We've been home a week
now and it feels odd. Its an extremely odd feeling/ mixture of
emotions.
The first few days were
great, actually a lot less depressing than I had expected. I found
myself taking mental notes of all the novel little things, things I'd
never noticed before but was suddenly acutely aware of and
experiencing through a fresh pair of eyes. First and foremost, I
found the concept of flushing toilet paper down the toilet and not
putting it in a bin, ridiculous. For about 3 days after we returned,
I had to constantly fight the urge to bin the paper and kept worrying
I would block the drain/ kept imagining where the toilet roll must be
ending up.
Another thing I noticed
more was flies. I found myself more interested in them, more aware,
more wanting to avoid them/ squat them. I had never had this
relationship with flies prior to our trip.
Other little things
that took some getting used to included not using foreign phrases to
say please and thank you, and not having to accept/ give things with
my left hand (as is done in Asia). I seemed to be more aware of
strange noises such as lawnmowers and helicopters in the sky and I
liked being able to drink tap water again, although I was hesitant
and cautious at first (ironically, having gone 10 months around the
world and travelled through some of the world's poorest countries
without ever having to go a day without a shower, the day I got home,
the water in our neighbourhood was off and I had to skip my shower
and brush my teeth with bottled water!). One final thing that I found
novel for a few days, was being be able to sit with the soles of my
feet pointing upward and it not be considered rude/ an insult.
But now its been a
week, and all of these novelties have more or less worn off, and what
I'm left with is a sort of fear and realisation that its back to the
real world. Its only just hit me tonight, as I attempted to pack a
holdall for a weekend away and struggled (!) doing so, what an
achievement the past 10 months have been. I think I have been
blocking it out for the past week, not looking at any pictures or
allowing myself to contemplate what has been and is no more. It's
only just hit me that its over. We planned it for two years, it came,
and now its over. We're not just having a rest at home and then
getting out our shells (rucksacks) again to re-pack them. Nobody will
ask us how long we've been away for and we will no longer proudly reply '10 months'. We wont do laundry, struggle with zipping up our
bags, fumble with currency or check tripadvisor. I wont steal tooth
brushes, spray mossie guard, take malaria tablets or wee in a squat.
Its officially over and now the question is: what next?
Well, Siem Reap is one
of the places I have looked forward to the whole trip and I was
worried, after some people's reports, that it wouldn't live up to
expectations, but it actually ended up surpassing them! Definitely
one of my favourite places in the world!
Siem Reap, home to
Angkor Wat, is the national pride of Cambodia, even the Cambodian
flag has a picture of Angkor Wat on it. Angkor, literally meaning
'city' is an ancient city that was re-discovered in the 19th
century in the middle of the dense jungle and it is one of the top
three 'lost cities' in the world (after Macchu Picchu). It has such
an amazing feel to it. The whole of the ancient city, consisting of
hundreds of temples, is part of a huge national park and you buy a
pass to get in and can visit as many of the temples as you like. We
opted for the three day pass, which could be used over three days
(doesn’t have to be three consecutive days).
Exploring the temples
So, we got to Siem Reap
the town, late at night and checked into our hotel which was number
one on trip advisor. It was lovely. Very peaceful, clean, all the
amenities, and very friendly staff who always said hello to us and
greeted us by our names. The night we got there, Jemma felt ill and
it was raining outside, so we decided to order room service and we
had fish and chips and burger and chips brought up to the room. It
was scrumptious. The next day, we spent having a lie in, exploring
the town, and getting our bearings. The 4* hotel next door had a pool
that you could use, so I also went for a swim in that. The town of
Siem Reap its self is very touristy, but that's why I liked it. Lots
of Western food, and Western bars and a nice atmosphere, with night
markets selling souvenirs and fairy lights in the street.
Main street in Siem Reap
On our second day in
Siem Reap, we started our templing. The weather was really hot during
the whole of our stay there and we took a tuk tuk from outside of our
hotel. We we hired the driver for the whole day to take us around the
temples. He was so lovely. First stop was not Angkor Wat, but some
other amazing mystical temple set in the middle of the jungle. It was
gorgeous. The best temple I have ever seen. The temples of Angkor
have such a mystical feeling to them. Second stop was the Tomb Raider
temple where they filmed Lara Croft with Angelina Jolie.
Tomb Raider temple
That one was
mind blowing. You see huge trees and roots growing out of the temple
walls and wrapping around the temples – it is like nothing else I
have ever seen! It was very impressive and showed the power of
nature. It also felt like you could imagine what the person who
discovered it felt like because it was literally hidden in amongst
the jungle. It was stunning. The next few days consisted of
experiences like this – riding around in the tuk tuk through the
stunning Cambodian countryside (rice fields, banana trees, little hut
villages) and getting out to explore these hidden ancient temples. We
stopped for lunch at a really nice restaurant and had a break there,
before continuing with more templing in the afternoon.
On the second day, we
got up at 4am to watch the sunrise over Angkor Wat. I was a bit
worried we wouldn't make it in time, as the hotel forgot to make
Jemma's packed breakfast so we had to wait for it, but we made it
there just in time to see this:
It wasn't as good as it
could have been, due to cloud cover, but it was still stunning.
A lot of people had
told us they were disappointed with Angkor Wat because there were too
many tourists there. Luckily for us, we were there in the low season
(rainy season, although we actually had fantastic weather), so there
weren't as many tourists there – peak season there are 7000(!)
tourists a day at Angkor Wat, when we were there, there were
supposedly 2000, but we hardly saw any. The only downside to the
temples, which wasn't too much of a downside, was all the sellers
there -lots of little kids trying to sell you books, bracelets etc.
We ended up giving in a few times; once because a little girl about 4
chased our tuk tuk for about half a mile and I couldn't resist her
(she was so cute). Every temple you go to though, you hear 'Madame! 2
for $1, you buy me, you help me, 3 for $1!'
Another day, another temple
It is similar to this
in the town of Siem Reap too, and one night when we went out, we had
one small boy holding a baby in his arms, approach us and ask us to
buy him milk 'I only want food not money'. So we went with him to the
supermarket, thinking, ok, maybe we'll just buy him one bottle of
milk for 20p, but no, he wanted a tin of powdered baby milk off the
shelf with no price on it (the only thing in the whole shop with no
price on it). We asked him how much it was and he said $18. We
sniffed a scam and left straight away. Later that night, I googled it
and found out it is in fact a very common scam, it happens every
night in Siem Reap (we saw it happening to lots more people whilst we
were there and the same boy even approached us the night after).
Basically, the boy takes the tourists into the shop, they buy the
powdered milk for $18 and then the milk gets given back to the shop
to be recycled on the next gullible tourist and the shop and the
beggar split the profits. Considering the average Cambodian makes
around $100 a month, this is an extremely profitable scam!
Day at pool
In between our three
days of templing, we gave ourselves a day's rest, lying by the pool.
I was getting templed out by this point. I also hit my head on one of
the low doorways in a temple and it really hurt! I was happy to have
a day's break. We ate in the town every night and one night we went
to a restaurant that had a live show of typical Cambodian dancing on.
We also treated ourselves to a massage one night (a 'seeing hands'
massage, by the blind). It was something I'd wanted to do every since
I'd seen it advertised but it was absolutely terrible. They spent 20
minutes just pinching our arms and then at the end of the massage
they slapped my back with brute force. They said it was a Japanese
shiatsu massage, it felt like amateur torture – it was awful! We
did laugh a few times though, not at them, but with them, because
they kept knocking the massage oil on the floor and then couldn't
find it (because they were blind) so we had to keep reaching down for
it. I had to burst out laughing at one point when I looked across and
saw the blind woman battering Jemmas feet. Jemma was wincing in pain.
I burst into raucous laughter, because I knew I'd be getting the same
a few minutes later.
River front at night in Siem Reap
Overall, I loved Siem
Reap and the Temples of Angkor, it made me love Cambodia. It was much
cleaner than the rest of Cambodia – no litter etc and very friendly
people. Probably all a show for the tourists, but still, it was nice.
I would highly recommend it as a holiday destination for anyone who
wants to visit Asia!
After Phnom Penh, we
decided to head down to the southern coast of Cambodia as we'd heard
there are some lovely islands and beaches down there. Unfortunately,
we were in the middle of rainy season, and when we got there, there
were heavy monsoons. We checked into our first hotel in Sihanoukville
and it was way below the standard we had become used to over the past
2 months in S.E Asia – no free soap or shampoo, no complimentary
water! It wasn't that bad, it was actually the biggest room we've
ever stayed in, but it just felt a bit creepy (high ceilings – they
always creep me out). We didn't like the feel of the place.
Biggest does not always mean best
That
night, I wanted to ring my mum for her birthday but the internet
didn't work in the room (sods law, the only hotel we've had in Asia
where the internet doesn't work), so I went down to the reception to
use it there, waiting until midnight to ring home. Then at 10pm, the
woman started to turn off all the lights and shut the shutters on the
front of the guest house and said they were turning off the internet
and couldn't leave it on in case it burned. Despite our pleading,
they wouldn’t change their minds, so we had to go to the bar across
the road to use the internet there. When we came back to the hotel
around midnight, we were locked out! We couldn't get back in. We had
to go round a dodgy dark alley around the back and hammer the back
door down. I could see a girl sitting in the room behind the door
just looking at us. Eventually, when I shouted 'hello!' loudly
several times, she finally let us in. The next day we checked out.
The towels were dirty and there had been a hole in the bathroom
ceiling. We didn't want to stay another night. Instead, we checked
into a luxurious hotel down the road that is probably the nicest we
have stayed in! The bathroom had a bath and a window onto the bedroom
and it had a lovely pool. We went for a walk along the beach and it
had a hippyish vibe to it, with lots of old Western men and young
Cambodian women there together. The beach also felt very dirty, with
litter everywhere, and we didn't trust any of the restaurants not to
give us food poisoning so we ended up going back to our hotel and ate
at the more pricey restaurant across the road which was lovely.
New room, new pool :)
We
shared a bottle of Malbec together and it reminded us of Argentina.
We decided to treat ourselves to the wine, a nice meal and dessert
because there was nothing else to do there. Food in Cambodia is quite
a bit more pricey than the other countries because they use the US
dollar as their currency, so everything is $1, which sounds cheap,
but that's about 60p for a coke, whereas in Thailand it would be 30p,
so Cambodia is double the price for many things, still not expensive
though.
The next day we checked
out and took a bus to Kampot, a town the Lonely Planet describes as a
'quaint little French colonial town'. On the minibus on the way
there, we were discussing how, despite having done a round the world
trip, we didn't feel like true travellers because we'd never
travelled on a bus with live chickens before (something many
travellers report as a norm). We ate our words a few minutes later,
not because someone with live chickens got on, but because the bus
stopped to pick up every man and his dog (bus built for 13 people,
ended up holding 26) and we were travelling with live crabs stuffed
between our legs. The bus stopped every 5 minutes to pick up some
package or another (sea food etc), which had to be wedged in between
our legs and made the journey go really slowly.
Kampot
Eventually we got to
Kampot and a tuk tuk driver approached us with a sign asking us to
stay in his hotel. As we had nowhere booked, we went with him and
ended up in an average place (this time with free toiletries), but
again, the weather was terrible, so what everyone had described to us
as being a lovely coastal down, just looked miserable. Our hotel was
on the bank of a river, where people supposedly go swimming in
summer, but we just had to make do with borrowing an umbrella and
walking into town. Luckily, we happened upon a lovely cafe, where
they made Swiss hot chocolates and where the staff were really
friendly and wanted to practice their French on us. We ended up
hanging out there for a bit and then went back there afterwards for
tea (fish and chips). In the end, we both decided we liked Kampot,
despite the rain.
Today we visited the temples of Angkor and experienced Angkor Wat at sunrise. It was a dream and a childhood ambition come true. It was one of the most spectacular experiences of the whole round the world trip and I absolutely love Cambodia.
Phnom Penh is the
capital city of Cambodia, and while we were here we did all of the
cultural/ historical stuff: some nice, some very sad.
On the first day we
went to the national museum, which had a lot of old statues in it and
had some beautiful gardens, it reminded me of Bali. Then we went to
the Royal palace.
National museum
Royal Palace
The next day, we hired
a tuk tuk for the day to take us to the killing fields and S21 prison
to learn more about the history of Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge.
Before we visited Cambodia, we both read 'First they Killed my
Father' and extremely sad an graphic book which tells the story of
one young girl's sad plight after 1975 when the Khmer Rouge took over
Cambodia and massacred a quarter of the population. We also watched
the film 'The Killing Fields', so we had a pretty good knowledge of
what went on in Cambodia, the genocide and the sheer brutality of the
Khmer Rouge, who took over the country, killed anyone they deemed
intelligent, middle class, or basically anyone who wasn't a pheasant
farmer, and then forced everybody to work on farms until most people
either died from starvation, disease or was brutally massacred by the
Khmer rouge soldiers. For anybody who doesn't know the history, it
too much for me to write on here, so here's a link for more info. It
really does defy belief. More information on the Khmer Rouge
Memorial tower with skulls and bones inside
I have never been
anywhere like the killing fields in my life. Even the concentration
camps in Germany don't have the amount of living history this place
has. When I say living history, there are literally still bones and
old clothes coming up from the ground you are walking on. All these
years later (the killings happened in the late 70s), its incredible
just how many dead bodies were dumped in the mass graves there, so
much so that each time its rained, more parts come up from the earth.
They say that the dead wont lie still. I couldn't believe it. Some
parts are fenced off, but on the walking paths, we saw bones and
clothes poking through and I even saw some teeth poking up on one
part of the path.
They have a big memorial tower with all the skulls
of the victims in (the Khmer Rouge brought people to the killing
fields to be murdered – they made them stand next to a pit and then
smashed in their head and slit their throats, letting them fall into
the pits). Men, women and children, all were killed in equally brutal
ways. Pol Pot, leader of the Khmer Rouge's philosophy was that you
needed to get rid of the roots of society in order to create a new
perfect communist society, hence why they even killed babies. By far
the most harrowing sight, was a tree, against which the soldiers used
to smash the heads of babies to kill them in front of their mothers,
before tossing both of them into the pits. They used to hold the
babies feet and then smash their heads against this killing tree.
Killing tree: Used for killing babies
The
man who discovered the killing fields after the Khmer Rouge fled,
said he knew it was a killing tree because there were bits of scalp,
blood and skull all over it. Killing fields like this, existed not
just in Phnom Penh, but all over Cambodia. It is so very sad.
After the killing
fields, we went to S21 prison museum, which was a prison the Khmer
Rouge kept people in before they were sent to be slaughtered. People
hadn't done anything wrong, they were forced to sign confessions that
they had been disloyal to the party etc and they were tortured until
they confessed and until they signed that their family had been
involved too. In the prison, as well as seeing the cells etc that
they were kept in, you also see hundreds and hundreds of pictures of
the victims and putting a face to all those skulls you saw earlier in
the killing fields memorial is heartbreaking. They also showed us a
video about a couple who were both murdered and their love story. It
was a very sad and draining day, much different to the day before
looking around the palace and national museum.
It was a relief to get
into Cambodia after the hecticness/ noisiness/ stressfulness of
Vietnam. The border crossing wasn't a bed of roses though, we took a
3 hour bus to the border and then had to wait at the immigration
office in a queue for about an hour and a half whilst they messed
with everyone's passports and dished out visas. A few hours later and
our bus pulled into Phnom Penh, capital city of Cambodia, and I
breathed a huge sigh of relief – it was so much calmer than Ho Chi
Minh City. We checked into our gorgeous hotel (we splurged and got a
posh one for £10) and then we went out for tea. We needed cash
first, but cash points aren't easy to come by (well not as easy as
they are in Vietnam), so we had to walk for a while to find one, in
the pitch dark. Whilst Cambodia is a lot calmer than Vietnam, its
also a LOT poorer, and the streets are not very well lit at all,
which can feel slightly dangerous. I think Cambodia is the poorest
country we've visited on this trip – it actually seems poorer than
Laos or Bolivia. For example, you have lots of people begging you for
money, and you see women washing their naked babies with bottles of
water in the middle of the street. There is also a hell of a lot of
litter and rubbish – an overwhelming amount. I don't think they
even bother to sort out rubbish – they seem to just toss it in the
street, and it all piles up everywhere, which makes the towns look
quite ugly (this was my first impression of Phnom Penh). However,
despite all of this, Cambodia certainly has a charm – the food is
really tasty (like Thai, but even nicer!) and the people are
friendlier/ warmer than Vietnam. You don't have to worry as much
about constantly being ripped off. One thing that has shocked me
about Cambodia, is the amount of western old men/sugar daddies with
young 20something Khmer (Cambodian) women – its actually worse than
Thailand, which I wasn't expecting.
The countryside in
Cambodia is stunning, and it was a relief to see the Thai style
architecture again (temples, Buddhas etc) as you don't get any of
that in Vietnam. I like all of the greenery: we are here in rainy
season, so everything is lush and in full bloom. As you drive along
on the bus, you see lots of rice fields, green banana trees and
villages made up of little wooden shaks, babies running around naked
etc. Its how you imagine South East Asia to be, well, at least how I
imagined it to be, and its a country I've always been interested in.
As we are here in rainy season, we have had a lot of rain, including
some very scary thunderstorms which woke us up in the night and we
had to check on the internet to make sure it wasn't an earthquake.
I'm really enjoying all of the differences and there is a lot to see
and do, but at the same time, I think we're getting tired now; tired
of all the dirty squat toilets, long uncomfortable bus journeys and
insect bites. It's not Cambodia's fault – its more the fact that
we've been on the go now for 10 months, which is a long time to be on
the go by anyone's standards and I never thought I'd ever get to the
point where I felt like I'd had enough but I think we are nearing
that point now... which is really convenient because we are nearly at
the end now anyway. However, now we're near the end of the trip, I'm
really savouring every minute and taking it all in more than ever. I
know that as soon as I get back to the UK, I'll be daydreaming about
trading in home comforts for foreign cultures, so I'm trying to
remind myself of that now, because you don't know what you've got
till its gone, and no doubt I'll read this blog a few months down the
line and lament the lack of noisy buses and smelly toilets in my
life.
After Nha Trang, we
made our way down to the most famous city in Vietnam, Ho Chi Minh
City (formerly Saigon). This time we took a day bus instead of a
night bus and it took us 12 hours to get there (Vietnam is really
long and the buses are really slow and inefficient). I had really
quite looked forward to Ho Chi Minh as it has a lot of history (war
museum, Cu Chi tunnels etc) and it is one of the most famous cities
in Asia, but in the end, I really didn't like it. There were simply
too many motorbikes; more motorbikes than I have ever seen in my life
and it was just impossible to go out and do anything because It was
so stressful. I nearly got run over (the guy actually mounted the
pavement and ploughed straight into me – I had to jump out of the
way, and I was quite shaken afterwards!).
Bikers with masks on
Also, it was a really
polluted city, everybody there wears masks and I can see why. It was
hot, and just going out the hotel and crossing the road to the shop
was exhausting. Add to this, the constant noise of horns and people
constantly hassling you, along with throngs of backpackers sitting in
bars and getting wasted on the dollar beers, and you have a good idea
of what Ho Chi Minh was like. But enough of the bad points, there
were some good things about visiting the city. We got to learn a lot
about the history of the Vietnam war (or the Armerican war as they
call it in Vietnam). We went to the war museum, where they have old
captured American military planes on display in the car park. I found
this fascinating because I've never seen real war planes I the flesh
before – they had tanks, helicopters, planes and all sorts. And you
could look inside them, touch them etc, there were no restrictions.
Then you go in the museum and it is one of the most graphical and
disturbing museums I have ever visited.
They have lots of pictures of
people who were injured and killed during the war by the Americans.
The images are horrific – lots of pictures and stories of mothers
and children who were slaughtered by the Americans – just like the
Nazis did to the Jews, in the most inhumane ways. They had one story
of an American general who ordered a whole town to be pillaged and
all of the women and children were murdered and beaten to death. Some
kids tried to hide in a well and they found them and disembowelled
them. I was just gob smacked that Americans had done this and so
recently as well! I really had not realised how brutal they were and
how in the wrong they were to go to war with Vietnam.
The general in
charge of that particular slaughter later went on to be come an
American senator! Of course, there are those who say the museum is
very biased – it only shows the Vietnam side of the story –
however, you just can't argue with the pictures we saw. The worst
part though, even more horrific than the room with the war
photographs, was the agent orange room. The Americans sprayed the
Vietnamese countryside with toxic chemicals – the most toxic known
to man – called agent orange. They said it was to destroy the
crops, but it was so deadly that it is still having ramifications to
this day – with millions of Vietnamese now disabled or with cancer
as a result. It carries on in the genes, so children and children's
children will continue to have problems in years to come. The
pictures were really disturbing – lots of deformed people, and one
display even had real foetuses in jars.
So yes, that was an
enlightening and disturbing day.
The next day, we had a
lighter day (just) and visited the cu chi tunnels – the tunnels
that the Vietnamese built and hid in during the war. They were very
impressive.
We all got to go inside them and they showed us all the
death traps that were used to trap and kill the Americans. At the end
they showed us a video talking about the brave soldiers who killed
the American enemy. When we got into the tunnels, we could go as far
as 300m along them, and at some points you had to lie on your back to
get through because they were so small. I got out after 100m because
I felt faint and claustrophobic but Jemma did the full tunnel. At the
other end, they had guns that you could fire with real bullets (AK47s
etc) but Jemma found it distasteful and anyway we didn't have enough
money so we just watched. It was very loud.
The next day we did a
final tour of the city, which took us to the Chinese quarter (just
some old markets) and some temple (seen one temple, seen them all –
yes I'm coming to the end of the trip now – can you tell?) and then
we went back to the room and just watched TV because we had had
enough of the city and couldn't bare the stress of it any more. I
went and picked up 2 pizzas from pizza hut and we just ate them in
the room whilst watching Desperate housewives. And that was the end
to our Vietnam adventure. I was so relieved to leave Ho Ch Minh the
next day and was really excited for Cambodia. Although I had really
enjoyed the rest of Vietnam (especially the seaside bits), some of
the people, the night buses and the traffic had stressed me out and I
was ready for calm.
Nha Trang is a beach
resort where lots of Vietnamese, Australians and bizarrely, Russians
go on holiday. I think I saw more Russians there than I have ever
seen anywhere else. There are lots of Western restaurants and bars
and I really quite like the place. One one of the days, we took a
really cheap boat trip out to go snorkelling. It cost us £10 and for
that we got a full day out on a boat, jumping off the boat and
snorkelling around the best reefs I've seen on this trip (much nicer
than the Great Barrier Reef!) and we went to some lovely turquoise
waters next to some rocks.
We also had an amazing Vietnamese seafood
buffet included in the price. There were some lovely people on the
boat with us and it really was an amazing day!
The following day, we
went to a mud spa which was amazing! We paid about £6 and for that,
we got a day's access to a kind of spa-themepark, with various spas,
pools, waterfalls etc. The best part was that we got our own private
mud bath – first time I've ever had a bath in mud before and I
absolutely loved it! It was so funny, and very tricky to wash off –
despite the power hoses that we walked through and despite going in
various pools afterwards, we still found mud in crevices for days
later! Later that day, we also hired a tandem bike and cycled along the promenade - it was hilarious. I loved Nha Trang and would recommend it to anyone who wants
to go on holiday to Vietnam.
After taking several
night buses in Vietnam, I can confir that they are the WORST way to
travel over night. I NEVER want to take another Vietnamese nightbus
every again in my life. They are bumpy, noisy, the driver honks his
horn every 2 seconds for no apparent reason, they force you to go to
the seats at the back of the bus near the stinking toilet because you
are Western, the toilets are disgusting and don't lock so you have to
hold them shut whilst squatting. The seats though are th worst part:
they are filthy – probably never been cleaned since they were made,
the curtain next to you is rotting, the seats are lying down ones,
which sounds great, but its not, because they are too small, and you
have a filthy little metal box at the bottom to put your bag and feet
in. Then you have a grotty hard pillow, and you have to lie there,
packed in, with other travellers either side and below you (we were
always forced onto the top bunks so the locals could have the bottom
ones and the top ones are the worst for swaying and the bus has no
suspension whatsoever). It is impossible to sleep. The last night bus
we took, I slept about 1 hour out of 12. I honestly can't stress
enough how much I hated them and I'm so glad I never have to do
another one!!
Hoi An is a typical
little ancient Vietnamese town, very touristy, but at the same time,
quite enchanting. We spent 4 days there. At night there are lanterns
lighting up all of the streets and you can have dinner overlooking
the river which has lots of floating lanterns in it and women in
traditional hats punting along in little boats.
Quaint little city - perfect for exploring with a bike
One of the main
features of Hoi An is that it is full of tailor shops and everywhere
you walk, people are asking you to come in and have clothes made. The
clothes are amazing – they basically base them on UK catalogues
like Next and you can see lots of different outfits hanging up in the
windows. On the first night we were having dinner in a restaurant and
the waitress asked us if we wanted to go in the clothes shop nextdoor
and have a look around after out meal. We couldn't really say no (she
was very insistent) so we ended up in the tailor shop and
consequently bought 12 new items of clothes in total. I had two
traditional Vietnamese tops tailor made and a skirt. Jemma had some
work clothes made.
Jemma getting work clothes made
Our other days in Hoi
An were spent either walking around the town, having one of those
pedlos peddle us around the town, or cycling to the beach.
Large group of Chinese tourists being pedalled around
The day we
cycled to the beach, we saw some amazing scenery; rice paddies,
traditional little houses by the river and a stunning beach. We
stopped at a cafe by the beach, where we got hassled by lots of women
selling stuff and had no choice once again but to buy stuff we didn't
need. We had sob stories and lots of English phrases thrown at us
such as 'luvly jubbly' and 'open your heart, open your wallet'.
After Hanoi, we took a
horrible night bus down south to Hue which was an awful journey.
It was something like this:
Hue was nothing special
– just a small town with a few heritage sights that we looked
around in one afternoon. We also took one of those pedal taxis for
the first time, where a man peddles you around town. We both got on
one together.
Getting a ride around town
Ancient city of Hue
We also had an AMAZING hostel, which was more like a
hotel than a hostel. We spent a day watching TV and chilling out in
the massive, luxurious room. That night we met up for dinner and
drinks with one of my colleagues from work (James, a placement
student). The next day we had to catch another 4 hour bus and I was
so hungover I didn't think I'd make it but a tuna sandwich and chips
soon perked me up.
Our nice hostel in
Hanoi packed us off on our night train to Sapa. When I say packed us
off, I mean they literally carried all of our bags, put us in a taxi,
got someone to meet us at the train station and then put us on the
train! The night train was our first train in Vietnam and it was a
lot higher quality than Thailand. Comfy bunk beds and a cabin of
four. We shared with two Vietnamese men, one of which had tissue
stuffed up his nose. I slept ok, the train was still as shaky as
those in Thailand but not as loud but the air con was far too strong
and I shivered the whole night. I woke up with a sore throat and
running nose, no prizes for guessing who I got it off.
Night train
Our train arrived at
6am and we were met by a minibus that took us along some winding
country roads into the mountains of Sapa. The scenery was out of this
world. Layers and layers of Rice paddies, greenery, blue skies... it
was stunning. I was very tired though. We got to our hotel and they
gave us breakfast (egg and bread) and then we checked into our room,
had a shower and had about an hour to get ready before our trek. We
were both so exhausted! Anyway, we got ready and our guide met us
downstairs in the lobby (a little tribal woman with a gold tooth) and
then took us out into the town with 4 French boys and 3 Malaysians.
As we began walking along the road towards the mountains, a group of
hysterical tribal women began following us (we had seen this group
earlier when our minibus pulled into the hotel, they were all
screaming and running after the minibus). The group consisted of
about 20 women, all carrying baskets on their backs, and being naïve
and new to the ways of Vietnam, we had no idea why they were
following us.
The women who followed us
Then they started talking to us and asking us questions
'How long you been here? Where you from?' and we got chatting to
them. I naively assumed they just wanted to practice their English,
but it was a very stupid assumption to make; why would a group of 20
women follow us on a 4 hour trek in the mountains just to speak
English? Anyway, the trek went on, and we clambered through and
across rice paddies, those ones that are like steps and lead all the
way down the mountain. It had been raining earlier and it was
extremely muddy and slippery, to the point where EVERYONE in the
group fell over at some point. Jemma actually slipped off the edge of
one of the rice tiers and jumped into the one below, submerging
herself up to her knees in water. She was very lucky she didn't go head
first and soak her whole body.
The rice steps - Jemma slipped & fell from one level to the one below
We were all so muddy, having slipped
on our bums so much. I slipped down a steep hill at one point and
just gave up and slid down the rest of it on my bum because I
couldn't stand back up in the mud. It was kind of fun though. And all
the long, the women were there to help us, holding our hands to stop
us from falling, catching us when we slipped. How lovely the
Vietnamese tribes are we thought! What a great authentic experience
we are having, trekking with a tribe in the outer reaches of rural
Vietnam.
Stunning Scenery
And then we came to the cafe in the mountains where we to
have lunch and what happened next can only be described as a swarming
attack. The women were all over us, in our faces, 4 women to a
person, shouting at us for us to buy what was in their baskets.
'Please buy from me, my baby needs food' 'buy me I helped you' 'buy
present, buy for my village, I need money'. The 8 of us were sat
around these little tables and we had no escape. The tour guide
disappeared and our lunch would not come until we had all bought
something. I wouldn't mind, because the women had helped us a lot
during the walk, but the prices they were asking for were so
unreasonable and they wouldn't budge on them at all. We ended up
buying two purses that we didn't even like/ want/ need!
French boys being hassled
Then the food
came, and then after that, the tour guide, who we hadn't seen for the
whole of the trek, reappeared and announced it was time to move onto
the next village, at which point the first tribe of women scurried
away, and we were joined by a new 'tribe' of women, dressed slightly
differently, in different colours who swarmed around us and each one
latched onto a different person. 'Where you from? How long you been
here? I from new tribe, different tribe, poorer than that other
tribe. How old are you? Do you have brothers or sisters?' We walked
through a small village that was scattered with 'home stays'. The
French boys were doing a home stay, we weren't, and when we saw the
home stays, which were actually just concrete hostels that had been
put up in the middle of a village and had nothing homely about them
whatsoever, we were glad we weren't staying there. We were especially
glad, when we saw a minibus pull up to take us back to the main town
of Sapa. We literally had to run into the bus and tell the women 'no
we don't have any money left on us!!!' They chased us and I shoved
the equivalent of about 40p into their hand and jumped on the bus.
They weren't happy, and shouted at us they wanted more, but
thankfully the bus drove off, and I was so relieved to get away. The
countryside had been so stunning, breathtaking, like nothing I have
seen before, and I had been so enchanted in the beginning to be
getting an 'authentic Vietnamese experience' but the women just
ruined the whole thing completely for me and I would never want to go
back.
Village
Just wow
But far too much hassle off the various tribes
We got back to the
hotel that afternoon and went straight to sleep. I felt so ill, fluey
and my nose wouldn't stop running. It was the worst cold I've ever
had in my life. I dragged myself out of bed for dinner, where we had
a lovely meal and got chatting to a Chilean and Israeli about
politics, but then I had to go to bed early because I felt so rough
and couldn't breathe because my nose was so blocked. I had the most
sleepless night of the whole trip, literally could not breathe and
went through about two toilet rolls from blowing my nose every two
seconds. We were supposed to go on a second trek the next day, but I
was too ill, and Jemma couldn't be bothered with the women hassling
her, so we stayed in the room and I slept whilst she watched films.
She went out to get me some medication and I took it and it knocked
me out. Then we had dinner, before getting on the night train again,
back to Hanoi. I wore extra layers this time, in preparation for the
freezing air con, which was a mistake, because the air con in our
carriage was broken and I sweated the whole night long. At least I
was sweating the cold out though. When we got back to Hanoi at 6am,
the guy from our hostel came to collect us, with a brolley to shelter
us from the rain, and we checked into our hostel and slept for the
whole morning.
