South East Asia

After my standard first-day of aimless wondering, I knew I'd be comfortable staying put here for the week running up to Christmas. Regardless of the activities available - usually the main determinant of how long I lay my hat in a town, Hoi An is so damn quaint I knew I could wile away any time I had not dedicated to actually doing something quite easily, and if I really got bored, there was a decent beach a short bike ride away to boot.

Hoi An town is so small you could walk across it in about ten minutes, but it's full of small lanes and quiet roads packed with character. And the food... my god. I didn't have a dud meal the entire week, in fact every single meal beat the hell out of anything else I'd eaten in Vietnam (whilst undercutting the price). It even has a handful of its own specialities unique to the town, all of which were worth eating everyday. 'White Rose' is a sort of ravioli looking thing made of rice-noodle with a minced piece of pork or shrimp, garnished with crispy onion with a side of sweet chili dip to dunk it in. Sometimes I had it as a starter for lunch and dinner.

The first day I sought out the Sleepy Gecko bar, recommended on Travel Fish for it's bike tours around one of the islands.

Arriving in Danang I found myself as the only person getting off the bus. As it was getting dark I headed to the best recommended and closest GH in the guidebook. Oh dear, a $10 room was the cheapest and batting my eyelids with a smile didn't drop it a cent, and a smile was definitely out of the picture, so I conceded anddumped my stuff in my river-side, windowless room before heading out for a look. Danang is a building site. Part-way through a transformation into a luxury hotel wonderland, at the moment it's just wet concrete and rubble. I wish I'd stayed on the bus. Heading out to the recommended eatery and it's adjacent (and only) recommended drinking spot, I was the only one in the restaurant the entire time, and the bar downstairs had a few old ex-pats in it. It occurs to me that Lonely Planet don't care much for Danang.
The next day I decided I might as well do the sights, and having not booked a tour I walked down to the Cham Museum, which the LP reckons is worth an excursion from Hoi An for alone, it was okay.

At this point I was ready to book my early morning bus for Hoi An but decided that the Marble Mountain might still be on the cards if I can get there on the cheap, and so walked all the way back to my new GH - $3 a night! - to ask the friendly guy if he thinks it's still doable at two o'clock in the afternoon, and how, exactly. He sent me off to the bus-stop, but after some waiting and finding the bus that DIDN'T go there, I succumbed to one of the moped taxi's who offered a return trip for an even pound. And am I glad I did. Marble Mountain, was, AWESOME! I took two hours over it when it's penned as a one-hour trip. The sun was shining which made all the difference and I had the place practically to myself. The walk up and down consists of 3 or 4 beautiful mountain-side pagodas, and mini-mountain overlooks it's other two smaller mountains sitting on the otherwise completely flat terrain. There were also about 3 caves which tended to open out into small casms housing some cool rock buddha images. Again, I was basically the only person in these at the time, and now not being in a tour-group I took plenty of time in them, just taking in the peaceful quiet under the spiritual icons.

The best bit though, was when just about to leave the seemingly small crap cave housing a tacky buddha, I spotted a crack in the rear-wall through the dark. I found some camouflaged steps and with some climbing, squeezed through the sheered rock to find a small second casm, lit from a small hole in the ceiling and one in the rear wall above a rockpile. About to leave again, I took another look and realised that with a real squeeze, the rock pile just about let you up through the rear hole! This then let out and up to the top of the mountain with panoramic views of the other mountains, the city, the beach and the sea. Amazin.

I got my moped taxi to drop me off at the beach out of town, as there was one last thing I had to do if I was leaving tomorrow. I'd heard Danang had the best seafood in town, and I intended to get it. After enjoying some childish excitement about liking being beside the seaside (I do) with it being the first one I have got to on my travels, I walked up the strip. There were a few posh looking restaurants, and that's it. I managed to ask the right local though, as he turned out to be from America, and pointed me towards what I was looking for, a local restaurant with the best freshest seafood for cheap. He wrote down the name of his preferred place and even wrote underneath in Vietnamese "I have recommended this English guy this place so please don't overcharge him, charge normal price as for Vietnamese people". I had to take his word for it. It gave the guys a good laugh at the restaurant though, whatever good it did. They spoke no English (well I did want a local place) and I was the only falang in the joint, with lots of surprised looks and giggles at my ignorant restaurant ways. The menu wasn't in English, but was picture-orientated. It consisted of about 8 buckets of water filled with different sea creatures. I pointed to a mini-lobster and a big crab and they whisked them into a basket, and pointed and them, and then at a pot of water. Yes please! Trying to communicate how it would be served - with rice or anything - proved fruitless, (and vegetable-less as it turned out). Desperately pointing to a bowl of salad-type stuff to get us off the mark, she picked up a piece of tomato from it and pointed at my bowl of animal, so guess she got the message. However, when it arrived, apart from coming with a side of mayonnaise, salt, and ketchup, my meal lacked any other kind of preparation at all. The plate they put on my table consisted of the boiled crab lopped in two between the eyes, and the lobster. Not even a garnish. Riiiight... After a minute or so of looking like a chess-player deliberating their next move, I glanced behind me to see three of the waitresses eagerly waiting to see what this silly falang was going to do next. One waitress then arrived with a nut-cracker before returning to her perch to watch with the other girls. I started by making my home-style seafood sauce my mixing up the mayonnaise and ketchup (Which turned out to be chili sauce. Still good though), and went to town.

The lobster type thing was easy, it was like de-shelling the biggest prawn in the world. Fiddly, it was not. The crab provided the most entertainment for all though, as I realised I had no idea which bit you could eat. Throughout the meal I also received a knife and fork, and then much to my amusement, a plate of tomato slices. but we got through it in the end as a team. It definitely was some damn good seafood, if only it had come slightly more prepared.

I went with Explorer tours for Halong bay. I'd have quite liked to take on the challenge of doing the bay independently, but I didn't think it would be as much fun on my own. The hassle of organisation and nervousness about if it is actually going to pan out is fun when there's someone to laugh about it with, but just hassle and nervousness if you're actually just by yourself.
Saying that, the Halong bay trips are notorious for not getting what you paid for and generally falling apart, and so with the idea that backpackers my age are cheapskates and that people get on better under shared adversity, I booked on the cheapest tour I could find, 28 dollars. Bring it on!
By my last morning at Ngoc Diep the family owners pretty much completely resented my presence, and conversation was short and direct. As I waited for collection, they managed to throw one last spanner in my works by retracting there agreement that I could keep my rucksack there, apparently there just wasn't going to be enough room for one more. As my tour agent was only a two minute stumble down the road and the thought of cutting my last tie to the place was quite appealing, I whisked my bag down the road without a fuss, but on return was told that my agent had been and gone, but I should wait out the front and he'll be back..
After 20 minutes and a couple of false hopes, Jules and Tom left with their tour and I tried to reconfirm with my guesthouse what the deal was, but Jim just gave me the brushoff saying he didn't know and the guy I'd spoken to had gone out, so just as I was about to leg it back to the tour agent when a guid approached me and after some umming and erring I was ushered over to a minibus where Tom and Jules were just as surprised to see me as I was them. Once I was confident that either this was actually my tour, or they couldn't now shake me off it, I relaxed - it was cool that I was now on T&Js tour after all, but it turned out they had paid $50 each for the same tour, so I felt smugly justified with my treatment of the GH.
Driving along I saw my daily accident - a 6 wheeler truch on its side across the divider, and being in the front seat saw our minibus gently rear-end a couple of mopeds who obviously weren't going fast enough. After eaves dropping on a couple of conversations, apart from TJ it seemed the rest of our minibus might be a bunch of kill-joys, but by sheer-luck they were all on the one day tour and only me and TJ were doing the two day, so we got sliced off that group when we got to the harbour and appended to a new one. This one was much better, with a couple of friendly canadian girls - Tiff and Sarah - and from then on slowly absorbed most of the rest of the tour group as the day went on.
Unfortunately we hadn't chosen good days for the tour - it was pretty damn foggy the whole time which took away a lot of the amazing beauty of the place, but despite this it was still a great tour.
The days activities were pretty fun, and following quite a decent lunch, we headed to Heavenly Cave - the first cock-up, we were supposed to be visiting the best one - Surprise Cave, but the no one really minded and the excuse on its own was worth the change. An unexpected bonus thrown in was being allowed to drive the boat and airhorn the other boats as we went past! Oversteer was a slight problem though what with the 20 second delay from turning the wheel to the boat changing direction. Me, Cat and Jenny had great fun doing that for an hour, then it was time for some kayaking. Happily this turned out to be not just around the boat like I'd heard it had been for some people, but through a cove and into a lagoon.
We finished out with a decent dinner, dropped anchor in the middle of a secluded spot in the bay, and had some beers, music and banter on the top deck which went on into the early hours. This bizarrely included a 3am stealthy cooking of some eggs by the Aussie girls in the crew kitchen which was quite funny. About the most rebellious thing we could think of at the time!
The next day we had a longish trip back to the harbour and passed the time with some card tricks and english lessons, and somehow a few of us scored an absolutely lush meal in a swanky restaurant when our group was specifically separated before lunch and to take separate buses back. It was really quite strange, we even had an extra guy for lunch who'd been cut off from his whole group!
We passed the long-drive back with napping and charades, and I decided to return to the devils lair and get a room with the guys at Ngoc Diep, who were screwed by them yet again by not having reserved their room. Jules' scowl got a 3 person $15 room down to $10 though, so we had a pretty decent deal. That night we went out with the canadians who'd found a cheap and tasty no-name vietnamese restaurant, and then off to Finnigans to watch the footballs.

The flight to Hanoi was short and sweet, which was a good job given the swarm of mosquitos patrolling the aisle ready to pick off the weak stragglers. In the 50 minute flight I barely had time to scoff the free ham sandwich before we were landing. The LZ was hot, and there was charlie everywhere.. but they were all quite smiley and let me through immigration no problem, so all was going good.
Although after getting out some cash (twice - bad maths meant the first time I walked away with 10 pounds of dong (haha)), sum-yung-guy hassled me for a taxi with a big smile - you go Hanoi!? my friend! - when I could already see the airport minibus, upon telling him this, he made a last ditch effort with "aah minibus.. one hour!". What a joker. Barely off the plane and people are blatantly lying to get their hands on my dong.
Ali G jokes aside, the minibus was a meer two bucks and the foreigners headed into town. Motorbikes.. fousands of em! The infamous Vietnam traffic is truly a sight to behold. Crossroads see four roads of continuing traffic seamlessly passing through each other, and whilst horns blair, they have the opposite meaning over here. Whereas in England, it's used as a futile defensive way to point out "I'm angry, as you have just performed a piece of bad driving an should stop this now, and you should be aware of this and realise I'm telling everyone else around us of it, and so you should be super embarrassed about it". In Vietnam, its an offensive pre-warning that points out, "I'm about to perform a piece of bad driving, and you should be aware of this, as I'm not going to give way, and if you dont take action to avoid me, I'm probably going to hit you." The undertone of this is that the sound of the horn is explaining just how much bigger the horn-blower is than the horn-blow-ee, and everyone in Vietnam knows the pecking order here, and ignore it to their peril.

At the airline offices some guy wearing a suspiciously flambuoyant garb got in and introduced himself to us as the flight attendant, which we didn't quite know how to take, and after all the hoo-har about finding out where we wanted to go, he dropped us all off at his choice of hotel anyway. But the foreigners revolted, scampering in all directions despite the hotel staff lying in wait and actually grabbing us by our arms and trying to pull us towards it, "you LOOOOK!".

I ended up at a plush hotel for 8 dorrar and headed out to explore. Daunting. Hanoi is not an easy place to navigate, with a road map that looks like a game of pickup-sticks, and with every shop having a number of random, irrelevant signs above them, trying to find somewhere specific is a slow process. Being a solo wanderer late at night I got a fair amount of hassle from bikers crusing beside me offering me his list of services - which always come in the same order -"motobike? marijuana? opium? lady boom-boom?"

Lost after two turns, I eventually found the central lake of the old quarter (the place to be), and did a lap. Vietnamese girls take note, if a guy takes you to the lake at night, he's looking for one thing. I saw 9 couples around the lake macking away on the lake-side benches. I also saw my first accident (minor).
The next day I took a stroll all round trying to adjust to the pace of the place, and walked down to the Temple of Literature which was so so, and booked a tour to the Perfume Pagoda for the following day. Reckon I'll do Halong bay the following days.