Marks out of 10

Ive thought about doing this on a few blogs now, but to be quite honest doing the blog itself is a lot of work, especially on holidays that tend to be busy, and by the time I get home I basically can’t be bothered to compare and contrast my trips.

This time since there has been no internet for much of the trip, and many long drives, I have rated my previous trips beforehand, leaving just one to complete at the end, which should be easy enough! Also I will be able to just copy the list onto each future blog thereby making it low effort going forwards!

A couple of things to bear in mind:

- I have selected these trips for myself after much deliberation. That means the scores are likely to be high (and they are): don’t expect and 1-4s ever really, those will have been screened out in the selection process

- This is a subjective rating of how I felt about the trip, not an objective one about how good I think the trips would be for your average person. This also means I will take into account exactly what I have experienced, which can include good (some exceedingly rare safari sights) and bad (Madagascan village fever) luck. You might use my list as food for thought on where to go next, but don’t expect a trip I found amazing to necessarily be as good, or suitable, for you!

Here we go!

Indonesia - 9.5/10 - no blog :(

This may be looking back with tinted glasses as it was the first of these tours I went on, and separated from my next trip by a few years, plus I only kept a paper diary so it is harder to look back on, but it is after all the trip that ignited my passion for travel, and had some unforgettable moments. Aside from the majesty of Borobudur and Prambanan, the 10,000 temples and endless rice fields on Bali, the beautiful view of the crater lake atop Mt Rinjani on Lombok, and the serenity of the Gili Isles, I was also mobbed by schoolgirls for a photo (my clothes were pulled and everything), drank the most expensive coffee in the world alone in a cafe on a 30 degree night with a violinist frenziedly fiddling in the background, stood shirtless in torrential rain whilst Buddhist monks chanted in the background, got blind drunk in a reggae bar on the beach thanks to a very sneaky Jamaican owner, and stroked a sea turtle in the open ocean!

The variety of the trip was unmatched outside of Peru as well, with temples, beaches, wildlife, plantations, and a trek and camping. I can thoroughly recommend Indonesia, but I feel like if you didn’t have the unforgettable experiences I did the score would likely be lower.

Peru - 9.5/10 - http://ciwtravelperu.blogspot.com

If Indonesia ignited my passion for travel, Peru cemented it! Variety was the key to my love of this trip: there are 27 climate types on Earth, and Peru contains 25 climate types! Lima was pretty rubbish and basically drags this trip down from a perfect score, but the Caracas islands, Nazca Lines, dune buggies on the world’s tallest sand dune, homestay on an island on Lake Titicaca and visiting the floating reed islands, Cuzco, and the highlight of the Inka Trail (even more of a highlight than Machu Picchu itself!), plus a visit to the Amazon, all sprinkled with Inka culture made it a truly fantastic trip. It didn’t quite have the unique moments my Indonesia trip produced, but exploring a huge ruined outpost on the Inka Trail with only one other person in the place, and brushing my teeth in the Amazon and seeing a 5 foot tall red deer wander by the mosquito net window just meters away were pretty special too.

I would recommend Peru out of all the trips I’ve done: I feel like anyone could essentially have the same trip I did, and it was a great one!

Vietnam and Cambodia - 8/10 - http://ciwtravelvietnam.blogspot.com

Finally a trip that doesn’t score 9.5! As you can see, Vietnam and Cambodia was still a very good time, but it fell slightly short of the heights of my first two trips. 

The good included Halong Bay, which was wonderful with the surprise of the Amazing Cave and kayaking into a completely enclosed (save for a tiny tunnel) pool with monkeys leaping from branch to branch dozens of meters above, plus beers on the boat at night, Hoi An, which was an absolutely lovely city, all build on canals and covered in lanterns and woodwork and a complete surprise, Angkor Wat and Ta Prohm, along with the rich related mythology (and surprising party town that is Siam Reap: I don’t think 12 beers a piece for 4 people for $12 will ever be beaten!), and the bamboo train running along the bentest rails you have ever seen!

The “bad”, though in truth it was mainly more average than bad was that there was basically no nature outside of Halong bay, and I’m not the biggest city fan. I can’t say I hated Hanoi, Hue, Na Trang, Ho Chi Minh City, or Phnom Penh, but I didn’t love them either. Vietnam was also subtly different to what I expected: there WAS a lot of jungle to look over, but the road was so lived with buildings that it was hard to take in any scenery. There was also the absolutely harrowing visits to the killing fields and former detention centre in Cambodia: it feels important to know about the genocide, but it is NOT fun or relaxing, and the fact that our guide was still afraid to talk about the government in public was an eye opener to say the least. Finally, I got a pretty nasty cold!

I can say this was a good trip, but be prepared mentally for a grim time in Phnom Penh if you plan to visit anything Khmer Rouge related, and don’t got to Vietnam expecting a lot of jungles, like what you often see on tv! 

Madagascar - 6/10 - http://ciwtravelmadagascar.blogspot.com

You can see this is a low score, and that’s partly on me: I booked the wrong holiday! The tour wasn’t a tour with a trek in the middle, it was a walking tour! I don’t mind walking, but this was far too much of it. Madagascar is also nothing like what you expect: it is 95% farmland, 5% rainforest. The lemurs were great and really unafraid of people, but the places they live are few and far between. The particular trip I chose took a very unispired walk to a local village that was literally filled with disease, and I got quite badly ill (and still had to walk everywhere, like a zombie), the big trek was terribly hot, and a lot of the scenery was uninspired, and a lot of my fellow travellers were far too picky for this sort of trip (not a problem I’ve typically had, but there were 3-4 nightmares on this one and our guide once drunkenly told me I was the only one he liked: his father had died shortly before the trip and he was drinking heavily in the evenings, another downside). The accommodation was very mixed, and a few times I actually wished I was home: very rare for me

There were bright spots, and I think a non walking trip to Madagascar could be quite good, but really I wouldn’t rate it as a fantastic destination and couldn’t really recommend it except to Lemur fanatics and possibly as a nice beach holiday

China - 9/10 - http://ciwtravelchina.blogspot.com

Finally back to the big scores! My trip to China last year was really very good, but I would say in general failed to exceed expectations, which is what separates it from Peru and Indonesia. I expected to see the Forbidden Palace, Great Wall, Terracotta Warriors, Pandas, the Three Valleys on the Yangtze, the majestic karsts along the Li river, and Hong Kong, plus stay at a monestary, and I did! Of these the Great Wall exceeded my expectations by some way, due to its lack of people and the forbidden section we snuck into, but the Terracotta warriors fell a bit short because I thought there would be more!

There were some good optional activities like cycling round the walls at Xian and along the Li river, but to offset these a lot of the stuff felt a bit fake (they use concrete a lot to mock up old stuff), and I regret missing the cormorant fishing at night because I was feeling tired (the 3 people who went, my closest friends on the trip, said it was a highlight :/ )

The food was excellent though (steamed buns <3) and it was a great trip. I can definitely recommend it, just be aware that you will probably get exactly what you expect and probably not too much more

Kenya and Tanzania - 8.75/10 - this blog!

A cop out on the score I know, but I couldn’t decide on 8.5 or 9, so I gave up! Halfway through this trip I was ready to give the trip a solid 8, predicting the future course of the holiday. I wasn’t safaried OUT, but I felt like we’d seen most of what there was to see, and that we could’ve done with a day or two of just something else to break things up a bit. Then we had the fantastic days with the cheetahs and lions, and I was ready to put it up there with Indonesia and Peru. Finally Zanzibar fell somewhat beneath expectations. Not because I was ill particularly, though I certainly didn’t have a fun time with that, but I don’t feel like I missed much by being ill! The snorkelling wasn’t as good as I was hoping, though the spice tour was decent, and there was little otherwise beyond relaxing around the beach or pool that wasn’t impractical from the north coast. 

All in all the highs were glorious, but there just wasn’t enough variation, especially with the activities being in solid blocks of the same. It was a great trip, and I could certainly recommend it, especially camping due to the close interactions with the animals, but there’s luck involved in how good the safari is, and the value of a stay on Zanzibar is largely dependant on how much you enjoy beaches?