Curley World Tour!

As I've mentioned, we endured a 10 hour train journey to get to Nha Trang and do you know what, it was alright. It's odd that all foreigners are sat together and your ticket is stamped 'FOREIGNER' but at least that meant we were able to have a chat with the people around us which helped the journey pass surprisingly quickly.

Our Hotel, The Perfume Grass Inn had been recommended to us so we had booked ahead. It is nice to be able to just turn up at your hotel and go to your room rather than going through the palaver of looking at the rooms and bargaining a price. However, we later found out that we were being overcharged, bugger. After an adult discussion (read argument) with the manager, our rate was reduced so that we were paying the same as everyone else. Well, it was a whole one pound fifty per night we were paying extra..... I know, pathetic isn't it but I rationalise it by telling myself that the amount we were being overcharged adds up to a nights accomodation somewhere and therefore is worth having a little tantrum about (just agree with me).

The hotel was in a perfect location, a stones throw from the beach with all the bars and restaurants right on our doorstep. We arrived at around 10.30 on Saturday 21 April and did what any self respecting backpacker does on arrival at a new destination....... went to find a pub. We found a bar called Crazy Kims that was actually playing decent music (the first decent music we had heard since leaving Brum). Crazy Kim campaigns to protect the street kids again paeodophiles and an amount from every drink sold goes towards her cause (so in fact we were doing it for the kids).

The following morning we were up nice and early to start our 4 day PADI open water diving course. After brekkie we had half an hour to kill so decided to go for a stroll along the beach. My word it is a gorgeous beach. It was all the better for the fact that it was almost desserted (apart from a few hawkers - at that time!) so had an opportunity to take some great photos.

The first day of our course was class room based with DVDs followed by tests. It was a lot of information to take in at once and it's fair to say we were a little frazzled by the end of the day.

The second day we had a full day at a local pool for our practical sessions. The first thing we had to do was swim 200 metres, just 4 lengths of the pool. No problem I thought to myself. There was no time limit at all, it is just intended to ensure divers have a general level of fitness. Ah! We all know that I'm not the fittest person....okay I may be the most unfit person you know, but for some reason I thought I wouldn't have a problem swimming 200 metres. Wrong. Coming up to the end of the second length I realised that I was going to struggle to complete this initial test and that I had foolishly paid for a course that I was going to be unable to complete due to my embarassingly lack of fitness....too many fags, too much vino and no exercise since, well for a long time. Luckily I did manage to complete it but couldn't breath for around 20 minutes afterwards and my limbs had turned to jelly. Honestly, I think they were considering giving me oxygen at one point.

It was a really interesting day but again there there wa a lot to take in. And then there was my panick attack.

Sean, our diving instructor asked us to perform a number of tasks out of the water, on the surface and under the water. These ranged from just floating for 10 minutes to removing and replacing your breathing apparatus underwater. One thing he told us quite clearly is that should something happen under water do not simply shoot to the surface in a blind panic. Should you do that in the actual dive you wouldn't equalize and could rupture a lung or get decompression sickness. Also, don't remove your mask and regulator (the thing you breathe through) once at the surface. Logical yes?

You know what's coming don't you.

Gav and I were performing one particular test during which I had to remove my regulator, signal to Gav that I was out of air and he had to pass me his alternate air source for me to breathe from. When given the signal I was to then remove Gav's alternate air source, find my own regulator which is floating behind my back somewhere and pop it back into my mouth. Simple? Nope. Something to bear in mind that at no point when we were under water were we allowed to hold our breath. When I remove my regulator I have to constantly breathe out whilst remembering to save some breath to purge (blow the water out) the alternate when I put it in my mouth and the same to swap back to my regulator.

During the test I forget how I'm supposed to hold onto Gav, Sean is gesturing at me and I have no idea what he's on about so I get a little flustered. Then when it comes to replacing my air source I remove Gav's and breath out as I'm supposed to but then I can't find mine. A little flustered becomes a little panicked. I finally find my regulator but simply have now breath left to purge....ah and now we have absolute blind panic. I start gulping for breath and of course breathe in water. Obviously all I want is to be out of the water at that point so do exactly what I had been told not to and swim directly to the surface where I then splash around coughing and spluttering like a complete muppet.

I could have purged the regulator my simply pressing a button on the mouthpeice - I forgot. I suspect I will not forget again.

Anyway, we both passed. Yep, I'm as surprised as you are. We had 4 dives at sea, the deepest being to 17 metres, followed by an exam to test us on everything we had learnt. During our dives we were repeatedly tested on the skills we had learnt in the pool and it did all start to make sense once we were putting it into practice (luckily).

It was brilliant. We both really enjoyed the course and are now very much looking forward to our next dive which will hopefully be in Malaysia (dependant on the weather) where the water is apparently 29c!

Us with Cecilie and our diving instructors

We met a lovely Norwegian couple, Cecilie and Steinar, on the diving course. One evening Cecilie and Steinar took us to a restaurant that they had come across previously. The waiter that served us was an absolute diamond. He fell over himself to be helpful and we ended the evening with an amusing language lesson. He taught us a few Vietnamese phrases and in return we taught him how to pronounce the English translations for the items on the menu. We've had so many experiences such as this whilst in Veitnam, where the Vietnamese people simple can not do enough for us and really make our time as enjoyable as possible.

Us with our "diamond" waiter

On Thursday 26 April we headed off to Monkey Island with Cecilie and Steinar. This journey was a cab ride to the harbour and a short boat trip over to the island.

Monkey Island was bliss. Just the four of us, the staff and of course the monkeys (okay there was a fair amount of litter but we'll ignore that). We set off for an explore of the island which is quite small but has some amazing scenery. It wasn't long before we realised we were being watched (by the monkeys not the staff). Steinar bought some nuts to feed to the residents and they soon clocked the bag rustling in his pocket. Within minutes we were surrounded by the 'cute' little monkeys which actually became quite intimidating! We spent the remainder of the day lounging around on the beach (read Gav slept all day) whilst Cecilie and Steinar snorkelled. We saw a woman get attacked by a monkey when the little critter decided that she wasn't feeding him quickly enough (we'd had a lucky escape).

We extended our stay in Nha Trang a little as it was a public holiday in Vietnam on 30 April and 1 May and therefore travelling anywhere during that time would have been problematic. Yes okay, okay, we jut wanted to doss around on the beach for a little longer, can you blame us!

On [bSunday 29 April[/b] we set off for a little sight seeing. As I've mentioned in a previous entry, Gav has put his foot down on about all the walking so we hired a motorbike without a driver for the day. To quote my Brother, it was "a bag of nails". There was an awful scraping sound once we went past about 10 miles per hour and we lurched forward everytime we changed gear (or maybe that was just Gav's driving). Anyway, it did the job and meant we were able to see all the sites we wanted to in one day (leaving more time for the beach of course).

When in Rome....

The Long Son Pagoda

The Giant Seated Buddha

Nha Trang Cathedral

Nha Trang has great seafood. We had a whole lobster, a crab and 4 tiger prawns for the equivalent of 4 quid and it was all BBQ'd by a little old lady right on the beach so we didn't even have to interrupt our sunbathing (needless to say there are no pictures of this....the food didn't last long enough).

Talking of sunbathing, Gav is sunburnt. He is convinced he will go brown at somepoint before the end of our years travelling although I'm not so sure. Bless.

Our last night out in Nha Trang - The Sailing Club and Why Not Bar

These little darlings are a couple of the kids that patrol the beach trying to part you from your money. It seems they also try to part you from your 'hard earned' by whipping your ass at pool.

I'm a Hustler baby........

On Wednesday 2 May we departed Nha Trang (reluctantly) and set off on our 10 hour bus journey to Ho Chi Minh City.

Hello everyone!

We have finally inserted piccies into all of our entries!!!!

Hey Sylvie, have a brilliant 30th birthday night out. Do everything that I would do!!!

Latas peeps.

Cardie & Gav xxxx

Tuesday 17 April
Hoi An was just a half hour cab ride away from our hotel in My Khe Beach. The driver even put on a CD of love songs for us to listen to during the journey,all together now...aaaaahhhhh. Once we arrived he then drove us around for a further half an hour whilst we tried to find a hotel with rooms available and he didn't try to rip us off with the fare either (belive me that's a first). We ended up at Thanh Van hotel which even had a pool for our nine pounds a night and was just a couple of minutes walk from Hoi An's old town.

Hoi An is a really lovely riveside town that was left virtually undamaged from the War and so has retained it's beautiful 'Old Town'. The Old Town is a World Heritage Site and very pretty indeed with buildings that date back to 19th century. As with Hanoi, the French influence is apparent in the buildings, baguettes, pattiseries and coffee shops.

Us in Hoi An

Apparently there is a really lovely beach there too but we never actually made it to the beach. We spent ours days in Hoi An strolling around the Old Town and mooching through the markets.

The Old Town

The streets are literally filled with tailors where you can get absolutely anything made to measure. I now you may be surprised at this but I actually resisted the temptation to go clothes shopping. My backpack is heavy enough already thank you and it's fairly expensive to send stuff home. Anyway I'll be a superwaif by the time I get back so nothing I bought now would fit me then (what? A diet of beer and baguettes isn't slimming!?!). I didn't buy clothes but I did buy almost an entire dinner service in the market which I now have to lug around until I can send it home and I imagine it will be destoyed during transit - where's the logic in that!

We did manage to squeeze some culture into our time in Hoi An. On Friday 20 April we set off at the ungodly hour of 5.30am for our trip to My Son, the site of the Cham intellectual and religious centre.

The Cham people origionated from Java, Indonesia and occupied the central section of Vietnam from 2nd to 15th centuries. They were forced South when the Vietnamese migrated from the North and there are now just 110,000 in Ho Chi Minh City. Their religion, Hinduism, and Indian influence apparent in artwork came from commerical relationships that the Chams had with India.

Oh how funny and original we are!

The trip we had booked was the sunrise tour although as the sun was rising whilst we were waiting for the minibus to pick us up we realised that we would have had to leave at 4am to get there in time for sunrise. Never mind, the most important thing was that we would get there before the hordes arrived and would be able to enjoy the site and take our pictures unobstructed. It was perfect, other than our group of 7, there were only 4 other people there. Another good reason for visiting so early is the heat. By 8am it was very hot indeed so it would have been unbearable by midday.

It's unknown how the bricks were fixed together as no apparent mortar was used however it is thought that they may have used a sap from trees in the area to glue the bricks together. The carving was all carried out after the towers were constructed. Amazing aint it! Unfortunately the site was almost completely destroyed by bombs during the War and the craters are still very visible today.

The Cham language is now completely lost so the script seen here cannot be translated

Apparently if a man rubs the linga....well we'll let you work it out!

Our guide for the day was delightful, a real character and very informative. I wanted to adopt him by the end of the day!

Whenever we are out in Vietnam we are approached by hawkers selling sunglasses, postcards, books etc. Most are good natured and simply move on if you do not engage in a convesation. However, I was not prepared for the children in Hoi An though. We've already established that I think Asian children are exceptionally beautiful, so put a Vietnamese 8 year old in front of me selling something.....I'm a lost case......

Gav and I were out in a lovely riverside restaurant for dinner (not very backpackerish I know but dinner two nights ago was baguettes and peanut butter in our room so that balances it out a little) and were approached by a succession of cute little kids selling crap. Initially I was firm but could see that Gav was buckling, and so could they. Upon seeing Gav's weakness one little girl turned her back on me and with all the cuteness that is physically possible asked him "but why wont you buy". It was too much for me "Ah man, okay, okay I'll buy". Then the business woman emerges from the child and she is fleecing us for evey penny she can get. I now have a wooden whistle that cost more than dinner - fine. But no, that's not the end. She then runs off to tell her mate, or sister or whoever it was who in turn comes over to our table to ask "why wouldn't you buy from me but you bought from her" and then would not leave our table for a good 15 minutes whilst putting on the saddest face that is humanly possible. Oh no. Needless to say we will not be suckered like that again (actually that's a lie because we were the other night but I'll talk about that in the next entry). Anyway, a dodgy wooden whistle thing that was vastly overpaid for will be winging it's way to my Neice and Nephew in due course.

And so our time in Hoi An came to an end and on Saturday 21 April we left on 10 hour train journey to the beach resort of Nha Trang.

School's Out-School Children in Hoi An

Cardie's hair is getting bigger.......

Well hello there. How the devil are you all?

On Sunday 15 April we departed Hanoi for Da Nang. We still hadn't fully recovered from the epic 3 day train journey that we put ourselves through at the beginning of our trip and therefore decided to fly. What? You don't expect me to slum it all of the time do you?

Our hotel was in My Khe beach which I have to say we had mistakenley assumed was walking distance from central Da Nang however it wa in fact a cab ride away (oops, my mistake).

My Khe beach (also known as China Beach) was used by American solders for a little rest and relaxtion during the war. It is quite undeveloped currently although judging by the construction sites it wont be long until it is.

The view from our hotel room

On Monday 16th we headed into Da Nang for the day to do a little sight seeing. The most interesting thing we saw was the Museum of Cham Sculpture which houses the best collection of Cham sculpture in the world (more on the Cham people in the next entry).

The Museum of Cham Sculpture

We did also hunt for the Ho Chi Minh Museum but after a very, very long walk (what is it with us and all this walking) in the searing heat, Gav lost it! He was walking no further and that was that. So after everything I've said about the dangerous roads and the motorbikes, what did we do? Yep, we got motorbikes back. I was holding onto the guy driving so tight that he was hysterically laughing at me (the only thing the girls here hold on to when they are on bikes is their sunglasses or hats). We made it in one piece though, phew.

Da Nang

We were not blown away with My Khe or Da Nang although there was nothing wrong with either place as such. A good thing about not having a strict itinerary is that we can just move on if we are not particularly enjoying ourselves and that's exactly what we did. We had origionally planned to stay for a week but in fact stayed for just two nights and on Tuesday 17th April we headed off to Hoi An.

No, we are not talking about the book by Mark Haddon and actually our incident didn't happen at night either......

I suggest that those of a delicate disposition do not read any further and Karen, you should most definitely not read this section to the boys.

We all know that the Vietnamese eat dogs right? Gav and I have seen one or two caged up and it has been apparent what lies in store for them. Apparently dog is quite an expensive meat and is therefore only eaten on special occassions although some like to eat dog once a month as it is thought that it brings luck. Sandy coloured dogs are said to taste the best. I believe it is an honour if a local asks you to dine on dog with him. We have spoken to a few travellers who have tried dog meat and said that in fact it is fairly tasty. Until recently it's fair to say that we have had no objections to the eating of dog, I mean how can we really? We eat animals so how can we judge? Don't get me wrong, neither Gav or I had any intention of actually eating any but surely us Brits eating our battery farm chickens is no better???

Anyway, back to the story. As I have mentioned we did experience some rain during our time in Ha Long Bay, in fact on the morning of Saturday 14th April we were subjected to severe thunder storms. Oh well, thats fine, we'll just stay in bed then is what we thought to ourselves.

The resort has a number of exceptionally friendly German Shepard guard dogs and at around 9am the dogs started going crazy. All of the dogs where barking at the same time and after around 10 minutes or so it was obvious that something was upsetting them.

I managed to drag myself out of bed to have a look at what was going on. At first all I could see was the young staff member, kitchen hands and the like, gathered around the volley ball pitch which was directly below our bungalow. One of the staff had a stick in his hand, similar to a broom handle. The dogs where all in the same area and seemed to be all looking in the same direction.....and so my gaze fell on what all the comotion was about.

On the sand volley ball pitch was a smallish sandy coloured dog. It looked like a greyhound type of dog although a little stockier. At first I could not work out how the dog's body was contorted in such a way although it was soon apparent that it's front legs had been twisted up behind it's back and tied together. The poor thing was terrified and was repeatedly lurching forward on it's hind legs trying to escape.

Oh God, it was awful. Gav told me not to look anymore as he knew how much I would be upset by what I was seeing. However I did once look back to see that the stick that the young staff memeber had been holding now seemed in someway holding the dog to the ground.

After some time, it became a little too much for both of us. The dog we squealing with fear and the noise of the other dogs barking at it and the staff shouting was overwhelming. What should we do? Eventually Gav shouted down to the group below that if they were going to kill the dog could they just get it over and done with and put the animal out of it's misery! We do understand that we are in Vietnam and whilst we are travelling we should respect the local customs and traditions and therefore maybe this was inappropriate action for us to take?? I'd actually like to know what other people's views on this are - what would you have done?

The group of staff then dragged the dog away out of view and, as Gav saw one of the boys pick up a meat cleaver, we assumed that was the end of it and that the dog would be killed and cooked. Erm nope! In fact what they actually did was just move the dog so that it was out of view and placed it into a shed area that was to the rear of the private beach. Throughout the rest of the morning we could hear the dog whimpering although stangely most acted as though they could not. I have no idea how long a dog would be left like that before it dies but it upsets me to think about it.

We have sinced been informed that the Vietnamese believe that the slower the death the tastier the meat becomes. They believe that the adrenaline released during death improves the flavour. Hence the treatment we witnessed and the reason why they were reluctant to give the dog a more humane death.

Chien, the owner of the resort, had asked us on the previous evening if we could email him with any suggestions as to how he could make his resort most appealing to western tourist. he asked for ideas or music CD's that he should buy, medicine that he should keep on-site etc. The resort had only been open since November and so was still a work in progress of sorts. At the time we imformed him that we loved it the way it was. It had a sort of rustic charm that would be lost if he tried to improve it too much. However with this conversation in mind we decided to approach him for a chat before we left (well Gav did the approaching). Gav basically took him aside and quietly said that we understand the dog is included in the Vietnamese diet however the treatment that we had witnessed that morning was hard for most Westeners to comprehend, whatever animal it might be. After initially denying he knew anything about the dog he was then very apologetic indeed.

If I am being honest I have come away feeling quite guilty as the guys at the resort tried so hard to make us as comfortable as possible and I think they felt that all their hard work had been undone. Maybe we shouldn't have said anything? However, if it stops the next guests having to witness the same thing, maybe we should have?

Gav and I wanted to go travelling to have new experiences and learn about other countries and cultures. We are certainly doing what we set out to!