Vikings and The Land of Fire and Ice

Velcomin to Iceland, a land of vikings past, exorbitantly long names and hot tubs.  It is a quirky country that has definitely done a ninety degree turn on what I had expected to find.  Coming from literally "the other side of the world" I was under the impression this land would be an unspoiled wilderness, neglected by the masses and home to some more hardened characters.  After all, who wants to holiday in a country that advertises how cold it is by it's very name?  Well apart from one stupid Aussie and his co....  So wasn't I surprised to learn that tourism is Iceland's second largest industry behind fishing.  Apparently the Europeans love the place but as we found out, maybe this is a bit more of a one way love.

Iceland is a small island, slightly smaller than Tasmania back home (the little dangly bit off the bottom of Australia) and with a similar population.  For it's size however it projects an aura of expansive wildernesses.  The air is clean and with no trees around you can see for many miles in every direction.  This makes Iceland spectacular.  It is truly the hardest place I have ever traveled to to photograph.  You just can't seem to capture the expanse nor can your camera seem to handle the colour contrasts.

Traveling with my girlfriend Emily we arrived well before the peak tourist season of July to September.  Though it is colder during these months we found the landscapes far more impressive as there was still a good amount of snow around.  We also benefited from almost no tourists, cheaper services and a more generally accepting population.  Hiring a little car for a great rate, we circumnavigated the island over the course of two and a half weeks camping out at our leisure and often for free.  We took every side road available to us and discovered many a really cool little nook and cranny.  

Not only is the island interesting but so too are its people.  We found the locals to be a little stand-offish at first but if you engaged with them they usually turned out to be quite friendly.  And it is not unlike an Aussie to yarn so this suited me well.  Plus if you could make them laugh, you were in!  The Icelandic's have a similar ratio of people per square km as we do back home in Australia.  This is what really had my head spinning when they told me that there was an expected one million tourists to arrive this summer!  That is as many tourists in Iceland as locals every month of the summer.  And seeing their infrastructure, I have no idea how this will work.  I am just glad I am not there to witness.  

Personally, as we traveled I could see the toll this many tourists was beginning to take on many of the locals.  If one Frenchman can piss me right off, imagine what a country full of them could do.  I also find European travelers, the vast majority of those who come to this country, to be quite difficult.  So I feel for you Iceland.  The tourist dollar is needed though and hence the conundrum.  In the north of the country the locals seem much more friendly and welcoming.  They obviously get less travelers here as it does take some time to make your way around the island.  Many travelers only give themselves a small number of days to see Iceland and then channel themselves into the South which is much more readily accessible.

Having the time to travel though is amazing.  The landscapes changed day to day.  You get to experience massive volcanic expanses with the odd volcano jutting out, lava fields, giant mountains and fjords, snowy flat lands, glaciers, lagoons and the list goes on and on.  Iceland is an explorers delight.  

There is not much in Iceland in terms of flora and fauna.  Being so isolated from the world and having formed volcanically like other places such as the Galapagos Islands, Iceland is mostly a domain for birds and sea life.  The highlights of our sightings were whales in the fjords, seals on the coastline, puffins in the cliffs and reindeer on the flats.  But what is lacking in this regard is well compensated for in others.  One such other is the abundant hot pools.  Oh my god I love this little feature.  Every town has at least one.  Free ones are dotted around the place for those who choose to find them and some a well worth the find.  All too often I see blogs posting the details of some little local gem.  Not this blog, if you want to find them, find them yourself.  I want to keep some things away from the masses to allow the more intrepid to find.  Message me if you are looking for something in particular and I may help out with some deets.

But enough chat.  Here are some photos and commentary to paint a more visual picture.

Iceland is a land of lakes, some frozen....

Fjords, some with whales in them...like this one as seen from the road.

Some instead have seals in them....  Be warned though, as they are hunted they tend to be flighty when you approach them.

Snowy expanses....

Dangerous snow....

And some really dangerous snow....

Glaciers and mountains....  Ice for watching

And ice for trekking....  Photo and foot holds (as seen in the pic) courtesy of my near icy death!

And glacial lagoons....

Big waterfalls....

And big waterfalls....

Warmer waters....

And water slides....

Small volcanoes....

And bigger ones....

Bigger ones with tourists in the middle that is....

Big black beaches....  I sad beaches, not...

And big black viking cars....  I have a wicked collection of viking car photos from all around this crazy country.

Little puffins....

Daring tourists....  Nothing but a 50m drop after that unstable edge....

 

And last but not least.... Sven style horses.

But enjoy the country.  It is expensive but honestly similar in price to Australia.  Don't bother to learn the language but, you'll fail.  If in doubt, mumble the word, it seems to work :)    

Now for an important safety message...  The Icelandic's have an aversion to crossing rivers.  Everywhere we went you were told not to risk it, book a bus, take a bridge, turn around!  So I thought I would publish a little how to, just to help out.

When crossing a river, never go it alone or without the reassurance of a bridge.  If you can't find a bridge 

consider your options of turning around or catching a tour....  Consider parting with your money to avoid disaster should the need arise.

This man is a trained professional, his actions should not be copied.

Even if the waters appear only an inch or two deep, it is danger danger, danger!  Always find a bridge, even if you have to walk a solid 3km or more to cross it.  It will give you a happy feeling to know you will now be okay.  

See, happy face :)

And enjoy Iceland!

                

Less Work More Tasmania

After handing in my resignation once again I am free to pursue my own vices.  Question: what is it about the quality of employment I keep on finding my way into these days that has me happily following this path yet again?  It seems that in engineering people’s egos are getting bigger and team work has become nothing more than a catch phrase rather than a road map to efficiency.  The office environment is becoming a mash up of the usual Dilbert standard of cartoon and the latest version of the soap opera Neighbours.   I look around me as the good engineers become less abundant, mostly moving on to find more fulfilling roles in other fields.  No wonder the manufacturing sector is dying in this country.  With the loss of the more skilled individuals, engineering is becoming less of a pursuit for new and ingenuitive solutions but rather a farcical race to recycle old designs in an attempt to minimise business overheads.  I see in the news that Australia has some challenges ahead in terms of its standard of living as we have all grown complacent to these very issues and I wonder where my contribution is to lie.  Things to ponder while on the road I guess.  I know, I know, what a note to start my next blog on!

So on I role with the more fun stuff.  Despite my dissatisfaction with my most recent employment, it did pay well.  This has left me enough in the bank for yet another round of travel. Yay!  I’m starting closer to home this time however.  The premise for my next round of travels is to trek the artic regions of Norway and Sweden with a little side visit to Iceland.  The only issue with all this though is that these areas are only really accessible to the kind of trekking I want to be doing during the summer periods of June to August.  I quit my job at the start of February because I didn’t have the mental fortitude to sit through a few extra months of dead end engineering.  Perhaps a sign of weakness on my behalf, though more probably a realisation that I would rather do something/anything but.  So what to do to fill my time?  Well that was a brief 10 second pause before the answers started flooding. 

My plans are to travel with Emily my girlfriend around Australia for the interim, visiting mates and seeing place I have yet to feel underfoot.  We will start with a trip to Tasmania and get some hiking/camping experience before making a trip to Fraser Island to visit some friends and do some beach camping.  Following all this the Great Ocean Road looks like a fair prospect with a few other side trips listed as potentials.

Planning and travelling to Tasmania requires little effort and it wasn’t long before we had bought some extra kit, packed our bags and flown to Launceston.  In Launceston we picked up a hire car and hit the road.  The hire car was a good choice as there are so many nooks and crannies to Tasmania and you really need to be mobile to access them. 

Tasmania is a vastly different beast that I had thought.  The cities seem to be quite bogan with a simple stop to pick up food from Woolworths having me double and even triple checking the car was locked.  Outside the cities however, the countryside is vast and wild.  We found the people to be very friendly, especially in the north west of the state and their love of good bakeries had them firmly planted in my book as “okay”.

The amount of wildlife around the place is astounding.  Emily being from the motherland (England) had never experienced anything of the like and to suddenly be absolutely surrounded by almost every Australian animal to make a post card was off the charts amazing.  If I can make any recommendation to others wishing to travel Tasmania it would be to camp your way around and get amongst the wildlife.  For this reason, I have broken from my usual blog format to provide some info on where to go to see and do what.  It’s no Lonely Planet guide but that said it is probably 100 times more helpful…  So let’s get to the good stuff:

Starting with the camping, we followed a simple recipe.  We had our own light weight tent, sleeping bags, roll matts, etc. which we were carrying for our hiking.  To this we added a cheap esky, gas cooker, folding chairs and other cooking essentials bought from Kmart in Launceston.  The grand total of our outlay was $70 but now we had all we needed to camp for 2 weeks.  With the car to ferry ourselves around we started looking for some free campsites. 

Tasmania is littered with free camping.  All you need is a one off national parks permit ($30 per car) and you are set to go.  Free camping in our experience is a good way to really get into nature when in Tasmania.  The facilities around the place are first rate.  They are actually so good that my mind was boggling at how it all was afforded.  The one obstacle you will find to free camping however is the lack of information readily available on where you can camp.  There is a simple answer to all this but.  If there isn’t a sign saying you can’t camp there….hello free camping.  You will find yourself alternating between the free camps and paid ones however if only to find yourself a shower.

As for finding animals.  How can you not?  Kangaroos, wallabies, pademelons and platypi are just about everywhere you look!  Latrobe was one place where we first went in search of platypi though and to be honest it was a little disappointing.  I think the most disappointing feature was that this was the area where everyone went to look for a platypus.  Despite the locals telling everyone that they are shy animals and you have to approach them with this in mind, you always find those who just don’t get it.  In my experience, nine times out of ten this will be Japanese tourists.  We suffered one of these nine times.  I’m not in any way against Japanese tourists but f@ck me dead, they do my nut in.  Not to worry however, we soon discovered that platypi are in almost every river, deep or shallow.  I stopped counting after seeing ten.  While camping at the Mole Creek caravan park I actually awoke to one eyeballing me.  So cool.

 

There are huge ants...

The more remote you go, the better the experience.  We took three days to trek the Walls of Jerusalem, a famous trek in the northern middle(ish) of Tasmania.  What a fantastic hike!  The weather can be a little fickle up on the highland plateaus with snow occurring even in summer but if you prep with this in mind you will be ok. 

Aside from the abundance of animals we encountered, deadly snakes, kangaroos, wallabies and the odd wombat, it was the people who really made it fun.  Oh and the scenery was off the chain too which did also contribute.  Back to the people however.  Running into another hiker would result in a 30 minute chin wag, especially with me leading the charge.  On one occasion, we had lunch with two Aussie lads of after they basically fell off the side of a mountain after setting out on a self-made exploration.  They found their way to us by the time honoured cooee method. Emily was truly flabbergasted as to what on earth was happening.  In a second instance, we later met a father and son who were making their own tracks hiking and trout fishing each of the backcountry lakes to the south of our travel route.  If those guys didn’t have the most wicked lifestyle in a bag I will eat my hat.  I was sooo jealous.

On the way in.  The big backpack is mine...

Our basecamp up on the plateau.

A view of the plateau heading up to Mt Jerusalem

Climbing Soloman's Throne

The view from the top. 

Just taking a break dangling the legs

Back at the camp, the locals encroach 

This is a pademelon.  They have less hair on their ears and tail.  They are also the size of a small wallaby

And this is a wallaby... (ladies, cue the awwwww)

Just another picture perfect scene

Hiking your way around will have you crossing paths with a few black tiger snakes.  Not to worry too much, just stare em down and they’ll move on.  Long pants or gaters are probably a very good idea but.  Emily, scared of snakes, sent me forward as fodder for any snakes too lazy to move off the path.  If you think this was a little rough from my perspective, I should note that I had little to worry about.  My girlfriend has the heaviest set of feet this side of the extinction of the dinosaurs.  The only snakes we crossed paths with were those locked to the ground in fright! 

In the Tarkine region of Tasmania we managed to see two wild and healthy Tasmanian devils.  A real highlight of the trip.  Here we also saw a bazillion possums and pademelons plus one very rare black spotted quoll.  Camping at the Julius River free camping area (not the RV one but the day use area) we also began to realise how treacherous it would be to drive between the hours of dusk til dawn.  There is that much wildlife around during these times that you need to be doing either 30km/h or risk damage to your car.  This really is because most the animals around are nocturnal feeders.

Swapping the west with the east of Tasmania we went to Freycinet national park.  This area is definitely more touristed than the west of the island.  Here we stayed a couple of days in Bicheno where we came across a good number of little (fairy) penguins.  Sitting around just on dawn and having 20+ of the little guys mooching around literally at your feet was a pretty special moment.  If only there were tourists wandering into the dunes behind the beach and disturbing the penguins nesting sites in an attempt to grab a photo.  There seems to always be someone who stuffs it for the rest of us.

And Tasmania has beautiful beaches too.

Penguinos!  This was just one batch to make it to our feet!

Avoiding the bad weather of the west coast we remained one more day on the East and visited the Mount Field national park to see some big trees.  Daaaammmnnn they were big!

 

The trees are this big!  If you look carefully you will see Emily at the base.

As our trip came to an end, the one animal that had eluded Emily was the wombat.  I had seen one but she hadn’t.  To rectify this we headed for a caravan park in Kelso, in the North of Tasmania.  We were told by the nice lady running the park that there were wombats about and boy was she on the money!  We pitched our tent and bang on dusk were in the midst of a herd of hungry grazing wombats!  You were almost falling all over them as they littered every square meter of free space.  The possums weren’t much better.  I took to hitting them with my shoe just to keep them from getting into the car, our tent and others dinners! 

 

Big and little wombats

 And they are approachable too...  Maybe because they are blind...

 And then there were possums.  This little guy was 1m above our tent.

All in all Tasmania has impressed a true sense of wilderness upon me.  The whole adventure was affordable and quite amazing.  I now have plans to return for another round of trekking.  This time something quite challenging, the South West track..  To close out I have to thank my mate Matt for hooking me up with his father and a tonne of free cherries from their cherry farm.  There is probably a solid 200km of sprouting cherry trees on the side of the road to the Tarkine thanks to all the fruit we ate!  And him shooting his malfunctioning plastic owl while we ate breakfast was a true bit of Australiana for Emily haha. 

 

 

Vietnam, the Fun Stuff

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...

 

 

 Our first nights camp, complete with jungle men and a fire.  

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.