Advertisement
Published: December 14th 2006
I've been ticking boxes again, although I wasn't pleased with achieving two of them: a motorbike crash in Hanoi and being bitten by bed bugs! The crash happened on my first trip so you'd think that would put me off, but no, when I got to Hue I did a motorbike city tour and a 200km day trip to the famous underground tunnels. To be honest the 200km trip was hell! It was freezing cold and it rained the whole day. The rain was coming down so hard that when it hit my face it felt as if I was being cut. It was also terrifying! At times the driver would try and overtake 3 lorries on the inside, which left about a meters between me and the lorry and me and the railing (sorry to scare you mum)! He always failed to pass all three and we'd end up stuck between them. This meant all the dirt the lorry threw up and smoke it chucked out found a home on my face. When we stopped for lunch I used a hand towel on my face and it came off black, yum yum. In future I should read my Lonely Planet
Interesting Sites
Tell me what you see....because I thought the tunnels were close by, but right there in the 4 line paragraph it said 200km round trip. It also said it's really only worthwhile if you're a war enthusiast. There's absolutely no way I would have done it knowing that! So there's another lesson: The LP will now be my bible.
Thankfully I've met people as I've travelled because otherwise I would have gone mad! Travelling alone is very strange, you cover the same questions to get to know someone and then say goodbye within days. I've spent the past 5 days with the same dutch girl which has been cool and useful since she's a tour guide in south east Asia and took the time to plan my itinerary!
One night there was me, the dutch girl, two new zealanders, a canadian, an english girl, a bottle of Jim Bean and a deck of cards. We polished off the Jim Bean and ended up dancing on the wall around our hostel. Our tame party woke up the French guests and has made enemies of them since. Unfortunately because everyone takes the same route I keep bumping into them!
The beach town of
Hoi An has definitely been my favourite place in Vietnam. Hanoi was pretty crazy, but nothing in comparison to Ho Chi Minh City (where I am now). This place wins hands down! All day long I'm offered trishaws, motorbikes, weed and prostitutes! One trishaw driver proudly told me I could have a "bang bang" woman for an hour at the mere cost of 4 pounds - bargain. There's even bars called "go go" bars meaning you go get a date (provided on the menu) then go get a room (thrown in).
Bye for now! I'm off to the Mekong Delta for two days which means I'll escape the sound of horns for a while! After that it's a short flight to Bangkok, to meet my sister (ness) and her boyfriend (pete) for xmas and new years on the beach - sweet!
Advertisement
Tot: 0.119s; Tpl: 0.011s; cc: 10; qc: 61; dbt: 0.0584s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 2;
; mem: 1.1mb
