Day 8 - Travelogues, Sapa, Vietnam

By far my most favourite place on our backpacking trip... we reached Lao Cai at 4:30 AM and caught a taxi for 30,000 dong each (about $3)... i think it took us about an hour to get to the picturesque mountain village of Sapa. We knew it'd be cold there but the rain greeted us as soon as we got there...! so at 6:30 am, in this breath taking place we alighted and looked for accomodation... all of us were charged up with the fresh mountain air and started hunting for places... we got something for $12 ($3 each) and since the hotel guys readily agreed, we knew that we'd definitely get a better deal.. and sure enough we managed a deal for 5 frickin dollars TOTAL that's $1.25 per head!!!!!!! in a gorgeous hotel called sapa twilight with hot water, a kitchen we could use for free (of course the ingredients had to be ours), heater pads to keep the beds nice and warm and free internet in an empty hotel!!!!!!

as soon as we got in we ordered hot chocolate... there's something about sitting in the mountains with the clouds coming in through the window to greet you and a mug of hot chocolate in your hands! ooooooooo mama.. orgasmic!

since it was raining, we spent the afternoon indoors and took off in the evening to go and see sapa's waterfall.. we rented bikes and hopped on... even though I was disappointed with their waterfall whcih was more a gushing mountain stream than a waterfall, the entire journey was so beautiful that I have absolutely no complaints...

finished early and had an early dinner... now we were really excited that we were saving money on accomodation and thought that we could treat ourselves to a slightly expensive meal (i.e. stuff ourselves with food)... unfortunatley... sapa's restaurants dint match the economy of the hotel rooms! every restaurant was really expensive!

that night when we sat to budget... we realized that we'd have to stay in sapa for 3 days more.. simply coz staying in sapa would help us with finances coz the hotel rates were so cheap!

wow.. we actually stayed in sapa for 4 days coz our room rent was peanuts! i still get stunned by our move.. but it was awesome

Day 7 - Travelogues - Cat Ba Island

This was the second day of our 2 day package tour of Halong Bay...it's a total waste to stay overnight on Cat Ba Island if you take a 2 day package... all we did on Cat Ba was sleep! Its a shame actually coz the place looked really pretty...
breakfast was provided by the tour agency... entertainment wasn't part of the itenarary but we got it free... there was this random dude... half indian, half jamaican or something.. drunk at 8 AM... he kept dancing in the middle of the road, teaching kids how to run, randomly walking up to people and shaking their hands.. all sorts of weird things... he drank throughout the 6 hour journey... which was a good thing.. coz if he wasn't drinking he'd be bugging us... the weirdo was so drunk he bit the guide!!!
anyway.. enough about him.. day 2 was pretty much a waste.. but the boat ride through halong bay is worth it all...
we got back to hanoi and immediately rushed to the station to catch a train to lao cai and go onto sapa... this time round we had a luxurious 4 seater coupe and it was so pretty.. we loaded up on bread, cheese and beer for the journey and took off...
we got into the compartment and couldn't get enough of it.. cute little train with a cute lil compartment...

Day 6 - Travelogues - Halong Bay, Vietnam

After reaching Hanoi at 4:30 we waited at the station till around 5:30 to catch a cab and get to Sinh Cafe... we reached by about 6 am and actually found a tour agent's office open.. he wasnt directly sinh cafe but an agent for them...at hanoi we had two options.. one was to goto sapa and the other was to goto halong bay...

we chose halong bay first... and set off with their 2 day package tour for $35 a head...

halong bay is one of the most romantic places i have seen in my life.. it is gorgeous... we got to the bay after a 2-3 hour bus ride after which we took a boat to halong bay...

i think halong bay gets its name from a legend which says that the bay was carved by the tail of a giant dragon...

it is truly a picturesque sight.. imagine yourself in clear blue waters... surrounded on all sides by random rock formations... some large and some downright tiny! and these are the thousands of islands of halong bay (all created by the dragon's lashing tail)... for toursity purposes these islands have been nicknamed things like fighting cock etc (coz they vaguely resemble two roosters fighting!!!!!) as soon as we got on board we were served lunch.... lovely for sea food eaters... me im vegetarian.. so i stuck with rice, chilli sauce and some peanuts!!! how i longed for a good meal in such wonderful surroundings...

then we went and sat on the deck chairs arranged on top, out of the confines of the cabin...amazing breeze! we'd bought beers before we boarded coz we expected the beer on board to be at premium price... simply demand supply laws!

we spent the next few hours in the water... even stopped at a couple of gorgeous caves... complete with stalactites and stalagmites... the caves were so awesome.. i tell you.. if i had decent food.. and maggi also qualifies and an internet connection.. i'd be prettty content in the caves! for a $1 each you can get off the boat and get into tiny dinghy's which take you out on teh water closer to some of the 'islands'.. its pretty cool... they eeven take you to the floating village (I know I've mentioned these alot in my blogs) which are basically fish ponds complete with mating squids an all.. the receptacle with the mating squids was GRRROSSSS....

now, when you choose this package.. you have two options..1 is to stay on the boat over night and go kayaking in the waters the next day and the other is to go onto cat ba island where theres a national forest park, spend the night tehere and come back on the boat the next day...

expecting loads of water sports in dalat, we chose option 2... i wouldnt recommend it to anybody if you pick a 2 day trip... cat ba island is really pretty.. but by the time we reached it was dark... and there was a festival going on there coz 50 years back Ho Chi Minh had arrived at Cat Ba island on that very day!

so no biking through the forest reserve for us...

the beauty of halong bay was more than enough tho

Volcano boarding & Airtel sponsoring Man-U

time-out from travelouging!!! this had to come in...

Airtel's gonna be the first Indian sponsor for the Man-U team...to reiterate.. during recession for this to happen just proves beyond doubt the power and impact of sports and how corporates can use sports as a medium to engage customers and get them on board.. with the amount of clutter in the advertising world its these events which can make a difference... both to the sport and the corporate house...

now.. since airtel is into providing cellular service and given the madness of soccer, the soccer game downloads and replays they provide will be lapped up im sure.. once the sponsorship takes off, i'll follow it and see if i can find out how many new subscribers they managed to get...

then again.. even if they dont manage the requisite numbers, it does work towards brand building and brand propagating.. also makes airtel seem younger...

I think in India, such moves will actually work towards making soccer more popular... it's a cool sport and such kinda VAS features make it even cooler.... there's always time and theses activities provide for fun ways to utilize that time...

and now for volcano boarding... as the name suggests, it involves using a plank of wood, im guessing not unlike a snow board or a sand board, which you use to slide down the side of a volcano! now people have been doing this for 4 years apparently.. and these people have been volcano boarding down active volcanoes!!! I've trekked up a volcano and swum in the crater of a dormant one as well.. but to think of sliding down the side of an active volcano is scary.... the terrain is so rough... one fall is enough to literally bruise your skin off... !!! but then again thats what makes it so exciting.. I can't wait to try this sport!!!!

Day 5 - Travelogues - Train to Hanoi, Vietnam

After all the running around of the previous day the day spent in the train was the other extreme... like one of those lazy Sundays where you stay in bed all day reading or playing cards... I think I spent most of the day sleeping...
before I started this trip I was most worried about the state of transportation and whether we'd get sufficient stops at decent places... I have to say my fears were totally unfounded... the buses we travelled in were awesome, the hotels we stayed at were cheap and really good... the part I liked most was the free internet that hotels offer customers as part of their package.. of couse that's subjec tto availability of a free machine.. but since we went during an off-season... we had no complaints.. but more about that later...

we reached hanoi station at 4:30 am the next day and immediately decided to go to a Sinh cafe office to figure out where to go next!

Day 4 - Travelogues - Siem Reap to Thailand...errr not!

Since we found out the previous day that we couldn't travel to Laos coz of the visa issue (they don't give visa on arrival to 13 countries of which India is one ) we had two options.. 1. was to go back to Saigon and then go to Hanoi and then travel downwards back to Saigon (seemed boring when we had another option) 2. goto poipet (cambodia-thailand border), then go onto thailand... bangkok by bus and then fly to hanoi from bangkok... the air ticket was about $95 cheaper than the $100 we'd have paid from Laos to Hanoi!

so we chose option 2 and took a crappy bus to Bangkok from a crappy agency right as soon as you enter the market area...he fleeced us.. told us we'd be in an ac bus and that we'd get visa on arrival... so we reach poipet which is on the cambodian border and visa issues dint let us enter thailand!!!!!!! frustrated onward again!!!!! apparently 40 countries only are allowed visa on arrival via land routes in thailand... everybody can get visa on arrival if you fly into thailand! fortunately we hadnt booked flight tickets from bangkok to hanoi and hadn't been exited from cambodia!

so now we haggled with one of those cars that ferry goods across cambodia and vietnam and got a guy to take the 4 of us to saigon for $22 in an ac car stuffed with footwear.

while deciding this we got something to eat and were constantly surrounded by the car-ferry guys!finally we picked one and went on our way to saigon...

the journey was filled with astrological discussions and a couple of times we were stumped when we looked out of the window to see a family of three on a scooter.. father riding with one hand, the other hand holding up an IV (intra-venous) bottle, the tube went into a baby's hand cradled in the mother's lap!!! we were so shocked and i fumbled a lil too much with my camera to be able to take a picture of the family!!!!! crazyy!

we dropped off the footwear in vietnam, came back to saigon.... went straight to the station to catch a train to hanoi.. a 31 hour train journey awaited us...

we managed to get to the station on time but unlike in cambodia where dollars are accepted even by street vendors, the vietnamese need dongs... we were out of dongs and dint even have enough to buy tickets to hanoi! finally we exchanged some currency with the ticket agent obviously at a lower rate (these deman-supply markets and their irritating logic when you're at the receiving end......arghhhhhhhh)... anyway.. it was pretty comical coz ashish had gone out to exchange money and paid a local to take him around to money exchanges but all of them were shut.. it was 10 PM i think.. so I'm waiting impatiently outside the station for ashish to show up coz we had a train to catch... and the only reason we hadn't bought tickets was coz we were worried ashish wouldnt make it!!! finally 5 minutes before boarding time ashish came back.. as soon as i saw him outside the station i ran in and screamed out to rachna (talk about theatrics) to buy tickets!

phewwwww... all of that done.. we boarded our lovely train... cute lil compartments... altho not as cute for our 6 footer friend, rachna... in fact she had to step out to collect her wits coz Vietnamese things are usually compact and she's a bit claustrophobic! She recovered and we had to haggle with a couple of locals to exchange seats coz we had been split into two compartments.. finally we settled down to some serious laughing and went off to sleep!

Day 3 - Travelogues - Saigon to Siem Reap (Cambodia)

Cambodia is known as Kampuchia.... did you know that?

So Day 3 at 5 AM our Polish friend landed up at Xinh Hotel... she's quite the traveller and pretty cool... Cambodia was calling and we had a 7 AM bus to take us there from Sinh Cafe (by far the best tour operator I came across).

The ride to Cambodia was really comfortable.. even tho it was 12 hours... the buses are really comfy... I'm one of the worst 'traveller's coz when in transit I usually doze off... so obviously I kept dozing off during this trip but obviously I'm not Kumbhakaran's daughter (Kumbhakaran being a mythical half demon, half human brother of the evil Ravana of the Ramayana fame). The scenery enroute wasa gorgeous... lush green paddy fields... good roads... very cute, quaint eateries which also sold beer...

Altho since I'm a vegetarian I survived on plain rice, some boiled vegetables, loads of chilli sauce and soy sauce... my mates survived on chicken fried rice or baguetes and ommelette!

When we rolled into Kampuchia, I was hit by how similar to Ahmedabad, Gujarat, India it looked... the architecture looked pretty Ahmedabadi... altho don't take my word for it... im no architecture expert... so i stepped out of the bus, at a stop of course... I'm not a whimsical, bus delaying freak, and went looking for cafes... found lots of them... but we reached at about 2 PM and that was their ahem TV watching time... so cafe's dint serve food... they brought out their siesta chairs, arranged them like theatre seats and watched tv - community style... when i went asking for food.. coz it was a cafe.. they gave me blank stares! it was really amusing.

anyway so we went on to Siem Reap and reached by nightfall... Wan be street i thin... the place was really really nice.. . the buses usually drop travellers to the backpackers area and this place did not disappoint. We found a decent hotel called Rhythrin Hotel on street 22 I think (i could be wrong since it's been a while) but really decent place.. $12 per night for 4 people.. so $ 3 a head..! with hot water etc.. quite a steal after the $5 we paid at Saigon...

But Cambodia was really hot...

I forgot to mention the visa regulations... they have visa on arrival... costin about $25 and the bus guys take your passport, the money and take yuo to the visa office... its pretty smooth... and then you walk on a strip of road, on the Cambodia side, which is the casino strip.. its so amusing to watch hordes of women on scooters crossing from Vietnam into Cambodia in the evnings and making the trip back the next morning... walking their scooters along the road! descending on that road from different sides, following a singular path to their 'office'!

And off we went again... after a while to catch a barge to take us across some kinda water body.

Coming back to Siem Reap, the next morning we set out to goto Angkor Wat, the largest temple complex in the world... measuring 10 Kms X 10 kms... the whole complex has loads of stone temples, monuments... the ones i visited are the main temple whcih took almost 600 years to build. Surpringly it was a temple dedicated to Lord Vishnu, the preserver of the Holy Trinity. Then while Buddhism was gaining popularity, the temple was dedicated to Buddism.. and 700 years later, it is still an awesome site, duly nominated to be one of the 7 wonders of the world.

After the temple complex we went to Bayon which when it was found (I think in the early nineteenth century by a French explorer... but I could be wrong, don't remember where I picked up these snippets from), was covered in wilderness... Bayon basically is a formation of gigantic stone sentinels which were constructed by Jayvarman VII to frighten invaders. Can you imagine stumbling upon the outskirts of a fertile kingdom only to find huge-ass human faces made out of stone, smirking down at you... covered by wilderness... imagining the scene takes me to a film depicting South East Asia... typical setting consists of somebody gettnig lost in the wilderness and coming across gigantic tribal totems which fill him with awe!

After Bayon we set off for Ta Phrom which waas by far my favouritest spot. It too was a temple constructed in the forest centuries ago and today to restore the balance, the forest is reclaiming its original land.. so you have impressive, strong stone structures, getting pulverized by gigantic trees which almost look alien-esque... with silver barks and roots which look like thuosand tentacled feet crushing the stone temples under their feet....

while I was at Ta Phrom, I realized that give me a regular natural setting and a stupendous man-made creation and I would be blown away by nature's wild beauty!

We could've stayed in teh Angkor Wat complex for a while but decided to try and explore other parts of Siem Reap. Unfortunately nothing seemed interesting enough.... but John, our rickshaw driver, really nice guy, took us to a river from where you gotta catch a boat to go onto the lake for boating et al... when we reached there we found the $20 fee too high and decided to skip it.. but the almost hour long ride taking you through authentic Cambodian scenery was fantastic... and 4 carefree students had a blast on the road!