Blogs from Vietnam, Asia - page 1326

This is my last blog for Vietnam…well, because we are not even in Vietnam anymore. Jackie and I are now in Phnom Penh, Cambodia and have been for a few days. So, I think the easiest way to update everyone is to go backwards from here. We arrived in Phnom Penh having taken a 3day/2 night tour of the Mekong Delta. I keep falling into the trap of taking organized tours, mainly because they don’t require as much work on my part and are usually cheaper too. The problem comes in on the corners the tour company cut to make extra money. For instance, the hotel on the second night of the tour was a complete dump with air vents that opened onto the lobby, which allowed us to hear everything from outside the room and ... read more

Our new, much reduced group departed Hanoi by minibus this morning & headed to the ferry which took us to Cat Ba Island. A nap in the afternoon set me right for pizza & beer, followed by more beer whilst watching the Australia versus Italy soccer game at the Koala bar. Unfortunatley Italy won because of a ridiculous penalty right on full time, but it was a good game none the less. Before settling on the Kiwi Bar for dinner, we were actually looking for 'The Flightless Bird,' a restaurant owned by New Zealanders, recommended to Snow by other travellers. After walking to the end of the Esplanade with no luck, we were halfway back when we witnessed a sickening accident. This little boy rode his push bike right into the path of a motorcyclist. They ... read more

"I'm allergic to fish, shellfish, peanuts and aubergines" was surely the most ridiculous sentence to come from the mouth of a man who had just signed up to join a cookery course in which every item on the itinerary contained one or more of these foods. And who's allergic to aubergines anyway...! Today I went on another cookery course. We started with a tour of the market (including the dubios delight of frogs skinned alive, still breathing - sick) before taking a boat downstream to the 'Red Bridge' restaurant and cookery school. The setup was good with a nice dining area, big enough cooking area and a comprehensive herb garden. The clientelle on the course were more Hyacith Bouquet than I was used to, but it was a refrshing change from scruffy backpackers. The group was ... read more

After a small panic this morning because I'd discovered two missing travellers cheques valued at USD$200-, I visited the Ho Chi Min Mausoleum. It was very eerie to see a body that has been preserved for over 30 years. Apparently the Vietnamese ship him off to Russia every so often for some maintenance - you know, the odd nip & tuck... The group had lunch on Hoan Kiem Lake, then I headed back to the Hotel for a quiet afternoon spent following up on my missing cheques. Dad managed to sort it all out from home & AMEX are refunding the money, although I am mightly interested as to where they ended up. It's not like me to lose something like that & there wasn't much chance for anybody to steal them either. Had our new ... read more

BRIEF ENGLISH INTRO: (Pequeña introducción en inglés para los que no hablan español --después vienen todos los posts en castellano.) Well, this is real Communism: selling, shopping, consumming, leisure, entrepreneuralism in its most active expression. Whatever uncle Ho Chi Minh is thinking now in the Marxist Nirvana, it is not that he succeded in finding the way to social-equality and proletariat-dictatorship. He did find the way to self-determination, that goal he did reach it indeed. There are so many stories of war here, of unbelievable massacres commited by the invaders and big fights. The most interesting stories, nevertheless, lie in this people's resistance capacity, their determination to succeed no matter how many sacrifices and how much suffering, their dynamic approach to reconstruction and life pursuing, and maybe the most impressive of their caractheristics:... read more