This trip has been a year in the planning stage so we’ve booked lots of activities in advance.
A couple of days ago I was just pulling everything together when my phone suddenly went ‘PING!’
I looked at the message which was from my bank and it said that I had just received 12,904,000!!
Yes, you read that right – Twelve million nine hundred and four thousand- into my account!!
At last, the Euromillions lottery had come good!
I was home alone at the time so I immediately searched for a local party planner to festoon the street with bunting and let the celebrations begin.
Next, I thought about the Vietnam trip and decided, as I’m not good in a small plane, that rather than calling NetJets for a Gulfstream maybe I could hire an A320 or a 737 to take us there.
Then I decided a support team would be great, maybe following us in one of those rock-band entourage buses containing personal trainers, nutritionalist, chefs (Head chef and patisserie, obviously) and perhaps a concierge, translator and security chief and a few extras to fan our brows and pamper to our whims.
I opened my bank app to begin investing my fortune – and that’s the moment when I realised that what I actually had was a refund from a Hotel in Can Tho for twelve million flippin’ Vietnamese Dongs which, at 30,000 to the pound, is around £400!!!😩😩😩 Drat!, as they say in Vietnam.
On the 10th November we will set off on our tour of Vietnam and Cambodia.
We are approaching this trip with a certain amount of trepidation as two of our previous adventures landed us in Tel Aviv on October 7th 2023 and then in French Polynesia, on a boat, surrounded by four cyclones in 2024. Oh, and we recently arrived in Spain as the cataclysmic floods hit!
What then, could possibly go wrong when we visit Indochina, home to the Vietcong, the Khmer Rouge and the killing fields?
Before our Japan trip I said in that blog that everything would be a complete surprise to us as we knew nothing about Japan. I was, of course, lying because we had read Shogun, watched the Seven Samurai and driven Lexus’s (Lexi? not sure). We were also accustomed to Japanese food, albeit European style Japanese food as opposed to dishes that the Japanese actually eat, some of which wriggled and therefore did surprise us. (However, we never once experienced Japanese cooking that required the chef to lob eggs into the air and catch them in his hat whilst cooking rice. A pity as I always quite enjoy that).
This time though everything will come as a complete surprise as we know nothing of either Vietnam, where we will be spending most of our time, or Cambodia which we shall also visit.
We’ve never read Vietnamese literature, never seen a Vietnamese movie nor have either of us ever driven a ‘Vinfast’ (apparently the only local Vietnamese car manufacturer) and this level of ignorance equally applies to Cambodia.
Our Route
Indochina is the name of the peninsula between India and China and consists of Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos, though we shall save the latter for a future jaunt. I have no idea why Thailand and Myanmar (Burma in old money) isn’t generally considered a part of Indochina but them’s just the rules, I didn’t make them.
Our Journey takes us the length of Vietnam, from Hanoi in the north to Ho Chi Min City (formerly Saigon) in the south and then up the Mekong Delta and into Cambodia where we visit Siem Ream and then Phnom Penh. This is our route….
Hanoi – 11th-13th November 2024
Lan Ha Bay – 14th-16th. (Ylang cruise)
Hue – 17th-18th
Hoi An – 19th-21st
Ho Chi Min City – 21st-23rd
Can Tho – 23rd-25th (Bassac cruise)
Siem Reap – 26th-27th
Phnom Penh – 28th-30th
If anyone has been down this (probably well trodden) path before, any advice and recommendations will be gratefully accepted. Please let us know of places we should visit and places which we shouldn’t. Places we should eat at and places where we shouldn’t, and foods we should eat and food which we shouldn’t.
We shall be visiting Skoun market on our drive from Siem Reap to Phnom Penh where, I’m told, a popular snack is ch’ngain which is a “tasty” eight-legged creature. Not sure if that’s in the ‘To eat’ or the ‘Not to eat’ column? Maybe I’ll reintroduce blog voting but rest assured, it’s not going to turn into ‘I’m a Celebrity’ – anything testicular is off the menu!
Please add your recommendations and advice, together with your comments, in the ‘Comments’ box.
I managed to reply to most of your comments fairly quickly in Japan but I think connectivity in rural areas of Vietnam and Cambodia is probably almost as bad as it is in the UK so I may not be able to post regularly but keep them coming again.
Our methods of locomotion include Plane, Car, Bicycle, Foot, Cruise Boat (tiny variety), Basket Boat (no idea but it sound’s tinier than the tiny cruise boat!), Speedboat, Rice Boat, Vespa, Tuk-Tuk and probably a Scabby donkey or two (I can’t confirm just how scabby the donkey will be but rest assured, I will count each and every scab in my quest for blog accuracy).
There are obviously myriad opportunities for self-harm which we shall try and avoid.
I should mention that, on September 7th, the strongest storm in over 30 years, ‘Super Typhoon Yagi’ hit Quang Ninh province with torrential downpours and winds exceeding 200 kph. This is around the Lan Ha Bay Area where we will be spending the 14th-16th on the aforementioned tiny cruise boat.
With our record, I’m both surprised and relieved that Yagi didn’t wait for us to get there. However, we have heard that it did cause a lot of damage in the area but this is being kept quiet so as not to disrupt the tourist industry so we may be in for a few extra surprises but that’s all part of the adventure.
As ever, thanks to Jacquie at Bakewell travel in Harrogate who organised the trip and who has provided us with enough reading material to incur excess baggage charges…
Only about 230 pages to read this time!
So, with vaccines in our arms, malaria tablets in our hands, visas in our passports, reading materials in our backpacks, Imodium on standby and our Dongs* in our pockets – off we go!
Hope you all enjoy it.
Andrew – November 2024.
*Vietnam currency – I’m aiming for at least one Dong joke per day you lucky people!!
Andrew & Brigitte in Indochina 