Hoi An may be the prettiest place I have ever been.

If you only have one day in Hoi An Vietnam, you are in for a visual treat. The old town is a Unesco World Heritage sight and you can immediately see why. Bustling streets are lined with buildings, their fading yellow facades evocative of bygone era of river trade. These days you are more likely to find yourself bartering for a silk scarf, or purchasing handmade gifts, than trading in fish. However for a glimpse of what the more hectic pace of commerce may have been like, head to the Market where countless stall holders will converse with you to get you to buy their wares.

Hoi An is also the stronghold of Vietnam's tailoring tradition. I indulged my shopping instincts for the first time this trip and walked away with many a bargain (tailored skinny jeans = sent from heaven). The one thing I would recommend is to get a tip on a good tailor to go to, as from what I have heard there can be great discrepancies in quality.

Hoi An also boasts many a culinary treat. White roses are delightful mouthfuls of dumpling stuffed with shrimp, and an unmissable experience is sampling the local noodle dish by the river, marvelling at the floating lantern creatures. What could be better than fantastic food, brilliant views and an atmosphere that feels like the Asia from a 19th century romance?

Definitely a favourite place to be lost in for a while.

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Cyclo tour of Saigon

If you have one day in Saigon (aka Ho Chi Minh City) I would highly recommend a cyclo tour. Although not the cheapest way to see the sights it definitely affords great views of the city and is more atmospheric than jumping in a taxi. As we wove through the traffic, my elderly cyclo driver huffing and puffing, wiping the sweat from his brow and frequently having near misses with all manner of other vehicles on the road, my eyes were drawn to many sights that would have been impossible to see from the window of a cab.

Our tour involved a visit to the palace - a building left exactly as it was found when the northern tanks rolled in in 1975. It was mostly like walking around a hotel until we reached the basement where the war operations rooms were concealed, with maps and information on troop numbers still pinned to the walls. A place left as a time capsule of a time pre-communism.

The next stop was the war remnants museum. After studying the fascinating array of propaganda posters and countless images of anti-war protests from across the globe, I was then faced with room after room filled with photos and information about the far reaching and atrocious consequences of what the Vietnamese call 'the American war'. Although there is an anti-american propaganda feel to some of the exhibits, the truth of the lasting affects the use of agent orange and the dangers of unexploded ordnance have is undeniable. You cannot help but leave feeling humbled by the resilience of the Vietnamese people.

After the war museum we drove past Saigon's Notre Dam cathedral before weaving through the traffic back to our hotel. I ended the day having loved seeing the city but with a feeling of melancholy for all the country has been through.

Temples of Angkor

 

My first stop in Cambodia was Siem Reap, famous for the temples of Angkor - an ancient temple complex heralded as one of the wonders of the medieval period.

There are various ticket options for visiting the temples, depending on how much time you have and your level of enthusiasm for ancient ruins. We went for the one day ticket which allowed us access after 5pm the first day for sunset, which was disappointing, and very early the next day for sunrise, which was worth the pain of waking up at 4.30 am. As we made it up for sunrise we also had the added bonus of avoiding the worst of the crowds.

 

All the temples we saw in a day were very impressive, particularly when you consider they were constructed a thousand years ago from limestone that was quarried miles away and floated to the site up the river.

Surrounding the stone temples at Angkor Thom used to be wooden huts which housed a city of a million occupants at a time when London could only boast 50000. In addition to the sheer scale of the civilisation that was built around the religious buildings, is the impressive nature of the irrigation system that was designed to support the city. The people of Angkor successfully harnessed the power of the river to fulfil all their basic needs.

The highlight for me was Ta Prohm, a temple that has been overrun by trees and moss, and made for many Lara Croft style photo ops (possibly not my most culturally sensitive behaviour). Another high point was the Bayon, covered in the faces of a god, said to resemble King Jayarvaman (the driving. Force behind the bulk of Angkor's construction). By this point in the day I was, unfortunately, flagging after a bit too late night spent St Angkor What? bar on Pub St so felt the need to end the trip there, but there is plenty more to see for fans of temple architecture and decoration. It is, however a hot and sweaty day with a fair amount of climbing, so for lazier visitors 6/7 hours is definitely enough!

Overall it is an experience not to be missed, and you might be able to chat to some of the visiting monks who want to improve their English. Just be prepared to be approached by many child vendors selling postcards and bracelets, many of whom will be able to tell you an alarming amount of facts about your own country in order to charm you into parting with a couple of dollars! 

Lao Festival for the Dead (AKA Night I Was Groped By A Lao Woman)

While we were in Ban Na Hin I experienced one of the highlights of my trip so far.

The owner of our guesthouse invited us to a party at his friends house. It was an important occasion, held on the anniversary of the death of a family member in order to honour their life. This apparently serious event honestly reminded me of a drunken wedding reception. There was a marquee under which relatives and friends were gathered enjoying the free food and beer, a DJ/compere telling jokes that were falling flat and a the kids were quietly observing from the sidelines, watching the adults make fools of themselves.

It very quickly became apparent that we would not be allowed to similarly observe. The Lao guys at the next table started toasting with us, which means you have to finish whatever is left in your glass - and as glasses were not allowed to go empty that meant a full cup of lukewarm Beer Lao. Dangerous and not so easy to drink!

Then the dancing began...

The Lao style appears to involve swaying slowly from side to side and waving the arms while turning the hands at the wrists. This remains exactly the same irrespective of the music playing.

After being dragged onto the dancefloor, at the end of one song a Lao woman who was slightly worse for wear used me as a leaning post. She then introduced me to her friends, plied me with more beer and once again dragged me on to the dancefloor. Only this time it was just me, my new best friend and about 4 other people apparently putting on a performance for the rest of the party.

As I was making my escape from the dancefloor my new friend decided to grab her own... Then grab mine... Various people then told me I danced Lao style well. Bizarre.

Events continued to well into the early morning. My friend Jo also experienced the invasion of personal space by my drunken BFF. She also nearly broke up a friendship as two men at the next table started to fight over who got her email address, her plaintive cries of 'I have a boyfriend...' falling on deaf ears. Meanwhile a local woman took it upon herself to defy dance tradition by whipping out the most enthusiastic air guitar moves I have ever seen.

It was a fascinating and hilarious night and I am truly sorry I don't have photographic evidence for you.

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Kong Lor Caves - photos to follow!

From Vientiane me and my Canadian girls dragged ourselves to the bus station at 5am to board the 6am bus to Ban Na Him. Our purpose of visiting this small village in central Laos was singular - the Kong Lor Caves. It was fortunate that we had only this goal in mind as when we arrived we realised there would be little else to do. The afternoon we got there we spent exploring the village, which took a grand total of 15 minutes before we found ourselves looping back onto the highway. After an ealry dinner at what appeared to be the only restaurant in town willing to feed us we returned to our bungalows and a very pious bedtime (something I was now accustomed to as everything in Laos shuts at eleven).

On the tuk tuk to the cavesthe follwoing morning the girls and I made some new friends - a handsome, intelligent guy, Sam, and his shy younger sister Maggie. Sam made the conversation on the journey very entertaining, regaling us with tales of his travels so far, particularly about hitchhiking on the roof of a pickup in Burma while his Mum rode in the cab with Maggie. Sam was 6 years old and Maggie was 3. Their parents are bycicling SE Asia with two young kids in tow - a challenge if I could ever imagine one.

After about an hour in the tuktuk, the first 20 minutes of which was spent eating dirt as our driver didn't feel the need to use the new tarmaced road, we arrived at Kong Lor National Park. Once in the park you commission a boat to take you through the caves (max 3 people per boat). As your captain leads you to the cave mouth you can appreciate the natural beauty of the area - a mountain covered in greenery, the river having carved its path directly through the middle of a wall of rock. Seeing this made me glad I came in dry season as the cave is too flooded in rainy season to be able to visit.

Jo, Andy and me boarded our boat with the two Laos captains wearing powerful head torches and we set off into the darkness of the cave mouth. Very soon any light from the entrance fades and you have to trust that the men navigating the boat know where thay are going. They expertly manouevre around rocks made almost invisible by the darkness, using tiny visual clues and years of experience to guide them. At times the water is so shallow you have to get out and wade while the boat is pushed to the next point deep enough - very creepy in the dark, definitely pack your own torch! In one area of the cave a vast chamber of stalactites and stalagmites has been lit (a combined project between Laos and France). At this point you can get out of the boat and explore. In places the water that formed these twisted formations, which remind me of gothic cathedral architecture, is still dripping and you realise that the process is ongoing and the cave is constantly changing.

After the stalactite room the cave starts to feel really er\erie. The darkeness is more complete and you are boating through an invisible tunnel that feels like it will never end. At times your torch cannot touch the ceiling, and when it does the rock formations can take on frightening features to those with the propensity to creep themselves out.

Eventually a chink of light appears in the distance and your boat emerges into a beautiful jungle setting, the river flagged by greenery and complete with swimming buffalo. The boat stops a short way upriver for a lunch/swimming break.

The 7.5km trip back through the cave is swifter but no less creepy. It is definitely a place which conjures up images of a mythical underworld. All that darkness was, however, swiftly forgotten in the beauty of the river and the simple joy of racing with a 6 year old who claimed he was the fastest person in the whole world. I think everyone agreed the Kong Lor caves are definitely worth a visit!.

Vientiane

Vientiane - Laos' capital city - is a few hours south of Vang Vieng  on the sweatiest bus I have ever had the pleasure of boarding. On arrival, after rehydrating, I set about looking up what there is to do in the city and the answer is not a great deal. My Canadian travelling friends were spending the first day visiting the Vietnamese consulate to get their visas  so I went for a wander to see what I could discover.

The streets of Vientiane make for pleasant walking. The cultural blend that exists in Laos is evident as local architecture is interspersed with colonial French style buildings and a lot of signs are written in Lao with French translation.

Vientiane would be a good city to visit with a higher food budget than my own. There are a lot of high quality French restaurants mixed in with local places and more bakery/cafes than you could wish for.

After a morning wandering the little shops and brunching in one of the cafes, I got myself a pedicure and took my newly groomed feet to the National Museum. The museum is located in a dilapidated french building and costs 10000 kip to enter (less than £1). The exhibition is designed more or less to work in date order, so begins with a very low tech display about the discovery of dinosaur fossils in the country, before moving in to talk about the various peoples that made up the population of Laos years ago. I found this portion of the museum very worthwhile. Once you arrive at the section dealing with the 20th century it gets interesting for a different reason. The exhibitions dealing with the Laos independence movement has a highly communist bias, and there is a lot of propagandist material on display, laid alongside enough weaponry to start another rebellion. It was definitely an informative and slightly bizarre window into Laos culture and worth a visit.

My second bizarre activity was a visit to the Buddha Park. About 40 minutes from Vientiane by public bus - a journey that was quite uncomfortable for me as I was stood the whole way in a skirt terrified the wind was going to lift and I would flash the monks sitting behind me - the Buddha park is a green space by the river filled with a mixture of Hindu and Buddhist statues. These statues look ancient but in reality this park was created in the fifties on someone's whim. By far the eat thing there was the giant pumpkin like structure which you entered through the mouth of the devil and then ascended through hell to heaven at the top. Some of the groups of statues inside were incredibly twisted and it could be quite creepy if it wasn't just so incredibly odd.

The next day I spent fulfilling the rest of my cultural duties by walking to the two main monuments in the city. The first is an Asian style replica of the arc de triomph, known colloquially as the vertical runway,  (the concrete used to build it was donated by the US to build an airstrip so it is essentially two fingers up to the 'imperialist puppets' [museum's terminology]). The second is the national monument in Laos and appears on their currency. The gold leaf covered stupa is a beautiful sight in the late afternoon sun and the surrounding temple complex is definitely worth a look.

After all that walking and culture the only thing left to do was satiate the appetite. That evening I ordered a cucumber salad with sticky rice at a small restaurant along the river front. Sounds pretty innocent right? Well this turned into my very own woman vs food challenge. It was without doubt the spiciest thing I have ever eaten. My mouth was on fire, my eyes were red, I rubbed my nose and that started burning. And it was CUCUMBER. It's meant to be refreshing! I even had to let the rice cool down before I could use that to absorb some of the spice. Aside from that it was delicious, but impossible to finish. Food definitely won this round.

Next blog: Ban Na Hin (Kong Lor caves and a Laos dance party).

Vang Vieng (photos to follow when I am back in the world of WiFi)

Moving on from Luang Prabang we boarded a pretty comfortable minibus and embarked upon a treat of a journey. The scenery en route was absolutely stunning. As our bus expertly wound through mountains that rose up from nowhere, their peaks jaggedly cutting up the skyline, all of us on the bus gained a new appreciation for how amazing Laos is. Not only that, we drove through several small villages and caught glimpses of genuine Laos life (albeit from the window of a bus. Children were seen both hard at play (we saw recently made swings straining under the weight of several Laos kids and I even saw a boy playing with a hoop and a stick, seeing if he could run after the hoop fast enough - a game associated with Victorian times at home) and hard at work. There were children as young as seven digging up the road and even younger kids beating the palm leaves on the dirt, flattening them to make roof tiles.

We eventually arrived in Vang Vieng, famous as Laos' party destination thanks to the scene that has sprung up on the river banks. Sadly we arrived to disappointment. The weather for the first two days more closely resembled home (i.e. grey and drizzly) than the bright sunshine and 30+ degrees I had begun to expect. We also had a power cut for the first day so we spent a couple of days doing very little. Our most strenuous activity involved the walk to the Organic Mulberry Farm a couple of km out of town, where we visited the goats and sampled their yummy food - all made in house - including tasty goats cheese. We also got a good view of the bars on the other side of the river, cheesy music blasting and drinks clearly flowing pretty freely. We were definitely ready to party the next day!

River tubing is what Vang Vieng is famous for (renting a giant inner tube ad floating down the river hopping form bar to bar) but we decided to skip the tubes anbd walk it instead. Sound dull? It defintey wasn't and we didn't have to worry about our tubes getting nicked and losing our deposits (commonplace) or about geting stupid in the water after one too many. This is honestly good advice as the combination of alcohol, tubing, rope swings etc kills several people a yar in Vang Vieng.

When we did party we had an excellent time, the bar staff are really friendly and everyone is there to have a good time. There are people walking around with spray paint and stencils to tattoo you (be warned - it's car paint) and random people graffitti-ing obscenities on any exposed skin they can find. It is a good idea to pace yourself on the river as the party continues back in town in the evening with more cheesy music in the bars on the main strip, and a more chilled out vibe later on in the bars down on another stretch of river. Our own experience was that we should have left for the evening session later as town doesn't pick up til after 10.30 but we had our buzz on from the river and wanted to keep going, which meant most of us didn't last very long (if we made it out in the evening in the first place - you know who you are!)

An excellent hangover cure after the excesses of tubing is a visit to the blue lagoon. This is a beautiful natural pool a short tuk-tuk ride from the centre of town. The water is beautiful (and soothing) to swim in and there are plenty of spots to laze in the sun. If you are feeling more active there is also a cave to explore. We didn't feel up to this and instead spent our time sunbathing, drinking fruit shakes and taking very unattractive underwater photos.

All in all Vang Vieng was a lot of fun but after a week of partying and chilling out it was time to move on.

Next stop: Vientiane - Laos' capital city.