Blogs from Ho Chi Minh City, Southeast, Vietnam, Asia - page 264

The Four-H Tour on a backpacker bus. Hanoi, Hue, Hoi An, Ho Chi Minh City. Perhaps the most trecherous stretch was the last. I departed from the scenic, and comparatively serene city of Hoi An for Ho Chi Minh on a 26 hour bus oddessey. This gave me plenty of time to reflect on the adventure ahead, and the path left behind. After arriving at the conclusion that I would apply to the University of Sydney in hopes of making the final deadline, my necessity calculations added up to a BOLT JOB. I would need certified passport copies, a printed CV, and express mail services within 48 hours. I notified Mr. Snuggz the very next day that I would be departing shortly from his clandestine cycle tour of Vietnam in favour of a mad streak to ... read more

As you can see my Vietnamese has developed nicely....that means Happy New Year! Hope you all enjoyed the last of 2004 whatever you did in your various locations around the world! We left Mui Ne and arrived in Saigon on the 30th. New Year's Eve here was out of this world ! They closed off the street where our hotel is, and set up food stalls and outdoor beer bars, Winner! As the hours passed and the large crowd started getting into the swing of things (beer induced) we noticed that family loads of locals were taking trips past the street on motorbikes to look at us......they couldn't believe the PArty that was going on!! There were hundreds of bikes clogging up the streets and hundreds more on the paths just standing round for hours watching ... read more

Well, after being in transit for about 30 hours I finally made it to my destination of Ho Chi Minh City last night. At close to midnight the streets were still full of activity but then again you have to remember this is a city of about 7 million people of which about 2 million get around via motorcycles! I reached my hotel in a relatively short amount of time but since I would say I slept the majority of the time I was on the plane (I mean when I was snacking or eating!) I wasn’t too tired. I guess excitement of finally landing in Vietnam and starting my year long ventures played a factor in my state of non-drowsiness. I woke up this morning all refreshed and took in my "complimentary" buffet breakfast. There ... read more

Sorry about my lack of communication - the internet has been unbelievably slow here, we have to play Solitaire while it loads! We got away alright on December 28 despite teary mothers at the airport. We flew into Thailand, where we met up with Angus and Kim for Sarah's 'One Night in Bangkok' birthday party - great fun, although all pretty knackered after Christmas, the flight etc. Everyone we bumped into was talking about the Tsunami - as you can imagine it's had a massive impact in Thailand. The next day we flew to HCM (Saigon) city which was unbelievable - words can't describe it! 100000s of scooters everywhere, beeping, carrying the craziest loads you can imagine - from rice cookers to stacks of tires. I have never in my life seen so many fairy lights, ... read more

Hey, First of all, thanks to those who are able to write back. I appreciate the emails and just realize that email is very slow here and I can't respond to every email but I appreciate them just the same. In Saigon until tomorrow when we take a boat up the Mekong Delta (yes, that Mekong Delta) into Cambodia. I have been here 2 days and this is really a great great city. In Hanoi, the excitement was ice cream on scooters and the streets dead by 10:00pm. Saigon is much much different. It's wild and doesn't sleep. When it does, they sleep on the street in cots. I think people don't want to go home because Vietnamese television is usually no better than Public Access. Most of the programming just shows Asians singing songs together ... read more