Hee hee, overheard this from a german guy on our boat, made us chuckle lots.
Vicki here for her one and only blog post. I hope I can live up to the Stumeister’s excellent posts.
Well, we have finally left Vietnam, the land where they eat anything that moves. After seeing the vast array of ‘food’ on offer, including dog, cat, mouse, sparrow and pigs uterus (yum!) we decided to stick to the safe. Despite this, on one occasion my dinner (a prawn) jumped out of the hotpot and nearly into my lap and mum was served up part of a pigs jaw in a pork dish. This was not enough to put off the parents from sampling the food of the region though and Christmas Day was an amazing buffet in the ‘best restaurant in Vietnam’. Stu and I still dream about the food there….the desserts and cheese!! We were thoroughly spoilt over Christmas and ate proper food again.
Halong Bay was also lovely. we chartered our own junk boat and drifted through the beautiful limestone karsts, completely peaceful apart from the dynamite fishers blasting a subsection of wildlife to smithereens every few minutes.
We said our goodbyes and got on a train to Sapa which involved several surly train guards and a room the size of a wardrobe for 5 grown men and a girl (me). Despite this the beds were surprisingly comfy although Stus impromptu New Years Eve feast of snickers bars and water was put a stop to with the lights out at 10.15. We were asleep by 10.45. Happy new year!
Sapa was foggy and cold, although not the 0 degrees the guidebook said so the crazy hats and gloves we bought weren’t needed. Quite touristy but lots of hill tribes, more ripping off and aggressive tactics from the Vietnamese and although the day trek was stunning, we were more than ready to leave Vietnam.
So, we book a bus to the border town of Dien Bien Phu. We get in the bus, and so does half of Sapa it seems, after squeezing 22 people plus luggage onto a 16 seater bus, the driver says its ‘too full’ and we’re getting another bus. Hoorah we think. Until the other bus is just as full and only 2 people are let off our bus. So, 11 hours with our knees by our heads, not an inch of space and a Vienamese boy sitting/sleeping on Stu. The lunch stop 3 hours in refused to serve tourists so no food, plus a crazy driver smoking opium and a village idiot who spoke very loudly non-stop, we screeched around hare-pin bends with 1/2 mile sheer drops on a very much under-construction road. The overturned buses on the side of the road were also slightly worrying. Got stuck in the mud once which was a welcome relief to unpeel ourselves and become upright again. And then the sickness and stomach upset came for me…All in all we were very relieved to make it to DBP.
The next day was another bus trip which left at 5.30am, drove for 10 minutes then stopped for 1 1/2 hour breakfast stop. We could have done with the extra sleep quite frankly. We made it to the border ok, which was the best border crossing ever – could see for miles across the top of clouds with mountains peaking through. Now in Laos which is stunning and the people are lovely. We have been travelling with a lovely Oz couple called Peter and Jane for the last few days and stayed in a couple of little fishing villages in the mountains. We trekked out to an even more remote village where we found a little lady who dished us the nicest Lao food and a Beerlao. Happy days. We can feel the stresses of Vietnam washing away.
