Warsaw Uprising

Warsaw was having a heatwave in the last weekend of July 2014. It was so hot, that even a palm tree was growing in the middle of an busy intersection.

We were taking care of our (de?)hydration with products such as Lech, Warka and Zywiec.

Warsawians like their parks. Classical artist Chopin had just released his newest album and people were listening to it for the first time in Laciewishki Park.

While some are listening to classical music, some are simply bathing in the sun and not caring in which company their dog hangs out with.

I was lucky to fit into this pic at all.

To be honest, there are only two sights in Warsaw. The first one is "Palac Kultyr i Nauki", which is the tallest building in town. I addition to some great views from the top it hosts arguably one of the most boring jobs, elevator button pusher. 

The second sight in the city is the old town, "Stare Miasto". It's a nice place to find some tourist crap for souvenier and take a glimpse of the UNESCO World Heritage stuff.

Warsaw Bomb Squad was riding with a remotely controlled bomb vehicle in the growd. Reason wasn't clear, but I'm pretty sure this nerdy kid wasn't carrying any bomb.

Without a doubt the best thing to do in Warsaw is partying. Warsawian club behaviour includes drinking shots of vodka (even if you haven't ordered any) and wearing stupid glasses. Every guy should embrace themselves for the fact, that in Warsawian clubs you'd be watching a lot of good looking females dancing in front of a mirror on the dancefloor. In fact also the females will be watching their own awesome bodies through the mirrors.

After clubbing it's natural for a man to find a hole to crawl into.

Last weekend delirium in Hong Kong and Macau

Our last destination on the SEA Tour 2013 was Hong Kong, a westernized city with the chinese oddities as a twist. I left modern out of the presentation phrase, because honestly it seems, that they've built only one building to the shoreline at the Kowloon side of the city after I visited this city about 10 yrs ago. Also, even the taxi cars seemed to be the same make and model as 10 yrs ago. 

When you've come this far on your Asian trip, you're bound to know the culmination point of the Asian culture. Yes, you already guessed it, the rice hat. Wearing it in public areas will earn you the respect of the Asian people.

If you like big Asian cities, but you're not keen to dirtyness, risky food decisions or shitty transportation and you're a big spender, HK is the place for you.

It seems, that instead of taking pictures for example of the 2 IFC, I apparently took pics of this sad ugly duckling of a building.

 

A nice way to see the city from the sea is to take the public round-trip ferry from pier to pier. Here you can relax and drink some warm canned coconut milk, while making smart decisions on how to pose on the next group photo you're about to take.

This piece of a pier, with four construction workers, was floating in the middle of a busy sea fairway.

You haven't been to HK, if you haven't done the Bruce Lee pose in front of the Bruce Lee statue. And if you're in front of the Bruce Lee statue, but not doing the pose, you deserve to be punched in the face.

Without a doubt one of the most breathtaking city skylines in the world.

It wasn't a riot about to begin, but a regular night at the Lan Kwai Wong -neighbourhood of nightclubs and bars.

The purpose of taking selfies with a random guys camera must be, that they want to be posted on a travel blog on the other side of the world.

In this picture, you can easily spot the difference between Asian high-class cosmopolites having a glass of wine after work and European recreational travellers spending their last weekend.

Finally, after many days, some nutritious fastfood. Wait?! It's the time for the fucking breakfast menu burgers at McD's.

It takes about an hour by a fast ferry to reach Macau from Hong Kong. Macau is a place of gambling in casinos and luxorious hotel-life. It's just that ridiculous, that you might want to see it with your own eyes.

You notice from the demography of the people in the background, that we are not in Venice, Italy. Instead we're at the Venetian Casino in Macau. They say it's one the worlds largest buildings and if it fits an artificial Venice inside, it must be true.

There it is, all of the posts of the SEA Tour 2013 are done. For all you SEA travel planners out there, my advise to you is: Buy a rice hat, wear it with pride, and respect the trail and the people along the way.

Paradise in Pilipinas, Boracay

From Vietnam we took a flight to Manila, Philippines, where we changed into a smaller plane and travelled to a paradise island called Boracay. As all paradises, it takes a little bit of travelling to get there. You'll have to fly to a nearby island and take a boat from there to Boracay. Along the way you must buy few permits and passes to get to the island. It's all very basic travelling stuff, that'll boost your anticipation towards the paradise.

About the boats in Philippines. Most of them are catamaran-like, made out of bamboo and rope, and every ride in them seems like it's the last.

But hey, at least you have to wear lifejackets. Actually, I bet these boats have a bad track record, because usually you only have to have enough lifejackets on board, not on you.

Now that we've made it to the paradise, what should we do? Many would think, that the right answer is something like diving, but actually it's crazy partying. During the daytime, when most are diving, you can be in your accommodation sleeping and recharging for the nights pub crawl. When the sun sets you can hit the bars and clubs, and pretend you were diving at the daytime.

Here is a nice recharging picture from our apartment. At this particular place, we'd booked a nice multi-level apartment by the beach. It had beds in all levels and separate beds for all of us, but sometimes travelling together just makes you that much closer to each other.

At the beaches of Boracay you can do some pro water activities. Here's an example on how to do some gliding or something in the waterline.

 You can also take the camera swimming and take some promo pics for a chinese travel agency.

It's just bad luck, that you get a tropical disease and suffer from it during an awesome snorkeling trip.

Snokerling trip took us around the island in different spots. No sunken Philippine-boats or Whale Sharks this time, only some regular fish and payment collected by a random boat at the open sea.

In my opinion, in Boracay, Europeans and Asians don't mix that much. Where Europeans like to drink and act stupid, Asians like to giggle and eat noodles. In addition, Boracay has a lot of European tourists, so they usually mix together quite well themselves.

There is a sleepy amusement park  in Boracay, which holds a Go-Karting -track. It's a good way to let off some steam and step on it.

An astonishing picture of the Manila skyline taken while landing. Just missed the downtown skyscrapers though.

Good Morning Vietnam

Chau Doc is a borderline crappy town in the Vietnamese border. Boatride from Phnom Penh ended up in here. From Chau Doc we took a bus to the largest city in Vietnam, Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City).

Saigon is like Bangkok with the difference, that Saigon is a bit reserved against the mass tourism. It's understandable considering, that majority of the tourists are drunken party-animals and/or sex tourists. 

Crossing the street in Saigon is one of the closest things to a suicide. In Saigon they have a special profession invented for escorting western tourists across the motorbike-infested streets. If you can't find any of these street escorters, just close your eyes, walk calmly across the street and forget what you were told as a child to look if there is cars coming before crossing the street. 

 From Saigon we took a half-day tour to the Cu Chi -tunnels, which had several military campaigns during the Vietnam war at the late 60s.

During the Vietnam war US forces used napalm, Agent Orange, small filipinos, snakes, dogs and other naughty stuff to flush Viet Cong militans out of their comfy tunnels and holes. But as you can see, there are still Viet Cong -militants lurking in their holes and making jokes about the Americans. Viet Cong wins.

If you get a chance, meet up with the locals. I bet it's going to be an interesting experience.

 

Finally a decent group foto, that can be posted. Usually it's only drunken rubber faces in every pic.

In Saigon they've numbered every neighbourhood, which I guess when you're asking for directions is a lot a more simple then trying to pronounce local names. We stayed in District 1, which is popular neighbourhood for backpackers.

War Remnants Museum is one of the top attractions in Saigon, and propably one of the best museums in this part of the world. For instance it has a horrific display of deformed children and people in general, that have been exposed to the Agent Orange defoliant. Also some statements about the Vietnam war from other world countries were displayed.

Once in a lifetime chance to get into the same picture with Ho Chi Minh himself. Sadly the cameraman doesn't master the art of focusing.

Holiday In Cambodia

 

From Bangkok we took a bus to the border of Cambodia. At the Cambodian side of the border a certain young man leeched on to us and tried to help us with changing currency, eating, transportation and everything. As you might imagine by now, we took advantage of the guys hospitality and left him hanging without any decent compensation. That's just the way poor backpackers roll.

Ride from the border to Siem Reap took some hours by taxi. This was one of the craziest rides so far, with easily over 50 % of the time spend on the opposite lane or side of the road.

Siem Reap was a major backpacker hub, with lots of fellow westerners to throw high-fives at. One of the top things to do in Siem Reap is to take a fish massage. It's a win-win for you and the fish. Fish get to dine your soft hands and feet, and you get something your girlfriend wouldn't give you.

 There it is, behind the moronic tourists, Angkor Wat. One of the wonders of the world and a UNESCO Word Heritage Site. After fish massage, this temple is the second thing you should experience when travelling to Siem Reap and Cambodia.

There was a crazy mass of people trying to capture the magic of sunrise at the Angkor Wat -temple.

It was as if we were waiting some world-class celebrity to enter the stage. It took a long time for the sun to finally rise.

 

Angkor Wat had some steep steps, but not steep enough to thin the herd of tourists. At the back of the latter picture you can see how many ancient window colums tourists have taken as a souvenir. Our guide had some inside info, that the chinese tourists were behind this unique souvenier idea.

At the temple area we spotted a fellow mammal, an elephant. Some sources say, that there's somewhere between 250-600 wild elephants tooting in the tropical forests of Cambodia. This individual was made to wear silly gape and carry tourists as an au pair -worker.

Harry is showing which fingers he wants to have dismembered as a sacrifice to this ancient temple of gods.

 

A statement from mother nature received. 

 

Staring contest was lost against the ancient god. 

 I feel sorry for our guide, because the poor guy thought he could teach us something about the temple to our ignorant thick heads. What a pity. 

   

We found it, the Pub Street at Siem Reap. A place where all the drunk-a-likes gather in a crowded bar and mingle. This bar had a special deal, where you'd get a free T-shirt for every three buckets of liquor you drink. And everybody has to have a shirt, right?

All day and all night - riding with the Tuktuk. The people in Cambodia and basically in all of the surrounding countries spend most of their lives on top of a tuktuk or a scooter. For every tourist there is at least 10 or more tuktuk's available at all times.

 

After Siem Reap it was again time for some near-death experiences on Cambodian roads. This time we were heading to the capital city, Phnom Penh. I figured out the perfect way to skip Cambodian road madness entirely.

 

They don't have kebab in Cambodia, but they have the next best thing, grasshoppers.

 If you are not that experimental in your snack choices, you can always try the local Kentucky Fried Chicken.

 In the suburbs of Phnom Penh lies a thrilling place called "the Killing Fields". It's one of the places where people were killed and tortured during the Cambodian genocide. Killing Fields is a modest, but terrifying place, where you get a glimpse of the cruelty of human nature. Audio tour of the place helps you to understand better what exactly happened here. 

 One of the top three places to have a power nap is definately a tuktuk.

Boatride from Phnom Penh to Chau Doc, Vietnam, is good for sleeping. Although, the motor of the boat is producing somewhat 80 desibels of noise to your nightmares. The scenery along the river is agrarian and flat, but if you're lucky you might see some waterbuffalos pooping into the river.

 If you can't get sleep, get a beer.

To summarize some thoughts about Cambodia. It's obviously a poor third world country, which thrives from tourism. In practice this means, that there are certain places made for tourists to play with themselves. This means, that you probably don't get to experience the local way of life, because staying at the tourist trail is just way too fun.