Archive for December 2011
Saturday December 24th – Monday December 26th: Singapore
Arrived in Singapore from Saigon by air, mid afternoon on Xmas eve, checked into the Marina Mandarin, and went pretty much straight to Raffles:
Singapore slings in the Long Bar at Raffles.
Lovely view of kitchen, door propped open with box of bottles, plastic milk containers left lying around, generally a bit poor.
The gorgeous Courtyard bar – beautiful, atmospheric and charming professional bartenders.
The next day was Xmas day and we had booked the famous Mandarin Oriental Sunday Champagne Brunch special Xmas edition with free-pour drinks including Ruinart Champagne. On arrival we were greeted by a choir singing carols in harmony – lovely!
We sat outside in the lovely garden:
Getting stuck into the Champagne.
The food was quite astonishing, both in variety and quantity.
One of the waiters topping up the shellfish station.
Assorted Asian dishes
Chefs flambe-ing to order
Oysters, sushi, charcuterie
Outrageous cheesery.
Antipasti – smoked salmon, gravadlax, roasted vegetables etc
Puddings as far as the eye can see…
Chocolate fountains and crepes to order.
First course
Admirably restrained main course – roast beef & horseradish, mash & veg.
Less restrained pud (!)
Cheese course.
After eating and drinking ourselves silly, on Boxing day we did the 3.5 km walk around the harbour before seeing the new Sherlock Holmes film in the Marina shopping centre. Flight back to UK in the evening.
Tuesday 20th – Saturday 24th December: Saigon
We arrived in Saigon / Ho Chi Min City by ‘international bus’ from Phnom Penh which involved handing over our passports to several different yet indifferent people who took our fingerprints but couldn’t be bothered to scan our bags.
Our hotel was in the Phạm Ngũ Lão backpacker ghetto so we joined in by dining at Allez Boo – surprisingly good noodles & tofu (Randall had his by now trademark burger).
In the morning after breakfast and a read of the local newspaper:
On this day in history…an interesting perspective.
we took ourselves off on an I-phone app guided tour of the city’s landmarks, starting with the War Remnants Museum with its extremely graphic exhibitions about the continuing effects of Agent Orange and other chemicals used on civilians during the American involvement in the civil war.
Next up was the Palace of Reunification which was closed (somewhat random but strictly enforced opening and closing times of public monuments seemed to be the norm) – this was to our relief as after the previous place we were a bit propaganda-ed out.
Instead we did some more ‘standard’ sightseeing:
Notre Dame cathedral
Main Post Office
Inside the Post Office (1)
Inside Post Office (2)
Inside Post Office (3)
Inside Post Office (4) – floor reminiscent of Barcelona
The ‘Hotel de Ville’ apparently modelled after the Paris one.
The 5* Rex Hotel next to the City Hall
One of the many high rise buildings going up in Saigon – lots of investment, much of it Chinese.
The National Museum was mainly interesting for the mummified corpse of a noblewoman. The remaining exhibits were poorly labelled and the party propaganda was at its clumsiest. Still, the floral calendar was quite sweet:
After stopping for coffee just behind the Opera House we attempted to go for lunch at the restaurant on top of the Saigon Trade Centre, only to discover that it had been closed for ages. The final stop on the tour was the Jade Emperor Pagoda
– a bit underwhelming frankly, so given that the weather was starting to turn, we took the soft option and caught a taxi back to Pham Ngu Lao where we had lunch and a couple of pitchers of Tiger Beer while watching the world go by (and local police harassing a local junkie) in Le Pub.
The next day we took the inevitable tourist trip to the Cu Chi tunnels, one of a series of tunnel complexes used by the Viet Cong. The tourist attraction is based around some partially restored tunnels and a kind of walk-through open air museum with varying degrees of factual accuracy about the exhibits; our guide pointed out some waxworks of ‘Viet Cong’ wearing military fatigues and smoking above ground, both fairly unlikely occurrences. Still, the ‘walk through’ tunnel was pretty hairy – we did the minimum 20 metre stretch, although a couple of our group did the full 100m open to tourists, reappearing red, sweaty and very out of breath.
The hilarious ‘John Wayne’ our guide, showing a tunnel entrance.
Way in (for small Viet Cong only)
Randall clambering on a captured US tank
pungi trap
another ingenious pungi trap
Salvaged UXO used for making IEDs. One of the reasons that the UXO issue is less bad in Vietnam than in Laos and Cambodia is that so much of it was scavenged and reused while the war was still on.
We decided to pay a bit extra and take the boat back instead of the bus, which was a great idea (particularly as the enterprising John Wayne had packed a cooler of beers which he sold us at highly inflated prices):
We bagzied the seats outside, along with a kiwi guy. Win!
That evening we decided to try out the nightlife, and selected ‘Carmen’ which turned out to be a delight. There was live music all night; Latin when we arrived – and we even got a little bit of salsa dancing in – followed by French followed by classic country (all together now: “Country Roooaaaaadddsss”). Highly recommend (although the beers were expensive).
We rounded the night off with G&Ts at the beautiful Rex Hotel Rooftop Garden Bar – very civilised, and apparently where all the reporters and photographers hung out during the war so they could peer down into the streets while hanging on to their cocktails – before an off-the-metre 2$ taxi home.
On our final night in Saigon we tracked down KOTO – the training foundation that we first discovered in Hanoi. As they opened in Saigon in January 2010 and the course is 2 years long, the first batch of ‘graduates’ were about to complete, so it was a great time for them. We had a fantastic meal accompanied by a bottle of Barcelona favourite Freixenet:
Stylish surroundings
Cheers!
Yum!
From Koto we took a taxi back towards the centre of town and called in at Alibi – restaurant and bar with super friendly bar staff and sophisticated cocktails – we ended up staying for 2 drinks and nattering with the bartenders. Finally we decided to head off to the (in)famous Apocalypse Now nightclub which seemed to be the ‘in’ place to go based on any websites we could find. Sadly it was pretty naff, mostly full of bored and boring western males in shirts and chinos failing to dance with their accompanying sexy asian ladies, although there were a few younger Vietnamese couples and groups who seemed to be having a whale of a time. We should have gone to Lush which we spotted the previous night next to Bar Carmen. Oh well, we’ll know for next time…
Thursday 15th – Saturday 17th December: Siem Reap
Siem Reap is the jumping-off point for the famous Angkor temples including the astonishing Angkor Wat. We flew in from Da Nang to Siem Reap’s very modern airport, visa on arrival for $20, and free airport transfer to the hotel provided by Mr Be in his cool Cambodian-style tuk-tuk:
On arrival at the highly recommended Angkor Spirit Hotel we discovered that they were having issues with their booking system and were full, so we would have to spend the first of our three nights in a sister hotel, but we would have a tuk tuk and driver at our disposal. This sounded OK but turned out to be a bit rubbish as the ‘sister hotel’ wasn’t as nice, the wifi was broken and the air conditioning unit blew out a load of bugs that had obviously been nesting in it. Nice.
Still, Mr Be’s mate came to take us into town where we had dinner on ‘Pub Street’. Siem Reap town, although it’s the administrative centre for the province, seems to be mainly a tourist town where everything is priced in dollars and there is the inevitable Irish Bar. It didn’t seem to have a lot to recommend it but at least we got dinner and a beer. Mr Be collected us from the crap hotel at 8 the next morning to take us back to our ‘real’ hotel for breakfast. It was very lovely, with a decent pool for doing lengths in and a good restaurant where we set ourselves up for the day and worked, enjoying the warmth after chilly Hoi An.
The next morning we were up super early for sunrise at Angkor Wat – 4.40am pickup by Mr Be and his tuk-tuk.
Approach to the main temple as the sun comes up.
Morning!
The incredible temples at Angkor
Inside Angkor Wat
This stone apsara has shiny boobs, possibly from being groped by passers-by.
Steep steps
Tank
The moat around Angkor Wat.
The approach to Angkor Thom
Me and Mr Be.
Breakfast
The Bayon, Angkor Thom. Look for the faces!
Randall climbing the walls
Hello!!
Randall doesn’t have the patience to wait on the stairs.
Terrace of the Elephants
More Elephants
The next day, against our better judgement, we were persuaded to take a trip to the floating villages on the Tonle Sap lake.
There is now no way to visit the lake and floating villages independently as there is controlled entry to the port/jetty/dock whatever and there is only one operator running tour boats for a fixed price per person. While the floating village lifestyle is pretty interesting (the houses etc get towed around depending on the season) the whole boat tour is aimed at extracting dollars, for example there is a ‘shop’ selling water and noodles that you are requested to buy ‘for the school’ which sounds reasonable enough, but the ‘school’ is a joke, basically a piece of theatre for the tourists – certainly no teaching going on; we met some volunteers in our hotel who were working in *actual* schools in the villages and they said kids were always being pulled out of class to go and row themselves around the tourist boats in a mixing bowl/handle snakes at the croc farm/generally hang around looking cute for money. Sadly there seem to be plenty of tour groups who are into the whole ‘children as tourist attractions’ thing.
Our ‘private’ boat.
At least these days the inhabitants have modern communication: (3 month old mobile phone mast):
We were quite glad to finish the trip to be honest. Mr Be was waiting for us with his tuk tuk and drove us back to the hotel from where were were collected and taken to the bus to Phnom Penh.
Saturday 10th – Wednesday 14th December: Hoi An
We arrived at Da Nang station at 10.30 am after a rather bumpy night and immediately bundled into a taxi to Hoi An with our two cabin-mates. The taxi driver thought it was amusing to play us various versions of Xmas carols, including a Vietnamese version of Jingle Bells and a hard house version of same, complete with sinister Santa voice shouting ‘Ho Ho Ho – Have YOU been a good boy?’. Think it would play well in Fire.
We got dropped off at our hotel, the excellent Thanh Van 2, just a little outside the UNESCO World Heritage site; the old quarter of Hoi An.
Rather nice hotel room with balcony overlooking the (unheated) pool.
After a relaxing morning in the hotel and an afternoon nap to recover from the train journey we headed into the Old Quarter for dinner at Streets, a local social enterprise comprising a restaurant and training programme. The food, surroundings and service were superb.
It was raining when we left but we had a quick wander around. The roads near the river were all flooded – apparently it was a high spring tide; the ‘main’ floods had finished the previous month. Indeed, the next day when we went back in daylight the river was back within its banks; however the paper lanterns floating on the flooded streets were quite lovely, and the whole area was beautifully atmospheric:
The water creeping up the street.
Paper lanterns floating over the flooded pavement as the water rises.
Aside from general tourism, Hoi An’s specialities are 24-hour tailoring and shoemaking. As Randall had worn his favourite shoes out completely and needed a new pair we popped into a shoe shop opposite the Streets restaurant. Within 10 minutes he had selected a style, selected a colour of leather and been measured up, with a promise that they would be ready the next day. Impressive. After wandering the streets for a while, and getting lots of attention from young Vietnamese women who all coveted my umbrella (it was raining, and my umbrella is really rather good) we had a last drink in Before and Now then headed back to the hotel.
Sunday was definitely a day of rest and work. I had a massage and also a swim in the (unheated) pool which I thought was quite brave of me! In the afternoon we went to collect Randall’s shoes which turned out to be too tight…fortunately this was not a problem for our accommodating new friends who vowed to make new ones for the next day. We also dropped off his old, favourite (stinky) shoes as they claimed they could copy them, and I ordered some casual clothes for travelling from the shoe-maker’s sister’s shop (in the way of these things) to be collected the next day too.
In the evening we went for dinner in town and met Mr Phuong, a Vietnamese man who runs an informal tour to his village for interesting/interested people that he meets in the restaurant. We agreed to meet him at our hotel on Tuesday with a rented moped so we could follow him to his village half an hours ride away.
It was an early start the next morning to catch the sunrise over the temple/ruins at My Son. They date from 4th to 14th Century but were trashed by US bombing during the Vietnam War, so that the main 24 metre high temple is just a pile of bricks. The bits left standing are still impressive and another UNESCO site.
Apparently the Cham people who built the temples over many centuries were master brick makers (is there a name for brickmakers?). The restorers at the site tried to renovate one of the walls using modern bricks and within 20 years the new ones were covered in damp and mildew whereas the 1000-year old bricks adjoining them were still perfectly dry.
Body of a god (Shiva in this case)
Peering into a shell casing from the war – there was bombing and fighting around the temples, much destroyed, craters and bullet holes still evident.
It was still early when we got back so we wandered into town:
The centre of the old quarter is pedestrian and bicycle (and other ‘primitive vehicle’) only.
The river was behaving itself.
Back within its banks
Inventive way for dealing with the floods
Secret agent cycle rickshaw
Lunch break
Japanese covered bridge
I ordered some more clothes from a different tailor where I had seen a coat I liked, and we collected Randall’s shoes, both pairs of which were a cinderella-style perfect fit – the copy of his old shoes (which we had been trying and failing to replace for ages) was really impressive. My items from the first tailor were OK – a couple needed some tweaking so we went for a drink next door and then to try and find something to take to the school in Mr Phuong’s village (we found an art shop selling cheap poster paint and brushes – result!) before picking up the fixed and finished items.
It was with some trepidation that the next day we launched ourselves onto Vietnamese roads on a tiny 50cc scooter (I say ‘we’ – Randall drove and I sat on the back trying not to look at the oncoming traffic), but the visit to Mr Phuong’s house and village was definitely worth it. We got a fascinating history lesson about Vietnam – Mr Phuong had fought for South Vietnam against the communists and had subsequently spend a year in a ‘re-education camp’. He explained how, like most civil wars, the North/South, Communist/Free split had driven families apart and still has a huge influence on what jobs and education a person can get.
Family temple in their home.
Apparently under the communists although religion was banned, venerating spirits, ancestors and ghosts was OK because it came under ‘Cultural Practices and Folklore’.
Boiled rice drying – to be made into rice wine, another element of the family business!
Fermenting rice
Down the hatch!
Mr Phuong holding forth
Fishing on the river
Making paan from betel nuts with Phuong mere
Mama Phuong
Pigeon trap – trapping them for pets apparently. Another family business!
Dragon fruit in the marketplace
Fruit seller.
Leaves of tobacco – another cottage industry in the village.
Tobacco rolled and ready for the wholesaler
The village primary school
The level of the flood waters from 2009 on the school wall.
We arrived at nap time!
Village War Memorial, commemorating those who fought and died on all sides.
Bullet holes in one of the only surviving buildings from before the war.
Local equivalent of WI whist drive.
Mr Phuong’s family temple
Mr Phuong and grandson
Mr Phuong’s grandson and friend, beating each other up.
Amazing lunch of baked tuna, rice spring rolls, stir-fried morning-glory with garlic and winter melon & shrimp soup. Yum!
Mr Phuong’s dining table, covered in postcards and travel books so he can ‘travel in his mind’.
Not quite La Dolce Vita, but fun all the same!
Wednesday was time to leave Hoi An for Siem Reap via Da Nang airport, but not before a morning Vietnamese cookery class at Thuan Tinh island cookery school.
After pick-up from the hotel, our group of 9 was led around Hoi An market by Ms Hoa and Bin the chef who picked out ingredients.
Onions, shallots and garlic for sale at Hoi An Market
Veggies.
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Oils and sauces stall (we bought fish sauce,soy sauce and chilli sauce)
Assorted noodles for sale.
Ducks
Half hour boat ride to the island from central Hoi An
Interesting ‘water closet’
Punt trip along the canals of Thuan Tinh island
We even got fetching hats to wear.
Our cooking station – luckily for us, someone else had done all the chopping while we were out and about on the island.
Ingredients for making stock. Mmmmmmm.
The unusual sight of Randall cooking.
More beautifully pre-prepared bits and pieces.
Chef Bin in action.
Randall rolling a spring roll with great concentration.
Yummy rice paper spring roll – result!
Randall showing off his crispy pancakes.
Frying the beef for the beef salad.
Mmmmmmmmmm!
Proud chef
Chef #2, drinking the stock from the Pho we made.
Tuesday 6th – Friday 9th December: Han Oi
Arrived in Hanoi on Tuesday evening – ‘visa on arrival’ process at the airport fairly straightforward – we had the letter from the embassy saying we were entitled to a multi-entry visa but to be honest we got the impression that even without it, if you had the dollars they would have the stamp. Another full-page visa sticker…starting to run out of pages! In the queue we met a guy who was working in Hanoi who advised us that the taxi service into town was a fixed price service so to ignore all the touts, which we did, but our driver still tried to rip us off by asking for another 100,000 VND (about £3.30 or about 1/3 again of the cost of the ride) for the road toll – we got around this by taking a photo of his taxi license when he wasn’t paying attention…that got him to back down 🙂 Still, after laid back and super honest Luang Prabang it was a bit of a culture shock.
The Old Quarter – where our hostel was located – is a maze of mayhem – winding streets that change name every 30m or so because they are named after what they sell, plus thousands of mopeds, the odd car and bicycle all competing for space on the pavement and road with pedestrians…it seems to work though (as in we only saw 2 accidents in 4 days!) – the trick to crossing the road being to launch yourself into the traffic and everyone does their best to avoid you.
The buildings in the Old Quarter range from shacks to gracious old colonial buildings (even if the colour-scheme is distinctly Vietnamese:)
The utilities were also somewhat Heath Robinson:
While most of the Old Quarter was fairly authentically about local people going about their business, the edge near the Hoan Kiem lake was where you could find all sorts of tourist tat for sale, including this rather splendid ensemble:
However the Hoan Kiem Lake itself was very much a locals’ haunt, with Vietmanese people jogging, power-walking and simply strolling arm-in-arm around it at all times of day and evening. At one end is an island with the Temple of the Jade Mountain on it:
The rather lovely pagoda of the temple:
The Old Quarter in the evening was just as hectic; Hanoi seems to be one of those cities where even the locals dine out every evening, so there is a glut of super-cheap pavement eating stalls serving various noodle dishes, where you sit on a tiny child’s plastic stool and slurp your noodles with the locals:
or like us you can stumble upon the only tapas restaurant in the city, run by a guy from Valencia and his Vietnamese wife, and eat huevos rotos, bravas and tortilla de patatas.
Later we found this excellently named restaurant where we had a few beers and watched the chaos unfold on the street below – my favourite moment being when two small children decided it would be a good idea to have a game of badminton on what passed for the pavement.
In a bid to be a bit more authentic, the next day we had lunch at Cafe Smile, a branch of the Hoa Sua foundation, an organisation that trains ‘disadvantaged’ young people for careers in the hospitality industry – a bit like Jamie Oliver’s ‘Fifteen’ (except ‘disadvantaged’ kids in Vietnam don’t get universal free-at-point-of-access education, healthcare, unemployment benefit, legal representation etc).
Overall they did a good job – the layout of the place was good and the service was courteous and efficient if a little nervous. The food was tasty and well presented:
and the pastries (Hoa Sua started out as a bakery/patisserie) were superb.
If anything it could have been a bit cleaner but obviously after they receive my feedback I’m sure they will sort that out 🙂
After completing our Xmas shopping next door at Craftlink Vietnam – a fair trade organisation that helps traditional handicrafts producers market and sell their wares – we crossed the road to the Temple of Literature, a Confucian temple which we had been recommended as one of the ‘places to see’ in Hanoi. It was interesting, but mostly interesting in a rather sad and cynical way as we reflected on the similarities between humanist philosphers like Confucius, Buddha and Jesus whose teachings on living and ruling ethically and with humanity have been twisted into weird rituals that require priests and incense in order to interpret them. The astonishingly tacky gift shop in the midst of this temple to learning was the cherry on the cake.
Still, it was interesting to learn about the history of the place. We particularly liked the stelae on turtle’s backs that recorded the names of all those who had achieved their doctorates between 1442 and 1779.
The lake of literature was a bit murky. Not sure what this is symbolic of.
ll
Randall musing that a stone stele on a turtle definitely wins over getting a copy of your thesis in the British Library when it comes to being given kudos for getting your doctorate:
No idea what the book thing says.
We think this is the great hot stove that you have to be able to lift in order to pass out of the Shaolin monastery. Or maybe I’m getting confused with Kung Fu:
This rather splendid item is apparently a sign requiring you to dismount from your horse before you enter the temple. You’ll be pleased to know that we remembered to do this.
The other side of the Hoan Kiem lake from the Old Quarter seemed like a completely different city; all wide boulevards and gracious buildings, not to mention high-end luxury brands. This is the Opera House:
And a mittel-europa-style Grand Cafe just opposite the opera house:
In the small park next to the Opera House we saw what we thought was a wedding photo-shoot, so were surprised at how harsh and physical the stylist was being with the bride and groom until we saw another, and another, until we realised it was actually a fashion shoot for meringue-style frocks. Very strange.
That evening we ate at another ‘foundation’ restaurant: KOTO or ‘Know one, teach one’. This is a VERY professional operation that has catered to world leaders visiting Vietnam – highly recommended if you are in Hanoi and we fully intend to check out their restaurant in Saigon. I had big ravioli stuffed with Ha Long Bay crab and Randall had Stir Fried Duck with chilli, roasted peanuts and basil served with steamed rice – both were superb and the puddings (dark chocolate mousse and passionfruit marshmallow respectively) were also excellent.
As I had singularly failed to get a massage so far, even in Thailand, land of the massage, I booked myself in to Just Massage, another foundation providing skills to disadvantaged youth, and got a fantastic 60 minute Swedish massage for 175,000 VND, or about £5.30. The place is in a lovely old colonial house; all dark wood and high ceilings. It’s a bit out of the centre in Tay Ho which is a residential area on the West Lake, so while I got massaged Randall went and explored:
After my massage we caught a taxi back to our hostel to collect our luggage then on to the station as we were booked on the 19.00 overnight train to Da Nang. We’d booked the 4-berth soft sleeper (see The Man in Seat 61 for information about trains) so we knew we would be sharing – always some trepidation about sharing an enclosed space with strangers of course, but our cabin-mates turned out to be Christine and Marco, a German couple from Leipzig, so the evening passed quickly in a haze of beer, chatter and amusing toilet experiences:
Friday 2nd – Tuesday 6th December: Luang Prabang
Lovely, laid-back Luang Prabang was a delight. We stayed in the Villa Merry Number 1 which we had booked on-line;
when we arrived the charming but very business-like owner managed to upsell us to a superior room for an extra $10 a night…definitely worth it:
Our huge room with attached dressing room 🙂
It was very comfortable, and every morning we had free breakfast (eggs, bread, coffee and fresh fruit) on the hotel terrace overlooking the Nam Khan river, a tributary of the Mekong.
The city is small but bustling, although very chilled out, no hassle from tuk-tuk drivers etc, and very honest people who always give you the right change (even when you mistake a 100,000 VND note for a 10,000).
The lovely old streets of Luang Prabang – bicycles, low-rise buildings, bougainvilla and the odd brightly-coloured tuk-tuk.
Oh, and flags – lots of flags:
We noticed lots of excellent and sophisticated restaurants, and there is quite a vibrant cafe and bar scene over a couple of streets in the old city, but they manage to avoid the ‘Australians in Bali’ syndrome by having a curfew – all bars in the old city (which is a UNESCO world heritage site) to be shut by 11.30. I realise I am showing my age when I say that I think that this is a very good thing.
This is the marvellously ricketty bamboo bridge over the Nam Khan river (just round the corner the Nam Khan meets the Mekong). In rainy season you cross on a bamboo raft:
Another ‘to do’ in Luang Prabang is the tribal crafts night market, where mostly Hmong tribal crafts are sold.
As well as wandering along the side of the Nam Khan and Mekong rivers stopping for Lao Coffee (yum) in one of the great restaurants with riverside terraces:
We paid a visit to the Royal Palace – a museum now as the monarchy was kicked out in 1975.
Although unfortunately you can’t take photos inside the actual palace, I rather liked it – it was a liveable size and I think I could have been quite comfortable there. One of the displays was of gifts given to the royal family over the years by various nations; my favourite was a paperweight containing actual specks of moon rock, a gift from Mr Richard Nixon.
In the evening after drinks at the Coconut Garden we skipped dinner and instead grabbed a sandwich:
and sat in the square watching an outdoor cinema screening of Lumpinee – a quite shocking and moving Thai film about kids in Thai boxing part of the Luang Prabang Film Festival.
This is the road bridge – also ricketty – near our hotel. The wooden planks are the ‘pavement’. You can just about see our hotel tucked away on the river bank, but close enough to hear the traffic rattling across the bridge at all hours.
And this is the fantastic street-food stall near our hotel, serving the usual rice and noodle dishes as well as fruit smoothies and crepes. Yum. We probably ate here 7 or 8 times…
Although we did go for a slightly more sophisticated dining experience at Cafe Ban Wat Sene:
On our last morning we did a bit of volunteering; we’d donated some money to ‘Big Brother Mouse‘ the day before, and had been told about the English reading and conversation classes that they run from 9 to 11 every morning. They really like it when ‘farang’ come and help out as it encourages more people to attend, so we said we would go along. It was an interesting experience as it was totally unstructured, we were just given a seat at a crowded table and expected to get on with it. The attendees were mainly teenagers and young adults including several novice monks, and they had varying degrees of proficiency, so we just did what we could.
Luckily I had come prepared with props – a Welsh flag (which I’d had for the Rugby in NZ) and a Spanish flag (left over from the footy World Cup last year when we were in Serbia) plus assorted family snaps, so managed to get through the 2 hours of conversation practice without too much trouble and learned a bit about Laos, buddhism and the day in the life of a novice monk in the process.
Interesting fact about Laos: For their partial support of North Vietnam during the Vietnam War, Laos is the most heavily-bombed country per capita, in the world, hit by an average of one B-52bombload every eight minutes, 24 hours a day, between 1964 and 1973.
US bombers dropped more ordnance on Laos in this period than was dropped during the whole of the Second World War.
There is still a massive unexploded ordnance problem in the country due to the use of cluster bombs. The Plain of Jars is currently on the list to become a UNESCO World Heritage Site but won’t be assigned this status until the UXO is cleared.
Thursday 1sts – Friday 2nd December: Slowly down the Mekong
There are two options for travelling by river from Houay Xai to Luang Prabang: the fast boat and the slow boat.
The fast boat zips down to Luang Prabang in 7 hours including an hour’s lunch break at Pak Beng – however by all accounts it’s a fairly unpleasant, not to mention potentially fatal, experience; the operators pack you in, and non-asian (or non-constantly yoga-ed) knee and other joints don’t fare so well under such conditions. Also hitting a rock or standing wave at 50mph and the boat disintegrating is a genuine risk – lonely planet reckon there are fatalities every year and frankly looking at the way they drive it’s not surprising.
The slow boat is a different prospect – long boats with more space that take 2 days to do the trip, with a stopover at Pak Beng village overnight.
What a slow boat looks like – they all crowd up to the jetty to punt for passengers.
They are usually family businesses – the family lives aboard.
We saw a woman cooking on an open fire on the back of this slow boat. Erk!
We opted for neither of these, instead ‘going private’ with the semi-luxury, fully catered, forest-lodge-overnight trip. Well after all that trekking and zipping we deserved it!
After an evening of recovery on Wednesday night, we had an 8am pick up from our hotel by the Luang Say Songthaew.
The porters boarded our bags and we boarded ourselves – as everyone else was faffing around with chairs an tables deciding on the best spot, Randall and I investigated and found a cushioned area at the back which we bagsied as our private cabin – we were later joined by a Swiss couple who were very jolly and amenable to sharing a couple of bottles of wine with us; we definitely had the VIP area!
Our boat. Note the uniformed minions and the bar.
Randall in our VIP area
Me in our VIP Cabin
As well as the tourist boats the port jetty was packed with cargo ships, mainly transporting trucks to and from Thailand across the river – it was pretty chaotic:
This slow boat is about to have a prang with a truck ferry.
Trucks boarding the truck ferry
Truck ferry across the Mekong
Assorted traffic to be avoided.
Riverside scenery
More scenery
More scenery
Day 1 was broken up by a trip to a village to see how local people live:
Arriving at the village
Beastie-proof village food store
Village piggies
Village ducks
Then after another couple of hours on the river we arrived a beautiful Luang Say Lodge at Pak Beng:
Gateway to the lodge
Welcome drink on the terrace
Terrace of the lodge
Our bungalow overlooking the river
Our bungalow
The gorgeous view from our bungalow across the river
Civilised dinner at the lodge.
After a lovely evening and night we had an early breakfast and were back on the boat by 8am.
First stop for day 2 was a village that depends on the river for everything as there is no road nearby. The boat company has a deal with the village in that they maintain the village school and contribute in other ways in return for being able to troop groups of tourists through. The villagers also obviously get the chance to flog stuff – the speciality of this village being silk weaving:
Typical Laotian village house on stilts
Village children
Randall tries the local rice ‘whisky’. Brave man.
Silk weaving in progress
Very good salesperson.
Confused small child
Village temple
Then it was back on the boat for lunch and another couple of hours motoring, before arriving at the Pak Ou caves
Entrance to Pak Ou caves
A few of the 4000+ Buddha images
We got back on the boat just in time for beautiful sunshine to accompany the last hours of our trip to Luang Prabang:
Monday 28th – Wednesday 30th November: The Gibbon Experience
After a 5 hour bus trip from Chiang Mai to Chiang Kong on the banks of the Mekong, we exited Thailand,
Thai customs house from the river
crossed the mighty Mekong on a long-tail boat,
Luggage piled on the boat
and entered Houay Xai, Laos;
The dock, with road leading to main street via customs house
30-day visa on arrival @ $36. Houay Xai (Sai/Say/ assorted other spellings) is a bit of a one-horse border town but the base for The Gibbon Experience and the starting point for the Fast and Slow boats down the Mekong to Luang Prabang.
This is the view from our hostel window – that’s Thailand on the other side of the river!
We dropped into the offices of The Gibbon Experience to confirm our start time in the morning then pre-ordered our sandwiches (we’d been warned the food on TGE was not up to much, which turned out not to be the case) from The Mad Sandwich People – a couple of Lao in a small shop with comedy signs pre-written on big, hand-shaped bits of card that they waved frantically at all new arrivals off the boat: “We have sandwiches”, “We have everything for Slow Boat”, “We have everything for Gibbon Experience” etc. Very enterprising and entertaining.
Sandwiches ordered, we had an unsuccessful dinner attempt at The River City Restaurant (avoid)
and a better one at The River View, a ramshackle, cat-and-kitten-infested family business with a swish-looking new hostel/hotel being built out the back between the street and their river-facing terrace and a nice line in thin-crust pizza, pasta and burgers as well as the usual staples. This will definitely be the place to stay as well as eat when the building work is finished.
River View
Up early the next morning to drop our bags at the hostel luggage room (actually the owners’ house), collect our sandwiches and gloves – we’d been warned that we needed gloves, and the same gardening gloves seemed to be on sale in every shop in town – grab some breakfast and turn up at The Gibbon Experience by 8.30 for a safety briefing. The safety briefing lasted all of about 20 minutes, most of which was a promotional video, then 8 of us bundled into the back of a double-cabin HiLux which had been converted to a SongThaew by having a rather Heath Robinson contraption welded to it that also served as a roof-rack and very possibly a roll-cage.
After a couple of hours of fairly hairy road-driving we had a tea-and-wee break in a small cafe/shop next to a river:
after which to all of our surprise we then drove down to the river, crossed it (which was a surprise to the big fat ducks) and drove for another hour on 4-wheel drive territory to get to the village at the entrance to the Bokeo nature reserve.
From here we started our hike into the forest:
Randall inspects the buttress roots of a tree.
Loo with a View – on the way to the waterfall.
After a reasonably challenging 2 hour hike we arrived at the waterfall/swimming hole and all changed into swimming stuff; Randall found a leech stuck to him – ick. It had obviously gone down the gaiters, up the tracksuit bottoms and down the sock – tenacious little bugger. He wasn’t the only person to have one and of course we all got paranoid about them after that. Didn’t stop us from all jumping off a rock into the cold water though:
Swimming at the waterfall: ‘pedicure fish’ nibbling you, cold water hydrotherapy under the waterfall, and mini-zip rope swing. VERY cold water!
Rope zip/swing – long bamboo pole and plenty of upper body strength needed to retrieve it from the middle of the pool each time!
Then, after a steep climb up from the waterfall it was time for our first zipline experience:
Wheeeeeeeee!
Delicate arrival (clonk/ouch!)
We soon discovered what the gloves were for: if you didn’t make it all the way to the end of the zip you had to pull yourself in to the end by quickly grabbing the cable in front of you once you had come to a stop (but before you started to roll backwards), turning to face backwards, and pulling ‘hand-over-hand’ into the end platform. One of our party didn’t grab the cable in time and rolled halfway back down the cable before she stopped! We were all willing her in as she ‘hand-over-hand’-ed but our lovely guide Lu helped her out by zipping out to her and pulling her back. Phew!
Randall zipping!
After 3 zips with short walks in between we arrived at the final short zip into the tree house. That’s right…the tree house was 50 metres up a tree, and the only way in and out was by zipping:
The way out!
Exit #2.
Home sweet tree.
It really *is* in a tree…
Sink and shower in the ‘downstairs’ (trapdoor in the main platform floor) bathroom. Plumbed and with water piped from a spring.
View from the shower in the morning…mist from the valley floor.
The lovely (but cold) shower.
3 impossible things before breakfast.
As well as zipping out of the tree we had to zip three wires to get to the kitchen area back at the waterfall where they served us breakfast. Luckily we were fortified with fruit and coffee in the treehouse first, as the guides came zipping across bearing hot kettles (no cooking/fires allowed in the tree house for obvious reasons)!
Breakfast is served.
The long and winding (and steep) road from the kitchen.
Bamboo thicket
Amazing tree roots
Another stream to tramp through…thank goodness for gaiters! Leeches be damned.
Loo stop at the kitchen near the way in to the next tree house.
Water supply to the kitchen for this tree house, pumped from a mountain spring.
Next tree house…quite high up (50m or so again) from the valley floor!
REALLY high up!!
Zipping into the treehouse.
The ‘kitchen’ of our second treehouse.
Second wire *in* to the tree house, so you could do the ‘long loop’ out and back in again that took in two long zips.
Anna gracefully landing on the..errrrr…landing.
View from my bed!
Randall on the scariest launch platform of the 3 days…out of the second tree house. You have to climb down to this wooden step suspended 50 metres above the ground and then just leap into space! (Attached to the wire first of course, but still…).
Randall zipping back in to the bottom platform on the tree house.
Bathroom in second treehouse – quite a gap between the floorboards!
Shower in second treehouse
Reverse angle
The loo – rather close to the edge…
…with a view 50 metres straight down!
Morning mist
Helen coming in for landing!
Treehouse for lightweights – not high up and with a tin roof – pah! (for the ‘classic’ tour not the ‘waterfall’ tour that we did).
Way out to the village – a terrifying ‘double zip’, the first stretch of which was 600m long, up to 200 metres off the valley floor…
…and ended up at a rickety tree platform over 100m off the ground, with the second zip launching off the same platform down a wooden ladder from the landing platform. On landing I hugged the tree and refused to let go until someone came up and unclipped my safety line off the zipline and on to the tree platform safety line! Eeeek Was very glad to zip my way off that one!
Finally it was time to hang up our harnesses and hike our way out of the forest reserve via the village’s fields where people were harvesting and threshing:
to the village where one enterprising family had set up a shop selling cold Beerlao and soft drinks to hot, sweaty, stinky and exhausted by happy Gibbon Experience veterans:
Purveyor of well-deserved cold ones to sweaty foreigners, with associated small child.
Yay! We did it!
Helen and Randall on the road 