All 25 entries tagged Holiday

Tallinn Revisited

I just got back from YAEPST (yet another epic poker soc trip) – this year we went to Tallinn with president Pete organizing. I elected to swerve what would have been a 3am wake up time and got a later flight from stansted to meet up with everyone who were cosily sleeping off the frolics of the previous nights home game and the early morning flight.

We wasted no time and went to a Medieval theme based restaurant as recommended by the ever reliable WikiTravel. The waiters [1] were in costume and I wolfed down a honey beer and a main course of bear. It tasted like a sort of blend of beef stew, pork belly with a hint of pheasant and lots of fat. Pretty good but probably not worth €50 other than for the novelty of eating a mother fucking bear which I caught WITH MY OWN HANDS. The waitress made sure to warn us, in particular Callum G [2], to swerve the local girls as they were BEASTS. This was consistent with her generally poor banter all night as she was berating people for having water/having small beers etc YAWN.

The lash up ensued into a basement bar where we got through 90ish shots or something then onto Hollywood club, famous in a previous blog post where Stars famously comped us some Dom. There was no comped Dom on offer this time unfortunately but there was little resistance from the bar man in serving us many many drinks.

After waking up in another hotel with an incred hangover, myself and Sam mustered up the courage to go and neck some sushi and 3 bottles of sake to get the day started. Prior to this we had found out from the rest of the grinders that the legal age for gambling in Estonia is 21 which is a bit unfortunate for a university poker trip! The sushi was surprisingly very very good and we returned to the hotel to play some NL400 HU online (-$800) and a €5 SNG home game where I was eliminated by jamming A4s into Jodies A9 and Ashs 42o. We then went to a couple of bars where Joe decided to arm wrestle the locals. Previous concerns of the local women being BEASTS were confirmed as the only person to come close to defeating him initially was the girl in the group. Then the bets got on for a beer a pop and a chap called Janus (second mate on a cargo ship by day) took him on and crushed him with both arms.

Anyway we resigned to the hotel and woke up very very hungover. Thankfully my flight wasn’t until 8:30pm so I got another “night” at the hotel and slept all day. Awesome trip as usual and big props to Pete and his exec for organizing!

[1] servants as they preferred
[2] I believe she knew him by reputation

Rupert Elder : 22 Mar 2011 01:03 |  Tags: Holiday Poker School Spewing |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

England again, Croatia soon!

Had pleasure of joining the Warwick lads to Prague over the weekend. Was a most enjoyable holiday which involved lots of late nights drinking and seeing very few sights. Did manage to get my middle class non-accent confused to be Irish by two American girls who myself and Callum promptly went drinking with at a bar that had taps at the tables. I was playing the unemployed line swimmingly until my favorite takeaway provider popped in and spilt the beans which then led to my blog appearing on Bridget (not Jones’) Blackberry.

Anyway, I managed to get 11 hours sleep last night after enduring the shoddy plane landing and 4 hours of trains then bashed out 1500 hands online today. Will probably do some reading like finishing off DUCY? then watch lots and lots of TV and perhaps a movie.

Oh yes, it took George just 3 seconds of convincing to book another holiday – this time to Dubrovnik in Croatia. I very much stumbled upon it on WikiTravel so hopefully it will be good fun. We are flying with BA, so it’s a good sweat as to whether we will make it out of the airport or not.

Rupert Elder : 23 Mar 2010 18:31 |  Tags: Holiday Live Donkament Poker Spewing |  Comments (2) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Book reviews and off to Prague!

I finished Bigger Deal which I must say was pretty disappointing after the wonderful Big Deal but I suppose it’s the changing of the times and poker has lost much of its romance. I’ve had the pleasure of living through the modern era of poker so don’t really need it retelling to me with an absolute fit of mistakes in the hands he recalls.

Vicky Corens book on the other hand, a really brilliant read and suitable for player and non-player alike. There’s a personal touch but doesn’t dig too deep and has some brilliant anecdotes from when she was playing with her brother to the Tuesday game with The Sweep. The writing style of short quips and stories works brilliantly and I found myself feeling empathetic at times (first time for everything).

Am onto DUCY? now by Sklansky/Schoonmaker and having only just got past the prologue shows promise already. Then i’ve got Superfreakonomics, Charlie Brookers Hell, and the more dimwitted The Game to get through.

Am off to Prague on Friday on a bit of a jolly with the poker society lads which should be good fun.

Rupert Elder : 15 Mar 2010 22:28 |  Tags: Books Holiday Poker |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Team building event in Oz/HK

Tommo summed up Oz/HK perfectly in his blog at maryhadalambpoker – incidentally check him out for a very very competitive ipoker deal.

In his post he mentions that I got a phone call about potential job openings. I’ve never really had a proper job other than doing a bit of painting for my dad. When I was around 15-17 (can’t remember) I became incredibly skint at one point such that it warranted an application to Sainsburys. There was only one other candidate for the spot of shelf stacker and since I wanted really awkward hours and possibly didn’t interview too well, the class retard from school got the post instead of me.

The next time I applied for jobs was internships during my second year. The financial crisis was just kicking off and I remember UBS coming in giving a speech not to worry about anything before they posted record losses. I managed to bink a phone interview with RBS and I was somewhat chuffed so put a reasonable amount of effort (bout half an hour) into preparing for it. I decided to take the interview just before a 5 a side match in my car and it became pretty apparent that I was completely underprepared and never going to get the job. It also became pretty apparent that the woman on the other end of the line was pretty moronic and although I wouldn’t be working directly alongside her it would probably be pretty irritating having someone like her in the workplace.

The next year i’d slummed it down to KPMG in Cambridge where i’d not only got past the initial screening but they gave me a full blown interview. I met up with Helen who’d been there for 12 years and asked me an absolute shit ton of team building questions. “Name a time you’ve been in a team and failed” etc etc. Well i’ve only really been in a team once and that was the 5 a side team and we failed week in week out. After the interview, it was again pretty apparent I didn’t have a the remotest shot of the job (she asked me if I knew how long the exams were, I didn’t know we had to take more fucking exams) and in the follow up email she suggested that I get a job at Tesco or something, just while i’m at uni to work on my team building. I didn’t have the heart to reply saying that i’d probably just be rejected.

I suppose i’m just lucky that I get to travel around the world with actual friends rather than acquaintances from work putting on a façade of “team building” when i’d much rather be in the pub with a pint and a cheesy grin. Australia and Hong Kong were brilliant fun, and I wouldn’t change my life for anything in the world right now. Except for this lower back pain (latin Grinditus).

Rupert Elder : 20 Feb 2010 10:12 |  Tags: Australia Hk Holiday Poker Trip Report |  Comments (3) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Back home, what an awesome holiday

In the interests of continuity I ought to let you all know how Estonia finished. I played one more SNG and came 5th in a spot I may have been able to fold (chip leader effectively shoved button at 300/600 I have 3k and A6s). Whatever though.

I did manage to make a bit of a name for myself in the turbo €110 tourney where I binked a final table for around $700. The average stack at FT was around 6 BBs and I couldn’t win 3 flips.

Not to be one-upped, Tommo had the pleasure of beating Keys heads up to scoop himself a PCA package and a good few stacks of high society while i’m sure Keys himself won’t be hanging himself over the $108k or so he pocketed. In a fashion that wouldn’t be out of place in a Party Poker “VIP” event, the trophy had enscribed on the bottom “545 EEK” which to the well informed is around $55. Marvellous.

The ensuing piss up was a mixture of vodka and cokes and complimentary bottles of Dom Perignon from the very lovely people at Pokerstars. It was all getting a bit too much for me and decided to crash out of the “Hollywood” club at what people reckon must have been about 3-4am.

The flight home was largely uneventful other than doing off 31 points at chinese poker and Tommo offering to buy the whole plane gin and tonics, which Easyjet promptly took up. I also lost £20 on scratch cards, but Tommo covered the cost since I netted less winning than him.

I’m on the home straight of importing 2.5M hands or so as well as trying to transfer websites/flog off advertising space so I can get back to the grind of $1/2 (!) tomorrow.

It really was quite an amazing holiday to have two good friends 1 2 the tourney. Also a good excuse for badgering them to come out next year.

Rupert Elder : 03 Nov 2009 00:30 |  Tags: Estonia Holiday Run Good Trip Report |  Comments (2) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Estonia in the house

Seem to be using up all my run good at once in Estonia. Have played 3 SNGs so far, $110, $110 and $220. Have finished in 3rd ($200), chopped 1st ($400) and chopped first ($865) respectively. All 3 obviously ran pretty well, the 1st and 3rd was even stack with the shortest stack on the bubble and the mugs decided to get it in in pretty bad spots and the 2nd one had a pretty commanding lead on the bubble before chopping it up with Tommo. Managed to bink Q4 vs AJ, AK vs Q8, AJ vs K8 on the 3rd 3 and 4 handed for all the gold before doing a chip chop with mongy so pretty pleased with that.

Putting myself through the trauma of playing the big one tomorrow though so hopefully will wake up in time without too much of a hangover in order to not doing anything stupid. I think my general hand reading and soul reading has been fine so far but could perhaps improve on my overall strategy as things all kicked off on a discussion of Keys limping the button with 85o and me leading J4cc on A2x with 2 clubs.

Food is very behind-the-iron-curtain so far, had wild boar today which was very nice in a quaint little restaurant in the old town (a UNESCO heritage site so wikitravel reliably informs me) and a not so great duck yesterday.

But the wodka [sic] and cokes have been flowing reasonably cheaply and quickly so it’s not all doom and gloom on the food and drink side and hopefully will be able to go the whole 1st level without resorting to perching on the bar hearing about Shaun Deebs [1] escapades of having a gun drawn on him in Warsaw while winning a 3 handed high rollers event.

Hope everyone in the UK is fine and not having to tolerate 6 degree with 40mph wind weather like us slumming it in a plush 5* hotel are.

[1] name drops ITT

Rupert Elder : 29 Oct 2009 00:32 |  Tags: Estonia Holiday Poker Run Good |  Comments (2) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

France, EPO, Home

Finally got the blog back after intense negotiation with the WGA staff. Much has happened since I last posted so i’ll bore you to death about the gist of it.

France ended on a high note with a big argument kicking off much to Tommo’s disappointment when he’d headed home for the weekend. Bankroll sizes were mentioned, futures of slumming it in investment banking, and a dastardly cock swinging contest from Mong “the schlong”. Nonetheless it didn’t prevent us from returning to The Jimmyz upon Tommo’s arrival back at the villa where we proceeded to get absolutely smashed and leave the club just before the now infamous infinity song came on.

After France I headed to the less delightful Coventry for a GUKPT summer series event. Pretty boring by and large, I went somewhat deep in the £220 to no avail and never got going in the main event much to my despair.

A week later I found myself in Nottingham for the inaugural English Poker Open event. Despite the name they had the cheek to charge us 5.3k of US dollars in order to play. Through a combination of buying a cheap seat and selling off 300% of my action I managed to get in. I considered my table draw tough although having talked to Kanu about it on break he seemed more than happy with it! I suppose that’s the joy of playing NL5k day in day out, every tournament table is a good one. Needless to say it was a combination of Euro/US pros, a couple of mugs and Neil Pearson. I didn’t let the pain of live tournaments grasp me for too long though as I was the 2nd player out when I failed to fold a set when the so called mug had backdoor’d a flush.

Rather than subject myself to a night on the lash in Nottingham/Coventry I decided to pop into my girlfriends house to say hello. Such is the nature of bad things coming along at once, we ended up deciding it would be best to take a break for a while and so that’s exactly what we are doing.

Just when I was starting to get over the horrors of my week, my computer last night decided to pack up and die. It’s always very exciting when this happens because it’s the perfect excuse to do off a load of money on a new one. So here’s what i’m getting in addition to what I previously had:

£184.34×1 – Intel Core i7 920 D0 Stepping (SLBEJ) 2.66Ghz (Nehalem) (Socket LGA1366) – Retail
£177.38×1 – Asus P6TD Deluxe Intel X58 (Socket 1366) PCI-Express DDR3 Motherboard
£86.95×1 – OCZ Reaper 6GB (3×2GB) DDR3 PC3-14400 (1800MHz) Tri-Channel (OCZ3RPR1800LV6GK)
£83.47×1 – Corsair TX 750W ATX SLI Compliant Power Supply (CMPSU-750TXUK)

I’ve been told the X58 motherboards are renowned for being incredibly unstable and faulty so I look forward to more pain and tears in future months. I wasn’t actually clear if my PSU or mobo had died so I decided rather than have the hassle of buying one and being incredibly irritated if it was the other part that went wrong i’d just get them both. Besides, it allows me to finally SLi up those 8800 GTS’ i’ve had collecting dust. Am sure the quad core will do wonders at loading up 9 tables on a Wednesday evening.

I should give a mention to Tommo aka maryhadalamb’s blog which has been reinstated after much nagging in France. Definitely check it out if you’re in need of more cynicism, scepticism, and sarcasm. Or if you want to keep up to date with the latest in female solo singer/songwriters.

Suppose I forgot to mention this too – was in The Times the other day: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/money/article6839947.ece “Economics graduate” was awfully generous off her but I suppose it paints a better image than “poker player” like I suggested. At a Nottingham casino I got asked what my occupation was as part of the registration process to which I quipped “unemployed”. “Not a student then?” “Nope.” There’s no saving face any more.

Rupert Elder : 21 Sep 2009 20:27 |  Tags: Blogs Coventry Fame At Last France Holiday Live Donkament Nottingham Poker Spewing |  Comments (3) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

France 1

First post from France I spose. Fell ill today so seemed like a good spot to spout nonsense.

We ended up getting in at 6am on the 25th after waking up at 7am on the 24th. Bit of a grind but got here in one piece. The villa is absolutely ridiculous and i’ve been playing tons of poker – have won 2 tournies and done pretty well at cash etc. Somehow find myself down on the trip tho.

Went to Monte Carlo a couple of times which was absolutely insanely awesome, Nice which was nice although the beaches absolutely jam packed, the quaint St Paul which I don’t have much time for in the evenings, and Cannes where there were a stream of Ferraris and a Bugatti Veyron for good measure. Happy days.

Here’s a couple of photos of the pool and grindstation.

: 05 Aug 2009 19:29 |  Tags: France Holiday |  Comments (7) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Cambodia/Nam trip report

Just wrote this on 2+2, might as well post here too

I guess i’ll briefly go through it… If this turns into a long blaberring post I apologise in advance :P [well it looks like it did, obv]

jigga watt: george and sam

18th wed, day 1, arrive in phnom p. chill / stay night
Cathay Pacific fucked up our flight and put our first name as surname and vice versa. Good job we got to the airport 4 hours early as it took them an hour to realise their mistake. No free upgrade :(. We get to Phnom Penh and as soon as we get out of the airport a dude with no arm helps us get our luggage into the $8 taxi (we’d just landed after 16 hours flying, couldn’t be fucked to negotiate as of yet). We didn’t really think much of it but then when he stuck his stump out we realised he wanted a tip (WELL LDO R-TARDS). We give him a dollar and head off. The cab driver is going on about how our hotels full of gays and that there are tons of gangs that hang on outside. I’ve kind of clicked that he wants a bit of commission by putting us in a new hotel (EVERYONE will try and make a few bucks out of you) but obv we’ve already made reservations and the penny dropped when he said the $20 hotels by the riverfront were nicer than our $60 hotel. Obv I knew in advance from this thread that all riverfront hotels are full of rats and you will get a rash (thx SomethingClever :D). we had some fun with him saying things like “YES, THOSE GAYS ARE A BIG PROBLEM” and talking about how gambling is illegal to locals cos all the students do off thier loans on the slots. He hadn’t heard of poker. Anyway, we get to our hotel and it’s very comfortable, the AC works, the shower sort of does… the pool was nice as well. We relax by the hotel poolside bar before kipping.

19th thurs, run phnom p stuff, stay night
Today is a touristy day. We check out the killing fields (extremely depressing/moving/frankly very eerie) and S-21 (genocide museum) – made me feel pretty ill. I’ve been to Nazi concentration camps and torture chambers but something about this ex-prison made me feel very odd indeed… Not pleasant but worth doing for $2. The tuktuk to these 2 places cost us $20 – it was outside the hotel and the guy must of thought he won the fucking lottery. We hadn’t got the hang of negotiation yet and being far too rich for our own good thought $20 for like 2 hours travelling was a good deal. We saw an American dude go past and saw him pay $2 for the same thing, lol. He even offered us a free trip later but we declined saying we’d rather walk. After these 2 we went to “Frizz Restaurant” as recommended by WikiTravel (http://www.frizz-restaurant.com). We had the Cambodian barbeque or whatever it was, it wasn’t fantastic but probably wasn’t the best thing to order. The restaurant was small but reasonably nice. It was an extremely hot day and they only have fans not AC. Staff very friendly. It was a 5 minute walk from our hotel but took us half an hour in the SWELTERING heat since we got lost and the locals don’t speak a lot of English. On the way home we found a nice bar which also happened to be on WikiTravel called “Rubies”. It was run by an English lad who was friendly and helpful answering questions and stuff about the local scene. He recommended a restaurant and a club for the night but we had other ideas. After our meal we hit up the Royal Palace quickly which I guess is worth doing, the buildings are very balla (gold covered roof etc) but I guess i’m not easily impressed, IDK. A bit disturbing was the amount of children coming up to us trying to sell us shit we don’t want. One of them was holding a sign saying something to the effect of “I don’t want to be disturbing so I won’t speak to you if you would like to buy something just say”. Sick angleshoot obv so I buy 2 packs of postcards. When I open out my wallet another chick spots my English £ and says “THAI BAHT YOU HAVE THAI BAHT???” This became a running joke amongst us, although we shouldn’t laugh if we cared about being politically correct. For dinner we hit up the “splurge” section on WikiTravel, as you do. A phone call and a visit to the “Intercontinental Hotel” and soon enough we were ordering the 7 course set menu at $100 a head. Unfortunately the $150 Dom Perignon (so cheap!) was out of stock so we had to settle on the “Rothschild and Rupert” red. I tell the waiter that my names on the bottle then start pretending i’m a Rothschild which they are extremely impressed at. At the end of the meal they ask if we want to split the bill and I laugh in his face before rouletting for it in order to keep up the charade. This was fucking funny, and made up for the fact that the meal was distinctly mediocre (the pan fried scallops to start were the best and very good, the shark fin soup, lobster, pidgeon, and other courses I can’t remember were all meh and have had better of all elsewhere), probably worth about half the price we paid. Still lessons learned. Later in the night we hit up Rubies again, get a bit smashed and head off to “Heart of Darkness” which the guy in Rubies tells us is reliably dodgy as hell. We get there and see the sign that says no guns and settle on the bar next door to it which is full of foreigners and Asian chicks. All we could think of it the picture that says “DON’T BE A PUSSY, THIS GUY SEEMS LEGIT”. So we roll in and get some double vod/cokes down us before the barman and his chicks want to start betting us in some board game. We have since searched long and hard for this game online but it’s kinda hard. It’s very simple. There are 12 numbers and 2 dice. The aim of the game is to knock off all 12 numbers which you do by using either a single dice or double dice combo. E.g. you roll 6 4, you can either knock off 6, 4 or 10. We figured it out pretty easily and felt we had an edge vs the chicks he was with but not vs the dude himself who was very cool. We bet like 3 beers a time and ended up +2 beers. HOLLA. But then they challenged us to connect 4. I knew it was a solved game but we played anyway cos they were fish at the dice game. We owned ourselves pretty early into the game before deciding not to play anymore. We were suitably wrecked at this point so decided to head back to BRUE RIME (blue lime, when smashed). Unfortunately the tuktuk driver lied (obviously as well) that he knew where it was so we ended up trekking round Phnom Penh drunk for 2 hours and 2 angry drivers later we got back with a boat to catch to Siem Reap in 3 hours. FML.

*tuktuk driver hit the mfin jackpot, rup in foreground*

*the killing fields, not a nice place*

*rup+george ballin outside the royal palace*

*gg $500*

20th fri, run phnom more pp stuff, get late boat to siam reap stay night
Unfortunately we didn’t have time to “run more phnom penh stuff” as the boat leaves everyday at 7am. I can’t remember the exact cost but I believe it’s $30-35 each and this price is the same anywhere so you can’t get fucked/it’s not negotiable. It’s definitely worth doing, but make sure you haven’t had 3 hours sleep and gotten absolutely trollied the night before. My buddy threw up in the morning, I threw up 3 times on the boat. GG last nights $500 meal. I needed to take a dump in the 4 hour boat journey, but I looked down at the toilet which was constantly flushing with yellow river water and decided I didn’t want cholera directly flowing up my butthole. Needless to say, I was over the moon once we arrived and frankly extremely exhausted. We get a tuktuk to Shina Mani and although he gets half way through before declaring he doesn’t know where it is, he makes a couple of calls and we’re all good to go. Thank fuck after the night befores ordeal. The hotel is beautiful and we get a massage, chill by the pool and sleep extremely well on the extremely comfortable beds.

*[ ] i enjoyed this boat journey. thats a soccer court in a cage by the river. looked like sick fun*

21st sat, run ankor WAT, back to siem reap
We get a tour for like $100 (I think, really can’t remember here). It’s a driver and a tour guide private for 3 of us. It kicked off at 10:30am and it soon became apparent that the tour guide was very very keen. He was a lovely guy and spoke very good Engrish, but fucking hell it’s 40 degrees we don’t need to go into detail about EVERY little detail. Angkor Wat was impressive, it is like it looks in the photos though. Unless you’re really into Hindu/Buddhist religion, don’t bother spending more than a day checking out the main temples imo. I think the temples we checked out were Angkor Wat, Angkor Tom (Bayon temple), and Preah Khan… err in reverse order. They were all very impressive. I fear sounding like a twat but I think it’s important to say: if you’re like me and get bothered by 3 hours in pretty extreme heat and get bored by religious stories anyway, you might want to consider going either without a tour guide and walking through obliviously or just be prepared to hurry them along a lot. If you’re not, I can probably dig up the details of our tour guide if you want to use him. We ventured out into Siem Reap night market which was not very impressive, good place to get gifts I guess but even then it’s the usual touristy shit. There’s like 4 of those doctor fish things there, but i’d seen that before in Korea and the idea of it disgusts me.

*george, sam, rup at one of the temples. george wore jeans and a shirt to be respectful cos we read that somewhere. he insta-regretted that when all the other tourists were dressed like me/sam looool*

*THE ASIANS, at angkor WAT?*

22nd sun, plane to HCMC, plane to da nang, chill there
We get an afternoon flight to HCMC then Da Nang before getting a cab to Hoi An. We decided against staying in Da Nang and boy were we glad. Palm Garden Resort in Hoi An didn’t especially impress us at first. The room was FULL of little flies/mozzys. Tilting for a 5*. They sorted it out and we got settled in and had a swim and went to the restaurant which was less than impressive. It took time though. The hotel grew on us and we spent the next few days chilling on the beach, berating germans, and playing some pokers online. The beach is private and lovely, the sea is probs like 18C so made perrrrrrfect swimming with the sun beaming down. The pool was ok as well, lots of hotties lurking around there.

23rd mon, 24th, hue, hoy an, etc.
We got suits tailored. We did a bit of tracing round before finally settling on a place that ended up owning us anyway, lol. we paid $100 (FAR too much) each for a suit and like $20 for a shirt. They did a good job though and the materials are good quality etc but I can’t help but feel I just bought it for novelty value since I already have a really nice suit already. Whatever. We tank/folded getting 3 white suits which would have been pretty hilarious if we had to balls to follow through. It was George’s birthday this night so we looked up “splurge” on WikiTravel (well LDO) and found “Brothers Cafe”. Again the food left something to be desired but the surroundings were absolutely beautiful and service good as well. Unfortunately we had to slum it with the Moet & Chandon but they priced it expensively enough to make us feel we were ballin’ out. It was like them over shoving the river for value, and us looking them up light. Generally we really enjoyed Hoi An as a town to visit – the people were really nice and it was all very laid back.

*the hotel gave george a birthday cake, lol*

*hoi an market where we bought lots of tourist stuff including chopsticks and card deck holder. i was v tilted when i found i got one with the ace of diamonds on the front and not the ace of hearts. this place was very quaint*

*slumming it on moet in brothers cafe*

On the 24th we headed to Hue in a private car from the hotel, can’t remember how much it was. Not really sure what we saw in Hue, I guess it was the Citadel or something. Hue didn’t impress us particularly. We got our suits finished and grinded a bit online before relaxing in the bar where there was a huge German company who sent out all their employees to the resort. We were chilling in the bar and some bint came on and did karoke which tilted the shit out of us. By this point, we were a bit drunk so obv when they are all leaving we say “lets follow them” a bit too loudly and for reasons now unbeknownst to me. I guess we were being a bit lairy, cos i’m like 90% sure one of them turned round and took a photo of us. I was certain that they were basically accusing us of being rapists, the other 2 guys were a bit more sceptical. Unfortunately we couldn’t be arsed to go and cause trouble so we called it a night having got glaring looks walking through their buffet.

*citadel in hue, apparently the most interesting thing other than pronouncing the town name as “HWEEEEEY” like drunken british yobs*

*somewhat surprisingly the only sign of american presence we saw on our trip. this was a bunker at the top of a hill on the way back from hue overlooking err some nice view*

25th tues, more da nang in morning, plane -> hanoi in afternoon stay night
The plans changed. We booked another night at Palm Garden cos we liked it so much. We intended to do some sailing but it was too windy so we mostly just swam, relaxed, and played poker. By this point we sort of concluded the whole trip was going to cost us $6k (for 3 of us) and we were up about $2k (pooled winnings). Sick life.

*they held miss world here a couple of years ago*

26th wed, go to ha long bay sort out boat
We flew to Hanoi. The plane was delayed and we won $1k on the free wireless in the airport. Holla. It’s a 3 hour taxi to our hotel in Ha Long City called “Ha Long Plaza”. hotels-in-vietnam.com said it was 4* and the photos looked ok. The taxi cost like $50 in DONG but the taxi driver tried to screw us over for some extra. We weren’t buying it cos we aren’t retarded (he tried to convince us the toll was VND300,000 instead of VND30,000 – i’ve never seen a $18 toll anywhere let alone Vietnam) and the bellboy helped us out so we tipped him like $4, lol. Also the taxi driver stopped off on the way by some guy that was trying to sell us some boat tour, they obviously had some deal going and the whole thing was a bit tilting after 3 hours driving so we said we had a trip already. First mistake. The hotel was nice and i’d recommend it, they have a happy hour with wireless connection which we made good use of making a few hundo while getting smashed on some pretty average cocktails.

27th thurs, ha long bay boat
We head down to the bay and there’s a hell of a lot of boats lined up. We kinda assumed we’d get mobbed by people trying to sell us tours but in reality there were only really 2 people who approached us even though I was anxiously shouting “TOUR??”. Unfortunately, one of them was the dude the taxi driver stopped of at the previous night. He starts looking very disappointed saying “I THOUGHT YOU ALREADY HAD A TOUR” when he sees us speaking to another woman about a potential tour. We blag some BS about it falling through and he can obviously see right through us. He was offering a tour for $10 cheaper than the other woman so for $50 total we got a private “junk” – that’s what they call the boats, somewhat fittingly. The boat wasn’t luxury but it was fine for what we wanted, a nice rooftop tour with the sun beaming down and wonderful scenery. The boat stopped off at a floating house thing which sold fish and stuff, they said they’d cook it for us and having lol’d for ages and taken various photos of the fish etc swimming round we felt obliged to do off $30 on shrimp and crab. Second mistake. The chef onboard cooked it in beer (which they later charged for) and we tried it out. I had one bite of crabs leg and decided I wasn’t hungry, Sam grinded one shrimp and half a crab, George got through like 3 shrimp and a whole crab. George later got food poisoning. Just sayin’. They also gave us beers with the meal and bananas (actual bananas) after the meal and charged us for the lot, so the trip actually ended up costing like $100. It’s a tarp. We took the details of the guy anyway cos he runs a cab company and we needed to get back to Hanoi the next day.

*world famous ha long bay “dragon teeth”*

*a recipe for disaster*

28th fri, go to hanoi, do hanoi stuff
What a fucking ordeal this taxi was. The guy seemed legit enough and we didn’t want to be pussys. The driver looked fucked. Looked like he was on coke, or was exceptionally happy and hyper. I was NOT keen on getting in that minivan. Fuck it though, we hop in and start watching poker after dark and south park on my laptop. 1 hour into the 3 hour journey he pulls over, hands me a phone where there’s a Vietnamese dude shouting “PAY $54 NOW OR GET OUT”. FML. I play dumb and say shit like “no we agreed $50 and we will pay you when we get there”. Anyway, the dude hangs up in the end and the driver carries on seemingly oblivious to what is going on. We sweat it out for like the next half an hour as to whether we are actually on our way to Hanoi or if we are on a murder-rape-thrown-in-a-grease-fire trail. We spot a sign to Hanoi and we take the turning. Phew. We pull over again for a restroom break and the driver gives us a sadface and does the universal sign for GIMME SOME CASH. We say no, when we fucking get there, you cunt. He doesn’t speak English but gets the picture.

We get to our hotel (the very Western Movenpick, a Swiss hotel) and we pay him $50 and he is a very happy bunny. Needless to say, just do shit through the hotel if you hate hassle and getting tilted. We were kinda conked out by the end of the trip and we didn’t really “see” Hanoi. It was Friday night though, and we found via WikiTravel once again a really superb Jazz club which was packed full of Westerners. It was my first experience at a Jazz club and I was disappointed that my camera was busto. We did however smoke cigars, so we could pretend we were true jazz afficondos while saying yeaaaaaaaaaah in really smooth deep voices. I was anyway. Beforehand, we had a nice meal at a restaurant just down the road from the club (name escapes me) which was good vietnamese food. It was also World hour or something and so they switched off the lights for the duration of our meal.

29th sat, more hanoi stuff
On our last night we went to a very very nice restaurant yet again through the godsend that is WikiTravel. Looking back, I can’t remember which one it was, so this isn’t particularly helpful. The meal was fantastic although the wine left something to be desired. We ended up getting pretty smashed before getting recommended to go to Funky Monkey, presumably some foreigner bar where people get lashed. We approved and got there where some Vietnamese dude tried to impress us with by reeling off a list of places he’d travelled to. He was credible until he said he liked Dido to which we all LOL’d at for the rest of the night. Then he insinuated that I was gay and that George was 14 so we called it a night. On the way home I stepped in dogshit. I was wearing flip flops.

*seems legit*

30th sun, get up early -> uk
We played some poker and won some monies ending up +$3k for the trip before getting the plane home. We ordered the taxi through the hotel.

In the airport we had like $40 of VND left so we go into one of the shops and I ask the woman if she can change it into USD for us for a premium. She tanks it a bit before saying no we don’t have enough dollars :( to which I snap respond THAI BAHT? The whole airport burst out into hysterics.

On the plane from Hanoi to Hong Kong (our one connecting stop) we met a very interesting man who owned a brothel in Sydney. He said he was trafficking women from Vietnam to Sydney. I had loads of questions for him. He said the split prossie/him was 70/30. I was like holy shit, I wish my backers would give me that. He said not to worry though, he still makes AUD$10k a week. And that there are plenty of tax dodges available to him. He pointed out a few women on the flight who were blatantly going somewhere to work as a sex worker. Very interesting stuff. He also pointed out a man who claimed to be moving to London to work in his beauty salon. The Aussie said he didn’t believe him at all and said that he thought he was trafficking women. I lol’d.
Anyway, that was almost the end of our adventure. We got back to Heathrow and intended to get the train back to Coventry for £60 but upon realisation that it take us 4 hours to get home I demanded to Sam that we get a taxi which was £200 and took almost as long. FML.

: 21 Apr 2009 07:07 |  Tags: Cambodia Holiday Spewing Trip Report Vietnam |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Ski tour!!!

Dashing away on Friday for ski tour. Doing a bit of last minute essay polishing and partying in general.

Got a couple of new links on the left as well, be sure to check them out if you’re after some bathrooms or shower enclosures

Will probably blog next when I get back, then it’s onto a massive poker grind over the holidays!!

: 03 Dec 2008 11:44 |  Tags: Holiday School |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem