China Part 1 - Enter The Dragon....

We had heard a lot of bad stories about the land border crossing between Northern Vietnam at Lao Cai & Southwest China at the town of Hekou, so as we exited Vietnamese immigration & walked across the bridge that links the two countries we felt slightly apprehensive about the grilling we would get from the Chinese border officials. By some miraculous stroke of luck however, it turned out to be one of the easiest & quickest border crossings we had ever done, complete with very amiable helpful staff. We had gone to the lengths of hiding our copy of the China Lonely Planet book deep in our bags, as we had heard tales of the officials confiscating the books due to the fact the map shows Taiwan as a separate country – which of course, it is – though the Chinese government don’t accept this & claim it as their land, & as the Lonely Planet challenges their view they apparently aim to wipe out all copies. Not so for us though thankfully. Walking out onto the streets of Hekou & heading for the bus station the difference between China & Vietnam is immediately blatant. Apart from the fact that you move from all signs in Vietnam being written with English characters (albeit not actually in English), in China all signs etc are written in Chinese characters which are completely unintelligible to us. There were also a whole host of modified push bikes, fully laden with an unbelievable amount of cardboard boxes, waiting to cross over into Vietnam as part of their export trade. A little different to the rows of containers & lorries that usually wait at border crossings elsewhere in the world.

Hekou is in the Chinese province of Yunnan, in the far south west which borders not only Vietnam, but also Myanmar (Burma) & Tibet. It is a mountainous area, & certainly on the Vietnamese side of the border, road travel is a slow bumpy wind around the mountain sides. It was with this in mind that we boarded our bus from Hekou heading for the city of Kunming, some 8 hours north (barely noticeable on a map of the country, such is the size of China) – we were expecting a similarly slow & windy journey. Immediately we were given a glimpse of the vast scale of development that is going on all over China at the moment, not to mention the huge amounts of money that is being spent on it. For the first 4 hours of the journey which traversed the most mountainous section of the route, we were on a brand new toll freeway that didn’t cling to the mountain edge at all – it was either a series of very lengthy tunnels blasted through the middle of the mountains or a network of very high bridges that spanned the divide across the valleys between mountains. As we cruised our way along with barely another car on the road (an indication of the amount of locals that can afford to use the toll route, the slow windy bumpy cliff hugging route remaining the main road for the vast majority), in our luxury air conditioned bus we felt considerably more civilised than we had imagined. That is until we made our first of several toilet stops of the journey. What confronted us was quite possibly the most basic, disgusting & degrading toilet set up of anywhere we have travelled.

Toilets: The only saving grace of the toilets were the fact they had actually bothered to go to the lengths of separating a Male & Female area, though when inside, there were two open troughs down either side of the walls, with nothing more than a 3ft dividing wall between what would usually be cubicle spaces, no doors or anything on the front of these little sections, so people were just going about their business in full view of everyone else in the toilet and anyone who happened to walk past the entrance to the toilets. It was reminiscent of what can only be described as a cow byre both in smell and appearance. Obviously there were no actual toilet seats or anything, just squat & drop into the trough, which if they actually bothered to flow any running water through, would swim past each subsequent toilet goer in the line – but that was even too much to ask, so there were rather unattractive piles left behind, just being constantly added to. You would feel incredibly sorry for the poor individual who had the task of cleaning these cess pits out, but it appeared that no one actually ever cleaned these things out – hence there was no one to waste your sympathy on. It was like being swept from the 21st Century straight back to the middle ages in one incredibly foul swoop. It was from this point on that we carefully planned our pre-bus journey liquid & solid intakes to minimise any future exposure to the delights of the public toilets. We would find however that even in the tourist areas where new posh marble toilets had been built, it means nothing if you fail to educate the public on general manners and so they inevitably were absolutely devastated beyond anything you can imagine. I say no more except, animals are cleaner.

When we eventually arrived in Kunming it was about 10pm, we knew there were about 4 or 5 bus stations in the city, but we had no idea which one we had just pulled into as these things have a tendency to change at the drop of a hat, and the fact that we could not understand a single word on any sign & all that. We assumed that as per every other bus station we had arrived into, there would be a taxi rank waiting to ferry us to our hostel, & there would be at least a couple of people that spoke a few words of English to help us out – in Kunming however, this was not to be the case. The bus station also appeared to have no outside lights they were prepared to use, so we wondered around in the pitch darkness, not really having a clue where we were or where we were going, unable to find anything that resembled a taxi, or anyone who spoke English.

Eventually an opportunist individual noticed our plight & decided to offer us a lift into town for an extortionate price (relatively against what it should have been), our attempts at any sort of negotiation on the price were completely futile, as neither sign language, written numbers or speaking English very loudly & slowly, as per your typical Brit abroad made any difference. Eventually deciding we had no other choice we decided we would jump in this complete strangers car in the middle of nowhere, in the middle of the night, & just hope that he wasn’t some dodgy Triad member, whisking us away for a life of torture & pain. Thankfully after a rather convoluted route around the city in a vain attempt by our driver to justify his ridiculous price, we arrived at the door of the hostel we had pre-booked – the Mingtong Guest House. Free at last we thought, into the comfort of a trusty old hostel where there were a few English speaking staff members & fellow guests...yet again, this was not to be. None of the staff spoke any English, there were no other international guests staying there, so once again we began the uphill struggle of trying to make ourselves understood.

After our first night in China we all awoke to something that would become a common theme – aching hips & backs from the beds, where the definition of a mattress is pretty much a plank of ply wood covered with a sheet. Voila – what more comfort could anyone ask for! Kunming is a city on the move and quickly, apparently there are something like 500 new cars that hit the roads every day. As we sat & ate our breakfast of a very tasty mixture of a pancake/omelette blend done by a local street stall opposite the hostel, we were amazed at the hoards of brand new cars flooding past us. Audi, VW & Toyota seeming to well & truly have the lion’s share of the market cornered. Even the French brands seeming to be more prevalent than Ford, & we didn’t notice a single Jag or Land Rover at all – come on chaps, get a showroom or 5 set up in Kunming asap!

Moving on from Kunming we took another 8 hour or so bus journey up to the ancient walled town of Lijiang. Passing through some stunning remote mountain scenery en route – naturally all via the comfort of our air conditioned bus on a brand new toll highway that had been blasted through the landscape & remote mountain communities. These communities are sustained purely by farming, & it was quite a contrast to see these farmers that live pretty much on the poverty line walking along the hard shoulders of the highway wheeling their crops from A to B, yet again lavish modernity side by side with the basic traditionalism of the vast majority of China.

Lijiang is a beautiful traditional old town, a vision straight out of some Chinese movie set in the time of the Ming Dynasty or something. The town is set within the confines of a walled boundary & has been preserved & restored in keeping with the original feel. The cobbled streets are largely pedestrianised, with the exception of a couple of streets that allow minor traffic at certain times of day, making it a nice place to have a relaxed amble about. It is however a very touristy place – incredibly popular with Chinese tourists, Western tourists are still in the vast minority – making it far feel less touristy to us than it actually is.

We stayed at a place called Mama Naxi’s Guesthouse – a traditional Chinese ‘Naxi’ house, run by the very sweet, highly eccentric & slightly insane Mama Naxi. Being up in the mountains, Lijiang gets very cold at night & what we didn’t realise about the traditional Naxi Houses is that they don’t actually have any glass in the windows just a wooden lattice style carving to prevent people from actually getting into the rooms. Mama Naxi thankfully provided electric blankets on every bed which proved to be worth their weight in rice.

China is obviously renowned for its tea and so we thought it appropriate to try some here in a proper tea shop. Unknowingly we ventured into a tea shop in Lijiang and ordered a pot of tea, then somewhat embarrassedly had to make our excuses and leave when we were presented with a menu of teas, some apparently hundreds of years old and priced like vintage wines. The cheapest tea on the menu was around £15 for a small 2 cup pot. All we wanted was a cheap cup of builders tea!

One of the big draws for the Chinese tourists to Lijiang is the fact it sits at the foot of the Jade Dragon Snowy Mountain, on the Eastern edge of the Himalayan mountain range, considered a holy site to many Chinese people. During Michael Palin’s BBC series, ‘Himalaya’, he visited the area, & in particular the small neighbouring village of Baisha, where he paid a visit to an old Chinese herbal medicine doctor known as Dr. Ho, at his clinic/house ‘Jade Dragon Mountain Medical Centre’. Following in Michael’s footsteps, we made our way out the rustic traditional mountain village of Baisha & popped in to say hello to the famous Dr Ho. Stood outside his ‘clinic’, we were unsure whether we should actually go in, but before our minds were made up the decision was made for us, when a very amiable 87 year old, dressed in Doctors whites came out to greet us & insisted we come in & join him in a few cups of his specially developed herbal tea.

Once inside & enjoying our tea, Dr Ho regaled us with his tales of how he started out life a very poor farm boy, who was stricken with an illness that no Doctors at the time that were available to him could treat, he decided to learn about the plants & herbs that grew in the foothills of the Jade Dragon Mountains & treat himself. Miraculously finding a way to completely cure himself & provide the knowledge for a life of good health, he decided to make his life’s mission helping others, who could either ill-afford conventional medicinal treatment, or who had failed to find cures for their respective ailments through conventional wisdom. He's a remarkable man who even mails parcels of his herbal treatments to Leukaemia patients in North America as they find that it is the most effective course of treatment. Very proud of his association with the BBC & Michael Palin, he was very excited to discover we too were also from England. ‘Do you know Michael Palin’ he asked us, ‘well, we know of him’ we replied – which clearly translated as – ‘yes we know him very well, Michael & the Monty Python boys regularly come round our houses for dinner, or sometimes we just meet up down the local for a few pints & a chin wag’ – as he was keenly asking us to pass on his regards to Palin & co the next time we had one of our little soiree’s.

After packing us off with a bag of herbs for general good health & a positive ‘Chi’; the Chinese life force, we made a small donation to his onward cause (he takes no actual payment from anyone for any of his treatments, merely the odd donation), & bid Dr Ho a fond farewell, promising to say hello to the Monty Python boys for him & tell them to pay him a visit again soon. A very special experience.

Having our final breakfast at Mama Naxi's place, she saw us off with a little good luck charm as a gift along with a bag of fruit (?) and we head to the bus station for what we hoped would be a similar standard of bus to what we had experienced so far. It wasn't to be, back to the crapped out old shankers again unfortunately, the good news was the bus left on time and there were only about 10 of us on it, the bad news was 2 of that 10 spent the majority of the next 9 hours being sick, firstly directly onto the floor as it apparently caught them unawares (?) then into the plastic bags provided.

The journey itself though took us through some spectacular mountain scenery, giving us a few snapshots of some of more rural lifestyles as we passed through small mountain communities. Huge areas of the hillsides given over to terraced tea plantations; the act of tea drinking being a very important ritual in Chinese life.

Half way through the bus journey we stopped off for lunch at some roadside restaurant and low and behold the two lads that had spent the last few hours making a right mess of the carpet in the bus, not only got off the bus continuing to throw up, but immediately afterwards went and ordered themselves a big plate of noodles and some suspicious looking chicken. To say we feared for the next few hours on the bus was an understatement...with iPods at full volume to block out the sound of retching and eyes aimed firmly out of the window to minimise any chance of witnessing any more puking (if we don't know it's happening then surely it's not happening...) but of course it was happening, and the one thing you can't do anything about is the smell...

This journey gave us our first real exposure to the sheer amount of mining and coal powered power plants there are dotted all over China. Once beautiful mountain vistas now resemble a polluted industrial wasteland, entire towns completely blackened with coal dust and the roads ruined beyond repair by the volume and weight of the trucks that are constantly pouring through these towns ferrying raw materials around the country.

We were en-route to the city of Chengdu in China's Sichuan province, the province that was hit very hard by the huge earthquake a few years ago. First though we had to change from bus to train in the city of Panzhihua, an industrial mountain mining town, apparently not even deserving a mention in the lonely planet, but actually home to some 1.2 million people... We had planned to take a 13 hr sleeper train up to Chengdu, but arrived at the station to find there was nothing but standing room left available for the entire journey. The really brilliant thing about Chinese public transport is that you have to book everything in advance to stand any chance of getting a seat or bed, but there is no way whatsoever of buying your tickets from anywhere other than the station you will be departing from and you have to do it in person. With millions of people constantly on the move it is rarely a straightforward transaction.

One of the more disgusting traits of the Chinese is their insistence of hoking their guts up and spitting huge globules of phlegm absolutely anywhere and everywhere. While we were queuing in vain to try and get our tickets, a whole host of the people also in the queue were spitting all over the floors directly behind and in front of us, vile.

That said, we managed to get 3 sleeper berths on a train that was leaving at about 2am. Choosing not to spend the next 8 hours standing around in pools of spit surrounded by people that constantly chain smoke even in non smoking areas, we booked a cheap hotel room across the road for a few hours to wait for the train and hopefully get some rest. When the time arrived we made our way back across to the decidedly dodgy train station and waited in the no smoking area, surrounded by people chain smoking, for the train to arrive. We joined the train to find not unlike the 3 bears, that someone had been sleeping in our beds...now if it had transpired that it had been Goldilocks or someone equally as delightful we probably wouldn't have been that bothered. Dodgy, puking, smoking, spitting China men however didn't really fit that bill...13 hours later after miraculously getting some sleep and enjoying the scenery during the daylight hours that we passed by along the way, we finally arrived in Chengdu.

Vietnam Part 2 - Central to Northern Highlands

Leaving the pleasant temperatures of Hoi An, we head north a further couple of hours to the city of Hue, just over the central point of the country, where the temperature changed from a sunny 28 degrees to a rainy 17 degrees. Hue is set on the banks of a river & is famous for the ancient walled city where the Emperor’s once lived, an area that was once off limits to anyone other than the ruling elite & their concubines - now open for all as a tourist attraction.

Before taking in any of the sights of Hue, we figured we had better get straight onto arranging our onward travel up to Hanoi, as due to the New Year celebrations this particular leg of the journey was reported to be very busy. It was - we explored every option to move on in the planned 2 days time, there were no seats left available on any trains, planes or buses for a minimum of 3 days, & even then all that was available were the last 3 seats on a 12 hour night bus - the relative luxury of the sleeper buses with a sort of chez lounge style seat for each passenger (nowhere near as glamorous as that sounds) were well & truly booked up for the entire week. So after resigning ourselves to another uncomfortable night a few days ahead, & an extra night in the city we went out & treated ourselves to our first Indian curry for quite some time - which actually turned out to be really nice.

As it turned out Hue was not a bad place to spend a few days, we spent a day seeing the sights of the old walled city, had some more good food, ended up staying in a really nice hostel & found some good bars to while away the hours. Due to the colder temperature in Hue, the bars were set out much more like European bars - i.e. they were inside with doors & windows, rather than largely outside with just some sun/rain shelter above - which made a nice change & made us feel a little more at home.

When the night of the bus journey arrived we found ourselves the only non-Vietnamese on the bus, crammed in on seats at the back of the bus with hardly any leg room - the only thing that made us feel slightly better was the fact that we weren’t quite the worst off - a woman had paid her way onto the bus (at a reduced rate) at the last minute after all actual seats were gone, & proceeded to sit on a plastic garden chair in the middle of the aisle for the duration of the journey. This being Vietnam, with the sort of uneven roads & crazy driving that we had now become accustomed to, we were less than convinced about the ability of this woman to actually remain on this chair for the whole journey. With every wild braking or swerving manoeuvre the flimsy plastic legs of the garden chair she was sat on pretty much buckled under her, leaving the prospect of her getting any sleep somewhat out of reach. Against all the odds, the three of us actually managed to get a small amount of sleep & the journey wasn’t actually as bad as what we had feared. The woman on the garden chair arrived in Hanoi looking somewhat dishevelled & tired, having just endured quite possibly one of the most uncomfortable nights of her life - though something tells us this wasn’t the first or last time she had actually used this particular seating arrangement!

The bus dropped us at the side of the road at about 5am on the outskirts of Hanoi - not quite what we were expecting, a bus station being the usual drop off point of choice. However, there were a few taxis lined up so we weren’t concerned, but it appeared that it was a little too early for any taxi driver to actually be wanting to do any work, as it took us a good half an hour to coax any of them into giving us a lift into the city centre. As we made our way into central Hanoi we passed hoards of pensioners all doing their morning Tai Chi in the park, or power walking around the edge of the lake - limbering up for the days mayhem that lay ahead in this crazy city.

Pulling up to our hostel in Hanoi – The World Hostel, we were not exactly pleased with what we were confronted with...the pictures & reviews they had used on the web were nothing like the flea pit it actually was. When we confronted the staff with the disparities in the pictures etc they just laughed it off, claiming they had just redecorated – quite why anyone would redecorate a place that looked contemporary, clean & modern into something that had dirty walls, lino falling apart up the stair wells & disgusting bathrooms was beyond us, but...

Anyway, we dumped our bags & took a walk out into the city in search of some breakfast & another hostel. Hanoi is not unlike Saigon in it’s crazy traffic flow & the suicidal road crossing techniques you have to employ, one of the largest road users here being the Cyclo-taxis (a bloke pedalling a bike with a seat on the front for 2 people, ferrying people all over the city). After finding a good place for breakfast & strolling round some of the chaotic streets of the characteristic old quarter we found the mythical Bia-Hoi Junction – an area of the city where draught lager is served straight from the keg to the glass literally on the side of the road, the beer being completely fresh with no preservatives in it & as such it is only good for 1 day – the best part about it though is the price, 4000 dong – the equivalent of about £0.12 per glass (about ¾ of a pint). It was while we were at the first Bia-Hoi establishment of the day that Jonny got approached by one of the local shoe shine/repair kids & was promptly conned into paying around £3 for his trainers to be buffed up with an old toothbrush, much to everyone’s amusement.

We moved onto another part of the pavement where we sat down on kid’s sized plastic garden chairs & proceeded to work our way through several more of the city’s best bargain. Being on the side of the street, there was no toilet at this particular establishment, however a family living down one of the alleys just across the road had seized on the business opportunity of opening up their outside toilet for the use of patrons across the street, charging about £0.10 for each use – which meant that once we had a few beers we were rapidly spending almost as much on going for a pee as we were on beer.

After some food we searched round a few hostels, which were all far better than our one & for not much more money, determined to move places we had a few more Bia-Hoi’s while we talked it over, then decided it all sounded like too much grief & just decided to stay in the hell hole we were already in. Such are the beauty of beer fuelled decisions.

The following day we hit the streets of Hanoi again with the plan of organising our tour out to Halong Bay, a beautiful area just off the East coast of Northern Vietnam filled with thousands of small limestone islands & cliffs jutting out into the water, where you cruise around on the old ‘Junk Boats’ as they are called – the style of boat that is synonymous with the likes of Hong Kong harbour, big wooden boats with huge oriental style fabric sails. After traipsing around the millions of tour operators that all seemed to be offering pretty much the same thing at varying prices, some that looked far more reputable than others, we decided to go for a middle of the road priced trip from an agency that had come specifically recommended for its quality of boats, service & food...we would soon find out what this actually meant.

Satisfied with achieving this, all booked up for the following day we strolled around more of the city, visiting Ho Chi Minh’s mausoleum (which was conveniently closed), the confucious Temple of Literature and ambled through the French influenced boulevards lined with chateau’s & villas from the French Colonial days, before making our way back to our favourite street side location in Hanoi. We were determined to spend the grand total of £1 each on Bia-Hoi, which resulted in us consuming 9 beers. Obviously the £1 spent on beer resulted in £3 being spent on trips to the loo, our ageing bladders not being what they once were. All this drinking & walking backwards & forwards to the toilet was hungry work, so we decided to order some food from the menu that was selotaped to the wall next to the pavement where we sat – intrigued as to where this might be cooked at & what it would actually be like, we took the plunge. 10 minutes later we were pleasantly surprised to see someone pull up on a moped with our freshly cooked wanton dumplings & beef noodles on the back – which turned out to be fantastic, one of the tastiest meals we had in Vietnam.

The following morning with slightly thick heads, we waved farewell to the delights of The World Hostel & jumped on our tour bus out to Halong Bay. Admittedly alarm bells started ringing straight away, as the bus – that was supposed to be a private bus from the ‘Explorer’ agency we had booked with, turned out to be a shuttle bus for the infamous ‘Sinh Cafe’ tour agencies, of which there are hundreds of completely different agencies all trading under the same, as once upon a time Sinh Cafe tours used to be the best value back packer tour agencies in Vietnam – now hundreds of others have simply stolen the name to try & get a slice of the pie that Sinh Cafe monopolised in the past. It was for this very reason that we didn’t book with a Sinh Cafe agency in the first place, as there was no way of telling the good from the bad.

Anyway, too hungover to be bothered to do anything about we just sat back & travelled our way the few hours east out to the coast. Along the way the weather turned horrendous, very thick fog, low cloud & heavy rain, the only thing you could make out through the windows of the van were paddie fields as far as the eye could see and women on the side of the highway selling loaves of French bread, people just pull into the hard shoulder of Vietnam’s equivalent of the M1 to buy a few loaves & head off again!

Upon arrival in Halong City port, there were vast numbers of people standing around not going anywhere. We proceeded to join this crowd & stand around in the rain going nowhere, doing nothing & getting no information for almost 2 hours. Many people had booked just a day trip out to the Bay & were being turned around & taken back to Hanoi, the fog being so bad that the harbour master would not allow any boats out into the bay. Just when we thought we would be turned round back to Hanoi as well, our ‘guide’ herded us up & took us over to a distinctly shoddy looking ‘Junk Boat’ – the name really fitting the bill of what our vessel represented. ‘That’s weird’, we said to each other, this looks nothing like the luxury ‘Explorer Tours’ boat we had been promised in the pictures when we booked the 3 day 2 night trip. Oh well, we thought, perhaps we will move to a bigger boat when we get out of the harbour. As our boat & every single other boat in the port proceeded to pull out at the same time (about 200 of them), we unsurprisingly all came to a crashing halt as the boats all bottle necked against one another trying to get out of the harbour exit. After much shunting & crashing of boats against one another, our captain decided to give up, so we dropped anchor on the other side of the harbour to where we boarded the boat (about 100 meters away) & we were served lunch.

Nose to tail with dozens of boats, we ate our way through a bland & unexciting lunch of boiled Tofu (foul!), rice & cold chips. ‘That’s weird’ we all said to each other again – this looks nothing like the lovely pictures of food we were shown in the agency offices. The one saving grace about our boat was that it was one of only a few boats that wasn’t full of Chinese, Japanese & Vietnamese tourists all getting completely stuck into a good bit of lunch time karaoke in tone deaf voices. Funny to watch from our boat as they were all going mental for it, thankfully we were spared this torture actually taking place in our boat.

After an hour or so of this all the boats decided to head back over to the port where we had started from, so off we all went back across the 100 metres to the port side & proceeded to ram & crash each other as all boats fought for space at the water’s edge to moor up again. Getting off this particular Junk Boat, we clambered across onto another suitably rubbish boat, where we then repeated the process of ferrying back across the harbour, crashing into as many boats as possible as we all fought our way out of the harbour – the harbour master having now deemed the waters safe to explore. First stop for all boats was an island about 30 minutes from the mainland where there was a huge cave network, so once again on approach to the harbour on the island we crashed, rammed & jostled our way into position to get to land so we could get off the boat. After traipsing through the cave with every other punter that had been stuck in the harbour all day long & our non-existent English speaking tour guide we had been promised (‘that’s weird’, we thought...). Getting back out of the caves we boarded yet another Junk Boat to make our way across to the island where we would spend the night.

Thankfully our boat pulled away & headed off in the opposite direction to the majority of the other boats, finally giving us a taste of the tranquillity we had been after. The rain had now stopped, the mist was rising & the sun was setting, sitting on the deck of the boat we cruised past hundreds of these tiny limestone islands, feeling like a real journey into the unknown.

Quite how far into the unknown we would find ourselves going was steadily being revealed to us with each developing chapter of this tour. After a couple of very tranquil hours cruising through this magical landscape, we arrived at the island wherenwe were to spend the night. Of the two nights we were on this trip, one was in a hotel on the island; the other was on the boat. We arrived at the hotel, (looking nothing like the pictures we had been shown by the agency once again), to find that the entire hotel was soaking wet inside. All the floors, the walls, the stairs, the chairs, tables, light switches, and plug sockets were soaked. It was like the pores of the hotel were actively sweating in the heat. A very strange phenomenon that we have not seen anywhere before or since. Against my better judgement I decided to the plug the TV in our room into the plug socket, where it very quickly & unsurprisingly exploded almost immediately. Woops...we won’t mention that to the staff.

After a rather damp night sleep, we woke to a beautiful day & set out early on yet another boat headed for a National Park that was on one of the surrounding islands. We sailed past tiny floating village communities & deserted coves with pristine sands, in the early morning light it had an idyllic feel about it. After a couple of hours we met up with another boat, & performed another obligatory boat change, this time we were hopeful that we would actually board a boat that had sleeping quarters on it – tonight being the night we were due to sleep on the boat & none of the boats we had been on so far had anywhere to sleep other than the floor. Alas it was not to be, we boarded another bed-less Junk Boat & made our way to the ‘National Park’ for the hiking or biking options we had been promised by the agency.

Due to the fact we had been shunted from pillar to post between a myriad of equally inefficient agencies, the ‘guide’ on our current vessel had no record of our tour including the hire of bikes in the original price (...’that’s weird’, we thought), he was not budging on his stance, & we refused to pay any more money than we had already paid, so we decided to set off on foot for the ‘hike’ through the ‘National Park’. What it actually transpired to be was a paved road through one of the islands, no sign of any ‘National Park’ information, & no option to deviate from the paved road on our ‘hike’. After about 45 minutes of walking in the midday sun down some random road on the island, we decided we had had enough & made our way back to the boat to console ourselves with a couple of cans of lager.

We cruised around more islands for the afternoon, stopping off at ‘Monkey Island’ where we were supposed to have an explore around, however our ‘guide’ announced to us as we dropped anchor 100 metres from the beach that our boat didn’t have a small dingy boat that they need to actually get to the shore, & if we wanted to get to island we would have to swim. That’s weird....

Getting back to the island where we had spent the previous night, we boarded a bus back across the island & boarded yet another boat – this time the boat actually resembled the boat we had been promised all along, with private cabins, a nice lounge & dining area & beautiful deck top terrace. The new people that we met on this boat all had tales of how the last couple of days had been absolutely perfect for them, cruising around on the same boat the entire time in full comfort & luxury, having visited the actual National Park, been actual hiking & actual mountain biking, kayaking numerous times etc – all the things we had been sold, but were yet to materialise. It quickly transpired however that this luxury vessel was not to be our boat for the night, & we were yet again just being ferried to one more boat.

The journey across to our next boat however was fantastic, the sky burning red with a beautiful sunset over the bay, as a natural beauty spot Halong Bay is definitely up there as one of the best. Boarding what thankfully turned out to be our final boat, we were pleased to find it was up to standard of the last one we had just got off, after settling into our cabins we enjoyed a good meal, & along with Mike & Nina, a South African couple who had been through every step of the last couple of days with us, got stuck into the boats supply of beers & enjoy the night out in the bay.

The following morning we had an early start for some pre-breakfast kayaking around the bay & the surrounding grottos in the side of the cliffs, all very nice. A hearty breakfast later & we set off on our final cruise around the islands & through the bays, back to harbour.

Getting back into Hanoi we arranged to meet up with Mike & Nina for a few final Bia-Hoi’s at our favourite street side establishment, before which however was a quick visit back the ‘reputable tour agency’, Explorer Tours, that we had booked with, to make a few minor complaints about the disparities between what we were sold & what we ended up. Thankfully we managed to negotiate ourselves a 20% refund each which was something.

After a few drinks & some more street food with Mike & Nina, we made our way down to Hanoi train station for the sleeper train we were taking that night, headed for the far North West of Vietnam, a mountain town populated by minority hill tribes called Sapa. The sleeper trains have 4 berths to a cabin, so we felt a bit sorry for the lone Vietnamese lady who had the misfortune of making up the 4th bed in our cabin – the 3 of us already being a few beers in, decided that the best way forward would be to carry on the merriment on the train with the cans of ale they were selling on the train. As it transpired I think we were dealt our karmic payback straight away, as when we decided to turn in about 3am we not only struggled to nod off, but when we finally did start to get some sleep the train pulled into the station very shortly afterwards, some hour or so ahead of schedule around 5am in the pitch black & cold whereby we then had to make our way a further hour up a very steep & windy road in the back of a van to get to the town of Sapa...those few extra ‘one for the roads’ no longer seeming like such a great idea.

We had booked into a really nice guest house in Sapa called ‘The Fansipan’ where we were greeted with a breakfast of bacon & egg sandwiches which went down very well. The town is a very picturesque place high in the mountains, famed for being shrouded in mist most of the year; we were lucky enough to have a few days of sunshine while we were there & as such could take advantage of the great views of the surrounding valleys & hillsides.

There are several main indigenous tribes that live around the area - the most dominant being the Black Hmong tribe, & as you would expect there are many of them around the town trying to sell you the handicrafts they had made. Many of them speak near perfect English, despite largely having no formal education & living a largely subsistence lifestyle. Although they do hassle you to buy things, it is not a hard sell like in some places as here they are happy to while away time chatting and telling us all about themselves and their lifestyle, so you feel you gain more than the 50p trinket you purchase. A couple of young girls of about 14 started chatting to us & walked around the town with us for an hour or so, telling us about their way of life, how girls get married at 16, are expected to have children before they are 20 and tend to the housework (or ‘hutwork’ as is more appropriate) while the men farm the land. It is due to this that you don’t see many of the male tribe members around town, as they are working the fields while the women try to supplement their meagre incomes by selling handicrafts. Many of the people actually live more than 10kms out of town, & with no means of transport have to walk backwards & forwards to Sapa in an attempt to sell their trinkets, which often results in many of them effectively sleeping rough as it is too far to do the round trip on foot in one day.

The following morning we visited the nearby Bac-Ha market - a weekly Sunday market, predominantly set up as a trading point for all the various tribes around the surrounding areas, with a small area of the market aimed at the tourist market as it grows in popularity for outsiders to visit. It was a fascinating blend of sights, smells & sounds with the stalls of home brewed 'rice wine' liquor in large plasic containers, the busiest amongst everything on sale. One of the more disconcerting sections of the market was the area where live cats & dogs were being sold for use as meat. You get something distinctly different to what you might hope for when you order a Hot Dog around some of these parts...

In the afternoon we visited one of the villages where the tribe actually live & were invited into one of the homes. A very basic adobe hut with little more than an open fire which was the kitchen area & beds on the floor, constructed of mattress’ made from piles of twigs & branches with covers over the top. A very modest & hard way of life, shown in the faces of the some of the women we met who were in their 40’s, though looked in their 60’s or 70’s.

Many of the mountainsides in the area have been completely given over to agricultural terraces, & it makes for a striking landscape – if not somewhat barren looking this time of year as it was the dry season. We found the people to be very warm & friendly who were happy to share glimpses into their way of life that is so far removed from our own. Having said that mind you, many of them have now joined the mobile phone revolution & can regularly be seen walking down the street balancing a bag of crops on their head, chewing on a piece of sugar cane in one hand while chatting away on their mobile in the other.

After a really good 3.5 weeks in Vietnam we made our way back down the mountain from Sapa to the Northern border town of Lao Cai, where we bid a fond farewell to Vietnam & crossed the border into the impending mayhem of the Peoples Republic of China...

Vietnam Part1: Up through the Central Highlands

After meeting up with Jonny in Kuala Lumpur who we will be travelling Asia with for the next few months, we flew into Ho Chi Minh City - the city which prior to the unification of Vietnam after the American war was known as Saigon. Many of the locals still actually refer to the city as Saigon, so we will too for the purpose of this posting.

The first thing that hits you (hopefully not literally) when you get into Saigon is the traffic. In particular the mopeds & scooters - thousands of them fill every street in the city, seamlessly weaving in & out of one another, around pedestrians, cars & buses without collision like fish flowing down a fast moving river. The surprising thing is that nearly all the riders now wear helmets, the Vietnamese government having made it law a few years ago. However, there are no regulations in place as to the quality of the helmets, & many are bought for as little as $1, shipped in from China - unlikely to offer much in the way of protection in the event of an accident. This lack of regulation has been jumped on by the fashion conscious and ‘helmets’ are made to look like wide brimmed women’s sun hats, baseball caps, head scarves or anything else the people want, all with just some form of hard plastic shell under their outer disguise.

Our arrival in Vietnam coincided with the run up to the Chinese New Year celebrations, known as Tet - which Vietnam also share as their new year, the actual date this year being February 14th, (it changes each year) though the celebrations start a week or so before that & go on for as long as a whole month past the ‘New Years Day’ date. As such everywhere is elaborately decorated with fresh flowers, potted trees, lanterns & banners which all very nice, the down side of it however is that all prices get specially inflated & getting a seat on buses or trains becomes very difficult, as the entire population appears to be travelling from one place to another to visit family & friends.

Anyway, we managed to get ourselves into a really nice family run guesthouse in central Saigon & had a few days exploring the city. First port of call was food, & we went to a local place recommended to us by our hostel that only served one dish - a beef soup known as ‘Pho Bo’, which proved to be one of the tastiest soups we had ever had, basically just a meat stock with fresh spring onions in, slices of lightly cooked meat & a plate of fresh salad & herbs to garnish with - fantastic.

Vietnam also does a great trade in black market books - while we were sitting at a roadside bar enjoying the first of the many £0.30 beers we got stuck into while here, a girl came over to us with a stack of about 20 books in her arms, photo copied versions of all the Lonely Planet guides for Vietnam, China & the other South East Asian countries, as well as all the classic Vietnam war literature & numerous other perennial traveller favourites. So we haggled our way into buying a copy of the Vietnam Lonely Planet - a perfect photo copy complete with colour photos which we paid just under £2 for, rather than the official price of about £17.

Armed with our pirate copy of the Lonely Planet & a less than original pair of Ray Ban sunglasses purchased from another street entrepreneur for around £2 as well, we made our way out to one of the main sites that people now visit from the American war (all references to what we in the West commonly know as the Vietnam war are made using the term The American War here) - the Cu Chi Tunnels. Located about 25kms north of Saigon in what was once forest, before the Napalm bombs used by the Americans laid waste to any trees or crops in the area, this network of underground tunnels were effectively used as the last line of defence of Saigon from invaders coming from the North. When shown on a model, the tunnel network resemble an ant colony inside a glass case. Multi tiered layers of tunnels providing everything from kitchens, living quarters, hospitals, arms storage, defensive fighting posts & traps. Some of the traps & handmade weapons used by the Vietnamese now on display were particularly brutal, hidden trap doors on the jungle floor which flip round & throw the unsuspecting victim into a pit about 10 ft deep with a mass of upstanding spears made from bamboo waiting to impale the victims as they fall in, & all manner of horrific devices set to trigger which trap & maim the victim via a series of spears, spikes & blades.

War tourism is nothing to be ashamed of apparently in Vietnam - at Cu Chi they offer you the opportunity to fire AK47’s, M16’s among others from their post war collection - only stopping at allowing hand grenades to be thrown & bazooka’s to be fired…though apparently over the border in Cambodia you can do both of those things as well.

Deciding not to take the opportunity to fire any of the weapons, we made our way to the other essential war related site around the Saigon area, the War Remnants Museum, in central Saigon. Until fairly recently this museum was somewhat more controversially named ‘The Chinese, French & American War Crimes Museum.’ Both Claire & Jonny had been to Vietnam around 10-12 years ago, & visited this museum when it was under the old name. As you can imagine from the name, it was a fiercely one sided account of the history of war atrocities in Vietnam. Now clearly with a more international relations conscious government in place, the museum does a very good job of laying out the actual facts of the various conflicts, with the majority of the focus placed on the American War of the ‘60’s & ‘70’s.

The most horrific sections are those with the information & pictures of the severe genetic deformities that chemical weapons such as Agent Orange caused both the people at that time, & in particular subsequent generations, not to mention the utter devastation of the Vietnamese landscape that was caused by the Napalm bombs & carpet bombing of entire sections of the Central Highlands by the Americans, a large amount which happened after the war had officially been declared over.

Considering the fact that the American War was only concluded around 1975 & many families are still dealing with it’s aftermath, the Vietnamese people are incredibly friendly & welcoming to Westerners. English is now so widely spoken throughout Vietnam that it is pretty much considered their second language, many Vietnamese people approach Westerners just to say hello & practice what English they know. If you respond to them with any Vietnamese however, as we did with the few basic words we picked up, they become unbelievably excited at the fact Westerners would want to learn any of their language & are incredibly grateful.

Deciding to take the road less travelled route on our way north from Saigon, we opted to head into the mountains of the Central Highlands as oppose to taking the coastal route up the country. Our first stop after Saigon was the mountain town of Dalat and Vietnam being an ex-French colony, the town is complete with numerous large French style villas dotting the Alpine landscape. Another legacy of the French that has remained in Vietnam are fresh baked baguettes every morning & good quality coffee - although the coffee is served slightly differently than in Europe, as the espresso is served over condensed milk, making it incredibly sweet - but strangely tasty at the same time.

From Dalat we moved onto Buon Ma Thuot, coffee capital of Vietnam, where we started really feeling the pinch of the unavailability of transport due to the Tet celebrations. We finally managed to squeeze ourselves into the back of a mini van that travelled the 8 hours around the seriously pot holed but beautifully scenic, winding mountain roads. We had the seats at the back of the bus (as always), the worst place possible for being bounced around all over the place and we were bouncing around out of the seat so violently, we managed to crack our heads on the roof of the van at some points. It probably ranks as one of the most uncomfortable journeys of our entire travels…unfortunately though this was not to be the last of this sort of torture we were subjected to during our journey north…

Finding something open in Buon Ma Thuot was difficult and something that would be a common theme throughout the Tet celebtations, but we manage to locate an open restaurant serving 'diy spring rolls' and armed with a bowl of salad, a plate of rice paper wraps, some 'meat' and some crispy batter stuff, a local shows us the way they are done in the mountains... washed down with some cold beers and a number of stares from passing locals, they were really very tastly. A great meal, until about 4 hours later when we were all ill... we really should know better after all this time travelling that washed salad or 'unknown meat products' are something to generally stay clear of of you want to avoid getting ill!

It is only in the last few years that tourists have been allowed to travel this route, as the Central Highlands was one of the worst hit places during the war & as such it has taken all this time to clear most of the unexploded bombs & landmines that littered the area. Whilst the roads & main walkways have now been cleared, it is still off limits to stray off into the open fields & hillsides - as on an annual basis still many local people are killed or maimed by these legacies of war. The hillsides still openly wear the scars of war, huge areas devoid of any living things, compounded in many places by deforestation of what trees were left & slash and burn agricultural practices not helping the environmental recovery.

We travelled further north via another hellishly uncomfortable & overcrowded bus journey along roads/tracks that have seemingly never been made flat after the destruction caused by the large scale bombings, to the town of Kontum. There are a number of highland communities here and the plan was to visit some with guide but again, it was Tet New Years Eve when we arrived (Feb 13th), & at complete odds with the way things are in Western countries on New Years Eve, we could not find a single restaurant or bar that was open to serve us any food, or even a shop where we could buy anything other than biscuits & crackers as everyone was getting ready for the big family celebrations of Tet, let alone find a guide and attempt any tour of the area. Just when we thought we were going to have to go without food for the next two days, a Vietnamese girl who had been studying English in Hanoi & had come home to her family for Tet, came to our rescue & invited us into her home to share some of the food they had prepared for their family celebrations. After some minor arm twisting we decided to take her up on her offer & she served us up some Tet culinary specialities, & all she wanted in return was to sit & talk English with us for a while - another display of the warm Vietnamese hospitality.

Tet New Years Eve involved huge firework displays going on at both ends of this relatively small town which we enjoyed from the comfort of our room balconies. New Years Day was as suspected, not a single thing open in town, thankfully our hostel served us a good breakfast & had a really nice garden area & a fully stocked beer fridge, which we spent the day working our way through sitting out in the garden playing guitars & enjoying Tet new year in our own way.
The following afternoon we managed to squeeze ourselves onto another packed mini bus & proceeded to head off around some more mountain roads with our driver who clearly had aspirations to Formula One. Being the first day of the new year celebrations where friends were really getting together (NYD being a family affair), the roads were even more crazy than usual. The mandatory helmet law was being pretty much entirely ignored, along with other unnecessary things - such as headlights whilst on streets with no lighting.

The only form of order that we could decipher with the way the traffic system works in Vietnam is that it is expected that you give way to anything in front. What this actually means is that mopeds, bikes, cars & buses just pull out onto any road without even looking what is coming, deeming it the responsibility of the oncoming traffic to anticipate this manoeuvre & then successfully negotiate their way around them - usually by swerving into the path of the oncoming traffic, weaving around that & filtering back into the correct lane again. Road rage doesn’t appear to exist here - which is pretty amazing considering the madness, people don’t blast their horns to complain about someone else’s driving as we do at home, merely as a sort of ’I’m coming ready or not’ warning - which just turns into a constant stream of everyone blasting their horns the entire time & subsequently everyone ignoring each others warnings…

Arriving in Danang somewhat shaken & stirred after our journey, we checked into a hostel for the night that was straight out of 1970’s France, complete with chintzy curtains & carpets, swiftly followed by our first proper meal in a couple of days, from a street stall serving up great seafood noodle dishes, another couple of £0.30 beers & we retired to our little city Chateau for the night - ready for the onward journey to our ultimate destination of Hoi An the following morning.

Not so bright & breezily we jumped on a local bus down to the ancient coastal town of Hoi An, one of the only places in Vietnam to escape any significant war damage & maintain the old historical buildings that date back hundreds of years. Thankfully Hoi An proved to be something of a haven of relative tranquillity, the old town set on the banks of a river is full of traditional Chinese and french style architecture & has been preserved as a no-car zone which came as a welcome relief.

While here we decided to try our hands at a spot of Vietnamese cooking & signed up for a one day cooking class. The day started with a tour around the local food markets familiarising ourselves with the sort of ingredients used & tasting a variety of strange looking fruits & vegetables, before heading back to the kitchen where we all cooked up some shrimp spring rolls, squid stuffed with a pork & chilli, a chicken & lemongrass clay pot curry, & river spinach with garlic. Now all we need to be able to do is recreate it when we get home…!