Vietnam part one

I can confirm we have arrived at the worst place on our travels so far. It’s my fault. Polly’s been Head of Planning so far and the one time I’ve made a decision it’s not turned out well.

It’s also the fault of Can Tho Waterpark with its enticing waterslides, tide pool and hot dogs, which is more temptation than I can handle. Can Toh’s towards the very south of Vietnam and is the capital of the region, which must explain why the Japanese came and built an incredible toll bridge here. I would have taken a photo from the bus but the camera was jammed between my legs and a pile of bags. Plus I didn’t want to make any sudden movements in case I made the fighting cock trying to break its way out of someone’s bag, or the chicken that was just hanging out on the bus, angry.

We arrived and had a relatively pleasant negotiation with some blokes with motorbikes and set off for the guesthouse. It turned out to be a short journey, which is always a bonus when you’re carrying a backpack weighing about eight stone. I didn’t have any change to pay them so went to buy a bottle of water from a stall and checked with the woman that she had change for the note I’d given her. She smiled and went off to get change, then came back a second later waving a completely different note and telling me I had to give her more. I presently experienced the following range of emotions: confusion, disbelief, rage.

The woman had taken my money and was pretending I’d only given her a few pence. I tried to reason with her but she wasn’t having it, so I went behind her counter to root through her draw but my note wasn’t there and she started getting shirty. We then wasted about a minute while I told her she’d taken my money but she was still demanding more off me, and we had a decent crowd round now. Some guy that spoke English stepped in and explained her story to me and I explained to him that she was full of shit. The problem here is that with half the street around and the thought of wasting our whole water park day getting the police involved over £3 (it’s not a lot, but it’s still daylight robbery), and other people saying she was right, I had to give up.

Stewing over a suitable revenge, we set off for the waterpark, the whole reason we (I) stopped over here. It’s hot and we thought we’d walk to work up a bit of a sweat so the reward would be all the sweeter, but as we got closer we could see the slides were either being used by incredibly small people or they were shut. But surely not? On a weekend? The website looked good so we thought it must be ok.

As we rounded the final corner it all made sense; the whole thing was closed down and had been for a year, as we later found out. As far as we could tell though, the park will be re-opening at 6:30 this evening – in Malaysia. We’ll be getting the first bus out of here tomorrow.

Vietnam hasn’t been all bad though, we’ve just come from a couple of nights staying in Vinh Longh, a busy little city on the bank of the Mekong. We had a nice room overlooking the river and the local karaoke bar. I can’t tell you who was singing or what, but it might have been auditions for Rex Factor from what we could hear. Woof.

We got up at the crack of dawn and went on a cruise round the nearby waterways and islands on our way to the local floating market. We really enjoyed it, the market was a sight to see and was something of a mix between Mad Max and Waterworld, just with less fighting and more root vegetables.

We also saw some new wildlife to tick off our list, including a few kingfishers and baby crocodiles that were being farmed for food and handbags.

Oh, and a horse.

The Mekong made a nice change from Saigon, Ho Chi Min city, where I think the traffic is more incredible than either Bangkok or Shanghai. It’s a big place and there’s no public transport to speak of so everyone has a motorbike. The sheer volume of bikes makes being a pedestrian hard enough, but when you throw into the mix the fact that traffic lights are meaningless and that, despite there being two lanes for traffic to flow as normal, it seems perfectly legitimate to ride the wrong way up a road or round a roundabout. Too much traffic on the road? Not a problem, just ride on the pavement!

We found a way to beat all the chaos by escaping to the top of the tallest building we could find for a drink.

Saigon gave us our first taste of poorly conceived but sometimes effective robbery techniques. One of the postcard sellers at the zoo was explaining how much he wanted for his postcards while I had my wallet out. Not feeling worried I let him touch my wallet and he took out a note. Here we go through my stock emotional response to robbery: confusion, disbelief, rage. He then tried to explain that I needed to pay with another note, presumably thinking we both hadn’t seen him taking the last one. A short attempt to reason with him later and Polly took matters into her own hands and managed to snatch the note back. Five out of five for effort, zero out of five for ingenuity, Mr Postcard.

Otherwise all was well, we had a delicious meal at a restaurant where all the waiters are kids from the city’s poorest areas and went out for some proper drinking at Apocolypse Now, a nightclub where there were more security guards than punters when we arrived.

It’s all a far cry from Raffles. Now that’s holiday-making.

Cambodge

Cambodia’s been an incredible experience for us. We spent our first week in Strung Treng and then moved on to Siem Riep where all the temples of the Ankhor empire remain in various states of disrepair/renovation. It was incredible, but the most poignant experience so far has been learning about the reign of the Khmer Rouge from 1975-79.

We didn’t know much but the basics about genocide and civil war, if you can call it a war, over that time but this country is still so affected by it that it’s been incredibly sad learning about what happened.

I’d tentatively asked a few people about it in Siem Riep but no one discusses it. It was only when we got to Phnom Penh and visited S 21, a school that was converted to a torture camp and holding place for as many as 30,000 Cambodians before they were taking to the killing fields to be slaughtered, that we got a glimpse of how terrible the Pol Pot regime was.

A handful of people, including two of the only seven people that actually left the camp alive, were guides at the camp. As one woman told us about the death of all her family at the hands of the Khmer Rouge she choked back tears – I’ve never seen such pain in someone’s face. At the time the revolutionaries cleared out the big cities as part of Pot’s plan to take the country back to an agrarian society with none of the so-called evils of the western world. No one imagined that the incoming army would slaughter a quarter of the country.

There are such terrible stories of atrocities and at S 21 hundreds of pictures were found showing young men who were tortured and put to death. One picture showed a woman holding her baby; after the photo was taken her baby was taken from her arms and beaten against the wall until it was dead. It’s no surprise that families do not talk about their experiences even among themselves. As much as I’ve studied history, this is the most painful story as it was so sudden, brutal and unexpected and speaking to a couple of survivors made it so real. No one expected their own people to cause such devastation.

Before Phnom Pehn we spent two days exploring the temples of Siem Riep (Polly's the little red dot). The short history is that they were built as homes for the gods around year 1000, and they really knew how to build a home for a god. Temple after temple, all unique in their own way with the most immense example being Angkhor Wat. It turns out that the pathway to heaven (represented by the top of the temples) should not be easy, which I discovered as I climbed a staircase that was more like a stone ladder.

We stomped, we trekked, Polly nearly fell off the top of a temple after sunset on the hill and we were fully exhausted. Dan’s travelling tip: Inconspicuous as a tree sounds, beware hidden monsters. Ambling back to our motorbike cart we were assaulted by a serpent that obviously remembered it wasn’t a monkey and fell out of a tree right next to my feet. I pretended to be an elephant and it slipped away without biting me.

We’ve being staying in cheap accommodation, which has been great in some places, but when we arrived in Phnom Penh the guesthouse we arrived at could generously be described as a prison cell. Here’s Polly preparing to kill one of the 936 mosquitoes in the room.

Our good friends at work had given us a generous bundle of cash when we left (in no way would I infer that they couldn’t think of anything good to get us) so we decided to cash our chips. Next day, here we are at Raffles, Phnom Penh. The most delicious breakfast, complimentary massages by the pool, a room you can actually move in and free showery stuff like shampoo = heaven.

Here's a picture of me looking pretty sexy.

We’re not moving outside the hotel, Phnom Penh is proper busy and on the roads there are ten motorbikes per square foot. In two days we leave for Saigon (there’s a new name for it but I can’t spell it), which is apparently 100 times more hectic. We’re resting up good while we can, although I've been toying with some 10k training plans.

Cambodia

You’ve got to hand it to the Cambodians, they know how to motivate you to cross the road:



Cambodia: Transparency International rate it the 12th most corrupt country in the world, which is pretty good going. They don’t make much effort to hide it either, when we crossed the border from Laos we had to take a bundle of dollars to pay off various officials including a medical examiner who checked our temperatures by pointing a ray gun to our head. Notwithstanding the fact it looked like a toy gun, I can assure you I wouldn’t be making this journey if I was running a 100˚ temperature.

We’d spent the last four days in the 4,000 islands in the south of Laos, a really serene place made up of thousands of sandbanks but only a few real islands. We stayed on Don Kohn, the quieter and more laid back of the group and really did nothing but explore on the bikes and sunbathe. Polly looks like less of a glowworm now, although she’s still not being mistaken for a local.

Still, it wasn’t without its trials and no surprise that a bike was the culprit in our latest mishap. We’d been out for the morning, looking at waterfalls and beaches and trying to find the elusive Irawaddy dolphin (no luck) and were heading home when Polly and I had a little race on a straight of road. I had been suspicious about my bike since the start, it sort of wheezed as I peddled.

When Polly started pulling away from me I knew for certain there was a problem and it wasn’t just the colour of my bike.

Next thing I know the pedals have gone limp and the chain’s come off. I got the chain back on but the illness was obviously terminal and the pedalbox or whatever it’s called was broken. An old man passing by helpfully analysed the patient and came to the same conclusion and I had to get home the rest of the way like a proper numpty:



Nicely rested we took off to Cambodia, heading for Siem Riep and the Angkor temples. It’s a twelve hour journey so we decided to cross the border and spend a night in a terminal town (in every sense) called Strung Treng. Thank goodness we did because as our guesthouse owner merrily waved us off on the boat he shouted that the bus had broken down at Pakse and there wouldn’t be one to pick us up for a couple of hours. We smiled and shouted back our thanks.

When the bus finally arrived we literally had to fight for a place on the bus. I think Polly killed a man. It took us ten minutes to get to the border and another hour before we’d cleared the various pay points and had to fight once again for our place on the bus. At one point I wedged myself behind a telly just to make sure I was in a defendable position but the company finally conceded they would have to get more transport and herded the overflow onto another bus. Seven hours later we’d got to Strung Treng and left a group of twenty Australians and Brits already well on their way to alcohol poisoning. As we found out from the next day’s journey they still had another twelve hours to go. What a bitch.

So here we are, tomorrow we take on the hundreds of temples with our cyclo man Mr Chas, a twelve year old in charge of a motorbike with a cart on the back of it. Should be great.

Tickets, systems and disrespecting local culture

From the calm of Luang Prabang to the storm of Vang Vieng, the would be Ibiza of southeast Asia if it was made of bungie jumps, zip wires and wooden huts giving away booze and selling lots of ‘happy’ drinks. Not that the girl running around screaming for an ambulance seemed that happy, nor the girl we saw as soon as we stepped on the river bank who was passed out and surrounded by people we can only assume were trying to put her in the recovery position.

We arrived late in the afternoon and the fun was already well underway so we skipped the first couple of bars where everyone was grinding in bikinis like it was 3am at a rave. We got ourselves a bucket of gin and watched the Aussies go for it. I would have liked to have shown them a thing or two but was a little bit poorly so we left without so much as a sniff of a rubber ring.

This picture sums things up nicely.

We only stayed two days, the second of which we tried to find a blue lagoon about 6k from our hut. What we actually found was an impassable road with a girl putting up a sign with skull and crossbones on it and the words ‘Danger, death, explosion…’. We tried to go up anyway but a very persuasive dog convinced us not to. Dan’s traveling tip: If a dog comes at you barking, do not confront it and then run away. We didn’t get to the lagoon, but we did get to explore a cave with a couple of entrepreneurial kids who took us to a Buddha in the depths. Why was it there? No idea.

Vang Vieng was our first encounter with the mystical Laos ticketing system. Pedestrians are charged for crossing the river bridge and in exchange get a nicely printed ticket. So far so good and on our return we handed in the ticket to cross back. Apparently the ticket system is no match for the eagle-eyed attendant who accused us of having crossed twice on the same ticket already. Anyone involved in ticket distribution/collection can feel free to correct me, but in my opinion the system should be quite simple – pay and collect a ticket one way, return it on the other. I tried explaining this in my calmest manner for about five minutes before falling back to wild gesticulation and finally getting waved through.

Next morning we headed for the capital city Vientiene. Highlights included buying antibiotics without a prescription, finding a cash machine that didn’t charge and this wonderful decorative chandelier on the VIP bus.

I should have saved the camera for our next trip though, the sleeper bus to Pakse. ‘King of Buses’ claimed the disco lights on the back of the bus. King of Cramp more like, We’d got the last beds on the bus but were a little disappointed to find it was no bigger than a single bed. We hoped that a couple of people might not have made it so we could snatch another one but the bus filled out and we settled in. Dan’s travelling tip: If you ever get a sleeper bus alone, buy two seats. If we thought we had it bad we felt a lot better when the 6’5” bloke above us realised he had to share the bed with another lanky man he didn’t know.

We allowed ourselves a little giggle but no more. Some Aussie chaps gave us a couple of valium for the journey but I found a bottle of whisky (70p!) worked just as well.

Safely deposited at Pakse we decided to do a bit of shopping and Polly found herself a right bargain; three knickers for 80p! Probably should have washed them first though, she’s got dyed zebra pattern all over her bottom now.

There’s not much to do in the town except have a sunset drink on one of the roof terraces but the main reason for stopping over was to visit Wat Phu Champasat. It’s a Khmer temple dating back to the 5th century built on the side of what was described as a ‘phallic’ mountain. They must have had some weird phalluses back then. A gruelling climb up the steepest steps in the world was well worth it, the ruins and the view from the sanctuary at the top were amazing, we’d definitely recommend a stop if ever you come to this part of the world.

We’ve just arrived at Don Khon, one of the 4,000 islands on the Mekong River at the southern end of Laos and we’ve got sunshine, hammocks and beaches. The trial to be passed in getting here? Buying a ticket for the boat at the boat ticket office, only for the boat ticket office to tell you it’s not valid and expecting you to pay again. Some would say another flaw in the ticketing operation but five minutes of calm discussion followed by wild arm gesticulation once again gets the job done.

Injuries to body and soul

We’ve slipped behind schedule. Luang Prabang is that sort of place, it’s a grown-up town that’s happy wearing its slippers and smoking a pipe, satisfied with its lot in life and not trying too hard.

After our stay in the villages of northern Laos we were excited about the prospect of a working shower, warmth from the sun and posh restaurants and bars. While the dream shower continued to elude us – not surprising at the prices we’re paying – everything else lulled us into a few lazy days on the Mekong.

It’s not been without its troubles though; I’ve picked up two injuries and a cold. The first ailment was at the Lao Lao Bar, a sort of barbecue fondue where a bucket of red hot coals is sunk into the middle of your table and you cook a choice of meats over a metal dish, with noodle soup bubbling away in the dish round the side. I got a burning coal right on my pinkie and nearly kneed the whole table over Polly before I knew what had happened, but luckily no further damage was done.

The next morning we went out for an amble around the town, made it to breakfast and were overcome with fatigue so just ate our way through the day. We made up for it in some spectacular fashion the next day, breaking our daily Wat record and climbing Phu Si where there were some incredible views out over the whole province. I was so overcome I ended up doing a sexy pose.

The real highlight of the day came that evening. The best bar in town is a place called Utopia, which has a bamboo terrace overlooking the river and is incredible at dusk. More importantly, every Friday it has a volleyball tournament and so I put my name down, while Polly took the reigns as Head of Media and additionally Chief Cheerleader. She refused the miniskirt and bikini top I offered her for the latter.

So how did I do? It wasn’t looking good at first, I was teamed up with three Germans that looked like they were out of Glee and an Australian girl who had cycled 80k (we talk in ‘k’ here, it upsets me but that’s how it is) already that day. We lost our first match to a team of Cambodians who obviously lived in Laos and hustled the volleyball circuit, but won our next three group games. We literally bulldozed our way through the semi-final – I personally knocked a girl over on the way to victory.

And so to the final, after three hours of competition. I can’t speak for my teammates but I was five Beer Laos to the good and full of confidence that only blind drunkenness can give you. Polly was saying something about not having eaten any dinner but I was so focused I blocked her out of my mind.

It was the re-match everyone had been waiting for; Team Sebastien vs. The Cambodians. The first match was a close call but we narrowly lost. Then the second leg , and disaster. With the game tied I made the supreme sacrifice going for over a ball over my head. Turning on a sixpence, I executed an amazing overhead volley. The crowd gasped. Lying on my side, I watched the ball arc to the far corner as it dropped. It’s in! I’m going to win this single-handledly! But then joy to despair as the ball hit a branch on the way down – out! I got to my feet and as I took the commiseration from my team and the crowd (except Polly, she seemed to have gone somewhere) I realised that the pitch was not in fact beach and rather a concrete yard covered with a fine layer of sand. My hip was shot and my wrist unplayable. Needless to say, without my flair and vision we went on to lose. We went home dejected to a loser’s dinner of crisps and half a Dairylea baguette.

The plan for the next day was to go to the Tat Kuang Si waterfall waterfall but I was in pain and so we went to the hospital instead.

To pass the time while we waited for an x-ray Polly had brought her trumpet, so imagine the disappointment when we saw this sign at the entrance. We didn’t have to wait long though, the doctors laughed as they handed me my bill and sent me on my way with a couple of aspirin.

The next day we finally made it to the waterfall. Have you ever seen a bear in real life? I don’t see how this has slipped past the rest of humankind, but bears aren’t real. We saw a Moon Bear supposedly saved from poachers near the Quin Se waterfall and I can assure you from the movements of this actor that there's no such thing as a bear. All bears are humans dressed up in bear suits.

The park owners were probably putting dye in the water as well, the waterfalls were incredible although suspiciously not so at the top where everything starts out as a brown sludge. It took us half an hour climbing sheer mudbank to find that out.

And away again! Off to Viang Vien for the tubing...

Laod? Not much!

We’re back in civilization! If you’ve been worrying about our lack of updates I apologise on behalf of the northern Lao, who haven’t bothered to set up their internet yet. It’s probably not their fault though, I bet you BT have cocked up their change of address and they’re still on hold with technical support.

So without the ability to play Bejewelled or check on West Ham’s misfortunes we decided to get out into the fresh air and do some outsdoorsy stuff. Our first stop was Luang Namtha, a town that seems to have changed quite a bit since our 2006 Lonely Planet edition was published, so the bus station was not in fact 200m from the centre but 10k. Seems the Ministry of Transport moved it to give the tuk-tuk drivers something to do.

I can't blame them, not only does it give them an income but also something to do in the freezing cold. At night Polly slept in a pair of leggings, tracksuit bottoms, three t-shirts, a jumper and a delightful Lao fleece she had to buy in a fit of panic about the temperature.

We signed up for a day’s trekking which gave us our first taste of really being in the middle of nowhere. Great for us, not so great for the girl who decided to do the four hours up a mountain in flip-flops.

Some of the money for the trip goes to a village in the mountains, but don’t worry, I won it back from some kids in a game of Kataw. I was pretty amazing but this is the best Polly could do to capture the moment.

It would seem she was more interested in taking pictures of all the baby animals than watching me making mugs of the small children.

We also got on the bikes to see the surrounding area for ourselves, it’s a stunning setting and the hundredth Wat we‘ve seen even managed to provoke some interest.

Next to Nong Khiaw on the dustiest public bus on the planet. Not only did we get bronchitis but also enjoyed the entertainment from the driver, smoking away at the wheel and stopping off to buy a lovely set of brushes. Nong Khiaw is built on the River Ou between sheer mountainside and is breathtaking. By way of punishment for this pleasure we had to stay in a bamboo box, which claimed to come with a shower. It might more accurately have been called a drizzle.

We took a bit of downtime here but you can’t just get drunk all day (so Polly says) and we went off for a wander, encountering a herd of water buffalo appear out of nowhere while we were investigating a pond full of water lilies and stumbling on a cave that the Lao used to live in while the area was being bombed. I must have made quite an impression, they made me Chief of the Cabinet!

Word quickly spread about my appointment and I was invited to play football in the town square; apparently it’s a requirement for any incoming cabinet member.

Although the rocks on the pitch made slick passing a little tricky, the mountainous scenery made it feel like we were playing at the Nou Camp, albeit with trees for fans. Sadly, an heroic effort to stop the ball going out of play left me with a graze on my ankle and, as is tradition when I go abroad, the wound’s got infected and now I’m injecting iodine into it every ten minutes.

The following day we took a longboat up to Muang Ngoi Neua, which is inaccessible other than by river. They pack the tourists on like cattle on these little beauties, but my new VIP status meant Polly and I were granted the best seats on the boat. We didn't realise how significant this was till we hit the rapids and everyone got drenched but us. Result!

Even more stunning than Nong Khiaw, we only stayed on for one night; this had nothing to do with the town alarm clock, which involved some bloke banging a drum for ten minutes at four in the morning. He even had a little trick where he’d leave out a couple of beats every now and again to lull you back to sleep. The snooze button of the rural world if you will.

So that’s it, an incredibly painful four hour journey on the back of a truck and we’re here in Luang Prabang. It’s a bigger place than we’re used to but very laid back, we’re going to look at more Wats, go see a waterfall and then relax vigorously. We haven’t had a massage in days.

Pai Pai baby

Aaaaaaaah. We arrived in Pai a few days ago, a once sleepy village/hippy retreat which now has high street filled with market stalls, neon lights and as many gimmicky bars (stools made out of scales, walls made out of old bottles of booze, you know the thing) as you can shake a sleeping dog at.

We stayed a couple of kilometres out of town in a sweet little place called Aqua Resort complete with bright yellow, live frog in the toilet. Very peaceful it was, giving me time to reflect on my life’s achievements to date.

A couple of minutes later I was bored and out of material so we decided it was time to hit the road. Rumour had it that there were elephants and hot springs to be found a couple of miles away, but in the searing heat and with bicycles being out of the question after Polly’s incident, how would we get there?

The answer was obvious. Have thousands of Brits not blazed this trail already, drunk and without qualification? Yes my friend that’s right, we got ourselves a motorscooter. I once drove my friend Nigel’s motorbike in a field and nearly broke my leg after getting confused between the throttle and the break, and Polly isn’t going near anything so much as a handlebar moustache for a while, so we were both a little apprehensive.

After a couple of laps of the town I decided if we fell off going REALLY slowly it wouldn’t be so bad, so we paid motorbike woman a couple of quid and off we went.

First stop, to see the elephants. Massive they are. Massive, saggy and with skin like those brooms you use to sweep mud and leaves out of your back garden. We went for a ride on one, which must have been the most uncomfortable two hours of our lives. It turns out there’s a bone right between your legs, the ‘undercarriage’ if you will, that if beaten by an elephant’s spine for more than five minutes bruises up and leaves you unable to walk very nicely indeed. We thought it must be normal for elephants to take ten steps forward before rearing up, spinning around and trying to run off a cliff. Turns out it isn't, but our elephant didn't like going out on her own and had a new driver she'd never played with before. Naturally, the owners didn't mention this till we got back.

To recover we went to the mountain spa, natural pools of water that are so hot you can cook eggs in them. Sadly we only worked this out by the time we got to the top and saw everyone else doing it so didn’t get to cook any ourselves.

I did take a picture of Polly next to an egg sign though.

So much for Pai, time and tubing wait for no man. We’re off for a couple of days’ bus travel to get right to the north of Laos where it’s all mud, rice and whisky. Then on to Luang Prabang, where I expect it’s all going to go off.

PUPPY!