Adventures from Singapore!

We spent the morning of the 6th at the beach and walking around Phuket, then caught an afternoon flight up north. Our first night in Chiang Mai we went to the night market and grabbed some dinner. Chiang Mai is a smaller town, with the "Old City" located inside a moat and a giant wall in the center of the "New City". Everything is within walking distance and we were able to wander around town and find things to do. At the night bazaar we found loads of restaurants plus any market style shopping you could imagine. Similar to the rest of Southeast Asia, there were a lot of cheap Tshirts, sunglasses, shoes, jewelry and of course a ton of knock-off items.

We had to get up early for a long day of adventures the next morning!

After Koh Phi Phi we went back to Phuket, this time for a planned visit. However, once again we missed our ferry! After the glow-paint insane beach party, we over slept and ran to the ferry dock to see the boat had already left. We thought we were out of luck, but we were told we could rent a long boat and try to catch up! You should have seen us: four college kids still covered in glow paint from the night before, climbing onto the ferry in the middle of the ocean, and we clearly had just woken up. People literally were taking pictures of us and laughing. However, we made it back to Phuket on time and everything else worked out fine.

We stayed at Patong Backpackers Hostel, which surprisingly was filled with NUS exchange students who we didn't expect to be in the area. A whole group of us went to the beach for the afternoon and then went out our first night there. We found an Australian Bar that played only the best music- 90's rap. Music in Asia isn't quite up to par with at home, I don't think I have heard a new song since leaving in July. But it makes for a fun night when everyone can laugh at the music being played at bars. After the Australian Bar, we wandered back through the rows of strip clubs, guys selling ping-pong shows, 'ladyboys' and prostitutes and called it an early night. You hear all these crazy stories about things that happen in Thailand, and I can officially tell you- they are ALL true.

We got up early the next day and rented motorbikes! We figured we would explore the whole island of Phuket, and get out of Patong for a while. We rode up to a private beach, where it was less crazy and more relaxing. After a few hours of sunlight, we rode our bikes further south to the 'Big Buddha". a huge statue of Buddha built at the top of the mountain. However this ride didn't go smoothly.

I ended up crashing my motorbike when I hit gravel on a turn going downhill. Not only did I slide into a pile of cut down trees, the bike landed on top of my leg and it was too heavy for me to pick up! Because I was riding last in our group, the guys didn't notice me fall and continued down the mountain. I was saved by a group of guys who own an Elephant Ranch on the mountain! They took me to the elephant farm (not sure what the real name is for an elephant ranch/farm...), got me cleaned up and gave me band-aids for all my cuts and scrapes. The guys came back up the mountain and found me with the elephants!

Eventually we made it to the Buddha, which was indeed big. The views from the top were amazing, you could see all the towns on the island and far out into the ocean. The Buddha itself has just opened, it is even still being built on the inside!

After visiting the Buddha, we rode our bikes to the southern most point on Phuket, trying to catch the sunset. We thought the sunset at like 6:30 in Thailand, but apparently it sets at like 5:45 or 6! So we missed it. But we were still able to grab dinner along the ocean, literally sitting on the ground on the ocean front. It was an amazing dinner

Koh Phi Phi is amazing. This is one of the biggest tourist destinations in Thailand and it is not hard to see why. A two hour ferry from Phuket puts you in crystal clear water and sunny blue skies. When we arrived on the island we set off to find the guys I was supposed to meet up with the night before- Josh, Ryan and George. This is the group I traveled with for the next week. Luckily they were still at the hotel when we arrived, so we dropped our stuff off, went to the beach for an hour and then got some lunch.

Lunch was the funniest experience I have ever had in a restaurant. They had a menu of everything you could possibly imagine, but it turns out they didn't actual have anything in the restaurant. We all ordered smoothies, and they biked to the closet smoothie store and bought them for us and brought them back! Two people got garlic bread to split, and they went a bought frozen garlic bread and then we watched them heat it up in the microwave! We should have realized that the cheapest place on the island was too good to be true, but we all got a good laugh out of it.

We spent the rest of the afternoon on Long Beach, which was on the opposite side of the island from our resort. Koh Phi Phi Don, the island we stayed at and the bigger of the Koh Phi Phi islands, has a really narrow straight in the middle of the island, where you can walk from one beach to the other in about 10mins. However, on either end the island gets pretty big, so you have to take boats or tuktuk's to get around. We got to take a long boat over and back, with a super cool long boat driver (check him out below!). The beach was nice, white sand and clear water. There was a reef right off shore so there were loads of fish swimming around, when you walked into the water they started to circle around you!

We stayed here until the sun went down, and it started to get stormy. We went back to our hotel, changed up for the night and then went out for dinner. We had dinner at a Muay Thai boxxing arena, which was crazy. We sat there for a few hours watching different boxxing matches. They had some guys who worked there fighting, and those fights were scary, but they also allowed people from the crowd to challenge each other. The winner got a free bucket (yes- they drink alcohol out of buckets in Thailand). We saw a really funny fight between two 20-something year old guys who were clearly drunk, and appeared to be best friends. In between rounds they were dancing to the music and jumping into the springs that line the sides of the arena. They were trash talking each other and just being ridiculous but they were really entertaining. Then we watched two girls fight, who were the biggest two girls I have ever seen in my life. On the first punch one girl got a bloody nose!

After watching the Muay Thai, we went back to the beach! I had been warned by Bailey that the beach gets crazy at night, and I should not wear any clothes I ever want to wear again. She lent me the dress she wore when she came in October and she wasn't kidding, within seconds of arriving, I was covered in glow-paint from head to toe. This was the best beach party I have ever been to, with crazy lights, loud music and tons of people. The glow paint made things 10x more fun, and we kept drawing on each other more and more as the night progressed. We were up until 4am, when the parties start to shut down and the music gets cut off. We wandered back to our hotel and went to bed for the night.

I had one day of laundry, packing my room, moving my stuff out, and getting ready for Thailand after I ended exams. My room went from a disaster zone to 4 bags, and soon I was ready to leave NUS for the last time.

I left NUS early in the morning on Friday, December 2nd, with a flight direct to Phuket, Thailand. I was planning to meet up with a group of NUS Students on the island of Koh Phi Phi on Friday afternoon, but my flight was delayed and I ended up missing the last ferry out to the island. Luckily there were two other NUS students on my flight with me, who were also hoping to head to Koh Phi Phi, and the three of us got a room for the night in Patong (a town on the island of Phuket).

Patong is a place hard to describe. The town never stops, with bars and clubs open until sunrise and music blasting from every open window. There are more strip clubs, prostitutes and 'ladyboys' walking around than you could imagine. With just one night to spend there, we wandered the streets in amazement. We eventually found a night club that wasn't too scary and stayed there for most of the night, we had a blast. Although this was an unexpected stop we had a surprisingly good time exploring Patong.

The next morning we got up and caught the 8am ferry to Koh Phi Phi.

I cannot believe the semester is over.

Exams are done, I finished up this morning after 4 exams in the last 4 days. I have packed up my entire room into the same amount of space I used on the way here (which I think is amazing). I am sure I am over limit on weight, but I will figure that out at the airport if it is a problem. Tomorrow I am leaving for Thailand, where I will be meeting three friends from NUS in Phuket. Here is where I will be visiting:

Koh Phi Phi, Thailand
Phuket, Thailand
Chiang Mai, Thailand
Bangkok, Thailand

After Bangkok I am still unsure what my plans are. I was hoping to go to Siem Reap, Cambodia but flights are looking very expensive. I will update you all when I get the chance!

Once again I will be resorting to emails to update people, using the same list I did for the Vietnam and Laos trip. If you weren't on that list and want updates shoot me an email at MillerCJ@Clarkson.edu

I will update this when I get back to Singapore (planning on the 15th).

I am running out of time before I leave for Thailand! So here is a fast version of Vientiane:

Leigh and I spend the last day in Vientiane, wandering through town, walking along the river, visiting the night market and grabbing dinner after we got into the city.

In the morning I decided to walk to the Patuxai, which is an Arc-de-Triomphe inspired monument in the middle of the city.

I met up with Leigh after that and we got some lunch before heading to the airport, our flights were about the same time. The airport was the best part of my day. I was on the first ever flight from Laos to Singapore, which apparently was a HUGE deal. Somehow I was like the only non- Laos Airline person on the entire flight. They had a camera crew, like 20 models holding signs, and flowers for everyone. I also got two free Laos Airline tshirts, food and drinks on the flight, and they had person TV's so I got to watch Captain America on the way home. It was awesome.

There are few words to describe Vang Vieng.

Vang Vieng has become a backpacker-oriented town, with the main street featuring guest houses, bars, restaurants, internet cafes, tour agencies and western tourists. Attractions of the town include inner tubing and kayaking on the Nam Song River, which is lined with bars selling Beer Lao and Lao-Lao, and equipped with rope swings, zip lines, and large decks for socializing.

I was told Vang Vieng was like a 3rd world amusement park, and that is a fairly accurate description. Everyday, all the backpackers head down to the river with tubes, you get numbers drawn on your arms to identify you (you have to sign like 50 forms to get a tube, and they need passport numbers and ID in case anything goes wrong), and you float. However relaxing that might sound, the second you step into the river people start throwing ropes at you, once you grab onto one, they pull you into their bar and give out a free drink. Sounds awesome right? It would be really fun if there wasn't bars every 25 yards down the river. You can't make it 2 minutes on your tube before getting pulled into the next bar. And sure enough, each bar has zip lines or swings or trapeze things or giant decks to jump from 3 stories up. Needless to say, many people die in this river each year, as mixing all the bars with the really sketchy "thrill rides" doesn't end well.

But with that being said, Vang Vieng is a TON of fun. I met up with the two Australian guys and the 3 Canadian girls who were teaching in Korea from Sapa Valley, and we had a blast in this town.

I am sad to say I have zero pictures from the river, I put my camera in the safe the second I got to the hotel and left it there as I was told anything you bring to the river is lost before you return. I did get a disposable waterproof camera and I have a few pictures on there, but I haven't finished it yet so I will be bringing that to Thailand with me before getting the pictures developed.

They ask you return the tubes by 5, so that the river clears out before dark, and then the party transfer back into town. All the bars on the river also have bars in town, and during the day you collect bracelets that are all different colors from each bar you visit. At night they give discount drinks to anyone with the right color bracelet.

This town, unlike Luang Prabang which has a 10:30 curfew by the way, has zero temples or monks. It is purely based on the business brought in from the tubing-backpacking-20-year-olds who stop by on their way through Laos.

After two nights in this town I was ready to leave, I don't know how some people stay there for weeks and repeat this everyday! In the morning on Wednesday me and one of the Australian guys caught the bus heading to Vientiane for one last day in Laos.

Although I have very few pictures to accompany this post, I want to describe the bus ride I had from Luang Prabang to my next stop, Vang Vieng. Laos as you may know is a very poor country, with not so well maintained roads. There is one main road that goes through the mountains, on the smallest road I have ever seen, along sharp curves overlooking cliffs. There were times the bus was straddling a drop-off as it inched around a corner (I knew my dad would have died if he was on this bus). And at one point we ever got stopped because there was a landslide that took out part of the road! We had to wait for it to be cleared, and then inch by on the open area.

Warning to those taking a bus in Laos.. be ready for an adventure!

Stopped at the landslide:

The road cutting across the mountains in the distance:

Kourtney flew from Hanoi back to Singapore for her Final exams on Saturday, but I still had a week of traveling before I had to be back at school. My next stop: Luang Prabang, Laos. This is a small town in Northern Loas is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, with old french villas and bakery's lining the street, and more temples and wats than you can imagine. Monks wander the streets everywhere you look, and one even stopped to talk to me. He asked where I was from and where I had been. He has never left Laos, but is trying to learn English so one day he can travel too. He was only 17 years old but had lived as a Monk since he was just 13. The town center is surrounded by water, by both the Mekong and the Nam Khan Rivers, and in the middle there is a small mountain with a temple at the top that you can climb to.

At dawn each morning the Monks begin their daily walk to collect alms on the way to the temples. I got up my first morning at 6 and walked down the street expecting to see a few Monks walking by. The owner of the Inn I stayed at told me I would see more Monks than I could image, and he wasn't kidding. They were in every direction, hundreds of them, walking in straight lines collecting alms.

After that I walked along the river, early in the morning the mountains are still covered in with low clouds and the river has fog along it, but later in the day you could see the mighty Mekong river flowing by.

My first stop was Wat Xieng Thong, a beautiful gold temple located at the end of the peninsula by the two rivers. Next I walked along the road and found a place for breakfast: eggs, a french baguette and orange juice! I was so happy for the french influence in this town, you cannot find a breakfast like that in Singapore for so cheep. The rest of the morning was spend at various temples and the national museum.

After lunch I climbed to the top of Phu Si (the mountain with the temple on top in the middle of the town). There is a beautiful view across the Mekong into the hills of Laos, and the temple at the top is fun because the monks that live there were walking around talking to visitors.

In the afternoon I took a tuk tuk to the Kaung Si waterfalls with a few other girls who were traveling through the area. One girl was from New Jersey, but had just finished a two year Peace Corps assignment in Micronesia, and the other was from Sydney just touring through. Once we got to the falls and saw how beautiful they were we decided to climb to the top of them! There was a side trail that literally was climbing up straight up, I was in a long skirt and flip flops and could barely make it up this path. But the view from the top was amazing, well worth the effort (And of course I knew my parents would love the pictures of me sitting on the little wooden fence at the top!).

As I did the first night there, I spend my second night at the night market. This is an endless street of stalls set up at sunset, where you can find anything from shirts and jewelry to wood carvings. Of course I bought more than I could carry, including hand made journals that I plan to tour into mini-scrapbooks from each of my little trips throughout this semester.

After a few crazy days of traveling around Kourtney and I finally got to stop and rest in Hanoi for a night- no plans and nothing to do but wander the city. We got to visit a few of the sites around town, but mostly we just walked around, got coffee in a little shop and sat for a few hours talking everything we had done in the last week.

We visited Ngoc Son Temple, which extends into the lake in the middle of the city. It was really pretty surrounded by the water and trees, and the inside was all red and gold painted. It was a fairly small temple, but it has a beautiful setting around it.

Next we wandered to St. Joseph Cathedral located in the middle of the city. It is an old church left over from the 1800's. It looks really old and warn down, and it towers over the other buildings in the area.

And here are some various other shots from around the city....

We decided not to visit any museums or go to any shows or do much shopping, we were so worn out at this point from the previous days that we really just needed time to relax. Our trip to Vietnam was over, and we were very satisfied with everything that we had done and seen.

We got our night train from Sapa at 9pm, arrived back in Hanoi at about 5am, caught a cab back to the Hanoi Backpackers Hostel, repacked our bags, and left at 8am sharp on a 4 hour bus ride to HaLong Bay. Was it worth it? Absolutely!

We got on our boat- the Jolly Rodger- and sailed for about 2 hours weaving through the islands before stopping in the Bay. Kourtney along with the two Australian guys from Sapa were the only people I knew on this trip, but we made new friends quickly.

Words cannot describe HaLong Bay. The bay itself is a maze of limestone cliffs sticking hundreds of feet into the air, with thousands of them in every direction. It is located in the Northeast Corner of Vietnam, and was recently named one of the 7 Natural Wonders of the World. Only locals can navigate through the islands, as it is impossible to see the ocean or the mainland once you get lost within them.

Once we got lunch and settled into our cabins, we were able to swim in the bay and jump off the side of our boat- which was awesome!

We set off for a sunset kayak tour, where we ventured through caves and we able to climb on some of the islands. We even stopped at a few floating villages where we could load up on drinks and snacks or whatever you wanted to get. I felt bad for my kayak partner, because I stopped paddling like every 2 seconds to take a picture, but I did warn him this would happen so he couldn't yell at me in the process.

It was dark be the time we finished kayaking, so we went back to the Jolly Rodger and the "Rock Long Rock Hard" party officially started. Although I have zero pictures from the rest of the night (I couldn't charge my camera in Sapa or on the trains/busses so my battery died), it was a great time with a group of random people in Vietnam.

We got up the next morning for breakfast at around 7:30 and basically sat around the top deck for a few hours enjoying the views and trying to recover from the night before, reenacting some of the more funny events. Eventually it was time to say goodbye to HaLong Bay, and we sailed back to port before catching the bus back to Hanoi.

After we got back to town, we showered up and had the afternoon to ourselves before we caught the night train back to Hanoi. We were too tired to wander far from the hotel, but we found an alley full of motorbikes for rent, so naturally we got a bunch to share and rode motorbikes through the city ("city" meaning the actual town of Sapa). There isn't much to say about the ride- other than it was freezing cold once the sun set, but I thought the buildings were pretty and the mountains in the background are amazing.

Just to clarify before anyone asks- no I was not driving my motorbike while taking these pictures. We all decided to double up on the bikes so I was on the back while snapping away.

We had a huge breakfast made for us when we all got up and moving, which was about 6am when the sun was up and the roosters were making all sorts of sounds (we all fell back asleep after the slaughter happened... it was still dark out). This was one of the best breakfasts I have ever had in my life. We had creeps, which were homemade of course, with bananas, asian pears, limes and sugar to fill them with. I was a little confused at first as to why I would ever put a lime into a creep, but you use the lime juice to mix with the sugar and it makes like icing/syrup amazingness. The fruit was fresh picked, the creeps were warm, and everything was perfect.

After our homestay we set out for day number two of trekking, which was shorter in distance but much harder in terrain. Our guide told us we would be hiking up a mountain to a waterfall, and then down into a valley to a village, then up another mountain to a road where we would catch the bus back into our first main town. The distance was only around 10km, but we didn't realize the up's and down's were going to be straight up and straight down.

But it was all worth it- the waterfall was amazing. I can't capture the waterfall in one picture, but it was almost straight down, and we could sit along the top on the huge rocks. It wasn't like a rushing waterfall, it was like a little stream that constantly flowed over the edge, enough for us to walk across and sit around without getting wet. We rested here for like half an hour, talking with the other people in our group and enjoying the view.

After the waterfall, we hiked straight down to the river below. I thought many times I might tumble to my death, as I was dragged down by those old ladies who were practically running this trail (stopping to take pictures was NOT an option). But once we reached the bottom we were able to take a swim in the river, which was freezing cold and absolutely beautiful.

Along our hike we stopped at a local school, and we were able to play games with the kids who were outside. They played hopscotch, and some crazy game with a stick and ball that we couldn't figure out the rules to. The kids in class were so well mannered, and their handwriting was the most amazing this I have ever seen (these kids are like 7 or 8). I tried to take a picture but it is hard to see the detail.

Last we hiked up to a small town for some lunch, and we caught the bus back to the main town we started our journey from. Sapa Valley trekking was amazing, and the views were awesome. I highly recommend it to anyone who gets the chance to go-but be careful of the ricewine!

Our Homestay:

As our day of beautiful views came to an end, we arrived at a small house where we would be spending the night. We chose to do a home stay program, where one family hosts us for the night and cooks dinner and gives us beds. We were happy to find that all 10 of us would be staying in the same place, there was a second story loft area that had some cushions on the floor and heavy blankets and mosquito nets for us to sleep with.

The sun set at about 5pm, leaving us in the dark sitting around a table waiting for the electricity to kick in. The "town" (about 5 buildings.. maybe) doesn't turn on electricity until 6pm. Dinner was a whole bunch of food, literally just plates full of food that was passed around. Of course I only stuck with the rice and vegetables, of which there was plenty. We sat around talking with our guide and host about the area, the different type of people who live in the area (there are different hill tribe groups in different villages), and where we would be seeing the next day.

One thing about Sapa: It is in the north.. and it is winter in the north (which we forget about in Singapore).. and therefore it gets cold. Please note the winter jackets and pants we all are wearing in the picture below. And by cold, I mean I could see my own breath, not below freezing...

And then came the rice wine...

Let me explain to anyone who has not had rice wine: it is not wine. All of the things we read about the trip, and all the people we talked to before, told us drinking rice wine with the locals would be a highlight of the trip. Rice wine is a taken in shots, and is about 18% to 25% alcohol (36 to 50 proof). We had bottles of rice wine given to us... and they kept coming and coming and coming. Every time something happened, anything at all, our host would pour us another round of rice wine and make a toast.

We don't know if we were a younger group than normally stays at this house, or if they host groups every night and supply them with endless rice wine, but either way we aren't sure how this family handles it. We were all asleep by 11:30 (dinner and rice wine started at about 6:30), and when we got up the next morning everything was picked up and put away like we had never been there at all.

Waking up the next morning was an entirely different story. Because we were sleeping in a loft about the main room, all the noises from downstairs traveled up to where we were sleeping. We are 99% certain we awoke to a slaughter happening below us. We heard animals in the house, scary loud noises, and lots of wings flapping. We all just looked around at each other but no one really said anything, we were all in shock. We should have guessed that is how the get their food, there are animals running free everywhere in Sapa, wandering the trails and doing their own thing, but we didn't expect to wake up to a slaughter.

Some animals we saw on our adventure:

And one funny pictures, a child riding on a waterbuffalo?! Yuppp!

The homestay was such a fun experience, I would do it again in an instant. Our group was a ton of fun to be with for these few days, and our host and guide were really fun locals to be with too.

After Hoi An we flew up to Hanoi, spent a few hours wandering the city, and then took a night train up to Sapa Valley, Vietnam. It is located right on the border of China in the Northwest corner of the country. The night train was 9 hours long, we didn't arrive until around 5:30, but then had an hour minibus ride to the actual town.

When you are in the middle of nowhere Vietnam, and the minibus driver turns on music at 5:30am, there is some music you just do not expect to hear... Our driver had a super remix CD, involving an extra long version of MilkShake... yes, a techno remix version that just repeats the lines "My milkshake brings all the boys to the yard" over and over and over... it was horrible! However, it made everyone in the minibus laugh with the little sleep we had gotten the night before.

We decided to go to Sapa on a guided tour, organized by a group called Hanoi Backpackers. If you ever are in Hanoi or Hue, Vietnam you must stay at this place (assuming you are under 30 and backpacking through Vietnam... which doesn't apply to many people reading this. I do know there are other groups that organize tours, as we saw older groups trekking too). They are an amazing group who are well organized and super easy to work with.

There were 10 people on our trekking adventure:

• Kourtney and I, who were the youngest of the group (Kourtney is over a year and a half older than me... making me the baby for the trek)
• Three girls (two Canadian and one American) who had just finished teaching English for two years in Korea and were spending their final paycheck backpacking in whole region before heading home for the holidays
• Two guys from Australia who were also on a backpacking trip across multiple countries over multiple months
• Two dutch guys. Not really sure what their plans were... they didn't talk much...
• One solo traveler who was just beginning his several month journey through Asia, I think this was one of his first destinations

Everyone else in the group was 25 to 30, and obviously no one else was still in school.

When we arrived we had a few hours to shower, grab some food and whatever supplies you needed (backpackers tend to run out of things like shampoo, or they lose things along the way, or things break...). And at 9am, we started trekking!

We aren't really sure how far we hiked, everything we read said something different, but we think Day 1 was around 15km. We had one guide, named Hein, who was really funny. He was hiking in a clean, perfectly white, pressed shirt, and somehow never got it dirty. They rest of us were disgusting by the end of the day. But it was all worth it from the views that can be seen from the trail in Sapa...

The views were amazing, but more impressive were the little old ladies that were trekking with us. As you may have seen in the pictures, there are these tiny women who hiked the whole way with us (trying to sell us things out of their baskets of course) but they were solid! They helped in areas where it was hard to climb up, they showed you the best way to get through rivers and which rocks to step on, and they let you know if you were taking too long taking pictures of the views! Even though they got annoying at times, I will never be in as good of shape as these old ladies.