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Published: November 24th 2008
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Our view from Hoi An Hotel room
Yes it is a poster of a nice view. Behind it was the next doors hotel wall. Hiya
We are now writing from Hué which is probably our last stay before we reach Hanoi.
So our stay in Nha Trang wasn't too bad considering the weather and the lack of blue water but we were hoping that further up the coast at Hoi An it maybe a bit better, although we had heard on our travels that there was flooding but we weren't thinking about that.
We chose a night bus to take us on the advertised 11hr bus trip to Hoi An. When booking we were given the option to upgrade to a sleeper bus for $6 USD each but we gave that a miss as our accommodation is always under $10 and didn't think it was worth it. Upon getting on the bus we were shown to the front seat (normally you can sit wherever you want) which turned out to be a good thing as it has a bit more space to spread your legs. Apart from the normal habit of buses randomly stopping every 10min pick up someone, the start of the trip wasn't too bad. Once we hit the "open road" we hoped the bus driver might put his foot
Flooding of the river in Hoi An
When we left this road was over a metre deep in water and the flooding was almost up to the next block! down a bit and get the bus moving above walking speed (couldn't tell what the actual speed was as the speedo had broken). But the rain soon started bucketing down and we kinda knew that we wouldn't get to Hoi An at the 6am scheduled time. We weren't too worried about a bit of a longer trip as we thought that finding a hotel at this time of the morning might be a bit of a hassle. So the rest of the trip went like this...Driver talking to other staff guy loudly in Vietnamese, driver opening window and door of bus in the rain so he could smoke (and remember we were sitting right next to the front door), the driver opening window to throw rubbish out, the driver pulling over on side of the road and jumping out (we assume so he could go to the toilet), going very slow on the flat and extremely painstakingly slow on the slopes, and by memory he made 2 toilet stops. In saying this though time didn't go too slowly and 6am came around without too much trouble. But we still hadn't reached Hoi An and we had no idea where we
My Son
Michael hacked through the jungle with a machete. He just happened upon some ancient ruins. Hence the excitement... were. We ended up getting to Hoi An at 8:30 which ended up being ok with us but if we had had a normally bus seat in the middle I think it may have been a bit different.
In Hoi An we found accommodation easily for $8 USD and then we went for breakfast. After breakfast we made up for lost sleep on the bus then went for an explore. Hoi An had a ticketting scheme where you purchased one ticket for 75,000 VND (about $7.5 AUD). This was then seperated into 5 sections of which you could choose one attraction from each section to visit with your ticket. If you wanted to visit more than one attraction in one of the sections you had to purchase a whole new ticket. This really wasn't a problem as after visiting our first few sites we kinda realised that the sites in Hoi An were a bit dull (Ali says now that she had more interest in the sites, but Mic thinks that at the time she was pushing boredom as well) and even if they were free we may not have visited each of the sites. We also found a
My Son
Ancient pre- Vietnamese ruins little bit of flooding over the foreshore street but had not gone into peoples houses yet.
Yesterday we rented another motorbike and went to the ruins of My Son about 50km out of Hoi An. They were not too bad but definately not up to Angkor standards, but then again that is probably too much to expect. We then travelled north up highway 1 to the 3rd largest city in Vietnam, Da Nang (which is commonly confused by Michael to be Da Lang, Na Dang or Na Dong) in which Ali let me ride aroud in. We only stopped for lunch which was over priced and then went for a ride but found the city to be rather dull from what we saw. We then came back to Hoi An down the coastline on a new road but didn't get far before we needed to put on our poncho's and drove the rest of the way in a bit of wetness. The coastline here was much better than Nha Trang in the fact that it did have a bit of blueness, but was still not the postcard view you would normally see in summer time.
That night we
wandered again down to the water front for tea and found that the days rain had risen the water levels up another notch and there was not much activity on the foreshore street. So we opted for a bit of shopping where we bought some Polo tops, which are genuine we're sure!!!
Today caught a bus to Hué. The trip was only about 4hrs but because we hitched a ride on the bus to Hanoi, we got a sleeper bus. It was a very fast 4hrs and we are considering spending the extra money when we make our way to Hanoi for the sleeping space.
Haven't explored Hué yet but we have booked in for a day trip to the Demilitarised Zone (which separated Vietnam's north and south during the war) tomorrow which will be interesting.
Thanks for reading and stay tuned to our next exciting adventure!!!!
Mic + Ali
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