the NAM, in one giant blog!

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well, on to our final country. let me first say that all these photos from cambodia and vietnam are actually kates because in true binge brit style i got hilariously drunken in na trang in vietnam and lost my camera. oops! thankfully at the end of the trip and not the beginning and i had backup the majority of my photos, only 2 weeks lost. not so bad. but i did only have 5 days left of the trip so that was a bit silly.

anyways, we got to the vietnamese boarder fine and all was well, the officials got on the bus with their ear thermometer things and checked us all then deduced that none of us were self combusting or growing curly tails and oinking so let us go through with no bother.

immediately vietnam was completely different from how i imagined. i confess i knew not much about the country, save the blindingly obvious!, and i had visions that it would be somwhere along the lines of cambodia, slightly falling apart at the seams and everything in a form of makeshift. oh how wrong i was. thailand is the wealthiest country in south east asia (except singapore.. but does singapore even count in the whole south east asia scheme of things being a developed country? not sure) and cambodia is one of the least. vietnam is somewhere up there with thailand! little have we been aware, or i have at least, that the countries economy has been BOOMING for the last 15years so everything is vast and neon lighted and paved and nice and new.. well, ish, for asia! ho chi min is awash with giant kareoke bars and restaurants and vibrancy.. and millions of people! we got off the bus and caught a taxi to backpacker land, one road home to a million backpackers and travel agents and a few bars. immediately we got scammed coz the 'meter' taxi driver had had a dodgy meter fitted and made us pay a fortune. mmm. but always for the first few days in a new country you expect to pay more and all this kind of thing. until you very quicky learn the ways of the land and the scams they provide.

checked in to mama chi 64, which was tall, very tall. many stairs. good work out. all the buildings are like this becuase all the families live like this, they own their shops or businesses on the ground floor then they all live above it on different floors. youngest at the top i should imagine although i never thought to ask! so we had a small wander, it was late so we just went to the nearest restaurant/bar, where an amusing thing happened that would make the likes of gordon ramsay explite from here to kingdom come. we went to order a western dish (asian food is very nice, but i do like variety in my life!) chicken cordonbleu actually. so we called the waiter over to exquire about the dish and what it came with. his reply was priceless: 'i dont know what the dish comes with, im not the chef, im just the waiter, the chef makes the food, i bring it out.' HA!!! what could be do but recover from our western astonishment at his answer and burst out laughing?! ahh, you asians!

next day we were up bright and early with our free breakfast of bread and jam (that old trick again! although the free dinners of instant noodle soup was surprisingly tasty!) and out to our grand tour for the day, the cu chi tunnels. our tour guide was very good and told us loads of interesting things as we went the 2.5hr drive out of the city. he drew our attention to the fact that there were KFC's about but no Macdonalds. there's a reason for this. vietnam is essentially still communist although it is becoming a little more lax in its ways, hence big MNC's such as KFC. the reason why there's no macci d's is because macci only uses argentinian beef for its burgers, vietnam proposed only the use of vietnamese beef be used for big mac's. ronald macdonald declined (probably ungraciously) and therefore no deal so no macdonalds in vietnam. and all the much better say I. the tour guide also told us about the infamous mopeds of saigon (ho chi mins former and more beloved name) ... for it is known that the grandest sight of all in saigon, and most likely vietnam, is the 3 million motorbikes that fill the city streets to absolute bursting. they're everywhere, including the pavements, i cannot even express to you how many there are. and they are the only way to get around the city as well. you tube 'crazy traffic in saigon' or any of its related videos and you will have some idea of what i mean. well, when in rome my dear! me and kate were hopping on and off them all the time and indeed there were some calls of the close encounter. but the tour guide explained to us that now everyone is required to wear a helmet (which they do.. except, ironically, the kids, who's parents never seem to have enough brain cells to figure out that kids need helmets too!) and that in the city there are so many motos (official name) that progress is slow and collisions are frequent but injuries rarely exceed minor scrapes.

so the tour went on and we made a detour to a special temple in a special village out in the countryside. here the people have a very different form of religion called godeism. what they decided, bless them, was that religion seemed to cause a lot of arguments, and it was mainly between the different religious ideas. however, they noticed one factor that united all the religions together... they all believe in a god of some sort. so the village decided that the best way to save everyone one from arguing was to create a religion where you believed in the concept of 'god' ie you believe in everyones god, therefore noone misses out. and so became godeism... and they temple is a sight.. christianity, buddhism, jewdism and hinduism make up the 4 religions where the belief in all the gods come together and it is reflected throughout the temple with sculptures and mosaics of jesus, buddha, vishnu etc etc. they also worship the left eye, as the eyes are the key to the soul and the left eye is closest to the heart. so eye symbols surround the outside of the temple, its very 'eye catching'! ahhhh, i get my coat!

we watched some of the weird praying they do 4 times a day, lots of robes and chanting to obscure music, and headed back to the cu chi tunnels. now this is another moment where i could get my text book out and thrill you with the historic value and significance of the tunnels. again, if you care, google it. surfice to say that the tunnels are a 15km network of underground systems that the vietkong soldiers used during the war to hide from the us soliders and were extensive and very effective. only a fraction of the tunnels are open to the public today but we went in them and they were pitch black and hot and you had to crouch to get through them, very strange and claustrophobic, but defo worth a visit, you get to see all the different traps they used and how they were made and if you really want to you can pay some dong and shoot some rifles. thats one for the boys me thinks and went off when we didnt expect it and scared me and kate half to death and off our seats. much to the amusement of the others on our tour!

the next day we did one more, and our last cultural thing of the whole trip... we went to the war remnants museum, exhibiting all sorts of things to do with the american phase of the vietnam war from the battle vehicles to a whole feature of photos and pubishings from 130 journalists from 20 different countries who died reporting in vietnam reporting on the war. there is also a big section on the effects of agent orange with graphic imagery. its was a shockingly provocative museum and not for the faint hearted (as the lonely planet also points out.)

the one other thing we did in saigon was to get a couple of crazy motos out to a waterpark which was loads of fun, i havent been to one in years. we were practically the only foreigners there as it was summer holidays for the kids but it was still great, and hardly any queuing! imagine that at an amusement park! fab.

onwards to our final destination of the trip... of course, it had to be the beach!

we caught the sleeper bus to na trang, the bus was not so bad, there werent seats, they were kind of bed things with raised head and shoulder bits, not too uncomfy and we got pillows and and duvets! result! on the way we went under a bridge that looked over the river, there couples gather on their mopeds to while the evening away in each others arms only meters away from the next couples, it looked very sweet, i guess theres not too many places to go for privacy in a vastly over populated city where everyone lives with their families. although affection is very open here in general. and of course the bus broke down, how unusal! but luckily we got up and running again within the hour. so we landed in na trang at 6.30am, na trang supposedly the most touristy place in vietnam. so i was expecting a beach a bit like snouckville, a long white but thin strech of sand which hasnt been built up at all and a load of beach bars. not so. it was more like copacabana than anything. the stretch of golden sand was vast, i think about 6km in total, maybe sporting one or 2 restaurants, one of which turned into a club at night. but the beach was backed by a fast road and behind that high rise hotels and buildings filled the skyline. there are various islands to look at out to sea. we got a very nice hotel (cheap for what it was) and we had an awesome balcony with a great view of the whole beach and islands. (unfortunately no photos to show you, sorry, but take it from me, it was nice!) and our room was inhabited by the tiniest gecko ever which took to jumping all over us, so cute! the only issue we had with the room was the fact that all of a sudden one morning the aircon started spewing water out of it vents, like a river! wtf? all over the bed down the walls and very luckily we were in the room or our beloved belongings would have been drenched. 2 workers eventually came to rectify the torrential situation and it was ok, phew.

again our days were spent chilling out and enjoying our last travelling days. we ate muchos good food.. on the beach woman came along with giant pompadom type things in mango, coconut and chilli flavours balancing pricariously on wooden branches across their shoulders, whilst other woman boilied up lobsters in pots on the beach, they looked seriously yummy but highly regrettably i never got round to trying one. they smelt amazing though, straight from the sea to the pan, couldnt be fresher. we had a favorite restaurant for a while, which was quite a smart one for the area (na trang central is pretty small, a couple of cross roads filled with bars, restaurants, travel agents and obscenely overpriced book shops. anyway, we ate a couple of times in this nice open air restaurant, sampling the prawns with sticky black rice and shell fish linguini and relishing the cheap gourmet seafood. that was until we walked out one night and upon our exit spied i gianormous rat scampering up under the tables and into the kitchen. we didnt go back after that.

there was also some rain here too. boy did it rain one night. i know i keep saying these things but really i have never seen rain like it, it was like someone had put a huge tap over na trang and turned it on full force, that was the power, speed and extent of the water coming from the sky. as it subsided we went out to get food and the roads and pavements were literally rivers. it was like the lewes floods all over again. so we went to this restaurant we had been to the night before and stepped in, there was noone there but we played pool. but couldnt help looking down and seeing how dirty the floors were. hmm. it wasnt until the waiter came to us and apologised for the state of the floors telling us that the water had been so high an hour ago that the place had flooded that we had some idea of what 'monsoon' really meant. and you know what? within the next hour the river outside that we'd had to wade through to get anywhere had disapeared and it was like the whole thing had never happened! crazy.

we did go on an island tour that had a bit of a twist from any other one i have ever been on. so, as i said before in cambodia, its summer holiday time, so the vacationing locals, couples, families and oldies alike are out in full force and we plus 4 irish girls were the only 'farang' on the cramped boat (actually there was an old italian couple, i think they regretted stepping on the boat from the first minute). our tour man was very nice, he babbled away in vietnamese as the boat (along with 5million other toursit boats) left the harbour and then babbled some more in english. and then he did a very strange but hilarious thing. suddenly from the captains hub some booming party music came bursting from the seams and the tour guide started grinding his hips in time to the music, then he started stripping! and he kept on stripping until he got down to a bright pink leotard and which point he ran off to get a couple of cups to put down his top and ran back to do some more grinding! it was the most unexpected thing one could imagine from a family outing to some islands but apparently the crowds were loving it. as were we it had to be said.

so we had found the party boat. and i know this becuase of the focus of the day. snorkelling went out the window as the company provided masks but not snorkels! d'oh! the islands were ok but you had to pay to get on them and there was nothing to do except sit on a ROCKY beach... i could do that in brighton. however! the tour boasts the first floating bar service in the country, and this is how it works. a couple of the crew members sit in a polystyrene makeshift dingy loaded up with plastic cups and cheap nasty red wine. they paddle out for a bit then a whistle blows... and its HAPPY HOUR! the music gets louder, one more boat comes to join and multiple floating rings are thrown into the sea. everyone launches themselves into the water and through the rings and swims to the nasty booze whereupon their cups are filled and then refilled as many times as they like until all the alcomahol has been consumed (invariably along with gulps of sea water). then everyone gets back on the boat where a mini stage has been set up and a full piece band has been errected. the tour guide is now the lead singer, the 12 year old skipper boy the drummer and the captain is the guitarist and thus commences the first tour boat gig, all the cool hip vietnamese teens are bopping away in their square inch of space and the mums and dads are nodding their heads whilst their younger sprogs have passed out from the sea air (or sea sickness,whichever hits them first!) it wasnt the trip we'd planned for, but a jolly experience was had by all none the less.

and of course there was muchos drinking and partying time as our final days closed in on us. buckets had turned to halk coke bottles in vietnam and were now lethal jam jars in na trang. cocktails were 2 4 1 and we had a merry time. so merry that on kates last night we were with a drunken travelling buddy and in order to try and sober him up (or maybe that was just kates excuse!) we all threw ourselves into the sea outside the sailing club. of course that lasted mere seconds before the security guards came out kicking and screaming with their flash lights upon us as an example to the whole club and verbally dragged us out the water. we managed to laugh it off with them and they let us back in dripping wet and carrying half the beach of sand with us. whoops!

so kate went on her way heading on her 37hr bus up to hanoi to fly back to england, and after emotional goodbyes i spent my last eve with travelling peeps and the day on the beach, collecting my thoughts and reliving my already distant memories from the beginning of my trip.

2 more days of travelling and the adventure would be over.... or would it just be the beginning?

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