I don’t really know whether to call this place Ho Chi Minh City or Saigon. We were told by a taxi driver in Danang (near Hoi An) that as foreigners we should say Ho Chi Minh City. At the hotel we stayed in they said that we could say either but that locals prefer the word Saigon. Apparently in the past, Saigon only referred to the central district of the city and Ho Chi Minh City referred to the city in its entirety – but I’m not sure that’s right either. I reckon I might just call it “here” or “the city” for now…

We arrived here at around five in the morning and watched and listened as the city woke up. It woke up a lot quicker than I did. I’m pretty sure the sky changed from dark to light when I blinked. Very soon after that we heard a few motorbikes beeping manically as they made their way down the roads. People everywhere seemed to hear their call and before we knew it the place was humming – or buzzing might be a better word – try screaming, screeching, beeping and shouting – use all of the above and you’ll get the idea. It was too much for me – I had to go back to sleep.

Yesterday we went to the War Remnants Museum. It was sad and shameful to say the least. I’m sure there have been atrocities in every war and that it’s all been going on for a long long time now but that doesn’t excuse anything – it just makes it worse.

Our visit to the museum left me with a lot of big thoughts and wonderings but maybe it’s better to just describe what we saw there. We saw lots of journalists’ photos of the war and read about how the photographers died taking them. We read about agent orange and saw photos of its effects on the landscape, the victims and the victims’ children. We read about how the American soldiers who dropped the agent orange also suffered and have since received compensation from their government. Strangely, no compensation has been offered to the actual victims (something was ringing in the back of my mind about chemical warfare and the “axis of evil”). We read about various killing and torturing rampages that occurred during the war – one of which was led by a former senator of the United States when he was younger. We saw many different types of land mines and grenades, read about how they worked, what they were designed to do and how they were just left all over the place to be found by innocent farmers, now rendered crippled or worse. It all got a bit much for me so I went outside and sat down in the courtyard where I watched as tourists from all around the world had their photos taken in front of great big machines of war – tanks, helicopters, bombers and fighters. The whole experience left me feeling very sad.

After visiting the museum we didn’t really feel like doing too much else so we’ve just been taking it easy since then. It’s a bit of a shame to be finishing our time in Vietnam on a dark and sad note like this. We’ve had a really great time in Vietnam – it’s hard (for me as a tourist at least) to reconcile its tragic recent past with the little that we’ve seen of the country and the people that live here. I guess that’s encouraging.

We’d been looking forward to getting to Hoi An for a while now. We figured it would make for a great place to hang out for a week or so, relax and not do much else.

When we first arrived I was wondering if maybe we were wrong – we couldn’t take two steps without being hassled to buy something, eat something or take a ride somewhere. It’s over a week later now and I’m going to be sad to go. We’ve done and seen a lot in the week that we’ve been here – a lot more than we intended to – but somehow it’s all been very relaxing at the same time. These days we stop and have a chat with pretty much everyone who’s trying to sell us something. It’s not really a chat I guess – we only know how to say a few things like no thanks and good luck – but even that’s enough to turn the odd frown upside down.

We’ve filled a lot of our time with activities – a bike tour, a cooking course, a home visit and tour of a nearby village, a few bike rides to the beach, a concert, and some visits to a few of the heritage buildings in town. We filled in the gaps with eating, more eating, reading, the odd arvo nap and laying around on the beach.

I’ve been really impressed with some of the ingenious contraptions in Vietnam but in Hoi An we got to see quite a few of them up close and in action. Fish traps and nets, bird traps, ice making machines, weaving looms, boats, rice huskers and more. Probably the most impressive thing for me was to see the round boats in action. These boats are like round bowls with a diameter of six or seven foot. Someone stands at the front with a single oar that they seem to stir around in front of them to make the boat go forwards. It really seems as though it shouldn’t work but somehow it does. I wouldn’t get in one myself but these guys seem to manage even in the surf – sometimes with five or six passengers.

We’ve had some great food here. The giant prawns were pretty amazing. A more interesting meal was made up of tiny shellfish that are scooped up off the bottom of the river (by fisherman making strange but groovy reggae dancing motions). The shellfish are boiled up, the meat is collected and then it’s mixed with garlic, onion, herbs, spices and peanuts. You eat the mixture using deep fried rice paper chips as scoops – might sound a bit odd but it was really good eating. Another amazing meal we consisted of a table full of assorted vegetables, meat skewers, rice pancakes, herbs, sauces and spring rolls that we’d roll up in a couple of sheets of rice paper to make a giant spring roll – about an inch thick and six inches long. We had a few too many of those. It couldn’t be helped.

On our last night in Ninh Binh we were wondering how we’d get to Hue. We didn’t want to get a night bus because they’re impossible to sleep in (for me at least) and also we wanted to be able to see the countryside roll past the window. We hadn’t booked anything because all of the tourist buses travel at night and people were saying we’d be a bit mad to catch a local bus.

“No problem” they said at the hotel. “We’ll walk you up to the main road and when we see a bus bound for Saigon that we like the look of we’ll just stick out our hand. It’s the Vietnam way.”

We ended up spending 15 hours on a very crammed bright pink bus. We were a bit nervous when we got on but it turned out being an enjoyable, if not entirely comfortable journey. We got to see a lot of Vietnamese life and met some pretty interesting characters along the way. We stopped twice for food and drinks and many many times to pick up people and packages from the side of the road. There were times when the driving crew made us a bit nervous – and not just because of their driving or use of the horn – but when we said our goodbyes in Hue everyone was full of goodwill and smiles.

Hue has been fascinating. We’ve seen a lot in the few days that we’ve been here. We’ve had plenty of time to relax – especially in the early evening when you can’t do much except watch the storms – but we’ve also taken a lot in.

Hue is very close to the demilitarised zone – basically the geographical “border” between North and South Vietnam that was set up before the Vietnam-American war. It was also where the royal family lived for most of the time Vietnam was occupied by France. All of this made the place very interesting indeed.

One of the most interesting things for me was when we visited the Thien Mu Pagoda and I saw the photo from the cover of Bullet in the head, an album from the band Rage Against the Machine. I was never into the album or the band but I remember the cover. I can even vaguely remember someone telling me what it was about. In 1963, a Buddhist monk named Thich Quang Duc drove his Austin motorcar from the Thien Mu Pagoda in Hue (where he was studying) to Saigon. He got out of the car and in front of a crowd of monks and spectators he set himself on fire as a protest against the way the government was treating monks. This action was broadcast on television in America and played a part in influencing peoples’ perception of what was really happening in Vietnam. I’m pretty horrified by what he did and I certainly wouldn’t want to be accused of glorifying it but I’m sure they were very desperate times. I see it as yet another example of just how tragic the war was for everyone. In any case, seeing the car there with the famous photo behind it certainly left an impression on me.

I’ve been really enjoying our bicycle rides – well mostly anyway. I’m not about to rush out and buy a pair of lycra pants – even though I’m told they make all the difference – but I really enjoy getting out, doing some exercise and seeing the sights all at the same time.

We got caught out in the rain on one of our rides the other day. I call it rain for want of a better word – I’m not even sure downpour cuts it. By the time I got my poncho on there wasn’t really much point to it anymore – I was already soaked. Each drop of water stung a little and the sound of them hitting the hood of the poncho was deafening. I discovered that the waterproofness of my shoes works better from the inside – they were full of water that wasn’t going anywhere. After the intense heat of the day, the rain did cool us down somewhat – and maybe made us go a bit silly… It was all kind of exhilarating in fact.

Riding through the rain forest at Cuc Phuong National Park made me jealous of people who were on motorbikes. It was so hot and steamy. By the time we got to the centre of the park (about 20 kilometers), I was almost as wet as I was after our ride in the rain – quite a bit smellier too no doubt.

We stayed in the centre of the park that night and the next afternoon we rode back. I was looking forward to the ride back on account of it being mostly downhill. After about six or seven kilometers though, my bike fell apart – the back gear changer was completely mangled. There was no way I could get it back to a working condition but I did manage to bend it enough so that the back wheel could turn pretty freely. Susan rode on ahead to try and get some help from the park headquarters (where we’d hired the bikes) leaving me to a 13 kilometer walk with the bike.

After a couple of kilometers of walking it dawned on me that I was being downright stupid. I still had wheels and the way home was mostly downhill. Why didn’t I just roll? It might even be fun. I was a bit worried that the chain might somehow get snagged and throw me off the bike so I pulled it out of the way, secured it with a safety pin, and off I went. After 5 kilometers of mostly rolling, a park ranger turned up on his motorbike and gave me a push whenever there was an uphill stretch. The whole thing turned out to be a good bit of fun.

We interspersed our various bike rides and explorations with some lovely moments of relaxation. After one of our rides, we wandered down to the river in Ninh Binh where people who had just finished work were sitting around in street stalls drinking ice cold Bia Hoi – basically cheap but tasty home brew. A group of four men called us over to sit and relax with them. Their English language was pretty minimal but there were plenty of smiles and friendly vibes. Most evenings we went to a restaurant called Thao Son Quan where we ate some really nice food, drank a glass or two of mulled local rice wine and chatted with Nils about life in Vietnam. The hotel we stayed (Ngoc Anh Hotel) was great as well – every time we walked in we were greeted with big smiles and cheers, an enthusiastic thumbs up, and fresh fruit. Nice.

Hanoi feels different from the big cities we visited in China. There are some fairly obvious differences – like the lack of Chinese characters, and the people for that matter – but then there are the more subtle differences. The buildings are more varied – both in colour and style. There are a lot of trees – it’s great to be in such a green city. The most pleasant difference for me is that the city seems a lot more laid back than anywhere we visited in China. Hanoi is jam packed with people, bicycles and motorbikes but somehow it still seems pretty relaxed.

The other day we found a really nice second hand bookshop. The books weren’t in any order – well not alphabetical order at least – but Susan managed to spot a copy of Moby Dick for me. I’ve been keeping half an eye out for it because I read that it was John Steinbeck’s favourite book. I’m not particularly excited about reading a book about whaling to be honest but I figure there must be something in it if it’s Mr Steinbeck’s favourite. Also, I’ve been flying through books lately and this is likely to slow me down a bit.

The overhead wires here really are something else. What a jumbled up mess. I saw a group of electricians working the other day and I couldn’t begin to imagine how they even start a job. I wonder if maybe they just keep adding new cable whenever there’s a problem.

I’m going bald. There’s no point in denying it. I went and got my hair cut last night – short because of the intense heat (or rather the humidity). I haven’t had my hair this short for a very long time. I’m very obviously getting a little “thin on top”. Ah well…

It’s hard not to feel guilty when we catch a ride in a cyclo (a three wheeled bicycle with a seat in front). I know that the people who ride these bikes depend on it for a living and I know that they’re probably especially happy to transport tourists like me (for the higher price of course). But when they’re struggling to peddle me up a hill I kind of want to jump out and give them a push – of course if I did jump out it would probably be straight into a passing motorcycle. When I look behind me at the rider though, he’s just smiling and pushing along – he must be super fit. I’ve settled for not haggling too ferociously when we’re agreeing on a price.

The coffee here is absolutely fantastic! Pretty much every cup I’ve had has been different in style but it’s always been very good. The bread’s good too. Oh, and the fruit juice. And the food in general.

Yesterday, Susan and I were out cycling along a picturesque river towards a 400 year old bridge. It was lovely. We were cycling just fast enough so as to create a bit of a breeze but not so fast as to be wasting energy and causing a sweat. The landscape was beautiful with all those broken teeth karst mountains dotting the scenery. We didn’t see any need to hurry.

For some reason or another I happened to look at my watch – not for the time but the day. I noticed it was Monday which made me smile. I hadn’t had that mild dread the night before and I hadn’t deliberately started the day with low expectations so that I wouldn’t be too upset or surprised when my day went badly (you might get the impression that I don’t normally like Mondays and you’d be right). Come to think of it, I haven’t dreaded a Monday for almost five months now. All of this left me feeling pretty happy with myself – I felt like I was on holidays again.

I know that I might be coming across a bit smug and I’m sorry for that. The truth is I don’t feel smug at all – more relieved than anything. In the last few weeks all of this traveling malarkey has been feeling a bit too much like hard work. I know that people who actually are working right now might find that a bit hard to take – I’m whining and I know it. The reality is that Susan and I have been getting sick quite a lot lately. It seems like pretty much every day has been devoted to just trying to look after ourselves. We’ve been finding it hard to gather the energy to pack and then lug our bags around and we’re certainly sick of having to sort out train and bus tickets in China. It’s been a bit difficult at times and we’ve been starting to ask ourselves what we’re doing…

Staying put in Yangshuo for a week has sorted all of that out for us. We’re feeling healthy again for starters. But for me, the moment came when I realised it was a Monday and I was on the bike, in beautiful countryside, far far away from the office where I would normally be spending my weekdays. For Susan, I think it was a succession of fibrous breakfasts that did the trick.

We’ve stayed here longer than we intended. It’s been great to be in the one place for a while. It’s been great that everything’s been so easy here. It’s great not being sick. And most of all it’s been great to get out into the quiet countryside and feel like we’re on holidays again.

So we had a plan. We were going to take an 8 hour bus ride to the Yuanyang rice terraces, hang out there for a while and then take some back road buses on into the Xishuanbanna region in the south of the Yunnan province. It sounded easy enough and it had the potential to be real interesting.

When we woke up on the morning of departure feeling a bit sick we wondered if we should still go ahead with it. We reasoned that surely nothing could be much easier than sitting on a bus. We like sitting on a bus and looking out the window – it’d be a great way to relax and get over our head colds.

Oh how wrong we were! Our 8 hour bus ride lasted for more like 12 hours. It was full of smokers but there were only 4 windows – two at the front of the bus to blow the smoke towards us and two at the back to let the exhaust in. Lucky for us, the bus driver took it upon himself to keep us entertained with some classic Chinese pop music turned up just loud enough for the bus speakers to not quite cope. All of this helped our headaches no end – as you can probably imagine. On top of all this, it was a bumpy ride with plenty of swerves and a whole lot of horn. We did eventually arrive but with compounded head colds and a pretty serious case of road sickness. I can’t remember the last time I’ve felt that sick and wiped out.

It wasn’t all bad – well it certainly could have been worse. When we arrived Susan did some fairly swift negotiating and managed to get us into a nice clean hotel a little out of town with a really nice view of a rice terrace – right from our window. It was a great place to recover – well apart from the food that is… We got a chance to have a good look around the villages and rice terraces in the Yuanyang area without really having to do all that much and so we recovered nicely.

We decided that more bumpy bus rides would probably be pushing our luck so we’ve come back to Kunming for a few days instead. More time to take it easy for a while…

I got a bit of a shock as we were walking out of the train station after just arriving in Chengdu. I saw a queue for taxis! I was just starting to wonder if somehow we’d managed to find ourselves in a different country when I spotted someone walk around the queue, carefully avoiding peoples’ gazes, and climb into a taxi three cars back. Phew… we’re in the right place at after all…

It still seems strange to me to be coming to a city to relax. Usually we’re trying to get away from the cities. Chengdu seems fairly laid back though and after having spent the last 10 days in small towns it’s been nice to have a bit more convenience.

The other day we were wandering around the park just near our hotel. It’s a bustling, noisy park – but very interesting for that. There was music screeching from speaker systems everywhere, people shouting, the odd horn blowing and always, no matter how loud everything else was, there was the background noise of crickets. We ended up heading for a comparatively tranquil tea house to do a spot of people watching and it was there that we met Mr Tray Lee.

It was refreshing to chat with Mr Lee over a glass of tea. We had a fairly open discussion about China. This was the first time I’ve had a chat here with someone from China that didn’t start and pretty much finish with “China is so great isn’t it”. Mr Lee had some interesting ideas and it was interesting to hear them. Not only that but he offered to arrange a cooking course for us.

I’ve been wanting to learn a little about Chinese cooking ever since we got here – certainly since I ate my first eggplant dish – so we decided to go for it. The next day Mr Lee met up with us and took us to a restaurant kitchen and we each had a go at making some dishes. We made qiezi (spicy eggplant), gong bao ji ding (chicken with chilli and peanuts) and ma po dou fu (spicy tofu). I was amazed at how quickly the dishes are made. Unfortunately it requires the use of a really high powered jet flame to get the wok really hot really quickly but hopefully we’ll be able to approximate the dishes once we get home. In any case it made for a fun afternoon.

Susan taught me some new Chinese vocabulary a little while back. I knew how to say goodbye already but I wanted to be able to say the equivalent of seeya later, cheerio, ta ta, all the best, mind the trams, toodaloo, tschuss, take it easy and so on.

In China they say “man zo”. Chinese is a tonal language. You say the “man” bit almost normally except that you bend it down a bit. The “zo” bit you stretch out some – you bend it right down low pretty quickly and then you bend it back up nice and slow. “Man zo” means “go slow”.

Man zo. Go slow. I like that a lot.

I’ve been saying “man zo” to people at pretty much every available opportunity. I admit that it may be starting to wear a bit thin but I’m going to persevere with it in the hope that one day it might take effect. It doesn’t seem to make too much of a difference just yet – everyone’s still rushing about frantically – but you never know… In any case it usually gets a smile at least.

Not being able to go to Xiahe meant that we had to “go slow” a bit. Instead of getting a direct bus from Lanzhou to Xiahe and basing ourselves there we had to take local buses from one valley town to the next. These buses were often slow and bumpy but they afforded us some very impressive views of the countryside and gave us a chance to see some of the rural life in this part of the country.

One of the reasons the buses were slow was because of the traffic. We’re not talking about a regular traffic jam here though. The roads were mostly full of a mix of cycles (some with 2 wheels some with 3, some with umbrellas some without, some with 1 person some with 2 or 3), innovative tractors of all types, motorbikes, people, people hidden under bundles, livestock and carts of various types. In some stretches of road people were also threshing their wheat (at least I think that’s what it’s called). Wheat was laid out on the road and being raked and dried and beaten and swept and gathered etc. I guess the road provides a good, hard, hot surface for this kind of work. As vehicles approached, they’d beep their horns so that the people doing the work could get out of the way and then they’d just drive straight over – maybe that’s just part of the process.

We managed to watch a bit of TV in some of the towns we visited. We have a favourite show. You don’t really need to understand any Chinese to watch it. People try (and mostly fail) to make their way over an obstacle course. It’s strangely mesmerising especially after a tiring and hot day – and it made for a nice change from the rose tinted Chinese news broadcasts and strange period dramas on the other channels (this was before the Olympics started).

It’s a shame that we haven’t been able to see everything we wanted to. I can’t really see how restrictions like this are going to help China but hey what would I know… In any case we’ve been having a really interesting time – it’s not all been easy but it’s certainly been interesting.

Note: We’ve bought a relatively cheap voice recorder (dictaphone) to tide us over now that we’ve lost our field recorder. It’s better than nothing.

I’ve been finding it hard to be enthusiastic about things over the last while. My camera and audio recorder were stolen from my bag a few days ago. I still don’t know how they managed it. I checked my bag when we left the train station and when I checked it again 10 minutes later the bag was open and my camera and microphone were gone.

I’m usually extremely careful with my bag and my gear. To be fair though, I was a little distracted that day. I was throwing something between a big huff and a small tanty on account of the heat, the noise and the endless games of frogger we have to play every time we cross a road. On top of that we’d just queued (I use the term loosely) twice in a massive, noisy, pushy and selfish throng at the train station only to find out that we couldn’t actually book a ticket anyway.

Over the next day or so I threw a few fairly major tanties I’m afraid to say – there was nothing huff about them. I didn’t really want to do much anymore – mostly I just stayed in our fairly peaceful hostel and tried to relax (i.e. sulked).

Susan, who was pretty upset about it too, was very patient with me. Eventually she talked me into getting out of Xian and going to a small town and a village a few hours away. That was really nice. People were so much more friendly there and we ended up having a really nice time.

I can be a bit more philosophical about things now. I know that it’s really not a big deal. Many people lose so much more and for much worse reasons. Many more people never even have a chance to own such things in the first place. But still…

I think whoever stole my camera might be a little disappointed. I’m not sure it’s worth very much. It’s over four years old and it was never a top of the range model. I really liked it though – it gave me a little more control than most “point and shoot” cameras and it always did what it was told. Anyway, it’s gone now and luckily we have a second camera that we can use – so it’s not too big a deal I guess.

Losing the audio recorder is what upsets me the most. I was really getting a kick out of recording the sounds throughout our travels. I take a lot of notice of the sounds around me most of the time but my memory of them is really poor (I think maybe it is for most people – don’t know). To hear some of those sounds back again is a real treat – it can put me back in a place much better than a photo can. Maybe I’m being a bit of a prat but I don’t reckon that whoever stole the device will get as much enjoyment out of it as I did.

I was cheered up a lot in a temple in Hancheng. We met a group of school kids there – they kind of swarmed in on us. Their teacher told us (told Susan actually – he didn’t speak English) that they don’t get to see foreigners much and so he asked if we’d be in a photo with them. To get everyone ready to smile he said “Yi, Er, San, Qiezi”. I didn’t even need Susan to translate that one for me. I kind of guessed the “one, two, three” bit and “Qiezi” I know very well already because it’s one of my favourite dishes. It’s eggplant! They do absolutely amazing things with eggplant here – we have an eggplant dish pretty much every day. “One, two, three, eggplant!” – kind of strange huh.

“Qiezi” is pronounced something close to “Chi-etz-a”. If you say “qiezi” out loud, your lips will make a pretty similar shape to what they would if you said “cheese”. This came as something of a revelation to me. Perhaps I shouldn’t admit this but I kind of assumed that we say cheese for a photo because something about cheese makes us smile – maybe it’s the memory of Tom and Jerry cartoons or something about cheese being yellow and kind of soft but not too soft and sometimes with holes – I don’t know. I’d never stopped to think about the mouth shape before. It seems obvious now I guess.

I wonder what people say for photos in other languages?