Once again we're running behind in our posts. I still blame the keyboard.
Here's what happened since the last post:
From Mui Ne we took a bus to Ho Chi Minh city (also known as Saigon.) The city did not impress us much to be honest. Traffic and noise was comparable to that of Hanoi, only the streets were wider, and slightly easier to navigate.
We browsed the city, but did not see anything trully remarkable, thus the luck of pictures. There are a lot of signs like this one, so I took a couple of these pictures (sorry, parents)
And since I'd already mentioned that Vietnamese failed to impress me with their Pho, I had to take a picture of the following sign as well:
So I'm not just looking forward to the "regular" european food back home, but also to Asian food in its American interpretation.
We spent a couple of days in Saigon, our last destination in Vietnam, and left for Phnom Penh, Cambodia. From there we went to Siem Reap to visit the Angkor Wat, and from there we (unexpectedly) went back to Koh Phangan, Thailand. As it turned out, planning the final leg of our journey was going to take more than a few hours we'd allocated to it, so while we are doing it we decided to spend the New Years with our friends at Zhaba bar. It just seemed like a simple, and a pleasant thing to do.
We are going to write another post on Cambodia, and share some pictures from there in a little while, hopefully before you wake up :)
A long long time ago a human life was only 20 years long and was very happy and carefree. However, man, being selfish and wanting more, went up to God to ask for a longer life. God contemplated that request and denied it. So the man was walking down from heaven and bumped into an Ox who was walking up to talk to God. The man asked the Ox what he is going to ask for. And the Ox replied that his life is 100 years long and all this time is filled with hard labor. And he would like his time reduced. So the man walked up with the Ox. God considered the Ox's request and cut his life in half. This is when the Man snatched up the 50 years from Ox's life.
Once again the Man walked down from heaven. And this time he bumped into a Monkey. The Monkey told him that her life is 40 years long and during this time she is completely lonely without any family. So she was going to ask God to cut her life. So the Man walked up with the Monkey. God thought about the Monkey's request and cut Monkey's life in half. And once again the Man snatched up the extra time for himself.
At this point the Man had acquired 90 years:
The first 20 are fun and carefree.
The next 50 are filled with hard work that of an Ox.
And the last 20 are lonely.
And so this is how the human life is to this day.
(This story was told to us by our guide at the tour of the Tombs at Hue.)
After grueling shopping of Hoi An we needed some quality RnR, and Nha Trang with Mui Ne were just the answer. Both towns are located on the beaches of the South China sea, and while the beaches are no match to those we saw in Thailand, they are still pretty nice.
Nha Trang was first. We arrived there by night sleeper bus around 6am, and were immediately overrun by locals on motorcycles offering hotels in the area. By then my patience towards pushy people was quickly approaching zero, and my back hurt from the uncomfortable bus ride, so I had nothing good to say to these people.
The approach we've been taking lately regarding finding a place to stay is to walk around the area with high concentration of budget accommodations, and look at the rooms before we commit to them. We did just that, and half an hour later found a place across the road from the beach. After a quick 2 hour nap we were ready to take on the town. We walked down to the beach, and walked on the sand until we saw Lousiana brewery that made very decent beer, had a pool as well as a pool table, cots for laying around the pool, and a massage room. It was perfect for our needs, so we spent most of the day time there for the next two days.
One thing that became apparent as soon as we got out of the bus was that the town caters to Russians. All restaurants have Russian menus, and some waiters even speak Russian. Same goes for the stores; stores that sell leather goods get the most prominent locations, and advertise their wares in Russian. We kept ourselves entertained by finding funny translations.
Second day brought Julie's birthday. Yey, congratulations baby!!! So naturally Julie decided to get a cold. But we still spent the day at the brewery speaking only English to avoid being detected by the scores of Russians that looked and sometimes behaved like the characters of "Nasha Russia" (Tagil !!!) At night we went to a restaurant with some Italian dishes, and a French name. Julie got to blow out a candle on a tiramisu, which I had to draw on a piece of paper along with a cake to explain to the waiter what I needed from him.
The next morning we were supposed to take a bus to Mui Ne, but the idiot travel agent messed up, and we missed our bus. After some yelling at the wrong people (the travel agent at fault failed to show up, or pick up the phone) we decided to stay one more day and night. Luckily the guest house where we booked the bus is owned by a nice lady that was very accommodating, gave us back our money, arranged for the bus the next morning. We decided to spend the night right there rather than attempt an evening bus that would arrive to Mui Ne around 2am, making the guesthouse search very difficult.
Surprisingly this day was very nice despite the morning misadventures. We had the best breakfast ever at Le Petit Cafe. They had (in the order of importance) good, non-Lipton tea, the best Croque Madame that I had since France, yummy crepes, and good cappuccino.
After breakfast we went to the brewery where Julie, still a bit sick, went to sleep by the pool, and I went running on the beach. Later in the evening we returned to Le Petit Cafe for their selection of cheeses and pate. As you might have guessed, we are by now all riced out. It proved to be another great meal.
The next morning we successfuly boarded a bus to Mui Ne. The bus turned out to be a sleeper bus again, which is strange when you ride it during the day, but it was a decent bus otherwise, and we arrived to Mui Ne without issues. Once there we set out to look for a guesthouse, and at the very first one we ran into Lena and David, the Canadians we befrended in Hue. We interrupted our search to have lunch with them, then dropped our heavy bags in their room, and went to look at the cheap but nice guesthouse recommended by their new friend. In another 15 minutes we were all situated in our new room, ready for more beach time. We spent a couple more days on the beach (Mui Ne is essentially one street along the beach), and on the third day rented a scooter to visit the only attraction nearby - the sand dunes. One set of dunes is white, and the other is red.
At both locations kids offer to rent the makeshift sleds to slide down the dunes. At the white dunes I found a half a sled, and tried to give it a go:
We stayed at a quieter end of town. While we had the scooter we decided to check out the other, touristy end. It turned out even more Russians-oriented than Nha Trang.
At one store the clerk could not understand English at all, however when 3 Russian ladies walked in, and asked him in Russian whether he remembered them because they were there the day before, he responded in a very good Russian. At the same store Julie was trying tea, and some dry fruit, and asked the clerk whether they had black tea, and when the clerk could not understand her, another Russian lady took upon herself to translate for us, and explained to him what Julie wanted. Not to embarrass ourselves, and the lady we maintained the character, and continued to speak English, so the next thing the lady had to translate for Julie was the name of 'guava', which sounds the same in both languages, to the amusement of the lady's husband who commented on how good of a job she did in that translation. We did not feel too bad pretending, after all she got to practise her English, and it will likely make a good conversation piece. Julie says it reminded her of my stories when I was "translating" back in Russia at the 1994 Goodwill games.
The next day we caught a bus to our last destination of Vietnam, Saigon, aka Ho Chi Minh city.
Between all the shopping we managed to get to some sights.
1. The town itself is super cute. It is surrounded by water on 3 sides and offers hours of walking
2. There food is unusually good for Vietnam. We found some lovely restaurants. The best were Tam Tam and Cargo. The latter had amazing deserts. They were so good that they are worth mentioning in this blog :)
3. We went to two different beaches. Of course it wasn't exactly beach weather but they were nice trips nonetheless
4. We made one trip to My Son - temple ruins from hundreds of years ago. It's a miniature version of Angkorwat. It was a lovely 50 km ride on a scooter and a nice walk between the different sights. The first sight was the most impressive one but we still powered through the heat and covered every sight.
5. And did I mention that we did a bit of drinking? :)
As soon as our clothes were shipped, we were on our way to Nha Trang...
Hoi An is a wonderful little town in the middle of Vietnam. It is best known as a Seamstress Town. People come primarily from Europe to have their clothes custom made there.
We arrived to town in the middle of the day on 11/26 after a long bus ride from Hue. The bus stopped in front of a large hotel and we were particularly lazy to walk around the town with our heavy bags looking for something else. So we chose a room that we liked, and that fit the budget in this hotel (An Phu) and stayed there.
The plan:
The plan for this town was to accomplish the most hated task for both of us - aka shopping! Anyone who had met us, may have guessed that our sizes are not standard by any means. So we were going to get a few essential things custom made.
The execution:
On the day that we arrived we went walking to town and right away were completely overwhelmed by the number of places. Literally hundreds of shops that will make anything for you from suits to shoes and all can be done based on an existing piece of clothing or based on a picture. We walked into a few places and asked about prices, materials and turnaround times. Then we stumbled upon Kimmy's Tailors. This was a bigger shop than all the rest of them and had professional staff. That same night we checked out the reviews and found that Kimmys was one of the top 3 rated shops so we decided to go with them.
The first day was most grueling when we had to pick materials, styles, negotiate prices, figure out the number of pieces, and get measured. All in all it took 5 hours to get out of the store. After that we were exhausted and happy to start drinking the moment we left the shop.
By day 2, we figured out that it is even better if we drink before and after the visit to the shop. For the other 4 days we kept this strict regiment of alcohol intake :)
The result:
A couple of suits, some blazers, shirts and pants for Levka, Igor and myself. All of which was mailed home right from the store.
You might've guessed the last picture is of Igor's suit.
Lessons learned:
1. Its really worth it to go with a slightly more expensive place with a great reputation. We made a pair of shorts in another cheap place and the quality was nowhere close to what was done at Kimmys.
2. If you do this, make sure to bring enough dollars to pay the entire amount. The prices are quoted in dollars and if you pay in Dong the conversion rate is awful. Plus we pay ATM fees to withdraw that money. Between the two, we ended up paying an extra 5%.
Hue was our next destination in Vietnam. The main attraction of this town is the citadel.
It was constructed as a fortress complete with a outer wall, a moat, and an inner courtyard with its own wall to prevent those who are not the king's concubines from getting into his private quarters. The citadel was all but leveled during the Vietnam war, and even though they've been working on restoring it since the 80's, they still have a long way to go. For example king's private quarters are still missing, as well as most other buildings. What is restored in a lot of places are the various walls that separated multiple areas within the citadel. They make it harder to navigate; we must have passed through a couple of dozens of gates. Another interesting feature of this place is mother-in-law's quarters. She had her own palace, a garden, and 22 smaller houses. Either Americans did not bomb it, or it got restored first. Either way, mother-in-law gets respect.
On the second day we joined a boat trip to other local attractions: an old pagoda, and various kings' tombs.
We had a choice to pay, and go into any of the 3 tombs we were going to visit. We figured they'd all be similar, and ended up skipping the only one that was different. It also started raining cats and dogs right when we were in the first tomb complex, but Julie kept warm by carrying around a kitten that lived on our boat.
The rain later subsided, and we were able to complete our tour without any other issues, except Julie had to give up the kitten because the last of the tombs had to be visited by bus, and the kitten had to stay on the boat.
Next morning we were off to Hoi An for some required shopping...
Мир, населённый слонами, конями, макаками Гиппопотамами, ламами и попугаями, Быстро просёк, что ты любишь их всех одинаково, И потому вас повсюду преследует стаями.
Я на столе пред экраном с утра и до вечера Жадно глазею на странное многообразие, Не представляла, но тут сомневаться мне нечего - Куча родни у меня и в Европе, и в Азии
Ты их там кормишь, ласкаешь, а я позаброшена - Малопушистая, мелкая, серая, бедная, Но ведь ты знаешь, какая я вправду хорошая - Не надоедливая и нисколько не вредная.
Ты возвращайся скорей, я тебе промурлыкаю Песню нехитрую, но своего сочинения, Мышку тебе подарю, потанцую, попрыгаю, В общем, поздравлю хозяйку мою с днём рождения!
From Hanoi we made an excursion to Halong Bay. Recently Halong has been added to the list of the '7 New Natural Wonders of the World'. So of course we had to check it out. By the way the Dead Sea was in the running and made it to top 10 but unfortunately did not win. Here is the list of all the nominees if you're interested: http://www.new7wonders.com/28-finalists
Every hotel and tourist agency in Hanoi offers a tour to Halong Bay, but we decided to go without it. We learned from our friends and from our trusty Lonely Planet forum that there is a company that offers a full trip to Cat Ba island including the bus and boat and all the transfers in between. (Cat Ba is the island from which everyone goes to Halong Bay) Sometimes it was disconcerting when you don't know how much time you have to wait between transfers, but if you are patient, you will eventually get there. The whole trip took about 5 hours and was rather painless.
The Cat Ba city has one main strip of hotels all of them facing the water. This time we splurged at $10 a night for a large room with a balcony vs. the $8 room which was a lot worse.
However, the boats in Halong never use the sails and are huge polluters.
The day started with beautiful weather and a ride for about 2 hours to get us to the bay itself. The scenery was spectacular. Along the way we made quick stops to deliver groceries to the boats that spent the night on the water.
We arrived to a little floating village, received our kayaks and were set free to roam around. The cool part is that you get to kayak through tunnels and into caves. And when you end up on the other side, there are more tunnels, caves and blue clean water everywhere.
In about 1.5 hours we decided to head back to the village. Upon arrival, we were yelled at by the captain as he was wildly gesticulating and pointing at his watch. I think he was indicating that we were late. However, nobody told us what time to return and we assumed to be back by lunch time :) In fact, between all the boatsmen they knew about 3 words in English. So our communication was strained :)
While we ate crappy lunch, the boat took us to our next destination. It was a huge cave that you can walk around in. It was very well lit and had carved stairs and ended up being the best part of the day. The pictures do not show the coolness of this place but try to imagine:
After the cave, we were taken to another island where we were supposed to be able to swim and hang out. On the way there, the weather became windy, foggy and very cold. Thankfully we had a towel that can be used as a blanket. As we were stuck and freezing at the island, a family of monkeys kept us entertained. They literally steal everything from the tourists and from the local cafe. They will take your bag, shirt, camera, etc. All in search of food or plain mischief. One little guy came over and said hello:
Another one helped Levka finish his soda. They haven't figured out how to open the caps but can chew through a plastic bottle.
In about 1.5 hours we were picked up by a different boat. It turned out that our boat's engine died. This second boat delivered us safely home.
Overall it was a good day. But we are not sure that Halong Bay deserves the 'wonder' status. We thought that the Ang Thong Marine Park in Thailand was even prettier.
At the same time I hope that this status will help the badly needed cleanup of the Halong Bay.
First impressions of Hanoi is that it is like Bangkok on steroids. This primarily refers to the crazy traffic. The number of scooters, cars, bikes, tuk-tuks and pedestrians sharing a road without paying attention to a single light and managing to avoid collisions is just impressive. Here is a video of a standard Hanoi intersection:
We were told that in order to cross the street you have to close your eyes and just walk. We thought this was absolutely crazy advice. In fact, on the first day, I got stuck on one side of the street (when Levka already crossed). A hotel employee grabbed my hand and helped me across (kinda like you'd lead an old grandma or a small child) :)
Only one day later, we were using the advice and were surprised that as you walk across the street the traffic splits and comfortably goes around you. Interestingly nobody actually stops to let us pass, they don't even slow down:
Aside from traffic, we were shocked by the amount of 'action' on the street; people cooking and eating; fixing cars and bikes; sewing, wood cutting, painting; people getting massages, manicures and haircuts; and you can literally buy anything on the sidewalk (that is if you can navigate between the thousands of scooters that are parked everywhere)
Surprisingly, after 2 days we were used to all of the above. I was most annoyed with the noise and Levka with the smell. Noise primarily comes from the non-stop honking. Apparently our bus driver from Laos was more of a rule than an exception. And the smell is just a side effect from a large city.
I kinda liked Hanoi in the end, but Levka is still not a fan.