Halong Bay

Halong bay is just as majestic as the pictures show you. Even the fact that you're sharing the bay and the amazing limestone cliffs with 2000 other people in identical ''authentic'' Vietnamese junks doesn't dampen the gorgeousness. In fact it makes for some pretty nice photos. The 3 days we were there it was grey and cloudy, but that was OK - all the cliffs faded into the background in different shades of black and grey and the silky still water and the white sky made it feel like we were in a black and white photo. The only sad thing is the rubbish in the water, with so many people and boats that stay overnight the water is not the cleanest or clearest.

The first day we went on the boat we went to visit a cave which we can't remember the name of but that all our guide could say that it was 'the most fabulous massive cave, the most beautifulest'' and other similar variations when quizzed.

Begrudgingly it was massive, and probably one of the most ''faaaaabulous'' caves we have ever been too.

And it had possibly the coolest bins in the world placed in side it, penguins and dolphins and fish! Who would want to throw their rubbish on the ground when they could throw it in a cool bin like this?

That afternoon we went exploring the bay on kayaks.

That night after dinner there was karoke, that no one took up, or you could go squid jigging. Which Jon LOVED, he sat with the boats crew all night dangling and jiggling a bamboo rod with some string catching squid and even a crab which the boats chef cooked for him to eat.

Otherwise all 12 of us on the boat sat around talking, there ended up being a fair few Aussies and 5 of us from Melbourne alone.

The next day we had opted for a 3 day tour so we swapped boats and went to CatBa Island, which is a National Park (with 50 hotels and guesthouses). Our brochure said we had a 15km a bikeride (though some of us opted for a motobike ride), which ended up being maybe 6km there and back and a ''trek throught the jungle to an ancient deserted village'' which ended up being maybe a 400m walk through farmland to a not quite ancient -but- we'll -givem -points -for -the deserted-bit village. The frogs in the well were cool though.

After lunch on the boat it was to our hotel on CatBa for a free afternoon. So we walked to the beach which was surrounded by cliffs and felt almost European not to mention packed with people in the water. We walked around to a quiter beach to have a beer where they charged us for the honour of using their deckchairs. That night was fairly quiet as the hotel the tour put us at was brimming with package tour middle aged Europeans. Infact the whole island was overflowing with them, everywhere you looked. So we think CatBa Island is aimed more for their market then ours.

CatBa Bay

The next day was a boat trip back through Halong bay then back on a bus to sweet home Hanoi.

On the highway to hell

Hanoi
Mãy 4-10
After the most horriblest bus journey to Hanoi, that had us arriving at midnight, our hotel was heaven, clean crispwhite sheets, a proper bath and shower. Not a bucket and a tap. A/C. A mini bar (not that we brought any of it, we went a brought our own cheaper beers and chucked them in) and a TV with 40 cable channels!!!! It rained torrentially while we were there so that was very handy. And free brekky and free internet.
Hanoi is....millions of motorbikes....and vespas... stylish helmets that look like jockey hats and are probably useless....tiny streets, mini plastic chairs and tables on the sidewalk for makeshift cafes, amazing art deco buildings, cute french cafes..... green trees lining every street...... girls with hanging fruit baskets selling pineapple and bananas...taxis with mini TVs where the rearview mirror should be, hundreds of thousands of business phone numbers stencil sprayed on every available wall surface, car horns, motorbike horns, truck horns day and night, everyone wanting to know where you're going, everyone having a good price for you. Streets with shops that all sell the one thing the whole street -a toy street, coffin street, baby milk formula, coffee beans, shoes, drills, underwear, clothing material.

We got used to the traffic, for the most part if you walk across the road everyone on the motorbikes zoom around you.. anything bigger has right of way, traffic lights for anyone are optional.

While we were there we visited the Temple of Literature and other smaller temples in between, resting from the heat with thirst quenching ''fresh' beer, for like 30 cents a mug!


Everyone on the road had given us horror stories about unfriendly people in Hanoi, but we liked it, everyone was friendly and talked to us. Everyone running the restaraunts and hotels were young in their twenties and wanted to talk to us, without any hidden agenda, which made a nice change from other parts of our trip.

The only bad thing was fruit seller girls who liked to grab me by the arm to buy their pineapple, they didn't grab Jon's. Jon got harrassed by tuktuk drivers trying to sell other wares when a tuktuk ride was turned down.

On the last day I was taking a picture of a street, when 2 pineapple seller girls ambushed us. They grabbed my camera and flung their pineapple baskets at us (You know the ones that dangle off a long piece of wood, one basket at each end?) ''We make good photo for you, nice picture!'' It all happened so fast we didn't get a chance to react. The next thing we know they're screaming at us ''YOU PAY YOU PAYEEE'' they wanted us to pay them for taking a photo of us, so I said we'd buy some fruit and pulled out some money to pay, when I asked how much, one of them grabbed everything I had, then the other one was screaming for me to pay the same to her and then a third one wanted to get in on the act and was trying to offload her basket on to Jon.
They were all screaming and everything had happened in 30 seconds ''YOU PAYEE MEE TOOO'' the third one was demanding hopefully. The first one had taken the equivalent of $20 US off me and we knew there wasnt going to be any change, and all we got were 2 bags of pineapple (it was pretty good pineapple, but still) . So I just said ''you share between all 3'' and walked off to them still screaming at us.

And the photo wasn't even any good.

Vieng Xai and Sam Neua

Photo to the left of one of the entrances to a Pathet Lao cave (the house on the outside built later after the bombing)

Thanks guys for all your comments. It's awesome to hear (or is it see?) from you.

May 1 -3
Alot of the people we met in Phonsavan were heading for Hanoi afterwards. We were the only ones heading off into the wilderness, even more north -easterly. We were running out of time in SE Asia and were already 2 weeks into our Vietnamese visa. But we didn't want to leave Laos, we loved it... so we went to find the caves where the Pathet Lao lived for over a decade under constant bombardment, everyday and every night by the US. The photo below is a field near the caves that still has bomb craters.

The bus to Sam Neua was 9 hrs of winding mountain roads, but we enjoyed it, there were so many villages to see, little stilt houses with adorable snotty nosed kids playing everywhere, people in the rice paddies, girls using those big weaving looms, people squatting everywhere to chat...
The forested mountains may have looked peaceful, and still, devoid of humans, but as soon as you got closer it came to life.
We stayed in Sam Neua 2 nights doing Vieng Xai as a day trip.
At night all the kids would run around in gangs catching moths and putting them in plastic bottles, we have no idea what they did with them, they laughed when I mimed eating them, whether that's because that's a silly idea or I'm dud mime we don't know. But they caught heaps, they'd come up and say hello and proudly show you their bottles.

On the second night with not many other edible options we went to a little noodle cafe for dinner and the waitress/cook/owner got confused with our order and brought us a plate of steamed rice, fried rice and sticky rice, instead of stirfried chicken.


Vieng Xai was a ride in a tuktuk for another hour through bamboo villages and vegetable patches and water buffalo. ViengXai is in the most beautiful valley surrounded by limestone caves and its stunning scenery everywhere you turn... Its hard to believe it was under constant bombing for a decade.
The limestone caves hid over 20,000 Pathet Lao forces and their families and there was a hospital, a theatre, a bakery, a lolly factory, schools.. We had heard about it when we read a book about Laos and the overthrow of the royal family,and the caves sounded amazing. All the Pathet leaders that hid there are now in, or have been, in parliament.
We visited the Presidents house and cave, their meeting room and saw their cave kitchens and car garages and the hospital. The caves protected them from the bombings that occured every day and the Americans never knew where they were.. farmers would come out in the cover of night to farm fields!
The Pathet Lao finally came out of their caves when the bombings stopped in the mid seventies, and were able to build mansions next to their old cave pads. The even named Vieng Xai the capital of Laos, until they toppled the king in Luang Prabang a few years later and moved the capital to Vientiane. The photo to the left is of one of the leaders bedrooms in the cave. And below is a car garage!

We met a cool Australian lady Meg whose helping the Laotians tour guides who take you around the caves and our tour guide Hien was very friendly and curious about Australia. The photo to the right is another cave entrance that lead into the leaders main conference room.

The next day back in Sam Neua was the beginning of our epic 17hr journey to Hanoi. We got to the bus station at 7 am to get our bus... but were told by a man that our bus to Vietnam wasn't running today.. WHAT?!! It only ran once a week. He didn't know why it hadn't come ''It's in Vietnam" he shrugged. "But" the man said, you can get on my tuktuk to the border if you like...Ok we thought, but the tuk tuk was full, 25 people full. But it was the only tuktuk for the day so on we squashed. It was a huge relief when 3 people got off an hour later, but then we went to pick up 5 more people....Jon ended up sitting on the roof with the luggage, ohh how I wished I could've been up there too. The photo of Jon is of him holding on to the tuktuk for the first part of the trip before he got on the roof.
So for three hours we sat with an extremely fresh and aromatic hairy leg of meat, cigarettes, pesticides, fishfeed, a tonne of luggage and like 27 people... in a tiny little tuktuk.
The only good thing that happened was that when we got to the border at lunch time, all the border officials were mega hungry and got us through from Laos to Vietnam in the time it takes to boil the water for their beef noodle soup.
But then there was the bus driver from hell on the otherside in Vietnam, who takes all the awards for craziest speed demon maniac ''who says you can't overtake an ambulance with sirens on'' driver . Who pelted down tiny little windy villages roads also populated with huge logging trucks, in possibly the most rundown bus in Vietnam still in service..(the roof leaked when it rained, and created a mini lake in the bus, drowning our backpacks. Our friends window fell off, there were nails sticking through our seats) but that's another story.

The back of the tuktuk from Sam Neua.

And Jon on top of the tuktuk, smiling because he is happy he is not inside.

Phonsavan- Plain of Jars

April 29-30Phonsavan is in the north east of Laos and has a completely different landscape to the rest of the country. Rolling hills with fluorescent green pastures and gum trees not to mention grey clouds made us feel surreal, like we were back home in Oz outside of Melbourne in a little country town seeing these ancient jars.

This area was also the cause of much fighting for Lao people in the last 100 years. Against the French, amoungst themselves, and then against the US who outdid themselves by going for a world record in dropping the most bombs on Laos then on any other country in the world in the history of warfare to kill the Pathet Lao. Phonsavan was actually completely destroyed during the 70s by the bombing and was rebuilt. Unfortunately this meant alot of the jars were blown up to, and very dangerous to visit due to the thousands of unexploded ordanances scattered around them. Bizarrely now people display all the leftover shrapnel and bombs in their front yards, if they aren't selling them as scrap metal to make a quick buck.

This means that although there are over 400 sites with over 100 jars in each site, only 4 have been demined and are safe for visitors. The jars in this picture have been partly damaged by bombs. And can you see the gum trees in the background???

All along the path to the jars it marks where it's safe to walk and where they aren't completely 100% sure they got all the mines..oohhh the danger.

Our local guide explained that no one is really clear on what the jars are for... he himself liked the idea that they were ancient whiskey ' Lao Lao' fermentation/storing jars.

Another theory is that they're ancient coffins, that the ancient tribes cremated the dead and placed them in the stone jars. Alot of the jars had lost their lids, we only saw one lid on the ground. The jars are dated from 500BC to 800BC and crafted by and ancient Khmer-Monh race, there are similar jar sites apparently in India and Vietnam. They were all different sizes the jars 'some for skinny lady and some for fat man' our guide wisely told us.

At site number 2 a group of tourists had hired a monk to walk around while they snapped away at the poor bewildered boy. He just walked around looking startled while the amatuer photographers got in his face, barking orders and positioning him and snapped him down low, up high, looking spiritually (?!) off in to the distance, very bizarre.

The last site we saw it was raining and misty and we walked through rice paddies, but much the same as the other two sites.

It was definately worth seeing, as was seeing all the great work NGOs are doing with the demining fields and helping the people of the region get back on their feet, because they are only now just recovering from the war.

Still Phonsavan is a pretty sleepy town (Guesthouse curfews were 10;30pm!) so we moved on to Sam Neua.....

City of monks

Luang Prabang April 25-29

Luang Prabang is UNESCO listed and pretty much the prettiest little town ever. It is the sprirtual home for Laotians and the old royal capital. There are monks everywhere; riding bicycles, motorbikes, using the internet, walking with umbrella's(it should be there national emblem, monks with umbrellas) talking on their mobiles, SMOKING! That was a bit of a shock, we thought they were these pure spiritual beings, but no, being a monk is a requirement of all males that they have to undertake at some point in their lives, so you get the good monks and the badass monks who don't want to be there....it's still cool to see all these orange robed monks wandering around town.

In the middle of town is a hill, a big one... with lots of steps, where apparently... actually true story... Buddha himself left his foot.. we saw it. The hill is named Mt Phousi and also has temples, and a buddha statue for everyday of the week. And amazing views... and monks.

We spent a day wandering around, checking out the old Palace which was very regal if quite small, only there is no longer a royal family inhabiting it as they were overthrown and the communist leaning Pathet Lao took over in the 70s. They were sent to a prision camp in the during the revolution and perished there. All royal families possessions are on display but no mention is made of what happened to them. We only know because we read a book about it, the Lao would never tell you. The main reception room is blood red with millions of coloured mirror tiles mosaics telling Lao legends and stories. They cover every wall and the roof, it was breathtaking, only you can't take your camera in so we can't show you, you'll just have to go check it out yourself. We also went to the Museum of Ethnology which showed the various ethnicities of Laos and their particular charateristics, and their costumes... who knew Lao people digged fluro and sparkles so much?

The 27th was Jon's Birthday so we spent the day white water kayaking. As all tours start there was the manditory stop at the petrol station accompanied by a stop to buy our lunch and to pick up the kayaks. Our 'guides' were a highly organised bunch as when we arrived at the river they were drastically short of safty gear and just looked sheepish when we questioned them. As a result Jon paddled without a helmet or a PFD. And as he said, he would never as a kayaking instructor back home be allowed to get away with that. All that aside it was a great day, we were both in the same boat and managed not to capsize all day. The scenery was a mix of slash and burn agriculture and rolling green mountains, little bamboo villages and locals along the river looking for gold! And the paddling wasn't bad either with a few nice rapids though Jon doesn't think they were Grade 3 rapids as we were told maybe a high 2. Grade 1 rapid s being a ripple on the surface and Grade 6 the highest meaning know ones conquered the rapid without dying in the process. For Jons B'day dinner it was lots of Lao Lao (whiskey) and a Lao soup BBQ where you get to cook your own veggies and meat on the top and on the sides of the BBQ you get a delicious soup.

Another morning we got up super early to watch the alms giving where all the monks walk in a line around the town, and women sitting infront of their houses give each monk a scoop of rice for their bowl. It was very quiet and misty at 6am and not quite light, it was very tranquil and we're glad we got to see it.

One day we also got a very bumpy tuktuk ride out to a river to get a boat to Pak Ou caves where thousands of Lao people for hundreds of years have gone to worship and pray and leave thousands of little buddhas for good luck. Even the royal family made a pilgramage each year with a new buddha image to add, there a roughly 4,000 buddhas, all completely different.

We loved Luang Prabang and would have loved a couple more days to hang out there, we met some really nice people and even got invited to a locals to enjoy the sunset from their roof. But we had to move on...

In the next episode we will take you to the ancient Plain of Jars... hold your breath untill then!

On another note... if your'e reading this, let us know! You can click on the bottom of the entry where it says comments and just say hello, or if you like it,or hate it, want more info on a place or whatever.

We would love to hear from you, and then we can write back to you!

Tubing down the river....

April 22-25: Vangvien

Vangvien is one of the most popular places in Laos for tourists, and you either love it or hate it. We loved it, but it could possibly be hated if you visited during peak season when it's packed.

Reasons you would hate it.

Vangvien is known for its Friends cafes, where for 16hrs non-stop all day they play all the Friends episodes, backtoback. You lounge around on cushions eat food, drink beer and watch Friends. Actually there's nothing to hate about that... nothing like watchin Joey and Pheebs and the gang after a hard days tubing down the river... at all. We're still humming the Friends theme tune. Except that everyone in town thought it was a winning business formula... and theres about 15 of these cafes scattered around. Of course this means you get to pick your season...and the cafes are diversifying.. you can also watch Family guy and the Simpsons. Hey if it's raining theres not alot else to do... and it did rain an awful lot oneday.

Reasons you will love it.

The amazing scenery.

Tubing! Floating down a river in a tractor inner tube, an organic mulberry mojhito from the amzingly cool organic farm where you start your tubing adventure in hand (in a plastic bag). You float from bamboo bar to bamboo bar along the river, listening to some cool tunes, drifting along beer in hand, jumping from rope swing to ropeswing, with all the stopping and drinking and jumping we didnt even get to the end of the river. The video is of Jon on one of the rope swings, possibly the highest on we saw. It was amazing scenery aswell, with these soaring cliffs right next to you and steamy jungle on the other.

The locals. Very sweet, kids very cute and cheeky. And the fact they all ride bicycles and hold an umbrella to shade their faces at the same time.