hills to the left of me, mountains to the right, here i am stuck in a valley with a view...

So. Where were we. We went to sleep on moving beds in Scotland and awoke into a London morning, and then before we even knew what was happening we found ourselves back in the reassuringly chaotic streets of Kathmandu. And immediately slipped back into the rhythm of Nepal, the intervening months in Europe becoming a shimmering mirage in our minds.

Our first few days were spent form filling and queuing in Kathmandu (Kathmanqueue?) and then it was time for the much more important brotherly reunion. So we dodged the rain and hail the night threw at us to meet and welcome Harry and Alex with hugs, and got ready to set off on a journey that would carry us through the heart of the Himalayas. 

We began in BesiSahar. The purpose of this town, I suppose, is to fill with relief all the trekkers who find themselves trudging out of it. Unfortunately once you leave its dusty underwhelming streets you have a good 4 hours of walking up roads along which the construction of a huge hydro-electric station (financed, I am fairly certain though I have nothing in the way of evidence except a few Chinese signs, by China) is a constant. This is not great for the morale of four trekkers who set themselves off on a 3 week trek based on the assumption of seeing some pretty spectacular natural beauty. Thankfully the last hour of our walk this first day took us up up up, into hillier, greener, more soothing pastures.

From here on in our days were one....we woke- early always as there is not a lot to do in a trekker's night once you have overdosed on card games-, then we ate, then we trekked, usually we stopped for our lunch of 'Trekker's Fuel' muesli bars (which were so highly regarded in the beginning that we would collect every spilt crumb and became so hated after two weeks that, now, to even look at the packaging turns my stomach), then we trekked a little more, then we found lodgings and we simultaneously collapsed on the bed and dove upon the menu in the manner of starving castaways. And this, essentially, is what you do when you trek in Nepal. Of course, it is all against a backdrop of some of the most impressive mountains in the world, so immediately something as mundane as going to the toilet becomes an exercise in wonderment.  

The mountains were not giving themselves away easily. This was one of the very first, very exciting peeks of the peaks that we had on our second or third day (it's all a bit of a blur now). This was also the place where we began to feel the kilometres in our legs and stopped for some impromptu street yoga, much to the amused bemusement of the locals.

Up and up we went. Every day the views produced more gasps and excited pointing from us. But one thing that is pretty much constant in the Himalayas (all Nepal in fact) is the Tibetan prayer flags. At home they flutter from the veranda of that one house on the street where the hippies live but in Nepal they adorn everything from temples to Bodhi trees to bridges. I can't work out if their presence on those uncertain bridges which join two river valley walls, the river rushing far far below, is an appeal for safe passage or purely aesthetic...

As well as prayer flags, there are these. Name? I don't know. But they are stone and they have a seam of prayer wheels- which are to be spun sequentially, all of them, in a clockwise direction- all down the middle. There are often flat black or white stones carved with beautiful Nepali script scattered about the place too. 

On our way up to the widest pass in the world we decided we may as well take a little detour to visit the highest lake in the world. A tour of superlatives. Later we will add: the longest time without a shower, the highest altitude we have achieved, the happiest I have ever been to catch a Nepalese bus. But for now we are on our way to the lake. And we saw this very stylish yak, with flowers in its ears. 

We walked across this incredibly dangerous section of 'path'; essentially about a foot of slightly less steep gravel where miss-step ends in probable death. This was the scariest part of our entire trek. Pretty cool picture though. And worth it. The lake, although frozen into an oval of white, was set amongst the most perfect, whitest, cleanest (still on the tour see?) mountains I've ever seen. We were almost completely surrounded by them. We heard an avalanche. And after a very arduous climb- remember we were at an altitude of about 5000 metres, which in human speak means every 5 or 6 steps we had to stop to catch our breath- and some biscuits by the frozen oval, we rewarded ourselves with some impro-skiing (toboganning without a toboggan) back down the slopes, reducing what was a 1 hour climb into a 5 minute thrill. The wet jeans were totally worth it. My body objected a little to the extremes I was subjecting it to and gave me an afternoon of altitude sickness after our return from the lake, but it was very good preparation for taking on the pass a few days hence.

A few days hence: 5000 metres is quite high; it gets quite cold. This is what we found adorning our guesthouse when we arrived at High Camp, the final stop before Thorung La; world's widest pass and 5500 metres above sea level. This night was probably the coldest I have ever been while sleeping. I wore all my clothes. Even gloves.

This is where we were though. The cold is secondary when you wake up to this.

And this. This is the famous pass.

We are triumphant. We have done it. Now all that remains between us and civilisation is a very steep descent and another couple of days. We celebrated (how else?) with water and Trekkers Fuel (whenever I say this in my head it is written in lightning and surrounded by exclamaton marks).

We've done the pass. We're bad-ass. 

Then we started the journey down. The lower we got, the warmer it was and the more the scenery began to resemble what I imagine Grand Canyon country to be. It was less spectacular than what we had just left, but quite beautiful still. We were in good spirits too. In acknowledgement of the feat we had just pulled off, we were on our way to enjoy some juicy yak burgers at a place called (in what can only be described as a stroke of genius) YakDonalds. Our expectations weren't actually that high...the visit was mostly because we couldn't let a pun that good pass us by. Happily the burgers were delicious. I am now a fan of yak in all their incarnations.  

I also like goats. Because they are so nimble and their horns are so very funny. These goats we met while wandering around a little village famous for its apple products (we sampled crumble, pie, juice, brandy and cider), on our way back to civilisation. The walk back down was quite pretty...lots of blossoming trees, the mountains still in the background, tiny villages perched here and there. But there was no denying that there was certainly less enthusiasm among our group. We had done the pass, the hard part was over, we were no longer in mountains and, to be honest, we were fairly sick of walking.  

So beautiful though the mountains undeniably are, we happily caught a bus down to Pokhara to enjoy beers, momos (dumplings), chocolates and sunsets on the lake, three days after crossing the pass. 

Satisfied in the knowledge that we had walked 208 kilometres in thirteen days.

And I will leave you with this...remember, always go clockwise...

a misadventure and a slaughtered sheep.

It is a very tired and weary couple of Will and Jordans that greet you from blog world today. Turns out, after two months in genteel Europe we've gone soft and are having trouble re-adjusting to the crafty "sales techniques" of those who live in the not so lucky world. But. Take it back about a fortnight.

We ended up staying on at the finca in Spain for an extra week, not really for any particular reason, just because we liked it and both decided it would be stupid to cut our time there short. And it is a good thing we did. We gained two anecdotes to add to our repetoire from that week.

After finishing work one afternoon- and after our afternoon nap- we decided to walk out to an old monastery, set in the hills behind the finca. We set off at about 5, and it was quite a pleasant walk, through the valley, up along the ridge, down through olive and carob groves...then we realised we had been walking for more than an hour and the monstery was still a mirage in the distance. Being sensible, we thought, 'we should go back, don't want to get stuck out here in the dark'. Hahahaha...oh how we laugh. Now. It was most definitely not funny when we were running around like panicky idiots on the top of a mountain at dusk, staring at a wall of impenetrable, prickly shrub that stood between us and a delicious pizza dinner. (Actually, it would have looked quite funny...we were in no mood for frivolity though, you understand.) Anyway, we were on the ridge because we knew we could walk down a slip in between two of the hills. We just didn't know that by the time we found the slip it would be dark. So there we were, panicking our way down a rocky, prickly, slippery, ankle-breaky "path", in the dark, with only the thought of the wild boars that would surely snuggle up to us if we didn't make it home to keep us going. We made it home. Scratched up legs, huge appetites and a story and we were home.

Then the week went on. We went for a couple more walks- strolls really, safely along flat ground. Visited another old English couple who fed us a huge roast dinner with banana split chasers. Saw more charming villages. Hung out with the dogs. Painted a bit. Then it was our last day- for real this time- and we were ending it with a memory that will last forever. Our first sheep slaughter. That's right, we are well on our way to becoming real country people, who can kill and chop up a sheep for many a future dinners (I say well on our way...that may be an exaggeration. We were in fact giggling hysterically through most of the "operation", and I may, at one point, have had my photo taken holding a knife and fork next to a dangling sheep carcass...). But it's a start. I know what bit loin is know. And I know I will never be a vegatarian- seeing all the neatly cut up joints on the table set my stomach a-rumbling, even as the dog was licking up sheep's blood off the floor.

So, we knew we stayed for a reason. But then we really did have to leave (it was getting to the point that we probably would have adopted the finca as our second home and Cathy and James would have found themselves with two new grown-up children). We took our cue from the ducks and headed to Granada.

A wonderful city is Granada. And not only- though this is probably a large part of it- because of the 'free tapas with every drink' thing they have going on. Seriously, 2 or 3 euro (that's $3 or $4) and you can have a beer or wine or sangria and you will also get a little dish of stew or a piece of pizza or some meatballs. These Spaniards, they know a thing or two about the good life (you know, except in regard to the economy and running the country smoothly; food, drink and sleep though- they have it down!) But Granada is also a very wanderable city. The Arabic area climbs up a hill in all its whitewashed, tiled charm to several fantastic panoramic city views (edit out all the ipad-wielding tourists). The main city centre is walkable and dotted with little plazas of fountains and trees. There is the majesty of the Sierra Neveda mountain range in the background. There is a river and watching, steadily and serenely over the city, the Alhambra. An Islamic complex comprising palaces, unimaginably beautiful gardens, and everything else needed in a royal complex back in the day. It is a relic from the days of the Moors and (I'm sure) a world heritage sight. It would be a huge mistake to come to Granada and miss it (and we nearly did). But we lined up from 7am, in the rain, to get a ticket and it was truly worth it.

And for now, that is the end of our European adventure. I do, however, get the feeling we will be back on its welcoming soil before too long. Morocco is a little more difficult than we'd like at the moment and it is, after all, just a short hop across the water. Those Portuguese tarts are calling to us...

(Also P.S. no photos again, back to the imaginations I'm afraid, at least for now).

paco's retreat.

We've been at the little farm of Cathy and James (from Blackpool, near Liverpool and Manchester, so they speak English- yay!) for almost three weeks now...and we haven't even noticed the time slip by. Clearly we are feeling very at home here.

The farm...

It's a little hobby farm in a valley between two mountains- both of which we've climbed, of course- surrounded by olive trees. Also some carob trees (carob is the stuff that health food shops try to sell as 'healthy chocolate'), which we have relieved of all their fruit in order to feed it to the livestock. It's a little hobby farm; it's also a little zoo...there are six dogs (there were 5 when we arrived but another has joined the gang since), around 30 cats, 8 sheep, 4 pigs, chickens, a goat, a pony and a donkey called Paco.

A selfie with Paco

For the past (almost) 3 weeks we have been learning a little about running a tiny farm in the Spanish countryside- everything from building shelves, pruning olive trees and repairing terrace walls to how to go about fixing mechanical problems with machinery when you can't trust the local mechanics not to rip you off horrendously because you are a foreigner (this bit involves not a small amount of swearing)- and immersing ourselves in the layers of history that are everywhere. Those terrace walls we were repairing? About two hundred years old. A patch of olive trees down the valley? One thousand years old. As we walked up one of the surrounding hills today we passed trees and walls that were (speculatively) hundreds of years old and discovered fossilized sea shells from when this valley was the domain of the creatures of the deep. On top of one of the mountains we so effortlessly scaled with all our climbing know-how and general excellence, we found the remains of a village that looks as though it has been abandoned well over 100 years ago but was in fact inhabited until the 1950's, when Franco decided he didn't like the idea of people living in inaccessible communities. There is history in these here hills.

As well as beach visits, a kayaking trip down the river, an ill-fated bike ride during which one of the tyres on Will's bike popped and I spent the majority of the time sulkily walking my bike up and down hills (I love to ride a bike...my only non-negotiable condition is that the terrain be flat), a trip to a beautiful and huge lake where we jumped off a bridge and did a spot more kayaking and lots of baked goods- I have been binging on baking while I have the chance-, we have also had a lot of long discussions with James about the state of politics, capitalism, immigration, clean energy, the running of Spain and England and just the world in general, which inevitably end up with us all sitting there shaking our heads and saying "But why? WHY?". Then we usually change the subject to our favourite books or movies or stories from ill-spent youth.

In our spare time we have visited the nearby town of Tortosa, which has seen both Roman and Muslim rule and still has some Roman ruins dotted about. Unfortunately the day we visited was one of the only 2 days it has rained since we've been here so we spent most of our time sitting at a café...but that was also nice. The other day we ventured further afield and caught the train up to Tarragona (just quickly, I know we told everyone we were at a farm in Tarragona- we aren't actually. We are an hour south by train and the nearest useful town is called Amposta) and had a lovely day wandering around more Roman ruins and Roman still-standing buildings. The city itself was founded in the 5th century BC and the ruins have been world heritage listed, so it was well worth a good wander around. We were a little disappointed that we didn't get to visit the market though- when we arrived at 9.30 (am) it wasn't open yet and when we came back at 2.30 it was already closed...I suppose you can't stay open too long otherwise how would you fit in your afternoon nap?

Snapshots of Tarragona.

Sleepy, empty Tortosa

Out of everything we've seen and done since we've been here there is still one thing that stand out as the most amazing...during our first week here Cathy and James had some friends from England over and we all went out for dinner...to an all you can eat, seafood buffet for 9 euro each (it's sounding bad, isn't it?)...and as well as none of us getting food poisoning, the food was delicious! The things you see eh?

Will let me cut his hair...also amazing.

Son of a bee sting...Will got stung in the eye by a bee

 Anyway, as I said, we've been here nearly 3 weeks and are reluctantly coming to terms with the fact that soon we will have to move on. Next week some time I think we will be in Morocco- not that we have really done anything towards getting there apart from decide that's what we might like to do-, enjoying tagine and baklava and lots of glasses of mint tea. But for now there are 6 dogs to pat and a few episodes of Black Books to watch. And some dressing up to do...

'bini flashbacks

As we only have three weeks here, this is a bit of a whirlwind tour of Sri Lanka and a completely different style of travelling to what we did in India. In that vein we are now on the south coast, having left Ella several days ago and then spent few days in Arugam Bay, the surfing heart of the country.

We would have stayed in lovely Ella longer but our time limits constrained us and once we had conquered all the peaks and climbs- which we did- we thought we should move on. Will had been keen to try surfing ever since we decided to come to Sri Lanka so the obvious next stop was Arugam Bay. It's the best time to be there now, sunny, warm and beautiful blue water and the town full of very tanned people with dreadlocks and sun-bleached hair (that's surfers...) So we stayed there some time, ate some delicious muesli, swam and got burnt and Will managed to teach himself to stand up on a surfboard and even ride the odd wave (there were also a lot of crashes). I, on the other hand, could see what tremendous effort it was learning to surf- you have to battle out over the crashing waves to even get to the point where you try to catch a wave in, then you either miss it and sit around waiting for the next one or catch it then invariably fall down and have to battle your way out there all over again- and decided I probably wouldn't be too upset if I gave it a miss this time...lazy? Very, but I'm ok with it.

After a few days of this (in keeping with our lightning tour) we decided to head south to a beach called Unawatuna, a place the trusty (though this I'm beginning to doubt) Lonely Planet said was a tropical paradise. Tropical paradise I'm sure it would be, if it weren't for the gently monsoonal weather of right now...we even checked the rainfall at this time of year in our treacherous guide book and it is supposed to be the second driest time to come, but this morning we awoke to a thunder storm and torrential rain and the sky is very defiantly remaining gray and cloudy.

It is also, as our luck would have it, Buddhist festival time. I'm not sure if anyone remembers my post about Lumbini, where we also stumbled on a festival- in fact, I can't even remember exactly what I wrote- but the constant wailing and "singing" being broadcast over the loudspeaker is, as Will said, as if his ears had taste-buds and somebody was squeezing lemon juice into them. Quite a neat analogy and perfectly apt. It's quite horrible. It isn't as bad as Lumbini because our room is pretty well soundproof and we can escape to the other end of the beach when it gets too much, but it beggars belief that the quietest and most peaceful of all the religions would celebrate festivals in this way.

All in all though, it's ok here. We probably won't be able to go snorkelling but we can go swimming and, if we are feeling cliched, for long walks along the beach. We are also staying in a room with hot water and internet that works which is about as luxurious as it gets for us. And it is only $12 a night. (In comparison, our $18 a night room in Arugam Bay came with its own set of frogs that lived in the bathroom and a mosquito net that allowed the mosquitoes inside to feast on our flesh whenever they chose).

So that's the lesson from today's post everybody- it's all a balance. Yin and Yang and all that (I knew I got my tattoo for a reason...)

Now, a few days after this post, I'd just like to add a postscript- the weather cheered up a bit and it's been perfectly sunny and tropical and I've taken some pictures that would make everyone at home, in the cold, very jealous (if only I could figure out how to upload them). 

tea drinking and view hunting

Welcome to Sri Lanka us. After being in India for the last 3 months we have not been able to get over how clean it is here, how much empty space there is and how much more pride the people seem to take in their surroundings. Also how nice and helpful the people are (this, as always, does not include tuk-tuk drivers). We were on a train the other day and as we were going through a station we noticed the car park was completely empty...something we hadn't seen ever in India. Also instead of beggars and half-dead dogs, the train stations here have fish tanks and hanging pot plants...

The travellers here are also a different breed to what we got used to in India. There we were with our own kind- the smelly, sweaty, thrifty kind of backpackers who don't mind a bit of an upset tummy from that street-stall dinner because it saved them $3. Once we arrived in Sri Lanka our smelly dirty clothes suddenly seemed to stand out a lot more...here it is all families with young kids or young couples on a no expenses spared 3 week tour around the country. To put it plainly, everyone dresses up in the morning, puts on their make-up before they leave their fancy air-conditioned hotel for a day of sightseeing in the hired car.

It's a lovely country though. Certainly not as interesting as India but a lovely relaxing wind-down from the sub-continent. Tea is big business here. It brings in close to US$1 billion per year and provides employment to a huge number of Sri Lankans. We have duly visited a tea museum and a tea factory and walked 7km's through tea plantations to 'Lipton's Seat', where Thomas Lipton (the man who began the company who now produce the iced tea everybody loves so much) used to sit and entertain his fancy guests and survey his growing tea empire. We learnt the process through which fresh tea leaves are turned into the little black things that go into our teapots- it's a lot of rolling and sifting and blowing with hot air but it actually only takes about 10 hours for fresh leaves to become tea-pot ready. We learnt about James Taylor who, along with Thomas Lipton, made the Sri Lankan tea industry what it is today...he came from Scotland and grew and produced his own tea, never married and only left his plantation once, to go to Darjeeling to study tea. So he was a  little tea obssessed. Thomas Lipton, another Scotsman, ensured the rest of the world grew to appreciate tea as much as the folks in England did...he marketed very cleverly and grew his own tea which he sold in his own supermarkets at a lower price, to entice the working classes. So these men are much lauded here. We have also done our bit by drinking as many pots of tea as we can- very difficult job, someone's got to do it.

The other main thing to do here seems to be climbing things, view-searching you could say. So far we have climbed a big old rock, atop of which there are the remains of a monastery. That was quite a lovely view. We could also admire the very old frescoes of colourful women painted into a niche in the boulder, and scratch our heads as to how the artists didn't fall to their deaths whilst painting.

We also (very misguidedly) climbed a mountain called 'Adam's Peak'. It is a pilgrimage site for Buddhists who begin the climb at 2am so they can make it to the top in time for the sunrise, which is supposed to be spectacular...I think the reason we saw no pilgrims as we were lumbering up the 5000 steps in the middle of the pitch black, raining, fog-laden night was that they knew there was no chance of seeing the sunrise at this time of year. And hey, turns out they were right. We did get a killer view of heaps of fog though, and probably came quite close to catching pneumonia...but we did it, despite everything, so now we can gloat over all those lazy souls who decided the warmth of their beds was preferable to the storm clouds and cold. Anyway, bad view.

As I said, we also climbed to Lipton's Seat which I'm sure would have been a simply splendid view had the blanket of fog decided to lift at any stage...didn't though. It was a nice walk however so it scores points on Adam's Peak.

We have hit the view jackpot now though. We are in a little town called Ella in the hill country. It's very much set up for tourists but it has some amazing views of mountains, hills covered with tea plantations and forest and waterfalls dotted about the place. And best of all, no fog obscuring any part of it! So we have finally found the view we've been searching for and can reward ourselves with cake and coffee at the relaxing cafes after spending the morning wandering amongst it.

an ascent into madness

Don't worry, I just was very proud of that play on words so I wanted to use it in this post- we aren't really going mad. We did spend the last week ascending higher and higher above sea level though (that's the pun- you get altitude sickness and go a bit mad if you go too high too quickly).

After leaving Chitwan we caught the bus to Kathmandu to deal with some beaurocracy and have some real coffee, then we had an extremely long and at times terrifying bus ride north. From Kathmandu to the town of Syabrubesi in Langtang National Park is only 190km...the trip took 9 hours. There were cliffs involved and buses that were at 3 or 4 times capacity- from this I think you can probably guess how we felt when we arrived. (Funnily enough, that wasn't the worst bus trip we have done in Nepal).

The trek through Langtang National Park was lovely and scenic though- if a little tough on the legs. Syabrubesi is at 1470 metres above sea level and at the end of 3 days walking we were at 3870 metres. It was a steep climb but there was no lack of tea houses, restaurants or snack shops along the way if we needed an energy boost. As well as enterprising Nepalese, we saw monkeys rustling in the trees above our heads, waterfalls and the occasional snowy peak in the distance. As we got higher the scenery slowly changed and the monkeys gave way to yaks, the forest to open plains dotted with shacks and Tibetan prayer flags until we were walking in a valley surrounded by mountainous forest on one side and snow-covered mountains on the other. It was a spectacular view.

Although we weren't at a ridiculously high altitude (by Nepalese standards) the air did get thinner and thinner and on our last morning of walking we were stopping every half an hour or so, just to catch our breath. Admittedly I did have a cold, which didn't help. I was exhaustedly relieved when we came over a peak and saw the final town sitting just in front of us.

The town, Kyanjin Gompa, is home to 10 or 12 lodges, 2 bakeries (one of which sold us the best apple pie we had in all of Nepal), yaks, ponies and lots of mountains. It sits in a valley entirely surrounded by them. The mornings were quite sunny and warm so we sat outside with snow on all sides and enjoyed the vew. It also snowed every night, so every morning we would wake up to a thin layer of white over everything- unil the sun came out and melted it all, ready for the next evening.

Will has developed a new passion now, in the form of mountain climbing. So while I lay in bed trying to get rid of my cold, he was out in the cold, climbing the highest easily accessible peak in Kyanjin Gompa. He made it to the top and can now proudly say he has climbed to 5000 metres above sea level (for the un-mountain inclined that is only 500 metres lower than Everest Base Camp).

After that success we headed back down to warmer weather, to reward ourselves for our efforts with a deep-fried snickers bar. (We were rewarding our brains and tastebuds, not our hearts or arteries). And since then we have had the most horrendous 36 hours I have probably ever had. I'll put that in a new post. Stay tuned!

in the mountains

I left Adelaide on Tuesday evening and after 2 days of solid traveling I reached Pokhara, Nepal, and found Will standing out in the garden of the hotel I was meeting him at.
I haven't really done all that much since being here...but I have only been here for 2 days. Yesterday we did a lot of resting...in fact I think the only thing we did in between resting was eat. Oh, we ate some mouldy chocolate croissant from an overpriced bakery which we then boycotted.

Today was a little more strenuous. We climbed up a very big hill to the first ever (there are I think 75 built or being built now) World Peace Pagoda, a bright white domed building decorated with huge golden Bhuddas. Then we walked back through a forest and had a relaxing afternoon back at the lake (this is the touristy part) in Pokhara. We bought a few yak's wool products in anticipation of an upcoming trek. Now we are sitting on a balcony, drinking a beer and listening to a pretty awful concert being held to celebrate Earth Hour. How's the serenity...

Before I got here Will had 2 1/2 weeks of exploring Nepal on his own; though most of this time was spent trekking to Annapurna Base Camp (he made it!) and back. He saw a snowstorm and the sunrise over the Himalayas which would have been pretty spectacular. He also ate a deep-fried snickers bar and a deep-fried ball of chips...yes, a ball of chips. I guess you need that slow burning energy to trek through the mountains.

 In his first few days in Kathmandu he also ran away from a "trustworthy guide" who told him not to talk to foreigners as they will just leave him for dead in the mountains and who charged him $30 for a walk around the city. Once he escaped from him he celebrated Shiva's birthday by having lunch with a Nepalese family and visiting some temples.

That's about it for now. Tomorrow we are heading down to Chitwan National Park with hope of spotting a tiger (almost guaranteed impossible) and some rhinos (very possible).

There are no pictures in this post because although I have figured out how to move them from my camera (actually, Will did) to this tablet thing I still haven't quite ironed out all the kinks. And I'm too tired now. But once I do, that will be way cool. 

good morning Vietnam.

It is raining in Hue, a town on the central coast of Vietnam in which we have found ourselves. Two days ago there was a flashflood. It isn't the ideal weather to be doing much at all, apart from sitting in cafes or watching movies in bed. But, I hear you ask, how did we get from Siem Reap to Hue and what adventures have we had on the way?

Well....

We were able to catch the bus to Bangkok, though the schemer who sold us the tickets and promised the bus would take us to the airport spoke not a word of the truth and we sat fuming on the bus as it drove straight past the airport and into central Bangkok, from where we had to go back exactly the same way as we had just come to go to the airport.

We slept at the airport and caught our early morning flight to Hanoi. Hanoi is a fairly insane city. The noise is constant, there are literally millions of motorbikes and the smog is thick. There is a lot to explore though...crowded little alleyways, cafes, restaurants and shops.

We did a bit of shopping, a bit of eating and a bit of sightseeing.

We got accosted by a lady who forced us to take pictures of ourselves with her wares, the afterwards it was 'you take photo now you buy! you buy!'...but we didn't. We ran away.

Our first night there we saw a show of water puppetry, an old art form originating in northern Vietnam. It was great. There was a band of musicians accompanying the puppets, which were made of wood and stuck on the end of long poles at the end of which the puppeteers were in control as they hid behind a large wooden facade. The puppets re-enacted various scenes from Vietnamese life, but it was all done in a shallow pool of green water. My favourite part was when two water buffalo stopped working in the field to have a fight then a little man had to separate them...imagine that scene (you have to imagine it because tickets were more expensive if one wanted to take photos, so obviously we took no photos) in water, with funny looking wooden puppets and sound effects in Vietnamese. Oddly funny.

We also saw some sights...Ho Chi Minh's mausoleum (though we didn't get to see the man himself, as his body is currently in Russia for restoration), the Temple of Literature (Vietnam's first university) and we caught a bus out to the suburbs and found our way to the Museum of Ethnology, which housed a very interesting account of Vietnamese life, both past and present.

Will got his faced shaved with a razor finally (he wanted to since Phnom Penh).

The Temple of Literature.

We escaped the smog and the traffic and the people on a train up to the mountain town (former French hill station) of Sapa. Where it was actually quite cold, but the air was amazingly fresh. And he fog was incredible...it engulfed all of the surrounding mountains until we were basically in a town in the clouds.

We hired a motorbike -I didn't drive!- and explored the mountainous roads and a waterfall in a national park. We met a lady from a nearby village (or, actually, she met us) and she took us over the mountain to have lunch at her house in a small village of 100 people.

The 'Love Waterfall' and me trying to make a loveheart (it's a subtle reference to the name...it's ok if you didn't get it)

A pause in our mountain trek and our lovely guide Chou.

After we had our fill of the slow pace and fresh air of Sapa we caught the train back to Hanoi, in order to continue on to Halong Bay. And I think that might be a good place to leave this entry, or it's going to end up being too long and you will all get bored...so see 'good morning Vietnam continued' for Halong Bay and Hue.

further a-field

After we laughed with relief at making our flight off Phuket, we had a look at our trusty guide book to find a guest house in Chiang Mai, a town in the north of Thailand, and our next destination. We decided on what looked like a winner, cheap and comfortable with internet and a restaurant. Until we got there and it was closed....since it was nearly 11 at night we weren't being to picky and just went to the next cheap, open place we could find. Apparently it was a place filled with elephants that liked to wake up irritatingly early.

After not too much sleep (because you must never have TOO much sleep....hmmmm) we left the noisy place and went back to our first choice. Then we went to book an overnight trek for the following day and to find trekking shoes, which suddenly seemed like a very important addition to our backpacks.

At 10 the next morning we were picked up and met our trekking buddies which included a father and daughter from Barcelona, a girl from London, a guy who was Canadian but was living in Afghanistan as he served in the army and two German boys who had that odd German way about them. After driving for a while and stopping occasionally at places that gave us opportunities to buy things, we had some fried rice for lunch and then set off on our trek for the day. Our trek for the day involved walking to the top of a really, really big hill where we would sleep for the night in bamboo huts, but it turned out the Germans thought it was a race up the mountain and charged off ahead leaving me to wonder if I was indeed an obese couch potato. Apparently not though, they just wanted to prove themselves. But the exercise was worth it in the end...

We hung out in the little village on the mountain for the rest of the evening and after dinner when we all realised we had no playing cards and there was no TV our guide showed us riddles he made with toothpicks and none of us solved any of them. Then he sung acoustic Thai songs to us with his guitar and when he offered his guitar around nobody else could play it. Then we realised we were probably the worst group ever.

The next day we set off down the moutain at a leisurely 10am. It was far far easier than climbing it, though a challenge presented itself in trying not to slip down the near vertical sections of slippery mud we were walking down. We got to the bottom and found our elephant friends who were going to take us for a walk around the river.

Then we rafted in the river. That was my favourite thing to do. After we had rafted a little (but not too much because I think the wet season makes the river too dangerous in some sections) we did some bridge jumping and then we were back on the road to Chiang Mai.

We had a bit more of a poke around Chiang Mai then we caught the bus to Chiang Rai, further north and nearer the border crossing into Laos. Nothing remarkable happened in Chiang Rai...it's a nice little town and there was a monsoonal thunder storm while we were snuggled up cosily in our $5 a night guest house. This is how we entertained ourselves.

And I think I might leave you all to ponder that...