Nha Trang

We arrived in Nha Trang after another hellish bus journey from Dalat. Despite this, we were excited because we were back by the beach and had also heard there was a good nightlife in Nha Trang, something that we had been missing out on since Thailand.

The beach we immediately went to was stunning and a massive contrast to the mountain location of Dalat. There were lots of people selling things on the beach, including lobsters for £1.50 which they cooked for you there and then. While we were sunbathing a man approached us and asked if we wanted to go on a booze cruise. The boat left at five and came back at ten. This was when my night ended; John was not exaggerating when he said it was all you can drink. The only problem with Nha Trang is that it is quite small so I had the unfortunate experience of bumping into the people from the boat who had seen me disgrace myself in falling asleep while still at sea. 

I took it a bit easier the next day and re-cooperated by going on an inflatable playground in the sea with Luce. We went out again and had the good fortune of meeting two other Welshies- Leigh and Lawrence. We had also been drinking at a bar where one of the workers got excited about the prospect of Gwend's birthday and promised he would be buying her a cake.

We had decided to go to Vinpearl on Gwend's birthday; Vinpearl is an island with a waterpark, theme park, aquarium and amusement arcade on. We got cable cars over there at 10.00 and didn't leave till about 9.00pm. There ended up being thirteen of us at the park because we had met Leigh and Lawrence there, some Scottish friends that we had made the night before, and Bryce our Canadian friend had also re-joined us with some of his mates. We spent the day running around the park like big kids drinking the cans of 50p beer on offer. My favourite parts of the days were the bumper cars, the water ride called the ‘Tsunami’ and the wild toboggan ride that we took, in the dark, at the end of the day. We also saw monkeys riding bikes, which was at first a novelty but so cruel.

That night we went to our favourite bar, Oasis, again and as promised, Tri had bought Gwend her cake which said ‘Gwenda in England’ with her date of birth on it. 

The next morning we had an early wakeup call from Brian 
(one of our Canadian friends) who had got an overnight bus to Nha Trang. As Brian and Bryce- who had also arrived the day before- had brought two more friends with them, the lot of us decided to go to the mud bath spa. Instead of relaxing we ended up mostly throwing buckets of mud in each other’s faces

That night we said some sad goodbyes as Gwend and I were leaving all the others to take a two day/night journey up to Hanoi. We were both sad to leave Luce and Soph who we hadn't spent a night apart from for over two months. It was in this frame of mind that we started our long journey. The beds on buses were no longer a novelty and these beds were disgusting and tiny. Both Gwend and I agreed that for the first time we genuinely thought that we would die on this journey. I was bouncing out of my seat for the last ten hours while watching the sky light up and the rain lashing down outside.

Dalat

From Muine we went to Dalat which was one of my favourite places in Vietnam. The journey getting there was horrendous; we were all crammed into a minibus with our luggage stuffed into the aisle so that I couldn’t move an inch. However the beautiful mountain scenery along the way partly made up for it.

Dalat in is the mountains and, weirdly, has a very French feel to it with many French cafes and even its own mini Eiffel Tower. There is also a big lake in the middle with peddalos on and a huge market close by. We had heard that there are beautiful waterfalls to see so went to book a trip to them. Whilst in the tour office, Groovy Geckos, we were convinced not just to see the waterfalls but to abseil down them. 

This activity was called canyoning which basically involves making your way down river in every way possible. We began by abseiling next to a waterfall and landing in the water below; this was exhilarating enough because when beginning this abseil you don’t realise that at a certain point you go off the edge of a sheer drop. After this, we moved onto rock slides which were brilliant fun- we slid from the rocks into a pool at the bottom, initially legs first, then backwards, and then Gwend, Luce and I went down holding onto one another. We also did a cliff jump which I was terrified of but managed to force myself to leap off. 

My favourite abseil came next; this was down a twenty five metre waterfall. We were hooked into a metal loop at the top and had to slowly lower ourselves down through the fast gushing water. The scariest part about this was that if you slipped and lost your footing it was really slippery and difficult to get back on your feet again. This abseil also involved a jump four metres from the bottom where the rope ran out and you had to let go. It was very scary but also a lot of fun. It was even better as we ate lunch at the bottom of the waterfall and were able to watch a group of Vietnamese coming down, entertaining us as they let go and dropped. For anyone who’s seen Takeshi’s Castle, it was a similar viewing experience. 

The last abseil we did was called the ‘Washing Machine’ because you begin walking down rock which suddenly drops away from you leaving you to lower yourself down a rope into a waterfall that spins you round as if in a washing machine. I went down this first which was brilliant because I was able to see everyone’s faces as they emerged from the water. Luce came second and we had climbed onto a rock to watch the others. When I climbed onto this at first I had completely lost my footing and come slipping back down to land on my back like a little bug in my life jacket. Even better that this however, was when Luce went to get off and in some sort of comic slow motion scene went sliding down the rock, landing on top of Gwend, completely taking her out. I was laughing so much, especially when their two helmeted little heads, resurfaced, bobbing out of the water.

After returning to our hotel from an amazing day in the water, we were completely shattered but went to see another waterfall, called Elephant Falls which was magnificent. It was bit tricky to get to, climbing across some slippery rocks but was well worth it, especially as when we were there a rainbow came out making the whole scene look even more spectacular.

That night, we decided to go to a restaurant called ‘V Café’, recommended by our hotel where I had the best meal of Vietnam; a delicious hotpot. There was also a Filipino man singing there who was fantastic and we ended up being the last ones left, singing ‘Wonderwall’ along with him.

As well as canyoning in Dalat we took part in another extreme sport; tandem bike riding. This was potentially one of the funniest things we have done on the whole of our travels. I will never lose the image of us making our way shakily around a busy roundabout, constantly stopping and with locals asking us if we needed some help. I couldn’t even get our tandem going and Gwend had to go on the front but somehow we eventually made it to our destination; ‘Crazy House’, a popular building in Dalat which has been designed by an architect, to be used as a tourist attraction but also a hotel. It looked as if the entire place had been carved out of a giant tree. On the way back we had some downhill tandem riding which was hilarious and once again had to get on the roundabout to take back the bikes. I am so surprised we didn’t get honked here because we had little to no control and pulled out in front of about four motorbikes, wobbling along laughing our heads off. 

Saigon, the Mekong and Muine

We touched down in Ho Chi Minh City after the three flights it took us to get there from Goa. Despite having slept on the floor in Bangkok airport we were still feeling excited to be somewhere new. Unlike our arrival in India, we were successfully collected from the airport by a man holding a card with Lucy’s name (which we were very excited by). We had arranged to meet up with Chad and Matt (our Canadian friends) who were also spending the night in Ho Chi Minh/Saigon. It was so nice to see some familiar faces, although we definitely missed not having working mobile phones when we were waiting around for them for about an hour unsure as to what was going on. We were extremely tired and didn’t end up having the big night out that we had planned but went for a little look round Ho Chi Minh and got our first taste of Vietnamese style food in an American bar. After this we bought some cans of beer for about 20p and went back to our hostel to catch up. 

The next day we were seeing another familiar face- Katy who we had met in Indonesia and seen again in Thailand. It was really good to see her and her two friends, Sandra and Jill. We decided to go together to visit the war museum in the city. This was a pretty harrowing experience because there were a lot of pictures and information depicting the cruelty of the Vietnam War. The mood was a bit low when we came out so we spent the remainder of the day booking a trip to the Chu Chi Tunnels and going out for a meal.

We had to get up at 7.00am for our trip so on the bus I slept through most of the talk on the tunnels, but I do know that the Vietnamese used them during the war, they are very small and people lived in them. I also had a picture in one that has been widened for Europeans. We had quite a good day at the tunnels and our guide was very entertaining. Despite this, the tour had been somewhat over commercialised and we all felt slightly surprised that you had the opportunity to shoot a gun at the end of the experience. This seemed a little ironic considering we had spent the day being shown all the damage done through this brutal and violent war.

That evening was our last in Saigon so we went out with Katy and her friends and drank buckets of alcohol on the street for £1.20. We also got thrown out of a club for not buying a drink so ended up going back to where we started and dancing in what I think was a cafe all night. I did leave at about 4.00am because someone jumped on my toe and (I think) broke it.

The next morning was not fun because we had to be up at 6.00am for our trip to the Mekong Delta. Later on an Irish lad from our bus admitted that we had looked a little worse for wear when first getting on.

Our Mekong trip was really good and a complete contrast to Saigon. We had gone from a metropolitan city full of coffee and karaoke bars to the Vietnamese countryside. I immediately bought a rice hat so I could look like a native on the water.   

The first part of our trip was to go on a motorboat across the Mekong River to a 'honey bee farm'. When we got there our guide pointed at a tree that had a couple of bees near it and took us for a cup of honey tea. Not exactly your typical bee farm. On the way back to our boat he showed us a couple of interesting things, including a gigantic lychee fruit. As well as this we went on a tiny wooden boat along a small side river which was really pretty. We looked the picture of Vietnam while doing this; all wearing rice hats. We had opted to stay at a homestay as part of our trip which we took another boat to get to. I’m really glad that we had chosen to stay here instead of a hotel; we were staying in cosy little cabins that you crossed a small bridge to get to. In addition this we were given an introduction to Vietnamese cooking through the opportunity to stuff and fry our own spring rolls. After eating these we were served the main course of fresh spring rolls; this involved making our own wraps from the Elephant Ear Fish in the middle of the table and adding rice noodles and vegetables from the other bowls. It was an interesting new novelty because we were eating the whole thing with chopsticks, including picking away pieces of fish.

The next morning was another early start as we met at 6.00am to go to the local market. This was really interesting because it wasn’t a tourist market, but a place where the locals went to barter in the early hours. While here we saw a live duck in a carrier bag. This was obviously quite a novelty for us and while we were staring a little boy thought he'd give us a bit of a show by jumping on the poor duck. We left the market and went on to a school where we saw little children arriving from boats to school with lifejackets attached to their bags- all part of living life along the Mekong River. Later that morning, we visited a floating market used by the locals which was extremely interesting; each boat sold something different, for example, pineapples, vegetables and they demonstrated what they were selling by tying it to a long wooden pole sticking up from the boat. This meant that we saw boats with poles sticking up that had onions, carrots and fruit on the end. It was a different experience entirely from the floating market in Thailand which mostly does a tourist trade, this market had local shop owners arriving in boats to buy produce in bulk. As well as this, while on the water, other boats sped up to us trying to sell us coffee, soft drinks and pineapple. Later on, we went to a rice factory, rice noodle factory and heard some Vietnamese music. We got back to Saigon at 6.00pm and waited for our bus to Muine at 8.00pm. We were very excited to get on our first sleeper bus, complete with beds.



We got to Muine at 1.00am and luckily they dropped us right outside the accommodation we had booked. The next morning we woke, excited to go and see the beach that we had heard wonderful reports of. Unfortunately Muine was a wash out, literally. It was so wet that we sat inside most of the day, eating and drinking Vietnamese coffee. The most exciting thing we did here was to take a local bus where I gave the Vietnamese a laugh by wearing my rice hat. 

Goa

Our final stop in India was to Goa. We were staying in Anjuna and looking forward to a couple of nights out. Unfortunately we realised upon arrival that it was low season which meant the resort was virtually deserted so we had no nights out but plenty of relaxing. We found a nice guest house run by the nicest lady who looked after us like a mum for the next three nights. We weren’t sure whether or not it would be raining as Goa was due to come into its rainy season. However this didn’t happen whilst we were there and it was blisteringly hot each day. The beach was boiling and I couldn’t even step on the sand without burning my feet. As a result, we decided to pay to use a swimming pool the next day and all burnt to crisps. That night we had chosen to go to a restaurant that we had spotted earlier in the day. On our way, however, a dog started following us. This wouldn’t have been an issue except that as soon as we got onto the road packs of dogs began running out at the one that had attached itself to us and going completely mental. We kept walking- I was completely terrified- but more and more dogs were running out and two were attacking the dog that was with us. We were starting to worry about getting to the restaurant when a lady said “Ah this dog bite many people”. This was the final straw and we gave up and went in the opposite direction. The dog still followed us and when more came running out a man came from his shop with a big stick saying “which way do you want to go girls?” He may have been about eighty with a beard but at that moment, when he started swinging his stick and shouting at the dogs, I was in love. We made it away but the stupid dog waited outside the restaurant while we ate- luckily it attached itself to some other people while in the mean time we began walking about a foot behind two locals for ‘protection’.

That was the end of our India experience. The only thing left was our flight- which was cancelled and re-arranged for two hours earlier. Apparently they didn’t feel as though they should email us to explain this but luckily we were very early and didn’t miss it.

       I really enjoyed my time in India but it was definitely a lot more work than the other countries we went to that were more accustomed to backpackers. I don’t think I’ve ever been stared at so much, or held so many babies for pictures before or ever been surrounded by groups of people who would just look at us. India was certainly a different experience.

Beaten by a bad chapati

We arrived in Haridwar after a gruelling ten hour journey in a sweaty car on the bumpiest road in.the.world. It seemed as though Karam was also on a mission to put us through the roof when my head bumped it for the fifth time. Things had also turned a little sour with the one CD we had bought so that 'who let the dogs out' skipped on every other (awesome) word. No matter how much Karam spat on the CD and rubbed it on his trousers it just wouldn't work (shocker). The journey did take a more positive spin after we convinced Karam to find and stop at a McDonalds for us; it had been almost three weeks of curries by now. 

As Haridwar wasn't included in our tour we had to book our own accommodation. Because we are extremely stingy we wanted to pay no more than £2.50 each. Considering how much we had paid the rooms weren't too bad. We did have to wash under taps and use a hole in the ground but apart from that it was a delight. We were very excited about being in Haridwar, partly because of the Ganges- pronounced gang-ies- and partly because we were on a mission to find the one armed and elephant babas (featured in Karl Pilkington’s, 'An Idiot Abroad'). That night we left to go to the Ganges at prayer time. When we began walking down to the river I was shocked by how busy it was. There were already thousands down there an hour before prayer time. People were lining the sides of the river and swimming in it as well as drinking the water. Karam told us that it was especially busy as it was a weekend and people would travel there from around India to come and pray. They were also filling up tubs of water to spread around their homes for good luck. We felt a bit too self conscious to get in the water here because we were the only westerners there. We also weren't sure what the clothing protocol was; the women seemed to go in, in their pyjamas while the men were taking a dip in a vast array of transparent underwear. The amount of men happily strolling around, half-naked with erections, was also at a disturbing level. 

After all the enjoyment of the Ganges we decided we wanted the take a boat ride along the river. Karam (as per usual) completely misunderstood this and tried taking us to a white water rafting centre in a place called Rishikesh. This wasn't a complete loss though as Rishikesh was beautiful. It is right in the foothills of the Himalayas so we were totally surrounded by mountains and the Ganges runs through the middle. It was a more relaxed atmosphere here than in Haridwar and we had a really good day looking around the town, climbing a path up the Himalayas and swimming in the Ganges. We also managed to find a honey cafe with some nice, non-curried, food. 

After leaving Rishikesh we spent a few more days in Haridwar, unable to find a single baba. I was seriously disappointed about this but after walking round asking a number of locals and sticking my arm in the air to try and imitate the baba we clearly weren't getting anywhere. But I will include a picture for those of you who aren't familiar with Karl Pilkington...

Our last stop before our tour was over was at our driver’s village where he had invited us to stay for the night. We were less keen on the idea of this than when he had originally invited us as he kept asking Lucy if it was going to happen with him and 'Goonda'. He was also generally irritating because he couldn't understand a word we were saying (I sound mean saying this but after three weeks of trying to explain every tiny little thing my patience was wearing thin).

Anyway we still took the trip to his village and had quite a mixed night there. It was soon apparent that our visit had caused some excitement as people kept turning up at his house to see us. However, everyone was really nice and he had a cute little niece who we taught to play snap. His sister in law cooked us a lovely meal which we ate before everyone else as is customary for guests in India. The downside to this was that our driver was completely hammered; he was and his mate, who had come round to the house to fix their computer were both so drunk. We were quite used to seeing Karam drunk by this point because he would sink back a fair bit of whiskey each night but his friend was a complete pest. He kept saying Soph's name but couldn't speak anymore English than that. He also offered me a piece of soggy, yoghurt covered onion when he was eating his dinner. 

In the morning things also took a turn for the worse. I had woken up feeling a bit queasy but ignored it until Gwend said she had been sick in the night and Soph complained that she had been feeling ill too. After this we were all running to Karam's little hole in the ground. This was a complete nightmare because not only were we all feeling horrendous but we were flying that day and had to sit through a two hour journey to the airport as well as the flight. Luckily we got through the flight without any emergencies. 

Gez, Jaz, Gilbert and Gary cross the Indian desert

Before leaving Pushkar we had some post to send. It took a LOT longer to send than we thought and so I went to wait outside because I had left my passport in the car. Waiting outside anywhere in India is always an experience and after five minutes a skinny Indian dressed in a toga with a lot of white hair came up to me and played a weird kind of recorder in my face. I let this go on a little longer than I should have because I was hoping Gwend would come out and see so it took quite a lot to get rid of him in the end. When Gwend did come out we also got surrounded by cows because a man came and scattered grass around us (he kept putting it on my feet even when I moved). 

When we finally left Pushkar we were heading on another long journey towards Khuri, near Jaisalmer which is in the desert and borders Pakistan. As soon as we got out of the car I could feel the heat difference; it was forty five degrees and I could barely breathe. Luckily it cooled down a lot at night which was good because we were off on our camel trek. We arrived at our accommodation which was two huts in the middle of the desert; although our driver had told us that we could sleep outside for a more authentic desert experience if we would like.

We got ready for our camel trek and were all a bit unsure about how it would go; we named our camels Gerard (renamed Geri aka Gez, upon discovery that she was female), Gilbert, Gary and Jasper (renamed Jasmine). Luce and I had nice well behaved camels; Gwends- Gilb was a bit more weird; foaming at the mouth. Sophie's camel, on the other hand, was insane. For some reason, my guide decided he wouldn't lead me but attached me to Gary who had his tail tied out of the way of his rear end which was not in a good way. For quite some time I thought Gary had a lump of shit hanging from his tail until I realised that it was actually the biggest, shittiest ball I have ever seen. This earned Soph's camel the name, Gary shitty balls.

After a fantastic time camel trekking we got back to our charming huts. Gwenda and I decided to go for the authentic approach and slept outside. This was a nice idea but the reality wasn't quite so lovely. As soon as we had settled down we heard a voice saying 'Goonda, you want to go for a walk with me?' This was the voice of our driver, Karam, who was no longer sweet but had turned out to be massively annoying and in love with Gwenda. In the morning we also realised that he had been lying when he told us we wouldn't get bitten in the desert as 'Goonda' was absolutely covered in bites. The next morning when Karam asked his regular question 'good sleeping'? He was met by more than one scowl.

Our next two destinations weren't particularly exciting because they were stop off points on the way to our final destination in north India, Haridwar. This was quite a low time in India as we stayed in two of the hottest rooms imaginable and spent the next two nights tossing and turning drenched in sweat. We did, however go to see a miniature artist who drew a whole picture on Gwend’s nail along with all our names.