Welcome to the Jungle

Like everyone else who's read Graham Greenes' classic novel about love and war, the Quiet American, I suppose I had built up a semi-romantic ideal of what Saigon would be like before we had arrived. Of course it's no longer like it was. For one thing it's named Ho Chi Min City and is now a thriving, modern metropolis; home to what seems like a billion mopeds that clog the streets at every turn and avenues lined with super-brand stores like Versace, Luis Vitton and Diesel. Some parts of the city have remained relatively well preserved and hint at the colonial past; the famous Continental Hotel however had undergone a "makeover", which clearly hadn't done it any favours, but ce la vie, things move on. I'm sure there are still certain Americans who still think coming to London will be like walking on to the set of Mary Poppins.


Saigon failed to charm either of us in the way that Hanoi had done, but that's not to say we didn't like it, its just that we both particularly fell for Hanoi. Like most of Vietnam you can't fail to eat incredibly well wherever you go and Saigon didn't let the side down. Once again, we found ourselves spending large portions of our time on street stalls in the evenings and having long lunches in back alley restaurants, where you could dine on plates of superb shellfish, eel cooked in Bamboo tubes and amazing noodle soups all washed down with cheap beer or some half decent chilled wine. We were also lucky enough to have found ourselves an excellent budget pad on the top floor of a building off the main drag with an entire roof terrace to ourselves. OK, so it was up nine flights of stairs, with no lift, and come six thirty seemed to be home to half the bats in Saigon, but it was good to have some respite from the heat and craziness of the city below.

Culturally and historically, Saigon was also fascinating and we were keen to use our time there to learn more about Vietnams long history of conflicts, the war with the US for me having the most relevance being brought up on a diet of 'Nam action films and references. So we donned our touron badges and piled on the bus with the middle aged Germans and took a couple of excursions to check out the sites (hiring a moped would have been tantamount to suicide...). As it happened the tours were really well organised and properly informative. We first visited Cu Chi - a couple of hours outside the city and home to the notorious VC Tunnels.

Now, if you don't know much about these, they are the huge network of tiny underground tunnels that the rural Viet Cong dug and lived in for years and used to outwit the US military in the region. Besides the total remarkabilty of anyone being able to live solely in dark, cramped, boiling claustrophobic holes and caves for years on end, barely ever emerging to daylight, the sheer ingenuity of their tricks and traps is overwhelming. Faced with the worlds most advanced and well funded military, they used only their knowledge of the land and what they had to hand in the jungle to scare the living crap out of the invaders. Lethal traps were set everywhere that were basically invisible to the US soldiers, and tiny trapdoors that could only accommodate the small frames of the VC would fly silently open in the ground, enabling them to stealthily take out soldiers - the enemy paralysed by fear and unable to work out where fire was coming from. As the guide told us, many US soldiers later claimed that they felt like they were under attack from ghosts. In addition, they used tactics like rubbing US military soap (that troops had carelessly thrown away) around entrances to dens to throw the army's dogs off the scent - being familiar with the smell of it on their US troops they padded on. They also learned to cook underground, making small kitchens that they only used in the early hours of sunrise when the jungle was covered with mist so no smoke could be detected.

There is no doubt that what happened in the jungle there was horrific and while both sides inflicted terrible fatalities on each other, you can't help have a sense of respect for a simple rural people, who, faced with a far superior military might, still managed to outwit the enemy with nothing but guile and basic hardcore determination. We both did the long crawl down one of the tunnels in the dark (which were actually made bigger for westerners to get their bulky bodies down) and I can tell you that it is far from pleasant. The idea of living in one for years, facing the potential of being bombed or shot every day must have been a grim way to live, although it was pretty amusing to watch a rather unpleasant overweight Bermuda-clad French couple emerge from the hole at the end looking like they were going to need CPR. Cruel but funny.

During the afternoon we visited the War Remembrance Museum, and if the tunnels weren't reminder enough of the trauma of war, then this was a real kick in the head. The full scale of the horror of the damage done was laid out in graphic photographs, models, and piles of armaments. Quotes from brain dead soldiers and shocking news reports accompanied the images - the scale of the US brutality toward the Vietnamese (and Cambodians) was almost incomprehensible and shows up politicians like Kissinger and Nixon for the absolute excuses for humans beings that they really were. Worst of all were the sections on Agent Orange - it's not often you can hear people audibly gasping in public museums. Its testament to the nature of the Vietnamese that little over thirty five years after such appalling crimes were committed (some of which you can still often see on the bodies of men in the street), that they've open their arms to the US and have managed to successfully move on.

The rest of the day took in the slightly bizarre Independence Palace, which reminded me of a cross between a seventies Corbusier designed college faculty building and the lair of one of James Bond's nemeses; the interior being decorated in a totally un-ironic kitsch retro style, with a games room and even a dance floor with bar on the roof. Down below in the basement lay a catacomb of somewhat sinister telecommunications cells and an operations centre complete with giant maps dotted with pins showing territories lost and won. Doctor Strangelove came to mind - "You can't fight in here! This is the War Room!".

We left Saigon after four interesting days headed for the mighty Mekong Delta, somewhere I'd always wanted to see. Unfortunately the trip this time included a fairly artificial representation of life on the Mekong, being dragged round "working villages" to "see villagers go about their daily lives" (alarms bells always ring when this phrase is used...). Can I also say that while over the amazing month we travelled Vietnam, we came to love many aspects of the culture, but folk music is not one of their strong points - think stray cats and out of tune violins. Luckily for us the scenery and company were excellent, and we met our new travel bud for the next crazy and slightly messy week - Mr Mike Beatty from San Francisco.

After a night stop over in a small delta town, we headed out at sunrise for the second part of the trip, the floating fishing villages, and then onto the badass of a journey that would take us all the way over the border and into the heart of Cambodia - nine hours on a slow boat up the Mekong. If you think you've ever been hot before, then think again, nine hours in one hundred degree heat, sat on the stinking dirty engine of a small dilapidated river boat squashed in with thirty other people is HOT. Thank god for endless cold beer and Californian positivity...


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Saigon, The Mekong Delta and Slow Boat to Cambodia

Roll with it

One of the funny things that happens when you spend several months living out of a backpack and sleeping in different places sometimes every other night, is you develop a few rituals to get some sense of organisation in your life and to try and prevent every room you stay in from resembling a second year students bedroom in the space of two hours of your arrival. It's probably fair to say this applies more to a couple travelling together than a single bloke/girl/bunch of mates on the road, as you've already developed some domestic habits back home to stop each other from going berserk on a regular basis, but bathrooms in particular seem to have become an area in which we've just kind of unwittingly established some rules.

Wearing contact lenses, I take over one side of the sink while Sam has the other (generally tidier) side, and toothbrushes are always left with the heads hanging off the side of the sink to stop any nasty little buggy thwangs running all over them in the night. I've even become quite good at putting the top back on the toothpaste, which is a good thing too, as it's never pleasant to wake up to a two metre motorway of army ants coming from a hole in the wall on the far side of the bathroom to stock up on a lifetimes supply of Colgate.


You may have noticed also from previous blogs that I seem to have a bit of a mild obsession with describing the idiosyncrasies of various hotels, home stays, shacks and dives we've found ourselves in, and bathrooms are probably one of the most interesting of these (you may well disagree). For some reason, Asia, in its long history of innovation (they had streetlamps while we were living in caves! etc..), seems never to have worked out any sense of bathroom ergonomics. Granted, Asian people do make use of bathroom facilities in different ways which we are all pretty clear on, but I still have not understood why in most bathrooms, which are the size of postage stamps, they continue to put toilet roll on a holder which is ALWAYS in the line of fire of the shower.

Asian bathrooms are basically "wetrooms", i.e, room with sink, toilet, bucket and pail and a shower, which drains away to a hole in the floor. More often than not the shower, of temperamental pressure, will fire all over the bathroom covering the sink, mirror and toilet; so inevitably you get used to taking the bog roll out of the room or wedging it somewhere stupid to prevent it getting soaked and a resultant trudge down to reception/local shop to get a replacement. Sam has far more brains on this sort of retarded behaviour, so its usually me that ends up finding these scenarios a pain in the arse. I don't know if it's because (particularly in India) they just don't give a shit about toilet paper (pardon the pun) that they do this, but it still bizarrely pisses me off. Maybe I will write to the Daily Mail about it.

One thing that did cheer me up on this lovely subject however, was a story Sam told me about a tenant she had while working back in Oxford who had a bit of bathroom trouble of his own. An Indian guy who'd been hired for some contract work by a English company had come over for a few weeks, and they'd paid for his accommodation in a smart short rental apartment. After receiving a call from the downstairs residents who were not happy people, they headed over to investigate and found that the Indian chap, thinking things were just as they would be back home, had decided to take his traditional shower and stood in the middle of the bathroom on the tiled floor while using a bucket to pour water over his head. Unfortunately English bathrooms don't work quite the same way, and the result was several gallons of water slowly leaking through the downstairs owners lounge ceiling. I guess everybody gets a little confused sometimes...

Anyway, Asian bathroom oddities aside, we had arrived in Dalat, which was another stunner in the Lonely Planets continual ability to get things totally fucking wrong. As far as we could ascertain, other than sitting atop a considerable range of mountains and being the home to Vietnams cheap and actually quite drinkable domestic wine, it had no particular redeeming features. However, we had met the lovely Stephanie from Holland on the bus up, who became our travel companion for the next several days and we had a great time knocking back the local plonk, taking some motorbikes out to the countryside for a few jollies (see pics for girls looking like female version of Seventies cop show CHIPS) and visiting the weird, and aptly titled "Crazy House", which looked like it had been designed by disciples of Guadi and H.R Geiger on a bad acid trip. All in, location aside, we had funny few days.

Next stop was Mui Ne, which was reached by without doubt the worst road we've ever been on. Parts of it actually looked like it had been ripped open by an earthquake (a combination of flooding and extreme heat seemed to be the real reason though), with two foot deep tears in the road in some places, meaning a relatively short windy bus ride ended up taking hours, and probably induced Sciatica in half the over thirties on the bus.

Mui Ne is basically a very hot, very long beach town with a small fishermans village at one end. It's popular with the Vietnamese for holidays as it has some very smart resorts, but also with Aussie Kite-surfers who come for some of the best Kite-surfing in the country along with Nha Trang. Some days there are so many kites on the water you wonder how they don't end up decapitating each other. We had come for a few days R&R though, and quickly met up with some people from Saarf Laahdan who we spent the following afternoons soaking up the sun and drinking round the pool with.

One of the main attractions nearby are the massive dunes, which look like something from the set of Starwars and are big enough to actually sledge down, so a bunch of us set out on motorbikes at five AM one morning to check them out. We overshot by about twenty miles and ended up a a tiny Vietnamese village where we encountered a few "fuel-based issues", i.e someone couldn't get the fuel cap open (not me for once). The locals obviously found this totally hilarious, but it was all resolved quickly and humorously after a trip to the village mechanic.

As it happens, getting lost on the motorbikes on a deserted ocean road at sunrise turned out to be a far better experience than the sand sledging itself, which was run by a group of initially pleasant ten year olds, who rapidly turned into a mini version of the Mafia once the tip turned out to be less than what they were angling for. There probably isn't much that beats the absurdity of being blackmailed to pay cash to a group of semi-psychotic pre-pubescants for the return of your flip-flops on the set of Starwars. I was half expecting Obi-Wan Kenobe to pop out from a bush and tell us to head for the service station before the Sand People came for us...

Anyway, having successfully escaped the wrath of the Vietnamese cast of Bugsy Malone, with funds still intact and flip flops on feet, we headed back for a tour of the "quaint" little fishermans village. We only stayed for about three minutes however as it stank so badly of salted dried squid in the late morning heat that it made it impossible to walk round, so it was back to Mui Ne for a swim and beers, not before grabbing a quick shower to get rid of the stench of rotten fruits de mer. Of course, I forgot the golden rule about the bog roll again, so it was off down the shop for me...
 
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Dalat and Mui Ne

Who Stole the Sole?

We were on our way to Hoi An, reputed to be one of the prettiest towns in Vietnam; old cobbled streets, colonial French architecture and HQ to the best tailors in the country, but first we made a flying visit to Hue, Vietnams old Capital and home of the Citadel of the Nguyen emperors and the Forbidden City.

Hue, (pronounced Hway as in "Haway the lads") is a fairly laid back but not particularly attractive town with mostly drab concrete utilitarian buildings set along the (deceivingly) romantically named Perfume River. It is however easy to forgive them this, as being very close to the North-South divide it was the site of some of the worst bombings in the US/Vietnam Conflict and some gruesome mass executions by the VC. Much of the city incurred the full wrath of American fire power, including a lot of the old monuments central to the history of city. Reconstruction is still taking place across the town and when we visited the Forbidden city and Palace parts if it were actually being worked on to restore it to its former glory. Nevertheless, the Citadel and the Forbidden City and Palace (located in its centre) remains very impressive and still evokes much of the sense of power and ceremony that must have existed there when the Nguyen Emperors ruled.

The following afternoon we headed on to Hoi An on one of Vietnams super efficient buses, passing en route the notorious battle sites Da Nang and China Beach. In stark contrast to Hue, Hoi An is as attractive a town as you could hope to find in Vietnam; incredibly quaint, with beautiful old houses crammed into a maze of streets. Cafes, restaurants, art and jewelery boutiques make up literally every other building, and there's a bustling row of food stalls with superb fresh produce and seafood straight from the market just fifty metres away.

We arrived in the evening when the town looks at its best - everything lit up with rows of red lanterns hanging from the facades of shops and houses, and restaurants filled with the scent of Vietnamese cooking. We also managed to stumble on a specialist wine cafe where we ended up ploughing through a few bottles of Bordeaux with a couple honeymooning at one of the expensive resorts on the edge of town. By the look on their faces when told them we were paying twelve pounds a night for a smart hotel with pool I gathered they they were probably paying ten times as much - even we had been surprised at just how cheap good accommodation is in Vietnam.


The next morning we set out on bikes to check out the town properly, which by the light of day was totally different. Although still quaint, we both felt it somewhat resembled a vintage version of Bicester Village Retail Park in places (but without the kids in Kappa tracksuits smoking their mums Bensons in the car park). Being a UNESCO heritage site you get the sense that the town is somewhat fossilised, which in some respects is great as it retains its old appeal, but the downside is that it feels very touristy and a little artificial. However, it does have some of the best cooking we found in Vietnam and as ever we were more than happy to while away the afternoons in restaurants or down at one of the street stalls; one of which produced the best Shrimp Wantons either of us had ever had - so good we went back three times.

Hoi An is also a lager drinkers paradise. It's not often you can go out with a pound, get eight pints of lager and still come home with change for a Wagonwheel. At those prices it could well be the next big Stag party destination, if groups of hammered blokes were into buying pashminas and handmade Mangowood tableware in between bars that is...

Anyway, the sun had finally reappeared with a vengeance and we were now well into the Southern half of Vietnam. Sams S.A.D had miraculously disappeared (personally I put it down to the healing power of cheap lager), so we headed on for Nha Trang - Vietnams big, brash seaside town for a few days of kicking back on the beach. Pulling into town at five AM it seemed strange to see locals on the promenade doing Thai Chi, out jogging and exercising - clearly they get up early here we thought, but by nine AM it was easy to see why - temperatures had soared to plus thirty and by lunchtime it was so hot that you could barely stay out for more than an hour without looking like Michael Winner in a Sauna.

Several people had said to us that they hadn't liked Nha Trang, that they found it too commercial and developed, but as ever these things are subjective and we both took took a liking to the place. Yes it is built up and modern, and little old style architecture exists but its not pretending to be anything else and we've both found that despite the general preference of travellers toward rural environments all the cities we've been to we've had a great time in. I guess we're more urbanite than we thought!

For a big city, Nha Trang has a surprisingly good beach - clean, golden sand with turquoise blue water and a good inland wind making it a kitesurfers paradise. There are also two superb upmarket beach hangouts; Nha Trang Sailing Club and The Louisiana Brewhouse, which is as far as I know is the only micro-brewery on a beach in Asia. Of course there was some sampling to be done so I ordered the full Beer selection menu and had my first pint of Ale in nearly five months. On balance, I'm still pretty sure Ale tastes better in a decent English pub with a pickled egg on a hazy Autumn Sunday afternoon, but I wasn't complaining. So, we went posh for a few days and got waited on hand and foot while lazing by the pool and on Saturday night hit the mega beach party that the Sailing Club puts on, and had our first encounter with South East Asias notorious "Buckets", which are essentially a bucket or massive jar loaded with whisky/vodka and red bull.

Now, its pretty plain to anyone that hard liquor is not meant to be drank out of litre buckets but we didn't want to be rude obviously. Unsurprisingly it turned out to be a fairly wild night of dancing on the beach which involved me getting into an absurd argument with an even drunker French man who stole my flip flops (I'm sure there's a joke about a French man and flips flops?) and me then trying to rip them off his feet while he tried to run away. Myself and a new Canadian compadre tried to hunt him down unsuccessfully (mainly down to the fact that neither of us could see straight), so, alas that was the end of my authentic Brazilian Hiavanas...goodbye my friends, you have served me well. I hope you enjoy your new home on a smelly Frenchmans feet.

If you were to rate hangovers on a scale of one to ten, then the following morning would probably be about a fourteen. I was unable to leave the room for a whole day and in the words of Withnail felt like "a pig shat in my head". It was pretty evident that we had not been consuming buckets of Grey Goose and Highland Park, probably more like formaldehyde and ethanol, but a good party is a good party and I'll always treasure those four hours that I can't remember from the night before...

We did eventually pull ourselves out of our self induced pits of despair, and before we left for our next destination had time to fit in an afternoon at the mud baths (see pics for attractive couple looking like they're covered in cow shit), visit the marine life centre and also eat possibly the best fish and chips ever, made with beer-battered fresh Sturgeon cooked by an Aussie Ex-pat who looked disturbingly like Alf from Home and Away. Maybe it was a little more exotic than the traditional Cod, but sometimes all you need after a big night out is good old fish and chips...

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Hue, Hoi An & Nha Trang

Ain't no Sunshine...

The Australian guy next to me on the bus to Ha Long Bay was looking decidedly ill. We'd exchanged a few words when we got on the bus which pulled out of Hanoi at seven thirty AM, but I could tell he really wasn't up for a conversation - he had that dead-in-the-eyes look that you only get from a savage hangover and you'd only got to bed three hours before. There were five guys who had all been staying in the Hanoi Backpackers Hostel in town and judging by the sound of it they had gone on a proper bender the night before. Pretty much at the first pit stop we arrived at to they all piled off and grabbed more beers and it was only ten AM. From then on it was drinks all the way to the ferry to Cat Ba island, and while amusing to start with by the time we'd got there everyone on the bus looked like they wanted to batter .


We'd been told before we took the ferry to Cat Ba Island that it could be a bit "badly organised", but that had turned out to be an sizable understatement. What it was actually closer to was herding cattle onto a floating container and then barking orders at them for the next four hours. Ten metres off shore the captain announced "you bring you own drink you pay us five dollar to drink". To which there was much disagreement and shouting of "this is bollocks mate" and "you are very bad men" etc.etc. They clearly waited until everyone had bought themselves a few beers and then imposed the surcharge when there was nothing you could do about it.. We refused to pay as did a Portuguese couple with kids we sat with. We were then blanked for the rest of the trip. Their own beer was extortionate and the food provided was crap, but the Aussies didn't give a toss though and after abusing the captain/pirate king got thoroughly pissed again on the roof of the boat while trying to pull a group of Swedish student girls. The stop at the cave on the way was equally as fun - with "you go in cave now - come back in half hour we leave, be quick". Inside the island cave which was clearly impressive (once,) a host of coloured lights on cycle illuminated the walls in pinks and greens. A (presumably calming) backing of what sounded very much like the theme tune to The Gallery off Tony Hart played through speakers mounted on stalactites. It was difficult to move without someones camera in your face or bumping into Japanese tourists queuing up to have their picture taken together on a pink Stalagmite that looked sort of like a Dolphin. Ha Long bay is a real spectacle - no doubt about it, but it is tourist hell. They really need to sort out the local mafia idiots who manage the boats over.

Cat Ba itself is a strange place. The largest island in the bay, its like staying in an out of season Minehead or Skegness. Think Vietnamese League of Gentlemen. Modern-ish glass fronted hotels called things like "Hotel Holiday View" and "Hotel Happy Land" look out onto a harbour and rows of small restaurants knock out very average food, as if they cant be bothered. Maybe they can't - as far as we could see its a pretty dull place to live. At night women would stand singing Karaoke in bars on their own, no audience, just them. I'd imagine you'd go a bit mad. Apparently its rammed in summer with mainland locals but the rest of the year is just a steady trickle of travelers passing through for to check the bays out.

It started hammering it down the day we arrived, adding only to the dreary English seaside town feel, but we booked a trip out Lan Ha Bay anyway, undeterred and not wanting to waste the trip. We were taking a boat out with half a dozen other guys to do some Kayaking around the limestone Karsks and towers of the bay and a few were planning on climbing and doing some deep water soloing (free climbing on rock over deep water). Luckily we got a boat with a great crew this time and an even cooler bunch of people to spend the day with - it was a real laugh. Our Kayaks were full off rain water after hours out on the sea, and climbing was called off due to conditions being too bad, but it was amazing to get out into the bay all the same, paddling around amongst the floating villages with their fish pens and sea-dogs that had never seen land. We didn't waste any time leaving the next morning however and grabbed the fast boat back to the mainland and sanity...

"I've got S.A.D. Definitely". We were in Nimh Binh, a few hours south of Ha Long and it had now been raining non stop for the last four days. "It's making me depressed". Sam was convinced that the lack of sun for all of ten days since we'd left India was taking its toll and she now had Seasonal Affective Disorder. It had been chucking it down solidly - proper cats and dogs. "Raining all ze animals!" as I'd once heard a Frenchman so eloquently put it. We had come to Nimh Binh to see the the famous caves at Tam Coc a few miles away but there was no chance of that now - the idea of more rain, spending a miserable day in plastic dollar macs sitting on an open top rowing boat and getting soaked to the skin was just not appealing. The town itself was not exaclty charming too; an industrial, grey looking place made worse by the dismal weather. You got the impression that even if was sunny, the locals would still struggle to raise a smile. So we did all you can do when your plans are rained off in a strange town - hole up in the hotel, read, talk rubbish to friends on the Internet and watch whatever American trash happens on HBO/StarTV/Discovery. I did feel slightly better after speaking to Edd from back home who was currently riding out one of the worst winters in recent years in Kiev. A ball busting minus thirty, coupled with a failing boiler and a drunken landlord who seemed to only break things every time he came round to attempt to fix them. Even though it was raining like something out of the old testament, Nimh Binh it wasn't really cold, and we were separated by 55 degrees. I'm pretty sure he would have swapped places right then.

A duff afternoons travelling is still better than an average afternoon in the office, and all was not lost. From the wreckage of the trip to see the caves we did manage to forge some entertainment in Nimh Binh, notably meeting Mr Lee, a ninety year old Vietnamese gent who now lived in San Francisco, while we were in a coffee shop across the road. He had moved to the US in the mid sixties and was back in Nimh Binh, his home town to visit family. He was without doubt the best turned out Vietnamese chap we'd met and certainly a contender for GQ's best dressed man of the year - if they had an geriatric category. We sat and had a couple of whiskeys and he chatted away about America, Vietnam and his business in San Francisco. In between he made organised notes about something or other in a leather notepad with a fountain pen in the sort of handwriting that you only ever see grandparents use. He was a fascinating old guy, and we could have spent hours talking with him and sipping whisky, only I suspect he would have drunk me under the table.
The other saving grace was the hotels menu. We'd considered venturing into the town to see what we could find on the street stalls, but by the time what was left of the sun had gone down it looked like a scene from Bladerunner; neon lights shrouded in rain - sour faced women with umbrellas everywhere and rats scurrying from one side of the road to the other, so we ordered in. The menu, had everything, pork, beef, eels, snails, frogs, catfish and even snake, which I probably would have tried if hadn't been $30 a plate. The bottles of green liquour with pickled cobras that lined the shelves of the hotel didn't do much to sell it either, so fancying something different we ordered the frogs legs along with a few other dishes. Now, I've eaten frogs legs before, in France as a kid and in the UK, but these were something else. They were huge, like the legs of some amphibian that had spent too much time hanging around Selafield or Chernobyl. I asked the waiter, who spoke good English whether these were actually frogs legs "They are specially farmed! Big frogs!". He wasn't wrong. It was hard not to imagine Olympian size frogs that could jump twenty feet in the air. I expect they must have very high walls at the farm just to stop them escaping. Anyway, they were good, a bit like chicken as everyone says but a bit more, well...froggy.
It had been a weird few days. It was still raining heavily the next morning and showed no signs of improving. Sam had a permanent frown on which said "I didn't sign up for this". It was time to head South.

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Ha Long Bay, Cat Ba and Ninh Binh

I wish it could be Christmas every day...

Well in Hanoi it is! Or at least it appeared that way as we taxied our way into the city centre under drizzly grey autumnal skies, fresh off the plane and still rocking shorts and t-shirts. Shop fronts sparkled with decorations, hotel lobbies sported green plastic Christmas Trees and Santa's peered from the rear windows of cars. It was mid January. We were a little confused. Our taxi driver had no idea where he was going and couldn't speak a word of English and pointing to the map in the guide book only seemed to confound him further, but he nodded and made positive noises anyway. I'm pretty sure we could have shown him a map of Bolton and he would have done the same, but we were getting a free impromptu tour of Hanoi and frankly we weren't complaining. In fact neither of us could stop smiling as we passed street upon street amazing looking food stalls, women in conical hats carrying yokes piled high with fruit and vegetables and old men sipping steaming tea on street corners.

After four months of amazing travel in India everything looked brand new; different faces, different architecture, different smells and sounds and we were excited. Eventually we found our hotel, and in fairness to the driver it wasn't easy - hidden down and alleyway with no sign and sandwiched between a hairdressers and a moped repair shop. I'll tell you this though, ten bucks gets you a lot in Vietnam, the room was a palace compared to what we'd been used to for the last several months, "We've got a DVD player! Check the beds out - silk throws! We've got a fully loaded fridge! The shower has got proper water pressure! Amazing!" The young Vietnamese guy stood in the door way with our bags must have been wondering whether the weird hyperactive English girl usually carried out inventory on every hotel room she stayed in. I asked him "whats with all the Christmas decoration still up?" "We like them" was the response. As good as answer as any I suppose...

As I'm sure you've worked out now, food is a pretty central theme to the blog (and drinking, yes...) and Hanoi was looking good. You know things are going to be interesting when you've got a woman with huge pot of black snails cooking away outside the front door of your hotel. Now, don't get me wrong, we loved the food in India, it is hugely addictive, incredibly tasty and always different wherever you go, but the Vietnamese take cooking seriously. Indian street food is good, but once you've suffered a few bouts of Delhi Belly and spent several days on the pot wondering whether it was battered thing with the black sludgy dal in the bus park in Jaipur, or the vegetable pakora cooked in possible week old oil on the high street in Bikaner, you get a wee bit wary. Never once did this happen in Hanoi. I'm sure once you get out into the burbs there are plenty of dodgy establishments, but the food in the city always looked and smelled fantastic. As the advice goes, if its busy, and its being cooked in large amounts (usually by a grumpy woman who looks like she means business) then you're pretty much ok. This seemed to be the case for most of Hanoi's numerous street food stalls.

The way things seemed to work is that each stall will specialise in something different; maybe a particular noodle dish, soup, kebab, salad or even just one type of seafood, like our sea snail lady next to the hotel. This means dinner is basically picking what you want then finding the stall that does it. If you want a salad to start then you can, and you then can follow it up with some shellfish at another stall two streets down. It's literally like having a huge market to walk round containing all the things you want to eat and someone there to cook them all in the best way possible. Grab yourself one of the playschool plastic chairs made for mini people that the locals perch on and some 30p beer and away you go!

Just before we came away I had a two day blow out and gastro-bender with my brother for his 30th birthday, which I would be missing. As some of you probably know Tom's a pretty decent amateur chef and and to say he likes his food is an understatement (a 1.3 kilo T-Bone steak eaten in Rome is still the Personal Best as far as I know, the sick man...). We picked one restaurant each; I chose St John  in Smithfield, Tom went for Bocca di Lupo in Soho . Over the course of of 24 hours we ate and drank as well as two blokes can. Between us we devoured Roasted Marrow Bone with Parsley, Ox Heart, Sweetbreads with Fennel and Bacon, Radish, Celeriac and Pecorino Salad with Truffles, Lardo di Colonnata with Walnuts, Tuscan Blood sausage with fava beans and Foccacia with lung and spleen simmered in lard and smoked ricotta. We even ate a full English breakfast in a greasy spoon in between which I'm mildy appalled at myself with. So, I was on the phone within the first day of arriving for the wind up... "mate you have got to see some of the food here!" listing a smorgasbord of grub "Ive already eaten two dinners today! You would love it - literally the best shellfish I've ever seen and loads of mad shit Ive never seen before, its as cheap as it gets too". I got the impression it was mild torture for Tom at the other end. "I'm so happy for you. It's pissing it down here and now you've made me want to get lunch" Sorry bro.

While we're on the subject, the coffee is worth mentioning too. It's outstanding. Our first cup of the local stuff was in a tiny doorway shop where an old guy who looked like Mr Miagi still weighs out the beans with lead weights on vintage brass scales. It's got a incredibly distinctive taste - slightly nutty and chocolaty, very strong and thick and it rips your head off. After a proper cup of Roman Espresso its about the best cup of coffee I've ever had. We later discovered that's its just as good iced and mixed with sweet condensed milk too, which in the ninety degree heat of the South goes down a hell of lot better than the hot stuff.

Anyway, it was good to be back in a city where there was so much to eat and drink for the first time, and the three days we planned on staying quickly turned into a week. Just so we're clear and you don't think we're a pair of chunkers we did actually do some cultural excursions (see pics for evidence) other than hang around street stalls stuffing our faces, although admittedly that was a considerable part of it. There actually aren't a huge amount of specific sites to see in Hanoi, but if you're happy just to wander and take it in then its perfect - the Old Quarter is hugely atmospheric and an absolute hive of activity (based mainly around cooking or eating unsurprisingly) and its fascinating to get lost in - provided you don't get taken out by one of the millions of mopeds that seem to be hell-bent on driving into you.

We had a couple of really good nights out too; the Saturday night market is superb and rammed with locals and there are some good bars also including a decent smoky Jazz club which we hit one rainy night (naturally). There were some pretty talented local musicians belting out some of the old classics and an excellent guest sax player who got up and went a bit crazy - the locals seemed to love it though and we got summoned over to a table full of extremely drunk office workers who seemed to want to toast themselves and us every ten seconds and drink themselves into total oblivion while sliding steadily off their chairs. Very funny to watch...

It's probably fair to say no other nation that conjures up a more vivid set of images in the global psyche than Vietnam. For many the name itself still represents a conflict more than a country - it was really interesting to start to separate the modern reality from the history lessons. Later on we'd see more of the ravages of the wars Vietnam had been subject to, but for now it was enough to be spending time in a beautiful, sophisticated Eastern city drinking in a whole new set of experiences.

View our pics here:

Hanoi

Planet Rock

You'll be pleased to know this is only a short blog, not one of the usual mega-essays, and the last from our four months in India...

Hampi, in the state of Karnataka was our final destination before we left for Vietnam and kind of an addendum to original plans, but it really turned out to be one of the most fascinating places we'd been and it's worth a mention in its own right.

People almost always say when talking about thier travels "the pictures don't do it justice", and while that's undoubtedly a truism here, you can probably get a fair idea from the pics we snapped as to why were so blown away by it - it really is quite unlike anywhere else you're ever likely to visit. Just in terms of the bizarreness of its geological makeup alone, its visual impact is huge. Vast mountains of house-size red boulders sit stacked upon each other as far as the eye can see - almost like piles of pebbles by placed there by giant hands. Lone ones balance impossibly on the tops of hills silhouetted against the blue sky. A winding river flows though the valley floor filled with men on coracles and lush green paddy fields surrounded by palm trees reflect the images of the mountains. Somewhere, an lone eagle screams high over head...OK - I'm taking the piss now but you get the picture. It's easy to see why this place was, and still is viewed as holy land, and there are temples and shrines every where to testify. It really does feel at times like you're on the set of an Indiana Jones film, although in the eternal tradition of fact being weirder than fiction its hard to imagine anything but nature being able to bring to life somewhere so fascinating.

The main town itself is bisected by the wide meandering river with the bulk of it on the South side and the quieter more traveler-friendly area on the North. We stayed on the North bank which is only reachable by boat across the river and even then it seemed only until six pm when you would then have to grab someone with a coracle to get you across. It never failed to entertain how there could be only three people waiting for the boat and literally as it arrived another twenty Indians would appear and pile on in front, usually with half a ton of bananas and pineapples to boot.

We ended up spending five days in Hampi, a few of which we spent exploring the incredible temple complexes and landscape. We climbed the five hundred and fifty odd steps to the top of the mountain where the Temple of Hannuman (the Monkey God) looks over the valley and we watched the sun set over one of the most incredible views in India (which is more difficult than you'd imagine when you've got two red faced monkeys going at it like Pamela and Tommy Lee next to you).

We'd landed on our feet with the hotel too where we had a cottage which looked right across the paddy fields, so we took in a couple of final afternoons of kicking back Indian style before we hit the road for our longest journey yet - a mega ten hours by bus to Mangalore, fifteen hours by train to Cochin, five hour flight to Kuala Lumpur with six hours in the airport before connecting to Hanoi. Still, on the way we got chased in traffic in a rickshaw for three miles by a crazed dog after some takeaway pizza, I got thrown out of a chemist (best not to ask) and accidentally George Bush-style insulted a man with no legs (best not to ask again), got into a seat war with a weirdo from Hospet who insisted that he wanted to sit next to Sam for the entire bus journey and got my photo taken with Ronald MacDonald. At least it wasn't dull!

View our pics here:

Hampi

The View from the Afternoon

Back in 1994 the hugely influential (later to be huge sell-out), proto-superstar DJ Paul Oakenfold returned from a trip to India, ranting and quite literally raving about the burgeoning trance scene in Goa. Fusing the ferral, dark psychadelic sound with more club friendly productions he went on to mix what was considered (arguably) to be the best Essential Mix ever to be broadcast on Radio One, and in the process denonated the Goa Trance sound in Europe.

Psy-trance, as it eventually came to be known, was relatively short lived as a mainstream club pheonomenon, but the spiritual, otherworldly production values that gave the music its haunting edge lived on through Progressive House which went on to dominate the global dance scene into the next millenium. Whether this means Paul Oakenfold is single handedly responsible for unleashing the appalling crimes on fashion that were orange trance-utility-trousers, and the rest of the flouro-related clobber that followed remains to be debated. EIther way, Goa is still indelibly linked with the image of wild beach parties soundtracked by booming trance, dreadlocked hippies in tie-dye, and acid sunrises. So having never made it over back in the day, I was looking forward to seeing whether this was still actually still the case - whether the Goa of public imagination still existed, or whether time, and popularity as a holiday destination had changed all that...

From chatting to friends before we arrived it pretty much seemed that there were two sides to Goa. Advice seemed to be "South Goa is chill out, North Goa is Party time". So, heading up from Kerala we hit the South first for a bit of R&R before the Christmas binge in the North, and on the advice of Goa stalwarts Matt and Lucy, made our way to Pallolem Beach.

Arriving an hour before sunrise it looked spectacular. A stunning, empty, tropical stretch of golden sand lined with cocohuts and flanked by a rocky bay. As it was three weeks before the main season kicked off it was still pretty quiet, and we spent a week being about as lazy as two people can be, lounging in hammocks, drinking cocktails before lunch and generally soaking up the sun. It was pretty hard to pull ourselves away when time to move on came around, but we had people to meet and a family holiday to invade!

Now I like to think that over the course of the last few months we'd been pretty good as far as "keeping it cultural" and holding down the partying goes (we both agreed that we did enough of that at home), and we were feeling in pretty good shape. However, all that was about to go shit - amazing how meeting up with some familiar faces from home turf can unleash the bad habits (admitedly it doesnt take much), but lets just say on the first day we met up with Jen and Smiffy in Calingute in North Goa, an entire case of large Kingfisher, two bottles of wine and a bottle of rum "disapeared" mysteriously by the pool in one afteroon...

Calingute is the overdeveloped commercial beach resort town where holiday makers flock every year for cheap bars and pubs, loud music and boozy afternoons on the beach, and what a beach it is...I've honestly never seen one so busy in my life. Rammed from top to bottom it looks pretty much like vintage Benidorm (with cows of course) and was loaded with the requisite Lobster-Red Europeans in floppy hats chain smoking and knocking back the premium strength lager. You know its going to be interesting when you hear "Who the fuck is Alice" coming from a bar in the first ten mintutes. Not really my type of thing, but when in Rome, eat chips.

Anyway, Jen and Smiffy had kindly sorted us a smart and unfeasably cheap apartment with pool on the quiet end of town and the next two weeks kind of turned into a family holiday within a holiday, with all the added entertainment that kids deliver. "Mum I'm not eating this, its weird, have they got fish fingers?", "Mum Dillon's locked him self out of the room again", "Mum Rhys shot me in the head with an elastic band" etc. But to be frank, we all know blokes don't ever really grow up and there can't be many better ways to spend afternoons than enjoying ice cream/cold beers on the beach, going crabbing in rock-pools and fishing with telescopic rods and spinners. Admittedly, although Smiffy had bought two rods for the kids, they didn't get much chance to use them due to our extensive, erm, "demonstrating classes".

Being the build up to Christmas too there was clearly some sort of competetion going on with a few of the Northern ex-pat Brits who lived in the apartment complex we were staying in. Every day after returning from the beach more flashing tat seemed to have appeared on two of the balconies, reaching the point where you could probably have seen them from space. Powercuts are a pretty much daily affair in India, but I'm sure the ones in our block were down to the massive electrical drain caused by 9 thousand fairy lights, 4 giant flashing stars and several luminous Santas going full pelt 12 hours a day.

Nights were spent mainly down on the beach eating and drinking at the numerous beach shacks which battled to see who could play the loudest six year old Electro House records (How many versions of Robin S's Show me Love are there?) and we did pull a few allnighters which ended up resulting in some messy mornings on Vagator Beach (see picture of Smiffy and angry cow in photos for good example). We hired a few mopeds, went to the markets, took a boat out to do some proper sea fishing and saw dolphins, got invited to an ex-pat OAP Bingo party and generally avoided being sober. Christmas day turned out pretty good too. Paragliding, Barbequed fish and curry! Smiffy somehow managed to eat six different dinners at six bars which was quite impressive, but I think he may have suffered internal hemoraging by the look of him next day.

So with internal organs still barely functioning we said our goodbyes to the Oxford Massive and hit the road again having finally got in contact with Leicester peeps Matt, Lucy and Jonnie who'd been on a mammoth road trip through Maharashtra on the trusty Enfield Bullets (real men drive 50cc mopeds though). They were heading down to Palolem for New Years Eve and we were more than happy to return after our week there in early December. Pretty much everyone had doubled thier rates in North Goa (thanks overspending Russians!), and frankly judging by the increasing daily torrent of new holiday makers arriving for the festivities it looked like Calingute and Bagga could turn into one of Dantes Circles of hell in a few days. By the time we'd arrived down at Palolem again even the tranquil bay we'd seen just a few weeks ago was now busy, so we took a beach hut at the quiet Patnem beach a few Kilometres down the road, which turned out to be a good choice - we stayed in beach shack with some great people, talked total rubbish over afternoon beers and on NYE had a bonfire and BBQ on the beach before heading over to meet Lu and Matt on Palolem. Wading through the unbelievably packed full moon high tide beach we only just made it for midnight celebrations in the most disorganised bar on earth. We didnt stay long (the booze was running dry rapidly) and headed off to Agonda beach for long and entertaining night of partying. We finally made it home sometime around 11am the next morning. Happy New Year!

It was great to catch up with the guys...and we'd finally started to see what all the fuss about Goa was. Maybe we were missing something, but the North just didnt do it for us, the South however, is beautiful and we'd definately go back. It's easy to see why you could end up getting stuck there, and we found ourselves staying at Patnem for another several days before we moved on to Hampi in Karnataka which we'd heard so much about.

As far as whether the fabled psychadelic Goa of 90's still existed - it's hard to say; mainly because we never actually made it a proper party (getting old?). We did consider heading to the "Russian Progressive House and Minimal Night" for about 5 seconds but then decided against it - meat heads in Lime Banana hammocks doth not make a good party.

Without doubt, opinion is "It's not what it used to be" (isn't it always...). The rules regulating the shutting off of soundsystems before midnight don't help either and judging by the average age of the grizzled Trance Monsters at Anjuna market, it's unlikely that there is going to be any massive underground resurgence as the area continues to commercialise. But, Goa definately does have a certain magic and is clearly still a very special place for a lot of people. I still hold Paul Oakenfold responsible for those Orange Trance Trousers though...

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Goa Part 1

Goa Part 2