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!