Halong Bay And Away.

After our ingenious method of tubing, Little Spoon and I had to make some moves. Moves back to Luang Prabang and then Hanoi where we had planned a trip to yet another UNESCO World Heritage site called Halong Bay. UNESCO owe me some sort of sponsorship given the dedication I have shown to visiting their various sites, and I may have to bring this to their attention.

Several things happened on our journey back to Hanoi and I will summarise them briefly. A truck crashed in the mountains spilling fuel all down the dangerously narrow and high roads, meaning our cramped bus was stuck for several hours in choking humidity. That was excellent. Even better was that Little Spoon had obviously been so impressed with my ability to act as a human water tube, that she clearly felt I would also make a great pillow, so I spent the hours cramped against the window with a small baffoon lying across me completely unconcious.

Luckily I had her I Phone with the worlds greatest game on it. Angry Birds! I may be late to the Angry Birds party, but I'm glad I got there eventually, because slinging cartoon birds at rocks, monkeys and green cartoon faces is one of my favourite ever pastimes.

Outside of Angry Birds and truck crashes the following events stick out as note worthy...

Little Spoon screamed and nearly destroyed an entire table at a roadside cafe because a dogs tail brushed her leg.

That's it. That is the extent of the "events" that I remember from our journey back to Hanoi. Gripping travel tales at their best.

Once back in Hanoi we booked a trip to Halong Bay. Here is a picture of Halong Bay so I don't have to bother describing it using words. Afterall they say a picture says a thousand words, so without this it would a very long and tedious blog.



But before we got to the bay with it's rock islands, caves and floating fishing villages (you now know all the key points of the bay) we had to get on another bus with our cheeful guide. He was unsurprisingly Vietnamese and introduced himself with a name that was fairly incomprehensible but then added "But because Vietnamese is difficult I have chosen an English name that is easy for you to remember and say, so you can call me Nicky."

I already liked Nicky. He had recognised that his own language was frankly ludicrous and that the name his mother had bestowed upon him was somewhat of an embarrassment, so he had wisely chosen a slightly effeminate western name. But at least it was in English, which was undoubtebly a huge relief to the rest of our tour group who were from Russia, Slovakia, Singapore, Japan and Germany. In fact Little Spoon and I were the only fluent English speakers there, and that's being generous to Little Spoon.

And to think some people look back on English imperialism with shame. I nodded with smug satisfaction as I listened to various nationalities forced to ask questions in English to "Nicky".

So as the bus started off, I got settled in for the 3 hour trip to the bay. Water? Yep, nice and cold. Pringles? Yep, Little Spoon had got those for about $20 from a trinket salesman. Angry Birds? Definitely. I focused on the latest level and began to play...

"Okay guys so right now we are going past Hoan Kiem lake which is the centre of the old town in Hanoi and..."

What the hell was going on? Nicky was talking for some reason. I paused the game and looked up to see what he was babbling on about and learnt about the lake and a few facts about the old town. Fair enough Nicky, some interesting stuff there and it is a nice lake.

Ten minutes later and Nicky is getting on my nerves.

Nicky: "My city is called Hanoi, which means 'River in the city', because Ha means river, Noi means town or city so it is river in the city...and this is where I was born and I love my city. But this is not the Hanoi city tour so I will stop now and we can get on our way to Halong Bay."

Yeah, you're right Nicky this is not the Hanoi City Tour, so shut the fuck up because some of us are trying to complete Angry Birds and your incessant yapping about this ancient city and it's temples and lakes is hardly helping me concentrate.

Thankfully Nicky gave it a rest and I completed 10 new levels by the time we arrived at Halong Bay. I had forgiven him for his constant waffling earlier and put it down to the excitement of having a real Englishman in his home town. I was glad he had kindly chosen a name that was "easy to remember and easy to say" for English speakers, because I had to check a couple of things about the days events and when I got to go kayaking through some caves.

Little Spoon also had some questions that she needed answering.

Little Spoon: "Hey, can you ask Roger what time we have the seafood lunch I'm quite hungry."

Me: "I beg your pardon, what are you talking about?"

Little Spoon: "The lunch stupid. Ask Roger when we have it."

Me: "Who the HELL is Roger?"

Little Spoon frowned. She bit her lip and then enlightenment shone across her face and she rolled her eyes at me...

Little Spoon: "Okay okay, I don't know why I said Roger. Kenny. Ask Kenny when we have lunch."

Me: "Who the fuck is Kenny and how does he know when we get lunch?"

Little Spoon: "KENNY! The guide Kenny! Who do you think?"

Me: "Do you mean Nicky? Nicky the guide? Nicky who chose the name Nicky because it was easy to remember? That Nicky? The Nicky who is not called Kenny and has definitely never been named Roger?"

Little Spoon: "Oh. Yeah him, ask him please."

Me: "No. I'm playing Angry Birds, you ask him. Or ask one of the Russians they look like they've been paying attention."

As it happened the lunch was very soon served as we sailed through the peaceful waters of Halong Bay. The picture does not really do it justice, and when the clouds moved away it was truly beautiful. We kayaked, I got some customary sunburn and then Kenny oops sorry Nicky took us to a recently discovered island with some caves inside. Apparently there were many stalagmites and stalactites that looked like animals.

He carefully pointed out the one that looked like a dragon "if you use you imagination" as he put it. Indeed,if you also used a large dose of LSD it would probably be helpful too; as the stalagmite looked pretty much like a stalagmite, arguably you could say it looked like a a bunch of stalgmites.

The one that "looked like Buddah" looked like a blob of ice cream. Still they were quite nice caves and I also got to see an idiotic woman wearing high heels twist her ankle on the slippery rocks which was nice.

A relaxing day came to a close and after our journey back to Hanoi we headed out for Bia Hoi and prepared ourselves for the return to Korea. Little Spoon's mother was due to meet us in two days and then I had ten days of living with Chess Champ and Chocolate Orange before I would return to England.

A round up of Korea and back again will be with you when I can be bothered. Goodbye for now.

Tubing In Vang Vieng.

You may have noticed that I added some photographs to my last two blogs. One of the infamous Luang Prabang massage/decapitation centre and one of Little Spoon wielding her giant lollypop as a baseball bat. Due to the inane content of my blogs, I felt that it might help make them mildly more interesting if I included some uninspiring pictures of people you don't know and signs of places that mean nothing to you.

With that in mind, you can expect this blog to follow suit and there will be a photograph of a hippy I briefly spoke to and a water slide above a river. I can only imagine your excitement and I'm pretty sure some of you have already scrolled hastily down to soak up these images and have now lost your sentence. Back yet? Good, I hope they were all you had dreamed they would be.

Little Spoon and I were on a bus to Vang Vieng. Vang Vieng is a small town in the mountains of Laos that is famous for people getting in tubes (rubber rings in the UK) and sailing down a river whilst stopping off at river side shacks to drink beer and maybe smoke drugs. It is also incredibly beautiful and whilst it is certainly more spoilt than it was 7 years ago when I last visited, if you are in the off season I think it is still quite mellow and well worth a visit.

It is purely for backpackers. This was great news for me as I had a backpack. Little Spoon had a suitcase on wheels and looked as out of place as a person with a huge lollypop wearing a traditional Vietnamese hat might have looked.

As she dragged her suitcase across the uneven terrain it struck me that we should stay in the exact same guesthouse that I had stayed at with my friend Montgomery Burns seven years before. Montgomery Burns and I had travelled around for 3 months, slumming it in any old dump and we had both sported backpacks. I don't recall either of us wearing any hats or having oversized confectionary, so I felt duty bound to give Little Spoon a taste of real backpacking.

The only stumbling point was that the place was a bit of a hovel seven years ago and the only redeeming feature I could recall was a laminated picture of some horses hanging from the wall outside our room.

I booked us in. Little Spoon was appalled and terrified. The room was squalid and most rats would probably avoid the bathroom for fear of catching something. It was going to be difficult to win Spoon over, as she had already started ranting and had taken her hat off to show she was serious.

Little Spoon: "No. No I wont stay here. This is not funny. Uggghhhhhh....I wont shower in there. Why do you want to be here?"

Me: "I don't want to stay here, I just thought we should."

Little Spoon: "What? Why? If it was crap seven years ago, then why come back? Are you stupid?"

I resent being called stupid by someone with a wheely suitcase in a town clearly delineated as a "backpacker" destination. But the filth and dilapidation was hard to justify. And then as we stood arguing outside our room, I saw it. The one thing that would win her over. Incredibly after seven long years, it was still there. The laminated picture of some horses. Not a photograph, just a badly drawn piece of "art" encased in thin plastic and now curled at the edges but still taped onto the wall.

Me: "The HORSES! Spoon. Remember the horses I told you about. Look at them, come on, that's a piece of history right there. My God, when I email Montgomery Burns about this, he will be cockahoop."

She seemed stunned by my combination of misplaced enthusiasm and use of the antiquated term "cockahoop".

We agreed to stay there. I don't know if the horses won the day or if she was too tired to move on, but we left the room and made our way to eat but not before she had used her new favourite word. A word that she seemed to try and use at least once an hour. Shaking her head at me in disgust...

Little Spoon: "Erroneous. You're erroneous."

I feel her use of the word erroneous is quite often...well...erroneous, but I let this one slide.

To sum up Vang Vieng it is best to just explain that in the central point of town you sit on beds eating food and drinking while TV screens play episodes of Friends and you play Connect Four as you look at vast swathes of jungle covered mountains. It's a bizarre juxtaposition but very enjoyable.

I had obviously ignored the leaflets offering anything to do with elephants, but we were all set for tubing the next day. We took a Tuk Tuk up to the starting point at the top of the river and before we embarked we joined a gaggle of hippies in drinking buckets of cheap whisky with red bull. Amongst the hippies were some normal people who I was able to discuss normal topics with. Things like politics, beer, evolution and the use of horse based pictures in the hospitality industry.

But the hippies kept distracting me. They were spray painting words and pictures on peoples backs. Random words and shit pictures.

Hippy: "Hey man, I'll spray something on you, I've got all these templates."

I looked at his templates. They said "Ooo La La", "Sexy" and "Pimp". I wasn't sure that men who controlled sex workers really fell into the usual category of love and peace, but apparently it was ironic. Looking at most of them, I assumed that "Sexy" was also being used ironically.

Me: "No."

The Hippy looked forlorn. Good, maybe I would tell him that I didn't believe in global warming too and that I was only at the river to dump my old fridge. He looked at Little Spoon. Oh great.

Little Spoon and I wandered towards the river edge to begin tubing. She was just up ahead of me as I'd bought another bucket of whisky, but the bright red "Ooo La La" across her back meant I couldn't miss her. Oh and here is a hippy playing with a local child...



There was one problem with our plan to tube. We hadn't hired tubes. Somehow in our haste we had ignored the instructions to hire tubes in the town and thought we could get them at the river bars. Our assumption was quite definitely erroneous.

So we had to go tubing without a tube. Little Spoon was very worried as she is not much of a swimmer. However, I began to feel it might not be so bad. As a young boy at school I experienced a devestating school rule that banned footballs in the playground after a window was broken.

Unperturbed my friends and I organised football games without a ball. Twenty small six year old boys running around the pitch screaming and arguing about who had the imaginary ball. There were many contentious decisions and some heavily disputed results, but I scored some of my greatest ever goals with that non existent ball and put in more man of the match performances than I ever managed once a ball was re-introduced.

With this in mind, I felt that tubing without a tube might turn out to be brilliant. So Little Spoon clung to my back like a baby monkey and I played the role of a tube perfectly. Swimming down the river and stopping at bars to top up on alcohol and watch maniacs slide headfirst into the often shallow waters of the river.

Drinking and swimming down a river with no safety regulations in check is hugely enjoyable and hugely stupid. People drown every month apparently. Oh well, I'll assume they are all hippies with stupid slogans sprayed on their body, and shrug it off as a blessing to the gene pool.

I didn't drown and neither did Little Spoon. And apart from one moment in a strong current with rocks where I cut my knees to ribbons it was great being a human tube.
I could waffle on about Laos for many a blog to come, but it would only interest me, so I will spare you the details but leave you with a scintillating picture of a water slide from which a hippy knocked out all of his teeth the day before we arrived. Ooo La La!