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Published: October 13th 2008
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Blog time again, Carol here. We have covered Vietnam and Cambodia since our last two inputs so I will cover Vietnam and then Rich will send something for Cambodia so you may get them in quick succesion again. Get your reading glasses on! lol
So, after kissing goodbye to Beer Lao and taking the horrendous bus that Rich describes in his last blog, we arrive in Hue which is about half way down Vietnam. We planned to just stay a few days so to make the most of it booked a bike tour of the city for day. This turned out to be a great way to see everything, including two Pagoda's which were beautiful, the Citadel and Tu Doc Mausoleum which had quite a few tombs and was really lovely and peaceful. We had an earlyish start at 9am so we could catch the morning prayer at the Pagoda and then we finished at about 14.00 which was cool as it was boiling hot and apart from the time we were on the bikes, the heat was pretty intollerable. Great day out though and fiished perfectly with a dip in the hotel pool and a relax for the afternoon.
Who said budget travel was without luxury.....this was perfect. We didn't really do a lot else in Hue apart from find a bar called the DMZ where, in my opinion, they served the best pizza ever. I made Rich go there two days in a row cos I was so impressed.....and that's coming from someone who doesn't even like pizza really. YUM YUM.
So, after Hue we headed down to Hoi An, home of the Vietnamese made-to-measure tailors!! How exciting! I had been planning and looking forward to this for quite some time. Going without clothes shopping for 5 months had finally taken its toll and so I had a list of stuff for travels and also for when I get home. As well as shopping, we also met our friends Amy, Ben and Katie here again which was cool as looks like we're all heading the same way down Vietnam and Cambodia. Hoi An is a great place with loads of cool, funky bars and restaurants.....all set in little picturesque lanes. We really liked it here and wished we maybe had a little longer but are on quite a tight schedule now as we've booked some flights to
Australia so need to get a wriggle on. Trying to choose a tailor out of the hundreds that line the streets was pretty stressful but finally we chose a small one with a lovely lady who didn't try to sell me a suit when I was clearly in the market for a dress, as that's what I was aksing about and looking at!! Honestly, it is so tiring getting hassled all the time. "What you want??" "Where you go??" "Where you from??" It drives you crazy!! Anyway, as a taster, I ordered a dress (preparing for the weddings when I return), a pair of shorts and a pair of jeans and Rich ordered a shirt. All exciting stuff. Had a great night out with the others. We went to a few bars, including a place pretty far out of town called King Kong. Not really sure how they make money as every half hour they bought out free drinks. Shots, rum and cokes....free flowing.....all very strange, but who's complaining?? We stayed for a while but wasn't really our scene so headed back into town and headed to The Salsa Bar. Music was cheese but we enjoyed the night, dancing away
Morning Prayer in Hue
Part of the City bike tour till the early hours! Next day went to checkout our stuff.....wow! Was amazing to try a pair of jeans on and they fit instantly. I was well happy so I ordered two more pairs, two more dresses and Rich ordered a few more shirts! Happy days! After anothe rnight out with the others, some last minute alterations and a mad dash to the sleeper coach (which w nearly missed), we were heading off again to Nha Trang, a beach resort half way down to Ho Chi Man City.
I will just say here how genius the sleeper buses in Vietnam are. You get on and have your own little bed, there are three across and then the upper beds too. And you sleep, from the minute it gets dark until you arrive at your destination, usually about 12 hours later. They wake you for wee and food breaks and then off to night nights again. It's great.....best transport we found in South East Asia! Anyway, Nha Trang......I absolutly loved it here. After finding a hotel and having some breakfast we headed straoght for the beach. Was lovely and hot and we paid for two beds and a club called
The Sailing Cub. The beds were amazing and comfortable, with some shade and a table. Now I know this sounds obvious and silly to point out but we haven't had such luxury in a while so we lay and pretended to be like any other rich holiday maker, sipping cocktails and reading our books. Well, reading the books anyway as we couldn't actually afford any drinks but still, we were happy! There is loads of diving out of Nha Trang, it's the main resort to hit the reefs from so we booked up for the next morning. Time to get into the water again, very exciting! A day later our drinking buddies turned up again so we all met in the Sailing Club and then hit the town, after only one drink as again, too expensive. Nha Trang town is so much fun. There's restaurants and bars everywhere and because it's more of a holiday resort that a backpacker place, they're all pretty funky and cool. We did a bit of a crawl and explored....ending up in a bar called "The Why Not Bar", dancing the night away. Next morning I woke up to "what timeis it"? Whoops......we missed diving!
Being the typical girl, I sent Rich down there so see how much trouble we were in. We popped back in later that day to apologise for missing the boat (so to speak) and the manager was clearly a bit pissed off with us but we apologised again and booked in for the next day. Early night and we were up in time, grabbed some croissants which turned out to be yukky sweetbread and then headed for the boat. We had a lovely dive, wasn't the best diving we've done but it was so nice to get back in the water and have a swim about. One of the best things was the chicken curry they served on the boat between dives. Yum Yum! We saw a cuttlefish which was pretty cool as it kept changing colour as we approached it and I'd not seen one before and some nudibraches, which are tiny sea slug type things that come in loads of different colours.....and lots of fish of course! With a free day before any of us moved onto our next destination we decided we would go to the mud baths and natural spring which is situated a short cab
The Perfume river, Hue
Part of the Vietnam war was fought across this river ride away. What a lovely day. We paid a little extra to have our own mud bath instead of having to share with anyone else and this also entitled us to use the facilities of the resort which included, fresh spring showers, hot soaks and then use of the 36-38 degree pool. All lovely, except in that heat and after all the hot mud baths etc, you could do with cooling down really but still, we had a great day and really enjoyed our mud bath experience. Not to mention how soft our skin was afterwards. Even the boys where inpressed! lol
Once again, it was time to move on.......so I am going to pass onto Rich now as I didn't really enjoy Ho Chi Minh City much so he can probably do it a lot more justice than me!
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