Wednesday, May 13, 2009

Vietnam fever

All aboard the nightbus to Ninh Binh. There is no need, in Vietnam at least, to take the nighttrain as the nightbus is faster, just as comfortable but only half the price of a trainticket.


We stopped round midnight in the middle of nowhere to go to the toilet and also to witness all the vendors screaming and gesticulating to get your attention. Quite surreal when you have just woken up.

We were dropped off at the side of a road at 4.30 in rainy and dark Ninh Binh but thank God for early life in SE Asia as there was a coffee place right cross the street where we sat down waiting for the sun to rise enjoying a hot cup of Joe. The dark clouds got a bit less dark signalling daytime so we put on our ponchos and turned out we were only 10 minutes from the Ngoc Anh Hotel which hadn't opened yet. We took some chairs that were nearby and sat ourselves down to enjoy the free WIFI. Some time later the staff woke up apologising that they hadn't noticed us before, brought us to our cosy, meaning tiny, room where we slept till 11.

Ninh Binh is again not an attractive city and is skipped by many travellers that prefer going straight to Hue or Hanoi. It is more a big rest place for the highway that runs straight to the center. A bit like Antwerp will be if the Lange Wapper will be built...

The surroundings however are stunning! We hopped on a local bus and after an hour driving on a muddy road through waving green rice paddies we arrived at That Diem, a Catholic church that looks like a pagoda. The church is located in a little but bustling town and hardly any scooters but all the more bicycles. Waiting at the roadside for the bus we were quite the attraction. A motorbike driver tried very hard to convince us that the last bus was already gone and that he was the only option back to town. Patience was rewarded and the last bus for the day showed up. You can't blame the motodriver for trying.

During the night the rain fell plentiful and by morning had turned into drizzle. We rented bikes for the day, the ponchos came out again and we took to the highway.


Loads of trucks speeding by, signalling their approach 500 metres in advance using their horn and when passing they seem to make an extra effort in cranking up the volume and frequency of beeping. Not exactly relaxing drive but we took a side road that would lead us to the first attraction of the day: a boat ride to the Tam Coc caves. A mystical place surrounded by green rice paddies and limestone mountains. The grey clouds and drizzle just added more to the atmosphere as you can see if you click here. During the ride the boat lady will ask if you want to buy some nice fabric. Just say no as we saw many people who had said yes and had to fight through tonnes of the stuff. Except for the occasional ambush from vendors it's a very peaceful setting. Had some noodle soup and back on the road to Mua Grotti. A pagoda on top of a hill that can be reached by climbing the 500 steps but the view makes it more than worthwhile.


Met a couple of Spaniards that were going through Asia by bicycle and who accompanied us to the ancient capital of Hoa Lu where there was kind of a fair going on with lots of betting and scams! Following some dirt tracks and highways that were being built we arrived back into town just before sunset haven driven 50 km. After a rewarding shower we treated ourselves to fried gambas and fried bananas.

Had our last breakfast where the ever friendly owner gave us both a nice gift and receiving a hug from the cleaning lady. We met up with Bruno, a french guy that lives and works in Brugge for 4 years already and who would accompany us to Vietnam's capital city of Hanoi.

A smooth bus ride of 3 hours later we arrived to the city, checked into the hotel and went for a delicious lunch of bun bo soup. Time to explore the city and even though it's smaller than HCMC it seems more busy and stressing. In the extremely busy old quarter all items and services are grouped together. You find engine parts in street X, rattan baskets in street Y, cloth in street Z and so on. It's incredibly noisy because all the scooters beep constantly. We think that one of the skills you need to get your license is being able to beep at least 50 times per minute. All the impressions and noise left us exhausted and we headed back for a nap. Met up with Bruno for a hotpot dinner and a nice coffee and chat.

After a delicious breakfast in Baguette et Chocolate we visited the excellent ethnological museum where you can see the various customs, clothes and real size houses of the many minority groups in Vietnam. Another treat awaited us namely yogurt with honey in a store that was made famous by Catherine Deneuve whilst she was filming “Indochine” We went back many times after that first time as it is just heavenly. Also very close to the train station where we had a look at timetables and fares to go to one of the next locations. Hanoi trains are mafia practices. Never any tickets because “everything full” but if you go to a travel agent plenty of tickets there for double the price! Also booked our boat trip to Halong Bay where we met “the kids” Scottish Kirsty and Swiss Andreas who we travelled with for a week.

An impressive site is the Ho Chi Minh mausoleum where the former leader of Vietnam lays embalmed for everyone to see. It's not a stroll however. Strict rules have to be followed: proper clothing, no photos, no smiling, no hands in pockets and always keep moving. We heard some tourists say that it was silly and ridiculous and those are the ones we try to avoid. The place is like a pilgrimage site and you can't help but also have a high reverence of this mummified body that embodies the hardship and fighting spirit of the Vietnamese people.

Walked around the city some more and to be honest we got more and more stressed by it. Neither of us liked the city. It's just too noisy and we just wanted to find a quiet spot which we eventually stumbled across round the cathedral. Hallelujah! Still noisy less which made this area our safe haven where we enjoyed many “frozen lemons” at Laplace.

Next day we couldn't wait to get out of the city to yet another UNESCO site namely Halong Bay famous for the roundabout 8.000 limestone formations that sprout out of the crystal clear water of the China sea. Checked into our cabin of the 6 cabin boat and we set off for a 2 day “cruise”. Whilst the mountains passed by, we enjoyed a nice seafood lunch after which we arrived at a huge cave that was made up out of 3 chambers with wonderful stalagmites and stalactites that, left to the imagination, looked like crocodiles, elephants, angels, dragons...



Now it was kayaktime and after shouting instructions to Angela on how to paddle (stress from Hanoi was still present) we rowed through a cave to end up being completely surrounded by mountains and peace and quiet. A dip in the water and a hot shower later, dinner was served after which we moved to the upper deck where the clouds denied us a view of the stars but it was nonetheless pretty to see the lights of the other boats and the dark ominous looking shadows of the mountains.

It must have been the smell and the gentle rocking of the sea that made us have a great night sleep. Breakfast awaited us and it was back to the deck to enjoy the view of Lan Tha Bay where not many boats go so we had the place to ourselves for half an hour before heading back to the pier passing by truly an amazing landscape... but then in the sea. Our drive back to Hanoi was less than pleasant as the driver thought he was on the race track, accelerating and braking all the time. By the time we got back to Hanoi we were well shaken and stressed again. We headed directly for the safer neighbourhood of the cathedral till it was time to head to the station to catch the night train to Sapa.


No durian on board this time and 9 hours later we arrived in the cooler hill station of Lao Cai only 3km from the Chinese border and a spectacular hour drive away from Sapa. We arrived there surrounded by clouds resulting in not being able to see more than 20 metres in front of you. Hard if you're looking for your hotel. Found a basic place to sleep for 1 night after which we changed to the nicer Queen hotel where we had a spectacular view of the highest mountain of Vietnam, the more than 3.000 metres high Fansipan. Not only the view is amazing but also the behaviour of the clouds appearing, engulfing, dissolving this only in a matter of minutes.


Sapa is the base station for treks to minority villages around. Many Hmong also swarm you the moment you arrive to town all wanting to be your friend and take you to their home in the village and speaking the best English we heard so far in the months we've been travelling. You can climb Fansipan which was the initial plan for Jonny but he wasn't feeling all that good so no flag waving for him at the top.

Actually Jonny's condition didn't get better but worse. Fever started and went as high as 40.5, shaking, yellow eyes (jaundice), intestinal pain all symptoms of malaria so it was time to start taking the treatement dose of Malarone being 4 pills at once with milk and food and this for 3 days. Jonny felt better the next day and it was off to hospital for a malaria test which turned out negative but could have been a false negative because of the first dose of Malarone. Contacted the insurance who had a doctor on stand-by who advised us to get to Hanoi where they have excellent care. Booked a ticket for that same night for a full train (mafia) and headed back to Lao Cai where Angela had something that was supposed to be fried rice. 4 hours later she would damn the restaurant whilst she was talking to the big white telephone (=WC)

In Hanoi straight to the fancy French hospital where they diagnosed it as being a viral infection. In Myanmar we told this story to 2 doctors of MSF working in Malaria zones and they were almost certain it had been malaria. In any case I was doing a lot better so we went and visited the war museum. The one in HCMC was the better of the two but the Hanoi one had the most war objects on display: planes, bombs, tanks,... it's great to see them on display but it must be a horrific experience seeing them in action. Let's hope that one day all such things are only to be found in a museum.

The last night in Hanoi we went to a coffeehouse on the 5th floor with a nice view of the traffic below.

Except for Hanoi Vietnam treated us nicely with excellent transportation, a wide variety of interesting and awe-inspiring places to visit and culinary discoveries.


A flight later we arrived to our beloved Bangkok where protests had broken out that saw images of buses on fire broadcast around the world. Might as well happened on the other side of the world as most people in Bangkok went on with their daily lives that was now all about Songkhran or Water festival. Avoid Bangkok during this time as you'll be soaked to the bone constantly which might sound like fun for a while but not for 3 days in a row, especially not when drunken tourists are the ones doing the soaking thinking this is all “like, you know, soooo coooool maaaan”

We managed to remain dry on our visit to the house of Jim Thompson, an architect that took 6 traditional Thai houses and made it into one. An absolute must see when in Bangkok. Only a short stop in Bangkok as it was time to fly to the last of the five countries: Myanmar!

Sunday, May 3, 2009

Durian Express

You can spend a lot of time planning your itinerary, but on a trip like this plans are bound to change as was the case for Dalat. Not on our list but we had read about a group of guides calling themselves the “Easy Riders”. They can show you the surroundings of this hillbased town or even drive you all over Vietnam if you want. This is done on their nice vintage motorbikes. The moment we got off the bus they had already spotted us, guided us to the hotel we wanted to stay and said they were going to wait for us downstairs. Might seem a bit pushy but we wanted to take a tour with them anyway so we didn't mind. Checked in at the hotel where we were given a room with two double beds and nice wooden floors and this all for only 8usd. Went down and arranged our tour with the ER for the following day.

When we arrived at this city,located in the middle of the coffee growing region, we saw something that we hadn't seen since we left Belgium: sweaters and jackets! What to us was a cool breeze probably felt like a siberian chill to the Vietnamese living here. In all honesty at night we put on sweaters and long pants aswell and Jonny's Cambodian Krama came in very handy here and has since then never left his side.

At night we had a nice stroll around the city and we saw an outdoor warm drink stand with some tasty looking pastries. We sat ourselves down on tiny plastic chairs ordered 2 coffees with milk and watched life go by. This is the best way to get the feel of a city and what this city lacks in architecture, being a concrete monster straight out of the USSR, it makes up for in atmosphere. Instead of milk we got a big dollop of sweetened condensed milk, that congregated at the bottom making for an ebony/ivory division and when stirred gave a strong yet rich and creamy hot coffee that reached all the way to your toes casting away the evening chill. The accompaning pastries were just the icing on the cake and we fell in love with this city.

Not only with the city but also with eachother. We had been travelling for 2 months now and were always busy plotting the next step, looking for places to stay and to visit, soaking up impressions and just giving ourselves enough time to process them, but not fully grasping the totality of it all. Here in Dalat it all seemed to fall into place. We felt very fortunate and extremly happy and it hit us that we were experiencing this wonderful journey together as a married couple, something that seemed hardly feasable many years ago when the only connection we had was the one through the internet with an ocean in between us.

Enough smoochie smoochie!

The next day was motorbiketime VROEM VROEM! We each took place on the back of our motorbikes and our virtualy perfect english speaking guides kickstarted their engines and we set off, for one of already many highlights of our trip.



It's an amazing feeling sitting on the back of a proper motorcycle (not like the scooters from Mui Ne) looking at the magnificent scenery passing by. Wasn't just a ride but also a tour of local sights.

The ornate Linh Phuoc Pagoda, where you could witness the art of tessalation (breaking... well...breakables and then remaking them ie Barcelona at Gaudi's Park Guell); the crazy house where the daughter of the second Vietnamese president got carte blanche building a hotel, made up out of weird structures linked with eachother through cavelike stairs;



the ricewine factory where we got a sample (hickup) and where the huge pigs were always drunk, as they got the fermented leftover rice to eat; a silkfactory where you could see the process from silkworm to scarf; delicious and abundant lunch, that our drivers picked out for us. Was also perfect timing as the rain fell in biblical proportions, turning the roads temporary into rivers. Then time to hop back on the motorbike to see the elephant waterfalls where Angela feared (yet again) that Jonny was going just a bit too far trying to get a nice picture and needlesly risking his life by doing so. Time for the hour long ride back home feeling at peace looking at clouds breaking lose from the treetops and being stretched out by the winds that roll off the hills.

We said goodbye to our guides and thanked them for a lovely day, wishing them more tourists, as the so called economic crisis causes a downfall of tourism of 30% or more in all the countries we visited, which means less income for the many people depending on tourism.

As the romantic mood lingered on, we sat down in a nice cosy restaurant with an attentive owner where we had an exquisite fish caramel pot and a rice and vegetable dish topped with roasted cashew nuts. After softly singing along to the instrumental pianothemes and improvised short dance, we left a happy owner and a smiling audience, that probably was wondering how much Dalat wine we had enjoyed (only one white for Angela, one red for Jonny) Time for coffee and a pastrie and dare I say that we would look great in a commercial promoting this black gold...




We left the cool of Dalat for the heat of the beach of Nha Thrang, where we got traintickets for the nighttrain to Hoi An that same night. Nha Thrang is a coastal city that reminds you of the ones in Spain with big hotels close to the beach. We left our backpacks at the station and went for a nap in the park next to the beach. Aaah the life of a hobo! Found a nice coffeehouse next to the station, where we passed time enjoying the free WIFI yet again till it was time to take our spot on the train. We were in the hard sleeper which sound less comfortable than it actually is.
There is a fruit in SE Asia that is called Durian which is actually prohibited in certain places, the reason being the smell. We were ever so lucky that someone in our cabin had brought a tiny amount of it with him and after nine hours marinating even the clothes in our backpack smelled like it.

Hoi An is a stop over for many tourists as it is the place where you can get clothes made for relatively cheap prices. Angela got sized up for a shirt and Jonny got very tired of the abundance of choice and decided not to get anything.

Our hotel came with pool, which was welcome at 39 degrees every single day and this only for 12usd. Of all the staff there was only one friendly guy Tuk. Jonny always smiles at people but that seemed to make the owner even more cranky, so Jonny went out of his way to smile at her at every possible occasion.

Vietnamese food is excellent and was enriched here with specialties of the region. We came across a Belgian couple, that we met at the Sherathon in HCMC and they advised us to eat at one of the street stalls for even better and cheaper food and they were absolutly right.

Except for having clothes made Hoi An is also on the Unesco World Heritage list for its nice architecture, which was influenced by Western and Chinese culture, as it was an international trading port in the 17th century. Almost all the houses are converted into a clothes shop or a restaurant, so you tend to look more at fabrics and menus than at the structures which is pity.


You can buy a ticket with which you can visit 5 of many sights of the town, of which the 200 year old Tan Ky house and the Phuc Kien Assembly Hall are the ones worth visiting the moat.

Said goodbye to Hoi An with an extra smile for the hotel owner and it was off to yet another Heritage town namely Hue, famous for its citadel and mausoleums of previous emperors.

When we arrived into a town Jonny always gets out the map and follows the trail the bus is making. We drove past the area with all the accommodation to drive out of town, where the bus stopped at a hotel claiming this was the final stop. All the tourists got off and it struck Jonny that all the Vietnamese stayed on the bus. He asked one of them and they said this is what the buses always do but eventually drive back to town. He explained this to the others and all the tourists got back on board which made the hotel owner and busdriver (bye bye commission) less than happy and sure enough they drove back into town where everyone needed to be.

After checking in at the Phong Nha Hotel, it was off to the citadel with its imperial enclosure and forbidden purple city which was the private living quarters for the emperor, his concubines and the eunuchs. Before we got there however Angela was mobbed by a group of middleaged vietnamese that wanted to have their picture taken with this exotic colombian princess. Many full memorycards later we got in to the imperial city.



The tourgroups don't venture too far so if you walk away from the central building you are virtually alone and rewarded with nicely decorated ceremony halls and a tomb here and there.



After our two hour stroll it was time to treat ourselves to some pain au chocolat from the french bakery, which employs street kids to give them a better future.

Hue is only a 4 hour bus ride away from Hoi An and even then does it have excellent additions to the Vietnam cuisine which is best enjoyed at Lac Tien's restaurant which is run by a deaf mute owner, who is all smiles and gratitude when you empty your plate and come back the second day for more!

The city also has a nice boardwalk where at night you can enjoy the changing lights that illuminate the motorcycle bridge and we did just that.
Next and last day we hopped on the bicycles and had a fun day visiting the Thien Mu seven storied pagoda. It was made famous by the monk Thich Qaung Duc, who publicly burned himself to death to protest against the cruel regime of president Diem, who was helped in power by the USA and, as on many other occasions in which the US intervened, they would proclaim: “He's a son of a bitch but at least he's our son of a bitch!”

The mausoleums are grand and represent the megalomaniac characters of the emperors who, we must say, had a great eye not only for aesthetic beauty, but also for location. The mausoleum of Tu Duc has nice water parts and Forrest incorporated in its outlaying, whereas the mausoleum of Khai Dinh is set on the side of a hill overlooking the surrounding rice paddies.



Even though we had already checked out of the hotel they offered us to use the shower and who were we to decline such an invitation being covered in sweat and dust? We have stayed in many hotels so far and they were all more than ok offering virtually the same standard. The difference however is in the people that run it and can make a stay memorable or just another place where you slept and showered.

After looking into the prices of transport too Ninh Binh (our next location that wasn't on the initial itinerary) we decided to take the sleeper night bus this time. To find out about this means of transportation and the conclusion of our Vietnam trip tune into our next post.