Dragon Descending Bay

The last major part of our Vietnam trip has been a three day trip to Ha Long Bay and CatBa Island with the Real Kangaroo Café in Hanoi. Ha Long means "Dragon Descending" in Vietnamese and the legend (there's always a legend in Vietnam) is that when the country was threatened by an invasion by sea from China a protecting dragon, summoned by the prayers and incantations of the people, came down and spat it's teeth into he sea in the path of the invading fleet and turned them back. The dragon's teeth are still visible in the form of hundreds of rugged tooth-shaped Islands.

The geological explanation is a little less exciting, limestone has over millennia of weathering and earthquakes been pushed up and weathered into the shapes we see today.

Ha Long bay is pretty much a "must-do" part of any trip to Vietnam and we had opted for the three-day tour which includes a night on the boat drifting on the sea in the middle of the islands and a night on the major island of CatBa which has a large National Conservation Park covering much of the island. CatBa is the only place where the golden-headed langur monkey is found, there are only thought to be about sixty left in the wild. 

The weather, which had been cool and wet for our visit to SaPa changed dramatically and we enjoyed long sunny spells and fairly clear visibility as we wandered between the islands.

A real highlight of the trip was the food, beautifully created on the boat by the crew. We had abundant fresh seafood (clams, prawns, fish) as well as a host of other dishes and, as usual in Vietnam, fabulous fresh fruit (pineapple, melon, mango, dragon fruit .... the list goes on).

After a swim and climb to a viewpoint we settled in at anchor with a number of other boats for the sunset:

Another memorable dinner ended with an impromptu demonstration from the chef of how to make flowers from vegetables:

Dragon Boat Racing on CatBa Island

It's 50 years ago today that Ho Chi Minh, president of then North Vietnam, visited CatBa island and CatBa town. Not a massive event you might think but we arrived in CatBa from our Halong Bay visit in the midst of a massive party, hundreds of people on the harbour walls, lots and lots of flags, music (no Kylie ...... yet) and another excitable person on the PA. All to celebrate 50 years since that visit.

We just got checked in and onto our balcony to witness the highlight of the afternoon, the dragon boat racing. The harbour had been cleared of the usual flotilla of junks, fishing boats and sampans and a long course marked out. The five teams assembled on their start lines, the gun sounded and the race began, a long 3km twice up and down the harbour.

The harbour ready for the start.

It's neck and neck at the first turn.

And on the final turn it's a narrow lead for red (the eventual winners) over blue and yellow.

Strange Places

I've written blog posts in some strange places and times. This is one of the stranger:

Welcome to Hanoi railway station at 04:35 am!

We've just got in on the night sleeper from Lao Cai, the station on the Chinese border, and we've got an hour and a half to kill before the cafés open for breakfast. There is a lot of work and investment going on to upgrade Hanoi station with new platforms, passenger bridges, electronic signage and reception halls. Shame it hasn't got to the waiting room yet .... 

The station at the border post at Lao Cai is being completely rebuilt as a modern glass and steel construction, that looks as if it will be completed later this year. The station has a difficult recent history. Lao Cai was the point that 200,000 Chinese troops crossed the border in 1979 to take advantage of Vietnam's eyes being on a campaign 2000km further south in Cambodia to remove Pol Pot (of the killing fields infamy) from power. Lao Cai and a number of towns in the mountain region around were more or less flattened in the 16 days before the Chinese withdrew having suffered heavy casualties - approximately 20,000 never made it back over the border. The Vietnamese Women's militia were reputed to have made a significant contribution to the Chinese casualties and I'll try to write something about my observations on the place of women in Vietnamese society in the future.

Next stop for us in Halong Bay and two days on a boat, unlikely to get much internet access there so might be a while before the next update. Hopefully we'll be looking better by then:

Trekking in the mountains

Due to the vagueries of internet connections and travel schedules I've missed a few days (and a few big chunks of Vietnam) off this blog - I'll catch up on those with pictures when I can.

We are in the North-west mountains now having taken a third sleeper from Hanoi up to the Chinese border at Lao Cai and then travelled in by bus to SaPa. This is the centre of the trekking operations here and the main attraction for many people are the Minority tribe villages in the surrounding hills and valleys. These ethnic groups with their own distinct cultures are separate from the main Vietnamese people and recognisable by their dress. We took two walking trips with a Black Hmong guide called Mee (on the left of the photo).

The countryside around SaPa is hilly and divided by deep valleys, access to many of the villages is by foot and, following a week of rain, the paths have been pretty slippery - hence Mee brought along the other two ladies in the picture to help. They do all of course walk like mountain goats and somehow keep the red mud off their shoes much more effectively than we did.

Barbara has also been making friends all over - of course they all want to sell us something ....

Back to the trek:

Walking down to Lao Chai village, our route took us over the aquaduct in the picture to the valley floor.

The landscape is a continual vista of terraced rice paddies, forest and mountains.

The weather has been pretty poor, the views across to Mt Fan Xi Pan, the highest point in Vietnam, are supposed to be spectacular, all we've seen is a misty wall! However, the weather for the trek was fine yesterday although the mist prevented the photographs looking very spectacular.

Conclusion jumping

In Hué in central Vietnam we set off early on the bikes to visit the old citadel and former seat of power of the last emperors of central Vietnam. The court and temple buildings looked fantastic from pictures taken during the French period of rule. They fell into disrepair after the abdication of the last Nguyen emperor in 1928, were burnt during the violent insurrections against French rule in 1945, further damaged in 1969 when the Viet Cong briefly held Hué for 25 days and again in 1975 when it finally and permanently fell to North Vietnam. Although there is a programme of reconstruction underway most of the central citadel is evocative open space and stones.

Bikes were a good way of getting around in Hué, although we were vary careful at the major intersections and often got off we soon got the knack of drifting through the shoals of scooters and getting in the right place at junctions. Actually there's no right place at junctions, just ones that increase or decrease the probability of meeting a scooter going your route across at 90 degrees or even heading completely the wrong way against the flow. 

As we wheeled across the bridge made with a steel structure suspiciously like the Eiffel Tower the unmistakable sound of military music reached our ears. On closer inspection the parade ground next to the Flag Tower was the source of the noise and it contained about 500 teenage children in coloured shirts being excitedly harangued (to our ears) from the PA on stage. "Oh good, at last some proper communist flag waving and marching" I thought.

Vietnam is a communist country, not really in your face communism but a more subtle kind. Like in China there are a lot of men in oversize military caps wearing olive drab uniforms on the street and more national flags than I've ever seen. The vietnamese flag is red with a yellow star and it's everywhere, on government buildings, along the streets, outside houses and hotels. Cities in the central zone (Hué, Da Nang) are busy celebrating 40 years since liberation and they are all flag-bedecked, there are even a number of hammer and sickle flags from a previous era that have been pressed into duty.

The youths assembled into their groups and shapes (lots of red Viietnamese flags being carried here too) and the tone from the stage got even shriller and more excited. Just as I expected them to launch into the Red Flag (or at least the Vietnamese National Anthem) the sulky tones of Kylie Minogue blared out and the dancing was under way, next on were One Direction ....

Just goes to show, don't presume to know anything about a country until you experience it. The traveller's motto.

Riding the Reunification Express

Wednesday swimming: 0.43km

Wednesday walking: 2.4km

Cocktails: 2

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Sweeping cobwebs from the edges of my mind
Had to get away to see what we could find
Hope the days that lie ahead
Bring us back to where they've led
Listen not to what's been said to you

Crosby, Stills and Nash sang about taking the Marrakech Express in 1969. It was a story about a trip Graham Nash had taken three years previously, a carefree trip where:

Ducks and pigs and chickens call
Animal carpet wall to wall

Apart from not scanning as well, Graham would have had problems writing about the Hanoi Express in 1969. Fortunately we only saw pigs, ducks, chickens and animal carpets from the windows of the train ....

In 1969 the Vietnamese railway was suffering a few challenges; the country had been split in two along the 19th parallel after the Geneva Accord in 1954 following the defeat of the French. It was also subjected to massive damage in the American War, some of it intentional and some a result of collateral damage from carpet bombing. After the war ended in the fall of Saigon in 1975 a remarkable repair campaign was mounted which saw over 1300 bridges and 27 tunnels being repaired or replaced in just 18 months to allow the line to reopen at the end of 1976. Fast trains running on the line are known as "Reunification Expresses" and so we caught Reunification Express number SE2 leaving HCMC at 19:30 and due in Hanoi, 1726km distant, two days later at 3.30am. Our stop was just over halfway at Da Nang after a night spent in a four compartment "soft sleeper", our fellow travellers were two Vietnamese men, on of whom spoke no English and the other was a tour guide with Intrepid Travel taking a British tour group from HCMC to Hanoi via Hoi An and Hué (coincidentally our itinery as well). The accommodation sharing a four berth compartment is pretty good too:

Moving from Hoi An to Hué we again took the train buying the tickets at Da Nang station - a rather chaotic process much enlivened by the man in the ticket office riding around on an upholstered chair on wheels and fanning himself to confirm by sign language that I wanted soft seating with air conditioning. This section of line is very scenic as it runs along the coast of Da Nang Bay and over the Hai Van Pass, passengers get plenty of time to admire the view as the train is limited by gradient and tight bends to 30kph for most of the way, as slow as 15kph on some sections.

Reunification Express SE4 pulling into Hué station to take us on to Hanoi.

Our third and final section took us on another overnight run from Hué to Hanoi (Há Noì in Vietnamese) - this coaches on this section were nearly new and we pulled into Hanoi 5 minutes ahead of schedule at 5.25am.

We travelled by train last year in Japan and, although Vietnamese trains in no way compare with JR. transport, train travel in any country is a much nicer way to see the countryside than road or air travel. The very rural nature of much of Vietnam is really evident from the train as was the scenery through the old De-Militarised Zone (DMZ) which was bombed and defoliated in equal measure during the American war (defoliants contain the very toxic chemical Dioxin which poisons the earth for years). It was just getting dark as we crossed the Ben Hai river on the 19th parallel, the former border between North and South Vietnam.

All to ourselves

Tuesday walking: 2.5km

Tuesday swimming: 0.3km

Cocktails: 1 

Wednesday walking: 2.8km

Tuesday swimming: 0.28km

Cocktails: 2

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We're Rough Guide sort of people rather than Fodor's or Lonely Planet. And today the Rough Guide more than repaid its purchase price.

From about the 7th century the central part of Vietnam was ruled by a sect of Hinduism known as Cham or Champa. They built impressive temple complexes from stone, brick and lime (yes, from La Basse Cour to Vietnam and I'm still talking about lime). The French when they colonised Vietnam discovered and excavated a complex at My Son, near to Hoi An where we are at present, finding a variety of buildings dating back to the 7th century.

My Son is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site and a popular visit for tourists staying in Hoi An. Here's where the Rough Guide comes in, it told us that the site opens at 7am, most tourists travel by coach and get picked up from their hotels at 8am and it takes an hour so ..... get to My Son early and you'll be the only people there. So we got a ride out just after dawn and were almost the only people on site for an hour.

There were one or two other pairs of eyes there however:

The setting is evocative in a bowl in the jungle. If you thought some of the buildings were leaning in my photographs you were correct. Tragically, having survived largely intact for 13 centuries the area was used as a base by the Viet Cong in the conflict that is known in this country as the American War. It was subjected to carpet bombing and use of defoliants and several of the temples and buildings were effectively destroyed, many others show large cracks and now lean from the damage they took.

There's a rather poignant modern exhibit among the ancient relics in one of the buildings, placed in front of a huge structural crack in the wall:

Chapeau Rough Guide!

Travelling through time

Bit of a catch up to start with due to some connection issues and a continuing battle with the frankly useless Blogger mobile app. on the iPad.

Walking Saturday: 3.2km (in Ho Chi Minh Ville)

Swimming Saturday: 0.04km (4 lengths of the rooftop pool)

Walking Sunday: 2.5km (Mekong delta and Ho Chi Minh Ville)

Swimming Sunday: 0.1km

Cycling Sunday: 4.2km (in the rice fields of the Mekong Delta)

Walking Monday: 271km (think the GPS threw a wobbly at HCMV buildings and streets). More like 7.9km from the map.

Swimming Sunday 0.4km

Walking Tuesday:  3.3km

Swimming Tuesday: 0.12km

Most number of people seen on a scooter: 5 (3 of them under 5 years old)

Largest items seen on a scooter: a full-size chest freezer

Oddest item seen on a scooter: two cages of chickens

Number of near-death experiences with scooters while crossing the road: 1273

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~.  

We arrived into Saigon/Ho Chi Minh Ville/HCMC - officially it is Ho Chi Minh City but the locals all still call it Saigon - on the flight from Singapore and the experience from leaving rural France was a bit like jumping out of a cold bath into a sauna. I've never seen so many motor scooters In my life, crossing the road here is largely an act of faith. We are indebted to the scooter rider who stopped as we were trying to work out how to cross our first major road wih no lights, said "here, follow me" and proceeded to step into the flowing masses with us in tow. It all seems to work as long as you don't slow, flinch or stop, the mass flow seems to part around you, scary but it does work.

I'll use HCMC for ease.

HCMC is changing very rapidly, the run-down romantic French inspired city is disappearing and being replaced by a steel and glass Asian super-city:

It reminds me a little of Hong Kong, the signs of British empire are still there (red post boxes, street names, company names, colonial buildings and shop brands) but you have to look for them. I'd hoped to find some french feeling still evident from the city that France tried to turn into the "Paris of the Orient" but, apart from the Cathédrale Notre Dame now hidden and hemmed in by skyscrapers, the Hôtel de Ville now the headquarters of the Workers Committee of HCMC and a few road names that survived the conquest by North Vietnam it's gone. I asked if anyone still spoke French but it seems it's  only the older generation now.

The rooftop pool was nice though:

The food's been great, see my reviews on Trip Advisor for a memorable vegetarian meal at Hum and a great set meal at Cyclo Resto.

Can you make a swan with a tomato, a spring onion and a chillie?

Next post: we take the Reunification Express north to Hoi An on a sleeper service.

The Euro slides .... Again

The euro-pound exchange rate has been sliding for nearly a year now. It was trading at 1.142 to the pound yesterday, an eight year low.

We bought La Basse Cour in 2009 at about 1.10 to the pound, that's about 25% less than today. Not such a good financial investment :o(

I'm sure it will recover ... 

Ready for the Grexit

Walking today:    3.8km

There is a (in my opinion) lazy trend at present to run together two words to make another shorter one.

Hence "Grexit" - as in "Greek Exit" (from the Euro). And, more worrying for us, "Brexit" - as in British Exit from the EU.

Should there be a Grexit we at La Basse Cour stand ready to fill the inevitable gap in the supply of citrus fruit. I've blogged before about our lemon crop:

And today we harvested our mandarins:

Southern Morbihan - the next big citrus growing area?

Wall workings

Walking today:   3.8km
Swimming today: 1.50km - yes if you are doing the maths, that is 60 lengths

We've spent the last week or so repairing and rebuilding one of the walls of our outbuilding which we call The Grange. The basic construction is the same as that utilised in the barn, faced stones on the outside faces with the whole construction being held together by clay.

We repointed the outside North wall of The Grange last October and operations were then halted due to the weather - lime is a picky material refusing to mix or set in very cold weather and taking its own time to harden depending on air temperature and humidity. But I find it a very pleasing material to use, somehow it's warmer and more forgiving than cement and, once you get to grip with its setting process, produces much nicer results than concrete. And it is, in the long term, nearly carbon neutral as it sets by slowly absorbing CO2 from the atmosphere at a rate of about 4mm per year- remember that number.

The first stage in the work is to rake out all the clay from the stone joints, clear and brush out all the dust and dampen down the wall with a spray. Controlling and maintaining the moisture levels in the wall is a critical part of the process and requires near continual spraying and re-spraying the wall.

The lime mortar is a carefully measured mix of lime, water, sand from our local quarry at Lauzach and river sand ("Sable de Loire"), more quarry sand produces a whiter, finer mortar, more river sand a warmer honey-coloured finish with larger aggregates in the mortar mix. Maçons here have a kind of colour chart using tints and dyes from reddy-browns through yellows, cream and white, our finish is light yellow using 2 parts quarry sand, 2 parts river sand and one part lime. 

The roof is metal corrugated steel sheet and my guess is that at some stage the previous roof failed (originally it would have been thatch but maybe with a subsequent asbestos one before the current steel) and water got down into the walls. This washed out a lot of the clay that the wall had been built with and left big gaps that animals then moved into. So I've spent a lot of my time filling and rebuilding the stones in big holes at the bottom of the wall, I could get my arm in up to the elbow on a couple of them!

Here's the before picture:

And the intermediate stage with the wall rebuilt back to its original level:

We've re-exposed and made a feature of the niches in the walls:

Lime has a two stage process to finish the pointing, is harder to use than cement but produces much nicer results. The first step of the pointing process is to push lime mortar into the joints until it is proud of the surrounding stones:

At this stage it shows a lot of trowel markings and spill onto the surrounding stones:

And, here's the tricky part, at some indeterminate time after the lime is inserted the surface has dried enough to brush with a stiff churn brush or soft wire brush. The time is critical and very variable depending on air temperature, original moisture content of the wall, humidity of the air and wind. It ranges from 4 hours outside on a warm day to over 4 days at the bottom of our wall in 7 degree temperatures. If the lime dries too quickly it goes bleach white and crumbles, if it's too cold below about 5C it refuses to set and crumbles so the mortaring season here runs from mid February to mid-May and September to mid-November.

No wonder that in the early 20th century lime was almost completely replaced by concrete in the construction and, unfortunately, renovation of buildings. There are plenty of cold looking damp stone buildings around here that have been repointed in cement for speed and ease but look terrible (to my eyes at least).

Lime can adapt to micro-movements in the building without cracking, is porous and allows the wall to ventilate rising moisture effectively and just looks so much nicer and more interesting, here is the finished area of wall from the previous picture:

The stones shine, the subtle colour variations in the stone are highlighted and the smooth brushed off mortar accentuates the outline of the stone. The aggregates from the sand mix contribute to the definition of the mortar bands.

Now, here's the magic part. The initial drying process to allow the lime to be brushed off isn't the setting process, that is a much longer process that relies on fixing CO2 from the atmosphere and proceeds at about 4mm per year plus or minus a bit. So, some of the really deep holes I filled will be nicely cured by about 2070!

First Potatoes planted

Walking today: 3.8km

We planted out our First Early Casablanca potato sets today, that's fully three weeks earlier than in previous years. So, it's a risk but they did very well last year, the frosts seem to have gone for the next couple of weeks at least and they can mature in as little as 62 days so fingers crossed!

Indigo Violet

Not all the flowers in our garden have been planted by us or deliberately.

The first Spring we found a patch of wild violets on a bank, although we haven't done anything very much to encourage them to spread we have mown the bank with the blades set a bit higher to give them some room to grow.

And this Spring they are spectacular:

Two days running ....

This blog isn't just about pictures of sunsets.

But this evening we were treated to another spectacular as thin layers of cloud were illuminated brilliant red across two-thirds of the sky.

And as the last of the light disappeared the evening star, Venus, illuminated the western sky:

Spectacular Sunset

Walking today:      3.9km

Swimming today: 1.40km

Tonnes of gravel shovelled: 1.68 Tonnes

It's been clear and sunny for the last couple of days and tonight as we drove home from swimming the sun was sinking low into the western sky in a bright orb of gold.

A year ago in Matsue in Japan we stood by the lake and watched sunset at officially one of the top ten sunset sites in Japan - Japan is a very ordered country!

Wasn't as good as from our terrace at La Basse Cour tonight though - officially one of the ten best places in Noyal-Muzillac to watch the sunset.

Moon View

Walking today: 3.9km

We got some clear weather at last this week and I succeeded in getting the telescope running with the camera attached. I had to resort to Youtube to find out which of the three eyepieces to attach to the telescope in which sequence to get the thing to focus properly. There are lots of other challenges that I had to deal with - the biggest one being that the camera isn't designed to be used easily when hanging upside down on the side of a telescope ...

So, there are a few technical issues with this picture but I was reasonably happy with the first effort that I took of the moon:

My knowledge of the Moon's features is approximately 0 so I need to learn to find my way around. The large crater with the white rays in the centre left of the picture is crater Keplar apparently.

The Chausée is déformée - again

Walking today: 3.8km

Swimming today: 1.10km

(Chausée déformée = uneven road)

One of the common signs that announces the arrival of summer here are the temporary road signs saying "Chausée Déformée" as the combined effects of a hot summer, heavy lorries and poor road maintenance lead to another road surface buckling under the strain.

When we arrived in 2010 the road from Noyal Muzillac to Questembert had permanent signs and was a real switchback ride. So the news that it was going to be closed for four weeks last September for major works was well received. The road closure was accompanied by lots of machinery and chaos, all promising signs that the road would be finished to a standard suitable for the Tour de France (well we live in hope ....). Gradually however the slow pace of work, the absence of any signs that the roadbed was being replaced and the fact that 80% of the work seemed to be digging metre deep ditches on either side of the road led to a scaling-back of our expectations - perhaps not the 2015 edition of Le Tour then. Still, at least the chasm of a pothole at the end of our road would be fixed.

Two days before the road was due to re-open frantic activity was observed as the surface was sprayed with tar and several hundred tonnes of chippings spread on the surface. The result for a couple of weeks was a feeling similar to driving on a beach. Eventually things settled down until, in December, tell-tale skid marks showed where the first vehicle had ended up in the car-eating deep ditches.

And then, last week, after the wet and frosty weather, the first Chausée Déformée signs reappeared as the tar coating failed, as was always likely, to hold together the crumbling road edges. That's four months and 25 days after the work was finished. Almost comical except I remember the signs erected during the work saying how much the department had paid (from its allocation from central government) and how much the state had paid towards the work - all out of our taxes of course. 

And the massive pothole has reappeared and been patched twice so far ......

There's a saying in French: plus ça change, plus c'est la meme chose. 

Indeed.

I want to see sunshine after the rain

Walking today:     3.8km

Swimming today: 0km (pool closed due to "une problème technique grave"

We saw our first butterfly (a Peacock) in the garden on 17th February, it was enjoying some early sun. I hope it's found somewhere warm to shelter because the weather has been dire since then.

Last week we had some sunny and showery weather though and Barbara captured a couple of nice shots in the garden of the dramatic the skies:

And, in case you're desperately trying to remember who sang that song lyric .... it was Elkie Brooks.