Mekong Delta revisited

I am back in the Mekong delta ! Returning to the area, six years after I spent three months working at Tra Vinh University, brings back many good memories.

I started my Mekong tour with a quick trip to the mekong delta's biggest city, Can Tho (population 1.5 million). My friend Rena had highly recommended Can Tho Touring with Susan so i signed up for a tour and homestay with Susan, a 26-year old tourism grad. Definitely did not disappoint.  Susan is cute and bubbly and eager to share her knowledge of her hometown.  We visited the Can Tho floating market, learned how rice noodles are made, saw how the locals get their rice husked (with a machine) and went shopping for a meal that we "helped" to cook - although Susan and her mom did most of the cooking !  We learned how  to make a steamed rice paper dessert that i would describe as "ha cheong  fan" without the shrimp and dipped in a sweet coconut and peanut sauce.  Susan's family appear to have been relatively well off and they farm rice and many types of fruits and vegetables.

My favourite parts of this tour were tasting durian (the durian tasting generated a strong range of reactions from the German couple doing the tour with me-priceless grimaces and exclamations of "Yummy !" and "Ick!" ) and playing with Susan 's beautiful cats and dog, as well as visiting the floating market. It was also quite exciting to visit an orchard and find out how durian, mangosteen, jackfruit, pomelo, dragonfruit and kumquats are grown.

Then it was off to Tra Vinh ! I had forgotten what a pleasant town it is. TV University has gone  on a building spree and now have a whole second campus across the road from the original one. The new campus (which is all painted in yellow as per the rector's favourite colour) houses Medicine and Law faculties in addition to dorms for 3,500 students. The Gender and Community department moved three times and is now housed in one of the buildings of this new campus area. My former colleagues continue to teach English and Khmer culture and give workshops on gender equality.

Memory is a funny thing. I thought I had forgotten how to get around campus but my feet somehow remembered the way to my old office (now occupied by the Vice Dean of Aquaculture studies).  I remember Khmer dance classes outside the office and so many breaks for ca phê sua da (sweetened iced coffee).  I was actually ridiculously pleased to stumble across a group of students practising a dance choreography in honour of TVU's 15th anniversary - just like the countless rehearsals I witnessed in 2010. (Linh mentioned that her students are always late for rehearsals and Kim Anh complained her students are too lazy to do their homework. I guess some things don't change.)

And of course the trip down memory lane included sampling my favourite Tra Vinh dishes like nem nuong (barbecued meat rolled with fresh rice noodles, lettuce and herbs and dipped in fish sauce). 

Fun things to do in Tra Vinh include visiting the Ao Back Om (pond) and some of Tra Vinh provinces' 140 Khmer temples. It's a laid back little town that few foreigners visit, but it is worth the detour IMHO.

Next stop will be Saigon and Dalat as I make my way north!

xo

My Gratitude List

Traveling makes you grateful for the little  and big things  that make your life richer and more complete. I was inspired to compile my list of things for which i am grateful after reading about another traveler's no so successful trip to Indonesia (making me extremely grateful that I have had no travel mishaps so far- knock on wood). (If you are interested, you can read California-based artist and Youtuber Kina Grannis' account of being stuck in Jakarta for 100 days. )

Here are some 10 things I am grateful for:

1. Hospitality- Good friends offering a bed to crash on.  By far my favourite way to travel is to "courchsurf" with people I know, and while hostels  are great for meeting people, friends' places are the nicest place to relax, to feel comfortable and safe. Bonus : often comes with good food and/or cooking and tea-making facilities!

2. Family and friends.  Nothing is more important - and knowing your friends and family know and support your decision to travel has been hugely helpful in my case.

3. The Internet - Wifi  and sim cards with data allow me to felt connected and informed about the news wherever I go.

4. I am grateful for smiles, nods and hand gestures that allow me to communicate with locals whose language I dont or barely know. I am also so grateful for people who make efforts to understand me and my sign language.

5. Fellow travellers who share their tips and experiences with you make the going even more pleasant (and help you to make more interesting travel choices).

6. I am grateful for my books & my e-reader (and grateful for my brother and his girlfriend who insisted i take the reader back after i had loaned/given it to them. Also grateful to my aunties who gave it to me in the first place hehe ).

7. Swimming and yoga have been my best ways to keep fit and healthy. And blogging and calls/emails keep me mentally happy and healthy.

8. Grateful for kids I have met on this trip who laugh at my funny faces and interact because they are curious. They keep me endlessly entertained.

9. Grateful for those little luxuries like air conditioning and aloe vera soap that keep me cool and soothe sunburns!

10. My passport and the privilege of having been born Canadian. I am so grateful that I was born by sheer luck in a country that is safe and has clean forests, rivers and mountains.  Its only when you no longer have these things that you appreciate how lucky you were to grow up with clean air and plenty of space to play outdoors .

Hello Vietnam!

Ah Vietnam- it's so good to see you again.  In the six years since I saw you last, you've gotten  busier and moved up the corporate ladder. Your streets are filled with cars, not just motorcycles as before. Foreigners flock to your shores to teach English and start businesses.  You've even made friends with those strange and world travelling American fellows, Starbucks and McDonalds. President Obama decided to hang out with you this week, and you treated him like a superstar (even boasting to everyone that he likes Hanoi bun cha (rice noodles and bbq'd meat).  Your food choices are just as dizzying as before (so far I have sampled your banh xeo, bun cha, banh mi, nuoc mía (sugar cane juice), bia hoi (draft beer) and pizza!).  You have some amazing architecture but the old colonial buildings will make way for modern skyscrapers with less soul but more rental space for Korean and Chinese businesses.  You banned Facebook this week to coincide with protests over toxic waste spills in the ocean which killed thousands of fish. At the same time, you are now a middle income country with an astonishing ability to grow and change.

I guess  you're just as complex and contradictory as before.  But that's okay , with all your flaws i still think you are pretty fabulous.

Manila streetscapes

One last update from Manila - I am flying to Ho Chi Minh City tonight!
Had a lazy weekend with my friend S who has been living in Manila since February. Of note- my main activities were shopping in Manila's countless malls and buying organic soaps at the Legazpi Sunday market!

Pictures below are from Poblacion, a "local area" situated a stone's throw from upscale Makati City.

xo

(Français)
Bonjour! Une derniere mise a jour avant mon depart pour le Vietnam. J ai passé un weekend de paresseuse, à manger et faire un peu de magasinage dans les nombreux centres commerciaux de Manille.
Deux choses que j ai bien aimé:
- le marché du dimanche de Legazpi;
- une randonnée dans le quartier Poblaciôn, qui est littéralement dans l ombre des gratte-ciels du quartiet huppé de Makati City.  Contraste interessant et fort typique de Manille, je dirais!

xo
Mia

Palawan is Paradise

Palawan is an island on the westernmost area of the Philippines which is reputed for its excellent diving and breathtaking lagoons. In the Philippines it is also well known as a) an archipelago within and archipelago - it has some 1,000 of the Philippines' 7,000 islands-  and b)  as a spot that is blessedly spared from typhoons and earthquakes.

If you ask me at the end of this trip what place I enjoyed the most, I may say: Palawan! It has superb beaches, islands galore, and many activities to do such as kayaking, diving, snorkelling, etc. I don't usually consider myself a "beach person" but after spending a week in Bohol and a week here in Palawan i may have to reassess that.

My itinerary for this island was 2-2-2-2:
2 nights in Puerto Princessa (to visit the Underground River);
2 nights in Port Barton, a quieter version of El Nido, where they grow pearls;
2 nights in El Nido, to see the beautiful Bacuit Archipelago;
2 nights in Coron, another set of islands famous for its 12 shipwreck diving sites.

I flew into Puerto Princessa, a smallish town with lots of traffic that can be skipped for those who have a tight itinerary or who want to focus on diving.  I elected to stay here for two nights because I wanted to visit the PP Underground River, which was included as one of the new 7 wonders of the world. The River is pretty cool to visit but I am not sure I would recommend it to everyone given how crowded it gets- we arrived at 9.30am and didnt get in until 2.30pm (our guide did take us zip lining and on a tour of the mangroves while we waited, given the expected delays in visiting the river).  It is filled with stalagmites and stalagtites, and an audio guide helpfully points out which rocks look like the face of Jesus or a bunch of carrots, hehehe.

Port Barton was fabulous for me since I enjoy quiet places. I stayed at Coconut Garden, a small resort on the island of Capnica, owned by a Swiss-Philippino family whose young adult kids are working in Switzerland. Hung out with two lovely French women and spent my time there snorkelling and finishing book 3 of Amitav Ghosh' s trilogy on the opium war , Sea of Poppies.

In El Nido, I went island hopping again. Tour A was fantastic- we saw a small lagoon that we swam into, a larger lagoon that has turtles, and some great snorkelling spots..  El Nido is a bit touristy but well worth a visit, in fact I could have spent 5 days rather than just one and a half days there! Las Cabanas beach is also lovely and it is possible to kayak and paddleboard around the bay.

After a pleasant 6 -hour boat ride (which can be challenging however if the weather is uncooperative) I arrived in Coron Town, a small town that serves as a base for many diving expeditions.  Coron is a famous diving spot thanks to its 12 World War II Japanese shipwrecks.  It also offers some amazing island hopping tours. The Backpacker Guesthouse where i stayed helped me book the "Ultimate" tour which was so much fun although very tiring! :) We went to Kayangan Lake (a lake on an island), saw the Skelleton Wreck (the prow of the sunken boat is clearly visible even for snorkellers) and saw amazing marine life- electric blue starfish, clownfish, table corals and corals that look like ginger, and even what looked like a whole forest of blue and purple corals that ressembled the underside of a squid. I didnt take any underwater pictures unfortunately but will try to get pics from others on my tour.
Had so much fun in the Philippines!

xx Mia

Bohol: Eat, Sleep, Beach, Repeat

Good morning.  I have been enjoying the beach on Panglao Island (Bohol), the Philippines, for the last 3 days or so. Bohol has many attractions other than the beach though, so today I went with 5 others (3 other Canadian women, 1 Dutch guy- who I had also met in Myanmar (!), and 1 Filipino guy) on a tour of the Chocolate Hills and Tarsier Conservation Area.  The Chocolate Hills are a unique geological formation, a mass of small round hills that turn brown in the dry season. They say that the Hills are formed from a giant's tears.    We also saw the tarsier, a unique and adorable looking small "monkey" which is native to a few area of the Philippines including Bohol.  The tarsier are very territorial and only meet very occasionally to mate, before going their own way.  They are nocturnal so sleep in the daytime when most visitors go see them.  Super adorable critters.

I also went "island hopping" with three other ladies, we swam around a long sandbank area and also did some snorkelling.  The Phils are popular among divers and snorkellers. Alona Beach where i am staying (Moon Fools Hostel) is small and there are lots of dive boats, not as picturesque as other Pinoy islands but still quite enjoyable, with white sand and lovely sunsets.

One more day in Bohol before i head to Cebu and then Palawan (Island).  It is National Elections tomorrow so I elected to stay on the beach and not go to any major cities on that day.  Among the Filipinos many favour R. Duterte, a foul-mouthed mayor of Davao city.  He has apparently done a good job of ridding Davao of corruption and the Filippinos appear favorable to his approach to crime and corruption although one could qualify them as hard-line.   It may take up to a month to announce the election results but in any case I wish them free, fair and peaceful elections!

Hugs
Mia

Manila And Cebu City

Hello from Cebu City! Day 3 in the Philippines.

After a 10hour delay at Singapore airport and temporarily losing my baggage (for two nights-but hey not too bad since I am trying to live with less stuff anyways) I arrived on Sunday afternoon in Manila and got picked up by my Japanese friend. From what I have seen of Manila it is one traffic clogged city!! My friend is staying in the heart of Makati City, so I mostly explored Makati City- skyscrappers and chic boutiques- as well as visiting the American memorial cemetery and the old city or "intramuros", literally "between the walls".
The best place to get a crash course on Spanish colonial times is San Augustin Museum, possibly the most beautiful and comprehensive museum I have visited on this trip. San Augustin is a former convent and still used by Augustinian friars. It has a long and sometimed tragic history- witness the memorial plaques for the friars who were murdered during the Japanese occupation during the Second World War.  Definitely a must see if you go to Manila.  The other experience I enjoyed was travelling by river ferry, although it was disappointing to see how polluted the Pasig River is with trash floating all over the place.
I flew to Cebu City yesterday and am exploring a bit today before heading to Bohol island.  The first pic below shows the view from the Tops View Deck above Cebu. Cebu also has lots of traffic and is a little grimy but colourful.  People mostly get around by jeepney, or shared taxis which are sort of like comfy pick up trucks with a top and seats. some of these jeepneys can seat 30 people from the looks of it alhough most carry about 12-14 when full.
The food is pretty oily and very meat heavy.  I tried lechon or pork yesterday , a typical Cebuano dish. After being practically vegetarian in Myanmar so much meat is a bit much for my system so I think I will pick up food from the supermarket more often here or opt for seafood. So far I have tried raw fish marinated in vinegar and chilis which was quite tasty.

I am looking forward to going to the beach!!
Hugs to all.
Mia