Vietnam, One man disco yeah!

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Hannoi

We arrived in Vietnam, on the 12th of march in the evening having met the lovely Becca on the plane whom we have travelled with since. Hannoi is quite an incredible city, yes it is polluted, the smells assult you, the motorbikes scream at you as you wade your way through them to cross the road and the people they will sell you anything and smile like an angel whilst blatently trying to rip you off, I loved it! We spent just a couple of days there ended up at an Irish pub watching the rugby and football plus the hostel bar had a happy hour with drinks for the equvilent of 50p.
During the day we also got some more cultural bits in exploring the old town, the french quarter and visting the army prison which has held political prisoners from the time of the french collonialists right up to american fighter pilots during the vietnam war.

Halong Bay- One big Party

We moved on quite quickly, to Halong Bay, where some of the 3rd pirates of the carribean was filmed and a place being considered for one of the 7 natural wonders of the world. There were 30 odd of us going from the same hostel so we had a lovely time. The first day we jumped off the boat, well some of us did, the tour guides neglected to mention that there were jelly fish and someone got stung, but not badly! We kyaked for a couple of hours to reach a cave that was supposed to be desserted but actually had someone in there playing rave music with hundreds of candles set out, who wouldn't want to go to that party?! We pushed on and explored the back of the cave coming to a lovely isolated lake, and apparently a few bats which I didn't get to see. I have to say that as brilliant as the tour was the water was absolutely filthy, so much crap littered it on that day that i didn't even want to put the paddels in at times, the second day wasn't so bad so i can only assume that it was the area we were in.
That evening involved drinking games, lots of them, dancing and generally going a little crazy there was a fair mix of Australians, English a couple of Canadians and Americans on the boat which made for a good party. I guess i should now explain the title, one of our tour guides for the trip was a Mexican who was quite obviously a party animal with a tendancy to dabble in the occasional/ not so occasional drug taking. He was absoultely brillant at getting the party started and his favourite sayings were; who's not loving it?!!, One man Disco! and then he'd do his little air fisting thing. Add a mexican accent on it, it sounds much better. Anyway by the end he had absolutely everyone doing it, they even set up a face book group! ;D
The second day we were taken to a lovely private island, basically a small beach with hugh rocks as a backdrop, then we chilled out, sunbathed played badminton etc and then in the afternnon did watersports, in my case i did tubing with Kiwi, we've got a video but it might be too large to upload, i loved it and wanted to go again in fact i am definately going to get it in again somewhere before the end of my trip.
The second night was another party with even more alcohol involed than the first which didn't really seem possible, i drunk to much and was asleep by one but some of the more hard core partyer's were up till 4 doing things like banging the gong with thier head and other ridiculus feats that I heard about the next day. I learnt a rather crazy new drinking game which puts ring of fire to shame when it comes to the sheer amount of drinking involved, will be showing the girlies that one when i get back.

Hue and the Citadel

We did arrive back in Hannoi almost recovered from the hangovers to everyone organising another party, we had a bus booked so hopped on that for the 24 hour ride to Hoi-an. The next day, part way through our trip we stopped at Hue for 4 hours, and i managed to get to see the citadel, the purple city which is where the emperor's used to live. Until 1945 Hue was the capital of Vietnam and in the citadel is where the Emperor's kept thier concubines and wifes. It had some beautiful buildings and lakes with mosaic making up decoration going up the edge of the buildings. Such a peacful place but unfortunatly bombed heavily during the Vietnam war so only a shadow of what it must have been.

Hoi-an

Jumping back on the bus we sped to Hoi-an where i have finally managed to update this, here we've been wandering around the old town, spent yesterday at the beach which was lovely and have had some custom made clothes made including a beautiful coat.
Here we also met up with a few of the people from Halong Bay tour and have continued the party since, starting at a wonderful restaurant in the evenings where i had the most delicious fish in clay pot with lemon grass and ginger. They also had fresh beer in the restaurant which i was informed was very nice for only 4000 vnd, the equivilent of 15p, shame i don't like beer. One evening we continued on to the Why not Bar where we had a lock in got drunk and danced on the pool table before wandering home through the old town at about 3 in the morning.
On the last day in Hoi-an i split up from the others to go and see the My Son ruins leftover from the Cham empire, whose people were beaten in a civil war and who now make up a small minority group in Vietnam of only around 100,000 people and live in the south far away from the My Son ruins. The place was beautiful however very heavily bombed during the Vietnam war due to false evidence and as a result all of the towers were damaged and some totally oblitorated with huge bomb craters scattered around. Also the french nicked the heads of the carvings on the temples and took them back to the louvre so although there are remakes, it's not the same!
Next on to Na trang, beach town!

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Photos

City of bikes
wading through this lot is scary even as it amazes

Jumping of the boat
I did it to and the water was a real shock to the system because it was soo cold. Only later were the jellyfish seen.

Our beach
Our own little private beach, lovely!

Green and grand
What is left of the gardens is so lovely that it's amasing to think what they would have been before they were bombed

On the way back
Stopped on the way back from the beach to snap the beautiful sunset

Halong-Bay
It was a little cloudy the first day but no one let it spoil our fun.

Badminton on the beach
It was quite a lot warmer by this point on the second day

The purple city
This was the entrance to the walled inner citadel

Inner palace
It was so quite in this part that i felt i had it all to myself

View on the way to the beach
I stopped on the bike ride to the beach to take this picture because it was just so beautiful.

Hoi-an old town at night
There were also hundreds of little lanturns floating down the river which was so beautiful but didn't come out so well on my camera

The towers
This is the inside of one of the towers what they can't work out to this day is how the cham people built these without morter they have tryed many theorys but none that work so far.