Our biggest mishaps.

The top five mishaps in our journey. Some of them are innocent mistakes and some are destinations we think it is better to avoid.

“You’re living the dream”, “Wow, I envy you so much”, “Heaven”. We hear these sentences every day more or less, and indeed we are full of gratitude for the lives we created for ourselves. We do live the dream. Most of the time it is awesome and heaven and I also envy myself when it’s so good for us.
But between us bitches, what we most enjoy hearing about are the blunders, the mistakes, the mishaps. It’s simple, mishaps make the jealousy more comfortable and I’m here to make your lives more comfortable.
So there you go, the top five biggest embarrassing, annoying, foolish mishaps of our journey.
I was wondering if I should be writing them chronologically because actually we started our journey in quite a big fall, but we’ll get back to it later. It makes more sense to open with our most recent mishap. The one we’re still struggling to escape from these very days, the one I’m really mad about in the last days. Did I say mad ? I meant more of a totally pissed off.
It all started when our month in Chiang Mai was coming to its epic end. Our next one month stop was already decided and some friends even found a home to wait on us there. We just need to arrive like kings, so much fun. But then The One started with his travel bugs “What about a trip? How about d-o-ing some stuff after a laid back month in amazing location A and before another laid back month in amazing location B???”.
Rumors about Pai brought us to the conclusion that it’s not our style (we have the feeling that it’s a bit of Vang Vieng style, check out mishap #4). Anyway, we decided on Chiang Rai with its White Temple. But Chiang Rai and its White Temple is something for one day. Shall we travel all the way to Chiang Rai to see one temple as glorious as it may be?? The One started digging in the internet (the internet is I’m telling you, oh my what a pile of nonsense!) which resulted in a talk about two nights in a picturesque village right in the middle of the jungle, amazing scenery, waterfalls, tribal atmosphere, something really really authentic.
I flowed with it.
Big… no… huge mistake! Don’t flow! Ask the necessary questions! Resist authenticity! Rebel any attempt to pull you to any place with “jungle” in it! Jungle is not good, friends. Jungle is the home of the animals, not mine! And when I say animals I mean giant spiders and when I say home I mean a dirty hut and when I say me I mean that woman who screams in the middle of the night because of a giant spider, starts shaking and crying hysterically, goes to sleep with the children because they have a mosquito net, wakes up to the squat toilet in the middle of the night only to find there another even bigger spider, wakes up her eldest son and forces him to kill the spider and interrupts his attempts to go back to sleep since how many times can you listen to mommy wailing “thank you dear, you saved my life” in a trembling voice.
The next day I summoned all of my will powers and we went on a trek. You can’t blame me and my sandals for not trying to fit in. Just kidding. I put on my shoes. It’s obvious that the jungle spiders have already heard of me (I screamed, remember??) and they’re now lurking there waiting for an opportunity to host me in their home court (jungle is the home of the animals! Not of me!) and coincidentally touch my toes. No chance! I will not leave my toes unprotected! In short, I wore shoes, I think the point is clear. So I trekked the jungle, friends. Real jungle with muddy trails and all, mind you. And I didn’t complain at all. I behaved gallantly. Really. Ask The One. Even he said so. I walked in the hilly landscape of the jungle, saw a waterfall, visited tea plantations, noticed the beauty of the view around us (beautiful indeed), dipped my fit in a small pond with The Natives, everything, you name it. Zero complaints. Even when in the end of the trek we had to take a steep crazy climb back to our village, I didn’t squeak a word (actually that was because I had no air in my lungs, what is this thing!?). And then we arrived back in the village. Some village. Seven huts that four of them were our “resort”. Some resort, God help me. Something awful. We drank water. We ate late lunch. There was no electricity. We thought, ok, it happens, a remote village, it happens, it makes sense that power outages happen here from time to time. It’s natural. It’s authentic. Even though natural and authentic are stupid excuses that I am already sick of, but well… it was still daylight.
And then slowly time crawled towards five and I started becoming irritated. I decided to take things over, enough with this bullshit. I don’t want to flow anymore. Do I look like a river!? The only problem was that there were no things there to take over at that moment. I mean, in this village there is no transportation. There is a pickup car of the resort that every day around six brings new guests and leaves every morning taking them back to the city. Every MORNING. Meaning tomorrow morning. Meaning spending a night in the jungle without electricity. No Way! Don’t even try to talk me into this. This is not going to happen!
The manager of the place was in Chiang Rai (of course, if I were her I would rather be anywhere other than my tribe’s seven-huts village with no electricity and many spiders) and I learned that she will probably come back with the evening’s pickup truck. I ambushed her. Like a giant spider I ambushed her. She didn’t even had a chance to step out of the car when I jumped on her explaining to her slowly so there is no way to misunderstand that there is no electricity for the last couple of hours and we cannot stay and have to immediately return to Chiang Rai. And you can’t blame her for not trying to argue. She tried to. It didn’t help.
700 baht later some guy with a big car from the village nearby took us back to town and then we had decent rooms to step into and then The One murdered a huge cockroach in the bathroom and then a hot shower and only then I could ley myself down and relax.

The jungles in North Thailand, near Chiang Rai.

But I promised five mishaps and that was only the last of them. The others I promised to tell calmly, less emotionally, at least relatively.
Let’s go back to the beginning, to Koh Tao Thailand. One month in Koh Tao while The One is working on his Divemaster. Big mistake. A beginners mistake. A mistake of booking things from home…. We could have settled in Koh Phangan, The One would have done his Divemaster thing easily while we enjoy our time there instead of spending this time in an island that is so totally not family friendly.
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Koh Tao. Not exactly paradise.

We’ll move on to Cambodia or more precisely, Phnom Penh, or yet even more precisely, well, we had to get to Phnom Penh to get our visa to Vietnam but what a mistake it was to get there on weekend! Read my lips, Phnom Penh is a totally unnecessary in your voyage. I repeat, totally unnecessary and I strongly recommend not getting there. And if you have no choice, like we didn’t, don’t be there longer than the minimum required, or in other words, don’t get stick there for the entire weekend when all embassies are closed. Just don’t.

And now Laos. In Laos there is a horrible place called Vang Vieng. Disgusting place in a beautiful country. Now, of course everything I write here is my personal impression. Well, every blog contains the personal impression of the blogger, duh. And I know of many people who really enjoyed Vang Vieng a lot. There are even some people I love that enjoyed Vang Vieng. But still, I hold my opinion that we’re talking about a repulsive place with hundreds of stoned weirdos staring at repetitive broadcasts of Family Guy and Friends, getting drunk and trying not to kill themselves by tubing in the river. Not my glass of beer. In fact, I think that if I’ll ever find myself back again in Vang Vieng I’ll voluntarily go and drown myself in the river, even without a tube.

Playing Settlers of Catan in Vang Vieng, Laos. That was the best entertainment we had there.

And we’ll finish this lovely post (I know you’re having fun) with The Philippines. I have already told here about this horrible place The One thought I’ll agree to sleep in “just to be polite”. Ha! And so I’ll dedicate the blunder of The Philippines to another island called Camotes. Well friends, I have no clue what is this island for. Normal places to stay in are non-existent. Normal wi fi is non-existent. No decent restaurants. A totally unnecessary stop in our journey and I truly don’t understand why are there no warnings anywhere about it. On the contrary, people actually recommend on going there. The internet is full of recommendations on this unjustifiable island. So here I formally announce, Camotes – take it off your list! Don’t go there! You have nothing to look for there. And don’t forget to thank me later with a big jar of organic tahini.

Fishermen in the sunset in Camotes, The Philippines.

And if you’ve reached that far, you’re well prepared to enjoy the last one. An extra bonus.
Heard of Vietnam? Heard of Sapa? There you go. Yes, I know, it’s kind of surprising, but for us Sapa is totally overrated. Perhaps it’s because we arrive there after being enchanted from the amazing authentic beauty of Ha Giang and with the crowded with tourists Sapa it just wasn’t exciting for us anymore. Of course we didn’t come to Sapa during the best season and the famous rice terraces were dry and unimpressive (in Ha Giang they were stunning, so season is not an excuse to let down people who came from afar!) and in general we felt overwhelmed by tourists traps surrounding us all over. The street sellers shooting at you words in Hebrew to tempt you to buy from them or come with them to their village for a tour, tourists’ restaurants that are priced accordingly, low quality guesthouses, an totally unnecessary stop in the journey. So either get there expecting the treatment of “here come the rich tourists, let’s try and scratch any dollar we can from them” or just skip it. Authentic? Not really.
Farewell from paradise.