Same same, but different!

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Greetings from Vietnam/Hong Kong


Well, we met up with our new tour people in Saigon, 6 of the original crew (us, Violet & Jade and the two Americans, Collette & Pierce) plus 3 newies. Alison, (30ish?) from Adelaide (another bloody Australian!), Dave (45-50?) from Somewhere in Oz and Anneke from guess where - AUSTRALIA!! Boy, do they like to travel down under. I think the flight time is only 7 hrs though, from Oz to SE Asia.
We have yet to discover where Dave is from, as he is a man of few words, most of which are usually mumbled. And he looks like Roy from Corrie, the one married to the sex change person. He seems ok, but it's hard to tell. Anneke is 19, dizzy and quite fun, but Alison is the real gem so far. She told me basically that Adelaide is the posh bit of Australia, so, me being me, joked and said 'surely there aren't any posh bits in Australia?!' Cue much looking down her nose at me, she couldn't tell if I was being serious!! I then told her I liked travelling, as you end up wth invites to far off places to meet up with people again, who will hopefully show you their town, and maybe even feed you. Her response? 'I hope you don't come to Adelaide,' closely followed up by me with 'Nah, we're only going to the big, interesting places.' Ouch! Going to have to work on Mrs Icy-Pants methinks!!!!! Ness, if you're reading this, you're by far and away the nicest Aussie we've met....so far. (Oh, and of course Megs too).

We were sad to say goodbye to Ainsley, the tour leader we'd had in Cambodia. He only does the first 9 days, then you get a Vietnamese guide for the last 9 days, with it being all in Vietnam of course. His name is Lam, he's 26 and he's irritated the pants off everyone, even sweet old Violet, so far. Our initial group meeting lasted 90mins! By contrast Ainsley had us for 15mins, collected the insurance details from us and then took us to the pub, muttering, 'oh yeah, dont use drugs or hookers or you're off the tour!' They were his only rules! Lam is intense. He covered everything in minute detail, telling us he expects our attentiveness at all times and that we mustn't ever be late.....yeeaah rightyo then, Mr Control-Freak. It's basic good manners, surely. Lam then took us to a restaurant, showing us how to cross the road on the way there. I kid you not. Now roads are a bit hectic, as the photo's will show, and you kind of stride our into a sea of mopeds, knowing that they will drive round you. Thats how it works, no-one gets run over, all is well. Lam waves at the traffic, getting 426 naffed off mopeds to stop en-masse, while we all scurry across the road, dying of embarrassment. I wanted to shout 'I'M NOT 12 YOU SILLY MAN!' but I was still giving him the benefit of the doubt at that stage.

20th July, Hanoi, capital of Vietnam

Bit of a two-parter in writing this blog, as the broadband hasn't been so good travelling through Vietnam! It really is a strange country, one I'm glad we've visited, but a country I don't feel i would rush back to. It's very similar to Cambodia, but the people are a touch less friendly.
Saigon is Vietnam's gem, I feel. Quite westernized in places, it's very pretty and there's lots to do. We went to the War Museum (not half as dull as it sounds!), which shows the Vietnam war from their perspective. Interestingly, the Vietnamese refer to it as the American War. Not so nice is the fact that they have pics of their war heroes - not soldiers who saved the most lives or showed immense bravery, but those who killed the most American soldiers. Nice. Not that the Yanks were any better of course, and this museum had tortuos photographs on the wall. All in all, an interesting place, but one that doesn't exactly leave you uplifted.

Neal & Caroline are not with us on this leg of the tour, but they following the same route up through the country, so we still get to have a beer with them. We arrived in Hoi An, our next stop, and they were at a hotel just around the corner, Hoi An is tiny. It wasn't our favourite place for 2 reasons. First, Ju ended up with fairly serious traveller's diarrhoea, which meant Lam taking him to the pharmacy on the back of a moped to fetch some antibiotics, and him skipping group dinner, not good. Second, Hoi An is comprised of loads & loads of shops. However, they are either tailors (suits made in a day), art galleries (can't buy anything - it'd break/crumple by November!) or restaurants. Now, the restaurants are all well and good, but the menus went a little something like this:

Noodles with beef, chicken or shrimp
Rice with beef, chicken or shrimp
Noodle soup
Spring Rolls
Pork Noodle soup
Meat noodle soup ( meat?! what ANIMAL is it from!?!)
Salad
Fried Rice

So, we got bored pretty quickly and started wanting food with some actual flavour!! Tipping soy sauce on everything can't be good for you, but it helps it go down. I thought Vietnamese food was meant to be out of this world? One yum restaurant (an exception!) was the Mango Rooms, where I had prawns wrapped in slivers of thin beef - awesome, however Hoi An is just a tourist trap, so we were a little annoyed when Lam told us all to spend $5 US on a ticket each, to allow us to wander the 'old town' and see the 'real' Hoi An. (For 'real' - he meant dirty, of course). It's just a bridge and a few streets and no-one wanted to see our ticket, and while $5 is hardly a king's ransom, it gets you quite a lot in Vietnam. It's been the cheapest place we've visited so far, we've paid 20p each for 2 hrs internet usage, 1 english pound for 3 kilos of laundry and generally about 2 english pounds each for our main meal, including beers! Australia is going to seem dear after this!

After Hoi An, we travelled by bus with the gang to Hue (pronounced 'hwweeey), but as it was much the same as Hoi An, we were tiring of this part of the tour pretty quickly, although Ju was feeling much more like his old self by this particular town. We did a boat tour with the gang, although' boat' is putting it mildy - it was 14 planks of wood held together with some string, with a metal dragon's head on the front! We saw various pagodas and temples, and had a tour around the Emperor's tomb - except he's not actually buried there?!
After Hue came the bit I was least looking forward to - the overnight train to Hanoi, the capital. Now, in my mind, I have to admit was hoping for a plush, velvet lined Orient-Express type cabin, where they give you free silk pyjamas and bring you green tea in a silver pot. Obviously, I must have been on some pretty strong drugs to think that! We were four bunks to a room, sharing with Colette and Pierce. The mattress was yellow, the sheets were too disgusting to even touch and the toilet? Wow. Trainspotting eat your heart out. 'Soiled' is probably being too kind, so we made up our minds to dehydrate instead, and thus reduce the need to visit!! However, when I did succumb, I spread a good layer of Tiger Balm under my nose, and held my breath while 'going'!! Blurgh. Colette thought that was hilarious, and I did too when I saw the red top lip I was now sporting - too much Tiger Balm is too much for sensitive skin it seems! It was worth it though, believe me.
Amazingly, we managed to sleep, despite Pierce coming & going throughout the night (Ju not impressed - he had to keep locking & unlocking the door to let him in!) between our room and Jade's - they've struck up a bit of a friendship.....
On arrival in Hanoi (Lam's home city - I wasn't expecting much with him endorsing the place) at 5am, we were swamped by a sea of waiting taxis, people, chickens, hawkers and food sellers. Just what you want after a fragmented night! We literally fought people off, scraping our shins on all the mopeds, and threw ourselves into our tour bus, which took us 5 mins around the corner!! We then spent the day at Halong Bay, which to me, seems the highlight of Vietnam. It's an enormous bay, full of glorious boats, looking like paradise. We explored caves, had a yummy free lunch and even got to swim in the sea for a short time (Lam was tapping his watch at us!). The weather was excellent, the sea was blue and everyone had a great day out. Even Alison was less snotty in the sunshine!

We stayed the night at Halong Bay and transferred back to Hanoi by bus the next morning. Ju & I had only one afternoon & evening here, as our flight to Hong Kong went the next morning at 11 (with Colette & Pierce again, how spooky they should book the same flight as us?!). All we had time to do was wander around the lake at the heart of the city and a take a few photos'. Lam had organised dinner & Neal & Caroline were meeting us for one last night too. Before that, Lam took us to the local 'must see' - a water puppet show. This is Vietnam, so I wasn't expecting much and I wasn't dissapointed. It was a bunch of puppets, a shocking Chinese band a few shouty bits in Chinese!! We were in fits of laughter, we'd paid 40,000 Dong for the tickets after all! Which is just over a quid each, but still!! We were glad to knock back a few pints of Halida afterwards, before dashing back to the hotel to pack our stuff, thus avoiding getting up early the nex day. Farewells were said, not going to miss these guys as much as the group we had in Cambodia, but we all shook Lam's hand and thanked him, because the trip had been well run. If a little too well!!

The flight to Hong Kong was excellent - I had been dreading it, as it was on Vietnam Airlines, surely the most ropey sounding airline in the world? Well, after Kuwait, Iraq, those sort of places, but you get what I mean. I had nowt to worry about. We flew on a brand new Airbus, the staff were so, so friendly, even the food was edible. Ok, I lied about the food, but still. Just 90mins later, we touched down in Hong Kong - bit of a view on landing, all those skyscrapers!! Yes, I am managing to look out of the window these days, it was my 11th flight of this trip afterall. I still get hot & sweaty and grab Ju's hand on take off though, old habits die hard. We waved off Colette & Pierce at the airport, Colette was lovely, Pierce became a tad too American by the end of the trip........! (Awesome!! Duuuude!!!! Super Cooool!!!! etc etc ).
Now we had serious business to sort out in Hong Kong - we needed to book airline tickets to Beijing, to start our next tour, and most importantly, we had to get our Chinese Visa, so we could go on the damn tour in the first place. You will have seen on previous blogs how much fun we've had with the Chinese Visa process so far (!!!!), so I was keen to sort it asap. Imagine how annoying it is to find out we have to wait until Monday (we arrived Friday late afternoon, too late to do a 24hr visa turnaround).
So, come Saturday, we decided to soak up some culture, seek out a few temples, maybe mix with the locals......oh bugger it. We went to Hong Kng Disneyland!!!WOOOOOOO!!!! We're SUCH tourists!! But you all know how we're suckers for a theme park! And you get to go by train, thus affording magnificent views of the harbour (Hong Kong disney is actually on Lantau Island, next door to Hong Kong Island itself) along the way. It was a gloriously sunny day,(it's still humid as hell, the sweat drips off our noses!!) and I'm a bit red faced to admit - we arrived at the park before it was open, with several million Hong Kongans. (What do you call resdients of Hong Kong? Hongs? Kongites? Hong Kongians? HKs? Ah well). As they drew back the tape, off we went to Space Mountain, Winnie the Pooh, Stitch the Experience and loads of other great attractions. Ju's fave was the Philarmagic show, very techie and 4D-ish, even if Donald Duck was in it. I preferred the Golden Mickeys - yes, maybe I am actually 12!!!

And so, now it's Sunday, all the days still feel the same to us, and we have most of Hong Kong still to see, before we fly to Beijing on Thursday for our final organised tour round China, seeing the Great Wall & the Terracotta Warriors, I can't wait. well, I may HAVE to if they don't sort our visas out!!!

I hope this blog was a tiny bit shorter than the last.....! Comments & emails always appreciated, hope everyone is well in the English heatwave!!! There are more photos on kodak gallery if you want to see them.

Two weeks until the footy season, COME ON YOU YELLOWS!

Love Kel & Ju xxxx

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Comments

[Dad W]

Bogs and Bogs !!
Now that we have found the time to read your latest Blog it appears to me that you should take up writing,( I will be your publisher) you really do make them sound very interesting Kelly so much so that I feel as though I am out there with you both,"well done".I would have loved to meet those gorgeous little children in Cambodia and experienced some of that fantastic scenery.so far as the toilets are concerned surely it was not such a culture shock to you because there is one you often visit on a saturday in Norwich that should have prepared you for what you had to put up with ,the only difference being that there is always twenty two blokes running around it when you go!!! any way keep up the good work and maybe Ju can learn to be a bricklayer when he gets to that "wall" i'm sure there will be a few repairs needed. Stay safe and keep eating the "Rats" it will be better when you eat kangaroo- nut soup won't it? Love Dad and Mum W XX