We left our hostel at about 8 in the morning and slept in the bus along the way. When we arrived at Halong Harbor we saw James from our train ride, he was doing a day trip, the Harbor was full of people, boats and was really hectic. When we boarded our boat we were given our cabin key, then went back to have lunch on the middle deck, we were seated with the other vegetarians on the boat, they were from Belgium and we spent a lot of the meal discussing vegetarianism and our trips, they were heading to Australia, America and Hawaii.
The lunch on the boat was delicious and mostly vegan, Lee enjoyed the eggs.
After lunch we went to the “Surprise cave” with our tour guide, and looked for interesting shapes in the rocks, much like cloud shapes.
We got back on the boat and headed to a floating island and decided despite the rain we would go kayaking and donned some warm clothes and paddled out to a cave and a rock with a door like hole in it, only 4 people in our group went out kayaking.
In the evening we chatted with lots of the other people on our tour and had dinner with the Belgium veggies again, our operator tried to teach us a bit of Vietnamese, but we were all pretty useless. Then they switched on the Karaoke (national obsession?) and our tour guide loving poured his heart into a scary rendition of “killing me softly” most of us where in hysterics by this time. Lee joined in and sang a few lines. Then a Swiss guy on the boat sang some John Lennon.
We encouraged the Vietnamese boys working on the boat to sing us a Vietnamese song, and he did a great job singing and we loved the upbeat style of the song an got some people dancing in their seats. Eventually the karaoke broke down, much to our tour guides disappointment. So we had a few drinks and chatted more, then went outside to get a few pictures of the boats lit up at night, the other boats were all anchored in the same area.
The next morning we had breakfast before 4 of us left the boat for day 2 of the tour, we jumped on one boat, then onto a luxury boat with other 2 dayers. We met a nice couple from Quebec the French province of Canada.Firstly we went to Cat Ba island and did a cycle tour around the paddy fields, seeing people living on the island and growing vegetables and the cows too.There were lots of dogs on Cat Ba island, living in peoples houses, but we think these dogs are not pets, but live stock and will one day be food.
We loved the cycling, then we did a trek to a small cave where local Vietnamese used to live. We saw a huge black and yellow spider and some angry goats along the path. Lee had a go at climbing the vines outside the cave. We cycled back to the jetty and got on our transfer boat.
We went to monkey island on the smallest boat with over 13 of us squeezed in, the monkeys were really cute but one of them was a bit of a beer addict, we were told not to get too close especially to the pink faced monkey. The adventure continued when we tried to get off the island, the boat pulled up by a rocky jetty and we all climbed in, the boat was in too shallow and couldn’t use the propeller, so one of the French guys on our tour jumped in to try to push us while the other guys used sticks to try to get us off the sand. Eventually the guide jumped in, fully clothed and got all the other guys on our boat, including Lee to jump in and push. although the boat rocked a lot, the waves washed over either side and we were scrambling to keep bags dry and shoes on board, eventually we got going! The crew of our main boat were laughing at our struggle once we got nearer.
We stopped for lunch about 3.30 on the island where we were spending the night. Only 4 of us were staying on the island in the bungalows, the others were off to a hotel.
The cabins were so beautiful, it was a bit cold and the generator would only be on for a few hours to provided electricity, talk about back to basics. We had an awesome Tet (lunar new year) dinner with the Canadians and I brought a long a Banh Chung cake of rice with fake spicy pork inside wrapped in a banana leaf and steamed, a traditional Vietnamese Tet food.
there were only a few beach huts on the small private island and our beach hut sounded like we were sleeping in a washing machine as the tide came in during the night.
In the morning it looked so beautiful with the tide in so we took some photos before breakfast and waited for our boat, another small boat took us to the bigger boat, where we had some cooking lessons in making Vietnamese rice paper spring rolls and we sailed on to Halong Harbor to end our trip and head back to Hanoi.
The scenery as so beautiful and as long as you don’t mind a bit of chaotic boat hopping its a really great experience!
Sunday, 26 February 2012
Hanoi
We arrived in Vietnam on the 19th of January, one month since we landed in Beijing. The soft sleeper train from Nanning china was comfortable and we shared it with a nice family, whose young daughter was learning English . we didn’t get much sleep as you have to get off the train twice at border controls, one of these times taking all your luggage. We arrived in Hanoi at 4.30-5am and with our new friend James from the train we embarked on finding the Old Quarter, though we were staying in different hostels.
Lee had researched how to get from the train station to a closer train station, our hotel advised us to get Taxi’s only from 2 companies, neither of which were to be seen at the station. So we walked (lonely planet book in hand) to the bus station nearby and got on a bus going near to the other station. In fact they dropped us near the bridge over the water, from here we negotiated a few streets and were in the old quarter! We said farewell to James and he went to find his hostel, and we walked down a few very quiet, dark streets until we found our Kangaroo hotel at about 5.30am.
They let us straight in our room and we had a few hours sleep before our first day in Hanoi. When we ventured outside, the quiet, dark streets had transformed in a hustle bustle all day and night New Years market that lives along the whole street, selling fake flowers, and red and gold New Years decorations. Also the amount of westerners was a real shock, in China outside of hostels, we were used to be the only whities in the supermarket, on a bus, in a waiting room or on a train.
We walked to the Lake nearby , we were getting hungry, but were money less as we didn’t bring any Dong into the country. I had read online about an ATM which will let you withdrawal more than the standard 2,000,000 which includes a 40,000 fee, not to mention fees from the bank at home. We found a HSBC that would limit up to 5,600,000, but then found the famous branch of ANZ which says it will limit to 10,000,000/ 10 Million Dong with the same fee.
Along the way we were accosted by some fruit sells, (never make eye contact, such a mistake) who though not only did we want fruit but we wanted to have a picture holding the stick with baskets they used to carry them, so in our first few hours I found myself ducking/running away from becoming a Vietnam fruit seller, we smiled but had to walk away quick to convey the message.
We stopped from dinner/breakfast/lunch over looking the water and the busy moped traffic on a 3rd floor cafe, the prices were crazy expensive, but we hadn’t really worked out how money converted yet and as we were almost at the point of passing out, so decided it was worth it. Lunch for 2 at 250k Dong.
Our second day we spend organizing our Ha Long Bay tour over the free hotel breakfast, from here we went to the nearby indoor market surprisingly quieter than street markets but still busy. We then went to find the Quan Thanh temple, only to get distracted along the way by an early lunch at a branch of Loving Hut, vegan chain that was set up to follow the Supreme Masters Religious ideology. The place looked very clean and quaint and had a lot of locals inside. I ordered the classic Vietnam dish, the famous Pho, my first Pho, a rice noodle based soup!
I had the Hanoi style one, Lee ordered a Pho style salad with rice noodles, and we had some rice paper spring rolls too. After China I has somewhat lost my faith in fake meats, not the biggest fan anyway, but the beef and chicken in our dishes was amazing, Lees beef had a lemongrass twang to it and a lovely thin texture. They both had rice noodles, my Pho had thick rice noodles and such a great flavour.
It was delicious, and I’m so glad that despite being Vegan and Vegetarian we can still enjoy real Vietnamese food, which I find to be fresher and lighter than Chinese and love all the lime being used. This kept us full for most of the day, with only one small stop for a few squares of chocolate in the afternoon.
We walked to the Ho Chi Mi Mausoleum, unaware that it is closed Mondays and Fridays, as is the museum. We got chatting to a friendly motorbike driver who was looking for business but chatted to us about English football and didn’t pressure us into anything.
Then we went to the QuanThanh temple, which was very pretty, we were confused about which religion it was referring to, but learnt it was the temple of the Snake and Tortoise. There were a few locals giving offerings and we saw offerings of money, fruit, cake, ice tea powder and cigarette.
We decided to go full circle walking back to the Mausoleum on the way to the Fine art Museum, which I initially thought was just full of ceramics and textiles, but read that it was also a home to lots of Vietnamese contemporary painting. Lee said that he thinks Art Galleries can really show you the differences in countries. It turned out the gallery was actually mostly paintings and had a huge volume of work spanning a few decades. The stone works and paintings were wonderful and a really enjoyable way to spend an hour or so. The style of engravings and gold paint used was really different to what I usually see in art galleries, and was being used in fairly contemporary work as well as older pieces.
The gallery was quiet and mostly for tourists I think, costing 20,000 each, and a tour bus arrived just before us but is a haven away from the hustle bustle of the scooter filled streets, which could still be heard out the windows in the corridors.
On our way back to the Hotel we made it our mission to get a picture of a scooter with an orange tree on the back (New Years Tradition?), having seen 3, in quick succession. We also saw a lot of babies with parents on scooters. The English standard to health and safety is totally redundant here.
Lee had researched how to get from the train station to a closer train station, our hotel advised us to get Taxi’s only from 2 companies, neither of which were to be seen at the station. So we walked (lonely planet book in hand) to the bus station nearby and got on a bus going near to the other station. In fact they dropped us near the bridge over the water, from here we negotiated a few streets and were in the old quarter! We said farewell to James and he went to find his hostel, and we walked down a few very quiet, dark streets until we found our Kangaroo hotel at about 5.30am.
They let us straight in our room and we had a few hours sleep before our first day in Hanoi. When we ventured outside, the quiet, dark streets had transformed in a hustle bustle all day and night New Years market that lives along the whole street, selling fake flowers, and red and gold New Years decorations. Also the amount of westerners was a real shock, in China outside of hostels, we were used to be the only whities in the supermarket, on a bus, in a waiting room or on a train.
We walked to the Lake nearby , we were getting hungry, but were money less as we didn’t bring any Dong into the country. I had read online about an ATM which will let you withdrawal more than the standard 2,000,000 which includes a 40,000 fee, not to mention fees from the bank at home. We found a HSBC that would limit up to 5,600,000, but then found the famous branch of ANZ which says it will limit to 10,000,000/ 10 Million Dong with the same fee.
Along the way we were accosted by some fruit sells, (never make eye contact, such a mistake) who though not only did we want fruit but we wanted to have a picture holding the stick with baskets they used to carry them, so in our first few hours I found myself ducking/running away from becoming a Vietnam fruit seller, we smiled but had to walk away quick to convey the message.
We stopped from dinner/breakfast/lunch over looking the water and the busy moped traffic on a 3rd floor cafe, the prices were crazy expensive, but we hadn’t really worked out how money converted yet and as we were almost at the point of passing out, so decided it was worth it. Lunch for 2 at 250k Dong.
Our second day we spend organizing our Ha Long Bay tour over the free hotel breakfast, from here we went to the nearby indoor market surprisingly quieter than street markets but still busy. We then went to find the Quan Thanh temple, only to get distracted along the way by an early lunch at a branch of Loving Hut, vegan chain that was set up to follow the Supreme Masters Religious ideology. The place looked very clean and quaint and had a lot of locals inside. I ordered the classic Vietnam dish, the famous Pho, my first Pho, a rice noodle based soup!
I had the Hanoi style one, Lee ordered a Pho style salad with rice noodles, and we had some rice paper spring rolls too. After China I has somewhat lost my faith in fake meats, not the biggest fan anyway, but the beef and chicken in our dishes was amazing, Lees beef had a lemongrass twang to it and a lovely thin texture. They both had rice noodles, my Pho had thick rice noodles and such a great flavour.
It was delicious, and I’m so glad that despite being Vegan and Vegetarian we can still enjoy real Vietnamese food, which I find to be fresher and lighter than Chinese and love all the lime being used. This kept us full for most of the day, with only one small stop for a few squares of chocolate in the afternoon.
We walked to the Ho Chi Mi Mausoleum, unaware that it is closed Mondays and Fridays, as is the museum. We got chatting to a friendly motorbike driver who was looking for business but chatted to us about English football and didn’t pressure us into anything.
Then we went to the QuanThanh temple, which was very pretty, we were confused about which religion it was referring to, but learnt it was the temple of the Snake and Tortoise. There were a few locals giving offerings and we saw offerings of money, fruit, cake, ice tea powder and cigarette.
We decided to go full circle walking back to the Mausoleum on the way to the Fine art Museum, which I initially thought was just full of ceramics and textiles, but read that it was also a home to lots of Vietnamese contemporary painting. Lee said that he thinks Art Galleries can really show you the differences in countries. It turned out the gallery was actually mostly paintings and had a huge volume of work spanning a few decades. The stone works and paintings were wonderful and a really enjoyable way to spend an hour or so. The style of engravings and gold paint used was really different to what I usually see in art galleries, and was being used in fairly contemporary work as well as older pieces.
The gallery was quiet and mostly for tourists I think, costing 20,000 each, and a tour bus arrived just before us but is a haven away from the hustle bustle of the scooter filled streets, which could still be heard out the windows in the corridors.
On our way back to the Hotel we made it our mission to get a picture of a scooter with an orange tree on the back (New Years Tradition?), having seen 3, in quick succession. We also saw a lot of babies with parents on scooters. The English standard to health and safety is totally redundant here.
Chengdu Sichuan China
We really loved Chengdu in the Sichuan province, which neighbours Tibet. The Hostel Lazy bones was amazing, probably the best in all our china travels and the resturant served cheap vegetarian food too.
During our stay we went on a free walking tour of the city where we ate a 5 Kwai (50 pence) lunch at a nunnery where they sang and chanted after the meal. We also saw Mao's statue, saw people dancing and practicing Tai Chi in the peoples park, visited the Wenshu monestary and ate some amazing vegetarian food at a resturant around the corner from our hostel. We went to the famous Sichuan Changing Faces Opera, which was a really cheap night out and really entertaining (I still dont know how they do it).
On our last morning we went to see the famous Panda's Breeding centre, and I realised panda's are just like Po from Kungfu Panda, playful and a little clumsy, we also saw baby pandas and Red Pandas too.
We met a couple from Chile, who we have become good friends with, for the first time here, who we later found out where also in the same hostel at the same time (New Years) in Beijing.
We had a sleeper train to Kunming, though we wish we had more time to see the giant buddha in Chengdu, a place we definately want to re-visit.
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Hand shadow puppets at Sichuan Opera |
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| Cold view from our train |
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| Mao being cleaned |
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| Chinese Charlie (Webster) |
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| This is China... |
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| Wenshu Monestary |
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| Chinese Chess! |
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| Opera |
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| Chinese Dentist |
Saturday, 25 February 2012
Xian China
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| Wild Goose Pagoda |
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| Water set to music |
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| Loving our Christmas hat |
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| China happened to your cat? |
We DIY's our trip to the Terracotta Warriors using the local bus system and it was so much cheaper than a tour. The complex is split up into 3 'Pits'. They are huge trenches that you look down into; Pit 1 the most famous had a lot of intact warriors and horses and chariots, all with different faces and their hair and costume denotes their status in the army.
Pit 2 shows you more of the structure of the original pit, which was accidentally ruined by people using the site as a cemetery themselves and cave in's on the structure.
This included the best preserved figures.
and an art exhibit by someone heavily influenced by the Terracotta warriors
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| Variety of hair styles. |
Friday, 24 February 2012
Beijing - China
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| Great Wall Tabogan guys |
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| Tienamen Square |
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| Summer Palace frozen lake |
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| Forbidden City |
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| 798 Art District |
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| Great Wall |
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| Olympic Stadium |
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| Great Wall |
We waited till 9 to check in for our flight at 11, then when we tried to check in we were told we needed to be at the other shanghai airport, Pudong which was an hours taxi ride away, we explained we had flown into this airport a few hours earlier from NZ. They told us to get a quick bus to the next terminal and ask then if they can help us, so we went to the China Eastern Airline and they cool as a cucumber said they could put us on a 2.30pm flight to Beijing. Phew! Disaster averted, we arrived at Beijing domestic airport (not made for westerners) and tried to explain to the taxi driver what hostel we were staying in, he eventually phoned the hostel and drove us. When we first arrived at the Sunrise hostel we went to buy some food and drink from around the corner before we went to sleep and were warned of a few scams, we were told not to get into Rickshaws they will rip you off and if people approach you and say they want to practice their English on you and want to take you to a tea house/ coffee, it is scam to get money from you for the tea, they will take you to a place they know and charge you lots.
We had 2 weeks in Beijing and hope that we managed to do just about every tourist activity.
On our first day we went to the forbidden city which was a short walk from our hostel, and opposite Tienanmen square. We took lots of photos of the interesting architecture,
We had to stop for a tea, simply to warm my photo taking hand up,
The next day we decided to buy winter clothes. we went to Walmart and bought jackets, hats and gloves. then in the afternoon we went to the Crows nest to see the sun go down and the place light up. I had a photo with a Chinese lady, because im a westerner...for dinner we went to the Veggie Table an all Vegan restaurant down a hutong near the Lama Temple.
Day 3 Summer palace, saw an old and young man preparing to swim meters away from the frozen lake in the icy water, a lady fishing by the arched bridge in a hole dug into the frozen water, the seenteen arch bridge which takes you to a small island in the lake was beautiful ad we walked in the frozen lake near whrere children could go on mini sledges or skate on the ice, while we heard it cracking sometimes. We spent many hours walking around the plance which has been heavily restored for the Olympic games in 2008. The walls were beutifully paitinted with scroll like images of birds and plants. We walked to the highest point in the palace, and to the left you could the city scape and on thr right mountains and country side. We met a nice chinese man who worked there he told us he had been to England and seen Biringham, Nottingham and London.
From the tube it had been a really long walk, so we tried to get a bus back to the centre, the bus system was beyond confussing and we decided to avoid all the illegal rikshaws and walk aimlessly, mapless. not far down the road we saw a starbucks and pizza hut and just around the corner a metro station, much nearer that the one we had come from (curse that missinforming website) that evening our hostel offered a free Dumpling making party where we met 2 Americans Tyler and his sister Megan, he worked as a teacher in the Shizz in China and his family had come to Beijing to spend Christmas together! The dumpling making went well, initailly they looked terrible but after 15 attempts we had some symetircal (mini cornish pastie looking) dumplings! A chinese girl also made dumplings with us and we learnt how to say a few things, such as Jiao-ds, dumpling and a few other words to expand our vocab beyond Ni hoa!
The next day we did our laundry and went to Tiennaman Square, before trying to find a place to buy our ticket out of Beijing which open 10 days before you want to leave. the lady in the office, simply said May-yo (dont have) when we showed her what ticket we want so we took a tube and walked to the west train station where they have an english speaking counter, only to be told the tickets wouldnt open til the next day. feeling pretty tired and having wated a few hours I left lee and his bad back and went to the night markets around the corner with Tyler, Megan, his girlfriend Emily and friend Byron. Tyler and Byron ate silk worms, which looked and apparently tasted disguseting! the market also had snakes, frogs whole cooked birds on a stick and a few normal foods like dumplings, noodles and candied fruit.
Christmad Eve, we sussessfully got our train tickets and went to the Capital Museum opposite Tienamen Square, where we sat accross from a small boy with his parents who shouted "whats your name" at us, then became really shy. It was so funny and cute! We did some last minute christmas shopping and decided to buy presents for each other. the only shops near by were souviner shops, but we decided to get cheap presents, that wouldnt take up too much room in our bags!
Christmas day,
We both work up at 7 to swap presents before the fun packed day. We got each other exactly what we wanted- scarfs! also a Santa hat and some chopsticks.
we decided, what would be the best and most memorable thing to do in China on Christmas Day, our conclusion; see Moa's dead body in state! So along with our new american friends; Tyler, Emily, Byron and Lauren we waited, then walking single file we shuffled silently through the moseleum. alot of chinese people where buying yellow flowers from the front to deposite outside the mosoleum (which then are moved back to the selling point tp be sold again) We werent allowed camera's or bags, and the place was heavily guarded and had security checks.
Tuesday, 13 December 2011
New Zealand Highlights Photo's
Fraggle didn't find it too cold in Franz Josef!
Wanaka from our Hostel
Lee getting a bit messy at Ferg Burger (check out the que)!
One of the two waterfalls we backed into on the Milford Sound Cruise
Milford Sound Able Tasman Sea.
Gary when our Kiwi Bus broke down (temporarily)
Lee just before jumping out of the plane
Sarah when the parachute is released
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