MILESTONE - one quarter through!

This Saturday is 13 weeks since we left the UK, which means that a full quarter of our trip is now behind us!

To mark this milestone, I've attempted to make some improvements to the blog. You've probably noticed the huge interactive map that now sits at the top of the page - every time we move to a new city, I'll plot it on the map so that you can keep track of our route. It works just the same as Google Maps so you can click and drag the image to explore more of the map, and use the + and - icons in the top left corner to zoom in and out. Pretty simple.

Let me know if you encounter any problems with it though, or if you have any suggestions on how I can make the blog even better!

Another beach, another waterfall - just another week in Vietnam

Although we had a good time in Saigon, it's a really busy city and after a few days we found ourselves flicking through the guidebook for somewhere peaceful and pretty to chill out. Preferably a beach.

We chose the little coastal town of Mui Ne partly because it's just a few hours from Saigon, but mainly because of all the fantastic reviews we'd read about its beaches online. In fact, our Lonely Planet guide went as far as to describe it as 'the best all-round beach in Vietnam'. So you can imagine how excited I was when we checked into our hotel and saw a quiet little sun lounger area with steps leading down to the beach - perfect! Until I walked over to see the sea crashing roughly against the bottom half of the steps and not a grain of sand in sight. That's not a beach, it's just a bit of seafront!

The tide finally went out at around 4pm, leaving a narrow strip of sand littered with bits of driftwood, the odd shell, plastic cups and pieces of polystyrene. Hardly paradise. Although to be fair, if you ignored this bit, the view in general was quite nice, and we spent the majority of our stay gazing out at it from beside the hotel pool.


We did discover a nicer stretch of beach about 10 minutes away, but a lot of it's taken up by bigger beach resorts. We also hired a motorbike to visit the red sand dunes nearby, and had another go at playing Indiana and Jones. We rented out plastic sheets from some kids and took turns riding down the dunes, although we'd foolishly decided to go in the early afternoon and the baking heat meant our fun didn't last very long.

After about two turns each we were hot and bothered, covered in sand, and just about ready to jump back into the pool!

I know you probably all think we're having a whale of a time with all this glorious sunny weather every single day, but it often gets too much and some days we're too hot to want to do anything at all. Most days it's around 34C! Believe it or not, we miss the weather back home - apparently it's only just hitting 24C in London, which sounds very appealing when you're melting on the other side of the world!

With this in mind, we headed inland to the hills of Dalat for a few days, where the weather is a lot cooler (around 21C) and the views are absolutely stunning. Here's a round up of our stay there:

We had a picnic lunch at Datanla waterfalls. The falls were cool, but the best bit was the rollercoaster ride that you can take to get down to them - such a genius idea!


We also visited Cam Ly waterfalls which was a total disappointment unfortunately - fake, gimmicky and smelly. And they had this poor old horse painted up like a zebra!

We had a wander around the local market. It's not huge, but it's possibly one of the best markets we've visited. We bought candied kiwi and strawberries, the best strawberry shake I've ever had, and ate a delicious lunch of braised pork and rice.

Dalat is surrounded by enormous green hills, and the best way to take in the views turned out to be via a cable car ride. We took far too many photos of course. I've selected just a couple of the best for you here:

There wasn't much to do when we got to the other end, so we sat in a little cafe and had a cup of artichoke tea, which is a Dalat specialty and surprisingly nice.


We also had a lot of noodle soup with wonton dumplings, pork-filled baguettes, strawberry wine, Vietnamese coffee, banana cake and Dalat-produced red wine. All in all, it's probably been our favourite place in Vietnam so far!

Vietnam so far...

After bumming around on beaches for so long, we decided we should probably get on and see some more of Vietnam.

Our first stop was Can Tho, a town on the Mekong Delta (where the Mekong River splits up into lots of mini rivers and waterways on its way to the sea).

One of the reasons I wanted to go to Can Tho was to visit one of its floating markets, where big and little boats punt along buying and selling fresh fruit and veg, sweets, canned drinks, coffee, baguettes and hot take-away meals.

A lot of people seemed to be buying in bulk, rowing off with boats filled with watermelon and pumpkin, so it was difficult to tell which boats were buying and which were selling. Eventually we realised that the seller boats all hang a sample of their produce from their masts, allowing those from further away to seek them out.

That evening we found a brilliant place for dinner where the concept is essentially a DIY barbeque. You order plates of seafood, vegetables and meat, which are brought along to your table marinated in a spicy sauce, along with a miniature barbeque. You're then left to cook your own meal and if you give yourself food poisoning – well, I guess that's your own fault.


This was followed by a couple of shots of snake wine at a nearby cafe – two huge jars filled with snakes and booze, how could we resist? Here's us in typical tourist pose:

A couple more beers later and we were staggering home munching on a delicious baguette filled with pate, cucumber, coriander, soy sauce, chilli sauce and some extra chillis for good measure. It was very spicy. If we didn't have a bottle of water handy, I would've hiccupped all the way home.

Next stop was Ho Chi Minh City (also known as Saigon), which is big and very very busy. There's an insane number of motorbikes zooming around, so road crossing is even more of an ordeal than it ever was in India. Apparently you're supposed to just take your time and cross slowly, letting the swarm of bikes weave around you as you inch forward at a steady pace, sometimes gesturing with your hands to let the drivers know whether you want them to go in front or behind you. No sudden movements, basically. It would be fine if I could convince myself that I'm not going to be spread across the tarmac every time I leave the kerb.

On our first day in the city we saw the first familiar, friendly face of our trip so far. I have a friend from high school, Cecilia, whose parents now live in Saigon. She very kindly put me in touch with them, so that morning her dad Lam and his business partner Louis picked us up from our hotel and took us out for lunch. We went to a fancy Chinese restaurant and filled our bellies with the BEST dim sum I've ever had – lots and lots of little parcels of delicious meat and seafood, followed by a variety of mini desserts. Interestingly, one of our favourite dishes was chicken feet in a spicy sauce – I didn't think these things would have enough meat worth bothering with, but I was so wrong, they're amazing.

Lam and Louis are in the process of opening a restaurant, and they took us to see how it's coming along. It's going to specialise in hot pots, where diners cook their own meat, seafood and vegetables in a pot of boiling soup in the centre of the table. It looks pretty good, and it's a shame that we're missing the opening by just a couple of weeks.

A couple of days later I celebrated my birthday spending the day at Dam Sen water park. I guess I'm not quite ready to be a grown up yet. We spent the afternoon going on all the slides, chilling out on the lazy river, floating around in the wave pool and then going on all the slides again. Got a lot of water up my nose, but it was worth it! And I finished the day off with my very own mini birthday cake.

Helmet time

You've already seen this picture of me modelling our helmet-with-visor in Ratanakiri.


But in Sihanoukville and Vietnam they tend to wear smaller, visor-less ones that look more like bicycle helmets. I like this one because of the two great big silver knobs on either side that look like the helmet is supposed to be wired up to some kind of electrocuting device.

Meanwhile, this one makes Karl look like he's about to get on the 'special' bus to school.

But this one has to be my absolute favourite for the brilliant quote on the side:


'Makes You Look Fashionable It Promises Fresh And Hot Impression'

Beach bums

Now THIS is the life!

Some mornings I wake up wondering what the hell we're doing so far away from home, spending all our savings, and dedicating way too much time seeking out decent hostels or bumping around on awful buses.

But then we find ourselves on a beach like this and remember exactly why we're here. The past week has been spent chilling out in Sihanoukville in the south of Cambodia, eating fresh seafood, drinking iced coffees and cold beers, lazing around in awesome swinging satellite chairs and playing in the sea:

It wasn't all fun and games, as I did manage to get a jellyfish sting one afternoon. Nothing too serious, just a minor sting from when I must've brushed past a tentacle, but it bloody hurt - half an hour later it felt like i was still being stung, and I had a bunch of raised bumps trailing across my upper arm in a kind of 'S' shape. Our hotel gave me some vinegar to dab on it, which helped a bit but it was still quite sore. So yes (and I know this is what you've been wondering since I mentioned the sting) - I put some wee on it. It actually helped a lot, and started feeling better almost instantly. And then, as my arm was now smelling of vinegar and wee, i had a very thorough shower.

We also got our Vietnam visas whilst in Sihanoukville - it was from the town's Vietnam Consulate, which sounds way more impressive than it was, considering it just looked like a big blue house. We filled out a badly photocopied form, handed over $45 each, and received the visas within about 5 minutes. All this left us feeling slightly suspicious as to their authenticity, but thankfully we managed to successfully cross the border into Vietnam a couple of days later. Although not after being asked by border officials to hand over $1 each for a health form - what a scam!

We were only on mainland Vietnam for about 30 minutes, before boarding a ferry bound for the beautiful island of Phu Quoc. It isn't too overrun with tourists yet, with just a few resorts and guesthouses along the beach. So not only is it absolutely stunning, it's also fairly peaceful. We only stayed for a couple of days, as we were keen to get back to the mainland and see the rest of Vietnam, but it was a verrrrryy chilled out few days.

The first couple of days were spent on Long Beach, near our guesthouse.


There are a few places along the beach offering massages and hair removal, but this place in particular caught our eye. What (or who) is Bear Trinming? And dare you order a Foot Love session??


On our last day, we hired a motorbike and travelled 30km to Bai Sao beach in the south of the island. Now, I'm not exaggerating when i say that this is the most beautiful beach I have ever seen. Goa doesn't even compare! Bai Sao was like something out of a magazine - soft white sand, clear blue sea, fishing boats and fluffy clouds. Just look at this and tell me you're not jealous!

The roads on the island are pretty bad, and on the way back to our guesthouse we managed to get a puncture and had to be escorted by a traffic cop to a nearby garage. Well, I say garage, but it was really just someone's front yard with a motorised air pump, puncture repair kit and a basket of tools. Oh, and a bunch of cockerels in various cages - a side business, I guess. The repair cost around 50cents - that's less than the price of the ham and cheese toastie we had on the way home (I miss cheese so much!).

After a two hour ferry journey - on which they showed Tom & Jerry and some Vietnamese comedy show - we're now back on the mainland. We weren't quite ready to leave paradise, but luckily the Vietnamese coastline promises more beach fun soon.