Hello Laos, the First Few Days

Scenery out to Ko Long cave
Meghan and Veronika
Hanging out at a look out after a tough climb. Strangely enough we just ran into the couple who took this picture for us again yesterday (8 days and 500km from where this picture was taken)
Meghan "The Goat" Muhle on another super climb
Climbing out of Vietnam

Our first few days in Laos made use realize why so many touring cyclists visit the country. The countryside we were biking through was absolutely beautiful with steep, high karsts jutting dramatically out of pancake flat fields. The riding was really interesting. There were times where we would be riding along the flats of a valley towards a line of mountains and it would not be clear how it would be possible to cross them. As we slowly approached and the mountains took up more and more of our field of vision it would become apparent that we were simply going to power our way up and over them in some very steep and windy climbs and descents.

Veronika, who we had met and had dinner with on our last day in Vietnam, rode with us for the first couple of days which was really nice. She was interesting company and inspired us with all of her cycling adventures in remote places. She also ended up helping us out of a fairly awkward situation. We had heard that Kip (Laos currency) could be hard to get a hold of but we had some money crossing the border and figured it would last till we came across an ATM. It turns out that we were probably three days of cycling from the first ATM and just barely had enough money to make it all the way. On top of that the flat tire I got just before crossing the border had caused a small tear in one of my tires which was slowly getting bigger and bigger and aside from causing me a few flats was also looking like it could completely blow out and become a show stopper (I will also carry a spare tire on me for now on). Should that happen though, we didn't have enough money to take a bus. As we parted with Veronika so she could wait for her boyfriend (he was a few days away by bike on a separate route) she was great enough to lend us some money to cover the eventualities. Everything worked out in the end, but we were possibly in a real pickle. We were able to get the money back to her in Vientiane via a helpful French bicycle shop owner.

The highlight of that phase of our journey was visiting the Kong Lo cave. It is a 7km stretch of river that runs underground through an interesting series of caverns. For a small fee we were able to hop into a narrow little boat and tour through the winding system of caverns to the other side (where of course there is the obligatory tourist coffee stop). During most of the ride the only lights were from either our own headlamps (pointing in every direction trying to catch glimpses of any monsters lurking in the recesses of the cave) or the headlamps of the two fellows who were guiding the boat through the river (pointing, mostly, straight ahead). Our headlamps seemed to be a little brighter which was disconcerting, but aside from one small incident when we hit up against a sandbar at fairly high speed the fellows did a good job of keeping us dry. There was a short section of the underground cavern that had had lights installed in it by a French NGO and we got to walk through and checkout the stalagmites and stalactites.

Neat limestone formations at Kong Lo

Entrance to the Kong Lo Cave. That little boat was like the one we road through the cave in

The lowlight of our early days in Laos were the few days before we arrived in Vientiane. There are no pictures to prove it, but the riding was boring and a little ugly. Fortunately we were in a hurry to get to Vientiane to meet up with our friends Pam and Dave (who are joining us for the last few weeks of cycling in Laos) so we pounded through some long days and didn't have to look at smokey flat fields very long.

A final goodbye to Vietnam

Our last day in Vietnam ended on a note like the previous few...a little bit of frustration, a little bit of rain, and some eagerness to get to Laos. We were anticipating leaving the cold weather behind and reaching sunshine (which I will jump ahead here and say that it turned sunny and warm almost EXACTLY on the Laos/Vietnam border line). We spent our last night in a Vietnamese border town and met Veronika, a girl our age who is in her 28th month of cycling from Europe to Asia...lots of stories to share and we had a great dinner with her! Also lucky enough to spend a couple days biking with her, but more on that in the Laos post.

Something I've learned about my very practical, very engineering kind of husband is he's surprisingly superstitious. Or at least, he would say I just bring on bad things...which might be true as we've had multiple occasions proving this theory.
1) I say, "No, no, we haven't been sick at all. Eating everything and no problems what so ever!" We both wake up puking.
2) I say, "Man, this is glorious weather." It starts raining the next day.
3) In this instance I say, "This is the best biking we've had in days." With no word of a lie, Cameron's tire immediately bursts (no slow deflation here) and we're side lined for an hour.

In the sides of this picture, there is an additional five or six people. And if this picture was taken ten minutes later, there would be about a dozen people huddled behind Cameron, with more spilling to the sides. They are laughing, yelling, pointing and honking, and doing all kinds of things that make it frustrating to change a tire. Oh ya, and don't forget the smoke blowing out of Cam's ears.

Some bystanders wanting to take advantage of a photo opt while the tire changing was occuring. Funnily enough they wanted many pictures taken, but have no email that we can send them to.

Yum...one last Vietamese baked good!

Our last days in Vietnam

The goal after Halong Bay was just to GET OUT!! We're meeting Pam and Dave, friends from home (Pamela was a bridesmaid at the wedding if that jogs anyone's memory), in Laos on February 23rd (yeah!) so we're on the move to make it happen. Aside from that, Vietnam is currently endlessly cold, raining, and we can't hack the scams any more so we're happy to be heading out.

Our last four days here are combination of biking and bussing..bussing when the rain is too much, though hopefully that's just today. It took us about 3 hours to flag a bus down, and three hours on it to travel 130 km (which we can't figure out as the buses barrel along at who knows how fast).

So..just some randoms from along the way. See you in Laos!

Rice wine, snake flavored (what's missing in this photo is the jars and jars on either side...bear paw, bird, geckos, pig something...)

When we get home we're also going to enter into the joint sunglasses/bread business

How many people have had tea from this glass? And what is Bahn Cay?

Just a usual day..filling up my bread carrying moto with petrol.

Halong Bay

Hmmm....one of the most photographed and visited places in Vietnam and our pictures have for some reason been messed up...but..this is what it should have looked like. Mind you, our pictures had a grey sky, a touch of rain, and overall were a bit more dull looking...yes, we are in the full throttles of north Vietnam's winter season!

We were quite proud of ourselves for making our own way to Halong Bay. The very popular alternative is to do a single or multi-day trip from Hanoi, which includes your transport to and from the city (a couple hours away), as well as your boat cruise around the bay and meals. It's well known that these tours can be terrible scams and people have a terrible time on overfull boats, gross food, and itineraries that don't allow you to see what you want. AHAHA! We beat the system and took the train to Haiphong, the coast town where we caught a boat to Cat Ba Island, in Halong Bay. Except...we didn't beat the system because as usual, they were able to scam out of us about 4x the actual price for the boat (I won't go into details but this basically involves lots of yelling, mass confusion, hiding the real ticket booth with a maze of fake ticket stalls and basically bullying you into paying more) which meant really, we could have taken a crappy tour for three days for the price of our 1 hour boat ride!!

A little grumpy, we arrived and sorted out our day trip into the bay for the next day. We huddled up into our nice guesthouse, had a good dinner, and stayed out of the rain for the evening. We're both reading the Girl With the Dragon Tattoo series and it's seriously addictive so we're happy to be in bed reading.

(What Meg failed to mention above is that we ended up huddled in our guesthouse after she broke down in tears at having been scammed on the boat ride and then finding people who had done the cheap tours and had a fine time. It is very frustrating some times.)

The tour of Halong Bay was stunning, despite drizzly weather. We were able to be indoors on our boat and really loved the stunnign scenery, wish we had pictures to show you! Spent the entire day on the boat, had an amazing lunch, visited some cool caves and met a friendly Australian whom we had dinner with that night.

Up the next morning at 5am to catch our boat back to the mainland, this time armed and dangerous in order to get a fair price!

(We were neither dangerous nor armed)

Hanoi

We arrived in Hanoi and got ready for a busy few days to maximize our time in the big city. We started with a trip to Ho Chi Min's Mausoleum and went through a crazy security process, a huge waiting line, and general chaos to follow thousands of Vietamese (and some Westerners) into the depths of the mausoleum to be entranced by Uncle Ho's embalmed self. It was quite the thing, mainly because he's so revered by the masses here. Along with his perfectly perserved body, we checked out his living quarters and a semi-entertaining museum.

Ho Chi Min waving a big hello to his followers

Enjoying a mighty fine ice cream after visiting Uncle Ho

We spent another day walking around the city, and seeing all the various shopping streets. Hanoi has streets lined with particular goods, so that you can wander through the shoe street, clothing street, tin street, herbal medicine street, painting goods street, and well...you get it. That night we checked out the Water Puppet Theatre, which was perhaps our highlight of Hanoi.

A rubbish picture but hopefully you can close your eyes and imagine the delight of having little wooden puppets creating a scene in a pool of water...was developed years ago by the workers in rice paddies

Another highlight of Hanoi was a cooking course we did. A highlight not because we learned amazing food to bring home to friends and family, but because it was fun and overall a good evening with a lovely English couple. Unfortunately of our 4 dishes, maybe 2 were ones we'd like to recreate...the seafood spring rolls were supposed to be "fusion" and had loads of mayo (ugh!), the caramelized pork was a little too runny and perhaps a bit on the dull side, but the banana leaf salad kicked butt (can we buy banana leaves in Canada?) and so did the sesame/peanut dessert.

There were so many beautiful cherry blossoms being bought by people still celebrating Tet...apparently this is a more Northern thing, explaining why we hadn't seen any yet.

We enjoyed the Fine Arts Museum immensely as well. It was full of all kinds of goodies like laquered Buddhas, Asian paintings, and beautiful wood sculptures. We saw lots of temples and pagodas, and spent some time at the Ethnology Museum learning about all the ethnic minorities.

We had some great food, met a couple of other cyclists from Seattle and had a meal with them, went for a great run in the city park and overall enjoyed the time in the city before hopping a train to Haiphong to being our Halong Bay adventure.

Hue

Hue was the royal capital of Vietnam for many years and has ended up with some really neat architecture as well as attractive public spaces as a result. Wound up there for three days and felt a little hurried at that.

One of the best parts of Hue is that a big chunk of the city is contained within a moat and a wall, while within a second wall is a more restricted area for the emperor and his people. The emperor's area is now a ticketed tourist area and some work is being done to repair damage done by time and bombs. We intended to spend the better part of our first full day in the city looking around the emperor's area so after a leisurely breakfast we set out in the direction of the ticket booth. On our city map there was a chunk of shaded grey blocking a direct path to the citadel but when we got to the T junction indicated on the map we saw that there was actually an ally piercing the grey area. We figured we might save four minutes by not skirting the block of buildings so we headed in (I also really enjoying going through narrow roads). We bounced through the little allyways for a while hitting dead-ends and we finally figured that we weren't going to find a way through. It was just at our last turn around that the home owner saw us coming and in quite good english said "You are going the wrong way. Where are you going?" After a bit of an explanation he gave us some directions to get out of the ally maze. We thanked him and were turning away when all of a sudden, as if externally coming to a conclusion to an internal dialogue, he said "Ok. You come into my house." Since our last experience hanging out with locals had resulted in us chugging rice wine and having a dance party at five in the afternoon we were a little leery to accept the offer. We knew our time in Hue was going to be rushed and we didn't want to miss anything. In the end though our desire to chat with this fellow won over our inhibition and we accepted the offer.

Hien ended up being an employee for a western NGO (hence his English skills) who had done pretty well for himself. He had just built a new house for himself (and his parents) and was keen to show it off to us in a tour around. It really was a neat house, combining many of the nice features of the older Vietnamese homes we had seen as well as some newer construction standards: it was very open to the outside with large windows and patio doors and had a really nice garden while at the same time things could be made wind proof with good quality windows and doors. The highlight of the tour was probably when Hien showed us his lovely kitchen and then opened a door to a narrow sliver of cement with a bowl and a short stool on it. It turns out his mom is not comfortable cooking with the all the new hardware and has set up on an old school kitchen outside for herself.

After the tour we sat down with Hien in his living room. As it was Tet, the coffee table was already set up with snacks and, of course, alcohol and no sooner had we settled in than I was downing shots of whiskey and Meg was shooting red wine. The snacks up for offer were a little strange to us, quite honestly I don't know what they were to even describe them. The one thing that really stuck out though was a really delicious fermented soy product that smelled terrible but tasted a little like blue cheese. Our guest had brought out the soy dish late in the visit and I think it might have been a bit of a test. He was a surprised that we weren't disgusted by it and kept insisting that most Vietnamese people don't even like it. During our visit we also got to meet some other members of the family, parents, children, sisters and brothers and they were all very friendly. We also were able to observe the dad, dressed in his Tet ceremonial finery, performing prayers to the ancestor spirits at the little shrine set up in the house which was interesting to see.

Probably the most surprising thing to happen during the morning was when, out of nowhere, Hien said, "When I married my wife I told her that I gave her the key to my heart... But I had many keys made." He then proceeded to carry the key metaphor forward to describe how he had many keys for homes in the villages he visited for work and that in fact there were many homes that didn't even have keys (I think maybe he was done with metaphors at that point, or maybe we was just commenting on the loose morals of some of the women he knew). It was hard to know where to lead that conversation and the discussion soon turned to his sons video game playing. After about an hour and a half, many failed attempts to say farewell ("Just one more"), and a half dozen shots we headed back out into the allys to sober up and get on with the day (Hien was just getting started as he had a school reunion to get to).

Meg, Me and Hien hanging out on the sofa. No, Hien does not have his hand on my leg, and no I am not smiling because Hien has his hand on my leg.

The rest of the day was a little lower energy after that but still enjoyable. The emperor's compounds were very pretty with alot of nice green space (something the Vietnamese seem quiet good at). It was interesting to see that the same basic building organization was used over and over again with just differences in ornamentation to differentiate the different emperors (or his queen's, or his mom's) compounds.

Meg showing her respect for the emperor's stuff by climbing all over it.

Main Entry to emperor's compound

Me, striking a cool pose. Also some sort of archway.

The next day we were scheduled to do a DMZ (demilitarized zone) tour. Vietnam was split in two along the 17th degree lattitude after the communists won the war against the French and the area was designated as a weapons free zone. During the war with the Americans the land around the DMZ became the site of some pretty famous battles and American bases. These include Khe Sanh, Hamburger Hill, the Rock Pile (more than just a pile of rocks) and Camp Carroll. Apparently, at one point, these would have been household names for the generation watching the news about the Vietnam War. They wouldn't have rung much of a bell to me but I had just finished reading an excellent book about the Vietnam war and many of the sites had been mentioned. Meg and I had not done any tours of war sites or seen much evidence of the war on our travels in Vietnam and were curious to learn more. Even on the tour though it was really hard to get the feel for the war. The sites are pretty quiet, if not completely reclaimed by the jungle, generally with a few Russian or captured U.S. planes, tanks or helicopters as proof of the war. All told it was an interesting tour though with some interesting stories and a few pictures of the sites we were visiting as they would have looked during the war. One of the more interesting sites was north of the DMZ where an entire village succesfully lived underground for several years. The tunnels have been preserved and even have helpful labels like "Family Quarters", for a 3'x6'x4' hole in the tunnel wall or "Maternity Ward", apparently several babies were born underground. Another funny thing on the tour that Meg insists I add in, involved our obligatory visit to a "ethnic minority village". During the lead up to the village our tour guide was helpful enough to tell us a bit about the people we would be seeing. The story she told us was that a doctor had visited the village in order to help them with family planning. The doctor showed a family how to put a condom onto a banana as an example of how it worked. A few months later an obviously pregnant women walks into the doctors office with a condom clad banana in hand and demands to know why this contraceptive technique failed. Ethnic minority people are "very low knowledge" you see. A little thrown off by the un-PC introduction, we were let out on the side of the highway to stare at three small houses and wonder whether the banana crop would be any good this year.

A helicopter at Khe Sanh

A Vietcong, a female guerilla, and a Vietminh soldier. A big statue just south of the DMZ to show the reunification of the Vietnamese people. One of the neat things about Vietnam is how much they hype up their women warriors.

Family quarters underground.

Our last day in Hue we hit the town early as we had to be back for an evening bus at 5. Each of the emperors whose homes we had seen in the city of Hue had spent a bit of his lifetime devoted to building a good temple tomb for when he died. The tombs are scattered around Hue and we spent the day cycling around checking them out. They were beautiful and very extravagant. One of the walled temples was probably about 1km to a side. The temples acted as a holiday spots for the emperors during their lifetimes and most contained little lakes and hills for relaxing as well as halls for governing. It was very relaxing to walk the grounds which I guess is as intended. Aside from a brief stretch during which I insisted that if we were able to get our bikes through a cow field and across a narrow log crossing a stream we would for sure get to the next temple (we wouldn't have, so it's good Meg made us turn around) we made good time and were able to see all of the highest rated temples. It was with content hearts that we got back to Hue in time to set off on the night bus up to Hanoi.

A calm spot for an emperor to contemplate.

Meghan, looking good as she surveys a burial tomb built onto a mountain.

From Danang to Hue

Even though it was only a single day of cycling, the ride from Danang to Hue gets it's own post. It was beautiful! Meg and I both agree that it was probably the best day of tour riding we have ever had.

Very quickly after leaving Danang we started a steady climb along the edge of a lush green mountain range. The climb lasted about an hour and a half, at the end of which we were on a pass at 500m. We had a great view looking back on Danang and, on the southern side, long beaches of white sand. Apparently the mountains act as a natural weather barrier in Vietnam, holding back some of the northern cloud and rain, so we expected on reaching the top that we would be getting our jackets on. Fortunately for us though the weather was great on both sides of the mountain that day. The best part of the ride by far though was that there were few cars! A tunnel has been built in order to avoid the pass and most vehicles take that route as it is far quicker.

Looking back on the trip up the mountain. You can just see the road snaking from the right to the left.

The rest of the day had us cycling along the coast and over small foothills. Too quickly we arrived in Hue.

More intense rice farming of every square inch of available land.

My Son Cham Ruins

We left Hoi An on our bikes for a nice 50km cycle out in the country (well...we got off the highway after the first 30km) and visited My Son cham ruins for the day, almost a mini Ankgor Wat. They were beautiful, and busy (the Vietenamese were still on holiday celebrating Tet, and making the most of it!)

The ruins were built somewhere between the 7-12th centuries

Cameron was almost fascinated by the lizards more than the ruins--we could post a collage of lizard pictures, but will spare you

And I didn't have to photoshop this! **reference to previous post in which Cameron mocks Meghan**

There aren't too many stories from this day. It was enjoyable biking, and enjoyable sightseeing. After the ruins, we biked to Danang, about 60 km north of Hoi An. It's Vietnam's 3rd biggest city, so says the Lonely Planet, and quite lovely. We had a nice dinner out, an even better dessert (who know who could find the freshest, yummiest chocolate donuts in Danang?!) and a walk along the river. The city was still pumping from Tet celebrations, so that was fun too.

Hoi An and TET

We made it to Hoi An in time for TET, yeah! Hoi An is a UNESCO heritage site,and the Old Town is a showcase of old Japanese and Chinese influenced homes, temples, and assembly halls. We spent the day wandering and taking in the sights, Cam very much admiring the woodwork and droning on about the beautiful teak :-)

TET is the most important holiday in Vietnam, and is a mix of our New Year and Christmas. There are 3 days of public holiday, though most people take more. Families travel home to be together, there are big meals, TET cake is eaten daily, and offerings are made to the gods. New Year's Eve is celebrated similarly to home--people seemed to be with their families for dinner, and then out with friends for the evening, and there was a big fireworks display that went off at midnight.

Chinese Assembly Hall

This is what happens when Cam is irritating by repeatedly asking me to "be a dragon, be a dragon!"

Awkward as a man posed us in a series of about a dozen photos around this temple, of course obligating us to give him money afterwards. Don't know how we gave him our camera in the first place!

Hoi An makes beautiful lanterns, and they were displayed everywhere for TET

We slept in on actual TET day, Cam came down with a cold (sorry!), and we went for our usual coffee and noodles in prep for a big blog update!

An epic ride

We left Kon Tum looking forward to being back on bikes, and having a long day ahead of us because of the spread of towns...one was a little too close, and the other a little too far so of course we picked the too far one and clipped in for a serious ride.

We had a head wind (all wind in Vietnam seems to go from North to South which is rather unfortunate as we're riding everyday from South to North) for most of the day, and lots of rolling hills that kept the quads burning. It was gorgeous scenery though--you hear so much of Vietnam's coast, but the central highlands have proved equally stunning to us.

We cycled past many ethnic minority villages and had good glimpses into rural life in Vietnam--a far cry from the prosperous lifestyle in the cities.

An ethnic minority village where life happens mainly on foot

Our ride finished in Dak Glei, the only town for 50 kms on either side of us. We were told ahead of time, but our friendly tour guides in Kon Tum that there was one guesthouse here, and we soon found it and hunkered down for the night.

Time is drawing nearer to TET, the lunar New Year, and people were starting to close shop so we were lucky to find one restaurant open though I think we ate their left over dinner rather than something from the menu. We met a nice Vietamese man who bought us coffee and had a charades-like conversation before packing it in for the night....we wanted to get up early to catch a bus to Hoi An for two reasons:

1) we wanted to celebrate TET in a bigger city, with all the commotion around us

2) we had been warned by people and travel guides that all things close around this festive time and we feared if we spent the next two days cycling our 200 km into Hoi An we'd run into trouble finding food and places to sleep

Our guesthouse hosts, though they had no English, reassured us we could catch a bus in the morning to Hoi An without any difficulty. As we are passed by hundreds of buses daily, we knew this to be true. Had a good sleep and woke up early to get our day started...what were told at this point that was left out the night before is that the Hoi An bus didn't come until 10 am....oh well, one more morning of coffee drinking won't hurt us!

9:15am rolled around and we were shooed to the street and told to flag down the bus when it came..which apparently could be anytime from 9:15, to the scheduled time of 10am, to the actual time of 10:30. We saw the green bus in the distance, our host confirmed this was in fact it, we positioned ourselves very plainly in the driver's view, and we jumped, waved, hollered as he bombed past us. Our host looked at us, shrugged, and left us be.

Waiting at the side of the street for what seemed eons for anyway, anyone to take us far, far from Dak Glei

Hmm. Now what? We proceeded to try our flagging techniques and for the successful 4 or 5 buses that stopped, when we ran to the door, the bus driver would come out, we would point very cleary at our map, the bus driver would shake his hands at us and drive off before we could utter a single word. This happened about 5 times before we decided to just get ON, no questions asked, the next bus that stopped. Apparently, taking 20 seconds to look at the map and confirm the bus is going where we think it is, is too much to ask.

We finally did make it on a bus, made it to where we thought we would, and have sworn to bike ourselves the most we can around this country!!

Kon Tum - Hanging with the locals

Kon Tum is described in the Lonely Planet in a fairly unfavorable light as being a dusty little town that might be visited only as a jumping off point for seeing the sites near by. We found it to actually be a fairly neat little place to visit. The central highlands of Vietnam are not as much visited as the central coast and it seems that Kon Tum was not a particularly popular spot in the highlands so we felt like we were seeing a Vietnamese city unaffected by tourism. It didn't hurt that on our first day there we fell in with a gang of "Ethnic Minorities" (that seems to be the label used here, or "hill tribes") who ended up showing us some of the highlight spots to eat in town and taught us a few things about the area.

One of the things which is talked about as a thing to do in Kon Tum is guest stays with the minority people combined with hiking in the jungle. Daylyn and Nick had had a wonderful homestay in the Mekong Delta and we were keen to try it out ourselves so, after settling into our hotel, we went to the recommended (and only) tour operator in town. It was closed. We went to the tourism bureau next door and they told us the address of the "head office" of the company. This address proved to be incorrect and we headed back to the downtown tour office to try to get the phone number off the sign. While we were sitting there writing down the phone number (and actually getting the correct head office address) a fellow zipped by on a scooter and after a short somewhat confusing discussion we were cycling behind him while he bought beer and fruit and toys for some sort of party. We then followed as he drove (slowly) a few kms out of town and into a neighbouring village. The best that we can understand it was the new years party for that local village and we were invited into the home of (one of?) the local witch doctor woman to celebrate with her and her family, as well as the tour operator and his employees. The celebration at first involved sitting around a woven matt floor eating from plates of fruit, drinking beer, and, when ordered, drinking from the communal "jar wine". Drinking from the jar was actually kind of a feat. It was a gigantic jar of rice wine, which is sort of an aquired taste I think, with a reed placed across the rim and then a little piece of the reed sticking down in the wine. The jar would be filled to overflowing and then the drinker/victim would have to suck on a communal straw until the liquid was below the hanging down reed. I would estimate that it was about a cup or maybe a little more of wine you had to chug when it was your turn. When you got the liquid below the reed you were said to have "crossed the river", which made for good jokes about the river being too deep, or not being a good swimmer.

Meg, giving 'er to the Jar Wine.

Anyway, after a bit of this drinking shenaniganery someone turned the television set to some kind of Much Music station which initiated the dance party section of new years. Much to our surprise our new friends were very familiar with western music as well latin and club dancing (I guess the grandma and the mom weren't that great at the club dancing actually). Anyway, there we were clubbing it up on the dirt floor of the entry room in a villagers home at 4 in the afternoon. Quite frankly I had not crossed the river enough times to make this situation anything but strange. Fortunately, after one last Lady GaGa song the party ended as quickly as it began and we all shuffled off to our evenings destinations.

We had been asked to go help one of the guides of the tour operation teach an english class at the seminary and we headed off behind her on our bikes. In the end the nuns appeared to be praying too long and Faile (our guide) decided to hell with it and instead we went to the home of another guide, Bahn, and hung out while an American couple taught an english class to a gaggle of minorty girls. After the class wrapped up with a few rounds of "Frere Jacques" (in English of course) we headed out with everyone (except the kids) for a really great meal of Bahn Xeo.

This became sort of the trend for the next few days. We would meet up with the gang for an excellent new culinary experience, and also do some rice wine drinking. A bit too much rice wine drinking actually, we got the uncomfortable feeling near the end that we might be around people who had some drinking problems. This helped us decided not to stick around Kon Tum for Tet (Chinese Lunar New Year, also the biggest Vietnamese holiday), though it would have been nice to be around friends for the holiday.

Bahn, and a little person we were never introduced to, eating a really neat meal in which various leaves would be used as wrappers for shrimp, pork and some kind of sauce. The leaves all had interesting and unique tastes.

Faile, me, small girl, and Bahn having coffee. In the background the quiet lovely river valley.

During this time of eating and drinking in Kon Tum, Meg was feeling a little under the weather with a cold (likely picked up from Nick and Daylyn, aka "The Infectors") so everything was a little slowed down. I even got an afternoon to myself drinking coffee and reading while Meg slept. It was quite nice as I like the coffee with condensed milk and had gotten really into that "The Girl with a Dragon Tattoo" book, it was getting painful to stop reading and actually enjoy Vietnam. It wasn't so great for Meg though.

Bahnar community house

Also, during our stay we were trying to line up to do a hike with the tour operator. It proved to be surprisingly difficult as the store front never appeared to be open. After talking with the guides during our evening though we finally managed to line up a hike for our fourth day in Kon Tum. The hike ended up being fairly interesting. We had two guides, one was an owner of the tour company (everyone else had plans), and the other was a member of the village whose lands we were traipsing around. The tour company guide had good english and clarified alot of questions that came up and the village guide helped us not get caught in any of the dozens of hidden rat, porcupine and deer traps which littered the forests we were walking through. Both valuable things. While we saw many interesting things on the hike (illegal deforestation to make room for farmland, cassava crops, rats being roasted on a spit, small little terraced rice fields), the highlight was probably being chased off by a troop of monkeys.

It happened like this. After walking through the cropland of the village we finally got onto some of the hunting trails in the jungle. We had been in the jungle about an hour when we started hearing the strange hoots and calls that we were informed were some kind of monkey. Our village guide was making a bunch of weird sounds back so we figured he had things under control and weren't really too concerned about what was going on. Suddenly there was a sound like a small avalanch, or an animal running down hill in a jungle and our guide turned back up the trail and started running in our direction. Naturally we also turned and started running thinking that we were about to be killed by a jaguar (me) or a bear (Meg). Honestly, I think there are few memories that are burned in my memory as much as hearing that sound and then looking and seeing our guide's head spin in our direction, his cigarette burning bright red (I think he had inhaled quickly). After about 30 metres we turned back to see the guide had stopped running, apparently the chase was over. We were then informed that the fear was of the monkey troop running down and throwing things at us (maybe then attacking us?). After that our hiking direction changed a bit and our guide walked with his machete out. We felt a little anxious, but had a nice lunch a short while later.

A baby pineapple. Who knew? We sure didn't.

Our team of intrepid explorers, unaware of the dangers they would face on (Attack)Monkey Mountain.

Meg trying to figure out how the rat trap worked.

A bike ride...in Vancouver?

We set off back on our bikes, leaving a cloudy, slightly chilly Nha Trang for what we hoped might be better weather...Vietnam doesn't actually get cold after all, does it? Wrong, wrong, and more WRONG!

We had a great start to our ride, and it was fun to be in the mountains. All our little legs have seen so far has been flat, endless pavement so it was a good feeling to be climbing. The road was nice and quiet, unlike the busy coastal highway and we were glad to be heading inland.

The scenery was lush with jungle for as far as the eye could see

As the day went on, the weather seemed to change. We climbed the mountains...straight into the wind, rain, and cold. For the last hour of our ride we were shivering, soaking wet, and sprayed in mud {this is because 1) Cameron hates fenders and does not have any on his bike and 2) Meghan's got ripped off in a mad fury while we tried to pack the bikes into boxes for their flight here}.

With no central heating and no hot water at our hotel, it was a challenge to warm up after the ride! Luckily, Cam did survive through the night.

The following day we decided to skip out on biking another 100 km in the rain, and instead took a bus to Buan Ma Thut, and onto to Pleiku. Thinking we'd pack up, ask our hotel staff (who speak almost no English) for bus information, and then have a coffee or two to start the morning off right...we were very mistaken.

Instead, we packed up, asked our hotel staff for bus information and were promptly taken out to sit in their shop infront of the hotel.

Meghan, doing as she's told despite no idea what's happening around us

Before we knew it, one of the local minivan/buses screeched past, our little host (above in orange) went screaming down the street after them, the peeled to stop, reversed at what seemed to be 100 km an hour and we were thrown in amongst a van full of amused Vietamese.

Cam helping to jam our stuff in the bus, and our bikes on the roof before we are left behind. Did we mention there's about 26 people on ths 10 seater van?

It was only minutes before we realized our passports were still at the hotel--they keep them here during your stay and in the chaos of leaving we didn't get them. With quite literally some yelling on my part, waving my hands, and finally finding one person who could read our written message "Passport at hotel" we were able to pay our way out of the situation. For a mere $10 (the same price as our two bus tickets) the bus driver somewhat kindly went back for us.

We survived two hours of crazy driving and made it to Buan coffee capital of Vietnam. Spent a couple hours unwinding after our nail-biting ride there and had one of our favorite lunches to date.

Yummy spring rolls that you make yourself, stuffed with pork, lettuce, fried dough, and delicous sauces.

Back on another minivan/bus to our final destination of Pleiku. We had our usual haggle over how much to pay to put the bikes on (which according to the woman at the ticket counter should be nothing, and according to the bus driver should be the equivalent of two extra tickets). Spent a night there and in the morning, rode our way to Kon Tum (in the sunshine), where we would be spending several days.

Looks like we're at home in the Okanagan!