I have been doing some more travelling.... this time the focus was really on getting out of towns and into the country. And I found some beautiful country!!!
I started with a trip through the mountains and close to the Laos border with Mr Uyen (my easy rider/"tourist guider" friend). 4 days on the back of a bike.
~~Me on the road with out trusty bike! ~~
~~ Mr Uyen - my friendly tourist guider (at least, that's what it says on his business cards!) ~~
We started out trip by heading into the mountains and to a stunning waterfall. Now - it is pretty hard to impress me with waterfalls. I spent a lot of my childhood discovering and enjoy many great swimming holes. And I find in Vietnam most of the "amazing waterfalls" are now more or less rubbish tips, or are average by FNQ standards. But this one was amazing. I would have happily paddled around all day!
While I was enjoying my swimming a friendly Danang local came and chatted with Uyen and myself. She and her work mates were having a picnic, and wanted to invite me to join their party.... once I was finished swimming. So I wandered up and had an awesome time!
only two of the girls could speak English. One very well, the other hesitantly. Everyone was very inviting and welcoming. Vietnamese people sure know how to picnic! they had entire chickens grilling over fires. Containers full of beef marinating and squid pieces, plus rice, salad, fruit, who knows what else!
I sat down and help skewer some squid and beef. Had a coffee and some watermelon seeds, then decided I should probably go find Uyen so we could go get some lunch! When I tried to leave the girl who had invited me started some extreme emotional blackmailing..... telling me I could possible leave until after we ate, or all her friends would think she was a bad host, or that I didn't like them. So I phone Uyen to make sure he was getting himself some food somewhere... and sat down to enjoy lunch!
Back on the road after my lunch and swimming and through some lovely hills and mountains, that unfortunately have been subject to years of slash and burn farming.
Uyen then asked if I like to drink tea.... and had a special treat, going to see how tea is grown. How exciting! (for those who don't know.... I spent my uni holidays doing tours of a tea factory and thusly possess more tea related knowledge than is really necessary!
Back on the road through a number of small villages and stops to visit rice wine "factories" cinnamon plantations and rubber farms. Plus we constantly pass groups of kids who all get excited and wave and shout "Hello!" whenever we stopped I would track down the kids and spend some time trying to talk with them. most enjoyed having photos taken and love to look at the photo on the screen and pose in as many ways as they can think of. Some are shy about the weird white monster with the strange machine and hide away. (I'll be dong another post in the next few days with a whole lot of photos of people but here's a few kids!).
I also met a group of women who were sitting up on a recently burnt hill when we arrived, taking a break from planting rice. They spotted me and started shouting for me to come over and waving their arms. I decided to give them a thrill and complied - resulting in them all laughing uproariously. So I crossed a little creak, and hiked up a hill to visit them. The conversation consisted of my minimal amount of Vietnamese. So I was able to answer such questions as where am I from (Op - Australia); How old I am (Hai muoi lam - 25 because the Vietnamese count ages different so here I am already 25). At least.... I am fairly sure that is what they were asking.... It is the usual questions and so whatever they asked those are the answers they got!
I also got roped into having a go with the pointy stick and throwing seeds into the hole job. Which again, they found hilariously funny!
The road then took us through some really beautiful jungle areas. This was another hill I hiked up for the view! It was somewhere around here that I got a glimpse of what I am pretty sure was a Gibbon in the wild, only for a second... but I was very happy to see wildlife, in the wild!
Up the border of Laos and Vietnam to Khe Sahn. I didn't expect this trip to involve so much fog, or cold weather! but at some points it really did feel like driving through the tablelands again! I am sure that the views from here down into the valley was beautiful, but the fog was so thick there really could have been anything in there!
Khe Sanh airport featured one of the most interesting museums I have seen (possibly because it didn't just focus completely on Ho Chi Minh like a lot of the do). The photographs were incredibly powerful, and very much front line photography. The base now consists of a couple of crashed planes, a couple of whole planes and helicopters and rebuild bunkers and trenches. The thick fog certainly made for an eery atmosphere. The downside was the guy trying to sell me "war souvenirs". Which possibly ex-service men are interested in.... but I just see those bullet casings and think: that bullet, or one just like it tore through a person. ripping them from their family, their life. cutting through with a sudden searing pain and making someone else, a killer.
He also had dogtags for sale. Which I suspect, and hope are fakes that have been made somewhere.... they were super shiny. But if they are real.... why would anyone want to buy the dogtags that a man died in. that should have been sent home to some poor family.
anyway, I tried to say no nicely and make him go away, i know he has to make money somehow.... and then Mr Uyen snapped something and the salesman left us alone.
From here we went East along the DMZ, saw the famous bridge and a couple of fairly boring war based museums. One featured 3 strange Vietnamese men who repeated yelled HELLO at me from the other end of the museum. The first time I smiled and waved and replied, but then they just kept yelling Hello repeated. So after a couple I started to ignore them and try to actually look around. When next i looked up one of the men had pulled a gun off the display and was miming shooting me. I think it was meant to be a joke.... but seems like the sort of thing you would expect of a 13 year old... not a 40 year old... and seemed fairly bad taste next to the photos of people fighting and dead bodies. So I left this musuem pretty quickly.
Slept next to the ocean and I got up at dawn to see the sunrise/the fishing boats coming in with their catch.
Unfortunately the cloudy weather persisted and I didn't get a sunrise.... but it was still a nice walk
Next off to the Vinh Moc tunnels.
This is where an entire village moved into tunnels to hide from the bombing. The tunnels here are quite interesting and you can still walk through them. Apparently 8 babies were born in the tiny kitchen table sized maternity room. They also had deeper bomb shelters..... but if the shallow tunnels collapsed while everyone was in the bomb shelter, I am not really sure how they planned to get out!
For the last day of my trip we journey to Phong Nha national park.
Boat trip into Phong Nha cave. This is apparently an 8km wet cave, but the boat trip goes up the river for about 40 minutes to reach the cave, then about 1km in.
They have filled it with lights and it was quite beautiful.
Next we went back to Dong Hoi, and I got the midnight train up the coast to Ninh Binh.....
But that is going to have to be another post - because I need a break!!
What a story. Great pictures. You could try storing your camera in the rice bin to draw out some moisture. I want to keep seeing these amazing pictures.
ReplyDeleteJulie
The camera spent the time between swimming and me getting back to Danang in rice. It actually works, I can turn it on, look at pictures and even take pictures - but they come out all white and fuzzy. So now it is visiting the camera shop. I had a feeling that if left in rice it would eventually all get out. But I thought it was worth (what I am told will be very cheap, but I need to phone tomorrow to find out) the price to get it cleaned professionally. :)
ReplyDeleteIn other news, my wounds are healing nicely, and showing no signs of having any water based insects living inside of me as a result of swimming with wounds :)
The caving...... It wasn't that the cave was scary. It was being alone. I loved the caving we did as kids (I have been wanting to return!) but when you think about it..... you aren't really ever alone in a cave. Why would you go in alone! While I was in the alone cave I could appreciate that if there was anyone at all with me... I would have climbed the mysterious ladder, and crawled under the ledge into what looked like another big room.... but alone, caves are scary!
ReplyDeleteI was telling someone here about the caving we did, and the string and torches. Climbing through tiny holes and tunnels. This caving was very different, huge caverns!
HELLO!
ReplyDelete