TravelStream™ news feed for member tandc2007 on TravelPod's free travel blogs service http://www.travelpod.com/syndication/rss/tandc2007 en-us Copyright ©2009 TravelPod.com Sun, 05 Jul 2009 04:04:00 -0400 http://www.travelpod.com http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/tandc2007/3/1246780266/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/tandc2007/3/1246780266/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/tandc2007/3/1246780266/tpod.html Sun, 05 Jul 2009 04:04:00 -0400 Back to the Old Country - Castles, Cathedrals and Country Pubs....

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Washington DC, District of Columbia, United States

As you may have noticed - the blog has gone completely out of date! Somehow don't seem to have
the spare time to write it up this trip - not sure why..... Possibly
because we are travelling in mid summer, the days are so long (sun
doesn't set til 10pm! right now) that we are out sight seeing much later - not
getting back til 7pm most nights. Plus haven't got myself completely
organised, so when I do have time, I'm doing a lot of stuff on the
computer to sort out the next bit of the trip, instead of writing up bits for blog.

Anyway - have basically given up - which is a pity, cos the blog is a
much for us to remember the trip as it is for others to follow.
However we are having a fab time and taking loads of photos to bore you with when we get back home....
Sorry!!!

]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/tandc2007/3/1245297600/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/tandc2007/3/1245297600/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/tandc2007/3/1245297600/tpod.html Fri, 19 Jun 2009 17:04:50 -0400 Back to the Old Country - Castles, Cathedrals and Country Pubs....

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Cape May, New Jersey, United States

Monday morning we said our goodbyes to Karen and Allen and set off across country to Cape May, at the southern tip of New Jersey, where we were meeting up with more friends - Ken from Boston and Diana from Cape Cod.

Despite the big distance Ken and Diana have to travel, we all arrived within 15 mins of each other at the little house we are renting -so we open a bottle of wine to celebrate before heading to the local supermarket to stock up on ingredients for dinner. This sets a pattern that repeats over the next 4 days....

Cape May is the last piece of land on the Jersey Shore before it is cut by the Delaware Bay and is therefore the last piece of the great ocean beaches that make up the Jersey coastline. It was obviously a popular seaside resort for wealthy New Yorkers and New Jerseyites way back at the end of the 1800's and they built hundreds of Victorian Gothic style villas and hotels here. Today, these have been renovated and restored, with all their elaborate details highlighted by multi-candy-colour paintwork and their gardens beautifully planted with flowers in the summer. It all looks really pretty and appealing and its now back to being a very upmarket vacation resort.

The house we are renting isn't on the beach and it isn't one of the gorgeous gingerbread Victorians, (although who ever decorated it went mad with pink and roses - but mostly on the interior!) but it is comfortable and its definitely affordable.... We decide that what we are saving in rent can be spent in enjoying ourselves (ie food and booze).

We spend our 4 days together tripping around the area:
We visited Wildwood - only a short distance away physically, but light years away in atmosphere. Wildwood is retro 50's motels - complete with plastic palm trees around the pool; neon lights and a huge boardwalk covered in amusement arcades, tattoo parlours and hot dog stalls.....
And also Stone Harbour - another quaint and seriously upmarket vacation town, although looking around the other people on the streets we had to ask if we were old enough to be there - there were so many blue rinses and walking frames!
Out to Cape May Point to see the light house; to check out the wreck of an experimental concrete hulled boat; to investigate the wildlife reserve; but most importantly - to play a very competitive 18 holes of minigolf! (Ken won and Tina scored a hole in one, so they were both happy - and we got a free gift from the attached souvenir shop, so in the end we were all happy!)
And we even managed a bit of a wander down to the Cape May beach just down the road

But our time at Cape May is most memorable for the superb meals we created each evening at our little holiday cottage and the amount of wine we managed to consume with them!

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Washington DC, District of Columbia, United States

Fond farewells to Diana & Ken (not too sad, cos we’ll be seeing them again in March when they head to NZ for their big trip) and its on our way to Washington DC, with a bit of a detour for a night in deepest darkest Delaware, where we caught up with Frank – who we met last year when we were in Vietnam. Amazing the people you meet when you are travelling – and how many we get to see again after the trip is over! And this time we get to meet Frank’s family – although briefly, and Frank introduces us to the delights of bison steaks – very juicy and flavourful, and way more tender than you would expect!

After a brief stop at a local market on Saturday morning, ably guided by Frank (who seems to know half the stall holders – we even meet the guy who grows the bison) we head north, over the Bay Bridge and arrive in Alexandria about an hour earlier than we thought – and an hour earlier than we told our friend Chris H, whose apartment we are staying in – and he’s not there…. Still it was a lovely day, so we decided to sit outside in the little garden courtyard and try to phone him using Skype. Big problem – since we were in the US last, people have got very savvy about protecting their wireless connections, and despite our laptop detecting a heap of wireless networks, they were all protected! But then a familiar voice yelled out from a second storey window right above us, some very rude comments about the homeless cluttering up his courtyard…..

We had a great few days in DC - revisiting some old favourite places, checking out some new ones (particularly liked the Renwick Gallery which was having an exhibition around the US architectural firm Greene & Greene - we really liked their house designs and all the little Arts & Craft style details that were part of these), and even better - we were in DC for Memorial Day, which was pretty impressive, with parades and a huge motor bike rally (ten of thousands ohge bikes blocking the centre of the city for hours - literelly!!!)

We also finally got to Arlington- we’d never made it there all the time we lived in Harrisburg (the US certainly does honour its military once they are dead….) Unfortunately taking the Arlington tour meant we were late meeting up with our old uni friend Ian, who had driven all the way from North Carolina just to come and see us. Despite our rudeness, we were all happy to see each other again and had a great night and day out the next day together.

Our final day in DC was really cool. Our friend Chris H is very high up in the FBI and he organised for us to get access to and gave us a personal tour of the FBI laboratories at Quantico. We saw some really interesting and totally awesomely cool stuff, but its so totally secret that I can’t tell you anything about it - all I can say is XXXXXXXXX (Censored by the US Government)

And Chris bought a genuine pair of FBI Agent pants - and we are still waiting for or Junior FBI Agent badges to turn up……..

We had some time before Chris H dropped us off at Dulles for our flight to London, so we spent a couple of hours at the new Marines museum also at Quantico - very interesting, even if it is a giant recruitment advertisement!

And the travellers luck held for us at Dulles - we were offered an earlier flight to London and another upgrade to Business Class - so we winged our way happily over the Atlantic, plied with champagne and comfy in our lie-flat beds!


]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/tandc2007/3/1242168254/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/tandc2007/3/1242168254/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/tandc2007/3/1242168254/tpod.html Tue, 02 Jun 2009 18:45:55 -0400 Back to the Old Country - Castles, Cathedrals and Country Pubs....

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Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, United States

Our big trip started on an excellent note when we got upgraded to Business Class for our flight to the USA! We were pretty happy about that and managed to get pretty good nights sleep on our lie flat beds (after enjoying the little BC luxuries like the excellent wine!) as we winged our way to LAX.
The travel gods continued to smile at LA - no queues, no surly immigration officer, and the baggage all arrived with us. Then another 5 hours flight to Washington DC, arriving at a little after midnight, then after a bit of faffing around we got or rental car and drove another 2 hours north to finally arrive at our friends, Karen and Allen's, at nearly 4am local time!
We had a bit of a sleep-in the next morning.....
The next few days were spent catching up Karen and Allen and with our other friends in Harrisburg, driving around checking out what if anything had changed since we were there last, and shopping - particularly for Chris who needed new pants and a shirt for the wedding we were going to on the Saturday.
Jess and asked us to be at the church early on Saturday and we had the responsibility of handing out the wedding brochures to all the other guests. Its very interesting seeing the similarities and the differences to a church wedding ceremony in NZ. It was a lovely wedding, with a special soap-bubble guard of honour as the bride and groom left the church (And just before that, the bride's son got and even more special ride round the block in the wedding stretched limo, while we all waited out side for the happy couple).
The reception was held in the large garden of a lovely old restored home, now a small elegant B&B, about 30 minutes drive south of Harrisburg. We had great time at the reception - although it is possible the wine flowed a little too freely! However we were staying at the B&B - very privileged, as it turns out - we were the only people staying there apart from the newly weds and their bridal party!
The next morning was a very slow start, but we had to get a move on - not only did we have a check out time, but Evelyn (who was also at the wedding, but drove back to Harrisburg - and consequently had not participated nearly as freely in the exceptionally free flowing wine previously mentioned) turned up bright and early (well before midday!), to join us on a expedition to deepest Lancaster to visit the Lititz Wolf Sanctuary. We'd found a reference to this online, and with visions of noble wolf packs roaming over acres of forested land, we decided that it needed to be visited. Karen and Allen met us there. And we were all relatively unimpressed - so we retired to Lititz (a lovely historical town) where we had a great Sunday lunch.

]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/tandc2007/aug-nov-2007/1191672060/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/tandc2007/aug-nov-2007/1191672060/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/tandc2007/aug-nov-2007/1191672060/tpod.html Fri, 08 May 2009 04:43:38 -0400 USA, Turkey and Greece 2007

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Yalikavak, Turkey

Friday 5 Oct - Nearly at the end of our time in Yalikavak. Penny, John and Jeannie fly out early on Sunday morning, and Penny and Jeannie want to do some shopping. So after our usual hearty breakfast and a fish feeding and swimming session, we head over to Bodrum. Jeannie has fun finding a bag large enough to hold a heap of stuff, but small enough to be used as a cabin bag. John has fun negotiating. We buy 3 new leather wallets between us. Chris buys a mask and snorkel set so we can see the fish better when we feed them - plus we can use it in Greece. John and Penny buy presents for the kids back home. Tina and Chris find a great little hotel on the waterfront to stay at for Sunday night and book their early Mon morning ferry trip to Rhodes. A good days shopping for us al! We then head off to the rental car company to see if we can bring the car back to Bodrum, instead of dropping it at the airport, which means we (T&C) can get all our luggage to Bodrum on Sunday without the hassle of getting buses and connections from the Yalikavak resort. The look on the face of the guy in the rental office when he saw us all troop in - clearly thought there's been some big problem with the car!! Was very relieved when he found out all we wanted and immediately agreed.

After a short time out for a beer on the waterfront, it was back to Yalikavak to try out the mask and snorkel. Our fish feeding has become a source of interest for others at the resort. There is and incredible number of small fish around the little jetty -a nd they love the bread we throw to them. We are also jumping in the water and holding the bread to hand feed them. There's about 4 different types of fish, but only the yellow and black striped ones are brave enough (and fast enough) to take the bread directly from our hands - they race in and grab a bit and race out again - but there'll be a mass of them going for it at any moment, and they aren't that accurate, so your fingers and hands can get nipped!!

Tonite we decide to eat out and find a little family owned restaurant back in the Yalikavak town. Its back from the beach and looks very humble, but the food is excellent - a great selection of mezes and everyone is very happy (and very full!) with their mains - only negative is the wine, so we stick to beer and soft drinks. And the whole meal costs us a third of what we paid on our first night here at the admittedly much more atmospheric restaurant down on the harbour!

Saturday 6 Oct - Last day here and we decide it can be a lazy one. Chris and John head off after breakfast for another fish feeding session (we're now buying bread just to feed the fish). Tina, Penny and Jeannie drive down to the internet café to get various things sorted.

We all meet up back at the unit late morning and the boys have tales to tell of the best fish viewing yet - masses and masses of them including some big ones (relatively speaking). So it's back down to the jetty with the last of our bread. And yes - they are right - fish are everywhere! Having the mask and snorkel is great (although the snorkel leaked at first and need some on the fly repairs) as you can see clearly the huge masses of fish! There is one small sardine type fish that doesn't eat the bread and doesn't move much, but it hangs in the water in massive schools of thousands of little silver torpedo shapes that move out of the way in swirls when you dive through them. We head back down there in the afternoon for another swim and fish feeding, but the rest of the day is nothing but reading, conversation, some last minute shopping in the Yalikavak village and of course eating! And that evening, Penny, John and Jeannie pack to go back home.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/tandc2007/2/1210073400/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/tandc2007/2/1210073400/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/tandc2007/2/1210073400/tpod.html Wed, 21 May 2008 08:02:57 -0400 Vietnam 2008 (Subtitle - Another Year, Another Continent... Sub-continent anyway!)

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Sapa, Vietnam

Its an early start - we're heading to another village market around 70 kms away. At least the rain seems to have stopped, which is good news, but its still pretty overcast. This time we are joined by a young German couple, but Thanh is still our guide for the day - our last one up here in the northern mountains. Our route today takes us east, back down to Lao Cai then further east to Coc Ly, a small village on the banks of the Chay River, that is supposed to have a good market onTuesday mornings - one where some of the more colourful ethnic minorities gather.

As we get closer to Coc Ly, the road becomes worse and worse, until finally it disappears under a sea of mud. There are now 2 other vans on the road with us (as well as the local people with their motorbikes and on foot). The vans all start heading into the mud, but rapidly become bogged down. We get out to walk the last km to the village, but give it up completely when we learn what is in front of us. It turns out that a new hydro electric dam is being built right here and Coc Ly village is in the process of being moved from this side of the river, to the other side. The market has already been relocated and is now at the top of a fairly sizable hill (we're talking mountain foot hills here). It looks as if there is a new road going in on the other side of the river to service the relocated village - but its definitely not complete and in the meantime, there is a dirty great digger in the middle of the old road, digging it up. If you want to go to the Coc Ly market right now, you have to wade though ankle to knee deep mud for about 1km, then cross a fairly big river (which right now is swollen with all the rain we've just had in the past 2 days) then a long steep climb up the hill - not even the locals are doing it!!! We all decide there is no way we are going to even attempt it - and we are all pretty annoyed with the travel company we booked with, when Thanh tells us that he informed the office in Hanoi that Coc Ly market had become inaccessible nearly 2 weeks ago!

While we've been finding all this out, our van and one of the others have managed to extract themselves from the mud, but the third van is firmly stuck. The drivers from all the vans, our guides, and some local men who have kindly stopped are all pushing trying to get it out. Eventually Chris and some of the other male tourists join in. To no effect - at least partially because the van driver seems a bit clueless - he's just getting the wheels into deeper mud.... As we stand around and watch the entertainment, we see another of those "only in Asia" moments - a guy on a motorbike, with a freezer on the carry tray! Not only this, but he's about to try to negotiate the mud and a ford in the road. Chris is convinced he's going to crash over - but no - last seen heading precariously around the corner towards the village.

After 20 mins, we give up on the mud embedded van and leave the driver to it - we are on to the next phase of our excursion - a boat trip down the river. We have no idea what to expect - and what we get is a fairly dodgy shallow steel hull, with wooden plant seats, some tatty shade cloth as the sunshade above us, powered by an old 2 stroke motor with an enormous long propeller shaft. Thanh at least organises lifejackets for all of us!

The journey down the river is stunning however! The river has cut a deep gorge through the limestone mountains; the river banks are too steep for cultivation and are clocked in verdant forest; every so often the limestone has been cut back to form small caves and overhangs - and there are waterfalls everywhere pouring into the river. Its just beautiful!

Because we haven't be able to go to the market, Thanh changes our boat ride so that we stop at a very small village on the way down the river. This is a village of Flower H'mong people, strung out on a very narrow strip of terraced land between the banks of the river and the mountains that rise up behind it. Flower H'mong dress very colourfully and there is a crowd of brightly dressed young children, excited (but very shy), who come out from their little school to see us. Thanh asks the teacher if we can come and see the school and they are happy to agree. The school has 3 rustic schoolrooms, with blackboards and a few books to learn from. We don't see any exercise books or pens or paper though, and it's clear there's very little money here. But the kids are very cute and very happy, and we have a lot of fun with them. They laugh and giggle and we see a lot of these kids have blackened teeth - they chew betel nut at a young age!

When we leave this village, we have an easy few km walk to the next little village along the river bank. We get another close up look at the gardens, crops, chickens, water buffalo and fish ponds that these people cultivate as we walk through their land. The villages appear to be quite isolated here, and its easy to imagine that they need to be virtually self sufficient in food.

The next village is a Thai minority village (these people are Vietnamese, and have been for hundreds of years, but generations ago their ancestors were Thai ethnic peoples and they have their own unique customs). Thanh is also Thai and knows this village well, although his own community is in another province. Thai people do not dress in ethnic costume, except for special occasions, so the people in this village are not as colourfully dressed as they were in the previous one. But the kids are just as friendly - a little girl and her toddler brother offer us a flower as we come up the path towards their house. Thanh talks to the people who live in the house and they ask us in. This is a traditionally built 2 story house - its wood and bamboo construction, with rammed earth walls on the lower floor, thin planks as the upper story walls, and thatched roof. Traditionally people lived on the upper story and the ground floor was used for storage and to house animals. But the government is encouraging people to house animals else where and in this house the ground floor is now the living room - and has the village's only TV, so becomes the venue of choice for the community in the evenings. (And it is funny to see these very rustic, traditional dwellings with their TV satellite dishes attached...) There is a large coffee table (with kids sprawled out watching the historical melodrama currently on) and some nice wooden seats where we are invited to sit and have a cup of green tea with the adults. To one side is the kitchen - cooking is all on an open wood fire. We are then invited to have a look up stairs - the upper floor is split rattan laid on supporting beams - makes for a very springy floor. The three adult couples that live in the house get their own sleeping platforms (mats only, no mattress), curtained off for privacy. The rest of the people and kids just sleep on mats on the floor.

We say farewell to the family and hike a short distance back to our boat. There is more flat land around the river banks here and rice is being extensively cultivated. There is also a lot of pumps sucking sand out of the river bottom, to be used for roading and construction projects in the area. The boat finally moors and we head up the bank to a small open sided restaurant we will have lunch and meet back up with our van.

After lunch, we head back towards Lao Cai, stopping along the way to look at cinnamon tree plantations, tea plantations, water buffalo swimming - anything that takes our fancy really. We are very close to the Chinese border here and because we have some spare time, Thanh takes us right up to the border - at this point it's a river - China is on the northern bank and we are driving a major highway on the Vietnamese southern side. Then at Lao Cai we stop and watch the people and truck traffic flow between the two countries - and there's a lot!

Finally, we are taken to a small restaurant and hotel opposite the Lao Cai railway station - we have a few hours to kill (which is several hours more than is needed to see everything that Lao Cai seems to offer!) before we get our night train back down to Hanoi. We say fond farewells to Thanh - its been an intensive 3 days and we feel as if we have made a new friend. The northern highlands has been a wonderful experience for us and a lot of what we have enjoyed has been thanks to Thanh.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/tandc2007/2/1210028520/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/tandc2007/2/1210028520/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/tandc2007/2/1210028520/tpod.html Fri, 16 May 2008 19:03:16 -0400 Vietnam 2008 (Subtitle - Another Year, Another Continent... Sub-continent anyway!)

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Sapa, Vietnam

We wake up to find its been raining all night - torrential rain! So our drive back up to Sapa becomes the drive of waterfalls. The rivers are brown with the silt washed off the paddies, swollen and raging - a big difference from the gently gurgling streams we saw yesterday. And water is just streaming off the mountains. Unfortunately the cloud is also low and it continues to rain intermittently, so views of the mountains are restricted. Travelling back up the mountain pass proves entertaining, with stops along the way to photograph the waterfalls. About halfway up we come on a local car with a shredded tyre - and he doesn't have a jack. So we stop to help (or more accurately we let our driver help while we stay dry in our car. The disabled car has stopped in a very bad position - right on a blind corner, so when the trucks round the corner, they have a big task to get round him without hitting him. Then when we get on our way again, we get stuck behind two laden trucks just before the summit. They're going extremely slowly - because one is towing the other - with a tow-rope that appears to be a very small piece of rope!!! We're not at all comfortable being close behind this little convoy - the rope looks as if it will break at any minute.... Finally just before the summit of the pass, they stop completely and we are able to pass them.

Over the Sapa side of the pass the rain starts in again and its quite steady by the time we check into our hotel, which is perched on the side of the mountain (we actually go down several floors to our room). And this time we are pretty happy with the hotel we've been booked into - its lovely - and if it wasn't raining there would be a spectacular view from our room out over the valley below us.

We're supposed to be going on another trek this afternoon to another interesting minority village, but we decide its going to be too unpleasant in this rain and the resulting mud. Its also quite a lot colder up here in Sapa than we'd expected - we knew it was at altitude and were looking forward to a drop from the very hot Hanoi temperatures and humidity, but with the rain, its only about 13ºC outside. So we talk with Thanh and decide to call off the trek this afternoon. We're not the only people who've decided to cancel today's treks - there are a lot of tourists just wandering around Sapa village. But we're luckier than most, Thanh suggests an alternative programme, specially for us - he'll come to collect us at 3pm this afternoon. Which gives us a few hours to settle into the hotel, have some lunch and wander the village.

And the first people we see as we come out of our hotel are Doug and Jan, the NZ couple we first met in Hue and keep bumping into as we travel around. They arrived in Sapa a couple of nights ago, after an overnight trip to Halong Bay, where we are going next. We spend a bit of time chatting about our different experiences since we last saw each other, before we split up - they are meeting their guide for lunch and we have to find our own. We end up at a Pho restaurant that Thanh recommended - he said they have great spring rolls and he's right! Then we head out to investigate the town. Its looks as if it's a very appealing little town, but its raining again and we're getting cold, so we head back towards the hotel, intending to spend a little time relaxing and catching up on the internet - but we spot Doug and Jan again in a restaurant having their lunch, so we join them for a beer. They are leaving tonite for Hanoi, then flying back to NZ on Friday, so we probably won't see them again.

We meet up with Thanh as arranged at 3pm. What he's arranged for us to do this afternoon and evening is firstly to go to the local market to buy some meat and veges, then take it all back to his place where he is going to give us a cooking lesson (he's a great cook - learned from his mum!) and then we'll all have dinner together. Sounds great - a real treat, especially as Tina's been keen on having a Vietnamese cooking lesson, but this one will be real life rather than one run by a restaurant!

So off to the market - at least the rain has slowed to a drizzle, cos this is an outdoor market. The stalls are covered by awnings and other temporary arrangements that keeps the rain away from the goods. We have a great shop at various stalls - Thanh doing all the discussion and Chris handing over the dong and all of us carrying the various parcels of meat (some beef and pork) and a wonderful array of fresh veges and herbs. Then it's a short distance up the hill to Thanh's place - he rents a room in a house owned by a young Vietnamese couple. The husband is a bank manager in Sapa and his wife also works there, so they are fairly well off by Vietnamese standards and the house and property reflects this. Its 3 stories high, with living areas on the ground floor and bedrooms and bathrooms on the upper floors. Its nicely finished, but even here in Sapa, where it can snow in winter, the stairs are external. Its all set in its own lush garden, both ornamental (there are some beautiful orchids flowering here - despite the cold) and edible, complete with chicken coop and a fish pond at the bottom of the garden. And the kitchen is in a separate building next to the house - it's just a single room, with lined walls, a tile floor and a tiled bench along one wall and a wooden bench and shelves along another. There's a sink set into the tiled bench, but there's no refrigerator. There's no oven either - cooking is done on free standing gas burners set up on the bench. The room also serves as dining area, laundry (there's a couple of modern washing machines) and storage/garage (Thanh's pride and joy, his motor cycle, is parked in here). By Vietnamese standards, this is a very up-market kitchen.

Thanh sets out a couple of low stools for us to sit on and we start sorting out the veges and herbs he wants for the various dishes we're going to make. Chris is set to work dry frying peanuts in a wok, constantly stirring with chopsticks to make sure they don't burn, while Tina starts to take notes. When all the various ingredients a re sorted into several plastic colanders, we take them into the garden, where a pipe brings in clean water from a spring - which is where we wash everything, including the pieces of meat we've bought. This is also where the dirty dishes are washed - even in the middle of winter!

By this stage the owners of the house (and their young son) have arrived home from work. They seem very nice, but do not speak English. It turns out we are all having this meal together and the wife settles down to help in the preparation as well. Several chopping boards come out, knives are sharpened (using the unglazed bottoms of ceramic plates, which is one of those things you think "damn that's so logical", but you've never thought of before), and we squat on the floor and our little stools, chopping up and preparing the various ingredients as instructed. Because we are here, it looks as if we'll be cooking up a small banquet and it takes a few hours to get it all ready. About halfway though, the husband comes in and takes Chris back to the house for some green tea.

Finally dinner is ready and we set up the little folding table and chairs for us all and sit down to a feast - fried tofu and tomato; bamboo shoot salad; stir fry beef; chicken and the soup it was cooked in; stir fried morning glory; rice and of course Thanh's famous cucumber salad. This is some of the nicest food we've had! (And Tina's taken copious notes, so hopefully we can recreate some of these dishes when we're back in NZ) During the meal, the husband brings out the rice wine - its medicinal, with various herbs steeped in it. Its good for the digestive system and it needs to be, cos its quite bitter! We think it's a male thing, cos Tina gets to taste it, but Chris get several glasses poured for him during the meal.

After dinner, we get taken back into the living room for some fruit for dessert and some more green tea. We've bought our computer with us and the family are very interested in the photos we have of our house and farm in NZ. Finally we say good night - its been a fantastic evening. We are very privileged to have had this glimpse into a Vietnamese family's way of life - it's not something most tourists get to experience.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/tandc2007/2/1209887700/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/tandc2007/2/1209887700/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/tandc2007/2/1209887700/tpod.html Sat, 10 May 2008 03:56:30 -0400 Vietnam 2008 (Subtitle - Another Year, Another Continent... Sub-continent anyway!)

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Sapa, Sapa, Vietnam

We manage to get some sleep on the train, but its intermittent and at 5am we are woken by the attendant going down the carriage offering tea or coffee. We arrive at the Lao Cai station about half an hour later and are met by our guide for the next 3 days - Thanh. We load our small packs into our car and we set off towards the village of Sapa, high in the mountains about an hours drive away. The scenery up to Sapa is magnificent - high, green mountains, with deep valleys carved into them and every valley floor and for some way up the sides, there are rice paddies, vegetable gardens and terraces, all dotted with little villages and farm houses. The cloud mists in and out in the early morning light. Totally picture postcard stuff!! Pass through Sapa Village - this isn't our final destination today - we are headed even further into the mountains and over the highest pass in Vietnam (at the foot of the highest mountain - Mt Fan Si Pan) and down to the valley beyond - another 70 kms. Apart from the magnificent scenery, one of the main reasons that tourists visit this area is that scattered through out, in small, poor and very rural villages are some of Vietnam's 52 ethnic minorities, many of whom still keep largely to their tradition way of life - customs and costumes. We are headed to a couple of small markets held every Sunday, where some of these people will be gathered.

The road up from Sapa to the top of the pass is just awful - the whole thing is being dug up and replaced - but the replaced bit hasn't happened yet, so it's a mess of humps and hollows and ruts and narrow by-passes - and while the traffic isn't Hanoi standard, there are still large numbers of trucks, cars and motorbikes (and a lot are pretty dodgy vehicles), as well as a surprising number of people on foot, considering how far and how steep this road is, all trying to make it up there. Our top speed up here can't be more than 15kms per hour. Thankfully the other side has either not yet been touched or has been completed as it's a much easier run down.

Our first market is at Tam Duong. And as we were told, a lot of the people at this market are dressed in various traditional ethnic costumes. In fact a lot of the people we've been seeing on the road on foot and on motorbikes are dressed in these colourful outfits. The market itself is quite small and has nothing of real interest that we haven't already seen in the other markets we've been to, so we do not linger long here. Having said that - the live piglet packaging methodology was worth a closer investigation.....

Further down into the valley, we have dropped in back down to only about 80 meters above sea level - its been a fairly spectacular descent - and we arrive at our final destination, Lai Chau. Here there is another small market underway, with more and some different ethnic costumes visible. This market sells not only food, but also some locally made farm implements like plough shares, for the buffalo pulled ploughs.

Right now the farmers are preparing their terraced paddies for the next rice crop, so we see a lot of people out in the fields ploughing and preparing the ground - perhaps not quite as scenic as when the paddies are full of maturing rice, but for us, more interesting. There is also a lot of maize being planted as the in-between crop. And, where their roots are out of the flood irrigation, tea bushes are grown in ranks up on the sides of the hills.

We check into our hotel for the night - which can only be described as basic and head down the road for lunch. The restaurant we are taken to by our guide is even more basic - the sort of place we wouldn't venture into if we were by ourselves! Its definitely set up for locals - no real front, uneven concrete floor, old formica tables with plastic chairs and a kitchen area with charcoal and wood fired ovens and burners. Thanh assures us its good food! We are lead to a table set up specially for us (we can tell, cos it's the only one with a table cloth!) and food is brought out. Thanh is right - it is good! All local, 5 - 6 dishes with a good variety of veges and meat.

Beyond the town, the valley is filled with small farms dotted with rustic wooden and slat walled houses, with thatch roofs. There are about 1000 families belonging to 2 main ethnic groups living in this area in what is effectively a very widely spaced village. After lunch we trek (a gentle ramble really) through the valley and the farms for a few hours, passing close by and through various house compounds and farming activities. Its very interesting!. We get to go into 2 of the houses and get a glimpse into a very basic way of life - there are no rooms, privacy for the married members of the family is by way of a curtain; beds are simply a mat on a platform; the kitchen is a covered area to the side or usually outside the main house (presumably to minimise fire risk) where there is some water storage and an open fire with a pot and perhaps another one with a wok permanently set over it. One of the houses belongs to the village president and it is concrete plastered brick, but its by far the most substantial house we see. And every one has a dog that fiercely guards the house compound boundaries - our guide carries a big stick, but we are relying on the owners to call their dogs back when they see us. The villagers are friendly, but unused to tourists - not many people get this far out of Sapa - and many are superstitious about being photographed, so we need to be sensitive to their wishes (which is where a good zoom comes in handy!)

After a really enjoyable walk, surrounded by the spectacular scenery and fascinating glimpses into local rural life, we have a bit of time to relax and shower at the hotel before dinner at the same un-prepossessing local restaurant as lunch time. Again, its great food in dodgy surroundings! This time with more locals - Tina notes that she's the only woman present....
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/tandc2007/2/1209794100/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/tandc2007/2/1209794100/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/tandc2007/2/1209794100/tpod.html Sat, 10 May 2008 01:03:44 -0400 Vietnam 2008 (Subtitle - Another Year, Another Continent... Sub-continent anyway!)

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Hanoi, Vietnam

We're off to the northern mountain region of Sapa, up by the Chinese border, tonite on the overnight train. We have to vacate our room by mid day, and again its raining in the morning. So we spend the morning loafing around our room (taking advantage of the aircon while we've got it!), updating a bit of the weblog and other internet jobs and getting our luggage organised so we only have to take our small back packs with us tonight for the 3 days we are away.

After we check out of our room, we've got around 7 hours we have to fill in before we have to meet at the travel agent to start our trip north - and its another hot, really humid day. We manage to take up about 90 mins at lunch in a lovely, upmarket French restaurant in another restored old quarter house near our hotel, then decide we should just wander and explore some of the back streets of old Hanoi - which we haven't yet done.

After about an hour, we're back down by the lake, hot and sweaty, and we pass an art gallery. There are loads of places selling paintings - copies of old masters (Van Gogh and Klimt are very popular) and standard scenes of Vietnam, but this place is way more upmarket and is selling original paintings by famous or up and coming Vietnamese artists. It also looks like it has air-con! We spend the next half day, happily cruising around the top line galleries, comparing the different artists. Its surprising how much of this art we both like - Chris especially is taken with several pieces and we are seriously considering buying one. Prices are not cheap, but they are comparable to those for original paintings for living artists in NZ (those that aren't super well known anyway). Its also surprising how prolific these guys are - there's a few really well known Vietnamese artists and every gallery seems to have quite a number of their paintings for sale.....

We easily fill in the time until we are due back to catch our train north. We get taken to the station and there is a guide to help us find our train and our carriage. And it's a good thing. When we arrive at the station there are at least 3 trains lined up on different tracks - no platforms - we have to walk across the tracks and behind one train to get to ours. And these things are huge- 18 or 20 carriages per train! Each large tour company seems to operate a carriage or 3 and there are differing standards. We're in a 4 berth soft sleeper, which is near the top of the range (there are even more upmarket ones) - you don't want to know about the bottom! This means we get a small private cabin with 2 sets of narrow bunk beds, with reasonably thick foam mattresses, sheets, pillow and a blanket - all clean. We are sharing with a couple of other travellers who seem nice, but by the time we pull out of the station, dead on 10.15pm, all any of us want to do is turn out the lights and try to get some sleep.
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Hanoi, Vietnam

We wake to find its been raining during the night and its still raining as we have breakfast. Tina found a non-profit organisation, Hanoikids, on the internet - young adults (mainly university students) take visitors on tours of the city for free in order to help them improve their English skills, She's contacted them and organised a tour today at 9am. Unfortunately because of the rain, this has to be postponed - if the rain stops, they will come to our hotel at 2pm instead. There's not a lot we can do outside the hotel while its raining, so we spend the morning planning and booking our next trips up to the northern highlands/Sapa area and out to Halong Bay, as well as catching up on this weblog, surfing the internet and organising some laundry. The rain stops around mid morning, so we head out to do some more exploring. First we agree to a half our cylco ride around the old quarter with a really happy, friendly cyclo guy who hangs around our hotel - loads of interesting street, some specialising in one type of market - eg Tin Street (pots, pans, clothes racks, etc), Bamboo St (bamboo brooms, ladders, poles etc), Shoes St (obvious). We eventually end up south west of the lake. On the way, we pass though a small market, which is always interesting for the variety and quality of fruits and veges available and for the range of meat types and cuts. This one even more so, as when we get to the end, there are the piles of freshly roasted dogs - all crispy and brown, complete with tails, paws and heads, with really off putting bared teeth. Chris goes right off the idea of eating any dog meat!!!!

A few streets later, we arrive at Quan An Ngon - a great restaurant where they aim to serve all the different varieties of Vietnamese street snacks and dishes, in a very nice indoor and outdoor setting. Today is day 2 of a major set of holidays here in Vietnam and the place is absolutely packed with mostly locals and some tourists, but we get a table and order a selection of really tasty dishes. It might cost more, but this definitely beats trying the street food while sitting in the street!

Our next Hanoi experience is the rip off taxi! We know that we should only get metered taxis, but apparently theres a bunch of non-authorised taxis (that look perfectly legit, unless you know the company names and logos really well) that have doctored meters. We can't believe the cost of our ride back to the hotel - its around 4 times what we'd expected, but that's what the meter says..... Turns out we were right - it ws 4 times the right rate. The only consolation is that everything is so cheap here, that being ripped means you get charged $8 instead of $2 - hardly anything to complain about, esp when you think what a similar ride would cost in Auck or US or worse, Europe!!

We're back in the hotel by 2 am and yes, two young people from Hanoikids turn up to take us around for the afternoon - Duc, who's doing an English language degree and Mai, who's specialising in tourism and hotel management. Its starts to rain again, so we spend a little time in the hotel reception chatting and showing them where we live in NZ - Google maps is great - we can zoom in so far you can even see our car in the driveway! But the rain soon stops and we grab a taxi (a legit one this time - Mai shows us what to look for) and head off to the Temple of Literature. What a fabulous place - even with the crowds that today's holiday has brought here. This was a temple and learning complex build by the Ly emperors a thousand years ago, as a place for the young male princes and elite gentry to be educated. Its been maintained, added to and embellished over the centuries and is still one of Hanoi and Vietnam's most loved places. Beautiful gardens and courtyards; graceful buildings; elegant and richly finished interiors; lovely detailing - no wonder its one of the top attractions here in Hanoi and one of Duc and Mai's favourite places they are taking us to.

We take a cab back to the old quarter again and start walking north. We are so engrossed in our conversations that we miss the building they were going to show us and have to back track. It's the low rise apartment building where Ho Chi Minh made the Vietnamese Declaration of Independence (from France) after the end of WWII. Its actually one of the uglier modern buildings in the quarter - at least the ancient rundown and falling down ones have some charm!!. There's a plaque in Vietnamese, but nothing else to show that it has any significance at all. We move on and turn left into a street stocking tanks and ornamental goldfish. We've told Mai and Duc about our fish back home, so they are prepared for us to stop and investigate the varieties available here (won't bore you with the details - but would definitely be something to set up a tank over here!).

Our sight seeing now takes us into the mass of push and motorbike traffic and onto the Long Bien Bridge. This is the original bridge across the Red River - 1.7kms long and built by the French, it is now for rail, bike and pedestrian traffic only. But until recently it was the only bridge across the river and was therefore a major bombing target for the Americans - they never managed to destroy it, but they did some damage and the repairs show as ugly, jerry rigged structures on the original, which doesn't appear to have been designed for aesthetic appeal in the first place. Overall it's a very ugly bridge, made worse by lack of maintenance - motley, rusty and definitely unsafe in places. Chris comments that given the constant stream of traffic on it at any time, plus the huge passenger trains that cross every day, this is a literal disaster waiting to happen. We hope not cos apparently we're about to walk across it - or at least to half way. This is another of the "hidden gems" of Hanoi that the kids are going to show us. I think there's a fondness in their hearts for this bridge because its apparently a popular romantic hang out for young kids - they ride out at night or on dusk to about halfway where they can get down to a small island or they just park their bikes in little passing bays in the side of the bridge and watch the lights of the traffic on the new road bridge a km away. And nothing really illustrates a cultural divide better than our total inability to see any romance at all in this ugly, dirty (trash everywhere) bridge with traffic constantly racing past noisy, honking and polluting....... But it's the sort of experience that really starts to give you a perspective on life in another country.

Its now nearing dark and these kids have given up half of their holidays to show us around. We have really enjoyed it and their company and we want to thank Hanoikids for the work they do - it is wonderful.

We go back to our room to shower and relax and its about 9pm before we head out to dinner. We're going back to the noodle restaurant by the lake because the lunch we had there yesterday was so good. It's a pity we didn't get here sooner (and that we left the camera behind!), because a stage has bee set up in the middle of the cross roads at the top of the lake and there's a show going on because of today's national holiday. This intersection is bedlam at anytime, but now its jammed! People have overflowed the pavements and park at the top of the lake and are standing on the road; motor bikes have simply stopped on the road to watch and there's barely a free space for any traffic to move one way let alone in 5 directions like its trying to...... The music on the stage is blaring; car horns are honking furiously; lights are flashing; people are joustling all around and we have a suburb view, complete with pre-dinner drinks, from our3rd floor restaurant balcony! Unfortunately its all over by 9.30 and the people and the traffic jam dissolve almost instantly. It does mean the restaurant staff stop watching the spectacle and start serving our dinner, which is an upside.
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