The Beach

What seems like weeks ago now we left Saigon and headed for the small fishing village of Mui Ne. The town has grown a long tail of resorts along its beautiful beach. It seems many of these are about to be swallowed by the ocean due to the incessant rip tide running parallel to the beach. It is this current which has formed, over a very long time, the massive sand dunes to the north of the village. We hired a scooter and managed to successfully navigate out to the dunes, only got lost twice thanks to a map on the back of business card, where we did some sledding and other dune related activities such as walking, climbing and politely declining a third sled for "very good price". Mui Ne is well-known for its seafood so we ventured to part of the beach lined with huge restaurants where all sorts of (no longer) sea-dwelling creatures can be selected from tanks and cooked in front of you. We choose the busiest restaurant and dined on kingfish, scallops and mussels for about $7. Despite the rain we will miss you Mui Ne.

A few Vietnamese holidaying at Mui Ne

From Mui Ne we headed inland to Da Lat.  Expecting a small, sleepy mountain village we were (almost) surprised when a bunch of men immediately started offering us taxis, motorbike tours and accommodation deals. Da Lat is a really cool town which reminded me of Wellington with its hills and cooler climate (jerseys came in handy after all). We hired a scooter and checked out the surrounding mountains, where we saw Vietnamese zebras. We went to a waterfall which had a roller coaster to get down to it from the car park which was rather novel but the whole area was swarming with Russians so we didn't stay long.
Later in the day we entered Da Lat's cafe scene and got hip with the visiting Vietnamese kids. We stopped in at a cafe called 'Bicycle Up', which possessed every hipster cliche under the sun, and had amazing coffee for fifty cents.

Just a few of the Russian and Vietnamese tourists at the Datanla Waterfall

Yesterday we got up at 5.30 and took a four hour bus to Nah Trang.  There we blobbed on the expansive white beach among expansive white Russians. We received obligatory oil massages and bought fresh fruit and other snacks in between quick dips in the warm ocean. After five the beach came alive as hundreds of locals came down to eat, swim and play volleyball and soccer. With heavy packs, and that exhaustion that only comes from a day of lying about, we checked on to the night bus that would take us to Hoi An by the morning.

The mountain pass between Da Lat and Nah Trang was  incredible

We rolled into the old port town of Hoi An as the sun rose above the young rice fields. Staggering of the night bus (think Harry Potter without the magical amounts of space) we fended of the hotel hawkers before wandering into the guest house district. We ended up choosing quite a nice hotel at a budget-stretching $18 a night and, as we were able to check in at 6 in the morning, crawling into bed and going straight to sleep.

Sunrise over Hoi An Province

On The Road

You can thank the rain for this post.  It looks like it's settled in, so we've also settled in with a coffee (a Vietnamese one, they use 'sweet milk' - condensed milk - in place of milk), a view of the beach, and some shelter.

We've made it to Vietnam - three countries in three weeks (and if you count New Zealand and our brief stopover in Singapore that's five, but who's counting?).  What I always forget is if we're covering that much ground, we also have to travel that much ground.  In this case, by bus almost all of the time.  I'm growing pretty sick of buses, and we've still got most of Vietnam to traverse.  Although, I have figured out that I can read on the bus; for much of my life it's made me feel sick.  I wonder whether it's share willpower and the threat of looking out a window for eight hours that's forcing me to read.

Since David last wrote one of these, we've been to Saigon (Ho Chi Minh - I still can't figure out what to call it, but it seems to largely be referred to by the locals as Saigon.  Guide books tend to refer to it as Ho Chi Minh.  I'll stick with the locals) - a large city in Vietnam's south and now we're in Mui Ne, on Vietnam's coast, before heading to Dalat tomorrow (slightly inland).  I keep having to remind myself I'm in a new country; so far at least, Vietnam reminds me a lot of Cambodia.  But we've got the most time in Vietnam, so am looking forward to hopefully getting a bit more of a feel for the place - and hopefully sit still in a place for more than a couple of days.

We haven't yet uploaded any photos we've taken in the last few days, so I'll just attach a couple from Phnom  Penh (Saigon was very similar to Phnom Penh, and I suspect over time the two places are going to get muddled in my memory) and the internet here is very slow, so I'll only try three photos at this stage.

- Hana

In Cold Blood

After three days of watching the rain and drinking coffee at Otres Beach we took a bus back up to Phnom Penh. We checked into the Fancy Guesthouse, fancy by name only, ( unless you consider it fancy to tile every surface) and headed out to one of the Night Markets for some fried noodle and Cambodian live entertainment.

This morning we met a tuk tuk driver who drove us out to the Choeung Ek Killing Field. While wandering amongst the trees we learned that almost 9000 Cambodians were beaten to death at Choeung Ek and buried in mass graves.  This is only a small percentage of the estimated 2 Million Cambodians killed under the Khmer Rouge regime from 1975 to 1979.  After Choeung Ek we visited Toul Sleng Genocide Museum.  Once a high school, Tuol Sleng was converted to a prison to hold thousands of people in tiny cells. They were tortured until they signed confessions for false crimes before they were transported to Choeung Ek and executed.

While the history of Cambodia is deeply distressing it is the fact that similar human rights atrocities are occurring right now that makes you feel sick, powerless and strangely inspired at the same time. But I must admit that, like the hundreds of others who visit this prison museum every day, the images will blur, the sadness will fade and I will go on living as before.  We are all only human after all and if humans are good at anything it is ignoring a problem.

So we spent the afternoon wandering the streets of Phnom Penh. We had our first travel argument - must have been the emotional tension - before reconciliation and discussion over a drink or two. After conversation became impossible due to an evening downpour we made our way to Romdeng restaurant. This is one of three restaurants in Phnom Penh which bring street children in and teach them the skills to work in hospitality. The meals were easily the best we have had so far and were a small sign of things to come from a country, only now finding its feet, 35 years on from the devastation of the Khmer Rouge.

- David

In Search of Lost Time

We've landed in Otres, a sleepy beach along the south coast of Cambodia, where we plan to sit back and relax for the next couple of days.  Although we only left New Zealand less than two weeks ago, we've seen and done so much so it's nice to have a moment to take a deep breath before hitting the road again.

After Bangkok, we caught a bus to Siem Reap in Cambodia.  The main attraction in Siem Reap is Angkor Wat and its surrounding temples.  Built in the early 12th Century, they speak of a past which is hard to comprehend (although Cambodia's more recent history is even more difficult to comprehend).  Also hard to get my head around is how anyone built them.  Climbing some of those steps with only a camera in hand was hard enough work, let alone with a massive concrete block on your back.  It still blows my mind what we are able to see and do here; were New Zealand to have a temple like this I imagine we would only be able to look from a distance.  Here, we are able to scramble all over them; encouraged to touch and experience.

And here's just a little taster of where we are now

The view from our room

- Hana

An Inconvenient Truth

Like everything in Asia the weather is done in extremes.

Hot.  Very hot - yesterday the forecast told me it was 32 degrees, but felt like 38.

And then rain, until the roads are flooded and the dust has settled.

But last night it was an electrical storm that held my attention. I have never seen anything like it before; the sky flashed purple every two seconds.  For hours.  Though when the boom of thunder was waking me during the night (and knowing we had a 4.30am start), my attention was waning.

We have ventured into Asia in the off season, when the weather is hot and the skies open at least once a day.  Maybe not my first choice of seasons, or even my second.  But it's definitely captivating.

I can't say I wasn't warned; David likes to point out he told me so.  And he did.  But the weather, and heat, just makes the 50 cent beers even more tasty.

A storm is brewing over Angkor Wat

Two hours later these clouds presented one of the most spectacular electrical storms I have ever seen

- Hana

Gulliver's Travels

There is a dearth of tall stature in Bangkok. I feel like Gulliver in the land of the smalls; however, I am still dwarfed by the city itself.  We are staying on the 18th floor (of 32) of the 'Park Residence' - sandwiched between the very hip, middle-class Sukhumvit and the malls of Siam Square.
Yesterday we took the air conditioned Skytrain out to the Jatujak market and spent a few hours roaming the thousands of stalls, a melting pot of clothes, crafts and cheap-eats. After blowing the day's budget like any good government we dragged ourselves back to the train (did I mention it's air conditioned?).

Sufficiently perked by a siesta we headed back out for a different kind of shopping experience at Siam Square. There are four malls here which get progressively cheaper as you go along (perhaps reflective of the class system in Thailand). With little money, not that it would have made a difference, we hit the Paragon Department Store first (Prada, Gucci, Louis V etc) where an exotic flower competition was being judged. We thought it reasonably expansive until we realised we were only in the atrium and hadn't actually entered the main store at all so we left before we got lost in all the jewellery.
We decided to eat at the 'food island' in the final mall, as you do when you have no money left. Here the meals ranged from $2 to a very classy $5.  We sampled holy-basil roast duck (very spicy) and sweet and sour pork (the safety net).
Too full for dessert we headed home just in time to sit on the balcony and watch a thunder storm roll over the city. Traffic came to a standstill while it poured down for twenty minutes before the organised chaos of Bangkok resumed.

- David

Elephant photos

A few more pictures from our day with the elephants.

I don't know how, but David almost manages to make the elephant look small.  We actually had the biggest elephant - an 11-year-old male who was saved from a life of street begging.

What you don't see in these pictures is how often our elephant would squirt water into the air with his trunk -  usually soaking us.  

David looking very lady-like.  

Our group in our delightful double-denim outfits.  They say it's so the elephants know who we are, I think they just dress us in this to laugh at us.  The man who looked after the elephant David and I had kept laughing at me, actually; I still don't know why.

- Hana

Water for Elephants

We have just got back from a three and a half day stint in the north of Thailand, at Chiang Mai (and didn't take the lap top, hence the quietness on here).

It's been an awesome three days that's involved swimming with elephants, cooking some amazing Thai cuisine, driving through the country side, lazing with a cold (and cheap) beer, and haggling at the night bazaar.  Oh, and a 25th birthday.

I was expecting a quiet town - but in good old Asian fashion that's not what we got.  Instead Chiang Mai was somewhere between a small town with cute alleyways and a large bustling city - it tended to depend which road you walked down as to which Chiang Mai you were served.  And then there were the streets which tended to have old men sitting in a bar, sometimes talking to a very pretty Thai woman.  I suspect they might have been brothels.

I think I might just let the photos do the talking (it seems I'm more technically able this time, and the photos do work) -

One of the many temples in Chiang Mai.  I wasn't dressed  appropriately so we just had to look from afar.

The lane - or Soi - we were staying on.  Was lined with massage parlours.  I didn't feel particularly brave and opted for a foot massage.  David got the full-on Thai massage.

Photo probably speaks for itself.  We don't have any photos yet from the afternoon when we got to ride the elephants through the bush, and then bath them (definitely the highlight) but the guide took photos of that, which we are hoping to get.

We had to wear this particularly attractive ensemble. 

Proof we are here together.

Our creations.  Red and green curry (made with our own paste) and sweet and sour chicken, and basil chicken.  Delish.

The Chiang Mai country side.  What you don't see is the heat which comes along with the sunshine - well actually with anything really.

I- Hana

What to Expect When You're Expecting

At 5am there's no need for an alarm
We were waiting, sleepless, anticipating
Stretchy pants and comfortable shoes
All sorts of cramp to look forward to

At 7am there's no need for alarm
We are queuing, sleepless, 'What are we doing?'
Drying tears, drowning fears, we finally got on a plane
How is this possible? I need to go toilet again

But now here we are, safe and sound in Bangkok
Thank God, still sleepless. Enjoy the Blog

- David