Off East

We were up early the next day to get a boat along the river to the famous Cairang floating market where all local wholesalers of fruit and vegetables bring their produce by boat to sell their wares to ‘middlemen’ also in boats. The boats were laden with produce and in order for people to know what they were selling, they all had a long pole sticking up in the air which had the produce attached to it so people could see what they were selling. Once they’d run out of something, they simply took that item off the pole. Simple but effective! It was very atmospheric cruising amongst the boats seeing all the hustle and bustle.

The last day’s cycling was the longest and when we got on our bikes in the morning we were knackered! My legs were still fine but my bum was really sore and the thought of 50+km that day was a bit daunting! the first stretch was a breeze though as we cycled right along the river under a green canopy of trees and flowers which was a welcome relief. We went through some really pretty villages and as with the first two days, were always accompanied by kids on bikes and hellos and friendly waves from everyone we passed!

We visited a Taoist temple and a crane sanctuary where there were literally 1000’s of cranes nesting in the trees. We had the option of having a Crane lunch (!) which we declined…

After a non-crane lunch we drove onto our next destination. The road we were supposed to take was closed as a bridge had collapsed so the one we had to take was ridiculously bumpy and busy and at times we were driving so close to the edge of the river that it felt like we were going to topple in. You wouldn’t want to fall in to the river as we later found out that during the typhoon earlier in the year, the waters had risen to high that one of the local crocodile farms had been flooded and approx 20,000 crocodiles had escaped into the river. Quite a few children had been killed by crocodiles in the villages that we past through, as they played in the water.

The last stretch of cycling that afternoon was about 45km and included one pretty big mountain to get up which looked even bigger than it was against the flat landscape of the rest of the Mekong Delta! As we were approaching the Cambodian border, the area that we were cycling through had a large Cambodian population as people had fled from Cambodia during the Khmer Rouge atrocities and the borders had been moved several times. They were obviously very, very poor. They people looked very different to the Vietnamese people we’d met in the rest of the country. They were really dark-skinned and their dress was different with many people wearing traditional Cambodian scarves. A lot of the elder women had shaved heads which I later found out was because they shave their heads when they are widowed.

We had all sorts of kids cycling along with us and talking to us as they came home from school or for others, from work. Some of them had to cycle 10Km to get to the nearest school and they’d do this journey twice a day. It made me realise as we cycled along for pleasure, just how important having a bike is to people in rural areas. for most, it’s their sole mode of transport and means the difference between going to school and getting an education or not. Without a bike, they can’t get an education and end up working the fields with their families to try and earn some money. We saw really young kids on massive bikes that were way too big for them, pedalling along or having a backy on someone else’s bike.

Despite being knackered, we pushed on and ended up covering the distance pretty quickly and even managed to make it up the mountain in one go – a downward slope has never felt so good!!!

It was really beautiful with huge fields full of palm trees stretching as far as the eye could see and as dusk fell it looked really magical.

We arrived in Chau Doc our final destination and had some well earned beers with Loc our guide who was a really nice guy. We then went and got some street food. It was so sad though as there was a very young boy on his own wandering around the market late at night trying to sell lottery tickets. He was looking hungrily at the food and hanging around the stalls so Loc bought him something to eat. He wolfed it down and gave us a big smile and it nearly broke my heart. What we didn’t know then though was that the poverty and hardships that we’d seen people facing in Vietnam as a direct result of the American Vietnam war, were almost going to pale in comparison to the situation in Cambodia and the stories that we’d hear.

The cycling trip was absolutely brilliant and was one of the highlights of our time in Vietnam and was the perfect way to scratch a bit deeper, get away from the more touristed Vietnam and see rural Vietnam in all it’s beauty.

After only a couple of hours sleep we woke up early and prepared ourselves for the next day’s cycling.

We were due to be picked up by our boat to take us further along the river to meet the van and our driver but the tide was so low that we had to wait as the boat couldn’t come and get us. When we eventually got on the boat it took us ages to move a relatively short distance as the water was only a foot or two deep in places. Luckily we had a very experienced boatman who steered through the canals. Some boats we stuck and simply had to wait until the tide rose before they could move. It was a great experience though and was really interesting to see the river villages and the boat life from the water.

Once we arrived in VinhLong it was back on the bikes. The legs felt fine but my bum was a bit sore and we’d both caught a bit of sun the day before. Because we’d set off later than planned due to the tides, it meant that we were cycling in the midday sun and it was much, much harder. The temperatures were pushing 40 degrees and the sun was really fierce. To help matters we were also cycling into the wind. It was hard work and we had a long way to cycle that day (about 40km) so we just had to get on with it and kept stopping for breaks. We discovered that sugar cane drinks that you could get at little shacks at the side of the road were the ultimate energy drink and really refreshing – freshly squeezed sugar cane, freshly squeezed kumquats poured over some crushed ice. Delicious!

The area that we cycled through that day was much, much poorer and we saw many people who lived in what were literally shacks at the side of the road. The scenery was lovely and very rural. We had to negotiate cows crossing the road, kids on bikes on their way home from school, tractors filled up with tropical fruits and the produce from the area. There were also lots of paddy fields with water buffalo grazing at the side of them and people tending to their crops wearing the iconic Vietnamese conical hat.

The sun got hotter and hotter though and we were all really pleased to eventually reach our destination which signified then end of the cycling for the day. Exhausted, we fell in to the van, and drove to Cantho where we had lunch and then went to the hotel and had a long bath! Cantho is a lovely Mekong Delta town and that evening we sat on the riverfront and had a delicious dinner and a couple of beers before falling into bed and sleeping like babies!

We were picked up in the morning by our driver and our guide. It was just the two of us and them cycling through the Mekong Delta for three days and then taking the boat up the river and crossing into Cambodia.

We were a bit nervous as we didn’t really know quite what to expect in terms of distances and how we’d cope with the heat as it was very, very The bikes were pretty new hybrid bikes and our driver would take all our gear whilst we cycled. It was like having our own support team – brilliant!

After driving for a couple of hours we stopped and started cycling towards Mytho. It was great once we settled in to a steady pace and we passed through villages with everyone waving and saying hello and loads of children running out to see us and say hello. They were so excited to see us it was hilarious and sometimes we’d pass a house and hear a chorus of hello’s but not be able to see where it was coming from, only to spot some kids up a tree/in the river/in their house and they wouldn’t stop saying hello until we waved back.

After a couple of hours, we arrived in Mytho for our boat trip on the Mekong Delta where we visited an island and saw sweets being made out of coconut and tasted many different types of tropical fruit and we took a sampan (a rowing boat) back along small canals. The Mekong Delta is simply massive – it was more like being on a huge lake than a river at times and the geography of it was a bit confusing as it splits off into many tributaries etc so we weren’t really sure exactly which bit we were cycling on at any one time.

We stopped for lunch and then took the boat back to the van and drove on for an hour or so before stopping and cycling on to CaiBe. This was really good cycling as it was totally flat and we went down dirt tracks, crossed lots of monkey-bridges and passed through some really rural villages. It was lovely cycling at dusk and was so peaceful. We took a couple of local ferries across more tributaries on the river until we arrived at CaiBe where we boarded a boat to take us to across the river (where it was 1.5km wide!) to BinhHoaPhuoc and AnBinh island to a guesthouse.

The guesthouse was a very basic traditional building on stilts at the side of the river. It was beautiful but it was boiling – there wasn’t a breath of wind at all and it was stifling. We had some well earned beers having cycled about 25Km, watched the sunset over the Mekong and had some delicious dinner before falling into our camp beds and pulling down the mosquito nets.

It was at this point, that the evening river noise started! First of all it was the incessant cockerels crowing, then the local dogs barking and fighting, then the insects all started and so it continued…

We flew from Nha Trang to Saigon (the locals mostly still call it Saigon despite it’s name officially being Ho Chi Minh City now). Flying within Vietnam is cheap and very easy. Vietnam Airlines seem really good! It’s only an hours flight but we didn’t really have time left on our visas to stop anywhere else in between as we wanted to leave enough days to explore the Mekong Delta too.

Saigon is a proper big, international city! Nothing like Hanoi, which is quaint and very Asian feeling. Saigon has tall buildings, international company headquarters, a high population and also all the problems that go with being the capital city in a country which is still developing fast.  The traffic was terrible though – just an endless sea of motorbikes and cars none of which were going anywhere very quickly…!  In our short time there it was pretty obvious that the infrastructure in Saigon is in dire need of updating. The sewers, drainage, cabling and roads/pavements all need major investment. In such a busy and populous city it’s hard to see how that can happen though as they really need to dig up the roads, fix the sewers, put the myriad of electrical/phone cables underground and sort out the pavements (which at times are non-existent). There’s a lot of money being invested in Vietnam but it mainly goes on tourism and business. If they don’t sort out the infrastructure too then it may be too late to do it without causing major disruption which will obviously impact their tourism potential. The country and government face a bit of a dilemma which could cause real problems if not addressed! That said the Vietnamese seem a resourceful people and I’m sure they’ll work it out.

We treated ourselves to a nice hotel in Saigon. We felt like we deserved a bit of luxury after all our travelling. The 5 star Sofitel had a sale on which made it affordable although still the most expensive place we’d stayed to date… Have to say the service was some of the best I’ve ever experienced in a hotel and the rooftop swimming pool was brilliant!

Saigon has some amazing architecture, a lot of the old government buildings were built by the French which gives the city a fairly cosmopolitan feel. It’s pretty easy to walk around most of the main sights and restaurant/bar areas. And that’s pretty much what we did during our time there; walk, stop to see a building, walk, stop to eat or drink There are some great restaurants and bars there although some of the nicest food we had in the city was at a fast food place called Pho 24 which serves just Pho (delicious noodle soup). It’s dirt cheap and as good as the Pho you get anywhere.

One afternoon/evening we went to visit a Vietnamese friend of Em’s parents who they’d met when they were in Vietnam a couple of years ago. Phong and his family live in the suburbs and they very kindly treated us to a great afternoon where Em got to try her hand at rolling spring rolls and we played with their lovely daughter (who’s western name is apparently Emily). They cooked us an amazing meal – enough food for about 15 people (!) and we had a great time.  As ever meeting locals on their own territory is always the best way to get a better understanding of the culture and how friendly they are. Thanks Phong, Van and family!!!

We discovered the backpacker area of the city the next day. It’s full of cheap hotels, small bars (most of which were full of very young Vietnamese girls and old Western men) and eateries (we had an amazing  Southern Indian meal here). It’s also full of tour companies who can book you trips to the Mekong and beyond. We had been thinking about trying to organise a cycling trip, although we weren’t sure as it was so hot. We went into one shop, Asiana Travel Mate (great local travel company dealing in really good tours), and sat down with the sales person. Her name was Thu and she proceeded to give us so much useful information about a cycling tour to the Mekong Delta which included boat tickets up the river to Cambodia that we ended up booking straight away (more on the cycling trip in the next post). We stayed chatting with Thu for some time and explained that we really liked getting the chance to meet locals in their own environment so we could really experience the culture. At this she got extremely excited and asked us if we wanted to go and visit her parents with her the next day. Of course we said yes!

Thu’s parents live in a small village about an hour outside Saigon towards the Mekong. They have a small farm where they grow a huge range of tropical fruits. We went there by car and stopped off at the village market to buy meat, fish, vegetables and noodles to take to her folks house for lunch. We arrived to a huge welcome from her parents and fresh coconuts ready for drinking. Following that was a massive platter of fresh fruit from their own trees which we tucked into as we all chatted.

Thu and her Mum disappeared to prepare lunch so we chatted with her Dad. He’s a lovely guy with a really interesting background; he was well educated and worked with the Americans during the war in a senior role in the South Vietnamese army. Because of that, when the war ended, the newly formed communist regime sent him to be ‘re-educated’ as a farmer. This meant he was separated from his family at times. He’d also spent some time in a prison, not for doing anything wrong, just as a result of his circumstances during the war – i.e working for the losing side; very unfair.  We were saddened to hear his story but (not for the first time) amazed at the resilience of the Vietnamese.

He hadn’t used English for many, many years and as the day wore on he became more confident and by the end of the day we were discussing pretty much anything with him. It was quite amazing to see a language come flooding back to someone like that!  Thu was particularly touched and amazed to see her Dad speaking so fluently in English and taking such pride in telling us his side of the story.

He also took great pride in taking us to see how the locals farmed the area and to see his fruit plantation. We learnt all about the farming techniques they use and how hard they work to keep soil fertile and well irrigated (a backbreaking, never-ending task). He even took us to meet other relatives who lived near by. We had a great lunch with Thu and her parents, their hospitality was amazing and the day was one of the highlights of our time in Vietnam!

We spent the rest of our time in Saigon mooching about and seeing a few sights and an inordinate amount of time trying to cross the traffic-clogged roads. Oh and wondering whether we’d done the right thing booking a cycling tour in 35 degree heat and humidity (more on that in the next post)

Here’s a few photos from in and around Saigon.

We got another private car and driver to travel to Nha Trang. The stretch of coastline between Quy Nhon and Nha Trang is particularly beautiful with mountains, cliffs and lovely secluded bays. On this journey we had our first sign that dog is still eaten in Vietnam. We’d been told that the Vietnamese only really eat dog in the second half of the lunar month and hadn’t seen any sign of it so far. We stopped at a petrol station and a truck pulled in full of small cages each of which were packed with dogs. The driver got out of the truck to fill up and saw me staring. He looked over, smiled and then ran his finger across his throat and pointed at the dogs… We didn’t see anymore sign of dog being eaten however this day would henceforth be known as the ‘day of the dog’…

Nha Trang is quite a big town but generally as a tourist you only see a very small bit of it. As you drive in from the north you can see many small, ramshackle wooden houses for fishermen. Then you get to the seafront and it’s mostly western tourists everywhere. There’s about 5 blocks of the town that tourists frequent. We found our hotel then headed don to he beach to find some food.

The beach front is nice, some cool bars and restaurants all with loungers and watersports available. The sand is beautiful, the sea is clear and pretty clean. The beach gets a little dirty though in parts. We lay on the sand in the afternoon and this is where the ‘dog day’ hit us. Em looked over and found we’d been lying not 2 metres from a dead puppy that was washed up on the beach! I’ve no idea how it could have died but that was enough to make us move down the beach quite a way.

We had some great western food in Nha Trang. After pretty much nothing but Asian food for nearly 2 months it was actually really nice to have access to expat owned restaurants. Very near our hotel (which was lovely by the way) was a place owned by a guy from Mississippi. He prided himself on having the best smoked ribs in Asia and they were amazing! I have never had meat so tender, the hours of smoking really do the trick!

Across the bay from Nha Trang is Vinpearl Island resort. The island has a massive Hollywood style sign on it saying Vinpearl in huge letters. It’s basically a single resort hotel with a water park, theme park and aquarium. We decided to go for the water park as our hotel didn’t have a pool and at that time of year the sea on Nha Trang beach is very rough.

To get to Vinpearl you have two options; ferry or a cable car. We chose the cable car. It’s the longest over-water cable car in the world at 2.5km. Amazing views, but also extremely scary as Nha Trang is a windy place and the cable car rocks about all over the place. Not good 100m up over the sea! Em decided she wanted to get the ferry back after the outward journey, unfortunately the ferries weren’t running all day so she had to grin and bear the return cable car trip.

We enjoyed our 4 days in Nha Trang mainly as it was such a change from where we’d been before and our hotel was so nice. Nha Trang isn’t the sort of place I’d go back to for a holiday though! Much better and quieter beaches all along the Vietnamese coast although sadly I reckon a lot of these will get overdeveloped like Nha Trang pretty quickly.

Here’s a few photo’s from Nha Trang.

Our next stop on the Vietnam leg of our tour was a relatively untouristed coastal town called Quy Nhon. To get there we travelled by car with a private driver. This journey was probably the worst of our driver experiences in Vietnam. He played non-stop euro techno hits the whole way, drove too fast and overtook everything he possibly could. There’s so many motorbikes and bicycles on the roads in Vietnam that we constantly thought he’d hit someone or something. He didn’t, luckily.

We booked he driver through one of the many tour agencies you find in every town in Vietnam. The guy in the shop told us that we’d be passing the famous site of the My Lai massacre and that it would be ‘very nice’ (not the way I’d have described it) to go and see it. So we got the driver to stop there en route.

The My Lai massacre is the site of a village where the U.S. Army essentially murdered many innocent civilians and torched their village. A very moving monument and museum are at the spot. Particularly moving are the messages from ex GI’s who weren’t involved in the massacre but have since gone back to visit it to pay their respects to the people affected by the atrocity. A very sad and needless waste of human life!

Quy Nhon is a smallish town situated on a massive bay. Our hotel was right on the beach and was really nice although the person who planned it wasn’t too clever as the swimming pool faced the sea and was in the shade of the building for most of the day…

There’s not a great deal to do in Quy Nhon. We were only there for three nights so took the opportunity to chill out and have a rest. The beach while lovely wasn’t too clean but just down the coast are some amazing small coves with crystal clear water and white sand. We got a taxi to one of these beaches one day to swim and catch some sun and there was only us and a couple of other travellers there.

Every time we visit somewhere new I tend to check online to see what’s been happening there in the local news. I did that for Quy Nhon and read a story about a man being bitten by a shark at the small cove we went to, I didn’t tell Em until after we’d had a swim Anyway, no sharks the day we were there, just lovely weather. It wasn’t until we got to our next stop a few days later that we read in the local news that there’d been a series of shake attacks in Quy Nhon just before we got there. The local government had offered fishermen a reward to catch the shark and one had caught a massive shark, around 5 metres long, just after we’d moved on (here’s the local news story! I’m really glad we hadn’t heard about large sharks off the coast of Vietnam before we got there. Apparently it’s very unusual but they sometimes come into the coast in search of food. Scientists believe that pollution in the sea attracts them, so sadly I think Vietnam may see more sharks given the infrastructure issues they have and that the South China Sea is full of sharks.

The rest of our stay in Quy Nhon was pretty uneventful. We had some great seafood one night and lounged on the beach a lot. One day we were lying on the beach when we suddenly heard a lot of excited screaming and laughing. About 40 children ran down onto the beach and started paddling and generally parking around in front of us. After they got over their initial excitement of the beach and sea they turned their attention to us and all started saying hello. One even took photos (which made Em put something on over her bikini to hide her modesty).

Em went to speak to an adult with the kids who turned out to be their teacher. The children were from a school about an hour inland from Quy Nhon. Most of them hadn’t even seen the sea before (which explains the excitement)! Em’s chat turned into an impromptu English lesson as all the children gathered round. Vietnamese kids are so friendly and can be very, very funny too. Photos were taken and much shouting of “hello goodbye”.

We liked Quy Nhon a lot. The surrounding beaches are amazing, the people are lovely and if they can clean up the main bay it will be an amazing destination. I’d expect it to be firmly on the tourist trail in the next 5 to 10 years!

Here’s a few photo’s of Quy Nhon, we neglected to take many while there…

We decided to get a car from Hue to Hoi An as were experiencing a bit of train fatigue! The driver was great but the road (Highway 1) was really terrible. Vietnamese roads are infamous for being dangerous and you can see why… Buses overtaking trucks overtaking cars overtaking motorbikes overtaking kids on bikes – with the odd wandering cow and roadside vendor thrown in for good measure! It isn’t a relaxing experience as everyone is beeping the horn of the car the whole time.

We’d decided to make a couple of stops en route which included a beach (destroyed by a typhoon), a Cham architecture museum which was interesting but I managed to get lost (!) and what sounded most exciting of all; Marble Mountain. The Lonely Planet with it’s tendency towards mis-information heralded this as a must see, with a walk up a hill to see 4 other marble mountains all with pagoda’s on them. Our driver had rather helpfully en route taken us to one of his mates shops to see all the marble sculptures etc (apparently made from local marble – more of that later). Whilst the handiwork was amazing, we were going to struggle to fit a 2 tonne marble buddha in our already heavy bags so the shop owner was less than pleased that we didn’t buy anything. So in a hump, our driver dropped us off at the ‘Marble Mountians’ and buggered off for an hour. So we climbed this ‘mountain’ and frankly it was rubbish! The mountains were small hills surrounded by housing estates and the view was crap. After 20 minutes of this, we descended the mountain and sat and waited for our driver to return. As we sat, a dust storm whipped up and the only places to take shelter were a zillion workshops all selling sculptures made from local marble. This is obviously complete bollocks because if they were really made of local marble there wouldn’t be so much as a hill left, let a lone a mountain. Apparently they buy it all from China and then sculpt it there…

Less than impressed we left here and arrived in Hoi An. The weather had taken a turn for the worse when we arrived and was decidedly grey and miserable. It was still about 24 degrees though, but this apparently was REALLY cold, so all the locals had jumpers and coats etc on!

Hoi An is a (small) rural city on the coast of the South China Sea in the South Central Coast of Vietnam. It is located in Quảng Nam province and is home to approximately 120,000 inhabitants.

The city possessed the largest harbour in Southeast Asia in the first century and was known as Lâm Ấp Phố (Champa City). Between the seventh and 10th centuries, the Champas controlled the strategic “spice trade” and with this came tremendous wealth. The boats still used today in Hội An probably have the same hull shape as those used by the Champas for ocean voyages. The former harbour town of the Champa people at the estuary of the Thu Bon river was an important Vietnamese trading centre in the 16th and 17th centuries, where Chinese from various provinces as well as Japanese, Dutch and Indians settled

In 1999, the old town was declared a World Heritage site by UNESCO as a well-preserved example of a Southeast Asian trading port of the 15th to 19th centuries, with buildings that display a unique blend of local and foreign influences.

It’s a beautiful place and we spent a very relaxing 4 days here wandering around the old city, having clothes made and eating a lot of delicious food – in fact some of the best we had in the whole of Vietnam.

There wasn’t a great deal going on in the evenings so we finally felt like we could catch up on a bit of sleep. We needed this as having made-to-measure clothes made is a quite a tiring process (sigh . With over 500 tailors in Hoi An, finding a good one is a bit like finding a needle in a haystack (despite our conclusions that all the clothes are made in the same ‘factory’ somewhere anyway) and without a recommendation we spent the best part of a day going in and out of shops, looking at patterns and fabrics and being measured. Steve decided that he wanted to get a suit made for my brothers wedding in Japan and I decided that I needed some clothes made for the warmer climate. Any excuse eh!?

We eventually found a great family run business (Da Phuong, Shop number 50 in the Hoi An fabric market!) and before he new what was happening to him, Steve had been accosted by some hilarious and VERY cheeky girls who had him measured up and choosing fabrics and handing over his dollars. He went back the next morning for the first fitting and amazingly it only needed one small alteration. I in the meantime had had a number of dresses, trousers, skirts and tops made so spent the best part of the next two days trying on clothes. Luckily the weather was still ‘cold’ so it wasn’t too much of an ordeal…

Steve’s suit was finished and looked great and the girls arranged for someone from the post office to come to the shop, pick up the parcel, wrap it up, box it and ship it to Japan. Amazing service!!!

Steve with his favourite tailors

We also had some silver jewellery made by a brilliant guy who took our designs and turned them into great pieces in record timing.

Tired from all the shopping (ahem) we treated ourselves to a couples spa package at one of the local places. This included a body scrub, a body wrap and a massage. This turned out to be quite an experience…! Steve was a bit apprehensive about this but after I assured hin that it would be a wonderfully relaxing experience, we went in. We were greeted by our two therapists and taken into a room and told to strip off – Steve got given a pair of pants to wear and I got given a tiny pair of plastic knickers to get changed into – mmmmm sexy. In fits of laughter by this stage and in a state of undress, we laid down on the beds which were covered in plastic sheets and were given our body scrubs. Steve had opted for ‘coffee’ and I had opted for salt and oil.

What we hadn’t realised was that Steve’s was coffee grinds (and quite coarse ones at that!) and he practically had the top layer of skin scrubbed off (which I rather helpfully told him was the point of it, not realising that he was practically being rubbed raw!). So having been scrubbed from top to toe we were sent into a bathroom to wash the scrub off. Unfortunately there wasn’t any hot water and it was FREEZING so we washed as quickly as we could and went back in somewhat apprehensively for our body wraps.

The wrap experience was hilarious as we got smeared in something gloopy that smelt kind of weird. We then had to lie there for 20 mins whilst it dried on us. As this was happening and we were laying there laughing, we watched a gecko scurrying along the ceiling and were saying how amazing it is that they never fall off. Literally as soon as this happened, it just dropped off the ceiling and fell to the floor!

It was back into the shower for another freezing cold wash and then we had our massage which was a bit intimate to say the least and my ‘chest’ and bum seemed to get extra special attention…! So all in all it was an experience and certainly one that we’ll never forget even if we never repeat it

Next stop Quy Nhon…