Advertisement
Published: January 8th 2008
Edit Blog Post
We have been steadily trucking up the Vietnamese coast since our last entry was posted. Our stay in Mui Ne was a nice little break on the sun loungers and with the guest house kitchen which did a great line in seafood dishes and comprised most of our costs for the stay. The weather decided to pack in on us after a few days, so it was time to start heading north again via the bus network. We had an amusing wait for our bus out of Mui Ne, which was supposed to arrive at 1.30 that afternoon. That came and went, as did 2.30 so we took up the ticket agent's (a 22 year old hair dresser) offer to hang out in her shop/front room and watch vietnamese music videos at high volumes...thankfully the bus arrived only 2 hours late.
Nha Trang was hit by the same weather system as Mui Ne, which kind of limited the sightseeing options, but we did take in all the "non beach" stuff such as markets and the usual huge Buddha you can find if you go looking. We therefore cut short our beach time, as we wanted to fit in time to
visit Hoi An which we reached by a 'sleeping' bus from Nga Trang. The bus had been done so three rows of bunks lengthwise all the way down the bus, separated by the metal supports between each person. This was OK - could mostly lie down - your legs were straight out, with just a partially tilted back to the seat bit so it was kind-of comfortable.
Hoi An is an historic old trading town, where the Vietnamese invited all comers to set up shop and trade with them. It has well preserved examples of 150 year old Japanese and Chinese buildings, complete with their current occupants selling Hoi An's trade mark lanterns and other tourist related goods.
We celebrated new years eve in the old town of Hoi An with a really nice 'expensive' dinner overlooking the river and one of the main gathering points. For NZ$ 30 (for both of us) we had 2 bottles of local wine (the imported stuff is very expensive), a bowl of crab and asparagus soup each and shared plates of white rose (a local dish of shrimps cooked in rice paper), squid stuffed with vegetables, eel in butter sauce, and
The Sleeping bus
yes, it is as comfortable as it looks a duck dish (note - no rice - we stuck with the good stuff!). It was not as much food as it sounds (just the right amount for 2 people), and eaten over a nice relaxed 3 hours. It was all really really delicious, so the scouting around the area for a less touristy restaurant definitely paid off. Quite a few on the same road had no balcony overlooking the river, the same wine at twice the price and doing set menus for new years for about US$18 each (what a rip off!!).
We decided to do new years a bit differently and see in the sun rise with a trip to My Son - the Cham temple ruins, instead of staying up until midnight....Of course it started pouring with rain half way there! (so didn't see any sunrise, or sun at all)
Furthermore, we hadn't thought to take our rain coats but luckily the one restaurant there which had someone at at 6 am (while we waited for the ticket booth to open) was selling the 'plastic rubbish bag/poncho type' raincoats - so we got one of those each which meant that we were able to stay
dry instead of get absolutely soaked. The ruins were still good - although only really one section of them left standing as quite a few of the sites had bombs dropped on them by the US during the war, and it was definitely great to get there before the hordes of tourists.
Next we headed up the road to Hue for a couple of days. It rained pretty steadily on the first day - we still heading out in our raincoats (and also our ponchos as the rain got heavier) to check out the walled Imperial city - pretty much just checked out the citadel (imperial enclosure - a walled area within the walled city) as much of the rest was bombed and now turned into paddy fields. It had lots of Chinese looking temples and quite an impressive huge gatehouse and throne room (with a very uncomfortable throne in it).
On our second day in Hue we went on a boat trip down the river to check out a number of imperial tombs, and a pagoda. The weather was much better, still overcast but not raining - it started to drizzle again on the way back but
thankfully we didn't need to whip out our ponchos again :-)
A second sleeping bus look us up to Hanoi and lodgings in the old city. This was a little bit of a shock to the system (and the ears in general) as we hadn't heard traffic like it since Saigon. Hanoi didn't have much on offer in the way of sigts apart from Ho Chi Minh's Mausoleum complex (complete with a display of his used cars) and a few temples. The Temple of Literature was definitely the best of these, being an old University for confusian scolars with lots of Chinese details in the roof decorations.
We have just returned to Hanoi from a 3 day tour of Halong Bay which we thoroughly enjoyed. After a bus ride to the coast we hopped on our boat (see photo) for the next 24 hours - which took us cruising through the bay, and on which we stayed for the first night along with similar boats. The pictures do not really do the place justice as you are surronded by limestone peaks on all sides for as far as you can see.
On the second day we cruised
to Cat Ba island - the only inhabited island and had a short (but steep) tramp in the National park which took us through jungle to the tip of one of the limestone peaks for the panoramic views on offer. We then spent the afternoon at the island's beach (getting a bit cold for swimming in the north), and a night on the island before cruising back to the mainland, and from there back to our base in Hanoi.
We are now really, really, looking forward to tonights 20 hour bus trip to Laos on a standard bus (seats, not bunks) :-( Will post some more photos again shortly if they have the internet....
Advertisement
Tot: 0.047s; Tpl: 0.012s; cc: 16; qc: 27; dbt: 0.0211s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb