Halong bay

Now we have returned from halong bay cruise (2 nights). It was wonderful altough very touristic. Soon we are taking night train to Sapa which lies in the mountains.

I'll post some pictures when I have access to computer.

On the coast again

After Dalat we headed for BMT (Bien My Thuot or something) and spend a night there. First thing in the morning we headed for Kon Tum - Or basicly first to Pleiku because we ran out of money and did not have enough for bus tickets all the way to Kon Tum. But no problem - ATM was found quickly and case solved. After a brief stop in Pleiku we continued all the way to Kon Tum which was rather peculiar city. It seemed to have lots of restaurants and services but no people - Probably there is some tourist season for Vietnamese, but not at this point of time. But nevertheless it was very pleasent small town with nice walking and good cafes. But next morning were then already on the way to Hoi An via highway 14 - absolutely fabulous scenery - also referred to Ho Chi Minh trail in Lonely Planets for some reason... So now we are in Hoi An and staying here for couple days and then we will head for north.

Dalat birding

This morning I did some birding trip to mountains near Dalat - It got rainy (really rainy) and I had to stop it to short, but nevertheless I managed to find some interesting birds (for me) like viatnamese crossbills and greenfinches and many unrecognized ones. I really wonder how can one actually recognise all the birds (or even most of them) - to me it is mission impossible to recognise all the voices or looks of the birds by seeing them second or two. Regardless of this I really enjoyed this wet birding trip....

Dalat

We have moved now from Cat Tien to Dalat, which is on the 1500m high plateau. This is very nice city and even weather is quite OK i.e. around 22 degrees of warmth and only slight drizzle every now and then (so like a Finnish summer) I have done some birding here as well with quite pleasant results as well - nothing special from birding community point of view but many new acquisitions for me... We probably stay here for few days and then either to the beach or even to higher altitudes. Only time will tell what happens next

Mekong Delta



Cruising on the Mekong Delta

 For last few days we were spending time in the Mekong Delta region - namely in the Ben Tre city. Very pleasent place with nice cafes, river cruise and beatiful countryside. One day we hired a boat and toured the canals in the delta, which was very pleasent way of spending our time. But probably best was just town itself which was small and very pleasent place with nice cafes and not so touristy - especially on days when we were biking the country side people seemed to be very 'happy' about our tandem bike and two white people. So far this has been by far the best place - hopefully we encounter as pleasent experiences in future as well.

Adjusting seats of our Tandem bike

The update is coming from Saigon as we did not find (or wanted to find) internet connection in Ben Tre. So now staying here for a night and tomorrow plan is to reach Cat Tien National Park.

War of Vietnam

Only real tourist site we wanted to see was checked today - War Remnants museum which showed some unpleasent thruths (although maybe put with a propagandistic view) about civilian losses caused by the horrible Vietnam war. Probably most worrying part was to see that Agent Orange chemical weapon used to destroy forests to make the hiding of Vietkong troops more difficult is still causing major birth defects (on both US and Vietnam side) - Pictures and 'bottles' showing those were not too pleasent experience, but definetely worth seeing

Birding in Ho Chi Minh

In the morning walk closeby our hotel we encountered interesting birding option of inspecting birds in vietnamese bird cages - Maybe not most pleasent way to see birds. In the park there were tens of people gathered with bird cages with various type of birds - It was left as a mystery why cages were moved all the time. First I thought every now and then someone wanted to move birds into a shade to avoid 'overheating', but it was not clear if this is really the case...

Good Morning Vietnam

We got a bit tired of laying down on the beach and decided to start enjoy some megapolis in Vietnam. We arrived to Ho Chi Minh with 'direct' bus from Sihanoukville which took whopping 14 hours. Luckily the bus was not full so that I was able to get whole row of seats for myself. I managed get good night sleep prior entering the border around 6AM (journey started 8PM)and now this update for the blog is done almost immediately after exiting the bus (we needed internet to check if our hotel reservation was succesful - it was). More to come later and hopefully with pictures then.

Beach life

For last few days we have been just laying down, eating and enjoying nice sunsets. And we also enjoyed very nice two days snorkelling and staying in very secluded island pf Bamboo island. If you happen to be here in Sihanoukville or around I would recommend changing the location to Bamboo Island if you want nice beach without people selling manicure, pedicure, sunglasses etc... all the time. Travelling there should be easy - just reserve the accomadation and they will come and pick you up from the mainland. In case you are interested in birding there should be something to see as well e.g. flock of 30 oriental pied hornbills, which were first for me to encounter.

Time to leave Phnom Penh

Yesterday (Tuesday) was interesting day of walking around Phnom Penh and following local life here. Other not so happy thing was to enter Tuol Sleng-museum which showcased some cruel and sad genocide activities by Rouge Khmer lead by Pol Pot. Very interesting but saddening experience to see what human beings are capable of doing each other.

Otherwise the day went nicely and we managed to even get good food made by Khmer people - Tacos :-)

Currently we are waiting for a pick-up service to take us to the bus station and start our jorney towards beaches of Sihanoukville:


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Mekongolous at Mekong finally

We managed to arrive to Kompong Cham by the Mekong river on Sunday afternoon. And we found quite awful hotel room, but very very cheap as well. The choice of hotels in this small town was not best and we did not find any Hilton hotels in the neighborhood. But luckily the town itself was quite nice and relaxed with also some interesting evening activities like Aerobics by the Mekong  (we did not attend) and some rowing competition with very big rowing boats probably each accommodating around 30 rowers. And in the Monday morning we had very nice morning biking in the small island on Mekong river where we saw probably quite authentic rural country life without cars or wired electricity (although there seemed to be some car batteries used as electricity source in some homes). It was really nice biking with lots of kids saying 'Hello' to us strange white people - although by the time it started to get bit annoying after 100+ greetings.

After that we started to head for Phnom Penh by a bus, which was quite tiring


In Phnom Penh we had pleasurable evening stroll and excellent dinner at Friends-restaurant. Highly recommended anyone being in this part of the world especially as it is run by former street kids (tought by this place being waitress/cooks) and helping new kids all the time.

And again we managed to see Mekong - This time even bigger as it was joining with another big river Tonle Sap.