PHOTOS: Cambodia Siem Reap Angkor Wat Temple

It is so spectacular that I have decided just to have one page on this temple alone. 

Click on them to see larger size, and enjoy!

Kids doze outside of Angkor Wat's protecting lake. I want too.

Newly weds having their pictures taken. IT WAS 09.30 AM!

Protecting walls outside, 1,000 years old

Angkor Wat Temple from about 300 metres away

Lovely cycle ride alongside my local temple

Angkor Wat Temple - we are getting closer

We are entering the walls of the temple

One of the MANY walls with stories on the stone

Follow the line please

Now you see me, now you don't

Everyone smiles here, and I wonder why certain parts are darker...

Respect

A picture, within a picture

Library on one of the East or West sides

Palm trees cannot compete here

Stone and Green

Inspiration

View from the centre all the way to the entrance

Now you see me, now you don't

They look after their Bhudas

VERY STEEP stairs... and these are new ones, the  original ones are in between the new ones!

I wish that was my view from my window every morning

Golden colours are present in many ways

We felt a lot of respect for the place

One of the many countries supporting the restoration of the temple, well done  Germany!

In 1881 someone left his mark. A bit of a shame, or is it?

Thousands of stories on those walls

Great visit, I almost felt closer to heaven

A big forest surrounds the temple

A small temple just down the road....

.... and its monkeys!

DO NOT DISTURB

If you need to know more details about this UNESCO Heritage site, feel free to go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angkor_Wat

Saludos!

Cambodia 30 March to 3 April: Siem Reap Temples to Happy Pizza

Friday 30 March: Welcome to Siem Reap

7.00pm: It has been a lazy afternoon after arriving to Siem Reap, in the north of Cambodia. The thermometer showed 35+ degrees at the airport. Visa and passport control is smooth and if you don’t have a passport picture at hand they charge you an extra 1USD and that sorts it. Total USD21 to get in the country. It is sunny, with no wind and feels sticky. Sweet. David and I head off into the old town, apparently Siem Reap has a decent nightlife. Let’s find out.

9.00pm:  We are having dinner on one of the street food places near the appropriately named Pub Street - Pub Street is about 100 metres long with pubs and restaurants at both sides, crucially there is little or no traffic here and pedestrians can cross the street at leisure, kind of; heaven. Street food prices vary between the ultra low USD1.00 for one fried rice with vegetables and chicken, pork or beef, to a budget killer USD1.50 for something similar. As I say, madness. Drinks are also one or two bucks, enough said. We are also sweating, A LOT, and David tells me some people are staring at my eating skills – yes, I was hungry. It all comes in at under USD9. Love it.

10.00pm: We walk around this busy part of town and there are plenty of restaurants, bars and pubs. There are two louder clubs, opposite to each other, and there are two other pubs showing live an English Premier League football match on these large screens – they show the Premier League every day, all day, any time, any where. There are some crazy young kids dancing in between the clubs, tourists love them, and they have the moves – very funny, although one cannot escape the reason why these kids are on the street at this time at night, with no adults supervising them, night after night. We have a few drinks at various spots, all fun and lively but head back at a reasonable time.

Saturday 31 March – Siem Reap Temples Day

10.00am: We arrive to Angkor Wat, the site of the biggest temples in Cambodia. Temples are a big deal here, or at least they were when they were built but for different reasons. Our great tour guide, Uy Sankar, is not only very knowledgeable, takes us around the quieter sides, but he is very funny too and just a few years younger than us; he makes for a very enjoyable visit.

Angkur Wat Temple - the biggest one, simply magnifcient.

Temples were built between the year 950 to 1,185. On average they took around 20-30 years to be finished. That depended on the king in charge and war. It is estimated some 200,000 workers built the main temple of Angkor Wat. Buddhism and Hinduism dominated temples and fought each other for centuries... But for anything else in the history of the temples, please go to Wikipedia, google or just jump on a plane and come over. You will love it.

Back to what we saw: a wedding couple is having their pictures taken in their beautiful white outfits and golden umbrellas, to protect from the sun. It is a another hot morning, some kids doze on the walls of this magnificent monument. There are many tourists, as you would expect, so Sankar takes us around one side, which is lovely quiet and incredibly beautiful.

12.00pm: It is difficult to take a boring picture here. THIS IS SO BEAUTIFUL AND INSPIRING. From the little towers, to the paintings and works on the stone. So many little details, so much history. IT IS TIME TRAVELLING in real life. The place is so huge we spend about two hours here and you know you can stay all day. This is a Buddhist temple, so it all is about going up, closer to heaven. It is very vertical and we have to climb up the steep steps every now and then, fun!

1.00pm: We are looking for Angelina Jolie or Lara Croft, Harrison Ford or Indian Jones. One of them will do. This means we are at the temple where they filmed the movie Tomb Raider. What is so special about this place? It is not only the architecture, the ruins or the colour of the stone. It is also Mother Nature. How trees grow everywhere, literally anywhere... Their roots are so strong they break stones easily and expand everywhere, even grow up hugging first and strangling to death later other trees. There are trees of 100, 200 or 300 years life. Some have fallen recently and broken some more stones. It is a delicate balance between restoring history and leaving history follow its own natural path. This place is simply stunning, it is also Hindu place, so it is more about being horizontal and many small towers – around 32 spread on the ground.

3.00pm: At a new temple we learn that the Chinese Prime Minister, or someone as important, will be visiting the temples tomorrow. So they have gotten rid off the street sellers and built some tents for some speeches, particularly some last minute work is going on at one where the Chinese government has helped restore.

I notice how there are many countries helping restoring the heritage including China, India, Germany or Czech Republic. We all live in the same world after all.

4.00pm: I climb one last temple where local kids are really fast. I tell myself I used to be able to that at their age and it is fun. Here I am climbing this temple of 1,000 or more years old, just like a kid, but a little slower. We also see free, wild monkeys hanging around like they own the place – and who says they don’t. They are so relaxed and calmed you have a feeling they have been here for centuries.

7.30pm: At a hotel near ours to attend an Apsara Dancing show – this is a typical Cambodian dance. In addition to the amazingly beautiful and elaborated outfits, the actual dance is highly skilled. To me it seems like a combination of yoga, on those heavy outfits, with acting and some smiles. We also have a large buffet dinner and I make the most of it with about six different plates.

Outside there is a huge storm unfolding, water and lightning all in serious amounts – but life doesn’t stop here for that, not at all. It lasts less than two hours.

10.00pm: Pub Street, hello: First night proper out in Siem Reap. We have a drink at the Red Piano pub, famous for Angelina Jolie hanging out there when she was filming. It is an ok place but maybe they need to move on from the AJ tagline. Some of the other bars and pubs are a lot nicer. You can hear the louder bars in the distance.

11.00pm: We meet two English girls who live here teaching English to young children at an NGO school. They have been in the country since Boxing Day (26 December) and love it.

Sunday 1^st April – Siem Reap night and more Temples

01.00am: We are on the dancing podiums of one the loud bars. We have had a couple of buckets too. A “bucket” is basically a large container where they throw in the cocktail you have asked, in large quantities. One drink is USD2.50, a bucket is USD10.00. And they prepare them well... It is also an excuse to celebrate David’s birthday, which is on Tuesday. We party for another couple of hours.

10.00am: Sankar is ready to take us for our long day. We are not THAT ready, but as I learnt years ago “ONCE A PROFESSIONAL, ALWAYS A PROFESSIONAL”. So we just get on with it. We have thousands of years of history to discover today. We can sleep another time, or not.

11.00am: There are two main types of homes off the road and they are all are very humble.

Ones are mostly made of metal, tin, plastic and some wood. They are more huts than anything else. Some have also satellite TV, huh? This is a shared sight with Vietnam. The other ones are built on stilts, for the wet season when there is regular flooding. I wonder how do the first ones deal with flooding that time of the year.

Although there some elderly people, most population is under 30 years of age. You can see kids everywhere, free animals everywhere. And it is all green and a bumpy road.

1.30pm: We stop at a small Anti Landmine Museum. It is run by a former soldier, aged today 36. Among the many atrocities of the Civil war, the landmines have left scares for life in the people, in the country and in their culture... We mustn’t forget. But it seems we do in other parts of the world as weapons have been brought from Russia or the USA, and other countries. He tells the story of how he had to shoot, to kill, his uncle a few times from far away, as they were both fighting on different sides... He missed, on purpose, and told his fellow soldiers his sight that day was blurry – he was the best sniper of his squad. Thankfully, his uncle escaped that day and only many years later his nephew told him the story.

WAR, STUPID WARS.

2.00pm: We stop at a local village to take some pictures. It is quite a nice village, with most buildings built on stilts. Now in the dry season people just hang out under their homes in hammocks and on tables.

A few kids spot us and come to sell us their souvenirs...

“One dollar (they say ‘dolla’) sir! One dolla!”

I am getting used to this. It is sad in a way, as kids shouldn’t have to work at these young ages. At the same time, I cannot change that. But I can try to help a little bit. I engage with some of them, try to be difficult offering very little money and asking for many things, to see how they react.

Most are quite sharp and creative. Some are in a different class, they are natural traders, but also great sales people. You forget their age and try to get the best deal. They want to sell you something, a bracelet, a flute, a necklace but what they really want is at least that ONE DOLLA that will make their day a better one. Some give up early, some do not. They are younger than 10 and have been working for years now. I buy two flutes and five bracelets, and received many big smiles in return.

Sankar tells us he did that too as a kid, always trying to help his family. He worked as a little boy every day and then share the money with his family. He then completed his university studies in business and married within two years of college. He also explains how he had to raise an incredible USD5,000 to pay to his fiancé family, before being able to marry her. They have now been married for two years. Kids will follow, one day, he tells me with a cheeky smile.

4.00pm: Floating village: we are on a small boat to visit the famous floating village where over 5,000 people live, or was it families? Either way those are a lot of families. The small, brown water canal takes down to the big lake in about 20 minutes. Life on this canal is busy, with many small, long boats up and down the stream constantly. There are big posts along the way on the dry land, about 6-7 metres high, and we are about 3-4 metres below those posts. Sankar tells us that at the peak of the wet season those posts are covered about more than half, with water.

As we enter the lake this endless aggregation of floating houses and buildings span all over the lake. They have everything they need. From schools to minimarkets, from bars to churches or even a sports centre. I mean EVERYTHING. There are thousands of these floating buildings and life goes around them like in any other village in this part of the world. Interestingly, Sankar tells us that most of them are Vietnamese, but I fail to remember what do they do in the wet season, sorry.

We stop at one of the bars and see some young crocodiles in small wooden cages, of about 1.2 to 1.5 metres long. They sell them when they grow a little more, as you do.

6.00pm: We are back in town and I go for a walk. There is a night market which opens later on, Pub Street is its usual self, including the louder bars. It is a lovely evening and I manage to get lost a few times, before admitting defeat and taking a $1 tuk-tuk to take me to the hotel; it was just around the corner, you muppet.

10.00pm: Watching a Tottenham Hotspur game in one of the loud bars. After two drinks, we feel it is our last night in Siem Reap and get a $5 bucket of some sorts of cocktail. What the hell, why not. About four hours later I am back at the hotel, I think.

Monday 2 April – Road trip Siem Reap to Phnom Pem and meet Pablo!

12.00pm: After a slow start to the day for reasons difficult to remember now, we are on our way to Phnom Pem (PP), capital of Cambodia. We are told it should be a 4.5 to 5 hours journey. We will also meet Pablo, aka Pableras or Pabs, a Spanish friend of mine who has been living in Hong Kong for five years now.

1.00pm: One hour in and this IS GOING TO BE INTERESTING. It is like a long straight road down to PP, just the two lines and the shoulder, sort of. It is also a very busy road. Our driver speeds at around 60 mph or 100 km/hr. On an old bumpy road with push bikes, tuk-tuks, motor bikes, cars, buses, trucks, cows, buffalos, chickens, pigs and people going up and down, right, centre or left. I lose count of the times I really come close to screaming or telling him to slow down, while he also smiles when I get tense. But, somehow, NOTHING BAD HAPPENS. Despite our speed, the old road, the ridiculous traffic or the driver handling two mobile phones at the same time at times, we just go along the way. It must be our lucky day.

4.00pm: After a brief stop to have some food we start to find more traffic as we get nearer to PP. The scenery is a combination of green, palm trees, huts off the road, rice fields and small towns. There are also big work roads that go on for more than 20 kilometres. The country is going forward, but I wonder how they will manage to get all this done one day.

6.30pm: We finally arrive to the hotel, safely, in one piece, thank you very much. Not quite the 5 hours but more like 6.5. I wonder how much the bus must actually take when they say it is just 6 hours. And there he is, Pableras, by the hotel pool bar with a couple of beers waiting for us. He has been in PP for two days already and, as the born natural survivor he is, he has been out and about discovering the non touristy parts of town. At first sight PP reminds me of Saigon but with a little less traffic, and crossing the street does not seem as crazy.

8.00pm: The Pink Elephant and its Happy Pizzas. For those of you who may not know, Happy Pizza does what it says, it makes you happy in a good spirited way; it must be the seasoning. It tastes marvellous too, which always helps. I strongly recommend trying this place, just the one small pizza and not the two medium ones we had, if you ever happen to be in PP. Having Pabs around also makes you happy as he comes up with some crazy little stories of what he has been up to in PP, including riding a push bike in the middle of the road, genius. All in all, we have a very happy dinner and an early night as we want to discover the city tomorrow.

Tuesday 3 April – Phnom Pem tour, dull.

12.00pm: My head is still happy from last night though maybe happy is not exactly how it feels. The day starts a little slow, thankfully I am not the only one. Pabs has arranged for a dedicated tuk-tuk driver for all day to take us around. The driver also happens to run an NGO looking after orphan children and seems like a good man. We visit a couple of the civil war related sites which confirm, once again, that WARS ARE STUPID. I will not enter into the detail but you should spend five minutes on it. We also visit the curiously named Russian Market. It looks like the Spanish “Ensaladilla Rusa” and we don’t really know why it is called Russian, but there you go. To me, it is another market.

There really is not much to see in PP otherwise, which is disappointing. I did not know what to expect, but considering it was a ghost town for more than three years during the war – as in they literally destroyed the city and no one lived there- the place really is not a tourist friendly city. They have more important things to deal with for now.

11.00pm: We have an early night and get ready to travel to Sihanoukville on the south coast, it is beach time.

PHOTOS: Vietnam North to South 24-30 March

Cities, People, Life, Food, Sun and Fun

You may have read the stories in my previous entry, here are some pictures to help illustrate them!! Click on them to see larger size too. Hasta luego!

Saigon traffic... Scooters EVERYWHERE. Now, you cross first; no, you go...

Madness, madness, madness

Coconut juice outside the Saigon main market - I think I paid tourist rate, like VND50,000 (or USD2).

Amazing home made soup for USD1 in local market - with a kick of chilli too.

Presidential palace at night

Street noodles soup after partying until 5am

Cu Chi tunnels - 200km long... Height about 0.70 metres - you get the picture...

Destroyed US tank 1970 - woman tourist (caught at the top) is not included

Tapioca (left) tastes like sweet potato, minus the sweetness - peanuts with salt and suger - and tea. Their diet for 10 years

US tanks in War Remembrance museum - this is only one side of the story

US jet in War Remembrance museum

Architecture is not a priority in this city after 30 years of war - People hanging out in squares and parks in the evenings

From Paris to Berlin... From Paris to Saigon

Typical street food place - they specialize in one dish, come early evening until all is sold. Marvelous.

The Opera house - some clear French heritage, Oui

   

Carrying and Balancing Skills Downtown Champion March 2012 - made it safely to the other side of the street. without looking.

Hotel in Phu Quoc - great resort    

 

Beer by hotel beach

One spectacular sunset - one of many

Plenty of great fresh seafood in the Night Market

Great dinner - USD10, all included. Bargain!

My left eye said NO THANKS!

Showing us how they take the pearls out of the oysters - bloody simple, and cruel if you ask me!

From oyster to pearl jewel in five easy steps, kind of

From 50,000 to 5,000,000 Vietnam Dong. I will never understand why, oh well.

Sao Beach in Phu Quoc

Sao Beach, as in the postcards

Roads are half started, most of them

Keeping the fish cool in the old fishermen village

Sea horses.... then they dry them out... and the rest if history. Didn't try them!

Old Fishermen town

Women work the paper rice at the port

Port life - universal

Floating fishing house, as you do.

Gorgeous Nature - shame corals were not too pretty, I think

Sea hedgehog (or whatever they are called)  - with peanuts. Interesting texture...

Lisa with David, and a pineapple slice.

Yes, its windy!

Back at port after a great day in the sea

Somehow it all looks super fresh afterwards... But not on the spot!

One last swim in Vietnam

One last SPECTACULAR sunset in Vietnam

Our very own private Beach Party - crazy and fun night

Noodles soup at Saigon Aiport. LOVED IT.

Vietnam north to south - 24 to 30 March

Saturday 24 March – Hoi An to Ho Chi Minh City
(pictures to follow soon, wi-fi goes veeeeery slow here, hope you enjoy it for now!) 

11.30am: we head off to the airport and have a lovely soup while waiting to board. It is amazing how something so simple can taste so good. I also order local iced coffee. It is amazing how something so simple can taste so... differently. And so strong. It is caffeine straight into your system; I take only two sips.

02.30pm: welcome to the madness of Saigon traffic. There are scooters EVERYWHERE. It is literally mental. Our taxi makes its way to the hotel in the centre of town and all I can see is a river of scooters from right to left, left to right, up and down.

04.30pm: we set off to discover the city on foot. First challenge: to cross the street. It is similar to go across a slope on a busy piste in the middle of the Alps on a Saturday morning. Only that here it is faster and more dangerous. And people come both ways. The trick is to walk head on straight into it, walking at a steady and slow pace, do not hesitate, do not run, just walk and see what’s coming. They will see you and avoid you naturally. And it simply does. Beautiful. It is amazing how something so simple can be so exciting.

6.00pm: we have a lovely soup in a small place in the local market. They have small stools where you sit and eat it as people walk around you. Markets are markets everywhere: the combination of smells, noise, people, stock and heat is universal.

7.00pm: David reckons he’ll go to bed before midnight, to make the most of Sunday.

9.00pm: we have been looking for a bar for a while and find a karaoke one near the hotel. It is a good venue. Unfortunately the singing is not particularly good. It seems we picked the night where all the hopeless perform. I think I may try too as I would not do too bad in comparison. But I don’t. The bar has wi-fi –every pub in Vietnam so far has free wi-fi- and we look for other pubs to head to.

10.00pm: at another pub we meet a Dutch guy, Kai, 22, who is doing an internship in Saigon. He is with a couple of English expats too. We jump on the back of their scooters and they take us to a nice, trendy club. THIS IS MORE LIKE IT.

11.45pm: Police arrive and the lights go up, but no-one leaves. We hang out. Kai explains to us that this happens very often. After half hour we go somewhere else. In a private booth, three police officers discuss paperwork with the club’s manager. We are told they are discussing the compensation.

Sunday 25 March – Ho Chi Minh City

01.30am: THIS IS MORE LIKE IT. We are at the famous ‘Apocalypse Now’ club. It looks as good as any club in London, New York or Rio as far as I can tell. “And I was going to be in bed by midnight!” remembers David. Tom, the young English expat, 20, is all good heart and very funny, making these flamenco-like moves in my honour. I set off clapping. Tonight is gonna be a good night...

03.30am: We are in this big club somewhere else. The expats have left us. We dance with the locals, they are funny. I am a little too tal for them, they just laugh, a lot. My best Chris Brown moves are definitely nailing it, or so I say to myself.

05.00am: We are having a noodles soup opposite the club. The noodles are not so good. But we are hungry. A man with five teeth comes round and offers his services, including any substance or woman we may fancy. Another woman is also having her soup. She gets on a taxi with a friend and wait for us. We are confused and tell her ‘no thanks’, they leave.

06.00am: We finally call it a day. We have a tour guide booked for 10.00am to go to Cu-Chi tunnels.

12.00pm: After sleeping for most of the 90min ride, we arrive to the tunnels. The scenery is like in the movies, green and wild. We can hear gunfire in the background. Mr Boa, our tour guide, shows us around. I try to fit into one of the hidden entries to the tunnels. It is a very, very small hole in the ground. I can only fit up until my shoulders and there is no way I can physically get in fully. The tunnels span more than 200 km.

01.00pm: We complete a 50 metres tunnel walk in a few minutes. It is not claustrophobic, if you don’t think about it. The local officer walks very fast through it. We follow more sitting on our backside than lunged forward as he does. It is hot too. You can just imagine what was like just forty years before, when they were fighting.

01.15pm: We have had a bit of the food the guerrilla had: tapioca, peanuts and tea. It is not very exciting. They ate only that, morning, day and night for more than ten years.

01.30pm: We fire five bullets each on a AK-47. It is a mighty fire arm. And the noise is incredible. I am rubbish at hitting the target, but the adrenaline rush is surprising. People fire these things to kill or hurt one another. One simple bullet and it is over. I ask myself: why do we invent these things? Why do we need them? We later find out, there were at least more than 25,000,000,000 bullets fired during the Indochina Wars.

03.00pm: Back in town we decide to visit the War Remembrance Museum. There is always three sides to a story: one side, the other side, and the truth. We enter the museum knowing this is only one side of the story. However there some universal truths about the brutalities of a war, the long term consequences on health and about the most horrible behaviours of the human kind, whoever they fight for, whatever they fight for. Why do we need these things?

05.00pm: We walk to the hotel. People hang out on the streets, on the little parks. There are lots of street food places where the chef has a few big pots and small bowls with ingredients and people sit around having their food in peace. For all the madness of the traffic, people are very quiet. We haven’t heard many loud laughs or loud shouting. It is all relaxed, in a way.

11:30pm: After a nice dinner I feel like walking back to the hotel while David takes a taxi. The same market where we had soup the day before is still busy, people buying, people selling. There is a lot of trading. It is a nice walk to the hotel and my body is finally adapting to the local time. What a week that was.

Monday 26 March – Saigon to Phu Quoc

09.45am: I go for a cardio workout at the very basic hotel gym. Views of the city are nice too. Saigon has been very good to us and it’s time to see something else.

12.45pm: As I walk through the Saigon airport departures terminal, once past the security control, I find a mini supermarket. Nothing out of the ordinary if it wasn’t because they sell frozen food... I mean, FROZEN FOOD AT THE AIRPORT for you to carry on the plane??? That has must surely to be a first! I decide I will pass on it, thanks.

2.00pm: We arrive to the Long Beach hotel in Phu Quoc and it really looks something special, with all these little bungalows and wooden work. Great choice. I wonder how much would they charge for a hotel like this in the Mediterranean.

5.30pm: We have a few beers by the hotel beach, which is just a small section of the 22km-long beach called “Long Beach”  – original name too. It is beautiful, peaceful and calm. I can like this place, pretty easily. There are also very few guests in the hotel.

8.30pm: Spraying anti-mosquitoes before going for dinner over my arms I manage to get some into my left eye, but it only reacts a little later. While we are at dinner it really burns, my eye has popped as if I had been in a fight and it is not fun. Thankfully lots of water over it and a GREAT DINNER at the Night Market for just the equivalent of £10 (for the 2 of us) makes a difference. It can be very cheap to live in this country.

10.30pm: We walk around town looking for a bar to have a drink. We find two. One empty and the other one emptier. We settle for the emptier one. This is going to be a quiet week. Have a few cocktails and call it a day around midnight. David is glad because he wants to be up early to go talk to the Divers centre.

Tuesday 27 March – Around Phu Quoc

09.15am: I wake up after a great night sleep. Cannot miss breakfast, whatever they have in store. David is still asleep.

1.30pm: After a couple of hours on the hotel beach we set off to discover the south of the island with a hired driver. Four hours, for £18 or USD25 in total, and two bottles of water. In London a taxi from Piccadilly Circus to Wimbledon costs me £30 or more. You know what I mean.

First stop is a pearl factory: we see how they take the pearls out of the oysters, interesting yet so simple. We can see hundreds of pearl-jewellery. I cannot yet really see the real value in them but for some reason women love them. It is one of those things that differentiate men from women, we like watches, women like pearls, and diamonds, sort of. Yet one can appreciate they have something intriguing about them. Fascinating too is the price range from 500,000 Vietnam Dong (about £15) to 150,000,000 VD (£4,500) for two very similar necklaces.

2.30pm: We arrive to the lovely and quietly impressive Sao Beach, in the south tip of the island. It is simply beautiful. Other than an eight-room eco friendly hotel, there is not much built. Water is crystal clear and the white sand is so thin it is almost ticklish. Unfortunately the bar we sat at loves loud Vietnamese dance, hardcore music. It gives it a different touch I think. A walk along the beach reveals a truly gorgeous beach. So simple, so good.

4.00pm: The roads this side of the island are mostly half-started. It seems they have big plans to build some sort of highway, but there are very few workers and machinery and equipment seems abandoned at times. It makes for fun 4x4 driving though. Coincidentally we see only a handful of scooters and motorbikes around. We also see how many families and villages are basically built with huts, made of covers and metal, but not particularly solid. I wonder how they must be in the wet season.

4.30pm: We visit an old fishermen village. It is a great combination of chaos, food, trade, energy, peace and old and young generations. There are road works, there are building works, there are kids coming out of school, and bikes of course up and down. There are tens of boats and houses living just off the sea. Time seems to have frozen in some parts. And people are lovely and smiley. You can smell the fish too. They keep it cool in these pots with water, from crabs to fish or squid and sea horses. We see too they eat dried sea horses. We do not try them.

5.30pm: Walking up the famous water falls in the middle of the island we cannot see much water falling. It is the dry season after all, but this jungle-like trek is quite fun. And humid, and sweaty. It reminds me of some parks back home, minus the humidity. I love it. Is this were Rambo hung out back in the day?

6.00pm: Back at the hotel I go for a manicure and pedicure. It is not as good as it has been in other places, which disappoints me, but it is still ok. If only all problems were like this.

9.00pm: We have dinner back in the Night Market. We choose a different spot and again it is all outstanding. It is a little pricier than yesterday, we also had crab and a couple more beers: it goes up to £15 for the two of us. Madness.

11.30pm: Back at the hotel after a nice relaxed evening.

Wednesday 28 March – around Phu Quoc, and our beach party

12.00pm: I arrive to the hotel beach while David left early in the morning for his day diving north off the island. The sun is out and it is hot, which always is anyway. I am ready for relaxing day on the beach, as I have not had a “lazy” day yet in these holidays.

4.00pm: I go for a 45 minutes full body massage on the beach, just a couple of metres from the water, for an astonishing £2.50. This is so good it cannot be real. BUT IT IS.

7.00pm: David and I have been making the most of the “happy hour” at the hotel’s beach bar and we feel like having some more beers, dinner can wait. The day diving was so-so as there was not much visibility apparently, but still is good to discover that side of the island. Whilst another outstanding sunset takes place in the background a woman is video conferencing on his mobile phone with someone in what seems is Japanese language. Global world, hello. Ten years ago that was simply not possible, let’s see where we are in another ten.

8.00pm: We continue at the bar, or more like we have taken temporary possession of the bar. We have talked to the daily band of one lead guitarist, Mr Dyung, and three singers, Abee, Camila and Vanessa – or something like that, sorry I cannot remember all the names. They are all from the Philippines and have been contracted for two years to perform every night, except Sundays if it is not busy, for 4 hours. They are paid USD500 a month, which is a very good salary for Vietnam. The audience the first night was about eight people, including us two for an hour or so, pretty much the same story the night before. And I assume pretty much every night now that it is the end of the high season.

8.30pm: We start to request songs and more songs. From Lady Gaga to Michael Jackson, from Rihanna to Adelle or Madonna. They cannot quite deliver the notes, but I cannot fault their enthusiasm. Their dance choreographies are fun too. The scene includes David and I dancing on the sand in front of the stage. Two couples and one single man having dinner. Noone else.

9.30pm: Two German girls from the resort next door who were walking on the beach join us. We have now a full private party going on. Our attempts to mirror their choreographies will not win us any dancing awards, but we don’t care, they love it and laugh; this is our beach and we love it.

11.00pm: It is the end of the performance from the Philippines Golden Four – I cannot remember their band name but that will do just fine. They have sung virtually everything we requested, apart from sometimes when they put strange faces with requests for David Guetta or Chris Brown tunes. We try to plug our iPods and iPhones to the sound system, but fail miserably. The hotel staff is starting to close the bar and we order a few more beers.

Thursday 29 March – Around Phu Quoc, snorkling and more

12.35am: Swimming in the sea at this time is always special. If you are in a stunning beach, by your hotel, after a private party for four, staring at a starred sky with very little artificial light contamination... then it is something at another level altogether. That was some evening.

08.35am: We join a group of tourists for a day boat trip including three stops to go snorkling and one at Sao Beach. They also throw in an unannounced stop at a pearl shop... Dude, you cannot get enough of the things. They love it.

10.30am: We arrive to the port of Phu Quoc. It is being redeveloped and in the next two years it will become an international port, tells us our tour guide, provided they are able to make all this chaos come together at some point. There are cranes, trucks, workers, fishermen, fishing boats, fish loads, women working the fish everywhere. There is also noise, fish smell, heat, bikes. It is ALIVE.

His English is limited but the tour guide is a lovely chap in his early 20s who always starts his indications by saying “Everybody...”

Example: “Everybody, listen. Now we will arrive to the port. It is very important, very important, that you follow me. You have to follow me to the right boat. Because it is very easy, very easy, to go to wrong boat. Everybody understand? Ok, follow me”

11.45am: We arrive to the first stop for snorkling of the day. A beautiful small island somewhere south off the main island.

“Everybody listen to me. We arrive to first stop for snorkling. Now I am going to give you your equipment. It is very important, very important, that you look after it well. It is very expensive to replace so be careful. This is the first coral stop. It is very beautiful. You have forty five minutes, four five”

I have not seen corals live before so I am quite excited about it. However it turns out to be not as exciting as I thought it would. It seems to me most of the coral is dead or worn over. I cannot see any bright red, pink, yellow or green corals the like you see on the BBC or National Geographic documentaries. It is mostly a general dark orange-yellow aggregation of many shapes and surfaces. It seems these shores have seen their better years a while ago. It is a shame.

Thankfully though there are still fish, plenty of them. Of many shapes and colours, playing between them, picking on each other. Not always the big one wins. It is very funny; and it makes you realise how much live there is under water.

We are 3/4s of water in this planet. We only can live on 1/4 of the surface of the Earth and we are nowhere near to have presence on every corner of land. And look at what we are doing to the planet. Where do we stop? And, more importantly, will we stop?

 1.00pm: “Everybody this is the second stop for snorkling. You have thirty minutes, half hour, thirty minutes, half hour”

This is pretty similar to the first one. I focus more on the fish than the coral. I have given up finding stunning corals. Fish are fun and crazy. There is one in particular who seems to want to play with me – that, or he/she is protecting something. I guess I will never find out.

1.30pm: We are having lunch, all 20 of us, around the table in the lower level of the boat. We try some local shell food thing, which is interesting, a bit like a sponge – minus the Fairy. The rest of the meal is good enough. I remind myself I have only paid USD17 for a full day including transport, equipment, boat, food and sightseeing along these islands. That is not too bad in my experience.

One of the guys is with his wife, children and parents-in-law. He is English and runs a school in Saigon. They moved three years ago and love it. Children on this side of the world are so respectful and polite, willing to learn and study. Western children should learn from them.

3.45pm: After one final stop on the water, we arrive by bus to Sao Beach, which remains as spectacular as two days before. We wonder whether it will be the same in five years time. We are enjoying ourselves the moment so much that we decide to skip the bus back and stay on the beach until the sunset. On the boat we have met Lisa, a world traveller, currently living and teaching English in a small town south of Saigon. She stays with us on the beach and tells us some of her stories in Vietnam. We also see the two German girls we met the night before. It is a small island after all.

6.00pm: The sunset is again spectacular. It is our last sunset in Vietnam and I cannot have too much of it. The local kids play on the beach with jet skis they hire to tourists during the day. Or play with a football, or run around chasing each other, and laughing loud. In that aspect, they are more similar to Western children when it comes to play. There is still hope.

7.15pm: We are back at the hotel after a taxi ride. It was the first dark night ride and the roads are at times even scarier. But the driver never hesitated once. Life in the villages we drive through at night is quieter, but everyone has the TV on. Hut, friends, and satellite TV. Simple life, like it.

9.00pm: We join our favourite Golden Four on the beach. We don’t have as much energy as the night before but we will have a good time.

10.00pm: We are dancing again after a decent dinner. Lisa and the two German girls have joined too. A German father and son also join us. We are having fun. One last night in Vietnam, dancing to live music, on the beach, with a starred sky... It cannot get much better than this.

11.00pm: It is the end the show but it is “David’s Cube” show time. It is a mental game David has mastered over the years which implies visualizing a number of objects that he tells you, and based on that, he will tell you things about your personality, your friends and even love life. It is a great game and everyone loves it. I played it once already and despite knowing what was coming I still pictured the same things again in pretty much the same shape, colours, size and positions. The human mind can be an amazing machine.

It turns out most of us gave, more or less, very popular answers and descriptions. Elmar and his father however both came up with two things Mr Cube had not heard before, which is interesting. We are all different after all.

Everyone has a good time with the game and we order the final round of beers.

Friday 30 March – Bye bye Vietnam, hello Cambodia

12.30am: The Germans are gone and the three of us sit on a sun bed by the water with a final couple of beers. It is a great ending to what has been a fantastic week in Vietnam. I knew very little of the country until now, and I leave with a great sense of respect for their people, their will and their commitment to succeed upon adversity. I will remember their smiles, their motorbikes and their organised chaos apart from the natural beauty of the place.

In the very few occasions that we tried to talk about politics with the locals, invisible clouds came up and their English become less confident. It is not for us to judge what happens in reality.

As far as I can see, this country is going forward. Despite the obvious poverty we see of people living in this simple and volatile huts off the roads, the dirt everywhere or the lack of proper roads, it seems people get on with life everyday with excitement and passion. It may not be as sophisticated and big as developed economies, but they have the same 24 hours of each day and they live them to the full. I hope they can protect their natural resources and continue smiling every day.

07.35am: We jump on the shuttle bus to the airport. The roads are already busy with traffic. Food places are open and people are having their breakfasts or just hanging around, some are taking naps too - madness. It is 32 degrees too and it will be another hot day in Phuo Quoc. We will not know what is going to be like, but we have a pretty good idea. And if I am right, it will be another great day in the little island. Cheers to that.

12.30pm: I am having some outstanding noodles at Saigon Airport. These ones are a Singapore recipe and for all I know they are delicious. So simple, so good. We board shortly to Cambodia, to Siem Reap. Ten days in that country await, let’s see what they have. For now though THANK YOU VERY MUCH VIETNAM, GOOD LUCK AND KEEP IN TOUCH.