Posts for March, 2023

Today we drove south to the tourist town of Hoi An. A rest stop at Phu Loc on the Cau Hai Lagoon gave us an opportunity to photograph some interesting fishing nets.

As you can see from the photographs we started the day with a bit of exploration around the hotel and beach front which included spending some time watching a local fisherman with his strange circular boat.

It was really a rest day. We spent some time at the pool getting sunburnt, some time walking the area around the resort, just taking in the scenery and local way of life and in the evening we took a taxi into the center of town to have dinner and do some people watching. It was noticeably crowded as the night descended.

Today looked like being just a travel day, but there were two surprises.

The main reason tourists come to Can Tho is to visit the Floating Market which, according to our guide, is the biggest in Vietnam. This was our main activity today and required a somewhat early start (6:00 am). Fortunately there was no driving involved as one travels to the market by boat, and our boat started the journey about 200 meters down the street.

Our morning was an interesting drive from Can Tho to Saigon, which is by far the largest city in Vietnam with an estimated population of 14 million. It was an interesting drive and gave us a general view of the country side and villages which line the road the entire way. In addition as we got closer to Saigon we saw many rice fields that had just recently been harvested (they are brown) or ones ready for harvest (they are yellow). About a quarter of the way along the drive we crossed the Mekong River on the first modern bridge built over this mighty river. It was built in 2000 with financial and technical assistance from Australia. Just before this bridge we had a "rest stop" at the most amazing "travel plaza", the restaraunt was huge, like an open sided 747 hanger and it had a collection of giant fish easily a meter long.

Our first stop today was the building once known as Presidential Palace during the days of South Vietnam. It sits on the site of a previous French Colonial building, called the Norodom Palace, that was completed in 1871 and served as the Governor Generals residents during French colonial times. Following the French it was the Palace for the South Vietnamese President until damaged by bombing in 1962. Thereafter the construction of the new Presidential Palace was commissioned. After the war ended in 1975 the building was renamed the "Reunification Palace". It was again renamed to "Independence Palace" - I have not been able to find a date for this final renaming, but probably after or in anticipation of, normalization of relations with the USA around 1995.

The first half of the day was simply the process of flying from Saigon to Siem Reap in Cambodia and required no elaboration. Siem Reap and it's surroundings on the other hand is one of the worlds major archealogical sites and will occupy all of our energies for the next few days.

We were up early in order to start our days touring at 7:00 am. This area is a major tourist destination getting somewhere between 2 and 5 million visitors per year depending on the source of that information. So the early start was to beat the crowds and heat.

Our first attraction today was a complex called Banteay Srei. It is built from hard sandstone and in our guides opinion has some of the best preserved decorative carvings of any of the ruins.

Today we was another change of location as we took a short flight from Siem Reap in Cambodia to Pakse, near Champasak, Laos. The day was quite routine until we realized that our accommodation for the next few days was on an island called Don Deng in the middle of the Mekong River at a hotel called La Folie Lodge. To add to the novelty we crossed to the island on a boat made from two large canoes connected by a seating platform, and we were driven from the shore to the hotel in a trailer attached to a "chinese tractor". The hotel turned out to have a very "colonial" feel, but also was quite a magic and relaxing place. Boating on the Mekong was a wonderful feeling.

Today we visited a local tourist stop called Wat Phu. It is a Hindu Temple built in the 10th century during the Khmer period as a shrine to Shiva. But there are other ruins and artifacts on the site dating back to the 2nd century BC. In particular up the side of the mountain above the temple is a sanctuary and sacred spring, in the first photo below the temple, just visible at the end of the approach road and the large steps up to the sanctuary are visible. The wikipedia entry in the link above gives a good description of the site and its history. It even has a site map that explains the long approach roads.

A 2 hour drive south of where we are staying is an area in the Mekong that consists of a complex region of islands and rapids, known as The 4000 Islands. That was our destination today. We were going to exlpore the area by long boat and tuck-tuck pulled by a motorcycle. The center piece of the day was a visit to Khone Phapheng Falls the widest water falls in the world and its little sibling Li Phi waterfall on the island Don Knon. But along the way we would see many interesting things

Today was a travel day, we left La Folie Lodge for a flight to the Northern Laotian town of Luang Prabang. Thus we spent most of the day waiting either in airports or sitting on planes. However the ever unrepressible Nina was up early getting her last walk around the island. The center part of Don Daeng Island is devoted to agriculture and livestock, as can be seen in the first 6 photos below. Photo 2 is rice fields waiting for the wet season to come to life, photo 3 is a water storage pond that is part of the wet season irrigation system. The final Don Daeng photo is a freshly planted tapioca field. If you look very carefully (maybe with imagination) you can just see short sticks poking up out of the ploughed soil; they are tapioca seedlings that have recently been planted.

Our starting point today was Ock Pop Tok an establishment that combined a restaraunt/coffe shop, souvenir shop with a craft workshop that specialised in spinning, dying and weaving silk and cotton. The dying operation was particularly interesting.

Not much happened worth of comment today. It was a rest day in the sense of no organized activities. We spent the day exploring the town for super markets and backeries, people watching and resting. Topped of the day with dinner at another restaraunt overlooking the Mekong.

There are a number of Budhist Temples in Luan Prabang (something like 15 -- look it up), which means there are a lot of monks, and traditionally the way they sustain themselves is with gifts of food from the local population. In Luang Prabang that process takes the form of a daily procession of monks walking along the streets of the town past lay deciples who are seated on the side of the road with various feed stuffs ranging from a pot of boiled rice to candy bars. The process is called "Alms Giving". The processing is early in the morning, around 5:30, and there for was not condusive to good photograhs.

Before going to the boat this morning to start our cruise on the Mekong, Nina decided to make another try at seeing and photographing the Buddhist Alm's Giving. As you can see from the first 2 photos she got a much better impression of the event.

In yesterdays post I forgot to explain the Shompoo in the title. Not surprisingly it is the name of the Tour Company that runs the cruise. The boats resident guide made a point of telling us that is was not "Shampoo", and that it was the word for "pink" which was the color of the soft furnishings on the boat.

This is our only day in Chiang Rai and we were scheduled to see "some temples" and an "old house". But as it turned out this was a very inadequate description. But before starting on our tourism activities for the day the first 2 photos are of a plant at our hotel called a Cannon Ball Tree

There is not much to say today. We were able to relax at the hotel this morning awaiting our 13:00 pickup for a drive of about 3.5 hours to the city of Chiang Mai. The quality of the roads were a positive surprise and as much of the drive is through mountains also scenic and interesting. As it turned out our hotel in Chiang Mai is downtown, just outside the large square area of the old royal city. It is Banthai Village

Today was billed as one of the highlights of this trip and so it turned out. We visited one of the 100s of Elephant Sanctuaries in the Chiang Mai area and really did not know what to expect. At a roadside cafe overlooking a vibrant fruit and veg garden we met our host Dom and after a short wait and coffee we got started with a ride of 10-15 minutes on a bamboo raft which took us to the Elephant Sanctuary. Later in the day we would discover that these rafts are a popular afternoon entertainment with the local young set, and by the time we finished our elephant visit, many groups of locals were riding rafts and stopping for beer and food at one of the many riverside impromptu cafes.

Today was a sort-of city tour and started at two inner city markets. The first was the wholesale food market and the second a large drygoods market. As is typical with such market visits we got to see all the obvious foods as well as some not so obvious.

Arriving in Bangkok was a bit of a culture shock, it is a big city (almost 11 million) and with traffic that is widely known for being terrible. Even at mid day it lived up to that reputation and our drive from the airport was full of waiting and then darting.

I have to admit to being a bit slack today as I declined the days tourist activity and sent Nina along with our guide Saruda out on their own to partake of the "city tour by walking and public transport".

Today was programmed as a rest day for us older people. We spent it mostly lazing around the hotel with a few short excursions when we got bored. These included near by Santi Chai Prakan Park and Fort

We were awake and finalizing our packing at 1:30am this morning in order to be at Bangkok Airport by 3:00 the required 3 hours before our 6:00am flight to Paro, Bhutan. The four and a half hour flight to Paro made a stop in Dhaka, Bangladesh. We thought maybe this would allow us techincally to add Bangladesh to the list of countries we have visited, but transit passengers did not disembark.

There are lots of things to see and do in and around Thimphu, but no visit to this city would be complete without a visit to the Big Buddha, more formally known as Buddha Dordenma. This gigantic bronze statue of Buddha sits on top of a large Buddhist Temple, and has a very large courtyard for the gathering of the faithful. It is located high up on the side of the Wang Chhu valley on a specially built flattened area of land at the end of a specially built road. A massive effort that started in 2006 and was competed in 2015. The statue, which is made entirely of bronze, cost US$47 Million and was paid for by Rinchen Peter Teo a Singaporean businessman and the whole project cost US$100 Million. The temple under the statue makes provision for the Buddhist faithful to make dedications in the form of small statues of the Buddha housed permenantly in the temple. Currently there are 100,000 8 inch statues and 25,000 12 inch statues.

Today we travelled from Thimphu to Punakha via the Dochula Pass and along the way got a lesson in Bhutan History both modern and not so modern. The Drochula Pass is the site of Druk Wangyal Chortens which is a monument consisting of 108 chortens or stupas. These stupas were built to honour the fourth King of Bhutan and the soldiers he led during operation All Clear between December 2003 and Jan 2004 to remove from Bhutan soil a number of insurgent groups from India that were using Bhutanese territory as a safe haven from the Indian Authorities. Now this little bit of history brought up a number of questions.

Our first stop today was the imposing Punakha Dzong also known as Pungthang Dewa chhenbi Phodrang (meaning "the palace of great happiness or bliss") it is the second oldest and second largest Dzong in Bhutan. As I mentioned yesterday this imposing building sits on a point of land right at the junction of the Mo and Pho Rivers. Originally built between 1637 and 1638 it has been enlarged and renovated a number of times over the years.

Today can rightly be named A day on the Wangdi-Trongsa Highway, as we met this east-west highway a little south of Punakha and thereafter it occupied most of the day before turning south into the Phobjikha Valley and our nights accomodation. To say that this was an interesting road would be an understatement. It winds its way along the steep sides of the valley of the Dang Chhu River, twisting in and out of creek valleys until the village of Nubding where it climbs away from the river heading towards Pele La pass at 3300 meters and then onto to Trongsa. The highway is a small part of what is known as the Lateral Road or PN1 which is the highway that crosses Bhutan on a roughly east-west line.