On to Danang and Hoi An

A slightly grimmer train on to Danang, no Tv, dirty sheets (SO pleased I brought the silk sleep sack, it's been invaluable so far) Dirty everything in fact, and it was REALLY cold, - first time I have worn a long sleeved Tshirt and a fleece!

First though, we had a 45 min wait for the train

outside in the dark and rain and insanity of Danang station (it's not big enough for a train full of people) and then there was a massive bundle and panic to get on as it only stops for 5 mins whether the passengers are all on or not.

We arrived at the hotel at about 5am, after a half our bus journey past an amazing sunrise

but there were no rooms ready until 10am, so those who werent lucky enough to get to sleep on the loungers by the pool slept in the lobby of the hotel.

I love this pic, as it has Gavin cheekily peeking out from the excellent spot he found behind the sofa....it's now about 7.45, so I thought I'd give up my sofa space to try and catch up on my blogging on the hotel computer.

It looks like there are some beautiful beaches here, it's very famous for it's tailors that can make you anything in a day, its a real party town, so looks like the next couple of days should be fun!

REALLY want to do a bit of shopping so hoping the house sale doesnt fall through, because I have seen the most gorgeous outfit that I want and I have already bought a pendant and a superb hat.

Scuba loopy! I love this place.

OH my god!! Now I know what they've been going on about for so long - I have just been scuba diving on the most amazing coral reef.

I saw the ENTIRE cast of Finding Nemo... in fact a little clown fish came up and nipped at my mask!

I saw rubbery coral, hairy coral, luminous blue coral, purple blobby coral, coral of every different colour and texture....and fish!!

Oh! So many different kinds! Sea urchins with 10 inch spines, with electric blue and red eyes that blinked at you as you swam over.

I held a sea cucumber, and tapped giant clams; I could hardly believe what I was seeing. Sometimes it was hard to remember to breathe it was so exciting.

(Also, superb views above the water too.... this chap just stripped down to his Calvins and jumped in to do free diving. I happened to catch him on film whilst trying to photograph the stunning coastline you understand. Twice.)

And it was so easy!! - others had ear pain, mask trouble, trouble breathing, hassle getting in and out, but everything was perfect for me - I cant' believe I have been missing this all my life! I MUST go again. This really is the most beautiful place I have ever been, both below and above the sea.

A cable car connects the mainland with another island - the longest cable car over water in the world. The beaches are clean, the people are friendly, the town is small, nothing costs too much money and ... well I could go on and on.

We chugged into port past the little floating fish farms (everything here is really fresh... if you cant' get it on a motor bike, you can't get it at all.)

Anyway - if you ever wonder where to go for a holiday, come here.

Sleeper train arriving in Nha trang

WOW!! Nha Trang!

This is without doubt the nicest place I have been to so far. If I could recommend anyone a great place to go it would be here. I can’t believe we only have 2 days here - I am definitely coming back.

We arrived last night by sleeper train from Saigon; the first time I’d ever been on one and I was terribly excited. It was clean, air conned, had a TV IN (but it only showed Tom and Jerry), the toilets were nice, the beds were comfy and I was asleep before me and my girly compadres had finished watching "He's just not that into you".

Gliding in to Nha Trang at about 5.30 and though everyone else did, I just could not go back to sleep and sat by the pool in the early morning sunshine and enjoyed the peace and quiet.

Spent rest of the morning on a gorgeous quiet, clean beach, with not too much hassle from vendors; listening to the birds twittering and lazily watching the little flying fish and pointy islands poking out of the mist above the delightfully calm sea. You can jet ski here, paraglide, "banana ride" or go to the local mineral mud baths (yes please!) and I am seriously considering shelling out for Scuba tomorrow.

So in the afternoon we went to the mineral mud baths! This is hugely fun. First you shower, then you all sit in a big bath of mineral mud and pour it all over each other and wriggle around in it, which was superb.

Then you sit in the sun for a bit and let it dry on you before you rinse it all off with high pressure hoses. Then you walk through a thelassotherapy bit where you are squirted from many directions with high pressure water, walk though a waterfall which really pummels you, sit in a really hot mineral bath again before more waterfalls and a swim in another hot big pool. Best $4 I've ever spent I think! :)

We went out for an excellent Indian this evening before collapsing into bed. All this leisure activity really takes it out of you!

Saigon and the Cu-Chi Tunnels

So - Saigon

Certainly much cleaner and more forward thinking than Cambodia so far - the toilets are far nicer, if that is any way to judge a nation....

14,000 people are killed every year on motorbikes generally although this has fallen to only 10,000 apparently since the wearing of compulsory helmets.

There is also no minimum age for buying booze and fags. If you can speak, walk, and physically carry them, they are yours for a piffling amount of dong.

Today we went to the Cu-Chi tunnels, - a wiggly collection of tunnels in the dense jungle about 20k outside Saigon.

They were dug by hand, the resulting earth used to fill in craters left from the bombs from the B52's or to construct fake termite mounds which were used to disguise tunnel ventilation shafts; entire communities lived in them underground in them during the war.

The entrances were absolutely tiny - only 1ft x 1.5 ft across... only the Vietnamese and very very small westerners can get in. (Those small blokes in the US army who actually could get down them were known as “tunnel rats”)

They were really hard to see too; so much so that apparently an American encampment was built right on top of one network unbeknownst to them. You can see how small they are in comparison to western feet here!

Oh... firstly we watched a fascinating film about how the strong proud and excellent Viet Cong army defeated the "evil devil Americans" and all about how said EDA’s killed thousands of Vietnamese citizens, all of whom were innocently picnicking, thus forcing them to create these tunnels to fight back. Awards were given to Viet Cong soldiers according to how many Americans they killed. Interesting to hear the Viet side of the story.....

We also heard how the independence of Vietnam from France still leaves a bitter scar on the proud French nation.

You've got to hand it to these guys; they really don't take any shit.

Aaaaaaaaanyway ....They lived and slept in these tiny tunnels, some of which had been widened for us westerners. Went through some, and was very pleased I had my torch (thanks Mummy!) they were very twisty turny and up and downy... so you couldn’t shoot down and hit too many people obviously. The tunnels would often end underwater so that the tunnel dwellers could make their escape into the river if their tunnels were discovered.

Interestingly, when they needed to go to the "happy room" which is what they call the toilet here, if you needed to go for "big happy" this was done in a box and disposed of later, however "little happy" was collected as if you soaked material in it, the ammonia would help protect you from many of the chemicals dropped by the Americans if you then held it over your mouth and nose. So there you are.

We were shown some of the home made traps that the Viet cong created, also how they made rice paper for spring rolls, how they made sandals out of tyres, and how cooking (mostly tapioca root) was done in bunkers with chimneys that came out some 100's of yards away.

There was also an opportunity to fire AK47's but I value my hearing and thought I could probably live my whole life without firing a real one.

Just met my fellow travellers

And there are definitely some interesting characters. We all went out for a big meal together to say goodbye to people who were leaving the tour and hello to the new guys. Everyone seems fun and there is a mixture of ages, so all good so far. This looks like it's going to be a laugh as well as a really interesting trip, which is good news. I have a room to myself again tonight which is a total result, as I really thought I’d be sharing from here on in.

Off to the Cu chi Tunnels tomorrow early, and then possibly to the War Remnants Museum, which is supposed to be quite interesting, though I am not sure I can do much more of that sort of stuff. Then we get an overnight train to Nha Trang tomorrow night. My first ever sleeper train!! (Though I am assured this is really nothing to get too excited about, I have always wanted to go one.)

We stay there for a night and then another overnight train to Danang from where we drive to Hoi An which sounds gorgeous, and is famous for it's tailors.

From there it's on to Hue, and then another overnight train to Hanoi, where we spend a day at Halong bay where we stay before returning to Hanoi, for 2 days. After that ...who knows!

Not sure what chance for internet access I shall have but we shall see.

Early start tomorrow so i'm off to bed.

Ho Chi Minh - First impressions

Just had my first real walk around Saigon. Things are certainly cleaner and better organised here (I don't mean the traffic - that's exactly the same but more of it as this is a much bigger city) but it's certainly less smelly and considerably more westernised.

You are not hassled half as much for Tuk-tuks or Moto (or Xe Om as they are called here) - or perhaps I am just getting used to it. It seems that most people speak English and if not, French, so it's much easier to be understood. It’s also cheaper here than Cambodia as far as I can tell with my appalling maths, but certainly for food and water so far.

I had a good long walk up to the post office, which is a wholly different experience than back home - i.e. they are efficient and move quicker than snails pace, and pack your item for you (after examining it thoroughly first of course!)

On the way I saw a large impressive building with a big statue of Ho Chi Minh, in front. Lots of people were taking photos of it, but i asked three of them what it was, and none of them knew!!

I saw their version of Notre Dame Cathedral (built by the French colonialists. It's brick though and is lacking any flying buttresses but the resemblance is definitely there!

Then I went to the Reunification Palace. because it was just about to rain and it was only 60p to get in,

However, I didn't really glean much about it as any information was in Vietnamese, but from what I can tell this was the former presidential palace and has been kept exactly the same since the Communist Tanks came bursting though the gates in 1975 and has some really groovy furniture and deco.

That's about it really. Shame it wasn’t really possible to photograph it as you weren’t allowed into any of the rooms you could just look in through doorways with the 40 other people all trying to do the same thing.

Walked back through a perfectly manicured little park in the centre of town. - got time for a bit of a freshen up before I meet all my fellow travellers in our little tour group for a meeting about the trip, and hopefully a bit of a get-to-know-you drinkie or two!

Goodbye blonde

Have finally taken advantage of posh room shower with decent pressure to dye my hair back to it's non blonde original colour.

Now I look really pale again... not that i had got much of a tan before as I have been in classrooms for the last month, but at least I do not have inch long roots that make me look like I have permanently greasy hair. Who knows, now I might be mistaken for Angelina Jolie.... or Beth Ditto

They all look the same....

....as a vietnamese guy just told me I look Fergie from the Black Eyed Peas.

Yup.

*****Cankle update (supplemental)*******

An update has been requested from sevaral parties now, so I am sure there will be no end of dissapointment to know that MY CANKLES HAVE GONE!

The cankle fairy visited me in the night and whisked them away, along with my fat feet. It did not leave me 10p under the pillow, but I did find a mosquito

So, some kind of normality has returned, leaving regular sized but slightly mosquito bite scarred feet and calves. I say scarred, I mean...... scabby. In fact I momentarily mistook the picture of Michael Jacksons legs for mine when finally surfing a news website recently.

Am hoping the mosquitos here in 'Nam find me less palateable than those in Cambodia.

Vietnam

Well, I've just arrived in Ho Chi Minh City after much hassle yesterday when I looked at my visa and realised that it started the day after my tour was supposed to!! .. For some reason the embassy back home had messed up, perhaps misread my 7 as a 9, and I had gone about blissfully unaware until I decided that maybe I should go a day early and looked at it.

So after a rushed trip to the embassy in PP, they told me I had to buy a new one for $35 !! I attempted to charm them with some Vietnamese that I had learnt which brought it down to $20. I thought that was probably the best I could do.

On the way here, a girl on my bus was in the same situation and simply bribed the official with $5 at the border! I am fuming that I didn’t think of that myself.

Anyway. I thought that, for a treat I’d spend one night before the trip in a nice hotel, with special treats I haven’t had for the last month like a mirror and hot water; it even has air con, a fridge with stuff like beer and water in it (rather than a rattly, room temperature, slightly smelly box that just pretends to be a fridge and who's only function appears to be to give you a shock when you plug it in like all the only ones I’ve encountered so far, and even they are few and far between) and TV. And Wifi,..oh! Yes!... I feel like a queen in my nice clean room, I can tell you!

My last room (for the last 3 nights) had a light, a bed and a fan, a “bathroom” (toilet cubicle with a shower that simply dribbled slowly down it’s own hose) oh! And a window but it looked out on a wall 2ft away. that was it. Oh and I shared it with a number of biting insect creatures of some description, these may have been bed bugs, or mosquitoes, not sure, and there was no lizard to control them. I had thought these were compulsory accessories, but sadly not. I felt bad that I hadn't said goodbye to Brian, the last gecko that i shared with in Siem Reap, as he'd really done a terrific job, and I never got to tell him.

Anyway, very glad for the investment as I just had a nice shower, felt refreshed, and sorted myself out a little back pack to go for an explore...and its pissing it down outside. Damn. Now, I didn’t mind Phnom Penh in the rain, as it’s small, and I know my way around, and how things work, what to pay fora tuk tuk, etc but here I don’t.

Also where $1 = about 4000 riel in Cambodia, that was easy to work out what you were paying for stuff. Here $1 = about 17,000 dong and I can’t get my tiny brain around this yet. I am going to have to sit here and write out multiples of 17,000 just to get me knowing what I am doing.

Right. Off to find some food.

Back to PP... and onwards

So, I sat by the pool for a few hours on Tuesday morning desperately trying to finish this book "First they killed my father" a compelling book about a child who survived the Pol Pot regime before I left as it wasn't mine.


Got horribly burnt despite the total overcast skies, but I did finish the book. Then I got the bus to PP - just getting on as the heavens opened, them being made to change, and change again, and a bizarre "being John Malkovich floor 7 1/2" size toilet.. (literally a 3 foot high door into a 4 ft high cubicle with a toilet in it!) ...and it rained the ENTIRE way back, and has actually not stopped rained here ever since.

However, despite everything, I did make it in time to have a birthday meal and many many cocktails with my friend John, which was an undeniably superb evening.

We met tonight too as I head off for Vietnam tomorrow, visa permitting.

My IPOD HAS BROKEN!! No NO NO!!!!! The sodding middle button simply ignores me. BASTARD thing.


Was going to attempt to purchase another cheaply here before my seven hour bus journey tomorrow, but I think I better hold onto my funds.....

Worms and Warp Drives

Today I visited the Artisans d' Angkar. This is where rural teenagers are apprenticed to learn how to be master crafts men; Silk painters, stone carvers, wood carvers, silk weavers, copper-workers, and lacquer-workers.
I saw all round the factory and it was fascinating watching the students work. (but they wouldn’t really let me have a go at anything).
The Students all make the same things, the silk painters replicate famous Cambodian works of art, the stone workers do Buddha statues and elephants, the copper workers replicate statues and animals and the lacquer workers make bowls and Buddhas and the occasional elephant too. They have original casts which they use to make exact replicas, measuring they dimensions with dividers.
I particularly liked the lacquer-work – they items are made from wood, covered in plaster and then once dry, lacquered black or brown. They then eventually add copper leaf and then distress it to make the item look older
The Copper-workers chase the most intricate designs in the sheets - am desperate to have a go at this when home.

The Stone carvers were absolutely amazing - the patience you must have to have to do this !!!

The artisans other speciality there is to weave the most beautiful silk scarves. I can't understand why they don't pool these skills to make some amazing jewellery they can add to their shop which you visit afterwards, and I now feel terribly inspired to do some designs for them.

They also do a tour around the Silk farm a little distance out of town, so off I went to meet the worms and go round the mulberry bushes.

There are apparently 18 types of mulberry bush which, in their natural environment the worms would live on, all of which provide different types and grades of silk. Here the bushes are grown in plantations and the leaves are harvested of the worms who live in more cosier comfortable conditions inside to prevent them being eaten by birds or the like.
The cute, sticky little white Worms eat for 3 days and them sleep for one day (when they are moved to another little basket with some nice fresh leaves) and live and grow for about 24 days before they begin to turn yellow when they are separated from the worm nursery and begin to spin their little cocoons.

They are then put onto little baskety cocoon holders as the worms busily spin away.

When they hatch as moths they mate bottom to bottom for FIVE HOURS! Go go you naughty silk moths!!

Unfortunately they then they immediately lay their eggs and die! (you can see all the eggs around these two busy silk moths, the female will be covered by a glass so that she lays the eggs in a contained space once they've "finished")
However only a chosen few get to hatch for the next cycle.

The rest of them, once they have finished spinning, are taken off their little baskets and boiled up to remove the silk. First the courser outer silk is removed - it takes 80 cocoons to produce 100m of this course silk thread. (this is RAW Silk) . The silk is caught up by stirring the pot with a wire whisk like thing and then wound on to bobbins. As you can see the natural colour of silk is yellow - you can really see why the fairy tales used to talk of spun gold, as this is what it looks like.
it then takes 45 of those cocoons stripped of their outer courser layer to produce 100m of FINE silk.

Then it is cleaned, bleached and dyed, and sometimes spun into thicker thread. They use natural products to create the dyes - for instance this is morning glory flowers which produce a very pale lilac colour.

This huge machine then creates the warp threads for the looms.... powered by a little motor...."So, it's a warp drive!" I said. No one got it :(

Sometimes the warp threads are tie died by wrapping them with plastic so that patterns are created.

They are then put on to the loom, and this woman is creating the nylon separators to different warp threads can be raised and used to create different textures in the silk, as the weft shuttles are passed back and forth creating the pattern and material.
It is breathtakingly complicated and at the same time unbelievably simple . And so perfectly done, its the sort of thing that we would always assume was made by an automated factory machine not done by the fast moving human hands here!

Silk making and the textures and patterns created have been of particular importance in the East for untold centuries, often denoting your social status by what patterns you were permitted to wear. For instance only the King was allowed to wear certain floral patterns and peasants were only allowed basic rough weaves.

Tania who was a fellow volunteer in Phnom penh, arrived in Siem Reap today, so we went out to "pub street" in the town for a few drinks in the evening before crashing out.

More Wat pics

more trees entwining temples....

Me being thrilled by Angkor Wat.....

Carvings at Angkar Wat

and here's a map of it all to put it into context: http://www.canbypublications.com/maps/SR-AngkorParkMain.htm