Louang Probang

We are now in Louang Probang by the Mekong, after an amazing bus journey up country through mountainous Loas. I am fortified by self-prescribed antibiotics, and now probably ready to try the local dish Lab [insert meat here].

Louang is an old hill town nessled in the confluence of two rivers, so is very attractive. After breakfast on the Mekong bank and a trip to the Wat, Lou managed to climb the hill to see the best view of this, while I hid indoors; after visiting the old Wat I was pretty drained. At the Wat I also found a large ceremonnial drum, but thankfully someone had broken its skin. The mosaics at the Wat were superb, and also the funnery chariots for royals, as Louang Probang is the ancient seat of the monarchy.

I have been talking to boatmen about going up river as this would be better than another bus trip, and hopefully let us see more. The boat only goes on certain days, and only if there are enough people, so we'd better make some offerings at the temple.

Free from Desire

As Lao is a buddist country, it was time for some hard application of Buddhist teaching to our heathen travellers' lifestyles. Buddism teaches us that all desire is futile, and will lead to endless disappointment and conflict - freeing ourselves from desire is the only escape from this and achieves Nirvana. Thus our desire to have a good night's sleep, and mine to digest my evening meal successfully were both always bound to trip me up. Thankfully some buddhist monks were on hand to teach us both some lessons.

After a long session on the internet on the first decent connection since the UK, I started to feel a bit queasy, and as we rounded the corner where the prostitues hung out near our 5* guesthouse, even more so. Lou pointed out to me that the 'girls' were a bit too tall, especially for Lao, and that their dresses were quite lumpy.

After feeling worse and worse through the night and racking my brains as to what I had eaten but Lou hadn't, neither of us managed to sleep. The room was noisy and at 4am the room started to shake like someone had started operating a pile driver in a vaguely rhymic manner. After a few more minutes I started to realise that I could hear gongs between the groups of thuds, and I suspected that this was coming from the local Wat (temple), as there is currently a buddist festival, though I couldn't work out what sort of heavy plant equipment you'd need to make such a seismic event.

My experience of European monks/nuns teaches me that they like to get up early, usually about 5am, even after a long night fueling themselves with the holy spirit (usually brewed on site). However their matins was usually fairly quiet and I could definitely avoid going to it and still not be woken up. So it seemed these monks were breaking all previous records for both enthusiastic early starts and volume.

The next morning, having foolishly prebooked a bus ticket for Vang Viang, we zombied over for breakfast opposite the local Wat. After standing ouside the restaurant to 'get some fresh air' and 'inspect the drains' I noticed an earth shattering drum and several gongs on a large tower next to the Wat. So it seems they were indeed teaching us the error of our vain desires. We thank them for their spirtual guidance, and I am now just up to eating again in Vang Viang.

I don't like cricket..

Vietnam was geting intense, and very flooded - The perfume river in Hue certainly didn't smell of perfume. We tried to get to a pagoda in Hue on mopeds, but were stopped by flooding - this revealed some interesting rats and snakes though.

I couldn't get on the Internet Hue or Hoi An, probably due to flooding or bad networking in the internet cafes. In Hue we saw boats moving on the roads. When we arrived in Hoi An, two streets were not accessible, but by the time we left the water had receded.

This didn't stop trade in clothes and shoes though, which Hoi An is famous for. Lou spent some time bartering for tailor made clothes in Hoi An without me impeding her. We both got new shoes, and hopefully I can upload a picture. I had to pay an extra dollar due to the size of my feet - and the tape measure he used to measure them has probably had to be burnt now. Still new shoes made to measure for less than five quid - we'll have to go back there one day. This left us to watch the dismal England match later and then bump into all the people we met travelling around Ha Long Bay.

We took a bus north to Dong Ha. There we were accosted by a man called Hoa who wanted to show us around the DMZ. This tour was for a price we had trouble arguing with, due to the distance we were dropped from town. Before 1972 Dong Ha was the last town in South Vietnam before the border and was full of American/South Vietnamese troops. We also went north and round the Vinh Moc tunnels, where NVA soldiers and villagers lived for several years under aerial bombardment - some bomb craters were still in evidence. We had negotiated a free lunch and breakfast with the tour, but the cost was that we booked out tickets to Laos with the tour guide - which was never going to make our onward trip straightforward. Also the selected Hotel in Dong Ha had beds which were probably designed to educate us about the suffering endured during the war. We also ate in a restaurant offering a full selection of meat including Beef Uterus - but this is not unusual. In Dong Ha westerners are not too common, so had good fun buying things in the market for very fair prices.

The next day at 5am we left for the Lao border in a minibus paid off by Hoa, who also turned up to see us off. This minibus sped us to the border at sick-making speed over a good mountain road. WE were at Lao Bao border post in an hour flat and were impressed. After several queues for border formalities and a $1 charge to the Loa authorties for 'working on a Sunday' we were through. No bus appeared, and it dawned on us that there was little we could do if Hoa had sold us down the river.

A woman appeared and ushered us to walk 1km down the road to get the bus. 1 km Down the road an ailing soviet bus sat surrounded by goods and a red shirted man shouted 'Savann Savann' at us. He asked for payment and wasn't convined by Hoa's reciept or my Vietnamese Dong. After a long conversation and some money changing a woman turned up with a bundle of cash and paid for us. I stopped swearing about Hoa.

The Soviet bus required some attacking with a hammer and a spanner before it would start, and heavy boxes of Vietnamese batteries were placed on the floor to reduce legroom. The bus started and was remarkably empty, but then stopped 500m up the road. The stop was used to siphon 120 litres of petrol into the tank, as there was no handbreak woden chocks we put under the wheels at each stop and removed by a man who then jumped back on the bus. It occured to me that travelling in Lao wasn't going to be anything like travelling in Vietnam. The large character in the red shirt shouted 'Savann Savann' and the bus filled up with people and any gaps were plugged with children.

After many more stops the bus collected sacks of rice and people of all ages. At Xephon we were offered roadside refreshments in the form of roasted crickets on skewers and something that looked like a roasted bat on a stick. I opted for soft drinks and some roast pork. These were delivered by sellers inside and outside the bus, however here they didn't target us particularly and seemed much less pushy then people in Vietnam.

After 6 more hours of leg torture we got to Savannakhet, on the Mekong. 1 mile across the enormous river you can see Thailand, but we are heading further in Laos. The whole country seems much slower paced than Vietnam and we're still geting used to people not hassling us all day. I look forward to trying my first roasted cricket.

Carry on up Halong Bay

A final orgy of money spending in Hanoi resulted in us sending a lot of vietnamese communist propaganda back to Totnes by air mail, and also us booking a trip to Halong Bay. The first of these was done with a maximum of paperwork which detailed exactly what was being sent and whether it was worth stealing at the sorting office and then multiple stamping - Vietnamese officials do so much stamping that they have hammers with rubber stamps on the end. I look forward to seeing whether the items get out of Hanoi.

The next item was a lot easier to buy, and we went off to Halong bay by bus and ship with an over entusiastic vietnamese guide - his enthusiasm for Lou was also considerable and at the first opportunity told me what a 'lucky man' I was, especially as I had managed not to get married to her yet. A trail (trial?) of innuendo followed throughout the weekend that included some comments worthy of a vietnamese Sid James.

I looked forward to the serene boat trip out to Halong Bay, but discovered that Vietnamese people pilot boats in the same way that they drive buses and mopeds, although without the horn. After setting several collision courses with freighters across the booming Halong shipping lanes, using only his feet to steer, we got to Halong and sailed through some amazing islands. We visited caves on an island which also provided lots of opportunities for elbow jerking and winking about shapes of stalagtites and stalagmites: 'I think you know what that one like...Anybody not know - Yes, I think you know - oh you not know? - I show you later!'

Anyhow, if I find a computer with a usb port I'll upload some pictures for you to guffaw at.

Another crazy Vietnamese guide took us up to a mountain on Catba island, whilst swinging from branches in the rainforest and swinging from the railings of the huge but ailing metal tower at the top. Lou didn't make it but me and the guide had a wordless conversation which involved the comparitive hairyness of our legs and size of our feet. I was not very impressed by the bored caged monkey at the end of the tour though. The scenery and rainforest were amazing though, and we have the bites to prove we went.

Tonight we're in Hue, after an overnight journey south. It is raining to heavily to do much, so better work out where to get supper without drowning on the way.

Trading Cushion Covers with the Black Hmong

After taking in some more propaganda in Hanoi - my favourite was 'the Americans want to kill your children', no wonder there are no McDonald's here - we travelled up to Sapa on the night train. Hard class was not hard at all, and we shared a cabin with a Vietnamese family from Sapa. Eight people in 6 bunks overall, but all smaller than Lou, so not a bad ratio. I managed to get a wash and spare them the smell of my hot feet before bed time so it was quite sociable. We crossed 'lovers bridge' on the way out of Hanoi over the Red River where local couples go to get bitten by mosquitos and each other, then we slept soundly.

We had an early start in Lau Cai and took the bus to Sapa, found breakfast and somewhere to stay and then did a small walk around local villages. These are inhabited by different hill tribes, the first of which was the Black Hmong. They try to sell you clothes dyed in indigo, which they grow between the rice paddies. Lou fought through a persistant group of wrist band sellers and by the middle of the day we had outwalked any other tourists to get to a village called 'Xin Chay' - which is probably not it's real name as it's Vietnamese for 'hello', but never mind. We were proud of the fact that people didn't expect us to be there. Lou and I argued about who took the best photo, so here are some samples.

In order to go anywhere interesting in the valley, you need a guide, so we hired one and took a soviet jeep down the valley. The guide dressed in his authentic local costume - Nike tracksuit - and we got a chance to ponce around in our walking boots pretending we were trekking remotely like Ray Mears amongst traffic jams of other guided tourists. At the top of a beautiful waterfall Lou haggled with a Black Hmong woman for a pair of cushion covers and both parties went away grinning, although Lou had a few more teeth.

We stayed overnight in a house with a Tay family - notable for their cloth which is like tartan but with more imaginative colours - we have a picture of them making this around their stilt houses. After a massive supper of 8 dishes we drank fermented rice wine and smoked the host's big bamboo bong. Despite all this food I managed not to fall through his thin bamboo slatted floor which Lou was genuinely concerned about. The amazingly loud local cricket also shut up at about 9.

After quick trip to a local waterfall this morning, which I was the only one stupid enough to swim in, we headed for Sapa via lunch. It was a steep walk out of the valley to the road, then by jeep - the road doesn't need any signs saying 'fallen rocks' as you have to concentrate on avoiding them in today's mountain fog. So, back to Hanoi tonight in posh class on the train.

Long live Uncle Ho

Finally in Vietnam, where all 'great victories' have been due to the leadership of Uncle Ho - the first victory was the speed at which my debit card was liberated from the evil imperialist cash machine that took it in the airport. I then became a millionaire by taking out 30 quid's worth of Dong. Such bounteous wealth is also doubtless due to the great leader.

The next 'great victory' was price of the public bus into Hanoi, with all the other comrades (45kms - 5p). The driver played stirring communist anthems all the way into town and was in such a patriotic fervour that he nearly knocked two people over on a zebra crossing. Someone was informed that we were traveling on the public bus so go on swiftly to badger us about accommodation. - The palace we are staying in comes in at 4 quid a night - viva la revolution! Vietnamese people are always keen to offer you a bargain.

Some pictures attached of us eating on children's garden chairs-as favoured by street cafes. The first of which where we weren't sure what meat we were eating - but a look in the market confirmed our suspicions. We have had some great meals here though, once we started avoiding people tearing meal from big balls and then boiling it.

Hanoi is hotting up after monsoon rains yesterday, but I was happy as this cooled the place down and let us look around without having to drink litres of water. Today we absorbed a water puppet show, and tomorrow we may go to the shrine of the great (but dead) leader himself. All this while negotiating the streets which are jammed with mopeds - best strategy is to close your eyes and cross.

Despite the insistence of our hosts on many trips they could offer us at great prices, we are going to head into the mountains (Sa Pa) on a night train tomorrow and do some walking. We will be traveling hard class - not because there were no comfy beds left, but because we want to stay up all night contemplating the wisdom of the great leader.

Bangkok

So, here we are, wondering why its so hot and we can't sleep at night. Bankok is pleasantly not as smelly in the wet season, but very hot and humid. Today we have been around the grand palace and some great food markets. We were too hungry to take any pictures of us stuffing our faces with cheap local delicacies, but did take some pictures of us pretending to be deities in the temple. I have included a picture of a man-eating sea monster for comparison.