Latest photo update

The remains of a jet engine from an American F-111 destroyed by the Vietnamese during the American War (a.k.a. the Vietnam War in the US). Now on display at the Military History Museum in Hanoi.

Me and the good Doctor in traditional royal dress from the Nguyen Dynasty for our royal meal in Hué

A basket of live chicks for sale in a market in a small town outside Hué. These are bought, grown and then used for food. I saw one lady fill a plastic bag (!) with six before paying for them.

A couple more photos then

A view of the mountains of north Loas or Vietnam from our Air Asia flight from Bangkok to Hanoi. The flight cost about GBP 6 (ex. taxes). Air Asia sponsor the English Premiership referees despite only having flights in SE Asia. They also sponsor Williams.

Smoking hookahs and playing jenga in a bar in Hanoi. Amanda, me, Michelle and Sylvia.

Some of the Limestone stack formations around Tam Coc ("Three Caves") and huge lilies in the foreground

Cooking

Sunday 28 September 2008
Hué to Hoi An

So in the morning we caught a bus from Hué to Hoi An. It was raining and though we stopped off at a couple of places there wasn't much to see. We drove through Da Nang (which looked like a pretty boring commercial city) and stopped at China Beach, which is apparently famous and pretty long, but without any sunshine it was nothing special. The rain also meant that we couldn't go up a mountain pass (a range that splits north Vietnam from the south, and a tropical climate from sub-tropical) and get a "Kodak moment" as Hung said, which was a shame.

When we arrived in Hoi An the weather had cleared up a bit and we took a walk through the streets with our guide. The place is mainly full of shops doing bespoke clothes etc. and a huge market. We bought a couple of bits and pieces, including a tshirt of the Vietnam flag - a large yellow star on a red background (the communists, or rather pretend socialists, know how to do their branding).

The afternoon was spent updating the blog and chilling out before we went to a Vietnamese cooking class: stuffed white snapper, spring rolls, squid, won ton with sweet and sour sauce and probably something else that I don't remember. Of course we ate it afterwards and it tasted fantastic!

After that we decamped to a local pool bar and the good Doctor and I watched the Singapore grand prix which was awesome. The FIA actually made a correct decision, which was a miracle. Williams did really well, which was good to see, and Hamilton extended his lead in the championship. McLaren also took the lead in the constructor's by a point, and that old dog Alonso won of course!

A few games of pool and a chat with some other tourists on trips round Vietnam ended the night.

First of the Photos!

This is me and the good Doctor chilling out in Termal 3 at Heathrow before the holiday. I'm trying out my new camera.

Pete's tiny cat

OK the pics are taking ages to upload, that's going to have to be that for now. I'll try and do some more later.

Stray bikers "en passage"

Saturday 27 September 2008

On this day we went to see a few local hostorical sites around Hué, including pagodas, mausoleums, monestaries, nunneries and bridges. We even saw an arena where they used to make tigers fight elephants for the king. Transport was provided by a local with a moped, and our route took us through plenty of back streets and dirt tracks, with local kids smiling a waving to us as we drove past. We even high fived a few while in transit.

The highlight was the monastery where we saw some monks chanting and praying, but the buildings and gardens were beautiful, and I took a bunch of photographs which look like they should be awesome.

The other highlight was the pagoda which was one of the most famous in the area, and place from which in 1967 (I think) one monk who wanted to protest at American interference famously travelled from Hué to Saigon, sat down in the street and meditated in the lotus position, while his fellow monks poured petrol on him and lit him, and he remained there as he burnt to death. You may know the famous image that was taken while he burnt - it formed the cover of the first Rage Against The Machine album.

That afternoon we took it easy and spent the time at the hotel, swimming and eating to recover from the last two days.

I'm on the Nighttrain

Friday 26 September 2008

So we were on the night train to Hué, which luckily had air conditioning and a friendly Vietnamese chap in the same cabin as us. The only bad thing was the succession of 70s doft rock hits and then a potted history of Vietnamese military success that they insisted on playing over the intercom until about an hour into the journey. Luckily after a while I found a switch which turned it off.

As we travelled through the night the air con actually became a bit to cold, but there was no way of adjusting it so we put up with it.

Hué is a beautiful historical city with a citadel at the centre from the eighteenth century, and an Imperial Palace within the centre of that. Our hotel was right next to the palace, and after lunch our guide Hung (pronounced Hoong) took us around it. The palace was the seat of the Nguyen (pronounced n'WEN) dynasty, the last of Vietnam's dynasties, and for the greater part puppets of the French imperial forces. Not to mention consistently tragic, with many kings murdered, forced to abdicate or barren. But the palace was beautiful and our guide told us lots of facts, like drums symbolise yang (male) and bells symbolise yin (female). Yellow is the colour of royalty, red is for happiness, blue is for hope, green is peace, pink is love and so on.

We saw all of this in the soaring heat, and as soon as we were back in the hotel we jumped in the pool. That evening we had an Imperial meal, with the only couple in the group dressed as the king and queen, and the rest as mandarins and concubines (the second Nguyen king had over 140 concubines, which no doubt was hard to manage).

The meal was sumptuous and afterwards the good Doctor and I, and a couple of others went to a pool bar called DMZ Bar, and shot some pool. We also saw a bit of the practice run of the Singapore Grand Prix, which looked absolutely awesome. I also talked briefly to some American girls, but they were leaving and I don't think their male friends were that happy about it!

Full Metal Rucksack

Thursday 25 September 2008

So we went to the Military Museum in Hanoi which was quite interesting, though hampered by the fact that most of the signs were in Vietnamese so it was hard to tell exactly what you were looking at most of the time. However two things were clear. Both the French and the Americans had completely failed to conquer the country in the second half of the twentieth century. Therefore we now have scientific proof that both countries must be pretty lame! (We couldn't see any mention of the Australian involvement, so they missed a trick to show up that country as well!)

Also they had a nice collection of captured American military vehicles, and I took a picture of the good Doctor in front of a Huey helicoptor - the ones used in Apocalypse Now.

The weather by now was pretty wet, and we spent a good couple of hours trying to find the shop we saw the previous day that sold iPod chargers, with UK and Vietnam plugs. But we couldn't find it for love nor money. We decamped to a café for a short while as we waited for the rain to ease, then spent a bit of time in an internet café catching up with things.

We had a group meal with the others in the evening - man I love Vietnamese food - and then killed a few hours with some of the girls in the group having a few beers and a few laughs, before we boarded the train to Hué (pronounced hu-way, as in Howay the lands!)

Typhoon Hagupit hits north Vietnam

So after the meal a few of us hit a bar round the corner in the old quarter of Hanoi, and smoked a hookah and played a few games of Jenga with different shaped pieces. Pretty rock and roll!

The next day was the first full day of our tour, and we were due to visit Halong Bay north-east of Hanoi - a beautiful bay full of Dolomite-shaped limestone outcrops and caves. However Typhoon Hagupit was coming directly over the bay on exactly the day we were due to go there (and the area was evacuated) so we had to change our itinerary.

Instead we went to Tam Coc, known as "Halong Bay-on-land" basically the same idea but based on a river south-east of Hanoi, and a bit smaller. The weather was now completely changed from the sunshine of the previous day, with it being cloudy but still warm, and just after midday it started drizzling lightly. We took a bus there and then after lunch boarded small row-boats and headed up the river and through the caves. The overcast climate made everything a bit grey, but we took some nice pics and I also filmed us going through one of the caves.

As we piled back on the bus after the boat trip the rain started chucking it down with a vengance so we were saved from the worst of it. I slept most of the way back and then we hit up another restaurant, which was pretty much exactly like the last one but in a different location. We hit a bar again but jet lag was still with us so we went to bed at a fairly reasonable hour.

Hanoi or bust

So we went out to explore the city, and DAMN!!! It's hot. You might think when you leave the oven on by mistake the kitchen gets hot, but that's peanuts compared to Hanoi.

It feels about 35 in the shade. And in Hanoi, the scooter is king, and traffic lights are there merely as a suggestion. That makes crossing the road fun. James and I filmed a little comedy moment about that, which I'll try to get up online at some point.

So we walked around the city, saw the temple in the main lake in the centre of town and walked round the Old Quarter, full of shops selling everything from endess sweets to large cylindrical plastic containers of unknown medical products, to everything else you can think off.

We had a meal in a restaurant recommended by James's brother who was here two months ago (it was great, and cost GBP 6 for three mains and drinks...) and then hit a cocktail bar recommended to us by some Aussies we were sitting next to for the meal.

Quite a few cocktails later we headed back to the hotel singing Divine Comedy songs to no one in particular. They costed GBP 20 - by far the biggest bill we've had so far on the trip.

The next day we hit the French quarter and now it was even hotter. I was like a human fountain and had to walk around most of the time without my shirt on just to survive. When I was getting some money out at a cashpoint, one woman felt sorry for me and started fanning me with her fan! It was that bad! We even went to a museum mainly because it had air conditioning.

In the evening we met up with all the other people on the Intrepid tour that we're taking. They're all Australians - well, shit happens I guess! And then we went for a meal - to the same restaurant we went to the previous night! Still, the food was good and really cheap so it was all good.

Have to go now, but the next post will follow about what happened when the Typhoon hit north Vietnam...

Three cities in two days

So we caught our flight from Heathrow to Abu Dhabi on Etihad, which is an awesome airline: loads of room, new planes, large TV screens, etc. Abu Dhabi airport seemed really tiny and like a coral space pod, and I think I accidentally managed to block a toilet. But we weren't there long as we caught our connecting flight to Bangkok.

Bangkok airport is nice and new, only a couple of years old. We caught a taxi to James's friend Pete's place, somewhere in the city. To be honest I didn't get to understand exactly where we were, Bangkok's pretty huge for a start and we spent most of the day getting over the jet lag

We did a bit of shopping for some essentials and had a couple of meals in local restaurants. Then we turned in at about 9 as the sleep caught up with us.

The next day was a flight to Hanoi in Vietnam, and a mix up on the timings meant that Pete had to drive like a maniac to get us to the airport in time. Luckily we checked in with less than a minute to spare, not that the people behind the desk seemed too worried.

So we're now in Hanoi which is noticably warmer and sunnier than Bangkok, and seems a lot more colourful and picturesque. Though I haven't really seen much of Bangkok yet except for it's high rises, so I'll reserve judgement on that until later.

We're off to explore the city now before we start our tour of Vietnam proper tomorrow. Ciao!

I haven't packed yet

So tomorrow I leave for Thailand. It's bang on 8 pm and I haven't packed yet. But I still have time.

It's a bit crazy. It's still monsoon season, I don't really know much about any of the countries that I'm visiting. I haven't packed. It's going to be fun.

I'll try to upload stories and photos as often as I can, let's see.

Ciao for now.