The Water!

So I took my first swim. Not too bad. It was off the boat.

Now Halong Bay is a beautiful place and Vietnamese people will tell you how beautiful it is every chance they get..

BUT

It will not be beautiful for long if the Vietnamese do not learn to stop emptying their rubbish into it! There was household rubbish everywhere and it really put you off swimming in the water. Our boat has a rubbish bin out the back that was overflowing and rubbish was just blowing into the water. It's a disgrace. Most Vietnamese have not travelled to other countries so have no idea that this is bad. Just a few hundred miles away in the Gulf of Thailand there is a national park that has the same limestone islands as Halong Bay but the difference is that the water is crystal clear and people know not to use it as a rubbish tip!

Shame on you Vietnam.

We also saw some caves that are a major tourist attraction. They were lit up like a disco. I'm not even going to continue with this...

The pics though tell another story so dont go there! Just buy a postcard and say you went there!

Halong Bay! Oooooooh! Huh?

Yippeee! So from the over night train from Sapa to Hanoi we jump straight on a bus out to the coast! Weeeeeeee! Sun! Sea! Halong Bay! World Heritage site!

Halong Bay is the most over rated tourist attraction in Vietnam. Boarding the boats is madness. There are so many and its all just tourist all arriving at the same time to do the same thing. It seems very difficult o to this trip independantly and if you are up against it with time i would recommend a day trip and not the 3 days that we decided upo, This is not a beach holiday. This is a trap to steal more money from your wallet. The boats themselves are great! Lunch was not too bad either consisting of a reasonable amount of seafood and average vietnamese grub. Its when they try and charge you $2 for a can of beer that you have been buying for 30c that it begins to annoy you. Then they have the cheek to wave a corkage notice under your nose of $1.50 per beer if you so desire to bring your own. You might think $2 is reasonable but when you are on a budget and you know how much these things cost its outrageous. But this is typical of Vietnam. Some people don't even bother trying to rip you off....they just stand with their hands out saying "Money Money Money!"

Sapa Scenery

Tribal Chicks.

Check out the leg warmers...on all three of them!

Our Guide

Our guide for two days was May - A super sweet, smart little 18 year old from a local tribe 20km away. I call them the red hats because the women wear red scarves on their heads. The married ones also shave the front of their head along with their eyebrows. They look great! The tribes are all so different and completely different in every way to the Vietnamese. I hear that the Vietnamese Government do not recognise these ethnic minorities as Vietnamese and they can't get passports....oh dear....there goes my blog again...

Sapa

If you go to Hanoi and you have to choose a trip to either Sapa in the mountains or Halong Bay at the coast, please choose Sapa! It's amazing! Its difficult to describe in words or even pictures. Sapa town is 1600 metres above sea level and is a perched right up in the clouds. The town its self is nice but i guess but its not the town that you come for. Surounding the town are villages made up of ethnic tribes who still wear traditional dress and clothing made from hemp and dyed with indigo leaves. Its a pretty amazing experience visting the villages and meeting the people (who are very nice).

Its Official

Smoking makes you gay.

Red or Dead

So now it seems that my blog has been banned in both China and Vietnam
by the communist regimes in power here. Due to the controversial
and brutal honest truth that I am broadcasting out into the www they
are trying to block me.

Rest assured - I shall not be silenced.

Ya Get Me Blud.

Checkers - Hanoi

Weird

I can't actually view my blog from here.

Hopefully things are uploading!

View From Our "Guest House" = Hanoi

We had a lovely room with a balcony. The last time i saw cockroaches as big as our room were on skewers in China.

Motorbike Rider.

Hanoi

Totally hectic. Bikes everywhere. People live and work from their houses on the street. Check it. You can buy cigarettes, beer and also get a scooter wheel alignment done here.

Back in Nam

Well Well Well....

Its been busy and i havnt had much chance to get on the internet.

We are just about at the end of our visa here in Vietnam. It has been certainly long enough! Everyones aim in life is to fleece tourists of any cash that they may have in their pockets. Where its by short changing you, quoting super inflated prices, giving shitty exchange rates when prices are quoted in US$s or just pushing you to buy their shit all the time. We have only just found a reasonable beach so we will stay here for a couple of days before heading to Saigon then on to Cambodia.

Pics to follow! (...if the ADSL is not just a 56k dialup...)

She writes.

Ania has started writing something in Polish. It's around 28 pages long so far. I think she is writing about how great i am.

Hot Pot Madness

We made a little friend called Lily who was in Shanghai for a job interview with Emirates Airways. She helped us out a lot with translations when we went to buy tickets for the train and also when i was going to banks tryng to get cash for the camera etc. So we took her out to dinner...rather she took us to Chinese Hot Pot!

Quite an experience. You order a shit load of food (or rather Lily did as there is no english menu) and then cook it in a pot that is heated at your table. You are cooking in a kind of spicy stock i guess is the best way to describe it.

We tried a couple of delicacies which you can see photos of. Ducks Tongue and Ducks Blood. Absolutely delightful!

We were the only round eyes there which made it even better.

Shanghai`

All you can do in Shanghai is shop.

Every 10 seconds some tosser is asking you is you want to buy a fake watch or some other fake shit. I have a real watch now and as much as i like to buy fake rolexes, the short life expectancy has put an end to this fetish. I did however try desperately to buy a Nikon D300 for an incredibly cheap price compared to the UK but I failed due to lack of Visa acceptance and not being able to draw that huge amount of cash out. Of well...you will have to be happy with the photos i am taking on my poor little Ricoh.

I also tried to buy some expensive hiking shoes but unfortunately the largest shoe size in China appears to be a UK9.5.

I hate small people.

Lets Hit the Beach!

Wooohooooo!

It's been hot! Did I tell you that? What better thing to do than head to the coast. Qingdao sounded like a wonderful place. They are hosting the sailing events during the olympics and have some wonderful beaches. Once a German colony they have a brewery there - The Tsingtao Brewery! And I love Tsingtao! So lets go!

Unfortunatly all we saw was thick fog for our entire stay. You could not even see the sea from the sand it was that bad...and it was cold...and it was damp!

Such a shame as I was so looking forward to it. They have a lot of seafood there too. It freaks me out though looking at it swimming around in buckets on the streets outside the restaurants....especially when i don't know what the hell some of these creatures are!

We ate dumplings too.

Bye Bye Beijing

A parting shot on our way to the train station.

The Great Wall!

As president Nixon said upon his visit - "This is a great wall"

We went on the "Secret Wall Tour" that our hostel offered. They take you to an unrestored section of teh wall which is away from all the tourists and all the hassle of touts that goes with it. We had a local guide who was about 70 years old, no english, not water and sporting some pretty cool hardcore workwear. This was quite a hike and at the risk of repeating myself...It was hot!

It was a pretty good trip as there were only 10 of us and the wall but I would have also like to have seen a restored section as well but without the masses of people.

You can't have everything in life.

For Your Clothes Here's A Pretty Flower.

Dinner!

Thanks to Bradley for the recommendation!

3 ducks had to die for our eating pleasure that night! Yummy!

(Having the head on my plate still freaks me out though)

Forbidden City

Ooooh! It's the Forbidden City! So called as this is where the monarchy lived away from the disgusting peasants. Never venturing out unless it was to the Summer Palace. It is absolutely huge! The guide book says that it could take you three days to really see it. You would have to be some kind of masochist to do this. Its great and all but its so hot and there are so many people that you just want to keep on moving and appreciate it for its enormity.

After you get through it there is a park at the end with a hill that you can climb to see over the entire city! Wow!

As you can see in my photo the smog was so bad that you could't see much.

Some Chinese Architecture.

I dunno what the 3 nuns is...it seemed to be some kind of shopping mall/office block but the other thing is the national theatre building if i remember correctly. it has this crazy "moat" around it like a horizon pool which gives the illusion of the water going right up to the structure....it doesn't.

Summer Palace

So we went to the Summer Palace for the day....well actually we spent a lot of time trying to get our Vietnamese visa and then looking for a boat to take us to the palace with only vague directions from the Lonely Planet which can be your best friend or worst enemy at times.

I do not enjoy tourism...I am not going to tell you much about the "sites" because i can not be bothered most of the time.

So we found the boat finally and chugged along to the Summer Palace which is basicly where the emperor and family would go in the summer to escape the city. This not actually a palace as such....it's an enormous complex of parks, lakes and...erm...a palace I guess. It was bloody hot and as we went by boat we got dropped off right at the grounds which ment a long walk (though nice) to the main palacy bit. I drank beer and and ate some dumplings. I like dumplings a lot and decided to try and eat them every day while in China.

This place was beautiful by the way and if you ever go to Beijiung its worth the trip just for the amazing gardens. China is so green!

Doesn't poor old Reto look tired....

Beijing

China was a breath of fresh air after Mongolia. As soon as we crossed the border everything started to go green and the magic of the Chinese culture began to unravel. Gardens, small communities, farmlands and chinese writing! Oh yes! We have reached some kind of civilisation at last. First impressions of Beijing were that it was a modern and clean city...and finally we had arrived to some heat. The hostel that we stayed at was pretty close to Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City. Everything is being redeveloped for the Olympics so its a little bit of a mess on the streets. You can look forward to seeing plenty of "traditional" chinese buildings all painted in grey with fake bricks attached to the walls with red trim on your screens when the Olympics starts. The first thing you notice about Beijing is the smog. After visiting other cities in China I doubt that it is all down to pollution. I think that China gets a pretty bad rap from the west. China is an incredible monster and reform in regard to pollution/manufacturing is a slow process. We read that some Olympians were pulling out of the games to due to the pollution. Their loss. The Chinese are not stupid. They are going to impress the pants off everyone. Once they stop the factories for two weeks and shoot that shit up into the sky to make it rain it will be perfect weather with beautiful blue skys.

It's a pity i loath athletics....

Beer is cheap in China - And good! Tsingtao large bottles were less that .50p and thats kick ass! Food is also fantastic but where there is no english and you are just pointing at pictures it can be kind of random. I had a lovely dish of what appeared to be spicy, battered, fried chicken bones with cashew nuts.

Yum.

Hurro Hans Brinks!

Oh my gawd! Sorry for going so quiet but china has this fucked up thing where the control and censor all media and blogs are deemed to be an in controlable method of free speech and are blocked in china. I am now free and in the peoples republic of Vietnam.

We were unsure about even wantng to stop in china but we were very pleasantly impressed. Very nice people and a very beautiful country. China is a whole trip on its own and as we don't have all the time (or money) inthe world we decided not to spend toomuch time here but make it another trip. We are now in hanoi which is hectic! Tomorrow we head to Sapa for a couple of days then back here and to Halong Bay.

Stay tuned for more on China once I get to spend half a day on a computer!

Chau!