How to deal with difficult situations in SE Asia.

If you're in a sticky situation in SE Asia, never lose your temper or start shouting. Also, if you know that you need something from the other party (e.g. non-cheaty price, your ticket, a visa), best way forward is giving them an acceptable way out. For instance, you know you've paid for a service but they try to ask for the price again (because they know that the Western tourist usual can afford this), state kindly that you have paid already - maybe they could check their papers again or call a colleague to find out.

What happened to us was that stuff started going missing from our room here in Huế at Sports2 Hotel. First our camera cable disappeared and we checked our belongings, carefully noting that everything else were in their proper places. When we went down for breakfast we asked the reception if we had left the cable by the computers the previous day, but they had not seen it. So we went back to our room, which had been cleaned by the housekeeping whilst we were at breakfast. Boyfriend then wanted to cut his fingernails - just to find out that our Swiss army knife had been taken from his zipped up rucksack pocket.

After checking the whole room again, I went down to reception to inform them of our problem and to ask if they could ask from the housekeeping if the knife was accidentally taken with our dirty towels (see! a respectable way out!) Soon we get a phone call informing us that the camera cable was found from the first floor balcony hanging on a potted plant - maybe we accidentally forgot it there? Perhaps, we said, knowing that we had never been on the first floor.

After a couple more inquiries and hours of waiting and not losing our calm in front of the hotel staff, the knife had not showed up. So we packed our belongings and checked out. There was no way of staying in a hotel where we could not trust anything to stay in our room. Obviously we did not say this aloud, and we did not point a blaming finger even at this stage. After getting our passports back from reception (this is what you do in all hotels in Vietnam) we informed the reception that unfortunately we would have to go to the police station to obtain a police report for our travel insurance claim - it was after all an expensive knife (half our combined weekly travel budget) - but hopefully this would not cause any problems to them (oh I can be so polite - however, this nevertheless caused the first signs of genuine interest in the receptionist with our minor plight). We left our contact details with the receptionist in case the housekeeping would find the knife.

And funny that, an hour later we got a phone call informing us that the knife is waiting for us in the reception. It had been found "behind the bed" (where we knew for sure it had not been). We thanked and smiled, obviously we were the foolish ones here not finding the knife from there. So in the end it was us who possibly lost our faces not being able to locate a knife in a room, but none of the staff at the hotel were shamed in front of us. So keeping our calm, being polite and offering a way out (finding the knife "from our room" after our departure) got us our knife back. What a day it has been though!

Romantic Hoi An and Imperial Huế

It's over three weeks since we've updated the blog - somehow Vietnam has kept us busy and left us very little time (or motivation) to be online. Since Can Tho we've been in Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon), Dalat in Central Highlands, by the South China Sea in Nha Trang, and in Central Vietnam in Hoi An and Huế. The latest posts about Vietnam have ended being a long lists of things we've done and not very descriptive, so we're now uploading a few pictures to correct this issue! This post covers Hoi An and Huế, and there is a post below for HCMC, Dalat and Nha Trang, and also we've added photos to couple of the earlier posts - check them out!

From Nha Trang we took a 13-hour night train to Danang, and carried on by a local bus for another hour and half to reach Hoi An. The second class sleeper beds on the train were quite hard, but we slept well enough and handily for the top bunks there was space for luggage at the top too. Hoi An had been described as romantic to me by a fellow traveller, and I vouch for this statement! The picturesque old town had a lot of charm with its narrow alleyways, brightly coloured lanterns, old temples and assembly halls and riverside cafes. It was a major trading post in centuries gone-by. The old town is luckily an UNESCO World Heritage Site, as Vietnamese have a tendency of modernising everything old! Hoi An is excellent for having clothes tailored and for all sorts of other shopping, but unfortunately our travel budget did not allow for this. We ate once in a top quality restaurant, The Cargo, and by the looks of it, those with fatter wallets could have a culinary blast in Hoi An!

 

 Narrow streets of Hoi An are lined with old houses with yellow fronts and wooden shutters. These days each house has turned into some sort of establishment to cater for tourists.

Note the lady in conical hat carrying the food she sells.

Red lanterns and beautiful greenery decorate the streets.

 The colourful lanterns were at their prettiest in the dark.

Hoi An riverside by night.

Entrance to one of the assembly halls; places where Chinese of a specific language group would congregate and help each other out.

Nine mosaic dragons in an assembly hall courtyard.

 

Elaborate woodwork on an assembly hall eaves.

Bonsai garden in front in a Chinese-style temple courtyard.

Chinese-style temple altar.

A wooden boat inside a Chinese-style temple. Most of the Chinese inhabitants were seafarers so many of the temples were dedicated to safety on sea.

Local specialty, Cao Lau, being prepared on the street. Of the three places where we had this, the best place to get it was a similar stall on the north bank of the river near where there were cultural dance shows at 7:30 pm each night.

 The famous Japanese covered bridge by night. The day view can be found from the 20,000 dong note (about 1 USD).

An hour drive away from Hoi An is another World Heritage Site, My Son. The site contains ruins of Cham temples dedicated to Shiva dating back to 4th to 14th century AD. Unfortunately the site was bombed during the Vietnam War, destroying most of the previously well-preserved temples. I'm not sure if I'm angrier to the Viet Cong who had a base there, or the Americans who dropped the bombs.

The tallest remaining temple tower at My Son. The taller ones (up to 28 metres) were destroyed, and overall, only twenty out of sixty temple towers remain in some state or another, the remainder having been destroyed only decades ago after surviving for about a millennium.

The temple towers were built from brick which were decorately carved. The heads of the figures were chopped off and taken to Paris by French archeologists in the late 19th century, but have been replaced by restorations.

Our current location Huế is yet another World Heritage Site. Huế was the imperial capital during the Nguyen dynasty (mainly puppet leaders under the French colonial rule) between 1802 and 1945, leaving behind the ruins of the Citadel (an impressively-walled city of about 2.5km by 2.5km, with a smaller Imperial City within it, with the smaller Purple Forbidden City within that) and many imperial tombs. Huế is also known for its bad weather, as the mountains surrounding it tend to bottle up the damp, cold air from the north. This time though the mountains have kept away the rain clouds that have covered rest of SE Asia and the weather has been sunny with maximum of 41'C! So we had two days of sightseeing the imperial ruins in the stifling, still, cloudless heat.

The main entrance to the Imperial City.

The main entrance viewed from inside. The Imperial City was also badly bombed during the war when the Viet Cong briefly occupied it, but it's being busily rebuilt to its former glory.

Additionally to the Nguyen emperors having their imperial palace in the city, most of them also had smaller palaces in the surrounding countryside, which were converted into their imperial tombs after their death. These tombs were an impressive sight. The first lot of the pictures are from the Khai Dinh tomb, which was mostly made of concrete, but it was elaborately sculpted and contained the most impressive china mosaics inside.

The eulogy of emperor Khai Dinh is carved on a stone slate inside the structure on the front.

These statues represent the emperor's retinue in the afterlife. Note the carvings on the dresses of the mandarins in the front row.

The porcelain mosaic bas reliefs were exquisite...

...and covered three rooms floor to ceiling.

The final resting place of emperor Khai Dinh (several metres under his statue).

The second tomb we visited was emperor Minh Mang's. The tomb was set in a beautiful park with harmonious temple-like buildings, and the emperor liked to sit here by the lake to fish, enjoy the scenery and contemplate the moon.

An example of the harmony between water, nature and temples.

The tomb itself was across this bridge, in a palace buried under earth and never opened since.

The final tomb we visited was emperor Tu Duc's. He had an unfortunate life without an heir, although he had many wives and 104 concubines. The tomb was more decrepit than others, but contained a lovely little pond with an island for rare animals, which the emperor enjoyed rowing around in a small boat.

The pond-side pavilion was for the emperor to write poems, and it inspired us to write a poem too. Our poem was called "Ode to Sweat", as the afternoon temperature rose to 41'C!

As emperor Tu Duc did not have an heir, he had to write his own eulogy, which was self-critical and housed in this building.

(C) all pictures: Boyfriend.

Endless hordes of scooters, cool highlands and hot beaches.

Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC, or Saigon) resembles a huge ant nest of people and seems to have about as many scooters as inhabitants (in fact, four million scooters for seven million people). Crossing a street is an interesting experience, the horde of scooters (or "motos" as they call them) parting around you like a school of fish. At the busiest intersections there are traffic lights, or even better, a team of officials dressed up in green (called " tourist security") who will guide you cross the street!

The helpful road-crossing team in front of the many scooters.

Note the ubiquitous propaganda posters in the background.

HCMC had a lot of historically interesting sights to see: the Reunification Palace (previously the Presidential Palace of South Vietnam), the War Remnants Museum with numerous photos illuminating the horrors of war, and the Cu Chi tunnels used as a Viet Cong base during the war. Together these sights gave a good picture of the recent Vietnamese history and the painful experiences that the nation has gone through. The most touching was the photos at the War Remnants Museum of villagers that were dead within five minutes of taking the photos and the malformations in newborns caused by the Agent Orange defoliant dumped into Vietnamese nature.

In HCMC we also visited a few pagodas (temples) to see how Buddhism is practiced in Vietnam. In one of the temples we learned about the Goddess of Traffic who protects you from accidents, but only if you remember her whilst driving. A good solution to avert an impending accident would be to close your eyes and think about her. No wonder the traffic is quite mad over here and people seem to rely on everyone else making way for them!

Other big religions in Vietnam include Catholicism and, more interestingly, Cao Dai, a newer religion originating in South Vietnam which is a mishmash of world religions rolled into one. We've observed a few Catholic churches and Cathedrals from outside, but we went to see the Holy See of Cao Dai in Tây Ninh, 90 km away northwest of HCMC. This cathedral was somewhat improbable and it was very interesting to see symbols of different religions happily combined together.

Cao Dai Cathedral.

Cao Dai religious service, women sitting on the left, men on the right.

From HCMC we took yet another brilliant Phu'o'ng Trang bus to Dalat in Central Highlands and spent a couple of days there in the pleasant coolness of the mountains. During the French colonial times Dalat was created to be a resort for the French to escape the heat, and it still has a feel of Alpine village with thousands of charming villas. Dalat is nowadays known for its flowers and as the honeymoon capital of Vietnam.

Views over Dalat with its thousands of lovely villas.

In Dalat we did two very different day tours. The first one was in a minivan with 20 or so Vietnamese tourists, and we rushed from sight to sight with our guide continuously reminding us about the time we had for each place. The tour was slightly stressful, but successfully covered a lot of interesting sights in the area, including a cabin lift ride to Truc Lam Temple with stunning gardens, as well as kitschy Valley of Love with plasticy statues and flower beds against which couples and girls liked to pose for photos. Another stop worth mentioning was a dried fruit shop where we sampled about two dozen dried fruits that I had never seen or tried - delicious!

A bit of peaceful garden at the Truc Lam Temple.

Valley of Love and the Vietnamese girls who like to pose.

The second day tour in Dalat was on motorbikes. We each had our own driver, and they took us up to the hills to see the stunning views, waterfalls, flower and coffee plantations, and a rice wine factory with also weasel coffee production. As the tour was just for two of us, we could decide the pace and we were never hurried to the next stop. The lunch was in a local restaurant in the countryside, where we were served half a dozen delicious dishes for 2.50 USD per head - bargain! Both of the guides spoke good English and we had a good laugh with them over the lunch. The Vietnamese humour appears quite naughty though! Touring the countryside gave us much better picture of the area, and being able to ask questions and talk about a variety of the topics with the guides was great. The tour ended in Dalat at the Hang Nga Crazy House, a delightfully bizarre guesthouse with organic shapes and a maze of surprising pathways.

  View from the pine-covered hilltop.

 Hang Nga Crazy House is crazy!

From Dalat we moved on to Nha Trang, once again by the brilliant Phu'o'ng trang bus. The road was brand new and ran through stunning views: higher up, it was plantations of all sorts (coffee, vegetables) and pine-forest-covered mountains and waterfalls, changing lower down into jungle-covered mountains. In Nha Trang we had six days of rest with occasional scooter-trip to the sights. We ate huge tiger prawns, drank delicious passion fruit beer, enjoyed the long sandy beach, had a spa afternoon, and just took it easy.

Nha Trang beach was long and wide, and offered all kinds of risky-looking water sports.

The Cai River estuary with its pretty blue fishing boats. The fresh seafood was delicious!

One day our hotel, Star Fish, organised a day-trip to secluded (but well equipped) Dai Lanh beach 60 km up north. All seven of us westerners staying in the hotel went with the hotel owner Mr Liem, his wife and a few of their friends, and we had the greatest beach day ever. Not only the beach was clean, white and empty (only a wedding lunch going on in the pavilion next door), we had really good group of people and probably the best Vietnamese food I've eaten so far! We had barbequed fish with chives and lemongrass, we had freshly rolled spring rolls by Mrs Liem, chicken, spicy beef skewers, fresh fruit,... and some beers too. I wish every visit to the beach would be like that!

Dai Lanh beach was an ideal location for a relaxed picnic.

In the final day of Nha Trang we managed to squeeze in some sightseeing before catching our train to Danang. We saw the Cham tower temple where there was a team from the Amazing Race Vietnam filming their latest episode. We also found a perfect spot to sit by the sea:

(c) all photos Boyfriend.

Vietnam: Chau Doc and Can Tho.

Crossing the border to Vietnam immediately showed in better roads, more fields, more canals, more houses and new set of letters (latin with lots of accents to indicate tone). The border formalities were quick enough and soon we were in the border town of Ha Tien. As we had bought tickets all the way to Chau Doc for "VIP minibus", we expected to change into something nicer from the bumpy-jumpy local bus we had taken from Kep. However we were hurried on to moto-taxis to take us to the local bus station. The rucksacks travelled quite smoothly in front of the driver, the logistics weren't even that impossible as some of the loads you see on scooters here. The VIP minibus turned out to be a very very old local bus with non-existent shock absorption and leg space, and the journey took four hours instead of the promised two. Oh well, I slept half of the journey anyway.

From the bus we saw the rice harvest in full swing. The Mekong delta is the rice bowl of Vietnam, and there seemed to be canals and rice fields everywhere you looked. People were drying the harvested rice on netting by the roadside, bagging it, and loading the bags on scooters, pickups, tractors and boats everywhere. Later on we've learned that the rice gets transported to factories to be cut (de-chaffed) and sold to the government. The chaff gets used for fueling furnaces, so nothing goes to waste. Hopefully I can upload some pictures of the rice harvest later on with a speedier internet connection!

EDIT: rice harvest pictures finally added on 26th April!

 Rice is ripe for harvest!

Some of the harvest is done by machine...

 ...and some by hand.

 Hand-harvested rice needs some more hand-treatment...

...until the seeds come off and can be dried in the sunlight.

Rice ready for the factory for de-chaffing.

Rice is now bagged and lazily waiting for its ride.

I'd be happy too with so many bags of rice!

And the bags just keep piling up!

Happy boat is full of rice!

After harvest, the remaining stalks are burned for nutrition for the next crop.

(c) for all pictures Dr Pepper and Boyfriend.

 

Chau Doc was not very touristy town, but a tour organiser called Vang managed to pick us up from the bus stop regardless. He pitched his hotel deals in a very un-pushy way, which appealed to us and we decided to check out his recommendations. The guesthouse was good value for money, and the tour he organised was amazingly good. We spent a morning touring the river by boat, seeing the floating market (traders who come up from Can Tho to sell fruit and veg), floating village, fish farm, Cham village and a bit of the canals. He accompanied us to the morning half, and his commentary and English were great. In the afternoon, two moto drivers took us to the countryside where we switched drivers (so that Boyfriend was driving me) and did a long (20km?) tour of the rice fields and villages, finishing up at the Nui Sam holy mountain. Probably the best tour we've taken, informative and interactive, and we could decide the pace. For the folks wondering how to find the tour guide to this tour in Chau Doc: Vang can be contacted from 0946 604110.

This far in Vietnam, huge majority of kids who see a Westener have automatically shouted "Hello!" and waved smiling. It makes me feel happy and welcome. This is a bit of a contrast with Cambodia, the hello was often followed by "One dolla?", drastically reducing the happy factor of the innocent hello.

From Chau Doc we took a bus to Can Tho, the biggest city in the Mekong delta. The bus this time was absolute luxus with free pick-up and drop-off at any hotel, air-con, complimentary water, and quarter of the cost of the previous ride. The company is called Phuong Trang and relatively new, and we plan to use them for all the next bus journeys if they got a bus running to where we go!

Can Tho has been a bit of a disappoitment, as the floating markets we came to see here were about the same as in Chau Doc, only a longer boat ride away. Also, we were sold a tour with "English speaking guide", who turned to know about ten words of English. I guess we were just contrasting it with the awesomeness and informativeness of the tour in Chau Doc, making it a disappointment. On the positive side, the tour took us also to a rice noodle factory, which I found very interesting, and a fruit orchard and through the mangroves. The town itself has a lovely feel to it with its many canals, artificial lake and the river, and we've happily spent an extra day here resting a bit from the hectic week of sightseeing in Kampot, Kep, Chau Doc and now here.

And then a quick note on fashion. In Cambodia it was common to see women wearing pyjamas. As in long-sleeved, button-up cotton outfits with Hello Kitties or other cartoonish prints. In Vietnam, similar outfit seems to be the trend, but not as blatantly a pyjama. Maybe you could call it a cotton shirt and trousers in the same print, and this is usually teamed with the traditional conical straw hat. A lot of Western trends can be spotted here too, but there has been a glaring lack of Angry Birds, whereas in Malaysia every kid was wearing a t-shirt with them. Got to love the cultural differences.

Kep and Kampot - where the pepper grows.

Spending a week in Sihanoukville left only four days to our Cambodian visa, so we got ourselves Vietnamese visas and headed towards the border. (The Vietnam visas we got very fast from the consulate next to our guesthouse, apparently the cheapest and quickest place in the world to get them.) On the way we spent two nights in Kampot and one in Kep, lovely small towns that used to be French holiday locations in the colonial times.

From Kampot we hired a tuk-tuk for a day to visit countryside, including salt fields, caves, crab restaurant, fruit orchards, and most importantly, a pepper farm. So we've now officially been to where the pepper grows and can start heading home. Eventually. It was really nice to tour the countryside on tiny sidestreets, as we got to see a lot of regular life. The farmers here seemed much more prosperous than in Siem Reap; the fields were green with vegetables and there were numerous chickens, cows and pigs roaming about.

The pepper grows here!

In both Kampot and Kep we also hired scooters to explore the area on our own. Especially Kep is a sleepy little village with many deserted colonial French villas, all funnily surrounded by new walls and gates although the buildings themselves were derelict. There were obvious signs of developing the area, as Kep had six-lane streets and the pot-holed two-lane road between the towns is being complemented with a railroad, so perhaps it will get busier in future.

Photo (c) by Boyfriend