The best feeling in the world

What is the best feeling in the world? My long-time suspicions as to the nature of this object have been emphatically confirmed by our trip. The best feeling in the world is putting on fresh, clean clothes after a refreshing shower.

Of course, the climate conditions prevalent in Vietnam mean that this feeling is often ephemeral. Hot and humid weather is aided by poor-quality air-conditioning to produce a suffocating, sticky nightmare – which, as with the Cambodians, the Vietnamese themselves seem not to be afflicted by. I am no closer to understanding how the locals manage it, than I was in Cambodia.

Photo Spam, Finally!

ahh… communism

A dish of Snake!

asleep in museum (forgot to rotate)

Museum artifact but Big deal, I have this at home too.

St Jospeh’s Cathedral with kid

Halong Bay 2

Halong bay 2

A familiar pose

Sapa is divine

Hilltribe girl on buffalo

Our train

The friendly staff of Ocean Travel

Chun Wee in orgasm

Of toilets in baggage rooms and space age showers

The great service provided by the friendly staff of ocean travel, the tour agency with which we booked our tours to Halong Bay and Sapa, deserve a post.

xe om joyrides, giggling tour agency ladies and one friendly Vietnamese bus passenger

Ahhhhhh. It feels good to have a proper room to rest in after 4 consectutive nights without proper accomodation. We are at Hue now, ancient capital of Vietnam, now a small, quiant and immensely walkable town that has a considerably slower pace of life than Hanoi. It suited us just fine; we need to chill after a hectic first 8 days and a chance of pace is more than welcomed. Tonight promises to be a relaxing night spent at a proper hotel.

gray plastic slippers, Sapa, unfinished business in Hanoi and hell ride to Hue

The black Hmong tour guide stepped nimblely on the rocks that dotted the path to our homestay house with her dainty feet. Her feet was covered with a pair of gray plastic slippers, which all the hill tribe women spotted too on their feet. The slippers looked particularly incongruous with their woven, traditional garb and the elaborate decorations on the garb and I could not make out why they chose to wear such slippers.

pork floss buns and scheming bus drivers

SInce the past few days were spent without internet access, I have an excess of handwritten posts to transcribe on this blog. I will split the posts into pre-Sapa and Sapa sections. This post will reflect my expriences before arriving at Sapa; the next one will for my stay in Sapa and beyond.

On snails, showers, sticky situations, Sapa’s spectacular sights, and then some.

I cannot immediately recall how long it has been since we set off for Sapa. Being ensconsed in the mountains away from the urban life has been a largely magical experience. Here are snippets of our Sapa getaway, from our departure to our return to Hanoi.

Thrills & Spills

As a first-timer, i find kayaking damn fun (though chunwee might beg to differ… then again maybe he’s ok with ‘kayaking’ and not ‘kayaking with zihao’). once we stepped off the main boat onto our kayak and started paddling, we headed off in the entire opposite direction, and the boat crew were shouting/gesticulating wildly at us, while chunwee was virtually screaming ‘right’ or something like that.