VIETNAM - Nha Trang, Hoi An & Hue

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The bus journey from Saigon was a bit too long, but it was comfortable enough on the Sinh Cafe buses. We got an 'open tour' bus, which pretty much means tourist bus. You get a ticket all the way from Saigon (on the south) to Hanoi (in the north) and you stop wherever you want on the way, whenever you want and for how long you want... perfectly flexible and cheap for all the tourists doing the route either north or south along Vietnam. You even get sleeping buses for the night trips with bunkbeds fitted instead of seats.
On the route to Nha Trang, we went past Phan Thiet (Phungs town) looking for the Yellow Dragon, but did not see it. We stopped in Mui Ne beach resort to drop and pick up tourists and for lunch. That place looked great, the sea looked amazing, with quite big waves, and we were tempted to stay at least one night, but we carried on to Nha Trang.
Nha Trang
After the 11 hours journey we got to Nha Trang at about 6pm. Fortunately the open tour buses stop right in the cheap hotel areas for the tourists, so we were right next to our hotel, the Perfume Grass Inn.
Nha Trang is pretty much a large beach front town, with a large avenue along the beach and some large hotels all along the road, and some small roads with smaller hotels, lots of bars and restaurants, and lots of tourists. On the north part it is more of a fishing village turned into city.
The first night we just wondered around, checked out the diving schools and went to a really nice restuarant called Lousiana Brewhouse, right by the beach with swimming pool, their own beer and some great seafood! The next day it was bright and sunny, so we went to relax by the beach and take some sun to start the process of wiping out the bleachy colour of our skins after too many years living in London. We also registered onto our Open Water SSI diving course at Octopus Diving School.
The three day diving course was quite intense, and we spent the time either in the pool (on the first day), in the sea (other two days), or watching videos or studying from our manual. The seafood in Hha Trang was great, with lots of restaurants with their fresh food on display for you to choose and cook in the bbq fire. We also met with Rakel (a spanish girl from Barcelona), Janusz (a Swiss guy) and Ben (an American), and most of the time we spent chating at the Cafe des Amis, having good cheap food, fruit shakes, ice coffees or some Saigon beers.
The diving course was great, Khuong our Vietnamese instructor was really good, and the coral and fish in the ocean was amazing. The first day was the best, with great visibility and so many colourful fish and corals. The last two days the weather turned a bit gray and it even rained on the last day, but that was no problem since we were having so much fun under water... we even saw a really large cuttlefish (squid) and some scorpion fish (very poisonous) as well a very small Moray Eel.
The last day it was really dull and rainy, and we went with Janusz to the mud baths and spent about three hours there relaxing in the thermal baths and swimming pools. On the day we were leaving to Hoi An we spent the whole moring lying down by the beach, and the sun tried to come out again for moments. After about seven days in Nha Trang, doing out diving course and relaxing a bit, we finally continued our journey north on the open tour buses.
Hoi An
This was our first time in the sleeping buses, and they were very impressive, very clean and the beds quite comfortable, which you could also lift if you wanted to sit up. The journey was quite good, but the road was not very good, and we did not really sleep that much. We arrived early in the morning, again right in the middle of the tourist hotels area. So we sat in a little cafe with Janusz to have a coffee and look for a hotel to stay. We found our cheapest option for about 12usd (incl. breakfast and free internet), the town was baking hot even at 8am, so we checked in, had a shower and went out to explore the town and have some proper breakfast.
Hoi An is charming little town, and the old part of town is a Unesco world heritage site, which means that cars and motorbikes are not allowed in... this really makes a big difference in Vietnam, since you don't have to be watching over your shoulder all the time in case motorbike decides to jump on the sidewalk and run you over.
The old town is beautiful, and even though it seems to be crumbling down, the old French colonial buildings surrounded by colourfull flowers and electricity cables are mixed with some peculiar timber local architecture, and give the dusty streets a really calm feeling of going back in time. The town is well known for the number of tailor shops, which can measure you up and make a top designer suit or dress in under a day!... they also make shoes, boots, and sandals to measure.
The food was also great, and we tried the Cao Lau (flat noodles with pork slices), the white rose (which was a delicious type of dumpling) and some fried wontons, all really good!
On one of the days we hired some bicycles with Janusz and went to the beach for the whole day (only about 30 minute ride). The sun was really hitting hard and it was so hot!... the beach there was amazing, with some rustic restaurants and we lied down on the sun beds all day. The sea was amazing, with almost white sand, and great big waves which you could almost even surf on! We had some really nice seafood there again, and just relaxed the whole day by the sun and the shade. If you ever go there by bike, don't fall into the trap of parking your bike at the entrance to the beach (and pay for it), because at the restaurants you can leave it for free (we nearly did fall for it).
The following day it was an early bus ride to go to Hue, back on the Sinh Cafe open tour buses. It was a bit of a shame to leave Hoi An that night, because the following day they had the Buddha birthday party as well as the full moon party (traditional in Hoi An), but we were racing to get to Hanoi so that we could squeeze in Sapa and Halong Bay before our flight to Laos.
Hue
We arrived in Hue after a quick four hour bus ride, and after sorting out the hordes of hotel hound dogs, trying to get you to come to thier hotel, we went to a fairly cheap one, which we then found out had the same name as one on the Lonely Planet, just around the corner (Phoung Nha or something like that), again very close to where the bus dropped us, so no problems on that aspect.
Hue was a bit of a horrile large town in first impressions, but after a bit of a walk around, it was more of a horrible small city. It was very hot, and again the motorbikes were all over the place, with a bit of competition from the cyclos (man on a bicycle pushing a kind of wheelchair where the customer/customers/luggage sit). The place was boiling hot, and we spent the rest of the afternoon hiding from the sun, and walked accross the river to see the Citadel (old walled city), which was beautiful from the outside, although it was late and had closed already.
The following morning we went to visit the closeby tombs of the ancient emperors (Hue was once the capital of Vietnam in its empire times), and we bumped into Janusz, so we went with him on the boat ride tour. We visited a pagoda by the river and also two beatiful tomb sites, which were more like palaces built along the river. On one of them we had our first motorbike ride, after all that time in Vietnam (motorbike country), and Lorena even enjoyed it! The boat ride back was a bit long and slow, about two hours, and it might be advisable to visit these places by hiring a motorbike or even bicycles, but the local tourism is very crafty and it is quite difficult to find any maps of where these places are, so you end up going for the organised tour.
The last day we did go to visit the Citadel inside, and it was a magnificent complex, but it was mostly in ruins. It could be comparble to the Forbidden City in Beijing in terms of size and ambition, but the Vietnam war had destroyed pretty much all of it. They are in the process of restoration, and some of the palaces insice look just amazing, full of colour and ornaments with also come obvious french colonial influence. And it seems the US hav not even contributed to any of the restoration costs after being the ones who actually destroyed it.
Well, that was the end of Hue, and on second thoughts we would probably had preferred staying in Hoi An another night instead of Hue, but that was how it went. After this is our last sector in the north of Vietnam before going to Laos.

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Comments

[Claudia Mejia]

Por fin relax...
Veo que Vietnam ha sido mucho de rilax con playa brisa y mar, tal cual que cualquier Coveñas en Colombia. Si, parece que hay mucho de comun entre Vietnam y Colombia, incluyendo las frutas que tanta falta nos hacen por estos pa8ises nordicos. Sigan disfrutando el viaje muchachos que por aca nosotros seguimos disfrutando de la cronica y las fotos. Todo de maravilla! Calita

[Phung]

Wishing I was there too. Great photos, Great food... Missing you guys...Love PhungXBumpXChrisXAutumn