to do with it a needle piercing into my achilles heel!!! Definitely a memorable experience and now I can remember my time in Vietnam forever with my little lady in her Ao Dai (Vietnamese traditional clothing).

Although it is in the most annoying area for my newfound love for Vietnamese nightclubs. People keep bloody kicking it. My new love has stemmed from Ladies Nights. Saigon has a Ladies Night pretty much very night. Free alcohol is very tempting!!! My friends took me to a new club I hadn't encountered before called 'X Club'. It's amazing fr two reasons.

One: There's a dance floor. Vietnamese clubs are very famous for having no where to dance because people sit around and drink bottles of spirit. PLUS the dance floor flashes.

And two: Two's the best reason. They have fish tanks IN THE WALL!!! yes, it's awesome.

So it's my last week in Saigon before I travel for 3 months. I'm off to Cambodia with 3 south african girls I've met recently. They are very awesome and I'm pretty excited. Matt's staying in Vietnam because he has another job teaching for a friend's new school. I'll probably meet him in Hanoi so we can travel down Vietnam together. I'm sure I'll get into some funny situations which will be happy reading for you. Also my sister, Kathryn, is meeting me in Thailand for a bit! YAY.

Love to you all.

Peace out!

Planet Goon (then returning to Planet Saigon) PART 3

Leaving Melbourne was pretty sad because we knew it wouldn't be long until we had to go home. We set off, absolutely knackered, because some idiot played music in the common room really loud until 6am! I was driving so I filled my self up with coffee and sandwiches before departing for...who knows? We didn't!

All we knew is we had to get back to Sydney by Tuesday and it was Sunday. We drove for 8 hours and stopped for the night in a place called Eden. Very quiet seaside town. Was OK but we didn't spend much time there. The drive there was beautiful though! The roads were empty; there was coastline or forest the entire way. We took some good photographs for you to see. AND SO MANY MOUNTAINS! Australia is just full of them!

This is where I hit animal number 2. A lovely grey owl. But what are you going to do when it flies out of a tree and lands on the road 10 metres in front of your vehicle?!!

Moving on from Eden we decided to drive all the way up to an area 2 hours out of Sydney. We took a wrong turn and ended up finding a small village. As we turned a corner we suddenly saw...not 1 or 2 but A FIELD FULL OF KANGAROOS! It was amazing! Now I know your thinking "it's not that amazing, you are in Australia". No. All we had seen of any type of Australian animal was the back of a Kangaroo jumping away and those penguins (which I do not class as Australian animals). I was starting to lose hope! We stayed for about 15 minutes taking photos of them. Matt had a trick where he shouted "jump" and they would jump. Crazy!

As this was to be our last night in the van as a 3 person unit, Matt decided he would cook us a curry. It was SO good. I miss Matt's curries :(

So the time came to drop Dave off. Matt and I were headed to The Blue Mountains, but Dave was meeting friends in Sydney. We decided to drive through Bondi Beach as we hadn't seen the famous surf capital yet!

It was bloody windy I tell thee!! Australia was definitely MUCH colder than I had imagined. But maybe it's because I live in 35 degree heat everyday...

After dropping of Dave, Matt and I continued onto the mountains! It took us AGES to go a 1 and half hour drive. I think it had something to do with it being rush hour. So because of this we didn't get to see any scenery that day and we JUST got to the campsite before it closed! Very lucky.

The town of Katoomba is small but nice. It had a good bar and that's all that mattered by that point. BUT MY GOD IT WAS FREEZING. I reckon about 1 or 2 degrees. It bloody snowed on the day we left!! Matt was not happy about being cold seeing as he'd only bought shorts and flip flops with him ha ha!

The next morning we drove up to the cable car to have a trip down into the forest. Now I was not prepared for the actual size and beauty of these mountains. It was literally one of the most amazing sights I have seen...EVER. The national park went on for miles and there was a blue haze down in the valley. This is where the mountains get their name. The blueness comes from the oil from all the eucalyptus trees there are. The main parts to see are The Three Sisters. The story goes that two tribes were fighting for the land. The father of the girls was one of the tribe’s leaders and fearing his daughters would get kidnapped, he turned them into stone to hide them. The father was then killed before he had chance to turn the girls back so they are now trapped forever! BAD TIMES.

We next visited the town of Leura and stopped for lunch. The food was so good! The town was pretty and quaint almost reminding me of a small St Albans. After lunch we were making our way to Wentworth Falls when we saw signs for Echo Point. I knew it was meant to be a fantastic spot so we stopped. WOW. It was mind blowing! I can't even describe to you so you'll have to look at the photos.

The best part of the day was walking to Wentworth Falls. We thought it would only be a short walk so we went on our merry way. We got to the Prince of Wales look out which had a brilliant view of the waterfall. Because it was so windy the water was pretty much horizontal which made for interesting photos. We could also see that people were standing on the top of the falls! We had to get there! We walked under the cliff edge, through alcoves with the wind blowing at 100mph!

We finally made it round and it was unbelievable! We could stand pretty much in the water at the top of the waterfall. The wind kept spraying the water back up to us so we got soaked but it was totally worth it! The view was yet again, immense.

Sadly the time came for us to leave so we drove back to Sydney to stay in a hostel for the very last time. I did nearly crash the van in Sydney city centre but thankfully my tutor drummed emergency stops into my head! God dam lifesavers!

Upon arriving back into Vietnam it was time to head to 185 for some cheeky buckets of shitty Vietnamese vodka. I walked into the bar and one of the bike boys came running up to me.

"Alesk! Alesk!" he shouted. He cannot say my name so he's made up his own version.
"Hi Anh, how are you?"
"I saw somebody who look like you in movie! So much!"
"Yea it probably was me" I said. "Is it a Mafia programme and am I at the airport?" I asked.
"Yes! Troi oiiiii! Tomorrow we buy DVD."
"It's on DVD?"

Oh yes. It's on DVD. And not only that, I'm on the bloody cover!!! Haaaaaaaaaaaaa! I bought one copy but I have since realised I should buy many copies and give them as Christmas presents! I watched it and because they don't record the sound, they dub it over the picture, some eastern European is doing my voice! It's awesome!

Alright I'm off to sign autographs. Thanks for reading this very long installment. Hope you enjoyed it!xx

p.s. Goon is the name given to a box of cheap wine. Basically most people drink Goon in Australia because it's the only dam drink they can afford!

Planet Goon (then returning to Planet Saigon) PART 2

Next was our very exciting journey to Australia.

We arrived in Singapore and got to the hotel. I'd found this hotel online. It was the cheapest hotel that wasn't a complete dump. Had a bed, shower, TV and even WIFI. All was good! We didn't think to check out what there was to see in Singapore first so we got straight on the WIFI and did some speedy research.

The area we were staying in was apparently the red light district. YAY. As we read on..."the houses with the big red numbers are brothels". We looked out our window and oop what do you know?! We were right opposite a brothel.

We made our way into the city centre where we saw the Sands Towers, walked around the harbour, saw the Raffles hotel, in which I bought a $25 cocktail. Yes Singapore is not cheap, but obviously that's outrageous for a cocktail. It was an official Singapore Sling. The Long Bar in the Raffles Hotel is where it was invented apparently so I had to get one for photo purposes.

The next day we were boarding the plane, got to our seat and looked to our left. Dave was pretty much next to us! Weird! After a movie filled 7 hour flight we arrived in Australia. The holiday had begun! I was in high spirits as I approached customs! "Australia is awesome" "Australians are cool" "Life is great". Then I met him.

The ugliest man I had ever seen. Fat, one eyed, bald. Ok maybe I could be overreacting, but this guy was so mean to me. I had put my customs card in my mouth for about 3 seconds because I had no hands to sort my 3 bags out. I suddenly heard an "excuse me miss, can you take the card out of your mouth, that how germs get transferred."

I apologized but that obviously wasn't enough for the knob head. Next thing I hear is him shouting across the airport to the guy I gave the card to "HEY MATT! SHE'S HAD THAT IN HER MOUTH YOU NEED TO GO AND WASH YOUR HANDS".

This would be funny if he was joking. But he was not. He basically said that I have shit in my mouth. DICK.

So that wasn't a great first impression but somehow I got past it. We got to the hostel. The famous BASE hostel in the centre of Sydney. I gave our room 3/10. There were no plugs! What's that about? The 3 points were for the fact that they had beds in the room. Here we hired the camper van that was to be our house AND burden for the next 2 weeks!

But before I move onto the van I will briefly go over Sydney. We went out for Paddy's Stag Do. Yes I know I'm a girl but I talked about boobs and fanny as good as the others. It was a fun night. We ended up in a weird bar that was full of slot machines...AND BIG BUCK HUNT! Oh how I've missed you. The days on the Winston Churchill came rushing back to me. Of course I had not lost my game. I totally beat Paddy!! And to make it better BIG BUCK HUNT is in every single Australia bar. YES.

We saw the sights of Sydney, spent a day in the gay area, and spent ALOT of money. I was told Australia is expensive but I didn't realise just how expensive. Scooners (not even a pint) of beer cost approx $7. I got a Vodka and Coke for $10.

So a few days later we started our journey to Bundanoon. It was only around 2 hours away and we got there without a problem. The house we were staying in WAS AWESOME! 5 bedrooms, massive living room and kitchen and balcony. The guy who rented it out was awesome! He took me and Dave for a walk to an amazing spot and also let us stay another night for free! Thank god as we were all hungover from the wedding!

Patrick and Carolyn! So beautiful!!

So the wedding! IT WAS AMAZING, not only visually but the whole day was just lovely! The ceremony was beautiful then as we waited for the important people to have photographs us other guest were left with cheese, crackers and brownies! JACKPOT! The important people then arrived and the party started. We all had places where we had to sit and to my horror I realised I wasn't sitting with Matt. I didn't know anyone! I was going to have to make friends quick! And after one bottle of wine I had managed to make friends with everyone on the table, even if they didn't want my friendship. Another awesome thing was that the wedding had a props table. The theme was 1930's so everybody had a lot of fun trying on the fake moustaches and hats. They made for some pretty interesting photographs!

The wedding finished at about 10pm, but of course for us binge drinkers we needed to carry on the party. We collected up all the half full bottles of wine off of the tables like massive pikeys and we went on our merry way. I caved at about 3am but the boys went on till around 5. The next day was not too pretty.

The day after, we left the house and made our way to the capital city. Canberra's ok. Not much really going on. Nice shops, bars and museums. Massive lake. We only spent one day there before continuing on our journey to the Great Ocean Road. We were driving for around 6 hours before stumbling upon a little town named Benalla. This was Dave's favourite.

Benalla was basically the town from The League Of Gentlemen. We parked up in a car park in what supposed to be the town centre. We decided we would sleep here for the night. Matt and I went out to search for a shop, leaving Dave alone in the van. We found that nothing was open. It was 9pm and nothing was open. Finally we saw a Woolworths (which in Aus is a supermarket), stocked up on red wine and went back to the van.

Halfway into a bottle of wine an air raid siren started up, scaring the absolute shite out of us! We still to this day do not know what it was for. Was there an air raid? Flood? Or maybe the weird townsfolk were all awakening from their coffins because the siren signified dinner time. I don't know but we weren't going to hang around to find out. We left pretty sharpish and stopped at a service station for the night.

The next day we drove 4 hours to get the Great Ocean Road. We didn't pick the best day to drive it as it rained. Also I drove the entire road to the hostel and I was pooing my pants! The road was constantly winding with an epic drop to the left side or the van. As is got darker I became more aware that I was driving a camper van on a dangerous road. And to make it better there were signs for kangaroos everywhere. That would have been all I needed!

Turning a corner, an animal walked out in front of my van. I have no idea what it was but it definitely wasn't a kangaroo thank god! At first I thought I'd missed it because I had slowed down to a speed where it could walk behind the front wheels. Thinking it was safe I sped up slightly and then 'crunch'. Oops.

The Great Ocean Road is AWESOME. We visited the 12 apostles, which are 8 columns of rock. They were made by the sea eroding the cliff over many years. There are only 8 because 4 have fallen down over time. The next stop was Loch Ard Gorge. This is an area where 2 people famously survived a shipwreck. The man washed up on the shore of the gorge and as he was building a fire he heard women’s screams. He swam to where she was and pulled her to safety. There is no happy ending love story here though. They went their separate ways and probably never spoke again.

The next day it was time to head for Melbourne. We stayed in a place called The Coffee Palace in a town just outside the city centre called St Kilda. It was a very arty/studenty hostel, which was a lot of fun. The first evening I walked down to the pier to see the penguins. YES I said penguins. If you think about it, it makes a lot of sense. Melbourne's on the south coast and next stop south is Antarctica! They were so cute! They live in the rocks and go out swimming all day then return home at dusk. It was so cool!!

Matt thought it was hilarious that he got a picture of two penguins having sex.

The following day, Matt was too hungover to eat speak so me and Dave moseyed on down to Melbourne city centre. I much prefer it to Sydney. Very relaxed, again pretty arty. If Covent Garden was going to be a city, I think it would look like this. Dave and I didn't do much, just walked around taking photographs. We did watch a street performer for a while who was constantly taking the piss out of peoples clothes whilst standing on 5 bins piled on top of each other and having machetes thrown to him by an 8 year old kid. Weird!

Matt finally emerged from his coma and we went out again that night. And that's when it ended with me getting a $10 vodka and coke! That was definitely the end of that night!

Planet Goon (then returning to Planet Saigon)

Wow! 2 months since my last blog! I'm getting lazy. I've had a crazy couple of months with the randomist stuff happening.

This is the order of events as I will tell them now!

1) My friend's farm/rave wedding to a Vietnamese girl
2) Going to the Land of Oz - via Singapore
3) Returning to Vietnam and being met by crazyness (of course)

Ok so number 1 on my list. The most random wedding I have ever been to in my life, and I've been to alot of weddings!

Matt, who ran the AK Hideaway, decided it was time to get married and who would be a better candidate that a hot Vietnamese girly that used to work for him! (not even the random part)

So we all pile onto a minibus at 2am to get to a town 5 hours away literally IN THE MIDDLE OF NOWHERE for the wedding at 8 am!!!! Who has a wedding at this time???? We rock up at this strange "hotel" to get changed into wedding gear. It wasn't a hotel - it was a brothel. Red light bulbs in the rooms...brothel.

We arrive at the wedding location - a farm - and get ushered to sit under a canopy in 50 degree heat. My table were all sitting down having a chat and we notice a huddle around the house so I go and have a look and AK Matt's there giving fruit and shots of rice wine to the family members around the table. He then takes ages trying to put earrings in his wife-to-be's ears. All normal weddingy stuff I guessed. I sat back down and around 15 minutes later AK Matt emerges and says 'so I'm married then'.


























What? We'd missed the wedding? Apparently the fruit, rice wine and earring were the wedding. No 'I do's' no kissing the bride. Just they're married. This is when it got a little crazier. it was 8.30am by now and food that could have been dinner was brought out! YUMMY! I was starving. The last thing I'd eaten were m&m's at about 4am.

Then the rave began. And I'm not even over exaggerating when I say rave. This family weren't the richest of families but my god. They must have spent aroud 90% of the wedding budget on the speakers. They were immense. Blaring out Vietnamese at a million decibels was all fun and dandy for about 5 minutes. Thank god Pete and his laptop took over and danced the morning away to some good old rap music.

We were all obviously hammered by 11am because beer was pretty much free flowing as well as the rice wine! The time came for me to pee and I was not prepared for the toilet, or lack of. Basically you walk into a wooden cubicle in the KITCHEN. And piss on the floor. you wash it away with a scoop of water from the pot that you wash your hands in. AWESOME. God knows what happens if you need a poo.








Even funnier I was speaking to Tom about the toilet a little later about how we have to pee on the floor and Tom was like "What?"
"You know Tom, there's no toilet."
"What about the pot?"
I looked confused then clicked.
"The pot that you wash your hands in?"
"Ohhh you wash your hands in it? I thought it was the toilet!"

Everybody at the wedding had washed their hands in Toms piss. GOOD TIMES.

So the wedding started dying down around 2pm so it was time to leave and embark on our wonderful journey back to Saigon. The driver must have loved it. 14 people all passed out for 5 hours. Silence.

I may not know that much about politics, but I know a good party when I see one!

...and in this instance it was a 6 day long party, which began with Nha Trang.

I met the girls at the airport fully equip with one awesome welcome sign and a pair of lips that were gonna kiss their faces off!

This is the sign that I'm very proud of!

So after meeting Kirsty and Michelle and taking them back to mine to refresh we went to the train station to catch the wonderful night train to Nha Trang.

These trains were very interesting. Two bunk beds packed into a teeny little room - so us three were sharing our sardine tin with a very sexy man that made wondeful snoring sounds all night.

Alright I make it sound like it was the worst experience ever but the train wasn't that bad. I'd do it again.

Finally getting to The Perfume Grass Inn (oh yes that was the name of our hotel!!), we passed out in a room for a couple of hours before hitting the beach. We decided to top our tans or in my case actually get a tan because Saigon has very little actual sunshine.

The beach was ok, nothing special but the view was lovely. Lots of little islands and mountains in the near distance.

The sea was also really nice and warm and very clear. It was however crazily choppy and I had no chance of having a swim. (This all changes around 14 hours later!)

Soooo after a hard days tanning we go back for a little sleep, wake up, drink a bottle of wine and advance to the nearest restaurant to line our stomachs.

We decided after dinner to mosey on down to this Sailing Club we'd heard so much about from poeple who have already visited Nha Trang. We arrived - confused because the atnmosphere was quite tame. Many old couple and familes were eating dinner so we sat down and tried to be civilised like the rest of the world. Little did we know all the crazies and bar hoppers would emerge from their hiding places within the hour and fill up the whole place. I'm pretty sure I danced for about 5 hours straight. GOODTIMES.















After befriending many people and taking many a drunken photographs (as I found out the next day after sifting through) we moved onto a bar which in my opinion has a pretty flawless name if the issue is getting drunk people to drink more. WHY NOT? Exactly why not? By this point you've killed of enough brain cells to not be able to to of a reason why not to go to this bar. It's genius. Now I can't really remember being here - pretty sure it entailed more dancing.

Walking home we met a group of french lads which at the time I thought was awesome and I actually believe that I can speak french when I'm wasted. Somehow this conversation ended up with me, Kirsty and a french dude, nearly dying in the ocean because we all thought we were SUPERMAN went for a dip. Just like that drink awareness advert. What idiots. But more idiotic, some English lad decided to join us, leaving his shorts avec Iphone and wallet in the pockets. Yeah that was an easy steal for the Vietnamese street kids.







The next day we jumped on some motorbikes and got taken to see a couple of temples around the main town area. After taking a few pictures and being generally touristy we made our way to the Mud Baths. We basically paid pennies to sit in a pool of cold, silky mud, which I totally needed because my hangover was intense. Apparently this mud is extremely good for your skin as well as the hot fresh water you swim in after the mud cleansing.





























After the lovely day at the spa we chilled out in our room ready for the evening. Kelly, my friend from Saigon, had just arrived into Nha Trang, so we decided to show her the bars we had found the night before. The night was just as eventful as the previous. Lots of drinking and dancing - you know the deal. We also saw the french guys again, who invited us to go surfing the next day at midday. This was a much better idea than what we had already planned to do (getting up at 8am to get on a boat). The thought that entered my brain at that moment was my Cambodian-hangover-boat-sick experience and I nearly fainted. I could not deal with another boat episode so we took the guys up on the surfing offer.

Good move I think! I can now surf. YES. I stood on that board and rode that goddam wave! Wahoooooo! I believe Kirsty and Michelle did too. Who said surfing was hard?

After Nha Trang the girls moved onto Mui Ne then came back to Saigon a few days later. We partied a little bit more of course. Finally visited a ladies night I've been meaning to go to for a while. It's crazy! Just literally free bar for 3 hours and there's no catch! Pretty bloody cool if you ask me! We ended up dancing the night away on Bui Vien and then all staggering home. Fun times!

So unfortunately, it was time for the girls to go! I was very upset, still am actually :( BOOOOOOOOOO.

So in the aftermath of the week of partying I had with the girls...me and Matt decided that time had come to get motorbikes. Tell you what BEST DECISION EVER!! At first I was scared because I had only driven in Mui Ne and Nha Trang which are considerably quieter than Saigon. But I have come to realise that it's actually fine. I love it!!! My bike's name is The Black Knight. Me and Black Knighty cruise around town everyday now, but I do need a pollution mask because sometimes it's actually wrong the amount of fumes are in your body.

Ok some this post has come to an end. Going to Mui Ne on Monday for a school trip travel and accomodation paid wooooo. Then not long until Australia! VERY EXCITED.

Hope everyone's good! Love you all xxxxxxxxxxx

Campuchia!! (That's Vietnamese for Cambodia by the way)

Tết or "Vietnamese Lunar New Year", is the most important and popular holiday and festival in Vietnam .

So we decide to leave Vietnam! Stupid I know, but everything was booked up! We had our hearts set on Hoi An, which we found out we could get to no problem we just wouldn't be able to return for around 4 weeks because of all trains were booked up! Tet gets extremely busy. So on an impulse and not knowing anything about the country, I booked bus tickets to Cambodia.

We left on Tuesday at 7am and it actually only takes 6 hours to get there including all the faffing around at the border with visas. When we got to Phnom Penh we had no f*cking idea where we were apart from the fact we were in the capital of Cambodia. We desperately needed to find a Lonely Planet and fast!

The next day, after surviving the first evening thanks to a tuk tuk driver and a dodgy photocopied map, we attained a Lonely Planet from a Cambodia girl that had scarily good English. Me and Matt were trying to talk about the price by mumbling but she understood everything! DAMMIT!

We decided to have a day of sight seeing which included The Palace and the Silver Pagoda. Much to mine and Matt's dismay the Silver Pagaoda was in fact not covered in silver as advertised in the name. And to make it worse the floor, which was the only thing covered in silver, was covered up by a manky carpet. It was being saved from damage...who for?????




















The best thing at The Palace were the monkeys! Yes a group of monkeys had set up camp on some scaffolding. Literally the whole family were swinging around the metal jungle.

The next day we caught a bus to Sihanoukville in the South of Cambodia on the coast. This town is party central. A lot of people from work were going down to Sihanoukville. The first day we were pretty chilled, found an awesome beach bar with a name which is a line from one of my favourite songs by John Lennon 'Above Us Only Sky'. We literally had the sea touching the decking I was sitting on with my glass of wine.

Because it was New Years Day there we hundreds of Cambodian beach seller-kids trying to flog you fireworks! It was insane, they would run up and down the beach holding them while they fired off into the sea! Oh and another thing about the sellers in Cambodia. MUCH easier to get rid of! If you don't want to buy you just say 'no thank you'. In Vietnam you have to pretty much run away from or shout abuse at the seller otherwise they will not leave you!

Friday - Injury number one. I trod on a spiky specimen in the sea which embedded many horrible splinters into my foot! Bad times.

Friday night we met some travellers from Australia. They were awesome! One girls name was actually Susie Gange - like as in marijuana - frickin crazy! It was one wicked night. Basically it rained all night and we were stuck in a bar on the beach. We drank until 3am, danced with random Vietnamesers and staggered back to the room, knowing full well we had to get on a boat to a tropical paradise in 4 and a half hours! This was not going to be pleasant!








And I was right! My god, it was the worst hangover ever! Maybe not ever ever (the bottle of Bacardi hangover was pretty bad like 5 years ago) but definitely in my top ten hangovers. I threw up 6/7 times on the boat journey over then as I was moving to another part of the boat to save the poor tourists from having to see my insides sprayed onto the water, I fell through the wooden flooring cutting my leg and totally f*cking my thumb! Injury number 2 and 3! My thumbs still swollen now so I may go and get it x-rayed :S

The island named Koh Ta Kiev, I thought WAS AMAZING! Definitely worth the bad journey! We stayed in a bungalow right on the sea front which only had electricity 4 hours a day ha ha! We took a walk to the other side of the beach where we found another kind of resort. It was hidden through the jungle at the end of these crazy winding pathways! I felt like I was actually in lost!!



































The place consisted of many tree houses and hammocks complete with a little bar, eating area and an awesome outdoor kitchen with oven. We found out that the place used no electricity but did manage to bake pizzas, bread and a pile of hash cookies in the oven! AMAZING! Unfortunately I was so hungover I didn't get to try these :(

We asked about staying there for the Sunday night and they said there was one room available! Result! This made us very excited! For the rest of the evening we walked along the beach to find the perfect sunset viewpoint. Here we swam in the sea until the sun totally disappeared. It was paradise! Kind of how I imagine the Thai islands were before developers got a hold of them. This was the point when lots of fishermen on tiny floats pushed themselves across the sea to catch fish. We think that they had a net attached below their float because they never stopped to actually fish.

The next day we awoke, bright and early, and decided to walk to the other side of the island. It only took 20 mins because thats how small Koh Ta Kiev is. The island is basically full of jungle with beach surrounding it and that's it! There are only 25 families that live on the island. They must live in hidden houses like proper jungle people! As we were walking down the final pathway toward the beach on the other side, I saw a fishing boat docked at the pier. I have pictures of this pier - it is insane. Me and Matt walked on it and it felt like it would give way at any time. I had to jump off because I got scared I would have two retarded thumbs!
















Anyway we were walking down the pathway to the beach and one guy on the fishing boat just stopped! Mid-action. And stared and stared and wouldn't stop staring literally until we were out of sight. Matt was standing 2 metres in front of him and waved, but still the man was just gob smacked. I was just starting to get slightly scared when, as if a light bulb had turned on in his head, the guy ran to his boat and pulled out his mobile phone. Yes he started taking photos of us. This is when I thought 'ahhhh maybe he's never seen a white person before?'. We disappeared out of sight for a swim behind the rocks! Away from the camera! Later we moved our things to the jungle tree house for fun tree top times!

Our house was lush, I don't think the photos do it justice!! Right on the beach front, basically had our own private beach. A ladder up to our house, no electric, a double bed with mosquito net, wooden furniture and an amazing view! Was actual paradise. I really didn't want to leave! Although the toilets weren't exactly paradise material YUCK!

The last injury we suffered, happened to Matt. He was swimming in the beautiful clear waters when suddenly 'Ahhhhhhhh, ahhhhhhh!'. Oops Matt had hit a couple of sea anenomes/urchins. You know those reaaallllly spiky ones! We spent a while using tweezers to get the bloody spikes out of his legs and fingers.

The next day we headed back to Phnom Penh for one last night (went to the S-21 museum which was horrible!) then home to Saigon! Hopefully Facebook will let me update but I'll add a couple of photo's on here for you to all see and get jealous ha ha!

Love to you all xxxx