I mentioned a few posts ago that we found a cafe a while back with a backgammon set. We quickly became addicted to sitting around drinking blended mango drinks and playing the game.

When we left, we were forced to go cold turkey on our addiction, and thought that would be the end of it. However, as all you junkies know, it’s rarely that easy…

Within days we were jonesing for a fix, searching every shop we came across for something resembling a western board game, or even a set of dice, but.. no luck! The closest we came was Chinese chess, which neither of us play.

Gradually, in the back of my mind, the seed of a crazy idea started to sprout, eventually pushing itself to the forefront of my thoughts; I had to build my own board.

Within half an hour, I had found some bits and pieces - nails, washers and a hammer, and I’d spent about 18,000 dong. Buying hardware in a forgein country is an interesting experience.

I had almost everything I’d need.. except the actual board. Down the road from the hotel we were staying in, there was a shop which looked like it sold timber. In retrospect, it was probably a shop fitters, judging by the difficulty I had explaining what I wanted to them.

When I popped my head in on the way back to the hotel, the guy in there gave me a nervous look then ignored me. I figured he didnt want to deal with a stupid whitey, and i didnt want to deal with him, so I let it pass. Later, though, I realised that if my plan was going to come to fruition, I was going to have to swallow my anxiety and get on with it. It’s amazing what an addiction will do for your willpower and tenacity.

I drew the size and shape of what i wanted onto a piece of paper, and took it to the shop, which was now fitting a big mesh sign with lights- i realised at this point that they didnt sell timber, I was going to have a much harder time of it.

I got their attention and they quickly made it clear they didnt speak english, and that I wasn’t really wanted. You know how I mentioned tenacity? well, you’ve gotta be pretty pushy about keeping the attention of someone who doesnt want to talk to you and cant understand word you’re saying. Eventually I got what I wanted.. a piece of off cut wood which just happened to be the right width and cut to the length I wanted. Shitty particle board with a veneer on each size, but it would do.

I had my materials…

I measured what I was going to do… and got to work.

By the time I was done I’d got my black bits filled with marker, and had carved the veneer off for the white bits, nailed in some pegs for my pieces and marked up half the washers as black pieces. It was a masterpiece. Truely a work of art. A functional backgammon set that I could even play on the bus if I so desired.

I worked out how easy it would be to simulate the dice rolls with playing cards and we got to playing.

success! It’s a beautiful thing and will save us many hours of potential boredom as we move deeper into the darkness of the third world.

I’m done for now, but bask in the glory of this promo video I’ve shot in preparation for marketting this travelers backgammon set-

click here!

So we’ve just gone and obtained bits of information about the Mekong tour options, the ones which will end with us in Cambodia.. weary from the contant up-and-down stairs tour of the budget hotels in the area, we’re settled into a dodgy little internet cafe, digesting lunch and internetting it up. Restive.

After trying four other machines, I finally found a fast one which works with my camera, which doesnt have a buggered video card. Whee. So, you know, that means it’s time to post some pictures.

This museum seems typical of Vietnams rough-cut approach to things. You follow the arrows through the museum, looking at various artifacts with little or no description to give them context, and, upon reaching the last room, find an introduction to the whole exhibit. Somehow that made it more enjoyable for me though, in an bemused sort of way.

This is the so-called Ha Long Bay on the rice paddies, and an appropriate name at that. My crappy photos from that day dont do it justice.

A beautiful place, in my opinion. I was somewhat amazed when, after half an hour of boat travel, we came upon a village on the river, cut off except by the water. Awesome.

This car, shown in a Buddist temple in Hue is prized for once belonging to a monk who became famous for being the first of his kind to make it onto a Rage Against The Machine album cover. His, later, lesser known acheivements included driving this car to Saigon and setting himself on fire to protest the pro-Catholic American Puppet Regime. Or so I assume the sequence of events occured. Once again my Modern History education comes in handy..

A couple of nice shots from the Citadel in the heart of Hue. I love the way Hue has grown as a modern city around an original walled Imperial city. Like zee European cities that have grown around castles.

Also inside the citadel. Attempting to prove something artistic to myself.

Evidence that Lili, for one, has partaken in motorbike tours. Snapping this shot, I too am perched on the back of a bike hurtling down a semi rural road.

Cham tembles at My Son, where the Hindu Chams worshipped Shiva, the god of war. More awesome.

Would you eat here? We did, in the mezzanine level of the Da Lat market. The nice lady here ran off and found us some Chao from another stall and put bits of meat in it for us.

On the night of the Da Lat flower festival there were women making these awesome ricey snacks by the side of the road. Thick rice-papery rounds, spread with a herbalicious paste and toasted over the fire, folded over with a squirt of chilli sauce. These are the best snack ever, and if you dont believe me? I’ll put a Jihad on yew.

The so called flower festival seemed to be being performed for the gods or something. Either way the flower and campy bee costumed kids doing the dancing off in the distance behind a police enforced out of bounds area were facing away from the amassed crowed which disappated after they did their weird arse-wiggling dance.
We found another hive of activity elsewhere, which just seemed to be some kind of weird agricultural trade show. Either way, we had trouble finding anything of entertainment and, evidently, so did these kids, who just started to gather around, laughing at me. More and more gathered and it started to freak me out, so I did the only sensible thing, started taking photos as evidence at the future trial of my Children of the Corn-esque murder.

At long last, we found a flower. Ella, this one’s for you.

We got in at around 7:30 last night. Had a look at a couple of hotels before being accosted by a rather large young woman in the street.

The warning bells went off the moment she told us, without actually hearing anything about where we were staying, that she had a cheaper room for us. For some strange reason (maybe my arse cramps from the bus ride were impeding rational judgement…) we decided to check out the place.

We took a room for the night, $10USD, air con and TV.. and nothing else worthy of mention. They hadn’t cleaned the room since the last person left.. and it showed. We kind of chose to ignore that for the moment and headed out for dinner. Ran into a couple of people we’ve seen in just about every city we’ve stopped in, before finally settling down to a bowl of spicy beef noodle soup and a tiger beer.

Dinner was good, so long as you just didn’t look at the big lumps of beef too closely. We finished up and went for a wander. This section of town is backpackerville. Interestingly there were a lot of gangsta-looking young men of African descent around. You know, corn rows and “diamond” encrusted “gold” watches.. and Lakers basket ball singlets. Anyway we had icecream cocktail things in some cafe before heading back to our hotel.

We slept on the bed in our sleeping sheets.. purchased so wisely weeks ago in Hanoi.

The air conditioners here vent into the hallway outside the room, and most of that heat comes straight back into the room.. it’s amusing, but the combination of the AC and fan make it comfortable enough. We “bounced” out of bed this morning, raring to go. Packed our bags and investigated the included breakfast, which sucked.. no surprise there.. and then headed out to find a nicer hotel. I think we checked out about 5 places, before stumbling on a place which was clean, cheap and close by.

We’re back at the first hotel now, making use of the free internet in order to squeeze our money’s worth out of this place before checking out. Hence, the blow by blow account of the last 24 hours.

Still having fun here. Saigon is hot and humid, which is pretty much the first encounter we’ve had with tropical weather since arriving in Vietnam. First impressions of the city include the wide streets, which seem to be much more open than Hanoi, its closest counterpart. Much more like an Australian city in that regard, but busy busy busy. Somehow even MORE motorbikes than Hanoi.

I think I’m gonna like it here, but I’m already looking keenly forward to our border crossing into Cambodia. I’m interested to see the difference between two countries in the region, to get a feel for the similarities and to see what the slightly less tourist-oriented (sorry, “touristic”) places are like.

Anyway, enough of this drivel, I’m going to read up on the latest in gang warfare in Australia. Fu-uhn. (Oh! And when are we going to inject some democracy back into the senate?! Reading Aussie news is making me so angry at the moment… grrr *shakes fist*)

Hah! We nearly missed our bus from Da Lat to Ho Chi Min.

We were killing time in the hotel foyar, chatting on the internet and stuff, at peace given the cool reassurances from hotel staff that we could get to the bus office place in 15 minutes. So, figuring we’d give it twice that to be sure, with 30 minutes to go we asked them to call us a taxi. All the taxi companies reckoned they were ‘busy’ and so we waited and waited. With about 15 minutes to go, I managed to hail a cab out the front of the hotel. Bundled in and off we went. The driver went the WRONG WAY. A forgivable offence, since the numbers on opposite sides of the road were descending in different directions.. (wtf?!) but eventually got us there.

So, we get on with about 3 minutes before the scheduled leaving time. Sitting at the back of the bus, but the bus, at least, was comfortable and even the back seats reclined. The AC was on and we figured we’d got it pretty good. The bus.. didn’t move for at least another 15 minutes. A woman sitting next to me said we were waiting for three of her friends. Eventually we seemed to leave without them.. only to pick them up on the outskirts of Da Lat.

Rather than finding enough seats for everybody, an additional two people decided to cram into the two spare seats at the back, along with the woman I had spoken to. Bastards! The rest of the seven hour trip we were all crammed in together.. even after I politely suggested the asshole next to me sit in one of the SPARE seats. I then politely suggested to the driver/guy in charge. Every time it became apparent I was trying to make everyone a bit more comfortable, they lost their ability to speak English.

I’m pretty sure I was all elbows and knees for the first half of the trip.. but I finally settled down and decided to be zen-like and non combative about the experience.

Anyway, I’m learning that even the most comfortable bus ride in Vietnam will be fucked up by something.

Oh and, yeah, I know I said I’d put photos up but I’m waiting until I find a place with easy to access USB ports and stuff. (slacker)

It’s been a while since the last update. Time marches on.

We’re in Da Lat, a little mountain city in the south of Vietnam. The weather here is cool, overcast, but it hasn’t rained yet. That’s a refreshing change.

Where did I last leave off? Hue? Well, since then we headed south to Hoi An, which is a small tourist trap known for its tailors. The place was nice. Fairly sleepy, mostly unsealed roads and cracked footpaths. I think it rained constantly. We found a few cafes that were comfortable and holed up for the most part. One cafe that quickly became a favourite had a backgammon set and after a quick recap of the rules online, we spent quite a few hours drinking coffee, eating random stuff and playing. It became somewhat of an addiction which I haven’t been able to satisfy since we left- but more on that later. Anyway, the ancient saying goes, “When in Hoi An, buy yo’self a new set of threads.” So I did. I got some shirts made to my specification and a suit. Wha-what?! Yee-eah. I’ve got a tailored suit made to my exacting design. Think, pants cut like low jeans, with a baggy bootcut, and an oversized suit jacket. Did I mention it’s pinstriped? It sorta smacks of zoot-suitishness. Pimpstyle fo’ life, etc..

From Hoi An we took another bus to Nha Trang, Vietnam’s “party town” which was pissing with rain the whole time as well. Nothing super exciting to report. Mainly ate, drank and was merry. Did a little bit of drawing, and in one cafe/bar I challenged the waiter kids to some games of pool and with the exception of one game out of far to many, had my arse soundly kicked. One night we sat down in the tackiest place you can imagine (a big restaurant set under a thatched-hut like pavillion packed with fat germans and other assorted whiteys) and ate an awesome meal of fresh crab. That was probably the highlight. I think.

Now, to draw my skimming of the past week or more to a swift conclusion, I’m brought to this day in the year of our Lord. We’re in Da Lat, the start of our second full day. Once again when we got here we scorned the nasty hotel the bus company dropped us off at and found a place Lili stayed when she was last here. It’s a pretty good deal with a buffet breakfast and stuff, but there’s a constant hammering and drilling going on next door which is a bit of a killer. We wandered around yesterday, getting some bank and post office related chores out of the way- it costs about $100USD to send 10kg to Australia by air.. for $50 you can send it by boat and hope to see your package some time 3-6 months in the future. Baha! We’re going to investigate DHL in Ho Chi Min city.

We’ve been constantly on the lookout for boardgames. Scrabble would be nice. Backgammon would satisfy. I hatched a lunatic scheme to build my own portable backgammon set, which I’ve set about doing. I’ll detail that little adventure later, and upload various photos of the last few highlights.

Now I’m off to try and have a shower under the trickle of water that is our shower.

We’re in Hue.

We arrived yesterday morning, early, after an insane ride on the vehicle Lili dubbed “Worst Bus Ever”… the trip from Ninh Binh was about 10 hours, theoretically.. I have no idea how long it actually took. We were stuck for the first three quarters of the trip in seats near the back that wouldnt recline because there was too much stuff shoved onto the back seat. The people infront of us were laying right back and there was NO room for us long-limbed roundeyes to move. I settled into a pseudo meditation with my eyes closed, I found a couple of weird gaps where I could stretch my legs completely, and if I closed my eyes and blanked my mind, I could ignore the fact that the back of the seat infront of me was about 20 cms from my nose.. (please oh great Allah, don’t let the driver slam his breaks on.

Towards the end of the trip we stopped in a little town, some people got off and some people got on. Some of the people who got on seemed to be travelling with big hessian-wrapped cubes of hay.. for some unfathomable reason the drivers saw no problem with pulling out all our bags and throwing them in the mud, so they could attempt in vain to stow these haystacks. After they manhandled most of the hay to the back of the bus, they kicked and dragged our bags to the back too and basically filled every spare cubic foot of space with luggage and maliable human flesh. It was quite surreal and I’d be able to do the situation more justice in words if I hadn’t experienced it at 4:30am after no sleep and the strange experience of Vietnams night driving. We’re both lucky to be alive.

Anyway, as I mentioned, we’re in Hue now. I got my hair cut yesterday (shaved to a number zero!) and was talked in to a manicure and pedicure as well. They prettifryed me! Noo!

The city is beautiful. Hopefully, as with yesterday, the clouds will clear a little later and everything will brighten up, because we’re off on a motorbike tour around the city and surrounds in about an hour. Woo!

Much other stuff has happened as well, but recalling all of it would require far more energy than I have available to me.

F

We’re leaving Ha Noi today.

A bus is taking us 75kms south of the city to a town called Ninh Binh, where we’re seeing what has been called “Ha Long Bay on Rice Paddies”… there’s also some ruins and stuff. It sounds beautiful, so we’re going.

When we’re ready another bus will then take us the 10 or so hours further south to Hue where we’ll hang out for a while and see more sites.

I’m going to miss Ha Noi, but I’m looking forward to moving on and seeing more of this country. The city is amazing and the experience here has been awesome. Time and again I’m amazed at how a place this old can be so developed and yet so unrefined. It’s an organic organised chaos and I love it.

Anyway, I’ve gotta get my bags from my room and I’ve wasted something like half an hour preparing and uploading some photos for your viewing pleasure. Check out my earlier Ha Long post, and here are some additional Sa Pa images.

We caught a night train back from Sa Pa which got in at some ungodly hour this morning.. somewhere between 5:00 and 5:30am.

We got a taxi to the hotel we have a booking at, and sat down with a couple of other travellers on the front steps waiting for the place to open. Told to come back in a few hours, Lili and I dropped our backpacks off and struck out to find coffee and bakery snacks.

There were loads of people out this morning, doing exercises around the lake.. heaps and heaps of people. I wonder if it being a Saturday morning has anything to do with it?

So, coffee fix obtained we set back to the hotel, stopping on the way at a few tour companies to get an idea of what our options are for the next leg of the trip. The best deal so far is an open bus ticket to Hue for $8USD. It’s a long bus ride though.. 12+ hours total. Looks like a big bus with room to stretch out though, and a whole lot cheaper than a sleeper on the train, so that’s what we’re going to do.

Back at the hotel now they’re cleaning our room as I sit here, and we’re killing time the only way we know how- posting mindless drivel on the internet.

Once I have a shower I’m going to set out to get all my photos burned onto CD.. I’ve got something like 1.2 gigs of images now. When I’ve done that I’ll try to find an internet cafe with decent computers and get some uploading done. Lili’s much more sensible plan is to sleep for a bit. I might buy our bus tickets when I go out too. Later today we’re going to see a couple of museums. Woo, touristy.

I had a small victory last night.

Until now I’ve been basically just going into places, making sure there wasn’t a peanut smell, ordering and asking the people to make sure there were no peanuts. Not ideal, because I dont really know how understood I am in some circumstances. Mostly it’s fine, and often, in Hanoi, we’d be in full view of the kitchen, with the handful of ingredients on display anyway. It still feels like roulette though, eating like that.

But yesterday afternoon I sat down with the phrasebook, found the word peanut, “Dau Phong” (insert various accents and tonal symbols and shit) and transcribed it onto paper foe-net-ick-lee from the front of the book.

Later that night we were eating in a place, we ordered and when the waitperson came to our table I asked if the springrolls and bun cha had peanuts in them. “Pee-nutes?” she asked me quizically. “Doe faung?” I suggested. Her expression was immediately one of recognition, “Peanuts! No peanuts!”

That’s the first time I’ve managed to say anything in Vietnamese that has actually been acknowledged. The only other thing I can really say is “no thank you” It’s the first thing you seem to learn in Hanoi, and noone is really interested in talking to you beyond that point.

It’s an awesome piece of encouragement and damn useful too. I feel less helpless as a result and I’m going to work out a few other things to say as well. It’ll be fun.

Wow. It’s been a few days since the last update and I’m not entirely sure which highlights are most deserving of an update.

We’re in Sa Pa at the moment, a small town in the northern highlands. We’re heading home this afternoon after three days here. It has been freezing cold until today, we were rewarded with an amazing view of the mountains this morning as the cloud cleared.

We’ve mainly been walking. Saw some waterfalls on the first day, and visited a token hill tribe village yesterday. The walk yesterday was amazing, led by our young Hmong guides, we trekked through actual terraced rice paddies, down into a valley surrounded by beautiful green mountains and with a picturesque river at the bottom.

We were hounded the whole way by hill tribe women, aged between like.. three and seventy years (at a guess) trying to sell us embroidered goods. It was intense and kind of depressing. We’d hit a little waypoint and there would be 9 year old children with snot on their faces trying to hawk little fabric bracelets. “Buy somesing small from me?” “Buy from me?” Any response was met with persistant attempts to sell; “No thank you.” I’d say, and they’d reply with “Yes thank you. You buy pillow case?”

Forget a glimpse at preserved hill tribe culture, it was a feeding frenzy every time a group of them found us. One could easily get frustrated or angry with the badgering. I kept myself from getting irritated by coming up with various ways to say no.. complicated stuff that left them blinking, before resuming the mantra. “You buy somesing from me?” Worst were the toddlers. Too young to have picked up our language, they just walked around empty handed tapping their palms looking for handouts. Five year old beggars make me verrrry uncomfortable.. and we tourists are creating this situation.

A few of the children were fun to talk to, they had enough English and nothing to sell, and the valley was amazing, I’m just worried that with the growing tourist trade and seemingly little else for these people to do, the situation is going to get dire.

Everyone’s favourite part- Photos! Click the little pictures to get big pictures.

this is the area we were trekking through yesterday…

obligatory cute child strapped to back photo

local tribal girls

and more..

one of our guides

Lili, being helped by La, another of our guides

this was either the school or the local police station

these are everywhere in Sa Pa