A walk along the Mekong River

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30 hours in a tight double sleeper bus took us across the Vietnam border and into Laos. As soon as we crossed lines we were welcomed with superb views of the never ending lush green mountain ranges, along with the never ended bendy road. We left ourselves high and dry again with no place to stay as we arrived in a city called Luang Prabang at 11pm. We were told, however, that we would be arriving 6 hours earlier and finding a place in broad daylight would have been a piece of cake. We had no such luck, as this city completely closed down at 10pm. Most places were already booked up, closed at reception, or out of our budget. It took us almost 2 hours of walking around the deserted streets aimlessly with Yvette, (a girl we became pretty close with on our 30 hour journey) until we found some other tourists who recommended the place they were staying at. It was a little budget guesthouse in a swanky hotel neighbourhood.

When we got there, it was all booked up as well, unless, we wanted to go upstairs, knock on someone's door and ask if she wouldn't mind 3 extra room mates in her room that had two double beds. As awkward as it was, Yvette took one for the team and headed on up. Coincidentally enough, the sweet young lady in the room also happened to be from Holland and was hoping to make some friends to brighten up her evening! At last, our now 32 hours of travel was officially over.




The next morning we woke up fresh and ready to explore Luang Prabang. The two of us and Yvette set out on a long walk around the town in the scorching heat. We let ourselves get lost on the small, hilly streets. At one point we walked across a rickety bridge and found ourselves outside of the touristy area where we could see the locals in their true fashion, enjoying a beautiful weekend afternoon. We had some super spicy and super vinegary local food alongside the Mekong River while enjoying the great company and scenery.

At night we set out to the main strip street market, checking out the local handcrafts and souvenirs. We then hit the town's famous 10,000 kip ($1.50) street buffet and filled up our plates with as much delicious vegetarian food as we could carry.




Another new day led us to the Kuang Si falls 29 kms outside of town. It's a 3 tier waterfall, the tallest cascading from 60 meters up. The grounds held various pools of crystal blue mountain water, one which was blocked off from swimming privileges as it is said to be sacred.  They also held a black bear sanctuary where they save and protect the bears. We were able to make it there just in time to watch the bears at feeding time.

We took an hour hike there, through the jungle to the top of the waterfall. Unfortunately the view from the top was pretty anticlimactic, but there's something incredibly exhilarating about trekking through moody terrain and sweating out the gallons of water you drink while doing it. Alice paid the price for doing it in her open toe hiking shoes as she was a little heavier when she got back down with a nice sized leech attached to the back of her muddy foot. Gross! We spent the rest of the afternoon indulging in the pools, swimming, fall jumping and Tarzan swinging from great heights.

Back in town we walked up 600 stairs to watch the sunset at a temple overlooking the entire town, with views of the Mekong river running through it. We then went for drinks at a great outdoor restaurant called Lao Lao Garden with Yvette and some new friends we met back at our guesthouse. It was impossible to turn down the "$10 for a bottle of whiskey and 3 cokes" deal, and ended up drinking way to much over the few hours we spent there.



 We ended up at Utopia, another popular touristy bar at the end of the night. Not even realizing what day of the month or week it was, we walked into the bar and saw people wearing Canadian flags all over the place. At first we thought there just happened to be a lot of Canadians in town, and then we realized, we were all gathered there for a reason. It was Canada Day (yes, we're that far behind on our blog)! In a drunken stupor we walked back to our place talking and laughing, and we almost missed a real live scorpion, yes a SCORPION, walking down the street!

The next morning we were regretting all the drinking we had done the night before as we woke up what seemed like only a couple of hours later to get on another mountainous drive to our next destination. You can probably imagine how lovely our bendy drive was with our head banging hangovers, but thankfully it was only 5 hours and we were in Vang Vien. Interestingly enough, the only thing to do in this tiny little town in the middle of the mountains is to rent a tube and go tubing from bar to bar along the river (although last year 90 % of the bars were closed as something like 30 people were dying every year from this practice). We can tell you that we never ended up touching anymore alcohol for the rest of our time in Laos. We did meet a couple of wonderful girls from London though, and ended up having a nice dinner with them and then spent the next two days recovering from our big night out, as we clearly can't drink like we could in our 20's!

Our last big journey brought us back to crazy Bangkok to catch a flight to India, which you'll need to get your stomachs ready for in the next blog.

Keep on keepin up!
With love from Bangkok, our home away from home,

D'Alice

 

Cave Hopping In Vietnam

After leaving Hoi An we headed to a remote city named Dong Hoi. It was a ghost town when it came to tourists, but we were there on a very important mission; to see the some of the biggest caves in the world! There were so few tourists, in fact, that all the locals were very excited to see "Phalong" (foreigners).  People would stop and stare at us, as if we were aliens,  but when we would wave happily to them, they were excited and would wave back. We could only find one restaurant with a menu in English, and as such, we ate most of our meals there.

 

Working in the rice fields

We got ourselves on a tour that left at 8am and drove us almost an hour out of the city to the Phong Na National Park, a world heritage site. The drive went through the countryside with amazing views of green mountains layered behind rice paddie terraces. When we first arrived at the park we got into a traditional old wooden dragon boat (with a loud, not so traditional motor) that took us on another hour ride down the Son River toward the mouth of the Phong Na Cave. The river led us straight through the sun glittering opening and only minutes later, we were swallowed up by the eerie darkness.





Entrance to Phong Na Cave

 

 The Cave is 7729m deep and filled with beautiful stalactites and stalagmites made by the crashing river water over the thousands of years. We were in awe. We spent about an hour exploring the inside of the cave that was open to visitors before we headed back down the river and back to the mainland for another amazing authentic Vietnamese lunch with our group.

 

Once we were fueled up, we all packed back into the van and headed toward the real wonder of the trip; Paradise Cave. The most amazing thing about this one is it was only discovered in 2005 by a local Vietnamese man and it was only opened to tourists less than 3 years ago. We felt pretty special being there especially because it's such a new and immense discovery in the Phong Na area, and people are travelling from all over the world just to see what it's all about. Paradise Cave is 10 times more grandiose and marvelous than the first one we had visited being 31 km long and reaching up to 150 m in height in some areas; the 3rd largest cave in the world! Here, we had to hike up quite a bit to get to the entrance and then walk down several staircases to get to the core, but it was well worth it!

 

 

After the tour we had one last meal at the only English speaking restaurant in Dong Hoi and picked up some treats at a great bakery we found, then jumped on another sleeper bus heading to Hanoi. The bus had 70's and 80's music blaring and disco lights all around. We slept like babies after an hour of grooving to the music and the next thing we knew the sun was coming up and we had arrived at our final destination in Vietnam.

It was only 5:30 in the morning and we had a 3.8 km walk to our hotel. There was no way we were going to take a chance of getting ripped off by another taxi driver in this country. Luckily, we found the walk to be very pleasant and peaceful. The streets of Hanoi were much quieter than the other big cities we had visited with minimal honking  and a sense of peace in the mildly breezy air. As we got closer to the old district we walked along the lakeside, passing hundreds of women doing their morning exercises and practicing choreographed dances.

We spent 8 days in the old district of Hanoi. The first few days we got some homework out of the way. We dropped off our passports at the Indian Embassy to get our tourist visas underway, but not before we were send on a wild goose chase to find a place that would make passport photos for us. The heat and humidity were unbearable in this city, so after visiting the American War Prison (where John McCain was held), we spent most of the hottest parts of the days in our amazing, air conditioned hotel room. This left the nights open for visits to the night market and socializing with our Italian friends; Luca and Giada who we had met way back in Fiji.

The hot days led to crazy storms in the north of Vietnam forcing us to postpone our tour to the stunning Halong Bay. However, when the weather cleared up, we were on the first bus out to the famous rocky mountainous bay. On the tour, we did some more caving, kayaking, swimming, hiking and made a huge group of new friends that we partied with on the top of our boat until the wee hours of the morning.

All in all, Vietnam was one of our favorite countries that we've had the opportunity to visit  and we highly recommend it anyone.

To our loyal readers,
Saying goodbye to a beautiful country,
D'Alice

P.S. Sorry we didn't add a map this time, we were having internet connection problems.



 



Pho Soups, Little Stools and Bargain Shopping

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Besides the fact we almost missed our bus, and our annoying bus driver honked his horn 20 times a minute, getting into Vietnam was a piece of cake. There were only 5 of us on the bus (the two of us and 3 locals), and the bus driver’s assistant got all of our passports and visas stamped for us so we were over the border within 20 minutes.

 

We were relieved to finally arrive in Ho Chi Minh City later that night. It is truly a city that never sleeps. The streets are filled with alley-way restaurants packed with laughing locals eating Pho, and motorbikes that rule the roads where marketteers specialize in reeling you into their stores to buy something.

 

As soon as we got there wee hopped into a taxi, not knowing exactly where we had been dropped off or how far our hotel was. The driver promised us it was 10 minutes away and that he would start his meter to "avoid ripping us off".  Driving through the main streets of the city we realized he was simply making a big square and heading back in the exact same direction we started. $11 and two very unhappy backpackers later, the car arrived at the hotel.  Needless to say, we didn't leave a tip, and tried to accept the fact that we had been given a ride for our money (literally), yet again.

 

We were ecstatic about our hotel room though, and spent a little bit more time relaxing with the A/C and flat screen TV than usual during our 4 day stay. We spent the rest of our time walking around town trying to weave through the heavy motorbike traffic and taking in the sites from the river front to the House of Independence and market SHOPPING!

 

At this point in our travels we had gone almost 6 months purchasing only the bare minimum. Buying only what we needed and leaving what we ‘wanted’ completely out of the picture. Traveling through South East Asia made it possible for us to save almost 50% of our daily budget, leaving us with a little room to indulge in the finest knock off goods that Vietnam had to offer.

 

Everyday we put on our bargaining caps and visited the Banh Thai Market in search of great deals. We made some great friends with the store owners and walked out with tons of new clothes without even stepping outside of our original shopping budget! We also tried the traditional Vietnamese Pho soups (noodle soups) everywhere we went, eating on tiny little stools in busy alley ways just like the locals.

 

With our bags almost full to the brim, we took our first overnight sleeper bus to Nha Trang (or little Russia as we liked to call it), a beach town 10 hours north of Saigon. We each had the luxury of fully reclining beds, but were put in the back of the bus in a row of 5 and sardined between 3 locals, one of whom didn't smell very good.

 

Nha Trang was busy, but much more relaxed and peaceful than the big city, and as mentioned, was full of Russian tourists.  So much so, that the street signs were written in both Vietnamese, and Russian! We were lucky enough to have another great place to stay, in a quiet alley just off the main street. We were able to get an early check-in and after lunch we put on our bathing suits and headed to the beach. It was a scorching hot day well above 40 degrees and we were only able to last about an hour before we were out of water and gasping for some cool air.

 

During our stay there, Vietnam was celebrating it’s bi-annual ‘Sea Festival’. Vietnamese people from all across the country gathered to Nha Trang to celebrate and watch the 3 day parade and fireworks. The main strip was packed with people every night, it was a nightmare trying to walk through the streets to grab dinner. We were lucky to find the city centre mall, fully equipped with a movie theatre, bowling alley and photo hunt mega touch machines and therefore found ourselves sneaking away for some indoor fun almost every night.

 

 

One day we took an island boat tour hoping that being out on the water would also help cool things down. We were the only westerners on the tour (out of about 30 people) due to the festival, but we didn’t mind. The tour took us to an aquarium, snorkeling, gave us an authentic Vietnamese lunch on the water followed by a party swim in the middle of the sea and finished at a 4 star resort on a secluded island. We thoroughly enjoyed the tour as we saw some amazing aquatic life and the scenery of the mountains around the islands was truly wonderful.

 

On our 4rth day in beach town, we checked out of our hotel and hopped on another sleeper bus to Hoi An, the land of tailor-made clothing. This time we stayed at a place called the Loc Phat Homestay and it was one of our favorites so far on the trip. Our room was a great size, super modern and comfortable (except for the open concept bathroom) with a walkout patio into the garden. Our hosts were very friendly and were able to recommend places to see and trustworthy tailors, they even cooked us the most amazing, never ending breakfasts every morning.

 

Our 3 days in Hoi An were spent running back and forth into town for our tailored fittings. Dave got 2 suits and a suit shirt made, while Alice got 2 dresses and dress pants and we both got tailor made shoes to top it all off. We even managed to slip in a trip to the famous Marble Mountain, Cham Museum and Buddha Beach before our time ran out!

 

 

Stay tuned for more Vietnamese excitement,

With love from Hoi An,

 

 

D’Alice









Marble Mountain**