Sapa to Halong to Hoi An to Nha Trang

So, the last place that I mentioned in my blog was Sapa. Being there was simply amazing. Just imagine huge mountains with terraced rice paddies and small wooden huts. From there we took an over night train back to Hanoi. The different classes on these trains need to be described.

First there is “Nice Class” (the one we stayed on the way back from Sapa and from Hanoi to Hoi An) It's basically a 'soft' sleeper bed. 4 beds per cabin. Actually quite nice.

Next there is “Chicken Class” (we were cheated onto this one on the way to Sapa – we payed for a Nice Class but they snuck us onto this... but that's another story) This is basically a 'hard' sleeper. 6 beds per cabin, small amounts of comfort.

Next is “Worm Class” - seats with a cushion.

Finally there is “Ant Class” - I wont even go into this one.
The prices obviously differ dramatically - our ticket in Nice Class from Hanoi to Hoi An (it wasn't an inflated tourist price) was $33 each! You could squirm in Ant Class for about a handful of rice and 3 chicken feet!

The train service itself is actually OK except that it is horrifically slow. Something that could be done in Europe in 2 hours takes 3 days and 7 different types of medication. Some of their railways stations are a sight to behold! The one in Hanoi is great. I'll quote Mel on this... “a train station that somehow strongly reminded me of a WW2 train station for people fleeing the towns, chaos over chaos” (later we found the tourist entrance :))

Next, we made one of our few mistakes on our trip. We went for the cheaper option on a 2 day, 1 night trip to Halong Bay. This is supposed to be one of the wonders of the world and is a world heritage site. It's basically a bay with hundreds of tiny limestone (I think) islands. I'm sure it would have been great except that it poured down for almost the whole trip, and we felt like sheep, no that sounds to comfortable, chickens being led to a slaughter house. In addition, we stayed in the worst 'hotel' that I have ever stayed in. The room had not been cleaned since the late seventies, the door was broken (you could see into our room!), and there wasn't even a window. I've stayed in crappy hostels before and places worse, but this place had the called itself a hotel! Oh yeah, all the food on the trip was crap too... I'm going to stop now... (I'm sure our whole experience would have been different if it stopped raining long enough for us to see enjoy the sights) This part of the trip only lasted 2 days and is possibly the only low point.

Halong Bay (It wasn't raining for about 10 minutes at this point)

Our next stop on our trip was a place that both Mel and I fell in love with. It's a small old twon called Hoi An about half way down the coast of Vietnam which is very famous for both clothes and shoes. (Anyone who knows me, now knows why I fell for this place. Mel did too, but she's a girl :)) As usual I decided to go low key and only got two suits, 4 shirts, 5 ties, 2 shoes... (ehhh, I think I'll stop now – I knew about this place before had so I traveled very light up until this point, about 10KG.) Mel of course couldn't help herself with a similar wardrobe purchased. Everything was tailored for you and some of the stuff I've already worn a lot and the quality seems grand. One of the mornings we got up early (I think the earliest ever for me at about 4:40am) for what they called a sun rise tour to My Son. My Son is basically the Cham cultures/dynasty religious head quarter. The place was amazing, however it was the one of the first major eye openers for the damage the American War did to Vietnam. There was 5 meter deep craters from B52 bombs next (and thus almost completely destroying) buildings that had stood for a thousand years. It was very sad from architectural point of view. Basically, most of the place was carpet bombed, poisoned, burned.... Still, the trip was amazing and defiantly worth getting up at that early hour for. There was something quite surreal about us walking around there with our guide and being the only people there.

Mel hard at work in Hoi An

Me outside one of the Cham buildings in My Son

Our next stop on our merry trip was Nha Trang. Do you know when you are on a roller coaster and you are heading straight for a huge rock (or something sturdy looking) and just at the last moment you pull up and it wizziz inches past you. This is our overnight trip from Hoi An to Nha Trang. These people are absolutely crazy (I haven't been to India yet but I hear they aren't that great either). Last year in Thailand, I thought that they were crazy. My feelings about the Thai are quite different now. In Thailand they only over take around a blind corner if they DON'T see someone coming. In Vietnam, you could be passing a truck on to the right around a corner and see two tour buses drag racing in the opposite direction one of them in your lane, the other on the truck that your passings lane on a two lane (one in each direction) road. Oh, and of course there is the family of 5 on a mopped nipping in between all of us. I didn't worry too much though... we had the obligatory flashing Budda at the front of our bus... That will save us :) (The Budda and the Buses horn are the only two safety features as far as I can see)

I have mixed feelings about Nha Trang – it is VERY touristy and the beach and surrounding islands don't match up to Thailand. There is massive development along the beach front and I'd say that in about 3 years it will look like Vegas. On the other hand, the night life was a lot of fun. As usual, myself and Mel found ourselves in an interesting situation. A club with about 1,000 people, thumping 80's dance music and two white people. It was great though, I think it was a local only type place and they were all great craic! It's a long time since I did the dancing train thing around a disco! Other nights we went out with Irish and Dutch people that we met on an excellent boat trip. If you are there, do the 4 island tour...

The view from our hotel in Nha Trang

Getting ready for a night on the town :)

Hmmm – this post is getting closer to an essay then a post, so I think I will stop here – spread in a few photos and call it a night :)

Back from Vacation :(

So I'm back at work in the US again after my holidays. :( It's really tough to be back to the 'real' world and not traveling. It's also hard to collect all your thoughts after such an amazing holiday. So hard, I'm not even going to go into the stories yet ;) I'm attempting to use this blog to try and document the trip in some way for myself and Mel, in addition to photos and her journal. Someone else may also find some interesting things in it if they where planning a similar trip)

Over the next few days I'm probably going to add little sections about all the places we where. So far I posted up until Sapa. From there we went to Halong Bay, Hoi An, My Son, Mui Ni Beach, Ho Chi Min City, Cu Chi, Phnom Penh and then Samui. All of the places where amazing and a few stage 5 nights were had. (I rate nights out in crazyness from 1 to 5) Some I will talk about – others will remain secret :)

When we were in Sapa (North West Vietnam, along the Chinese/Laos border) we went trekking for 3 days. Mi (standing next to Mel) was our guide. She actually belongs to one of the Minority Hill Tribes (Red Dzao). She isn't wearing the traditional dress like everyone else in the region because "It's too warm".
There was weird sand dunes beside Mui Ni Beach. This is my current desktop background :)
This was the view from the sea of Mel in front of one of the beach huts that we were staying in on Samui. It cost 250 Baht a night (about 5e) and was simply amazing!

This is the view out from the hut. Unfortunately, I am in the way...

This is what I meant when I said "Over Kill!"

I think this will just about hold my bike...

My new wheels :)

While any of us Edgespace folk are in California we always rent a car for the duration of the trip. This last while we have been dealing with a company called Enterprise for two reasons.

1. We get good deals with them because of the place we stay.
2. They actually acknowledge that people under 25 may want to hire a car (Unlike almost every other car company who spit on people that are less then 47 million years old).

So I went around to the dealer close to our clients office looking for the standard car - the guy met me at the door, was hugely friendly and when I requested that the car should be able to transport my mountain bike, he smiled at me and pointed me to this truck!!! Talk about overkill! I think I could transport a small army in this thing! Still though, he gave it to me for no extra charge (beyond what a crappy normal car would cost) and I'm not planning on driving much over the next two weeks so I don't feel to bad about using up huge amounts of fuel.

Bangkok - Hanoi - Sapa...

I'm now about 10 days into my vacation and it's going great. I think I am going to do a proper post about the whole trip when I am get back because I've picked up a few tips that would be helpful to anyone who travels out to this neck of the woods.

So, what I've done so far...

Originally I'd planed to go to Tokyo for 2 days before I met Mel in Bangkok, pretty much at the last moment I changed this and I'll now be going to Tokyo at the end of my trip. (I guess I missed Mel too much :))

So, I arrived in Bangkok and spent 3 nights there with Mel wondering around the streets and doing various touristy things. One of my favorite things was taking the water taxi along the canals. It costs 8 Baht (0.16euro) and was a very cheap thrill. These guys are just like the crazy moped/tuc-tuc/taxi/van drivers in Thailand except that they are on water. The funniest thing is that the bridges are actually lower then the boat, so the whole roof collapses around you as you near a bridge. Tons of fun :)

We then flew with Thai Airways (very nice airline - I'd use them again) to Hanoi in Vietnam. All I can say is that place is crazy. Just think of the crowd coming out at the end of a foot ball game out a tight alley, put everyone of them onto a scooter, then tell each of them that if you don't beep your horn every second you will kill them... Welcome to Hanoi. There was a lot of interesting things there and it is much more of a culture shock then Bangkok. Basically, Dublin is to Bangkok as Bangkok is to Hanoi... We stayed in a hotel called Sunshine (which was in Lonely Planet). They are a really nice group of people and I'd recommend the place to anyone staying there. We also booked most of our trips (that I'm about to talk about) with them and throughout they were great.

So, next we did a 3 day, 4 night trip to Sapa. Sapa is in the mountainous north west of Vietnam and is right beside China and Laos. There are a lot of minority Hill tribes there and the scenery is great. The 3 days there where spent trekking through the hills and, one of the nights, staying in a Tribes (Red Dzao) village. One of the highlights was playing a local card game with some of the people from the village (and a police man for some reason...) I was doing quite well until they took out a bottle of rice white (a.k.a. petrol in a bottle) and announced the the loser of each game (lasting about 4-5 minutes) has to do a shot... I slept well that night.

Currently I''m a few locations on from Sapa (Hoi-An) but I have to leave this cafe now - so I'll update this sometime over the next few days...

This last while...

This last while has been reasonably interesting. The last three weeks have been spent talking to clients in California. The work itself is interesting and I'm learning a lot as I go along. It has been easy to slip back into the flow of things over here. Week days are basically, work, eat, work, eat, do something fun, go to bed, repeat. It can get a bit repetitive but the weekends have been great fun.

Each of the days over the weekend I've been biking around the bay. It reminds me a lot of two years ago except this time I can handle my bike a lot better. The hills around Ireland are so much more technical then over here. They have trained me well :) The main points about biking in California are:

• The trials seem like a paved road in comparison to Ireland. (My hard tail Stumpjumper handles it really well)

• When it is hot, the up hills can be grueling!

• Downhill == roller coaster (except a much better rush)

For the 4^th of July, we all headed to down Santa Cruz to which 10,000 crazy people let off fireworks on the beach. As far as I know, rockets are illegal in California – but tell that to anyone down there! It seemed pretty dangerous at the start as fireworks were landing in the crowd close to the ocean. We stayed back a bit from the ocean and it felt a lot safer. (Or maybe it was because it was darker and we couldn't see the rockets landing in the crowd) Anyway, we sat round a fire, chatted and toasted marshmallows. It was cool.

Last weekend myself and Fergal went to Great America (Ok theme park) The best thing was the Xtreme Skyflyer. You are basically winched up 153 feet. When you pull a rip cord, you free fall and eventually (6 feet before the ground!) pull up into a swinging motion. It was a lot of fun. Hitting 60 miles per hour going head first towards the ground is something I havn't tried before. I think the next thing for me will be either a bungee jump or a parachute jump. (Mel has been trying to get me to do one for ages – I want to, I just haven't had a chance yet :( )

Today was also notable in that it was my last day of work for a while. Tomorrow morning I'm flying out to Bangkok and then on to Hanoi. I have been looking forward to a break for so long.

This last weeks has been so busy. Basically filled up with working, cycling and eating. Really, that's about it!

Last Saturday I went back to one of my old haunts on the bike. Basically it's about a 18 mile loop with about 3400 feet of climbing. You start off down by the Stevens Creek reservoir then cycle along side the San Adreas Fault line to the top of Black Mountain. The city of Mountain View (were Google lives) was named so because it had a good mountain view. It was a lot of fun and my bike skills have come a long way since two years ago. After biking around some of the trails in Ireland these trails seem to be paved in comparison.

On Sunday, myself and Kieran headed out to do the Coastal Classic bike ride. You basically start in Palo Alto, go over the mountains down to the Pacific and then back over the mountains at a different place and back to Palo Alto. It was the longest (distance wise) bike ride that I went on a road bike and was a lot of fun. The road rides that were around 30 miles seem to small and pesky now :)

Mel is still doing great – she's currently up by Brisbane and going kayaking, 4x4ing and camping over the next few days. It's well for some! ;)

Back in California

So the flight over to the US was grand. Same as ever I guess. It was funny, the girl sitting next to me on the flight from London to San Francisco lives (or at least, was brought up) about 10 miles away from my home in Monaghan.

The place we are staying in is actually really nice. There is a distinct feeling of community about the place and I think I'll enjoy staying here over the next while. (It really reminds me of going to basketball camps when I was younger) There is pool, basketball courts tennis courts, and best of all, a hot tub. It was quite surreal last night, me and my colleagues sitting in the hot tun (it fits about 25 people) just chatting watching a lovely evening go by. It is really nice to catch up with the guys as it's about 5 weeks since I had seen some of them. I'm so lucky with the group of work mates that I have! We get on so well.

Tomorrow morning I'm going to go off and bike along some of the trials that I covered two years ago when I lived here. I can't wait to get up to the top of Black Mountain and see the view over the valley. Oh, and on Sunday my brother was talking about doing the Coastal Classic with me. Basically, you start in Palo Alto, go over the mountains down to the Pacific, turn and go back again. I don't know if I'd be able to hack to long runs back to back yet... I'll see how I feel tomorrow...

The Grudge

I just finished watching The Grudge (no spoilers) and OMG – it scared the hell out of me! It was brilliant. Few movies ever scare me and the only notable ones over the last few years are Blair Witch, The Ring and now this one. (Two Japanese ones...). I remember hearing the reviews for The Grudge (wasn't that good 5.8 on IMDB!) so I gave the film a miss in the cinema – then tonight I just happened to have the DVD sitting around so I watched it.

The suspense was great but I think my surroundings helped the movie along. Pitch black room, surround sound, by yourself and on a huge screen. I recomend everyone seeing this with a few conditions.

1. You are either by yourself or with someone who wont talk through the movie and willing to only concentrate on the movie

2. It's late at night

3. You are in a dark room

It was great – I could feel good adrenalin rushes :)

Oh, and I realise that anyone who has already seen it is probably saying “It was crap...” that always happens with this kind of movie. I guess tonight I was in the right mood for it and my surroundings were perfect.

In other news, I've finished packing for flying out in a few hours. Wasn't difficult, N t-shirts + M shorts + bike stuff and that's about it.

I was talking to Annie about Electric Picnic which is on on September 3^rd and 4^th in Laois... I'm probably going so if anyone else is interested, let me know... (Have a look at the line up, there is something for everyone – not just dance heads)

Nothing to report

Another week, another few movies, a few more bike rides and a week closer to holidays :)

Nothing much happened this week.

Our company, Edgespace took on our first employee. He will be our summer intern working with us until the end of September. It was good to have another person around the office while everyday else is away. This last week and next week will be spent training him in and introducing him to our work environment. Nothing he can't handle :)

Mel is doing really well in New Zealand. When she arrived in Auckland, she spent a day in the city and then started a (I think) two week journey around the North Island. Her stories are just amazing and I'm really jealous that I'm not there with her. Today she went on a mad 5 hour bike ride through the mountains without taking any food with her! Crazy girl!!! :) She will be in NZ for another 10 days, then onto Australia for about two weeks, when I'll be meeting her in Bangkok for the leg of her holiday that we will be together. I really can't wait to go on a proper holiday. The last proper (as in not Christmas and more then a few days) was last June. I notice that I can't concentrate as well at the moment and my productivity at work has gone down. Hopefully the change of scenery next week will make the last weeks before my vacation a little easier.

I met a nice group of people last night when I was biking. I went up Three Rock for my usual post work bike ride and when I was on the way down I met EPIC mountain bike club people out on their Thursday bike ride. My legs still felt fresh so I tagged on with those guys. I picked up a few new single track trails from them that I hadn't been on before and the banter was pretty good. The ride was cut a bit short when one of the guys rear wheels decided it had had enough – it was unfortunate but at least he was going up hill and not down hill when it happened. For me, there are tons of good things about going on group rides and one bad thing. The good thing is that there is safety in numbers and that I can be a little more aggressive on the downhill since there is people to watch my back. The banter is always pretty good too! The only bad thing is that there tends to be a lot of regroups on the uphills (I need the regroups on the downhills) When I'm climbing I tend to enjoy getting into it and not stopping until the climb is finished....

Internet is going down for cleaning

Yeeah! ryansherlock.com is working again (not that there is anything there). The people at blackknight were really friendly (unlike their website) and helpful and fixed the problem quickly. I also renewed gobuckmad (my old going out photos web page) for the next few years...

Interlink Express on the other hand.... :(

Damned domain registration...

My damned domain (ryansherlock.com) expired yesterday and I didn't notice. (Well, Mel told me that she went to a strange page when she went to my web page yesterday but I didn't realise...) There is a long cool off period (which I know all to well when I was waiting for edgespace.com) so I'll be able to renew the domain easily on Monday. It scared the hell out me me though because lots of people send me emails through that address...

I think I'll just renew it for 3 or 4 years this time...

Requiem for a Dream

Mel left for her travels yesterday. She left Ireland at 4pm and will arrive in Auckland 36 hours later. A pretty long trip! Since the house is empty apart from me, and Reetta in the other place, I've gotten a ton of films out from Xtra-vision, one of the films was Requiem for a Dream. All I have to say is, OMG. A horrifically shocking movie. I remember Trainspotting been called a romanticism of drug use/addiction (Which I think is crap. Personally I don't want to crawl through a toilet looking for a fix.) I don't think anyone could say that Requiem, in any way, romanticises anything. It's shocking enough that I watched a light comedy after it before I went to bed. All said and done, it's a great movie and worth the 8.4 it has on IMDB. The night before Mel left we watched 28 Days Later. It was pretty good, Mel being the scientist, had to poke all the holes in the plot – but hey – it was fun. The next three on my list are Platoon (because I'm going to Vietnam in a few weeks :)), The Insider (because it was one of my old house mates favourite movies) and The Secretary.

Summer weather

Finally, some summer has arrived in Ireland. Yesterday and today we have seen beautiful blue skies. This is the view from my house this morning :)

Broken bed...

Not again...

For the second time in a month my feckin bed broke. The hooks that hook into the head board just snapped! I was so annoyed when I had to sleep on the floor. (Trying to fix a bed at 1am is something that I don't do!) I now have to figure out how to take it apart and rebuild it. (Alan did this for me the last time it broke but he is now in California) I love my apartment, the location, the view, the space but some times these things really piss me off. They did so well building all the stuff and then skimp on finishing the job off.

The meal went well last night. Although we did arrive at the house to start cooking at the same time as our first guests so the cooking was a bit stressful. I now know that myself and Mel can work well under pressure. Lots of wine was consumed and I think a good time was had by all.

The long weekend :)

This last week has been a bit of a rush from place to place. Mel finished her exams last Thursday and since then we have been running around organising stuff before she leaves on Friday for 3 months of travelling.

Over the weekend we went down to Monaghan and then on to my sisters. It was nice and all of my family (that was in Ireland at the time) was there. My sister Nicola and her husband Shane put on a big BBQ at the riverside deck at their new house. It was really nice and much less of a building site (although they are still building) then the last time I was there.

I found out today that I'm cooking for 10-12 people tomorrow night! I've cooked for more then that before but it was usually mostly family, this time Mel's friends (and some of mine) and lots of people that I probably have to impress with my culinary talent. (Lets home I don't burn everything!) I'll probably play the menu very safe. Chips, dips etc... Some sort of curry from scratch and then probably strawberry cheesecake. (There is a special on strawberries on in Tesco :))

Today, after work, myself and Mel went out to Bray Head. We climbed up to the top and grabbed a few pics. (Blogged earlier) It was a beautiful evening after been grey all day and I even scouted some new mountain biking trails. Some of them looked a little steep to take a bike up (or down!).

The view out over Bray from Bray Head today. 

My nieces and nephews...

Four of my five (Ellen is also expecting) nieces/nephews. This photo was taken at Nicola's BBQ at the weekend. Left to right it is Alex, Jack, Cara and Chloe. The girls are wearing their Monaghan Gaelic jerseys, fortunately Monaghan lost to Derry earlier in the day...

Projects page

I should really get around to making a projects page somewhere... I think I have a few useful (and a few less useful but fun projects that I should put on the web) I wrote a script the other evening that I found so handy for backing up music onto DVDs, basically, you tell it when you last backed up and it grabs all the new music since then and puts it into and iso ready for burning. When you have a large collection, backing up efficiently becomes annoying, even with DVDs backing all that up.

Thirteen

The house has been quite with most of the guys gone so I've been using this time to catch up on a few movies. Sunday was the twice yearly showing of Donnie Darko. I think this is the 6^th or 7^th time that I saw this movie, I think it's amazing – quite different from the usual crud. Mel thought it was good too but I don't think she loves it to the same extent as me.

On Monday after work, myself and Mel went for a walk and some how ended up in Extra Vision. I quickly found the thing that we keep me busy over the next few weeks. They have a 5 dvd for 9 euro for 7 nights deal on at the moment on non new releases. Their definition of “not new release” is actually quite decent although their selection is pretty crap. So, last night kicked off with “back to the old school” nerdy movie Sneakers. It was actually really enjoyable! I think that one thing that has helped the movie age (it was made in 1992) reasonably gracefully (in a genre that looks old after a year) was that it didn't take itself to seriously.

Tonight I watched Thirteen. Basically about a 13 year old girl that gets into drinking, drugs, sex, self mutilation (I'm referring to cutting herself and not piercings... :)) and petty crime. All I have to say is that, in comparison, I was a saint at 13! The cinematography was excellent and the acting was great. Get this one out!

For the next few nights I've got, The Crow, Eyes Wide Shut (Mel hasn't seen it ;)) and Confessions of a Dangerous Mind. I'm looking forward to The Crow as I can't really remember anything about it.