Vietnam and Cambodia - Christmas and New Year

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Executive Summary

Before I start, I should apologise for the length of this entry. For those of you that can't be bothered to read the whole thing, I've included an executive summary, covering each of the places we've visited since last time:

Hanoi: Christmas, embalmed bodies, motorbikes
Ha Long Bay: stunning scenery, impressive caves, great tour
Hue: New Year, cheeky barbers, Demilitarised Zone
Nha Trang: beach, beer, snorkeling
Saigon: hot, busy, South Vietnamese luxury
Phnom Penh: no time, blind massages, getting hotter
Siem Reap: temples, bikes, crocodiles

There you go - fully up to speed

Hanoi

Arrival

After a fun 10 days in Laos (see previous blog) we decided to move on, braving a Laos Airlines flight from Vientiane to Hanoi on Christmas Eve. I say "brave", because my Rough Guide had warned "for some travellers, flying with Laos Airlines demonstrates bravado, but it's not really something you want to do if you don't absolutely have to". We were therefore more than pleasantly surprised to find that the flight was comfortable, on time, professional, and came with a hot meal - Michael O'Leary could learn a lot about how to run an airline from the nice people of Laos!

Whilst a reasonable length's stay in Vietnam had always been part of our plans, we'd spoken to a few people over the previous weeks who had warned us that it was going to be very different to Thailand and Laos, and that in particular we should be careful in Hanoi, where we should prepare to be scammed/pay over the odds for everything. One of the classic scams are the dodgy airport taxis that overcharge you, and then take you to specific hotels in the hope of earning a kick-back for bringing business in.

Whilst mentally preparing ourselves for some tough taxi price negotiations, we came through customs to see a man holding a sign for our hotel, with the name of a random Dutch couple... I know what you might be thinking, but despite having been travelling together for a while, we figured that we'd probably struggle to pull off looking like a married couple! Therefore, rather than try and steal their ride, we decided to hang around until they showed up and ask if we could tag along. They agreed, although the driver didn't look happy about it as he went off to get the car. Lo and behold, when he returned he said he'd spoken to his boss, and that we'd have to get a different car - which fortunately (!) the hotel had quickly arranged, and was waiting for us behind him.... It was pretty obvious that he'd just sold our business to another driver - maybe we should have argued, or just turned it down flat, but it was getting dark on Christmas Eve, and we wanted a drink.

The ride from the airport was an education, with the roads of Vietnam being significantly different to those of Thailand and Cambodia. In particular (other than the complete disregard of the normal rules of the road) we saw more motorbikes than we ever thought possible, many of them transporting all manner of thinks (panes of glass, pigs, TVs, stacks of cases of beer etc.). As we drew towards the Old Quarter of Hanoi, I started to get the impression that our driver wasn't taking the most efficient route to our hotel - surprise surprise, he pulled up outside a completely different place, where two men came running up to the car, and desperately tried to beckon us out of the car. The conversation basically went:

"welcome, please come in"
"but this isn't our hotel, we've booked somewhere else"
"come in, come in, our rooms are very reasonable"
"no, we're going somewhere else"
"it's OK, it's OK, please come in"
"no, we're booked into the Sunshine 3 hotel"
"just come and have a look around"
"no...."
We then reconfirmed the address of our hotel to the "taxi driver", who then pretended he'd misheard us originally, and of course would take us to our hotel. Welcome to Hanoi - it was starting to look like the warnings we'd been given were pretty accurate!

Christmas

We had a few quiet Christmas Eve drinks that evening (including a couple with Sam and Sarah, the couple we'd met kayaking in Laos, and who we randomly bumped into - not for the last time!), and later received our solitary Christmas presents for 2009 - 2 packets of crisps from a 7 year old Vietnamese girl, whose family kept sending her over to us in a restaurant to practice her English. Obviously I expect there to be piles more Christmas presents waiting for me on my return to the UK in May.....

Christmas Day wasn't exactly productive, at least from a sightseeing perspective, as we decided to celebrate by heading to Hanoi's only Irish bar. We installed ourselves there for the day, playing pool with a bunch of ex-pat Irish guys, and listening to James moan about how difficult it was for him to play with his damaged shoulder (following his Laos tubing injury). Later on we headed back to our hotel to ring our families for Christmas, stopping off at KFC for our only meal of the day. It was only halfway through eating it that we realised to our horror that this was our first Western fast food meal of the trip, and was also in effect our Christmas dinner - please don't judge us, we were drunk and are already thoroughly ashamed of ourselves....

Sightseeing

Over the next couple of days we visited more of Hanoi's sights (see below), most of which required us to risk life and limb by crossing numerous roads. For those of you that have never been, there is a pretty simple method for crossing the road in Vietnam:

1) Step out into the road (it may make it easier if you close your eyes at this point)
2) Shuffle forward slowly, always looking both left and right, as motorbikes seem content to travel on either side of the road
3) NEVER step backwards, and always assume that motorbikes will find some way of avoiding you (this assumption only failed us once, when a bike tried to drive up the back of James' leg)
4) Continue shuffling until your feet reach the opposite pavement. Remember that this doesn't mean you're safe - although your only worry now is the motorbikes driving along the pavement....

One of Hanoi's big attractions is the old prison (nicknamed the "Hanoi Hilton" by the US soldiers imprisoned there during the Vietnam war) - most of which has been demolished to make way for a fancy tower block, with a corner preserved as a museum. The most striking thing about the place was the way in which the exhibits told one of two very different stories:

a) in the late 19th century the evil French colonialists forcibly removed Vietnamese people from their homes to build a prison with appalling conditions, where they tortured and mistreated thousands of Vietnamese "political prisoners";
b) a century later, the caring Vietnamese people used the old prison building to "treat" US soldiers captured during hostilities, where they were well fed, and spent their days having fun by playing basketball, volleyball etc. in the prison grounds.

I hate to be a cynic, but I think there may have been some bias there...

Our trip to Ho Chi Minh's mausoleum was a different experience entirely. We arrived early, and went through various security checks, including having our bags and cameras taken off us, before we could see "Uncle Ho". Sightseers are then grouped together in batches, arranged two abreast and then marched up the street to the mausoleum building. James and I were fortunate enough to be at the front of this column, leading the way to the doors where we stopped for a minute for an honour guard to meet us. The whole column then solomnly processed through the main doors and up some flights of stairs, before entering Uncle Ho's final resting place. There's no opportunity to stop, and as you march around the room flanked by guards in pristine white uniforms, you're forced to spend half of your time watching where you walk (and as we were at the front - ensuring we kept the correct pace), and the other half turning your head to the left to gaze on Uncle Ho's pale preserved body. The whole experience can't have lasted much more than 5 minutes, but it was worth the trip to Hanoi alone (be warned though - if you're planning on visiting Hanoi in October/November, you're unlikely to get to see him, as he goes on his annual holiday to Russia for maintenance!).

Ha Long Bay

After 4 nights in Hanoi we were thoroughly fed up of the constant noise and traffic chaos, and looking forward to our trip to Ha Long Bay, where 1,960 limestone islands thrust their way out of the sea, creating a spectacular landscape, which has rightly been recognised as a UN heritage site.

Having been warned about a wide variation in quality on Ha Long Bay tours, we paid a premium to go with a reputable Aussie-run organisation, where the group size was limited to 14 people. The trip lasted 3 days and 2 nights, including a night on our boat (or more accurately "junk"), and a night on Cat Ba Island. The first day included a 3 hour bus ride out to the bay, and then the first of many seafood based meals on the boat (not ideal from my perspective...). Once we set sail we got to see some great views of the limestone karsts, although we weren't alone - every other junk from the harbour was now also heading in the exact same direction.

After visiting "The Amazing Cave" we anchored in the bay for the night, and were offered the chance to go for a swim. Given that it was cold enough for most people to have been wearing their jumpers all day, I didn't think there'd be any takers - only to turn around to see James jump in. I still decided to refuse on the basis of the cold, a decision that I was thoroughly ashamed of when Oscar, a 4 year old boy from New Zealand, was lowered down into the water....

That night I got back to our cabin a couple of minutes after James, only for him to turn to me and say "Ben, do you want me to tell you something that you won't want to know?". It's obviously impossible to say no to that, which is how I learnt that he'd watched a cockroach scurry up the table and sit on the head of my toothbrush. As predicted, I wasn't particularly happy to learn this, particularly when he proceeded to show me the photo he'd taken of it - maybe if he'd been shooing it away rather than getting his camera out, it'd never have made it as far as my toothbrush in the first place....

The next morning we headed to Cat Ba Island, where were we taken to another cave. This time it was one which no other tour groups go to, and where there are very few electric lights, all powered by a noisy generator outside. This was much more of an experience than the previous day, particularly when some of us took up the opportunity to squeeze through a couple of bloody tight spaces (my belly did not assist me in this...) into a couple of further caves with no lighting, and thousands of undisturbed little stalagtites - absolute quality, even if it did mean that we spent the rest of the tour with very muddy clothes and grazed elbows.

The schedule for the afternoon was to visit "Monkey Island", on which a load of wild monkeys live. However, our guide (Tung) decided to tell us a little about the place, and gave us a choice:

I know we're scheduled to go to Monkey Island, but I should warn you that there are only about 10 monkeys there, we probably won't see any of them, and if we do they'll try to bite you and steal all your stuff. Alternatively, we could go kayaking in one of the nicest areas of the bay - it's a little further on the boat, but there'll be no extra charge. It's completely up to you, what do you fancy doing?

Call me suspicious, but it sounded to me like Tung fancied a bit of kayaking over us taking photos of some monkeys! However, based on his quality selling technique, we all agreed that Monkey Island probably didn't sound much fun (although I've since heard that it's better than Tung would have had us believe), and opted for the kayaking.

I can't complain though, as the kayaking was great fun, although James and I have continued to find that we're incapable of paddling in a straight line (we always pull to the right), and despite the fact that I managed to fall in whilst getting back in the kayak after a brief stop on a beach (much to everyone's amusement).

That evening we all met up for drinks in a bar on Cat Ba Island to celebrate the birthday of a Dutch guy on the tour. He seemed pretty embarrassed when Tung got the bar to turn the music off and led the group in a rendition of Happy Birthday. However, mild embarrassment quickly took a turn for the worse, as Tung then dedicated his favourite Western love song to him, which he sang solo to the whole bar - I was frantically biting my cheeks to stop myself from laughing!

When we got back to our room that night, James and I realised that we were unlikely to get any sleep for at least a couple of hours, as the disco opposite was playing some very loud cheesy music. After listening to various songs, including YMCA and some Michael Jackson classics, we decided that if you can't beat them, join them. We walked in to the place to find that there were only about 10 other people in there, including a very drunk Cockney guy, and his Aussie wife and friend. Whilst it was tempting to walk straight back out, they insisted on us joining them in drinking as many happy hour drinks as we could manage before they stopped at 23:00 (later extended until 00:00...) - what had looked like being a quiet night, quickly became somewhat more drunken.

Hue

Our Ha Long Bay tour group arrived back in Hanoi early in the evening the next day, and after killing a few hours, James and I made it to the railway station to catch an overnight sleeper train to Hue. This was our first Vietnamese sleeper train, and we were treated to a 4 berth "soft" cabin to ourselves. Getting some sleep wasn't as much of an issue as it was on our first train a month previously in Thailand - which we took to mean that we're getting better at this travelling lark.

We arrived in Hue the next morning, and were proud of the fact that for the first time since we'd been away we actually shopped around for a hotel room rather than taking the first one that was offered to us. This was the start of a good run on hotel room prices, which I've subsequently been tracking on a spreadsheet (see graph below!).

That night was New Year's Eve, so that evening we headed into town to find somewhere suitable to welcome in 2010, stopping off at the highest bar in Hue on the way (16th floor - not a patch on the 64th floor in Bangkok, but almost as expensive). Our first stop seemed like it might get better later on, but rather than risk it, we moved on. The next bar seemed more promising, with buy-one-get-one-free drinks, and a pool table. We settled in for the night with a group of people we met playing pool, toasting the New Year in various parts of Australia and East Asia, before it was finally our turn.

The next day I finally accepted the inevitable, and got my hair cut - whilst this doesn't sound particularly exciting, it was the first since I started my travels, and was somewhat of a worry as I had to use rudamentary gestures to explain what I wanted. Overall I can't complain too much, although the guy did try it on when he'd finished "10 US Dollars Sir" - given that's pretty much what I pay in the UK, I used the approach of laughing a lot and then offered 5, which he almost immediately agreed to. Notes to self: a) I should have agreed a price up front, b) once I'd failed with a), I should have started at 3 dollars...

Our final day in Hue was spent on a 12 hour whistle-stop coach tour of the DMZ (de-militarised zone), which lay North of Hue during the Vietnam war. Unfortunately, most of the sights have now been eaten up by vegetation/farming, which together with our tour guide's dreadful English, made the excessively long day even more frustrating. The one stand out experience for the day was the Vinh Moch tunnels, which we got to explore, and where villagers spent 6 years sheltering from US air raids.

Nha Trang

We chose Nha Trang as our next destination, on the basis that it could be reached on a sleeper train, leaving Hue at 20:00ish, and arriving in Nha Trang at 8:00 the next morning (and also because it's Vietnam's premier beach resort). Unfortunately, the train didn't have any "soft" berths, so we had to make do with "hard" berths - the difference being that there are 6 beds in a cabin rather than 4 (meaning you don't have enough room to sit up in bed!), and that there's no mattress to speak of. James had anticipated this issue, and purchased some dodgy Vietnamese Diazapam (Valium) in Hue to relax him for the journey. I looked suitably disapproving, but I'm starting to think that only encourages him.

When we arrived we found another bargain hotel, just a few feet from the promenade, and headed to the beach for a lazy day of napping, drinking beer, and swimming.

That night James was pretty hyper, which he attributed to a post-Valium high. I knew it was going to be a bad night when we arrived at a bar at about 5:00pm, and in the time it took me to drink my first beer he'd had 4 cocktails.... A low point for the evening occurred later in the night, when I ordered a water, only to be brought a bottle of Manchester United branded water. Despite my loud protestations, the barmaid couldn't understand what the problem was, and much to James' amusement I refused to drink it until the label had been fully removed... (my Dad would be so proud).

The next morning we were up early for a snorkelling trip around the islands of Nha Trang bay. I hadn't snorkelled since our family holidays in Spain when I was a kid, and had forgotten how good it was. We had a fun and lazy day of snorkelling and sitting in the sun, interspersed with plenty of food (much of it seafood again...). When we got back into town we had just enough time to grab a shower and sort ourselves out before we moved on again - this time by sleeper bus to Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon).

Saigon

In keeping with our new brand of Blitzkrieg Travel, we only had time to spend one night in Saigon, with a day to see the sights. It turns out that this wasn't too much of a hardship, as Saigon didn't have too much to offer (being very similar to Hanoi, if a little more welcoming, and certainly a lot warmer).

One of the sights we visited was the Independence Palace - the offices of the president of South Vietnam during the Vietnam war. Having already been to Hanoi and seen the reserved and simple way in which the North Vietnamese leader Ho Chi Minh lived, it became pretty clear to us why the South lost. Whilst Uncle Ho was working away in his wooden house on stilts, with meetings held around a small table set up under the house, the president of the South was messing about in his massive palace, complete with gambling room and cinema...

That afternoon we found ourselves a nice air conditioned cafe, where we escaped from the heat and checked our emails. It was this point that James found a message from earlier that day from his friend June, telling him that if he visited Saigon, we could stay with her parents in their house, complete with pool and driver. Cursing our luck for receiving this a day too late, we headed back to our hotel, which no longer seemed as good a deal as it had when we'd negotiated the price that morning!

Cambodia

The journey from Saigon to Phnom Penh the next morning took about 6 hours by bus, with a brief stop at the Vietnam/Cambodia border to complete the necessary formalities - the most worrying of which was a Cambodian official in a face mask holding a gun to your forehead... this turned out to be some kind of thermometer, which they were using to check us all for signs of swine flu.

If our stay in Saigon had been whistle-stop, then I'm not sure what word I'd use to describe the stay in Phnom Penh (whirlwind?). We arrived at a hostel in the late afternoon, and immediately booked our onwards coach journey to Siem Reap for 8:00am the next morning. The time in between was largely spent in the bar, other than when we got ourselves "blind massages" from a couple of blind Cambodian girls (it's not as dodgy as it sounds - it's a scheme run by the blind association in Cambodia).

On the off chance that there are any (no doubt very bored) Cambodians reading this, I'd like to apologise for not spending longer in Phnom Penh, and in particular for not visiting/learning more about the Killing Fields, where Pol Pot murdered thousands of Cambodians during the Khmer Rouge's reign of terror - maybe next time. Unfortunately, our Blitzkreig Travel schedule (we had to get back to Bangkok for the 11th Jan, in time to meet James' girlfriend Lyndsey) only allowed us three full days in Cambodia (one of which would be taken up by a 6 hour bus ride), which we concluded would probably be best spent visiting the temples of Angkor Wat, and therefore necessitating moving on to Siem Reap.

Siem Reap is described by my guide book as the most touristy place in Cambodia, and for good reason - the place seems almost exclusively set up for tourists, complete with "Pub Street", where you can eat/drink whatever takes your fancy. Arriving in the mid afternoon we headed out for a late lunch and beer, where we got chatting to a French guy. He warned us that he'd bought a three day pass to the temples, but that it wasn't nearly enough time to do them justice. He also warned us that it takes even longer if you try to visit the temples by bike. We then explained to him that we'd actually planned to do just that, and also that we only had two days. He shrugged his shoulders in a typically Gallic way, and without actually saying it, seemed to have "you English fools - you'll never do it" written all over his face...

With the French guy's words of warning ringing in our ears, we were up early the next morning and had left our guesthouse by 7:00am, complete with the worst bikes we'd ever seen. So far on our travels we've been having very little luck with map reading, and this day was no exception. Somehow we managed to take a route which completely by-passed the Angkor Wat ticket office, and therefore arrived at the first temple without a ticket. The guard offered us little sympathy as he explained that we'd have to cycle 6km back the way we'd come to buy our tickets... The rest of the day was spent cycling in pretty intense heat, with stops every few kilometres to wander around the next temple. Whilst we never felt that we were rushing around anything, we realised by lunchtime that we'd pretty much covered the day's intended itinerary, and that at our current pace we could make it around our two day plan (i.e. most of the easily accessible temples) in just one day. We therefore set this as our revised plan, if for no other reason than it would mean we didn't have to spend the next day sweating quite so much, and would save us spending another 20 US Dollars each on a second day ticket. We duly completed our mission (take that, random French guy) - having left Angkor Wat itself until last in the day, and therefore seeing it as the sun began to set - a very impressive sight, if a little spoiled by the scaffolding that has been erected around the main towers.

Following on from our success, we rewarded ourselves that evening with a number of beers, including one in a bar that had its own crocodile pit, complete with a (pretty dopey) crocodile. Unfortunately this meant that I then had to listen to James explain in detail how he could "take the crocodile", and the various ways in which he would use the advantage of his 80+ kilos to crush it. Fortunately as it was reasonably early in the night, he didn't attempt to demonstrate, and I therefore didn't end up having to travel to Bangkok alone, and explain to Lyndsey how James has been eaten by an enraged crocodile....

Next time...

We left Cambodia as planned on 11th January, and now have four weeks of exploring Thailand's beaches and islands to look forward to. I hope those of you in the UK enjoy similar weather to us....

Learning Points

James is better at pool in Vietnam
Hanoi is pure chaos
Unlike the Americans in 1969, we actually made it to Hanoi for Christmas (thanks to my Dad for that one...)
It only takes 33 quid to be a millionaire in Vietnam
James is addicted to cleaning his ears (every time I look round he's playing with another cotton bud)

We now talk far too openly about our bowel movements
I get very grumpy when hotels lose some of my laundry
According to an American couple we overheard in the Hanoi War Museum, the American's didn't really "lose" the Vietnam War
On the basis of the above, we have concluded that the British didn't really "lose" the American War of Independence
It's impossible for a man to walk anywhere in Hue without being offered "lady boom-boom"

James is a "tactile person" - this is his explanation for needing to touch everything he sees, in particular things that say "do not touch"....
The first thing most Cambodians say when they discover you're English is "luvely jubbly"
To the Vietnamese, James and I bizarrely seem to look like brothers (or sometimes, twins...)
My friends seem obsessed with asking me how many margherita pizzas I've eaten on my travels
Days of the week no longer have any meaning to me whatsoever

James is incapable of refusing to buy things from young girls if they pull a sad face
The Swarbrick-Aldridge-Sunley luck has continued to plague me, as my photos of the three most significant Angkor Wat temples were obscured to varying extents by scaffolding
Watching a blind Cambodian girl kneeling on James' back is a funnier sight than it should be

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Photos

Christmas Day
James in the Irish bar on Christmas Day

Hanoi chaos
A brief example of traffic at a Hanoi junction

Hanoi's Flagtower
Part of the Hanoi War Museum

Uncle Ho
Statue of Ho Chi Minh in his musuem in Hanoi

Ha Long Bay
Cove where the tour boats moor to visit the "Amazing Cave"

Ben after a visit to Ha Long Bay Cave
Note the filthy T-Shirt and shorts - not ideal when we'd had to pack 3 days worth of stuff into our small day sacks...

Hanoi's Main Railway Line
Note the houses/doors opening directly onto the railway tracks....

Nha Trang beach
Gorgeous - wish we'd stayed longer

Siem Reap
Post temple-viewing relaxation

Accommodation Cost Graph
Just keeping my eye in on the financial analysis front....

Comments

[Emma]

Geek.
I read the top summary and the learning points. I might return to read the rest when I've got a spare year handy...

[Andy]

I too read the summary, looked at the pictures and read the learning points. I will read the next one with more interest if only to grasp whether the intake of pizza's exceeds your previous visit to the country. On the topic of pizzas there were some fairly interesting ones in Cambodia when we visited. Did you partake?

[Mary Coates]

Your blog
We have just finished reading your blog. We both think it is brilliant. When will your book be published? Bens rough guide to the far east. You are certainly having a good time and hope it continues. Enjoy.

[Soph]

Please get a new toothbrush. (I, unlike Em, have an assignment to do, so I read the whole thing. Plus I'm the better sister!!)

[Auntie Hilda]

love your blogs
HI Ben Its a good job it was not chity water