Last day in Phnom Penh

It's our last day in Cambodia and we are both sad that our holiday is coming to an end but also looking forward to catching up with friends and family back in Perth. We are both super keen to see one particular puppy :)

Our adventures have been a lot of fun, and now its time to return to work and get back into the swing of the real world.

As many people can relate to this trip has opened up other travel destinations that we'd like to visit in se asia in the future.

Now we have a 2 hour flight to Kuala Lumpur, a 5 hour lay over in the crappy air asia terminal, and finally a 5.5 hr flight to Perth. So we should be touching down in Perth around 5 am ish on Saturday. Hopefully we can both get some sleep on the plane.

It will be nice to unpack our bags and use our wardrobe again :) its amazing how little clothes you actually need!

Anyways I hope your all doing well and we are keen to catchup for a beer and share a few stories.

We aim to do one last post when we return to Perth to write up our experiences in Phnom Penh and siem reap and share some photos.

Happy trails!

Tales of Halong Bay and Goodbye Vietnam

Erin and I both had a lovely time in Halong Bay as you've probably gathered from the photos that we've uploaded.

We started out with a 3 hour bus journey from Hanoi to get to Halong city. The bus ride was pretty good but as we've mentioned before the roads over here are pretty bad and road travel is slow going.... We arrived into Halong city around midday and boarded a little boat to get taken to our junk.

After about 10 minutes we boarded our larger boat, the "Vega". The boat was lovely with 3 stories, a bar, a dining room (with karoke...) and a upper deck for lounging and sun bathing. Erin and I thought we would splurge a bit and got the deluxe room with a balcony and all the bells and whistles (including love heart twisted towels)

We cruised out to the islands while sitting down to a sumptuous lunch consisting of fish, pork, spring rolls, wok fried greens, rice, corn, and chips. It wasn't long till we caught site of the dreamy rock formations typical of the Halong Bay area.

The first destination we were bound for was "Surprise Cave", which we arrived to after approximately 2 hours of cruising. The caves were fantastic and consisted of 3 large chambers which had formed in the limestone karsts. There were many strange shapes which have formed over the years of calcium deposits, some which our guide described in detail that had caused ladies to have a heart attack....

We continued our journey deeper into the islands and soon stopped for some kyaking. Erin and I were very keen to hit the water and we weren't dissappointed. The guide led us into a massive enclosed lagoon which was only accessible at low tide by paddling through a cave. It was soo peaceful and beautiful in the lagoon.

Before we knew it the sun was setting on our first night in Halong Bay and we paddled back to the main boat. Dinner that night was delicious and the chef did an amazing job carving flowers our of carrots, chillies, and other vegetables. The food again was amazing!! It turned out to be our guides birthday that night so the crew threw a celebratory party for him and a seafood feast with lots of rice wine.... It wasnt long before celebratory cheers turned into an excuse to skull rice wine, some of which was extra potent stuff brought on board by a traveller who sourced it from markets in the mountain village of Sapa. Ohh how it burnt....... In Lao style the shots of rice wine needed to be skulled in one shot and the glass turned upside down on the drinkers head, unfortunately for the Italian fellow he couldnt drink all of his and had a rice wine shower..... And not long afterwards the Karoke machine got fired up for some challenging singing in both English and Vietnamese.......

Our second day on Halong Bay started off a little rough, which I directly blame on the rice wine...... We started our day with a hike up Tee Top mountain to get beautiful 360 degree views of the bay. The hike to the top was a challenge in the 40 degree celcius temp with 80% humidity, but the effort was worth it when we got site of the views.

The afternoon was spent swimming around, jumping off the boat and generally having a great ole time in the water. In the late afternoon Erin and I were dropped off at our beach bungalow on a small beach. Unfortunate for me when we left the boat I snapped off the metal door handle to our room when retrieving our luggage. This caused a bit of panic amoungst the boat crew but eventually got sorted out.... The bungalow was fantastic and was perched above the water, so we could hear the water lapping underneath us. We had a relaxed evening sat out on our balcony having a few local beers.

The following day the boat picked us up at 8:00 and we started our cruise back to the mainland. To my peace of mind the door handle had been fixed over night. After a long drive back to Hanoi in a packed bus we got back to the lovely Holiday Diamond hotel in Hanoi. We met up with friends (Sally & Chris from Melbourne) that we had met on the trail in the hotel and headed out for a final dinner and drinks in Hanoi.

Hanoi was a fun place, full of action, scooters, and general madness of busy life. We were sad to leave Vietnam as it had provided some fantastic food, great sites, and a very happy and warm people. But Laos called and we were soon on a flight bound for Luang Prabang.

Back in Hanoi from Halong Bay

Erin and I have just arrived back to Hanoi after spending 3 awesome days cruising around Halong Bay.

We've noticed that a few people have been having technical difficulties posting comments, so to make it easier I have removed the word verification step before submitting comments. So feel free to try and add comments, we do love reading your thoughts :)

We will endeavour to upload photos and a blog regarding our adventures in Halong Bay in the next day.

We are off to Laos tomorrow at midday for a week of relaxing in Luang Prabang.

All The Best

Hue

Our time in Hue was interesting, it started out with a beautiful drive from Hoi An up the coast and over the mountain pass which provided spectacular views.

We arrived in Hue around 1600 and dropped our bags off and hit the streets exploring. It didnt take us long to find a nice little vietnamese restaurant that was doing a deal with free spring rolls and 2 for 1 beers (Golden Rice). The staff were very attentive and chatty, seems that alot of vietnamese people love to chat, I think partly to improve their english, but also for a chance to sell you something.... I slipped into the conversation that we were on our honeymoon, and we got provided complimentary desserts... I should have got married years ago.... ;)

We kicked onto a bar "Brown Eyes" which were offering 2 for 1 cocktails and other drink specials to get the tourist into the place, worked for us. Erin and I were the first ones in the place so we ruled the pool table for about 2 hours, below is a photo of Erin in fine form with her pint sized pool cue.

Unfortunately the drink specials were our undoing as we partied on late into the morning and slept most of the next day. So much for visiting the temples and ruins like we had planned.... We eventually ventured out of the hotel in the evening in search of dinner. We found the night market and some awesome pop up restaurants that lined the river. The restaurants were selling lots of fresh barbequed seafood which smelt amazing so we couldnt resist. The BBQ seasoned squid and pork skewers where awesome!!

After a day of rest we had to start preparing for the next move, we were due back in Denang for a flight up to Hanoi. I managed to get up early the next day and check out the Citadel, a historic ruin in the middle of Hue where previous emperors of vietnam lived. Given the time contraints I thought I've give a cyclo a burl, good fun.

So as I finish this post we have left Hue and have arrived into Hanoi for more adventures.

Craig

Diving in Nha Trang

Yesterday I went out for 2 dives off Monh island with a company called Angel Dive.

I was a little dubious of the quality of the dive after discussions with dive operators the previous evening. Their descriptions didn't include any large fish, sharks, turtles or any of the high end marine life. It seems the local area has been largely over fished and not managed effectively..

So I set off at 7:30 yesterday with beautiful weather conditions. The first dive started at 8:30 and I was partnered up with a French Canadian fellow by the name of Robert.

The first dive went well, the water temp was a lovely 28 degrees and the visibility was good at around 15m. The dive started on a soft coral garden with a mix of dead coral inter mixed and a few small tropical fish darting around.

We descended to around 15m and worked our way through a series of boulders on the hunt for a cave. Our dive guide was a local fellow who had been diving the area for the past 10 years. We soon found the cave which had formed from a few large boulders collapsing on top of each other. The dive instructor entered first and we followed. The cave was a tunnel which lasted about 7m with openings at both ends. Large schools of fish were inside the cave, which quickly shuffled to the side as we moved towards them.

We found another similar cave shortly after and went through that one too.

The first dive lasted around
1 hour, and we then had a 1 hour surface interval.

We moved around the island to a new dive spot and jumped back into the water at 10:30.

The second dive started out well until the dive guides tank popped an o ring and started leaking air when we had descended to around 10m. So Robert and the guide went back to the boat to get some new gear. After 5 minutes the two rejoined me and we started exploring.

The second dive mainly consisted of partially healthy coral gardens at 6-8m, and at deeper depths faded into a sandy desert. We saw a few lion fish and a grouper but the dive was definately showing signs of previous mis treatment. Hopefully in time the area improves given its been made into a marine park.

The second dive lasted around 55 minutes and we got to 20m. The water temp below 17m dropped noticably with the thermocline to around 14 degrees.

I was back in Nha Trang at 1p and had lunch with the group of 7 at a local restaurant. All in all the dives were enjoyable but they were no where near as good as areas such as the great barrier reef, north east coast of Fiji, Galapagos, or even rottnest island.

Erin and I are off to Danang today, so I better start getting sorted, we fly out in 4 hrs.

Mekong Delta Adventures

We have just returned from the Mekong Delta area after spending the last 2 days cruising around on buses and boats of various sizes in the south west of Vietnam.

We've found out first hand how long it takes to get places by road here, for example 120 km trip can take anywhere from 3-5 hrs.....

Slow transport aside we had fun checking out the floating markets at Can Tho, basically a wholesale market for fruits and vegetables. Hopefully we get some time on the computer today to upload some of the photos.

We also visited a rice husking facility and a small family run business that made rice paper and vermicilli noodles using rice flour, water, tapioca, and potato starch. Rice husks were used to fuel the fire. Nothing gets wasted over here which is encouraging to see.

We visited some smaller islands on the river and saw some of the fruit orchards and tasted jack fruit, dragon fruit, lady finger banana, pineapple, and pimello. Erin started on the pimello and didn't like it and left the rest of the fruit to me, bonus :)

We had the opportunity to see how coconut candy was made by squeezing the milk out of the coconut flesh and then boiling and mixing it up with sugar cane syrup. The mixture is the cooled in strips, cut into pieces and then hand rolled in rice paper and paper. The lolly tasted pretty good.

Our accommodation in Can Tho was pretty basic, but it was comfortable. We got a lil lost wandering around the streets of Can Tho on Friday night, but stumbled upon a market which was interesting. There was lots of fresh, still kicking fish and marine life for sale. We eventually found somewhere to eat and got back to the hotel.

Today we are going to checkout the war museum in Ho Chi Minh, then this afternoon we fly to Nha Trang where I'm hoping to do some diving.

Time for breakfast.

First Impressions of Ho Chi Minh City

Erin and I have been wandering around district 1 of hcmc for the past couple of hours. The place is a buzz with activity of people flying around the place on scooters of all shapes and sizes.

We are having a great time soaking up all the interesting sites and smells.

We are both stuffed after scoffing down some fresh Vietnamese pork rice paper rolls and some poh (soup). Both dishes were awesome and came to a total price of $9 for both of us! I love this place already! We washed it down with a long neck of tiger beer each worth $1.5, bargain!

During our evening walk around hcmc I happened to notice some food carts selling fresh rolls made to order with pork belly, lettuce, and various other bits.... Looked delicious, I know what I'm getting for lunch tomorrow :)

Tomorrow we will venture a bit further around the city and also investigate some local tour operators to suss out the best deal on a tour out to the Mekong delta, we are very keen to see the floating markets. We flew over a section of the Mekong delta today and it looked great.

Anyways I better sign off and get some sleep, its been a long day as we've been up since 4am.

Craig