Backwaters, Beaches, Bombay and Bye Bye

We flew down to Kerala on the South West coast of India, on 15^th April and took a taxi straight to Fort Cochi. My friend Flick’s lovely Mum, Jan, has been to this area of India numerous times and proved very helpful with tips of where to stay and how to get a houseboat to explore the backwaters. Fort Cochi is a beautiful, quaint little area. It’s one third of the archipelago that makes up Cochin and is the older, more colonial area. In quite a contrast to what we’d experienced elsewhere in India, Fort Cochi was more strongly Christian- Catholicism having been left behind by the Dutch/ Portuguese colonisers.

There were very few tourists around due to the intense heat of this time of year so the town was nice and quiet for us to wander around. Kerala is the home of Aruyuveda (natural and herbal) remedies and massages so the first day was a good time to sample some. I went for a massage which consisted of having a bottle of oil poured over me and my tummy rubbed a lot. It was interesting and I believed whole heartedly in the ancient wisdom which dictates the practice, delivered by a nice old lady who oozed spiritual insight- I am quite easily sucked in!

During our time in Fort Cochi we frequented a little cafe called Teapot- recommended by Jan. It was a lovely place to escape the heat and eat some good food. On our second day I left Jonny behind and got up early to go to a yoga class. I was so happy that I was doing yoga as it was intended, in the baking, sweaty Indian heat. The male teacher was ridiculously flexible and very unforgiving to his sole student (me) who has not done yoga for a few months now. It hurt pretty bad but was a great, hot experience. On the way back I shared a rickshaw with a nice lady who offered to show me the temple of her religion- Jainism. It was very interesting and she explained to me that Jains believe in keeping their body and thoughts pure. They eat only vegetarian food that has been laid out in the sun and so enriched with ‘solar power’. They also believe that your thoughts, as much as your actions, can hurt people and so work on disciplining themselves to control their minds.

When I got back we started our day of sight-seeing in Cochin. It turns out that Kerala is known as God’s Own Country, which could be down to its incredible natural beauty or down to the fact that every faith seems to be represented amongst its population. As well as my Jain temple, we visited a Hindu temple, more than one Catholic basilica and a very old Synagogue. We also visited the house of the former royal family and a fantastic smelling spice market. We had a great dinner before preparing for our three day houseboat experience!

With a lot of help from Jan and her friends we secured ourselves a pretty sweet deal on our own private houseboat with a bedroom, upper deck and chef. We set off and slowly made our way through the winding backwaters of Kerala. The landscape was breathtaking with wide expanses of standing water with lily-pads and flowers as far as the eye could see and bright green rice paddies. During the evening we watched the sun go down and the kingfishers dive for their supper. During the days we took residence on our upper deck to watch Keralan everyday life go by. Houses line the, often very narrow, pieces of land in the backwaters and we saw people washing themselves and their clothes in the water, children playing and waving at us and even a group of around 1000 ducks being herded towards a rice paddy to eat the remaining grains before the next harvest. It is a very beautiful place. The food was delicious too and we were sad to leave, what now felt like ‘our’ houseboat after the three days.

We got off the boat and had to stay in Alleppey, which was not as beautiful, for a couple of days due to the crazy train system here. In order to get a train, you have to book in advance- fair enough, but when we went to the station 5 days before we wanted to travel, we were told the next available train was in June! The only other option, we were told, was to queue from around 6am the day before we wanted to travel to purchase ‘emergency tickets’. Being the great guy that he is Jonny went to queue for 4 hours and secured us two tickets to our next stop- Palolem, Goa.

We had heard good things about the trains in India and were pleasantly surprised as there are constant offerings of Chai, Biriani, soup, Pakora and other cheap treats throughout the journey. However, my bed was folded down from two seats and so was not especially comfortable making it a sleepless 17 hours! We arrived in Palolem at 5am and were told that we would not be able to get into our booked room until 8am so we went to sit on the beach like zombies until then. After some sleep we ventured out...Palolem is a very popular tourist town and beach but we came at the right time and there were few tourists around. We spent two days on the beach in Palolem. I had the obligatory henna tattoo on my hand and then nearly had the same hand bitten off by an angry stray dog! We headed to the even quieter beach of nearby Patnem and sat, ate, drank, read and swam for another two full days. Feeling pretty chilled we took a bus to Benalium, about a 2 hour ride away in all, which is another beach resort more often frequented by Russian holiday makers. Again, due to it being low season, we bagged a bargain accommodation-wise and ended with our own apartment- bedroom, lounge, kitchen and bathroom! We did some more beach chilling, which we are getting quite good at now, before heading off again to the capital of Goa, Panjim.

I didn’t know but Goa remained under Portuguese rule right up until 1961, a full 11 years after India had declared independence from England. The European and especially Catholic influence is therefore very strong in Panjim. It is a nice, small place with painted colonial houses and a slower pace of life than a lot of other places in India. We took a walk around Panjim and then explored nearby Old Goa which is home to the largest church in Asia and about ten more very sizeable cathedrals.

Yesterday we caught the 10 hour train up to Mumbai, our final stop. We got up early today to go on a tour of Dharavi slum where some of Slum Dog Millionaire was shot. Reality Tours gives you a guided snapshot into the life of slum dwellers and 80% of their profits go back into the slum community and they were fantastic! First we drove through the red light district in which, very sadly, 35% of the prostitutes are children and on to the largest outdoor laundry area in the world. Our guide used to live in the slum and was very keen to tell us about and show us the positives about these areas, which he doesn’t feel have been reflected in films like Slum Dog. There are 2,000 slums in Mumbai (the definition of which is houses built on government owned land) and the one we saw was 1.75 Km² and housed 1 million people. 55% of the population of the city lives in the slums which are hives of industrial work; Dharavi specifically accounts economically for $665 million! As we walked through the narrow lanes of the slums we saw people melting down plastic to be resold, banging the dints out of oil and paint cans to be sold back to the companies, crushing glass and making pottery and poppadoms. It’s by no means amateur but a slick industrial operation run like clockwork. Our guide told us that the slums are very safe as people live so close together- in fact we saw inside a house which was one room, 125 square foot in which a family of 4-11 people will sleep, wash and cook. It was fascinating, and yes it was dirty and smelly, but it definitely gave you a different perspective on what we understand by the word ‘slum’. 

Tonight we will have our final curry before heading back to England tomorrow. It has been an incredible 3 and a bit month trip and I have experienced so many things and places I would never have dreamed I would see. In honour of the places we have been Jonny and I have devised awards to give (separately of course as we’d never agree on them all!!)....drumroll....

                                                Jonny                                       Bex

Favourite Country                   Malaysian Borneo                    India

Favourite City/Town              Yogyakarta, Java                      Yogyakarta, Java

Best Experience                      Sipadan Dive (Borneo)            Bamboo Train (Cambodia)

Want to Re-visit Most             Indonesia                                  Indonesia

Best Food (General)                Thai                                         Thai

Best Meal (Specific)                Fresh Crabs (On Mabul)          Hot & Sour Soup (Siem Reap)

Best Restaurant                       Ka Lui, Palawan                      Mondo, Phu Qoc                    

Favourite Moment                   Taj Mahal at Sunrise               Singing Qiwallis (Delhi)

Best Accommodation*             Hien Mai, Nha Trang              Malam 1001, Yogyakarta

Friendliest People                    Laos                                         Laos

Favourite Activity                   Snorkel/Scuba                         Snorkel

Best Beach                              Patnem, Goa                            Hoi An

Best Massage Country             Philippines                               Thailand

Favourite Sight                       Amber Fort, Rajasthan              Amber Fort, Rajasthan 

           

*We thought it was only fair to omit the Shangri-La from the awards!

Thank you for reading! x

From Golden Buddhas to the Golden Triangle

It’s been quite a whirlwind the past week and an interesting migration from South East Asia to India. We had about 1.5 days to experience Bangkok before we flew to Delhi which we spent boating from sight to sight. We happened to be in Bangkok on the day of the funeral of the Princess and so thousands of Thai people, dressed in black, were visiting the Royal Palace to pay their respects. As a result the palace was closed to tourists so we went to the Wat with the massive golden reclining Buddha instead- pretty impressive. We headed to Chinatown for our last taste of dim sum before departing that part of the world and experienced the obligatory Kao San Road that night for dinner and drinks.

The next day, we flew to Delhi...what a change! So far India has been challenging but breathtakingly beautiful with scenes and buildings like nothing I could have ever dreamed about; but first came the nightmare of Delhi! We arrived in the Indian capital pretty tired and were driven to our hotel. On the plane I had read our India guidebook and absorbed the lengthy warnings about potential scams pulled in Delhi. The Hindustan Hotel was in a pretty murky backstreet and sure enough when we walked into the hotel we were told that there was no room and we had to move to a sister hotel (scam number 1 in the Lonely Planet!). We insisted we stay there as that’s what we’d booked and the manager came to speak to us after about an hour of waiting. He finally apologised profusely and showed us to our room- after them saying the hotel was too full and under renovation- very strange. Stranger still, the room sported a round bed and multiple mirrors. Who knows what this place had been before but the room was pretty dirty and falling apart. The manager had also, kindly, informed us that the area was dodgy so not to walk around at night! This didn’t fill us with confidence to go out and get some dinner. We went to the first place we could find and got chatting to an English guy who has lived in India for 25 years. A pretty shady character with slight hints at his career in drug trafficking, but he was quite helpful and gave us some good tips. Walking back to the hotel we bumped into a chatty man, obviously trying to sell us something, who asked where we were staying. We told him the Hindustan at which he gasped and asked ‘Have you not heard what happened at that place?’. Worried, we asked and he told us that one week ago they had found a French girl dead in one of the rooms having been murdered. Mildly concerned, we brushed his story off as a potential scam to get us to move to his hotel instead and returned back to our dingy room.

The next day we tried to find a travel agent to hire a car and travel the Golden Triangle. After an hour of being driven around and taken to the places where the driver could get commission and not where we wanted to go, we ended up at somewhere that looked half decent. After much negotiation we booked ourselves a driver for the next three days to take us to Rajasthan and Agra. When paying they asked us where we were staying in Delhi...again the gasp! They told us that in fact the hotel is just a cover for the drug dealing management and that the French girl had been taking drugs in the room with an Indian guy who had then done a runner! Nice. We could not wait to get out of that place! But first, we had the sights of Delhi to see.

The company supplied us with a nice driver who took us to all the sights. We visited the huge and impressive Jama Masjid with a high minaret giving views over sprawling, busy Delhi. We also visited a complex of tombs of previous kings from 16^th century and went to the house and garden where Ghandi was assassinated. We capped the day off by going to hear the Qiwallis sing at a Mosque (I am still not sure what the Qiwallis are but I think they are holy men associated with the mosque). Our driver dropped us at the top of a packed, dirt road market. As a blonde, white girl it’s never particularly fun navigating these densely packed streets but we pushed down following the people that kept pointing further and further down the street. We finally hit an undercover warren of market stalls which wound down to a central point where the small mosque sat. Jonny, as a man (and wearing his Muslim head covering) got whisked off to a tomb area where women weren’t allowed. Meanwhile, I sat, receiving some very curious looks from the men and women sat on the rugs, and listened to the singers- their warbling, prayer-like singing created an incredible atmosphere as the sun began to go down on Delhi.

The next day we set off on our driving adventure with our driver, guide, bodyguard and friend for the next three days- Shashi. Our first stop, after around 6 hours of driving, was the Pink City- Jaipur. This ancient city, where all the buildings are a lovely pink colour, is walled with looming gates guarding the entrances to the old centre and teeming with bazaars. We spent the remainder of the first day visiting a garden where a Maharajah had exercised his interest in astronomy and astrology by building huge instruments and then visited the Hawa Mahal palace. The palace is an incredible looking building that keeps going up and up to the top floors where the ladies of the palace, who were not allowed to be seen in public, could sit and watch the goings on through small windows. The next day we took the short drive to the Amber Fort and this was amazing!! From a distance the huge pinky coloured fort looks like it has been carved out of the mountains and is surrounded by large man-made lakes. We climbed up and took the audio tour to explore the Maharajah’s rooms, the beautiful public meeting room and the rooms and gardens for the many wives of the king. It is hard to express in writing the sheer beauty of this place and Jonny and I wondered why this was not included in the wonders of the world to be honest. After descending we took a short stop at the Water Palace, which sits in the middle of a huge lake-only accessible by boat and only to the royal family, and the palace of the existing (if a little less powerful these days) Maharajah.

The next day, we drove to Agra but on the way stopped at the Monkey Temple. Again, this abandoned city and temple complex which sits at the foot of rocky mountains, was pretty breathtaking. We followed the Hindu pilgrims up the many steps to the main temple where we sat and received a blessing from the holy man guarding the statues of the Gods. We were pretty happy that we now had little orange blobs on our heads like many Indian people we saw, even if we didn’t really understand why! On the way back down Jonny fed some nuts he’d bought to some already well fed monkeys and we watched people bathing in the algae covered Ganges water that flowed through the temples before we got back in the car to go to Agra. Before we reached Agra we had another stop in Fatehpur Sikri and visited a huge, beautiful mosque guided by a nice kid who studied at the Madrassa in the mosque.

On our first morning in Agra we got up before the sun to go and see the famous Taj Mahal. At that time there was less than 100 people so it wasn’t crowded. When you enter the gates to this monument you have seen a thousand times in pictures, it is breathtaking in real life. The huge white marble building looks like a cardboard cut out against the sky- it’s hard to take in how big it is. We meandered around the Taj as the sun came up, looking at the light changing on the marble and took the obligatory Lady Diana pictures on the benches. For the rest of the day we dragged our tired asses around the Agra Fort and went to see what’s called the Baby Taj; another, much smaller tomb, which is said to have been the inspiration for the main event. After a great morning we made our way back to Delhi via the birth place of Krishna, a Hindu God, which to be honest went a little over our heads due to the fact we’d been up since 5am but interesting just the same.

A word about Indian roads...I honestly thought I would never experience anything as bad as Ghana roads and traffic but India takes it to another level! Shashi was a very good driver but had to share the road with elephants, camels, goats, motorbikes, cows, dogs, rickshaws, buses, trucks, people driving the wrong way and many mental drivers! A dual carriageway here is turned into a 4 lane racing track as no one respects the lanes and overtakes on the left and right. The crammed buses travel at crazy speeds and Shashi even pulled over to report one bus driver to the police whilst he was driving us back to Delhi. We were pretty happy therefore to arrive in Delhi safely and be getting a flight down to Kerala in the South rather than driving. We are now in beautiful Fort Cochi in some seriously hot weather and eating some gorgeous food. I will update the blog with more details soon.

Le Cambodge

I have left my blog for a little longer than anticipated and since my last entry we have completed our time on the island of Phu Quoc, travelled through Cambodia (Le Cambodge in French-love that name) and are now in Bangkok for two days before we fly to India!
Our time on Phu Quoc mainly consisted of chilling out on the beach which is what we wanted. Our room was a large bamboo cabin near the hotel’s private stretch of beach so we just ambled down in the mornings and swam in the beautifully warm sea. The island, like a few other places in Vietnam, is most visited by Russians (an old Communist chum no doubt) so all the signs are in Vietnamese and Russian. Not to generalise, but all the Russian men we saw wore very small Speedos and had amazingly committed and strange sunbathing regimes- many of them were pretty red too! After our first full day of chilling, and the obligatory beach massage, we decided to go on a night squid fishing trip. The trip didn’t start well with us being passed from company to company as two men argued who we were meant to be going with. As we experienced a lot in Vietnam, the hotel had promised us to a more expensive operator but had actually booked us on a cheaper one for a higher percentage of commission. Anyway we sorted it out and boarded our boat...error! We were two of eleven tourists on the boat- one Vietnamese family of four, a Portuguese couple with a young baby, a German couple and us. Within ten happy smiling minutes, the very choppy sea claimed its first victims- the mother, father and son of the Vietnamese family were being violently sick on and off the boat. Then the mother of the young baby was taken down but then the poor little baby started being involuntarily sick and screaming as she didn’t understand what was happening to her body. After about 20 minutes at sea, incidentally catching no squid either, we made a group decision to abandon the trip and head back to land. The tour guide misjudged the crowd and suggested we stay on the boat for dinner; everyone just walked away glad to be on still land and trying to settle their stomachs. A bit of a disaster but quite funny in the end!
The next day we went on a much less rough snorkelling trip. To be honest the water was pretty dirty, with Jonny emerging from the sea with a small oil slick down his face, so I stayed on the boat mostly and entertained myself fishing. I never knew how much I love fishing! I caught eight fish (the boat record and many more than Jonny!) and they cooked some of them for our lunch. That night we went for a lovely dinner before leaving for Cambodia the next day. We liked the little old lady we arranged our trip from Phu Quoc to Cambodia with, but little old ladies can be deceiving! We got the ferry to the Vietnamese mainland and a bus through the Cambodian border and travelled on to a town called Kampot where we were told we had to change to a taxi. It seemed odd as we’d paid for a bus all the way to Phnom Penh, the capital and when they attempted to squeeze 7 people into the car to travel for around four hours, we protested. The travel agent shrugged her shoulders and told us we’d missed the bus- which incidentally with the set ferry crossing and journey to Kampot we never had a chance of catching (damn little old lady!). After nearly an hour of trying to get them to do something the travel agent took us to a local minibus and said that would take us to Phnom Penh. It looked like a tro-tro from Ghana so we weren’t that concerned- a pretty beat up, 12 seater minibus- fine, we thought, we’ve done this before, just suck it up and we’ll be there soon. That was until they packed 27 people in, including 8 people sat on the luggage which protruded out of the boot and even one person sat underneath the driver!!!!!! At one point the driver was weaving in and out of traffic at break neck speed, with someone underneath him, on the phone and watching the drop down television he had in the front!! I was beside myself and felt very, very relieved to reach Phnom Penh alive (sorry Mum!). We were exhausted when we arrived and jumped in the nearest tuk tuk to get us to our hostel. Phnom Penh is a maze of streets without names, only numbers and no one seems to know where anything is. After 2 hours, 2 different tuk tuks and much frustration we finally found our hostel, a full 15 hours after we’d set off that morning. We had a good sleep and prepared ourselves for what was going to be a pretty emotional next day.
Many readers of this blog will have been to this part of the world and/or know the history of Cambodia, but for those who don’t, this is the little snippet I have learned. In 1975, the Khmer Rouge came to power in Cambodia led by Pol Pot, or Brother number 1, who had ambitions to make Cambodia into the ultimate Communist country. He wanted the entire country to be remodelled into a purely agricultural, peasant- led society based on communes and self-sufficient sharing. Tragically, like Communist leaders before his time, this meant that anyone that questioned the authority and omniscience of the Khmer Rouge was an enemy who had to be wiped out. For Pol Pot’s regime this translated into anyone who wasn’t a peasant- educated people, teachers, artists, religious leaders, monks and their families were murdered on mass. They estimate that almost a quarter of the population, 1.7 million people, were killed by this regime in the 3 years they held power. The insanity and brutality of the time is brought home by S21 museum in the capital. It is a school which was converted into a prison and torture camp by the regime. Thousands of men, women and children were tortured there before being taken to their deaths and the numbers escalated as the regime got increasingly paranoid. Only 7 people survived the camp, ironically mostly by being artists and painting portraits of the leader and we met one of the survivors the day we visited. We moved on to Cheoung Ek, which lies just outside the city and is known more commonly as the Killing Fields. Here, the Khmer Rouge brought those they wanted to exterminate from S21. As we walked around, you could see the depressions in the ground that are mass graves of the victims. The keepers of the ground have unearthed thousands of skulls and bones which are displayed in a memorial Stupa but have decided to allow nature to unearth the rest and dig no further. As the rain comes and earth washes away, more bones and rags appear out of the ground and you see them as you walk around. It is a difficult and heartbreaking place but one I feel is essential to visit.
It is crazy that while the developing world rocked out to the Rolling Stones, grieved the end of the Beatles and were being terrified by a shark film, so many people were being massacred in Cambodia. It begs the question of what human rights violations we are still blind to and what our government actively chooses not to see- China, Zimbabwe, Tibet, Guantanamo...the list goes on but this is not a political blog so I will move on!
Our final two days in Phnom Penh were spent visiting the very impressive Royal Palace, Silver Pagoda and Independence Monument. We also took a drive out to the slums to visit a non-profit project we read about in the town. We met an Aussie guy who has set up Justees (http://www.justees.org/) which employs disadvantaged young Cambodian men to print t-shirts with justice messages on. It was great to chat to him and see the process and we bought a couple of t-shirts- check out the website!
We moved on to Siem Reap and the wonder of the world that is Angkor Wat. We hired a lovely tuk tuk driver called Saly and started very early to visit all the temples. I didn’t know before going but the complex of temples is huge with structures dating back to 800AD. We spent 8 hours visiting the temples we wanted to see and it is breathtaking. My favourite was the slightly further out Banteay Srei which was set in tranquil rice paddies and had incredibly intricate carvings all over it. We explored all the temples including the tree temple, made famous by Tomb Raider, which has huge trees somehow growing out of the rocks, Bayon, which is a temple made of huge heads and of course Angkor Wat, the national symbol. It was a fascinating and very hot day but well worth the visit. We were staying in a really nice and cheap hotel that offered in room massages so I decided to have one to ease my sore legs while Jonny relaxed by the pool. The lady who arrived did not seem very happy to be massaging that day and I found out why when she rushed to the bathroom after 10 minutes and threw up. When she was done she wanted to carry on- I of course told her she was sick and needed to go home and gave her a couple dollars as a token. Amazingly she protested and tried to charge me the full amount for the massage- a very surreal event all in all!
The next day we visited a photography exhibition which happened to be connected to a children’s hospital set up by a Japanese-American. The hospital was in desperate need of financial donations and blood...so Jonny stepped up to the plate and gave them 350ml of the red stuff. We took a trip out to a temple which was also used by the Khmer Rouge and had a lovely dinner at Madame Butterfly’s set in the oldest colonial house in Siem Reap.
In the morning we took a bus to Battambang and, having only one day there, packed it full! We started by taking the bamboo train- the most fun thing I think we’ve done this trip! The locals use the old French train track still and we sat on a plank of wood which had two axles underneath, propelled by a small motor engine. We were hurtling down the rickety track which had warped and bent out of shape in the heat, at about 25mph, until we met another train coming the other way. At which point, our driver made us dismount, took the wooden plank off, removed the wheels from the track, allowed the other train passed and reassembled our train once they’d gone. It was amazing fun! We then visited a temple on a hill which has been built to mark the caves where the Khmer Rouge threw people to their death. Again, a very sad and chilling place. We hung around until night fall to see tens of millions fruit bats leave the cave to hunt in a long line which looked like billowing smoke. We raced back into town to see the youth circus- it is a non-profit organisation for disadvantaged Cambodian kids to learn circus skills. We’d read that the adult team, of which a few have been selected for Cirque Du Soleil, were on tour and so we would see the kids’ team. We expected an entertaining hour but nothing mind blowing- how wrong we were. The kids were absolutely amazing; doing contortion, tight rope walking, acrobatics, clowning, juggling- it was a fantastic night. Just as we were leaving an almighty storm broke and soaked, we grabbed a takeout pizza and retreated to our hostel. After a very long journey yesterday we arrived in Bangkok where we will explore for a couple of days before embarking on our final leg of the journey...India!

Gonna Miss Saigon (and the rest of Vietnam)

We left Laos on 15^th March and arrived in Hanoi, Vietnam around 26 hours later, after a bus trip from hell and a small unexplained mandatory bribe to the immigration officials! The sleeper buses, as they are ironically named as sleep is nigh on impossible, have two decks and three aisles of beds. As we’d heard happens on the traveller grape vine, the Westerners were herded to the back and the worst possible seats. We refused to go in the beds on the bottom where you could not sit upright for 26 hours and so got slightly better beds in the end. It was pretty horrific but Hanoi quickly blew all our frustrations away.

We stayed in the old quarter of the capital which is an incredible, energetic, bustling place. You have to hit the ground running in Hanoi and stand your ground against the constant flow of mopeds on the narrow streets. Our first full day there was spent visiting the lake in the centre of the city. There is a temple in the centre and a giant embalmed turtle. From what I could figure out there is a Vietnamese myth to do with a sword being hidden in the lake and a giant turtle bringing it back out of the water. It was a bit hard to follow so I know no more. After the lake we had a first sample of the famous Pho (pronounced a bit like fir), which is a clear broth with loads of noodles, bean sprouts and herbs- very tasty. We headed on to the Ho Chi Minh mausoleum area only to be disappointed that the Communist leader’s embalmed body was only on show from 8-11am; we’d missed him and so had to be satisfied with visiting his house and the museum. Like the earlier experience it wasn’t greatly laid out and was more propaganda than anything else, however I just about picked up that Uncle Ho, as he’s affectionately known, led Vietnam to independence and unification after 120 years of fighting. Since 1860 Vietnam has been occupied by and/or attacked by France, China, Italy, Cambodia and of course America. Uncle Ho is revered as a national hero and Vietnam remains a ‘socialist’ state. The only signs of Communism we’ve encountered have been propaganda posters, tanoid announcements and facebook being blocked. Capitalism has very much been embraced with Western brands and advertising in many places. We have been told that Vietnam is the number 1 exporter of rice and rubber but, as we’ve witnessed elsewhere, the ‘socialist’ monies don’t seem to trickle down to the common man so much and the people we’ve seen along the way work exceptionally hard to scrape together a pittance of a wage every day.

After a cultured day we hit a street bar outside the front of a lady’s house where you sit on squat stools almost at floor level and drink 18p beer! Whilst there we witnessed a car crash into a parked moped and girls walking around with curious green pictures on their faces. It didn’t take us long to figure out it was St. Paddy’s day! We met a couple of guys from Mallorca at the street bar and moseyed on down to the nearby backpacker’s party hostel. We had some more drinks and mingled with loads of people from all round the world, interestingly none of which were Irish, until we were moved on en masse to another bar. We walked for around 15 minutes until we came to this bar positioned under a motorway bridge! We had good fun and regretted it in the morning when we had to rise early for our tour of Halong Bay.

Our Halong Bay trip was a bit of a disaster from the outset, but not without laughter! Our guide didn’t really speak great English so it was hard to understand what he said about the history of Halong Bay. We were taken out to our boat where we’d sleep for the night and allowed to settle in before our, now slightly dictator-like and flustered tour guide told us to get on another boat to visit the caves. The caves were impressive but there were so many tourists we had to queue to get into them for about half an hour. After that we were taken to do some kayaking and then back to the main boat for dinner. We met some interesting people and even partook in some karaoke. It’s no coincidence that right in the middle of my song the electricity cut out and all the crew started running around with fire extinguishers. No one explained what was happening so naturally Jonny went to investigate only to report back that the motor had caught fire but it wasn’t a problem as they had a back up! The next day we took a slow return to the dock area through what I am told was Halong Bay, however could have been anywhere as the mist was so heavy you couldn’t see 2 feet in front of your face. In the end of tour guide hilariously announced that we should return in October as you can see the bay then!

We left Hanoi that night on another sleeper bus (half the price of the train) to Hoi An. We had to stop in Hue for a few hours before getting our connection bus on which the anti-Western feeling was painfully evident. Jonny was told to get out of his bed and lie in the aisle so that a Vietnamese man could have the bed instead. Very frustrating! We arrived in Hoi An pretty tired but to a lovely hotel with a balcony overlooking the street. Hoi An is a very nice place with narrow walking streets lined with art shops and the tailors for which the city is famous. When we woke up the next day our first stop was to hire some bikes for the day and then visit one of the tailors to have Jonny measured for a suit. It was a bit like walking into a vulture park and everyone rushes to the fresh meat, but our lady was very nice and after about an hour Jonny had ordered and been measured for one suit, spare trousers and a shirt- all for about £250 including shipping!

After that we hit the beach- beautiful clean, white sand and warm sea with nice little waves to bounce on. It was lovely and we really enjoyed the sea. That night we went out to sample Hoi An specialities- the wonton (not as we know it) and a soft Dim Sum type parcels called White Rose...delicious!

The next day we took a tour to the ancient Hindu and Buddhist My Son temples which, as we were reminded numerous times, was bombed and mostly destroyed by the Americans. There were still some interesting structures and we took a chilled trip back to the city by boat via a wood carving village. When we got back Jonny went for his final suit fitting accompanied by moi. The suit is amazing! It fits perfectly and he looks like a real grown up! That night we got...guess what...another night bus to Nha Trang. This was 10 hours I think and the worst one of them yet as the road was terrible and I kept getting thrown out of my bed every time we hit a bump. We arrived in Nha Trang pretty delirious at 6am and to an over cast beach town. The next two days were spent chilling out at the beach, despite not fantastic weather, and more sea swimming. To be precise, Jonny swam and laughed at me as I was taken down by the huge waves, recovering bewildered and with a bikini half on and full of sand, only to be taken down by another huge wave! That night we met up with a very nice Irish couple, Colin and Julie who we’d met on the slow boat to Laos and had some dinner, cocktails and a very competitive game of Jenga.

The next day all four of us went to the nearby natural mud baths where we plastered ourselves in the brown stuff for half an hour before taking a sequence of hot mineral baths. It was a lot of fun and the Asian tourists thought Jonny was crazy for putting his head under the mud surface- but then so did we when he came out looking like a sea monster and with mud in his teeth! That afternoon we did more chilling on the beach and the next morning got up early to get a 7 hour TRAIN (yay!!) to Saigon/ Ho Chi Minh City (HCMH).

Our hostel was up a tiny winding alleyway which gave us a great insight into how people live in the city. As you walked past you could see whole families in tiny spaces which acted as their kitchen, lounge, bedroom and dining area. On our first full day there we took the trip to the Cu Chi tunnels just outside the city. It was here that the Americans most fiercely battled the Viet Cong. We were very lucky to have as our tour guide a Mr Bobby Frederique Riviera (or Mr Bean as he liked to be called) who was a veteran of the war. Interestingly though, having lived in America and joined the Navy there, he fought with the American troops against the Viet Cong. He was clearly still very deeply affected by what he had witnessed during the war and predictably had me in floods of tears on the way to the tunnels. We walked around the tunnel area, learned about the booby traps the Viet Cong used and ultimately how they out smarted the American fighters. Strangely you can fire an AK47 and various other guns in a firing range there which I don’t really understand having learned the history about the area, but it was a very interesting day and we learned a lot.

The next day my sniffles that appeared in Nha Trang had turned into a full blown cold and so Jonny had to go out and get me some medicine. The tablets were from Korea and after taking two, I felt better but also pretty spaced out so I kind of floated around the rest of the day. We visited the Independence Palace which was finally stormed by the Northern Communist forces and the Southern Vietnam President forced to surrender. The most interesting thing is that not a single item has been touched since the 1960’s and so the palace is like a design museum for the era. We also visited the Jade Pagoda where, once again, I was talked into freeing an poor captured animal for good luck (I later found out that the birds I freed in Chiang Mai are homing birds and so just come back to be caged that night!). I picked a baby terrapin who was stuck in a plastic cup and released him into the first pond I found. We walked on feeling quite happy with only subconscious whispers questioning why there were not more terrapins in said pond, when we noticed another pond full to the brim of turtles and terrapins. Much to Jonny’s glee I had released my baby terrapin into a pond with no fellow terrapins and no dry areas for him to crawl out and bask. I felt pretty bad and this was made worse when we returned, after seeing the Pagoda which had now become irrelevant, to witness the massacre of a goldfish, which had just been released by an equally unsuspecting lady, by a massive Carp. We were traumatised! The only thing for it was a massage. Only this one had a twist- it was performed by blind people who are trained at the national Institute for the Blind. Although not the greatest massage in the world it was fascinating to see how the masseurs navigated their way around the room.

This morning, we took a flight (we are going up in the world!) to Phu Quoc, an island off the south coast of Vietnam. We will spend four days before carrying on to Cambodia, at which point I will update you further.