Hoi An - tailorville

This place is really nice. You can easily spend some time here if you're sick of the traffic in other busy towns/cities. There is a new breed of hassle here - Tailors! Every second shop seems to be one - and they can make anything for you it seems?/seams?
Because you aren't constantly busy sight seeing, you tend to wander into these shops and temptation takes hold.

I didn't really plan on much - but when I sat down and had a flick through their catalogue I decided some new hightop kickers were for me. seeing their craftmanship is not really a confidence booster with wonky nike logos and stitching that looks like a crazy 'B' road. I thought about it and waivered the risk by strict modifying. It goes like this;
1) Choose your favourite sweat shop... I mean shoe brand in the book
2) What leather would you like sir? I'll have black, black stitching, no logos, metal eye holes, snakeskin detailing please, and black soles.. oh and phat laces
3) Pay more for leather.. then when you receive them realise that they are made of vinyl no matter what,
4) come back in 24 hours and bingo - new nike.. hightops.

they actually aren't all that bad.. but they weigh about 40grams and may rip apart if you were to accidentally stand in gum.


Ladesha has had 3 skirts made - and is now getting her favourite dress replicated along with some sandals from a magazine picture she brought with her.

We get asked so much "hullo, you come in, you buy, moto bike, bicycle, what you like" that we decided to adopt a family technique started by Cousin Andy Gardner for little Hannah's listening skills. Basically if you think they don't understand you but pestering you anyway ..and you are a bit sick of the questioning you just say "RHINOSAURUS" and they smile and turn away.

This is a really pretty town and is built around French and Chinese architectural influences.. so the places are pleasing to look at and even better to go into with loads of timber and exposed beams. They are currently raising money to restore the oldtown.. I think we're actually sposed to be contributing by buying tickets to wander through.. but no hassle, no sale sorry.
Along the front of the town is a canal system full of boats taking you for 1 hour tours and the such.. a few pics.




Another attractive part of this city is the culinary delights. Around the oldtown are fantastic restaurants offering great local food and western food also. They are really into Lassi drinks and so are we (fruit with yoghurt - traditionally Indian).
This is a pic of yesterdays lunch;
Lemon shredded chicken with rice crackers and a strawberry lassi.. Mmmmm


We love the dogs here also.. they are total mongrels - but adorable lil creatures nonetheless. Here's a Chihuahua crossed with Street dog modeling a faux pearl necklace.. Paris Hilton would love her.


Next is an example of the female role here. Before this shot she was being used as a human towbar on this motorcycle for her husband. Very effective - just hook her up and drive with maximum load.


I thought I would include a shot of our hotel. It's really sweet - nice large room with quiet A/C.. we do have a loud Hoicker next door - but he just removes the lung butter in the mornings. French styled shutters and Vietnamese tea and clay pot for refreshments. There is a lil restaurant balcony on our floor for breaky too.


One last story - our post office saga today. The mission was simple. Walk in with a coffee mug each, ask for a parcel and then send to NZ. We had one each.. after 20 minutes in a line that made no sense at all we were given 3 customs forms to fill. After filling them we returned to the line, only to get snaked 3 times by the locals and their damn language.. after finally getting there, she took my tiny cup and laughed - then tapped the worker next door and joined her in on the joke. She then proceeded to spend 20 minutes building a bespoke box for the mug and creating a cellotape ball over it until it had soft corners and could be used for footy practice.
They weighed it in and it came to $7 to send - that's fine. Poor Ladesha had the same parcel as me - but got snaked even more - so she was 15 minutes behind.. when it came to her turn for a box they applied double tape - and her bill came to $9. We tried to dispute - but apparently hers had a customs charge on it and mine didn't need one. The logic blew our minds so we left confused and scared.. very scared indeed.

trains, planes and automobiles

We woke up for a fresh start at 4am ready to catch our 5.30am train. As soon as we arrived at the train station a nice old duck of a lady was trying to sell us baguettes. This was actually perfect as we had NZ sliced processed cheese to accompany bread. For those who haven't been here, Vietnam makes a great living selling baguettes and cheese to Western back packers... yum. Sometimes in these situations we get generous - and I felt like giving - so when she said 3000dng (30c) I said no - here's 20,0000 ($2) keep the change thinking yeah - she'll love this.. but it only spawned her on to try sell us coffee ..

On arrival we were pretty confused and the locals were only too kind to help in their weird native language. Luckily 3 Catholic nuns came to the rescue and adopted us as friends, and Desh as a recruit. it was pretty funny as she had a big wooden cane and decided to use desh as a poking device! So as I was boarding the train, Desh was being poked on with Catholic guilt.

Aboard the train and it wasn't too bad - reclining soft seats and A/C.. but we weren't aware of the onboard entertainment, consisting of unavoidable TVs at max volume ready to play for 8.5 hours inbetween communist music and announcements.

Here's a pic of the train inside;

I think it's pretty important now to lay down an example of one of these shows they play on the Train TV. Although I don't understand their ridiculously loud squawky language - I think I got the gist of how it went down;

So - there is this guy sitting at a street table cafe (they are everywhere in this country) and he is super sad because he has no friends. After talking to the unattractive lady owner he decides to recruit a friend from the street. he walks up to this Vietnamese tourist taking photos of bland buildings and squaks at them until strangely they start hugging one too many times. After a few more hugs they sit down.. and with his new friend at the side he gets some male confidence and starts yelling at the owner until she delivers 2 slabs of Heinekin beer (only 48 cans).. but this only mildly pleases them, so he yells at her and slaps her on the ass until she gets a big feast of noodle broth too.
So the 3 of them start getting really HAMMERED and the hugging starts again - but worse than this, the show turns into a really bad MUSICAL - a nightmare train situation for us. At this point I put the ipod on and closed the eyes.. so sorry - no idea how the program got any worse and then ended..
Interesting note to make though - I think it may have been off the cuff - as they seemed to be drinking the beers for REAL.

Next up was lunch - Ladesha has this really big problem with eating noises - so this was pretty entertaining for me when most of the carriage got given trays of meat and rice, soup and even sausages to gnaw on visciously - poor Desh started to feel ill with the noise which we drowned out with 'Pearl Jam' on full volume.
You've heard me mention the trash problem before - well this is a new level. If they don't like something they just spit it out - so there was these chicken bones and rice deposits landing everwhere around us.. Then a carriage worker comes through with a mop and cleans it up.

The highlight for me after the lunch affair was seeing someone get a shaken up coke can and click the tab - only for it to explode over a nun.. she calmly had to get a towel and give her glasses a full wash and chamoise.

One last note to make - the bathrooms. There are 2 choices;
1) A normal looking toilet connected to a holding tank - 8 hours in the tank is full and she's backing up bad.
2) A silver bowl that when flushes you see the flap open to the tracks - cool huh?

Once in Danang we caught a cab to Hoi An - which is refreshing comfort. Our driver handed us a card and it stated his name is 'Kill Bill' - one of our highligths for sure.
He had his own car - A Kia - which he paid $50,000 - - bam, I didn't have the heart to say they are pretty much scrap metal where I come from and half the price.. instead he is a P.I.M.P with his ride being one of about 2% of the population driving something other than a motorbike.

right now - getting hightop sneakers made based on Nikes. Getting mine stealth with no logos - black leather and snake skin... quality is something toworry about - but will just make it funnier if they turn out to be dire.

Desh is hooked on getting skirts made - and is getting some cool stuff with great fabrics. Next post will reveal all.
Caio

Nha Trang

I'm not going to rave - I'm not going to rant - this place is what it is.
Full of suckers who don't know about Jungle Beach 30 minutes thatta way. We've come in to use the HBO channel and saddle tomorrow's train at 5am.

I do have 1 story though. Our plan was to sleep in and go grab brunch around 11. That plan went really well until 6am when I was wide awake and really hungry by 9. Desh was fine - so I decided to go brave it at a local cafe in a hole in a wall down the road. Of course it was near impossible to communicate - but after a bit of pointing I got a plate of rice with Pork, a chicken drumstick, veges and soup for $3NZ.. I also had an audience of locals who politey sat and watched me eat. Well, I came back to the room hyperactive which lead me to believe they lace their food with MSG - sure enough an hour later I got hungry again and my mood crashed big time.. and kinda remained for the day. Needless to say I went for a 2nd breaky to try recover at 12 for a cheesey omelette and fresh mango juice... mmmm

I decided to show you this instead of the beach - cause you probably would have seen a similar one in a brochure for the Gold Coast.

























I thought I would post a pic of the room we have to give an idea of how we live. This is $20US - you can get a room in this town for $7 with no TV and no space - but this is a newish hotel with rooftop swimming pool - aircon - balcony - TV with cable - Bath - and 2 double beds.. which Desh has used as an opportunity for alone time and star fishing.

Jungle Beach

Since the movie 'the beach' - hoards of tourists have scanned South East Asia for that special spot. the truth is it doesn't really exist - - chances are you will get a semi nice strip of sand littered with trash and people (white trash).

This is the exception - started by a Canadian and Vietnamese couple 7 years ago.


They have a white sand beach and have constructed simple open air huts from bamboo for lodging. As part of the simple luxury you get fed 3 times a day plus a fruit platter for snacks. Unfortunately the lack of exercise and mass amount of food has detrimental effects on the single abdominal muscle of mine.

Your average day may pan out like this;
- Get up at 5am for sunrise on the beach
- Go back to bed at 6am
- Get up for Breaky at 8am
- Swim at 10am after chatting for too long at the table
- Read on the beach or return to your hammock at the hutt
- Lunch time at 12
- Return to beach
- Fruit platter at 3pm
- Retire to read outside your hutt
- Dinner at 6pm
- Head to beah for bonfire.. so on so on everyday for 7 days.

It doesn't get much better than that.. and since they feed you, and train you to eat at certain times, you find you are like a trained animal listening for the food to shake in the bowl. Much longer and you may stop thinking all together?

Another great attraction is the random wildlife - you get giant lizards.. squaking geckos in your room, giant red ants.. and on the last night a red neon snake - amzing! At 4pm you can look through a telescope at the native monleys playing in the jungle - truely a spectacle that we will remember - this was one of our favourite non thinking activities.

Here's some kodak moments.




This is the sunset from this morning - one of the best I have seen - usually a blood red ball lights up and bleeds across the sky and sea - strangely alien from what I have seen before.
Notice the clouds in the distance that look like rocky islands, and the night boats coming back in from their fishing trauls.




This is our guard dog "ugly dog". She learns who you are and then barks at any stranger coming close on the beach. There is another chained up that can't go anywhere as he has bitten too many people. There is another pup called "stinky" which literally stinks - but he is great and allowed to run free at night. At the rear shed is another dog that look like Ugly who has given birth to 10 puppies.. really cute.


A few shots of the walk to the waterfall and the waterfall itself. The first shot looks down to where we were staying.

Easy Riders - without the stars and stripes

We had heard a lot about the easy riders before we had met them. Our intention was to get to Dalat and then they would probably find us. Before we even got off the bus I saw a Easy rider and made eye contact for a split second too long – like a hawk going for the weak rodent below he swooped on us on check in. That was all fine though, as our plan was to find them anyway.

They are pretty funny guys. As a sales incentive they said they would take us on the bike for a coffee.. we were really excited, hopped on and they fired the underpowered chopper look a likes up and drove us 3 metres to the coffee shop and said “we’re here, get off”.

First day.

• We started at a prompt 8.30 and had 220 kms to cover. This seemed like a small ride to me, but soon realised it would take us until 5 with the 35 odd stops they make for us on the way ..I think most of the stops are for their cigarette breaks.. in fact, they tend to stop quite often and get you to walk in sweltering heat for 500m or so for our legs, but we suspect this is their ciggy/toilet break.
  This is a fantastic way to travel, as they take you to hill tribes and villages that you couldn’t imagine, let alone get to on a bus.. we were effectively off the beaten track in Vietnam. . and learning non stop. I feel we have seen the real Vietnam in many ways and was a invaluable experience.
  

I’ll list the trip and make some notes beside the stops.

- Gerbera growing fields – flowers, not much to say here except for the sheer beauty. These flowers can be bought for about 25c each.

- Silk farm – incredible! They have caccoons with worms in them, which they boil to kill the worm – then in the water the silk is threaded and pulled onto reams. From there they take them to these giant mechanical machines that make the fabric – patterns are created with punch sheets that are fed through – like automatic pianos.

- Elephant waterfalls – Amazing place – a giant waterfall that you have to clamber to down some treacherous steps. The only thing that wrecks this experience is the rubbish.. This is quite an important note to make. Vietnam road ways are a giant rubbish bin –the locals throw their rubbish out the window everywhere. When rubbish piles up too high someone will come along and burn it off in a roadside bonfire.. it’s pretty heartbreaking to see such a beautiful place be destroyed over something that can be easily remedied.

Buddhist Pagoda – WOW – you’ve never seen anything so big laughing at you! I wanted to climb up and give it the biggest NIPPLE gripple in the world for a photo – and now regret my resistance. A sad note to make here is that when trying to find the entrance Desh and I wandered down a dirt road behind the Pagoda. Amongst bits of rubbish were hyperdermic needles everywhere! When asking our guides about it later, their exprressions turned sad and they explained that the monks in Vietnam are addicted to heroin! Can you believe it?? Apparently it is really common that they turn to this addiction and are fed by Vietnamese smuggling it in from China. I guess you could say they are Monky Junkies.

- We drove through hilltribe villages next and observed from the road until stopping for lunch on the very peak of a mountain. We ate very very well here and have to say the food was the best we had to this point. It was a true feast and the bill came to $3 each. This is the view from our lunch table.

- The afternoon was spent stopping at villages, silk worm farms, rice wine makers, and minority villages (the kids are paid with lollies by us – the guide stated he was a god to them.. kinda wrong). We eventually pulled up to the hotel and got into drinking the happy water (rice wine) with the many easy riders and tourists that had pulled in for the night.

Day 2

- Extremely hung over and not too stoked about leaving at 8.30.. but nonetheless we did. We first stopped at a minority village and walked about. They have elephants there to ride, but we weren’t happy about doing that as the conditions they live in as worker elephants aren’t that kind.

- We went to a local market which is where minorities come to sell what they make - such as harvested bamboo or brooms made from bamboo. There is loads of festering meat in the hot sun.. needless to say we didn’t stay too long.

- We belted along the rice pattie roads trying to escape the hot sun. At about 9.30 we came across a man in the middle of the road swaggering totally drunk – my guide said many minority villagers get wasted as they have nothing else to do.

- We found This bombed out bridge and church next which I insisted to take photos of – as the Americans had bombed it 40 years ago and it seemed so preserved in a strange way… pointing high with pride.

- Next was a mushroom farm. This was a highlight as they had a pet python. Our guide hit the cage over and over saying a snake was within. I thought he was kidding until the owner opened it and pulled it out gesturing to me to take it. Hey, fine – it is only a 21kg python with the nearest hospital being who knows how far. She put it around my neck, and it strangely felt really safe – after a few seconds it felt fine to hold it’s head and direct it about – very cool and slithery. They made Ladesha come over and have a go also – which was fantastic – her reaction was priceless to start with, but she felt confident within no time also.

- These girls lived at the house with the snake and the mushrooms - they insisted they sing us a song - firstthey sang A,B,C - then they sang if you're happy and you know it. GREAT!



- After traveling long dirt roads we came to another waterfall down some secret ancient stairs – that apparently only easy riders know about? We went swimming here and cooled off which was super refreshing.

- Another waterfall followed – but the day was soooo hot at this point that we suffered badly walking about it.

- We drove into the cooling heat through villages and towns until we got back to our next hotel.

Day 3

- First stop was some rubber trees. We were shown how to bleed the trees. Once again – there was a hyperdermic needle sticking into the trunk. My guide thought it would be funny to wipe the rubber on my arm hair. Lets just say that half my arm has no hair where I managed to get it off - the other half of the strip is covered in rubber and road dirt until petrol or wear and tear gets it off.

- Next stop was a peppercorn tree fram – we were explained that these are extremely valuable – more so than coffee.. Heaps of cicadas here. Our guide has no problem eating them – this shot is him posing with a beating cicada in his mouth.

- Rice paper rolling – yum yum – we ran out of gas right outside this shop that makes rice paper (like pancakes) so we stopped and ate here. The kids here are very cute – this one decided to smile for us when you point the camera at her.


- The rest of the afternoon was spent drivng fast and hard with 220kms to get done for our drop off at Jungle Beach. We stopped for lunch – and this place sold preserved snakes in a jar – just the same kind we get at home with the jelly snakes… hmmmm.. wonder which one I’d prefer to eat. A brick factory and kiln. Then we did the final 60kms in one hit with everyone with us anticipating the luxury of hutts on the beach with white sand and a jungle behind us.. and that’s just where we’re at right now.