Ha Long Bay and Sapa, Northern Vietnam

Ha Long Bay is absolutely gorgeous. From the boats sundeck the view is amazing and every time you turn around there is another picture perfect scene. The tour we booked was a little weird and a little pricey, but we had a really good time just the same and met lots of really nice tourists. Spent quite a bit of time with a really cute French family (4 daughters!) who are travelling around the world in a year. The guys impressed them with there backflips off the sundeck and I settled for jumping off one of the balconies with them (I did jump off the sundeck once...just to prove to myself I could, but had no interest in doing it again lol). It was an amazing experience swimming around the boat, with all the stars out and these little girls squealing as they jumped together. It was adorable.

The first day we cruised around the islands and stopped at a really commercial looking cave. Neon lights all over. Looked more like a night club than a natural wonder. Then had dinner and drinks on the boat before our night swim.
The next morning we got up at 6am to go kayaking around the bay. It was cloudy so the temperature was a little cooler and really lovely. Then the boat dropped us off on Cat Ba island and we took a bus to Cat Ba National park. Here our guide said he would wait in the bus and that there was only one trail so we would be fine. Turned out there were several trails and the path was covered in jagged rocks, which made walking it in flipflops rather interesting. No one informed us we would be hiking so none of us were dressed for it. The littlest of the French girls ended up doing it barefoot, while her mother struggled to keep up in a dress. We hit a couple of dead ends before finally getting on the right path to the summit. About 3/4 of the way there Rob smacked his head on an overhanging rock. I wasn't concern at first, but then noticed the blood running down his forehead. Luckily at the top we ran into a nurse/well equiped tourist who patched him up for the walk down using gauze, disinfectant and the only clean article of clothing I had in my pack - my underwear. He looked rather odd, but made it down okay. Once we hit the town our guide took him to a somewhat legitimate looking doctor and got set up with 3 stitches. So much for an easy little trek!

We spent that night on Cat Ba island. The hotel and the little town aren't very exciting, but we strolled down to the beach for some drinks and had a great night.
All in all a good tour.

Sapa is a tiny little town in Northern Vietnam. It's about 40 km from the border to China and nestled in the mountains so it is refreshingly cool. The view from the hotel window is amazing. The hills are covered in rice paddies and a dozen different shades of green. The weather this time of year isn't stellar, but when the fog clears and the rain stops this place is truly amazing.
I opted out of the trek the others decided to do and spent the day trekking by myself. The walk down into the valley to see the Cat Cat village is pretty easy and provides great views of the hills. The actual village itself consists mostly of little shops selling hand made goods so that was a little disappointing, but I wasn't very surprised. You can't walk down the street in Sapa without having someone from a minority group try to sell you something, but they are really friendly and leave you alone pretty quickly if you say no thank you. I like Sapa very much. I don't think there is a better place to sit back, drink some tea and enjoy the view.

Hoi An and Hanoi, Vietnam

Didn't really do too much in Hoi An. Mostly just spent a lot of money on tailored clothing and lounged around the hotel's pool (a must in the middle of the day). Hoi an is a cute little town with a really old style throughout (apparently the government insists on it staying like this for the tourists...Has banned glass doors and anything else too modern looking).





Found an amazing place to eat, where I essentially had all my meals. It was called 'The Eating and Drinking Area', nice name lol, and consisted of a row of tables and a roof. Wasn't much to look at, but was dirt cheap and unbelieveably delicious.
My favourites have got to be:
- morning glory in garlic: kind of like spinach...but better
- wontons!: Amazing. Like nachochips with shrimp, mango and veggies on top.
- rice pancake: kind of like crepes with meat and cheese.
- Cao Lao: local speciality, tasty noodles with lettuce, prawn crackers and shrimp.
- pineapple shakes!

The custom made clothing business in Hoi An is booming and you can't walk 10 m without passing a tailor's shop or being approached by a random lady trying to lead you to her out of the way shop. I decided to order things from 2 different places. One was a random little market area with mountains of fabrics and tons of women with sewing machines. From there I ordered a dress and a blazer and put down a $20 deposit on the clothing. After two fittings it became obvious that the women had no idea how to tailor clothing. The dress looked like a bag and the blazer made me look like a football player. My attempts at showing them the picture of the dress and the detailing that changes it from a bag into a nice dressed only ended in them saying 'you not skinny like that model!'. Ok well that was obvious, but didn't change the fact that they had no clue what they were doing. Long story short I ended up walking away from my $20. Lesson learned. The 2nd place I went to, Kimmy Tailor, was a lot more expensive, but much more reputable and organized. From there I ordered a suit, 2 skirts, 2 dresses and 4 dress shirts. I was a little concerned when I put on the 1st dress and it wasn't at all what a wanted, but was immediately reassured when I exited the dressing room and the tailor immediately came at me with a bar of soap (what they use to sketch out the changes) and started changing things. by the third fitting everything looked great!


Took the night bus to Hanoi. Met an Aussie couple on board that broke out a bottle of wine and were just generally hilarious and awesome. Made the bus trip all the more pleasant. Loving the night buses.

Hanoi day 1: checked into Hanoi backpackers, which is 'the place to stay'. It's pretty nice, clean rooms with nice beds and a nice breakfast, but nothing over the top amazing about it.

We were pretty tired from the night bus so we opted to wander around the lake (nice little spot) and then went for massages at the Lien Bien hotel. Turned into a rather weird experience. Went with three guys, but, not surprisingly, ended up by myself. I quickly understood why. I was led into a hallway with lockers and (no one spoke any English) so was motioned to strip....on the spot, in the hall where female staff are having their coffee breaks and hanging out. Random, but ok 'when in Vietnam' right. Next I got into a barrel full of hot water, while two Vietnamese guests looked on curiously. Pretty weird with the three of us sitting in our barrels with only our heads sticking out. Then I was told to get into a scalding hot bath full of brownish water. It was kind of like soaking in a giant tea cup for 15 minutes. Then the most normal part of this whole experience, the steam room, but even it had an added twist: our feet were soaking in buckets with bits of some kind of plant. Then I finally got to the massage portion. The massage itself was ok, but consisted of a lot more pressure point pressing then real deep muscle massaging. I definately prefer the massage I got in the Philippines and Malaysia, but this was a cool experience just the same....despite all the weirdness. Also, the Vietnamese use extremely hot towels from some of the massage, which was a cool modification.

Dalat and Nha trang, Vietnam

Loved Dalat too. Great scenery, rolling hills in all different shades of green. Dalat is also inthe mountains so it is blissfully cold! Purchased a North Face Raincoat and actually got to wear it with the fleece insert! So exciting after 3 months of intense heat. Signed up for a three day hike where we worked our way through fields of veggies, coffee plantations and forests, crossed several sketchy suspension bridges and saw a couple of really nice waterfalls. Had a great time with our guide, Tri, and enjoyed some seriously delicious meals (one consisted mainly of deer soaked in various delicious sauces). Back in Dalat I checked out the Crazy House, which is a hotel set up like an Alice in Wonderland set. Turned out to actually be pretty lame. Very cool ideas, but tiny with huge sections under constructions. Might be a very cool place to stay in a couple of years when it's more complete.







Nha Trang was my next stop. Nice beach town, but pretty pricey and since I spent so much time in Bali and Thailand I didn't really feel the need to stick around for too long. Met up with a German guy named Ingo and checked out a beach party. Started out being a really cool atmosphere, good music and an ice bar, but the party very quickly deteriorated to drunken musical chairs and limbo (participants were mostly 18 yr olds on package tours). Went diving the next day with Octopus Diving. Went pretty well. Best diving in Vietnam, but definately not in the same league as diving in Borneo or Thailand. Had a lovely chat with a Vietnamese guy from Saigon. He had just finoshed a Bio-chem Degree and was away from home for the first time on internship in Nha trang. He was very curious about Canada and I think just genuinely wanted to hear about my travels. Nice change from people trying to sell you stuff!

Ho Chi Minh City aka Saigon, Vietnam

I loved this city. The insane amount of motorcycles on the streets, the delicious and ubber cheap street food, the stacks and stacks of photocopied books and possibly the nicest locals yet. The city is also really easily navigated on foot and was the first big city that didn't have me frustrated to the max standing on a street corner breathing in intense amounts of exhaust and thinking "Why did I want to come to this city again!?!" (this is what happened in Manila and Jakarta). However, there is an intense amount of exhaust. All the locals drive around with face mask covering half there face, which left me thinking that maybe I should have one too. I'm also fairly certain that for most women the purpose of the mask is 1/2 to avoid breathing in the exhaust and 1/2 an attempt to stay as white as possible. Some of the women driving their motorcycles are wearing gloves that come up to their shirt sleeves, hats under their helmets, sunglasses and facemasks that come all the way up to meet their sunglasses. Very interesting look. The preference for being pale is also evident when you look around drugstores: ALL the products have labels that say whitening. Even the deodorant! Who really needs white armpits? SE Asians apparently.

I spent 5 nights in HCMC, but two full days were spent hibernating in my amazing aircon and fan room with duvet, fridge, bath and TV with 3 English channels including a movie channel! I was pretty exhausted from my diving in Thailand so staying in was way too hard to pass up. Also, I had no clean clothes...well no clean light clothes. None! So I also used that as my excuse to hibernate for 24 hours while I had my laundry done. Why didn't I go out in my slightly warmer clothing? Because HCMC was 39 degrees!!!!!!!!!!!!!! The heat in Southern Vietnam is INSANE!!!!!!!!!!! Once I got my shorts and tank tops back I didn't mind it so much. EVERYONE sweats profusely, even the locals, and I'm used to it by now. Also, it was quite entertaining to see the Westerners who have just arrived melt. Not nice, but 10 weeks ago that was me so I figure I can laugh now.
Sights in HCMC:
- War Remnants Museum: very very sad collection of pictures taken during the Vietnam war with the US. The explanations and captions are very helpful and provided tons of info on what happened, how many people were involved and what the costs were (human lives and monetary). Absolutely heartbreaking. Especially the sections dedicated to children exposed to Agent Orange.
- Reunification Palace: Huge let down. This is the Palace that housed various important people including Ho Chi Mihn. It's where international politicians and royalty are received and important meetings take place, but really...it's a big house/office building. From the outside the architecture looks really interesting and the lawn in immaculate. On the inside it has faded rugs, faded chairs, faded art. etc. etc. Nothing very exciting. The information provided by the free tour was great. Learned a lot about past rulers and wars, but there really isn't much to look at and it is stiffling with no aircon and only the occasional fan.
- Cholon/China town market: cool place to walk around and check out the local goods.
- Traditional water puppet show: Very cool! Set up with a water stage instead of wood. The musicians and singers were lined on both sides of the stage. They used a combination of instruments and voices to tell a story (in Vietnamese so I didn't really understand, but it didn't matter) while the puppets act out the action in the water. They also used lighting, fog and sparklers to created really cool scenes.
- Day trip to Mekong Delta: in the interest of saving time I signed up for a day trip to two towns in the Mekong Delta. Originally I was interested in seeing the floating markets, but I didn't have high hopes for this because the markets usually get going around 5am and my trip wasn't even leaving HCMC till 8am. By the time we got there the market was dwindling, but I still got a glimpse of what goes on. Essentially instead of having stalls the vendors set up their produce in a boat and then drive up and down the river area selling their goods. Next I got to see a couple of different demos: rice paper, coconut candy (so delicious!) and popped/puffed rice. The popped rice was definately the coolest. They heat up black sand in a huge wok, adding oil every few minutes to see if the sand is hot enough. When the oil starts to evaporate/burn they add in the rice (husk included)and it pops almost instantly.

Phang Nga and Patong Lady Boy Show, Phuket, Thailand

Phang Nga Bay looks exactly the way I pictured Thailand. One hundred percent breathtaking! Huge rock islands jutting out of the water and bordered by sandy beaches. The actual town of Phang Nga is tiny, but its main streets provides cheap accomodation and tasty street food and the locals are really lovely and accomodating so it's a nice place to spot off for a day or two. I took a long boat tour around the bay with Nathan from NZ. Since there were only two of us we had a lot more control over how much time we spent at the various stops and got to skip the more touristy places completely. We puttered around the bay and then stopped to kayak some caves. Didn't actually get to paddle, ust sit in an inflattable 'kayak' (term used very loosely), but our guide was hilarious (insisted we take excessive amounts of pictures and kept telling us what a great choice we made for our honeymoon lol) so we had a good time. Caves were pretty cool. The rocks were covered in jagged edges with seashells imprinted in them. Very interesting formations. From there we got back on the long boat and headed to James Bond Island where they filmed 'The Man with the Golden Gun'. Wasn't horribly interesting. Was very beautiful, but so are all the other islands and this one is swarming with tourists and pushy vendors selling junk. Back on the boat we headed to a tiny island where the boat driver handed us headlamps then pointed at a ladder that lead into a cave (he didn't speak any English so that was the extent of our instructions). Cave was great. We were the only ones there so had the run of the place. Came back out and had a tasty lunch on the tiny beach. After lunch we stopped at a muslim fishing village. Whole village is set on stilts around ahuge rock island that comes straight outof the water. Unfortunately, it has been totally turned into a tourist market. All the usual trinkets and souvenirs. I heard Muslim and automatically put on a long sleeve highnecked shirt. Turned out it wasn't necessary since one tourist was in her bra in the middle of the market trying on souvenir t-shirts. So much for a modest muslim village. We lasted about 5 minutes before heading back to the boat. Overall, awesome day trip.

Hat Patong 2nd Night
I ended up back in Hat Patong the day before my flight out of Thailand. Decided to wander down the main strips of bars and stores. Soon spotted huge gaggle of lady boys dressed a la Birdcage. Ended up going to the show (figured I had to check it out while in Thailand), but quickly became apparent that despite the dozens of people lining up for pics witht he lady boys no one actually singned up for the show. So I took a seat with the 2 other spectators (2!) thinking this was going to be really awkward, but it actually worked out really well because the 2 rather large Americans acted as a buffer so I wans't subjected to any 'in your face' performances. The show wasn't half bad. It was a mix of actual singing (which was good), lip singing (absolutely terrible) and mediocre to good dancing. I think the really bad performers, who were also a\rather unfortunate looking, are purposely mixed in as comic relief to break up the other numbers which were essentially strip show numbers. As for the lady boys themselves, some were really pretty, others closer to scary than sexy. One Marilyn Monroe number was especially nightmare worthy.

Hat Patong, Phuket, Thailand

After the liveaboard I got dropped back in Hat Patong, which is the really touristy area near Phuket Town. It's an okay place to hang out for a little while, but isn't very thrilling unless you plan on drinking. So that's just what I did! I headed out with some people from the boat and found a nice place where the bartenders play Jenga and Connect Four with you and, once your drunk enough, ask you to place a wager on who can nail a nail into a giant plank of wood with the fewest hits. Needless to say I didn't partake in the hammering competition since I can barely hit a nail without any alcohol in my system, but it was pretty hilarious to watch.
The main drag is littered with bars playing loud music and half naked men/women/??? dancing on platforms and people showing flyers for "free pingpong shows" (with mandatory 500 baht drinks :S). It's an interesting place and brings quite a few question to mind:
- is that a man or a woman?
- are those real or implants?
- what do they pay for implants over here? (since so many of them have them they have to be sort of affordable right?)
- is he paying her?
- does he know that she's a he?
etc., etc., etc.

Makes for a interesting evening!

Phuket, Thailand - Similan Liveaboard!!!!!

I arrived in Phuket and signed up for a liveaboard trip that left later that day. I was lucky to get the last spot on the last trip offered this season. Monsoon season is coming up and the National Park will be closing soon. We drove about 2 hours from Phuket into the Province of Khao Lak to board the boat. The boat was way nicer than I imagined with three floors, one with equipment, dive platform, kitchen and tiny, but comfy cabins, one with a dining area open on three sides with an amazing view and refreshing breeze, fancier cabins and the captains bridge, and, finally, a sundeck with a hammock and lounge chairs that quite a few people choose to sleep on instead of freezing in their aircon cabins. To my relief, the other tourists were between the ages of 21 and 45 and almost all spoke fluent English. I had been terrified that I would be the only anglo on a boat full of German 60 year old married couples and would spend four days sitting alone and listening in on conversations I had no hope of comprehending.
But instead, the next four days flew by in a blur of diving, eating, sleeping and laughing at each other. We saw a leopard shark, manta rays, Kuhl's stingrays, sea snakes, lion fish, turtles, moray eels, puffer fih, angelfish, lobster, barracuda, and squid. The dive sites in the Similans not only offer a chance to see all these amazing animals, but also clean/clear blue water, brightly colored corals and thousands of tiny fish in huge schools. It was absolutely breathtaking and even the "dullest" of dives left me wanting more. Absolutely amazing experience.

Another thing that I got to experience on the liveaboard was a thermocline. We were waiting to see of any manta rays would show up at a dive site in Koh Bon so we were lined up above this ledge of coral keeping an eye out on the blue (kind of like watching a huge blue screen). I noticed the water in front of me was shifting from clear blue to this funny greenish yellow color and getting really blurry. Within minutes, the cloud had hit me and it was FREEZING! I have yet to find someone who can thoroughly explain it to me, but for some reason the water remains separate, the warm blue and clear and the cold greenish and really blurry (kind of like looking through frosted glass). Sarah aptly described it like watching a sandstorm heading for you. I personally didn't mind it, after the initial shock wore off, and entertained myself by swimming along with my body in warm part and my arms dangling into the cold part. It was very cool!

Overall, I love love loved my liveaboard trip. I think 4 days is about as much as I can handle with 4 dives a day, but I would get on another boat in a heartbeat!

A day in Kuala Lumpur

KL provided a nice stopover. Other than the sketch hostel in Chinatown, that left my scratching at bites on my legs and eyeing my hostel sheet trying to decide whether it had picked up any bed bugs :S (I ended up soaking it in deet for a couple of hours before using it again), KL was a pleasant place to stop for a day and wander around. It's like many other big cities, it's busy and the streets are teeming with people in suits with briefcases rushing to work. Since it was threatening rain and I hadn't eaten since before my flight the night before I couldn't resist when I saw a KFC with free WIFI. Inside it was set up exactly like a KFC in NA (big surprise), but offered rice as a side dish, had a sign stating the food is hallah and the clientele was about half men and women in suits, half women in hijabs. Everyone was chatting away happily while waiting in the enormous line up. Probably looked exactly the way a downtown Toronto KFC would look at lunch hour, but maybe a little happier...?

The KL tower, which provides a great view of the city and the Patronas Towers, is the 5th tallest telecommunications tower in the world. On the viewing deck I was given an excellent audio guide that provided me with just enough detail to keep me interested in the view, but not so much as to bore me. The city has many unique features which were made all the more interesting thanks to the explanations. After the viewing deck I headed to a very sad attempt at an authentic Malay village. Essentially the tower wanted to triple its price and so thought that by adding this cheap addition they could justify it. I wasn't expecting much from it so I wasn;t very surprised or disappointed when it turned out to be a crappy strip of wood buildings selling cheap trinkets at ridiculous prices. Luckily, the dance performance that followed was much more impressive (see facebook for short video).
Overall not a bad way to spend an afternoon!