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.

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!

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!

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!!

Stretches of Cave

I ventured ever so slightly off the beaten track and towards the caves of Kong Lo starting at the nothing town of Tha Khaek. I traveled my favourite way: by local transport of course with all the usual breakdowns and food stops at roadside stalls and restaurants then I transferred to songthaew (a pick-up truck adapted for shared taxi use) where I was neatly dropped off at the start point of the Kong Lo caves. I hopped in a tiny boat with the boatman and guide and off we went. For well over an hour, possibly two, I was powered along the water which cut through the 7 km stretch of awesome caves. It was incredible: the caves were like huge chambers in some places where not even my torch beam could reach, and it was so eerily quiet (well apart from the hum of the boat motor). The caves and stalagmites and stalactites morphed into a crazy chapel effect type structure and it was utterly breathtaking. I have never seen anything like it! This is a cave to recommend to all!

At one point we got out and had an explore of one section of the caves on foot which was prettily lit by a few blue and pink lights.

Those who are brave and cocky with a motorbike could venture and do The Loop taking in a few small villages over a few days before reaching the caves, but I was more than happy with my public transport adventure which ended in a 5 hour trip sat on a plank propped in the middle of the songthaew (not even sat on one of the mildly padded benches), but time flew by on this entertaining, sometimes hair raising ride (as per!).

Exiting the cave. The outside nearly as impressive as the inside.

Pretty Much 4,000 Islands

I missioned it to the south of Laos via a double bed sleeper bus which I shared with a stranger: a clarinet playing British girl. I stayed on Don Det, one of these 4,000 Islands, and had a super chilled time, even bumping into a couple of Team Laos members on this tiny island. I hired a bicycle a couple of times and looped both Don Det and Don Khong in a morning casually cycling along the bumpy pathways through the island jungles and villages and along the delta of the islands. I even saw a heron casually hanging out on the back of a water buffalo (which would have been a great photo pic had I not been crashing around trying to find my camera!). I even managed to cycle past this cow-like creature without getting too phobic about the situ. The islands and deltas were very beautiful indeed. 

A nice little scenic spot on my cycle about two of the 4,000 islands

Cruising around the islands towards sunset



And who knew watermelons grew like this?? On a tiny little sandy mound (erm, island)

G&T and the Outdoors

Team Laos traveled via minibus and the windiest roads towards Vang Vieng the home of the hideous tubing boozing phenomenon which just screamed Brits abroad! Oh dear. Vang Vieng is set in the most lovely and impressive of scenes with karsts and rivers and greenery galore.

Team Laos went on a cave tubing (floating on the river in a huge inner tube of a tyre) and kayaking expedition. For the cave tubing we sat in our tubes wearing hazardous head torches with the biggest battery pack just casually sloshing about in the water. Trying to forget about the obvious water/electrical hazard we pulled ourselves through the cave by ropes attached to the cave walls as we bobbed along in our tubes. It was an impressive, surreal, and fun activity.

After our stream-side lunch we went kayaking down the river which was chilled and beautiful and the weather was perfect (well maybe a bit too sunny and bright for my pasty skin so out came the factor 50 and a long sleeved top to protect me from the rays!). We paddled through minor rapids and past a herd of water buffalo chilling in the river until we reached the tubing stretch. Urgh! Such a horrifying contrast as we turned the river bend! Cringey and tasteless dance music thumped out while teens boozed about looking a mess. We paddled a little further downstream to stop for a Beer Laos or two, jumped off a high platform into the refreshing river, with a few of the braver Team Laos members swinging from a high trapeze and then flinging themselves into the river below.

One of our guides setting up the top rope with ease on Sleeping Wall

The next day saw the Team Laos girls rock climbing on Sleeping Wall. Lots of jugs to grab onto and occasionally dodging the odd spider and spider web inside the holds. It was lots of fun, of course, and it felt great to be able to complete most of the climbs set up for us. I didn't manage one where you had to sort of shimmy and sidestep a big tree trunk but got up pretty high so I was happy and proud of my climbey achievements. Half a day of this was enough for my feeble guns! To reward ourselves we sipped on a G&T (so British!) bucket with lots of fresh lime (of course) as we sat on a bamboo raft that hovered over the river.

Confusion with drinks orders so this little old lady wades back to shore and picks up this huge drinks menu and wades back across to our spot out on the river to clarify our G&T bucket. Hilarious!!