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Published: June 22nd 2010
Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon)
View over backpacker area from a rooftop restaurantHELLO!
So when Geena last wrote we were in the Sihanoukville in Cambodia. Since then we have made it all the way up Vietnam.
The crossing from Cambodia into Vietnam was relatively easy. We got a local bus from Sihanoukville 4 hours north to the capital Phnom Penn, which was interesting! A lack of air con on the bus meant that when we arrived and stepped off the 35 degree temperature outside felt quite cool. Not enjoyable! We then got another bus that was super comfortable and had a guy onboard that handled everything at the border crossing for us. Nice and easy.
The bus dropped us in the centre of Saigon and a Dutch guy on our bus showed us a good place to stay. Saigon is an absolutely mental place! There are hundreds and hundreds of scooters on the road which makes crossing interesting. The trick is to start walking at an even pace and to not stop. The riders swerve all around you and everybody gets where they are going in one piece!
While here we went to one of the war museums. It was quite interesting but understandably heavily biased towards Vietnam. Seb,
American fighter jet
War Remnants Museum - Saigon an English guy we have been traveling with, and I also went to the Cu Chi tunnels about 2 hours out of town. Gee was feeling a bit ill so gave it a miss. The tunnels were constructed by the Viet Cong during the war and are quite amazing. There are about 140km of them and they included hospitals, kitchens, toilets and fresh water wells!
After a few days we went to Mui Ne on the coast for some beach time. We got a place right on the beach where we could swim and watch the kite and wind surfers. There's not a lot to do here other than chill out and play on the sand dunes. So we got a jeep out to the dunes with Seb and Jared an American staying at our guesthouse. When we arrived we were surrounded by what seemed like hundreds of kids all wanting to hire their sandboards to us. We grabbed a couple and went zooming down the dunes for about 30 minutes. After that all activities in Mui Ne were exhausted so it was time to move on!
We caught a bus the next day to another coastal town
American cannon
War Remnants Museum - Saigon called Nha Trang. It's quite a lot bigger and had a really cool backpacker vibe to it. Our first day here we spent at the beach during the day and then drinking cheap beers in the restaurants in the evening! It's a hard life! The following day was my birthday so Geena, Seb and I all went Scuba diving! It was absolutely brilliant and easily the best diving I have done. We saw loads of amazing fish and bright colored coral and even got to dive through two caves. Afterwards we went out for some dinner and drinks and met up with some other people from the dive trip. The next day was another day down at the beach recovering from the previous nights activities. The next day was time to move on so we were catching a night bus up to Hoi An. As the bus didn't leave until 7pm that night we filled in the day at the amusement park!
About a kilometer out from Nha trang beach is an island with an excellent amusement park. To get there you hop on the back of a motorbike, drive a couple of kms through town and hop on
a cable car and 20 minutes later you're there! We spent about four hours at the water-park acting like kids and having a blast.
The overnight bus was ok, not ideal for tall people but pretty cheap and it got us to Hoi An fine. There isn't a lot to see in Hoi An other than a really nice beach. The main reason most people come here is for the tailoring. I got a suit, 4 shirts and a pair of shorts and Geena got a jacket a dress and a jumpsuit made for the grand total of $300 US!! Not bad.
After getting all our tailoring done (in only 30 hours!) we decided that for the next leg of our trip to Hue we would hire scooters and do the 140km trip on them. So for $40 each we got a scooter, a guide and someone to take our bags up and we hit the road. It was an absolutely brilliant thing to do! The scenery alone would have been worth it but we also stopped at an old US war bunker, a cave temple at the top of Non Nuoc marble mountain, an amazing waterfall that
Cu Chi tunnel entrance
Used during Vietnam war only locals know about and rode on one of the funnest roads ever - Hai Van Pass! The panorama at the top of this blog was taken from the Hai Van pass, overlooking Lang Co beach where we had lunch. The 'elephant' waterfall was such a nice relief from the heat. There is a big pool at the bottom to swim in and all the locals are very friendly. I even got called over by 4 old boys sitting under some trees above the falls, none of whom spoke English, to just sit and drink their beer with them. Niiiiice! We got into Hue in the early evening after 8 hours on the hogs.
Hue is a quiet place with not much to see or do. We stayed a few days and got cyclos (rickshaws) to go and check out the citadel. The citadel was pretty impressive but the highlight of the day would have to have been the cyclo rides there and back! It's a lot of fun having someone peddle you through the town with the cars, buses and bikes honking and zooming past! Fun anyway until the riders convinced us to peddle while they sat in
Inisde one of the tunnels
Lucky Adam's not claustrophic! the front! Not so much fun!
Anyway after Hue it was time to go to the far north. So it was another sleeper bus all the way up to Hanoi, 13 long, hot, uncomfortable hours!! Didn't like that at all, particularly when the old girl next to you is a foot shorter and her bed is a foot longer! The injustice..... Oh well we got to Hanoi in one piece so no harm done.
We spent the first couple of days just wandering around and checking the place out. The city itself is quite nice with tree lined streets, lakes and big cathedrals. The people not so much. The ones who deal regularly with tourists are friendly and helpful but the others we found to be quite unpleasant. So we decided to get out for a bit and booked a tour through a hostel to go to Halong Bay. After a 3 hour bus ride we arrived in the city of Halong and hopped on our junk (boat) for the trip.
Halong Bay would easily have to be one of the most amazingly scenic places I have been. The bay itself is enormous and has literally thousands
of limestone islands coming out of the water. As you cruise through the bay the islands surround you and you have 3, 4, 5 islands only meters away from you at a time. It's absolutely stunning.
After cruising through the islands for a while we stopped and started diving and flipping off the boat to cool down before lunch. We spent the rest of the afternoon kayaking through the islands before having dinner on the boat. The evening was spent playing drinking games before crashing out in the early hours after a big day.
The next day we hopped on a smaller boat that took us to a secluded island that only our tour uses. The day was spent sunbathing, reading, swimming, wake-boarding, banana boating, playing volleyball, eating and drinking. It's a tough life! Accommodation for the night was brilliant. They had built raised platforms with a roof right on the beach. They had a mattress and a mosquito net and nothing else. Even though they were very basic it was so nice to sleep and wake on the beach
So after 3 short days it was time to leave this paradise and head to another. Gee
Mui Ne beach
Great for wind-surfing, sea-kayaking, surfing, kite-surfing and sailing and I had booked a trip to Sapa in the north west of Vietnam leaving a few hours after we got back to Hanoi. So we arrived in Hanoi had a shower and something to eat then headed to the train station to catch the overnight train into the mountains.
Thankfully the train was a lot comfier and smoother than the overnight bus so we arrived in Lao Cai nicely rested. A short ride from Lao Cai to Sapa and we found ourselves in a place that is the equal of Halong Bay for stunning scenery. Sapa is roughly 1200 meters above seal level and everywhere you look are enormous mountains and deep valleys. Blessedly because we are so high it also meant the temperature was a lot more manageable than the 41 degrees of Hanoi!
After a quick shower in a hotel it was time to head off on our hill-tribe trek. We were met outside the hotel by our guide Shucx from the Black H'Mong tribe, one of the minority tribes there, and about 10 other little ladies to help us along. The first day was a 12km trek up and down the valleys. We walked
through some of the other tribes villages, dropping some tribes-people off and having others join us for a while, through amazing rice terraces and through some absolutely amazing scenery before getting to our homestay for the night.
The homestay is owned by the H'mong tribe and when we arrived some other villagers turned up to help do the cooking for us. It was so peaceful sitting in such an amazing place talking with the local people and playing with their children and puppies. Luckily they had a TV to break the peacefulness and I got to watch the football with Tal and Shahar, two Israeli travelers we met. Oh and they had a fridge full of beer. Scenery or not I still love sport and beer but at least I waited until it was too dark to admire before watching the game!
The next day was another short trek and lunch before heading back to Sapa then on to Lao Chai and another sleeper train to Hanoi. We would have liked more time in both Halon Bay and Sapa but unfortunately we don't have much time left in South East Asia as tomorrow we fly to Kuala Lumpur
The red sand dunes
Being harassed by kids trying to rent their plastic sandboards to us then the day after that Sri Lanka!!
Until next time all our love
Adam and Gee
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Julian
non-member comment
Ah, the memories!
Great to see your tour of 'nam and wicked to remember some of the places you went; Cu Chi tunnels, Ha Long bay ... it's all coming back to me now! Mich and I had an awesome time in Vietnam and looks like you did too. Our journey wasn't quite as epic as yours is turning out to be - I'm so impressed! Can't wait to catch up with whenever you stop trotting the globe, chech out your tatt's and hear all of your war stories. Keep Cool til After School kids!