Vietnam

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Hi everyone…sorry for the delay in getting the latest blogs sent out…..

We arrived in Vietnam on 30th November for the last leg of South East Asia. One of the best things about Vietnam is the value for money regarding rooms. For less than $10US we were staying in rooms that included cable TV, a swimming pool, a private hot water bathroom, air conditioning and even breakfast in some cases! Also Vietnam has lots of companies offering open tour bus tickets which means we got to book our whole route from Saigon to Hanoi including 5 separate bus journeys for only $35US each (in comparison we paid $36US each for one bus journey in Laos). We used Sinh Café to book our open tour bus and would highly recommend them.

Saigon

We entered Vietnam at the end of November and headed strait to Saigon by bus from Phnom Phen. By chance the bus was run a Vietnamese company The Sihn Café who have a office in the centre to the main backpacker area of Saigon. This meant that we did not have to walk far to find a hotel and avoided the stress that every bus station brings with touts, taxis, new currency and not knowing what a fair price for anything is.

Saigon was a great city to visit and we had a busy couple of days having a look around taking in the War Remnants museum which was within walking distance and gives a Vietnamese view on the American War (as they call it) as with S21 in Cambodia this was a real eye opener and though provoker.

I (Mark) have bungy jumped, canyon swung, rafted and ridden many a roller coaster but nothing I have done scared me as much as being on the back of a scooter being driven across Saigon at rush hour to teach at an English Language school for kids.

1. There are $hit loads of motorbikes in Saigon
2. There are traffic lights…..but no one, including our drivers take any notice of them
3. There are two speeds…..stopped and flat out
4. I lost sight of Kelly and had to hope for the best

We made it in one piece and had a great time with the kids who now have a slightly Kiwi/Kentish accents and may just be more confused that before we ran the lessons….

As part of an organised tour we visited the Cuchi Tunnels which are one of the networks of tunnels used by the Vietcong. It was a tour of ‘two halves’ the good half being that we got to have a look at how they lived and the ingenuity required to survive. The not so good half being that there were tanks that could be climbed on for photos and you could buy ammunition to fire the likes of M16s etc. It all felt a little bit wrong.

Dalat

We had both been really looking forward to visiting Dalat, the lonely plant had compared it to the ‘French Alps in spring time’ so we had reasonably high hopes. We arrived there to find it raining and cold which was not a good start. The first day we went out for a walk around the lake, to the botanical gardens and to the crazy house which was pretty good. On the second day we decided to avoid the whole Easy Rider (these are motor bike riders you can hire to give you a tour) thing, we hired a motor bike and went to visit a waterfall and to see some of the surrounding areas, this was great fun even though it rained all day.

We stayed in a nice room and bought some Dalat wine to try, so we spent our evenings in our room playing cards and drinking wine (really bad wine I should add, but still a nice change from beer)

It was when we tried to eat that the problems began… we went into more than one restaurant in Dalat and ordered something from the menu with a clear price of say 20,000 dong and were told ‘no, you pay 50,000’. This confused us at first but then we realised they were taking tourist pricing to the extreme to see what they could get away with. We walked away from most places that tried this but it just made eating out really hard work.

All in all we were pretty disappointed with Dalat, we found the surrounding areas pretty but the town itself didn’t really have a lot to offer.

Nha Trang

We knew we were visiting at the wrong time of year as the weather is usually pretty bad during November and the water on the beach turns to a murky brown colour…..

We stayed in Nha Trang for 3 days. It is just a beach town but we were unable to use the beach as the weather was bad so we just spent a couple of days wandering around and watching movies on cable TV in our room. We did have one reasonably nice day while we were there and we went out on a boat trip to visit some of the surrounding islands. It was a bit of a booze cruise really and it turned out to be a really fun day, although the water was freezing and snorkelling as impossible as the vis was less than 1 metre!

Hoi An

We had heard so many good things about Hoi An from people that we had met along the way and it did not disappoint. It is such a lovely little town and so different from the rest of Vietnam. We stayed for 3 nights and spent a lot of our time in the tailor shop as we both had suits made. We did manage to squeeze some other stuff in though, we went to the marble mountains for a day which was really good fun. We hired a scooter to get there as they are 18km out of town and it was a great day just riding along the coast (the beaches outside of the Hoi An are stunning). We spent the day climbing all over the mountains and checking out lots of different caves. Unfortunately we didn’t get a chance to go to the beach as the weather was bad pretty much throughout the whole of Vietnam, raining and cold.

We also loved the central market, it had a some great food stalls where the women all fight for you to eat at their stall, it was funny and sometimes we had to eat something from each stall to keep them happy. Not that we minded, the food was so good and so cheap! Mark finally found his 15p pints in Vietnam, we were drinking lots of glasses of local draft beer (bia hoi) and you could by 8 glasses for $1US.

During our stay it was full moon and each month in Hoi An there is a festival to celebrate it. Lanterns are lit up every where and there is lots of entertainment taking place in the streets. We were lucky to get to see it and it was such a great atmosphere.

Hue

We only stayed in Hue for one night as we only really wanted to see the Citadel which was cool and good to see the painstaking work that is going on to restoring it. We spent a nice afternoon rummaging around in what is left of the buildings. The city itself does not have much to offer with regard to things to see and do so we were glad that we had only planned to spend one night there.

Hanoi

We had heard a lot about Hanoi before we got there (most of it negative…. Hanoing is a popular nickname for the city). We arrived into Hanoi after an overnight bus and as soon as we stepped off we were surrounded by hotel touts trying to walk off with our bags to try and get us to follow them, it was pretty daunting especially after a very sleepless night.

Hanoi is quite a pretty city and we went on a walking tour around the city which was really nice, the only problem is that there are no foot paths in the old quarter so we were walking in very thin streets with motorbikes, cars and cyclos all rushing past us and honking which was pretty scary and it just seemed like such an effort to get anywhere as we had to be so vigilant about the traffic around us the whole time. We had 3 nights in Hanoi and we took it most of the usual attractions during this time including a couple of museums and the water puppets show which we really enjoyed and would highly recommend.

Halong Bay

Halong is another UNESCO world heritage site, we did a 3 day tour to take in the area which includes over 3000 limestone islands . It was pretty amazing. The first day we went to boarded our boat that would be out accommodation for the night, it was really cool there is only enough room for 16 to sleep aboard so it made for a nice group. We went first to visit a huge cave and then went sailing for a couple of hours to check out the amazing scenery (it is another one of those places that is hard to describe so we will let the photos do the talking) before anchoring down for the night. It was such a peaceful night on the water and the views from our cabin window when we woke up were just stunning. The second night we were taken to stay on Cat Ba Island, we stop to do a 3 hour trek on the way which was surprisingly tough as it was uphill the whole way but great to get our legs working! The third day we were back on the boat again to watch the numerous limestone islands go by.

We had a really nice trip and found it really good value for money, all meals and accommodation were included for the 3 days for only $60US each (we booked through Sinh Café). The only downside was that there are so many companies offering this trip so the waters were just full of boats which made us feel a bit like sheep being herded as we were often told to hurry up etc so as not to miss a time slot…. Customer service is not top of the agenda on this trip but it wasn’t bad enough to distract from the beauty of Halong Bay.



After reading this blog it may not come as huge surprise when we say that we did not enjoy Vietnam as much as the other South East Asian countries that we visited. We found it a pretty unfriendly and unwelcoming place most of the time. The constant in your faceness just started to really grate on us and it became really hard work. We were glad to be heading off to Hong Kong where a nice pre booked hotel awaited us……

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Photos

Cu Chi Tunnels
This is the enlarged tunnel entrance to fit us westerners....

Dalat wine
At a quid a bottle we really couldn't expect anything great... but still better than beer.... avoid the one on the left!

Treking in Dalat
on our way to the waterfall

Mark at tiger cave
cheesoid!

Cave at the marble mountain
temple inside the cave

Halong Bay
Relaxing on the boat

After 2 hour uphill trek
Cat Ba Island - Halong Bay