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Axe Me About Backpacking Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam &China - The Something Awful Forums
I am not the world's greatest expert on this topic, but I've backpacked from southern Thailand through Cambodia and Vietnam on up to Beijing by land and river so I've got a little background.
Additionally, I keep up with the regional backpacking scene regularly on the internet and through a couple of acquaintances.
If there's something I don't know then I can usually find it out or point you to more information.
It's worth noting that I'm not an expert on languages, though I know a little about the various cultures, which means I can't answer any language questions, just questions from a backpacker's perspective.
Frankly, I enjoy discussing the topic in general and finding out new things, so ask away if you have any questions.
Quick disclaimer: I only know a little bit about the drug culture and I only know what I've read, heard and seen publicly about the whores (yes, I was the only white man in Asia not there to stick my dick in the locals), but I can direct you to an internet source on just about anything.
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I would love to do something like this, but the only second language I know is Spanish, and even that's suspect.
Did you know any of the languages before you went?
If you didn't, could you talk about how hard/easy it was to still get around.
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What was the cost like for it, and how much spending would you say you did.
What would you recommend as a budget for this sort of thing, not including airfare?
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Quote: : ape!!! came out of the closet to say:
I would love to do something like this, but the only second language I know is Spanish, and even that's suspect.
Did you know any of the languages before you went?
If you didn't, could you talk about how hard/easy it was to still get around.
I can tell you that before I left this was a major concern of mine.
I'd been to Mexico probably 10-20 times before I left and I'd visited France and England with no real problems, but I sort of assumed that Asia would be like some crazy Indiana Jones adventure where I needed a wily kid guide in a baseball cap to negotiate the locals.
I didn't know whether I'd stay in Thailand the whole time or not, but I picked up one of the teach yourself Thai book/tape sets that came highly recommended.
I didn't learn much at all, tonal languages are a motherfucking bitch for me.
The same word in three different tones means three different things - you really have no hope of being understood without some level of strict education or immersion.
The truth, sadly or fortunately depending on your perspective, is that just to get around you won't need anything but English.
I did learn some limited language in all places, particularly in Thailand and Cambodia (always the basics too, please, thank you, sorry, excuse me, etc).
However, in Thailand everyone in every area you might normally want to go to, or can get to easily as a tourist speaks English and will be up in your grill trying to "help" you (even the parrot in my favorite guest house spoke English to you).
Cambodia's much more provincial, but all the big cities (all four of them) and the borders have English speakers, so it's not a problem.
English was more common in South and Central Vietnam than it was in North Vietnam, but in the big towns and cities like Hoi An and Hanoi you couldn't throw a rock without hitting an English speaker.
China was the first place that I actually went an entire day or two without seeing a Westerner or speaking English.
I packed myself across the border on a mineworker's moto and guided myself up from Pingxiang to Nanning, and in that entire time I was basically matching symbols on signs to symbols in my Lonely Planet guide.
As you get closer to Hong Kong, Beijing and Shanghai there are a lot more English speakers and I expect this is the norm in most large Chinese cities (and jesus are they large cities), but it's much more common to go somewhere in China only to find out that the person can't communicate with you.
My most unfortunate incident came when I accidentally filled out the health certificate at the Chinese border by checking "yes" next to every single disease/disorder.
That was tough to explain in broken English, but they were very nice about it
While I enjoyed China and found the people very friendly to me as a Westerner (particularly the kids - oh man they're so cute and funny to giant gwai los), I can say that they don't go out of their way to help you out as much as in Thailand and Cambodia in business transactions when you don't speak the language.
This is not always the case, but at more provincial train and bus stations (among other places) for instance I found that when they saw I was white they'd get a nervous look and on rare occasion they'd suddenly even be out to lunch.
I didn't chalk this up to rudeness or anything, they've just been a very isolated country and I'm sure foreigners are a little daunting.
After all it's their country and I'm the one causing the inconvenience by not knowing the language, so who am I to complain?
I learned enough Mandarin to ask for tickets to certain places and food and what not and solved my own problem.
I hope that answers your question.
To summarize:
Thailand: English Everywhere
Cambodia: English in Populated Areas
Vietnam: English Everywhere in the South, Populated Areas in the North
China: English Spotty Even in Populated Areas, Common in Major Cities
Touristy poo poo Everywhere (net cafes, hostels, border crossings, airports): English Ubiquitous
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What precautions did you have to take regarding the ridiculous number of landmines in the region?
(for those of you who don't know, there are well over a million active lamdmines left over from the Vietnam war scattered about Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos, three nations that are the size of a U.S.
State apiece.)
Is it true what they say about Gary Glitter and Cambodia these days?
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How do you go about getting a visa to backpack in these countries without pre-arranged hotel accomodations and travel plans?
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Quote: : B-Prime came out of the closet to say:
What was the cost like for it, and how much spending would you say you did.
What would you recommend as a budget for this sort of thing, not including airfare?
It completely depends on what you want to do.
I can tell you this, people considering backpacking anywhere else should take a look at SE Asia because it's the cheapest and most beautiful place on the planet to backpack.
At least in American terms, it's like an undiscovered treasure, because almost no one in America is really even aware of it outside of bullshit movies like Brokedown Palace or The Beach that try to scare you.
More specifcally, I'll break down costs for you in a general way.
Thailand is the cheapest to stay in and get around.
Cambodia, despite being poorer, is slightly more expensive to stay in and get around in - mostly because the massive, massive NGO presence (with their $50 per diems) inflates the cost of living for westerners.
Vietnam was about the same as Cambodia price wise.
China is the most expensive, but still way cheaper than Europe or America.
Thailand's free to enter and exit from most developed Western countries for 30 days at a time.
Cambodia costs about $20 for a tourist visa (technically less, but you get charged $20 no matter what - how I miss Cambodia) and a little more for a 6 month renewable business visa (and you don't need to be there on business for a business visa, heh).
Vietnam, IIRC, is $30 for a 30 day tourist visa and about $40 for a 90 day tourist visa(if you need up to the minute figures I can double check).
China is currently loving the US back for our post-9/11 passport shenanigans, and we have to apply for tourist visas now (as opposed to on arrival) which cost $50 for single entry and $75 for double entry.
If you're planning on going to Hong Kong, last I was there it required its own visa, so you may want to think about the double entry to the mainland.
All of these visas can be gotten very, very easily while traveling so you don't need to be a typical American hyperventilating tourist and map everything out ahead of time.
With that out of the way let me say this: if you plan to go only to Thailand your trip can be very, very cheap.
If you don't mind staying in a pretty ratty single or dorm room, you can usually find a place for about $1-2 a night.
A slightly cleaner but still very spartan guest house will run you for like $3-5 a night.
Most areas you go as a backpacker have a ton of options, ranging from $1 a night up to $x000/night suites at the world's finest hotel, the Oriental.
Most nights I think I paid about 150-200 baht, the local currency (40b roughly $1), for simple rooms with only a fan in clean, well kept places.
If you're from Houston like I am, or any other gulf coastal city, Thailand is pretty much like our most humid summer days most of the year (except in certain places up north).
You will adapt to sleeping under just a fan, but prepare to take a lot of showers if you don't like to stink.
For usually 100-200 baht more you can add air conditioning to your room, though I mostly didn't.
I'm from Houston, so it wasn't as big an adjustment for me.
If you're from Minnesota, it might take longer, heh.
The most beautiful place I stayed was on an island called Ko Phangan, in Southern Thailand, and it was a large cabin with two beds and air conditioning for about $10 a night (400 baht).
There, this was the view out my front porch:
And just past that was this:
Basically, you can live in a Corona commercial for about $10 a night in relative luxury.
If you want to take a shittier cabin, it's even cheaper.
If you want to stay somewhere off the beach and just visit, you're back down to the $2 a night range.
And yes, even on the islands, you can find total dives for like $1 a night if you negotiate and stay a few days.
Food can range from nothing up to hundreds of dollars depending on your tastes.
Most meals ran me anywhere from $.50 (simple thai fried rice, khao pad gai, or noodles, phad thai) up to around $5 (desperation stop at a Burger King in Bangkok for lard filled Amerifood), depending on how much I ate and what I ate.
Asia is full of night markets, which are a loving treasure we should import to the US.
People set up stalls on the main drag and serve fresh food cheap.
I could get a full meal and a couple of beers for nothing.
If you love seafood, you'll die in Southern Thailand from all the fresh seafood for nearly nothing price-wise.
Do most of your eating at markets and stalls and you can eat an incredible meal every sitting for $3-5.
Beer is anywhere from $.75-$1 a bottle usually, though sometimes more expensive.
Local liquor is accordingly cheap, but I can't recall how much - maybe $3 for a small bottle of whiskey or rum?
You drink the bottled water everywhere you go, and it's really cheap - though I can't remember how much.
Maybe $.20 a bottle?
It depends on what kind you get.
They have a refillable municipal brand of bottles that are the cheapest.
Bottled branded stuff is more like $.50 or $.75.
Travel really varies, but is incredibly cheap.
You can fly on Air Asia (check rates for yourself) for as low as like $20 (plus taxes and fees).
Most medium to long distance travel is done by train or by bus, and tends to run anywhere between $2-$20 depending on how far you're going and your level of accomodations, though it can be more expensive if you're going in serious style or a really long distance.
You can rent a moto (think honda scooter) for about $10 a day or a car for more.
Rides in various forms of taxis are cheap, but depend on distance.
You can get aroun small local areas for $1 a ride usually.
If you learn the bus routes in cities you can go even cheaper, and of course Bangkok has a subway and a skytrain, which are cheap too.
For Cambodia, roughly triple the accomodations and double the food costs, though alcohol and travel are about the same (or cheaper, you can rent a moto driver for like $5 a day to go around town).
For Vietnam, it's about the same as Cambodia but travel is more expensive.
And China is another thing altogether, I'll be happy to describe it in detail if you want, but it takes a long time to think through all this, heh.
I had no idea before I left if I would leave Thailand or not, but one morning I got up and booked a bus for Cambodia and I ended up in Beijing, so my expenses went way up.
If you look at where Bangkok is on a map and look at where Beijing is, you can imagine that this costs a lot of money to cover distance-wise.
I also stayed a couple of nights in a historic hotel in Hua Hin Thailand (featured in the Killing Fields) for $125 a night.
So I made a few expensive judgements here and there.
Overall I spent about $3500 not counting airfare to and from the US for four months of traveling that distance, that includes the $600 Air China flight back to Bangkok from Beijing and one flight from Da Nang Vietnam to Hanoi to get the gently caress out of Vietnam in a hurry, which I did not care for.
If you just stay in Thailand and Cambodia (which I can safely recommend to casual tourists, though I wouldn't suggest anyone not visit somewhere they really want to see) you could stay for most of a year on $3500 and live fairly comfortably.
If you hook up a bar job in Cambodia you could stay even longer.
That's all a little disjointed, but I hope it makes sense.
I certainly haven't given you an idea of what cool things you can do for cheap, but for example of a touristy thing - a beautiful day long snorkeling and diving trip with a bunch of other young drunk people, accompanied by a lunch caught while you're snorkeling and cooked on the boat, followed by all the wine you can drink, is like $5.
Hope that helps, I can be more specific if you need me to.
For reference you might want to check these out for starters:
http://www.talesofasia.com
http://www.travelfish.org
http://thorntree.lonelyplanet.com Rheumy Sven fucked around with this message at Jul 05, 2005 around 08:17
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Quote: : Asshead came out of the closet to say:
Have you, or anyone you know ever been injured by a punji stick?
No, but I was humorously and playfully accosted by ladyboys a couple of times in the street, so I was almost injured by whatever you call their sticks.
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Quote: : Crackpipe came out of the closet to say:
What precautions did you have to take regarding the ridiculous number of landmines in the region?
(for those of you who don't know, there are well over a million active lamdmines left over from the Vietnam war scattered about Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos, three nations that are the size of a U.S.
State apiece.)
Is it true what they say about Gary Glitter and Cambodia these days?
Landmines both are and aren't a concern.
Let me explain. In Thailand they're non-existent for the most part, though supposedly on the far border near Burma there are still some from rebel activity with the hill tribes up there.
This might be true for the Laotian border too but I can't recall offhand.
Cambodia is another story.
Pretty much anywhere you go as a tourist is fine, they've had about ten years to gank all the mines and they've done a good job.
However, if you travel to less traveled places you're supposed to be really careful and not stray from the path as a number of people lose various body parts (or their lives) every year.
I promise you you'll never see so many amputees as you see in Cambodia.
However in and around Phnom Penh (the capital), Siem Reap (home of Angkor Wat), Sihanookville (the horrible beach city) and Batambang (the other larger city) you're perfectly safe.
Once you get up and around places like Ratankiri, and particularly in the mountains, supposedly you need to be more careful.
I have no personal knowledge of any backpackers having been injured though.
Laos I didn't go to, but it's arguably the least safe in this regard.
It sort of never re-developed at all since the war and it full of UXO of all kinds, ranging from mines to bombs.
There are cities where the bombs are used as parts of building and such.
During the course of the war we dropped an insane amount of bombs on these countries and not all of them exploded, thus the leftovers.
I think we dropped more tonnage on Cambodia during just operation Rolling Thunder than we dropped during all of WWII combined, if that gives you any idea.
Laos is still cleaning up, I believe mostly because it remained (somewhat) communist with no inhrent economic value and never received the international attention that Cambodia and Vietnam did after the war (until recently).
Vietnam is supposed to be moderately dangerous near the borders and in the mountains, but as a tourist you won't have any issues.
They keep a pretty tight lid on regions you can't go to, so you won't be allowed to visit anywhere you can get your dong blown off.
China is perfectly safe from a things-that-splode perspective.
Can't speak to Gary Glitter, sorry!
Rheumy Sven fucked around with this message at Jul 05, 2005 around 05:29
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Quote: : MNC4t came out of the closet to say:
How do you go about getting a visa to backpack in these countries without pre-arranged hotel accomodations and travel plans?
As mentioned above, it's not an issue.
Supposedly you need to have a return or departure ticket to enter Thailand by air, but no one ever asked me for one.
Supposedly it's pretty rare that they do ask.
If you're polite, respectful and learn enough to say hello and thank you, most people don't give you a hard time.
I was never even searched except leaving Thailand for the last time at the airport, but that was during the ASEAN summit.
Imagine if everyone at OHare had every single bag opened and inspected by hand - that's what BKK was like that day.
Fun, let me tell you.
You can arrange visas ahead of time in all the countries, and at the border in Cambodia.
You just need to carry around a sheet of passport pics (you can get these easily in any big city there for a couple bucks) and your passport.
Vietnam and China wanted to know where you were headed, so just pick out a guest house address ahead of time and write it down.
I never had any trouble.
I literally did not plan one thing before leaving, or usually even before going to sleep.
All I took was my backpack with stuff in it, a passport, my international driver's license, a Thailand Lonely Planet and my Wells Fargo ATM/Check Card.
That's it. It was the best thing I ever did too.
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Do you have any recommendations for ways of getting to Thailand that are low-cost?
I'm looking at round trip airfare from January 1st to January 20th and the chaepest I can find is $850.
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Quote: : B-Prime came out of the closet to say:
Do you have any recommendations for ways of getting to Thailand that are low-cost?
I'm looking at round trip airfare from January 1st to January 20th and the chaepest I can find is $850.
I assume the ever-increasing fuel prices the world over are contributing to this (and I don't expect that to change), so they won't be as cheap as they were a couple of years ago ($550ish R/T).
However, IIRC, the off season for going to SE Asia is actually some of Spring and all of Summer here, and the peak season is Winter and some of Fall.
This means that rates are reversed in general from the way we think of them here - so January is cheap to travel here (after new years) and expensive there.
Also, revenue management for airlines dictates that the cheapest days to fly are (IIRC) Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday.
Making your departure/arrival dates on these days sometimes helps.
When it comes to national carriers (like THAI and China Air) there's relatively little variation because they just fix the rates and sell at that price for the most part.
My best advice is to watch http://www.travelzoo.com and keep up with any airfare consilidators you can find.
Perusing http://www.biddingfortravel.com/ can't hurt either.
Also, Orbitz and Travelocity tend to have pretty good prices.
You can sign up for the newsletters from carriers who fly those routes, like NWA and Cathay Pacific.
Lastly, placing a post on the thorntree forums is usually a good idea too, as people can tell you what they paid recently.
Personally, I think if you go off peak you should be able to get there and back for around $700 or less, but that's just a guess.
If you want an open ended or open jawed ticket, the rates go up.
Of late I've noticed that the Hong Kong and Taiwanese carriers seem to have the best deals.
I flew NWA when I went.
NWA is awful, but they were cheap and I could keep the miles in my Continental mileage account.
I got my ticket off of skyauction.com for around $600, but after paying the departure fee for Houston and making it an open-ended ticket it was more like $800 IIRC.
There are no super-cheap ways to get to Asia that I've found, but you can get there cheaper than it first appears with a little work.
If you don't mind setting an exact depart/return date it stays pretty cheap.
Rheumy Sven fucked around with this message at Jul 05, 2005 around 06:52
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Ignore me if this has been answered, but I didn't see it:
How much is airfare to, say, Thailand?
The prices for living in the country are phenomenally low, but how much does it usually cost to go from the United States to the other side of the world?
I anticipate your answer, because if it's relatively affordable, I'm totally taking some time of from college to save up the funds for a Southeast Asian adventure.
Edit: Oh, for God's sake.
Written directly above me right before I replied
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Quote: : PiratePete came out of the closet to say:
Ignore me if this has been answered, but I didn't see it:
How much is airfare to, say, Thailand?
The prices for living in the country are phenomenally low, but how much does it usually cost to go from the United States to the other side of the world?
I anticipate your answer, because if it's relatively affordable, I'm totally taking some time of from college to save up the funds for a Southeast Asian adventure.
Look one post above you, that's the best I can do - if you mean from the US to Thailand.
I have no idea what it costs from other places.
As for taking time off to go, don't do it unless you have the gumption to come back and get right back to work on your education.
That being said, I really wish I'd done it, I can't tell you what an important experience it's been.
EDIT: Oops, I see your edit and raise you one edit!
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I obviously can't stay overseas forever, and if I returned to the US without finishing my education I'd have no employment prospects that really interest me, so I'm pretty sure my motivation wouldn't wane.
My vague plan at the moment (made stronger by the wonderfully low in-country prices you've listed) is to finish my BA, spend a year or so working to save up travel money, see the (cheap) world, and then return to the US for my law degree.
If there's any reason this seems particularly retarded, please let me know.
Thanks for the totally rad thread.
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Quote: : PiratePete came out of the closet to say:
I obviously can't stay overseas forever, and if I returned to the US without finishing my education I'd have no employment prospects that really interest me, so I'm pretty sure my motivation wouldn't wane.
My vague plan at the moment (made stronger by the wonderfully low in-country prices you've listed) is to finish my BA, spend a year or so working to save up travel money, see the (cheap) world, and then return to the US for my law degree.
If there's any reason this seems particularly retarded, please let me know.
Thanks for the totally rad thread.
It sounds like you've got your head on straight, so believe me when I say I didn't mean to lecture.
It's just that for some people, a break in continuity of their patterns is irrecoverable.
For my money, I'd say go and don't look back until you have to.
I can't say it will honestly change your life, everyone has different experiences, but if you go with no expectations and not trying to squeeze some particular thing out of it, it will at the least be an entertaining and educational experience.
While I was over there one of my friends (and his then-wife) met me on his bar trip for a bit, he had just finished law school at Texas.
He can't wait to go back either.
My only other big advice, which it sounds like is up your alley, is to honest-to-God not plan.
You're raised over here, at least most people I know are, to think in terms of planning vacations.
You book hotels, you get tickets well in advance, you make sure you have traveler's cheques, you check the forecast, etc.
Don't. Just get your poo poo together, get a plane ticket, get a Lonely Planet or something, read up on travelfish.org and get on the plane.
It's gonna seem a little creepy at first when you land at 2:30am and don't know anyone, but you quickly figure out how safe Bangkok is.
Once you've gotten one night's sleep, get the gently caress out of Bangkok and don't come back until you're acclimated to being there.
Other than that, don't plan a thing other than your air travel until you step on the plane in America.
Don't even exchange USD for baht.
Nothing.
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Why didn't you like Vietnam?
What was the biggest culture shock you experienced there (food, customs, etc)?
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Quote: : MayuMayu came out of the closet to say:
Why didn't you like Vietnam?
I wrote a post on talesofasia.com answering a guy who asked this and I'll paste it here.
This gets to be a very contentious topic in backpacking forums, so you'll note a number of disclaimers in my post.
I should mention that Houston, where I'm from, has the 2nd largest Vietnamese population in America, so this really isn't a racial or cultural thing that I was aware of.
I interact with Vietnamese folks all the time and eat at Vietnamese Pho joints a lot and have never experienced anything like this stateside.
Quote: : Well, as I mentioned this topic can quickly turn into a pissing match, and that's not my intent.
I found a number of the Vietnamese that I met to be very aggressive and abrupt, I don't think most people who've traveled through there would dispute that characterization - at least in terms of who you have to deal with as a visitor in the cities and more-trafficked countryside areas.
I was worried for a while that I had simply had a bad experience personally, but after speaking with a number of other traveling folks who went there I found that the large majority of them felt the same way.
I'm a pretty easy going guy.
I made it through Thailand's, Cambodia's and China's thousands of touts, beggars and shopkeepers with a smile.
I figure that's part of the experience and frankly you expect a certain amount of chicanery as a Western visitor.
Vietnam is very different though.
There was a lot of bait-and-switch in traveling around other countries, but in Vietnam I'd say there's a lot more outright fraud.
I guess, for example, in Cambodia you might buy a cheap ticket to a place and the folks stick you on a bus to that place but then try to force you to stay in their guest house.
That's annoying, but it's fairly benign in the larger picture.
In Vietnam, they sell you a ticket for a bus that doesn't exist and when you try to get your money back no one knows anything and they scream at you.
That's how I'd characterize what I ran into and what I've read about consistently on the Thorntree and around other sites.
Speaking particularly to aggressiveness, I'm built about like a tight end and I've never been in a fight in my life.
I'm pretty docile really, and tried to wear a smile my whole trip.
In Vietnam I actually had to physically defend myself twice from touts who shoved me and hit me.
I mean shoved and hit violently, not playfully or naggingly.
I had to put one old guy on his back after he took a swing at me.
He'd been trying to get me in his cab.
Once I got in another cab, and he got up, he tried to break the window.
I can take care of myself and these folks really weren't big (or armed) enough to do much damage, nor did any other Vietnamese feel the need to help them thankfully, so everything turned out ok, but being physically attacked really puts you off your game - especially when you're genuinely trying to be nice.
And of course when I wasn't being physically attacked gangs of kids were trying to get into my backpack on my back and steal things.
Some days touts would follow next to you on a moto or cyclo for literally miles constantly nagging you.
I understand that these people have to make a living, and that tourists are a source of income, but after the 1st or 2nd mile of saying "no, thank you" every 2 blocks it gets pretty old.
Imagine that non-stop in the cities.
I could go on and on with little stories, but it should be enough to say that I'm using these as examples of a trend I experience throughout the country.
It's hard to describe everything I disliked, but it adds up over the days and weeks until you just get tired of it.
There are also people that have a great time, so your mileage may vary.
I'll also say that I had some really great experiences in Vietnam.
I got to Chau Doc the night of what I believe was Independence Day and everyone there was really lovely.
There were truckloads of Vietnamese kids in the parade waving and smiling at me as the only yank in the crowd and I let them tug on my arm hair as they and their parents giggled.
I met a former South Vietnamese man and his family on the train north from Saigon, he'd fought with the Americans and spent years in a re-education camp before he escaped to America with the help of a former Army officer he worked with.
He raised his kids here and was incredibly proud to tell me how they had graduated from Carnegie Mellon and Anapolis.
I could go on, but there were some really fascinating and great experience I had there.
It's just that they account for about 10% of the time while being chased, harrassed, attacked, hassled, screamed at and ripped off accounted for more of the time.
The usual response to any critique of Vietnam (I've been reading forums long enough to have seen it many times) is to make fun of the person making the critique.
Assert that they must be stupid or that maybe if they spent less time outside of tourist areas like Pham Ngu Lao and Na Trang maybe they'd know something.
I entered the country at Chau Doc and went by bus, train and motorbike all the way to Lang Son and I stayed in a lot of places along the way.
I'm no expert on Vietnam and don't claim to be, but I saw a lot of it and out of 4 countries over a number of months it's the only one that was very markedly negative in my experience.
That's all I can offer.
Speaking honestly, you don't know me and for all you know I could be lying and I could be a raging rear end in a top hat.
I'm not, but this is the internet, so caveat emptor.
If you want to do some dilligence, I'd suggest poking around the Vietnam/Cambodia/Laos section of http://thorntree.lonelyplanet.com and other forums.
A lot of people post back and forth on this topic and you should be able to get a fair view of what goes on (both sides of the argument) there.
I hope that helps.
Don't not go on my account, everyone should see everything, but if you're picking between Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam my advice would be to pick Thailand or Cambodia.
Quote: : MayuMayu came out of the closet to say:
What was the biggest culture shock you experienced there (food, customs, etc)?
It's tough to say, because in some ways it can be just like home, but in many ways it's like Asia somehow ended up doing everything the exact opposite way we would do it.
Also, each country is different, so culture shock varies by country.
I'd say one of the big culture shocks, particularly in Thailand and Cambodia, was just being me while there.
This is me in Bangkok:
I'm about 6'3" and 255 I think.
That's not huge here, but I was just too big for most of Asia.
I broke about 4 toilets while I was there and constantly ran my sunburned head into doorframes.
It was very hard to find clothes also, so I ended up dressing in baggy hippi clothes I bought a lot.
For instance, in Phnom Penh Cambodia's big Russian market I could only find one "Cambodia" tshirt that fit me.
So in that way it was very weird.
Seats were too small, toilets too small, clothes too small - everything too small.
The locals thought I was hilarious though with my shaved head and some called me "big buddha" as a joke, and I had fun reacting to their surprise and their laughter at me.
If you go everywhere you can with a smile on your face and don't react badly when people think you look funny or kids want to come yank on your facial hair, then it's a pleasant kind of culture shock.
The typical culture shock everyone will have right away is A) the smell and B) the bathrooms.
Bangkok and most seaside cities just loving stink.
You get used to it after a couple of weeks, but it's really tough at first.
I almost threw up one day when I got up hungover and walked down the road to the market and the smell of the squid drying on the docks hit me, and I'm not the kind of guy who throws up at little poo poo like smells.
Most guest houses in Thailand also have sinks in the bathroom where the drain just empties out onto your feet.
So the first time you wash your hands and your feet get wet that grabs you by surprise.
The squat toilet also takes all westerners by surprise the first time too, heh.
It's basically a porcelain pad in the ground with foot pads on it and you squat over the hole in the middle to do your business.
Most toilets in rural areas and in guest houses don't flush either, you have a pail of water next to the shitter and when you're done you ladle water in to manually flush it.
You also don't put your shitwipes in the toilet, so you do the math on that one.
There are lots of little things like this to get used to.
I really just can't explain the culture shock, there's a lot of it, but I enjoyed most of it in Thailand and Cambodia.
The Vietnamese I didn't enjoy for reasons stated above.
The Chinese were tough too, but I didn't consider it anyone's fault, just a cultural difference.
There's a big thing in China about smoking ANYWHERE and spitting constantly.
Supposedly authorities are trying to curb this and have laws against spitting and smoking in certain places, but I got stuck on trains in rooms full of Chinese salarymen who would play cards, smoke like chimneys and spit on the compartment floor for 6 hours straight and it nearly killed me.
Another thing is the attention paid to the Western male.
The disparity didn't occur to me until a chick from California pointed it out to me, but the Western male is the center of all attention in Asia.
You will be swarmed by hookers and people offering drugs constantly in most large cities in Thailand and Cambodia.
In China hookers will call your room all night long if you have a phone trying to set things up.
I could go on and on, but let's just say that the attention just never stops.
Conversely, the Western female is almost completely ignored except by other western males.
It's really quite bizarre once someone points it out and you pay attention to the dipsarity.
Oh, and, get ready to not be around Americans.
I went for weeks without meeting another American.
You'll meet a ton of Canadians though.
I guess one last thing that will catch you off guard, mainly in Cambodia, are the child beggars.
They're incredibly loving cute, they know the name of every US state and capital.
They know a lot of the Presidents.
The speak perfect English and they're super fun to talk to about things.
They're also cunning little salesmen and women, heh.
It's really heartbreaking at first when an 8 year old with no leg pulls that routine on you, you can't resist.
What's even sadder is that you quickly develop an emotional shield and while you don't have to always ignore them, you're more bursque with them than you probably should be because there are so many.
As it turns out, they often run in gangs and they have sort-of-pimps who take a cut of their earnings.
The whole situation sucks.
Kind of a disjointed rant, but I hope I answered your question - it's really hard to answer because there's just so much to say.
Rheumy Sven fucked around with this message at Jul 05, 2005 around 08:12
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Quote: : Deraj came out of the closet to say:
Cool, thanks for the thread No problem!
I enjoy trying to remember everything and I thought it might be a good contribution to Ask/Tell, which I just found today and which is the best forum feature (for me anyway) since D&D.
It's like Google Answers without censorship or accountability, heh.
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Quote: : pukeduke came out of the closet to say:
Any goons wanna backpack it next summer?
:atari: Hopefully I'll be there, heh.
If my business goes according to plan anyway.
If I am I'll try to post about it before I leave in case anyone wants to meet up.
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Just saying thanks for the thread, I've always wanted to travel but honestly never considered any places in Asia besides China and Japan as potential hotspots.
Maybe one day I'll wind up out there.
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Quote: : Achtzehn came out of the closet to say:
Just saying thanks for the thread, I've always wanted to travel but honestly never considered any places in Asia besides China and Japan as potential hotspots.
Maybe one day I'll wind up out there.
No problem! I don't want to turn this into a travelog, but I thought I'd post a few pics to give you some idea of how beautiful and also bizarre it is over there.
You'll wish you had a camera attached to your eye because you constantly see something that's just amazing.
I snapped this when I walked out my guest house front door one morning in Hua Hin, Thailand:
This guy was a lounge singer at a restaurant, again in Hua Hin.
He knew about half the words to every Paul Simon and Elton John song and sort of faked the rest.
I'd love to have him at my wedding if I were ever to get married, he was unintentionally hilarious:
These were the stairs down to the beach from my guest house on Haad Rin (on an island) in Thailand:
These guys were at the UNESCO World Heritage site in Ayuthaya, Thailand.
It's the ancient capital of the Siamese empire IIRC.
This was an overgrown temple door at Ta Prohm temple complex at Angkor Wat in Cambodia.
The jungle temple parts of Tomb Raider were filmed at Ta Prohm, it's one of the most insanely cool places I've ever visited.
I played the Halo soundtrack on my headphones while I walked around sort of on accident, but it fit really well.
Yes, that makes me a huge dork.
I've got about 450 pics, but I just grabbed these out of the directory as they caught my eye.
I'm obviously not a photographer and they're not the greatest pics ever, but I have to say that it's literally a non-stop visual assault, so many things are so curious or outright amazing looking.
You feel like you're in a postcard about half the time that you're outside of Bangkok (and sometimes inside Bangkok, heh).
Rheumy Sven fucked around with this message at Jul 05, 2005 around 09:18
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Thanks for the great answer, and I didn't realize my second question was so open ended.
I am Vietnamese myself so I was curious what you thought of the country, and after reading your reply I realize you're absolutely right.
If you're Vietnamese in Vietnam you don't have as many problems (but they can still spot a foreigner a mile away, even if you're Vietnamese).
If you're a big 6'3" 225lb American such as yourself, they just get loving hostile.
They often expect handouts because the big men in America have it so good that they should be able to take care of every poverty stricken citizen of the country (even if you're a visiting Vietnamese, they're still first class beggars).
Also, I hear Saigon is one of the worst places for pickpocketing in the world.
I don't really know why that goddamned country is so brutal.
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Sir, is it not true that you attempted to conquer kuala lampur wearing little more than a wifebeater and some sneakers?
And that you were propositioned many times by thai less-than-ladyboys for entertaining delights?
I have heard many a disturbing rumor.
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Were you ever scared?
Maybe I just watch too much television, but I'd be too afraid to go backpacking because I don't want to get mugged or killed in some crazy foreign land.
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Quote: : ail came out of the closet to say:
sir, is it not true that you attempted to conquer kuala lampur wearing little more than a wifebeater and some sneakers?
And that you were propositioned many times by thai less-than-ladyboys for entertaining delights?
I have heard many a disturbing rumor.
I was, for a brief time, known as the white trash Colonel Kurtz!
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Quote: : zornsan came out of the closet to say:
Were you ever scared?
Maybe I just watch too much television, but I'd be too afraid to go backpacking because I don't want to get mugged or killed in some crazy foreign land.
the man probably weighs more than 30 asians and is a large, bald, stocky texan.
He would laugh in the face of the puny vietnamese shiv.
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Quote: : MayuMayu came out of the closet to say:
Thanks for the great answer, and I didn't realize my second question was so open ended.
I am Vietnamese myself so I was curious what you thought of the country, and after reading your reply I realize you're absolutely right.
If you're Vietnamese in Vietnam you don't have as many problems (but they can still spot a foreigner a mile away, even if you're Vietnamese).
If you're a big 6'3" 225lb American such as yourself, they just get loving hostile.
They often expect handouts because the big men in America have it so good that they should be able to take care of every poverty stricken citizen of the country (even if you're a visiting Vietnamese, they're still first class beggars).
Also, I hear Saigon is one of the worst places for pickpocketing in the world.
I don't really know why that goddamned country is so brutal.
Hey! I'm glad that made sense.
It's really hard to explain those kinds of things with appropriate nuance, but I had to go into some detail to do it.
If I don't sort of explain what I mean I feel like it comes off as me saying, "I don't like them Vietnameses!!!
Dang!" and that's, of course, not the case.
I can tell you that I thought the central part of Vietnam was particularly beautiful as were Hue and Na Trang.
I read that Dalat is amazing as well, but I didn't make it.
I'll tell you what I read over and over about Vietnam, and maybe you'll have an opinion on this.
"Aggressive." It's just an aggressive culture there, or so I experienced as a foreigner and I have read from other foreigners.
Even the driving is absolutely insane - I've never seen anything like it.
The italians would even run in fear from Vietnamese roads.
I never felt like any of the problems were caused specifically by my being American - which is a question a lot of Americans ask me in reference to the war there.
In fact I felt like they at least welcomed Americans as giant dollar signs, and probably just as Americans.
I did feel like maybe there was some lingering disdain for the French owing to the colonial era, but this was a really thin impression that I got from a few different things and I have no idea if it's accurate.
I think, in addition to what you said (which as an outsider I couldn't see), part of why I really had such a rough time because, like you mentioned, I was a farang (I forget the local word) and they're very aggressive in the cities.
Sorry if my culture shock thing was a bit rambling.
I didn't have much culture shock by the time I got to Nam, though I can say that the ever present communist iconography and propaganda (particularly in the North) was a serious bit of culture shock.
It's not as totalitarian as it used to be I'm sure, and there are markets and people interacting freely everywhere, but the vestiges are still there in the form of banners and statues and museums and such.
Seeing captured American Hueys and what not at what used to be called the Museum of Chinese and American War Atrocities was a trip too, heh.
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Quote: : zornsan came out of the closet to say:
Were you ever scared?
Maybe I just watch too much television, but I'd be too afraid to go backpacking because I don't want to get mugged or killed in some crazy foreign land.
This one's a hard one to answer because I can't do the vulcan mind meld and force my experiences into your brain.
I'll try to be honest though and maybe that will help.
I was scared a little bit when I first got there.
Like you, as an American, all I had seen of this area was poo poo about the war and movies like Brokedown Palace, so I figured I might end up tripping over a land mine while fleeing from the cops who were chasing me on a setup drug bust.
I mean, what's your impression supposed to be as a typical person over here?
We hear nothing on the news about these countries unless there's a Tsunami or a terrorist attack, so of course they must be horrible.
I think arriving at 2:30am and getting in a tinted window Mercedes cab with a guy with sunglasses on was freaky, but you know what?
He dropped me off exactly where he said he would and he even played Leevon by Elton John all the way there.
From then on it was a series of experiences that only reaffirmed what I had begun to suspect.
We have been duped!
It's a generally very safe region for foreigners and I can't emphasize this enough - particularly Thailand and China.
I'll offer some caveats below.
I felt completely safe wandering around the streets of Bangkok at 3am drunk off my rear end.
I also felt perfectly safe on 10 hour bus rides across Cambodia where we'd stop in the middle of nowhere, and in crowded markets and in desolate areas.
There were two times on my trip where I was actually worried, both in Cambodia, and I'll explain below.
I'd never done any illegal drugs.
It's not that I have a problem with people who do, I just decided not to try them until I was 25 because I tend to take to things pretty easily.
Once I turned 25 I didn't have any desire to start (I'm 30 now).
However, in Cambodia they cook with marijuana pretty regularly and one of the things they serve to foreigners in marijuana in regular food - popularly "happy pizza," which is pizza with a liberal dose of weed sprinkled over it.
Well, this Irishman and an Israel and I decided to go out one night for happy pizza.
I had no idea what to expect, but I dug in.
I didn't feel anything, so I started my usual routine of downing rum and cokes.
Probably 10 rum and cokes later the pot kicks in - which is the same time that Aussie dave shows up.
Aussie Dave doesn't like Israel travelers (this is a whole other backpacking thing, but I won't get into it here).
So when Aussie dave sits down and realizes that we're at the table with Omri, an Israel, he starts friednly jibes at the guy.
"I reckon you can't trust no Israeli traveler - yeah?" Stuff like this.
Normally I'd have told him to pipe down, but as I look across the table, the Irishman and I begin giggling incessantly to ourselves.
At this point I'm practically on the floor due, I can only assume, to the effects of happy pizza and 10 rum and cokes.
I'm just giggling inessantly and can't get a sentence out.
The Irishman is hosed too and thinks this is hilarious and he's giggling back at me.
I think somewhere in here Omri excused himself, but at some point, unable to get up the intellectual will to put a stop to Dave's badgering of the Israeli, the Irishman and I announce we're leaving, stumble to our feet, steady ourselves and flag down a sort of rickshaw-wagon taxi.
We climb in giggling like morons, it's about 11pm, and ask the driver to take us to our guest house.
I think everything was going well until we couldn't realize where we were.
We both suddenly decided we were being taken to the kidney factory.
This is apparently the other effect eaten pot has on me, I get paranoid as gently caress.
So suddenly we're begging the driver - who is the nicest guy in the world - not to kill us and offering him all the money we have.
Like a typically cool Khmer he wouldn't take it, he just kept laughing and explaining that everything was ok.
Of course we have no idea and we're going insane.
I think he was probably as scared of us as we were of him.
Keep in mind we're on the back of a flatbed wagon that this guy is peddling down the street, so it's not like we couldn't just leap off - this is how hosed we were mentally.
The Irishman is screaming DONT FOOKIN KILL US NAH and I'm pleading.
The guy finally gets us to the hotel and we try the gate and its locked and we're screaming at each other histrionically MY GOD THEY'VE LOCKED US OUT THEYRE TRYING TO KILL US WHAT WILL WE DO.
OH ME FOOKIN KIDNEYS LAD.
We hatch a plan that involves the Irishman scaling the 10' tall fence and letting me in, which he does, but the gate is padlocked.
So at this point I'm begging him not to leave and telling him if he does please not to leave me to be killed.
Of course the owner comes out and happily unlocks the gate, laughing at how stupid we are.
I think I probably hugged the loving owner and I ran into my bedroom and hid under the covers.
What was I scared about?
Nothing. I was a drugged up moron, but it was hilarious in retrospect.
Here we were two drugged up drunk fuckers with no idea where we are trying to stuff money at the Khmer driver in the middle of the night and what happened to us?
They wouldn't even take the money we tried to give them.
This is the kind of thing I experienced a lot in Cambodia, which is a place I grew to love.
The other weird thing was a little more unsettling.
I was staying in a lovely backpacker district call Boeung Kok in Phnom Penh (the Cambodian capital).
It's a bunch of wooden shanties by the lake with a huge mosque on the corner.
This was late 2003, so tensions were a little higher at the time for obvious geopolitical reasons.
In fact, not too long before, I had been in a town called Ayuthaya in Thailand when Hambali (an Indonesian), the mastermind of the Bali Bombings had been caught there.
So while it's generally safe, there are people hiding out in the politically neutral countries like Thailand and Cambodia.
When I got to Boeung Kok they had in the paper that Hambali had laid low in a backpacker district in Boeung Kok for a while before Ayuthaya.
So at this point I was on the famous-last-homes-of-Hambali tour and I was probably a little more keen eyed than usual.
Anyway, one day I stop into this internet cafe and these guys who were running it didn't look exactly Khmer.
They looked darker with different features.
When they saw me they sort of perked up, but I didn't think anything of it.
Then they asked me where I was from, and I told them "Texas" in my typical friendly way.
They proceeded to start asking a LOT of questions - and not just conversationally.
Probably because of my shaved head and large redneck appearance.
Had I ever been to Washington DC?
Was I in the Army ever?
Did I work for the government?
I started to get a little nervous, so I notified someone and within 5 minutes had paid off my bill and high tailed it out of Boeung Kok.
Were these guys up to no good?
Were they curious?
I dunno, but this was the only time in my entire trip I felt legitimately nervous enough about something to alter my routine and ship out in a hurry.
Those are the only two times in four months I was scared.
Now, Phnom Penh, Cambodia is not the safest place at night and neither is Sihanoukville.
There are very occasional reports of tourists being robbed at gun point in PP and tourists, more women than men, do get mugged from time to time.
There have even been occasions where the kids of local Khmer muckety mucks (known as the coconut gang by the expats) have pistol whipped westerners when they've been piss drunk and the westerner is sitting at "their table." These are really super-isolated incidents though for the most part (there have been a few strings of robberies, but they're taken care of quickly).
I even saw a guy get shot one night in Phnom Penh, but I can tell you that aside from a possible ricochet I was in no danger.
They really don't gently caress with foreigners and haven't for some time.
The people I ran into, touts and beggars aside, went out of their way to help me and I left Cambodia with an incredibly positive impression of the country.
Going in all I knew was The Killing Fields and a book I had read on Pol Pot.
Coming out the other end, I understand things better.
Laos is actually a little bit more unsafe and unstable, and while I was in Thailand some terrorists blew up a bus with Swedish tourists in it.
So there is some danger in Laos, but counterintuitively, everyone who vists Laos loves it more than anywhere else.
I didn't go so I can't say.
What's my point with all this rambling?
Just this: I spent 4 months backpacking mostly alone across all those countries and was only ever truly afraid for my safety twice - one of those times on drugs to the point where I didn't know who I was practically, heh.
In all that time I never had one thing robbed, never had to put up with hostility (outside of Vietnam) and met a ton of very friendly people who, even when they were trying to scam me into buying something, had no ill intentions toward me.
After I got back to America I had a bachelor party in Nuevo Laredo, Mexico.
The first night there I got thrown in jail on a bullshit shakedown by the local policia, claiming I was a coke mule, and had my pocket picked by a transvestite.
So, my point is - Asia is really quite safe in general, you just have to use your noodle and be careful when its called for.
If I had spent a bunch of time in whorehouses or something, who knows, but I didn't so I can't say.
If you want to see what Cambodia looks like, Matt Dillon made a movie there with James Caan in 2002 called City of Ghosts that captures the bizarreness of the expats and the generosity of the locals pretty well (though it's about something else).
It's also a good view of what it looks like there.
It's just a phenomenally strange and crazy and entertaining and sad and fun place full of interesting folks.
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I'm interested in doing this toward the end of this year/beginning of next finances permitting.
Where did you keep your belongings and valuables when you were exploring, scuba diving or the like?
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Quote: : Kinky Friedman came out of the closet to say:
Asia is full of night markets, which are a loving treasure we should import to the US.
Having recently had one of the best meals of my life for $8 [including 2 beers] in the Temple Street night market in Kowloon I am in full agreement.
Just don't expect much in the way of decor .
For those of you who know HK movies, Temple Street is where the folks in "God of Cookery" start out.
Qirex fucked around with this message at Jul 05, 2005 around 23:32
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Quote: : flunk XVI came out of the closet to say:
I'm interested in doing this toward the end of this year/beginning of next finances permitting.
Where did you keep your belongings and valuables when you were exploring, scuba diving or the like?
The bag I just left in my guest house room, it's really too large to do much with.
By smaller bag, with passport (if I still had it), money and such, I usually hid in whatever good spot I could find.
In a ceiling tile, under a toilet lid - whatever.
I don't exactly think it would've taken the world's greatest burglar to find them, but I'd rather not have them lying around.
I usually also separated out the ATM card from the passport.
It sounds like a chore, but it becomes second nature.
When you enter a room you get used to finding a relatively secluded spot and putting your poo poo there.
Sometimes there isn't a secluded spot, so I'd just stuff it under the bed, heh.
Most places take your passport anyway, so it's basically the money and copies of the passport that I wanted safeguarded.
Most joints didn't have lockers that I saw, though there was always a place in town where you could go lock your poo poo up.
I have to say, I never had a problem with this, but I also kept a good eye on my bag.
I only let it get out of sight when they absolutely insisted - like in a luggage compartment on a bus.
However, even then I'd wait, staring at it, until the bus pulled out.
And when the bus stopped, I'd be the first one out to keep an eye on the luggage compartment.
Same for trains and boats - if the bag went up top, I went up top.
It's not rampant, but a great deal of bag theft while traveling takes place during transit.
Anyway, hope that answers your question!
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Quote: : MayuMayu came out of the closet to say:
Did you have to worry about vaccinations before you went?
If so, how many did you have to get?
Resources at bottom:
This depends on local circumstances, where you're going and what you're doing.
I can tell you that the vast majority of populated, or even semi-populated areas were perfectly safe.
There's not even malaria with any regularity.
I wasn't loving any whores, so I wasn't worried about anything besides Hep A (waterborne) and of course the obvious diptheria/tetanus stuff.
So I got a Hep A jab and updated my Dip/Tet.
I even made sure to yell Raising Arizona Quote: s at the nurse about the Dip/Tet, but she didn't get the joke.
My total bill with insurance was like $80 or something.
I can't tell you what to get and what not to get, but I can tell you that you probably won't need to go beyond the Heps and typical tetanus stuff if you're not going to be doing anything too risky or going anywhere too unpopulated/currently risky.
As for malaria, if you're going into the dense, dense jungle or an area that's having a local outbreak you might want to consdier malarone or doxycyclene.
There's also some crazy poo poo like Japanese Encephalitis that tends to be rare, but can have outbreaks - it's currently, and sadly, spreading among children in parts of North Vietnam, so if you're going there you'd want to check up on it.
And typhoid's on the list too.
I'm not in any way qualified to speak authoritatively on this, so, to be sure, consult a travel clinic or check the local conditions yourself from over here and make a decision.
Jabs were one of the only things I should have added in my earlier post before saying "don't plan a thing." You definitely want to plan your jabs (some of them need to be taken way ahead of time) and you definitely don't want to get Hep and end up in chemo with a 50 year life span or whatever it causes these days.
So DO plan your jabs, but it's a really minor affair.
And don't get all freaked out by what's on the list.
The State Department and other US Government bodies go out of their way to err on the side of caution, so they make everywhere else in the world sound like a danger-ridden no man's land.
The truth is usually somewhere in-between, so be safe but don't be paranoid.
Unbelievably, the CDC (which is the best resource in the world actually) has a non-linkable subsection for regions, so you need to go here and select "Asia - Southeast":
http://www.cdc.gov/travel/
The UK NHS has a good site on travelers' health too:
http://www.fitfortravel.scot.nhs.uk/Asia.html
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Quote: : qirex came out of the closet to say:
Having recently had one of the best meals of my life for $8 [including 2 beers] in the Temple Street night market in Kowloon I am in full agreement.
Just don't expect much in the way of decor .
For those of you who know HK movies, Temple Street is where the folks in "God of Cookery" start out.
Oh how I miss those markets.
After looking twice at that picture, an important difference for me was that the Thai night markets tended to be out in the open and Thais don't smoke like chimneys, heh.
I can see the ever-present Marlboro packs there in the pic.
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Thanks for the informative thread.
How's the local wildlife?
I've heard horror stories about plate sized spiders and cockroaches too big to fly.
I'm pretty sure I could stomach the smells and get used to the toilets, but insects freak me out.
How bad is it in populated areas and more off track?
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Quote: : Judas came out of the closet to say:
Thanks for the informative thread.
How's the local wildlife?
I've heard horror stories about plate sized spiders and cockroaches too big to fly.
I'm pretty sure I could stomach the smells and get used to the toilets, but insects freak me out.
How bad is it in populated areas and more off track?
I didn't go to any of the huge national-forest-type-places, so I didn't get into the real wilderness.
However, I can tell you that in general (outside of China) it's typical tropical type stuff, mostly similar to what you'd see on the Gulf Coast.
A fair amount of roaches and mosquitoes and poo poo.
I didn't see any huge spiders but they probably have some.
The worst experiences I had usually involved roaches.
My first class sleeper in Vietnam was great until 30 minutes into the trip (I was on the top bunk) when about 20 roaches came pouring out of the ceiling onto my shirt.
Cambodia held the strangest experience for me in this regard.
I got suckered into one of these cheap, cheap, same-same-but-different Bangkok to Siem Reap bus trips for like $2 where they basically just try to force you to stay at their guest house at the end of the trip.
It's not the worst thing in the world, usually the guest house is no worse than any other, so in this case I stayed there and they were cool.
However, this guest house had a serious bug problem - at least my room did.
I spent the first 20 minutes killing big rear end Texas-size roaches with my flip flop (like some kind of redneck housewife).
I threw them all out in the hall to make a point, heh.
I thought I was done killing bugs, so I went to take a shower.
Everything was going fine, I was all lathered up and I feel this thud on my shoulder.
I shake a little and look down and a three inch milipede is running around the shower floor.
I know gently caress all about millipedes, but I've read that their bites hurt, so I'm basically prancing around like one of the queer eye for the straight guy crew while trying to jump out of the shower with soap in my eyes and avoiding the millipede.
I killed it and threw it out in the hall too, and that was the last of my bug issues, really, untilt he above Nam experience.
Sure, there were roaches here and there and some big rear end rats on the lake in Boeung Kok, PP, but I never had any problems with anything.
Hope that answers your question!
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