Rain is no fun, here’s a puppy
We’ve been so lucky with the weather this trip. In the Philippines we could have arrived before or during the typhoon, but we arrived just after and so our plans were barely dented. Apart from that it was sun, sun, sun. In Phong Nha we were told that the caves are often closed at this time of year through flooding, but it’s been a dry year (and it didn’t rain on us either) so all was well. Hue is the wettest city in Vietnam, which is a very rainy country, and yet apart from one short shower we didn’t need an umbrella.
But now we’re in Da Nang and the heavens have opened and the celestial sprinklers show no signs of running out. Which is annoying, because it’s here that we want to see our final Vietnamese langur – the beautiful red-shanked douc. They live on a forested peninsula just outside the city, and would normally be the easiest to see of all the primates we’ve looked for, but they might as well be on the moon right now with the torrents coming down outside our window.
It’s not looking good either. Just been talking to a local guide we’d like to take us on a walking tour of Hoi An’s street food (an hour down the coast), and they say if the rain doesn’t let up soon then the town will be flooded. So our final three days may end up being camped in a hotel room staring at the rain!
We’ve just stayed in all day, with one quick dash to grab some chips and very nice crab soup for lunch. And then a taxi ride in the evening for our single swish meal of the trip – a tasting menu at Restaurant Nen. The dining room was smart and modern with all the trappings of fine dining, the owner is a food blogger turned restaurateur, I think all the customers were all foreign tourists, the food was great, and the tasting menu an astonishing £27. Astonishing both ways; the most expensive other meal we’ve had in Vietnam has been about £12 and yet back in England this menu would certainly have been £50.
So, since there’s no adventures to report today, we’ve come up with a list of the 10 weirdest things we’ve come across in our 7 week trip around SE Asia (in no particular order)…
Theme restaurant
- A restaurant in Bong Lai valley where you kill your own chicken for dinner. So you know it’s really fresh, I guess?
- Children in local costume doing karaoke on Phu Chi Fa mountain in the fog at 6am every 100 yards, in the hope of tourists saying “aww, cute” and forking over money
- Grandad and grandma’s graves right outside the front door of houses in Maligcong village, so you don’t forget them I guess?
- An Bang cemetery, the endless pastel city of the dead
- Playing Jingle Bells on a musical stalagmite in Paradise cave
- Duck stop
- Throngs of frantic fish feistily feasting on our feet at Whisper of Nature
- Bucket of furry animals nestled together like pompoms in the market at Luang Prabang. Definitely to be sold as pets I’m sure and not to be eaten at all! : P
- The fire-breathing dragon bridge of Da Nang. Why aren’t British architects more imaginative, eh?
- Durian pizza. The weirdest thing about it was that it tasted amazing.
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