Asian awards 2013

We spent a whole year in Asia, mostly south east but also Indonesia and the Philippines. So we thought after the South American awards last year we should also give awards for the things we liked the most in Asia.

We started in Hong Kong which we count as a country here. Then we went through China, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia, Malaysia, Philippines, Vietnam, Indonesia and finally, Brunei Darussalam.

best food award

This was quite a debate. Thai food just won, Vietnamese getting a very close second place. It's fresh, tasty, healthy, often cheap and almost impossible to cook bad. If you can handle the spices, that is.

most exotic culture award







Definitely China. Basically no English anywhere. Cantonese (or Mandarin, sounds the same to us) is extremely hard to pronounce and let's not even start about the writing... The people are as different to us as it gets. But it is safe for tourists, and magically, things always work out somehow in the end.

best diving awards

Indonesia is a diver's dream. There's everything from the smallest to the biggest. Everything! And often it's very affordable.

best accomodation award

Often it's not dirt cheap but the quality was always good. Even the cheapest rooms have flat TV and hot water. Consistency won for Vietnam. It's always good.

best historical site award

Angkor Wat and the surrounding ruins in Cambodia. It's such a big area, you can spend weeks here if you're into this sort of thing. The work and money that went into the restauration is incredible. Also incredible is the bribes you need to pay to become a guide at this UNESCO world heritage site...

most relaxed award

In Laos you can just be, without being shouted at or without any big rip-offs. Outside Luang Prabang or Vang Vieng, that is. Sit down, grab a Beer Lao and just stare at all the green around you.

best airport award

Singapore's airport is just worldclass! You could be happy to spend a few days just exploring the parks, restaurants and cinemas here. Or you might never want to leave.

most adventurous travelling award

You get nowhere easily in the Philippines. 5 hours on the roof of a jeepney because there's no more space inside or being soaked in seawater for 9 hours on a bangka, every trip is exhausting. But more often than not, it is worth all the hassle.

friendliest people award

Cambodians love to joke, always smile and are extremly friendly. Never ever did we get a bad tempered answer just because we didn't feel like buying something. We always felt welcome in Cambodia. And all this after the hardship they had to go through in the past years, it's very moving. Just thinking of Cambodia and its people still brings a smile on our face.












best people watching award

Life happens on the street in Vietnam. We spent hours and hours drinking coffee and watching the life go by. And just to see for the first time children crossing the streets in Vietnamese traffic is stunning.

best beds award

There are some terrible beds out there, believe me. Cambodia though had some of the best and also best priced beds we've come across.

easiest travelling award

In Thailand you can get a ticket to anywhere and everywhere. Choose any agancy, tell them where you're heading and you get there. If it takes 3 buses and 3 boats through 3 countries you'll get it, on one ticket. Makes you lazy.











best big city award

We normally don't feel comfortable in big cities but Hong Kong was different. We spent a week here without getting bored! (For us, that IS long in a city!) It's easy to get around and very safe. It's chaotic in a nice way. Old and new often only one street apart. Good shopping too. Beaches, viewpoints, markets. What else do you need?













cheapest diving award

On Ko Tao we dived for 17€ per person. In Indonesia we paid at least 20. So, 17 wins.















least dangerous traffic award

Brunei Darussalam has clearly the most polite drivers. They stop even when you are not planning to cross the road. You could walk around blindfolded and not get a scratch. And that is worth an award in Asia.













best coffee award

Vietnam's very strong and very sweet coffee is just the best. Enjoy it hot or cold. After about three of them you can't sleep for two days. And still you want more of it.














most breathtaking landscape award

The views you get around Yangshuo and Xingping are the best we've ever seen. The river that runs through hundreds of high peaks is lined with bamboo and water buffalos. If you climb up a hill, you'll be alone. It's truly breathtaking.












most budget friendly award

Apart from Luang Prabang, Laos is very reasonable priced. A motorbike for 4€ a day and a whole ensuite bungalow for 3€ a night you get in busy places. Now imagine how little you pay far off the tourist trail.













best capital award

Hanoi is so busy and often hot that you forget everything else and just concentrate on the streets ahead of you. It's beautifully chaotic, but also colourful and full of flowers and trees. Amazing food everywhere, coffee shops and stylish boutiques, Hanoi is our all time favourite.












best national park award

The Komodo national park in Indonesia is stunning over and under water. For the small amount you pay they seem to do really well. The guides are friendly and full of information and are your only insurance when you encounter the dragons. Also the amount of fish around Komodo is incredible. Everything from sharks to manta rays frequent the reefs here. Also recommended: watching the sunset from the deck of a boat after a great day of diving.

pity award

 Malaysia was several times so close to win but there was always something wrong. It's hard understand what Malaysia is, or wants to be. It's a big collection of good and not so good. But they have orangutans and that's great. It's still worth a short visit.

The forbidden post

The day before we were supposed to leave Hong Kong it was time to go back to the Chinese visa centre to find out if we were going to travel through China. We paid the fee of 200 HK$ each and got our passports back. A quick glance through the pages showed us a new glued in visa! China was now only a day away! For this night we had planned to visit "the peak", a place on a hill south of Hong Kong island, reachable by tram, from where one has superb views all over the city, harbour and surrounding hills. We wanted to go on this Monday because the one week Chinese holiday ended on Sunday and the over-2hrs-queue at the tram station from last week would hopefully be a lot shorter. It was. No queue. In no time we were on the hill but somehow trapped in this building and had to buy an extra ticket to go all the way up to the terrace and, wow, it was well worth the money! We got on the tram just before sunset and reached the top in total darkness and with thousands of colourful lights below us. What a great finish for this crazy but amazing city.

 

After checking out our opportunities to reach the mainland we decided to take the ferry from Hong Kong to Shenzen and from there on a bus straight into Yangshuo, our first stop in China. After all it would've been easier to take a train from Hong Kong to Shenzen, but we wanted to combine our departure with a harbour cruise, which ended up in thick smog. We didn't see shit. At the harbour in Shenzen we made our way to the brand new subway station to get a train to the bus terminal which lies in the city centre, about 20 kms away from where we arrived. We got there for slightly over 50 cents each.

At the bus terminal we found timetables for the buses, in Chinese letters only. The info office said that there's no bus to Yangshuo. Wrong terminal. We ended up following a guy who approached us on the street, first wary not to get ripped of he turned out to be a quite ok and we had ourselves tickets to Yangshuo in a overnight bus (way overprized as we found out later...) That bus didn't leave from the terminal, would've been too easy. We walked/ran behind a dude from the company through half Shenzen just to wait for the bus in a random, dark street. The bus, as it finally arrived, was better than most we had for more money in South America and it was almost empty! Anni got the back seat-row for herself and I slept on 3 seats across the aisle.

 

As we arrived in Yangshuo, it was still dark and we were tired, so without thinking we took the offer of a guy at the bus stop and followed him to his hotel, which turned out to be quite decent. Just he wasn't, offering free beer for breakfast (that wasn't the bad part) and not leaving us a free minute without talking about his bloody trips, that he wanted to sell us. The next day we bought ourselves a trip with a "bamboo" as they call it, a plastic raft that's supposed to look like bamboo. In around 3 hrs we went downstream the Li river to a town called Fuli, which was nice but packed with tourists. Then further on to a cave and a look out point. The whole time we had the camera ready and shot an immense amount of photos (I even had to delete older photos to get more space on my memory card). The area is one of the most beautiful we've ever seen, if not our new number one. And on the way back upstream everything again! Also very well worth the effort is the hill inside the town, a short climb up the stairs and you get rewarded with a breathtaking, 360 degrees view of Yangshuo and the karst peaks. We also found out that many websites are blocked by the government of China, much more than we thought, including this site where we post our blogs. Without any knowledge of how to get around these kind of "government precaution measures" it took us 10 minutes to download a VPN app for the iPad and here we blog again!

The last night we went to "Impression", a show directed by the same man who did the Beijing olympics opening ceremony. They use the Li river as stage and the surrounding karst peaks get lit up and act as a stunning background. 600 people are involved, including local fishermen. It was highly recommended to us by an older Norwegian couple who said we can't leave Yangshuo without having seen this show and that it's better than any opera they've seen. It is also called "Human's masterpiece cooperated with god".You can't miss that, can you? With high expactations we waited with around 2000 other, mostly Chinese visitors for the show to start. And from there on we started to notice certain differences between European and Chinese audiences. Europeans know how much money they paid for the ticket and it's absolutely quiet during the whole thing. Chinese talk. And laugh. And surf in the internet. And make phone calls. Throughout the whole show. This is pretty annoying when you're used to the European system and the whole story only gets told by light and music, so we moved to an empty sector and had our peace back. All the songs were in Chinese only but I think we still understood big parts of it and it was indeed fantastic! Just a bit too short in our opinion.

Then it was time for some relaxation. We chose the town of Xingping, of the planned 3 nights soon became 6 and we mostly just read books and planned trips ahead. Xingping is much smaller than Yangshuo but almost as touristy though the tourist herds that suddenly appear disappear after a couple of hours and the town is quiet again. Most people just live their normal life and tourists normally stay out of the small streets which makes it easy to escape the crowds. Short walks along the river with its wildlife, dragonflies, beautiful birds (and a water snake!) kept us awake (especially the run away from the attacking water buffalos that somehow seemed disturbed by Annis new pink shirt) and we climbed the peak next to our hostel twice, the second time because the visibility was much better this day. We saw how the setting sun turned all this peaks first in yellow, then red and purple in the end. Just breathtaking. We also ate the best pizzas we've ever had on this trip in the hostel, and in their cafe I started to fall in love with tofu. All of this and the very friendly locals made us feel a bit sad when we left on a bus to Guilin, the tourist capital from where we want to visit some stunning rice fields, but that's another story...