Sadness In A Beautiful Place

My three-day tour of the Mekong Delta turned out to be a truly marvellous trip, even if it was very touristy. The Mekong is one of the longest rivers in the world, and after travelling through China, Myannmar, Laos, and Cambodia, the river finally meets the sea in Vietnam, spilling out into one of the largest deltas on the planet. The land here is very fertile, so naturally there are rice paddies galore!

The trip was split between boat and bus, with the most amount of time spent on boats trudging through the brown silty waters of the Mekong River. The delta was absolutely massive, and even in three days we only saw one small corner of it. But what I saw I loved - floating markets, boats of every shape, size and colour, houses on stilts, bustling riverfront towns, rice paddies and palm trees, and lots of little brown naked children jumping up and down and yelling "Hello!!!"

The lower part of the delta was much more developed than I thought it would be, with houses and stores clinging desperately to the sides of this wide river. Upstream there's less people and more jungle, and it makes for an incredibly scenic ride. We had two nights in hotels and on our third day we cruised upstream right up to the Cambodian border. We jumped off the boat briefly to exit Vietnam and then one more time again to enter Cambodia a few metres up the river. Arriving in a new country by boat is definitely a cool experience!

Our last boat was quite large and we were able to sit up front in the sun as we entered Cambodia (country #5 for me on this trip!) I sat with three hot and spicy English girls and we basked in the sun and warm breezes as we gazed upon the lush Cambodian landscape. It's unbelievable how WIDE the Mekong is, and it was amazing to see all the tiny little bamboo and thatch villages along the banks. People seem really friendly here as with every passing village you'd have locals - especially those naked children - waving and yelling hello as you sailed by.

After our boat ride we took a bus for about an hour to get to Phnom Penh. The ride was extremely bumpy but through more beautiful landscapes. It's the wet season here and so the rivers are full - actually overflowing - and so surrounding the highway you'd have field after field flooded with water. Cambodia actually appears to be more water than it is land!

Arriving in the capital city you could feel a marked difference from Vietnam. Phnom Penh is calm, quiet, and very laidback. It definitely feels very 'Third World' as there's a lot of poverty and most of the streets aren't even paved, but it's got such a great atmosphere you can't help but be charmed. The Cambodians are some of the nicest, friendliest, most genuine people I've ever met. They're low-key, very easy-going, and always smiling (amazing, considering this nation's recent bloody history.) After checking into my guesthouse I went out for dinner and drinks with Cat (who's a dead-ringer for Baby Spice,) Amy, and Chloe and then called it a night.

On our first morning the four of us went our for brunch to this place called The Garden City Cafe, and we all practically burst out into tears when we saw the menu. It had a *breathtaking* array of breakfast items that none of us had seen in months and months. When our food came we gorged ourselves until we wanted to throw up. I had honey granola meusli with fruit and yogurt, and hashbrowns cooked with rosemary, and it was hands-down the best freaking breakfast I've had on this whole trip! It was a serious culinary orgasm!

That afternoon we went to the infamous S-21 prison which was just around the corner, and our breakfast high was quickly brought down to a deep, dark low. S-21 used to be a high school, but was turned into an interrogation and torture centre during Pol Pot's bloody reign of Vietnam. I won't go into all the long details of Cambodian's history, but basically this man decided to 'cleanse' the nation from top to bottom. He abolished currency, emptied the cities out into the countryside, forced people into slave manual labour camps, and opened 're-education' camps for all those who dared to question his power. This included ALL people in the country who were educated, former government officials, foreigners, monks, or anyone who was rumoured to have ties to the former revolution. During his reign it is estimated that more than four million people were tortured and killed, or simply just went missing.

s-21 was the largest of these detention centres, and from 1975 until 1978 more than 17,000 people were imprisoned there. Of all those who were taken to S-21 for questioning, only seven ever made it out alive. Prisoners were kept in tiny cells that used to the be the classrooms of the school, and eventually tortured in order to extract information or give false confessions. Most of the detainees died during this process in the most horrible deaths you can imagine, and those that did were later executed and buried in mass graves at the famous Killing Fields just outside of town.

Today S-21 is called the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum, and visiting it is probably the single most depressing experience you'll ever experience. To wander through all the actual rooms where the prisoners were held, and seeing all the torture devices that were actually used, is incredibly gruesome. Even more horrifying are the thousands of mug shots of all the prisoners, and the photographs taken of their mutilated bodies after they died in the torturing process. It leaves you feeling shocked to the point of being numb. The sheer volume of sadness and misery in that place is indescribable. There's such a...heavy feeling in the air...just entering the grounds you can feel that this place is a concentration of evil. The walls drip with pain and suffering. The grief is nearly suffocating.

They also had some photographic exhibitions on display, where the lives of a few individual prisoners have been profiled, which makes the experience of visiting the museum a little more human. There was also a film that you could watch that told the story of two lovers who died during Pol Pot's reign, as told through the grieving mother.

Tuol Sleng does not seem like the kind of tourist attraction that one would want to voluntarily visit, but I think that it's an important experience for visitors. Living in the Western World, we're all so sheltered from the atrocities that occur in wars like this. Although we can never truly imagine the pain and suffering that the Cambodian people have had to go through, feeling just a small piece of their hurting by visiting S-21 reminds us of the darkness that can dwell in humanity, and reinforces the idea that things these should never, ever happen again. War is a horrible thing, and genocide the worst of all human evils, yet these things keep happening in our world. It makes you wonder if humans are actually evolving over time, or just finding new ways to kill each other.

The tourist attractions on my second day in Phnom Penh were much lighter and far less emotionally-exhausting. I visited the Royal Palace and Silver Pagoda, which were incredibly ornate and beautiful, and the National Museum which was full of statues, pottery, and carvings collected from Angkor and around Cambodia. Most visitors breeze through PP on their way to Angkor, but it's definitely a city worth staying in for a few days. Tomorrow I myself am off to Siem Reap (where Angkor lies), and I'm looking forward to visiting one of the greatest monuments in the world.

Confronting Fears

So it was time to leave beautiful Mui Ne, and soon I was back on the bus headed to my final city destination in Vietnam - Saigon. Okay technically it's called Ho Chi Minh City, but Saigon is the name that the residents there still use, and 'Saigon' has a much more romantic-sounding name anyway.

Hugh had arrived there the day before we so we decided to share a room together again. Like Hanoi, Saigon was big, busy, and crawling from top to bottom with maniacal motorbikes zipping left and right. I spent my first day just sorta wandering around, checking out the city views, and arranging my exit from Vietnam. Later that afternoon I went and saw the War Remnants Museum, and what a harsh experience that was, let me tell you.

The War Remnants Museum used to be called The European and American War Atrocities Museum, but apparently that name offended a few too many tourists. The museum is a mainly photographic exhibition of all the terrors and horrors of war. Concentrating mainly on the more recent Vietnam War, the main gallery contains hundreds of shocking photographs of soldiers in combat, victims lying dying or dead in the rice paddies, B-52's dropping bombs on villages, and especially emotional images of villagers fleeing for their lives. They have a few war machines and weapons on display as well, but the most shocking part of the museum was the section dedicated to the horrors of Agent Orange.

Besides dropping bombs and napalm on innocent Vietnamese pheasants and farmers, the Americans sprayed a deadly chemical called Agent Orange all over southern Vietnam. It was the first time, perhaps, in war history that a nation has ever declared war on the land of a so-called enemy country, and by spraying this chemical freely over the landscape thousands of square kilometres of forests and rice fields were rendered dead and toxic. The worst horror was yet to come, as Agent Orange worked itself into the ecosystem, poisoning all plant and animal life for decades to come, and causing horrible birth deformations in the babies of the war survivors. There were several photos of Vietnamese born with extreme disfigurations, and also on display were two large jars, and you'll never believe what was inside these jars...

Inside each of the jars was a human fetus, but horribly, horribly disfigured. And yes, they were real fetuses. They were so nearly unrecognizable as human, it looked like they came straight out of a horror film. I was absolutely apalled and almost too scared to get close to the jars to examine the babies, for fear that they might suddenly move or something... It's a shocking image that I'll carry with me for the rest of my life...

On my second day I went for a tour of the famous Cu Chi Tunnels, which was yet another testimony to the horrors of war. The Cu Chi Tunnels are a long network of tunnels built underneath a massive area of land that was occupied by the Americans during the war. Dug out by the Cu Chi guerrilas, they were used to hide the combatants and launch surprise attacks against the Americans. So ingenious were there design that the Americans were never able to find them during the war despite knowing of their existence, and even massive carpet bombing of the area failed to destroy these tunnels.

Today you can examine part of the tunnels, as well as the many horrific booby traps that were set up in the jungle by the Vietnamese. Seriously, these Vietnamese thought of like 101 nasty ways to kill advancing soldiers, and it's morbidly fascinating in a gruesome way to see all these traps. The tunnels themselves are actually remarkably tiny, so narrow in fact that the average Westerner can't fit through most of them. Many of the tunnels had entrances that measured only 50 cm. by 50 cm! Tourists are now allowed to climb through a portion of these tunnels to experience what it must've been like to live, hunt, and kill in these tunnels, and I had serious doubts as to whether or not I would enter them.

Most of you probably don't know this, but I'm more than a little on the claustophobic side, something which seems to worsen the older I get, and the idea of going in these tiny DARK earthen tunnels that burrow anywhere from three to ten metres under the ground scared the shit out of me. I can't imagine a more frightening place for a claustophobe to have to crawl through, and just knowing what happened in these tunnels makes the thought even more scary. Talk about an area with Bad Juju!

I decided to be brave and venture into the tunnels...

The portion that we were allowed to climb through was 80 metres long, a distance that to me sounded like 80 km., but fortunately they have escape shafts every 20 metres. I decided to go in cause I didn't want to feel like a wuss, would know that I would regret not being brave later on, and must admit that I was slightly curious as to what they looked/felt like inside.

The experience was not a pleasant one...

The tunnels are indeed long and very, very dark. And full of sharp corners and twists. They have small red lights inside, but they're very dim, and when you're in a line of tourists crawling through most often the person in front of you is blocking the light completely. I've never known darkness so complete and suffocating as inside those tunnels. It was 360 degrees of blackness. The roof was so low I had to crawl on my hands and knees, and couldn't turn around even if I wanted to. And it was so hot and steamy in there. It was like the air in there hasn't moved or changed in decades...you could barely breathe in the heat and in mere seconds you were soaked and dripping with your own sweat. This is how I imagine what hell must be like. I just pushed myself on and tried to talk myself through it. Freaking out would only make matters worse.

20 metres was more than enough for me, and so at the first chance I took the escape route and returned to the surface. I was very, very happy to return to fresh air and daylight, and although most of my tour group opted to crawl through longer, I didn't feel like a wuss. Crawling through those 20 metres felt like it was much, much longer to me, and I'm happy to say that's it's something that I accomplished, and hope I never have to repeat ever again! Later on I found out that the tunnel ahead of where I exited became so tiny that everyone had to squeeze through on their stomachs! Dear god that would've scared me shitless, and I'm even more glad now that I left through that first exit.

Besides the above, I spent the rest of my time in Saigon just relaxing, and doing a little shopping. Fake CD's are *ridiculously cheap* here, and so I bought....about twenty! And yet altogether it only cost me about six bucks for all of them! Blur, Snow Patrol, Norah Jones, The Strokes, Elton John, Moby, Linkin Park, Westlife, Groove Armada...they're all coming home with me!

Also, on my last night in town Michael, Bobbi, and Myriam rolled into town, and we met up for dinner and drinks. It was great to see them again, and I hope that we get to cross paths again in Cambodia. Tomorrow I'm off on a three day tour of the Mekong Delta that finishes up in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, and I can't wait!

The Perfect Day

So this morning I was supposed to take a motorbike ride with Joseph, *all the way* to Mui Ne, on the coast, but alas, Mother Nature had other plans. Once again, I woke up to torrential downpours (damn Dalat!) and Joseph said that it was too dangerous on the highways to bike all the way there. And plus, it just wouldn't be a very fun ride at all. So instead I caught the bus, and was on my way - and dry - to Mui Ne.

On the bus I met a guy from New Zealand who was also travelling on his own and heading to Mui Ne. His name was Hugh and he seemed really cool so when we got into Mui Ne we decided to share a bungalow together to save on costs. Mui Ne is a little beach hideaway on the South China Sea about 200 km. north of Saigon. It's bordered by massive sand dunes and thus has its own micro-climate. The sand dunes protect Mui Ne from a lot of the rain that the rest of the country gets and so as a result the region is quite arid and sandy, with completely different vegetation. The town is basically one long strip of hotels, resorts, and restaurants along a soft stretch of white sand beach, and it really is quite a lovely place.

It was SO NICE to be somewhere warm and dry and even though the seas are a bit rough at Mui Ne, the beach is very quiet and almost empty. You can hang out on the luscious sand all day and not have to worry about being hassled by vendors. You just have your piece of sand to yourself, the swift breezes in your hair, and the sound of the pounding surf....ahhhh....Hello, Relaxation!

On our first night I went down to the beach alone to sit by the surf and stare at the night sky. The moon was nearly full and it shone brightly in the sky, its reflection glittering off the massive waves pounding the gentle beach. I stared out into the blackness of the ocean, and thought about all my friends and family back home. Its amazing to think that I'm on the other side of this great ocean that separates Asia from North America, and when I look out at its horizon it's almost as if I can imagine Vancouver's lights are just beyond my vision. There really isn't anything but water inbetween (well, okay, that and the Philippines) and so I wonder if anyone back home is walking along the Pacific's shores way on the other side, or staring at the moon like I am, at the very same moment as me. It's not a feeling of homesickness, it's just a wonderful sensation of feeling connected to your home by this body of water, and by that glowing celestial body in the sky. How large the earth feels, and yet how very small at the same time.

Some of Hugh's travel buddies that he met earlier arrived the day after we did, and we spent the remainder of our time in Mui Ne all hanging out together. They were Michael and Bobbi-Jo who are both Canadian but have been living in London, UK for ten years, and Myriam from Stuttgart, Germany. They were all really nice people and we had such a blast hanging out at the beach together. My days in Mui Ne all blended together so nicely, a wonderful blur of beach, sunshine, swimming, fantastic intellectual and philosophical conversations, some great (and not-so-great) dinners out, and many, many silly photos avec alcohol. Altogether I was there four days, but I had one day in particular that was truly amazing.

On this day I had signed up for a tour of the sand dunes, and this involved waking up at 6am. Yes, it was awfully early, but it didn't seem so bad actually, and you'd be surprised as to how bright the sun is at that hour. My personal guide came to pick me up on his motorbike, and after breakfast we headed out of town. The sand dunes are a good 20-30 minute ride from Mui Ne, and speeding along that coastal highway on the motorbike was sheer heaven. The warmth of the sun on my face, the warm wind whipping through my hair, the early morning bay glistening in the sunlight, fishing boats dotting the waters, and red and orange hills in the distance. It felt like I was flying and I wished that the ride was hours instead of only minutes long.

First my guide took me to see the fishing village. It's not so much a village as it is just the place next to the harbour where all the boats come in to dump their catch after a long night of fishing. It was a wonderfully chaotic place, with literally hundreds of ships in the harbour all eager to make it to shore. And on shore there must've been a thousand villagers or so, helping them unload the boats, and sorting through the massive piles of seafood. All around me were these giant piles of seafood of everything that you can imagine - fish, fish, and more fish, plus crabs, clams, mussels, squid, octupi, scallops, lobster, and even seahorses! It was quite the sight indeed - and smell - with all of this seafood absolutely everywhere.

After the fishing village we first went to the white sand dunes. They're quite far out of town and consist of this huge curving mounds of pure white sand. They're the size of hills and you can climb up and over them, following their crests, and examining their wind-sculpted ripples. They're truly majestic, and wandering through them you can't help that you feel like you're in the Sahara or something! You can also *sled* down the sand dunes, and that was a blast and a half! Local kids follow you through the sand dunes with these plastic krazy karpets that you can ride down the dunes as if they're snow! Flying down the dunes and then crashing at the bottom, and being covered in sand, was completely hilarious and crazy. It was so much fun!

After the white sand dunes it was back on the bike, and we went and checked out the red sand dunes. On the way there we stopped at a canyon in the hills that consists of these blazing red jagged peaks carved out in the sand by wind and rain. It was quite an other-worldly place and very scenic. The red dunes weren't far from there, and although they're smaller than the white ones they're still very beautiful. And, yes you can sled down these dunes too!

The tour ended after this, and I spent the afternoon reading on the beach and swimming in the sea. It was a perfectly hot and clear day with the bluest of blue skies, and it felt great to be out in the fresh air. I met up later with the girls and Michael and we hung out over at the beach on their resort. Myriam made seashell necklaces for each of us, thus forming a new pop band, 'The Seashells.' We went for a long swim and practiced our dance moves in the surf, and got completely silly pretending to be at a photo shoot for 'the band'. Way too much fun!

After our swim I walked back to my bungalow to get cleaned up. The stroll along the beach coincided perfectly with a truly spectacular sunset. Colours of orange, pink, crimson, and magenta mixed together painting the fluffy clouds in an ever-changing dance of colour. There really is nothing quite so beautiful in this world as a tropical sunset when viewed from a white-sand beach.

Later the five of us went for a delicious seafood dinner, followed by dessert, and then drinks. After supper we bought some wine and vodka. We went back to Hugh's and my bungalow and we got a bit tipsy and took a whole long series of silly bedroom photos. We decided later to go and hang out on the beach, and had some more drinks while chatting the night away. At quite a late hour we decided to strip down to our bathing suits/underwear and run into the surf. It was awesome to swim in the dark sea and we really did have such a great time. We went to bed after our night swim and I fell into a long, deep sleep. What an amazing, perfect day! It's these incredible days, in these beautiful places, with these wonderful new friends that you make, that truly define a perfect holiday.

Hot And Cold

The bus ride from Hoi An to Nha Trang turned out - surprise! surprise! - to be another awful trip. Not quite as legendary as the last one, but still completely uncomfortable. It was jam-packed with tourists. Like seriously, every inch of that bus was crammed with people and luggage and it was so hot and stuffy and the aircon wasn't really working...ugh... It was an over-night ride from 6pm to 6am and I got very little sleep during that time. The highways are too bumpy and the driver too crazy so every time you start to doze off you either hit a bump and then suddenly you're airborne, or the bus driver swerves around a truck or tractor or cow on the highway while rocketing at 120 km/hr and now you've got whiplash. And I'm just too damn tall for these busses anyways - there's never anywhere to put my legs or rest my head!

Well, enough complaining! I arrived in Nha Trang and was SO HAPPY to be greeted with bright sunshine, a long, wide beach, and a glistening bay. After a nap I headed down to the beach, found myself a nice, comfy deck chair at one of the resorts, and parked my ass down to sit in the sun and read my book. And that's basically what I did for the next three days! Every day consisted of waking up, breakfast, and then beach ALL DAY LONG. It was so awesome and exactly that I had been hoping for. It was hot and beautiful most days and while the waters weren't the calmest they were warm and full of salty goodness. I got seriously sun-burned on my first full day on the beach (note to self: sunscreen *IS* important!) and enjoyed the peace and quiet...and all the gorgeous eye-candy to be found wandering the sands!

I certainly enjoyed my time in Nha Trang, as the 'down-time' was much-needed as was the sunshine. However, by the end of the third day I must admit I was getting kinda bored. I had been on my own all that time after splitting up with the German girls (they didn't have time to stop in Nha Trang and had to keep going south) and was missing the company. Nha Trang is supposedly Vietnam's biggest and busiest beach resort, but it was really, really quiet when I was there. I know that it's the off-season right now, but where is everybody?

And plus, as nice as the beach and sea was, it was certainly no Boracay! I went to Boracay - an island in the Philippines - for Christmas last year and it was like the most perfect tropical island you could ever imagine. It had the best beach I've ever seen, clear turquoise waters, and one long strip of fantastic restaurants and bars. I think Boracay may have spoiled me rotten, and sorta 'set the bar' for how one measures Beach Quality. I'll probably forever be comparing other beaches and islands to Boracay, and who knows if I'll ever find a place that can measure up! Still, Nha Trang was pretty damn nice, and I am definitely looking forward to further Beach Contests in the future. Spending the next few months as an "Official Tropical Island and Beach Judge" works for me, baby! ;-)

On my last day I did in fact make some new friends. I met an Aussie brother/sister duo and spent the day hanging out with them. On my last night we went out for supper, and then for too many drinks at the Sailing Club. You gotta watch out for those sneaky Happy Hours! (they're never just 'one hour!'), as well as those free vodka-redbull shots they were giving out all night long! T-R-O-U-B-L-E I tell ya! hehe!

The next morning I dragged my hung-over ass onto the bus and rode to my next destination - Dalat. Dalat is an old French hill station up in the Central Highlands of Vietnam and to get there you have to climb up up up into the hills. The change in elevation and climate was quite shocking, and when I got off the bus, I let out a gasp as there was seriously like a 20 degree drop in temperature! It was actually COLD in Dalat! Like cold enough that I had to run into my hotel room, put on long pants, a t-shirt, and over top of that a (brace yourself) LONG-SLEEVED SHIRT cause I was so cold! And this is basically what I wore for the next three days, and even at night when I slept in my bed. It was *that* cold! I don't know what the exact temperature was, but it was definitely below 20 C which is a crime in itself and I struggled to adjust to the coolness (I've been used to 30-40 C for the last few months!)

The weather in Dalat was pure shite, alternating between cold and cloudy at its best, to cold and torrential downpours at its worst, but I tried not to let that slow me down. I spent the first day just walking around town, and then had quite the adventure on the second day. I was approached by an Easy Rider on my first day and after being propogated by him I decided to take up his offer for a ride (on his motorcycle!) the next day.

Now, who are the Easy Riders, you may ask? The Easy Riders are a motorcylce gang in Dalat who cruise around the city looking to meet tourists. Picture the Hells Angels, but only if the Hells Angels helped grannies across the road, baked cookies for the school fair, and rescued kitties trapped in trees. They're quite famous in Vietnam, and even though I'm scared of motorcycles I decided to be brave and go for it.

It ended up being one of the best days of my trip! Joseph was my guide, and he was exceptionally friendly and knowledgeable. He took me all around the city and even out into the countryside a bit to see various sights, and the whole time I felt completely safe on the back of his bike. He even drove me out to a local mountain just outside the city so that I could hike up it and get a view of the whole city and valley below. It was an all-day tour, and besides the hike and some historical attractions, we spent some time in the afternoon hanging out with a local rural family who live on a fruit farm. I got to sit in their house with them and sample some of their home-grown pineapple and persimmons, watching them de-stem the fruit and chatting with them a bit (they didn't speak English, but Joseph could translate.) It was a unique and humbling experience to see how simple these farmers lived, yet how happy them seemed with how little they have.

On my third day I went for a day-hike with a local outdoor adventure company. Myself and a guide climbed up Langbian Mountain, which turns out to be the second-highest mountain in Vietnam! (Go Scotty!) And even though it poured down rain pretty much the whole day, and our view from the top was completely shrouded by thick cloud, it was still beautiful and refreshing and I enjoyed the quiet solitude of the mountain forests.

Dalat was a cool and refreshing retreat from the stiffling heat that I've travelled through across Vietnam, but to be perfectly honest I've come to enjoy that heat quite a bit actually, and after three days of cold and rain I was itching more than ever to get back to the beach. (Cause I mean come on, if I wanted to hang out all day in the rain I coulda just stayed home in Vancouver, right!) Mui Ne was my next destination - another beachy area of Vietnam - and the whole way there I had my fingers crossed for some good weather.

Bring back the sun! Bring on the heat!

Heading South

So my travel plans changed a little again as well, but this time it's Halong Bay to blame. After my amazing trip there I was supposed to be heading off to do some trekking in Sapa, which is a beautiful mountainous area northwest of Hanoi. However, this was not meant to be on this trip. After three luxurious days of sun, sand, and sea, I was so not in the mood to be hiking up in rainy mountains. I've heard they're spectacular, but I just spent a lot of time in rainy mountains courtesy of Laos, and really, right now, all I wanna do is get my ass down to a BEACH and soak up some rays. Sorry Sapa, I'll have to hit you up next time I roll through Vietnam.

Plus, the day after I got back from Halong Bay there was a huge national holiday in Vietnam where practically the whole country shut down. It's their Independence Day and because of that either tour companies were closed, or the trains to Sapa were booked up by locals streaming out of Hanoi for the long weekend. I bought my ticket down south and spent the last day hanging out with Clara and Maddie (the sweet German girls) and my new Aussie friends Jo and Damon who I met on my boat.

On my last night in town we all went out for a big dinner together, along with Macey and Beccy, and two of their new friends Karen and Jasper. We were a big gang of nine whiteys wandering the streets of Hanoi kicking it up. After dinner we went out for drinks at this funky club called...Funky Monkey...and then later the German girls and I went to another place called Linkin Pub after the rest went home to sleep.

One little side note that I forgot to mention before Halong Bay. Bars are supposed to close at 11pm in Vietnam, and one night before my boat trip we went out to this little bar for some drinks (myself, the German girls, and Mace and Bex.) Well 11pm came and went and we were still having drinks laughing it up in the pub with some French guys we met. It must've been around 11:30pm or midnight when all of a sudden the power was cut in the bar and we were plunged into darkness...

Turns out that many, many bars in Vietnam ignore the 11pm curfew, and instead just try and dodge the cops who patrol the streets looking for open-too-late establisments. Well when our power was cut it's cause the bar received a tip from someone up the street that the police were just around the corner! Our bar locked its gates and we all had to hide in the dark corners away from the door so that any police looking in won't see us. It was a bit exciting and were all giggling in the corner like schoolkids hiding from an angry mom at a basement sleepover, but then all of a sudden we saw this large dark figure of a man in the doorway. THE POLICE! We held our breath in silence, clutching our precious beer and martinis, afraid to move or speak for fear of giving away our presence, and then gave out a collective sigh of relief when a minute later the police moved on. Phew! So this is what a night out on the town is like in a Communist country, eh?

The next day we were hoping to catch some of the Independence Day celebrations, but most of them happened very early in the day (like 7am!) and we all slept in late from our night out. It was a hot hot HOT day in Hanoi and I spent it just hanging out with the German girls and the Aussies. Later that night there were fireworks going on but I had a train to catch so I missed out on the show.

I caught the night train down to Danang and was excited to see that I had a whole first class sleeper compartment all to myself. I arrived in Danang the next day around 1pm and took a taxi to my actual destination - Hoi An, a small town just 30 km. or so down the highway. I spent the next three days hanging out in Hoi An and it was a really lovely little place. It's a tiny town, and used to be a popular trading port back in the colonial days when ships from France, Portugal, Japan, and China would visit Hoi An to trade goods. Walking along the old wharf on the riverfront, and gazing at the old buildings that line the streets, you can imagine what all the hustle and bustle must've been like back in Hoi An's marine heydays. The architecture in this town is truly splendid, a mix of colonial and Vietnamese, and consequently the Old Town is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

It was FREAKIN' HOT in Hoi An the whole time I was there and most days during the mid-afternoon I would hide indoors from the extreme heat, either reading at a cafe or chatting with friends online. Man, with this weather I *really* can't wait to get myself to a beach... But that'll be my next destination... Hoi An is famous for its many tailor shops who can make you an entire new wardrobe custom fit for like $100, but I wasn't really interested in spending my time in tailor shops (and then I'd have to cart around the clothes, or mail them home) so I decided to pass on them.

The German girls rolled into town a day after me and one morning we got up early to go on a tour of the My Son Champa ruins. My Son is a collection of temple ruins that used to be the centre of the Champa Kingdom. The Chams were a civilization that lived in Central Vietnam from about 3rd Century up to the 12th Century I believe, and their small but strong kingdom ruled for three times longer than Cambodia's famous Khmers. Not a whole lot is known about the Chams today as their kingdom was eventually taken over by the Vietnamese to the north and over the centuries they've been assimilated or their history has been lost. They even have a system of writing which bears similarity to Hindu, but the meanings have been forgotten and it now remains a 'lost language.'

My Son is a beautiful collection of temple towers and pagodas. Unfortunately, many of them lie in ruins. However, it was not the invading Vietnamese, nor the fact that they're well over 1000 years old, that has destroyed them. During the Vietnam War (or the American War as they call it over here) many locals hid in the shelter of the temples for protection. However, when the Americans found out about this they bombed the hell out of My Son to try and kill the hiding Vietnamese. It took *a lot* of bombing as they're all very large and solid structures, but eventually most of them were reduced to rubble in the jungle. A famous French museum curator found out about the My Son bombings, and wrote a letter the American President (Nixon I believe?) emploring him to not bomb the precious ancient temples. Amazingly, Nixon actually listened and ordered all the American armies to continue bombing in Vietnam, but not to bomb any more temples. It was too late to save My Son, but many other Champa ruins in Vietnam were spared because of this.

It was fascinating to wander through the My Son ruins. Several of the temples are still standing, but you can also explore the ruins of the ones that were bombed. Giant blocks of bricks and enormous pillars lie toppled in heaps, and scrambling through the remains you can imagine how majestic these temples must've looked. There is a lot of mystery which surrounds this place. Historians have no idea how these temples were built, as every single brick fits together so exactly perfectly without mortar, and they're so precise they have no idea how this was done so many centuries ago. Current archaeologists have even tried to recreate some of these temples but no one has been able to figure out how to build it the same way. Even with modern technology they can't get the bricks to fit together as perfectly as the Chams could! Many of the temples are covered in exquistive carvings, and no one knows how the Chams were able to carve these so precicesly without modern tools. On some of the pillars you can also see the Champa lost language, carved into the stone, which I found to be beautiful and hypnotic, and this added to the air of mystery surrounding this site. We even saw a team of archaeologists nearby who were busy excavating the foundations of an ancient My Son temple. What an amazing place!

That evening it was time to leave Hoi An, so the girls and I booked ourselves a bus ticket, and braced ourselves for another long bus ride as we headed south. Please let this bus ride be more pleasant than our last one...PLEASE!!! :-)

Well-Deserved Luxury

Man, was it ever great to be back in civilization! Food of all types and flavours (no more rice or baguettes for me for a while, please), proper toilets, hot showers, the internet, and not a sack of rice or massacred dog in sight! Hooray! :-)

Hanoi is a really cool city, albeit a very loud one. It's the capital of Vietnam and is a unique mix of French colonial and Vietnamese architecture. Our guesthouse is in the Old Quarter - a really old neighbourhood full of small, twisty streets and alleys, (whose names change every two or three blocks), tree-lined roadways, lots of restaurants and cafes, and a billion and one motorbikes. There's about 4 million ppl in Hanoi, and my best estimate is that there are *at least* 40 million motorbikes! Seriously, I've never seen so many in my life, and it's a bit odd (although cool) to be in a city where cars are far, far outnumbered by motorbikes.

It means that there is an almost continual roar of motorbikes throughout this city nearly 24 hours a day, and that crossing the street is single-handedly the most dangerous thing you have ever done (and ever will) in your entire life. Traffic laws are...just a fun, non-existent mind concept...and most intersections don't even have traffic lights. The bikes race all around going full-throttle, winding between cars and each other, dodging frightened tourists and the tuk-tuks and street vendors and somehow, miraculously, seem to avoid killing each other en masse. Amazing!

The only way to cross the street here is with some faith, some hope for life "on the other side", many, many silent prayers to whatever deity pops into your head, and balls the size of bloated pumpkins. The trick is to do it very, very slowly, and let traffic avoid you, instead of the other way around. It feels completely wrong and doing so goes against all your better judgements and instincts as your mind screams "RUN YOU STUPID FOOL! RUN FOR YOU LIFE!" but it truly is the only way to make it across and live to tell the tale.

And you have to repeat this life-endangering/near-death/spiritual-awakening experience dozens of times a day as you make your way across Hanoi. Be still my frightened, panicked, rapidly-beating heart!

Hanoi does have a couple of small lakes inside the city surrounded by some lovely parkland, and they make for great escapes from the traffic and noise. (And also fantasticly convenient spots for kissing the ground/re-evaluating your life priorities/thanking your lucky stars that you made it across that street.) I spent the day browsing through various travel agencies searching for the perfect tour to Halong Bay.

And then I found it...leaving the next morning!

I found a really great (albeit expensive) travel agency called Handspan that had a plethora of fun tours around Northern Vietnam that seem both exciting and relaxing. I decided to splurge on myself (hey it was just my birthday, after all! and I deserve the break after those hellish three days on the bus, right???) and opt for a luxurious 3-day tour of Halong Bay that looked to be like paradise.

Halong Bay is a UNESCO World Natural Heritage Site (boy, I'm really racking up my list of visited World Heritage Sites, eh? The UN should really offer me a job at this point now) and is probably Vietnam's most beautiful and most popular tourist destination. It is a massive bay full of semi-submerged limestone karst terrain, creating a marine haven full of 3000 near-vertical islands that shelter several caves, grottoes, beaches, and forests. It truly is one of the most beautiful corners of the globe and the kind of place that you *wish* you would get lost in.

It's a 3.5 hour drive to get there and on the way I met my fellow passengers. There were 11 of us in total, and looking around I noticed that it was Scotty and....five couples... Oh lovely! So my luck! Story of my life! I'm always the token single guy at the party full of happy cuddly couples, and in these scenarios I always feel a bit like Bridget Jones in that it's a reminder that I'm very much single and therefore the odd duck out. Haha!

Actually everyone turned out to be really friendly, and from various corners of the globe. There were 2 Italians, 2 Spaniards, 2 Australians, 2 French, 2 Norweigians (sp?)...and lil Canadian me of course! Upon arrival we boarded our Chinese junk and it really was quite the fancy ship. We were greeted with a cold towel, glass of juice, and ushered into the great big dining area with white linens and fancy napkins that I'm never really sure whether I'm supposed to actually use to clean myself, or if they're 'just for looks' and that I really shouldn't soil them. One advantage of being the odd duck out is that I got my own cabin, and my own bathroom, which totally rocks!

The next three days were sheer paradise and true luxury. We toured caves and little coves, sailed between narrow openings of the Lord Of the Ringsesque giant rock islands, and were fed *incredible* meals every day. I'm talking like 7 or 8 courses, with delicous seafood like crab and tiger prawns and shrimp, and fresh fruit every time we came back from a swim. I really can't remember the last time I ate so well! The waters here are a deep emerald green and nearly bathwater warm and I took every opportunity I had to swim in them. Our first night was spent on the boat, and the second night in our own little private bungalows on a beach on a little uninhabited island. Oh man, I could soooo get used to living like this!

We spent the entire second day kayaking through coves in the bay near our beach, and it was magical. I've never kayaked before (other than when I just sat in the kayak on that flooded river in Vang Vieng) and I totally loved it. And hey the guide said I was really good at it! This is something I'd definitely like to do more of in the future. In a few places we could kayak under these giant rock overhangs that are exposed when the tide's low and it was freaky but cool to sail under them. Another fantastic lunch later on, and some more swimming too. What a great day!

That night I encountered a phenomenon that truly captivated my imagination and curiosity. The waters here have phosphorescence in them, which means that when you walk in or splash through the water at night it releases this...explosion...of bright little lights that glow in the water. It's like being Harry Potter and creating this magical glowing sparkling glitter in the water with your every touch. It was incredible! We took turns going out on the kayak in the bay and dragging our feet in the water. It was so cool, to see a trail of underwater dancing fireflies in your wake as your sailed through the liquid black. It's hard to explain unless you've seen it with your own eyes, but all I can say is 'Wow!'

Sailing back into harbour on the third day was quite sad actually. I had such an amazing time on the boat (and became good buddies with the Aussie couple, Jo and Damon) and did not want to go back to the city. Hanoi's cool and all, but come on...compared to spectacular scenery, great food, and fun in the sun in Halong Bay, which one you think will win out? Personally I'd love it if we could hijack this boat and sail all the way down the Vietnamese coast and onto Cambodia, Thailand, and beyond, but I don't think the crew would appreciate that!

All good things must come to an end, but what an amazing tour it was. Exactly what the doctor ordered, and I feel so relaxed and refreshed...and even a bit more tan!...than before. Oh, it's a rough life I lead I tell ya, full of nothing but pain and suffering and misery here on the road in Southeast Asia, but someone's gotta live it, right? ;-)

I'm Hardcore!

My departure from Phonsavanh would mark the beginning of one of the longest, most challenging adventures of my entire life. I planned to travel from here to Hanoi, Vietnam by public transit - overland. I knew that it was going to be difficult, at times, but I had no idea what a feat it would prove to be. Just look at a map and you'll see how remote this part of the globe is. And oh boy, what a crazy journey it turned out to be...

Luckily my journey began with good company. Staying at the same guesthouse as I was were two really nice girls from Germany who were planning on taking the same trip, so we decided to join forces together and head on out. We left Phonsavanh at around 8am and began the long bus ride to Sam Neua. The public bus was actually not nearly as horrendous as I had expected it to be. There weren't many passengers at all so we each had our own seat, and I, surprisingly, had enough leg room that I could sit up straight (a rarity here in Asia!)

The bus ride turned out to be over 10 hours long, but was through some of the most spectacular scenery I've ever laid eyes upon. The 'highway' (it's barely paved, and wide enough only for one vehicle) snakes its way through the remote mountains of northeastern Laos, up and over absolutely gigantic hills, clinging desperately to sheer hillsides, and connecting the very few tiny villages of people that live in this empty quarter of the globe.

Our journey would have been a bit shorter but we were delayed by a landslide that had swept across the road. It's been really rainy lately in this part of Laos and so mudslides are a common blockade in these parts. Unlike some of the smaller landslides that we had seen earlier, this one was quite large and very thick and muddy, with a bus-sized boulder lying right in the middle of the road. To get around it we had to drive through the mud, and ended up getting our back wheels stuck in the sludge. It took nearly an hour of digging and pushing (by the driver and his buddies) to free the bus, and then we were on our way again.

Clara, Maddie, and I arrived in Sam Neua sometime between 6 and 7pm, and were absolutely STARVED as all we had eaten that day were a small baguette, and a couple tiny apples and bananas. We had a fried rice dinner at some local hole-in-the-wall just as the torrential rains arrived again, and called it an early night at our guesthouse.

We woke up the next day at around 6am and headed back to the bus station to catch our bus to the Laos-Vietnam border. Our 'bus' turned out to be a pick-up truck with two rows of bench seats in the back. We climbed in, or more like *squeezed* in, with the other passengers, which included some scary-looking men who wouldn't stop staring at us, a few elderly people who looked to be at least 100 years old, a young woman with a baby, and a basket of ducklings. Yes, that's right, baby ducks. So it was 'cheep-cheep' all the way on our four-hour ride to the border, and I felt bad for the poor things that seemed terrified. At the next town after Sam Neua two other whiteys joined us in our journey - a friendly English couple named Beccy and Macey.

Crossing the border turned out to be a strange but fairly easily procedure. Our truck was not allowed to cross so we got out and went through the paperwork to leave Laos. This involved opening all of our luggage and going through each and every piece of clothing, thoroughly examining all electronic equipment, and even leafing through all the pages of our books. We were then free to cross into 'no-man's land' - that half-kilometre wide strip of land inbetween the two countries. This meant that for about 10 minutes while we were hiking we were neither in Laos... nor in Vietnam. So where were we???

Immigration at the Vietnam side involved more paperwork and another dissection of our personal belongings all over again. We were all a little nervous at this point cause we had no idea what to expect. This is a very new border crossing, one that just opened last year, (it wasn't even in my Lonely Planet!) and we weren't sure what infrastructure existed to carry us on our next leg of the trip. However, we were happy to hear from the border guard that there was a bus just up the hill that could take us to Thanh Hoa, a major city on the coast, where we could transfer to Hanoi. Also according to the guard, the bus ride to TH was only about 5 hours long, and the leg to Hanoi only 3 hours, so we could be in the capital in about 8 hours altogether. Woohoo! We're almost back in civilization, kids!

Oh, what foolish children we were...

We found the bus to Thanh Hoa, and was told that it would be departing 'around noon'. We couldn't get on the bus just yet cause they had to load it with some local goods that were being sent to TH, and we naively thought that it would only be a few minutes to load up the shit and then we'd be on our way. Turns out we had to sit for two hours in Bordertown/McShitville waiting for our small bus to be loaded...with sack after sack after sack of rice! Each bag of rice weighed 80 kg. and I'd say they loaded at the very least 50 of those giant bags. They filled the roof, the ailes of the bus waist-deep, and even stuffed sacks under every single bench on the bus. After that they loaded up sacks of vegetables, boxes of unknown things, and a basket with a rooster in it. Cause I mean, come on, what bus journey would be complete without some live poultry?

The heat that afternoon was almost unbearable, and there was nowhere for us to get any real food or any place to use the bathroom. During our wait at least half of the town came by to gawk at us, and I especially felt bad for Maddie as she was covered from head to toe in a horrible rash because of an allergic reaction to something that she had eaten the day before. Random strangers would come up and poke at her skin and make strange faces of disgust at her discolourations, and I could see she was getting really uncomfortable with all the un-wanted attention. During our wait we also saw howling dogs getting picked up by their necks and being put onto...scales... Our worst assumptions were that these screaming dogs would later be used for...food...and our fears were confirmed when minutes later we saw a hanging dog carcass across the street, neck slit, covered in blood, half-decomposed, and open from head to tail with about half of its guts missing.

Finally it was time to board the bus! Man, we were SO READY to leave that god-forsaken border town! We made our way onto the bus, but it took almost another hour to load all the passengers. On a bus that seats about 30-40 people or so, I'd say that they loaded up a good 100-120 passengers. This meant that there were people sitting in seats, on the sacks of rice in the aisles, on top of other people, and on the backs of seats... This also meant that everyone had pretty much no personal space whatsoever, as no matter which way you turned, you had someone's butt or feet in your face. Oh, it's gonna be a long ride...

And that it certainly was!

Our 'five-hour' ride ended up taking 10 hours, and once again involved trudging along a mud-plagued highway through the middle of nowhere mountains (but again, breathtaking scenery all around you.) And this journey, naturally, would not be without its own forms of peril. While driving across a semi-flooded bridge (more like a dam actually, but it had water flowing over the top of it a little) one of the tires blew or something, and the driver had to get out and spend an hour or so getting that fixed. And then later on we came across another massive landslide that we had to drive OVER. The bus crawled up and over the mud and rocks and was tilted on its side, I swear, like almost 45 degrees or something, leaning over the lip of the canyon. I looked out the window and saw a raging river far down below in the valley and it was then that I could already imagine the headlines: "Five unidentified foreigners found after over-crowded bus plunges into ravine in Vietnam!"

We made it through safe and sound, and finally arrived in Thanh Hoa at around midnight. Before arriving here, though, we stopped at a small town about half an hour from TH where 95% of the passengers got off the bus. I have no idea why everyone was getting off in the middle of nowhere, but it involved spending a good half hour unloading each and every sack of rice, and then another half hour of the locals arguing over which rice sack belonged to whom....oh boy.... We were so tired and hungry and cranky, and the five of us just wanted to yell out the window "Just shut the fuck up and take any goddamned bag of rice!!! They're all the bloody same anyway!!!"

Our slow bus to TH, after this stop, transformed into a rocket and we flew to the city. I guess our driver wanted to make up for lost time, and so he drove at least 120 km/hr on the highway, and he spent about 70% of that time driving on the....left-hand side of the highway. On-coming traffic would be blaring their horns at us and our driver would just accelerate more and lay on his own horn, and always at the last millisecond the other car would veer off just in the nick of time. (And yes, they're actually supposed to drive on the RIGHT here in Vietnam!)

There were two other guys on the bus from Laos and, using sign-language, we communicated to them that we needed a place to stay for the night. (No way we're getting a bus to Hanoi tonight!) They took us to a guesthouse across from the bus station, and it was the most disgusting motel I've ever had the misfortune to lie eyes upon. It reeked of old urine, the beds had no mattresses but instead had metal bars and some straw-filled blankets, and the bathrooms were BLACK and probably hadn't been cleaned in a good decade or two. If ever there was a Roach Motel, this was it. SO NOT the kind of place we wanted to stay at after our long journey!

Macey and I decided to search around the empty neighbourhood to find a better place, but we only found one other guesthouse that was not much better than the first one. This part of town was really dark and felt quite dangerous, and we were all anxious to get out of there. The original guesthouse owners were also very suspicious of us, and followed us along making us feel even more nervous. We found a taxi and pointed out a guesthouse in the Lonely Planet that seemed nice that we wanted to go to, and he said he knew where it was. THANK GOD! Let's get outta here! We couldn't all fit in one taxi so Beccy, Maddie, and I went in one while Macey and Clara in the other. The guesthouse owners, at this point, were on their motorbikes and started to follow the cabs as we left! We were totally freaked out, fearing that they were going to try and rob us or something, or were pissed off that we didn't want to stay at their place and wanted to beat us up!

About 5 minutes into the ride I noticed that the city streets and buildings were behind us...and we were now driving outside the city in the country. Uhhh....where the hell are they taking us???!!! Now we were totally freaking! I saw a sign that said 16 km. to Sam Son, which is a beach town outside of Thanh Hoa. The hotel that we had agreed to go to was back in TH, so we couldn't figure out why they were taking us outside of the city.... This cannot be good!

We arrived in Sam Son a few minutes later, without harm or foul, thankfully, and told the cabbie to just stop at the first big hotel we saw. A new challenge now presented itself. Both the girls, and Beccy and Macey hadn't planned for arrival into Vietnam very well, as none of them had any local currency on them, and the girls had only a few US dollars. Beccy and Macey had no cash at all, and so how the hell were we going to stay at a hotel when the banks aren't open to cash anyone's traveller's cheques til Monday!? (and this was Saturday night!) Oh man, the troubles just keep on coming, don't they?

Luckily, being the suave traveller that I am, I had bought some Vietnamese dong before leaving Ventiane, and had some US dollars as well. It wasn't much, but it would be enough to get us through....maybe... We paid far too much money to our bastard taxi drivers, and then woke up the receptionist of the hotel and begged her to open some rooms for us. She agreed to let us stay (although we were still not sure how we'd pay for the rooms as there wasn't enough cash for all of them), and we grabbed a bite to eat at the cafe around the corner. Once again we were famished as all we had eaten that entire day were 3 baguettes and some crackers.

We went to sleep and then got up the next day determined that there must be a way out of our financial situation. We all had the money, just not in cash form! We devised a new plan, and the hotel was very accommodating with it as well. I would take the girls into Hanoi that Sunday afternoon (to get a place to stay, and more importantly to get Maddie to a hospital as her rash was starting to worsen and turn blue,) and the hotel would let Macey and Beccy stay an extra day 'on their tab' until the banks opened on Monday. Thank God, it seems like things will work out after all...

Clara, Maddie, and I took a minibus into Hanoi, and, of course, still had one last unexpected hurdle to clear. We had yet another encounter with a greedy scum-sucking mother-fucker taxi driver, only this time it ended with 20 minutes of yelling and screaming. When we arrived at the bus station in Hanoi we caught a cab and agreed to pay him 100,000 dong for the ride, having no clue as to what was fair. When we arrived at our guesthouse he suddenly demanded 150,000 dong!!! Fuck that shit! This was SO the last thing we need to deal with. He started to yell at us and get really angry, but luckily the guesthouse staff came to our aid. Apparently our ride should have cost only 50,000 dong - at the most - and so they joined the yelling at the taxi driver bastard who had clearly ripped us off. Eventually he left, but it sure took a lot of angry yelling to get him to leave us alone and go away. Welcome to Vietnam, eh?

That night, after much-needed showers, we treated ourselves to an expensive dinner at a nearby posh restaurant. Oh sweet baby Jesus, was it ever amazing to eat REAL FOOD after nearly three days of only bread, rice, and water! After our fantastic meal we took Maddie to a hospital (had to go to three before we were directed to the right one) and got everything taken care of with her. The doctor gave her some medication and it was all good.

We settled in for the night, feeling SO HAPPY to be back in the city, and although it was too soon yet to laugh at our adventure of horror, we knew already that we were Survivors, that we were Hard-Core Backpackers, and soon we'd be laughing over our story with others over a drink. Until that time comes, I'll just hide here in my room, and sleep sleep sleep. :-)