On our third day in Saigon, we did a tour out to the Mekong Delta. This trip was via bus and was about 4 hours each way out there and back. Along the way out we stopped at a few different locations to see the locals.

One of the places we stopped at was a small village where we sampled the local honey, played with snakes and went for a row down a small canal that ran through the middle.

Id have to admit, sitting on a bus for so long does get a little bit boring and rather tame (mind you, that can be good at times). It is, however a nice way to watch life as you pass by and see some of the key constructions along the way.

When booking the tour, we had the option of a Standard, 1st class or Superior Hotel Suite (why its superior is anyones guess…), or a homestay. We opted for the latter, and oddly enough, we were the only ones out of the 30 or so people on our tour that decided to do so.

Upon arriving at the main tour hotel, everyone checked in, and we were told to wait outside. Then Hung, our home stay host who’s family were staying with, turned up with 4 scooters and told us to get on. This was my first experience on a scooter and for the initial few moments, it was shitting myself. It takes a little to get your head around sitting on the back of a small bike, holding on behind you while you dodge people, busses and other scooters and pass through 4 lanes of intersection without any traffic lights. But once you resign yourself to the fact there isn’t a whole lot you can do about it and just to trust your driver, then its a bit of fun. Its by far the best way to see the area and fortunately Hung was my driver and he talked me through all the locations as we passed. Kind of a personal tour guide type deal.

Anyway, we took off for a 20 minute ride through the city and down the highway then we turned off onto a bumpy little dirt road that eventually led us to our homestay. The place was perfect. The whole village was an 8km strip of huts/houses that ran along the river and our place was opposite Hungs family house in a row of little huts that overhung the water. There was about 8 huts, so it looked like it could accomodate quite a few people, but as we were later told, the area isn’t too popular in the wet season. Thankfully we were the only ones there.

After settling in to our huts for an hour, we were told to head over to the family house for dinner and a little bit of a cooking lesson. This was actually just a lesson in spring roll rolling which we did a good job of butchering. After doing our part in the dinner, we sat around and had a few beers before the food was brought out to us. We were given our spring rolls that had been fried, rice, salad and a steamed Elephant Ear Fish, which tasted fantastic and was quite possible the wosrt smelling fish I have ever smelt. Something akin to a sewer. It didn’t kill us so it couldn’t have been too bad.

That night we slept under mosquito nets, though oddly enough there weren’t any around. I slept really well, it was so quiet and peaceful out there. Well that was until about 6am when the boats started up and down the river, and they’re all powered by 50 year old diesel engines that sound like trucks which inevitably woke us up.

At about 7am Hung came and got us and we went for a walk through the village to say hi to the locals and to make our way to the local market. It was a nice reprieve from the relentless hounding of the locals in Saigon trying to sell you something. You learn pretty damn quickly to say no and walk away. But there was none of this here.

At 8am we took off on a little boat to meet up with the rest of the tour group who were floating out on their bigger tour boat and after jumping aboard we took off to have a look around some more sights.

We went via the floating market, which is essentially a farmers market but on boats. This place wasnt without its people trying to sell you water/beer/bananas/their child. We then went up one of small rivers to see how rice paper is made, the rice factories, and a number of other interesting local attractions that my brain fails to remind me of at the time of writing this.

After finishing the tour we all hopped back on the bus as the rain kicked in and headed for home via some new Buddha statues that have recently been built.

The ride back was initially uneventful. 2 hours passed and the usual bus sleepyness kicked in and we all dozed off (with the exception of the really irritating English girls that were madly flirting with the two Scotts). As we were cruising down the highway in the rain, the bus suddenly braked hard locked up and turned hard right before smashing into a concrete barrier on the side of the road. After the initial shock of what had just happened, everyone piped up and tried to work out what had happened.

We all piled/jumped/fell off the bus into the rain and to the shelter of a little road side shop/hammock shelter (much to the luck of the owner I’m sure) to discover we had hit a concrete barrier and torn the front door off the bus.

As best I can understand, a truck hit the concrete barrier on the other side of the road, pushing two of them out in front of our bus. Surveying the damage post crash, it was obvious shit really could have hit the fan and we could have been touring the inside of a hospital. So to our bus driver – nice work. Not only did he hit the barrier that was square on to the bus, he missed all the scooters that were hanging around the bus like flies. I was impressed.

Thankfully, it only took about 45 minutes for a replacement bus which was a bit of a surprise given how far we were out of Saigon. The rest of the trip after that was back to the same old boring uneventfulness, however there was still a mild paranoia on the bus every time we braked a bit harder then normal (which was 90% of the time).

The next day (and I’m going to keep this paragraph short because I forgot to write it the first time around and Im too lazy to write anything detailed), we went to the Cu Chi Tunnels to see some of the tunnels from the Vietnam War. The site was quite interesting. We had a strange 20 year old dubbed movie talking about the war before hand which was slightly anti American – and fair enough too. We were shown around the different styles of traps and other goodies the had thought up and we got to crawl through some pretty dark and cramped and highly claustrophobic (for those that way inclined) holes in the ground. There was no light, it was stuffy and it kept changing in size and elevation. Its not hard to see why people would get lost in there. Apparently the tunnels we went through were widened for westerners. Which even then was pretty cramped.

Anyway, thankfully that tour bus got us home safely and uneventfully and went out to dinner to sort our plans for the rest of the trip.

Our plans were to ditch Saigon and head up to Hoi An, and have a look around there for a while at a slower pace as we had done all we wanted to in the South. It was decided that we should bypass the rest of the south of Vietnam and head straight to the middle, and the easiest (read: cheapest) was to catch a train.

Now the trains in Vietnam are quite like their traffic. Slow. Here is what I wrote on the train.

Well, I’m currently on a train from Saigon to Denang. I’m in an air-conditioned “hard sleeper” birth which has 6 people. Well, 6 beds and 7 people, there is a young Vietnamese couple here with their baby. So far the baby hasn’t made a noise, but then again it is midnight. I hope it stays that way.

This train is proper old school. It’s an old diesel train pulling a half a dozen carriages (I guess, I was crammed in here so I am just estimating).

The bunks are not quite westerner length, so I have a choice of head-butting the bar above me, or toe-poking the bar below me, I’ll leave asleep Luke to sort that one out.

There are two stacks of 3 bunks, and I’m in the middle of one. As a result, I have a pretty awesome view out my window for sunrise. The train bounces around quite a bit, but it’s somewhat therapeutic in an blender kinda way.

Truth be told, this is awesome, I’m loving it, although it is 15 hours long, so I may change my tune. Mind you, something smells stale in here, and I’m not sure if it’s me or the blanket. It’s could very well be either.

I will continue this in the morning as I’m shattered, and I think I won’t be allowed to sleep in.

Its about 3am. I have been woken by the train breaking hard and a thump. I think a cow just copped it. We are on our way again, no delays here. Back to sleep

Well, it’s now going on 2pm, so an hour left as we are roughly an hour behind. I caught up on a heap of sleep and have spent the last few hours playing cards with Tim while the girls slept with a bit of Creedence Clearwater Revival pumping out on the iPhone in all its tinny goodness.

Sleeping last night was good, the baby kept relatively quiet, but I slept with my headphones on so it made no difference. To our luck, the others in our room got off at morning so we have had our stuffy little cabin to ourselves. I’m about ready to get off though.

After finally arriving. We all had to depart while the others tried to get on. This lead to a bit of a problem. There is no etiquette when it comes to this. Basically, me and my bag take up a walkway, which is fine when everyone is single filing it out the door. The problem arrives when the locals want to push on while your getting off. I had a guy push through me with his bags ultimately pushing me back and crushing all the poor people behind me. Id have to say that somewhat pissed me off and abusing him achieved nothing as he didn’t speak English. I did have the rest of the crowed on my side, and they backed me up. So my yellings I think were roughly translated and conveyed to him by the rest of the crowed.

Once outside safely we had to find our way to Hoi An, but I’ll save that for a later post. Hopefully the next one won’t be too far off.

See the a larger version on Flickr

After many months of planning then quitting my job and having a leaving party then moving to Brisbane then getting a job then quitting that job then having a leaving party then leaving then getting to Melbourne and having another leaving party, its finally happened.

The last few days in Melbourne have been great. It was nice to have a few days grace after the manic packing spree to relax before leaving. We didn’t do too much in those days except for leaving drinks on Friday at the Espy. Cheers to you all for showing it up, it was a great turn out. Sorry we couldn’t stay longer, but we had to get up and leave for the airport.

We flew 6 hours from Melbourne to Darwin then 5 from Darwin to Ho Chí Minh with Jetstar. Its the first time I’ve flown with Jetstar, and to be honest, I don’t understand what all the fuss is about. They were great, besides the fact that the staff didn’t particularly give a shit. But thats what you get with a budget airline.

We landed last night at about 10:30pm local time, and after being stuck on the runway because they had no where to put our plane, we got off and the plane and went through customs. It was a bit weird there. There were lots of people and no one said a word. It was quieter then a library.

Completing that, we headed through to grab our bags and then out into the 10 million degree / 5000 percent humidity taxi rank. After a quick breather, we jumped into a cab on the way to our Hotel (hostel? I don’t know, I think they’re all the same here).

Thats where the fun started. I was aware of the scooter mayhem that awaited us before we arrived, but holy shit, its another world entirely to be in the middle of it. We spent most of the time on the horn (its more a ‘coming through’ warning then aggression), while dodging bikes and avoiding trucks that were dodging us. We managed to communicate our hotel, Saigon Sports Hotel 1 (or is it 3 or 5, meh), and also managed to negotiate the fee to be on the meter. To the drivers credit, he weaved through the traffic and took us exactly to our door.

Our first experience in dealing with the local currency while not being able to talk the same language started here. Our trip fee was along the lines of VND 120 000 with a fee of VND 50 000 for the taxi parking. That brought us to VND 170 000 which is give or take $10, but our driver wasn’t happy with that. We had the ‘you have no idea what your doing’ tax imposed on us and he started trying to take the fee up to VND 300 000 and beyond, telling us that it was because of the taxi parking fee.

This is where I started to get lost. I entered the country with 1.5 million Dong. I had no idea what was worth what but its all in the thousands. But fortunate for us Tim and Ruth have been-there-done-that and took up the fight for us. Tim told him it was too much (which I’m starting to see is what you generally the done thing for non-locals) and the argument started. After much debate and not backing down (and already paying double our fee) the driver gave up and let us go with what we had paid. We took off down the street looking for our place only to realise we had started at the right place to start off with and went back.

By this point I was pretty exhausted. I was hungover from the night before, hadn’t had much sleep and had been flying for over 10 hours. It was also past midnight back home so I was probably jet lagged. Ignoring all this, we checked in, put our bags down and went down the road to the swanky expensive bar (think $2 for a beer instead of $1.50) and settled in for a little bit of food and a few drinks. We were there till about 2am and decided it was time for sleep.

The beds over here are harder then a wooden floor. My back has been reminding me of this all day. We decided to leave the door to our very tiny balcony (with an awesome view mind you) open to let the breeze through, however we discovered at about 5 am this was a stupid idea because the air-con was venting all its hot air back in through the door and defeated the purpose. We rectified the problem and the aircon is doing is job and keeping us cool.

That brings us through to today.

We woke up at about 9:30, met up downstairs for our complimentary breakfast then took off into the street. Its a very different world in the day, but equally as mad. There are shops everywhere and if the shop isnt in a building, its on the street. Its awesome. There is shit happening everywhere and horns going wild and I love it. You have plenty of opportunity to trip over a bin/piece of concrete/rat/box. Scooters are everywhere. Every flat surface is fair game. You head in the direction you want, regardless what side of the road your on and if in doubt use the footpath. Its ok though, they’ll let you know they are coming with their horn. You adapt very quickly to it.

The heat is still a killer. I’ve been living in my own little sweaty ass crack land since I landed, regardless of how many times I’ve showered. Hug anyone?

Anyway, after breakfast we took off down the road to have a can of coke at a little corner bar to discuss our plans over the next few days. One of the things you learn very quickly is to say no to people trying to sell you things. Me, being the nice person that I am, give (gave) people too much attention and that made shaking off the local person selling sunnies a bit of an ordeal. I’ve since learned the errors of my ways.

After our can of coke, we came back and booked our next few days. We are going to head up the Mekong on a boat for a day, stay at a homestay then head back again for another night here then hopefully head out to the tunnels. With our bookings made we went on our way to lunch at a nice cook your own bbq place (I’m sure I’ll be paying for that tomorrow).

Finishing that (which was great food mind you) we went through one of the local markets to see what the deal was. You can get your hands on quality ripoffs of anything you could possibly want. The catch is everyone wants to sell you something. People litereally hang off your arms trying to sell you something you don’t need, which is somewhat entertaining.

After surfacing the other side, we then made our way across town to the Reunification Palace which was quite an interesting place to visit. We had our own tour guide, and although it was very scripted, it was still informative.

After, we walked home via a Buddhist temple (which resulted into another money argument) and that leads us to now.

I’m sitting at home in the aircon, taking it easy drinking a 333 beer before we head out later to get food and watch the world cup. I hear they are football mad here, so that should be fun.

As I do not have a mobile number here, I will generally only be accessible via email or skype. We have free wifi here, so that should make me contactable for the next few days. It turns out facebook is banned in Vietnam, however the iphone app lets me through, so I have limited facebook access as well.

Hope all is well back home and I’ll keep you up to date as I travel.

Photos are to come soon as I don’t have the time to do them right now. As you can understand there is beer to be drunk and football to watch. They will be up soon I promise

In the mean time, here is the view from our hotel

There have been a few parties and being able to spend Mothers day with my mum was fantastic, and there are a few social events here and there, but on the whole its relatively quiet.

The routine is pretty boring but its easy to stay motivated because there is an end in sight. Speaking of travel plans, here is our general plan, complete with costs, stolen straight out of Tims email to me:

(these are now out of date)

Sat 10/7 – Melbourne > Kuala Lumpur (AU$432)
Sat 10/7 – Kuala Lumpur > Vientiane (AU$84)
Head North by bus to Vang Vieng and Luang Probang.
Travel back down to Vientiane
Cross into Thailand over Friendship bridge into Nong Khai.
Around Wed 21/7 Night Train Down to Bangkok
Sat 24/7 – Bangkok > Kuala Lumpur ($91)
Sun 25/7 – Kuala Lumpur > London (AU$446)

And for those who are interested, those costs don’t include baggage. But hey, Airasia are cheap.  It also appears that due to  recent deadly events in Bangkok, we’ll have to adjust the last bit of our plans, for obvious reasons. I’m also hoping that by the time it comes to arriving in Europe that our their little volcanic issue doesn’t cause us too much grief.

Currently, 3 of the 4 of us have our passports (Ruth is still waiting on a renewal), and all plans are go. As soon as that passport comes in, and we working our issues with riots and volcanoes, we’ll be booking our flights and be on our way.

Anyway, before I get too far ahead of myself, I should get some sleep as I’m still bound to the daily grind, and I’m also getting sick.

I’ll do my best to keep people updated on the plans as they unfold.

I am finally at the end of my Melbourne journey. All my boxes will be shipped back to Brisbane tomorrow. Annoyingly they’re picking them up some time between 11 and 1 am, which ruins my chances of catching up with friends for lunch unless I’m lucky enough to have them show up earlier.

Surprisingly, I am leaving Melbourne with just about the same amount of boxes I arrived with. I have spent a few days selling and binning as much as possible and I can successfully fit all my worldly possessions into the corner of a room.

Once my boxes have been picked up, all I have left to do is redirect my mail and then sit around and wait till I fly back to Brisbane on Thursday afternoon.

I’m not sure if I should be sad or what, but I’m not. Well, thats not to say I won’t miss Melbourne because I will. I just think its time for something new, and fortunately enough I have pretty much new things happening for me for the rest of the year.

In a week I start back working for a former company, 3 months after that I fly out and then for the rest of the year I live winging it, travelling from place to place.

I guess that means I will have no excuse to be bored in 2010. Good times ahead, I can’t wait.

Well I best get to bed. In true Luke fashion I have left something to the last minute and that means I have to get out of bed early to finish packing the last few items before the removalists arrive.

I am surprised at the amount of crap I have accumulated over the last 2 and a half years of living in Melbourne. And most of it isn’t even useful, its just… well crap really. I have set myself the task of culling back as much as I can and going back to Brisbane with about the same amount of boxes that I came down here with.

“But Luke, how can you possibly achieve this?” I hear you say. Thats a very good question and I’m glad you asked. I am very fortunate to have a lot of people that want to buy all my stuff. So far I’ve offloaded my bed, desk, bookshelves, speakers and a few other bits and pieces. I still have to get rid of my little cabinet that has my amplifier in it. Thats going free if anyone wants it.

With any luck I can keep my rate of packing up, so I can get most of it done before the weekend in time for my going away drinks on Saturday night. If your in Melbourne and I haven’t invited you yet, let me know and I’ll give you the details.

For you people in Brisbane, I land back in town on the 15th, just in time to catch up for drinks on the weekend.

Well I think thats enough procrastination for now, I best get back into it.

I have mixed feelings about it all. Maybe thats because I’m suffering from the worst hangover I’ve had in years, thanks to a healthy dose of beer and shots for my going away drinks last night. But it could also be because I think I’m going to miss people and work there. They were good to me. They helped make Floodslicer probably my favorite place to work so far. However, the future and what it brings definitely outweighs any sadness I have about leaving. I also, at this current point in time, solidly believe that I will never drink again as this hangover is killing me. But realistically, I don’t think it will be long before I’m in the same situation.

Although I am unemployed, things are only going to get busier over the next week. I have flights and removalists to book, boxes to pack, mail to redirect and a million little bits and pieces to do. Its going to be hectic. If I can stick to the idea of doing things sooner rather then later, I may be ok. We will see, I am, after all, a master at procrastination.

I really can’t believe I only have about 2 weeks left before I leave Melbourne for good. I have had it planned for a long time but it somehow never actually felt like it was going to happen. I’ve reached this point where I’ve talked the talk for so long, now I actually have to action this plan I have. Crap.

The whole idea of never going back into the studio hasn’t really sunk in yet I don’t think. Even though I was only there a year and a half, the routine of waking up, getting my coffee, working, lunching, then going for a beer after work will be hard to get over. I’m sure over the next few days I’ll write more on the topic, as, like I said earlier, I’m good at procrastinating. I guess that works in the favor of those of you who are reading.

Which makes me think, is anyone actually reading this?

Finally, I apologise for the disjointed post and its lack of ability to flow and make sense. It reflects how scattered my brain feels at the moment. I endeavor to write more in the near future, so check back soon.

So, using the powers of Google Calendar (due to the fact that my memory is shit), I can give you a semi-accurate account of whats been going on.

October 2009

I turned 26. Yep, I’m closer to 30 then 20 now. I’m not too sure what happened to the last few years.. I must have been asleep for it. We went out for an epic night of drinks in the city in way of celebration, but it turns out I’ve already written about that.

Brooke in Melbourne

Not long after my Birthday, Brooke came to town. I don’t quite remember what we did on that particular visit, but I think it involved playing a lot of Little Bit Planet on the PS3, drinking and listening to good bands at The Espy (who appear to have a website that you really shouldn’t look at when tired), eating bagels at the cramped yet awesome place on on Degraves St. and drinking at the Rooftop Bar.We also did the Day in Pompeii exhibit at the Melbourne Museum. We had been waiting about a year for that one and it delivered.

Brooke also convinced me to buy a new lens, which shortly after purchase I decided was it was a stupid idea to get it, but as time has gone on, it is just about the only lens I use these days. Cheers Brooke

Perth

After Brooke left town, I flew over to Perth to spend some time with Dad as he was over there for a few months working. I’d have to say I liked Perth, but as you’d expect from the worlds most isolated city, its relatively small and boring. This was the second time I’ve been there, and the first time I’ve really explored.

Of the week I was there, I spent the first few days with Em and the rest of the days with Dad. Em and I spent our time at out at Fremantle exploring and doing the Jail Tour, sitting around her Hostel and just general wandering around the city and Kings Park. We also spent some time out at the Ocean Beach Hotel at Cottesloe, which I remember from the first time I went, and its definitely a must do for a sunset beer. I got to see a bit of her hostel life which, later down the track, is proving useful in understanding what I’m up for in my near future travels.

Dad and I had a great time together. Although he spent his days at work, and I spent my days trying to find something to do (sorry Perth, your great and all but your inner city options are kinda limited), we still managed to do a fair few cool things. Of those cool things, we went to the Fremantle Jail and did the tunnel tour (which was awesome!), went to Cottesloe for food, went to the movies and spent time in the city. It was good to spend time with dad.

Of my experiences in Perth, its a great, pretty and green city, its not for the young. I spent a lot of my time sitting in the city gardens reading a book and wondering why the hell all the cafes were closed. Maybe I’m spoiled in Melbourne with its cafe culture, but I’m confused why the hell they have cafes if they’re going to be closed most of the time!

Anyway, that concludes part 1 of my catch up posts. Part 2, 3 and probably 4 are not far behind.

Mum and dad had just arrived in town to see me, having only been in the city for 20 minutes before shit hit the fan. Being a seasoned Melbournian and accustomed to its unpredictable weather, I had spotted the black clouds moving in on us and decided to take us to a cafe on Degraves St. for a coffee while the weather passed.

Annoyingly, today was the one day I had decided not to pack a digital camera, opting for film instead, so I had to make do with my (old)  iPhone instead. The photos shot on film are yet to be developed, but I doubt they’ll yield anything of use as the lens popped off in full daylight the other day leaving the film to receive a healthy shot of sunlight to ruin anything and everything.

Anyway, back to the story. I had planned to get home asap and come back armed with my camera to shoot the carnage, but it seemed the weather had done a good enough job of ruining all forms of transport, including travelling on foot.

After realising that trains, trams and taxis were all screwed, I decided my only option was to walk home. This was ok for the first 100m, until my thongs became dangerously slippery and I risked a roadside face plant (or worse, a blowout) in front of all the stranded people waiting for a tram. This ended up in a 1.5hr bare foot walk from the city to home, after which I had zero motivation to get back into the city to photograph the mess. The couch was far more appealing.

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