23rd June - Ko Tao , Thailand

ok - i left off last time as we were getting on a sleeper bus from Hoi An - Nha Trang. Well it was quite the adventure, sleeper buses surprisingly comfy actually! although its all about being on the bottom as i was on the top and got rocked around all night. we drove through the mountains on some very windy narrow roads during a lightning storm! Sam napped like a baby but i couldn't sleep as the road was so bumpy. Started pulling near to Nha Trang at around 5am just as the sun was coming up on a Sunday. Was really surprised to see town and the beach literally packed. thousands of people were jogging, playing tennis/badminton, stretching or doing aerobics in little groups all around the beach area- at 5am!!! Sam and i couldn't check into the hotel till 8am so went for breakfast, chatted to an old expat called Pete, and went for a long walk on the beach and watched all the locals for a few hours, so much fun. Once we had checked in we headed to a place on the beach where you could rent loungers and swim in a pool for a small fee. chilled there all day, pretty much paradise, great weather, great food and drink, very relaxing! It also served the most delicious Pho (Vietnamese noodle soup) which had a spicy thai broth, chicken, veg and noodles. for 1.20. yum) We did some culture stuff the next day in Nha Trang - visited a pagoda, met a 99 year old monk, burned some incense, and saw some amazing giant Buddha statues! Went out for some beers and games of darts that night as we were so tired from the very very long walk to the pagoda.

As we loved Nha Trang so much we decided to stay another few days and visit the mud baths and also Vinpearl theme park (Vietnamese Disneyland - kind of) but in order to do this we needed to majorly save some cash as we are already over budget by paying for lots of trains, visas, buses and accommodation being much for expensive than we thought for somewhere clean. so to save for our next adventures we bought bread from a street vendor and laughing cow cheese spread from the mart and ate spread cheese sandwiches for 4 days straight. hmmm - vegetables never tasted so good after that!! but we had a little more cash and headed to the mud baths. where basically sam and i sat in a giant clay tub with some locals for half an hour and you just keep drenching yourself in it! then you have to go and sit in the sun and let it all cake onto you, then wash it off with a mineral shower and then head to the hot spring pools - 39 degrees C! like a hot bath swimming pool. really relaxing.

Headed to Vinpearl the next day -really hot sunny day, took a cable car (the longest one in the world to go over water apparently) across to the vinpearl island and spent some time going on the rides. sam foolishly got on one without seeing what it did first and it proceeded to hang him upside down and spin for 10 minutes. not happy when he got off so we went on the carousel to calm him down! ; ) Loads of free arcades at Vinpearl and a giant waterpark which we spent all day on the slides and the wave machine. The food served there i wouldn't give to a dog so it was a hungry day with lots of 7up!! went on the little roller coaster there a few times and got a great video of us on it! Saw a great water light show at the end of the day where they use coloured fountains in time to classical music which was fun!!

Had 5 nights overall in Nha Trang and caught the late night bus to Ho Chi Minh City on the 6th day, after watching the world cup opening ceremony with the lady who ran our hotel. she was so sweet, you just wanted to hug her! zonked out on the night bus and found a hotel in Ho Chi Min the next morning at 6am. Had a chilled 2 days in Ho Chi Min, went to the re-unification palace and the war museum. had some horrible photos and information all about agent orange and the war and it was really horrible to find out about, but i did not know all the details of the Vietnam war so it was interesting to fin out their history. Wandered around a lot of the city and stopped to watch a lot of the world cup every day - i've seen more of this world cup than any other!!!! Also called in at the cinema and watched ' From Paris with love' - new Travolta movie which we liked!

Next up was to head to Cambodia. Border crossing went like a dream we had a really good tour company taking care of everything for us! 50 usd for us to get into the country though! arrived in Phnom Penh in the afternoon and literally couldn't even get down the steps of the bus for all the people screaming at me to go with them for taxi/tuk tuk/hotel/bar - we had to push through with people screaming at us to get our bags and despite saying no thank you the whole time about 4 guys followed us quite a way down the street still trying to get us to go with them, saying our guesthouse was far even though we knew it was a 5 minute walk. i think the key out here is to plan when you are going. we don't book any of our accommodation ahead but we do decide 2 guesthouses we want to check out and just walk to them so we don't get scammed or ripped off. Phnom Penh was actually so disappointing. its really not developed yet and most of it really seems like a slum. horrible to say it but it really was, we just hated it. The only good thing was really cheap beer Angkor (draft for 50 cents - 30p) and the western pizza we ate!! we headed to the Thai Embassy as we needed to extend our thai visas (when flying into thailand you get 30 days, but if you cross a land border you only get 15 days and we plan to be in Thailand for 5 weeks so we have to apply for a longer one). However when we arrived they told us we couldn't submit a visa application until the next day and although the visa itself is free at the moment because of all the political disruption in Thailand - the Cambodian officials take this to mean they can make some extra cash and therefore you have to bribe them to do you Visa for you. We found a couple, Paul and Rachel form London in the Embassy who had taken this option and were just getting shouted at and had been waiting there for hours. we decided there was no way we wanted to stay in Phnom Penh and had to bribe to get our passports back so decided to figure something else out. We booked a bus to Siem Reap for the next afternoon and just got up early the next day to visit S21 - the prison where Pol Pott slaughtered around 7,000 people between 1975-1979. All the information we read there was really harrowing and seeing all the torture chambers and reading about the victims was horrible. Only 7 people were found alive in S21 when the prison was liberated in 79 and these prisoners had manager to keep themselves from being murdered by having a skill, artist, carpenter etc. The really amazing thing was that one of the survivors was actually at the museum and was taking a tour of it himself. he was stood next to the photo of the 7 prisoners that were found alive and he looked so healthy (now 79) next to the emaciated version of himself 40 years ago. loads of people were having their photo taken with him but Sam and i didn't want to be like that and just went up to him and bowed to him instead and he seemed really happy we did that and bowed back to us. Sam and i have done that a lot actually. sometimes there are local scenes and people that have to be enjoyed in the moment and it's really rude to take photos or just tacky. so many foreigners sticking cameras right in the locals faces treating them like an attraction and not people. so as much as i can tell you here there is nothing like the sights, sounds and smells of experiencing it first hand.

Will Sign off here as Internet time has run out and its so expensive here. Will have to do the rest tomorrow when we are moving islands/hotels and will hopefully have free internet.