Our final steps through Vietnam!

Asia
August 28th 2007

Published: September 1st 2007

Edit Blog Post

Lesley Andi

Halong bay!

Just another day in the office!

Hello Again Everyone!

We're not dead!! Just to let you know... I got held captive and used as a concubine and human pin cushion by some Vietnamese pimps for a week! But I had to pay for that, so we've been ok... Hectic and sore in places, but ok...

It's been a long time since we spoke to you all so I'll try and keep it all as brief as possible, whilst letting you know all the gory and amusing details of course!

DALAT

So the last time we wrote on the Blog we had decided, after a lot of careful consideration, that hiring a guide or 'Easyrider' was the right thing to do.... Wrong again! Uh.... Great...
The day we had decided to find a guide, we had done so, on the side of the road. Basically, I commented on how expensive it was to get a guide ( we had been quoted 15 dollars each ) he then said in classic con man fashion, exactly what we wanted to hear...
Fifteen dollars!?! No, no, no... I charge you ten!

Right, cool... So we went off the ride a Swan shaped peddle boat around the lake holding hands watching the sunset...

THE

"I'm Fliying Jack!!!"

A view from the mountain top in Dalat...

NEXT DAY... Our guide (which we will refer to as "Mr Turd Burger" in this entry) was outside the Hotel but he looked uneasy... As we approached him he asked us whether we wanted to go on a tour with him, or with our Hotel staff - who had not stopped pestering us since we got off the bus!
I said,

No, we'll go with you...!

Which was a decision I had already made when I continually ignored that weasel of a man, who was by now peering over my shoulder, when he relentlessly badgered me for a bloody tour!
Brilliant, so we'd saved ourselves around about $12 and we were off with a guy who spoke some of the best English we'd heard from a Vietnamese native... WRONG!

Next, Mr Turd Burger introduced us to our new 'tour guides'- some bloke who looked like a drunken Vagrant and our Mountain guide "Mr Useless Mountain Guide"...

So after some hello's and some.... more hello's, telling him where I was from and then a lot of silence, we got to the Mountain...
It was 25pence each to get in and there was a tarmac road all the way to the top! Hmm... And

Nha Trang!

This was one of the cleanest beaches so far....shame Andi was too scared incase any sharks ate him to get in!

with a sigh and a puzzled, perplexed look on my face, I felt the words

Thank God we have a tour guide with us

laced in sarcasm, fall from my lips...

Well, at least Mr Useless Tour Guide is indigenous to this Mountain region will be a fit Mountain climber, just like Mr Turd Burger told us in his sales pitch!.... WRONG!
Well, at least we can't get lost.... WRONG!

The whole situation was SO annoying! It wasn't difficult at all, there was absolutely no challenge; there were disabled people at the top, how is that a worth while climb!

Well, we got some nice pictures, took in the view and made our way down...

"Wait, who's that?"
Mr Turd Burger, with his other tourist for the day - obviously she had paid him more than we ever would.
What does he want? Of course, he wants to sell us another tour for £120... And part of his sales pitch was

I'll be there this time!

It did sound tempting, Lesley got a tad sucked in, which was understandable; this guy was an idiot but an annoyingly good salesman. But seeing the risk, I said

Yeah ok we'll do it, pick us up tomorrow at 8:30

and said to Lesley, if you think this is a

Yum straight from the sea!

"Ahh please dont eat me Mr!" Oh yes I will, I need all the calories I can get sitting here on the beach!

con job we'll leave on the Bus tomorrow at 7:30 an hour before he shows up, hahaha!
Then, as we left on our crapy scooters with the two vagrant types and despite the fact I was secretly plotting against him and had no real intention of going on the tour, he zoomed passed us on his massive motor bike and shouted

See, I'm a great salesman aren't I!?!

Oh yes, and so endearingly modest as well you Turd!

Needless to say we buggered off in the morning way before he showed up! Heh Heh Heh!
Shove it Mr Turd Burger! Lesley was thrilled, she was just happy that we had screwed someone over before they had done the same to us!

So we hit Nha Trang on a high (high meaning we'd avoided being conned of course).

Nha Trang

We met some charming older guys on the Bus to Nha Trang, which managed to just about sway our attention away from the Kamakaze Esq. Bus driver for the journey, these guys led us to a pretty good hotel in Nha Trang about 7mins walk to the beach, as they had been there before... We decided this would be a nice place to

Our cool little tailoress!

Lan, managed to do wonders with our suits and even made Andi look smart....a true magician!

chill for a while...

Therefore there is nothing of real significance to tell you, other than, my England Shirt got nicked from the beach when we went for a jog (a bit stupid, we know, but stealing our clothing?!).
We met a cool Korean guy, Song Sok, on the beach one day who told us, among other things, that in Korea they are only allowed to take 9 consecutive days holiday at anyone time off of work and they only get five paid holidays a year! The remaining 15 they can take must be unpaid!
Also, possibly the best bit to tell you is that, in Vietnam, you can get a Lobster, a Crab and 7 Tiger prawns, each the size of my hand, for £3.50! Sweet, so we did! And it was very nice too!

Nha Trang was really pleasent and relaxing, we had the opportunity to go on a boat trip but declined so we could relax on the beach for one more day! Very picturesque and serene...

Hoi An

Hoi An was pretty good, and most Hotels had a swimming pool built into them, which most others around the country do not... But

This is my quality suit made for CHEAP CHEAP prices!

Now THATS what we like!!!

that wasn't the charm of Hoi An, neither was it the Japanese Bridge, which was basically a Bridge that early Japanese settlers constructed to trade with Chinese settlers across the water, not exactly a wonder but a sight none-the-less... The real charm was maybe slightly hidden from the untrained eye....
CHEAP SUITS BABY!

And when we mean cheap we mean MEGA CHEAP!
We met an American guy by chance who was running a book exchange over there. The Vietnamese Government's Ministry of Culture had just confiscated 2000 books from his collection and he was asking for book donations and two for one swaps...

We paid him a visit sacked off some crapy books and asked him to recommend a good tailors... He recommended Lan No.9, run coincidently by a lady named Lan...

She was brilliant, she measured absolutely everywhere and made sure everything was perfectly fitting before we left...
I got a three piece suit (Jacket, Trousers & Waistcoat) two custom made shirts and a tie for a delicious £33!!! Oh Yeah! Lesley got a three piece suit also (Jacket, Trousers & Skirt) and two dresses which all in all came to $54 and adding that to

Safety First!

I'm not sure who this is that jumped into the photo....little miss turtle head I think her name was!

mine meant everything had cost us $120 and because of the delightful exchange rate, that meant £60 in total! Whoop Whoop!!

Other than that Hoi An was very different to everywhere else simply because of the European Esq. architecture, which could have it mistaken for a small town in southern Spain almost!
There were some people trying to sell us trips to some more temples and because they simply couldn't understand,

No thank you, we really have seen enough temples

No, leave me alone, I really don't want to go to any more crapy old temples

or even

Look, just leave me alone will you, before I introduce your front teeth to the back of your skull!

we just left and continued on the Bus up to a place named Hué!

Hué

When reading up on Hué: what to do and what to see, we didn't come across a lot... So when we finally got there, it wasn't that much of a shock to find that there wasn't much to do other than visit a Citadel, which was now just part of the city with a wall around it, and some bridges... Great!
However, 30km outside the city were some "Hot Springs" at the foot of some mountains. It sounded pretty cool and we had already decided to leave a day earlier than planned, on the basis that there really wasn't a lot to see or do,

After hours of shots, we got the perfect one...

Lesley just said, "I'll do my stuff with the camera, you just work it!" So I did Baby...

so we headed off to see what these Springs were like!

We, again, decided to hire a motorbike rider to take us, although we were assured he was a good guy from the man at the fresh fruit juice shop! Hmm...

We were picked up the next day from our Hotel by this guy and his mate - who already out shone those we had met in Dalat, simply because they could dress themselves properly. We were under the impression we were off to the Hot Springs, seen as, that is what we had asked for and that is what we had been told was booked and that is what Mr Juice Shop man said.... WRONG.... AGAIN!
We were taken to Motorbike Man's wife who sold coffee and horrible sandwiches to locals... Guess what, we ended up buying two horrible sandwiches and the coffees he said would be free, we ended up paying for those too! Hmm....
Then, as we left we asked to buy some water,

I'll take you to my house and get some cold water for you

he proudly exclaimed!

At his house he insisted we take a picture of his Buddha Shrine in his house: that is to explain the weird picture of Lesley and

Here we witness an example of perfect form entering the water!!!

I holding incense burners next to a Shrine... Lesley later joined his Occult but that's another story...
This guy was clearly a bit eccentric (to put it nicely) but we gave him the benefit of the doubt and carried on...
As we were driving however, he kept stopping and telling us to take pictures of random places, I instantly deleted them as I would have had no room left on my camera - yes, there were that many! Not only that but the most disturbing part was when he leaned slightly back and commented on a factory on the horizon. I didn't hear him properly so I leant forward only to have him slap my leg stroke it up and down and tell me it was a

Semen Factory

....!!!
Well apart from thinking my imminent rape was unavoidable, I was totally shocked until my brain finally engaged and he meant Cement Factory but his accent and disguised it to me!
Well, firstly, phew, no fastlove for me...
Secondly.... why did he touch my leg again? Well, I never found out, he was just a weirdo I guess...
The most important was that we got to the Hot Springs and for all

Yep, Mr Motorbike Weirdo was safety concious too!

And with our EXTRA small helmets we were ready to embrace our alter-ego's... THE DORK POLICE!

his downfalls, neither him nor his colleague, carrying Lesley, were bad drivers and we got there safe and sound...

The Hot Springs were fantastic! They were clearly quite old and verging on dilapidated, but it was a week day and they were virtually empty! To put them in to some kind of context, they were man-made pools filled with water from a Volcanically heated stream... The water in the pools was green because of moss that grew on the floor of the pools, but the water was crystal clear and smelt of chlorine... So we jumped in and it was gorgeous, ace, fantastic! It was everything we wanted! The place had slides and hot pools and generally was perfect for us to relax in!

After the day at the Hot Springs, as I mentioned earlier, we made our way out of Hué on the Bus up to our final stop in Vietnam, Hanoi (the Capital).

The Bus trip was... well.... I'll let Lesley take you through that "little adventure" hahaha...

I hope this was worth waiting for, for you all...
We've been so hectic travelling very far in such a short space of time that we

What a cool view!

All I said was, "It'd be nice if it was sunny" And the clouds parted!

literally haven't had the time to write a Blog entry... But now we have, so now you know we've not been kidnapped!

Take Care everyone and we'll be Blogging again soon!

Oh, and just to let everyone know, I'm still the ONLY monkey in the jungle wearing sunglasses!

ANDI

LAST STOP IN VIETNAM.........HANOI

So our last stop in Vietnam was Hanoi, We must have taken the most annoying overnight bus ever from Hue up to Hanoi (the Capital), not only was it full of stinking Vietnamse men it also had the most annoying people ever on it.
One man thought it was extremely entertaining to sit there clicking his fingers, whilst the guy behind me was constantly kicking the back of my chair whilst his girlfriend had her feet in my face. We also had an atomic bum man who just couldn't keep it in, he produced one of the grotesc smells I have ever smelt. Andi's smelt like roses compared to this stomach renching stench!
Luckily Andi and I managed to get a double seat each until some puney Vietnamese man decided to jump on Andi's chair at a

Our Driver was clearly under age!

But he told me to "shut up and sit down"... So I did...

10min stop. So Andi slept in the aisle and I had the double seat to myself. You can only imagine what the bus smelt like in the morning!

Oh I forgot to mention the bus driver...a crazy lunatic who prefered to drive on the opposite side of the road until something came towards him and decided to swerve. I'm sure he was either drunk or asleep, we heard some cries from the back from a spainish guy "Hey driver what you do!" which I think was a suggestion that his driving wasn't quite perfected yet!

(So if any other travellers are reading this to try and get some info on bus company's my only advice is do not go with An Phu.......!!!!)

So we arrived in Hanoi safely (just about), very annoyed and gasping for some clean air! When the guide got on the bus he organised a taxi for us to the centre of town, where he then met us and dragged us by the throat to his guest house. What a twat! He should have just said "Im going to try and get as much money out of you as I possibly can........please sir".

Halong Bay with some guy blocking the view!

Oi poser, get out of the way you are ruining the view!

He told us the lowest price room was 2 dollars more expensive than another couple who had also just arrived, he then tried to charge us almost twice the price for laundry and not until we refused did he then start lowering the price............ so he could stick his price up his little stinky nose!

We were so tired and had no idea of where we were we decided to put up with this annoying toad of a man and stay one night.

The toad then tried to get us to pay for the tour to Halong bay through his hotel. Halong bay has approx 1900 islets in the sea just in case you were wondering. We have heard a lot about this place and unlike the sqillions of temples we have visited we thought this maybe actually worth a look! It was 20 dollars more to book with the toad in the hotel than any other place. Luckily we have learnt to look around and managed to get a better deal. As soon as he knew we were not interested in his tour he lost total interest in us. Honestly these people thay do not deserve

Here we are in Halong bay......

Just minutes before Lesley pushed Andi to his death!

to have tourists in their country!

We decided to venture out into the streets of Hanoi......well...... just another dive added to the list in South East Asia! The streets are tiny and filled with traffic, beeping horns and people once again following us to try and get us to give them our money . We were glad that we were off to Halong Bay the next day!

We were praying that everything would go as planned for the Halong bay trip, and for the majority of the 2 day one night trip it did.

Another couple(Shane and Racheal) that were staying in the toad's hotel also booked with the same agency so the four of us along with about another 12 people all set sail to Halong Bay.

The Boat was impressive and the first meal was extremely good, extra tasty seafood! So Andi was smiling with a full belly!
We booked into our cabin rooms and had a few hours of chilling before we stopped off for a spot of Kayaking around the Islets.

The Islets were really cool and a refreshing break from that horrible city of Hanoi, the kayaking was good fun,

Halong Bay!

If you look close enough you can see us swimming to the Islet............... Not really!!!!! Who would be taking the photo silly?

but I had to point out to Andi that we were meant to be enjoying it and not trying to go faster than everybody else!
We got back onto the boat and off we went to another place where we were to anchor for the night. Before dinner we went for a swim in the turquiose water, the boys (Andi and Shane) were off diving from the top of the boat......it took me a while but I finally Jumped from the top and luckily had enough time before resurfacing to put my bikini back in place!
Andi and shane were trying to see who could jump the highest, the furthest, the most outragousist etc etc. It was entertaining......and even after a few drinks that night the games were still going, they tried to see who could climb the hightest on the ladders leading to the top of the mast and even leg wrestling..........to see who had the strongest legs????!!!
The following day was slightly disappointing as we were meant to be visiting a few places, but we just seemed to go back into the port after a few more peole had piled onto our boat from another boat. We got

A cave in halong bay!

I tried to lose Andi in the cave but it was just impossible....sorry!

off the boat about 11am had some lunch and travelled back to Hanoi slightly disappointed that we didn't get everything promised to us but glad we enjoyed at least one of the days!

We stayed in Hanoi for one more night before flying off to Bangkok then onto Manila!

I think Vietnam was my favourite country so far as it offered a bit more than temples!!! It had mountains, we got to go sand sledding, chilled out on the beach, went to a hot water spring and visited Halong Bay. It was also very cheap, which is always a bonus!

PHILIPPINES

So we flew into Manila, the capital of the Philippines. At first sight it seemed very Americanised with wide roads and English speaking people which was great! Then we found out the prices of the accommodation 25 squid a night...we had been paying 4 squid in Vietnam!! We just couldn't understand, the streets are filled with homeless people and it is a complete dump. The Hotel prices just didn't match the area and the hotels were nothing special.
We were both a bit gutted as we would have to get out of here

Just our bedroom window view!

JEALOUS?

and go to one of the Islands, costing more money for another flight etc. So we made a decision to get out of the Philippines as soon as possible and go to Singapore.
We booked our flight and brought our flight to Australia forward to the 4th Sept, this means we arrive in Oz with more money and get away from these horrible Asian people who try to con us of all our hard earned pennies!

We are slightly disappointed we didn't get to see the other Islands of the Philippines but we just were not prepared to use all our money here, so maybe we will have to come back one day when we are millionaires from all our inheritance.........um I mean........when we have more pennies.

So we go to Singapore now for just two days then fly onto Australia(4th Sept)!

We will let you know what its like to be by the beautiful white beaches, spending days surfing in the sea and well..............just having fun!!!

Bring on Australia!

Lesley

Additional photos below

Photos: 25, Displayed: 25