Brunei

Uneventful flight (thank goodness) across to Brunei over some beautiful turquoise clear water. Not sure what I expected from Brunei, I didn't know very much about it. I knew it is a very small sultanate wealthy as a result of its oil resources and that the organisation, who I have done a placement with (here know as summer placement organisation, SPO, as anyone can read this), are involved in Brunei, particularly with teaching English teachers and recruiting English teachers.

First thing I noticed is that it is far less conservative than I was expecting. Women are actually quite present in the workforce and also quite high up in the political world as well and young Muslim couples walk around holding hands etc. It is also nothing like Asia, other than the odd water village and market, people stop at zebra crossings! Even though nobody walks, when I was walking around people would stop their cars and ask where I was going. It is known as the 'Abode of Peace' and does have some really beautiful mosques. It also has a Chinese temples and a strong Chinese presence, similar to Malaysia. After meeting the people at SPO, I also realised that the expat community is quite different to what I had seen in Vietnam. Brunei is quiet, modern and has little night life, so most expats are families.

I am going to spend three days in total properly observing their work and staying with the families of those who work at SPO. This has so far included long chats about the difference between being an 'English teacher' (ie English literature) and a 'teacher of English'. First thing is to learn our own grammar! (Apparently Brits are a bit better at this than people from NZ and Aus...!) This is something I'd talked about with Emma in Vietnam, as well. I spent today watching the Prime Minister's Office have their English lessons. They were learning about how rhetoric and speeches, quite difficult! We spent a long time putting different emphasis on phrases to change the meaning and then looked at rhetorical devices through poetry, which included dramatic readings from me of 'The Eagle', 'Jabberwocky' and Auden's 'Funeral Blues'. Try explaining galumphing to a Bruneian.

Borneo!

So, after stocking up on some very cheap XXL clothes (that's my size in Vietnam...) in Saigon Square, (am quite bored of the same clothes after six weeks), Emma and I made are way to Sabah, Borneo. Emma assured us confidently of the timings and we arrived at the airport at 10.28 for our flight at 12. Or, as it turned out, actually at 11. Second amusing airport story, we made it from arrival to sitting on the plane of an international flight in sixteen minutes. I took all my luggage, minus scissors, but including liquids, aerosols etc. on to the cabin itself, and people were CHARMING as we barged through the queues. A lot to be said for Ho Chi Minh airport and Malaysia airlines...

On arriving in Sabah, after enjoying the Harrods shop with tea at KL airport, we went straight to our hotel in Poring Hot Springs with a very talkative taxi driver who gave us a potted history of Borneo, which was very useful! Our first day was spent walking around Kinabalu Park, very jungly, very mosquito-y and very cloudy! Unfortunately the only views we got of Mt Kinabalu were brief and through cloud, but it was good to do some walking and we felt we deserved the hot springs afterwards, floating dead skin and all. It was also amazing how much we were staying in the middle of the jungle, it's really quite noisy.

After Kinabalu Park, we went on to Sandakan. This is where Agnes Keith, and American lady who married a Brit, lived from the thirties to the fifties and wrote three books, most famously 'Three Came Home'. Emma is reading the first and I, unfortunately, cannot get them on my Kindle so am yet to read them. Her house was a really interesting museum, with some quite amusing quotes from her books and stunning views. Importantly, there was also a croquet set and an incredible Western cafe with real tea. A big hit with us.



From Sandakan, we went on to Sepilok, famous for its orangutans. It is a rehabilitation centre, so the orangutans mostly live freely but get fed by humans. We stood about 15m away and watched their feeding , both orangutans and macaques. It was actually really good, they warn you you may not see many, it is not a zoo, so that makes it all the better when you actually see lots, even Mummy and baby. They're also just quite funny to watch because they're so human like. They do this pose a lot: (not my photo, I have a LOT not very well zoomed in photos...)

We also just happened to look up and see some rhinocerous hornbills. This was almost more exciting, as it was unexpected. In the afternoon we went to the rainforest discovery centre and wandered along the canopy walkway hanging out with giant tree squirrels (very close and confident!) and some pittas, which are extremely colourful birds. It was probably more fun to spot a bright yellow or red bird by chance than to spot orangutans with lots of other people when they come at the same time every day...

(not my photo, obviously I have lots of photos of blank sky and trees...)



Finally, we went to Semporna which is dive central in Sabah. In particular, Sipidan is meant to have incredible diving and, after finding out we couldn't go here (partly because we hadn't booked it when we thought we had, partly because we are not experienced divers) and after Emma got over this, we ended up going to Mabul and staying there. Neither of us are qualified, Emma has dived before but I never have, so we did discovery dives, where someone accompanies you and you only go to twelve metres. This was quite far enough for me; firstly my ears were very slow at 'equalizing', which is painful, and secondly, it's very daunting being underwater! I spent the whole time wishing I could talk to someone though, as we saw some incredible things. In two dives we saw six turtles (hawksbill and green), which were beautiful when they swam and big when they didn't, coral, all the cast of 'Finding Nemo' minus Bruce and the seagulls, (Nemo, Dory, Scarface, squid, bright blue starfish etc.) an ugly cuttle fish and an ugly but very rare flamboyant cuttlefish. This last one has a very cool underwater dive symbol. Our instructor has only seen three in two years and I think was slightly miffed I saw one on my first dive during a discovery dive. All round it's going to be very difficult for any other diving to live up to this! Taking photos involved hiring a very expensive camera, so I've added some photos for you to get the drift..

 

 

Third not-yet-amusing airport story: We flew are separate ways from KK (Kota Kinabalu), and had to get a short flight from near Semporna back to KK. We arrived and were warned that our flight may be delayed as the airport at KK is not open... The two girls we had joined up with and I went and sat around in the grottiest airport I have ever been on, but Emma managed by sitting right next to the Air Asia man, to get us on an earlier flight so that by the time the airport opened we left more or less at the time we would have done. However, she undid this good work by forgetting her passport on said plane when we arrived and not realising until the hotel... Fortunately, after a stressful wait (for her) at the aiport when the plane went to and from where we'd come from and came back at 2.15am, her passport did return, but we slightly felt sick of airport-related stress by the end of the holiday. To reward ourselves, we spent the final day in KK in a very swish Meridian hotel buffet (quite cheap but very good, Emma tells me this is what one does in Asia...) eating all we possibly good, before enjoying the bars of KK. Emma headed back to Saigon and I travelled on to Brunei...

Saigon

Sorry, there has been a bit of a delay in writing this blog, I have been busy! Or there has been no Internet..

In Ho Chi Minh/Saigon, I was staying with my old housemate, Emma, who is currently teaching in Saigon. This gave me the opportunity to enjoy expat lifestyle. To be an expat you need to learn taxi directions in the native language, drink and eat out a lot, live in an incredibly swish apartment maybe with a maid (the maid does not apply to Emma, to be fair) and not necessarily have visited the main attractions in your city. This was quite fun for a week!

After a gruesome journey from Dalat, which lasted most of the day and included speaking Vietnamese that Emma had given me and a nice evening in (a treat when travelling!), I spent the second day exploring Ho Chi Minh. Firstly, this included enjoying the luxury apartment and its pool, and then I went and wandered around. Ho Chi Minh is much more built up and richer than other cities in Vietnam, there are a lot of high rise buildings and very swish shopping centres. There are also a lot of amazing patisseries and things, which are realy fun to have a look at. I also went to the War Remnants Museum, which is in no way fun. There is quite a heavy propagandist slant but also many horrendous images of the long term effects of war, particularly agent orange. The second unpleasant thing about the museum is the Asian tourists posing for pictures with damaged foetuses. Emma had lent me The Quiet American, which I very much enjoyed, so we went and walked down Rue Catinat and had cocktails in the Continental in the style of Fowler, and we could afford them! This was followed by a Vietnamese meal where someone felt confident ordering for us and ended up being delicious.

For my birthday itself, I went into Emma's school, the British International School. This was actually amazing to see. It's a really well done school building, with lots of small classes and a completely different atmosphere to any UK school I've been in. Firstly, Maths is cool. Secondly, the difference in value of learning is really apparent, especially as the lessons and school is very much British but the responses of the children are very different. I got to observe a lesson and chat to lots of teachers, as well as observe Emma teach English as a second language (they were learning 'If I had heard her, I would have gone downstairs' sentences - very confusing!) and then, after meeting the headmaster, was seen as some kind of Oxbridge expert and spoke to the head of sixth form (I assume) and one girl who is about to have her interview for Cambridge in Singapore, although normally they encourage parents to pay to fly to the city itself (!).

After that I had a massage in a salon full of expats having their hair done by three people at once, followed by English faculty drinks and then a big very Western meal out with a whole load of Emma's friends that I adopted for the day! On Friday, I went back to the school to watch their international day celebrations. This was incredible, all morning they wander around different classrooms that are different rooms and play quizzes/games/eat food/dress up, and then in the afternoon they have a big talent show and fashion show. This largely involved national dance (the Indians and the Indonesians, who dance with their eyes, were the best!), as well as a lot of dancing in the style of gangnam style - google it, it is huge here. Way more fun than any school show I'd been to before!

Finally, I also spent a day in the Mekong Delta, which is not beautiful but amazing how much life happens on the river, particularly when it floods a lot. I hope to share some pictures soon, I got rowed down through the jungle, saw honey being made, coconut and fruit being grown and heard some traditional music. A really good day trip. I wish I had google earth, I imagine it looks like one massive puddle from above.

I have now arrived in Borneo and have spent the day looking at Orangutans! I will try and post soon, as I am out of Internet time and definitely want to share some pictures soon!

Moving South

Tomorrow I will (hopefully) be in Saigon and Emma's apartment (with a pool and a washing machine)- phew! Will try and upload some photos when I get there...

From Hue I did the tour of the DMZ. There was a guide who was quite useful, but obviously assumed that we had no previous knowledge at all about the Vietnam War/American War (depending where you are!). We saw the Khe San Combat Base which had quite a moving museum in it and lots of crashed planes/left over tanks/bombs that you could wander around. Much more disconcerting was the guide's own stories about blowing up dud bombs when they were younger and trying to use explosions to kill fish! He also told us how bomb craters are often now fished in... The other particularly impressive we saw was the Vinh Moc tunnels. A whole village essentially lived underground in a tunnel system to avoid the war. Unlike the Cu Chi tunnels, they were more lived in than used for soldiering and were a bit bigger but I, embarrassingly, went about 3ft in and then had to turn around - turns out I'm more claustrophobic than I thought. Most of all, it was a good trip for just seeing the kind of terrain - you could get a good idea of what it might have been like.

Then I went on southwards to Hoi An, which is a beautiful town with older architecture. Unfortunately, I was started getting ill here and had some nasty throat thing that is now a cold with a cough, but fortunately I think Hoi An is the sort of place you would sit around in cafes/restaurants anyway, whether you were ill or not. Sleeping in a buff to keep my ears warm seems to be working and I am recovering.Visiting the pharmacist give me an insight into marketing - all moisturiser here is 'whitening' although seems to be exactly the same as what is 'nourishing' in the UK.

From Hoi An I went to My Son, which were old Cham temples. I think what is meant to make them particularly impressive is the way they are set against these big hills, but it was raining so much we couldn't see those! (Am getting very tired of the tropical storm...) It was still a nice place to walk around for a bit with this Canadian girl I met and also to see how much had been destroyed by American bombs (again). I also caught the bus up to Danang, which is a bigger and much less nice city, and saw lots of Cham sculptures (the ones that didn't end up in France from My Son). Just outside are the 'Marble Mountains', more like steep hills of marble and limestone, with some cool caves in. Getting to the top included clambering through some very small holes - marble is quite slippery to climb up! Then I went to the beach, which was a bit over resorted and, as a result of Gaemi again, not very safe for swimming. I could see how it might have been a  nice place to R&R as many Americans did.

Final stop before Saigon (or Ho Chi Minh, I can't decide which I should be saying) was Dalat. Dalat is 'the town of four seasons', as it starts in spring, is summer by lunchtime, autumn by evening and winter overnight. Really, it's in the Central Highlands and a bit more like a summer's day in the UK, which is quite nice! There is much less rice and jungle and a lot more flowers and evergreens, making it quite a nice place to wander around, of which I have done a lot, particularly around the lake. I caught a rickety old train into a nearby village with some pagodas that went past miles of greenhouses (plastic, not glass). Then wandered over to the king's summer palace, which was a surprisingly small and slightly ugly thirties building. Apparently the fact it was yellow made it royal... Then, because I was spending the day with a Chinese girl, Ruby, and a Slovenian guy, Zoman, we went to this kitschy 'crazy house', which is a sort of fake Alice and Wonderland-like tree house. Both Zoman and I, although much more so him, spent a lot of the day grilling Ruby about China. It was quite interesting, especially as I am reading 'Wild Swans' and am in a bit of Chinese whirl but was also quite interesting how unimpressed with Vietnam she was; China is more beautiful and, whilst she would take a lot of photos, none of the temples and pagodas, we have those in China!

Overall, I like Dalat's climate and surroundings but am a bit disappointed with the city. Ideally I would have had time to come southwards through the central highlands and do some more walking. Frustratingly, Vietnam appears more touristy than elsewhere, but I think actually it's just a little bit harder to get around away from the tourist routes, so you spend a lot of time with tourists following the same path. It is much harder to get off this path than in Thailand, for example, unless you speak Vietnamese. Anyway, 5 days left in Vietnam and then on to Borneo!

Making it on my own!

I am managing very well on my own, thank you to all those who have asked!
We spent another day in Sapa, which was extremely foggy and, a shock to the system, cold. This did mean I could indulge in a hot bath, I haven't even had a hot shower since Bangkok, so this was very much enjoyed. We couldn't see very far at all and it made us very gratfeul it had been so much clearer the day before. This meant we ended up taking advantage of the markets, shops and cafes. A bit incongruous to have hot chocolates and cake in Vietnam but that's what Sapa is like! We also wandered around the museum. Quite interesting to learn how Sapa had become a tourist retreat for the French in early 1900s, obviously had a break from the thirties to the nineties, and now is very touristy again. Also learnt a lot more about the different ethnicities in and around Sapa and their customs. Quite fun to look at all their different clothes they make and patterns of monkey's tails and cat's feet.

After another overnight train (arrived at 4am - not ideal), waiting outside a hostel for an hour or so and then a little nap, we managed to explore a bit more of Hanoi. The traffic bothered us less this time, and we walked all around the Old Quarter, looking at the lake, temples, a very European medieval Cathedral and, like good New Hall historians, the Women's Museum. There was quite a lot of overlap with the Sapa Museum in terms of tribal culture. Was quite interesting to learn about some matrilineal societies within Vietnam and then a lot on women historically being involved in war and then being very much involved in wars against the French and American. Also a very moving exhibition of paintings of the 'mothers', women who get support from the state as their husbands and/or all their children 'sacrificed their lives' (rather than killed) in the 50s, 60s or 70s. It was noticeable looking at temples that there is a lot more Chinese influence in Vietnam, or at least the North. Even though many Vietnamese would claim to be Buddhist, many follow a faith mixed with other things, like Confucianism and other Chinese influences. I definitely haven't seen any orange clothed monks; they're everywhere in Thailand and Cambodia!

After this, Cat and I decided to indulge in some Western culture and went to the cinema to see 'The Watch'. Reasonably entertaining, but not something I would watch in the UK and definitely put us off Western culture again!

Cat then left to go to Nepal very early on Friday morning, and I spent another day in Hanoi. I didn't make it to Ho Chi Minh's Mausoleum as his body is currently being re-waxed (?) in Russia, but I looked all around the Temple of Literature and saw some more of Hanoi outside the Old Quarter.

I have now made it to Hue on an overnight bus. On this long journey I thought maybe now I'd have some time to think about what I'll do when I get back, and then thought NO! Too stressful! and went back to squashing bus bugs and thinking about how my old English teacher told us it was good to be idle. Am obviously not yet bored of being on holiday and not thinking about the real world.

Hue is the old capital and, due to the tropical storm currently over Vietnam, extremely wet! It has a very beautiful citadel, a striking pagoda and a number of tombs of old emperors, all of which I have now looked around. It was quite interesting to see the French influence creeping in by twentieth century, and they are very good at peaceful and beautiful architecture. I can bore you all with a lot of photos on my return.

Other than that, I have been talking to a lot of teachers (they're everywhere! I really don't seek them out!) and enjoying all the different local beers at every place I go. Tomorrow I am going on a tour of the de militarized zone, which I'm expecting to be a bit heavy and have heard mixed reviews about, but having read lots of books on Vietnam War (thanks to my kindle), I'm embracing it before heading on to Hoi An on Tuesday.

Halong Bay and Sapa

Since escaping the bustle of Hanoi, we have seen some really beautiful parts of Vietnam. We spent three days in Halong Bay, which was really stunning. These are not my pictures as my camera won´t connect up, but it really did look like the postcards! We did a boat trip that included kayaking (very relaxing), hiking up Cat Ba Island National Park (very beautiful views), swimming, a lot of eating and staying and beaching at Monkey Island (I´m not THAT keen on monkeys close up...). It was really nice and relaxing, only slightly tempered by a MENTAL Guatemalan guy who was also on the boat, but other much nicer people too! A whole bunch had been through China and we not overly positive, but in a way that made both Cat and I want to go and see for ourselves!

Straight back from Halong Bay via an extremely delicious restaurant (I am now addicted to fruit in coconut milk puddings) we got the overnight train to Sapa. Despite not much sleep, arriving at six thirty am, it seemed to be at it´s most beautiful. It is much cooler, as it is high up and surrounded by mountains, with masses of terraced rice paddies, which are a very bright green. Similar to Chiang Mai, it has many Hmong people, who wear very traditional dress and, inevitably, attempt to sell us EVERYTHING. Miraculously we maintained energy after an uncomfortable train ride (very narrow bunks for sharing with ALL of our stuff, combined with an agile old lady or had no problems treading on us on her way up and down to bed, as well as a rather unpleasant smell...) to go on a one day trek today. The weather was beautiful, and I have a whole load of photos which probably don´t do it justice. Another well deserved meal today - I may have to do a Vietnamese cooking class as well....