Hi again everyone...sorry for the lack of photos again, think there's a problem accessing our memory stick..too big for slow computers!!
Anyway, suppose we should fill you in on what we've been doing... we left you last in Agra before catching the train...ok so it was late and the time waiting for it to arrive was spent fending off begging street kids, but the free food on the train was fantastic, even with ice cream for pudding...we had been avoiding dairy to try and keep the bellies a bit more settled, but when its free!!
So then had a day's sightseeing in Delhi, decided to walk around like usual (explaining this to rickshaw drivers is a nightmare...and ignoring them gets you no further, they just accuse you of being racist - "Do you not want to talk to me because I'm Indian??"), unfortunately the majority of Old Delhi is closed on a Monday...ruling out most of the planned sights - Red Fort etc! Instead we headed first for the intellectual alternative - the Jantar Mantar, a 17th century observatory...a crazy array of building-sized instruments to measure everything astronomical...the exact time, the location and angle of the sun and moon, the distance from equinoxes and some stuff we didn't really understand about deciding on zodiac signs...all in all rather interesting (even just for the architecture) but rather taxing on the brain (had a lovely, but bloody expensive guide to help us...although didn't ask for him...thought he was the caretaker!) After the very grand India Gate (like the Arc de Triomphe), the presidential palaces (and the troop of monkeys in the grounds) and Connaught Place it was time to fly off to Vietnam, where we've been ever since.
Arrived into Hanoi on the morning of 30th Dec after dinner on the plane at 1.30 am and no breakfast!! Went to the cash machine and instantly became millionaires! 1 million dong is about 40 quid! Didn't give the city much of a chance as we wanted to head out to Halong Bay asap. Caught the bus there and got on a boat ready to explore the bay. A beautiful sunken karstic landscape with steep limestone islets, riddled with caves rising out of the sea. Spent New Year's Eve on the biggest island in the Bay (Cat Ba) and started off the celebrations with an Australian family and a couple of americans, pool and the local beer - 4 glasses for a pound! Headed to a more lively bar later, good job they handed round sparklers for midnight, else we would have missed it completely, think the cheap beer and local spirits did their job...next thing we knew it was morning!! no idea how we managed to stumble back to the hotel a couple of miles away, but we all made it!
New Year's day was spent nursing very sore heads, with a breakfast of pringles and orios, exploring the island and kayaking before getting back on the boat for a rather more subdued evening and night on the water. The trip went smoothly, as long as you took what you were sold with a large pinch of salt and just enjoyed it...the Aussies ended up in a brawl with the tour operator in the local police station...according to our tour guide "He's not a bad person, he just works for a bad company"!!
Back to Hanoi for even cheaper beer, 8 for a pound but some glasses did taste better than others...little quality control! Kerry ordered snake head for dinner...very brave, until it arrived and it was disappointingly just a local type of fish! and Ben was later offered $500 to share Kerry with a 14 year old-looking bookseller!! if he'd said $600 I'd have considered it...
Exploring the Old Quarter of Hanoi was fantastic fun, it's a series of streets and alleyways each with their own theme (silk street, bamboo ladder corner, sweet street, snail and frog street, snake- and ghecko-wine street) which were great to get lost down and worry about where you were later. There was a flower festival in the city, may sound boring, but 15-feet high dragons made entirely out of flowers are pretty impressive! Also went to watch a performance of water puppetry...a cross between local stories, Punch and Judy and musical pantomine, set in a swimming pool inside a theatre...very bizarre, but great fun!
Started our trip south with a short bus ride to a little, not that touristy, countryside town, Ninh Binh, which was a great place to explore the surroundings by bike ( it was completely flat, barring the limestone pinnacles, like those in Halong Bay, but rising from paddy fields, not the sea). Cycled about 50km getting very lost trying to follow a hand-drawn map between the local sights, but got to see village life, so was well worth it!
Experienced our first sleeper bus to get down the coast to Hue, not the comfiest night's sleep, the bed was fine, apart from being about a foot too short (we are very tall for here!), the humid, oven-like conditions and being thrown into the air over every bump, of which there are a lot!! Waking up in mid air is an experience!
Hue, the old imperial capital of Vietnam, was great and sunny...apparently the first dry day for the past 4 weeks! Lots of city walls, old buildings and pagodas interspersed with damn good food...tried frog, not just the legs, the majority, even what we think was the liver! It did rain in the evening, the first precipitation since we left the UK...no problem, just meant that we went to the closest cafe to our hotel for tea...run by an eccentric, but very funny woman, with great yoghurt shakes, cheap beer and tasty dinner!
Then it was off to Hoi An to blow our very well kept budget!! It is the capital of silk and tailors...over 500 in the town apparently, so had to take advantage of cheap labour and get 2 suits (Ben), 2 dresses (Kerry-surprisingly!), 2 coats, 2 shirts (Ben) and 2 pairs of trousers (Kerry) made to measure with two fittings in a day and a half!! Managed to do a deal with the woman looking after us, which included hiding a wadge of money in a suit pocket (so she could give the tailors a bigger cut and stop it going to the boss - at least that's what she told us!), got a free shirt and a big discount out of it, so everyone's happy! All looks amazing quality and great fun getting it done...since when do we enjoy shopping!?!?
Oh yeah and Hoi An is a really lovely town, very French with wide boulevards along the river and narrow streets in the old town, really enjoyed our stay here, especially the food, amazingly fresh seafood and local specialities. And we went on a half day's cooking course, learning how to make them...can now make fresh rice paper for pancakes, spring rolls and to turn into rice-noodles amongst other recipes! Got to eat all our creations, like seafood and exotic fruit salad, lemongrass and aubergine stew-like thing and pork and prawn spring rolls and pancakes - yum yum (not allowed to say that here, it means you're horny!!) Food kept getting better with the local coffee - incredibly strong and mixed with condensed milk to make it extra creamy and sweet! followed by pudding of chocolate cake and cocktails!
Had a morning's trip to My Son (a Cham temple complex dating from the 10th century), amazingly well preserved, especially considering the bomb craters dotted in between the towers!
Leaving Hoi An meant a return to the budget and backpacking lifestyle, now with much heavier bags! and a trip to the beach, in Nha Trang. Another night on the bus to get there. More bearable than the last as we were further forward and the driver was saner! After struggling to find breakfast (walking round for an hour -where are the croissants in a town full of French Expats?) we stumbled on a cafe offering scrambled eggs and bacon in a baguette...mmm!!!
Spent the morning walking along the beach and visiting the National Oceanographic Museum...not any old museum...half of it is an aquarium, with amongst others, green turtles, seals and sharks!! This made us hungry for seafood, found a place where you could BBQ eels at the table, again mmm! Afternoon spent seeing the sights, including another Cham temple site, with a 28m high tower about the same age as at My Son, and two giant buddhas 14m tall!!
Now we are in Dalat, in the Central Highlands, dubbed the Vietnamese equivalent of the French Alps in spring, more like Disneyland meets pine forest and rolling hills!!! A really disappointing town and area, filled with reservoirs with swan-paddle boats and gingerbread-house cathedrals! They do make their own wine here...no grape variety, so we later found out because a lot of it is mulberry! Good for the first part, deteriorates rapidly when you get near the salty, dried fruit that they add in at the bottom...weird!!!
Apart from that, food and drink in Vietnam has been amazing, all really fresh, flavoursome and lots of local specialities to choose from, hopefully will be able to recreate some at home. Haven't had that much weird stuff, not seen dog on the menu (just seen it being butchered) and haven't tried duck eggs with an embryo inside, fried crickets or snake!
Off to Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City, but no one calls it that!) tomorrow so hopefully still time to find some interesting delicacies!!
Sorry this is a bit long, will try to update it more regularly in Malaysia when we get there in a few days.
dhas on the hill above the town... 
dhas on the hill above the town... 
