Indochina

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My cousin met me in Bangkok and we kicked things off in style. We headed to the State Tower, where they filmed scenes from The Hangover 2, for an overpriced cocktail on the 56th floor. It was pretty swanky and the view of Bangkok was amazing. We then went from one extreme to the other, with a speedy, ever so slightly hysterical tuk-tuk ride (poor Bec had ony been in the country for a few hours) to th Khao San Road - Backpacker Central. The area is pretty infamous, (probably thanks to The Beach, and by this time I had read the book - surprisingly good - and accidentally watched the film twice in one day) and within minutes we had encountered lots of drunk falang, several offers for ping pong shows, rats, and argumentative Thai girls. The girls were actually really sweet to us and came and sat with us and bought us drinks, and said they were fed up of the perception of Thai girls as 'prostitutes or bitches', which is fair enough. From the minute Bec arrived in Thailand it seemed to rain non-stop, and after a soggy day of walking around, a hideous trek to the skytrain with all our belongings and an even more hysterical tuk-tuk ride (this guy was practically taking corners on one wheel), we were on a bus north to Chiang Mai.

Unfortunately, because my foot was taking so long to heal (an expert opinion from a med student ascertained that they took the stitches out too early) and still hurt to walk, we weren't able to do any jungle trekking, which is really the thing to do there. We did do a Thai cooking course, which was fun and delicious, and wandered around the huge night market. It was nice to be out of Bangkok, as I had spent a few days there waiting for Bec, and Chiang Mai was a lot more chilled out. Leaving there, we headed for the Laos border where we were catching a slow-boat down the Mekong River to Luang Prabang. We stayed in a nice place on the river, looking over into Laos, and met some lovely people who were getting the same boat. A woman called Robyn told us all about a meditation course she had taken with some monks in Chiang Mai, and it's something Bec and I wish we had done, although I doubt either of us would have been able to concentrate and take it seriously! We also became friends with two girls from Cambridge, Emma and Sinead, who we travelled on and off with for a few weeks. In the morning we crossed the river into Laos and boarded the slow boat. In my head I had a rather romantic image of drifting down the river, everybody sitting about on the floor or benches, taking in the scenery. When we actually got on the boat, the last ones on, they had decked it out airline style with old car seats, and we didn't even have a seat! We ended up squeezed at the back behind the engine, playing sweaty, whisky-fuelled card games instigated by a crazy Belgian guy and missing most of the beautiful scenery. It was fun though, and after a night in a village called Pak Beng, we made sure to get on early to get our car seats for the second day on the river. It was actually a really lovely trip, and we passed little villages with children splashing in the river, women collecting water and beautiful mountains covered in dense jungle.

In Luang Prabang we found a guesthouse with Emma and Sinead and had a lovely few days there. The French colonial influence was very evident, with little cafes in shabby but charming buildings with painted shutters, and yummy food (baguettes!). It was a lovely place to potter about in for a few days and we hired bicycles and got a bit lost, drank lots of iced coffees and (of course!) went bowling. There was a curfew of 11.30 at which time all the bars closed (it is a Communist country), and then everybody heads to the bowling alley, which is open until 2.30am. It was rather strange, but we did have a funny time! We booked a day tour to see some local sights and got picked up in the most torrential rain. Half the town seemed flooded, with people wading up to their knees, but we carried on regardless. We were with two other women that had been on our slow-boat, Harsha and Alice, and a French lad called Benjamin, and we were driven out to a point on the river and were put on a tiny boat in the pouring rain, to cross the river to a cave that was filled with thousands of statues of the Buddha. It was basically a shrine for the locals bring along statues for good luck. After the cave we were taken to an elephant camp for elephant riding. I was so excited to be so close to an elephant and couldn't stop grinning when they brought two out and walked them right past me. I'm not sure we enjoyed being sat on the poor thing, however, the two of us on a bench strapped to its back and with Benjamin straddling its neck while it plodded along up a track. I'm not convinced she was an entirely happy elephant, but I loved watching her eat the trees, ripping huge swathes with its powerful trunk, and feeling her leathery skin and flappy ears. We were right on the river, which was beautiful as it even stopped raining, so we all cheered up immensely. Especially so as our next stop was a village where they make Lao whiskey and we were given some shots of rice whiskey and rice wine, which made us rather giddy in the bus! We had a hilarious journey to a waterfall, chatting to our guide about jokes and chat-up lines. Apparently the funniest joke in Laos is as follows: a guy says to his friend 'buy me a drink', to which his friend replies 'sure, I'll buy you a drink - just give me the money!' Our guide seemed to find it hilarious! We tried to teach him some ill-advised British chat-up lines, and I don't know what Benjamin thought of us four cackling English women! The waterfall was lovely, and our guide was like Mowgli, jumping and flipping off things and climbing up the falls. Bec took one for the team as my foot was still worrying me and swung in from a rope tied to a tree - she was a proper Jungle Jane!

After Luang Prabang, we headed to Vang Vieng, the 'tubing town'. It was a stunning, butt-clenching bus ride through the mountains, and we got stuck in mud from landslides a couple of times. At one point our bus was slipping sideways towards a sheer drop - I had to stick my head in my book for most of the journey! Vang Vieng is a bizarre little party town on the backpacker route, full of bars and restaurants that just show Friends on a loop, so at any one time you can choose from about 20 episodes. Tubing was fun, basically a bar crawl down a river, and you float along in a tyre inner-tube. The river flows pretty fast, as do the whiskey buckets, and the scenery (which a lot of tubers probably don't notice) is beautiful. We ended the day soaking wet, covered in mud and spray paint, on a bit of a Red Bull high, but still intact. The next day we left for Vientiane, the capital, to catch a flight to Hanoi, which we were very excited about getting to.

We absolutely loved Vietnam, and we began with a trip to Halong Bay. It really was a 'geographical orgasm', as Bec had hoped it would be! We were on a really nice boat and the weather was glorious as we sailed through the limestone karsks jutting from the sparkling blue sea. We were taken around a cave and went kayaking, and then as the sun went down we jumped from the top deck of the boat (a couple of storeys high) for our first swim in the South China Sea. There were some lovely people on our boat and after dinner we all lazed about on the top deck as the full moon lit up the little bay we were moored in. It was so peaceful and one of my favourite evenings in Vietnam. The next day we were taken to Cat Ba island, and as some people went for a trek up a steep mountain, Bec and I rented rusty, decrepit old bikes with a couple called Sian and Dave and cycled to the Secret Hospital Cave. It was a beautiful, sweaty bike ride, with nobody about and these jungly cliffs rising either side of us. We felt like we were in Jurassic Park. The cave was really interesting, it was used as a secret hospital during the Vietnam War, and you couldn't see anything from outside. Inside they had built lots of rooms, a swimming pool and there was a big cavern that was used as a cinema room. In the afternoon we got a boat from Cat Ba to Monkey Island, although when we got there we were terrified of the monkeys!! They were chasing people they knew had food in their bags and jumping up and generally looking rather menacing. We went to the other end of the beach to get away from them, but then Bec got stung by a jellyfish! She was a trooper though, and it looked so painful. Her thigh had a huge red welt and the other leg had faint wavy lines were its tentacles must have swept past. We put lime on it but she just had to ride out the pain. Wildlife aside, we did have a lovely afternoon and we saw these large fishing villages full of little huts that floated on the water. We spent the night in Cat Ba town and then headed back to Hanoi the next day to catch a sleeper train to Sapa.

Sapa was up in the mountains in the northwest, and it was absolutely beautiful. We drove into town from the train station as the sun came up over the towering mountains, so green with rice paddies terraced all the way up. The town itself was full of these tribeswomen who try and bully you with smiles and friendliness into buying things from them, but the surrounding mountains and the valley below were breathtaking. We had a lovely walk, scrambling down steep hillsides and hopping over streams between the rice paddies, following a really sweet guide called Zee, with some Spanish women and a Mexican guy, which was great for Bec to practice her Spanish. We even saw a snake - eek! We drank lots of iced coffees - Vietnamese coffee is delicious - and fruit lassis, and spent one night there before getting the night train back to Hanoi. Hanoi had a shabby charm to it, and we were staying in the Old Quarter with narrow streets full of people sitting on tiny stools eating and drinking Bia Hanoi. The roads were full of mopeds, thousands of them, and crossing the road we felt we were taking our lives in our hands, but we soon got the hang of the rules: just walk, slowly, and NEVER step backwards. We had a day to kill before a night bus to Hoi An and we went to the Temple of Literature, which was pretty old and dedicated to Confucius, had a ride on a cyclo, which involves a guy peddling a bike with a seat stuck to the front of it, and we went to see a water-puppet show. This is a very traditional Vietnamese thing, traditionally performed in flooded rice paddies, and it was interesting, if bizaare!

Our first sleeper bus wasn't too bad, after a minor initial freak-out we settled down and managed to get some sleep. The Vietnamese drive like maniacs though, prefering to drive down the wrong side of the road until something comes the other way, at which point they are usually overtaking something else, all the while beeping continuously. We arrived in Hoi An at around lunch time, slightly grumpy and irrational after the bus journey, and checked into a hotel with a pool - Bec was, after all, on holiday and it was time to enjoy some sunshine! Hoi An was such a cool place, chilled out and lovely, another town full of French colonial architecture. The riverside and bridge were softly lit by hundreds of chinese lanterns, while candles floated on the water in colourful little paper cups. Our favourite thing about the town was, of course, the food, and we ate some delicious local specialities. Aside from lazing by the pool, we cycled to the beach, which was beautiful, the sea like a bath, and Bec dipped herself tentatively back in the water. The next stop on our journey down the coast of Vietnam was Nha Trang, which was very built up, kind of the Benidorm of Vietnam, but we did have fun there. There is an island called Vinpearl to which you get by cable car with stunning views of the bay, and on the island is a little theme park, an aquarium and a fantastic water park. It's surprising how much fun two grown women can have on some water slides! Another bus ride later found us in Mui Ne. We had a fantastic time there, hiring motorbikes and heading to the sand dunes, which felt like being in the Sahara desert suddenly. We rented plastic sheets from some local kids and went sledging down them, which was so much fun! The kids were awesome too, obviously wanting money but chatting away, setting up the slides, helping us back up the dunes and even doing our hair. We got absolutely covered in orange sand and looked like a couple of Cheetos for the rest of the day. We loved riding the bikes and had a fabulous drive along an empty coastal road, and then ventured into a fishing village where they were bagging mountains of squid. The horizon from Mui Ne is lit up at night by hundreds of squid fishing boats, it was weirdly mesmerising. Needless to say, we had some delicious sea food there. After a morning of body-boarding in the huge, powerful waves, we were sad to be leaving, but excited to get to Ho Chi Minh City.

Part Two coming soon!!

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