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.

Thailand & Laos

It feels like it’s been a while since I last blogged and a lot has happened in the meantime, spanning two countries. We arrived in Chiang Mai, Northern Thailand on 3^rd March and checked into our lovely hostel, Finlay’s Cottage, run by a knowledgeable English chap called Keith. Chiang Mai is a nice, relaxed place with a walled centre, a moat around the city and lots of beautiful temples and is pretty popular with tourists. On our first full day we booked onto a Thai cooking course. With our group of Swedish, South African, German and Chilean fellow chefs, we were guided around the morning market in Chiang Mai to see the fish, vegetables and ‘1000 year old’ preserved eggs! We got down to cooking and I made green papaya salad, a Thai soup, Penang curry, noodles and sticky mango rice...the best bit, we got to eat everything we made...mmm. It was very good, if I may say so myself, and great to learn about all the ingredients and flavours, although Jonny struggled to consume his soup due to the copious amounts of chilli he threw in!

After a tough day cooking, Jonny and I did what we now do best- had a massage! On Keith’s recommendation we ventured down to our local temple where you have a clothed massage outside. Again, this was not for the feint hearted as a man half the size of me dug his knees into my back and pulled my shoulders back to achieve very satisfying clicks. Feeling very loose, we glided down to the Sunday market which stretches farther than the eye can see, near the city walls. I predictably got lured in to freeing two tiny birds from a bamboo cage. It is meant to be good luck but I just felt bad for the birds...Jonny had to stop me paying to free them all. We had a great evening strolling around the market and eating various different street foods from the stalls huddled around the temples.

Somehow Yonna convinced me to do a trek (even after Mount Kinabalu) the next day. It was actually great fun and not that much trekking. We started in an orchid farm with beautiful flowers before being taken up into the hills. We alighted our rickety tuk tuk and were swiftly moved up a wooden tower to mount our elephant! The hill tribes have used elephants for centuries in the logging industry. They have been replaced by machines now and so the retired elephants take tourists for rides instead. We were informed that the wild elephants in Thailand cause a lot of damage to farm land and so the government fund local people to take them in and use them in this way instead. I have to say I was dubious beforehand and worried about how the animals would be treated but the men we were around were gentle and respectful. Our elephant thought it was amusing to snort water and elephant snot all over us on his back and ate a banana tree trunk on the short trek too. It was lovely to be so close to the elephants and we appreciatively fed our guy a bag of bananas and sugar cane when we got down. After that, on our fun packed day, we took a short trek up to a waterfall. The water was absolutely freezing but quite nice once you’d been in for a while. We trekked back down and got on with some white water rafting. It is dry season at the moment so it was more water rafting than white! It was a lot of fun and we got soaked- much to the dismay of the Chinese girl who was at the back of our raft. We were instructed to get out and swap to a traditional bamboo raft. Despite our many protests that the bamboo was sinking and almost hitting the rocky river bed, the Thai guide told us it was fine and to carry on. So we had a five minute ride pretty much in waist deep water on a piece of sinking wood...very funny. Whilst we attempted to dry off a little, we watched the elephants being ridden by the locals down to the river to have a bath. We were then taken to a ‘traditional hill tribe’. It was all very surreal as we were guided around a village of what looked to be totally normal Thai people who happened to live on a hill. The guide tried to convince us of their traditional ways of living as we past satellite dishes, 4x4 trucks and flat screen TV’s. There were a few older ladies dressed traditionally, trying to sell souvenirs so it’s understandable why they bring tourists here but it was a little embarrassing really. That night, we settled down to an evening of Muay Thai boxing which included some very young contestants, lady boxers and a Spanish guy. It was interesting to watch even if I did think some of the kids were a little young to be fighting, however I am told that boys start training very young in Thailand.

The next day we devised our own walking temple tour of the city. Yonna gets a little bored after the 8^th temple or so but I love them and so drag him into every single one! I loved seeing the saffron robed monks walking around Chiang Mai and the temples. Most of the temples are gleaming with gold leaf and beautiful paintings inside of Buddha and Buddhist stories. The most opulent temple we visited was in Doi Suthep, a short taxi ride away on top of a hill. It was a little crowded with tourists but the stone and Jade carved Buddhas were beautiful. Having read a bit about Buddhism before coming to Asia, I have been surprised to see the Buddha worshipped as a God like figure. As I thought I understood, Buddhism has no God as such but is more about a way of life but I do know there are many variations. There seems to be a lot of offerings at the temples, usually money, and giving alms to the monks, who have no personal possessions or income, is seen as a way to achieve redemption. We even saw one monk offering a blessing whilst hanging out the window of his brand new BMW-quite the gift! We were told that often corrupt politicians will commit fraud, do a couple of months’ prison time and then become a monk for a few months and all is forgiven. However, none of this took away from the aesthetic splendour of the temples and my fascination with the Buddhist way of life. We found some smaller, less visited temples that were a bit more serene and spiritual in feeling. We visited another temple which had differentiated itself by being silver and I inscribed the names of mine and Jonny’s family onto a silver Boddhi tree leaf and hung it up, as is traditional. I finished the day with a body scrub at a pretty dodgy (I didn’t figure it out until I was in!) looking massage place with older men queuing up for their ‘treatments’...I’ll say no more.

The next day we said a sad goodbye to Chiang Mai but were excited about the prospect of a whole new country..Laos. We had to take a minibus to the border, stopping at an incredible but strangely situated white temple, on the way. We got our passports stamped on exit and after 5 minutes on a boat, we were in the land of Laos. We stayed the night at the border town in Laos and were very lucky to be there during only one of the 3 days every year when there’s a festival at the temple. We joined the monks and locals in throwing balls at towers of cans and throwing darts at balloons to win biscuits and sweets. We also had dinner at a women’s empowerment cafe that had been set up by a Dutch lady. She moved to Laos ten years ago, lived with the mountain tribes, married a Laos mountain tribe man and set up a charity for battered and impoverished women. She also spoke fluent Laotian! It was really interesting to hear about her project and we had great food. A nice welcome to the country.

The next day we set off on a two day long boat ride to reach Luang Prabang. Day one was slow as we broke down a couple of times but after a night in Pak Beng and a total of 17-ish hours on a boat, we arrived in Luang Prabang. What I didn’t know was that Laos was a French colony so the locals speak French and a lot of the signs are in the language. Luang Prabang has some colonial French architecture and is a beautiful place. For this reason it is a UNESCO heritage site and has a curfew of 11.30pm! On the first day we hired push bikes and cycled round the quaint streets. I don’t think I have ridden a bike for about 15 years so it was good fun. We visited a few temples and the royal palace and of course, ended the day with a massage! The next day Jonny went off to the nearby waterfalls whilst I stayed in town and did some sketching in the temples and generally pottered around. I had a night in the market looking for souvenirs before we had to leave pretty Luang Prabang for Vang Vieng....not at all pretty!

The main reason people go to Vang Vieng is for the tubing down the river. The town itself is not at all nice, although it is set in some very striking mountains. The day after we arrived, the time had come for the main event...the tubing. Everyone I have ever spoken to who has been to Laos has been tubing and says that you have to go and do it. Basically, you hire a rubber ring and float down the river whilst bars throw a rope out to you and pull you in for cheap drinks. Every bar we were pulled into was full of young English guys and girls working there and it was kind of like you could be anywhere, not really Laos. The loud dance beats and guys off their heads on drink and drugs was not really my scene but we had fun on the big water slides and in the tubes themselves.

Today we got a bus to the capital, Vientiane, where we stay just for one night before getting the 24 hour bus to Hanoi, Vietnam tomorrow!

Buddhist Birthday and the Shangri-La-Dee-Da

We flew into Jakarta, the capital of Indonesia on the evening of 23^rd February and into crazy heat and traffic! Jakarta is a massive city, the greater metropolis of which is home to over 20 million people. It’s a lot to get your head around so, with only one day there, we had to pick and chose our sights the next day.

There are some impressive Communist looking statues built by a previous dictator, the national monument in the centre being the most impressive, size-wise. We visited the nearby glistening, white palace of the President and sat down to lunch at a West Sumatran restaurant. As is the tradition on the Indonesian island of Sumatra, the man brought us 15 plates, most of which were balanced on one arm at the same time, of various items we didn’t recognise. We sampled most of the dishes and you only pay for what you eat. Next on the list was the Taman Mini Indonesia Inda which, as the name suggests, is a park representing all the cultures within Indonesia. The country includes over 17,000 islands (only 6,000 of which are inhabited) which each have their own culture and identity. The park is one of the most surreal places I have been. It’s absolutely huge and took us a few hours to walk around (still with sore legs from the mountain). It’s as if it was built in the 80’s to draw huge amounts of tourists but now it’s a little run down and quite deserted, playing Indonesian music out of tannoys to empty streets- quite odd. Jonny and I were two of only about ten tourists in there! The park includes tens of museums, full-size remakes of the architecture found on each island, a skycab, monorail, tens of restaurants...the list goes on. We looked around some of the mocked-up houses, the interesting museum of Indonesia and the animal parks. Jonny got to pose with a Komodo dragon and a reticulated python- I even stroked it! We saw lots of other snakes and turtles and visited the aquarium too.

That night we ate great street noodles in a steamy, hot little street stall with a drumming parade passing beside us. This was the night that Jonny discovered the Indonesian dessert of Martabak, a kind of thick pancake, folded in half with a filling of chocolate or cheese. He was addicted, in fact I would say he’d fallen in love, he couldn’t stop talking about it and every day after that in Indonesia we had to go on the hunt for Martabak! Early the next morning we caught the train to Yogyakarta (pronounced Jogjakarta) which was a full 8 hour ride away. The scenery was amazing with bright green rice paddies and small villages. We turned up in Jogja in some serious rain and found our little hostel...we were very pleasantly surprised!

Jogja has a decent tourism industry, due to nearby sights, but has managed to remain pretty traditional. It’s a very arty city and feels a little hippy-ish. We loved it immediately with a maze of small, thin alleys running through the city, each with restaurants, mosques or just glimpses of interesting Javanese everyday life down them. Our hostel was more like a hotel with a beautiful bedroom, air con, a hot shower and huge bed for a very reasonable price. The cherry on the top was definitely the included breakfast in bed of chocolate and banana pancakes!!

The next day we walked to the Kraton, which is the existing Sultan’s palace, as we’d caught wind of there being a dance performance that happened only once a week. Once we reached the complex of one-storey marble buildings and open courtyards, we bought our tickets and took front row seats around a slightly raised, covered platform in the centre of the main courtyard. There was a huge Javanese orchestra with big gongs and drums who started the music before the dancers came out. The performance is called the Ramayana ballet which depicts a story central to the Hindu faith (not that I know what the story is, I will find out!). The ballet (not as we know it) was absolutely mesmerising; every tiny movement of the feet, hands, eyes and heads was perfected to the tiniest detail with maximum concentration. The women’s faces, outfits and jewellery were beautiful and it’s hard to capture the atmosphere they created in writing. The final dance was a man in a bright red mask (I think he depicts a demon king) creating the most incredible shapes with his body. It was magical. Having been introduced to Hinduism, we moved on to a 9^th century Hindu temple called Prabanan. It has been seriously damaged by a couple of earthquakes in this seismically active part of the world, but the part that stands is still very impressive. The stone triangular temples stretch high into the sky and are adorned by thousands of reliefs of the Hindu canon. Inside the main temples are carvings of the central gods of Hinduism- it was very interesting, even in the heavy rain! We had a look around the nearby Buddhist temple too, which the masses of tourists seemed to have forgotten about as we were the only two people there, and returned to Jogja.

That night we wondered down one of the little alleyways and found a restaurant that offered cobra and python...of course Jonny couldn’t resist! I tried some python and it tasted alright-a bit like pork but the texture of fish, very odd. Jonny mopped up the snake mêlée and then made the mistake of getting chatting to the owner. The owner drew his attention to the ‘Devil Drink’ on the menu. He claimed that the mixture of cobra blood, red wine, bone marrow, veins and gall bladder was miraculous for the health (claiming that he gave it to his uncle who was unable to walk and within two weeks he was on his feet!). He offered to drink one if Jonny did and said he drank it all the time and loved it. I made the mistake of joking that the owner was addicted to the stuff to which he replied, suddenly dead pan, ‘I’m not addicted to anything. I used to be a heroin addict. I’ve been in prison twice’. I felt pretty stupid! I don’t know whether it was out of social faux-pas panic, to break the atmosphere or due to the challenge that Jonny came out with ‘I’ll have one!’. With the entire restaurant crowding around, Jonny downed the drink, stumbling on the gall bladder but with the fear of the bile burning his throat, quickly swallowed it in one! Revolting! But in classic Jonny style, he put the glass down and said ‘Wasn’t that bad that’. We finished the evening with a Luwak coffee, the famous Civet cat poo coffee that we’ve wanted to try for ages. I think it was about £1 for a big cup but is the most expensive coffee in the Western world. A pretty satisfying evening!

I went to sleep 26 that night and woke up 27 years old on 27^th February, to pancakes, candles and a rose for my birthday. It was a lovely surprise and I kept the pampering coming by going for some seriously cheap but good reflexology. After that we set off for Borobudur, an amazing Buddhist temple just outside Jogja. The site was a fascinating stack of six concentric circles each with very detailed stone panels depicting the enlightenment of Bodhisattva with sitting Buddhas in nearly every space you looked at. The temple culminated in two top layers of sitting Buddhas encased in bell shaped stone structures. We took hours going round and round and looking at all the images and then sat at the top and watched the sun going down behind the two prominent volcanoes in the near distance. That night we went for dinner at a lovely restaurant where we sat in a wooden carriage, that someone like the Sultan would be carried in, and ate great food. I had a brilliant and memorable birthday made even more special by the fact that my second nephew, Oli James Bennett, was born in the UK on the morning of 27^th February! Very special and I can’t wait to meet him J

The next day, due to the cheap price of my reflexology, Jonny went for the same treatment. I had face tapping and ear candling instead. Face tapping was like facial acupressure and ear candling was where they put a lit paper cone in my ears and it cleaned them. It was totally gross but everything was so loud afterwards! We had a great lunch and then went shopping in the famous silver jewellery area, Kota Gede. I couldn’t find anything I liked and time ran out before I had to meet my teacher for the silver jewellery making class I’d booked. My teacher, Agus took me to his studio and I had a one on one, 3 hour lesson of how to make a silver ring. It was excellent to be able to work the silver and my end product was my own personalised ring embossed with XXVII to remember my 27^th and the day Oli was born. It is really beautiful and I am so pleased with it. I said my goodbyes to Agus and met Jonny to get the night train back to Jakarta. We were both sad to leave Jogja and said we’d love to go back one day.

We flew direct to Kuala Lumpur that day and the pampering really began!! As I write this I am sat in our deluxe king size bedroom in the Shangri-La. The hotel is absolutely stunning- we feel like kids in an adult world. When we came to the room I had a birthday cake waiting for me and Jonny’s dad has very kindly arranged for us to have breakfast in the hotel while we’re here. It really is the height of luxury and the staff can’t do enough for you. Obviously I have turned into a pikey and have already started stealing the free toiletries, hair brush, even the sewing kit! The night we arrived we decided we would have dinner in one of the four restaurants in the hotel. We ordered a whole Peking duck and the man told us it was too much for two people, as we’d ordered Dim Sum starters and scallops too! We said he had got us wrong and that we could definitely handle this much food. He was right, we were defeated! The lady wheeled out the biggest duck you’ve ever seen, head still on, and carved off the amazingly crispy skin that another waiter then dipped in Hoisin sauce and wrapped in pancakes for us. You don’t make your own pancakes in the Shangri-La, no no. We ate about 10 each and then they brought the duck meat main and the noodles...we were stuffed, but it was amazing.

On our first full day in KL, we went up the observatory tower and looked over the city. For lunch, we wandered down to China Town and Little India for some street food and atmosphere soaking. After a sauna and swim at the hotel we went for a Japanese dinner. The restaurant was a totally new concept on us where you chose from a buffet of raw ingredients and then cooked it yourself in a boiling pot on the table. I got a little obsessed with the all you can eat sashimi and had around 30 pieces of raw salmon!

This morning we had our first breakfast experience- wow! There is literally every possible type of food on offer- Chinese Dim Sum, Japanese sushi, Indian curries, meats, cheeses, pancakes, chocolate fondues. Needless to say we felt sick afterwards when we made our way to the Batu caves outside the city. Inside is an interesting Hindu shrine with bright and colourful temples and many mischievous monkeys. We’ve just polished off a Shangri-La afternoon tea and will now retire to the pool area...I could get used to this and am trying to make the most of it before our return to hostels in Northern Thailand.