Vietnam Pages -- Day 1

We had left Singapore early morning and the flight journey was spent reading the 'Lonely Planet guide to Vietnam' and major discussions on 'where to stay', 'what to do', etc. The main backpacker location was Pham Ngu Lau and nearly all mid-range accom. seemed to b listed there. There was also a direct bus from the airport, saving us the trouble of having to haggle with taxi drivers.

Four confused Indian girls carrying huge backpacks can attract a lot of attention. Thankfully, we did not have taxi drivers chasing us to hire them. We had a little difficulty finding someone who could speak english to direct us to the bus station. In our heads we were looking for a bus interchange, like in Singapore. We were pointed towards a lone bus standing a little further down. We tried speaking to the driver, who din understand us. We pointed where we wanted to go to on the map, and he merely nodded disinterestedly. We just went in and sat. In the worse come situation, we thought, even if we had taken the wrong bus, we could get a good city tour.

I always had a different picture of Saigon, painted by movies and my father's description of the city. Dont get me wrong, I din expect to walk into a run down, war torn village like place. Looking out the window of the local city bus which we had decided to take from airport, I saw short buildings, with large compounds and high walls, very similar to the way I remember chennai. The bus was spacious with more room for standing than sitting. Since we were the first few passengers, we got space to sit and comfortably place our luggages too. It was another hour to reach Pham Ngu Lau.

We decided to check out a few hotels before booking into them. The thing that strikes you first is how friendly the staff are. We settled into this small motel in a narrow lane which seemed to have many food joints. We went next door for breakfast. I had come to Vietnam expecting to survive on bread and sorts. Little did I expect that every restaurant has a separate 4 page vegetarian menu and that too in a small roadside shack! Breakfast was sumptuous. Pardon me, but I have to talk about what we had. I love waffles, so I ordered chocolate and banana waffle. My friends ordered some bread butter, scrambled eggs and roast potatoes. Firstly, the food was hot and freshly prepared, including the bread. Secondly my waffle turned out to be crepe and I was given a small cup of freshly made chocolate. Thirdly, we were all in heaven...the food was jus too tasty. Coffee was fresh brew with individual filters. I just loved the idea.

ok ok enuf about the food. We had planned to go from Saigon to Hanoi by train. It was my brilliant idea that we can see the sights of Vietnam from south to north while travelling by a 30 hour train. I grew up travelling around India in trains. I am used to long 30-40 hour train journeys and I think they are great fun. So we go to the Saigon train station. Confidently, we walked into the local train section and are trying to make head and tail out of the sign boards there, all written in Vietnamese. After a few minutes, we realise everyone is staring at us misfits. They obviously know we are at the wrong place, it just took us much longer to realise it. When we walked out we saw there were about 100 over porters dressed in navy blue uniform looking at our direction. How we managed to make a spectacle of ourselves, I duno. They started approaching us smilingly and we kept saying 'No'. In India, when porters approach you that is what you do. But how silly it felt now cos we had no luggage with us! Even more sillier when we realised they were trying to direct us towards another platform where the inter-city train tickets can be bought.

My brilliant idea was not so brilliant after all, since every tourist seemed to be doing the same thing! So after waiting for an hour, we found out that there are no seats available for the next week. I think my friends were a little relieved about it, cos now we would have to go by flight. Anyways, we decided to head back to our hotel and go to some travel agent nearby to book flight and some tour for the next day.

Vietnam Trip

Ok I know this is a looong awaited post which I just havent had the time to pen properly. After much inspiration from my friend, who is penning her Cambodia trip..I thought I should do some justice to what was probably one of my best trips ever.

Before we get to the trip details, a little on how it all started. The initial idea was for P, V and myself to head to Cambodia in May/June 2006..this was discussed in 2005. But at that time I was shuttling around too much to decide soemthing so far off. Towards the end of 2005, the Cambodia idea was given up for Vietnam instead. Logic being that Vietnam is less 'touristy' and plus I only get a week off, so we can only do one country. That sounded ok to me..I din care where we went, as long as I got to go with those two. At that time, we had been friends for 8 years but the last trip we had taken together was our JC india trip, which was 8 years back.

Of course there was much convincing to be done at home. My dad found it amusing that I would want to go to Vietnam. He goes there very often on business, and din think it was safe for 3 girls to go by themselves. As usual, my mom seconds my dad on this. They never thought the plan will actually materialise.

We planned and planned and replanned the dates and finally booked the tickets for June after 2 months of debating leave dates. Only to realise two of us cant make it on those dates...So we replanned and rebooked the tickets for end July. Good thing was..that was all we actually planned. I got so busy with work, I left the other two to draw out the itinerary to give home. One thing about living with your parents is that they do expect to be kept in the loop. Anyways, you can imagine my father's expression when I told him, "Er..we havent booked any hotel...we will go there and then search for a good backpackers." The roof din fall but the utensils he was cleaning did. He just simply said "You arnt going!" My dad is usually really cool and I always manage to get his support for all my so-called adventures. Apparently during his last trip to Hanoi, some women tried to kidnap him. I just burst out laughing (if you see the size of most Vietnamese women and my father, you will know why). Of course nothing happened to him, he was just giving an example of the "dangers" we may be faced with.

One thing I know I can do is persuade my parents. I have done it so many times, that I managed to convince them that we wud be alrite and nothing wud happen. We reach in daytime and we have a lonely planet guide (the book) with us. I wasnt gonna miss the trip anyways :)

So the night before I borrowed my cousin's backpack and got ready for 8 days of fun. The last 8 days of my vacation before college started and classes resumed. Before the madness of subjects and assignments and exams started.

Recharged and back to work

I know its been a while since I have put up a post. Saying I have been caught up with work, would just be an excuse. Anyways, I just got back after a good, deserved vacation and break. After weeks of 2-3 hours of sleep and massive amount of work (resulting in severe back pain), I just couldnt wait to leave all that behind and rush out of Singapore for the long weekend. Couple of friends (P and V) and myself headed down to Phuket on wednesday last week. This trip was going to be about indulgance, so I had told myself I was not gonna think of how much I was spending or worry over money, so I could jus pamper myself.

We made our way to our hotel, which was tucked away somewhere, in the middle of nowhere called "Leelawade Hotel". I had no time to look into all this, so my friends handled the accomodation bits. The room was cosy and we landed near to midnight, so I dont think we noticed much else except the bed. Next day morning we were to leave for Krabi (where our real holiday was gonna start), but much to our disappointment, it was raining. The view from our hotel did not help. We saw a lot of ruined structures, still under construction after the Tsunami in 2004. Just when the mood was dampening, the sun God took pity on us and came to the rescue. With new spirits, we bargained our way to Krabi. The bus ride was definitely interesting. Although I could feel neither the "1st class" nor the "aircon" part of it. We had to haggle a lot with taxi and tuktuk drivers and finally reached a hotel which my friends had picked called "Buri Tara". Small, cosy and tucked away from the main beach, so if the Tsunami did hit, it will take a good 10 mins to reach us. I wasnt complaining.

Lunch was simply too good to be true. We managed to find a small place on the beach called "K.R.Thai". The food was really tasty and the bill was laughable compared to the horrible thai food and the even worse bills we see in Singapore. With our tummies and wallets satisfied, we headed to do some bikini shopping and beach exploring. Then we headed to the hotel swimming pool for a dip to relieve ourselves of the day's fatigue. And lo! it was dinner time already. I have no qualms of pigging out since I was on a holiday. Dinner was at a fancy thai restaurant facing the beach. Nothing beats the sound of the waves lapping at the shore gently while having candle light dinner and white wine with best friends.

Next day was activity filled. After breakfast we headed to the mangrove swamps for a morning of Kayaking around nearby islands. Unlike Vietnam, where we kayaked in open sea, this was more tricky. There were mountains and rocks on one side and mangrove swamps on the other and keeping the kayak in between took its toll on my arms and back. Nevertheless it was great fun. The scary part was this place was filled with monkeys who kept jumping on our kayaks and walked all over us rather comfortably, as we were part of trees. We took a break in one of the islands and had fresh pineapples and watermelons, with monkeys staring and waiting for us to throw half eaten fruits for them. Lunch was simple. Home cooked thai food provided by the kayaking company. The company was good. A thai family, couple from Slovakia, a girl from Austria and us three Singapore girls, sharing our travel experiences around Asia. It was time for swimming again. This time we headed to "Emerald pool" only to find out it was not anywhere close to a pool. It was an underground cave, 240m in depth, filled with water. The water was green (apparently cos of the cave) was moss filled and freezing cold. Next stop, elephant trekking! It was a sad affair...We all sat on elephants and went around the jungle very slowly for an hour. Slow because the elephants kept going wherever they wanted and stopped whenever they felt like it. Sad because the mahots kept hitting them. I was very upset by the end of it, not to mention my guilt level. Anyways, we got to feed the elephants and they seemed very happy about that. We had 3 elephants, a 90 male, a 45 year old female, and their 25 year old daughter. The youngest one kept "thanking" us each time we gave her something to eat. It was jus toooo cute. We headed back to the one place we were looking forward to, the swimming pool!

I know, it sounds silly that we are at Krabi and we havent really gone to the beach yet! We did the next morning. The water felt good, especially cos the sun was blazing! After a lot of fooling around in the water, we headed back to pack and leave. We were heading back to Phuket. I slept thru most of the journey. On reaching Phuket the same haggling started again and ofcourse seeing us with bagpacks and all, the prices went up the roof. One taxi driver went to the extent of telling us its impossible for us to find rides if we were going to be so unreasonable. As we decided to walk a little further ahead, a huge bus stopped near us and offered us a ride for a mere 30 Baht and drop us off outside Patong beach. Ofcourse we got in! The ride was slow with many many stops.

Patong beach was already getting lively and ready for the saturday night crowd as we walked down to check out some hotels. Finally we managed to get one facing the beach. We decided to have a girls night out, we decided that we were gonna drink till wee hours of the morning and we decided we are not going to sleep early. None of that happened. After the first few drinks my darling friends started giggling and talking loudly and god knows wat else. I spent the night holding their hair back, while they vomitted their guts out, and convincing them to go to sleep. I sat for a long time making sure that they din get up and walk out of the room or something. I duno when I slept off finally.

Sunday morning was on the beach. I loved the water in Phuket, much more than Krabi. It was cleaner and more lively even at 7am. After having fun at the beach we headed to the pool to laze around for a while. But the sun was just too much to take. Most of the remaining morning was spent in bed enjoying the last day of the vacation. After a good footlong subway sandwich and some fresh smoothie, I felt recharged to take yet another nap. Dinner was at a lovely mexican restaurant overlooking the beach. We quietly ate enchaladas while watching the sunset. I wish we had such places in Singapore...we do, we jus dont bother going to them.

It was time to head back to Singapore...as soon as the plane landed in Changi depression set in...the holiday was over. It was back to work from tomorrow, rather today. As the clock ticked 2am, I headed to bed.