SE Asia trip -where to go?

Doshwaster

PompeyPete wrote: »

Doshwaster. In my experience the easiest and very enjoyable way into Laos from Thailand is over the Friendship Bridge, which is very close to Nong Khai.
Nong Khai is easy to reach from BKK by overnight sleeper train, and that train ride becomes a memorable experience.

Sounds like great fun. I go to SE Asia at least once a year but my main limitation is that I can only get 2 weeks off work at any one time which limits my ability to go too much off the beaten track and means that I usually have to fly between places rather than take buses or trains.

I'm starting to plan my next trip in Sept/Oct this year and would like to include Laos this time as I get more adventurous. It does seem that entering Laos by land is the best way to do it as the airfares look very expensive.

totallybored

PompeyPete wrote: »

I doubt that's right!

You're right, it's a boat not a bus and it takes a couple of days.

totallybored

shockingmoment wrote: »

I was teasing you about the Hanoi Hilton....

Hỏa Lò Prison, later sarcastically known to American prisoners of war as the "Hanoi Hilton", was a prison used by the French for political prisoners then for American POWs during the Vietnam War. It's well worth a visit though!

As for the train - make sure you're in a sleeping compartment - you'll be fine. The others in the compartment will be in the same boat!

Sleeping bag not needed but the silk liners are good, and very cheap. All over Hanoi - street sellers.

Junk - We used Indochina junk. http://indochina-junk.com/our-junks.aspx

Your hotel will book this and the train for you - charge a couple of quid but it means you can book well in advance (particularly for the train).

We stayed here:
Hanoi Elegance Ruby Hotel
http://www.hanoielegancehotel.com/he4/
03 Yen Thai Street, Hoan Kiem, Hanoi. They sorted the train and the junk, had everything waiting for us. Central, cheap, great breakfast, clean, friendly, would stay again!

They even got me a local SIM for my phone!

In fact - that's a good tip. Bring a cheapo mobile (unlocked) and pop a local SIM in it for cheap calls. Invaluable for hotels / trains / taxis etc.

Get the hotel to collect you from the airport. There are lots of taxi scams going on. Not expensive.

And don't forget your visa!
We used www.myvietnamvisa.com

I am so jealous!

I walked into the Hilton thing didn't I! I've actually looked at that hotel and have been considerring it so will probably book it.

I was planning on booking the boat and trains from here, just so it's already on a credit card and out of the way. There is a link from seat 61 on booking the trains in Vietnam and they'll deliver the tickets to the hotel for me.

I'm now thinking of adding 3 or 4 nights in Nha Trang at a beach resort. I was going to do the beach in Thailand but where I wanted to stay was $250 a night so Vietnam will be cheaper.

I will have a max of 31 days from arriving in Hanoi to flying out of Bangkok and back to HK. I have around the first 20 days planned so far, now deciding on how long to stay in Laos. I'd like to be back in Bangkok on day 28/29 so I can fit in the weekend market and some shopping before leaving too.

My next thing to do is sort out what to take with me, I'm aiming to have a hand luggage sized amount of clothes:eek: I also need to take minimal toiletries as they're too heavy. Would I be better off taking most of he sun cream and mozzie repellant with me or is it cheap to buy out there?

totallybored

Hi All, I’m finally back from my trip so I thought I’d come back and update everyone who offered advice. I had an amazing trip that lasted 2 months in total.

The original plan was to go to HK and bum around at a friend’s for a few weeks before heading off to SE Asia for a month on my own. I did the SE Asia part but the hubby decided to come out for a couple of weeks first and completely blow the budget. I ignored all advice on Japan not being cheap and we went to Tokyo for 4 days. It was lovely though, I am so glad I went there. Loved the shopping too! Tokyo Hands and Loft are excellent shops. As he didn’t want to spend the full 2 weeks in HK we needed somewhere else to go and eventually decided on Seoul for 4 days. So glad we did! It is the most amazing place I have ever been and I absolutely loved it. I didn’t know what to expect but it is a great city. There was loads to do, I loved the palaces, traditional villages, shopping and bars. The people were so friendly and it felt like a really vibrant city. Lots of bars and great food too. I did a trip to the DMZ and North Korean border which was definitely worthwhile. I’m now considering going to South Korea for a couple of weeks next year and travelling around a bit as Seoul was my favourite part of the trip. We also managed to fit in an overnight trip to Macau on the ferry from HK. Weird place but it was fun. I love gambling and normally manage to make it to Vegas once a year but Macau just wasn’t as fun. I did win enough money to cover the couple of days there though. I also got to see the pandas in Macau which made the trip there worthwhile (it cost £1 to see them and there were only 5 other people there!).

Hubby left and it was time for my SE Asia adventure. I flew to Hanoi and stayed at the Ruby Elegance as suggested. Lovely hotel. Stayed one night and then did a one night trip to Halong Bay before returning for another 2. Halong Bay was beautiful but one night was enough for me. We were lucky with the weather too. It rained my entire time in Hanoi so I didn’t see as much as I’d have liked. I did find a street full of shoe shops though! I arranged in advance for the hotel to book my train tickets and I took the overnight sleeper to Danang and got my hotel in Hoi An to pick me up. The train was an experience! I had a bottom bunk soft sleeper and anything else would have been horrendous. The air con didn’t work for the first 5 hours either. I took someone’s advice and bought a sleeping bag liner, this was invaluable. I loved Hoi An, it was beautiful and the weather was fantastic. Best place in Vietnam I visited. I then took another long train to Nha Trang for a couple of days and I hated this place. It was tacky and full of package tourists, not my sort of place. The beach was OK but it just wasn’t for me. I took the train again to Ho Chi Minh for a couple of nights. Didn’t like it there that much either. It could have been because I’d been in Vietnam for 2 weeks by that point and was getting fed up of it and I’d chosen to stay in the backpacker area. I went to the war museum which I enjoyed but I hated Ben Thanh market. It was the most miserable shopping experience of my trip. Unbelievable rip off prices and I didn’t like how people were grabbing me as I walked by.

I took the bus from HCM to Phnom Penh and my friend met me here for the Cambodia week (very easy and I had got an evisa in advance for Cambodia). I did 3 nights in PP, 3 in Siem Reap and 2 in Battambang. Stayed at the Blue Lime as recommended which was lovely. PP was my second fave place on the trip, I’d met people travelling through Vietnam who told me to miss it out and go straight to Siem Reap but its lovely. I went to the S21 museum and Killing Fields which was incredibly depressing but also one of the highlights of the trip. I also loved the shopping in PP! The Russian market was so cheap and I bought loads of stuff and the central market is lovely. The stallholders weren’t pushy at all and you could get them down to their lowest price quite easily. I ate at some very good NGO restaurants too. We took the bus to Siem Reap – if anyone is thinking of doing this take the Giant Ibis bus as its much nicer than the Mekong Express that we took. I liked Siem Reap but it seemed much smaller than PP. Lots of markets though! Now I have to admit, and others probably won’t agree, but I thought Angkor Wat was over rated and I hated it. I’d have been happy with my one pic of it (which you can do without paying to get in!) but we had a guide and 8 hours of it. After SR for some reason Id decided I wanted to go to Battambang. There isn’t much to do there but we went on the bamboo train (google it!) which was actually lots of fun (much better than Angkor Wat).

After Battambang we were meant to be heading to Bangkok and this is where all of my moneysaving disappeared. My friend decided to head back to PP and as I’d booked a hotel in BKK I had to go there. I’d got ill by that point and decided to take a taxi all the way. I’d booked a taxi to the border at Poipet (which is a complete hole) and had intended to get a bus but I just got in another taxi on the other side. Not moneysaving at all but I thought I was going to die. I did one night in a cheapish hotel in BKK and then took the public bus to Ko Samet. Stupidly I had booked 4 nights there, that turned out to be a mistake. I had a beach front bungalow and the beach and island where nice enough but I discovered I detest beaches and I was too bored. I was so grateful to get back to BKK after that. As BKK was the end of my trip before heading back to HK I had gone and booked myself a very nice suite in a 5 star hotel. I was still a bit ill (I think it was my malaria tablets that made me ill) and I’d hurt my leg on a boat so I did very little in BKK. I spent the entire weekend shopping and relaxing. I barely saw any of BKK, no palaces or temples or anything cultural but it was fantastic.

Overall I had an amazing trip. I definitely want to return to Cambodia in future, not sure about Vietnam though. Seoul was my favourite place and I was surprised by how much I liked it. I’ve certainly discovered that I’m not a beach person at all and I like big shiny cities. The one thing I wish I’d not done was to take a backpack. I hated that blummin thing and wanted to burn it. If I ever did a trip like that again on my own I’d take a nice wheely suitcase (someone will always help you lift it on and off things, when you have a backpack they leave you to struggle!!). I will have a decent amount of holidays every summer now so hopefully I can fit in a few weeks to Japan and Korea next summer.

Doshwaster

Thanks for the trip report! I've been looking forward to reading it ever since you started planning your trip on these pages months ago. It's always nice when people come back to report on what actually happened.

So pleased you liked Phnom Penh It's one of my favourite places in SE Asia too.

NiftyDigits

Haven't visited Vietnam and Cambodia yet, though plan to on my next trip. So was interesting reading.

PompeyPete

Great report.
Next time you go to PP, have a side trip to Kampot for a couple of days. Easy enough to do by bus from PP. Stay here, right on the river...

http://www.rikitikitavi-kampot.com/

Hire a tuk-tuk for the day to visit Kep. Cost about US$18.
When you return to PP, try and stretch to a taxi. If you're lucky you'll get an enjoyable 2 hour history lecture by the taxi driver.
We stayed in the Blue Lime too. Loved the swimming pool and breakfast. Not too sure about the rooms, and I noticed a bit of 'goings-on' in the late evening!
Lovely restaurants along the river-front in PP, especially the FCC...

http://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/Restaurant_Review-g293940-d2530943-Reviews-Foreign_Correspondents_Club-Phnom_Penh.html

totallybored

PompeyPete wrote: »

Great report.
Next time you go to PP, have a side trip to Kampot for a couple of days. Easy enough to do by bus from PP. Stay here, right on the river...

http://www.rikitikitavi-kampot.com/

Hire a tuk-tuk for the day to visit Kep. Cost about US$18.
When you return to PP, try and stretch to a taxi. If you're lucky you'll get an enjoyable 2 hour history lecture by the taxi driver.
We stayed in the Blue Lime too. Loved the swimming pool and breakfast. Not too sure about the rooms, and I noticed a bit of 'goings-on' in the late evening!
Lovely restaurants along the river-front in PP, especially the FCC...

http://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/Restaurant_Review-g293940-d2530943-Reviews-Foreign_Correspondents_Club-Phnom_Penh.html

I wanted to do Kampot, Kep and Sihanoukville but my friend only had a week so we decided on Battambang instead as we didn't have enough time. To be honest, I wish I'd missed out at least a week of Vietnam and spent an extra week in Cambodia as it was just so much nicer. Next time I go I'll probably be taking the hubby and he will agree to getting a taxi everywhere in as they were fairly cheap (I only paid about $30 from Battambang to Poipet and it was so much better than the bus). I did notice that some people on the bus from HCM had bought 2 seats for themselves to get more space but if there are 2 people you might as well get a taxi.

I didn't eat on the riverfront as we just went to the night market there but we went to the Friends NGO restaurant which was really good and a vegetarian place that wasn't as good.

We had a mini garden room at the Lime which turned out to be a mistake as we were too scared to open the door to it as it seemed to be a mozzie pit! The Lime was one of the only places I was bitten by them in SE Asia too so I was really lucky.

I think one of the reasons I liked Cambodia so much was that the people were just so nice. It was so different coming from Vietnam and finding the tuk tuk guys were lovely and not all out to scam you and even the kids selling their Lonely Planets etc in bars were really sweet. We hired a tuk tuk for the day and at the end of the day we said we didn't know if we needed him the next day. When we went out the next day just to go to the market and asked him he wouldn't take us and said it was one of the other guys turns which I thought was really selfless of him.

I also went to an NGO handicraft factory in Battambang which had some excellent stuff. It was more of a few sewing machines in the bottom of a house and I don't think many tourists visited but we bought loads of pretty silk stuff so I'd recommend this to anyone who goes.

Doshwaster

PompeyPete wrote: »

Lovely restaurants along the river-front in PP, especially the FCC...

http://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/Restaurant_Review-g293940-d2530943-Reviews-Foreign_Correspondents_Club-Phnom_Penh.html

The riverfront is my favourite part of PP with loads of bars and restaurants to explore. The FCC is an absolute must to meet other travellers and exchange stories - especially during the cocktail happy hour at sunset(!) It may be expensive by Cambodian standards but it's still reasonably cheap.

Now is an excellent time to visit Cambodia as I'm sure that in another 5-10 years time it will have become a replica of Thailand (not that there's anything wrong with that but at the moment Cambodia has a charm of its own)

totallybored wrote: »

I think one of the reasons I liked Cambodia so much was that the people were just so nice. It was so different coming from Vietnam and finding the tuk tuk guys were lovely and not all out to scam you and even the kids selling their Lonely Planets etc in bars were really sweet. We hired a tuk tuk for the day and at the end of the day we said we didn't know if we needed him the next day. When we went out the next day just to go to the market and asked him he wouldn't take us and said it was one of the other guys turns which I thought was really selfless of him.

Yes, totally agree. The friendliness in Cambodia was amazing right from the people in the street (children coming up to you to practice their English, not to bed) to the honesty and reasonable prices of the tuk-tuk drivers (which is a big change compared to most parts of Thailand).

The next time I go to Cambodia I will certainly make the effort to explore more of the countryside as once you have done the main museums (the Killing Fields is heart breaking) then there isn't that much else to do see and do in PP apart from eat and drink (and shop if that's your thing)