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Published: August 5th 2007
We've been on the move quite a bit since our last entry, working our way down Vietnam on the open tour bus. Some of the parts of the journey between towns have been pretty long, but its a great way to do it, as 1 ticket from Hanoi to Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) with 6 stops along the way only costs 22 pounds!
We left Hanoi on the 20th for Hue, which took 14 hours overnight on the bus, no sleep, not good! Grabbed some really nice croissants and brioche and chilled for most of the day. Next day the lovely family who ran our guesthouse arranged a motorbike tour around the area for us along with two nice girls from our bus, Paloma and Emily. The motorbike tour was great, the guys who took us around were really safe drivers and our guide Hieu was really informative. We saw various sites including: a chinese roofed bridge which used to house the homeless, 1st pagoda where we saw Viet bhuddist monks eating their 1 meal a day!, the tomb complex of the 19th century Emporer Tuc Doc, a nice view of the Perfume River from Bunker Hill where the
Bhudda at the first pagoda in Hue
We were quite surprised to see the swastika on the bhudda's chest knowing what it means to us, but our guide explained that in Mahayana Bhuddism its a symbol of "good life".Americans were based in the area, the Pagoda of the famous Burning Monk (sat down and burnt himself to death in Saigon 1963 in protest against the south vietnamese government) and finally we finished at the gates of the old citadel.
The next day we made the 4 hour bus journey from Hue to Hoi An. Hoi An was pretty quiet and quite small, but it had its charm, with loads of nice patisseries, colonial era architecture and lots of mini art galleries with paintings by local artists, some of them were amazing (Rosie you would have loved it!).
Our next stop was Nha Trang after another 12 hour overnight stint on the bus, this was basically a stopover to break the journey up to Mui Ne. Nha Trang wasn't great, was very much like the Benidorm of Vietnam, although we did have a nice day on the beach.
We then made the 5 hour journey to Mui Ne which was much less developed and quiet with another nice beach. We spent 3 days relaxing there (Paul even managed to pick up a tan!), until this morning when we hired a motorbike ourselves!!! :-) Was so nice
not to do the tourist thing and just set out on the open road on our own, and for Paul to finally get to drive a motorbike after his initial fear. Kirstie even seemed to feel quite relaxed at the back, even though Paul's knuckles were white to begin with. Once Paul got used to it, the bike was awesome, and we both loved it!!! (We even hit 50km per hour!) We managed to go see all the sites we meant to see in a jeep the previous day before we got washed out (its rainy season down south right now). This evening we arrived in Ho Chi Minh City after our final 4 hour leg of the journey.
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James
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Hey guys!! What can i say?! I'm so jealous of your trip, i almost feel like i wasted my 6 months away by snowboarding all the way through it... Almost, but i'm sure that'll change as i carry on looking at your photos! Hope you're having as great a time as it looks! Loads of love, James