8itchyfeet

Halong Bay – I’d do it again

Published on February 29, 2016February 29, 2016 by 8itchyfeet5 Comments

I don’t like spending money. It doesn’t come naturally and it makes me uncomfortable. I like saving. I like socking money away each fortnight and the feeling of opportunity that comes as the bundle grows. Ironically one of the reasons I like saving, is so that we can do most excellent things, like travel the world for example. Here we are however, travelling the world, and I’m still not entirely comfortable opening my wallet.

But I am getting better at it. Two months into this trip and its starting to dawn on me that this is a pretty special thing we are doing – worth the money. Experiences and time, surely these are as worthy of investment as other pursuits. Rolf Potts in Vagabonding, my favourite book on the philosophy of long term travel, says that:

‘Regardless of how long it takes to earn your freedom, remember that you are labouring for more than just a vacation. A vacation, after all merely rewards work. Vagabonding (long term travel) justifies it.’

Work, I think, has its own purpose and rewards but I take the point.

Why, I hear you ask, am I volunteering these idle thoughts? It is because our trip to Halong Bay lead me to wrestle with such matters. What do I deserve, what is responsible and what is reckless, what is affordable, what matters and why?

We didn’t travel Halong Bay in the manner one might expect from a family trying to eke out 12 months travelling the world. We travelled Halong Bay in style. Lifestyles of the rich and famous style. We decided that if we were going to spend a few days living it up, this was the time and place to do it. It cost twice our daily budget and hence bought me face to face with my own perception of what this year was about and how we are doing it.

A luxury mini-van picked us up from the hotel. Granted it was a well decked out Ford Transit rather than a Mercedes Benz, but it was finished with bling. Purple and white lights lining the roof, leather chairs that would do Qantas business class proud and built in fridges and freezers. You get the idea.

The mini-van however was just the entrée to the main dish. The Dragon Legend of the Indochina Junk cruise line was the main course with its:

‘24 luxury cabins, 4 decks with inside and outside dining areas, a spa, bar, sundeck, swimming pool and other entertainment options. Each spacious cabin is a work of art with Vietnamese traditional hand crafted décor and modern facilities, a private bathroom includes a bathtub and big sea view windows. Dragon Legend cruise offers dramatic public spaces, impressive open air dining and a bar that definitely makes for a relaxing trip in the bay.’

Yep, it was all that. I particularly liked the cabins. One for Amy and Oliver and one for Emma and I. They were decadent, with big squashy beds and crisp clean sheets. You could lay down and never want to get up and it was oh so easy just to lie there and watch the islands drift by. I wanted never to leave.

Halong, and the lesser known Bai Tu Long, bays have approximately three thousand craggy limestone islands poking their heads out of the sea. Halong has become the famous sibling, but Bai Tu Long is (apparently) identical, all part of the same landscape, but with less people, boats and plastic floating in the water. This is where we headed.

Lunch was served, as soon as we got underway, in the outdoor dining area. Kenny, our host for the three days, strategically sat us next to a family from the US. Ryan and Kami and their children Sage and Indy turned out to be kindred spirits and we were soon happily chatting and enjoying the company of more new friends. As you will have seen from the previous blog we spent more time with them back in Hanoi and then in Hoi An, after the trip.

Kenny by the way, is not Kenny’s real name. By his own admission, Kenny’s Vietnamese name was all but unpronounceable to western tongues (it really was – I tried). The rest of the crew either voluntarily or otherwise followed his lead, going by the names of Harry Potter, James Bond, David Beckham and the like. Harry Potter was, funnily enough, also a magician and thoroughly impressed us all with his post dinner card tricks.

As we ate course after course of delectable Vietnamese cuisine, the rather unimpressive Halong Harbour turned into the very impressive Bai Tu Long Bay. The density of craggy little islands of ever changing shape and size made it captivating. Everywhere we looked islands abounded, further from view they lose definition but gain different shades of blue, silhouetted off to the horizon.

In the afternoon we kayaked out into the islands. It would have been easy to get lost, but Kenny steered us safely on our way. Back on the ship, Amy and Oliver played hide and seek with Sage and Indy, the boat being the perfect place for such games and with only 18 guests on board there was no-one to complain as they roamed up and down stairs and corridors. Emma and I lay in our cabin or on the sundeck and contemplated how we got so lucky.

And so it went. We cruised on and I was never really sure whether we were headed North, South, East or West. We visited stunningly beautiful tiny floating fishing villages nestled in sheltered inner island coves (where, fortunately, the locals this time were genuinely pleased to host us). We had lunch on a private beach watching smaller cruise boats come and go and we spent more time on board eating and enjoying the view as it drifted past, including from the on-board heated pool. It was super comfortable and we were waited on hand and foot at all hours of the day.

Oliver and Sage watching the islands go by

Spring roll making with Kenny and Harry Potter

Exploring the area near the floating village

Floating village (established over 100yrs ago)

Floating village – they fish and farm pearls and now host tourists

The village now makes some money ferrying tourists like us

View from the hill above the lunch spot – there was a cave system here

Without wishing to overstate the matter, the experience challenged my perception of how I deserved or was able to travel and where we were at. That we could afford this brief stint of upmarket travel was something of a revelation. That it was ok and the sky wouldn’t fall in was another. That I am no longer, or at least didn’t need to be, a university backpacker living off rice and soy sauce was… liberating. That this sort of a thing may just be why we work hard and choose not to pursue other spending opportunities justified the effort involved in being here. It was wonderful. And I’d do it again.

The land of 3 million scooters

Published on February 26, 2016February 26, 2016 by 8itchyfeetLeave a comment

Wow! Hanoi hits with you with a punch. A bedazzling load of sensory input that left us reeling as soon as our taxi entered the Old Quarter, having arrived late in the evening from the serene and decidedly first world Hanoi International Airport. The view was not more than a hundred metres in any direction as the narrow streets twisted off and away. There was however more to see than could be taken in as we cast our eyes around to get our bearings and find somewhere to eat.

The streets are a river of scooters, the footpaths are either packed with eateries or performing as a parking lot for yet more scooters, and people, people and more people fill the spaces in between. It’s an obstacle course, with most journeys requiring twice the number of steps you would ordinarily take to get somewhere. Buildings on either side of the streets had the feel of brightly lit canyons and businesses of every form fills in the blanks.

Hanoi streetscape – it is busier than it looks here

Like other visitors to Hanoi, when we weren’t trying to escape it we were totally mesmerized by the traffic. Llewellyn King of The Huffington Post describes it as one of the wonders of the world.

‘Looking at the traffic is like watching a column of ants, going hither and thither in a courteously chaotic way. The only absolute rule on the roads is to keep to the right. Everything else is improvisation. Central to the Hanoi traffic triumph are scooters and very light motorcycles (some of them electric), the occasional moped and even bicycles.

To the more than three million scooters, most of which take to the streets daily, add the skill, courtesy and physical courage of the riders. They weave, dodge, brake, swerve, swoop, accelerate and slow in what, to American (or Australian) eyes, is an unscripted ballet with a cast of millions. The dance is known, but the choreography is new by the split-second.’ (Lewellyn King – The Huffington Post)

The whole thing is a triumph of chaos over system. On more than one occasion we stopped and stood on the corner of two intersecting streets and watched as the opposing streams of traffic met. It was fascinating because nobody stops, the traffic just merges through itself.

Then there is the honking. A cacophony (I love that word) that greets your ears with a level of sensory input to match that provided for the eyes. Scooter drivers are just like bats and whales. They navigate and communicate by sending out sound waves to the other drivers to let each other know they are there. Honking also seems to be correlated with speed. The faster you go the more you honk. Those exceeding the speed limit, if there was one, just ride through town sending out honks to rival any master of Morse code. It’s wearing. So wearing Oliver started to fight back. Yelling out his own ‘beeps’ to warn the scooters that there were now pedestrians that needed to be accommodated on the asphalt.

Into this scene we inserted ourselves each day, bracing as we left the sanctuary of the Hanoi Hotel3B. When we were in Bangkok, Paul (my older brother that is) told us a story about a driver he had once in India. Paul had asked this driver how he negotiated India’s traffic chaos, to which the Indian Driver had replied, ‘Be confident’! I imagined this coming out in a thick Indian accent.

So, ‘Be confident!’ became our street crossing mantra. There is no point waiting for a break in traffic. There are none. There is no point waiting for the lights to change, there are very few. Rather you must have

‘…the patience and boldness to know that the river of motorcycles, a river that ebbs and rises, but never ceases, will accommodate you’. (Lewellyn King – The Huffington Post)

Be confident!

So we were. Sort of. Perhaps we were boldly timid, or timidly bold. Emma and I gripped Amy and Oliver’s hands tightly and probably issued ten times more instructions on where and when to step than they were ok with. Hanoi is a tough place to give the freedom to grow and still ensure everyone makes it home in one piece.

We did however get better at it with each foray away from our hotel. We shopped, successfully purchasing four new beanies to keep us warm in the cool Hanoi weather, but unsuccessfully searching for new sandals for Amy. We tracked down familiar banking institutions; we took in the sites including Hoan Kiem Lake, the Ngoc Son temple (built in the 14^th Century in honour of a war hero, Tran Hung Dao, who thrice repelled the mongol hordes from China in the 12^th century) and its famous red bridge and the Vietnam Military museum; and we navigated our way to the Indochina Junk offices to finalise arrangements for our trip to Halong Bay.

How could we not find anything suitable here?? Cinderella?

Military museum sculpture from bomber wreckage

Everywhere there is an opportunity for commerce

After our Halong Bay visit, and with new friends at our side we explored the street food scene. Ryan and Kami, and their children Sage and Indy had been on a street foods tour before we met them and we soon found ourselves benefitting from their local knowledge. We ate some amazing food, including this indescribably good chocolate egg nog type drink (I dunno how else to describe it), in places that we would not have given a second glance, or even found for that matter.

Chocolate egg nog surprise (Oliver didn’t want to stop eating for a photo)

Watching a street performance with new friends

We left Hanoi at 10.00pm on our last day, catching the sleeper train to Danang. So adept were we at navigating the chaos we walked all the way to the train station with packs on and Amy and Oliver unrestrained for the most part by their parent’s hands. We were becoming (a bit more) confident!

Hanoi train station – waiting for 10pm to come

The land of a million elephants

Published on February 20, 2016 by 8itchyfeetLeave a comment

Laos is sometimes referred to as the land of a million elephants. Regrettably there are no longer anything like that number of the large beasties left. In fact, we were advised that there is probably less than a thousand altogether, including something like 500 wild and a touch under 500 domesticated – all up. Elephants are still revered and loved by the populace but there is increasingly less land available to accommodate them.

On Emma’s South East Asia to-do-list was a visit with some elephants. We had hoped to do so while in Chiang Mai, Thailand but the only elephant parks we were interested in were all booked out. There are a lot of elephant opportunities for travelers but only a few of them make a genuine effort to do what we would consider the right thing by the elephants. We are not into circus tricks, elephant riding (it’s really bad for their backs) or exhausting work day after day supporting the tourist trade.

So it was that we landed upon a visit to the Elephant Conservation Centre about two hours drive out of Luang Prabang, Laos. The ECC elephants are not wild, they are well and truly domesticated. But for a domesticated elephant in Laos, this is elephant heaven. No working 12 hours a day dragging logs out of steep forests with chains around your neck and no beatings with canes around the legs to tell you what to do. Nope, these elephants have an onsite elephant hospital, they are trained with positive re-enforcement, they are fed or provided access to the 200kg of food they need every day, get four or so hours a day to themselves just to hang out and be elephants and have their lives ‘enriched’ with elephant puzzles and games.

We arrived at the centre by ‘speedboat’ across an artificial lake created by the damming of the Nam Khan River. It is a stunning spot, with the Centre’s bamboo huts and restaurant perched on a little peninsula jutting out into the lake.

Lah, our guide greeted us with his flamboyant accent and slightly camp ways. He was great, extremely knowledgeable and finished every burst of information with, “ya, it is like this’.

DSC01780 (1).jpg — Our guide Lah – this was his usual method of feeding the elephants

The Centre was set up in 2007 by a couple of French guys and a Laos business man. They currently own 7 elephants including one big male, 5 females and baby boy. Two other mothers and babies are also there on a contract with the centre which has 106 hectares of land. This contract ensures the elephants owners and mahouts are paid while the mothers are on maternity leave – they actually call it the baby bonus program! So while after the contract is complete the elephants may go back to work in the community, at least the babies will have longer to grow up in a natural setting with their mothers. If the centre would like the mothers and babies to stay they would need to pay around US$60,000 for each pair and they would need more land. The current site is only just big enough to support those elephants already there. Getting more land is a complex and delicate process of working with Laos government officials.

One of the babies enjoying time with her mother

The young Belgium fellow running the place explained the games required to cultivate relationships within the government and the difficulty competing with Chinese interests in land in the area. Influence comes with privileges bestowed and the Centre can’t afford to pay for the Laos official’s children’s education the way the Chinese can. We got the impression the rug could be pulled out from the centre at anytime.

We first met the elephants for their afternoon bath. We wandered down the hill and right in an amongst them as their mahouts urged them into the water. It was a thrill to be up so close to them and a pleasure to watch them roll and loll about in the water, suck water up with their trunks and spray it all over themselves and to play around. One elephant sat down on its haunches and used its trunk just to continually splash the water in front of it, just like people would in a pool.

At the mahouts urging they all climbed out of the water, some more gracefully than others, where we fed them from a platform, trunks coming at us like… I’m not sure what it was like, snakes squirming in mid-air maybe? Then we walked with them up into the hills where they spend each night. The mahouts were lifted effortlessly up to sit on their heads as they marched off into the forest. We watched the sun set over the lake from our little bamboo huts and looked forward to what tomorrow would bring.

The step out was pretty big for the little guy!

The elephants head to the hills for the night

It brought a trek into the hills to find the elephants. We hiked up hill and down dale, following along with the mahouts. One of whom had a thing for singing loudly which was entertaining. The elephants are chained at night. Long chains loosely applied around the leg so they can graze a fair sized area. The centre cannot be fully enclosed and the elephants can’t be left to roam for their own safety. If they drift off into the surrounding farms the centre has to compensate for the damage done or worse still, there is a good chance they would be shot.

We retrieved the large beasties and walked with them again through the forest. At one point Mae Dok, the oldest elephant of the herd stopped grabbed a small tree and unceremoniously ripped it from the ground no doubt using most of the 150,000 muscles in her trunk. Amazing. We all laughed and she set about devouring her prize.

Down by the waters edge the elephants took another bath, before we were unexpectedly offered a chance to sit up on their necks for just a minute or two. This we understand is fine, and quite unlike the chairs used to carry multiple people on other elephant’s backs.

The elephants were then turned out to play. Free time for elephant socialising. We watched from platforms high on the hillside above, one of them high in tree across a suspended bridge. This was uneventful, quiet grazing, until elephant trumpeting rang out across the forest. The elephants hurried to group together where more trumpeting followed. For large animals without predators they are remarkably flighty. We later discovered that the obnoxious American we had shied away from at dinner the night before had just left on his motorbike with two or three others, freaking the elephants out in the process.

We spent time in the afternoon watching and learning how they train the elephants. This training is not circus tricks, but useful skills to enable them to be checked over and treated if the need arises. For such big animals it is important to be able to safely check under their feet and behind their ears. Emma used to use very similar techniques with her horse. The trainer would request a foot with a tap and if the elephant correctly placed the foot where it was supposed to go the mahout offered food rewards – we marveled at how fast an elephant can eat!

Our last morning with the elephants we were put to work setting up the ‘elephant enrichment’ area. Elephants are smart and as was explained to us, looking after their physical health is only half the challenge. Without mental stimulation they can still suffer enormously with impacts including that they won’t breed. This is a problem given only two elephants are being born at the moment for every ten that die.

We were dealing with clever elephants we were told. They had been playing these games for quite a while and needed a challenge. ‘Be mean’ the Spanish biologist Annabel told us ‘these are level 10 elephants’. We tied pieces of sugar cane up in long yellow bags made from old firehose, hid them in tyres, and then jammed the tyres inside other tyres and put them over stumps. We hid the cane in barrels suspended in trees and scattered food throughout the area. Then we sat back as the elephants were let in and they set about, with almost visible smiles on their face, tackling the problems we had set them.

A ‘level 10’ challenge – she whacked this bag on her foot many times

The care for the elephants wellbeing, the relationship they have with their mahouts, the experience for visitors without compromising the elephants’ welfare all made this a special stop. Wild elephants would be better, but they’re not all wild and they never will be. We wish the ECC all the best in their efforts show that elephants don’t need to be exploited to provide a sustainable livelihood.