On to Hoi An

Hue had been interesting, but we weren't that bowled over by it, so we decided to cut it short and head onto Hoi An.  The 3 1/2 bus ride was not bad although the rain really came hammering down making the raods even more dangerous.  The bus stipped in central Hoi An right outside the Grasslands hotel.  We were exhausted so weren't in the mood for trapsing the streets looking for a good deal.  We checked in and at $15 a night including breakfast we didn't think it was bad at all.  It's your typical hotel with dozens of rooms, TV's, pool etc.  Blake had highly recommended Hoi An to us too so we're expecting great things. 

The old town is gorgeous.  Along the river lined with old french-style buildings and restaurants - although I've never been to France, this is what I'd imagine parts of France to be like.

We picked a restaurant with an open roof-top terrace overlooking the river and enjoyed a few Gin n' Tonics (our first on the trip I might add) and some good grub.  After dinner we were approached by one of the restaurant managers, Mr Trung.  He told us of his village near by and invited us to join him in his village for a day and he would take us fishing and to see the local pottery villages.

After reading previous tourists reviews in his little note book and taken a great liking to his warm friendly character, we decided to take him up on his offer for the day after tomorrow.

 

The City of Hue

Bridge:  The bus journey was a killer.  Almost literally.  12 hours in a sleeper bus crammed to the hilt with locals travelling to HCMC.  The driving was horrendous - the driver overtaking on blind rises and corners at ridiculous speeds and slamming on the horn and brakes every few seconds!

After trekking the streets in vain trying to find a guesthouse, we took a taxi to Moa Binh Guesthouse on Le Loi Street.  We had a long sleep and then took a "cyclo" (a man-powered bicycle with 2 chairs strapped the the front!) around the citadel - which again proved to just consist of an ancient outter wall with modern buildings and markets in the central streets.

Ninh Binh

Bridge:  The hotel was lovely.  $15 for a spotlessly clean and comfortable room.  Hoa and his wife, Xuan and their sons made our stay great.  We rented a semi-automatic bike and drove 8km to the Tam Coc River where we bought tickets for a boat ride.  We hopped into a tiny tin rowing boat and were rowed by a man and his wife we presumed).  The scenery was fantastic - like a miniature Halong Bay.  We rowed through 3 enormous "grottos" that had stalagmites and stalacites hanging down from the cave rooves.

Such a peaceful experience.  Unfortunately it was slightly spoilt when, on our journey back towards the boat dock, they stopped in the middle of the river and revealed a huge sack from under the seat full of souvenirs!!  They hassled us for almost an hour to buy their crafts which were ridiculously expensive.  We refused - not because they weren't nice souvenirs, but just because of how they'd gone about the whole procedure.  They then very rudely insisted that we give them both a tip when we got off the boat!!  

The great river experience had ended and had left a bitter taste in our mouths.

Worst Birthday Ever!

Bridge:  It started with 3 near head-on collisions - one after the other - when the bus picked us up from our "hotel".  Something I still haven't figured out - on Highway 1 the drivers drive at 40km/hr and on the narrow, winding roads on Cat Ba, they insist on driving at almost 120km/hour.  We were dumped at the pier with no explanation at all about which boat to get on or even who would be taking us back to Hanoi.

After half an hour, I went to look for our guide and I found him casually sitting in the shade having a beer and a cigarette.  I asked him to please come explain to the group what we should be doing or who we should be "reporting" to, as it clearly wasn't him.  Well that set him off - he went off screaming at me saying he was tired and sick of tourists and that I should SWIM back to the harbour!  I was shocked - absolutely gobsmacked.  Never had I seen a tour guide speak to a tourist like that.  Well, we made it back to Hanoi eventually after being passed on from one guide to another and being dropped off in the middle of nowhere on a road - we had to walk 4km back to our hotel / tour agent!!  After what a terrible time we'd had, she didn't seem to care - or believe us for that matter.

That evening we caught our open - tour sleeper bus to Ninh Binh - just 90km south of Hanoi.  We were met on the road by Hoa - the owner of the hotels "Xuan Hoa I" and "Xuan Hoa II".

Cat Ba Island

Bridge:  When the boat eventually dropped us at Cat Ba, we were handed over to another guide who threw us onto a bus and we set off.  20 minutes later we arrived at the national park where we were dropped off and TOLD to go on a 2 hour trek - again - we had no choice.  We asked the guide if we could skip the trek and go straight to the hotel but he told us if we didn't want to go then we should sit under a tree and wait.  3.5 hours later, our bus returned to collect a very angry group of tourists.  It had been shuttling people to their hotels from the boats.  We were then dropped off at the shabbiest looking building in Cat Ba town.  Supposedly a 2 star hotel.  It was more like a dark and dingey brothel!

Again we had sticky rice and french fries for lunch - for the 3rd meal in a row.  An Tam hotel was 6 stories high with no elevator and we got stuck on the 5th floor in a room with NO windows and just the front door for ventilation which only opened up into a windowless cement corridor.  Mould and mildew clung to every square inch of our room making it difficult to breath.  The white bedding was now a pale green/grey and stained with who-knows-what and the bathroom had almost certainly never seen cleaning detergent or a mop.

The whole Cat Ba experience was horrible to say the least.  And to add to it, we happened to arrive on the day when the entire Hanoi population descended on Cat Ba for the school holidays crowding every beach and hotel on the island.

Halong Bay Day 1

Bridge:  We were collected in a minibus at 8am and the 180km journey to Halong Harbour took almost 4 hours.  We sat around the harbour ticket office for almost 1.5hrs while our guide made various calls trying to round up more people for the boat, although we already had our maximum 16 pax already.  We were supposed to board our boat at 11am but only boarded at 2pm - all 32 of us!  I must say that the boat seemed lovely.  A large restaurant and bar on the 2nd deck and a top deck with lounger chairs and cushions beneath the mast.  On the lower deck there were 3 cabins on either side and 1 on the either side at the back of the restaurant on the 2nd deck.  One of which we stayed in.

After a lunch of sticky rice and cold french fries we finally left the harbour at 3pm!  We made a very quick stop (40mins) at some lovely enormous caves set in the side of one of the massive lime karsts in the Gulf of Tonkin.  We spent the rest of the afternoon shuttling tourists to Cat ba Island when we were infact (according to the itinerary) supposed to be touring the bay, swimming and kayaking.  At 6pm we arrived at dirty floating fishing village where the guide told us it was time for kayaking.  Nice.  It was almost dark!!  He then said if we wanted to swim we had to wake up at 6am because the boat leaves at 7:15am.  We weren't impressed.

Dinner on the boat was sticky rice and cold chips again.  Drinks from the bar were out-of-the-question expensive but i needed to wash the starch down with something so I reluctantly settled for a $2.00 cup of tea.  We had anchored near the floating village along with every other boat in a 10 mile radius, we were kept awake till early hours of the morning with thumping Vietnamese karaoke from the boat tied up alongside ours.  And because the boats engines needed to run the sound system.  We also had our boat petrol fumes pouring through our windows!

Hanoi - Vietnams Northern Capital

Bridge:  Because we arrived late we weren't up to tracking down buses etc so we booked a hotel from the airport tourism desk.  Unfortunately Quint lost his cell phone - I think when we were getting out of the taxi.
The hotel room itself was nice but the fridge, geyser and safe all weren't working.  We were also promised a big buffet breakfast included in the room price, but that consisted of 3 slices of sandwich ham - that was going off - and 3 small triangles of bread.  Pacific Prince Hotel it was called.

We were woken by loud traffic and honking horns.  it seems that noone in Vietnam has a drivers license or ever took a road test!  In Vietnam, traffic is supposed to drive on the righthand side of the road, but everyone just drives where's most convenient for them.  Pedestrian crossings, stop streets and intersections mean nothing to these people - let alone "right of way!" and roundabouts.  The streets are dirty - running water fulled with the previous nights dinner leftovers flow along the pavements and hygiene is clearly non-existent.  We struggled to find street stalls and markets selling cheap local dishes and the restaurants that looked slightly decent had New York price tags attached to their meals - local or not.

We had been warned that countless tour companies offered tours to Sa Pa and Ha Long bay and that it was difficult to decipher which was good value.  So we took a chance and bought a 3-day, 2-night Halong Bay tour from the first "decent-looking" (p.s. wrong approach!) travel agency we came across.  They also had cheaper rooms on offer so we moved out of Pacific Prince to Espence Hotel and Tour Agency.

Back to Chiang Mai.

Quint:  The next day we were up early to ride when it was cool.  We only had 150kms to Chiang Mai and made good time to be there before noon.  The last bit of the ride was amazing, lovely meandering roads over rolling hills, I didn't want it to end.

We finally made it into the northern city and back to the bike shop where it had all began six days earlier.  It had been an amazing adventure and had we all had more time to kill, we would have done another bike tour right then and there.

That afternoon the four of us rented two scooters from the same shop.  We sped out to a nearby animal park / zoo which unfortunately was a bit disappointing.  After our own week of freedom and independence, it was sad to see thing such as beautiful hawk mountain eagles built to soar the skies - kept in cages with barely enough room to spread their wings.  From there we set off to a golf driving range to smack a few balls wish was good fun.  Before we left I abused my poor little scooter and did an impressive doughnut on the gravel in the car park - much to Bridge's horror and my friends cheers - boys will be boys!

The next day after a morning of catch ups and note swapping, we said our goodbyes.  Blake, an Aussie mate I'd made in the UK had been such a pleasure to travel with.  He was an amazing character full of life and energy, never wanting to waste a single second of any day.  We wished him well on his travels and hope that one day we will meet again.


Off to the airport we went, our flight was delayed by half an hour and again by 4 hours from Bangkok.


Our time in Thailand had come to an end and we were very sad as it had just been amazing.  Anyway its onto Vietnam from here - new adventures to find and new people to meet.


After a very rough take off from BKK due to heavy rain and lightening, we were finally onto the second leg of our journey - VIETNAM BABY!

On to Phayao - Finally!

Quint:  The next morning we were up at sparrows.  We wanted to get to Phayao early so we could chill out a bit and hopefully partake in some "extra mural activities."  200kms and we did it in about 3 hours, not bad.  The purple monster, was however, struggling a bit on the up hills but managed to keep up ok.

Phayao thankfully, was more then just a one horse town.  Set on the side of a large lake, it seemed to be quite a buzz.  After the previous nights budget arrangement, we decided a hotel would be a treat and managed to find quite a nice one for about $3.50 per night!!  NOW we were smiling!  Unfortunately after a short boat trip on the lake and a couple ice creams later, we realized the rain was about to come down hard.  So after a few thoughts we decidedd to cancel our evening drive around the lake and thought well, lets do what we best when it rains at home and watch a movie.

Enthusiastic about our idea, we set off to find a DVD rental store, hoping we could also rent the machine as well, as the hotel didn't have one.  After much frustrating sign language and playground talk we finally got the gist that there were DVD's for rent but no DVD players.  We were about to give up when we found out the owner of the shop also owned a Kareoke bar next door that had privvate studio rooms we could rent for about $1.00 and hour.  Problem solved.  We ended up watching a fantastic movie called "The Hurricane" with Denzel Washington in our private room with surround sound.

Much to our dismay and utter disbelief there were about 8 Asian men in the room next to us dancing and singing Karaoke with their shirts off and a couple crates of beers.  Looking through the glass walls at this bunch we couldn't work out why at 3pm on a Thursday afternoon they would be up to such a game, I mean, did they not have jobs?? - Or wives to go home to?  As queer as it most definitely was, within a further few weeks of travel in Asia, we began to realize that when we go to the pubs back home, men over here hit the Karaoke bars - no matter how many hairs they have on their chests!

Ghost Town of Thoeng

Bridge:  We had an incredible breakfast spread back at Viong Yonok next door with Jim and her husband Ian.  Eggs, bacon, sausies, tomatoes, you name it!  They really were a fantastic couple and really went out of their way to help us and make us feel welcome.  It started raining so we threw the black plastic bin liners over our day packs and strapped them to the bikes.  We spent the whole day riding through the mountains on winding roads and were trying to reach Phayao - on th elake, but at 5pm we still had 200km to go!  So we decided to ride into the next town, Thoeng, to find somewhere to stay.

Quint:  Arriving at Thoeng tired and sun burnt we were willing to crash anywhere for the  night.  However reality hit began to creep in as we realised what we had found ourselves was a shanty town then anything else.  Driving around for another half an hour confirmed our initial fears, there was nowhere to stay!  After giving up we decided to pull over on the street and gorge ourselves on some street food chicken kebabs.  It so happened that where we stopped a lady on the street offered us to stay at her 'guesthouse'!  Before we knew it we were following her on her scooter and finally arrived what surprisingly resembled a place to stay.  Cheap but cheerful and relatively clean we decided we didn't have another option. 

That evening before we turned in we found ourselves an empty snooker club to entertain us for a while.  Although the club had a back room full of mafia-looking men taking part in illegal gambling, we seemed to be left alone and in all we had quite a good evening!