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Hello Everybody,
It has been a little while since I last wrote. Hopefully this website will work okay and will be easy to manage for both you and me. I am fairly computer illiterate so this is somewhat of an acheivement for me if it works.
Right now we are in Mui Ne (pronounced moo-nay) which is in South Vietnam and it is our third day here. It is a nice "beachy" place again and it is a lot nicer than Sihanoukville where we had been staying before in Cambodia.It is a lot cleaner and there are hardly any hawkers (I have only seen two and they didn't even bother me!)
Since having last written I turned the big 3-0 and it really was pretty painless. Thank you again for all your e-cards and birthday messages. Roy took me to the 5 star hotel (there is only one) in Sihanoukville for 3 days which was lovely. It had its own private beach which was a welcome relief from all the hawkers on the public beaches. I brought in my 30th singing karaoke and drinking cocktails with Roy. Roy told me that the only reason he was singing karaoke was
Sokha beach resort
Time out for my 30th Birthday because it was my 30th birthday but I think he rather enjoyed it (we only did it because there was nobody else around except the hotel staff).
In total we spent 2 weeks in Sihanoukville which was far too long but our visa for Vietnam didn't start till the 1st June and there was really nowhere else for us to go so we languished on the beach for all that time. What a hard life......but I have to admit I was more than ready to go by the time it came to it.
We had met another couple who are doing the whole South East Asia thing but the other way round (ie. Thailand, Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia) and they thought that Laos was the best and Vietnam was their least favourite. They felt that the hawkers were worse in Vietnam and people looked at you more but from my experience so far I am liking Vietnam a lot and I feel like the people barely look at you. Certainly the hawkers tend to pester the locals more than us to buy their stuff, I think because they know we can't speak Vietnamese.
One word of advice,
if any of you decide to do the same sort of trip as us and think about going to Ho Chi inh (Saigon) from Sihanoukville then don't do what we did. Best thing to do is to go back to Phnom Penh and go from there even if you are backtracking. It costs a quarter of the amount and takes the same amount of time. We were going to do that but there were no seats left on the bus and we didn't want to stay another night in Phnom Penh.
So we thought it would be quicker to get a taxi to the border (there are no buses as the road is too bad ) and go from there. The whole trip was one long joke. The taxi ride was okay. The airconditioning wasn't really up to much and it was acutally a lot nicer to have the windows down and to have the breeze coming into the car. The roads were mainly potholed and dusty and it seemed that we were driving along in a cloud of dust and dirt most of the way. Our driver asked if it was okay to stop and pick up this
Roy relaxing
Having a refreshing drink in The Sand Dollar bar, Mui Ne. lady at the side of the road who needed a ride to the next village. She went in the front seat with her little girl who was about 18 months and also had a basketful of ducklings that went into the boot. I was like, "Aw, those poor things, they'll suffocate in the boot!" Roy replied by saying that the mafia stick people in the boot of their cars all the time so that he was sure that the ducklings would be just fine. By the time that we got to the border I emerged from the car with a mass of tangled air and 3 shades darker from the dirt and Roy sporting an affro.
We walked over the border into Vietnam and I have to say that you see the difference straight away. There are beautiful lush green fields as far as the eye can see and immediately you see the local folk with their conical hats on. First food cart I saw was serving my beloved pho (pronounced "fa"; it is the vietnamese noodle soup that I have come here for).
From the border we had to get a ride on the back of a
moto for 25km to this town (Chau Doc) where you get the bus to Ho Chi Minh. We thought it would take about 3 hours tops but it took us 6.5 hours. We were the only westerners on the bus. This guy kept sucking his teeth and slurping for no apparent reason which really started to grate. The piece de resistance was when one of the kids at the front of the bus puked all over the floor. Everbody opened the windows and so that was the end of the airconditioning. We got to Ho Chi Minh after 12 hours and boy were we glad to get there.
Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) is ace and I again I have to say that I like it better than Phnom Penh. I suppose it is unfair to compare places that you have only stayed a few days in but that is all that I have got to base a judgement on.
In Saigon I was in pho heaven and also in shopping heaven. Lynne and Rekha, you would love it here. It is so easy to get clothes made (I resisted as Hoi An is the place to get
things made apparently).
Crossing the street is 10 times worse (more fun) than Siem Reap and it was a blast walking across a road the width of the Champs Elysees with all the traffic coming at you. I truly believe that you could be blind and cross the road without being hit as everybody just dodges past you.
We only spent 2 days in Saigon as we are trying to stick to an itinerary so we can now fit in Laos for a week. As I say we are in Mui Ne at the moment and will leave on Wednesday for Nge Trang.
Hope you are all well and it is great hearing your news too so keep it up!! Suzanne, have fun in Bangkok and Lee & Angela, have a great time in Mexico and Jenny, have fun in France!!!
Love,
Natalie & Roy
(PS I will try and get Roy to write something but he always gives the excuse that he can't type fast enough!)
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Charina
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Absolutely green with envy. You lucky, lucky people. Natalie please keep us posted - it has brightened up my day. LoL Charina