Saigon for Christmas, Welcome to Viet Nom!

One of the harsh realities of travel is that places change and quite often it's not for the best, at least not for us.

We were in Saigon two and a half years ago and whilst we were only staying 100 meters from one of the city's main attractions - Ben Thanh Market - we were still able to find a cheap beer in a dingy dive bar and an even cheaper soup close by. However unfortunately for us (but fortunately for the polo/loafer types) that dive bar now has a sign, a menu in English, staff wearing uniforms and it's now normal for foreigners to stop and eat there whereas before we got looks of check out those guys, they're out there!

Those tiny centers of sanitation that previously existed have now expanded and connected and the centre is now clean enough for the people that thought it was too grimy before and not dirty enough for the people who once loved it for what is was.

Our first 24 hours was spent revisiting some old favourites from last time around:

Banh Xeo

The Lunch Lady

Duck Congee

It was at that point that we realised that maybe we'd changed a bit too and would have to push outside of what we knew and loved from last time.

In amongst the following little beauties we also accumulated a couple of good food related anecdotes.

Goi Du Du

Banh Beo

Banh Da Xuc Hen

Bun Bo Hue

Our Christmas lunch of half a suckling pig and some pumpkin flowers cooked in a veggie patch full of garlic also included a plate of conical shelled snails served in a coconut and lemongrass sauce. 

We spent the first half of the plate trying to work out which end to suck the snails from and then when we'd finally worked that out, spent the next half trying to get over the trail of stringy snail slime that pulled out of the shell like melted cheese on pizza. Mmmm, yum yum....

We searched far and wide for deep fried Elephant Ear Fish with rice paper rolls in Chau Doc only to receive strange looks and laughs. We'd even downloaded a photo to our phone and were marching in between restaurants pointing to it maybe just a bit too exuberantly. We finally found it in Saigon and would've been pleased enough with the dish but this was dinner and a show.

Our waitress took it upon herself to individually create and wrap each roll for us until it got to a point where it was just plain uncomfortable but then took great pleasure in ripping the head off the fish and placing it in the empty Saigon Export vase. Home decorators take note. Not only does it look great but it keeps the house smelling fresh and fishy.

And having spoken about it for far too long, after a couple of beers I determined it was time to have Hot Vin Lon - the semi developed duck foetus that is so highly prized in this part of the world. We sat down and I ordered through Nicola trying to say, "You just get one and I'll have a little bit". Wrong. Nice try but we're in this together.

It wasn't really that weird to be honest. You break a small hole in the top and suck out the eggy broth, break away some more of the shell and eat the yolk (which consumes most of the space within the shell) and then nibble on your tiny duck foetus - the minuscule rubbery breast and crunchy skull remind you of what you're eating. We've worked out that next time we need to have older Hot Vit Lon as there wasn't enough foetus about our duck foetus. Job half done.

Other highlights were the banging Christmas Eve party that that our hotel put on.

Heading back to our first beer stop in Saigon from last time - the opulent Rex Hotel - and aside from realising that it had also changed for the worse we had to pay about $22 for two beers. That's half our daily budget and approximately 1000% on what you pay in a restaurant down at pleb level. But it was all worth it for the photo.

My Christmas miracle - watching a pair of Hornbills fly past our window. I've spent almost a week in the jungle since we hit SE Asia and seen four Hornbills total flying in the distance. I shouldn't have bothered. I should've just looked out my window in f*cking Saigon and watch them fly right through the dead centre of the city.

And stopping for beers as the rain bucketed down.

The lowlight of Saigon was the War Remnants Museum. Aside from dealing with the masses making comments such as this, "Don't bother reading anything hunny, just look at the pictures." - because sh*t, you wouldn't want to learn anything would you - the museum is a lesson in the lengths people will go to to get what they want. The stories that were fabricated to brainwash the world and the methods that were used to force the desired outcome left us both, literally, speechless. 

The Vietnamese sometimes get a bad rap with some people saying that they're too hard and all they want to do is juice you for every cent you're worth. Spend a few minutes surveying the photos of the innocent victims whose lives have been ruined by Agent Orange and Napalm and you'll soon reach the conclusion that the Vietnamese people could be the biggest arseh*oles on the planet and they'd have just reason to be so.

And that was Saigon. A mixture of disappointment, new finds, great noms, too many techno Christmas tunes and sadness.

Gooooooooood Morning, Chau Doc

We arrived in Vietnam and all the memories of why we loved the place so much the first time came flooding back. The vivid, sprawling emerald greens of the rice paddies, the old ladies trundling along on their bicycles sheltered from the searing sun by their non la, the Mekong Delta splaying out in all directions.... Who are we kidding? 

It's the fact that you spend your time with your eyes glued to the streets watching cart after cart after cart serving up the freshest, tastiest food you've ever had, it's the waft of something delectable coming in from the street not leaving the bus for the three hours that we were on it, it's the old lady that made sure Nix's pants didn't catch on the rusty old bus seats as we got off, it's the personal jokes I share with Vietnamese men with them pointing at me, pointing out the window, firing a few sentences at me and then bursting out laughing with the expectation for me to join in despite me having not the slightest idea what we're laughing at and it's the madness that a million and one mopeds weaving around you creates. We're back and we sort of feel like we're at home.

**As I write this, now on a different bus, a lady has just handed Nix a mandarin. A lady that we hadn't made eye contact with up until this point. And here comes a second one...**

About Chau Doc. We had one night there on a tour a few years ago but we were in the teeth of those dreaded Malaria medication side effects and didn't see much more of the city than the hotel room. It deserved another chance and presented an opportunity to adjust to the rhythms of Vietnamese life.

Our time in Chau Doc was spent wandering around going from ca phe to pho to sugar cane juice saying hello to every kid under ten and even having 18 year olds waving and yelling hello.

We had a tiny little girl one night pointing to the different pictures on a drinks menu and demanding that we pronounce them properly in Vietnamese in between bouncing her rabbit puppet around in front of us and trying to press our noses down flat in an attempt to make us look more normal.

We woke up early on our final morning and in a sleepy stupor remarked how nice everyone had been here, in particular the old man who had crossed to road twice to point to Nix's tattoos and say, "very beautiful!." As we walked down the street looking for breakfast a couple of stall owners sort of made an attempt to get us to sit down but one from across the road started yelling very intently in our direction. It was the old tattoo man again.

He sat us down and soon Nix had a fishy broth complete with chunks of succulent Mekong fish and super soft udon-like noodles but I had nothing. I waited patiently and out came my breakfast - a strong ginger gruel laden with bits of congealed blood, strips of pork, some strange sort of pork cake and the strongest, most bitter pork intestine I've had. All the world's ginger could not have masked the flavour of that intestine. It turns out the fish noodle soup is for the woman and the offal gruel for the man. Make me strong ;)

The fun didn't end there. He brought out coffees and demanded that Nix put in more and more sugar, ran into the back of his shop to bring out a pink lily for Nix and a chrysanthemum for me, again for the woman and the man respectively and then made another dash inside to to find some Buddhist beads to place around my wrist. So yes, the man that took convincing to wear a watch and a wedding ring now also wears a bracelet. 

It's moments like those why we love to travel and it's people like that that make this part of Vietnam so endearing to us.

Crabs, More Crabs and Tropical Disease Symptoms

There is no greater travel reality check than leaving paradise (link) and arriving in Sihanoukville. We had two hours in Sinville before our ferry to Koh Rong Samloem departed and that was two hours too many. Enter fat Poms strutting around with their shirts off, women offering us pamphlets to join their full moon party (definitely misjudged her audience there), Khmer youths that had been corrupted by attempting to imitate the knobbish Westerners that hang out there and puppies, that were too young to even know what they were doing, humping other puppies (we also blame the Westerners for this).

So after two hours that felt like ten we were on our way to Koh Rong Samloem, another picturesque island off the Cambodian coast.

Koh Rong Samloem

Apart from taking in a bit of island village life and soaking up some more sun, I was on KRS to complete my Advanced Open Water Dive ticket. I nailed it, naturally.

Highlights of the course were:

• underwater rodeo which involves taking off your tank and BCD and riding it like a bucking bull;
• seeing three seahorses and setting a new AOW record in the process;
• a night dive on Papa's Boat which was crawling with fish and a myriad of crabs; and
• playing ping pong with an egg yolk at 29 metres that doesn't break up due to the pressure that's exerted on it at that depth. Mind = blown

Highlights of Nix's time on KRS were:

• hanging out with SparkleD*ck and Bobo;

• reaffirming her title as Gecko Queen spending her days with a family of seven Giant Geckos (all at different stages of their development ranging from tiny to foot long); and

• getting some quiet time away from me.

But the most interesting observations from KRS were the things our gecko friends would get up to at night:

• we watched the big daddy shed his skin by peeling it off with his mouth and eating it;
• we witnessed gecko sex which was surprisingly consensual; and
• saw two geckos fall off the roof in an attempt to get an insect and live to tell the tale of their four metre plunge.

Kampot

We dropped in to Kampot to visit one of their famous pepper plantations and chow down on all things pepper. We spent four nights holed up in our room whilst Nix suffered through what appeared to be the onset of Dengue. We had one decent meal of pepper squid, saw the giant durian roundabout and I had some Cambodia-wide famous but ultimately disappointing ribs. Nix's symptoms cleared up after a few days (clearly only the best of us get the real dengue) and it was time to move on.

Looks like someone made a full recovery.

Kep

Pretty little seaside Kep. It has a white sandy beach, is small and peaceful and is a popular hangout for Cambodians. Oh, and it had crabs. F*CKLOADS of crabs. More crabs than you can poke a claw at. Crab shells litter every corner of the beaches, streets and parks.

There are two main ways for you to acquire your crabs.

The first is at the Crab Market where the ladies down by the water's edge haul their crab pots out of the ocean and you barter your way to what seems like a reasonable price for a kilo. We read a "guide" before we went on how to barter for you crabs. Don't bother reading that guide. People throw numbers and laughs and quizzical looks at you in rapid succession and anything you've read that says "make sure you select your own crabs", "you a should never pay more than X amount", "the optimal size for a crab is three and a quarter inches". Forget it.

Get in there, don't get ripped off, get stuck into your bag of steaming hot crabs.

As long as you keep a smile on your face the Khmer people will pretty much take them from the pot and put them in your mouth. For less than a tenner you'll get a kilo of crabs, half a kilo of prawns, lime and pepper dipping sauce, and two sugar cane juices. You can't beat that for a feed.

The other option is one of the crab shacks complete with menu and a tenth of the crab for the same price. Nahhhh...

Rabbit Island

Before leaving Cambodia we slummed it for a couple of nights on Koh Tonsai in a $6 a night bungalow.

The wind blew its arse off, the sun never really appeared and on both boat crossings everyone got drenched but hanging out in a hammock and being adopted by the local dog pack (to the point that we'd get de-flead like the puppies by mama pooch) made leaving the little island paradise very, very tough.

But now it's time for Viet Nom!!

Here's our Cambodian journey in map form.

Survivor: nomad's land, Koh Totang

A dodgy moto ride and a mini bus packed to the gills with rice wine and gunja supplies for the construction workers plonked us opposite our island paradise for the following four nights. We were picked up in a little runabout, introduced to our fellow contestants and spent the next four gruelling days and nights duking it out against Germans, Poms, Frogs and Sepo's. It was a battle to the death, here are a few actions shots from our four nights at nomad's land on Koh Totang.

Outbungalow

Outhammock

Outkayak

Outgrunt

Outselfie

Outsnorkel

Outread

Outsunrise

And it was at 0945 on the final morning that the Germans sped off and we'd Outwitted, Outplayed and Outlasted all contests. Aside from the ten or so villagers, the owners of nomad's land and its four volunteers, we'd claimed the island for ourselves. Time for a beer, "barman!!".

Chi Phat According to Nicola... A Confession

Every time we end up in the jungle and I complain about the spiders in my personal space, freaking out about possibly having to attempt to pee in the middle of the night and accepting that the amount of sleep I'm going to obtain might as well be zero, well it turns out that these are generally my ideas. For some reason I feel the need to suggest we go to the jungle for god knows what reason and a few months prior I agree it will be fun... Until I'm there and thinking to myself for f*** sake why is this happening AGAIN!!!

Chi Phat is located in the south west of Cambodia and whilst the village used to make its money from logging and poaching, it has completely turned it around to focus on eco tourism and protecting the surrounding jungle and its inhabitants. Someone explained the place to us as 'a real Cambodian village that tourists happen to come to as opposed to a village for tourists' and it is exactly that. After jumping off our bus literally on the side of the highway, we took a two hour boat up the Preak Piphot River to reach our home for the next five nights. 

Accommodation options here are simple - you either stay in a family run guesthouse or you stay in a family's home. We were extremely fortunate in that having located the "pub" and helping ourselves to a beer from their esky, we realised they had rooms in the back yard available and knew it was the place for us. This family were so incredibly friendly, inviting us for lunch and dinner each day, being adopted by their pooch Leup who slept on our doorstep and growled if anything came near, and making friends with their three year old daughter Teda, teaching her English and new games. 

We were made to feel like one of the family and were lucky enough to be included in a rice wine fuelled lunch (the first shots downed at 10.30am) with the extended cousins and uncles and somehow held our own.

We'd walk down the road for our morning noodle soup to have one year olds tearing out of their house to scream hello to us, little boys swarming to show off their fight moves, dogs somehow knowing that we were happy to give them some lovings and a sugarcane juice lady that always appeared as soon as I was craving one. Chi Phat is a pretty awesome village!

We tried our hand at "lobster" fishing, or so it was referred to. We headed out on a boat at about 8pm with nothing but a five pronged spear and a head torch. We cruised along the banks until our guide somehow spotted one and then pow! there was our contribution to tomorrow's lunch. More like a prawn with nippers than a lobster, but still delicious. Excuse the shocking photo.

And then it was time to head to my favourite place... The jungle. Up at the crack of dawn, we took a motorised boat for two hours and then a row boat for 40mins in the hope of some bird spotting.

FINALLY I caught sight of two flying hornbills, one of my favourite birds. Decked out in our finest jungle attire, we were ready to commence the trek.

It was humid and thick, but the best part was the fact that the leeches had decided to go on a feeding frenzy thanks to some heavy rain a few nights earlier. Every five minutes I'd check out my shoes to have to flick off ten of the bastards, our jungle assistant helping with his machete. You'd look at the ground and you could see them reaching out for you - you can definitely see where some horror writers would get their inspiration from! This meant that stopping for a break wasn't so relaxing given you couldn't keep your feet in the same spot for more than a minute. This is the result of the little shitweasels making it through your socks.

We carried on through the jungle to the awesome sound of the gibbons. Still no sightings but they were very close in the tops of the trees. We skipped our lunch stop given our lightening speed and carried on to our camp for the night where we feasted on pumpkin stew and green tea. We had time for an afternoon nap in this delightful set up. Even I had to admit it was super comfortable.

Then in the evening we made our way to a shelter built by the waterhole in the hope of spotting some wildlife. Unfortunately as is so often the case we saw zip. Nothing but a few teeny birds flapping in the undergrowth and getting our hopes up.

At dinner our guide kept flashing his torch underneath the table then proceeded to warn us to watch out for snakes if we go to the toilet during the night (not an issue for me given I'd already spotted a few massive spiders at head height so was not venturing there again, however the alternative of a bush squat meant the likely possibility of having leeches on my bits... Not really liking my options here!). If the king cobra was to bite us then we were literally dead meat because help was too far away, but if it's a normal cobra then don't worry because you just have to get back to the village (ummm... How?) then take a two hour taxi to Sihanoukville where they have the anti-venom at the hospital. Fantastic.

Tucked up in my cosy hammock listening to the jungle was actually nice and the best jungle experience I've had, however due to the bathroom issue I was awake most of the night with a sore stomach and hammocks really aren't made for stomach sleepers. I awoke watched dawn break to the sound of gibbon howls and the flapping of hornbill wings. We set out into the jungle again to make our way back to Chi Phat and the welcoming embrace of Leup.

In order to leave Chi Phat I had to endure another of my favourite pastimes... Riding on the back of a motorbike. My driver was a teenager on a bike with a broken speedo and obviously no helmets. Within the first two minutes we had gone up and down a ramp that I thought there was no way a bike could physically accomplish and then when Brim's driver stopped mine continued to fly onto the one plank ramp to get us onto the river crossing. Sometimes I really dislike travelling.

After the crossing it was a hair raising fifty minute ride on dirt tracks... my butt losing contact with the seat on multiple occasions, my driver covering his eyes so the dirt didn't get in them (who cares about seeing where we are going), dodging potholes and then flying at a ridiculous speed when we finally got to the highway for the few minutes until our destination. I got off that bike with numb cheeks, sweaty palms, shaky knees and trying to somehow blame the whole thing on Brim.

The morals of this story is that I will be purchasing some Air Force grade hammocks when we get home and will be trying my best in the future to NOT make stupid suggestions about sleeping in the jungle.