Holiday

A Brahman cow and calf making use of the waste water. We flew into Cambodia to Siem Reap and it poured and poured but we still had a great time I was going to post the photos of Angkor Wat but blogger is playing up so will post them later. The typhoon which hit Manila came on through to Cambodia a lot of the roads in Siem Reap were under water, this is a small hotel.

Life carried on much the same they still rode their bikes and everyone worked so hard at clearing up, even though some of them had flooded houses and nowhere to sleep and they were still smiling.

The water buffalo have very regal faces.

We flew back into Vietnam to Hoian which had had 2 days before water 3 meters deep, some of the hotels had to close due to damage and down by the river it was still wet and muddy, our hotel had some damage to the roof.Health and Safety would have a hissy fit here ,they were repairing the tiles no hard hats no safety harness nothing, but they sure got on with it.

This is My Som a temple complex just outside of Hoian, quite a few of them were deliberately bombed my the Americans, they are made of brick.

This is part of the gateway to a Buddist temple at Cham Island.

We did a cookery course, which was great as we found out the ingredients for the fantastic food we had been eating, it is very fresh and clean tasting they use a lot of coriander and different types of basil.The tutor spoke superb English and we made spring rolls, Wassabi soup, tofu balls,stuffed cabbage rolls ,chicken and shitaki and banana flower salad it was all delicious,I came home with a suitcase full of dried shitaki, and a great gadget for doing julienne strips.

We even managed to make tomato roses.

We went on a sailing trip for 2 nights around Halong bay, on a boat like the one below.The bay has masses of small outcrops of rock, some of these are small some have caves which you can kayak into [you get to realise your age getting in and out of a kayak!] and some have fantastic grotto`s with stalactites.

People live on floating villages the photo below is of the school

and the village

One of the grotto's from the sea.

The islands are stunning but it was always misty and my camera is only a basic one so you do not see the masses of islands disappearing into the distance,it would make a great textile piece with organza.