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.

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.

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!!

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)

Bon Appetite!

I arrived in Vientiane looking for a bit of alone time after the booze based debauchery with Team Laos. I headed for the Wat in the forest and attended a freebie meditation class led by a couple of the monks. This included the usual: focus on your breath and clear your mind tricks, then we moved onto some meditation I hadn't tried before: walking! We got up and walked around the hall using the slowest and smallest steps of your life. It helps to concentrate the mind on your feet when previously you've been concentrating on your head and it really worked. Unusual technique but a winner for me. Next door to the Wat was a herbal steam bath so of course I had a few rounds in this rickety wooden steam bath wrapped in a Laos sarong with breaks to drink herbal tea to rehydrate after sweating out all of the Beer Laos.

The meditation session was held here...

Unfortch I undid all of this cleansing and purification and went for a huge steak dinner!! I, accompanied by a French girl and Belgian woman, treated ourselves to a huge steak, with creamy mushroom sauce, avec chips (not fries!) with my fave and absolutely most missed condiment mayonnaise, fresh salad drizzled in vinigarette, and a little bread bun, accompanied by a little Beer Laos, naturally. I splurged a little here and spent 75,000 Kip on this meaty, European feast. The French and the Belgian were happy with this dish so I was relieved to know that my British palate, which had known virtually nothing but Indian curries for four months, could still appreciate a French meaty dish and that it wasn’t just cravings for European cooking that made me gush over this meal! 

So much GOLD!! It looked even more sparkly and ridiculously lavish in the crazy sunshine.

The next day we went cycling in the midday sun around clean and easy Vientiane. Everything seems so fresh and refreshing after India! Vientiane oozes the European, especially with the mountains of French and Belgian restaurants and a good dose of café culture dotting the streets. 

After a tough admin day of going to the post office and sorting out my visa for Vietnam I treated myself to a gloriously cinnamon spiced apple pie and iced coffee at JoMas as an extravagant treat (yes, I have many a food based treat) made even more luxurious by the near-lifesaving aircon.

Slow Boat to Team Laos

I took the two day slow boat from Huay Xai down to quaint Luang Prabang. And here was the creation of Team Laos, an international group of English, American, Finish, French Canadian, South African, Australian, Chilean... The scenery was dramatic, not at all what I was expecting, and so it was just lovely to sit and gaze out of the boat as we passed mountains and villages. There were a few hairy moments as we sailed over rocky shallow waters. Beer Laos and Lao Lao whiskey warmed us all on the second day of the journey as the skies clouded over and the wind blasted us but my woolly Pushkar blanket kept me snug. We made regular pitstops to pick up Laos villagers en route who loaded up with boat with veg and stacks of tasty pumpkin to which Team Laos got particularly attached.

View from the slow boat along the Mekong

We docked in Luang Prabang and miraculously found accommo for Team Laos then off we went out for food and Lao Lao cocktails. My first traditional meal in Laos was the special festival food of water buffalo laap with sticky rice. A unique combination of flavours including mint, coriander, chili and lime...and probably a few more indecipherable herbs and spices and condiments thrown in there as well.

Day two and a few of us girls roamed Luang Prabang by bicycle tackling a bamboo bridge river crossing where we had to carry our super cute bicycle down lots of steps, then found out we had to pay a small Kip fee as we got to the bottom of the steps, then across we ambled, and of course more carrying of bicycles on the other side. Phew! A noodle soup stop was of course mandatory after all of these easy breezy cycling about town.

Crossing the precarious bamboo bridge!

The night market held tasty mounds of veggie food and barbequed meats and fish to satisfy all palates. Pile your plate high choosing from tofu, fried morning glory, pumpkin, salads, an array of vegetables, all different genres of noodles and rice. Once you've made your selection it gets woked up with your desired level of chilis and is ready to eat, all for a bargainous 10,000 Kip.

A bit of a blurry shot of my favourite stall at the night market with the smiliest cook around. Such a delish feast!

Smart Cook!

My time in Thailand was very brief on this, my second jaunt to the country, but of course I found time enough for a Chiang Mai cooking class with Super Cook Super May. The closest I'd got to cooking in the four months in India was popping to the fruit and veg market in Calcutta and picking up a tasty selection of tropical fruits, chopping them up, adding some curd and nuts for a tasty fruit salad eaten from my tiffin tin. At the time this felt enough like cooking and I was very pleased with my culinary masterpiece (of sorts!).

Posing in my lovely purple apron complete with machete!

First we took a train to a little village, stepped off the platform and onto bicycles and cycled to and around the organic farm wearing our sombreros to shield us from the Thai sun, stopping off to pick a few herbs and spices for our menu. May, our cooking tutor was impressed with the general level of our collective spice tolerance. I added 3 chilis to one of my dishes which just shows the level of spice exposure I have been forced to tolerate over these past months. Back in Blighty all I could manage was a korma curry and even found Carmex lip balm too spicey! However, to put this into perspective May adds at least seven chilis to her dishes!! Still a long way to go!!

Fried spring rolls at the back, banana spring rolls and condensed milk dip and my fresh spring rolls at the front garnished with a sweet condiment and coriander..urm, yes, it is lopsided but sometimes these comps are a struggle!

Spicy papaya salad with another shot of my fresh spring rolls

Thai green curry including handmade green curry paste which was pretty labour intensive. Served with steamed rice. And for dessert a slightly unusual but super tasty pumpkin in coconut milk. Pumpkin is my new fave veg.

Crabs Escape on Train!

So to my weekend jaunt to the delightful Sunderbans. A perfectly chilled group of us took a 2 day boat tour of the Sunderbans in search of the elusive man-eating Bengali tiger through the largest mangrove delta in the world (not mangoes as one of our troupe thought!). We started off super hungover after a Hope Foundation flat-warming party (the results of which saw the Hopers get evicted due to the apparently rowdy party. Eeps!). We then, of course, took a plethora of transportation modes: firstly, the taxi to Sealdah train station, onto the locals train, onto a sort of rickshaw front end with a flat wooden cart stuck on the back for us to sit on (possibly the most uncomfortable 45 minutes of my life with every bump in the road felt as heads and legs were thrown against bars and boards), and finally onto our modest little boat.

Rickshaw/cart fusion. Beautiful scenery en route made this journey bearable: mud huts, rice paddies, tropical trees...

It was simply extremely chilled with guitars and singing, nice peeps and beautiful surrounds. On the first night we went to one of the villages and sat amongst a courtyard of mud huts for many hours with more guitar and singing and a cheeky little toddler to keep us entertained. The villagers then cooked us the most amazingly delish foods as served up for festivals (and of course there was a festival, this time for Saraswati): mushed up and spicy lentil and rice dish, grilled aubergine, and matchstick fried plantain. All eaten by hand and served up on a metal tray. We then popped off to the main event which turned out to be a village dance-off and as the guests we were invited up on stage. Urgh! I avoided this humiliation but the boys had a great time even giving a thank you speech. Afterwards we returned to the boat for some sleeps but alas!!, the boat was stranded on the mud bank! With some bloke muscle power they managed to haul the vessel back towards the dock. Disaster averted!

Mangroves...not mangoes!

We spent pretty much all of the next day cruising around the Sunderbans spying a few monkeys, a big lizard, and a croc...but no man-eating Bengali tiger! At one of the docks we bumped into a famous Bengali actor who climbed aboard, blessed the boys with a splodge of river mud on their forehead, and then gave us some river crabs as a gift for us to cook up for our tea. Bizarre!

Bengali actor warmly greeting his fans

On the journey back we piled into a tempo which could comfortably hold our group of eleven plus driver, but as soon as we were about to depart the masses piled in as they wedged their way onto the benches, clung to the sides, and sat on the roof bringing us to 25 aboard! Hilarious!! Then, at a brief stop at another town, another 5 magically squeezed their way on!! Impressive stuff! On the train back to Calcutta I was in charge of looking after our crab dinner. I did a poor job. Unbeknownst to me one escaped and as I caught sight of the second trying to claw its way out of the carrier bag it was too late and it too scuttled off - it's pincers looked pretty fierce and determined! There was mild pandemonium on the train as word got out that the foreigner's crabs had escaped! Pointing and high dramatics ensued. The crabs scuttled a little further down the carriage towards the doorway and were promptly kicked off the train by two in our group who were trying to save the crabs from being stomped to pieces by the locals. So no crab dinner. Funny times.

"one school pen"

Jetted off on a canoe tour of the lush backwaters of Alleppey, Kerala. The day started, in food terms, with idiyappam, cooked by our canoe guide's wife. It's a noodley rice mix sweetened up with coconut. Delish, (as are most foods!) although this one seems to be one for the home life. We ate in the guide's cute, modest home that overlooked rice paddies in one direction and a small canal on t'other. The guide, a man in his 50s, referred to me as his "daughter" as I am in fact the same age as one of his daughters and then a tattooed Danish girl in our group as his "sister" even though she's only five years older than me! Slightly offensive. Anywho, we took turns to paddle through the tiny canals of the backwaters whilst our guide had convos with his fellow villagers as we slowly drifted past at a leisurely rate. We were nearing the end of our idyllic, peaceful tour when a troupe of primary school kids passed us on the canal pathway. They started shouting the usual "one school pen!!" at us, and luck was with them that day, as the Dutch couple on the canoe had a big stash with them ready for just this moment. Pandemonium ensued as Mo hurled school pens from the boat to the kids on dry land. Some were being a bit cheeky and trying to nab themselves two. And then one over-enthusiastic little boy overstretched and ended up in the water up to his waist!! Mega lols!!

Mr Bombay

26.11.10 Me and a fellow newbie traveller attempt the walking tour of Mumbai but maybe after half an hour we decide we need coffee and cake. This proved tricky, and looking lost, over bounds Mr Bombay fully fitted with blue contact lenses. He offers to take us to a place he recommends up the road serving coffee and traditional Indian sweets. Three hours later and we still haven't made it, but the impromptu tour and guide were entertaining. Tales of the time Mr Bombay rang up Arnie to talk shop aka bodybuilding a personal fave. He encouraged us to eat the local street food (overly sweet or incredibly greasy and fried) to which he had none: "too many calories".

Alu Muttar & Chapati

24.11.10 First taste of India. White radish. Promptly followed by alu muttar (pea and potato curry) and chapati, of course. Touched down in Mumbai on 24th November 2010 then quickly dashed into a tiny taxi for a couple of hours towards the Gateway to India. Immediately confronted with the high contrasts of India where slums run alongside luxury hotels. The traffic manic, alert, noisy. The taxi weaves through trucks and buses and rickshaws and deft mopeds and school children crossing what looks like a dual carriageway (to say the least). From Worcester to Mumbai, from tea and scones to curry and chai in a matter of hours.