Travel Blog

So at the end of my last entry, we were about to embark on a special trek to the hill tribe villages with Lue, our cool Lao guide. Most of the treks on offer in Luang Prabang include some sort of elephant riding and tubing/rafting. Since we’d done all that, we just wanted basic trekking. 6-8 hours a day through a few tribe villages would suit us fine. Lue said he knew just the route to take and with everything organized we set off last Saturday morning. We hiked for about 3 or 4 hours through little streams, under forest canopies and up mountain sides. Then we stopped for a Lue style lunch which, as before, consisted of spicy chicken fried rice. After this, we hiked a further 30 minutes to the first village of our trek. The place was deserted and Lue explained that all the people were off working in the nearby rice paddies and would return around 5pm. He began showing us some of the farmyard contraptions when we heard a 4x4 jeep zooming towards us on the narrow dirt road. A guy in a uniform vaguely resembling that of the military hopped out and Lue went to chat with him. He came back to us a few moments later and told us that the government had decided that we weren’t allowed to be trekking in this area and we were to return to Luang Prabang at once. We tried to find out why but Lue said he didn’t know and frankly, due the communist nature of Laos, when a government official asks you to do something, you don’t ask questions.

In the jeep on the way back to Luang Prabang we tried to figure out why we weren’t allowed trek there. The most popular theories were that there was some upcoming insurgency within the tribes or that the government just likes exercising its power. So anyway we made it a short way back towards Luang Prabang when the engine began emitting large volumes of steam. Here we go again, we thought. We had to stop but this happened to be in the middle of a patch of the road that the locals were working on. They were widening the road under orders of the government – another example of Laos’ communist nature. We waited patiently while a few of the lads headed off to the river to get some water to cool the engine down. Once they returned it seemed this wasn’t enough to get the jeep going again. We asked Lue what our options were and he said “Maybe we can wait here and maybe a motorbike will pass and maybe he can go to a nearby village and maybe the village will have a car and maybe they can drive the car to us and maybe we can use their car to get ours started”. That seemed like a lot of maybes to me and I hoped some other alternative would present itself soon as we were in the middle of nowhere with no mobile coverage and a government official who didn’t want us there. Just then the driver had a brainwave. He decided the best thing would be to push the car along to get some momentum going so he could try starting the vehicle. The only thing is we were at the bottom of a kind of trough in the road which made it quite difficult. We ended up pushing the car a short way forward before it rolled back down the way we had pushed it. But while it was rolling down backwards we had to run to the front of it and try and push it back up the hill on the other side. When it began to roll forward again we ran to the back and pushed it up the first hill again. This continued on for some time until we had enough momentum going for the driver to try starting the engine. Thankfully it worked and we all piled back into the jeep again, considerably more tired than when we got out of it.

Unfortunately this wasn’t the end of our troubles. The journey back to Luang Prabang was three hours and it was only a matter of time before the engine overheated again. Once more we sat on the side of the road while Lue and the driver hiked down to the river to get more water. We were on our way again and after a few hours started to see the signs for Luang Prabang. It was just after the 5km sign that we broke down for the third time. Thankfully only being 5km from the city meant we could just call for a backup jeep. We indulged in a Beerlao while waiting to be picked up, something we certainly felt we deserved. The new jeep turned up and brought us back to Luang Prabang without further incident. Being back was all very good and well but it meant we had cut our trek short. We got most of the money back that we had paid for it but it meant we were out of time to start another 2 day trek the next day (Sunday). We had already bought our boat ticket to Thailand for the Monday but we couldn’t even change this to leave a day earlier because the place we bought it in was closed for the rest of the day. So this basically meant we were forced to spend one more day in Luang Prabang with not much to do. We spent a great deal of it sleeping and took a walk around some part of the city we had not yet visited. Other than that, we loitered around like a pair of gurriers.

We took the famous 2 day slow boat trip to the Lao/Thai border. It wasn’t too bad – comfortable enough but by the end a little boring. The boat stopped in Pak Beng after the first day which was a one function town. It exists solely to cater for all the tourists taking the 2 day boat. As such it was tacky and touristy and not much fun at all. Add to that a room that while only costing 1 dollar, we had to share it with a few cockroaches, mice and bats. We arrived at the border at the end of the second day, conveniently just after it had closed for the day forcing us to stay in the nothing town of Huay Xai. First thing the next morning we were over the border, back into Thailand and on a bus bound for Chiang Mai. We arrived late afternoon and immediately booked ourselves some tickets to see a Thai boxing match for that evening – something we’d planned to do for a while. The boxing was fun and interesting but apparently it’s put on for tourists which is kind of annoying to know. Unfortunately a sore throat had been brewing up for a while now and that evening it crossed from being sore to downright painful. I stopped off in a pharmacy on the way home to pick up some antibiotics (4 dollars for 20 and you don’t even need a prescription!) which meant that I was resigning myself to no booze for the next 5days. I was actually glad of an excuse to give my body a rest from alcohol but Fi was less impressed with having no one to go to the pub with.

On our first full day in Chiang Mai we went on a one day cookery course, another thing we’d been planning for a while. Before we cooked anything, we were taken to the nearby market to buy all the raw ingredients. It was great to have a guided tour of the market and our guide explained to us what all the weird and wonderful fruit, veg and meats were. Back at the kitchens laden with ingredients we started into eating the traditional Thai welcoming snack. This was a curious delicacy which consisted of a large leaf (not sure what type) folded into a cone shape with a chunk of lime (skin still on), some dried coconut flakes, some chilies, a slab of ginger and a dollop of special sauce all chucked into it. Then you pop the whole lot in your mouth in one go and despite being skeptical towards the rawness of the lime and ginger I actually really enjoyed it. Following this, our teacher brought us to the preparation room to begin chopping all the ingredients. The first dish of the day was Pad Thai. We prepared everything before hand and then cooked it all up in a wok in the kitchen. The best part was being able to eat it afterwards and it was truly delicious. It was great to make something that I’d been ordering in restaurants for the last few months and see just how easy it is to recreate. For the rest of the day we cooked up a spicy prawn soup, Thai chicken salad, Thai green curry and for desert, water chestnuts soaked in grenadine and flour. By the end we were absolutely stuffed and couldn’t eat another thing. We were also given a cute little recipe book complete with suggestions for alternative ingredients to ones you can’t buy in Ireland so that we can make the same meals when we get home. Thanks to the antibiotics I wasn’t up for anything that night and I relaxed at the hotel while Fi went out with some mates.

The next day we did our tourist day of Chiang Mai. We headed up to a famous temple with a good view of the city but it was very rainy when we went and we couldn’t see anything. After the temple we continued up the road to a Hmong village however it had been completely destroyed by tourists over the years and is no longer a traditional village. It is completely overdone and put on for tourists which is kind of annoying because our attempts to see real Hmong villages in Laos had failed. We checked out a few other nearby waterfalls and sights and headed for home. Looking for something to do other than go to the pub we went to see Die Hard 4 that evening. After that, things started to go downhill. I had some kind of reaction to the antibiotics that turned my stomach into a churning mess and I couldn’t eat for days. I even found it hard to get out of bed at the best of times so the rest of my time in Chiang Mai was spent curled up in a ball in the hotel room. Aware of Ali’s arrival to Thailand in a couple of days I set myself the task of getting better by the time he arrived. I ate nothing and drank only water and flat sprite. The morning we arrived in Bangkok I was feeling quite better and I was off the antibiotics at that stage too. We met Ali at the prearranged location of Silk Bar on Koh Sanh road and celebrated seeing our mate for the first time in 7 months in the appropriate fashion. Unfortunately it turned out that my return to food and drink was premature and as we made our way from Bangkok to the island of Ko Phan Ngan the next day with no sleep, I decided it was time to get back to a diet of water and flat spri’.

Sure enough, the 22 hour bus journey from Hanoi in Vietnam to Vientiane in Laos was hell. I prepared myself for the worst thinking that way I couldn’t be fazed by it but it was worse than the worst! The bus was tiny and they packed in far too many people for it and when the seats filled up, about 7 or 8 people just sat in the aisle. We were only allowed sit at the back row which had the worst leg space and no space behind to recline the seats. On top of all the people they packed in, they loaded the bus with tones and tones of luggage. Any spare millimeter of space that wasn’t taken up with people was used for boxes, baskets, bags and kids toys. Of course there wasn’t air conditioning and the feckin’ Vietnamese just love to listen to all the ring tones on their phones one after the other all night long – just for fun. We started off anyway at about 7pm and we were beside an English guy and a Japanese girl, the only two other non-locals on the bus. I had resigned myself to not being able to get any sleep and I was actually dealing with the situation pretty well. About 4am we turned up at a random guesthouse in the middle of nowhere. We were told that the Laos border was only an hour away and it didn’t open until 7am so we we’re going to wait at this guesthouse for 2 hours. “What are we supposed to do for 2 hours?”, we cried. Our options, it seems, were limited. We could sit on the roasting hot stuffy cramped bus, hang out on the streets or get a room for $5 for 2 hours. We refused to get the room as a room anywhere else in Vietnam costs only $3 – for a whole day! The cramped bus didn’t seem to inviting either so I just hung out on the side of the road in the middle of Vietnam.

Finally 6am came and we started off again to the border. If I thought the bus was my biggest worry, the border crossing was a bureaucratic nightmare. We had to get our passports stamped coming out of Vietnam, pay an exit tax go back to the original guy with the receipt of our exit tax, walk to Laos, apply for a visa, go off and pay for the visa, come back to the visa application place with receipt showing payment for the visa, go back to the paying place to pay the entrance tax and then bring the passport back again for a further stamp. The whole thing was irritating enough without the fact that I had had no sleep. At least that was over and we were on our way to Vientiane. Only 8 more hours to go! I could deal with that BUT… the bus broke down. I should have seen it coming. The bus had been packed to the gills and running smoothly for 14 hours. It was well overdue for a breakdown. I could only laugh and luckily the bus broke down by a little roadside shop. We figured this was a good time to sample the famous Beerlao that we had been hearing about for the last 7 months. Maybe it was the state I was in but it was the best God dam beer I had ever had. I was so overtired at this stage that I was in hyper mood. Eventually we made it to Vientiane and the big saving grace was that Vientiane is small, quiet, chilled out and entirely non-stressful. I don’t think I could have hacked arriving into somewhere like Hanoi after all that malarkey. We checked in to a guesthouse, grabbed some food and SLEPT!

We hadn’t actually planned to spend any time in Vientiane as it’s infamous for not having much to do. We revised this plan after our bus journey from hell and decided a day of chilling out was in order. We ambled about the lazy streets, went for a nice lunch, bought some stuff in the market and took advantage of the DVD player in our guesthouse. A nothing day of pure bliss. The next morning we were straight off to Vang Vieng. Vang Vieng is widely known among backpackers as the ultimate chill out place in Southeast Asia. Nothing stressful ever occurs here. The place is full of bars selling cheap Beerlao and happy pizzas while showing episodes of Friends on repeat. You can also watch any movie from the extensive DVD collection each bar has or even bring your own. This suited us down to the ground as we had an entire season of Jack Bauer in our rucksacks. From an activity point of view, we spent one of our two days there caving. There are several cool caves in the area and we visited four of them on this day. The first two were nice and we ventured far into the depths of them with our little 15,000 kip torches. The third one was the largest which reportedly goes back 3km into the mountain. We only ventured about 1km of the way in but we could have gone on for ages. The last cave is one in a river. The water is high inside it and to get through, we sat in rubber tubes and pulled ourselves along using a rope attached to the inside walls of the cave. The beginning was quite scary as the roof was very low and I felt like if the water began to rise for any reason I’d drown instantly. But the cave then opened up and I felt less claustrophobic. Finally we reached a big open cavern where there was no current so we were able to go swimming in the pitch black of the cave. Another freaky activity of the trip! Coming out of the cave was easy as the current was flowing that way and all we had to do was sit in the tube and be floated out.

On our second day in Vang Vieng we indulged in its premier activity – tubing. You rent a tube for about 40,000 kip and get a tuk-tuk a few km up the river. Then you sit in the tube and float all the way back downstream to Vang Vieng. Sound fun and relaxing? It is! But there’s more to it than that. Along the way down the river there are numerous makeshift bamboo bars along the way selling cheap Beerlao and pumping rockin’ tunes. Well, the Red Hot Chili Peppers were good but one bar, dubbed the gay bar, had cheesy gay tunes pumping out all day. Whenever you want to stop at one of these bars, just wave to the guy at the bar and he’ll pull you in using an exceptionally long bamboo stick. If drinking in bamboo bars on the way down the river wasn’t enough fun, each bar had its own tall wooden contraption that you climb to the top of and swing off on a wire flying fox style. I personally didn’t indulge in any of these swings (my responsible side was showing just a little too strongly) but we made our way down the river over the course of 6 hours drinking Beerlao and meeting many people. We even bumped into David Quinn, a guy Fi and I went to school with, at the first bar on the river.

After Vang Vieng we grabbed a bus to Luang Prabang. We reckoned that an 8 hour bus could be nothing near the hell that our 22 hour one was and in fairness it wasn’t. Except that the road from Vang Vieng to Luang Prabang winded constantly up and down the mountainside the entire time making it a very lurchful journey. Luang Prabang turned out to be very nice, however. It is the same kind of set up as Vientiane but a lot more popular and a lot more to do there and in its surrounding area. On the first day we visited a waterfall. Doesn’t sound terribly interesting but we heard from a few people in Vang Vieng that it was an exceptionally beautiful waterfall. This turned out to be correct and the waterfall was actually made up of five smaller waterfalls. Water cascaded down five whole layers of rock before hitting the river at the bottom. At the second layer it was possible to get into the water and swim around. We got in and made our way against the strong current to where the water hit the ground. It was very strong but making our way past the sheets of water we came across a little cave that you could sit in. We were now behind the waterfall and could see the water gushing down from above. It really looked like something out of a Disney movie – too perfect to actually be real.

The Gibbon Experience is a tour that one can take in northern Laos which involves spending three days in the jungle living in the tree tops and spying gibbons. A lot of it is chilling out and stuff but the rest involves ziplining between different tree top huts to catch various different views of the gibbons. It is something we heard about from a couple in Mancora, Peru and something we’ve been looking forward to since. Unfortunately, even though we attempted to book ourselves in a few weeks ago, the tour turned out to be booked out until 22nd July which is too late for us as we fly from Bangkok to Ko Samui on 23rd July. So to ease our disappointment we decided to book ourselves in for a two day Mahout course. A mahout is someone who can drive an elephant and we were very excited about spending two days with these fascinating creatures. On our first day we arrived at the elephant centre and first thing we were taken on a 90 minute elephant ride to get to grips with the massive beasts. This tour was taken sitting on a bench on top of the elephant. Afterwards we got to feed the elephants bamboo shoots and bananas. My elephant turned out to be the greediest bugger this side of the Mekong and snatched the entire bunch of bananas out of my hand, eating about ten of them in one go.

After the feeding, we were taken to the nearby river for some tubing. This is typical of Laos. After a “stressful” morning of sitting on an elephant, we were required to de-stress by sitting in a rubber ring and floating down a river amid spectacular scenery. Phew! I was beginning to feel a little too stressed with all the chilling out. In the afternoon, after donning our rather fetching mahout suits, we took our first ride on the elephants without the security of the bench. We had to drive them through the jungle to the place where they sleep at night. We had to sit on the elephants necks with our knees tucked in behind their massive ears. By nudging their ears with your knees you can persuade them to go, stop, turn left or turn right. We also learned all the verbal commands including ones to make them sit or stand up. Balance was a very difficult thing to master. By the end I was ok with flat or upwards sloping terrain but the downwards sloping terrain freaked the bejesus out of me. I constantly felt like I would be thrown forward off the elephant and trampled underfoot. Thankfully I survived that but I think my elephant had a cheeky streak in him as he was constantly spraying mud all over me via his trunk. He also liked to break branches off the nearby trees and whip me with them. By the time we arrived back at camp we were given some free time to relax. Again this was well overdue as I was beginning to feel a bit too stressed out again with the 90 minutes of preceding activity.

That night turned out to be one of the best of the entire trip. There was a fridge in the camp that was generously stocked with Beerlao. We invited the mahouts and guides to join us after dinner and since beer is a luxury for them but peanuts to us we decided to treat them. A few hours later we were all rolling around laughing and joking even though only one of the guides spoke English. After a while the Lao insisted that we teach them some western games. All we could think of at the time was snap. It proved to be just the ticket. Things got rowdier and rowdier and the Lao were totally out of control. Had we not been deep in the jungle I would have been worried about the authorities hearing us. Around 11.30 it seemed time to go to bed since we had to be up at 6am. When we arose we once again put on our mahout suits and ventured into the jungle to collect the elephants. The mahouts weren’t in tip top form and at some times it felt like we were teaching them to drive the elephants. Once we collected the elephants we drove them down to the river where they waded in so the water was just below their eyes and only the tops of their head were showing. This was the elephant bathing time and we spent a while scrubbing them down and making them clean for the day ahead. The elephants loved this and soaking us with trunkfulls of water delighted them even further. Once we had them back at camp we indulged in breakfast.

This was the last of our contact with the elephants for the course but the Lao had more activities planned for us for the afternoon. We were to go bamboo rafting, something which sounded a little too stressful for a Lao activity. Once we arrived at the bamboo rafts it all became clear. We were to sit IN a tube ON the raft while the guides did all the paddling! The whole afternoon turned out to be basically an afternoon of tubing, rafting and swimming and our guide, Lu, had even brought a packed lunch for us. And I’m not talking about soggy sandwiches, I’m talking about spicy Lao curry and fried rice in Styrofoam containers. We spent hours floating down the river in various ways while chatting to the increasingly cool Lu. Afterwards we were driven back to Luang Prabang where we headed for a cinebar (bar with a cinema in it) armed with our Jack Bauer boxset. We were sad to leave Lu who we really got to know over the two days but we’ve commissioned him to take us on a two day trek to some Hmong (ancient Lao tribes) villages starting tomorrow. Will keep you posted…

Having made it all the way from Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) in the south of Vietnam to Hanoi in the north, I can conclude that Vietnam is a country of contrasting people. In the south, very friendly and eager to help you out. Yes people will always try and sell you something but at least a friendly ‘no’ will make them move on to the next person. In the north people are rude and crazy. No amount of ‘no’s’ will make them give up. One French girl we met in Hanoi got off a bus from Hue at around 6am and was making her way towards her guesthouse when a load of guys started trying to get her to take a taxi. She politely said no again and again but they kept following her down the street. When it became clear that she wasn’t going take their taxi, they started shouting obscenities at her. She felt very uncomfortable especially since it was 6am and there weren’t many people around. That whole situation is something I would be surprised to see happen in Nha Trang or Hoi An in the south. So anyway we have found Hanoi to be far too noisy and mental and so we are merely using it as a base for trips to Ninh Binh, Halong Bay and Sapa – all in the surrounding countryside.

But first let me tell you about our last stop in Southern Vietnam. Hoi An was a place that we planned to stop at ever since we met a couple on Easter Island who had been there. Before the trip we had originally planned to buy really cheap tailor made clothes in Bangkok however this couple said we’d be mad not to do it in Hoi An instead. Apparently the service is better (not everybody is trying to rip you off), the quality is better and the clothes are even cheaper. It’s also cheaper to send your purchases home. So we arrived there at the crack of dawn after a not so comfortable bus journey. It was our first overnight bus journey in Southeast Asia and these buses are NOT made like South American ones. The seats are far too narrow and there’s practically no leg space. It meant we were in a desperately tired state for our first morning in Hoi An. After a quick snooze we went straight out to buy some clothes as they take a few days to make and do various fittings. Suits and shoes are things that I have serious issues with buying at home so they were the priority buys. Anything else was a bonus. I ended up ordering 2 suits, 2 pairs of business casual trousers, 3 shirts and 3 pairs of shoes. The cost $330! That included postage home by seamail although it will take 2-3 months to arrive. At least I remained calm – I think Fi went temporarily insane with all the stuff she bought!

We had to hang around Hoi An for a couple of days while the clothes were being made and to go back for fittings to make sure they actually fit us. We used one of these days to see some nearby temple ruins known as My Son. They were grand – nothing to write home about but we met some really fun people on the bus there and we all messed around a bit in the hot hot Vietnam sun. We arranged to meet the gang for scoops later on and headed back to the tailor’s for our first fitting. My two pairs of business casual trousers were a little too baggy but no sweat! They just alter them accordingly. That’s the beauty of tailor made stuff! Everything else was fine though and we headed off to the pub where we would meet our new friends. I think the bar was called “Same, same but different”. Sound strange? It’s southeast Asia! Everything’s strange! We had a great night and we hadn’t met some people in a while so it was really good to head out with some new faces and have the craic. When Fi and I arrived home at all hours we played a game of cribbage accompanied by a couple of beers from the minibar. I won but I’m not sure if the booze helped me play better or helped Fi play worse.

The next day was a beach day. Hoi An has a lovely beach about 3km outside the town. It actually turned out to be better than Nha Trang which is supposedly the best in Vietnam. The sand was smoother, the beach more deserted, the water was cleaner and there were loadsa palm trees around which gave it a great atmosphere. The only problem is the feckin water was too warm! You lie on the beach working up a sweat and decide a dip in the ocean would sort you out but no! The South China sea is slightly warmer than the Atlantic. Come back 40ft, all is forgiven! We went back for our second fitting later on which turned out to be the final one as everything was hunky dory. After trying everything on we packed it all into a box and covered it in about 7 miles of sticky tape to send it off to Dublin. We were so excited at having bought all these new groovy clothes but kind of sad we wouldn’t see them again for ages. During the evening we walked down by the river to a restaurant we read about in Lonely Planet. There’s this chef who has cooked at all sorts of European expos and every night his restaurant has a set menu and he just cooks up whatever he feels like on the day. The only choice you get is whether to have the fish, meat or vegetarian menu. You don’t even know exactly what you’re getting until it comes out but you can guarantee it will be good. Predictably I chose the meat while Fi chose the Fish. It was superb and the waitresses who bring it round show you exactly how it’s supposed to be eaten. That was really handy because often in Southeast Asia your food comes with all sorts of plates and bowls and chopsticks and spoons and sauces and spices. It’s very difficult to know which sauce to use with which dish in which bowl or plate. And whether to use a spoon or chopsticks. So we were happy to know for once that we were doing things right.

We wanted to bypass Hue which is on the way from Hoi An to Hanoi and head straight to Hanoi but the bus from Hoi An to Hanoi stops in Hue anyway. So we had a few hours to look around Hue before our bus to Hanoi. Although Hue is technically in South Vietnam it is probably the closest place to the border and we noticed the north Vietnamese attitude straight away. The main thing to do in Hue is to look around the old town which, despite heavy bombing by the Americans in the war, still has its walls standing. It was actually a very pleasant and interesting afternoon but it was somewhat wrecked by the persistent cyclo drivers. These guys have a bicycle that has a 2 person carriage attached to the front. One of the guys asked us if he could give us a one hour tour of the old town on his cyclo and he just would not take no for an answer. He followed us around for practically the whole time we were walking and although I’ve heard you should never lose your cool or you could be in big trouble, I was severely tested that day. As I said it was a nice day and once again, the weather was beautiful. It was slightly marred though by the thought of yet another overnight Southeast Asian bus trip. Despite all the odds though, the bus turned out to be ok even with all the Vietnamese playing noisy computer games on their phones all night long. I think what really happened is I’m just getting used to sleeping in worse and worse conditions. I think soon I’ll be able to sleep standing up on the Dart. You wouldn’t believe some of the conditions I’ve been forced to sleep in!

As expected we weren’t the most awake people when we arived in Hanoi at the crack of dawn so we decided to hit the sack for a couple of hours. While checking into the guesthouse we met a nice French girl called Angelique and arranged to meet her around midday for a spot of lunch and some sight seeing. As it turned out we weren’t too interested in the sightseeing so we had a quick gawk at the lake before heading to the pub. Later on that evening we headed to a water puppetry show for which Vietnam is famous. It was pretty interesting and ful of fireworks, puppets and live music. The only thing is that it was all in Vietnamese so we couldn’t really understand the story. Also there wasn’t much leg space in the seats but it was an entertaining show nonetheless. The next morning, Fi and I hopped on a local bus to a place called Ningh Binh about 2.5 hours outside Hanoi. We had heard about this place from a hippy couple we met in Phnom Penh who said it was very chilled out with amazing scenery and hadn’t been hit by the tourist boom yet. It turns out they were correct. On one of our days there we hired moto drivers to bring us Cuc Phuong National Park about 40km away. The guy who we hired the drivers through suggested that we take a route there that was slightly out of the way but was through the countryside instead of just being on the highway the entire time. We agreed and once we got into the farmlands we were treated to stunning views of rice paddies and pineapple fields. I always presumed pineapples grew from trees but it turns out they grow up from the ground. We stopped off by a pineapple field for a break and to swipe a cheeky pineapple. When we arrived at the national park, the first thing we did was visit an endangered primate rescue centre. This German run place take endangered primates from the wild, breed them in their centre, release them into a semi-wild environment before releasing them fully back into the wild. We took a tour around and got plenty of snaps of gibbons and other monkey type creatures jumping between branches.

Further on into the national park we stopped at a cave which was pretty cool. It involved renting a flashlight for 5,000 dong (about 25c) and hiking a short way up to the cave. The immediate are inside was impresisve enough but we managed to venture further back into the depths of the cave where we actually needed our torches. We could certainly have gone a lot further but the dim torches and presence of many bats stopped us. After this we headed further again into the national park where there was a nice 2 hour walking trail that led towards a 1,000 year old tree. It was very hot and the walk was essentially through the jungle. There were sounds of tropical birds, insects and monkeys all around us while the heat and humidity completed the experience. Needless to say the 1,000 year old tree was massive and we took a few minutes break there to try and get our heads around its age. That was the end of our activity in the actual park but our moto drivers took us back via a different route. This time we passed through small villages and farmland and more rice paddies. I don’t think the people who lived there had ever seen a Westerner before let alone one my size. Every man, woman and child we passed pointed and laughed at me and many of them ran off to tell their mates. Some who were on motos too would ride along beside us just blatantly staring at me. It was funny at first but became a bit tiresome. Speaking of tiresome, after a few hours of sitting on the back of a bike our asses were seriously beginning to hurt. By the time we arrived back at our guesthouse in Ninh Binh my knees and bum were so sore I couldn’t imagine I’d ever sit down again.

For our second day in Ninh Binh we rented bicycles (as if our bums hadn’t had enough trouble the previous day) and cycled to Tam Coc. Tam Coc is a set of three limestone caves on the Hoang Long river and you hire a rowing boat and rower to take you down the river. We sat in the boat with a woman and a boy who was presumably her son and passed yet again through some amazing scenery and underneath the caves. I know it sounds repetitive to say the scenery was amazing but it’s just something you have to see to understand. Some of the caves we passed through were pretty low and I spent some of the time ducked right down in the boat. Also the rowers cheekily forced us to row as well as trying to sell us some of their embroidery. Very clever as we couldn’t exactly run away when we’re in a boat in the middle of a river! After the boat ride I continued cycling on to Bich Dong which is a pagoda a few kilometres further down the road. Fi didn’t join me due to a flat tire. After a whiel I came across some kind of religious building with a guy outside beckoning me in. I knew this couldn’t be Bich Dong Pagoda but I headed in anyway as the guy looked friendly. The place consisted of a small courtyard surrounded by a few small buildings and the guy lead me into one of them. It turned out this is where he slept/lived and he kindly offered me some Vietnamese tea. I’m not really one for the tea but it would be rude to refuse so I knocked it back. At first I thought his lack of speaking was because he hadno English but it soon became evident that we was a deaf mute. But somehow we managed to communicate through hand signals any by pouring liquid on the stone floor and drawing pictures in it. This was also a good way for me to get rid of my Vietnamese tea without having to drink it. He continued showing me around the complex and even let me take some photos of the religious alters and statues – something which is usually banned in other places. As a final gesture he gave me a big bag of lychees and so I threw him a small donation before heading on my way. At this stage I had been there a while and so didn’t feel like heading on to Bich dong. So I went back to where I left Fi and we cycled back to Ninh Binh where we took a bus back to Hanoi.

We spent only one more night in Hanoi before taking a 3 day tour of Halong Bay. After a few hours drive we arrived at Halong bay and boarded our junk around about lunchtime to the tunes of Boney M and Jingle Bells. As we set sail we were treated to a delicious lunch. Once again the scenery was amazing - sorry but I don’t know what else to say! Legend says that Halong Bay was made by a dragon who thrashed its tail around creating loads of tiny islands and waterways. We sailed for a few hours around the bay and I sat on the top deck listening to music and enjoying the view. We stopped off during the day at a cave which, while certainly very impressive, was terribly overrun with tourists. And most of the tourists were Asian – the worst kind! There were some parts though that I was able to imagine what it’s like without the hordes of snap happy Japanese and Koreans. We continued on through the bay and in late afternoon we anchored down and hopped into kayaks. Our guide brought us around a small island to a “hidden lagoon”. Although I’m sure plenty of people know about this hidden lagoon, our group was actually the only one there. Once you enter the lagoon, the only noise you can hear is that of the birds and insects. Also since the entrance to the lagoon is quite small, you feel like you are completely surrounded by hills. When the guide started back to the boat, Fi and I waited around a few moments longer so we could enjoy the peace of the place without 12 other people to make noise. We both agreed it was up there on the top ten list. I’m really not doing a great job of explaining it and I don’t even have any photos of it as I didn’t want to bring my camera in the kayak for obvious reasons. We spent the evening eating dinner and drinking beer with the other folk on the boat. Some of the people on the tour were great fun and the boat even had a built in karaoke machine! You can imagine the kind of night it was. I decided to sleep up on the top deck underneath the stars and after hauling up a blanket and a pillow I settled in for the night Unfortunately my plan was thwarted around 2.30am when it began to piss rain sending me running below deck.

On the second day of our tour we pulled up to Cat Ba island which is the only inhabited island in Halong Bay. We were first taken to a place on the island where there is a great 2 hour hike. Again the scenery was great yadda yadda yadda but the heat was almost unbearable which made the hike seem twice as tough as it actually was. There was a strategically placed cold drinks stall at the end of the hike and I’d say it does a roaring trade as I think I bought about 3 drinks just for myself! Then we were off to the floating restaurant for lunch. Yes the floating restaurant was a great novelty except when the sea got a bit rough. We’d be sitting around eating rice when next thing a big wave would come in and we’d all have to grab onto something and try and stop the food from flying everywhere. It also didn’t help keep my stomach in order once I’d finished eating. After lunch we were back into the kayaks but this time the destination was a small beach in a little cove. As it was inaccesible by land, it was deserted and we stopped there for about an hour lounging about and swimming in the far too warm sea. The rest of the day was spent hanging around Cat Ba island and for that night we stayed in a hotel. We brought our guide down to the pub after dinner and following a couple of Vietnamese beers he was well on his way! He even treated us to a few hundred renditions of the Carpenters ‘Yesterday once more’ on the karaoke machine – a standard party piece for every Vietnamese person it seems. The third day of the Halong Bay tour was pretty much spent on the Junk going back to Halong City and then the bus back to Hanoi. However we did stop off mid morning for a swim to cool down. It was good fun jumping off the back of the boat and letting the amazingly strong current drag you back to the front of the boat where the ladder was.

When we arrived back in Hanoi we had but 3 hours to have a shower, grab some food and head off to catch an overnight train to Sapa. Sapa is a city in the very north of Vietnam, very close to the Chinese border. People who come here normally take a 2 or 3 day tour of the local indigenous villages however we decided to climb Mt. Fansipan, Southeast Asia’s highest mountain, instead. It sounded like a great idea at the time but unfortunately it didn’t really work out like we expected! The first day wasn’t too bad. We hiked for only 3 hours to our base camp and it turned out we were hiking with 3 very cool Germans. We had a delicious dinner at the campsite and a lot of great chat with the Germans so we awoke on the 2nd morning feeling all rested and ready to go. Our morale deteriorated steadily over the next 4 hours as the trail to the top got steeper and steeper. It was bad enough hiking up a steep path but when the path ended and we were literally climbing over boulders, logs and rivers, the strain became unbearable. We had no idea it would be this techincally difficult. At one stage I even considered giving up. I have done some pretty serious hiking in Peru and Patagonia but never before did I feel like I couldn’t make it.Oh yeah, it was also pissing down with rain and about an hour from the top I heard myself uttering that famous line from Forrest Gump, “Viet-f*****g-nam!”. We did eventually make it to the top but the torrential rain, lack of visibility, sore muscles and coldness meant we didn’t even feel like we’d achieved something. Maybe if there was a good view… Our guide prepared some sandwiches for lunch but we weren’t even hungry we were so miserable. I nonetheless ate a roll figuring I’d need some energy for the hike down. Although we were going down, it was still really difficult and we arrived back at camp after 9 hours of difficult, cold and rainy hiking. I would have gone to bed straight away except dinner was being served in an hour. That night I think I slept about 13 hours.

The third day was actually the nicest hiking but we were so fed up from the previous day that all we wanted to do was get back to Sapa. Sure enough, the good old reliable rain started soon after we began hiking. The good part of it was that we passed through a couple of dwellings on the mountainside. Our guide took us inside one to meet a family and they sat us down giving us boiled water and rice wine to drink. We played with the children and tok photos which they thought was hilarious. We presumed all this would cost something as unfortunately any kind of hospitality in Vietnam usually does. But at the end we asked our guide if we should give some money and he said no. We were delighted that we actually found some good old fashioned kindness in Southeast Asia rather than everyone desparate to make a quick buck whatever way they can. When we finally arrived back at the hotel in Sapa it was a joyous occasion. We survived! We took a well needed shower, wolfed down some lunch and spent the afternoon resting our weary bodies in the tv room of the hotel. That night we caught a train back to Hanoi and we are now in Hanoi about one hour away from a mean 22 hour bus trip to Vientianne in Laos. This promises to be 22 hours of pure hell but unfortunately there is no other way to get to Laos short of paying 120 dollars for a flight. I’ll let you know how we get on!