Posts tagged my son
Suits, shirts and sleeper trains
A week further down the line and we have managed to stretch across the whole length of Vietnam, I am now sitting in my room over looking Ha Long Bay, one of the most beautiful things I have ever seen.
A week ago I ended up in the Nah Trang Mud Baths after sitting by the pool for a good few hours nursing the burn that everyone had managed to acquire. It would seem that a bunch of white westerners was actually more of an attraction to the locals than the baths themselves, a fact I realised when an elderly Vietnamese man with black teeth came over and stroked my skin and laughed… its a strange country. The mud baths themselves were an experience, it turns out that they weren’t the thick kind of mud I thought they were going to be, more like an off green runny paste that you sat in for 15 minutes. Was still a good way to spend the afternoon, and good laugh had by everyone who came along, and at around £4 a pretty cheep way to spend it to.
After to heading the cash point and withdrawing 1,000,000 Vietnamese Dong (it’s pretty strange seeing that number coming across an ATM machine) we went on to board out second sleeper train. This time around, we were told that the train would not be waiting around for very long, that we would have to run to get on, and that if we weren’t on time it would leave without us. Yet getting a sweet on and fighting to get on that train was not worth the hassle.
The window was smashed, the mattress emitted an amazing amount of flies when you sat on it, and cockroaches had set up shop in most corners of the room. I felt unhealthy just sitting in there.
As if 8 hours wasn’t enough in that hell hole, the train broke down somewhere along the way for a further hour. I think in all I slept about an hour and half. Once again, there was a rush to get off the train before it started moving again. One upside to the whole thing was turning around to see one of the most incredible sunrises coming over the train. Every cloud.
Hói An is a small town that sits on a river that has been made famous for the amount of tailors that have set up shop here. For around £55 you can get a full suit with shirt and tie, all completely made to fit you how you want. How could I have said no?
It takes just over 24 hours to get the suits finished, but it’s totally worth it. I came out of the shop with the nicest suit I have ever owned, and for a quarter of the price I would have paid back home. Most of the girls I was with went about getting a fitted dresses as well, but this will take a little longer, mainly because they will look much more extravagant! I was offered the chance to get shoes made for me as well, but I thought I would draw the line somewhere!
On the first night in Hói An it was one of our groups birthday, and after a few hours of fittings, we all went to a bar restaurant called Before and After, which you can find nearer the river at the centre of ‘Old Town’ where a few of us carried on the night after the meal.
We were approached by an American who seemed to love that my name was Matt (I never found out why) who then shoved a leaflet into my hand explaining about a Beach Party and a free bus would take us to. Not one to pass up such an offer, I jumped on with Katie. Here you can get a bucket of some disgusting mixture of Red Bull, Orange Juice and Vodka in a massive bucket for 65,000 Dong (around £2.20), and after a couple of these you will be sufficiently inebriated.
A great way to cure a hang over in Hói An is to get on a coach at 8am and head to the My Son temples. Here they are using some of the US army jeeps left over from the war to cart you up the mountain to the ruins. One of the monuments in the complex was once considered the centre of the universe and there is a small statue of a penis that you can touch to give you a better libido. I hugged it.
We moved on the next day for a quick stop over in Hue (pronounced H-way), here there isn’t much in the way of tourism apart for a number of bars where you can find a handful of over travellers. But the one reason that you should go there is the opportunity to experience the crazy streets of Vietnam first hand. For 250,000 Dong (about £9) you can be taken on a tour on the back of a motorcycle around the rice fields and local villages around Hue, the views you get to see are incredible, and the adrenaline rush of riding at 30 miles per hour on the wrong side of the ride is, while ill-advised, a brilliant feeling!
The next day we set about on our epic 19 hour journey to Ha Long Bay. The journey went something like this: Sleeper train late by 1 hour, sitting in the pouring rain, sleeper train is better than the last one but teaming with roaches, watch movies, air con breaks, sweat through sleep, get off train, bus has flat tyre, ‘10 minute’ wait turns into an hour and half, drive to mechanics, wait another ‘10 minutes’ (45 minutes), back on bus, 3 hour journey to Ha Long Bay. I will never get annoyed at the London transport system again.
Ha Long Bay is easily the most beautiful place I have ever been in my life. We got on a boat almost immediately and set off around the 1,968 islands around the bay on our own ‘Junk boat’. If you ever managed to do this, there are three things you should do: Visit the caves, go to the floating fishing villages and watch the sunset out at sea. All of these things are breathtaking. One thing you should avoid is the beach. There is apparently only one beach that you can go to during the trip (how true this is I don’t know and don’t want to know now that we are leaving!) it will cost you 10,000 Dong, it isn’t much, but it still isn’t worth it. It’s crowded, filthy and totally destroys the peaceful feeling you might have managed to acquire during the journey. There is a path behind the beach up to the top of the hill which will give you the most amazing view aver the islands, and that is what you should pay for, but avoid this beach at all costs!
We are about to set off for the wonderful capital city of Hanoi, and our last few nights in Vietnam, so I will write again once in Hong Kong!
Tell then.
Matt