Southeast Asia Archives - Page 4 of 4

Thailand to Malaysia Overland: getting stranded at the eastern border with a lonely policeman (or, how NOT to travel to the Perhentian Islands)

Malaysia, Overland travel, Southeast Asia, Thailand, Travel tales

How NOT to travel from Thailand to Malaysia overland!

(for the sensible routes from Thailand to Malaysia, scroll to the lower half of the post)

Hat Yai bus station. The day was getting old, the sun dropping and the shadows drawing long, and I wasn’t sure if I had time to make it to Kota Bharu in Malaysia before the border closed. Earlier that day I’d made a last-minute decision to change my route and head to Malaysia’s Perhentian Islands (instead of Thailand‘s Ko Pha Ngan) to catch up with some friends (or rather, my ex-girlfriend and her friends); I’d almost caught them in Hat Yai, but their bus had just pulled out before mine arrived. I knew they were planning to take the ferry to the Perhentians in the morning, and assumed (incorrectly) they were on a bus to Kota Bharu – so I decided to chase them and take the next bus to Kota Bharu, if indeed there was one.

Thailand to Malaysia. The goal: the beautiful Perhentian Islands — The goal – Malaysia’s Perhentian Islands

In actual fact, they’d gone to Penang (on the opposite coast), from where they were to take an early morning bus across Malaysia to reach the ferry, and my chances of reaching Kota Bharu that night were already absolutely zero. But that didn’t stop the bus company guy from lying through his teeth and taking my money anyway…

I told him I wanted to go to Kota Bharu (on the northeast coast of Malaysia and the nearest city to the Perhentian Islands) in the hope of catching up with them there, asked if it was still possible that day, and was sold a ticket for a minivan which he absolutely promised would take me all the way through to Malaysia.

On the beach, Perhentian Islands — Beach in the Perhentian Islands

Now, the reason I was so keen to get this assurance wasn’t just that I was worried I wouldn’t catch my friends that night, but because I knew this bus would be passing through Thailand’s far southern Patani region – a majority-ethnic Malay area which has seen a decades-long separatist struggle by armed groups aiming to split the area from Thailand and join Malaysia; thousands have died over the years in terrorist attacks and gun battles between separatists and government troops & police. I was well aware of all this and wasn’t just blindly wandering into a conflict zone, but I also knew that at that particular time the violence was dormant and the highway was considered safe (I double-checked this with the policeman on duty at the bus station); so I decided it was okay to go, so long as the bus just passed through and I made it to Malaysia that same night. I didn’t want to be spending the night in that troubled region though, as you never know when trouble could flare back up again; it was a slight risk as it was, and that’s why I’d doubly and triply sought the bus company’s assurances, and he had absolutely promised the minivan would take me to Kota Bharu.

Well, that man was an utter shameless lying bastard, and after a very nerve-wracking 4-hour journey during which we were flagged down at military checkpoints every 20 minutes while jumpy soldiers quite literally pointed their rifles directly at those of us inside while everyone’s documents were checked, and with all the other passengers having disembarked one by one and clearly not heading to Malaysia, we finally pulled up in some dark desolate middle of nowhere on the
Thai side of the border, and the driver told me to get out. I was hesitant (as in I’m thinking “where the actual fuck am I and what the hell is going on and am I about to get kidnapped?!”), which only made him agitated; he grabbed my bag out of the back and chucked it on the ground, pointed towards some dark and forbidding buildings, and yelled at me. I tried to ask him to drop me at a hotel, or at least take me into the town centre, but I couldn’t say it in Thai, he didn’t speak English, and he was in no mood to attempt any other form of communication. He looked about ready to stab me and picked my bag up again and hurled it further away, so out I got and off he drove.

At this point it would be fair to say I was shitting myself; I was unsure exactly where I was or where to go, it was dark and isolated and felt very sketchy after hours of checkpoints and guns, and I was aware of a pack of dogs close at hand and I’m no fan of the roving packs of stray dogs in Thailand. I shouldered my pack and jogged towards the cluster of very closed-looking buildings over yonder, and to my immense relief found one of them to be a border police post with one chap on duty.

He spoke very little English and I speak very little Thai, but I managed to communicate that I wanted to go to a hotel and cross the border in the morning; he in turned conveyed that I would be staying with him for the night, an offer I most gratefully accepted.

He pulled out a little camping bed for me, and I would’ve been perfectly happy with that; but then this chubby middle-aged policeman with the kindly face absolutely made my day by serving me up a plate of rice and eggs. That’s all it was, a simple dish of rice and pickled eggs, but I hadn’t eaten since lunchtime and wasn’t expecting to eat until Malaysia, and it tasted so damn good.

Small talk wasn’t really possible, so as I wolfed down my rice and eggs he sat working away at his computer, presumably dealing with the daily reports or whatever. And then I had an idea – perhaps he’d let me email my ex to update her where I was and to say I’d be on the morning ferry.

I enjoyed those eggs immensely, and he even insisted on washing the dishes; I tried, but he wasn’t having it. So I figured that would be a good time to use the PC, and asked if I could send an email; he said that was fine and opened up a browser window for me. Sitting down at the computer as he washed my plate, I was most amused to see he hadn’t even bothered to hide the fact he’d been porn surfing! He had about a dozen windows open, all playing hardcore western and Japanese porn. I didn’t put the headphones on (but could hear some tinny squawking emanating from them) and didn’t comment. Fair enough I guess – what else is a bored and lonely policeman going to do at the shut-for-the-night Thailand Malaysia border?!

Email checked and sent (and now realising they’d gone to Penang), I turned in while my man watched a bit more porn, and then he retired to the back room. Sometimes when you’re travelling you find yourself in some unexpected situations, and kipping on a camping bed in the front office of a border post wasn’t something I’d ever expected to do! A few hours later he shook me awake again, gave me a coffee, and indicated I should be on my way; thanking him profusely, I walked the short distance to the border, crossed the bridge from Thailand to Malaysia, and found a bus to Kota Bharu and another from there to the ferry pier where I rendezvoused with my ex and her friends, and we then spent a few days in the beautiful Perhentians. While I guess he was basically just doing his job, he did it with the warmth of genuine hospitality and I’ll never forget that policeman’s kindness and his delicious rice and eggs.

How to travel from Thailand to Malaysia overland (Hat Yai to the Perhentians)

If you’re heading from southern Thailand to Malaysia, the usual (and easiest) route is a minivan from Hat Yai to Penang, going through the Padang Besar border crossing (by far the busiest crossing on the Thailand Malaysia border). An interesting alternative route exists from Thailand to Penang by sea, which involves island hopping from Thailand’s Ko Lipe island to Malaysia’s Langkawi island, and from there to Penang. These islands are connected by regular ferries, and Ko Lipe is also connected to other Thai islands like Ko Lanta and Ko Phi Phi – in fact, it’s possible to island hop all the way from Phuket to Penang without touching the coasts of Thailand or Malaysia. I haven’t done this island-hopping route all the way, but needless to say it’s a very appealing idea if you have the time!

Whichever way you decide to go from Thailand to Penang, after visiting Penang you can then cross Malaysia to reach the Perhentian Islands – the Cameron Highlands and Taman Negara park can both also visited on the way to the Perhentians, or on the way from the Perhentians back to Penang or down to Kuala Lumpur.

As Penang is most likely a part of your intended itinerary anyway, it really does make sense to head there first when going from Thailand to Malaysia overland, thus avoiding the conflict region. However, if you do want to skip Penang, because you’ve been there before or don’t fancy the dog-leg route or whatever, and want to head directly from Hat Yai to the Perhentians, then I would advise two main things:

First of all, check and double-check that the security situation is clear. Don’t do this with the bus companies, but ask the police directly in Hat Yai; they should have the latest information and be the most reliable source of it. Also double-check whether your own country has any travel warnings in place for the area, and whether or not your travel insurance will cover you while you travel through the area (most insurance companies have a clause that they won’t cover you in areas under your government’s travel advisory warnings, unless you specifically pay more to be covered there). Take all of this into account.

Secondly, don’t get yourself stranded at the Thailand Malaysia border overnight! There is no cross-border transportation, meaning you have to take a van to the border, walk across, and then a bus or van on the other side; it’s not a 24-hour border, and as I found out you can’t trust the Hat Yai bus station on any of that. The Thai border town of Sungai Kolok is 4 hours from Hat Yai, and the Malaysian border town of Rantau Panjang is about an hour from the city of Kota Bharu. It’s hard to pin down the actual closing hour of the border, but I left Hat Yai before sunset and didn’t make it in time; I’d say you’d want to be leaving Hat Yai at lunch time (i.e. if you’ve stayed overnight, check out and go), or be leaving Kota Bharu by mid-afternoon if going the other way. If you have a choice between crashing overnight in Hat Yai or gambling on an afternoon bus to Sungai Kolok, I’d say crash overnight in Hat Yai and continue on the next day.

If you do manage to end up stranded at the border, look for the border post and hopefully you’ll get taken in by a friendly cop with a plate of rice & eggs!

For more Thailand posts, click here

Also check out my overland travel guides for Thailand and Malaysia

Phonsavan to Hanoi overland; 2 days, 2 landslides, a scam, a crash, and 2 stolen passports

Laos, Overland travel, Southeast Asia, Travel tales, Vietnam

As the three of us rattled along through the dark in back of the songthaew, a brief pinprick of light caught my eye out over the rice paddies. As I peered out into the night, another tiny light popped into existence and described a quick arc through the air before vanishing; and then there were dozens of them winking out there in the darkness like will-o’-wisps. Dave, sat across from me on the opposite bench, had noticed them too, out in the darkness behind me, and pointed them out to Mike next to him; and the three of us sat there, bouncing along this rural road in northern Laos towards the border with Vietnam with the wind in our hair, gazing out at the fireflies, lost in our weary thoughts after a long day of washed out roads and landslides and feeling like we’d almost reached our goal. Little did we know then that it was to be a case of out of the frying pan, into the fire…

Anyone who goes long-distance overland backpacking picks up an epic bus journey story or two; ten hours on a crazy mountain road while trussed-up livestock squawks and bleats under your seat, perhaps, all while a friendly local sits on your shoulder or leans over you to vomit out of the window. I’ve got my fair share – such as winding down the Trans-Sumatra highway from Bukkitinggi to Jakarta (a white-knuckle ride, missing logging truck after logging truck by inches as we overtook on blind corners round mountain bends, all with the same driver – the same one guy driving as though with a death wish for himself and all on board, taking only three one-hour breaks per day – the same driver day & night for almost 48 hours!); such as the mud-fest of Luang Nam Tha to Luang Prabang in rainy season (which I’ve been masochistic enough to do a second time even though I knew what it was like); such as the 10-hour marshrutka ride from Irkutsk to Ulan-Ude in a Siberian blizzard (we were packed into that marshrutka van like a matryoshka Russian doll!), to name a few. But this 2-day journey from Phonsavan, Laos, to the Vietnamese capital of Hanoi (and the ensuing crazy weekend in Hanoi) was the most incident-filled bit of overland travel I’ve ever done or likely ever will, and it left me with a decent travel story and two new friends for life (and, as it would eventually turn out, future business partners)

Phonsavan to Hanoi, Day 1: Phonsavan and a brace of landslides

I’d met Mike and Dave early that morning at the bus station in Phonsavan, waiting for the bus to fill up and get going as the rain drizzled down on the paddy fields. The scheduled departure time had long been and gone and the bus was showing no signs of movement, so we fell to chatting about this and that, including what we’d seen and done in Phonsavan – such as visiting the UXO museum, which explains the issues Laos still faces today due to unexploded ordnance left over from the Vietnam war, mostly due to cluster bombs; all the metal that was dropped on northern Laos has been put to good use by the resourceful locals – you see bullets serving as key-rings, spent shells serving as stools and door-stops, knives & forks fashioned from the melted-down metals – but often at great cost, as those who go out searching with metal detectors (because they need the income) often become victims of these weapons doing what they were designed to do, decades after they were dropped there to do it.

Scrap metal from the Vietnam war in Phonsavan — An entire scrap metal industry revolves around leftovers from the Vietnam war; unfortunately this has tragic consequences for many of the metal collectors, the main culprit being unexploded US cluster bombs

The previous day, Mike told me, they’d rented scooters to visit the Plain of Jars, which I’d also visited on a bus tour. It was a good little tour, taking in the mysterious jars – large prehistoric stone pots scattered across the plains around Phonsavan – as well as an abandoned tank and a visit to a village where they were producing lao-lao (a sort of rice moonshine). My tour-mates and I bought a few plastic bottles of the stuff, and it was like drinking paint stripper… not the best night cap I’ve ever had, but there I was, up early the following day to head on to Vietnam without too much of a sore head. The conversation moved on to various other travel stories, as it does, and finally, amid some talk of a landslide, it was announced that the bus was finally leaving.

The lao-lao distillery in Phonsavan — The lao-lao distillery

The road left town and snaked up into the jungle-clad mountains, their peaks wreathed in mist, and after an hour or two we arrived at the aforementioned landslide. These are a common problem in mountainous northern Laos during rainy season, especially with the sadly seemingly ever-increasing deforestation in the area, and roads are often blocked. A pile of earth and fallen undergrowth was blocking our way now, with a large tree making up the bulk of it. Still, it didn’t look impassable and in due course a JCB came trundling up the road behind us to do battle with this obstacle; it wasn’t easy, but the JCB strained and heaved and was eventually victorious and bulldozed a path through to re-open the road. And that was when one of the locals on the bus told us that this landslide was only the small one and that there was another, bigger one further up ahead.

The first landslide, our first obstacle from Phonsavan to Hanoi — The small landslide (and Mike looking pretty unimpressed)

And he wasn’t wrong – a short time later, we pulled up in front of the site of a massive landslide… the road here wasn’t simply buried under some mud and undergrowth; the road here was gone. The volume of mud, rocks, and trees that had come down in the night was enormous, flattening a swathe of forest down the hillside, huge boulders all stacked up in a crazy jumble, with the wet mud filling in the cracks between them.

“So… that bulldozer back there probably won’t be able to clear this, will it?”, I asked the same guy.
“No – now we wait for the army”, came the reply. “They use dynamite to open road!”.
“Great – when will they get here?”
“Maybe today, maybe tomorrow… who knows?”

This wasn’t looking good. While the local passengers started producing stashes of food, mostly consisting of wicker baskets of the main Lao staple of sticky rice, and settling in on blankets for the wait, the three of us along with a Dutchman and two American girls who were also on the bus discussed our almost complete lack of food and water. The stoicism and foresightedness of our fellow passengers was impressive; but we needed either to find a ride back to where we’d come from, or find a way to continue beyond this landslide. So a few of us picked our way carefully across the unstable pile of rocks and wet earth, which looked like it could very well have given way any moment and swept us down the hillside – pretty nerve-wracking and perhaps not the brightest idea, but we made it over and started sounding out the drivers of the long line of vehicles waiting on the other side, and eventually we found a songthaew willing to turn around and take the six of us back down to the next town towards Vietnam. He’d been on his way to make a delivery of empty Coca-Cola bottles for recycling – crates and crates of them – so it was going to be a tight fit. And while he didn’t seem too keen to do it at first, we negotiated a fair price with him and as he obviously wasn’t going to get where he’d planned to that day he agreed to do it. So we climbed back over the landslide, picked up the rest of the group, and then we all had to clamber over the landslide again but this time laden with our bags. Super sketchy, but it held; and so we lashed our bags to the roof of the songthaew and crammed ourselves in amongst the crates and onwards we continued to the clanking and jangling of hundreds of glass Cola bottles.

The second, much larger landslide — The big one

Some hours later, with the sun shining low and the shadows growing long we arrived at the village we’d agreed passage to. It turned out that this was our driver’s home village, and our Dutch and American companions arranged to stay there overnight (not sure where, exactly). However, the three of us who were Vietnam-bound had started the day intent on reaching the border town of Sam Neua, and we hadn’t given up yet. So we had another round of negotiations with the driver to take us a few hours further, writing the numbers on the ground with a stick to make sure there were no verbal misunderstandings, long strings of zeros etched in the dust (there are over ten thousand kip to one British pound) – this time he really didn’t want to make the trip, what with the late hour and him already being home, so we had to make it worth his while. I don’t recall how much we paid – not a lot in the grand scheme of things, but our man had a rather profitable day in the end. So, him being happy with the price and us being happy that we would reach our original goal (which would allow us to make the border crossing in good time the next day and so be able to make Hanoi by the next evening), and with the Coke bottles offloaded to be transported another day, we clambered back into the songthaew’s now-roomy back and drove on into the gathering dusk (stopping to pick up one of the driver’s mates – not sure if this was just for company or he actually needed a ride to Sam Neua too!)

And that’s how we came to be in the back of that songthaew while the fireflies danced over fields of rice paddies under fields of stars. You spend so many hours on the road when travelling, that eventually they can blur together somewhat. You remember these long journeys and the scenery along the way, aided by the photos you snapped through the window; but sometimes a scene etches itself vividly into your memory, and that songthaew ride with two new friends and the dancing fireflies is firmly etched into mine. I almost didn’t want to reach Sam Neua! But in due course we did, having taken the entire day to cover a mere 240km (150 miles), and so after checking into a cheap hotel enjoyed a well-earned bowl of pho before hitting the sack. We would be up early the next day for one last songthaew ride to the border and the madness waiting for us in Vietnam.

Phonsavan to Hanoi, Day 2: Sam Neua to Hanoi; a scam, a crash, and two stolen passports (welcome to Vietnam!)

And after a bright and early start we were crammed once again in the back of a songthaew which was driving us the last 100km (60 miles) to the border. This took us through the town of Vieng Xay, famous for the cave systems used by the Pathet Lao (Laotian communists) for shelter during the Vietnam war as the American air force subjected the area to the heaviest aerial bombardment in history. The caves look remarkable (in the pictures I’ve seen); a natural limestone cave formation which was expanded by the Pathet Lao into an underground fortress, complete with factories and even a concert chamber. They survived the war and went on to overthrow the Laotian monarchy, establishing the Lao People’s Democratic Republic government that holds power to this day. I do now think it would have been a good idea to stop over there and see these caves, as they are both spectacular and historically significant; the tall Dutchman our songthaew picked up in Vieng Xay had done just that and told us it was well worth it.

Anyway, a short time later (after having been on the receiving end of the most hostile glares I’ve ever received from a border guard), we were stamped into Vietnam and along with our new Dutch travel companion were attempting to arrange onward transport to Hanoi. This involved an awful lot of being messed around as we tried to negotiate a remotely reasonable price – there’s no public transportation from that border, so we had to deal with the private vehicle owners who knew very well that they had the upper hand. After all, we weren’t going to be walking to Hanoi. We tried to be as polite as possible, but our efforts to bargain were met with outright hostility; tempers became a little frayed, and suddenly our Dutch companion intentionally tripped one of the Vietnamese we were negotiating with. I couldn’t believe my eyes! He apologised and managed to pass it off as a mistake (and I reckon he could have got himself, perhaps all of us, a nasty beating if he hadn’t immediately apologised), but that moron scuppered whatever chance we had of bargaining the price down. I think we paid around 40 dollars each – extortionate by Vietnamese standards at the time, and a few weeks later a Dutch girl in my hostel in Ho Chi Minh City told me that she’d paid 25 dollars from the same border town to Hanoi. Which just goes to show that smiling and being polite & respectful tends to yield better results than kicking people!

In any case, finally we were on our way. We thought that bus was taking us all the way, but in fact it dropped us off by the highway where we were shunted on to another bus to Hanoi. But before that change of buses, we’d stopped for a toilet break in a small town; I managed to score a much-needed coffee, and as we stood there sipping and chatting in the rain, another bus that was parked up alongside ours started reversing out into the street. There was a squeal of tires from the road, and I watched the breaking scooter plough into the side of the bus with no chance of stopping on the wet surface. The helmet-less driver went over his handlebars, smashed his head through the bus window with a sickening crunch, and bounced back into the street. A crowd gathered; no-one helped; we wondered if we could help, and how (I’ve never wanted to be a Vietnamese-speaking medic, but I wished I was right then); but then someone simply picked him up and plonked him on the back of another scooter and held him there behind the driver, his head lolling around on his limp neck, and off they went. To hospital, I hope, but I don’t actually know. What I do know is that he’d probably suffered severe head and neck injuries, and that however bad they were to begin with they would have become worse by the time they got him there.

Talking about it later, Dave and I who’d been facing out towards the road and watched it happen reckoned he was maybe permanently injured, if not dead; whereas Mike, who’d had his back to the accident, judging the situation by how bad his actual injuries seemed afterwards rather than how bad the impact had looked, reckoned he might have come out of it okay. He was just about semi-conscious in the immediate aftermath, so I sincerely hope that Mike was right; but we’ll never know.

So with that sickening crunch fresh in mind, along with the aggro at the border and another full day’s bus travel on top of the previous day’s songthaews and landslides, we finally arrived in Hanoi. The tall Dutchman told us he knew of a good hotel, so we left him to it and went to find our own. After seeing him trip the chap at the border we had little time for him and were glad to be shot of him; but the hotel we did end up in turned out to have been a rather bad choice (and on the way to it, the taxi driver passed a fake note off on us – when Dave tried to use it in a restaurant they showed us it was fake, and it ended up pinned on the wall behind the bar). We checked in late at night and were told 10 dollars a room per night (when they later charged me 15 a night upon checking out, the argument became a scrap and I have a scar on my arm to this day). The hotel staff took our passports to keep in reception (this is standard in Vietnam and they have to do it by law), and I said good night to the lads and crawled into bed. It had been a long, crazy, amazing, stressful couple of days, but it we’d made it and it was finally over… or so we thought…

I woke up the next day to find a note under my door… “Si mate, you’re never gonna believe this. The bastards have lost our fucking passports! Yours is okay, but mine & Dave’s are gone. We’re off to the police station, see you this evening – Mike” (my passport was in a leather holder I’d bought in Mongolia a few months earlier, so presumably whoever took theirs hadn’t noticed mine due to the holder). My time in Vietnam had started as it would continue…

Theft, robbery, scams; three intense weeks in Vietnam (Hanoi to Saigon overland)

Overland travel, Southeast Asia, Travel tales, Vietnam

People often ask each other about which countries were their favourites to travel to. It’s a hard question to answer, and not a question which I can answer with one single country; I’ll usually answer with a shortlist! However, sometimes the opposite question is asked – “which country was your worst?” – and that question I can sadly answer without a moment’s hesitation…

The day I arrived in Vietnam, we got ripped off and almost ended up in a fight as soon as we crossed the border (though to be fair the aggro was made worse by a random Dutch guy off the bus who we didn’t actually know), witnessed an accident involving a scooter and a bus, and my friends’ passports got stolen overnight from the hotel. What a way to start things off! And while it didn’t keep coming quite so thick and fast, there was plenty more to come. Picking up from where that crazy day ended, I woke up in my hotel room in Hanoi having had a solid sleep but still feeling the effects of the previous two days’ epic journey from Phonsavan, Laos, to Vietnam’s capital, involving a couple of landslides, enchanting views of fireflies over the rice paddies, the angry scenes at the border, and the scooter accident. But it felt good to have made it, and I was looking forward to checking out the bustling, chaotic, vibrant city I could hear honking and hustling about its day outside. Dragging myself out of bed with thoughts only of first sourcing some coffee, I noticed a piece of paper had been pushed under the door… a note from Mike:

“Si mate, you’re never gonna believe this. The bastards have lost our fucking passports! Yours is okay, but mine & Dave’s are gone. We’re off to the police station, see you this evening – Mike”

Unbelievable… I hastened downstairs to confirm that they did indeed still have my passport, and then went off to sort my caffeine fix. (Now, while I had a pretty constant string of annoyances and problems, and found myself in a couple of outright dangerous situations in Vietnam, it wasn’t all bad – the food was excellent (bowls of excellent pho noodles from street stands for dinner, and fantastic French baguettes with fillings like lemongrass and chillies for breakfast), and so was the coffee. You get a little glass with an individual filter shaped to fit over the top, stuffed with ground beans and with the hot water poured in just before it’s served. You sit and wait for the coffee to drip through, while the old chaps sit around playing xiangqi and putting the world to rights and the heaving life of the city pours past just outside the door, and then a few minutes later (if you’ve remembered to ask for it without milk – they use condensed milk which I find far too sweet) you have a deliciously bitter glass of coffee in front of you. Without much to do until the lads got back from the police staton and the embassy, I whiled away an afternoon of people watching, snacking, and way too much coffee.

A cafe in Vietnam — Hanging out in cafes – overdosing on delicious coffee and watching (but not partaking in) the madness outside – was pretty much my favourite thing to do in Vietnam

We never really knew who’d taken the two passports, but the fact that they’d failed to take mine – presumably because it was in the passport holder I’d bought in Mongolia a few months previously – did suggest the hotel’s claim it was someone from outside was true. If it had been their own staff, all three would likely have been taken, so it did lend credence to the idea that it was an opportunistic theft. Of course, that still didn’t exonerate the hotel from their failure to keep the passports safe from would-be opportunistic thieves in the first place (Vietnamese law requires you to leave your passport with reception at every place you stay, so you just have to trust them to keep it safe).

Mike & Dave were advised by the embassy to stay at that same hotel until the whole thing was sorted and they had their new passports and their insurance reports, but I had no intention of continuing to give my business to them – especially as they were being so unhelpful and unapologetic. They seemed to be more concerned with dodging the blame than they did with either apologising or trying to make up for it in any way. But with the next day being Sunday and with the embassy closed until Monday, there wasn’t much to do except go out for a good-old fashioned bender and relieve some of the tension! And boy, was it a bender… we drank all night, all over Hanoi, including at one point a night club on a boat moored up on the banks of the river, and eventually found ourselves joining the crowd of elderly folk doing tai chi in the park at dawn. I can honestly say that we weren’t taking the Mickey and made a genuine attempt to follow the moves; but we were rather drunk at this point, so our attempts were frankly pathetic.

Another cultural experience we had on that long and messy walk home as we wandered in circles (we couldn’t find the hotel) was crossing the street Vietnamese-style. This involves picking your spot, choosing your line, setting a steady pace along that line, and then sticking to it until you reach the other side. Sounds easy, but when there’s a constant stream of scooters, swarms of scooters, buzzing past you front and back, it’s a real test of nerve – but if you start trying to read where the bikes are going and changing your line, you’re gonna get hit. So you just have to keep your eyes forwards and walk straight and steady. Now, the locals have this down – they’ve been doing it all their lives – but it takes some getting used to at first… especially when you’ve just witnessed a scooter accident a couple of days before. And I didn’t really get the hang of it until we started doing it drunk – and then it was kind of fun!

Anyway, with the need for alcohol-derived stress-relief having been dealt with, and another day having been spent sleeping it off, on the Monday I checked out of the hotel to head to Halong Bay while the lads were back at the embassy once again. They were looking at a week or so stuck in Hanoi but I was aiming to be in Bangkok to meet someone a few weeks later, so we’d agreed to try and meet up again somewhere further down the Vietnamese coast. So, having been there for 3 nights in the end, and having been told it was 10 dollars a night at check-in, I had my 30 dollars ready and went to drop my keys off at the front desk – where I was told that I owed them 45 dollars at 15 a night. This obviously didn’t go down very well, especially as they’d lost my friends’ passports; I insisted that I’d been told 10 dollars a night, and they insisted that the staff member who’d told me that had made a mistake. I insisted that that wasn’t my problem, and given that they’d failed to keep the passports safe I didn’t really think they were in a position to demand more money from me. And so I placed my 30 dollars on the counter, bade them good day, and walked out of the door… I’d made it about half way to the taxi rank when I felt the first slap on the back of my head, and before I’d even turned to defend myself I had two cleaning-ladies dragging and pulling at my backpack, the straps caught on my elbows and pulling my arms down, while the old chap who was always sitting in reception slapped me round the head and pushed me in the chest, with my arms pinned to my sides, quickly reinforced by the manageress – whose pregnancy didn’t prevent her from getting stuck in! – who contributed the most stinging slaps of all. The four of them pushed and pulled me back into the hotel lobby, slammed the door shut and locked it. I was being held hostage!

There ensued a furious argument between myself and the manageress – “you, big fat liar!” she kept shouting at me, again and again, refusing to accept that I’d checked in on the understanding that the room was 10 bucks a night. I tried again to leave, but it was clear that this would lead to violence – there were by now half a dozen hotel staff surrounding me. So I told them I wanted to use the phone to call the British embassy. “Okay”, she said, “you can use it. Phone charge is 15 dollars!”. Haha… I remember admiring that even at the time. So then I said I wanted to call the police. “It’s okay”, she said; “we already call them. They come now, arrest you!”

And that’s exactly what happened. They took my passport, we all walked to the station, a cop holding each of my arms (thankfully the station happened to be just around the corner), and the English-speaking policeman in the group asked if I wanted my passport back. I said that of course I did, to which he replied that once I paid the hotel the 15 dollars, he’d return my passport. I still wasn’t having it, and asked to call my embassy, which the police allowed me to do from their phone.

Imagine my two friends, sat in the British embassy applying for new passports to replace their stolen ones, when the official dealing with them breaks off to take a phone call – and tells them it’s from their friend who’s in the police station! They told me they couldn’t believe their ears… “What now?”… The embassy official explained that if I really didn’t want to pay the 15 dollars, it would go to court and I may very well win… but also that it would take months and I wouldn’t be able to leave Hanoi during that time. So, of course, in the end I just had to suck it up and pay the extra. What did I learn from this? Mostly that, as a tourist, you aren’t always welcome; that to many people you’re just business; and that when you’re in another country you really don’t have a leg to stand on when dealing with the police, however much you feel you’re being wronged. They say you have to keep your cool in situations like that, and it helps to take a deep breath and calm down. I kept my cool reasonably well, I think, other than the shouting in the hotel lobby after they’d got me back in there. But it’s hard to keep your cool when the people you’re dealing with are not even remotely keeping theirs, and have been hostile and aggressive from the word go. I still have a scar on my right arm from where my bag strap cut into my skin as they were forcing me back into the hotel; they lost my friends’ passports, they overcharged me 50%, and I don’t think they had the slightest guilt about it or any consequences to deal with. In those days we couldn’t even write them a scathing review on Hostelworld and the like.

Ah well. In any case, I did eventually make my way to Halong Bay that evening. The bus conductor ripped me off for a few dollars (dropping me off at some intersection and slamming the door and driving off as soon as I’d got my bag out of the luggage compartment, without giving me my change), adding to the simmering rage I was already feeling, but whatever, I got to Halong.

And it really is a beautiful place – that’s the photo you always see of Vietnam with the limestone karsts towering up out of the sea, traditional junks sailing between them; a breathtaking view and well worthy of its World Heritage status.

Boat trip in Halong Bay — My boat-mates in Halong. They were the first people I managed to have a nice conversation with in Vietnam (after 5 days in the country), which was refreshing

However much hassle I had in Vietnam, it doesn’t take away the fact that it’s a gorgeous-looking country with amazing food. And on the boat cruise I did around Halong Bay, I finally got to interact with some locals without it feeling like a cutthroat transaction, and they were of course absolutely lovely.

The old fortress in Hue — Hue’s old citadel

Continuing on southwards, I visited the ancient fortress city of Hue on the way to the charming old town of Hoi An. This pretty little town really was by far my favourite place in Vietnam, and unwinding there for a few days I started to feel the hassles of Hanoi and Halong had just been a string of bad luck; I was perhaps even starting to quite like Vietnam. Hoi An is a World Heritage listed town, a living collection of traditional Vietnamese architecture including a fantastic roofed wooden bridge; and nearby are the ancient Hindu ruins of My Son, well worth a day-trip – not quite as spectacular as Angkor Wat or Borobudur, but definitely a place which appeals to the Indy Jones in you. I emailed Mike to see how he and Dave were getting on in Hanoi, telling them that Hoi An was great and that I’d be making my way to Ho Chi Minh City and stopping there for a while, so hopefully they’d catch me there.

The My Son ancient ruins, near Hoi An — The My Son ruins

The next port of call was Nha Trang. And this was where I realised that the hassles back in Hanoi hadn’t just been bad luck; that there really were a lot of people in the tourist areas of Vietnam who just wanted my money, were willing to straight-up take it from me, were likely to resort to violence to do so, and who absolutely didn’t give a fuck if I liked their country or not… and indeed, I suppose, on that last point why should they?

The beach in Nha Trang — Nha Trang… not as nice as it looks

Nha Trang is a famous beach town, and the beach itself is nice enough (though not nearly as nice as the one at Mu Ne, further south); but it’s also a notorious spot for sex-tourists – including, apparently, for some with very disturbing tendencies. Elderly white men in speedos sunbathe alone on that beach, a beach where kids are wandering up and down selling postcards and chewing gum and other bullshit to tourists. It’s disgusting and heartbreaking to think of the opportunities for predators; there’s a restaurant in town called Lanterns which works with local orphanages, and to anyone stopping in Nha Trang I’d highly recommend a visit to learn about the great work they do and support them with your business.

So, this coastal beach resort town has a very unpleasant side to it, and it’s barely even hidden – as you walk along the road, motorbikes slow down alongside you…

“Hey, you want taxi?”
“No thanks, I’m okay”
“Okay… you want marijuana?” (said with a little ‘spliff-smoking’ action)
“No thanks”
“How about boom boom? You want boom boom?” (said with a pelvic thrust action)
“No. Go away”

…was more or less how the conversation went each time. Two of the other guys on the boat tour I did said that on one occasion the day before, the standard exchange had been followed with one additional (hushed) question:

“You want little boy?”
“…what. the. fuck?!”

You get the picture… the motorbike taxis in Nha Trang are the local drug dealers and pimps. Not a nice bunch. We discussed this on the boat tour, but mostly we had fun and swam and drank and had a singalong with the boat’s resident band (i.e. the crew) who had a good stock of tunes – one classic tune for each of the nationalities on board, and members of said nationalities had to get up and sing. The song for the Brits on board was ‘Yellow Submarine’, to which I discovered I actually knew sod-all of the lyrics apart from the chorus (which we delivered con gusto).

I also got stung by a jellyfish that afternoon, and had a great big pink lightning bolt slashed across my torso for the rest of the day. It hurt a lot at first, but faded quickly – perhaps due to the excess of alcohol that the passengers on this cruise were encouraged to imbibe. Arriving back at shore, we all headed for showers & changes of clothes before meeting up for dinner, more drinks, and ultimately a club.

A temple in Nha Trang — This Nha Trang temple’s Buddha may look serene; my time in Nha Trang was anything but

It was when the last three of us remaining left that nightclub at 3am that things got sketchy. Names are long forgotten I’m afraid, but I was with a stocky New Yorker and a legless-drunk 18-year-old from Scotland; we left the bar, New Yorker and myself taking one arm each as we held Scotsman up between us, steering him out of the door. And then next thing I knew, I was pinned up against a wall – by five scantily-clad Vietnamese girls doing the full Full Metal Jacket routine, for real… “me love you long time”, “sucky fucky, let’s go, me love you”, while they giggled and tickled and distracted me as I protested and tried to politely brush them off, laughing “no thank you” while one of them crouched down and fondled my groin with one hand… and lifted my wallet from my pocket with the other.

I saw the wallet come out, and I must admit I completely lost my cool right then and there. I shoved all these girls off me and chased after the one with the wallet, catching her on the other side of the road and throwing her to the floor. I got my wallet back and stood over her, lecturing her – in fact, yelling at her – that it wasn’t okay to steal from me just because I’m a tourist, or words to that effect (though rather more colourful, I think…), before being turned about by a hand on my shoulder. One of the motorbike drivers – the pimp – was confronting me, but before he’d even told me to back off, I just facepalmed him and shoved him to the floor. It was a very stupid thing to do, but at that point I was well and truly seeing red – I’d say that’s probably the most out of control angry I’ve ever been. And I really do think that I could’ve been stabbed if a group of Irish and Australian guys hadn’t been passing at that exact time; my memories of how they got me out of there are pretty blurred, and in fact I was told many of the details by the Irish lads when I happened to see them again the next day – but I clearly remember one of these guys grabbing me by the shirt and looking me in the eye, and saying “Run!”

Which we did – our hotels were all in the same direction, and we ran from back street to back street before ducking into a street stall with tarps covering the sides. We ordered coffees and huddled in there, listening to the scooters driving up and down – some of them no doubt searching for us. Luckily – and it was very lucky indeed – they never did find us, and eventually we made it back to the street where our hotels were. Those lads really helped me out that night, at great risk to themselves, and if any of you boys happens to read this, thanks again!

As for the guys I’d left the bar with, I didn’t see what happened to them and I didn’t know which hotels they were staying in to go check on them; but by chance I bumped into the Scottish lad again in Saigon, who told me he’d woken up safe and sound in his hotel bed with nothing missing other than his memory of anything after midnight. Presumably New Yorker had managed to bundle him into a taxi and out of there while I was surrounded by hookers, and good thing too – Scotty would’ve been thoroughly done over with the state he was in!

View of the Nha Trang countryside — View from the temple in Nha Trang

Of course, following this narrow escape I sent warning emails to Mike and Dave, telling them to be very careful in Nha Trang, especially if they were to go out drinking, and then I continued on to the highland town of Dalat (nice enough place, but at the same time not so interesting) and the beach at Mu Ne (gorgeous beach, without any of the nonsense of Nha Trang!) before finally reaching Ho Chi Minh. And it was there in Ho Chi Minh City that I got a message from Mike – he and Dave had been attacked and robbed in Nha Trang, having come out of the exact same nightclub, by a gang of prostitutes and their bike-riding pimps. They had been similarly surrounded but had escaped, only to be chased and cornered in an ally, and threatened with knives (and were even threatened with being clubbed with motorbike helmets). They emptied their pockets out – they’d made sure they weren’t carrying much after what they’d heard from myself and others about Nha Trang – and handed the contents over, and thankfully walked away.

Boat trip, the Mekong delta — The Mekong delta (day trip from Saigon)

I never did manage to meet up with them again in Vietnam, but I next saw Dave two years later in Vancouver, Canada. After that spell in Asia, I’d headed to Canada to work in the ski resorts, and Dave and his girlfriend had travelled all the way up from southern Argentina to Canada overland (a trip I hope to emulate some day!). And over a few beers by English Bay, he filled me in on the details of that night – and also told me about the bloke they’d met in Nha Trang who’d actually been stabbed, having likewise been surrounded and threatened but trying to fight their way out. To anyone reading this and heading to Vietnam, I say be very careful in Nha Trang at night, don’t carry too much money or valuables, and if you do get robbed just hand it all over and be able to walk away. Don’t do what I did and lash out; in fact, not getting drunk late at night in that town in the first place is probably the best advice.

(I should point out that despite all the crap that happened to Mike & Dave in Vietnam, Mike eventually went back to live there for a while and ended up loving it – he now says it’s his favourite country in Southeast Asia, and that it’s changed a lot in the years since. I certainly don’t mean for this post to be a damning indictment of all Vietnamese and their country; I’m just telling the story of my (ridiculous) experiences there as a backpacker, not wanting to put anyone off going and checking it out for themselves, but to hopefully give people a heads up to keep their wits about them when they do)

So anyway, there you go; in just three weeks in Vietnam I experienced more threats, rip-offs, aggression, danger, and hassle, than I probably have in all the other years of travelling I’ve done combined. Well… there’s been a lot of minor hassle in a lot of countries… but in terms of aggression and really being in physical danger from other people, Vietnam was definitely the worst by far (except perhaps the one nutcase hillbilly encounter on a mountain road in the Rockies). And all simply because there are people there who see (western) tourists as a source of cash, but unlike, say, India, where people will cheekily try it on to get a little extra out of you but then will also be cool about it and sometimes even laugh it off if you don’t let them get away with it, in Vietnam when you try to stop people ripping you off it seems only to lead to aggression and possibly violence, as though they feel they have a right to do so and you’re being deeply offensive for trying to prevent it – I say this all in my own experience, of course. I do know people who travelled there without any problems at all – all of my Japanese and Korean friends who’ve been there, for example, had no trouble; same for my sister and her boyfriend. I think the people who have the most trouble are young, single, western, males (whether travelling as groups or individuals), so if that’s you bring all the patience and streetsmarts you can muster.

So, would I go back? Well, I almost did go back – almost – when I was in Kunming last year and aiming for Bangkok; I was looking at the overland route options from China to Thailand, and as I’d been through Chiang Rai & Chiang Mai before, and I’d been through Luang Nam Tha & Luang Prabang etc before, I was looking for somewhere new to check out on the way (Myanmar was out, due to the MTT permit situation at the China / Myanmar border). It occurred to me that I could swing through northern Vietnam to check out Sapa for a few days and then cross to Laos from Dien Bien Phu; I very nearly did it, but you know what? I imagined crossing the border at Lao Cai and trying to get myself to the Sapa bus without getting fleeced, and all the angry glares and shouting and aggro it would probably involve, and I just could not be fucking arsed with it; so I just took the bus from China to Thailand (now possible in one day, with a change of bus in Huay Xai, thanks to the new bridge over the Mekong), and I didn’t regret it at all. So would I go back? I’d never say never of course… so suffice it to say that if I ever do find myself back there, it will be to my great surprise.

But with that said, the food is great, the scenery spectacular, and the people (the ones who aren’t out to make an easy buck from you) friendly. So, do go to Vietnam and see for yourself what it’s like, but do be careful! (and one last thing to note again – the events I describe here happened in 2008, almost a decade ago, so hopefully you find a different (better) experience to mine)

Further reading: all I’ve given here is an account of my personal experiences in Vietnam, unfortunately largely negative. But I haven’t given any practical advice for actually dealing with it. So, as both a counterpoint to my post and for some good advice on dealing with Vietnam (or more specifically Hanoi), have a read of this great post by a long-term Hanoi expat on how to get your head right for dealing with the Vietnamese capital.

I also strongly recommend travelling by rail rather than road, and booking your tickets online. Baolau* is a Vietnamese online ticket booking agency (trains, buses, and domestic & regional flights), you can search & book using this widget:
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Have you been to Vietnam? Got any similar stories to share? Would also love to hear from anyone who loves Vietnam, and why. Or maybe you just want to call me a moron? Leave a comment below and I’ll get back to you.

Also see my main Vietnam page here

(*affiliate link)