December 29, 2010 By Leave a Comment
December 29, 2010 By Leave a Comment
December 29, 2010 By Leave a Comment
MO PHOTOBOMBS
December 28, 2010 By Leave a Comment
These were all taken while I was on tour with the Stereosonic Festival.
HALONG BAY
December 27, 2010 By Leave a Comment
We ended our Vietnam trip with 3 days aboard a boat, cruising through Halong Bay, surrounded by nothing but small islands.
It was very relaxing. Besides the day trip we took to the Mekong Delta, we had planned each day in Vietnam ourselves, so it was a change of pace to be on board a cruise where all of our activities had been organised by someone else. It was cool to be taken out of our food-focused comfort zone for a few days, especially after the gorge fest that was Hanoi.
On our first morning our boat was met by four women in small rowboats who picked us up and took us for a ride.
I tried to row but I sucked at it.
We were taken to a local fishing village where kids as young as 5 were tearing through the water in rowboats.
These kids were so badass that the school had been flipped over and was out of use! They said it was because of storms but I reckon the girl in the pink sweater did it just to see if she could. So badass.
One afternoon the staff aboard the boat prepared a bbq for us on the beach. It was the best food we ate on the cruise – fresh seafood and meat cooked over charcoal.
I bought these sunnies at the market in Hoi An. They’re meant to be Ray Ban knock-offs but the logo says ROY & BON. Money well spent!
Clearly not content after the amazing lunch they’d cooked us, I got the staff to help me find clams in the sand. Then we cooked them over the charcoal and they were delicious!
We went kayaking each day. I dove off the front of the boat into the water a few times too. It was quite the OUTDOOR ADVENTURE™. And what OUTDOOR ADVENTURE™ is complete without a guided tour through some sweet caves?
Cool stalactites, brah.
When we escaped the sweet caves, we were attacked on the beach by a gang of adorable puppies!
Aren’t puppies just the best way to end a cruise?
We headed back to Hanoi for one last night and went straight to Fanny for the best ice cream sundaes ever:
The next morning we boarded our planes for home. Boo hoo.
In conclusion: Vietnam is a fucking radical place to visit and is especially great to eat at. Somehow, after eating 5 meals a day for 2 weeks, I lost 3 kilos, so that makes Vietnam even more magical!
99% of the photos I used in these blog posts were taken by my girlfriend Bianca. She runs an awesome blog called Sandwichface and is the greatest person to travel with ever. Here’s me and her wearing sunglasses on a rowboat:
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HIP HOP XMAS DOG
December 22, 2010 By Leave a Comment
Ladies and Gentlemen, meet my bro Hip Hop Xmas Dog.
I bought this at a Coles supermarket a few years ago and after 3 Christmases, we still haven’t had to replace the batteries!
VIETNAM BOMB
November 4, 2010 By Leave a Comment
I had to do one while I was there… apologies to the chinese tourists in Hoi An. Photo taken by Bianca Khalil.
NHA TRANG
October 29, 2010 By Leave a Comment
B and I headed north up Vietnam and stayed 3 nights in Nha Trang. Nha Trang is a beach town on the verge of blowing up as a major tourist spot. Looking to the left and right of our hotel you could see another 3 resorts being built on each side. Along the main road was nothing but beach.
If you head south in town you’ll get some wack Gold Coast vibes, all the restaurants and bars are super trashy backpacker joints and there are more tourists than locals. Tourists that enjoy drinking at a spot called Booze Cruise, a bar with a boat on top of it serving NON STOP MIDORI ILLUSION SHAKERS (we didn’t go in but this shithole probably served that).
Up to the north of town was a different story, lots of cool lunch spots serving local fare and a massive market serving BAGS FULL O’ CHICKEN:
The beach was mad windy and the surt too rough so we spent most of our time swanning about in the awesome infinity pool at the resort.
And drinking ICE CREAM FLOATS!
Who would’ve thought vodka and ice cream would go together so well? Scientists, that’s who.
The weather was meant to be real wack for the whole time we were there but was just a little overcast and overall pretty warm. We had dinner on the beach one evening and that was one of the best meals of the whole trip. In Sydney if you’re hungry at the beach but don’t wanna walk to get food, the best you’re gonna get is a Calippo or something. In Nha Trang ladies bring you lobsters!
This awesome lady grilled us up a sea feast that was the freshest we’d ever had.
Grilled scallops in tamarind sauce.
Lobsters, prawns and some big ass snails.
Crabs!
It was a good feast!
While the street food culture in Nha Trang was nothing compared to Ho Chi Minh (and later in our trip we would learn that it was even less compared to Hanoi!), we still found some mad shit. Or should I say, MAD FRITS?! (no I should not).
That little bag of awesome contains a banana fritter and some sweet potato chips. The vendor took one of those little Vietnamese bananas (which taste way nicer than oz bananas, they’re super fruity tasting), smooshed it, dipped it in batter and sesame seeds and deep fried it. Soooooo gooooood.
The sweet potato chips were rad too, sweet potatoes in Vietnam are sweeter and yellower, and deep fried is definitely the best way to eat them.
We had another sea feast in Nha Trang in some restaurant with a windmill out the front. The food was good but clearly not good enough for me to remember the name of the place.
Overall Nha Trang was cool, I was thankful we visited during the off season for tourists because it can totally see this place being the worst ever. When we were there though it was a warm, lazy little beach town. A good spot to relax but not essential to visit when you come to Vietnam!
THE MEKONG DELTA
October 25, 2010 By Leave a Comment
We booked a tour of the Mekong river through Buffalo tours. We were picked up at 8am and we began the 3 hour drive to the river, where we were greeted by the worst rain we’d seen so far on our trip.
The rain only lasted 10 minutes or so. We boarded a boat and started to cruise, passing the floating market.
You can tell what each boat is selling by looking at the object stuck to the top of the bamboo poles that stick up like a mast. If there’s a pineapple on the pole, they’re selling pineapples, and so on. Apparently the faces on the front of the boats are there to scare off crocodiles.
During our voyage we make a few stops, first is at a factory where they process rice to make candy, wine and tonnes of other shit made of rice. We ate a bunch of it, and then tucked into some rice wine with snake in it.
Back on the boat we continue down the river, making stops at a local brick kiln and an old French imperial mansion. The stops are nice enough and the scenery along the river is beautiful.
We were given a plate of local fruit:
The fresh dragonfruit, longans, rambutans and banana merely whet our appetites before we stop at Le Longanier, a restaurant, for lunch. The food is ok but the service is great. The highlight of our lunch is this massive deep fried ‘elephant ear fish’, a fish exclusive (imagine Fatman Scoop yelling that) to the Mekong:
The fish gets torn up, its chewy flesh wrapped in rice paper with herbs and eaten by our crew.
After lunch we board our minibus and return to Ho Chi Minh City. Before we are taken to our hotel, we stop at a factory where they make lacquer. Seriously. It was the most boring point of the tour, but the 3 New Zealanders in our group stick around and buy some of the lacquered goods so I guess they got something out of the stop.
Overall I’d say the tour is worth the money and time – I don’t know if there is a better way to see as much of the river as we did. Tin, our tour guide, was very funny and made the experience all the better.
I’m gonna end this post the same way it began, with piggies!
