Everything is puddle!
12 Mar 2012 6 Comments
I’m taking a brief interlude from writing about our trip to describe to you the weather situation of recent weeks. As you can imagine, it was always going to feel cold coming back from Thailand. The cold here is greatly exacerbated by the humidity and the complete lack of heat or insulation in any buildings. Almost every day, the children have been wrapped up in thick coats during lessons. In the school building and the canteen, windows and doors are open all the time, which can be completely exasperating. Even in our flats, where we do have the sense to close windows, it wouldn’t be more than a day before the temperature inside matches a drop in temperature outside.
But this is nothing we haven’t dealt with before. Was has been different lately is that the humidity is even higher than before. This means much more rain. Rain that refuses to evaporate no matter how much time you give it. The outside basketball courts have been harbouring standing water for about three weeks straight. Some clothes have had to hang for over a week before we give up and just wear them slightly damp. Outside the school, there have been extensive road works adding a lane to the dual carriageway. This has a huge inconvenience to us. Seemingly the only people who walk anywhere from our school, we have been forced to take this hazardous route into town. We are confronted with an unappealing choice each time we leave school: tiptoe over bricks and paving stones along the extremely narrow bit of road barriered off for pedestrians, or walk along the side of the road facing the traffic. On the way back we usually catch a moto taxi. The humidity and rain have prevented any progress with the roadworks, which means that this has been the status quo as long as the basketball courts have been out of action.
The worst by-product of this combination of moisture in the air and cold is the condensation. On several days we have woken to find that the tiled floor outside our flats have been covered in sheets of water, the tiled walls all covered in beads of water. If we had left any windows open, it would be no different in our flats. The situation, if anything, has been worse in the school building. The children have rarely played outside their classrooms in weeks. And there has been no morning exercise for all this time. At its height, the moisture was even enough to put the lifts temporarily out of action. This can’t be an unusual occurrence, as it has barely been commented upon by the teachers at all. But you would have thought that some precaution could be made to ensure that this condensation isn’t so disruptive. A perfect demonstration of the non-cautious approach here was made when I asked what had happened to the music that we had become accustomed to in morning tea. I was told that the CD-player had been broken by rain. I guess you’ve just got to laugh!
The weather has improved in the past few days, but there is still rain to come if BBC weather can be believed.
There are now photos up for the previous post. Take a look if you haven’t already. The post on Sapa and Halong bay is underway!
Hanoi: Hoa Lu and Tam Coc
09 Mar 2012 7 Comments
The next stop of our trip was Hanoi. I’m going to have to turn this part into two posts because there’s simply too much material to fit in. The next part will cover Sapa and Halong Bay.
Hanoi is the capital of Vietnam and has been for most of the last thousand years (the 1000-year anniversary of its foundation was just over a year ago; Vietnam’s only other capital). France’s 50-year occupation of the country has a profound effect upon the main cities in Vietnam, not least in Hanoi, which served as the capital of French Indochina (The French-occupied territory that comprised Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia). To us this effect manifested itself particularly in the appearance of the buildings in and around Hanoi and also in the cuisine. But most memorable of Hanoi’s traits, though not necessarily the most endearing is the swarms of motorcycles that descend on the city every day. I’ve heard various statistics about their number compared to the total population. The one that’s stuck is the one told to us by our guide on the bus to Halong Bay. He said there were 5.8 million people and 3.8 million bikes. True or not, it’s like nothing else in the world.
The sheer number of motorcycles is what first struck us as we shared a taxi with Mike, whom we had met on the bus, from the bus station to our hostel in the old quarter. The relatively short journey took a long time, edging our way precariously across each junction. The bikes, like wasps, buzzed around us. Though wasps don’t have horns, which the drivers in Vietnam use at every opportunity no matter how empty the streets are. You’ve just got to hope you don’t get stung! It later transpired, when we met Mike by chance, that our taxi driver had an ulterior motive for elongating the journey. Despite having determined an already high price for the three of us, the driver had the cheek to charge Mike the ridiculous price he had managed to rack up on his dodgy meter. Mike stood his ground and refused to pay more than the agreed price, and after a good few minutes of litigation the driver drove off with one of Mike’s bags still in the back of the car. Luckily, a travel agents Mike knew from a previous visit had the presence of mind to take down his number. Remarkably, the driver later sheepishly brought back the bag, leaving his number and insisting that Mike call it and pay up at a later stage. From then on we probably became over suspicious of the taxi drivers who would tussle for your custom at the destination of any intercity coach or train, especially after our experience in Yangshuo too.
I have to admit my heart sunk a little when we first stepped foot into our hostel in Hanoi, ‘Hanoi Backpackers’ Hostel’. It was everything I feared it might be despite positive reviews and high ratings on Hostelworld. We might as well have walked into a bar in Newcastle for all the bronzed partygoers and the loud obnoxious music that drowned the communal area on the ground floor. To me it was a feeling at once familiar and alienating. As it turned out the hostel itself figured little in our experience of Hanoi and the rooms and facilities were actually excellent for the price. Also, through them we booked one of the highlights of the whole trip – our two-day outing to Sapa valley.
Out of fear from not being able to get to Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) because of the Tet (Vietnamese name for the lunar new year) holiday, we were harried into rash and expensive decisions. Though, given the chance again, I couldn’t confidently say that I would have done any of it differently. All at the same time, we booked a trip for the next day to Tam Coc, our trip to Sapa valley, and our 35-hour train to Ho Chi Minh City. Maybe it would have been better to fly, as most people did, but it would have taken away from the trip had we booked a flight. You can catch a flight to anywhere you like and the experience would be much the same, but the train would be unique.
Our first full day in Vietnam was spent on the day trip we had booked to Hoa Lu and Tam Coc. Day trips are easy to come by in Vietnam, since a lot of what Vietnam has to offer lies outside the cities. The hostel books you a place with a travel agency; the agency sends a minibus complete with guide and driver to pick up the happy travellers from their respective hostels all over the city before heading to its destination. Our first destination that day was Hoa Lu, Vietnam’s ‘ancient capital’. It was a seat of power for only 41 years before moving 90km north in 1009AD to where Hanoi now stands. It was nice, after months of living in China, to see something of genuine historical significance. But Hoa Lu offered little beyond that. There were a couple of temples, which were certainly not 1000 years old, and very similar to the Buddhist temples we had seen in China. The guide’s English wasn’t really good enough to provide an insight into the remains. Instead, it was the surrounding scenery that stole the show. And it was for the scenery that we hopped back in the minivan and went to Tam Coc.
After a buffet lunch, the two of us were rowed along a stretch of water that snaked through karst ‘towers’ much like those in Yangshuo, though perhaps not as tall. Our oarsmen, like most of the others that plied their trade there, used his feet rather than his hands. An ingenious way to reduce the effort of a long row, but requiring a fair amount of dexterity of foot! He took great pride in the speed at which he propelled us, repeatedly indicating to us that our boat was ‘number one’. Tam Coc, meaning three caves, is so named because of the natural caves that you pass through along this route. Our winding path was lined with rice paddies, but you wouldn’t have known, as it was a long way off harvest time. This hour and a half boat was at least as spectacular as anything we had seen in Yangshuo – almost too much to take in all at once.
After the boat ride there was just enough time to fit in a short cycle ride through more rice paddies before heading back – probably too short for it to have been worthwhile. But the whole day trip was worth it for the three caves of Tam Coc alone. Back in Hanoi we had plenty of time to find somewhere nice to eat. So we followed the advice of our guidebook to a place a fair distance. On the way and completely by coincidence, we bumped into our Californian coach companion, Mike. It was then we learnt of his altercation with our taxi driver. Mike joined us for dinner and we discussed our future plans in Vietnam. It turned out to be great choice of restaurant. It was a big place and the rows of full tables (mostly outside) were a testament to its deserved popularity. We ordered a Vietnamese pancake on the recommendation of the waitress. This turned out to be a sort of make-your-own spring roll. When a waiter saw that we were obviously struggling to eat it he demonstrated, with incredible finesse, how to construct the spring roll with the rice paper greenery and seafood. I tried with my hands to replicate what he had managed with chopsticks. Needless to say I failed completely! Still, that and my Pho (noodle soup) made for one of the best meals of the trip.
The next day was our Hanoi day – the day we had set aside to explore the city itself. It was actually (with the exception of our minibus ride to Halong Bay) the last time we saw Hanoi in daylight, despite the fact our departure of Hanoi was still three days away. It will become clear why later on. We started our day having endured another terrible night’s sleep. There was nothing wrong with our dormitory, but rather one of its occupants. For two nights running this guy had woken us both up in the middle of the night. The tragic irony is that, as he had woken us up, he was enjoying blissful sleep. He managed this with his truly monumental snore! I have never heard anything like it, and I’m sure Amy would say the same. Once I had given up on sleep, his snoring even distracted me from reading. That very morning, I discovered that we had met the snorer on our first evening in Hanoi – a perfectly pleasant Australian traveller. We hadn’t worked out that we were in the same dorm before because we went to sleep and woke up before him. I actually found it difficult to converse with him, knowing the suffering he had inadvertently caused!
Another less redeeming feature of our stay in this hostel was the free breakfast. It was clearly deliberately bad to encourage us to go for the cooked breakfast. It consisted of going stale rolls, butter and choices between a bizarre relish and a sorry excuse for marmalade, and between pre-mixed coffee sachets and Lipton’s yellow label tea, which is ubiquitous in all places that don’t ‘get’ tea. They underestimated my thriftiness. If they offer a free breakfast, then a free breakfast I’ll get! Besides, the breakfast was made up for in two significant ways. Firstly, the big screens showing live Australian open games (I particularly remember a gripping encounter between Lleyton Hewitt and Cedrik-Marcel Stebe); secondly, another of France’s more positive legacies in Vietnam is the coffee. Anywhere you go in Vietnam you’re likely to find quality coffee. It is often drunk with sweetened condensed milk (perhaps that’s the USA’s input into Vietnam’s unique brand of coffee). For those that like it, it makes for an excellent iced coffee.
Finally steeled for a full day in Hanoi, we set off first to Hoan Kiem Lake. This lake is a defining feature of central Hanoi, evidenced by the several happy couples that had chosen it as the venue for their ‘western-style’ wedding photo shoot. A large lake right in the very centre of activity in the city, its serenity offers a welcome reprieve from the surrounding roads that are beset with unrelenting chaos. The extremely rare species of turtle that dwells within has given rise to a legend in which the Emperor, Le Loi, returns a sword to the golden turtle god, Kim Qui. We saw one of these turtles on display on one of the two islands in the lake, which is easily accessed via a bridge. The other island is very small and has just enough space for ‘Turtle tower’, which is lit up at night.
After that, we visited Hanoi’s neo-gothic, catholic cathedral, St. Joseph’s. Unmistakably an allusion to the Notre Dame with its circular stained glass, it was little bit of Paris hidden away in the back streets of Hanoi. We helped ourselves to a croque monsieur and an omelette for lunch. Once replete, our next stop was to be the temple of literature. The temple is dedicated to Confucius, sages and scholars, and functioned as a university from 1076-1779, meaning that it predated any university in Europe. The temple grounds are made up of five successive courtyards that contain, among other things, turtle stele with the names of successful graduates and fish-filled ponds. At the end there was a performance of traditional music. I had not heard such instruments being played since I went to Shanghai around ten years ago with the Haringey Young Musicians’ Big Band. It was delightful. I listened and reflected on what a shame it is that so few people learn these instruments nowadays. After we left the temple, I got a shave on the street. I had deliberately left without any shaving equipment, with the intention of allowing a chin of hair to grow. But it was irritating me so I gave up on the idea.
The temple is dedicated to Confucius, sages and scholars, and functioned as a university from 1076-1779, meaning that it predated any university in Europe. The temple grounds are made up of five successive courtyards that contain, among other things, turtle stele with the names of successful graduates and fish-filled ponds. At the end there was a performance of traditional music. I had not heard such instruments being played since I went to Shanghai around ten years ago with the Haringey Young Musicians’ Big Band. It was delightful. I listened and reflected on what a shame it is that so few people learn these instruments nowadays. After we left the temple, I got a shave on the street. I had deliberately left without any shaving equipment, with the intention of allowing a chin of hair to grow. But it was irritating me so I gave up on the idea.
Next on the day’s agenda after seeing the temple of literature was to visit Ho Chi Minh’s mausoleum. Ho Chi Minh, largely responsible for reuniting Vietnam and repelling the French and the Americans, is practically worshipped. His visage is plastered all over Vietnam, not least on every bank note whether it be worth 500 Dong (roughly 1.5p) or 500,0000 (£15). You can go inside and see the embalmed body of ‘uncle Ho’. It’s curious that a nation that adores him so would deny him his dying wish to be cremated. We didn’t go inside because it happened to be closed to the public when we got there. Instead we just rested while listening to the ridiculously jolly patriotic songs that blared out all around. So severe was the guard stationed outside the mausoleum that one of the guards blasted his whistle furiously at a small girl when she strayed slightly too close.
The walk back to the old quarter was fraught with danger. It coincided with rush hour in Hanoi. Traffic lights were largely irrelevant at that or any time. In fact, so were pavements! There isn’t a time of day where the roads aren’t swarming with motorcycles. It’s pretty simple, though scary, to negotiate the roads when there are only motorcycles because the onus is on them to avoid you. The problem with rush hour is you can hardly cross the road the same way when there are cars involved. Having made it back unscathed, we used our remaining time that day preparing for our two-day trip to Sapa – the night train was to leave at 9 that evening. After a hearty western dinner, I picked up the laundry I dropped off that morning and we retrieved our bags from storage. I was to regret not purchasing a smaller bag and leaving the bigger one in Hanoi for the trekking up hills.
So ended our experience of Hanoi city three days before catching the train from Hanoi to Ho Chi Minh City. Still to come before then was Sapa and Halong Bay.
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Yangshuo
27 Feb 2012 8 Comments
Guilin, Guanxi province, and the area around it, is legendarily beautiful. So much so that each and every 20 yuan note is adorned by its fantastical karstic landscape. ‘karst’, wikipedia tells me, is the technical name for the mystically bizarre rock formations that this, and other areas, is famous for. We were to see more such rock formations in the north of Vietnam. Less than 5o miles south of Guilin lies Yangshuo. Yangshuo is the go-to place for travellers wishing soak in the staggering scenery without having to negotiate the city. It doesn’t matter where you are in Yangshuo, there’s a photo opportunity everywhere you look.
It didn’t come all that easy, though. Our trip, as we always knew before, coincided with the largest annual migration in the world. At Chinese New Year roads, trains, buses and planes are crammed with Chinese people taking the opportunity to go home to their families. To give you an idea of the extremity of this migration: We’re not talking about any journey, but a journey between two of the four principal agglomerations of the world. Simon, on requesting a ticket from GZ to Shanghai, was informed that, unless he bought a ticket for that day or the day after, he could not get a single train ticket in the next 4 weeks. Can you imagine every single seat on every single train from London to Edinburgh being fully booked for four weeks?
We experienced this migration in full force when we went to GZ central to buy our bus ticket to Yangshuo the week before leaving. Luckily, Yangshuo wasn’t one of the more popular locations on the map, so a week before leaving was ample time. Outside the train were thousands upon thousands of people queueing to get on trains north. As I heard the buzz of an electric razor, it dawned on me that these people had not been waiting for hours but days! We scrummaged our way through the swarms of people to the bus station, which was surprisingly empty. You could hardly swing a cat in there, but given what was going on outside… This was certainly not the case when we got there to leave. For some reason, it was the bus station’s turn to be prodigiously busy. We stood around waiting for our delayed bus, with four weeks’ worth on our backs. The journey itself wasn’t much fun either. The Chinese tolerance of almost all noise translates to a tendency to make it too. The fact we were on a bus wasn’t enough reason to stop a couple of people hocking and spitting noisily into a tissue. The person next to me just chucked his tissue on the floor. The same person (a middle aged man) played Westlife’s version of ‘You raise me up’ at full volume on his mobile phone. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry!
Our stay in Yangshuo got off to an inauspicious start. It was already dark by the time we got there (our day was shortened by the fact we had travelled west. There are parts of China at the same longitude as India, yet on the same time as Beijing. In real terms that’s three and a half hours’ difference!). We thought we could just walk to the main tourist centre from the bus stop. We had serious doubts when we ended up walking down an unlit road with Chinese people eating by candlelight at the sides of the road, so we flagged down the first taxi that we saw. He professed to know the hostel to which we were headed before parking at the tourist place to ask in there. When he finally got to our hostel ‘En attendent Godot’ he charged us waaay too much. We realised we had made a very good choice of hostel when the young owner, Zack, proceeded to argue with our taxi driver insisting that he charge a reasonable price. Up to that point we had been so careful in China about agreeing the fee before getting in a taxi without a meter, but this was a lapse due to our desperation for a taxi. It turned out the dark road we were walking along was exactly the right road and there just happened to be a very badly timed power-cut along that very road. Typical!
The virtues of ‘En attendent Godot’ didn’t stop at shouting down dishonest taxi drivers. The hostel had a relaxed, youthful atmosphere. There was a posse of Chinese people who seemed spend their whole time there drinking tea or going out to pick fruit. They also spoke very good English – a feature that was to distinguish Yangshuo from anywhere we had been in Guangdong. My good impression of this hostel was reinforced by the friendliness of the Germans we shared the dorm with on the first night. There was just one downside to this hostel that I imagine is common to all hostels in the area: there was no heating. Just like my room in Shishan, the outside temperature matched the inside. Most the year round, this wouldn’t be a problem in Yangshuo but when we arrived the temperature was 2*C! So, after quickly exploring the main tourist street and helping ourselves to dinner and a game of pool at ‘M.C. Blues’, I experienced one of the coldest nights of my life wrapped up in half the clothes I had brought. The next morning I discovered how to use the electric blankets. Sleeping in the cold ceased to be a problem!
We emerged drowsily and late from the hostel to be struck by our first view of the town in daylight. The surrounding scenery was utterly jaw-dropping. Unfortunately our time in Yangshuo was to be blighted by murky grey skies, but that took little away from the experience. It’s only a shame that, as a result, the photos I took didn’t do the place justice. Despite the jutting karstic landscape, the lie of the land around was pretty flat, so it was ideal for cycling. The first trip on our hired bikes (£1 a day) was to Moon Hill, on which there is a huge naturally occurring arch that is covered underneath with hundreds of stalactites. At the foot of the hill near the entrance we were accosted by two women, who turned out to be mother and daughter, offering us a cut price entrance to walk up the hill. Only when the younger of the two produced a book full of ringing endorsements in various languages did we yield. It was in fact the 70-year-old mother, introduced to us as ‘Mama Moon’, who led us to a point in the wall that could be climbed. She then, agile as you like, climbed over the wall and waited for us to stumble over it. She then sneaked ahead to make sure there were no staff ahead and pointed us in the right direction. After a laborious climb we were surprised to see her waiting at the top of the hill to sell us drinks and postcards. The views were easily worth the climb and the reduced entry fee. We left ‘Mama Moon’ at the top of Moon hill and made the considerably easier walk back down. Inexplicably, ‘Mama Moon’ was back where we first found her. She had somehow managed to overtake us undetected via different less direct path. We cycled back in puzzlement!
That night we dined at a German restaurant, enticed by the novelty of finding a restaurant in China that serves Wurst and Spätzle and its German owner. As with many culinary temptations in China, it didn’t live up to expectations. The restaurant was extremely cold despite its fireplace and the food unGermanly meagre. We spent the rest of the evening out with drinks and pool in a bar called M.C. Blues. That German place (and an Indian restaurant) would turn out to be the only place on West Street (the main tourist area) we visited only once. When we got back to the hostel we found the German girls playing cards with Stan, a Dutch guy whom we had met briefly that morning. We joined in with much enjoyment and by the time we went to bed we had agreed to meet with Stan the next day for another cycle ride.
We decided to cycle to a place called ‘Silver Caves’. We had been told it was a must-see. I once again hired my lovely pink bike! The ride there was a good 2-hours and along the way we began to wonder if we hadn’t taken a wrong turning. Along the way, we asked, with the aid of our map, pomelo-sellers the way. I found the ride to ‘Silver Caves’ wonderfully liberating and certainly worth it for the journey alone, which was just as well because we didn’t find much there when we finally got there much later than planned. We saw no caves there. Just a sort of park with a lake. It was undoubtedly beautiful, but not at all as advertised. We raced the sun back to Yangshuo, unwilling to share the road with unpredictable drivers at night time without lights! Stan made excellent company on that day and for the rest of the time he stayed at En Attendent Godot. With him we also visited the Buddha Water cave, so named for an apparently naturally occurring Buddha image inside and the spring in which you could, and we did, bathe. We got to the water caves by ‘bus’. I use the term bus loosely, as it was really just a mini van. They packed us into this 12-seater with thirteen other people!
Another person we met in Yangshuo was Maja. She is an American MIT student who was studying abroad in Beijing and had some time between semesters to travel around China. We enjoyed two great days out as a foursome (and a few enjoyable nights too!). The first of these days out was a cycle ride to ‘Dragon’s bridge’. Once again, had the bridge been the sole focus of the day, we would have been sorely disappointed. But it was the cycle ride that along the river and the beautiful agricultural land that made the day. At one point along the route we had to cross the river with our bikes. It’s wholly intentional that the path we took had no alternative but to pay to cross the river. But it’s an experience we would gladly have paid for given the choice. The transportation across the river consisted of simple bamboo rafts. They took their time getting us and the bikes across, achieving the feat in two shifts. This was probably to give more time for the hawkers there who preyed upon tourists waiting to cross the river. Stan went on the first raft with the bikes, and Amy, Maja and I went on the second. For almost the entire twenty minutes we waited there, one woman pestered me to death trying to sell me a bag of oranges. When we went across we had to squat – in the manner to which so many Chinese people are accustomed – because water seeped through the gaps between the bamboo. After taking a few photos at the underwhelming ‘Dragon bridge’ we found our way to the nearest town, Baisha, to get some lunch and to visit the market we had been told about. This town was completely unaffected by the nearby tourist trade and there was nothing much to distinguish it from any other town apart from its scenic setting. The square buildings were the same, the shops were the same and the market was entirely unchanged by the potential for tourism. This, though, was our first experience of a rural market town. We were disturbed by the dangling pig’s organs, the flopping fish (particularly Amy!), and especially by the routine slaughter of chickens. Once carefully selected by a customer, the hen would have its throat unceremoniously cut and then would be shoved flapping into a barrel in which it would convulse as it bled to death. Not a pretty sight, and one that makes you think twice about eating meat.
That night, we went to a place called Lucy’s. It was not our first time there. We went there the night before after going to a restaurant that was recommended to us for its beer fish. Beer fish is the local dish in Yangshuo and is actually quite delicious. I was a sceptic before I tried it. It’s my first and only time in China that the quality of a fish dish has outweighed the fiddly extraction of bones. We went with Stan, Maja, the German girls and a Canadian guy they had met called Dan. In Lucy’s after the meal, Dan regaled us with fascinating stories from his travels. He was comfortably the best travelled person I have ever met. As a gardener, he had 4 months holiday a year, and those months did not go to waste. For the past 13 years or so he has been escaping the harsh Canadian winters in search of exotic wildlife and heat. In that time he has visited all but two of the equatorial countries around the world. China was the coldest trip he had planned to date. But that wasn’t enough to put him off coming to see the pandas. We managed to meet up with Dan once more at Lucy’s while we were in Yangshuo. Lucy’s was on a small street of cafes that were known to us for their western-style breakfasts. There was another place on that road we went to called Kelly’s. There they made great milkshakes.
The second of our days out together was the other way along the river by motorised bamboo raft to a town called Fuli. This vessel was a great deal sturdier than the ones that took us across the river the day before! If the cycle was beautiful, this was utterly spectacular. We just sat wrapped up in the cold and admired the passing karstic mountains. On the river we saw cormorant fishermen. These people drift on the water with cormorants on their boat. The cormorants, as nature intended, dive into the water to catch fish for their owner. They are prevented from swallowing big fish by a snare tied around their necks. Unfortunately, we didn’t see them in action. It was market day in Fuli and the market hardly differed from the one we saw in Baisha. There was however a couple of places where we could get souvenirs just where we left our driver. We tried with little success to find something palatable for lunch in the market. So looking slightly further afield we found a sort of hotel. There they offered us a hot pot. Ah. Just what we were looking for – or so we thought! The with the hot pot we were offered a tray of organs. From which animal we had no idea. None of it was edible. We needed something reasonable to eat so we asked for some noodles. At this the owner called his son who rushed out and bought some plain cooked noodles in a bag for us. The canteen at our school has sometimes not been too appetising, but this meal was on a whole other level! Still hungry, we headed back to the raft by taxi – the taxi would be better described as a motorbike with a trailer. The driver had been waiting for two hours without complaint. For our last evening with Stan and Maja, and also Dan, we enjoyed an excellent Indian meal. Just like the night before, we played Chinese dice in Lucy until they closed.
On our last day in Yangshuo we went on a quick jaunt to the ‘butterfly cave’. Didn’t see any butterflies except for the huge one above the entrance. It didn’t take long for us to walk through the whole thing. At the end there was some sort of variety performance. We have no idea what it was for or what its significance was, but it was interesting to watch objectively. It mostly consisted of singing and dancing. Maja was still around when we got back so we went for a final meal with her. Her parting gift to me was her copy of ‘The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo’. I ended up reading the whole trilogy during our trip, as did Amy. Counterfeit copies of popular books were easy to come by on the backpackers’ trail that we took. The next two days we had plenty of reading time, travelling across the border into Vietnam with a night in between in Nanning – a forgettable place that I will remember for the glass-walled bathroom in our hotel room! The only other westerner on our journey was a Californian, about 50-60, called Mike who was switching his English teaching job in China for one in Hanoi. He was very helpful, having been to Hanoi once before, and we saw him once more during our stay in Hanoi, as you will find out in the next post!
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Back in China
14 Feb 2012 6 Comments
We’ve now been back in China almost a week. As I said in my first post, the Southeast Asia trip was a big part in my decision to come to teach English in China. So I didn’t exactly look forward to our return with relish now that a key incentive for being there has now gone. The dread of returning to China never got worse than when we were waiting to board our plane in Bangkok. All at once we were reminded of China’s less redeeming qualities. We sat down and the woman opposite us immediately proceeded to chew on some roasted sunflower seeds. With each seed came a deafening crunch. Unable to put up with that (it really was that bad!) we moved to a different seat. Just then a family came along with running and screaming kids. Normally speaking, the mother would be ordering her children to stop or at least hiding her face with embarrassment. But their raucous behaviour was met with apathy all round. There’s just a general disregard for the people around that can sometimes drive you mad. Having said all that, I have been pleasantly surprised with how easy it has been to fit back into the mould set before we left. Once we got back, the traffic seemed quieter than before, as did the children. The things that I was dreading were hardly what I was anticipating. The only thing is that they are STILL playing the christmas songs to wake up the children from their post-lunch nap.
I didn’t look forward to the lesson planning either. My feeble excuse for not having posted sooner since I got back is that I was prioritising the lesson planning. But I was putting that off, meaning that, overall, I achieved virtually nothing in the first couple of days after getting back. I’m sure that procrastination by prioritising your least favourable task is a method many can identify with. Over the years, I have become a master at it! Over the next couple of weeks, I intend to write up our dazzling trip through Southeast Asia. There will be a separate post for each city that we visited. The first will be on Yangshuo; second, Hanoi; third, Ho Chi Minh City; fourth, Cambodia; fifth, Bangkok; and finally, Kanchanaburi. Below are some pics to whet the appetite.
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Can’t stop…
04 Feb 2012 12 Comments
Just got a couple of minutes to update. In Bangkok. It’s great! Just been to the beach. Going to Kanchanaburi next to see tigers and elephants!
Trip update (29/01/12)
29 Jan 2012 4 Comments
I am writing this latest update from Siem Reap in Cambodia. Siem Reap is best known as the gateway to the Angkor region where you can find Angkor Wat, so integral to Cambodia’s identity that it’s found on the national flag.
After my last update we went on a day trip to the Cu Chi tunnels, which also included a visit the the bizarre central temple of the Cao Dai religion. As I understood it from our incomprehensible tour guide, this religion is a ‘best bits’ combination of all the main religions of this part of the country. We were joined on the trip by Rosie, whom we met shortly after I posted the last update. The Cu Chi tunnels were slightly disappointing. We had high expectations after the harrowing story told by the photos at the war museum. Certainly worth the visit though.
The next day was more relaxed than planned. In the morning, we saw what little was still open of the central market – most people were on holiday for the new year. The plan was to meet my friend Gemma, whom I met on the CELTA language course in Brighton (see my first post), in the afternoon. She has been teaching English in Vietnam as long as I have in China. We didn’t meet until the evening because her bus back from Cambodia was massively delayed. It was well worth the wait, and only a shame our visit to Ho Chi Minh exactly coincided with Gemma’s new year holiday.
The next morning, we crossed the border into Cambodia and carried on through to Phnom Penh, the capital. The Vietnamese houses that I like to describe as ‘slices’ (tall and narrow buildings with an ornate and colourful front, but dingy and completely flat on the sides; standing alone, it looks as though slices of Parisian terraces have been dotted around the Vietnamese countryside) were replaced by shacks on stilts to protect them from the flooding of the Mekong river. That same night we went out to celebrate Australia day with the rest of the dorm in our new hostel.
We thought we had had our fill of reflection on the brutality of mankind when we learnt of the havoc that had been wreaked on Vietnam during the Vietnamese war. But just as Vietnam was finding its feet again, Cambodia was falling under the shadow of Pol Pot’s horrendous regime. In Phnom Penh we went to one of many ‘killing fields’ spread across the country where Cambodians murdered fellow Cambodians in their thousands. From 1975-9, an estimated 2 million of a population of 8 million died as a result of the Khmer Rouge regime. The killing field and the prison within the city went beyond the statistics, doing their best to bring across the horror of those years. I was especially shocked that the Khmer Rouge continued to receive official UN recognition long after having committed such atrocities. It was only the intervention of the Vietnamese army that brought this brutal regime to an end in Cambodia.
The next day was thankfully free from war and genocide. We went to see the impressive royal palace before hopping on the bus to Siem Reap. Today we met up with our friend Heather, who has been teaching English in Korea. We know Heather well from our year in Bologna. It is wonderful to see her again after almost a year in Cambodia, of all places! Today we all went together to see a ‘floating village’ – a village on stilts that went way beyond the scale of something similar we had seen in Hong Kong (I haven’t written about that yet!). Tomorrow we are going to see Angkor Wat – a great source of excitement and anticipation in this trip so far.
Trip update (23/01/12)
23 Jan 2012 11 Comments
I have done a lot since the last update. The four days spent in and around Hanoi were frantic but enjoyable. We went to Sapa, which, unlike the rest of northern Vietnam, was bathed in glorious sunshine. We spent two days trekking through the stepped rice paddies that swirl across the Sapa valley. We took a night train there and a night train back. So we were a bit worse for wear when we left for our next trip three hours after the train got back to Hanoi at around 5am! This trip was just for the day at Halong bay, which is basically Yangshuo but under water. Unfortunately, we didn’t get the weather we got in Sapa. But it hardly mattered when we were able to kayak right up to the beautiful, rocky oddities that protruded from the sea! We still couldn’t rest even after that trip because the next day we had to catch the train from Hanoi to Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) at 6am. It was only in our cramped cabins that we finally had the opportunity to catch up on much needed sleep. I think 35 hours is enough time! At midnight, on the evening of our arrival in HCMC (last night) we watched the fireworks as Vietnam saw in the new year. I don’t think I would be exaggerating if I said it was the most impressive display I have ever seen. Today, we explored HCMC. We visited the traumatising war museum, which, with good reason, hardly gave a balanced account of the war against USA, and we visited the ‘reunification palace’, the downfall of which signalled the end of the puppet regime in southern Vietnam and the end of the Vietnam war.
Tomorrow we are going to see some of the tunnels from which the Vietcong waged their war. We are also going to the circus. Way too much animal involvement judging from the pictures, but curiosity got the better of us! Thursday we leave Vietnam and cross the border into Cambodia…
