Burn the evidence

The Hanoi Backpackers was of course completely booked out, I checked before I left, but after wandering around that area I managed to find a really nice place for only 140,000 a night – exactly the same price as a dorm bed in the backpackers, and just down the road! It’s run by a really nice family, the room is huge, has a big bed, massive bathroom, and is nice and clean. Absolutely no complaints.

Decided that I’ve been eating asian food long enough and it was time for something western. Went to the backpackers to check it out and get a feed. It was pretty dead to be honest. I’d heard that the place is pretty packed out, but maybe 7pm was a bit early. I got myself the chicken and mushroom pie – first pie in 3 months!!! It was ok. Wrong type of pastry altogether, but reasonable effort nonetheless.

Also saw the first Olympic coverage since I’ve been here, and of course it had to be handball. If ever there was a sport not worthy of being in the Olympics, handball would be it. Dodgeball is a more Olympic worthy sport! It would also make for some sweet press photos. This sentiment was shared by the small crowd of unimpressed sports enthusiasts clustered round the single TV in the hostel, watching France beat Tunisia in a game clearly developed in a primary school playground, and largely unchanged from there.

After dinner I just decided to wander around the town and see if I could find some sort of nightlife. There’s bound to be some bars/clubs in a city this size right? The city really comes to life at night – almost impossible to walk anywhere due the the incredible volume of scooters that fill every street and the footpaths as well.

The least amount of bikes ever

I managed to accidentally stumble across a bar that was offering FREE BEER from 8:30pm-9:00pm. It was 8:58, so in I went! No kidding, they were actually giving away free beer, no strings attached. I am heading back there tonight at 8:30 precisely! I ran into a crowd of French medical students doing an internship for a month in Vietnam. How cool is that!! One of the guys was named Amaury and had been living in NZ for 6 months, so instantly invited me to stay with him when I got to France. Badass!!

Ended up dancing the night away with them at Flow Bar. Met a cool Japanese girl – first person I’ve met from Japan so far in my two and a half months! They’re all off to Sapa today (everyone comes and everyone goes, right?), but looks like Hanoi might not be so bad.

Now I’m starving and time to go find some more food. Unfortunately I’m apparently living in the noodle district so rice is very hard to come by. It’s like a 10 minute walk to find anything that’s not noodle soup. The soup is pretty cheap though……

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Holy shit Vietnam!!!!

Took the bus up here with Mat from Australia. Absolutely tops bloke. Really nice to be talking to another Australasian again, even though now my speech has rocketed back up to 150% speed. Damn you Aussie man!!

The scenery here is unbelievable. That photo is barely changed from what we saw as we were riding back from seeing Tam Coc – the “Halong Bay of the rice fields”.

Once again I was lucky enough to meet someone who had an actual plan for the place I was thinking of visiting. We rented scooters in the morning and rode out to see Tac Coc – “The Halong Bay of the rice fields”. We chilled out on a small metal boat, while a Vietnamese lady rowed us with her feet.

The scenery was mind-blowing.

After the river trip, we rode out to see a temple built into the side of a cliff. We decided after seeing it that we might as well try and climb to the top. It was a hell of a climb – razor sharp rocks, and pulling yourself up some pretty steep faces, but I got right to the summit. The view was incredible!!

At the bottom of the temple we stopped to take some photos of the scenery and Mat managed to fall into the pond with his bag and everything. The iPhone cracked on the way in but was still working, and the camera in the bag managed to survive without getting wet. He lost his sunglasses though which is a real pain when you’re on the bike with no eye protection.

After that we just rode out into the great blue yonder. No plan, just riding any direction that took our fancy.

We rode through so many small villages where the roads were about 4 feet wide, and all the kids came out to see us and say hello. When we stopped off for gas, Mat bought a little bag of candy for the kids there and they were so excited, it was too cute.

On the way back into town, the sky started clouding over something fierce. There was a huge storm coming, but unlike the skies in NZ, there was so much texture in the clouds. I took a couple of beautiful photos before the rain started pelting down.

We stashed everything electronic under our bike seats and just kept going. Since he didn’t have any sunglasses we couldn’t go too fast, so just cruised back into town at an easy pace. The locals all had their ponchos on and were giving us a lot of strange looks, but it was amazing. When you’re travelling with nowhere to be, even getting soaked in the rain is awesome.

No nightlife in Ninh Binh, so we just got some great food and sat on the street drinking “bia hoi” – the cheap home-brewed beer you can buy on every street corner.

The next day we did the same thing again – just picked a direction and took off. We did a massive 3 hour loop around the town. I was putting on sunscreen religiously, but because I’m taking the doxycycline it didn’t really help at all and I got really burnt. Sorry malaria, but melanoma is a real risk and I don’t think I can take the tablets any more.

I was in a climbing mood, so when we came across some of the massive rocks sitting out in the middle of the fields, I gave one a go. They are a climbers dream – huge jagged handholds, and razor sharp edges for your shoes to cling on to. I absolutely destroyed the soles of my $5 Thai shoes, so I had to chuck them out, and time for a new pair.

When we got right out into the sticks, we started seeing signs for Thit Cho everywhere – dog meat. I was keen to find a place to stop for lunch, but Mat didn’t want to risk eating dog by mistake!

That night, same thing again, and now we’re on a bus bound for Hanoi. Missed out on booking accommodation at the Hanoi Backpackers, but I’m going to try and find some cheap guesthouse in the same area. Best of luck to me!

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The town is quite beautiful, if a little sleepy and quiet. Definitely no night-life, and quite hard to find somewhere to eat if you don’t start walking in the right direction.

I’d mainly planned to be here to get off the beaten track, catch up on photos and blog posts, and take the slow way up to Hanoi.

Failed on all three counts.

Turns out this hostel is insanely popular, so tons of people arriving / leaving every day. Met a great Welsh couple and went out drinking with them at possibly the only bar in town. There was no one in it when we arrived, but we sat down and started drinking. They put on this dance-remix of the Happy Birthday song. We think this might have been their only English language song, because they put it on again for us when it finished. And then again. And again. Six times in total, about 5 minutes long each time. We were just looking for chopsticks to stab ourselves through the eardrums when they finally put the normal music back on.

Went out to the beach with them the next day and snuck into this resort for lunch and a swim. Not too shabby!

New guy in the dorms last night from Australia. He’s going exactly the same way as me, so I’m catching the bus with him up to Ninh Binh tonight. It’s further than I was planning on going in one stretch, but my visa runs out on the 8th so probably should get a move-on up to Hanoi and Halong Bay!

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There is love everywhere around me, I think we watch the news and sometimes we forget. The old man lying in a hammock holding hands with his wife and just staring into each other. The grandmother who ran my hotel in Hue and her two daughters. The man swinging his hammer as he builds the railway track.

Every song about heartbreak is just a song about love. The world is beating with the pulse of every soul reaching out to each other. I’m in a bus built for 12 with 21 people in it, and another guy just got on next to me. It’s love that makes it all work, otherwise what’s the point?

Smile and the world smiles with you. There is no second half of that quote. I watch the road drift by as kids fly kites that look like giant octopuses in the sky.

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Yesterday I spent the whole day doing photos and just hanging at the hotel. In the morning I rented a scooter and drove 26km to the beach to take a photo for Linnea’s 1st birthday. I was the first person to post on Facebook about it. Uncle #1!!

Now it’s time to go. Goodbye Hue, it has been an amazing time.

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We took a bus midway between local and tourist. We were picked up at our hotel in Dalat and delivered by minivan to the bus station where two seats had been reserved for us on the bus. This was where the tourist bus part ended. The remaining seats were piled high with locals until they were sliding them in horizontally along the top. We probably didn’t make too many friends by having a giant helium shark balloon occupying the usable airspace above our heads.

The drive was absolutely gorgeous – winding mountain roads, stunning vistas, clear skies, and continious potholes. When we finally arrived in Lak Lake, the entire bus (who were continuing on to Buan Ma Thuot) looked in horror at us thinking they would all have to exit the bus just to let us off. In a stroke of genius and pure Indiana Jones, Marieke climbed straight out the window and dragged me with her. The entire bus nodded its approval and six Vietnamese devoured our two vacated seats.

The town was deserted. We wandered around lost and finally found an excellent hotel with aircon for a mere 150,000. The aircon wasn’t working, so I went down to talk to the desk staff. He couldn’t speak any English, but after a moment’s consideration, leapt to his laptop and pulled up Google Translate. I have never had a conversation like this before, and it was fantastic. As he was typing, the English side was constantly changing. I would write “The remote for the air conditioner doesn’t work.” He would reply “The fish are…”, then it would change to “Several times the..”, then “Certainly for the bus you must…”, then finally “I will find some new batteries.” It was spellbinding to watch. At one point, his reply fully completed, the English side read (and I kid you not), “Ireland’s major export. The fruit trees cannot.” Google, I thank you.

After a well deserved cold shower, we wandered down to the lake to find where we could book an elephant ride. I knew that there was a resort by the lake, and was worried that we had overpaid our accommodation by not checking the lake out first. As it turned out, the rooms were far inferior, had less hilarious desk staff, and cost 7 times the price. Well done us. Booking the ride was a simple matter, and we went for lunch at the resort restaurant. The resort appeared to have gone out of its way to employ the surliest people in one of the most smiling countries in the world, but we managed to order some very nice food, and the world’s two smallest coffees.

We sat around in the lovely resort garden until our motorcycle came and picked us up for the transfer to Elephant Central. There, right in front of her, is a full grown elephant. All of Marieke’s dreams are coming true and she is speechless. The one thing she has wanted to do on this entire trip, and it’s just about to happen. She goes up to the elephant and introduces herself. The elephant seems quite pleased to be acknowledged and spoken to, rather than just sat upon, and says “Hello” back, in a sort of standing-there, swaying-its-trunk kind of way. The driver arrives, jumps on the elephants back, and brings her round to the platform. We get on, and the trek has begun!

Meka is not at all excited about riding an elephant

The second thing I was worried about was that taking an elephant around a lake might be quite boring compared to say galloping through the jungle, but as it turned out I think this was far, far better.

We started off going for a tour of the local village. All the kids came out to say hello, and we swayed through wooden cabins and tiny side streets until eventually we arrived at the lake. Seeing cool refreshment ahead, the elephant picked up the pace and bounded excitedly into the water. This was awesome – we were riding an elephant waist high through a lake surrounded by some of the most stunning scenery I hvae ever seen. Marieke is convinced that she has managed to die sometime in the last couple of hours and is now in heaven, riding elephants amongst the angels and lakes of paradise. I’m pretty happy to sit there and figure out exactly the right shutter speed to capture crystal clear landscape images from the back of a constantly jolting elephant seat.

After the ride we got a Revive (holy shit, this is the best drink in the world), and looked around for motorbike guy. He’s long gone, so we walk the 1.5km through the village back to our hotel. It is incredibly beautiful, an unspoiled slice of rural Vietnamese life. I am completely amazed by a day that couldn’t have gone any better had I planned it that way.

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We drive down the road toward some roadside seafood places that some guy told us about on our first day in Mui Ne, and stop for some breakfast. Scallops and mango shakes. Oh my god, that is the way to start the day!!! Nothing on the scallops I had at Mum & Dad’s 60ths, but pretty good nonetheless.

Continue heaading down the road to the dunes whcih are pretty easy to find thanks to brilliant pictorial internet directions. When we get there it’s exactly as expected – a thousand kids all trying to rent you a sled or take you for a guided tour to the White Dunes. We need neither but we buy a drink each to keep our bike safe at a cafe.

After the dunes and after a protracted argument with a hopeful tour guide about our lack of need for his services, we head down the road in the direction of the white dunes. We’re not heading there specifically, but just going for a ride in the beautiful sun. I ask Meka if she wants to drive. Holy hell yes she does!!!  Quick change over, and I’m fearing for my life as this wild speed demon careens down the road at 100km/h on Vietnam’s least robust scooter. She’s absolutely loving this, and I’m sure we almost died a maximum of only two times. We’re kind of looking for a beach to chill out at / swim, and eventually I see a break in the coastal guard rail with a rocky path leading down to what appears to be a completely desrerted and absolutely gorgeous beach. We pull off the road and use the chain to lock the shit out of the bike. No way I’m losing that thing and having to fork over hundreds of dollars.

Meka doesn’t kill us

The beach looks perfect. We find a little boat to put all our stuff in and jump in the water.

On the sand I notice a couple of the biggest jellyfish I’ve ever seen in my life. I am not kidding, these things were HUGE!! I’m talking 70cm diameter easy. Meeks hasn’t noticed and is diving through the surf like she’s finally back where nature intended. She’s beautiful, like a sea otter; like a dolphin that’s been trapped on land for too long. Suddenly things are not good. I noticed these little green things in the water as I was swimming around, turns out they’re little stingy things.

We get the hell out of the sea and head off home. We go to the bus office to buy a morning ticket for Dalat, then to dinner where we stop at a roadside stall and order Vietnamese soup. It’s amazing, and life is good.

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We got out at the very end of the resort strip and started walking back looking for a place to stay. Meka goes through the things in her bag and finds that her wallet is missing. Then she finds that her glasses are missing. Prescription glasses, not sunglasses, I have no idea why anyone would want to steal those. She is understandably a bit pissed off. There was nothing open at this time of night. We found a couple of more than $50/night places, but a bit too much, and finally found a $30/night that was the best we could do. By this time we just want to collapse into bed so we take it.

This is the view in the morning:

While Meka slept in, I decided to sort us some new accommodation at a reasonable price. After walking up and down the whole strip, I settled on a guesthouse directly across the road from where we were staying – almost exactly the same inside the room, and only $9 with A/C.

In the afternoon I get the brilliant idea to ask the glasses-wearing receptionist at our previous hotel where we could go to get some glasses made. After a translated conversation with her daughter on a cellphone, she writes me out some Vietnamese directions to an optometrist. We jump on a motorcycle taxi and head down the road. On the way to wherever we were going, I spot a place that looks very positive. We jump off and go inside to chat with the guy. He is awesome, and fixes her right up with a pair of very good looking glasses for NZ$30, in just one hour. Holy crap!

New glasses

Even in the middle of nowhere, there’s an optometrist…

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I love it.

The traffic in Saigon is nothing short of madness. But it’s a comprehensible madness. There’s a system, and by the end of the day I had it down pretty well. We head first to the War Remnants Museum. It is amazing to see the Vietnam war from their perspective. I honestly know nothing about it and I really need to educate myself, but seeing the pictures of American soldiers brutalising the Vietnamese and seeing the weapons and the photos of the aftermaths was a pretty grim experience.

We didn’t last too long there, and went off for lunch with some people Marieke knew who happened to be in Vietnam.

Next up was the Jade Emperor Pagoda. I guess we both expected something really clean and beautiful, but it was kind of grimy and unimpressive. I did get this one awesome photo though:

It’s about 2pm by now and we start heading off for the Co Chi tunnels. It’s not easy to navigate the city so we’re constantly stopping the bike and pulling out the GPS to make sure we’re on the right highway. And then it starts to rain. We stop at the first shop and buy ourselves ponchos. I wish like anything that I’d taken a photo, because they were Angry Birds ponchos – blue for me and pink for Meeks. Every traffic light we stopped at we had a crowd of Vietnamese looking at us and laughing. It was totally awesome.

The drive to the tunnels took forever. We kept thinking we were lost so many times but we finally get there in the pouring rain at about 5pm. We go to the ticket desk and it’s closed. This is the first point I really start to feel bummed out. I’ve dragged this girl halfway across the world and the first thing that’s happened is that I’ve taken her on a 2 hour ride in the cold pouring rain, to a destination that’s closed, leaving us with only the option of driving all the way back.

We talk to the lady at the souviner counter and she thinks she can do something for us. She shouts out to a few people and arranges us a one-off personal after hours tour. It’s D90,000 per person, no idea how much the tickets are normally but I really don’t care.

Our guide is named Tien, and you can see the obvious pride on his face as he’s taking us around the tunnel site. He shows us the tiny entrance and exit holes. We go down into the tunnels and it is incredibly small. These are the real ones, not the ones enlarged for tourists.  These are the real tunnels that they used in the war. This is amazing. It’s pouring with rain, we’re in the rainforest in Vietnam, we’re the only ones there, and we’re crawling in and out of tunnels. I doubt there  has ever been a more thematic and realistic tour there. I’m feeling exactly like I was really there. I couldn’t have more respect for the Vietnamese and what they had to do to survive while their country was being invaded. 30% of the fighters were women. Everyone was involved in protecting their home from the attacking armies.

We finish up and we both kind of dumbstruck. The rain on the way back doesn’t seem so bad after having an experience like that. Driving in the rain at night in Vietnam in Saigon is a bit of a mission, this place is madness. We stop at a store on the way home and buy a litre of Vodka for $2.50. Awesome.

Home, and then a long, long hot shower.

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My bus leaves Nha Trang at 7 in the morning. Plenty of time to get back according the the bus company. 8 hour trip at the maximum. At 7:30pm I’m starting to get a little worried as Meeks is getting in at 9pm. And she is not the kind of person you want to leave by herself in an unfamiliar airport on her first ever trip overseas. She will find a way to wander off and Vietnam will swallow her, never to be seen or heard from again.

I manage to arrive with an hour to spare, book a hotel room (spared no expense!), have a quick shower, and a motorbike taxi to the airport. Her plane is on time, but no Meka. I watch the bag tags of people exiting the gates and see the amount of 3K551’s quickly dwindle. No Meka. It is possible that she has gotten lost in the air somewhere between New Zealand and Vietnam. I would not put this past her. But an hour and a half after her flight arrived, I finally see her coming out the gates. Turned out there was some weird problem with her visa that took a while to sort out.

We get a taxi back to the hotel cos it’s raining a bit, and her eyes are popping out of her head! It’s awesome to see because everything has become a bit normal to me.

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