Advertisement
Published: December 6th 2010
Edit Blog Post
Hoi An welcomed us after an 18 hour overnight bus journey by raining!! The city itself is very small and we had 3 days to get to know it. Surrounding the river is the Ancient town which is made up of narrow streets lined with yellow washed buildings, selling all kinds of clothes, bags, crafts and souvenirs. I'm sure it looks much more appealing in the sunshine but the rain didn't let up and everything just seemed damp. There was so much rain infact that on our first night the river was spilling over onto the pavement! It didn't stop us walking the 3km plus to the beach the next day though!! The rain was pouring and the waves were crashing onto the beach....I stayed back but Sadie and Hayley decided they were not to be defeated and plunged right in!
Our main reason for stopping in Hoi An (other than to break up what would be an incredibly long bus journey) was to visit the Cham ruins at My Son. It was an ancient Hindu temple that has since been reclaimed by the surrounding jungle. During the Vietnam/American war 'Uncle Ho' set up camp here with his Commie buddies, this
inevitabley led to its mass destruction by means of the ever present American B-52! Most of the site is in ruin, although they are trying to repair it. The red brick structures that were left standing are embosed with elegent religious carvings. However, you can still see the huge bomb craters that potmark the Vietnamese landscape!
Our next stop in Vietnam was to be Ho Chi Minh City (or Saigon as the Vietnamese still refer to it as) or was it........
Another night bus from Hoi An would take us 24 hours to get to Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC) something that neither of us were particularly excited about although i'm sure we both would have taken it over what actually happened!!
03:25 we wake up to the sound of smashing glass, a huge thud and the bus veering off the road........ the driver quickly reversed out of the ditch he had gotten us into and turned off the engine!! Not the best wake up call i've ever had! It seems that we had hit a lorry, the wing mirror had smashed through the drivers window, he swerved, hit a concrete pillar and we went into a ditch.
It wasn't long before the sun started to come up and everyone was getting off to have a look at just what had happened in the night. No-one was any clearer about what was happening now though. The drivers seemed to have disappeared somewhere, with this some people started grabbing their bags and hitch hiking. Once it was a reasonable hour someone called the bus company who said they were aware of the situation and that a bus was coming to pick us up. Nha-Trang was the next town and not too far away, we thought we'd be rescued and on our way again by 10am. With no sleep, no food, no drink or anything available to us at the side of the road we decided to go for a walk. We came across the drivers who then told us we wouldn't be leaving until 12pm, we'd already waited this long whats 2 more hours...........at about 11:30am the bus drivers resurfaced, started the engine and we were off?!?! Just what we were waiting 8 hours for we'll never know?!? Needless to say the driver didn't learn from this experience and was overtaking everything that was in his way!!
We finally
reached Nha-Trang at about 3:30pm and had missed our connecting bus by about 7 hours. The bus company suggested that we get the bus that evening to HCMC, but we had other ideas!! After some time spent in their office Sadie managed to persuade them to pay for our hotel that night and book us onto the bus the following evening - RESULT!!
Nha-Trang and its beach wasn't a bad place to be accidently be spending the day! It was a hot, sunny day and we just spent it relaxing on the beach before our bus to HCMC take 2!!
We finally arrived in HCMC two days later than we had planned, which meant we had less time to spend in the city. There wasn't too much that we wanted to see in the city which was good seeing as though we'd lost a day anyway! The weather was scorching hot but with a random 10 minute heavy shower which seemed to occur like clockwork every afternoon! We visited the War remnants museum, which was really interesting but at the same time quite depressing. Well worth the visit though, it was educational and gave a view of the war
from a different perspective to that of the Americans we usually see. We also went to the Presidential Palace which has been left as it was in 1975 when the communist North stormed it and reunited the country. It was very strange, almost like we had stepped through a time machine.
Cambodia is our next destination, another bus journey to look forward to ...........
Advertisement
Tot: 0.187s; Tpl: 0.012s; cc: 10; qc: 48; dbt: 0.0767s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb