We continued our trip south through Vietnam with a stop in Nah Trang about 10 hours by bus south of Hoi An. This is a city with a gorgeous beach front devoted to tourists, and is probably Vietnam's premier party town. We however decided that rather than devoting ourselves to a few days practice in the art of personal pickling we would go back to school and complete our open water diving certificates so that we can go diving during the rest of our trip with fewer restrictions.
The PADI course that we signed up for took 3 days, with half a day of studying and half a day of diving each day, Vietnam is probably one of the cheapest places in the world to do this course, and it only cost us about NZD$300 each. The primary goal is to teach you how to deal with any of the emergency situations that you might get into and get you practiced enough that you wont panic if something does start to go wrong. Pool dives first day followed by reef dives on the last two days made it good fun, though the studying put a bit of a damper on nightly boozing. Having completed this course we can now go diving to 18m depths, looking forward to putting this into practice in Thailand where there is purportedly some of the best reef diving in the world.
To combat the relatively high expense of doing this diving we naturally had to economise in other areas. Primary means for accomplishing this was Bia Hoi (ie Beer Hoi, the Beer part being obviously the most important element). These are small dirty little establishments with plastic chairs and tables intended and sized for three year olds in which you can purchase a litre of beer for about NZD $0.25, or about a fiftieth of what it costs in NZ. Obviously the bar tabs never run too large. On top of this they are very social and a great way to meet similarly tight-arsed people with marginal personal hygiene as you are forced to share the lilliputian furnishings. On the food side of things we made an additional discovery of Bo Ne, and variants, where you get a simple meal of steak, egg, salad, bread/rice for about NZD $1.00 served at the same sort of furniture as the Bai Hoi on the footpath by mobile vendors who show up after presumably finishing their day jobs. So consumables can be really cheap. Accommodation was also only about NZ$15 a day for the double room with air conditioning, cable TV and ensuite 100m from the beach. You are probably getting the idea that this is a very cheap place to hang out, and you would be right, we've been told that it is similar to what Thailand was like 10-15 years ago.
We decided we had to take a day off from our course to sample the nightlife, and went out in search of the crowds. We met a number of interesting bods at Bia Hoi and wandered off to a bar/resort on the beach (the "Sailing Club"with 100's of Europeans sitting out under the stars in the hot night air. We got chatting with a group played some pool and sat out at the palm-thatched bar on the sand with swings instead of bar stools and a speedy little crab that scuttled back and forth on the bar looking for new hiding spots. Here things started to get a little wiggly as we discovered that great Asian institution the "Cocktail bucket" which is basically a poorly thought out concoction of fruit juice or softdrink with industrial grade alcohol and ice served in litre quantities. Three of these later and it was time to gracefully depart the field. Not sure exactly how we got home, but the next day was a total right-off.
We completed our diving course (both passing final exam), had a more subdued night out and then had to spend the day on the beach waiting for our night train to Saigon. The Nah Trang beach is fantastic, with massive crowds of Vietnamese showing up at 5am and 5pm, but otherwise not too busy. However the continual harassment by hawkers every 5-10 minutes really started to piss us off, was tempted to pay one of them to keep the others way from us. After our bad sunburn from an hour on the beach in Hoi An we had to stick strictly to the shade of a hired beach lounger.
Saigon (No-one except government and business calls it Ho Chi Minh city, as the Northern invaders really aren't popular, and Communism has been a total screw-up) is just another big Vietnamese city, with the same mad and massive population of motorcyclists putting you in fear for you life anytime you walk the streets (and you do have to walk ON the street as the sidewalks are appropriated for every other use and activity by businesses). We were advised that to cross the street you simply start walking and ignore the traffic, as they will swerve around you as long as you don't do anything silly like pause, stop or notice them. So after getting our accommodation sorted we quickly booked a tour to the Meekong Delta for three days.
The Meekong is SE Asia river #1 Starting in Tibet and winding through six countries on its way to the sea. In the delta area it is divided into Numerous branches, connected by thousands of canals to each other and every habitable scrap of land. Some of the branches are over a kilometer wide, and anywhere up to 25m deep. It is also home to an entire civilisation of boat people, with floating houses, floating factories, floating markets, aquaculture and massive numbers of boats and lost Jandals floating around everywhere you go. It produces prodigious amounts of rice and other food for export and serves as a conduit for trade with all the countries along the navigable portions of the Meekong. We spent three days traipsing around on a ridiculously cheap tour (NZD$35 each including accommodation) transferring from bus to boat to bus to boat to boat to boat to motorbike to rowboat to boat to van to boat to bus to Saigon. I finally got to ride in an Asian long-tail boat in which a propeller on a long angled driveshaft is hooked straight to an engine that is muscled about on a pivot by the driver to steer. However, the highlight of the trip was being taken to a Mosque (Vietnam is 86% Buddhist) by our knob of a guide who explained to us how the school next door taught Arabic to the children so that they could talk to Osama and Saddam. This did not go over that well with the Mullah standing nearby, and there was a bit of a shouting match before our guide retreated saying "I ******* hate minorities".
We finished up our time in Vietnam with a couple of lazy days in Saigon as Jane waited for her replacement Visa to finally come through (we ended up getting it 1 hour before we left for the airport, and Jane in her usual charitable mood saw fit to educate the persons responsible for this in some of the richer and more evocative terms of emphasis and imperative that English has to offer). Meanwhile I was getting over a cold and while dosing up on antibiotics (standard antimalarial treatment) on an empty stomach I distinguished myself by projectile vomiting all over the road in front of our cafe table during lunch. Fortunately it was raining at the time so it washed away quickly, but I suspect the cafe owners were not totally impressed at this advertisement for their services.
So here our time in Vietnam comes to an end. Vietnam has been great (apart from Jane having her bag snatched in Hanoi), and probably the highlight of our trip so far. Friendly, helpful and funny people, nice weather (almost no rain), and interesting to boot, this place is going to move ahead in leaps and bounds over the next couple of decades. If they can just get their population growth in check (90 million now) , so do try to see it before its all gone.
If Thailand can match what we have had here then we will be very pleased.
Monday, July 23, 2007
Thursday, July 12, 2007
Does the wet suit you? (With apologies to Whit Deschner)
Jane and I travelled seprately to Hoi An (her by bus and me by air) meeting up again in Da Nang airport in the evening and catching a taxi with another couple ot Hoi An half an hour away.
Hoi An is a rapidly developing beach resort town with some offshore islands and probably the most tailors per square km of anywhere in the world (literally hundreds). Needless to say when most women get a sniff of this place their eyes roll back in their heads, their jaws widen into an attack-gape and they start salivating uncontrollably. We managed to spend $900 dollars on clothing in four days, including:
Jane: 2 suits (each with jacket, 2 pants, 1 skirt), 3 sets of pants, 5 blouses, 3 dresses, a woollen felt jacket,
Robert: suit with two sets of pants, great coat, five shirts.
It really is incredibly cheap, suits less than $100 and shirts/blouses/dresses for under $20. Most professional women could probably justify a trip to Hoi An from anywhere in the world simply on the money they would save over a year or two's clothes shopping.
Of course we had to fill in the time we weren't in the shop (averaged about 2 hours a day, with return trips for minor fitting alterations).
First day we cycled to the beach and swam and sunbathed for 2 hours. Big mistake as in our conceit that NZ has the worst sun in the world we didn't lather up with the sunscreen and got horribly burnt. This put an end to time in the sun for the rest of our Hoi An stay, we had to soak in the hotel pool for a few hours to take the sting out of it and found that the pool was a better bet for swimming from then on (necessary in the 30-35 degree hot sun and high humidity days).
Second day we hired a motorbike and took turns driving to travel 20-30km up the coast to marble mountain, where a big hill of marble sticks up out of the otherwise flat land, it is covered in a number of temples and caves with statues etc in them, and overall pretty good (better than the nepalese/tibetan JAM), but would have been better if the weather wasn't so hot and sunny. Surrounded by a huge number of marble working businesses churning out statues, furniture and objets d'art for very reasonable prices. This is another place that we will likely be back to one day to buy at - eg a marble table and 6 stools for $2000, shipping is easy to organise and cheap at only about $100 per cubic meter to New Zealand.
Third day was a real highlight; we went out on a "Discovery dive" where we were taken diving under strict supervision of a Dive Master for two hour-long dives on a coral reef, all for $90. This was very cool, lots of fisks (nearly put my hand on a scorpion fish - which would have been bad) brilliant visiblity, and lots of technical bits to pique the engineer's interest :-). We had enough of a taste from doing this that we are now going to do a dive course. Much cheaper than NZ at about $NZ300 vrs more than double that in NZ and still have good safety with western teachers. This should allow us to enjoy the best diving spots in the world when we hit Thailand in a few weeks.
Hoi An had fantastic food and great night life in it's sleepy little waterfront area. We stayed in a nice hotel with a pool, air conditioning, free breakfast tv etc for just $10 per night each and food and drink cost less than $20 each for the day even when we had a big night out, so living is pretty cheap. Having finished up our time in Hoi An we packed all the swag and headed off to Nah Trang, Vietnamese beach party town a 12 hour NZ $11 overnight bus trip down the coast.
Hoi An is a rapidly developing beach resort town with some offshore islands and probably the most tailors per square km of anywhere in the world (literally hundreds). Needless to say when most women get a sniff of this place their eyes roll back in their heads, their jaws widen into an attack-gape and they start salivating uncontrollably. We managed to spend $900 dollars on clothing in four days, including:
Jane: 2 suits (each with jacket, 2 pants, 1 skirt), 3 sets of pants, 5 blouses, 3 dresses, a woollen felt jacket,
Robert: suit with two sets of pants, great coat, five shirts.
It really is incredibly cheap, suits less than $100 and shirts/blouses/dresses for under $20. Most professional women could probably justify a trip to Hoi An from anywhere in the world simply on the money they would save over a year or two's clothes shopping.
Of course we had to fill in the time we weren't in the shop (averaged about 2 hours a day, with return trips for minor fitting alterations).
First day we cycled to the beach and swam and sunbathed for 2 hours. Big mistake as in our conceit that NZ has the worst sun in the world we didn't lather up with the sunscreen and got horribly burnt. This put an end to time in the sun for the rest of our Hoi An stay, we had to soak in the hotel pool for a few hours to take the sting out of it and found that the pool was a better bet for swimming from then on (necessary in the 30-35 degree hot sun and high humidity days).
Second day we hired a motorbike and took turns driving to travel 20-30km up the coast to marble mountain, where a big hill of marble sticks up out of the otherwise flat land, it is covered in a number of temples and caves with statues etc in them, and overall pretty good (better than the nepalese/tibetan JAM), but would have been better if the weather wasn't so hot and sunny. Surrounded by a huge number of marble working businesses churning out statues, furniture and objets d'art for very reasonable prices. This is another place that we will likely be back to one day to buy at - eg a marble table and 6 stools for $2000, shipping is easy to organise and cheap at only about $100 per cubic meter to New Zealand.
Third day was a real highlight; we went out on a "Discovery dive" where we were taken diving under strict supervision of a Dive Master for two hour-long dives on a coral reef, all for $90. This was very cool, lots of fisks (nearly put my hand on a scorpion fish - which would have been bad) brilliant visiblity, and lots of technical bits to pique the engineer's interest :-). We had enough of a taste from doing this that we are now going to do a dive course. Much cheaper than NZ at about $NZ300 vrs more than double that in NZ and still have good safety with western teachers. This should allow us to enjoy the best diving spots in the world when we hit Thailand in a few weeks.
Hoi An had fantastic food and great night life in it's sleepy little waterfront area. We stayed in a nice hotel with a pool, air conditioning, free breakfast tv etc for just $10 per night each and food and drink cost less than $20 each for the day even when we had a big night out, so living is pretty cheap. Having finished up our time in Hoi An we packed all the swag and headed off to Nah Trang, Vietnamese beach party town a 12 hour NZ $11 overnight bus trip down the coast.
Thursday, July 05, 2007
Vietnam - Stuck in Hanoi
So from my end and three weeks of being in Vietnam. I spent my first 2 days in Hanoi, hiring a bike one day and peddling around the town, and just wandering the old quarter the other day. The 2nd evening I headed, by overnight train, to Sapa (just south of the Chinese border in the Yunnan province) where I went trekking and homestaying in some local tribes houses. It was beautiful scenery, but unfortunately things have changed since my uncles 1993 Lonely Planet, which I was using and advised that not many tourist go here. It is very touristy and the tauts are much worse than in Hanoi. Worth it all the same.
Another overnight train was taken to get back to Hanoi and it was on the morning after this that my stuff was stolen. Bad luck, a lesson, and a pain in the ass. I was planning on heading Halong Bay that same morning, but this was obviously cancelled and the day was spent sorting out a new passport. The new passport took just under 2 weeks to get here, but during that time I was able to head out of Hanoi, just not to far, because I had to come back anyway.
So I went south to Ninh Binh for 3 days. Had a look at Tam Coc (some rock formations that you reach by a boat and go through these caves, very beautiful), went by motorbike along backroads to Cuc Phong (a national park) where I spent the night. I was the only visitor here which was quite nice, but also a wee bit weird. The trip back from Cuc Phong was also by motorbike and through backroads, this was definitly a highlight so far. I was also taught to ride a motorbike by my guide when I got back to Ninh Binh, which was very exciting.
From Ninh Binh I went to Vinh and spent the night at a beach close called Coa Lo. This is a Vietnamese resort town and they obviously don't get many foreignors here because everyone was shouting out Hello etc even thought they couldn't actually speak english. It was a beautiful beach despite the massive numbers of Vietnamese crowding it, but it was a bit disturbing and I left early that morning back to Hanoi via local bus.
Partway through the trip a man got on the bus who had a pet monkey with him. This kept the bus amused for a while, until we got a flat tire. They didn't seem to have the tools necessary to fix the flat tire and had to send someone into the closest town. It was fixed pretty quickly though and we were off within 1/2hour.
The following day I went to Halong Bay. This is a beautiful bay off the East Coast of the north of Vietnam and has hundreds of these odd linestone formations protruding out of the water. It was pissing down with rain most of the time, but was beautiful all the same. I was lucky enough to have a great group of people on the boat who were all keen for a bit of a party and so we partied and swam into the night. Great fun. The following day we headed to Cat Ba Island. I don't know whether it was due to the weather or whether the Island is just not that great, but I wasn't really able to enjoy this and spent most of my time in the hotel. I did pop out to head to Monkey Island (where there are obviously monkey's) and go for a swim, but it was still pretty horrible weather.
The following day I headed back to Hanoi to collect my passport and sort out my Visa's. I was able to get my British one within the day, but apparently, like Rob, I need to have some proof that I'm leaving the country before Vietnam will issue a new Wietnamese visa. All a bit odd considering I came in without needing this proof. So at present I'm travelling without a visa and will sort this out in Saigon.
So far Vietnam has been great. There are heaps of tourists everywhere, unless you truly get off the beaten track, but this seems to be quite expensive. Hanoi has got a great feel to it, I certainly could have been stuck in a worse city.
Another overnight train was taken to get back to Hanoi and it was on the morning after this that my stuff was stolen. Bad luck, a lesson, and a pain in the ass. I was planning on heading Halong Bay that same morning, but this was obviously cancelled and the day was spent sorting out a new passport. The new passport took just under 2 weeks to get here, but during that time I was able to head out of Hanoi, just not to far, because I had to come back anyway.
So I went south to Ninh Binh for 3 days. Had a look at Tam Coc (some rock formations that you reach by a boat and go through these caves, very beautiful), went by motorbike along backroads to Cuc Phong (a national park) where I spent the night. I was the only visitor here which was quite nice, but also a wee bit weird. The trip back from Cuc Phong was also by motorbike and through backroads, this was definitly a highlight so far. I was also taught to ride a motorbike by my guide when I got back to Ninh Binh, which was very exciting.
From Ninh Binh I went to Vinh and spent the night at a beach close called Coa Lo. This is a Vietnamese resort town and they obviously don't get many foreignors here because everyone was shouting out Hello etc even thought they couldn't actually speak english. It was a beautiful beach despite the massive numbers of Vietnamese crowding it, but it was a bit disturbing and I left early that morning back to Hanoi via local bus.
Partway through the trip a man got on the bus who had a pet monkey with him. This kept the bus amused for a while, until we got a flat tire. They didn't seem to have the tools necessary to fix the flat tire and had to send someone into the closest town. It was fixed pretty quickly though and we were off within 1/2hour.
The following day I went to Halong Bay. This is a beautiful bay off the East Coast of the north of Vietnam and has hundreds of these odd linestone formations protruding out of the water. It was pissing down with rain most of the time, but was beautiful all the same. I was lucky enough to have a great group of people on the boat who were all keen for a bit of a party and so we partied and swam into the night. Great fun. The following day we headed to Cat Ba Island. I don't know whether it was due to the weather or whether the Island is just not that great, but I wasn't really able to enjoy this and spent most of my time in the hotel. I did pop out to head to Monkey Island (where there are obviously monkey's) and go for a swim, but it was still pretty horrible weather.
The following day I headed back to Hanoi to collect my passport and sort out my Visa's. I was able to get my British one within the day, but apparently, like Rob, I need to have some proof that I'm leaving the country before Vietnam will issue a new Wietnamese visa. All a bit odd considering I came in without needing this proof. So at present I'm travelling without a visa and will sort this out in Saigon.
So far Vietnam has been great. There are heaps of tourists everywhere, unless you truly get off the beaten track, but this seems to be quite expensive. Hanoi has got a great feel to it, I certainly could have been stuck in a worse city.
The Holiday from the Holiday from the Holiday
Just a fill in on the fun and frollics since I went AWOL a couple of weeks back. I returned to NZ to do some work and have a holiday from the holiday, but have now rejoined Jane in Vietnam. It was nice to get back to NZ for a couple of weeks catch up with friends and dose up on meat with Jane's folks (big thanks to Cathy and Tim for the hospitality and the chance to see the America's Cup).
Returning to the fray in my usual mad-rush sleep-deprived state I had all sorts of fun getting back to Vietnam; First Air NZ check-in in Auckland, where they were not going to let me fly to Hong Kong because I didn't have a flight out of Vietnam, now I informed them that this was in fact bollix because Jane had done exactly this 3 weeks back and I had a Visa and please stop being such dicks etc but unfortunately they own the airplanes and the appropriate rubber stamps. After an hour and me remembering that I had an onward ticket from Malaysia to Dubai in August (prooving intent of leaving Vietnam) they eventually relented and I was on my merry way. However the sequel to this was yet to come.
I got to Hong Kong with a ticket in had to go to Ho Chi Ming city (old Saigon) however about two weeks ago Jane got bag-snatched by a motorcyclist whilst getting out of a taxi in Hanoi and lost her passport, a credit card and some money. A real bugger and an inconvenience (not too bad as we are insured), but an object lesson in why women should always keep a BSM (big strong man) around to cry with them when it goes wrong. Anyhow the upshot was that Jane had to spend two weeks around Hanoi waiting for replacement so I wanted to meet up with her there instead. I rebooked for a flight to Hanoi, and was just in the process of checking in when they informed me that they wouldn't let me fly without an onward ticket from Vietnam. Bugger and Crap. So with 10 minutes to go before boarding I had to rush off and book a ticket out of Vietnam (cost about $300) so that I could fly in. Of course arriving in Hanoi no one checked to see if I had such a ticket (confirming my beliefs of it's inconsequentiality) but sometimes you just have to take it on the chin. I would love to know why it is that the countries that westerners have the least likelyhood of wanting to stay in long-term are the ones that make it most difficult to travel in and out of. The people's collective's of China and Vietnam should pull their collective heads out of their collective arses, the third would is nice for a visit but you wouldn't want to live there.
I managed to meet up with Jane for a few hours in Hanoi before she jumped on a 17 hour bus trip to Da Nang (halfway down Vietnam on the coast) where we hope to spend a few days in Hoi An - a nice beachy town. I am joining her today by the far more civilised means of flying.
Returning to the fray in my usual mad-rush sleep-deprived state I had all sorts of fun getting back to Vietnam; First Air NZ check-in in Auckland, where they were not going to let me fly to Hong Kong because I didn't have a flight out of Vietnam, now I informed them that this was in fact bollix because Jane had done exactly this 3 weeks back and I had a Visa and please stop being such dicks etc but unfortunately they own the airplanes and the appropriate rubber stamps. After an hour and me remembering that I had an onward ticket from Malaysia to Dubai in August (prooving intent of leaving Vietnam) they eventually relented and I was on my merry way. However the sequel to this was yet to come.
I got to Hong Kong with a ticket in had to go to Ho Chi Ming city (old Saigon) however about two weeks ago Jane got bag-snatched by a motorcyclist whilst getting out of a taxi in Hanoi and lost her passport, a credit card and some money. A real bugger and an inconvenience (not too bad as we are insured), but an object lesson in why women should always keep a BSM (big strong man) around to cry with them when it goes wrong. Anyhow the upshot was that Jane had to spend two weeks around Hanoi waiting for replacement so I wanted to meet up with her there instead. I rebooked for a flight to Hanoi, and was just in the process of checking in when they informed me that they wouldn't let me fly without an onward ticket from Vietnam. Bugger and Crap. So with 10 minutes to go before boarding I had to rush off and book a ticket out of Vietnam (cost about $300) so that I could fly in. Of course arriving in Hanoi no one checked to see if I had such a ticket (confirming my beliefs of it's inconsequentiality) but sometimes you just have to take it on the chin. I would love to know why it is that the countries that westerners have the least likelyhood of wanting to stay in long-term are the ones that make it most difficult to travel in and out of. The people's collective's of China and Vietnam should pull their collective heads out of their collective arses, the third would is nice for a visit but you wouldn't want to live there.
I managed to meet up with Jane for a few hours in Hanoi before she jumped on a 17 hour bus trip to Da Nang (halfway down Vietnam on the coast) where we hope to spend a few days in Hoi An - a nice beachy town. I am joining her today by the far more civilised means of flying.
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