Well, let’s get down to it shall we. No more philosophy, no more mantras and no
more hippie imaginings. Where is the fun
at and how do I get it? Well the good
news is that it is there, the bad news is that it can be hard to find if you
are time poor. And frankly, this is the
majority of the travelling public. But
stuff the majority; I’m for the 10 percenters.
People piss me off with their “I have only 3 weeks to travel 3 countries”
mentality.
For me, the fun was definitely in the north of the country. But before I could access it, I had one touristy
thing I had to do. I had to have a
custom suit made in Hoi An! With some
600 tailors rammed into one town, what better place to do it? Armed with an open timeframe and a few
pictures I set out to find a tailor to make me a “high end” suit. With a few recommendations I settled upon a
tailor called BeBe. Personally my choice
of shop was based on word of mouth reputation and the head tailor’s polite yet
definite approach in telling me which part of my ideas were rubbish. The experience was something very different
for me and to be honest I quite enjoyed it.
I had a total of four fittings to get my creations bang on and that is
where the difference was for me in terms of quality of outcome. Impressed with the whole caper, I also had a
vest, fitted shirt, pants, shoes and dress for my girlfriend Emily made.
Hoi An by night time. It kind of reminds me of an Asian Dubrovnik.
Lanterns light the streets. $9 for the hand painted ones...
While I enjoyed the experience and was pleased with the
outcome, I was chomping at the bit to leave Hoi An. This feeling could be attributed to a lack of
much else to do in the city other than shop and eat. Hoi An is a well known tourist spot and not
only amongst the backpacking crowd. It
is well frequented by the more affluent older crowd who throw money around without
much regard. They most definitely
perpetuate some bad habits amongst the locals.
So as soon as I could, I was out and hiring a motorbike to
ride to Hue. Taking the bike over the Hai
Van pass, which was made famous by the TV show Top Gear, I was expecting a mind
altering experience. This pass is
apparently rated as one of the most famous passes in the world to drive. I am at a loss as to why however? It is nice, but it is nothing more
spectacular than so much other coastline around the world. Must be an expectation thing on my behalf… But eh, nothing really lost.
From Hue, I returned the bike and looked to the sights for
inspiration. My choices were museums,
ruins, old palaces yada yada. Hmm, not
my speed. Maybe if I was still a “Lonely
Planet traveller” but that fad passed me by a long time ago. I heard a whisper of a caving area around the
little inland town of Phong Nha.
Apparently here there existed the world’s largest cave, Son Doong. Most of the jungle surrounding the area was reported
too thick and remote to have been explored until the more recent times of foreign
interest. “Sounds interesting me thinks”. And so with some leads to chase I hit the
town and managed to hop aboard a tourist bus to Phong Nha the following
night. Arriving into town that night I
had no idea of the area but when I woke, I knew my choice had been a
cracker!
Phong Nha I can tell you now was my greatest adventure in
Vietnam. The area is smack bang in the
middle of thick jungle covered karst mountains, the kind you visualise when
thinking of Vietnam. Water buffalo roam
the streets while a blue limestone coloured river flows calmly by. There is a little but established tourist
route allowing you to see some of the caves readily accessible to those who
only have a day or two to spend. I on
the other hand knew that this might well be the place for me to blow my entire
trip. And so I set out to find out how
best to do this.
The river through town
More rivers and karst mountains on the local tourist loop. River eventuate from the ground and as soon as they appear they are gone again. It is very cool.
At my hostel, I met another intrepid traveller, a Canadian guy
called Chris who was keen to do much the same as myself. So with some local assistance we set out to
one of the only guiding companies in town.
We wanted a guide, we wanted some kit and we wanted to get deep into the
jungle. Well as luck would have it, this
was on offer albeit in a highly rag tag manner.
I think it was the lack of information on what we were signing up for
and the thrown together nature of the trip that had both myself and Chris
excited. All we knew was we were in for
3 days of jungle time, hammering through caves, swimming across rivers,
climbing mountains and all with the promise of not another sole being
around. Wicked!
Come the morning of the tour, we were given two bags. One small vinyl bag to carry with us during
the day and house all the kit we could afford to get wet, the other a smaller
dry bag to house our one set of dry clothes.
We were offered boots, a helmet, headlamp and life vest. That was all.
Unfortunately my feet were too big for all of the boots they could
muster and so I used my own.
It was a 75km drive to the minority village from which we
would pick up two porters and start our trek.
The weather was terrible, cold and wet but we were keen to do something
a little less ordinary. The area here
was fully restricted to the public and visitors required a pass attained from
the government check-in station along the way.
Shortly after arriving at our start point, we shouldered our gear and
were off. For those of you who have ever
walked through red soil mud, you will know how hard that is. This was our life for the next 3 days. We were slip sliding up and down mountains,
bouncing off some frankly stupid sharp rocks, swimming rivers with all our kit
on, hanging off vines and all in the cold, cold rain. We walked through waterfalls, swam through
mountains, explored caves with nothing but our head lamps. It was sooo cool. Now I am not going to make out that the
workload was stupendous, because it wasn’t.
We were left wishing for more, we wanted to really earn each nights rest. But what lacked in this regard was made up
for by the experience.
The trek was full of good humour and some ridiculous sayings. At one point I managed to help our guide into
the water on one of our cave swims with a little kick in the back while he
hesitated at the temperature of the waters.
Chris kindly reminded me that you should never mess with the guide at
this point especially since we had just signed the most ridiculous waiver to
get onto this trip. Apparently the
company could either deliberately or not cause harm, serious injury and or
death to either of us haha. What a
waiver!
We drank rice wine on the first night and complained about
how much we all hated accountants. The
following night with the rice wine all gone, the request went out for some
stories to be told around the camp fire.
Chris knew what was coming as a grin set across my face. “Alright boys, what do you want to hear? How about midget bull fighting in Colombia?” I think that story was a little too foreign
to the little jungle men, they appeared more in disbelief than anything. So I revised, re-evaluated and told them some
spearfishing stories instead. That was
more the treat. Jungle men like hunting! Later we all rounded the night out with some karaoke
around the fire, stone cold sober…. The
Vietnamese guys were at an advantage because they sing for everything. They sing while they work, while they walk
and I’m sure while they shower. So
belting out a few tunes was natural to them.
When Chris and I were asked to sing a song together, we came up with a
blank. With frozen and lethargic brains,
my only suggestion was “do you know the Barbra Streisand song by Duck Sauce?” And there we went, “Ooowwwoo wooo ooo wooo
ooo wooo ooo, Barbra Streisand!”. Bouncing our hands above our heads from side
to side, our retardation was a great hit and the tune stuck in everyone’s head. We killed it.
On the last day I had it in my mind to race our porters back
to the village from which we had begun our trek. I had heard that despite their large
backpacks, they were absolute machines through the jungle and so this I felt I
needed to see. We left for home before
them as they were still busy packing up
the camp. Along the way we explored a
cave off the path though and I felt this gave us equal standing. Walking through the fields after an
invigorating river crossing I got distracted by the many water buffalo. Taking a prompt from the movie Crocodile Dundee,
I thought I’d test the hand gesture he used to subdue a water buffalo that was
blocking his path. Walking towards the
buffalo I started with the gesture and then the noise. Immediately the buffalo stopped eating the
wad of grass it was so previously engrossed with and stared directly at
me. Its head slowly lowered, gaze still
fixed as its brow started to cross. Yep,
one definitely pissed off buffalo. As it
trained its stare on me, the front foot stomped and the others began to plead
for me to stop, please stop. It was a
big buffalo and there was nowhere to run, stopping probably was a good idea. Just to make sure that the previous buffalo
wasn’t broken or anything, I tried my skills on another two… Definitely not broken, they bloody hate that
move!
With my focus restored I saw the two jungle men taking a
more direct path to the village than us.
As I gauged our relative distances I saw one of the guys start to put a
burst on. “Oh it’s on like Donkey Kong”
I thought and hoisting my bag high on my shoulders I started legging it for the
entry point to the village. This is the
one time I was thankful for having long legs in Vietnam. Standing at the start of the village I
performed a somewhat over exaggerated and prolonged victory dance just to be a
bit of a dick. Booyeah! The rest is history.
And this is how we begun...
This is the exit of the cave we traversed to out first nights camp. We camped at the entrance of this cave under the shelter of an overhang.
One of the many caves. Dramatic and epic in one.
One of the many waterfalls along the way we trekked through.
More caves!
This is the entrance to the cave near where we camped for our second night.
It was so wet in these areas there was some cool flora to be found. Plus the spiders...
One hillbilly and his adventuring partner just about to swim through a cave.
Duk our guide swimming through a cave exercising his unique paddling style. Backwards, legs raised and using his arms in a circular paddling motion.
The following day, freezing our butts off me and Chris got
food poisoning which prolonged our stay in Phong Nha. All better, our next stop was Catba Island.
Catba Island is the island central to Halong Bay, possibly
the most famous tourist attraction in Vietnam.
Both Chris and I headed for the less touristed area of Lan Ha Bay to the
south. Here we met up and set about
searching for yet another adventure.
This time the theme was nautical, kayaking the many karst limestone
islands over the course of three days was our plan. But again the difficulties of Vietnam set
in. Finding a guide was impossible, lies
were blatantly told to try and force us into going with the easier
options. My favourite was “You can’t
camp overnight on the beaches because during winter the high tides are at night
and the beaches totally disappear”. I do
believe the expression on my face was one of “are you seriously f@king going
with that as your final answer?” Being a
boat fairing guy, this is a great bit of bullsh!t if I ever heard it. The end result was “so we recommend it be
better to stay in our bungalows”. “I’ll
give you bungalows” was my thought shaking a mentally clenched fist! Luckily we heard of an Australian bloke
hiring a boat off his own back for a private climbing expedition. The guy, called Brad, was happy for anyone to
come along and split the cost of hiring the boat. Brad had kayaks, climbing gear and the
like. The trip was cheap and meeting the
others who had all signed up, they were cool.
And so it was.
Aboard the boat we had our choice of activities. I was made aware of a sport I had never heard
of before called deep water soloing. You
basically climb a cliff face that juts out over the water, jumping off into the
water when you feel you have gone high enough.
Pretty cool! My lack of shoes for
the climb though was an issue as I already knew how unforgiving the limestone
is to climb. So I had to let this one go
and satisfy myself with some kayaking.
Lan Ha Bay is a beautiful area but unfortunately it was almost totally devoid
of life and utterly ridden with garbage.
The waters were so cluttered I actually didn’t opt to swim the whole
trip. I did however go to Monkey Island
with a few others where the Dutch guy on the trip, Derick, almost managed to
get mauled by a territorial monkey after he gestured with his arm for the monkey
to come and sit on it. The angry as hell
monkey then ran to the top of an adjacent abandoned building and tried to find
someone to throw a loose piece of corrugated iron at. Even monkeys can be jerks.
Overnight I sat and drank with all aboard before organising
my own private boat ride to an island beach where I camped under the stars with
a raging fire. One thing that did really
impress me about the waters was the bioluminescence. Any disturbance to the water resulted in
quite a strong residual glow that had me intrigued.
The following day six of us set off to find a swim through
cave that took you to the inside of one of the islands and a secluded lagoon. Finding the cave with little problem we set
out to kayak through. The tide was
running out and this made padding and more importantly steering against it very
hard. But first seeing in the pitch
black of the cave, which ended up being much longer than we anticipated, was
our primary concern. Remembering that I
had a head lamp on me from my previous night’s camping this problem was solved. Now just to get through. With the water shallowing and our kayaks
being bashed into every bit of cave wall with increasing vigour we decided the
best way through was to walk, dragging our gear. Unfortunately only two of us had shoes and
the cave floor was nothing but sharp oysters.
Luckily we had a girl on the trip called Grace from Coffs Harbour. Grace was one standard unit, there is no real
other way of saying it. Grabbing two
kayaks at a time she squat her legs and began to drive us forward. Man handling (or should I say women handling)
us through the cave we popped out the other side and into the lagoon. It was the only place where we actually saw
corals and some sign of fish. As we
paddled around, the Dutch guy Derrick's, spurred on by Chris, decided to eat the
head off a little live bait fish. Not
too sure what was going on there but random seemed to be Derrick's thing.
After taking the place in we returned back to the boat the
way we came, bouncing off every rock, wall, oyster etc. on the way out of the
cave. We had just enough time for a few
people to do some climbing before the boat departed. My favourite climbing moment was when Grace,
not an avid climber at all, attempted a 30m rope climb up a nearby cliff. Putting her head down she powered up the wall
ignoring her boyfriend’s calls to take in the view and look down. At the top, she made the mistake of finally listening. This is when the cry came out “oh f@ck, how
do I get down!” Hilarious, she was up
there locked onto a rock and terrified of heights. What a unit.
The foreshore at Catba
The actual foreshore at Catba
The actual foreshore at Catba.
Heading out of the port for our boating adventure. It is a busy affair on the water with many a fish farm, squid boat and various service vessels.
There are even floating supermarkets.
In the kayaks however it is a more relaxed affair. I feel like I am making ground on mastering the selfie...
The sport of deep water soloing
One jerk monkey holding a piece of corrugated steel.
This was my own private island for a night. Transport, fire and tent. Check.
The view from my cove. Complete with an island full of backpackers just around the corner....
Proof that we made it into the secluded little island cove.
In the end we all returned to Catba Island and I booked a
bus to Hanoi for the next day. I
travelled with Elisa, a Brazilian girl from the boat trip back to Hanoi and we
spent a pretty cool Christmas together drinking and wandering the streets
soaking up a very Vietnamese occasion.
Two days later I was on a plane for Sydney my trip ended and the start
of a new year to come.
Finally, I guess I need to summarise my thoughts on Vietnam. In all honesty, a month was more than enough
time for me to see what I needed to see.
I know not to arrive into a place with expectations but I did and
Vietnam didn’t come close to fulfilling them. The country is very touristic and you meet
many a traveller totally over the scheming, scamming and false sincerity of
many of the locals. But all this is for
a buck. I really don’t believe any of
them are bad people at all and I know that if you have the time to spend, they
are actually very nice. Unfortunately if
you are travelling through the country however, often most of your local
contact is brief as you need to meet people to help you go where you need and
do what you like to do. The country is
also very agricultural, with much of its natural beauty being ripped up for
farm land, rubber plantations, timber lopping etc. And to add to this, the scourge of most
developing nations is ever present: plastics and other pollution. It is such a shame really. I doubt you will find me ever returning to
Vietnam but at least now I have a new experience and I am educated in the ways
of the country.
