Laos – Luang Probang, Vang Viene, Tad Lo, Four Thousand Islands

Our first destination in Laos was Luang Probang where we arrived on the 16th. It is a lovely provincial city – surrounded by lush green vegetation and mountains, the perfect place to relax by the river and watch the world go by. We visited beautiful temples – very different to the one’s we had seen in Vietnam which had far more Chinese influence in their designs – and went to the night markets to see all the beautiful cloth and artwork and jewellery. We spent an afternoon hiring bicycles and cruising along the Mekong river that meanders through the town, stopping for an ice cold fruit shake or just to enjoy the views….we came across a bamboo bridge which crossed at quite a wide part of the river. It was skillfully made by a local family, and there was a polite notice asking for 5,000 KIP (about 60p) to cross, stating that the bridge had to be rebuilt every 6 months as the water level of the river rises so high during the rainy season each year it is washed away and has to be rebuilt! The highlight for us was going to Tat Kuang Si waterfalls which were the most beautiful cascading waterfalls tumbling over limestone rocks in a forest that have been eroded into smooth rounded boulders and formed into deep pools you could swim in. The water was a beautiful light turquoise colour and icy cold! But we jumped in anyway and reveled being the only tourists there as we had set of early in the morning. It was magical!

After a couple of days in Luang Probang we reluctantly left this beautiful place on the 18th to travel on to Vang Viene, 7 hours south – now globally known for its ‘tubing’ experience. For those of you who have not heard someone at some point rave about tubing in Laos:  it simply involves an inner tube (big inflatable ring) and a flowing river that meanders through mountains and beautiful countryside for a few hours, a truly relaxing experience. Apart from when the current picks up. Or you head straight toward the bank headfirst, or you don’t notice those sharp pointy rocks sticking up in the middle of the river till a bit too late (thanks for the warning Neil!) No it was fine! Only 16 deaths so far this year…Along the way you can stop off at a bar and enjoy fresh juice drink or a beer, or a not so innocent ‘happy shake’, opium bong or tea!….Anyway enough of that my parents are reading this – SO JUST TO CLARIFY WE DID NOT DO ANY OF THAT! Actually mum I think you would love it – not the happy shakes, the tubing!! There are also slides and rope swings into the river and hammocks and all sorts to keep you entertained along the way and Bob Marley blaring from speakers so there is something for everyone. Well we had fun, and mingled with a range of people - from a group of ‘typical’ British lads enjoying the booze as much as the tubes, and a three generations (they had kids young) family who peacefully floated alongside us for much of the ride. I was impressed to see the grandfather (58 years old) give the 15 foot high rope swing into the river a go, I onlyhope I'm still that youthful when I get to that age!

On the 21^st of December after an afternoon and a night of travel by bus we finally arrived in the south of Laos where we planned to stay three days in TatdLo, in an area called the Bolavian Plateau. After lugging our backpacks along a dusty road for a mile or so in blazing sunshine in the middle of the day we rounded a corner and there before us was a beautiful blue river shimmering in the sun’s rays, and perfectly in harmony with the villagers who were peacefully washing their clothes or hair on its banks. As soon as we arrived at our guest house perfectly located next to the waterfall that the river gently flowed from I changed into my swimsuit and jumped straight into to its cooling waters. Ah bliss, to wash off all the dust and dirt of almost two days travelling! I swam around contentedly. For the next couple of days Neil and I trekked along the river through forest/bush following it upstream to pass its three beautiful waterfalls. We met a great Israeli couple who joined us along the way and we spent the day jumping in the rivers and waterfalls, then making small fires to keep warm.

We also enjoyed an elephant ride lumbering through the bush and across the streams from a nearby resort which had tamed elephants to feed and ride. Neil and I took turns to sit on the elephants head (where the rider usually sits) whilst he kindly hoped about on rocks to take photos of us wading majestically through the water. Interestingly the rider controls the elephant by kicking his heels gently behind the elephant’s ears. Also, as well as bananas, elephants also eat sugar canes which they angle in their trunks and snap off what they want to eat with their feet (hooves?!). Okay well I was impressed. Sugar cane is pretty strong, it was about 4cm in diameter and 3 meters long.

The next day Neil tested his moped skills (no license needed here just brovado) which he apparently honed a few years ago in Kenya, and after a a few wobbly starts the two of us and our new friends set off to see more of this lushly green and lowly populated region. We passed through (literally – and no one said a word!) coffee plantations, and saw a tiny “factory” where the beans where picked, sorted, dried and roasted right alongside a road. Obviously it was small scale, about 10 young lads working in a small hut with the basic equipment. They were happy for us to look around and take a few photos. We then passed through villages with children besides themselves with joy to see 4 Westerners whizzing by on bikes and waving and smiling till our arms/jaws ached at these beautiful, innocent children. The beauty of Laos is that it has not been plagued with tourists the way Vietnam so sadly has. Here children are still happy and excited to see you as foreigners are still few, especially in the Southern, more remote and less travelled parts of Laos that the average backpacker doesn’t usually bother to travel to.

I really didn’t want to leave the beauty and serenity of this place, so few tourists, so many waterfalls, but we were onto a place called Si Phan Don, or Four Thousand Islands for Christmas, so we could hardly complain, and moved on without trouble. Well actually we did have a bit of trouble getting there. We got on the wrong bus and ended up travelling on 5 different forms of transport that day to finally get there – first in the back of a pick up truck, then by local bus, then tuck-tuck, then we had to get driven all the way back to where we went wrong by moped, then boat, then finally our own two feet. It was worth it in the end! We stayed on an island called Don Khong which is the biggest of the islands that sits on the Mekong river where it reaches its widest point. On Christmas day we chilled on some tubes (like in Vang Vieng but much more peaceful – without the booze and the bars) and cruised on down the river for a couple of hours with a very nice boatman. We spotted an eagle soaring in the skies above us!We then hditched the tubes and hopped onto the boat and whilst Neil did some fishing (ledgering so I’m told) I kicked back and relaxed with my book until sundown…

Sadly I got sick as soon as we got onto dry land and had a minor 24-hour tummy bug so I spent Christmas day evening in bed. The next day when I had perked up a tad, we got some bikes and explored the island the next afternoon. We saw more stunning waterfalls and stumbled upon a secret hidden beach where we saw the sun sink down into scenic landscape of mountains, forest, jagged rocks, cascading rivers, a deep rock pool and soft white sands. It was as beautiful as it sounds, unfortunatly our cameras just couldn't do it justice.

On the 27^th of December we left Laos onto Cambodia and thankfully had a hassle-free boarder crossing. We are now in Phnom Penh, Cambodia’s capital and it is a beautiful place. The people here are very kind and gentle and helpful, and they all have warm, smiling faces. We feel truly welcome here.

For now, Happy Christmas and Seasons Greetings from myself and Neil,

Xxx

Northern Vietnam – Hanoi, Halong Bay, Sapa, 3 day travel to Laos

Hello, we spent a week or so of early December in the Northern parts of Vietnam. Having moved away from sunshine and blue skies, we shivered in our raincoats and under our layers of jumpers. It felt more like a typical winter's day in England than the tropical climates of South East Asia, and  I was glad I had packed my Marino wool socks!

We didn’t see much of Hanoi (the capital city) beyond the hustle and bustle of the streets around our hotel, but we did enjoy watching a traditional Water Puppetry performance in a theatre, an art which has been performed in Northern Vietnam for thousands of years. The performance was accompanied by traditional singing and very beautiful musical accompaniment on Vietnamese wind, and string instruments and percussion. The wooden puppets were manned from behind a screen of a temple by long wooden sticks and the various puppets enacted simple scenes of traditional life in Vietnam like a man ploughing his rice fields with a buffalo, or oriental dragons dancing around and even one scene had horses jumping through rings of fire! The stage was 3 feet deep in water allowing the puppets to go under and above the surface! It was fascinating to watch something so different from what we are used to seeing at the theatre at home.

We travelled to the east coast on the 8^th December where we spent three days on a wooden ship cruising around Halong Bay islands – one night sleeping on the boat and one night staying in a wooden hut on stilts above the water of a small island. It was a lovely relaxing trip, with delicious food and great scenery but sadly the weather was a bit bleak and cold and didn’t really encourage us to disrobe and jump into the emerald waters below us. (I was wearing as many layers of clothing as I could pile on underneath my jacket,, and thick merino wool socks….) We made friends with some really nice people on the trip– a German couple, a Canadian guy, and two Aussie girls who have already insisted we come out to visit them in Adelaide and enjoyed hanging out with them. As part of the three day tour we did some exploring by bicycle on Cat Ba island, visited caves and kayaked around the large rock formations. On the island where we slept on the second night we paddled out in low tide where we found hundreds of tiny starfish –which some locals were tossing into large baskets…for eating!! Don’t ask me what they taste like, it wasn’t on the menu for us!

We headed on by night-bus on the 11^th to Sapa in the very north-west of Vietnam for trekking and seeing local hill-tribes in the mountains. When we sleepily stepped off the bus at 7am we were immediately woken by the icy cold air that was like a slap in the face, and the fog which surrounded us. If we thought Halong Bay was cold, Sapa was even colder: it went down to 2 degrees at night. We were whisked off to a hotel on the back of mopeds (standard transport for us now) which we were promised had hot water and electric blankets – both facilities we immediately made use of! When we reluctantly stepped back out into the cold we sought out woolly gloves, scarves and some very nice North Face, (or should I say ‘North Fake’) jackets which were roughly £30 each – a bargain as the UK equivalent would probably be 5 or 10x that price. So we were finally prepared for our 15km trek the next day.

We arranged our trek with a local guide called Chai who our Aussie buddies had recommended and passed on her mobile number. Chai was so sweet and so lovely and the trek was arduous at times but made so enjoyable by Chai and her her two friends who accompanied us. May I just say at this point that Chai is an amazing woman:  She is 27 years old and already has 4 children – was married at 14 and had her first child at 16. She speaks her local H’Mong tribe dialect, Vietnamese and a good level of English – which she taught herself a year ago simply from listening to tourists talking in the town and markets and by starting conversations with them! She could understand us and answered all our questions; we were very impressed. Oh, and she also speaks a little French too! So we are glad she can do these tours for tourists and earn a good wage to send her children to the local school, we even got a few photos of us altogether printed that evening and gave them to her the next day to keep. She was so, so happy and said she will remember us forever!

We trekked uphill for the first few hours, passing teak tree plantations, bamboo forests and small scale Vietnamese tea plantations, the occasional house, buffalos, and to my surprise large pumpkins growing over roofs. We then went to Chai’s village where we met Chai’s family and were cooked a delicious meal of many dishes prepared by her in front of us over a wooden in her simple but welcoming family home. After lunch we continued down the mountain, slipping and sliding as the ground was muddy and slippery – but Chai’s friends from the villages all the time. We enjoyed views of rice terraces all the way down and Chai and her friends wove us little things out of the plants – such as a heart woven out of ferns and decorated with tiny pink flowers which they put in my hair!

We left Sapa on the 13^th and had an epic 3 day overland journey to our destination Luang Probang in Laos that was memorable but for all the wrong reasons! On our second day of travelling things got a bit hairy when we were due to get the 5.30am bus but missed it when our alarm didn’t go off. After some initial panicking (as there is only about 3 buses a week that go across the border into Laos) we grabbed our things and ran to the bus station anyway.  After being persuaded by two local drivers that they could take us the 30km to the border crossing Neil and I ended up on the back of 2 mopeds with our big bags precariously balanced on the back – and clinging on for dear life as we ventured through thick fog, down roads with more pot holes than actual road.

We ended up catching up with the bus before the boarder and in our gratitude and still half dazed state (as you would expect before 7am in the morning) we handed over far too much money in a mixture of dollars and VND (Vietnam Dong) to the moped drivers who then sped off. We gratefully took our seats on the bus ready to relax but in true money-grabbing Vietnamese style, no sooner had we sat our bums on the seats of the bus, we were asked to hand over yet more money – even though we had already paid for the journey and had the tickets to prove it! We were then hassled for the next couple of hours of the journey and threatened that our bags wil be thrown off the bus if we did not pay. Irritatingly, we had to pay up as we weren’t faced with many other options, and the Laos border crossing was fast approaching and we didn’t want any trouble kicking off as we entered another country. The next worry for us was that we had exactly enough money for our ‘bribe’ payment and visas, but no more, and with a long day ahead of travelling and no idea where another cashpoint would be, we started thinking about what items we could sell to raise some money for us to continue our journey to the next town in Laos another 6 hours away. Luckily a kind Spanish couple who had learned of our troubles that morning leant us 10 dollars so we could take the bus onwards to the next town. Phew.

Well all I can say is it’s a good thing travelers stick together and generally will always help one another out. But it was just one of those days for us and luckily we managed to continue our jouney safely on into Laos with no further troubles. :-)

Vietnam 06/12/11 Ho Chi Min City, The Mekong Delta, Mui Ne, Hoi An, Hue

Ah Vietnam! So much to see and so little time! We arrived at Ho Chi Min City on 22/11 by plane at 1.30am, half asleep and weary from our journey, knowing worryingly little about our new destination. However, 2 weeks on and we are well accustomed with visiting the local markets, sampling the tasty cuisine, and taking in all the tourist sights. We are (slightly) better at haggling, and I am much improved in eating with chopsticks.  The city and country at large is surprisingly well – developed (much more so than the Philippines which I hadn’t anticipated). This is largely due to a massive boom in tourism since the 1990’s. Vietnam has a population of 85 million, and Ho Chi Min itself is a large sprawling city with 16 districts. 
We spent 2 days in Hoi chi Min City – one of Vietnam’s biggest cities which is in the very south of Vietnam. We went to The War Museum where we were saddened and shocked to learn more of the graphic details of the Vietnam war that divided the country for over two decades. We also visited a nearby site called the Cu Chi tunnels where a village community took to living underground in very narrow self-dug tunnels for 3 years whilst the Americans dropped bombs and the horrific Agent Orange chemicals onto all the crops and towns. during the war. We visited the usual museums, temples, pagodas, a botanical garden, food and textile markets and generally enjoyed observing life passing by all around us. The Vietnamese are very keen on babminton and volleyball; they also play a game with a special kind of shuttlecock which they hit to each other with their feet! Neil and I decided to buy one and joined the many people playing this in the park – much to their amusement – as I am sure you can imagine we weren’t quite as well-practiced as them!

One afternoon we whizzed around a few of the city’s sites on the back of mopeds - which is the dominant mode of transport here (city population of 9 million, 3 million mopeds – and no road rules – literally anything goes – it’s a nightmare as both pedestrian and on a vehicle!) This was courtesy of Mr Chow and his friend, and Neil and I enjoyed a local beer with them afterwards (I stuck with coke). We generally enjoy looking at all the foods for sale in the markets wherever we are and sampling whatever we dare to. For example the local fruits such as custard apple, dragon fruit, jackfruit, chinese pear, mangostine and pomello. Along the way we have observed frogs, chicken feet, chickens heads and eels but politely refused any offers of these! On the subject of food, to our amusement we have discovered Vietnam’s take on Western products: Wrigley’s do a cinnamon flavor chewing gum, Galaxy chocolate over here is called ‘Dove’ and it tastes different too – not as milky smooth, and just 10 minutes ago Neil popped open a tube of pringles and they are in fact slightly smaller! Neil says that it is because as the Vietnamese are small they must have smaller mouths and therefore pringles have to be made smaller….personally I’m not so sure….maybe they are just not as greedy as us Brits!

We then travelled along the Mekong Delta for 3 days – this is the main river which flows through many countries throughout South-East Asia and has its final tributaries and mouth in the south of Vietnam. We went on different boat tours and saw a range of local traditional ways of life in towns in the Mekong area: Ben Tre, Van Tho, My Tho, Chau Doc. We also saw and tasted the water coconut – a palm which as the name suggests grows in the river along the smaller tributaries and is a large and beautiful nut that looks a bit like a flower – you will see what I mean from our photos! Some of the highlights included visiting a floating fish farm where their houses are built to float on the river and house vast quantities of fish caged underneath. We have also seen many houses built on stilts, and seen local production of coconut sweets and silk scarfs handmade on a loom and Vietnamese honey. The women throughout Vietnam wear conical hats made out of woven fibres (bamboo?) tied under their chin with a ribbon – in the cities and the villages. We also saw the region’s largest floating markets where they sell their fruit and veg produce on boats on the river. You will see pictures of Neil and I enjoying pineapple beautifully spiraled for us to eat, and wearing the local hats they gave to us for our boat ride.

We have met some really nice travelers along our way, mostly couples, a few lone travelers and a couple of girls also from England who we have bumped into a couple of times along the way. It’s great to share stories, exchange information and laugh (or complain) about our experiences of the country and its people. It’s also great to meet people of all nationalities from different backgrounds and different ages.

We headed on up north from the Mekong, following the main coastal road to Mui Ne where we stayed in a nice hotel (but still within budget!) with a  garden and a pool (yay!) next to the beach for a couple of days. It was great to relax by the pool, work on our tans and live at a slower pace than in the city, or when touring the Mekong delta, where our day trips sometimes started at 6.30am! Much to our surprise one afternoon we were taken to visit some really beautiful sand dunes and limestone rock formations along a stream ‘fairy stream’ which consisted of red, yellow and white sands! We then went on to marvel at rolling hills of what looked like Saharan desert and watched a magnificent sunset over the dunes. We were given no explanation as to how this bizarre topology came into existence but enjoyed it all the same.

Even in the rain, Hoi An is a very pretty place. On old town that survived the war, Hoi An, our next main destination is now a UNESCO heritage site due to its distinctive French architecture of the 17^th century that remains from the influence of French rule and missionaries who brought Christianity to the town. It was also a famous port even centuries before when the Chinese ruled for silk, mother-of pearl, tusk, fabrics, tea, beeswax, paper and porcelain. Hundreds of years on and every other shop is desperate to sell you silk paintings, tailor-made clothes, kimonos or porcelain tea sets. Whilst Neil and I resolutely stuck to our guns and were not persuaded to buy any of the usual tourist trinkets at massively inflated prices, I confess I fell for some beautiful pieces of local art which we bought directly from the artists’ galleries. Charcoal drawings, ink paintings on rice paper and photographs. Well at least they don’t weigh much and are a lot easier to carry! At night time the town is lit up by colourful paper lanterns all along the river, and in the day you can stroll along the streets which are lined with mustard yellow and white French buildings complete with archways, pillars and oriental yin and yang roof tiles! On our last evening we even stumbled upon a beautiful patisserie with the most exquisite selection of beautifully crafted cakes – even Neil was tempted – and we were instantly transported to Paris!

We are now travelling on from Hue where we have just spent 2 days admiring many more pagodas, temples and tombs of previous kings. I am now officially templed out. I really cannot see another one. Ever again. Well at least not until we are in Cambodia. We also were pedaled around a Citadel – a sort of walled fortress with beautiful old buildings from the 18^th and 17^th centuries where Emperors and Kings ruled. The temples are beautiful here, don’t get me wrong, they are intricately detailed inside and out, and almost every town we pass through on our seemingly endless bus journeys seems to have one. You occasionally see a Church. Although the country is Communist (Facebook is officially banned but apparently people seem to find ways to access it anyway) four religions and philosophies are practiced here: Buddhism, Confucianism, Taoism and Christianity. Over time the first three of these have fused together with other Chinese beliefs and Vietnamese animism. Every home and place of work has a small shrine with offerings – be it hairdresser, boat, coach or the pavement next to their stall. The offerings include flowers, incense sticks and fruits. Although one offering we passed on the street was such a contrast to the sweet scents and fruits I found it very funny and mused that the person must be feeling pretty pissed off with God that day. Why? Their offering consisted of garlic and instead of incense sticks they were burning cigarettes.

Well, back to the present: Neil and I only a few hours into a 14 hour night bus journey up to Hanoi and it is time now for me to rest my head on my tiny, luminous pink, quilted cushion, stretch out on my 1 and a half foot wide bed, and try to catch some quality sleep.

From Neil and myself, goodnight, x