Day 44 Wednesday June 17 2009 Negotiated a ride on the motorbike to take us to the War Remanents museum as we were running out of time before heading off to the airport. A motorbike ride through downtown Saigon/ Ho Chi Minh City should be a ride of passage! I need to spare the details, but I did wear a helmet as always. After the museum, we attempted to check out of the Orient Hotel. Our first mistake was agreeing to pay $10 US without asking what the rate was in VND, which is what we were paying with. So when [View Full Entry]

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Day 43 Tuesday June 16, 2009 Enjoyed our free breakfast at the hotel and took a tour van 1.5 hours to visit the Cu Chi tunnels. On the way, we stopped at a lacquer ware factory that specialized in training disabled people in making these intricately patterned house wares using paint, eggshells and mother of pearl inlays. Finally made it to the Cu Chi tunnels and watched a documentary on the war against the Americans. It's amazing how clever those little guys were. They had loads of hand made boobie traps, the most famous being the trap door on the footpaths [View Full Entry]

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You know you're a pedestrian in Vietnam when... 1. You feel safer running across the street in front of a bus than a motorbike. 2. You feel as if you are living in that old computer game called "Frogger" everytime you cross the street. (one step forward, stop, back, 3 steps forward, stop, run like heck to the other side and safe) 3. You have to look both ways to cross a one way street because the motorbikes frequently drive down the wrong way. 4. You learn that a red light only means stop when there is traffic on the other [View Full Entry]

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Day 42 Monday June 15, 2009 Rented the motorbike again and had breakfast at the Tuong Vy Cafe, very good. Great food, but no menus in english. We were lucky enough to find a waitress that knew some english and we were able to order. We went back to Vietnam Airlines to try for like the 3rd time to change our tickets to go to Cambodia to a different day. We bought a series of tickets to take us from one country to the next and part of the special package was that we could change the dates up to 24 [View Full Entry]

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Day 41 Sunday June 14, 2009 Had breakfast at the fake "Peace Cafe"(64 Truong Cong Dinh). Very good food. Rented a nice motorbike from our hotel for $5 for the day and went around the town to do some sight seeing. Our 1st stop was the Lake of Sighs (and park) to ride horses around the lake (not nearly as romantic as it sounds, it ended up being a pony ride around the park). 2nd stop Datanla Falls to take a roller coaster ride downhill to the base of the falls. We had way more fun than adults should have on [View Full Entry]

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Day 40 Saturday June 13, 2009 We have been traveling 40 days/ 40 nights. We arrived in Nha Trang at 6am and switched buses to take us onto Dalat, a little town in the mountains in the Central Highlands of Vietnam. The roads up the mountain were long, windy, and hot (poor A/C). This bus was way too big to be traversing up these narrow roads! I don't even want to know how many motobikes we ran off the road, but the horns were blaring all the way up the mountain. We stopped twice, once for a potty break and then [View Full Entry]

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Day 39 Friday June 12, 2009 Rented a motorbike and took a scenic 35K trip to My Son village that is home to 4th century ruins and ancient buildings. Very impressive indeed. The builidngs and the architecture they used in that time period with no equipment is amazing. We only got to spend a little time there as our bus was leaving that night for Nha Trang. I stopped by a tailor shop and had a really cute red wool coat made. I had waited to the last minuted deciding whether or not to do it, but $35 for a custom [View Full Entry]

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Day 38 Thursday June 11, 2009 The streets all around the city are chocked full of tailor shops and all have little yappy dogs to guard. I was close to eliminating the one across the street from our hotel a few times...hehe. Rented the bicycles again today and headed down to the streets by the river to check out several museums and such. Our first stop was the Catonese Assembly Hall that ws originally founded for community meetins and later became a temple to worship Thien Hau, from the Fujian Province in China. (Info from Lonely Planet) There were some very [View Full Entry]

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Day 37 Wednesday June 10, 2009 Finally arrived in Hue at 8am and had to switch to another bus to take us on to Hoi An. There are usually two guys on the bus, the driver and the ticket taker. Most of the tourists have open ended tickets (a booklet of tickets to each destination) and the ticket taker on this bus was trying to take more tickets than needed to the next destination from a British couple in front of us. They got into an arguement and the ticket taker told us all to get off the bus and identify [View Full Entry]

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Day 36 Tuesday June 9, 2009 Happy 21st Birthday to Kali!!!! Began our 24 hour journey to Hoi An, Vietnam by taking a hydrofoil (130,000 VND) to Hai Phong and took a 3 hour bus trip to Ninh Binh for 25,000 VND ($1.43). I chatted with the local ladies at the bus station and even though they didn't speak hardly any English I managed to have a whole conversation with them regarding marriage and children=) The bus ride was hot and dusty but wasn't as bad as previous bus rides. We arrrived at the Ninh Binh bus station and noticed the [View Full Entry]

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