hostels/guesthouses: southeast asia

I had a request to list the places I stayed while on my trip.  I know that hearing about places from other people is way more helpful than trying to find one on your own, so I thought it was a good idea.  Keep in mind I was looking for places that were easy to meet other people in, so they weren’t necessarily the cheapest.  I always tried to stay in dorm rooms when possible, and I know this isn’t everyone’s style.

If you’re into booking stuff ahead of time, I recommend hostelbookers.com because they don’t charge a booking fee.  And some of these places aren’t listed online, but every single place I went to (minus Myanmar) had backpacker areas that were packed with guesthouses, so you can easily show up to any major place in SE Asia and find a cheap place to stay.

Here are the places I loved and would stay in again if I were traveling alone or wanted to be social:

Hanoi: Hanoi Backpackers’ Hostel One of the nicest dorm rooms I’ve ever stayed in, met a ton of people, and is a great place to book a Halong Bay tour.  It’s more pricey than other’s, but if you want to get drunk with fun people, it’s a good way to go.  Ha.

Hoi An: I stayed at a really nice place here, but don’t remember the name.. it was listed in the newest Rough Guides for Vietnam I believe, and if anyone wanted to know I could find out once I got back to Korea and could look through my stuff.

Ho Chi Minh City: I stayed at Luan Vu Guesthouse, and it was nice, pretty average.  There are a ton of places in the backpacker area of Pham Ngu Lao, so it’s really easy to find somewhere to stay.

Phnom Penh: Where I stayed was “meh”, but I guess the area to stay is near the lake.  I dunno.

Siem Reap: There are cheaper places, but I had a lot of fun at the Siem Reap Hostel.

Vientiane: This city is hardly worth staying in for more than a day, so it really doesn’t even matter where you stay, ha.

Vang Vieng: One of the coolest places I’ve ever stayed—Spicy Laos.  Def, def, def recommend it.  I stayed at their sister Spicy Laos in Luang Prabang, which I also recommend.  It’s not as nice, but a good place to meet people.

Chiang Mai: I tried to stay at Julie Guesthouse, but it was full.  It had been highly recommended.  I ended up staying in a $3/night very basic dorm at the Same Same Guesthouse down the street.  By that point, I was incredibly low-maintenance so anything with a bed and shower was fine.

Bagan: May Kha Lar.  The owner is so, so, so helpful and friendly.

Yangon: This is also one of the better places I stayed.  It’s called Motherland Inn 2.  It’s not in the best location, but the staff was amazing, and I met a ton of awesome people.  It was almost full when I came, so if you go in high season, it might be best to try to book ahead if possible.

Bangkok: I stayed in two places.  The first was called the River Line, and it was near Khao San Road.  It was a quieter place, though, being a few minutes’ walk away from the madness.  It was kinda “meh” because I really just wanted to go out and party, and it wasn’t the best place to meet people.  The second place, though, lub d, was awesome.  The nicest hostel I’ve ever been to in my life, and lots of cool people.

Koh Phi Phi: Golden Hill Bungalows (also known as Bungalow Dave’s).  It had pretty bad reviews online, but I had to book something ahead because everything fills up.  There are probably better places—the whole island is just restaurants, bars, and accommodation—but it was fine for me.  They have dorm rooms, and I met some good people.  It is the farthest possible place from the pier, though, so carrying all my shit back and forth in 90 degree heat was probably the worst thing ever.

Sooo, I hope that is helpful for someone! :)

angkor

The sunrise… pretty lame.

There were so many people.

A girl from my hostel, Angela, and I shared a tuk tuk for the day.

You can barely make out the guy at the top.  There was no way we were going to climb those steps at this point.  I was very happy to be with another not-so-adventurey person who was also looking forward to finishing so we could hang out in the hostel pool.  Ha.

Koreans and trees had taken over Ta Prohm, which was my favorite temple.  It was where parts of Tomb Raider were filmed so it may look familiar.

siem reap

I’ll post pics from the city here then the ones from Angkor next.  My posts from these two days are here.

So many things I wanted to buy.

On the street where my hostel was.

Post-Angkor meal.  So good.

Street restaurants

Pretty tree

Creative tuk tuk driver.

Bar crawl!  Ridic.

Two guys I met played with fire.

Three on a motorbike!  I got a pic of four in Thailand, but sadly no fivers.

phnom penh, day 2

This was the day I went to the Killing Fields and the Toul Sleng Prison.

Since most Westerners probably don’t know much about the Khmer Rouge, I’ll post a little info from Wikipedia:

Following their leader Pol Pot, the Khmer Rouge imposed an extreme form of social engineering on Cambodian society — a radical form of agrarian communism where the whole population had to work in collective farms or forced labor projects. In terms of the number of people killed as a proportion of the population (est. 7.1 million people, as of 1975), it was one of the most lethal regimes of the 20th century.

Money was abolished, books were burned, teachers, merchants, and almost the entire intellectual elite of the country were murdered, to make the agricultural communism, as Pol Pot envisioned it, a reality. The planned relocation to the countryside resulted in the complete halt of almost all economic activity: even schools and hospitals were closed, as well as banks, and industrial and service companies.

After four years of rule, the Khmer Rouge regime was removed from power in 1979 as a result of an invasion by the Socialist Republic of Vietnam and was replaced by moderate, pro-Vietnamese Communists. It survived into the 1990s as a resistance movement operating in western Cambodia from bases in Thailand. In 1996, following a peace agreement, their leader Pol Pot formally dissolved the organization. Pol Pot died on 15 April 1998, having never been put on trial.

The Khmer Rouge is remembered mainly for the deaths of an estimated 1.5 million people or 1/5 of the country’s total population (estimates range from 850,000 to 2.5 million) under its regime, through execution, torture, starvation and forced labor. Because of the large number of deaths, and because ethnic groups and religious minorities were targeted, the deaths during the rule of the Khmer Rouge are often considered a genocide as defined under the UN Convention of 1948.

And actually while traveling, I saw on the news that one of the leaders was still on trial.  Right now.  It’s horrible to what extent this affected Cambodia, and that it seems no one will be punished for it.

A monument was built in honor of the people who had been killed.

One of the many, many mass graves.

Mass graves everywhere.  They are still uncovering bodies.

Toul Sleng Prison

Back to Phnom Penh

Wat Phnom in the distance.

phnom penh, day 1

I have a lot of pictures from here, so I’ll split it up.  Here’s what I wrote from PP.

Tuk tuk in the rain, certain I was going to die in the city that people had claimed was so dangerous.

Royal Palace

Silver Pagoda

This was the day that I saw thousands and thousands of schoolchildren hanging out along the streets with flags and pictures of someone.  I found out they were waiting for the king to come because it was their Independence Day.  So I hung out and waited with them.  The kids were so cute, it was a lot of fun.

“Hello!  Hello!  Hello!”

The king is coming!

He’s somewhere over there.

The Independence Monument

on the bus from ho chi minh city to phnon penh

When we crossed the border to Cambodia, it was very apparent that you were in a totally different country.  It was dirty, there were animals everywhere, then there would be these huge beautiful temples in the middle of it all.  It was a really cool ride.

At a stop we made.  People and stuff everywhere.

Cambodian advertising.  Muscle wine!