I had been cautioned that Vientiane was not the most exciting of capital cities and that definitely rang true – I did “the sights” in about 6 hours: lots of wats and a crazy Arc de Triomphe (a plaque on the wall stated “From a closer distance it appears less impressive, like a monster of concrete”. They’re such braggers, the Laotians.)

After exhausting Vientiane’s delights, I hopped on a bus to Ban Khoun Kham, a very tiny village in central Laos that sees 3 tourists a week. I arrived in the afternoon and headed off to the tourism office to pick up a guide (Keh) to check out a waterfall. Keh ran up the mountain like a goat, with me in my flip-flops trailing after him, crashing into spiders and even a snake (lucky me, apparently). That evening, while I was having dinner with the family who ran my guesthouse, 2 elephants came trumping past with a flock of little children following. The kids were actually more excited to see me than the elephants, which goes to show how remote Ban Khoun Kam is, I guess.

The next day I woke early to hire a bike and putter off to Tham Kong Lo, a 7,5km underground river in a limestone karst. Pretty stunning scenery on the way to the cave: the road runs along a fertile valley between limestone cliffs, dotted with tiny hamlets and shepherd’s huts. The cave itself was impressive – it takes 2 hours to pootle upstream in a leaking boat from one side of the karst to the other in total darkness. I did note and enjoy the irony of my spending considerable time and money to get there and sit on a boat for 2 hours on a river in complete darkness, occasionally having to get out in the river and pull the boat over rocks.

That evening Keh invited me over to the tourism office for dinner; he had made laap, a spicy meat salad. When I asked what sort of meat it was, he answered, “Sandal!” I looked down at the bowl of mashed flip-flops in front of me. “Sandal?” I asked. “No! Scandal! Scandal!”. I did indeed think it was a terrible scandal that this man had been reduced to eating footwear, but before I could say anything he leapt to the fridge and got out a very stiff, bald squirrel (it could have been rat, but I’m going with squirrel). Anyhow, it was pretty tasty whatever it was, albeit a little hot for my wimpy taste buds.

The first bus back to Vientiane was scheduled to leave at 7am the following day, so I naively woke early to catch it… when it arrived at 8:15am. Well at least it came and at least I got a seat, not a little plastic chair in the aisle, but it did mean that I had to spend another night in dreary Vientiane, rather than heading north to Vang Vieng that afternoon (missed the Vang Vieng bus by 12 minutes. Hmmm…)

So I checked back into the guesthouse I had stayed in before and wandered down the road where I met up with Alicia, the owner/manager of the hostel where Gillian and I had stayed in Hanoi. She was over with her mother and step-father and the 3 of them invited me to dinner on the riverfront; a nice, mellow end to Vientiane.

The smell in the hotel was impressively foul and there was an alarmingly large population of ants in the bedroom by morning, so we picked up our bags and hiked it to a different part of Phnom Penh, near the lake.

Cambodia is HOT. Gillian and I crawled to a couple of sites, found a market selling crispy tarantulas and cockroaches (I chickened out), fixed my camera, and then slithered back to the guesthouse to read and try to be cool. Played pool (or snooker… what IS the difference?) very badly with a few guys at the guesthouse on “the best table in Cambodia” (if you’re looking for a pool table made from bags of frozen vegetables).

The next day Gillian and I tagged along with a few guys we had met the night before for a pretty full-on day. First to see the S21 Prison: a school turned prison/torture house during the Pol-Pot era and then on to the Killing Fields (presumably no explanation needed?), just outside of Phnom Pehn. All pretty gruesome and heavy stuff… There was an offer from the tuk-tuk driver to take us to an orphanage, but we agreed that would be overkill, so back to the guesthouse to continue melting.

I perked myself up that afternoon by getting a massage from a blind man (trained masseuse, I should say, not random blind man on the street), which was gorgeous and floaty, and then wandered over to the Foreign Correspondents Club, where I was told I would be hit on by “a sleazy journo”. However 2 prostitutes got in there first… they headed straight for me and asked me if I would help them learn English. Weird book they had: A is for Antelope; B is for Baguette; C is for Computer; D is for Danger. I would not make a good teacher: no patience.

Back to the guesthouse that night for more Shithead with Gillian and Rich, and a wee sample of Cambodia’s gardening produce (never offered to Gillian or me, only to guys, we’d noticed, along with prostitutes).

The next morning the 3 of us took the bus to Siem Reap (for Angkor Wat), which is just as hot as Phnom Penh, and checked in to another nasty dirty hotel on the advice of the bus driver. We were too tired to look around for better digs, so showered and went into town for dinner and a drink(s) in “Angkor What?!” (As you would imagine, many puns made about Angkor Wat… endless mirth over the next few days: Whaaaat?).

The next day the 3 of us went on the hunt for a tuk-tuk driver to take us around for the day and came across Mr Batman (he wouldn’t actually tell us his real name over the 2 days he took us around). Mr Batman had put a disturbing amount of effort into turning his tuk-tuk into the batmobile, which of course elicited covetous looks from other Wat tourists. Heh heh.

Anyway, temples: I had been looking forward to this part of the trip since before I knew I was going travelling, so of course I was expecting to have the whole place to myself and not another 12 billion tourists. It was nice enough, but lacking in that mystical creepy atmosphere I had hoped for. (Difficult to please, I know.) The second day of our Batman Experience was less dominated by the click of Japanese cameras as the 3 of us were batted (haw haw) out to the more remote temples and then on to another temple for sunset. However, heading back into town, the batmobile puttered, spluttered and came to a smoky halt, so Mr Batman got on his batphone to call for assistance. His brother, Mr Superman! (… in a decidedly poor imitation tuk-tuk. Admittedly, Superman never did have a Supermobile). The evening ended very messily back in “Angkor What?!”, all of us bumping into different people we had met while traveling and Gillian and I drinking one too many little pink cocktail thingies.

Needless to say the next morningday was a write off: Gillian and I watched 5 films on HBO, while Rich got on a bicycle to carry on Watting (show off). We even got to see the Sex in the City film that HBO had been tantalizingly advertising throughout the last month while travelling with Gillian. A fitting end to our time together – the next day I caught the plane to Laos and became Norman-no-mates again. Had to adjust to travelling on my own after spending time with other people.

Queue violins…

Angkor Wat

Longlongboringboringboring bus journey to Ho Chi Mihn City (HCMC) / SaiGon. Intercepted by man waving a card for a guesthouse (creatively named “Room for Rent”), which sounded cheap and close, so Gillian and I followed the little man (not condescending; he was short) and plonked our bags down at Room for Rent to hunt for dinner. Room for Rent is down a little alley, off a park where half of the city comes out at dusk to do some kind of exercise. The most common sport is a sort of volleyball, played with a shuttlecock, but using feet as racquets. Anyhow, much excitement that night, started off well, but ended badly: we latched on to two Irish “lads” and had a great night out: nightclub, chewy dried squid, a bar where you get a free massage and popcorn with your 30p pint of beer… but at 4:30am when we went back to Room for Rent and I was halfway over the wall because we were locked out, Gillian’s wallet was stolen by some nasty little man who ran like the wind while I leapt after him screeching and waking up all of HCMC. Needless to say we never did see Gillian’s wallet again. We actually didn’t see much for a while because immediately afterwards the district had a blackout.

The next day, after 3.5 hours sleep (enough time for a hangover to kick in); we went to the police station THREE times. Cushy job, being a police-person in Vietnam. Desks in the interview room acted as beds for a few policemen while Gillian was interviewed, and it’s a strict rule that no more than one person may actually do anything constructive at any one time. Not much achieved that day, except dressing up in donut suits we found in a coffee shop and trying on bike helmets coloured as ladybirds.

The following day was crammed with culture. Attached ourselves to a tour to a Cao Dai temple (mad religion which kind of makes sense till you hear that Victor Hugo is a patron saint, alongside William Shakespeare and Napoleon Bonaparte…), then on the Cu Chi tunnels; tunnels where Vietnamese hid from the “mad, crazy, American devils” (quote from a film at the Cu Chi Tunnel centre) during the Vietnam War. There was an option to pay a heap of money to shoot a couple of rounds of an M60 automatic… which OF COURSE we had to do!

I wouldn’t make a good soldier: very noisy, guns.

During the next few days we wandered around HCMC, becoming regulars at the night market (mmmm, bbq “meat” on noodles…); visiting the War Museum (sad place, but a bit of a one-sided story, no?), the Reunification Museum (unofficially Vietnam’s largest collection of disconnected telephones and the most boring museum in the world), discovering coconut candy and Fanny Ice-cream (…); finding the Jade Emperor Pagoda (again and again and again); and getting stuck in a massive rain storm, hiding under a pagoda in a park for 2 hours with a soap opera film crew, singing songs about rain (just Gillian and I, not the film crew).

HCMC: Done! Next: Mekong Delta!

Cao Dai Temple

Bad girl, I know. I haven’t written for over 3 weeks and its like having not done your homework on Sunday night…

So! Arrived in MuiNé around lunchtime and checked into the hotel. Nice, with a swimming pool right on what would have been a beach if the sea was not doing a remarkable tsunami impression for the first 2 days we were in MuiNé (the walls of our room would shake each time a wave crashed against the sea wall… imagination would run riot in the middle of the night: convinced we would be swept out to sea).

The weather dictated that we do nothing for the first day or so – lots of red wine, Shithead, reading, watching HBO and BBC World (catching up on all the natural disasters we’ve missed). On our third day the storm quietened down long enough for us to hire a bike to see the sand dunes MuiNé is famous for (famous for dunes and wind surfers. Saw none of the latter, sadly…) Very odd scenery, like the Karoo or Namibia, in between tropical bits. On our last day in MuiNé we made a half-hearted attempt at finding a salt pan as well as breaking the bike (and I locked the key in the seat, which caused great excitement for about 10 minutes while a small boy tried – successfully – to retrieve it. Just goes to show how easy it is to nick things in a motorbike “boot”). Didn’t find the salt pan, so lay by the pool, minus tsunami-style waves, to slowly incinerate while waiting for the bus to Ho Chi Mihn City (HCMC) / SaiGon. (ouch ouch)

People definitely less aggressive, shouty and pokey the further south you go in Vietnam. Thank goodness.

PS that’s ouch ouch to getting burnt, not HCMC…

Whatever.

Off the train from Sapa and back on the road 3 hours later to HaLong Bay. Gillian and I picked up another straggler, Jess, and the 3 of us were the only backpackers on the little trip of utter luxury! Also the only 3 out of 20 to do the 3day/2night package and so were given a boat all to ourselves on the 2nd night, with chef and waiters. Aaah! Not much to report on for HaLong Bay: its very beautiful with pokey bits of rock peeking out of the water; ladies on boats selling drinks and snacks for extortionate prices; little activity except for a spot of kayaking, swimming, jumping off the top of the boat (7m: eeek!) and drunken Shithead in the evening (a card game, Mom&Dad. I did not name it).

After lunch on the last day (lunch, er, at 10:30am) we zoomed back at HaNoi at a snail’s pace to phaff around for 6hrs to get a train to HoiAn. Gillian and I tried out the “hard bed” option on the sleeper train to save… oh, about 7GBP each. Mistake. We had another 4 Vietnamese people in our (very small) cabin, 2 of whom looked like they were about to expire on the journey, and all of whom woke up at 5:15am with much shouting and rushing in and out, only to go back to sleep at 8am (honestly, is that necessary?). Gillian and I collectively hit our heads 9 times. It was not a fun journey.

From Danang, where the train delivered us (to platform 9, although I still haven’t seen a single platform in Vietnam yet; you must tumble from the train like a broken sack of rice), we caught a minivan that ran out of petrol a few times to HoiAn. The journey there was quite an eye-opener: the central coast of Vietnam was hit badly by Typhoon Ketsana and there were piles of debris along the roadside, under palm trees battered by the storm. HaNoi itself seemed to have sprung back to life easily and the Vietnamese Sales Force was in full swing: “buysomethingfrommeee!” squeals at every turn. Gillian came across the best sales pitch though:

• Gillian: “How much is this book?”
• Lady: “Fifty thousand”
• Gillian: “How about I give you forty?”
• Lady: “Fifty-five”
• Gillian: “But it was just fifty!”
• Lady: “You don’t like fifty, I don’t like forty”

Gillian bought the book.

Although its pretty, there’s not a heap of things to do in HoiAn, but the thing to do is get clothes tailored. We both got a couple of dresses/skirts made. 3 dresses and a skirt, custom-made by hand (there’s that sales pitch again), all for $38. Bargain!

We went for a little walk out of the “tourist area” on our last day. You could tell by walking though the streets how high the water had risen and how much damage had been done. Apparently the worst flood in central Vietnam for 3 years, with over 100 dead, mostly children. Pretty sad.

From there we hopped back to the other side of the river for our cooking course. I am an expert… chopper! And eater! I didn’t learn much, but who cares! The chilly and lemongrass snapper and deep fried wantons with sweet and sour sauce was delish. Don’t ask me to make it again though…

From the cooking course we rolled each other back to the hotel to pack in anticipation for The Sleeper Bus to MuiNe. We had discovered the most uncomfortable way to get around the country! The times I did get to sleep I woke up with my legs dangling over the side and the safety belt under my arms. Probably quite comfortable if you are the shape and size of a chop stick.

Which I am not, after eating noodles for the last 5 months.

sneaky junk in ha long bay

After tumbling off the train we were squashed into a minivan to Sapa and instructed to stay in a hotel of the drivers “recommendation” (aside: Vietnamese people come across as rather hard and unpleasant: lots of snorting, shoving, pushing, shouting, poking. There are exceptions, but few and far between).

It was pouring with rain, but the weather forecast wasn’t looking good for the next few days (Typhoon Ketsana was losing momentum, but still doing its thing), so we bought what looked (and felt) like boiler suits with wellies, hired the coolest (cheapest) bikes in town, and hit the road. First on the itinerary was Cat Cat, a tourist trap cultural village. Amazing views of the mountains and rice paddies, but you get the feeling that no one actually lives there and its all for show. So after puffing up and down a few hills in the world’s most insulated waterproof clothes, we spurned the cultural trap and followed our noses, finding locals with their umbrellas who needed lifts on the back of our bikes down windy and muddy roads.

We found a little cave entrance just outside another cultural trap which I thought looked quite fun to explore. Just as we were going in, a man came running up behind us asking if we wanted the electricity turned on. Initially we said no (cheapskates that we are), then changed our minds when we realized the cave was longer than we had thought. On came the lights and he told us there was a big chamber at the end with a beautiful lake. Gillian turned back, thinking scrambling around in muddy, skinny passages wasn’t really her thing, but I decided to carry on. About 2 minutes later Gillian called: “Apparently the electricity only lasts ½ an hour!” “Cool, I won’t be too long, just want to see the big chamber!”. A minute later: “Apparently it takes 2 hours to get there!”. The mind boggles. I turned back.

That evening we found some cheap wine, hot chocolate and phó (noodle soup. Initially unsure of the pronunciation: poo? foo? poe? foe? Turns out its “fer”), and watched/translated Vietnamese soap operas.

The next morning we went on the hunt for some carved boulders and a rattan bridge. While searching we went up a very bumppppy road clearly not made for motorized vehicles, ditched our bikes and met a little lady who invited us to her house. We were so off the beaten track (any kind of track actually), that she seemed over the moon to have us and so invited a few friends to come over and gape. She did try the hard sell to which we submitted; and we must have given her too much dong because beamed and threw in extra bracelets and invited us to stay for lunch, thankfully nothing more adventurous than phó and com tãm (rice) with heaps of chilly sauce. After much nodding and “mmmm”ing we look our leave to find the elusive boulders and/or bridge.

We landed in another cultural trap, Ban Ho, which has a “spectacular waterfall” (hmmm). Getting off our bikes we were accosted by 10 women who grabbed our arms and dragged us there, shouting “Careful! Careful!” every 10 seconds, and pulled us over slippery rocks, achieving nothing more than almost pushing me into the river a few times and putting me in a bad mood. Back in the village, after having the women thrust bags and cushion cases in our faces, squealing “buysomethingfrommeeeee!” we gave 2 of them a lift to their homes in the near dark.

Our last day in Sapa actually saw the sun, so we took the bikes up to Tram Ton pass to see another “spectacular waterfall”. We carried on into the next province for a bit of a bike ride and had to stop a few times to wait for trucks to clear mud and rubble from recent landslides, and saw a truck that had overturned on the road, its bizarre mix of content being raided. Soon after I was almost squashed by a large truck we turned back and headed back to town for some lunch in the market, to the little lady next to the cow legs and chicken feet. Gillian made the vital mistake of expressing an interest in a beautiful blanket and was tackled by 15 women all trying to get her to buy theirs. As we walked through town, Gillian was the Pied Piper: women following, shouting “ok-ok, 150! / ok-ok, 160!” (The price would sometimes mysteriously rise). Gillian bought one in the end, but that didn’t stop the others from advertising: because Gillian had one, it meant she liked them and so must want more…?

That evening we caught the sleeper back to Ha Noi, sharing a cabin with a Vietnamese couple who were on honeymoon.

Never did find the boulders or the rattan bridge.

scary lady in boiler suit with children