The rest our our Vietnman adventure.

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Hello,



I thought I would update the blog with the last of our experiences.



Whilst in Nah Trang, I was lucky enough to do a day's diving. My instructor was lovely and we headed on a boat to an island near by where we dived in protected waters. I did two 45minute dives, it was a very relaxing and beautiful experience, although many of the fish we spotted I recognised from our time snorkelling in Koh Tao.

We also visited some natural mud pools, this was an interesting experience. Sitting in muddy, gritty water wasn't as relaxing as I had imagined. It was a good experience though as the locals obviously attend these pools regularly due to their health benefits, it is thought that the mud helps your skin. All the locals were in a bath together, wearing their clothes not swimming costumes, whilst the tourists sat in another pool together.

During our time in Nah Trang we also met a group of 4 other travellers, 2 Dutch, 1 American and 1 Brit. We became good friends and ended up travelling up the whole of Vietnam together. So, we all clambered aboard another sleep bus. Unfortunately I didn't get much sleep on this bus. We broke down and had to wait on the side of the road for and hour, then once our bus was fixed, we had a problem with the suspension so every bump in the road caused us to hit our bottoms on the seat! Ouch. After our eventful journey, our next stop was Hue.

Hue has an old citadel, which is surrounded by a big wall. The architecture was beautiful, very detailed gate ways with ceramic decoration. We didn't go into the citadel, but walked around the outer wall and had a look in a few pagodas. From Hue, we took a boat to visit some old temples. This was a lovely trip and the highlight was Tomb Duc. A beautiful space that has had many uses in its time; palace, house, temple and recently tomb to an old king. There are many different areas and along with the building, there are wooded areas and a large pond with 2 pagodas.

After our brief time in Hue, we headed to Hoi An. This was our favourite place in Vietnam. I was a beautiful little town with wooden houses brightly painted. There was a local market which sold everything you could think of, including live hens. Whilst walking around, we found an amazing food stall and discovered one of our favourite Vietnamese dishes. It was noodle soup, but with meat, chopped nuts, lime, a hard boiled quail egg and lots of different herbs that I wasn't sure what they were. Yum! We went back 2 days running to have it because it was so tasty and a bargain at 1 Pound.

From here we headed to Hanoi. This is a large city that has lots of hustle and bustle. I enjoyed my time here as we were not hassled in the same way. We found that throughout most of Vietnam we were pestered to buy things more than the other places we have visited. We stayed in the old town of Hanoi which has lots of little streets, food stalls, shops selling everything you can think of. In fact they have whole streets dedicated to certain items, for example if you want shoes, you head to a particular road as that is where all the shoes are, whereas if you want flowers, pots and pans or anything else, you would have to go to a different street.

Our last stop was Halong Bay - a famous area just of the North East coast of Vietnam. This is an area of sea that has over 2000 islands, some are small, others are very big. We spent one night on a boat exploring the area and the other night on one of the largest islands in Halong Bay - Cat Ba. The scenery was beautiful, we spent time looking at the rock formations, we had an afternoon of kayaking, visited a huge cave system that was once underwater but has since been used as an area of safety. We also walked up to a viewpoint that overlooked the rainforest of Cat Ba, through the jungle which was very humid. The view was stunning.

From here we said goodbye to our friends and headed over the border to Laos on a 30 hour bus journey! Phew. Vietnam has had beautiful scenery and I have enjoyed seeing the classic' Vietnamese sights of rice fields, water buffalo pulling ploughs in the fields and people wearing conical hats, but we have not enjoyed the country as much due to the constant bombardment of people selling things.

Miss T

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