Mosquitoes and bugs on Hon Tre

Leaving Hon Tre today. One thing about living so close to the jungle are the bugs. For some reason I seem to get bitten more than other people by mosquitoes. If I'm in a room of ten people and there is one mosquito, it will bite me. Now I'm pretty good at keeping mosquitoes out of my house at home but here, being next to the jungle, it's very difficult. I slept under a mosquito net and applied repellent but still got feasted upon.

As you can see the picture above is of the back of my arm. There are about 20 bites in total, both mosquitoes and god knows what else. This is just my arm, my feet and ankles are also covered in them. I'm guessing I've got around 60 bites in total. This has forced me to spend the last day out of the hammock and on my bed under the mosquito net as my skin itches so much. No one else in the house has been bitten. The mosquitoes must have thought it was Christmas when I visited.

Anyway, like I said, back home today.

Hon Tre Island for TET 2015

So, we left Rach Gia nice and early and got to Hon Tre Island which is where I've been for the past few days. As I've said before its a very simple place with not much to do.

Most of my time was spent laying in a hammock and reading. Most of the people here spend their whole lives here so are not used to seeing outsiders and no one speaks English. For work most of the people are fishermen and farmers. As it was TET holiday not many people were working and with very little entertainment most of the men were drunk all the time. 

Laying in a hammock was fun but as I'm quite active after a while you do want to do other stuff. Going for a walk difficult as I'd get lots of hassle. The men, who were mostly drunk would look at me like they wanted a fight and everyone else would just stare and ask odd questions.

The other thing to do was walk through the jungle, this isn't fun, its full of bugs and hot. Saying this it wasn't all bad, the air was fresh and the family I was with were welcoming. It was also nice to see how simply people live.

two friendly locals wanted their photo taken, they were drunk, it was 11am

House on the rocks

The family I stayed with had some nice land and great fruit rowing on it. The photo below is of the pepper that is growing. There was also jack-fruit, star fruit, mangos and dragon fruit.

TET is a time where there is lots of religious stuff going on. Below is some food layed out as an offering to buddha, he didn't eat it.

So, going back to Ho Chi Minh City in the next few days. Then back to work next week.

One night in Rach Gia - Deep fried cheese

So, because of the overly long journey we missed the last boat to Hon Tre Island which meant we would have to spend the night in Rach Gia. This wasn't a bad this as there are lots of hotels and I'd like to see the city.

The pictures above are a view from our hotel next to the harbor. Not bad really for 12 dollars! We hired a motorbike and explored the city. We stopped at a pagoda which had a statue of a man called Nguyen Trung Truc. The reason he has this statue it that over a hundred and fifty years ago he organised and led the locals to fight against the French who were colonizing Vietnam. He was only a fisherman and did some good things. Read more on the following link

Story of Nguyen Trung Truc

 

After this we went to a nice fish restaurant in the town. We order a section of dishes, one of them was the deep fried cheese. The picture is below.

As you can see when the cheese came they were six perfectly formed wedges. Do they look familiar? Upon further inspection these wedge turned out to be deep friend laughing cow triangles! They were very tasty though and it was a good meal. It was even cheaper than Ho Chi Minh City which is saying something.

It was a very pleasant stop in Rach Gia. Anyway, off to Hon Tre tomorrow.

Kids on bikes - TET edition

Me laying down on the bus and with all the traffic outside presented a great opportunity to take some photos and put together a special TET edition of 'kids on bikes'. I think this one surpasses the ones I've done before. Lots of photos so I'll let them do the talking.

This child can only be spotted because off the legs sticking out over the side of the bike, sleeping though the journey.

Family holiday - four on the bike. Two kids, two adults and lots of bags. Good to see some helmets being used.

 This child gets a good view of the road as he's sat on a brown suitcase.

This kid  is sitting back and chilling out for the log journey ahead.

Love the curious expression on this baby's face, he's just taking it all in like a seasoned pro.
 

 Another baby taking it all in, just a beanie hat for protection. Do they make helmets that small?

 Good idea, sleeping through the journey. No idea how he managed this in all the traffic

 Looking good! Helmets, glasses and face masks

 Standing up for a good view of the road

Standing up and looking backwards, different to the traditional forward looking position

 

Look at all the bags! Cool looking glasses on the boy though

No kids in this one but I just liked the lady on the back chilling out

Journey to Rach Gia - The big TET gettaway

The bus journey to Rach Gia was a bit special. We were booked on the 7:20am but have to be there half an hour before. This is normal in Vietnam, I've no idea why because I'm yet to take a journey that leaves on time. This meant I had to be up quite early - about 5:30. The journey should take about six hours to Rach Gia from Ho Chi Minh City on any normal day..... But the first day of the TET holidays is no normal day.

When we arrived at the bus station it was still dark and I can only describe the scenes as Chaos. If you've ever seen those pictures on TV of of Chine where everyone is going home for the holidays, it was a bit like that. There were so many people, motorbikes, luggage and buses, it looked incredibly disorganised but I'm guessing it was 'organized chaos' The pictures above do not do it justice.

As I've said before pretty much everyone goes home for TET. Most people don't come from Ho Chi Minh City so the exodus form the city is special. We left about an hour late because of the chaos.

Once I was on the bus it was ok as I have a sleeper so I can lye down and relax. Now, after three and a half years in Vietnam I'm very used to the traffic and never really notice it any more. TET however was different, I was amazed at the traffic leaving the city. We crawled most of the way to Rach Gia. I took some pictures from the bus. 

I was really amazed at what people were carrying on their bikes. Basically, you had families going on a weeks holiday and carrying everything. This included kids, bags, food, fans and crates of beer. Check out the pictures below. 

 

Flag sellers

 

So this journey, that should have taken 6 hours, ended up taking 10 hours which also meant we missed the last boat to Hon Tre Island and would have to stay in Rach Gia for the evening.

TET holiday - Hon Tre Island

So tomorrow I'm off to a very small Island called Hon Tre to spend it with a Vietnamese family. Its not on the tourist map. Its about 10 miles off the coast of the Mekong Delta.

Bus route from Ho Chi Minh City to Rach Gia where we get the boat

Hon Tre Island - very small

We are getting a bus. We had to buy the tickets weeks ago because at TET everyone goes home so demand is very high. You can see from the pictures I took from Google maps that the Island is barely 2 miles across. They don't get any western visitors. There is nothing to do, there are no shops and you can't go to the beach as its just rocks. There are literally a number of houses either side of a small road then jungle in the middle. I will be spend pretty much all the time laying in a hammock reading.

Watermelon Carvers at District 7 market

I think this warrants its own post as its pretty cool. At the TET market in District 7 there was a few stalls of people carving watermelons. They were excellent. I think the pictures below speak for themselves.

I'm guessing these skills could be used to carve pumpkins. As you can see they are excellent and very clever. I'm not sure how it takes to get this good. It was nice to be able to see the people actually doing this.

TET market district 7

So, its nearly time for TET 2015 and I get one week off work!

As I said before, TET is like Vietnam Christmas so there are lots of lights around the city and lots of stuff going on. Near my house is a big shopping mall with a lake. Its the same lake where they had the big inflatable duck a year or so ago which cause lots of traffic chaos. 

  

Anyway, this time they had a big TET market in the same area with lots of stuff going on. Apart from the crowds it was pretty good. Its only a 15 minute walk so wisely we left the motorbike at home. The river was really nice, they had made some mock houses of famous buildings in Vietnam. One is Benh Thanh market in district 1. The second is a temple in Hue and finally the last one is the building on the big lake in Hanoi.

As you can see above it looks good and it has 'Chuc mung nam moi' in the set up which is Vietnamese for 'happy new year'

Next there was lots of rice fields made up which also looked pretty cool. It was actually real rice too. It was very nice to look at and presented a good opportunity for taking photos.

 

Also there was an enormous flower and clothes market. Now this place was very busy as I hope the photos below show. Didn't enjoy this part as much as I'm not much of a shopper and even less of a fan of crowds.

Lots of flowers and people

Queue for parking - I'm glad I left the bike at home

The river area - lots of people

Anyway, off to a nice small Island for TET in a few days. Will let you know how it goes.

TET 2015 - Lucky money tree

It's nearly time for TET here in Vietnam which is their big national holiday where we get 5 days off work!!

At Christmas in England we decorate trees and here they do the same thing but a little differently. You can get trees with lots of yellow flowers and also you can get trees with lucky money envelopes. As shown in my pictures. 

When its new year next week people give each other lucky money in these nicely decorated red envelopes to mark the occasion. They are very pretty. As you can see above this is a tree that has been put in the entrance to our University gym. There is also a fake watermelon under the tree. This is eaten at TET as red is a symbol of good luck, which also explains why the envelopes are red.

I've included a couple of close up pictures of the envelopes and as you can see HSBC have hijacked the occasion using it for some cheap publicity by printing their lovely logo on them as so often happens these days by companies for annual events.

You can see on the envelopes above the words 'Chuc Mung Nam Moi' which means 'happy new year' in Vietnamese.

I'll try and get some pictures and videos of other trees and lights around the city in the next few days. At the moment the city centre has some great lights that would rival Regent street at Christmas time in London.