markandlauren

FINALLY!! Well this post is incredibly delayed... many apologies! It seems that getting to a new country and organizing housing and employment is hard work, who knew?! As the holiday is seriously over and we are back in the real world, officially, it is time to bring home the final post from our adventure... enjoy! Our last days in Vietnam saw us bringing in the New Year in Saigon and taking a trip down the Mekong Delta... Mark posing in front of the Christmas displays... and me with the yellow M&M as we head out for New Year's along with thousands of other people cruising the main street. ... read more

Nha Trang We decided that for Christmas it would be good just to camp out in a beach location and Nha Trang certainly fulfilled that purpose. The view from our balcony at Nice Hotel. We hired a motorbike and headed out of the city to check out the natural mud baths for a day. For a small fee you can soak yourself in cold (supposed to be warm) mud, shower in the natural springs, have a jet spa massage (2 mins of standing with water jets firing at you), soak in a hot mineral bath, followed by a dip in one of the several hot mineral pools. It was certainly relaxing and afterwards we cruised around and saw some of the local attractions, including the white buddha. img=http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2371/2134858836_1db163d2bf_d... read more

Hue On the overnight bus heading to Hue. The entrance to the old city... The entire complex used to contain hundreds of structures however, as Hue was around the division between the North and South it suffered significant damage during the war and only 24 buildings remain, some in better condition than others. Carting bananas on a cycle-rickshaw... and Mark pretendin... read more

Sapa After a very comfortable overnight train ride from Hanoi, we arrived to the unbelievable beauty of Sapa. We stayed at a great guest house that overlooked the mountains, the view from our balcony is pictured below. We met these girls on the first day and kept running into them for the rest of our visit. They spoke English unbelievably well and told us that they had learned it from speaking to tourists. In school they learn Vietnamese and at home they speak their native M'uong language. Her favorite phrase was to tell Mark (quite appropriately), 'you crazy, you are a crazy monkey!" then start giggling. They gave us woven bracelets as a gift now that we were friends and Lauren bought a metal bracelet from them and... read more

Hanoi We only spent a couple of days in Hanoi before heading off on a tour of Halong Bay. This was our first taste of Vietnam and we loved it!! Hanoi is a busy-but-beautiful city with a French influence. Like most of Asia there are many motorcycles on the roads. We were surprised to find a lot of fantastic restaurants, funky bars and picturesque scenes around the lake in the centre of town. Mark in front of the opera house. Vietnam (and Hanoi in particular) has a lot of good coffee. The local preparation of coffee consists of black coffee with a generous... read more

Mumbai Thank you India... it's unbelievable how quickly seven weeks in India has gone by and the time has come to say goodbye for now. As the good doctor that we met on the train to Jaisalmer informed us: "India stretches you." He could not have explained our experience more accurately, it has stretched us and left us permanently changed, definitely for the better. We have witnessed unwavering pride and commitment to hard work in a land where the women dress in beautifully colored sarees while wielding pick axes along the side of the road, people crouch on their haunches to determinedly clean the front 'porches' of their slum accommodations, and families of four manage to navigate the traffic on a single motorcycle with women riding side saddle and carrying infants. We could list a million ... read more

Hampi Did it sound like we were complaining about our trip to Gokarna? We never should have done that because nothing could prepare us for the bus trip that we took to Hampi. Unfortunately there is only one bus company called PAULO (never travel with them!) that runs a nightly bus to Hampi from Goa making one pick up en route. We happened to be on the one pick up and after taking a shared taxi to a bus stop in the middle of nowhere (and waiting three hours for the delayed bus) we got on to be told that there were no more seats. "Excuse me... we have a reservation!" we said, only to receive a typical Indian reply: "What I can do? There is no more room". They had sold our seats to some ... read more

Gokarna Gokarna is another lovely beach area on the west coast, just south of Goa. There are half a dozen different beaches which you can hike to from the main beach. We had an interesting trip to Gokarna from Kochi... and overnight bus got us to Mangalore where we were supposed to have a few hours before our bus to Gokarna. Unfortunately that bus never arrived despite us asking every single person who worked there at least three times and they assured us that it was coming. Finally after 8 hours of waiting they said, oh no, it's not coming, you should take this bus to Kumta. It was a state bus and the roads were horrific... it took us 8 hours to go 150 miles (240 km) and then we had to hire a rickshaw ... read more

We arrived into Kochi (formerly Cochin during the British Raj era) late in the evening after an easy train trip North... we only know now, several days later, to appreciate that experience immensely. We came to Kochi to accomplish two activities: take one of the famous backwater tours and to see the local fishing practice using ancient Chinese fishing nets. The fisherman were extremely eager to show us how the contraption works and let Lauren help pull it out of the water to see the catch. We only got a few tiny things that time but they bring up the nets about every 5-10 minutes... it's hard work. img=http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2408/2046329786_37714849f8_d.jp... read more

BEACH PARADISE Varkala Varkala is a small town in the state of Kerala (south-west) featuring cliff-top hotels and restaurants with beautiful beaches below. Being on a beach was a welcome change from some of the more adventurous traveling that we did in the north of India. We spent 5 days here. The nearest beach to our guest house. Above the beaches were dozens of guest houses (ranging from luxury hotels to shacks), shops, cafes and restaurants (serving some delicious fresh seafood). The picture on the left is of our favorite meal - tandoori fish (Lauren had sn... read more