Northern Vietnam and Bangkok
Sorry this is so delayed! Its now fully a month after all this happened.
We had to leave Thailand because our 30 day Visa ran out, so we planned to return at the end of our trip. Out we flew to Hanoi in northern Vietnam...
Anyone need a bird? There were actually lots of animal stores like this. And sometimes people sell puppies on the street.
We never figured out what this meant but there were a bunch of walls tattooed like this throughout the city.
First driving lessons.
We spent four days laid up sick in a hotel in Hanoi before heading out to Cat Ba island in Lan Ha bay with our friends Sandra and Gustav whom we had met in Thailand in the scuba diving class. From there we took off on a 3-day boat trip (you sleep on the boat) to explore Halong Bay and other surrounding bays. Sandra and Gustav are in the background.
Shots from the boat. Limestone islands shoot hundreds of feet out of the water throughout these bays.
On the top of the boat at night playing cards
Flipping off the top.
Gustav getting some serious air.
A floating village. These were scattered all around. The docks are built with 5x5 foot holes in them that are used for fish farming.
We did some rock climbing on one of the limestone islands.
One of us way up there.
A view of the beach front back on Cat Ba.
Hanoi again.
Lauren met a four year old kid at one of the temples we checked out who wanted to learn to take pictures with her camera. He spoke perfect English.
There he is!
And then we launched off on an 8-day motorbike trip, the most epic part of our journey by far. We began by renting a bike in Hanoi and putting it on an overnight train to Lao Cai. Above is our route map, we did all the blue on a motorbike except for the leg between Hanoi and Lao Cai. In all we probably drove over 1000 kilometers.
Here's our bike outside the Lao Cai train station with all the stuff we needed strapped to the back (we left the rest of our stuff at a guesthouse in Hanoi).
Here we are in Sapa. We were treated to these kind of views throughout the motorbike trip.
Towing fresh cut bamboo with a motorbike.
Absolutely one of the most beautiful places we have ever been.
Road construction.
There were members of various hilltribes walking down the road almost everywhere you looked.
Some examples of stuff people carry on their bikes.
This the first really bad road we ended up on. It was to take us from Lung Phin to Xin Man. It was NOT on our road map (we should have taken that as a sign) but locals told us it was there and passable. Lies. It was time to figure out how to handle this motorbike. Unfortunately at one point on this road I got into a little ditch in the middle filled with pine needles and dropped the bike for the first time trying to turn out of it. Lauren has a burn on her right leg from the tailpipe to show for it :(.
Hilltribe women, you can see we're just on a dirt road here.
Fat pig plus babies.
After hours of driving, we finally reached the end of that really bad road and celebrated! Now we just needed to figure out where this road spit us out and make it to our destination town of Hoang Su Phi before nightfall.
The women carry really heavy loads on their backs.
Some of the miserably cold fog we encountered. Visibility was sometimes limited to 30-feetish in this stuff. And we didn't really have cold weather gear.
Soup break. We wasted a few hours in the town of Ha Giang trying to get a permit for the next region (required because its along the border with China). We had heard that they'd probably try to force us to take a guide which we didn't want. We'd been traveling for months without guides and were determined to keep it that way. Assuming they did this so they could make more money we offered to pay extra for the permit (a bribe) and they still refused. Frustrated we left to try to find a police station because we heard you could get permits there as well but they pointed us right back to this permit office. We argued with them for awhile again and finally agreed to take a guide just at the moment a cop whispered to the girl we were talking to to just take the money. Leave it to a cop to know how to take a bribe. We left without a guide and our pockets $30 lighter.
This ended up being the most beautiful stretch of the trip. Huge vistas where you could see miles of mountains and rice fields.
A few times we ran into this sort of situation. An impassable road due to a truck that didn't have enough power to get up the hill and ended up sliding back into the guardrail. Eventually some intrepid motorbiker would blaze a path around the truck, usually involving driving really carefully on a narrow path of loose gravel. The rest then follow.
People waiting to pass the stalled truck.
Coming up on a town. Our favorite of the whole trip - Quan Ba.
Quan ba - a standard view of the many towns along the way.
Going for a pass. It always fun to pass a huge truck driving on a narrow mountain road on a tiny little motorbike.
Is this a ripoff?
People walking the many miles home to a hilltribe village from a morning market in one of the towns.
Rats, the end of paved road again.
The road widens into a huge boulevard as you approach each town. No matter how small the population. There were maybe a few hundred people living here, few with cars.
To make matters more difficult not only were we faced with an inaccurate map, but also town markers which had been whitewashed. At some point someone will come along and stencil on the name of the next town and the distance in kilometers. Until then, you have to hope you are on the right road. This was often the only way we knew we were on the right track (comparing the road markers with names on our map). Relying on locals was useless since none read maps and you'd get a different assured answer out of every single person you asked.
What we came here for. The famous drive from Dong Van to Meo Vac.
Awesome.
They told us this was the first time he'd seen a westerner.
We were lucky enough to be in the town of Meo Vac during the Sunday market. Thousand of hilltribe members come from miles around to trade in town once a week. Here are some folks eating blood soup.
Hilltribe women selling homemade hooch. You can see the woman on the right doing a taste test before buying.
We met a really nice teacher, Hung, who gave us some Vietnamese lessons and a tour of the town. Traveling tip: if you need to find someone who speaks English look for a school and then find a teacher.
It's 8am at the market. Sitting in front of each man is a bowl of locally made rice wine, pretty strong stuff (as I learned in Thailand with the Akha family). not "wine" at all.
"How much?"
Our teacher friend Hung's students in front of their school.
Hung took us for a walk through Meo Vac after giving us a tour of the market. This woman was grazing her cows on the street.
A shot of people around the outside of the market.
Another impassable truck. We had to pass this one twice. The first time on our way to the town of Bao Lac. After about 30 minutes of driving in the thick fog we came upon the town of Khau Vai where the paved road conveniently ended. From here, there was supposedly a bridge to get over the large river and onto the next town. We asked the locals in Khau Vai how to get to the bridge and they pointed us in the "right" direction. After almost 2 hours of driving around on many different dirt roads at the advice of many different people, we discovered that there was no bridge yet (under construction) and the only way to get across the river was to drive on a single track cow path carved into the side of a very steep hill. This path (we explored by foot before taking the motorbike on) wound around the topography before taking a steep dive down to the river where you then put your bike on a bamboo raft to be shuttled to the other side. Neither of us had the confidence to try this, as we could risk dropping the motorbike down into a deep ravine, or worse one of us ending up down there. So after much debating we decided to give up, turn around and backtrack all the way to Ha Giang to the paved roads. As soon as we got on the bike to drive away, a man with a cow emerged from the brush on the cow path with, you guessed it, a cow. We had no clue how we would have gotten around that if we had decided to go for it.
See the "Thit Cho" sign? In English that's Dog. And here, you eat it.
Avoid the cows.
The scene of the second (and worst) time we dropped the bike. The road was wet and another guy came around the corner and dropped his bike right in front of us. Lauren swerved to avoid him and put the bike down as well. We slid a few feet along the road, me on top of her. Lauren has a bruise on the hip to show for it. The other guy was fine too.
Oh, and a tiny hole in her raincoat.
Her burn healing nicely.
And no we happen upon the story of by far our most unique accomodation. This is a shot of it the morning after we stayed there. How did we end up sleeping on a platform surrounded by canvas sides with a few other Vietnamese construction workers you ask? Well, after losing so much time to that missing bridge we were pushing hard to get to Ba Be park. We hit the town of Bac Me (so far so good), but it was getting dark, and to make matters worse the paved road promptly ended. We inquired around for a hotel in Bac Me but there were none. One guy asked his neighbor if we could stay with her. She walked out of her house and upon seeing the two of us promptly said "NO!". We tried to ask how long the road was unpaved in sign language thinking if it were just a few kilometers we could make it through shortly and then drive on a paved road in the dark. The guy seemed to tell us that it was only unpaved for a short way so off we went.
This road was as bad or worse as the first unpaved road we had tried (though I was certainly more skilled now), but it was pitch black outside. Lauren held up two headlamps on either side of me to light up the part of the road our headlight wouldn't cover. We went probably 20km or more in this manner, stopping here and there to find the right path to take through a huge puddle. Mud abounded as well as loose rocks and steep hills, we kept it in first gear. A few times I had to come to a complete stop and wasn't able to hold the bike up completely (we both hopped off) and we pretty much buried the thing in mud. We were actually having a pretty good time of things and got quite a few laughs.
We were getting really close to just giving up and camping on the side of the road through the night (which would have been a bit cold but we could've made it), but we had noticed that now and again we were passing the shelters you see pictured above. We even passed a small store where some guys were hanging out and managed to buy a few apples. We thought they told us we didn't have much further to go but that never turns out to be the case. Eventually we stopped to talk to more people and tried asking how far to a hotel ("nha nghi" in Vietnamese). They conversed for a few minutes and then indicated that we could stay with them. They offered us food, tea and whiskey, and then brought us up the hill to one of the shelters. Inside were two guys in their 40s and bunch of younger guys in their 20s watching a single TV. They were all pretty amused to see us there and tried talking to us pretty much to no avail. Eventually all but the older guys took off and these two set us up with some blankets and a mosquito net and turned the lights off. We could only repeat "thank you thank you" in Vietnamese and never figured out a good way to show them truly how gracious we were.
The next morning we continued. Here a nicer stretch of this road I've been talking about.
Kids walking to school. Our theory is that these are mostly the kids of people who were working on building the road.
This gravel is harder to drive on than the dirt.
And finally, PAVEMENT!
Soon after we were back on the paved road we got to a town and there talked with some people who through a pictogram informed us that we need to take a fairy to a some land in Ba Be park, and from there we needed to take another ferry through one of the park's lakes to the park entrance and from there we could continue by road to Hanoi. And when I say ferry I mean one of these little boats. Here I am loading our bike onto one of them.
The things people carry on their motorbikes...
Lauren drove the final three hour stretch to Hanoi. The road widened out into a highway and started to look like this, which was wonderful for about an hour until we got into traffic. Unfortunately we don't have any pictures of just how insane this was because I was afraid to do anything to throw Lauren off-balance while we were in the Vietnam traffic.
Here you can see some more people in the road than we had dealt with but it gets way crazier than this. Imagine a road with trucks nose to nose going at least 40km an hour passing swarms of cars and motorbikes, all without really any rule or order. This was the one time I was really a bit afraid. If you were to somehow fall in a situation like this you'd certainly be smashed by other motorbikes. But Lauren somehow actually enjoyed driving in the traffic and got us all the way back to our hotel in Hanoi (and Hanoi traffic is even more insane: slower but even more packed to the brim).
Back in Hanoi again. Notice none of these actually say Aquafina.
Here are some traffic shots we took the next day to try to capture the insanity.
You think texting while driving a car is bad?
Bia Hoi! At these little beer shops you can get fresh beer (made daily, no preservatives) for the low low price of 3000dong per glass which equates to 20cents per pint). This is supposedly some of the cheapest drought beer in the world, and not too bad either.
Fruit or veggies anyone?
How about some hanging lanterns?
And finally we headed back to Bangkok for our last nine days. We took it pretty easy there, hitting this rock-climbing gym twice. There's me hanging upside down.
We finally found some Mexican food! Not very good, but it really hit the spot.
Khao San road, the main tourist drag of Bangkok. Filled with thousands of Westerners populating bars with Thai bands that cover famous 90s American rock songs. They also had really good street food. For $1 you could get delicious Pad Thai, made fresh in a wok right in front of you.
We hit up a prison museum that was mentioned in a book written by the last Thai executioner (well, he was the last one to ever shoot someone, they use lethal injection now starting some time in the late 90s). This was an example of a torture device used hundreds of years ago. It was a ball they stuck you inside that had nails pointing inwards. Then they toss you in the midst of some elephants how kick you around inside this thing.
We found a pretty funny pool hall. Bangkok is known worldwide for its legalized prostitution and redlight districts. In this poolhall young Thai girls that work there play pool with older Western men. You can see a Thai girl in a cowboy hat playing some some old expat. He kept saying "I'm getting tired of winning, are you sure you want to play another" and we were thinking "dude you're paying her to let you win". Sigh...
We found a pretty cool "art mall". Five stories filled with experimental stores, like this ice cream shop. Notice the "red bull" "beer" and "cigarette" flavors. I had to try the cigarette one and I must say her recipe was spot on, tasted just like what I imagine licking the bottom of an ash-tray would.
The top two floors were filled with exhibits of which I must say this was the coolest. It was a massive room with walls covered in LED counters. Each counter would count down from nine to blank at varying paces and then start over again. After 10 minutes all of them suddenly turn off at once and the room is pitch black, and if you wait a few minutes more they slowly start coming back on. It was meant to be a metaphor for life and the reemergence of life following even a devastating catrastophe that wipes it all out.
In a park we found about 200 people doing jazzercise.
The famous "laying buddha". This thing is over a hundred feet long.
Along the side of the laying buddha people make an offering of about 1-penny each in every single one of these erns along the wall, so while you are in there you hear a constant "clink clink clink".
The corner of the old palace grounds.
Checking out some of the buddhist architecture.
Along the sides of the roads and in almost every building and house in Thailand are pictures of the king and queen.
Goodbye Bangkok.
And that's it for Shawn and Lauren's three month trip to southeast asia. Lauren continued on to Korea to visit friend and from there to China to see her dad. She'll probably be making a few more posts here about that leg of her trip. Thanks for reading!
Oh and PS: if anyone ever has a few weeks to spend in Southeast Asia we recommend skipping everything else and taking a motorbike trip in a remote region. Remember that awesome feeling you get when you're a kid exploring the woods or places you haven't been, but as you get older you start to realize that everything is already mapped out? Well, the maps are wrong.
