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Published: February 27th 2006
10p for Beers!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
This cafe in Hoi An and others like it charge just 3000 Dong (10p) for a beer. Beat that!Hello....
Well we were glad to arrive in Hoi An. The weather in Hue wasn't very good, more like England really, but much hotter of course. We barely saw a blue sky, so most of our pictures were a bit grey'd out! No rain though, which Hue is famous for at any time of year, phew!
It was a painless five hour journey on a nice coach (These journeys get easier with time it would seem..) and on the way we stopped off at a really nice beach called Ca Long and the Marble Mountains, where we explored some of the marble caves. (The areas covered with sculpture workshops, where you can buy anything that can be made from Marble - bit heavy for us to carry though!)
On arrival in Hoi An we bagged ourselves a great hotel with a pool, then went exploring. Everyone was trying to sell us clothes or shoes or bags from their tailoring shops and it was a bit overwhelming at first. We are realising fast that if you answer any questions like 'where are you from' etc... you get stuck there for 20 mins trying to escape. Also little kids are always
walking around with bracelets or postcards trying to get you to buy something, with cries of 'Maybe you buy later' or 'buy something from me'. You get used to the hassle though!
Hoi An is also a World Heritage site so there's plenty to do in the town and there is also a massive beach 2km away. We got a ticket thing, where you can visit all the sights at your leisure, so over the next three days we visited temples, museums and old Chinese merchants houses, which were preserved from the time Hoi An was an important trading port.
On day two we hired a motorbike to visit some ancient Champa ruins called My Son. We hired a bike to drive the 40km. 2km out of Hoi An, we heard a sound like air being driven through a very small hole... after a few seconds of denial we realised that we (me actually - Stu) would have to wheel the bike back to town, whilst trying not to get killed by the huge lorries zooming past. Fortunately there was a garage right on the outskirts of town. So in sign-language we explained what had happened and got the tyre
Holy Smoke!
These incense burners are paid for by families for good luck and burn for a month! fixed by a kid who must have been no older than ten! (Stu goes off to phone the hire company and I am left, surrounded by 5 kids who seem very interested by me. Then they ask if I like babies and try giving me the baby to hold, help! - Sarah) Anyway the moral of this story is make sure you check the bike before you hire it; we realised as soon as we got to the garage that both tyres were bald and the back one had worn so badly that it caused the puncture, oh dear! We headed for the beach afterwards as we'd had far too much excitement for one day!
Our last day was spent checking out more sights and shopping (mostly (exclusively) Sarah shopping actually)!!! Oh yes and eating - A LOT! We had an AMAZING lunch on the harbour front, followed by a ride in a little old lady's paddle boat. Check out the pictures, but needless to say Stu got stuck in with the paddling. (I felt a bit bad being paddled round the harbour by an old lady easily old enough to be my nan so I decided to paddle to
Comrades...
Advertisements like this are all around Vietnam. Although we can't read them they always have the hammer and sickle and the workers on them... hide my guilt. She was happy with the money though andeven took a rest a few times when I was paddling - Stu). The lady was more than happy to let him take over and seemed pretty impressed with his skills. She took us past her house, a tiny boat on the river that houses her, her husband and son. Another reminder of just how lucky we are!
Another night bus later, we got to Nha Trang. (Interesting journey as the bus was over booked and Stu nearly had a fight with a dumb French guy, who was trying to sleep on top of our backpacks, which were in the aisle as the storage under the bus was taken up with good knows what the Vietnamese were secretly transporting!)
Nha Trang is a Vietnamese beach resort, that was used by the US soldiers for R&R during the war. The beaches were spectacular and went as far as the eye could see. After another sleepless night bus we decided to chill at a hotel pool on our first day after catching some sleep first. The next day we hired a motorbike to explore the place which is pretty big to cover
Sarah enjoys her boat tour...
Honestly this is the only paddling the woman did... I did most of it (Stu). on foot. (No disasters this time) After visiting a Cham temple complex on the outskirts of town, Sarah needed some pampering so we headed to a spa resort for the rest of the day. After a slight detour over a mountain we managed to find the illusive mud Spa and spent the day soaking in communal mud pits and washing it off in mineral salt waterfalls, lush! Sarah made friends with a Korean girl and had a good old reminisce about Korea, while Stu befriended a super confident 6 year old Aussie girl, who ordered him around for a few hours, hee hee.. (a nice break from Sarah doing it! - Stu)
On our last day we opted for a boat trip. Our company was called No.4 Boat trip and our tour guide introduced himself as funky monkey! We started to worry, not helped when we realised most of the people on the bus were old Vietnamese women! We needn't have worried though. Old funky Monkey was hilarious and kept us totally entertained with terrible jokes, pranks and singing with the No.4 boat boy band, helicoptered in for the performance supposedly. Their rendition of 'Unchained melody' was pretty good! We
They're watching you!
The woman who took us on a boat tour said the boats all have eyes so they can see where they are going... visited four islands where we snorkeled, dived off the top of the boat and visited the floating bar, bartendered by 'lady boy' and 'monkey boy'... Stu volunteered for the Spanish dancing and F.M. tried to get Sarah to do Karaoke by calling out 'Miss English, Miss English I need you help' over the mic, erm no!!!!!
On the move again, we headed off to another beach town called Mui Ne 5 hours further South along the coast. Our last stop before reaching Ho Chi Min City (Saigon). We stayed in a nice little bungalow on the beach and straight away hired a motorbike. Cue our next motorcycling disaster! We get about 30km away from town along the coast road, when Stu thinks he's getting pins and needles in his foot. Weird until I start to smell petrol and my foot also goes cold. Yep, we have a leaky fuel pipe which is spilling the contents of our once full tank onto the road. The only living thing for miles is a rather large ox. (deffo no petrol stations) Fortunately we catch it just in time, Stu bodges a repair to the pipe and we limp it back to the hotel, phew phew phew!!! (So the bike count so far is two punctures, one electrical fault and one leaky fuel pipe! Hurrah).
The next day we again attempt a self guided tour of the countryside. We go in search of the Red Canyon and the red sand dunes. We find the Red Canyons (god knows how) and explore, not to be put off by the big signs warning about land mines! Then we go to the Red Sand dunes where you can rent a plastic mat from some kids and slide down the huge dunes. We cause a massive fight between all the kids when we decide who to go with, which Stu has to break up! Quite intimidating being surrounded by 20 of the brats, so we hop back on the bike and find a cute little girl to rent us the mats for 10,000 dong. (much cheaper than the 200,000 dong one couple we met got charged!) She takes us to the best spot for sliding, but it has a massive rock at the bottom, eek! We look on in awe, as her and a friend prepare the slope for us, smoothing the way by tossing lots of wet sand they dig up down the slope to speed our progress. Stu goes first and barely missed the rocks, Sarah opts for a safer launch pad further down the dune! We only go down twice, dumb comment, but it was far too sandy and getting back up to the top was such hard work. Bless the little girl, but she obviously thought Sarah needed help as she pushed her up the second time, by rather inelegantly pushing her bum, (oh the shame! - Sarah) Afterwards we searched for the so called 'fairy stream' which you get to by walking down a very shallow river. We immediately get pounced on by kids, but two eventually become our tour guides (whether we want them or not!) So for 30,000 dong (1pound) we get an interesting tour, from a childs perspective and they get a free English lesson! It was a very pretty stream with high sandstone cliffs that have been worn away by the wind and sand and seems pretty 'fairy' like. That evening we dine on fresh seafood (1quid for 10 king prawns) and Dalat wine (2quid a bottle) and get drunk! Don't even ask how bad our heads were the next day!
We're in Ho Chi Min City now (Still Saigon to the locals), so will be in touch soon!
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Amy Yuan
non-member comment
Hi,Stuart and Sarah,I am planning to travel some cities in China on Augest after my contract ends here.If you are interesting in it, contract with me. and you know you can see the hammer and sickle in almost all communism country such as in China