Good morning Vietnam
My original plan for Vietnam was always to head up to Haolong Bay for New Year. No particular reason other than the pictures that I’d googled looked fantastic. However, travelling needs flexibility and heading to North Vietnam for this one thing seemed like it would be expensive and time consuming and after hearing from Laura-Lynn on Christmas day that it wasn’t that great if you didn’t have the weather I thought the last week of my travels could be better spent somewhere else.
Christmas in Kep
Before leaving Phnom Penh there was one more thing that I wanted to check out – the killing fields. I knew the story about what Pol Pot had done but there’s definitely a sense of reality that’s brought by walking round the compound where the massacres took place, seeing the graves, listening the stories told first hand by survivors on the audio tour, the clothes and skulls that still come to the surface after it rains.
Say hello to my little friend
Early morning on the 20th I was waiting at the dock ready to leave Don Det and it seemed like everyone else had the idea. There was a mass exodus with about fifty people all leaving for the 8am boat that would start us on our journey to Siem Reap, including the kayaking team from the day before which meant there were a few familiar faces.
Kayaking down the Mekong River
Fitting Inle Lake into my travel plan was going to be a tight squeeze and it was. I had to be in Yangon for 6am on Monday for my flight to Laos. My first choice of getting there was by bus, but with only night departures I’d have to leave on the same day I got to the lake which didn’t appeal after having no sleep the night before. The flight to Yangon was $120 and got me to the airport 12 hours earlier than my morning flight.
Central Myanmar – Bagan and Inle Lake
I’d booked three days at the Yaga youth hostel before getting to Yangon and because of their cancelation policy I couldn’t get the money back for my last night, that’s thirty bucks down the drain but on the plus side it meant that, still feeling ill, I could chill out in my room later than the midday check out time. As I checked out I asked the girl working on reception to call a taxi for me. She looked a little confused at first, which confused me, then walked over to a girl who was sat in the lobby and said that she had a ticket for the same bus going North to Bagan. It made much more sense to head there together and split the fare.
First impressions of Myanmar
Before leaving Thailand, there was one last spanner to be thrown into the works when my debit card was eaten by a rouge ATM. It’s not an issue right now as I’ve got enough dollars (the universal currency) to keep me going for a while and then I’ve got my credit card as back up. The card got cancelled straight away online but due to bad internet connections I’m still attempting to organise another to get sent out.
Off roading
I had an 8:30am train to catch from Hua Lamphong station in Bangkok and had arrived with plenty of time after I had accidentally hailed a cab instead of taking the metro as I had planned. As the other trains pulled in I could see the complete lack of accessibility, these trains must have been forty years old easily. That didn’t bother me too much, it’s fantastic when things are accessible, but when they aren’t you just have to be flexible with you expectations.
Creatures of the night
Other than the flight being delayed, leaving Dhaka was a smooth operation. I got on a small plane with wider aisles going through first class so I managed to take my chair all the way to my seat. Tricky transfer but definitely preferable over getting dragged along in a standard aisle chair.
Bye bye Bangladesh
Every morning at the CRP I’m woken up at 5:30am by the morning call for prayer at the mosque that’s located next to me room. As much as I don’t like waking up that early in the morning, I have to say that the low rumbling of the voice that is chanting away is preferable to the usual high pitched shrieking alarm that usually starts my day.
First couple of days in Dhaka
It was the night before I was due to leave and lying on the floor in front of me were two packed rucksacks and my old wheelchair, solid tyres fitted and footplate held together with duct tape and cable ties. I was a bit worried. I felt a little too prepared for this trip, like everything was in place and that was slightly unsettling. It seemed like I was travelling light, but that was the plan and everything on my list had gone into the bag. As soon as the plane left the ground I was convinced I would remember something of significant importance that hadn’t been packed.