It's been a while since our last post and we've moved about a bit since then.
From Hoi An in central Vietnam we travelled to the north east to Cat Ba island. It is situated in the south of Ha Long bay, famous for the spectacular karst (limestone) outcrops that rise dramatically out of the water in sheer cliffs a few hundred metres high. Most of the island is also a national park full of rare and endangered species of monkeys and other animals.
Unfortunately the weather while was pretty poor with lots of rain and mist. We still managed to get in a few walks and an afternoon on the beach though. We went on a boat trip around the bay and visited one of the huge caves created by the erosion. We visited 'monkey island' too, but there was a thunderstorm. We got absolutely drenched and saw one lonely monkey sheltering under a ledge.
After Cat Ba we returned to Hanoi and caught the overnight train to Nanning in southern China. We continued straight on from there, a few hundred kilometres north to a small town called Yangshuo. It has similar karst landscape, but this time surrounded by rice paddies and orange orchards. We had a great hike along the Li river although part of the path was flooded (there has been two weeks of torrential rain in the province apparently) and a local bamboo raft boat owner took advantage of our situation and demanded a rip-off 5 pound ride around the flooded part - about a two-minute ride along the river. Apart from that it was great despite the rain.
We are in the city of Guilin, just north of Yangshou now. Yesterday we caught a couple of buses to visit the dramatic dragon's backbone rice terraces, where the mountains have been landscaped into terraces up the very steep mountainside for hundreds of metres. You can hike up to the top of the hills and the views are fantastic. We almost didn't get there though as there'd been a landslide across one of the mountain roads. We had to get off the bus and scramble down the mud to another bus on the otherside. At least we weren't carrying massive packs of stuff like some of the local passengers!
We are heading to Sichuan province tomorrow, the city of Chengdu. We'll be based there a week and doing day trips to visit the world's biggest buddha, a holy mountain and the panda breeding base (Robin's highlight of the whole trip).
PS. We can't add pictures at the moment, but we'll add some more when we find a better computer.
Friday, 23 April 2010
Sunday, 11 April 2010
Photos from Hoi An (Vietnam)
Typical Vietnamese petrol station!
Hoi An old town
Cycling to Cau Dai beach
Champa ruins at My Son
View of the boats and old town from Cam Island
Chinese lanterns
Saturday, 10 April 2010
Photos from Cambodia
John and Louis enjoying a refreshing coconut
The Bakong (Roulos)
Elephant statue at East Mebon (Angkor)
Ta Prohm (Angkor)
Louis and John with Bebe the tuk-tuk driver
The faces at The Bayon (Angkor)
Outside Angkor Wat
Friday, 9 April 2010
Back in Vietnam
We're back in Vietnam now, halfway up the coast at the small town of Hoi An. It's our first proper stop since we got back from Cambodia a few days ago.
Since the last post we spent two and a half days visiting the temples at Angkor in central Cambodia. There are dozens of temples, some absolutely massive like Angkor Wat - with a 200m wide moat around its city walls, each a kilometre long - and others that are far smaller. A few of the more famous temples have been restored, the jungle that surrounds and attempts to devour the ancient sites cut back and the towers and walls painstakingly put back together from the piles of bricks and sculptures littering the ground. But others have been left in their 'natural' state - covered by strangler figs and the enormous kapok trees that grow over and through the walls. These temples are the most atmospheric, especially with the constant noise of crickets in the background and huge butterflies floating over the ruins. They really are spectacular, and once you get away from the most popular temples and the tour groups, surprisingly quiet.Other than in one or two places they let you scramble around exploring the crumbling tunnels and sancturies, which makes a difference to most ancient sites. It's unlikely to stay that way for long though.
After Angkor we headed back to the Cambodia capital Phnom Penh. The bus journey up the country was very relaxing; the return journey was a bit of a disaster. We got stuck in three hour traffic jam in 40 degrees heat. It was like a sauna that you couldn't leave. At least the hotel hadn't given our room to somebody else, so that was something.
The next day we visited the Royal Palace and Silver Pagoda. For the price it was a real rip-off as you could only peer into one of the several buildings and even then from behind a rope at the entrance. After that we visited a more sobering place - the Toul Sleng genocide museum. It is housed in a former school that the Khmer Rouge turned into a prison and torture facilty. The barbed wire was still around the classrooms and on the balconies, several of the classrooms divided up into tiny cells. Photos of hundreds if not thousands of the victims lined some of the other rooms. It was a harrowing place, and it really brought home how horrific the regime had been, and continued to be: even after the Khmer Rouge were driven out by the Vietnamese in 1979 they continued to fight and kill people until the mid-1990s.
We left Cambodia the next day on the morning bus (this time very comfortable with reclining leather seats and air con!) and reached Saigon (Vietnam) around lunchtime. We had a few hours to fill before our overnight train to Hoi An, so we visited another museum, this time regarding the US-Vietnam war. Here were more terrible exhibits - the destruction wreaked by Agent Orange and landmines - and a stunning if tragic show of pictures by the photographers killed in the conflict.
Our train back up north was far better than the one south - comfortable beds, space to sit up straight and a window we could see out of.
We've been in Hoi An for a couple of days. It's a lovely old town - a Unesco world heritage site - so it's been kept olde worlde with shuttered windows and yellow-painted houses. We hired bikes yesterday and cycled through paddy fields to the beach, a few miles away. It was great to have a day to relax but the sun was pretty strong. We all looked a little pink in the evening.
Tonight is John's last night, so we'll be back on our own from tomorrow. Pictures from Angkor to come shortly.
Since the last post we spent two and a half days visiting the temples at Angkor in central Cambodia. There are dozens of temples, some absolutely massive like Angkor Wat - with a 200m wide moat around its city walls, each a kilometre long - and others that are far smaller. A few of the more famous temples have been restored, the jungle that surrounds and attempts to devour the ancient sites cut back and the towers and walls painstakingly put back together from the piles of bricks and sculptures littering the ground. But others have been left in their 'natural' state - covered by strangler figs and the enormous kapok trees that grow over and through the walls. These temples are the most atmospheric, especially with the constant noise of crickets in the background and huge butterflies floating over the ruins. They really are spectacular, and once you get away from the most popular temples and the tour groups, surprisingly quiet.Other than in one or two places they let you scramble around exploring the crumbling tunnels and sancturies, which makes a difference to most ancient sites. It's unlikely to stay that way for long though.
After Angkor we headed back to the Cambodia capital Phnom Penh. The bus journey up the country was very relaxing; the return journey was a bit of a disaster. We got stuck in three hour traffic jam in 40 degrees heat. It was like a sauna that you couldn't leave. At least the hotel hadn't given our room to somebody else, so that was something.
The next day we visited the Royal Palace and Silver Pagoda. For the price it was a real rip-off as you could only peer into one of the several buildings and even then from behind a rope at the entrance. After that we visited a more sobering place - the Toul Sleng genocide museum. It is housed in a former school that the Khmer Rouge turned into a prison and torture facilty. The barbed wire was still around the classrooms and on the balconies, several of the classrooms divided up into tiny cells. Photos of hundreds if not thousands of the victims lined some of the other rooms. It was a harrowing place, and it really brought home how horrific the regime had been, and continued to be: even after the Khmer Rouge were driven out by the Vietnamese in 1979 they continued to fight and kill people until the mid-1990s.
We left Cambodia the next day on the morning bus (this time very comfortable with reclining leather seats and air con!) and reached Saigon (Vietnam) around lunchtime. We had a few hours to fill before our overnight train to Hoi An, so we visited another museum, this time regarding the US-Vietnam war. Here were more terrible exhibits - the destruction wreaked by Agent Orange and landmines - and a stunning if tragic show of pictures by the photographers killed in the conflict.
Our train back up north was far better than the one south - comfortable beds, space to sit up straight and a window we could see out of.
We've been in Hoi An for a couple of days. It's a lovely old town - a Unesco world heritage site - so it's been kept olde worlde with shuttered windows and yellow-painted houses. We hired bikes yesterday and cycled through paddy fields to the beach, a few miles away. It was great to have a day to relax but the sun was pretty strong. We all looked a little pink in the evening.
Tonight is John's last night, so we'll be back on our own from tomorrow. Pictures from Angkor to come shortly.
Friday, 2 April 2010
Photos from the Mekong (Vietnam)
Enjoying a boat ride
Boats on the Mekong
Louis and Slim Jim share a joke
Cau Dai cathedral
Thursday, 1 April 2010
Red Hot Cambodia
Since the last post we've been on a few trips around south Vietnam and we're now in Cambodia.
On Sunday we visited the Cau Dai holy temple, north of Saigon. Cau Dai is a religion founded in the 1920s - an amalgamation of Buddhist, Hindu and Catholic doctrines and ehtics. They have a bizarre retinue of saints, including Victor Hugo. The temple was amazing confection of pastel kitsch, but rather magnificent all the same. The worshippers all dressed in white and sat on the floor, rather like in a mosque only crossed-legged not kneeling. They meditate while a band and choir chant from the back of the temple. It's pretty hypnotic to watch, as long as you forget about the hundreds of flash cameras going off from the tourists on the balconies.
We also went to the Cu Chi tunnels - a warren of former guerilla hideouts just north of Saigon, used by the local villagers to fight various enemies including the US soldiers. You get to see the vicious bamboo booby traps they built and have a chance to crawl along some of the tunnels too (though it's a special one they've widened for fat westerners, twice the size of the original tunnels, which are titchy). You could also fire a machine gun at pictures of rabbits if you wanted, but at $1.50 a bullet it's an expensive few seconds! We didn't indulge.
One other unexpected highlight was the Vietnamese guide for the tunnels, who called himself Slim Jim and spoke almost exclusively in cockney rhyming slang. When he found out we were from England he wouldn't stop talking to us, asking if we were hank marvin (starvin) at lunchtime, but not to worry - we were off for a ruby murray (curry). At the the toilet break from the bus he told us it was time to 'siphon the python' and 'shake hands with the unemployed'. He was hilarious.
We then headed to the Mekong delta in the far south of Vietnam for a few days. We packed quite a bit in, including a visit to one of the wholesale floating markets - boats piled high with mounds of pineapples and pumpkins and bananas. Riding up and down the water was a nice change from trains.
We had one grotty hotel though. The room was massive, but old and when we came back from our tea, a few mice had slipped in through a whole in the fire escape door and eaten our coconut candy. Judging by the trails of mouse poo behind the bed, we weren't the first people to have been visted.
From the Mekong delta we caught the slow boat to Cambodia - a full day on a baking, uncomfortable and very noisy chugging river boat travelling at exactly the same speed as the light wind, so we got no air. Getting off on to the shore was a relief, even if it was still about 35 degrees or more.
After a night in the Cambodian capital Phnom Penh we've come up to Siem Reap in the centre of the country today. It's very different to Vietnam here. Much less developed and very rural. Plus it's totally flat - you can see for miles in every direction. We're heading off to visit the temples of Angkor tomorrow morning - should be a highlight of the whole trip. We'll add some photos afterwards...
On Sunday we visited the Cau Dai holy temple, north of Saigon. Cau Dai is a religion founded in the 1920s - an amalgamation of Buddhist, Hindu and Catholic doctrines and ehtics. They have a bizarre retinue of saints, including Victor Hugo. The temple was amazing confection of pastel kitsch, but rather magnificent all the same. The worshippers all dressed in white and sat on the floor, rather like in a mosque only crossed-legged not kneeling. They meditate while a band and choir chant from the back of the temple. It's pretty hypnotic to watch, as long as you forget about the hundreds of flash cameras going off from the tourists on the balconies.
We also went to the Cu Chi tunnels - a warren of former guerilla hideouts just north of Saigon, used by the local villagers to fight various enemies including the US soldiers. You get to see the vicious bamboo booby traps they built and have a chance to crawl along some of the tunnels too (though it's a special one they've widened for fat westerners, twice the size of the original tunnels, which are titchy). You could also fire a machine gun at pictures of rabbits if you wanted, but at $1.50 a bullet it's an expensive few seconds! We didn't indulge.
One other unexpected highlight was the Vietnamese guide for the tunnels, who called himself Slim Jim and spoke almost exclusively in cockney rhyming slang. When he found out we were from England he wouldn't stop talking to us, asking if we were hank marvin (starvin) at lunchtime, but not to worry - we were off for a ruby murray (curry). At the the toilet break from the bus he told us it was time to 'siphon the python' and 'shake hands with the unemployed'. He was hilarious.
We then headed to the Mekong delta in the far south of Vietnam for a few days. We packed quite a bit in, including a visit to one of the wholesale floating markets - boats piled high with mounds of pineapples and pumpkins and bananas. Riding up and down the water was a nice change from trains.
We had one grotty hotel though. The room was massive, but old and when we came back from our tea, a few mice had slipped in through a whole in the fire escape door and eaten our coconut candy. Judging by the trails of mouse poo behind the bed, we weren't the first people to have been visted.
From the Mekong delta we caught the slow boat to Cambodia - a full day on a baking, uncomfortable and very noisy chugging river boat travelling at exactly the same speed as the light wind, so we got no air. Getting off on to the shore was a relief, even if it was still about 35 degrees or more.
After a night in the Cambodian capital Phnom Penh we've come up to Siem Reap in the centre of the country today. It's very different to Vietnam here. Much less developed and very rural. Plus it's totally flat - you can see for miles in every direction. We're heading off to visit the temples of Angkor tomorrow morning - should be a highlight of the whole trip. We'll add some photos afterwards...
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