The Bro Trip

Time for the second part in our Mugs in Motion series. There aren't as funny as the chinese mugs, but we have some funny ones. We also included some other pictures of funny signs or object. If you need a descripton of what a mug is or want to see our Mugs in Motion - China, just scroll down until you find it our look in our China Archives. Enjoy!


Overloaded mug #1


Overloaded mug #2


Boat mug.


Sleeping moto-mug


Tonnage of bombs dropped... in tons.  Oh really?


Banned? :P


Haha!


Waste basket - Happiness to Everybody :)


Flyer we got in Hoi An. What the **** is "Suck contest the blood"?!

/C & M

Better late than never. Thought we might give you our summary of Vietnam now.  Starting from the north, Hanoi isn't really interesting or fun at all. It may be if you're really interested and into culture, but if you're not, skip Hanoi. None of very few bars had open after midnight, few people speaks English and it's rather expensive (to be in south-east asia). Also, about the locals, not only don't they speak English, they're not very nice either. You're more likely to get ripped off or scammed here rather than in southern Vietnam. Everyone on the street will try. We made it a rule not to listen to what anyone on the street had to say or sell us. The traffic here is really crazy too. Actually that goes for whole Vietnam. There are millions of motorbikes/scooters/mopeds here. That is the main transportation vehicle in Vietnam. Cars are freakishly expensive. The only reason to come to Hanoi (or the only reason to come back for us) would be to go to the places around Hanoi. Halong Bay, in which we stayed for 5 nights with beautiful beaches and Sapa, an native Vietnamese city with beatiful scenery, we were told, since we did't go there. But we would if we'd come back.



Busy streets in Hanoi.


Our beach on Cat Ba, Halong Bay.


Beatiful scenery on Cat Ba.

To the central coast then. We had an Open Bus Tour ticket, works great! We went to Hue, Danang and Hoi An on the central coast. If you're not into culture or history, skip the first two. Hue was the city with the old citadel. Nice city actually, lots of history. We liked it, but wouldn't go back. You shouldn't bother go to Danang either. Boring city! Nothing to see, nightlife is medioker and people aren't that nice. Hoi An is the place to be in the central coast. This is where we met up with Nick & Trent and ended up staying for week. A small town, very pittoresque. The city centre is on UNESCO's World Heritage list. Hoi An is also famous for it's tailors. We had each a suit and two shirts made. Paid $50 for that. Girls we met had shoes, skirts and especialy dresses made. Really cheap of course.Hoi An has also got two very nice beaches and nightlifes is good too. Locals are nicer, but you still have to watch out for scams, though less frequent than in Hanoi. We enjoyed Hoi An a lot and it's easy to go there thinking you're only staying for a night or to and ending up staying fo a week...just as we did.


American Blades.


The good life in Hoi An. Aah.


Crazy Buffalo Bar in Saigon, one of the bars in the backpacker area.

Our next stop after that was Saigon, or Ho Chi Minh City as the offical name is. We skipped the beach capital Nha Trang, since it was flooded. But would be fun to go there another time though. Saigon was so different from Hanoi! We felt it right away. Saigon is vibrant and really has a pulse. Hanoi had neither. People are so much nicer in Saigon too. There aren't that many things to see in the city, but just being there was good enough for us. And the nightlife is great too. There are still thousands of motos, you still have to watch out for sneaky vietnamese people (we had a really expensive taxi in Saigon), many are still not that good in english or very nice to you - but everything is so much better in Saigon compared to Hanoi.

If you would compare Vietnam to say, China's well-structured organization of the country, Vietnam is like the Wild Wild West. Everything has a chaotic feel to it. Stuff like lack of traffic rules, no reciepts when paying or taxis without rules for how the taximeter works.  Since the "free" Vietnam is only 19 years old,  the capitalism is really just getting started. Before that it was strict communism. Now when locals are allowed to buy and own stuff, everyone is trying to make it for themselves. Everything has its price. Vendors are everywhere, and even their kids sell stuff. 4-year-olds sell cigarettes, sunglasses & books. It's just wrong. And most of the 4-year-olds speak better english than the average Vietnamese adult. Crazy.

To conclude, we loved Vietnam! People can be very dodgy, but just watch out and be very suspicious to everything and you'll be fine. We met lots of nice people too (especially in southern Vietnam). The country is so beautiful and has plenty of amazing beaches. We both would love to go back one day.

/C & M

Yep, you saw it! This morning was our last in Vietnam. We're now in a hotel in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. We left Saigon 9 am and had a nice and bumpy 6 hour bus ride. We've been spending our first day here in Phnom Penh just walking around the city and having a nice dinner with traditional Cambodian food. Took a stroll home through the city, watching people and buildings. So far, we think it's a nice city, but nothing really special about it. About 1,3 milj people live here in Phnom Penh and 15 milj total in Cambodia. This is, just as Vietnam, a former french colony. But they got independent the 9th november 1953, so yeah, we got here the on their national day! Though, they didn't really celebrate it a lot, except for some fireworks in the afternoon and Cambodian flags hanging everywhere. Though everything is getting better here, Cambodia has a dark history, especially between 1975-1979. That was when the Cambodia was ruled by the Rogue Khmer led by Pol Pot. They attepted a agricultural reform inspired by Maoism and Marxism and forced all the people in Phnom Penh and other big cities to go out on the fields and work for at least 12-15 hours a day. Young, old, sick or weak - it didn't matter. All scholars, monks and educated people were excecuted. This was going on for about 3½ years until Vietnamese forces invaded and put an end to their rule. It's estimated that over 1,4 million people died during those years. So tomorrow, we're taking a little trip to a place known as The Killing Fields. As you may understand, this is where they took people and killed them. Lots of massgraves and skulls to be found here. It's gonna be an interesting day tomorrow!


Marcus in Phnom Penh inside a Tuk-Tuk. A motorcycle with a carriage.

But, we didn't just kick back and relax yesterday. No no, we took a trip a couple of miles south of Saigon to the Mekong Delta. Mekong is the world's 12th longest river. It starts in Tibet and flows through China, Burma, Laos, Cambodia and at last to Vietnam where it turns into a delta just before reaching the ocean. Lots of people live here and mainly, produce rice here. But a really beautiful place with lots of small canals and thick jungle surrounding it. We booked a tour and took the bus for two hours to get there. With us was also our partner in crime, Trent. And lots of other people of course, but screw them. We started by visiting a pagoda, or temple, with a gigantic Buddha outside. But we're kinda bored with all the temples now, so we didn't even bother to go inside.


Bros with giant Buddha.

After that we reached the delta and the river. We took a boat ride for about 30 min on the river to go to a small village. It was interesting to watch all the people and how they live and work on the river. When we came to the village, they showed us how they make the coconut candy (or lollies, whatever) they're famous for. And it tasted really good! Comes with different flavours - standard, peanut, chocolate and a few others. Marcus bought one bag with peanut taste and Trent bought one with chocolate. Chris was happy just taking from them. Before we left there, they showed us a big-ass snake! A "tame" snake (yeah right). Think it was a python. Trent disappeared before we even had time to see the snake, but marcus took it around his neck with a smile. Chris held a safety distance of 2 metres.


View from the boat.


Marcus with his new friend.

Then it was time to get into the boat again. This time in a really narrow canal, maybe 2-3m wide only. And with a guy that paddled. Almost like in Venice. Except for the jungle, of course. After a while, we had reached our destination and got off the boat. Now, it was time to watch some natives play traditional music. Three guys were playing on typical southeast asian instruments and two people were singing different songs. It was...maybe not the best we've heard. They are probably really good if you're into that kind of music, but to us it sounded like someone were strangling a bunch of cats. Really nasal and didn't sync with the music that much. Well well, it was an experience. After that we went to our bus and back to Saigon. Had dinner with Trent and went out to party in the evening (it was tough waking up today) and then took the bus to Cambodia this morning.


The guys - Trent, Chris & Marcus on the second boat.

We're gonna write a summary of our thoughts and experiences about Vietnam soon and post it here, and of course we'll give you the mugs of Vietnam too. In couple of days, or so. Time to go bed. Have fun in the snowstorm ;)
/ C & M

Today we took a half day tour to the tunnels of Cu Chi, the tunnel system the vietnamese guerilla used as shelter and supply centers agains the americans in the vietnam war. It was really cool to see really how narrow and small the tunnels were, and just imagening spending days, weeks or even months in these dark, long, underground tunnels as the vietnamese soldiers did is impossible.

We left with the bus like 8.30 from Saigon city. With us was Trent, our american friend who landed in Saigon yesterday. Arrived around 10, and got to see some entrances (Now covered with roof), some really nasty traps the Vietcong set up in the jungle, some bunkers and stuff. Sat down for a lecture about how the tunnels were used tactically by the Vietcong. They also showed us a really old movie (think black & white, all grainy. Made in like 1967) about the "war heroes" of the vietnam people in the war. It was only propaganda showing the beautiful village of Cu Chi was destoyed by the americans and how some vietnamese farmers got the title of "American killer hero" after killing a bunch of americans. I mean, sure we're in Vietnam and they are really into their propaganda and stuff, but the whole movie was pretty comic. Since it's been like 40 years. :P


Marcus found a way out of the hole after a month and all he had to show was two lame "peace"signs.


This is how narrow some entrances were! It was crazy! Claustrophobic? Don't go in there!


One of the traps. Looks like harmless ground, but step on it and you are skrewed!

We also got to go to a shooting range and fire guns! Awesome!! We bought bullets (26.000 dong/bullet, so around 8 kronor/bullet) and fired AK47's, and Trent fired the AK as well as the M60. Feel the power!


Christopher saw someone wearing pink Crocs on his feet. He had to take him down.

So tomorrow we'll go to the Mekong Delta, as we said we would in our last post. Get to go on boat trips on the rivers, see floating markets and stuff. Hoping for the best! And good weather! Today was a great day with sun, it was hot! Now it's raining though (surprise), but hoping for itto stop before we're having dinner at 7 with Trent. Damn this wet season.

/M&C

After seven days of relaxing, drinking, partying and almost drowning in the ocean, we felt it was time to go on with our journey. We had so much fun in Hoi An, best so far and that's why we stayed there that long and that's why we haven't bloged that much either. Met so many fun and cool people and just enjoyed our time in Hoi An as much as we could. We just had too fun to sit down by the computer and write here, sorry guys ;)


Drinking at Phattie's. This was monday 12:00. It turned out to be a looong day.


Same day, couple of hours later. Now with two british girls, Sofie & Roz who
we tricked into coming to phattie's that day. They ended up missing their bus.


A last photo outside our sanctuary.

But all fun has its ends. We left Hoi An on wednesday 18:00. The first plan was to go to the beach city Nha Trang, but after a few hours of thinking we changed our minds and decided to head straight for Saigon. Reason? Simply that it rains in all of southern vietnam right now and there are floodings here and there (including Nha Trang). So we'd rather spend the rainy days in a big city like Saigon than a beach town. The bus ride was fun - 24 hours! And it was a crappier bus than the one we had from Hanoi to Hue. Not enough curtains to make it dark, no toilet(!) and less space for the legs. But, amazing as we are, we made it! Arrived in Saigon around 19:00. Found a cheap hotel and then had dinner and a few beers with some friends we had met in Hoi An. Actually, we saw six people our first two hours here in Saigon, that we had earlier met in Hoi An. Probably not gonna be the last time either.


View from the bus, not too bad.

We had a good night sleep (needed that from the bus ride), went for breakfast about one o'clock and then to the cambodian embassy to fix our visas. Best embassy ever! The visas took 17 minutes to get, Chris had forgot his photo and we both needed photocopies of our passports according to the rules. They didn't care. We just paid and got the visas 17 minutes later, awesome! Celebrated with som icecream and then moved on to the first and only museum we've planned on visiting in Saigon - The War Remnants Museum. They focus on collecting, preserving and exhibiting proofs of Vietnam War crimes and their consequenses. There were many, many horrible and awful photos of civilians that were injured or killed in the war. Children lying dead in the streets, victims of napalm with half their faces burnt off, deformed children born in the 90's - a result of the chemical warfare the U.S applied.
They also had the story behind the war with lots of photos with that. Really interesting - and terrible.


Celebrating our Cambodian visas.


Say hello to my little friend!

Now we're back in our hotel. Took a taxi back, since heaven opened up and decided to make this city a swimming pool. Going out for dinner soon. In the upcoming days we're going to excursions to the Mekong Delta and to some tunnels used during the war. Don't exactly know which days we'll do what, but we'll figure.
/C & M

Since we got here, life's been pretty much the same and the days blend together. Just like the movie Groundhog Day (Måndag hela veckan). Our days here are as follows:

1. Wake up. Could be 10 am, could be 2 pm. Doesn't really matter.
2. Flip flops on, go out for breakfast. We tend to hang out at places nearby our hotel, so it's mostly no further than 100 meters.
3. Back to the hotel, take a shower, check our mail and stuff, maybe sleep some more.
4. Rent a motorbike and head to Phattie's bar by the beach!
5. Play pool, drink beer, eat, play pool, drink beer. Nick & Trent shows up an hour or 2 after our arrival.
6. Return bike around 6 pm, head back to the hotel, sleep for an hour. Head out for dinner.
7. Hit some bar, hang out.
8. Sleep.
9 Repeat steps 1 - 8 the next day.


The hard knock life of Hoi An.

This is pretty much what we've been doing since we got here. Tomorrow we're going on a trip to some ruins called My Son for some sightseeing! We feel like mixing it up a bit. Later!

/M&C

So, here we are, in Hoi An. Our fifth stop on our journey through Vietnam. Hoi An is a pretty small town with just about 130.000 people or so. Nice town though! Close to the beaches, nice restaurants, nice bars and cool people!

As soon as we got here, we got an email from Nick & Trent saying we had one mission: to find them at a beach bar called Phattie's, with very vague directions. So, we accepted the challenge, grabbed our swimming trunks, rented a motorbike and were on our way. Awesome as we are, we found the place about 10 minutes later, only 2 km from town just by the beach. It was great seeing our american pals again! Phattie's is basically a hut right on the beach, with a bar and a pool table. All you need, right? We went for a swim, and the waves were HUGE! About 3-4 meters at least. It was crazy fun! Bodysurfing on waves more than twice your own length is both awesome and terrifying :P. After that we had a bite to eat and a few beers before heading back into town, had a quick shower and went to a bar! We had great fun all night, hanging out with people from all over the world!


The Beach Boys. Standing inside Phattie's Bar.


The beach just outside Phattie's bar.


What can you say? It was Happy Hour...

Today has been a lazy day. Had a great breakfast, slept some more, then we checked out the old part of Hoi An. Small narrow streets with small shops everywhere. "Hello, you buy one pineapple?" "Hellooo, come see t-shirt? One dollah one dollah!" and "Motobike?" is mostly what the Vietnamese people are saying to you when walking down these kind of streets. We're probably gonna stay here in Hoi An for a while now, just kicking back, relaxing and enjoying life here.


Random street in Hoi An.

Meeting Trent in a while for some food, gonna find some good local food to eat. Maybe fish. That's about the biggest problems we have here. It's aight! Later!

/M&C

After staying two nights in Hue, we felt it was time to move on. Hue is a nice city, but there are more cities to see and so "little" time ;) Next stop on our journey was the city of Da Nang. Rather large city, about 1 milj, it's located on the coast of the South China Sea, right where the Han River meets the ocean. This is also the place where american soldiers first landed in the vietnam war.

When we first woke up, still in Hue, we could hear the rain pouring down. It rained so heavily, that for a minute there, we thought we were back in Sweden ;) Maybe not, but it was crazy. Luckily, by the time we got ourselves ready to leave the hotel, it had stopped. We went to a bar for some breakfast and then took the bus from the booking office. The bus ride was ok. No sleeping bus this time, wasn't any need for that, since the bus ride only took 3 hours. We got to Da Nang by 11, wandered around for a while looking for a cheap hotel. Found one for $13 / day, nice price. After we got rid of the backpacks and freshened up a bit, we decided to visit the only big tourist thing to visit here in Da Nang city, the museum of Cham Sculpture.

This museum was founded in 1915 and it, as the name suggests contains lots of sculptures from the old kingdom of Champa. It's really weird to walk in to a museum to see some art and craftsmanship of a kingdom or people you never really heard of. That's just what we did. But it was nice anyway, we learned a few things, such as the empire existed from the 3rd century AD until 1800-something. They had buddism as one of their religions but also a lot of hinduism. Most of the sculptures are Hindu gods. There is a big site not far from Da Nang called Mÿ Son, where the Chams raised a lot of temples and sculptures. It's supposed to be like a way smaller version of Angkor Wat. We won't go there quite yet, but at some point, we will. Well anyway, the musuem would probably be way better if you knew anything about the Chams or the religion and gods, but we had a good time.


Chris with some Cham sculptures.


Maybe the sculptures looked a bit too real for Marcus...

After that, we went for a walk in Da Nang, just checking the city out. Seems alright. But we're not gonna stay. No no, we're leaving tomorrow for Hoi An. A smaller city about an hour away from here. There are lots of cultural stuff to see and if the party gods are with us, we'll meet up with Trent & Nick, who should be there right now. We'll probably stay there for a few days. Since it's supposed to rain anyway, we'll do some sightseeing in the days, and party in the nights! Hoi An style! Not sure what that means yet, but we'll come up with something. Time to sleep now. Goodnight!


Lots of palmtrees by the riverside in Da Nang.

/ C&M

Today we had temples, tombs and pagodas on our sightseeing menu, and we got what we ordered! The day started out with breakfast at DMZ Bar, the place where we had breakfast the morning we arrived to Hue. Good spot! We then met up with a couple of other tourists and a guide who showed us the way to the boat that would take us up the river to our destinations.

But first, about yesterday. After we checked in to our hotel, we decided to go to the old Citadel, as we mentioned in our last post. It was kinda cool to see the long citaldel wall dividing the city yet today. Within the walls we found a sort of museum for old tanks used in the Vietnam War. We goofed around for half an hour or so there, before moving on to our next destination. There is a "citadel within the citadel". A 6 metres high and a couple of hundreds meter long wall is running around what used to be the emperor's palace and private courtyards. We walked around there for a while. Some of the buildings were restored really good while others looked like they were original and at some places the building wasn't even there anymore. It had been bombed during the war, leaving a large, empty field. All n' all, it was a good day and a nice place to visit.


Christopher got caught up in the moment.


Outside the inner citadel gate.

After that we retreated to our hotel, just chilling for a while. Then we decided to hit town for some beers, and started looking for cool spots around town. We heard the bass from a place called MTV Bar (it had nothing to do with MTV) and decided to check the place out. The place was packed with people, mostly guys though, but some girls too. No western people at all. We really couldn't figure out what kind of place it was, but i the end we came up with two theorys; Either it was a gay bar or it was that kind of bar where men bought the company of the women there, and could later on buy her company even after the club...either way, we left. Found another bar down the road, we read about in the Lonely Planet guide. Sat there for a beer and then went back to our hotel and slept.

So back to today. Our first stop was a small fishing village a few kilometers from Hue. Apparently, every fisherman in Vietnam knows Kung Fu, at least we were told. We saw a Kung Fu show where a group of vietnamese guys and girls showed of their ass-kicking skills. It was awesome!!!


Epic ass kicking in progress!

After this, we continued our boat trip on the Perfume River, Song Huong, to the Thien Mu Pagoda, the last national Pagoda of Vietnam before they went Communists. The guide explained all about how buddhism works with the "circle of life", to quote The Lion King. Humans that make lot's of mistakes in their lives, have to live as animals in their next life. If they live a good life as animals they will go to heaven, and if you spend your time in heaven error-free you get to stay there forever. If you mess up, like if you spill your beer all over a hot chick in the Heavenly Bar because you had too many divine drinks, you get sent right back to earth to start your next human life. Kind of.

The cruise then took us, after having lunch on the boat deck, to Minh Mang tomb, a temple site for an emperor that ruled Vietnam somewhere between 1800 and 1950. Don't really remember. What we do remember is that he had more than 300 wives and concubines, one for every day of the year. The good life :P Cool temples though. We then headed buy bus to our last stop, the Khai Dinh tomb, also a place of worship and living quarters of emperor Khai Dinh. Huge site with cool architecture!


Marcus outside the Khai Dinh Tomb.

Tomorrow we're leaving Hue to go to the city of Da Nang. We'll probarby just stay there for one day, but you never know. It's actually supposed to rain for 5 or 6 days now, so we haven't figured out all the details yet. But we'll keep you posted ;)

/C&M

Finally in Hue! The local time is 10 am, and we're now having breakfast at some café we found on the way to the hostel where we're planning on staying. The bus ride here was something, alright. We have had better bus rides in our live, that's for sure. This ride will definately enter the top three list of "Bumbiest rides" ever.

We left Hanoi yesterday at 6 pm in our sleeper bus, which is basically a bus with three rows of bunkbeds (more like chairs in a 45 degree angel). At first we had lots of room in the back of the bus, but we stopped to pick up more travellers on the way from Hanoi, and eventually the bus was full. A bit crowded, no space to move and uncomfortable pillows. But the worst part was not the bus itself. The problem with a sleeper bus in Vietnam is that the roads here really are crap. Imagine trying to sleep on a hard pillow, barely lying down, on a bus driving on a highway destroyed by an earthquake (kind of). On top of this apparently all drivers in Vietnam have death wishes. They use the horn whenever they can and tries to pass other cars all the time, no matter if there's a curve coming up or not.

The driver also thought it would be a good idea to put on some music. Music in Vietnam is highly interesting. It's like the music of the 90's from the western countries have just reached Vietnam! Celine Dion's "My heart will go on" is a hit here, as well as Bryan Adams "All for love" and Lionel Richie's "Say you, say me". To name a few. If these power ballads from the past is not flowing through the speakers, it's definately the classic Vietnamese Euro-dance-disco-tecnho. It's like Aqua, but waaay more simple, annoying and sugar coated. And that's exactly what the bus driver played the first hour of our trip. After that, he played a chinese movie, dubbed with a vietnamese voice. One vietnamese girl saying all the lines of the movie. Incredibly stupid, and annoying. :P


The view from the back of the sleeper bus.


We were this happy. Really!

Anyway, the title of this blog post is refering to the movie Ace Ventura - When nature calls, our favourite clip from this movie. This bus ride pretty much felt the same as Ace's ride through the jungle. CHIIIITYYYYY!





Today we tink we will go and see the old citadel here i the city. Hue was actually the old capital of Vietnam from 1802 to 1945. It got tons of temples and tombs around town and the old citadel is one of UNESCO's World Heritage Sites. The city is very close to the place where the old border between North and South Vietnam were and though the city was bombed and damaged during the war, it is still the cultural capital of Vietnam. Hue is small city though, "only" around 350 000 people, so we're kinda hoping that it should be somewhat more quite and calm here compared to Hanoi. Now, we have to go and find our hotel. Later!

/M&C

This morning we left our quiet and cosy beach to go to the city of Hue, 700km south of Hanoi. Instead of having the chaos we had getting to Cat Ba, we actually knew where to buy tickets this time. We had talked to the owner of a bar in the middle of Cat Ba. A kiwi guy that owns the place, but isn't around that much, so we were lucky to have a chat with him. He recommended us this place so we bought tickets from a company on Cat Ba that took us by bus to the ferry, then after the ferry we just changed bus to one that took us straight away to Hanoi. Awesome. And we had some really good company all the way to Hanoi too, so that made the trip even better. Thanks for that! :)

Though the day didn't start that good. The alarm rang 6:30, which meant we only slept for 3½ hours. Was kind of a late night last night. We went to the only place where people on Cat Ba goes to have a late night drink, a small bar on the third floor of a restaurant. Cosy place with a pool table and a fussball table. Not so much people though. But we had lots of fun, cause we saw both Danny De-Vito and Sam Worthington there! Well, at least their look-alikes. Especially Sam Worthington (whos real name was Dean), he was like a clone! And aussie too of course :P He tried to get the bartender, who was half his size, drunk by taking shots together. It ended with Sam almost falling off his chair and his girlfriend had to take him home. Then we met some other people, played some pool and went to the beach 3am to have a last beer. Kinda hungover when we woke up. That sucked. Breakfast and a showe helped, luckily. Then we had our nice bus/ferry/bus trip and now we're in Hanoi again. We went to a booking office to get so called Open Tour Bus tickets to Saigon. Those tickets are valid for a month, so we can take the bus, get off somewhere, spend a couple of nights there and then jump on the bus the day we want and continue our trip south. Really handy.  We have like 5 stops planned or at least we can if we want. We'll see. Anyways, our first stop is Hue, which is the old capital of Vietnam. We'll try to update tomorrow evening after we get there and find a hotel and so on. Sorry no photos today, haven't taken any lately. Shame on us! We'll be better, we promise ;)

Our plans for today was to explore the national park of Cat Ba. And so we did! Started out early morning with breakfast at our favourite table right at the beach. Btw, vietnamese coffe is awesome! Lots of flavour, black and strong! No better way to wake up!


The view from our breakfast table. Can't complain.

So, we headed into town and hired a motorbike and drove to the national park through the winding paths and beautiful coastal line Cat Ba has to offer. When we got there, we parked our bike and began the longest trek we've had so far! Our journey started on wide, paved roads, but would soon turn into narrow, steep trails through the jungle that really closed in on us the further in we came. It's really amazing just standing still in the middle of a jungle listening to what it has to say. Birds, bugs, wind, leaves falling, mysterious noises in nearby bushes made by mysterious creatures... Cool!


Marcus found his home deep in the jungle, among all the other monkeys.


Christopher, the trek master!

After about 3 hours of trekking we reached what seemed to be a dead end for us. The path had been eaten by the jungle, and since we only had shorts and t-shirts, we decided to go back, or we had been eaten as well. So, we fought our way back through the jungle, and finally came back to where we started. Since we still had time to go places, since we rented the bike all day, we took a detour and visited Hospital cave. This cave was built in 1965 and was used as a hospital (really?), treating northvietnamese and chinese patients injured by american soldiers in the Vietnam War. In the cave, they had built a hospital in three floors, were they treated the injured. It also worked as a strategy center for the vietnamese military. The cave was basically built by square concrete rooms, that had different uses.


Beautiful nature in the national park. This is where we decided to turn back. Jungle!!


This little bat was hanging of a leaf right above our heads on our way back
on the trek! Just had to bother him with some pictures, tourist style!



View from the entrance of Hospital Cave. Typical vietnamese countryside.

After Hospital Cave we decided to go back to our bungalow for some food and a shower. Writing this blog update from a computer at our "regular" internet cafe. After this we're having dinner! Gonna hit yet another place from the Lonley Planet bibel! Btw, we heard the first snow fell today in Sweden. We just wanna say that we're sorry for you. We really are. Anyway, tomorrow is a brand new day! We'll probably hit the beach after breakfast and not move for the entire day. It's a hard knock life! :)

/M&C

Finally!! After a couple of weeks of sightseeing cities, suburbs, museums, nightlife, mountains, streets and restaurants by walking, running, taxi, buses and motorbikes we finally arrived at (one of many to come) destinations having what we believe is one of the true essences of what The Bro Trip is all about - BEACHES!!!

But, first of all we have to tell you about our culinary experience in Hanoi the night before we left. We had dinner at a restaruant called Highway 4, a restaurant famous for having lots of wierd out-of-the-ordinary meals. After looking through the menu, we ordered sautéd buffalo, sautéd ostridge and some spring rolls. That was far from the wierdest thing on the menu though. They had stuff like Roasted pidgeon with salt, locusts roasted with lemon leaves and stuff like that. Feeling we should try something we haven't tried before, we also ordered roasted crickets in pig fat, served with shrimp crackers. :D It wasn't that bad actually!


Roasted crickets in pig fat. We had antennas between our teeth after the meal!

Anyway, we now reside in a bungalow on the island of Cat Ba, in Ha Long Bay, northern Vietnam. Palm trees & lush mountains surrounding us, hammocks and about 20 metres to the beach. Hakuna matata baby! We got here yesterday, after a really long day. The trip here didn't really turn out as expected though. Got up around 6:30 in our hotel in Hanoi. Took a taxi to the bus station ticket booth, where the ticketlady pointed us in another direction. We didn't really get why, but we went looking for a bus to Hai Phong, a city on the coast in Halong Bay. Some guy then showed us to a bus and told us the price to Hai Phong was 70.000 dong (about 23 swedish kronor). We were like: "Sure, why not!"

The bus left the station, and about 5 minutes later the ticket guy tried to rip us off Vietnam style: the guy in front of me gave the ticket guy 250.000 dong, which the ticket guy then showed me, saying the ticket price was 250.000 (by pointing on the money), instead of 70.000 as the other guy told us. We totally refused, knowing that the vietnamese people in general take every chance they get to sell stuff at way too high prices to tourists. The ticket guy finally gave up, and took our 70.000. I (Marcus) a few minutes later saw him secretly (he thought) give 200.000 dong back to the guy in front of me since he didn't succed in fooling us. Crafty, sneaky bastards.


Hoping we will end up where we planned on the bus from Hanoi! We didn't...

After 1 hour (the bus tour was supposed to be 2 hours) we got thrown of the bus in the middle of nowhere. We never really understod why, but we guess the bus was heading for Ha Long or some other place, or, that they just didn't like us. :P Soooo, there we were, on a highway in northern vietnam. Luckily, there was a bus stop nearby, and a guy we could ask (using sign language and the few english words he knew) to get on a new bus, that took us to Hai Phong!

Once in Hai Phong, we jumped into a taxi and told him "Pha, to Cat ba" (pha means ferry). After like 15 kilometers, we reached the ferry. It really didn't look like the tourist ferry though, but we bought a ticket and were on our way! After two ferry transfers and one motobike-ride through a remote island to another ferry we realized that we really did not take the tourist route. But it was worth the hassel, cause the last motorbike-ride took us on winding roads with magnificent views of the Cat Ba island coastal line. It was amazing to see, and in Cat Ba town 45 kilometers later, we reached our bungalow sanctuary!!


Coastal line of Cat Ba from the motorbike.


The beach 20 metres from our bungalow!


The good life.

We are now writing this blog update at an internet cafe in town and will probably hang here and check out what's up with the Cat Ba nightlife after dinner! After that, I think we'll just kick back with some beer on the beach by our bungalow :)

Later!

M&C

Sooo, since we've got lots of english-speaking (or at least non-swedish speaking) followers on our blog, we thought we might give it a try to start bloggin in english. Though we don't wanna hear anything about the grammar or the vocabulary, all other comments are appreciated :)

We've been sightseeing in Hanoi now for two days, so we thought we'd tell everyone what we've seen and experienced so far! We started of yesterday by going to the Temple of Literature. This is Hanoi's first university and was founded in 1070 as a temple to Confucius (who's temple we've visited in Beijing). Six years later they did also turn it into a university and we've learned that their educational system within the university isn't very different from the one we use (in sweden at least). They applied, the students with the highest grades got in, they had ordinary tests, then national tests and so on. Pretty cool! The temple consited in five courtyards with different buildings. Within the last building, there was a statue of Confucius and on his side his four apprentices.


Outside Temple of Literature. The left pillar reads: Visitor, please dismount
from your horse. We did :P

After that we moved on to the Vietnamese Museum of Ethnology. This musuem shows different types of etnical groups in Vietnam,their lifestyle and culture. Luckily this wasn't an ordinary museum with small scale models of buildings, pictures and all that. No no, they had actually brought the some of the villagers from all of the groups and let them build their buildings in full scale! It was awesome! It was like walking into a small vietnamese society somwhere in the countryside. They had the big town house, forges, stables, gravesites ornated with various items and art and also the common houses where people lived. It was really interesting, and of course, we got lots of good photos too. We also took the chance to see a Water Puppet Show at the museum. This is a classical vietnamese form of art, especially for the northern parts and Hanoi. Kinda fun, but since they only spoke Vietnamese, it wasn't too easy to understand what happened.


That's one big ass town hall!


Christopher just had to sit down and think of life's great mysteries. Accompanied
by a wooden figure.

After that we went back to our "hood", the Old Town. In the center of Old town, there's a lake where they have a temple and a statue of a giant tortoise. The legend has it that emperor Le Thai To in the 15th century asked the god for a sword to defeat the chinese. God gave him a sword and with that, they fought the chinese and won their independece. One day after the war, the emperor was chilling on the lake with his bros and had a few beers (we think) enjoying the victory when suddenly a giant golden tortoise appeared. The tortoise took the sword from the emperor and disappeared into the lake. No one has seen neither since that day. People assumed that this were the gods who reclaimed their sword. That is why the lake today is called Hoan Kiem, whick means Lake of the Sword Restored. Cool story! But sorry, now I've bored you long enough with this. Point was, we walked around the lake and took a few photos, haha.


Strolling by the Hoan Kiem lake at night.

We went to a genuine Vietnamese restaurant for som genuine Vietnamese food later that night. We had Cha Ca, which are charcoal grilled fishfillets with lots of garniture. It was yammi! After that we headed back to our hotel for some sleep.

So that was yesterday... Today we visited Ho Chi Minh's museum. It sucked. Worst museum ever. Didn't see anything of interest, coudn't go into the mansion and couldn't see his embalmed body (cause sep-dec it's in Russia for restoration). Worthless! And it cost us like 15.000 dong each! (about 5 swedish kronor :P) Instead, we went to some bus companies to look for tickets out of here and we also visited the temple on the lake from last night. Wasn't really a temple, just a small building, more like a place of prayers (isn't that the definition of a temple, Christopher?) Well, it was just a really tiny building you couldn't get into! Anyways, we strolled around Old Town after that, just enjoying and experiencing the atmosphere. Narrow streets, people standing, walking around or selling food on every sidewalk and motorbikes as far as the eye can see (and hear - the horn is used ALL OF THE TIME here). It all has got a strange charm. We also took the oppurtunity to enjoy some massage (not with happy ending, guys). They had swedish massage 60 min for only $10. Worth it!


The crowded & narrow streets of Old Town

This was a very long update, sorry for that, but we're not forcing anyone ;) Hopefully next time, we'll be somewhere on an island in Halong Bay lying on the beach and enjoying life even more!

Finally! Sitter nu på hotellrummet i Hanoi - Sports Hotel! Faktiskt ett av de bättre och billigare vi hittills bott på. Kostar 22 dollar per rum, vilket är riktigt riktigt överkomligt eftersom läget är riktigt bra och kvaliten riktigt schysst! Hotellet ligger i Gamla Stan här i Hanoi, den äldsta delen av staden (duh). Rummet här har AC, Minibar, TV och mjukare sängar än vi hittils haft nöjet att sova på.

Tågresan hit från Nanning i Kina kunde väl varit smidigare, men att korsa gränser i byråkratisk kommunist-anda är ungefär lika roligt som det låter. Tåget gick 18:45 från Nanning och vi gjorde oss hemmastadda i våra våningsängar direkt, tillsammans med en tyst Kines som vi delade kupé med. Spenderade de första timmarna på tåget med att spela kort o dricka öl i bistron, för att sedan bli avbrytna eftersom vi närmade oss gränskontrollen. 22:00 stannade tåget och bordades av kinesiska uniformsklädda gränsvakter som tog passen. Sen fick vi dra på oss alla väskor för att gå av tåget till en stationsbyggnad och scanna dom (dessa scanner-kontroller gör dom tydigen så ofta dom får möjlighet i Kina - metron, flygplatsen, tågstationen, muséer - you name it). Sen tillbaka till tåget!


Trångt och smalt - men bättre än förra mögeltåget!

Vi sov väl max 30 minuter innan vi nådde Vietnamesiska gränsen, där hela proceduren upprepades. Ut - passkontroll - in - åka.

Sen var det ungefär 4 timmars sömn innan vi kl 4:30 anlände till Hanois tågstation. Äntligen i Vietnam! Tänkte skriva lite snabbt om Vietnam och Hanoi också för er som undrar eller ens orkar läsa allt vi skriver: Vietnam har 86 milj invånare, därav 13e plats i världen. Hanoi är huvudstaden och här bor "bara" ca 3,7 milj människor. Valutan är Dong (hihi) och 1kr =  ca 3000 Dong. Vietnam är en f.d. fransk koloni, varav vissa äldre här kan tala franska. Man slog sig dock fria från fransmännen 1954 och inte långt efter började vietnamkriget, där (jag hoppas de flesta vet) nordvietnam segrade med Ho Chi Minh i spetsen, som numera är betraktad som landsfader här i Vietnam. Vi ska bl.a. kolla hans museum här i Hanoi. vanligtvis finns tydligen hans balsamerade kropp här också, men är på restuaration i Ryssland just nu (typiskt!).

Tillbaka till oss: Hanois tågstation såg ut som ett lysrörsbelyst ruckel där vietnemeser lite sporadiskt låg och sov på bänkar, tillsammans med påträngande taxichaufförer som alla hade det bästa erbjudandet på resor till diverse hotell. Hanoi har ett rykte om sig att vara tätt på folk som mer eller mindre lever på att lura turister på olika sätt, så vi tackade nej och gick mot huvudgatan. Insåg där att det inte kör så mycket bilar i Hanoi halv fem på morgonen, så vi tog en taxi till området med budgethotel vi läst om i vår numera bibel: guideboken Lonely Planet: Southeast Asia on a shoestring. Gud får ursäkta :P


Vår Bibel!

Vi hoppade av taxin vid Sports Hotel som vi läst om. Det var stängt för natten! Regnade gjorde det också, så vi drog på regnskydden och började leta efter öppna hotell. Efter att ha gått gatan upp och ner så kom vi tillbaka till Sports Hotel strax efter 6 på morgonen. Då hade de öppnat, så vi fick ett rum här och kunde äntligen duscha och sova i riktiga sängar efter 40 timmar på resande fot!

Vi har även hunnit avverka vår första dag här i Hanoi. Sov till 13 på dagen och drog sedan ut för att turista lite.
Orkar inte skriva om det idag, utan gör det imorgon bitti istället.


Sjukt nöjd Christopher med öl & laptop efter en heldag i Hanoi.