In La Li Land

I’m watching the world go by, and, for a change, I don’t have to pedal to do it.

I’m sitting on a train, staring out into the view, typing a bit, and then staring out again.

Lali’s napping on the seat next to me, her novel and phone perched precariously on her lap. I predict they won’t last too long there.

It’s so awesome to see Lali again, it’s been a long time.

Too long.

I’d almost forgotten how much I love her.

We only spent one full day together in Ho Chi Minh City, as I’d already bought us train tickets to get out and see some other places. Today we’re heading up the east coast to Nha Trang, a 9 hour journey on this old clunker train.

But first, please allow me to rewind.

The Mekong Delta

Before the amazing woman sleeping next to me arrived, I took a 4 hr bus ride down to Can Thô, a city of about a million people, southwest of HCMC, which lies at the heart of the Mekong Delta.

The bus design is pretty interesting. Each passenger space is an almost-seat almost-bed. The seat backs don’t go up completely upright, as there’s not enough space for your head at that angle. So unless you wanna sleep, they’re not the most comfy bus seats ever designed. But they’re fine for napping.

I crossed the Mekong again.

Can Thô is a super interesting place, the area alongside the Hau River feels super chilled, there’s a small park, families wander along, there’s a small night market.

There’s lots of bakeries in town.

This is a salted egg bun. And, of course, a baguette. The egg bun was sort of savoury, sort of sweet. Not surprising. Sugar seems to be in every single baked product under the sun here. Why should being savoury stop you from being sweet?

This is a similar egg bun, which I bought another day. I used the camera function in Google Translate, so I could read what the label said:

Ok, well that’s left field. A fuck button.

It looks a bit different to the one I used to have.

I gotta say, it’s so good to be in bakery land again.

I guess the French left at least one good thing here.

Not sure about these steamed rice dumplings though, I predict they may possibly be on the slightly sweet side.

L’Atrocité de l’Hôtel

Chillin’ by the river

Hat of hats

Uncle Ho limbering up for his arm wrestle with Tricky Dicky

Sunrise. It’s true. (Only because I was going on an early boat though).

Cute little night market

Backstreet boys

Dr Smooth

Trippy

I found this great veg restaurant

Looks like meat, dunnit? But it’s not, it’s some sort of processed soya meat substitute.

I don’t know how women like this survive on the streets. I mean, how much money could she possibly make in a day, with her meagre wares?

Ho Chi Minh chatting to the masses.

And conducting music business

Another flavoured jelly milk tea, packed with sweet goodies

The ubiquitous satays

Chè, a very common sweet here in Vietnam, a mix of fruit, rice jellies, and various syrups and liquids. And 4 tonnes of sugar.

Pagodas

Drying teas and various other suspicious substances

Twirling mushroom

Bridge decorations

It really poured a few times. It was much wetter than in HCMC.

Steaming peanuts. They’re really soggy to eat, but still quite tasty, once you get used to the consistency.

Local museum

Solid jamming

Village resistance

French summary injustice

Death rain

Many traditional Vietnamese musical instruments mirror the styles I’ve seen in other Southeast Asian countries.

But they tend to have more stringed instruments, and love to wobble their strings. Just like the Chinese.

Beer wisdom

On Yer Boat

I went on a beautiful delta trip, up river and down canal, on a little wooden boat, deftly handled by a lovely and particularly tiny old local woman.

My companion for the journey was Jeanne, a French biologist, whose research about the spread of plant viruses by a particular insect has been funded by the EU, to the tune of millions of Euros.

Jeanne was the best person to have around, as she knew everything about everything. She told me all about the local ecology, and the massive environmental problems within the delta, due to climate change, widespread land cultivation, use of fertilisers, overfishing, and mangrove clearance.

And she told me all about her own interesting research.

Jeanne explained to me the devastating effects that climate change is having in the region, due to sea level rises and an increase in the number and intensity of extreme weather events, such as flooding and storm surges. Not good.

The mangroves, and all the fish, insect, animal, plant and aquatic life they support in the delta, are under major pressure.

Which is rather important, as the region is the primary food basket of the whole country of Vietnam, more important than any other region, by a long shot.

So off we headed, upstream up the Hau River, a major boat highway.

First stop was the floating market at Cái Rāng, a super interesting small market conducted pretty much entirely on boats.

The pole at the front of the boats displays whatever the boats are selling, tied at the top. This makes it easier for buyers to see what’s around, if the boats are docked together.

First things first. We were hungry. I had a delicious egg and salad banh mi ôp la from this lovely lady. Nice and warm.

And so was the banh mi.

That's not a cockroach in there btw, just some river greens

Living quarters

Later, we headed up a little canal, and made our way to a super interesting rice noodle-making place, where they use traditional techniques to produce delicious rice noodles.

Rice is de-husked, and the husks burnt in clay stoves, where a runny batter of milled rice flour and water is spread out over a rubber plate, in thin circles.

Sometimes the batter is coloured with dragonfruit juice (pink), pandan leaf juice (green), or a local flower (blue).

After a short time of steaming, the wet rice paper is removed, using a bamboo roller tool, and each one placed to dry on bamboo mats. The crisscross design of the mats is what you often see on packaged rice paper from grocery stores.

The rice paper is then dried, and fed into a small chopping machine, which cuts it into thin noodles. It remains a little rubbery, and the noodles are flexible. These are then packaged and sold.

It was great to watch.

Mangrove roots

Our next stop was a sweet-producing place, where they were making coconut-based sweets. Lucky us.

Pure coconut and sugar are fried until they caramelise, which takes about 30 minutes. The caramelised yum paste is then placed and slowly stretched into a large mould of long sunken strips, which are then cut into bite-sized candy-sized rectangles.

This pic’s from the web, I forgot to take pics

Then, one lucky girl had the task of individually wrapping each sweet into very thin rice paper (edible), and then again into paper, to prevent them all from sticking together, and to also prevent them from sticking to their paper wrappers.

Definitely a meditative task.

The rice paper is eaten with the sweet, it just dissolves in your mouth.

They’re absolutely delicious, some are also flavoured with pandan, which makes them green.

And that was that. Jeanne and I talked all the way through, about everything under the sun, which itself appeared about halfway through the trip. It’d been raining quite heavily the night before.

No Means No

Jeanne was travelling alone to Asia for the first time, and told me she’d had an amazing experience in Vietnam over the past 6 weeks. I asked her what she’d learnt on her trip.

After all the incredible cultural stuff and amazing sights, she said the main thing she’d learnt was how to say “no.” She said that travelling as a young woman could be challenging, because sometimes her fellow male travellers were on the make, and she realised that when she said no, they often didn’t seem to hear it.

She realised that she often wasn’t saying no in a way that men understood. She said she’d been conditioned to consistently please others, particularly men, and she hadn’t learnt to properly respect her own needs, which she believes, unfortunately, many women don't do.

Now Jeanne said she’s learnt how to set her own boundaries more firmly, and how to be more assertive. Things have been way easier for her since then.

Good for you Jeanne. A lifelong lesson, no doubt.

I dare say that many men also need to learn how to hear “no,” however it’s said, suggested, or even politely hinted at. And not just to hear it, but to gracefully and happily respect it, especially when it’s not what they necessarily want to hear at the time.

Yeah, just saying.

Back To The Big Smoke

Eventually I got back to HCMC, and spent some time organising my life and storing my bike.

The beautiful Huyen Si Catholic Church

Late arvo stroll to the railway station

Another church. There's obviously Christians about.

Khoai mi, cassava balls garnished with shredded coconut and fried sesame seeds. This is a really good one, actually one of my fave sweets here.

Hopefully not

I want beer cake for my birthday

No matter where you are in Vietnam, there’s always dudes on motorbikes in the background.

Or in the foreground

the mid ground,

or bloody everywhere.

The station

Rina and Esther, the two German women I met at the border, have a beautiful apartment in a nice leafy suburb, hidden away from all the messy noisy chaos that HCMC is. They cooked me the most amazing dinner one night, real pasta with a tomato-based sauce, peppered with black Moroccan olives, and garnished with mountains of grated Parmigiano. With a rocket salad, no less.

What??!! Did you hear that??!!

I couldn’t believe my luck!

I savoured that meal, I’m tellin ya. And the conversation.

This is the park across the road from Rina and Esther’s place. These guys are playing sepak takrô, sort of a volleyball game played with a small rattan ball, and you use your feet instead of your hands. It’s amazing to watch, the skill levels required to play it well are next level. The game’s played all over Southeast Asia.

Badminton’s big too. Brownie points if you can find the shuttlecock in the sky.

Ostentatious designer store

Book Street

HCMC main post office

HQ of the Ho Chi Minh City People’s Committee, a government agency

Rice snacks of every variety

Pyjama party

Iced tea, with extras. That’s coffee-flavoured jelly on top. I didn’t know that was coming. Yeah, it was bloody good.

Statuesque

My Darling!!

I packed up all my bike gear and stored it with my bike, at the house of a lovely cyclist from the Netherlands, Ronald, who lives in the city with his Vietnamese partner, Manh. I met him through Warmshowers, a website that connects cycle tourists around the world. It’s a bit like Couchsurfing, for cyclists.

And then before I knew it I was at the airport, waiting patiently, for my darling Lali’s night flight to arrive from Brisbane.

It finally did, fashionably late.

It’s so great to see Lali! We’re loving hanging out together, and have a lot to catch up on. We’ve done a lot of travelling together over the years, particularly in Asia, so it’s super easy spending time together here.

She’s so happy to be back in Asia, she feels super comfortable, as she’s been coming here since she was a baby, on various trips, over the years.

We went straight from the airport to our guest house, and then out, for a midnight dinner. It’s so great. There’s loads of good eating choices at that time of night on a Tuesday night, right around our guest house, in District 1, one of the main nightlife hubs of the city.

Pre dinner snacks

Motorcycle victim

The next day we basically spent the whole day walking around the city. Of course, there’s so many interesting things to see, on the way to anywhere.

Beautiful florist handiwork

Laneway action

Delicious veg feasts

Nha Trang

So, off we went, training to Nha Trang.

It was a pretty comfy ride, but long.

Beautiful coastal views en route

Dragon fruit farm

Lots of full rivers at this time of year

We got there quite late at night, but managed to find the most delicious vegetarian restaurant of my whole trip so far. Without a doubt. Mid range pricing for Vietnam, super super cheap for Oz.

Sago and coconut bliss

Nha Trang is a city situated on a beautiful part of the South Vietnamese coastline about 450km northeast of Ho Chi Minh City.

There’s a lot of tourist hotels here, catering mainly for Chinese, Korean and local tourists. But the city’s not too big, the beach is really long and beautiful, there’s loads of places to see nearby, and a whole pile of great places to eat and drink.

The place’s got a really nice vibe.

More flashy night art

Night markets entrance, with electric cycle rickshaws

The famous civet coffee, ca phe chon. Civet coffee, or poo coffee, is quite an interesting idea.

When coffee is normally produced, humans pick the coffee fruit, and the pips (beans) are removed by machines, and then fermented for 24-36 hours, before being dried and roasted.

With civet coffee, the wild civets, a type of weasel, go around and eat the best coffee fruits. Apparently they have a taste for it. The beans are then naturally fermented inside their digestive systems until they’re pooped out, as whole beans, inside the faeces.

The civet poo pellets are then collected, the whole (already fermented) coffee beans removed and thoroughly washed (phew!), and then roasted.

Haven’t tried it yet. It’s a shit coffee, but not sure if it tastes shit yet.

Great, thx for the info

Wide expansive beach, with lots of scenic islands off the coast. And a couple of footprints.

Waiting for morning coffee

Beautiful seafront parks

Local markets

Warning, decoys

There’s a theme park on one of the islands, notice the massive Ferris wheel.

Pre-dinner snacks

Happy days

I am an individual

Local fruits and seeds. Not sure what the dark seed is.

Leonine clock

Evening bustle, from a café balcony, where Lali thrashed me at cards (as usual).

I used to let her win when she was young, but now I’m a genuine loser.

Rolled coconut icecream

More veg feasts, including an amazing hotpot, a very common dish here in Vietnam, and in north Asia generally. Hotpots originally came from China, I’ve had them there, and have been blasted to Chilli Hell, it’s crazy what people get used to.

I apologise if you find food shots boring. I do. But I love eating, and, well, wanted to provide a little bit of hot and tasty for the foodies.

Coralling

Lali and I went out on a beautiful boat trip, to the islands of Hòn Tàm, Hòn Mun and Hòn Môt, three of the many islands situated in the Nha Trang Bay Marine Reserve.

It was absolutely stunning out there. It was a beautiful clear hot day, the ocean waters were crystal clear, so it was perfect for snorkelling, which we did in 3 different places.

It’s such an amazing experience to witness with your own eyes the beauty of a coral reef and the incredible array of aquatic life it supports. We swam above some beautiful coral formations, sea plants and grasses, and amongst a huge bunch of assorted sea life, including many amazing types of colourful tropical fish, of all shapes and sizes, as well as sea snakes, starfish, sea slugs, and sea urchins.

The diversity of life under there is incredible.

However, as is the case in many places around the world, the coral reefs in Nha Trang Bay are suffering from the effects of coral bleaching due to warming oceans. They’re also affected by the increasing acidification of the ocean due to pollution, and the impact of nearby coastal developments, which result in sediment washing into the sea, and covering live coral, affecting its health.

Back in the 1980s, the bay supported 250 different species of hard corals. Today, it only hosts around 10% of that number. It’s a tragedy to realise that the beauty we witnessed is only a small fraction of what existed there only a few decades ago.

A boat like ours

There’s a few ritzy tourist resorts on some of the islands

Crystal clear waters at every snorkelling spot

Amazing lunch spread

There’s loads of islands in the bay

Lali showing her age.

The fishing fleet

Long Son Pagoda

One afternoon Lali and I walked through the back streets of Nha Trang, and eventually climbed a hill to the Big Buddha at Hai Duc.

At last, a pack of dogs that didn't chase me

If you happen to be a big Buddha aficionado, you’d probably find the place a little underwhelming. It’s actually not a very big Buddha at all (by official Big Buddha Standards). A Vietnamese website actually said it was the biggest Buddha in the world.

Dream on, it’s tiny.

Also the surrounds are really run down, with rubble and weeds everywhere etc. I'd really been missing Farmers Friends, it was so great to stroll through them and get them all stuck on my pants legs, just like in the good ole days.

It was nice to be up there though.

The Long Son Pagoda down the hill was really beautiful.

So nice of them to name it after me.

This stunning Chinese temple dates back to 1886, and has been moved twice, due to cyclone damage, and later from artillery damage during the Vietnam War.

The Party’s Not Over

So, Lali and I have many more things we wanna do together here in Vietnam.

She’s still with me for a bit more than a week, and our plan is to head to the hills, to a town called Dà Lat, and then to go to another beach town, to chill some more.

Then we’ll return to Ho Chi Minh City, she’ll go to Bali, and I’ll cry.

But ok I’m welling up now, so let’s save all that grief for when it actually happens❤️

Thanks again to you, beautiful old friends, new friends, and wonderful people I've met on the road, for reading and supporting my writing. I hope you’ve been enjoying the vicarious travel. If you wanna buy me a coffee, feel free to use the link below. Travelling with Lali, herself a coffeecionado, I’ve been drinking lots lately.

http://buymeacoffee.com/krolesh9