roundtheworldflights.com

 

Lai Foong

Lai Foong Coffee Shop has been a fixture of Chinatown’s Tun Tan Cheng Lock street for more than fifty years now. It is actually a collection of half a dozen frantically hectic eateries and is famous for Lai Foong Beef Noodles and for what must be the most tooth-rottingly sweet coffee in Malaysia.

The rushing waiters yell in shrill Chinese and from the surrounding tables you can hear voices chattering in Malay, Mandarin, Cantonese, English and Tamil. The cultural mix is as mind-bogglingly diverse as the menu.

Four ringgit will get you a heaped serving of delicious Penang Fried Kuey Teow – thick noodles served with egg, chicken and vegetable...but for just a little more you can get a plate of omasum, or cow intestines. The board of fare also offers tripe, lean meat, tendon and what is described simply as ‘balls.’

You can wash your tendons and balls down with a glass of something that the menu calls Jolly Shady. Presumably this is in fact a shandy. Not being a Muslim establishment, Royal Stout, Guinness and Tiger Beer are also on offer. There’s also Carlsberg Special Brew which reminds me only of High School Days but to which the Chinese typically have attributed some supernatural health-giving powers. But then the Chinese see aphrodisiac qualities in everything.

It was here where a Chinese street trader once sidled up to me with a packet of something which he claimed was the world’s most powerful aphrodisiac.
“Test it out,” he said – “if you drop just a few grains of this into a plate of instant noodles all the noodles will straighten out!”

Coliseum
Time almost seems to stand still at The Coliseum. This KL icon is close to celebrating its 100th birthday and has changed little since the good old days when planters used to occupy the rented rooms and colonial engineers used to meet here for sundowners. The bar is said to be the highest bar in South East Asia: it was ergonomically designed at a time long before the term was even thought of and is placed ‘exactly at the height of the average Englishman’s elbow.’

The old bar has seen some wild nights and the loyal crowd of staunch regulars regularly threaten to rebel (or, worse, desert) whenever the owner threatens to refurbish or even just paint the tobacco-stained walls.

You never know who you might bump into in the Coliseum’s bar. Last time I was here I ended up on a G&T binge with a leading military advisor from East Timor and a man who claimed to be an exiled Bengali noble who was battling to regain his ancestral fifedom.
Returning this time the regulars still look vaguely familiar and even old Captain Ho, the famous Chinese waiter has recently celebrated his eighty-eighth birthday but still insists on hobbling out of the kitchen to tie the napkin around your neck and serve up your sizzling (or “sizzering”) hotplate steaks. The traditional British Pot Pies are also a sought after delicacy but the staff here refuses to be rushed...the menu stipulates that these delicacies must be ordered with three days advance notice.

The only noticeable difference these days is that the bar-staff seem to be a bit stingier on the gin slings. Can it be that even the venerable Coli is having to face up to an economic downturn?

Every time I stay at the Coli I think that it’s impossible that it can still be here when I next get back. I’ve been saying that for years though and chances are I guess the infamous ‘Coli’ might outlast me after all!

 

Saigon - 2 brilliant new videos

 

Vietnam - it's addictive

Vietnam was a detour from my original schedule. I had been heading there many times. But the only thing that is 100% certain in Asia is that the unexpected is sure to happen. The gods of travel had for one reason or another always deemed that I should head off on another tangent (usually following assignments to other areas...in some cases much less appealing). And once again I missed out on Vietnam. I have been in Thailand perhaps a dozen times and this time I was determined not to get sidetracked so from the very beginning I had scheduled Vietnam as a 3-week side-trip from my RTW route.

I had heard that Saigon is an addiction. “Once you get to know it,” one old Asia hand had told me, “you will certainly fall in love with it and you won’t want to go anywhere else.” I nodded noncommittally, thinking it unlikely that it would ever rival Bangkok for pure excitement. I have always rated Bangkok as one of the most fascinating cities in the world. (This is no definitive list but Marrakech, Istanbul, Mexico City and New York would certainly also feature).

I have never been able to get my head around calling Saigon ‘Ho Chi Minh City’ but it turns out that this is not a problem since it still remains almost universally Saigon to the locals. Bangkok will always be spectacular but Saigon is like Bangkok must have been fifty years ago. Such things as coolie hats, betel nut and pretty girls sitting side-saddle on the back of motorbikes are an increasing rarity in Bangkok. In old Saigon they are still common. Taxi motorbikes still race you through the traffic as they do in Jakarta (but with less dirt and dust and, usually, dents) making it a much faster – and more exciting – city to negotiate than is Bangkok. They are called Honda Om and the name literally means ‘Honda hug’, presumably because of the way terrified passengers cling to their rider.

In other parts of Asia you can see three people riding a moped and occasionally you might even see four: in Vietnam four is fairly common...and sometimes you can even see five people ‘riding bitch’ behind the rider!

I arrived in Saigon on the red-eye flight from Bangkok on Christmas morning and, enjoying some luxury for once, checked into the wonderful old Rex Hotel – once home to the likes of Graham Greene and a whole host of famous journalists and photographers from the war. I spent most of my time downtown among the old streets and markets though and by sundown on Boxing Day the city had stolen my heart. I fell in love almost at first sight and can’t remember the last time that I was so instantly smitten by a city.

Last week I was talking to an American retiree (I later discovered that he was an ex-spy...but don’t tell anyone) at a beach town in central Vietnam.“Don’t let ‘Nam get too much into your blood,” he warned me, “you will get hooked and you will die in Vietnam.”

Coming from a spy it could have been taken as a threat but he was just a complete devotee to life in Vietnam. He had been in the country almost consistently (discounting the odd unavoidable exile) ever since he joined the marines in 1964. Even after just a week I could well understand what keeps him there.

And he was right I did get hooked. Take my advice and let Vietnam hook you too. But don’t worry you probably won’t die there either.

Vietnam

 

Vietnam - in praise of buses

Vietnam could be described as ‘a tall country that is much more up and down than sideways.’ Go almost anywhere from Saigon and it seems that you are likely to be involved in a fairly long journey. Fortunately overland travel in ‘Nam is as comfortable as it is inexpensive. After a summer spent on air-con-frigid and salsa-blasted long-distance night buses up the length of Central America just the sight of a bus terminal waiting room was beginning to bring on a sudden urge to scramble for a thick woolly ‘chomper’ and a set of ear-plugs. Last month I made the 48 hour bus journey from KL to Bangkok. Even Central American buses are streets ahead of the sort of comforts offered by our beloved National Express and Malay and Thai long distance buses are extremely good.

Even so I was slightly dubious about the prospects of a further 24 hours on a Vietnamese bus travelling from Saigon to Danang. But the winner in this year’s Markies Travel Awards for the ‘world’s best long distance buses’ definitely goes to Vietnam!

I had originally intended to take the train from Saigon. I’m a bit of a rail junky anyway. I don’t collect toy trains or spend my weekends painting old boilers or anything but I do think that rail travel is very often a fast-track into the soul of a country’s mobile population. And since the mobile population is very often the most interesting cross section...

Anyway, who can fail to be seduced by a train journey that goes under the name of the Reunification Express? However, when it came to leaving Saigon Vietnam’s buses won the toss simply because they offered such hassle free departures from the city. No hustling out to some remote railway station, just another quick and terrifying dash (loaded as usual with camera bags and pack) downtown on a Honda Om (literally ‘Honda Hug’) taxi bike. The coach departed from a tour operators in the District 1 ‘backpacker ghetto.’

These Vietnamese long distance buses don’t have reclining seats: instead they have serious bunk beds! There are in fact three rows of bunks, looking something like hospital beds, with backs that raise you almost into a straight sitting position. You take your shoes off at the door and carry them inside in plastic bags so that you can sit with your legs stretched out in front of you. If the bus is not too full aim for the seats at the rear. There are five beds in a row here but if, as I did, you get lucky and have a window bed at the back – and get doubly lucky and have nobody in the beds around – you end up with a sprawling king-sized bed all to yourself.

I made half the journey to Danang in a local standard sleeper bus with only half a dozen other passengers (mostly Vietnamese). The journey was pure bliss. At midnight however we had to transfer. My ticket onwards from here got me onto a more ‘luxurious’ tourist bus. The layout was the same but the seats were ergonomically designed in the sort of moulded plastic and fake leather that would make the inside of a Lexus people mover look shabby. However, this bus was completely full with backpackers and by midnight the air was getting pretty funky and musty. My advice would be to downgrade and go for local transport. As long as you do that Vietnam has, hands-down the world’s best buses!

I made the return, southbound journey, by train anyway. Ask for ‘soft-sleep’ tickets rather than ‘hard-sleep’ and you bag less crowded cabins with only 4 beds as opposed to 6...as the name would suggest you get softer beds. Vietnam’s trains also get the big thumbs up. Next time I head back I plan to travel by train from Saigon to Hanoi...and since the Danang-Saigon ‘express’ departed only 5 hours later than scheduled I think Vietnam’s Reunification Express is probably still likely to give British Rail a run for it’s money in the next Markies Travel Awards.