When Aengus Collins got married, he and his wife decided to ditch a traditional postnuptial holiday for three months with their backpacks
A shorter holiday would have been easier to plan, easier to take time off for, and easier to finance. But who wants easier when it comes to a honeymoon? You make your own romance in these things, so when my wife and I were deciding where to honeymoon last autumn, we settled on three months backpacking in southeast Asia, Australia, New Zealand and the US.
Life's too short not to throw caution to the wind occasionally. We'd been together seven years before our wedding - so if the fact of being married was unlikely to prove a revelation then at least our honeymoon would. It was one of the most amazing and life-affirming experiences imaginable.
We started with a 10-hour flight to Beijing and a fortnight in China, which I wrote about last month. Suffice it to repeat here that it was hardly the highlight of the trip. From China we flew to Thailand. For the next three weeks we used Bangkok as a hub, taking trains and planes north to Chiangmai, east to Cambodia and south to the island of Koh Pha Ngan, from where we would travel by minibus down through southern Thailand, into Malaysia and on to Singapore.
In Bangkok we had planned to treat ourselves to a few nights of more conventional honeymooning, by staying at the Oriental for a night or two. By all accounts it's a remarkable hotel, and a bit of a steal by European standards. But we didn't stay. We had already got used to backpacking life, and checking in and out of a five-star hotel would have meant having to adjust all over again to the basic accommodation our budget usually gave us.
We ended up staying at a hostel a few minutes from Khao San Road, Bangkok's backpacking centre. Khao San is the kind of place I had thought I might hate, full of young Europeans drinking all day as they watched the pirated DVDs that never stop playing in the district's countless bars. In fact, the area brimmed with energy - and an unexpected sense of community. Most people were in transit, relaxing in Khao San before moving on or heading home. If the bars were countless, so were hole-in-the-wall travel agents who would arrange bus, train and plane tickets to destinations all over Thailand and the rest of southeastern Asia.
We travelled north to spend a day trekking through a torrentially wet rainforest a couple of hours' drive from Chiangmai, a city with little else going for it. It was off-season, quiet and very wet, so we didn't stick around. We took an overnight train back to Bangkok before flying to Siem Reap, in Cambodia. An infamously uncomfortable bus runs between the two cities, but we had neither the time nor the inclination. Urban myth has it that Bangkok Airways pays the Cambodian government not to upgrade the appalling road, so people will continue to book flights instead.
Cambodia was a revelation. The people were among the warmest we met on our trip. Again and again, they would make eye contact as we walked past, beaming huge smiles at us. It's clearly still a deeply troubled country, though. On our first night we stayed at a budget hotel rather than a hostel. It was ramshackle but respectable, which meant the sign on the back of our bedroom door spoke more of the problems of Cambodia generally than of this hotel in particular. "Do not bring any explosive items in rooms." "Do not bring any arms or guns in rooms." The casual dysfunctionality was humorous. I stopped laughing at the next item. "Do not sex with children."
We went to Cambodia to visit Angkor Wat. It's easy to get temple fatigue in Asia, but Angkor Wat and its surroundings are magical. We hired a moto-taxi - what people in other parts of Asia call a motorised rickshaw - and spent a day being driven from temple to temple in the huge Unesco heritage park that contains them. The smiling faces of the Bayon temple, the glowing red sandstone of Banteay Srei, the wondrous trees of Ta Prohm: if I could revisit one place from our honeymoon it would be Angkor and its temples.
After Siem Reap we made our way to Koh Pha Ngan. For a couple of days the rest and relaxation of our island beach hut were a boon. But boredom set in. You get used to being on the move, and waking up to another day of lounging in the sun seemed like a waste of limited time, so we decided to head for Malaysia. We wanted to travel down through southern Thailand and into Malaysia in a single day, but delays to our morning ferry threw our schedule entirely, and we ended up spending a dreary night in Hat Yai, near the border. We spent less than 12 hours in the city - just long enough to eat and get a few hours' sleep in a particularly grim hostel - then took the earliest minibus we could find to the Malaysian island of Penang.
As we crossed the border our driver stopped to give bags of fruit to the customs guards - a quid pro quo for a blind eye turned. A few miles down the road we pulled into a car park, and the driver began to root around under the seats. It turned out that every nook and cranny in the bus was stuffed with cans of Guinness, which the driver quickly transferred to the boot of a car we had parked beside.
After three nights in lively and colourful Penang, we wanted to overnight it down to Melaka, where we'd spend a few days before moving on to Singapore. But, contrary to what we'd been promised when we bought our tickets, our cockroach-infested bus arrived in Melaka not at 7am or 8am but at 4am. Our hostel was closed, and we were tired and annoyed, so we decided to be done with Malaysia and jump on the first bus to Singapore.
It was an unfortunate end to the Asian leg of our trip. Part of the joy of spending time in Asia is the low-level chaos, the ease with which you can make and change plans on the spur of the moment. But it cuts both ways, and constantly having to improvise and adapt when things go wrong becomes a bit trying after a month and a half. Being dumped on the outskirts of Melaka in the middle of the night was the final straw - and a sign that it was time to begin our six-week homeward leg.
Next week: Australia, New Zealand and the US
HOW MUCH YOU MIGHT SPEND BACKPACKING IN SOUTHEAST ASIA
Lunch Dinner Room
China €1 €5 €16
Thailand €4 €8 €11
Cambodia €8 €11 €11
Malaysia €5 €11 €20
All costs are for two people; accommodation is for en-suite double or twin rooms