The Bay (Hanoi - Part 2)

Ha Long Bay is one of the seven natural wonders of the world and consists of over 2000 limestone islands all scattered about a beautifully picturesque bay. The bay is about a four hour drive outside of Hanoi and we were picked up at about 8am, we didn’t get to the bay until about 12:30am. It was a cramped mini-van journey through the Vietnamese countryside but it was pleasant enough. We aren’t really used to booking onto package tours but it’s really the only way you can ‘do’ Ha Long Bay. The tour companies have kind of a monopoly on the whole thing and they make it incredibly difficult to travel independently here. We were happy enough though and when we arrived at Ha Long City pier we were quickly put on a boat that took us to our ‘junk’ (a small cruise ship).

When we arrived we were given a welcome drink and we sat down with some other people on the tour, we talked and were eventually served some lunch before we checked into our cabins. Our cabin was pretty small but was just what we needed. We had a double bed and an ensuite bathroom which according to other people on the boat was more than what most had.

The boat was of medium size, there were about twelve cabins and there were three levels, the sun deck on the top which was for relaxing and admiring the views, the main deck below it which was where the restaurant and bar were and also where our room was, and then there was the below deck where most of the cabins were and where you could sit on the edge of the boat, and if the light was working (which it wasn’t) you can go squid fishing. The sea was a perfect crystal blue colour and it glistened in the sunlight, but you could tell that the water was polluted, there was litter floating around and a few patches of oil dotted here and there, I guess that’s what happens when you open these places up to so many tourists. The amount of boats in the bay was incomprehensible.

For the first leg of the trip we just looked out at the bay from the sun deck, watching the world go by. It was a pleasant experience and a stark contrast to the past three days which we had spent in the hustle and bustle of Hanoi. The first stop was a small fishing village, it was literally just small houses lined up along an elevated wooden platform. It was from here that we went kayaking around the bay. Natalie didn’t want to kayak for some obscure (fear of drowning) reason so I teamed up with a Austrian man that we had befriended on the boat. He was on holiday with his Thai wife; they both live in Pattaya, Thailand, he was a pretty smart guy and he had certainly been kayaking before. It was pretty easy to pick up and we probably kayaked further out into the bay than anyone else on our tour. We kayaked around caves and the limestone cliffs and got in the way of a few cruise ships whilst we were at it.

After we had kayaked we moved onto see some caves. Very different caves to what Natalie and I were used to, the cave we explored was huge. Unfortunately the tour guide was more interested in pointing out what the rocks looked like (a duck, an elephant) than actually telling us anything scientific or geological about the cave. All I can say is that it was huge, bigger than the larger cave we explored in Laos, but was much more prepared for tourists, even the darkest corners of this place were lit up with florescent lights. We were rushed through the cave in order (I suppose) to cram as many things into our tour as possible. There were spectacular views from the top of the cave across the whole bay and as usual everyone on the tour scuffled along to have their photographs taken. I don’t mind people having their photographs taken, don’t get me wrong, it’s nice to have the memory and it’s nice to show friends and family where you’ve been and what you’ve been doing. However, from what I’ve seen tourists are too busy taking photos that they’ve forgotten to actually make memories. There was a girl in the Ho Chi Minh museum in Hanoi who was standing next to exhibits and having her boyfriend take photographs of her, but she wouldn’t for one second even look at the exhibit itself, let alone read it. The same happened here in Ha Long Bay, people seemed to be looking into the camera lenses more than they were looking out into the bay. It’s absurd.

It was getting pretty late by now and the boat cruised along to a small beach beneath a viewpoint ready to catch the sunset. We hurried to the top of the cliff but unfortunately we were just a little late and didn’t quite catch the sun setting beneath the horizon, but the views from the top were still well worth the climb. We eventually wound up chilling out on the beach for a while before jumping back on the boat and sailing to our anchor point for the evening. I’m sorry if I’m not using correct boating terminology but anchor point makes sense to me, I’m sure you can figure it out.

That evening dinner was served and we sat on the sun deck for a while and watched the night roll on by, we were kind of disappointed that we couldn’t go squid fishing but it was nice to relax after our steep climb up the cliff. The next morning we cruised around the bay until it was time to jump back on the bus and head back to Hanoi. We could have spent two night on the boat and gone to Cat Ba island, which is a national park within the bay, but we didn’t want to spend the extra money and we felt like our one night tour gave us a great experience. The bay was amazing and despite the tour being more interested in pointing out similarities between rocks and animals we’re glad we splashed out to see it. There was more of this on the cruise back to Ha Long City where we were informed that two rocks that apparently look like two kissing chickens is the symbol of Ha Long Bay. What a joke, we thought. Apparently not, the rocks that look like chickens even appear on the 200,000 dong note, it seems like they really think those chickens are a big deal.

We got back to Hanoi in the early evening and took a walk around the lake before settling down for dinner. We went to a French restaurant in the middle of the old quarter whose overweight owner had been sat outside every single night and whenever we walked past would say ‘bonjour’ so despite its steep prices we gave it a shot. The food was delicious, I had some French sausages and old style potatoes which was a nice change to the Vietnamese food we had been eating so much of.

Our last day in Hanoi wasn’t really very interesting, we walked to the old cathedral in the middle of the old quarter and then we did some shopping before packing our things up and heading to the train station to catch our train to Hue. Hanoi train station is very interesting and they don’t make it very easy for tourists. There were no real signs that directed you where to go or what platform your train left from but after approaching some people that appeared to work there we eventually figured out where we needed to be. To get to our train we actually had to walk over some train tracks (that’s normal here). We entered our cabin and threw our bags down. This train was much better than the train we had got in Thailand, we actually had our own cabin which we shared with two other guys who were travelling solo, I only remember Andrew’s name, he had been travelling for just over a year mainly through Eastern Europe and was on his way back to Australia through South East Asia and the other guy was an English teacher in China doing a trip similar to ours before he headed back home to the UK. We slept pretty well on the train despite it occasionally coming to grinding halts, and we woke up at our destination in Hue. Travelling by sleeper train is the way to go when going long distance as it doesn’t even feel like you’ve been travelling anywhere and it saves you paying for a night in a guesthouse. We’re booked onto another train tomorrow but we’re in a six-berth cabin next time so we’ll see how that compares to the soft-sleeper four berth.

I’ll write about Hue and our current location Hoi An in detail when I post my next blog, but I did just want to write about something that happened to us just a few hours ago when we caught in a huge thunderstorm. We were lounging about on a beach when we saw the storm approaching across the islands in the distance. We didn’t think much of it, but we got up and started walking further down the beach, at this point the sun was still ablaze and we didn’t think the storm would actually hit for a while. However, it started to rain and before we knew it the heavens had opened. There was no shelter anywhere and we just had to walk in the rain and suck it up. We were drenched within seconds, the sun cream I had put on was pouring into my eyes making them itch beyond belief. We took a little shelter under a palm tree but it really didn’t work so we just had to start walking back towards the restaurants at the start of the beach, which were very far away. We seemed to be the only two idiots left on the beach as everyone else around were staying in resort hotels lined up along the coast. We were all alone getting drenched. It took us a good twenty minutes in the storm before we finally got some shelter and we were without any towels to get ourselves dry as the towel we had in our bag was wet from the storm. Luckily the lady who owned this particular restaurant took pity on us and gave us towels and a good seafood lunch. Moral of the story, always be prepared when travelling in the wet season as that beautiful sun can disappear in seconds. The waves were amazing during the storm and I took a little dip as the sea was warmer than the rain. So, not exactly the relaxing day on the beach we were hoping for but not bad either, it was a fun experience and we laughed about it the whole way through.

Vietnam has been a great place to travel, the cities are exciting and the countryside and the small towns are beautiful, relaxing and steeped in history. We’ve avoided scams, something that Vietnam is well renowned for, and we’re getting more and more confident as we travel on. We only have two more weeks left in this piping hot area of the world before we fly up to China and things will get cool again. I’ll be sure to blog as much as I can before then. Thank you for continuing to read these posts, they are often rushed and I apologize for not putting more effort in, I hope they still let you guys know that we’re having a great time and trying not to miss any opportunities. 

Slainte.

The City (Hanoi - Part 1)

We caught our flight from Vientiane, Laos to Hanoi, Vietnam in the late afternoon, it was quite possibly the best flight either Natalie or I had ever taken. It took about forty-five minutes, we were served a drink, a sandwich and a cake and the seats were nice and comfortable. We landed on time, travelled quickly through arrivals and we were greeted by our driver who took us to our hostel.

Now, let me tell you about this sham of a hostel. The Hanoi Backpackers Hostel on Ma May Street had received some pretty decent reviews, thus giving it a pretty good rating on tripadvisor, however, this was a hostel that masqueraded itself as a backpackers hostel run for backpackers by backpackers when really it was just a sneaky way to rip you off. It is owned by two obnoxious Australians and the downstairs reception area was a rave from early in the morning until late in the evening, not a moments peace. We were in a room with a bunch of gap-year schmucks whose only purpose for being in Hanoi seemed to be to get wasted. We were ripped off when we brought our train tickets through them, by a pretty large amount and when we asked to upgrade to a private room we were quoted a whopping fifty dollars. So, we left. We found an amazing hotel about three doors down that for a private double bed en suite room was the same price as what we were paying in the loud and uncomfortable dorm room. We were thus, finally settled into Hanoi.

Outside of the rough accommodation (which we cleared up) Hanoi is an amazing city. It’s busy. Busier than any city I’ve ever been in. This is nicely exemplified by the traffic. The majority of vehicles on Hanoi’s streets are mopeds, scooters, motorcycles and cyclos (as the locals call them) and they are freakin’ everywhere. To cross the road in Hanoi or indeed anywhere else in Vietnam you put your life in the hands of the hundreds of oncoming motorbikes and cyclos. There are no pedestrian crossings, there is no waiting for a gap in the traffic (it will never come) you literally step out into the road and the traffic will move around you. You walk at a steady pace, you do not stop (very dangerous), you do not speed up or slow down (that way the cyclos and cars can judge where you will be and effectively manoeuvre themselves around you), and you cross the road. Crazy.

We got used to the hustle and bustle pretty quickly and we had an amazing time. Hanoi feels a lot more European than any of the other cities that we’ve been in so far and we felt a lot more comfortable here than in Thailand or Laos. The architecture felt strangely familiar (mostly French) and the language was readable as it used roman characters, therefore navigation was simple.

We went to the Hoa La Prison on our first day, this prison was originally used by the French during their colonial occupation of Vietnam, and then later it was used by the Vietnamese to hold American prisoners of war that were captured from downed aircraft. They even claim (on show near the end of the tour) to have John McCains flight suit, but whether it’s actually his or not, well, your guess is as good as mine. So, like most museums and memorials we’ve seen dotted about South East Asia this wasn’t much different in the sense that it’s being used as a propaganda tool to make tourists feel sympathetic about the hardships the country had to endure. Whilst I’m sure that some terrible things happened at this prison there is no way that the Vietnamese treated the Americans as well as the museum suggests. The death room was quite atmospheric and gave a small insight into what it was like being a prisoner there, and all in all it was a worthwhile tour.

Next on the list was the Women’s Museum and this was a little more balanced than the prison and depicted the story of Vietnamese women’s history. It was fairly interesting but what was most interesting was a video about street vendors on display on the third floor. I had no idea how dreadful the life of a Vietnamese street vendor is. They are usually working miles away from home in the big cities raising money to support their families, they might go home every two months and will bring approximately twenty dollars with them that they earnt on the job. They’ll get up at 3am to go to the market and buy their goods at a cheap price somewhere out of town, they will then head into town ready to start selling bright and early in the morning. They won’t finish until they’ve got rid of a vast majority of their stock this could be anywhere from 5pm until as late as 10pm, then they will go back to their sleeping quarters (usually a small concrete room shared with about fifteen other vendors) to sleep ready for the next day. How different our lives are, huh?

That afternoon we went to see the water puppet show at (low and behold) the water puppet theatre. This is an ancient traditional Vietnamese art which involves telling traditional folk stories using water puppets set to music. It was moderately interesting for about the first three performances but quickly became repetitive. However, it was a great experience and the music and choreography were nothing short of astoundingly impressive.

We went for dinner soon after this and had a walk around the lake which lies in the middle of Hanoi. The food has been great. I’m a big fan of Pho (a rice noodle soup with chicken or beef) and we’ve eaten a lot of French food, that’s’ what they have here. The Vietnamese can get creative with their food though. They eat what seems to be anything that moves. We’ve seen frogs getting chopped up on the side of the road, we’ve read about duck embryos and fetuses being eaten and the cherry on the cake is snake wine.

At a snake wine restaurant you’ll go along with some friends, sit down at a table and say something like “snake wine, please!” then the host will go to his little snake pit and pull out a live cobra. He’ll take the cobra to your table and slit it open and let the blood drip into a shot glass, then he’ll rip the heart out and pop it in there like a little cherry and you’ll down it. Then comes the second shot, snake bile, when you kill a snake it throws up, that’s your second shot. You can’t waste the snake though, so after that they will grill it up for you and you can enjoy some lovely snake steak. I know, right? Pretty sick. Needless to say we didn’t try any of this.

The next day we wanted to check out the Ho Chi Minh mausoleum. We were hoping to tick Ho Chi Minh off of our checklist of communist dead bodies (the other two would be Mao in China and Lenin in Russia) but Ho Chi Minh was away for maintenance at the time of our visit. Usually you’ll go and see Ho Chi Minh in his glass coffin, under very strict regulation and supervision, he is perfectly preserved much like Lenin, Mao and Kim Il Sung (North Korea) and we were a little disappointed that he wasn’t there. It is a rather strange tourist attraction though: a corpse. But this guy seriously means a lot to the Vietnamese. He is their national hero, he is on every note of money, on almost every souvenir, the Vietnamese people even go on pilgrimages to this mausoleum to see him. A strange scenario if I ever did see one.

We did walk around his house and a rather absurd museum which was more like an art exhibition dedicated to his life and works, we got a fair enough insight into the old man to feel at least a little like our morning wasn’t wasted. After lunch we headed to the temple of literature which was the most unique temple we have visited so far. It didn’t seem to have a specific religious proclamation (it couldn’t make its mind up) but was more so dedicated to scholars of the ages, mostly Confucian scholars or Taoist. It was a fairly big place, with a small pond (Natalie was more interested in the fishes and frogs than anything else) and some beautiful temples that you could explore.

That evening we had Vietnamese barbecue  whilst the goat’s udder sounded appealing we opted for beef. We are ticking off barbecue styles as well as dead communist leaders, so far we’ve collected Korea, Laos and Vietnam, Laos clearly comes out on top but Vietnam tries pretty hard, it was some tasty food and we ate it on the side of the street which was an experience all by itself. What with all the motorbikes whizzing pass, horns beeping, people going about their lives in the funny triangular hats.

It seems like we spent a long time in Hanoi and so far we are really enjoying Vietnam. It might be our favorite country so far, we’ll keep you posted. We actually spent longer in Hanoi than I’ve detailed here so I’m going to split this thing in two and write about Ha Long Bay (an overnight trip we took from Hanoi) in a separate post. We’re currently sat on a sleeper train from Hanoi to Hue and it’s much more comfortable than the Thai version of the same thing. So, we’re going to kick back and get some rest. We can’t believe how damn fast this trip is going, whatever you do, don’t mention how long we have left to Natalie, she bites.

Slainte!

UXO

The Peoples Democratic Republic of Laos is the most heavily bombed country in the world per capita. More than 580,000 bombing missions were conducted over Laos, which is one bombing mission every eight minutes, twenty four hours a day, for nine years.

Over two million tonnes of ordnance were dropped during the Vietnam War, and the US denied that there were any combat missions in Laos for six years after the war, not taking any responsibility for their actions. Two hundred and seventy million bombs were dropped on Laos and thirty percent of them failed to detonate, that’s eighty million unexploded bombs just sitting around waiting to explode.

People all over Laos are still living with the leftovers of the US secret war. In January of this year (2012) a family in a rural Laos province were having a bonfire for their daughters Birthday, there was an unexploded bomb buried underground beneath the bonfire, the heat from the fire was enough to force the bomb to detonate. Four of the children’s were killed instantly, two more died on their way to hospital and more people were left injured or without limbs. The UXO problem here in Laos is devastating.

Today we went to the COPE center a charitable organisation based in Vientiane dedicated to helping those affected by UXO’s in Laos. Some of the stories we heard and things we learnt will no doubt stay with us forever. The issues surrounding UXO in Laos are far more complex than people simply getting killed by unexploded mines. There is an illegal scrap metal industry that is seriously big business here. People can sell scrap metal for money and depending on the amount of metal found, that money could feed a poverty stricken Laos family for months. There are stories of children spotting bits of scrap metal that have tuned out to be bombs. They try and dig the bomb up in order to take it to sell it so they might feed their families, and of course, more often than not, they are killed or injured in the process. 41 out of 46 of the poorest districts in Laos have UXO contamination. Bombs are found under roads, in school playgrounds and in the middle of villages.

Between 1964 and the present day more than 50,000 people have been killed or injured as a direct result of UXO incidents, more than 20,000 were post-war, out of the 20,000 killed or injured after the war had ended, 13,500 of them lost a limb, forty percent of them were children and one hundred new casualties occur per year. 24% of accidents occur because people are looking for scrap metal to sell, this is something that could be stopped if the illegal scrap metal trade were to be shut down, but in such a poor country this is hard to enforce. When a bomb is cleared from a village the looks on the faces of the villagers are torn, some part of them is pleased because the danger is gone but the other half is sad because the money they could have gotten from the metal is taken away.

The museum was amazing and some of the documentaries we watched were very moving and very informative. I feel like I’ve really learnt something of value here in Vientiane. Is there ever any need to carpet bomb a country? Is there ever any need to use cluster bombs in times of war? 111 counties in the world think the answer to those questions is no, and I’m happy to say that the UK has signed a treaty for the ban of cluster bombs, however, the US on the other hand, has signed no such treaty. Which is disappointing. You don’t really give these things a thought until its there right in front of you, where you can touch the bombs (the safe ones in the museum), where you can talk to the people affected by the choices and decisions of military advisers  people in white collar suits in high rise buildings deciding the fates of the lives of thousands. I’m sure these decisions aren’t taken lightly but in the case of Laos, nearly fifty years after the bombings took place, people are still losing their lives and losing their limbs, parents are losing their children, an entire country is being prevented from being moved forward because of those choices.

Some of the most devastating footage we saw was of an old 92 year old village elder watching the UXO clearance team blowing up a bomb found in his village. The UXO team said that they could sometimes see that the people who were alive during the bombings are taken back to those days, are reliving those moments, this particular man lost his wife and his whole family during the bombings and he was there hunched over behind a barricade reliving those moments fifty years later.

I’m not sure quite how to conclude, but I’ll just say that if you’re ever in Vientiane pay a visit to the COPE center  it’s truly amazing and the work the charity is doing is very noble and very worthwhile. They are good people.

The past few days we’ve been chilling out here in the capital city, we walked around all of the major temples and monuments, and we took a local bus out to the Buddha park (an open air Buddhist art exhibit) which was very interesting. It was striking to see how quickly the concrete roads of the city turn back into bumpy, dusty, mud flats, there is still a lot of development to be done here, this country has a long way to go.

Lee (the Malaysian cyclist we met in Luang Prabang) told us how he found it astounding that the country still waves the communist flag. He has a point. The big buildings, wealthy business man, and economic excess that can be found here in the capital are a stark contrast to the abject poverty that we witnessed on the slow boat through the Mekong. This country probably needs to re-asses some of its priorities, but I tell you something: Laos people sure know how to smile, they know how to be welcoming, a guy who had both of his arms blown off was a fine example of this today as he said hello to us with a huge grin on his face. The people here are wonderful, they are friendly, and even though some of them have nothing they are humble and willing to help. Natalie’s flip flops broke on a walk through the country in Vang Vieng and a teenager walking through his village offered her his flip flops. They have the important things right. They know how to be humanitarians, they know kindness and empathy and as long as they don’t lose that, I think they’ll do just fine.

It’s been a great experience visiting Laos, we’ve seen a lot, we’ve done a lot, and we’ve learnt a lot. We are really lucky in the UK that we can walk through a field with no fear of having our legs blown off. That's not the case here and it's been an experience learning why. We've also met some great people, and had a great time, eaten some good food and engaged in some great conversation. We fly out to Vietnam tomorrow, onto a new country and new adventures. I’m going to remember that no matter what happens I need to keep smiling, if the people of Laos can, then by gum, so can I, and so can you. 

Vang Vieng

I was sceptical about even visiting Vang Vieng in the first place. It has a reputation for being a loud and obnoxious party town that caters specifically to backpackers who want to get wasted on buckets (yes buckets) of cheap whiskey and BeerLao. Not my scene, at all. However, since Huay Xai we had started hearing rumours that things were changing in this central Laos party hotspot, and from what I saw, things really are.

Let me put it this way, in 2012 11 people have died whilst tubing down the river in Vang Vieng, they usually die because they’ve drank their body weight in Tiger whiskey and have decided to jump into a river full of massive rocks from a giant slide. On average 4 backpackers die every month in Vang Vieng. Tubing is the big draw for a lot of people. You rent a giant rubber tube from town, get a tuk-tuk down to the riverside and then sit in the tube and float back to town, only on the way back, there are several bars along the river most of which have water rides, a recipe for disaster if I ever did hear about one. Oh, and that happy pizza you saw on the menu, yeah, that ain’t happy because it’s so delicious, it’s happy because they’ve thrown a load of hallucinogenic drugs on top of it.

So, what’s changed? Well, on August 31^st the Lao government stepped in and shut down all of the bars along the main tube run and have cracked down on all the drugs and heavy drinking going on in Vang Vieng. The result is a ghost town. There was just nobody there. We saw a few people tubing down the river but they weren’t drunk and they looked pretty bored if you ask me. The bars along the riverside in town were practically all empty despite the fact that they were playing re-runs of Friends and Family Guy on a loop. The Lao Culture and Tourism board want to completely reinvent Vang Vieng to pull in a less rowdy cliental, and a month in, it seems to be working. Once word gets around that the party is over in Vang Vieng, then those booze hounds will have to find a new town to destroy.

Outside of the video-bars and tourist driven downtown area Vang Vieng is a truly beautiful place. The river flows gently beneath these huge limestone cliffs that fade away into the clouds in the distance and they make for some great exploring.

We headed out to the ‘Blue Lagoon’ which is a lot more green than blue this time of year, no matter, the main draw of the place is a giant cave that sits half way up the cliff side. Unfortunately, like everything else in Vang Vieng, the cave has been subsidised and you have to pay to get in. The man sat beneath the path to the cave had a giant spider crawling all over him. It was about the size of his head, it was bright yellow with black stripes and black legs and the man said it was very poisonous. It was one of the scariest things in the world. It was huge and it was just crawling all over the man who seemed pretty un-phased by the whole affair. I took his photo and we started climbing up the side of the cliff.

It was quite a ramble up the steep slope that was covered with giant leaves and insects, as we got higher up, the more dense the jungle seemed to become, but after about ten minutes climbing we finally got to the entrance of the cave. We threw our headlamps on and headed inside. I have honestly never seen anything like it before in my life. The cave was gigantic, the sunlight poured in through a hole in the ceiling which illuminated all of the rocks below, there were passageways leading off in all directions, there were vast holes which fell into nothingness and there were pools which had formed in small pockets of the cave interior. It was like being in the mines of Moria.

This wouldn’t be the only cave we would venture inside on our stay in Vang Vieng. We didn’t fancy tubing or drinking so all that was really left to do was explore the countryside and the caves.

On our second day we went looking for adventure, we left the town on foot and headed out into the cliffs, we eventually stumbled across a sign that pointed to a cave and figured we’d been walking long enough and we wanted to do some caving. We followed the sign through a huge rice paddy and then through the jungle until we got to a small outpost that two guys were sat upon. They told us it was 10,000kip to go inside the cave so we paid up and headed through the forest towards the bottom of the cliff.

This cave was very different to the first one that we had explored. One of the guys from the outpost followed us to the entrance, handed us some headlamps and showed us the way inside. You had to duck down into a small puddle and under a rock to get in, inside there were some bats hanging out on the roof and the whole room was pretty large. The guide pointed to a far corner where a trail went off into the interior of the cave. As soon as we edged around the narrow rocks we were told to leave our shoes and our bags and we descended a rickety old ladder into an even narrower path a little lower down. There were huge crickets jumping around under foot, the mud was incredibly slippery and thick, there were puddles of water at every turn and the walls were wet and provided no decent grip.

I started getting pretty nervous about this cave, pretty quickly. If our lights went out then it would be pitch black and there would be no way out, if it started raining then surly the cave would fill up and we would drown, the ladders we were descending into the cave upon were made of rickety old wood and were falling apart, barely resting on the slippery granite walls. There was one hole that we had to cross on top of two old bamboo poles which were just as slippery as the floor and if we would have fallen we probably would have been falling to our doom. We kept going and the guide kept reassuring us that “it’s no problem, it’s very easy”. We walked further and further into the cave for a long time, climbing up and down ladders, ducking under giant rocks and splashing through deep puddles, thick with brown mud.  

Eventually we made it to the back of the cave and there was one final descent to a huge swimming pool below, however, to get there we would have to descend steps that were made out of the very mud we had been sliding upon our whole way through the cave and we decided it wasn’t worth the risk so we turned around and went back the way we came, which was just as daunting, nerve wrecking and heart wrenching as before.

We were happy to get out of the most claustrophobic space we had even been inside, we were covered in mud and filth and had a new found appreciation for our lives. The conclusion of this cautionary tale is that Vang Vieng doesn’t just have to be about drinking buckets of whiskey, watching re-runs of Friends and tubing down the river, you can in-fact do some pretty amazing things there, but you’ll probably still put your life on the line. It’s certainly not for everyone.

We’re in Vientiane now, the capital city of Laos and we just walked around the old run-down Lao National Museum, which is basically a communist propaganda centre, but it had a few interesting things going for it and I read a lot about the UXO situation here in Laos, which is truly devastating. We’re looking forward to exploring the city some more tomorrow and we hope not to go inside any more caves anytime soon, although it was incredibly enjoyable.

Luang Prabang

Arriving at the pier in Luang Prabang you are surrounded by touts trying to tell you all about their hotels and guesthouses. We must have ended up with about seven pamphlets by the time we finally got out onto the road. We pretty much ignored the pamphlets we were given and headed out to find a guesthouse. We walked past a fair few asking how much before we finally settled on a quaint little guesthouse tucked nicely away down a side street. The guesthouse catered to Korean travellers, some coincidence, they had a soju stocked fridge, a menu with kimchi soup on it and Korean writing scattered around on signs.

One pamphlet did come in handy and it was advertising a restaurant called the Lao Lao garden. We had wanted to try Lao barbeque since hearing about it in the border town of Huay Xai so we got pretty excited. My belly was finally feeling back to some level of normality so we set out into town to find the restaurant. Luang Prabang is a beautiful little town with lots of hangovers from the French occupation. It’s a green city lined with golden steeples, beautiful French architecture sits next to small Asian inspired buildings, and monks in orange robes walk through the streets day and night, (that is until midnight when curfew kicks in). Laos has a government curfew that states that every person must be in their legally registered residence by midnight, or else. This law seems pretty loose as far as foreigners are concerned and most police won’t bother you, however, if you are Lao then rest assured you had better be home by midnight, so all the bars and restaurants start shutting up at around 11 / 11:30pm.

Anyway, onto the Lao Lao garden. It’s a great restaurant with a great menu, and we ordered our Lao barbeque. It’s very much like Korean barbeque but with a slight twist. You start by pouring some seasoned water around the edge of the pan and into that you throw a bunch of cabbage, glass noodles, lettuce, tomato, some egg and a few other salad type items, then in the raised middle you cook your meat, we had chicken, pork and buffalo. It was delicious. What was even more interesting about the Lao Lao garden was that the menu informed you about Lao culture, it had a kind of FAQ page at the back, and I learnt a lot by reading this, let me share what I learnt…

Laos is one of the most remote and one of the poorest countries in the world, when you barter or argue over a few thousand kip with a Lao person then you are arguing over a few pence or a few pounds with somebody whom if their family gets sick, they die, because they can’t afford medical care. The average Lao person stays in a bamboo hut with about ten other people with no water and no electricity (you actually see a lot of Lao washing themselves under waterfalls or in the Mekong river, and washing their clothes the same way). They grow their own food and will rarely, if ever, eat meat. In fact the ONLY things made in Laos are basic farm crops, textiles, handicrafts, wood products, cement, electricity, cigarettes, beer and soft drinks. That’s it. Everything else must be imported. Laos is so remote that it wasn’t accessible by road until nearly the 21st century (probably the 80’s / early 90s). Most area businesses operate at laughably small profits in order to stay competitive; they have to pay the same cost from imported products as they do in Thailand, plus the increased cost due to reselling fees and taxation. So anything modern costs more than 2 to 10 times more than in a developed country.

Interesting, huh? So, anyway, we ate our food and spent a while in the Lao Lao bar playing pool with the bartender, who was surprisingly amazing at pool and thrashed us.

On our first full day in Luang Prabang we booked a mini-van for 50,000kip (that’s a pretty good deal) to take us to the Kuang Si waterfalls. These waterfalls are unimaginably beautiful, it was like stepping into a fairytale, it reminded me of Rivendell in J.R.R Tolkiens ‘Lord of the Rings’. There were several pools that branched out from beneath the tallest waterfall I had ever seen. It was surrounded by gorgeous greenery and wildlife and the mood was so serene that I felt like I could have swam in those pools forever.

On our bus trip to the waterfall we met Sebina (a travel journalist from Germany), Tiana (a student wildlife conservationist from Nevada) and her boyfriend Jeff (also from Nevada) who was visiting friends and family in Thailand. We would spend the next few days with these guys and we were really lucky to have bumped into them. On the way back from the waterfall we stopped off at the Hmong village which I talked about in my previous blog post but that I’m going to touch on again here. See, we’ve been to a few more of these places now and we’ve seen some real Laos hill tribe villages along the road on our journey to Vang Vieng (where we currently reside).

Most of the community development projects like the Hmong village we were stopped at are a front to sell items to tourists. They usually get the kids to do it, they’ll run up to screaming ‘you buy, you buy’, Tiana said that it’s so bad in Cambodia that the kids will say things like ‘if you don’t buy, I will cry’, but most of the time the money won’t go to the kids and won’t even go to the village but will end up to the supplier of the many bracelets and trinkets that they have for sale. There was no doubt that it was a real Hmong village but it was depressing that their lives had been reduced to selling this stuff to the tourists who pass through, you question how much it really helps these people. There are also hundreds and hundreds of kids in the village and this must be down to the tradionalist way of thinking (I need as many kids as I can to look after me when I’m old) mixed with the complete lack of access to any contraceptives. We’ve seen a lot of this and it’s very sad. It’s not going to get any better any time soon if things stay the same here in regards to funding and sustaining these projects.

That night we went to dinner with Sebina, Tiana and Jeff and were joined by a Malaysian called Lee. Lee had been cycling from Malaysia, through Thailand and Laos for 48 days and his final destination was China. He had already cycled over 2500km and he was still rip-roaring on. He was 56 years old. He seemed pretty fed up with his bike but was very happy that he was free and doing what he had always dreamed of doing. He said every time that he is close to giving up he looks at his bike thinks of how much t cost, and decides to keep going. He was quite the character and he told us lots of stories about his travels and gave us a fair insight into Laos.

The next morning we got up and went for breakfast with Tiana and Jeff. Jeff proposed that this specific restaurant did the best breakfast in Laos, well that maybe but the conversation with the waitress went something like this:

Sean: I’ll have the banana shake?

Waitress: No.

Sean: No banana?

Waitress: No.

Sean: Ok, I’ll just have a ginger tea?

Waitress: No.

Sean: Just a lipton tea?

Waitress: Ok.

Sean: And to eat, I’ll have the fruit salad?

Waitress: No.

Sean: No fruit?

Waitress: No.

Sean: Wow! Er, Natalie what do you want, they have no fruit.

Natalie: I’ll have the banana and honey pancake?

Waitress: No.

Sean: There is no banana.

Natalie: Oh.

Sean: I’ll just have egg and bread.

Waitress: Ok.

Natalie: I’ll have the omelette.

Waitress: Ok.

Hmmm, best breakfast in Luang Prabang, huh? They had nothing and what they did have was hardly anything to write about in this blog.

After breakfast we met Sebina at the market, picked up some baguettes for lunch (another French colonialist hangover) and headed out to the Pak Ou caves. To get here you had to hire a boat at the pier so we spent some time haggling with the boat captains to get a decent price, we finally scored one and headed out. The boat was a rickety old thing that had an ant infestation but it was good enough for us, the views along the Mekong were just as stunning as they were during the slowboat trip and we had good conversation with Tiana, Jeff and Sebina to make the ride go quickly.

The first stop before the caves was a traditional village that specialises in making Lao whiskey. Not another one of these again, we thought, but we stepped out and strolled around for a while. They had lots of jars of whiskey filled with the craziest things, whiskey with scorpion, whiskey with snake, whiskey with centipede, whiskey with king cobra, whiskey with bears paws! BEARS PAWS! It was revolting so we got back into the boat and set on our way wondering if anyone actually buys any of that stuff.

We pulled up at the caves about half an hour later, the caves are full of old discarded Buddha images. You can’t touch them, and it’s considered a very holy place rather than the dumping ground for old Buddhist statues, that it actually is. The caves were very pretty though but didn’t go back very far, you could hear the bats from up above your head which at least made Natalie happy, along with the giant spiders we saw on the outskirts of the upper caves. The upper caves were a little more impressive than the lower but were still pretty small, but the views across the Mekong more than made up for that. We are planning to do some caving here in Vang Vieng so we should have our cave fix by the end of our time in Laos.

The journey back went much quicker as we were travelling with the current, we exchanged some money and sorted out our bus trip to Vang Vieng and did a little shopping in the night market. We actually spent more than we probably should have but some of the things on sale were just too beautiful to pass up, I actually managed to get all of my Laos gifts at this market.

That evening we met with Tiana and Jeff and had dinner and drinks and talked about many a thing. I had buffalo which was the toughest meat I’ve ever had and it left me with a massive toothache the following morning. Tiana and Jeff had never tried soju so we went back to our hostel and all shared a bottle of the stuff before curfew kicked in at midnight. It was great hanging out with them for a few days and it broke our trip up a little bit as prior to this we had been mostly doing things by ourselves. We wished them well as they were venturing back into Thailand the following day and we settled in for the night.

I woke up with a rip-roaring hangover and toothache, but we had to be early to catch our VIP bus to Vang Vieng. The VIP bit is a bit of a joke. I have never feared for my life more than I feared for it on that bus journey. I had read tales of Hmong rebels with guns on the highway who would hold up buses for money, we did see some but luckily they didn’t hold us hostage, phewey, that wasn’t the most treacherous thing about the journey however, it was the mental driving, unstable roads, winding blind bends and high mountain drop offs that made it so frightening. I clenched my eyes shut on a few occasions when I though we were done for, alas, we made it and we’re now here in Vang Vieng.

Vang Vieng is obviously a tale for another blog post and as usual I’ve ranted on for way to long, so I’ll bid you all farewell, the rain has just stopped so we’re going to head out to the caves and do some exploring. Thanks for reading!     

Getting Stuck In (Chiang Rai and Huay Xai)

Good day my sometime friends, it feels like an age since I last sat here and updated this here blog. It has been, I suppose. Where to begin? The beginning always seems like a good place to start so I’ll jump right in.

We arrived in Chiang Rai at a pretty reasonable hour after a beautiful drive through the Thai countryside. Sweeping hills, expansive forests, and tranquil streams lined the sides of the road as we meandered along on the public bus. The long distance public buses in Thailand (specifically travelling from Mai to Rai) are pretty comfortable, and the ride went quite quickly. When we arrived in Chaing Rai we got a cheap songthaew (converted pick-up truck) to the Akha River House which would serve as our accommodation during our stay. The Akha river house is run by inhabitants of the Akha hill tribe who make up a vast percentage of the hill tribe population in Northern Thailand. More on hill tribes later, needless to say our room had a beautiful view over the river, we were basically staying right on top of it.

We settled in and then headed out to explore the city. Chaing Rai was the smallest place we had visited, and you could walk everywhere in town without too much bother. We strolled through a few temples and looked around a Buddhist history museum which used to house the famous emerald Buddha which now belongs in The Grand Palace, Bangkok and then we finally settled down for something to eat. We were tucking into our pad thai and spring rolls when suddenly there was a huge electrical failure and the light started flickering and making rather unnerving noises. We weren’t really in a restaurant but more of a local café (which looks like a small shack with picnic tables underneath), it turns out a man had taken a chainsaw to a tree next to the café and the tree had fallen through a group of electrical wires and onto the side of the shack. We were escorted out of the shack for safety reasons and ate the rest of our food under some wood to the side of the restaurant. The first of many an odd dining experience to come.

That evening we strolled along the river which our guesthouse overlooked and we spotted a restaurant on the other side. It had beautiful views of the river and looked pretty quiet so we headed over the bridge to the other side of the river and towards the bar. I was already suspicious of the place as it had no English and looked a little out of place in the middle of nowhere just outside the city by the river. Usually bars and restaurants in Thailand all seem to be clumped together for convenience. However, in for a penny in for a pound. We took our seats. Nobody spoke a lick of English, luckily the menu had pictures, it felt awkward, like we weren’t welcome, when we looked around we noticed we were the only couple sitting in the restaurant. We further noticed that all of the waitresses were wearing rather revealing clothing, hot pants and the like. They also had name tags on, there were plenty of business men sat around, it clicked that we probably weren’t in a restaurant but at a night entertainment venue for single men. Wink, wink. We were in now though so we leisurely ate our food, paid our bill and got a story to tell out of the whole experience.

The next day we went to an Ostrich Farm on the outskirts of town, not the original plan but the forecast didn’t look great and we needed something to do. The ostrich farm was another odd ball experience, we were shown around by an incredibly short but incredibly happy middle aged lady who tried to persuade us to ride some of her ostriches, we settled for feeding them instead. I’m pretty terrified of large birds with giant beaks, but you try everything right? They snapped away at this repugnant food that we were giving them, their beaks didn’t hurt but they nipped a little. Once the show was over we sat down and had a drink to cool off, the sun had shown its face by this point but we decided to get a tuk-tuk back into town and we ended up checking out the hill tribe museum.

Chaing Rai province is full of hill tribes, our guesthouse was run by a hill tribe and they organised treks up into the hill tribe villages and the museum was an interesting insight into the lives of the tribes people, who are living in a totally different age. As a side note (I’m getting ahead of myself) we actually went to a Hmong hill tribe village today, we didn’t spend long there but it was a depressing sight to behold, you looked inside their homes and it was just a wooden room where families of up to 15 people would sleep, there are children running around the village (like a LOT of children) in dirty clothes or no clothes at all asking for you to buy the bracelets that they had for sale (there is clearly a contraception issue at work here), the average daily income for a family here is about 50p, and it really puts your existence into perspective, I felt sort of guilty walking through the village and gauping at how they live, I felt unwelcome and awkward. The museum tried to explain the complex issues surrounding the hill tribes in Thailand specifically in relation to tourism, how there are major pros and major cons.

The long neck tribes seem to be the best example I can think of off hand. Most long neck tribes inhabit bordering Burma, but a few migrated into Thailand. I say migrated what really seems to happen is that wealthy business men bring them into Thailand and force them to live in hill tribe villages so that tourists can come and take photos with them, they are forced to wear their gold neck rings and are not allowed to leave the villages. They have no rights as they are not Thai citizens and are paid pittance by the owners of the scheme. This is an extreme case, but tales of hill tribes selling their traditional clothes to tourists and the like are common. The museum gave a really balanced view and we spent a long time there learning about the traditions of the hill tribe people.

That night we had dinner at the famous Chaing Rai night bazaar and headed home in the rain. The next day we were up early and caught a more rustic public bus to the Burmese border at Mai Sai. You can hop over the border into Tachelik, Burma here but we decided not to as from the viewpoint looking over the city you could see most of what you could on foot. The two are linked by a bridge and separated by the river that runs beneath it and for the most part that’s all there is to see. It is like many other border towns, there are lots of markets and cheap goods from the other side for sale, so we looked around for a long time and took some photos of bordering Burma. There is still a smuggling problem here specifically with drugs like opium and this is prevalent from the amount of police checks there are on the road to Mai Sai, a few guys even got pulled off of our bus for reasons we couldn’t quite figure out. Another interesting experience.

On our final day in Chaing Rai we went to the famous white temple which may as well be an art exhibition, it truly is like something out of a fairytale, tall gothic white statues and gorgeous sparkling architecture surrounded by a little moat. It’s an attempt by the creator to bring Buddhist architecture into the modern age. You walk over hell to the gate of the temple. Hell is represented by many white hands creeping up from the ground below you, the temple itself is guarded by a statue of death, and once you’re past him you ascend to heaven, the gorgeous temple itself. This place also houses the most luxurious toilets in the world, solid gold temple like structures surrounding the lavatories. My mother would be pleased.

We left Chaing Rai via another public bus which took us to the border town of Chaing Khong where we were crossing the border into Laos. The bus ride was just as pretty as the first and we were excited to be going to a new country. Exiting Thailand was easy, we signed out and handed over our departure cards, we hopped in a boat and five minutes later we were in Laos, we filled out our arrival cards and exchanged our money and we were there, on the street, without a guesthouse or any idea where we were. It was sort of brilliant.

We ended up booking into a cute little guesthouse that was pretty close to the border crossing, I’ll never forget that guesthouse. See, I don’t know quite what it was, but after dinner that night I started feeling a little strange in the belly department, I didn’t think much of it at first but when we got back after hanging out at a cool Lao bar beneath the guesthouse I came over really ill. I was sweating, had a temperature and felt nauseous, I spent most of that evening in the bathroom. Travellers sickness had finally caught up with me. It’s two or three days later now and I’m feeling mostly back to normal again apart from a few rumbles. It wasn’t a very pleasant experience though.

We caught the slowboat from Huay Xai (the border town we were staying in) to Pak Beng (the halfway point between HX and Luang Prabang which would serve as the next major stop on our trip). I was feeling a little better in the morning, my belly had calmed but I still had a fever and a headache, seven hours on a boat wasn’t really what I need but we trekked on. Natalie loved the trip on the boat and undeniably the views were awesome, some of the most beautiful vistas I have ever seen. The Mekong river is pretty muggy but it is surrounded by the most awesome mountains and forests. We would stop off sometimes to let Lao people on and off and it became clear very quickly that we were in a different country.

Laos is one of the poorest counties in the world, and the average Lao earns perhaps $1 a day. There are unexploded mines scattered across much of the country leftover from the US secret war here during the Vietnam war when many Vietnamese fled to these parts, the clean up team suggest that it will take 100 years to declare much of the country safe, luckily we won’t be anywhere near these areas but it’s still an eye opener. The people here are humble and friendly but scarred by their hardships. Children are playing in the river from sun up to sun down as there is no school for them to go to outside of major cities. Here in Luang Prabang things are obviously different and I’m talking about rural Laos here.

It’s an interesting place to be, and a great thing to experience. When we arrived in Pak Beng my head was throbbing and I felt like death warmed up, but after settling into a new guesthouse after being attacked by local kids who wanted nothing more than to get their hands on my packet of crisps, I had some medicine and started to recover. The second day on the river was much more enjoyable as I felt for the most part back to my old self. Natalie said that the second day on the river, “wasn’t as quiet,” hmmmm, I wonder why?

I’ll write about Luang Prabang in my next post, but so far we’re having an amazing time here. It’s a beautiful small town with plenty to see and do, we’ve made some friends here, and we’re going for dinner with some of them tonight. It finally feels like we’re no longer on holiday but that we’re actually vagabonding, taking our time, experiencing things first hand and getting to know people. It feels good to finally be getting stuck into some proper travelling. After all, that’s why we’re here. 

I'll update when I can, the internet here is few and far between. See you on the flipside. 

Still Alive: Laos

In true Nathanael style this is just a short update to let everyone know that we're still alive. I just wanted to post and tell everyone that we made it into Laos via the Huay Xai border crossing. It's beautiful here just watching the magnificent Mekong river floating on by. We are catching a slow boat to Luang Prabang tomorrow. The internet is few and far between here but I'll be posting about our adventures (last 4 days in Thailand) soon. Some stories will include having dinner in a Thai whore house (by accident), visiting the flooded Burma border, staying with rude hill tribe people, and visiting a temple which had Neo from the Matrix plastered on its interior, oh and we fed ostriches but were too scared to actually RIDE one. More of that to come when I finally have some internet and some time to write about Chiang Rai. For now we've just had a lovely dinner watching the sunset along the Mekong and we're looking forward to exploring Laos. Asta la viesta, baby.