Nah Trang to Dalat (Tim)

A prior warning - it was for the span of this blog that we decided we'd had enough touristing for a while and wanted some time to just mope around, getting up late and staying out till late - consequently, there isn't much to write about our time in Nah Trang and Dalat, but I'll do my best.

It was another one of those overnight buses that I can never sleep on that brought us from Hoi An to Nah Trang. We stumbled off the bus at close to 6am, prepared to go with the first guesthouse we found. As the bus drove off, there was a lone traveller we got talking to (Tracy from Canada, as it turned out) and it was quickly decided that getting two twin rooms would be much better than getting a triple and a single, or a twin and two singles, or something uneconomical like that. I was dying on my feet and ready to go to bed before food was mentioned, after which sleep was out of the question..we walked a little way up the road and found somewhere to get some breakfast. By the time we finished, it was still only around 8am, meaning the sun was still young in the sky so we decided to explore the beach. With all other backpackers still in bed, the white sands were empty and the water clear of paddling tourists so we swam for a while and played some frisbee since there was no one else there to laugh at us for dropping it. At the same time, we were also getting to know the new temporary addition to the group and, unknown to us, getting extremely sunburned in the early morning heat. When we returned to the gueshouse, the guy working there told us it was his day off the following day and asked if we wanted to go on a fishing trip with him and his brother ($20 each..well they needed to fund their trip somehow). Didn't have anything else planned so we accepted.

In the afternoon we caught up on sleep for a while, went out for a meal in the evening and then sampled some of the bars on offer. Nah Trang is very much a chilled backpacker sanctuary, with many many places for drinking, usually offering happy hours lasting whole days (apparently there are more 'happy hours per capita' in this town than anywhere else in Vietnam according to our guide book, although I'd change that to anywhere in the world)- hence our decision to go easy on the relentless sight-seeing for a while. We ended the night at the main nocturnal attraction of the city - The Sailing Club, a bar-come-nightclub opening up right onto the beach, very reminiscent of bars on the Southern Thai islands. Me and Ryan discovered the down-side to staying in such a laid back place on our early-morning journey home when we were accosted by two 'hookers' on a motorbike, who came up to us, and whilst talking softly, attempted to slip their hands into our pockets and steal our wallets, and anything else of value that might be lurking there. Sounds pretty obvious, but they make a lot of money that way, especially with drunken Westerners who don't get whats happening. All you need to do is slap their hands away, shove your hands in your pockets instead and walk away.

It was a reluctantly early start the next morning, Ryan rising slightly earlier to accompany the guy to the market to aquire provisions for the day (bread and beer). Once at the port, and after some confusion about the exact location of the boat and several other issues that were indecipherable to us, we boarded the boat (a bit smaller than promised) to go hook us some fish. We went to a couple of spots, using squid and some other unidentifiable squishy substance as bait, but didn't have much luck..apparently the conditions were bad for sea fishing, with high wind and no sun..I don't think it made much of a differnce - the four of us being complete novices probably wouldn't have caught anything had we been fishing in an aquarium. I had a few bites, but didn't really know what to do with them. The brother of the guesthouse guy and his other friend had the knack and managed to catch about 7 or 8 small ones, which got placed (live) into the icebox until we had finally surrendered on the idea of catching any ourselves, after which they were grilled above a camp stove and then consumed most hastily. I don't think it's possible to have fish much fresher than that, except for still flapping. We had a few beers in the late afternoon cool, talked to the Vietnamese guys for a while and swam a bit around the boat..it more than made up for the lack of excitement in terms of the actual fishing. Again, in the evening, we did little more than go to a few bars and get accosted by hookers.

The following day the four of us visited some mud bath place, advertised by the catchy line "soaking in mineral mud is interesting". We couldn't resist after reading that. It was pretty heavily touristed, but it was still fun sitting in a jacuzzi size bath whilst it filled up with mud from a big tap, then pouring it over ourselves and eachother.

Apart from that excursion, the two or three days after that were fairly uneventful..resting during the day and going out during the evening (we found a street stall that served a 2 litre bottle of Beer Hoi for 33p) so I'll cut that short to avoid putting you through the tedium of our eating and drinking habbits. We were lucky enough to be in Nah Trang for the England vs Sweden match, which started at 2am local time, for the Sailing Club has a huge screen and projector on the beach out the back. By the time the game started, there was a large audience of English backpackers some of whom, of course, were stupifyingly drunk. A few guys danced in front of the screen singing songs, which sort of added atmosphere but was mainly obsctructingly annoying. Just before half time, one of them fell onto the projector, pulling the cable out and causing a large groan from those watching. By the time half-time came the projector still wasn't fixed so we decided to find another bar. The new one had a smaller screen, but the place was much more peaceful, and we found some Swedes to watch the disappointing draw play out.

The day after we caught the bus to Dalat, a quiet mountainous town that was blessedly cooler than the rest of Vietnam due to its altitude. It was really strange to have neither a fan nor air-conditioning in our guesthouse room, but the owner assured us they really weren't necessary. On the first day we made the most of the cooler temperature and walked around the town some, and then took some swan shaped paddleboats onto the small lake (unknown to us, the paddle mechanism was useless so you had to paddle crazily hard to get anywhere. We let the current take us until the hour was almost up and then realised the lack of propulsion, which meant it took us about 25 frustrating minutes of hard work to go a ridiculously short distance - it was probably one of the worst things we've done out here). In the evening Ryan and I decided to get our hair dyed (again), since it was much cheaper than Thailand where we had it done originally. Ryan went for a light blondy colour, and they didn't have blue so I chose silver - two relatively different colours but our hair, once again, came out looking nearly exactly the same (bleached, although Ryan's with a slight yellow twinge and mine with a green one). After that screw up, we went to a teahouse 0with some American guys we met to watch the American vs Gana match (I was secretly rooting for Gana). I was disappointed when I found out the World Cup would be on whilst we were in Vietnam because we wouldn't be able to watch it, but the truth is that it's far easier to catch the game out here - football is incredibly popular all through Vietnam and just walking down the street you see many screens showing the match (I think a part of its popularity owes to many many bets placed on the outcome).

The day after, we did something through an adventure company called 'canyoning', which involves absailing down rock faces and waterfalls - it was pretty fun but not as adrenaline-packed as the advert said it would be (apart from when we had to climb a perilously slippy tiered waterfall).

The day after, with the same company, we rode bicycles to our next destination, Mui Ne (a small (although now heavily touristed) town by the sea). The distance from one to the other is about 120km but we only cycled 80km, still a long way but we were assured that most of it was downhill (Dalat being in the mountains and all). The first section wasn't promising as there were steep hills we had to cycle up, and it's a lot easier to get out of breath when the air is so thin so we were all exhausted by the time we reached the downhill stint, but it really was worth it - freewheeling down mlles and miles of mountain road with sharp turns and large drops (made for some amazing scenery - probably best we saw in Vietnam after Halom Bay). It was nice cycling through tiny road-side villages to the (by now) usual response of "Hello! Hello!" and frantic waving. I think they dug our weird blondey hair. We arrived in Mui Ne about 6 or 7 hours later, thoroughly knackered and requiring showers, but in terms of consolation we found a guesthouse with rooms a couple of meters (about 3 or 4) from golden sand and salty sea.

Bumps, bruises and beaches (Ryan)

As we expected, upon arrival back at the Lucky Eden Hotel in Hanoi, we found that the room we so coveted had been occupied since the previous day by five British girls, who we later found out were volunteer teachers in Malaysian Borneo. We didn't grumble (us Brits never do!), figuring that five girls need the space more than three lads. Let's be honest, even if there were only three girls, they'd still need more space than the three of us.

So, moment of sexism over, I'll get on with telling you how that night went. Essentially, we lay around our fairly small hotel room with the half-arsed aircon for a while, then went out in search of food, headed in the general direction of the lake. We managed to happen across an interesting looking local restauraunt, the kind that sprawls out most of the way across the pavement, cluttering it with miniscule sets of plastic tables and chairs. We were pretty intrigued by the little stove-looking things on the tables, so after a brief discussion of price, which isn't normally too necessary at these street places, we sat down wondering in what form our food would come. Soon, the answer arrived, in the form of a large pot full of what seemed to be soup, with things floating in it. It's not like I just made it sound - they were actually vegetables. Next followed a plate of meat, a plate of greens, and bundles of noodles. The lime green-clad owner showed us the ropes, chucking meat in willy-nilly and giving the whole lot a stir. We followed suit and were soon cooking with gas, so to speak. A lot of folk don't eat at street stalls because of the certain bowel-associated risks, but we normally just go right ahead. No problems yet, touch wood. So yes, the soup was rather delicious, we ran the gauntlet of uncooked meat and fish fairly well, only occasionally happening on a squidgy bit, and I made a right mess with the noodles.

Once done and paid, we headed off in search of adventure, which in this case was represented by our getting a bit lost on the way to what is to all extents and purposes a fairly sizeable mass of water smack dab in the middle of the Old Quarter. Nonetheless, we managed at one point to have walked right past it, Lord knows how, and had to ask for directions. Once there, we went to the place where draught beer goes at 10p a glass and proceeded to drink their entire supply, as we did just about every time we were there. Once suitably liquored up, we went our separate ways. Shaun was tired, but me and Tim weren't quite finished, so asked a motorbike driver where the best place to go at 12am was and he said Barracuda Bar. We weren't arguing, so both hopped on the back of his one bike and revved off into the night.

As it happened, Barracuda Bar was initially dead, then it filled up with foreigners, largely French, which, depending on your viewpoint, could be a good or a bad thing. Tim and I didn't stay long. Some folk were playing on the pool table, the dancefloor was shamefully sparse, beer was too expensive. So yes, pretty muched hopped on a taxi back towards where we lived. Once on the ground near our hotel, we made the best decision we'd made all night and decided, at 1am, to look for a massage parlour. Thankfully we found one where Happy Endings weren't on the menu and where the people who massage you weren't men, paid our money and had a damn fine massage. After walking back to Lucky Eden practically asleep on our feet, we crashed out immediately.

Honestly can't remember exactly what happened the next day. I think we got up late, checked out of our hotel room and then did very little of substance until our bus was due to leave at around 8 o'clock in the evening, headed for Ninh Binh. It was only a one and a half hour journey, so we arrived in time to check into a hotel and get some reasonable noodle soup.

Next day the decision was taken to rent motorcycles and go and see the local sites, with particular focus on the Tam Coc caves and a couple of pagodas. I felt rather special when the guesthouse owner said I was probably the best candidate to have my own bike. That left Tim on the back of our guide's bike and Shaun on the back of Mons'. Mons was a decent Swedish chap we met that morning and who we were to travel with for a few more days yet. Handily, he drove a bike at home, so Shaun was in good hands. So, after getting used to riding the things, which we'd obviously never done before, we headed off towards the caves, where we parked up and got in boats that took us all the way through the caves and back again. It was pretty amazing, really, the rowers could row with their feet, rotating the oars and everything, no idea how. When Tim had a crack at rowing on the way back, he couldn't really do it with his hands, rowing traditionally, so these guys and girls propelling us downstream with their feet was all the more fascinating. The caves themselves were pretty standard, though it made a change to go through them in a boat and not be sweating buckets and standing in guano.

Back out of the boats and on the bikes again, fate finally caught up with the solo rider among us, namely my good self. Now, were it not that someone had put a frickin' great rock in the middle of the road and followed it shortly after with a pile of rubble, which I duly rode up the side of, I'd have been fine. But, as fate would have it, those two very obstructions did find their way into my path, or I into them, and the net result was that I ended up on the floor, bike on top of me. I thought I was pretty alright and was honestly more worried about the bike until I looked at my elbow and saw the pretty sizeable cut on it. As luck would have it, I landed right outside the doctor's surgery. I reckon they put the rocks their deliberately to keep trade going, but there you go. So, the woman patched me up and let me lay down for a while, whilst the others went up to see a pagoda on a hill. Within an hour, they were back, I hopped on the back of the guide's bike, another guide had come to take Tim on the back of the busted up one, and off we went.

Next stop was a temple type structure, which held our attention briefly and where the triumphant photo of me, post-crash, was taken, then it was onwards to the old capital city of Hoa Lu. Before we went to look around the old city itself we climbed a hill to a temple which afforded a great view of the area below. It was all rather beautiful, although I think the other three guys had more fun on their way up the last hill, while I was laying down in that doctor's house. They had a guide on the way up who was partly or entirely deaf, who, along with his daughter, accompanied them up the hill and had a laugh with them at the top. By contrast, we had no guide for the hill I went up and after admiring the view, came back the way we'd ascended. After that we ambled around the old buildings in the old capital, then got back on the bikes and headed off again. We didn't actually stop anywhere else, really. I suppose you could call it a stop when Tim and his guide fell sideways off their bike and into the mud whilst trying to navigate a particularly bad, muddy bit of road, but does that really count? So yes, the floating villages we would have liked to have seen were a two hour boat journey away and the light was already fading, so we decided to just head back in the general direction of the guesthouse, where I would have to atone monetarily for my motorbiking sins. Ultimately I had to cough up twenty-five dollars for the damage done. Not so bad, really, I guess. Dinner followed, as did some locally brewed spirits, which were too much for us to stomach more than two shots, and the first half of the England game. Sadly the bus came midway through, so we had to leave, walking gingerly, my wallet somewhat lighter. It was a rather nice surprise when, on the bus, we found the four American girls we first met on the Gibbon Experience back in Laos and who we'd met with in Hanoi not long before.

And they, too, were glad to see us, as they'd had a pretty bad time of things the last couple of days. On their Halong Bay trip, th e boat beside them had sunk and the passengers had all had to swim in the pitch dark for hours before they could board another boat. Even more agonisingly, they were only fifty metres from a large sand-bank, but the darkness prevented them from seeing it. The whole next day was consumed with the awful events of the night before and I think the girls were just glad to be back on solid ground and in familiar company, namely ours.

In Hue, where we arrived at around 6am, we decided to go on another motorbike tour, less than 24 hours after I nearly mangled myself doing exactly the same thing. This time, though, we all rode as passengers, so there wasn't too much danger. We didn't originally have it in mind to do the motorbike tour, but the place we did it with had such glowing reviews and good mentions in guidebooks, and Thu, the owner, was so very charismatic and charming, that we decided to just do it and scrap our plans of going to the citadel and wandering aimlessly in the killer heat. The tour ended at the citadel anyway, so this seemed a good idea. The catchphrase of our guide, "You never go, you never know; you go, you know. Follow me!" and the keen expression on his ferrety face when he said it is still popular with us while we're deciding whether to go on a certain day-trip or not.

First stop was a temple, where we saw some monks getting their lunch, then we were off to a Japanese bunker, situated at a bend in a river, high on a hill. We couldn't explore it, as it was ridden, apparently, with snakes and rats, so we were resigned to just hearing a bit of history and hopping back on the bikes. Following that, we dropped by the old king's tomb, you know, just to say 'Hi'. It was rather impressive, in that kind of oldy-worldy way that makes everything more than a hundred years old impressive, even if not too interesting. After wandering around the buildings there for a while and taking the odd photo, losing Mons in the process when he walked off to photograph something we must have overlooked, we reunited outside and, after sampling an awful canned drink called Bird's Nest, which contained small bits of what we only hope was jelly, but was probably white fungus, as that was what was written on the can, we headed off again. Another pagoda was the next great photo-op. This pagoda, or rather the temple behind it, had been home to a monk who had driven to Saigon and set fire to himself while meditating in order to protest against the unfair treatment of Buddhists by a Catholic regime. They had the actual car he drove down in, but we felt somewhat disinclined to photograph it. Next stop on our whirlwind tour of culture was a bridge over a river, a Japanese bridge, as it happens. It was actually kind of cool, literally, as it was constructed to be a temperate place to sit and commune during the hot season, when the heat outside is pretty much unbearable. Naturally, the bridge was chock-full of locals, so we took the mandatory photo and left, headed for the citadel, which, due to a pretty extortionate entry fee, we didn't visit. According to our guide, the architecture at the old king's tomb was better anyway and we were in no mind to argue, or to pay another entrance fee to look at more buildings that looked the same as the last lot. Back to the hotel it was, at which point we decided to take the early bus to Hoi An the following day.

The meal from that evening will go down as the worst I've ever had, or not had, as the case may be. The fact that it was the first time I've ever sent something back and subsequently refused to pay for it says it all. The food was slow in coming and when it came, it wasn't very good, mine especially. The 'chicken curry' was basically potatoes and carrots in a yellowy soup and plonked in the middle was a clump of bone was the most pathetic quantity of chicken I've ever seen on a plate. After eating the potatoes, I sent the rest back and asked for more meat. Their response was to pick off the bones the aforementioned pathetic quantity of chicken-meat and then hand me it back, not even heated back up. That was pretty much it. Thus followed my refusal to pay and hurried departure to the Indian restauraunt down the road, sometime during which Tim lost 50,000 Vietnamese Dong which he put on the table and we're sure the waiter swiped before we'd finished paying. It's only about one pound and sixty-odd pence, but out here that's what you pay for a whole meal and it just disappeared. We were that desperate to be gone that we didn't really query it. The Indian meal was handsome, even though I paid a bit more for it, and after the abortive curry from before, I was bloody hungry for it as well. At the Indian, we discovered that it was the first restauraunt's opening night, which made me feel a bit bad about being so awkward, but even if it's your first night, you should damn well be able to cook a decent curry.

Next day we got on that early bus to Hoi An, where the American girls said they'd meet us, because they'd headed almost straight there after a brief stay in Hue the day before. We arrived at the best hotel we've stayed in and are likely to stay in. It even had a pool! Plus, they did breakfast for a dollar fifty extra per person in the room. Rather than go around and try and find some cheaper, better value options, we just landed there, at the first hotel we saw. In fairness, it was a great deal. After eating at a restauraunt where the congenial owner with a high voice, Mr Dong, told us about how he didn't take commission from tailors he recommended and we had been harassed by another girl to buy a suit in her shop, we negotiated some bicycles and made our way to the beach to meet up with our Colorado Comradettes. Naturally, frolicking in the sea and frisbee ensued on the very nice beach. It's odd, we're actually getting very accustomed to perfect gold-sand beaches, azure oceans stretching out to great, ominous looking islands in the distance, crowds of old women offering you fruit as you sit and bake in the sun. The comparison to beach experiences back in Jolly Old Blighty is staggering. Anyway, back to the story at hand, we arranged to meet up again that night to go to the Hoi An branch of the Indian I'd eaten at the day before, watch some football and drink some beer. All things considered, a good plan. The Indian was wonderful, as I'd expected, the football was ignored because of the ongoing drinking games and a good time was had by one and all.

Next day we beached it again, after getting up fairly late and eating breakfast at the cafe over the road from our hotel. Tim and I and Shaun and Mons split up into two pairs, as Mons had some errands to run and Shaun didn't want to leave him to them alone, good chap that he is. Tim and I headed to the beach to meet the girls and on the way, after we'd parked the bikes, I had a quick look in one of the tailors' shops. Hoi An is supposedly the premier place in Southeast Asia to get suits tailored, with people coming from fair ways away just to get cheap, decent suits. So, naturally, I was talked into ordering one, and at a pip over fifteen quid for the whole thing, I couldn't complain. Back on the beach in the same place as the previous day, we pretty much did as before, Shaun got beat at chess by some twelve-year-old pineapple sellers (they were actually deceptively good and nearly could have beaten me if we hadn't had to leave) and left so that the girls could get their bus. On the way back we called at the tailor's where I had ordered my suit and we all preceded to order two suits each, one being a shirt, trousers and jacket, and added, for good luck, one silk kimono each, for late, hungover mornings at Uni. We had no idea how much it'd all cost to post, but for such good prices, how could we not indulge?

Back at the hotel, after the sweat-inspiring ride back, we dived headlong into the pool to cool off and met the Colorado Girls before they were to board their bus southwards. It's a real bugger, but we're on such a lax timescale compared to most other travellers we meet that we're frequently overtaken by them and can't travel with any one or group of people for any great length of time. Naturally, they always envy us our relaxed pace and are somewhat annoyed that they're going so fast through all of these wonderful countries. We just meet more sets of new people. Though it is odd, we have a strange knack, as we're moving down the coast, for bumping into people we met a week or two prior. I suppose it's because everyone's on the same route, so mutual bumpage is somewhat inevitable.

But back to the trip. That night we ate somewhere up the road and had a pretty quiet time. I think we went back and lingered in the moonlit pool until it was no longer appropriate to do so, then went to our rather comfortable beds in our nice, cool, air-conditioned rooms.

Following a damn fine night's sleep, we got up and chowed down on the dollar-fifty buffet breakfast. They even had sausages and bacon and would cook eggs however you wanted them, to order! My belly was already getting excited for the next day. So, post eggs and bacon, pancakes and what-have-you, feeling more bloated than we have for months, we set about a day of fairly mundane chores, working up a decent sweat cycling from place to place. Said chores involved going to the tailor's for a fitting, which went pretty well, needing only a little taking off the shoulders off a couple of the jackets; another task was heading to the market to find me some new headphones for my MP3 player; also we had to back up all of the photographs from our trip so far onto CDs and post them home; and of course, we had to go to the bank to replenish our wallets. See, it isn't just back home that you get stuck in a world of fairly routine tasks. It ain't all swinging from trees, flying down rapids and falling of motorbikes. Although, fair enough, that is mostly what it is.

So yes, that day was spent doing those things, lounging around by the pool and generally taking it easy. In the evening we had another suit fitting, this one for Mons as well, as he had now also ordered from our tailor, as well as having spent a preposterous amount of money already at another. On the way home, we managed not to cycle straight into the gigantic piles of building sand that line the absolutely pitch-dark road back to the hotel. The previous night me, Tim and Shaun all rode, one after another, into a rather large mound that just seemed to leap out of the dark at us. Not this time, though.

The following day was to be our last in Hoi An, where we had that pool, the wonderful breakfast, the cheap tailors and a great beach. Naturally, we weren't all that keen on leaving, but sometimes you've just gotta move on. So, we went and got our stuff from the tailor's, headed to the post office to post it all by SeaMail, managed to play some CounterStrike in an 0nline gaming internet cafe, then sort of just hopped on the bus bound for Nha Trang at around half six. It's amazing in Vietnam especially, the amount of kids you get in internet cafes clicking away mindlessly at online role-playing games. We take some advantage of the whole gaming thing, on occasion, and relieve frustration by shooting the virtual bejeezus out of one another, but the locals really go for it. Screens are swimming with the little virtual representations of hundreds of other kids around the country living out strange, magic-fuelled fantasies. And it happens here more than anywhere, we've found, so much so that sometimes we can hardly check our mail for the whooping shouts of some little kid kicking demon ass on a computer behind us. Sometimes you can't even get a machine. But hey, internet's cheap - like ridiculously cheap - and normally pretty quick in Vietnam, so we'll put up with a couple of sugar-high, goblin-busting kids. If I were them, I'd probably be doing the very same thing.

So, blog over. We're gradually getting round to bringing you folks back home up to date with our adventures. I blame the heat, personally. I keep hearing about this heatwave Britain is or was having. Ooh, blimey, Norman, it's 28 degrees! You should try doing anything remotely taxing in thirty-eight degree heat with humidity you could cut with a stick. We've just been to Dalat - and I know I'm skipping ahead in the story a wee bit, here - and were practically ecstatic to discover temperatures in the high twenties. We're very much hoping it'll get cooler soon. But anyway, heat-related rant/excuse for crappy blog maintainence over. Hope you've all enjoyed the latest instalment and we'll hopefully be bringing you more news and weather right after this.

Ciao for now!

A Busier Country (Tim)

After getting into our expansive but inexpensive hotel room at 5am and crashing for a couple of hours we decided it was time to explore Hanoi. The streets at 5 in the morning were already busy, with streams of motorbikes, bicycles and buses. It was nice to be back in a place where things were actually going on, in contrast to the sleepy town-sized cities of Laos, where sometimes it was hard to believe anyone lived. Crossing the road is an adventure all in itself, with the huge number of bikes on the road - there just isn't an opening..ever. Traffic lights don't impose any strict regulations on the flow, it seems they are only there for appearance. We learned that the only way to get to the other side is to just walk into the street as if nothing is there and the bikes skirt around you. Every time you cross the road, you feel amazed to be alive after such a suicidal ordeal.

We didn't do much with the day, since there wasn't really much left of it after we'd slept. We managed to find a War museum, with a couple of Vietnam war relics such as planes, tanks, AA guns, rifles - that kind of thing. THere was only a bit of text in English and it all got a bit same-same towards the end but it was still fairly interesting to see the war covered from their perspective, with the photos being mainly of Vietnamese troops and the text obviously biased towards the 'galliantly brave' Viet Cong soldiers. After this, we took a walk to a large lake, around which a large part of the city is based. This is more the rich white tourist area, with high-rise hotels and swanky restaurants - in other words - artificial Vietnam. People who stay in places like this tend to go on day tours in air-con buses, being whisked from one temple to the next and never properly getting to see the country. It must be a shame to coms so far, just to stay in a transposed England or America.

One thing we missed about Thailand whilst in Laos was the tiny street stalls selling unidentifiable, although tasty, foods extremely cheaply, and we were happy to see that Vietnam has many, so on the first night we visited a small place in a backstreet, with tiny plastic tables and chairs as if for children - the Vietnamese are a small race. In a glass jar on the side of our table was a thick red sauce that we ladled into our noodle soup, in order to discover that it was probably, judging from the burning in our mouthes. made from mashed up red chillies. We had to order another beer.

The next day we went to Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum, which is where the embalmed corpse of the deceased leader of Vietnam resides. For the locals, this is like a pilgrimage to worship the great man, so there were massive queues stretching for about 200m. The whole thing is kept moving by armed guards, who give you a little push should you stop walking at all - this is pretty annoying but you don't really want to mess with armed guards. The corpse was quite strange - I've never seen a real body before..it lay in a mood-lit glass case and was made to look quite serene. After this, we visited some temple of literature where the famous Chinese philosophist Confucius lived. It wasn't very interesting, but some of the Chinese-style architecture was pretty cool. In the evening, we went to a water-puppets show. I didn't really know what to expect from this - perhaps some puppeteers with snorkels controlling the puppets from under the water or something. This wasn't the case, as the figures were controlled from behind a screen by sticks on their backs. It originated from many years ago when the rice paddies flooded and the adults put on shows for the children in the evening. It was pretty impressive how well they managed to mimic the movements of water-buffalo and fish and kids playing in the water. After the show, we met up with some of the American girls we met on the gibbon experience, who had just arrived in Hanoi, for a drink. Considering how busy Hanoi is during the day, I'd expect the evenings to be just the same but instead everywhere seems to close at 12 and the streets are almost dead at 1. There are some bars designed for insomniac Westerners though (such as the bar "Half-man Half-noodle" - I don't know what that's all about) so not everyone is forced to an early bed. Before we went out that night, one of the guys working in the guesthouse (a slimey little man) asked if we'd mind doing him a favour and vacating our room because some return customers had booked it out for the next day but he forgot to tell us this before. He said that it was a big family with an old man who needed the space of the room (despite the fact you have to climb 10 sets of stairs to get to it) and that the room we would move into would be exactly the same, with identical beds, just a bit smaller. We couldn't really say no, so agreed.

At 6am the next morning, he knocked on our door and asked us to move. Grumpily, groggily and hungoverly, we shifted our belongings to the new room and were less than happy to find out that there were only 2 beds. By this time it was a bit too late to say anything since our old room was already being cleaned..besides, I think we're all too British to complain.

That day we went to Lenin Park, which is quite like Lumphini park in Bangkok - just a few hectares of grass used as a retreat from the bustling streets of Hanoi. We sat in the shade and drank cold coke and played some chess for a while, then went to a prisinor or war museum where the general message was "the French treated the Vietnamese badly, but the Vietnamese treated the American POW's really well". Again, not much English text but fairly interesting. In the evening we went out to eat with a German girl our age who was staying in the same hotel as us with her family, and was needing to socialise a bit. It also gave Ryan a chance to practice his German, and me and Shaun to wonder what was being said. It turned out she was of the family that had turfed us out of our room, and that her dad wasn't at all an old man needing a lot of space or anything like that - I think the guesthouse guy just wanted to get us out because they charged us $9, but the German family an extortionate $22 for the very same room. We found a place for dinner that cooked some exotic dishes - Ryan had snake heads and Shaun had frogs. I stuck to fish, but the snake and frog meat was actually quite nice. We then went to the hippest night club in the city ('New Century'), only to get turned down for not wearing trousers. By English standards, this is reasonable dress code but the point is in Vietnam it's far far too hot for anything other than shorts. We all threw our only trousers away months ago, so had to find another club (which we quickly left when we found out the drinks were 4 times more expensive than average, which is still only about $3, but we're pennyless backpackers now).

Next day we went on a 3-day boat trip to Halong Bay, a famously picturesque rocky cove on the sea of Vietnam. At one stage we docked at a place called 'The Surprise Cave', the surprise being a large fallisce shaped rock in the last cavern. It was completely different to any cave we went to in Laos, where you get given a candle and have to navigate the precariously slippery stones in almost darkness whilst spilling hot wax on yourself. Here, there were paved walkways, coloured flood lights for effect, dolphin shaped bins every 10m and many many snap-happy tourists. They were very adamant you shouldn't touch or break any of the thousand-year old stalactites, yet to make the walkways they had to cut down hundreds of them. Once back on the boat, we got talking to a pair of Danish guys whilst stretching out on the top deck of the boat. The boat stopped for a while a bit later so we could swim (after cliff and bungee jumping, going in from the top of the large boat seemed pretty easy). Even there, in the middle of the sea, there are small rowing boats that come up to you and try and sell you Oreo biscuits and packets of pringles - a lot of people in Vietnam are now making a living off of the boom in tourism. It can be really annoying, but understandable for a nation so poor.

As dusk approached, we saw from the boat one of the most amazing sunsets I think it's possible to see, with hundreds of deep, vibrant colours stretching across one part of the sky, and the rest was a bright shade of orange. For all of us it was another one of those 'life doesn't get much better than this' sort of moments. In the evening we were shown a couple of drinking games from the Danish guys as well as a Swedish couple we got talking to - a good chance to take advantage of the drinks tab. We found the games to be largely effective, bless the Danish.

Next morning, we were taken to stay for a day and a night on Catbar Island, a nice place that is now completely geared to tourists (unfortunately). Still, an awesome beach where we played some frisbee for a while - this is a pretty uncommon thing in Vietnam so every once in a while a curious Vietnamese guy ran up and tried to throw it a few times and then ran back off into the sea, all the time grinning madly. We also played in the waves like children for a while..well..we hadn't seen the sea since Southern Thailand 2 months previous. That evening, by coincedence, we ran into the German girl from Hanoi and went swimming again since the moon was full, although some guy with a torch came and told us we couldn't go in the water.

The next day we headed back to Hanoi to spend a night, before starting our open bus ticket journey south through Vietnam.

Vietnam-Bound: The Last Four Days of Laos ... (Ryan)

The day following my 19th birthday, so whilst still fairly hungover, we got on a bus headed to Phonsavan. It wasn't too long a journey, as they go, and we got to see some beautiful scenery - as is just about always the case in Laos - during the moments when we weren't asleep. We arrived and found a tout who looked remarkably like a slightly older, paunchier Jackie Chan, whose name we never learned so will forever be Jackie to us, who brought us to a pretty nice guesthouse, coincidentally called NICE Guesthouse. Since he was such a charming chap and had a rather nifty homemade map of the area, which, thinking about it, would have allowed him to lie through his teeth about petrol money and how far it was to each place, we booked a trip with him for the following day. Since we'd been travelling, we didn't do a vast amount that night, but managed to have a brief wander and find ourselves fleeing into a Chinese restauraunt to avoid a massive rainstorm. From the comfort of the restauraunt, where they served dishes which, though they had different names, were all green, we gazed out into the street and laughed at Lao people flying around on mopeds futily trying to keep themselves dry. One man even went to the length of putting his hand over his forehead, which had me and Tim in stitches for a good few minutes.

Cut to the next day and the infamous Plain of Jars, and we had to begin wondering why on earth it's so infamous. There are three Jar sites and, I must say, if we would have done all three rather than just two, we would have been too utterly sick of stone jars to disembark the minibus for the third installment of, "Here is a jar. Behold the architectural wonder that is a rather large stone pot." It does become more interesting when you begin to contemplate how people four thousand years ago lugged these bloody great things up hills and all over the place, and also when you hear that the larger ones used to be used as punishment jars. Visually, though, it ain't exactly a treat and the overcast weather did not help. Our guide told us they were made of sand, blood, bones and something that sounded like "molasses", but we have no idea what those are. Honestly, they looked like stone to me.

Following the Jars, or should I say our second encounter with them, we went to see 'The Russian Tank'. Shaun was rather looking forward to donning his recently purchased T-shirt with the Lao Communist Party flag on it and posing militarily on the top of the metal mammoth, but what we found was in roughly lthe same condition as the mammoths we see these days - bones. It had been stripped of just about everything - wheels and tracks, insides, guns, including the massive turret - by local people. The body was resting on its side, looking as though it had lost its balance and rolled down the hill, being stopped only by a cluster of trees, and the top had fallen off. That was the end of that brush with war history.

Next came the Hmong village where they used shell cases to build things. That was quite interesting, as they had used them for pig troughs, in one case massive two and a half metre long, shell-shaped fence posts, and also stilts for perching their rice storage huts on top of, to keep them clear of the animals. Yet, as we wandered around, we had the same kind of feeling we get whenever we go to minority villages, namely the feeling of the distant tourist. We rarely ever take photos, as all they are doing is living their everyday lives and that is nothing to make a spectacle of, and it is impossible not to notice the vast linguistic and cultural gulf, so all you really end up doing is walking around as though wind0w-shopping or going through a gallery, gazing around and occasionally muttering about the odd quirks and conditions of these people's everyday lives. Then you go and climb back into your aircon bus. It's not that isn't a good experience, but it is an odd one, and one that is offered to tourists far too often.

After our brief flirt with ethnotourism, which was actually fairly quiet, as almost all of the people in the village had left to work in the faraway rice paddies, we were taken to a hotspring. Now, we were expecting something like the one we saw in Kanchanaburi, back in Thailand, something we could swim in. Once we'd disembarked our mobile fridge and wandered down a path, we found an area hemmed about on three sides by concrete pillars, the other side being the slippery mud bank, filled with incredibly hot water. The problem was that it was only two feet deep at the most, so our relaxing dip into the natural spring was reduced to sticking our fingers in the water and commenting with all the enthusiasm we could muster on how hot it was.

Next came the cave. This cave is reasonably famous, we think, in Laos, as during the war an American rocket managed to get inside the cave and cause a rockfall which, along with the initial blast, killed four hundred sheltering civilians and soldiers. Now all that is left, naturally is rubble. After climbing the nice, orderly steps we entered the cave with nothing but candles and one torch between four of us for light. If I had nightvision goggles, I would have loved to stand and watch us stumbling and tripping around in the dark, barely able to see our own feet, our only sources of light steadily burning away as we went deeper into the cavern. Sadly I left my nightvision goggles on the bus, so had to make do with a candle-lit fumble. I think it was in this cave that we most noticed the country's complete disregard for health and safety. Back home the genius who gave people a puny candle and sent them on an ankle-breaking, knee-popping walk through a pitch-dark, slippery-wet cave would not be out of court for long. It was a bit of an adventure, though, for all I seem to be bemoaning it, and is probably the most like explorers we've felt so far. Not a bad time, all in all, and if we would have had proper torches we no doubt would have stayed and ventured further. Shaun and the other guy on our trip did go a bit further and found a bunker of some sort that would have been constructed by the former inhabitants during the war, which was a bit of a find.

When it seemed as though our candles might not last the rest of the way back to the cave mouth, we turned and made once more for the airconditioned minibus, which ferried us back to Phonsavan. What ensued was the first of three nights spent pretty much bored out of our minds, because we had evidently exhausted all of the surrounding area's tourist potential in one fell swoop. We did, though, manage to find a splendid Indian restaurant, where we also ate on the third night, and spent more than average gorging ourselves on curry, rice and Naan bread. Probably the best meal we've had all trip. Aside from that silver lining, the next two days were pretty darn dull. We didn't do anything, in particular, aside from wait for our Vietnamese visa to start and book a bus to make sure we got to Vietnam on the first day it started, thus ending thr boring spell at the end of what was a fantastic month in Laos.

Our aim being a bus to Hanoi, and this was something we clearly communicated to the guesthouse manager on several occasions, several times on each occasion, it was only natural that we should end up getting a ticket to Vinh, a city five or six hours south of Hanoi, paying five dollars more than the ticket should have been worth because we went through our guesthouse. We only found out on the morning of our departure, at seven o'clock in the morning, that we weren't going to Hanoi, and had no comeback whatsoever. All we could do was get on the bus with supplies for the twelve hour journey and contemplate how we would get to where we were supposed to have been going once we reached the place we had no intention of ending up at. The only minor event on the journey was the bag search at Vietnamese immigration, where the old man asked me to open my rucksack lid, then my toilet bag, which was at the top of my rucksack, and then clearly had no cause to think I was smuggling anything illegal into the country. I could have had a snake, a whole farm of illegal animals, a massive stash of drugs - clearly, if it wasn't in my toilet bag, I was clean.

In Vinh we managed to get booked onto another bus to Hanoi that left fifty minutes later, along with three other English backpackers and a French couple who were pretty much in the same situation as us. So, we boarded said bus at eight thirty after a bite to eat and thought we'd leave straight away. Not so! We headed for the back row of seats, only to find that the legroom was taken up entirely by a massive box of what seemed to be flatpack furniture. Since there were only me and Shaun on the back, as Tim had taken a seat, we didn't mind too much as there was still enough room on the seats to lay down and get some rest. Sadly, Nurse Pain the bus woman had other ideas. She moved Tim out of his seat and onto the back and also put a random Vietnamese guy there, too, leaving two vacant seats on the bus and four of us in very uncomfortable positions at the back. On the sound advice of the Frenchman, Tim moved back into his seat, which was never filled and from the outset was never going to be. The Vietnamese guy stayed, but we all had just about enough room if we curled up really small, so it wasn't too bad. What happened next, though, now that we had been stuck in the uncomfortable positions we would be occupying for the next hour, did not involve leaving. Rather than get going on the road to Hanoi, we sat by the side of the main road for two hours whilst Nurse Pain and her stooges harassed every passerby, asking if they wanted to go to Hanoi. Needless to say, we, and especially the French couple, were pretty pissed at this turn of events. We kept thinking we'd leave soon, but the minutes became hours and the hours were two before the ridiculous charade was abandoned and we finally put foot to accelerator. The six hour jaunt was hot, cramped and uncomfortable, but we and our luggage made it to Hanoi by five the following morning and followed a tout to a hotel that he said would be big enough for all of us at nine dollars a night.

Boy were we surprised! Easily the largest room we've had, this baby had a fridge, TV, aircon, hot water, chairs (making it the first room we've seen with more to sit on than beds), a massive wardrobe, and a balcony! We were pretty darn impressed and would have been more so if it hadn't been for the hour and the awful journey.

Tired, hungry, thirsty, annoyed with the cost and lack of quality of our journey, but quietly impressed with our new digs and looking forward to getting up in a few hours and exploring Vietnam's northern capital - so we began the next leg of our journey and our third country in just over a month.

The "Gibbon" Experience (Tim)

With aching backs from the terrible journey the day before, we ambled into the Gibbon Experience offices, ready for adventure and excitement. Joining us in the jungle were 6 Americans, a Canadian, 2 Swedes, 2 Brits, and a French girl. The Bokeo reserve was a 5 hour drive from Houayxay, and 2-3 hour drive from the nearest village, through really sketchy, half-constructed mountain-roads (a large portion of which are unnavigable by jeep during the wet season, meaning a long long walk. It was dry at the time we were passing along them and even then we had to help push the jeep up some hills). Next, an hour hike up into the jungle, at which point it started raining (a grim omen for the rest of our time there, as it rarely stopped after this point) and things got very slippy. As we started off, we passed the group just coming out of the jungle, including the guy who put us onto the experience in the first place. He was covered in mud and grinning maniacally. "Wow, you're so dirty," I said. "Wow, you're so clean," he marvelled. Our pristine state didn't last long - a bit of walking and a couple of falls later we reached the base, and brown was in fashion.
In the main quarters, they had an orphan bear and monkey they were raising until they could eventually be released back into the jungle - the project isn't just about the gibbons. Shaun being the animal fanatic, within seconds was lavishing attention on the monkey and playing with the baby bear. It was actually the monkey who was the most dominate of the two, being the only thing the bear is scared of.

Since the tree houses are all so far up, there is an extensive network of ziplines connecting them all, some of which are huge (300m long) and rather rather high when crossing valleys (150m down). It was an extremely cool way to discover our accomodation - finding it on the end of a metal chord as it speeds towards you.


Over the next 2 days we hung out above the jungle canopy, zipping around between various platforms and treehouses by day and just watching and listening to the sounds of the trees, animals and insects in the evening. It was hugely unfortunate that it barely stopped drizzling throughout our time there, as it made the gibbons highly reluctant to come out so we neither saw nor heard them - this only put a slight downer on the experience, as the surroundings and people (and zipping) were all awesome.The raining also meant that the jeep was unable to come all the way to pick us up, so it was time for some hiking back to the nearest village. The roads were all made of clay, and since it was wet it clung to the bottom of our boots and added to the tedium of trekking along the extremely hilly (mostly uphill) track. Along the way, we crossed paths with the guys just starting the experience that day and did the whole clean/dirty exchange, which was pretty humourous. After a 5 hour walk, tiredly dragging boots with a couple of extra inches to them, we arrived at the village and collapsed infront of hot bowls of rice - something so plain has never tasted so good.

We made the unanimous decision of taking the 2-day slow boat back to Luang Phabang (we could not survive another 6 cramped hours in a speed boat, and we also found out that they are extremely dangerous - if they clip a submerged rock, of which there are many, then the whole thing just shatters and explodes), accompanied by all the guys from the(so called) gibbon experience, spending the first night in a pretty scummy town geared towards housing (and ripping-off) tourists coming down the river. It was a Saturday night when we arrived back in Luang Phabang, the day before Ryan's birthday, and half-price night at the delicious bakery there (using up all fresh goods before Sunday when it closes). It's rather difficult getting a present for someone you spend all day, every day with but I managed to sneakily steal away to the bakery a couple hours before and organise an iced, candled cake to be brought out when we visited later. The plan worked excellently - he was thoroughly surprised, which was all rather great.

Next day with the rest of the guys we visited some amazing waterfalls (climbed to the top tier and swam in the pool there). It was one of the many moments where I know we made the right choice in taking a gap year - when you are relaxing at the bottom of a huge waterfall, with trees and flowers all around you and enormous mountains visible behind you with a bunch of great guys you just met a couple of days ago, I know I'd much rather be here than taking exams at uni.

In the evening, we went out to celebrate Ryan's birthday properly and of course drank a bit (but not lots, thankfully) too much. Today we parted temporarily from the other fellows (we'll meet again in Hanoi) to Phomsavan in the northeast of Laos to visit the plane of jars (ancient tombs).

Coincedentally, as well as the 28th being Ryan's birthday, it was also exactly halfway through our journey - it's weird to think we've already been out here for 12 weeks, although we've come a long, long way in that time (both geographically and personally). It no longer feels strange or unusual being in the back of a public songthaw, surrounded by Thai's or Lao's and chickens and dogs; we no longer worry about small things like finding a guest house or ordering food or talking to locals or other backpackers - it now just seems like life for us. Every day I think about home and friends and how I look forward to returning, but for the time being I can't imagine doing anything else but this.

(1st photo: In our treehouse, wearing mud. 2nd photo: One of the guides riding the zipline. 3rd photo: Us hanging around. 4th photo: View of the jungle from up in the canopy. 5th photo: The long slow-boat ride. 6th photo: Ryan's birthday cake being delivered. 7th photo: The waterfall. 8th photo: Dave (the Canadian) about to jump.)