Hoi An

The second hotel the bus stops at snaffles our business with the promise of $8 twin rooms and a swimming pool. Its V posh and V new, and turns out charges variable rates dependant on how much they think your budget is, we must've looked v scruffy. Hoi An is a small fishing town which used to be an important port a couple of hundred years ago and managed to escape damage from the French & Americans. Its v charming and cute. Probably my favourite place so far. I share with Mark, Innes and Jasper share. We can wave at each other from each wing & our room overlooks the pool. We hit the pool as soon as we can & one of the workers comes out with a camera- promo shots. We stroll into town for a bit of an explore, gobble some lunch then get swallowed by a tailors for several hours. Emma produces some fair clothes for us after several fittings, and it was really cheap. She also cooked an evening meal for us at her house beers included, the day we pick everything up. All the bars and resturants are along the seafront and look gorgeous at night all lit up. We find a place selling cheap local beer and predictably bump into Neil there the second night, well, he is Irish!



The second day we take a walking tour of the town, a ceramic museum, Tan Ky old house and the Japanese covered bridge (which is also a temple). In the old house we were given a tour by a lady who lived there the 6th of 7 generations of the same family to do so. She showed us the distinct architecture, carved bats and pumpkins ( which mean happiness and lots of children respectively- but made me think more of halloween) Chinese mother of pearl writings where each stroke is made from a bird and their confuscius cup, which is v old. And we drank tea with her. On one of the walls are marks showing where the flood levels get to each year, this November's mark is especially high, over the door frames, too high to row a boat through their ground floor. From Hoi An we also visit the nearby Cham ruins, which are impressive but don't cover as large an area as we expect. After that we hire bikes and cycle to the beach, we pass water buffaloes in rice fields on the way. The beach is gorgeous, the water so warm, waves are quite powerful as the sand slopes steeply. Predictably we get pestered a lot to "buy something", every 30 seconds or so, faking being asleep is the easiest option. We return to the beach the next day before our night bus to Nha Trang, the bikes are a bit better and the chains don't fall off!

Hue

After 1 night back in Hanoi we catch a night bus down to Hue. No luxurious sleeper bus for us (which has beds in it) we take the soft seat option and spend 12 hours on a bus packed with locals (We take the last 3 seats) its totally boiling hot but we get some sleep, thanks to the driver switching the lights off at 9.30. Dazed and confused scrambling off the bus, we shoulder our bags and walk towards accommodation recommended in the book. A few guys on bikes try to offer us rooms but we're determined not to be hussled, one poor bloke so wants our business he pushes his bike with us for 20 mins, talking up his hotel all the way and is so disappointed when we turn off. Our room is nice and the staff really helpful (possibly too helpful- making our beds each day & laundering my knickers & Mark's shirt, we thought they'd been nicked!) We go for a wander and pay no attention to a voice calling "Hello" til Neil from the Ha Long trip cycles past us, we're far too used to people trying to sell us things. He's staying in the hotel opposite us and we arrange to meet for a drink & some football watching in the DMZ bar. We too hire some bikes from our hotel and set off towards the citadel, bumping into Rach & Jasper who also agree to meet later.

The next day we go for a boat trip on the perfume river and visit the pagoda where the monk who is famously depicted self-immoliating on a rage album lived, and a few of the more impressive mausoleums of Vietnamese emperors. The next day we get the bus to Hoi An, Jasper's on the bus too.

Ha Long Bay

Over 2000 limestone islands make up this part of Vietnam, so we take the 3 day option to try and do it some justice. A bus picks us up from our guesthouse and drives to Ha Long city where we board our boat (v posh). The 3 of us decide to split up as most people are travelling alone and its the quickest way to get to know the rest of the group so I share with Rachel, from Gloucester. We kindly take the double bed so the boys are spared that and get the twin rooms. We sit on the deck sipping beers and chatting as the boat heads out towards the islands. We are set up with tandem sea kayaks (I grab Mark quickly) and spend an hour exploring. We then head off towards surprising cave, which is really big with 3 chambers, the limestone is worn away to produce stalegmites and stalectites and rock formations that look like Buddha, amongst other things. After the cave the boys go swimming, as its getting a bit dark Rach & I give it a miss. When jumping off the boat Kurt manages to soak one of the women trying to sell food and drink to us from their rowboats so guiltily he buys something, and gets totally ripped off. Dinner, as are all meals except breakfast, is seafood. Yum! Afterwards Jan our guide trys to make us play an ice-breaking game which involves kissing body parts of other people, we gamely give it a go but it stalls when kurt won't let Mark kiss his forehead. Guess the family of 4 from Singapore wouldn't have liked it either. A few beers later and we're playing drinking games anyway introducing 21 and yeehaa to an international audience.

The next day we visit Cat Ba island, which is a National Park and has some rare monkeys- so rare we don't spot any. We have a mini trek up to the peak, and some more kayaking in the afternoon. The boat takes us back to Ha Long City andwe check into a posh hotel, then head out for some kareoke and beers- I sing YMCA(!)(?)(intended for Innes but he wouldn't take it) and Innes sings Painted Black, the translations of the words are pretty funny and the songs drag on forever. We finish the night by heading into a club, which contains 4 people and is huge! We get kicked out really early too. I spend the next few days with a sore throat, that'll teach me.

Hanoi, Vietnam

We cheat and book a flight from Vientiane to Hanoi as we hear the land crossing is pretty hellish and would take us 2 days to get to Hanoi. Adding to that is the fact that in entering Vietnam at the mid-point we'd have to double back on ourselves. The flight takes an hour and is an absolute dream, so easy. Not such a culture shock as Bangkok airport we still get husseled for a taxi. Get offered one for $9, then the driver puts the meter on so it costs $14, not such a difference but its still stressful trying to get dropped off at the right place. We're forewarned and forearmed so when we pull up at the Thu Giang guesthouse and a rep opens my passenger door, saying "3 bed room, come in, come in" I'm checking for the street name- wrong street. I'm shouting at the driver to take us to the right place ( I'd read the street name out to him and he'd repeated it back to me, so I feel understandably annoyed that he's trying to double scam us). He reverses up a one way street to a symphony of car horns and finally drops us in the right place. Our room is lovely though, really comfy beds and clean. We're splurging though at $5 each a night! The guesthouse is really narrow, long and tall. This is/was to avoid certain taxes. The best way to cross the street seems to be to close your eyes, cross your fingers and walk at a steady pace, knowing that they will avoid you. There will inevitably be a soundtrack of carhorns, as they beep at everything, to tell you to get out of the way, if they're about to overtake etc etc. The vietnamese merchants quarter is an absolute maze of little shops, the same types congregate on the same street. Shoes street, bedding street, fruit & veg street, Christmas decoration street, etc etc. Everyone seems to walk around in their pyjamas a lot, and they definately are pyjamas not just clothes that look like them. There's quite a big lake which is fairly central, and nice to walk around. Although we walk around as a group of 3 we still get lots of cyclo drivers or moped taxis pestering us- they wouldn't have a hope of getting all of us on, we're fairly sure its safer and easier to walk too as everything is pretty central. We have visited uncle Ho in his mausoleum and also been to the Ho Chi Minh museum, really strict security. Definately an experience to remember was eating in the street kitchens where you can watch them cooking your noodles then while they're chopping up chicken's feet later on, wonder if there were any in your soup! We have also discovered the delights of bia hoi, tiny little street bars serving glasses (probably 1/3 of a pint) of beer (probably 2-3%) for 6p a glass! Amazing! Tastes good and is easy to drink too.

Vang Vien & Vientiane, Laos

From Luang Prabang we caught a 7 hour bus ride to Vang Vien. I feel travel sick the whole way, throwing up 10 minutes before arriving, Mark was ill too so I'm blaming the bus. We walk around in a bit of a daze for a while, not helped by the fact that half the guesthouses in our guidebook seem to have disappeared, then stumble accross Pho Khet, which has ok rooms, slightly manky bathroom, is fairly cheap and has an amusing name which pretty much sums up how we felt at that point! Vang Vien is pretty small and apart from the place we have dinner the first night (which also offers opium shakes and weed pizza) every meal was accompanied by an episode of friends. We put off tubing til the last day we're there to give my hand a chance to heal enough to be able to pull myself out of the river. Tubing is absolutely amazing. I'd recommend everyone to go, easily the highlight of Laos. You're given a truck inner tube, driven a while up the river and you just sit in it, drifting from bar to bar. Most of it is fairly shallow, and the end part into Vang Vien is really slow (in fact we gave up and walked it). The scenery is fantastic, lush green irregularly shaped mountains, and we had a lovely hot day. Most of the bars have zip slides or swings into the water (I gibbed out and left these to the boys).

The trip to Viantiane was an uneventful 3 hours. As we weren't too sure where we were we grabbed a tuktuk to take us to the guesthouse. He drove us round the block and dropped us a couple of hundred meters from where we'd started. By the wrong guesthouse! Not completely his fault though as we later found the one we were looking for didn't exist anymore. We eventually found somewhere with a 3-bed dorm for the bargain price of $2 each a night. It was only worth that though as the bed was rock hard and it was a shared bathroom. Our strategy of deploying beer mattresses was thwarted by all the bars shutting at 10.30, at the latest. Overall Vientiane was a bit disappointing, the whole place is best described as a really quiet building site, not many people but lots of ongoing construction, or destuction. The lunch hours which are extended by an hour gave us a few problems when trying to visit the city museum, we even spotted a few security guards sleeping on the job. Tuk tuk drivers chilled out in hammocks slung up in the back, mumbling a half hearted "tuktuk?" as we walk past- the least pressure we've had anywhere. Lots and lots of young children in Laos. On the day we leave Innes & I get up early to go for a swim before our afternoon flight. Laos national (open air) swimming pool was completely deserted and a really nice bit of exercise.

Down the Mekong river

After 9 hours in a minibus from Pai we arrived in Chiang kong, on the Laos border. We settled on the first guesthouse we stumbled across, and explored as far as a decent place to eat. We returned there for breakfast &packed lunch, and walked in what we hoped was the direction of boats, fortunately it was in a roundabout way. 10 minutes later we were in Housax Say Laos, immigration & Visas took a bit longer. We tuktuked to the slow boat port, and after unintentionally attempting to stow away, bought tickets. The boat was absolutely rammed before we set off, plastic chairs down the aisle in the centre too. Guess we know how cattle feel. The boat drops us in Peck Beng for the night and we scramble up a steep beach with torches and head up the hill for a guesthouse. We arrive at the boat early the next day (at my insistance) so we can get good seats. An hour and a half later we set sail, the boat's bigger than yesterday's and not so full, comfier too. These effects combine to make the scenery seem nicer too, although its v chilly. We arrive in Luang Prabang- daylight this time- and stagger off to find a guesthouse.

Pai

The morning after we returned from the trek we caught a hellish minibus ride to Pai. Pai had been billed in the Rough Guide to SE Asia as a bit of a mecca for travellers so we thought we had to check it out. We had trouble finding accommodation though, probably because Pai has obviously become more popular in recent years, hence nice guesthouses being out of our price range, and the fact that the festval of lights was not far away, so Thai people would be travelling to Pai too. We settled on the second guesthouse we viewed- Charlie's, 3 beds in a 5 bed dorm, a short outdoor stroll away from the shower/toilet block. Mark & I spent the first few days feeling totally wiped out from our tummy bug, so Innes was pretty bored. We hired some bikes and rode/ trekked to a local "waterfall" the first day Mark & I felt well enough to do so, unfortunately we hadn't left enough time and didn't get to the waterfall before we had to turn back so we'd get back to our bikes in daylight. On the plus side none of the people we passed going the other way had actually got there either, the path becoming the river and getting pretty trecherous from then on. This little escapade opened up some horrid little cuts on my feet courtesy of my merrels, and set me back a bit with my recovery: lesson learned. The night before we were due to leave for Chiang kong we found a bar showing the football, Mellow Yelow, a really nice chilled out place as I guess the name suggests. Still not 100% I stuck to snacky foods garlic bread (way too literal...) etc. Mark & Innes both had rice.....which was a bit cold. The next morning they both had food poisoning, at first the poor things could only stagger as far as the door before vomitting in the strategically placed flowerbed. I cancelled the minibus &spent most of the day in the bakery. On one of my visits to check on them I found a dog with its nose in the pile of sick, eating it, and on the way out I saw it was giving its master (Charlie, presumably) doggy kisses all over his face. Urgh! We eventually left Pai, after spending a week there.

Trekking

(opps, seems I have a bit of catching up to do!) We took part in a 3 day trek from Chiang Mai, through our guesthouse- Eagle 2. Our group was 13 really nice people German, Dutch, American, Irish & us! That was 1 more than the maximum number though so travelling in the van was v squished & 2 people had to share the passenger seat. The first day we got to ride elephants, up through some jungle, through a river a couple of times, &back to base. The elephant Innes & I had was obviously very used to the route as he was just allowed to wander without being led, Innes even had the chance to slide out of the cradle we were sat in and sit on his neck. He kept sticking his trunk in our faces- asking for bananas & sugarcane, which he got. Our guide said they were fat elephants and had easy jobs compared to the elephant from his village, which is to fell trees/bamboo. We stayed overnight in a hilltribe village in bamboo huts, and got to see a lady pounding rice the next morning, harvested from the paddy fields we'd passed. Tip: bamboo &blankets do not make the comfiest mattress! The second day was really hardgoing, lots of steep hills, and it was very hot. It also didn't help that we were attacked by leeches while crossing rivers (not personally but half the group, including Mark & Innes) It was a huge relief when we reached our camp, bambo huts again but not in a village this time, and went for a swim in the river. The last day started with rafting down the river, which was done standing up in a surfing position. I still managed to fall over & Mark fell in as the pole he was using to steer/row got wedged between some rocks. We then had a 30 min trek before meeting the van & visiting a waterfall & the king & queen's cheddi on top of a mountain. Unfortunately Mark & I managed to pick up stomach bugs before/during the trek which made it a bit more difficult. Thank god for all the drugs I brought out with me!