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Published: March 20th 2008
Adam in HCMC
Tank outside the Reunification palace!We slept in until 11am on Saturday 15th of March, and were out and about by 12am. We had 2 days left in Phnom Penh before we could enter Vietnam with our visas, and we had pretty much seen everything the city had to offer. We first got some lunch at one of our usual places along the river front, you get constantly pestered by kids here, they either want to sell you something, take your empty bottles or cans, or just generally beg you! After food we headed off to 'The Cambodiana', this was a really posh hotel where we could apparently pay to use the pool. We managed to walk all the way through the hotel and were almost poolside before someone questioned us! He said it was $8 a day, and the place looked really nice, so depending on sun burn analasis we penciled it in for tomorrow. Next we booked our bus to Hoi Chi Min City (HCMC) in Vietnam, after bad experiences with border crossing buses we asked lots of questions and it sound good for $12 each, we booked to depart 7am Monday morning. We then headed to the room and put the laptop on
Football in the Park
View from our room and where we played against the kids for some music while we did the well overdue clothes washing session in the sink, it doesn't get any easier, and Adam has come to terms his new white socks will never be bright white again. We then walked out to the big park just outside the guest house and watched the local kids playing football for a bit, they were quite good for thier age! We had spotted a DVD shop next to the guest house so we popped in thinking it would be a good thing to have if we ever got stuck somewhere with lots of time to burn. We eneded up buying 3 DVD for $5, thats less than £1 each, although we havent tried them just yet, hopefully they work! We then headed off to dinner and had a good laugh with the pestering kids, they now recognised us and joked about with us rather than trying to sell us stuff. We then brought a few postcards (don't expect any anyone!) and headed back to watch the premiership. The whole area had a power cut for about 20 mins which was fun, we watched from the balcony but there wasnt much to see! We then
Petrol Station
Night quite BP - but I bet its much cheaper! both crashed out asleep.
Next day we got up at 7am and collected in our washing from the guest house corridoor where it was slowly drying, its so humid here. We did our sun burn treaments and headed for breakfast at 9am. After ordering our food at the nicest looking restaurant on the street we saw a massive rat run past our table - he was very well fed! We had banana pancakes and pinapple milkshakes. A guy came past offering shoe fixing services, and he instantly spotted Adam's torn stiching on his trainers, couldn't really argue that it didn't need fixing. So we got him down from $4 to $1.50 and while we ate he sewed up the shoes and finished it off by using his lighter on them, it looked like he had done a top job (2 days later the hole is even worse!). He headed to the pool at The Cambodiana, we got good treatment for our $8 including nice sun loungers and towels. We had a few good swims in the pool and relaxed by it, making sure to cover up our tragic burns, but hoping to get rid of our permanant white t-shirts
Fixing Adam's shoes
You get what you pay for at $1.50 before we hit the beach in a few days. Obviously we got burnt again, even when smoothered in factor 40. We headed home around 3pm stopped for some food on the river front for the last time. We then got on the interent and booked train tickets from HCMH to Nha Trang, leaving HCMC the same day we arrive but giving us enough time to see everything. We checked up on the Swedish girls and they had made it to Nha Trang and found different accomodation, they left us a nice note to let us know, on the coments section of last blog. We then headed out to the park to have a little kick around with our new ball. We ended up playing football with the locals for about 2 hours in the park, it was really good fun, and the kids were really happy that they got to play with us. We played on the same team at first, but after giving them a good beating they split us up! It was really hot and we played until their Mum came on her moped and shouted at them for being out too late! We said goodbye to them
Cambodiana Pool
Nice views of the Mekong river, good beds and even a slide but unfortunatly didn't have our camera out with us to take a photo. We then headed back and packed up our stuff ready for Vietnam and paid our guest house bill.
Monday 17th was an early start and set to be a long day heading to Vietnam, we were up at 530am and picked up an hour later to be taken to the bus station, where we would ride the Mekong Express. It was all quite professional compaired to other buses we had used and they signed in our luggage and we all got on the nice air con bus, that even had a toilet. The first suprise was breakfast served up on the bus, it was only a few rolls and some water but was a nice shock. Our bus soon boarded a ferry to cross the Mekong River, we didn't realise we would cross this. The Mekong river is in the top 10 longest rivers in the world, stretching through 5 countries and 55 million people depend on this river. We had as short stop just before the border for food and toilet and the staff on the bus collected all our passports and forms, we havent
Testing testing...
The pool seemed a safe place to try underwater photos! Came out well! filled out 2 forms but the nice lady said she would do them for us. Both the exit and entrance from Cambodia to Vietnam were stress free. The funny highlight came when she handed back out the passports and forms, the nice lady and some pronouciation problems and we were called Michelle (Adam's middle name being Michael) and Nick was called out as Michelle. Nicks form was also signed simply 'ALAN', this being his middle name. We headed off through Vietnam and were dropped off in the center of HCMC's District 1. We quickly found the ATM and withdraw a cool 1.5 Million each, unfortunatly this was Dong and not Pounds Sterling! It was 2pm and we had an afternoon to see as much as we could, so we got ourselves a driver and handed him a list of sights we needed to see. First stop was Notre Dame Cathedral, its was nice looking and we had a peak inside even though it was closed, someone left the door open! We then headed to the Post Office which is apparently a sight worth seeing, and it was a quite nice looking big building with a great interior. Next was the
US Army Plane
Outside War Remnants Museum in HCMC Reunification Palace, while this place is still in use it also has areas kept the same from the end of the war. Highlights were the war command room, and the presidents bedroom and war room, plus there was a fighter plane and some tanks outside the palace that made for good photos. We then flew past the Town Hall litterally just stopping to take a photo. Next was the War Remnants Museum and this was the best stop of the afternoon. It had lots of planes, tanks, guns and even a helicopter left from the war, and also had thousands of photos documenting the events of vietnams 20th century. Slightly disturbing foetuses were on display in jars displaying the birth defects caused by the chemical 'Orange Agent' used on Vietnam. We then got dropped at the train station and enjoyed burgers from Lotteria before popping out to use the internet, a bargain at 6 pence for 30 mins. We later discovered free wireless internet in Lotteria burger shop, so we got out the laptop and used that for a few hours to contact our accomodation in Nha Trang. We got some dodgy sandwich from a train station vender, seemed to
Train Cabin
From HCMC to Nha Trang, we didn't see this much due to sleep! have lots of fish and paste in it, apparently its a local specialality according to Lonley Planet, only Adam dared eat it. We got on our SE4 train at 11pm and were in the hard sleeper section, this ment we had beds that were stacked 3 high with 6 people per cabin, very similar to our night trains in india. Everyone got stright into beds and so did we, and we were both asleep within 30 mins of leaving...
Awoke on the sleeper train at 5am having slept through both alarms, thankfully our stop was not for another 30 mins. We actually arrived a bit later than scheduled at 5.50am. We had looked at the map and headed in the direction of the beach and our hotel, while turning down lots of taxi drivers along the way. It was a long walk with our full packs on (about 30kgs each), but we eventually found the 6km long stretch of beach, and it looked amazing - and made for a good photo as the sun was just coming up. We chilled out here for about 5 mins before heading to Hien Luong Guest House. Here we got a nice welcome
Nha Trang in morning...
After only 15 minutes in Nha Trang this was a nice sight at 6am! considering it was about 630am, and they guy greeting us with our names having known about the booking! We checked out the rooms and they were nice, then set about seeing if the wireless internet in the room worked, and it did, so hopefully we can back up lots of photos here. About 9am we got a knock at the door, and it was Emma and Malin, seems the guy at reception told them we had arrived. They gave us a tour of near the hotel and showed us the supermarket, which was good but not quite Tesco! Then we headed of to see the one spirtitual sight of Nha trang, the Giant White Budda that looks over the city, this thing was hugh and had great views of the city. It was located just next to Long Son Pagoda, but we had great difficulty getting a taxi there, even with Adam's excellent drawing skills the taxi driver didn't understand. Seems people come here just for the beach! We then popped back before going out to get some food, the swedish girls had already found some good places to eat so we went there. We spent most of the afternoon
Nha Trang Beach
Stretching 6kms, we are shotuing this out as the big holiday destination of 2009 maybe! on Nha Trangs beach, its a really nice 6km stretch of white sand, and the water was just warm enough to enjoy. We swam about in the see and dived into waves then we all played catch in the sea with our new ball. It was a nice relaxing afternoon and the first proper beach we had seen in our travels, which we were exactly 1 month into today! After the beach we popped back to the guest house and relaxed. We made some plans to go on an Island tour tomorrow so we booked tickets for that, then went out to a nice Italian restaurant for pizza in the evening. After pizza we headed to a bar called Zippo, this place was nice and we had lots of different cocktails. We had a rematch at pool but Adam and Malin still won. During the second game we had a power cut, which was a bit scary at first and everyone jumped for thier bags. But after a few minutes they had candles around the bar and our pool table, and got out a guitar to replace the music that cut out. Everything was back to normal after about 20
Giant White Budda
This looks over the city of Nha Trang and there was great views from here! minutes and then we headed towards home and all crased out asleep. Someone was being really loud and we couldn't sleep, but we will never know who!
Next morning we were up at 6am and got ready for the day of island hopping. We packed the underwater camera case hoping it might get some use and we met Malin and Emma at 730 to go shopping for breakfast. The bus picked us up to take us to the port at 850 and as usual there was a few more people than seats, but it was a big coach so no problems. We soon arrived at the boat and started packing everyone on, its seems like a few too many people for the boat, but we were told once we are stopped people can use the top roof deck which had no seats. The mix of people was odd, of the 60 or so people maybe 10 of them were western and the rest seemed to be a mix of locals and chiniese people on holidays. Our first stop was Mun Island and it took about 30 mins to get there, we stopped here for snorkliing and all the equipment
Malin, Emma, Nick, Adam (clockwise from top left)
Nick blames this look on his poor performance in the drinking games! was provided. This was the nicest stop of the day, we got to see some good reef and fish (the reef looked dead though), and jump/dive from the top deck of the boat. Be sure to see Adam's dive picture expertly taken by Nick! Here we also used the underwater camera and it worked really well. Soon we were off again and we stopped at Mot Island, here lunch was served up on the top deck, and it was suprisingly good. We also got a live music performance from all the crew which was funny, and they played some English songs but we didn't know them. After the music the floating bar was put out, which was basically a guy in a big floating ring serving up free wine, we choose not to get back in the sea having just dried off, but it was fun to watch the locals trying to drink wine while they struggled to swim, and they all seemed to get a bit crazy from here on in! Next Island was Tam Island, this was a bit of a tourist resort and had lots of water sports on offer, we just watched, but they had jetskis,
speed boats and paragliding. We paid for some nice seats in the shade and relaxed here. When we got back on the boat we had a 'fruit party', it was good stuff, they served up lots of different fruits and everyone passed them round, we ate dragon fruit for the first time, it tasted like kewi! All the locals were now drunk it seemed and were really having a good time annd passing all the fruits to us to try! Our last island was Mieu Island and this pretty much just had an aquarium on it, so we payed about 2 dollars each to go in there. It was quite nice and had lots of fish, but the tanks were too small for some of the fish it seemed. There was one nice section outside which had some really big fish it and turtles, there had plenty of space and you could see them well in the clear water. From here we headed back to port and then the bus dropped us back at the hotel. This whole trip including boat, bus, food, fruit, music performance, snorkling and red wine cost us $7 each, about 3 Pounds! A must do
Food on the Boat
We were worried as they started serving it up but turned out to be a good buffet, some of this was caught as we sailed out to snorkling spot! if you are ever in Nha Trang! We relaxed and wrote some blog when we got back then met the girls for dinner, it was the best food we have had in a while and everyone had noodles, the only sad thing was seeing turtle on the menu here. Emma felt a bit sick (not drinking enough water) so she headed back to her room. So the 3 of us headed for some more beers and played some pool. Adam and Malin beating Nick 2-1, how embarassing for him (Malin was really good today!)! We then went to Crazy Kim's bar, we had read about this place and could here good music as we walked past. This place was really good, most people seemed to be travellers and it also had free pool and good english music. We heard Artic Monkeys and drank banana milkshake cocktails here, at 50 pence per go! After a few tiquillas we headed back to the hotel after a long tiring day. One of the nicest days we have had so far...
We now have 1 full day left in Nha Trang before moving on, although we havn't quite figured out yet how or
Floating Bar...
Not the safest of ideas but was funny to watch! where too, thats todays job. With only 2 months to travel 6 countires in SE Asia we can't quite stop at every little palce we want to, so picking and choosing is hard work. We think we will head north to Hanoi next and visit Halong bay plus do a few days trekking in Sapa in the mountians here. Flight or train is our big decision, and the prices aren 't too different, so 2 hours flying sounds better than 24 hours on a train right now.
Hope everyone is fine back home and your weather has cleared up. Slightly less education write up this time and more of a beach holiday report, hope it was interesting still!
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Adam Gibson and Nick Burke
Fruit Party!?!
Certainly the first one of these we have been to!
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Shaun
non-member comment
Nice writeup!!
Im leaving for my trip overseas in two weeks, and you got me PUMPED UP for visiting HCMC and Nha Trang with this writeup.