Gorgeous Halong Bay

Lest the previous post leave the impression that there is not much likeable about Vietnam, here is some counter-evidence. Halong Bay is a stunning sight after leaving the not so stunning Halong City.



The limestone formations jut out of the ocean and the tallest ones are about 200-300 metres tall (based on my inaccurate estimates) . They are also quite wide. Below is a village in Halong Bay. It is supposed to be a UNESCO World Heritage site and a World Environmental Site (or some such designation), but there is a lot of tourism, myself included, of course. And I have no doubt about the severe negative impact of such activity.

The rudest place in Asia (the Asia we know)

Now before you jump on us for generalizing, we are generalizing because that is the best we can do in the situation. But Maria and I agree about the fact that the Vietnamese on average were the rudest of all the places we had been to. Of course we can't say much about the places we have not been to yet. And we are speaking of the general case, not the ones you get to know or have any interation with.

In Thailand, Laos and Cambodia we were spoiled because it did not matter who you flashed a smile at; man, woman or child, they smiled right back at you. On the other hand, in Vietnam we were greeted with a less than warm reaction. However, it seems that if you interact with the poorer people you get a much warmer reaction. We were also struck by all the propaganda and how pervasive it is especially as you get out of the city. The amount of propaganda is probably about the same, just that as you leave the city, the billboards get larger and louder.

When we got off the minibus that brought us from the airport to the Old Quarter in Hanoi, we were assaulted by a barrage of touts trying to get us to come to their guest house. We had already booked a guest house and told them that we were going to Venus GH at which point they said that they were from Venus. Others insisted their relatives ran Venus. (more to follow ...)

Dodgy Phonm Penh

One thing that you notice as soon as you enter Cambodia is the number of the people that are maimed or crippled, presumably by mines and other UXOs. Of course, they are everywhere and they beg for money which seems difficult to not give into because you can give away 500 Riel notes which is the equivalent of 12.5 c US.

The city itself is strange. We felt more stared at than we had felt on our entire trip. A lot of the stares were not just curious or friendly. There was one asshole at a restaurant who kept looking over and both Maria and I smiled at him. He misinterpreted Maria's smile and just gave me a blank look. We tried interacting with his kids and they too were a bit strange. In a foreign country, the best course is to just avoid such people and go on your merry way and fantasize about the violent end he could meet with in a caged death match ..

Since we hated it so much, we decide to come to the lovely coastal paradise of Sihanoukville a day early. The weather is beautiful, the ocean, cool; the breeze, calming and fine white sand everywhere.

Angkor Wat

Angkor is an incredibly beautiful city full of stones, temples and places that, as a whole, leave you with a sense of why we don't just build fantastic structures for the sake of building anymore. It does happen from time with brave new architecture but not often enough. Why must places of worship be so uninspiring and underwhelming in their beauty or spirituality ?

The picture above is the innermost levelof Angkor Wat, which also happens to be the highest and is steep and really scary. The steps have a run of only a few inches so it is a hairy climb. Once at the top, climbing down is even more treacherous. It is possible to go down a set of steps that have a hand rail, but we went down a set that did not have one. The anxiety in both the descenders and the onlookers was palpable as we tried to make our way towards the steps to climb down.

While Angkor Wat, the main temple is nice, there are other temples whose beauty is much more haunting.

We decided to take a tuk-tuk the first day, a good decision in retrospect since it allowed us to gain our bearings. The next day, we went to Angkor on electric bikes which was an interesting experience in itself. The good part is that we were able to get away from the heavily touristed areas and from the vendors screaming at you to buy something. It was humourous at first but lost its colour pretty soon when they became really insistent. Ta Keo and Ta Prohm were some of the more exciting temples on the outer rim while Bayon on the inner circuit is fantastic. After two days of walking around in temples and old ruins, we had had our fill. We could have visited further but it would have been after a day's rest. Since we had to head off to Phnomh Penh, we only visited the temples for two days but that should really be a minimum to amount of time to spend there.

Laos - the epilogue

It seems that the slow pace of life in Laos affects the most ardent of blogging fans and completely saps their will to blog, email or do anything else for that matter, not directly related to some form of relaxation. We took the bus from Luang Prabang to Vang Vieng. Vang Vieng is not even really a town. It is a village that happens to be on the back packer trail and has thus grown. The fact that there is great natural beauty around it does not hurt either.

We stayed in a really nice little guest house tucked away by the side of the river. The bungalow we had was really nice, open and airy, overloooking the river the limestone peaks in the distance. The vista was quite stunning as we lay savouring it on our bed. We decided that since we had gone hiking in Chiang Mai we should go caving in Vang Vieng, for variety. But we changed our minds the next morning and decided to go to for the hard trek. They weren't kidding when they said hard trek. Maria had been sick for a couple of days and had barely eaten anything in two days and so she began to run out of steam after a little while and felt faint. Heide, a very athletic (read: marathoner) german woman was our trekking mate. She offered to take Maria's pack for a while. Since I am always armed to the teeth with food and I had an orange that helped bring the colour back to her cheeks and she was in good form again. After an 800 m ascent and a descent into what looked like the garden of Eden, we stopped to barbeque and explore the cave that we had reached. The guide took care of the cooking while we headed into the cave. But after the cave became pitch black, we could see strange shapes in the ceiling with our flashlights. Not wanting to wake up what in my mind were the biggest bats known to man, we decided to head back out. The mouth of the cave was enormous and a beautiful stream flowed into it. We bathed and played around in the cold water and then stopped for lunch.

As usual, I overate at lunch. Without much of a post lunch break, we headed back out. This entailed another 800m ascent and descent and I felt really woozy from hiking after eating too much. When we descended at the other end, we went into a cave which was where the stream that entered the first cave, exited the mountain. The water was cold and a beautiful blue green. We went tubing into the cave. Tubing entails sitting in a big truck inner tube and then going with the flow of the water. In our case, there was a secured line along which we pulled ourselves into the cave. The mouth of the cave was just about 30 cms above the water so we really had to go into a very claustrophobic feeling place. Once inside, the cave opened up but it was pitch black. Luckily we all had headlamps which helped us to follow the guide. We did a loop in the cave and then came back out. Sometimes and we had to crawl on all fours and those sections really made us think about the fact that we can sometimes be claustrophobic even though we never think of ourselves as such. It was a fantastic experience and highly recommended to anybody willing to give it a try.

Lazy in Laos - Luang Prabang

The leisurely trip to Luang Prabang set the tone of our stay as well. We started off not wanting to do much so we did exactly that. Luang Prabang is not a very big place. One good indication of its size is that the map's scale is so large since most of the city fits into about 1 square kilometer. We decided to walk around all day and kept running into people we had been on the boat with. That was a pleasant surprise. We met Mook and his girlfriend Thum and asked them what they were doing. We mentioned that we were looking for some coffee and breakfast and asked them to join us. We sat on a table overlooking the Mekong and had our breakfasts and off we went to check the city out. We were all on bicycles that we had rented for the princely sum of 10,000 kip (roughly, USD 1).

After checking out the city, we went to a Hmong village. The Hmong are a hill tribe in South East Asia, found in Myanmar, Thailand, Laos and maybe elsewhere. It was very nice because it happened to be Hmong New Year and there was a very interesting ritual of picking mates. The boys and girls stand in two rows, one with the boys and the other with the girls, tossing oranges to each other. I could be wrong but I think the woman accepting the orange by not tossing it back has accepted your courting and is willing to be your mate. The Hmong have very beautiful features, but distinct from the Thai and Lao peoples. We drew a lot of curious stares because I am sure it was not common for them to see tourists in that setting. Kids ran around, lusted after toys and other foods on sale at the various stands and were doing what they usually do. In a couple of stalls, strange foods were for sale in addition to various drinks. More strange than that was the fact that you could buy Lays or Pringles ! Interestingly, they serve drinks in plastic bags, with a straw dropped in. Of course, there were no garbage bins so all the plastic bags and chips wrappers were littered everywhere, making me feel that the companies selling them this stuff should be required to teach correct disposal methods as well. It was a great experience and we shared lots of smiles with the people around. It was frustrating to not be able to communicate better with some of them.

Sleepless in Chiang Khong and Pakbeng

We arrived in Chiang Khong on the Thai banks of the river Mekong. It was a beautiful sight with the sun getting low over the horizon and some of the hills hidden behind clouds. We ate our dinner at the guest house, read a bit about Laos and thought about getting some sleep so we could get an early start to the day. The night was difficult because the guesthouse was poorly designed and everyone talking around the rooms could be clearly heard. So we were rudely awoken after a few hours sleep by the loud mobile phone coversations of some drunk fellows. It was hard to fall back asleep because there were loud periodic noises and the roosters began crowing far before dawn. One tough night in Chiang Khong.

The next morning after departing officially with Thai immigration and registering with Laos immigration we took the slowboat from Houay Xai, Laos. Before we got on the boat was a good three feet out of the water and by the time the whole boat was loaded it looked precariously close to the surface, just 18 inches above the water. The boat was pretty uncomfortable with wooden benches and was completely painful after a few hours. There was yet another day to go because the trip takes two days. The scenery was stunning the whole way, from the get go. The mountains were lush and green with beautiful vegetation, trees in interesting shapes and hanging vines and creepers giving them a surreal rock like shape. Often, just behind the hills were taller mountains, parts of which were shrouded in mist and clouds with peaks breaking through to reveal their enormity. There were great riverine beaches and massive rock formations that had been shaped by the furious waters of the river. The beauty of the river valley was truly stunning and we were thrilled with our decision to have taken the boat.

The boat arrived in Pakbeng around 6:00. We had already booked a guest house in Houay Xai before getting on the boat. There was someone to meet us at the ferry who took us to the guest house. It looked a little dingy and the sheets looked like they were seldom changed. We had sheets with us so we thought nothing of it and said to ourselves that we were only going to be there for a day. There was barely any electricity in the place. Luckily we were armed to the teeth with flash lights and so we went on and got on with dinner and a few drinks. We eventually returned to the room and then went to sleep. Well, I did. Apparently the beers (640 ml) did me some good and I fell asleep right away. Maria on the other hand was wide awake, partly due to my snoring, the strange sounds of the geckos and some kind of sizeable rodent gnawing on god-knows-what in the room. Around 2:00 AM I awoke due to this symphony of strange sounds and Maria mentioned that there were other living things, not approved by us, in our room. I tried to sleep again but now my instinct for protection and self preservation would not let me sleep. I tried not to think about the fact that I wanted to pee.

The symphony in the room turned into a cacophony in my head and finally I relented and decided to examine the room. Armed with two flashlights, just in case, one needed to be used to bludgeon an oversized rodent, I looked around, under the bags, in them, checking to make sure that nothing had eaten its way into the bags, to our food for the next day. Since we were wide awake we decided to go to the toilet and be really prepared to fall asleep. Alas, if life were that simple ! An hour or so after we got back to bed, we had still not fallen asleep and we heard the loud sounds of a human thundering across the very thin metal roof. What ? Is someone trying to get into the room ? Thank goodness the windows are locked we thought. OK, I wish I had a knife, no better yet a katana ! Yes I should have bought one in Japan. All kinds of insane thoughts got through ones head. Finally, a couple hours later out of sheer exhaustion we fell asleep only to be woken up by our alarms so we could catch our boat for day 2. The second tough night in a row. Thanks, Pakbeng.