Vietnam with Lionel

After almost four months of separation, I finally get to see Lionel again! He has prepared two weeks of city, culture, adventure, trekking, nature, sun and some rain too. Read on to see what we discovered in Vietnam, formerly part of Indochina. 

Hanoi

Hanoi is certainly the closest I get to “home” during my trip so far. Jose and Mai make sure of that. They live in the Hanoi suburbs in a very nice apartment in which the best food in the whole of Vietnam is being prepared, by José and Mai themselves! Fried tofu, vegetables, nems, delicious mushrooms, soup and other delicacies make out taste buds wriggle. Oh and the fruit, I have rarely seen and tasted so many interesting shapes and tastes. Hanoi is Lionel’s and my base during our two week trip in Vietnam. We go north, east, south, but we always come back to Hanoi in between, to get new energy, fresh clothes, and to fill up with smiles and kindness from our hosts. Jose is as a local here. Apart from being white, he bargains and drives his motorbike like the Vietnamese. We visit a few places in Hanoi too. The temple of Literature is a very nice one. Unfortunately I forgot the memory card to my camera at home so I don’t have any pictures. There are other nice temples too, one is even on an island on a little lake. There is supposed to be a turtle swimming around in the lake, but we don’t see it despite musing at the water for several minutes. José shows us some markets. I almost throw up when I see a decent sized dead dog without the head (you can still tell it’s a dog though) and with its fur burnt off…ready for Vietnamese cuisine. One day we go to the theater to see a water puppet show. The puppets are beautifully carved in wood and painted in bright colours. The story is also very beautiful; it tells the everyday life of Vietnamese people and also shows their beliefs and traditions. The puppeteers are actually themselves IN the water and they conduct the puppets with wooden sticks immersed in the water as well.

pictures Hanoi

Going to find the sun in Hué and Hoi An

Hanoi is not a bad city, but too big for our taste and the weather is also not so good; we decide to go south, to Hué first, then to Hoi An. Hué is the ancient imperial capital of Vietnam, and the imperial city is still standing on the other bank of the Perfume River with its citadel and gardens. There are even some elephants who witness of the past glory of the city. We only stay one night there, heading further south to catch some sun in Hoi An.

photos Hué

What a charming little city! Hoi An used to be an ancient trading port, and is still an important place for tourism and arts. A river runs through the city and we enjoy a trip on one of the boats that brings us out to see the fishing boats further out. The technique is very different from what we are used to. They have a huge round net that they throw up in the air and down on the water. The net sinks down and the fisherman then closes it round the fish that was swimming under the net. There are many places to visit in the area and we need to choose. Cam Kim sounds like the perfect place to spend a pleasant afternoon. A local ferry brings us there, with no other tourists, exactly what we hoped for! We explore the island on foot, wandering aimlessly around for a few hours.

photos Hoi An

On our last day, we book a tour to the ruins of My Son (pronounced Mi son), ancient temples constructed by the kings of Champa. The departure is at 5:30 in the morning by bus. Big is our surprise when we have to pay extra for the entrance to the ruins, and the price has almost doubled since…yesterday! We get into an argument but there is nothing to do, we have to pay if we want to enter (impossible to get the money back from the hotel too). It is worth it, the ruins are beautiful in the morning light. We reach the site exactly as the sun rises above one of the ruins…

photos My Son

Trekking in Sapa with the H’Mong

In Vietnam there are many ethnic minorities (over 50 in the whole country) and we went to meet some of them in the mountains up North, near Sapa. Sapa o’chau (http://www.sapaochau.org) is an organisation founded by a young H’mong woman. She helps educate young people from surrounding villages, trains them in English, guiding and cooking and offers them a job as tour guides for different treks which make it possible for us foreigners to discover their culture and traditions in a local and sustainable way.

We are lucky because there are no other participants to our trek so we get our guide and her trainee for ourselves. May has experience and she gladly shares all her stories and knowledge with us. Mr. Su is only 17 and accompanies us to learn from May. She reckons he can lead his own group in a year’s time. May and Su lead us through muddy rice fields and fog. We are not so lucky with the weather but May tells us there is supposed to be rice terraces and beautiful landscapes…behind the fog.

In the evening we stay at a homestay with a red Dao Family, another ethnic minority known for their expertise in medicinal plants. May cooks a delicious meal on open fire and we enjoy a herbal bath in a wooden barrel. The women gather around the fire to make embroideries to decorate their traditional dresses. The embroideries for one pair of pants take up to six months to make and the pants last three years! This is why as soon as the women have some spare time, they work on their handicrafts.

The next day the fog seems to have risen a bit, but it rains. At least we see the landscapes better. Before leaving the Homestay May performs a supposed-to-heal treatment on my throat. In fact, I have been coughing for about three weeks and the cough doesn’t want to disappear. She does it on her children, she says, so I let her try on me. It hurts so bad I don’t know if I should laugh or cry. Lionel has to leave the room as she pinches my throat again and again, and it leaves some serious marks (check out the picture in the Ha Long album) and the cough didn’t go away either… May then prepares some sticks for us to walk with. It is easier to keep our balance in the mud with the sticks and it prevents us from falling into it. The walk is shorter today and we return to Hanoi to José and Mai where they await us with another delicious meal.

photos Sapa

Quan Lan and Ha Long bay

Bai Tu Long Bay is less famous but has the same limestone rocks, less tourists and is as beautiful as Ha Long Bay or at least that is what we think. It is a bit more difficult to reach than its famous neighbour, but when we reach our 10$ “luxury” hotel on Quan Lan Island we don’t regret the extra hassle. There is a beach 13 km away from where we are staying and to reach it we rent a small motorbike. Nobody is there except some children playing on the beach and an eccentric all-in-white clad 75 year old from Nicaragua… The water is refreshing and the sun even makes a short appearance to encourage us. The evening meal at our hotel is delicious and we regret not staying longer in this little Paradise.

Departure at 6 in the morning with a local boat direction Ha Long city. We are the only foreigners aboard, again. The landscapes are beautiful! Look at the sun peeking out from behind the clouds. When we arrive in Bay Chai we see them, the tourists, and also the selling sharks trying to sell us cruises for 550.000 Dong. After doing some research, we find an official agency doing the same cruise for less than half the price. Half a day on Ha Long bay… We visit a floating village, some caves and most importantly, we plan our kayak tour for the next day. Our guide arranges everything, even a meal with a local family and the bus back to Hanoi. What a pleasant stay. The next day we leave the wharf in a local “ferry” full of local women playing cards and the men encouraging them. We return to the same floating village where we board our kayak. It is nice to paddle around on our own, we get to see more and at our own rhythm; a passage under a mountain, a rock that looks like a ship, two smaller rocks called two fighting cocks. After some hours of paddling we cannot resist the urge to plunge into the water, although it is not allowed (we were the only ones doing it but I thought it was because the water was cold…). Back to the village where the family awaits us with lunch. After eating they tell us to sleep, under a plastic tarpaulin. We do as they say and when we wake up, we are all surrounded by tourists coming to rent kayaks! Off we go, back to José and Mai, to say good bye to Vietnam, for now.

photos Quan Lan and Ha Long Bay

One Night in Bangkok

One night in Bangkok MUSIC

One night in Bangkok and the world’s your oyster! Thanks to Avneesh, Ashish’s best friend (with whom Kathi and I stayed in Varanasi), my night in Bangkok was very pleasant! No time to visit a lot of places, I arrived late in the afternoon and my plane was at 5 in the morning… Dinner and water pipe on the menu for us, in one of the tourist districts. I will have to come back to Thailand another time to see more.

photos Bangkok

Incredible India

Incredible India! According to various unverified sources, India is, together with China , one of the emerging industrial nations in the world. Easy to believe when you see New Delhi, airports or the nice parts of other big cities, more difficult to believe in the slums of Delhi where people are left to die in the streets, alone, or where street children cry of hunger. India certainly is a place everyone should visit, to discover life in is purest and often cruelest form and learn to relativise. You become strong when you travel in India, and I understand better now why people told me that in India you find the best and the worst of human beings.

Remember I told you about Kathi that I met in Russia, well we are going to travel together for two weeks here in India and I’m really glad about that, as India is not so easy by yourself.

Delhi

We arrive in Delhi for Diwali, the festival of lights and veneration of the goddess of money, Lakshmi. Our host in Delhi lives in an amazing house that looks more like an art gallery, in a private residence. We stay in the penthouse, with a king size bed and private bathroom. The Lotus Temple is a ten minutes walk from his place and is indeed the reproduction of a gigantic Lotus flower. It is the house of worship of Bahai, all religions are welcome in this temple. On our way back we pay a visit to the Krishna Temple where Diwali festivities are being carried out. Look at the beautiful light on the praying flowers…India is that for me, colours, and more colours, smells, you can get drunk with the different smells there. I have never experienced a country so extreme with beauty and so full of misery. 

photos Delhi

Agra

You shouldn’t try to visit The Taj on a Friday, it is closed. All the guidebooks say it, the travelers write it on forums and blogs, but we still show up at six in the morning to watch the sunrise over the Taj… What to do? We take a local bus to Fatepur Sihkri, an abandoned town 40 km from Agra to spend the day; beautiful temples, buildings witnessing a period of prosperity gone. Nobody knows why this city was left to die. Water shortage is mentioned, but there is a river nearby so the reasons remain a mystery.

6 AM on the next day we show up again at the gates of the Taj Mahal. They didn’t lie, it is indeed the most beautiful building in the world. Actually it is perfect. Constructed by a husband to his wife as a proof of the love he felt for her, it is said he chopped off the hands of the builders so that they would never be able to reproduce anything as beautiful. Unfortunately for him, the wife died and the creator was put in jail shortly after the Taj was finished and thus spent the rest of his life watching it from his cell... Look at the trompe l’oeil on the column, the shine of gold on the gems encrusted in the marble. The weather is misty this morning, because of the pollution mainly, and the Taj emerges from it, majestic and symbol of eternal love and beauty.

photos Agra

Jaipur

Jaipur, the pink city, home to elephants and Amber Fort, only ten minutes’ walk from our couchsurfer, Shubham’s house. His grandmother has cows in her backyard and from her courtyard we see the fort and the Jaipur version of the Chinese great wall. Shubham brings us to a cricket game with his brother and cousins and after we take a ride on an elephant in the elephant village nearby. In the evening his family invites us to celebrate the auntie’s wedding anniversary. Everyone in the jeep, we have to push start it! After eating in a nice restaurant, some family members are still hungry so we stop to have some more in a street kitchen…Is this strange? No, this is India!

photos Jaipur

Pushkar

Home to the annual camel fair, once a year Pushkar fills up with thousands of camels, horses and other tradable animals; salesmen from all over India travel a long way to come here to make business. Tourists also fill up the streets, the hotels, the restaurants… Can you guess the price of one camel? There is a special atmosphere in the camel camp, especially at sunset. I never knew camels were such sweet animals. In the center of Pushkar there is a holy lake. We take off our shoes to walk around it, observing the purification rituals performed by locals. I love the monkeys here, so different from the “red-faced” ones seen before. They are even polite J

photos Pushkar

Varanasi

The mother of rivers, sacred and pure… considered the most polluted water on earth, containing almost no oxygen, to devotees it can even be drunk because the water of the holy mother cannot be filthy. Difficult to understand for us, it seems logical once you are there. All life (and death) in Varanasi is concentrated around the Ganges. People wash themselves, their clothes in the water, their dead are burned and the rests are thrown in the water. Some people cannot be burned, as children or pregnant women, so their bodies are weighted down with rocks and thrown directly it the mother’s bosom. Children at a very young age start drinking the water and it is also used for cooking, Fascinating is the only word I can use to describe what happens in Varanasi. Good Karma, Bad Karma.; words that are on everybody’s lips. I don’t dare to put even a fingertip in the water. Banana, our boat driver, invites Kathi and me into his home. We spend some hours with his family, talking, his daughter even paints us with henna.  I think the tea we drank was cooked on holy water...This is true Indian hospitality!

photos Varanasi

Kolkata

Only one and a half day in Kolkata, the city of joy. Arindam and his mother welcome me with open arms. Arindam celebrates his 26^th birthday with delicious food prepared by his mother. I consider kidnapping her as my stomach seems very satisfied with her cooking skills. We go to the cinema. If you have the chance to see this film: LIFE OF PI in 3D you definitely should! http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0454876/

I go to the nicer parts of Kolkata on Arindam’s advice. After paying a visit to the market where someone tries to sell me… a table! I pay a visit to Queen Victoria memorial before heading to the airport with Arindam.

photos Kolkata

What more is there to say? This is India, anything can and will happen.

Pokhara and Sarangkot

Pokhara

After one month of volunteering, two weeks of non stop work with the children and correcting the new CPCS book in the evening and even during the night, Dashain and Dashain games, we well deserve some rest. Pokhara is situated about five hours drive from Kathmandu. It has a lake and lies at the feet of the Himalaya Mountain range, the tallest mountains in the world. We choose a “luxury hotel” of 6 Euros per person a night which has a nice balcony and free but slow WIFI. Lakeside is probably the Nepalese version of the Riviera, with less tourists though. The atmosphere is laid back and street artists perform their shows with the snowy peaks in the background…

On our first day we decide to climb up to Peace Pagoda. To reach the other side of the lake we take a boat across Fehwa Lake. The price only includes one lifevest! Then we start the ascension, joining a group of tourists from Bangladesh with whom we share the pain and the relief of reaching the top. After several pictures sessions, we decide to descend on the other side, where Devi’s fall is. There is a shortcut through a village and we meet many schoolchildren returning from school and two girls from the Netherlands going to see the waterfall as well. I’m afraid the cascade will be disappointing, but it is rather interesting actually. The water pours into a hole in the ground, into the center of the earth… The air coming out from this hole is humid and hot, producing steam when you look at it from a distance. We return to our hotel by local buses.

photos Pokhara

Sarangkot

Climbing up to Sarangkot is our plan. From our hotel it is supposed to take around three hours. Mutti and I set out with our small backpacks and a lot of courage on the road to the top, hoping for some beautiful mountain views… We have chosen the long way, through the city, then following the road up in the mountain. The air gets purer; paragliders compete with hawks for space in the sky and we reach the bottom of a Nepalese version of Stolzekleiven… When we arrive on the top, we are dripping with sweat and very happy to reach our hotel: Superview! The view is breathtaking. On one side the Himalayas reach for the sky, on the other side, deep down, we see the Fewha Lake.

Yam is a freelance trek organizer, and he explains us about all the possible treks you can do in Nepal and many other things about Nepal as well. He is very professional. I feel my feet are longing to walk on all the tracks he describes and when I come back to Nepal I will definitely join him on one or more adventures. Anyone cares to join me?

The viewpoint on the mountains is only a few minutes away from our hotel, good, then we can go there for sunset and sunrise. The sun colours the mountains in pink, we stay until the last ray of light disappears from the snowy tops in the evening, and watch the reversed phenomenon in the morning, until the Annapurna range again is bathed in sunlight.

M. Morita, a Japanese photographer, is Yam’s client. They travel in the mountains where M. Morita takes pictures he is going to present in Switzerland beginning of next year. They are going to this secret place at 5 in the morning and invite us to join them. Unfortunately there is too must mist and a boat blurring the reflection of the mountains in the lake. At least I saw how a professional photographer works!

photos Sarangkot

Chetana Women development (weaving)

Lisa is back in Pokhara after her trek, we decide to go and find her! Easy said, easy done, we find her in the street. We decide to do some shopping and on our way we see a shop with women weaving in the back. Chetana is a pure women organisation, created by a woman to help other women with no skills. The women are trained in weaving, usually they stay with Chetana for a while, then they go back to their village and start a weaving business there. One of the main reasons children end up in the street is because the family is so poor it can not support a child’s education. This initiative helps prevent this.

Our stay in Pokhara comes to and end, but not without a last meal of Chilli momos at David’s place, the best Chilli momos I’ve tasted in Nepal!

In Kathmandu Valley

Some other places we visited in the Kathmandu valley during our days off:

Kathmandu Durbar Square

Home to many hippies during the sixties and seventies, the only remains of this past period is a temple called the hippie temple. Our guide introduces us to the cult of the Kumari, the living child Goddess, chosen on physical attributes but also on her courage, for instance, she has to stay one night in a temple with 108 ox heads freshly slaughtered without showing any sign of fear…
photos Kathmandu

Thamel, its bars and souvenir shops draw all the tourists, but also street children. There is an interesting chapter in the new book “The street children of Nepal” on the relationship between children and tourists, a mutual attraction difficult to define. Street children in Thamel are almost impossible to attract to NGO’s as they earn so much money by begging that they don’t want to let go of the freedom and money flow… something to think about?

Pashupatinath, the most important hindu temple in Nepal where they burn the corpses on the river bank of the Bagmati, a part of the Ganges river in India. Once a person feels the end is near, he travels to the hospice on the side of the temple to die. The body is washed in the river, placed on a bed of dry wood for the family to light and watch burn to ashes. Everything is public, which can surprise us coming from a part of the world where the old and dead are dealt with in private.
photos Pashupati

Patan is one of the other past kingdoms in the Kathmandu valley. There is also a Durbar Square in the center of the city with temples and more temples… Our favourite spot is the garden situated on the backside of one of the palaces. Look at the sculptures on wood, they are so beautiful…
photos Patan

Bakhtapur, the other kingdom in the valley is known for its potteries. There is a square in Bakhtapur where thousands of pots dry in the sun. It is such a beautiful view. I could spend hours watching the potters make everyday life’s objects on their pottery wheels, others decorate them; others again check when they are dry and ready to be burned. There is a huge oven on the back of the square. 50 families share this oven where they burn their potteries during three to four days, feeding the fire with hay (and some garbage too). Bakhtapur is the third kingdom in the Kathmandu Valley and also has a Durbar square with many temples.
photos Bakhtapur

Swayambunath, also called monkey temple, is best visited at sunrise. Look how the light changes. We even see the snow-capped mountain tips in the far. And monkeys of course, many monkeys! It is one of my favourite places in Kathmandu. Look at how the light chnages over the stupa.
photos Swayambunath

Bodanath is the largest Stupa in the world. It has perfect proportions and the eyes looks at us from every side of the Stupa. They just cleaned it so the white stands out against the blue sky. You just want to walk around it again and again or do as we did, have a tea on top of one of the rooftop restaurants to admire the stupa from above. After having done that you might want to take a local bus (we are experts with local transportation now) to Gokarna Mahadev, a temple in the outskirts of Kathmandu, near a forest.  The temple has the footprint of Shiva on the ground and is surrounded by beautiful statues of Hindu Gods. Not so far from there and more importantly, a beautiful walk away, is Kapan, a renowned Buddhist monastery where we watch the sun go down. Oh no, how do we get home? We share a taxi with three women we met at the monastery, a mother, her daughter and her grandson and a Chinese lady, friend of her son who lives in China. Yes, six people do fit into one taxi!
photos Bodanath-Gokarna-Kapan

NEPAL - CPCS volunteer work

To better understand my stay in Nepal you should have a look at the website of CPCS (Child Protection Centers and Services: http://www.cpcs-int.org/ ), and read the books published by its founder, Jean-Christophe Ryckmans, one of the most fascinating persons I have ever met and a dear friend.

« L’avenir au bout de la rue » - 2007

« Street children of Nepal » - 2012

During one month, my mother and I volunteered in the different CPCS centers in Kathmandu, home to big and small street children, with stories to tell and unforgettable moments to share. We stayed in Baluwatar, in an apartment with 4 other volunteers: Jean François, Marieke, Lisa and Kevin. As Lisa said, the six of us were meant to be, no one else. What a pleasure to share one month with them, interesting conversations, difficult moments but most of all many many funny moments!

Working in the different Centers

To work in Baluwatar with the small boys (6-12) and boys Elite group was pure enjoyment. Puran runs the center with a gentle but firm hand, teaching the boys that it is possible to make it outside of the street. We played karamboard, cards, badminton, ping pong, made drawings, origami or any other activity that they enjoyed. One day we also organized some games with the boys; an apple in water and sweets in flour, potato on a spoon, rope pulling (tug of war)… The boys were in different teams: Cobra, Tiger, Lions. Their faces were lit up with excitement as their team would win points.

The Lazimpat girls’ center is the home to small girls as well as young women abandoned by their parents or without parents at all. Their stories are similar to those of the boys but they are even more fragile and exposed to abuse than the boys. They love drawing and are very concerned with being beautiful. One day they decided to make us beautiful too. We got nail polish, oil in our hair, some makeup and traditional Nepalese dresses. They even tried to teach us the dances that go with the clothes… I will always remember their laughs!

Dillibazaar is the biggest of all the CPCS Centers. It houses boys from 12 to 18 years of age, has a shelter, a rehab program and school boys program. The principle of CPCS is that the child itself chooses what he wants to do. When he is ready to go to rehab, he commits to the rules of the program and the CPCS staff help him. When a rehab child follows some classes, he gets educational tickets with which he can buy different things like soap, games or even soccer shoes. In fact, football is one of the favourite activities of the boys in Dilllibazaar, and they could play it for hours. It was more difficult to connect with these boys as they were older and adolescent and I’m not such a good football player… However, after a while, when we got to know them better, we are able to discuss more as their English was quite good.

In Siphal, at the end of an alley surrounded by trees and monkeys, the CPCS clinic cares for the wounded and hurt. The best food is served here as the children have to get better quickly. Some had a cold, others a leg wound they got during soccer practice or fighting in the street. Others again had AIDS or were drug addicts with serious injection wounds. These children have had to face the cruel reality of the street or are facing it every day. Many children still have their parents who are unable to take care of them, or are so attracted by the liberty and the money that they choose voluntarily to live on the street with a gang of other street children. In the clinic the activities were calmer than in the other centers; play memory, karamboard, take pictures, make bracelets or even cut my hair. Siphal Clinic is 45 minutes walk from Baluwatar, where we live. One day, walking through the alley to reach the clinic, some monkeys attacked us, to steal our biscuits. One even grabbed our legs. We started running and screamed out loud to scare them off. They were attracted by plastic bags is what we learned afterwards…

Dashain is one of the most important festivals in Nepal. It is celebrated with animal sacrifice and wishing of good luck. If you want to know more about this festival, have a look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dasain

We were quite lucky to have been there during this period as everyone celebrated and the children had days off from school so we could spend more time with them. Some children also went home to their families during this period, highly encouraged by CPCS whose aim is to reunite the small ones with their families whenever possible. In Dillibazaar, the largest of the centers, we did the Tika ceremony and celebrated with all the children with delicious food and activities.

(CPCS asks us not to publish any pictures of the children on the web, but I will gladly show you some when I get back)

Kunming

Arriving in Kunming at 4 o’clock in the morning is probably not a very good idea… The bus drops us in the middle of nowhere and we have no map… Hundred meters away some people are heating around a fire, taxis stop but they don’t seem to know where my next couchsurfer, Heather lives. I am not very enthusiastic about staying there too long. Finally comes a car (probably not a taxi) with a GPS who agrees to take me to Heather’s. Poor Heather, I wake her up in the middle of the night and she yawns from her bedroom: “you can go into the room with the girl”. I open the first door and a sleepyhead with beard peeks out of the blankets, nope, definitely not a girl! What is this place, how many rooms are there and how many people? I open another door, Yza smiles at me, great, this must be correct! I fall asleep instantly but don’t manage to sleep very long, I want to discover Kunming, the capital of the Yunnan province, and I only have one day to do so. 

Simon and Yza are from France, they bike around the world and record sound. We agree to meet in the evening to have some food and then they want to go to a pre-premiere performance of Yunnan minorities before the Premiere in Beijing. Do have a look at their blog for more information about this fabulous evening we spent together. You will find there some photos I took during the performance and the sound recordings they made.

http://lesoreillesbaladeuses.blogspot.in/2012/10/yuansheng-art-space.html

Kunming itself is quite nice, smaller than Chengdu, and more relaxed, but very modern. Again I seek refuge in a Buddhist temple, with its smell of incense and serenity. 

On the local market the puppies look at me with their sad eyes, yes I would love to take you home but I’m traveling around the world…

The next day I leave early to reach the airport and start the new chapter of my adventures: Nepal… Bye bye China, see you next time. And thank you to the Ger connection, Mille and Anne, Tom and his family, Scarlett, Norah, Ofir, Avihai and Noa, Hang Yu and her family, Tandzindjela and Fufujuma, Ananya, Moha and Julieta, Tejas, Sergio, Petter, Yza and Simon for a wonderful wonderful stay in China!