7 beds in 11 days

No, that is not an attempt to be raunchy! I just want to show how much Dan and I have been travelling around since we returned to Australia and New Zealand. We got back to Australia on the 29th of April, spent a few nights with some friends there, then went to my parents' place, then my grandparents' place, then my sister's place, then across the ocean to Dan's mate's place in Auckland, then finally to Dan's parents' place. Which is where we are now - Cambridge New Zealand. So, as you can tell, we've been pretty busy catching up with friends and family.

It's over a month ago now that we left Soc Trang. It seems a lot longer. It's hard to believe that a month ago we were in hot, humid HCMC, trying to do some last-minute shopping, catch up with friends and trying desperately to fit all our luggage into our overstuffed bags. Now we are amongst the green, rolling hills of country New Zealand, rugged up in jeans, jumpers and ugg boots and watching the wind howling through the trees and across the paddocks. It's a world away from Vietnam!

Thinking back over our time in Soc Trang, I have to say that, although it got pretty tough at times, overall it was a pretty positive experience and I'm glad we did it. It was such a bizarre time for us, being completely immersed in a culture so different to our own and struggling to break through the language barrier. We challenged ourselves, had some successes with our work, met some amazing people and had lots of really yummy food.

But it's good to be back. We're enjoying catching up with everyone and reacquainting ourselves with some old habits. (Yesterday I went to a supermarket for the first time in ages - I got a bit over-excited by all the products I could buy there: cheese! chocolate! wine! make-up! I had to restrain myself from going on a shopping and junk food binge).

Seeing as we are settling back into our regular lives (which includes, hopefully, finding jobs as soon as possible), this will be my last post on this blog. I've enjoyed posting my long, rambly rants on here and I hope I have kept you somewhat entertained. Thanks for reading!

Homeward bound

It’s been nearly 2 weeks since we left Soc Trang and already it feels like a lifetime ago. Since we left we’ve had more farewell dinners in HCMC, visited the orang-utans, lions and crocodiles at Singapore zoo, gotten lost and frustrated in the traffic jams of Jakarta, chilled at the beach in Pangandaran and marvelled at the 1000 year-old Buddhist and Hindu temples near Yogyakarta. Now we are in Bali, in Ubud to be precise, on the final leg of our meandering journey back to Australia.

We came to Ubud via Kuta, the main tourist beach drag of Bali. The last time I was in Bali I was about 11 years old, I don’t remember too much of that holiday except for watermelon juice and apple pancakes for breakfast, street sellers with dodgy watches and silver rings, women wanting to touch my (then very blonde) hair and endless market-type shops selling cheap t-shirts, paintings and wooden carvings. Well, things have changed in the last 15-16 years. The streets of Kuta are now lined with endless surf stores (Rip Curl and Billabong must own nearly half of Kuta by now) and trendy bars offering happy hour cocktails and ear-shatteringly-loud techno music. It’s like the Gold Coast but louder, cheaper and much hotter. (There’s probably less silicone and bleach here too, though that will probably change as more and more tourists arrive.)

Which is why we abandoned Kuta quite quickly and made our way to Ubud. I’m sitting in a café now, waiting for Dan to come back from his attempts to find us some accommodation. Ubud seems a lot more relaxed than Kuta and the surrounding countryside is very beautiful. I’m looking forward to exploring this area a bit more, although, if my dodgy memory serves me correctly (there is a reason why Dan calls me the Travelling Goldfish), the last time I was in Ubud I was bitten by a sacred monkey. My plans for the next few days are to catch up on some sleep, sample some Indonesian delicacies and visit the local sites – as long as I don’t have to go anywhere near Monkey Forest that is!

The final week that was

It's our final day as volunteers! We've spent a large part of this morning cleaning our house and selling our fridge and air-con unit. Then we came into work and gave all our collegues a farewell present. Now we are finishing off our work, tying up loose ends and trying to clean up our desks.

Despite this being our final week in Soc Trang we've been very busy. So I present to you, in photos, the week that was...

We started the week with a trip to Soc Trang's only beach.

Where the sand and water were brown, brown , brown. We found a seasnake at the waters edge then I got eaten alive by sandflys.

Dan went to a farewell dinner with his tennis club that night, where they presented him with a souveneir trophy and flag.

On Monday we went to a meeting at Au Tho B Village. Then we put on a seafood and beer lunch for all the co-management sub-group leaders. I tried 3 different kinds of snail.

On Wednesday we held the teachers training workshop on mangrove forests. Dan gave a presentation on "What are Mangroves?"...

And look how interested everybody was!

The project put on a farewell dinner for us that night at Restaurant 36. Project staff and government officials from the Department of Agriculture and Rural Development, the Department of Education and Training, the Forest Protection Sub-Department and Fisheries all came along.



Dan and me with our boss and the project driver.

Drinking buddies: Dan, Philipp and Mr Vinh.

Tonight we will have our final farewell dinner then we leave Soc Trang on Sunday - once we have finished all our packing and tidying!

Thinking about returning

It’s now our last week in Soc Trang. I’ve been living here for about 15 months and Dan has been here for 18 months. We both have that surreal feeling of not quite comprehending that our time here is coming to an end. Nevertheless, leave we must. Last week I posted about the things I will and will not miss about life in Soc Trang, Vietnam. This week my thoughts have been about returning home. What to expect, what I’m looking forward to and what I’m not looking forward to.


Things I am looking forward to:

• Seeing my family and friends again. It can be tough living so far away from all our family and friends, I can’t wait to see them all again. I’m particularly looking forward to catching up on all the gossip with my friends, seeing my grandparents again and letting my mum cook me dinner (hint, hint mum! I’m joking, of course!). Obviously seeing my family and friends again is at the top of my list of things I’m looking forward to, but it very nearly was knocked off the top position by...

• Seeing my cat again. Yay! I get to see Miffy again soon! I know she will be so happy to see me too!

Yay! Another excuse to post a picture of Miffy!

• Hot showers, every single day. Heaven!

• Reuniting with all my clothes and shoes. It feels like I’ve been wearing the same old clothes, day-in, day-out for the past 15 months. Every day is a variation on which of the 5 pairs of long pants will I wear to work, which of the 3 pairs of shorts will I wear on the weekend combined with which of the 5 t-shirts I own. It’s going to be a sensory overload when I get all my old clothes out of storage and have bags and bags of clothes and shoes to choose from. I can’t wait!

• Reuniting with my hair straightener. As I’ve mentioned on this blog before, my hair is pretty much always an unmanageable mess. Straightening it is one of the few ways in which I can control it. My hair will be in for a nasty shock once I start brandishing my hair straightener again! Similarly, I have bags of other cosmetic items to re-unite with, like all my bottles of nail polish – currently being lovingly preserved in my parents’ fridge. I haven’t had painted nails for 15 months! That is mind-blowing for me, especially seeing as I used to paint my toenails a different colour every week!

• Driving my car. Apart from a couple of wobbly attempts at driving the motorbike, I haven’t driven anything bigger than my bicycle for a while now. It will be great to get behind the wheel again and drive at 100km/hr down the highway. (Shock! Horror! Such speeds are unimaginable on the roads in Vietnam! – except for the resident hoons that is.)

• Going to the beach. It seems particularly unfair that we have spent the last year or so living in a tropical environment, near the coastline, and there is not a proper beach anywhere nearby. The ‘beaches’ in the Mekong Delta are not what I’d consider beaches at all – they are mud flats and I have absolutely no desire to go swimming in any water that is cappuccino brown. I cannot wait to go back to some of Australia’s picture-perfect sandy beaches with sparkling clear blue water, sigh!

• Earning money. Volunteering is a great experience but I am looking forward to having some cash again! Once I find a job that is...

Once again, I have to list food and drink separately after the jump.

Thinking about leaving

It’s our penultimate week in Soc Trang so, naturally, our thoughts have turned towards leaving this peculiar city where we’ve been living for the past 15-18 months. While we haven’t really started any of the practicalities of leaving Soc Trang (such as packing or tidying up our house – we’ll get to that soon enough!), we have realised that some of the activities we have been doing on a regular basis we are now doing for the last time. For example, we went for a motorbike ride out to Cu Lao Dung Island yesterday, the island is part of Soc Trang Province and we’ve been there a couple of times either for a bike ride, or, in Dan’s case, for work. Yesterday was the last time we will go to the island; I don’t imagine that we’ll ever go back there.


All of these ‘last-time’ scenarios have got me thinking about what I will and will not miss about living here. Doubtless I’ll think of more things as these 2 weeks go by, but the items listed below represent the most obvious and glaring examples of things to love and hate about Soc Trang and Vietnam.

Things I will miss:

• Friends and colleagues. We’ve met some lovely people both in Soc Trang and all over Vietnam. In Soc Trang I’ll miss all our colleagues – as well as working with us they have been such a huge help in our personal lives, helping us find somewhere to live, helping us go shopping, keeping us entertained and always translating for us. I’ll also miss the friends we have made outside of work, friends that we play badminton with, go to restaurants with and go out drinking with. Outside of Soc Trang I’ll miss our fellow project workers in the ‘swamps’ and the other Australian volunteers we’ve met. Visiting these guys has always been a means of respite from life in Soc Trang and it’s always interesting to hear what they’ve been up to.

• Work. It’s not just the people from work I’ll miss; I will also miss the actual work that we do here for the project. I’ve enjoyed working for a project that has real benefits both for the poor local people and for the environment. I’ve also appreciated being able to work on such a variety of different activities, e.g. I never imagines that I would co-edit a co-management proceedings or that I would co-author manuals for teachers on climate change and mangrove forests!

• Year-round hot weather. Soc Trang has two seasons: hot-and-dry and hot-and-wet. Perfect weather conditions for someone like me who, back in Australia, complains bitterly about how chilly it is in the refrigerated aisles of the local supermarket.

• Travelling. Regular readers of this blog will know that Dan and I have used our time in Vietnam as an opportunity to explore not just this country, but also all around Southeast Asia. Being based in Vietnam means that travel is pretty cheap so we’ve been able to visit some pretty amazing places. For me the highlights have been seeing the Angkor temples in Cambodia, Luang Prabang in Laos, Melacca in Malaysia and Hoi An and Sapa in Vietnam.

• The motorbike. Dan tried to teach me how to ride the motorbike but I’m not very good at it (the roads and traffic here make me too nervous). I’m more accustomed to sitting on the back of the bike, watching the world go by as Dan drives us out into the countryside. We’ve explored some pretty amazing places around Soc Trang, including Cu Lao Dung and My Phuc Islands. And while it does get a bit sore after sitting on the back of the bike for too long, I will miss our countryside jaunts past rice fields, orchards and coconut plantations.

• The shopping. Vietnam is a shopper’s paradise. I’ve bought: tailor-made clothes; store-bought clothes (including a lovely ‘silk’ skirt from Hanoi); cheap shoes; silver and costume jewellery; silk hair accessories; ceramic bowls and plates; and a whole heap of clothes for my niece.

Last but not least is the food and drink here. This is such a big category for me that I've decided it needed to be listed separately after the jump.

Working, working

I've realised that my entries on this blog make me look like I'm always off having a holiday somewhere. Which isn't entirely true, I do work sometimes! One of the activities I've been working on is producing teachers' manuals on climate change and on mangrove forests. The climate change manual is finished now and we've held two workshops to introduce the topic to local teachers. The manual is available here on the project website. The manual on mangroves is nearly finished and we will be holding a workshop for it on the 6th April. We'll also be holding a ceremony during the workshop where we hand over 1,600 copies of the climate change manual to the Soc Trang Department of Education and Training. It will be pretty exciting, the local media have been invited!

We have also finished editing the proceedings of the National Co-management Workshop which we held here in Soc Trang last year. The proceedings is also available on the project website. Editing the proceedings was a lot of work and, while I edited all the reports, Dan did the bulk of the editing and formatting. He is very glad that it is now finished!

I've also had the opportunity to be a bit creative and design some posters and do some illustrations for the project. A couple of examples are below:

This is a drawing I did for an environmental awareness raising poster. The colours, the patterns....so very Vietnamese! (That was the idea anyway!)

This is a food web which I illustrated. I've never had to draw shellfish and fish before. Do you know how hard it is to draw a prawn? It's incredibly hard! And don't ask me what that thing on the left of the prawn is meant to be, some kind of shellfish. And the thing on the right of the prawn? Ummm, a goby fish?

Nevertheless, I'm pretty happy with how the shark turned out. It's a pretty cool-looking shark, right?

And can I just add that this is the grumpiest-looking fish I have ever seen.

Finally, this is one of the pages from the children's environmental colouring-in and activity book which I wrote and illustrated. The aim of the book is to encourage kids to reduce, re-use and recycle garbage and to raise awareness about climate change and the importance of mangrove forests. This colouring-in page is all about recycling.

On the back of the motorbike in Sapa

These are a couple of videos I took while I was sitting on the back of the motorbike as Dan rode through the countryside of Sapa:

I took this one while we were driving along one of the main roads out of Sapa. The road was interrupted by a waterfall - which everyone had to drive through. There were quite a few of these over-thr-road waterfalls, some people even stopped in the middle of them so that they could give their bike a quick wash. Quite a bizarre site!

This video is of us driving through one of the villages of the ethnic minority groups. There were quite a lot of tourists there, most of them had trekked the whole way or had caught a tour bus there. It was interesting to see the buildings and lifestyle of the hilltribe minority groups.

Possibly the funniest photo ever...

...to me anyway. I think it's so funny that it deserves it's own separate blog entry.

I love it! Those water buffalos and the dog are looking at Dan and their expressions clearly show what they are thinking: "What a clown! I'm embarrassed for that guy."

Sapa photos

Snow in Sapa! (Which you can only just see - the whitish stuff on the roof of the building.) This was the view from the balcony of our hotel room

 Dan trekking through the farmlands of Sapa

 Dan and Ben at a red bridge

 Yeah, I don't know

There were photo opportunities everywhere we went in Sapa, it was so impressive. So this post doesn't become too long I've included more photos after the jump.

Halong Bay photos

 Looking out over Halong Bay.

 Inside the Surprise Cave. The cave is huge, it has about 3 chambers, each bigger than the last.

 Dan and Ben were more surprised by the penguin bins inside the cave. There was a surprised-looking penguin bin approximately every 10metres. Though this penguin looks more worried by the weird Westerners standing next to it than surprised.

 Ladies selling food and drinks on a boat. These women rowed up to every tourist spot and up to every tourist boat and were easily identified by their catchphrase "You buy sumsing?". Dan and Ben were impressed that they could buy beers by leaning out of the cabin window on our overnight stay on the boat.

Rabies Monkey Island. There really was not much there to see!

A cold and wet holiday

Last week Dan and I had our very last holiday in Vietnam. We went up north to Hanoi, where we met Dan’s friend Ben, then went down to Halong Bay then up to Sapa. Both places are quite spectacular, though, unfortunately for us, the weather decided to turn nasty.

We spent a night aboard a boat in Halong Bay (despite the fact that a tourist boat sunk there a few weeks ago, drowning 12 people). The mist and rain had rolled in so it was quite eerie to see ghostly limestone cliffs emerging from the fog as we slowly went by. We also visited the Surprise Cave, a massive cavernous gulf in one of the cliffs which was absolutely jam-packed with tourists. Still pretty impressive though.

After successfully not sinking overnight, we went to Monkey Island; renamed by Ben “Rabies Island” (the Lonely Planet warns that the monkeys on the island do bite). Luckily or unluckily (depending on how you look at it) we didn’t see any monkeys. We didn’t see much of anything really, spending a night on a bungalow on a beach on a secluded limestone island is a bit boring when it’s raining and cold and the only thing to do is listen to the soothing sounds of a circular saw being used in the construction of more bungalows. Still, I’d rather be bored than catch rabies!

So the weather was a bit of a let-down but we were lucky to get out into Halong Bay at all, the day after we left all the tourist boats were denied permission to leave the harbour because visibility was so poor.

Anyway, onward and upward to the northern highlands of Vietnam and on to Sapa. After a fairly gruelling night on the train we arrived in Sapa where it was snowing. Snowing! In Vietnam! In springtime! Crazy! I am eternally grateful for the rain jacket I had just bought in Hanoi, without it I would have absolutely frozen. The first few days in Sapa were spent waiting out the snow and rain by sitting in one of the (somewhat) warm cafes or restaurants which sold mulled wine. And getting food poisoning, again. That was fun.

On our final day in Sapa the weather cleared and we had enough time to go for a trek through the valleys and take a motorbike out through the countryside. The scenery around Sapa is so beautiful, the mountains, valleys and raging rivers are all so impressive. Then there are the local people themselves, many of whom belong to an ethnic minority group and still wear traditional clothes and practice traditional farming techniques. The whole area really is amazing to see.

After another gruelling overnight train ride we arrived back in Hanoi (at about 4am) for our last holiday night. We decided to treat ourselves by going to the wonderful Koto restaurant for dinner, the restaurant is run by an Australian man who decided to help the disadvantaged and street youth in Vietnam by training them in hospitality. The food and the service at Koto were fantastic; Dan had the duck while I had chicken skewers with Saigon peanut sauce – yum! My absolute favourite though was the cheesecake, so good! Anyway, if you ever find yourself in Hanoi or in HCMC then I recommend having a meal at Koto. We know a couple of Australian volunteers who are working with Koto to get the restaurant and training centre in HCMC started and the work they do to help the young people is absolutely amazing.

Now we are back in Soc Trang and back at work again. Our time in Vietnam is quickly coming to an end. We only have about another 2 weeks in Vietnam then we start to make our way back to Australia. It’s strange to think that we are leaving so soon! Our last weeks in Vietnam will be really busy as we try and finish off our work, which includes holding another teachers’ training workshop on mangrove forests plus holding a handover ceremony where we give the Department of Education and Training 1600 copied of the teachers’ manual on climate change that Dan and I wrote. Plus there will be farewell parties; Dan is planning on having 4 parties! One for work, one for friends, one for his tennis buddies (which I won’t go to) and one for the co-management members out in Au Tho B Village. And on top of that we have to pack up all our belongings and try and sell off our furniture. I have a feeling the next couple of weeks will be so jam-packed that they will just fly-by. Then Dan and I will likely find ourselves at the international airport in HCMC going “What just happened?! Are we leaving already?!”

If you go into the woods today...

...you're in for a big surprise. If you go into the mangrove forest in Soc Trang today you'll certainly be surprised when you're confronted by this:

This...thing...is in the mangrove forest in Soc Trang where our project is conducting mangrove monitoring. I don't know what it is but those broken dolls with their mud-splattered white, white skin and white, white lifeless eyes are completely creepy. I'm a bit scared that there might be a Blair Witch here in Soc Trang!

Vang Vieng and Vientiane

Vang Vieng is the weirdest place on Earth. Truly bizarre. We arrived at Vang Vieng in the early afternoon and were pretty underwhelmed - it just looked like a dry, dusty small town with no redeeming features. Dan set off to find us somewhere to stay while I waited with our bags in a cafe. There was no electricity at the time so all I could order was a soda water. The underwhelming experience continued. Dan came back for me and took me to where he had found a room - it was actually a small, basic wooden bungalow on the riverbank, surrounded by vegetable gardens and fields with a stunning backdrop of limestone karsts. So that was pretty impressive.

 The view from our bungalow

Later that night we strolled into town to find something to eat. We were surprised to find the streets lined with restaurants, all with televisions showing episodes of Friends or Family Guy, and all the restaurants were full of drunk (or possibly stoned) backpackers all staring blanky at the tvs. What was even stranger though was, as the night went on, the streets filled up with drunken backpackers who were all only wearing bikinis or boardies. We didn't know what was happening. It all became clear on our 2nd day in Vang Vieng when we went out to explore some caves then went tubing down the river.

The tubing was surreal. The idea is to float down the river towards Vang Vieng on an inner tyre tube. It's about a 3km trip and we were told that it should take about 3 hours. We expected some small rapids and some stunning scenery, what we didn't expect was the bar after bar after bar that lined the riverbanks, all full of backpackers chugging Beer Laos. Some of the bars had slides and swings going into the river, after a few beers Dan went down a really massive slide, he took it too fast and ended up hitting the water sideways, hurting his ankle and bruising his side. We stopped at about 4 bars and we ended up taking about 4 hours to get back to Vang Vieng. We realised that all the backpackers who we'd seen in the streets at night time in their swimwear must have stopped at nearly every bar and had ended spending hours and hours on the river. 

So that was Vang Vieng, an alcohol soaked backpackers Disneyland. Next stop, Vientiane, the capital of Laos.

Rather than catching a bus directly to Vientiane we decided to kayak part of the way. Which ended up not saving us any time at all and we had to spend more time in the back of a tuk-tuk. But the kayaking was pretty fun. We went down a few rapids and, due to my extensive experience and superior kayaking skills, we managed to stay upright. (Ok, that wasn't completely true, we didn't capsize but I think it was more because Dan knew what he was doing. I sat up the front of the kayak with my oar up in the air until Dan yelled at me to paddle.) Our kayaking trip included a bbq lunch which our guides cooked for us on the rocks of the riverbed. We also had the opportunity to jump off a cliff face into the river - a drop of about 12-13m. Needless to say I passed, but Dan did the jump.



 Dan jumping into the river

Finally, after another tuk-tuk ride, we arrived in Vientiane. We only had 1 day in Vientiane so we had a quick look around the sights, including Pha That Luang: Laos' most important national and religious monument; and Patuxai: Laos' version of the Arc de Triomphe which was built in the 1960s out of concrete dontated by the US in order to build a new airport.

 Blending in with the demons at one of the temples surrounding Pha That Luang

 Dan in the foreground, Pha That Luang in the background

Patuxai, also known as the vertical runway. Patuxai remains unfinished and a sign on the interior states that, on close inspection, it resembles a concrete monster

Then it was back to Vietnam, back to Soc Trang and back to work. Not for long, however. It's taken me about 3 weeks to write about our holiday, which means in another week we will be off to Hanoi, Halong Bay and Sapa. Then we only have another 3 weeks of work until our volunteer contract expires and we head back to Australia, via Malaysia and Indonesia. In addition to holidaying, our next few weeks will involve finishing up all the work we can, trying to sell our furniture, posting all our excess possessions back home and trying to pack the rest. Busy times! I need a holiday just from thinking about it!

Nong Khieu rapids and racing

Going up the rapids in Nong Khieu River. The water was really shallow, this was our second attempt to try and get past the rapids. Our first attempt ended up with us stuck on some rocks at the rivers edge.

Racing the other slow boats (which could actually go pretty fast). The woman yelling in the background is the wife of our boat driver, urging him to go faster!

Nong Khieu

We'd heard that taking a slow boat up the Nam Khan River from Luang Prabang to a small town called Nong Khieu was a great way to admire the scenery. So that's what we did.

 The scenery along the way was certainly spectacular.

 Locals panning for gold (I think) along the riverbed.

 A stranded cargo boat. It was the dry season when we took the boat to Nong Khieu so the water level was really low. Even in our small, shallow boats we got stranded on the rocks a couple of times.

The town of Nong Khieu.

Luang Prabang

Our next destination was the former capital of Laos and UNESCO World Heritage site, Luang Prabang. Luang Prabang is a beautiful old town on banks of the Mekong and Nam Khan Rivers, it pretty much has everything you could ask for as a holiday destination: spectacular scenery, history and culture, serious shopping and delectable dining. I've heard a few Europeans say that Luang Prabang seems like a typical French town mysteriously transported into the middle of mountainous northern Laos. Having never been to France I cannot verify this, but I'd say that the plethora of Buddhist monks wandering around the streets, the temple on every street and the abundance of tuk-tuk drivers all trying to tout their services were distinctly South East Asian!

 There were a lot of old, classic cars in Luang Prabang. I love this VW Bug, it looks to be about the same vintage as my mum's Bug (the car I learnt to drive in). I would have loved to have taken this one for a spin through the streets of Luang Prabang!

Vat Xieng Toung, the oldest temple in Luang Prabang. The exterior walls are decorated with very intricate mosaics, it is incredible how much detail has gone into them.

 Buddha statues at Vat Xieng Toung.

 The main street of Luang Prabang.

 Crossing the bamboo bridge over Nam Khan River.

 Some young monks in the grounds of another temple. Most Lao men spend at least a year in a monastery. Some of the monks we saw wandering around looked so young!

 Danny made a demon-friend at the temple!

 The famous Luang Prabang night markets.

We did a day tour which included riding elephants and going out to a waterfall. More about it (plus more pics!) after the jump.

Lions and tigers and bears...

We left China and entered Laos through the border crossing at Boten. The border crossing itself was indicative of how things were going to be in Laos. On the China side it was all very organised, with a big new(ish) border control building, security guards and customs officers with the latest computer equipment. The Laos side was a lot more...relaxed. There were a couple of guys in uniform in a small shed who were in charge of issuing visas and checking passports; no computers, all paperwork. The main features of the Laos side of the border crossing were the volleyball court and the charcoal remains of bonfires. Obviously the Laos border guards know how to live it up when there are no pesky tourists around!


From the border we proceeded on to a small town called Luang Nam Tha. The town reminded me a bit of a small, country town in NSW, with its wide main road, dusty streets, old wooden buildings and rolling hills in the distance. However, the tuk-tuks and abundance of backpackers were a constant reminder of where we really were.

Luang Nam Tha is right near the National Biodiversity Conservation Area, the town is famous for its eco-friendly treks into the jungle and to surrounding hill-tribe villages. The treks are pretty pricey though, Dan and I ended up paying approximately $30 each for a one-day trek through the jungle and to a Hmong village. Apparently a lot of the money goes to the villages and to conservation efforts, although it also seems that every layer of government (local to national) has imposed some kind of taxes or fees.

The trek itself was a bit disappointing. We basically climbed up a really steep hill in the jungle. Upon reaching the summit we found that the vegetation was too dense to actually see anything other than the trees immediately surrounding us. Then going back down the other side of the hill. The visit to the Hmong village consisted of us walking past a village on the main road, back to where a tuk-tuk was waiting to take us back into town. So trekking in Luang Nam Tha is not something I would recommend.

That being said, it was good to hear our guide’s stories about tigers and bears living in the jungle. He pointed out some bear claw marks on a tree and found evidence of a bear having passed along our track sometime earlier that morning. We also heard stories about tigers entering some of the more remote villages and being seen walking along the mountain crest where we passed by. Sadly no lions though, oh my!

 Dan in the jungle in Lao. Did I mention that Dan fell over while he was trekking through the jungle? And that I didn't fall over while I was trekking through the jungle? Mwahaha!

The track which led us out of the jungle and into agricultural land. The track was really, really, really steep. We ended up sliding most of our way down it. It really did seem like the jungle had finished with us and was spitting us out.

Black Dragon Pool and Baisha Village

Dan and I rode bicycles a few kilometres out of Lijiang to Black Dragon Pool. Apart from the pond, the surrounding parks contain a few old temples, pavilions and bridges as well as an (unfortunately closed) museum of Dongba culture (the culture of the ethnic minority group the Naxi people).

 Looking over the Black Dragon Pool towards the Jade Dragon Snow Mountain. These mountains lead into the Himalayas and into Tibet.

 Dan at the Shuocui Bridge.

I don't know what this thing is, but I do know the animal in the centre is a frog and the Naxi people had some kind of frog-god figure. My guess is that is some kind of calendar?

After Black Dragon Pool, we rode our bicycles out to Baisha Village. Or tried to. We got horribly lost and ended up pointlessly riding our bikes along a Chinese highway. We then turned off onto a random dirt road which, eventually (and unexpectedly) led us to a resort. The resort workers (who were all out front having a smoke) were able to give us directions to the village. Baisha Village is one of the oldest villages in Lijaing and was an early settlement of the Naxi people.

 The village is close to the foot of the moutains, which makes for a very impressive back-drop for the store-houses! 

 Dan outside a traditional house.

 Local transport.

 Yay! We found it and now we are heading back to the heated hotel!