Struggles of a now non-lazy blogger!
Well it's just typical isn't it.
The moment I start to become prolific with my blog entries you enter a Communist country and can't find a computer fast enough to load your blog web page! ;) That is the struggle I've had for the past 2 weeks - hence the reason you haven't heard from me in ages (which is why the last entry was published long after it was written).
Yes Vietnam has yet to encounter the joys of broadband. However, although this computer, despite not being broadband, is the fastest I've ever downloaded photos! It's mega quick, hence I have been able to add quite a few shots to this and the previous entry. Ace. :)
I forgot to mention my 'Tet' time spent with a strange naked German guy on Cat Ba Island in Halong Bay. After sleeping on the junk boat the first night of the trip (which was actually better than some guesthouses we've stayed in, apart from the fact that one of my lights didn't work so I was in quite a bit of darkness - thank God for my head torch), we checked into a lovely 2-star place (which is where Intrepid tours stay, so was naturally good). Because there was an odd number on the tour I was stuck in a twin room on my own. They said I would have to share it, so I requested to share with a female. That's not what I got. I got a 52-year-old German man called Wagner.
The only luggage he carried was a small carrier bag with one change of clothes in it. We thought at first that he had left some luggage in Hanoi and was travelling the 3-day trip light, but some girls off the trip saw him a few days later in Hanoi, and that was still all he was carrying.
Anyway, the first thing he said after introducing himself was 'I can't believe I've been put with you'. Now I wasn't sure whether to take that as a compliment or an insult. Although I was thinking the same thing: the latter though. There was no point in complaining to the hotel because they did not understand me.
He was on a similar tour, but just for one day, he had the same tour guide. He ate a meal with the group in the evening and we were invited to join the hotel's Tet celebrations, which was really nice of them. They put a spread out of dried fruit, chocolates, strange green rice cake called Banh Chung (with bean curd and what looked like tuna in it, turned out to be pork apparently - see photo three, I left most of mine) and rice wine - in what looked like a large vase with 15 or so bamboo straws sticking out of it. I pretended to drink some so as not to offend.
We then all went to a bar round the corner and got a free shot of something lethal (I gave mine away as obviously can't drink it with my allergies) and some free wafer biscuits: now you wouldn't get that in the UK! ;) We watched the celebrations on the TV around Vietnam. We also discovered they love Abba here - they were playing it all night!
We now know the phrase for happy new year (they go by the lunar calendar in Asia) in Vietnamese: 'chuc mung nam moi'. The kumquat or pink peach blossom trees that adorn homes here (Xmas tree equivalents) ward off evil spirits and bring good fortune. They invite a first visitor into the house, like we do in the UK, but they cannot be any of the folllowing: a single, middle-aged woman woman; or have lost their job or a family member in the past 12 months. as this is a sign of bad luck.
So in the morning I got up, went downstairs before breakfast to check my laundry had been done, came back to the room and he was naked on the toilet with the door open - what is wrong with men, why do they feel the need to do that?! Please enlighten me if you know. He closed the door thankfully. Then he came out naked - he could have wrapped a towel around himself and got back into bed. Not what I wanted to see, let alone before breakfast!
So I went downstairs and had breakfast. He was still in bed 10 mins before the bus was due to leave so I told him to get up if he wanted to be on the bus. He got up again, naked, and went into the bathroom. I left. Thankfully.
Anyway, after returning to the madness of Hanoi (we stayed in the much swanker sister hotel of the Little Hanoi Hotel, the Hanoi Blue Sky Hotel), we found some restaurants that were open over Tet and had a nice Indian with our new friends Claire and Louise Robinson, sisters from Solihull outside Birmingham - hi girls! :)
On the Sunday evening we got on the open bus booked through Camel Tours (only $40 to get from Hanoi to Saigon), only after the thing I had been dreading happened: I threw up. But it wasn't from dodgy food. It was my own stupid fault. Don't mix Doxycycline anti-malarial tablets with Fibrogel. It's not a good combination. Thankfully it didn't last long.
So then it was on to Ninh Binh - that's not to be confused with Nimbin near Byron Bay on the east coast of Australia which is hippie and dope heaven. The bus was an hour and three-quarters late and we ended up being the only people on the bus to be dropped at this place which looked in the dark like the middle of nowhere. Thankfully it turned out to be one of the most picturesque places we've been to in Vietnam.
We got ushered into this lovely hotel (just $10 a night = five pounds) and were pursuaded to take a motorbike tour of the area. Hmmm. I was not too impressed with this idea as had not yet been on a motorbike and was not too eager to try it. Especially as they didn't have crash helmets...
But we did and it turned out ok. We took a narrow boat down Tam Coc (see photo two), which is a winding river which snakes through lush green rice paddy fields and stunning limestone cliffs/caves. Far more impressive than Halong Bay, despite the drizzly weather. That just seemed to enhance the green of the fields. There weren't many tourists on the boats either; well, Western tourists. We were a bit of an attraction along the way.
The boat drivers and the refreshment sellers have a bit of a scam going at Tam Coc: they get you to buy a can of drink for the driver, but the driver doesn't drink it there, they save it and sell it back to who you bought it from! So we bought them a drink but then opened it for them so they had to drink it then and there. When we mentioned the scam, they all laughed so they knew exactly what we were talking about!
Then it was off to Mua Cave, which was less of a cave, and more of a mountain of steps to get to a temple at the top. It was beautiful but would have been so much more so if not for the plethora of Juicy Fruit chewing gum wrappers littering the steps. Our 15 mins of fame turned into about 45 mins as locals kept stopping us and asking to have our photos taken with them! I nearly started offering autographs but thought that may have confused them.... ;)
The ancient capital of Hoa Lu was pretty too with a couple of Chinese-style temples (no monks sadly). There were some rice workers in the fields too, who made good photographic fodder (see photo one).
The moment I start to become prolific with my blog entries you enter a Communist country and can't find a computer fast enough to load your blog web page! ;) That is the struggle I've had for the past 2 weeks - hence the reason you haven't heard from me in ages (which is why the last entry was published long after it was written).
Yes Vietnam has yet to encounter the joys of broadband. However, although this computer, despite not being broadband, is the fastest I've ever downloaded photos! It's mega quick, hence I have been able to add quite a few shots to this and the previous entry. Ace. :)
I forgot to mention my 'Tet' time spent with a strange naked German guy on Cat Ba Island in Halong Bay. After sleeping on the junk boat the first night of the trip (which was actually better than some guesthouses we've stayed in, apart from the fact that one of my lights didn't work so I was in quite a bit of darkness - thank God for my head torch), we checked into a lovely 2-star place (which is where Intrepid tours stay, so was naturally good). Because there was an odd number on the tour I was stuck in a twin room on my own. They said I would have to share it, so I requested to share with a female. That's not what I got. I got a 52-year-old German man called Wagner.
The only luggage he carried was a small carrier bag with one change of clothes in it. We thought at first that he had left some luggage in Hanoi and was travelling the 3-day trip light, but some girls off the trip saw him a few days later in Hanoi, and that was still all he was carrying.
Anyway, the first thing he said after introducing himself was 'I can't believe I've been put with you'. Now I wasn't sure whether to take that as a compliment or an insult. Although I was thinking the same thing: the latter though. There was no point in complaining to the hotel because they did not understand me.
He was on a similar tour, but just for one day, he had the same tour guide. He ate a meal with the group in the evening and we were invited to join the hotel's Tet celebrations, which was really nice of them. They put a spread out of dried fruit, chocolates, strange green rice cake called Banh Chung (with bean curd and what looked like tuna in it, turned out to be pork apparently - see photo three, I left most of mine) and rice wine - in what looked like a large vase with 15 or so bamboo straws sticking out of it. I pretended to drink some so as not to offend.
We then all went to a bar round the corner and got a free shot of something lethal (I gave mine away as obviously can't drink it with my allergies) and some free wafer biscuits: now you wouldn't get that in the UK! ;) We watched the celebrations on the TV around Vietnam. We also discovered they love Abba here - they were playing it all night!
We now know the phrase for happy new year (they go by the lunar calendar in Asia) in Vietnamese: 'chuc mung nam moi'. The kumquat or pink peach blossom trees that adorn homes here (Xmas tree equivalents) ward off evil spirits and bring good fortune. They invite a first visitor into the house, like we do in the UK, but they cannot be any of the folllowing: a single, middle-aged woman woman; or have lost their job or a family member in the past 12 months. as this is a sign of bad luck.
So in the morning I got up, went downstairs before breakfast to check my laundry had been done, came back to the room and he was naked on the toilet with the door open - what is wrong with men, why do they feel the need to do that?! Please enlighten me if you know. He closed the door thankfully. Then he came out naked - he could have wrapped a towel around himself and got back into bed. Not what I wanted to see, let alone before breakfast!
So I went downstairs and had breakfast. He was still in bed 10 mins before the bus was due to leave so I told him to get up if he wanted to be on the bus. He got up again, naked, and went into the bathroom. I left. Thankfully.
Anyway, after returning to the madness of Hanoi (we stayed in the much swanker sister hotel of the Little Hanoi Hotel, the Hanoi Blue Sky Hotel), we found some restaurants that were open over Tet and had a nice Indian with our new friends Claire and Louise Robinson, sisters from Solihull outside Birmingham - hi girls! :)
On the Sunday evening we got on the open bus booked through Camel Tours (only $40 to get from Hanoi to Saigon), only after the thing I had been dreading happened: I threw up. But it wasn't from dodgy food. It was my own stupid fault. Don't mix Doxycycline anti-malarial tablets with Fibrogel. It's not a good combination. Thankfully it didn't last long.
So then it was on to Ninh Binh - that's not to be confused with Nimbin near Byron Bay on the east coast of Australia which is hippie and dope heaven. The bus was an hour and three-quarters late and we ended up being the only people on the bus to be dropped at this place which looked in the dark like the middle of nowhere. Thankfully it turned out to be one of the most picturesque places we've been to in Vietnam.
We got ushered into this lovely hotel (just $10 a night = five pounds) and were pursuaded to take a motorbike tour of the area. Hmmm. I was not too impressed with this idea as had not yet been on a motorbike and was not too eager to try it. Especially as they didn't have crash helmets...
But we did and it turned out ok. We took a narrow boat down Tam Coc (see photo two), which is a winding river which snakes through lush green rice paddy fields and stunning limestone cliffs/caves. Far more impressive than Halong Bay, despite the drizzly weather. That just seemed to enhance the green of the fields. There weren't many tourists on the boats either; well, Western tourists. We were a bit of an attraction along the way.
The boat drivers and the refreshment sellers have a bit of a scam going at Tam Coc: they get you to buy a can of drink for the driver, but the driver doesn't drink it there, they save it and sell it back to who you bought it from! So we bought them a drink but then opened it for them so they had to drink it then and there. When we mentioned the scam, they all laughed so they knew exactly what we were talking about!
Then it was off to Mua Cave, which was less of a cave, and more of a mountain of steps to get to a temple at the top. It was beautiful but would have been so much more so if not for the plethora of Juicy Fruit chewing gum wrappers littering the steps. Our 15 mins of fame turned into about 45 mins as locals kept stopping us and asking to have our photos taken with them! I nearly started offering autographs but thought that may have confused them.... ;)
The ancient capital of Hoa Lu was pretty too with a couple of Chinese-style temples (no monks sadly). There were some rice workers in the fields too, who made good photographic fodder (see photo one).
My driver was 25 and worked at the hotel 5 days a week to fund his English degree which he studies over the weekend in Hanoi. Bless. He'd never had a girlfriend and think he took a bit too much time making sure my leg was in the right position on the foot rest....
So after our Easy Rider episode we left on the overnight bus to Hue. That was hot and we were worried we wouldn't have seats (there had been people laid in the aisle on the bus to Ninh Binh, or sat on little plastic chairs), but the bus was not as busy and was relatively comfy, apart from the heat.
Hue was a nice little city. We experienced more motorbike riding there with a town tour which took us to a Japanese bridge (?!), a lady making incense, Emperor Tu Doc's tomb which was so serene, reminded me of Japan - beautiful), Thien Mu pagoda, and a temple where we saw monks chanting. The new novice monks don't have all their hair shaved: they still have clumps of hair growing. Looks a little bizarre. They were white tunics with trousers and more experienced novices seem to wear pale blue, with more experienced monks wearing red or yellow. I like the tunics here, more civilised.
I met a nice Irish guy called Chris too who was weary after travelling around SEA for 11 months.... am kind of beginning to understand how he feels.
We also did a tour of the DMZ, or Demilitarized Zone for those who don't know: a relic from the Vietnam War. They call it the American War here, understandably, even though it was started by the French?! It was going to be the highlight of Andy's visit to this country but I think he was a little disappointed there weren't more war relics lying around. We saw one burned-out tank by the side of the road, some war memorials, a bridge and statue commemorating the start of the Ho Chi Minh Trail, walked in some tunnels the Vietnamese used to hide out (how they lived in such small cubby holes God knows, they even had babies down there!), and a war museum. But sadly, as we've learned, the Vietnamese are not that good at museums. There were lots of photographs, mainly showing 'the horror of war on the American soldiers' faces' - a direct quote. But as ever, I came out none the wiser. There were some helicopters and planes outside, plus a strange little man selling war relics like medals... hmmm.
So after our Easy Rider episode we left on the overnight bus to Hue. That was hot and we were worried we wouldn't have seats (there had been people laid in the aisle on the bus to Ninh Binh, or sat on little plastic chairs), but the bus was not as busy and was relatively comfy, apart from the heat.
Hue was a nice little city. We experienced more motorbike riding there with a town tour which took us to a Japanese bridge (?!), a lady making incense, Emperor Tu Doc's tomb which was so serene, reminded me of Japan - beautiful), Thien Mu pagoda, and a temple where we saw monks chanting. The new novice monks don't have all their hair shaved: they still have clumps of hair growing. Looks a little bizarre. They were white tunics with trousers and more experienced novices seem to wear pale blue, with more experienced monks wearing red or yellow. I like the tunics here, more civilised.
I met a nice Irish guy called Chris too who was weary after travelling around SEA for 11 months.... am kind of beginning to understand how he feels.
We also did a tour of the DMZ, or Demilitarized Zone for those who don't know: a relic from the Vietnam War. They call it the American War here, understandably, even though it was started by the French?! It was going to be the highlight of Andy's visit to this country but I think he was a little disappointed there weren't more war relics lying around. We saw one burned-out tank by the side of the road, some war memorials, a bridge and statue commemorating the start of the Ho Chi Minh Trail, walked in some tunnels the Vietnamese used to hide out (how they lived in such small cubby holes God knows, they even had babies down there!), and a war museum. But sadly, as we've learned, the Vietnamese are not that good at museums. There were lots of photographs, mainly showing 'the horror of war on the American soldiers' faces' - a direct quote. But as ever, I came out none the wiser. There were some helicopters and planes outside, plus a strange little man selling war relics like medals... hmmm.
The highlight of the tour had to be the Japanese gentleman (I think) who scored 100% marks for originality of outfit (see photo four). Bless. Matching shirt and shorts. Good on him for standing out from the crowd and expressing his individuality! ;)
The Citadel in Hue was amazing: like a forbidden city with large Chinese-style gates and temples (see photo nine). Much of it was in ruin due to the war, but it was serene. Although there were many tourists there, I was mostly on my own wandering around, which was great. Got slightly sunburned though... ;) well, it was cloudy when I set off. It's good practice for what I imagine the Forbidden City in Beijing to be like - just on a smaller scale. When the fish got fed there was a mini feeding frenzy - hilarious to watch (see photo eight).
So then it was on to Hoi An. This was a UNESCO World Heritage Site, like Luang Prabang in Laos. And, like Luang Prabang, it certainly deserved that status. The two towns are very simliar, small, sweet and with lots of Colonial French architecture (see photo seven). It is set on a river (see photo six) and is a mecca for clothes-makers. Yes you can get anything you want made here, including shoes. The streets are lines with tailors and most of them have a recent Next catalogue that you can have outfits made from. I bought a few items, well, more than a few, but it was soooo cheap! Will have to model for some of you when I get home... hopefully they'll make it home in the post.
The Citadel in Hue was amazing: like a forbidden city with large Chinese-style gates and temples (see photo nine). Much of it was in ruin due to the war, but it was serene. Although there were many tourists there, I was mostly on my own wandering around, which was great. Got slightly sunburned though... ;) well, it was cloudy when I set off. It's good practice for what I imagine the Forbidden City in Beijing to be like - just on a smaller scale. When the fish got fed there was a mini feeding frenzy - hilarious to watch (see photo eight).
So then it was on to Hoi An. This was a UNESCO World Heritage Site, like Luang Prabang in Laos. And, like Luang Prabang, it certainly deserved that status. The two towns are very simliar, small, sweet and with lots of Colonial French architecture (see photo seven). It is set on a river (see photo six) and is a mecca for clothes-makers. Yes you can get anything you want made here, including shoes. The streets are lines with tailors and most of them have a recent Next catalogue that you can have outfits made from. I bought a few items, well, more than a few, but it was soooo cheap! Will have to model for some of you when I get home... hopefully they'll make it home in the post.
I met up with Claire and Louise again while here and we dined in lovely restaurants and ate the nicest cake I've eaten since arriving in SEA: none of the flavourless morsels that were so common in Laos, this was proper French patisserie-style cake and it was gooooooooooooood! ;)
I also did a tour of My Son (see photo five), which is home to some Champa temple ruins. They were a matriarchal society so I warmed to them from the start of the tour. It was a really peaceful place (despite the tourists). Sadly much of it was destroyed by the Americans during the Vietnam war, but what remained was fascinating to see. Lots of intricate carvings. If this is a small taster of what Anchor Wat will be in Cambodia, it has certainly whetted my appetite. Am seriously looking forward to that.
Our hotel was possibly the nicest one I've stayed in so far on this trip: kingsize double bed to myself; huge bathroom with bath over shower; flat screen TV; fridge; large room; balcony; pool; and tasteful embroidered drape over the bed for just $12 (= 6 pounds!!!!) a night. Bargain. It was brand new and very clean. It was with a heavy heart that we left Hoi An for Nha Trang, I tell you.
We only stayed in Nha Trang for one night. It was not a bad little beach town. Very hot weather. We got the sweltering overnight bus there which was a tad uncomfortable: made even moreso when I managed to lock myself in the scabby toilet at the stop en-route. I couldn't get out. I ended up scraping some skin off my index finger on my right hand, blood everywhere. Not nice. Thankfully a lovely American lady gave me some anti-bacterial wipes and a plaster. It seems to be healing now but it's taking its time. I don't know, you can't take me anywhere! ;)
So now we're in Da Lat and we're leaving here tomorrow. But more about that next time.
See ya. x
posted by CJ at 1:23 AM
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