Travels in South-East Asia - Line Begby
A selection of some emails sent home from Line Begby
JANUARY FEBRUARY MARCH APRIL MAY
SAIGON March 12. 2003
After my stay in Phnom Penh where I stayed for quite some time to get over my sickness, we went to Sihanoukville, down south in Cambodia where we could finally dash off to the beaches again. Sihanoukville was a very small, quiet town with the beach as the main attraction and not much else. But I liked it a lot after the capital. We actually did some diving in Sihanoukville. It was our first dives since the diving-course.
Then, Joergen and I decided to split for some days. After almost 2 months together, which we had spent almost 24 hours a day together all the time, we found out that we both needed to be apart for a while. We hadn't quarelled or anything, but we started to get on each others nerves. So he decided to go back to PP, and I would come after in 5 days before we went to Vietnam. During those days I took a 2-day trip on my own to the neighbour town Kampot. And I took the train there. Oh my god, what a journey! I had heard the train went at 6.30, but when I arrived at the station, they told me it would leave sometime between 7 and 10 o'clock. It left at 10.30. Hm... And while the bus would take 3 hours maximum, the train took 9,5 hours. You can imagine! We stopped several times to log down trees and to just... wait. Hurmf... But I lay in a hammock at the window, and saw a lot of nice nature. It was an experience too, I suppose. From Kampot I took a trip up to a deserted town called Bokor up in the mountains, 1000 metres above sea level in a national park. The trip up there on a dirtbike can be described in one word: Pain. The town was a disappointment, but it was... an experience. The same evening I had a date with the guide from my trip, and he declared his everlasting love to me and offered me a marriage. Poor thing, he was very cute.
The next day I went back to Sihanoukville, spent a few days on the beach there, and then went to PP to meet Joergen again.
Now I'm in Saigon. After 3 weeks in Cambodia ( in the end it felt more like 3 years!) we finally managed to cross the border to another country. Why the delay? We had to wait for the date on our visa. Anyway, the second we passed the border I noticed the difference, just as when we came to Cambodia. Suddenly, the roads were smooth again. No more bumpy roads! Vietnam reminds me more of Thailand than Cambodia, but I have to say I think the vietnamese have much better taste than either the thai or the khmer. The houses here are very tastefull in neo-colonial style mixed with a touch of post-modernisme. At first we gazed at the beautiful clothings some girls used. Long trousers and a kind of very long dress-shirt over, all in white. It is very beautiful. Then we understood that it's actually the school uniforms! I would actually like to have one of those and use them at parties at home. But how should I get one? I'm really above school age now...
The environment is much more maintained here, and you can't see the piles of garbage as in C. There are even streetlights here! Amazing. But the traffic is just as bad. Yesterday we just walked around in the town. I must say it's kind of good to be in a really big city again. Even Phnom Penh in Cambodia was small and there wasn't nearly as much people there as here. Here, the atmosphere is electric with all the life everywhere. We looked in the shops, and I even had a facial treatment. The night before I had been out with some fellow backpackers we met on the bus from Cambodia, so I fell asleep during the facial-massage. And then we spent another night out at the bars with the same people.
Today we have been on a half-day trip to see the Cuh Chi-tunnels under the earth which the vietnamese guerilla used during the Vietnamese war. It was a great trip and I finally got to learn the whole story about why the war took place and why everybody was so mad at the americans being there in the first place. And it was very special to crawl around in those small, tight tunnels with no way of turning back and with the walls pressing against you at all sides. I had to take a few deep breaths not to get claustrophobic. And tomorrow morning we'll go up north to a place called Nha Trang. We heard the diving possibilities are excellent there, with visibility up to 30 metres! We have so many places to see here in Vietnam, so we have to keep up the pace here compared to in Cambodia, but that's just fine.
HANOI March 30. 2003
In my last mail I was still in Saigon, and since then I have been travelling up north through the country up to the city of Hanoi.
From Saigon we went to a small place called Nha Trang, which is first and foremost famous for its incredible beaches and good diving-places. We took the bus for 12 hours, and when we got to the hotel, Joergen's big backpack had disappeared! We understood that it had to still be in Saigon, but now it was lost, with digital camera and everything he owned. It was not a very nice situation. Fortunatly, the travelling-agency had it at the office, so he got it back the first thing next morning. So after that event, we have been more careful with actually seeing our bags beeing put on the bus, not just trusting the bus-people to do it for us.
Nha Trang was wonderful. The beaches were heavenly, but the reason why we came there was to scuba-dive. We booked a trip the evening we came there, so the next day we left early in the morning to go with a boat together with other divers. The dives were excellent! The two dives were the best I've had so far. There weren't that much fish to see, but a lot of corals, and the fish we did see were more spectacular than the other we have seen so far. We saw 5 lion-fish, which are some of the most poisonous in the world, and we saw a barracuda, huge bright blue sea-stars, angelfish, and so on. It was a great experience!
The next day we just relaxed on the beach.
The day after we went to Hoi An. The bus trip was very long, 13 hours or so, and on the way we met two german guys, so when we arrived in the town, we ended up sharing a double-room with them for only 10 dollars a night! And I must say Hoi An is probably my favorite town so far. It's small, with narrow streets, and the houses are very european inspired, and almost look as if they belong to the Mediterrean area, in Italy or south of France! And the shopping is amazing! Hoi An is famous for all the tailors there, and you can really shop till you drop there! It's dead-cheap to buy tailor-made clothes, even cheaper than buying ready-to-wear clothes. If you order in the morning, you can pick up the clothes in the evening. I was quite modest: I just bought a beautiful typical vietnames outfit with silk trousers and a silk shirt, a green self-designed dress, and a black asian -cut top. 36 dollar!!!! Tailor-made! But the german guys went absolutly nuts. One of them bought 31 pieces of different clothes, including a coat exactelly as the one in Matrix. And you could also buy tailor-made shoes! For a nice pair of very nice self-designed sneakers, you could pay 8 dollars. I'm sorry if I get a bit carried away, but the prices, quality and speed was so amazing! And the town was really picturesque. Lovely...
After 4 or 5 days we were planning on taking the bus for 6 hours to Hue, stay there for one night, and then go to Hanoi on a 12 hour-long bustrip. The nature on the way was just amazing. Huge mountains with roads that could compare with Trollstigen in Norway, and right next to it there was a beautiful beach with huge waves.
When we came to Hue, we booked a room in a hotel and went out to see the town. But when we sat down to eat and thought about when we could reach the embassy in Hanoi to get the new Visa-card for Joergen after his was stolen in Cambodia, and we realized we actually should take the bus to Hanoi the same day. If not, we would just come to a closed embassy on Saturday. We looked at the time, and saw that the bus would leave Hue in 45 minutes. So during those 45 minutes, we went to the ticket-office and bought two tickets, went back to the hotel, took a shower, packed our bags again, and ran back to the tourist-office in time to get the bus! Puh. But we made it, so after a few hours of rest, we sat on the bus again. But the few streets we saw of the town wasn't that impressive anyway.
When we came to Hanoi 5 o'clock in the morning, we get a bit of a shock by the cold there. It was about 14 degrees, and we came in thin summer clothes! It was terrible, so we went to the hotel we had decided to take as quickly as possible, and went to sleep.
Hanoi is not as impressive as Saigon or as nice as Hoi An. I think it's a big city like any else. But from here we have taken a couple of tours to the districts around, and they have been spectacular. First we went to the Perfume Pagoda, where the group we went with was taken in a boat rown by two women. On each side of the river there were rice fields, and we were surrounded by mountains. Not mountains as in Norway, but very strange shapen mountains. Almost like this: WWWWUUUVVVKKWWWYY It was absolutely wonderful.
The second trip we have taken has been a three-day trip to Halong Bay. It's an area on Unesco's World Heritage List, with more than 3000 islands of different sizes. Some of them look like small ice-bergs in mountain, with some green vegetation on the top. We went with a group of 9 other people on a very nice wooden boat and guide. The first day we sailed around between the islands, and came to an island with 3 huge lime-stone caves. It was as something I only had seen on Discovery Channel or something. I was speechless as we went looking around. HUGE caves!!! I don't even try to describe it, since it was undescribable.
The next day, yesterday, we went trekking. We went to another island where we went up steep hills, on mud and stone. It was very good to use the body and muscles again after months of relaxation. The lost time I got some exercise was in Bangkok! So when we came to the top, all the tourists were dripping of swet and breathed very hard, while all the vietnamese guides hardly broke a swet at all. Nice... After lunch we went back to the boat and went to a place to swim. I was the first to jump into the water, but also the first to get back up. After Thailand, Cambodia and the south of Vietnam, I thought 20 degrees in the water was way too cold to stay for a long time in the water swimming.
Today we came back to Hanoi, and we are planning on going to Laos Saturday. We have been to see a puppet-theatre on water which is very famous in Vietnam and Hanoi. It was a nice experience.
The strange thing about Vietnam is that you meet the same tourists over and over again in different places. The reason is that most of us have an open-tour-bus-ticket, where you can go from one town to the other anytime you like. So now we have met an austrian couple and two swedish girls 3 or 4 times randomly, and we are planning on meeting the guys we went out with in Saigon today or tomorrow. Not to mention all the people we recognize but don't really know.
It's a shame we have to leave Vietnam this early. In comparison to Cambodia, we have done so much here and moved around so quickly that I only feel I have been here for one week. And this is definitely the country I like the best so far. The nature is far better than in Thailand and Cambodia, and I like the style of the culture far better as well. But everyone we have met says that Laos is their favorite country, so I guess I may get another favorite country in a few days. The people in Vietnam are a bit more agressive than in the other countries, and everybody touches you all the time to get your attention, or waves or shouts at you.
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