Travel with us in Asia through Philippines, Vietnam, Laos and Thailand

ASIA finally, my restaurant in Jersey closed for January so I decided to travel Philippines, Vietnam and Laos with my buddy Jason, and Nicole in Thailand because she could only take one week off.

Philippines is amazing, after 20h of flights to Manila I finally met up with Jay in a backpacker’s hostel right downtown of Manilla call Malate. Cached up and hit straight the street food and bars, got fish cooked on BBQ with homemade spicy sauce and rice for few bucks just awesome. After few beers we decided to keep going the all night and sing karaoke… crazy night. After 2 days in Manilla we made our way to the airport still drunk cos we again partied all night long and at the entrance we saw a Firearms Depository Booth lol we obviously didn’t believe it so we check it out and as we take a picture a dude just pull a gun and gave it to the booth, funny but crazy.

So we flew to Palawan Island for 30 Canadian dollars where we went straight to a small village and rented a cabana for 5$ bamboo style ocean view. We drunk giant beer called Red Deer, next day we went to one of the wonder an underground subterranean river, we kayak for 3km in a cave hole full of bats.

Did the most annoying van ride ever to the north of Palawan Island El Nido, Jay was stuck between Russian cases and the roads were so so shit, dirt bumpy roads… We surely had a great night sleep. Next day we hang out to a restaurant right on the beach and told the waitress to bring us a seafood dish every half hour and buckets of beers every time its empty, we stayed 5h and paid like 30$ each love the Philippines.

Flew back to Manilla and stayed with some locals few hours away from the big city where we got a true local experience, it started raining hard so Jay and I decided to take our shower outside, some kids in the village were amazed by us cos we were the first white foreigner they saw. It truly opened my eyes that people who’s got nothing are the most generous human on this planet, you kind appreciate more things than just watching TV in yr couch all day.

It was time to say our goodbye to the Philippines, it was beautiful and can’t wait to go back but it was time to enjoy some sleep, Jay and I slept roughly 4h a day during our time there just partied liked animals, Pilipino are machines seriously.

Flew to Hanoi Vietnam for 40$ and met with Wesley our mate from Ontario which by the way was his first trip outside of Canada. Only stayed few days so we decided to do the famous Hạ Long Bay, in northeast Vietnam, it’s known for its emerald waters and thousands of towering limestone islands topped by rainforests. Junk boat tours and sea kayak expeditions take visitors past islands named for their shapes, including Stone Dog and Teapot islets. The region is popular for scuba diving, rock climbing and hiking. We took a tour on Castaway Island and stayed one night ate seafood and again partied most of the night with peeps from all over the world. It was truly stunning, again I need to go back and take more times to travel this country. We wondered the capital for a day or two and got lost on purpose to eat drink and experience the Vietnamese life, oh and the currency is the biggest on earth, 1 million dong notes is equivalent to 60$ Canadian cool eh we were millionaires for few days lol.

36h bus ride to Vientiane the Capital of Laos, damn that was fucking long bus ride…

so obviously we paid 5$ an hour massage and hit the bars and here comes one of the most fucked up stories of my backpacking life. We didn’t know there were curfew in Laos which means by midnight you not allowed in the streets. We heard some sort of music into the walls, knock and enter a sort of local mafia bar, it was weird, but when we got out with beers in our hands it was 2am, we sat in front of the river and 4 dudes on scooter approached us aaaannnnd they had guns, no police jacket or anything, they started to search us, looking for drugs I believed or passport, but we always leave our valuable at the hostels so we only had a little bit of cash but wanted none of it so we stared to freak out cos more locals show up with more guns, Wesley was freaking out and Jay started to get naked to proof we were innocent and had nothing on us, I started to throw key works like “ I am the police” (which is not true of course) “you fucked up” “you going to jail” blablabla language barrier was hard. After few minutes of confusion they let us go for few hundred meters and screamed “STOP” we turned around hands in the air look at Jay and said to each other “we had a good life” LOL but they were pointing at our beers to take it with us, so we came back grab our beers and freaking run to our hostels locked everything and talked for hours to pieces what just fucking happened to us. Next day we clarified with the staffs of the hostels and yeah curfew is serious in Laos, so next time let’s do some research about the country first.

Next stop was Vand Vieng, a cool hippy town where it’s famous for tubing, Locals drives you up the river and gives you massive donut where you sit on and go down the river, the coolest party river cos there is pubs and bars along the way and every time you want to drink they throw you a rope stop and and chill, come back and continue like that for 3km AWESOME.

Next We went to Luang prabang the ancient capital of Luang Prabang Province in northern Laos, lies in a valley at the confluence of the Mekong and Nam Khan rivers. It’s known for its many Buddhist temples, including the gilded Wat Xieng Thong, dating to the 16th century, and Wat Mai, once the residence of the head of Laotian Buddhism. So we did cultural stuffs ya know, visited temples, did the coolest markets ever full of traditional clothing, spices, music and food. Amazing.
From Luang Prabang we took a boat until Thailand a 3 day trip on the Mekong river, cruising around and stopping at night into small locals villages were we experiences Laos pretty well.

Thailand ouhouh we made it in one pieces, finally met with Nicole and my crazy French friend Clement and all us reunited we partied in Chang Mai, visited cool temples ate dome sick Pad Thai, Noodles… Jay was getting sick of rice lol Bus ride to Bangkok crazy capital of Thailand were Khao San road the most popular party street in Asia lol were streets food, tuk tuk market with scorpions, bugs etc noisy stinky sweaty beautiful Bangkok.

All of us planned carefully to be exactly at the full moon party in Ko Pha Ngan it’s an island in southeast Thailand that’s renowned for its monthly Full Moon Party. This boisterous night-long celebration, which is tied to the lunar calendar, draws revelers to its southeastern peninsula, Haad Rin. Most festivities center on Sunrise Beach, whose beach bungalows attract a backpacker crowd. Just crazy 50 thousand of people partying on the beach all night long, we took a quick boat ride during the party to the next beach just for few hours to go to a “Local Pirate Bars” where you can found everything….. One of the best party in my life.
The next day we rented scooter and wondered the island and had some of the best seafood in our life, crabs, squid, local fish, shrimps etc… swing ropes in lagoons in the middle of the jungle, played with Cobras (eurhhh nasty, fuck snake) and monkeys.

And voila after 4 fast paced weeks traveling throw Philippines, Vietnam, Laos and Thailand it was time to fly back to Jersey and go back to work. Our next trip was Amsterdam, stay tuned for the next story.