Saigon, Vietnam Trip Report

Neither myself or that English fish Amatay knew much about Vietnam, other than the famous war in which the communist North Vietnam defeated the USA backed South. But what better way to find out about a country than to go there and experience it? It was just a cheap 1-hour flight from Bangkok, Thailand and we landed in Ho Chi Minh City (better known as Saigon).

Vietnam is still a communist state to this date, in that there is only one political party - The Communist Party. However, other than the lack of democracy, their citizens seem to have all the freedoms of any western country. I didn't see anything that would make me think that the Vietnamese people are under oppression. There's no real government presence visible, and you only have to walk around Ho Chi Minh City to realise that their economy is capitalist. Private businesses and international brand shops are everywhere (but thankfully there's not a single McDonalds to be found!).

As we set out to explore the city on our first day we walked out of the hotel and to the end of the street. I remarked about how good it feels to walk around without being hassled by the prostitutes, beggars, slimy suit salesmen, scam artists and tuk tuk drivers that we'd experienced staying in a major tourist area of Bangkok.

Then as we turned the corner a man ran up right beside us and said "Where are you going?". I've been to enough cities around the world to know a dodgy bloke when I see one so I just ignored him. "What do you need?" he said. "Get lost mate!" I said. "Where you go? I can take you? What you need? I can get you" he shouted. "Please just **** off!" I shouted back at him. He seemed to get the message.

Crossing the road for the first time was a scary experience. The roads are about 8 lanes deep with people riding scooters and none of them stop at pedestrian crossings. We learned how to cross by watching how the locals do it. The trick is to walk out slowly and the scooters somehow avoid you.



The roads are just perfect for a game of Frogger!



After we crossed the road safely there were 3 guys standing on the other side next to parked scooters. They asked us where we were going, we ignored them, they asked us if we needed a ride, we said no thanks. Then they offered us some prostitutes. This was about 3:30pm in the afternoon.

As we walked around we found these scumbags on every street corner. Between 1-4 of them, on, every, single, corner, harassing the hell out of anyone that looks like a tourist. First with an offer of transport on the back of their death-mobile scooter and then an offer of "a lady". Occasionally two "NO"s to those questions would result in an offer of drugs. That nonsense was very annoying but after a while we just gott used to it. Assholes shout at and harass you as you walk down the street and you just ignore them. Saigon life.

Eating out in Vietnam is ridiculously cheap, as we found out on our first night. It's even cheaper than in Thailand, which is already incredibly inexpensive!

One of the common tourist scams that I read about in Vietnam is that some restaurants have a separate western menu that they give to tourists where the prices are hugely inflated. As we looked around for somewhere to eat dinner we found one such establishment. They had main courses listed for between 20,000 and 40,000 Dong. That's like $1-2. As we looked at the menu next to the door this old guy in a suit, presumably the manager, practically pushed the employee next to the door out of the way so that he could present us with the Special Western Set Menu. A choice of 2 different set meals, priced in US dollars at $20. I promptly handed him the menu back. "I don't feel like paying the white man tax tonight mate."

We did easily find a place with great food and super low prices and had 3 tasty courses and a cocktail for about a fiver. The only bad thing was that they served us each course when we had barely started the previous one. Soup, appetizer and main course were all on the table within five minutes of each other. This seems to be the way they serve food in Asia.

We sat a table on the low balcony area next to the street to do some people watching. That seemed like a good idea until we had every street hawker in the area come up to us trying to sell the biggest load of old crap. Then came a ghostly looking woman holding a baby that stood in front of us for no less than 5 minutes, crying and moaning and droning "I'm so hungry, my baby, I'm so hungry, my baby". I ended up seeing that same woman three times during my short stay in Vietnam hassling tourists. A professional beggar and exploiting a child in the process. I really think it's a bad idea to give these people money.

On our second day in Saigon, we did a lot more exploring. We checked out Ben Thanh Market, where a lot of the locals shop for food and items.



With the temperature and humidity absolutely destroying us we quickly looked for an alternative to walking. We had seen these vehicles called Cyclos, that are basically bicycles with a seat on the front for a passenger, and decided that it would be fun to have some guys pedal us around the city for a while.

I had read previously that the going rate for Cyclos was 50,000 Dong per hour ($2.50 USD), and that they were everywhere, just sitting around all day with no customers. So, feeling generous, we decided we were going to pay double that - it's only fair for what seems like hard work. We approached a couple of Cyclos. I asked them how much and the guy said something I couldn't understand then tried to get me onto the Cyclo. "No, how much do you want to cycle us around?" I asked. "How much do you want to pay?" he replied. I told him we'd pay them 100,000 per hour and seconds later he was cycling me around Saigon.



The Cyclo guys dropped us off at the War Remnants Museum, which contains exhibits from the Vietnam War. This place was previously named The Museum of American War Crimes but the name was changed in the 90's after Vietnam became a more liberal country and started trading relations with the USA. On display were many planes, tanks, guns and bombs as well as an exhibit on Agent Orange with some disturbing images showing it's effects.



The Cyclos were waiting for us when we got out and they recommended that we go to Reunification Palace (formally Independence Palace, before the commies took over). This was where South Vietnam's leader stayed during the Vietnam War and the war officially ended when Tank 843 of the North Vietnam Army smashed through it's gates. Unfortunately this place was pretty boring. It's basically just a bunch of rooms with a big table and some chairs, that you aren't even allowed to enter. There is a replica of Tank 843 outside, but that's about as awesome as it gets.



After coming out of the palace we asked our Cyclo drivers where they recommended next. They said something I couldn't understand, and kept repeating it. I asked them to show me where it was on the map and after pretending not to understand me a few times they eventually showed me. It was some place miles away, and at the 2 miles per hour that guy cycled at he was obviously looking to run us up with a big fare.

It had been 90 minutes since we hired these guys and we just wanted them to take us somewhere close by and end the fare.  They cycled a few blocks and dropped us off at the Museum and when I said that we were ending the ride here and wanted to pay, the guy got very offended. I said that we just wanted to do stuff on our own from here on and then he got clingier than a Thai girl. He just didn't want our relationship to end so damn fast, he had his mind set on the long term.

Being nice (we were already paying the guys double what the going rate was) we paid them 200,000 Dong for 2 full hours, even though we only used them for 1 and 3/4 hours. I gave my driver 2 x 100K notes and the fish Amatay handed him 2 x 500K notes. Just as the guy was about to grab it out of his hand (with a HUGE smile on his face) I grabbed it first and told him those are 500Ks not 100Ks. The Cyclo guy's smile dropped immediately.

Then he got very angry and said is "no, it's 300,000 Dong each". Oh really? He got really aggressive with me and in amongst all the Vietnamese or incomprehensible English he said that it was 200,000 for the ride and 100,000 for his tip "You like, you tip. You like, you tip". We stood there for 5 minutes having an argument when the bastard burned my hand with his cigarette, almost certainly on purpose. After that happened we just quickly walked away from them, and into the museum, which was absolutely horrendous.

We decided to get out of the city centre on our third day so took a boat ride up the Saigon River to see the Cu Chi Tunnels. It took about 2 and a half hours but the weather was hot and the scenery was awesome.



Once we got to the tunnels they sat us down to watch a half hour propoganda documentary that looked like it was made 30 years ago, celebrating the Viet Cong and the civilians that contributed to winning the war, often referring to them as "American Hero Killers". They featured one little girl who "Helped KILL 13 AMERICAN SOLDIERS. She was awarded the medal award of AMERICAN HERO KILLER, for her efforts in KILLING 13 AMERICAN SOLDIERS." It went on like that...... There were quite a few Americans in our group who seemed uncomfortable.

After the video we were shown some of the common traps that the Viet Cong would leave around the jungle for their enemy. We were then offered the chance to purchase some bullets at a vastly inflated price so we could feel what it was like to fire guns in the Vietnam jungle. Of course I got out the cash and grabbed an AK47, pow pow pow.

After some target practise we went down the actual tunnels, which have been widened by 20%, and the 1 foot squared entrances made into big stairways, to allow us fat western tourists to experience them. The Cu Chi tunnels are only a small part of a huge tunnel network that runs under Vietnam and was an extremely important asset to the Viet Cong in winning the war. Inside the tunnels it's extremely cramped, hot and and humid, with little air. You have to squat and shuffle your feet to get through them. It's extremely uncomfortable for just a couple of minutes so I cant begin to imagine what it must have been like for the VC soldiers who used them for long periods of time.




Our fourth day was a bit of a write-off. We woke up super late, decided that we were going to visit Saigon Zoo and Botanical Gardens, one of the oldest zoos in the world. But we found the Hard Rock Cafe on the way there and omnomnomed some amazing burgers.

Unfortunately, after our visit to Hard Rock, we ended up arriving at the zoo just as they were closing. Fail. We spent the rest of the day at the pool/bowling/video game arcade at the top of Diamond Plaza, then playing on PokerStars from our hotel room the rest of the night.

On our last day we did make it to the zoo. The entry fee was 8000 Dong, that's like 40 cents, L-O-L. Three hours of entertainment for some pennies, gotta love Vietnam.




On our last night we ate at the same place we did on the first night. AGAIN they shipped us all courses at once, haha.

Our next stop will be Hong Kong

Thailand Trip Report - Bangkok and Phuket

On the 4th of February I travelled from Bali, Indonesia. After a couple of nice Malaysia Airways business class flights via Kuala Lumpur I was in Phuket, Thailand, well relaxed and well fed, ready to enjoy myself. Unfortunately however, I had to wait around Phuket Airport for nearly 3 hours hours to meet online MTT legend Simon 'Amatay' Jones, who was flying all the way from England and will be travelling with me over the next 5 weeks. His flight was delayed. As I sat at the meeting point, just past immigration/customs, I was thoroughly entertained by watching the constant stream of 90 year old white men walk through and meet/greet their 18 year old Thai brides. So sick.

We stayed in Phuket for a full week. My friend Joel 'jcar9271' Carr, who is a PokerStars Supernova SNG player gave me a room in his balla Villa in Chalong and the fish Amatay stayed in the cockroach infested apartments down the road.

Joel also sorted us out with a brand new scooter each, but after seeing how crazy these Thais drive on the way from the airport we weren't too keen on using them. However it turned out that scooters were the only reasonable way to get around where we were staying, so we had a few practise sessions on some quiet roads and then braved the busy highways.



After learning to use the scooters we were barely off them the whole day. We zipped around, exploring the island and just generally tried not to get killed by the numerous retards driving on Phuket's deathroads. It's a pretty scary experience at first, driving on Phuket's steep winding roads where there's seemingly no speed limit and all sorts of ridiculous obstacles to avoid. Obstacles including loose gravel, huge pot-holes and countless people driving food carts and scooters along the edge of the wrong side of the road straight into traffic. It's also very standard to be simultaneously overtaken AND undertaken if you try to leave a safe gap between yourself and the driver infront of you. We got used to the roads and the scooters very quickly though and they were a lot of fun and gave us a huge amount of freedom to see and do some cool stuff.

At night, while Amatay was busy chatting up the ladyboys in Chalong's bars I decided to stay in because I was extremely keen to grind some profits and FPPs on PokerStars. January was a devastating month for me financially after bricking all 7 events that I played at the Aussie Millions, spending $10,000 on hotels, travel, food and entertainment and almost busting my bankroll on PokerStars, not to mention that I was without a working laptop for the first 10 days of the month so was unable to play online. I planned to play at least 5 hours every day while staying at Joel's house and he set me up a nice desk to grind at and had 2 stable internet connections. within 90 minutes of starting my first session of 2/4 CAP PLO I ran worse than ever before and spunked off all but a few hundred bucks of my roll. I kept getting AAxx double suited in preflop against 2 mega whales with junk, getting 2:1 on my money with around 48% equity in the pot.

Needless to say I won very, very few of those races!

I tried to take my mind off the pokers by getting up early the next day and heading over to Kata and Karon beaches to relax.



The beach is fun for me for a couple of hours, after that, not so much. It gets very boring very quickly. The only interesting moments are when some Thai guy walks past with some absolute crap that he's trying to sell to tourists and I can some entertainment from laughing at him. I think Amatay would be happy just lying on the beach listening to his i-pod all day long, but I convinced him to get up and go do a bit of exploring with me. We drove around and found a bunch of depressed looking elephants in shackles which their owners use to give rides to the tourists at around $45 per hour per person. It looked quite dangerous and a shame for the Elephants so we decided to pass on the ride.



We then drove up some steep winding roads to visit The Big Buddha of Phuket, a towering monument that is visible from anywhere on the south of the island. The road leading up to it was extremely steep in places but fortunately there was very little traffic. I did end up coming off the road at one point but had slowed down enough that there was no damage done. Once we got to the top there were a whole bunch of tourists and very few Buddhists. There was a huge market of stalls that you had to walk though, selling cheap crap stuff aimed at tourists, before you could get up close to the Big Buddha. We weren't that impressed with the monument, and it still seems to be under construction, with scaffolding surrounding it.



After dark we went for dinner and spent about $4 each on a 2 course meal with drink. Food is insanely cheap in Thailand, in fact EVERYTHING is insanely cheap in Thailand. For a couple of grand per month you could live there like an absolute king, live in a balla house, eat out for every meal, have massages every day, and much more. After dinner Joel was sitting grinding SNGs, so I decided to sit at the desk he set up for me beside him and grind microstakes poker all night long to try to rebuild my Stars roll. After about an hour it was going well and was up 7 buyins, before losing them all back, then my laptop crashed mid-session. No big deal I thought, lost a bit of money I had invested in some pots but whatever, just rebooted, logged back in and started playing again. 5 minutes later I get a bit of rungood back, flopped sets on a bunch of dry boards with fish betting into me, when the graphics on my screen go all garbled and my laptop turns off. It never came back on after that, video card was dead, huge huge beat.

My video card had originally died on January 1st in Prague and I had to wait until January 10th in Malaysia before I found someone who could fix it. Whatever they did obviously wasn't good enough because a few weeks later there I am again with a busto laptop. The problem I have is that my laptop is special in that it has a 17" screen with a 1920x1200 resolution, that I absolutely need to play poker on, as I can only play with tiled tables. It's near impossible to buy a laptop with that spec in a shop, and it's not easy to order a replacement video card or laptop online and have sent out to me since most places only ship to the cardholder address. I'm also spending a short time in each place I visit before moving on so having a friend in the UK/USA buy me something and then having them courier it to me, trying to predict my exact address on a certain day and the delivery date of the courier, seemed like a bad idea too. My first reaction when my laptop died was that I just wanted to quit my travels and settle down somewhere to just concentrate on playing online poker, however I decided to just see how things went over the next couple of weeks, and just have fun without thinking about poker or blogging.

The next day was Amatays birthday so he got to decide how we spent the day. So we went exploring for a nice beach to spend the day at then made plans to go for a big night out in Patong in the evening. We didn't have to drive far before we found a much smaller and nicer beach than the one we visited the day before. It's called Nai Harn.



In the evening myself, Amatay, Joel and another poker player living on the Island, Nick, went out into the degen capital of the world, Patong. Everywhere you look in Patong there are ugly ladyboys standing on at the side of the street and sleazy old western men with young Thai prostitutes on their arm that they've easily picked up from one of the many, many go go bars. As we walked along one of the main street I had girls constantly come up to me, stand right in front of me trying to get my attention, slap me on the arse or grab my forcefully by the arm. It would be really flattering if I hadn't already seen them do the same thing to some geriatric bag of bones seconds earlier.

Initially we avoided the sleaze by going to a nice Mexican restaurant on a roof terrace, and then to an awesome and huge pool hall with nice tables which was super cheap. Then we went out drinking, and checked out some of the sick stuff that goes on, but I will keep this blog tasteful and not mention any of that. Needless to say the pervert Amatay, who's blog only became popular after he populated it with porn links, was loving every minute of it. Myself, not so much, just isn't my scene, but the night was a lot of fun anyway.



What was an awesome night unfortunately ended with Joel being robbed of his wallet and phone by 2 disgusting ladyboys as he drunkenly tried to get into our driver's car. I was taking photos at the time because I thought it was hilarious that there were ladyboys harassing him, it was only when we got back to Joel's house that we realised that the bastard ladyboys robbed him.

The next day was a write off as everyone slept all day. I was the only person that didn't get wasted the night before so I was pretty much kicked around on my own all day and was pretty depressed about not having a working laptop and not being able to use the spare time to grind myself out of the mess I'm in with online poker runbad. I drove to Banana IT, the biggest IT store there to see if I could find a laptop to buy that was semi suitable for me, but their largest screen laptop was some low resolution 14" nonsense, completely useless. Pretty boring day but in the evening I went with Joel and his wife for food, a massage and to eat at the best banana pancake stand in Phuket. Omnomnomnomnom.



The next again night and I went back to Patong with Amatay, as we wanted to watch some live Muay Thai boxing. It was a lot of fun but pretty expensive by Thailand standards at $65 for a ticket. We bet each other on every fight which made watching the fights way more entertaining. We were even in the betting before the very last fight when I convinced Amatay to up the bet from 100 to to 250 then my guy pretty quickly shipped the knockout blow to Amatays donk fighter, gg son.



After the boxing we went around Patong, experiencing more of the degen capital of the universe. This place is just crazy. Words cant describe what it's like there and videos don't do it anything near justice, especially since you can't use cameras in the places where the really sick stuff goes on.



On our last day in Phuket we hired a longboat to Coral Island, a nice beach and crystal clear waters with tons of tropical fish swimming right up to the shore awaited us.

I took PokerStars Monkey with me and he enjoyed a bit of sunbathing.

And then a game of poker with the locals.

After a week in Phuket we took a flight to Bangkok, the capital city of Thailand, staying in a suite on Sukhumvit Road where all the action is. We went out exploring on our first evening and after a 3 course meal in a classy restaurant that cost about a tenner, we didn't have to walk too far before we found a place that reminded of us Patong, it was called Nana Plaza and as soon as we started walking around there we were getting hollered at, grabbed by the crotch, etc. etc. etc. etc. by the Thai whores. The streets surrounding it were almost as bad and also had many ladyboys, and beggars, that we could barely squeeze past for the rows of market stalls selling fake shit and people eating next to stalls that were frying up cockroaches or some similar disgusting shite. What a place.

We just found some British pub to play pool and listen to live music, before we sat on their terrace for a while watching the degeneracy pass us by. On the way back to the hotel Amatay hopeless haggled with an old lady selling wallets. He ended up with one branded "Billobang". LOL.



We got up early on the next day to experience Bangkok in the daytime, and it did seem a lot more like a normal city. All the whores, ladyboys, hot smelly foot carts and fake goods market stalls were gone but there were still a few beggars lining the streets. After a whole load of pissing about trying to organise a city tour we ended up just exploring Bangkok on our own, taking every mode of transport available. The SkyTrain and taxi riders were very comfortable and safe, the Tuk Tuks and back of motorcycle rides, not so much.



We ended up at Plantip Plaza, a huge IT mall, as we needed to buy some software to fix the computer noob Amatays computer. The plaza is huge and filled with everything IT related at the lowest prices, and has a bit of a reputation for the huge amount of software piracy that goes on there - and no wonder why, there's about 30 different stalls where you can get a copy of any software, video game, movie or porn that exists, for a couple of bucks per disc. Like the prostitution that goes on in Thailand, the piracy is so blatant and open that the police obviously turn a blind eye to it and allow it to go on.

I found a laptop repair man in the Plaza, in a little unorganised shop surrounded by laptop components. I told him what was up with my laptop video card and he was convinced he could fix it, so I went back to my hotel and got the laptop for him. He quoted me a price of 5000 Baht (£100/$160) if he fixes it and no charge if he can't fix it. I didn't even bother to haggle, as is standard with everything in Thailand, I'd happily ship him the money if he fixed it for me.

"Come back tomorrow 6pm, laptop will fixed" he said confidently, and I left it with him.

We wanted to check out the National Stadium and big MBK mall that is attached to it, which was a few blocks away, so we negotiated a cheap price with a Tuk Tuk driver and off we went. Our driver started telling us something about how he was sponsored by a Tailor and gets free gas and a lottery ticket for being sponsored or some bullshit, whatever. After 10 minutes driving, way longer than our journey should have taken, he pulls up outside this tailor shop in the middle of nowhere and asks us to go in and have a look as it will help him out, they will give him free gas. Fuck our lifes, we go in and there are eight salesman waiting like vultures and no customers. They sit us down, I have a look at the shirts, ask the price, tell him he's a ripoff merchant and walk out. Once we get the Tuk Tuk driver clown to actually take us to where we asked go we are sitting in his deathmobile for another 10 minutes before passing the place he originally picked us up (the bastard), and another 5 minutes til we reach our intended destination.

Outside the National Stadium we say a smaller stadium with some activity surrounding it, so went to take a look. It seemed that there was a Thai Premier League football match on in a couple of hours, and was the first game of the new season. Buriram PEA were playing the local side BEC Tero. Seemed like a good way to spend the evening so we bought tickets for 80 Baht (£1.60) and Buriram replica tops for 350 Baht (£7) and chilled outside the stadium for a bit. It was pretty clear that we were the only white guys around and just in case we forgot it, all the Buriram fans (from the town Buriram in northern Thailand) were staring at us non stop and pointing at us haha.

There was a fun atmosphere inside the small stadium, these Buriram fans really know how to support their team. I tried to teach these Thais some real football chants such as "Who are ya? Who are ya?" and "The referee's a wanker, the referee's a wanker!" but they didn't seem to catch on. The match was good quality and our boys went home with a well deserved 2-1 away win.



After the match We braved another ride in a Tuk Tuk and told him to take us somwhere good to watch the Man Utd vs Man City game that had just started. After missing a fatal crash by little more than the width of a ball hair he dropped us off in Nana, the degen part of town that we had visited the night before. Oh well, we went to the one bar in the area that didn't have hookers in it, the same British pub from last night, and watched it there. Another awesome match, topped off by a spectacular late winning overhead-kick goal by Rooney.

On our last day in BangKok we used the railway system to get to the old city, next to the river. We weren't too impressed by the ghetto that we were walking around in so tried to see if there was a way that would could take a boat trip on the river. We found a travel agency at the train station to get take us on a private tour of the river and canals in a longboat, along with a stop at a Buddhist temple. The river looks pretty disgusting, and is likely used by the many shanty households that line it to dump their sewage. "It would be a huge epic fail to fall into this river" I thought to myself just before making the leap from the pier to the shakey wooden longboat. Luckily I held for one time in my godforsaken life, and sat down in a comfortable seat in the middle of the boat ready to enjoy the tour.

As soon as we set off down the river and picked up a little speed I was getting some water sprayed over me, with no way to avoid it. Eurgh. It wasn't too bad though and I forgot about it after a while, until we passed another wooden longboat going in the opposite direction, and crashed into a wave than drenched me and my expensive camera. I run so f bad, I swear to god. The fish Amatay survived without getting wet and just laughed at me. Since I was filming at the time I guess you all can laugh at me too...



The driver, the spitting image of Johnny Chan, told us to move to the front of the boat if we wanted to avoid getting wet, and from there on the tour was a lot more enjoyable. We had a little old tour guide woman sitting behind us pointing at stuff and talking to us in broken English but we could neither understand her. but that was a waste of time as we couldn't understand her terrible English and the noise of the boat meant we couldn't hear her anyway. We just sat back, chilled and enjoyed the ride. Of course we stop at some bullshit floating market, some women on longboats trying to sell tat to tourists. Everyone wants to sell you something in Thailand, and usually what they are selling is absolute crap. After showing us all the junk items she had she opened a box which was full of drinks, so she wasn't completely useless to us. We sailed the river and canal for about an hour before we stopped off a the big temple, that was well worth checking out. It had some crazy steep stairs on it, and didn't look at all safe, so obviously we climbed it.

After the river cruise was over we headed back to Pantip Plaza and amazingly the laptop repair dude had got my laptop up and running, telling me that he replaced the processor on the video card. Epic win, I could start blogging and playing online poker again, but had a huge amount of catching up to do and not much time. We just dumped our bags in our hotel, went out for dinner and a stroll, then found ourselves in yet another degen area, Cowboy Soi.

We went into one bar as they had loads of big screens showing the English football highlights. Maybe 30 seconds went by before a very pretty Thai girl sat beside me and started chatting to me in perfect English. That was quite weird because I had been in Thailand for 10 days and hadn't spoken to a single Thai person who's English was even somewhat decent. As Amatay and I sat watching the football, this girl was still sitting close beside me. The situation was a bit awkward so I bought this girl a drink. No sooner had I done that she had her hands all over me, kissing my cheek etc. etc. then asked me if I wanted to take her back to my hotel. I declined, telling her that I was going to go with my friend to play pool instead. She wasn't too impressed that I prefer pool to whores that speak perfect English because they are chatting to westerners every single night looking for business. Another 10 minutes went by of me sitting drinking and watching football, and her beside me, when She said "give me 2 minutes, I'll be right back". We figured she had gone to get another girl for Amatay, because maybe I wasn't going with her because I didn't want to leave my friend alone. As soon as she left, we left in the opposite direction straight to the pool hall, where for a fiver and hour we got the VIP room with a sick table, stereo, and our own personal servant girl to bring us drinks, rack the balls up and even stuff like pull out and put away the rest out when we needed it. Like I said, in Thailand you can live like a king on not very much money at all.

Next stop, Saigon / Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam

Bali, Indonesia Trip Report

After a disastrous poker trip to Melbourne for the Aussie Millions I took a direct flight to Bali to relax for 4 days.

I was going to book a hotel in a quiet part of the island but I had a friend who was staying in the party town of Kuta, so I decided to stay there. I stayed at the Discovery Kartika Resort which was very luxurious, and so it should be for $200 USD per night. That kind of money goes a long way in Indonesia!

One of the best features about my room was that it had a popcorn media player attached to the TV, with hundreds of new movies and tv shows on the hard drive available to watch for free. What an awesome thing to have, and really makes staying there so much better.

Why have I never seen this in any other hotel? Well, because they are too concerned with getting $14.99 from people who occasionally want to watch a pay-per-view movie, than with making their guest's stay as pleasant as possible. I'd rather just pay a higher price for the room and relax and not have to think about money during my stay.



My first day was spent doing the full spa package at the hotel. The body massage, head massage, body scrub, aromatherapy and even a manicure, LOL. The girls who worked at the spa were all young and hot, and looked after me well. I left there feeling like a million bucks.

Next day I went to Waterbom Water Park which was just across the road from my resort. I had a great time there. They have tons of good rides and you can load up money onto a wristband before going in, and get massages and food and drink around the different pool area, so good!



My friend Henrik that I met at UKIPT Galway in Ireland last year was staying at the Hard Rock Hotel with 3 of his Swedish friends and they invited me to go party with them one night. We first ate a delicious dinner at the Hard Rock, and then went to visit a hostel were about 12 other Swedes were staying. We were drinking and having a laugh beside the pool and in one of the rooms. These guys and girls were all paying like 10 bucks a room, between 3 of them, at this hostel. It looked decent enough for the money they were paying but not somewhere I'd want to stay on a vacation.

We all went out in a big group to go party at the nightclubs on Legian Street and stopped off at a lot of little small bars along the way. The heat and humidity was killing me so I just wanted to go to a proper bar with air-conditioning, as it's not much fun trying to party fully clothed in a sauna! When we did get to the big bars and clubs I had a great time, and we stayed out til around 5am.



An hilarious thing we witnessed was a crazy woman who was going nuts at cars that were going past. Of course I took out my phone and started filming her.



On our way back one of the Swedes insulted a group of ladyboys and got absolutely bitch slapped. It was the funniest thing I've ever seen. Really wish I was filming when it happened. We stopped off at the hostel and there was a whole load of drama as we seen some guy through his girlfriends suitcase into the pool with all her clothes, ipod, etc. One of the Swedes wanted to beat the guy up and the rest of us helped get the clothes out of the pool and laid them out to dry.

I didn't get back to my hotel until 6am, and barely had any rest before going on a full day road trip to Ubud. I booked a private tour with driver and guide, so I could tell them where to take me and decide for myself how long I wanted to stay in each place. We stopped off in lots of little village areas along the way and there were shops selling clothes and silver that had demonstrations on how they were made. So I watched the demonstrations for free, then didn't buy any of their overpriced crap :-)

The journey home it started lashing down with rain and I thought we were going to need to swap the car for a boat!



While we were in Ubud the highlight for me was the visit to the Monkey forest. I stayed there for ages feeding and playing with the little monkeys. The forest is a sacred religious area with 340 macaque monkeys and a temple. Well worth a visit!



I didn't do anything else interesting in Bali, just got massages and relaxed on the beach. Very un-interesting but very enjoyable :-)