Sapa - Sun 16/05 - Fri 21/05

Sapa… As I sit here on the third floor balcony of our hotel room overlooking the South China Sea, the rugged mountains and villages of the Sapa region seem a long way away. Due to computer and technical problems we have been unable to keep the blog as up to date as we would like. However Sapa is a place worth remembering and the scenery and landscapes up there are some of the most beautiful we have encountered so far on this trip.

It turned out to be a great time to visit Sapa as it is summer here in Vietnam and the mountains were warm and sunny during the day and refreshingly cool at night. Cool weather is not something we have had a great deal of on our trip and the crisp alpine climate turned out to be a welcome respite from the sultry humidity of Hanoi and the coast. Our plan was to hire a bike at Lao Cai which is where the train from Hanoi terminates and it’s right across a short river bridge from China. From here we would go to Sapa which is about 35km straight up the side of a very large mountain pass and this is exactly what we did. We hired a sweet bike in Lao Cai and after a few test drives, so I could get used to riding a ‘real’ motorbike for once rather than a scooter, we strapped our gear on the back and set out up the pass. It is a picturesque ride up to Sapa from Lao Cai but like most in Vietnam, it’s the sort of road where you have to keep your wits about you. Trucks and buses go hurtling up and down the pass with no regard for sticking to their own side of the road and we turned more than one corner only to come face to face with a group of horses or water buffalo meandering all over the road with no person looking after them in sight.

Sapa itself is a reasonable sized town that is a popular destination for foreign and local tourists who come here to escape the heat of the rest of Vietnam. The town has one defining feature other than its alpine location and that is the presence of the ‘minority’ or hilltribe people. There are numerous different ethnic minority groups here but most people know them as ‘H’mong’ people, but in truth only a small percentage are actually H’mong. They are different from the Vietnamese as they arrived from China a couple hundred years ago and have different cultural practices such as language and, most obviously, dress. The streets are filled with H’mong women dressed in their traditional clothing which includes flowery garments and head dress.

Although they are awesome to look at in their unique clothing they are actually extremely canny and persistent salespeople who see tourists as one of their main sources of income. Many of these women walk up to 15-20km every day to sell their supposedly handmade garments in Sapa. What this means for visitors is that groups of up to ten women and girls are waiting outside your hotel for you to walk out in order for them to then begin trying to sell you something. They are extremely persistent and will follow you wherever you happen to be going, asking you all the stock standard questions they know by rote such as, ‘where are you from?’, ‘you buy something from me?’ and they absolutely refuse to take no for an answer.

This can get a bit much as sometimes you just want to go out to the shop or get something to eat and you have literally a whole gaggle of women bombarding you with questions and pressuring you to buy something. If you say no enough times then they will try to get you to agree to buy something later, tomorrow or next week, whenever! My patience was sorely tested to say the least but Kate being the pillar of patience she is was able to ignore their constant questions and badgering with good humour and a smile, I honestly don’t know how she does it!

One of these particular ladies we met offered to take us to her village the following day to see how they live and have lunch. Her village was about a 10km walk down the valley and we agreed to go to see how the locals really live. Our guide, ‘Cho-cho’, was a bit of a character and as promised the next morning she was waiting outside our hotel to lead us on our long march. The valley itself is a photographer’s dream and Cho-cho had a reasonably good command of English so we passed the time chatting and taking in the awesome scenery.

Before we left Sapa we picked up a chicken from the market for lunch and a cabbage to wash it down with as this was our end of the bargain for her taking us to the village. The walk was pretty easy going downhill and we passed through a couple of other minority villages on the way where the locals come out and once again try to get you to buy things from them. It never ends honestly! I actually got nipped by a dog walking through one of these villages but as I haven’t developed rabies yet I’m assuming it was a ‘clean’ dog, well, about as clean as the dogs over here get!

Once we arrived at Cho-cho’s village of ‘Tevan’ we had a chance to see what life in a minority village is all about. And what it’s all about of course is rice! What else? Well, at least, rice production. There is nothing, and I mean nothing, you can tell the locals about growing rice, they know it all! The enormous valley leading down from Sapa through Cho-cho’s village and beyond is one huge rice terrace. They are so skilled at terracing hillsides here that in some places the rice paddies rise all the way to the summit of the mountains, literally. Near vertical hillsides are no match for the locals and their rice planting endeavours and almost every aspect of rice growing is done by hand. No fancy farm machinery here just a lot of well loved water buffalo, about the most basic plough you can imagine and a whole heap of elbow-grease.

Cho-cho’s family was no different and of about the ten people or so that lived in her wooden, earthen floored shack only her, her daughter and her husband had time to spare to enjoy lunch with us two. Although we didn’t have to pay for anything other than lunch in order for Cho-cho to take us to her village the ‘protocol’ is that we should also buy some of her traditional hand-made garments as a gesture of goodwill. Cho-cho’s nine year old daughter turned out to be a real hard business woman (surprise surprise!) who fleeced me like a pro. Fair dues but now my nieces all have some traditional H’mong bags on the way to them, girls if you’re reading this, I’m too cheap to pay for airmail so they should be there in a couple months!

After lunch was over and the chicken was all gone it was time to pull up stumps and begin our trek back to Sapa. The only problem with walking ten kilometers into a remote village is that you have to walk ten kilometers back! And to top it off we had walked down the valley earlier so now we had to do the ten k’s back uphill. Boo-hoo I hear you sniffle, but you should see the ‘hills’ here! Did I mention Sapa is towered over my Mt Fansipan, the tallest mountain in Vietnam?? No? Well it is, and that means our little ten k trek was going to be a bit tougher than your average Sunday arvo stroll. No matter, we did it and we refused all offers from the guys whizzing past us on motorbikes to give us a ride back to Sapa, for a small fee, and by God we made it. It was more walking than I’ve done in one day for probably, I don’t know, 20 years!! But all in all it was a great day and Cho-cho was a gracious host who taught us a lot about how locals really live here in the remote mountainous region of North Western Vietnam.


As for the rest of our time in Sapa did I mention we had a sweet bike?? Well we did and our days were spent blazing through the high mountains dodging trucks and buffaloes and taking in the spectacular scenery. On one day trip we did a loop up to a remote Chinese border post via another breath-takingly spectacular mountain pass and a buttock shattering twelve km dirt road that threatened to shake our bike to pieces and strip the tyres right off of her. We finally made it to the border crossing and on finding the barrier was up thought we’d just have a little drive down and see what we could see. As we could see a river below us with China obviously on the other side I thought no one would mind if we just cruised up and took a look. Wrong! What seemed to be a deserted border outpost turned out to be anything but, and it appears we woke the guard on duty just out of sight in his barrack. His screams and rants convinced us that maybe just sneaking a bit of a look over the border might not be such a good idea so it was time to turn around and high tail it out of there rather than risk an ‘international incident’.

We blazed up day after day on the bike and explored the main roads and back tracks of the Sapa region. This was hell fun and the Tom Tin pass was especially awesome as the temperature rises by about ten degrees once you’re away from the Sapa side and the ride down the pass is amazing. The road however was anything but amazing and about twenty km’s of slips, gravel and continuous road works made for a challenging but rewarding ride. After a week or so of these kinds of shenanigans it was time to head to another mountain town about 100km’s away for their famous Sunday market where you can drink corn hooch with the locals and buy a fine pig or water buffalo if you’re so inclined. This place sounded pretty sweet and after the tourist badgering streets of Sapa we were both looking forward to it.

Sapa had proved to be an interesting place. The local hilltribe people are aesthetically beautiful and they inhabit an extraordinary part of the world. The only drawback being the way they hassle you constantly to buy things every time you go outside, but away from the town itself this really is a special region. Bac Ha sounded like it would be more chilled but still very interesting as it is the home of the ‘Flower H’mong’ people whose traditional dress is even more colourful than the groups in Sapa. But more about that next time. ‘Til then.



View of Sapa.

View of Sapa from our hotel balcony.

Some tourists being attacked by the local minority people.

Our walk to Ta Van village with Cho-Cho.
Walk to Ta Van village.
Two pals walking along the dirt track.

These cute group of kids asked for a dollar once I had taken the photo.

Water buffalo having a soak in the mud pool.

The rice terraces and the water buffalo.

Huts in Ta Van village. In Ta Van village there are 300 huts which house 3000 people - that is an average of 10 people per hut!

Buffalo ploughing the rice field. The man is in traditional gears which are black jacket and pants. Most of the clothes are dark coloured. If you wear white, you are considered a lazy person so no one wears white here and no wonder as it would be really hard to keep clean!!

View of the hills, huts and rice terraces.

This is the path through the Ta Van village.

Rice terraces. The farmers were preparing the fields to plant rice for the next rice season so there were very few terraces which were lush green. Growing the rice first starts with a few terraces that are packed with rice seedlings and once the seedlings are big enough then the farmers replant them in the the rest of the terraces.

Here they are getting the terraces ready for planting - they are chipping away the weeds from the terrace walls. We didn't find out the reason for this but i am sure there is one - maybe so that the weeds don't soak up all the water??

Tim and Cho-Cho. In the background you can see the mountains we had to walk down to Cho-Cho's village!

A girl we meet on the way to Ta Van village. I took a photo of her and showed her and all along she just gave me this same expression!

Lunch with Cho-Cho's family.

Tim, Cho-Cho and her daughter in front of their hut. Their hut had a hard, dirt floor with at the most three rooms. Cho-Cho's daughter was 12 years old and was on school holidays so she was in Sapa everyday trying to sell her trinkets to all the tourists. Cho-cho said that she does the 10km walk with tourists to her house at least 3 times a week. Her and a few others from her village rent a room in Sapa so that they don't have to walk back to their village every evening.

Tim and Cho-cho's daughter negotiating on the price of bags.

View from the hut onto the family's rice terraces.

Tim drinking tea. For lunch we had steamed chicken (which we bought from the markets in Sapa) and cabbage soup with rice which was kindly cooked by Cho-Cho's husband.

Our long walk back to Sapa.

A man from one of the minority villages looking over the view of the valley.

Walking along the rice terrace walls. You had to be careful not to slip into the muddy water!

Rice terraces. The green terraces are the seedlings being grown for the next crop of rice.

Ride 1: Ride to Sapa
On the 30km, 1000m rise ride from Lao Cai to Sapa we saw some impressive sites. Here are just a few!

The farmers do not use fence here so the animals always wander along the road.

Minority village hut and rice terraces.

Rice terraces.

More rice terraces.

Tim and the beasty bike. We had to make numerous stop because of course, the view but also because our bums would start to get numb!

Ride 2: Ride to no where. We rode for about 30kms which took about 3 hours as the highway was being tar sealed. We ended up going no where but we saw some pretty cool countryside.

Traffic along the highway!

Another view of some awesome mountains.

Another view of the awesome mountains and countryside.

Water fall. This was the best waterfall we have seen so far in SE Asia - very little rubbish and it actually has water in the waterfall!

Ride 3: 100km round trip from Sapa to Ban Vuoc (China border crossing) to Lao Cai (main Chinese boarder crossing) to Sapa.

A drink stop after a 12km, 1.5 hour journey along a very dusty road (which was more like a track)! It was a relief to get off the dusty track and onto the road again!!

Along the road was heaps of green fields filled with rice. We dropped maybe 1000m or so and the weather was a lot hotter compared to Sapa. Sapa on average was around 25 degrees whereas these planes were probably in the 30 degrees.

The dusty road. In our tourist map it said that this road was a main road so we assumed it would be tar sealed - it was a main road as there was a lot of traffic but far from sealed!! The locals could hoon along this road but we could only go 5kms a hour!

Another view of the road.

Tim and the view of Ban Xeo. This was the start of the dusty 9km trek. You can vaguely see the road in the back ground wrapping around the mountains just left of Tim's head.

Some fat pigs and her piglets!

Me and the beasty bike. No I did not actually ride this!

Vietnam, Ha Long Bay - Sat 8th May - Sun 9th May

Ha Long Bay....Although we did actually fly into Hanoi and spent a couple nights there with Kate's friends I have decided to deal with Ha Long separately. This is due to the fact that we would come and go from Hanoi at least once more so I will deal with Hanoi as one larger post in the future. So, back to Ha Long Bay.

We had decided to book a two night/one day cruise around the islands of Ha Long Bay. In all I think there are about one thousand six hundred islands altogether in the archipelago. The islands themselves rise out of the sea forming sheer vertical cliffs with dense bush covered jagged hills in between. Some are very small and uninhabitable while others are very big, such as Cat Ba Island are home to several thousand residents. When you see the islands lined up in the distance they remind you of a mouth full of broken teeth or a Jack-O-Lantern and they are certainly a very imposing and impressive sight. Our overnight cruise was to take us through a section of the islands with a few stop offs along the way at some enormous caves and one of the many floating villages where the local fishing people live.

The cruise started pretty normally and the boat looked like a sea-worthy vessel which is always nice in this part of the world. It was equipped with a full bar and restaurant, a top sun deck with sunlounges and tidy, comfortable rooms. Each room had a window opening out onto the water and an ensuite so I was more than happy with our lodgings. Our first afternoon consisted of cruising through the islands, drinking a few beers, chilling out and admiring the stunning scenery. We stopped at a floating village to take a bit of a look and these things really are floating villages. People live their whole lives out here with their families, they even have dogs running around their pontoons and a floating school! The fishing must be pretty good as there are alot of villages. When the boat stops lots of locals paddle their boats over filled to the brim with fruit, vegetables, souvenirs and even cold beer! The knack of the locals for spotting a business opportunity, even whilst floating at sea, is truly remarkable. God knows how they get fresh pineapples out here but they were really good! We jumped in a smaller boat with a local guy to go for a short trip through a hole in a cliff face that leads into a kind of hidden bay within the island that is surrounded on all sides by cliffs. Pretty awesome stuff. Once back on our main boat we settled in for an afternoon and evening of cruising through these spectacular islands. There are postcard worthy photo opportunities in literally every direction and we were all certainly enjoying it.

Some people hopped off at Cat Ba Island and more hopped on. As we were only doing the one night cruise we didn't get a chance to stop here but no matter, we were more than happy with what we did see. That night was spent making new friends and playing 'arsehole'(the best card game in the world). The English lady who I taught how to play proceeded to whip everyone's butts at it and I vowed never to teach anyone arsehole again!

We moored in a beautiful bay overnight and when morning broke it was time to go kayaking around the nearby islands - at 5:30 am!! Pretty damn early to be kayaking if you ask me but in Vietnam it's sometimes better not to bother asking why and just get on with it. Only a few hardy souls made it into the kayaks at this time but I'm pleased to say Kate and I were among them - Jake and Amanda where were you?! The kayaking itself was good but I wasn't in the mood for too much physical activity at that time of the morning so it was a pretty sedate paddle around a couple of the nearest islands.

After breakfast we managed to talk the tour guide into letting us jump from the top deck of the boat. This vessel was made for jumping from and it was alot of fun jumping and diving from the top railing into the water. Now as beautiful as Ha Long Bay is the water is actually pretty skanky. Well think about it. What do you think the toilet looks like in a floating village?? It looks like a bloke dangling his bum over the side of his house's pontoon and doing his business that's what it looks like! Throw in all the rubbish from the various boats, not to mention the diesel etc and you've got some preety toxic water quality. The temptation to dive off the 4 metre or so high top deck of the boat was too great though and a few of us picked a relatively scunge free patch of water in which to land in. Great fun.

After we had tired of jumping into other people's filth it was time to head back to the mainland. The scenery was unreal and no amount of my prattling on will do it justice so I'll leave that to the photographs. Our adventures hadn't finished there as we were back in Ha Long city by about 10:30 am and we weren't due back in Hanoi until 4:30 at the earliest. It's only a three hour drive so what to do?? I should have guessed. Our trusty guide led us to a 'Bia Hoi' across the road from the wharf where we docked. Bia Hoi is Vietnamese for 'bloooody cheap beer mate!'. About 25 cents will get you a mug just short of a pint of the finest local brew. We had time to kill and our guide looked pretty keen on getting hammered before his next tour group left from the dock in an hour or so's time. Before you knew it the Bia Hoi was flowing and everyone was having a great time. When it came time to leave our tour guide handed us over to another tour guide for the drive back to Hanoi and he turned out to be a lot less good humoured than our previous guide.

It's all well and good to feed your guests cheap beer like it's going out of fashion but it's another thing altogether when you're expected to pile back onto a bus with no toilet for the trip home. Fella's you know what I'm talking about. Alright so Jake probably didn't need to go buy another six pack for the ride home, but when you're having fun you kind of forget about these things. After about two hours on the bus, a few more cans and many rounds of cards I was dead set bursting for a wee. No big deal I thought, ask the tour bloke if we can stop and I'll be back on the bus in no time. Wrong!!

This is Vietnam and I learned that if there's one thing Vietnamese bus drivers won't do it's pull the bus over so some bloke can take a leak. The tour guide was extremely rude when he ordered me back to my seat saying 'the driver won't stop! We stop in ten minutes!! Back to your seat!'. Well that might be alright but I didn't think I was going to make ten minutes as 'the key was already in the lock' as they say. Besides ten minutes in Vietnam might be ten minutes or it might be an hour and I couldn't wait for either.

After much strain back at my seat I again approached the tour bloke with this. 'Look mate, I gotta pee real bad, either he stops or I'm going right here on the floor!' It was that bad. To my amazement he very angrily replied 'Go on the floor then, go on the driver's feet! I don't care! The bus is stopping in ten minutes! Get back to your seat!'. Well I wouldn't have told him if I wasn't serious and I don't like people being rude to me so I found the emergency opening switch for the door, opened it and started peeing out as we were going along! As I felt the guy had been such a dick and all this could have been avoided I decided to sing our beloved national anthem 'God of Nations' whilst peeing onto the roadside as it whizzed by.

The rest of the bus was now very much awake wondering just what the hell was going on here, cars and trucks were backing up behind us as the driver slowed and still God of Nations rang out even louder! I thought it was a proud day as I'd stuck one up the bus driver but he responded by stopping the bus abruptly and pushing me from behind mid-pee out the door onto the hard shoulder. He was so angry all set to take off and I can honestly say by that stage I wouldn't of cared if he had, but some quick talking by the girls saw him park a little way up the road and begrudgingly open the door for me to get back on. But he had to wait until I was finished first.

I took pains to explain to the other passengers on the bus what had happened and that I didn't fancy going on the bus like the driver had said and I apologised for any offence I may have caused. They didn't seem to mind, in fact one old Vietnamese couple had just about fell off their seats laughing as the entire episode had unfolded. The guide was still shitty but he explained later that he couldn't do anything as the driver didn't want to stop so that was that. From here to Hanoi there were no more mishaps but as I got off the bus as we arrived I gave the driver a big thumbs up and he cursed me out appropriately. I walked away happy.

So anyway now we were back in Hanoi for at least a week while our application for an extension to our Visa'a was processed. Hanoi is one grimy, noisy city. But more about that next time. 'Til then.


Our guide (in white stripy shirt), Jake and Tim, and a random person at the bia hoi.



Tim drinking at the bia hoi.



Amanda, Tim and Jake in front of our junk boat.



A junk boat.



Tim chilling out on the boat.



Tim jumping off the boat into the dirty water - you would often see rubbish floating past the boat. The rubbish probably comes from the nearby floating villages.



Tim again.



Some of the magnificant Ha Long islands.


Floating village house. People in these villages spend their entire life on the sea.



We paid 40,000VND ($2) to ride on a boat through a cave into a big 'lake' (it can't be a lake as it's sea water but this is how our guide described it) that's surrounded by these magnificant cliffs/island. I am sure that it has a technical name but I don't know it.



Another view of the 'lake'.



These ladies float around on these boats trying to sell you food. They are kind of like a floating market.



Another picture of the floating markets.



In this floating village it has a school - it's the blue building.


Floating village.



Floating village.


On the first day we stopped at this large cave. It was impressive but they have put heaps of coloured lights inside the cave making it look kind of daggy.



Another view of the caves.

China Beach, Hoa's place - Tues 4th May - Thurs 6th May

China Beach...Alrighty, so China Beach is the name given to the spot on the beach where we were going to stay even though the whole 30km beach is called China Beach, confused? Well I was, but the jist of it is we were staying at Hoa's place on China Beach about 6km's from the medium size city of Da Nang. Hoa's place is a kind of family run affair similar to Jungle Beach (see earlier posts) but about one third of the price. Hoa, the owner was a bit of a character but he was really nice and wanted all his guests to feel at home. I thoroughly recommend staying here as it's right on the beach and very well run. You can get food made at any time, the prices are very reasonable and at 7pm every night all the guests sit down to a meal together where you eat until you're full for about $2.50. Noice.

If you do plan on getting there if you're ever in Vietnam you might want to get a wriggle on as the government is slowly but surely buying up all the land along the beach in order to build yet more resorts. Hoa explained this to us one day whereby he said the government man came to see him and said 'we want to buy your land'. Hoa evidently said 'Man, you're crazy, get off of my land!'. The government man replied 'I may be crazy but with one stroke of my pen I can take all your land'. This is the reality in Vietnam. If the government wants something they'll come and ask once nicely. After that they'll take it anyway and give you a pittance for it in return as compensation. Hoa was obviously pretty upset about all this but he knows that it's only a matter of time before they'll come and take away everything he has spent the last 15 years building up. Such is life here.

As for the beach itself it was pretty damn good. White sand, warm water and surf! I was out there pretty much every morning and had a great time once again getting back into the water and then coming in hungry as to a massive double cheese and bacon burger. I was pretty content here to say the least. The others divided their time between sun-bathing, reading books and I don't know what else as I was pretty much always in the surf.

The highlight for me though came when Jake and I made a short trip up the beach to Montogomerie Links golf course. Golf is definitely a rich man's game in Asia and neither Jake or I were going to part with nearly a million Dong (about $50 AUD) for nine holes of golf, plus club hire, plus caddy and so on. They even expected you to wear a collared shirt! I don't even have one of those with me so to hell with that. What they did have at this golf course however was easily the best driving range I've ever seen. For 50 000 Dong (about $2.50 AUD) you could swing until your arms fell off thanks to their unlimited ball promotional offer. We were rapt. The driving range had bunkers, greens and flags so you could alternate between chipping and driving - this place was awesome! They had full table service which means you could have food and, most importantly, beers brought to you where you were teeing off from. Needless to say Jake and I were in heaven. I have to mention that I broke Jake's heart and won a few beers in the process when we had a bet on who could chip the ball into a hole about 10 yards in front of us. I managed to get three balls in there together and I must have used up all the golfing good luck I'm likely to get for the next few years. Jake couldn't believe it, neither could I and we were both falling about the place pissing ourselves. It was a fantastic afternoon.

We arrived back to Hoa's place after golf to find Hoa fall down drunk on God knows what. It was only about 4pm but he was completely off chops. As we had had a few at the course we were in pretty good spirits ourselves but Hoa was in a league of his own. He started by greeting me with "hey Tiiiiimmmm, F**k you man! Ha ha haaaaaaa...' I was cracking up and after he nearly mangled my wrist trying to give me a big bro hand shake and hugging me he carried on by swearing at, and generally good-naturedly abusing all his other guests, one by one. He certainly didn't mean any harm and we were all losing it as his wife tut-tutted on the sidelines, giving him disapproving looks and apologising to us.

After we had a few beers with him, his wife spat the dummy and demanded he take her home. I said "I hope you're driving!" to his wife and Hoa just laughed and said something along the lines of "that'll be the day!". Within minutes they were both on his scooter zig-zagging up the driveway at a decent clip with his wife hanging on for dear life on the back. Hilarious! The Vietnamese don't care how much they've had to drink when it comes to getting home and Hoa isn't the first completely wasted person we have seen trying to control their scooter on the road. Hoa must've done okay as he turned up bright eyed and bushy tailed the next day and I honestly don't think he even remembered what had happened. What a champ!

On our final morning the others went to visit nearby Marble Mountain which is a short walk from Hoa's. I missed this one as I was in the surf but Marble Mountain is basically a limestone (I think!) hill sticking out of the ground and full of Buddhist shrines and pagodas. It's pretty impressive and makes for a great backdrop as you look from the surf towards land. It's pretty tall but as I wasn't there I don't know anything else about it but I know it made for some great photographs. Thanks Kate. That's about it for Hoa's place, it was now time to jump on a plane at nearby Da Nang and jet up to the capital Hanoi.

Now I heard that if you thought the traffic was crazy in Saigon just wait until you get to Hanoi! That thought didn't exactly please me very much but Hanoi promised something that we haven't had for a long time - friends to stay with! Our accomodation was sorted thanks to Kate having good friends in Hanoi so we would actually get the luxury of sitting in a house, a fridge to put things in and all sorts of other stuff that we would normally take for granted. We were also planning to visit that freak of mother nature known as Ha Long Bay and it's other worldly type islands that are in the process of being credited as one of the 'wonders of the world'. But more about that next time. 'Til then.


View of China beach from Marble Mountain. You can clearly see where the land has been cleared for resorts. Hoas is to the right of the cleared area.


Another view of China beach.


View of buildings (and I think the remains of a fishing village) from Marble Mountain.



A large pagoda in Marble Mountain.



All of the Buddhas are hidden inside numerous caves all over the mountain and the mountain is made of marble, hence the name Marble Mountain. Here is a picture of one of the many Buddhas - this is the female buddha.



Some cheerful nuns on Marble Mountain.