Hi My name is Tina and I began my Asian travels in June 2004
Well by this time each country was becoming progressively more expensive to stay in, so I didn't want to spend too long in Laos. Pakse was a ghost town and I was still ill and still needed to get to Bangkok so I got a flight, yes a flight! to the capital in the north, Vientiane. This was a nice enough place, but didn't feel it worth staying too long so got an overnight bus down to Bangkok.
Headed out by local bus to a small town called Kratie. The most picturesque place on the edge of the Mekong River, the wide red river. The straw houses on stilts surrounded by lush green palm trees, greener than you can imagine along dusty red pot holed roads. I got motorbike rides out through these little villages, found a young boy witha boat to take me out across the river where I saw so much interesting wildlife and even stub nosed rare dolphins swinmming in family groups, they were so beautiful, swimming all around our boat, we stayed there for ages watching them play as the sun set.
The boy who took nme out was onme of 7 children, living in very poor conditions. His father worked as a fisherman and cought maybe 1 kilo of fish a day. From this he would sell half to buy rice and the rest use to feed his family. Thats all the income they got. The boy did odd jobs for people when he could to earn a dollar so that he could get English lessons which may help him find work in hte future. In the meantime it was difficult for him to earn anything without a bike and he couldn't afford a bike.
Well that night I got extremely ill, side affects of the malaria pills I think. Anyway i didn't leave my bed for 3 days and didn't eat or drink for 7 days. But as soon as the fever left I had to carry on, very weak by this point i emptied half my rucksack so that i would be able to carry it and the closest hospital was Bangkok. I had to carry on up through Cambodia by boat and motorbike to a horrible border town of Stung Treng, sitting on the roof of the boats in rain and sun and wind! And getting off the boat knee deep into mud. Then caked in mud by motorbike to get across the border to Laos in the middle of a jungle, then a jeep to a Laos ghost town called Pakse.
Another 7 hour bus journey to Siem Reip. The landscape in Cambodia is beautiful. The poor country folk live in simple straw and wood houses on stilts surrounded by lush green tropical fruit trees and paddy fields. Really picturesque. Buffalo grazing or cooling off in the rice fields, small canoes fishing in the ponds. Unfortunately the poverty means that most children in htese areas never go to school, cannot afford clothes and onl;y get a little rice and fish to eat all day. From the age of 3 when they can barely speak the children are sent out to sell postcards, T shirts etc to tourists to earn a little for food. And the tourists spend all their time haggling the price down from 1 dollar to 0.75 dollars for a T shirt. Its really crazy, there are however 1300 NGO's here so I guess something must be happening. But it seems at the moment that the rich are getting richer, the poor, poorer and the people don't know what they can do to improcve the situation. On top of that there are the many maimed beggers, injured by landmines, which until recently were still a threat in the countryside. There is just a senhse of helplessness and i don't really know how the situation can be improved, well not until all the corruption stops anyway.
Anyway Angkor Wat temples, huge remails of Hindu and Buddhist temples built in the 10th Century were extraordinary as expected, hundreds of them in the muiddle of nowhere, some even had trees growing over them. Well I watched the sun coming up over them at 5.30 in the morning and stayed until sunset. The stone steps leading up to some of the temples were so steep, from the top you literally couldn't see the bottom or any of the steps below. Even I got vertigo and usually i love climbing!
Very quiet city, lovely people but very poor. One girl invited me to her house to meet her family. They lived a very simple life.Travel around Cambodia is tricky, not many roads and those that exist are mainly bumpy dirt tracks. Transport mailyn motorbikes, so i was always on htese on the really bad roads with no protective clothing and often 3 on the bike. I did see a horrendous accident invloving 7 people and motorbikes and all 7 were covered in blood and in a very bad way...the ambulance took half an hour to arrive! Sort of scared me a bit.
Even more depressing, I went to visit the killing fields and S-21 prison from the Khmer Rouge period. It was horrendous how so many people in Cambodia for no apparent reason were tortured and killed, the prioson, now turned into a museum, showed the horrors that so many millions of people were put through eg women stripped, tied up and then had their nipples cut off using plyers! Children were tortured and killed, It was horrendous, how a human being could do that to another human being is beyond me.
Hoi An was another little tourist town further down the coast. A lot quieter than Hanoi but still everyone pestering you. They tailor made the most beautiful clothes here too. Anyway I went just wanted a break so went to the beach...for 5 days! Golden sands, clear sea....palm trees, pineapple, coconuts jet skiing swimming etc etc. I met a lovely French man who treated me to dinner by moonlight on the sands. It was full moon and they celebrate by laying mats on the sand to sit on and oil lamps on each to light up the darkness and then the local ladies would come and serve you food and drink. They even had two huge beautiful hot air balloons. Anyway I got to practice my french and he got to practice his English.
Une Mer de Bougies
Fete de la pleine lune. Aujourd'hui je suis venue a la plage, par motocycle. La plage c'est vide c'est tres beau. le sable blanc et la mer avec les vagues. La plage etait presque vide et c'etait tres beau. Le sable etait blanc et la mer affortait ses vages. La plage etait ladee d'abres tropicaux et je me suis assiss sous un parisol de paille avec mon ananas et ma noix de coco. C'etait le paradis!!! Et puis j'ai recontre quelqu'un, il ne sait pas parler correctement anglais mais nous arrivons a echanger quelques phrases a l'aide d'un dictionnaire qu'il avait dans son sac (ouf!!). Apres avoir nager ensemble, nous avons diner sur la plage. Nous etions assis sur un tapis eclaire d'une bougie : c'etait tres romantique. Imagine! Pleine lune, avec 2 montgolfieres, c'etait la fete! La suite vous l'imaginez tout seul......
Anyway got a ride back at midnight with a very drunk motorcyclist who swerved all over the road while seranading me with drunken made up lyrics consisting of "luvly jubly, we will look after your bikes mate...don't worry, be happy" in a dodgy Vietnamese tune....I was in hysterics but glad to get back to my hotel in one piece!
I also went to visit an old ruined temple...looked a bit like a mini version of Ankgor Wat and in the process of getting of the motorbike I had hired to get up there...I burned my leg nicely!!! A huge tennis ball sized white patch where my skin had burned off and started to puss.
Aparently this happens to everyone in Vietnam...so no one was surprised!
Well this was a nice surprise...after the bad reports i had heard....people actually dont hassle you here....its nice...and the city is amazing especially at night. Although it does have too many western resaurants for my liking and too many Brits eating pizzas and drinking beer. But I got away from that by wondering around the back streets....was very interesting.
While here I visited the the Cu Chi tunnels, built by the Vietnamese during the French and American invasions. They were incredible...miles and miles built by hand and in 3 storys, the deepest being 10m. I went through 30m of the tunnel to see what they were like, I had to squeeze through the opening and was on my hands and knees for most of it, getting rather claustrophobic! And the Vietnamese lived in these tunnels everyday for over 20 years, coming out only at night! It was incredible.
Then on to the war crimes museum where we could see photos of what the Americans had done to the country and the people....it was really shocking....I was in tears! I can't understand why the international community still allowed America to possess any weapons or go to war again after this....it's really shocking! I'm just speechless.
Anyway to recover I went on a lovely day of boating the next day on the Mekong Delta, where the water is red and the vegetation sooo lush...like I've never seen before. We canoed through small canals amongst the thousands of islands in the Delta. Amonst the pineapple trees, the banana trees, trees with guavas, lychees, grapefruits, dragon fruits, mangos etc etc. And visited the little villages that lived in such gorgeous surroundings on the islands. I even got to hold a beautiful enormous python, soo heavy! And went to visit some monkeys....poor things were locked up in small cages looking very sad...but they would reach out to hold your hand and look at you with big watery eyes, they were very sad....and it was so cruel keeping them locked up like that. Can't stand it, need to get out now......off to Cambodia tommorrow.
Well this was a bit of a disappointment. The capital was overcrowded, very noisy dirty this wasn't so bad...but the people pestering you every 2 seconds really does start to get to you. Anyway if it hadn't been for this and the constant overcharging and ripping off of tourists, the city would have been lovely. The old colonial French buildings, the best baguettes in Asia, filled with spicy minced meat, the rice noodles soup with sprigs of basil and mint and the original spring roll!
And motorbikes, motorbikes, motorbikes everywhere. As soon as I stepped out of the bus with my huge rucksack onto the uneven pavement I went over with my bags onto the bikes parked side by side on the pavement, knocking them all over one by one....was I embarrassed!!??
So after a few hours i just had to get out of the place. I booked to go out on a cruise around Halong bay for the next few days.
Halong Bay was incredible, the weather hot and sunny, the boat an ornate intricately carved wooden sailing boat with a dragons head at the front. We sailed out to sea until we were surrounded by the most amazing huge limestone rocks jutting out of the sea, Huge jellyfish swimming around us, eagles flying in the clear blue sky above. We went to see some amazing huge caves, better than any i had seen in Europe, and spent time swimming and kayaking in the peace and serenity of that magical place. In the evenings we watched the sun set and an amazing electrical thunder storm light up the whole sky. Then as quickly as it had appeared, it disappeared leaving the moon and stars to glitter above.
It was surreal, misty, stormy, it was like being in a Turner painting, tied to the mast of the ship riding the storm, and the silhouettes of the enormous craggy steep rock formations in the moonlight, the waves and the rain on the water, the lightning...... it was really incredible...we drank Swiss whisky and slept peacefully under the stars.
Back to Hanoi for a couple of hours and tehn straight on the bus for another 19 hour uncomfortable bus journey to Hoi An. The buses here don't have engines, they just wait for the wind to blow them along. (And for the americans out there....I'm only joking!)
I arrived across the border by bus from China to Lao Cai in the north of Vietnam. It was quite a sight to see so many Vietnamese women with conical (lampshade) straw hats on and huge baskets of farm produce filled straw baskets balanced on bicycles, queuing up to enter China. They do this daily to sell their stock across the border. Anyway my first stop was a small town called Sapa, up in the green rice paddiy covered mountains. many minorities lived up here, just like in China, but unlike China, they could all speak perfect English in order to pester the many English tourists to death to buy their handicrafts. Well I guess they need to do this for a living, although it was really annoying, particularly after wonderful China where the only tourists are Chinese ones so they dont really count.
So I spent the next 3 days trying to get away from the thronging Vietnamese and Thai minorities. I went trekking and mototrcycling around the mountains, it was really peaceful and beautiful with all the lush green rice terraces. Couldn't really spend too long here though...just get fed up with people ripping you off....so off I went to Hanoi...
