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Published: December 2nd 2006
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Hey guys, again sorry for being so slack with adding entries onto the blog! Thought it was time we let you know what we've been up to for our 3 weeks in Vietnam......
Had a great 5 days in Saigon, its a crazy city,never seen so much scooter traffic & when the time comes that you have to cross the road you just walk, make eye contact & hope for the best! The city has a good feel about it though! Caught up with Dom & Briely(sp) (2 ozzie girls) who we met on the Mekong trip, had a few nights out with them, some shopping, although I'm saving the real shopping for Bangkok. We hired a cyclo for the morning which was a bit hairy at times what with all the traffic but after mounting a few kerbs, going up one way streets the wrong way, basically weaving in & out of the traffic it was absolutely fine, quite enjoyed it! My cyclo driver had been a cyclo driver for 30 years & was one of the unfortunate ones who was sent to re education camp & stripped of his citizenship after the war, punishment for siding with the Americans.
This happened to 1000's of people who were doctors, teachers & journalists before the war!!? He took us to the Jade Emperor Pagoda which was pretty cool,The Remunification Palace and the American War Museum which was all a bit depressing, interesting to see the original tanks, helicopter & the size of the bombs which were used. The USA used 14 million tons of bombs & shells, 7 times as much as what was used in the 2nd world war, more than 70 million litres of toxic chemicals, among them 44 million litres of Agent Orange. Crazy & all so unnecessary!!! From there we just went for a walk around to a few other sights. Matthew joined us after a few days so the three of us went to the Cu Chi tunnels, they were ok, not the original tunnels though & have been reconstructed for the tourists so not overly impressed. We stopped at a Cao Dai temple which we enjoyed (we both read the Girl in the picture, a true story about the young girl that was burned from a napalm bomb during the war, she followed the Cai Dai religion for a while before turning to Christianity so
it interesting to see the temple after reading about it), quite impressive as temples go! Had a look in at a noon ceremony, the balcony above where they were praying & chanting was full of tourists, but hey.....interesting all the same. After our 5 days in the city it was time to get back to the beach & make our way up the coast. We caught a 3 hour bus to Mui Ne, not really too much to say about it really. Its a sleepy fishing town where fish sauce is made. We were only there for 1 night, didn't think much of it, the beach wasn't all that, a little messy and in the afternoon the wind gets up so its the place kite surfers go.....not for us. Although we did catch up with a group of people we again met on the Mekong Delta trip so from there all 8 of us traveled up to Nha Trang. Stayed in Nha Trang for 5 days, it was great!! Beach is lovely, had great nightlife & nice restaurants. So all in all our 5 days were spent sunning & partying. We went on a boat trip for a day to
American war museum 3
I have you in my sights see the surrounding Islands, this turned out to be more of a booze cruise with a floating bar after lunch with everyone drinking cheap red wine! Being the only 8 westerners on the boat we seemed to take over a little bit while the locals just sat back staring at us in amazement. All good fun though. From there we all went to Hoi An which again is a really nice town, a lot sleepier than Nha Trang but had some great little streets & restaurants. Every other shop is a tailors so 3 days were spent going for fittings, I got a suit with both trousers & a skirt, 2 coats & a dress! All for US$140! Skip also got a jacket made for US$30. Cheap as chips & they all turned out great. Skip, Dani & Jon all hired scooters for the day so we rode out to the beach which again was lovely & went for a little ride up the coast where the beach was empty, with just a few little places to eat. All a bit hectic when we arrived as we had 10 women fighting for our custom pushing menu's in our faces. The
food turned out to be great even though we did have to wait for an hour for a few spring rolls & some squid. Didn't mind waiting too much, just relaxing on deck chairs & enjoying the scenery. Unfortunately from there time was running out for us & everyone had different time schedules so we all went up to Hue,4 hrs on the bus. Jon,Danni, Skip and I just stayed for the afternoon while the other 4 spent a night there. Our afternoon was spent at the Citadel (similar to the Forbidden city in Beijing) the highlight was feeding the fish which were in the moat that surrounded the Citadel???We booked our Halong Bay trip and then had a few beers over looking the perfume river before getting on the bus for our 12 hour overnight journey. Arrived at Hanoi at 5.30am which was all a bit of a nightmare, no idea where we were really heading then this guy appeared on a bike with a sign for Martin Anderson, not sure how he found us, more from luck then anything as we had been walking around for a little while. We had heard about people getting names from companies
but we jumped in a taxi & went to his hotel as he said he had rooms for US$10 & after a 12 hour bumpy bus ride all I wanted to do was check in somewhere. Turns out the rooms had people in them & they were checking out at 7am. Sat around waiting for 1 & half hours, as soon as the people checked out, the rooms jumped from being $10 to $15????!!!! We went to 3 different hotels where this happened before we finally found a place to stay. So first impressions of Hanoi weren't great. The people here have a different attitude towards you, not as friendly as in the South. Skip and Jon spent the afternoon getting things for our Halong bay trip and I spent the afternoon shopping with Dani, we soon got fed up though & found an Irish bar for a few vodka & red bulls. Met the boys later for the water puppet show which was a bit naff, we actually walked out it was that painful. Good to see but 10 mins was more than enough. That eve was spent on the street corner drinking Beer Hoi 2000 dong a glass
(7pence) & having food with locals.
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