Kep is a small coastal town in Southern Cambodia, often skipped by western tourists in favour of the more hedonistic town of Sihanoukville. Kep is a holiday town that is more popular with tourists from within Cambodia and consequently, it has a very different feel to the bigger tourist destinations in the country. And if only for a day or two, I reckon it’s totally worth a visit. But what can you actually do in Kep?

Have dinner at the crab market

If you’re a seafood fan, Kep is your paradise. The crab dinners here are supposed to be the best in all of Cambodia and are traditionally served with a pepper sauce made from the famous locally grown Kampot pepper. There is a crab market in Kep that is lined with seafood restaurants, where people tear off claws, suck out the crab meat, and get messy fingers. And if seafood isn’t your thing, there are plenty of other local culinary options as well. A meal of freshly caught crab with green pepper will generally set you back $7.

One of many crab restaurants.

Visit a cave

There are a few caves around Kep and I visited the Phnom Sorsia cave complex. The most impressive-slash-terrifying thing here was a bat cave. Upon entering, my guide and I were surrounded by dozens of bats flying above us. I had seen bats in caves before but never like this. As if that wasn’t enough excitement, with all of the bats flying around me, I shone my torch on the ground in front of me and saw an absolute massive spider. Then upon leaving the cave, there was a snake right outside, which even the guide seemed to be shocked by, and he promptly battered it to death with a branch.

The snake – freshly battered to death.

Visit a pepper plantation

Kep and Kampot are towns famous for pepper production. There are a few plantations in the region that are open to the public, so why not take a wander around and see how the pepper you grind on your dinner every night is grown? On the farm I visited, mangoes and durian were also grown, and there was a raised deck that allowed for a stunning view of the surrounding area.

An amazing view of the countryside around Kep.

Cycle around the surrounding countryside

Kep itself is really small, and all around the town is green countryside where you’ll see kids riding bicycles, local people working in the rice fields, and you might find the odd local market as well. I was really blown away by how beautiful the countryside here is. The people are coy and friendly and I managed to find the cheapest coffee I’ve just about ever had – sold at a local market for 1500 riel or $0.40.

Probably the cheapest coffee I ever had.

Take a day trip to Rabbit Island

Just 4km off the coast, away from Kep town, is Rabbit Island – a small island with a very laid back feel. Tour operators in Kep charge just $7 for the return trip to the island, where you can eat some great food, sunbathe on the sand, kayak in the sea, and get a cheap massage on the beach.

And one other tip. If you find yourself in Kep, you absolutely must stay in Treetop Bungalows – probably the best value accommodation I’ve found on my trip so far. The lovely gardens have multiple bungalows, some on high raised stilts so that you have a great view of the ocean. My room was only $5 and perfectly comfortable. Plus, the owner is lovely, the food is great, and just next door is the more expensive Kep Lodge where you can use the pool.

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Beach life.

So what makes Rabbit Island appealing and what exactly do you do when you are there? I will tell you.

Kep is a charming little town in the south of Cambodia but the beach there is pebbly and it’s really not a sunbathing location. Most people go there to eat crab. But one place nearby that has the complete beach experience is Rabbit Island, and it’s a cheap way of grabbing a little beach time as there are multiple tour operators in Kep offering $7 return journeys to the island.

Ahoy, Captain.

There isn’t a huge amount to do on Rabbit Island, but since when do you need to be occupied with activities when you have soft sand under your feet, an ocean right in front of you, and hardly anybody else around? The pattern of my day was: got on the boat for the island at 9am, arrived at 9.30am, took a 2 hour walk around the island, found a hammock and fell asleep, had some lunch, treated myself to a $7 coconut oil massage, read a book in a hammock, got the return boat back to the mainland at 4pm. Perfection.

Walking around the island.

Massage anyone?

If you feel a little more adventurous, I found one spot on the island that rents kayaks for $3 an hour and other wee shack that organises fishing trips around the island. If you really want to unwind, this would be a great place for not just a day trip, but to spend a few days. There are numerous beachfront bungalows on Rabbit Island so why not take it easy, slap on some sun lotion, and enjoy this charming little slice of Cambodia?

Bungalows on Rabbit Island

Reading in a hammock – it never gets old

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When I was in Saigon, I basically had an awful time thanks to my first ever Couchsurfing experience, which was a bloody nightmare. For a little respite, I checked out a couple of gay saunas and here’s the lowdown on them.

NaDam Spa

12/29/1 Quốc Lộ 13 Hiệp Bình Chánh Thủ Đức, Ho Chi Minh City. (Yeh, good luck finding that.)

This place is quite a way out of the main backpacker strip of the city. In fact it took me about an hour and a half to walk there, all the way petrified that my bag was going to be snatched or that I would be pickpocketed. I had the time and I figured that walking would give me a chance to get a feel for the city, but it was boiling hot and not a fun experience so please don’t be a fool like me and just get a taxi. Once you’re in the vicinity, it’s still really hard to find because it’s tucked away down about three alleys. But as soon as I was off the main road and into an alley, a couple of families clearly realised what I was looking for and showed me the way to the sauna – not embarrassing at all.

Well, these boys look like they’re having a good time.

It’s a mission to get there, but it’s worth it. This place is seriously plush and has that fragrant smell of a proper spa rather than the smell of lubricant that you find in some other establishments. NaDam Spa has all the things that you expect a sauna to have – but executed better than most places. So there’s a sauna, a frighteningly hot steam room, a salt scrub room, a hot tub, a little swimming pool, a room where you can rest and lie down, and a lovely little outdoor area with swing chairs where you can sit and not read their magazines that are all in Vietnamese.  You can also purchase a body massage or a body scrub, which I have the feeling are ‘no extras’ massages but I can’t be sure.

I went in the day time so  the only kicky activity I noticed was a bit of play in the hot tub, so it’s actually a really ideal place to unwind and relax for a couple of hours to escape that Saigon madness. And that’s exactly what I did. I was the only foreigner there, and I had a couple of nice chats with local people, but the general feel was low-key and quiet bordering on silent. It costs 195,000 dong to use the facilities of Nadam, which is around $10 – I think very much worth it.

Binh Minh

L 19, Number 1 Street, Ward 3, Binh Thanh Dist. Ho Chi Minh City

Binh Minh is the most recently opened gay sauna in Saigon. It has no website and a definite local feel. Again, it’s a little bit of a trek from the backpacker district so I’d get a taxi. Glutton for punishment that I am, I decided to walk here as well.

It costs a totally bargainous 60,000 dong to enter Binh Minh and use their facilities, which is just $3 or £2. And if you pay 100,000 dong you can use the facilities of the sauna and get a massage from one of the employees. This place had a very different feeling to NaDam and so I was pretty sure that this was a massage that I didn’t want to have and I politely declined the offer.

Binh Minh is a gay sauna as people expect gay saunas to be. The whole place is very dimly lit and doesn’t have that ‘spa’ feeling that NadDam has. Having said that, I had more conversations here than I did in NaDam. The guys were all local and mostly a young twenty-something clientele who were keen to speak to the foreigner and find out how he knew about a local Saigon sauna. There are no loungers and no relaxing atmosphere – just a blisteringly hot set of hot-tubs, saunas, steam rooms, and of course, dark rooms for play. I didn’t venture there, but I spent some time in the hot tub with the friendly local gays and then left within the hour, still satisfied with only paying £2 for the pleasure.

See you again, Binh Minh.

I visited Binh Minh in the early evening when there is most play, so the atmosphere definitely felt more sexually charged than at NaDam. If you’re into having a bit of a grope in the dark, then this is probably the place for you.

If you’re going to head to a gay sauna in Saigon, or anywhere else in the world, remember to stay safe. And have fun!

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Get a bespoke suit made

Or shirts, or a dress, or pretty much anything else you can think of. Hoi An is chock full of tailors, some are better than others, and some are straight up terrible, so do your research, speak to a few tailors, and make sure you pick somewhere where you feel confident they can get the job done. I can personally recommend Lana for getting a suit made – I did go back seven times for alterations, but it wasn’t because they were bad, it’s because I’m incredibly fussy.

When you a venture into a tailor’s shop in Hoi An, make sure that you already have a clear idea of what you want – that way both you and the tailor will know what you are working towards and you’ll be much happier with the result. I’ve never had a suit made before (in fact, I’ve never even worn a suit before) but I’ve had lots of clothes altered because I’m so slim and nothing sold in shops fits me, so I was able to speak confidently about what I wanted and expected from a suit. And the result was bloody marvellous. I paid $150 for a beautiful suit with a silk lining – but with cheap fabrics and a different lining, you can get a suit for $100.

Top up your tan on An Bang beach

My beach of choice in Hoi An is about 3km away from the main beach, Cua Dai. Both are very lovely, but you’ll experience less touts and hassle on An Bang beach.

Drink plenty of mega-cheap fresh beer

One of my favourite things about Vietnam is the incredibly cheap beer – what a surprise. But when I say incredibly cheap, I really mean it. It’s cheaper than water and by a long stretch. The cheapest deal that I managed to find out was at a lovely little restaurant that was selling fresh beer by the glass for 3000 dong. That beer was also on a 3 for 2 offer, which I fully took advantage of, so in fact the price was 2000 dong for a glass. Let’s put this in perspective – 2000 dong is £0.06 or $0.10. Outstanding.

Eat 45 different flavours of ice cream

Hoi An is a real haven for people with a sweet tooth. Thanks to the French influence of the town, you can find delicious cakes and pastries on every street corner, but my favourite place to eat dessert in Hoi An is a brand new ice cream parlour called Enjoy. They have at least 45 different flavours of ice cream, sorbets, and frozen yoghurt, and tonnes of toppings as well. It’s not cheap at around 30,000 dong a scoop, but so bloody good.

Have a silent tea at Reaching Out

Tea is serious business in Vietnam and much of Asia. It’s not just a drink, but comes with a whole ceremony and practice. In this social enterprise that hires speech and hearing impaired staff, you won’t hear a word uttered, as in this tea house everyone enjoys a traditional silent tea ceremony. The teas are of course delicious, but they also have coffees, soft drinks and snacks. A very cute place.

Cycle to Thanh Ha pottery village

Just a few kilometres outside of Hoi An is a pottery village where you can observe local people making all kinds of pottery work, from cups and saucers through to much grander sculpture work. You can even have a go on the potter’s wheel yourself.

Relax with a $5 massage

There are a tonne of massage places in Hoi An, but with so many offering ‘extras’ it’s hard to know where to go without ending up in an erm… uncomfortable (or perhaps too comfortable) situation. I had a personal recommendation to go to a blind massage place on Cua Dai road, where not only were the massages great but they only cost $5. Bargain.

Drink Vietnamese coffee on the riverside

I am a tea drinker through and through, but Vietnamese coffee is ridico tasty. I don’t know anything about coffee but to me, Vietnamese coffee doesn’t even taste like coffee. It tastes like warmed up nutella in a glass. My favourite place to relax with a coffee in Hoi An was Son Caphe – a café on Cua Dai Road that overlooks the Song Do river.

Okay, this isn’t coffee, it’s beer. But I did drink coffee. Sometimes. Maybe.

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So what happens once you’re in the pottery village? Er, you see a load of pottery. Yeah, that’s about it, but it was really pleasant nonetheless. The families who work in the village are all incredibly friendly, but are also pushy with selling to you. I was told twice in the village how handsome I am. Maybe I am just spectacularly handsome, but I suspect that the flattery was an attempt at making a sale. But if you are in the market for some pottery, this is certainly the place to buy it. From plates and bowls, through to clay whistles, and some incredibly elaborate structural pieces, there is a huge range of work showcased throughout the village. And if you are really lucky, you’ll even be invited into one of the homes to have a go on the potter’s wheel.

Here are some photos from my trip to Thanh Ha pottery village.

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In fairness, both of the beaches are a great choice. Head to either Cua Dai or An Bang and you’ll find soft golden sand, water that is surprisingly warm, and a choice of beach restaurants and bars where you can down a beer and order some spring rolls and an ice cream. The one thing that put me off Cua Dai beach is the amount of touts that pestered me to buy sunglasses, coffee filters, tiger balm, cigarettes, incense sticks, and anything and everything else that they were selling. I don’t blame these people who are on the beach selling their wares at all – they are just doing their job. But I find that constantly being sold to can make a beach day draining when it should be relaxing. On Cua Dai beach I just couldn’t relax, so I cycled northwards to An Bang, where there were about a tenth as many touts and a fifth as many tourists. For such a beautiful beach, I was amazed that there were so few people there.

About to have lunch at Soul Kitchen on An Bang beach.

Once you are on the beach, there is a lovely selection of places to eat your lunch, drink a beer, or grab an ice cream. I can personally recommend La Plage, Soul Kitchen, and Banyan as great places to grab a spot of refreshment on a beach day, and there is also a lovely looking Italian restaurant (run by expats) called Luna d’Autonno, which has great reviews but I didn’t try the food myself.

The outline of my body in sweat. You’re welcome.

An Bang is about a half an hour cycle ride from town, and when you can rent a bicycle for 20,000 dong (about 75p) there is no excuse not to pedal your way to this lovely, lesser known beach of Hoi An.

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So this is what happened. At around 3.30 in the early morning, an obnoxious German backpacker comes into our 8 person hostel dorm (which is full), turns on every single light, and practically shouts “It’s all about having sex!”. So weird and extremely antisocial. Everyone else in the room is pissed off, shushes him and tells him to turn out the lights, to which he responds “I’m coming back in ten minutes with a girl and we’re going to have sex” and leaves the room without turning off any of the lights.

The image of a dorm room fills me with unbridled fear. Image courtesy of immu.

Around thirty minutes later, our German chum does indeed return to the room with a girl in tow. She is coyer than him (although not coy enough to not have sex in an 8 person dorm) and will only whisper while he carries on talking in his German drone that wakes everybody up again. I saw him summon the girl to his bed in the dark and then I put my pillow over my head, trying and failing to get back to sleep for another two hours.

While I know that this isn’t the typical behaviour of a lot of backpackers, this happened after a day of feeling very isolated from everyone around me, and it hasn’t exactly given me any faith in the hostel experience, which I’ve uniformly hated aside from my hostel stay in Bangkok.  Before I started traveling this year, I had never stayed in a dorm room before, and I had read that it makes it easier to meet people when you are traveling alone. Except, I’ve hardly ever spoken to anyone I’ve shared a room with and the only times I’ve really felt lonely on my travels is when I’ve stayed in a hostel.

When I stay in a hostel I am reminded of just how hetero-normative the world is, and how the lovely little gay world that I’ve created for myself isn’t typical at all. I probably shouldn’t feel shocked to find myself around straight boys making really stupid comments about girls when I stay in a hostel, but it does shock me, and makes me question whether I really want to be traveling when I don’t have to deal with any of that kind of nonsense at home. So after staying in a hostel in lovely Hoi An for a few nights, and having to deal with dorm room sex, I actually feel like the place that I most want to be is in London with my friends, as far away from Vietnam as possible.

Hopefully that feeling will change as I continue on my travels – but upon leaving Hoi An I am making a promise to myself that I will never stay in a hostel again.

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Hoa Lo Prison

When I arrived at Hoa Lo prison, I knew that I had arrived at the right place because of the lettering over the entrance, but I was still confused because this place does not look like a prison at all. The building was built during the French occupation, and it’s so typical of the French to create a ridiculously beautiful building with incredible ornate detail, even when that building is a prison. The prison was built towards the end of the 19^th century with the intention of holding prisoners (obvs) but political prisoners for the most part. As you explore the area of the prison, which now serves as a museum about the prison, you find out about all of the grizzly details of the prisoners lives and their execution. Even though the prison looks beautiful from the outside, inside that is not the case, and the prisoners lived in brutal conditions. The good old Vietnamese still held strong to their political convictions during their confinement, created political magazines, and held meetings while staying in the prison, and some even managed to escape through the sewers.

And then, during the Vietnam war in the 1960s and 1970s, the north of Vietnam took control of the prison and imprisoned members of the US military, including John McCain. The US prisoners nicknamed the prison the Hanoi Hilton, and the museum now goes to great lengths to show how well the Vietnamese treated the American soldiers. I have noticed that all the museums here really engage in chest beating for everything Vietnamese, so it’s hard to detect what the reality of the situation really was.

The Museum of Ethnology

Vietnam is home to 54 separate ethnic groups and the Museum of Ethnology is dedicated to better understanding those 54 groups that comprise the Vietnamese population. It covers everything from dress, to wedding ceremonies, through to housing, and agriculture – and the whole museum has been put together incredibly well. Everything within the museum walls was interesting and I was never bored. But the best part of the museum is undoubtedly an outside area where they have built houses from the various tribes, which can be explored by going inside – really cool. At particular times, the museum also hosts traditional water puppet shows and I was lucky enough to catch one. Well, I say lucky – I bloody love puppetry and I’ve even performed in a couple of puppet shows myself, but I found the show a little on the dull side.

The fishing traps that are used by many ethnic groups in Vietnam.

Kids enjoying the water puppetry. Maybe.

Vietnamese Women’s Museum

I am a feminist through and through so the Vietnamese Women’s Museum was 100% top of my list of places to visit in the city. All of the displays in this museum are so well executed with a really great mix of artifacts, written explanations, and video content as well. Learning about the important role that women play in various ethnic groups in Vietnam was fascinating and I was particularly encouraged to learn about a large number of matrilineal societies that venerate older female figures, and that have preference for daughters over sons. The museum covers everything from the role of women  at markets, working in the rice fields, cooking in homes, and also as contemporary entrepreneurs. Great great stuff.

Which is your favourite museum in Hanoi?

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A pavement scene in Hanoi.

Fortunately, after a day or so in Hanoi, my city instinct kicked in and I really started to like the place. As with any city, Hanoi is a great place to explore in the evening – that is when there are most people on the streets and when the city has the most to offer its visitors. If you really want to kick it with the locals, you can do nothing better than sit on the pavement with hordes of people from Hanoi as they drink 10,000 dong (20p) beers and snack on street food. The pavement culture in Hanoi is probably its #1 attraction, and it presents a real point of difference from other Asian cities, so do get stuck in and drink that cheap and fresh Bia Hoi. If you’re visiting in the summer like me, you’ll be grateful for the cool refreshment.

More pavement joy in Hanoi.

Hanoi knows how to do beer, that’s for sure, but its people also have a deep passion for coffee. At home, I would only ever drink a cup of coffee in the morning with breakfast, but in Hanoi they drink it all day long, and it’s very common to see people meeting up at night just for a cup of coffee. Again, there are a tonne of places where you can drink a coffee on the street (by the sword lake is a nice spot) but I was taken by a local to café called Cong Caphe and without exaggeration, I had the best coffee of my life in this place. I ordered a ‘coconut coffee’ not really knowing what I would get, and I ended up with a coffee meets ice cream drink, which just tasted bloody amazing. I’m not even a coffee fan, and I was ready to French kiss the owner out of gratitude.

Cutest menu ever.

Coffee that dreams are made of.

After my little caffeine hit, I decided to take a walk around the Old Quarter, and it was such a pleasure to see groups of friends dotted around the city playing music. They would attract audiences of both locals and tourists and were all very accomplished performers. I was particularly fond of this group who I found perched outside the steps of a bank.

And of course, my post about night-time Hanoi would not be complete without a little shout out to the homosexuals. The first thing I do when I reach a new city is investigate the local gay bars, and the second thing I do is visit them. For a city of its size and with its population, Hanoi has a spectacularly underdeveloped gay scene, with just one gay bar in the whole city. Though there is just one bar flying the homo flag in Hanoi, I really enjoyed my night at GC Bar, and would absolutely recommend the place to anybody wanting to explore a bit of gayness while in Vietnam. I arrived at around 9pm on a Saturday night and there were probably about 10 other people in the bar, and by 10.30 the place was absolutely heaving with a mix of locals, expats, and tourists who were enjoying cheap beers and dancing around the pool table to pop music. In Hanoi, everything shuts pretty early, so we were all done by midnight, but get friendly with some locals and they’ll be able to point you in the direction of an after-party.

Not only the worst photo ever taken of GC Bar, not only the worst photo ever taken of a bar, but the worst photo ever taken.

Have you been to Hanoi? What was your favourite night time activity (keep it clean!)?

The post Exploring Hanoi by night: Coffee, beers, and homosexuals appeared first on That Gay Backpacker.

A ten minute walk within the gates of the waterfall and I was confronted with multiple tiers of cascading aquamarine water – the kind of pure azure colour that makes you stop and take a short breath. The tiers of the waterfalls seem to go on forever and look so perfectly formed that it is astonishing that they are naturally formed. At the falls, you’ll find locals and tourists alike, splashing in the water, swinging from a rope into the pools beneath, and enjoying picnic lunches with each other. The entrance fee is only 20,000 kip – totally bargainous for such a breath-taking site.

If you want to add a bit of adventure to your Kuang Si experience, then you can hike to the top of the waterfall. This hike only takes around 15-20 minutes, but it is steep.  Dave and Vicky from ACoupleTravelers and I braved the hike to the top, but we were wearing flip flops and boat shoes, feeling for rocks and branches on our way up to keep our balance. If I was to do this again I’d pack some walking shoes, but actually I wouldn’t because the view from the top was a bit of an anti-climax. The drop from the top of the falls is so sheer that you can’t look over the edge without, well, falling to your death.

Kuang Si waterfalls are spectacularly beautiful, but on the grounds they also have a bear sanctuary making a visit to Kuang Si Falls even more special. All of the bears have been rescued from illegal poaching and trading, and it’s pretty awesome to see the bears looking so happy, eating honey covered sticks and playing in the sanctuary together. I had never seen a bear up close before and it was quite something – big, beautiful animals that deserve the life they have at the sanctuary.

And that’s Kuang Si Falls – I hope you manage to get there!

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