We did it! On 17 August 2012, Rosie & I left the UK. For six months we travelled from Japan, all the way through South East Asia to Australia. After that came 6 months in the USA, a year back in the UK and a permanent move to Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam - our new home.
Enter your E-mail address below to be notified when new posts are published.
After a few thoroughly festive days doing nothing but drinking beers and champagne from the hotel room bin (filled with ice), while having long hot baths, watching movies and TV box sets and generally doing nothing, we extended our stay in Dalat by another two nights and donned our hiking kit once again to hit the hills of the surrounding countryside...
We like Dalat already. After a long Christmas Eve car journey, we climbed up the mountains to be met with temperatures not felt for a long long time.
Coats, jumpers and jeans were the order of the day and by the time we were heading home after an evening of exploration last night, Rosie was wearing a wooly hat! It was quite surreal, but has certainly helped us get in the festive mood.
We have earl grey tea, a hard drive full of movies and a few presents to exchange. Now it's time for a festive buffet breakfast in the five-star hotel across the road and a festive home-made joke...
What do you call a Christmas crooner who didn't get the electric shaver he asked Santa for?
A rooftop BBQ restaurant I'd highly recommend - here
Street Snacker - Bun Cha Ca Danang. A delicious fish-cake noodle dish - here
Despite being an officially atheist country, Vietnam does Christmas. The big department stores have giant illuminated displays of Santas and reindeer and sleighs and snowy Christmas trees, our local co-op store is playing dodgy covers of Christmas hits and the staff are all wearing santa hats, and the foyer of our apartment building is thoroughly decked out...
Yes, that's a roaring log fire
The "ice-bar"
Our friendly local Communist party's website has a few images of the brilliant illuminations, which include a mile-long boulevard of twinkling flags to mark the 40th anniversary of "reunification" which falls in April 2015 (the Americans know it by another name..."the fall of Saigon"). I'm hoping to get Rosie on the back of the bike, camera in hand, to film this amazing sight for you.
Our friends Geoff and Jane have recently blogged pictures of the various Christmas scenes from Ho Chi Minh City here.
The weather in Saigon is warm and dry, currently 30 degrees (midday). The arrival of the dry season brought with it significantly lower humidity levels so it's much more comfortable outside - it feels rather like those record-breaking hottest days in the UK at the moment.
Rosie's 3 week Christmas break began in style yesterday (lunchtime cocktails in the Mekong Merchant anyone?) and today we're resting and relaxing preparing to haul on our rucksacks once again and get travelling for the next week or so.
As a pre-Christmas treat, we bagged a table a HCMC's number one restaurant, Pizza 4Ps, for tonight - I'm expecting good things - and tomorrow morning (Sunday) we'll be bussing it to Nam Cat Tien for a spot of cycling, hiking and bird/gibbon spotting in the jungles of one of Vietnam's most splendid national parks. After three nights, on Christmas eve, we'll head up to the mountains of Dalat.
1,500 metres above sea level, they say it's the Switzerland of Vietnam, enjoying year-round Spring-like temperatures (roughly 10 degrees cooler than Saigon), sweeping mountain scenery and plenty of homely goodies like cauliflower, strawberries and early morning mist. We've also been promised surroundings that are "even more Christmassy than Saigon".
At 4:30 this morning, we rose to the rooster in a bizarre boutique hotel room in Siem Reap, Cambodia, surrounded by Barbie dolls in display cases on the walls and random bits of neon plastic glued, literally everywhere, all over the room.
Siem Reap is just a few kilometres from the ancient city of Angkor, the ancient seat of the god kings built over one thousand years ago.
It was over beers in a Brooklyn bar that a friend of a friend told us of Angkor's annual half-marathon event, held in aid of land mine victims. "We have to do that!" we said. Owing to my relatively flexible caldendar these days, I was able to find the huge amount of time required to train for such an event - having only started running in February of this year - and Rosie entered the 10k run...highly respectable given the busy first term she's just had in a new school in a new country.
So with the sun not yet up, we were donning our running kit and heading out across town in a tuk-tuk to get to the start line opposite the mighty Angkor Wat temple. A new sensation was felt...I believe many across the world call it "cold". At maybe 15 degrees, Rosie's arms prickled with what many across the world call "the goose's pimples".
Long story short, it was amazing. I made a good start and quickly found myself at the 5k mark...the scenery is stunning and with people from all over the world competing, there was a great atmosphere. As we headed up the park's east boundary, families and children from the nearby villages had come out to cheer us on, standing in long rows along the road, holding out their hands to high five as we filed past. I have a GPS watch and noticed how much faster I got when passing them...it really helped!
The 10.5k half way mark was a long time coming but as I pushed on, time seemed to speed up and before I knew it we were at 16k with only 5 more to go. Drummers and dancers met us along the way, pounding to the beat of the thousands of feet running past, and as the incredible temples appeared and disappeared behind us, I was soon staring down my last 3k. It was around 8am, and the tourists had started to appear in the park, roaring and cheering us on...and my pace rocketed, leaping from an initial 6:28 per kilometre to 5:30. Sprinting the last 500m was amazing, speeding along the narrow tunnel formed by the crowds. The dance music from the PA system was pumping, I could see the finish line through the trees and I shot past everyone and anyone ahead of me to finish in 2h 11m with an average pace of 6:11...not bad considering the temperature was hitting 30+ degrees by the end.
From a frosty morning in February, when I was only just able to jog 1km around my parents' village, to an international half marathon, I'm really rather proud of myself...and exhausted! Could I have turned around and done it all again, do I have a marathon in me? Not today, no thanks....but never say never...
Rosie hit a new PB for her 10k, leaving the "fun runners" chewing her dust and finishing in an amazing 1 hour 8 minutes. Quite a change from her Santa Run on a bitter London morning exactly one year ago to the day. After leaving her waiting for me for over an hour, we were reunited on the banks of the Angkor Wat moat for a big sweaty hug with the towers of the largest religious building in the world looming over the jungle beyond the water.
After massages and a huge lunch, we're now just chilling in the cafés (me) and manicure bars (Rosie) of Siem Reap before making the 45 minute flight back to Saigon this evening.
"It's happening!" went my e-mail to Rosie. "It's finally happening!"
A couple of weeks earlier I'd sent a rather random e-mail to the editor of one of Vietnam's biggest English monthly magazines. "I'll sharpen pencils, make tea, organise your contacts," I offered, keen to find a reason to get out of the house and escape the boredom. "If you want me to proof-read, I can do that. Maybe throw down a few lines of copy here and there..."
I clicked send and forgot all about it - I probably went off to mop the floor for the second time that day or something.
"Can you come down to the office for a chat?" came the e-mail back a few days later (shocked face).
With nervous, sweaty hands clutching at a brand new notebook, I rode a cab into the centre of town and found myself sat next to Nick Ross - chief editor for Word Vietnam - as he offered me the chance to write a sample article for them. "We'll start you off as freelance," he said. "So what would you like to write about?" Just like that. Word Magazine is the Vietnamese equivalent of Time Out and is distributed primarily in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City...it's a big deal.
Now, I'd arrived with my office-administrator head on. I'd also sent him one of my short stories on the off-chance that he'd see some potential in me, but the idea of actually writing for them was not on my radar. I hastily came up with a subject and in under a week bashed out 900 words on the "soundtrack to Saigon".
FIRST ATTEMPT
But it didn't work. After just over a month in the city, I was very, very green, and it showed in my writing. I'd overlooked glaring issues that were obvious to long-term residents and made assumptions that were highly contestable. I didn't really know what I was talking about. But they saw something...
"Can you do a food review for me?" came Nick's e-mail the following week. "It's a small ice-cream and pancake place in District 3. Not a big job, just 500 words. I have the photos already. They know you're coming."
"It's happening!" I wrote to Rosie that afternoon. "It's finally happening!... and we're going out for ice-cream tonight."
That night and we're eating hand-made ice-cream and crêpes with a couple of friends. I get to work the next morning.
My 500 word review is submitted and I don't hear anything for some time. Oh well, I think. I tried my best. Just not this time eh?
TRY AGAIN
Then came the ping of an e-mail in my inbox. I'm invited to the magazine's next monthly editorial meeting. Interesting, I think. Maybe they're giving me another shot. So kind of them.
I enjoy a second sweaty-palmed cab ride still not really knowing whether I have a position here or not. I find the restaurant where the meetings take place and take a seat at the crowded table. So there I am, surrounded by professional editors, photographers, writers and journalists. A stack of copies of the latest issue arrives from the printers and I casually flick through, pretty much expecting not to find my review, but you never know.
But boom, there it is. Top Eats. Below an arrangement of eye-catching photographs sit 500 of my words. My words, my review, my name at the end. My name. In print. I try to play it cool but inside I'm high-fiving the world. 15,000 copies distributed in bars, restaurants, hotels, cafes, gyms, schools, offices and apartment buildings in Vietnam's two biggest cities, Saigon & Hanoi. That's double the number of visits this blog has ever had since it began in January 2012.
But for now I sit there, mostly in silence, not sure what I, a former office-administrator, gearbox builder and wannabe short-story writer can really bring to the table. Nevertheless, ideas are bounced around me, opinions on the latest issue are given and suggestions for the next are raised. It's informal, it's creative, it's casual clothes - no shirts or ties here - someone's even drinking a beer, and somehow, it's me, and I like it.
(Full-size readable version below)
"Okay," says Nick. "Street Snacker..." This is the magazine's regular section focussing on a new street-food dish each month. He looks to me. "Simon, do you want to take it?"
I nod.
"How about bo la lot?"
I've never heard of it. "Okay," I say. "...but, what is that?"
"It's good, you'll see."
I get an address and soon after I'm introducing myself to the owner of this tiny street-food joint as a writer for Word magazine. It feels...odd! "We'd like to feature your restaurant in the magazine," I explain. She's delighted. We eat 'bo la lot' (beef in leaves), I interview her about her life, her restaurant and her food and I spend the next couple of days writing (yeah, I took my time!). It feels great to be writing for a purpose again, after so many months filling notebooks with what are mostly futile attempts at story writing, for stories that no one will probably ever read anyway. I like it.
It's October now, and at the end of the month we take a half-term trip to our nearest 'desert island', Phu Quoc. In the waterfront bar of our hotel sit a few copies of the magazine.
"I'm in there," I say to Rosie.
"You are! You are indeed."
I flick one of them open to my page, just to make sure it's still there. It is.
I COULD DO THIS...
The next week my Street Snacker article is published in the November edition and I'm once again sat at the editorial meeting to plan the next issue.
"December's Street Snacker..." says Nick. "Simon?"
"Absolutely," I reply, and my confidence leaps. They like me...I guess?
"Cool. Next up - Top Eats. There's a great BBQ place in District 1 that's just had a makeover. You want to check that out too?"
"I can indeed." And I'm thinking to myself, wow! That's two pages. Two articles, two pages!
When the discussion is opened up to other ideas for the December edition I raise my hand. "There's a cool 'room-escape' game that opened this summer in District 3," I offer.
People look confused. "What's 'room-escape'?" someone asks.
"Where you get locked in a room and have to solve puzzles to escape...?"
Silence.
"It's very big in Europe and the States - like the online puzzle games you get..."
"Okay, sounds interesting," says Nick. "Write it up. 600 words."
And that's three pages! It's going to be a busy month. And then....
He runs through his list of notes. "You mentioned chocolate wine before..." he continues, looking up at me.
Our neighbour had recently tried cocoa juice wine at her boyfriend's house and raved about how good it was. He worked for a chocolate factory in HCMC and the farmers who supply their cocoa had sold him a bottle of their home-made wine. Again, no one at the table had heard of it.
"Chocolate...Wine?" came the ubiquitous response. "I have to try that!" said someone else.
"Okay," said Nick. "Chocolate wine - Simon Stanley."
And we're up to four pages!
THE BIG ONE
Over the coming days I exchange emails with Nick and we agree on an angle for the story. Focussing on Marou chocolate - a luxury producer based in Saigon whose products can be found in Fortnum and Mason among other luxury stores across 25 countries - we decide to craft the story around the company's farmers with the chocolate wine as the hook.
"So much has been written about the story of the company - let's do something different," I suggest.
Dotted throughout the countryside, these tiny farms are producing some of the best chocolate in the world, in a country that neither produces nor consumes much chocolate at all. I'd heard about Marou's "better than fair-trade" business ethic and was keen to show another side to the firm away from a simple "this is Marou, they make good chocolate".
I line up an interview with the French owners at their factory (and make a scramble all over town on the morning of the meeting to find the one shop that sells dictaphones) and make the long taxi ride up there. Tucked away in a dusty backstreet on the edge of town, I navigate the final hundred metres or so by smell alone, the distinctive aroma of chocolate riding the warm air.
I'm shown the production facilities, the sacks of beans arrived straight from the farm, the packaging room...the whole process. Yet I feel like an impostor, wielding my stupid Sony dictaphone like an idiot, asking stupid questions with lots of "umms" and "errs", in my yokel accent (a tragic consequence of using a dictaphone is actually hearing your own voice - and hating it). What must they think of a magazine who sends such a numpty to do their journalism? "We're a serious company!" I hear them saying to themselves. "Sacrebleu!"
I suck it up and try to sound as professional as possible. I ask if we could join their agronomist on one of his tours of the countryside when he goes out to visit their farmers and hunt, literally, for new ones. "Of course," says Samuel, one of the co-owners. He gives me the guy's email address and we arrange to spend 24 hours with him on a trip to Nam Cat Tien National Park in Lam Dong and Dong Nai provinces.
But there's one problem. The guy rides up there on his scooter with his translator on the back. I need to shadow him on this journey and the only way is to follow him from Saigon. But I don't have a bike. Or a photographer. "You must take a photographer," Nick had said. "We need the photos."
URBAN AND OTHERWISE - VIETNAM'S JUNGLES
Less than 48 hours before departure, I acquire a 125cc automatic scooter from the manager of our apartment building and head off into the backstreets of District 1 to get my bike legs. The roads in Vietnam are re-diddly-ickulous. Packed with millions of bikes, the rules are...flexible. People whizz up on the wrong side of the street, turn suddenly without indicating (or even looking), pull out of side-streets without so much as a glance, and ride so close together you can frequently feel exhaust heat from other bikes gently baking your left calf. If ever there was a lesson in anticipatory, defensive driving, Saigon is it.
Here's a video to give you a rough idea of what it's like aboard a bike here...
Check out the beer delivery at 2:55!
At 5:20 this guy drives past the end of our street, 100m or so from our apartment.
You won't believe me, but it's safer than it looks. Slow and steady, the traffic just 'blends', flowing like water through the streets, always moving, never clogging. And despite the horns and what we in the UK would class as bad driving, no one is angry and no one gets road rage. The horn just means "I'm here," and we all go about our business. Nippy, agile and able to stop on a dime, the scooter is the only way to really get about this city.
So I manage a few hours riding practice over two days but the afternoon before I'm due to leave, we still have no photographer. After a frantic exchange of emails with the magazine, one of the members of the their staff (a writer, photographer, editor and fashion expert), Francis Xavier, agrees to make the ride up with me. I feel pretty guilty - it's a long way, and she probably has better things to do. No. she definitely has better things to do, better than riding up there with this idiot. But I suck it up and think of the story.
Next problem, her bike is an old 50cc Honda Cub and "probably won't make it".
It's a four hour drive, at least, and I don't doubt her for a minute.
More e-mails. I'm inexperienced as a rider and don't need the pressure of taking her on the back of my bike - that and it's not so comfortable sitting on the back of a bike for 150km. But she has a friend with a 125 to lend her. Just hours before we need to leave, we are ready.
THE ADVENTURE BEGINS
After almost 4 hours in the saddle, caked in road dirt, brake dust, tyre rubber and sweat, we arrive in the Nam Cat Tien National Park buffer zone - the sparsely populated ring of rainforest, fruit farms, coffee plantations and tiny villages surrounding the park. The landscape is stunning. Rolling mountains surround us, their faces coated in lush tropical forests. Waterfalls tumble out of the scenery and kingfishers, herons and eagles dart overhead as we cruise the dusty country roads in convoy. And here we find the cocoa farmers. And here the story begins.
So today, with this being my 150th blog post, my first feature magazine article has been printed and distributed across Vietnam - another 15,000 copies - with the story later to appear on the magazine's website. It covers six pages, plus the other three articles I wrote earlier in the month. Pretty chuffed am I.
If you want to read the whole magazine, full PDF versions of each edition are available at the bottom of the magazine's homepage at wordvietnam.com (iPad users can export the PDF to your Kindle app) or click the following links to see just my articles (opens a new tab):
With a few more articles lined up for January, a 2,000 word Open University assignment on the Russian Empire due next week, a half marathon this coming weekend and a week or so exploring Nam Cat Tien national park and the mountainous city of Dalat over Christmas, it's going to be another busy month...
The narrow alleyways race past. Colours, sounds and smells rush by. Cries of kerbside food-vendors cut through the chorus of rattling scooter horns. Clouds of smoke and steam swirl through our wheels and spiral off in the dust as we pass. My driver drops down a gear and cranks out a short burst of throttle, expertly threading us through the chaotic night-time traffic of this busy Saigon backstreet. With the bikes around us dancing in and out, avoiding each other with millimetres to spare, we swerve around bicycles, food carts, fruit sellers and parked taxis, my knees brushing past each obstacle, but the driver knows what he's doing. Suddenly, the path ahead narrows to what seems like a dead-end and the world slows as a looming brick wall approaches. Then, like flocking birds, we all turn and bank in unison, bursting out beneath an arch of paper lanterns onto a wide tree-lined avenue. I look back to see the rest of the group pop one by one from the shadows, their fifty year old two-stroke engines ringing clearly above the chaos. We all meet at the next set of traffic lights as a wall of traffic rolls across our path, everyone eyeing the green signal which will send us once again into the bedlam. I spy Rosie through the haze of petrol fumes and we share a knowing smile. We own this night, this perfect night, in this perfect city of noise and dirt and crumbling walls, with history so thick it clogs the air and food so good it could take a lifetime to fully appreciate.
There's no better way to see Ho Chi Minh City than on the back of a scooter, and when that scooter is a restored 1960s Vespa, it's like being part of your own slice of pre-1975 Saigon. Whisked from one food joint to the next, with a few boozy and musical interludes, we really got to see a side of the city we'd so far been missing out on, and with our expert local guide meeting us at each waypoint, we picked up some valuable tips and tricks for our life here in Vietnam. I even decided that life aboard a scooter isn't as crazy as it looks and have since been eyeing up a two-wheeled stallion of my own.
Vietnam Vespa Adventures operates out of Ho Chi Minh City, Hoi An and Siem Reap (Cambodia). We took the "Saigon After Dark" tour. www.vietnamvespaadventures.com
Q
.jpg)
.jpg)
