South East Asia - Vietnam & the Malaysian gay community.

Last time I left the SE asia story we were in Cambodia. The last night there was drunk. We ended up drinking with a couple Canadian and English. They were pretty funny. However the next morning we almost missed our bus. 5:30 we get a slamming on the door telling us bus was ready to go! So after being ripped off for the room and tab for drinks (I swear we didn't drink that much, honest!) We scrambled on to the bus headed for Ho Chi Minh.

Vietnam was nice. It was cleaner than Cambodia and people seemed nicer. Both Cambodia and Vietnam work in US dollars. Better to use the local currency but travelling like we were it was easier to just carry the one currency. Our guest house was $12 US a night and was clean WITH A/C. Upon arrival we booked a tour the next day for the Mekong.
Turtle, Pheonix, Dragon, Unicorn. No its not some Captain Planet summoning spell. These were the 4 main islands that we visited on the tour.
Dragon was about fruit markets with LOADS of tropical fruits and that includes the king of fruits - Durian (Sorry its hard to see but its the green things in the baskets).
For those who don't know, its been described to smell like hell and taste like heaven.
Turtle was a Longan farm, we had lunch here (pretty average really).
Unicorn was a coconut island. There we had some coconut candy and bought this $1US bananna moonshine. Heavy stuff.
Pheonix was a canal ride with 2 really old ladies doing all the rowing. Felt kinda bad. They went non-stop for a couple of kilometres.

That night we to the local markets back at Ho Chi Minh for some bargains. Picked up some stuff for a friend here in Shanghai who has helped us enormously. I ate some coconut prawns which was pretty tasty. (The previous night we had PHO.) Then it was clubbing! We went to a place called Apocolypse Now. It was alright. The vietnamese girls are quite pretty. But the shocking part night was, aside from the music, the malaysian guys we had met from our Mekong tour. You see they were there too and had seen us walk in. A friendly wave later we found ourselves standing at their table surround by a bunch of guys who were into well, guys. I didn't really have a problem cos it was pretty funny. I wasn't sure of it until one of them started telling me that I should hang around a couple more days for the mardigra. I said in the exact words, "but I'm not gay." In hindsight is should have said "But I not gay wan!"

We found our way back via a tricycle that had seats in front with some old guy pedaling at the back. Now in our slightly intoxicated state, Lyndon decided he was going to do the riding for the guy. So there I was sitting wedged in this seat with this guy while Lyndon pedaled us to sure death. He kept veering into traffic, which was halarious at the time. Ofcourse we long rode past our hotel when we decided to get off. It all worked out because we found an all night Pho shop! Only problem was that we didn't have enough money for 2 bowls. So we had to share. I love spicy food so it HAD to be the spicy Pho. This was maybe the nicest Pho I'd EVER eaten. Well it was at least until I couldn't feel the insides of my mouth cos there was so much chilli in there.

It was shortly back to bed and ready ourselves for the trip back across cambodia in search for the beaches of Thailand and the Full Moon Festival. I'd had enough of cities and wanted large bodies of water.

Our next stop, Thailand Koh Phangan. Full Moon Party March '06. The promise of thousands of people on the one beach partying for 48 hours.