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Published: January 15th 2008
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Sailing around Halong Bay
(Nice shot Andrew - cheers mate) The last thing we did in Northern Vietnam was a good thing! - an overnight boat trip/cruise around Halong Bay. We did some cruising, explored some rather fetching caves, kayaked around a bit which was fun and did a spot of drinking too. We had a right good bunch of people on that boat trip. After that we headed back into Hanoi for the last time to catch a train headed south, down the coast.
Hanoi has a population of 4 million by the way and guess what...........3 million of the blighters have a motorbike! When you're in Hanoi you can't get away from all these millions of scooters charging this way and that - along pavements, down one way streets the wrong way etc etc - there are bikes everywhere, parked in the gutters, on the pavements, in hotel foyers, shops, bars, restaurants......We estimate that there's around 1 million parking spaces for all these bikes. The authorities would have you believe that all of this charging around that people do in Hanoi is down to the surging Vietnamese economy - everyone doing their utmost to secure more dollars and dongs. However, in actual fact all of this madcap rushing
around is just two million poor buggers desparately looking for somewhere to park their bikes!
Vietnam and dogs - a chap on our Halong Bay trip told us something about an aquaintance of his - an English girl teaching English in Hanoi. She was a walking down the street one day in Hanoi when she spotted a cute little doggy in the window of a shop - she stopped to admire it. The shop keeper asked if she would like to have it and on impulse she replied "oh yes please that would be very nice thank you". The shop keeper took the dog and a meat cleaver and before the girl knew what the crack was the chap had chopped the dogs head clean right off! He then popped the head and body in a bag (a doggy bag one supposes) and gave it to the poor horrified girl. We know there's a lot of dog lovers out there so apologies if that story upset you. Steve loves dogs too, especially with chips and a side salad ;-). We saw a roasted dogs head in a market the other day actually - we didn't buy it though -
Cua Dai Beach
Janine checks out the beach just down the road from Hoi An what on earth does one do with a roasted dogs head?? Answers on our message board please - we've still got a week to go in Vietnam after all............
Anyway's - south we headed on a 16 hour overnight sleeper train departing Hanoi at 11pm. We awoke to find ourselves speeding past stunning scenery - mile after mile of lush green paddy fields, karst rock formations, jungle, hills, mountains and the China Sea as we frequently hugged the coastline - sometimes literally hanging over the sea on tracks built into the cliff edge. We got off the train in Danang (about half way down the Vietnamese eastern coast) and then got a taxi a further 45mins south to Hoi An. Hoi An was a super cool chilled out little town. It's a UNESCO thingermejiggy town because of the lots of cool old stuff they've got there. As well as UNESCO stuff they have good cake shops, good resaurants and lots and lots and lots of tailors. Everybody goes to Hoi An to get measured up for clothing - they'll make absolutely any clothing item you want exactly to your spec - they'll do it cheaply and they'll have it
Cycling back from Cua Dai Beach
Steve used the on board basket to dry off his speedo's on the way home. done in 24 hours. Janine got a coat and a dress done. Jurassic park was on the Star movie channel so Steve missed out on a new suit this time around.... We visited the most excellent Cua Dai beach a couple of times - it's 5kms from Hoi An and you get there by renting a bicycle for 10,000 Dong (about 30 pence). We also visited the nearby My Son (pronounced Me Son) seriously ancient ruins - My Son was the spiritual centre of the ancient Cham empire and it's yet another UNESCO site. These ruins have a 'deep jungle' setting and were well worth visiting on a very hot day. In the old days it would have taken a tourist a full day to get around the site but these days, courtesy of the US Military and their B52 bombers, you can easily get around the site in under an hour as there's not that much of it left really.
After Hoi An we headed for the Central Highlands by way of an 8hr train down the coast (stopping off at Nha Trang for a few hours sleep) and then inland (by way of a 6hr bus ride)
up into the mountains to the town of Dalat (standing at 1500m). The bus ride up into the mountains was an interesting one - proper steep hairpin bends all over the place with big drops off into the abyss and all that. The journey was made all the more challenging (for the passengers) as the driver was intent on swinging the bus around each corner as quickly as possible. In certain sections the full bus of passengers was perfectly silent as we all willed the bus to stay on the road. On one corner the rear wheels of the bus hit a pot-hole and the bus jumped to the side - one of the passengers let out a very loud gasp/sharp intake of breath which set everyone's hearts racing even more so - especially Steve's heart as he realised that it was Janine doing the gasping! Janine spent the remainder of the journey to Dalat with her eye's tightly shut. Steve described the stunning scenery to her upon arrival.
In Dalat we've done a couple of long treks around the surrounding mountains. We've had a very hot day treking and a slightly cooler day. We didn't get a view
from the highest peak around here (Langbian standing at 2169m) as it was up in the clouds which was a shame but apart from that the scenery has been quite stunning.
We head south again tomorrow to Saigon and we're not entirely sure where we might head after that - maybe further south to Vietnam's largest island (Phu Quoc) or maybe west to Sihanoukville, Cambodia - we're having a think about it now.
That's all for now folks - bye.........
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DC
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Back in Nam
Hi Ste and Janine. Good to see you are liking Nam. It brings back memories. Just left Luke in the islands. I was wondering Ste - have you been caught short of late? Up the Everton. Down with the Boro. Bring on my Jaffa Cakes...