54 year old Female Backpacker Travels Cambodia and Vietnam
Posted: Sat Apr 11, 2015 9:42 pm
Her 28-day holiday through Cambodia and Vietnam, including a return ticket from London cost only £1,100!
There were moments on my month-long backpacking trip around Cambodia and Vietnam, on a budget of £25 a day, that I questioned the sense of my plan. Time-rich and cash-poor, I wanted to travel, but also to rediscover my sense of adventure.
However, it was more than 30 years since I’d last backpacked – around India (and that trip had its challenges). The doubts started almost immediately as I endured the seven-hour, bone-shuddering, coach ride to Phnom Penh from Ho Chi Minh City (there are no trains in Cambodia), being force-fed One Direction and Britney Spears videos.
It was at the Mad Monkey Hostel in Phnom Penh where I faced my first “age-challenge”, on being shown my bed. It was the top bunk of three, eight feet up in the air with a vertical climb up a ladder. My one pair of jeans ripped immediately in protest.
This catastrophe led to a sequence of events that would reduce many a middle-aged woman to tears and an immediate flight home. But not me. How I laughed when I tried on a kaftan that made me look like the not-so-small sister of the late Demis Roussos, how I giggled with the tailor as he measured my behind, and how I howled, hysterically, when he produced an outfit that wouldn’t have looked out of place in an operating theatre. On the upside, he did manage to patch my jeans. If there’s one piece of advice I would give any woman travelling to Indo-China it’s, if you’re over a size eight, make sure you have enough clothes with you.
Next, I needed to find my backpacker legs and acclimatise to the heat, dust and traffic. At 5.30am, having slept very little (there was an all-night bar, a couple feet above my head), I jumped into a tuk-tuk and for £4 rapidly went from temple to monument and back to a temple and so on, while fitting in one palace and the national museum.
At a slower pace, I supped a beer in the Foreign Correspondents Club and savoured the glamour of the Raffles Hotel Le Royal Elephant Bar, which once served, among famous others, Somerset Maugham and Jacqueline Kennedy. On my budget, one cocktail was enough but at least the atmosphere was free. Things were looking up.
There was another spasm of doubt during another long and at times terrifying, bus ride to Siem Reap. No one should take the night bus. But it was in Siem Reap that I realised that for only slightly more money I could have my own quiet room and a bed a lot closer to the floor, (Mandalay Inn, £10 with air-con).
The town’s many glitzy but reasonably priced restaurants (breakfast, lunch and dinner for around £12) compete for business with the beggars, the hawkers and the tuk-tuk drivers, some of whom whiled away the night watching televisions strapped to their vehicles. But I was there to see the world-famous temples of Angkor Wat. I arose at 4.30am for the sunrise along with a thousand or so other people. You can get a three-day pass which might suit some as it was hot and humid by 9am and I had only managed to visit three temples.
Being a backpacker at 54 might not be a good look but age does have some advantages, including being allowed to use the pool in the four-star Angkor Holiday Hotel in Siem Reap, looking like someone wearing pyjamas who’s been dragged through a Gardenia godefroyana hedge backwards. It was a very welcome few hours of luxuriousness.
Back in Vietnam, I planned to fly to Hanoi (two hours from Ho Chi Minh, £56) and then work my way back down the eastern coast. When I took out my travel insurance I ticked the box that promised I wasn’t participating in dangerous sports, so I had to hope that did not include riding pillion on a moped.
Along with millions of other mopeds (some carrying live animals, monks and whole families), a large number of buses, lorries and taxis but a distinct lack of traffic lights, we whizzed through the dilapidated, charming, mildewed city that is Hanoi, only slightly slowing down at crossroads or roundabouts, where my guide would say: “Shut your eyes now, lady”.
I flew past the Ho Chi Minh City Mausoleum, the Hanoi Opera House and Hoa Lo Prison. I saw street barbers honing their craft and ex-offenders releasing turtles into West Lake for good luck. We broke into the closed B52 Victory Museum (only the outside) and went to a restaurant that served dog – fortunately they’d sold out.
Needing something a little less frenetic, I spent the following day on a boat visiting.......
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/desti ... etnam.html
Essentials
Getting there
London to Ho Chi Minh City flights start at £500, arranged through edreams.co.uk.
Visas
You can apply for a visa for Cambodia when you arrive in the country, it costs around £15: embassyofcambodia.org.
The visa for Vietnam is more expensive, especially if you need multiple entry, £54 and £85 for 30 days respectively. vietnamembassy.org.uk.
You can also order a visa to be collected at the airport in Vietnam. It’s cheaper but can involve a long queue.
Where to stay
Cambodia and Vietnam have a huge range of accommodation in all price ranges but you can’t go wrong with hostelbookers.com which books hostels, hotels, apartments and guesthouses.
Travelling around
By bus in Cambodia (and into Vietnam): see catmekongexpress.com.
By train and plane in Vietnam: see vietnam-railway.com; vietnam-airline.com.
seat61.com covers rail travel in both countries.
