BeaSisTravel

On our last day in Vietnam and on-board the Gecko Eyes boat, we visited the floating market at Can Tho and had a tour of a local noodle making factory. I have run out of time to do this justice - hopefully a couple of photos will suffice!

In order to get to our boat before lunch, we had another early start today. The Victoria hotel in Chau Doc is really lovely - and we enjoyed every moment here. The service was superb - apart from when the waitress gave my Pho to an Asian lady at breakfast. It is annoying that everyone assumes that Westerners want Western food. We don't and I never have!!! Anyway, I had to scoff the Pho as we were running a few minutes late for our pick up... Bundles of Nem What Nem looks like on the inside Our driver and guide took us on a long road trip to Cai Be - which is where we were due to meet our boat. Along the way, we took a car ferry across one of the strands of the Mekong and I questionned our guide about a little green bundle of stuff that ladies were selling on the ferry. He tells me it is Nem - fermented pork - and we would stop to try some shortly. At our morning loo stop, there was indeed a Nem factory where the owner has gotten relatively rich selling these small pork p

Breakfast did nothing to improve our impression of the hotel. It was practically inedible. Enough said. Throne room at the royal palace We only had a few hours this morning to allow for sightseeing, and had pre-selected the royal palace and the genocide museum as things we'd like to see while we are here. The royal palace was first, and we chose the guided option. Although the buildings and the grounds are immaculate, the exhibits in various parts of the palace were not. There were several places where various pieces were on display and it looked like the inside of the display cabinet hadn’t seen a duster in years. Our guide talked about the current king, a bachelor and devout buddhist, and of course gave us a brief run down of the history of the palace. Luckily, when the Khmer Rouge were in power, the palace was left untouched. So, all of the historical artefacts dating back to the palace inception in 1886 have all survived. Reliefs in the walkway However, due to an

As I mentioned yesterday, there isn’t a lot to see in Siem Reap aside from the temples. We had a well deserved sleep in today and wandered out for some breakfast. Avoiding western food, we again tried local fare. A rice dish (Hai Nam rice) with chicken pieces and some broth might sound like a dinner meal, but here it is common to have these sorts of dishes for breakfast. It was absolutely delicious – but I’m not sure I could eat like this for breakfast long term. After scratching around for places to visit this morning before our flight to Phnom Penh, we set off for a local buddhist temple (Wat Preah Prohm Rath). The gardens in this place were immaculate – and there were plenty of sculptures and buildings to look at – all just a hop, skip and a jump from pub street. Across the river, we stopped for iced coffee and frappes (Sandra – you would have loved these ones – the best we have had on the trip so far). Next door was a local market, featuring crafts made by handicapped loc

It was worth the early start this morning to get a good position for the sunrise over Angkor Wat. Our guide turned up on time, fast-tracked us through the ticket queue and had us well positioned for the sunrise. The whole process was a bit interesting – in that you had to go to a completely separate ticket place (quite a few miles down the road), queue up, get photographed, hand over cash, and then get driven to the site itself. The sunrise this morning was OK - but nothing spectacular. We managed several good shots where the camera was a bit generous to the average sunrise. A bite with the locals was next in order – as by this stage we had been up for a couple of hours and we were famished. Whilst we ate, other large tour groups went off to eat breakfast and see other sites – so we enjoyed a relatively free walk around the main part of Angkor Wat. Our guide Kim was quite masterful at manoeuvring us around crowds, taking us to the best photo spots and providing his inside

For our last day in Hoi An, we thought we’d head to the beach. Anh Bang is about 6km away from Hoi An and is very picturesque. For the second day in a row, the planned hotel shuttle didn’t materialise and we got a free taxi to our destination. The sea was crystal clear and reasonably cooling and had really good buoyancy. I’d have to rate this one of the best sea swims I’ve had in ages. As we were so early, things were only just getting going at the beach and there weren’t that many people around. It was very pleasant and we could have stayed here much longer – but we had a few more activities to squeeze in. We had a couple of tickets left on our Hoi An tourist card, so elected to go over the 18 th century Japanese bridge. We didn’t get a ticket collected, so that meant two more things to squeeze in to get the most out of our tourist ticket. We picked an assembly hall (mainly so that we visited one of each type of attraction in Hoi An) to start with. It was a bit of a waste of t

We arrived in Hoi An late last night – after a cancelled flight, and further flight delays. Frustrating, but completely beyond our control. Today was stinking hot. The hottest it has been so far. Combined with blue skies for the first time in ages – it was simply a matter of trying to stay out of the sun as much as possible whilst catching as many sights as possible. Despite the heat, we started with an egg coffee – these things are getting quite addictive… wonder if I could convince Wellington baristas to give it a try??? Hoi An is very clean, there is almost no sign of rubbish, the streets are pristine, and there is concrete in places that there would be dirt and holes in the ground in other cities and towns. It is almost too clean – and seems a bit devoid of personality. Nevertheless it is a very pretty place. There has been a lot of effort in restoring old buildings – and obvious UNESCO funding. There are a series of 22 tourist attractions that you have to buy a ti

We had a scheduled walking tour this morning and duly turned up at the appointed time, only to be told to wait. Well, it worked in our favour as the other people were no-shows, so it was just the two of us and our guide. We covered some of the same spots as our food tour, but being a completely different time of day, we also saw many different things. One of the highlights was the wholesale market – where there were no tourists at all.  A massive building containing more of the same crap as everywhere else, but on a larger scale – most items bundled up in sets to be sold together. Out the back of the markets were the spice markets, with large tubs full of all sorts of things. Many types of prawns and dried bits and pieces were common. Further on past the back of these markets were the fresh meat and seafood markets. There were many large bowls containing live fish, snails, frogs, and other such delicacies. Meat was being chopped up in front of us and funnily enough, the hygie

Overnight, there was a lot of thunder (and we assume lightning) and we awoke to pretty steady rain. I was wondering how the visit to the Surprise cave was going to work with so much rain, but it wasn’t an issue at all. The cave was a real surprise – it was massive. Once again we hit the cave entrance with what seemed like hundreds of other people. Boat after boat all seemed to show up at the same time. Waiting our turn to get underway, we climbed a hundred or so steps and had a gander at the first cavern. There wasn't much room to move with everyone trying to squeeze into a pretty small space. The second cavern was a bit bigger - then we moved on to the third cavern which was absolutely massive. The lighting effects throughout the caves have been really well done, and you can see that in the photo. Obviously, being a UNESCO world heritage site, there has been some good money spent on this place – and it definitely shows. Well worth the visit. So, after two short days we had

It is Helen’s birthday today – and we started things off on the right track by attempting to do Tai Chi on the sun deck. All went really well with arm movements and nominal leg movements, then the instructor stepped things up and we had all four limbs going at once. It was very relaxing and we enjoyed a different way to start the day. After another sumptuous breakfast (including beef Pho of course) we transferred to our day boat and headed off to see a local fishing village. Again we elected to take the bamboo boat instead of the kayaks and our local guide expertly weaved us around the small houses lashed together. What a way to live. Very minimal and no doubt very difficult as well. There were several dogs around, and we got a bit close to the edge of one of the places and we soon knew about it. One of the people in our group of four offered to “row” the boat which produced a lot of laughs. Even the guy who was meant to be steering us around took a picture on his cell phone

Another beef Pho for breakfast. I wonder if I can keep this up? It might just have to be the mission for the rest of the trip in Vietnam! We were collected this morning by the cruise company we had booked with to tour around Halong Bay. Once everyone was on board, we were straight on the expressway. This has got to be easy right? Wrong. After 40 minutes we left the expressway and things got more dicey from there. Our bus driver (apparently the best driver in Vietnam… sound familiar???!!!!) had all of his skills on display to get us to the departure point for the cruise. Then we had to wait almost an hour to actually get on the boat. And boy there were a lot of them. Boats I mean. Nothing exclusive about this trip. Finally away and the four course lunch to start us off was well done (probably one course too many to be honest!) and we chugged away – behind what seemed like hundreds of other boats – all apparently heading in the same direction. It didn’t matter – the scenery wa

We will be out of action for the next three days while we sail around Halong Bay. Apparently there is no wi-fi on the boat... so we'll be back in action late on the 4th.

It was really noticeable that Hanoi city has been planned – as opposed to the hodge podge chaos of Ho Chi Minh City. The trip from the airport to the city involved a traffic free, 3 lane modern highway the entire way. You can’t help but get the feeling that there has been a significant amount of organised planning involved in the route from the airport – obviously borne out of a combination of being the country’s capital city as well as the significant devastation that occurred here in the war. We were deposited in the old quarter, and our driver (who didn’t speak any English) just pointed down a small lane. We’d heard that the entrance was a bit hard to find – but this really took the cake. Turning right into another extremely dodgy looking lane, and we happened upon the hotel – like an oasis in the desert. The hotel itself is absolutely beautiful – with some of the most friendly staff we have encountered so far and a beautifully appointed room. It wasn’t long before we were

Just call me Jackie Chan our tour guide said when he came to pick us up. Turns out this guy (real "English" name is Jackie) is an absolute character - and a definite part of the landscape at Cu Chi. We'd booked a small group tour to take us to Cu Chi - an hour and a half or so out of the centre of the city. The van was equipped with the most spacious chairs I have ever seen in a Transit van, and we settled back for the drive out of the city. It seems like most tours in any country involve a stop at a factory of some kind. You get a demonstration of some type of local specialty (usually crafting something) and then get taken to the adjacent retail outlet where there are many bargains to be had. This tour was no different. Near to the entrance to the tunnels, we stopped at a local artisan house where disabled people make hand crafted Vietnamese items: pictures; bowls; jewellery boxes and the like. We got to see the artists painstakingly going through their small compon