One Night in Bangkok

It was a total culture shock arriving into Bangkok after Vietnam. Bangkok positively seemed to be the city of sin. Of course the biggest sinners are the tourists who flock to KohSan Road. While Bnagkok Red Shirts raged the city, we visited the royal palaces. They are truly stunning and unfortunately my instant camera cannot possibly do justice to the scale and beauty of the place. It is amazing the opulence of the Royal family, especially when contrasted to what the average Thai has.
Detailing on the sides of the palace wall

The Reclining Budda is 46 meters long and almost as high
We escaped Bangkok as fast as we could and headed for Koh Samui. Romantic dinner on the beach.
The Tranquil fishing village of Big Buddha beach.

Paradise on the beaches of Angthon national park
Sadly our holiday is over and it is now time to head back to reality.

North Vietnam

After leaving the south we headed to Hoian, the city of the lanterns. We were lucky that Fred's brother's wife's second cousin's wife lived there and she was determined to make sure we had a good time. Apart from giving us a scooter to kill ourselves, she insisted in taking us out on tours. The first night was a tour of Hoian and its wonderful lantern display.
This was my favourite lantern
Early next morning Huyen took us to Danang to see the fishing villages. The round tubs are actually boats, I still haven't figured out how they work but all I could think of was Rub-a-dub-dub, three men in a tub.
We took a ferry to visit the islands, this was taken from our Ferry and gives you a good sense of the health and safety standards in Vietnam. every inch is used.

The highlight of our trip was a BBQ on the beach at Hoian. Huyen is holding my hands and the couple to our left owned the beach batch which cooked up our feast. The best part was the home made Rice wine that they produced.Next day we toured the countryside on motorbike. Here are some local fishermen
After Hoian we went to Hanoi. Huyen warned us that the North was different. This is not the place to take the piss out of Uncle Ho. They are very proud of their Lenin statue near the national war museum.
Hanoi was not our place and we were happy to get out of it. We decided to do some hiking in Sapa. Only 40 km from the Chinese border this part of Vietnam is very different from what we had seen before. The children of Sapa are responsible for caring for the Water Buffalo.
Water buffalo are the life blood of country. They plough, pull and move stuff. On our hike we were lucky to come up close and personal with them.
The Hmung baby chair
We did a homestay and had to help cook dinner. Here Fred and Mao our guide are making spring rolls while getting sozzled on Tiger Beer.
The children of the house were just fantastic, this is little baby Lu who kept everyone entertained.
Meanwhile his mother managed to produce an absolutely fantastic gourmet meal from just this wok fired by bamboo wood.
The most depressing part of Sapa was the collection of minority women who now go to the town to peddle stuff to tourists. They flock around any unsuspecting tourist and hound them to buy something. After Sapa we headed for Halong bay because everyone goes there. We were not too keen on Halong bay, but once again it proved to be well worth the visit. Sadly our camera cannot capture the beauty of the place.
At the top of Titop mountain we greeted the dawn before we headed back to Hanoi. Fred and I are starting to look the same - scary!!!!
We are at the end of our Vietnam trip and head to Thailand tomorrow. We have enjoyed a wonderful time in Vietnam with wonderful memories.

back in Vietnam

We were glad to get back to Vietnam after Cambodia as the poverty is hard to take. We flew to Da Lat and arrived late at night. At 4,500 feet Da Lat was positively cold relative to the rest of Vietnam. The locals had their children wrapped in winter wollies as if they were expecting a snow storm. Meanwhile the weather hardened Wellingtonians were going around in shorts and tee shirts.

Da Lat is known as the Little Paris of Vietnam, the city of Lovers. Either Fred and I thought it was about as romantic as a visit to the dentist. Maybe it did not help that the lake had been drained of water and the city centre was a mud pool, but it did not stir our hearts much.

However we loved the market, probably one of the nicest we have visited so far. The produce and hand made sweets beat any Los Gatos farmer's market day. The range of exotic fruit and veg was amazing. If I only had a kitchen!
Fred was particularly drawn to the selection of little cup cakes. His eyes are bigger than his stomach.
We decided to go for a hike in the local national park, to make room for the cup cakes. The hike was very steep and quite challenging, however it was sad to reach the top of the hike only to find that it was covered in trash. I have never seen anything like it on top of any mountain. What a pity.

Just as we turned around the mother of all monsoons hit us and we hiked down in torrential rain. Everything got drenched and sadly it even blew up my 7 year old cell phone which has stood by me in many countries at this stage. The photo below gives you a sense of the rain that fell.
We decided to leave Da Lat as the romance continued to evade us. Rather than the usual bus ride down to the coast we decided to take a bike. Given that Da Lat is at 4500 feet and we were going to sea level, we reckoned that it could not be too hard. Unfortunately the first section was ALL uphill so we got our exercise in. Here is Fred and our wonderful guide climbing to the summit.

Da Lat is famous for its coffee plantations, in fact we learned that Vietnam is the second largest exporter of coffee in the world. Here are the little beans that make me happy every morning.

T

Destination Nha Trang, only another 65K of downhill to go
The road we took is being built through a national park. It was a very beautiful ride down the mountain. This Buddha marks the site of a building accident that killed many of the workers in a landslide.
The end of the ride, lunch overlooking a river and then 40 winks in a hammock.
In the very rural areas you get a sense of the poverty in Vietnam. This house is made of either sugar cane or palm weaved together. It never ceased to amaze me that no matter how poor the house looked there was always a satellite dish or tv Arial to be seen.
On the way to Nha Trang we passed many water buffalo who basically are utilized as we used horses. They seem the most serene animals you have ever come across.

Finally we hit Nha Trang - the beach party town. What a total contrast to anywhere else we have been. This ended up being an oasis right by our hotel. For $1.50 you could rent a lounge chair for the day at a brewery. This beats any brewery I have ever been in in my life. And the beer wasn't half bad either. Not really into the party scene and typical beach stuff we left Nha Trang for Hoi An after two nights.

The best thing we saw in Nha Trang was this massive Buddha which sits on a hill overlooking the city. It was truly magnificent and wins the award for best Buddha to date.

We took an early morning flight to Hoi An this morning and met up with the Vietnamese wife of one of Fred's brother's wife's second cousins (really!). She insisted that we needed to get wheels and quickly supplied us with a motor scooter to go explore the town.
She showed us the locals beach out of town and set us up at her friends cabana for the day. Now this is more like our scene. We we have a couple of more days here being guided around by Huyen.

Wat Wat

We were glad to leave Pnom Penh and head for the temples at Angkor Wat. Fred was confused as to why Cambodia's national flag sported a Bouncy Castle until we got to Siem Reap. The most famous temple Angkor Wat has become the national emblem.

We started our tour with a dawn trip to Angkor Wat to watch the sunrise. The photo does not do credit to the scale of Angkor Wat, there are 5 towers and the complex circumference is over 12KM
There are over 2.000 Apsaras at Angkor Wat. They are celestial dancers and each one has a different hair adornment. Fred wonders if it was not the inspiration for Beach Blanket Babylon in San Francisco. The carvings are incredibly beautiful.This was the temple used in Tomb Raider, although there was no sign of Angelina Jolee
The first carving of a pig roast barbeque
The four faces of the king looking in all directions so he could not be attacked
The Terrace of Elephants
Fred and Barbara templed out at the end of the day
Cambodian style foot massage
9th century carving was significantly more ornate than that in Angkor Wat, it was three dimensional
Shiva riding the dragon which means he was at war
The Nordstrom Rack Cambodia style. A market on the side of the road

Lots of stairs to climb to the temples
The water buffalo protects the temple

A five headed cobra supported by a monkey warrior
Another temple
An Elephant protecting the temple
By the end of two days we were templed out, there are hundreds of temples all over Cambodia and it is a hard job for a country so poor to protect its Wonders of the World. Unfortunately the damage of the temples is clear between people stealing the statues or simply just walking all over them.

We are heading back to Vietnam tomorrow and looking forward to escaping the searing heat of Cambodia. It was only 38 degrees today and 55 percent humidity.