Our Travel Blog

Before we get on with today’s adventures, let’s fast rewind to yesterday. All started out fine, we boarded the high speed train, we were collected from the station and taken to the airport. At check in we had a problem. Lyn’s middle name was missing it’s last letter. This is something I should have picked up, but I have also found previously that a number of airlines truncate the middle name, so this shouldn’t be an issue. It was! After a few minutes playing on the computer and consulting superiors, we were told it was ok to fly “this time”, but don’t let it happen again! Went through the emigration process and grabbed a snack, we then heard the dreaded “Would Mrs Winch please report to check in”, we thought that the missing letter had caught up with us. There was no one at the gate, so we figured we’d just wait. Ten minutes later we heard the message again. To get to check in we would somehow have to go backwards through emigration and security to get there. I figured a trip to the Air Vietnam lounge would help, we were told to go back to emigration and tell the officer we had been called back to check-in. Miraculously this worked, he just grabbed our passports and told us to see him when we came back. Simple! (assuming we came back, and hadn’t been kicked off the flight) We got to the check in desk expecting the worst, only to find Lyn’s suitcase there! Turns out she had put her dead cell phone in the case a few days ago, which is verboten, and the scanner caught it. Put said cell phone in carry on, back through security, picked up the passports with no problems and sat down only to find the flight had been delayed 40 minutes. We were late getting into the hotel at around 2300 and after a 0500 start that morning we asked our guide if we could start a little later, so it was an 0830 start for the next day.

Now to today.

About 7AM we heard speech coming over a loudspeaker system outside. It was the daily communist propaganda “encouragement” for the citizens.

We met our guide at 0830 for a mornings walk around the old French quarter of Hanoi. Vietnam had been a French colony for may decades, and the underlying architecture reflected this, although many of the buildings have been increased in height width and depth since then.

The traffic here is amazing/disturbing/unbelievable/crazy/ fill your own words. Scooter is King with a scooter to car ratio of 100:1! Rules of the road and common sense do not seem to apply to scooters, they do not believe in one way streets; centre lines on roads appear to be advisory and crossing the road seems to be impossible. However there is a simple rule for pedestrians to cross, walk in a straight line at a slow constant pace. Vehicles WILL stop or go around you. We proved it on many occasions! The situation was made even worse as the city is celebrating the 70th anniversary of release from French rule this week end.

As usual I’ll dump a whole load of pictures below, some won’t have captions as I am beginning to lose track of what is what! I’ll need to piece it all together when we get home.

As you can see in the above shots, side walks (pavements) once the safe zone for pedestrians, are now parking places for scooters!

There was a large lake in the city, with two islands. One of the islands was connected by a bridge and had a temple on it. There are far less temples here than in previous stops, the majority of people here (85%) practice traditional folk/spiritualism.

Above are the two guardians of the temple gate

Walking around the lake we were stopped by a young lady who asked if we could spare 5 minutes of our time to help her. She was a school teacher who was with a group of grade 1 kids who loved “foreigners” and would like to meet us. They practised their English and took some group photos!

After we finished our walk we headed off to a small cafe that is famous for it’s egg coffee. This didn’t really appeal so we settled for coconut coffee, one hot one iced. After a little more walking (we’re glad we got up to a couple of miles a day back home before we left) we met the car and drove to B52 lake. This is a small part of a lake that has been preserved in the city where a B52 crashed in the Vietnam war.

We then drove a little further and discovered another Temple!! These were nowhere near as ornate as previous ones.

To balance things out, below is the Catholic Cathedral modelled on the Notre Dame in Paris

Now it was lunch time, so we headed off to a back street restaurant whose claim to fame was that President Obama ate there. We had a traditional meal of rice noodles,BBQ pork and spring rolls.

Following that it was off to the city prison where revolutionaries from the turn of the 20th century were sent during the uprising with the French. The same prison was later nicknamed the Hanoi Hilton, where American airman were detained during the Vietnam war. Madame Guillotine made her presence known in the original prison.

We did a little more driving around the city, they too have a market built on the rail tracks, but nowhere as near impressive as the one in Thailand.

We rounded off the afternoon with a local craft beer and snacks

We could have sat all day on the street corner watching the sights and the traffic.

That’s our day in the busy city, tomorrow we are off to Hoi An which should be a lot quieter.

Of course a busy day had to be followed by an early start. 😊 Up at 5AM, finally I realise there really are two 5 o’clocks per day.

Today we were off to see / participate in a daily routine, the giving of Alms to the monks. The monks walk from the temple along the streets of the town with large bowls, collecting offerings of food. Primarily this was sticky rice and rice cakes. The food is then taken back to the temple and a meal is provided for all the monks. Going off topic slightly, our guide was a monk for 10 years so gave us some insight to their life. In the Buddhist faith all males are expected to attend the temple as a novice monk for a period of instruction. This can range from a few weeks to many years. Our guide completed most of his education this way. Unlike western monks they don’t “sign up” for life, but they may continue as a monk for as long as they wish.

Above are the monks collecting the Alms. Those who have one bare shoulder are novice monks.

Once you have given your offerings, a small amount should be left over to give to the spirits of the animals. Three (or 1,5,7,9) small rice balls are placed on the Temple walls for them.

Once the ceremony had finished we headed off to the morning market. Even though it was just 6AM the place was pretty busy, both with tourists and locals doing there daily shopping. Some of the things on sale were pretty bizarre (to me any way)! Dead squirrels and rats for stews, frogs alive and dead, catfish alive and dead, large black hard shelled beetles etc. etc. There were a variety of fruits, previously unknown to us and every where people were selling buffalo skin in various guises to be used for food.

Below are a few shots of the market.

Once back at the hotel we had breakfast, then it was off to pack. We will be taken to the train station to catch a high speed train to the capital of Laos, Vientiane, about two hours away. The it’s onto a plane heading to Hanoi in Vietnam.

We headed down for breakfast around 0745 for an 0830 pick up. Today was a mixed bag of visits with our first stop being the Royal Palace Museum.

It was built in 1904 during the French colonial era for the King and his family. The palace is close to the river making it easy for guests to travel there. The river was the main form of transportation in those days. In 1975 the Monarchy was overthrown by the Communists and the Royal Family was sent to “re-education camps”. Many did not return and have not been heard of since. The palace has since been converted into a national museum.

We weren’t allowed to take pictures in the museum, so all you can see are some outside shots.

From here we headed off to see few other temples, unfortunately technology let me down as I was relying on the GPS link from the phone to the camera to tag the photos so I could track them back later. It didn’t work, so here are some mixed temple views!

Above is the name of one the temples. In Laos a temple is VAT, in Thailand it is WAT. The language and alphabet in the two countries is similar enough to allow them to communicate.

Above is a close up of the bottom right corner of the Tree of Life. The whole scene is depicted in a mosaic of small pieces of glass. The two pictures below also incorporate glass work.

By this time we were “templed out” so we headed off for a drive through the country to a fabric workshop. As we left the city, the roads became progressively worse, making Ottawa’s pot holed roads look quite good. The journey reminded me of road trips in many of the Caribbean Islands. Where ever you went there were roadside vendors or open store front shops. Again, like in many of the islands, although the housing looked poor, all the people we saw were clean, well dressed and happy looking. They have mastered the art of making a moped or scooter into family transport, we often saw them with 2 adults and 2 children on them, crash helmets…. what crash helmets!!

We arrived at the workshop shaken not stirred! The speciality here was silk. We could watch the silk being spun from the cocoons, and then been woven on the loom. The intricacies of the patterns was amazing.

Below are some of the patterns being woven

After watching the weaving we went into the shop, where Lyn managed to find a small silk wall hanging to take home with us. Next we had a Lao lunch, the went onto see some waterfalls.

In the park they have some rescue bears that they look after.

Finally we found the water falls, we had brought swimwear with us, so decided to go swimming, it was cool and refreshing!

Tomorrow it is a 5 am start for us! In the afternoon catch a train then a plane and hopefully finish up in Vietnam.

We almost made it #1 at breakfast again, but had to settle for #2 this morning. It was then a quick 10 minute trip into the airport. It was during this trip that we discovered our guide made jewellery and had her own store, that kept her Lyn chatting for the short journey.

It was little confusing at the airport as, although our first flight was domestic, back to Bangkok we were treated as International passengers as we were flying onto Laos. 95% of the flight checked in at the Domestic terminal, the rest of us at the International. Once the flight was called, we walked to the aircraft and met up with the passengers from domestic. All I can think of was that we cleared immigration at Chiang Mai rather than in Bangkok.

At Bangkok we felt a need for some “normal” coffee, so we grabbed some from McDonald’s! Flying in to Luang Prabang in Laos we thought the airport to be some way from the city centre as there were no large buildings visible. We were wrong we landed close to the centre of the second largest city in Laos, population 50,000. Laos is a small landlocked country with a population of around 7 million people.

Once through the various immigration formalities which were quite rigorous i.e. fill out arrival and departure card, get visa in the passport and pass though immigration, we emerged into the airport landside. It only took about 10 minutes as we had a guide to fast track us. He told us it can take upwards of 2 hours to complete immigration normally. Luang Prabang was a throw back to the 1950’s. No high rises or apparent modern buildings. The room was totally different to any we have been in so far, and to me is of the French Colonial style. There is even a 1947 Citroen out side. Laos was a French colony until 1945 when it then endured 2 years of Japanese rule and then the French took over again after 2 years until the 1980’s.

The area was perfectly safe to go walking after dark, so we headed off to a local restaurant for some local food. We also needed to get some local cash as you cannot obtain it outside the country. The exchange rate is ridiculous….. we changed $50 and came away with 800,000 kit!

Tomorrow we head off exploring the local area.

Ok, I know you’re all suffering withdrawal symptoms after missing yesterdays blog!! There were a couple of reasons, it was a long day with not too much time to write and I was suffering from a cough/cold which seemed to have peaked around two in the morning. Although not feeling 100% yesterday, it did not spoil the days activities……. the elephants!

We drove about 90 minutes to an elephant sanctuary to spend a day playing with, feeding and washing the elephants. The sanctuary is privately owned by one of the people who used elephants as a “power house” particularly in the logging business. Logging was banned in Thailand in 1989, leaving many elephant owners to abandon their elephants back to the wild. Unfortunately these elephants had been domesticated, or born outside the jungle, and were not able to survive on their own. Many of the more caring owners set up sanctuaries to rescue these animals. This particular one, the Kanta Elephant Sanctuary has 14 elephants on a 20 acre site. Not only is the sanctuary there to help their own animals, any elephant in need of medical assistance can be brought there. Money is raised partially by tourist trips, and the sanctuary is also used by vet students who want to specialise in elephants.

The first thing we did was get dressed for the event as it was very likely we would get both muddy and wet…. We did!

Lyn dressed to go Elephant hunting

Below are a series of random photos, initially we were separated from the elephants by a sturdy bar fence to allow us humans to rid ourselves of any fear! After that we were free to roam with them, pet them, feed them and play with them. It was suggested that we stay clear of the rear end for a number of reasons. Elephants have poor eye sight, and any sudden movement at their rear could cause them to panic or swing their tail, which would result in injury to us. Also they eat 300Kg (660lbs) of food per day, this food has to go somewhere!!!

The females have very small tusks, this tusk has not been cut, just worn down by every day activity. The males have longer tusks, but are not so keen to come and play with us humans. We fed the elephants sugar cane which they would (usually) take gently from your hand with their trunks. The dexterity of the trunks are amazing, they could pick up and organise six or more pieces of sugar cane to place in their mouths.

After a mammoth feeding session, we went back to the rest area where we were given a lesson in elephant cooking (their food that is!)

We made sticky rice balls with protein, salt, tamarind and banana added, their favourite (and most nutritional meal). We then had a traditional Thai lunch prepared for us, then it was back to the elephants.

This time, instead of the elephant getting the food in her trunk, we held the rice ball above our head and said Bon Bon. The elephant would then raise her head and open her mouth. Time to risk hand and arm and place the ball in her mouth. They were (usually) very gentle, they have no front teeth which was reassuring, and even if you don’t want to hear it, their tongues were silky smooth.

We now took the elephants down to the river to drink some water, have a bathe and a bit of play time. Elephants drink over 100 litres (26US gallons) a day.

Late afternoon we headed back to the hotel where I crashed for a bit, then we braved going out to the local market to get a meal. A couple of Pad Thai’s and a couple of beers for $20.

Tomorrow is purely a travel day, I’ll write today’s entry then.

Today we headed off to Chiang Mai in the Northern part of Thailand. This meant another early start to our day. The restaurant opened for breakfast at 0630, we were there at 0628, and were the first customers! That was a first for us, that I hope won’t be repeated.

We checked out and our guide and driver took us to the airport, a trip that took 90 minutes when we arrived was completed in 35 minutes this morning. Today we wouldn’t have the luxury of a lounge to wait in as we were travelling in economy. The sacrifices we have to make sometimes :-).

Despite turning right as we boarded the aircraft AND walking almost to the back of the plane to find our seats, we managed to survive the one hour trip.

We were met on our arrival by our guide, this time here name was Bammie, the last guide was Boomie! We were not able to check into the hotel until 3PM, mainly due to the fact the hotel was busy in absorbing guests that had been evacuated from other properties.

We drove to a temple located 3300ft above the city, with a 300 step climb from the street to the temple itself.

Looking down the 300 Stairs

Fortunately there was also a funicular railway that could take us there if we wanted. We wanted!

Once at the top we were greeted by many buildings, which is typical of the temples we had visited previously in Thailand. I was expecting a temple to be just that, a single building.

Below are photos from around the temple grounds.

In Thailand religions peacefully co-exist, below is a shrine with a Hindu Goddess, and below that a shrine with a Chinese Buddha.

We discovered a large moth on the wall, believed to be a Japanese Lunar Moth

The building below has just been renovated and is covered in 24 carat gold leaf.

The top of the building switches to 15Kgs of pure gold for it’s construction, the very top portion is made from crystal glass.

The city of Chiang Mai

From there we headed back to the hotel, it appears that we made a good choice. We are also finding prices here for food and drink is way less than in Bangkok. Tomorrow we are off to the elephant sanctuary for the day!

The good news was that we received our Cambodia visas. The day before we left I got an eMail saying that the Cambodian govt. had revised their Visa requirements with immediate effect! This involved answering numerous questions on line, providing (thankfully, electronically) a passport photo and a copy of the passport. We had the hotel print them out last night as they were required to be in paper form.

The bad news that I got in an eMail was that there had been severe flooding up north where we are heading tomorrow and the elephant sanctuary may be closed, however our tour director assured us, that if that was the case, they would rearrange our last few days in Phuket (pronounce it as you see fit!) to ensure we got to visit one. Next, while on our way this morning we were advised that the new hotel was open, but was surrounded by water. The hotel was “ferrying” guests to dry pick up points for their tours in “large trucks”, were we OK with that? On the way home we learnt that the hotel gave up on that idea and was now closed! We had to choose a new one! On the good news side, so far the elephant sanctuary appears to be unaffected.

Today’s trip was an even earlier start, 0700. We headed out of town for our next adventure. On the way we also encountered some flooding!!

Our destination was the Train Market. Many of you may have seen this on you tube. There is a market with stalls along both sides of the railway track, so close that their awnings cover the track! When the train comes, the awnings have to be pulled in and people moved back behind the safety line. The safety line gives about 15cms (6 inches) clearance from the train! Immediately after the train passes, every thing is opened up, and life returns to normal

Our guide was very good, and she got us a ring/track side seat in a restaurant, complete with Mango and Coconut smoothies!

Health and Safety anyone.

Having survived the train, we left the market and headed for Thailand’s equivalent of a Maple Sugar Shack, a Coconut Sugar Shack. This particular one still used the old method of production. The sap is gathered from the tree by cutting into the green branches and letting it drip out.

It is then reduced in a series of heatings over a wood fire, the wood being old coconut husks.

Some of the product is drawn off as coconut syrup.

Some of the syrup is is further processed to make Coconut sugar

In addition to the syrup and sugar, there are many other products such as coconut toffee and coconut chips.

Next it was back into the van and to the floating market. The area was full of small canals, and in one area there was …….. a market, some of the stalls being boats! We took a boat tour around, the boat was similar to yesterdays long tail, but was human powered!

There were some powered boats around, this guy was obviously proud of his engine

Once off the boat, there was also a “normal” market to navigate! Lyn managed to find some things to buy as souvenirs. We also had lunch there.

After lunch it was time to head back to the hotel. The weather is still hot and humid so we headed to the pool, unfortunately any hopes of cooling down in the pool were dashed as soon as we got in as the pool was quite warm.

Tomorrow we’re up early and flying about 1.5 hours north, hopefully the flooding situation up there has improved.

An early start to the day (for us!), 8AM!

It appears that Thai meteorologists are no better than our own, yesterdays forecast was for 0% chance of rain. When we woke up it was pi$$ing down. Our first stop was the Wat Arun (the Temple of Dawn) if you want more info https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wat_Arun. Buddhism is the predominant religion in Thailand, and there are temples everywhere, they add a splash of colour to the city.

Way back when, well the 1700’s or so, Thailand bought a lot of china and ceramics from China, unfortunately the packaging of these goods left a lot to be desired, and much of the shipment was broken. Not wishing to waste the goods that had already been paid for, the remnants were used in the building of the Temple of Dawn as the pictures below show.

Above is the complete tower, decorated the same way all the way to the top

What’s the password??

Thankfully the rain had stopped by this point as the next part of the trip involved a ride on a “Long Tail” on the canal.

View from the Long Tail

The long tail name comes from the long drive shaft that connect the engine to the propellor. The engines on these boats are large, I’m guessing 6 litres or so AND turbo charged

One of many monitor lizards that we saw

Canal work in progress with the equipment on a floating barge. The barge had no engine, it was propelled using the digger bucket to pull it along.

Some of the houses along the canal. They ranged from shacks to mansions.

And of course Temples

A long tail coming out of the lock

Our boat driver stopped an bought some old bread to feed the fish. It was a feeding frenzy when we threw it in. I am told they were cat fish.

Where does one sit?? Luckily there were “western” toilets available as well!

Next it was back to the van, for some reason we had 10 seat passenger van to ourselves. We headed off to the Grand Palace. Again, I’ll give a reference https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Palace, it saves me typing! Below are some of the pictures. The place was beyond description, even the photo’s won’t do it justice.

What’s the password (again). This poor guy had to stand their for 3 hours in the heat and humidity!

The door above is inlaid with mother of pearl, the lower picture is a close up of the detail

The palace above is loosely modelled on Buckingham Palace as it was designed by the same architect. A different one designed the roof!!

This lamp outside the palace may be familiar to Londoners

That’s why!

The elephant mounting station! The King would get dressed in the building and come out on top of the white platform. The elephant would be secured on the lower platform, the King would hop on, and off they went

Wasps in a flower!

Our last stop of the day was at the temple of the reclining Buddha.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wat_Pho

I’ll let you read about that as this has taken a long while to write. There was a problem with WordPress not accepting the pictures earlier which took a while to sort out.

It seems as though our electronics do not like to travel! Lyn’s cell phone got stuck on the boot up page, and after a little fiddling, it now refuses to turn on. Next I tried to adjust my watch to the local time zone, but it refused to obey. Being one of these electronic gizmos there is no manual way to adjust the hands. The electronics move the hands backwards or forwards to match the time in the local time zone. The hands would move forwards OK, but wouldn’t go back more than 15 minutes. The result, it’s 1345 now, but the watch says 1458!! I knew I should have bought that new watch I’ve been looking at before we left.

We arrived in Bangkok at 0600 local time. We got off the aircraft and were met by a guide to take us through immigration. We were able to use the fast track, but the term fast was only relative to the other track. Entering Thailand was reminiscent of flying into the US. Fingerprints left hand, finger prints right hand, thumb print left hand, thumb print right hand and finally photograph. The good news was, that having taken a while to get through immigration we arrived at the baggage belt just as the bags started coming off. We did well; Lyn’s bag was second off and mine was fifth. Once through customs our airport guide handed us over to our tour guide for the next few days. We headed out of the airport to our transport, it was hot and humid, even that early in the morning. It took about an hour to get to the hotel due to rush hour traffic, however at least they drive on the correct side of the road here, which is surprising as Thailand was never a British colony. Once there we got settled in and went for breakfast. The hotel is billed as a resort, and in fact it is very similar to any of the resorts you would stay at in the Caribbean.

After breakfast it was time for a quick nap and shower to ward off any jet lag. Thailand is 11 hours ahead of Ottawa. We then headed off to check out the local shopping mall attached to the hotel. The mall was interesting in that it had a few high(ish) end stores as well as Burger King, Boots (a UK pharmacy), Starbucks and a 7-11!

After this mornings downpour, the humidity has dropped, even if the temperature hasn’t. In an hour or so we are heading out with our guide for a tour of China Town for some food and drink.

Just as we entered Chia Town we were met by a transformer like figure. A lot of the work in China Town involves working on truck engines. What parts can’t be used are made into sculptures

We headed out to the older part of Chinatown first with some of the buildings dating back over 200 years

Below is the original Chinese Temple

Above is a shrine to Grand-parents!

Today was the first day of the “Vegetarian Festival” in China Town, the aim of this is two fold, for 10 days eat vegetarian meals and cleanse the body of all the bad stuff from eating meat. Secondly is to showcase how close to the real thing vegetarian meals can taste!

We stopped off at a local bar to sample the Thai beer, this was located on a roof top so I could get a few pictures of the Bangkok skyline.

The building above was designed with the bits “missing”

After the beer it was back down to the streets which were lined with people selling their wares and the place was mobbed. No photos unfortunately as it was very crowded and pouring with rain!

Next we stopped at a restaurant for a mixed Chinese Thai meal which was very tasty. By the time we finished the rain was still coming down, so we decided to head back to the hotel.

Above, the entrance to China Town at night.

Tomorrow we’re off to see more sights of the city.