The Easy Way Out

Writing takes ages. Here are some images instead!

1 - Hue. Each evening at dusk the sky is filled with vibrantly colored kites, transported here mostly by men on bicycles.

2 - Silk Worm Factory Workers, Dalat

3 - Downtime. My heart goes out to the cyclo riders. Each day, regardless of the heat they are out on the street plying their trade. And lets face it, in some circumstances sleeping on the job is a necessity!

4 - Hoi An. Market Lady

5 - Nha Trang Nun

6 - Hilltribe Woman, Sapa

7 - Halong Bay

8 - Nha Trang Opera House

9 - Hanoi at Sunset

10 - Part of the Imperial Complex Hue

Vietnam in a nutshell

It is time to stop procrastinating and time to draw a line beneath Vietnam. The time we had there flew past and indeed we were on the move every three days or thereabouts. Three days is not a long time to explore a city, it’s sites and in manycases it’s beaches. It certainly doesnot leave a huge amount of time for writing. So, the low down.

Vietnam was a hugely enjoyable country to travel. In spite of all the horror stories we heard from fellow travellers (muggings, theft, aggressive denizens and psycho bus drivers) we found the country to be mostly safe and the people to be mostly friendly. Douglas Adams might have dubbed it “mostly harmless,“ but there was more to it than that. It was the most diverse and exciting part of our trip thus far. There were a couple of cretins along the way, but that applies to most places around the world in my experience. The biggest cretin I have met so far was undoubtedly in Cambodia and he was “A Rhodesian.” When I explained to him that time moves on and twenty nine years has passed in the interim he became petulant. He prided himself on being a “Colonial,” having been born in Wales (of Indian lineage) and lived in colonies of the British Empire for much of his life. The irony is that under Rhodesian rule he would have been a class two citizen of the country, and as a mixed race citizen would have faced blatant discrimination and segregation. Despite having lived in Rhodesia as it was then, he was incredibly ignorant about the country. “I still drank in all the sports clubs” he boasted. Well, whoopy doo mister. Social Darwinism found its nest in his heart, AIDS was the result of a black government and it went to pot in 1980 apparently. The conversation ebbed and flowed (we were in a large group of people thankfully) but as the local wine flowed he became more surly and aggressive. By the end of the evening, I felt there two options left open to me with the way the evening was going. These were (a) to punch him before he punched me and then end up in the beautiful but squalid Kampot jail for the night or (b) call a spade a spade and head off to bed. I chose the latter which was probably wise in retrospect. So in all my time travelling it seems that the biggest plonker I have met hails, in part, from my very own country.

We spent longer in Saigon than anywhere else in Vietnam, not because we particularly like big cities but rather because there is a lot to see and do. The museums were interesting and it is here that so much of Vietnam’s history took place. We visited the War Museum, the Cu Chi tunnels, the Re-Unification Palace and spent time just exploring the city. We learnt to cross a road in Saigon. Trust me, it takes a while to get used to throwing yourself in front of four lanes of speeding scooters. From Saigon we caught up North to the coastal town that is Mui Ne. It was a Friday afternoon and the traffic out of Saigon was incredibly heavy. Saigon sprawls for mile upon mile and it must have been a couple of hours before we had made it out of the city. Our four hour trip to the coast became a six hour one of brake lights and horns. But it was worth it. Mui Ne is known for it’s waves and it was great to dip into an ocean where there some surf. The current pulls to the left very strongly and we would start at one part of the beach and end up at another. But as the beach with it’s wide sand stretches along for ten kilometres this is not so much of a problem.

It was not just for the beaches that we went to Mui Ne but also the sand dunes that are a few kilometers inland. The dunes are red in one area and white in another and cover a fairly expansive area. We started off at 4.45am with an irritable jeep driver who was not big

on small talk. Then again at that time of the day who can blame him? We did the white dunes first, watching the sun rise from atop the dunes. It was a beautiful dawn and after some time there we moved onto the red dunes. Where there had only been a handful of people at the white dunes the red dunes teamed with people. Local Vietnamese families covered every dune in sight, using hired sleds to shoot down the dunes. Vendors sold food from baskets hanging from their shoulders on bamboo poles. Laughing children, smiling women, men with their jeans rolled up around their ankles and sweat on their foreheads. It was a convivial and friendly atmosphere. One of the great things about Vietnam was seeing local Vietnamese people enjoying the outdoors as opposed to tourist dominated hotspots where the only locals were hawking goods. The trip ended with a visit to the local fishing village where our eyes bulged at the amount of food that was being hauled from the ocean, whilst wicker basket-like boats bobbed about on the waves. The stench of salt water and fish was ferocious and on every side were blankets of fish, crabs, weighing scales and women with heavy poles and baskets slung over their shoulders. Finally we went to the “Fairy Spring,” a shallow creek that runs through a dazzling red clay valley of sand dunes. Wading through the cooling waters was a good end to a very busy, long and hot morning.

Dalat

After the blistering hot beaches of Mui Ne it seemed wise to head up into the mountains of Dalat. At an altitude of about 1500 metres above sea level Dalat is four precipitous hours from Saigon, heading almost directly North, away from the coast and up into the interior of the country. The winding drive is breathtaking and the sinu

ous route had a few people reaching for their little blue plastic bags. One of the first things that stuck me about being in Dalat was the weather. It was like being back in the UK. The sun, impossible to escape for nearly five months now, was nowhere to be seen. It was grey, wet, cold. Not raining, not dry. Just persistent damp.

And it was refreshing for a change! It felt great to put a fleece on and zip it up. This weather has many implications on the area. The French used to use it as a retreat from the heat, and as such there is an old French Street and the very quaint train station. More recently, Dalat is rumoured to be Vietnam’s number one honey moon spot. It is also where a whole host of Western Vegetables are grown in Vietnam and the fresh produce is diverse and cheap. Flower farms are scattered through the hills as are silk worm factories and a host of other industries including Dalat wine. The wine is not bad either. The best way to see Dalat is to get a couple of motorbike riders (the self styled Easy Riders) who will take you through the region and beyond if money and time are no object. After much debating (can we afford it? Sounds expensive?) we took a day trip and it was without a doubt one of the best things we did in Vietnam

. If I could do the trip again I think I would allow a three or four day Easy Rider trip through Vietnam. Our concerns about the ability of our guides to speak English was quashed when one of the first things he said was “Lovely Jubbly.“ Our day trip started off in Dalat town, firstly looking at the Linh Quang Pagoda and then heading out into the lush countryside. The great thing about being on a motorbike is that you can stop anywhere. We looked at the waterfalls in the area, the silk farms and the local hooch distillery. Sadly the local hooch was not available for sampling. We ended up back in town, overlooking an aerial mast fashioned to replicate the Eiffel Tower and near the train station where the token carriages were painted with a red, white and blue motif.

The next leg of the trip took us from the hills of Dalat along a wildly meandering road back down to sea level and the beaches of Nha Trang. Along the way you find yourself in a Catch 22 like scenario. The scenery is remarkably beautiful, but the road meanders so hideously that if

you look anywhere but straight ahead nausea becomes your new best friend. Immediately around me I could see four people paling rapidly and discreetly disgorging

into plastic bags. Finally the gradient decreases and with the hills behind you, the beaches of Nha Trang stretch away in front. After walking into town and finding accommodation we made our way down to the promenade and were befriended by a Vietnamese couple after pulling faces at their young child. It was the kind of “Oh how cute” faces that struck up the conversation, but whilst in Vietnam we met some really friendly locals which was great. It is nice to be genuinely befriended as opposed to sold to continually, it is one of the things that I notice now. The principle draw of Nha Trang are the miles of glistening beaches, but there is plenty more to do as well. The town itself bustles with life and there is plenty to see if you tear yourself away from the beaches. For us this was not too hard, it was bucketing down with rain most of the time we were there. Among the sights was the gallery of the Vietnamese photographer Long Thanh, a fishing harbour where the fishing boats (similar to those in Mui Ne) look like giant wicker baskets and Long Son Pagoda. Above the Pagoda, set atop a hill, is a giant Buddha, the base of which features bust reliefs of the seven monks who died by self emolliation protesting the South Vietnamese government of Ngo Dinh Diem. Whilst my big toe did not make it into the ocean on account of the weather, Nha Trang was still worthwhile.

Heading North by sleeper bus our next pit stop, eight hours up country, was rustic Hoi An. Hoi An is famed for its tailors.

Figuring that if the locals are good with scissors then this would be a good place for a haircut is a fatal mistake. I can testify to this, they cut cloth better than hair. Promise. But Hoi An is all charm. It is graceful and at night the evening comes alive with lanterns and street markets where the food fantastic and the restaurants advertise “Fresh Beer.” The beer is cheap, the food good and the town’s vibe is vibrant and yet laid back. The market at dawn is worth the 5am wake up call and a Vietnamese coffee a couple of hours later braces you for the rest of the day. As if Hoi An did not have enough to see and do with i

t’s ubiquitous art galleries, tailors and riverside walks the Marble Mountains are a bus ride away and a good way to spend the day. Carved out of - you’ve got it -marble, the mountain features numerous pagodas, temples and caves that house more temples. Edentate women with red mouths from chewing beet peddle incense sticks, rewarding the lucky by showing them some of the more clandestine sights of the complex. Hoi An is another place that I would like to make it back to, particularly in the wet season when the whole town becomes flooded and the streets are best mooched by boat.

By now the clock was seriously ticking for us and in spite of having wanted to spend time in Danang, we ended up taking the

bus straight through to Hue, the old imperial capital of Vietnam. Hue is home to the Forbidden City and is bisected by the Perfume River. The town itself ranges from the beautiful promenade to the sprawling mass of motorbikes and narrow streets. It is a rewarding place to spend some time though. It was thirty eight degrees when we were there which was a bit too hot to do much, but I still managed to spend a day roaming the Imperial Citadel. I ate three over priced ice creams and drank who knows how many litres of water. And shot 4 gig of photographs. It is beautiful and so rich in culture. As the sun sets the area in front of the citadel comes alive with kite fliers and colour, whilst in the background, blustered from the 37 metre high flagpole (the highest in Vietnam) a giant Vietnamese flag billows out in the warmth of the last light of the day. We ate Japanese food at a charitable restaurant supporting street kids called JASS, only to find out that the name had been copied by a nefarious business mind set on capitalising on JASS’s good name. We ate at a different JASS the next evening, so hopefully one of them was the real deal.

Hue was soon behind us and we found ourselves on board a sleeper bus with real-ish beds. The comfort was short lived, we were at the back of the bus above the engine. I woke up half way through the night with my back feeling like I had passed out with the electric blanket still on, whilst above the air conditioning unit chucked out huge volumes of freezing air. It is quite a bizarre sensation to feel like your back is in a wok and your front in an icebox. At a roadstop along the way I got out with a couple of other travellers from the back section to chew the fat. We watched some locals eating one of the Vietnamese delicacies, a semi-incubated egg that has been boiled. Once the shell is off the egg is traced by a network of veins and arteries. It should be the best of two worlds really, I love eggs and eat silly amounts of chicken. But put the two together like that and erm, I’m gonna pass this one thanks.

We arrived in Hanoi at six the next morning, I promptly got lost whilst looking for accommodation and found an unimpressed Nipun two hours later, dutifully watching our bags and patiently waiting for me.

The alleys for which the city is famous, do kind of look the same on the first day in town. Hanoi sprawls and motorbike drivers patrol each and every street trying to get you to take a ride across town with them. Vendors try and trick you into picking up their bamboo poles with fruit laden baskets for a photo opportunity, and then charge you for the privilege. Cyclo riders bombard you and ask you to take a trip through the old Latin quarter with them. It is a busy city, and one that can leave you feeling harassed pretty quickly. We were already pretty exhausted by the time we made it this far North and so it was not too long before we had booked our onward travel into the mountains of Sapa. And if the rain was bad in Nha Trang, then in Sapa it was a deluge. For three days spent there, it rained for over two and half. But having said this Sapa was stunning. We did manage to get out for a couple of hours on motorbikes and the country side was magnificent. Terraced rice fields stretched away beneath mountains and verdant fields stretched away as far as you could see. Which was not that far because of the fog. But you get the picture. Less appealing than even the rain were the local hawkers who tried to sell anyone and everyone no end of trinkets. “No” does not mean no in Sapa, it means “Challenge.” The Hill Tribe ladies and girls are really sweet at first, but make for very aggressive and determined sales ladies.

But then such is the beauty of Sapa that I would return there immediately with no qualms. My only disappointment is that the weather conspired against us with hellfire and brimstome. And then before we knew it we were back in Hanoi, headed for the airport and soon to be in Bangkok.

Saigon: Worth Many Thousand Words

On arrival in Vienam it became apparent that we were really going to be up against it it terms of time. Having entered from the very deep south and leaving (in four days) from the north there has been a lot of ground to cover, and a huge amount to see on that ground. As we have been on a bus every two or three days the blogging has been falling to pieces, so I figure that if a picture is worth a thousand words, then uploading a buch of pictures should adequately cover my shortcomings in the writing department. That, coupled with the fact that we stumbled upon Bia Hoi Hanoi last night and a glass of fresh draught beer cost about 6000 Dhong -or 20 pence. The locals love to shout "100 percent" as a toast. This translates as "Finish you glass now." Juvenile? Maybe. Fun? Hell Yeah! Writing would be an insurmountable task today so have some pictures instead.

First up is a sculpture from the Museum of American War Crimes in Ho Chi Minh City, or Saigon as it is mostly referred

to. Saigon was fantastic. The city was constantly alive and had all the sophistication of a modern, first world city combined with all

the bizarre things that you see in Asia. It had highways and alleyways, fine dining and stalls on the road serving dog and weasel coffee. But back to the museum, it is chilling. I cannot say that it is entirely un-prejudiced, but it does showcase the brutality of the Americans in Vietnam. There are photos of grinning goons holding up decapidated heads and horrific pictures and preserved foetuses of Agent Orange victims. It is sombre to say the least. It also offers a timeline of the Vietnam War and a remarkable photography exhibition dedicated to the photojournalists that were killed in the Indochinese Conflict and Vientam War. I got to see photos by some of my heroes including Robert Capa, Nick Ut, Larry Burrows and too many others to mention. Pictures that I have only seen in books until now were hanging from the walls in abundance. They had to kick me out at closing time, and I vowed to return the next day but time was against us and we ended up in the Cu Chi underground tunnels, the underground networks of tunnels that the Vietnamese used to defeat the Americans. There is more here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C%E1%BB%A7_Chi_tunnels

I found them horribly claustrophobic and they had me gagging for fresh air, but then again if the other options was Napalm exploding overhead then I think I could have been persuaded to stay down there a little longer.

Ok, this is really two pictures but I make the rules here and I am counting it as one. Not the best diptych in the world but down and dirty and quick, which is what we need at the moment. Saigon, as mentioned, has all the contradictions you can think of. Traffic is just one of these, and if the joke was to be re-written it would go something like "How did the chicken cross the road." And then, just five minutes away from all the congestion and chaos you have alleyways with markets, locals scurrying through narrow walkways carrying coffee pots and the occassional motorbike barging its way through, hooting and erratically accelerating.

Quite by chance we ended up at the Hindu temple in Saigon. We were on our way to a museum when our cyclo rider asked Nipun if she was from India. She affirmed this and he pointed across the road at a colourful building which is Saigon's which he explained was the only temple for Hindu's in Saigon. We ventured inside and soon got talking to the priest, a Vietnamese of Indian descent. He was such an aimiable man, gregarious and yet also sage and full of warnings about Saigon for us. Among these was do not buy anything until you have been given a definite price, and not let anyone put something into your hand or over your shoulder, because if you do, you will have to pay for it. We spent a good half hour with him nattering away before he bestowed a small gift of fruit (prashad) on us and we were on our way again. The temple was beautiful and his friendliness completed the experience. What was most interesting is that a lot of Budhists were present in the Hindu temple and praying to Hindu deities, which I thought was kinda cool. They embraced a different religion and looked for similarities instead of differences. And in turn they were welcomed inand let to go about their prayers without any chiding or proselytsing. I found that acceptance and common respect of each other a breath of fresh air. If only there was more of that.

We paid a visit to the Ho Chi Minh city museum during our time in this great city. The museum traces the history of Saigon right back to when it was a primitive port town that produced pottery and eartherware and traces the places development over town. The museum was not the best that we have seen, it seemed a bit random in places. However the building that houses the museum is stunning and worth the visit for this alone. What we did not know though is that several newly weds use the place as a location for their wedding

pictures. There were about twenty couples in outfits that ranged from traditional brightly coloured clothes (she in red and he in blue) to white suits and dresses. Restless photogrpahers patrolled the museum waiting for their turn to use a desirable location. I skulked in the back ground and bounced a flash off the ceiling whilst no one was paying attention!

The Saigon Central Post Office is just across the road from the city's very own Notre Dame Cathedral. This was a bit of a find for us really, we saw it from across the road and had no idea how beautiful it was. The curved roof with its skylights are magnificent and fill the post office with soft, beautiful light that wraps around every surface. Without a tripod I was reduced to having to use a narrow table top for a support, so this picture could be sharper, but hey, it gets the message across!!! More to follow soon, we are about to be thrown out of our hotel room so gotta run!

Vietscam?

The Lonely Planet edition for Vietnam dedicates roughly ten pages to dangers, scams, annoyances and thefts. Spread throughout the book these methods range from petty acts of criminality to more, shall we say, in your face methods of appropriating your goods. On page 468 they make some attempt at reassurance with the words “In spite of all of this, don’t be overly paranoid.” Which is almost like saying “Yup, you’re gonna get done so don’t worry be happy.” Paranoid I was. By the time we entered Vietnam my camera bag was attached to the belt loops of my jeans by a length of chain and a steel clip. “Let’s hope they don’t take your pants with them too” my Vietnamese friend Huy, back in the UK, commented. The bag itself is padlocked closed and our rucksacks are chained together and locked. Happily we are three weeks into Vietnam now and nothing has gone missing, in fact we have not run into any trouble whatsoever and the Vietnamese have been superbly friendly. Of course we are not out of the woods just yet, but we are well over half way through and Vietnam has been the best place we have been to, if it is possible to make such fickle comparisons that is.

We entered Vietnam from Cambodia and arrived in the riverside and coastal town of Ha Tien. Ha Tien is a border town and during the 1970’s was heavily attacked by the marauding Khmer Rouge army. Thousands of civilians were murdered and tens of thousands residents fled their homes until the Khmer Rouge was toppled by the Vietnamese in 1979. In an unkempt, rural way Ha Tien possessed a charming character with blue and red fishing boats docked along the river and one horse motorbike streets. A new modern bridge crosses the river and to the right as you head away from town the gulf of Thailand glistens below. We rode into town on the back of motorcycles, rucksacks balanced at the front of the bikes, followed by the driver followed by one of us followed, in my case, by a camera bag and a tripod. It was an ungainly entrance, but a method of travel we were soon to master as there are no tuk-tuks in Vietnam. A couple of things became quickly apparent in Ha Tien, firstly that next to nobody speaks English and secondly, that the budget guest houses are like something out of the Hammer House of Horror. The first place we looked at had our local motorbike riders shaking their heads and muttering about the massages and ‘boom boom’ - that would be a happy ending to your massage and not an all night party as you could be forgiven for thinking. We looked at a couple more places, each grimmer than the one before until eventually our motorbike drivers convinced us that our best bet would be the beach, situated 8km away. It has to be said that the motorbike driver who spoke (some) English was a bit of a sly old dog and maybe there were better places in Ha Tien that he decided not to show us. He was quite keen on getting some cash out of us for the running us out of town meant that he could do this. In any event it was a fortuitous decision as the beach in Ha Tien was completely un-Westernised and consisted of fully dressed Vietnamese people in their jeans and golf shirts wading into the ocean and frolicking in the waves.

An intrepid photographer darted in after them snapping pictures and then holding his camera and flash head high before the approaching waves drenched his equipment. The beach in Ha Tien was also memorable for it’s seaside restaurant whose menu, boasted “Blind Gobi Orange Fever,” or “Steamed Swimming with Beer.” We never did ascertain what these delicacies were but my mirth was short lived when I got to “Grilled Dog.” To add to this startling revelation, three pooches mooched around the porch and panted by our feet. Were they livestock…? Pets…? I don’t want to know. One way or another the staff found us to be an amusing spectacle as we attempted to decipher the menu and they attempted to decipher us. We left town the next day, making our way to the bus step where we had breakfast with the locals and a grinning elderly gentleman offered me a wife swap, his for mine. The locals howled with laughter and Nipun seemed up for it but I figure better the devil you know.

We caught a minibus inland to a town called Rach Gia before getting a second bus to Can Tho. The Vietnamese are not too shy when it comes to personal space and it was not too long before the man next to me fell asleep on my shoulder. I woke him up a couple of times by jabbing my shoulder into his face as we bounced along the road, not hard enough to hurt but hard enough to make my point. He was unabashed though and within minutes he was drooling and softly snoring again, his cheek pressed to my shoulder and his body at a jaunty 45 degree angle. The journey itself was beautiful and as we travelled through the Mekong Delta with the sun setting we traversed several rivers and canals, all crammed with markets and boats and buzzing with activity. We arrived in Can Tho at about eight o’clock that night and after months in Laos and Cambodia it was an eye-opener, the town hummed with life. Ubiquitous neon signs for bars, coffee houses and hotels lit up the night and motorcycles came at you from every plausible angle. The town was truly alive with life and light and was the most frenetic city we had seen in about three months. It felt like being a yokel from the county. Situated in the Mekong Delta Can Tho is the largest city in the region and serves as the transportation and economic backbone for the region. Our explorations took us through town where we had KFC and found a shops that sell high street fashions, new laptops and phones and sound systems. On the other side of the town is the river front, which during the evening makes for a refreshing retreat from the city and also has some very fine restaurants.

Our main reason for stopping in Can Tho was to see the floating market and we arranged this down at the waterfront with a lovely lady who spoke broken English and served as our guide for the boat trip into the market at 5.00 AM the next day. The floating market was, for me, a fairly unique experience and really enjoyable. As you get into the market you can order good quality hot black coffee from one of the boats next to you, or should you fancy a nibble then a bowl of noodle soup. Most of the boats sell fruit and fresh veg, the produce being easily identified from afar by a length of bamboo that, like an aerial, protrudes into the air. At the top of this bamboo there will be a melon, or a bunch of rambutan fruit. It is exotic and thoroughly enjoyable. Like many of the Vietnamese towns we have been in Can Tho also has myriad small alley ways to discover and explore, with markets selling anything from boat propellers stacked high to clothing to a man who has set up a barbers chair and cuts hair and cleans out ears. And then were back to the bus station again negotiating our fare out of Can Tho by minibus, headed for Saigon.

Vietnam: The Route so Far

We are way behind schedule with posting our journey so far and I will sit down and get more on paper soon. This posting is a journey planner entry for anyone doing our trip in the future - the photos and superlative nonsense will follow soon. And "Hi mum, we are alive!" Just thought I would let you know!

We are currently in the very quaint and tranquil Hoi An, Vietnam. I say tranquil but maybe this is not altogether true, there are over three hundred tailors all wanting to make me a suit and the same number of motorbike taxis all wanting to ferry me to the marble mountains. But I like Hoi An, a lot. It is rustic and romantic, and very alive.

The route that we have taken so far is as follows:

Kep (Cambodia) to Ha Tien (Vietnam), a small city where not many people speak English and we actually had to actively look for a man on a motor bike to take us anywhere. Accommodation was dire in the budget range, based on the handful of places that we looked at. The place we did stay in seemed to double up as a brothel, not that I checked that is. It is close to the sea and quite refreshing in its complete lack of Western tourists. The sea was populated with modest Vietnamese swimming fully dressed, complete with jeans and polo neck shirts.

From Ha Tien we took a bus to Rach Gia (two hours) before getting a connecting bus to Can Tho (apprx two hours again from memory) the same afternoon. As opposed to what the touts may tell you, you can get your connecting tickets with in the bus station and there is no need to jump on a motorbike to go anywhere else. Rach Gia seemed to be a bustling, commercial town and may have been worth a night or two, but the thirty visa is a pain in the proverbial. Rach Gia does not seem like a tourist town and there in will lie it's attraction for some.

Can Tho is beautiful and combines a busy centre with a charming water front. The main reason for our stay here was the floating market. I went twice, leaving at 4.45am each morning to catch first light and then sunrise. It is beautiful, but it gets very hot. Early is your best bet! Later in the day you can catch up on your sleep. It is too hot to do anything else.

Our next leg took us from Can Tho to Saigon. A lot of people we have spoken to hated the big city, I found it fascinating. It's museums are great and me eyes were roved like a chameleon's with all the sights. I was there for close on a week which has seriously messed up my schedule.

After the bustle of Saigon it was time to hit the beach at Mui Ne, a beach with real waves and a slight chill to the water. Sundowners in the evening are fantastic and the cocktails are on special so it is difficult to go too far wrong. Mui Ne is also famous for it's red and white sand dunes, get there for dawn and watch the sun come up. The jeep driver may try and bully you into spending a but few minutes there but it is all part of the game. There is also a brilliant fishing village and the fairy spring, both worth investigating.

From Mui Ne we moved on to mountainous Dalat, a vertiginous drive through stunning mountains capped with clouds and a melody passengers throwing up into blue plastic bags from the serpentine bends. No trip to Dalat would be complete without getting a Easy Rider (steady on, that is the name of a company of professional guides who take you through the country by motorbike) for at least a day (US$20.00 for a day trip). They are expensive, but in terms of value for money they are worth every cent of that twenty dollars. A longer trip (eg the three day trip with them from Dalat to Nha Trang) would set you back $65.00 a day, if time was on our side we may have done this. The guides are excellent and from a photographic point of view you have all the freedom that a bus deprives you of. And the scenery is stunning. In fact if time was on our side I WOULD have done this. Next time.

We took the bus from Dalat to Nha Trang, again rich with the sound of travel sick passenger and verdant, heady scenery. Nha Trang is famous for it'sturquoise ocean and 8km beach, it also has some very cool pagodas and photographic galleries. The final leg was the eleven hour bus slog from Nha Trang to Hoi An. Next stop Hue!

You said "HOW MUCH!!!!"

Or alternatively somewhere to lay your sleepy head.

I am working on this at the moment and it will be posted right at the beginning of the blog as the first entry. Update: It is the only entry in Feb 09!

This will be down and dirty, functional information without the pretty pictures, aimed at those who need indicative prices and possibly the name of a place to stay. Some of it is Lonely Planet and Rough Guide recommendations, much of it is from people we have met along the way, but the benefit of this post will be that we have actually stayed a night in a bed here so hopefully the information will be accurate. The accommodation has varied from the pristine and clean to blood on the walls and bugs in the bed, but hey, that is all part of the adventure.

Included in this post will be accomodation costs, visa information as we found it and transport routes. This is all likey to change over time so none of this is gospel. And of course, being Asia, prices are usually negotiable. Obviously this post is aimed at people doing similar trips to us or anyone who wants to get a snap shop of prices. We will endevour to update this regularly but should you need any other information then ping me an email. Happy days.

South Cambodia

There is a funeral going on outside our window. It is ten o’clock at night; an amplified voice penetrates the evening and is accompanied by frenetic, syncopated drumming. To this caterwaul add an Indian sounding piper playing a crazed melody that erratically cuts into the song. To one side of this devilish carnival there stands a small applauding crowd and a bald, hunch backed monk who taps away at a small coconut shaped drum with the precision of a metronome. To be fair, it feels and sounds nothing like a funeral. Whilst the dirge is melancholy in places, the drumming and the crowd is almost celebratory and we would not have known that this was an occasion of mourning it we had not asked what was going on. From our balcony we overlook the gathering, which is located down one of the small, labyrinth like alleyways in District 1, Ho Chi Minh City. We have been in Vietnam for about a week now, which means I have some catching up to do. So let us rewind to Phnom Penh, and the journey into southern Cambodia where the beaches glisten in the evening sun, a barbeque of fresh fish and lobster costsabout U$2.00 and the beer at happy hour (2pm to 7pm) is considerably cheaper than a bottle of coca-cola.

So....

Sihanokoville

Our journey from Phnom Penh was typical of most of our trips in Cambodia. The roads were good, the drivers sensible and the bus was new, air conditioned and punctual. The attention to the customers needs and desires went so far as to include a TV, which played karaoke songs such as Wham’s Careless Whispers and loved up numbers by Enrique Iglasias. Seldom have I been so happy about having an iPod with me. Personally I preferred the crazy departure from Laos where we were treated to Linkin Park featuring Jay Z at an eardrum shattering level. Jay Z cussed, Linkin Park hollered. It was far more agreeable, but then taste is subjective. Having clocked the entertainment on offer on the bus and consequently turned up my ipod to balance out the hapless couple that were Wham, reading proved difficult. Staring out the window greater Phnom Penh shot past. Again I was struck by how vast the city was, it sprawled. And then we were into rural Cambodia again. The countryside as we travelled South towards the coast was stunning and I would love to do this route again by ourselves, in our own transport. This would not be merely in an effort to escape Wham, (though of course this is motivation in itself ) but rather because the countryside is remarkable in it’s beauty and bus drivers are not always very understanding when you want to get out a camera, some filters and a tripod. As you get closer to the coast you ascend into a mountain range and then, suddenly, as you round a corner the sea sparkles between hills to the right. The sea is shades of dazzling green and blue capped with iridescent diamonds. The bus crosses over numerous rivers and then runs parallel to the coast before you enter the less picturesque town and bus station of Sihanoukville. The town itself seems quite industrial and to be fair, prosperous as Nipun observed; welders (naturally unafraid of arc eye and enthusiastically welding without masks) go about their business in pokey garages, tradesmen bustle and the new, busy market is a constant source of activity and movement.

On arrival at the bus station, over helpful hands made grabs at our bags in an attempt to chuck them onto tuk-tuks before a price could be negotiated. After a few minor and amiable fracases we got our bags on our backs and walked onto the main road. We have found that it is easier to negotiate a sensible, fair price for transport away from the station and it is certainly less stressful than being surrounded by a handful of eager drivers, cajoling and pushing each other in order to gain your favour. The attention in these situations can be a little overwhelming and stressful and my asperity has surprised me from time to time - after all these guys are just earning their daily living. But sometimes it can just be too much, the jovial joking side of me wilts and I get snappy. Then about half an hour later when I have calmed down I feel guilty and, I admit, like a complete prat for being such an irascible fiend.

At our guesthouse Nipun got chatting to the manager as she checked in. A couple of young British guys staying at the guest house were causing him some grief, aggressively asking him to remove a Vietnamese girl from their room (reading between the lines a call girl who for one reason or another who was going nowhere - go figure). Through gritted teeth he went on to tell Nipun how, when they had checked in, they had given him a sum of money for looking after. They told him it was US$800.00. When he counted it in front of them it was only $500.00. “And when they checked out, they would have accused me of stealing the money and I would have been responsible for paying them back” he concluded. In a similar incident he had been defrauded of about $500.00 last year, and held accountable for the loss. This time it was by an English guy who said he was off to the bank so he could settle his food and drink tab before leaving town. The man never came back. He had smuggled his luggage out and was off like a shot to Thailand. Needless to say the manager was somewhat contemptuous of the English. He eyeballed our passports and us we tried to convince him that we were nice people - really! But it is shameful that people with so much can steal from people with so little. I reckon that the manager of that hotel probably makes between $100 to $150 per month and is no position to pay back someone else’s bar bill.

We got changed and went down to the beach with as little delay as possible. Sihanouville is beautiful. We stayed next to Serendipity Beach which boasts soft, white sands and a sea (the Gulf of Thailand) that is warm and clear and dotted with vibrantly painted, wooden fishing boats. Paradise here is a shallow illusion though. On our walk along the beach on the first day I almost kicked a used syringe complete with hypodermic needle. One of the local ladies that offers massages on the beach shook her head in disgust and acted out a junky shooting up. Drugs, it seems are a big problem, both with the foreigners (surprise, surprise) and the local youth. Young kids of about ten also patrol the beach selling bracelets and trinkets and can get a little shirty when you refuse to buy anything from them. Sensibly the powers that be have forbidden any children from hawking goods after seven o’clock at night, a rule which we saw being enforced. We took a day trip the next day to three islands in the area which was well worth the money. We got to do some snorkelling, got burnt to a crisp and played some atrocious volleyball. That evening as we dined al fresco at a local Indian restaurant a huge commotion erupted across the dirt road at us. Locals leapt up, hollered, a table went flying. The table was then picked up and hurled repeatedly at the ground before a seven foot snake was triumphantly held up in the air. It was bad luck for the snake really, it was non-venomous. As Russell Hoban put it in the brilliant book Riddley Walker “Your turn now, my turn later.” Continuing this theme the next morning as we had breakfast CNN caught our attention. Something about Michael Jackson was going on and they were mentioning his upcoming concert. Ten minutes on and this was still going on until we clicked, he was dead.

Kampot

Our next stop was the somnambulistic town of Kampot. Rather than catch the tourist bus we took a shared minivan. Not only was the journey an adventure but the process too proved memorable. The first driver we found took our luggage and put in the boot of his car and then told us that we had to wait for more passengers before we could leave. In the interim Nipun found a minivan that was leaving immediately and was also cheaper. Our first driver however would not return our luggage for love or money. He became petulant, aggressive and hostile, refusing to budge. So I tried to wrest his keys from his pocket whereupon his surliness increased. Threats of the police were the only thing that made him laugh. Eventually, after the threats of physical force had joined the empty threats of the police action he relented and sulkily returned our baggage and we were on our way. The shared minivan was shared with about two tons of mephitic barley, picked up from a depot in town before we set off. Bags of fifty kilograms were hoisted into the van until the rear view mirror was transmogrified into a useless accessory, six old ladies also on their way to Kampot were bundled into the remaining row of seats and then we on our very smelly way. As we continued down the coast towards Kampot the scenery got better and better, the rivers increase in size and swell into the ocean, littered with villages and smiling kids that wave from the side of the road. I really regret the fact that we spent so little time in South Cambodia.

Kampot seemed almost like it had been picked up out of Laos and dropped into Cambodia. It is a small, lethargic town, set by the river and populated with dilapidated but graceful French colonial buildings. The restaurants and riverside bars are fantastic and the town has a relaxed and cheerful feel to it. It’s old bridge is worth the visit to the town alone. The bridge was destroyed during the Khmer Rouge years and has been rebuilt by throwing together a bewildering combination of materials. The main section of the bridge is covered by steel chequer plates that clank like a train track as motorbikes and tractors traverse it. Kampot prison is nearby, and alarmingly close to the guesthouses in town. The prison is as beautiful as a prison can be, after all it was built by the French and is painted in a soft saffron colour that catches the evening sun and glows with warmth. The inside, I have just read, is not so grand… “A surge in inmates in Kampot prison has led to severe overcrowding and mounting health problems, including malnutrition, prison and provincial health officials said Thursday. In particular, several prisoners suffer from tuberculosis, skin infections and hypertension, said Lim Kaing Eang, chief of Kampot's provincial health department.” There are two other reasons that Kampot enjoys some fame, one is for Kampot Pepper, some of the finest in the world (trust me on this one, we had a Kampot pepper sauce and it was practically enough to get me filling in an emigration request) and the second is the nearby Bokor National Park and Bokor Hill Station.

Bokor

The main reason that we wanted to see Kampot was it’s proximity to Bokor Hill Station, a visit that cost us US$50.00 to do but which was worth every penny. Access to the Hill Station is now sporadic as the government builds a monstrosity of a new hotel nearby, from the drawing being displayed an anachronistic eyesore that hails back to the flamboyant but tacky hotel architecture of the seventies. The irony is that the environs are stunning and that the new hotel will be entirely unsympathetic to the landscape in which it will be set. Furthermore the impact on the Hill Station and its historic grandeur will be awful unless it is micromanaged, and this is unlikely to happen.

The original hotel was built atop Phnom Bokor by the French as a retreat from the heat and humidity of the main cities. At an altitude of over 1000 metres the hotel grounds overlook a vertical drop into the ocean below. The view can be mesmerising. I say “can be” because the hotel is so high up that clouds often sweep across the building and render them into an obscure fog. As you push along the road you suddenly see the hulking structure of the hotel or its outbuildings manifest before you, much like a ghost ship appearing from the mist. The overall effect is positively eerie, and then as suddenly as the clouds rolled in they are gone again. In the sun the Hill Station and the nearby cathedral glow amber in the sun, the walls being covered in an orange lichen. To add to the overall uneasiness the place inspires the walls are pocked with bullet holes from conflicts between the Khmer Rouge and the Vietnamese.

Kep

It was time to ago again, the few days that we spent in Kampot with it’s rusted corrugated roofs and ubiquitous volleyball games was too short. But we only a few days left in Cambodia before the visas ran out and so we moved onto the seaside of Kep, forty minutes down the road. The first thing that strikes you about Kep are the Hindu statues that line the road as you drive into town. Indeed Kep seems to be populated by statues in a variety of styles and quality. As you stroll down the main beach for example, the alabaster white Naked Fisher Man’s wife stares at you from across the beach, eight feet high and ensconced upon the end of the pier. It is refreshing that there is so much sculpture in Kep though. Owing to the seaside town’s bourgeois heritage (it was a quintessential seaside resort, the French loved it and the former King had a palace here) the Khmer Rouge decimated the town and as you walk along the seafront the old ruins of burnt out houses and villas. As such the town has an undiscovered feel to it in places, particularly in the early mornings. Local rumour has it that some of the burnt old buildings house ghosts, and at this time of the day it is easy to imagine why.

The beach in Kep was not as picturesque or the sea as inviting as it was at Sihanoukville and the nearby islands. However the crab market more than makes up for this. At dawn each day the grainy shore in front of the market is filled with women wading into the water to check crab traps, they return with baskets stuffed to bursting point with crabs and lobster. These are put onto scales, chucked into baskets and off they are taken. The quantity of crab that tumbles from trap to baskets made our jaws drop. Is this sustainable? Who knows. There are thousands of crabs being fished, weighed, put on ice and dispatched. Some of this crab stays put though and is served up at the twenty or so quaint shacks that line the beach. We had a sea fish lunch one day, more crab than we could eat, bursting with flavour and fist sized prawns caught that morning. From memory it cost us about US$10.00, which for this neck of the woods is expensive. But the quality and freshness of the food, coupled with the view of the ocean and rounded off with a Kampot Pepper sauce was worth every penny. It was our last day in Kep and the following morning we had an early breakfast at the Star Hotel (which was housing the president at the time) before getting a tuk-tuk (that we had pre-arranged) to the relatively new Vietnamese border post at Ha Tien. After about half an hour of driving through verdant rice fields with the smell of fish drying out in the sun hanging thickly in the air, our tuk tuk driver handed us over to some motorbike drivers who got us across the border and into town.

We had heard that crossing into Vietnam could be a bureaucratic nightmare, made more difficult by antagonistic and rude officials. Nothing could have been further from the truth at Ha Tien and the process was entirely painless. We were into Vietnam and Cambodia, sadly, was behind us.

We loved Cambodia, the people were generally friendly and good fun, the culture rich and the landscape beautiful. Of course everywhere has its problems though. It was a land of those who had plenty and of others who had very little. We saw shocking injuries on men and women whose lives had been shattered by landmines, children working the streets late at night and then the plain old homeless and destitute. A recent survey by Transparency International ranked Cambodia as the 14th most corrupt country in the world. Nepotism is alive and well a select few seem sure to prosper. And yet on the other hand for a country where monetary currency was only re-introduced in 1979 (after the Khmer Rouge declared Year Zero and effectively abolished money in Cambodia) the Khmer people have come along a very long road in a very short time. I was apprehensive when I entered Cambodia because the history was so brutal, so bloody and so recent. And yet our time here revealed that this is just one small aspect of a land where people are getting on with their daily lives and making a go of it. Cambodia was wonderful.

It is about 3.00 AM now and the funeral is still going strong. We have gone from the live band to karaoke to Buddhist chants and now it is time to go to bed. What a time they have had tonight, we should have joined them!