Tuesday, January 30, 2007

Well folks, I figured since we've been gone for nearly four months it's probably about time you heard from me! I really have no excuse, it's just that a cocktail and a good book win out over staring at a computer screen for hours on end 100% of the time. (I'm afraid I'm not doing it now out of the kindness of my heart, I was "persuaded"!!) Besides, Sean does it so well I really don't see any need to exchange duties with any permenance. Still, there is one piece of advice I will offer him as he settles in for a hard days work sampling the local homebrews at 15cents a glass and some of the beautiful creations from the patisserie here in Hoi An: don't read when you're drunk, it is a pointless and a frustrating experience earning you nothing but a sore head and confusion at your own diminished intelligence. When the words get wavy, give up, put on your headphones and enjoy the cool breeze or the shade of the palms, and order one more!
So, our adventures of late have brought us from mud baths and hot mineral soaks at the hot springs in Nha Trang (with little resistance from Sean at the girlyness of it all) and up the coast by train to Hoi An, the tailors mecca of Asia.




The old part of the town is beautiful and the French colonial influence is evident, particularly along the waterfront.


Cars are prohibited in the French quarter, even the mopeds move at a more respectable pace along the narrow streets. Pedestrians NEARLY take priority.


Just inside that door is a glass cabinet full of some of the most amazing chocolate delicasies I have ever tasted. Unfortunately, there are too many in there to sample in a week, and believe me, I really have tried!


It's a great place to kick back, have an ice coffee Vietnam style and enjoy a bit of the cafe lifestyle.


Another night time riverside view.


There are beautiful boutiques, jewellery shops and many other enticing stores and stalls scattered about the town. Not what a girl needs when funds are having to be carefully monitered and weight limits for flights are in danger of being seriously exceeded (any suggestions about how to ship things to Australia without an address to ship them to are welcome... I really don't want to have to wear everything that won't fit in my bag....customs get suspicious).


Local art fills rooms and then lines the streets outside. Some of the work is beautiful and some a little more obscure, but always worth an afternoon of wandering and just having a look.


There are plenty of good restaurants too, most offer a choice between a shady balcony or a sunny spot on the street.

Needless to say, we took the opportunity to invest in some smarter attire. The prices are crazy (in a good way) and the quality of the finished product is unbelievable. I think the girls fitting us were quite pleased with themselves too, the scruffy, grubby couple that wandered into their shop almost completely transformed after only two days! The service and the end results have both exceeded our expectations.


Pretty slick don't you think?!


I'm really sorry, Sean was trying to make me model....I blame the photographers' direction.


Though a GOOD photographer can work wonders.


It's about the clothes, not me ok.


"Damn, I thought I left those watches in here."


"Nope, not here either."


Seriously...


I'm really quite pleased with myself for this...while my tailor definately did the hard part by making the coat look exactly like my drawing, I did design it myself! Yay me!!


He was quite pleased with himself too (and rightly so). I let him keep the drawing.


Again, apologies for my camera face. Not quite as bad as the one Sean won't take down where I look like a horse facing into the wind, hopefully he'll stop torturing me with it one day.


For some reason the suits made Sean temporarily adopt an English accent. It returned to normal again when he put his shorts back on.


Ah, isn't he lovely!


Or so he'd have you believe...


Pow! Right in the kisser!


Well that's it from me for now. I'd say you might hear from me again in another month or two. For those of you to whom I've promised e-mails, I haven't forgotten you but this may have taken up my alotted computer time for a while.


So bye bye from Hoi An, you'll see us in Hanoi!

Lots of love, Charlie and Sean (but Charlie did all the work this time!!) xx

Tuesday, January 23, 2007

Hello Everyone,
Just a quick one to keep you up to Date. We are currently in Nha Trang about 400KM north along the coast from Ho Chi Minh City, we got the train over night a few days ago, Its a pretty nice place, a bit bigger than we expected but it has some amazing surrounding countryside. We have decided not to stick up any photos of Angkor Wat in Cambodia because we cant really be arsed looking through them all!! and it doesn't really do the place justice. So what are gonna do is show you what we did the day after spending 3 day in the temples...... Eat and Drink!!!


This is a place called the blue pumpkin, Its a pretty weird place to find in Cambodia, Its very western and funky and you can sit on a bed type thing while eating or using the free wifi. Nice.


I really don't think Ive seen a bigger grin on Charlies face as when this was placed in front of her. It tasted even better than it looks!!


I on the other hand got a bit excited and drank my Chocolate milkshake a bit too fast and got a nasty "brain freeze" as you can see by the nasty twitch that wouldn't go away for the next hour!

After walking around Siem Reap we found the FCC. (same one as the place we went boozing in Phnom Penh)

It would have been rude if we didn't have a jug of beer and a few games of pool!!


Its a pretty fancy place and had a nice pool room:


After 2 jugs we decided to go get some dinner, when we went to pay they only charged us for 1 jug!!! Sweet!!!

Ho Chi Minh.

This is the Holy See Church of the Religion "Cao Dai", Its pretty new religion (1929) and the people who thought of it decided to take the good bits out of a few different religions and mix it all up and make a super religion. The up shot of this is they go bonkers when they make the churches.


The inside was crazy, Check out the long "steps" leading up to the far end of the church, when you join the religion you start on step 1 (of 9) then every 5 years you get to move up a step! Weird.

You are allowed to go up to the balcony and watch. It was a really cool/weird place.

After the Church we went to visit a place called Cu Chi Tunnels, they are 250Km of tunnels that we dug during the Vietnam war (they call it the "American War") by Southern Vietnamese who were Sympathetic to the North Vietnamese fight against the south/America. (I don't really get why they sympathised) but anyway the Americans bombed the crap out the area, but just could not get rid of them as them were 8 meters underground!! Sneaky buggers!!!

Here is me and a US Tank which was destroyed by the Cu Chi people in 1970.


Here is me Scurrying into one of the Tunnels!!


These Tunnels are actually twice the size of the real tunnels, the have made them bigger so Westerners can fit through them! It was very hot, smelly and tiny, I could not imagine the nightmare having to do this while B52's were dropping bombs up above!!



Can you see anything?


Whats this you say?


Its Charlie!!!
This is Charlie coming out of a VC (Viet-Cong) Sniper hole. They used to pop up and kill a few people and then drop down and hide!! Very Smart.

After a hard day of pretending to kill Americans we went and chilled out for a while:

Hammocks are Brilliant.


Not so good when they are thin and you are big.


This old Codger gave us a few tunes on his "Insert proper name here" (I don't know what that's called!)

After relaxing a for a while we went for a nice boat ride around the Mekong delta, I didn't think people actually wore these hats in Vietnam, but they are everywhere.

How cool is that!!

Hope you enjoyed that, we will be leaving Nha Trang on the 25th, heading up to Hoi An, Which is meant to be a really cool little town and THE place to get suits made!! Hope your all well and enjoying yourselves!

Lots of love
Sean and Charlie.

Thursday, January 18, 2007




No Comment.

Tuesday, January 16, 2007

Hello,
We have arrived safe and sound in Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon for all you older people reading this..) The bus from Phnom penh took about 8hrs but a border crossing broke it up a bit so it didn't seem too long, 2 American idiots didn't have the correct papers/info at the border and the bus had to leave them there and carry on without them, So that cheered me up for a while.... We arrived into HCMC about 9pm last night and the bus stopped in the centre of the city. We were dreading having to search for the place that we had already booked the day before. We asked a person who was working for the bus company how to get there and she just turned around and said, "That's it behind you" In a city with a population of 7 million, and that sprawls for miles, I call that very lucky...
Anyway, we were pretty sad to leave Cambodia. We loved every minute of it there, it's a very cool place. The city's are crazy, the country side is beautiful, the history is both awe-inspiring and horrific, the people can seem unusual on first impression, they are a bit more stand-offish than the thai's, but are probably a bit more genuine when they do eventually speak to you.



This is the view from the balcony of the hotel (we were 4 stories up and no elevator - Charlie counted: 72 steps!!) In case your wondering that's the Tonle Sap river meeting the Mekong river.


It was a really nice place to relax and do a bit of "people watching" which is a great past time and you get to see some crazy ass things.


In the afternoon the riverfront comes to life and all the locals go down there and just hang out, eating and seeing friends, it's very social and gets pretty busy especially at the weekend.


There aren't really alot of what you would call "shops" around phnom penh. Most people just buy stuff from street vendors, who in turn come up with ingenious ideas for getting the goods from one place to another, they build things like this moped with a cooker attached. It's pretty impressive really, they either use gas canisters or quite simply just light a fire in a bucket lined with concrete. What is annoying is when they drive off and you're stuck behind them on your own moped, the red hot ashes from the fire fly off and land on your moped. I kid you not. I can't imagine health and safety in Ireland letting that on the streets.....

I walked into a gun shop and asked to see his biggest gun............









Try explaining your way out of that at airport security......


In every major town or city in Cambodia there is an "Independence monument" that celebrates Cambodia getting its Independence from France in 1953.


That's Phnom Penh's in the distance.


It's a great looking thing and is very handy to use as a landmark while whizzing around the city on a moped.


This poor dude was using it as a shelter from the midday sun.

Speaking of whizzing around on a moped, we got another one in Phnom Penh too. It's a pretty crazy place to drive around but was great fun and saved us a fortune on tuk tuk drivers:

It was brand new and was the nicest one we have rented so far. It's pretty funny as it's really just a crappy moped, but I kept getting told by people at traffic lights it was amazing and getting asked what was it like to drive....... weird. I was very temped to get a proper 250cc Scrambler but I don't think Charlie's feet could touch the ground.... When I get back to Ireland, I may have to start up a motorcycle gang, Who would be up for it?

Here are a few random photos taken while just wondering around the city:


That yellow building is the Central Market. It's where all the locals and some tourists buy all their stuff.


It's pretty cool looking inside and the building part is alot cleaner than the market I went to in Sihanouk ville.


Charlie was going nuts at all the materials and colours in the materials section. It's really cool to have a look around but if you even motion towards a piece of material, the seller has it out and in your hand before you can say "we are only looking". It's just the way they do it over here.


This is the main entrance into the market.


A Monkey running up and down the power lines...


Me feeding a "wild" monkey at a temple in the city (I don't think the words wild and city really go together when describing an animal)


A couple of monks. It's really funny when you see them whip out a mobile phone on the streets.


This big sucker walks down the street everyday at around 5pm after spending the day carring tourists around a temple. It was such a friendly Elephant.


Either she got smaller or I got taller.


The Infamous Pontoon bar. It's a really nice place, we spent NYE here. Great Cocktails.


Some of the old buildings are really nice looking, the French influence is very obvious.


Kids playing on the river front on a Sunday afternoon......

Too leave you on a more sombre note, we went to a place called S21 which was a school until the Khmer Rouge turned it into a prison and torture building during the Cambodia Genocide (Read this if your intrested: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_Kampuchea ) It's pretty grim stuff, but its something that any vistor to cambodia must understand because its effects are pretty obvious when walking around the cities. 2 million people were killed (the population at the time was 7 million) in a 4 year period by the Khmer Rouge under leadership of POL POT. (Quick history lesson comming up:) He overthrew the previous leader in 1975 with mad ideas of making the whole country into a single farming nation that would export rice to the rest of the world, with nobody living in cities or working there way up in status to challenge his power. As things started to fall apart (crops failed etc) he became very paranoid about the previous leader taking back leadership (with the help of the CIA) and started rounding up anyone who looked smart (wore glasses/could read) and systimatcally started torturing them and then killing them. He used this school as the largest torture station in the country, 20,000 people were held here and then brought to the killing fields to be killed. Out of the 20,ooo, 7 people survived. Seven.


Walking around here was really numbing. It was very creepy that it used to be a school.

Pol Pot.


The rooms where the prisoners were kept before their torture and then finally killed at the aptly named killing fields....


Each of these rooms were found like this when the Vietnamese entered the city in 1979 to clear out the Khmer rouge. What they found were the dead bodies of the last people they tortured to death, on the wall just out of shot is a very graffic picture of each of the bodies. You cant even imagine the things that were shown in the photos. I felt quite sick after looking at a couple of them.

Each person who was killed during the genocide was photographed and charged with betraying the Khmer rouge.


Charlie behind bars.


The amount of photos was just horrible, each face just showed this horrible expression.


Another torture room. The room has not been touched since the first cleaning in 1979, the blood stains are still on the floor.

More Photos. Before and after they were killed.


This is the monument out in the killing fields which were about 18km outside of Phnom Penh. After S21 we went out there and had a wander round. Some of the mass graves have been dug up and these are the 8000 skulls on display. Loads of other graves are still left untouched there and you can see bones sticking out of the ground all over the place.


Most of the skulls have fairly obvious damage on them where the person was whacked from behind with an axe handle. Bullets are expensive.


It was a pretty grim day and took us a while to get over what we had seen.
Cambodia is still recovering from this and it's a huge part of their history, so it gave us an insight into what the Cambodian people have been through.


Not wanting to leave you on a total downer, Woolly and Stripy wanted to show off their new Vietnamese hats.



Hope your all keeping well and missing us loads!! Its always cool going into a new country and if vietnam is half as good as Cambodia we will have a blast, We plan 3 weeks here and then 4 in Laos and then maybe a week in Bangkok to sort ourselves out before going down under. We also got a mobile number here in Vietnam +84937238315, Its in Charlies phone so if anyone wants to send us texts please do!! We also have a skype account called "seanandcharlie" if anyone spots us online?

Keep the emails coming and let us know how everyone is getting on back home!

Lots of love
Sean & Charlie