The Modern Nomadic Existence

Our trip is almost at an end and it is time for us to sign off, at least for now. It is hard to believe that three and a half months (101 days, to be precise) has gone by since we left Sydney on May 14. We have had some amazing experiences while we have been away, which we have enjoyed sharing with you all on this blog.

The fact that so many people spend so much money on getting from one side of the world to the other, just to see it, has got us thinking about how today's traveller is really the modern equivalent of yesterday's nomad. When you think about it, the modern traveller is really no different to the desert Berber... both of us continuing a long human tradition. Why else would we spend all our money, risk life and limb and throw ourselves off the deep end, just for the experience? And why else would we love doing it?

But enough philosophising for now. We thought we'd pick out the best and worst of our trip in this post to round things off until next time. So here we go...

Favourite town: Blois

Favourite city: London/Paris (I know it might seem like a cliche, but what can you do?)

Most beautiful city: Lisbon/San Sebastian

Craziest city: Marrakech

Most beautiful scenery: the Saraha proper/the French countryside

Favourite country: Portugal (Josh), France and Vietnam (Tova)

Most boring country: Andorra

Best beach: Estoril/Cascais

Funniest miscommunication: Becoming convinced that Hungarians used kookaburra feathers in their pillows and doonas, until we realised that they meant geese and ducks

Best quote: [Pedro's father Eduardo, in a strong Portuguese accent, after being told that smoking was being banned in public places in Australia] "But that is dictatorship!! I will never go there!"

Most random communication experience: Using our German skills with the car mechanic in Santiago and with locals in Vietnam

Most useful language: French (essential in France and Morocco, helped in Spain and Portugal)

Hardest place to communicate: Spain (they speak no English, no French, no German; just Spanish)

Best book read: Nicholas Nickelby, by Charles Dickens

Worst experience: Getting our car fixed/packing up the tent in the pouring rain

Second-worst experience: Being climbed on by a monkey (Tova)

Funniest experience: Tova being climbed on by a monkey (Josh)

Best experience: Being able to travel for 3 1/2 months!

Loved: Catching up with overseas friends and family

Best church: Westminster Abbey

Best Arab fortress: Sintra

Most walking in one day: Paris

Worst stomach difficulties: Morocco

Best R&R: Granada

Most amazing person we met: Elodie (the 8-year old who complained the least out of all the people on our journey into the Sahara)

Best campsite: Barcelona (Tova), Loire Valley (Josh)

Hottest place: Morocco

Coldest place: Paris

Sweatiest place: Vietnam

Best weather: Lisbon

Most romantic place: Château de Chambord

Worst airline experience (so far): Waiting for 3 1/2 hours in Casablanca for our flight to depart to London

Best food: Tapas (Josh), Parisian onion soup (Tova)

Cheapest country: Vietnam

Most expensive place: London/Paris/Vienna

Biggest surprise of the trip: Tova becoming a fully-fledged fish eater!

Thanks for coming along on the journey with us. For those of you living in Sydney, we'll see you soon... and for those of you who live elsewhere, for now:

Auf wiedersehn/ Sziasztok/ Au revoir/ Adéu/ Adiós/ Agur/ Até a vista/ M'assalama/ Gha-tamgraout/ Goodbye/ Tam biêt!

Love Josh and Tova x

Ha Long Bay

The last days of our trip were, appropriately, spent taking in some of the most beautiful scenery we have seen so far. The story goes that in order to prevent the Chinese from invading Northern Vietnam, a dragon descended from heaven and spat out zeroes, which became the small rocky islands that dot this gorgeous bay.

The painful (and life-threatening) three hour drive to Ha Long Bay ended up at one of the busiest docks I've ever been to. Dozens of tourists milled around waiting to be told what to do, whilst tour guides took our passports, gave us entry tickets, gave us back our passports, then took back our entry tickets. It was very confusing. But it all calmed down once we departed onto the tranquil waters of the Bay.

Apart from visiting some (very average) limestone caves, we spent most of the trip sunning ourselves on the deck, as we watched the beautiful islands go by. Josh also got very adventurous and went kayaking and swimming in the stunning blue-green water. It was an extremely relaxing way to end our 3.5 month trip - especially considering all the hard work that's ahead of us!

Tova's Paradise

Since we have managed to take refuge from the torrential rain (see above!) in an internet cafe, I thought this would be the perfect opportunity to write about the town we have been staying in, Hoi An.

[Insert 3-hour power failure here. Now to continue...]

Apart from its amazing food, Hoi An is best known for its tailors. It seems that there are more tailor shops here than all of the other shops put together. Tailors here are said to be able to whip anything up for you within a few hours, from a t-shirt to a business suit. And one is truly spoilt for choice - there are so many fabrics and designs here, that after a while it all blurs together and your head begins to hurt.

Anyway, we decided to test the theory and get a couple of things made... and the results have been amazing! Depending on which shop you go to (of course), the staff are highly professional and the workmanship is excellent. Where changes have been necessary, they have been made so that everything fits perfectly.

I recommend it to anyone travelling in this part of the world.

The Final Food Post (I Promise)

This blog would not be complete without a description of the delicious food you've all come to know and love. Today we did a fantastic Vietnamese cooking class in beautiful Hoi An, where we got to participate in making our own lunch. We had an awesome time making and then eating local Vietnamese specialties.

When we arrived at the restaurant all the ingredients were laid out and the chef explained all the different vegetables, herbs and spices we were going to cook with. We then made four different dishes, which we'd chosen ourselves from their extensive menu. First up were the fresh vegetable spring rolls, which we were able to roll ourselves.

Next was the classic Vietnamese dish that Josh and I are obsessed with in Sydney, Pho Bo (beef noodle soup). This was followed by the Hoi An specialty, Cao Lau, which is an incredibly tasty noodle dish that apparently can only be properly made using the water found in a particular well in Hoi An. We finished up with stir-fried vegetables, because we just had to know how they made such a boring-sounding dish so delicious.

These were all totally amazing and we took lots of notes, so you all have some excellent Vietnamese-themed dinner parties to look forward to in the future!

The Propaganda Machine

Yesterday, after stepping off our train from Sapa at 4.30 am, we spent the morning at a massive complex dedicated to Ho Chi Minh (the leader of the Vietnamese socialist revolution). And it was quite an experience!

After waiting in a queue about 300 m long together with Vietnamese people on their national pilgrimage, we entered the complex and checked our bags and valuables so that we could enter the mausoleum housing Ho Chi Minh's embalmed body. We then lined up in another fast-moving queue and entered the air-conditioned concrete box-building that was the focus of the entire trip. In the central room was a glass sarcophagus, very dimly lit, containing Ho Chi Minh's body. The sarcophagus was guarded by 4 soldiers (one at each corner) and behind it was a star (the symbol in the middle of the Vietnamese flag) and a hammer and sickle emblazoned onto the wall. As the queue was moved along pretty quickly by other guards, we were out again before we knew it. I observed a group of older soldiers who had also just emerged, talking animatedly and obviously very excited by what they'd just seen.

We spent the rest of the morning looking at Ho Chi Minh's "House on Stilts", a simple house where he is said to have lived and worked as leader of the nation before he died, and a large and well-presented museum extolling the revolution and the "exemplary morals" of its leader with a massive statue and various multimedia displays.

So despite Vietnam's move to a market economy, the country remains communist in name (somewhat like China) and communist symbolism can be found without looking too hard. Like this shop we saw in the street where our hotel is, unashamedly selling "Propaganda Art"! And the English-language Vietnamese paper I read this morning on the plane from Hanoi to Danang (yes, we ditched the 16-hour train ride for a 55-minute flight!) was also an eye-opening experience, full of congratulations to the Prime Minister for being re-elected last month as well as news on the various mutual cooperation and peace initiatives the government is pursuing with its neighbours.

A curious mix of capitalism practicality and communist ideology is the result of all of this and one can only wonder where it will all end up!

Trekking with the Hill Tribes

We have spent the past two days based in Sapa near the Chinese border, trekking in the mountains with the hill tribes. And when I say trekking, I mean it! Today, we walked about 14 kilometres in really rough terrain, descending from the mountaintops into the valley below. (Yesterday we only did 8 km). Sometimes the track was mud, sometimes rocks and sometimes a creek/river bed. (After several years, my Tevas have finally come in handy!)

The countryside here is truly spectacular with mountain peaks devolving into sculpted hills of terraced rice paddies, amongst which the people live in their small villages. And you can't get much more rural than this: the people here live amongst pigs, water buffalo, chickens and ducks and subsist off the land and from money that tourists bring in.

In fact, tourism seems so important here that without it, the poverty people live in would become absolutely abject. On our trek yesterday, one of the Red Dzao village women asked us what it cost to fly from Europe to Vietnam - when we told her and after her initial amazement subsided, she told us that such an amount of money would be enough to eat for several years here.

On the other hand, the hill tribes seem quite happy with their lot and enjoy interacting with tourists. Yesterday we were amazed to observe one of the hill tribe women translating from Vietnamese into English for a Vietnamese person trying to speak to one of the people in our group! Today we were helped down the mountain by a group of H'mong hill tribe women (help which was needed, given the incline and the muddy state of the track we were walking on!) who we chatted to along the way about our families, names and ages. And once we got to their village, they had some local crafts to sell us for a small sum.

But possibly one of the strangest things we have experienced here is observing the use of modern technology in these remote areas. Yesterday, we saw village houses with satellite dishes mounted on their roofs... and today, we were amazed to observe that there is mobile phone reception out here!

We Are Totally Taking First Class Back!

While some people are travelling in the lap of luxury through Europe (and complaining about it), others (i.e. ME) have braved the perils of the Vietnamese rail system and lived to tell the tale. We dragged ourselves out of bed at the ungodly hour of 5.10am in order to catch the train to Lao Cai, a town on the Chinese border and an hour away from Sapa, our ultimate destination.

We spent a number of hours yesterday dealing with Hanoi train station. After standing in line for ages due to the Vietnamese habit of pushing in and being sent to various different other queues and rooms, we were finally told that tickets to our destination would not be sold until a few hours from that time. When we finally got our tickets, the only seats left were 'hard seats', which is basically fourth class. Although strongly advised against taking such seats by our beloved guide book, we had to get going, so we took the plunge...

... And I think I can safely say that this was one of the worst trains in the entire world. I wish I had taken a picture of the outside of the train, but it seems that at the time I was too horrified. Let's just say it looked like it was about to fall apart. The inside was not much better (see photo), with hard wooden benches. The only saving grace were the fans that were bolted to the ceiling at regular intervals. This uncomfortable and extremely sweaty journey lasted from 6.10 in the morning until 5.00 in the evening. And with eleven hours travel time you'd think we'd have gotten quite far. But that would be too easy - this dreaded day trip managed to get us only 340km from our place of departure!!

Despite the pain, the trip had some great scenery (as usual) and was not without it's amusing incidents (the type of amusing where you either have to laugh or cry). Most of this was caused by the fact that Vietnamese people do not seem to have any concept of personal space. The people on the opposite bench started the journey by sticking their smelly bare feet on the very limited space on our seat. Although they didn't speak English, I'm pretty sure they then asked me if I was 2 months pregnant (the chunky-moneybelt-under-dress effect) and consequent to this belief started buying strange food from the train vendors and giving it to me. They also laughed at how hairy Josh's legs and face were (rubbing and touching them), told us we both needed haircuts and, I believe, recommended a haircare product in a magazine they were reading.

By the end of the trip we were all hot, tired and grumpy. The weirdness of it all was capped off when one of the women on the train scurried over to us, took our bag of rubbish from under our seat, tore it open, took out some empty bottles and bread that we didn't eat, then hurled the (plastic) bag out of the train window and scurried away again. The tension was thick in the air as all the people around us saw Josh and I look at each other in disbelief, then as we started laughing hysterically, so did everyone else!