Sipping a Salt Field

The night I slept in the tree was my last at the homestay on the Vietnamese beach. A friend of the family gave me a lift on the back of his motorbike to the hostel in the main town where I planned my journey to Cambodia and went on what can only be described as a street food RAMPAGE as it was my last chance to street-eat in Vietnam. The next morning I caught a mini bus, a ferry, a taxi and a bus from Phu Quoc Island to Cambodia - an experience I was dreading as I'd heard the borders were rife with scams however my journey was surprisingly drama free - hooray! I arrived in Kampot, a sleepy riverside town, in the afternoon and almost immediately got chatting to a Swedish girl who joined me for dinner that night and then we watched a film in a little makeshift cinema. Meals with complete strangers have become the norm for me now; I have no problem inviting myself out with other travellers that I meet however I guess I'll never know if they were about to invite me or not!

This fruit was the last new thing I was able to try in Vietnam - almost reptilian on the outside and incredibly sweet and sour at the same time.

The view from the balcony of my hostel, The Mad Monkey, in Kampot.

The cheaper, more scenic way to explore the area, like many places, was to rent a moped so with my new Swedish friend on the back I drove to the nearby fishing town, Kep. We visited the crab market where women were manning stalls piled high with cooked squid, shrimps and whole fish on sticks and then made our way to the dock where we caught a wooden boat to Rabbit Island. Although noticeably rabbit free it was a serene, coconut palm fringed island and we ordered noodle soup whilst watching the trees swaying in the breeze; suddenly a giant, green coconut zoomed down from above narrowly missing the couple in front of us. Beware: coconuts kill!

The crab market.

Rabbit island.

We also enjoyed a $5 Khmer massage on the beach. 

After a relaxing day on the island we got to the mainland and started to get on the bike to go back to the hostel. It was at this point, after spending 24 entire hours with the Swedish girl, that I suddenly realised I didn't even know her name!! Luckily she'd just realised the same and we laughed about it. When you're meeting so many people all the time it's easy to forget names however the more time you spend with an 'anonymous' person the more awkward it can get when you finally have to admit that you don't know what to call them! On the way back we visited salt fields which they cultivate for...err, well you know...salt. That evening we went out for more than a few Klangs (cheap Cambodian copy of the Thai beer, Chang) rendering us pretty much useless the next day apart from going for a meal with a bunch of people from our dorm room.

There were no sign posts and after seeing pictures we were expecting piles of salt so I drank from the field...just to check. Yep, definitely salt...

LISETTE. Her name is Lisette.

Fresh Chicken Footprints on the Bedroom Floor

One of the many benefits of travelling long term and not having any definite plans is that if I like a place I can pretty much stay as long as I want. This feeling of freedom is unlike anything I've ever experienced, in fact, I didn't even know it was possible. Not only have I stayed in Vietnam a few more weeks than I'd originally intended but I decided Phu Quoc island was a place I wanted to explore for longer. After my four nights at the hostel near the main town I made my way to Thuy House, a homestay on a private beach further North of the island; I got a lift there on the back of a motorbike and had to navigate through dirt tracks and jungle to get to the house on the beach made out of sticks, rattan and tarpaulin which was run by Thuy, a local woman. This was truly an experience where I'd be living like, and with, the locals; my 'bedroom' floor was sand, I slept on a rather hard bed made out of bamboo, there was no flushing water, no electricity aside from a generator that was turned on for a few hours each night and I ate delicious Vietnamese food freshly cooked by the family such as barracuda, calamari, mackerel, shrimps and chicken all served with rice, fresh vegetables and lashings of locally produced Phu Quoc red pepper.

Sunset at Thuy House (pronounced Twee) as seen from the dining room/communal area where I spent my days.

Thuy's beach.

My room - every morning I would wake up and see fresh chicken footprints on the bedroom floor?! This is especially bizarre considering I always kept the door closed...!

For £7 a night including room, drinking water and three meals a day (THREE meals a day?? I'm stepping up in the world!) you can see why, after spending so much money over the last seven and a half months, I was happy to stay put at the homestay for several days, not to mention the fact that the deserted beach was like a paradise! I spent my days swimming in the sea, reading, chatting to Thuy and her English husband, Les, as well as other travellers from all around the world and I also had a giggle with Thuy's adorable five year old neice, Sao, who had such a big personality and would plonk herself on my lap whenever she pleased and chatter away to me in Vietnamese, completely unbothered by the fact that I couldn't understand her! To break up the 'hard graft' of doing pretty much nothing I decided to walk along the beach to the town with Lea, the Swiss girl I'd met at the hostel, as she also happened to be at the homestay. Once we'd walked to the next bay and past a swanky resort we noticed the beach was getting more and more filthy and full of plastic rubbish. With the abundance of palm trees and crystal clear, spotless, tropical beaches it's easy to forget you're in a developing country until you see the state of the coast in the parts that don't have resorts. I constantly see the Vietnamese nonchalantly chuck all kinds of rubbish on the streets, beaches and in the water. What was more disturbing than a paradise being turned into a dumping ground was that in our hour long walk we came across the bloated bodies of a dead pig and THREE dead dogs that had been washed onto shore. Despite this we marched on in the blazing afternoon sun with our eyes firmly set on the bobbing fishing boats that peppered the blue horizon as a distraction from what was washing up on the beach.

'Dead animal' themed walk to town - here you can see squid drying in the sun, a popular Vietnamese snack.

I always try to give balanced account of my travels: this is unrecognisable compared to the previous photos of the clean beaches.

My little buddy, Sao, doing her best model pose for the camera.

During my time at Thuy House I had the most wonderful news from home, I am now an Aunty! To a certain extent I feel like I am sacrificing a lot to come travelling as it means I'm missing out on my friends' and family's lives however I'm truly having the most unforgettable experiences and I have to accept that I can't have it all. If I wasn't here I wouldn't be able to do things like sleeping in a tree which is what I did on my last night at the homestay! The wooden platform, built by the family, overlooks the deserted beach and the cool breeze up there was a welcome relief from a succession of hot, sticky nights; I drifted to sleep to the sound of the waves whilst spotting stars peeking through the jungle canopy above me. Yes, I can unequivocally say that, despite missing people terribly (and despite the dead dogs), I am VERY happy to be here.

This is Thuy's Aunty who had come to help out as Thuy and Les are expecting their first child.

The view from the tree house at Thuy House.

Great fun!! (until you need the loo in the middle of the night)

Street Food Heaven

After the homestay in the Mekong Delta I decided I wanted to experience Vietnamese island life on Phu Quoc which is part of a Southern archipelago very close to the border of Cambodia. I booked a bus to Rach Gia which was the nearest town with a ferry port however when I arrived I found out that all the boats were fully booked until the next day; I tramped around the harbour town with my backpacks comparing room prices and eventually settled on a £4 private room in a basic hotel. I had unexpected time to kill seeing as I was originally going to zip through Rach Gia to get to the island so I spent the day walking around the town sampling different street food snacks that I hadn't tried before - this is possibly one of my favourite things to do whilst travelling! I walked for three hours and didn't come across any other tourists but I did enjoy dense, dairylea-shaped pancake bites, a grilled banana wrapped in rice batter, some kind of small egg concoction and a sticky rice and coconut flavoured ball! All between 3p and 30p each and served with a kind smile. I caught the three hour long ferry the next morning, checked into my hostel, 'Mush'rooms', and headed straight for the beach where I had lunch and indulged in an hour long, £3 massage under an umbrella on the sand whilst listening to the waves. Perfect.

The banana and rice fritter, like most street food, was cooked on the ground by the side of the road.

The walk down to the sea, my first glimpse of a proper beach since Thailand in early January.

Just when you might be forgetting you're in Vietnam...

There is an abundance of cheap, fresh, tropical fruits on the island.

I met a Swiss girl, Lea, at Mush'rooms and we decided to share the cost of a moped and cruise around Phu Quoc island which is the size of Singapore and only recently began being developed for tourists; this means that there are still many deserted beaches, fishing villages and large patches of jungle largely untouched by tourists to explore. Whilst Lea enjoyed the views on the back I battled with the old rental bike over the bumpy dirt tracks and tried my best not to kill us when the accelerator got jammed. At a roadside kitchen we ate fried bananas in batter, grilled corn on the cobs and 'cong cake' which is a deep fried, muffin-shaped savoury cake with prawns that you encase in leaves and dip into the famous, locally manufactured Phu Quoc fish sauce.

Bai Sao beach - the beaches in Vietnam are only cleaned in the parts that house resorts.

A stall full of street food goodies at Phu Quoc night time food market, I ate the beige pattie which turned out to be tapioca.

The fishing harbour.

The local fish market.

As you can see there is a lot fishing activity on the island and I decided to seize the opportunity to go night-time squid fishing; I was collected from my hostel by a minibus full of Vietnamese tourists from other parts of the country and I was met with puzzlement, confusion and a stream of questions in broken English - "you are travelling with no one?", "where your husband?", "what your family think about this?" - luckily I'm used to this, I actually find it quite funny, and I explained that in my culture it is quite common to go travelling alone. The boat chugged into the open water and I chatted away to two ladies from Singapore whilst we tried to catch squid. Afterwards we were served a feast on board including the vile sounding 'squid porridge' which was on my list of 'weird' things to try. I arrived back at the hostel later that evening and on my way to brush my teeth before bed I got chatting to some people and the next thing I knew I was swapping sleep for a night out...

Unfortunately only five people managed to land a catch...I wasn't one of them!

Squid porridge - not as horrendous as it sounds! (Actually it's more like risotto and it's delicious).

Another hideous looking but great tasting snack: sea urchin!

Yes, I may be technically 'with no one', but there's always plenty of other people around!!!

Adventure in the Mekong Delta

After Evie left I stayed in Ho Chi Minh City for a few days taking some much needed time to complete a long list of things I had been procrastinating on. While I pondered my next move I bought a second hand iPhone to replace my lost one, got addicted to fresh 45p dragon fruit and mango smoothies from a street stall, ate my fill of Pho Bo (Vietnamese beef noodle soup), visited a local market with a German girl, Friedi, from my hostel and drank fresh coconuts from a little mobile vendor all whilst staying at Ecohostel for £4 a night where, despite not appearing 'eco' in any way, I had my own little semi-private 'pod' to stay in instead of a bunk bed in an open dorm.

After staying for a week in such a hectic city I decided that I wanted to get away from it all and visit a homestay on an island village called An Binh in the Mekong Delta further South of Vietnam. I booked a bus journey from a man in a travel agency who gave me a piece of paper with something scrawled on it in Vietnamese and instructed me to hand it to someone after getting off the second bus. I was the only tourist for the whole journey and had no idea when my stops were coming up, after handing the piece of paper to the first person I found at the second bus depo he laughed and pointed to a driver who dropped me off in his car on the side of an indeterminable street and shrugged benevolently when I asked him where I should go! It was all a mystery. I chose a direction and walked aimlessly until I found a ferry port where I was approached by a man who simply pointed at a boat. Trusting my instincts I obliged and on reaching the other side of the water, after being repeatedly stroked on the arms and smiled at by a crowd of local women all dressed in pale blue, a woman (without saying a word) indicated that I should get on the back of her bike and then promptly drove me to the home stay. I can only assume that, being the only white, blonde person with a backpack for miles, I stuck out like a sore thumb making it obvious to people that I was destined for the local guesthouse and that's presumably how they were all able to know where I needed to go!

The ferry crossing to the island village.

The porch of the home stay in the tiny, sleepy village was lined with hammocks for travellers to lounge in after a hard day of doing nothing.

That evening myself and the other guests, two French couples, sat down to a veritable feast of Vietnamese food comprising of fried elephant fish, DIY rice pancake rolls, vegetables, chicken and rice. I was offered a boat tour of the village and surrounding islands for the next morning so I set an alarm for the crack of dawn although I needn't of because the sound of cockerels crowing, children playing and families blasting music whilst eating their breakfast could have woken the dead (the Vietnamese are very early risers). The six hour boat journey took us round a very small floating market, a honey farm, a coconut sweet making shop and we were given the opportunity to try some sort of alcohol from a glass jar that had a whole giant snake inside!

Delicious elephant fish.

Snake wine at 8am? Erm, yes please!

Myself and the other seven on board were transferred onto smaller boats at one point which were operated by women with large paddles.

The market had a 'fruit boat' (aka floating heaven!) where I bought oranges and jack fruit.

That afternoon I borrowed one of my host's rickety old bicycles and, despite the seat feeling like it was made of barbed wire, I biked round the island passing waving toddlers shouting "hello hello!" and kids flying kites. I made it on to the 'highly extortionate' 3p ferry to the main land and then rode to the local market where I ate from the street stalls, only choosing things that I'd never seen or tried before. Another evening brought another impressive spread of food and after dinner I swapped travelling stories with the other guests for hours before settling in to my own room at the home stay realising that I hadn't slept in a private room alone since the beginning of my time in India - over seven months ago!

I thought these bowls of beans would be a savoury snack but instead they put a selection in a cup and added milk and ice. I later found out the drink is called 'che'.

The Co Chien river.

Minus One iPhone, Minus One Evie

After the calm and relaxation of Mui Ne we headed towards Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC). The uncomfortable five hour overnight bus only allowed us about two hours sleep and as we stumbled off the bus, half asleep at 5am in the dark, we were met by the usual crowd of taxi and motorbike taxi drivers encircling us and insisting that they drive us to our hostel. I have experienced this many times in Asia and I'm certain that the overwhelming scenario is a sales tactic to dupe dazed tourists into deals they would otherwise avoid. I'd been warned that scams are rife amongst HCMC drivers and this was further reason to perform my usual ritual of moving away from the crowd and taking a minute to get my bearings; being dropped off at a recognisable bus station is rare and in this case we'd been dumped on the side of an unknown road so we were unable to locate our hostel without WiFi and GPS and we eventually had to agree to get in a taxi as we had no other choice. The taxi ended up driving us in round in a perfect circle and when he stopped we realised we could have easily walked, as we pointed this out to him he suddenly became aggressive and began shouting at us to get out whilst chucking our bags into the traffic! Not ideal at 5am in the morning! The screaming continued as we hurriedly got out, scraped our bags off the street and the taxi screeched off into the night. Shocked and shaken up we checked our bags and at that point I realised that in the commotion my iPhone had fallen out!!! I relied on that phone for a lot of things during this trip and I've been extremely careful with my stuff to the point of paranoia so I was horrendously annoyed that I'd lost it (I did everything I could to recover it including pacing up and down the street where we were dropped off for an hour trying to find the driver). Putting my acute frustration aside I was thankful that it wasn't my passport I'd lost. We slept in the hostel communal area until check in time and spent the day getting lost amongst the smorgasbord of noises and colour that define HCMC before going to the cinema. The southern city is somewhat more modern than Vietnam's capital Hanoi and this is evident in the abundance of luxury hotels, brand new motor bikes and flashy iPhones (perhaps one of them is my lost phone?!) however the hectic traffic still prevails so that every time you cross a street you say a little prayer in the hope you'll make it to the other side alive.

We took a 9p bus to a water park in a built up area of the city. We were amongst the vast minority of tourists there whilst Vietnamese families were still celebrating the tail-end of Tet.

Dancing with the locals in a Vietnamese club.

A rare quiet street in HCMC (check out the bundles of cables).

The following morning was Evie's last day and we'd only had a couple of hours sleep when we awoke early to fit as much in to her last morning as possible. We started off visiting the tunnels of Cu Chi where war guerrillas from the north of Vietnam hid from the Americans during the conflict over 40 years ago; the tunnels were dark, humid, full of mosquitoes and absolutely tiny, not only because they were 'Asian size' but also the fighters were small due to malnourishment and Vitamin D deficiencies after spending so long underground. We learnt about their cunning tactics such as wearing their shoes backwards to give the appearance that their footsteps were going in the opposite direction, pits filled with metal spikes covered with bamboo and breathing holes in the tunnels disguised as ant hills. Following this we visited the war museum which, although extremely biased due to propaganda, was a massive eye opener into the horrifying circumstances of the American/Vietnam war. The photos depicted murdered families and deformed children due to Agent Orange chemicals that were dropped by the Americans to kill crops.

This is one of the original concealed entrances to the tunnels that apparently has been made bigger(!!!) for westerners (it was still tiny).

We crawled along the underground tunnels for over 150 metres. 

This photo from the museum depicts American GIs proudly posing with the dismembered heads of Vietnamese men.

It was time to say goodbye to my friend Evie. When you decide to spend 24/7 with someone for two months it's hardly surprising that you form friendships as deep as if you'd known each other for a decade, also when you live through the highs a lows of travelling through Asia with someone you become very close; in short I will miss her a lot! I am now a bonafide solo female traveller again ready to conquer the world!

So far this post has been ever so serious so I'll end in on a light note; as you may know I've made it my mission to try as much food - that the western world would deem 'strange' - as possible so, along with my friends Sam and Kieran who we've been bumping into all over Vietnam (very common considering the long and thin shape of the country, everyone is following a similar route either up or down), I went to a Vietnamese restaurant and tried bull penis and testicles!

Spice stall at a local market.

We didn't want to commit to the bull penis as a main meal so we ordered a DIY table BBQ as well.

The bull body parts were served chopped up in a lump inside a cauldron full of soup - does this sound appetising to you??! No?!

It's All About the Mui Ne

I've must have stayed in almost one hundred hostels (as well as the odd hotel and guesthouse) during this trip so far and most travellers become quite the connoisseur when it comes to accommodation, particularly hostels. I can't count how many times I've had the conversation - "if I was running a hostel I'd do this..." - and when we arrived at Mui Ne Backpackers village it started all over again because it was up there with the best; a spacious, soundproof room with six decent sized (non-bunk!) beds, loads of room for luggage, individual lights and plug sockets, meticulously and regularly cleaned bathrooms and a heavenly infinity pool surrounded by palm trees with a bar/restaurant right outside the dorm door. Yes, Mui Ne would be a place where we wouldn't get much done aside from rolling out of bed and plopping ourselves in the pool for five days straight ahhhhhhh!

The pool at night, the door on the left was our dorm.

Hostel heaven for $10 a night, albeit slightly more than I'd like to pay but it was worth it! 

The seafront is choc-a-block with seafood restaurants where eels, frogs, turtles, shrimp and other fish wait in tanks on the street. 

Not too shabby for a meal time view.

"Forgot.How.To.Stand. - Too.Much.Time.Spent.On.Sunbeds"

I tell a lie, we did peel ourselves away from our routine of sunbathing, mango shakes, reading and generally being deckchair-potatoes for one day during our time in the seaside town of Mui Ne to go on a day tour of the area including the local sand dunes. We were taken to the 'white dunes' to start off with, an incredible, powdery expanse that undulated under the perfect blue sky, and drove quad bikes amongst the smooth dunes only stopping to 'sand bathe' and roll down the steepest hills, getting sand EVERYWHERE. You know you're on holiday when you have sand in your teeth, amen to that! I'm falling in love with Vietnam more and more each day, it has a multifarious landscape which is what fascinated me so much about India (mountains, deserts, beaches, jungles...) yet on a smaller scale! Next up was the 'red dunes', although unmistakably more orange than red, they were the perfect place to watch the sunset and oh, you know, dance like lunatics and ride your friend like a sledge down the hill.

We stopped off at a fishing village where tub boats-a local invention-aid the shallow water fishing.

Ten second ostrich ride at one of the stops on the tour, possibly one of the most scary and bizarre moments of my life.

QUADS!!!

Rolling down the sand dunes.

Evie makes a brilliant sledge.