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Sunday 4th June Paul - Left Hong Kong in a blaze of glory by stealing all the toilet paper from our room as whoever ran our hostel hadn't got up to see us out.
In a bit of a random side story, I saw England's goals against Jamica. I bet if my dad was managing England, Crouch wouldn't be playing again after the way he took that penatly. And Graham Rodger is the new Grimsby manager...
Back to Hong Kong and after we arrived at the airport we scouted out the cheapest place to eat as we had close to 0 HK dollars left! Managed to spend every last cent (airport food is expensive) and boarded the plane. The reason we ate before we boarded was because we were unsure as to whether we would get food on the plane. I'll never doubt Singapore Airlines again! It was fabulous!
Great entertainment system (I played Super Mario Bros the original version and Laura watched some rubbish film) and unlimited free drinks. You could have the time of your life on that plane. The great news was that our connecting flight was also with Singapore Airlines! So even more
free food! As we touched down in Ho Chi Minh we completed our 3 countries in 5 hours (Hong Kong, Singapore and Vietnam for those of you who are confused!) and also managed to exhaust Singapore Air of fresh orange juice!
Met a crazy Kiwi as we were going through Customs. He kept telling us how great Vietnam was because it had "KFC". Laura and I both smiled at him uneasily after his 'hilarious' comment about what would happen if you went and smacked the guy checking your visas. We politely let him through first and then quickly hurried away.
Got to our hotel with no problems and checked into a very nice room. Then went out for a quick snack (we'd had two full meals on the plane by this point) and decided what we wanted to do next. Plan is - get a train to Hue tomorrow and start working our way down.
Just by our hotel was a bar called "Guns N Roses"... can you guess where we went next? There are numerous reasons why this bar was so excellent, here are a few - The beer was cheap! It was definately not called
'Liam Oggs'! And they had free pool! And they played 'Guns N Roses'! And they played other good music! And they had an extremely crazy Vietnam guy who kept buying us free beers and telling us he liked missles!! What a bar! What a place!! What a country!
Monday 5th June Paul - After a bit of hassle managed to book a train to Da Trang tonight where we will get a bus on to Hoi An. Decided we didn't want to see Hue as Hoi An sounds much nicer. So had a day to kill in Ho Chi Minh City... it was boiling hot... very humid... let's go to the water park!!!
Not quite up to the standards of Blizzard Beach in Florida but still pretty fun all the same. Spent about 4 hours zipping down all the slides and racing the Vietnamese kids down the rapids. Who would have thought that so many kids would cheat!? Pulling you back by the legs and hair - nothing was past the little rascals!
The water piped in some great music too - 'Barbie Girl' by Aqua, some early Backstreet Boys, some random Ace of Base, a
whole host of Britney Spears and a smattering of everyones favourite - Sir Elton John.
Great day and topped off with a fantastic meal in a little restaurant down some random side street. Had some Vietnamese specialities amongst other things and it was all delicious. Just waiting to get the train now as it leaves at 11pm.
One thing to note is how confusing Vietnamese dong is. 30,000 dong to the pound! So basically you are carrying over a million dong with you all the time. And the notes go all the way down to 500 dong so things are quite confusing. I also think the traffic here is worse than in China if that is possible. Motorbikes litter the streets with their constant honking and frequent crashes!
Tuesday 6th June Laura - The night train was fine - quite clean, and unlike the Chinese trains the hard sleepers had seperate compartments (and free food!). We were in a 6 bed cabin with 9 other people... seriously! And 7 of those shared 2 beds. Impressive.
Anyway, our train got to Da Nang at 2.30 and we got ripped off getting a taxi to the
bus station. He managed to make a 1km drive down the road into a 5 km circuit. Nevermind. It still only cost about a pound. We found our bus pretty easily (actually, that's a lie - the taxi driver pulled up in front of it and pointed at it so we didn't have to find it at all). We waited around for almost an hour before it set off. God knows why. And it was sooooo hot. Really we were sweating so much, it was not a pretty sight!
We finally set off and it was the usual bad driving and beeping of horns. The conductor came and asked us to pay - 10 times the amount it quoted in the guide book (just above the NB 'foreigners will get ripped off')! Eventually we managed to haggle it down to a reasonable price that was only 3 times the amount we were supposed to pay (not before having a discussion with the driver for 5 minutes while the whole bus watched amused). We showed him our empty wallets! I may try that next time I get the number 45 into Grimsby. Anyway, when we got off we spoke to
a friendly Vietnamese woman in the street and she told us we got a good price for foreigners. Hurrah!
We checked into a cheap hotel, putting our haggling skills to good use once more to get 1 dollar knocked off (look, that IS impressive, the room only costs 7 dollars!). The room is great blah blah blah.
Hoi An is a tiny riverside town in the middle of Vietnam, very close to the coast. The whole town is a world heritage site and it has only 65,000 people living here. So it's tiny and lovely. We strolled down the road to the river as the sun was setting, and both said 'wow' because it looked amazing. The riverside is lined with restaurants but it's very quiet and very pretty.
We ate some local specialities in one of these restaurants, and it was very tasty, and even cheaper than China! A 4 course meal for less than a pound and amazing views while you eat. You can't complain really!
Wednesday 7th June Paul - Hoi An really is a beautiful little town. As Laura said the whole town is a Unesco World Heritage Site
and you can really see why. Every 'road' is a tiny little dirt track that skirts past numerous ancient houses and temples before leading down to the river. It's really magical!
Got up at 1pm and did a little walk out of the Lonely Planet guidebook. It was nice and interesting but the main highlight was meeting our Vietnamese 'friend' Mia from yesterday again. She was the girl who told us the right way from the bus station into town. We met her outside the clothes market and knew she was going to try and tempt us in. We told her we were going on a walk and we would come back later (this was true - Laura wanted just a top making....) but after tempting us with free water we went in for a look. So any shop owners if you want to tempt two westners into your shop, free water is the answer. We're easily swayed!
Cloth is stacked up to the ceiling in this place and lots of people are at work on sewing machines making all kinds of things. Basically anything you want. As Mia said, she can tailor anything for us, even a
suit made out of bright orange flowery beach shorts material as one English guy had asked for (we enquired whether his name was "Dave Brightmore" but apparently not)!
She showed us to a little table where we sat down and then basically all we had to do was sift through lots and lots of magazines and tell her what we wanted tailoring. Now I wasn't going to get anything at all. Seriously I wasn't! We were doing well of sticking to our budget! Until I realised how cheap it all was. So Mum, expect a tailor made suit heading your way. Seriously! I'll post it from Ho Chi Minh later on this week.
Apparently Katie Darby will be crying with jealously but Laura got all measured up and after MUCH deliberation (apparently there were so many gorgeous materials to choose from she just couldn't decide!) she is getting two tops and some smart trousers. I also decided on some swimming shorts. All this came to 50 pounds! We couldn't quite believe how cheap it was but decided against getting anything else today (watch this space - we're going back to get fitted tomorrow and Laura has already spied
a dress that someone else got made for 3 pounds as really really really nice) and we are getting fitted tomorrow.
Rather randomly and brilliantly we also met Anna & Andy in the cloth shop and arranged to meet them for dinner tonight. They also got two suits made and they were really very nice indeed so looking forward to mine.
Finished off our walk by taking a few more pictures that you can see on our blog and went to meet Anna & Andy in a bar. When we turned up the Oz couple (Pete & Lauren) were also there and it was like a little reunion from China. Quite random! Had a really good meal and discussed where we were all going next. Going to meet Anna & Andy in Nha Trang for the England game on the 10th so I am definately looking forward to that!
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Cousin Catherine
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Come on England!
Chris very envious you exploring Vietnam, somewhere he's always wanted to go. The scenery looks amazing. Singapore Airlines sounds a bit good, haven't played Super Mario since you were about 8 years old! You can travel for thousands of miles around the world but you can't escape Barbie Girl, classic! Take care x