Hanoi and Ha Long Bay, Vietnam

Monday to Saturday, 27 November - 1 December 2006

Thanks to the (Very) Rough Guide, we traipse around Hanoi for ages looking for the "Queen Salute" hostel. According to the RG's map it is situated beside the city's opera house. Alarm bells should have started ringing at this unlikely location. Sure enough, the site on the map is occupied by a plush Hilton hotel. We check the guide again and notice that the address of the hostel is in a completely different part of the city.

We sit on the steps of the opera house and resist torching the guidebook on the spot. At this stage, about two hours into our stay in Vietnam, we feel we can make one observation with confidence: here people are persistent, even by Asian standards, when it comes to selling stuff. We are pursued by hordes of taxi drivers, cyclo drivers, moto drivers, T-shirt sellers etc. who interpreted "No, thank you" as an invitation to escalate their sales pitch. Finally we found a taxi that could take us to the hostel for a decent price. After one final small bit of confusion - the hostel had recently changed its name to "Hanoi Spirit" - we managed to sort out a room for the night.

The next day, we walk around the pleasant Hoan Kiem Lake and enjoy the hustle and bustle of Hanoi's old quarter, including the Cho Dong Xuan covered market. The traffic here is like Michelangelo's "The Last Judgement" but everybody is on a motorcycle. Thousands of motorcycles clog the streets and it takes a bit of nerve to take them on. Pathways serve as parking lots for the motorcycles so pedestrians have to skirt along the streetside, hoping not to get clattered. (The tip we have been given for crossing the road is to walk purposefully across the street and not to stop. The traffic will drive around you. If you stop, you are in trouble. This has worked so far.) The speed and noise and fumes really get the adrenalin racing but the locals look on serenely as if it the scene is one of water gently lapping the shore. We have heard that the traffic in Saigon is worse. Body armour and lollipop signs are on the shopping list.

We go to a Vietnamese water puppet show: puppeteers behind a screen manipulate puppets that are half-submerged in water on the stage (Bosco meets Waterworld, on a slightly lower budget). The stories are hard to follow as there are no subtitles or descriptions given in the theatre programme. Alot of fire-breathing dragons and water snakes are involved. We leave the theatre confused.

The following day we make the popular trip to Ha Long City, about 4 hours by bus from Hanoi. The plan is to spend a night on a tourist boat anchored out in Ha Long Bay and spend the following night on nearby Cat Ba Island.

Thankfully the boat is a alot more comfortable than the Mekong slow boat we were herded onto in Laos. Again the passengers are all tourists, so we are not getting much contact with the locals. We meet Conor and Gar from Dublin and Antonie and Stephanie from Brittany, who are good company. The boat chugs over the peaceful waters between the karst rock formations and "floating villages" that make Ha Long Bay so beautiful. The weather is a bit overcast but not as bad as the previous week when a tourist boat had been sunk during a freak ice storm. There were no fatalities but all the luggage was lost. Apparently the Vietnamese government paid compensation to each of the passengers of about ten euro.

After dropping anchor (arrgh, matey) we go kayaking into a deathly still lagoon nearby. Our guide insists that we only go out for 20 minutes (the first of many departures from the glossy brochure we had been shown in Hanoi; it had promised swimming, snorkelling, fishing, a beach barbeque and a visit to a "monkey island" where superintelligent chimps would recite Shakespeare. Except for the visit to Monkey Island where a few screeching semi-domesticated monkeys preferred to attack visitors on their way to the toilets than perform Hamlet, none of the above ever happened). As it turned out, we spent the allotted 20 minutes trying to tow a German and Japanese guy back to the boat. They had capsized their kayak but the staff on the boat thought that this was hilarious and preferred to watch the poor fellows drown (despite asking for them, no lifejackets had been given to us for the kayaking) than send a rescue team. Eventually one of the crew paddled out to help, laughing at the suggestion that they should have come out earlier.

On scenic Cat Ba Island we walked through the National Park and later at our fairly isolated hotel met an elderly Vietnamese couple who fled the country in the 1970s and had since lived in Canada. It was interesting to talk to them about their impressions of the changes in the Vietnam in the intervening period. Despite there still being alot of poverty in the country, things are alot better now it seems.

Despite the spectacular scenery, our trip to Ha Long Bay was a bit of a let-down. If anybody was thinking about doing this trip, we would say definitely do it but double-check what the tour company is offering (take a photo of the brochure before you go as one tourist did back in Hanoi - at the time we thought they were being unbelieveably anal) and hold the guides to it.

Still though, it's not all bad: if you want to see more photos of Hanoi and Ha Long Bay click here.

Vientiane, Laos

Sunday and Monday, 26 & 27 November 2006

The apocalyptic vomiting forecasted for our bus trip in Laos (see blog entry for Phonsavan) turned out to be a bit like a Nostradamus prophecy: the prophecy came through, we just got the date wrong. The overnight bus to Vientiane was a torrid affair (described by Leahanne as the "worst journey of her life"). The sights (no need to be eating that much carrot before a long bus journey) and sounds (eardrum-piercing Thai karaoke again) will haunt our dreams for some time yet. We were therefore glad to arrive in Laos' capital one hour ahead of schedule. It was 4 am though and meant that we had to try to sleep in the bar of the Lang Xiang Hotel, until our room was free at 9 am. We killed time by doing a walking tour of South East Asia's "most modest" capital. There is very very little to see here and after being underwhelmed by the city's mock Champs Elysees and Arc de Triomphe, we slept for the day.

Before getting on our flight to Hanoi, Leahanne decides to make a trip to the Buddha Park, 25km to the west of Vientiane. The Buddha Park is a collection of Buddhist and Hindu statues built in 1958 by Luang Phu Boonlua Surirat, an "interesting" guy and self-styled holy man, who claimed to have been the disciple of a cave-dwelling Hindu hermit in Vietnam (!). The cheapest way to the park is by local bus so Leahanne bites the bullet and piles in with the locals, encountering a few smiles but mostly lots of stares! The Buddha 'theme' park (as Dara likes to call it!) turns out to be smaller than expected and there isn't a ferris wheel in sight, but it is crammed with a huge amount of sculpture that wouldn't have looked out of place on the album sleeve for Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band: the first thing you see is a giant pumpkin (which has three inner levels representing hell, heaven and earth), you can climb to the top of the pumpkin and get a great panoramic of the park; there is also a 20m long reclining Buddha, which the locals come to worship. The rest of the park consists of lots and lots of quirky statues (just see the photos!). Boonlua Surirat fled from Laos to Thailand during the 1975 revolution, where he established another buddha park in Nong Khai - guess it's a bit like Disneyland and Disney World...

Plain of Jars, Laos

Friday and Saturday, 24 & 25 November 2006

We take a local bus from Luang Phabang to Phonsavan. Taking the tourist "VIP" bus would have meant air-conditioning and more comfortable seats but we thought that we might save a bit of money by travelling in a normal bus. This has its downsides: the bus is a bit rickety and the aisles are packed with sacks of rice. It seems that local buses are used to transport all sorts of goods: our one has a few hundred boxes of shoes strapped to the roof. More disconcertingly, while the bus is being loaded, a man oversees things with a rifle half-hidden under his jacket. In 2003 and 2004 buses in the area we are travelling to were attacked by insurgents/bandits and we presume that this guy will be travelling with us for a bit of protection. Our bodyguard is very young though, only recently out of short pants. You wonder whether he has real bullets in that gun or did it just come as part of a "Cowboys and Indians" set he got last Christmas.

The journey is a long and slow one, taking about 10 hours. The roads are hilly, windy and potholed (just short of Conor Pass terrain for about a hundred miles). Backpackers had told us that Laoatians get travel-sick easily and had predicted vomiting on an apolocalyptic scale. Thankfully this didn't come true; although one old lady did belch like a trombone for the whole journey. The in-bus entertainment consisted of a 6-track Thai karaoke DVD complete with "amusing" videos. The 6 tracks were played on a loop - recent upgrades to hell have included this feature!

Phonsavan is a small town but has a decent tourist trade thanks to the UNESCO World Heritage Site nearby: the Plain of the Jars. This is a plain covered in 2000 year-old stone jars, which are believed to have been used as funeral urns or storage for food. (Yawn!) We stay at Kong Keo hostel, which is basic but does have the attraction of staff who are masters of double-speak. Despite pestering him for the evening, the sphinx-like guy in charge won't give us a straight answer about the price of a tour to the Plain of Jars:

Us: "Hello again [for the 9th time], we want to check again about the tour: will it cost 10 dollars per person?"
Sphinx, disappointed with himself for making eye-contact with us: "Yes, 10 dollars".
Us: "Are you sure, 10 dollars?"
Sphinx: "Yes, I'm sure, 10 dollars".
Us: "So that means 20 dollars in total?".
Sphinx: "No, it could be more".
Us: "Why, 10 plus 10 equals 20?"
Sphinx: "Maybe not, maybe we don't get enough people to go on tour".
Us: "But it will be 10 dollars per person maximum?".
Sphinx: "I don't think so...maybe...we see tomorrow, 10 dollars, maybe, maybe not".
Us, a bit exasperated: "Ok, maybe we will try another tour company".
Sphinx, adamantly: "No don't go to other tour company, they ask higher price, I give you tour for 10 dollars".
Us: "Are you sure, 1o dollars per person, 20 dollars altogether?".
Sphinx, backtracking: "Yes...I think so... maybe...we see".

Us: "So, when will we find out about this, later tonight or tomorrow morning?".

Sphinx, retreating into the shadows: "Yes".

Beaten into submission, we retire to the hostel's bar. It throws up a surreal cast of characters. We get talking to a fisherman from the Faroe Islands. He is a bit deranged. Having spent the last 6 months on a large trawler somewhere off Russia he has every right to be. He is obsessed about fish and talks to us for a solid two hours about fishing, fish and other sea life (whales, shrimp, king crabs, tuna, shark, 4 different species of bottomfeeder). We also speak to an English lady, divorced from a Burmese "freedom-fighter", who has been hanging around with young novice Buddhist monks for the last few months. To round off the night, we meet an Italian guy, who has recently set up a tomato farm on the Plain of Jars. Apparently this will produce tomatoes for the German market when they are out of season in Europe. He talks of his deep love of halibut with the Faroe Islands fisherman. We turn in for the night before it gets ugly.

The next day we get our tour to the Plain of Jars (for 10 dollars!). The plain was lavishly bombed by the US during the Vietnam war as it was believed to be a supply route for the Viet Cong into southern Vietnam. Between 1964 and 1973 one planeload of bombs was dropped every 8 minutes. It has taken some time for the huge number of unexploded bombs to be removed from the jar sites. This has also inhibited archaeological study of the sites. As a result, it is still not certain what the giant jars were used for. Our guide, Lor Vang, prefers the local legend of the jars being made to hold "Lao Lao" (rice whiskey) to celebrate the victory in battle of a warrior hero. Whatever the reason, the 3 sites we visit are well worth the visit. The jars vary in size (generally up to head height) and condition, and remind you of the stone circles you see in Ireland.

On the way back to Phonsavan, we stop by a hut where Lao Lao is made. The conditions here are pretty decrepit (chickens pecking at the ground and quietly incubating the next strain of bird flu; filthy toddlers dressed in rags chasing the chickens; toothless hundred year old women acting as master brewer). It doesn't look like there is much hygiene involved in the brewing process (a few plastic drums, full of a whiteish goo, festering in the sun and attracting alot of interest from flies). Despite this, the Lao Lao doesn't taste bad and there is no lasting throat-burn. Lor Vang entertains us with stories of his polygamist father ("he is so handsome" that he has 3 wives and 13 children). Polygamy seems to be fairly routine in Laos. Lor Vang will probably keep it to just the one wife and 2.5 children though as any more than that would be very expensive. A wise fellow.

We head next for Vientiane. It's an overnight bus. We make sure to charge up the iPods to drown out the karaoke. To see more photos click here.

Luang Phabang, Laos

Wednesday to Friday, 22 - 24 November 2006

Luang Phabang was the ancient capital of Laos and has been described as the "most Lao city in Laos" (?). Laos was a French colony for the first half of the 20th century and, in addition to Buddhist temples, there is alot of Parisian-style cafes, restaurants and baguette stalls in the city. French expats frequent these and we hear a few outraged "le cappucino est merde!" and the like. It's a sleepy place, the people are friendly and we hear from veteran tourists that Laos reminds them of Thailand 20 years ago.

Keeping to our quota of one temple a week, we visit the Wat Xiang Thong temple and do the climb to the top of Phou Si ("sacred hill") for a view over the small city. There is also a decent, if touristy, market at the end of the Xiang Thong street.

It has dawned on us that we are running out of time so we only spend a day and a half here. The plan is to spend Christmas in Thailand (not that there will be much more chance of getting roast turkey and brussels sprouts or RTE re-runs of Willy Wonka there!). This has left us with about a month to see Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia - nowhere near enough time! Originally we were going to go next to Viang Vieng for a couple of days. The main draw there is that you can do "tubing" (hiring inflated inner tubes the size of tractor tyres and floating down a river while stopping off at bars on the riverside). Dara's horrific moped injuries (elbow and ankle scratches) are still a bit raw (we have consulted NetDoctor on the symptoms of leprosy and gangrene and can rule these out, but the intensive elastoplast and Savlon therapy has yet to produce results). For fear of said elbow and ankle deciding to part ways with Dara during the tubing we decide to give it a skip and go straight to Phonsavan, site of the Plain of the Jars.

To see more photos of Luang Phabang click here.

Slow boat on Mekong to Luang Phabang, Laos

Tuesday and Wednesday, 21 & 22 November 2006

The first thing we want to do in Laos is to take a 2-day slowboat along the Mekong River from Houayxai to Luang Phabang. To get to Houayxai, we needed to make the border crossing at Chiang Kong in Thailand. This involves a 10-hour overnight minibus journey - the less said about that the better!

We had imagined the slowboat to be a converted cargo boat, shared with a few hardy souls like ourselves and a bit of room on the upper deck to laze about on. No such luck. Instead, it is a highly evolved form of tourist sardine-can. After all of the miniscule wooden chairs, fixed and loose, are occupied, the late arrivals are put sitting on the floor at the back of the boat (us) or, worse, are put in the engine room. The poor folk in the engine room have the anxious, half-startled look of refugees who have just been discovered by border police. They endure worse when the engine doesn't start and some cowboy mechanic tries to recussitate it by banging it in random places with a rusty mallet. It splutters into life to the cheers of the 150 or so passengers on board.

There is a party atmosphere on the boat: we are sitting with a group of Americans (Alaskans!), Australians, Belgians, Chileans and English, who drink the boat dry within the first hour (the lady at the food stand had to arrange an early emergency docking to replenish the stock of Beer Lao). One of the Belgians has brought a trumpet and plays a few bugle calls. There is a mad-eyed chef from Milan, dressed in a Huckleberry Finn outfit complete with straw hat, who spends the two days smoking dope, enthusiastically supplied by the crew. We also chat to Trevor, native of Hull, who is a great character and, stranded in Houayxai for a couple of days, has read up on Mekong trivia. Apparently, the biggest fish caught in the river was a 600 lb catfish. The river is also home to pink dolphins and huge water snakes. None of these decide to eat the eejit who fell out of the boat on Day 1. There were no lifebuoys on board but at least the captain had the decency to turn around and pick up the man overboard.

After the first day of boating, we stay overnight in Pakbeng village. It's a bit chaotic when we hit land. There are no lights by the river and locals, eager to make a bit of money, commandeer the luggage that is being tossed from the boat to the bank and offer to take it to a guesthouse. Silhouettes flitter about the place offering accommodation or marijuana. Eventually we manage to find our bags and head for Bunny Guesthouse. The accomodation there is standard enough but the restaurant seems to be working on the "one wok" system so it takes an age to get any grub. We find out the next day that the Indian restaurant in the village is pretty good.

Apart from the fun on the boat, the scenery is spectacular. The river banks sweep up into verdant jungle. We pass by fishermen casting nets, children playing in the river and other boats. When we see them, we feel sorry for the tourists who stumped up for the 6 hour speedboat to Luang Phabang. The engines on the speedboats are deafening. All of the tourists are wearing Dr. No helmets. As they whizz by, they look as if their eyeballs are going to pop out from the g-forces! Even if it was a bit slow, it was two days well spent and we really enjoyed it.

For more photos click here.

Pai, Thailand

Friday to Tuesday, 17 - 21 November 2006

We take a minibus to Pai, which is about a 4 hour drive to the west of Chiang Mai. The journey runs into an early hitch courtesy of some "gappers" (English youngsters on a "gap year" between secondary school and university). Ben, who sounds as if he has been teleported straight from Henley Regatta, utters a loud "oh, blahst, I've forgotten my pahssport and plane tickets!". There follows an hour of doing laps in Chiang Mai's suburbs until the passport is finally brought to the bus by motorbike. The pain did not end there. Wanting to put some space between us and the gappers, we sit near the front of the bus. Unfortunately a bolshie Israeli girl in the row behind uses us to relay all sorts of queries and demands to the driver ("can you ask him to roll up his window?", "can you ask him to roll down the window?", "can you ask him to slow down?", "can you ask him how far away Pai is?" and that old chestnut, "are we there yet?"). At least the scenery was good!

In search of some peace and quiet, we get a bamboo hut at the Pai River Lodge. The hut is pretty basic but it has a hammock and a great view of the river and there doesn't seem to be too many mosquitos about. This may be thanks to the dozen gekkos and one big lizard with whom we share the hut.

Pai has a deserved reputation for being a laid-back place and you can spot plenty of foreigners who came here years ago, have been captivated by the place and avoided barbers ever since. Outside a supermarket early one morning, we pass a Messianic-looking character playing "Pop goes the Weasle" on a wooden flute. He is not busking - he seems to have decided that this would be a good place to play. Apart from this there is a bit of a live music scene in the town and we some professionals at the Bee Bop Bar. A Thai quartet play the blues complete with authentic raspy vocals.

On one of the days we decide to rent out mopeds to tour the area. Neither of us have ridden motorbikes before so we try to get the most straightforward automatic mopeds possible. The instruction given is pretty scant (they point at parts of the moped and say: "this start", "this accelerate" and "this brake"). We take it fairly slowly at the start and all seems to be going well. The map we are given suggests a route and we head for the first stop on it, described as an "ancient village". Except for one beady-eyed old lady who tries to stare us out of it, there is nothing ancient about the place and the welcoming committee of a pack of rabid dogs does not add to our love of the place. Dara tries to execute a tricky manoeuvre, a 180 degree turn. No Evil Knievel, he's a bit panicked by the crazed dogs and high revs and accelerates when he means to brake. The bike shoots off 30 yards in the wrong direction and, only for it sliding on its side at the last minute, would have landed in a ravine (at least that's what Dara is calling it) below the road. He picks up a few scrapes and a bruised ego but is otherwise okay. After Leahanne does a good job of elastoplasting the scrapes, we get back on the road and spend an enjoyable day taking in the countryside.

For more photos of Pai click here.

Chiang Mai, Thailand

Wednesday to Friday, 15 - 17 November 2006

We take an overnight train to Chiang Mai in northern Thailand. The travel agency in Bangkok had promised us a 4-berth compartment with air-conditioning. However, this is a fairly wild misdescription. We arrive at the train station to find that we have 2 bunks in an open carriage with a few mouldy curtains for privacy and fans that don't work. There's no sign of the champagne and caviar supper either...

Chiang Mai is a nice town to spend a few days in. The old town is fairly compact, surrounded by a moat and the remnants of fortifications. We do a brief tour of the town, taking in the Wat Phra Singh temple. The temple isn't too different from the other temples we have seen but it does have a garden full of signs with backpacking-affirming Buddhist proverbs (e.g. "Anxiety shortens life"). Unsurprisingly, there is no sign of good Protestant work-ethic sayings like "one who is slack in work is close kin to a vandal” (Google and Proverbs 18, 9). Backpackers like the Buddhism, so they do!

We both do a cooking course while we're in Chiang Mai. Leahanne does one at the Chilli Club cookery school which is in the Eagle Guesthouse where we are staying. Dara goes to the Chiang Mai Thai Cookery School, which offers a few too many fish dishes for Leahanne's liking! Both are good, you get a cookbook to take home with you and during the day we have a go at trying to cook things like Phad Thai, hot and sour prawn soup, green curry, fish cakes and spring rolls. One of the best bits of the courses was learning how to deal with that most deadly of foodstuffs, the "birds eye" chilli (i.e. not eat it).

We meet up with Leahanne's cousin, Sally-ann, and her friend Gill who have just spent the last while in Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam. As we will be going there next, we get a few tips from them. As luck would have it, one of Leahanne's and Sally-ann's friends from Dungarvan, Sarah, has been working as a teacher in Chiang Mai for the last year. It's her birthday while we are in Chiang Mai so we go to a birthday dinner and meet all her pals. Sarah takes great care of us and takes us to a traditional northern Thai restaurant the next night with her friends Helen and Kampon. During the meal, performers dance, juggle knives and do pantomime. Then tragedy strikes when a call goes out for audience participation. We are thrown to the lions and have to dance on a stage in front of the restaurant. There are about two hundred people watching and, judging by the amount of flash photography, Dara's unique two-left footed Thai ballet is a real treat for them! As we have missed the recent Yi Peng Lantern Festival, Sarah manages to get a few lantern balloons for us. During the festival hundreds of these "wishing balloons" are set off into the night sky. It must be a spectacular sight. We have no idea where they land though. The next day, there is nothing in the newspapers about buildings being burnt down or people being bombarded by lantern balloons so we are in the clear!

For more photos click here.