Bungee Jumping

There are four things that you need to remember when you are doing a bungee jump:

1) Despite everything your body is telling you this IS going to be fun

2) It’s safe, I promise

3) Make as much noise as you can, all the way down, it will help

and 4) the moment you finish, you WILL be wanting to do it again.

I did my first bungee jump in a water park in Venice. I had always wanted to do it, and when the opportunity came along for a pretty low price I was all over it. At the time I was in a pretty dark place, and the moment I was taken off the rope all my problems seemed to have been blasted away by the amount of adrenaline pumping through my body. I was hooked.

For my following birthday, my sister got me a bungee jump voucher for anywhere in the UK. I spent no time waiting around, and booked into the earliest slot I could. I spent the next weeks shaking with excitement and once again threw myself off the platform and screamed all the way down. Knowing what to expect, I was so much more ready for what was to follow, and I was officially addicted to adrenaline.

The strangest thing that you will experience is the moment before you jump, as you step to the edge of the platform and look out into nothing. Everything in your head is telling you that this is wrong, that this should not be happening, and that this is NOT a good idea. Even that feeling makes me smile now.

The only way is down

Both of these jumps were at a mere 70 metres. Macau Sky Tower is the biggest bungee in the world, the main platform standing at an amazing 235 metres above the ground. As if I was not going to do this.

I do have to admit, that for the first time, I felt pretty ill on the way up to the top, which you take via a lift that accents at 6 metres per second. Mostly I was scared that I was going to bring the massive buffet I had just gorged on back up on the way back down. after standing at the top for a long while however, that feeling I am so used to washed over me like a blanket, and all I could do was smile.

There is no way that I can describe hurtling towards the ground held only by an elastic rope. That, you will have to experience for yourself, but suffice it to say, that that feeling and the incredible amount of adrenaline I got from it sent me through the next 24 hours. If there is anything I would tell you do in Macau, it would be the Sky Tower. If anything, for the views you get of the entire city as you fall to the floor.

Matt M

STA UK WTI 2010

Things can only get colder

With yet another England misery, came another amazing day in Hong Kong. Some how we had landed ourselves among the rich and famous of the Ex-Pats, and were chilling out next to a pool and being waited on hand and foot all day. The friends you make while travelling can land you in the strangest of places!

The drags of a 9-5

Quickly we had to come back to reality and leave the luxury of Hong Kong for Oz. We gave a fond farewell to our new friends (who offered to put us up for a few weeks next year for the ‘Sevens Tournaments’ which are apparently the best thing since sliced bread, and after experiencing the Hong Kong nightlife, I will be booking my flights back very soon), and set off for Melbourne. Stepping off the plane was a bracing experience. The last time I landed here, I was leaving winter and arriving in summer. Now, I was leaving 42ºC and landing in 9. I should not have been wearing shorts.

I will never under appreciate the joys of living in an English-speaking country again. The fact that we were able to go into a corner shop and ask for what we wanted without being confronted with a blank, dazed expression was heavenly.

Melbourne skyline up the Eureka Tower

YIt was all about catching up on lost time over the following days. We were back in hostels, back in dorms, and back to the real travelling life, and so there were no luxuries to distract from the job at hand. After hours of editing and uploading, we hit the streets of Melbourne, calling into STA Australia, who handed us free tickets to the 280 metre Eureka tower. Although higher, it was nothing compared to the thrill of the Macau Sky Tower!

If you ever find yourself in Melbourne, I urge you to go to Shanghai Dumplings, located on Tattersalls Lane, just off the main road. I was handed 15 dumplings of fried pork for a mere AU$5.60 (about £3.50), and they were fantastic, but beware that these will come out hotter than the sun. I am still recovering.

Off to Tasmania now, were I’m told it’s even colder than here…. god help me.

Matt M

STA UK WTI 2010

PS England went through second in the table and are now facing Germany, thank God I’m travelling the world as I watch this. Did watch it in a casino just off Federation Square though, and won a tidy sum. Every Cloud!!

Suits, Shirts and Sleeper Trains

A week further down the line and we have managed to stretch across the whole length of Vietnam, I am now sitting in my room over looking Ha Long Bay, one of the most beautiful things I have ever seen.

Chilling in the mud

A week ago I ended up in the Nah Trang Mud Baths after sitting by the pool for a good few hours nursing the burn that everyone had managed to acquire. It would seem that a bunch of white westerners was actually more of an attraction to the locals than the baths themselves, a fact I realised when an elderly Vietnamese man with black teeth came over and stroked my skin and laughed… its a strange country.

The mud baths themselves were an experience, it turns out that they weren’t the thick kind of mud I thought they were going to be, more like an off green runny paste that you sat in for 15 minutes. Was still a good way to spend the afternoon, and good laugh had by everyone who came along, and at around £4 a pretty cheep way to spend it to.

After to heading the cash point and withdrawing 1,000,000 Vietnamese Dong (it’s pretty strange seeing that number coming across an ATM machine) we went on to board out second sleeper train. This time around, we were told that the train would not be waiting around for very long, that we would have to run to get on, and that if we weren’t on time it would leave without us. Yet getting a sweet on and fighting to get on that train was not worth the hassle.

Sunrise in Hói An

The window was smashed, the mattress emitted an amazing amount of flies when you sat on it, and cockroaches had set up shop in most corners of the room. I felt unhealthy just sitting in there.

As if 8 hours wasn’t enough in that hell hole, the train broke down somewhere along the way for a further hour. I think in all I slept about an hour and half. Once again, there was a rush to get off the train before it started moving again. One upside to the whole thing was turning around to see one of the most incredible sunrises coming over the train. Every cloud.

Hói An is a small town that sits on a river that has been made famous for the amount of tailors that have set up shop here. For around £55 you can get a full suit with shirt and tie, all completely made to fit you how you want. How could I have said no?

The finished product

It takes just over 24 hours to get the suits finished, but it’s totally worth it. I came out of the shop with the nicest suit I have ever owned, and for a quarter of the price I would have paid back home. Most of the girls I was with went about getting a fitted dresses as well, but this will take a little longer, mainly because they will look much more extravagant! I was offered the chance to get shoes made for me as well, but I thought I would draw the line somewhere!

On the first night in Hói An it was one of our groups birthday, and after a few hours of fittings, we all went to a bar restaurant called Before and After, which you can find nearer the river at the centre of ‘Old Town’ where a few of us carried on the night after the meal.

Buckets that will rot your teeth

We were approached by an American who seemed to love that my name was Matt (I never found out why) who then shoved a leaflet into my hand explaining about a Beach Party and a free bus would take us to. Not one to pass up such an offer, I jumped on with Katie. Here you can get a bucket of some disgusting mixture of Red Bull, Orange Juice and Vodka in a massive bucket for 65,000 Dong (around £2.20), and after a couple of these you will be sufficiently inebriated.

A great way to cure a hang over in Hói An is to get on a coach at 8am and head to the My Son temples. Here they are using some of the US army jeeps left over from the war to cart you up the mountain to the ruins. One of the monuments in the complex was once considered the centre of the universe and there is a small statue of a penis that you can touch to give you a better libido. I hugged it.

Getting as much as I can...

We moved on the next day for a quick stop over in Hue (pronounced H-way), here there isn’t much in the way of tourism apart for a number of bars where you can find a handful of over travellers. But the one reason that you should go there is the opportunity to experience the crazy streets of Vietnam first hand. For 250,000 Dong (about £9) you can be taken on a tour on the back of a motorcycle around the rice fields and local villages around Hue, the views you get to see are incredible, and the adrenaline rush of riding at 30 miles per hour on the wrong side of the ride is, while ill-advised, a brilliant feeling!

The next day we set about on our epic 19 hour journey to Ha Long Bay. The journey went something like this: Sleeper train late by 1 hour, sitting in the pouring rain, sleeper train is better than the last one but teaming with roaches, watch movies, air con breaks, sweat through sleep, get off train, bus has flat tyre, ’10 minute’ wait turns into an hour and half, drive to mechanics, wait another ’10 minutes’ (45 minutes), back on bus, 3 hour journey to Ha Long Bay. I will never get annoyed at the London transport system again.

Ha Long Bay

Ha Long Bay is easily the most beautiful place I have ever been in my life. We got on a boat almost immediately and set off around the 1,968 islands around the bay on our own ‘Junk boat’. If you ever managed to do this, there are three things you should do: Visit the caves, go to the floating fishing villages and watch the sunset out at sea. All of these things are breathtaking. One thing you should avoid is the beach. There is apparently only one beach that you can go to during the trip (how true this is I don’t know and don’t want to know now that we are leaving!) it will cost you 10,000 Dong, it isn’t much, but it still isn’t worth it. It’s crowded, filthy  and totally destroys the peaceful feeling you might have managed to acquire during the journey. There is a path behind the beach up to the top of the hill which will give you the most amazing view aver the islands, and that is what you should pay for, but avoid this beach at all costs!

We are about to set off for the wonderful capital city of Hanoi, and our last few nights in Vietnam, so I will write again once in Hong Kong!

Tell then.

Matt

STA UK WTI 2010

Monsoon season is still freakin hot…

And so it all begins!!

Its been a few days now since we left the UK and already an amazing amount of stuff has happened. The first thing wasn’t as fun as I would have expected it to be however…

I got to the airport and began to prepare for the journey ahead only the realise that I had managed to leave the one thing that I never go anywhere without at home. My camera. Nightmare. After lots of swearing (I apologise to Becky’s parents for this as this was the first time that we met and I wasnt acting at my best) I calmed down, and figured that I was going to buy a new one anyway, and it would be cheapest abroad anyway, so not a total loss. Never the less, I was going to feel naked without it until i got the new one!

Nice bright, brand new, fashionable STA shirts

After the fury subsided, Alex (the big boss) gave us our ever fashionable STA T-shirts, which we had to immediately don to walk through the airport representing the company. Hmmm….

And so the time came to say goodbye to the family, my sister took a million photos as I headed through security and managed to hold back the tears as I wandered off. What a trooper! Got the security and for the first time in a long time managed to get all the way through without an alarm going off. Becky wasn’t so lucky. After they searched her bag (which revealed even more liquids in her bag after showing me the 500 bottles she had already removed before heading through) we were pulled aside and put through the new full body scans I had been reading about in the papers. Which was actually quite a lot of fun to be a part of! Not sure how we look like terrorists in our nice STA shirts.

The plane itself was amazingly empty and we ended up getting our own rows to ourselves. So a good nights sleep was in store.

After a long sleep (where I missed the dinner and the headphone I had from the airline were taken off my head by someone) we landed in Ho Chi Minh. At our transfer in Doha we had had 40 minutes to get to our next flight, and I never thought that our bags were going to be following us through. But against all odds, they appeared without problem!

Scooters... lots and lots of scooters

Once in a taxi we got our first feel of the Vietnamese lifestyle. And it appears that the word is SCOOTERS, lots and lots of them!

All the way to the hotel we were surrounded by them, they outnumbered cars at least 10 to 1, and there seemed to be no rules to them whatsoever. Driving in Vietnam is suicide!

Our first night

That night, I was thinking that we would have a nice quite one to recover from the jet lag and settle in, but it was not to be. After meeting our guide (cutely named Apple, who screams, loud, whenever she was drunk) and the rest of the group, we had dinner and then headed into town. The night was very much a blur after that and two hours sleep later, we were up for our first trip.

So still drunk and slowly moving into the realm of hang over we set off on the 1 and a half hour bus ride to the Cue Cho tunnels. I have to be honest, I did not think that crawling through tunnels the size of a coffin was going to be a very good hang over cure, especially when I was claustrophobic…

the bus ride was a good laugh and we got to know our group a little better, and pretty soon we were standing on the site of all those battles you see in the movies between the Viet Khong and the Americans. The sun was well and truly out and I was sweating as soon as I stepped off the bus, I could see what they meant when they said that the reason the americans did so badly was because they couldn’t handle this blistering heat!

Slightly too large for the Viet Khong

We were shown one of the original entrances, which I couldn’t fit into, but Becky could, which I was pretty glad about as what lay underneath did not look like my idea of fun. Later on though, there was a much bigger entrance and I was told I would be able to fit into it. Not being one to back out of anything I gave the tunnels a try. I got about 30 metres and had to bail. Hats off to the Viet Khong, there is no way I would have been able to stay in those tunnels for any longer than 45 seconds!

On the journey back, I thought about maybe getting a little shut-eye, but then got distracted by the scenery that I had missed on the way there. It was beautiful. there were miles of green fields all around, framed by an array of mountains, and in the distance you could see massive rolls of mist floating around the bases of the looming shadows cast across the sky. It was breathtaking.

Once back, many of the group retired for a little shut-eye, but I had spent too long without my camera, so ventured out with a couple of others from the group in search of one! It took a couple of hours, but eventually I found success, and once again I can been that geek in the back you can hear constantly snapping away!

It was on this little trip that I found out was it was like trying to cross the road. Just like driving, it is suicide. No one stops for you, but if you walk slow enough, the hoards of scooters can drive around you. Cars on the other hand you really have to look out for. Nether the less, it is still terrifying to see 1000 scooters driving towards you at speeds that would kill you. You just have to believe that those driving them know what they are doing and that the years of experience they have on them is enough to save your life.

A quick shower later and we were packed and on the 9 and half sleeper train to Nha Trang. And I welcomed it with open arms. After the two hours sleep that I had had in 48 hours it was beautiful.

We were woken at 5.30 as the train pulled into the station and heading straight to the next digs. We dumped all our stuff into one room (as only one was ready) and headed straight to the beach, at 5.30, and yet most of the town seemed to be up already. it seems that everyone in Vietnam follows the rule of waking and sleeping with the sun.

It's a hard life

We worked on the first video for most of the morning and spent the rest of the day chilling on the beach, where the water was beautifully cold, and so refreshing, seeing as sitting down for five minutes in the sun made you start to sweat. Everyone got burnt.

Painfully we all heading to dinner and most people couldn’t eat as they all had sun stroke… it was an early night for all involved. Unfortunately the hotel had had all the power cut off due to the building works next door so we couldn’t get into our rooms until later. And were we did the air con hadn’t been working all day. Nice sweaty nights sleep.

Later on today we’re heading to the hot springs around the corner and hopefully getting into a mud fight with the locals, at least that’s what we’ve been told!

Till Next time!!

Matt M

STA WTI 2010

Vietnam!!

Leaving University Round 1

After three years at Exeter Uni it was always going to be a strange experience leaving. When I found out about STA I immediately knew that the whole process of saying goodbye was going to be condensed down into less than 3 weeks. Earlier today I left for the first time…

I had a meeting with STA the day after I left, and was meeting Becky for the first time (both of which I was looking forward to massively!) so I headed back to London. My dad arrived with the car and we set about stacking everything I own into it. I am going back at the weekend for a four-day long goodbye bender but this was the best time to get all my crap out of my room! Even though I know I am going back in 4 days, it’s still a little emotional saying goodbye to something that has been your life for 3 years.

Making some treats

Drinks on the Beach

Sunday, being the hottest day of the year so far (until Monday…), I went to Exmouth beach for a good 8 hours. Had a BBQ, got burnt, and had a few beers. The sky was blue all day, not a cloud in the sky, and we all stayed there until the sun almost went down. It was a great way to spend one of the last days I would be spending in Exeter as a Student. I bought a frisby at the beginning of the day with all the best intentions… note to self, never buy a frisby for 99p, it’s not worth it. After burning nicely, a friend went and got a nice colourful umbrella to sit under, prompting a small kid to look at us and say “you know it’s not raining right?”…

Something for the Burn

After watching the sun (almost) set, we piled into the cars, and spent the half hour journey back singing along to likes of MJ, Backstreet Boys, Eurovision and Counting Crows. A brilliant end to a brilliant day.

Sunset at Exmouth

On getting back, we all separately went in search of aftersun…. turns out there is no where that sells aftersun at 9.30 in the evening on a sunday, who knew. Rough nights sleep ahead…

On Tuesday I headed into London for some STA fun times. Met up with the sister for some lunch and tried to get my bloody mac fixed with the apple geniuses (random crashes are the bane of my life), before going to meet Becky (first one to the meeting would be getting a free pint from the loser… I lost… good start)

After being plied with donuts we were given our cameras, phones and backpacks, and I started to get a little giddy. They told us all about the itinerary and what we might end up doing and I still couldn’t believe my ears… you will have to wait and see what I get up to!!

This weekend I head back to Exeter, and I cant wait to finish my university in style. in just over a week I head off, and there are so many things to look forward to, but it still means saying goodbye… I’ll let you know how it goes!

At UEA at the moment visiting the little sis for a couple of days as she can’t make it down before I head off, so expect some more photos of the celebratory kind!!

Still in the sea at 6.30

Until next time!

Matt

WTI 2010