Wok and Roll Star......

---

Ok, howdo. This is Joey's blog, but shes not feeling "chatty and fun" so I'm writing what will no doubt be, a heavily edited blog! Yes the title is a reference to the Oasis gig im still a bit annoyed i missed. Because strictly speaking, I havent used or indeed seen a Wok in the 2 months we have been here so far!

So when I last wrote we were in Hoi An. The Friday morning, we along with Liam and Michelle, hired bikes and now Joey has perked up and wants to take over...... Sorry. Bye!

Hello! sorry about that, i will explain later..... yes, so Hoi An was definitely a favourite. On the Friday off we went to the beach with Liam and Michelle, we hired sunloungers so the boys went off into the sea leaving us girls to the serious sport of sunbathing. The beach was beautiful and the waves were massive....the sea was full of Vietnamese kids, mainly jumping in the waves or floating on rubber rings. However, not all of them could swim as Tom and Liam found out....a rubber ring floated on its own in the distance with nobody in it and then they saw 4 kids in the water - 2 of whom were swimming towards the ring - but 2 were sinking. They hauled them out of the water onto the ring before pulling the ring to the shore, thus saving their lives....Tom says this makes up for being mean to the kids in Hue. In the evening we were out celebrating our friend Stuart's birthday....we were intending to leave early but soon got into the swing of things and found ourselves back at the beach bar we had been in on Wednesday night which had a swimming pool outside. Luckily I was wearing my bikini under my dress as one by one everyone ended up in their underwear and in the pool. A group of us were involved in some sort of world record attempt to make the tallest tower from people that we could by sitting on each others shoulders....I went on Tom's shoulders, he went on someone else's and then an unsuccessful fourth person would try to carry all of us...we tried various combinations, but to no avail.

Saturday saw a very sorry for herself Joey attempt a second record - to eat breakfast faster than previous hungover attempts. I like to think I succeeded although Tom will definitely disagree and has photographic evidence....after a wander round the town we went for our second suit fittings. Very pleased with them and very impressed how quickly they can be made! We were glad we went for the swanky looking tailor as we'd heard stories about people not being so pleased with their clothes but still had to pay etc. In the afternoon it decided to start raining so we bought a couple of dvd's and went back to our room to watch the Da Vinci Code.....Tom says its not as good as the book, and I say its still not as good as the book after a second viewing. In the evening we watched the FA cup final with English commentary which I gaily thought was the end of football dominated evenings for a while.....I forgot about the internationals.

Sunday rained. Lots. So we left. We were going to stay and go to the beach etc but didn't see the point of hanging around so off we went to Nha Trang, a seaside town just a short overnight bus journey away from Hoi An. It was an ok journey by previous standards although we pulled into a petrol station 5km outside Nha Trang for 30 mins which I didn't see the point of.....but they love the stopping of the bus at any opportunity here - it seems impossible for a bus to drive more than 2 hours without a 20minute stop....unless you're on a night bus when it stops once in 12 hours and there's no toilet on board. But anyway....we arrived at 6am in Nha Trang and walked to a hotel until about 6.20 as the bus has already been into the centre of town and driven out again (also a favourite activity....really make it difficult for people to stay anywhere apart from the 'centre' where you drop them as finding somewhere else involves walking in the heat/pouring rain with rucksacks on - and then you're just a prime target for hassle from everyone from motorbike drivers offering you hotels to hotel owners offering you hotels) Sorry, it sounds like i'm really moaning, just trying to paint a picture for you of how it feels after a 12 hour bus journey!! Nha Trang was a bit of a disappointment - lots of high rise buildings, not much to do apart from go to the beach and it rained a lot!! We managed to get to the beach Tuesday afternoon but weren't overly enamoured so left on Wednesday for Dalat.

Dalat is 1500m above sea level so we were expecting it to be a bit cooler and wetter.....it was bloody freezing and absolutely tipped it down!! After the longer than customary 45 minute walk for a hotel in the pouring rain being trailed all the time by an Easy Rider (a group of guys who give motorbike tours of the area) we showered, I dug out my cagoole (rocked the look by the way) and off we went for an explore. The town itself wasn't as pretty as I was expecting as people rave about it's attraction as a honeymoon destination for the Vietnamese, although the scenery coming into the town was pretty impressive. We spent 2 nights here and due to the appalling weather played scrabble, connect 4, numerous games of pool and caught up with the news from home with BBC news worldwide. The activities we chose not to partake in included having a ride in a boat shaped like a swan, having our picture taken on a pony with a Vietnamese dude dressed like a cowboy and go to Crazy House - a bit like Alice in Wonderland apparently....we didn't really see how these were related to Vietnam (other than they are random and slightly strange....much like the lady whose restaurant we went to both nights - she was lovely but a sandwich short of a picnic, although she made a very good apple crumble....that classic Vietnamese dessert we all know and love).

Onto Mui Ne on Friday which is another slightly odd town....it's one road 13km long. There's a beach on one side....and thats about it. Liam and Michelle enjoyed it there as it was quiet and the beach was pretty, but we weren't as convinced. We were staying on the non-beach side of the road - error. To have a chair or sunbed on the beach you had to be staying at the resort/a customer of the windsurfing school/or in our case pay 18,000 dong for a coke (about 75p which sounds mean, but its scandalous when they're usually 6,000). Also, when we arrived my previously bitten legs had just about recovered....about 6 hours later I counted 56 bites from my knees to my toes. Not cool. Tom has 5 which are obviously way more itchy and painful than mine, and he caught swine flu (a really really really really really bad cold) from Dalat so isn't doing too well. On our second and last night we had 2 dinners, not because we are fatties (although we are...) but because in the first restaurant we ordered braised duck in a pot and what we got was duck fat with slimy green stuff in grease in a pot. Second dinner was much nicer and upsettingly much cheaper. Oh, and just before we leave Mui Ne I will tell you about the weird beetle type bugs they have - huge huge huge things which we have a picture of next to the universal scale that is Tom's size 13's....they're rubbish though as they seem to fall on their back and cant get up so flap their wings around and scare me. Tom had to rescue me from the bathroom at 4am as one was blocking the doorway.

Which brings me to Saigon....we arrived at about 7.30 last night, showered and went straight out. It's livelier than Hanoi in the evenings and easier to walk down the roads as they are about 4 times as wide. We spotted Liam and Michelle in a restaurant and spent the evening (and early hours of the morning) with them and later, a Vietnamese guy called Jonny who thinks Tom looks like Wolverine. After a couple of beers I made the classic mistake of buying chewing gum from an 8 year old boy....I was separated from the pack and felt bad he was up at 3am so gave him a 50,000 dong note (the gum was 10,000) which he disappeared with for a while and Jonny had to intervene to get my change and laughed at me. Silly Joey.

Today we've had a wander, went to the Reunification Palace but it was shut so went to the War Remnants Museum which was eye-opening and emotionally quite tough....it starts off with 'historical truths' which explains the war slightly differently to the American versions and has shocking statistics of the tonnage of bombs dropped in Vietnam, the number of innocent people murdered (2,000,000), media reports and hundreds of pictures showing it all. The 'vestiges of war crimes and aftermaths' section was horrendous - detailing the extent of agent orange usage and the effect it had and is still having on people today, as well as pictures of those affected by the chemicals and the worst part....babies who had been preserved in formaldehyde and on display in glass boxes to show birth defects resulting from the dioxin. Also in this section were pictures of US troops smiling surrounded by heads of the Vietnamese they had killed....you get the picture. We left feeling tired, in disbelief that such horrendous war crimes have gone unpunished and with a renewed hate for America.

On that high note I'll leave you to get on with your day....oh but I will say we worked out we've stayed in 17 beds in the last 30 days not including 2 sleeper buses so we're looking forward to a few days in HCMC.....

---