Philippines: Cebu and Bohol

I had originally planned to visit Boracay first, then Cebu and Bohol however my body forced me to make some last minute amendments to my itinerary when I woke up the morning of my flight to Boracay sick with food poisoning. I was able to rebook a flight to Cebu and see 2 days of the Philippines.

Overall, I was stunned at the poverty level in the Philippines. Vietnam was a poor country but it seemed that most people in the big city had shelter and water. In the Philippines, it appears that the vast majority of the population of Cebu was living in poorly build clay, brick or wooden huts. Many sleeping on the streets. As we drove through some parts of the country, I would see a young boy walking a goat or cow down the side of the road, then a huge nice house or building, then a slum with little children everywhere. our hotel in Cebu had a 24 hour security guard and a barb wire fence around the wall surrounding the hotel. For $25usd a night I had a TV with several movie channels, aircon, shower and free toast with coffee in the morning. We were paying around US$5 for a 30minute cab ride and around $2 for a pizza. Prices were on the same level as Vietnam only the food wasn't as good.

After one day in Cebu we caught a 2 hour ferry to Bohol which was rumored to have beautiful beaches and interesting animals. The main animal they are famous for is the Tarsier, the worlds smallest monkey. my cab driver explained to me that I could buy one if I wanted one. After going to a zoo to see these monkeys, I went to the beach very briefly before taking the ferry back to Cebu to catch my flight. The beaches looked spectacular, white sand, palm trees everywhere, $6usd massage on the beach. I'll definitely have to make another trip back soon when I can spend some more time. There was also a strong Christian community in Bohol. Nearly every taxi had a biblical quote painted on the back.

Malaysia: KL and Langkawi

Immediately after spending the Christmas holidays in Atlanta, I boarded a flight back to Asia to explore Malaysia. I landed in the capital city Kuala Lumpur and spent one night walking around the city. I was shocked to find prices to be very similar to Hong Kong (AKA, very expensive) for food and drink. Since Malaysia is a Muslim country, it is not a very good place for a guy to get a massage unless you like getting massaged by other guys. Taxi drivers had their standard inconsistencies in pricing where you could literally have a 100% difference in price to do the same trip in 2 different cabs which were each running a meter. I attempted to visit the twin towers and found that they had sold out of tickets for the day.

After a day in KL, I went to Langkawi to check out the beaches for a few days. Nothing too special about the beaches, mostly families visiting on vacation from various parts of Europe or Australia. One unpleasant surprise was that there was no fun young person scene, no place to enjoy a pina colada. The food was not very good and expensive when you consider that only 50miles away was Thailand which had delicious and cheap food. The hotel in Langkawi cost around US$30 per night, had no hot water, a TV that didn't have the proper plug outlet and a refrigerator that didn't work. Luckily, the Aircon did function quite well.

I'll probably wait a while before visiting Malaysia again. For the price you pay, Thailand is a much more enjoyable trip.

Japan: Tokyo

We arrived in Tokyo, took a one hour train to our hotel and relaxed over a sushi dinner at the Hilton hotel. The next two days we did tours around the city, checking out the temples and major landmarks. Finding a trash can in the city is almost impossible. There are literally no trash can's on the street and maybe one per subway station and each station is the size of a shopping mall (and often is a shopping mall). After two days in Tokyo, we caught the train to Kyoto.

Hong Kong

After spending one last night in HCMC, I caught a one way flight to Hong Kong to spend the next 4 nights. Right as I arrived I had to go visit the HKU office to pick up some paperwork and fill out some forms to get a HK ID. I rushed over to the office and got there just in time to pick up the paperwork I needed for traveling to China. Lan Kwai Fong is the main bar district in Central Hong Kong where all the expats go to drink after work. Beer's range in price between $7-15 with the cheapest beer being Corona....the opposite of what you would expect. My first night I met up with a friend of a friend for dinner and drinks to celebrate her birthday. She was staying at the Hotel LKF which has an amazing roof top bar which is where we spent most of the night people watching. The next day I opened a bank account at HSBC and went to check in at the Mandarin Oriental hotel to meet my dad. 45 years ago my dad visited Hong Kong with his dad and stayed at the exact same hotel. Once my dad arrived we enjoyed a nice dinner in the hotel restaurant, then I went out for the night to cheer on team USA in the world cup who played at 3am HK time. The following day we left for Japan

Thailand: Chiang Mai

We decided to spend 3 days in Chiang Mai after speaking with a British couple who spent three weeks there and loved it. Chiang Mai is located in the northern part of Thailand, near the southern part of the Himalayas. We finally got free from the street hecklers and met some nice Thai people who don't view you as a big dollar sign. The food here is fantastic. We've eaten nothing but Pad Thai, Green and Red curries and Spicy chicken with basil for each meal (around $2 for each). Our first day in the city we explored on foot, saw some temples, found some good restaurants and booked tours for our next 2 days. On day 2, we hired a driver to take us around the outside of the city for a half day tour ($20). We went to an elephant zoo where we fed, rode and played with the elephants. We also saw the elephants paint several paintings and play soccer. Next, we went to a monkey zoo where we watched monkeys ride around on tricycles and dunk basketballs. Lastly, we visited a tiger zoo where we got in the cage with the tiger and got pictures petting it and laying on top of it. After our half day tour of the zoo's we took a nap, grabbed dinner and starting drinking some of the local Chang beer. On day 3 we slept in, then did a half day zipline tour through the jungle. We finished our tour just in time to get under shelter as the rain came pouring down. Tomorrow we will fly to Ho Chi Minh city for one last night, then I will fly to Hong Kong.

Thailand: Bangkok

We caught a flight from HCMC to Bangkok and hopped a cab to the backpacker part of town to find a hotel. Our cab driver took a quick bathroom break on the way into the city, stopping on the side of the highway to go #1 in the bushes....anyways, we found a good cheap hotel for around $17 per night and set out to walk around the city. The city is much more developed than Vietnam, most people have cars instead of motorbikes, they have a tourist police, and most places are relatively well maintained. We quickly learned that Bangkok is much worse than Vietnam with the heckling and harassing from cab drivers, tuk tuk drivers and anyone trying to sell something. As soon as you step out of your hotel there is a non-stop hoard of people trying to sell you on eating at their restaurant, sex shows, clothes, useless carved wooden objects etc... If you stop to look at a map, the salesman swarm you saying "what are you looking for? Where are you going? Let me show you the city". After several hours of this we started crafting more entertaining responses to their questions like "we are going to Mexico, take us there" or "we are looking for the holy grail". We did eventually get to do a walking tour of the city which was extremely challenging since most roads are not labeled, most maps are not accurate and the roads that are labeled are often only labeled in the Thai language. We did see a mother holding a plastic bag for her son who was probably around 8 years old, peeing into the plastic bag...on the side of the street, not covering up, not facing the wall, just out in the open peeing into a bag...not sure what thats all about. The food is quite good in Bangkok and the pad thai here is almost the exact same as in the States, only here it costs around $1. We enjoyed several meals of street food for very cheap. Apparently, Seven Eleven's are very profitable in Thailand. There is a 7/11 on almost every block in the city and on the busy streets, sometimes even more. We saw several places where there would be two 7/11's staring right across the street from each other. They provide the cheapest beer in town and a nice air-conditioned relief from the heat. Our last night in Bangkok we met a nice group from Chile in South America and spent most of the night shooting pool and hearing about life in Chile. Lady boys are all over Bangkok and are quite disturbing to look at... After a good breakfast at Dunking Doughnuts in the Bangkok airport, we caught a flight to Chiang Mi which is north of Bangkok and home to many outdoor activities such as riding elephants, playing with tigers and monkeys, and bungee jumping.

Vietnam: HCMC and Nha Trang

Morgan and I decided to fly back to Ho Chi Minh City from Hoi An rather than suffer through another sleeper bus. Our second night back in HCMC we met up with two of Will Akridge's (Morgan's friend who lives in Hanoi) friends for a night on the town. Shane was from Australia and Arnauld from Paris (as he would say "I am from Paris, not France, Paris"). They took us to their favorite bar to shoot pool called the Drunken Duck. This particular bar also has a shot contest where if you participate, you get a plaque with your name on it, a quote from you and the time it took you to finish the shots. The amount of shots to finish...15. The Frenchman (or Parisian) held the record for a few weeks with taking all 15 shots in 38 seconds. As Arnauld explained to us, he was in the bar when his record was broken. The person who broke his record was one of the female bartenders at the bar who was celebrating her birthday (35 seconds was her record). Her plaque on the wall read "I beat Arnauld". Upon witnessing this, Arnauld immediately ordered the 15 shots and took them in 33 seconds to regain his title. His new and second plaque on the wall read "Even I kneel before myself". A moment later our friend Will Akridge took 15 shots in 27 seconds to break Arnauld's record. His plaque on the wall read "Beat that bitches, BORN IN THE USA". The Parisian decided that since he couldn't have the fastest shot record, he would take the most shots. A few nights after his record was broken, he took 45 consecutive shots in 5 minutes and 50 seconds (1.5 liters of liquor), took a cigarette break, then kept drinking the rest of the night as normal. He received a plaque for this as well. In fact, his name is on the record board 6 times, 4 times from him breaking or setting records, and 2 times from others writing something about him in their quote.

I hope you now understand what we were up against going out with these guys. We had a fun night, took way too many shots and made it home safely.

Nha Trang
We caught a flight to Nha Trang, the most developed beach in Vietnam, to meet Will Akridge and celebrate his 29th birthday. Our new French and Australian friend came as well and we had a good time getting sunburned, eating pizza, pasta and omlettes, and walking the city. Morgan got some fresh cooked lobster on the beach where they cook the lobster right in front of you and coat it in hot sauce...very tasty for only $4 a lobster. Our hotel called "Nice Hotel" was conveniently located right next to a Bia Hoi where they served $0.75 pitchers of beer. The beach was nice but I will probably never go back. Reminded me of going to a Georgia beach with the same water color only there is also constant heckling from the locals to buy useless things. We got very tired of these hecklers and thus started talking to them in either Spanish (which we knew they wouldn't understand) or simply tried to sell something we had to them. At one point, Shane the Australian, borrowed one of the Vietnamese girls basket of goods and walked up to a group of white girls trying to sell them something...no takers. We enjoyed a nice birthday dinner and went out for drinks. Our flight back to HCMC before leaving to go to Bangkok was terrible. The 40 minute flight was so rough that roughly 20% of the passengers took the liberty of using their vomit bags. Today we are in Bangkok, not wearing any red, and will tour the city before planning our next destination in Thailand.