The rain in China falls mainly on the plain, and the mountain and the valley, and the plateau

Rain, rain, rain and guess what? More rain!

Today is our 5th day in China and it's the 5th day it has rained. Not Vietnamese monsoonal rains, but constant drizzly Melbourne in May or perhaps October rain that is ever present and very wet. We are in Yunnan province which is one of the southernmost areas of China and home to Tiger Leaping Gorge, lots if Ethnic sub groups and the totally excellent Brothers Jiang restaurant in Kunming where they serve the best Across The Bridge noodles (named across the bridge because the guy that named them had to go across the bridge from his house to get them...) either Shell or I have ever tasted.

We got here via a 25 hour overnighting bus extravaganza from Luang Prabang which has set the standard in terms of painful and surreal travel experiences. Whilst it's probably deserving of it's own post (in the near future - coming soon!) it's suffice to say that anyone who reckons it's exciting or adventurous to cross remote land borders is either

a) an idiot;
b) a masochist; or
c) both

Maybe I'm being harsh but the pain is still fresh in my mind.

Anyway, getting back to China, what we have seen so far is great! I am now a great admirer of the Chinese Road and Rail infrastructure. The toilet infrastructure, in general, needs some prompt attention.

We got to Kunming, the capital of Yunnan province, at about 8 am in the morning and went straight to our hostel where we managed to wash the stench of the bus ride off us and go and do some exploring around town. Yunnan is on the footstep of the Tibetan plateau, averaging about 1900m elevation for most of the middle and northern parts of the province. The higher altitude gives the benefit of milder temperatures, which when mixed with incessant rain and spending a month in the tropics means that we are cold. As for Kunming it is a standard big city with traffic and a nice park that we walked around and also a nice cinema where we watched Kung Fu Panda one day, and then Hancock the next.

Not terribly exciting, but it did have the Across the Bridge noodles at the Brothers Jiang restaurant which gave us our first real view of Chinese manners in a busy situation: There are none! This restaurant basically just does these noodles (actually a noodle soup) and the locals love it, so much so they arrive in their thousands at midday and wrestle each other for seats. The way it works is thus:

1. Pay for your food outside, sight unseen and, as every thing's written in Chinese, possibly not what you are after. But pay nonetheless
2. Enter the dining area, which is roughly equivalent to a rugby scrum, and try and find a non existent seat
3. Get dragged by a waiter into another section of the restaurant, where he tries to claim some seats for you but with no luck
4. Stalk people who look like they might be finishing their food, getting ready to pounce on the seats. Just like a really busy carpark at Chadstone
5. Panic, telling yourself (or your husband/wife) that you don't understand how this works and we will never get our food and do you think they will give us our money back...
6. Finally get waved down by a good Samaritan who gives you his seats as he and his mate leave
7. Have a waitress snatch your receipt from you and replace it with 1 large plate of raw meat, 1 small plate of vegetables, 1 small plate of nibblies such as cashew nuts and pickles, and a bowl of the freshest noodles you have ever seen.
8. Have same waitress dump a 3 litre pot of boiling stock in front of you.
9. Add meat, followed by vegies and noodles
10. Enjoy!

It was really stressful, but really good food. We also had another top shelf meal in Kunming but as for the rest of the food, the oil the Chinese put in EVERYTHING is starting to take it's toll on our health and sanity when it comes to eating. Other things that are weird are the mass spitting that takes place in all public places by Chinese people. Everybody, and I mean everybody, lets fly with a big hock and grolly combo at any and every opportunity. Yesterday Shell and I were having a quiet cup of tea in Dali and a little 5 year old kid walking along with Grandma pulled out a beauty and Nanna didn't even bat an eyelid. Very disturbing.

But it's not all bad. We are enjoying ourselves, having spent a couple of days in the Ancient Bai capital of Dali which was pretty and had wicked walls surrounding the old city. Also our mandarin is coming along nicely. Between the two of us we have mastered:

• Hello
• Goodbye
• Thankyou
• Yes
• No
• Excuse me
• Steamed Rice
• Bill (as in restaurant bill)
• Toilet
• Numbers 1 - 99 (more or less)

It's quite a lot of fun. Well that's enough lists and anecdotes from me. Hopefully the rain clears up and we can walk Tiger Leaping Gorge (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiger_Leaping_Gorge) on Monday and Tuesday and then after that we head off to Chengdu to check out the Pandas.

Hill Tribe Trek, Luang Prabang, Laos

I'm not sure who's idea it was but we ended up on a two day hike to the Hmong and Kmao villages around the Luang Prabang area. We booked with "Tiger Trails" as they were made out to be slick operation by the lying Planet.

We turned up at their office at 8AM as directed, only to find that we weren't on their list to do the trek. At 8.30 we were still waiting for someone to arrive with the key to their office.............anyhow lets just say it took a while to get started, if only the German bloke who runs the company knew of their inefficiencies!

Our guides name was Li, he is a local who studied agriculture at university and has since given that away to work in tourism as he now has a child that he needs to feed! We got started with the hiking to find that my beautiful new, white Tiger trainers weren't really up for the job! It had rained for about 8 hours straight the previous night and the jungle trail was muddy and sticky and very slippery. I fell over in the first 30 minutes and then after that I lost count, however I did get pretty good at falling, and sliding and rolling, none of which were in the Tiger Trails brochure! We had Bonnie and John (Seattle USA) as our trekking companions, I wanted to poke their eyes out in the Tuk Tuk on the way to the start of the trek for being so annoying, however we found that in the face of adversity and hardship they weren't so bad.

Seriously though the trek was nice, we started off by walking past farm land and rice paddies and got to see a lot of rice transplanting in action. The scenery was amazing, the villages and farm land are nestled in the valleys formed between massive chunks of limestone that just seem to jut out of the earth. The inclement weather shrouded them in cloud and mist and that combined with the lush greenness of the vegetation made it look like we were in Jurassic park without the dinosaurs or Sam Neil.



After slipping and sliding for two hours we stopped off in a Hmong village for lunch to avoid a bit of a down poor and munched on our sandwiches inside their dirt floor hut. It looked like about 8 people slept there on a wooden platform, it looked like their doona covers hadn't been washed ever - what would mum say? Mum would say that when the weather is hot you should change your sheets every week! As thanks for their hospitality we bought some Hmong bracelets from them.

After that it just pretty much rained and rained, and when you thought it couldn't rain any harder - well it did. We walked through another Hmong village where pig raising was the specialty, there was a corresponding smell to this as well, use your imagination. In fact in this village it looked like their were more pigs than people, but raising pigs is a good way to make money, so good on them really. The only problem was that we walked across the pig paddock which was just mud and pig poo, and to say that we walked is actually an inaccurate description, it was really more like ice skating with terrible consequences.

Once we had cleared the pig pen it was back into the jungle where Li cut down a small tree for each of us with his pocket knife and made us a walking stick. This made things a little easier. It rained so much that the path we were walking on was like a small river, pretty soon after lunch my undies were soaked though, then my socks and then I just didn't worry about balancing across planks of wood to cross creeks and just walked straight through them. At many points the path was so slippery we stopped looking at where to put our feet and just worried about where the next strong looking bush or bit of bamboo was that you could use like a piece of rope to lower yourself down on. It was absolutely ridiculous, but no one got hurt thankfully.

So then we walked and walked and walked we counted the up-downs till we made it to the Kmao village where we were to stay the night. Brock said our trekking was like walking the Kokoda trail, I reckon if that's what the Kokoda trail is like then I'm not interested in doing it even if some dude carrys my bag for me! We walked about 15km and it took us 6 hours, 4 of which it was raining.

The Kmao people travelled to Laos about 500 years ago when the King of Laos daughter married the King of Cambodia and sent out the invite to come on down (well up really), they walked all the way to Laos, I'm tipping they probably did it in the dry season otherwise they would have had the same problems as us, and after all no one likes having wet undies.

The Kmao villages were similar to the villages in Cambodia - houses on stilts, and the Kmao people still look similar to the Cambodian people of today. The village we over nighted in had a primary school, football pitch and a town meeting place. We had a bamboo hut to sleep in with a mattress, pillow, blanket and mosquito net, pretty good really. We had a bit of a mushy wash put some not so wet clothes on and Li made us dinner, which was fabulous, oh boy we love sticky rice!

We had a bit of a wander around the village and joined in with some Korean hikers for a few rounds of "Lao Lao", Laotion whisky made from fermented rice and then distilled. It was kind of like tequila, it was not as bad as I thought it would be but it still sent a shiver down my spine. Between three people they had had 3 bottles and lets just say their eyes were looking a bit bloodshot when we saw them at 6pm.

After dinner we went to bed early as we had a feeling that we would be woken early the net day. Sure enough we had roosters underneath our hut having a crow off at 5am, not to mention the generator next door. We had a lovely Lao breakfast of meat and sticky rice, oh boy we love sticky rice! We then hit the trail to the waterfall and elephant park. We only walked for an hour and a half and the path was pretty good comparatively as its the same one the daily tractor that takes people/things into town uses. We had a bit of a gander at the elephants and a very refreshing swim in the waterfall, the waterfall is like terraces as the limestone gets deposited around trees, logs etc and forms separate pools and levels, very spectacular really.

From there it was a short but hairy boat ride to the Tuk Tuk that was waiting to take us back to civilization at last!

Vietnam in a nut shell

• Pho (Vietnamese noodle soup) - can be great or it can be poisonous!
• Conical hats are a fashion accessory, seriously young people wear them
• Bargaining is more of a necessity than in Kampuchea
• Overnight trains are OK as long as you don't mind someone else's hair on your pillow
• Cyclo drivers can not be trusted
• Taxi drivers in Hanoi are criminals (with the exception of Hanoi taxi)
• Uncle Ho is a dude
• I'm not sure if the Uncle Ho in the Mausoleum is the real deal - I'm prescribing to the Madame Tussuad's theory of a wax substitute!
• "Vietnam Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam Ho Chi Minh" its a catchy little tune, go on sing it!
• Beach bars in Na Trang are very very nice
• Tailored board shorts are the way of the future - you should see them, very sexy Brocky!
• You can get Oreos, Choco pie and Pringles anywhere (we were swimming off a boat in Ha Long bay and a lady paddled over to us to sell them!)
• They love the sound of a beeping horn
• Communism with a free market seems to work and do wonders for the economy
• Dam Sen Water Park in HCMC should be on every ones itinerary
• Chopsticks are the only necessary kitchen utensil

Air Travel, South East Asian Style

Well we are sitting pretty in the totally excellent city of Luang Prabang in Laos at the moment after getting all adventurous like and going trekking to a hill tribe for a couple of days. Pretty interesting in itself, but not as interesting as how we ended up in Luang Prabang 3 days earlier than planned...

After having a great time in Vietnam, we'd booked a flight from Hanoi to the Laos capital of Vientiane on the 25th of June. So as planned we said a final farewell to all of our new friends from'Nam and headed off to the airport in Hanoi amidst the usual honking of horns that is background noise in all of Vietnam. Honestly no one can drive a vehicle without a bit of the ol' horn action every, say 2 or 3 seconds.

But I digress; a thing that people may not know about Hanoi is that it's a fantastic city full to the brim of lovely people, with a frothy top thieving bastards trying to grift money off you at any opportunity, lead principly by taxi drivers. In Hanoi there are as many different taxi companies as places selling noodle soup and three quarters of them have dodgy meters, so every time you get in a cab you have to check the meter and threaten the driver with unspeakable acts of violence to ensure you pay a fair rate. We got a taxi from Hang Bac road to the Ho Chi Minh mausoleum (actual distance about 3kms) and the meter rang up 12.5 km's and the driver wanted us to pay 100,000 Dong (about $6). So after a big argument and various accusations in English and Vietnamese we paid 60,000 and cleared off. Other cabs tried the same thing with less success and we were wise to their tricks.

So with our hard won knowledge of Hanoi we thought it prudent to book a transfer to the airport ,which is quite a ways out of town, with a reputable individual. This we did, heading to the airport at 1pm thinking we were done with the place. After a drive at the usual breakneck speed, enough to make Shell carsick, and past things you simply don't expect to see such as 4 different Baguette vendors, all sitting smack bang in the middle of the on ramp for one of the major bridges over the Red River. Think 4 Mr Whippy's parked on the interchange between the Tulla and the Western Ring Road and you will get the idea. Wasn't 1 enough?

Again I've digressed. We got to the airport with plenty of time before our 4pm flight and sat around waiting for the check in counter to open up. And waited. And waited a little more.... Until finally at about 3pm I decided to try and find out what was going on and how come we couldn't check in. I mean, the flight was on the board, but just nothing happening. So I lined up at the ticket counter, waiting about 15 minutes for some girl to place many stamps on many pieces of paper for a non-existent passenger, and finally she said

"The check in counter will come up on the board when they open check in."

Thanks. I know that. That's how every airport in the world works.

"Check in should have opened an hour ago", I say, "the flight leaves in an hour"

"Oh. Maybe you should go and ask someone at the counter over there" and waves at 50% of the airports 70 or so check in counters that were on her right hand side.

"Thanks " I say and set off in search of someone - anyone - who looks like they know whats going on. After wandering around for a bit I found a counter that looked likely with someone sitting there and said

"I'm flying to Vientiane at 4" and then - the same second I swear - the tv screen above her head pops up saying

"Qv322 16:00 Vientiane, cancelled". Then she helpfully informed me that the flight was cancelled. So after a bit of "What?! Why?! " and the like I told her that I really wanted to go and she said,

"well there's a flight to Luang Prabang later and then there's another plane going to Vientiane after that".

"I'll go to Luang Prabang. Anywhere in Laos will be fine" I said.

"Really? Ok then that's easy" she said and I dashed off to get Michelle and the bags.

So we checked in for Luang Prabang and after another hour or two of waiting around for the flight we walked up the boarding gate for our Lao Airlines flight. Since in was the dinkiest little plane ever manufactured we had to get a bus out on to the tarmac so we boarded the bus for our final dive in Vietnam and drove out there, with a completely unnecessary but very jovial honk on the horn from the bus driver we bid adieu to Vietnam and offered our lives to the mercy of the maintenance program of a third world airline.

We survived and landed in Luang Prabang, possibly the nicest city in the Mekong area (And ended up cutting 3 days of unnecessary travel of our trip as well). What a great day! This worked quite well for us as we were flying to Vientiane in order to get a bus to a place called Vang Viene (3 hours), do some white water rafting, and then head to Luang Prabang by bus (8 hours driving). It turns out we could do all the extreme adventure activities in LP and we dodged 11 hours of Karaoke hell in a local bus. [Anyone that has been on a local bus in SE Asia will know what I mean - for everyone else they play these god awful karaoke videos on the buses . It's sort of Bollywood video clips with the words below, in Sanskrit of course, with the sort of music that reinforces the notion of Asia being the continent that rhythm forgot.]

So now it was to infinity and beyond....

Imperial Court Dinner. Hoi An, Vietnam

I read somewhere that we could go to a fancy dress banquet dinner in Hoi An, which I thought was a stupendous idea. Thankfully all 15 of our fellow Intrepid travellers thought it was too, so along we went for an entertaining evening.

There was dress ups - my favourite. Cultural show in the form of music - Brocks favourite. And a 6 course banquet - our collective favourite.

We drew names out of a hat, Magnus got chosen to be the King, Chris the Queen and Samantha the court Eunich. The rest of the girls were conchibines and the boys were Civil Mandarins (military men - not friut!).

Anyway I'll let the pictures tell the rest of the story. Please pay particular note to the effort they made to make our entrees look like birds!

Motor Scooter Safari. Hue, Vietnam

This was one of the best things that we did on our Intrepid Vietnam trip, keep reading and I shall tell you why....... It all started with 15 guys on 15 motorbikes arriving at our hotel to pick us up early in the morning. We all had our Intrepid helmets put on for us and mounted our bikes from the left hand side of course! and sat as close to our drivers as we felt comfortable but most of us found as we went along wasn't any where near close enough. Brock's driver was Tham Nguyen and he was catholic (he felt he need to tell Brock this?) and my driver was Huey, he had a really cool flannelette shirt on and was the carrier of the esky that contained ice and our refreshingingly cool face washers that we would enjoy later in the day - this made him a very popular guy, after all it is the simple pleasures in life! Once we were all in the saddle the drivers all let out a rousing "mo hai ba something" (one two three go!) and we were off. Imagine this 15 motorbikes with absolute disregard for the rest of the traffic all entering a busy road at once, interesting concept but it works trust me. Just like 15 motorbikes approaching a T-intersection have right of way, trust me this was frightening! The first stop was Thanh Tom as small village about 20 min ride out of town, we stopped off at the market place where everone wanted us to buy a drink from them, Brock tried rice wine but I passed as my tummy was not really up for it if you know what I mean! Apparently it wasn't that great but thats not really suprising. The village also had a covered bridge over the river and in the bridge was a little old lady dressed in silk pyjamas who was a fortune teller. Thats right kids a fortune teller! It is worth mentioning that was about 80 years old and had her eyebrows drawn on, and lipstick, it was odd. The other odd thing was at the other end of the bridge there was about 10 old men just lying around inside the bridge also wearing pyjamas. There must be some rule in Vietnam created by one of the Nguyen Emperors that once you hit 50 years old its ok to to wear pyjamas all the time........clearly there is no other explanation! So most people in our group had their fortunes told but I wasn't allowed to - Yes Brock is a party pooper! Most people are either going to marry twice and their first marriage would be to an alcoholic, this did not go down well with the other couple on our trip - poor Kelly! The fortune teller didn't say anything about motor bike so it was back on the bikes and off to the arena where the Emperor used to watch Elephants fight against Tigers. It was kind of like a mini colosseum with out the stadium seating. We wondered for a few moments who would win out of Tiger V's Elephant, I thought tiger and Brock elephant but Thanh our trusty tour leader quickly explained that they broke the tigers teeth and claws off so the elephants one everytime. Apparently thats lucky, I'm sure the RSPCA would not share the same definition of "luck". Next was a bit of a hairy ride to a look out over the Perfume river. Quite spectacular really watching the barges go down the river with the mountains in the background in one dierection and the Laos border and the Ho Chi Min trail in the other. The same hill had machine gun bunkers created by the French - good spot for it really we though, at least when you wern't shooting stuff you had something pretty to look at right? Next stop was a incense making shop. Brock had a go at it and lets just say he is much better at being a computer nerd, we also got to try on the Hue poem hats, they are like regular Vietnamese conical hats but they have silloutted scenes of daily lfe inside them which you can see when you hold them up to the light. Brock got to buy a cold Mars bar, I think that might be why he thought this was such a great day! Piggy. Then we headed to one of the toomb of the Nguyen Emperors, Thanh picked a toomb for us that hasn't been restored which was quite nice to see the real deal as sometimes the restorations are lets just say a little tacky! Hue is famous for the toombs of the emperors that strecth along the Perfume river. Next stop the nunnery where we had the biggest and bestest vegetarian buffet I have ever had (the only one i have ever had actually). Mother superior took it upon herself to shovel more food on our plates and feed us with chopsticks, after lunch she made us all lie down for a nap. It was all a bit like kindergarden. The last stop on our tour was to visit the monks - just to balance things out a bit. We went to pagoda where there were many mini monks in training. By far the most interesting thing was the garaged car of the monk who drove himself to Saigon and then set himself on fire (next to his car) in protest against the South Vietnamese government. His picture won the photographer who took it photograph of the year and immortalised him as the cover art of Rage Against the Machines first album.

The trip home involed a ride over a pedestrian brige, which was just wide enough for our bikes, Huey kept tucking my legs in closer to him so they wouldn't get torn off! So then we were home for a well deserved late afternoon nap, we then had very good Italian for dinner and then played Jenga at "Brown eyes" bar till very late. What a great day!

Cambodia Country Notes

• Everything costs a dollar! Anything from a t-shirt to a drink to a tuk tuk to an entire meal to just about anything that you can hold on one hand
• They clearly do not like their own currency (The Riel). The ATM's give out US Dollars and they only give you riel for change
• The main rule for driving is don't show any fear. Also I think that anyone undergoing fighter pilot training spend 3 weeks driving a public bus in Cambodia. Truly it requires nerves of steel. Also I'm certain that the Cambodian equivalent of Vicroads sees cattle and small tractors as legitimate traffic control devices. You know how the French built that massive via duct for $400 million Euros to cut 4 hours off the trip from Paris to Barcelona: The cambodians could cut 12 hours off the trip from Bangkok to Phnom Penh by
  

1. Paving the road;
2. Building some fences to keep the Cows and Buffulo off the road; and
   
3. Asking that people pull off the highway when they need to conduct businesss, go to the toilet, cook some food, have a sleep and stuff like that
   

• On the beaten track, ie Siem Reap, Phnom Penh and Shianoukville, there is always someone close to hand that speaks English
  
• Food is generally like Thai without the super spice. I quite liked Beef Loc Lak and the Amok curries.
  
• Phnom Penh must be the smelliest capital city in the world
• It is clear the war and the Khmer Rouge is still recent in everyones minds. Frankly I think they are doing well for the carnage inflicted on the country