Vietnam - 'On the busses'

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Vietnam is a difficult country to visit unless you are prepared to do the well trodden tourist trail. You can't walk down the street in any city without seeing a travel agent offering all sorts of tours and excursions, most of which seem to be bulked out with random rubbish to appear better than other tour opperators and therefore get more money from you. For example, in Dalat we could have enjoyed the 'Valley of Love' which consists of a group of Vietnamese tour guides dressed up as american cowboys taking you on horseback around the lake and periodically stopping in places where you can purchase 'local' handicrafts (the same mass produced 'local' handicrafts that you can find all over Vietnam)! In Hue we could have spent time admiring the 'Rock Pile', an old pile of rocks which once stood as an army look out point but now you need a guide to point out where the rocks are as many have dissapeared!

Being new to the whole Vietnam experience we decided to arrive from Cambodia via the Mekong Delta on a two day boat tour. First day was quite scenic as we cruised across the border and admired the daily life on the river bank. On the second day we cruised toward Saigon but stopped off to watch rice noodles being made, some traditional weaving and a walk through an 'ethnic minority' villages where Becky was thrilled to see yet more large spiders and then finally on to the incense factory. The incense factory tour went as follows; We all piled off the boat and followed the guide down to a small hut with huge bundles of incense drying on the ground outside, he then went in to the hut and appeared a minute later "This is how you make incense" he shouted. "First they make a putty from sawdust, next they wrap in around a bamboo stick, then they spray with colour and 'smell', then leave to dry in the sun. Now back to the boat". This stop lasted all of five minutes - how informative!

Whilst in Saigon we visited the Reunification Palace (which was closed for a meeting!) and the war reminance museum and then booked our bus ticket to Hanoi in the north via Mui Ne, Dalat, Nha Trang, Hoi An and Hue.

We arrived in Mui Ne which is a scenic coastal town famous for its kite boarding and windsurfing, and checked into a hotel right on the beach. After looking around for a while and enquiring about kite boarding (which we didn't have time for on this occasion) we booked a sunrise tour to the local sand dunes for the next morning. We dragged ourselves out of bed the next morning at 4.30 am and waited for our jeep to arrive. It eventually arrived twenty minutes late and proceeded to drive at 15 mph, finally reaching our destination at 6.20 am a full half hour late and therefore missing sunrise! We were so furious we demanded he turn round and take us back to the hotel where we spent the day relaxing by the pool.

The next day we jumped on a bus to Dalat, which is a beautiful city set in the central highlands surrounded by lakes, waterfalls and evergreen forests. We spent the next 36 hours taking in as many sites as possible on foot. These included; the botanical gardens (one of Becky's highlights), Datanla Falls and the 'Crazy House', this is a long running project by an excentric architect to create an 'Alice in wonderland' style house. Becky seemsed to really enjoy this and regressed to being 5 years old, but really wanted to have her best mate Vicki there to experience it too.

We could have covered more by hiring motorbikes as our friend Jess did, the story of which she related to us by email (I hope she dosen't mind us repeating it):

'The woman I hired the bike off tried to show me what to do, so I figured I'd be sweet, drove off with her on the back giving instructions, and was kind of doing fine until all the people along the street started shouting and I realised she had fallen off! Apparently I was weaving along the street a bit much and going too fast! After that she offered (offered/insisted, potato/patato) to drive me to the Marble mountains instead. I have decided maybe motorbikes arent my thing and have since hired them with a driver'. - A lesson to us all!

Our next stop was Nha Trang where I finally managed to persuade Becky to try Scuba diving. She was very nervous to start with, but thoroughly enjoyed it as predicted. We saw many spectacular coral formations and some beautiful fish. We now can't wait to get to Thailand and give it another go!

By this point in our Vietnam trip we were aware of the iminent arival of 'Tet', the lunar new year,a time where the transport system, like everything else in the country, shuts down for a few days. We chose to spend New year in Hoi An, a small town about half way up the east coast. Unfortunatly we had to endure the overnight bus first. To start with it took three hours to leave Nha trang and then the rest of the journey was spent bouncing around with the people infront practically sleeping on our laps as the seats went back so far!

It was in Hoi An that we met up with a couple, Colin and Hilda from Southend, whom we met in Saigon. The four of us saw in the new year the only way us Brits know how, we got really pissed! It was a wicked night, we sent floating candles down the river, followed the dragon dance through the streets, chatted with locals, started a pool party at our hotel and in Richard's case ended up going to bed at around 7 in the morning after making sure he had wished everyone on the street outside the hotel a very happy new year (Chuc Mung Nam Moi!). It has to be said that the next day was hell and the hangovers lasted well into the evening.

Once the busses started again it was up to Hue (pronouced 'Whay'), supposedly a cultural centre. Well we were a bit dissapointed, most of the really old stuff was lost in the war and has been either left as rubble or rebuilt so there is not much of age to look at. So rather than hang around we decided to head up to Hanoi to see what the capital had to offer. The bus ride was a gruelling 12 hours, but we had some added onboard entertainment when the bag boy decided to throw a glass bottle at the driver when we were at a petrol station! The driver chased the guy into the darkness and then came back alone and drove off! We found out later that the bag boy was sent back to Hue on another bus, but for a while we thought he had been left somewhere in a ditch! The rest of the journey was alot less eventful. We finally got to the capital at around 6.30 am and were all, along with our bags, practically thrown off the bus in an unknown area and left on our own as the bus drove off. This summed up our travel experiences with 'TM Brothers'/'Camel Travel' and we would not recommend them to anyone. We finally found our own way to our destination.

We are in Hanoi at the moment but will fill you in on this and more in the next journal but just thought you might like to know that it has been raining for 3 days!

B and R

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