Pratting Around the World

Sapa

Sapa is a small town in northen vietnam that is up in the mountains and nearby to several village tribes. The views of terraced rice paddies and small village huts were beautiful despite the frequent and all-encompassing mist.

after the heat of south vietnam, Sapa felt absolutely freezing. hudson bought a coat and i looked so pitiful when we first arrived that a vietnamese girl let me borrow her coat. our hotel was nice except that the power kept cutting out – in the whole town, not just our hotel. as was usual in vietnam, the hot water wasn’t really hot at all. we had a lovely fireplace right in our room, but they only gave us wood at night. and it wasn’t just wood – they burn plastic and all sorts of rubbish in vietnam so after the guy started a fire in our room i had to pick out some laminated paper and stuff.

everday tribespeople came into town, mostly women and children, to buy stuff and sell crafts. each tribe has their own distinct colors and wardrobe. one tribe wore and sold a beautiful deep blue cloth; the color runs though and all of their skin was died blue. also, the girls and women had their legs showing and their legs looked frozen.

i wish i could have understood the language as everytime we didnt buy something we got an absolute slagging, im sure it would have been amusing

central craft market.

one day we went into a tribe village. the people were friendly and just going about their business. they were poor, living mostly in little shacks and hovels and raising small crops.

there was a very high, rickety bridge with holes big enough for my leg to fit through.

the tribespeople use the waterfall to power some simple levers, although we really couldn’t make out the point of the levers – possibly to crush grain or something.

sapa was very pretty and peaceful.

Hanoi

After a night train, scary motorbike taxi and flight, we finally arrived in Hannoi on Tet, the Vietnamese New Year. It was also Valentine’s Day. Tet is similiar to Christmas Eve in the states and so most businesses were closed. luckily this cozy little restaurant that we loved was open so we didn’t starve. It was actually really nice to walk around a big city while the streets were empty. We stayed long enough to see all the businesses open and Hanoi back to it’s usual hustle.

our little street

 hanoi was cleaner than HCMC, but not by much. we still had a sighting of a woman using the bathroom in public – gross. We saw a lot of Hanoi by just walking around; there were some nice galleries and shops. The city had a nice feel to it.

happy tet 2010!

‘hanoi hilton’ – where john mccain was held captive during the war

we went to a water puppet show since they are meant to be iconic of Hanoi. A bit long, but cool to see.

my pal Huy who lives in HCMC warned us that we wouldn’t see any stray dogs in Hanoi (because the locals eat them). it was hard to find dog meat, although hudson was pretty determined. we did have a laugh at this sign though:

finally we found some in this shitty little town. a street stall had dog head, body and tail. after all this hunting around, hudson didn’t even try any. can’t say i blame him. who would you eat that head???

yeah, didn’t fancy eating a raw dogs head, would have loved it on the BBQ though

woof woof

Mui ne

Mui ne is a beach resort town which is famous for sand dunes within the vicinity of the city. We managed to call upon a friend of a friend who runs a great  hotel. Finally got to have a good shower.

the pomello is like a grapefruit in the taste but it takes ages to peel. Kelly became pretty good after a while.

we’ve become obsessed with it.

pretty little fishing boats. if you look closely, you can see some fishing baskets – these floating baskets large enough for someone to sit inside. they are something out of a fairytale.

there are two sets of large sand dunes. we rented a motorbike to get there, but it’s kind of tough to ride through dry sand.

definitely should have called to check what each other were wearing.

the white dunes

there were loads of  little kids around trying to rent you a piece of plastic to surf the dunes. yeah, we both tried slaloming down the downs. it was fun. sort of. jumping off the dunes was much better.

photo makes me look like a champ – just a good photo

a more accurate photo

climbing back up the dunes was a killer

sunset on the red dunes

Ho chi minh city (saigon)

Ho chi minh city (still called saigon by most locals), is a crazy city that is always busy. since we were there the week leading up to tet (chinese new year), the atmosphere was even more festive.

loads of flowers in the markets for tet, including these huge flower animals.

reunification palace – when saigon fell a northern vietnamese tank crashed through the gates (broadcast live to the world) and power was officially handed over to the north.

we visited the war remnants museum. Some amazing photography was exhibited here aswell as some information on the use of different weaponry used. The museum was obviously biased but was still interesting to see.

We also visited the Cu Chi tunnels – an underground tunnel system that the north vietnamese used as a hiding spot and hospital in the vietnam war. the tunnels also included some exhibits of a big tank and bamboo booby traps.

the north vietnemese used about 20 different bamboo traps to seriously injure their enemies; most involved getting speared in some way. the one below shows that the ground is on a see-saw type board that flips a person down into a pit full of spears.

the tunnels were amazing; there were three different levels of tunnels and we just went down to barely the second level. below you can see a tiny entrance into the tunnels. i volunteered to try it out.

very clautrophobic inside. the tunnels connected, but in some cases dead-ended. this small peep hole was used as a periscope of sorts so a soldier could pop up and get his bearings.

inside the first level – the tunnels weren’t too small. we had to crouch and it was very dark, hot and lacking oxygen.

the second level we briefly went through was even smaller – we had to crawl on our hands and knees. you supposedly have to crawl through the third level on your stomach, but it’s offlimits because you can’t breathe down there.

i thought the tunnels were going to be like sewer tunnels in the states, but they weren’t at all. there wasn’t any oxygen flow and the tunnels were carved right out of the ground. the walls and ceilings were dirt and clay; the high clay content is the only reason the tunnels don’t cave in.

we met up with my pal, Huy, a couple nights. he’s an art director that lives in vietnam. he took us to his fave restaurant, which was huge and hilarious. thanks for the hot pot and beans-in-a-glass Huyzel.

the only good burger in south east asia – we visited my mate’s  bar in central saigon, he dubs it ‘the bellybuster’

Can tho

Our next stop was can tho, one of the important towns in the mekong delta. We decided to visit some floating markets because they’re not as touristy as the ones around bangkok.

usually when we get off any mass transport we’re bombarded with a hoard of moto/tuk tuk/taxi drivers fighting for business. A rare sight – an orderly queue to offer moto services.

statue of ho chi minh -right outside our hotel.

an early start for the 8 hour round trip to see the floating markets. the sun wasn’t even up yet.

the floating market had loads of boats overflowing with fresh produce. many smaller boats, including ours, are driven by someone standing up. many of the locals also wore pointy, conical hats to keep off the sun.

the market was great to see, loads of boats with fruit and veg. These markets were obviously still an important part of peoples lives, no harris teeter around here.

some boats specialized in a particular produce, like this watermelon boat below. many of the boats also had guard dogs that would bark and freak out if another boat got too close – can’t be losing all your produce because of some river pirates.

our boat driver was hilarious. he bought a load of fruit for us to try and kept making me gifts of flowers and palm fronds – i think he liked blonde hair.

after checking out the markets, our driver took us through mekong canals and parts of the jungle. it was very secluded and the only humans we saw were some locals living in huts. they must not see much blonde hair because they loved mine and kept waving at us.

a relaxing return joiurney down the canals

a rice paddy – we saw these all over vietnam rural areas. the rice is tended to by hand and everyone wears the cone hats.

this is a banana.

this is a spider.

after walking through jungle where we saw jack fruit and star fruit trees, we hopped back on the boat and went to a small open air restaurant in the middle of nowhere. we had to pay for our driver’s meal, but our meals were delicious. i had some vietnemse duck dish and hudson had fish with rice paper and lots of other crazy ingredients. our driver found a snake in the canal and we played with it a bit. there were also turtles around and a few other creatures.

Phu quoc island

Our first stop in vietnam (apart from an unavoidable overnight stay in ha tien, a border town) was phu quoc island. The west side of the island is a continuous beach with beach bungalows being the main source of accommodation. Our bungalow, of course, had a sketchy bathroom but was so close to the beach it didn’t matter. One huge problem was some random german guy next door who was hawking up some massive lugees constantly. Fun to mimic but not great when trying to sleep.

Being on the west side of the island, it was great to relax with a beer and watch the sunset

we rented a motorbike one day and travelled a few kilometres away from the main tourist scene. we had a deserted stretch of sand to ourselves. One of my favourite beaches so far.

this “private” beach we found was amazing. the water is so calm and clear, even better than where the bungalows are located. we drove right through some palms and parked the scooter on the beach.

we also explored the local part of phu quoc (see above). this river wasn’t very clean and the town wasn’t too much to see. many of the roads were dirt and a bit rough. we also went down to the southern tip, but the beach wasn’t too impressive.

there was a pearl farm on the island which had a great bar. Once kelly found the wild monkeys that hung around, i couldn’t get her away. The owners had made a pet of the monkeys – the baby just roamed free and the mom had a long rope so she couldn’t get into all the food. these little guys seemed very friendly and happy – i guess they should be since the owners told us that the locals capture these monkeys to eat their brains.

hudson and the monkey look great together. these monkeys were so funny, climbing all over us.

cutest monkey ever, the mum was really protective at first but kelly soon worked her magic.

view from our bungalow. overall phu quoc was a great island – a good compromise between total isolation and total tourist.