Background Reading

So I am off to Myanmar/Burma, depending on your colonial tastes, this'avo. It's a controversial place to travel and there have been calls to boycott travel there as a way to condemn the current regime. However, I've been doing research, starting with the easy to digest Lonely Planet's 'Should You Go?' which has helped to give me some pros and cons on independent travel to the country. And obviously I have decided that the pros out way the cons and I'll be heading there for a whistle-stop tour of only 18 days. I was also encouraged to go by a travely chum I met in India who rates it one of her highlights of South East Asia. I'm currently reading Emma Larkin's 'Finding George Orwell in Burma' which is revelatory and provides depth and insight into the Burmese character and society from her own experience and explorations of the country. I feel that I may only be allowed to see the glossy side and that the true Burma will be out of my reach, but I really hope to absorb as much as I can and take with me all that I learn there...

ANGKOR WAT!! Hermazing!

A small section of the central part of Angkor Wat

I had the best time at Angkor Wat spending three days exploring the huge, grand ruins, two of these days were, of course, on bicycle which was by far the best way to view Angkor and the surrounding temples. An absolute highlight of my trip in Asia! On the first day we went and saw the big two, Angkor Wat and Angkor Thom, and I was so incredibly in awe of the place. So old! So grand! Angkor Wat seemed even more spectacular and incredible and awesome on the last day when I popped by to have a second peek and to sadly say goodbye to Angkor. I would love to go again! I was very sad to say goodbye to Angkor.

Big faces at Bayon

One of the many examples of sculpture, and especially of the female form. In so many cases each figure was different to the next and where there were hundreds in a row it was immensely impressive! As I found everything at Angkor!

Hugging a huge tree in my possibly fave, Ta Prohm. The jungles reclaimed the temples here and it was great to explore and clamber over ruins and gaze in awe at the monstrous trees!

Dolphin Spotting

I headed over to dusty, quiet Kratie in the east of Cambodia for a little cycle and some dolphin watching. Kratie is found in the Mekong Delta and is just one of the homes for this funny looking dolphin (I tried to look for it from the 4,000 Islands in Laos but had no luck). I had a pleasant and flat cycle along the river towards the dolphins. After about 7km from Kratie I reached the spot where you can take a boat out over the delta and get close to the dolphins. Within seconds we were surrounded...by maybe four of the creatures frolicking around who stuck with us for the hour that we were out in the boat. It was quite exciting to be so close and for them to be cavort around with such great abandon!

Irrawaddy dolphin cruising along the Mekong delta!

I then cycled a little more to a very small village and decided to head back in the midday sun. Error!! It was much too hot to be out cycling! I also forgot to put suncream on my hands and they burnt! Even that is a first for me! The sun is lethal but my nice big rimmed sunhat is a lifesaver and I am never without it!

My cycle route around Kratie...wooden stilt houses running alongside tropical trees with hot skies overhead.

C.H.O.I.C.E

I arrived in Phnom Penh on a mission to sort out my visa for Myanmar which was hindered as I arrived over the weekend when the Embassy was shut, I then had a few stops and starts as I had to find confirmation that I once had a job and now no longer have a job (thanks to the speedy work by HR NTU who did an efficient job, as always!). The big thing of note in Phnom Penh is the superabundance of Lexus' that ride the streets!

After a healthy cup of ginger, honey and lemon tea at Chiva's Shack I learned about C.H.O.I.C.E Cambodia, an ex-pat run NGO out on a Sunday mission to deliver basic food stuffs to several of the villages surrounding Phnom Penh.

One of the villages reached by CHOICE. Villagers set up home alongside the road as this little 10m stretch either side of the road is not owned privately nor by the government. They have no land rights here.

I decided to join Choice and spent a productive and enlightening day out with the NGO and other voles. We started off with an efficient production line and packed carrier bags with rice, noodles, sugar, soy sauce and other helpful bits and bobs. We loaded up the truck and sat in the back and drove down bumpy roads until we reached the villages and handed out the goodies.


One resourceful villager makes homemade rice wine!

Choice also offers a free, portable clinic to the villagers which gives them much needed access to free health care. If you swing by their blog and facebook page you can see their ongoing work...Of course it's that age old dilemma of a fish versus a fishing rod and I'm pleased to say that there are long term projects, funds willing, to provide one of the villages with a plot of land in which to build a school and have land enough for the villagers to grow rice.

The kids at school. One Choice vole handed out school books and pens for each child attending school in the village!

The villagers don't own the land that they have built their homes on so have few rights and means of being self-sufficient. They also have to deal with the fact that their water supply, a pump helpfully put in by Unicef, is contaminated and laced with arsenic which I found truly shocking: that there are people out there without access to safe drinking water. Maybe I am too naive and ignorant! And I was also alarmed at the high levels of corruption in Cambodia with much monetary aide coming into the country but little making it to those in need. Sad times.

Water pump and dishes.

Another Slow Boat

I took the scenic waterways route as I exited Vietnam for Cambodia taking in a floating fishing village, a floating fruit and veg market, and a Cham village along the watery way. I headed for Can Tho to see the floating fruit and veg market and had a rather creepy bus journey from Saigon to Can Tho. The bus driver of the minivan only knew "I love you" in English so I humored it for a while. The driver and bus ticket man offered to take me directly to my guesthouse which came across as a bit creepy so I hopped on the back of a moto to my guesthouse. I was just settling in when the driver turned up and motioned to me, him, and my room! Jeez! I'd only said bye to Tom a few hours before and already I was being propositioned! Of course I said a firm "no" and hid in my room for a little while.

At the floating fruit and veg market Can Tho, Vietnam

The next morning I got up bright and early and headed for the dock and got on a small boat powered by a little local woman who took me to the busy floating market and then back through the quiet backwaters (it reminded me very much of Alleppey, India). Whilst she was steering the small motorised boat she crafted me a bracelet and staff made of river reeds. Super impressive crafty skills!

Good craft!

I then headed to Chau Doc and took the slowboat, first to the floating fishing village and Cham Muslim village, and then towards Cambodia. The view was very scenic and we passed lots of kids having a great time splashing about in the river water and the usual rice paddies and wooden stilt houses. It was a very chilled introduction to Cambodia.

Floating fishing village, Chau Doc, Vietnam

Saigon and Cu Chi

The last Vietnamese stop for Tom. I really like Saigon as a city: it's big and busy and clean and there's lots of historical spots to see and great pho eating to be done. The traffic is the usual chaos but using my old trick of keeping locals traffic side ensures a safe crossing. The wealth there was unbelievable: ridiculously plush hotels and lavish designer stores aplenty which was all quite unexpected.

Veggie pho: broth, fresh noodles, mushrooms, egg, tofu, carrots, tapioca, bean sprouts, cabbage, mint, chilis... Bill Clinton ate here in 2000.

We did the usual touristy route and went to the Reunification Palace which had great interior design: very geometric light fittings and a minimalist lounge. I'm not sure that was what I was supposed to appreciate here! The basement was kept in a pretty authentic condition as it was in the time of war with maps and telephone rooms in tiny rooms down clinical corridors.

Very stylish interior!

Uncle Ho

We went to the War Remnants Museum which was an upsetting, shocking, depressing reflection of war and humanity. Most of the space is taken up with photography exhibitions taken by various, well-known war photographers documenting the Vietnam War capturing moments and expressions in a thought-provoking yet starkly factual way. I found the whole exhibition hard work for my sensitive soul but it was an extremely worthwhile, informative and emotional visit.

We took a day trip to the Viet Cong Cu Chi Tunnels which was pretty touristy yet eye-opening. We got to crawl through a small safe section of the tunnels (which span 75 miles in total), which have been widened and heightened for the fat Western tourists, to give an impression of what it would be like: hot, sweaty, small, cramped, and very dark. One of the tour guides leading another group was actually in the Viet Cong and had bullet scars on his shoulder which he displayed to his captivated audience. He had a brilliant attitude to life and explained his own life experiences in the Viet Cong and in the tunnels with humour and pride.

Crawling through the Cu Chi Tunnels

On Tour

A view of life on the road

We had a very brief stop in Dalat, sank a strawberry shake (possibly even eclipsing my love of mango shakes) and visited a mountaintop pagoda, and then scooted out of there on the back of a motorbike for a three day tour of the surrounds. It was so much fun!! I am pretty much anti-motorbikes but when traveling old ideals sometimes slip out of the window. We hired motorbikes and drivers through Freelance Cycles, strapped our backpacks onto the back of the motorbikes and away we went! It was exhilarating!! I can see why people get hooked on it: the wind in your face, being exposed to the elements, the freedom, and really being part of the landscape as you zoom through the mountains and alongside villages and rice paddies. It was incredible! An absolute Vietnamese highlight! Plus we rarely saw another traveller and so got off the tourist trail for a few days at least which was refreshing. It was chilled and fun and educational and a million other things too!! Brilliant!

We swung by this lovely blue water for a refreshing dip, after a slippy clamber down, plus a shoulder massage underneath the super powerful waterfalls.

Our first stop was Crazy House in Dalat in the style of Gaudi but executed with a little less panache. It was still an interesting spot with different animal themes running throughout, my faves being a huge ant where I drank a Vietnamese drip coffee, a big cheetah with scary red eyes, and a huge toucan with splayed wings. Crazy House is an ongoing process with new wings being continuously added to, we even had a clamber over the building site with bits of concrete and poles jutting out haphazard. Oh Health & Safety!

Crazy House under continuous construction

After exploring for an hour we hit the road with Khian and Khio our hilarious double-act drivers who entertained us with folk tales of cleverness and trickery, as well as logic puzzles using chopsticks and bamboo toothpicks that we very rarely managed to crack, and if we did it was with a fair few hints! Lots of fun!

On our first day we visited a flower farm. In Vietnam three pink roses shows love, yellow flowers for respect and red for luck. I received a lovely bouquet of pink and red flowers from my driver, none from Tom mind! We stopped off at a coffee plantation/rice wine factory combo. The rice wine is a super strong spirit made of rice (of course!) and locals make it for local consumption. It is pretty lethal stuff! Later we learnt that you can add animal bits and bobs with different effects: scorpions for the back, goats' penis as Viagra. Charming! At this little roadside place I had the best coffee of my life! Weasel coffee! To start you harvest the coffee beans, get little weasels to eat the coffee beans, wait for them to poop it out, collect the coffee beans (which are still intact!), and grind them up in the regular fashion...and this is weasel coffee!! We drank it in the usual Vietnamese drip coffee style and, oh my, it had the densest, smoothest, richest taste verging on alcoholic it was just so strong!

Waiting for our Vietnamese drip coffee sweetened with condensed milk. I'm a BIG fan!

As we approached the village where we were going to spend the first night a thunderstorm hit with dense rain so out came our matching green waterproofs which were a great lol. It was pretty scary and exciting driving through the rain and the storm with lightening cracking in all directions. We made it to our basic accommo of a huge wooden longhouse on stilts with mattress on the floor and mosquito net with no bathroom (the nearest was the restaurant down the road) and power cuts throughout the night just to add to the drama of the storm. We had a great feast with dishes galore. Khian had phoned ahead earlier in the day to make sure I had some veggie eats, and I sure did: tofu, battered mushrooms, wintermelon salad, greens, spring rolls, rice and more. Delish! We slept in our basic but huge wooden home with the loudest gecko shouting out "gecko gecko" right by our ears all night long.

In our matching waterproofs!

We also took in a brick factory, tea plantation, mushroom farm, silk worm factory, a poor attempt on my part at crossing a rickity bamboo bridge, paddled across a lake in a wooden canoe to see some surprising fishing tactics, cocoa plantation, rubber plantation, cashew nut farm, and saw a waterfall or two. Busy busy!

At the silk factory. You can see cacooned silk worms in the big baskets waiting to be cleaned. Don't fret, the dead silk worms are not wasted, they are fed to farm animals!

We had such a brilliant time and it was worth splurging the travelly budget. Khian and Khio defo made the trip memorable with their never-ending enthusiasm, puzzles, and skillful driving skills. Absolute highlight! I hugely recommend! Never try, never know!

Navigating our way through a herd of cows strolling along the road.

Sandboarding and Fairy Springs

 We headed to the very windy beach strip of Mui Ne with our accommo looking out to sea! Lahvely! We took a jeep tour of the sights around Mui Ne first stopping at the incredibly orange and beautiful Fairy Springs, and it was so refreshing to paddle along the stream and through the tropical trees and ravine.

Fairy springs, apparently sees the odd ox-cart trundling through

The white sand dunes just up the road were mental. It was like being on another planet: a lake filled with lilies, next to that a pine forest, and then the glaring white sand dunes. It was such a bizarre landscape.

White sand dunes, lilies, and shrubs with pine forest behind me from where I took the photo and huge white sand dunes to the right (and painful sand dunes! The wind was up when we reached the top of the dunes and it felt like millions of little needles being hurled at your flesh. Ouch)

We were then whisked away to yet more dunes, located not so far away, for a disappointingly cloudy sunset, however, this didn't matter as our jeep driver gave us a plastic sledge to taboggan down the steep sandy slopes. It was like being a little kid again sledging in the snow! I screamed and laughed all the way down the slope!

Hmmm, I don't think the depth came out on this photo but the way down was very steep and long. Fun times!

Strike a Pose in HoiAn

We headed still further south to the touristy tailoring town of HoiAn. We both made quick steps towards the tailors, of which there are an overwhelming number, and had a fun time getting measured up for a few frocks (me) and a three piece (Tom, obvs). We picked out the fabrics and styles we liked and the tailors created them with speed and ease. We returned for a few alterations over the course of the four or so days that we were there which all seemed rather glamorous.

At the tailors for a second fitting: Tom striking a pose in two of his three pieces

We took a day trip to My Son which is apparently the Vietnamese version of Angkor. Hmm, optimistic! The countryside ride there though was of course beautiful and super chilled with rice paddies dotting the landscape.

Ruined Hindu temples at My Son...not so Angkor

Views over to the Old Town

The town itself was easily navigable on foot and by bicycle and it was a lovely relief to find that no motorised vehicles were allowed within the Old Town which took the edge off strolling along the quaint roads. On our last day we cycled over the bridge to view the pretty Old Town whilst dining alongside the river. And at Chips and Fish Tom had possibly the best fish and chips of his life. I am a big Brits fish n chips n mushy peas fan but these "chips and fish" were perfection! The batter was mixed up with herbs to coat the super fresh fish chunks and the condiment was a super divine lime juice, salt and pepper combo (super simple and super delish). This fresh dip may very well overtake my mayonnaise condiment obsession! (Although out here mayo is a rarity which my arteries are probs most grateful for!)

Chips and Fish and Fresh Lime Dip

The Humid City of Hue

Oh my life! So incredibly humid in Hue! Sweatnation! We did the touristy thing around the Imperial City of Hue for a morn and hotfooted it out of there asap. Before hastily departing we (deservedly) treated ourselves after our sleeper bus from HaNoi trundled into Hue six hours later than scheduled. We grabbed a dip in our guest house pool, Tom wolfed down an interesting eight course Vietnamese menu (of which I could have barely any due to my new veggie status) and we sampled a sweet streetstall delicacy of Chè: a sweet gloppy dessert in a glass with some sugary rice, purple jelly cubes, banana, a few kidney beans and tapioca thrown in. It was an odd combo of flavours and as I hate to see food go to waste I dutifully finished it off. Interesting but I won't try it again!

Big urns in the Imperial City

An oldy building in the Imperial City

Pots of bananas and beans and jelly and other syrupy bits and bobs that make up a che glass.

Crazy Cat Ba Jive

APRIL - MAY 2011
We arrived at Cat Ba Island on Liberation / Reunification Day, the weekend that ALL Vietnamese in HaNoi set off for the coast on their hols. It was absolute mayhem when we arrived. Hundreds of Vietnamese strolling the Cat Ba promenade with barely another tourist insight. I had made a bit of an error in assuming it would be easy enough to find accommodation during the hols. It was not. We, accompanied by two Dutch boys, scoured the few streets of Cat Ba in search of a free room. Hotels were either full or owners were shouting for crazy amounts of dollars for one night! Eeps! Eventually Tom and I found a room in a moto taxi driver's sister's house for a crazy price but after two hours of searching we gave up. I usually just rock up to a town, even during national holidays, and find a budget room, this time was a HUGE exception. I have never seen anything like it! So if you're in Vietnam around 30th April book a room otherwise you will be faced with stress and near homelessness!

Bowls of different seafoods to purchase live and eat later. A few endangered species available, alongside geckos getting their throat slit at the time of purchase. Yuk! Scorpions and various snakes also for sale.

Floating market, seafood wares, and a conical hat.

A beautiful view over Halong Bay.

We took a glorious boat tour from Cat Ba Island via The Amazing Cave to Halong Bay and a few secluded beaches. Halong Bay is made up of stunning, huge, and beautiful limestone karsts that litter the sea around. We kayaked alongside some floating fishing villages and through tiny openings amongst the karsts to near seclusion. I used my intuitive navigation skills for an hour to guide us through the maze of the bay, leading us between the huge karst islands to remote spots and right alongside the fishing villages and over their fishing cages at the bottom of the sea. It was so wonderfully beautifully scenic.

Paddling to the Perfume Pagodas

Tom joined me for a few weeks of my travels starting in the north of 'Nam. We took a daytrip to escape the hectic traffic and general hustle and bustle of Ha Noi and headed out to the calming countryside towards the Perfume Pagodas. To reach the foot of the perfumed mountain we took a small boat paddled by a tiny Vietnamese woman who didn't even break a sweat and casually chatted to other oarsladies nearby. I was very impressed with her skills. The boat ride was extremely scenic as we passed along the base of many a limestone mountain and rice paddies, naturally.

Boat view across the mountains with the threat of rain overhead. You can make out an oarslady and her conical hat paddling on ahead of our boat.

Tom and I on the cable car ride up to the top of the mountain. It was quite bizarre and a bit like we were off on a skiing holiday.

Inside the Perfume Pagoda cave.

The perfume pagoda is nestled in a cave at the top of a mountain and inside are many Buddhist shrines with burning incense filling the air and nose. In peak season, when there's a festival on, the place is smoked out with burning incense and hundreds of worshippers which would have been a sight to see! Unfortch there was no such fest that day but it was still great to marvel at the scale and location of it all. The slippery walk down was slightly traumatic as we realised that we were running late and as our tour guide had threatened to leave behind any stragglers we were worried we'd be stranded there. Tom stormed that last stretch to see our tour group leader rallying the others on the trip to get up and go! We made it back just in the nick of time! Phew!

Cool Sapa

It took me three days to get from Luang Nam Tha in Laos across the border to Sapa in Vietnam via four buses and one small boat through the rain and past a mudslide. It was on this journey that I decided to become veggie, the defining moment was seeing a super squealing pig having its legs tied up, plonked on some scales, tape over its mouth to stop it from squealing, then dumped in the back of a minivan and off to market it goes via a very bumpy and wet border crossing. No more traumatised bacon for me!

One of the many glorious views of the terraces in and around Sapa

Anywho, Sapa was gloriously cold! I wrapped up in a duvet at night and even had the opportunity to get out my very rarely worn hoodie, socks and Converse. The valleys around Sapa are incredibly huge and stunning, and the women of the hill tribes wear simply the best and most colourful outfits around. I walked down to Cat Cat village and then stormed up the steep slopes back to Sapa town on one day and jumped on the back of a small motorbike and got chauffeured around other villages the next.

Two of the hill tribe women who invited me have a poke around their house. Great headwear! And I loved all of the hand embroidery on their outfits.

An Indigo woman sewing away. All the folk of Cat Cat village dye their clothes indigo.

Laos Breast Milk In Eye!

Taking a small break from our kayaking

Me and Dutch veggie vet Esther journeyed to Luang Nam Tha for a spot of trekking. We did a days worth of exhausting research to find the most ethically conscious and eco-friendly trekking operator in town. On day one we kayaked downstream. The captain of my kayak was one of the guides which made my kayaking easy as we easily navigated the shallows and tight rapids, and even though I thought I was working quite hard my arms didn't feel the pinch the next day. In the time it took me to find a spot to pee my guide, Ped, has set up a barbecue for our fish! Impressive foodie skills. We laid our food out on two huge banana leaves and feasted on lots of sticky rice (which we ate for breakfast, lunch and dinner. No complaining from me mind as I love the glutinous stuff!) and other bits and bobs including tofu, barbecued pork, barbecued fish dipped in a simple chili and salt dry dip... Yum yum!

Ped preparing the fish and our kayak

Eventually we reached the village where we stayed the night in a basic, single-roomed wooden hut on stilts with an outside toilet and the river as our bathtub! After another delicious meal a thunder storm whipped up and threw dust in my eye. This pesky dust would not budge and continued to plague me well into the second day of trekking. My right eye and nostril were just streaming. A woman from the village who made our lunch thought I was crying because I missed my boyf and carried my water for me in sympathy. She was pretty old, I felt so bad, but she was very insistent, plus a lot more sure-footed than me on the slippery rocks and leaves!

The village on the second night. We slept in similar accommodation.

At one point the pain got so bad and the vision so blurry that we all had to stop and try and resolve my eye situ. Esther and a Frenchie trekker fashioned a contraption with a water bottle and pierced lid and shot water into my eye to dislodge the dust. No luck. And so I trundled on with water tears streaming down my right eye as my tear ducts tried to dislodge this foreign body. I looked and felt a mess and was having a miserable time and for most of the second day that I barely saw the jungle. Although I did spy a few tiny leeches trying to burrow their way through my socks with sandals (definitely a look to be kept to the jungle, for sure!!). I picked a few off but a few wriggled through to suck my foot blood. But surprisingly I was the least squeamish of the trekkers despite having the most inappropriate footware for a leech invasion!

We reached the Lan Tan village late afternoon and they presented their handicraft wares before us. I really couldn't see at this point and kept my head down and my eyes covered. One of the older women in the village noted my state and asked our guide what was wrong. She then offered to sort my eye out. She grabbed my eyelid and turned it inside out and saw the glob of dust then grabbed at her stringy, fabric necklace and dabbed at my eyelid with one of these threads. It worked!! The dust was all gone!!



Action shot! Cleansing breast milk being dripped into my eye!!

 For extra measure she asked, via our guide, if she could drip some breast milk into my eye to soothe the pain...I was hesitant. But in these few seconds of thinking that it would be the most gross and weird thing to have breast milk dribbled into my eye versus the desperation of being in so much scratchy pain for such a long time, she had already grabbed a villager and pumped out a few drops of her breast milk and collected it in a handy scrap of banana leaf. She then tipped my head back and dripped the milk into my eye!! It was warm! It was hilarious!! A trickle made a road towards my mouth but that would have been too much and I swiftly wiped  the milk away. I was saved!! It honestly felt like I had got my life back after being in so much pain for so many hours and fearing blindness (it was in my one good eye after all...I know, I was internally being somewhat of a hypochondriac!). I obviously repaid the woman who saved my life by buying a bracelet off her which will forever remind me of this bizarre, lifesaving event!!

Souk Dee Pii Mai!

Esther and I on the beach covered in water and flour!

Happy Laos New Year!! Possibly my best and most favourite new year of my life. Laos celebrates its new year with lots of water, colours, and flour, oh and some religious and family elements too. The families of and around Luang Prabang team up and gather outside their homes to throw water at any passersby. They are very well prepared with water guns, hoses, big buckets, and even evil ice buckets to make the water super chilled. Each little suburb or family group get matching tshirts printed up to mark out their gang and create a bit of extra competition. The water symbolises cleansing before entering into the new year, and then coloured paint and water gets thrown into the mix for fun. This lasts for days and days, and when you finally think they must have got bored of it, oh no!, you get soaked again!!

Making the sandy stupa on the beach

The owner and family of the hostel I was staying at invited us hostel guests to join in with the merriment and so we all headed over as one big team through the town and to the beach on the other side of the river for further new year festivities and traditions. We made it to the beach side completely soaked, covered in paint and flour (the flour and water made a grim paste in my hair but still a great lol), then we helped the family to build a sandy stupa decorated with flour, flowers, and flags. It was so lovely to be part of such a special and personal moment of the Laos people. We then cracked open an obligatory Beer Laos and danced along to a local band in the sandy mud under a sprinkler. Good times for sure!

A Laos family enjoying a feast at the Kuang Si waterfalls on the eve of the main, watery, new year, beach event.

Kuang Si waterfalls. Just divine.