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Hello again!!
Well my bag has been released from quarantine at terminal 5 and is now in my possession.. It was a close thing but we got there in the end.. After my travels in Hong Kong, Macau and Singapore I have now landed upon the peoples of Vietnam... As for Singapore there was not much to write home about. Got to the hostel (Sleepy Sams which was great if anyonbe wants to look it up - 5 quid a night) late from the airport and wrote a bit and then had a few beers and hung with the bad ass homies at the front of the hostel. These included a girl from Saaaaaf Landan who appeared to have an Australian accent for some reason and was going to be murdered in South Africa for sleeping with best friends who lived there, and 3 lads from England(Chester, Herts and not sure). They were a laugh and we had a few beers. An early start the next day took me to the airport and using the majestic Tiger Airways, which I also used from Macau, I took myself off to Hanoi where I would meet Miss Elaine Darmody to travel, take
HaLong Bay
The limestone scenery from a distanceregular thrashings and generally try and sedate using various guises... Obviously this has failed miserably as I am a man and cannot multi-task....
Well I landed in Hanoi and met Elaine anyhow after the short 3 hour flight from Singapore which was spot on and we took a taxi into the centre of the old town in Hanoi. Now there are a few rules which must be obeyed when you live here in Vietnam...
(1) Thou must overcharge thy tourist
(2) Thou must not hold any previous driving experience god forbid a license to drive
(3) Thou must buy new car if horn is faulty
(4) Thou must hassle all foreigners for everything
I'm being a bit harsh here as it's a great country but the roads are something else altogether... Imagine about a hundred motorbikes/cars/trucks all vying for the same piece of road with the horn used as a sign of your impending arrival on said piece of road. Now obviously only one can win and as such a scheme of "the largest and hence one most likely to maim wins". Therefore a truck beats a bus, which beats a car, which beats a motorbike, whcih
Cyclomania
My preferred mode of transport.. beats a moped, which beats a cyclo. If you are riding a bike then you are basically shafted... You give way to anything bigger than a ladybird!! So as you can see the roads are basically a carcophany of noise and mayhem. Now try and cross this and see how you do... You have to just walk very slowly and everything goes around you basically... Sounds mad at first but you get used to it and death slowly moves away back to his comfy chair to wait for the next unwitting tourist to arrive on the scene.
We looked around Hanoi old quarter where we were staying and it did exactly what it said on the tin and was very enjoyable to walk about. got a Lonely Planet guide from a local who started at $18 but managed to get it for $5. Oh rule number 5 - Thou must haggle for everything and then walk off to get the best price. Works a treat!! Anyhow Hanoi was nice, looked around the lake and had some nice Vietnamese food and also the worlds cheapest beer - Bia Hoi ("Beer Ahoy"). This little gem of a concoction is much like
homebrew but without the side-effects such as paralysis and mutation which accompanies home brew back home... This stuff tastes pretty good and is sold on street corners from random cafes for the pricely sum of 2000 vietnamese Dong - A hefty whack to your walllet at 30c or 15p... I didn't touch the stuff obviously!!!
Right so we looked around Hanoi and then decided to head off on a 2 day, 1 night tour to Ha Long bay to the North East of Hanoi. This is the place you see on all the travle shows with loads of Limestone islands coming vertically out of the sea... We set off in our Minibus and then stopped and got out, the minibus drove off with our bags, people looked at eachother, we looked back, they looked again, we looked back. In the end it was agreed that silence was probably the best option at that moment seeing I had only just got my bags back off Quantas... To cut a long story short you've just gotta go with these things here as invariably your stuff turns up safe and sound and it is the norm. ONe bus change for a random
US tanks left over from the war
That's my moto driver by the way!! reason later we ended up at HaLong which as a town is crud but ont the boat, or "junk" as I would like to refer to it we got along with a few others for the trip.
Off we sailed some 10 metres from the pier and then we stopped. Hoorah... Lunch was taken, the captain slept for a while and then an hour or so later we set off... Vietnam time eh!!! Ha Long was pretty spectacular and there was a massive cave to explore on one of the islands... Cool indeed. Ulster folk, imagine the marble arch x 100 and you're close... English people imagine what having some proper scenery feels like!! only kidding... Anyhow a fine dinner later we settled down with the whiskey me and a lad from New Zealand had bought from the floating market earlier in the day to relax... We indeed drank the whisky and reguiled stories of heroic deeds and fantastic escapes from unescapeable positions... We also spoke to a girl from America who advised us that she had ran into a bus in Laos on a motorbike 3 weeks prior and broke her ankle and generally devastated her body.. She
appeared to show no visible evidence of performing such feats and as such Elaine and me branded her a liarit was mostly Elaine I have to say!!) Our lodgings on board the luxury liner was a ranther small cabin beside the engine which pumped diesel fumes into our room all night, nice in that it killed the giant cockroaches that were apparant, however I'm not sure that teh eggheads need to fear me any longer as half my brain cells were neutralised. Doesn't leave me too many let me tell you... We cruised around a bit more the next day, swam in the Tonkan Sea for a bit, avoiding giant jellyfishes as we went and returned to port for more minibus fun back to Hanoi.
Arriving back in Hanoi we made a decision to get out of the city and down the coast to Hue (pronounced "Hu-Ey") some 700 clicks south! After a quick haggle with the nice folk in Sinh Cafe(the main backpacker tourist provider here) we got 2 tickets on the sleeper coach to Hue for $30, reduced from the RRP of $40. The sleeper bus was spot on although the stated leaving time of 6pm failled
Pagodamania
I am in fact 100 foot tall incase you didn't know!! to materialise as the usual trick of driving for 5 minutes and the dropping you somewhere again was deployed successfully!! Finally leaving at 9.30pm we set of on the 12 hour journey south to Hue. The sleeper bus was nice, however Elaine managed to bag herself a bed on the top deck in the middle where both A/C outlets were facing. I think she now knows how to survive in Sub-Arctic temperatures... I tried to swap positions with here but she was dewtermined to see it through the little trouper that she is!! Anhow 17 hours after being picked up we found our way to Hue, a nice city on the coast.
Hue wasn't damaged too much during the war, however there was fighting in and around it, especially to the West, where the Ho Chi Minh trail runs through the forested mountains. We picked up a cyclo around the city which is basically a bike with 2 wheels at teh front and 1 at teh back with a seat for the driver and a bigger seat for the passenger in front... Nice way to travel and not too expensive at all... We saw the main walled Citadel of
A big arch near a big Pagoda near Hue
Think some lad called Tu Doc is around here somewhere. Not really sure!! the city which was on the other side of the river from the hotel. There were many pagodas and palaces so I'm not even going to try and explain them all... Have a look at the photos... We also stopped off at a few tanks and vehicles left over from the war which was a good phot op... After 3 ro 4 hours we paid our guides who were very friendly a sum of 150,000 Dong or $8, probably loads but for a great tour of the city it was worth it... We went to bed at 5pm and woke up again at 10am the next morning... D'oh... Bloody jet-lag. The next day we decided on seeing the sights around the city where there are many temples and pagodas to past emporers and the like. In order to do this we picked up a couple of motos + drivers. These guys proved to be great - Tri and Hieu. They ferried us from sight to sight on the back fo their motorbikes, through the countryside and into their families restaurant for lunch even before having a few beers at the end... A really good experience once you get over the
whole back of the motorbike in Vietnam syndrome, but basically this is the only way to do it... And a full days travel and guide for $10 each, result.
Now we had already decided that the next day we would get out of Hue and make our way to Hoi An, 110km or so South, again on the ocast basically... We decided to employ our firendly moto drivers once again to take us this route with various stops along the way. It was a hard bargain but $25 a piece was settled on. You can take the tourist bus for $3 but you see nothing and in between Hue and Hoi An is teh Hai Van pass which I really wanted to see as opposed to go through via the tunnel on the tourist bus. Now remember the part about bargaining? Yeah... Well I thought we'd baragained good to get to $25 each but when we said ok the 2 lads basically jumped 3 foot in the air, high fived us and eachother and looked like theyd won the lottery 2 weeks running... Maybe more bargaining was the order of the day but it was done now so let
them have their moment in the sun I thought... sure I'd get revenge at some stage in the future...
8am the following morning and Tri and Hieu were waiting outside and off we went with our backpacks strapped to the back of their bikes... Now the day before there was no pain to report in the lowere exhalons of my arse... Today was a different matter altogether as within 30 minutes of our departure the pain which can only be described as "earth shattering" took ahold of my pert behind... I'm no fairy boy you know but the back of a motor bike in Vietnam is no place to be in a whole world of pain... Anyhow I now know what it feels like to die... We pushed on and I prayed to the lord baby jesus for forgiveness for whatever I had done in a previous life. First stop was Elephant Springs, a place which had nothing to do with Elephants, spare an elephant statue but I didn't query it's authenticity as my arse rested peacefully beside the pools and rapids as I swam in the deep pools. Rather refreshing if I do say so myself... Onwards we
went on the bikes of doom, even though Elaine didn't say anything about the exrtreme pain I know that she was feeling it to but didn't want to let the side down!! We then went up and over the Hai van Pass... This was the highlight of the trip so far for me. The views were simply stunning as you can see from the pictures of me looking somewhat like the old cop show Chips... At the summit there are remnants of an old US base and it was very cloudy... Anyone coming here should go over the pass and not through it... The other side brought us to Danang, the 4th biggest city in Vietnam but not much to write home about.
We stopped at China Beach, famed for some rubbish show on TV in the 80's I believe. Elaine has advised me that it was a complete stormer and I ain't seen the show so I went along with that. It's also where the American soldiers came to relax during the war and was quite nice to chill out for half an hour or so... Onwards again then and to Hoi An where we are currently situated.
China Beach
Roasted alive here!!! I have been writing for bloody ages so have to go now and relax my fingers and possibly get an arse massage to try and help it deal with the trauma of the past days...
Hope all is well there back home. Oh did I say it's 35 degrees or so every day here. So hot today that you can't really stay in the sun for longer than a couple of minutes.. Bloody roasting!!
Be good
Owen
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jude
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photos
hola. is there any photos to go with this?wanna see them if so!!!hi to elaine and hope your asses have recovered!!!was laughing reading that, all fine here, speak soon, jude, darren and chloe xxxx