Halong Bay

While staying in Hanoi, mum and I took advantage of the overnight trips available to Halong Bay, an archipelago of 3,000 islands in the Gulf of Tonkin, near China.

We took a four hour bus to the city of Halong (where the dragon descends into the sea), where we boarded a traditional style 'junk' boat to tour the bay for two days. Although it was very cold, we stayed upstairs in the open air for as long as possible enjoying the stunning views. There were about 12 people on our boat tour, and we all seemed to get on very well. There were a few swedish guys my age, a couple who had spent five years touring the world as dancers and acrobats in the musical Notre Dame de Paris, and a few others from Italy, South Africa and the US. I think the memory I will take from this trip is not only the stunning Halong Bay, but also how you can have such a wonderful time with a group of total strangers, with varied languages and backgrounds... We all sat up playing cards, drinking wine and eating seafood late into the night, in the middle of the clear, dark, peaceful bay. It was a very very special few days.

Shopping boats... Modern Viet Nam... Beer and Pepsi for US dollars on Halong Bay.....

View from the top of the 90 steps which lead to the Hang Dau Go caves

Hang Dau Go & Hang Sung Sot Caves

Floating fishing villages

Cccccold Rhonda...

One of my favorite moments from our trip, kayaking around some of the islands with one of our fellow travelers Zuban. It was such an amazing feeling to get out into the bay, where you couldn't see another boat or person, just crystal blue water and islands to discover...

Photos taken by Rhonda when waking very early on the junk boat, to find a surreal, mirror-still, bay

Rhianna found some swedes as usual... with Kim, David, Klaus and Johan... we met up with Kim and David at a number of points along our simultaneous journeys south.

Lunch in Halong, check out the menu above... Homer Simpson would be in heaven... 'Steamed Crab full of fat in beer' ... heart attack waiting to happen

Hanoi!

I am used to the temperature reaching the mid 30s every day. I don’t like it, I will never acclimatise, but I am accustomed to waking, putting on skirt and t-shirt, flip-flops and sunscreen. Unfortunately this mindset also influenced my packing when preparing to leave Phnom Penh for Siem Reap, and then on to Viet Nam. I knew Hanoi was cooler, however it is ‘close’, so can’t be too bad… I checked to weather a few days (or was that weeks…) ago and it was nice, sunny, mild….. I can’t imagine why I didn’t realise that thought was a little lacking in fact. Fact: Hanoi is also close to CHINA, which is COLD right now, SNOW cold.

So, imagine the chill that shot through my body as we disembarked our airplane in Hanoi at 8pm in the evening to be greeted by 15’c, cold wind, and rain…. Brrrrrrrr! It was at this moment that I realised I really have begun to feel at home in Cambodia, as I had completely forgotten what it was like to be cold! The warmest outfit I had packed was a pair of cotton cargo pants and a light ¾ sleeve cotton. And putting shoes in my pack had not even crossed my mind! As we drove in the taxi through the cold night into the city, I realised my wardrobe was going to need to change, and quickly!

Our first night in Hanoi was spent at the Sunshine Hotel, a place with cold floors, damp bathroom, and very funny bright blankets. And to my poor mum’s horror, up about 10 flights of stairs, which do not go well with worn out, arthritic knees!


As we woke the next morning, we finally got a chance to survey the old city. A very beautiful and chaotic jumble of tall, thin houses, shop fronts, markets and street vendors. The difference between this city, and those in Cambodia, or the rest of Viet Nam for that matter, reminded me again of the beautiful contrasts and constant changes you find in South East Asia. After a quick check-in online with my brothers back home, and organising dinner plans with a lovely Dutch couple staying in our hotel, we headed out to find me some shoes! We managed to find Dong Xuan Market, and a pair of very groovy blue and white stripe converse all stars and socks. We then set off exploring the winding streets and shops of the old town, while I adjusted to the very strange sensation of having socks and shoes on for the first time in six months.










(Discovering the Old Town, in new shoes!)


We had an amazing lunch at ‘Little Hanoi 2’, including delightful Nêms and an amazing dish of caramelised stir-fried pork with sesame seeds. I then stumbled on the outrageously pretty clothing store called Kén, which took up some time trying on all their outrageously colourful and exquisite silk clothing. Finally warm in a new jacket and shoes, we met up again with Mai and Ron from Sunshine hotel, and they took us out for a fantastic dinner at Ladybird, the highlight being an amazing fish and vegetable stir-fry cooked at our table, and some delicious grilled minced pork skewers with Vietnamese mint and garlic. Yummy!













(Beautiful Kén, and yes, I now own that brilliant fairy skirt!)

(dinner at Ladybird, delicious!!)

The following days in Hanoi were spent exploring markets and small allies that criss-cross the old town; visiting the Ho Chi Minh museum, house and mausoleum; the women's museum; the water puppet theater; and, the Hoan Kiem Lake and Ngoc Son (jade mountain) temple. Oh, and eating, lots and lots of eating - street stalls, restaurants, Koto (hospitality training restaurant) etc etc

(chaos and calm)

(Rhonda contemplates a road crossing)

(Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum and Stilt House)

(Hoan Kiem Lake & Ngoc Son Temple)

(Dinner at Koto, a hospitality training restaurant which works with trainers from Australian TAFE colleges, similar to the one my mum taught at, obviously my mum got into the kitchen in no time! And we gave a donation to help them with the building of their new restaurant... a wonderful training institution with great students!)

In the Shadow of Ancient Giants

On Sunday 26th February, Mum and I started our two week holiday in Cambodia and Viet Nam. Our first stop was Siem Reap in Cambodia, close to the site of the ancient Angkor temples.
For a full photo slideshow of our trip, visit my Flickr account.

As I have driven the five hour road to Siem Reap with work, I decided that to fly would be much more sensible. On Sunday morning, Mum and I left Phnom Penh, and half an hour later, arrived at Siem Reap’s new airport. Siem Reap is a wild place. At the moment it is going through an incredible, tourist-driven, development boom. In the last year approximately 10,000 new hotel rooms were built. Most of the town is being dug up in order to lay new infrastructure and pave roads.

On the advice of friends from Australia who had recently been ‘tourists’ in Siem Reap, we orgainsed to hire a guide with a car to take us around to the temples for three days. The special thing about our guide was that she was female. It is quite unusual to have a female guide; especially one in her early 20’s driving a car! Sarna was lovely, and immediately became very protective and caring towards Mum. She never left Mum’s side as we climbed over temple steps and tree roots for three days.

We took great delight every evening as we caught a tok tok back to our guest house after dinner, when the driver would inevitably ask ‘you need guide, Angkor Wat, good price..’ and we could say ‘no thank you, we have a guide, a lady guide, and she is driving a car’. They would laugh hysterically at this. Who ever heard of such a thing!

As Cambodia was heating up to its hottest period of the year, we decided to limit the number of temples we wanted to see during our visit to five: Angkor Wat, Banteay Srei, Bang Mealea, the Bayon and Ta Prohm.

We started our first afternoon with a visit to Angkor Wat. A truly incredible place. Being a very poor history student, I will not even attempt to delve into the complex past of this giant. For those interested to know more, you could start by visiting The Apsara Authority.

Unfortunately, Angkor Wat is now completely overrun with bus loads of tourists, and I found it hard to feel the magic of this place. We were glad to have the opportunity to visit, and appreciate the grandeur, however I think I need another visit during lunch time in the wet season (a moment when the least visitors are there) to fully appreciate Angkor Wat. As the sun set we walked to an outlying temple to watch the sky turn orange over Angkor, and then head back for dinner at my favourite restaurant in Siem Reap, Moloppor.

Or second day was surely the most memorable. On the advice of my good friend Martina, we organised to drive to Bang Mealea, a ruin in the jungle about two hours from Siem Reap. On the way, we stopped at beautiful Banteay Srei (‘Citadel of the Women’), a stunning small Hindu temple dedicated to Shiva. It has extremely delicate and detailed stone carvings including re-creations of scenes from the epic Ramayana. Seeing this temple bought back many memories of India for my mum, a feeling that will surely be reversed for me when I get the chance to visit there!

After our early morning visit to Banteay Srei, we took to the road again and headed towards Bang Mealea. Bang Mealea is in the middle of an ancient Angkorian road connection between Angkor Thom and Preah Khan in Preah Vihear Province, and has the same floor plan as Angkor Wat. The truly magical thing about Bang Mealea is that it has been left at the mercy of the jungle. Arriving at a small rural town, you must walk over an ancient bridge crossing a large moat, then through the jungle, passing oxen and local farmers, until the trees clear and you are faced with this enormous slumbering ruin. The beauty of this site is breathtaking. To see the temple in its true state of disrepair is more impressive than the large restored sites around Siem Reap, as you really get a sense of the age and scale of this ancient structure. Jungle vines twist and turn over gigantic stones, beautifully described by Martina as ‘Christmas presents wrapped in ribbon’. The surrounding trees provide a lovely dappled light, and shade from the afternoon sun.

A very simple and easy boardwalk has been built from the south entrance leading to the centre of the temple. From there it is up to your and your guide to carefully clamber through windows, into dark, damp corridors, and over huge piles of fallen stones. Mum and I shared a wonderful picnic lunch with Sarna, her cousin, and a local guard on the boardwalk overlooking the site, before separating to explore the area. Sarna and I took the more adventurous route, climbing up to the highest points of the temple, then through dark spooky corridors until we reached to outer path and made a lap around the temple. Mum took a walk through the centre of the temple, learning about the remaining carvings and history of the temple, and then out past the west entrance.

Unfortunately, one of the reasons for Bang Mealea’s current state of wild beauty and peacefulness makes reference to the country’s violent past. The site was extremely dangerous to access for many years, before 22,188 land mines could be cleared from the surrounds of the temple.

Bang Mealea is particularly special as few tourists venture this far from Siem Reap, so you can really have the place to yourself. Unfortunately, our guide informed us that Hun Sen recently made a visit to the site and declared that it has been left in this ruined state too long, and has ordered a restoration. Local workers are already hacking tree vines of the stones with axes, and pulling down trees. It will be a great shame when this is complete, as the temple will be nothing more than a sterile, smaller version of Angkor Wat. And as it has been left to the mercy of the jungle and monsoon rains for so long, most of the carvings are faded and worn.

In my opinion, this special testament to 9000 years of existence on this earth should be left to rest in peace.

Our final day in Siem Reap, 28 February, was a chance to really appreciate the beauty of the Angkor Wat and Angkor Thom. We woke early to arrive at Angkor Wat in time to watch the sun rise. This is a spectacular site, and if you are prepared to step off the causeway, you can find a quite place to enjoy the experience out of view of thousands of tourists with tripods and lenses at the ready. The colours are beautiful, and as you will see from the photos, changing every minute. On this morning I took a moment to think of my RMIT ‘family’, and the loss of our dear friend one year earlier. Watching the sun rise over Angkor Wat was surely an appropriate place for some reflection of the past year.

After a quick breakfast trip back to town, we then spent the late morning visiting Angkor Thom. First, the Bayon, with its enormous towers decorated with the smiling faces of Avalokiteshvara, and 1.2km of remarkable bas-reliefs depicting scenes from 12th century Cambodian life. At the top of the Bayon, Mum had her future read by a fortune teller, who was impressed with her lucky palm…. I will keep my sceptical comments to myself.

After Bayon we visited the very beautiful Terrace of Elephants, a 350m-long terrace decorated with giant elephant carvings, that was used as a viewing stand during public-ceremonies and the King’s grand audience hall. Having been bought up by my mother who loves these creatures, we were both very touched to see such a beautiful depiction of these gorgeous giants.

After this it was time to pull on the black body suits and channel Lara Croft for a visit to Ta Prohm, now a famous pop-culture reference due to the film ‘Tomb Raider’. A Buddhist temple dedicated to the mother of Jayavarman VII, this 8,000 year old site is especially beautiful due to the enormous jungle trees that have taken control of many structures, winding their huge trunks and roots around the temple to great effect.

With our temple visits complete, we made a final stop at the Golden Banana (our charming guest house) and a tour of the workshops and store at Artisans d’Angkor, before heading back to the airport for our late night flight to Hanoi.

Siem Reap is wild, beautiful, demanding and continually changing. I am sure you will be seeing more of the temples and surrounding ruins in future posts!