1.) Some people try and scam you on taxi fares. Not exactly a surprise, this sort of thing happens everywhere from England to Australia. They’re just much more brazen with it over here.
2.) It’s REALLY hot.
3.) …
I guess I can’t think of any more. It looks like I love Vietnam then!
1.) The constant horning from vehicles on the road. At first this unending assault on my ears was something I did not in the least appreciate. After a while though, it sort of grew on me and it felt like something was wrong if more than a few seconds went by without me hearing a car or motorbike horn.
Reasons people in Vietnam horn at each other:
2.) How kind, friendly and helpful the Vietnamese people are. I can’t tell you the number of times I was given unsolicited help by a local with them having no expectation of any sort of reward from me.
3.) The stunning natural wonders that Vietnam has been blessed with. In all my years of travelling, Halong Bay is one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever seen.
4.) The food. These people must do some crazy black magic to make the beef here taste so good. The Vietnamese pizza I had in Hoi An is among the 10 best things I’ve ever eaten, even though the only thing it had in common with my beloved western pizza is cheese.
5.) How cheap it is. A litre of alcohol for 20 US cents is pretty good in my book!
6.) Sleeper trains. You can ride these in other countries but since I’ve never been on one before I’m putting it in. It condensed the Vietnamese experience into a low ceilinged, narrow walled metal can. Being in what felt like a bustling little town, surrounded by the rich vibrancy and endless vitality of the Vietnamese people, all the while speeding along poorly maintained half century old railway tracks was quite the experience!
7.) How easy it is to meet people despite a massive language barrier. Don’t get me wrong, people were very friendly and welcoming in some of the other Asian countries I visited as well but I don’t know what it is about this place that makes it so easy to drink with the locals.
The Ho Chi Minh City Skyline.
My Intrepid group for Vietnam :)
Firing an M16. I couldn’t resist.
Chilling in the Cu Chi Tunnels. The Vietnamese dug hundreds of kilometers of these tunnels by hand during the Vietnam War.
Helen and Kathleen on their cyclos.
At the Vietnam War Remnants Museum.
Arty shot.
Ah, my old friend Saigon beer. The first of many wonderful brews tasted in Vietnam.
We ate all sorts of weird things in this country.
Hoi An River at night. The lights from those restaurants lit that river up like Christmas!
Another arty shot.
Quite possibly the most delicious thing I ate in Vietnam.
I was more impressed with this massive flag than the building it was at.
Fun times dressing up for our ‘royal banquet’!
The presentation of food was amazing during the banquet, Every plate the staff brought out for us had a different bird carved out of vegetables on it.
The narrow corridors and low ceilings of our sleeper train. It was a really cool experience being on there but I must’ve whacked my head on at least 3 different door frames within the first 20 minutes of being on board.
Ho Chi Minh’s mausoleum.
The amazing dining room on our Halong Bay boat.
Halong Bay was absolutely stunning, I couldn’t take enough pictures of this place.
Aww, poor Helen (centre). Bless her, no matter how hard she tried she never took a good photo.
The top half of an octopus head. I ate it about 20 seconds after this picture was taken. All sorts of nasty juices oozed out when I stuck my fork in and it tasted just as disgusting as it looks. Probably the most horrible thing I’ve ever eaten.
The last of my major activities in Phnom Penh was a 4 hour quad bike tour of the Cambodian countryside. It was by and large a brilliant time, but the day I chose to do it was blisteringly hot and unpleasantly dusty. I later realised that every day was probably this dusty and polluted but I hadn’t noticed because any significant distances I’d previously travelled had been in a car, rather than on a tuk-tuk or quad bike. (The starting point of the tour was an hour from my hostel but the quad bike people sent a tuk-tuk to pick me up. An hour in a tuk-tuk wouldn’t have been so bad but the dusty, ridiculously pot holed road did not make for a pleasant journey).
There was one other guy in the tuk-tuk with me, Anton from Germany. He was only doing a one hour tour though (whereas I went for the half day option) so after we got started on the quad bikes, we only travelled together for about 20 minutes before our paths diverged. The Cambodian countryside was, as I had already found it to be in other places, absolutely beautiful. As the day wore on it became clear that the heat was a mixed blessing. I’ve told you before that I don’t deal with the heat well so I wasn’t loving it at first but the weather conditions that resulted from that heat made the visibility excellent. You could see out over the unspoilt Cambodian landscapes for as far as your eyes would let you. It was important for several reasons to take care when navigating the dirt roads we were on though. I had a guide leading the way on a motorbike so the paths he took around the sometimes massive holes and fractures were not necessarily the best ones for me to take, being on a four wheeled vehicle instead of a two wheeled one. There were also very sudden drop offs by the sides of a lot of these routes, sometimes leading into river, sometimes leading into a field or rice paddy. And also, just like with the horse riding I’d done in Siem Reap, our path took us past a number of long ‘residential roads’ (I’m not sure if I can actually call them that given that they look like they’re in the wilderness but they did have lots of houses on them and people living there). The people living in these houses often had young (and unspeakably cute) kids with them. When they heard the quad bike coming they’d run outside and start waving and saying hello, it was absolutely adorable and one of the cutest things I’ve ever seen. After seeing this and the dance I saw a few days earlier in that Siem Reap orphanage, I can see why Angelina Jolie felt so compelled to start her adoption spree here. Some of the slightly older kids that were already outside would stick their arms out as I went past so I could high-five them, it was really fun.
The heat wasn’t as bad as it could have been because on the clearer, child and pot hole free roads, I could cut lose a little and build up some real speed on the quad bike. As I was so close to the ground, the sense of speed was fantastic as the air rushed past me and the Cambodian scenery blurred by. It was nice that, unlike the horse I was riding a week earlier, the quad bike did not get tired or suffer from heat exhaustion.
About 2 hours after we started, my guide gestured that we stop for a light lunch. It was only a pack of crisps but the drinks he got us were very refreshing. He got us sugar cane juice mixed with mandarin orange juice and ice cold water. I was expecting not to like it because I don’t like things that are overly sweet but it was pretty good. After being in the Cambodian heat for so long it was just what I needed.
All the dust I’d surely eaten on the way there (and I’m guessing an element of heat exhaustion too) caused me to have brief spells of dizziness on the ride back. It wasn’t anything I couldn’t handle but it probably wasn’t the safest thing to be riding like that. I was fine, though I didn’t feel so good on the tuk-tuk ride back to the hostel. It was even dustier than the first time and the only way I could make it through was to pull my shirt up and cover my nose and mouth.
A while after being back at the hostel I perked back up and felt completely normal. Things perked up even more when I finally had a chance to speak to the people from my room. The first night I was in this hostel I had my 6 bed dorm completely to myself. This room was unusually big for a hostel dorm too (and the beds were huge) so it was a nice little treat having it to myself. After my first night, I headed out to do some stuff the next day (the Killing Fields etc.) and when I got back saw that all the remaining beds had now been taken. I also saw that they were probably all girls (my first and only required hint was all the bras laying around). The six of us and an American guy we’d met (Gordon, cool dude) ended up going out for a big night that evening. It was pretty epic but I’ve run out of space to tell you about it :)
Cambodia was brilliant, in the end Siem Reap ended up going exactly how I wanted it to and I ended up getting a nice little bonus in Phnom Penh meeting all those great people. Vietnam is going to be fantastic! Since it’s the only country on my journey where I’ll be with a tour group for the whole thing, I’m expecting to meet loads more great people over there :)
STOP BY FOR POT PIE 