Author Archives: Julie

When things don’t go according to plan

After Cat Ba Island we travelled to Phong Nha-Ke Bang National Park. The national park is an emerging area for tourism in Vietnam with the world’s two largest caves both having been discovered there in the past 10 years. We were all looking forward to our planned activities which went something like this:

Day 1 – arrive by overnight sleeper train from Hanoi at 07.49, hire bikes and explore the area around our guesthouse, Phong Nha Farmstay
Day 2 – take a guided tour 7km into Paradise Cave, the second largest cave in the world
Day 3 – transit to Hue through the de-militarised zone (DMZ)

Day 1

We caught our sleeper train with no problems and settled down for a good night’s sleep in our 6 berth compartment. Two of our cabin mates got off in the early hours leaving just the three of us and a Vietnamese lady. We knew that the train was not scheduled to stop for long in Dong Hoi so we got up at 7am, dressed, donned our rucksacks, refused the offer of some rice from the friendly lady and waved her goodbye to wait by the carriage door. After several minutes of standing in the corridor it was clear that we weren’t imminently arriving at the station and so we went back to sit in the compartment.

After another hour, no sign of the station and having had no breakfast we decided to investigate the offerings of the buffet car. The waiter gave us a menu but seemed keen for us to try the ‘chicken rice’ so we ordered three trays of rice with a fried drumstick and some sliced cucumber. It was pretty tasty considering it was cooked on the train and only cost 40,000 VND each (£1.20) or maybe that was just extreme hunger! The train stopped often, once for almost an hour, to let trains going north pass. We tried to work out where we were so that we could estimate our arrival time but we were never quite sure and anyway with all of the stops our speed wasn’t really consistent. Mainly we settled into reading, going through photos from the last couple of days and playing Angry Birds!

Jo reading on the train

Eventually we picked up a little speed and pulled into Dong Hoi station. 8 hours late on what should have been a 8.75 hour journey… Fortunately our taxi transfer from the farmstay was waiting for us and we later found out that the train from the day before had arrived just a few hours ahead of ours – a mammoth 37 hours to travel the 522km from Hanoi.

Dong Hoi station at last!

When we arrived at the farmstay there was more bad news. Due to the two typhoons and subsequent flooding which had torn through the area over the previous two weeks (also the reason for the train’s delay) there was no mains electricity. They did have a generator for lights and charging cameras, laptops and phones but it wasn’t powerful enough for air conditioning or hot water. A cold shower’s never much fun but Vietnam is warm enough that it wasn’t so bad. Much more disappointingly though, access roads into the National Park had been closed and Paradise Cave wouldn’t be open for at least another 3 days.

Oh well, we decided to drown our sorrows in a nice bottle of wine (or two) paid for with a small portion of the budget that we’d set aside for the cave tour, eat a thoroughly delicious home cooked meal, and hope that it would have stopped raining by the next morning so that at least we might be able to do a bike ride.

Day 2

We awoke to find that the flood waters, which at their height before our arrival had been lapping the top step of the house, had fallen quite far in the night. Our hopes were buoyed but the weather had other plans and during breakfast it started to rain again. Heavily. We settled in to some more reading, blogging and photo editing, and Andrew amused himself by turning the 3G dongle in the guesthouse’s laptop into a wifi hotspot so that we could check our emails.

Lucky, one of the guesthouse dogs, a morning of heavy rain, Jo and Andrew reading on the terrace

By lunchtime cabin fever had begun to set in. The rain had eased a little so we decided to borrow bikes and head to the local noodle shop for lunch. After riding past it at first (when he said on the left after the turning onto the main road we didn’t expect it to be on the corner of the junction!) and meeting a number of locals who varied between shy smiles, shouting hello and trying to have us hold a baby, we turned around, looked more closely and were pleased to find the small restaurant empty but open. We ordered three bowls of beef noodle soup and crossed our fingers that the rain would stop so that we could explore some more local life in the afternoon.

Cycling into the village, the noodles were worth it

After eating we convinced ourselves that the rain was getting lighter and we could head out a bit further on the bikes. Mike, the guesthouse manager, explained how to get to Phong Nha town mentioning that the first part would be very muddy and that “the bridge might be flooded but you should be able to wade through”. It sounded like an adventure!

Flooded fields outside the farmstay, we’re told that there are rice paddies under there somewhere…

It soon became clear that the rain definitely wasn’t going to stop. We greeted the slightly bewildered looks of locals with smiles and more than once we heard peals of laughter following us down the road from people sitting on their dry porches. I suspect that there are several Phong Nha residents who now think that foreigners are completely crazy and enjoy cycling in a downpour without the usual Vietnamese accessory of a waterproof poncho. By the time we reached ‘the bridge’ we were drenched and, faced with a raging torrent, we reluctantly turned around.

Andrew at ‘the bridge’

Back at the farmstay, Ben, the Aussie half of the Australian-Vietnamese couple who own the place, took pity on us and offered to drive us into town. During the short trip we saw some of the limestone karsts at the edge of the national park, met the man who discovered the world’s largest cave, and had a beer at the hostel which Ben also owns. After another delicious dinner we settled down to a Monopoly tournament with Ben, his wife Bich, his visiting friend Nathan, and Dean who works on reception. As with all games of Monopoly it dragged on for hours with plenty of friendly rivalry. Unlike most games of Monopoly I found myself in the winning position!

Monopoly at the Phong Nha Farmstay

Day 3

At last, something that was in our original plan! The transfer to Hue began at the slightly uncivilised hour of 7am and, after a later night than expected, we were all a little groggy but there was time to rest during the two hours that it took until our first stop at the Vinh Moc tunnels. The village of Vinh Moc was an important point in the supply line of North Vietnam during the American (Vietnam) War. Because of this the Americans bombed the area heavily to force the villagers to leave. Instead they built almost 2km of tunnels and moved the whole village underground.

Plan of the tunnels

Our guided visit took us through the upper levels of the tunnels (the lowest levels can only be visited in the dry season). As we crept through, not quite able to stand up, we saw the tiny niches where whole families would live, the meeting room and medical stations, including a reconstruction of the maternity area. The villagers were underground for so long, from 1966 to early 1972, that 17 babies were born inside the tunnels! Despite the Americans dropping an average of around 7 tonnes of bombs per person on the area they didn’t manage to destroy the tunnels and no villagers lost their lives. Unfortunately, our guide seemed somewhat disinterested and keen to get the visit over as quickly as possible, but despite that it was a fascinating place to see.

Julie just inside the tunnels, Jo at a tunnel entrance, the cramped area where families had to live

Some of the tunnel entrances are right next to the sea

Our second and final stop in the DMZ was at the Ben Hai River Museum. This was the border between the two halves of the country during the war and items on display include giant loudspeakers used to shout propaganda messages across the river and a huge flag tower. There was also an exhibit showing the injuries which are still happening from unexploded bombs and land mines.

Andrew and Julie checking for sounds from the huge loudspeaker [photo credit: Jo Harris]

The Flag Tower

We arrived in Hue a couple of hours later. It wasn’t quite the stay that we’d hoped for, but it was nice to have some downtime and it whetted our appetite to visit the National Park again in a slightly less wet season.

Life on the street in Hanoi

Street Eats and Market Tour, Hanoi

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We read quite a few travel blogs and have noticed recently that other travellers take food tours to get to know the cuisine of a new place – for example here and here. This sounded like a great idea to us and so before we arrived in Vietnam we did some research and found that the Hanoi Cooking Centre runs a half day Street Eats and Market Tour which sounded like just what we were after.

We were told to arrive at 9am with an appetite when we would meet our guide and the rest of the group. Our guide, Huế, is head chef at the Cooking Centre and was knowledgeable and enthusiastic about Vietnamese food. The rest of our group consisted of an Australian mother with her teenage son and a German/Canadian couple who live in China and their two young children (aged about 2 and 4).

Phờ and Green Tea

First stop was just across the road for the classic Vietnamese dish of noodle soup, phờ. Andrew went for the beef and I decided on chicken. Huế told us that the beef stock was prepared by first soaking the beef in cold water for 2 hours and then cooking it really slowly, usually overnight, to extract the full flavour from the meat and bones. The chicken stock doesn’t take quite as long but neither is allowed to boil to ensure the soup is translucent.

With the phờ we had green tea prepared from fresh leaves.

Phờ (clockwise from top left): preparation area, squeezing lime into the chicken phờ, not much leftover, beef phờ topped with garlic and chillis

Market

To give us a bit of a breather before the next course, Huế took us to the local market to see the different foods on offer. Similarly to the markets that we saw in China and Hong Kong, everything was very fresh with live fish and lots of crisp greens.

Shopping from the back of your scooter is common practice in Hanoi, Huế showing us a banana flower which is made into a tasty Vietnamese salad, This butcher worked cross-legged from her block!

Rice Pancake Rolls and Essence of Water Bug

After a brief taxi ride to Hanoi’s Old Quarter we arrived at a traditional rice pancake roll restaurant. The pancakes are made from rice flour, are as thin as French crêpes and are cooked with steam rather than the frying that we’re used to. We tried two types filled with chicken and pork, both were sprinkled with dried fried shallots and were very tasty. Huế left us to munch through the pancakes before reappearing with a saucer and what looked a dead cockroach, oh dear it looked like we were going to be thrown into the deep end of Asian cuisine… He explained that it was a kind of water bug and asked who wanted to try it. None of us looked keen, but peer pressure might have pushed us into it if he hadn’t offered an alternative – the bug is squeezed into a sort of essence which we could add to our dipping sauce to try. It tasted surprisingly like a strong almond essence, I’m not sure that it necessarily enhanced the pancakes, but it wasn’t unpleasant either.

The rice pancake chef was rather glamorous

Hovering tentatively over the dipping sauce with added insect…

Green Rice with Banana

I missed Huế’s explanation of the green rice which we bought from a street vendor, but according to vietworldkitchen.com

It is freshly harvested sticky (glutinous/sweet) rice that’s been toasted to bring out its delicate flavor

I did however hear that it’s seasonal and so we were only able to try it as it is autumn.

Green rice with banana, we found the flavour reminiscent of dried fruit

West Lake Prawn Cakes

A definite highlight of the day, these prawn cakes are made from a sweet potato batter and whole prawns. Originally the prawns came from West Lake in Hanoi city hence the name, but the waters are no longer as clean as they were and the shellfish is now sourced elsewhere. They are fried in three pans of oil of varying temperatures to ensure their crispness and non greasy texture. The dipping sauce was made from fish sauce, lime juice, green papaya, carrot and …. Huế told us that Vietnamese eat the prawns with heads, shells and all (it’s good calcium for their dairy-light diets) so we tried them that way and found that it just added extra crunch!

We expressed our liking for these early on and, as everyone else was slowing down as they filled up, Huế force fed us the last of them (arms twisted behind our backs obviously…) by dropping them into our dip bowls. I know, it’s a hard life…

Us enjoying the prawn cakes

Bún Chả

The next street restaurant on the itinerary sold bún chả. Bún refers to the noodles, long, thin rice vermicelli, and chả is the barbecued meat served with it. The noodles come cold (and handily pre-chopped with scissors) and the meat is slices of pork belly and little patties of pork meat served in the ever present dipping sauce. The stand we ate at cooked the meat on bamboo skewers giving it a lovely smoky flavour.

Bún Chả (clockwise from top left): menu, barbecued meat, noodles and meat served separately, tucking in

Ché

After all that it was time to see whether we had room for pudding. Ché is a traditional Vietnamese dessert made from a mixture of beans, jelly, tapioca, corn and fruit topped with coconut milk or condensed milk. The stalls are a bright display of the different ingredients and despite the unlikely sounding combination we found the ché to be tasty and sweet enough to give us a sugar rush!

Colourful Ché stand

Andrew’s ché

Bia Hoi

We had understood that the tour would end with dessert so when Huế called a taxi after we’d finished our ché our stomachs groaned. Fortunately we were now entering the liquid part of the tour and as everyone knows there’s always room for beer! The taxi took us to a traditional Bia Hoi bar, common throughout the city and usually with small plastic tables and tiny stools occupying the pavement outside. The beer is ‘fresh’ and served straight from the keg into glasses which are roughly half a pint. It’s only about 3% alcohol so it’s light and easy to drink on a hot day.

I thought that my photo wasn’t straight until I realised that the glass leaned to one side! Typically the glasses used in Bia Hoi bars are made from this slightly green, bubbly glass

Vietnamese Coffee

The last stop on our route was a traditional coffee house. Vietnamese coffee is strong and usually served with condensed milk which means that it’s also sweet. The stuff served by our guesthouse for breakfast is not really to my taste but the blend at 80 year old Cà Phê Duy Trí was much smoother and the condensed milk had been frothed to create something akin to the latte art that is often seen in fancy coffee shops at home.

6 month summary

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Incredibly, it’s 3 months since we did our original quarterly summary. Here’s the next instalment…

In the Gobi desert, with the Chinggis Khaan statue in eastern Mongolia, on the Great Wall of China with Julie’s parents, taking the Harbour Ferry tour in Hong Kong

Countries visited in the last three months (1st July to 30th September)

Mongolia, China, Hong Kong

Have you managed to stay within your budget (£70 per day)? And what has been the expense breakdown?

Almost within budget, our average daily spend over the three months has been £70.29 although with a lot of variation in the quarter. August’s spend was high, partly because of the cost of our tour to eastern Mongolia at the start of the month and partly because we moved faster than usual when Julie’s parents came out to visit us in the second half of the month. We made up for this by living very frugally through our 3.5 weeks in Hong Kong in September.

Our daily spend to date since we left home has been £70.88.

Accommodation is the biggest expense again at 28.5% – this is skewed slightly downwards as the cost of accommodation was included in the tour price for our two long trips in Mongolia – a total of 15 nights
Coming in at a close second this quarter is Guides and tours which not only includes our Mongolian trips but also a couple of ones that we took in Xi’an
Next is food at just over 15%, again skewed slightly downwards due to its inclusion in the tour prices. Kitchens have only been rarely available in our accommodation in China and Hong Kong so we have been eating out for almost every meal (the exception is breakfast – fruit and biscuits/crackers can be done without a kitchen!). Fortunately this has been relatively cheap.
Intercity transportation is a much lower percentage than last quarter at 10.7%. This is basically just our trains around China as moving in Mongolia was very cheap on the local buses or included in the tour price and we never moved very far in Hong Kong
Entertainment and entry fees – 5%. Entry to tourist sights in China is very expensive (around £15 each for many of them), however we found Hong Kong’s sights to be very cheap or even free!
Alcohol – seems very low at just 3.5%. Be assured that our beer consumption has not dropped, it’s just the price per pint which is cheaper! An honourable mention should be made for the Chinese brand Yanjing which we agree is the nicest lager we’ve tasted.
Our visa costs this quarter were much lower than in our first three months. The Mongolian visa process was pretty straightforward and although the Chinese visa application was relatively complicated it was cheap. As UK passport holders we can stay for up to 6 months in Hong Kong without a visa.
Other stuff – the remaining 7.5% covers local transportation (generally incredibly cheap), laundry, toiletries, haircuts, etc as well as a new pair of jeans for Julie and new walking shoes for Andrew (thanks to Mum and Dad for the courier service!)

What has surprised you most in the last three months of travel?

How cheap and plentiful public transportation is in other countries. I don’t know if it’s subsidised by the government but it seems incredible that the subway system in Beijing costs just ¥2 (about £0.20) per trip anywhere within the city considering the cost of a similar ticket in London (I just looked it up, the cheapest single ticket without an Oyster card is £4.50). The trains are very new, air conditioned and clean (a no eating and drinking rule means that rubbish doesn’t get left behind so much). Beijing’s buses are even cheaper – ¥1 (£0.10) to go anywhere and similarly comfortable. It costs over £2 for the 10 minute trip from our home in Gateshead to the centre of Newcastle… And it’s not just Beijing, the local transport networks in the rest of China and Hong Kong was just as impressive.

Apart from family and friends, what are you missing most about life in the UK?

Julie – Since we left Russia I’ve had very little access to kitchens and much as I’m loving the food everywhere we go I’m really missing cooking for ourselves, especially more complicated meals and baking.

Andrew – Finishing the Trans-Siberian railway, this big adventure that we’d planned the start of our journey around and which, I admit, was about as far as I’d researched into our two year trip, is a monumental undertaking in and of itself which left me contemplating “what now?”. I do wonder if those of us who have incorporated it into longer travel plans all feel a similar way. Yes, I felt a little homesick after Beijing, the knowing how everything works (where to go to buy, say, rawlplugs, or just instinctively knowing how much, relatively, everything should cost, or being able to have more than a basic conversation with strangers rather than just “hello, how are you?, good thanks, and you?”. I started to wonder if I’d had enough of travelling and wanted a “work” break – the line from Henry IV sprang to mind – “If all the year were playing holidays, to sport would be as tedious as to work”. And then the universe read my thoughts and offered me some software programming and web development in Hong Kong – I have to say I was sorely tempted (in fact, I still think about it). The reassurance that I can find interesting, challenging work was enough to put that part of my mind at ease. For the time being, at least :)

What’s the most memorable sight that you’ve seen in the last three months?

Julie – For me it has to be the Great Wall. We were so lucky with the weather to have a day of clear blue skies and the scale of it just took my breath away. It also reminds me of Mum and Dad’s visit – I’m so impressed that they managed to climb all of the steps up to the wall.

Andrew – The Great plains and expansive steppe of Mongolia’s nothingness is what I choose to remember the most from the last three months. It is so humbling and yet so inspirational an experience to see nothing but wilderness in every direction.

Tell us a funny story from the last three months of travel.

Julie – When we arrived at Pingyao station to take the train to Xi’an our tickets were checked and we were directed to the correct platform. On the platform a lady employee of the station was directing people to the correct area depending on which carriage they were in. Andrew, Dad, Mum and I were the only people getting into carriage 10 but she made us queue up in single file… As we waited for the train, Andrew decided that he would take a picture of the platform and stepped forwards to get the angle he wanted. Cue the platform lady shouting at him through her loudspeaker! He moved back into place and none of us dared move again until the train arrived.

Andrew – Our driver, guide and shepherd for our eastern Mongolia trip had a fondness for a certain expletive. As you’ll hear at the end of the video in the afore-linked post, Bacha says after we crossed a river that had we taken a 22km diversion further upstream, resulting in an extra 44km, that, in Bacha’s words, “that is bullshit” (I cut the video just before he was about to say it – we knew it was coming :o)

Who is the person you’ve met that you remember the most from the last three months?

Our 9 day tour to the Gobi desert has been one of the highlights of our trip so far – for the great people we spent the time with as much as the scenery – many of whom we’ve subsequently met up with again

[photo credit: Wasut (Khun) Pornpatcharapong]

Finally, what have you found to be the greatest challenge so far?

Curiously, we’d say again that time has been our greatest challenge. Julie’s parents landed slap bang in the middle of our Chinese visa which meant we weren’t in one place long enough to apply for an extension, so we made a Plan B and headed for Hong Kong. We’ve since decided that one-month visas are too short.
But it’s not just visa restrictions, our days seem short and after 6 months on the road we’re wondering where all the time goes! We’re usually up and out by 8:30 – 9:00am, but without 8 or so hours of a full time job to account for we still feel like we’re behind on our reading, research, blogging and photograph tagging.

Free things to do in Hong Kong

Walking

Walking the streets is always a good way to get a feel for a place and you can often stumble upon some interesting sights, be it a temple or a restaurant with tanks of fish outside! The Hong Kong Tourism Board (HKTB) publishes a booklet with a number of different walks which we found helpful in giving our wandering a little direction and telling us some of the history of the things we were seeing. We particularly enjoyed the Mong Kok markets walk and the Ping Shan Heritage Trail.

I dread to think how much one of these would cost for dinner!

Ping Shan Heritage Trail (clockwise from top left): Tsui Sing Lau Pagoda, interior courtyard of Kun Ting Study Hall, restoration work in Hung Shing Temple, plaster mouldings in Ching Shu Hin

Parks and Gardens

Hong Kong has some beautiful parks. We especially liked Kowloon Park which is just off Nathan Road, very close by if you’re staying in hectic Chungking Mansions and need some peace and space! They’re very clean, not too busy and usually have lots of different areas – water features, aviaries, and exercise equipment as well as plenty of shady benches under the trees. Most of them even have free wifi thanks to a scheme run by the Hong Kong government – just look for the freegovwifi-e network and input govwifi for both the username and password. We spent several relaxed afternoons blogging in the park!

Sculpture in Kowloon Park, Andrew blogging in Yuen Long Town Park, pretty flowers

Also worthy of a mention is the Nan Lian Garden which is attached to the Chi Lin Nunnery in Diamond Hill. Its sculpted banks of trees and central pond with golden pagoda was well worth the trip.

Observation deck

We discovered on one of our self-guided walks that the Bank of China Tower in Central (1 Garden Road) has a free observation deck on the 43rd floor. You’ll need to take your passport and register at the reception desk in the lobby to get a lift pass but there was no one else there when we visited and the view was stunning.

Museums

Seven of Hong Kong’s museums are free on Wednesdays. To be fair they only cost HK$10 each (about £0.80) on a non-free day so they’re hardly going to break the bank, but every little helps…

We had three Wednesdays and so naturally we visited three of the museums…

the excellent Hong Kong Museum of History tells the Story of Hong Kong from its natural history to the different ethnic groups who lived there and the story of the British colonisation
the Hong Kong Heritage Museum had fascinating exhibitions ranging from Bruce Lee, to fashion design, to traditional woodblock printing and more…
Hong Kong’s Museum of Art has an excellent location on the shorefront in Tsim Sha Tsui. We particularly enjoyed the exhibitions of traditional Chinese painting and the fascinating guided tour of the Xubaizhai collection

Tai Chi

If you spend any time in China or Hong Kong and happen to be up and about fairly early then it’s likely that you’ll see locals doing Tai Chi in parks and open spaces. In Hong Kong you get to have a go as well! Three times a week on the harbour front near to the Hong Kong Museum of Art there is a free Tai Chi class taught by husband and wife team William and Pandora (and run by the HKTB). We really enjoyed it although we often found ourselves thinking we were doing quite well just before noticing that our feet were in entirely the wrong position!

A Symphony of Lights

To be honest, we didn’t find this free light show (which runs every night at 8pm) to be as spectacular as its blurb suggested:

“A Symphony of Lights” has been awarded the world’s “Largest Permanent Light and Sound Show” by Guinness World Records. This nightly spectacle combines interactive lights of 45 key buildings on both Hong Kong Island and Kowloon with musical effects to showcase the vibrancy and glamorous night vista of Victoria Harbour.

Nevertheless, it is definitely worth heading to the waterfront to see the Hong Kong skyline at night.

Laser show. English narration happens on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.

Markets

I always love visiting local markets, and there are some interesting ones in the Mong Kok area of Hong Kong. We also enjoyed exploring the local food markets where we got splashed by a fish trying to escape, admired the unusual vegetables and marvelled at the chicken feet, cooked ducks with heads intact and miscellaneous other things that we Europeans would not normally consider to be edible…

Roast meat shop (notice that the birds still have their heads), a neat display of vegetables, a selection of meat and fish ‘balls’

Hiking

Not the first activity that comes to mind when you think of urban Hong Kong, but a surprising 70% of its land area is green hills, mountains and tropical forest. The trails are well marked and the scenery lovely, just remember to take plenty of water and watch out for the giant spiders…

Mountains and path on the way from Po Lin monastery to Tung Chung, trail marker signs, Giant Golden Orb Weaver Spider

Temples and churches

Lots of Hong Kong’s religious sites can be visited for free.

Incense coils in the Man Mo temple in Sheung Wan, St John’s Cathedral in Central, Us with the Big buddha statue at Po Lin monastery on Lantau island, altar in Yeung Hau Temple on the Ping Shan Heritage Trail

Local festivals

During our first week in Hong Kong we happened to see a poster advertising the Mid-Autumn Lantern Festival. There were three locations around the country and the closest to where we were staying was Tuen Mun in the western New Territories. We weren’t sure what to expect but we enjoyed the display of colourful lanterns in the park and cultural shows – Cantonese opera, youth stage, and circus artists. To find out what’s on at other times check out the Leisure and Cultural Services Department website.

Lantern displays in Tuen Mun Park

Getting around

Although all of these activities are free, Hong Kong is a big place and at some point you’ll need to use public transportation to get you from point A to B. Fortunately Hong Kong’s underground rail network, MTR, is cheap, easy to use and extensive. And if you’re staying for longer than a couple of days then we’d recommend picking up an Octopus card which gives you discounts on MTR tickets and saves you queuing for tickets before every journey or needing to find the correct change on the bus.