Vietnam

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Vietnam, the country we weren't supposed to go to.....

After taking a good couple of hours to cross the boarder and make it into Vietnam, we realised that we had no maps, guide books, money or language. Good start. After making train noises we finally worked out the way to the train station (a mixture of Katherine's knee and too much traffic going to Hanoi) where we booked our overnight ticket. Last time i caught this train with Laura 3 years ago, we didn't get any sleep even though we got the soft sleeper option so this time we thought that we would save money and go for the soft seat because we weren't going to get any sleep at any rate. It wasn't actually too bad, very much like an plane seat, but we got some pretty strange looks from the others in the cabin. We arrived in Hanoi at 4am, all the other tourist got into their pre arranged transfers, we got on our bikes, the best part was - there was no traffic as it was still the middle of the night so no one cared that we rode down the one ways the wrong way. We then hung out at the lake were Katherine cooked up a feed of noodles which we ate whilst watching everyone running around the lake - got some pretty odd looks.

Dropped our visas off and then spent the next few days chilling out in our hostel with free beer feeling very pleased with ourselves whilst it poured with rain (did some sight seeing too). Then passports got rejected so spent some quality time at the NZ embassy trying to sort everything out and in the end it didn't really help so we did the touristy thing, visiting museums and monuments which were all pretty interesting. Also went and watched the water puppets in which Katherine wet herself laughing, no one else found it quiet as funny.

After being rejected a second time with the visa we thought it was better to cut our losses and go for a bit of a bike ride before heading to Macao (the cheapest air ticket). After a very hectic ride out of Hanoi we made it to Cuc Phong National Park. A wicked park where no one else goes so we had the place to ourselves. We spent the next few days exploring the park both on bikes and hiking and being intrepid cave explorers (to Katherine's disgust) which ended up with just plain getting lost and bush bashing (to Jane's disgust). But the caves were pretty cool, cave men used to live in them - we saw old fires that actually looked rather recent, i think they were made for tourists benefits.

From here we headed towards the coast via Nim Binh and Thai Dinh, two of the loveliest places, not much to do but really friendly people. We turned up at one place for lunch and they took one look at us and bought out steaming bowls of pho, we didn't even have to ask. Then we went to another place and wanted something other than pho or rice but were having problems seeing we couldn't even master Mandarin and it only had 4 tones, Vietnamese has 6!! But this group of guys who said they could speak English (which actually was only "how are you?") made us sit down, ordered us food and made us drink vodka and drink beer, they even got us bread for the following morning, it was great. Although every time you went to have a drink everyone had to say cheers in Vietnamese, which meant plenty of laughing at our pronoucation. But Katherine and I both thought we could drink beer with the best of them but these guys were downing it like it was going out of fashion and it was the middle of the day, and then they all went back to work for the afternoon.

We then continued riding to our "beach resort." On the way we stopped for a snack at this little shop and the whole family had turns on our bikes with our trailers and kept laughing at Katherine's flag (mine got stolen at some lights). When we made it to the beach it was the most disappointing thing ever!! There was no beach, it was just a fishing village and everything was deserted and building were half built but everything was really expensive, so instead of staying for a couple of days we headed off to the hot springs the next day. These were wicked, but it was really hot so we spent most our time playing in the cold pool to the amazement of the staff who kept reminding us that it was in fact the middle of winter and the pool wasn't heated!!!

From here we made a bee line to another beach resort - Do Son, which turned out to be really cool. So we stayed here a few days although they sold most of their food per kg which made getting dinner challenging especially getting veges for Katherine, i was embracing the diet of prawns and rice. But for breakfast they eat bread dipped in condensed milk - you should all try it, very good. We saw a few other tourists who looked at us like we were from another planet, not only did we drink the water, we put ice in it. Didn't even get sick. From here we made our way back to Hanoi via Hai Phong before eating lots of icecream and flying to Macau.

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Photos

Katherine with random family
they loved our bikes and trailers!!