Australia day 3

I woke up at 7:30am and raced to the courtyard to get my free breakfast. Once I powered through the bowl, I went back to sleep.

I woke up at 9:00am and raced to the courtyard to get my free breakfast. Once I powered through the bowl and 2 slices of toast I met up with John again and decided to walk around town with him.

John is my American double. He's a 25 y/o engineer from California and literally has the exact same world view I have. The only major difference we have is that he has a job working at Tesla Motors and I don't :(. We walked around the Brisbane botanical gardens and around the city a bit before heading back to the hostel.

My first impression of Brisbane was very positive. There are a lot of aweosme pubs, its really clean and the river walk is amazing. However once you've done South Bank, the river walk and botanical gardens, there is hardly anything left to explore! I'm amazed at how dead Brisbane seems to be during summer!

When I got back I heated up a shit tonne of pasta that I had made for myself yesterday and went for another walk around town. I went outside for a total of 5 minutes and ran into a German guy who looked desperately lost and asked me where the nearest supermarket was. While i was walking him there i discovered he was a 35 y/o who decided to spontaneously quit his job and book a flight to Australia once his girlfriend dumped him. I advised him against spending new years in Brisbane and to travel to a beach instead. There's a good chance we'll both end up hitchhiking our way to surfers Paradise tomorrow :)

Australia day 2

I woke up at 8:00 sharp to get my free breakfast. The hostel was offering free cerial and Vegemite on toast.

Shortly after that I decided to walk around town so I packed my bag and walked along the river for a few hours. I ended up at south bank beach; a small artificial beach in the middle of the city. I suspect the beach would have been better to see at night because it was a public holiday and there were kids screaming and shouting all over the place.

While walking back it struck me just how many fat people there are in Brisbane. Especially coming from Korea, the high obesity rate here is remarkably transparent. There are plenty of druggos here too. Spotting a crystal meth addict is super easy; just look out for the super skinny bogans trying to stay balanced on flat ground.

Later on that night I made friends with an American guy called John and a few Germans. We all went drinking in the pub by the hostel and met a group of bogan Aussies. The Aussies were extreemly friendly but clearly racist. Also, they bought their drug addicted 50 year old mother along to go partying with them. It was a strange sight to say the least.

Australia day 1

I decided not to book a hostel and simply rock up at fortitude valley instead.

The first hostel I landed at was pretty epic. It was called "bunk hostel" and it was $20 / night. A big change from the $4 / night I was used to in Vietnam; but it would do. Once I realized how packed the hostel in Brisbane was on a Sunday night, I decided to book my hostel for Byron bay immediately for New Years. No luck; apparently every hostel (not an exaggeration) had been booked out months in advance. In my desperation to find a place to stay, I found a vacancy at a hostel in Surfers Paradise. Not as good as Byron, I know, but at least it has a good beach. Plus I heard Surfers Paradise is famous for skateboarding!

The hostel gave new residents a free beer on entry and a free sausage sizzle on Sundays. Guess who was first in line? I met 2 Brazilians and a Sweedish girl while devouring my free meal. Even though their English wasn't the best, I still spent the entire night chatting with them at a pub which served $11 burgers and $10 beers.

Christmas break

I celebrated Christmas with my family in Brisbane this year. Aunty Christine and Uncle Ron were kind enough to let us use their boat, Tonic, for the occasion. After filling the floating house with heaps of beer, food and $1000 worth of diesel we were on the open blue road.

Overall the trip was good. I got the opportunity to show off my music, go swimming, play my new favorite game 'slapcock', and eat enough food for a lifetime.

For two nights everyone on the boat had to deal with a severe mosquito infestation, but distracting myself with game of thrones and breaking bad on the boat television was a perfect distraction.

My Dad offered to buy me a ticket to go back to Sydney, but I declined and decided to travel more down the east coast. I can't spend another new years in Sydney. First stop; Brisbane.

South korea day 14

Today was my last day so I wanted to make it count. Sadly I had no idea what I wanted to do, so I asked one of the receptionists, Jeonbuho, for advice. Even though I didn't know Jeonbuho very well personally, he insisted on being my own personal guide for the day. How kind is that!?

I waited for him to finish work at 12, and then we headed out in search for some traditional Korean markets. We walked past all the touristy places and then had lunch at a place I would have certainly missed if it weren't for him. Jeonbuho insisted on buying my lunch as a farewell gift. It was called Zzajangmyeon and it was a Chinese dish with Korean sides. It was delicious, filling and only 3500 won ($4). During this time, I kept asking him about Korean culture so I could confirm or debunk some of my working generizations. Here's what I've found out:

1) Koreans are all incredibly hard working. A business man working for a company like Samsung can easily expect a 6am - 8pm work day. Even kids will typically go to school and then go to first after school care then second after school care leaving them to finish at 11pm. Jeonbuho reckons this is the main cause for Korea's high depression and suicide rate because the inflexible working hours leave no time to develop socially. He also thinks its especially bad because the large working hours don't equate to more productivity; workers will typically sit patiently at their desk for several hours doing nothing if they finish their work early.

2) about 50% of Korean women and about 20% of Korean men have plastic surgery. It's quite typical for a middle class family to reward their daughter with a nose job or eye job as a graduation present. Unlike western cultures where there are several different ways to look attractive, Korea has just one and everyone tries to live up to this standard by trying to have the same chin, eyes, nose and personality. Hair colour is the only acceptable form of individuality.

3) Korea is advancing technologically faster than its culture can keep up. Smart phones are everywhere and computer gaming is not only acceptable, its encouraged in men. Atheism is growing too which means young men, which would have otherwise involved themselves in the commilunity through religion, are becoming increasingly socially distant. Women are still somewhat subservient to men and less likely to work full time even though their are equal employment opportunities. The major family decisions are still made by the father. Marriage is still very traditional; the divorce rate is low and many couples will only get married when they have enough money for a house and family. This is a problem for the younger and poorer generation, who are likely to simply remain unmarried till their mid 30's.

4) all Asian hair is the same. It's beautiful and long in the 20's and 30's then starts to thin out in the 40's. By the 50's and onward all women will have hair which looks kinda like a weird afro.

OK OK OK that's enough about culture. What did I do then? Oh yeah, Jeonbuho showed me the apartment he was staying at with his sister. The only furniture was a tiny traditional dinner table with no chairs. No desk, no computer, no beds. Jeonbuho was studying neuroscience and was running his own English teaching company in between working part time at the hostel so there were books and clothes all around the apartment. Upon leaving he tried to offer me a jumper as a gift. I honestly couldn't accept it after seeing how little he had. I think he was a bit offended by that. After that we walked to the world cup stadium where he told me his ambitions in life; he wants to find a western girlfriend, leave Korea and find a cure to Alzheimer's.

We split off when he had to go teach English. I went back to the hostel and met a group of Australians from Sydney. We all got drunk, ate Indian curry for dinner and went to a busy bar. They were all aged 21 except for one bloke who was only 18.

It was a good end to an amazing trip.

Oh yeah, the young Aussie managed to lose his passport by morning! It turns out that on other nights out he'd managed to lose his credit cards and his phone too... He reminded me of me when I was young.

South Korea day 13

I woke up with one thing on my mind. The Google Center in Seoul! I think Google has 7 centers around the world, all of them famous for their innovative design, free entrepreneur workshops, kick ass café and water slides. I rocked up to the Google center called "Seoul campus" in Samseong only to find that no entrepreneur workshops were running, the cafe was closed, the office was tiny and there were NO water slides. I was very disappointed :( in hindsight I really should have guessed this was the case though because no one on Korea actually uses Google products here; they all use 'Naver'.

After a disappointing start to the day, I got in contact with Matt via Facebook and arranged to meet him, Josh and Woo in Sinjeong. We were all starving by the time I arrived so we decided to get Korean pizza (yes, that's a thing). It was good, but not as good as the Cambodian pizza I got in SE Asia.

Because we were insanely unorganzied we had to sprint with our pizza boxes through a whole bunch of public transport to arrive in Hongik University to complete our 'escape the room' adventure we had booked earlier that day. The Koreans on the subway must have thought we were the most passionate pizza delivery men in existence.

Escape the room was great!! I loved it. Solving puzzles, finding clues and arguing with your friends are 3 of my favorite things to do in life. I really enjoyed it. Plus we were only 10 minutes behind the record for escaping the room!

After escape the room, we all decided to go to a PC bang and play some computer games. That was also pretty epic! Josh, the Australain civil engineer, crushed us in StarCraft :( its my  fault. I should have practiced more.

We played computer games till about 12:30am. Sadly the public transport shuts down at midnight for some reason so I had to walk for 2.5 hours home. Walking through Seoul at night is actually a lot of fun. I got back at 3am and passed out.

South Korea day 12

Matt Gates had arrived in the late evening last night and had booked a hostel in Hongik University. Somehow I managed to multi task having a shower and being hungover at the same time so that I could go meet him and his Korean friends.

Matt and Josh arrived at Iteawan and we enjoyed a Korean BBQ together. It was nice catching up and exchanging stories about our adventure through Asia.

Josh is an Australian civil engineer that Matt made friends with on his last visit to Korea over a year ago. Josh graduated from engineering, tried working as an engineer for a year, decided he didn't like the working hours and work environment, then decided to quit everything and come to Korea to teach English for a year. Is that inspiring?! You decide! Either way, he's a really interesting and intelligent guy.

After eating food, we all decided unanimously to watch the latest star wars movie! We couldn't understand the website for the GVC cinema (since they said their start times were at 28:00 or at 36:00) so we decided to just train it to Gangnam and see if we could find seats.

Just as we arrived, a Korean lady came up to us and said in broken English "hey guys, do you want 3 free tickets to see starwars in 3D?" She had purchased 3 tickets for her son and a few of his friends, but apparently they coudlnt make it so she was giving the tickets away for free. We tried desperately to pay her for the tickets but she wouldn't accept it, so we thanked her heaps and waddled our way towards the cinema. Star Wars Free-D !! Wohoo!

After the movie, we met up with another one if Matt's friends, Woosung, who is half Korean, half Aussie. We enjoyed another Korean BBQ together and then went walking around hongik university.

So much was happening around hongik! Food, lights, performances, protests etc. It was great.

South Korea day 11

The Korean staff at pencil 5 hostel were as hospitable as ever. They prepared an epic lunch for all residents which consisted of sliced chicken breast wrapped around orange slices. It was marinated in a sweet sauce, wrapped in tin foil and baked. It was wonderful! Sadly, I also found out it wasn't technically Korean - the owner was just a creative cook.

As much as I loved the hostel, it was a little bit out if town and quite expensive so I decided to pack my shit and go back to stay in the Iteawan hostel. Once there I decided to walk to the Korean war museum.

In all honesty, this was by far the best museum I'd been to on my whole trip. They didn't just focus on insignificant details and emotional stimulus, instead they had whole sections of the museum dedicated to the bigger picture behind the Korean war. I still consider myself remarkably  ignorant about the conflict, but at least I know a whole lot more. I didn't even know China was militarily involved before I went to the museum.

It was bloody cold leaving the museum (-7°C) so I decided to invest in a hot chocolate to keep my organs from frosting over. I've only just realized how ive traded my addiction of cornetos from Cambodia with hot chocolate from south Korea.

To top off the day, I went touring a few markets and temples in the north of Seoul. So much delicious street food.

When I arrived back at the hostel I made friends with a massive group of British exchange students and one Swiss guy. Of course we ended up drinking

South Korea day 10

I woke up from the marble floor I had collapsed on and immediately got naked to bathe with old naked Korean men.

Shortly after I packed my bags and headed outward to explore the city. I went to the fortress and walked along the river.

I kinda felt at this point that Jinju was midway between a big city and a rural escape, and since I was really looking for one or the other, I decided to go to the bus stop and head back to Seoul.

Once I was back in Seoul, I immediately made my way back to Pencil 5, the hostel I started at.

South Korea day 9

You win, Korea. I can't handle soju anymore. It goes down as easily as water but hits as hard as vodka. From this moment on I need to stop: 1) drinking or 2) challenging Americans to drinking competitions.

The hangover was awful. Even the supposed magical hangover cure; 'triangle kimbap', was not enough to save me. James and the American guy, Frank, had both left to go to work teaching English in schools on the other side of the island which meant I had the entire flat to myself. I left to go exploring at 1pm when my hangover was at least manageable.

Walking around town was pretty great. It was nice to get out of the city and see 'real' Korea. It was a little dirty, there were rice patties next to beaten down shops, there was nothing written in English anywhere and most people stared vacently at me like they'd never seen a white person before. I went into a shop to get food and the lady there tried to have a conversation with me in Korean; clearly the only white people she had seen were teachers who spoke Korean. It was really fun and awkward because I could tell she was trying hard to simplify what she was saying in pigeon Korean in the hope that I would know enough to communicate back. But sadly the only words I know are "hello" and "thank you". I managed to get by using hand gestures thoigh! After that It was too late for me to do any proper touristy shit, so I decided to do a nice easy 1 hour hike past a temple. It was wonderful, the trees were pretty and it started snowing half way through too!

When I got back to the flat I chatted with Frank and James a tad, drank some much needed water and played xbox360 for about an hour before I caught my next bus to Jinju!

As soon as I arrived in Jinju I made my way to the jimjibang (찜질방). The Americans strongly recommend the place to me because it was only 8000 won to stay there for 1 night and it's essentially one giant spa complete with saunas, hot tubs and weights rooms. What they didn't tell me, however, was just how many naked old Asian men would be there. So... Many... Naked... Old... Asian... Men...

After relaxing in the steam room and sauna for 2 hours I decided to put on the orange shirt and pants they gave me and set up my bed on the marble floor with a couple of blankets and mats.

South Korea day 8

The first thing I did today was visit Busan tower. It cost 5000 won ($6) to go to the top. I wanted to take the stairs up all 46 levels but they forced me to share an awkward elevator ride up with one of the staff members who couldn't speak English. The view was outstanding. It also made me realize that although Busan was the second largest city, it looked more like a giant village.

Afterwards I walked to the Busan modern history museum. The entry was free and I learned about all the times Japan invaded Korea and tried installing their own culture in Busan. I thought that fucked up shit only came from European countries trying to colonize. Guess not..

Lastly I made a massive hike to Beomeosa temple right at the top of the mountain. It was a Buddhist temple so there were plenty of statues and people praying. I'm curious how many Koreans are Buddhist and how many are Christian. I guess that's another thing I'll have to research when I'm back home.

For a late lunch I ate gimbap tempura. It's basically sushi deep fried and it was awesome. This made me think that if American companies renamed deep fried mars bars as honey chocolate tempura, a lot more people would buy them coz it sounds slightly healthier.

Afrer that I took a painfully long public transport trip back to the hostel to collect my stuff. The trip was made bearable by an elderly man who came up to me on the crowded subway and shouted "its superman, look! It's superman". I wanted to say " look, its Jacky Chan! " back at him, but I decided agaisnt it.

At 5:40pm I raced to catch an express bus to meet a friend, James, who i had met earlier in Seoul. He lives in Namhae.

When I arrived in Namhae (an island in the south) I met James and 3 other Americans who were doing the same English teaching program as him. We all got drunk on soju and chatted about Korean culture.

South Korea day 7

I woke up this morning and immediately went on a hike to Jangsang peak which was an easy, well travelled, 4.5 hour climb there and back. The views weren't as spectacular as they were in Seoul, but at least I got to walk past a few churches, mushroom plantations and isolated villages on the way up.

When I got back my foot was killing me. I had already gone throguh my emergency supply of anti inflammatories supplied to me by my doctor back in Aus. My foot genuinely feels just as bad as it did 2 months ago... I think I'll have to see a specialist when I'm back.

Once I hobbled my way back to the hostel and rested up a bit I decided to head out to Gwangan beach. This beach was supposedly the place to find the most happening pub scene and excitement in the city. Sadly, it was completely dead. I know it was a weekday in December but still! Come on Busan, where is your.. Umm.. Where is your.. Spirit!?

South Korea day 6

I took a 4 hour bus to Busan (a big city in the south of South Korea) in the afternoon. Once I arrived it was quite late and I was starving so I ate a hefty abount of "gimbap", which is a Korean food which looks exactly like sushi but tastes very different. I definitely prefer sushi, but then again, I prefer sushi to anything.

It was roughly 7pm and I hadn't booked a hostel, so I decided to catch local public transport to Haeundae which was a place my backpacker sense made me expect to find lots of hostels. (By the way, the trains here are really cool; they play classical music at every stop).  As soon as I walked out of the station I found a place called 'one stop hostel'.

Even though the public transport ride was only 40 minutes long I was still starving by the end of it. Fortunately my roommate was a Korean engineer who hadn't eaten yet. I went out to have some traditional Korean food with him. He told me about his experiences doing 2 years compulsory military service and expressed his anxieties about starting his Engineering job tomorrow. He talked a lot so I only got to mention that I was an engineer as I was climbing into my bottom bunk bed. I was fiddling with my phone adaptor and the power socket as I was telling him that I did some electrical engineering courses at my university. Unfortunately, it was at this moment that i short circuited the whole room by forcing in the adaptor plug... Whoops! I can guess what he thinks about western quality education now :p

South Korea day 2

I woke up at 6:20am to go hiking with the American guy, Nick. The hostel was already quite far north west of Seoul, so it was only a half hour public transport ride to Bukhansan National park. We decided to do the Baegundae peak which was the shortest of the hikes so we could be back at the hostel by 1:00pm. I was quite amazed to see how many elderly people were climbing the mounting with us. Sure, they were slow, and hilariously over equiped; seriously they all had walking poles, and professional hiking clothes, but I got pretty inspired by it none the less, mainly because most Australian elderly people I meet typically waste away watching TV and drinking beer all day. Go Korea! 

The hike itself was easy and short, although some icy bits made it a bit tough at times. The peak itself was amazing though. I got an epic panorama shot which I'll share on Facebook soon.

For the hike I had repurposed a plastic beer bottle from last night by filling it with water. Funnily enough, the beer flavored water tasted identical to the actual Cass beer I drank last night. Drinking from the bottle with powerful, desperate gulps in the early morning on the public bus on the way back might have given the other Koreans a very concrete stereotype of white westerners.

When we got back, the Koreans had made a huge lunch and invited us to eat with them. It was a broth filled with vegetables, clams and a few spices. Delicious.

After I had rested up I decided to go to IPark mall to see the world famous esports stadium. It's an arena littered with seats, plasma screens and 10 computers. Sadly the famous Dota 2 international tournament had ended 2 days before I arrived, so the stadium was empty. The cleaner there still allowed me to look around after I begged him for 5 minutes. The next big computer game being played there was "heartstone" on Friday. Even I was not nerdy enough to see that.

From there I decided to walk to Iteawan, a 30 min walk. On the way I visited the Korean National Museum and passed an American Army base. Once I hit Iteawan ibwas blown away at how western it was. There were Americans everywhere and every street was littered with pubs, food outlets, and clubs.

It was getting quite late at this point so I decided to buy some more rice cake with spicy sauce and head back to the hostel.

South Korea day 5

The collective hangover of 2 consecutive days of heavy drinking was bad. What made it worse was honoring our plans to visit the DMZ at 7:00am.

Because my liver at this point could best be personified as a baby being force fed brussle sprouts, I ended up sleeping for small parts of the tour. Fortunately I was still awake for the important parts; including the tunnels and the lookout.

The tunnels were awesome. Apparently the North had tried building dozens of tunnels that were obviously directed towards Seoul. Once the South discovered them accidbetly through an excavation, the North reportedly painted the walls black and claimed they were searching for coal. We got to walk down the 3rd tunnel up until the 1st blockade. It was such a steel incline / decline that I'm sure that even if the North had constructed the tunnel, their troops would have been too exhausted to fight anyway.

The lookout was awesome. I researched the North had constructed such a large flag that it couldn't even wave in the wind. This is a lie, I saw it blowing around like crazy.

Tim and I made friends with a french girl, Julie, while doing the tour by offering her some of our hangover food; jollypong - a sweet Korean snackfood.

Tim went to bed as soon as we got back at 5pm. I forced myself to have drinks with Julie. It wasn't easy, but I didn't vomit from the 3rd night of drinking Soju.

South Korea day 3

It was time to say goodbye to my old hostel and head to Iteawan. I took a train there, placed down my bags and immediately made my way to Gangnam. No matter how long I walked around, or how many times I listened to Gangnam Style, I still couldn't find Psy...

I was a little disappointed walking around Gangnam to be honest. There were just apartment buildings and giant booming offices. I was expecting a Tokyo feel, but instead it was quite seouless.

I left close to 5pm and made my way back to my hostel. Rush hour is crazy here! I've seen stacked trains in Sydney before, but this was something else. I think it's because Koreans are so much thinner on average compared to Australians that they were able to get way more people per square meter on the train. Also because I was genuinely about a foot taller than everyone else on the train, I had to actively fight my desire to crowed surf from carrage to carrage.

While having my organs compacted by other Koreans, I had the chance to watch the korean television in the train. For the most part it was exactly what I expected it to be like; quirky cartoon characters selling toothpaste was a big part. What I wasn't expecting so much was just how many female actors were selling beauty products. The models were very artificial and used an array of feminine hand flicks, cute laughs and pouting to sell a tub of moisturizer. Sure, this form of marketing happens everywhere in the world, but its overwhelmingly abundant in Korea. The inner feminist in me was furious; there must be thousands of woman out there battling their insecurities becasie they don't confirm to an arbitrary notion of beauty.

When i got back I met a bloke called Tim from Utah at the hostel and decided to go out drinking with him. Tim was nothing short of a redneck. He was a 21 year old, Donald Trump supporting, gun wielding cowboy. He even supported Trumps ban all Muslims policy because "its like a tap that's leaking dirty water. You gotta stop the flow and figure out the problem so ya dont risk contamination".

Even though I strongly disagreed with Tims conservative outlook, if didn't stop me from enjoying the night out. We went to a whole bunch of different bars and got drunk. We met a few Korean guys and went drinking with them. They were super hospitable and friendly and bought us a few rounds of beer and vodka shots. Despite their broken English, one of them managed to communicate that he had visited Australia and been subject to crippling racism in Brisbane. I tried to console him by telling him that he was simply unlucky in his experience and that most Australians are kind welcoming people. None the less, I'd never felt so embarrassed and ashamed to be Australian. We bought rounds of alcohol back to the Korean guys and went our separate ways.

Almost immediately afterwards we somehow managed to run into 2 Korean girls we had met earlier in the night. They were heading to a club and invited us along. Even though I was drunk, its still very unusual of me to agree to go to a club; I must have misheard them say 'pub'.  I didn't need to worry though because the entire club was so packed that it was physically impossible to dance!

I noticed more than any other club I'd ever been to, how much of a divide there was between male and female behavior. It was disturbing to see just how much everyone tried to live up to 1950's gender stereotypes. There were small pockets of Asian girls everywhere trying to dance and laugh just like in the TV commercials, and giant hordes of western men around them pumping their chest out like roosters. This type of thing exists in Australia too, but once again its overwhelmingy prevalent in Seoul. Despite this, I still had a good night.

South Korea day 4

The hangover in the morning was awful. It was made worse once I realized young Tim barely had one at all.

Today was a day dedicated to recovery. I walked a lot around Iteawan and enjoyed a few good cultural dishes including Ox rice soup from a bistro and a chicken sandwich from 7/11.

At some point I managed to fit in the Korea war museum. I got there only 15 minutes before it closed so I'll have to go back there again to get a proper look.

Tim may have been a gun crazy hillbilly, but supposedly he also played StarCraft. We went to the nearest PC bang (internet cafe) and played a game. I crushed him. My life goal of winning a game of StarCraft in Korea was finally accomplished.

We got back to the hostel and ran into a British guy and a Canadian girl who actually lived in the south teaching English, but had travelled up to Seoul for the weekend. We decided to go out drinking with them. We forgot where all the pubs were that we visited last night, but once we got a few bottles of soju down from 7/11 as predrinking it became a lot easier to remember. It was another sloppy drunk night.

South Korea day 1

FUCK ITS COLD! It's called south Korea, why is it so far up North?!

South Korea is such an organized, clean and beautiful country. I took the KTX express to Seoul center and then took a bus to my hostel called "pencil 5". The streets are wonderfully kept, and all the buildings are pimped with technology. Even the pedestrian crossings have speakers attached to them when you press the button which blast put some 10 second Korean message - I thought I'd activated a silent alarm when I first pushed it. Perhaps I'm just in shock after spending a month in South East Asia, but either way its a refreshing change. It was definitely relaxing not needing to be constantly vigalent about avoiding motorbikes.

I met a few international people at my hostel including; an American, a Canadian and 3 Malaysians. They're all really friendly, but nothing compared to how friendly the other Korean guests are. I kid you not, Koreans are literally the nicest and welcoming people I have ever met. The Koreans found out it was my first day and insisted on making a late Korean lunch with soju for the whole hostel to enjoy. I tried paying them for my share but they wouldn't take it.

For dinner I tried some street food. I am now addicted to Tteokbokki; a rice cake with spicy sauce. I wish I could be as positive about kimchee though, that stuff is downright awful. I don't know why everyone likes it so much.

Oh yeah, other than the 1 American I met, I literally think that I am the only white person here. :)

Vietnam day 7

Today I reunited with two Swiss girls I met earlier in Cambodia. They were new to Hanoi so the swirling deathball of traffic was quite intimidating for them. Reinacting a scene from Aladin I asked Monika to trust me by closing her eyes and walking confidently into the traffic. At first it worked brilliantly, but towards the end I had to yank her back to stop a lone motorbike from splattering her. She wasn't too happy after that.

Regardless, we all had an epic Vietnamese BBQ lunch where we; enjoyed good food, drank a few beers and met an American called Dan.

Sadly the Swiss girls had to leave to Sa Pa by 9pm so that left Dan and I alone in a pub. We got plastered drunk, joined a pub crawl and somehow ended up at the Mafia owned nightclub; the lighthouse.

At roughly 4 I stumbled my way home through the deserted and eerily quiet streets of Hanoi. I slipped and fell over more times than I can remember. Amazingly there was one woman who was still selling sugary pastry near my hostel. I decided to award my bad athleticism with a donut and crawl my way to my bed.

The hangover the next day was very real. I spent half the next day sleeping and the other half hating myself for drinking so much. You might say I was quite "hanoid"!!!

Vietnam day 10

Saigon... shit; I'm still only in Saigon... Every time I think I'm gonna wake up back in the jungle.

My body really was not ready for the warmth and humidity of Ho Chi Minh after being in Hanoi for so long. Going to Korea a day later would really keep my body confused.

Sadly I didn't have all the time I wanted to do the touristy shit. I had to skip out on the tunnels :( instead I went to the war museum and purchased a bunch of cheap Xmas presents.

My flight was in the late evening again so I had enough time to make some friends at the hostel. I met this one bloke, Thomas, from Denmark, and went roaming around town with him. We found a park where locals were playing a game which involved kicking a shuttlecock with a spring on one end. It was bloody impressive how talented they were. It looked like an awesome version of tennis.

I decided to buy one of the shuttlecocks and play the same game. After realizing I had no foot-eye coordination i decided to revamp the game and slap the object instead. I called the game "slap-cock" and im definitely bringing it back to Australia.

Before I left forbmy flight I had an epic convo with one of the Vietnamese receptionists. She made me try quale eggs and some type of bean & garlic paste - it was delicious. She was only 21 and told me her dream was to live in England where its always cold. I didn't have the heart to tell her that dreaming to live in England for the weather was perhaps the dumbest life plan ever.

Vietbam day 9

My original plan was to slowly make my way down Vietnam overtime, but sadly because I had spent way too much time in Hanoi at this point I decided that I would simply book a flight to Ho Chi Minh in order to catch my other flight to Seoul on the 7th.

If only it were so easy...

I took a taxi at 6:00am to the airport only to find out my flight had been cancelled due to a technical glitch in the aircraft! They reimbursed me 400,000 dong and told me to come back in the evening for a replacement flight. This really sucked because I was hoping to get at least 2 days in Ho Chi Minh and now I would only have 1.

On the bright side though, Max (the Sweedish bloke I had met before) was flying into Hanoi in the early evening. I managed to have a beer with him and show him around briefly before I had to leave to catch my new flight.

Once I got to the airport for the second time I found that my plane had been delayed by 2 hours due to another technical glitch!! Grrr! All these delays and cancellations had me worried about the safety of the plane I was flying on. I had no reason to be scared though, we didn't even crash once.

Somehow I managed to make friends with 2 Canadians on the flight despite an orchestra of crying babies disrupting our conversation.  The 3 of us split an uber to our destination once we arrived. I got to bed at 2am.

Vietnam day 8

This day was rough. I really didn't do that much.

At one point I went for a short walk with Sean (the Irish bloke who completed his PhD) and had a pretty epic chat about European PhDs, fluid dynamics and advice in general about how to do shit. Apparently he had completed his PhD, won an award from SETI, plays several musical instruments and is thinking about starting up his own consultancy business in turbines that are used in vortex's.

While admittedly the chat with Sean was awesome and inspiring, my hangover had worsened at the sound of computational fluid dynamics so I had to go back and nap for a few more hours.

I surfaced close to 5pm and met Dan at a pub. Dan (who is about the same age as me) decided to handle his hangover by getting drunk again. He had found a Welsh bloke and had been heavily drinking since 1pm. Despite having my manhood mocked by Dan and the Welsh guy for not drinking beer with them, I decided to order a coca-cola with a swirly straw.

Later that night I went to the night markets. In all honestly I was more interested in the kabab stores on the adjacent street. One resourceful shop had managed to drill a hole directly into the ground into a gas pipeline underneath to cook my kebab. When it was done he simply clogged the sturdy hose with a plastic stopper...

Vietnam day 1

The sleeper bus from Vientiane departed at 5pm on the 27th and arrived at 7pm on the 28th. 26 hours of a bus ride is not fun. In hindsight I should have payed the additional $50 for a flight.

What made the trip so long was the Vietnam boarder. We arrived at the boarder at 2am even though the boarder security only showed up at 6am - why we simply didn't depart 4 hours later is beyond me. The boarder security was dreadfully inefficient, there were no English signs and a simple stamp in a passport would take up to 40 minutes. To make matters worse the infrastructure of the boarder was dreadfully incomplete. At one point we had to walk 1km through rain and mud to get from the departing gate of Laos to the Arrival gate of Vietnam.

Despite everything, I'm still kinda glad I made the trip because I got to meet a few cool Canadians and British people.

Once I arrived I made friends with an Irish bloke called Sean and a bunch of Germans and English people. We all decided to go out drinking at a place called 'le pub' (yeah, that's actually what it was called). There I ran into Michele and Marie! It was really great catching up! At 12:00 the bar tender pulled down the aluminum gate to the pub, closed the door, turned off the lights and told us to be quiet. I found out later that the city had a midnight curfew and the bartender wanted to avoid the attention of the police. At 3ish the bartender kicked us out though and advised us to go to another pub around town. Word on the street was this other pub was actually run by the Vietnamese Mafia who simply bribed the police to keep their doors open and music blaring all night long.

Vietnam day 6

I took a bus back to Hanoi with Michele and Marie. We left early enough in the morning to arrive by midday.

The first thing I did when I got back was drop my bags off at some hostel and walk around the lake. I passed several groups of elderly Vietnamese women doing a coordinated workout dance to old country western music. It was an extreemly bizzare sight. It was kinda like zumba but much much less sexy.

Layer on Marie and I had epic street food for dinner. It was a yellow sticky rice with herbs and beef. Nom nom nom.

I got back to my hostel only to discover two deaf guys were my only roommates. I asked them all types of questions about what it's like being deaf. They definitely seemed more complimented at my interest than insulted by me asking about their condition. I guess it's good that they didn't hear me snore that night :)

Vietnam day 5

We did it. We climbed Mt Fansipan today! We found a deal for $44 per person (still a rip off) and decided to book with that hostel.

There were 3 Israeli's, the 3 of us and 2 elderly Russians. The Israeli's were friendly and a lot of fun to talk to, but the Russians were slow, jaded and looked like they had at one point been an active member of the Mafia... Seriously, the dude had scars across is face, tatoos across his arms, and talked with the deepest threatening accent I could imagine.

The walk was beautiful. It was green and luscious. We often found ourselves suspended in clouds for 15 minutes at a time, but once they cleared the beautiful surroundings opened up for us. When we got to the top, we found that the Vietnamese were building a hotel at the very top. There was loud construction work, incompleted stairs, and a perfectly functioning gondola. I personally hated that they were building a hostel up this high for 2 reasons: 1) it was destroying the natural beauty of the summit and 2) I don't think it'll even be that popular since no fancy rich westerner could cope with minor altidude sickness at 3100m. That being said, the total climb took 13 hours to comolete, so I changed my mind about the working gondola pretty quick.

Later on that night I went out drinking with the Israeli's. They had managed to find a place selling home brew beer in recycled plastic bottles. They were only 15000 dong ($0.8) per litre!! Trust the Jews to find a good economic bargain, eh? I really enjoyed that night, they told me heaps about Israeli culture as far as their military and religion was concerned.  I think Israel will be the next place I visit on my next trip.

Vietnam day 4

Holy fuck I'm falling behind on my blog. I'm a week behind, let's see how well my memory copes.

We rented motorbikes today with the hope that we'd be able to climb Mt Fansipan. The travel agency said the cost would be $65 USD per person to climb which we thought was ridiculous considering several travel blogs said we could climb it without a guide.

The ride up was amazing. The road up there involved sharp turns on high elevations around mountains. Michele was riding his scooter with Marie on the back and was zooming ahead - he'd definitely seen 'the Italian job'.

Once we arrived we found an unoccupied building which we assumed was a security checkpoint. We simply walked straight past and were just about to start the hike until a half asleep security guard shouted from the top of the building beckoning is to come back. Shit. He told is that we couldn't hike without a guide and that no guides were available that day. We found out later that it was complete rubbish and that he must have been looking for a bribe. None the less we left with our heads down low and our bike engine revs high.

We decided to make the most of our rented motorbikes by driving down to a few waterfalls and checking out a few more villages. A good day all up, but still kind of disappointing.

Michele and I decided to verse each other in a game of chess later using a chess app. (We had an epic rivalry which ended in a tie back in Australia). Sadly we played 2 games and won 1 each. Another draw :( we should really play 3 games..

For dinner we went to a great place in the heart of Sa Pa right by the church. I honestly can't remember what we had, but it was aweosme. Oh yeah there was red wine too (I think).