The last few days!

Well the trip is nearly over now as I write this from Abu Dhabi airport. The final few days at the clinic were great - alongside the many neutering surgeries that we had booked in, we also found ourselves with an early morning caesarian, and a puppy with a badly broken leg who needed it amputating - both on the same day!


We also had a bit of a hairy time with a very aggressive (but hopefully not rabid) dog who we needed to get out of kennels and required about 5 people to successfully restrain it! Luckily we all came off uninjured. Por, the head nurse at the clinic was back so we had a few days of slightly less stress as she monitored the animals and could speak Thai to our clients, and just generally run the place! We had a few wounds and distemper dogs to deal with but a bit less busy than the previous week!
On my last night, I went for a couple of drinks with all the clinic staff at a hillside bar with stunning views over the bay. It was a bit of a mission to get up there but it was worth it for one of the most beautiful sunsets I have seen.
After exchanging details with everyone and promising to return at some point, I headed back to the resort to pack up and set off on our 16 hour boat-bus-boat journey across Thailand to Koh Phiphi. We had a final meal at Rambutans and then went to the port.

The tourist boats were all docked at the port, but none of them looked very active. It turned out that we were actually booked on what looked like a cargo ship, with a deck covered with mattresses. We seemed to be pretty much the only tourists on board, and instead were surrounded by Buddhist monks meditating, local traders and families. Nevertheless it was a comfortable journey, and we arrived on the mainland 7 hours later. The next step of the journey seemed to be sitting on the pavement in the pouring down rain for an hour, followed by a large tutuk to the bus, to Krabi to get the final boat over to Phiphi. Shattered from the long trip, we arrived on Phiphi without any further plans and spent the first hour wandering round the narrow streets with out backpacks trying to orientate ourselves. We eventually found a lovely bungalow resort on the beach, had a very welcome shower and headed out to explore. There seem to be two sides to Phiphi - it was destroyed by the Boxing day Tsunami in 2004 and the effects are still quite evident on some areas of the island - and there are Tsunami evacuation routes signposted all over the island (basically just all heading up!). The Leonardo DiCaprio film 'The Beach' was also filmed on Phi phi Leh (a small island just off the main island of Phi Phi Don) and tourism has increased dramatically over the past 10 years since the film. During the day it is bustling, but with a very friendly vibe, and somehow still seems quite relaxed despite the amount of activity. At night though, the English came out in force, and it seemed to turn into a bit of a party island. Our tranquil bungalow resort...not so much! There was a beach rave blaring music out until 3 am!
We spent the evening wandering round the various markets, and took on the steep trek up to the viewpoint - the highest point on the island, for sunset. It was a long hard walk up to the top, but we had panoramic views across the whole island, Phiphi Leh and some of the other small satellite islands. The views were stunning, but we made a bit of an error going up at sunset, as unsurprisingly, it got quite dark afterwards, and we had to clamber our way down in the pitch black! We treated ourselves to a very ticklish fish foot massage, and then went back to our bungalow.
The following day was Astrid's birthday, and we managed to get places to camp on 'the beach' beach - it is a protected area and only 25 people are allowed on the island at night. Katya and Will came to join us too, and we set off on a boat to the island after lunch. We had a very lively young group, and we all got on very well. The first stop was on the near side of Phi Phi Leh for some snorkeling. There are some caves, and shallow coral and turtles and sharks are often seen in the cove so we were very excited. I have an overwhelming and often irrational terror of sharks - but when I'm snorkeling or diving, it doesn't worry me, and we all swam around trying to spot one. We saw loads of beautiful coloured fish, squid, pipe fish, puffer fish and even three large turtles which was amazing, and they came surprisingly close to us! Suddenly, a group snorkelling a bit away from us gave the shout 'Shark'! Now normally that's something from my nightmares, but we all headed towards it in excitement. Unfortunately, my mask chose that moment to suddenly flood with water - and so while everyone raced off ahead, I struggled with my mask, surrounded by stinging sea lice, with no mask, on my own and knowing there was a shark in the water!! EEEEK! Eventually I got my mask sorted, and back in the water - the shark was now heading away from the others towards me - it wasn't the huge man eating shark that my imagination had created - just a black tipped reef shark, but was still amazing to see!
We climbed back aboard, for some pineapple and to head round the island for our first glimpse of the Hollywood famed beach. It was indeed stunning, a small white sandy beach, surrounded by limestone mountains and coconut palms backing onto the beach. Our boat anchored, and we jumped onto a long boat to take us a bit closer to the beach, but even the longboat couldnt anchor as there are very shallow coral reefs, so we had to jump off into the water, and pick our way carefully over the coral onto the beach. There were a few small wooden shacks and we dropped off our bags and went to explore. We all headed down to the beach to watch the sunset. Once it got dark, we all settled down on beach mats, with cocktails in buckets (enough time had passed since Half Moon to be able to face them again!) and got to know the rest of the group a bit better. The crew put on a fantastic spread of Thai food, and had brought guitars and drums - everything necessary for a fun party on the beach! Our guides, Chocolate and Nemo (not sure if they were their real names!!) told us to go for a late night swim - which didn't sound like the most sensible idea after drinking, but Astrid, Katya, Will and I went down to the beach later on for Astrid to blow out her birthday candles on her banana bread cake. The bay was even more stunning by moonlight - the sky was perfectly clear with hundreds of bright stars. There was lightening in the distance that kept lighting up the island with a purpley glow and the sea was lapping at our feet - then we noticed occasional bright lights in the waves and remembered that the guides had mentioned the plankton. We headed into the sea and the plankton lit up even more - then we realised why they had told us to go for a swim. It was the most incredible phenomenon I have ever seen - as we swam out to sea, it was like fairy lights that lit up as we moved our arms and legs - ducking underwater looked like a private light show, and there were pockets of huge numbers of plankton that just made your entire body glow in the water. I can't even describe how mesmerising it was, but we were all absolutely blown away by it.






We dried off, still stunned and all chatting excitedly about the plankton, and the crew appeared with some lemon grass BBQ chicken for supper. Before long, we were tired, and all settled down on the beach to sleep. It was magical - being lulled to sleep by the sound of the waves, looking up at the stars, and spotting shooting stars as we drifted off to sleep. We had been promised that high tide wasn't until the next morning and despite stories of cat eating pythons, scorpions and spiders, we were really quite relaxed!
The next morning, after breakfast, Astrid and I had to head back to the main island to catch our ferry back to Krabi to fly back to Bangkok. The trip was pretty much over, but what an incredible ending to it!
The trip back to Bangkok went pretty much without incident, although we had a number of messages from back home worrying about the flood crisis in Bangkok which seems to have got worse while we have been on the islands. Our flight was still running, but it was quite a sight flying into Bangkok - the whole city looked underwater.
We couldn't get to the hotel that we'd booked on the Khao San Road as it was flooded, and with high tide they were expecting worse floods overnight, so we stayed near the airport, and just ventured into the city on the skytrain for dinner and a last bit of shopping.
Well that's pretty much it for this trip! Will be home later on tonight to try and get lots of sleep ready for work on Monday!

Bangkok and beyond

We waved a sad goodbye to Vietnam, and jetted South to Bangkok, to spend one quiet night there before travelling on to the islands for some hard work! We decided to head up to the huge mall on the outskirts of Bangkok for a bit of window shopping. The effects of the flooding are quite evident here - it's raining a LOT, and all the shops and hotels have sandbags which we had to climb over to get anywhere off the streets! After a few hours, not quite window shopping, we headed back to the Khao San Road, exhausted. The quiet night that we had planned didn't quite go to plan! First off, I met up with Laura, a friend I met whilst working at a street dog charity in Nepal, who is now teaching in Bangkok. We were just heading for dinner when I heard my name, and turned to see Katya and Will, two of my university friends running down the Khao San Road after us! It is a small small world! We all went for some dinner and decided that one Chang (the local beer) tower couldn't hurt. But we all had so much catching up to do, and one turned into three, and before we knew it we were being roped into a visit to an infamous Bangkok Ping Pong show! After a short walk through a decidedly dodgy part of Bangkok, we arrived at the Ping Pong show. I won't go into details about the show itself, but it was an experience probably not to repeat! The tuktuk journey back to the Khao San Road was almost as memorable as the show itself - with four of us piled into a 2 person seat, and our driver intent on racing any other vehicles on the road! We made in back safely, with two hours to go before our early morning flight to Koh Samui!
We landed at Samui airport - if you can call it an airport - it is more a collection of beach huts, with a few small propeller planes and avery short runway. The view coming into land was beautiful - we have finally found some sun and there is no better place to be in the sun than a Thai island! A short ferry ride later, we arrived on Koh Phangan, our home for the next week. Our resort is right on the beach, surrounded by coconut palms and hammocks. Unfortunately though, I am not here to relax, and even on the journey to the resort it was clear how much work needs to be done - there are stray dogs and cats everywhere, and very few of them seem to neutered, so the problem is just increasing week by week! After settling in to our beach hut, we went to find PAC (Phagnan Animal Centre). It's a little off the beaten track, but the clinic itself is huge, and very well equipped compared to other charity clinics that I have worked at. I met the team, including the many clinic dogs and cats (a high proportion of whom seem to have less than an average number of legs or tails!) There is a Maltese vet also volunteering for the time that I am here, but unfortunately all of the permanent clinical staff were off for the first few days for various reasons. It was lucky for the clinic that there were two vets, so that we could keep things running, but from our point of view, it was quite unnerving using new (and unusual) drugs, techniques and protocols without anyone who was familiar with them! We got straight on with some bitch spays - the clinic staff have recently discovered about 30 dogs and puppies living on a dump not far away from the centre, and we wanted to make a good start on them. The dogs were all collected by Jamie, the practice manager on a motorbike and trailer, and we set about getting to know the anaesthetic protocols. If any of you at Farthings are reading this, you would be both impressed (by how much I have learnt from you nurses, and my clip patches!) and appalled (by the anaesthetics that we use here - euthatal for induction, no light in theatre (luckily I have a head torch!) and no way of keeping dogs flat on their backs - resulting in a moving target for surgery!!)

Anyway, we adjusted a few things - like the minimal pain relief in the premed, and started with our long list of surgeries. It took a while to get used to, and we were essentially monitoring our own anaesthetics whilst both of us operated on the same table at the same time! Most of the dogs here have blood borne parasites that cause excessive bleeding, so most of the surgeries was obscured by blood the entire time! Sterility is actually relatively good compared to other clinics I have seen, but there are a few differences to Farthings! Everything is autoclaved in a toaster, packaged in tin foil...and when I first picked up the hand brush to scrub up, a baby gecko ran up my arm from it! Other than that though, everything is pretty similar, except for the numbers of spays that we were doing each day!
It was hot and very sweaty work, and by the end of the day we were pretty tired, and perhaps less than enthusiastic about the flood of consults that appeared from locals and ex-pats who don't trust the local vets! Again, as there were no permanent staff there, this involved me doing a consult as normal (though often in very broken English or sign language) and then rummaging around in boxes full of random drugs trying to find any appropriate treatment. It's scary but strangely refreshing having absolutely no diagnostic tests and having to depend solely on my own clinical judgement!
Anyway, by about 7.30pm I had worked through all the sick animals, seen to the inpatients and was ready to get back to the beach! Will and Katya came to join us on Koh Phangan, so after a drink on the beach we went to a local restaurant that Astrid and I had already discovered, called Rambutans. It's a small Thai place, and the man that runs it is the loveliest man ever!! We went there for most of our meals on the island, and on our last night, he gave us each a postcard to say thank you and good luck for our travels!
After a few beers on the beach, we went to bed - thinking we were in for a good night's sleep after all our travels! Unfortunately it was not to be! At about midnight, there was a banging on the door of our bungalow - and Tracy, one of the clinic volunteers was there in a panic, with her kitten who was fitting. Unfortunately she had been licking permethrin, a flea treatment for dogs that is very toxic to cats, from Tracy's puppy. We rushed to the clinic on the bikes, and spent the next four hours trying to save her, but sadly she didn't make it. It was very sad, but at least we were able to try. There's no permanent vet on the island so they depend on volunteers and any emergencies like this usually don't get to see a vet.
The rest of the week was fairly similar - with lots of bitch spays, a few cat spays and a few cases of distemper, parvovirus and various other diseases that we don't see at home thanks to vaccination.
The Thursday night was the notorious Half Moon party on Koh Phangnan - a world famous trance festival in the jungle. We decided to head up and see what all the fuss is about.


All of the drinks are served in buckets, the whole venue is lit with UV light, and everyone wears neon clothing and face paint. We met up with a few people that we'd met at the resort and some of the clinic staff and all headed up to the jungle for the party. It was a night to remember (if only we could!!) - and I'm only glad I had the next day off work!
We decided to head over to Koh Tao for the weekend, as we had no inpatients at the clinic and fancied trying out the diving. The four of us headed over on the ferry, and booked into the dive resort. I have never dived before, so did an introductory dive and then a deeper dive. It was great fun- I have really bad ears so was worried I wouldn't be able to but despite some problems coming back up, I managed it ok! We saw loads of fish, a couple of huge moray eels and some very large trigger fish, and kept a close eye out for sharks, but unfortunately didn't see any!
After the dive, we had a lovely chilled out night at the beach bars, watching the fire dancers and chatting to the other divers.
Now to head back to the clinic for some more surgery next week!

Misses Saigon

Saigon is actually a lot less chaotic than I had expected. Having started our trip learning to stay alive in Hanoi, Saigon was actually quite tame! However, there are millions of motorbikes everywhere. It's quite phenomenal when thousands of them are lined up at traffic lights, and then completely ignore the signals, and just weave in and out of each other at the same time.
We headed to the central market for a spot of light shopping. It is somewhere between a local market, selling Pho, rice and various other dishes, and a souvenir market, with lacquewear, tapestries, and the usual gifty bits. We all got quite carried away, bartered hard, and bought too much to be able to carry!
Astrid and I then decided we wanted to do a Vietnamese cookery course, so sadly waved Caz off to the airport, and then went on what was to become a wild goose chase to try and find a cookery class. STA travel had reccommended one to us, and given us the address, but when we got there, we were met only by a small Vietnamese man who didn't speak a word of English. After a long attempted conversation, he wrote down another address, and we hopped in a taxi. There, we found no cookery school; we got quite excited for a minute by something that turned out to be a kitchen shop, but no sign of any cookery school! Eventually we gave up and headed to the River Saigon for dinner. There are a number of boat restaurants along the river, so we headed for the biggest one and sat down for dinner. Just as we were finishing our food, the buildings on the coastline started to move. It took us a few seconds to realise that we had set sail! We had no idea that it was a cruising restaurant! We called over a waiter to ask where we were going, and were told we were to be treated to an hour long cruise around the industrial harbour, with some traditional entertainment. The harbour cruise took us past lots of container ships, and not much else, and the traditional entertainment consisted of a table magician, two girls flamenco dancing and a flautist. An unusual and not very Vietnamese mix, but entertaining nonetheless - though perhaps not how it was intended.
We eventually got back on dry land, and went for an early night before our Mekong Delta trip.
The next morning, we took a boat down the Saigon river, for two hours until we reached the Mekong Delta area. It was a hot sunny day, and it was a lovely trip down the river, past locals fishing from small wooden boats, miles of coconut palms and people going about their daily business in the shanty towns that lined the river. When we arrive in My Thon, the first town in the Delta, we transferred onto a small rowing boat to navigate the many small tributaries of the Delta. This is how the local farmers get their produce to the floating market every day, and the narrow rivers got quite congested with all the boats rowing up and down. We stopped off at a coconut candy workshop, where they showed us how they make the most delicious coconut toffee sweets from just coconut and sugar cane. We walked through tropical fruit gardens - seeing mango, papaya, banana trees lining the paths, and then were taken to a bee farm. Were were then treated to a cup of honey jasmine tea made from the honey. It was quite an experience trying to drink the tea with hundreds of bees buzzing around our faces - maybe trying to get their honey back!
The rest of the trip involved getting on and off a series of different sized boats to explore th delta, before heading to our homestat where we were supposed to be doing a cookery course, rding bikes and staying with a local family on the river. Unfortunately this was not to be. Our guide suddenly swapped with another guide half way through the day, and it all went rather downhill from there. Our new guide didn't speak English, and kicked off things by asking where we were going - we thought that was his job!! 4 hours driving later (we were just marvelling at the sheer size of the Mekong Delta until more observant members of our party pointed out that we actually were at the same point 3 hours into the journey as we had been an hour in!) we arrived in the town of Ben Tre where we were staying. Unfortunately by this point it was dark, our homestay had apparently flooded (though we think it may have been an administrative error rather than actual flooding!) and we ended up staying in a hotel in the city, rather disappointingly. We joined a couple of other girls from our tour for dinner, and had 'hotpot' by the river. This is basically a pan of boiling stock which is brought to the table on a gas ring, and you then add meat, vegetables and herbs yourself and cook it all up on the table. It was good fun and surprisingly cheap!
The next morning we were up early for a trip to the floating market. We expected a quaint little bustling market with local farmer selling their various wares from their boats. In fact, it was a huge section of the river, with large boats, full of fruit, veg and hardware, that wouldn't sell less than 15kg of anything. In short, it was a trade market - not what we had signed up for! We did jump on board a pineapple selling boat (they all display whatever they are selling on a pole - like a flag!) for a pineapple, but other than that it was a wholly disapointing and quite tedious trip. We were fed up, and really not in the mood for the broken English tour of the rice factory, the rice noodle factory or the Bonsai gardens with no Bonsai trees (and aren't Bonsai trees Japanese?!)
We eventually got back to Saigon for our final night in Vietnam. Astrid hadn't yet tried a good Pho (noodle soup), so we went on the hunt for a good local soup, and found just that!
We have a couple of days of planes, buses and boats to get us down to Koh Phangnan in Thailand where I start the work part of my trip, volunteering at PAC animal centre on the island.

Easy Riding and eating rats!

Well I will start this post (Gran-I know you'll be worrying otherwise!!) by letting you know that we all made it from Nha Trang to Dalat in one piece, and Eddie's passport was returned to him as promised in exchange for a safe delivery, but we had an adventure or two on the way!
We got up early, and were met by Eddie and his team - consisting of Titi, and Pipi. I was riding with Eddie, who seemed to be their leader - and a very chatty one at that! He didn't stop talking for the entire 2 days! Titi is a very charismatic guy, who speaks great English, and he was Astrid's bike mate. Caz however, drew the short straw with Pipi, who speaks no English, didn't know the way to Dalat, and whose bike was no better than a hairdryer on wheels!
The guys strapped our backpacks to the bikes, handed us our helmets and we were off! Even the short journey out of Nha Trang along the beach was stunning. It took barely any time for us to get comfortable on the back of the bikes and before long we were all relaxing and taking photos of the beautiful scenery. We were scheduled to stop regularly along the way, and the first stop was small fishing village. We watched the locals making round fishing boats, out of leaves and what seemed to be wattle and daub! Other stops of the morning included a brick factory and a number of viewpoints. The bikes wound their way up towards the highlands, and the baking hot sun of the coast started to give way to cooler weather. We knew within a fewm minutes that we had made the right decision to take the tour. The guys were great bikers, constatnly looking out for each other and checking we stayed together, and there is no doubting that motorbike has to be the best way to see Vietnam! We really felt part of the local life, zooming through villages, waving at the locals and high fiving the children as we sped past. We rode alongside bikes with baskets full of live pigs, ducks, chickens and small tractors piled high with local people and bags of rice! It was all quite exhilarating!
After a quick lunch stop, we got back on the road, and the afternoon's itinerary involved trespassing a number of huge plantations - of sugar cane, coffee beans, cocoa, corn, peppercorns and rice, at each stop, one of the guys gave us a run down of how they farm each crop. It was fascinating and so far from the tourist trail it was a far cry from our experiences in Sapa and Halong Bay. Vietnam is apparently the world's second biggest producer of rice (second to Thailand), and as we sped past miles and miles of paddy fields, we could see the locals collecting and drying the ricein the sun. It seems fairly common place up here to spread the rice over the roads to dry, and in places, the only way through was over the sheets of rice!
As we got higher into the mountains, the sky clouded over, and suddenly a torrential downpour began. Quite an experience on the back of a bike speeding along at 90 km/hr with no waterproof gear! Once we were completely soaked through, the bikes stopped, and Eddie wrapped our boots in plastic bags, and we put waterproof jackets and trousers on, just to be sure that we had no chance of ever getting dry even if the rain stopped. Eddie spent the rest of the afternoon on the phone to god to find out when and how long the rain showers would last each time - he is a complete nutcase!! We stopped at a petrol station, where the owner had a number of pet snakes and scorpions which she gave to us to hold, including a HUGE python, that the three of us even struggled to hold between us!
Eventually, soaking wet, and with aching bottoms, we arrived at the homestay. Despite a (possibly ironic) sign welcoming tourists to the village, this homestay seemed genuine. There were no showers, the toilets were a short walk away from the house, across a cow shed full of cows, pigs and chickens full of slurry and the M'nong tribal people were sleeping in the same room as us.
We went straight to the local Ca Phe (you don't need to know any Vietnamese for that one!) for a beer and chatted to Titi for a while before dinner. We were having dinner in one of the neighbouring longhouses, with a M'Nong couple called Y'Cor and H'Ban. We arrived at their house, which was one large room, with bamboo mats and chopsticks laid out for us on the floor. The easy riders were there, and we kicked off the evening with a card game before dinner. We went to see H'Ban cooking in the very smokey kitchen out the back of the house, and it seemed that she did all the cooking over a single fire. We didn't really know what to expect - they guys had been teasing us all day about BBQ rat, dog curry and various other local delicacies - but we assumed they were joking. Even when Titi (who is a bit of a joker) asked if we wanted to go and see the rats on the BBQ we laughed it off. It wasn't until we were each presented with our decidedly rodent shaped piece of BBQ meat that we realised! They were complete with all internal organs, testicles and all. Not girls to shy from new culinary experiences, we all tucked in. We were maybe a little too enthusiastic, as they brought round a second rat each! The rest of the meal consisted of rice (!), bamboo shoots, fish, vegetables, more passion fruit than we could eat and, of course much happy water!
The M'nong people have their own happy water, which is a brown liquid that you drink through a bamboo straw. Much drinking and drinking games ensured - including spin the chilli and card games in 3 languages (English, Vietnamese and M'nong). Eventually, 2 hours after the M'nong's usual bedtime (8pm), we headed back across the cow shed, via a quick toilet stop undeneath the longhouse with the animals (!), and then headed to bed for a sleepless night of children screaming, dogs barking, roosters crowing and pigs grunting very loundly, all directly beneath us.
The next morning we woke to cloudy skies and rain. We had a quick breakfast and left early to make to 140km to Dalat.
We rode through village after village all living off the coffee plantations - resulting in some extremely plush looking houses! We drove past all the local vehicles, including a Huyndai lorry (not Hyundai!! Fake car brands?!)and a Yahama (not Yamaha!) garage and dodged the many local dogs that seem to lie around in the middle of the road, deliberately to get in our path. Eddie then told me one of the most disgusting things I've ever heard - apparently the dogs deliberately sit in the middle of the road, because the Vietnamese are such bad travellers that they often throw up out of car and bus windows, and the dogs just wait for it ....dinner!!
We waved at all the local kids, Eddie beeped at all the lorries, cars and buses, and despite the intermittent rain, it was great fun.

The roads into Dalat were extremely windy, and Eddie amused himself by leaning the bike so far over that we were practically touching the floor on the corners! It was fun, if a little scary!
We made it to Dalat without great incident, stopped off at the Crazy House, a bizarre house designed by some mental architect, and then say our sad goodbyes as we caught the bus on to Saigon (Now Ho Chi Minh City). In true Vietnam style, the supposed 4 hour bus journey took 8 hours. We stopped off at a roadstop for some snacks, but all of the food on offer were completely unrecognisable fruits, that we had never seen before! We ended up with some small egg shaped fruits, some chinese cherries and some dried maybe strawberries.
We checked into a hotel for Caz's final night in Vietnam :( and got a good night's sleep.

Tailor made Hoi An

If you only do one thing in Hoi An, it has to be getting clothes tailored. There are hundreds of local tailors here and as we wandered down the narrow streets of the old town, Vietnamese men, women and even children tried to coerce us into their shops to look at all the beautiful dresses, jackets, tops and suits.
We had planned to have a lazy couple of days in Hoi An after our busy time trekking and travelling in the North. We had no great shopping plans, and just wanted to see the 'magical and memorable sleepy town'...as the Lonely planet describes it. After a good night's sleep we decided to head into town to look at some of the old buildings along the river, all decorated with chinese style lanterns lining the fronts of the buildings.
Unfortunately, in true monsoon season style, it rained heavily, all morning....all day...and then all night. We headed out into the town anyway to have a look round, despite the rain, and decided that the only thing for it, was to indulge in a bit of shopping. Now imagine the kind of shopping where you just pick clothing designs, pick colours, pick materials and then get everything tailored to your exact measurements, and then you pick your price!! You never even have to try anything on until the next day! Caz and I were in heaven - and we went a little too crazy, picking coats, designing our own blazers (I ended up with some hideous lime green monstrosity - don't ask!!), adapting dresses from the Next catalogue, and all for a fraction of the prices we'd pay in England. It was a tiring, but fun day, and most of the tailors were lovely and very accommodating of all of our (some rather unusual!) requests. One lady in particular had a bit of an unusual fascination with me, and kept pinching and slapping my bum, cuddling me and then insisted on 'helping me into my dress'! She was obviously not used to seeing someone of my shape here!!
After a hard day's shopping, we had a quick meal of the local noodle soup dish, Lau Cao (which is pork, thick noodles, croutons, beansprouts, and somewhat randomly...lettuce! Yum though!) and an early night.


The next morning we decided to indulge in a little 'extreme running'. Not extreme by virtue of the speed, distance or even terrain - more the incessant motorbikes, pushbikes, cyclos, dogs and children constantly in our path and trying their best to run us down!! It was a whole new way to experience Vietnam as we ran through the cobbled streets, the busy food market and along the river. The market posed another challenge entirely, as it is set up for tiny Asian people, which we are not, and we are both about a foot too tall to fit under the roof without constantly crouching!! The market vendors are incessant with their attempts to get us to visit their stalls and one fruit seller even tried to accost me with a conical hat as I ran past - obviously not fast enough! The rain had finally stopped though and it was humid and sticky - not the ideal climate for exercise!
The rest of the day was spent frantically running round the old town trying to remember where we had bought various items of clothing from, have fittings and modifications sorted, and desperately trying to resist the urge to have more clothes made!! Most of the clothes that we ordered were a success - I had one blazer made, not quite to my specifications, and with huge lime green buttons, lime green pockets and for some reason made long enough to reach my knees, it would be more fitting in a circus than as a serious item of clothing! Everything else, a couple of very shiny dresses excluded, were serious bargains, and generally we were pretty chuffed with our purchases!
Next stop was Nha Trang, on the sleeper bus. We packed up our now very many bags, unaware that we were to be transferred to the bus station by motorbike! It was an exciting journey, balanced atop my backback with another rucksack on my back, one on my front and various bags of clothes dangling from my person!!
The sleeper bus was far to bumpy for any sleeping to be going on, and the loud Asian soap operas that blared from the tv ALL NIGHT certainly didn't help matters.
We arrived in Nha Trang tired, but delighted to see bright sunshine, and settled straight in for some early morning sunbathing on the beach. Nha Trang is stunning, though a little like Surfers Paradise in Oz, with towering hotels and skyscrapers just a few metres back from the seafront. There are lots of small islands, just off the coastline, the whole setting is stunning. Unfortunately, I am taking doxycycline as an antimalarial - one of the side effects of which is to cause photosensitivity. I am now (still 5 days later!) lobster red, peeling, crusting and sore! Not fun!
We met Astrid, one of my school friends there, and then had a nice relaxing day. I went to the post office, to ship a rather large parcel of new clothes back to the UK so as not to end up with excess flight baggage, and on the way met a group of locals playing chinese chess who invited me to join them for coffee. I politely declined, but one of them jumped on his bike and followed me, calling 'you from England? Lovely Jubbly - I'm Eddie, Eddie Murphy'!! I couldn't help but stop and laugh, and got chatting to him. He is part of an Easy rider group that does motorcycle tours across Vietnam - something we were interested in doing. I agreed to meet him later on with the others, and went on my way.



The touts and local people here have an uncanny way of knowing where you are at any one time, and Eddie and his gang appeared at a number of times and places throughout the day! Eventually we succumbed and joined them for an ice coffee (a local favourite - strong sweet, cold black coffee - with ice-surprisingly good!). We decided to go for it, despite some reservations...it seemed like a great way to see Vietnam, and I have heard so many good things about the motorcycle tours. In case we had any doubts about Eddie's trustworthiness - he gave me his passport as an insurance policy. Unusual but certainly instilled a certain amount of confidence. We spent the rest of the evening planning for our trip, strolling along the beach, eating roasted yams from a woman in the street, crabs from an old lady on the beach and taking in the sights, sounds and smells of Nha Trang.
The next stop - Easy riding!!

How long to Halong?!

Writing now from Hoi An (not Hanoi, but an anagram of it, about 500km south along the coast). We have spent the last two days cruising around Halong Bay which is renowned for its emerald waters, sandy coves and mysterious caves. Unfortunately, our experience was more one of cloudy skies, grey seas and tourists a plenty! We are slowly becoming accustomed to the dreary weather, and finding out that the weather has been glorious the day before we arrive anywhere!!
So we were transferred to Halong City by 3 1/2 hour bus journey, with some other members of our group. Our tour guide was a little over enthusiastic, and insisted on going round the bus all introducing ourselves, and prided himself on giving us all little facts about our respective nationalities. We arrived at the harbour to find hundreds upon hundreds of pirates of the carribean style 'junk' boats. We were quickly rounded up by our tour guide, and taken to our junk, the Dragon cruiser. The rooms were lovely - looking right out onto the sea - and probably the most luxurious room we've stayed in yet! We then introduced ourselves to the group properly; we were with 4 very antisocial Japanese, 3 French exchange students, a Portuguese couple, an Israeli couple, 2 Australian women, and Christian; a Swiss boy, with, in his words, only tourist English, and somewhat lacking social boundaries!!
We all then set out to visit some of the caves which Halong bay is famed for. We took a small steamer boat to shore, and were promptly joined by about a thousand other (mainly Japanese) tourists.
The caves were nothing to write home about (though I seem to be doing so!), and although the stalactites were fairly impressive, they were somewhat ruined by the ropes, paths and fluorescent uplighting for the many tourists' benefit. Next stop was kayaking. It was fun rowing around the caves and small islands, but the sea was filthy, it was raining, and the novelty quickly wore off.

An hour later, we returned to not so dry land, to watch our guide and crew catch our dinner from the fish farm pens located around the kayaking area.
Later, after a hot (!) shower and a delicious Vietnamese seafood dinner we set about on the evening's entertainment. We had karaoke scheduled, but none of us were really in the mood so we played an amusing game called 'the wolf' all night, which was a great way to get to know each other a lot better, and in the case of Christian, a little too well!
The next day, we had what had seemed at the time of booking to be a fairly full schedule. The day started with an early morning tour of the pearl farm - where they implant a small piece of mother of pearl and a small white shell ball into an oyster, and then grow them for 18 months until a pearl is born!
As Ori, our Israeli traveller, put it, they stick a white ball into an Oyster, wait a year and a half and then get out....a white ball!! However, it seemed this was the end of our packed itinerary - after breakfast, some of our group went their separate ways, to spend a night on the island. Unfortunately, our guide seemed to disappear onto a different boat with them, and a small group of us were left on our boat with no guide, and apparently no English speaking crew at all, waiting for our food decoration lesson.
After a few hours of cruising around in the mist, we suddenly realised that we were back at the harbour. Expecting to learn how to turn fruit and vegetables into decorative garnishes, we tried to question one of the crew about it.
A lot of confusion, head shaking and the usual hissing later, our guide phoned to tell us that they had run out of cucumbers so we were just going straight home. We weren't very impressed with this excuse, but then a very angry chef appeared from the kitchen with a face like thunder, a set of knives and a tray holding half a carrot and a tomato which he slammed down on the table. He then proceeded to cut and slice the living daylights out of the vegetables, 'tsking' all the while, to create some vaguely flowerlike garnishes. It was hilarious just how angry he was, although the number of sharp knives he had was a little unnerving! We then realised that the Japanese group had taken the only steamer boat to shore, without us! Eventually the boat came back for us, and we set off on our long journey back to Hanoi. From there we took a flight down to Hoi An where we are now relaxing before a long day of shopping tomorrow!

Mud, sweat and happy water!!

So we are now back in Hanoi after a busy few days with the hill tribes in Sapa. We prebooked our tour, but when we went back to pay, realised that it was only for a 5km trek - we figured that we are decidedly more hardcore than that, so changed it to an 'intermediate trek' - without the luxury of a support car in case we get too tired(!!) We arrived at the travel agent in Hanoi in the evening, to discover that actually the intermediate tour involves staying at a homestay in the village, and so we needed to trek with all our luggage - we hadn't realised this, so had packed all our big backpacks up for the trip - a panicked repack later and we were ready to go! We had a cabin on the sleeper train on the 'Pumpkin express' carriage - which excited Caz quite a lot, as she thought it might take us to Hogwarts!
We were taken onto the train by a guide, and got settled in our twin bunk bed cabin for the night. A few minutes later, we heard a banging and shouting at our door. Despite trying to lock the door, it was promptly flung open by a very stern looking Vietnamese train guard. She proceeded to pick up our luggage, and physically throw us out of the carriage. We protested, and tried to show her our tickets, but she ignored us, and then pushed us off the train, onto the dark, wet platform, throwing our luggage behind us, with some hissing and angry vietnamese gestures to boot. We tried to get back onto the train (to see our 'friends' - other people from the tour group that we'd just met!) but she slammed the door in our face with a 'tsk'. We had no idea what was going on, but eventually managed to figure out that our oh so helpful tour guide had put us on the wrong train, on the wrong platform. There was no sign of any English speaking guides, so we traipsed around showing our ticket to several non English speaking train guards, who kept pointing, so we followed the directions and eventually arrived at a different train.
We finally got settled, and bought ourselves some consolatory Oreos (they love Oreos here - they even seemed to be the most popular offering to the gods in the temples of Hanoi!!) We were then joined by our cabin mates for the night - an English couple. They initially seemed quite pleasant, although she was a little odd, and conversation didn't flow quite as we hoped, and so we opted for an early night. Unfortunately, our loved up cabin mates had not seen each other for 6 weeks, and decided to climb into one of the top bunks together. I have no idea what they were up to, but there was a lot of banging and they seemed to feel the need to smoke regularly throughout the night!!
After a sleepless night, we arrived in the hilltown of Lao Cai, and were taken by bus up the windy roads to Sapa. It was raining very heavily, and we realised that we were wholly unprepared for such conditions. After a quick breakfast, we set about trying to buy waterproof trousers from the many trekking shops in Sapa. We were unsuccessful, so opted for the long poncho/cape option - in red and green - we looked quite the part! We set off on our 'intermediate' trek with our new group consisting of two Dutch, one Swiss, a French and German. A very European troop. The trek started off fairly well along the roads - we were accompanied by a large group of H'mong tribal women in traditional dress and headbands carrying various goods to sell to tourists in the villages.
The tracks became steeper and muddier but still manageable - however we were helped along by the tribespeople. My handholder was a 7 year old girl, and Marrten, the 6'6" Dutch man, was helped down by a very elderly 3 foot tribal elder! It was a sight to behold!
We trekked through the tiered paddy fields, past buffalo, through (yes, through!) rivers, and met many tribespeople along the way. It was good fun, and after a lunch of banana sandwiches, and a bit more trekking, we arrived at our homestay. Now, unless the tribal people of Vietnam live in large lodges, with pool tables, hot showers, french fries and TV, I'm thinking this was not a genuine homestay! But a very welcome hot shower nonetheless!Caz and I decided that we'd not had enough exercise for the day, so went for quick hill run, past barking rabid dogs and children who kicked at us. So far, we are not finding the Vietnamese the friendliest of people - what with the kicking children, angry train guards and many more examples to come!
It was still fairly early in the day, so we decided to kill a bit of time with some pool - there was either something wrong with the table, the cue or the balls (most certainly not the players!!) but the first game lasted 2 hours (honestly!!) with every nearly potted ball veering away from the pocket!
Dinner was a lovely Vietnamese meal of 'pho', a traditional beef and noodle soup, various stir fries and the obligatory rice, complete with chips - an unusual combination that we are finding fairly common place here. It was freezing cold up in the hills, still raining and the wind was picking up but the turning point of the evening had to be when a couple of the villagers appeared with 2 large bottles of 'happy water', the local liqueur. It's pretty strong stuff, but warms you up fast - 8 bottles later, with various European and Asian toasts, we were warm, and, as it says in the name, very happy! Much chat, friendly European banter and attempted card games ensued and we all went to bed warm and happy to listen to the torrential rainfall, all night.

Th next morning it turned out that we had requested a delayed start and a shorter trek than planned! Given the immense amount of water that had added to the mud overnight, this would probably have been sensible, but we decided to stick to our guns and do the longer trek.
We put our wet and muddy clothes back on and set out, this time through a farm yard and out onto the hill slopes. Then we hit the mud slide. I can't even begin to describe the amount of mud and water that we were attempting to trek through, up extremely steep and treacherous slopes. There was frequently a sheer drop to one or both sides of us, and we were sliding over wet clay with nothing to grip onto. Needless to say, the tribespeople were there to help again - this time, my lady was in fact an adult, however, she had a 8 month old baby strapped to her back!! I have genuinely never been so terrified for someone else's life!! Half a foot wrong and all three of us would have been plummeting to our deaths! Luckily, the tribespeople have very sure footing, and they pointed out every safe foot placing, and when our feet slid, they stopped us sliding with bamboo sticks and their own feet. Nevertheless we slipped and slid most of the way.
The views at the top of the trek were well worth it though - there were waterfalls all around us, and the tiered rice paddies make for a stunning backdrop.


A few hours later, we sat down to a well deserved lunch of....well, we are not entirely sure. It was a noodle soup similar to pho, but the 'beef' didn't look or taste like beef. Given their love for 'Thit cho' (dog), in this part of the world (and I don't mean they love their pets!) we were more than a little concerned!
The short trek up to the road to get our bus back to Sapa was arguably the most interesting of the lot.
The heavy rainfall overnight had caused a huge mudslide, and the main road in and out of the villages had been blocked. The locals had dug most of the cars and bikes out, but a thick, deep, flowing river of mud was left. We struggled along, clinging on to electricity cables for support, it felt like we were trying to escape a natural disaster zone. We were all covered from head to toe in mud, wet, cold and aching from correcting out slips all day!
We eventually made it onto the bus and back to Sapa for a icy cold shower - just what we needed, and a cup of tea!
The return night train was much less eventful, and we travelled with an English/Chinese couple who made it much more pleasant experience than our previous journey. Now back in Hanoi, about to set off on our Halong Bay trip - haven't got high hopes for the weather, but it surely has to be better than the rain and mud in Sapa!!