Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon), Vietnam
After an interesting flight from Danang, which involved people using their mobiles on the flight (???) and Dave physically fighting with a tiny old Vietnamese lady (who decided it was not appropriate to queue to get on the plane and wanted to push everyone) we made it to Ho Chi Minh City!
It’s very different to Hanoi and noticably richer. Although there are still millions of motorbikes on the road, it has been pleasing to find that they actually stop at traffic lights occasionally and I don’t feel like I’m going to die every time I cross the road!!
On our first day here we visited the war remnants museum. As you can imagine, it’s an extremely moving place. We came out feeling quite shocked and depressed, particularly after seeing the replica concentration camp they have made for us to see. However, it is interesting and we would recommend that people visit it. We had been hoping to go to the famous Reunification Palace on our way back, but it was closed due to a conference, so we went for tea, coffee and cake instead! Yum! (Well… yum after I took back my ‘tea latte’ and asked for a black tea with separate milk).
Today we went on a tour to the Cu Chi tunnels at Ben Dinh. It’s not far way, but took 3 hours to get out of the city! Nevertheless, it was well worth the journey. The tunnels are extensive and unbelievable. They are 280km long and tiny – it is amazing to think that the Viet Cong soldiers and civilians lived in and fought in these tunnels. We were given the chance to go in them. I lasted about 10 seconds, but Dave went a bit further. It was extremely hot inside and everyone came out looking really bedraggled!
Tomorrow we set off on our 3 day boat trip along the Mekong Delta into Cambodia. Should be interesting!
Add comment Thu 12 November 2009
Halong Bay and Hoi An
We’ve been busy over the last few days in Vietnam, squeezing in both the beautiful Halong Bay and Hoi An. It was only about an 800km trip between the two, so relatively close compared to some of our journeys across the vast nothingness of Australia.
We decided the best way to see Halong Bay was to take a 2 day tour from Hanoi. Halong bay is about 4 hours away from Hanoi so we were pleased to see the sea and arrive at Ha long city after our early rise and long drive. We had seen nothing like it when we arrived at the harbour to board our junk for the next 24hours. Basically, the large port was full of tourists and there were literally hundreds of junks dropping off and picking up tourists for their trips around the thousands of karsts. We knew it would be touristy, but this was something else!
Soon after departing the port we started to lose the other boats as we gently cruised through the protruding rocks from the still water seas. We were lucky it was really clear and sunny, so we made the most of it by sitting on deck. Later we kayaked around some of the karsts, through some caves into small inlets. The sea was at low tide so we occasionally grinded along some of the rocks and had to push ourselves off, which made it a little harder than normal, but our efforts paid off as we saw some monkeys around the hills.
Meals on the boat were interesting as we had seafood most of the time. Carly had already opted at an earlier point for a no seafood dietary requirement, but I thought it couldn’t be that bad! We’ll I’ve never had so much whole crab to crack, prawns to peel, fish to debone, squid to chew, octopus to untangle and so on. It was really tasty though and I survived to see the next day which was a bonus!
After more cruising and viewing we disembarked and headed back to Hanoi to get the overnight train to Hoi An. This train was a little less jolty through the night, but due to the typhoon that had hit Vietnam earlier in the week the train couldn’t go all the way to Danang (nearest train station to Hoi An), so we had to change trains in Hue adding another 3 hours to our already 15 hour trip. (A long, crazy story of disorganisation!).
Hoi An was a really nice change from the noise of Hanoi. Even though it’s about as busy as an average British town, it sounds and feels lovely and quiet. The setting close to the sea and along a small river is really nice. Much to Carly’s glee, Hoi An is famous for its textiles. Every shop here is either selling tailored clothes of all descriptions or hand-made shoes. Obviously we’ve picked up a little something, but you’ll have to wait and see what creations we’ve had made!
Today we went to My Son, a set of ancient ruins dating back to about the 7th century. The temples were quite overgrown by the jungle, but they were interesting to see and wander around in the heat of the morning. Hoping to go to the beach tomorrow before heading to Ho Chi Minh (Saigon) in the evening.
2 comments Mon 9 November 2009
Hanoi, Vietnam
I’m not quite sure where to start with Hanoi! We arrived here a few days ago, before our trip to Sapa, and have since been back for a look around.
Initially, on our drive from the airport, it seemed like a reasonably calm place. We were deceived!! Once we got right into the middle of the city it was like entering a chaotic mass of motorbikes! We had to walk through millions of them (on the path and road) and avoid treading on loads of people eating their dinner in the alleyways to get to our hostel! It was very interesting, especially as loads of them like to sit outside on tiny little stools and even cook their dinner next to them on little BBQs. I was convinced that we were either going to get squished by a motorbike or scalded with boiling soup on our ankles!!!
You can’t come to Vietnam without going to Hanoi, but it’s not really somewhere that we would like to stay for long. It’s not as busy and chaotic as Medan, but does come close! We have had to be here for a few days in order to apply for our Mongolian visa (we need it for the trans-siberian later). Nevertheless it has been interesting. We have wandered around the city on a walking tour, seen them practising vigorous tai chi by the lake at 5am and been asked to buy things about a million times!
One thing we have noticed is how football is the English ‘thing’. In all of south-east Asia we have been asked: “Where you from?” a countless amount of times. When we say England, they always reply, “aahh yes good football” or “David Beckham”. I’m not joking, it’s every single time. You would think they might say, “aaaah yes London”, or “the queen” or “cold place” or something, but it’s always about the football. It’s quite nice because then we can chat to them about which teams they like. Even in the Sumatran jungle, the English premiership was their favourite thing to watch!
Anyway… back to Hanoi! We have tried some Vietnamese food (pho – a type of soup), which seems to be very nice. It’s not as spicy here as in other places. We went to Ho Chi Minh’s mausoleum and the war museum today, which were ok. They show lots of art work, but you still come out wondering what exactly he did and wanting to find out more about him. Today we also went to see a water puppet show, which was very random and amusing. Apparently it’s a northern Vietnamese thing to do so we thought we’d better had.
It’s been fun, but we are looking forward to getting some peace in Halong Bay soon.
Add comment Fri 6 November 2009
Sapa, Vietnam
Our trip to Sapa started with a sleepless night on a sleeper train from Hanoi to Lao Cai on the border of Vietnam and China. The 8 hour trip was on time, which makes a change for the trains we are fortunate enough to board, and we arrived at about 5am before the 1 hr trip up through the mountains to the hill station – Sapa.
On departing the bus and embarking on our little walk across down to the accommodation we’d booked we were very quickly introduced to Sapa hospitality. Two local tribes women (from the Black H’mong people) quickly followed us up the hill asking us questions about who we were, where we came from, how old we were, were we married and so on. To start with we were prepared with the standard asia phrase ‘no, thank you’, but they kept following us and they did seem genuinely interested. But it didn’t take too long before we heard their favourite phrase ‘you buy from me?’ We were soon glad to escape to our predators for a catch up on some sleep.
Later that day we decided to go on a small hike, which Sapa is famous for, to Cat Cat village. The walk was lovely, down through the valley, past the village and to a waterfall at the bottom. We got to see a little bit of local life, people working the rice terraces, water buffulo tramping through the water, pigs lazing in the sun and chickens aimlessly wandering around. The hike was really worth it, although a little tiring on the way back up!
To round off our first day in Sapa we had earlier seen that a free Vietnamese language course was being held at the tourist info centre. Of course, we leapt at the chance and were soon being taught with a small group of other beginners the basics of Vietnamese. It was really cool and now we can make a few locals smile with our attempts to order food and drink and ask for directions.
The following day we were to head back to Hanoi in the evening, on yet another overnight train back, so we wanted to make the most of it. We headed off on a hike to the top of one of the hills surrounding the small town. Of course at the start we had the usual small group of H’mong tribes people follow us, but at the top we great peaceful views of the valley and town.
Before heading back to the train station, we decided to try out our Vietnamese at a local cafe and had a long chat with the waiter. He actually understood what we said and was so pleased that a tourist wanted to speak his language! He was more interested in practicing his English, but it was great knowing our skills were working. Later we went and sat in the town square to witness some of the madness surrounding the local people and their attempts to sell their wares to the tourists. Many came over to chat to us as they all do, but they tend to leave you alone a little bit more if you aren’t walking around. We had some interesting conversations and a bit of a laugh.
That pretty much ended our trip to Sapa, apart from the funny taxi trip back on arrival in Hanoi. We got an official taxi from the station and, after telling the driver where we wanted to go and the d asking his friends where it was, he took us off around town. We had a map and could soon see he didn’t know where he was going. We noticed we had gone full circle and were back at the station. So when he pulled over to ask for directions, we hopped out and swapped to another cab, with Carly forcefully informing him that we weren’t paying for his scenic drive at 5am. (she’s not to be messed with, when she’s tired! 
)
1 comment Wed 4 November 2009
Laos
It took a while for us to decide whether to come to Laos or not. We have been debating it since Australia – did we have enough time?, what would it be like? Etc etc. We had heard that it’s hard to get into; you have the choice of a 2 day cramped boat, with no shade, a 1 day fast boat which might sink, a 14 hour bus journey from Chiang Mai, or a plane which may or may not be safe. Then we heard: “When you get there don’t walk off the side of roads in case of land mines” and “if you need medical care fly to Thailand”, oh and “sometimes armed robbers get onto tourist buses”. All of this information didn’t fill us with glee! However, we decided to give it a go and I asked my mum to find out from her aviation colleagues which planes met the international safety requirements!
As usual, our preconceptions were proven wrong! We arrived in Luang Prabang last Sunday. It was one of the prettiest towns we have ever seen. A driver was waiting for us at the airport and we were treated to a beautiful journey to our accommodation. There were so many hills, flowers and pretty little lanes. In a bizarre way it looked a bit like France, perhaps due to the French once ruling the country. Everything looked so peaceful and the people seemed so chilled out. We have since discovered that if you ever need a taxi or something you have to wake the driver up, as he tends to be lying on the floor sleeping! It’s not like Thailand where they really want to drive you somewhere.
We spent the next couple of days touring the town. This included visiting some more Wats (temples). We walked along the Mekong river and went to the really nice night market. Then we booked a ‘VIP’ bus to Vang Vieng. Please don’t be fooled by the VIP name! However, it got us there without any armed robberies, for which I was grateful!!! The journey was extremely slow and bendy, but we were given the most breathtaking views. This is one of the most beautiful countries we have visited. Vang Vieng is next to the Nam Song river and surrounded by jagged limestone karsts. The view from our hostel room was stunning.
We hired some bikes and cycled 6km to a huge cave (Tham Phu Kham cave) near the little town and were guided around inside it. It was quite difficult to walk around, being a cave and everything, but it was cool to take a look! The next day we tried to walk to a hill, which apparently has good views of the area, but despite having a ‘map’, we never found the path, so we took a walk along the river instead. On the way we went off track and wandered past some little houses, where tourists clearly don’t go very often. The locals were very intrigued by us and wanted to say hello and try to chat!
Yesterday we took another so-called VIP bus to Vientiane, the capital of Laos. As expected, it is bigger than the other towns we went to. However, it is still really small and quiet (population of approx 200,000). Today we went to the National History Museum, which is quite good and has some information in English. It was good to find out a bit more about this country and also sad. I didn’t realise how much the Vietnam war had affected them.
All in all we have been very pleasantly surprised by Laos. We are going to do a few more temple visits tomorrow and then fly to Vietnam. We just checked and the typhoon hitting the Philippines is, thankfully, not heading to Hanoi!
1 comment Fri 30 October 2009
Chiang Mai (part 2)
One of the things we have really wanted to do while travelling is learn to cook something from another country. We love Thai food so we booked onto a day-long cookery course.
We weren’t really sure what to expect, but it turned out to be a great day. They took us down to the local market (where food was so much cheaper than the usual markets!!) and showed us all of the ingredients that they use. One unpleasant moment was when a market man grabbed a live flapping fish and began hacking it to pieces!!!! Anyway… we went back to the little cookery house and chose 5 meals to prepare each. There was quite a selection to choose from. Then we went off into groups and were shown what to do. A couple of our choices were different, so we enjoyed sampling each others’ meals when we came back. Yum!!! So we are now pretty impressive Thai chefs and are determined to try it out when we get back home.
That evening we went to Chiang-Mai’s night market. It was pretty big and fun to walk around. I was delighted to find some fantastic bright red sequined shoes for a quarter of the price of what they would be in the UK. Yey!
Chiang-Mai is touristy, but a really nice place. We left with mosquito bites the size of boulders (Carly for a change, about 10 of them – not Dave!), but also some pretty good memories!
2 comments Mon 26 October 2009
Chiang Mai
We’ve been in Chiang Mai for just over three days and so we have much news to tell! We started off by going to an elephant rescue centre about an hour out of town – to see where retired, poorly and ill treated Asian elephants go to to be cared for.
The drive through the countryside to the Elephant Nature Park was interesting – all hilly and misty once we’d left Chiang Mai. We eventually arrived to see dozens of elephants wandering wild around a huge reserve. No sooner than we’d arrived and given a few tips on how not to get stepped on (as demonstrated by a random cat?!), we were introduced to some of the friendly elephants, through the means of feeding time! It was great – you take the fruits and hold it out towards them and a trunk will come toward you and take it, and if you haven’t had time to get the next bit of fruit it’d wave the trunk around until there was some!
Next was bath time! Yep we were all encouraged to get in the river with about five elephants and give them a wash. We were kitted out with a bucket and small scrubbing brush each and wadded in. It was great fun! We got a little wet, but being so close to them and being able to touch them was amazing – especially as they seemed so pleased to see us.
We specifically chose a tour that didn’t ride the elephants as we’d heard bad things about many of them and after seeing some of the images and videos the conservation centre allowed us to watch you can see why. So after our little bit of education we were once again allowed to get up close and personal and feed then wash them.
Our favourite was a little baby elephant (only 3 months old), but we weren’t allowed to wash him, as the heard are very protective (we noticed when they all ran from hundreds of metres away to enclose the little fella when he felt scared and made a lot of squealing/trumpeting). All very interesting to see them behaving naturally.
The next day, after the excitement of the elephants, we decided to do a little tour of town. We saw many more temples and wats – many of which were very impressive. The one thing that did stand out that day was when we went to ‘Monk Chat’. Basically, the local Buddhist University encourages tourists to chat to the monks to find out about Buddhism and it gives the Monks in training a good chance to practice their English. We found it really interesting finding out how nice and normal he was, even with a few restrictions on his life, and chatted away for about an hour. It was funny when he said he couldn’t touch a woman as it would give him an electric shock! They always look so serious, but clearly have a good sense of humour.
Chiang Mai to be continued…
Add comment Sat 24 October 2009
Dave
Carly