Same same, but different

Pick of the day: Village Public (only?) loo, Nr Sapa

Style: Squat

Atmosphere: Theatrical

Extras: This loo has a pretty impressive view, which you can't see thanks to the exposure. Unfortunately it is at a perfect height to give half the village a view if you are standing up for a pee.

24/04/13 to 06/05/13: Hanoi, Sapa and Halong bay

We arrived in Hanoi at 4:30am feeling spectacularly crap and had to head straight to an ATM to get some cash for a taxi to our hostel. We hadn’t really looked at the exchange rates beforehand so were a little confused when the cash options at the ATM ranged from 500,000 to 3 million dong (yes- that is the name of their currency). Turns out there are 30,000 dong to £1 so takes a little working out.

We made it to the hotel and found that our dorm room was air conditioned (bonus) and that the hotel did free breakfast with loads of fresh fruit (extra bonus). We spent the day exploring the old town which was a cool little selection of mad little streets and alleyways which even Ben couldn’t find his way around with a map. It was astoundingly hot so there were multiple cold drink stops along the way and we had to intermittently head back to the hotel to sit in the air conditioning for a while and cool off (I know, poor us).

There is an unspoken competition among the Vietnamese as to who can get the most on their bikes.

We decided to head to the Hanoi prison museum which was the prison formerly known as the Hanoi Hilton and was originally a prison used by the French to keep, torture and execute rebel Vietnamese and then was used by the Vietnamese to hold captured American pilots during the American war (unsurprisingly that’s what they call the Vietnamese war here). It was a pretty fascinating museum that still had the gruesome guillotine used by the French and the sections of sewage pipe that hundreds of prisoners escaped by (seems the French weren’t terribly good at keeping people in). We had to take the section on American POWs with a pinch of salt as we were given the impression that they were given everything they could possibly want short of a free flight home in a new chopper.

This lady wouldn't stop hassling me to buy bananas!

Next we went to visit Hanoi women’s museum which gave us an insight into everything from the role of women in the American war (up to 50% of guerrilla units were made up by women) to life for women in the traditional Vietnamese hill tribes. In some of these tribes black teeth are considered beautiful so women paint their teeth black with a kind of lacquer- pretty weird. Also a fair few of the tribes are matriarchal so the man takes the woman’s name, as do the children, he has to have a dowry and once married goes to live in his wife’s family home.

Lastly we went to see the traditional Vietnamese water puppet theatre which is a show accompanied by traditional music in which specialist puppeteers operate puppets on long underwater poles to make a scene of traditional Vietnamese life- it’s pretty cool. They do 6 shows a day up to their waists in water and how they don’t get trench foot is beyond me.

 The street food in Hanoi was pretty tasty and varied and always accompanied by loads of fresh herbs which seems to be a Vietnamese staple. Particularly good are the Vietnamese sandwiches which are a combination of crunchy baguette, a relic from colonial days, and tasty pork or chicken with beansprouts and loads of mint and coriander. Also we were introduced to the ‘frozen lemon’ which is only lemon juice and zested lime with sugar over crushed ice but on a day where its 35C with 80% humidity it’s the most refreshing thing in the world.

Frozen lemon. Perhaps the best reason to visit Hanoi

We had been planning on going from Hanoi to Cat Ba island on the coast but arrived not long before a big national holiday and accommodation and transport was hard to come by so we decided to head to the hills and go inland to Sapa instead.

Again, because of the holidays the only train ticket left to Sapa was soft seat which we were a bit wary of due to our Chinese hard seat nightmares. However we were assured that we would get our own comfy, reclining seat with A/C and it would be a lovely 12 hour journey.  The Vietnamese idea of comfort appears to differ quite starkly from ours. The chairs only recline if you aren’t in the two against the back wall (therefore guess where we were). The A/C is only on when the train is actually moving (appears to be roughly 50% of the time) and those that didn’t purchase a seat don’t seem to feel any guilt about stealing a bit of yours.

Sapa market square "you buy from me"

Thankfully when we arrived in Sapa (which is an old colonial hill station) we found that we had a beautiful view from our room overlooking the terraced rice fields and the mountains. We spent a day exploring the town and its markets which is populated by colourfully dressed tribal women. The usual dress for the local women is a colourful pleated skirt, black velvet leggings that are wrapped around the lower legs and an array of colourful long sleeved tops. Women in Vietnam tend to cover up a lot in the day time (jeans, thick socks, hoodies and gloves as standard) because white skin is considered beautiful and they are avoiding tanning as much as humanly possible. What they must think of people with translucently pale skin who rock up to try to tan is anyone’s guess.

The view from the balcony....

...was impressive with clouds forming in the valley below...

.... so a little time-lapse and light refreshment was in order

Our second day in Sapa we decided to grab a map and do a little trekking by ourselves and found that once we were out of the way of the main crowds we had the beautiful landscape with rivers, waterfalls and rice terraces all to ourselves. We had a picnic overlooking some grazing water buffalo and duly got sunburnt. That night we were craving something a little calorific and western and amazingly managed to find one of the best burgers either of us had ever had, home or away.

As with so many places, 100metres off the main path and you could be the only person for miles

That river was sooo tempting for a dip

Sometimes you just have to treat yourself. A worlds top 5 burger and dried water buffalo with a cold beer. Not shit.

The next day we were pretty glad to have not gone for the local food as we were walking along and saw a goat in a cage being taken to market on the back of a motorbike. Then we saw a small dog in a sack howling as it was also taken to market on the back of a motorbike. Apparently the second half of the month is dog-eating time as dog is a cheap meat and people’s pay is stretching a little thin by then. It’s supposed to be a pretty grim meat and we don’t think, fingers crossed, that we have been fed any yet. We also had the misfortune to witness a piglet being prepared for the roasting spit. I am not veggie and understand where meat comes from but there has got to be better ways of killing an animal than putting it in a sack and hitting wildly with a crowbar until it stops squealing. Tenderised at least….

Roast pork. VERY popular in Sapa

Anyway, now suitably vegetarianised we headed back to Hanoi on the train as a stopping off point on the way to Cat Ba island on the east coast.

As we arrived at Halong bay on tail end of a bank holiday it was as you would expect cloudy and a bit drizzly. We had tagged onto a Halong boat tour to get us to Cat Ba island which is the other side of the bay. Halong bay is geologically and scenically stunning, like a flooded version of Yangshou. With the Karst spires now being spectacularly eroded at the base.

Halong Bay, with typical bank holiday weather

We split our time at Cat Ba between a cheap hotel in Cat Ba town on the island and at a beach “resort” out in the secluded Lah Ha Bay (a less touristy, but no less impressive, Halong). One thing that has become apparent is that to truly “see” Vietnam you have to hire a motorbike, or so they say. Either way, with no motor biking experience, save a little mopeding in Kalymnos, and fully safety geared up in our shorts, t-shirts and flippy floppys we got a bike and stuttered our way around the island for the day. Thankfully there is little to no traffic on the island so we enjoyed a pleasant ride through the islands national parks.

Highway to the danger zone

The one thing we had most been looking forward to in Halong was some deep water soloing, but the moon god was against us and the tides would be too low throughout our time there. Fortunately there are a number of bolted coves around the bay and a superbly enthusiastic and professional outfit called Asia outdoors which hires kit and runs trips. We tagged onto one of their trips and enjoyed a morning kayaking and an afternoon bolt clipping on beautiful boat accessed cove.

Vi borrowing a top rope for a route at Moodys beach, courtesy of Asia outdoors

Nam Cat island resort.

Our home for a couple of nights

The following day we grabbed a boat out to Nam Cat beach resort. This was the setting we were after. A number of beach “bungalows” built on an isolated beach, with an all you can eat buffet lunch and dinner and nothing to do but read, swim, kayak and play with the puppies, we set in for a bit of R & R. Highlights include the dog vs. snake fight (mummy dog not too happy about snake biting two of her puppies and so destroyed it) and kayaking out to find some lagoons on our own.

Puppies, Kayaks, sand, and enough sun for a pink belly

Exploring the lagoons around La Ha Bay

Our exit from the island involved a bus-boat-bus-bus shuffle back to Hanoi were we decamped to the best place for frozen lemons, La Place, for a couple of hours before our evening train to Hue…

Livin' the celebrity lifestyle

Pick of the day: Public WC, Yushan train station

Style: Cinematic squat

Atmosphere: Communist

Extras: The communal atmosphere here is a bit of a taste of the last of the communism in china. The new style is consumer communism where EVERYTHING exists for profit. Not here though. This loo was free and to top it off the trench running the length of the stalls (which have no doors) gives a river like view as you look down at what those around you have offered.

13/04/13 to 23/04/13: SanQing Shan National Park, Yangshuo, Nanning to the China/Vietnam border

Our next stop from Shanghai was a lonely planet recommendation for a more off the beaten track Chinese national park, SanQing Shan.

Getting there proved more irritating and difficult than we’d envisioned. First off was a train to the town of Yushan, where it should have been possible to get a bus to the base of the mountain where we had planned to stay. In all our journey from station to hotel had three main grievances.

Number 1: We came out of the station and everyone is screaming SanQing Shan at us. We pick a friendly looking lady with a three wheeled flat bed and jump in. She did not take us to SanQing Shan. She took us to the bus station. False advertising.

Thinking we'd hit the jackpot

Number 2: On arriving at the bus station we were told there was no bus to the part of the mountain we wanted but we could get one to the other side of it. Not much use. Then a young girl said we could get the bus half way and then a taxi for 80RMB. Then everything seemed ok and people were nodding and we were ushered onto a bus.

Number 3: Turns out the bus wasn’t taking us to SanQing Shan but decided to drop us in a town near where we wanted to be, next to a taxi. The driver was unfortunately of the rip off the foreigner variety and decided that instead of 80RMB, he wanted 200RMB. When we said this was ridiculous he pointed out it was getting dark and we had no other choice. Dickhead.

Having finally arrived in the correct part of the mountain, considerably poorer and in a very bad mood we checked into our dodgy hotel (rock hard beds, no restaurant) and went to bed early ready for trekking into the national park the next day.

Early the next morning a lot of noise heralded the arrival of what looked like half of china in tour buses. We headed out, found a couple of shops that sold crisps, biscuits and cakes and armed ourselves for the journey (no breakfast though as there were no actual restaurants in the town and neither of us could stomach super noodles at 8am). We decided to forgo the cost of the cable car and walked to the trail head in the national park. Error. Not only was it a 2 hour walk up around 800m vertical ascent of stone steps (seriously hard work) but the whole way up we were hounded by Chinese tourists who kept shouting hello at us and constantly either took our photo or insisted being photographed with us. We now know what it must be like to be a minor celebrity and it is about the least fun thing we can imagine.

Having reached the top of the cable car we climbed another few hundred steps to gain the walkways which had been built into the sides of the granite spires for which the park is famous. For some reason most of the Chinese tourists did not get this high and so we left the flag-waving, loud-music-via–microphone-playing crowds behind and more or less had the mountain to ourselves. The huge granite spires were breath taking and the walkways built into the mountain meant that we could see them from a vantage point that we would otherwise have struggled to reach.

errr... more board walk

We walked back down to the bottom as the sun was setting thoroughly happy with our little bit of mountain time but a little worried that our legs might actually give way. Super noodles for dinner in the absence of anything better and the next day we had to negotiate trying to get back to the train station. The complications of this were compounded by the fact that our legs hurt so badly that neither of us could get either up or down stairs or manage anything more than a very slight incline on the flat. We were told that there were no buses back to town. We chose not to believe this and went into one of the posh hotels where an English speaker told us there was a bus at 3pm. A private bus driver swore blind that there were no buses going to Yushan and that we had better just pay him to take us there. We refused and waited. Turns out a few hours later that 

the same bus driver was driving the 3pm bus to Yushan!

He dropped us somewhere in the town and having no idea where we were we clung desperately to a kindly-looking elderly couple who had got off at the same time as us and a young couple. We showed them a scrap of paper on which we had got the man in the hotel to write ‘train station’ in Chinese and in an act of completely unexpected kindness the lady of the young couple hailed a rickshaw, bundled us into it, told the driver where to go and paid for it with her own money. We left before we even had the chance to realise what was happening, let alone pay her back. We were pretty touched.

And so, on the back of yet another pot noodle we headed to Yangshuo.

We had been looking forward to Yangshuo with its Karst limestone peaks and more tourist friendly atmosphere. On arriving we realised one thing. It had suddenly got hot, real hot, and muggy to boot. I(Ben) had been dreading a haircut but now the need was desperate so I picked the best looking place and got a buzz cut. Cue heat stroke the next day!

We had been keen to see the dragons back rice terraces several hours north of Yangshuo so hopped on a tour. We had thought this would just be the transport there but in true Chinese style we had suddenly found we had joined the flag waving masses. We managed to convince our “tour guide” to allow us to bugger off on our own once we had arrived thus saving us from the more hectic tourist traps there that the guide’s only job is to guide you to and actually spend more time exploring the terraced hills. These were beautiful and were just tiny terrace after tiny terrace (each no more than a metre deep and high but thousands of metres up the hillsides) that were each irrigated by their own little water supply and sprouted green rice a few times a year. Unfortunately the heat stroke had kicked in and I spent most of the day wanting to vomit.

Its like walking round a 3D OS map

The following day we hired some bikes and went for to explore up the valleys. Our friends Mark and Ruth(from Mongolia and Shanghai) were staying at a nice place in the countryside so we went there and luckily they showed us the best place to cycle to along the river where other tourists were taking bamboo rafts poled by locals back down stream. It was hot sweaty work cycling in the heat which was only exacerbated when the local kids decided to jump on the back for a lift. The buggers even ran off with out paying for the ride!  After a nice day’s ride we met them back for cocktails, dinner and a swim in the river.

Honestly, wtf?

Bike 'n' boat Yangshou style

The best way to cool off

Yangshuo is one of, if not the most, famous climbing location in china (sport climbing anyway), so we hired a 

rope, draws and harnesses and biked off to the nearest section, Wine Bottle, so named thanks to a karst peak eroded like a wine bottle. Not quite the iconic Moon hill with its tuffa clad arch, we found that the easy grades suited us thanks to months of no exercise. We got shut down big time!

Vi was more happy about the memories of good red wine invoked by the crag name than the actual climbing

Not the best place for sunsets but you get the idea of the landscape

On our final day in Yangshuo we signed up for a cooking class to get some dishes and skills to take home with us. This proved to be a fantastic experience with the day kicking off with a trip to the local farmers market (a genuine farmers market, not the middle class things we have at home) before getting into the 6 dishes we were going to cook. We learnt some great things such as heat up the wok till it is smoking BEFORE adding the oil otherwise your food will taste oily, and other nuggets.

Heading out for breakfast

In Mongolia its all boiled in a wok. In china its all fried in a wok. The cleaver is ubiquitous throughout.

After failing to get a visa extension in Beijing we had toyed with the idea of heading to Hong Kong to get a new visa before heading to Vietnam, but after much deliberation we decided the expense was too high and it would be better to just risk the overnight train. (As a recap our Chinese visa expired the day before our Vietnamese one began)

The train to Vietnam departs from the provincial capital of Nanning which really has little else going for it. We overnighted here in a nice new hostel which seems set up for the Vietnamese-China overland traveller and got the train the following evening.

Loading up on train snacks

Unlike all our other train border crossings this time we had to disembark with all our bags at both border points. In the end we left china with 28minutes left on our visa which was an improvement on Russia, but thanks to the time difference entering Vietnam we arrived 30mins before our Vietnamese visa began (it’s an hour difference, but also an hours train ride between the two border points). Luckily the Vietnamese didn’t really give a crap so stamped us in anyway and  we got back on the train for 4 hours kip before we would pull into Hanoi…. 

Sauntering to Shanghai

Pick of the day: Ok so we forgot the loo shot for this section so this is one of my 'stock' collection from the trip and this was actually from Beijing.

Style: None

Atmosphere: Pun-tastic

Extras: Check out the photo above. Whats the name of the toilet paper? Now Whats it sat on?
Its a play on words/objects. Get it?

06/04/13 – 13/04/13: Pingyao, Xi’an and Shanghai

We arrived in Pingyao at some ungodly hour of the morning but thankfully our hotel did pick up from the train station and we were duly transported by electric golf cart to a beautiful courtyard hotel on one of the main thoroughfares in town. We actually struggled to find cheap accommodation because of the weekend (Chinese people really do live for the weekend and escape their homes in droves at the on Saturdays) but the upside of this was that we had a beautiful ensuite room.

This dude made some weird cakeyflanbread things. VERY tasty

Our room was on the left in this lovely little courtyard yard hotel

Pingyao is famous as being an authentic ancient walled town with the city walls and most of the streets, alleyways and buildings inside being intact from the 14^th century. We essentially spent our day wandering round and exploring as well as laughing at the tourist tat on offer including ‘oba-mao’ tshirts and bags. Also we noticed that most of the stray dogs in the town (there are a lot in china, except for the places that are famed for dog hotpot) appear to be interrelated and virtually all had a massive underbite giving them a permanently perplexed, muttley-esque air which was fairly amusing. We had some wonderful food from the local caff and then a great sleep in the biggest bed in the world (literally about 8 feet wide) before continuing our exploring the next day.

Its so dusty in this town the best way to build is to stack the bricks and wait for the next dust storm to fill the cracks

Even the street signs look cool

The roof tops of Pingyao from the city tower

Another reason way pandas fail to breed. They are far too absorbed in chinese chess

That evening we took the train to Xi’an and when we had booked the train there had only been ‘hard seat’ class available so we expected something pretty bad but were still totally unprepared for the horrors ahead. Hard seat does not literally mean that the seats are hard, it means (as far as I can tell) that it’s hard on your sanity. Imagine a normal town-to-town train like we have at home with 50-100 seats or so per carriage. Then imagine twice the people to seats being put into said carriage, for 10 hours straight. I was lucky in that I got my seat early on but I had my feet on my big rucksack, little rucksack on lap and literally moved nothing except my left arm for the rest of the journey (not even to pee). Ben was less lucky- the dude sleeping in his seat refused to give it up so having got on the train at midnight he spent 5 hours sat on his rucksack in the aisle before finally sitting in the seat he paid for at 5am. Then add in chain smoking from passengers right next to you. Then add in constant spitting on the floor- indoors. Then add so much rubbish that the two times it was swept up the pile came waist high. We came out of that shell shocked and swearing that we would rather walk to the next city than do that again.

Hitting up the food in Xi'ans Muslim quarter

Spicy potatoes. Eat near access to a toilet.

We arrived in Xi’an pretty much screwed but couldn’t really go to bed so instead we headed up the muslim quarter for which Xi’an is well known and managed to get some awesome grub including some pots of tiny little curried fondant potato. That evening we signed up to go on a free tour with our hostel. First they took us to the ‘skyscape’ which is essentially a shopping area that has been roofed over with a massive LCD screen. The screen shows a constantly changing sky from space to changing seasons and even a giant reef view. It was like we had suddenly been transported to Tokyo and was very impressive. We then had a little wander around the local park where plenty of people were out strolling in the warm air. A man playing a violin was attracting a crowd and we suddenly realised that he was playing greensleeves while nearby a crowd of about 100 elderly Chinese did synchronised musical tai chi to some Bollywood tunes. We started to wonder whether our sleep deprived state was starting to make us hallucinate. Then to top it off we watched a huge light and fountain show where the water bursts were timed to coincide with the alternating classical European and Chinese music. Weird dreams that night.

Fried (quail) egg on a stick!

You had to time walking down the street just right to avoid el scorcho

Under the sea in a shopping centre

Flash mobs have been around for a while in china. Or synchronised tia-chi dancing. Amateurs not tolerated.

The following day we took the bus to go and see the iconic Terracotta Warriors which are located just outside of Xi’an. We managed to push our way through all the guides who kept telling us that without them we would see nothing and understand nothing and made it to the 3 pits and museum to have a look for ourselves. The sight was incredible. There are 3 pits that have been found so far and even they have only been partially excavated with a lot of the warriors destroyed but there are thousands of statues that are in perfect condition. For those that don’t know the Terracotta Warriors is a burial  site for an ancient chinese emperor who believed that he needed who have replicas of everything from his life to serve him in the afterlife.  Thousands upon thousands of pottery warriors made, each unique with their own uniform, expression and hairstyle and an entire army was created from the top generals to crossbowmen, archers and cavalry complete with pottery horses. Each was also painted and gilt and placed in battle positions. On top of that an entire pottery city was made which included city walls, sewer systems, everything needed for an imperial court such as acrobats and jugglers and also all the supplies so bakeries and bakers, forges, grocers and animal keepers- all made of pottery. To say it was impressive is an understatement.

Hands posed for comic effect

Pit 2, impressive

Pit 1. Crazy impressive. All these guys are individual. Wouldn't want to be the night guard

Having sufficiently wowed our socks off we then caught the overnight train to Shanghai.

THE Shanghai skyline

Arriving in the afternoon we had time for a quick wander down East Nanjing Street (a classic) to the Bund which is the old riverfront from which you can see the iconic Shanghai skyline. The whole experience (and I take Ben’s word for this but it definitely seemed like it to me) felt so much more like New York or Sydney than an Asian city. We found a great man down near our hostel who sold food from a wok mounted on the bike of a bicycle where we got our first street vendored egg fried rice in China which was amazing! Awesomely enough we also did not get food poisoning and the next day were good to go for a wander round Shanghai’s old town and Yunan Gardens which are a wonderful little haven full of blossoming cherry trees, tiny ornamental bridges over carp ponds and beautiful little pagodas made for an afternoon chill.

Obligatory couple shot to prove we are still traveling together.

We then headed on to the Shanghai museum which was impressive, especially considering it was free (well, excepting the sunglasses that some little shite stole) and then we met up with a couple of friends (Ruth and Mark) from the Trans-Mongolian and headed to the famous French Concession area of the city for some food, cocktails and beers (from the mad dog brewery which is a cool bar if you ever happen to be in town). After a slightly hungover sleep we headed back to the French Concession for some exploring (the area is huge with a myriad of tiny little alleyways that house shops selling everything you can imagine buying and a good few things you didn’t know you needed). We also went to a museum of propaganda posters dating from throughout Mao’s rise and until just after his death. It was a real treat to get to see them as most were destroyed during the various purges and in particular after Mao’s demise and they are completely fascinating (competition with Britain for steel and grain production seemed to be a big thing). Then there was a final visit to the Bund which was a little surreal as since it was a weekend there was a lot of couples who had got married and were getting their wedding photos with the Shanghai skyline in the background, and by a lot I mean in a 20 minute walk we counted 16 separate couples.

The river is swarming with boats decked out like christmas trees.

Then it was time to move on again, this time south to Yushan.