A day at cooking school

During our time in Hoi An, we had so much yummy Vietnamese food that Meg decided we needed to go on a cooking class to unlock the mysteries of pho and other culinary delights.

The day started early with a visit to an organic veggie farm, where we sampled an array of pungent herbs and collected some ingredients for our lesson.

On to the local market to collect more ingredients, we saw vast piles of veg and herbs, every cut of fresh meat you can imagine, fish and seafood galore, and a few live ducks sat in amongst the melee observing it all.

Then it was on to the school for a refreshing dip in the lovely pool before our chef instructor Phi (like fee-fi-fo-fum, as he put it) got us suited up in our Red Bridge Cooking School aprons.

We made beef broth for pho (key- barbecue all ingredients before adding to pot) and then proceeded to make our own rice noodles by hand. Even Mark got in on the action, especially when the time came to slice the noodles up with a giant cleaver!

Other dishes, which we all ate for lunch, included lemongrass shrimp grilled in banana leaf, clay-pot fish and chicken and banana flower salad. As we relaxed in the pool after our delicious lunch, we reflected that although we were confident we could reproduce the noodle making feat (how hard can it be?), finding a banana flower stockist in London may prove more of a challenge.

That evening we went out for a few local beers with our new cooking friends Steph and Jon to celebrate our achievements, and had a rather later start the following morning in consequence...

One more lantern . . .

Arriving into Hoi An we realised it was the first city with a beach we'd visited since Indonesia. And with the daily temperatures reaching 40 degrees C it seemed the best place to be. The beach was beautiful - white sand, clear blue sea and a strong offshore breeze that not only cooled us down, but gave Mark the chance to finally fly his kite.

A national kite competition was coincidentally taking place on the beach which gave us the chance to watch teams of 6 - 10 Vietnamese kite flyers controlling giant lobsters, footballs and snakes, and gave the locals a chance to laugh at Mark's plastic bag on a string (unsurprisingly he didn't win the competition)

Meg's indulgence in Hoi An was the purchase of nine decorative Vietnamese silk lanterns to hang in our theoretical future home in the UK. Mark hadn't realised that starting discussions of building a dream home would result in Meg furnishing the place before it even existed!

Anyway, we should add a warning here to Lizzie: on our way to posting her the lanterns for safe-keeping, the Nine became Ten because apparently "you can't have a rainbow of colours and only one white ..." or something similar!? Lizzie - take a car to the Post Office! And thanks.

Our main mode of transport around Hoi An was a bicycle. Meg cycling with Mark sat on the back seemed the best way to stop him sweating and gave Meg some good exercise. But once again we were amazed by the effortless circus feats of the highway performed by the locals as we were overtaken by several schoolkids riding 3 to a bike - 2 pedalling and the third binding them all together!

Team Dengland

The land of counterfeit goods just gets better. A few days earlier we'd been discussing a ridiculous fake England football shirt which Mark's dad had seen in Azerbaijan featuring 4 Lions on the badge, when we spotted an 'England' t-shirt in a shop over here made (apparently) by Fila. Once we'd stopped laughing at the mistake, obvious to any Englishman (or vexillophile), Meg made the purchase and adopted the shirt as her lucky World Cup shirt.



Without going into too much detail about the disappointing World Cup so far, the recent poor England performances have not been starting until 1:30am local time. And with the local police cruising the streets and closing down any bars flouting the midnight Hanoi curfew, we have not been rewarded for our efforts in staying up to watch.



Mark is now on his fourth pair of conterfeit Ray-Bays and has vowed to buy a real pair in Australia - though possibly not with his newly acquired stash of 'real' $1000 bills.

The Top Gear Challenge

From Laos we headed to Vietnam and after a brief stopover in Hanoi we found ourselves in Hue (pronounced "h'way"). The two most pronounced changes from previous countries were the manic traffic and the incredible heat of Vietnam, both factors leading us to take the safer option of 'cyclos' around Hue. We explored the incredible Royal Palaces within the citdel of the old city, and then bought Mark another pair of 'genuine' $2 Ray-Bans to replace his previous pair which had broken.

Having promised ourselves (and our parents!) that we definitely wouldn't ride motorbikes in Vietnam, we were presented with an opportunity to ride the 7 hour route from Hue to Hoi An (do all cities in Vietnam start with an 'H'?) taken by the Top Gear team on that memorable episode. We promptly arranged for our bags to be sent separately and got ready for our road trip.

We woke early for a quick breakfast and were on the road by 8 o'clock. By 8.05 we'd noticed that the fuel guage was below empty and made a quick stop to refuel. By 8.10 we'd noticed that the speedometer and odometer weren't working so we had no way of knowing our speed or distance, but by 8.15 the full scale of our situation hit home - another bike cut us up so Mark hit the horn only to hear what sounded like a pathetic sqawking chicken! The horn is without doubt the most important part of any Vietnamese vehicle, and without one we were in trouble!!

Once we had made it off the narrow track leading through tiny villages and onto the main highway the scenery was spectacular, and the mountain pass before getting to Da Nang was a major highlight of the journey (see photos below)

And after 7 hours of silently dodging any form of oncoming traffic imaginable, our sore bums were relieved to arrive into Hoi An and we let off one final chicken squawk 'beep' to celebrate.

The mission now is to enjoy our first beach in a few weeks, have some clothes custom-made, and of course start enjoying the long-awaited World Cup.

Temples and elephants

It's been a little while since the last blog update!! This is due in part to laziness and too much time enjoying the beach in Vietnam, and also being witness to someone losing all 500 of their photos when they plugged their camera into our hotel's computer. Needless to say, we were spooked, but have found a (we hope) trusty internet cafe and will risk our memory card in the dodgy computers once more.

We left Vang Vieng and journeyed to Luang Prabang by coach- the switchback roads and ageing suspension were not a brilliant combination but the scenery was magnificent, and Mark managed to stop the person in front of him putting the seat back by wedging two water bottles between that seat and his, thus ensuring himself a slightly more bearable journey. (We should note that no one else was putting their seats back, only the plonker sat in front of us!)

Luang Prabang was stunning- French colonial villas with faded shutters, leafy streets with atmospherically crumbling temples on every corner, etc. We did a lot of meandering around the streets on pushbikes, ogling temples and trying to resist buying beerlao tshirts, and also spent a morning at one of the most well-known of these temples trying to look knowledgeable about the subtle differences between the zillions of buddha sculptures.

Meg decided that having been sooo good about not making souvenir purchases up to that point, the time had come to fully immerse herself in the craft shops of Luang Prabang. After lengthy contemplation, several items were purchased which thankfully didn't take up too much room in the suitcase (she hadn't been to Vietnam and seen the silk lanterns yet...)

After a few days spent relaxing, we decided to spice things up a bit by going on an elephant ride. Miss Kham was a delightful elephant companion, sturdy but light-footed, and always keen to spot a likely bit of greenery somewhere off the path for a bit of a mid-morning snack. When she wasn't moseying off into the bush to find a bit of lunch, she was pushing up through the queue of elephants to walk next to her friend Miss Nam.

Mark had a try being a 'mahout' or elephant trainer, which involves sitting on the elephant's head and steering her (they're all lady elephants- 'less aggressive' apparently) by moving your feet behind her ears. After a few dodgy manoevres, he got the hang of it and managed to stay on the path all the way to the end. Once we were safely back on the ground Meg took a few risks herself by feeding bananas to the voracious Miss Kham.

The next day we took off for Hanoi, to trade our sticky rice and laap for some pho and fresh spring rolls. Unbeknownst to us, we would also trade the elephant for a motorbike!

Tubing the Nam Song

Before leaving Vientiane we decided to indulge in massages. Over the course of a relaxing hour we heard not only our own, but each others fingers and toes cracking and clicking as our strong-handed masseuses went to work. At one point, Mark was surprised by the impossible increase of strength of his masseur and turned his head to see whether she had in fact been replaced by a male wrestler, only to find that she had taken off her shoes and was walking on top of him digging her toes into his back and legs!!

Our next destination in Laos was Vang Vieng - home of caves, tubes and some of the most breathtaking natural scenery in Laos. Firstly our guide took us to the 'Elephant Cave' to see a dubious natural stalactite which resembled an elephant. He then spent half an hour in the midday sun telling us the famous Laos fable taught to all schoolchildren and goes some way to explaining the unscrupulousness of all tuk-tuk drivers and sellers. A basic synopsis of the (long) story is that a pelican deceives a fish and a frog by telling them that their river is drying up and that he'll carry them to a new deeper river. He shows them the deeper river and they tell all of the other fish and frogs. Each day he flies away with a new fish and a frog and promptly eats them. Anyway, he later tries the same trick on a suspicious crab who doesn't trust him and so asks to ride on the pelican's back and slits his throat and kills him. Hopefully not a bed-time story!

The moral of the story is don't trust anyone. Quite how our guide made this story last half an hour we didn't know ... but we certainly didn't trust his intentions!!

Our next cave was one which we investigated on an inflated tractor tyre inner tube wearing a head torch. The cave was extremely low and had a river running throughout, so it took about an hour to get to the end and back and was both spectacular and terrifying in equal measures!

After a bbq lunch we took part in the most popular backpacker activities in Vang Vieng - 'tubing' down the Nam Song river. This basically involves sitting inside one of the giant inner tubes and floating down the river, allowing yourself to be pulled into various bars en route, all blasting pumping-House music, to drink Beerlao or a bucket of cocktail. Most of the bars had rope swings, cable runways and giant slides just to add to the excitement (danger) of it all! It took about 5 hours to cover the 4km route, however much of this time was spent 're-fueling'!

Next stop is Luang Prabang for some rest & relaxation between the madness of tubing, and the anticipated chaos of Vietnam.

Foodie heaven

After we left the Cameron Highlands, we had a quick overnight stop in KL (back to the incredible shopping mall to stock up on books and see 'Robin Hood') and took a flight to Vientiane, the capital of Laos. We'd heard it was laid-back, we'd heard there was good food. We were not disappointed.

Our first day, we wandered slowly around the streets and along the Mekong river, hearing only one halfhearted 'taxi?' as we strolled by. In the evening we made our way to a bar overlooking the river for some sunset drinks, reflecting that life here was indeed very bearable. We discovered the best breakfast place in town (Joma, for those of you who've been or might be in Vientiane, Luang Prabang or Hanoi where they have shops) and Meg enjoyed a warm cinnamon bun and Mark, an egg and bacon bagel. After a breakfast diet largely featuring banana pancakes for the past few weeks, this was indeed a pleasant change!

We spent the day exploring the local attractions, including the National Museum which had some very interesting artifacts and photographs with a different version of the history of Laos in the 20th century than the one many of us may be familiar with.

Our final night in Vientiane we headed to a pretty restaurant serving Lao and Thai delicacies and enjoyed a scrumptious feast of crispy spring rolls served with piles of lettuce, mint, basil, spring onions, sprouts, noodles, and delicious sauce to eat them with, chicken laap (minced chicken salad with tons of herbs chopped in) with another pile of gorgeous veg, and the piece de resistance, ping paa (barbecued fish crusted in salt and stuffed with lemongrass to keep it soft and moist), all with the Lao staple of sticky rice. Yummy.

Strawberries and Steamboats

You would have thought we'd had our fill of strawberries. Well, we thought so too until the next day, our last in the Cameron Highlands, when we decided to just take it easy and enjoy the lovely cool breezes while strolling around the town of Tanah Rata. And then, we happened upon an entire shop filled with strawberry-themed merchandise... and then another one... and then another one. We finally succumbed when Meg encountered a strawberry beach ball. How could you resist.

After purchasing two of them ("in case one of them breaks and I am distraught", reasoned Meg) and a lurid orange strawberry-themed t-shirt for Mark, we headed for the local park for a spot of light-hearted fun with the inflatable strawberry.

Mark also decided to try and fly his trusty pirate kite, and drew many curious stares from locals as he ran up and down the football pitch trying to get his kite to launch on an uncharacteristically windless day.

All the running around meant we were up for a big dinner, so on a recommendation from a local resident we headed to a Chinese restaurant to sample the regional specialty, the steamboat. Described as 'the Chinese answer to fondue' by the restaurant's menu, the steamboat was an enormous pot of broth bubbling away over a portable gas burner. It was accompanied by the most enormous mound of raw chicken, beef, squid, different types of fish, crab, mushrooms, pak choi, watercress, spring onions, lettuce, sprouts, three types of noodles, and two raw eggs, all of which were to be cooked by us in the broth and eaten with different sauces.

It was very delicious, and the interactive element appealed to Mark's active nature- lots of plunging and timing and scooping to be done. We now regret not asking for a fondue set as a wedding present....