It can be hard to enjoy your chocolate pancake when there are kids wandering around at 9pm selling photocopied books or just begging alongside the amputee beggars who have been injured by landmines. Yet you still do and are helping the staff of the cafes keep their jobs. The economy relies a lot on the tourist industry. Yet there is something so wrong in the world when people are sleeping on the streets and not having enough to eat.

Landmines are still a major problem in Cambodia, even this many years after the war is over. About 1000 people a year are killed or maimed by landmines. Victims are a common enough sight on the streets of Siem Reap and Phnom Penh, many reduced to begging in a country where there is no such thing as social security. The dilemmas of giving to beggars and not being able to give to everyone. And the kids question. It is nice to buy the pineapple from the cute girl at the stalls, but is that encouraging child labour, or just providing income to a family?


We passed through increasingly green fields under an increasingly grey sky. The rain laden clouds built up but only ripped open after we were safely in the cafe of our new Sihanoukville guesthouse. It is interesting to see a country from the windows of a bus. The wooden stilt houses and newer brick houses on cement stilts; food stalls; children finishing school and being collected by parents on many varied motorbikes; motorbikes with a double load of pig strapped on the back seats, belly up and definitely dead; flat plains and the start of some low hills that seem large in comparison to the extensive flatness of the country. It is better travelling by land than air.


"Travel is an art, and one must practice it in a relaxed way, with passion, with love. I realised that after years of going about in aeroplanes I had unlearned that art - the only one I care about"
Terzio Terzani in 'A Fortune Teller Told Me'

The four boys sat on the corner of the weather blackened stone of an out building at Angkor Wat. Two of them wore the bright orange robes of novice monks and their shaved heads reflected the warmth of the sinking sun. They were all laughing at their friend chopping away furiously up the coconut tree. Professionals; all smiled straight at the camera for their photo opportunity and it was a classic.

Digital photography has the advantage of being able to delete images as you choose, so you can shoot freely without developing costs. To my sickened stomach, it also means you can accidentally in an unfocussed second wipe a couple hundred photos! Yes - it happened to me yesterday. I went back around the main sites in the inner loop at the Angkor complex to re-take some images, but the sun was now high and the light flat; and the wee boys were no longer waiting for me!

Angkor Wat is a truly impressive complex. Man's skill and creativity; desire for power and prestige; worship and wonder. A great accomplishment, and yet my favourite is Ta Prohm, where the forest is reclaiming its place over the man made buildings. Tall trees bind their thick roots around the roofs and walls and broken stones. Even in destruction nature is beautiful. Maybe the building was the destruction and the forest is restoring some natural balance and beauty?

We passed through the flat expanses of the Cambodian countryside with an electric storm illuminating the sky for miles around us. Sheet lightning flashing out both sides of the bus and fantastic classic fork lightning ripping the sky in its brilliant race to the ground. So bright it burnt its imprint on my retina for several minutes after it had exploded. We passed through a little rain which bounced through the closed windows, but for the most part it streamed down in a dark fog on the horizon.

People are not exaggerating when they say the trip from Poipet on the Thai border, to Siem Reap is one of the worst roads in the world. Our driver was good and our only incident having to bypass a collapsed bridge which still held the articulated lorry that had crushed it. We did wonder how the bus stayed together though. My dad does not know how its axle is not dead. It was impossible to hear the voice of the person sitting beside you, the rattling was so loud. It even drowned out the thunder when the lightning was right on top of us. We arrived by 9pm after just over 5 hours of shaking from the border. Meeting some people from our Bangkok bus leg of the journey today, we found out that the bus they had been transferred to arrived at 1.30am!!!!, after two breakdowns! I guess we got lucky.

After watching a cloudy sunset from Angkor Wat, complete with orange robed monks dotted photogenically by the weathered stone columns, we made it back to our guesthouse on our bicycles before tonight's storm hit. Its 15 minute glory was bright and loud and very wet, and cooled us down deliciously!!

I breathed in a hot breeze, even on the motorbike. The air was viscous and I rode through pools of hotter air, like currents in a body of water. The atmosphere felt heavy; wading through a molasses dream. My own 'Famished Road' merging of heat induced dreams in daylight. 38 degrees in the shade and sitting at a red light on the black sun beat tarmac I felt myself turning to glue.

Cool water bottle from the fridge to the temples and ankles. I sat rehydrating in the still shade and watched the slowly moving people walk around the market. The covered walkways between the many shops made perusing the wooden goods bearable. I even purchased myself a set of chopsticks.

Cloud cover comes as a welcome relief, below the relentless sun. Sodden clouds bearing a false witness to cooling rain bring a brief respite. Life through my tinted lenses appears a fraction more animated.

An extract from my journal on Friday 22nd August, 2003.

“A town only shows it’s polished & seedy & preened, prepared, powdered exterior to the casual visitor, the tourist, the passer through. The attempt to find a feeling, a connection feels elusive. Wandering artificially lit streets & collecting mass printed flyers on street corners from made up and trendily dressed employees who are earning their beer-funding minimum wage by offering you offers of beer jugs, cocktails, happy hours on the rocks and with a twist. But the beat is the rattle of a cattle train. Beer doused backpackers leer and the locals who frequent these venues are on the look out for a zero maintenance “good time”. Soft pillow calls.

Looking for a pumping heart; a soft underbelly takes longer, luck and a feel for the creative, chilled vibe of the local rhythm. It takes a day of couch hogging and spaced out drink buying – just enough to justify hogging the best couch all day.

Sitting here skint and chilled with a plan in my pocket and a good book. The lonesome journeys of Kerouac my companion, as I explore from my armchair the life of Cairns, with a groovy soundtrack.”

Read on the cover of a journal in the art gallery in Christchurch:

"if adventures do not befall a young lady in her own village, she must seek them abroad" Jane Austen

New Zealand is a really beautiful country. I have really enjoyed it a lot!! Though it is winter, and we have had some cold weather, there has been a lot of great weather, especially on the days when I have been doing different activities! Sunshine and blue skies. New Zealand is a moderately expensive country to travel in, except that there are so many fabulous things to do - so I think everyone goes over budget here! I have been: sea-kayaking in Abel Tasman National Park; full day hike up the Franz Josef glacier; bunjy jump from Kawaharau bridge (original site of bunjy); 3 day learning to snowboard package; a 2 hour cruise on Milford Sound; a wildlife tour on the Otago Peninsula - albatross, fur seals, blue penguins, sealions, yellow eyed penguins and sheep! I have also been for great walks and visited good art galleries and museums, coffee shops.... I have been on a 'Stray' bus, which is a hop on hop off type of bus. It has been really good and I have met some fun people on it. It is also good cause there is a real mixture of ages of people on the bus! (I'm not ancient on it) So I guess you could say I have had a fun and full 3 weeks!

I head back to Australia on Sunday. When I go back I will head up the east coast with my Canadian roommate, Lianne. She just has a month left to travel. I will then be needing to look for some work!!

The winter is definitely here but there has been some sunshine amongst the rain and New Zealand in the winter is certainly a land of rainbows. They appear dancing along the side of the bus as we pass lush green fields filled with sheep or just grass; through small towns with a single main street; past houses that sit perched on an outcrop that nestles at the bottom of a lushly vegetated cliff and overlooks a sweeping vista of coastline. Yes the guidebook described the south island of New Zealand as a land of superlatives! Highest, tallest, deepest. It is also a land inspiring adjectives! Really stunningly beautiful. So far I have also found most of the people to be friendly and welcoming.

Small art galleries and organic coffee shop in Kaikoura; skin soaking walk in Picton and a lovely post walk chill out in the hot spa back at the hostel, while drinking a glass of red wine; wine tasting; Marahau accomodation in Old Macdonalds farm complete with llamas and a big dog; sea-kayaking in the Abel Tasman National Park - right place at the right time - take it as it comes joys of travelling; 'shit head' (card game) with a bunch of English lads; starry skies that looked like a child had taken a paint brush loaded with white paper and splashed it all over a velvety piece of black fabric; Barrytown - crazy cross-dressing quiz night and a bus load of fun travellers up for a good laugh; more beautiful scenery; pancake rocks; seal colonies; rain; rainbows; waves and coasts and beaches and sweeping cliffs; cloud and blue skies; silence and lots of laughter.

So far I am having a great time here!

NEW ZEALAND
Christchurch

I flew from Sydney yesterday evening and got to Christchurch after midnight. I had a busy few days before leaving Sydney - finishing work; sorting my 'stuff' out; packing; meeting people to say goodbye; big night out; recovering; and most importantly of all reading (and finishing before I left) my friends copy of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. I had promised not to steal it off to NZ with me. So I got it finished 20 minutes before I had to leave. A great story!

I haven't seen that much of Christchurch yet. It is the second biggest city apparently, but seems like a big town. After Sydney though it would. It is cold here (being mid winter) and I guess can only get colder as we move south. But it is a bright sunny day and there is a nice atmosphere around. Suzy (who I met at the airport and we stayed in the same hostel) and I had a lovely breakfast in a wee cafe called the Honeypot. We are just wandering really. A nice start to a new country.

I start my bus tour tomorrow morning. My 28th birthday! I am looking forward to it.

I have unintentionally abandoned my blog.

No reason other than not getting around to it! I have several days of best intentions. It was going to be beautifully updated with my travelling stories. Thoughts, moments, images. However 3 months is a lot to update. A summary includes ... 2 weeks in Chiang Mai in northern Thailand doing a Thai massage course...a week in Koh Tao in the south of Thailand doing a PADI Open Water and Advanced Open Water Scuba diving course...flying to Sydney and spending time looking for work, staying with friends, getting work, moving into a house with other travellers...now planning to activate my New Zealand working holiday visa by going there for a two week holiday...then returning to Sydney and heading up the East coast.

An understated paragraph on three full months. Places, people, experiences....

I guess I had to break my deadlock by starting somewhere. I will add moments as I feel!

For the moment though I will finish with a nice quote I have just read:


"I went to the woods because I wanted to live deliberately. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life; to put to rest all that was not life. And not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived".
Henry David Thoreau

I travelled with Liz to Kampot by share minibus (four to three seats,
about 26 overall in a 15 seater) where we spent a night in an
unexciting but nice guesthouse. Oh yeh - the colour scheme in our
room was nice - fleecy deep purple bedcovers with satiny cerise pink
pillowcases and vibrant yellow towels folded on the end of the bed.
Nice. Kampot was a small town that has a regular but not too huge
tourist trade. Most tourists who pass through here are heading to
Bokor National park for either a day trip or an overnight. We were
offered this trip several times. It was a nice
place to wander and the river side road while different, was
reminiscent of Kratie. We had an Angkor beer in the one restautant
we could find across from the river and watched the blue river (not
brown like I have got used to seeing rivers) and the delicate but
stunning sunset that sank behind the blue horizon of the hills in the
National Park. This is quite a change for Cambodia where for t
he most part the landscape is unrelentingly flat and now well into
the dry season also evry arid. Brown dust is prevalent, not just
along the unsealed roads. The few fields that are irrigated and
planted with vibrant green rice or other vegetables stand out like an
oasis in the desert.

Kampot has a small busy market but we didn't really explore for long
as we wandered along relatively wide red dirt roads where simple but
nice houses lined the sides and a couple kids played with string and
rubber inner tubes and other wonderful creative toys. Back to the
river and then to our taxi which we had managed to get for $5 to Kep.
The town is only 25 km and half an hour away but there appear to be
no regular buses and the moto riders and taxi drivers have a monopoly
on the route. $5 was very good as the average on offer was $10 which
was just completely ridiculous. But it was a pleasant drive out
there. The roadside seemed like one long horizontal picture
interjected with vertical images...palm trees, poles, a house, a
bicycle with a lady cycling, a white cow some water buffalo....and
still the flat sealed road went on through the flat brown fields. We
arrived at our guesthouse and they had a room, upstairs with a
balcony. The place was about 3km before the '
town' though we never quite made it there and what we saw were a few
houses. A Norwegian man staying at our place said he had looked
around with his moto rider and there wasn't really a town, there were
not really any shops to speak of, no bank and the post office looked
as if it hadn't been used in about 20 years. Probably true. All
along the road there are burnt out homes that were part of the
colonial history of Kep where the rich used to come down to enjoy the
seaside. Apparently it was during the Khmer Rouge that the place was
destroyed, though whether the elite used it themselves, it was
symbolically destroyed or it was just looted by impoverished and
desperate locals during the famine under the Khmer Rouge in the late
70s is not completely certain. The guide book suggests that a
combination of factors is the most reasonable assumption.

Our 'Seaside Guesthouse' was literally by the sea. There was no
beach to speak of but the sea came up near the wall by the edge of
the guest house where there were about 5 thatched wooden platforms
where hammocks were strung. What a great place to chill out. We
stayed 2 nights but could easily have stayed longer! I had bought a
hammock in Phnom Penh so enjoyed getting the opportunity to use it
there! I also learnt a good way to tie it up. We went out to an
island the second day and I strung up my hammock between two palm
trees and relaxed! Very nice.

We got a taxi to Kampot and stayed in the same taxi as it became a
share taxi all the way to Sihanoukville. The drive was fine and we
ended up with only four in the car so it was really quite
comfortable! Though travelling in Cambodia is always a sticky
business! We arrived in Sihanoukville to find it heaving with
tourists - mostly Cambodians. We thought it was because it was the
weekend, but later found out that it was also 'International Women's
Day' so we were too overwhelmed with the numbers of people to try and
look for anywhere at the nice beach we wanted to stay at and instead
opted for heading up to the budget enclave at Victory Beach. It was
fine - but late that evening I got antsy and decided that if I could
get a ticket I would leave the next day to head to Thailand. I wasn't
in the mood for a beach day and would just be puttin gin time to get
to Thailand and sort out my massage and diving courses. So I got up
the next morning, arranged a ticket and left for
the boat at 11am after a short walk to the beach and a nice
breakfast with a very good mango shake - lots of good mango in it!
Liz decided that she would leave too and got a bus to Phnom Penh.

So I got the boat at 12 which took about 4 hours to get to the
border. A barrage of moto drivers and pick up drivers stand by the
pier and wait for custom. All at once just before the boat touches
the pier they all start shouting and jump on the boat and try to get
you to go with them. It was so absurd we started laughing! In the
end I got a pickup for 20 baht which I think turned out to be the
cheapest offer around. Not bad. I had met Arjon on the boat, a guy
from the crowd at Siem Reap. We joined 8 others in a nice minibus
just over the border that drove us all the way to Bangkok. Very
easy. We arrived about 10.30/11.00pm. We got a four person room to
share and headed out to KhaoSan road to get some Pad Thai (noodles).
I had missed them! It was funny and yet also very familiar to be
back in Bangkok. I did need to scroll back through a few languages
to find 'thankyou' though and it is taking a little time to readjust
to traffic driving on the left.

I went from Kratie by boat to Kampong Cham and then from there by share taxi to Siem Reap. It is the town at the Angkor temples and the base from where to explore them. It isn''t a cheap thing to do, as a 1 day pass costs $20 and I got a 3 day pass which was $40. However it was worth it and it would be stupid to go there and not pay the money to see one of the 7 man made wonders of the world!! I cycled around the mini tour the first day, motorbiked out to a far temple and round some of the grand tour on the second day and then hired a moto with driver for the third day and saw more of what I hadn't already seen, some about 14km away and then more in the main part. My moto driver also took me to visit the house of a friend who lived in a rural area in a wee wooden house. It was nice to see, though he wasn't there but his sister was.

The temples are really amazing. Any one of them would be very much visited anywhere else, and here there are so many you could run the risk of becoming blase about them. Angkor Wat is the main one and obviously stunning, however there are lots of smaller ones that are great- intricate stone carvings, majestic faces hewn in large rocks, ones where there is a beautiful tangle with nature and man's creations - the jungle's roots entwined with stone archways where the two have become one. A dance of destruction and support.

My firsty guesthouse was okay, but then I moved to the same guesthouse where Amir and Marte were staying. It was nice! The room was wooden (I was sharing with a German / Turkish Kurd girl Nurcan) and there was a communal area downstairs of a bamboo platform with hammocks and cushions on the ground. Very nice. There were quite a few single travellers and we had a nice time hanging out in the evenings. My last night there we sat up playing cards until 1.15am.

I am now back in Phnom Penh - this time staying at Number 10 (next door to number 9) and am sharing with an Australian girl called Liz. In the past month and a half I have had one night by myself! It is cheaper but quite funny when you think about it. I just phoned Nikki and we chatted for 38 minutes (to be exact) and she asked if I had been able to have sace to myself - I think I have had enough. I will soon be ready for some more, but that is more of the need to stop and process for a while. We shall see.

I am heading to the south tomorrow to Kampot and Kep then will head on to Sihanoukville and to Thailand via Koh Khong. About a week left here, or just under.

CAMBODIA

A new country for me. For its people too it is a new country or perhaps an old one, emerging from the ravages of too many years of a too brutal war. It is a poor country and the presence of many donor agencies and fancy AID vehicles brings reminders of other poor nations where there are the contrasting reminders of poverty and investment and help and potential harm. There is the daily struggle of facing poverty in the form of beggars and vicitms of the war with their prosthetic limbs - begging or tryin gto sell you the ever present packets of 10 bad postcards, or photocopied books - many about Cambodia. It is hard to say no, and yet you can't always say yes, and then after spending $4 on a book I feel in turmoil that I am not giving to the boy who runs along by me begging. So I go and eat in the 'Friends' restaurant supporting their wider street kids programme and training young street teenagers, and I buy a book from a man with one leg, and I donate to a childrens hospital who provide free quality healthcare to young Cambodians; and I continue to feel concerned and confused and impotent and passionate. I think what if it was me trying to get some money to feed my children from these people who spend on frivolities and fancies.

Phnom Penh is a small city compared with the major cities of its neighbours Thailand and Vietnam. There are lots of motos and cyclos all keen for you to give them some business, but compared with Saigon the streets are over half empty. It's nice. Marte and I arrived and stayed at Number 9 Guest House by the lakeside. A basic room ($2 for a double with shared bathroom) but the plac3e had a nice wooden restaurant / deck/ chillout music and videa and cane armchairs and hammock area. Worth spending a couple nights longer than initially anticipated there.

Walked around a little to get the feel of the place. Visited the Royal Palace and Silver Pagoda, which would have been impressive if you could have seen more than a little bit of the silver tiled floor. Most of it was covered with red carpet for people to walk aorund on! It is hot here too - melting weather.

We also visited 'The Killing Fields' and the S21 museum. An old high school that was converted into the most notorious detention centre under Pol Pots Khmer Rouge. It is a sobering look at very recent history in this country where 2 million people were killed, many brutally, during the genocidal rule of the Khmer Rouge. I just finished reading a book 'First they killed my Father' by a lady who was five at the time when the Khmer Rouge took over. If I had been born in Cambodia, 2 months after the takeover, it is very unlikely that I would be alive today. Personalising the inconceivable sometimes helps bring home the shockingness of it all.


I got a boat to Kratie (north /ne up the river from PP) and sat on the roof. It was a good trip and I met a nice S.African girl called Kim. We ended up sharing a room for the next three nights. It is a small town with a central market that was very interesting to walk around and also some nice fruit shale stalls along the top of the river bank at night. However the main reason tourists visit this spot is to go and see the Freshwater Irrawaddy Dolphins. Which we did - twice.

It was great being out on the boat with the engine cut off and floating in the middle of a deep pool in the Mekhong to suddenly hear a deep breath behind you and to turn and see the back of a dolphin. These dolphins don't jump out of the water like bottle nose dolphins but you can see their backs and sometimes a tail too. They are shy, but on the second day there were some only about 10 metres out from our boat. It was great.

We hired a motorbike and I rode us up the river through small villages that live along the roadside. People are very friendly and the kids waved and called out hello and goodbye - a variation on just the hello of other parts. It is always a good way to see a bit more of an area to get a bicycle or motorbike and ride around a little. The houses are mostly bamboo on stilts. Life is very open and shared and kids and adults sits under trees, by stalls in the shade and by the road. I also had a completely chilling out day - we moved to a hotel that was only $5 for a double room and it was new and nice and had satellite TV and a big terrace on the roof that was a great place to ry clothes and sit drinking an Angkor beer and watching the sunset!

I had written about the Mekhong but the computer lost it all. Frustrating but I will now just mention it briefly. I had a good three day tour (yes I went on a tour cause it wa going to be easier with only a couple days to actually see things and not just be figuring out the transport). The last day was crossing the border and finishing up in Phnom Penh (Cambodia).

Fruit market with baskets of pineapple, mangoes, bananas and dragon fruit. Women gathered around under the shade of their conical straw hats, buying, selling and socialising. The river was a km wide at one point with traffic ranging from large cargo boats laden down with building materials to small wooden rowing boats. We visited a small island that grew fruit in orchards and a rice noodle factory and coconut candy factory - both of which were actually quite interesting. We boated up canals under a 'monkey bridge' (narrow bamboo pole across the river) and house boats, stilt houses, flimsy and sturdy houses. We saw people swimming in the river; washing, bathing, cleaning vegetables and meat, boating, working and relaxing - life intertwined with the flow of the river and its seasons.

Hue - Hoi An - Nha Trang - DaLat - Ho Chi Minh City / Saigon

How to update on two weeks in all those places?

Hue has been mentioned. Hoi An was very touristy but I also really liked it. It is a small town that was undestroyed by the wars and still retains original small streets with some wooden houses and others with lovely textured old yellow painted walls and French influenced shutters and doorways. There were some local eateries by the sides of the road as well as many tourist places, a couple that were very nice places to have fruit shakes, sit in a bamboo chair on the front verandah, listen to chilled out music and read my book. We (still travelling with Marte) hired bikes two days and cycled the 4km to the beach. Very nice - moved around following the shade under a palm tree and enjoyed the breakers. We also walked across to a island / other part of the main land (we weren't quite sure which) where there were mainly eating places full of Vietnamese. A drink and a snack by a river and overlooking fields of tall crops. We then walked back through a residential area of one story houses set in gardens with the open doors that so characterise homes here. People living life inside and outside and open to the neighbours.

Hoi An is also full of shops selling and making clothes. It has come to be known for it and you see many people browsing and ordering clothes. Backpackers in t-shirts and sandals trying on their smart new suits hoping it will get them a job back home; large girls trying on their small black shorts and wamting them adjusted so they are smaller and "more sexy"; some people walking away with new wardrobes full of clothes...and then others like me who considered getting something for my brothers wedding but couldn't decide what I wanted so ordered nothing and then the night before leaving decided that I really liked the wee yellow/orange skirt and so ordered it (it was only$7). Marte and I both liked it, so we both have one!!

On to Nha Trang on the night bus, or so we thought. The bus was full as were all the other buses they triewd for us. So we were asked to stay another night for which they would pay. Their hotel was full and so we ended up back in the same room we had started in! Had a good fun night - a few drinks, met some people.... The next morning we got the bus to Nha Trang.

Nha Trang is also very touristy but in a different way. It has lots of high rise hotels along a very developed seafront where its beach stretches for a few km. Some of this has hotels on it, some restaurants and some of it just slopes down from the paved walkway to the sea. We didn't swim here but sat and watched the breakers and a group of men from a hotel put in a lot of effort to move an old boat from the sea up onto the shore. We read our books and Marte took a photo - very helpful, but I doubt if we would have been much help!! In the afternon we hired bikes with Amir (Israeli guy we had met and hung out with in Hanoi, CatBa, Hue and the first night in Hoi An) and cycled to a temple, a 24 metre white Buddha on a hill and then out to the countryside through flat lands of verdant rice fields where the stems were bending in the wind. Amongst them were white plastic bags tied on sticks that were swollen with air and dancing in the wind to scare away the white birds who rested in the fields a little further along, apparently not too perturbed!!

Our other day there we went on a boat trip to four islands. It wasn't quite how I imagined it would be when I heard that - we were full and with two other boats, snorkelling at the first one with a crap mask and not a lot to see but fun swimming and jumping off the top of the boat; volleyball on the beach; big lunch; floating bar (violent 'red wine' that is a kind of rice wine thing - served with pineapple!!) where we floated in life belts to get our free drinks; big speakers with a range from U2s "Beautiful Day" to Britney Spears (I think it was) and Ricky Martin; a ride in a round basket boat; and when you could appreciate it some lovely views!! Our loud and funny guide was called 'Funky Monkey'!! A fun day but a once off.

I had planned the whole trip not to go to DaLat but the night before we were leaving I decided to go there with Marte. A 6/7 hr bus journey up into the Central Highlands past some very beautiful scenery. Lots of vegetable fields and some fields full of flowers. Apparently DaLat grows the vegeteables that supply a lot of southern Vietnam, so we had some lovely meals full of very fresh vegetables. We hired mountain bikes one day and went to a couple waterfalls. A bit spoilt by the overtouristed-ness of it - but that was interesting too. Lots of Vietnamese tourists (apparently it is the no.1 honeymoon destination in Vietnam). Some of them dressing up in the hilltribes costumes you could hire to have their photo taken in. There were also 'cowboys' with their horses for photo opportunities and at one of the falls we saw a 'bear' and a 'monkey' sheltering from the sweltering sun in the shade!! The coast down the 13km to the falls was slightly marred by the knowldege we had to cycle all the way back up, but it ended up being a fine ride, apart from the fumes and piercing horns when a bus or truck passed. The next day we hired a motorbike and rode around the area exploring. We passed by many vegetable fields where people were working in the fields and loading vegetables onto trucks. The road turned bumpy and then smaller and we ended up almost off road really, a walking path with tyre marks on it. Huge gulleys made by running water left narrow ridges to ride along. I couldn't take Marte on the back in quite a few places!! We finally joined onto a main road again! It felt like real exploring. We passed a river and dust creating trucks passed us so we turned off into a village where we passed a wedding at a church and saw the bride in her white dress and the groom in a suit greeting all the guests before they passed along the road to a marquee for the wedding reception. The people we passed in the village were very dark and completely un-Vietnamese looking. They looked more Peruvian/Indian. We passed two lovely young girls walking arm-in-arm along the road.

I continued on to Saigon / Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC). The bus driver was more than a little manic on some of his hair-raising overtakings!! I read and listened to my music and ignored the swerves and "Oh my God's" from the Canadians in the raised back seat where they had a full view of the drama on the road! It is hot here!! Almost a little too hot. Kind of energy sapping. The first afternoon I got here I went with a cyclo rider to Cholon Market in Cholon/China town and then to a pagoda on the way back. A nice way to see a bit of the city.

People; hats; cyclos; motorbikes; traffic merging, converging, diverging, just missing each other; shops and stalls and shops on wheels; tall narrow fronted buildings one room wide stretching back from the road and up towards the sky; buildings with old shutters and dirtied walls with collections of TV ariels crowding on the roof. A market place full of people and stalls selling - fabrics, clothes, bags, stacks of china bowls, dried prawns, sugar, blocks of coconut sugar, herbal medicines, bottles with snakes in yellow liquid, noodles, shampoo, paper, snacks, Chinese blankets, chopsticks, bundles of incense sticks by the hundred, silk, and probably whatever it was you were looking for.

I visited The War Remnants Museum. A worthwhile though sad and at times nauseating and angering place. Many photos, some reconstructions. A thought provoking place. Certainly strengthens any argument against war. It is not glorious.

Also visited the Reunification Palace. Interesting and very caught in 60s architecture and decor. Had my photo taken by the tank that broke through the front gates at the 'liberation of Saigon' in 1975. We then spent the rest of the day at Saigon Water Park. Fun was had by all as we went on all the different water slides and chilled around the 'river' and in the pool where the waves machine sent out waves for 10 minutes every half an hour. It was all outdoor and made me think of Ireland - yes cause it could never work there!

I am now having a very chilled and sticky day in Saigon. No real plans other than to updat my journal, my blog, to read a little and to book my trip through the Mekhong Delta to Pnomh Penh (which I have done). Three day trip - I will leave the 17th, one day before my visa runs out. I was going to go myself and use public transport, but because my time is limited I think I could spend all the time just travelling and not see much. It would also depend on who I met, but I could be charged loads to get places without the time to get a decent deal, so while I feel a bit of a failure - I have succumbed to the ease of booking a tour!!

It has been a good month, and though slightly frustrated with the country at times it has been great and I have stayed longer than I planned!!

Hue

Hue was a nice town on a river. There were other tourists around but not too many in some parts of the town. I spent two nights there and saw a number of old buildings and ruins. Thery were a bit expensive (that's what you get when they are UNESCO World Heritage sites!), but interesting. It was just s shame that I was on a boat trip and had to rush through the two I paid to go in and see. It would have been better to go out myself and hang out for a while, sitting by the lakes in the old tombs and reading a book in the sunshine. They really felt very peaceful and quiet!!

Last night was New Year's Eve - TET! The place was buzzing and everyone was out and about. There was a stage with people singing patriotic songs about Ho Chi Minh and Vietnam. Those are the moments when you can really sense you are in a communist country! Everyone was happy and excited. It seems to be traditional to buy a plant and there was a large flower market where lots of pots and cut plants were being sold. The trees must all be set up in the houses already. We ate dinner in a good family run restaurant where they were all really friendly, we went back for breakfast today and they were all giddy and excitable. Kind of like a feeling of Christmas day about. Everyone was dressed up and going to visit friends and family. There were fireworks by the river!

I am now being thrown off the computer because the people here are wanting to go and celebrate Tet with their family. Fair enough - but they could be a bit friendlier!!

I read a good quote that seems particularly appropriate for travelling and friendships...

"We have so little faith in the ebb and flow of life, of love, of relationships. We leap at the flow of the tide and resist in terror its ebb. We insist on permanency, on duration, on continuity; when the only continuity possible, in life as in love, is in growth, in fluidity...Security in a relationship lies neither in looking back to what it was in nostalgia, nor forward to what it might be in dread or anticipation, but living in the present relationship and accepting it as it is now. For relationships, too, must be like islands. One must accept them for what they are here and now, within our limits - islands, surrounded and interrupted by the sea, continually visited and abandoned by the tides".

Anne Morrow Lindbergh

Sa Pa

A full cyclo ride to the train station with Marte, myself and our bags all piled into one. The train was full but the soft sleeper, while providing no head room to sit up in was comfortable and I slept a lot of the journey. We got a nice enough hotel and bargained hard. Before we even got in though we were accosted by women selling us stuff. They were all dressed in their traditional Hmong clothes and looked great.

There is a market in SaPa from Saturday midday to Sunday midday. This happens in the market place that appears to be there all week but just gets packed out on a weekend when the nearby towns appear to empty as everyone pours in to the market. I bought a necklace, ear-rings and a piece of cotton fabric! All quite light - honest! (Yes it is myself I am trying to convince!) They are very friendly but also very persistent sellers! "Why you no buy from me?" was the high pitched attack over and over again! Having one already only brought on more recrminations of why you had bought from someone else and since you had one you must need two!

The first day Marte and I walked down to Cat Cat village. It is down all the way, which makes it up all the way back, but it was a very pleasant walk. The whole area is higher up in the hills and so as well as nice views and terraced paddy fields there were good walks. The next day we paid for a guide to take us trekking. The otherstaht were meant to go never came so it ended up just the two of us with a 15 year old Hmong girl as our guide. She was a typical teenager and we had a lot of fun with her. The sky was clear, the views were nice and the walk very pleasant and fairly easy. We went through a couple of villages and could see that the traditional costumes worn by the women and men in the market were not just for the tourists as they wore them in the fields, tending the pigs and just sitting around.

The morning we left it was raining. The 7.30 am bus arrived at 8.00 and then proceeded to drive around the town for an hour waiting until it was more than full before heading to Lao Cai where we were trying to make a 10.10 train! The time when you would have been happy with a fast driver we had a very slow one who didn't appear to be able to go above 20mph. They said we would arrive at 10.15 but it was okay because the train didn't go until 10.20. We didn't have tickets yet and resigned ourselves to not making it but got to the station, ran, didn't queue and made it on to the train which pulled off a couple minutes later at 10.25am!! Close. The train was packed and we had to be a bit mean and keep our hard seats to ourselves, but it seems some people don't pay for a seat but just for a ride to an interim station and so they were squished many to a seat. It was only men with bad vibes that asked to share however, and we were in for a 10 hour journey so we followed the Vietnamese couple opposite and refused (feeling a little rude - but not too bad as the guys sat and stared, made lewd comments and laughed, and blew smoke our way). The train gradually emptied and we had a nice time with the people opposite us who had a one year old daughter with them. I held her for a while. They had no English but were friendly. The train finally arrived back in Hanoi 10 hours later. There had been some nice scenery in the rain. It reminded me a little of Ireland where the rain can bring out some beautiful deep greens in the landscape, though the sun is great.

Halong Bay and Cat Ba Island

After busing to Halong City from Hanoi we got a boat out to Cat Ba Island passing through the hazy but very picturesque Halong Bay. The area is full of islands all of limestone and forming small steep sided islands that jutt out of the sea and are being eroded at the base by the salt water. They reminded me of the scenery in Vien Viang in Laos which is also karst limestone and looking at a small picture that I drew in my journal it looks exactly the same! The difference is that here they are surrounded by the sea and the bottom is undercut from the action of the waves. They harbour a multitude of caves and we visited a touristed but still interesting one on our way to CatBa where there were loads of interesting shaped stalactites and a main chamber about 1km long!

We passed an area where there were people living on platform boats under the shadow of the islands. It looked very nice, but we reckoned it could become a little isolated for teenagers. We arrived on CatBa and were driven over a very bumpy road that is in the process of being made to CatBa town. We were to discover that there is blasting and roads being built all over the island. The town itself was more developed than I had been anticipating though it is not that large, and there was a harbour full of boats. Many of these were houseboats where people live and there were also smaller taxi boats that rowed people around between the various boats and bays.

We hired motorbikes and rode around the island one day. I got one to ride myself and after felling slightly wobbly soon felt very confident and enjoyed the day. Because of Eric having an accident and Louis staying to help sort it out I ended up with Nicole as my passenger and we headed on with Amir and Marte on our two bikes. The others caught up later. The views from road over the bay and the paddy fields and small beaches were fantastic and the weather was great. The next day we just lay on the nearby beach which had a great walkway around to it. I finished The Lord of the Rings and was very satisfied by the tale!

There were quite a few kids selling postcards and wee plastic hacky / kicking things. We ended up making friends with a couple of them. One wee 10 year old boy in particular (Chi) was very cute and fun. There was also a girl called Hoa who was 15 who really liked hanging out and wanted to learn an English song. She asked me to teach her Jingle Bells, so Eric wrote it out for her and I ended up singing it several times each day!! Funny!

Hanoi

I've been here three times now. The first time I saw very little as I arrived at 6am, slept a little, sewed new lining into my bag, had some lunch and then went on the internet for about 5 hours. I decided to enquire about trips to Halong Bay and CatBa Island and ended up leaving the next morning at 7am!! When I came back from CatBa I stayed one night and then got a night train the next night up to SaPa in the north of Vietnam near the Chinese border. This time I have had 2 nights and days and have seen a little more.

Hanoi is a busy city, though staying in the Old Quarter is nice as you see a lot of life as it has been for a long time. The streets are named after the trade or craft that happened and was sold on that street and many of them still sell the same or the modern equivalent. Wandering today we found some new streets we hadn't been on before one of them particularly narrow and quaint. There are motorbikes/scooters galore and a constant cacophany of traffic and horns. Cyclo drivers hail you at every corner asking where you are going and letting yuo know they could take you there for very cheap; motorbike taxi riders compete for your attention. There are women balancing bamboo poles with a basket hanging from each end on their shoulders and selling fruit or bread or vegetables or other things that I don't recognise. There are streets where traffic seems to travel in more than two directions and pavements where there are so many motorbikes parked that pedestrians have to pass on the street, dodging the moving bikes, usually approaching leaning on the horn. All along the pavements are wee stalls selling food and drink. Each stall generally specialises in one dish - either Pho (noodle soup) with a choice of meats (or none!),or Com (rice) or Xom (a sticky rice kind of thing) or other tings that I haven't discovered yet. They have a small stall and then a stack of blue plastic stools about a foot high. Some have wee tables too but otherwise you perch around on the stools and use another one as a table in the middle of the group. These can be cheap but you never know - the Vietnamese as a rule charge tourists more and how much more varies and can be ridiculous. A consistent source of frustration for the budget traveller here. Vietnam wouldn't be so expensive to travel in if they charged normal prices as elsewhere. Oh well. There have been lovely people but at times you can meet just a few too many trying to do you in! And I have never been in a city where I have been asked more times if I wanted my shoes shined! "Very dirty shoes, very cheap, shoe shine,ok?! Ok?!!"

I went to see the famous Water Puppet show the second time I was here. It was interesting and I couldn't figure out how they moved a lot of the puppets! The sleep inducing heat in the theatre meant that the paper fans they gave were not just for a souvenir and an hour was a good length. Yesterday I went to Ho Chi Minh's mausoleum. It was an interesting experience, though thought provoking how different it is from what his request was! He is laid in a glass case guarded by four guards (and loads more in the building), inside a large formal and rather imposing building. You are not allowed to talk, smile, or move your hands from your side, especially not to touch your head - all out of respect. HCM is taken every year to Russia to be done up and fixed. His request was that he be creamted and that his ashes be put in three places in the north, south and centre of Vietnam under a simple shelter in each place. Kind of the opposite really! The Ho Chi Minh museum was interesting too. It was well signed in Vietnames, French and English. There was some interesting history and quotes and then some good, though slightly abstract exhibitions upstairs that were a little hard to relate to the theme but I enjoyed in an artistic ideas sense. The doctrine and dogma of communismis very appealing and sounds great, but when you see the party officials driving around in flash new cars it is exposed in reality.

We visited the museum of fine art which was interesting too and there were some good pieces. I then went to the Temple of Literature where there is a statue of Confucius and some of his best pupils. The worship of him and learning seems to be the purpose of this place. On the way there I passed a guy doing long strips of Chinese calligraphy on the street. I was invited to sit down and given a small cup of green tea while I watched. I went to a couple of other small galleries on my way back towards the Old Quarter. There are lots of small galleries. Some of them have just paintings and a lovely smell of oil paint, but there is also a lot of laquer paintings. One lady explained to me how they were done and it is really interesting. A complex version of the kiddies colourful crayons and black paint pictures.

I have enjoyed getting to see a bit more of Hanoi and it is nice having a city where there is a lake at it's centre. Sitting by the Hoan Kiem lake, it appears to provide a stillness and calm amid the constant noise of traffic and horns flying around the edge of the lake. While you can't sit there without being approached by someone trying to sell you photocopied books and packets of postcards, or wanting to shine your shoes it is still nice. It is also used by amorous couples sitting and cuddling on the benches. West Lake is even bigger and is nice to look out at as long as you don't look at the water at the edge! It has boats and even swan boats for hire but we didn't see anyone out in them.