Yes, Gerd, you're absolutely right. Unfortunately, the internet here is very slow and my time limited, so I'm not able to make the blog a fully interactive multimedia experience (ie hunt around for graphics). Thanks for this one though:
I have, however, secured a tape of the soundtrack from the Vietnamese Water Puppet Theatre, and once I can figure out how to rip it to mp3, I will include it too. My plan is to go back over these entries and put in more links to stuff, maps, images and scan in some of my own photos too!
Anyway, we're now in Bangkok International, killing time before our flight to Melbourne in a couple of hours. A good opportunity to go over the last few days ...
We went on a day trip to some of the craft villages surrounding Hanoi - it's the Asian concept of "one village/one industry", so we took in Bat Trang (pottery and ceramics), Dong Ho (print painting) and Van Phuc (silk weaving and dyeing). It was just Marie and I, our driver and our really cute and vivacious 24 year-old tour guide Hien. Hien made the day for us - she even sang us some folk songs on the way back! The actual crafts etc were very interesting too - I love watching the potting wheels and silk looms in operation, and even the obligatory walk through the shops was worthwhile to see the finished product. We also wandered around a village and found out a bit about how they organised.
That night, we took in the aforementioned Vietnamese Water Puppet Theatre. This was completely enchanting! Instead of puppets manipulated by strings from above, it's done by poles from underneath the water, and the action takes place on the surface. It was developed a thousand years ago in the rice paddies, and so a lot of the action is set there. The puppets are anywhere from hand sized to a metre across, and there were water rats, different kinds of dragons (spitting water and sparks!), unicorns, boats, farmers, soldiers, water buffalo, fish, frogs all carrying on. The live band was great, with traditional Vietnamese music. The instrumentation, rythyms and tonal structure were totally bizarre to my ear - I hope to include it here for your accoustic enjoyment. The only downside was that for an extra couple of bucks, they let you take photos. Unfortunately, we were in between a row of Americans and a row of Japanese on tour, and the camera flashes were incessant - but they subsided during some parts, so mesmerising was the performance.
The next day, we went on a 3 day/2 night tour of Halong Bay. This is the famous bay with several thousand limestone islands of various sizes in it. It's spectacular, and photos can't do it justice. We visited an enourmous limestone cave (cathedral?) with many chambers that the Vietnamese thoughtfully lit up with different multicoloured lights. The next day, we went on a one day trek on Cat Ba Island, in the newly established National Park. The hike itself was very good - we walked, clambered and slipped our way across 6 "mountains", and then trekked through a big rice field and fishing village surrounded by mountains before hiking across a mud-beach and taking a boat back to Cat Ba Town. The third day we did more sight-seeing in Halong Bay, and then went back to Hanoi. I left my tailor-made Hoi An coat on the bus, with my camera, and there was a tense hour while the tour company got it back - I was most relieved to have recovered it, since I'm pretty sure those buses are kept busy 24 hours a day and I was sure it would be on the the road to Saigon before I found it!
I'm now looking forward to returning to Australia. Some of the other people on our tour asked us what our first meal back home would be - for me, it's going to be a nice big glass of water straight out of the tap! Mmmm, tap water. And then, I'm going to find the biggest, crispiest, peppery meat pie I can and drench it in some tomato sauce. And have a long hot shower. I was thinking before how weird it is that my idea of a holiday is getting up between 6 and 7 (that's a.m.) most days, having piss-weak showers - sometimes hot - and foregoing coffee with milk, newspapers, wine, internet browsing, any sort of cheese, BBQ shapes, telly, Indian food, bike riding and pub-nights. On the other hand, I've learnt to enjoy shopping for clothes, reading Harry Potter (just finished the last one) and having an early night. So there you go - travel does broaden the mind.
Yesterday we flew from Hue to Hanoi. We're staying in the Old Quarter, which is amazing! There are dozens of streets here, each with a particular product for sale, eg "Luggage Street" or "Sunglasses Street". We're staying in "Silk Street", near the lake. Tomorrow we're going to visit some of the surrounding villages where they specialise in traditional handiwork, so we're going to "Pottery Village", "Painting Village" and "Silk Village". Then we're off for 3 days/2 nights cruising on Halong Bay and Cat Bo Island, which should be great. We fly out of Hanoi on Wednesday morning, arriving in Bangkok at lunchtime. Then, we fly from Bangkok and arrive in Melbourne at about 5:30am on Thursday, Melbourne time.
Last night Marie ordered the eel hotpot, which I was obliged to try. It was more on-table cooking, this time in a claypot on a gas burner, where you drop chunks of eel, tofu and greens into a simmering soup of pineapple, chilli and other vegies. It was fantastic! Also, it was a kind of Vietnamese open cafe, where you can watch the chefs cooking food in one corner and people prepare it in the other corner, and it's all kind of open to the street. We chatted with some landscapers from Montreal, a Vietnamese business-owner and some Bavarian travellers from Laos (NB: NOT Germans. Bavarians are pointedly not Germans in the same way that people from Texas are Texans, not Americans. Also, generally speaking, Bavarians are quick to pay out on Berliners, point out their refined High German accents and superior educational system! I get the feeling that the animosity runs deeper than the good-humoured Melbourne/Sydney rivalry.) We also met and befriended a Vietnamese waitress there, Tru[sp?] and we've planned to go out clubbing on Saturday night with her and some of her friends. This will involve a trip to the fabled "Apocalypse Now Bar" (there's one in each of Hanoi, Hue and Saigon), which should be interesting.
Oh yeah - I had an amusing incident in Hue. My shoe developed a split, and I was looking in some shoe-shops for a replacement pair. It's hard to find my size, but some enterprising shoe-shiners spotted me and accosted me for a shoe-shine. In a process reminiscent of a frog being boiled slowly, I found myself signing up for new shoe laces, cinammon-flavoured inner soles and a superglue repair job on the sole. By this stage, I was seated at a cafe with six cobblers, from 10 to 15 years old, passing my shoes around and pointing and speaking excitedely. There was also an elderely couple from the cafe looking on in disbelief and a couple of shop-girls from the silk shop next door looking on bemusedely. I tried to assure them that I was fine, that this group of rag-tag street-kids were in fact a team of expert shoe-menders, but this was undermined by one of them resorting to his teeth to remove my shoelaces, which had knots too big to pass through the eyes. Another kid was gnawing the corner of a tube of superglue - I tried to stop him by doing a charades impression of someone with lockjaw, but he he assured me that as it was only Vietnamese superglue he'd be fine if it got on his teeth. The same kid asked me if there was any Mafia in Australia. I said "No, not really", and he conspiratorially leaned forward and said "In Hue, shoe-shine, mafia same-same" and then nodded at another kid, about 12 and made a stabbing motion, like he had a stiletto. This other kid was shaking his head vigorously and looking very worried - presumably Mafioso hitmen don't like being identified in broad daylight. I'm rather doubtful that these pre-pubescent kids are in fact the Mafia in Hue, and I'm not sure what they were getting at. Were they trying to find out if I'd be interested in a contract killing in addition to a buff and polish? Or trying to find out how gullible westerners are? Weird, but I had great fun with them, and they got their US$2 from me (outrageously overpriced, but I guess that includes "protection money" too).
We had a great trip on the train this afternoon from Da Nang. The coastal scenery was quite spectacular, and the hills and beaches we passed reminded me strongly of Cape Otway. Now we're in Hue. This is town used to be the centre of the Vietnamese Nguyen Dynasty until 1945, and was hammered quite severely during the American War when the VC took the town for three weeks. Khe San (of Cold Chisel's Khe San fame) is not far from here. Still, there's plenty of historic pagodas and the Purple City inside the Citadel still standing.
Sadly, the weather's turned, and it's now about 18 degrees, overcast and we've had the first rain of the trip. You'd think it was summer in Melbourne! (Ha ha, though I'll be "enjoying" it in 10 days myself.) :-( I picked up some new duds at Hoi An (this design-your-own-clothes thing is great!), but neglected to include a slicker - or even an extra jumper! - in the purchases. I might have to grab something in Hanoi, before going to Halong Bay.
Here's some things I've found interesting about Vietnam:
Nearly all the trees here are Australian eucalypts. It's weird seeing a mountain covered in them, with rice paddies at the bottom.
When I try and say "Thank you" in Vietnamese, I say "Sin Cam On", which I pronounce like "Sin Cum Ern", according to our phrasebook, and - to my ear - the local pronounciation. Amongst young ladies, this causes giggles, mouth-covering and the occasional "you cheeky!". No one will tell me either what I'm really saying, or what I should be saying, and since this is a tonal language, it could be anything! Aargh!
There is a religion here call Caodaism, which is a fusion of Taoism, Buddhism and Confusionism, with traditional ancestor-worship thrown in. It was kicked off in the 1920s. They have three saints that they call on in a kind of seance for advice etc. One of them is Victor Hugo - French writer who wrote Les Miserables. Apparently, his advice was sought to guide them in building their temple (we visited - photos to follow).
Dogmeat is considered "medicinal". I tried some in Chao Doc in the Mekong, and can atest that it's not very nice. Kind of chewy. I think that it's promoted as "medicinal" because otherwise no one would eat it.
On a related note, snake wine (rice wine like sake, but with a cobra pickled in the bottle) is meant to be a potent aphrodisiac. I've sampled that on a few occasions too, but it's not up to me to comment on its effects ;-) NB: I wouldn't actually buy this, as some of the snakes are endangered - I've only taken it as "gifts" from staff in some restaurants.
What is it with East Asian men and their aphrodisiacs? It seems that there are four requirements for something to be considered an aphrodisiac:
Something has to have died to make it
That something has to be very powerful or scary
Very scarce or even near extinction
More or less longer than it is wide
By my reckoning, rich Asian businessmen fit the bill perfectly, and they should be taking chunks out of each other instead of rhinos and tigers. It follows that the government in Hanoi is sitting on a goldmine: Ho Chi Minh is pickled and sitting on public display in a museum. Imagine the market for wee snifter of Bac Ho, Chairman Mao or Lenin-infused vodka?
Anyway, my email is playing up - I can read them both alright, but can't send. So, by way of reply: Yes, we're both perfectly well now, and feeling immune to the effects of local bugs. Almost reckless enough to rinse my toothbrush with hotel tap water or something crazy like that! Katy's email is katyhill_76@hotmail.com. Postcards are on the way. And the next leg is why fly Vietnam Airlines to Hanoi in two days. (I don't know what frequent flyer points I'll get for this - perhaps I'll be able to redeem them on Air Cuban or something?)
I'm sitting in lovely Hoi An. This is a peaceful, almost-world-heritage-listed crafty/historic tourist town. I haven't seen any neon at all yet. Marie and I've been getting measured up for some clothes, which has been fun. We're thinking we'll hang out for a few days, as it's so nice, and then catch the train up to Hue from Da Nang, because we like trains.
We had a hellish 14 hours on the bus getting here from Nha Trang. We averaged about 40km/hour (see prior post for description of mad bus trips). I think we'll fly from Hue to Hanoi, as there's apparently not a heaps to see in between, and I'm not keen on an even longer trip. That said, the long bus trips have given me a chance to start the Harry Potter series. We bought the first four for about AU$20 - the IP laws here are quite lax, and, let's just say that I'm sure photocopiers are more expensive to run here than in the West, so I can infer that a fair whack of the sticker price on a book bought in the West is going into non-marginal costs. This would explain why J.K. Rawling is the first billion-pound author, and her various publishers, agents and managers probably aren't wondering where their next meal is coming from either.
We're in Nha Trang now, the "Gold Coast" of Vietnam. It's a truly lovely beach here and the water is amazing in colour. I can attest to that, as I spent a few hours this morning in amongst it. (We went on boat out to the islands and I did a couple of dives and Marie did some snorkelling. Great fun, good visibility. Max depth 15m.)
This is definitely a "party town" - full of backpackers, bars, prostitutes and beach bums. Such a contrast after the 3 nights we spent in Mui Ne. So quiet! Our bungalow was 6m from the water line, and there was a collection of chairs and hammocks about 3m from the front door, under some palm trees. This is just as well, as I was sick for a day with some sort of horrible tummy thing, and then Marie was sick the next day! I guess it just has to happen. Luckily, we were able to stagger the illnesses, so we weren't competing for the facilities, if you catch my drift. Anyway, Mui Ne is a nice little spot with some awesome sand dunes, and some suprisingly good food at the little beach places.
Tomorrow, we're back on the bus to head up to Hoi An. We're about half way through our time in Vietnam (less than 2 weeks to go!), and about half way up the coast. The buses here are flabbergasting. I can't see how they operate the way they do, in amongst thousands of Hondas. The "big wide open" National Highway No. 1 is actually a two lane (well, 1.5) road and, out in the jungle, hundreds of kilometres from the big cities, we're still fighting through traffic, passing, say 2-5 motorcycles EVERY 10 SECONDS. There is at least one motorcycle along each side of the bus at all times. To cover 75km took 2 hours. I doubt there's one 50m stretch of road in this country that is occupied by one vehicle. The road planners are getting maximum utilisation of the bitumen, but it costs them terribly in road fatalities (hundreds each day). I can't understand how the bus drivers can concentrate that hard for so long, but I'm glad I'm in the biggest thing on the road (well, apart from the petrol tankers, but even the buses are a bit ginger around them). It's quite a rush sitting up the front of the bus, with this 15 square metre piece of glass between you and oncoming traffic and these lights whizzing past ... "is that two oncoming Hondas, or a truck?" and then nnnNNN-yeeeAWwww and they break left and right either side.
Anyway, Gerd, thanks for your blog entry. Sounds like you guys have had a good few weeks. I'm relieved to hear you and Theresa aren't getting bored, moping around the house and pining because we're not around to play :-)
Neal, sorry about the chess but I think it's kaput - timed out. I just plain forgot. I'll book you in for another lesson when I've got more reliable and timely access to the net. I hope Paddy is containable as Kate's return approaches. I recommend putting him in liquid nitrogen, under pressure, in a lead-lined drum in a concrete bunker at Woomera in the interim.
After Cu Chi Tunnels, we went to the Mekong Delta for 3 days, on an organised bus tour. I was initially a little hesitant, but it was definitely the way to go. The people were, by and large, great, and there was no way we could have organised so much stuff so cheaply in such a short time. My hat's off to Delta Adventure Tours!
We used quite a few different modes of transport: big aircon bus, two-deck boat, small boat with outboard motor, push bike, walking, motorcycle and rowboat. We saw the usual stuff - floating markets, small villages, tributaries, rice fields, floating houses, the big 160m high Australian-built bridge (go Aussies!), pagodas, stalk garden and larger market towns. We also saw how they process rice (it has seven stages, and absolutely everything is used - highly efficient), fish farming, coconut candy making, making of incense sticks, weaving of cloth with the Cham minority people and making rice paper.
Highlights for me included biking around a village and meeting some fishermen on a break. Over a few sticks of chewing gum, and using only pointing and hand signs, I explained how it is that a man is wearing an ear ring (they were curious, and not entirely respectful about it), and what deodorant is (we were having a poke around in my bag). The showed me how they carry sacks of rice, and by pointing at my thin and girly wrists I was able to explain that it wasn't a regular part of my working life. They had some cool-looking "prison tat" style tatoos, but pointing lacks sufficient expressive power to explain what they were about.
Another one was seeing the operation of the "toilet fish". Rather than pooing in the Mekong River, these guys have a pond out the back about 5 m across, with a bucket seat suspended over it about 1 m above. You climb up in there, and drop your poo into the pond. They have fish (like catfish) that are special poo eating fish in the pond. They grow very big and fat on human poo, and are taken to market and sold (quite expensive). This is typical of the ingenuity and efficiency with which these people organise their economy. Quite fascinating.
The rowboats here are cool too, quite different to Venice. The rower stands at the back with two oars crossed in front of them, and they sort of use a scissor-action while lunging forward to stroke, which is very impressive. After watching these teenage girls rowing me around for an hour, I thought I'd have a go. After flailing around for all of 5 minutes, I'd managed to move us forward about a metre, and turn side on to where we meant to be going. They thought it was hilarious.
One of the most impressive and quintessential Vietnamese sights is a flock of school girls in their traditional ao dai (aw yai). These are the really really white pants with the high-collared top that is long at the front and back. This is standard school wear. They look so beautiful and graceful with their conical hats and long jetblack hair, riding along on decrepit bikes or rowing on the rivers. Amazing! Even more so when you consider that they presumably wash their clothes in the silty Mekong Delta and hence can't use napisan.
The kids here are awe-inspiring. Everywhere we go, we get waves and smiles. Sitting on the deck of the boat, chatting with some of the other travellers and having a few beers means constantly waving to kids on the banks, or playing in the water, or in their stilt-houses on the side. At the touristy stops, they follow you around and ask you to buy them softdrinks. Of course, they sell them back to the vendors for half-price, so we got wise to that scam. In Can Tho (pop. 150,000), we were shooting pool at the "International Bar" with a group of young Melbournians on their way to Cambodia. One of the many street-kids (about 8 or 9) was flogging us peanuts and kind of hanging around. On the way back (after 11pm), walking through the streets, I asked him why he wasn't asleep - he replied "no sleep now, gotta work, gotta work". Apparently, these kids work to 1 or 2 am when the tourists go to bed. Sobering stuff.
We met a lot of interesting backpackers on the tour bus. Suprisingly, some of the most interesting have been middle-aged Americans and Canadians - I guess they would have to be a bit "out there" to be do the backpacker thing. By far, Aussies have been the most represented, followed by Germans, Britons and Dutch. It's been nice to mix a bit with an international crowd. Unfortunately, the language thing hampers conversation beyond business transactions, but we did have a nice long chat with the night guy at out Saigon hotel about the economy (he's an economic grad working for the government during the day) and Viet Kieu[sp?] (overseas Vietnamese) and my own family history.
Right now, we're in Mui Ne Beach. It's pretty deserted here, and our bungalow is on the beach, 6 m from the water line. It's great, but the rolling of surf might require ear plugs! So, were going to stay here for a couple of days, relaxing after Mekong Delta (I've been getting up at 6am for the last week) and then head up to Nha Trang where I'm hoping to squeeze in another dive.
Today we went to the Cu Chi Tunnels, NW of Saigon. It was amazing to see these tunnels which the VC used to supply and communicate from the Ho Chi Minh Trail to the guerrillas operating in Saigon. They had kitchens, living quarters and hospitals in there, 10 m underground, in some 200+ km of tunnels. Makes you realise how horrible it must have been above-ground, with Agent Orange, B-52 carpet bombings and masses of foreign and local soldiers.
Marie and I are off to a tour of the Mekong Delta for 3 days, which involves some boating, bicycling and bussing around. Then, we're off to Nha Trang for a few nights on the beach.
The last couple of days saw more hanging out in Saigon. We went back to our favourite on-table BBQ, and found a place next door called "The Blue Gecko Bar". Turns out it's an Australian-themed bar, run by "Simon", who has a deep knowledge of Brunswick St, is a mad-keen Tigers fan and has a Viet Ocker accent: swoiy may ("sweet mate"). It was good cheesy fun to have a few beers and play pool. Simon has a big Australia Day planned - he's bringing out Hunters and Collectors, and has brought out Diesel in the past, and his favourite - Ron Barrasi (I saw the photos!).
Another highlight was the lengthy unsolicited conversation on the south-east Asian hammock market with a local street vendor. As I bought mine in Thailand, the vendor was curious about the price (150 Bt = US$3). He went as low as US$1.50 to prove his point that Vietnam was cheaper. While he understood that I had a hammock, I don't think he accepted that I could only really use one at a time, and I think he was alluding to some sort of import-to-Australia deal. Most bizarre.
Another observation: coffee. Ca phe sua is drunk with on-table-filtering. Ie a small metal filter is placed on the individual cup at the table and filters through. The highest quality coffee is pre-filtered - through a weasel. "Chon" (I think) is fed to weasels as beans, and then recovered from the poo, roasted and served to us. I have tried it, and yes, you can really taste the weasel.
Also, with Vietnamese coffee, the milk is actually in the bottom of the cup as sweetened-condensed milk. After the coffee has finished dripping in, it looks black: it gradually gets whiter as you stir in goo off the bottom. Without milk, you have a very very short black, not unlike Turkish coffee. With milk, it's more like the runny inside of an expensive chocolate. Eitherway, don't plan on sleeping for about 12 hours.
(Hint: if you're ever around Krabi in southern Thailand, there's only one place where you can get good 'cino/latte. This is on the main drag at Ao Nang, near the lady-boy's travel agency at the three pay-phones. The guys there have got a machine in a few weeks ago and they can actually make froth! Elsewhere, you're lucky if you get dripolator with soy.)
I've been sampling the local beers here, and "Ba Ba Ba" is the best, beating Saigon Export (a weak and girly light beer) and Tiger (a Thai import). It means "333", although apparently the Australian accent renders it "3 old women". (Fortuntately, context removes the ambiguity, although there are no doubt bars where this is not strictly the case.) This is to be expected, as Vietnamese appears to have a total of about 17 syllables, and further distinction is made by subtle changes in vowels and intonation that is lost on my crude ear.
Another obversvation about Vietnamese communications: the car horn. It appears that in South East Asia, the horn is used for it's intended purpose of signalling to other drivers, rather than the European and Australian functions of posturing and expressing aggresion. However, I haven't exactly figured out what the signal means. A breakthrough came today when I realised I should in fact be trying to understand the silences; being far less frequent they convey more meaning than the blaring horn.
It probably has something to do with the huge numbers of lanes of traffic that can be squeezed into a road by very carefully sharing slots. It's not uncommon to have a scooter overtaking a push bike while being overtaken by a bus - and a cheeky car undertaking everyone else - all one a one lane country road. I'm pretty sure the licence exam consists of a Chine Tile puzzle (you know, where the one gap gets moved around).
Another thing I love about here (and even more so in Thailand) is the obsession with ISO 9001 and ISO 9002 accreditation. This is an obscure standard relating to ongoing process improvement and adoption of certain quality control methodologies from the International Standards Organisation. In the West, you'd only be concerned about accreditation if you were involved in corporate tendering, investment analysis, government endorsement or other "big business" activity. Not here. Here, there are giant signs advertising compliance. Like, REALLY big signs on billboards in the street, as big as the company logo. Things like Thai Airlines Customer Service (what about the Maintenance guys?), hotels, paint retailers, taxis, tour operators, supermarkets, shampoos etc. Really weird.
More jottings in a few days, when we're in Nha Trang. (I'm hoping to fit in some more scuba diving!)
We've been in Saigon for a couple of days now. The hotel is really nice, and it seems we're the only ones staying there. The weather is very comfortable, a little overcast on the first day but heat and humidity are fine. The traffic here is completely indescribable - I can't see how so many motorcycles, scooters, push bikes and cyclos (push bikes with a bulldozer-like seat on the front for passengers) can flow through the streets. It's not uncommon for intersections here to have several hundred people a minute going at right angles to each other simultaneously. We went on a long cyclo ride for the afternoon and being in amongst such chaos was breathtaking.
We've been to the Reunification Palace (formerly Independence Palace, formerly the French G-G's palace) and also the War Remnants Museum (formerly the Museum of American and Chinese War Crimes). This was deeply disturbing and the artifacts, photos, testimonials and other items paint a terrible picture of what war has done to this country. Museums are shut today, so we went to the Ben Thanh market this morning, which is a very large indoor market flogging everything under the sun.
The food here has been good. I like the pho (noodle soup with vegetables, meat etc) but my favourite is the do-it-yourself on-table BBQ: you get a small clay pot about 10 cm in radius with burning embers in it and a plate of raw meat in marinade, and you BBQ it yourself right there! This requires a fair degree of accomplishment with chopsticks, as you can't afford to dilly-dally arranging your meat as they're made of wood :-)
We're thinking of going to the Cu Chi (sp?) tunnels outside of Saigon, and then the Mekong Delta.
ps. I can't access my Uni email (tech talk: probably because it uses port 8000 instead of 80), so if you need to get a message to me, best to use my telstra.com email: gregory.hill@telstra.com
OK - really quickly because I have to board in 10 minutes:
We went sea kayaking around Ton Sai Beach, which was fantastic. On the next day - Thursday? - we went out to the islands for a boat dive/snorkel. It was my first dive in a few years, and it was excellent to get back into it. The first dive was 18m, the second after lunch was 16m. Saw some awesome fish and coral, and it was great to dive in shorts and t-shirt instead of the regular 7mm two-piece wetsuit with hood!
We went out on the piss with some "lads" from the diving (2 Yorkshiremen, a Sorth Ifrican and an Irishman) - really funny guys, lot's of laughs.
We took the boat from Ton Sai back to Phuket (2 hrs) and then flew to Bangkok (1 hr). We stayed at a swanky (well, 4 star) hotel near the airport, which was fantastic. Flush toilets and hot showers!
The contrast between Thai Executive Class (we couldn't get economy) and the bench bus from Krabi to Ao Nang was quite striking. We got to Krabi Town - a dusty market town - and proceeded directly to Ao Nang. From there, we took a longtail boat to Had Ton Sai. It's about 10 minutes in the boat, and this is the only way it can be accessed. It's a beach about 300m long, bracketed by awesome limestone cliffs and with tropical foliage all around. There's many climbers here from Europe, Australia and America, drawn by the rock and locale. We met one, Rob, who is climbing here for a month or two before taking up his job at PwC!
At Ton Sai, there are a few cafe/bars on the beach where you can have drinks and meals. About 15 minutes walk around the rocks at low tide (or longtail) is Railay Beach. This is a bit more developed and there's quite a few resorts and restaurants here (I recommend Coco's). We spent NYE on the beach at Railey, watching the fireshows (twirling etc) and the completely dangerous and thoroughly reckless fireworks. Spectacular!
Since we've got here, we've just been swimming, lounging around on the beach and reading. Vrey slack! Now, where back at Ao Nang, using the internet and ATMs and other mod cons. I'm hoping to do a bit of sea kayaking and maybe some snorkelling in the next couple of days out at some of the islands, and then take the boat back back to Phuket on Friday.
Might not get a chance to blog before Ho Chi Min City on Saturday.
