Sing Chao Vietnam

Crossing the border into Vietnam I felt so lucky to have got over whatever illness I had as this is the first border we’ve come across where the officials scanned us to test out body temperature. Had I still been unwell and measured an unhealthy temperature I wonder where I would be right now as we had already officially left Laos and if Vietnam wouldn’t let me in I might be taking up residence in No-Mans-Land! But all’s well that ends well and so none of that matters.

Out first stop was the town of Hue (pronounced hway) where we were only staying for one day so we spent it on a boat and took a cruise up the Perfume River to see a temple and a tomb and enjoy a day out on the river. We passed many fields and paddies where people were working away but all along the river we passed many small boats, low to the water and filled with sand or gravel, heading in the direction of the city. Further up the river we found where they had come from as the river was alive with activity, lots of boats working the same part of the river dredging the sand, separating it from the water, loading it on to boats and sending it homeward for use as building materials. Most of the workers we have seen wear the cone shaped hats made from reeds that we have all seen on the tv, I had wondered if this was now just a tourist gimmick but they’re still very much in use by locals, they must be cheap and effective. The language barrier became more apparent on this day out as the tour guide’s English was good but he couldn’t grasp our use of tact or consideration, he looked around us all so he could compare someone’s belly to Buddha’s, he read a girls palm and told that she’s stupid and soft in the head and then he said we all have big bums! It was really quite funny; we wonder how aware he was of the offensive way this had been put across.

Our next stop in Vietnam was a town called Hoi An, best known it would seem for making clothes for people, every second shop is a tailor keen to make a made-to-measure dress of jacket or shoes at a very reasonable price. While I didn’t have anything made many other people were unable to leave Hoi An without something new for their wardrobe. Other than that it was a lovely little town to walk around, ignoring the tourist shops there are some lovely old buildings to look at, it’s a very pleasant place to wander and soak up. A huge market on the riverside sells everything from fresh seafood to all fruit and vegetable varieties you can think of to household goods. Some of the stalls had a load of vegetarian alternatives, vegetarian meat slices, vegetarian beef chunks and even vegetarian pigs ears! Why any vegetarian would look for them I never did find out though as asking a question means getting chased around the market by the stall owner offering you a better price or asking why you don’t want to buy the thing you showed an interest in! It’s a nightmare, running away from them, and it also means we are back in the tourist hell of being asked every 5 minutes if you want to buy something, very annoying!

The main historic tourist attraction is the Japanese Bridge, just a small bridge over a small part of the river, it’s a covered bridge and very quaint and also has the alternative name of the Faraway People’s bridge which is my personal favourite. This part of the river is where a lot of international trade took place and so boats arrived here from many different countries leading the locals to name the bridge after the ‘faraway people’, how lovely is that?

While I’m so far enjoying my time in Vietnam I have to say that it hasn’t yet lit any fires in my soul and I’m keen to see other parts of the country that I might find more interesting. I know the north is far more enchanting but we aren’t heading in that direction, we’re heading south towards Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) via the beach, so I’m sure the landscape will appeal to me more soon. In the mean time, I am just making the most of their food and soaking up what is left of their culture through the tourist haze. The food is not bland but a curry I recently ordered had little in the way of flavour, it was more like a chicken soup, it tasted lovely but it never would have entered my mind to have compared it to a curry. The other dishes I’ve had have all been delicious though, very typically Asian with rice, noodles, soups and spiced meat, very nice, but once again the tourist trail shows its face as we are being given cutlery rather than chopsticks which we have to ask for.

Heading to the beach now on a sleeper bus, I miss seeing the countryside out the window but I enjoy the night buses, I still find it a novelty to have a bed on a bus!! After all the times I’ve slept on buses and trains these sleepers are just genius and I doubt I could get bored of them. Next stop Nha Trang.

Sa-bai-dee Laos

 Our first sleeper bus was taking us from Kunming in China across the border into Laos to Luang Prabang, it had 2 aisles and 3 lines of slim line bunk beds, complete with little Snoopy (well, Snopy) duvet and pillow sets. Travelling through the last of China we passed mile on mile of poly tunnels, at one point there was nothing else as far as my spectacled eyes could see, when China do something they do it on a grand scale! I didn’t even try to sleep until well into the night, even after dark the views were enjoyable and I could still make out the hills and see low lying cloud covering the bottoms of the valleys. We crossed the border in the morning and were immediately greeted by two enormous butterflies fluttering around a nearby bush; they looked the size of a small garden bird, one plain black and the other black with a yellow tip on its bum. Welcome to Laos!

Once in Laos it was as if China had never happened, the people disappeared, the cultivation relaxed, the roads became bendy and eventually more potholed and I felt like we were back in Nepal again. The road continued to worsen and the drive got slower as we hit more landslides, more mud and bigger potholes. The landscape outside was now wild in comparison to China, the forests were thick and hiding all sorts of secrets right in front of us. Driving through it my lasting memory is of the whispy dainty little leaves from various types of bamboo trees hanging out over the road, they’re so elegant and pretty, these are the details that remind me what part of the world I am in as I gaze at any mountains in sight and compare them to Scotland’s.

Our first stop was the city of Luang Prabang, hard to believe with a population of only 50,000 that this quiet little place could be classed as a city. Such a lovely place to wander around, the main street is home to temples, a monastery, a stoopa, a market, a night market and various other beautiful sights. At the end of it we join the river Nam Kan just as it meets the Mekong river. We took a couple of tours up the river on a wee local boat, the first being to a waterfall, the Kuang Si Falls. We got a few hours cruising on the Mekong River, then a 20 minute ride in the back of someone’s pickup up to the falls, its then a short walk to reach the bottom and the pools that you are welcome to swim in or use the tree swing. The main waterfall itself is a gorgeous tropical sight, it looks like it’s come right out of a Disney film set as it cascades down over the rocks. We climbed the hill to the side of the falls, a steep climb of 20-30 minutes up the muddy hillside, not ideal in flipflops. Once you reach the top though you are rewarded by the opportunity to walk across the top of the falls, about 1-2 metres from the edge of the drop. This was the most exhilarating experience, we waded knee deep or deeper through the river, near the edge I could hold on to the bamboo fence for support against the current and the slippery rocks. At some point I could look right over and see the pool below, at other times only the other side of the valley was visible, but the whole time I was thanking my lucky stars that I have the opportunity to be in a country where the health and safety rules are relaxed enough to allow this little adventure to take place. Even going down the other side was exciting, the path was very steep and at times the best way down involved holding on to some creepers or branches, I’m sure Tarzan wasn’t far away! Just when you thought it couldn’t get any better we then had to go down some wooden stairs that were built in to the side of the waterfall and get soaked all over again! The best waterfall to visit, I had a great day, and still had a further couple of hours cruise on the river left to get home.

The next outing was to some caves near the town, the Pak Ou caves were once home to monks as well as places of worship although now they exist only as shrines to their much loved Buddha. There are two caves which are thought to contain over 2500 Buddha’s, many different kinds and sizes of Buddha’s hiding in the nooks and crannies of the rocks or taking pride of place around the centred large Buddha. You need a torch to enter one of the caves as its deep and pitch black with some Buddha’s hiding in the corners! It’s another interesting place to visit and another excellent excuse to take a few hours cruise on the Mekong.

Up and down the river there’s evidence of how much it is used in local life. There are people fishing from it and all along the edge there are bottles floating marking where a fisherman has some nets down. At other points we passed people sawing wood, loading boats with logs, transporting other goods or just parking up their canoes to go to work. All the boats are fairly basic, long thin canoes with a tiny motor attached or longer larger boats that carry passengers. The bigger boats, ones which might carry goods a greater distance have a house on board and washing hanging out to dry. The most interesting boat for me was the fuel station, moored at the side of the river this boat has one side fairly open and two pumps within, we pulled alongside and the boy jumped aboard to fill us up! When another boat pulled up alongside us he made sure that its occupant extinguished his cigarette before coming too close which was a relief to all of us, some rules really need to be applied!

The final point of interest for us was the march of the monks. This takes place every morning around sunrise every day; the monks walk up the street in single file and get their food from the locals who take a space at the side of the pavement to offer the monks some rice and some bananas. The march here is the longest of its kind in the world. The monks here wear bright orange clothing and so it cuts a fine picture to watch them making their way up the main street, some with umbrellas up against the morning drizzle. We kept a fair distance from them, I feel they are due respect however I was disappointed (though sadly not surprised) to see how many tourists didn’t seem to mind getting in their faces and even flashing cameras right up close, you can see they are shy people and some look uncomfortable at being the object of so much attention.

The nest stop in Laos is Vang Vieng, a town which has placed itself well and truly on the backpacker circuit as it is home to the craze of tubing. This would involve a lorry tyre inner tube and several bars to stop at along the way. First stop we rented out tubes for the day, then get a tuctuc up to the starting point of an organic farm just outside the town. The first bar offered us a free shot of whisky and a wee friendship bracelet and this seemed to be the norm for most of the bars. The drinks on offer are buckets of cocktails which are pretty cheap when they use their local whisky. In these unusual pub circumstances we would be jumping in a river at every opportunity and so a new game was developed for our entertainment that day, we’ve named it Cocktail Bucket Blowback and basically one person fills their straw with the cocktail and then fires it across the at anyone with their mouth open! Naturally most of this is sprayed across the other person’s face but if some lands in their mouth it’s considered a success! Throughout the bars we had swings to play on and a slingshot game and twister and various other games intended to keep you at the current bar but we kept moving on, aware that there are over a dozen bars to get through. In between times it’s a lovely gentle ride down the river floating in our inner tube and then as you approach a bar they throw a bottle on a rope out to pull you in with. It was a really great day, we had so much fun and despite a few cuts and bruises no one was badly damaged in any way, which came as a great relief as the tubing has a terrible reputation for being very dangerous. I think the worst thing to happen was when I half disappeared through a floorboard!! The bars are wooden decking and some parts may be a little rotten, it was the funniest thing to be walking along and then one leg disappears down a hole! Big bruise to show for it but no real harm done!

The rest of Laos was a bit of a blur for me. We had a day of recovery from the tubing and then took a couple of buses to a place called Savannakhet which we stayed in on the way to the border of Vietnam. I don’t know what my sickness was but I slept for the best part of two days and therefore missed the latter part of the country. I’ve really enjoyed Laos and I love how wild the countryside is, it’s so thick with trees and bushes and really rustic looking, it’s such a pleasure to drive through it and daydream into the hills and forests, and so quiet you feel like you’re really getting into the country when you drive through. The food's been nice too, I had one of the nicest curries yet here in Laos and while it said it was local it tasted like a Thai dish, really tasty coco-nutty flavour, yum! Next stop, Vietnam!!

China, the Sequel

The main attraction of Chengdu is the panda breeding centre where most people head off to but I decided instead to hire a bike and take a small city tour. I had a lovely day cycling through the city to the main square, the local monastery, the Tibetan quarter, across the rivers, through parks and in among the contrasting old and new buildings. At most of the hostels here you can hire a bike for the bargain price of one pound for the day, so it was a cheap day but full of pleasure and I thoroughly enjoyed Chengdu.

The next day we were back on the train for the long journey to Lijang. A small town popular with Chinese tourists, Lijang’s big attraction is the old town with its winding cobbled streets and beautiful old buildings. It’s so easy to get lost as there is such a maze of streets all looking fairly similar to each other. At night the restaurants all light up their red lanterns outside the doors and the town becomes most enchanting. Through the day you can see that the whole place is surrounded by beautiful big green hills, and when the haze really clears up even bigger mountains capped with snow come into view.  The train journeys are taking us through gorgeous mountain scenery, the water from these are used for China’s hydro power and we’ve passed several places where the gathered water is shooting through enormous gates or crashing down their purpose built waterways, what a spectacle! As with the truck though it’s very difficult to capture photographs while moving along, the perfect shot will suddenly have a stray tree blocking the entire image or else it’s all just one big blur!

We also had a quick stop in Dali, another Chinese tourist town whose main attraction is their old town. It’s very similar to Lijang but without the old town being quite as quaint and unlike Lijang it’s not pedestrianised. In an effort to get out of the town and see some scenery I agreed to go horse-riding up to a hillside temple from where we could get views of the whole town. It wasn’t really the best introduction to horse-riding for a beginner, the path was so incredibly steep and so muddy the horses kept slipping and it was really quite frightening, not just for our safety but that of the poor horses, especially mine which seemed to be a bit of an oaf and kept tripping and stumbling. All the way up we had the extra fear of knowing that we must also come back down this way but I needn’t have worried as going down the horse showed far more control and gave me a lot more confidence. While he continued to stumble and got a little bit stuck almost throwing me off (the owner quickly grabbed me and held me on the horse!!) I had by then been shown how to steer him and slow him down and I soon felt like I was Robert Redford in ‘The Horse Whisperer’ riding along with the reigns in one hand, feeling quite in charge of my steed! It turned out to be really good fun and the cold beer I had earned tasted all the better for it even though I continued shaking for a good half an hour!

The next and final stop in China is in Kunming, a fairly large city with all the expected High St goodies on our doorstep. I didn’t find many amazing things to go and visit here so decided on a fairly relaxed couple of days, except for our night out to the Chinese karaoke or KTV. The Chinese are reportedly crazy about karaoke and there are KTV places dotted about all over the place so we had to go and experience this! It was of course necessary to ensure a suitably drunken state was achieved before unleashing the beasts of karaoke and I feel we managed this exceptionally well. We arrived at the KTV to find it really quite posh; the staff all wore smart uniforms with little waistcoats and smart trousers. The KTV room we were given was a very smart little living room with a leather corner sofa built in, a glass coffee table (full of beer and popcorn!) and a big flat screen TV. We wasted no time at all in getting the party under way and gave it our all, singing and dancing and having a great time. I looked in other booths to see the Chinese people all sitting sensibly on their sofas and singing from there, the contrast to ours was extreme, if you looked in ours there was carnage! Dancing on the sofa, beer bottles everywhere, everyone was on their feet dancing and singing except one person who was asleep in the corner and the floor was awash with spilled drinks! It was so ironic, we had come here to laugh at the Chinese people’s karaoke, but the Chinese people were all looking in our windows and laughing at us! It was the best time, and as a karaoke hater I am converted!

The food so far has been delicious; the Chinese like their food hot though especially in the Szechuan region where the Szechuan peppers add a real tingle to your mouth. One of our truckers had spicy pasta and afterwards had a visible facial twitch for a good 15 minutes. Not many of the dishes are like those from home (in my limited experience) except the Cantonese style sweet and sour which have been similar. Outside the main dishes we’ve ventured into the world of strange Chinese foods and have tried many different things including pigs ear, chickens foot, pig trotters and some kind of treated egg. The pigs ear was in a very spicy sauce and mostly just tasted of fat and gristle, the worst part was crunching through cartilage which I didn’t enjoy. The chickens foot smelled amazing, the skin tasted good but the bones and toenail, while soft, were still a little crunchy for my liking. The pig trotter was also in a very spicy sauce but it was mostly just skin, there was some meat on it though which tasted delicious. The egg was brown the whole way through, from the outside it looked like a chocolate egg but it tasted a bit salty, not egg-like at all, we think it was possible boiled in soy sauce but haven’t managed to get it confirmed. The other interesting foods are the crisps, cucumber flavour, corn flavour, lime flavour which were really nice and of course chilli flavour which were hot hot! Everything is also served with chopsticks which is a great way to eat, much nicer than the Indian and Nepali way of just using your fingers!

The school holidays in China are the same as the British ones and so this is high season for Chinese tourism. At home this would mean there are children everywhere and it took a while for it to dawn on us that this isn’t the case here, the one child rule has kept a lid on this and suddenly I’m far more aware of the fact there are hardly any children around. It’s rare to be bothered by children playing loudly or even to see children together as all the children are solitary and will be paired with an adult. It’s so sad to think of an entire generation of children who will grow up without siblings and therefore lead to a further generation without cousins or aunts and uncles. It makes me wonder if India would ever consider such restrictions or have the control to implement them.

Chinese toilets have surprised me given how clean and structured the rest of the country seems to be. In one of the train stations the public toilet consisted of nothing more than a length of trough and sections like cubicles but without doors. The people inside are clearly seen in their squatting position with absolutely no privacy whatsoever. While one girl was in a cubicle another lady came in and stood watching her, at point blank range, while she wiped herself and got dressed again, it all seemed so indecent and made us feel uncomfortable. I’m quite used to the squat toilets now and will occasionally even choose one over a throne depending on my mood, but when it comes to public transport I would definitely prefer a throne!  All the trains have squats and I don’t enjoy this balancing act, maybe this is why locals find it acceptable to use the bins instead?! A lady on the train held her child over the bin while he pooed into it, as if that’s not bad enough they were standing next to a vacant toilet at the time! Everything seems so normal here until you just have a little scratch at the surface!

Next stop is Laos, we have a week there and while I’ve enjoyed China and all it’s quirks I’m quite looking forward to the next stage of the adventure. 

Ni Hao!

Flying into Beijing (via Kunming) was very comfortable onboard China Eastern Airway, the seats are roomy and the pitch is the longest I’ve ever seen in cattle class. The food was tasty and the toilet was NOT squat, a dreadful thought that had occurred to us in airport before boarding – imagine!!

Beijing’s a very modern and swish city, in the taxi from the airport it felt like such a treat to be in a big car with seatbelts and a suspension, driving on orderly roads with lanes and no tooting. Chinese girls are very into their fashion of short shorts, short skirts, fancy dresses and big wedge heels. There’s more flesh on display here than we’ve seen for months and it’s made us a little prudish to start with as we gawp at the tiny clothes the girls are wearing. China has been far more westernised than any of us had realised, and there’s a lot more money here than we expected which is a pleasant surprise, but we’re still in the city so maybe the rural places are another story, without the truck we’re unlikely to find out.

We only had one day in Beijing so we rushed out to the wall on public transport and took a cable car ride up to it. The place was so busy, I think the whole of China came to view it too as all the other tourists were Chinese, but this is different to India, we joined a queue! We haven’t had the pleasure of an orderly queue for some time now. It was a lot hillier than I expected, we walked along about a kilometre of it, some bits had steps and some were just steep cobbles with old ladies holding on to the railings for dear life in fear of their flip flops sliding them back down to the bottom. We might have stayed for longer if we hadn’t been fighting through the crowds to get anywhere but it was amazing to be standing there on the Great Wall of China! Had we had time and paid more we could have taken a tour which would have taken us out to a much quieter part of the wall but that wasn’t an option for us. On the way home I hopped off the underground to take a quick look at Ti’an anmen square before heading back to the hostel to reacquaint myself with the group I hadn’t seen much of for 2 weeks. That evening we went to the night market, a tourist attraction of various small beasts available for deep frying and tasting. There are skewers of scorpions, starfish, seahorses, centipedes, grubs and goodness knows what else. I tried a scorpion, the man coated it in spices and so it ended up tasting quite nice, it was crunchy and bits of the shell hung around in my mouth but the worst part was getting over the mental issue of putting shell, claws and a sting in my mouth. We also tried snake and possibly dog (who really knows?!) and I really wanted to try a spider but when it came to the crunch I just couldn’t bring myself to do it.

The next day we took a bullet train followed by a sleeper train to Xi’an. Unlike the planes though the toilets on the trains are squat and not the most pleasant! You can squat and try to keep your balance as the train jolts it’s way around the corners, some of them have a bar for you to hold on to while you’re squatting, just hope it’s dry! Taking the trains means we’re among the local people a lot more, all the stations are rammed full of people, it is currently Chinese school holidays so everything is busy. Chinese people are such a mixture of polite and friendly and rude and shouting, but what they all have in common is the more revolting habit of spitting everywhere! Not just a small discreet spit but a full on throat curling hack followed by a loud spit! It’s horrible, even on the train, you’re just settling down to eat your noodles and in the background someone lets out a big loud hacking sound, and not into a bin or into a sink, they’re happy to just allow it to land on the floor!

Xi’an is home to the fairly recently discovered Terracotta Warriors. It’s thought that once the excavation is complete there may be as many as 6000 warriors who have been lying underground for over 2000 years, every one has different facial features and is an individual. There is still a lot of work going on at the site as they were only discovered in 1974 and as none of them were in one piece they are slowly picking out the army and piecing them back together, it’s a huge project which won’t finish there as a nearby pyramid shaped hill is thought to hold the extravagant tomb of Qin himself. Entering the biggest archaeological site packs a visual punch as you’re face to face with a huge area containing an army of hundreds of soldiers with some horses dotted around. Fantastic!

Xi’an is an ancient capital city and the start of the Silk Road and was surrounded by miles of city wall with smaller walls within. The centre of Xi’an resides within one of the inner walls, about 14km round and we spent a lovely couple of hours cycling around the top of it looking down onto the old town and the temples. It’s no small structure, about 30m high and the same wide so it’s the perfect size for a short ride.

Back on the train again and headed for Chengdu.