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Published: August 10th 2008
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June 10 - June 22
It was a long, long journey from Ninh Binh to Hoi An, made longer by the fact that every piece of information given to us by the person who sold us our tickets was a lie. Don't get me wrong, Vietnam is a great country, one of our favourites on this trip, and the Vietnamese people who are not involved in the tourist industry are friendly and interesting, but the bloodsuckers involved in the industry will stop at NOTHING to get every little cent out of you they can. Had it not been for our India experience, which taught us to look beyond the people who want to make money from you, I'm not sure we would have liked Vietnam as much as we did. Okay, rant over, on with the blog.
So after many hours on the bus, a surprise four hour layover, and one incident which involved me shouting at a tiny vietnamese woman (a bus company clerk) we at last arrived in the long awaited Hoi An - City of Ten Thousand Tailors. We immediately liked Hoi An, with it's great and cheap accommodation, it's beautiful world heritage streets and it's
long sandy beaches. We liked it so much we ended up spending a week there. After disappointing food in northern Vietnam, we finally found a few great restaurants serving up amazing local food - the best being Morning Glory, down near the river.
While in Hoi An, Becky and I went on a bit of a tailoring rampage - you could have any thing you wanted made incredibly cheaply, from full suits to wool coats and stylish shoes. I ended up ordering three suits, one wool coat, one extra pair of pants, a dress shirt and 20 ties all for under $250.00. Bex had even more than that made. We went to a few different tailors, and some were definitely better than others, but after a few fittings, all of our clothes turned out pretty good. The whole experience was a lot of fun.
We had the chance to spend an afternoon at an orphanage for children affected by Agent Orange. Agent Orange was a chemical defoliant (a poison designed to kill plants) used by the US during the American War (or the Vietnam War as we know it). Unfortunately, the chemical is still a very serious problem
New White Coat
When you pay hundreds of dollars for a winter coat, go black. When you pay $20 - go for the white! in Vietnam as it causes devastating and often fatal birth defects. Although it was a tough afternoon, we did our best to just bring a few smiles to the faces of these very unfortunate children.
We managed to drag ourselves away from Hoi An heading south to the beach town of Mui Ne. On the way we had a three hour bus layover in Vietnam's resort mecca Nha Trang, which we had intended to give a miss. While waiting for our bus at a coffee shop, I saw a dive shop across the street. Before I knew it, we had postponed our ongoing bus trip by a day and we were heading out diving off the coast of Vietnam. The diving was nice and the city itself wasn't too bad - all in all, a great spontaneous decision!
The next day we caught our bus to Mui Ne and checked into a small resort with a beautiful garden and a great room right on the beach. We spent most of our time walking on the beach and swimming in the water (although there tended to be a lot of garbage in the water when the tide was coming
in). Mui Ne is famous (famous in Vietnam anyway) for its fish sauce ... yup, fish sauce ... which gives the village itself a bit of a distinct odour. Lucky for us, the smell didn't reach as far as our beach. Mui Ne is also 'famous' for its sand dunes, and we spent a day exploring several different dune areas. We even went dune sledding, which is touted as a must-do Mui Ne activity. We thought it was just like sledding on snow, but much slower and lamer.
From Mui Ne, we were off to Ho Chi Min City, or Saigon as its better known in the west. Although we only stayed a few days in HCMC Becky and I both loved it. There was so much to see and do. We toured several museums - the War Remnants Museum, which was quite well done, and the Ho Chi Min Museum, which was not. We saw a water puppetry show, which may not sound great, but really was very interesting and fully entertaining. We even stumbled across the Miss Universe Pageant (Miss Mexico gave me a wave). At nights we would sit in the Bia Hoi bars drinking bad
Bex Enjoying Shooting the AK
Lookin' real comfortable with the whole machine gun thing... CHEAP beer and chatting with locals and tourisit alike. We spent our last day visiting the Cu Chi Tunnels, a tunnel system used by the Viet Cong during the war. There was a firing range at the museum, so when you'd walk around the forests or crawl through the tunnels there was the sound of machine gun fire in the background. It made it a lot easier to imagine what that it would have been like for the soldiers. To make the experience even more authentic, we paid to fire 10 rounds from an AK47... which was kinda scary to tell you the truth. Alas, we ran out of time before we could explore everything the city had to offer, and we had to fly back to our central hub, Bangkok (thats our fourth time in Bangkok for anyone whos counting).
Vietnam left us, or should I say, we left Vietnam wanting more. On the flight out we talked about all the places we didn't get to see, and all the things we would do on our next trip to this beautiful country.
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