Hanoi - (Lao Cai) - Bac Ha

11/11/12 - That was a long and painful night.

Our first breakfast in Vietnam that a lady gave us (as we looked probably anxious and curious when she opened one of those for herself)... Still not too sure what it was, but we were starving at this point so we hat it all.

After 8 hours journey (bus+minibus+cab), we reached Hanoi and the crazy atmosphere of the Old Quarter where we had a nice (street food) meal and our first beer for 5000 dong (15 pence). We also found a hotel for just 10 U$ dollar per night through a very nice thai man (wearing a Popeye jacket) who had come all the way with us on the nightmare bus (he was 58 and had to sleep on the bus for two nights in a row, not a very nice start to his holiday). The room was on the top floor with balcony and a hot shower… just what we needed.

13/11/12 – The next morning, the sounds of the busy traffic and horns woke us up in the early hours. We had a soup for breakfast and learnt how to cross the road without being injured by one (or two) of the millions of motorbikes racing through the capital.

We visited a Water Puppet show (and learnt a new dance, Cham style), the Temple of Literature, The West Lake, its temple and also some nice restaurants…. We stayed 3 days there, but every morning before we went to go out of our hotel into the street, we took a moment to breath in and out. The thought of all the noise and traffic was a bit of a headache and we thought about taking a Nurofen 400 beforehand. It would have been fine if we could walk on the pavements which Hanoi did have, but they were full of motorbikes parked there (which meant that as a pedestrian, we had to walk on the road). 

On our last day in Hanoi we watched the new James Bond film at the cinema (thumbs up except that Embankment is not on the Jubilee line, at least not when we left).  We saw some nice shots of London which reminded us of home and how peaceful it is there in comparison to the mad chaos of Hanoi. Even when watching the movie, we knew we were far from home, with people snoring after 5 minutes from start and answering their mobile phone to have a chat with their mate.

15/11/12-17/11/12 – We took an overnight train to Lao Cai (3km from the Chinese border) and headed to Bac Ha where a lot of hill tribes live nearby. We went for a little trek solo, after visiting the tourist centre (one guy with a laptop and no leaflets/maps available), where the guy drew us a map and told us where we could go.

It was relaxing 8km walk even though it was raining. We came back before dark and had a meal in a local restaurant where we had a chat with a few other guys eating at the next table. The young waiter who served us sat with us (without asking) to practice his english (which was very poor), but he was very nice and even offered us tea before we left (he seemed to like us a lot and wanted us to stay as long as possible).

We went to bed early and could hear the heavy rain outside to swing our dreams.

The next day, I went to Cam Cau by scooter 20 km away from the town to go to a H’mong local market. (Dave didn’t feel well so stayed at the hotel to rest). I didn’t realise that the rain did some massive damage to the road. After 10km, I asked a guy standing outside his house if I was going in the right direction. I was and it cost me as I had to give him a lift to the market… I couldn’t refuse but I wished I had as the road got worse. He was chatting to me in Vietnamese all the way, when I was trying to focus on the road.
Eventually, we stopped as there was some work being done on the road (I learned later that it was a restricted road). Lots of motorbikes and cars were waiting for the “green light” to go because 15 centimetres of red and wet clay was covering this section of the road. I saw quite a few cars sliding as I struggled to go up the hill and also a few motorbikes on the floor with their drivers. The front wheel of my scooter got stuck due to the mud and I fell as well with my new friend behind me. None of us got hurt as we were going quite slowly. We tried to remove as much mud as we could and we got on again, with the guy in front this time. We fell again and he left, saying that Can Cau wasn’t too far… 4 km or so. I met a French woman soon after who was going up by foot as her minivan was stuck further down. She saw me covered in mud and asked me if I was alright. She suggested for me to leave the motorbike on the side and keep going by foot… I thought that was an excellent idea and followed her advice.

Now on my way to the market by foot, some local people were looking at me with a big smile or even laughing (I was a real mess), but I was finally in this very colourful and fascinating market.

The Laodown - Summary of Laos

LAOS PEOPLE'S DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC

Distance travelled: 2484 km
Snakes encountered: 6

Modes of Transport: Bus, Minibus, VIP bus, Sleeping Bus, Songthaew, Tuk Tuk, Riverboat, Longboat, Kayak, Bicycle, Motorbike, Trekking.

Favourite places: Luang Prabang, Muang Ngoy, Bolaven Plateau, Si Phan Don, Phongsali district.

Funniest moment:  A six year old kid from a village showing us how to put the motorbike into neutral as we tried to move the 125cc when it was in first gear and the engine was off...

Our Route:

Muang Ngoy Neua

07/11/12 - Muang Ngoy Neua was a peaceful riverside village, only reachable by boat.  We checked into a riverside shack with hammocks and a great view of the river and the surrounding karst cliffs.  After our gruelling trek, it was nice to spend a day relaxing and getting our energy back.  We also awaited news of the US election as we were without internet (and electricity except for 3hrs per day).  We also discovered some leftover war junk which the locals had used to decorate the village.

09/11/12 - From Muang Ngoy Neua we took a one hour boat to Nong Khiaw where we stayed for the night knowing that a big bus journey was waiting for us the next day. 

 

10/11/12 - We had to take the only bus to Sam Neua which was leaving between 12 and 13h30. We were lucky enough to wait for 1h30, standing near the bridge. The 11hours journey was a nightmare for very different reasons, each one enough in itself (when you think you’ve seen it all). First of all, imagine going from Paris to a ski resort in the Alps in France by car. It can take around 11hours (including stops) but you expect the last 10 or 20 kilometres to be winding. Except that in this case, the ‘road’ is bad and the 11 hours are all on winding roads. On top of that, the minibus was very old and our seats broke, which means we had the choice between sitting at the back (on a 20 centimetres plank of wood with no leg room) or sitting next to another person who takes already a seat and a half, because the seats were only 30 centimetres wide. The icing on the cake was that we stopped 3 times for an express wee on the side of the road for 30 seconds. We finally arrived in Sam Neua at midnight knowing that our bus for Vietnam was 7 hours later (another 11hours + 4h to Hanoi bus journey). We had a short night’s sleep in a guesthouse for 5 hours. At this point we were clandestine in Lao with our visas expired.

After an hour of our bus journey to Vietnam, when we thought that nothing else could go wrong, we saw this…

… a truck with a puncture in the middle of the only road to Vietnam and its owner smoking a big pipe. We did a U-turn to the nearest town Vieng Xai (where the commies hid in secret caves for 9 years while the Americans bombed the ground above) and stayed there for 5 hours, enough time for the truck to sort itself out. Unfortunately, it is never that easy and when we came back to the scene of the crime, nothing had changed (actually, it had : an extra wheel was off the truck).

After another couple of hours (at this point we were thinking we might be stuck in Vieng Xai for 9 years), putting pressure on the driver and the owner of the truck to sort himself out, we moved on again for 2 hours to the Lao-Vietnamese border. It was supposed to be closed at this time, but we woke up the guys working there and went through without paying the extra 10 U$ dollars we expected to pay for staying a day longer on Lao soil.  What we didn’t expect  to happen just metres after the Vietnamese border was to stay overnight sleeping on the bus, as the driver said it was now too late for him to drive.

Oudomxai to Phongsali

31/10/12 to 6/11/12. We made our way to Oudomxai from Luang Prabang, arriving in Oudomxai mid afternoon, just in time to see a fine sunset from the top of the hill above the town. In the evening we watched lots of people place baskets of flowers and candles onto the river for Boun Lay Hua Fai (to celebrate the end of buddhist lent and the end of the rainy season. It is a gift for the Naga and therfore, it is supposed to bring luck).  They also set off lanterns and fireworks.

 

The next day we visited a nearby village Muang La. After some confusion over which Muang La we arrived to have a stroll around the village and the Wat to pay a visit to to the Pra Singkam Buddha who is considered to be especially potent. The legend says that you can wish whatever you want and your wish will be granted .

After another night in Oudomxai we took a day bus (9hrs) to Phongsali. This was a colourful old commie bus with pictures of Che Guevara and air con (if you opened the windows). We left at 9am and stopped 5 times before even leaving Oudomxai for the driver to get some fuel, pick up some more people, text a friend, chat with some mates, etc…It took an extra hour to actually leave Oudomxai. Luckily we survived the trip and arrived on time in Phongsali. We met some people who took the same bus the day before and it took them an extra 3 hours because of a couple punctures.

We were now up in the mountains at 1400m and it was refreshingly cool. On our first day we had a walk around Phongsali where the Chinese influence was clear (we were only 6 miles from the Chinese border). There were shops selling cheap electrical goods and chinese goods, and a lot of hotels and restaurants have chinese writing in addition to Lao. We climbed a challenging 200m by steps to the top of the mountain where there was a stupa and an excellent view of the valley. On our way down we were invited to have a drink and a game of “Petang”(asian pronunciation of the French petanque game) with a group of locals. Dave, the owner of the little bar and I won the game and we had a good laugh (with the help of our phrasebook which they found fascinating and thanks to the local pastis - Lao Lao).

After some debate we booked ourselves onto a 3 day trek to visit some hill tribe villages, where we would be fed and would stay for the night. After a bus journey to nearby Boun Tai, we set off with our guide, Bounlod. He was monk for 7 years and was a true bushman, hunting for food and making several items out of bamboo with his knife along the way.

It was raining on our first day which made the trails muddy and lots of leeches were wiggling at us. A few made it onto our shoes but luckily no bites thanks to our insect repellent. After a quick lunch at our first village where we ate banana flower, wild boar and sticky rice, we set off for the afternoon. The mud made it tough to walk up and down the steep hills, and we arrived at our 2nd village after a record 7hrs, the first group to arrive after dark, which amused the Akha tribe who usually do it in 3hrs carrying 20kg of bamboo. We had a nice traditional meal all made from ingredients found in the forest/village (beef, pumpkin, melon, chillies, bamboo), helped down with some Lao Lao. This was followed by an Akha massage and then bed, where we slept like logs until the coqs woke us up at 5 in the morning, followed by the sound of Akha women creaming sweetcorn with huge wooden contraptions directly below our bedroom... Is felt like an earthquake.

We had breakfast, filled our waterbottles with cold tea, then trekked for an hour before taking a quick wash in a stream. Then we continued mostly uphill through thick jungle before reaching our next village for lunch. This was a Loma village this time and they wore different patterns on their clothing. They were staring at the hairband that Flora had bought from the Akha women and were laughing and smiling. We stopped for lunch, (pumpkin, bamboo, omelette, chillies, noodle soup and beans/nuts).

We continued in the afternoon, where we passed a school. All the children ran out to shout "Sabaidee" at us. It was deafening and we realised what its like to be a celebrity in Leicester Square on premiere night.  When the teacher came round the corner, they all ran inside as they probably should have been working.  After better weather we arrived mid afternoon in our last village. We admired the view and the friendliness of the people. Some children were curious to begin with but usually smiled and followed after us. 

Bounlod took us to the village's only 'shop', which also had a snooker table (a dodgy one with pieces of tape and bumps on it). All the villages were watching our game of pool with 3 spots and 6 stripes, as some of the balls were missing. We then had dinner where a chicken was picked from the village to be part of our meal. Within 5 minutes it was plucked and bubbling away in a pot with its liver, heart, head and feet. We had the chicken with the usual pumpkin flower, chillies, green beans, bamboo, riverweed and peanuts (and Lao Lao of course).

We woke at sunrise to see the stunning "Sea of Clouds" in the valley below the village. It was an awesome sight sitting among boar, chickens, and bamboo houses looking out across the 'sea'.

After a breakfast of eggs, bamboo, chillies and the gorgeous shredded melon with peanuts, we waved goodbye and trekked a beautiful road back to a main road where we said thanks and goodbye to Bounlod. We were back into a ‘normal’ and ‘civilised’ world, with shower, toilets, tables, chairs and clean water to drink. We had a well-deserved fish soup in a tiny restaurant, as we had walked 32 kilometres in 3 days.

We then waved from the side of the road and caught a bus on to Muang Khua, where we stayed the night before catching a riverboat down the Nam Ou river to Muang Ngoy Neua.

 

Luang Prabang

27/10/12 to 31/11/12. Luang Prabang has a strict rule.  Everything closes at 11.30pm to preserve a midnight silence.  As luck would have it, our bus arrived 3 hours early at 2.30am, when nothing was open.  Our plan was to take the bus overnight, arrive in the morning and avoid a night’s accommodation.  We were so tired we had to get a decent sleep in a proper bed, so we decided to get a hotel for the few hours of night time that were remaining.

Everybody we’d met had told us how beautiful Luang Prabang was, so we had high expectations by the time we arrived.  We weren’t disappointed.  It’s a touristy place yes, and quite a bit more developed than anywhere else in Laos, but being a Unesco heritage site, its development had been restricted to traditional style buildings, in a lovely mountain setting, bordered by two rivers. 

After a tough nights travelling to arrive, we took it easy the first day, wandering around the palm tree lined avenues, observing the wooden facades, visiting a few golden Vats, and eating in the night market.  The next day we climbed the hilltop overlooking the city to see the various Buddhas along the way.  Halfway up, we stopped to see another “Foot of the Big Buddha” . We’d seen one in Champusak, one in Vang Vieng, and this was the final one of three as Buddha allegedly strode across Laos (he must have been drunk or trying the Triple Jump as they’re not particularly evenly spaced).  As we looked something dropped from the roof and Flora stared at it and pointed in disbelief.  I stared down to see a blue and white striped Gecko sitting there.  We thought he was dead as we couldn’t seem to scare it into jumping away. Eventually he went crawling off.  At the top of the hill by the Stupa we had a fabulous panoramic view of the city, the hills and the Mekong and Nam Khan rivers.

The next day we hired a tuk-tuk along with a French couple (JB and Laeticia) we’d met on the bus from Vang Vieng.  We went to visit the Kuang Si waterfall in the morning, followed by the Tad Se waterfall in the afternoon.  The Kuang Si reserve included a bear rescue centre where we saw some black bears having fun and playing in a pond.  We then made our way up the waterfall before swimming in the florescent blue waters. 

In the afternoon at Tad Se, we again swam in the lagoon at the bottom of the falls, and saw some elephants taking a bath with some tourists.  On our return by longboat to the tuk-tuk pick up point, Flora took a tumble and ended up in the river, luckily she was alright and gave everyone a good laugh.

We made the most of a nice guesthouse, with a good host, decent wifi and some nice places to eat.  We found it a great place to relax and ended up spending the best part of a week there.  We had time to enjoy good restaurants set up in very nice gardens or near the rivers, bookshops, antiques shops, a huge night market with lovely handcrafted products, stunning temples and a great city atmosphere.

I (Dave) went to a pub to watch the Southampton vs Spurs game as it was advertised earlier in the day on a poster outside.  With the clock on 80 minutes and with the score at Saints 1 – 2 Spurs,  the barman asked if I minded if he turned it off as they were closing.  I obviously said that yes I minded as it was a close game and there were still 10mins left.   He didn’t seem to understand.  I (Flora) was laughing so much as I didn’t give a toss about the game but could see Dave’s face being more and more stunned.  I (Dave) reasoned with him and he told us to cross the road to their sister pub who were also showing the game.  We did as he said to find that they had turned it off too and were closing soon.  After 5 of the 10 minutes had past I finally persuaded him to turn the screen back on (after appealing in a calm, Lao style way to the Buddhist in him and hinting at some bad karma if he didn’t do the decent thing).  Luckily Spurs held out in typically nervy fashion for the win.  On our return to the guesthouse, we found our host and a couple of Man Utd fans (amazingly enough, actually from Manchester), watching Man Utd beat Chelsea, which rounded off a good evening.  I’m about to get told off for talking about football too much, so over to Flora.

[yawn] Thanks Dave.

Vang Vieng

24/10/12 to 26/10/12. The Bus to Vang Vieng was the usual stomach churning ride up into the mountains, slowed partly on the exit from Vientiane by roadworks. Despite the sign clearly saying "Road Closed", our driver decided to try his luck anyway. Sure enough a kilometre later he was trying to Do a 3-point turn in a narrow street after coming face to face with two diggers. Half an hour later we were back on Track.

The scenery in Vang Vieng was stunning.  It has a Reputation as a Party town, but to our relief this seemed to be limited to a couple of streets in the centre. Also as we were visiting just before the main tourist season, it was nicely quiet. We booked into a Lodge on the "other side" of the river with a lovely garden and good omelettes. The footbridge had been washed away by the river during the rainy season (as it is every year), so we had to use a toll bridge downriver.

The next Day we went caving and kayaking. Before we entered the cave our guide stopped us as he'd spotted a snake in the tree on the beach.  It turned out to be a venomous Green Tree Snake. They usually eat chickens and a bite from one of these snakes and you're dead in 30 minutes.

We entered the cave on an inflated inner tube of a tractor tyre. This is called "tubing". Lying on the tube you either float down river, going over rapids, or in our case, we pulled ourselves along inside the cave using a rope attached to the wallas you are lying on your back, it is a good way to see the rock formations and stalactites on the roof of the cave. The cave was about 500m long, so we spent a good hour getting to the end and back. It was good fun.  We came out of the cave for a bbq lunch, but the snake had gone. Apparently some locals came to catch it and it was barbequed for a tasty snack.

In the afternoon we went kayaking for 12km down the river over some gentle rapids. Dave did most of the paddling and Flora got very wet as payback for this.

The next day we went to another cave, this time on foot. It was on top of a high mountain and we took a rocky path to reach the cave. It was huge and a golden Buddha was lying in the in the opening chamber. We then went deep inside the slippery and very dark cave with a only a tiny torch to help us both to see anything. The cave was massive inside and we felt a bit like Mulder and Scully from the X-files. We heard noises that we couldn’t recognise as we went deeper into the cave. It could have been anything, a snake, some bats, or Aliens???? We walked a bit faster on our way out.

Outside the cave was the Blue Lagoon. We had a swim and played with some ropes set up to swing from and a dived from a tree. The water was cool and transparent and we were surrounded by hundreds of fish as we swam.

We had time to visit one more cave in the afternoon, which was more developed (there was a footpath inside with handrails). This reminded us of a cave from an Indiana Jones film, or a Bond villain's underground lair.

On our way back to town to get dinner, the heavens opened and we had heavy rain that we stood and watched from under a tin roof. The sound was impressive and in the space of 15 minutes, water was everywhere.

In the evening we took the nightbus to Luang Prabang. No beds this time as it was a local bus. For some reason Lao pop ballads and 90s happy hardcore music blared all night from the stereo. Somehow we got an hour or two sleep before arriving in Luang Prabang at 2.30am... much early than expected.