Smoke, ganja, ganja, smoke?

A common problem you have to contend with when traveling is touts trying to sell you stuff such as drugs, hotel rooms, taxis or asking to take you to their "friends" shop or to a market. In Asia most of these touts seem to assume that every western tourist wants to buy drugs and as a result when you are in the main tourist areas you are constantly harassed by them.


In Shanghai when walking down the main tourist shopping street guys will walk along side you whispering "marijuana, cocaine". In Thailand things are a little different due to their strict approach to drug dealing and drug possession. Drugs are still offered to tourists but those offering them are quite discrete. Next you have Cambodia where restaurants will have "happy" items on the menu, for example you can order a regular pizza or a "happy" pizza. Marijuana is illegal in Cambodia yet it is sold in many restaurants and bars. The owners pay bribes to the local police and they are left alone.
Vietnam is a little more discrete than Cambodia but yet the moto taxi drivers ask if you want a taxi when you refuse their next question is if you want Marijuana. Malaysia is a little different, when you arrive in the airport you see a big sign saying "Drug possession is punishable by death".


Finally Dali in the Yunnan province in China is different, you are regularly offered drugs but they are far from your stereotypical drug dealer. When you walk around the old town you are constantly approached by elderly ladies who say "Smoke, ganja, ganja, smoke?". They are quite aggressive, they will follow you down the street repeating it over and over again and they do this everytime they see you. I was in Dali for almost two weeks and it was took until the second week for them to recognise me and to realise that I wasn't interested. I was not brave enough to take a picture of them when they were following me but I got a photo of them walking away.

Not your typical drug dealer

Dinner is lost in translation

Here are some menus that I came across during my travels in Vietnam.

Half done beef a beef balls

Fried rice with variaties

If you are feeling unwell they have nurses on hand

I had previously ate crab in tamarind sauce and shrimp with tamarind sauce but I decided to give the tamarind sauce dish a miss in this restaurant. Take a look at the 4th item on the menu below.

Finger Nail with Tamarind Sauce

You want bike? you rent mine.

After getting stuck in Saigon for longer than planed I eventually made it to Mui Ne. The tet tax continued and we struggled to get accommodation. The day after we got there we decided we'd hire some motorbikes but the tet tax was out in full force and the price was double because it was tet.

We tried a few different places and they had all doubled their price, they all had lots of motorbikes available for rent so its not like there was a big demand for them. 

Finally after hearing that yet again the price was double due to tet we decided we wouldn't bother but as we walked back to the street one of the moto taxis was there. He had listened to our full conversation and rather than his normal "you want moto" he said "You want bike? you rent mine". We talked for a bit and agreed on a price that was a few dollars less that what the shops wanted. His bike was new unlike the  old bikes the bike hire place had. He called his friend who arrived on another bike which my 2 friends hired. They gave us their helmets and then rang another friend who arrived and give us another helmet (3 of us and 2 bikes). We agreed to meet them in the same place the following day at the same time to return the bikes. We paid them and the 3 of them left smiling all on the one bike and no one wearning a helmet.

We spent the day riding around Mui Ne visiting the sand dunes, sandboarding and stopping at some fishing villages.

Fishing village near Mui Ne

Entrance to sand dunes

Sand dunes close up!

More sand dunes

Cambodia to Vietnam on the Mekong

I took a bus from Phnom Penh to Neak Luong and then a slow boat from there to the border with Vietnam. This border crossing was considerably smoother than the Thailand/Cambodia border crossing at Poi Pet. No bribes were needed this time around.

Cambodia from the Mekong

Cambodia - Vietnam Border on the Mekong

Once we were through the border we changed boat and continued to Chau Doc. We visited some floating villages on the way. There were not only people living on the house boats but they had animals too. We passed one boat where they were raising pigs and most of the boats had dogs. Everyone was busy preparing for the Chinese New Year known as Tet in Vietnam.

Dog in the floating village

Flowers for Tet

After a night in Chau Doc we took another boat to visit some of the floating markets in the mekong delta and finally finishing up in Can Tho.

Floating Market

Can Tho