Category: travel log

This post is coming to you from the war zone that is Luang Prabang! It’s the end of Buddist Lent and there are firecrackers and rockets going off all around us. It is all in good fun, with boats being set alight and floated down the river and garlands of orange flowers bedecking everything. We have had a few close calls and the bangers certainly aren’t helping my headache but it isn’t quite as wild as the Diwali celebratiosn we experienced in Delhi.

There isn’t much else to tell you yet about this town – we only arrived at sunset today. It is World Heritage listed and in our limited wandering tonight seems to have lots of interesting French Colonial buildings for us to explore.

We spent yesterday in the backpacker Mecca of Vang Vieng, a town in an amazing setting – fantastic mountains wreathed in clouds bursting out of brilliant green paddy fields – spoilt by lots of louty tourists. We squirmed and swam our way through several caves in the morning before I pretended I was 21 again and cruised down the local river on a tractor inner tube, jumping off some crazy 4 m high swings on the way.

Our bus ride today was absolutely breathtaking – by far the windiest and most scenic that we have experienced. I can only hope that they continue to be as good as today as we have about 30 hours of bus travel ahead of us in the next week!

Currently parked in Vientiane awaiting our exhorbitant Vietnamese visa. Luckily there is an end-of-monsoon festival happening at the moment so there is plenty going on (although the monsoon seems not to have realised that it has ended – it rained all morning). I think we will miss the dragon boat racing that is the culmination of the festival, but we saw them out training at sunset today – they are incredibly long – about 40 paddlers by my estimate with at least 5 freeloaders standing up throughout the boat.

Luckily for us we haven’t missed the Lao pop blasting from the riverside discos nor the various barbequed delights on offer – crickets, duck embryos and various other unidentifiable treats!!!

Vientiane is a very chilled out place – lots of cafes and bars, and barely any traffic to speak of (a little like Adelaide perhaps??). It is quite a pleasant space to hang out in although we weren’t anticipating staying as long as we now have to because of our visa.

Tomorrow we are hiring a motorbike and heading out into the surrounding countryside on a bit of an epic trip – hopefully we will be able to reach the places we are aiming for although several local’s have expressed their skepticism.

We have finally made it in to Laos, after being delayed for a day by a typhoon – our hotel had no power for most of the day, the street outside was completely flooded and it was raining continuously so we resorted to devouring the dreadful collection of chick lit and airport thrillers in the hotel’s book collection. Things were so grim our hotel even ran out of rice!

The bus trip today was a relatively uneventful 9 hour cruise on a rusting death trap. In addition to about 10 passengers we also carried a wide variety of foodstuff (none live thankfully), some steel pipes that rolled around in the passageway of the bus with every turn and what seemed to be about half a tractor.

Most of the countryside was under water for the first part of the journey – the typhoon caused a fair bit of damage. Once we reached the mountain passes into Laos the views were spectacular with crazy torrents rushing through all the valleys and misty mountains on all sides.

We are bunking down in Savannakhet in southern Laos for the evening – it is full of interesting French Colonial buildings which we are planning to explore tommorrow before heading on to Laos’ capital Vientiane.

I am currently sitting in our hotel in Hue, the former imperial capital of Vietnam. The typhoon mentioned previously has now very much settled in, such that all the “sights” are either flooded or closed! We did manage to ride out to a few of the more interesting spots before the weather worsened this morning – unfortunately we were quite a way out when this happened, hence another drenching!

All is not lost however as the poor weather has allowed us to idulge in our our passion for food. Hue is quite famous for it’s royal cusinine and it just so happened that across from our lodgings in Saigon was a restaurant specialising in Hue style cuisine called My Thau (I think – Howe could you please confirm). As our host is a frequent diner (and we dined there several times ourselves) we received a list from the proprietor (a Hue native) detailing the best spots in town to try local specialties.

So far they have been amongst our dining highlights of the trip. Small tucked away places that we would never have found ourselves, and serving only one delicious dish (thankfully as we wouldn’t have been able to order in any case), not a tourist in site and far far cheaper than much of the tourist swill we were consuming in Hoi An. It is amazing what a difference some local knowledge makes!

Unfortunately mellifluent Hue girls as promised in the menu at My Thau have been conspicuously absent – perhap the typhoon is to blame!

Tomorrow we teporarily take leave of Vietnam…destination Laos. I am looking forward to it immensely it is reputed to be one of the more relaxing places on the planet, although first we have to get there.

The ancient port town of Hoi An, home to much APEC business if the banners all over town were to be believed, was quite delightful. We stayed in the centre of the old town amongst old Chinese and Japanese shop houses and French villas.

Had an architectural ball checking out old houses and exploring little alleyways. It is a very picturesque town although now full of tour groups and their attendant tourist shops (or is it the other way around)??

Yesterday we rented a bike and despite warnings from our hotel about an imminent typhoon, lost our way to My Son – the poor man’s Angkor. Although the ruins aren’t all that spectacular the setting was fantastic nestled amongst encircling mountains like a secret city. The misty rain added to the allure, if we had subtracted about 10 degrees it could have been Scotland!

On the way back we encountered the predicted typhoon and arrived back at our hotel somewhat more damp than when we set out.

Phu quoc was fantastic, albeit a little damp. After a 4 hour delay for our flight on Saturday we finally made it to our accomodation by about 4.30. We stayed at a small eco-resort – our rooms were rammed earth bungalows with thatched roofs (not so good in the wet season!) and outdoor bathrooms with solar powered hot water (again not so flash in the wet season!) Spent the afternoon checking out the place, relaxing and enjoying the sunset from the restaurant located about 5 metres from the waves crashing over rocks!

Woke on Sunday prepared for a big day of adventure, but were greeted by tropical monsoon conditions instead. After a morning reading and watching the rain, the weather cleared and against the advice of our hosts (although on their motorbikes!) headed to the remote north of the island. With only a few somewhat muddy dramas…

we visited remote beaches and small fishing villages as the gloom settled around us.

After struggling back to the resort for a seafood feast, I introduced the coin game to one of our French companions over a few Saigon beers.

Yesterday the weather had eased to overcast with the occasional patch of blue so we jumped on the motorbikes and headed south to the island’s most famous beach – Bai Sao. In between ducking squalls we wandered around, went swimming and watched the locals scoff seafood on the beach – much to our chagrin by the time we ordered lunch they had completely cleaned out the restaurant of crab!

After lunch with the squalls more frequent and the patches of blue much rarer we explored the inland areas and visited Dinh Ba, a larger fishing village on the east coast of the island.

Closing weather saw us running for home with a stop at a fish-sauce factory to see out a particulary violent spot of weather It was deliciously aromatic – we would have got some for everybody but it is forbidden to take it on the plane!

We are back in Saigon now with only a barbeque feast tonight (highlights of the menu – goat’s penis, scorpion, snake and live prawns) before we leave for the last time.

We are still in Saigon at the moment, just back from a magnificent shellfish dinner. We have eaten all sorts of weird and wonderful things that one would usually leave on the sea floor, fishing them out of their shells with a safety pin!

This week we headed up into the highlands of Vietnam, more specifically to the tourist trap of Dalat. The scenery on the ride up was breathtaking, which was lucky given that it was an 8 hour trip!

Once in Dalat we jumped on the back of a motorcycle and toured the surrounding countryside, temples and waterfalls with the notorious ‘Dalat Easyriders’. It was quite interesting – especially as we visited some local farms and had tea with an ex-VC captain!

Yesterday we hired our own motorbike and set about finding some of the waterfalls and lakes that dot the area around Dalat. With a couple of wrong turns along the way we visited Tiger Falls (complete with giant concrete tiger – the Vietnamses really know how to ruin scenic locations with kitsch junk). Due to our navigational difficulties we didn’t quite make it to as many places as we had planned but crising through the countryside was fun anyway.

This weekend we are heading to Phu Quoc – a Vietnamese island off the coast of Cambodia (stolen from the Khmers according to Chhay’s dad). It is supposed to be absolutely fantastic – beautiful beaches and very little development. It will be the only beach time that we spend during this trip as we will be racing up to central Vietnam and into Laos next week.

I’m currently sitting in our friends office in Saigon when I was supposed to be kicking back by the Mekong in Ben Tre! We had a small mix up with our bus – well perhaps we were a bit slow to realise that we had reached the spot where we were supposed to get off – and instead of disembarking from our bus at My Tho and catching the ferry to Ben Tre the next thing we knew we were sitting at the bus station in Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon)!

We should be able to really check out Saigon as we are now here for 10 days. I think we’ll do a few short trips into the surrounding areas and just relax for a little bit. I woudl have liked to have seen Ben Tre but Chhay was getting a bit sick of the delta so perhaps we were meant to get here early?

Since we left Chau Doc we have been staying in Can Tho, in the centre of the Mekong Delta. We hired a boat for half a day and explored the surrounding canals and waterways, including the much vaunted floating markets. While the markets were a little underwhelming it was fantastic to watch the variety of working boats that ply the delta – especially once we got away from the main channels and were drifting through small creeks that lace the area. In fact it was possibly the highlight of our trip so far – for me at least.

Now we are staying with friends I should be able to dowload a few more pictures so keep an eye out here and on our flickr page.

We are now just inside the Vietnamese border in a little riverside town called Chau Doc. The boat trip here was quite uneventful, some interesting scenery but the river was so wide that little detail was available from the boat – very different from the trip from Siem Reap to Battambang.

This morning we climbed (with the small help of a couple of motorbikes) the local protuberence into the otherwise dead flat Mekong Delta. The views from the top were quite impressive – the border between Cambodia & Vietnam clearly marked out and water covering 75% of the territitory we could see.

Excessive beauracracy to get into the country aside, Vietnam seems much more organised than Cambodia and definitely cleaner. There is food absolutely everywhere – baguettes for sale on every street corner, and iced coffees wherever you go (heaven for me). So far the fodd that we have tried has only been ok – the cold rolls that we had for lunch today couldn’t compare to Chhay’s efforts at home but I am expecting great things as we get closer to Saigon…