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

When Dunstable came to Saigon.

So, the boys are still here, but much to my surprise and probably everyone elses too, they are still alive and not in jail.

Although saying this they do have another 4 days yet so lets not tempt fate!

We had a very busy month which I'm now about to tell you about. Firstly it was Christmas Eve. Me, Matt, Sophie and Kelly started the night at our friend Jonathon's house. His mum (who is the chef of a massive restaurant somewhere in America :S can't remember where!?!?!) cooked us some amazing food and we drank much wine! After a lovely dinner, lots of cheese and Fuzz humping my leg we left and entered the funniest taxi journey I've had in my life. Completely intoxicated we started to spread Christmas Love from the windows of the vehicle. The people of Vietnam LOVED IT! We even made a straight face traffic policeman laugh! We then had an awesome countdown in AK (which I'm really upset is having to close on 23rd January due to a moody bitch living opposite in a shed not liking the noise. I think she's just jealous she doesn't have a really cool bar!)

Then came CHRISTMAS DAY.

We finally decided on dinner at one of the big hotels - Moevenpick. It was amazing! There were rows and rows of food and not just Christmas food either. I pretty much just ate lobster, truffles, cupcakes oh and a bit of turkey and gravy (sometimes all at once). YUM! It was also free flowing alcohol which of course we all made the most of the Cava. Especially Matt who was WASTED. So wasted in fact he danced around the restaurant and proceed to shimmy behind the desk where the receptionist was on the phone to give her some Matthew lovin'. It was pretty funny because he was in his pajamas too.























Then it was the arrival of the boys! I feel they were welcomed extremely well into Saigon. They all got so drunk they didn't get up until 5 the next day! I thought drinking 2 buckets was enough. but Carl has showed us that he can happily sink 4 and still be OK!!


New Years Eve day we all went to the water park. IT WAS IMMENSE. I nearly died of a heart attack about 4 times and once from a major wedgy that nearly cut me in half. One thing you need to know about Vietnam is there is no health and safety. If they want to build a house - they build one the next day. If they are building a house and scaffolding falls of the building - the attitude is SHIT HAPPENS. The water park is no different. Some of the rides literally had no sides and nothing to catch you if you fell off. The only thing the workers were concerned about is Ross's zip on his pocket. It may scratch their slide!!!









So the one ride that gave me 3 heart attacks in a row was The Boomerang. Basically a 3 seater rubber ring dropped over the top of a drop slide and goes straight up the other side. Matt put me at the front because I was the lightest and we would go faster. JESUS CHRIST. I thought I was on Oblivion at Alton Towers. It's a definite must go though!

Later on we went for a nice sophisticated NYE dinner at The Refinery, a french bistro. The food was lush! We then decided to turn the clock back 10 years and go and buy vodka from a shop, pour it into a water bottle with coke and walk the streets of Saigon for the count down.






















































The street party on Nguyen Hue was awesome!
We learnt how to say Happy New Year and kept on saying it over and over! Matt and Carl bought some fake snow spray to make it really feel like home :S . The countdown was AWESOME! Lovely gold confetti rained over us for about 15 minutes. YAY! Now it was time to party hard. I can't really remember what happened next, but what I do know is that it involved singing in Welsh, a massive bag of quail eggs, hitting Matt with a rose and then ending with Matt knocking himself out by falling down the side of the bed. A productive night I feel.

Carl, Ross and Laz left us on NY Day to go up north but they soon returned. Well two of them anyway. Ross went off to Phu Quoc Island, which he said is amazing. One beach had white sand for miles, no hotels and only 2 beach bars. Sounds like my kind of place!

Me, Carl and Matt decided to visit the War Memorial Museum. I recommend it to all tourist but be aware it's the most soul destroying place on earth. You will see pictures of dead Vietnamese soldiers and innocents. Aswell as read some horrific stories of what American soldiers did to them in the war. Very interesting though totally anti-American.





















I've now brought you up to date. Yesterday was Matt's birthday which was of course eventful. We started at 3.30pm and finished around 4 am. Matt's still in bed now and it's 5pm. I think he's slightly broken. Nothing a swim won't fix though!

I'll put a few pictures on here because Facebook's banned in Vietnam right now.

Chuc Mung Nam Moi! xx