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Published: December 3rd 2006
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Hoi An
By the river I finally made it in one (rather tired) piece to the busy Ho Chi Minh City (a.k.a. Saigon) after over a week with no blog entries (sorry!). I've been on the trip now for just over a month, and quite a lot has happened during the past week.
We arrived in
Hoi An last weekend which is a small riverside town with traditional Vietnamese buildings and markets. Our hotel was located about a mile from the centre, so we rented push bikes each day to get to the village. Although there was a great beach nearby I just wanted to relax a few days (and figure I'll be beached-out by the end) so I just pottered about town and perused the many hundreds of local tailor shops. It's possible to have entire outfits made for very reasonable prices, and it's supposedly the tailor captial of Vietnam. I managed to get some custom-made sandals for $8 (in size 13!!) and also some trainers ($15). For anyone planning a round the world trip my advise is to buy everything in Vietnam as it's all a fraction of the price back home (and good quality). The girls on our trip had pretty dresses made,
Big Fish!
Biking it to Marble Mountain which they were mostly very happy with. That Monday night, I popped into an Internet cafe to upload some more photos but left my memory card and USB adaptor in the PC - when I went back it had been stolen and despite the fact that they said they knew who had used the PC after me, I never got them back. I was extremely frustrated to have lost the entire 3 weeks' worth of photos. Well, I suppose that's another lesson learned - back them up to CD regularly and send them home! but I shall hopfully get copies from everyone else on the trip.
Tuesday I opted to take another bike tour to the nearby Marble Mountain which has stunning views of the surrounding coastline, several temples and caves containing huge Buddha statues. There are also miles of great sandy beaches just a minute away.
That evening we took part in a Vietnamese cooking lesson which included dinner, a rather entertaining couple of hours learning to make spring rolls and squid salad, though I really do need to improve my culinary skills.
Next on the trip was a 10 hour day train to
Nha Trang, a popular beach-side
town further south down the coast. The first day we took a boat trip to a nearby island, followed by some snorkelling, and onto a small beach where a few of us tried jet skis for the first time (which was extremely good fun!). Tarly (one of the Australian girls) was celebrating a new job and everyone was in the mood for a big night out, and it turned out to be the best party night on the trip - several cocktails and champagne glasses into the evening Tarly and Anita were dancing on the bars with the local girls, the drinks were flowing (even free Mojitos in some places) and our group seemed the centre of attention that night! Returning home from the Yacht Club bar, I decided that a motorbike taxi seemed the best option, so Zoey and I jumped on the back and we sped off into the night. A few moments later another bike pulled up alongside and started talking to us, shaking hands, smiling and waving. They drove extremely close in parallel almost touching which seemed strange at the time - oh well they're just friendly we thought...anyway we stopped and paid 15,000 dong (50
pence) and heading towards the hotel. However Zoey realised that the girl on the other bike had stolen her wallet and camera from within her bag! so all we could do in our drunken stupor was to lie on the road whilse Zoey repeated 'that bitch stole my money, Roly'. Luckily I'd kept my wallet in another pocket and tied it to my shorts. A minute later the bike drove back and threw the bag's contents back at us, still containing the camera, passport, and valuables - all except the Vietnamese Dong and Australian dollars. Strangely they'd left some US$, a currency which is accepted everywhere here.
After the eventful few days here I spent the next day lying under a beach hut, and did very little but relax and recover. That night we took our last overnight sleeper train to
Saigon arriving at 4am. Since we had no check-in until midday we alll shared 2 suites and grabbed a few hours sleep. With 3 of us on a double bed it was hard to sleep. so I just stared at the ceiling - some 30 minutes later I thought I was going mad as I was sure I'd seen
Shhhhhh
Lou and Karen, on the day train to Nha Trang a bat flying around the room. I put it out of my mind and down to lack of sleep but a few minutes later I saw a bat's silhouette and shouted out "s***, there's a f****** bat in the room!" (excuse the language!!). It turned out there
was a bat trapped in the room, which is pretty freaky for an English person - it just doesn't happen at home. Several hours of lying there hoping it didn't land on me I got up and went for some street noodles, followed by a short orientation walk around the city and a visit to the war remnants museum. This was a very moving account of the horrors of the war and photographs of soldiers on both sides of the conflict, including the agent orange victims and details about the US-led defoliation and bombing campaigns...
Well, I'm still in Saigon and last night was the last one in the tour group, everyone today going our separate ways. We had our last meal together and headed out to the famous Apocalypse Now club - drinks were over-priced (50,000 for a beer!) and it was crowded, though pretty entertaining. We bid our farewells and today
Nha Trang bars
Anita, Trond and Dan the last few of us still here (Dan, me, Zoey and Deborah) had lunch at Pho 2000 (Bill Clinton visited in 2000) and popped into the huge indoor market to buy some t-shirts. Billabong and Quicksilver fake t-shirts were too expensive at 60,000 each (2 pounds), so we're going back later to get them down to 40,000. :-) Apparently the market trader women liked me, kept saying to Zoey and Deb "can he be my boyfriend?" (I thought it sounded OK but we had to leave!).
Right now I've checked into another hotel (10$ for hot water, air con and satellite TV) and tomorrow I'm heading to the Mekong Delta on a 2-day sightseeing trip, after which I'm spending a week relaxing on the deserted white sandy jungle-fringed beahes of Phu Quoc Island, and exploring the island. I've arranged to extend my visa and am supposed to pick it up at the tourist agency at Chau Doc near the Cambodian border, so right now I have no passport and it's slightly unnerving giving your passport to an agency to collect later in another town on another day! still, I've learnt that in Vietnam you just have to go with the
flow - what's the worst that can happen!!? :-) My last comment is that it's weird being in a hot country in December where no-one celebrates Christmas, makes a change from the damp wet and grey weather back in the UK!!! ;-) Stay tuned!
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Tania
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Hello
Hello! Glad you're having fun!