Day 127 – Chiang Rai Scooter!

Another hostel, another free breakfast. This one comes with tea, toast, cereal and bananas. When I googled somewhere to stay the other day I discovered there had been an earthquake in the Chiang Rai province of 6.3 magnitude only on Tuesday, so 4 days ago! Crazy to think we could have been here when it happened. The main reason for coming here was to see the white temple and I read in an article that had been partly damaged and was closed, so I was very happy to find out it had only closed for the day and was reopen for us!

We debated about hiring bikes to ride around the town but decided to go all out and hire a scooter for the day and ride to the temple ourselves. It only cost 250B, which is about £5 for 24 hours! Absolute bargain! The temple was about 12km from the hostel and it was one straight road to get there, so we couldn’t really get lost. I have driven a scooter once before in Malaysia and got used to this one really quickly and loved every minute.

The white temples official name is Wat Rong Khun. This contemporary temple began being built in 1997 and apparently wont be finished until 2070! He has since added it will take 2 years to fix the damage the earthquake has caused. This is the most impressive temple I have ever seen. I think because it’s not traditional and has been created by an artist you can really see the story behind it. He’s a crazy man but still, it was amazing to look at. I think you might have been able to walk through the temple and get closer than what we got but just seeing it was better than not seeing it at all.

We left the temple grounds and made our way about 17km down the road to see the Khun Korn waterfall. We went down some crazy potholed roads and I managed to miss a lot of them! We then had to go on a 1600metre trek through the forest to find the fall. It was totally worth it, out of all the waterfalls I’ve seen on this trip this could potentially be top spot, you could feel the force from the fall as soon as you got to the top of the trail.

When we left the waterfall we took the same journey back to the temple and onto the highway to take us back to our hostel. On the way back we stopped in the Central Plaza shopping centre to take a look around. We bought a few goodies, grabbed some lunch at 5pm as we hadn’t eaten since breakfast and then went back to the hostel.

Seeing as we had the bike we decided to take it out for a spin in the evening and find the Sunday market, which was slightly too far to walk too and good job we did! Within about 5 minutes of arriving at the market a storm appeared and did the rain come down! We took shelter in a pub for about 40minutes waiting for it to stop and when it did… well, we went outside to walk back to the bike to get back before it started to rain again and the road was completely flooded. It was about 3inches deep so we waded through it and somehow the road from where we parked the whole way back was fine. We were gutted as we really wanted a bit of street food and the market looked really good before everyone grabbed it all and legged it under cover!

Day 95 – Hanoi.

We didn’t end up going to bed until about 4am, so there was no way I was getting up before 9am for breakfast. We went for a little walk and found ourselves at a massive indoor market, so we got lost in there for an hour or so before finding the exit and grabbing some lunch nearby. The food was amazing and cheap and exactly what we were looking for. We then went for a short walk by the lake and then made our way back to the hostel.

We needed to do a bit of organising, planning and packing for the next few days. Originally we were going with a different company but then changed and booked our Halong Bay 3 day, 2 night tour with the hostel instead. They also offer a hop on hop off bus tour from Hanoi the whole way to Ho Chi Minh City, so we booked all of that up too. Both things cost something stupid like 5 million dong but that’s actually only £140. I know I’ve taken control of the trip but I think Chrissy likes that, after all she has joint me on my trip.

We packed our small bags ready for the early start to Halong Bay and the grabbed something quick to share in the hostel. We spent our evening in a rooftop bar called the Summit Lounge at the Sofitel Hotel. I discovered in Singapore that it’s quite easy to go to a roof top bar and get an awesome view of the place you’re in, so I’ve decided I’m going to try and do more of this. The drinks were buy one get one half price so obviously we had two and were even given bar snacks! It looks expensive when you read it on a menu but the price of one cocktail was cheaper than the standard price at home, so we felt super swanky for half the price!

Day 94 – Hanoi, Chrissy arrives!

I woke up quite early but chilled out in my bed reading for a bit as the hostel failed to tell me they offered free breakfast! Something I'll remember for tomorrow that's for sure!

Hanoi is mental. Literally cars and scooters everywhere and they beep like mad men and fly around all over the place. It's manic! The weather had a slight drizzle in the air but it was quite refreshing. I grabbed a local map from reception and went exploring.

I walked down to the lake past a million market clothes stalls and women carrying goods on what I'd describe as scales over their shoulders. I then went to visit the History Museum, which wasn’t a great success because most things were written in Vietnamese and not in English at all, so it was more just looking at stuff than learning anything. It was mostly full of ruins, pots and other things that they found after the war.

The map I was given from the hostel had a walking tour around the Old Quarter so I embarked on that as it was near enough the easiest route back to the hostel anyway. I walked past the Opera House, saw a wedding, had a smoothie and walked around a couple of shops. When I got in, I decided to grab some dinner and chill in the hostel bar where I met two girls who happen to be going to Halong Bay the same day as us ,which was cool. They went out on the bar crawl whilst I waited around for Chrissy to arrive. She got here just before midnight and we stayed up for a while talking about things, mostly me telling her what I’ve been up to but yeah, feels good to have a friend!

Day 24 – Leaving Melbourne/Arriving in Auckland.

RISE AND SHINE IT’S 4.30AM! Yes, this is the time I had to wake up as my flight out of Melbourne was just gone 8am… well that’s what it was supposed to be but we all knew that was never going to happen! Anyway, little ol’ me decided to walk to the bus station with all my bags because I’ve done it before (without bags) and it wasn’t that far… I’ve just googled and it’s 2km, which took me about 20mins and I wanted to die when I got there, why didn’t I just take a taxi?

On arrival at the airport the woman told me there was a ‘slight delay’, of course there was, to be honest I’d be surprised if there wasn’t with my luck so far! I tried to Skype my parents but the free wifi in the airport was shocking so we soon gave up. The delay was only an hour, which wasn’t too bad, and the flight took just over 3 hours. I watched a documentary about Andy Murray so if you can find it I totally recommend it!

I’m staying with a relative called Stuart who lives in Titirangi, which is just west of Auckland. His partner Lizzie came and picked me up from the airport. For the first time ever the sniffer dogs tracked me down in the airport so some woman emptied all my bags and gave them the once over. It was like being in one of those TV shows. She asked me if I had carried any fruit or flowers recently and so I told her I had a Kiwi fruit in my small bag a few days ago and she said it could have been that. After she ruined my very neat packing she repacked and sent me on my way. Finally I was free!

That evening we had dinner at home and chilled out by the TV, I went to bed pretty early as I was knackered from my long day!

Day 17 – Shopping & Friends.

Today I decided I wasn’t going to set an alarm and that I would wake up whenever my body wanted too. I woke up about 10.30, which isn’t too bad! After breakfast I wondered down to the tram stop to get on the free City Circle tram to Spencer Street. As I walked to the tram stop I realised I’m only a stones throw away from Victoria State Library and the shopping centre next door, it was funny to look at things and feel like I knew where I was because I recognised it from when Chrissy and I came here a few years ago.

I got off the tram and walked down Spencer Street because I knew there was an outlet mall right behind the station, what I didn’t realise was they had a Coles underneath which meant I could do clothes and food shopping at the same time! After looking in some shops and leaving some items I wasn’t sure about I found Supre! Supre is the Australian topshop/forever 21 and this being an outlet store made it so much cheaper. I spent $12 on 2 tops that I’ll probably wear as dresses and another top. That’s about £7, bargain!

Am I the only one who loves going around supermarkets in foreign countries? I just love exploring and seeing things that we don’t have and what UK food items they do have. I wanted to buy some things that would last a few days and I could mix and match if I wanted to. My main meal was going to consist of a bunch of stuff with rice mixed all together with some cream cheese as they don’t do Crème Fraiche over here. It ended up being pepper, carrot, mushroom, spinach, onion and some ham (which really wasn’t needed). It tasted delicious! 

That was after working out how to light the gas stove with the girl next to me… seriously it’s not as straightforward as it should be! We decided to sit together after we cooked and watch the tennis, quickly finding out she’s into it and also she comes from Winchester! After dinner I went back to my room and found a new girl had arrived, she had spent the whole day at the tennis so we already had something to talk about. She originally comes from Derby but went to uni in Bournemouth. So by the end of my first real day in Melbourne, I have 2 new friends, GO ME!