Day 59 - 61: Hué

The sleeper bus from Hanoi to Hué was the first we'd taken on our trip. It wasn't an unmitigated disaster, as we managed to get something like 5-6 hours sleep. It involved lying down on an adjustable seat stacked in three columns one behind the other and slanted so that your knees down were underneath the headrest of the seat in front. Ingenious, but not particularly good for moving around. Essentially, you are in a lying down position for over half a day, unless you wanted to bring your knees up to your chest. On top of this, the chairs are arranged bunkbed-style so there is an upper and lower row, and in true Vietnamese style the two aisles were filled with sacks of rice, live birds and for at least part of the journey, Vietnamese people.

At 6am though, a little brat of a girl decked out in denim, gold bracelet, gold necklace and gold earrings who couldn't have been older than 3 decided to scream every 15 seconds. A piercing, persistent shriek that served to wake up anyone unfortunate enough not to have bought earplugs. I'd wager that they'd have disintegrated even if they had, such was the sonic force generated by this spoiled shit. Her step-father was an English guy wearing similar attire to the kid, her mother was Vietnamese, and it was clear that neither of them had the ability to shut them up. An hour of this later, and I had concocted several ingenious methods of doing so myself, the best of which involved the child, a pane of glass and significant velocity.

We arrived, cranky and hating children even more than usual, 15 hours after setting off. It was raining. We hadn't experienced rain over any significant time period for at least a month. Hué soon made up for that; it rained consistently for the first two days, rained intermittently for the third day, and typically dried up on the morning of the fourth day when we got on a bus to Hoi An.

Hué itself, then. I imagine it's quite a quaint little city when you can walk around it without feeling cold and wet, but even with the drab weather we tried to make the most of it. On arrival we were taken by a free minibus to a hotel I had earmarked for potential by a guy who told us we'd be staying a luxury room with breakfast chucked in for $10. The photos looked stunning, and there was no obligation. Just as well really, as the room was $12, breakfast wasn't included, and the room looked nothing like the picture. The chap with the leaflet had obviously scarpered after dropping us off. We politely declined and walked across the road to Ngoc Binh Hotel where we were given a comfortable room for $8 (no breakfast, but that was fine).l When I say comfortable, I mean it was the softest mattress I have ever sat on. I imagine that if they'd made a bed out of marshmallow, this is what it would feel like. Bags dumped, we walked over to the Family House Restaurant opposite and had a hearty lunch (an excellent spicy fish casserole thing that is just the right side of "blow-your-head-off" hot) before setting off to find the main cultural hotspots. A Contemporary Art gallery we came across consisted of a house containing a number of vaguely-formed sculptures and little else. Across the road, we spent an hour or so at Ho Chi Minh Museum (apparently every city has one), and soon found ourselves faced with many of the same photos and excerpts from his speeches as in Hanoi. I have vowed not to go in another one until Ho Chi Minh city...if anywhere is going to enlighten us on this fellow, it's surely the city that's got his name. Right?

In the evening we went to Nina's Cafe, also on our street about 4 doors down. Somehow we'd managed to get a hotel in the road with the best restaurants in town, all serving up authentic local specialities. We tried Bang Khoai - a yellow pancake made from egg and rice flour, containing shrimp and pork - and some delicious pork which was wrapped around a spring onion for cooking, and then served with beansprouts, lettuce, cucumber and an amazing peanut sauce which you then roll up into pancakes using supplied rice papers. All of the food was fantastic.

The next day we checked out of Ngoc Binh in favour or Thai Binh 1 next door (the wi-fi in the former was playing up and we needed to get some photos uploaded) and braved the relentless drizzle and biting wind to head into the citadel and Imperial City. The citadel is the "old" city, whilst the Imperial City is a collection of buildings - a lot of them ruins - from the time of emperors in the early 19th to 20th centuries. It contains things like a theatre, palace, pavilions and ornate gates, and would make a lovely walk on a warm sunny day. We were not there on a warm sunny day. 4 hours later, dripping wet and freezing cold (where did the cold come from? I didn't order this on our trip until New Zealand!) we'd explored about as much as we wanted to, and were now ready to go back to our lovely hotel room. After getting dry, we went back to Nina's Cafe for an evening meal and saw a Geordie couple who had racked up 20 empty bottles of Huda Beer between them for the paltry sum of 200,000 dong (£6.60). That would barely get two pints in Bristol. The food was once again superb - we had more of the pork from the previous night and some speciality shrimp and fish spring rolls, then retired to the hotel.

On our last day in Hué, we decided to charter a motorbike taxi for the day. The Geordies had told us not to bother getting a tour - all of them took a dragon boat along the brown, murky Perfume river, with various stops at shops where the locals aggressively hawked their wares. With the weather as it was, we went for the "fun" option of getting on the back of a moped whilst a guy called Lop who didn't speak a word of English buzzed us about the various mausoleums in the area. This was my first time on a motorcycle, and despite my previous misgivings, it wasn't bad at all. Mopeds look fairly simple to ride, especially the automatics. We wandered around the three main mausoleums the tours spin you to but with the bonus of a) not being crowded with tourists getting in our shots and b) being able to take our time rather than the 15-minute whistle-stop visits you usually get. Despite our gesticulations, we ended up with one helmet between us which I gave to Gilly. I figured we'd be going slow enough with three people on a moped for it not to be too dangerous if I fell off.

We'd experienced the near misses from a distance in Hanoi. Actually being part of the "fun" and almost getting broadsided by bikes, cars and trucks whilst actually on a bike is completely different. Firstly, you have to have confidence in your driver. I did, completely. The guy was 60+, so had obviously been doing this for a while. Secondly, it helps not to stick out any extraneous body parts. On a number of occasions, Lop's tarpaulin raincover actually hit the moped handle of another driver coming in the opposite way. This is how it goes on a moped in Vietnam. People swerve all over, come close to hitting you, and at the last second turn away. After the third time of it happening, I became a bit blasé about it. It was just another ordinary "oh-my-God-we're-going-to-crash-oh-wait-we've-somehow-survived" scenario.

So we trundled around the entire day, hopping on and off at a total of three mausoleums and a pagoda. Lop had to ask for directions on a number of occasions to find these places. It was pretty obvious that when he'd yelled "motorbike!" at us, he wasn't expecting us to present him with an itinerary, and so proceeded to blag his way (via a helpful interpreter friend) from then on. The mausoleums are the "afterlife palaces" of the old Vietnamese emperors, and are sprawling complexes of buildings and grounds, littered with statues, ponds, temples, and so on. The three we went to were Minh Mang, Khai Dinh and Tu Duc. Khai Dinh was probably the most impressive, and had exceptional mosaic work in the walls inside, as well as a grandiose series of steps and platforms to climb to reach the main temple.

The other two were interesting as well, but not in such good condition.  Thien Mu Pagoda was last on the agenda, and was a working temple complete with chanting Buddhist monks, a Bonsai garden and, in a garage, the Austin car driven by the venerable monk who drove to the centre of Saigon and set himself on fire in protest at Catholic oppression of his faith. Sobering stuff.

Thankfully the weather in the afternoon diminished to cold, rather than cold and wet. We arrived back at our hotel at about 4:30pm, then went for dinner with Scott and Hannah - two Australians we took the Ha Long Bay tour with. We fancied something a bit more western, so ate at Omar Khayyam's Indian Restaurant which was possibly the best Indian meal we've had since leaving the UK. Still not a patch on home, but a damn good effort nonetheless.

We had explored Hué as much as we wanted to given the miserable weather, and were happy to head on south, so we booked a bus via the Family House Restaurant for the next morning to our third Vietnam destination - Hoi An.

Day 56 - 58: Ha Long Bay

The Kangaroo Cafe has had a rough ride on Trip Advisor. Part of it is probably not helped by the Cafe itself. The owner, Max - an Australian - has a typically blunt approach to pretty much everything regarding the marketing of his place. All around the cafe you'll find signs lauding the trip, and explaining exactly what he thinks of the multiple copycat tour groups in Hanoi, along with his forthright views on the quality of other tours, the duplicity of Lonely Planet, the quality of his meals, the size of the boat and the luxuriousness of the rooms, and so on. All written in Comic Sans MS, and complete with underlining and italics. His website is similar, and some of the responses to the Trip Advisor reviews cross the line from blunt to plain unprofessional. Swearing abounds. It's certainly a unique way of doing business. We'd never seen this level of self-aggrandisement in a company before, and it almost put us off booking with them.

However - and this is a big "however" - his company delivers on almost every single aspect.

We were already sold on the food at the cafe after trying one of their magnificent burgers. The tour was a different matter. $129 per person for a 3 day, 2 night tour wasn't the cheapest we found, but it certainly wasn't the most expensive. Rebecca and Craig paid the best part of $240 each for a stay on what was sold to them as a 4-star trip through a company called A-Class Opera, and were left disappointed and had to fight to get money back. We had contemplated doing a trip ourselves but after a chance encounter in Hanoi Backpackers with a Danish girl who had come back from a Kangaroo Cafe trip to Ha Long Bay (complete with pictures), we decided we'd book it.

On the day of the trip a fully air-conditioned bus picked us up just after 8am. It had the most legroom we've experienced on a bus in SE Asia so far and was a very comfortable ride. Our guide was Quan, a genial gent who was more than happy for us to ask questions and actively sought our opinion of every aspect of the tour - more on that later.

So, the boat itself.

Getting onto the White Dolphin, we were greeted with a dining room laid out like an upmarket restaurant, all cloth napkins, crisp tablecloths, and wine glasses along with a well-stocked bar. We had a welcome drink of orange juice, and were handed our room key.

The room far, far exceeded our expectations. A lovely double bed with bedside tables on either side, one of which had an antique telephone for some reason. A balcony that opened out onto the water (not just a window). A separate sofa. A fridge. A bathroom containing toothpaste, toothbrush, shampoo, shower gel, combs, and - to Gilly's delight - a hairdryer. On top of this, a rain shower in a separate cubicle. It's as close to a 4-star experience as you're likely to get on a boat.

Back to the dining room then, for our first meal. This was the thing I was most wary about; most of the negative reviews on Trip Advisor complained that the food was greasy and bland. Our lunch that day consisted of a starter of pumpkin soup with a plate of salad, followed by freshly cooked cockles, then crab meat in the shell mixed with vegetables, accompanied by rice and cooked vegetables, then what I can only describe as a squid pakora, and ending with dragon fruit. The whole thing was outstanding, pretty healthy, and exceptionally tasty.

Like any tour you go on from Hanoi, you have to pay for drinks on board and will also pay if you bring drinks on yourself (water is excluded from this latter rule). The prices aren't too bad but we smuggled on a box of wine we got from the supermarket, with the intention of sharing on the down low with our fellow shipmates. This turned out to be an excellent plan.

After lunch we took a trip with one of the many guides on the boat to what he described as "The Surprising Cave" (Thien Cung). This was a bit of an understatement. The cave, a hollowed out limestone shell with masses of natural rock formations artfully uplit with neon coloured lights, was staggeringly beautiful. We saw a rock that had formed into the shape of a tortoise, stalactite and stalagmite formations, and individual grottoes and karsts which were incredible. Ha Long Bay is a World Heritage site, and is trying to become known as one of the 7 wonders of the modern world. Judging by the cave, it's a realistic prospect.

The weather on the trip was pretty grey - it drizzled for almost all of the first day, and Quan suggested postponing kayaking to the following day in the hopes of getting better weather. We had checked the forecasts beforehand, so this wasn't unexpected - Ha Long Bay was still beautiful in the mist, so I can only imagine it is spectacular on a clear, sunny day. We anchored at about 5pm and then had the chance to jump off the boat into the water from various heights, which was great fun. The water wasn't too cold once you were submerged. Gilly opted against it, but Tom, Holly and I braved the waters:

Dinner consisted of salad, french fries, fried chicken, a whole cooked fish, rice, spring rolls and cabbage. Dessert was watermelon, and chocolate marshmallow cakes. All good.

One negative - the boat's staff weren't the friendliest. The one young guy was fantastic, and couldn't do enough for us, but the rest of them sat in the dining/lounge area on the comfortable seats, smoking and playing chess, and were fairly surly when we wanted to do some swimming in the evening. After one of the passengers spoke to Quan about it, he immediately told them to stop smoking and they did so. However, they still spent the day lounging in the chairs; it was pretty cold outside and we'd have liked to sit and socialise, but in the end had to pile around the dining room table to do so. Quan was excellent - friendly, sociable and gave some very interesting information on the places we visited and also Vietnam. For example, Vietnamese people have to pay 100% tax on imported items - sometimes 150% (such as for cars). So a $20,000 Toyota will set them back an insane $50,000. Corruption on the part of the government, or a way of promoting local manufacturing? Quan believes it is almost certainly the former.

We were due to do some kayaking in the afternoon, but it was pouring with rain and Quan asked if we wanted to postpone it until tomorrow at Monkey Island. What I didn't realise was that the chance to kayak into caves was only something we could do on the first day. This wasn't explained to us, until the next day when the option to do this was no longer available. This was a little disappointing - I got the feeling the boat staff weren't keen on going out in the rain to sort the kayaks out, so we were encouraged to postpone it.

We had a very comfortable night's sleep but the showers in the morning started off freezing, and moved up to lukewarm. It was too late to tell the staff but they probably would have sorted it out if we'd asked. Breakfast was omelette, toast with jam and butter, baguette, tea and coffee. Quan said that we could have different types of egg if we wanted (fried, scrambled, etc). Omelette suited me fine and it all tasted good.

We took a bus ride and a short boat in the pouring rain across to Thien Long (dragon cave) which was less spectacular but more "natural", and still great to explore. Apparently only Kangaroo Cafe tours go to this cave out of all of the tour groups; we saw one other couple, but I think they chartered their own boat and guide. There was a rock that was allegedly in the shape of a Buddha but our guide told us, tongue firmly planted in cheek, that a level of imagination was necessary.

Afterwards, we took the boat to Cat Ba Island and had a fantastic lunch at Green Mango. The blurb in Kangaroo Cafe claims it is the best restaurant on the island. I can believe that, as the food was excellent (and looking at the price list, it's likely the most expensive on Cat Ba to boot). We had plates of food brought out consecutively to share: papaya salad; Tom Yum soup; fried calamari and prawns; sweet and sour fish; BBQ chicken wings with rice; toasted tuna sandwiches with fries; a plate of fruit to finish. Again, all of it was excellent and filling.

In the afternoon we took the boat to Monkey Island. Interesting place - the wild monkeys there are used to humans, but are actually vicious little animals. They are used to humans giving them food, and will actively try and get into any bags you've brought along, and will even attack you if you don't give them food. This happened to Hannah, an Australian girl in our group; a man further down the beach had been feeding them, and they came over to her - she had no food, and couldn't run away (you're advised not to as they see that as a threat), and one of the larger monkeys came up and bit her leg. She was taken by boat immediately to the pharmacy to get rabies shots and was fine, but I would advise not getting too close to the monkeys if you can help it. Still, here's some pictured of the little bastards looking fairly cute:

We did some kayaking for an hour from the island to one of the beaches nearby. Great fun, the water wasn't too cold, and it had stopped raining. To be honest, it was worth doing to ensure we didn't get attacked by our simian "friends".

We got to the hotel on Cat Ba island at about 5:30pm, and the evening was ours to do what we wanted with. The hotel - Ngoc Lan Anh - was described as one of the better hotels on the island by Kangaroo Cafe. It was excellent. We had a double room which was HUGE and incorporated all mod cons: two double beds, table and chairs, massive bathroom with all the extras, a TV, hairdryer, wi-fi, the works. It had a great concave window looking out onto one of the Cat Ba cliffs, and all in all we were very impressed. We had some wine with Tom and Holly, taught them how to play Uno, listened to some Christmas tunes, then went out for some food. We we wandered around and went to a restaurant next to Bamboo cafe. I had fried crab (still in the shell) and steamed rice. We went back to our hotel, which had a karaoke room(!) and after the manager - a crazy and hilarious man named Zum - literally poured some rice whisky down our throats from a pitcher, we were in the mood for some singing. I think we were the only people in the hotel, which may have been a blessing given our efforts. Retiring to bed at 12:30am, we felt a little guilty as one of the hotel girls had stayed up as well, to ensure we had drinks, etc.

She was there at breakfast at 8am the next day serving us with a cracking selection of food - there are 7 options to choose from, ranging from pancakes, to omelettes, to Vietnamese breakfast staples, with bananas and tea or coffee. After checking out, we took a bus and then a boat to Ha Long City for lunch. After the Green Mango, the hotel we stopped at for lunch was disappointing. It was another set menu consisting of salad, chicken and potato casserole, fried fish in spicy sauce, rice, freshly cooked prawns, and chips. Sounds great, and tasted great, but we had one plate of each of the above to share between six people. There was simply not enough food. The meal ended with 8 segments of orange and I don't think I'd be alone in saying that 1.33 segments of orange does not class as dessert. If they had cooked a plate of each dish for four people, it would have been much better. As it was, by the time we left the restaurant and got the bus back to Hanoi, I was still hungry.

Overall then, was it worth doing the tour? Absolutely yes.

It's not perfect, but after seeing some of the cattle class tours being offered by the other operators, it was luxury by comparison and very reasonably priced. The maximum number of people is 16 on a 3-day tour, 14 on a 2-day. Other boats have large groups of people, sometimes from 3 different companies, all crowded on. There were 12 in our group, and we formed a great bond and made some fantastic new friends, despite the awful weather for most of the trip. It's a sign of a good tour that even rain can't dampen spirits. Here's all of us enjoying the rain at the end of the trip:

I'd love to see more of Ha Long Bay in the dry season, I can imagine it would be exceptionally beautiful. However, even with the rain the cliffs had an ethereal quality about them as they appeared through the mist:

We'll be back again, one day.

Day 54 - 55: Puppets, Singers and Fine Arts

On Sunday we went to the Fine Art Museum in the morning. I was hoping for something more; three floors of ceramics, lacquer paintings and silk paintings, whilst undeniably well crafted, didn't do much for me. There was one gallery of oil paintings which weren't bad, but other than that I much preferred the slew of mini galleries dotted around the city.

After lunch at a small cafe we went to the water puppet theatre. It was an enjoyable 50 minutes of puppet wizardry, with puppets mixing water, fire and smoke to make an accessible spectacle, accompanied by a 9-piece orchestra. Kids would definitely love it, whilst adults no doubt marvel at the ingenuity of the stage and performers.

We found a cracking bakery called Fresh Garden which sold fantastic filled rolls, croissants, cakes and more, and bought a few things to eat before the Ca Tru performance. We met up with Tom and Holly for a couple of drinks beforehand, and went to Hanoi Backpackers to track down someone who had been on one of the Halong Bay tours who Tom knew. We didn't find him, but by sheer serendipity bumped into a Danish girl who had been on a Kangaroo Cafe tour, had loved it, and had got the pictures to show us. It looked like a lot of the reviews on Trip Advisor were indeed nonsense, and armed with this information we proceeded to head to Kangaroo Cafe's second outlet to buy the 3-day, 2-night tour for Tuesday.

With this done, we met Lan at the Ca Tru theatre and took our seats. The musical style was unlike anything I've ever heard. There is a singer (usually female although during one of the switchovers a man took the lead) who plays a wooden percussion block - for want of a better word - with two sticks in one hand, and one in the other. She sings from her belly with very little mouth movement and it is surprising how powerful her voice got. She is accompanied by someone on a three-string lute, one of the longest instruments you'll find, and someone playing a small drum rather erratically. The lyrics are usually traditional folk songs describing Vietnamese life, and the pace is quite slow. When the female singer - who is apparently well renowned in Vietnam for her ability - switched with one of the men, the rhythm got a bit jauntier. If a picture tells a thousand words, a video should cover a few million:



During an intermission we were given information on the instruments used and then had the opportunity to try and play one of them. I had a bash at the drum, excuse the pun, and found that it was actually pretty difficult to play. You'd think hitting a bit of stretched skin on some wood with a single stick to get one of two possible notes out of it would be fairly simple. This is not the case - for me, anyway.

We were introduced to the main singer afterwards who translated through Lan, and asked if we enjoyed the performance. Whilst not something I would rush out and buy a CD of, I could truthfully answer yes, it was actually a very enjoyable hour and a half.

Feeling peckish, we grabbed a couple of nibbles and drinks from Gecko before retiring for the night.

The next day we decided to try and find Gilly some sunglasses and t-shirts. We half succeeded. Luong Van Can is known as "sunglasses street". This follows an odd theme in Hanoi: all of the shops appear to compete with each other on the same street. All of the silk shops are next to each other. As are the sunglasses shops, the shoe shops, the clothes shops, the flower shops, the Christmas decoration shops, the home furniture shops, and so on. If you can find a niche market, odds are there will be 3 or 4 shops in a row selling that product. On our way to sunglasses street we saw a road with 4 consecutive shops selling store mannequins. I'm not joking. Anyway, after eight identical sunglasses stores, Gilly got into the haggling game when she finally found a pair she liked. I liked the owners too - they thought we were students, and said I didn't look a day over 25. Result all round.

T-shirts were a different matter. Vietnamese women's sizes appear to range from XS (our version of XXXS) to L (our version of S). Gilly tried a medium which didn't fit, and then a large...which was still too small. Men's sizes seem to be different. For no reason other than I liked the colour, I tried on a small t-shirt and found it fit perfectly. So I bought it. Gilly's face was understandably a picture.

A trip to Ha Loa prison was on the cards for the morning as well, we stumbled on it quite by accident - everything we'd read said it was closed on Mondays, but this wasn't the case. An interesting self-guided tour around it ensued; it was the place they kept American pilots that were shot down during the Vietnam War (or American War as it's known here). It was known sarcastically as the Hanoi Hilton Hotel by the POWs and guests included one John McCain, Republican contender for the 2008 US Presidency. His flight jumpsuit is on display amongst much paraphenalia and Vietnamese propaganda about how well US prisoners were treated. Eavesdropping on an organised tour, one Vietnamese tour guide debunked this quite bluntly: he said prisoners were tortured for information. Not particularly shocking news, but his matter-of-factness was a refreshing change after all of the rose-tinted info we'd been given in previous museums.

We tried and failed to identify the train services to Hue from the main train station (we are going to Hue immediately after returning from our tour), so went across the road and grabbed lunch at a place called The Deli. I think it was a catering company but had a cafe upstairs, and the freshly made curried chicklen baguettes we had were superb.

The rest of the afternoon was spent pottering about the city. We bought water and a box of wine for the tour the next day (drinks are not included and have to be bought on the boat), had dinner at a restaurant called Aubergine, tried unsuccessfully to track down Jazz Club Minh (the location mentioned in the guidebook appears to have closed down but the website is still active, so maybe it's moved), then went back to the hotel ready for a 6:30 alarm the next day to begin our Halong Bay tour.

Day 52 - 53: Hanoi Culture

Cities are great. I'm all for the scenery of the countryside, being at one with nature, insert other hippy cliche in here, but sometimes you need to just wander around cities and explore their culture amongst the hustle and bustle. Hanoi has plenty of bustle and only a little hustle, which I'm still not used to. You don't get the hard sell in London or Bristol, so coming to a SE Asian country where very little of this happens (after the intensity of Bangkok), draws favourable comparisons.

Having said that, there are plenty of things that aren't so great. The main one is pollution. With so many motorbikes (see previous post for video), the streets soon get thick with fumes. Add this to the compulsory smoking habit of pretty much all Vietnamese men, and the smoke given off by the many street corner barbeques, and you have yourself a carcinogen-fest free of charge, simply by walking out of your hotel door. Also, if you come to Hanoi you soon get used to the honking. You can't go more than 8 seconds out on the street without hearing a bike or car horn. The frequency is such that I actually believe, like whales and bats, they navigate by some sort of sonar. We've now mastered crossing the road, and have yet to see an accident which I can only put down to either compressor fields around each vehicle, divine intervention, or sheer good fortune.

Our hotel is excellent. The wi-fi stopped working a couple of nights ago, and the staff had it fixed by the morning. I'd highly recommend staying at Camellia, it is very comfortable and friendly. Also loving the memory foam mattress; I think we may have to invest in one in the future.

After a well earned lie-in, we took a stroll up to the north of town. There are a few traditional houses which have been restored in this area, and in one of them we met a lovely Vietnamese local volunteer called Lan. She was there to practice her English and told us all about the symbolism in the cultural houses in Hanoi. The main colours they use in a lot of buildings around the area is yellow, which was the colour of the French royal family. Similarly, red is often used in places of worship as it denotes power (the colour of blood). There are often two horses in temples - one is white which protects the occupants, the other is red which chases away bad spirits. There are also lots of statues around the city of a crane standing on top of a tortoise: the crane represents the sky, whilst the tortoise represents the earth and longevity - in conjunction they represent the harmony between heaven and earth. Lan invited us to a performance of Ca Tru music on Sunday at the house, which is a type of folk music; tickets were limited and I believe there are only 15 or so people that can along to keep the atmosphere intimate. Since we were going to be around, we thought why not - let's get immersed in the culture.

We ate lunch at Newday which wasn't bad (a 5 course set menu) but not as good as I'd hoped considering its placement on Trip Advisor.

Wandering around some of the art shops, we stumbled across Bao Nguyen. This guy is one of the greatest artists I've ever seen. His simple charcoal drawings are almost photo-realistic, to the point where I had to do a double-take on a number of them to check if they weren't actually photographs. Based out of a small shop on 47 Hang Ngang street, his walls are covered with drawings of people, famous and ordinary, and all stunning. If I had a week and a few hundred dollars to spare, I would definitely be buying a commission from him. If you get the chance, take a look at his shop when you visit Hanoi.

We walked down to the Ngoc Son Temple on Hoan Kiem Lake - the main lake in the centre of the city. There's a huge 6 foot long turtle on display in the entrance room which was found in 1968, and which locals believe is a legendary turtle, possibly related to the turtle god which an ancient emperor handed a magic sword back to, after it gave him victory. It looked like a stuffed turtle to me, but the story sounds cool.

After a lovely sunset, we went to buy tickets at the Water Puppet Theatre, and were served by a woman who could give Anne Robinson a run for her money in the stroppiness stakes. I've never felt like buying something was as much of a hassle to someone as it was to her. Thankfully, she wasn't indicative of Vietnamese people in general, who have been very pleasant so far. So, on Sunday we are going to see the Water Puppet Theatre at 3:30pm followed by a Ca Tru performance at 8pm.

In the evening we decided to go to an all-you-can-eat ice cream buffet at Kem Fanny. This only runs on the first Friday of every month, so we were pretty lucky to be here. We gorged ourselves stupid on a variety of ice creams, sorbets, toppings, wafers and fruit, and after an hour and a half of sugar intake, we were buzzing. We did eat some savoury street food as well, just to ensure that ice cream wasn't the sole dish of our evening meal...

On Saturday we continued the Hanoi building tour and trawled around a number of popular sites:

- Temple of Literature: Established almost 1000 years ago, this is still an important venue for scientific and academic events today. It's also on the 100,000 dong banknote. Students would travel here to attain professorship, or at least attempt to - only a handful would be accepted out of the thousands of applicants, and they would have to pass a series of exams - the last being set by the king himself. These days, most of the temple is given over to wedding parties and souvenir stands, but there are peaceful areas in there and a few Confucian statues calling back to olden times.

- One Pillar Pagoda: It's a pagoda that stands on a single stone pillar. We didn't actually get in there, so only saw it from the outside as there were queues of people wanting to offer incense and money and pray.

- Ho Chi Minh Museum: This is an odd one. A huge building containing a bizarre collection of permanent installation art. These range from Picasso sculptures, geometric carvings, a range of different war memorabilia and, near the end, an oversized table and chairs adorned with an equally huge bowl of fruit. Because nothing symbolises the revolutionary cause like a massive pineapple. Each area was supposed to represent some aspect of Ho Chi Minh's life, but I went out not knowing any more about Uncle Ho than when I entered. The big fruit was pretty cool though.

- Army Museum: More dry war material, most of which was only captioned in English so we couldn't get the full benefit of the Vietnamese struggle against the US. This disappointment was offset by a fun courtyard of cannons, aircraft, tanks, and jeeps in the courtyard, including a MIG fighter jet, which we got to take photos on, in, or around.

We had lunch at Cafe Smile (a 4-course set menu again, better than Newday and cheaper to boot) and an evening meal at Kangaroo Cafe (who are in the top 50 burger joints in the world according to International Cow, and after trying one, I can see why). We met another English couple - Tom and Holly - at Kangaroo, and spent the evening discussing Halong Bay tour options with them. We're all undecided on how we want to get there. Our Russian-American friends Julie and Lev did it on their own by making their way to Cat Ba Island and setting off from there. However, Kangaroo Cafe also run a tour which - from the reviews and blurb inside the cafe - sounds pretty good, and different to the identical tours being peddled by the rest of the Hanoi guesthouses. Having said that, the Trip Advisor reviews for Kangaroo Cafe Tours are not that good. That's not to say it's a bad tour necessarily, as we also heard that a number of dishonest competitors to Kangaroo Cafe were deliberately paying people to post negative reviews in order to hurt their business. I can well believe that; if stealing a business's name doesn't work, why not hurt their reputation too?

The KC tour sets off on Tuesday and the weather from Tuesday onwards looks fairly miserable so we may just bite the bullet and go with them to save the hassle of organising our own transport to and accommodation in Cat Ba in the rain.

Day 50 - 51: Hanging out in Hanoi

The bus to Hanoi was probably the best of the many journeys we've had in the last couple of weeks, mostly because it was quicker. We stocked up on fruit and snacks beforehand, so we didn't need to stop off for lunch (not that the driver gave people much time to eat). Arriving in one of the Hanoi bus stations, were immediately set upon by a gang of motorcycle taxi drivers. By that, I mean we were literally surrounded by 7-8 men who were all talking at us, waving money in our face (not to give us, but to tell us how much we should pay them to get a lift), and generally getting a bit too close for my liking. Obviously they fancied their chances, as the first offer for a taxi was 200,000 dong to the centre of town - about £7 (it should be about 90,000). We ignored them and decided to get something with four wheels instead. Call me crazy, but I don't particularly trust transportation which, when you let go of it, falls over.

Having read up beforehand, we knew better than to tell them the guesthouse we were going to, and instead gave them the road name. The reason for this is apparent as soon as you get to the Old Quarter in Hanoi: there are dozens of places with identical names. The reason for this is two-fold: there is no copyright protection in Hanoi (and neither in Vietnam, I would assume), and secondly any hotel or tour operator that has a good reputation - perhaps thanks to appearing in a guidebook - is immediately cloned by a less reputable guesthouse who changes their name to try and capture some of the original's business. They then work in tandem with taxis or motorbike taxis to snare unwary tourists who give them the name of the place that they want to go to, and are taken to one of the copies - usually run by a mate of the taxi driver - and given a hard sell for a room, or a tour. I've seen over a dozen "Sinh Cafe" places, multiple "Especen Hotels" and at least three "Hanoi Backpackers". Cunning.

We found a place called Camellia recommended in Rough Guide, and checked it out. The first thing we noticed in Vietnam was the change from the local currency to American Dollars for hotel payments. It makes things seem a lot more expensive; in actuality, Vietnam is on a par with Thailand in terms of accommodation costs. We got a decent room for $15, nicely laid out and with super fast wi-fi. I think we will stay here for a few days - we shopped around a bit later, and the majority of places are at least the same price, if not more.

After dumping our bags, we went out for a wander around the Old Quarter. Hanoi is completely crazy, at least from the traffic side of things. How people aren't injured or vehicles damaged on a minute-by-minute basis is beyond me. Crossing the street is an event unto itself. Have a look at the kind of thing we have to contend with:



At this stage, it's a case of shutting your eyes and walking. As long as you walk slowly enough, the bikes will just go around you. Running is not a good idea unless you fancy a new appendage made from rubber and/or metal.

We dropped off some laundry, exchanged a book at a bookshop, then had a look around St. Joseph's Cathedral and Ba Da Pagoda, and strolled down some of the many side streets. I can say one thing for Hanoi: it doesn't waste space. Every inch of pavement is crammed full of shops, cafes, guesthouses, restaurants or tour places. You can buy pretty much anything you're looking for here, as long as you're willing to search for it. Having spent the last 3 days eating pretty much all rice and noodles, we decided to go to a place called "Pepperonis" for an all you can eat pizza buffet. It was decent enough, but nothing special. Whilst there though, we met a Scottish couple - Craig and Rebecca - who are on a 3 month whistlestop trip around the world, and had some great tips for us about Cambodia and southern Vietnam.

After a decent night's sleep, we got up early this morning to meet them again, before heading over to the Museum of Vietnamese Revolution. This was a dry collection of photographs detailing the Vietnamese struggle firstly against the French colonial occupation, then the war with America. The photos could have done with a bit of context; whilst they were pretty much chronological, a lack of backstory made them somewhat impenetrable to people who know little about that period (shamefully, I include myself here).

The next stop was the History Museum over the road, which was actually smaller than the Revolution museum and had a standard array of pottery, carvings, bones, teeth and whatnot. There were some decent cases but the majority of items dug up by archaeologists tend to bore me to tears. I'm sure it's fascinating to many people, but once you've seen one bit of broken jar, you really don't need to see another forty-eight.

After lunch at Ciao Cafe we went to the Museum of Vietnamese Women. This was the surprise highlight of the day - it explained the female role in Vietnamese culture, both from the traditional day-to-day sense and, more importantly, the role they played in helping liberate Vietnam from French colonialism and US aggression. Fascinating stuff, and well worth a visit. We also popped into a few of the many, many art galleries lining the Hanoian streets - I could spend a day just trawling around them.

In the evening we met up with Craig and Rebecca again at Pickles, a sandwich/western/Asian restaurant with fairly decent food at decent prices. They are heading to Luang Prabang tomorrow, so hopefully they'll find this blog useful!

The weather today has been miserable. It rained from about 7am until almost 5pm, and was fairly cold to boot. Still, it's the first rain we've experienced for about 3 weeks so I guess we can't grumble, especially when comparing it to the UK.

Hanoi is an interesting place. There's something new on every street, whether it's a funky looking restaurant or a book shop or a gallery. The locals aren't as in-yer-face as Bangkok, which is a relief, and the only attempted hard sell we've had is for one of the umpteen tours to Halong Bay which every tour company, guesthouse and hotel are peddling. After a timely and helpful message from Julie and Lev, I think we're going to make our way to Cat Ba Island in a few days and organise a Halong Bay tour ourselves. It'll be cheaper, and we won't be in thrall to the time restrictions of the tour operators who are notoriously hit-and-miss when it comes to this particular tour.

Tomorrow we're having the first lie-in we've had for the best part of a week, followed by a walk up to the French Quarter.

Day 48 - 49: Sam Neua, and onward to Vietnam

Sam Neua really didn't have much going on. We wandered up the main street and got to the temple (accompanied by 6-7 curious kids who kept saying "Sabaidee" [hello] in order to see what we'd do), had a look around, then wandered back again via a fresh food market. There appeared to be only one internet cafe in town so we tried to find some more information on Thanh Hoa online, failed, and left after ten minutes.

There also only appears to be 2 restaurants with English menus. If Laos didn't have a completely different script for their alphabet, it wouldn't be so difficult; as it is, our eating options are limited to what we can read, unless we planned to take some risks. Going by yesterday's English language breakdown, and the fact that the guidebook suggests some of the other Laos restaurants are for "adventurous types" and include intestines, we decided to play it safe. More rice and noodles, yum.

Today we checked out of the guesthouse at 7am, having said our goodbyes to Carolyn and Brian last night, as they are staying around to visit the Viengxay caves (something we might have done if we'd had more time). After a hike up to the bus station, we got on the bus only for it to come back down to the centre and stop for an hour whilst the driver had breakfast. Great.

The drive to Thanh Hoa wasn't that eventful. We went through passport control and baggage checking at the border, whilst a Vietnamese official offered to buy our remaining kip at a rate of 2 dong to 1 kip. The current rate is 2.6 dong to 1 kip. I suggested he offered more. He politely refused. I politely refused. We hung on to our kip. Shortly after, we stopped at a little Vietname restaurant where we had our first taste of Vietnamese food. It was steamed rice, steamed spinach, and a couple of pork skewers. The pork was excellent, and the rest was as you'd expect - filling, but bland. Still, I managed to pay in kip - take that, Mr. Unreasonable Exchange Rate Man.

After we crossed the border, the bus journey got more unpleasant. Lots of Vietnamese people crammed in, and many of them decided to light up during the journey. Now, my parents both smoked all through my childhood and teens. I hated it; it's a vile, toxic habit which even to this day makes me feel ill when I'm around cigarettes. It was even worse on car journeys, and may have been the cause of my car sickness when I was younger. Today was the first time I'd been in a moving vehicle whilst around someone actively smoking for well over a decade, and it did not make me feel good. I'm not sure what the smoking laws are on buses, but I suspect even if there are any, the police probably wouldn't be too bothered. In any case, the journey was fairly miserable for both of us.

On arrival in Thanh Hoa, we were pretty much surrounded by groups of motorbike taxi guys, all speaking Vietnamese at us, miming "sleep" and asking us if we wanted to go with them to a guesthouse which they'd undoubtedly get commission from. At that point, we had no Vietnamese dong, and only a vague idea of where we were. One of them suggested that I got on his bike whilst he took me to an ATM; leaving Gilly with our luggage and six unfamiliar men didn't appeal, so I declined and we decided to head up the street on our own, leaving the locals laughing at our backs. Luckily we didn't have to walk far - a hotel about 50m from the bus station looked fairly inviting (the Minh Hotel, I believe), and after inquiring we found it was 200,000 dong or $10. We decided to check out the room, and it looked reasonable. That is, until I decided to use the bathroom, closed the glass fronted door behind me, and then realised that I couldn't open it again. The handle turned but the door wouldn't open. I asked Gilly to open it from her end. There was no handle on her side. I was literally stuck in the bathroom, and unable to get out. After a couple of minutes trying to lever the door open, we gave up and Gilly went down to get some help. I wondered if this was what a contestant on The Crystal Maze felt like.

The guy came back, fiddled with the handle for a minute or so, and managed to get it open. Then, inexplicably, he decided to go into the bathroom himself, close the door behind him and check if the same problem occurred. Naturally, it did. He was now stuck in the bathroom in the same way I was, with the difference being that he knew what he did to open the door, I didn't, and neither of us could communicate about it. In the end I used the tried and tested method of swiping a credit card down the door frame, which worked a treat. The guy sheepishly directed us to another room.

After moving all our stuff in, we went to find an ATM (result - one was just 200m away, and let us withdraw 4 million dong, in a mixture of large and small bills) and a restaurant. Fortunately we were lucky in that respect too: a nice looking restaurant was just a couple of doors down. It seemed a bit too nice though, and when we were ushered into a private room and handed a menu with both English and Vietnamese languages and no prices, alarm bells started to ring. We needn't have worried though: we got a decent sized portion of noodles with beef(even though we'd ordered chicken), a MASSIVE portion of fried rice with seafood, a can of orange juice and a Hanoi Beer for around a fiver. Probably expensive by Vietnamese standards, but we were hungry and tired and it hit the spot.

To be honest, Vietnam hadn't appealed up until that point. The toilet breaks we had basically consisted of going on the floor behind a brick wall. The other occupants of the bus, when not smoking, spent their time clearing their throat in the most noisy, disgusting way possible. I've heard more hacking, spluttering, gargling and snorting than I'd ever want to hear again in a lifetime. They'd make Guybrush Threepwood look like an amateur. The villages and towns we stopped off at were grim, dirty places with rubbish strewn in the roads and gutters, people urinating wherever they fancied it, and almost every road vehicle hammering the horn as if it was the only way to keep the engine from stalling.

We crashed out at about 9pm (well, Gilly did - muggins here decided to stay up and blog). Fortunately, the hotel reception said there was a bus to Hanoi at 10am which gets in at 2pm tomorrow. 4 hours won't be so bad after two 10-hour bus journeys in 4 days.

Hanoi awaits!

Day 47: Arrival in Sam Neua

We got picked up at 7:30, an ungodly time of the morning when it was still fleece and trousers weather. On the plus side, it could be worse: our friends Paul and Fi who are also travelling have just left Russia, which is considerably colder. Too cold for my liking. I'm definitely a sun bunny.

We didn't actually need to get up so early as it happened, since the bus took us to the station to pick up more people, and then back again...right past our guesthouse. That's an hour's sleep missed. Ah well. The promised 9 hour drive took 10 hours but we're used to Laos time now, and it didn't come as a surprise. We had a stop for lunch and fried fish was once again on the menu, but unfortunately not spicy. It filled a gap, however, and with the fruit, Pringles and chocolate wafers we'd brought, we didn't go hungry. The road to Sam Neua was much less winding than the road to Phonsavan, and whilst the seats weren't as comfortable I found the drive more bearable for reading.

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On Rob's Bookshelf

Since starting out on our trip I have ploughed through a few books:

- A Clash of Kings, George R R Martin:The second book in Martin's excellent series "A Song of Ice and Fire". The first book, A Game of Thrones was adapted for TV earlier this year, whilst the second is coming out in 2012. Any fantasy fan worth their salt should read Martin's work, he is utterly peerless. This was my second read through and was as rewarding as the first. He's up to book 5 of a proposed 7 book set, and I've only read the first 4 previously so I'm looking forward to getting on to the fifth in due course.

- The Damage Done, Peter Woolf: Bought at Orn's Bookshop in Chiang Rai, this is a true story of a professional London criminal and drug addict who turns his life around after trying a new type of rehabilitation. Gilly bought this and I wasn't particularly keen on reading it at first, but it was actually very interesting and not the kind of "misery memoir" it may have been if the author had been more sentimental and less matter-of-fact.

- The Accidental Time Machine, Joe Haldeman:A straightforward and enjoyable time travel tale from the author of the excellent "The Forever War", this was my choice at Orn's Bookshop. Both of us read it, and both enjoyed it. It isn't hard sci-fi by any stretch, and is a quick, fun read.

- The Simulacra (S.F. Masterworks), Philip K Dick:I'm a big fan of Dick's work, but this was a little disappointing compared to some of his other offerings. All of the author's staples are in place: political commentary, satire, fascination with smoking, oppressed alien race, WWII anachronisms. However, the underlying story itself isn't particularly coherent, and the governmental structure isn't explained well enough for the denouement to be satisfying.

- Breakdown at Tiffany's and other stories, David Braga: This is a collection of short stories by my good friend Dave. With an eye for making the everyday interesting, a great sense of humour, and a consistently enjoyable knack of turning a normal story on its head in the closing paragraphs ("Shadows", "Death in the Village", and "Shopping" immediately spring to mind), this e-book is well worth 69p of anybody's money.

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We arrived at Sam Neua, took a sawngthaew to the centre and checked into what we thought was a guesthouse recommended in the guidebook: Khaemxam. It turns out that we'd actually gone to Sa Ne Khaemxam and the guesthouse we were looking for was just around the corner. We took a look at this first one anyway, and were pleasantly surprised: comfortable bed, en suite, and even a TV. It looks to be run by a husband and wife team, and seemed pretty empty. Carolyn and Brian, two Canadians who we'd got to know on the bus were with us, and Carolyn bargained the completely nutty wife down to 60,000 kip per night, which was a complete steal. After dumping our bags, we wandered around the very small town and came across some sort of telecom-sponsored event happening in the town hall. It looked like a pop concert of sorts from the cardboard cut-outs, posters and stands selling CDs and DVDs - we asked at the door and they told us that we could go in for free, despite Laos people having to pay. I guess being a farang has its benefits occasionally. Inside we were treated to a packed auditorium of around 400-500 people, mostly kids, with more cut-outs of Laos or possibly Thai pop pin-ups on stage with funky haircuts and names like "Tan" and "Fresh". We couldn't tell if it was an ensemble of different artists, or a Laos version of S Club 7. We stayed to hear a girl and then a guy sing, with mixed ability, whilst the kids in the audience screamed and pleaded to be given free merchandise from the two MCs who couldn't have been older than 20. It was certainly a surreal experience.

Afterwards we ended up at Chittavanh restaurant. Gilly ordered "Pork noodle soup with roll" which turned out to be noodle soup with balls of ("rolled") pork meat. At least, that's what we assume - it was grey and fairly unappetising. I ordered fried rice with chicken which came, inexplicably, with a fried egg on top, as well as Fried Noodle Roll which I expected to be spring rolls but were delivered as the spring roll filling without the corn paper wrapping. Language translations aside, it wasn't a bad meal.

We have a day to kill tomorrow before we can cross into Vietnam, so we will likely mooch around, check out the tourist information centre, and catch up on some reading. There doesn't appear to be any places with wi-fi in the town, and my Kindle can't pick up any sort of mobile 2G or 3G signal, so it looks like internet cafes are our only option for trying to book ahead for accommodation.

Day 45 - 46: Phonsavan and the Plain of Jars

In the morning we moved from Dok Khoun Hotel to Dok Khoun Guesthouse. Possibly owned by the same people, but the room was cheaper, the bed was more comfortable and they did banana pancakes for breakfast, so it was a no-brainer. We spent the day mooching around the town. Phonsavan reminds me of what a Wild West town would look like if they stuck guesthouses up on either side. A wide main road with a few shops either side, some hotels, and little else. We ate lunch at Sanga and I once again went for fried fish, and once again wasn't disappointed.

There is a Mines Advisory Group (MAG) office here which explains - in excellent detail - the horrors inflicted upon Laos by the US air force. A popular trivia question is "Which country is the most heavily bombed in history?" The answer is Laos. Between 1964 and 1973, the US dropped almost 2 million tons of bombs on the country in order to disrupt Communist Laotian groups and the Vietnamese, without the knowledge of the American Congress or the people. The atrocities that the US committed would have them hauled in front of a war tribunal for war crimes today, but back then the CIA was running the show in the so-called Secret War and was accountable to no-one...mainly because they prevented anyone finding out about it. The aftermath of the devastating and relentless attacks mean that 40 years on, 30% of those bombs which didn't explode are still littered around the country. We watched, shocked, at the videos explaining how civilians digging up bombs for scrap would frequently be killed or maimed, how children would mistake "bombies" (unexploded bomblet contained within a cluster bomb) for tennis balls and inadvertently set them off, and how the US has refused to sign up to a treaty to ban the use of cluster bombs to this day.

MAG works to detect and clear villages, roads, schools and other areas of unexploded ordnance (UXO). They train the local people, have many teams of all-female technicians to promote equality within the country and challenge traditional conventions, and have made safe hundreds of thousands of bombs littering the country. Given the scope of the bomb dispersion, however, it will take decades to clear, and the US has given a relatively paltry sum of money to help clear the mess it made. Farmers cannot increase their crop for fear of digging and hitting UXO, and villagers risk their lives each day cutting into bombs that they have found in order to sell on the scrap metal to subsidise their living.

Needless to say, our visit to the MAG centre was eye-opening, as were the videos we saw there. MAG hopes that clearing enough of the ordnance will allow UNESCO to grant Xieng Khouang World Heritage status, which would increase tourism, funding, and ultimately allow more and more of the UXO to be cleared. One of the benefits of the clearance project was the Plain of Jars, which was made accessible thanks to MAG assistance. This was where we planned to visit the next day.

That evening we ate at Nisha restaurant, an Indian run by a husband and wife with assistance from their two young daughters (who couldn't have been more than 9 and 6). The food - when it came - was excellent. Unfortunately the popularity of the place meant that it took over an hour to get it to our table; they would definitely benefit from an extra pair of hands.

We had found out that - quite by accident - we'd arrived for the Hmong new year festival. A fairground of sorts had been set up just around the corner from where we ate, so we wandered up. It was great, and a little surreal. They had rows and rows of stalls where you had to throw 3 darts and burst balloons, a bumper car arena, a karaoke/nightclub venue, a ferris wheel, a fashion show, and all manner of other stalls and activities going on. I had two blasts on the dodgems and felt like I was 15 again. Fantastic.

This morning we booked a tour of the Plain of Jars which also took in a trip to a Hmong village, and in the afternoon a visit to a Russian tank and a spoon village.

There are 3 main sites most visited by tourists in the Plain of Jars, and we went to all three. the "jars" are actually funerary urns left by an ancient Lao civilisation, which when discovered, contained bones and personal items. They litter the landscape but have only been accessible in the last few years thanks to UXO clearance. To be honest, I wasn't blown away by them. They are stone jars on a hill...and after we saw one site, the other 2 were probably overkill. Having said that if you could pick and choose for your tour, I would suggest visiting site 1 and 3, and leaving 2 as it's probably the least interesting. Our genial guide, Lien, was a great help though and gave us plenty of information, made some awful jokes, and generally improved for me what was a fairly dull excursion.

The Hmong village we passed had loads of children wearing full clan dress, all weaved locally by their parents or grandparents, and it was quite the sight. The Russian tank was a rusted, graffiti-ridden shell, and not worth a visit at all. The spoon village gave me a slightly polarised opinion. Essentially, the villagers there melt down aluminium purchased from scrap dealers and convert it in to spoons which they then sell back to villages, restaurants, and so on. It's a fairly simple but repetitive process which allows them to smelt and make around 500 spoons a day. I was allowed to have a go myself at making one; it involves pouring molten aluminium into wood-carved moulds, and then removing the cooled result from them about 60 seconds later. Only two of the three moulds I poured metal into turned into spoons, but I considered that a result for my first go and purchased one of them as proof of my blacksmithing prowess.

That was probably the highlight of the tour for me. The flip side was earlier on, where a few of the people on our tour expressed their disappointment - quite vocally to Lien - that the weavers were not in their hut weaving, and allowing us to photograph them. This was because they were at the various Hmong festivals around the area, but hey, why should that get in the way of tourist demands? As a result, they told Lien they wanted to visit one of the village houses and see the people living there. An obviously embarrassed Lien then asked a lady of over 80 years if it was OK for a bunch of comparatively rich tourists to tramp around their house. Being Laotian and not wanting to offend, she consented. Her entire family were in the house, and as I waited near the steps considering whether I should go in or not, Willem - a retired Dutch man - said to me: "Rob, come in; it's why you're here."

That struck me - what right did we have to go into these people's homes? We'd paid a relative pittance for a day's tour (about £10) and still we expected more from them? I wandered in, and managed about a couple of minutes of watching our group shoving cameras in the faces of the old lady, her kids and grandkids, and had to leave. I felt sick, as if I'd violated the privacy of the locals' lives. Festivals are one thing: they are an obvious outlet for exuberance and sharing with anyone in the area. Invading someone's ome for a couple of digital photos of what a "poor person's house" looks like was too much for me.

When we got back to the tour office, the owner - whose grandfather was a spokesman for the Pathet Lao, the Communist rebel group the US was trying to crush - showed us a video of the Secret War with interviews from CIA agents, US journalists and his own father. It's well worth watching if you have the chance - click here (5 parts). After the film was over, the owner of the tour office, who still supports the Communist rebels, told us that the film took 6 years to make and he took some of the film crew out on location, but the version we saw was the unedited version and different versions are shown around the world. Willem refused to believe this was the case, and despite us trying to explain how propaganda, country-specific agendas and censorship worked, wouldn't have any of it. We left fairly sharpish before I decided to say something I regretted. The naïveté of some westerners defies belief. A meal at Simmalay followed, and was even better than the one we had on our first night.

Tomorrow we head to Sam Neua, a small town en route to the Laos/Vietnam border. It's another 8-9 hour bus ride, joy of joys, and from there we will have to work out the best way to get into Vietnam. We can't actually enter until the 29th November as that's when our visa starts, so we'll have a day to kill.

Day 42 - 44: Vientiane, and onward to Phonsavan

Buddha Park was well worth a visit. There were hundreds of statues, from fairly small to monumental (excuse the pun) in size. One reclining Buddha was a good 20m long if not more and tall to boot. For size comparison, my lovely assistant Gilly demonstrates below:

It wasn't all Buddhas though, a few other religions made an appearance as well - Ganesha, the Hindu Elephant god, for one - as well as some other oddities such as mermaids, monkeys and a huge stone building almost conical in shape which had been hollowed out and split into 3 tiers containing more statues within:

We had lunch there and headed back to the city. We found a computer shop and decided to splurge on an Acer D257 netbook. Great, we thought, now we can get stuck in to uploading photos and doing other internetty-related activities. After unpacking the box we realised that the shop hadn't packed a power cable for the netbook. Fantastic. I dropped them an email via the Kindle that we would pick it up the next day.

Our guesthouse gave us cake and tea in the afternoon, wonderful. In the evening we ate at Dok Champa; I had spicy fish and loved it, whilst Gilly wasn't that impressed with her curry. If in doubt, go for spicy fried fish - a lesson we learned after the meal in Houay Xai (which hasn't been topped yet in terms of deliciousness). Our mealtime entertainment was provided by two kittens in the restaurant garden fighting and learning to climb a tree.

The following day we crammed in most of the main Vientiane sights. A visit to the Laos National Museum was first, which was interesting when describing the archaeological digs taking place around Laos, but unfortunately moved on to a not very good description of the "Secret War" waged by the Americans in Laos, which was heavy on anti-American propaganda and light on a decent explanation of the events around the war. Laos is the most bombed country in history thanks to 9 years of US airstrikes, but it would have been good to have a bit of detail about the "American imperialists" rather than just a series of photos of the main players in Laos and the US. It's a bit of a missed opportunity really.

We headed off to pick up our Vietnam visa from the embassy, the netbook cable and then went on to That Luang, supposedly the most important stupor in Laos. It was golden from a distance but fairly dirty up close, and probably wasn't worth the trek up to get to it. Patouxai - Laos' version of the Arc de Triomph - was next, no doubt inspired by the French colonial occupation. Apparently a lot of money meant for aid to the Laos people was instead ploughed into this monument...who needs food when you can have a big arch, right?

In the evening we wandered over to Jazzy Brick, a funky cocktail bar which oozed so much cool you'd expect the door to be made of ice. I'm a sucker for cocktail bars and when they're done right, as this one was, I could happily stay there all night. Some pics:

Carefully placed uplighting and retro German appliances aside though, it's not much cop if the drinks are rubbish and the music is terrible. Luckily, neither of these things affect Jazzy Brick, making it possibly my favourite cocktail bar since Dry Martini in Barcelona. A Serpentine, Immaculate, Mint Julep and Aquarius later, we were feeling a bit peckish so ate at Aria Italian Culinary Arts as it was on our road. We had a magnificent pizza, the best we've eaten on our trip so far, so much so that I can forgive them their incredibly pretentious name and £250 wine list.

The next day we left Vientiane on a 9am bus to Phonsavan. The tourist office told us that only 2 buses ran in the morning, that it was 95,000 kip per person, and that it would take 10 hours. It turned out that they had buses running throughout the day (negating our rush in the morning to get to the bus station), it was 110,000 kip per person, and the ride took about 11.5 hours. None out of 3 ain't bad, I guess. The bus journey itself? Well, I've tried to scrub it from my mind. 11+ hours of listening to a mix of Thai soft rock and Lao karaoke pop pelting full blast from an overhead speaker, whilst the bus weaves in and out of its lane on a mountain road honking indiscriminately might be someone's idea of a fun ride but it certainly wasn't mine. The songs weren't even catchy, not even on the eighth listen. I think the bus driver only had 2 CDs and there's only so much synth accordion one person can take before thoughts of how to "accidentally" smash the CD player with a nearby water cooler start creeping in. To make things even more fun, when the driver got tired of the music, a girl to our right decided she'd become the DJ and started pounding out the exact same drivel from her iPhone for all to hear, and then accompanied her music with some delightful karaoke. Deep breaths, Rob.

We arrived traumatised at Phonsavan bus station, stubbornly refused to get ripped off by tuk-tuk drivers and waited until one of them caved and took us to the hotel strip for a reasonable price, then checked into the Dok Khoun Hotel. This was the biggest room we'd had on our trip, but it was also the dullest. The shower resembled a school gym shower room, and the hotel itself still appeared to be under construction. The bed was barely comfortable, but it sufficed for one night. We wandered out to get our first proper food of the day; we'd munched through 2 bags of crisps, a chicken on a stick bought during a rest break, a few bits of fruit and some praline wafer things, so were still fairly peckish. A stop at Simmilay set us right, with huge portions of chicken noodles and a BeerLao to wash it down. We were so tired, even the bed didn't stop us sleeping well. However, Phonsavan was cold in comparison to the rest of Laos - it's the first time I've worn a fleece in the country - and the size of the room didn't help, so we decided to check out the next day and find something a bit cosier and hopefully cheaper.

Day 38 - 41: Rock Climbing, Caving and Kayaking to Vientiane

We had never done rock climbing before. So when we found out we could do a full day for less than thirteen quid each, we thought "Why not?". We weren't disappointed. In the morning we did four climbs ranging from 4a to 5c. Unfortunately the first one was 5b and was a baptism of fire. Nothing like easing you in gently. On the plus side, the three subsequent climbs were a relative doddle. After a lunch of rice and a baguette, we tackled three more climbs all at grade 6: two at 6a and one at 6a+. I was only able to get to the top of one of the 6a climbs; I was completely knackered after that and the 6a+ climb was crazily tough. However, I really enjoyed the day and will certainly consider climbing when we get back as an activity.

The next day we took a half day trip out to 3 caves - Elephant Cave (basically a hole in a cliff, completely uninteresting), Snail Cave (more like it - a decent trek underground), and Water Cave (as it sounds - we got on a tube and pulled ourselves under and into the cave which was pretty much flooded). I'd not been in a cave since a schooltrip to Wales, and forgotten how much I enjoyed it. In the afternoon we grabbed a surprisingly good chicken burger at Gary's Irish Pub back in Vang Vieng and in the evening ate a fantastic meal at Arena, a restaurant that looked upmarket but had excellent Thai food at reasonable prices. The evening soured a little when two English guys wearing just swimming shorts staggered in, completely pissed, and went straight to the toilet...together. Clearly from the way they were looking around, their plan was to take some drugs. The owner was understandably furious and hammered on the door. They came out swearing at him, and he stood his ground and ordered them to leave. I thought it might get violent but thankfully they managed to get back out without falling over or punching anything, whilst the owner shouted at them telling them they were an embarrassment to English people, which was completely true and I felt embarrassed for my nation. Vang Vieng, we realised, was not a place we wanted to hang around in for any length of time.

Yesterday we took a trip to Vientiane by kayak. At least, that's how the package was sold, in reality it was about 1.5 hours kayaking, a hearty lunch by the river of freshly cooked skewers of chicken and vegetables with the obligatory baguette, then another 30 minutes of kayaking, then a stupidly uncomfortable truck ride to Vientiane. I envy fat people sometimes, they won't experience the lack of "natural padding" which makes a ride in a rattlebucket with zero suspension so utterly miserable for me. The kayaking itself was fun though, even if I did have a slightly scary moment whe we capsized going through a rapid and I didn't manage to hang on to the kayak so got washed downstream in a surprisingly quick current, clutching my oar and bobbing around helplessly. Fortunately the guides knew what they were doing and kayaked over to grab me whilst Gilly (who sensibly held on) was helped by the other guide.

To call Vientiane a quiet city would be an understatement. It's more like a business capital, with government buildings taking up most roads, and guesthouses and restaurants in the minority. We wandered around and found Youth Inn - one of the few budget places with spaces left - and got a room before heading out. We ate at Taj Mahal, an Indian recommended in the guidebook which was actually pretty good and cheap to boot. I watched the first half of the Liverpool match before the Laos curfew kicked in, then went back to the room. Whilst not quite as bad as Green House in Bangkok, it stank of sewage in the bathroom which permeated throughout the room, the bed was barely comfortable and the reception couldn't provide an extra pillow. Still, we managed to just about get a night's sleep thanks to being completely knackered and this morning checked out, happy to leave the place behind.

We moved next door, literally, to Mixay Paradise. This was twice the price (£10 a night) but included breakfast, and had a lovely soft bed and a clean, nice-smelling room. Considering some of the dives on offer for similar prices, it was a steal. It also made us realise that as we are coming into the high season, we may have to start booking ahead. This has been an alien concept to us so far, as we've been able to just turn up in a town and get somewhere. I think as we approach Christmas, that will be increasingly unlikely.

We wandered around the city today, looked at a couple more wats and the main shopping mall, and found a place we may be able to get a netbook from depending on price. We also put our passports into the Vietnamese embassy to get a visa for November 29th which means that if we stay a full 30 days we will have Christmas in Vietnam, most likely Ho Chi Minh city. Not sure if we want to do that or move to Cambodia. Might have to look into it a bit and also get some accommodation booked in. In the afternoon we both went for an hour-long aromatherapy massage which was fantastic and helped sort out the ache from yesterday's trip. We also went to the night market and I picked up the obligatory BeerLao t-shirt for £1.60. It's a win-win-win, the beer company gets free advertising, the seller makes a profit and smelly backpackers get dirt cheap clothing. Might get a couple more as a few of my t-shirts are looking somewhat frayed.

We went to La Terrasse for dinner and had a great steak, which was followed by a trip to Swensen's for some ice cream dessert. It would never take off in the UK; we just don't have the climate for it.

Tomorrow we are going to get a bus to Buddha Park (it's a park full of Buddhas. No, really) and I am going to attempt to get my haircut at a place recommended by the massage parlour owner. Hopefully I will still have some hair at the end of it.