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Published: August 8th 2007
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We love Vietnam and probably our favorite place so far, although in stiff competition with Mongolia! Vietnam is so different to China. For starters, they don't spit (thank god! As we really couldn't take much more!), the food is gorgeous, the people are welcoming and friendly, the architecture is colourful and the scenery lush and green (helped by some insane tropical rainstorms that we’ve got caught in). However, the honking of car horns is louder than China and for some reason, the men like to have long finger nails... sometimes over an inch long. Ew! Just slightly freaky! But the main thing that we love here is that we no longer have to plan journeys days, or sometimes weeks in advance, like we did in China. Suppose cities that aren't full of millions of people helps!
Didn’t spend too long in Hanoi as after the bustle of China as we wanted to get out into the open. So the last week or so we’ve spent sunbathing on sandy shores, trekking in the jungle and floating on boats along rivers. Many of these places aren’t accessible by public transport and the only way to get there is to ask a local
Hanoi
Funky straw masks if we can hop on the back of their bike to take us there. The other day Jenny was on the back of one bike and Jay was following closely behind on the back of another. We were headed to Cucphong National Park to go trekking in the jungle. We were loving it, the wind rushing by, thinking how far behind the office desk at 1Spatial is... then suddenly, out of nowhere, a stupid dog runs out of the bushes in front of Jenny’s bike! The bike swerved all over the place, the dog seemingly getting itself in the way of wherever we went, and eventually skidded into the grassy verge. There were no broken bones, or even cuts or bruises. Just that the white top she'd decided to wear that day was not so white anymore. But she survived and lived to tell the tale! So we hopped back on the motorbikes off to the national park, which was amazing! The sounds we work up to that morning were insane as we spent the night there in a wooden stilt house. The trekking was hot, but rewarding, except that we did get eaten alive by mossies!!!
Our last
Hanoi
Motorbikes rule the roads in Vietnam stop before Nha Trang, where we are now, was Hoi An, which is a lovely old town, and probably the prettiest we've seen since Riga, Latvia. It is also a very painful place to be as there are so many things we want to buy, but really have to resist! There are loads of shops where local people will tailor make for you the most gorgeous of coats, dresses and suits in lovely fabric, all to a western style. Then there are all the local galleries, the artwork of which is all individual and not the mass-produced tourist stuff that you would imagine. It's so colourful and abstract, often using oils on large canvasses. You can see them at work in the street, which is lovely. Then beyond that, there's all the little shops selling unusual hand made stuff - everything from tea pots to photo albums to bed sheets. And as the major bonus, we found the cheapest beer EVER that we have seen in our lives so far.... in Hoi An you can get a half pint of local 'fresh' beer for... 9 pence!!! How crazy is that?!?! And it's not half bad either!!!
An eventful overnight
bus journey then brought us here to Nha Trang. Not only did we get bogged down in a tropical rainstorm, where everyone had to jump out and push, but 2 hours later, we smashed into the back of another bus! The bus in front of us had quite gently slowed down with brake lights, but ours was going too fast, couldn’t stop in time and so swerved to try and get round but didn’t quite make it. We smashed the rear window of the bus in front and lost our right wing mirror in the process. It was only once we stopped and realized that we were inches away from a river bank and that there was a line of lorries coming the other way, that we realised it could have been a lot worse! All adds to the adventures though, right?
So after the traumas of buses, bikes and blogs, the beaches of Nha Trang our well deserved and are beckoning now….
See ya!
xxx
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