Vietnam
Like I said before I am going to make my life nice and easy and post the 2 emails that I sent whilst i was in vietnam. They will give you a pretty good idea of what I did whilst I was there.
Email 1
Hello all!
Well I have finally arrived in Vietnam and have been here a couple of days now. I am slowly picking up a few words in order to be able to speak with the locals in their own language, always appreciated, usually creates a laugh at my awful accent!
The journey here was a long one which involved 3 planes, the first to Abu Dhabi (arab emirates),the second to Bangkok(thailand) and the third to Hanoi(vietnam. We spent around 24 hours travelling, fun!
The stopover in bangkok was nice, a good opportunity to stretch our legs and practise our mostly forgotten thai. We were there for 5 hours, so we decided to have a foot massage. it was lovely!
Our first day in vietnam was spent relaxing, and catching up on sleep. There was a nice pool at the hotel with a retractable roof, and we spent most of the day lying on chairs beside it reading, sleeping and occasionally swimming. We ventured out onto the streets of hanoi later on in order to buy some water. Its really dangerous to be a pedestrain in this country because there are no traffic lights, pedestrian crossings are ignored and mopeds speed around everywhere. Its real havoc! They dont even stick to the correct side of the road most of the time!
Yesterday evening we boarded the sleeper train for Lao Chai. It was certainly a bumpy ride! It was really hard to sleep because the train kept stopping and starting abruptly and like I said before it was really bumpy. I got a couple of hours sleep though, and then watched the countryside go by. Vietnamese farmers were already in their paddy fields at 5.30. The scenary was beautiful, I didn't expect vietnam to be so green, but there is greenery everywhere, probably due to the abundance of water thanks to the large rivers that flow through the country.
We arrived in Lao Chai at 7.00, an hour late, and had breakfast. We then drove to Can Cau market which is in the mountains. There are lots of minority peoples living in the mountains, the ones from this particular region are called the flower H'mong people. They wear lovely dresses
made from lots of different peices of fabric (mostly red) and lots of velvet! I don't understand how they stand the heat because they wear so many different layers, and it is so hot! They were selling lots of bags, and diferent materials. Very pretty, and cheap!
This afternoon we drove to Sapa, passing very close to china on the way. We drove on one side of a river and china was on the other, literally a couple of metres away. In fact mums mobile thought that we were in china and it welcomed her to the country!
It really shows that vietnam is a communist country, the military have so much power here. There wee loads of poicemen in the airport, and today we got stopped in a road block. The policeman asked to see the drivers papers, and decided to keep them, saying that he would get them back when he returned. This of course left our driver without papers. We continued on to the market, and on the way back we were stopped by another set of policemen asking the same thing. Of course he didn't have his papers as they had been confiscated. he therefore had to pay a bribe of 100000 dong (3 pounds fifty) it doesn't sound much I know, but in vietnam you can do a lot with that amount of money.
Tomorrow we are going to visit the silver waterfall and then going on a walk to visit Cat Cat village. We will also go and see Sapa market.
Email 2:
Well I left you all a while ago now in Sapa, in the mountains. I will try and remember all the interesting things that happened since then! (though it may be difficult!)
Well in sapa we went to Cat Cat village which is the home of the black H'mong people, a different minority group from the mountains. They wear clothes dyed dark blue with leaves from the indigo plant. Of course it means that lots of women wonder around with blue arms because they have been dying material! We had a lovely walk to go down to the village through paddy fields, and then we visited some of the houses in the village. Their houses are just one massive room with some partitions made of material. The biggest area is always reserved for the altar that they use to worship their ancestors. They also have little bits of paper hanging from their doors to keep wandering spirits out of their homes. The H'mong have some lovely customs such as men kidnapping the woman he wishes to marry and putting her in a room in his house. he keeps her for 3 days during which time she only eats something if she agrees to the marriage. Its quite hard on the woman if she doesnt like her suitor! 3 days of fasting!
Later that day we went to a waterfall which was very pretty. The most interesting thing however were the hoards of men lining up to take photos of me! I was very confused and didnt know what was happening! I still dont for that matter. Mum did nothing to help me at all, in fact she quite willingly started taking photos of them with me for them!
The next day we went to visit the red Zao people in their village. On the way there, guess who we should bump into but................. yes you got it the group of vietnamese men who had taken photos of me the day before! I hid!!!!
The guide book says that this ethnic group is a shy and retiring one, however upon arrival we were surrounded by 7 ladies trying to sell us their wares. We were followed and even encircled by them at times during our 'relaxing' walk through paddy fields! We ended buying some of their goods in order to get rid of them!
We took the sleeper train back to Hanoi (another bumpy ride accompanied this time by a dutch man and thai lady) We had the day off, so we did what you do in vietnam, shop! The next day we visited the city. Everything is very militarised, when we went to visit Ho Chi Minhs mauselium, we were made to walk in lines, 2 by 2 and were not allowed to talk. There were guards stationed at every corner of the room. Ho Chi Minh himself looked pretty good for his age! (he has been dead 20ish years and it looked like it had been a day) They spend 2 months a year on his appearance, which helps I suppose! Mum and i both came out under the impression that he was made of wax, which I am still inclined to beleive although the guide was adamant
that he isn't! The prison was our next stop, the 'Hanoi Hilton' as the americans called it. it was full of propaganda about how well they treated the american soldiers during the vietnam war, but then that is to be expected I suppose, the propaganda I mean.
We had a nice relaxing day on the thursday on a boat in Halong Bay. I was a little disapointed when i found out that it was just me, my mum, the guide and the crew on board and that there weren't any other people joining us. I was hoping to talk to some other people, but in the end it was fine. We had a lovely time kayaking around the islands and swimming in the jade coloured
sea (whilst avoiding the numerous jellyfish of course!). Our guide got stung several times, and for once i didn't! A miracle! I tend to get stung by anything that moves.
Back in hanoi we had our most interesting meal of the trip. We started off with 3 different types of spring roll, one resembling a cornish pasty, another a round doughball and the last a spring roll. Feeling full we moved on wanting to try a dessert called che. We approached a lady sitting in the street selling something that looked like what we were looking for. We asked for che, at which she looked slightly confused. In the end we jut pointed at someone elses dish and got what they were eating. Upon tasting the thick white liquid we discovered to our amusement that it was in fact rice gruel with fried bread on top. it was, erm, interesting! We ate a bit and managed to discard the rest! we presently moved on and came accross a stall selling bamboo juice (they pass a bamboo shoot through a pressing machine thing and put the juice in a plastic bag with a straw.) which was lovely. We were wandering along enjoying our juice when we found a sign with che written on it, so we tried it! They give you a glass and then you get a spoon and fill the glass up with all kinds of weird and wonderful looking things. I dont know what half of them were! It tasted a little strange, a bit of a mish mash of flavours, and textures. It was not very sweet because the vietnamese dont really have a sweet tooth and dont like cakes.
The following 2 nights were spent in a stilthouse, sharing a house with local people. Well that is, us sleeping on their living room floor, under mosquito nets! There wasn't much to do in Mai Chau so we tryed to find an internet cafe, and we managed to find one but unfortunatly the power was down for the 2 days that we stayed there so it wasn't open! We walked up and down the only street in the village 5 times looking for somewhere to eat. The locals must have thought us pretty strange because we are not exactly inconspicuous! We ended up having a soup in the pitch dark somewhere.
The next day was pouring with rain and we had been supposed to go on a long 2 hour walk around the countryside with our guide. However, the guide announced that the walk was off due to the weather. Seeing as there was nothing better to do, we decided to go on the walk without him! At this point he decided it might be best to accompany us. It was certainly a muddy walk, so I decided to do the local thing, and took my shoes off (which weighed a ton anyway thanks to the kilos of mud attached to them). It was a lot more fun splurching through the mud after that!
We took our last train in Hanoi and said goodbye to our guide not that we were all that sad to see him go, as he wasn't a brilliant guide. During the train journey we were kept amused by 2 vietnamese business men who fortunately were getting off at the same stop as us, which mum was very pleased about because she had been so worried about missing our station. +There was no chance of us missing the station however, because our travel companions woke up at 5.30am and started making noise which woke us up too! Then at 6am some propaganda music started playing through the loudspeakers. We only arrived in Dong Ha at 7.15!
We met our new guide Anh Co who was a lot nicer than Dinh (previous guide). We went to visit the Vinh Hoc tunnels which are tunnels that the vietnamese built during the war in order to shelter from american bombing. The deepest is at 23m. The whole community stayed in the and the had all kinds of facilities ranging from a maternity room to a meeting room (which is supposed to take 60 ppl, but could prob only take 15!). From there was drove to Hue, a town in the centre of vietnam which was briefly their capital city. We visited lots of pagodas and a citadel and tombs. It all sort of rolls into one at this point and every tourist site looks like the last one.
From Hue we went to Hoi An which is the silk and tailoring centre of vietnam. Of course we had to have some clothes made, it was part of the experience! hehe. Here we stayed in a lovely resort hotel with a swimming pool! A real luxury!
We cycled round the city with the guide, which was certainly interesting. It was scary at times as there dont seem to be any traffic rules at all and traffic lights are yet to be invented in vietnam! We even cycled to the beach and spent an hour or so there, though it wasn't very sunny.
Next stop was Nha Trang,and a new guide, a seaside resort place which looked very much like any seaside resort in the world. It was funny because it didnt feel like vietnam. We had a boat day trip which was really nice because we had glorious weather,we were with other people and there was lots of swimming! The next day we had free so we went to a small waterpark. It was fun despite the fact that the average age must have been 11 excluding mum!
From here we headed into the mountains to Da lat which was a freezing place! The temp was around 15-20 degrees centigrade. The locals wore woolly hats and thick winter coats! We had a nice horse and carriage ride around the town and went on a pedalo which hardly moved! Its a town known for its vegetables and flowers, and we saw plenty of both. We went to a beautiful pagoda which was still under construction. To make the mosaic walls, they use bowls and beer bottle by the hundreds and break them. I dont think that the workers get to drink the beer though!
This morning we started our long journey to Ho Chi Minh (saigon) and stopped off on the way at Dambri fall. It is a big waterfall with a sheer drop of 50m or so. We walked along the bridge i front of it and got completly soaked, we could hardly see where we were going there was so much mist and downpour from the fall! We arrived here a couple of hours ago and are getting settled into the city. Still 5 days in vietnam then 5 in bangkok and then we will be heading back.
lots of love
Sophie xxx
Thats all the emails that I sent. We spent a couple of days in Ho Chi Minh with Jason our new guide, and then went into the Mekong delta. We returned to HCMC for a couple more days and then flew to Bangkok. We spent 5 days there which was quite strange. It was really busy and really built up and i felt so out of place after having stayed in villages and small towns in vietnam. Even the big cities in vietnam don't feel all that hectic because they aren't all that developed yet.
But bangkok was nice all the same. We went swimming in the pool, visited the floating markets and the Grand Palace and did lots of shopping in MBK. As a result my sister is now the proud owner of a new mobile phone.
I think that the above is a very complete account of my time abroad in vietnam and thailand and I heartily congratulate anyone who has reached this point of the page! If there are spelling mistakes then I am very sorry, but I was unable to use spell check due to the fact that it will think that my words are spanish. Ohhh the difficulties of being abroad!
¡Que os lo paseis bien!
¡Hasta Luego!
Sophie xxx
Email 1
Hello all!
Well I have finally arrived in Vietnam and have been here a couple of days now. I am slowly picking up a few words in order to be able to speak with the locals in their own language, always appreciated, usually creates a laugh at my awful accent!
The journey here was a long one which involved 3 planes, the first to Abu Dhabi (arab emirates),the second to Bangkok(thailand) and the third to Hanoi(vietnam. We spent around 24 hours travelling, fun!
The stopover in bangkok was nice, a good opportunity to stretch our legs and practise our mostly forgotten thai. We were there for 5 hours, so we decided to have a foot massage. it was lovely!
Our first day in vietnam was spent relaxing, and catching up on sleep. There was a nice pool at the hotel with a retractable roof, and we spent most of the day lying on chairs beside it reading, sleeping and occasionally swimming. We ventured out onto the streets of hanoi later on in order to buy some water. Its really dangerous to be a pedestrain in this country because there are no traffic lights, pedestrian crossings are ignored and mopeds speed around everywhere. Its real havoc! They dont even stick to the correct side of the road most of the time!
Yesterday evening we boarded the sleeper train for Lao Chai. It was certainly a bumpy ride! It was really hard to sleep because the train kept stopping and starting abruptly and like I said before it was really bumpy. I got a couple of hours sleep though, and then watched the countryside go by. Vietnamese farmers were already in their paddy fields at 5.30. The scenary was beautiful, I didn't expect vietnam to be so green, but there is greenery everywhere, probably due to the abundance of water thanks to the large rivers that flow through the country.
We arrived in Lao Chai at 7.00, an hour late, and had breakfast. We then drove to Can Cau market which is in the mountains. There are lots of minority peoples living in the mountains, the ones from this particular region are called the flower H'mong people. They wear lovely dresses
made from lots of different peices of fabric (mostly red) and lots of velvet! I don't understand how they stand the heat because they wear so many different layers, and it is so hot! They were selling lots of bags, and diferent materials. Very pretty, and cheap!
This afternoon we drove to Sapa, passing very close to china on the way. We drove on one side of a river and china was on the other, literally a couple of metres away. In fact mums mobile thought that we were in china and it welcomed her to the country!
It really shows that vietnam is a communist country, the military have so much power here. There wee loads of poicemen in the airport, and today we got stopped in a road block. The policeman asked to see the drivers papers, and decided to keep them, saying that he would get them back when he returned. This of course left our driver without papers. We continued on to the market, and on the way back we were stopped by another set of policemen asking the same thing. Of course he didn't have his papers as they had been confiscated. he therefore had to pay a bribe of 100000 dong (3 pounds fifty) it doesn't sound much I know, but in vietnam you can do a lot with that amount of money.
Tomorrow we are going to visit the silver waterfall and then going on a walk to visit Cat Cat village. We will also go and see Sapa market.
Email 2:
Well I left you all a while ago now in Sapa, in the mountains. I will try and remember all the interesting things that happened since then! (though it may be difficult!)
Well in sapa we went to Cat Cat village which is the home of the black H'mong people, a different minority group from the mountains. They wear clothes dyed dark blue with leaves from the indigo plant. Of course it means that lots of women wonder around with blue arms because they have been dying material! We had a lovely walk to go down to the village through paddy fields, and then we visited some of the houses in the village. Their houses are just one massive room with some partitions made of material. The biggest area is always reserved for the altar that they use to worship their ancestors. They also have little bits of paper hanging from their doors to keep wandering spirits out of their homes. The H'mong have some lovely customs such as men kidnapping the woman he wishes to marry and putting her in a room in his house. he keeps her for 3 days during which time she only eats something if she agrees to the marriage. Its quite hard on the woman if she doesnt like her suitor! 3 days of fasting!
Later that day we went to a waterfall which was very pretty. The most interesting thing however were the hoards of men lining up to take photos of me! I was very confused and didnt know what was happening! I still dont for that matter. Mum did nothing to help me at all, in fact she quite willingly started taking photos of them with me for them!
The next day we went to visit the red Zao people in their village. On the way there, guess who we should bump into but................. yes you got it the group of vietnamese men who had taken photos of me the day before! I hid!!!!
The guide book says that this ethnic group is a shy and retiring one, however upon arrival we were surrounded by 7 ladies trying to sell us their wares. We were followed and even encircled by them at times during our 'relaxing' walk through paddy fields! We ended buying some of their goods in order to get rid of them!
We took the sleeper train back to Hanoi (another bumpy ride accompanied this time by a dutch man and thai lady) We had the day off, so we did what you do in vietnam, shop! The next day we visited the city. Everything is very militarised, when we went to visit Ho Chi Minhs mauselium, we were made to walk in lines, 2 by 2 and were not allowed to talk. There were guards stationed at every corner of the room. Ho Chi Minh himself looked pretty good for his age! (he has been dead 20ish years and it looked like it had been a day) They spend 2 months a year on his appearance, which helps I suppose! Mum and i both came out under the impression that he was made of wax, which I am still inclined to beleive although the guide was adamant
that he isn't! The prison was our next stop, the 'Hanoi Hilton' as the americans called it. it was full of propaganda about how well they treated the american soldiers during the vietnam war, but then that is to be expected I suppose, the propaganda I mean.
We had a nice relaxing day on the thursday on a boat in Halong Bay. I was a little disapointed when i found out that it was just me, my mum, the guide and the crew on board and that there weren't any other people joining us. I was hoping to talk to some other people, but in the end it was fine. We had a lovely time kayaking around the islands and swimming in the jade coloured
sea (whilst avoiding the numerous jellyfish of course!). Our guide got stung several times, and for once i didn't! A miracle! I tend to get stung by anything that moves.
Back in hanoi we had our most interesting meal of the trip. We started off with 3 different types of spring roll, one resembling a cornish pasty, another a round doughball and the last a spring roll. Feeling full we moved on wanting to try a dessert called che. We approached a lady sitting in the street selling something that looked like what we were looking for. We asked for che, at which she looked slightly confused. In the end we jut pointed at someone elses dish and got what they were eating. Upon tasting the thick white liquid we discovered to our amusement that it was in fact rice gruel with fried bread on top. it was, erm, interesting! We ate a bit and managed to discard the rest! we presently moved on and came accross a stall selling bamboo juice (they pass a bamboo shoot through a pressing machine thing and put the juice in a plastic bag with a straw.) which was lovely. We were wandering along enjoying our juice when we found a sign with che written on it, so we tried it! They give you a glass and then you get a spoon and fill the glass up with all kinds of weird and wonderful looking things. I dont know what half of them were! It tasted a little strange, a bit of a mish mash of flavours, and textures. It was not very sweet because the vietnamese dont really have a sweet tooth and dont like cakes.
The following 2 nights were spent in a stilthouse, sharing a house with local people. Well that is, us sleeping on their living room floor, under mosquito nets! There wasn't much to do in Mai Chau so we tryed to find an internet cafe, and we managed to find one but unfortunatly the power was down for the 2 days that we stayed there so it wasn't open! We walked up and down the only street in the village 5 times looking for somewhere to eat. The locals must have thought us pretty strange because we are not exactly inconspicuous! We ended up having a soup in the pitch dark somewhere.
The next day was pouring with rain and we had been supposed to go on a long 2 hour walk around the countryside with our guide. However, the guide announced that the walk was off due to the weather. Seeing as there was nothing better to do, we decided to go on the walk without him! At this point he decided it might be best to accompany us. It was certainly a muddy walk, so I decided to do the local thing, and took my shoes off (which weighed a ton anyway thanks to the kilos of mud attached to them). It was a lot more fun splurching through the mud after that!
We took our last train in Hanoi and said goodbye to our guide not that we were all that sad to see him go, as he wasn't a brilliant guide. During the train journey we were kept amused by 2 vietnamese business men who fortunately were getting off at the same stop as us, which mum was very pleased about because she had been so worried about missing our station. +There was no chance of us missing the station however, because our travel companions woke up at 5.30am and started making noise which woke us up too! Then at 6am some propaganda music started playing through the loudspeakers. We only arrived in Dong Ha at 7.15!
We met our new guide Anh Co who was a lot nicer than Dinh (previous guide). We went to visit the Vinh Hoc tunnels which are tunnels that the vietnamese built during the war in order to shelter from american bombing. The deepest is at 23m. The whole community stayed in the and the had all kinds of facilities ranging from a maternity room to a meeting room (which is supposed to take 60 ppl, but could prob only take 15!). From there was drove to Hue, a town in the centre of vietnam which was briefly their capital city. We visited lots of pagodas and a citadel and tombs. It all sort of rolls into one at this point and every tourist site looks like the last one.
From Hue we went to Hoi An which is the silk and tailoring centre of vietnam. Of course we had to have some clothes made, it was part of the experience! hehe. Here we stayed in a lovely resort hotel with a swimming pool! A real luxury!
We cycled round the city with the guide, which was certainly interesting. It was scary at times as there dont seem to be any traffic rules at all and traffic lights are yet to be invented in vietnam! We even cycled to the beach and spent an hour or so there, though it wasn't very sunny.
Next stop was Nha Trang,and a new guide, a seaside resort place which looked very much like any seaside resort in the world. It was funny because it didnt feel like vietnam. We had a boat day trip which was really nice because we had glorious weather,we were with other people and there was lots of swimming! The next day we had free so we went to a small waterpark. It was fun despite the fact that the average age must have been 11 excluding mum!
From here we headed into the mountains to Da lat which was a freezing place! The temp was around 15-20 degrees centigrade. The locals wore woolly hats and thick winter coats! We had a nice horse and carriage ride around the town and went on a pedalo which hardly moved! Its a town known for its vegetables and flowers, and we saw plenty of both. We went to a beautiful pagoda which was still under construction. To make the mosaic walls, they use bowls and beer bottle by the hundreds and break them. I dont think that the workers get to drink the beer though!
This morning we started our long journey to Ho Chi Minh (saigon) and stopped off on the way at Dambri fall. It is a big waterfall with a sheer drop of 50m or so. We walked along the bridge i front of it and got completly soaked, we could hardly see where we were going there was so much mist and downpour from the fall! We arrived here a couple of hours ago and are getting settled into the city. Still 5 days in vietnam then 5 in bangkok and then we will be heading back.
lots of love
Sophie xxx
Thats all the emails that I sent. We spent a couple of days in Ho Chi Minh with Jason our new guide, and then went into the Mekong delta. We returned to HCMC for a couple more days and then flew to Bangkok. We spent 5 days there which was quite strange. It was really busy and really built up and i felt so out of place after having stayed in villages and small towns in vietnam. Even the big cities in vietnam don't feel all that hectic because they aren't all that developed yet.
But bangkok was nice all the same. We went swimming in the pool, visited the floating markets and the Grand Palace and did lots of shopping in MBK. As a result my sister is now the proud owner of a new mobile phone.
I think that the above is a very complete account of my time abroad in vietnam and thailand and I heartily congratulate anyone who has reached this point of the page! If there are spelling mistakes then I am very sorry, but I was unable to use spell check due to the fact that it will think that my words are spanish. Ohhh the difficulties of being abroad!
¡Que os lo paseis bien!
¡Hasta Luego!
Sophie xxx
posted by sophie at
1:48 pm
|
1 comments
