November 27, 2004 - new phone number for Vietnam

Well hello to all and a Happy belated Thanksgiving to those that celebrate! We come to you tonight from Dong Hoi, Vietnam where we came to see the Phong Nha caves but were thwarted by the rain which has flooded the entrance to the cave! Oh well.....

We have a new cell phone number if you need to reach us. I don't have the country code at my finger tips but our number is 0904458530. I think if you were calling you might have to drop the first zero but you could try either way.

When I last blogged we were in Kunming and we have been many places since then...so let me do a quick update and then I can try to get some details on here if I have time...

So I last wrote on Nov. 17 I think. On the 18th we took the bus to Jianshui...according to the book a quaint little town in southern Yunnan with some great old architecture! Well let me tell you I think the guidebook is a bit out of date - quaint this place wasn't! More later...so from there we headed to the boarder town of Hekou, spent the night there and crossed into Vietnam the next morning (Nov. 21). From there we hopped a train to Hanoi where we spent a couple of days. We then splurged on a boat trip in Halong Bay - an overnight stay on a junk was great. Back to Hanoi in the evening of 11/25 and then the overnight train to here last night. We hope to move on tomorrow but the train is having some issues due to flooding as well so we will see what the morning brings.

So some details of these trips.....

So our bus ride to Jianshui was pretty uneventful...one of the nicest busses we have been on - plenty of leg room etc. We pulled into town and I had to check the guide book again to make sure we were in the right spot....it was not the pretty ancient town that I had imagined...in fact it was a pretty dirty busy place....we searched in vain for a decent place to stay and settled in at the Garden Hotel (not!) but felt better as it cost less than $10 a night. While searching for a hotel we did manage to see most of the town and did not see any amazing architecture about...maybe the writer was in a different town.....they did have great yogurt in a bottle! We had a bunch of those...we had tried these first in Beijing and then again in Dali and they were great! and a little store near our Garden spot sold them so that was something good! We also found a small dumpling place along one of the main streets - they had awsome dumplings - something that we had not had for a while - and they were cheap! See such little things can keep us happy! Unfortunately for Tom the first night we were there he munched on some sausage that we had bought in Kunming and I think perhaps it needed to be cooked as it did not agree with him and wiped him out a bit the next day! We did get a walk around the town and found some redeeming qualities in the back alleys of this town away from the bus and truck traffic. The children were delightful - I don't think that they were used to a lot of westerners - especially ones walking around the back areas of town. We took some photos of them and then showed them to them on the screen - they thought this was great and laughed and shrieked when their images appeared. As we had not been enamored here we decided to forego a rather off the track side trip to see some rice terraces and make for the boarder with Vietnam instead. So I went off to the bus station to get tickets - which I did successfully - and then stopped in the local market which was fun - I got resupplied for our trip the next day and headed back to the hotel. So buyer of Lonely Planet beware...while Jianshui does have some redeeming qualities we would not put it high on our list of places to go...at least for a few years - it did look like they were trying to spruce things up a bit but the work was still in process here!

Our bus the next day was at 7:30am so we were up early and got to the bus station with plenty of time. This time we were on a local bus - not the big express busses....we looked at each other and said - are you game....the drivers looked about 18.....hmmm what to do....well we hopped aboard. While there is an expressway from Jianshui to the boarder this bus did not take it! What an experience but that being said we did see some beautiful scenery on the way. For part of the way a young student was on the bus with us and Tom chatted to him for a while. He was very nice. There were only a few of us that were going the full distance and as we trundled along people got on and off the bus...there were times where the whole thing was full of hugs bags of rice, people and among other things, chickens, puppies, caged birds....quite a menagerie! Everyone was pretty nice. We took a break about half way through our 8 hour + ride. This is where the student got off - he was excited to see his family. We grabbed some lunch at a local place at the station and then we were on our way again. Up to this point we had been traveling in an area of high plateau. We had been interested to see some green house techniques being used in the farming - it was a very fertile growing area. After lunch we climbed into the hills and through a pass - as we went through the pass, everything changed - it got warmer and the plants changed - We started to see palm trees, pawpaw trees, lots of sugar cane and much more tropicl plants than we had seen just moments before...it was quite something to see this radical a chance in a short distance. From here it was all literally down hill to Hekou. Our drivers got a bit nervous at one point pulling off the road to check the breaks. I was a bit worried as there was no guardrail on the road and not much else stopping us from tumbling off the hillside! We pulled into an area where there was a shack and we were able to cool the break pads with water. After a bit they seemed satisfied to move on and we made it safely down from here. Ocassionally, a local woman got on the bus in very colorful clothing - this area is home to some minority people and the clothes are really beautiful.

Oh - I need to go....and I have only just started some of these tails.....hmm. If we get stranded by the train tomorrow I will try to keep going but dinner calls at the moment.

Hugs to you all.

Pam