Laos, Thailand, HK...the final chapter

So it has been quite a while since the last post, and unfortunately this will be the final one for this adventure! We are officially done, and tomorrow we catch our flight home from Hong Kong.

So from where I last left off….

We ended up spending a day in Vientiane, Laos, which was a city we were not overly impressed with. We also ended up staying in a COMPLETE dive of a hostel. Matt likened it to a prison cell…and it also came with bed bugs. Not fun. The next day we crossed the border into Thailand by bus and stayed for a day in the border city of Nong Khai. It was a quaint town with a nice market. We celebrated our last day of being together as a group of 4 with a dinner river cruise on the Mekong River. It was a nice way to celebrate the end of another chapter in our travels.

The next day we parted ways. Gill headed home, Ryan headed to Vietnam and Matt and I flew to Phuket. Our flight was delayed, putting our arrival into Phuket REALLY late, which made it difficult to get up the next day to catch the morning ferry to the island of Koh Phi Phi. The ride over was nice, despite being tired and hungry. We set out on foot (because there are no cars on the island) and found the bungalows Gill had recommended to us, and decided we would stay. It was a really nice place away from all of the noise and action of the ‘down-town’ area of the island. We had a nice deck with a hammock right beside the pool. It was great! We spent the next few days just relaxing on the beach and by the pool…unfortunately we both ended up getting pretty nasty burns despite wearing sunscreen! The beaches were absolutely beautiful, with white sand and turquoise, clear water and the weather really turned out to be in our favour! We went on a sunset snorkel cruise to Koh Phi Phi Leh, the sister island to Koh Phi Phi, which was made famous by the movie ‘The Beach’ (where it was filmed). The snorkelling was absolutely amazing too…so many brightly coloured kinds of fish! Some of the best snorkelling we have ever done. They also took us to this place called ‘Monkey-beach’…which was what it sounds like. It would have actually been ‘fun’ had the monkeys not been vicious. Seriously – they told us that tourists often get bit by them…which left me asking the question, ‘then WHY the heck are we going there?!’. We also had the chance to walk up to the viewpoint on the island, which doubles as the Tsunami escape route. They had pictures of what the island looked like after the tsunami hit in 2004. It was completely decimated but it has been rebuilt since then. When we took the ferry back to Phuket the waters were unfortunately extremely rough. As soon as we set out they started handing out the puke bags. Luckily Matt and I made it through the trip without vomiting, but we were both exceptionally scared. At times the entire ferry would get ‘air’ and come crashing so hard back into the water that it seemed it would split apart. Water even started leaking in from the ceiling near us (as we were forced to sit on the second level below deck). It was a terrible trip (the longest hour and 40 minutes of our lives), but we managed to make it in one piece, thankfully.

Next we flew to Bangkok and had a whirl-wind stay. Our main highlights in the day and a bit we spent there were the Grand Palace and Kohsan Road. We did lots of shopping at the latter! Bangkok was a very busy and crazy city, not unlike the other major cities we have been to in Asia. As always, complete with hounding Tuk-Tuk drivers and salespeople.

To finish our trip off we flew to Hong Kong, arriving (of course) in the middle of a typhoon. It was a pretty rough and stressful flight, but again we arrived a bit shaken, but safe. We made it to our hostel before the typhoon escalated to a level 8 (it goes up to level 10). We had been told that the buses often stop running when it hits the higher levels, so we were a bit concerned, however we made it in time. We spent today, our last day exploring Hong Kong. We walked around Nathan Road, the touristy area with all of the markets and shops, and we eventually made our way over to Hong Kong Island, where we went up ‘The Peak’. The tram that took us up, went up at such a steep incline! It was unbelievable! When we got to the top, the weather was unfortunately still not the best due to the typhoon, so the views were not great, but still good. We made the mistake of deciding to have a drink at one of the restaurants at the top, which ended up costing us about 7 Canadian dollars per drink (non-alcoholic)! Hong Kong definitely lives up to it’s claim of having an impressive skyline though! It is such a cool city, very built up, modern and busy. We were also impressed by how efficient and ‘user-friendly’ the transportation system is. We both agree that it is unlike any of the places we have visited thus far on this trip. After ‘The Peak’ we had lunch at a little noodle restaurant. We both got noodle soup with squid-balls. I didn’t think it was all that bad, but Matt didn’t really like it. After that we visited the Hong Kong Science Museum, which was a bit of a let down. It was ‘Free-Wednesday’ and boy was it PACKED! It was a bit overwhelming, and difficult to spend time at any one exhibit. After dinner we headed down to the piers to watch the laser light show that is put on by the city skyline every night. Unfortunately the weather really took a turn for the worse, making it literally impossible to see across to Honk Kong Island. We had to walk back to the subway station and got completely SOAKED by the sheets of rain that were coming down. It was a bit disappointing, but you can’t change the weather! Anyways, one day has definitely not been enough here, and we both hope to come back again for a longer period of time. Probably not during typhoon season though!

This trip has gone by WAY too fast for both of us, and it has definitely been the trip of a lifetime. We have had amazing experiences and have really grown to appreciate home and how privileged we are to have been born in North America. Although neither of us are really ready to come home yet (because there is still SO much more to see and do), we are looking forward to seeing all of our friends and family again. We are also looking forward to some of the simple luxuries we have been missing out on over the past 3 months…like not living out of a bag, having clean laundry (Matt only brought 4 pairs of underwear), western breakfasts, home-cooked meals, etc. With any luck the typhoon will not interfere with our departure tomorrow and we will be back in Toronto after our ~15,000km journey home.

Until our next great adventure…

Amanda and Matt