Flower H'mong women

Settled amongst the mountains in the far north of Vietnam is Bac Ha, a small and relatively untouched  hillside town that for most of the week is quiet and sleepy. On Sunday however it’s all change, the surrounding hills are home to something like 10 different hilltribes: the Flower H’mong are the most vibrant, but other groups include Dzao, Giay (Nhang), Han (Hoa), Xa Fang, Lachi, Nung, Phula, Thai and Thulao and come Sunday morning the hills are alive with the sound of markets.
We headed there from Sapa another larger hillside town but it wasn’t easy, first we had to get a very early bus to Lao Cai and then from there a local bus to Bac Ha, which takes all day. There are tour buses that do the trip but because of the distance they charge a small fortune and this puts many tourists off. Anyway the local buses are always much more interesting and the road is very scenic if not a little rough!

The Sunday morning market starts early and it’s impossible to miss, what was a dusty, quiet town square turns into a car park for local buses and throngs of Flower H’mong people stroll past the few guest houses in town on their way to sell their wares. With their baskets strapped to their backs full of fruit, vegetables and textiles it makes for a wonderful scene and we didn’t see a single piece of tourist tat anywhere. Georgie loves a market and generally I do NOT but once your there it’s such an attack on the senses that I couldn’t help myself, I sat and smoked with some serious looking men what I hoped to be tobacco… A few coughs on my part soon had them laughing and within minutes I’d managed to reduce a whole crowd of serious tobacco buyers to a fit of coughing and giggling… Time to move on!
It is a real market in every sense of the word, it has wet parts and textile parts, livestock arrives and leaves on the back of motorbikes and the buzz about the place is almost overwhelming. Everything can be bought here from puppies to rice wine and if I recommend one thing it’s to sit down and try some home made hooch… It will certainly wake you up! I tried to chat with some men about which pig was best and which ones they were after but they were busy men and I probably stank a little too much of homemade moonshine from another stall.

The market lasts all day and unless your planning on staying in Bac Ha longer to explore the mountains around it then you will have to wander around to find a local bus with spare seats going your way. For some people this may be a bit hardcore because if your not on these buses the next ones will be a week later but to be honest the locals won’t see you stranded.
What struck me most about Bac Ha was it’s authenticity, even getting there was only possible the same way the locals do and once there we were in at the deep end. It’s not a market for tourists as such although there are bargains to be had but its a great way to spend a day and really get to see how some of Vietnam’s hilltribe people live…

Have a look at our posts and be inspired:

It Takes Two

Bac Ha Market Madness

The death bus to Bac Ha

So there you have it, look out for the “Off the beaten track” category and I will keep adding our favorites to it.

We recently received an email about an offer to send two passionate travel bloggers on a week long trip to Zell am See-Kaprun in Austria. Two bloggers by two different means of transport, one by air and one by rail. see here for more details

Having been back in the UK and back to “real life” for some time now this email couldn’t have come at a better time. Georgie and I are desperately trying to keep ourselves busy and occupied as the infamous British winter begins to take hold but to be honest things are a little slow. With the weather now taking a turn for the miserable and the nights drawing in the only real time we get to see the outside world is when we go to and from work… Which for Georgie consists of a very short walk to the end of the garden. Cabin fever is setting in for us both and the need for a holiday has never been so great.

Yesterday while putting the finishing touches to a redecorated spare room we put a large map of the world on the wall. I stood back with Georgie to admire my handy work and we were grabbed by that ever present need a traveler has, that need to plan and wonder about journeys and destinations we may one day have or see, the travel bug (as all travelers will know is a real and powerful disease) had been woken from it’s sleep and what started out as a simple:

” On our next trip we should go there”

Ended up as a:

” We could fly here… Take a train to there… A boat across that… And live there for a while in a yurt, with Yaks.”

All it took to re-light our (travel) fire and turn us slightly delirious was the sight of a world map, so I’m sure you can imagine how excited we were to read about this competition. Furthermore neither Georgie or I have ever had a much experience traveling through Europe despite always wanting to go, but I’m pretty sure that’s the same with most travelers, the place on their doorstep often gets overlooked for a little slice of faraway promise. So it’s about time we put that straight and where better to start than Austria!

Georgie and I would be perfect for this because we’d throw ourselves straight in at the deep end as we always do and squeeze every last drop of excitement and fun from it. We’d keep you and anyone else reading entertained and informed in the only way we know how (the best kind of way), blogging as we went and hopefully leave a little bit of ourselves behind for good measure… Thank you and good night.

P.S. We haven’t seen snow for a couple of years now and if we did get to go we would probably build the biggest snowman in the world!

It”s always been a bit of an issue with travelers and so many times I’ve seen horribly surprises like reaching a new country and having your card declined or outrageous fees for making a withdrawal. Another concern of course should awlays be security. The only problem we ever had while traveling was our cash being so secure that when I lost the card our money was so secure I couldn’t even get to it… £130 and two days later a new card was couriered to us while we waited in Hanoi. Hopefully this will help you avoid doing the same.

• The Cash Card: Nationwide Flex account debit card. Basically it doesn’t charge you for withdrawals and it gives a competitive exchange rate straight out of the ATM, we never had a problem with it being blocked for “security” reasons.

• The Savings account: It makes sense not to keep all your eggs in one basket and with the wide availability of WiFi and internet cafe’s, internet banking is never far away. Keep the bulk of your dosh is descent savings account and drip feed it across that way if your card is stolen or cloned they wont get much, also you will make much better interest on it and be a lot more conscious of what your spending.

• The Backup: Get a credit card or another debit card, stash it away inside some dirty undies or something just in case you do loose your card (This happened to us and we were stranded for a week in Hanoi while we waited for another).

• The Backup Backup: As with computing it’s always good practice to back up your backups and what we did was stash a $100 bill in a secret pocket on our bags, this way when your being hustled across a border crossing with no ATM for miles your covered… The green backs are a universal communication tool!

Have a look at the Money Saving Expert site, it offers great advice for travelers and was a great resource for us…

Here for your enjoyment is our article “The Long Way Laos” in full, as featured in the online travel magazine HipCompass Escapes. It’s about our 550km motorcycle trip from Vang Vieng through one of the most stunning countries I’ve ever seen, to Luang Probang and back again…

Adventure travel has always been one of those things that seems to be on my list of things I said I’d do tomorrow, its not for lack of trying but more a lack of having the balls to ignore the negative practicalities and get on with it, but thats exactly the attitude you need for it… Less thinking and more doing!

A few months ago while traveling through Laos that was exactly what I did, we were staying in the small and stunning town of Vang Vieng, over shadowed by the towering limestone peaks and blinded by the natural beauty around every corner something in me burst to the surface. Every traveler’s done it – during a long but air-conditioned bus ride to some picture postcard beach, pulled out their adventure travel book from their bag for a spot of inspiration on an otherwise uninspiring journey… Been duly inspired but never taken it further. But this time I was determined to do it, my inspiration came in the form of two monstrous looking dirt bikes, the mental image of the bikes sat inside my head rattling around for a few days as I got down to some serious tubing (if you’ve ever been to Vang Vieng you will know exactly what I mean by that and if not… Go see!) Then out of the blue during a rare moment of sobriety the idea, the adventure was born…
To my left the dirt bikes… To my right cloud-topped limestone peaks leading off northwards over mountains and hills and on to Luang Probang.

A day’s planning had informed me we would be looking at 135 km each way and we had a time frame of two days in which to do it…
Our party consisted of three – myself, my fiancee Georgie and our good friend Toby. Toby owned his own dirt bike back in the UK and was no stranger to off-road biking,  Georgie was a very eager passenger which just left me – with limited motor-biking experience, but what’s an adventure without a challenge? The sun was blazing down on the sleepy streets of Vang Vieng and it seemed to be roasting us alive so we bought a map, saddled up and set off with a roar.

We passed through rice fields and small villages, along winding roads and alongside rivers – all idyllic and stunningly beautiful. We made our way over the hills that surround Vang Vieng and back down the other side, the road was smooth enough and any serious pot holes were scoffed up by our trusty steeds with ease. We found a small cafe down by the river as it meandered between the last of the hills and pulled over for coffee and a refreshing dip – it was stunning! The limestone peaks stretched high into the sky and scratched the bellies of the low lying clouds, completely rural and silent at that moment I realised that was what I left home for. Mixed with the excitement of the journey ahead a sense of sadness washed over me, a sense that all my travels before that had been done the wrong way – if I were on a bus I would’ve breezed past and the river and its beautiful setting would’ve  been nothing more that a fleeting glimpse, all the places I may have missed started racing through my head and all I could do was hope that this time I would make up for it.

The journey wound up mountains and back down again, we stayed a night in a tiny town called Phou Khoun far away from anywhere. We woke at 5 am and drove through clouds and we stopped at countless villages along the way. I could write about the hard bits, about the miles, the hills and sore bums but it doesn’t really seem fair. Not when we passed so many warm and friendly people who desperately wanted to go out of their way to make us feel welcome, who call that terrain home and who’s everyday lives make our adventure seem like a walk in the park. The hardships that made it an “adventure” were also the things that pushed us on when we were exhausted. The funny thing is Vang Vieng to Luang Probang is a road well travelled, except mostly on a bus behind glass, reading books as they go – but we really “traveled” it, we felt every mile and every bump and the people we met and the places we stopped at would’ve been missed if we’d taken the bus. A motorbike has the power to connect you to your environment and you have to work with the road not in spite of it… Laos is the most charming country we’ve ever been to, the people and landscape are truly beautiful and those few days were some of the most interesting, fun, hard and rewarding of our whole travels. What it taught me was – the only thing that ever stands between a person and an adventure is the person themselves.

Below is a full length video of the trip so you can pretend you were right there with us, Mucho Mucho Love… Come Join In.

Click here to view the embedded video.

I am going to be trying something new, while Georgie and I aren’t traveling about I’m going to be dishing out some hot tips about places that fall under that traveler cliche term of “off the beaten track”. I can only speak for myself when I say this but all to often while traveling you will hook up with a few other travelers and they will groan on for far too long about the “real” Thailand or “real” Cambodia (me and Georgie), now for most people, like those on a gap year for instance, they have a timeframe and a list of things that they really want to see. That means that stumbling about in a one horse town with no travel connections or even anyone that speaks the lingo is often a nightmare despite the fact that for those with nothing but time this is what it’s all about. So what I will be doing here is writing about the places and things we found while lost and wasting time… So you don’t have to…

First on the list is my favorite place in the world – Bamboo Island just off Koh Phi Phi:
Phi Phi is a place on most peoples list if they’re planning a trip through Thailand and honestly, although Phi Phi has a lot to offer the reality is that the beach isn’t great and there are far too many boats about to enjoy the water (see Nomadic Matt’s post about Koh Phi Phi). But therein lies the key to Phi Phi, the boats are there for a reason and that reason is the stunning national park islands that surround Phi Phi Don. Most people head out on a boat trip to see Maya Bay where the beach was filmed and to do a spot of snorkeling, often these trips are readily available in most travel agents but the key is to go down to the main pier where the ferry brings you in and deal with the longtail boatmen yourself.

Personally I think Maya bay is a must and so is a short trip around some of the stunning hidden bays filled with glowing emerald water but don’t be tempted to stay a night at Maya bay (camping is offered for one night), instead get the boat driver to drop you on Bamboo island, 45 minutes in the other direction to Maya bay it is a small and stunning island fringed with some of the best coral and marine life I have ever laid goggles on. The rangers will throw a tent up for you and there is a small settlement of fishermen who will be only to happy to sell you the catch of the day and help you cook it up. We have been lucky enough to go there and camp twice, both times we were the only people and by 4 pm the tourist day boats had gone and we had the island to ourselves… Once to watch a storm roll in and once to get hammered with the rangers… Good times.

Have a look at our posts and be inspired:

• Longtail boat fun
• Bamboo Island camping
• Exploring Koh Phi Phi in a boat named “Hollywood”
• Bamboo Island, Koh Phi Phi… Paradie

So there you have it, look out for the “Off the beaten track” catagory and I will keep adding our favorites to it.

Welcome to the new look HAPPYTIMEBLOG, a travel blog of Aaron and Georgie’s wanderings from here to there. If you’ve been here before you will notice a drastic change in its appearance and if you haven’t then hopefully your just dazzled by the prettiness of it – either way I’d love your feedback, comments or links. Please feel free to have a look round and let me know how it went

Thanks again for looking

Aaron

Over the last few months Georgie and I have been super busy with renovating a house, catching up with friends and of course keeping up with other blogs to satisfy our wanderlust… So I’ve put together a short list for you of our favourite blogs so you too can enjoy them and be inspired.

• Nomadic Matt’s travel site:

A great resource for pre-trip planning, on the the road info and inspiration.

• Andy’s Blog-Gone further:

A top quality travel blog about travels in southeast Asia.

• Manilla and Terry:

A superb travel blog about a couple of newlyweds traveling the world, great insight and unique     perspective.

• Hipcompass.com:

A hub for travel bloggers and a great source of info from those that know.

All of the blogs listed here can be found on our links page and more…

The Long Way Laos…A Motorbike adventure with Aaron and Georgie happytime from aaron bradford on Vimeo.

Watch The Long Way Laos now – Our motorbike adventure 550km from Vang Vieng to Luang Probang. The ups and downs through one of the most stunning countries in southeast Asia… As featured in the online travel magazine – Hip Compass Escapes and on our number 1 blog www.happytimeblog.co.uk

Hot off the presses is the new HipCompass Escapes fall edition with our featured article about Adventure travel in Laos… Get it while it’s hot, heres a taster to wet your whistles:

“We passed through rice fields and small villages, along winding roads and alongside rivers – all idyllic and stunningly beautiful. We made our way over the hills that surround Vang Vieng and back down the other side, the road was smooth enough and any serious pot holes were scoffed up by our trusty steeds with ease. We found a small cafe down by the river as it meandered between the last of the hills and pulled over for coffee and a refreshing dip – it was stunning! The limestone peaks stretched high into the sky and scratched the bellies of the low lying clouds, completely rural and silent at that moment I realised that was what I left home for. Mixed with the excitement of the journey ahead a sense of sadness washed over me, a sense that all my travels before that had been done the wrong way – if I were on a bus I would’ve breezed past and the river and its beautiful setting would’ve  been nothing more that a fleeting glimpse, all the places I may have missed started racing through my head and all I could do was hope that this time I would make up for it.”

Enjoy.

August Wallpaper Loas motorbike adventure Vang Vieng to Luang Probang, we rode

530km on our Honda 250 Baja’sfrom Vang Vieng through the mountains and back down

again to Luang Probang… And then did it all again the

next day, seriously one of the best things I have EVER done!!! enjoy