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Published: June 13th 2007
And good ridance! We are now back in Bangkok and are getting a bit behind with the blog updates - been too busy relaxing and enjoying ourselves after the trauma of Vietnam! So....here goes!
It all started out well when we arrived in Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon), but we felt the need to escape the big smoke and head to the beach. We took an early morning bus to Mui Ne: a small beach town famous for 2 things, smelly fish sauce and big sand dunes! We spent an afternoon relaxing and unwinding on the beach, and the following morning (very early to catch the sunrise) we took a tour of the sand dunes in the back of a former US army jeep! There are white, yellow and red sand dunes in the area, a fresh water lake with lotus flowers and a shallow river you could walk up.
Next we headed north to Nha Trang where we stayed in a small hotel run by a lovely old Vietnamese couple (the first of the very few nice Vietnamese people we met!). As is compulsary at this party beach town, we took a boat trip to the surrounding
Chillin by the beach
Cocktails may appear larger than actual size!islands. This was quite good fun, mainly due to our drunken skipper who cracked open the beers promptly at 9am! the post lunch karioke and dancing was a good laugh; the Vietnamese on board found it hugely amusing when Di was dancing with the drunken skipper. We also did some snorkelling and saw a few stripey fish, and the skippers antics with the floating bar were also a great hit!
Further up the coast we stopped at Hoi An, the old town of which is a Unesco world heritage site. We visited some of the old temples, ancient houses, a Japanese covered wooden bridge and saw a traditional Vietnamese musical (apparently) show. The real highlight of Hoi An was our hotel. We splashed out a whopping $12 on a lavish room in a hotel with a swimming pool, furnished in the traditional Vietnamese style!
From Hoi An we travelled north to Hue, the former capital of Vietnam. We visited the Citadel and the Imperial Enclosure where the emperor used to live. The following day we took a tour on the back of motorbikes to some places of interest outside the city. We had a very friendly and chatty
guide (who we named Jay) and his friend who never spoke a word (who we named Silent Bob). They took us to see some of the Royal Tombs, a Pagoda (where we were allowed to watch the monks praying), a wooden Chinese covered bridge, and some bunkers from the war. Unfortunately our tour was interupted by a sudden downpour, and we had to shelter in a petrol station for about an hour.
We took an overnight train to Hanoi, arriving at 5am, a little bleary eyed. Up until this point we had deftly sidestepped any cons and scams that came our way, but that became practically impossible in Hanoi. Asside from the usual hastle a tourist gets, the place is awash with imopsters of reputable hotels, travel agents and restraunts which are reccommended in guide books (for example one of these travel agents has over 500 branches in Hanoi!). Following our guidebooks directions, we ended up staying a night in one of these imposter hotels, which wasn't bad, but was not what it should have been! We didn't book our overnight trip to Halong Bay with our imposter hotel, and when we told him, his yells of frustration showed
us how annoyed he was! How we laughed!
Our visit to Vietnam ended with the Halong Bay boat trip, around some of the 3000 limestone islands. We went sea kayaking, had a look round some caves, slept on a junk boat and generally relaxed in the sun on the boat. Generally we were underwhelmed by the country and what good things we did see and do were overshadowed by the people who continually lie and cheat to try and rip you off. We wont go back to Vietnam in a hurry, but at least they had a vast selection of nice beer!
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