Sat 5 Dec: Bac Ha

We took our lunch early, as we were beginning to feel the lack of dinner and breakfast, and chose a food place at random. Quite a disappointment for our first Vietnamese meal, with rather ordinary noodles and minimal flavour. We surely hope they will improve, but maybe up here in the hills of Bac Ha is not haute cuisine.

Lunch for somebody

We are enjoying the cheerfulness of the people. It is rare not to get a smile or a nod. The exception seems to be the minorities people, who are rather more grim. It is sad to see. They are noticeable for being the only ones still always on foot, often with a backpack basket of fresh greens, or grass for their animals. Their dress is very distinctive, at least those still in traditional garb. This consists of a bright patterned headscarf, bright top, multi-striped skirt and black leggings tucked into teal-coloured gumboots, with calves bound in more cloth. The gumboots are clearly not traditional, but they are ubiquitous.

After lunch we took to our feet again and walked out out the town to several small villages. Unlike our part of France, villages are not tight clusters, more an increase in concentration of buildings. There are still plenty of 4-legged water buffalo tractors quietly consuming their fuel in small sheds. A good idea really. What Western tractor self-creates the next generation, and can be eaten when the replacement arrives? They are massively solid beasts, and amazingly placid. Dogs are common, but just as in Laos, they too are very placid. Those out roaming are silent and quiet, the only aggressive behaviour has been from a few on their owners porches. Everything is very quiet. Apart from the odd rooster's crowing, almost no noise at all.

Fields just outside Bac Ha

The feel of the place is quite different to Laos. It is altogether more business-like. Decoration is minimal - new buildings are mostly strictly utilitarian, the exception being the more recent Vietnamese houses, which are 3 story, narrow concrete and brick constructions painted in bright pastels.

A small local residential street

Traditional construction

By evening we needed to fill up again, so chose a different place, and indeed the food was better. It wasn't yet up to standards from our previous trip to Vietnam, but hopefully a good sign. The manager of the restaurant (the owner's son) suggested a guide for the next day to do a village walking tour, so we set that up for the morning after the famous market.

We were lucky that Bac Ha had a concert that evening. We wrapped up in all our warm clothes against the cold, and found ourselves a place on the edge of the square. It's not difficult for Europeans to find a good view of anything. There are virtually no Vietnamese who come up above my shoulders, so I can see over crowds quite successfully. The concert was fun. A mix of acts, starting with minority dancing, moving on through a small band and different dancing to some weird instrument-and-dance performers. We left when some Vietnamese soloists sang what we know as long-distance-Asian-bus-music. Those who have used these buses will know exactly what I mean. It was very popular with the locals, and one singer in particular was cheered on stage, and had a constant stream of people coming up to give him roses while he was singing. What with a bit of sleep deficit and the cold, we were very happy to be heading back to bed.

Weird instruments played while dancing

The toilet here is a bit of a laugh. When flushed, the pipes play a little tune. This isn't deliberate, just some random function of the plumbing.

Friday 4 Dec: Viet Scam

We arrived into Hanoi airport near on two hours late, and our train to Bac Ha in the high country was due to depart only 90 minutes away, with a long drive in from the airport. If the plane had been on time we would have had a generous 3.5 hours to get to the train station. This was now seriously undermined. Things got off to a good start, with Karen's bag the very first one on the conveyor. Not all that helpfully, mine was quite a bit later.

Given the limited time, we decided to drop taking the bus, and went for a taxi instead. Two "tourist information" counters gave us taxi costs of 25 and 30 in US dollars, which is pretty much a standard currency in Vietnam. A few minutes to extract some Dong from an ATM, with a pathetic top limit of 2 million VND, only $NZ140, and we went outside to try dealing directly with taxi drivers to see how we'd get on. First one USD35, next one 20, so in we jumped. The supposed true rate should be around the 16-18 mark, but we had no time to haggle.

Out onto the highway, then city roads. The driver was very gentle and very legal, not really what we wanted. Once he was even sitting at a red traffic light with other cars streaming past on both sides! Red lights appear to be more of a suggestion in Hanoi than a rule. The traffic was generally very sedate though, and always allowed other vehicles to ease through and merge when needed.

We were successfully dropped off at the train station about 50 minutes later, with our train due to leave in under half an hour, with only a voucher in hand and no ticket, and a requirement to be there 60 minutes before departure. Not ideal. The voucher said to arrive at Gate 6 to exchange it for a ticket, but there was nothing remotely looking like a ticket office. We must have managed to look lost, as a man came up, checked out our voucher and raced me outside to a hole-in-the-wall staffed by 3 young men. It all looked a bit dubious, but they waved a paper at me with our name on it, handed me some tickets, and the first man took us back to the train. A tip required of course, and we were successfully on a train, settled on beds in our 4-person cabin. 

Just 5 minutes later, the train was on the move. Talk about cutting it fine. The cabin seemed a bit disappointing, not as nice as the ones seen online that we had booked, however it was perfectly acceptable. We enjoyed telling our story to the Aussie and Dutchman in the compartment, then settled down for the night. It wasn't until the next day when we'd had a chance to recheck the internet and our cabin details that we realised we'd been very cleverly scammed. We had been given tickets for the ordinary "1st class" sleeper instead of the rather more comfortable and cleaner King Express carriage we'd booked. The guys in Hanoi had presumably somehow on-sold our good berth and left us with an ordinary berth, pocketing the difference. Obviously it needed the connivance of somebody in authority, as they had our names already. Very clever - the story just about makes up for the lost money and comfort.

A compartment similar to what we ended up in, OK but not what we booked

We slept OK on the train. The beds were perfectly comfortable, though marginally short for me. The carriage rocked, swayed and bounced a lot, as the tracks are well short of TGV quality, and the train horn was sounded constantly, so it wasn't a sound sleep. We avoided drinking too much since the toilets were not very savoury at all. Dinner had been a few biscuits and peanuts - we had expected to have plenty of time to have a meal before boarding.

Into Lao Cai at 6am, somewhat early, as we'd actually been put on a different train, which had left 20 minutes before ours was meant to, another detail which had seemed odd to us. This early arrival created another hassle, and almost another scam, as our hotel's man wasn't there to meet us and put us on a bus for our destination of Bac Ha. Yet another man attached himself to us, trying to sell us an expensive taxi ride, then a bus ride at an inflated price. I finally got hold of our hotel on the phone, and his local man did find us, gave us a cup of tea and then put us on the correct bus. Yet another scam, we paid 5 USD, when it should have been the equivalent of 3, as we later noticed a price sign inside the bus. The money wasn't the issue, more the annoyance of constant lying and rip-offs. As a tourist I'd be happy to pay a fixed higher tourist price of $5, it's the cheating that gets to you.

The 2 hour bus ride was excellent, through interesting country. A taxi would have been $50+, and our bus was comfortable and driven gently, and it was interesting being with locals and seeing all the deliveries and pickups along the way. We were even dropped right outside our hotel. Having settled in our room, it was still only 10am. We didn't yet feel the need for breakfast (even though we hadn't had any dinner the night before, and lunch before that was just a light noodle soup), so took off on foot for a loop around the town of Bac Ha. It's enormously different to what we'd seen at Luang Prabang. Bac Ha has the largest ethnic minorities market in Vietnam, but generally the tourists come in by bus from Sapa, rather than stay here. It is more of a local support centre, with all manner of small shops. It is very busy. Cars, trucks and especially motorbikes in every direction, horns blowing in warning. We opted to stay here because it's far less touristy than Sapa, and more of a typical remote town.

Mid-town, Bac Ha

We were struck by the number of children. They are everywhere, small, large and in-between. On bikes, in backpacks, wherever. The birth-rate must be phenomenal, and the average age of the population very low. Children are clearly treasured - they are always carefully dressed, almost always happy, and have lots of family looking after them. We get a constant stream of "hello"s from 4-year-olds to youths. Clearly English is taught early.

Despite Bac Ha being the centre of a large minorities' region, they seem to take a bit of a back seat in commerce. We're not great at picking the ethnic differences, but it seems to us the larger establishments at least are mainly non-minority Vietnamese-run.

Last Days at Luang Prabang

We had intended to watch the alms-giving to the monks, which happens between 5:30am and 6am. We set both phone alarms, but woke an hour or so after it was all over. After a bit of research, I discovered the do-not-disturb period on our phones, which should have still allowed the alarms to ring, has a separate extra volume setting which had been set to Mute. A good time to discover it, when it didn’t really matter. We were philosophically not sure about the alms-giving – it is a Buddhist-only thing, and there is some controversy about non-Buddhists taking part.

There are some interesting weaving villages across the other side of our river, so we headed down to the seasonal bamboo bridge to cross. It is rather Mickey-Mouse, but totally serviceable. Each year it gets washed away and is rebuilt when the river lowers in summer, with the cost being recovered by a small toll. Across the river, there was a track which joined up with a road down to the villages. It turned out to be a very pleasant walk, passing various wats and houses.

Xang Kong Village

Trainee monks at Xang Kong Village

 

There are clearly some wealthy people about, as there were some big modern houses with multiple car shelters. Quite a contrast to the larger number of traditional wooden-built local houses.  We had no real intention of adding to our souvenirs, but did take the time to look at some of the weaving. Much was really beautiful. Very similar to other similar weaving in Thailand, particularly from the hill-tribe regions.

We lunched at a place recommended by our guesthouse. It had a beautiful setting in bamboo and forest above the river, and a pair of happy-hour gin slings started off the meal well. The food was nice, but not a patch on our cheap place in the town, despite a doubling of the price of the mains (the meal still absurdly cheap at NZD40 for cocktails, beers, entrée and mains for two). Eating out is such a lottery though - you cannot really trust reviews as people's tastes and expectations vary so much..

We took an alternate route back. At one point we passed a village market including a rice shop. I never knew there were so many variations on rice, including a rather attractive soft orange one. We crossed the river on a 1930s French-built steel bridge. The footpaths were scary clip-on footways on the outside edges. The deck was three fairly solid planks, but they were clearly very old. In places, intermediate supports were missing, and a number of the planks were full of big insect holes and had seen better days.  Being rather more heavy than the average Laotian, I made sure I had a hand close to the inside railing, just in case.

A real choice of rice

Wat in Luang Prabang - quite reminiscent of Balinese decoration.

For dinner, we chose to return to our favourite eatery. As the weather was threatening, we sat inside which gave us the bonus of seeing the meals being prepared. The cook jumped off her bed where she had been watching TV (remember this is a family restaurant, cafe, kitchen, living room and everything else, not a tourist place) and set to with preparation. Garlic and ginger were cleaned and sliced, but all the other veges were more or less ready and on hand in bowls. Wok on, oil in, Karen’s pre-cooked noodles were dropped in, and an egg broken on top. A quick sizzle, out of the wok and put aside. More oil, and in went a whole load of veges which had been prepped while the wide noodles were frying. The noodle mix had deliberately been left to burn a little, which must give the smoky flavour that I have always failed to replicate at home. Lots of sauces put in, a squirt of this and a spoon of that – 2 types of soy (dark and light), maybe a little fish sauce, sugar, salt (or MSG perhaps), into the plate and Karen was served.

All you need for a kitchen

The wok was rinsed and dried, then my ginger and garlic were sizzled, followed by the onion and some water. Lime leaves, a few veges, two different soy sauces, the meat, and mine was on the table too, and the cook was back to lie on her her bed watching TV! She clearly needed no recipe. The skill is all in the choice of ingredients, the proportions and the timing. As before, two startlingly good $5 dishes, and it had been really fun and enlightening seeing how quickly and surely it had all been done. All that with a single wok, and a kitchen of 3 square metres. It was just starting to spit as we headed home, having had 3 perfect warm and mostly sunny days.

For our last day, we had thoughts of trying to see the monks again, but overnight and morning pouring rain and thunder put an end to that. We hadn’t got to the museum, an ex-royal palace, but as our flight out of Luang Prabang to Hanoi was not until late afternoon, we had time left between checking out and heading to the airport. The rain was still on and off, so into town under our umbrellas to change a few more dollars and to sit having some tea while a heavy shower eased. We set off at opening time for the palace, but unfortunately the lunchtime closing hours were a little longer than we’d been told, so we chose to lunch first (delicious noodle soup in a funny little alley near the market). The palace turned out to be lovely. Remarkably austere – the bedrooms were very large but anything but luxurious, however the main reception room was just gorgeous. The king's cars were in a garage out the back – two Lincoln continentals and an Edsel (gifted by Ford presumably because Edsels were so ugly that nobody in the USA would buy one) from the American era, and a Citroen DS from the earlier French era. Both governments had been carefully courting the king to retain some influence in the country.

Royal Palace, Luang Prabang

Ornate interior, Royal Palace, Luang Prabang

We’d had to rush our visit, as we needed to get to the airport, then a quick walk back to the guest house. A few minutes wait and our tuk-tuk for the airport arrived. We we managed to leave our umbrellas on a table and had to get the tuk-tuk to do a loop around the block so we could retrieve them. 

As it turned out we had hours to spare. Check in was a very slow process for some reason. We managed to pick the slowest line, not once but several times, before we made to to the gate area. Unfortunately, our boarding time came and went, and we ended up leaving almost two hours late for Hanoi due to the plane arriving very late. This delay was to cause us some small problems!

Luang Prabang Waterfall Day

I’ll start this instalment with a rant about smartphones. We were amazed when we got to Singapore Airport. As it turned out, Singapore city and Luang Prabang were no different. Phones have taken over from face-to-face conversation.  On the Singapore metro, a good three-quarters of people are on their phones from the moment they step on, to the moment they step off, and many are actually face down to their phones even as they leave or enter the carriage. There’s a mix of incessant texting and non-stop talking, but the thing that seemed the worst to me was the many who just open the phone and find things to do on it. They look at their Facebook, up and down the pages, then swap to looking at old photos, check for messages, back to Facebook, into some other app and so on, ad infinitum. It’s seems that they are not particularly interested in what they are looking at, it’s just a time-filler. The saddest ones are those who enter the train with friends or relatives, but out comes the phone instead of making conversation. Nobody opens up a magazine or book. A few like us take some interest in their surroundings, or (clearly total weirdness here) actually talk to one another.

In Luang Prabang we were often walking around in the evenings. The youth of the town like to congregate along the roads beside the river. In times gone by, presumably they sat and talked. Now they still sit in large groups, but all in a row, doing something menial on their phones. Those poor unfortunates who don’t seem to have a phone of their own will be sitting next to a mate who does have one, with both silent and avidly peering at something on the screen. We recently read an article saying that attention spans are dropping, and people are becoming unable to read books, because they can’t concentrate on one topic for long enough.  No surprise why. Rant over, we’ll keep reading our books and trying talk to one-another, and even to friends when we have the chance.

Having had a day in the town on Monday, we chose to go out of town to the Kuang Xi Waterfalls, some 36km from Luang Prabang, the following day. It was not an early start, just as well as I slept from 10pm until 9:30am – a marathon effort. We’d arranged seats to the falls in a minibus, which turned out to be a 15-passenger Toyota. Rather like Bali, there’s quite a business here in customising vans. Most have all sorts of extra chrome, lots of go-faster bits like air dams, spoilers and side skirts, plus a good load of chromed blingy bits. The first van stopped outside the guesthouse, but drove off, and we were picked up as the last passengers in a second van. This meant we were in the front beside the driver. I’m still not sure if it was better to see the horrors of driving here, or it would have been better to be further back and less aware of it.

The roads are busy. They also have a very wide speed range, from kids walking 2 abreast, up through slow bikes to tuk-tuks, to moderately fast scooters and finally the larger and much faster vans and cars. It meant that our driver was constantly swerving out to get past slower traffic, or rushing up behind perhaps a couple of helmetless girls pottering along on a scooter. It was rather nerve-wracking, and I think we were both pushing an imaginary brake pedal from time to time. I can’t say our driver was dangerous, but the whole situation was inherently unsafe. We had some nasty proof on the way home, when we came across some deep fresh gouges in the road, crushed foliage and a poor man with a horribly scraped and bloody arm being helped onto the back of a ute. Probably a scooter had been mowed down by something larger and heavier.

After about ¾ of an hour, we pulled up accident-free to the end of the road near the waterfalls. We had 2½ hours free before the return trip, so off we went up towards the falls. First stop was a bear rescue centre beside the path. A dozen or so rather nice sun and moon bears, black with white collars or other markings. These are rescues from bear bile factories. Mostly looking pretty content with their new lot.

Further up the path to the waterfalls, starting with shallow falls and nice pools. The water must be very limey, as all the falls and any surrounding rocks and trees are coated in lime. Very attractive, they reminded us of the falls near Kanchanaburi in Thailand. There were plenty of tourists about, the majority being Chinese. The Chinese are not always the best of fellow-tourists, as they don’t have the same concept of personal space and politeness as many other groups. A number of times we have had them step right out front of us, or stand in the middle of a path making no attempt to move aside. I’m generalising of course, it certainly doesn’t apply to all. We've also met the same behaviour in the Spanish.

Plenty of people were taking the opportunity to swim in the pools, but we thought we’d head to the top to better judge what time we had left. The top falls were gorgeous. A great tall cascade plunging down beside lush forest into a big pool, with the sun lighting up the spray.

The time remaining being adequate, we changed in one of the changing rooms and braved the slippery banks to get into the water. Very pleasant. Not warm, but certainly not cold either. As with Kanchanaburi many years before, I enjoyed sitting with a cascade coming down on my shoulders. Back down through the lovely forest, with plenty of pretty butterflies flitting about, and even a stick insect hitchhiker for a while. The cascades of waterfalls certainly were impressive, and some of the loveliest we have seen anywhere on our travels.

Back down at the terminal, we had enough time to have a drink and pick up a couple of delicious skewers of pork before the trip back. We also managed, finally, to find some peanuts. Snacks here are mostly of the crunchy artificial fried variety, and I had not been able to find any nuts, which I prefer. Odd, because I remember getting bags of enormous cashews everywhere in Vietnam. It had been great being out in the countryside, and seeing how people live. A good day's trip.

Back to our guesthouse, and up to our balcony with a beer where Karen spent 3 hours redoing a photobook that has been bugging her for 2 weeks. It’s the 4^th time she has had to completely redo this book, due to some appalling software and bugs. She was not at all happy.

As our lunch the previous day had been so nice, we went back there for dinner. It was just as good, but the flavour of a repeat dish was totally different to last time – perhaps a different person was on wok-duty.

Luang Prabang

A number of our friends who have visited Laos told us we must go to Luang Prabang, even if we went nowhere else in Laos. So here we are.

The flight to Laos was on an ATR-72, the normal Nelson-style turbo-prop plane, and took just an hour, arriving at 8pm local time. I got money from an ATM at the airport, but we couldn't get as much as we wanted because it couldn't spit out enough notes - despite them being 50,000 Kip each. Laos money is like in Vietnam where you carry round handfuls, and have to get used to everything costing tens of 1000s. The tuk-tuks which were supposed to be there were nowhere to be seen, so a shared taxi to our accommodation instead. Perhaps they were there but the staff inside maybe had an arrangement with the taxi drivers to profess no knowledge of other modes of transport.

At our rooms (Kingkham Riverside Hotel) we had a very pleasant welcome from the young manager. Super helpful, a very welcome "welcome drink", and a nice room looking out across the river. We couldn't see much as it was night-time, but we can hear the river running, and the roosters everywhere. A sound that instantly says Asia to us.

We had our normal arrival orientation walk near the guesthouse and around to the night market, but it was getting a bt late and things were winding down. We ended up having Beer Lao (very good) and a nice meal just one hundred meters up the road. Lovely crisp, fresh, light, tasty food - it's one of the reasons we love visiting Asia. At $4 each for the meal and under $2 for a 500ml beer, you can hardly go wrong. Into bed, in very reasonable temperatures, and a good long sleep.

We had 3 full days available for Luang Prabang, and most of the 4th day. We intended to simply enjoy the town on the first day, take a trip out on the second, who-knows-what on the 3rd, and a bit more walking on the last morning. Luang Prabang is a little town of only 50,000 despite being 4th largest in Laos. The old centre is very low-key, quite attractive, but totally tourist-oriented except for the wats (temples). Buildings appear to be either guest-houses, handcraft shops, travel agencies or restaurants. Despite this, the overall effect is of a pleasant, quiet town, as most of the food and retail premises are clustered in close proximity, with plenty of trees and foliage to keep it looking rural.

Chilli peppers drying beside the road

We took a route around the perimeter of the peninsula between the Mekong and the Nam Khan Rivers, where Luang Prabang sits. The roads are a little tired, and many of the buildings have seen better days. It's peak season now in November and December, but you wouldn't know it. There are remarkably few tourists about, and the restaurants and cafes are mostly empty. Perhaps the financial crisis is still affecting trade here.

The banks of the Mekong are extensively cropped. The soil is clearly hugely fertile, and there are perfect-looking crops at all stages of maturity. No wonder the food can be so fresh.

Agriculture along the Mekong

We looked through the large Wat Xieng Thong temple. It is very reminiscent of Thailand's Buddhist temples, but with differences in the decoration. Some lovely scenes carried out in glass mosaics. All the temples here seem to be fully in use with plenty of young resident monks, dressed in their lovely orange flowing robes. As with other Buddhist sites we have visited, there was a very peaceful aura.

Lunch was a couple of dishes from one of the dozens of little eateries - restaurants would be too grand a name for them. They mostly have just one person working a single wok, plus somebody else to take orders and serve. We sat overlooking the boat traffic up and down the Mekong. It's a busy waterway, but there is nothing like the traffic seen further downriver in Vietnam. Our meal was outstanding. As delicious a pair of dishes as we have had for a long time. We are comfortable in saying that in our opinion the depth of flavour, the freshness and the sheer taste of Asian food leaves European-style food for dead. And that is without even taking into account the absurdly low cost - our delicious meal for two including a couple of fresh fruit smoothies was NZD14 or under 9 Euros. It can't be beaten.

Junction of the Mekong and Nam Khan rivers

Even the monks need to go places

Back to our guesthouse for an entertaining time watching some river damming. Those who know me well will realise that damming rivers is a Warren-family thing. We have all loved it, from my grandfather, through my father and me, to our children. So watching somebody else doing it was good fun. A large section of bank below and adjacent to our guesthouse had collapsed into the river a month ago. The family were now trying to divert the river away from the area so they could get people and equipment in to shore it up again.A large group had loaded sacks of gravel onto one of the long river boats, but had somehow let it get away to ground on some shallows. We watched for several hours as they struggled with rope and levers to shift it sideways to deeper water. They won eventually after heaving several sacks overboard, but it was a desperately hard struggle.

Supervising damming operations

We watched marginally too long, as we wanted to climb Phousi Hill behind us for sunset, and had to rush up it rather faster than we had intended. Temperatures are in the late 20s and humidity is quite high, so as well as hot and panting, we were more than a little sweaty by the top. However we did manage to see the sunset! The view from the top, not actually very high at all, showed just how small Luang Prabang is.

Sunset from Phousi Hill

Back down to the night market, where we ran the gauntlet down the dual row of stalls. There are hundreds of little owner-operated stalls, most selling variations of handcrafts, especially weaving and textiles. While there is much lovely merchandise, our days of major souvenir collecting are over, as our house is full. The drinks here are outstanding. You can order almost any combination of fresh fruit to be whizzed up with a little ice, water and syrup for a couple of dollars. We ate a simple dinner just along from our guesthouse, and into bed quite early.

This is what choice means - two drinks stalls. We chose the little kid on the left.

Heading Home

It's great to be back in South-East Asia again. The moment we stepped off the plane in Singapore, we could feel the tropical warmth, and take in the special smell that you get there.

The day started oddly. We didn't hear the phone alarms, or they didn't work. The phones said we'd missed the alarms, but I can't believe we could possibly have missed two of them ringing and buzzing together. We'll have to set an alternative alarm next time. Thankfully Karen woke a little earlier than her normal time (don't ask what that is), so we still had enough time and it wasn't a mad rush. Our trip out from Ceret went well. The 1 Euro bus to Perpignan, TGV train to Barcelona, Emirates to Dubai, Emirates to Singapore. We're not convinced about splitting the Dubai to Melbourne leg into two 7-hour legs versus one 13-hour leg, as the longer distance plane has better legroom and more walking-around space at the front. We had no choice but to split the flight this time this time with our stop in Southeast Asia.

We managed to get a bit of snoozing on the first flight, but as it was daytime France time, we didn't try too hard. The second flight was after a 2-hour transfer in Dubai, where I had a nasty headache, probably caused by my coffee issues. Thankfully I was OK by boarding time. An early meal and then we both slept well. I don't remember anything between the end of dinner and the breakfast snack some hours later, so that says something. We managed to catch only 3 movies between the two legs, probably a record minimum for us.

As I said, arriving in Singapore was great. We negotiated the metro to near where we had booked our hotel, then had a 10-minute walk to it in Little India. As we turned into the street, we thought "Yes!". It was a typical little tight Oriental shopping street, full of small shops, bars and restaurants, and our hotel which was in a converted building from perhaps the 30s. We had a moment's trouble finding it, until we noticed the huge sign right across its facade! Not lit for some reason and in difficult-to-read dashed lettering. Even when I pointed it out to Karen, she took a little time recognising it. It's a quirky very modern refit by what appears to be a small designer hotel chain. All the rooms are super-modern with plenty of "design" features. Our entire floor has "Pantone" rooms, with each room being painted and decorated entirely in a single Pantone colour (Pantone is a coloured marker maker). Ours turned out to be "Orange Crush", fully as bright and rich as an orange. Very cool!

Pantone "Orange Crush" room

The toilet and shower are in glass cubicles, the bed on a platform. Great extras - free but non-alcoholic minibar, free Nespresso machine in the room, free mobile phone to use in Singapore for calls and use as a GPS. Quite a laugh, and a fun experience.

We were keen to get out and about, so dumped our gear, drank a juice and headed across the road for a beer. Luxury! The temperature was Singapore normal - 30C and fairly humid. Having sunk the beer, we took off to a tech mall to see if they had a phone and a camera I wanted to check. "No" to the the phone, and "possible" to the camera. We also got some more US dollars, as they are necessary for the Vietnam and Laos visas, and for one of the bookings we had made. We'd got some at Barcelona airport - a mistake. We knew airport rates were awful, but wanted a few USD to get us started in case we didn't get another chance. Not a good move, as the rates in the tech mall in Singapore were vastly better.

That out of the way, back into Little India where walked around until hunger took charge. We had intended to eat more or less opposite our hotel, but looking at the food on the tables, we decided we wanted more veges and less pork, so went back to another Chinese place we'd seen. OK, but not the best we've had. All the same, to our taste even an average Asian meal is hard to beat.

It's all go in Little India at night

Little India is an old area, full of countless funny little places. It has a proper bazaar feel, nothing like Orchard Road and the more European areas of Singapore. Great smells - incense, spices, food. Not the slightest doubt we were in Asia. It's been a while since last time, and we did love being back. So much so that we could be tempted to spend a little more time getting to know Singapore. A pity accommodation is so expensive.

Back moderately early in the evening to our orange room, had a shower and into bed - being horizontal again was just what we needed. We both slept very well. Awake a few times in the night, but back to sleep again soon. We were pretty lucky considering it would have been daytime in France. No sign of jet lag whatsoever.

Little shops in Little India

After an excellent breakfast in the morning, we had enough time to explore a little more. We walked out to a larger road and along it marvelling at the small shops. One tiny place had the best range of metal mesh I've seen, then five sink and plumbing shops all in a row. Little shops mending bikes, one shop which seemed to specialise only in knobs for electrical gadgets. 

Typical colonial oriental architecture

Back to the hotel, back to the metro, back to the airport, and to the Vietnam Airlines check in. We seemed to have lost half an hour somewhere, so no more mucking around, and at the gate in plenty of time. Onto the plane, and horrors! The back of the seat in front was just the back of a seat, no screen at all. We were forced to get out our e-books instead.

They've forgotten the screen!

A pleasant flight into Hanoi. We thought we should be able to get to our Laos flight without going through immigration, as you would at most airports, but no such luck. Thankfully we'd requested a multiple entry visa, so we had to go through the curious visa-on-arrival system to get the pre-ordered visa activated, then through passport control, back around the corner to check in for Luang Prabang and out again through passport control. A bit weird but no problems, and we'd allowed enough time that the visa process was not an issue.

Last Fortnight in France for 2015

It's been lovely being back in Ceret. The weather has been outstanding, with day after day of clear blue skies, no wind, and warm sun. It's been the same each year for us in September, October and November. Temperatures have been sometimes rather cold, but often very warm. We've had a number of days over 20 degrees. All the same, the leaves had completely turned from when we left for Morocco.

Definitely autumn

After getting back from Marrakech, the first few days were spent doing washing and tidying, plus a bit of catch-up with work. The biggest effort was reserved for finishing the blog for our Morocco week. It always takes a surprisingly long time, but it is lovely to have it as a record of our trips. It seems there are some people who are prepared to wade their way through it. We managed to cook a dinner for friends on Monday night,  and were out with Liz and her son Ben over from England on Thursday night at the Vietnamese up the road. We saw it as practice for our trip home when we have a fortnight in Vietnam.

As always there was a little bureaucracy to sort out. Because we had not been here to receive our taxe d'habitation and taxe fonciere demands (rates) late in 2015, we had come back to a demand. We paid over a cheque, and were also told that there was some kind of hold on our account for the relevant amount. On checking the account, we found that the amount had come out not once, not even twice, but three times. At least it had been put back in once, but left us with a double payment. We went along to the tax office to talk to them. The tresorier agreed it had come out twice, once by direct debit and also by cheque. He then insisted that they had issued a cheque to us for reimbursement (sounded good to us) but that this cheque had been presented and paid out (not at all good, as we certainly hadn't received it). We wandered back home thinking we could be in real strife trying to get our money back. Who did we blame - the bank, the tax office, our postie, some random person who might have got our cheque? One of those situations which would be near impossible to resolve in a foreign country with heavy bureaucracy.

Back home we double-checked our accounts, and knew that the money had not been received. Back the next day to the tax office, and our very pleasant taxman was not at all surprised to see us again. He'd obviously thought again after we'd left, and had found that the double payment had been credited to our next year's rates. Good result! Yet again the bureaucracy is terrible, but the staff as helpful as they can be.

We seem to have been quite busy each day keeping up to date with work, emails, little odds and sods to finish our travel plans, Christmas things, catching up with people leaving Ceret until next year, and so on. We try to get a good walk in each day too. On Friday we revisited a lovely walk we'd done above Arles-sur-Tech. Last time we did it on a hot day, about a month earlier, and the paths had been covered in deep dry leaves. This time with a bit of rain and a few more weeks, the leaves were a bit slippery and the tracks a little tricky in places. However a really good day out, with four hours of walking and plenty of climbing, with lovely views at the top.

On the Vauban fort above Arles, the Med. behind.

On Sunday we had a second look at the Jaume Plensa exhibition at the Ceret Art Museum. This time we made sure to see the documentary about him - just fascinating. We are only sorry we hadn't been to the exhibition before our children were here in July, as we would have made sure they knew how good it was.

With only a fortnight left here, we've been thinking a lot about what we have enjoyed this year, and what we enjoy in Ceret and France. One thing we keep coming back to is how polite and helpful people are. It is so rare that we come across anybody vaguely rude or unhelpful. Each year or even month we notice how we are more accepted here. We can't go on a walk around town without nodding to somebody, or shaking hands, or doing the French double-kiss. It's very pleasant. We'll very much miss it when we depart. That, and the cheese, and the wine, and....

Yes, those are indeed escargots! Had to try them, at La Fontaine.

Now just 3 days before we leave our little town. As in other years, we  are not all that happy to be leaving. Nice to be heading towards family and friends, but so sad to be leaving a place that has been so good to us. For the last week, we've been remarkably busy getting things tidied up. There's been a reasonable amount of work, plus still a range of things to be finalised for our trip back home. We've had a number of meetings with friends, and sent a number of goodbye emails. We've also tried to have a meal at a couple of our favourite places including Can Jordi, La Fontaine, and tonight Quattrocento. Just as important, we've had a last example of some of our favourite pastries - today's being a jesuite from Jean-Louis under the arch. Last week it was a tartelette and a croissant amande from the same source. You can't get better!

Over last weekend winter came roaring in. Until then, we'd had daily highs of mid-teens to low 20s. However on Saturday a cold blast came through, and since we have had snow on Canigou, rain in Ceret, and overnight temperatures around zero. We've been wearing more layers, but have still been able to get out on our walks, as most days have still been clear and calm.

Canigou treats us to snow before we leave