So close to home...
That it barely seems worth updating. In fact, the lack of any updates in all Vietnam makes this one likely to go on for a while. The Gibbon will try to keep to the interesting bits.
Northern Thailand
This was a while ago. Frances has about 5 pages of journal condensed notes (soon to be 100 pages full writeup) on it all. The Gibbon has a vague memory of a cooking course that turned out to be mostly an eating course, and a few treks around the hills.
Laos
- or "Lao" as it was supposed to have been, my lonely planet guide tells me. Not that I trust the Lonely Planet any more. Scaremongering book that sends us to hollowed-out shells that once were hotels, that gives advice from people who sometimes made a worse botch of travelling than even we do. Here I was first offered Opium. By just about everybody. Restaurant owners, little children playing badminton in the street, little old woman selling rice-cakes. The drug inforcement office here has a poster up around town, that helpfully has the important words highlighted in red. Amusingly enough, the red fades in sunlight faster than the rest of the poster, leaving the message "Don't smoke opium in Laos" reduced to "smoke opium in Laos". Still, I have been the perfectly behaved traveller.
Laos was quiet, friendly and pretty. I bought Harry Potter & the Half-Blood Prince to read, but The Hatted One tells me it was pretty and I trust her judgement. Saw no gibbons, but heard a few singing to us, while staying in a massive treehouse 30 feet above the jungle canopy in Bokeo province.
Vietnam
The lasting impressions of Vietnam on me? Not the limestone karst scenery of Halong Bay or Tam Coc, with goats prancing on precarious sheer drop cliff-faces and eagles fishing around the boat. Nor the cold north with multicoloured hill-tribe women vying for biggest-clashing-garment in the marketplaces. Not the thousands of near-miss moped accidents, or the mysterious junction where everyone behaved as if there were traffic lights that they could all see, and simultaneously respond to, when there clearly were no such things. Not the Bia Hoi ("Beer Fresh"), for around 20 pence a pint, not the food, not the friendliness of everyone or the endless sequence of boot-polishing 12-year-olds. The primate rescue centre gets close, but somehow fails to reach the number 1 slot.
The thing that'll bring me back here was the tailors shops of Hoi An. I have sufficient tailored shirts & jeans to last a couple of years, and then I'm coming back. Words just can't express how fabulous my new shirts are, from the cartier-silk like-wearing-clingy-water, through the shimmery rock-star shirt, to the purple curtain-material, feels-like-cardboard wundershirt.
Cambodia
My memories here aren't going to be anything like the rest of the holiday. Y'see, we're only here really to visit Angkor Wat, and the rest of the time is being spent trying to buy a few meagre trinkets for all those lovely people who I really owe trinkets to in Blighty. This has left only a short gap in which to be horified by the blighted past, the intense poverty, the abundant multiple-amputees and bird-flipping spider-boy (long story) and generally feel terrible sympathy for everyone while in a constant state of seige by beggars and tat-vendors. It's all a little overwhelming.
We're back all too soon. Personally, I've missed you all, and as most of you are back home, Í can't wait.
Northern Thailand
This was a while ago. Frances has about 5 pages of journal condensed notes (soon to be 100 pages full writeup) on it all. The Gibbon has a vague memory of a cooking course that turned out to be mostly an eating course, and a few treks around the hills.
Laos
- or "Lao" as it was supposed to have been, my lonely planet guide tells me. Not that I trust the Lonely Planet any more. Scaremongering book that sends us to hollowed-out shells that once were hotels, that gives advice from people who sometimes made a worse botch of travelling than even we do. Here I was first offered Opium. By just about everybody. Restaurant owners, little children playing badminton in the street, little old woman selling rice-cakes. The drug inforcement office here has a poster up around town, that helpfully has the important words highlighted in red. Amusingly enough, the red fades in sunlight faster than the rest of the poster, leaving the message "Don't smoke opium in Laos" reduced to "smoke opium in Laos". Still, I have been the perfectly behaved traveller.
Laos was quiet, friendly and pretty. I bought Harry Potter & the Half-Blood Prince to read, but The Hatted One tells me it was pretty and I trust her judgement. Saw no gibbons, but heard a few singing to us, while staying in a massive treehouse 30 feet above the jungle canopy in Bokeo province.
Vietnam
The lasting impressions of Vietnam on me? Not the limestone karst scenery of Halong Bay or Tam Coc, with goats prancing on precarious sheer drop cliff-faces and eagles fishing around the boat. Nor the cold north with multicoloured hill-tribe women vying for biggest-clashing-garment in the marketplaces. Not the thousands of near-miss moped accidents, or the mysterious junction where everyone behaved as if there were traffic lights that they could all see, and simultaneously respond to, when there clearly were no such things. Not the Bia Hoi ("Beer Fresh"), for around 20 pence a pint, not the food, not the friendliness of everyone or the endless sequence of boot-polishing 12-year-olds. The primate rescue centre gets close, but somehow fails to reach the number 1 slot.
The thing that'll bring me back here was the tailors shops of Hoi An. I have sufficient tailored shirts & jeans to last a couple of years, and then I'm coming back. Words just can't express how fabulous my new shirts are, from the cartier-silk like-wearing-clingy-water, through the shimmery rock-star shirt, to the purple curtain-material, feels-like-cardboard wundershirt.
Cambodia
My memories here aren't going to be anything like the rest of the holiday. Y'see, we're only here really to visit Angkor Wat, and the rest of the time is being spent trying to buy a few meagre trinkets for all those lovely people who I really owe trinkets to in Blighty. This has left only a short gap in which to be horified by the blighted past, the intense poverty, the abundant multiple-amputees and bird-flipping spider-boy (long story) and generally feel terrible sympathy for everyone while in a constant state of seige by beggars and tat-vendors. It's all a little overwhelming.
We're back all too soon. Personally, I've missed you all, and as most of you are back home, Í can't wait.