I left off yesterday by telling you how My wife and I were skulking around in the bushes like thieves in the night as our ‘tour guide’ tried to find a way past the security guard outside De Tian waterfalls.

Dry Season View Of De Tian Waterfall With Vietnam In The Background

As you can imagine I was a little upset by the rapid, unexpected turn of events. I don’t mind saving money but I think this was taking things a little too far.

What’s more I couldn’t voice my opinion because we had to hide from the security guard!

After about 10 mins of this skulking around our guide had a brainwave!

He said we’d have to take to the water and wade upstream through the river to get past the offending security guard.

Even Lily, hell-bent as she was upon saving money, baulked at this idea for a while.

Beautiful Lily

But after weighing up the pros and cons of spending an extra Y100 to get in, she soon gave in to the thrifty side of her nature and in no time at all was taking her shoes off alongside the guide.

I had no choice but to reluctantly follow suit, I’d already lost face amongst the two ‘locals’ by being the only person to fall over (twice at that) amongst the three of us and this despite me being the biggest and strongest of us all!

Fortunately I had on sandals and shorts so had no need to worry about getting wet, all I had to do was transfer my cellphone to my bag and keep the bag clear of the water, also as the tallest of the three I had certain advantages and soon regained my face in their eyes by hardly getting wet – Hah!

We silently ‘plunged’ into the river and started wading carefully upstream, me not to lose face by falling over again and to make sure our weekend bag didn’t get wet. The water was just below waste deep for me but for Lily and the guide it was considerabley deeper.

At one point we had to go round a concrete culvert that had some deeper water next to it and Lily was soon in trouble. She was left hanging on to the culvert by her fingertips as her feet floated aimlessly in the river – nowhere near touching the bottom – unable to go any further.

I nust admit to having a little snigger to myself as I carefully placed my bag on dry ground overhead before helping her around the culvert.

Soon though, we were past the offensive guard and ready to scramble up through the jungle on the river banks into the waterfall area.

Peaceful Pagoda

Being taller I’d had few problems with the river traversal and was quite dry, Lily and the guide however were soaked almost from head to toe!

Lily wasn’t quite finished yet though…

No! She had a few strong words with the guide complaining about his efforts so far and the fact that he’d made promises that he hadn’t lived up to, she was dripping wet and in no mood to compromise…

Reluctantly the guide agreed to halve his fee of Y20 and the fact of saving more money soon had Lily in a better mood.

We quickly scrambled up the banks and headed straight for the nearest toilet where Lily was able to change into dry clothes.

De Tian waterfalls are really quite spectacular, the scenary is stunning. Lush green tropical vegetation is eveywhere, a crystal clear river reflecting the green of the vegetation and the blue of the sky flowing over a wide horshoe arc.

We were a little unfortunate that we visited in the dry season but despite this I took many pictures and revelled in the atmospheric scenary.

Quite A Drop

Our adventure didn’t finish there though.

After several hours wandering around drinking in the atmosphere it was time to leave and find a hotel, so we phoned our guide to come and take us back to the nearest town where we soon located a clean, cheap hotel – only Y60 a night for a room.

We’d looked at others in the little Town – more of a village really – and the palce we chose was the best of the bunch.

There was a small price to pay for this ‘luxury’ however and that was that the hotel was located right next to the market.

Not a problem I hear you say. Well the particular part of the market we were next to was the slaughterhouse for the pigs and I can tell you that hearing the screaming of pigs being killed at 4am is not the nicest of dawn choruses. Poor animals, they really did squeal.

I’m a vegetarian and that’s a sound that will stay with me forever!

All in all quite an adventure.

My friend I hope you enjoyed hearing it as much as I enjoyed sharing it with you. I’ll share some more travellers tales with you in future posts.

All the best,

Stuart.

Generate Outrageous Wealth Even While You Sleep – Find Out How Right Now
http://howtowritekickbuttcopy.com/Generate.html

Hi there,

I’d like to share this true story with you, sorry it’s a little long but I’m sure you’ll enjoy it!

When I was living in the South of China my wife and I decided to go on holiday to a local beauty spot, but the actual experience was a little more than I bargained for…

My wife is a very beautiful Chin*ese lady, but as much as I love Lily there is a side to her character that, as a westerner, is very difficult for me to adjust to, and does cause a few arguments now and then.

You see, embedded deep into her phsyche is the notion that she has to save the smallest amount of money at every opportunity. You only have to visit any market or shop and witness the frenetic bargaining that takes place just to save a few cents to see what I mean.

This is an admirable trait, I mean who doesn’t want to save money? But…

Sometimes I think Lily takes it a little too far.

However, back to our holiday…

We decided to travel to a local beauty spot, about three hours away, one recent weekend. The place is called De Tian (pronounced Der T N) waterfall and is situated on the Chinese/Vietnamese border.

It is a very beautiful waterfall but when Lily made enquiries about the price she was aghast. “What Y80 per person just to go in and see a waterfall?” she nearly shouted down the phone!

In dollar terms Y80 is about $10 – not that much you may think – but in local terms it’s a lot. For example you can buy 50kg of fresh vegetables for that price, that’s right 50kg!

Well I can tell you it didn’t take her long to start scheming and she was soon on the Internet making up a money saving plan!

As all the arrangements were done in the local dialects which I do not understand I wasn’t fully aware what I was letting myself in for.

Anyway, off we trundled, by bus and three wheel trike (public transport is wonderfully fast, reliable and cheap here) duly arriving at the waterfall site in about three hours.

The last leg of the journey was by trike and along the way we’d picked up a passenger whom I thought was a friend of the driver coming along for the ride as sometimes happens…

But no, this was our guide as I found out when we stopped in the middle of nowhere and Lily said it’s time to get off.

Our guide duly disappeared into the nearest clump of bushes and was off like a scolded cat with hardly a word. Lily too shot off after him and called for me to follow.

A little confused about the sudden turn of events I obediantly followed and was soon scrambling through ankle deep mud trying to find a path through the jungle on the river banks.

My friend imagine for a second that you have to half run along slippy, growth entangled river banks that angle down towards the river at about 60 degrees, with a carry bag in your hands containing all your kit for a nice weekend away. And this in an ambient air temperature in excess of 35 degrees centigrade with the humidty nearing 100% – is this your idea of fun?

I was getting a little miffed, especially as I slipped onto my backside in the mud a couple of times, but…

All of a sudden I caught up with the two ‘bush rats’ and my protestations about the ‘jungle scramble’ were immediately hushed into silence as they urgently whispered “Quiet!” to me.

We’d reached the edge of the falls and the road ahead was blocked by a security guard.

So, there we were skulking about in the bushes like thieves in the night trying to find a way in to the falls…

Find out whether we managed to get past the secutity guard or whether we were arrested, look out for part 2 later.

All the best,

Stuart.

Generate Outrageous Wealth Even While You Sleep – Find Out How Right Now
http://howtowritekickbuttcopy.com/Generate.html