Vietnam - onwards and upwards

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Day 12: by far the most boring day of our travels/life we get up at 6 get picked up at half and the bus leaves at half 7, we arrive in phnom pen at half 12 and have to wait till half 3 before we depart again to Ho Chi Minh another 7 hours :-( wahhhhhh.



Day 13: After a nice long snooze we get up and find our breakfast, which so happens to be in a Mexican restaurant and flick through the lonely planet book to decide what to do, and pick the 3 hour walking tour around the old Ho Chi Minh City, taking in the only sights that were left standing after the Vietnam/American war, which as it turns out isn't very much. So using our map and guide we start of going to Ben thanh market which was built by the French in 1914, although impressive the market is highly over priced and fixed by the government (no haggling) next we precariously cross a 6 lane road avoiding a million and one motor bikes, to see a statue of Tran Nguyen Han (yeah we don't know either) we skip the fine arts museum and antiques shop and briefly stroll through a street market (everywhere sells the same thing) next up for some reason is the standard high rise that you can see in any city. Next up is the Majestic hotel which was requisitioned by the Japanese during WWII and used as a military base and then onto another statue of Tran Hung Dao ( again we don't know, but he defeated the mongols.) We skip a couple of a stops, and head to the Municipal Theatre originally called the Grand Opera house built in 1897 during the French colonial period, and we take a short stroll to Lam Son park home to a statue of Ho Chi Minh himself and set in a beautiful backdrop too the Peoples committee building another piece of French architecture. Next up we head to the Notre Dame Cathedral which although impressive isn't as large as the one in Paris, and directly opposite is the Central Post Office, which was designed by Gustave Eiffel (of the Eiffel Tower fame) and built in 1886 -1891 and is home to hand painted maps of South Vietnam, Saigon and Cholon and is still strangely a post office. Now whilst enjoying the free high powered fans a nice Vietnamese lady asked us if we had any plans for the evening, which we didn't and she showed us a video of a show they were putting on in the Municipal Theatre, it looked really good so we purchased a couple of tickets and stopped for iced beverages (it was hot) after we make our way back, it's a really long walk, half way we stop at Reunification Palace, which was a monument/museum to the former government of South Vietnam right up until they surrendered to the north. Now we head to our hotel to shower and change for our fancy evening at the opera, and a chance to see Ho Chi Minh at night a mind blowing paris & Tokyo cross seamlessly mixing the old with the new. The show, called the A O show was incredible, and mixture of acrobatics and performance covering cultures and traditions of the Vietnamese people, worth a watch if your ever in Saigon, or they tour the show.



Day 14.

After such a hectic first day, we decide on not doing to much today, we book onto a tour, dine out drink coffee get a hair cut watch monsters university, eat at the restaurant at the end of the street and just relax.



Day 15.

So today is our trip, we had two choices really for today, it was the chu chi tunnels or a trip to the Mekong delta river, having heard a lot of negativity about the tunnels (heavily biased towards Vietnamese(a lot of trip advisors reviews saying that the guides laughing about the horrendous booby traps set up) not the original tunnels and a live firing range on site? Really),we opted for the Mekong trip, it was a two hour drive and after half an hour we realised our tour guide was a horny nut job, all he talked about was how to get exercise with the ladies and how many wives you could have if you payed enough buffalo. After a couple of hours we arrive at the dock of the river to get on our boat and cruise along the river past a floating market (which is a local wholesale market fruit/veg) to our destination which is a local family factory/shop where they make popped rice/noodle/corn candy, coconut candy and ice wine & we get to watch the process of them all being made and get to try all of it, very good except rice wine, very strong and horrible although nothing compared to tapioca wine according to the guide. Next is a short stroll down to a bee farm to sample honey bee tea, avoiding the bees and the over priced honey #notallowedinaustralia. Just a brief 5 min shopping break before we jump back on the boat and head out to our lunching destination, a 20 min trip down the river. We pull up on the river bank and enjoy a delicious slither of pork and rice for lunch and take a wander along the bank taking photos. Our guide then takes us along a long walk and he explains with great knowledge and details many of the trees and foliage and it's uses to people who live in rural areas and we eventually arrive to our next point which is a long tail boat ride down the canals which join onto the main Mekong and a precarious crossing from the small boat to the bigger boat. Our final stop is at a small family house where we sip green tea and eat fruit as we listen to the family sing songs about the local courtship (we assumes end that's what it was as the guide was highly amused.) On our bus ride back, Kayley sleeps vertically the whole way back.



Day 16.

Day 16 brings us something have been looking forward too for a long time, we are flying to our next destination, no more wasting whole days travelling on a bus, happy times. We arrive in Nha trang at around 6pm for another attempt at a day on the beach, it's a very lively place, like a Russian equivalent of Ibiza, but first we need sustenance so after a couple of recommendations from the hotel staff we go to a little restaurant down an alley which serves the local speciality of fresh Vietnamese spring rolls that you do yourself, and a house dip called cuan, very nice, but just as our starters arrive the power goes out, which immediately makes the restaurant about 40 degrees and makes me regret ordering the BBQ pork dish which they put a small coal BBQ on your table and cook it yourself, it was amazing to be fair and was our most expensive meal to date at a bank busting £10! Then we go to a bar next to our hotels street and drink two for one cocktails and listen to some American douche butcher song on his acoustic, to which we joined in after a few more cocktails.



Day 17.

So we get up nice and early and have our complimentary breakfast, always a bonus when your on a budget, and pack up for le beach, the sun is out so we go in search of the highly rated (trip adviser & lonely planet book) water park. After walking for what seemed like too long, kayley shows a man the picture in the book and it's gone, been turned into trendy beach bars and restaurants, a little disappointed we settle for a sun bed outside the louisanne brew house, with its own pool, section of beach and most importantly, ITS A GOD DAMN MICROBREWERY! So we wait for an appropriate time to order a brewski ( 1pm as it happy hour ) and have a little sample of their passion fruit radler, and the thick, dark, porter (a drink, not a person)

It's hot now, at least 40 so I little paddle in the sea is in order before I head into the shade before I become tomato red. Some time in the afternoon a pleasant man wanders onto the beach, he had a nice chat with us and wasn't but was trying to sell us something, he was an artist, a fairly internationally recognised artist he had newspaper and magazine publishings and was offered to show his work in New York but can not afford to go, and recently had to give up his gallery in the town because he could no longer afford the rent, it wasn't a hard sell once he had shown us some of his work, and at £6 couldn't afford not too, you couldn't buy the sheet of silk it was painted on for any less in England. By now I am bordering between bronzed Adonis and freshly cooked lobster so we call and end to our first successful "Day At The Beach" and wash up, find a nice restaurant and head back to last nights bar, ladies night, free passion fruit mojito for Kayley and they make their first ever frozen margherita for me, then the tedious job of packing but we've become pretty good at it now.

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