Strewth!

(Alfred: Pardon me if I remain standing for the duration of this entry (Ruairí: that could have been more gracefully phrased) but having received a number of rockets up the arse for neglecting my faithful (if irascible) public, this entry is taking place under a certain amount of duress. And, let's be honest, I've been lazy. South-East Asia has the ability to ooze itself into your pores and induce a quality of langour and relaxation that makes other considerations seem irrelevant. But we are back in harness and updates should be more regular. Of course, we face the 'slight' problem that the last entry saw us in Da Nang on Day Three or so (and written on Day at-least-in-double-figures). Now we have travelled through Hoi An, Siem Reap, Vientiane, Phonsavan and are now at our last destination, Luang Prabang. So I think edited highlights for the moment but, rest assured: Ruairí has been keeping records. Between the two of us, all important aspects of this holiday will be dealt with. You may be reading about it by a pool in Marbella in August, but it will get there eventually!!)

So, let's just pick out a few highlights so far - not easy, because it has been an amazing holiday, even more incredible and enjoyable than I think any of us had dared hope.

1.  Guides:  in Phonsavan, we had hired a car and guide for the day at what seemed an exhorbitant price of $150 to visit the Plain of Jars and various other sights (Alfred: Surely you mean 'sites'. Or do you? Actually, OK, never mind, need to think about that one....). Turned out to be a bargain. Some of the roads were as bad as I remember from Africa so a sturdy 4x4 made all the difference for the seven hours of our trip. And our guide, Tey (Alfred: and don't forget you promised to write about him on Tripadvisor and still haven't) was fantastic. We visited three different sites with hundreds of ancient jars scattered around (many badly damaged by bombs during the 'Secret War' but others, I suspect, also harvested by villagers for various reasons over the years) in what is truly one of the world's most amazing archaeological sites (Alfred: or even 'sights', eh? Ok, I'll shut up). Even more staggering was the realisation that this entire area, now relatively flat with little growth other than some struggling eucalyptus trees - was originally heavy jungle before the spraying of vast amounts of Agent Orange that completely - and pretty much permanently - transformed the landscape. Eucalyptus is good at removing Agent Orange from the soil so that is why they are planting these.

Tey also took us to a village where they make stuff from the remains of downed planes, bomb casings, discarded auxiliary fuel tanks and other suitable war debris and another where a 72-year-old woman was still making rice whisk(e)y (Alfred: My brackets) after 55 years. And it tasted good.   And Tey talked - about everything! The War, the ongoing UXO-clearing programme (UneXploded Ordnance), Agent Orange, relations between the Hmong (who fought on the American side) and the other Laotian ethnic groups now that the war is over, (Alfred: As you may guess, all is now OK. Tey assured us that there has been complete reconciliation and there are no tensions between the Hmong and the rest of Laotian society, even though the Hmong were working as mercenaries paid by the CIA to fight their own government. Mind you, the Hmong would say they were fighting for the Royalist cause against the Communists, the old terrorist-freedom fighter argument. No tensions at all. None), the complicated (to say the least) state of relations between Laos and Vietnam and much, much more. The guy was brilliant and much recommended and, had there been four of us rather than just two, the price would have been a giveaway.

(Alfred: Ah yes, Tey was great but in Siem Reap we actually had as our guide the Great Lord Sauron himself. We all wondered what happened to Sauron when Frodo threw the ring - with Gollum's help - into the fires of Mount Doom and the Great Eye collapsed in ruin. Well, he seems to have been reincarnated as a happily-married Cambodian tour guide with a wife and two beautiful children. It kind of gives the lie to the idea that if you are evil in one life, you will be reincarnated as, say, a woodlouse. Actually, now that I think of it, it may just be a coincidence of names but it was cool having a guide called Sauron (even if he actually spelled it Saron). Now, Saron had the advantage that we had him for three days as opposed to Tey's  seven hours, so he had longer to impress us but, sweet Lord, there was nothing the man didn't know! And, believe  you me, Martine and Ruairí tried! Among the topics covered were current salaries and earnings for various groups of Cambodians, Khmer proverbs and their meanings, the structure of local government, wildlife in every conceivable form (including all the Latin names), ethnic issues, the Khmer language and alphabet, population issues, family size and contraception, the price in a local market of any given item of foodstuff, the history of Cambodia right back to the dawn of time, Hindu mythology, the interaction between Hinduism and Buddhism over the centuries, the Khmer Rouge and their (problematic) reintegration into democratic Kampuchea, the structure of the primary education system... seriously, the most informative guy ever!).

2.   Litter: now this is one big area of difference. Vietnam was spotless, Cambodia was clean (but we only saw Siem Reap) but Laos is une autre bouilloire de poissons, as Martine so enchantingly puts it (Alfred: You know she is going to kill you when she sees that? I know YOU think these mangled translations are both humourous and witty but have you ever thought actual French people may not feel the same way?). Strange to see rubbish and plastic bottles and other garbage thrown around somewhere as beautiful as Luang Prabang. Maybe it is just a lack of rubbish collection (not forgetting Laos is much much poorer than Vietnam and we only saw one small touristy area of Cambodia) but this needs working on.

3.   Menu Highlights (most of these have been photographed and can be posted as verification if necessary):

Roasted Shrimp Baby with Salt
Oil Minor Repairs
Vitamin Fruit Labels
Special chef salad, served with Dijon mustang dressing

Classic Bugger
Hun Bugger
Bugger with Cheese  (all under Buggers & Sandwiches)

Apologies for a rather abbreviated entry (Alfred: and, let's face it, that section on 'Litter' wouldn't even be considered as a page-filler in the Metro!) but there is lots of good stuff to come:  we promise we will be more diligent (Alfred: forthcoming highlights include more great menu items - I especially like 'Minor pork in seven styles' - recipes with toads and cockroaches, Ruairí and Martine's strange determination to see if they can become the first people ever to put on weight while on a 100% Asian diet and loads of great things about monks, including spanking monks, monk wet t-shirt contests and keeping minature monks in a hamster wheel!

Behind schedule .....

(Alfred: Bugger. Day fourteen or so of the holidays and we are already as far behind in our blog as Alex Salmond is likely to be in the polls once they kick off the Scottish Independence referendum campaign. Then again, the upside is that we are having the MOST AMAZING time, which is why there hasn’t been time for the blog. One can think of the length of a holiday blog as being in inverse proportion to the quality of the holiday. I mean, if you have a spare couple of hours each day to craft a detailed, witty and skillfully observational blog, one has to wonder why you didn’t bother staying at home and writing a novel.


So, just a few high points to keep us ticking over and make you all realize the eventual entries will be worth waiting for:

 
• Classic buggery in Siem Reap

• Flirtatious Thai monks

• Khmer proverb #1: He dies as a snake, he lived as a frog  (Answers on a postcard to ...)

• The life story of a Cambodian who fled the genocide (otherwise entitled ‘How the UN actually did a damn good job’)

• Youth Defence and the friezes of Angkor Wat

• Frogs and their uses

• Khmer proverb #2: If you are nasty, be it so that one respects you; if you are stupid, be it so that one feels compassion for you.

• Dependent and independent vowels in the Khmer language

• Morning glory – the greatest vegetable ever

• How household gods fly to heaven on carp at the new year

• Competitive archaeology

• Food, glorious food

• Khmer Proverb #3: The mountain is high, but the grass on its summit is higher still.

• Martine running amok in Siem Reap

• The joys – and subtleties – of soup for breakfast

• A little corner of the USA in Cambodia

• Khmer proverb #4 (subtle, this one): The raised rice stalk is empty; bowed, it is fruitful.

• Pronouncing my name

• Begging

• Rude Cambodians, litter and flies

• Khmer proverb #5: don’t argue with a woman, don’t trade with a government official, don’t begin a lawsuit with a Chinese.



And there you are. I promise I/we will get around to all of this – notes are being kept. Oh, and there will be photos. So far, Ruairí and Martine have taken over 2000 of them. Scary.

Ho Chi Minh City (Day 2) and Da Nang

(Alfred: In real time, we have just finished our five days in Hoi An so Ruairi is falling further and further behind in this blog. So it may be more a question of highlights only, and a la Premier Soccer Saturday on Network 2 rather than Match of the Day, if you get my drift. Oh, and in case you hadn't figured it out yet, this computer doesn't do accents - in Vietnam of all countries!!)

Day Two in Ho Chi Minh City was still part of the recuperation process. But we did walk a lot and saw a lot of things, as well as practising our road-crossing skills. But first ... our first Vietnamese breakfast! (Alfred: Probably a good point to mention that if you are not into food, I suspect this blog is not for you. As I personally don't eat you can rely on my contributions to avoid this topic - for the most part - so maybe just stick to the sections in italics. Just a suggestion ....). Giant buffet containing fruit, various fried rice and noodle dishes, rice porridge (come back Irish porridge, all is forgiven - this looked vile), spicy breakfast soup (which subsequently became our favourite breakfast dish), eggs cooked as you wanted them, the usual bread, croissants, bacon, sausage etc. And so on. A very welcome introduction to Vietnam!

We wandered around for a few hours, eventually ending up at the river where we sat at a tourist-trap cafe: I ate a sausage which cost me 20,000VND (75c) - an horrific price here! Martine amused herself with Birds' Nest, a white fungus health/energy drink (I kid you not) which had a small amount of real birds' nest in it (Alfred: The truth and nothing but the truth .... but not the whole truth. 0.1% of the contents was birds' nest. 'Small' he says ...). She has also developed a taste for Vietnamese cakes made - as far as I can tell - from the foam used to stuff cheap furniture that has been dyed various implausible colours (the foam has been dyed, that is, not the furniture). 

Eventually we fled into a restaurant, as much to escape the noise as anything. And here we had our first real culinary experience as this was a Chinese restaurant that served real Dim Sum. And it was fabulous! (Alfred: Yes, a posh restaurant but one that served its beer in 330ml cans. Strange ...). Then off we set again, taking in an impressive skyscraper (whose visitor deck we decided to skip in the end) and a Hindu temple dedicated to the goddess Mariamman who is associated with floods and smallpox. And then back to the hotel where we continued our (mostly futile) quest of trying to combine the technologies of my Kindle, my Android phone, Martine's new iPad and the camera.

Dinner was to be in the hotel's restaurant .. or so we thought. People eat early in Vietnam but we hadn't realised how early. Down we went a little after 9.30 and ordered a pile of food. The waiter smiled, took our order and muttered something incomprehensible that included the words 'room service' before bringing us our beers. Then, bang on ten, he told us the restaurant was closing and the food would be brought to our room!

And so it was and it was gorgeous!  Five spice pork with noodles (very good), crab and asparagus soup (good but a bit like what I would have had at home), seafood noodle soup with prawns (amazing) and squid (a little rubbery) and ... water spinach. Now we have no idea what this plant is called back at home but it is absolutely gorgeous, like a cross between spinach and asparagus, possibly the best food we have discovered since we got here (Alfred: And that is really saying something. And, if anyone had bothered asking me, I could have told them the plant is Ipomoea aquatica, also known as Water Morning Glory. But no one ever does ). And it had the most amazing fresh herb with it with a strong taste that was faintly anise-like to me (later turned out to be Thai basil). So it was a great night - I always feel getting room service food is a really decadent thing to do, so it felt like the holiday had really started!

Off to Da Nang the next morning. (Alfred: By the way, any of you - especially those not interested in food - hoping to regale yourselves with stories of chaotic airports, crazy and dishonest taxi drivers, and other similar travel-related mishaps and anecdotes, sorry: so far (Day Eight) every single aspect of travel by air, car, minibus and boat has gone absolutely flawlessly, punctually and without a hitch. And if anyone from Ryanair is reading, or any European airline for that matter, have a look at VietJet's way of doing things! We especially liked the way the stewardess gave a special separate safety talk to those of us in the emergency rows, including an admonition that if we thought something was wrong, we were NOT to open the emergency doors until told to do so by the staff!! One has to wonder what particular incident prompted that addition to the routine! ). The Domestic Terminal in HCMC was very posh and absolutely huge! They had interesting stuff for sale too - loads of fresh fruit (Martine bought what she thought was a custard apple but it turned out to be what is called a milk apple and VERY messy to eat!!), the usual duty free and a wide range of jade, birds' nests and some kind of what looked like dried chillis that were incredibly expensive (I mean hundreds or even thousands of euro) - if anyone can recognise them from the rather blurred photo below we would love to know what they are!

Da Nang is not a great tourist destination so it was a good look at a fairly typical Vietnamese city. The hotel, the An Nam, was lovely: the staff had enough English to cope but not much more than that, the room was lovely, bathroom clean and bed exceedingly comfortable and huge (Alfred: Actually, I'm going to butt in here on this one. So far all the beds have been huge. This in a country of - let's be honest - quite diminutive people. At first we thought it was because they had overestimated the size of foreigners but this hotel in Da Nang is probably as much for Vietnamese as it is for tourists. So the only answer is that the Vietnamese believe you need to be pampered from time to time. We can so relate to these people!). The only thing is that the windows were all sealed shut! (Alfred: Or maybe they kick like crazy when they sleep?)

We wandered around a bit but had no real experiences worth repeating until we eventually decided to eat in a street cafe. Now that was an adventure ... but it will have to wait for the next episode. 

Can't do captions due to ... never mind. Photos are:

1.  Wierd blurred expensive somethings in airport

2.  HCMC streetscene outside restaurant on first night (from previous blog entry)

3.  Inside restaurant (from previous blog entry)

4.  Diminutive waitress (from previous blog entry)

5.  Cocktail list in Da Nang (or maybe I am just behind the times in cocktail titles).

Good Morning, Vietnam!

(Alfred: I swear to God, I really do, someday I am just going to up sticks and find someone more worthy of my creative contributions. Weeks to think of a title and all he can do is recycle a second-rate title of a second-rate movie that paints the Vietnam conflict as a merry jape in which automobile breakdowns constitute the major threat to life and limb.)

I have wanted to visit Vietnam ever since 1998 when I visited a holiday fair in the RDS and got a brochure for a cycling holiday from Hanoi to Ho Chi Minh City (Alfred: OK, I wasn't around then but I have it on VERY good authority that Ruairi presumed the tour would go south from Hanoi and not north from Ho Chi Minh City .... because it would be easier cycling down!) Yeah, right. Anyway, the idea has always stuck with me and when I decided to take early retirement from Rathdown I figured this was my chance to finally put my dream into effect, (Alfred: Horrible phrase, come on!) especially as Martine was equally keen to visit Asia. The decision of Martine's daughter Amanda to emigrate to Australia with her husband Dave meant we were able to plan a co-ordinated holiday whereby Martine went to Melbourne for Christmas and then we would meet up in Ho Chi Minh City (hereinafter referred to as HCMC) in January.

So, preparations. I like to be prepared (Alfred: 'I like to be prepared'!! Ha! Ruairi is the one who put the '-anal' into 'travelling'. What, I hear you say, there is no '-anal' in travelling? You haven't travelled with Ruairi!!) so I spent a good while sourcing locations and hotels on the internet and put out an APB on Facebook to former pupils and colleagues who might be able to help. And guess what - there are people EVERYWHERE!! On holiday, journalists in Phnom Penh, film crew in Vietnam, holidaying in Laos and so on. (Alfred: This is where he is supposed to say 'Thank You' to everyone who gave advice but it looks like I will have to do so on his part). So, by Christmas it was all worked out - four weeks in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos (and a lot more of it in Laos than originally intended based on the advice from visitors there) and a minimum of travelling by spending longer periods of time in fewer places. New passport, visa, extra passport photos, no inoculations (Alfred: Glad he mentioned that, an opportunity for a massive 'I TOLD YOU SO' later in the blog depending on how events transpire, though we obviously hope it doesn't happen - being around Ruairi when he is sick is a pretty miserable experience for all concerned and both Martine and I deserve better), some new clothes and a pair of walking shoes and off we go!!

Martine's flight had been eventful enough with her original itinerary of Dublin - Dubai - Singapore - Melbourne suddenly including Colombo for reasons far too complicated to get into. I was with Aer Lingus to Paris and then Malaysian Airlines Paris - Kuala Lumpur - HCMC and to my surprise and pleasure my luggage got checked all the way through! As I usually fly Ryanair to Edinburgh and elsewhere, I had forgotten how nice it is to be flying with an airline that makes a little more effort to be civil and helpful! (Alfred: And how come the airport was so crowded? Who in their right mind travels on New Year's D... ah, never mind).

The trip was pretty uneventful, to be honest. Wierd spongy escalators in Paris CDG that made you think they were collapsing under you and an interminable check-in for Malaysian Airlines as most passengers were coming home from Christmas and New Year shopping in Paris and had several kilotonnes of baggage each. Bought an inflatable headrest (which I then never used) to replace the one that exploded when I tried to inflate it (Alfred: Eurosaver quality ain't what it used to be). Twelve-and-a-half hours to Kuala Lumpur during which I watched the following films:

Rise of the Planet of the Apes:  good, had wanted to see it in the cinema anyway.
The Losers and Max Payne: both of these are films based on graphic novels. The Losers was a so-so run-of-the-mill film but quite watchable (Alfred: It has Zoe Saldana in it, of course it is 'quite watchable') but May Payne was great - I love films that really capture the graphic novel feel and successfully transfer it to screen.
The Expendables 2: appalling, gave up after 20 minutes
The Campaign: not quite as appalling as The Expendables, I lasted almost forty minutes.
The Bourne Legacy: really good!
Some Korean film based loosely on Top Gun involving defecting North Korean jets. 30 minutes was enough.

(Alfred: Having a ten-year-old Malaysian schoolboy sitting beside us proved invaluable as both Ruairi and his Australian neighbour from Brisbane struggled with the video controls and the trick of rewinding the cord that attached it to the seat. Turns out you press the button that says 'Rewind'. Who would have thought......)

Kuala Lumpur airport is magnificent (the largest in Asia), a lovely, light-filled building of glass and high ceilings, immaculately clean and not crazily crowded. (Alfred:But nowhere to buy water, which our erstwhile hero could really have done with at this stage, having refrained from drinking on the plane because of being stuck in the middle of a five-seat centre section and surrounded by sleeping passengers he was unwilling to discommode - so, no water, no need for toilet breaks. This is what passes for logic in Ruairi's head). 

And so to HCMC, arrived on time, luggage also arrived, as did Martine two hours later and we got a taxi straight to the hotel. Same people changed our money and sold us SIM cards and all at standard prices (Alfred: Ah now, the taxi was a bit more than a regular taxi fare would have been  but the difference between $7 and $10 when you have just travelled for 30 hours is not worth the hassle!)

Arrived at the Saigon Star Hotel - $30 a night including breakfast, clean, good WiFi in the room, and an amazing range of services. Plus you could buy anything in the room as a souvenir. The high point had to be the health spa - read the ad below to get the full flavour.

(Alfred: Cultural Observation #1: attitudes towards the elderly. Our preparatory reading on customs in Asia had led us to believe that there was a high degree of respect for the elderly .... in the queue for Immigration (which was fairly slow-moving but not crazily so) there was an elderly woman who was finding the standing tiring. So she asked the Canadian girl behind me, and me, if it was OK to skip forward. Of course we obliged but when it came to the two Vietnamese teenagers in front of me, no way. One marched up to the Immigration Booth and when she tried to go next, the second teenager actually elbowed her aside and walked up instead. Not what we had expected!!).

First impressions of HCMC: crazy traffic (80% motorbikes) but that operates with an inherent logic that works - crossing the road takes a subtle blend of courage and common sense: don't step off the kerb if an oil tanker is bearing down or a dense pocket of bikes that will not be able to part to accommodate you, but otherwise walk slowly across and traffic will pass on either side of you.Two people need to cross side by side - one behind the other is too big a target! The noise levels are incredible - constant honking of horns, engines running, can get a bit wearing after a while! A lot of people, especially those on on bikes, wear masks (Alfred: Actually, it is all women. We are still trying to find our first man wearing a mask - though, given that they are masked and all rather diminutive, it can be hard to tell.). Many of them keep their masks on indoors, giving a rather sinister look as if a 1970s IRA funeral has just broken up.

Parks everywhere and people actively using them - as we walked around, there were people doing meditation, calisthenics, playing games (including badminton and a version of keepy-uppy with a cylinder weighted at one end that was new to me), a group of teenage girls developing a dance routine and - in one charming instance - practising the tango (see photo below), all utterly unself-consciously. And trees everywhere - on every possible street there are gigantic trees, with fences cut away and walls rearranged to suit the trunks as they grow out of place.

Old and new completely mixed - nice modern buildings (and there are some very nice ones) mixed in with old, decrepit buildings whose balconys are covered in chickens, ducks and plants. And people ignore you - not rudely, but there is no staring, no sense of being obtrusive and - above all - no begging. (Alfred: To jump forward here. As I dictate this entry to Ruairi, we are actually on Day Six of the holiday: not once have we either been asked for money or seen anyone asking for money. There are people with disabilities selling lottery tickets, chewing gum and newspapers and others selling items of relatively little value from whom you might buy something, but no one is begging. Even one old lady in Da Nang we thought was begging on the side of the road turned out to have a weighing scales in front of her and was charging for people to weigh themselves).

That night we found a simple little cafe near the hotel with only two other customers in it (see final photos). The girl had virtually no English but had photographed all the menu items with her mobile phone and scrolled through them so we could find something we wanted! And this was when we found out just how cheap food and beer are here in Vietnam. Dinner for two with four beers for seven euro.  Lucky the food isn't too fattening!


And, as Zebedee siad, time for bed. The hours and hours of travel had scrambled our brains quite a bit so bed was welcome. And that is that for now. Next instalment: Dim Sum in HCMC, the boat that looks like a shark, first Vietnamese breakfast, Hindu temples (Alfred: Yes, he goes to Vietnam and the first thing he visits is a HINDU temple!) and the amazingness of water spinach.

(Alfred: Jaysus - whatever combination of Windows XP and Google Chrome this ancient computer is running has really screwed up the interface for photos - apologies for the mess!)

And a new age dawns .........

It has been a while, folks, apologies all round. I thought that when I retired from Rathdown I would have loads of time to restart this blog but events proved otherwise. Friends and family will know that it has been a tough nine months but now that 2012 is behind us, time for a fresh start!! Plus Alfred's incessant nagging and hectoring about how his wit, sarcasm and humourous observations are going to waste without a creative outlet proved a telling argument (Alfred: I think 'incessant' is a bit over the top; the occasional polite reminder and delivered always in a supportive and encouraging tone. And as for 'hectoring' (a phrase that is in itself an unfair slur on a great hero of ancient times) - I may look like James Reilly but that doesn't mean I behave like him).

So, quick recap: retired from Rathdown in March 2012, started a course to get a qualification as a proofreader (Alfred: this has kind of stalled for the moment but Ruairi ensures assures me he will get back on it in February) and spent four weeks in November-December doing my CELTA training to get my certificate so I can teach English pretty much anywhere in the world. Meanwhile, Martine quit her job in Edinburgh in November and spent Christmas in Australia with her daughter Amanda who recently moved there. The plan was for me and Alfred to meet up with her in Ho Chi Minh City on January 2nd and begin a four-week tour of South-East Asia, something I have been dreaming of for a long, long time (Alfred: Hmmm, hope it lives up to expectations because ... ah, who am I kidding, you know I am writing this after getting there so expectations have already either been lived up to or not. But wait and see, we have been having an amazing time in so many ways!!

                          

            

   






Alfred                                                         James Reilly

(Alfred: you can tell which one is James Reilly because he is the one wearing the cowboy hat ......)
And apologies for the layout - rather an ancient computer so WYSINWYG (Alfred: Ruairi showing his age there, does anyone under the age of forty remember this?)