A distinctive Hue

I think the Vietnamese have stolen all the accents from the English language - the e of Hue has both a circumflex and an acute accent, which seems greedy. Anyway, all you need to know is that (a) it's pronounced Hugh-way, and (b) I'm too lazy to find a way to add the accents.
Hue is probably the first place in Vietnam where we've found historical buildings that you would travel to see in their own right. On our first evening we had a stroll around the main tourist concentration, which is small and has a few decent bars and restaurants but is otherwise unimpressive, so first impressions were lacklustre. The next couple of days changed our minds.

Hue is the home of emperors, the old capital of Vietnam (Nguyen Dynasty 1802-1945. Yes, I looked that up). It sits astride the broad Perfume River (our view of which was the best thing about our hotel, above), and on the north side is the vast Imperial City, and within that is the still large Imperial Citadel, which contains in turn the Purple Forbidden City - or would if there was much left of it (all sides agree that the Viet Cong did actually use it as a base and were holed up there for quite a while, so it's good that there's anything left). A lot of work is being done to restore and, in some cases, rebuild this site - what we saw in progress looked very impressive work.

I try not to comment on the many manglings of the English language and spelling mistakes we see on our travels - it's rarely worse than the e-mails I get from some of you (you know who you are) - but one really threw us. At the Imperial Palace there is a very impressive and professional video featuring computer-generated reconstructions of some of the old buildings. One line of it made no sense until we walked round the complex and saw a gutter-spout in the shape of a large fish. Oh, we said - they have carp gutters!

Quite a lot of the Citadel still stands and it's well worth the visit. The Imperial City generally has a pleasant, relaxed air to it with a lot of gardens - but it's so big that there's plenty of commerce too.

We also had our Christmas lunch here. The only place we saw offering anything Christmassy on Christmas Day itself was the hostel up the road from our hotel. Instead we had a crazy seven course lunch in a charming building with beautiful gardens. It may have been a little too high concept - the closest we got to a traditional Christmas bird was a "peacock" - a whole pineapple, hollowed out and filled with candles, with carved carrot wings and head, a red hot chili for a nose and mini porks spring rolls for plumage. Hmm...

Around Hue you can find various recommended buildings, notably the tombs of some of the Nguyen emperors. As usual, you can't even leave your hotel or eat lunch, let alone walk 50 yards, without being offered tours. For once we passed on the cheap minibus trips in favour of riding on the back of a couple of motorbikes on a customised itinerary, for an extravagant $9 each, and one of the drivers was a pretty good guide (can recommend the Stop & Go Cafe for this if you too are prepared to break the bank). Purely so I can remember which order my photos are in, I'd better make a note here that we went to the Thien Mu Pagoda*, the ampitheatre built for elephant/tiger fights**, Tomb of Tu Duc***, Vong Canh Hill (stunning views of the river outside town, below), Tomb of Khai Dinh, and Tomb of Minh Mang.

* And adjoining monastery. 75% of Vietnam is Buddhist and we reckon there must be about a million monks, including a lot of kids who are monks in training but go out to normal schools - you can recognise them by their partially shaven heads. There aren't enough schools so most kids only go for half a day, and you generally have to pay for schooling (though there are exceptions, as we found out later in Ha Long Bay). The monks' only income is donations of money, produce and people's time (eg people will help to repaint the monasteries). They must be jealous of the Church of England and its lands - if Buddhist monks are allowed to be jealous.

** Fights were previously held in the Palace courtyard with guards forming a ring of swords and spears, and when that (predictably) went wrong, on an island in the Perfume River with boats for spectators. Hold on, can't tigers swim? Yes they can, so that went wrong too, and apparently the emperor had to fight off a tiger with an oar, which sounds highly unlikely. So they moved out of town. It was fixed though, elephants being an important animal over here - the tigers were declawed and partially detoothed, so they generally ended up getting stomped. Poor kitty. Not actually much worth seeing here, but a good story (at least until I retold it).

*** Some of the emperors oversaw construction of their own tombs. This chap's was based around a tiny island in a lake, a really charming spot. Apparently he had over 100 wives but couldn't produce an heir, though he did adopt a son who succeeded him before dying aged 15. Tu Duc therefore had to write his own eulogy, which is rather long and sad - though I imagine it was some other poor fellow's job to carve the entire thing onto a gigantic stele balanced on a turtle's back - and as he got older he would come more and more often to the place he was going to be buried. Lovely place though - all three tombs we saw were well worth the trip, I wish we'd noticed there were a couple of "lesser" ones on the way back so we could have popped in for a look.

Tomb of Khai Dinh (guess ­what the carefully cropped sign at the bottom of the second one says...):

Tomb of Minh Mang:

We finished up by hiring a dragon boat (less exciting than you're probably picturing) for an hour's cruise on the Perfume River.

We assumed the local girl on board was just there with her dad the driver, but as soon as we set off she started unpacking things to try to sell us, and brought them out of the cabin one at a time.

No thank you, we don't want any shirts. [One minute later...] No thank you, we don't want any paintings. [One minute later...] No thank you, we don't want any jewellery. I was a bit worried that Lilly couldn't take any more of this shopping pressure before she cracked, especially since the silk pyjamas looked pretty nice, but I have a pretty simple rule: never buy anything on a boat. If we have kids, I plan to instill this rule into them on a regular basis until they're old enough to work it out themselves from basic economic first principles. (Lucky hypothetical kids. I really hope they get my economics genes to cancel out Lilly's shopping genes.) I think she got the message eventually. I also think our boat came back to shore early... Pleasant little cruise though.

Huda is the local beer ­with the best logo, though for taste ­we recommend Festival

We were lucky with the weather - Hue is supposed to be the rainiest city in Vietnam, with all the good weather getting stuck on the mountains, but we had 3 sunny days here. Glad we came.

We were going to hop on a train from Hue, but we learned a number of things that changed our minds:

• There's apparently nothing worth visiting on the train line between Hue and Hanoi (725km away, according to a helpful city centre roadsign)
• The sleeper trains all get into Hanoi between 3 and 5am, and the other trains would spend a whole day travelling
• Lilly hates sleeper trains
• Flights are frequent and cost about 30 quid.

And to give Vietnam Airlines credit, they put on perhaps the smoothest and most efficient flight we've ever been on - it both took off and landed early! A side-note - I've read that Vietnamese people are not used to travelling on long-distance buses or trains, so if you use them, you may see people throwing up. We never saw this on trains or buses, but as we cruised in on a smooth descent I heard the unmistakable sound of a sickbag being used in the seat behind me...

Our Christmas Bird!

Lilly's Highlights & Recommendations #7 (Hue, Vietnam)

The usual top 5:

1. Imperial Tombs - my personal favourite was the Ming Manh tomb,
which is in a lovely setting. Tu Doc and Khai Dinh are also
attractive. We got around the tombs by hiring a couple of mopeds and
drivers, picking an itinerary and having them drive us around for US
$18 for 5 hours. A really fun if bumpy way to travel. They drive less
like maniacs in Hoi An, Mui Ne and Hue. Probably wouldn't try this in
HCM.

2. Thien Mu Pagoda - also on our bike trip. Impressive monument to
Buddha and also houses the car driven by the monk who set himself
alight in Saigon in protest at the Vietnam war. The car features in
the famous photo. A great historical relic!

3. Imperial City - a city within a city, behind a defensive wall. But
what I really mean is the Citadel which is at the centre of the city
which is where most of the historic buildings are. A decent collection
of religious, pleasure and accommodation buildings for the Ngyuen
dynasty with some gems. The city outside the citadel is pretty
peaceful for Vietnam too.

4. Perfume river - our hotel had a great river view. Would definitely
recommend having a view of the river if you stay in Hue. River is also
good for a dragon boat trip (an alternative to bikes for seeing the
sites) and a dusk beer.

5. Bars/Beer - best selection of local beers yet. Huda has the best
label, Festival the best taste and Hue loses out on all fronts! Lots
of good bars to drink them in too. Why Not? is recommended. Has free
Wii tennis (I still have a blister!) and free pool. DMZ also has free
pool and is very busy. The backpacker hostel bar is relaxed and Brown
Eyes is open late but seemed to be doing most of its business in
prostitution!

Not the best food we have had ( Stop & Go cafe or Cathi's probably the
best) but I will post a picture of our Christmas lunch bird in a
minute. Only in Hue!

Waiting for flight to Hanoi now. I wasn't going to venture on another
sleeper train!!

Merry Monkey Christmas!

Christmas Morning View

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas from Hue, Vietnam.

Very strange being over here for Christmas - I believe the holiday is something they've picked up on over the last few years and now there are Christmas trees in every hotel and most restaurants. Saw a lot of kids in Santa suits yesterday. All the hotels have a big Christmas Eve meal and party (we skipped that - from what we saw at ours it's mainly the locals showing up). On the bright side, it's a nice sunny day so we're off to see the Imperial Palace, and hopefully everything is still open today!

Hope you all have a great Christmas. If you're enjoying the blog (or if you have helpful suggestions, like get more pictures up and stop writing so many words), feel free to say hi in the comments.

Lilly's Highlights & Recommendations #6 (Hoi An, Vietnam)

Loved Hoi An (despite 1.5 days of torrential rain - don't worry it is
sunny again now!) Top 5:

1. Tran Family Chapel - this by the far the best of the cultural sites
of Hoi An. Lovely architecture and so well preserved it is like
stepping back in time. Friendly free tour too which is actually
interesting.

2. My Son - although the temples at My Son are a bit of a
disappointment after Angkor, they are an important piece of cultural
heritage and good to compete the temple set. The return trip on a
boat (via a 500 year old woodworking village which is interesting) is
scenic and very worthwhile.

3. Cui Dai Beach - not quite as nice as the beaches at Mui Ne but very
good for a relaxing afternoon if you have spent the whole morning
walking the streets of old town. Warm sea and cold beer. Waves a bit
calmer than Mui Ne. The journey home on the back of a moped was great
fun too. Couldn't leave SE Asia without going on a moped!

4. Riverside - the bars and restaurants and the outlook along Bach
Dang road on the river is amazing! Exactly how I had pictured Vietnam.
It is great for people watching (and even bumping into work
colleagues!) both on the water and on the street, the beer is cheap
(13p in some places!) and the food is brilliant (especially the local
specialities Cao Lau and White Rose) and if you get bored the main
Market is also on the street.

5. General ambience - in terms of things to see, museums etc Hoi An is
not the best place in Vietnam but strolling around the largely
pedestrianised (mopeds allowed of course!) streets among the ancient
houses and temples is really satisfying and the rest stops for drinks
and lunch are normally always scenic and cheap. Much calmer than HCM
too.

A quick summary on the food/drink side of things as it was the best we
have had in Vietnam:

Cafe des Amis - 52 (I think) Bach Dang. Great for people watching.

Restaurant 96 - 96 Bach Dang. See above!

Street food stalls at 62 Bach Dang - great location. Cheap and amazing
White Rose.

Lighthouse - on the other side of the river with a balcony terrace.
Great views of the old town and decent food.

River lounge - on the other side of the river so great views too.
Slightly expensive and pretentious food. Upstairs is basically one big
mattress for lounging on.

Mango Mango - see River Lounge except without the mattress. And we
only had drinks there.

Sleeping Gecko - near Lighthouse. Very relaxing and nicely set up with
free pool and a free shot on arrival. The owner (from Yorkshire we
think) also gave us some free rice wine (yuk!)

Morning Glory - on Nguyen Thai Hoc street, which has a lot of the top
restaurants on it. Also a good shopping street. My shrimps with garlic
chives and rice was my favourite meal.

Tam Tam - relaxing bar also on NTH street. Free pool. Notable for my
only pool victory so far!

The Bruges of Vietnam

That's a ridiculous comparison in many ways, but the theory is the same - a chunk of old town that can't be knocked down or modernised. We got a muted first impression thanks to the weather but quickly started enjoying it.

We jumped off our sleeper in Danang, an hour late, and too glad to be free to do more than get swept into a taxi (unfortunately this turns out to be one of the few places where you should agree a fare rather than use the meter). Danang station has a great steam train out front and that's about all we saw of the town. It will be huge in a few years though - there's apparently a great beach nearby, but from the coastal road all we could see was construction of miles of high-end resorts. Invest in Danang airport now!

Hoi An has a beach with a few hotels, and a town about 5km away. Our hotel, Ancient House, was a bit in between - perfectly walkable to town but not ideal in hindsight. It looked very nice and probably would have been in summer, but in practice the room had a stone floor and never felt warm enough to dry clothes, there wasn't enough hot water for a bath, people walking past our room were very noisy, etc. (Great breakfast for me though, and they did let us check in early.)

We walked down to town and it started to pour with rain. We lurched through the market, under plastic sheeting too low for me, let alone my brolly, and dived into somewhere on the riverfront for a tasty lunch. We weren't used to this sort of weather (apart from a freak half hour in HCMC)! We trudged round in the rain - crossed the river to an island with some submerged streets - and wondered what all the fuss was about.
But to appreciate Hoi An you have to get your head up. Some of the buildings are a bit shabby but lots of them have nice features, especially higher up. And although it is fairly tourist-ised, it's a lot calmer than HCMC and busier than Mui Ne - a good mix. (People will try to sell you things on the street or get you into their shops, but they won't try too hard. Again, a lot of empty cafes and restaurants though, but a few busy ones too. Nobody likes an empty room. We sat right at the front of one with just a couple of occupied tables, having a drink one evening, and by the time we'd finished the place was full while its neighbours stayed empty. We should have got the drinks for free!)

It's not a place with must-see sights, it's all about the general feel of the place. When the sun came out in force on our third day it got even better. It's so small you can get to know the whole place and see its few tourist attractions* in 24 hours.

* Very strange system. There are about 4 temples, 3 old family houses, 5 guild buildings etc. You can buy a ticket which gets you into 1 of each. I believe you used to be able to buy top-ups for individual buildings but no more. (You could buy multiple tickets but I doubt many people do.) What you really want is a recommendation for the best old house, temple etc, but this seems beyond the ability of guidebooks - maybe each writer only saw one! I didn't mind much as none of the ones we saw blew me away, but they're quick enough to visit that there must be a market for a comprehensive ticket.

The other local must-visit is My Son - bonus points for knowing that it's pronounced Mee Sun. This temple complex must have been stunning once, but unfortunately the US bombed it heavily during the war, believing that the Viet Cong were using it as a base. (Our guide said that his dad and uncle were VC and the VC were never there. Decide for yourselves!)

As a result you can comfortably see the whole site - apart from bits being restored - in the 90 minutes that a standard tour offers. Our hotel was offering one for about $40. For $6 each we got a coach there, guide, trip back on a boat with an admittedly what-you-pay-for bland lunch thrown in and a stop to see local craftsmen at work (none of whom had any kind of hard sell going). My Son is probably a bit disappointing if you hope for anything like Angkor but still well worth a trip if you're in the vicinity.

Now we're en route to Hue on a hot and sunny Christmas Eve. We could have got the bus from Hoi An but instead we've taxied back to Danang (much cheaper taxis can be arranged for the return!) to get the train, which climbs through the mountains and is supposed to have great views of the coast that the bus misses. It's only $6 a ticket and half of that is travel agency fee! (Note to self: don't buy more expensive tickets for longer journeys from agents.) As it turns out the views are pretty good in the first half hour (before we meet the road) that I'm happy to have paid a bit extra, but it's not unmissable.

Next stop: Hue for Christmas!

Lilly's Highlights & Recommendations # 5 (Mui Ne, Vietnam)

Not a lot to Mui Ne other than sun, sand and sea but here is a quick
top 5 (as usual not in order of preference but unusually hopefully
not duplicating Paul's!):

1. The sea! So warm although not as blue as you might like. Enormous
waves so plenty of water sports fun to be had or you can just try and
take on the waves and not lose your costume! The sea wins most of the
time!

2. The hotel (Blue Ocean) - lovely resort. Quiet with a really nice
and warm pool. Clean, modern bungalow rooms. Ok breakfast. Average
service though. They haven't mastered the middle ground between
inattentiveness and pestering in Vietnam yet.

3. Joe's Art Cafe - funky cafe with good food and drink and a cool
vibe. You can watch DVDs in the 'loft' too on a big screen.

4. Sunset restaurant - Mui Ne has a lot of average restaurants. But
this one was good and in a nice garden setting. No one in it of
course! Where is everybody??!

5. 9 ball - a version of pool, which finally ended my massive run of
defeats to Paul! Always free and sometimes outdoors. Very nice.

Written in Hoi An having survived the sleeper, an experience I hope
never to repeat unless they start doing much nicer ones. Sorry
environment, flying wins!

Show me the Mui Ne

Feeling refreshed after 3 days at the beach in Mui Ne. (Before I go on, out of consideration for my readers, I should say that we are now somewhere cooler and wetter and by the time we get to Beijing we'll be jealous of your temperatures!)

Barely a cloud in the sky. Mui Ne features about 10km of fairly thin beach (vanishing entirely at points) along a single road, with a variety of resorts along one side and restaurants on the other.

We stayed at the Blue Ocean (our last 3 hotels have been River 108, Blue River and now Blue Ocean, so I'm disappointed to be breaking the run) which was fairly swanky but still good value, and the local restaurants outside the resort hotels are ludicrously cheap. So it made for some good downtime.

The main beach activity here is kite-surfing, which looks like great fun - plenty of wind and waves here for it - but it's pretty expensive and I suspect you need to invest quite a few hours to achieve basic competence. So we stuck to a bit of swimming, a very poor round of an exotic but badly designed mini golf course (lack of bounce meant the ball almost always came to a halt in an unplayable position against a wall) and both indoor and outdoor pool (yes, as in the cue-sport - it gets interesting outdoors when the wind picks up).

Very relaxing here but strangely quiet - our hotel feels about 20% full and it can be a battle to find a restaurant with anyone in it. Maybe we're just a tiny bit too far before Christmas (17th-20th) but we're both surprised as it's a great, cheap place for a beach holiday.

A taxi then took us to the (relatively) nearby station of Muong Man to get a sleeper to Danang.   Properly in the sticks, not all the trains stop here. Ours is on time - couple of minutes early in fact. We're in the top-grade luxury accommodation, which is... Well, it's air-conditioned, and the beds are fine. I would have been happier if there hadn't been people on our alloted beds, but the guard moved them on and I expect we'll survive...

Abandoned ideas #2

All pretty quiet here as we chill out in Mui Ne - lovely resort and beaches, strangely devoid of people.

Photos of HCMC added in the post below.

Abandoned idea #2 - toiletwatch - photos of at least one toilet in each destination. Fortunately abandoned when I forgot to take one in Dubai, since they're all the same everywhere - standard toilet with a little hose on the side for those who like to bidet. In every country. How boring.

We've had to resort to this...

With all the reports of snow in England I thought this might cheer you up.
No?

Lilly's Highlights & Recommendations #4 (Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam)

Another quick city stop with a couple of days in Ho Chi Minh (formerly
Saigon, which is still the name given to downtown HCM). Anyway,
highlights:

(Apologies again for duplication with Paul's blog. We write them at
the same time, but not together. We may try improved cooperation next
time!)

1. Cu Chi tunnels - a half day tour to visit the network of tunnels
under the Cu Chi region a few miles outside Saigon. These tunnels
served as both living space and a military stronghold for the Cu Chi
guerillas who managed to stop the American 'demons' ever taking this
area. Spectacular for the fact that the guerillas included both women
and children and that the tunnels were so extensive and so small (the
entrance tunnels were approx. 30cm x 60cm). My claustrophobia
prevented me from witnessing this first hand but Paul assures me they
were horribly tiny, hot and dark! We also got an opportunity to fire
an AK-47 here, which made my teeth rattle and was unbelievably loud. I
also had no sense of whether I had hit anything I was aiming at. In
summary I would be a pretty useless guerilla!

2. War remnants museum - an insanely biased museum about the Vietnam
war (or the American war if you are Vietnamese). Foetuses deformed by
Agent Orange in glass cases???? I look forward to China's efforts in
the rewriting history competion! Despite that there is an interesting
selection of journalist photographs which are powerful on both sides.
There is also a good selection of captured US military hardware
including tanks, planes and bombs. You are more likely than anywhere
else I have ever been to stumble across military equipment on display
in HCM.

3. Pho - a really delicious rice noodle soup dish with your choice of
beef, chicken, squid etc. I believe the Vietnamese eat it for
breakfast but it makes a decent cheap (£1ish) lunch. Asian Kitchen did
a nice one. We also had a decent Indian in Mumtaz.

4. City Centre Area - the 'posh' part of Saigon. Lots of nice
buildings around here with a lot of history including the Rex and
Continental Hotels, the opera house, the Notre Dame Cathedral
(Catholic - actually quite a few around), the very dated Reunification
Palace and the central post office.

5. Pham Ngu Lao area - main backpacking area. Loads of bars,
restaurants, shops, traffic and noise. The heart and soul of Saigon.

Other notable things:

- The traffic is insane. Apparently official stats have it that there
are 3.7million mopeds in a city of 7milliom people (cheapest one costs
US$400). They don't seem to abide by any laws of the road and you have
to throw yourself onto the road and hope for the best. Surprised to
have made it out alive.
- First rainstorm; a real monsoon. 5 seconds in it was enough to have
you wet through.
- Phone cable pylons - every pylon is an absolute mass of wires. It is
almost like every phone has its own wire travelling across the city.

On another coach now on the way to Mui Ne beach for some R&R.

Miss Saigon? Not much

Ho Chi Minh City (formerly Saigon, and the central district is still called Saigon) is a different kind of mental. Quite a lot of honking, but unlike Mumbai, it's not crazy drivers. It's crazy motorcyclists.

HCMC population 7.1 million, with 3.7 motorbikes (incl a lot of mopeds), plus quite a few cyclists. And it's completely mental. They pay no attention to crossings, little to traffic lights, and they're not averse to swinging across the entire road to turn left into the wrong lane against oncoming traffic. Crossing roads you take your life in your hands - as our last day tour guide said, advice for Westerners crossing roads, close your eyes and walk, they'll drive around you. (Don't try this with approaching cars or buses!)

And even on the pavements you're not safe - that's if you can even get on the pavements amongst stalls and parked bikes, we spent a lot of time walking in the road - because they think nothing of driving onto the pavement to park, or using it as a short cut. I don't think my heart could cope with living here. I've even held off writing about it until safely on my bus away from HCMC to avoid an ironic last-minute flattening.

We only really got a look at two parts of town. One is the area around the cheap hotels, Pham Ngu Lao, which is manic, though that makes you appreciate it all the more when you find a quiet side street or alley with a tasty little restaurant or bar. Our hotel was in the cheap and cheerful category, but a fine example of the breed, with a very helpful proprietor (who provoked a French family into a tremendous argument this morning by only accepting payment in USD, as advertised, and being willing to change local dong to USD at a rate slightly worse than they'd seen anywhere else. We laughed at them and handed over our crisp $50 note for 2 nights) and well-located for our arrival and departure buses.

We went to the War Remnants museum, which Lilly's entry describes and I'm sure she's the expert on distortions of history (um, that may have come out wrong...) but I agree that the war photographers' photos were particularly good.

From here we strolled into the centre of town and a bit of peace and quiet at last. Then something wet landed on me. At first I was worried a bird had brought me luck. Then I thought it was a drip. The third time I realised it was big, warm raindrops - something we haven't seen since leaving London (though anyone reading this has apparently seen a lot, sorry. In fact I don't think we had even had an overcast day until we got here - the weather seemed to change at the border - it's also more humid than Cambodia). And then it became a torrential downpour so we had to leg it to the nearest cafe.

This was actually a blessing in disguise - I hope - since we had been about to book a train to Nha Trang for a few days on the beach. This gentle prod to check the weather forecast revealed thunderstorms, so we decided to divert to the much nearer Mui Ne by bus instead.

Our other major excursion was to the Cu Chi tunnels, where a bunch of villagers literally went underground to fight first the French and then the Americans, supported by the Viet Cong from the North. I cannot imagine how horrible it must have been living underground, getting around in tiny tunnels - hotter and more humid than it is above ground, which is bad enough. The tunnel I went through had been enlarged for Western visitors so I only had to squat and waddle though - the real ones are hands and knees jobs and the openings to ground level are tiny:


Hard to believe that they used to travel through 7km of tunnel every day to pop up and shoot at the US camp north of HCMC. And the ground is hard clay - there are many km of tunnels, plus living quarters, kitchens, smoke tunnels so as not to give away the location of the kitchen, airholes that come up in termite mines... It's some undertaking.

I also enjoyed the ingenious range of traps they set for US soldiers, and the way they adapted some - for example, spikes that would swing down when a marine forced a door open, and even if he was ready for that and blocked it, a second set of spikes are hinged below, so they'll carry on and swing up.


All topped off with a great propaganda film and the chance to use the firing range.

On the whole, you can see where HCMC is trying to modernise - we saw some dodgy riverside slum areas that had been recently razed to build apartments - and there are some very plush shops and hotels in the central area, but everything else is a bit crazy, traffic is horrendous even though there are relatively few cars, and it just frayed my nerves.

The other crazy thing about HCMC is its masses of telephone cables just above street level so naturally I couldn't resist this T-shirt, and now that I've explained the context you can all laugh knowingly if you see me wearing it:

Looking forward to a bit of relative peace and quiet on our next stops. Fingers crossed for the weather!

Oh, and we picked up a Vietnam daily paper in a cafe - the main back page sports story was ice hockey - Finland winning a Winter Olympics warm-up tournament. Which featured 4 teams (none of them Asian, obviously, unless you count Russia). And was one of 4 warm-up tournaments those 4 teams would play. Featuring no NHL players. Is this a major sport here? (This becomes even stranger when we get to Hue and find a Finland jersey hanging in a bar - Finland being the team I support in international competition.)

Monkey!

A quick post from Lilly: Replacement Monkey's travels.

At Angkor Wat:


At the Ancient City (near Bangkok):

In Leopold's Cafe, Mumbai:


In Dubai:

Lilly's Highlights & Recommendations #3 (Phnom Penh, Cambodia)

Only 1.5 days in Phnom Penh so not a massive amount to report, but
here's a quick Top 5 (not in order of preference):

1. The Royal Palace - nice complex with some decent temples (although
the silver pagoda is a let down; most of the silver tiles are covered)
and a nice touch of European architecture in the run down pavillion
dedicated to Napoleon III.
2. The Killing Fields/Toul Sleng Genocide Museum - it may be stating
the obvious to say this was a grim experience but it was grimmer than
anticipated. At the killing fields themselves you are literally
walking across mass graves occasionally stepping on the bones, teeth
and clothes of men, women and children that continue to appear out of
the ground 30 years later (although I did wonder whether any of it is
staged). The central memorial is a temple packed to the rafters with
skulls. The museum itself is in the school which was converted into
S21 - the main security office/prison/interrogation and torture centre
(the Cambodian Prinz Albrecht Strasse). The cells are all still in
place and there is still blood on the floors and instruments of
torture dotted around. It is not sanitised in the way you would expect
in Europe and is all the more affecting as a result. The recentness of
it all (within Paul's lifetime) also added to the impact.
3. Backpacker Street (Street 93, lakeside - not a great lake) - packed
with scruffy but fun bars and ridiculously cheap. 75 cents for a vodka
and mixer.
4. Cafe Culture - it has a very Parisien street cafe culture,
particularly on the riverside, which is great for people watching (as
well as eating and drinking). Much more evidence of old western men
and young Asian women here than in Bangkok!
5. Huxley Pub - although we have only been away for 3 weeks it was
nice to find somewhere with English papers (photocopied!), beer in a
pint glass and a free pool table. Shame about the pool series
whitewash! Nice balcony view too.

On another coach now (bad roads!) Ho Chi Minh here we come!

Phnom Penh is mightier than the sward

I don't actually know if they have sward in Cambodia. Work with me. We passed through a bit of the country on the bus here but mostly along a well-developed road (although you could buy fried locusts at our one stop, it was next to a big cafe and generic market so hardly noteworthy).

[This entry - and the text I've added about Angkor a couple of posts below, don't miss it - are a bit more detailed than usual as we have friends visiting the same places shortly]

I don't have too much to say about Phnom Penh - we booked for 2 nights and see no great need to extend. It's a pleasant place to spend 2 or 3 days but no great attraction in its own right. You can see a bit of a French influence - a few wide boulevards and a lot of cafes and bars spilling out onto the pavement, especially along the riverfront.

On our first day we stuck to the riverfront - reports say the rest of town is not entirely safe after dark and there's not too much we want to see.

We hopped down to the Royal Palace, which suffers a bit by comparison to Bangkok. The best (or most novel) bits - a big frieze and an art deco pavilion dedicated to Napoleon III - are both in serious need of restoration.

However I can recommend a rooftop bar called Chow for sunset - on the riverfront just north of the turn-off for the Royal Palace - nice view along the river and you can also see the sun set in the opposite direction (happy hour 4-8 made it thankfully a lot cheaper than it looked!).

On our second day we took a little tour in the morning to the Killing Fields at Choueng Ek and Tuol Sleng (aka S21), a school converted to an infamous detention and interrogation centre - now the 'Museum of Genocide'. ($4 each for the minibus was good value, we think.)

The Killing Fields are quite chilling. There were hundreds of these death camps across Cambodia, but this was, I think, the biggest, due to its proximity to Phnom Penh. The most obvious thing to see is the stupa, a partly glass tower that houses the nearly 9,000 skulls excavated from mass graves here. It's a Buddhist monument. I do admire the Cambodian attitude - terrible things happened here and they won't forget them or cover them up, they're going to use them as a reminder to themselves and the rest of the world. The guide (you do need a guide) spoke very soberingly of all the men, women and children murdered here (the Khmer Rouge killed up to 3 million out of a population of 7 million) and how his own sisters had died of starvation. Every time it rains, they find more bones, teeth and clothes in the ground here. (30 year old clothing has survived surprisingly well. I have just a little scepticism about this, but I think that if they are laying it on a little for visitors, their motives are good, as I noted above.)

Being sceptical is an important theme in one exhibit at S21 - a Maoist Swede who was part of a group invited to visit in 1978 during Pol Pot's reign. He took photos of what he now realises were events staged for his benefit and wrote stupid things about how good it was that they had got rid of money so they can all grow rice. The exhibit contrasts his thoughts then and now.

Apart from that, they've preserved a lot of cells (there even seems to be blood on the floor, although again I'm a little sceptical) but the exhibits aren't in a great state and nothing is a really compelling reason to visit. (If anyone does come on a tour, start with the last 2 buildings which have most of the text.) We should perhaps have got a guide here too.

My mood was brightened a bit at the very end by noticing that the icon for the ladies' toilets were perfectly standard but the men's were as pictured.

We picked ourselves up for the afternoon with lunch in a tiny bookshop/cafe just north of the Riverhouse, which Lilly boldly claimed to be her best meal of the trip so far.

We strolled up to Wat Phnom (fairly missable though the monkeys on the hill were cute - and a girl showed us a cage full of birds and tried to sell us one for a dollar. I'm not quite sure what we were supposed to do with them) and over to backpackers' central by the lake. The lake was muddy and entirely missable and almost everyone we saw looked hungover, but it was all very cheap.

A quick trip to the central market - its architecture is much-praised but I struggled to see why, though a lot was closed for renovation and the stalls offered nothing new.

We them came across a great ironic name for an English bar broad - Huxley's Brave New World - "Home of the English pint glass"! - with photocopied English papers (e-mailed from the UK?). Having mocked it, we spent a couple of hours sitting on its balcony reading the News of the World and the Guardian, and playing on their free pool table (not on the balcony). (All pool/football tables seem to be free, maybe because they have no coins to operate them.) [Joe - one street over from the river, c.street 140, if you feel a craving. Nice place, though the waitress did stand watching us play pool.]

Topped off the day with a great Vietnamese beef stew in the Riverside bistro. Hopefully this bodes well for Vietnam!

Major disappointment this morning when I saw the lead sports story in the local daily paper. We're missing another world cup! Disabled volleyball, to be precise. Cambodia is hosting and had a good win yesterday. Good luck against Slovakia, guys.

As I write this we've just left Cambodia - defected from Mekong Express buses to Sapaco, where the seats are a touch bigger and they have only used their TV and speakers for 5 minutes. So a definite upgrade. Had to get off twice at the border - once with bags in tow - but Sapoco handle all the processing so after a little standing around it's plain sailing.  Just before the Cambodia-Vietnam border, Cambodian side, in the middle of nowhere, is a little strip of Vegas-style casinos. They look very new, possibly still under construction. But why there? There are casinos in Vietnam.


If only we'd got an earlier bus I could shout "GOOD MORNING VIETNAM!" right now. Maybe tomorrow.

Lilly's Highlights & Recommendations #2 (Angkor/Siem Reap, Cambodia)

6 hour coach journey to Phnom Penh to kill, so plenty of time for
highlights..

Angkor is the park area outside Siem Reap (the local tourist town) and
is all about ancient temples. So instead of the usual Top 5, here is
my Top 5 temples at Angkor (we spent 3 days wandering the park so this
is only a small selection of what there is to see):

1. Bayon - 216 giant face sculptures (of the King at the time) make
this the most memorable and impressive temple.
2. Banteay Srei - on a small more human scale a little way out of the
park. Beautifully preserved carvings and a lovely red colour stone.
3. Ta Prohm - very ruinous and overtaken by enormous and ancient trees
with giant roots spreading like tentacles all over the ruins. Very
Indiana Jones.
4. Angkor Wat - amazingly well preserved and beautiful bas-reliefs
around the terraces but these are its best feature and it doesn't
deserve its status as Angkor's #1 temple. Good for sunrise though.
5. Terrace of the Elephants - a long wall in the Royal Palace complex
with an impressive number of large elephant carvings and some great
elephant trunk sculptures coming out of the walls.

Siem Reap is also a pretty decent little town. A good range of
restaurants and bars (from tourist standard on Pub Rd (!) to posh
cocktail bars (Nest - needless to say, my favourite!)) The souvenir
shopping is good too with a couple of day markets and a fun night
market with a couple of outdoor bars. Generally very tourist friendly
and safe and much more developed than I had expected (although it
doesn't pass my Starbucks and GAP globalisation test!) Poverty and
evidence of the Killing Fields actually very limited but that leaves
something to look forward to in Phnom Pehn...

Cor, Angkor

(I began writing this while drinking a cold beer at a temple on top of a hill waiting for sunset. I'm finishing it on a 5-6 hour coach journey to Phnom Penh, in a slightly-too-small seat with two occasionally screaming children opposite me and the local equivalent of a Bollywood movie* on a TV screen and blasting out of the speakers... Well, they say Cambodia is a country of extremes.

* Collywood? Certainly puts me in mind of something that's going to stick around for a few hours without doing anything aesthetically pleasing.

Anyway, we've just spent four days in Siem Reap, the small town that exists mainly to service the many tourists who visit the Angkor temples. It's a great place to spend a few days because the temples are amazing. They date from the 8th century up - the most famous being from the 12th - and after a long period of abandonment they were rediscovered just over 100 years ago and gradually restored and opened up to visitors. They open before dawn and close after sunset and, with one annoying exception, you have a lot of freedom to clamber all over them and touch and photograph whatever you want, which is brilliant. I don't know how long this will last or if the exception is the sign of changes to come, but surely the more international organisations that get involved and the more visitors come, the more likely they are to get restrictive.

There's an interesting little visitor centre at one temple which tells that some of them (or some parts) were in such a parlous state - from the elements, from trees falling on them or rather spectacularly growing up through them, in some cases from early visitors and from the Khmer Rouge - that they were taken apart and rebuilt and restored piece by piece, using the original stones and, where possible, original techniques and materials.* So it's strange to wander round and see that some bits are obvious reconstructions but others appear to be genuinely beautifully well-preserved (I picked a photo from Banteay Srei, below, which has miraculously intricate detail and a missing head, which makes me assume it's original).

* One of the temples at Angkor Thom had just been deconstructed when the Khmer Rouge came to power, and the careful plans and notes they made were lost. They're still putting it back together now. I like to think that a generation brought up on Lego will be a bit better at this.

Anyway, once you get here, it's time to hire a tuk-tuk and driver for the day and off you go - there's a good number of temples in a small radius and a few slightly more distant ones.

There's probably a bit of a trick to scheduling, which you may be familiar with from Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings trilogy (bear with me, if you've made it this far). There are 4 indisputable stars, the must-sees - Angkor Wat, Bayon, Ta Prohm and Banteay Srei, which you could just about cram into a day. But if you see all those first, temple fatigue will set in, and places like Ta Preo and Preah Khan, which might have blown you away when expectations were lower, will be a bit of a let-down. Jackson knew this when he put what looked like the battle scene to end all battle scenes in Fellowship, then topped it in The Two Towers and topped that again in Return of the King. If you saw RotK first then its predecessors would have looked relatively tame. A bit of restraint early on can be a big help. A 3-day temple pass (you don't have to use it on consecutive days) gives time for a leisurely visit to all the main places of interest. We held back our main visit to Angkor Wat till the last day, but in retrospect maybe Bantei Srei and Ta Prohm or even Bayon would have been better calls.

Ambitiously, we kicked off with a 4:30a.m. alarm to make sunrise at Angkor Wat. Lilly was not happy at the time but even she agreed this was worth it. AW is a huge square site, sitting inside a fantastic wide moat. The thing to do here is arrive early in darkness, cross the moat, enter the outer wall, walk halfway to the main temple until you reach a big pond on either side of the path. Turn left and walk 2/3 of the way along the pond-side and when the sun rises, it is just about over the temple, and you get a stunning reflection in the pond. (Apparently in the ideal spot you can see all 5 towers on both temple and reflection, so I was pretty close.)  It's lovely. Even I could manage a few decent photos.





(Our directions were less specific so we didn't get here in time to be front row - it's fairly busy - but could still peek through.)



I guess we could have gone back to the hotel for a nap and/or breakfast but we boldly pressed on, leaving a proper look at AW for another day. It's pretty good out until 830 or so, very quiet and pleasantly warm rather than hot, so a good time to visit our #1 favourite - Bayon, in the Angkor Thom complex.
If you've seen a picture of Angkor it will be either the temple at AW or the giant faces at Bayon.



Hundreds of giant faces, and the more you look, the more you see (the degree of preservation varies). We popped back later in the day for a second look as the rest of Angkor Thom is not as good (though it's worth seeing the Terrace of the Elephants from a few angles, some great bas reliefs and sculptures).


After lunch we went to Ta Prohm, which is a bit more derelict and overrun by trees - you can imagine Indiana Jones here, or Lara Croft (part of one of the Tomb Raider movies was shot in Angkor, but I've managed to wipe them from my mind so I can't tell you which or where). Really enjoyable, with some brilliant trees working their way through and over the walls.


We just had time to stop off at Ta Keo - a tall and steep pyramid vaguely Inca-style - before heading to one of the two main sunset sites, Phnom Bakheng, a forgettable temple on top of a hill. We messed this up, I think. The point is not to see the sun set, but to see the colour of the sky 10 minutes later. (There's nothing to really set it against so you're just using the elevation.) We watched the sun set, saw quite a few people leaving, and decided to beat the rush down. We should probably have stayed. The down-side would have been descending in the dark - some incredibly steep stone steps followed by 10 minutes on the path. Pack a torch!

On Day 2, we stopped off at a fairly missable pyramid structure (Ta Keo, I think) - first sign of temple fatigue - at the start of a 37km trip to Banteay Srei. This takes a bit of time in a tuk-tuk but it's well worth it for a very different type of temple, quite small but with beautiful, intrictate decorations and very well preserved. Don't miss this.

On the other hand, I kind of wish we had missed extending our trip to visit Kbal Spean (it's another 9km and drivers will want a supplement). This is basically a 1500m uphill hike - heavy going in places over rocks - to the barely visible remains of a temple and a pleasant enough waterfall. Now, at every single other temple, each arriving tuk-tuk is greeted by kids or women trying to sell you cold drinks. Here, we just got a couple of kids with postcards, and the drink stalls 20 yards away ignored us. There's a massive gap in the market for someone to run up and say "This is a 3km round trip, it's hot and this is your last chance to buy water." I really wish someone had told me this and tried a hard sell for the one time I really needed to buy something. (I tried to explain this to one of the postcard kids when we got back down but I'm not sure 6-year-olds here have enough of a background in micro-economic principles for it to work, which is itself a gap in another market but probably not one that is likely to be filled. To be fair too myself, I didn't try to explain this bit to the postcard kids.)
So, a very late lunch by the lovely lake at Sras Srang (above - the driver's recommendation, a good and cheap local place) and a quick look at Banteay Kdey temple (falling down in various semi-interesting ways but a bit sub-Ta Prohm), and on to Preah Khan, which falls somewhere between those two. It's quite big, and worth making it to the far end for a great tree that looks a bit like am alien pod that has landed and sprouted up, curling around the buildings. Which is quite accurate, I guess.


We took Day 3 off for a bit of R&R and picked up Day 4 with the Roulos Group, slightly out of town and another victim of temple fatigue. We'd saved up the afternoon for our return to Angkor Wat - saved probably too much time, as it turns out. AW has a great bas relief running around the outside of the temple, which is well worth a good look. But I think the temple promises from a distance a bit more than it delivers up close. Most annoying is that the top section has been closed (a guidebook says it used to be open and there are fairly recent wooden steps for those who don't fancy the steep stone). The first real restriction on going anywhere comes right at the last minute!

[edit: months later, someone who had a tour guide around AW told us that you can just bribe the local police and they'll take you up there.]

Oh well. We stick around for sunset - this is another recommended spot but we can't work out exactly why or where. It's possible there are people round the back framing the temple against the sky but I don't think that would work... Best spot may be the main gate by the moat.

(Now this bus is playing a cheap and noisy Hong Kong action film - unreadable subtitles in English and presumably Khmer. Does anyone want to watch this?)

So, a very good trip. Everything is very easy for the tourist here - the town itself is completely Khmer-cialised. It even has a road called Pub Street, from the humble beginnings of its first pub ("Angkor What?") 11 years ago to a lot of bars and restaurants (almost all with free wifi if you don't want to walk 20 yards to the many internet cafes). You'll never go short of water or fruit at the temples, and at most of them you can buy T-shirts, postcards, guidebooks etc. 

(Especially for Joe - you'll like the burgers at Le Tigre de Papier, Kamasutra does a good curry, and apart from that we mainly ate local-style food, which was decent to good - don't be tempted by the Cambodian Barbeque where you can cook your own chicken, beef, squid, snake and crocodile. You get what looks like an overturned metal collander, heated from below, with a big lump of fat at the top and a moat around the outside to cook your veg. On the rare occasions that we managed to get a piece of meat to cook in the thin sloping space below the fat without it falling into the water, it wasn't worth it! The balcony at the Red Piano is a nice spot in the evening. We also checked out the local apsara dancing show at Kou Len restaurant as recommended by our driver. Lilly quite liked it but dancing is not really for me. I've seen my sister do tap and ballet and I've seen the Bolshoi in Moscow. I'd like to think that this marks two extremes and if they didn't do anything for me, nothing in between is likely to. Get there early for the buffet if you do decide to try it!)

I am struck by the varying value of money though. Their own currency is barely used - USD is ubiquitous, with local 1000 riel notes standing in for quarters on the rare occasions you get change from a dollar (fixed exchange rate apparently), and Thai baht also widely accepted. This is one sign of the troubles this country has had. Siem Reap probably hides the rest, but there are so many people dependent on the tourist trade - a lot of them used to farm their land near the temples but are now prohibited.

The law isn't all it should be either - our driver was pulled up one day for forgetting to wear his driver's waistcoat, and even though his papers were in order we clearly saw him slip a couple of notes to the policeman to be allowed to leave. He was fairly subtle but could have done with watching Tom Selleck do it a little more closely. Shortly after we saw a policeman at a temple trying to sell police badges to tourists!

So what does one dollar buy you here?

• A can of coke at the temples
• An entire pineapple, nicely sliced up
• 80 minutes in an internet cafe
• 2 draft beers in happy hour on Pub Street (which is all day in some places) - the two local beers in Siem Reap are confusingly called Angkor and Anchor (they pronounce the latter with a soft ch, an-chaw).
• About an hour of a tuk-tuk driver's time ($15 from pre-dawn to 10pm)
• A third to a quarter of a tasty meal (eg some kind of stir fried chicken and rice)
• 1/40th of a 3 day temple pass
• A glossy guidebook, cover price $27, from the right seller (the ones at AW won't go below 4, but out at Banteay Srei the going rate seems cheaper), or a Lonely Planet for any number of places - I haven't seen many lorries out here but not many of them have backs, which may explain this
• Half a T-shirt
• A pair of underpants laundered in our hotel (or more accurately next door - we saw the racks of "laun'dry" drying in the sun)
• A book of 10 decent postcards from a kid, or a single postcard in some shops
• A quarter of a cocktail (eg the Tomb Raider at the Red Piano, which Lilly recommends)

Draw your own conclusions, but it all seems out of kilter to me and the tuk-tuk guys seem to get the worst of it - supply comfortably exceeds demand, as we found when we tried to get one home one evening and quickly attracted a crowd who went straight down to $2 when we'd been expecting more. Our driver was probably glad that Lilly hates getting up early!

So Siem Reap kept us entertained for a few days (I think tourist town fatigue would have set in if we'd stayed any longer) and the Angkor temples really are great. It's a nice, relaxing place to be, out in the countryside - in places it feels very English, with English-looking trees, until you realise that it's a hot, sunny day and yet there are some autumn leaves on the ground. Other parts feel more exotic. It's hot in the sun, but not humid, and the breeze in the tuk-tuk is refreshing. I'd heard that it can get very busy, and we're in peak season, but it was never too bad anywhere (apart from maybe getting down the mountain at dusk). I feel refreshed and ready to deal with a couple of cities, so it's off for probably a couple of nights in Phnom Penh and then Vietnam, starting with Ho Chi Minh City.

After an entry this ridiculously long, I feel the need for a sign-off. Hmm... a twist on an old favourite...
Yours in travel,
Paul