Judith and Mark D. S.E. Asia Trip - 4

This email arrived from Judith this morning. The only thing that the pictures have in common with the email is that they were posted by Mark in his series on English advertisements encountered on their trip. Enjoy (or Enjoh)!

Hey!

Our last day in Saigon was quite busy. First, let me tell you about when I was 13. I really liked this tv show, Tour of Duty. Its an American tv show about a platoon of US soldiers in the Vietnam war. It was what first made me want to go to Vietnam one day, the scenery was beautiful (little did I know it was filmed in Hawaii), made me want to fly (joined air cadets shortly after), made me soberingly impressed with the north Vietnamese use of tunnels during the war, and made me think the M60 machine gun was pretty awesome (not as a tool to kill, just cool on its own). So, we went to the Chu Chi tunnels near Saigon (search on google for more info). We got to crawl through a portion of tunnel, which was cool, but overall I was disappointed because it didn't fully show the full extent or complexity of the tunnels. What was super cool though is they have a shooting range where you can shoot some of the guns that were used in the war like the M16, AK47, and drumroll, the M60. So Mark and I got 5 rounds each to shoot the machine gun. It was pretty awesome. Now as most of you know I'm a "pick flowers not fights" kind of girl and in real life I don't like guns, so please don't judge me when you see the photo of me looking like a gun crazed maniac (in reality I was just super awed and excited).

Later that day we got a Thai massage. They used their hands, elbows, forearms, and feet! They would get up on the table for better angles and would move your joints and muscles. As a manual practitioner there were some things I found cool that you wouldn't be able to get away with in Canada, and some things I would never do to my own patients. We also got a facial care treatment that was really nice (something I'd like like to do once or twice a year from now on).

I apologize that this one is going to be so long, there is just so much to share.

Some things we learned about Saigon: the population is over 8 million, and 3.5 millions scooters! One of the biggest reasons why so many people drive scooters and not cars is because of the tax put on cars. We liked the city, a mix of east meets west. We headed out to Malaysia the next day. Uneventful. Malaysia: barely any scooters! Drive on the left side of the road. Malaysia is a lot more multicultural compared to Vietnam and Laos. It's state religion is Islam. I was woken up by the adhan today.

Kuala Lumpur, Chinatown: dirty and not so nice. We were glad to leave the next day. Our bus to the Cameron Highlands was absolutely beautiful: mountainous, rainforesty, and windy. Even more windy than the Laos mountains. Yesterday we took a trail that climbed Mount Brinchang. Beautiful and good exercise. The rainforest here is in the subclass of montane or cloud forests - it was very cloudy. We just relaxed for the rest of the day and read our books.

Today we went to a tea plantation! So beautiful! We explored the plantation for a bit then checked

out the tea factory and went to the cafe that overlooks the plantations to try out their teas. We had 3 different kinds and it was by far the best tea I've had this trip. Unfortunately in general, the tea in south east Asia has not been great, not great quality and also more often then not the milk they put in is carnation milk. So today I got my fill of good tea! The plantation (Sungai Palas) itself is huge and I think it said they harvest what equals to over 800 000 cups of tea a day.

We are now sitting in Starbucks enjoying an almost but not quite as good cup of tea. Tomorrow we head out to Taman Negara, a national park for a few days then on to Singapore on the 12th. Frustratingly the only way we were able to get a place to stay on our next leg was to join a tour. Malaysia is the only place where we apparently needed to book hostels in advance. But, despite the change in plans we are quite excited for the trip and will send our next update in Singapore.



We hope everyone is doing well. We'll see you in just over a week!

Judith and Mark

Judith and Mark D. S.E. Asia Trip - 3

This email update arrived yesterday from Judith:

Hey everyone,

So since our last email we've been in Hoi An, Nha Trang, and we just arrived in Ho Chi Min City (Saigon).

(c) Wikipedia creative commons

Hoi An was really nice. Because of the timing of the busses, we ended up staying there for 2.5 days. The old quarter is really nice, quaint, and partially blocked off to most traffic so it had a really nice atmosphere. The food was hit and miss but we found a really nice cafe that we spent a good amount of time at. After sundown they light up the main street with lanterns which was pretty. We went to a nearby beach the first morning that was nice and because we went in the morning we missed most of the tourists. Mark got custom made dress shoes and sandals that look really nice. They recommended waiting a couple days for the glue to set properly and he's very impatient to start wearing the sandals. I had a dress made that I'm excited to try out, but I'll wait until I'm home. This is definitely a place to get clothes made, although to do it properly you should probably go for a week or 2 with a bunch of ideas in mind. Mark thinks this has been his favourite city so far.

We then took a night bus to Nha Trang that was far from great. The beach there was a lot busier. All the menus were in Vietnamese, Russian, and English. We had what we both agree as our best meal so far.

Credit: Little Accidents in the Kitchen

It was a local restaurant, we were the only tourists there for a while. They brought a charcoal fire and grill and placed it on our table along with marinated beef and chicken that we then barbequed ourselves. We also had garlic fried rice that was surprisingly very sparsely fried so it still stuck together well, so using the chopsticks wasn't an issue (no knives or forks were provided). On our way back we stopped in a bakery and bought some small cakes including a very hipster (and yummy) 1000 layer matcha cake. We left the next morning which is today :-)

We got into Saigon and it took us a whole 1 minute to walk to our hostel. After settling in we went over to Burger King to eat some nostalgic American fast food. We've only seen 1 Starbucks and 1 KFC and that was in Hanoi so we indulged ourselves tonight.

Now it's off to bed! We have a full day here tomorrow then fly out to Kuala Lumpur the next day (with Vietnam Airlines not Malaysia).

Having fun but missing you all!

Judith and Mark

Sunday at Willow Beach with the Girls

Ingrid and I had a wonderful time today with Claire and Caitlyn at Willow Beach, Georgina. Miriam and Geoff were also there. In fact, they took us there. Thank you, Geoff and Miriam, for a super time.

Luckily, the weather was perfect. Now that she is four Claire has a new independence and took herself off to play by herself at the playground where she made a best friend for the day. The two new-found friends encouraged each other to ever new and greater challenges on the climbing structures.

As a family we all had a lovely time on the beach making and destroying many sandcastles. GrampaMac dug a hole that nearly went all the way to China. We stopped when we arrived at the China Sea which was coming into our hole.

Judith and Mark D. S.E. Asia Trip - 2

Now the updates are coming thick and fast.

From Judith yesterday:

Hue - Forbidden City.
www.all-free-photos.com

We just arrived in Hue. We're skipping a couple places in Vietnam so we're not so rushed. 14.5 hour train ride, so exhausted, lol. Goodnight.

Then this morning from Judith:

Hi Everybody!

Well we arrived in Hanoi on the 24th. It was a huge change from Laos. The first thing we experienced after getting off the bus was essentially being accosted by taxi drivers. There was a swarm of them and they all come up and start asking you things and telling you things and following you and won't let you go. We teamed up with a bunch of other tourists and got a minivan taxi at a decent price ($2 each), unfortunately it dropped us off with about a 10 minute walk from our hostel. Not such a bad walk, one would think, except that it was our first exposure to Hanoi traffic. Crossing a road in Hanoi was terrifying. 

Hanoi scooters

About 70% of the traffic is scooters, and there are no stop signs or traffic lights, and pedestrians are secondary to motorized vehicles. We managed, and by the end of our stay there we actually got the hang of it. The trick is to cross the road one half at a time instead of trying to find a break in traffic on both sides at the same time. There were a couple other differences we noticed. No stray dogs in Hanoi, but lots of rubbish on the street. All the small side streets in Laos were the red rusty coloured dirt roads, in Vietnam its all cement. Unfortunately no good bad English advertisements for Marks photos.

We decided to do 2 day trips and use Hanoi as our base. The first day we went to Tam Coc. Tam Coc is beautiful. You travel down the river in a small boat in between karst mountains and through 3 caves. The rowers rowed with their feet! Both oars at the same time or one at a time (looked similar to riding a bicycle). We also rode bikes for a few kilometres in the area.

Thien Cung Cave

The next day we went to Halong Bay. The scenery was similar (Karst mountains), except instead we were on a big boat. The boat went between the karsts and then stopped at a really big and famous cave (Thein Cung Cave, which means Heavenly Palace) which was beautiful but packed with tourists, unfortunately.

The next day we left for Hue on our first south east Asian train. It was a 14.5 hour ride, filled with rice cakes, not sitting together, and screaming and jumping children.

We really like our hotel here, and we both much prefer the city compared to Hanoi. Its a lot less busy, cleaner, and crossing roads is a lot safer. Restaurant, bars, cafes, and convenience stores are also a lot more to our liking. Side note, there are no grocery stores that we've seen anywhere in out travels, only mini marts and convenience stores.

Today we checked out the imperial city, which was pretty neat. The heat was crazy though, in the direct sun it was 45 degrees easily. No heat exhaustion yet though, yay! We also checked out local eats/drinks, and the night market (I bought a cute $2.5 shoulder purse). We had a huge delicious meal that we would have paid about $70 before tax and tip for in Canada, and only paid $20 tax and tip included here. Our beers came out to 75 cents each.

We are off tomorrow to Hoi An, which we are really excited about. We hear there is a really nice beach and they are also known for custom made suits, dresses, and shoes!

Hope everyone is well.

Judith and Mark

Posted today on FaceBook by Mark:

Didn't get a shot of this one in time because I was on a bus driving by.
Luckily the Internet has my back.

Judith and Mark D. South-East Asia Trip - 1

Judith and Mark D. flew out Sunday 13 July  on their South-East Asia Adventure. I can't believe that was two weeks ago today.  Communiqués from them are best described as sporadic but newsy when they come, mainly email from Judith and pictures on FaceBook by Mark who seems intrigued by local advertising.

They spent their first week in Laos.

Email from Mark, Monday, 14 July:

Our second flight was cancelled. And so we were unable to make our third one.

We have purchased new tickets and should be only 1 day behind.

We are currently waiting for our flight to Kunming (China), and then on to Vientiane, Laos.

We'll shoot you an email when we get there.

Mark & Judith

Sent from my BlackBerry 10 smartphone on the Rogers network.

Saturday 19 July we got this email from Judith:

Hey everyone!

We are in Laos!

Getting here was a mission, it was supposed to take 31 hours but ended up taking around 50. We had 3 flights with 2 stopovers. Unfortunately our second flight was cancelled so we then missed the third :-(  we were able to get a flight to another airport (Kunming, in southern China) the next day and then to Vientiane, Laos.

Tuk tuk

The airport itself in Vientiane was a shock, it was so small and old it almost felt like an airport from the 60s for small planes only. And completely surrounded by rice fields! The city is pretty awesome. Cars park anywhere and everywhere, temples on every corner, stray dogs and cats by the dozen, people offering tuk tuks everywhere, and delicious and cheap food. We stayed at the Funky Monkey Hostel, a really sweet place. Checked out the must sees in the city as well as Buddha Park. The road to Buddha Park was crazy, dirt road, insane potholes (busses don't go there anymore), but it was also really interesting to see the living conditions just outside the city.

Vang Vieng. See photo attribution below

We arrived in Vang Vieng yesterday. The trip was beautiful and we've heard that the next stretch we're doing is even better! Mountains, tropical fauna, rice fields, photos don't do it justice. We're staying at Pans Place Guesthouse and checked out a couple caves today that were cool. To go to one of them we rented a semi automatic motorbike and drove there, 7km. The ride there was probably better than the cave. Endless beauty! We're heading out to Luang Prabang tomorrow where we're gonna stay 3 nights. 

The trip is 7 hours long, windy, up and down, but beautiful. I'm really hoping to avoid motion sickness but it may be inevitable. The heat hasn't been too bad. Our hottest day so far was feels like 44. Here in Vang Vieng it's cooler, 25 degrees and raining a lot.

Hope everyone is doing well!

Judith and Mark

Courtesy Mark D, FaceBook

Courtesy Mark D, FaceBook

Courtesy Mark D, FaceBook

Thursday, 24 July; email from Judith

Hey everyone!

We have now left Laos and are en route to Hanoi, we crossed the border into Vietnam at 730 this morning. The bus ride is over 24 hours and is our first sleeper bus! The seats are recliners and from head to toe are about 6 feet in length. The change from Laos to Vietnam is quite drastic. Laos is full of windy roads, potholes, and hills while Vietnam has been pretty flat. The views in Laos nicer though. Also a lot of construction (and infrastructure) in Vietnam so far.

We've had a great time in Luang Prabang! The city is beautiful, it's actually a world heritage site, so there isn't much growth but more restoration and preservation of the city proper. The outskirts are still pretty poor though. Our first day we checked out the city and a nearby waterfall. The night market is huge and you can get all you can eat from food stands for $1.40 (we didn't, lol). There are also a lot of monks in the city (most young, not sure why).

Definitely not Judith and Mark

Our second day we took an elephant tour which was super fun. After riding in the elephant seat we got to bathe the elephant in the river which to our surprise actually consisted of playing with the elephants where they try to throw you off into the water and you try stay on. The drivers had a lot of fun getting the elephants to throw off tourists! We then went bareback on an elephant on a short trail. My adductors are still super tight from all the gripping that day.

Also not Judith and Mark

Our third day I think was actually my favourite. We did a half day "rice experience" where we went to a local rice farm and they taught us all about rice farming. We participated in all the steps of farming rice and it was a lot of fun. They're a working farm and do the tourism thing in the morning. They are a community farm with 7 families participating and the extra income from selling veggies and the tourism program goes to helping some kids go to school who can't afford it otherwise. Look up Living Land Farm "riceexperience" on google! (My description does not adequately describe how great it was).

Hopefully we'll be arriving in the next hour and I will send this when we next get WiFi.

Hope everyone is well!

Judith and Mark

 Stay tuned, watch this space, but don't hold your breath!

Photo of Laos Landscape in Vang Vieng CC BY-SA 3.0