A Birthday Weekend in Berlin.

This year I wanted to do a trip for my birthday - I thought for a TravelChick it's the right thing to do :-) And some of my friends decided to join me. Me = Lucky one!
I know - it's already been a while... but I really wanna say THANK YOU to my friends Alex, Franzman, Gabe, Heiko & Luzifer. THX for an awesome trip to Berlin, THX for all the fun, THX for making my birthday special!

You are great and I'm really happy to have you around me.
XXX

Birthday Weekend in Berlin from bieneschmid on Vimeo.

TRIPLE-S in L-O-N-D-O-N (the video)

so here's the video of our weekend in London, including some shots of U2's live performance @Wembley Stadium. I know it's a bit long but Gaby took some really nice shots which I didn't want to leave out :-) Even the sound in the live parts isn't the best, I guess you can get the goose bumps-feeling...

TRIPLE-S in L-O-N-D-O-N from bieneschmid on Vimeo.

A beautiful day in L-O-N-D-O-N.

first of all: I like doing crazy things. And I'm a lucky one to have friends joining me whenever I have a crazy idea...

A few weeks ago, I read about U2 performing at the Wembley Stadium in London and as soon as I read about it I wanted to go there. I'm not the biggest U2-fan in the world - far from it - but I saw them on the Vertigo-tour in Munich and I must admit - it was an awesome show! But even more, me soccer-girl was excited about going to the Wembley Stadium :-) I guess any concert is a great experience there with 90.000 people around you?!

So I started planing on going to London for the concert. And as soon Gaby and theLuzifer heard about my idea they were in!

We spent a great weekend there, full of sightseeing, shopping, chilling with my friend Johannes (who lives there) on his roof terrace and of course seeing U2 perform at the Wembley Stadium.

Right now I'm working on the video, hope to finish it soon. Meanwhile enjoy a little teaser, showing a spontanous performance for our friend Artur...

For Artur (Triple-S in L-O-N-D-O-N teaser) from bieneschmid on Vimeo.

A girls weekend in Brussels.

As August is my "travel-month" this year, I went with Gaby, theLuzifer and PerlenPaula to Brussels last weekend. Not only for sightseeing and clubbing, but for celebrating PerlenPaulas BDay there. Unfortunately our Lufthansa flight turned out codesharing with Brusselsairlines and the aircraft as well as the service was... NO, I won't complain - the weekend was just too great ;-)
(but I wouldn't recommend brusselsairlines btw)

So yeah - PerlenPaulas BDay - that meant about 30 people coming to Brussels from all over Germany.
And Schmierlappen...

The BDay weekend started friday night with a get together (means a few large beer ) at "A la Mort Subite" and some clubbing afterwards. Saturday afternoon PerlenPaulas Dad showed us around Brussels and in the evening the late-BDay-BBQ (with awesome food and drinks!) started at her Dad's place. A short visit at Musée Magritte on Sunday and then we had to go back to Munich already. Weekends are just too short... it's always the same ;-)

It was a great weekend though with a lot of fun - even we were hung over most of the time and even theLuzifer couldn't sleep because of me snorring ;-)

So here's a slideshow of our weekend:

A girls weekend in Brussels from bieneschmid on Vimeo.

I amsterdam.

Last week I went to Amsterdam to see my friend GabeMac. Once again, I spent a wonderful time in this lovely city (I know, there are some posts missing, but I'm working on it!) with a lovely host making the best pancakes, eggs and california rolls :-)
AND this time I was also able to take part in an absolute amazing event:
Isabelle, a friend of Gabe, organised the "Michael Jackson Thriller Dance Tribute, Amsterdam".
Around 1.000 MJ fans met at Vondelpark, learned how to dance Michael Jacksons "Thriller" and then "flashmobed" several places throughout Amsterdam.
It was a great experience to be part of this amazing tribute to the King of Pop!

There's a lot of pictures of the event on flickr (this one shows me with the lead dancer *LOL*).

And, of course, the official Flash Amsterdam Video by GabeMac:

2 Münchner in Hamburg.

In May, I went for a weekend trip to Hamburg with my Mum. As my mum didn't know Hamburg very well, we did typical tourist stuff like a sightseeing tour with the bus and doing a boat tour at the harbour, we went to ElbArt which is a nice once a year art exhibition taking place in a tunnel (Alter Elbtunnel) and visited the brand new Beatles museum "Beatlemania". We also went to see the musical "the lion king" which was great but at the same time a bit strange as all the lyrics were in german. And of course we had drinks in nice bars at the Kietz. Here's a short wrap up I made with Animoto.com:

2 Münchner in Hamburg from bieneschmid on Vimeo.

Madrid & Salamanca.

Earlier this year, think it was in February, I went visiting my friend GabeMac in Madrid (Spain). I had a wonderful weekend there, including an awesome trip to Salamanca.
Here are some pics from the trip.



And a wonderful video Gabe made...

Salamanca with Sabine from Gabemac on Vimeo.

Stay tuned.

That's it. That was our awesome month in asia. But as the TravelChicks love travelling, there will be enough to tell.

So from now on - I'm trying to catch up on all the trips I did so far this year and of course - I tell about all the trips that will come...

Back in Munich...

...I uploaded all the pics from this awesome trip. Click here to see the set on flickr.


travelling through Cambodia, originally uploaded by bieneschmid.

...I uploaded all the pics from this awesome trip. Click here to see the set on flickr.

Back in Thailand.

As I mentioned, going to Kratie was quite exhausting. But it was nothing compared to getting back. The bus ride from Kratie to Phnom Penh was defo one of the worst rides we ever did. This crappy bus with no AC working, totally overbooked, with stuff and people everyway on the floor, sitting on our backpacks, sweating like hell... But we arrived! Late that day in Phnom Penh, checked in at the guesthouse next to No. 9 and tried to relax with a few beer (surprise, surprise). It was strange to be there again without the boys. But as it was only for one night before going to Kho Chang (Thailand) to spend the last days of our trip there and meet Albie and Bryan again, it was ok.

Once we arrived at Lonely Beach, Kho Chang we switched into „chill mode“ right away.

A few words can describe our time there:
chilling at the beach, getting a massage, Zeugwart getting a new tattoo, both of us getting really sick, meeting Albie and Bryan for Albies birthday and one night in Bangkok.

Here’s a short wrap-up of our last 5 days (in Thailand):

Back in Thailand from bieneschmid on Vimeo.

Watching Dolphins.

The trip to Kratie was really exhausting. It took us the whole day in various shitty (local) buses (with no A/C) to get there. But when we stepped out the bus and saw the Mekong (our beloved Mekong)... we were just happy. Of course we just sat down at the riverside, had a beer and a smoke and wondered if our colleagues are having lunch at Mannis cantine...

Kratie is a totally sleepy place where not many tourists are coming by. Most of the tourists stop there on their way to Laos for watching the dolphins. But nobody goes there JUST for watching the dolphins and goes all the way back.

We did!
And even it was that exhausting to get there, even there was nothing else to see or to do (I mean they "closed the walkways" at 7 pm!), even we had to get up at 6am again for watching the dolphins in the morning hours - it was definitely one of the highlights of our trip.

Watching Dolphins from bieneschmid on Vimeo.

Time to say Goodbye.

And then the day we had to say goodbye to misterknister came. We decided to go to Kratie, watching dolphins at the Mekong, while he started his way (back) to Hong Kong to meet theLorenz again.
Our last night together started with misterknister choosing a pizza place for dinner :)
(because - not sure if I mentioned that before - he hates asian food)

After that we went to Ankor What? bar, where we were supposed to meet Albie & Bryan again.

That night, Albie left this special note for us in my travel-book:


And we promised to meet Albie & Bryan a few days later in Kho Chang (Thailand), to celebrate Albies birthday together...

Siem Reap - everything but temples.

As I said, we spent 4 days in Siem Reap - most of the time visiting the temples of Ankor. But the other two days we just hung out there, enjoyed great cambodian food (they have a special and absolutely delicious BBQ btw), did very funny Tuk Tuk rides with Rami and we did a trip to visit the floating village at Tonlesap lake:

everything but temples from bieneschmid on Vimeo.

Ankor - what?!

The 9 hours bus ride turned into a 11 hours bus ride with flat tires and a lady next to Zeugwart who was just throwing up the whole time. But Zeugwart did not get any sleep during the night and was so tired, she didn't really notice...
Finally we (Gaby, Zeugwart, Misterknister) arrived at Siem Reap where we spent 4 days in a tripple bed room at a nice guesthouse - most of the time with visiting the amazing temples of Ankor (with our new friend Rami, the Tuk-Tuk driver).
Its hard to describe the beauty of this place. All the temples, the scenery, everything is just AWESOME!!!
We liked a lot :)

This video shows the first two days of our stay there - visiting Angkor:


Ankor - what the fxxx?! from bieneschmid on Vimeo.

99 cents.

So, the video shows some situations of the first two days we spent in Sihanoukville. We actually spent one more day there, but this day was just chilling at the beach - everybody was just tired & hung over.

That night, after having dinner at a great place with just locals and delicious cambodian food - we all went to the 99cent party at Utopia (Guesthouse/Club/Bar). That means every Mixer or Shot was 99cent, every beer was 25cent - the whole night! Thank god, I did not take any camera with me... :-)

It was a great night though, even we had to say goodbye to Jeroen and theLorenz. We were about travelling to Siem Reap the next morning while Jeroen stayed for some more days at the beach and theLorenz had to go back to Hong Kong. And as the bus for Siem Reap was supposed to leave at 7am, Zeugwart decided not to sleep at all, but to step into the bus for a 9 hours ride right away from watching the sunrise at the beach...

Good times @the Beach

as we got a little lazy with writing posts - i did this video of our good times we had at the beach in Sihanoukville:

good times @the beach from bieneschmid on Vimeo.

The Beach and the rising sun (Sunday, Mar 22nd)

For any reason, we girls got up much earlier than the boys and already had breakfast and made the decision what to do that day when we finally woke up the boys at 1pm.
Our decision was finding a nice, quiet beach to chill at. It wasn't very easy to convince misterknister - he still felt sick from his stitch and the reactor in his stomach was working... but after the Lorenz and Zeugwart had lobster at the beach and misterknister had pizza or pasta or whatever (that's the only things he eats since he is in Asia!) we got on a TukTuk to bring us to a nice place. And it was a really nice place. Much more quiet, almost nobody else over there and watching the sunset was (again) 'all about the romance'.
We girls and the Lorenz decided to go to the nightmarket, for some shopping and nice seafood. But misterknister (still sick) didn't like the idea and stayed at the bungalow.
But for any reason we didn't make it to the nightmarket. We had a great seafood BBQ at the bar just next to our bungalow instead. And as the americans showed up just right in time for $0.25 Happy Hour.... we just stayed there. Gaby found her wingman with Albie (they were drinking Jaegershots the whole night, even she pretends, that they had only two shots!). And Zeugwart found her wingman in Bryan who still can not understand how girls can drink that much beer.
It was a great party and Gaby decided to get misterknister from the bungalow. I think maybe it was because we all were already 'very funny' and he was still sober - but he started with a Vodka bucket right away...
A lot of Jaegershots and beer later, suddenly Jeroen showed up. He arrived just that afternoon from Phnom Penh and so the 'sunrisecrew' from GH #9 was complete!
I don't know whose idea it was to go for some nightswimming - but it was great fun!
And then, there was the rising sun again.......

Beach Bungalows and the LadyBoy in Sihanoukville

After just a few hours in our sauna we got up at 6.30am to catch the bus to Sihanoukville - the only place in Cambodia with nice beaches. It was a 6 hours ride again and we all felt a bit hung over from the nights before...
We decided to stay at nice beach bungalows even they were a bit more expensive. But they were at the 'main beach' with lots of bars around :-)
Gaby couldn't wait to chill at the beach so we didn't spend a lot of time unpacking and headed straight to the beach were we met 'our new friend' - the ladyboy. Offering manicure, pedicure, massage, waxing and all the spa stuff. He or she or... it was very funny so we promised to get a manicure later.
It was a very relaxed day - chilling at the beach, having great seafood, doing nothing than enjoying life at its best! And as I said before, we felt a bit hung over, so we didn't make it a big night. Misterknister had a sunstitch anyway, went to bed around 10pm and while we (and the Lorenz) were looking for a nice place at the beach to have a Schlummifix we bumped into the americans who arrived that evening as well. Its a small world...

A Sauna for 5 $

Gaby woke up the "next morning" at around noon by Zeugwarts snobbing "äeehhhh, dis geht ja goar net".
She was right - our room felt like a sauna, the fan was not quiet working well, the sun was at its best, the mosquito nets were spread over our bodies (and not hanging on the ceiling anymore...yummiiee) - yes we definitely had a great first night in Phnom Phen.

Okay so we got up and after a rich english breakfast felt a lot better and woke up the guys to visit the "killing fields" - the place where pol pot killed over 17,000 people only approx. 30 years ago. They even had a whole wat filled up with skulls of all kinds of people.
30 years ago is about the time when we were born. 17,000 people killed for nothing but an ideologic stupid reason.....It was a very sad and silent moment to see all that and imagining the history going on there. We didn't take any pictures.

After that we went back to our guesthouse no.9 to take a nap in those very great and beloved papesan chairs and met with the american dudes albie und bryan to get some food.
We went to the riverside to get some seafood but ended up at the happy pizza place. The albie was the only dude who really tried the happy pizza but that is another story.
We shared our food with a little cambodian boy who wanted to sell books because he was hungry. As we didn't want to give him money, we offered him our rice and yes, he really was hungry.....

After hanging out at some kind of boat party place, we went back to our guesthouse at 2 am and arrived just on time to listen to Jack Johnson himself playing the guitar and singing some lullabies for us.
Okay, it wasn't Johnson himself but some english guy who could have easily been his brother and who just knows how you can even better imitate and play those bonfire melancolic self-reflecting songs.
That was AWESOME, breathtaking and beautiful - all at the same time. I have never heard anyone play and sing as good as he did. And if I wouldn"t already be in love with Zeugwart, I would have fallen in love with that guy......

Construction workers, Guesthouse #9, cool guys and the sunrise in Phnom Penh

The last hours in Saigon we wanted to spend at the riverside and we thought it would be a nice walk to get there. But it turned out that the whole way (like almost every place in Vietnam) was under construction. We couldn't see the river on our way to the Bootsanleger, but the locals could see us. And I think not many tourists are walking the same way through the dust and crossing Baustellen in the heat. But - yeah maybe you can imagine - Zeugwart liked the idea of saying 'hello' to the construction workers (especially to the Geruestbauer, the Moertelbauer and the Gabelstaplerdriver) :-)
Finally we got to where we wanted to, found a nice place in the shadow, had a smoke and thought about the (almost) two weeks we spent in Vietnam. We had a great time there, but there was no place we liked THAT much to come defo back sometimes. We were really looking forward to Cambodia, and as we were supposed to meet misterknister and his friend the Lorenz from Hong Kong in Phnom Penh we felt like there would be some funny days in the future.

But first - another busride. And right before we got on the bus, we bumped into Alex & Nicole who just arrived in HCMC, sitting in the same restaurant we had breakfast the day before. Funny!

Finally on the bus to Phnom Penh - we excited - we met Jeroen this nice guy from Holland. After a 'nothing special trip' with a 30 minutes break at the vietnamese/cambodian border to get our visa, we had the same Ziel: Guesthouse No. 9 at the lake side (misterknister and the Lorenz arrived 2 or 3 hours before and did a reservation for us. Just say password 'room no. 5').
Great Guesthouse though. The rooms were quite abgefucked, especially the bathroom and we girls had a magic fan (not working while working). But everything else there was pretty nice and it the room was only $5 - chillout area, pool table, beautiful lakeside view. We liked a lot. And it was a really big 'hello' to meet misterknister on the other side of the world in Cambodia to hang out a few days...

The same time we met Bryan and Albie from Colorado, staying at the same GH. And it didn't take long to see that the americans and zi crazy germans were on the same Wellenlaenge.
So we had dinner for seven (Joeren joined us as well) and went for some beer (to be honnest, a lot of beer and Vodka something) to a famous club in Phnom Penh called 'the heart of darkness'. Had a really funny night dancing, drinking, chatting until they begged us to go (not to mention that we were the last ones........). Of course it was not enough and back at the GH #9 we woke up the bar boy to get some more beer and playing pool. The night ended with the beginning of the new day: watching the rising sun while chilling at the lake side...................



Sunrise @Guesthouse #9 from bieneschmid on Vimeo.

One Night in Saigon (or as we call it HCMC)

Another Sleepingbus ride - this time in one of the upper "beds" which means that every few minute you believe you can fly...

So we arrived in Saigon at 6am again, took a short rest and started our obligatorische sightseeing tour. Even it was early in the morning it was already hot like hell.

We walked to the Independence Palace to visit the former presidents residence (Gaby was reminded of the Zone), went to see Notre-Dame/St. Marienkirche, the Post-Office, the Jade Pagoda, the war remenant museum, the market.... we just did the whole fucking sightseeing tour on one day because we decided not to stay longer than one night in Saigon (to finally go to Cambodia!).
As we almost finished our tour, Zeugwart got a phone call from our boss. It wasn't just about "i hope you are having a great vacation" but that is another story... Anyway - 30 minutes later the both of us really needed a beer. Or two. Or three.... So we ended up in a small street cafe, on plastic chairs - but this time they were more like on a beach or somewhere.
Drinking beer, getting hungry, finding a place for dinner. Brought us to a nice rooftop restaurant were we had BBQ at the table and met this strange southafrican guy telling us all this weird stories about getting robbed on BKK (like met some really nice Thai ladys, had two beer with them, woke up 30 hours later in his hotel room with nothing left than his underwear and can't remember anything. Der Depp!).

We made that night not a big one as we wanted to get up quite early next morning to see some more things in Saigon before leaving for Phnom Penh around noon. And as there was no electricity when we got back to our room, Gaby had to go back to the reception to get a candle that we at least were able to go to the toilet....

I want my Underwear!

Tuesday (17th) was the first day on this trip we didn't set an alarm. So we slept until 11, had breakfast at Shortys, went to the beach and did some shopping - I think just a normal relaxed day in Nha Thrang (because there isn't really much to do).

We were about to leave for Saigon (with the so called sleepingbus) anyway.

So, just pick up our laundry quickly, get us a sandwich and off to Ho-Chi-Minh. We thought... Because when we tried to pick up our laundry - AS ALWAYS there were some pieces missing. This time it was Gabys turn. And she had a really funny (for Zeugwart) argumentation about her missing Schluepfers. I think I don't have to mention, that of course she got it back............ :-)

Sooooo, there are some places to recommend in Nha Thrang:

- go to Shortys for great breakfast (they have delicious banana pancakes!)
- Cafe des Amies offers "ok" food, but really cheap
- at red apple bar you will meet a lot of Irish and English guys, but it is fun though. And not to forget "Haeuptling schnelle Zunge"who owns that bar
- Why not bar has Happy Hour until 12am which means you get a REALLY strong Vodka Something for 20.000 VND what is about 1 USD
- after 12 go to the Sailing Beach Club - great party there (60.000 VND entrence fee, but you get f.e. a Jam Jar of Vodka Something for free)
- do a boat trip with Mama Linhs.......

Mama linh and the vietnamesian Backstreet Boys

The next morning we got up quiet early to catch our boat which would take us through the islands of Nha Trangh.
We chose "Mama Linh" as a party boat tour operator, known for their fun and feuchtfroehlichen rides.

We got on the boat with 30 other people (american, french, icelandic, korean, vietnamesian) at 9 am which was way to early for us. Not only because we still had a little hangover from the night before but also because of the fact that we couldn't start drinking at that time of the day. You will understand in a few seconds why...

So the boat started, we watched some islands, went snorkeling, hang out on the boat talking to the others when our 'captain' - a small cute well-trained vietnamesian - introduced his boyband to the guests. The band constisted of 4 people (singer, drummer with a self-made battery-driven drum set, bassist and second singer), everybody wearing nothing but their pants....yummy.

They started their show with lots of ding dong vietnamesian songs, dancing around and trying to warm-up the crowd. Then the captain asked us to introduce our own country with a song.
Gaby, of course and as always, was the first to start and had to sing "Marmor, Stein und Eisen bricht"of Drafi Deutscher. Awesome - totally sober. Good job though...I think.

After all the countries were done, we had to dance the twist'' on the wooden benches. But Zeugwart and Gaby got tired of doing that after a minutes and started a huge polonaise, involving almost the whole boat....

That was a perfect start for the floating bar. Our captain jumped into the sea, settled with his little bar (filled with red vietnamesian wine---uerkksss) and everybody followed.
So in the end we found ourselves, floating in the sea with our beers and the others, toe-to-toe, just like one year ago in Vang Vieng.

After getting back from the boat trip, we decided to have seafood dinner and went to a very awesome place. Everything was a little more expensive but got paid off by the great seafood they served. Even our server, this time a female Miss Rottenmeier, was a joy.

When we had food, we met a german guy on the table right beside us who invited us for some more drinks later.
We met in the "Why not" bar with even some more germans and a dutch girl and decided to get to the beach for another beach party...Well it became a great night, with too many jars of alcohol, too many dutch guys and the security had to throw us out of the building as we were the last ones at four a.m.

Nha Thrang - sun, beach, bars and goalkeeper-training.

OMG! This 12 hours busride to Nha Thrang was really horrible! So when we arrived at around 6am we were quite tired and so we hurried up to find a hotel near the beach, get some breakfast and finally get to the beach and relax. Unfortunately Zeugwart got lobstered (falling asleep at the beach when you don't have a sunshade is NOT really a good idea...). We planned to stay at the beach during the morning, and rent bikes to explore the city in the afternoon. So we went quickly to all the sights in Nha Thrang (which aren't a lot), saw the lying and the sitting Buddha and stuff like that, took some nice pictures and finally got back to the beach for chilling in the beach bar and having a beer. Like always we entertained the guys and girls behind the bar who laughed their asses off because of us. Wondering why...

Anyway, after having dinner it didn't take us long to find a cool bar (red apple bar) and to get free shots there. So we did not mind all these drunken english and vietnamese guys. And when "Wayne Rooney" came over to ask Zeugwart for a dance it was a really good laugh for us. Even when Zeugwart showed off that she defo would be a great goalkeeper (she has reflexes wie sau!) we could still laugh - this time about the vietnamese (very drunken) owner of the bar who suddenly tried to kiss Zeugwart... Meanwhile Gaby had a discussion with the wild dancing indian bollywood guy. And it was time to get some sleep to be fit for Mama Linhs boat trip on the next day. I just say party boat...

Sorrry! Listen please! The day with Mr Thrung...

At 10am Mr Trungh picked us up at the hotel to show us his nice small fishing village (sorry, really can't remember the name) about 3 km in the countryside of HoiAn. We had the choice either to take motorbikes or bikes to get there, and as by now we're almost bike-pros :-) we decided to take the bikes. With us were the 2 Ossis and and middle-aged french couple.
The ride to the village was fun, and as soon as we left "the city", the landscape got really nice.
Our guide Mr Trungh had to get serious with us a few times (he was like the male version of Fraeulein Rottenmeier!) because we were only goofing around the whole time - I think we and the Ossis were just the perfect team for doing this trip :-)
So, we arrived at the fishing village, Mr Trungh showed us around, told us interesting stories and gave us a lot of informations about vietnamese culture. We visited locals in their homes, we went to a pottery manufacture (and tried to make vases ourselves) and we went fishing! Gaby was lucky and catched a fish, even if it was a really really really small one. ( about 5 cm..threw him back into the river)
After all that "workout" we went to Mr Thrungs place, where his wife made us a delicious vietnamese 3-course-meal. We loved it!!!
I can't write about all that funny situations we had that day - Mr Thrungh was sooooooooo entertaining in the way he talked and how he tried to be strict (sorrry! listen please! stand here! No, no, not there - I said stand here!) and how he always parked the bikes in HIS special way and everything. We really laughed a lot and had a great day. Maybe the funniest so far..... But I taped some short videos of Mr Thrung aka Fraeulein Rottenmeier (coming soon).

So, this trip was the perfect ending of a nice stay in Hoi An. And after saying goodbye to the Ossis and taking a short walk to the market we got on the Sleepingbus to Nha Thrang.

Hoi An beach, Becks and abspacking

Friday morning we woke up with a total hang over (sure it was that weird cobra blood from last night uerkss...!!) but after getting some of that what they call "good vietnamesian coffee" we were able to head to the city centre...didnt"t expect much but were proved totally wrong.

Hoi An is a very very nice verschlafenes village, with many colorful streets, nice shopping markets, even more nicer people, lots of sun and flowers and we totally got into a nostalgic mood by remembering Luang Prabang (where we were last year in Laos). It"s just as beautiful.

After doing the obligatorische sightseeing tour, we rented some very wackly bikes and headed to Hoi An beach. To be honest, the beach wasn"t too nice at it was way to windy to hang out there for more than two hours and we were pretty sure to catch a cold.

In the evening, we had dinner at a place, Zeugwart's parents recommended to us and probably had the best fish ever in vietnam. While eating, the owner of the restaurant, Mr Trungh, started talking to us and asked if we would like to do a tour with him the next day. He wanted to show us his little fishing village and learn more about vietnamisian culture.
It didn't take us too long to decide to do it and we also asked the two german ossis to join us.
We spent the night with the boys at some kind of beach party in Hoi An, playing pool and meeting tooo many english people. That"s why, we decided to have at least SOME fun and started abspacking on the dance floor (thanks lady gaga).

I don"t really remember, but it must have been like around 3 in the mornig when we took the shuttle bus back to the hotel. The bus was made for 15, but was packed with around 30 people, which gave us a litle vang vieng feeling (after tubing).
We finally ended up in our hotel with two english guys (one half italian, half pakistani & the other one looked like david beckham himself) drinking another beer.

I think when becks decided to present us his yellow-black underwear with stars on it, it was time for zeugwart and gaby to say good bye.
We prefered to watch the stars from our own hotel room and get some nice dreams for Mr Trung's tour starting the next morning..

Tombs and Cobra Blood.

Our second day in Hue also started quite early - we wanted to do some sight seeing before leaving for Hoi An. So, we got up early, had a quick breakfast and got on a cyclo for visiting the Citadelle. Pretty nice I think, even there are just a few buildings left... Next on the list was the Tu Duc Tomb and after an endless discussion with some motorbike drivers, we decided to get a cyclo again which took us two to the tomb. The driver told us, that it won't be a problem to get the two of us on one cyclo to the tomb, it will only be a ride of about 20 minutes. But as it turned out, most of the way was uphill and after ten minutes the driver was really exhausted. Gaby thought about getting off the cyclo for a moment but then, the driver got some help from a guy running a motorbike and he pushed us up all this little hills to the tomb.
The tomb was really impressive, but it was sooooooo hot, that we did not want to go to other tombs. Instead we got back to the city for quick vegeterian lunch and got on the bus to Hoi An which was supposed to be an AC comfortable bus. Supposed to be... the AC was a few open windows and as Gaby tried to hold on to her seat the guy in front of her was lying almost between us. But it was only a 4 hours ride...

So, our next stop: Hoi An. Hoi An is a pretty nice small town, with a small beach within 4km distance. And with a beautiful Oldtown which reminded us onLuang Prabang in Laos a lot. But as it was already dinner time, we decided to get bikes to explore the city and go to the beach the next day. We just went out for drinks with the guys we met the day before in Hue. A lot of drinks. And ended up at a place called Dream Bar - to drink Vodka with Cobra Blood. Brrrrrrrrrrrr but at least and as always the last guests to leave the bar...
At this point we were sure about the bad hangover that would hit us the next day. But there was this funny "way of living" written on the wall: "Kiss slowly. Forgive quickly. Dance uncontrollably and never have regrets in vietnam." So we had no regrets on all the drinks but were glad to hit the beds around 4.30 am...

...

This is just a short post, to say we are alright. Have been doing a lot the last days, seen so much, met a lot of people, travelled to other cities - and we are trying to spend as less time as possible on the internetz... We are in Nha Thrang at the moment to spend some relaxed days at the beach and on the boat, before we go to Saigon (Ho-Chi-Minh-City) next. But stories will come. For sure :-)

Riding bikes in Hue.

We arrived at Hue train station on time. What means 10.34 am. And needed to find a hotel for one or two nights. As the taxi drivers were really annoying, we decided to take a walk to the DMZ hostel, which we picked out the lonely planet. It turned out, that this wasn't the best decision. It was really hot already, we weren't used to the temperature as in Hanoi it was only about 20 degree during the day, we had our big backpacks... And the "nice little walk" wasn't nice at all and took about an hour :-( But we finally got to the DMZ, just to find out that they had no room, so we went on walking to find another hotel *nerv*

But of course we found a nice cheap one just around the corner. And after taking a (unfortunately) cold shower we were ready to explore Hue. Inspired by a friend of Zeugwart who showed her around Amsterdam on bikes (2 weeks ago) we decided to rent bikes! And that was a really good decision! We had so much fun cruising on our bikes and exploring the whole city in no time! In the beginning we felt a bit unsecure with that traffic (video following!) but it didn't take long and we were driving at least as crazy as the vietnamese people do :-)

Kind of exhausted after 2 hours on the bikes we needed a rest and decided to have a beer at bar Why Not? And a short nap after that - so we were ready for - yes, delicious seafood dinner again :-) and the night out in Hue which started at Cathies and ended up at Brown Eyes, where we were the only to girls in the club! But at least, that got us some free drinks and a lot of nice chats...


riding bikes from bieneschmid on Vimeo.

Back in Hanoi

So, back in Hanoi for the afternoon, before we took the night train to Hue. Time for running around the city again, to see the famous vietnamese water puppet show (which Zeugwart wanted to do!), to find a nice little restaurant with a great balcony for having dinner before we picked up our luggage and went to the "travellers place" again, where we spent the other night with Erin and the others. It didn't take as long as we got our first beer, until we got into chatting with the guys sitting next to us. All coming from Canada - except Brandon who was from Irland.
A lot of Canadians here in Vietnam - didn"t expect that... Anyway, we had time for 3 or 4 beer until leaving for the night train, so enough time for some good laughs.

On the way to the train station, we took out first motorbikes. It was a quite funny picture - little Gaby with her huge backpack on the back of the motorbike. But Zeugwart just saw it a few seconds until Gaby's driver was leaving with her and Zeugwarts driver started to ask for more money. Of course he did not get more money and Zeugwart had to start a walk towards the train station. Funnily enough that it took 5 or more minutes to find a new motorbike driver, and Gaby got a bit nervous waiting at the train station...

The night train (Zeugwarts first night train in asia) was pretty cool! The beds looked ckean, the cabins weren't as small than expected and we had funny neighbours. We shared our cabin with two vietnamese people, a nice middle-aged woman (unfortunately not speaking english) and a not at all speaking guy. But we had a couple of beer and enough to talk about so it wasn't a real problem that we couldn't chat with them :-)

The only problem was, that there was an alarm clock beeping at 6.45 am! And that the nice middle-aged vietnamese woman started chatting on her phone without taking a breath. It took us about one hour to fall asleep again... The next thing Zeugwart remembers is waking up, with the vietnamese woman sitting on her bed..............

Halong Bay

Monday morning, 7.30 am - getting up for our trip to the Halong Bay. After a quick breakfast, we were picked up for our 3 hours busdrive to Halong City. A quite boring trip, nothing special to see. So I guess that's the reason our driver tried to make it more exciting by driving like ... - Gaby calls it asshole :-) There were a few situations when the only thing we could do was CLOSING OUR EYES.

But when we finally got there and saw our boat... It was really nice, with pretty little, clean cabins and nice staff on the boat. We couldn't wait for starting the cruise!

And the tour was just awesome! At Halong Bay there are about 2.000 rocks in different sizes and shapes, one formation more beautiful than the other. Sitting in the sun (btw sun for the first time since we are in vietnam!) on the sundeck, cruising along these rocks, having a beer, smoking a cigarette. Nice one!

The trip to a nearby cave was nice, but not that exciting so we were looking forward to the Kayaking in the afternoon. And that was really fun. I think Gaby never did that before (Zeugwart once) and so there was some experience missing... Anyway - we managed to paddle around the bays for about an hour without overturning. And we also were the lucky ones who saw 2 monkey families in a quiet bay. Believe it or not - even if the monkeys (with about 15 little tarzan monkey babies) were really really really cute, Gaby did NOT call them Mietzi :-)) Yeah!

Back on the Junk we had time to chill a bit on the sundeck, having a beer of course, watching the sunset... I can't find words for how beautiful that was. Gaby got a little romantic, started snuggleing. But just a bit :-) (As always, it's all about the romance...)

To be honnest, there was not much to do on the junk, eating, drinking, chilling, reading books, chatting with the other travellers. So that's exactly what we did after a delicious seafood dinner.

And what we did the other day on the junk, before the bus took us back to Hanoi...

Hanoi: uncle "Ho" and Hobbit-like plastic chairs.

First of all: Happy Women's Day!
We started today at 7.30 am (after about 4 hours sleep) with 1) the alarm clock and with 2) a huge party (noisy!) parade going on just in front of our window. Thanks women united!
So yes, quite early for vacation, but we planned to see a lot of places in Hanoi... After breakfast we wanted to go straight to Ho-Chi-Minh Mausoleum. As it was slightly raining we chose to go there by Cyclo - which means a poor (quite old whiskey-smelling) man had to drive us...
hah hah!
Once we got there and figured how to get in and what to leave out of the mausoleum (I mean weapons, drugs, cameras, hats and stuff like that) we got in a row with 'gefuehlten' 100 kids from a local school. All about the size of Gaby (a few might have been maybe smaler than her!), all aged between 6 ans 12. Each wearing their green and white school uniforms, being quite bored about the duty excursion. To make a long story short: it wasn't Ho-Chi-Minh who was the attraction of the day for them - it was just the two german chicks with their white skin and their long noses. I have defo no idea why - maybe just because we were laughing and making fun with them?!
So, we saw uncle 'Ho' himself, seemed like he had nice dreams. Of course we tried to take pictures. But that is another story - sorry guys. And we saw his former house on steels and his really fat koi-carps.
But besides having fun with the kids at mausoleum, we had to fix two things for the next days: booking the boat trip to Halong Bay and getting the train tickets for our ride to Hue on tuesday. Both fixed, we ran into Alex and Nicole (we met them at Hanoi Airport last night) by accident, just walking around Hoan Kiem Lake. We spent the afternoon together, visiting Indochinas biggest (former) prison and doing some more sightseeing.
Exhausted from almost 10 hours of running around and visiting places, we needed a 'rest' and chose a small street-cafe/soup kitchen (with even smaler plastic chairs!) to get us a beer and fried rice with waterspinache for about EUR 2,00.
So then, we were nourrished to explore the nightmarket and maybe Hanoi's nightlife? But as it turned out - Hanoi is NOT the city that never sleeps. Most of the bars close at 11 pm and there are hardly clubs... BUT: there are street cafes (call it spelunke or boatzn) where they sell beer for 3.000 Dong (which is about EUR 0,17!!!!!) and where you can meet travellers from all over the world, just sitting on Hobbit-like plastic chairs, drinking beer and chatting about life and travelling. Sounds like heaven on earth, doesn't it? For us, it does and so it happened, that we had a great night out with canadian single-traveller Erin, fine dining cook american Jason (both supposed to be on the boat trip with us tomorrow) and the two franzakken Sam(uel) and Vincent (wenn ich den am Feuer............................................................)

Nothing more to say for now. Tomorrow we start our 2-day boat trip and we're excited about the (supposed) beautiful scenery at Halong Bay and the night on the junk. Time for our goodnight beer and hopefully some hours of sleep. We'll be back on tuesday (or maybe wednesday)! Bussi baba

Munich, Bangkok, Hanoi

After having a last bottle of champagne with our colleagues to say good-bye for a month, we went to the airport (thanx franzl) and after check in we had delicious bavarian dinner at Airbraeu with Leberwurst, kaltem Braten, Kochkaese, Radi, Leberkas und Obatzda. The last Bavarian dinner and bavarian beer for the next four weeks...



So we finally got on the plane, as usual "final call", a bit tipsy. Ten hours later we arrived 30 minutes ahead of schedule at Bangkok International airport - I got a lot of sleep because I was lucky with my seat neighbours, but Gaby got the grumpy ones. Laying on her shoulder while sleeping and using a loooot of space.
At Bangkok (34 degrees, sticky air) everything reminded us about our last trip which ended there a year ago. Same Same, but different of course :-) But we didn"t leave the airport because our stopover was only about 4 hours. We expected our flight to Hanoi a bit late, because when we got to the gate around boarding time, the plane hasn't even arrived... Same same?? No, anyhow they managed the incoming flight really quick and we departed almost on time!
So, another 2 hours to get to Hanoi. We were curious if our "Visa on arrival" would really work (I figured something on the Internet, that saved us about 40 Euros and 2 weeks compared to the "normal" Visa and we weren"t quite sure if it would work, because it was nothing official. The worst thing that could happen was that we had to go back to Thailand - so we tried it...). But thanks to http://vietnam-destination.de/en/ everything worked out without any problems!!
So, another step on our 19 hours trip to Hanoi. Now we just had to find our Taxi to the hotel. Nothing easier than this, because when we came to the lobby there was already a nice young guy with a sign that had our names on it. Perfect!

Once we got in the car, the guy started talking on his phone immediatly and didnt't stop until we got to the hotel (wondering what he was chatting that much - maybe he organised a party? Or he had a fight with his girlfriend??? We will never know...). No, that's not true - he did stop talking once, for 2 minutes, when his battery was out of power. But hey - a good vietnamese taxi driver has a spare one of course and so he started to switch the battery while driving. Or while doing something similiar then driving - he was the slowest driver in the world!!!
But finally we got to our hotel in the centre of Hanoi. It is really nice and offering free fruit and Computers on the room :-)

After the 19 hours trip we were quite hungry by now. So we tried to get some quick food. That didn't work out that well and after walking through Hanoi for 1 hour, trying to find a restaurant that was still open, we decided to get a quick meal from a guy cooking at the street. It was corn-something. Looked like corn, fresh spring onions and seasonings but probably enhanced with maggots but tasted a bit fishy...Yummy! Oh well, we will never know what it was...
Anyhow - we got food for 20.000 Dong each (what is about EUR 1,00) and beer for 10.000 Dong and we are ready now for our good night beer and.... oh yes we forgot a looonnng shower.
Tomorrow figuring out the boat trip at Halong Bay, trying to take pictures at mausoleum of ho-chi-minh and not getting caught by the police. Hope you guys come and get us out of jail then....

On Tour 2.0

Once again - the TravelChicks (aka Zeugwart & Gaby) are going on tour.

This friday, 9.50 pm Thai Airways flight TG0925 is heading to Bangkok - about ten and a half hours later the adventure southeastasia 2009 starts. This time AirAsia flys us straight to Hanoi. From there we are following the vietnam coast towards the Mekong delta, via Cambodia, via the 4.000 islands to Laos, then upstream the Mekong to Vientianne and via Bangkok back to Munich. That means we are on tour for 1 month...

As usual, we will keep you informed about our "adventure"... so, stay tuned!