Bottles of rum, an ostrich omelette and a boat trip in 'Nam

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This blog entry covers 'Nam from China beach up to Halong Bay. I was expecting to live a little like a hermit for my first few weeks in China as I had heard stories of people not seeing any foreigners for weeks on end etc. This would have allowed me to get completely up to date on my bloggy wogging, but instead I have been having a wicked time meeting loads of decent people. Hence the lack of blog updates recently.

I haven't actually got any further in China than Dali, my second stop after spending 11 days in Kunming¡­ Dali is a really nice little place and I think I'll stay here for a few more days and witness the torch festival tomorrow night. That is a few blogs ahead of this one however, so I'll get back to Vietnam. And not just anywhere in Vietnam, but one of the coolest places I have been on my travels so far.

My last blog entry finished with my arrival at China beach. China beach isn't just one beach in the traditional sense as it's a stretch of 30km of coastline with plenty of secluded spots to completely relax for a few days. Jonny, Ian and I stayed at Hoa's Place, about 7km south of Danang. We had heard of Hoa's Place from a few girls in Nha Trang who said it was really nice, so we thought we'd check it out for one night before continuing on to Hue.

The first day at Hoa's I felt like renting a motorbike and checking out Danang. It was only 3 dollars to rent one for the day so I didn't mind I only had half a day left after a short catch-up nap in the morning. For some reason buses always leave at a rough time in the morning, meaning the art of napping is a good one to master, especially if you don't go to bed until far too late. The motorbike I ended up with was okay, although someone had obviously crashed it at some point and bent the downshift side of the heel-toe gear lever out of place. This wasn't a big problem though, as it meant just moving my foot and using my toe instead of my heel to downshift. When renting small bikes a few minor faults make driving them more interesting haha. So anyway, I drove around Danang for a bit, saw the main part of China beach which was horribly ram-packed with people, and then headed into Danang not realising it was approaching rush hour. By the time I arrived at the main bridge in Danang, it was extremely busy. I drove onto the bridge not really thinking and got stuck in complete scooter gridlock on there. It took me about half an hour of constant manoeuvring to get across the bridge, but it was good fun apart from all the exhaust gases. I drove around Danang for a bit before deciding to just head back and tackle the bridge again¡­ This is when I took one of my favourite photos. I was stuck in scooter gridlock again and nobody seemed to be moving, so I quickly grabbed my camera and had just enough time to take a photo and put my camera away before hurriedly rejoining the flow of traffic.

That evening Jonny, Ian and I ended up going back to Hoi An to see the Miss Universe parade, so we didn't really experience the full potential of Hoa's place. We had managed to have a look at the beach already though, and it was beautifully free of sunglass salesmen and other people. Ian was eager to get to Hue the next day to meet up with a few girls we met in Hoi An, and Jonny and I decided to stay at Hoa's a bit longer. We would see Ian in Hue.

After Ian got the bus, Jonny and I met a really decent group of people who were traveling through Vietnam together. Matt, a Canadian guy who had just finished two years of teaching English in Japan, Remco, a Dutch guy from Utrecht and Emma and Maria, two Canadian girls. We also met an English couple called Carly and Ally.

Ally told us about 15,000 dong a bottle rum, which Jonny and I immediately went and bought. It's about 16,500 dong to the dollar, so this rum was pretty good value. It was also the nicest rum I've ever tasted, which is pretty unbelievable considering the price. I was starting to like Hoa's place more by the minute 😊.

That night our group ended up buying all the rum from the corner shop and playing Kings until late. Kings is basically the greatest drinking game of all time, although first place probably has to be shared with beer pong. For a big group of people though, you can't really beat Kings. We all ended up getting mildly intoxicated, and all decided to go for a night swim. We had heard there were unnamed bioluminescent organisms to be found in the water there, which is extremely exciting when you've had some rum. The bioluminescence was pretty impressive, apparently the organisms start emitting light when agitated, so when you waved your hands about in the water you could see lots of little dots of light appearing for a short time. We spent most of our time in the water being amazed at the bioluminescence before the rum was finished and everyone decided it was time for bed.

The third night at Hoa's was pretty similar, following a day of enjoying the amazing weather on the beach and even trying to surf for two hours or so. Jonny and I decided to rent a board each from Hoa's and test our surfing skills in the not so impressive waves at China beach. Unfortunately, our surfing skills were also not so impressive, but we had fun anyway. Before settling down to a few more bottles of rum and some drinking games, the eight of us decided to rent motorbikes and drive to a seafood place Carly and Ally had been to a few days earlier. Here you could pick your fish from a tank, which was then killed and prepared for you. I picked a red snapper, a fish I had wanted to try for a long time. Unfortunately my fish disappeared somehow, which meant I had to go pick another one, but when I eventually did get my fish it was beautiful. After dinner we drove back and got involved with some more of my favourite rum.

Carly and Ally left the next morning, and Maria and Emma left for Hoi An in the afternoon, leaving just Remco, Matt, Jonny and I at Hoa's. This was going to be our last night here, as for Jonny and I our intended one night had already turned into four and we had the rest of Vietnam (and Ian in Hue) to think about. Matt and Remco were leaving the next day too, so Hoa's place wouldn't be the same anyway.

For our last afternoon / evening at Hoa's, we decided to all rent scooters and go on a little road trip. I had driven around Danang already so I was confident I could get us through the city efficiently. At first we picked "My Son" as our destination, but Hoa's wife told us we probably wouldn't make it there before it closed. We chose "Ba Na", an old French hill station as our destination instead. After driving through Danang without too much hassle and with a little help from a few locals, we made it to Ba Na at just after 5pm.

As Jonny didn't have much experience riding bikes, I swapped bikes with him. The bike I ended up with was terrible, but like I said earlier, it just added to the fun. The problem was that whenever I had to stop for anything, like other traffic in the middle of an intersection, my bike would helpfully stall. This meant I had to quickly restart the bike and get out of the way as the next wave of traffic was coming towards me.

Later on the bike started shutting down even when I was driving slowly, causing me to suddenly make an emergency stop as the engine was no longer running and the bike was in gear. This was less than ideal, especially in traffic, but I quickly learned to keep the revs up 😊.

Having arrived at Ba Na safe and sound, it started to rain and rain and rain so we thought we would stop in one of the little restaurants and wait out the rain. This is when we saw one of the girls that worked there carrying a tray of ostrich eggs, and a brilliant idea was thrown into the group. Why don't we try and get one of those made into an omelette? After looking it up and seeing that omelette is the same word in Vietnamese, we asked the girl if we could order one ostrich omelette for the four of us. After she had stopped laughing we agreed on a price and she set off to make us the best omelette I've ever had. Perhaps it was the fact that we had driven through beautiful scenery and conquered dangerous bike faults in order to get there that made that omelette taste so good, but it was absolutely amazing. It was also enough for the four of us, as an ostrich egg is about 10-15 times the size of a normal chicken egg. After our food we each put on our rain macs and set off back to Hoa's in the rain.

Somehow the rain had managed to disable the electric starter on my bike, and as kick-starting the thing on a junction wasn't my idea of fun, I made sure I kept the revs up at all times. When braking it was essential not to let go of the accelerator, but to find the happy medium where the bike keeps running and the engine isn't working against the brakes too enthusiastically.

After making our way back through the mountain villages we ended up back in Danang in the dark. Driving through crazy traffic in the dark is intense, and just after we crossed the bridge I got stuck on a few days earlier we saw a big gathering of people and decided to check it out. There was a big crowd gathered around people dancing, and one of the guys watching told us that they do this every month in Danang and that everybody can dance. We stayed and watched for a while, took a few more photos and returned to Hoa's.

Our last night was fairly uneventful, the rum consumption was more sensible and our swim didn't last as long. We stayed on the beach chatting til fairly late before bedding down for the last time at the amazing place that is Hoa's.

The next day Jonny and I set off to Hue, met up with Ian, checked out the old citadel, had some amazing fried rice and left for Hanoi the next day.

We only spent one day and one night in Hanoi before our Halong Bay boat trip, but we would return there afterwards and see it more thoroughly. We opted for the 3 day boat trip, as the 2 day trip doesn¡¯t include Cat Ba island. Besides, how often are you going to find yourself on a boat trip through Halong Bay¡­

We had heard from others who did the same trip that alcohol prices on the boat were ridiculous, so Jonny and I each hid a bottle of spirits in our bags. All they achieve with having ridiculous alcohol prices on the boat is that nobody buys booze there. Instead, we just kept coming back for more cans of coke, somehow managing to get drunk off it haha.

After doing all the classic boat trip things like videoing everybody jumping off the roof, kayaking for a few hours, visiting the most touristy cave ever and of course drinking smuggled in alcohol, it was time for Cat Ba island.

The first stop was walking off any potential hangovers with a big trek up a hill. The views from the top were pretty amazing, even if you had to scale a rusty, unstable looking contraption once you got to the top of the hill. I don't think safety was a main priority there, as it was so rusty in some places that you could actually break off bits of the tower¡­ After discovering this at the top we decided to go back down carefully.

We could spend the rest of the day however we wanted (no tour programme), so a few of us walked around in search of a good beach. The first beach we found had some pretty big waves crashing down onto it, but it looked quite good fun so we had a go. It was a pretty dangerous beach as if you weren't deep enough the waves would pick you up and smash you into the pebbles on the ground. I made sure I stayed deep enough after making that mistake once. It was only after I had got out of the water and was considering going back in that we saw a guy get smashed into the ground by a big wave and break his arm. That put me right off going back in.

We looked around for another beach but didn't find anything worthwhile, so we headed back for dinner and a few drinks at the hotel. Later that night a few of us went night swimming again, although this time I cut my foot climbing out of the water via some sharp rocks. Enough night swimming for me for a while¡­

The boat picked us up again the next day and we set off back to Hanoi.

This is where my photo album ends, so I'll wrap up this blog entry. I'm not sure when I'll be able to upload my photos to facebook as facebook seems to not be working most of the time here. On a more positive note, I have managed to upload the motorbike video from Pai to my "Motorbikes, massages, malarone and the mighty Mekong" entry. I've also managed to upload the video of me and a few others jumping off the roof of the boat at Halong Bay 😊.

Right, I'm off to have some more noodles covered in red chili pepper.

*Update: I've finally managed to upload my photos for this blog entry! An amazing feat of endurance, as I had to upload the photos 5 at a time... Here's the link:

More 'Nam

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