Ho Chi Minh City

Ho Chi Minh is a city of parks

and grand buildings from the French era. This is the old town hall – now the Communist party headquarters.

Notre Dame cathedral.

The Post Office was built by Gustave Eiffel (of tower fame).

It is still used for its original purpose, unlike a lot of Post Offices nowadays.

We visited temples of various persuasions. I think this one was Buddhist.

It had a pond filled with turtles.

This is a hearse used by adherents of the Cao Đài religion.

We did one trip outside Ho Chi Minh City – to the Mekong Delta.

We went on a boat trip through some of the highways and byways of the aquatic environment.

 The range of produce transported on the delta is impressive.

These little fellows were cycling to catch the boat to school.

Noreen discovered some breadfruit.

 It's a tough life being a tourist!

Vietnam

Vietnam is a long thin country. We had twelve days there and decided to concentrate on three areas where we stayed. These were Ho Chi Minh City (formerly Saigon) in the south, Hoi An (we flew into Da Nang) in the middle and Hanoi in the north. This map gives you an idea of the geography.

I’ll use this post to give a general flavour of the country and then do separate entries for the three areas we stayed in. As I mentioned before, eating was an important part of the experience. We really liked Vietnamese food. Light, nourishing, plenty of vegetables and restrained use of flavourings made every meal enjoyable. This was our first night in Ho Chi Minh at a food court in a large shopping centre. It is the quintessential local dish – Pho, a broth of noodles, vegetables and sometimes meat.

Later that night we discovered our second most favourite culinary experience – Vietnamese coffee (Ca Phe as they spell it). This is served very strong, filtered and the piece de resistance – allowed to drip into condensed milk. We preferred it hot but it is also popular iced.

Traffic chaos takes on a whole new meaning, particularly in the big cities. As we flew in it was noticeable that the road traffic was at least 75% motor bikes. I expected the taxi ride in from the airport to be nerve wracking with impatient drivers and hair raising aggressive driving. In fact it was very civilised. Certainly very busy but they drive remarkably slowly and with much consideration for other drivers. It was even easy to cross the road – the traffic, particularly motor bikes, just flowed around you. The trick was to look for a small gap then stride out purposefully but not too quickly.

It is impressive the loads that they carry on quite small bikes. We often saw a family of four perched on a 50 or 90cc machine.

Basic infrastructure is a bit chaotic as well. Power and phone lines are festooned from poles and street lights.

Shopping is everywhere and like shops tend to congregate together. So there is a street devoted to shoe shops – some of us were in seventh heaven.

All trades and professions are practised on the foot paths (although we didn't see dentists as we saw in China in 1984). Here is a motor bike mechanic.

South East Asia

Our recent trip to South East Asia took us briefly to Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia), then 12 days in Vietnam and finally a couple of days in Hong Kong. This post covers Kuala Lumpur and Hong Kong. I’ll blog more fully on Vietnam in the days to come.

We spent a lot of time eating and drinking, or thinking about eating and drinking. Jenny has photos of every interesting meal she consumed. She is threatening to post these on some accessible web site – details when I have them.

The most photogenic place we visited in Kuala Lumpur was the Bird Park. It boasts the world’s largest walk in aviary and there were certainly a lot of birds getting up close to the human visitors. I didn’t manage to identify a lot of the species so here are a selection of the exhibits with my best guess if I’m not sure.

Toucan.

No idea on this one but I love its slightly demented look.

Some sort of stork.

Pelican.

Scarlet ibis

This is the old railway station in Kuala Lumpur, built by the British in an Arabic style.

 At the museum there were a couple of steam locomotives.

 There is a working monorail – one line on the city’s suburban passenger network.

Hong Kong also has a very good public transport system – a combination of buses, trains, trams (the only all double decker fleet in the world)

and ferries. We stayed on Lantau Island and took this fast ferry to Hong Kong Island.

This was where we stayed - the Silvermine Beach Resort.

We visited the Ten Thousand Buddhas Monastery. If you ever visit it beware of the false monks who take you through an elaborate welcoming ceremony and then con you out of a few dollars. There were notices warning us of the practise, but only higher up the path after we had encountered the tricksters.

Finally, Kathy joined us on her way back to the UK. She was ferried around in this two person tricycle.

Glorious Easter

It has been a wonderful weekend for the long holiday. I actually had five days off as Denise was visiting from Christchurch and Ali from Tauranga.

We went walking most days. The first day up Ahumairangi Hill where this magnificent cabbage tree was.

Denise standing by the Tinakori Hill Landmark.

On Saturday we walked up from Percys Reserve. Andy went exploring in the tunnel (it’s not very long).

We followed the stream bed 

up past the magnificent waterfall.

Denise tries to attract ducks with her bird whistle (she was only partially successful).

On Sunday we did Kaukau – mainly for Ali who always likes to revisit old haunts when she is in Wellington.

We had our picture taken at the summit lookout

and enjoyed the views out towards the South Island

and over the harbour.

Monday was a day off from walking but on Tuesday Denise and I braved the murky conditions which had set in and walked up to Johnston Hill along the Sjyline Walkway from Makara Saddle. There were only views of the mist!

Our trip to South East Asia was amazing. I have a thousand pictures to sort through and will blog when I have got through some of the other tasks that awaited on our return.