[100+ big pics] My trip through China + SE Asia

[turdburgler]

As some people know, I have been off traveling in Asia for the last two months. I remember sehvi had posted pictures of his trip through South America, and thought some people want to see some of the stuff I saw on my trip. First the route:

Yeah the map is a little ridiculous but was the first one I pulled up. We started off in Beijing, China and spent roughly two weeks in the country. It's not nearly enough time to see the country, and honestly soured it a bit on me. I wasn't a huge fan of China, although I think if I had spent more time there I may have warmed up to it. After China we went into Vietnam, and spent a month there. Vietnam for me was the highlight of the trip. The people were beyond friendly, the scenery was amazing and there was always something to do. After that we went into Cambodia for a week - just hit Phnom Penh and Siem Reap. Cambodia was awesome as well, albeit stupid poor. We went to Bangkok to catch a cheap flight to Hong Kong, where we flew out of. We didn't spend much time in Bangkok, and the time we did was pretty much buying clothing for dirt cheap.

Anyways...on with the pics:

Day one, after getting in the night before we were really jet-legged. We got up and walked around at about 5:30 in the morning and wondered why Beijing was so damn empty. This is just a shot of a road (yes road) that runs between the Forbidden City and Tiananmen Square.

Everything in China is on an epic scale. The dome is the Opera house, and in the background is the People's hall - government building.

Gate at the base of Tiananmen Square. Keep in mind by this point it is about 7 am. Everyone is up early and running around in the morning because it gets way to hot to do anything in the afternoon. Also note the Chinese tourists in there matching hats being led around by flags - I tried to steal one but to no avail.

Maos tomb - he is essentially a plastic corpse...sort of weird. No pics allowed inside though.

More Tiananmen Square - line up for Maos tomb.

I had to stare down Mao. Some random Chinese dude approached me and tried to hand me his camera. I thought he wanted a shot with his wife who was with him. He shoved his wife out of the way and wanted a picture with the tall white guy...I got used to being a celebrity pretty quick.

Forbidden City. We were there for four hours and only did a lap down the middle, the place is so damn big.

Lion with baby under its paw - is female. The male one is crushing the earth under his paw. We win.

More Forbidden City

GAH GODZILLA

View of the city from a hill we climbed at the end. You can see how massive it is. The big section in the middle is what we walked, didnt even bother with the stuff on the side. You can see the Opera house at the end as well. Standing at the top of this hill you could turn around and all you could see was buildings - the city is stupid big. Also notice the pollution everywhere. By the end of Beijing I was spitting shit everywhere, the air is fucking gross.

Off to Olympic Park, at the Birds Nest. Best stadium I have ever seen.

Good old Chinese signs. This one is at least spelt properly, some of the signs we saw were amazing.

Media Tower at the Olympic Park.

Inside the Birds Nest - for a stadium that seats 80k, it seems pretty small from the inside.

Random Asian dude that was staring at me. Regular Occurrence.

Water Cube - we didn't go inside, but it was a pretty cool building from the outside. I used to swim competitively so I sort of wish I saw the inside in person, not a huge thing to miss though.

The Heavenly Temple. Huge temple made entirely out of wood - not a single nail used to hold it together. It was pretty deserted while we were there, good place to chill.

Another shot of the temple...

 

[turdburgler]

Our hostel was found down this Hutong (Alley). This is what traditional Beijing looked like - they tore most of them down for the Olympics to make it more western friendly.

Up the great wall! My buddy struggling to climb. We thought these stairs were bad...we found out how easy they were once we got to Cambodia.

More great wall shots.

More of the wall - I actually managed to fall down this badboy. There was no one on the wall except for the one section I bailed. Pure skill.

Off to Xi'an. Honestly not to much here - actually nothing, other than the Terracotta Warriors. They were cool to see in person, but you can't get up close so a little bit of a let down. They had some really well preserved ones set up the side that you could get close to though.

An Archer...

And the big Chamber. Estimated 8000 figures in here. They all have different faces which is pretty cool.

Up close and personal.

TAKE THAT YOU DIRTY COMMY BASTARDS

Shaghai time. We got there and it was raining and misty, oh wells.

Oh, and under construction. Fack. Shot of the Bund. I actually didnt really like Shaghai at first due to all of the construction, it made the city look like ass.

Close up of the Bund side.

Shanghai Old town. We met up with some other people who were on exchange in beijing. They were visiting Shanghai for the weekend and we just sort of tagged along for the time we were there. One of the guys actually lives about 5 mins from me in Toronto...random. Anyway, this is a section of Shanghai that has been kept somewhat preserved, traditional buildings and whatnot.

Yu Garden. Really cool Garden found in Shanghai. At one point it was the emperors retreat, now is just a badass rock garden.

Pudong District. All the finance buildings are on this side. Really cool skyline if you are into big cities.

A shot down the Bund.

Bottom of the Jin Mao tower. We hit up the worlds highest bar...87th floor.

View from said bar - behind glass so the pics are a bit sketchy, was pretty amazing though.

And night shot from the bar. We nursed the shit out of our 20 dollar beers. This was a pretty classy bar, filled with businessmen and other ballers. We walked in with flip flops and dirty backpacker clothing. Dressing up is for chumps.

Shanghai at night - note the big ass bottle opener on the right hand side. And that is the end of Shanghai - I actually really liked the town by the end of it. We went to a chinese club, were there till about 5 am, and it was still going hard when we left. I forgot my Camera that night, but I may be able to steal some photos from the Canadians we met there if anyone is interested.

 

[turdburgler]

Yangshuo. By far the nicest area we went in China. Karst moutains everywhere, rice paddies, amazing scenery.

Off to the river boats for a trip down the Li River

And on the boats - took us about an hour to get down the river. There were little vendors in the middle of the river you could buy beer from. We met our bikes at the end of the river and were nice and drunk to continue our bike ride.

Another shot...

Went caving, jumped in a mud pile. I am just chilling while my new best friend is lurking around. We eventually wrestled in the mud...crazy chinese.

RUN BUFFALO!

As I said - amazing scenery. It was a great place to just rent bikes and tour around. I ran into a rice paddy to get this shot.

GOOD MORNING VIETNAM. First night in Hanoi - capital of Vietnam. My friend heading back to our hostel.

Hello, motorbike? We thought the roads were bad in Hanoi, then we went to Saigon...you'll see.

Ha Long Bay. Imagine Yangshuo on water. This place was unbelievable. We stayed on one of the boats you can see in the harbour, drank, jumped off the top, had a grand old time.

As I said, unbelievable.

Went on a jungle trek on Cat Ba island in Ha Long Bay. 38 Celsius, 90% humidity...lovely.

Was worth the view though. The peak was only 450m, but it felt a lot higher. They had a sketchy rusted observation deck we climbed as well. This is a shot from the top of it - it was held together with rusted bolts and rotting wood. We had about 12 people up top, then realized there was a sign at the bottom that said max of 4 - whoops.

Welcome to the DMZ. The heaviest fighting of the American war was here. We went with a tour guide as there were mortars and UXO everywhere. We got some friends we met on our bus down to go in on it with us, ended up paying about 8 CAD each for the half day.

Oh look a bullet.

North Vietnamese Graveyard. This one has about 7000 buried in it. Our guide said there were 82 (or 84, cant remember) in the province alone.

Vinh Moc tunnels - tunnels in which a town lived for 2 years during the war. 3 different depths, 12, 18, and 23 meters deep.

They were not built for 6'2" people - I barely fit in most places.

Hue, just south of the DMZ. We didnt really stay here long, but they had a cool forbidden city look a like in the middle of the city. We got bombed here with some people form Australia, the UK, Laos, and Vietnam. All in all worth the trip...haha.

Leaving Hue for Hoi An, I got out of the bus to puke, and found more awesome scenery.

 

[turdburgler]

balllllaaaa - 1 CAD = 16000 dong, 1 USD = 18000 dong. haha.

Went to the beach and met some folks from the Netherlands there. We stopped at this place on the way back to town for some food. We ended up traveling with the guys from the Netherlands for the next month.

Rented motorbikes and road to the Marble Mountains/China Beach/Danang.

Herro.

Being responsible in Vietnam.

Sunset in Hoi An. This place was amazing. We stayed for 5 nights, for tailor made suits for 70 USD each, and pretty much just relaxed. Amazing town.

Hoi An during the day, really cool town as I said. The best thing we ate on the trip was here. Cao Lao - the only place you can get it traditionally made is in Hoi An, if you ever make the trip it is worth going here just to eat it.

And now Nha Trang. Not very many pics from here, as we spent our time Scuba Diving. Really cool town though - assuming you like beaches and driving. We got fully certified to dive for 200 USD. Here it would cost 1000+, plus we got to learn surrounded by coral. I have some pics from the dive I can throw up after if people want - just need to find the CD they are on.

Dalat - city in the Central Highlands. Nice and cool climate, almost like back home. At night it would get down to 20 degrees or so, and the Vietnamese would be wearing winter jackets. I wore shorts all the time and got awesome looks from the locals.

The real reason to come here is to get into the country side. We rented motorbikes for the day and just drove off. View from one of the mountains we rode along.

Bikes next to a coffee plantation. Vietnam is the 2nd largest exported off coffee, and the people that grow it are rich, by vietnamese standards. A crop can be sold for upwards of 40k USD, which to the vietnamese is a fortune.

Stopped at a local village. These tribes spoke a different langauge than the rest of the country, in all there are around 70 minority villages/cultures in Vietnam. These families were dirt poor. Living in a tin shack (you can see in the background) there were 8 people living in it.

Mui Ni - Tiger Prawns. Amazing. There is not much here, it is really just a beach with some guesthouses on it My buddy wanted to go to beaches again so we went.

We did get to rent motorbikes again so it was worth it. In all we rode about 80km and got some cool shots of the area.

More from the bike ride.

Red Sand dunes - we got some kids to take these of us. The kids there were so damn cute, and they had perfect english. We tried riding down the dunes on crazy carpets, but just ended up joking around with the kids for about 2 hours.

Said kids.

Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon). Reunification palace. Where the North Vietnamese drove out those dirty democratic bastards.

The place was stuck in the 60s, really cool to see if you are into architecture /history.

Phnom Penh - Cambodia. Welcome to povertyville.

 

[turdburgler]

S21 - converted school. This was the biggest torture camp during the Pol Pot/Khmer Rogue days. Super depressing. They would bring anyone with any sort of education here to be 'reeducated' aka tortured until they admited anything. Then they were carted off to the killing fields.

They lined the ledges with barb wired so people couldnt jump off and kill themselves.

And the Killing Fields. Once they admitted guilt at S21, they were told all would be better. Then they were thrown in trucks and sent to the Killing Fields to be killed.

The Khmer Rouge used pickaxes and whatever else they could find to bash peoples heads. It was cheaper than using bullets.

Walking around the ground you could find bones and clothing sticking out all over the place.

As I said, anything. They would take small kids, hold them by the legs and beat them against trees until they died. Then throw them in the hole. There was actually a tree that they put a big loud speaker on to play music. It was so that no one could here the screams coming from the area. No one knew they existed until the 80s, after a random farmer dug up some bones.

It started to rain on the way back from the Killing Fields.

And rain some more - the whole city flooded. These kids were swimming in the streets.

Outside our guesthouse, the street was running down towards the river.

Off the poverty filled streets to the amazing Royal Palace. It's very similar to the one found in Bangkok. A shot of the Royal Throne room. There are no interior pictures as Cambodia is very Buddhist and does not allow pictures inside temples. Had to remove our shoes to go inside.

Royal Concert Hall.

More shots of the palace. The blue french house was donated by Napoleon.

Side street in Phnom Penh. It was a city of contrast, Killing Fields to the Palace. Amazing river view next to slums. Really cool place to see.

The heavy hitters of Cambodia. Angkor Temples. This is a shot of Angkor Wat, the worlds largest religious struture. We showed up at 5:30 am for sunrise, it was cloudy as shit though so we didn't get very good shots unfortunately. When this was fully populated, there were 1 million people in the area; at the same time the population of London was 50,000 to give you an idea of how far ahead they were.

Another shot of Angkor Wat.

Entering the temple...

Inner courtyard of Angkor Wat, the scale of this place was crazy. It took us a solid 3 hours to walk around, we easily could have spent a day here just exploring the one temple.

One of the spires in the courtyard...

Detail work on the temples, crazy.

Bayon Temple, inside Angkor Thom - the capital of the Khmer empire. Me taking a cliche tourist shot.

 

[turdburgler]

216 faces in all, each tower has one facing each direction. This temple was rushed when built so some of the detail work looks hurried, pretty cool to see the difference between Angkor Wat.

More faces...

Close up of one...

Different temple, my friend trying to climb. The stairs here were ridiculous, some of them were probably 75-80 degree climbs.

Ta Prohm temple. One of my favourites. It has been left in a state similar to what it was found like, so there are overgrown trees and rubble all over the place. Makes you feel like you are really exploring it - it was actually used to film the first Tomb Raider movie.

Big ass tree eating a building.

Fallen rocks all over the place.

Out in Siem Reap, the town close to Angkor. I have no idea who this guy is, he was passed out the bar. I had a tower going on his head at one point, but the bar staff made me take it down.

BANGKOK IS FUN. Into thailand we go. We spent no time here, like I said, just wandered around a bit, bought clothes, and went out a couple times.

View from the bar we went to in Bangkok. Another one of the classy joints, was on the roof of a hotel, cant remember the name of it now.

Thai club - Hollywood. They had no DJ. Just random half naked thai chicks singing club songs (top 40 stuff), it was jokes. They butchered the songs but it was amazing to watch. The pics suck as they wouldn't let us take them inside the club, I had to sneak my camera in and take spy shots from around corners.

Hong Kong! My room was fabulous.

Nanthan Rd in Kowloon, the main shopping street. This city never stopped moving, we got back to or room one night thinking it was 11 pm, it was actually 4 am. There are people out everywhere, all the time.

asshole

More shots of the city, really cool place to explore.

 

[turdburgler]

More random shots of the city...

Hong Kong island as viewed from Kowloon - looks cool during the day, just wait for the night shots.

Random shopping mall - they know how to sell in the city. Lights everywhere, always on. AC blasting all day and night, with the doors wide open. The cold air spills onto the street so you run into the store to cool off, then sales people swarm you and try to sell you random shit.

Midlevel escalators. These are a series of escalators that take you up Hong Kong Island. In the morning they go down so everyone can go to work, and at night they go up so people can get home. It took us 20 minutes or so to get to the top.

Hong Kong Island. I dont have any shots of the cars here, but it's really expensive to drive so the only people who have cars are taxi drivers and the super rich. There are a lot of sick sports cars, Bentleys, rolls etc driving around.

View from the top of Victoria Peak. Took a tram up the hill at a ridiculous angle. Some crazy asian engineering.

I AM BATMAN. Bank of China building. Looks really cool, but apparently a lot of the chinese hate it because it breaks all the rules of Feng Shui.

Finally the view of HK island at night. Really cool place overall. Really expensive, but an awesome place to visit. A friend of mine was working there at the time so we met up with him - his view is a bit different as apparently they work a shitload more than us, and are paid a lot less.

Well, that's it. I have about 2500 pictures so I just threw up some, if anyone wants anymore of certain places just ask, I can try to throw them up. I dont have much bandwidth so I am hoping these stay up for now.

ps if anyone cares I'm going to throw a mix together in the next little bit as well - been way to long since I've got to play with my decks/DAW

 

[Mojo616]

im pretty sure i just saw a dick

 

[New Account]

herro prease

 

[motoxbudd]

LOL^

seriously awesome man. looks like u had a great time. awesome pics!

-moto

 

[telia]

im pretty sure i just saw a dick

 

[turdburgler]

Don't worry she is hiding the dick...

The picture of me facing the camera has the kid being held full frontal to the camera...baller

 

[misfit]

sweet pics, looks like an awesome trip

 

[DMAUL]

i want to do that

 

[Mojo616]

i was talking about the mud bath pic, actually

 

[Osiris]

Cool pics, Hansel.

 

[ArakAtak]

Nice pics, looks like you had a great time.

Thanks for sharing

 

[Dangerdoggie]

You went on a sex tourist trip and all you got were a bunch of pictures of buildings and shit?

 

[jerry]

what's up with then new best friend thing

 

[turdburgler]

what's up with then new best friend thing

guess I should explain that

it was a random cave we went to in Yangshuo. The guy is not actually naked - wearing some tight ass underwear though. He knew enough english to teach me how to swear in Chinese and then we just threw mud at each other for a while.