I love to travel, and I love to write about my travels.
We really enjoyed our ten days in Taiwan. It’s the perfect introduction to East Asia, like a bite-sized piece of China. The terrain is beautiful, the weather was cool and refreshing, the transportation was for the Continue reading “Ten Days in Taiwan”
We arrived in the Philippines, without a real plan. We kept meaning to choose which islands we wanted to visit, but with over 7,000, we just got overwhelmed. So we landed in Manila early in the morning, dropped our stuff at Continue reading “Philippines: How do you choose an island??”
We arrived in Saigon just in time for the Lunar New Year. The streets and parks were full of sweets being sold for the holiday, gift baskets, hanging red lanterns and balloons, and flowers everywhere. Yellow blooms for long life, and orange trees for good luck. It’s funny to see motorbikes zipping around town with a medium-sized orange tree tied to the back!
But by 5 pm on the actual New Year’s Eve, all the sellers had packed up to go spend three days with their families, and the city’s main park was transformed from a flower market to a concert pavilion. At ten that night, thousands of people came to the park, watched a live singing and dancing show, and then fireworks at midnight. Pretty cool.
Also in Saigon, we went to the Cu Chi Tunnels, and the War Remembrance Museum. Both of the places, and all throughout Vietnam, were pretty heavily into the propaganda about the “American Imperialist invaders”, the “puppet government of the south”, and the “brave revolutionaries of communist Vietnam”. But they did also highlight just how much both sides suffered during the war, especially in regards to chemical agents such as Agent Orange.
From Saigon, we hopped back on our Stray bus and went to Dalat, a picturesque and temperate city in the highlands. We visited a waterfall, got to steer our own roller coaster car (so fun!), visited one of the weirdest architectural hotels I’ve ever seen, and rode a cable car up to a monastery. A nice city. Our guide, Luong, introduced us to some new street food, one of which was pretty good and one that was disgusting. You pretty much have to try them all to find one you’ll like.
Our bus left Dalat and headed to a small fishing village where we were definitely the only farangs (foreigners) around. We met a local family, had dinner with them, and the next day they took us to their family island out in the bay, where they showed us how they fish for crabs, snails, squid, shrimp, and fish. And then we threw them all on the grill and ate them. Yum!
Bai Xep, hardly even a village, was next. There was nothing there except white sand beaches, a bay, a five star hotel, and a simple but lovely hostel (actually both owned by the same man). So for $10 each, this paradise was ours for a night. Thank you Stray Bus for bringing us here! And did I mention the two abandoned kittens we got to feed with a straw?
After a visit to the My Lai memorial, our Stray bus arrived in Hoi An. We stayed at a beautiful hotel right next to the Old Quarter, full of homes that date back hundreds of years, incorporating Chinese, Japanese, and Vietnamese styles. One of the things I love about taking the Stray bus is that they will suggest your accommodations for you- if you like it, they will help you reserve a room, and if you want to make a different choice, you are free to do that too! Some of our group from our bus had suits or dresses made by the renowned and yet cheap tailors that inundate the city. Walking around the motor-bike free Quarter in the evenings was really nice. There is a river that runs through the quarter, and for a dollar (21,000 dong), you can buy a floating paper lantern to set in the river and watch it drift off to sea.
From Hoi An our bus took off for Hue, arriving in time to do a motorbike tour of various villages, temples, the Perfume River, a French war bunker, the citadel and Emperor’s palace and a coliseum where tigers and elephants used to be pitted against each other. 12 of us from our bus did the tour, so we were quite the sight, zooming along on the back of our guides’ bikes. We had a blast. We even watched a woman making incense sticks and one making the bamboo conical hats all the Vietnamese wear.
Crossing through the DMZ, we arrived in the north of Vietnam, finishing the day with the Vinh Moc tunnels. We stayed at a lakeside resort that night and enjoyed their pool and the view, and a pretty good bottle of Vietnamese wine. We stayed there two nights, and visited the nearby Phong Nga cave. It’s huge. Massive. In fact, the largest cave in the world is in that same national park, but it takes a day and a half hiking to get to, and costs $3000 to explore. No thanks. I don’t like caves that much.
Almost done with our bus tour, we wound our way through the karst mountains and rice fields of the north, the weather getting cooler and mistier. We stayed just one night in Ninh Binh, and visited the primate center to see rescued lengurs, gibbons, and macaque monkeys. It’s sad to see them in cages but they have all been rescued from poachers, and the ones that can be rehabbed and released in the wild are set free. And they are trying a breeding program, as some of the primate populations have fallen below 100 in some areas.
And finally we arrived in Hanoi. Our Straycation at an end, we said goodbye to our bus mates and settled into a hotel in Hanoi’s old quarter, where we spent the next six days working on our Chinese visa application, eating delicious street food, getting lost in the alleys and back streets, and drinking 5,000 dong beer (about 25 cents). We did a tiny bit of sightseeing, such as the “Hanoi Hilton” prison, a water puppet show, and Ho Chi Minh’s mausoleum, but for the most part we just took a break. I think some of our best Vietnamese food was in Hanoi, such as grilled eggplant, caramel pork, and cashew chicken. And rice. rice. more rice. And noodles!
So now we are refreshed, recharged, and ready to take on the Philippines and then Taiwan.
Thanks to Vera, Jess, Fee, Nat, Sam, Carol, Olly, Clare, Bethun, and even Ryan and Lisa for making our Stray bus a trip to remember!
Tearing ourselves away from Laos, we headed to Cambodia. A long travel day got us to Siem Reap, where luckily our hotel was just off the very fun and very diverse Pub Street- where the draft beers are 50 cents, all day and all night. I’m not ashamed to say we ate at a Mexican restaurant. In Cambodia. And it was pretty good.
The next day, we hired a tuk tuk driver to take us to the Angkor Wat temple, as well as two others, Angkor Thom and Ta Prohm (yes, that’s the one from Tomb Raider). We tried to stay out of the way of the huge Chinese tour groups, and avoided getting scammed by the “free” guides and guidebook sellers. The huge, falling down temples are really beautiful…..and big. Truly, a sight to see.
After a couple of days in Siem Reap on our own, we rejoined our Stray bus compatriots and went to Battambang, where we rode the Bamboo Train. It used to go from Cambodia to Bangkok, but is no longer in use except for a few kilometers used for tourism. The locals make these square bamboo pallets, and place them on top of two axels and add a small motor. If two pallets “collide”, one party simply gets off the tracks and picks up their “train”, letting the other party pass. At the end of the track we stopped in a small village for a cold beer and some barbecued mouse, which really doesn’t have all that much meat on it…
After the train, six of us wanted to go see the bats leave their cave at dusk, while the others went to a local market. It was pretty cool seeing 3+ million bats streaming out of their cave. They fly up to 200 km away and then return about 8 hours later. They eat a lot of insects every night!
Later we rejoined our group at a homestay, where we had the best fish amok! It’s fish pieces baked in a bamboo leaf, in a coconut milk and Khmer spice broth. Really good. We learned a little about the family who own the house, and what life is like for them in the village, and how they got started in tourism and turning their barn into a homestay area. It’s nice to think that we are helping many members of local families with our tourism dollars.
Then it was a brief stop in Uodong, then two nights in Sihanoukville, a beach town, pretty much catering to mass tourism (not too much local culture there). Good food, a decent bottle of wine, some beach time.
We went to Kampot, and hopped off the bus there for three days, to see our old friend Dave, who I used to teach with. Kampot is a nice little river town, not too overrun with tourists, with a small but growing expat community of people who have found the perfect place to run out their senior years on less than $700 a month. Hmmm, good chance we’ll be back to Kampot one day.
After Kampot, we spent one night on the tiny island of Koh Tansay, in a bungalow that only had electricity from 6pm to 9 pm. 13 bungalows, one restaurant, one massage pavilion with five pallets…. Well that’s all I needed for the 20 hours we were there. A very relaxing and romantic way to spend Valentine’s with my sweetheart (and ten other Stray bussers).
Our last stop in Cambodia is Pnom Penh. On the way into town, we visited the Killing Fields. Chris and I bought the audio guides, which were pretty interesting, although sad. Then we went to S21, one of the Khmer Rouge’s security prisons, where they tortured and killed thousands of intellectuals, teachers, doctors, dissidents, basically anyone who might challenge the 1975-1979 vision of a communist Cambodia. Horribly, the place used to be a school before the schools were shut down.
To end on a more positive note, we went to a cultural dance show in Pnom Penh, sponsored by an organization called Cambodian Living Arts, which was really good! They performed about a dozen folk dances and blessing songs and had beautiful costumes. They all seemed to be enjoying themselves and we were happy to see the arts thriving in Cambodia- a minor miracle, considering 90% of their artists were killed 35 years ago.
All in all, a very interesting country to come to, well worth a visit if you’re in the area. And now we are crossing the border into Vietnam……..
We crossed the Thai/Laos border with our Stray bus group, and boarded a long flat covered boat for our two day sail down the Mekong River. It was very cool looking at the scenery along the way, although after two eight hour days on the river we were definitely ready to be on land! The night between the two boat rides, we stopped in a small highland village and had a homestay. The village had about 60 family houses, and we divided our group of 18 or so into five houses. We had dinner and breakfast with our hosts, spent the night on their floor on mattresses and under mosquito nets, and tried the local “Lao Lao”, which is a homemade local rice whisky. Pretty gross, but it’s cheap and a few shots of that will do the trick!
When we finished our boat journey, we were in Luang Prabang, the ancient Siam capital of the north. A pretty and small city, perfect for some walking around and gazing at all the goods offered in the markets. We visited the public library, and donated a book for their village outreach program, a “book boat” that travels to remote areas and gives kids there the chance to access a book. And Luang Prabang is great place for baguette sandwiches: Laos, having once been part of French Indochina, retains the love of French bread that is so missing from Thailand and Malaysia.
From Luang Prabang we headed south to Vang Vueng, a kind of grungy river town that basically centers on the backpackers coming through and tubing the river. For five dollars we rented a tube, got dropped off a couple of miles upstream, and floated lazily down the river. There are five or six bars along the way; if you want to get out, a young Laos boy throws a filled water bottle attached to a rope at you and reels you in, like a fish. We tubed the river with most of the group from our Stray bus, so it wasn’t long before the Lao Lao was flowing and the beer pong was a-playing.
The next morning we had the chance to go up in a hot air balloon for only $80 US, so we couldn’t pass that up. We rose up to 1,000 meters and looked down at the river, the karst mountains, the mist, the rice fields… Really beautiful. A bit of a scary “crash” landing, but we were all okay, if a little shaken.
We headed to the Kong Lor area, too small to even really be called a village. Just five or six guest houses, two restaurants, all a kilometer from the kong Lor cave, which we were there to explore. We got a boat ride into the cave- 7 kilometers into the cave- had to portage three times- walked around inside the cave for a while. Pretty spooky feeling, being that far under a mountain. At the end, when we returned to the starting point, we all swam in the cold, clear water in a natural swimming hole at the cave’s entrance. Back at our guesthouse, we all lazed the rest of the day away, nothing to do but look out over the green tobacco fields and the surrounding mountains. What beautiful scenery!
Ventiane, the capital, was next. We didn’t do much there except visit the Victory Arch, a temple, and COPE, an organization that helps bomb victims deal with their injuries and adjustment. We learned about the millions of bombs dropped over Laos during Vietnam and the “Secret War”. Laos is the most bombed country, per capita! And there are still thousands of UXO here, in fields, rivers, jungles, and villages.
After Ventiane we had another homestay, not with a family, but in a big farmhouse owned by a local and given over to Stray bus for their three times a weeks stop in the village of Xe Champhone. After dinner, the Lao Lao started flowing and the music started playing and the kids on our bus (because, yes, of course Chris and I are the oldest) started partying. This time I wasn’t in the mood, and kind of felt that the loud partying was a bit disrespectful to the rest of the village, although several locals did stop by to meet us and have a drink.
Some of our side trips on these days have included Buddha caves, UNESCO temples, waterfalls, a turtle lake, a coffee plantation, and a monkey forest where we hand fed dozens of macaque monkeys.
Our last stop in Laos, and where 12 of the 15 of us hopped off the bus for three days, has been an area called “4000 islands” in southern Laos. We are on an island called Don Dett, about 2 miles long and one mile wide. Just “beach” bungalows, bars, tubing, kayaking, and bicycle rentals. It’s a nice place to explore and I even managed a run yesterday morning before breakfast. Rice fields, water buffalo, sunsets, and relaxing. We really needed the break. Tomorrow we head across the border to Cambodia, starting with Angkor Wat.
PalmTreeMusings 