Volver

So, our journey has come to an end in Newton with Scales, England, where the sun is trying to shine between days of wind and rain and we attempt to come down from the constant activity of travelling. It’s not easy. Tom is grumpy and Dani is constantly hungry. Perhaps they are travel withdrawl symptoms. Either way we’re enjoying a short rest before the Hermetingers fly, en masse, to the UK and we head to the countryside for some dual family entertainment.

Arriving back in Europe from Asia caused quite a culture shock…maybe more than the other way around. We stayed in Osnabruck, a quiet northern Geman town full of cyclists and European perfection. There could not have been a better contrast to the wilds of Laos or the chaos of Bangkok. Late summer treated us well; we had one day of clouds in 12 days moving through Europe back to England. The best day with Anne was a challenging trip to a climbing forest which had us both sprawling, leaping, swinging, crying and falling through the treetops. Great fun once the initial fear goes away.

Our return trip took us through Hamburg, Copenhagen and London. In Copenhagen we visited Lisa and stayed with our second couchsurf, Raimondas. Denmark is even more expensive, clean and organised than we imagined. For the price of one very, very, very delicious cake we purchased, we could have eaten 22 times at our local vegetarian buffet in Luang Prabang, Laos. However, the city is incredible and we had a great time with Lisa and her new friends.

The last night, accompanied by various very strong Belgium beers, we spent with Jen and Tim in Stoke Newington, north London. The hangover made the last bus north seem to go on forever. The rain started as we reached Manchester and we splashed through deep puddles over the countryside to Preston bus station, where Tom’s parents waited to take us home.

So that’s that, but this blog hasn’t ended quite yet. If you’re still reading, check back soon…

Sabadeeee!

We were more than a bit lazy in South East Asia in language learning. In Vietnam we didn’t even get past ‘thank you’. In Laos however we developed a substantial vocabulary: hello, goodbye, thank you, left, right, straight on, stop, knee up. Everybody in Laos greets you with a warm ‘Sabadee’, in contrast to the other countries where English has taken over even the most basic communication in tourist situation. Laos is different to its neighbours. Tourism has developed only in a few centres in the northern part of the country, most of the population lives and works on the land, there is only one cinema showing comercial films, bars must play a certain percentage of Lao music instead of Western pop, and there is a curfew at 11. The only places to go as midnight approaches are bowling alleys.

Laos is covered with jungle, even the capital Vientiane seems more like a big village. Infrastructure is limited compared to Vietnam, Thailand and even Cambodia. What exists for tourists is merely a facade; Luang Prabang, Laos’ World Heritage town, is simply too expensive for the ordinary Lao to live, with wages for a waiter in a tourist cafe around 1.25 euros per day. We visited the hospital in Luang Prabang, a ghostly building with few doctors or patients and little in the way of facilities. On the 2 day slow boat to Thailand we saw one town.

Culturally, Laos is more similar to Thailand than to Vietnam. It is a Buddhist nation with many beautiful temples and a long, independant history. Like Cambodia and Vietnam, it was also occupied by the French and then suffered a lot during the US wars in South East Asia. While the war in Vietnam is common knowledge, the US bombing campaign in Laos and Cambodia has been kept largely hidden. However, in Laos the Americans dropped more tonnes of explosives per km squared than in Vietnam, many of which did not detonate, leaving the countryside covered with lethal landmines.

Coming from Vietnam, Laos was beautifully quiet and friendly, devoid of traffic noise and congestion and hassle. We passed the majority of our time there in Luang Prabang, recovering after so long on the tourist trail. We met a German couple, Albrecht and Sarah, with whom we spent evenings by the Mekong drinking lao lao (awful Lao whiskey) and beerlao (awesome Lao beer) and playing Backpacker. On the last day we took a mahout training course. Mahout’s are elephant owners and trainers and we learnt how to give commands (hence our language skills) and ride up on their necks. The day finished with comunal bathing, Dani’s mahout repeatedly telling her elephant to dunk her under the water. She came up laughing every time. Lao elephants have no space left in the wild and, as the logging trade is reduced, they are no longer profitable for their owners (not to mention very expensive to care for). Tourism supposedly provides elephants with employment (gracefully, we humans allow them to live so long as we can make some money out of them). Whatever their employment, Asian elephants have a pretty bleak future.

We returned to Thailand on the Mekong, a two day trip that redefined boredom. Dani got it the first day, Tom the second, and we were more than glad to reach Thailand on the other shore. Our second visit to Bangkok didn’t disappoint – we still loved it, especially Samsen Road. It is a world away from nearby Khao San (the backpacker district that opens ‘The Beach’) full of an amazing variety of cool bars, cafes and restaurants with the friendliest owners. Even though we were sad to leave, tiredness, insect bites and cockroach invested bathrooms meant we were ready for Europe.

We’re now in Osnabruck, Germany, staying with Anne and Malte, enjoying wholemeal bread, low humidity, speaking German, flushing paper down the toilet and drinking tap water. One week to go…

Same same

Vientnam has created two unknown wonders of the modern world. One is a system of urban traffic chaos revolving almost entirely around the motorbike, where nobody stops, everybody beeps and yet, miraculously, avoids crashing into each other. The second is a piece of linguistic genius, at the same time ambigous, meaningless and profound that can be applied equally to every day life and to business with startling effects.

It was introduced to us on a tour of the Mekong delta by a manic guide (in fast forward…Hello, my name Mr Lee, and now we go now, on bus, to boat, see local people, take picture, okay, and now we go now, see coconut, see rice paper, take picture, more local people, take picture, okay, and now we go now, buy honey, no honey no money, less honey less money, no honey no baby, take picture, okay, and now we go now…) who used it to comment that all Europeans looked the same to Asians, and all Asians look the same to us. “Same, same… but different”. We are all the same, he was telling us, yet not. A glorious claim to universality? Or proof of unbridgeable difference? Was he saying although we all look the same, we are all individuals, or rather that the foreigner, the outsider, could never see that? Or was it more the threat that our cultures, even though they grasp hopefully at similarity and empathy, are irreconcilably different?

It turns out it’s just a slogan, and a very useful one at that.

“This tour, that tour, same same.”

“Ahhhh”

“… but different”

“What’s different?”

“Not different, same same.”

“So why shouldn’t I go for that one?”

“Different.”

Admitedly, it’s success relies heavily on confusion.

It’s just one of the reasons that makes travelling in Vietnam sometimes challenging and difficult. It was an exhausting months and by the end of it, we were ready to move on. But that’s not to say that we didn’t have a great time there. Bev was travelling with us since Cambodia and joined us on our trip through the whole length of Vietnam.

We started in Ho Chi Minh City where we were confronted with an evil taxi driver who charged us 10 dollars for a distance of approximatly 500 meters – after driving us around the city for 15min of course. Normally we look at the map first, but this time we had no clue where the hostel was, so we didn’t get suspicous early enough. In this city we had our first encounter with hundreds, thousands, millions of motorbikes – ’till the horizon. Whole families could be found on one motorbike along with huge bags of rice or anything else that needed to be transported (for example a cupboard).

As the heat was unbearable sometimes, we decided to go to Dalat, which is situated in the mountains and therefore has a very nice climate.  The temperature supposedly attracts many couples on their honeymoon. The town itself is a bit strange (a green, totally polluted and hence toxic lake in the centre, complete with swan paddleboats floating around it) but the surrounding area is pretty amazing. We met a group of old guys called the Easy Riders, who drive tourists around Dalat on their motorbikes. It was our first time on bikes, at times scary (at least our driver, Hung, Hung and Phuc, drank the local ‘Happy Water’ they bought after our trip) but mostly enjoyable. Professor Phuc and Co. showed us around silk farms, coffee plantations, a Chinese pagoda, told us the history of the area and how the people live there. We shared a slurping, scooping meal overlooking the valley with these charasmatic old guys.

On the bus down from Dalat to Hoi An, we found ourselves among the vommiting, burping, snorting, sniffing and communal pissing habits of the Vietnamese, a bit of a culture shock for those who do these things mainly in private (unless they are drunk). After changing busses in the middle of the night, we were handed over to a gang of motorbikers on the outskirts of Hoi An and forced to take a ride with them to town. When Bev didn’t appear at our hotel, we had a few minutes of worry. When she did arrive, she said her driver had taken her to another hotel (probably friends of his) and asked her if she wanted to stay here or with us. Tough question.

Hoi An was one of our favourite places in Vietnam, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, which means no (or less) traffic in the old quarter. Hoi An is famous for clothes and lanterns, so the town is full of tailors and little shops where you can watch the production of colourful lamps or get yourself a fitted suit. By night you find them all lit up and, in the absence of glaring streetlights, you wander around surrounded by the soft light of red, green, blue, violet and yellow lanterns.

Our last stop with Bev was Halong Bay. All the tours there are, unsurprisingly, same same but different. We got the different one. Our ‘junk’ (old wooden boat) had rooms for twenty people – we were the only three on it. We feasted on delicious sea food (Dani on delicious vegetables) with Khong, our awesome guide, and watched the sunset from our private sun deck. Halong Bay is an almost mythical landscape of a thousand limestone islands, said to have been formed when a dragon spat down enormous jewels, which turned into the islands, and created a protective wall against the Chinese invadors. Except for some nasty looking jellyfish that appeared just after we had been for a swim, these were wonderfully peaceful days in a hectic country.

We said goodbye to Bev and hello to Hanoi. At first the excitement and noise gives you a buzz but it quickly turns into a building anger and rage at the simple impossibility of crossing the street without feeling you’re about to get hit by a thousand motorbikes. We never quite got the hang of the crossing technique – close your eyes and walk out without hesistating. We met Spanish ex-pat Alvaro, living and working in the city, who showed us some cool areas and cafes, but still we longed to escape as soon as possible. We fled to the hills, Sapa, a gorgeous mountain town surrounded by bright green rice paddies where we did some challenging trekking for a few days.

It was our last stop in Vietnam. Before we set off on this trip, I think it was the country we were most excited about. All the guidebooks say it’s one of the most colourful countries on Earth. Judge for yourself.