It's the country I spent most time in so far, but finally I'm out of Vietnam and into Kampuchia (Cambodia for those unfamiliar with Khmer transliteration). Up to Hoi An I was loving Vietnam. It's got a bit of french va-va-voom thrown into the already exciting SE Asian hotpot. But the further south you head the more the gloss fades and the less tolerant I become. By the time we fast-boated over the mekong border I had a bitter taste in my mouth. Not from the huge amounts of coriander the Vietnam chefs put in every dish, but more, the apathy and occasional hostility from the locals and the open desire to fleece you as much as possible.
Overall though I fell in love with Vietnam. The food is some of the best in Asia, the climate varies from UK temperate stuff in the north to desert hot in the south and the things to see, on the whole, are the most interesting and varied in this region. When you combine the usual pagoda/wat stuff with a war museum and shooting range I say you are onto a tourism winner.
It is from Mui Ne that I pick up the recap then. We reach Saigon in a not unreasonable 6 hours. Every bus journey is six hours, whatever they advertise it as. It's late and Saigon is big an scary after the weeks in coastal villages. We have agreed not to make our usual mistake and settle for the first hotel we find so we walk all over looking at rooms to find almost all hotels are full. So we return to the first hotel we found and take their (now rate inflated) room. The first signs of tension are beginning to show between Amanda-Sue and me. We are equally annoyed with each other for no good reason. I think my non-stop juvenile joking is wearing thin and Amanda has assumed my Mum's responsibilities in telling me off for not cleaning my teeth twice a day. A good meal and everything would be forgotten but I pick the restaurant and according to my new Mum I was wreckless in my choice and the food is awful (the food hasn't arrived at this point, but that is just me being pedantic).
It's time for some emergency action on my part to salvage the situation and the next morning I get up early to find an improved luxury hotel room for the lowest price possible. With my finely honed haggling skills I get a room half the size for about twice as much but it doesn't smell of mould and the sheets aren't made of highly flammable synthetics so all of a sudden everyone is happy.
A bowl of Pho for breakfast and we are happier still - 50 pence for a bowl of noodles with beef brisket in a soup and you are set for the day. But it's late by now and half the day is gone. I go for a haircut and shave (the first in a few years) and then we are off to the five star majestic for some cocktails to celebrate that we haven't gone our separate ways.
Ever since we reached Vietnam my debit card hasn't worked and I finally decide to do something about it along with sorting my insurance claim out now that I'm through the worst of it and won't need to readmit myself to a hospital. So we trek to the Saigon branch of HSBC (the world's local bank) where I enquire about my card. The manager doesn't know and says I need to contact HSBC UK. I ask if I can use his phone and apparently no, while HSBC in the UK is the worlds local bank, HSBC Vietnam is the worlds worst bank. He tells me to try the Post Office for international calls. So I do and I buy an international calling card with 15 minutes of talk time. 9 minutes later and I've put in my sort code, account number, date of birth, second digit of my security number and fifth digit of my security number. They have retrieved my balance of all four of my accounts and now I am holding for a customer service representative. The clock is ticking and at 10 minutes I finally get through to the recorded message informing me the call centre is closed (it is 7.30am in the UK). I am wrong about HSBC Vietnam; HSBC UK is the worlds worst bank... by far. When I do finally get through to someone (someone in India - where it's only 3 hours behind Vietnam and a not unreasonable noon) I am transferred to Fraud prevention and told my card has been blocked because I've used it abroad. I explain that I've been using it abroad for a full three months and if they actually want to stop fraud they should try to react a smidgen quicker than that. But the line is bad and the wit it lost somewhere over the indian ocean. She does at least remove the block before my second phonecard runs out.
Everything is sorted but I'm still close to losing it. If a tuc-tuc driver approaches me now I'm scared of what I might do (and more scared of what he might do in return when I fail in what I was trying to do). So we walk through a park towards the reunification palace giving me the opportunity to take some deep breaths. At this point I am aware that I would normally brush over or slag off the tourist attraction that we are visiting, but for almost the first time I am impressed with an attraction and would recommend the palace to anyone that is anywhere near Saigon. It's been left exactly as it was when the Viet Cong marched into Saigon in 1975. The retro 70's feeling of the architecture and interior is intoxicating for someone who loves to feel like colonial times are here again. I imagine myself sitting in the games room demanding some kaffer gets me another G&T. Admittedly wrong race, wrong time and wrong colour, but that's just what comes into my head.
There is a great video in the basement all about how the Vietnamese struggled against the Americans and embraced the Viet Cong, how the Americans killed thousands and the Viet Cong saved thousands, how the vietnamese women were still firing their AK-47's at American soldiers while giving birth to the next generation of anti-imperialist troops. A complete work of fiction, but entertaining for it.
We follow this up with a morning visit to the Cu-Chi tunnels. On the outskirts of Saigon this is where thousands of Viet Cong troops could remain hidden from the Americans and conduct raids at night. It's been disneyfied with some poor mannequins sitting in reconstructed tents. The reconstructed tunnel itself is about 150m. After putting up with all the disney crap first (which includes firing my AK - sadly no kids around) we are finally allowed to enter the tunnel. Our guide tells us there are exits at 50m intervals. The map we are shown by our guide shows kitchens, medical centres and bedrooms all connected on three levels by this tunnel. So after the first exit at 50m, with everyone else getting out, I persuade Amanda-Sue to carry on expecting to come across something more interesting than a 3 foot high tunnel at some point. By the end of it and having given up on finding a room we leave the tunnel to find our group and guide have left us and gone on. It takes us a fair while to find them in the jungle and we have missed a lot of what our guide was saying. But since he couldn't speak English, the entire site is one big tourist pile of fictional shit and that I've been stuck in a tunnel crouched and sweating like crazy I couldn't give a shit about anything except where our bus with A/C currently is and how long it will take to take me back to something approaching reality. So if you get the chance don't go to Cu-Chi. But if you do and you have a guide called Suwe, please, please, please take your AK-47 off it's stand turn it to his face, tell him this is from Robin and pull the trigger. He is good enough to drop us at the war remnants museum on our way back to Saigon which is a seriously depressing place full of pictures of Agent Orange and napalm victims. There are a couple of feotuses in jars with two heads and the like just in case you were thinking of having supper. Whilst they have an understandable dislike for the Americans they actually hate the french far more from the 1940's and 50's Indochine fighting. There are a few rooms here dedicated to pictures and stories of purely french atrocities... and I didn't think I could dislike the french any more than I already do.
It's time to leave Saigon, take the malaria tablets again and head into the Mekong Delta. It's a three day trip that ends in Phnom Penh and rather than the small group sizes we have had on tours up to now this is a full size coach load of tourists who have all paid just $25 to do this. I've always said you get what you pay for and in this case we didn't even get that. Day 1 is spent bussing to a boat stop taking a quick boat journey either to a factory where they make some local tat or to a random point in the river where we turn and sail back. The vast majority of the time is spent on the coach and at one point we are supposed to get a ferry over a large part of the Mekong in our coach. But the queue is long and our guide, Moon, decides it makes more sense to offload us and walk to a passenger ferry. On the other side we can then wait at dusk by the river and sewers for our bus to catch us up. You can probably see where this is going, but just to spell it out so I can vent some of the plenitude of frustration built up from this tour: the bus obviously goes no faster in the queue with us off it and we wait for about 45 minutes for it to catch us up. In all that time we are completely surrounded by mossies deep in malaria country. There is no A/C on the side of the road but plenty of it on the bus so I'm not alone in asking Moon why in Buddhas sweet name he decided this was a sensible course of action. As is typical he explains nothing but puts on a big toothy Vietnamese smile just asking for his teeth to be smacked all over the road.
Our night is home-stay - some little bungalow on the river. The food is typical of home-stay food: authentic but inedible. I'm on a table with French people and images from the Indochine rooms of the war remnants museum keep popping into my head. But I hate our guide so much at this point I've lost interest in hating the French. Plus these guys all seem quite nice and cheerful (they could easily have been laughing at me though - I've no idea).
Day 2 and it's the same formula. Bus, boat, factory, market. No explanation of anything and no enthusiasm from anybody. I'm ready to go straight to Cambodia but we have to put up with one more night in this hell-hole they call the delta. Because of our home-stay night we get an upgrade tonight to an air-con room in Chao-Doc. It does indeed have air-con, but nothing else. The door is frosted glass and at the top of the stairs that every other guest has to come up to go to bed. Above the door is a gap three bricks high and about five foot long which ensures the air-con is completely wasted. At 3am the kitchen (at the base of the stairs) puts on a CD of the little mermaid soundtrack (on repeat) and that is the end of any possibility of sleep on the nylon sheets that give you static shocks should you just roll over.
There are some more markets and villages to see before our boat leaves the next morning, but we skip all that and jump on a fast boat at 8am. Sadly by skipping the mornings sights I miss the opportunity to not tip our guide. I obviously don't tip him, but I wanted to do it very obviously so he'd know that I found him a completely useless human being.
The Cambodia/Vietnam border is your typical inefficient SE Asia experience. The border guard soldier is actually lying in a hammock smoking a cigarette while we wait. There is an x-ray machine which is employed in what must be the most pointless security operation in the world and then we're in. The Mekong is boring by this point - wide and flat - and so I read Harry Potter all the way to Phnom Penh.
As is now expected on a tourist route we are met by about ten to twenty touts for tuc-tucs, hostels, motos and some who can't even be bothered to tout but just ask for money. This is the part of the world that gave us that incredibly annoying Motorola sign off phrase of "Hello Moto". Every moped driver will stop and say it to you in the hope you will jump on the back and pay him 1000 Riels for a journey. But apart from that negative they all seem a bit nicer than Vietnamese. We eventually take a tuk-tuk for $1 to a hostel of our choice. The driver tells us our hostel doesn't exist anymore and being the wisened traveler I tell him I've heard that one before and let me guess, you know another hostel that is similar and close but will give you a fat commission. He doesn't understand me and continues driving. When he pulls up to our hostel we discover that it really doesn't exist anymore and I blame the lonely planet and all it's scam warnings for ever making me doubt our poor tuk-tuk driver.
Since we took the fast boat we are in early enough to kick start the Cambodia leg of our trip with a journey out to the killing fields where just 20 years ago anyone and, it would seem, nearly everyone was exterminated and buried. It's a cheery way to say hello to a country but essential viewing that brings it home that something like that has happened in my lifetime.
We're still in Phnom Penh. It's not the prettiest town and it has precious few sites, something I think will be repeated throughout Cambodia. Everything here is about Angkor Wat. It's on their flag and it's their national beer. There really is little else to keep the tourists here. So tomorrow we head up to Angkor for what I firmly expect to be the absolute highlight of my trip. Fingers crossed.
Sunday 29 July 2007
Friday 20 July 2007
Here today, Saigon tomorrow
I should have written this post yesterday for the headline to be true, but I only came up with it this morning and, in a George Dubbya war report type way, decided it was too brilliant not to use because of a thing like accuracy. I'm in Mui Ne on the south coast about 3 hours from Saigon, but I'm jumping on a bus in a few hours and will be there by 5pm. So I pick up the story leaving Hanoi a week ago.
It's a one hour flight down to Hue; about half way down the east coast. We catch the local bus number 17 from Hanoi to Noi Bai (the airport). Every hotelier and tour person we speak to says this will be very busy and take too long and ordinarily I'd listen, follow their advice and blow $10 on a taxi. But having had no problems with the number 17 last week when I met Amanda-Sue I adopt my traditional, arrogant position and do what I do best - ignore local advice and go with my own opinion. As it turns out they are all wrong and the bus journey is easier than any taxi journey(and you know I'll be using that little victory for weeks). The flight is an Airbus A321. Without me even asking the check-in girl puts me next to the emergency exit in an extended leg-room seat. She can only be about 5' so I must look freakishly tall. But the emergency exits in an A321 don't have windows and I'm forced to fly blind for the hour journey. I realise I'm not the one doing the flying and therefore, strictly speaking, don't require a window, but without one the plane seems even more like a coffin than normal. To add to my woes the captain is obviously a junior and a bit nervy. As the stewards and stewardesses start sorting drinks he shouts over the intercom for them to sit back down and buckle up as we are in the middle of a typhoon and everyone might die. I'm paraphrasing. But I could hear the sentiment in his voice.
Against Allah's will we land without incident. Hue is an old town that once was the capital of Vietnam. It has limited sights. The big draw is a citadel with the countries biggest flagpole. We can't get down to Hoi An until the morning so we have to go see this. It's much hotter than the North and we walk (and sweat) all the way. The inside of the citadel is very much like the outside. Roads, houses and shops continue as if an historic, ancient wall is just a hindrance to progress. There is, though, a museum with some rusty tanks and APVs in the courtyard. In front of every one is a sign telling of it's capture from the puppet soldiers in 1975. If they really were operated by puppets I think I could have captured them too.
The flagpole is reinforced concrete. I'd say it's not the most authentic or interesting thing to see in Hue, but it probably is.
A quick bus to Hoi An in the morning and it's like another world. This place is old french colonial and they have managed to preserve it's atmosphere. There isn't a great deal more to do, but just ambling around is nice enough. We organise a tour to My Son, an ancient temple complex a couple of hours away, but in my apathy at 8am I let Amanda-Sue experience that on her own. Apparently it's a lovely place, frequently referred to as the little brother of Angkor, Sukhothai and Bagan. But I've been to Bagan and Sukhothai and will be in Angkor next week so I can happily ignore their little brother.
It's then an overnight bus journey down to Nha Trang and on to Mui Ne. I've become soft with my many flights for long distances and as soon as I get on the bus I swear not to do another overnight. It's packed so we get two seats at the back. My chair is broken so doesn't recline, but the seat in front definitely isn't and reclines right into my lap (if I manage to get my legs out of the way in time - otherwise I just get brusied knees). It's a 6pm departure and so we assume there will be a stop for dinner a couple of hours into the journey. I'm not sure you could call it supper but we do pull into a petrol station where a corn seller is dispensing corn cobs that have been boiled for enough hours that all the flavour and nutrition has been leached out. It's valet service so the lady dispensing petrol puts the pump into the fuel tank and walks away. The majority of the passengers are standing around this pump smoking cheroot or cigarettes (it doesn't matter which, they can both ignite petrol). Since the petrol pump is unmanned when the pump drops out of the tank and starts spraying petrol over the side of the coach, the floor all around the coach and the people standing around nearby no one can work out how to turn it off. It is only by the grace of Vishnu that it seems to miss those smoking and only sprays those non-smokers munching their corn. It would perhaps been Vishnu's divine sense of irony had the non-smokers all gone up in flames. Although with a full tank of fuel and in a petrol station I guess if anyone had gone up we all would have suffered the consequences. Back on board I spend a sleepless night with my head millimetres away from the dandruff of the man in front. Amanda-Sue suffers with me, since I considerately check to see if she can sleep every half hour. So we roll into Nha Trang at 6.30am with a two hour break before we need to be on another coach to Mui Ne. The good spirit that has taken us this far seems to be absent along with our sleep and concious that my sarcasm and cynisicm aren't welcome I head to the beach to give Amanda-Sue some time to find it. Nha Trang is a big resort town and every step along the beach I'm relieved we aren't staying here. Big casinos, discos and high-rise hotels blot what would have been a beautiful beach. The vietnamese seem to love it though. This is the number one destination for internal tourism.
The 3 hour bus to Mui Ne turns into 6 hours. No one says why and there are no obvious delays en-route. I think it is just a 6 hour trip advertised as 3 to make foreigners more comfortable for the first 3 hours.
Mui Ne is a more desolate beach resort. It's a single road running along the coast for about 12km. The hotels and restaurants are spread out all the way along the road making it very difficult to walk around and check out where you want to stay. Not impossible though so as I settle down for a diet coke in a cafe in the middle with the bags I send Amanda-Sue off to find the best deal she can. I have been giving her haggling lessons and see this as the perfect chance for her to practice. She is under instructions to find an air-con room with en-suite, minibar, free internet and cable TV for no more than $2. We end up paying $20 but get everything bar the free internet. I'm obviously not a good teacher.
There is nothing in Mui Ne apart from a nice beach but that doesn't stop them setting up tours of local attractions. We sign up to a sunrise tour to go see the red sand-dunes, the white sand-dunes, the red canyon and the waterfall (I love waterfalls). The red and white sand-dunes are what you would expect. The red canyon is a miniature version of what you might expect if they used the word gully and the waterfall is just not even worth talking about.
So it's time to move on and get back to city life in Saigon. There is plenty there to look forward to. The war museum promises plenty of photos of American atrocities and at the CuChi tunnels I can shoot an AK-47. They have it fixed on a rotating pole though so I doubt I'll get any gooks. But $200 is a lot to these kids - I may be able to persuade one of them to take a bullet.
It's a one hour flight down to Hue; about half way down the east coast. We catch the local bus number 17 from Hanoi to Noi Bai (the airport). Every hotelier and tour person we speak to says this will be very busy and take too long and ordinarily I'd listen, follow their advice and blow $10 on a taxi. But having had no problems with the number 17 last week when I met Amanda-Sue I adopt my traditional, arrogant position and do what I do best - ignore local advice and go with my own opinion. As it turns out they are all wrong and the bus journey is easier than any taxi journey(and you know I'll be using that little victory for weeks). The flight is an Airbus A321. Without me even asking the check-in girl puts me next to the emergency exit in an extended leg-room seat. She can only be about 5' so I must look freakishly tall. But the emergency exits in an A321 don't have windows and I'm forced to fly blind for the hour journey. I realise I'm not the one doing the flying and therefore, strictly speaking, don't require a window, but without one the plane seems even more like a coffin than normal. To add to my woes the captain is obviously a junior and a bit nervy. As the stewards and stewardesses start sorting drinks he shouts over the intercom for them to sit back down and buckle up as we are in the middle of a typhoon and everyone might die. I'm paraphrasing. But I could hear the sentiment in his voice.
Against Allah's will we land without incident. Hue is an old town that once was the capital of Vietnam. It has limited sights. The big draw is a citadel with the countries biggest flagpole. We can't get down to Hoi An until the morning so we have to go see this. It's much hotter than the North and we walk (and sweat) all the way. The inside of the citadel is very much like the outside. Roads, houses and shops continue as if an historic, ancient wall is just a hindrance to progress. There is, though, a museum with some rusty tanks and APVs in the courtyard. In front of every one is a sign telling of it's capture from the puppet soldiers in 1975. If they really were operated by puppets I think I could have captured them too.
The flagpole is reinforced concrete. I'd say it's not the most authentic or interesting thing to see in Hue, but it probably is.
A quick bus to Hoi An in the morning and it's like another world. This place is old french colonial and they have managed to preserve it's atmosphere. There isn't a great deal more to do, but just ambling around is nice enough. We organise a tour to My Son, an ancient temple complex a couple of hours away, but in my apathy at 8am I let Amanda-Sue experience that on her own. Apparently it's a lovely place, frequently referred to as the little brother of Angkor, Sukhothai and Bagan. But I've been to Bagan and Sukhothai and will be in Angkor next week so I can happily ignore their little brother.
It's then an overnight bus journey down to Nha Trang and on to Mui Ne. I've become soft with my many flights for long distances and as soon as I get on the bus I swear not to do another overnight. It's packed so we get two seats at the back. My chair is broken so doesn't recline, but the seat in front definitely isn't and reclines right into my lap (if I manage to get my legs out of the way in time - otherwise I just get brusied knees). It's a 6pm departure and so we assume there will be a stop for dinner a couple of hours into the journey. I'm not sure you could call it supper but we do pull into a petrol station where a corn seller is dispensing corn cobs that have been boiled for enough hours that all the flavour and nutrition has been leached out. It's valet service so the lady dispensing petrol puts the pump into the fuel tank and walks away. The majority of the passengers are standing around this pump smoking cheroot or cigarettes (it doesn't matter which, they can both ignite petrol). Since the petrol pump is unmanned when the pump drops out of the tank and starts spraying petrol over the side of the coach, the floor all around the coach and the people standing around nearby no one can work out how to turn it off. It is only by the grace of Vishnu that it seems to miss those smoking and only sprays those non-smokers munching their corn. It would perhaps been Vishnu's divine sense of irony had the non-smokers all gone up in flames. Although with a full tank of fuel and in a petrol station I guess if anyone had gone up we all would have suffered the consequences. Back on board I spend a sleepless night with my head millimetres away from the dandruff of the man in front. Amanda-Sue suffers with me, since I considerately check to see if she can sleep every half hour. So we roll into Nha Trang at 6.30am with a two hour break before we need to be on another coach to Mui Ne. The good spirit that has taken us this far seems to be absent along with our sleep and concious that my sarcasm and cynisicm aren't welcome I head to the beach to give Amanda-Sue some time to find it. Nha Trang is a big resort town and every step along the beach I'm relieved we aren't staying here. Big casinos, discos and high-rise hotels blot what would have been a beautiful beach. The vietnamese seem to love it though. This is the number one destination for internal tourism.
The 3 hour bus to Mui Ne turns into 6 hours. No one says why and there are no obvious delays en-route. I think it is just a 6 hour trip advertised as 3 to make foreigners more comfortable for the first 3 hours.
Mui Ne is a more desolate beach resort. It's a single road running along the coast for about 12km. The hotels and restaurants are spread out all the way along the road making it very difficult to walk around and check out where you want to stay. Not impossible though so as I settle down for a diet coke in a cafe in the middle with the bags I send Amanda-Sue off to find the best deal she can. I have been giving her haggling lessons and see this as the perfect chance for her to practice. She is under instructions to find an air-con room with en-suite, minibar, free internet and cable TV for no more than $2. We end up paying $20 but get everything bar the free internet. I'm obviously not a good teacher.
There is nothing in Mui Ne apart from a nice beach but that doesn't stop them setting up tours of local attractions. We sign up to a sunrise tour to go see the red sand-dunes, the white sand-dunes, the red canyon and the waterfall (I love waterfalls). The red and white sand-dunes are what you would expect. The red canyon is a miniature version of what you might expect if they used the word gully and the waterfall is just not even worth talking about.
So it's time to move on and get back to city life in Saigon. There is plenty there to look forward to. The war museum promises plenty of photos of American atrocities and at the CuChi tunnels I can shoot an AK-47. They have it fixed on a rotating pole though so I doubt I'll get any gooks. But $200 is a lot to these kids - I may be able to persuade one of them to take a bullet.
Saturday 14 July 2007
Hanoi and North 'Nam
I am still in Hanoi, but contrary to what I assumed would happen I haven't actually been here for the last nine days. I managed to get out and about thanks to a combination of antibiotics and my incredibly high tolerance for pain. Amanda-Sue is still here and hasn't yet started complaining about me too much but I will start complaining about her soon - her idea of looking after me so far has involved palming me off on a hospital and buying me a banana.
It's Day 2 in Hanoi. I'm out of hospital and pumped full of antibiotics. The doctor says at this point I need a very strict diet. No meat, no dairy, no uncooked anything, no vegetables or fruit except bananas; basically I can't eat much. I assume, since my cellular make up is now 80% antibiotic I should be able to throw caution to the wind and eat anything from anywhere. Amanda-Sue doesn't let me. We book tickets to Sapa for the Saturday giving me a full two days in Hanoi to get better.
We meet Amanda's friend Zoe who is travelling the north of Vietnam and go out to a very exclusive Hanoi restaurant. The food has received rave reviews. I'm only allowed a canned drink. I sit there with a Sprite like the designated driver only in Vietnam the idea of a designated driver doesn't exist so I just get strange sympathetic looks from the waiting staff. The following day we get up early to go and say hello to Ho Chi Minh in his little mausoleum. But it closes at 9.15am a full hour before the Lonely Planet says. The more I travel the more I realise I could write a Lonely Planet. You don't actually need to visit anywhere and you don't need to get any of the actual facts right.
Our afternoon is spent in the Literary Museum which has a turtle pool (a big draw here). Turtles here, along with dragons, unicorns and pheonix, are spiritual animals and seeing one is considered lucky. That said, they also eat turtle - so it's not THAT lucky. And I've seen a few now; still ill and still miserable so I dispute their good fortune bringing abilities.
The train to Sapa is an overnight - usually 4 berth soft sleeper, but since we are both signed up members of the flashpacking club we upgrade to the only VIP cabin with just two beds. It doesn't matter though, sleep is impossible as the train tracks are so old the train struggles to stay on them most of the night. We arrive at 5am and have to wait until 10 for a bus to our "Eco-Lodge". I'm always skeptical of places with names like that. I assume Eco means cheap and we will be staying in a bamboo bivouwak. But this place is Danish and they have built proper bungalows on the top of a remote hill. The fittings are luxurious and the view up the Sapa valley is probably as good as it gets. We are only here one night - it's a chance for me to recharge and for Amanda-Sue to work on her bedside manner. The food up here is very traditional so naturally I'm not a fan, but I struggle on without complaint. It's supposed to be cold in the mountains, but it's not and we sleep with the doors and windows open letting every bug in without care as we have a mossie net. An hour later and somehow a cockroach has perched himself on the inside of the net very near my head. Cockroaches here are like the Great White in jaws. They carry vendettas and pursue their victims for miles. I recognise this one from Burma. He woke me up by crawling on my face there.
After the nightmares that ensue we trek down to the local village in the morning. It's a long way down and difficult to stay upright. Sights are the usual fayre - buffalos, rice paddies, locals in embroidered costumes. We are walking with a Danish 18 year old who is the cousin of the lodge manager and is spending five months here. He tells me how he has moved his bed to the middle of his room and sits all night with an aerosol can and lighter ready to open a can of flamethrowing whoop-ass on any insect he finds. I don't think he'll make five months. Before lunch we come across a waterfall and as is now traditional we swim in the lagoon. This waterfall is massive and the lagoon a death trap so it's not quite the magical experience I have come to expect from waterfalls. To get back up to the lodge we take mopeds for an hour on switchback paths not really designed for mopeds. Predictably my chain breaks and perhaps the turtle comes to my rescue as we don't careen into the ravine. And then it's back to the station for our VIP train journey back to Hanoi. No sleep again thanks to something (probably a wheel and probably incredibly dangerous) broken directly under our cabin.
We are due to head out to Halong bay at 8am and arrive in at 5am so we take a long walk with back packs into Hanoi. Everyone here gets up early and by 6am the whole of Hanoi is well into their early morning routine. This seems to be Tai Chi by the lake if you are an old widow or badminton by the lake if you have a partner. It's lovely to see that socialism here involves more socialising and not many 'isms.
A quick breakfast stop and we are off to Halong Bay - limestone cliffs jutting out of turquoise blue sea water north of Hanoi. It's a tour so we have to put up with other foreigners, but the group size is limited to twelve and no one stands out immediately as an undesirable. The boat is beautiful. We get an air conditioned cabin with en-suite, for once something exceeds my expectations. The food is also vast and flavoursome. It is, however, biased towards sea food. Something I should have expected on a boat, but still a dissapointment for someone who doesn't like anything with a shell. I'm still on antibiotics though so I manage to keep down what little I eat.
The boat cruises all afternoon between this stunning scenery. It's difficult to do it justice either in a photo or writing. But two hours later and one limestone cliff surrounded by turquoise blue waters looks very much like the other hundred (or officially 3000). The boat docks at a cave where we are all taken around by our guide Thwan. He points out the rock that looks like a person, the rock that looks like a turtle, the rock that looks like a dragons tail and then, predictably and in a cave with thousands of stalacmites rather too easily, points out the rock that looks like an erect penis. I'm about to say that I can see hundreds of penises all around me but I don't want that label. It's too hot for caves but perfect for a swim, so pretty quickly we take the boat to a cove and all jump in. The water is the temperature of my bath. It's a perfect place to unwind. But after two months of unwinding it's probably wasted on me. One of our fellow sea-mates is a nine year old girl called Jasmine. She is beautiful and has that enthusiasm that I haven't been able to muster in the last twenty years. As a memento she goes around the boat taking photos of everyone in the group. When she reaches me I try to smile but only manage a half grimmace that screams sex-pest. She tries to say it's a good photo but I can tell, in her head, she hears her parents' voices warning her about weird looking strangers. I keep my candy for myself and pray she doesn't show the picture to her parents before I'm off the boat.
Our night on the boat is interrupted by a rat that has detected my shortbread biscuits. Like me he sees the picture on the box - rips that to pieces - and discovers the actual biscuits inside are nothing like the picture. He discards the biscuits as I did and proceeds to rip little holes in my pants (not the ones I'm wearing). I can only agree that these are probably more tasty than the biscuits.
After a couple of days of this we head back to Hanoi. The city has grown on me as my health has improved and coming back this time I feel more like a local than a tourist. I still look more like a tourist than a local though. We need to move on but I need to extend my visa and we both need to push back the flights so we can stay here longer. A day of administrative stuff and we are now ready to fly south for the winter. So next stop is Hue and Hoi An. Lots of culture and old buildings so expect the next post to be full of moaning.
Photos of Northern Thailand: http://www.flickr.com/photos/robinsouthgate/sets/72157600832512261/
Photos of Northern Vietnam: http://www.flickr.com/photos/robinsouthgate/sets/72157600833024197/
It's Day 2 in Hanoi. I'm out of hospital and pumped full of antibiotics. The doctor says at this point I need a very strict diet. No meat, no dairy, no uncooked anything, no vegetables or fruit except bananas; basically I can't eat much. I assume, since my cellular make up is now 80% antibiotic I should be able to throw caution to the wind and eat anything from anywhere. Amanda-Sue doesn't let me. We book tickets to Sapa for the Saturday giving me a full two days in Hanoi to get better.
We meet Amanda's friend Zoe who is travelling the north of Vietnam and go out to a very exclusive Hanoi restaurant. The food has received rave reviews. I'm only allowed a canned drink. I sit there with a Sprite like the designated driver only in Vietnam the idea of a designated driver doesn't exist so I just get strange sympathetic looks from the waiting staff. The following day we get up early to go and say hello to Ho Chi Minh in his little mausoleum. But it closes at 9.15am a full hour before the Lonely Planet says. The more I travel the more I realise I could write a Lonely Planet. You don't actually need to visit anywhere and you don't need to get any of the actual facts right.
Our afternoon is spent in the Literary Museum which has a turtle pool (a big draw here). Turtles here, along with dragons, unicorns and pheonix, are spiritual animals and seeing one is considered lucky. That said, they also eat turtle - so it's not THAT lucky. And I've seen a few now; still ill and still miserable so I dispute their good fortune bringing abilities.
The train to Sapa is an overnight - usually 4 berth soft sleeper, but since we are both signed up members of the flashpacking club we upgrade to the only VIP cabin with just two beds. It doesn't matter though, sleep is impossible as the train tracks are so old the train struggles to stay on them most of the night. We arrive at 5am and have to wait until 10 for a bus to our "Eco-Lodge". I'm always skeptical of places with names like that. I assume Eco means cheap and we will be staying in a bamboo bivouwak. But this place is Danish and they have built proper bungalows on the top of a remote hill. The fittings are luxurious and the view up the Sapa valley is probably as good as it gets. We are only here one night - it's a chance for me to recharge and for Amanda-Sue to work on her bedside manner. The food up here is very traditional so naturally I'm not a fan, but I struggle on without complaint. It's supposed to be cold in the mountains, but it's not and we sleep with the doors and windows open letting every bug in without care as we have a mossie net. An hour later and somehow a cockroach has perched himself on the inside of the net very near my head. Cockroaches here are like the Great White in jaws. They carry vendettas and pursue their victims for miles. I recognise this one from Burma. He woke me up by crawling on my face there.
After the nightmares that ensue we trek down to the local village in the morning. It's a long way down and difficult to stay upright. Sights are the usual fayre - buffalos, rice paddies, locals in embroidered costumes. We are walking with a Danish 18 year old who is the cousin of the lodge manager and is spending five months here. He tells me how he has moved his bed to the middle of his room and sits all night with an aerosol can and lighter ready to open a can of flamethrowing whoop-ass on any insect he finds. I don't think he'll make five months. Before lunch we come across a waterfall and as is now traditional we swim in the lagoon. This waterfall is massive and the lagoon a death trap so it's not quite the magical experience I have come to expect from waterfalls. To get back up to the lodge we take mopeds for an hour on switchback paths not really designed for mopeds. Predictably my chain breaks and perhaps the turtle comes to my rescue as we don't careen into the ravine. And then it's back to the station for our VIP train journey back to Hanoi. No sleep again thanks to something (probably a wheel and probably incredibly dangerous) broken directly under our cabin.
We are due to head out to Halong bay at 8am and arrive in at 5am so we take a long walk with back packs into Hanoi. Everyone here gets up early and by 6am the whole of Hanoi is well into their early morning routine. This seems to be Tai Chi by the lake if you are an old widow or badminton by the lake if you have a partner. It's lovely to see that socialism here involves more socialising and not many 'isms.
A quick breakfast stop and we are off to Halong Bay - limestone cliffs jutting out of turquoise blue sea water north of Hanoi. It's a tour so we have to put up with other foreigners, but the group size is limited to twelve and no one stands out immediately as an undesirable. The boat is beautiful. We get an air conditioned cabin with en-suite, for once something exceeds my expectations. The food is also vast and flavoursome. It is, however, biased towards sea food. Something I should have expected on a boat, but still a dissapointment for someone who doesn't like anything with a shell. I'm still on antibiotics though so I manage to keep down what little I eat.
The boat cruises all afternoon between this stunning scenery. It's difficult to do it justice either in a photo or writing. But two hours later and one limestone cliff surrounded by turquoise blue waters looks very much like the other hundred (or officially 3000). The boat docks at a cave where we are all taken around by our guide Thwan. He points out the rock that looks like a person, the rock that looks like a turtle, the rock that looks like a dragons tail and then, predictably and in a cave with thousands of stalacmites rather too easily, points out the rock that looks like an erect penis. I'm about to say that I can see hundreds of penises all around me but I don't want that label. It's too hot for caves but perfect for a swim, so pretty quickly we take the boat to a cove and all jump in. The water is the temperature of my bath. It's a perfect place to unwind. But after two months of unwinding it's probably wasted on me. One of our fellow sea-mates is a nine year old girl called Jasmine. She is beautiful and has that enthusiasm that I haven't been able to muster in the last twenty years. As a memento she goes around the boat taking photos of everyone in the group. When she reaches me I try to smile but only manage a half grimmace that screams sex-pest. She tries to say it's a good photo but I can tell, in her head, she hears her parents' voices warning her about weird looking strangers. I keep my candy for myself and pray she doesn't show the picture to her parents before I'm off the boat.
Our night on the boat is interrupted by a rat that has detected my shortbread biscuits. Like me he sees the picture on the box - rips that to pieces - and discovers the actual biscuits inside are nothing like the picture. He discards the biscuits as I did and proceeds to rip little holes in my pants (not the ones I'm wearing). I can only agree that these are probably more tasty than the biscuits.
After a couple of days of this we head back to Hanoi. The city has grown on me as my health has improved and coming back this time I feel more like a local than a tourist. I still look more like a tourist than a local though. We need to move on but I need to extend my visa and we both need to push back the flights so we can stay here longer. A day of administrative stuff and we are now ready to fly south for the winter. So next stop is Hue and Hoi An. Lots of culture and old buildings so expect the next post to be full of moaning.
Photos of Northern Thailand: http://www.flickr.com/photos/robinsouthgate/sets/72157600832512261/
Photos of Northern Vietnam: http://www.flickr.com/photos/robinsouthgate/sets/72157600833024197/
Thursday 5 July 2007
Waiting to die
I've been worse than usual updating you all. I say all - does 5 people count as an all? I've just been let out of hospital in Hanoi after 2 days which I consider a good enough excuse not to be writing a blog. So let the whining begin.
From Vang Vieng in Laos you can either head north to the mountains or south to the islands and rivers. In the north there is the "gibbon experience" which isn't yet in the lonely planet and therefore gets all the travellers raving about "authentic experience", "real laos" and various other clichéd terms that will appear in the lonely planet review just as soon as it is updated. I have nothing better to do and so reserve a place there and make my way up; first by bus to Luang Prabang again. Nicole is here on her way to Thailand and since I've been here before I show her all the good places to go. Luang Prabang is probably about 4 blocks in total so I imagine she could have found these on her own, but I need the company. My day in LP is spent sorting transport up to Bokeo to see the gibbons. It's a two day boat journey with an overnight in Pak Beng. Once this is sorted I get enough Laos Kip to pay for the gibbons. It's a currency that is worthless as soon as you cross the border and I now have 1.5 million of it. I then call to confirm my booking to discover that my place has been given to a couple. I would complain but since their customer service is so incredibly bad I couldn't see any point. Instead I shall just spend the next few years of my life shadowing forums and travelling haunts telling anyone who will listen that the gibbons are all dead and in their place are leeches and french people. That should sort their business out.
I take the boat anyway. It's taking me away from Hanoi but Nicole is on it on her way to Thailand and it's that or stay in LP on my own for another few days. I decide a boat trip is a nice way to spend a couple of days. But then I see the boat.
As a 'farang' I'm expected to pay twice as much as a local for exactly the same journey. They make no pretentions about this. There is a big sign up giving Local and Tourist prices. The boat is an old wooden longboat with wooden benches and 10 coach style seats. Since I have just paid twice the local rate I have no problem asking an old local woman to remove herself from my comfy chair and sit on the deck. In a pang of guilt I help her by carrying her walking stick. I give the laos too much credit and turn up without food or water expecting a restaurant on board. There isn't one. There isn't much of anything. I do meet a nice couple, Trevor and Louise, and with a little conversation we get through the 10 hours to Pak Beng. It's a village built purely for the boat stop. The hostel is $2 and not worth that. No electricity, leeches, cockroaches, that lovely musty smell in bed. Nicole, Myself, Trevor and Louise meet for supper and while away the evening drinking beer Lao to try and forget that we have to do it all again the next day.
Up early to try and get a comfy seat on the boat again. Except it's a different boat, with no comfy seats. the engine is pretty ropey too and an hour into our journey the propeller and shaft fall off. This would normally spell disaster, but here, while we float back downstream our engine man dives in, retrieves the propeller and pushes it back through the underside of the boat, reattaches it to the drive shaft with some banana leaves and away we go. The only repercussion is that every half an hour or so he deems it necessary to pour a cup of water over the banana leave to stop it burning through. It's hard to believe they make things like this work, but then again, it's hard to believe someone who knows how an engine works can stand there pouring a large can of petrol into it with a fag in his mouth. Hard to believe until you see the scars all over his arms and legs.
We make the border crossing into Thailand just after it closes. The driver seemes to power down for the last hour of the journey and I may be doing them a disservice (but you know I'm not) in saying that I suspect they get a commission from the guesthouses for forcing us to remain in Laos for one more night. Everyone is on the take in SE Asia and tourists are the little pawns in their game. HouayXay is the border town (it's also the town closest to the gibbon experience to which I'm not going). There is nothing going on here except the border which opens again at 8am. So we hunker down in a considerably nicer hostel than Pakbeng for $5 each.
Getting back into Thailand is easy - a 5 minute ferry ride over the mekong and we're in for 9am. We all stop for breakfast on this side of the border and immediately everything is easier than in Laos. ATM's abound, the food choices are vast and the quality good. I haven't had a good impression of Thailand from my last two blighted visits, but this is a welcome improvement over Laos facilities. By 11am we are all on an air-conditioned coach to Chaing Mai. It's another full days journey, but the lunch stop is at a coach park with a 7/11 and Mr Slurpees so I'm happy.
Chiang Mai is a lovely town that reminds me of a tropical Amsterdam. The hostel we go for doesn't live up to the town. But I only have one day here so for once I keep the complaining to myself. My first night and I'm throwing up again. I only mention it because its relevant to my current state. I feel fine in the morning and head off with Nicole elephant trekking, hiking to tribe villages and then bamboo rafting. The elephant trekking, contrary to my experiences in India, is nice. The elephants are well cared for. Rather than smacking big metal rods into open wounds these elephants respond to a wooden baton tapped behind either ear. They also have a taste for bananas and affectionately bring their trunks up over their head to your face so you can feed them. They can really move those trunks so if you ever go take enough bananas. After a bit of hiking we reach a waterfall lagoon and it's time for another swim. Not quite the magical holiday moment as the previous waterfall since the current is so strong you could easily get swepped to your death, but fun for sure. Then it's onto meet some villagers from Burma - I yawn and explain that I've actually been to their original village just the other week. I can see the people I'm with have put me down as a complete wanker but apart from one girl with a fantastic body I don't really like the group and don't care what they think. So I start talking in Karin Burmese with the locals and explain to the others why their traditions mean their houses are on stilts and their clothes are always blue. The guide at this point has joined the rest of my group in the "complete wanker" pool of thought. The afternoon is for bamboo rafting down river and while we wait for the raft my guide challenges me to chequers. They have a rediculous rule where your king can move an unlimited number of spaces in a single row. Even with this I beat him comprehensively and I think it may have been more sensible to lose. He decides I should drive the raft so while Nicole and Lauren (the girl with the fantastic body) get to sit down on the raft I stand at the back with a pole. Bear in mind I'm still not in peak physical condition after my various ailments. I don't really want to be standing for all to see in my swimming trunks. But as luck would have it I'm so bad at driving I spend very little time standing and a lot of time swimming after the raft trying to catch up. It's all good fun for my two passengers and I laugh along to hide the tears. But both feet are now in agony from the rocks in the water and the bamboo on the raft and I'm about ready to go home. Back in Chiang Mai and Nicole, Trevor, Louise and I go out for a final farewell meal before we all go our seperate ways.
I fly to Hanoi early. But get in late since I have to go via bangkok and Air Asia insist on taking their time checking everyone in and Hanoi immigration insist on taking their time checking everyone out. To top it off the baggage carousel breaks (I told them to go see the one in Luang Prabang) and our luggage was stuck underground for an hour.
Just have time for an evening meal in Little Hanoi before an early night as I have to be back at the airport early the next day. I decide that a taxi won't cut it this time and I need to get a local bus out there. I'm not catching a flight. I'm meeting my new travelling companion, so I figure I should rough it to set an example. But buses in Hanoi aren't that easy and I get a lift on a moped to a number 17 bus stop. The driver claims to know exactly where to go, but 15 minutes later pulls over and asks me where I want to go. I'm in a bad mood this morning as the first signs of a new illness are on the horizon so rather than letting this go I decide to ask where he has been heading for the last 15 minutes if he now needs a map. He smiles and suddenly doesn't understand a word. He doesn't understand maps either so I leave him to it, tell him he can forget his 10000 Dong and I figure I can walk to the bus stop. I can and I do. The bus is 5000 Dong all the way to the airport (compare that to $10 for a cab - although you can't without looking up the exchange rates - so let me just tell you it's a shed load cheaper). And at 10am I cease to be a lonely traveller by meeting Amanda, who is travelling with me all the way to NZ.
A lunch and dinner later and Amanda's first day in Hanoi is turning into a bit of a nightmare as I develop a severe fever, chills, aches in all my joints, severe stomach cramps and, of course, bloody diarrhea. I can tell she is relishing the chance to pamper me. After a sleepless night for both of us (mainly because the door to the bathroom isn't as soundproof as it needs to be in that situation) she takes me to the International SOS clinic. I explain the symptoms to a lovely french doctor who looks much more concerned than I am. He hasn't heard of the bacteria that they found in Bangkok but is convinced after taking my temperature (39.1) that it must be serious and after I rule out repatriation he insists I stay in and get on fluids straight away. They have no lab facilities here so there is no way to find out how to treat it - they use best guess treatments. They can at least take blood and do so straight away. To put me on a drip the nurse insists on shaving a little patch on my forearm. The doctor returns looking serious and explains that the blood work is not good. White Cell count is through the roof, granulated cell count also very high, sodium and potassium very low and CRP (I didn't ever find out what it meant), which is measured as 0-6: Stage 1, 6-12: Stage 2, 12:24: Stage 3, 24:48: Stage 4, was at 96. There is no stage five but it is well over anything he's seen. He mentions repatriation a few times but I decline and tell him he has my full confidence to treat the problem here. Since neither Ciprofloxacin, Ofloxacin or Metronidazole has worked he goes for Rocofin in an IV drip at 2g. I'm not convinced it's going to work as one of the few things I read about Aeromonas is that it is resistant to Penicillin (of which Rocofin is a type), but we have no way of even testing for Aeromonas so I just go with it. Even with the lack of any lab to do cultures the nurse insists on a stool sample - I think just for her private collection. I think it is the closest I come to going home as I squat down over a tiny transparent plastic pot which I then have to give to the nurse who looks repulsed as she notices what is in it. Her diagnosis: I have bloody diarrhea. Thanks for that.
There is no improvement at the end of the day so I get more rocofin in the morning and yet more orally for the road. My temperature is down a bit so I'm out of there before I catch something else. I check out with a bill for $1600. Never travel without travel insurance.
And now I'm still in Hanoi, still in pretty bad shape and really just waiting to die. It's fight or flight time for my white blood cells. If they don't get rid of the infection this time with the help of these antibiotics I think I will write this body off as a lemon and do the world a favour by recycling it. But since I have a stupid little bare patch on my arm with a swollen vein I doubt even the worms would touch it.
From Vang Vieng in Laos you can either head north to the mountains or south to the islands and rivers. In the north there is the "gibbon experience" which isn't yet in the lonely planet and therefore gets all the travellers raving about "authentic experience", "real laos" and various other clichéd terms that will appear in the lonely planet review just as soon as it is updated. I have nothing better to do and so reserve a place there and make my way up; first by bus to Luang Prabang again. Nicole is here on her way to Thailand and since I've been here before I show her all the good places to go. Luang Prabang is probably about 4 blocks in total so I imagine she could have found these on her own, but I need the company. My day in LP is spent sorting transport up to Bokeo to see the gibbons. It's a two day boat journey with an overnight in Pak Beng. Once this is sorted I get enough Laos Kip to pay for the gibbons. It's a currency that is worthless as soon as you cross the border and I now have 1.5 million of it. I then call to confirm my booking to discover that my place has been given to a couple. I would complain but since their customer service is so incredibly bad I couldn't see any point. Instead I shall just spend the next few years of my life shadowing forums and travelling haunts telling anyone who will listen that the gibbons are all dead and in their place are leeches and french people. That should sort their business out.
I take the boat anyway. It's taking me away from Hanoi but Nicole is on it on her way to Thailand and it's that or stay in LP on my own for another few days. I decide a boat trip is a nice way to spend a couple of days. But then I see the boat.
As a 'farang' I'm expected to pay twice as much as a local for exactly the same journey. They make no pretentions about this. There is a big sign up giving Local and Tourist prices. The boat is an old wooden longboat with wooden benches and 10 coach style seats. Since I have just paid twice the local rate I have no problem asking an old local woman to remove herself from my comfy chair and sit on the deck. In a pang of guilt I help her by carrying her walking stick. I give the laos too much credit and turn up without food or water expecting a restaurant on board. There isn't one. There isn't much of anything. I do meet a nice couple, Trevor and Louise, and with a little conversation we get through the 10 hours to Pak Beng. It's a village built purely for the boat stop. The hostel is $2 and not worth that. No electricity, leeches, cockroaches, that lovely musty smell in bed. Nicole, Myself, Trevor and Louise meet for supper and while away the evening drinking beer Lao to try and forget that we have to do it all again the next day.
Up early to try and get a comfy seat on the boat again. Except it's a different boat, with no comfy seats. the engine is pretty ropey too and an hour into our journey the propeller and shaft fall off. This would normally spell disaster, but here, while we float back downstream our engine man dives in, retrieves the propeller and pushes it back through the underside of the boat, reattaches it to the drive shaft with some banana leaves and away we go. The only repercussion is that every half an hour or so he deems it necessary to pour a cup of water over the banana leave to stop it burning through. It's hard to believe they make things like this work, but then again, it's hard to believe someone who knows how an engine works can stand there pouring a large can of petrol into it with a fag in his mouth. Hard to believe until you see the scars all over his arms and legs.
We make the border crossing into Thailand just after it closes. The driver seemes to power down for the last hour of the journey and I may be doing them a disservice (but you know I'm not) in saying that I suspect they get a commission from the guesthouses for forcing us to remain in Laos for one more night. Everyone is on the take in SE Asia and tourists are the little pawns in their game. HouayXay is the border town (it's also the town closest to the gibbon experience to which I'm not going). There is nothing going on here except the border which opens again at 8am. So we hunker down in a considerably nicer hostel than Pakbeng for $5 each.
Getting back into Thailand is easy - a 5 minute ferry ride over the mekong and we're in for 9am. We all stop for breakfast on this side of the border and immediately everything is easier than in Laos. ATM's abound, the food choices are vast and the quality good. I haven't had a good impression of Thailand from my last two blighted visits, but this is a welcome improvement over Laos facilities. By 11am we are all on an air-conditioned coach to Chaing Mai. It's another full days journey, but the lunch stop is at a coach park with a 7/11 and Mr Slurpees so I'm happy.
Chiang Mai is a lovely town that reminds me of a tropical Amsterdam. The hostel we go for doesn't live up to the town. But I only have one day here so for once I keep the complaining to myself. My first night and I'm throwing up again. I only mention it because its relevant to my current state. I feel fine in the morning and head off with Nicole elephant trekking, hiking to tribe villages and then bamboo rafting. The elephant trekking, contrary to my experiences in India, is nice. The elephants are well cared for. Rather than smacking big metal rods into open wounds these elephants respond to a wooden baton tapped behind either ear. They also have a taste for bananas and affectionately bring their trunks up over their head to your face so you can feed them. They can really move those trunks so if you ever go take enough bananas. After a bit of hiking we reach a waterfall lagoon and it's time for another swim. Not quite the magical holiday moment as the previous waterfall since the current is so strong you could easily get swepped to your death, but fun for sure. Then it's onto meet some villagers from Burma - I yawn and explain that I've actually been to their original village just the other week. I can see the people I'm with have put me down as a complete wanker but apart from one girl with a fantastic body I don't really like the group and don't care what they think. So I start talking in Karin Burmese with the locals and explain to the others why their traditions mean their houses are on stilts and their clothes are always blue. The guide at this point has joined the rest of my group in the "complete wanker" pool of thought. The afternoon is for bamboo rafting down river and while we wait for the raft my guide challenges me to chequers. They have a rediculous rule where your king can move an unlimited number of spaces in a single row. Even with this I beat him comprehensively and I think it may have been more sensible to lose. He decides I should drive the raft so while Nicole and Lauren (the girl with the fantastic body) get to sit down on the raft I stand at the back with a pole. Bear in mind I'm still not in peak physical condition after my various ailments. I don't really want to be standing for all to see in my swimming trunks. But as luck would have it I'm so bad at driving I spend very little time standing and a lot of time swimming after the raft trying to catch up. It's all good fun for my two passengers and I laugh along to hide the tears. But both feet are now in agony from the rocks in the water and the bamboo on the raft and I'm about ready to go home. Back in Chiang Mai and Nicole, Trevor, Louise and I go out for a final farewell meal before we all go our seperate ways.
I fly to Hanoi early. But get in late since I have to go via bangkok and Air Asia insist on taking their time checking everyone in and Hanoi immigration insist on taking their time checking everyone out. To top it off the baggage carousel breaks (I told them to go see the one in Luang Prabang) and our luggage was stuck underground for an hour.
Just have time for an evening meal in Little Hanoi before an early night as I have to be back at the airport early the next day. I decide that a taxi won't cut it this time and I need to get a local bus out there. I'm not catching a flight. I'm meeting my new travelling companion, so I figure I should rough it to set an example. But buses in Hanoi aren't that easy and I get a lift on a moped to a number 17 bus stop. The driver claims to know exactly where to go, but 15 minutes later pulls over and asks me where I want to go. I'm in a bad mood this morning as the first signs of a new illness are on the horizon so rather than letting this go I decide to ask where he has been heading for the last 15 minutes if he now needs a map. He smiles and suddenly doesn't understand a word. He doesn't understand maps either so I leave him to it, tell him he can forget his 10000 Dong and I figure I can walk to the bus stop. I can and I do. The bus is 5000 Dong all the way to the airport (compare that to $10 for a cab - although you can't without looking up the exchange rates - so let me just tell you it's a shed load cheaper). And at 10am I cease to be a lonely traveller by meeting Amanda, who is travelling with me all the way to NZ.
A lunch and dinner later and Amanda's first day in Hanoi is turning into a bit of a nightmare as I develop a severe fever, chills, aches in all my joints, severe stomach cramps and, of course, bloody diarrhea. I can tell she is relishing the chance to pamper me. After a sleepless night for both of us (mainly because the door to the bathroom isn't as soundproof as it needs to be in that situation) she takes me to the International SOS clinic. I explain the symptoms to a lovely french doctor who looks much more concerned than I am. He hasn't heard of the bacteria that they found in Bangkok but is convinced after taking my temperature (39.1) that it must be serious and after I rule out repatriation he insists I stay in and get on fluids straight away. They have no lab facilities here so there is no way to find out how to treat it - they use best guess treatments. They can at least take blood and do so straight away. To put me on a drip the nurse insists on shaving a little patch on my forearm. The doctor returns looking serious and explains that the blood work is not good. White Cell count is through the roof, granulated cell count also very high, sodium and potassium very low and CRP (I didn't ever find out what it meant), which is measured as 0-6: Stage 1, 6-12: Stage 2, 12:24: Stage 3, 24:48: Stage 4, was at 96. There is no stage five but it is well over anything he's seen. He mentions repatriation a few times but I decline and tell him he has my full confidence to treat the problem here. Since neither Ciprofloxacin, Ofloxacin or Metronidazole has worked he goes for Rocofin in an IV drip at 2g. I'm not convinced it's going to work as one of the few things I read about Aeromonas is that it is resistant to Penicillin (of which Rocofin is a type), but we have no way of even testing for Aeromonas so I just go with it. Even with the lack of any lab to do cultures the nurse insists on a stool sample - I think just for her private collection. I think it is the closest I come to going home as I squat down over a tiny transparent plastic pot which I then have to give to the nurse who looks repulsed as she notices what is in it. Her diagnosis: I have bloody diarrhea. Thanks for that.
There is no improvement at the end of the day so I get more rocofin in the morning and yet more orally for the road. My temperature is down a bit so I'm out of there before I catch something else. I check out with a bill for $1600. Never travel without travel insurance.
And now I'm still in Hanoi, still in pretty bad shape and really just waiting to die. It's fight or flight time for my white blood cells. If they don't get rid of the infection this time with the help of these antibiotics I think I will write this body off as a lemon and do the world a favour by recycling it. But since I have a stupid little bare patch on my arm with a swollen vein I doubt even the worms would touch it.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)