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Published: April 15th 2012
George: On 7th April, it’s very stormy. We go for a swim in the rain and return home and get a car back to the Hong Ngoc hotel. At night I get ill and have to move in with Mum, it’s terrible diarrhoea because I put my finger in my mouth after putting my hands on the floor near the lake. I am also vomiting a lot. We go on an overnight train to Hué for one night, the bumping around on the train doesn’t agree with my stomach. When we get there I start to feel a bit better and by the evening I’m 100%!b(MISSING)etter but Dad and Ruby are both ill. (Hey! You’ve missed out the visit to the Imperial City completely here George, Ed!) Me and Mum order pizza from room service and eat it in front of the TV which is showing the second Narnia film. I feel very happy to be having my first meal in 36 hours. The next day we check out and get a train to Hoi An and get to a hotel called Hoi An Pacific which is a bit strange because the sea we are by is actually called the
Eastern Sea. (Or the South China Sea, but connected the Pacific. Ed). Next day we go to the old town, it was very very hot. There’s no traffic ‘cos no cars or motorbikes are allowed. Afterwards we go back to the hotel and get our swimming stuff ‘cos we are going to the beach. The beach is the best beach I have been to so far on this trip. In the evening we go back to the old town for dinner and I get some new flip-flops because my other ones broke. We spend one more day relaxing in Hoi An. The next day we go to Da Nang Airport and we get an aeroplane to Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City). The hotel we stay in is the 3 star Sapphire Hotel; we go out for lunch and try to find a laundry which is unsuccessful. We see a Notre Dame Cathedral which is identical to the one in Paris except for its made of red bricks and it’s smaller. I have lasagne for lunch after a big row with Dad. In the evening we go up the Bitexco Financial Tower – we go up to the 49th floor which
is under the heli-pad and we see all across Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC). It is very high up and the lift makes my ears pop. We go to a mini-mart and we get pot noodles and me and Ruby get a toffee flavoured ice cream. Hurrah.
Ruby: George was ill in Hanoi and then we got on the train. We went to Hué. We had a good time. I videoed the crickets, they were loud. Next day we got the train to Hoi An. We went to the bridge in the old town then we went to the beach. We splashed around for a bit and had lunch. We got a new swimming costume for me. I felt sad and worried when I was ill. (Which was in Hué, BTW. Ed!).
Poem About My Big Trip By Ruby We are in Chau Doc, it is good Loads of houses made out of wood All the houses made out of wood are standing on stilts in the water, The we caught a Boat. Alex: Back in Hanoi in the middle of the night George started feeling very ill, and was very sick for the rest of the night. The next
day he was still feeling awful, so we stayed in our hotel room for much of the day. Ruby and I went out around lunchtime, and took a cyclo tour around the lake and old town of Hanoi. By evening George was just about fit to get on the train to Hué, but was still feeling a bit poorly. It was an overnight journey and I just can’t sleep on trains. In Hué we visited the ‘Imperial City’, a 200 year old citadel, slightly crumbly in places, with gardens, palaces and temples. Elephants walked around taking tourists dressed up in old Chinese style clothes on a tour of the citadel. The crickets in the gardens were so loud at times that Ruby actually took a video of the grass to record the sounds.
About 2 hours after lunch, both myself and Ruby (who shared the “shrimps with fried rice”), were very ill. We spent the rest of the evening and night feeling very sick. Traveller’s tummy. It wasn’t a good few days, health wise. The next morning we were on our way to Hoi An – and the beach. Things were looking up and Hoi An was a lovely place
to spend a few days. We went to the Ancient Town in the morning, and walked around slowly in the heat and sunshine. After looking at the covered Japanese Bridge and the Chinese Assembly Hall we headed to An Bang beach. Its a few km down the coast from Hoi An, but it was just the most superb beach you could hope for. Golden sand, gentle waves and only a few tourists, and a handful of cafés behind the beach serving seafood and cold beers. Lovely. George and Ruby spent hours in the sea. I spent quite some time throwing George around although he’s getting quite big now and what with my back issues I had to take a break every now and then and just read my book on the sand. Ruby required my presence in the sea in order to “go deeper!” in search of the big waves. Late in the afternoon, I heard a couple of low loud rumbling sounds, and pointed them out to Carla and George. It sounded like a jet plane, but I couldn’t see anything in the sky. It wasn’t until we got back to the hotel and put on the news that
we worked out it was the earthquake in Indonesia. It was probably a good thing we didn’t guess what it was as I would have been quite worried about it and trying to get out of there as fast as possible if I had known. We returned to the old town in the evening, by which time it had cooled somewhat and we found the restaurant we had been advised to eat at – a traditional Vietnamese restaurant, called Streets, run by a charity for children. Unfortunately, it was booked up but we made it there the next night and it was delicious! The next morning we had had a chilled morning in the hotel, as Ruby had been looking particularly exhausted – still recovering a bit from her tummy upset. For a lunchtime treat we took G’n’R to a café with an adventure playground. The excitement grew until we reached the café, we could see the adventure playground poking up above the building, but when we arrived it was all roped off. Doh! It was a delicious lunch and we went straight back to the beach afterwards, but it was disappointing nonetheless. It was great to just relax so
much for a couple of days after all the cities and temples etc. We recharged our batteries a bit before going to Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon).
We flew to Ho Chi Minh City (I lost another Swiss Army knife to airport security – that’s my second). The traffic there makes Hanoi look like a quiet village – it is madness! If you don’t just walk into the road, into the midst of hundreds of mopeds interspersed with cars, you would never get across. The first major road we came to Carla had to be helped by a friendly local, but eventually you do just kind of get used to it and start to build faith that they won’ just run you down (although cars will – mopeds try not to). And it’s not even that safe on the pavements, as when it gets busy the mopeds see pavements as a kind of ‘overflow’ lane and they will just zoom along at speed in their hundreds. On our first day in Ho Chi Minh after visiting the Notre Dame Cathedral I went to the ‘War Remnants Museum’ and the others went back to the hotel. The museum was a little
too gruesome for children. The tanks and helicopters they would have enjoyed (as I did) but the torture of prisoners and the chemical weapons (agent orange) and the lingering effects were too much for me to handle in parts – just stomach churning – the photographs and stories showed (even though, understandably, it was slightly one sided) the horrors of the Vietnam war, and the legacy. In the early evening we went to the Bitexco Tower and the viewing deck on the 49th floor. Everyone stopped for a collective “Whoa!” as we stepped out of the lift. It was an amazing view over the city and the sun was just setting which gave it an extra bit of colour. We’d had a French creperie lunch so we went budget on dinner and had pot noodles in the hotel room – mine was extra spicy and made my eyes water. Ah the glamour!
Carla: On the morning of our second day in HCMC we split up again. Alex went off to find the Vietnamese Massage Centre (exclusively employing blind masseurs) and a laundry and George, Ruby and I headed for the park across the road which had eluded us the day
before. I was rather trepidatious of being solely in charge of the two children whilst crossing the four lane road between us and the park. The ‘walk slowly without stopping’ method had been fine, if a little scary, in Hanoi but I had been a bit paralysed in HCMC on Friday and so worried I’d freeze again today, this time with 2 children relying on me. Anyway we got to the road and Ruby and George were shouting at me “Just Walk! Just Walk!” – which would have been sound advice if there hadn’t been buses coming towards us. So, once the buses had passed, we “just walked” and were exhilarated to reach the other side unscathed. We had a shady morning in the park and then Alex joined us, refreshed from his massage. We headed off to the Reunification Palace but were foiled in our first attempt to visit as we had forgotten about the generous Communist lunch breaks in Vietnam – 11am to 1.30pm in the case of the palace. So we strolled (sweating profusely!) round the downtown area and marvelled at the malls and skyscrapers before having lunch and heading back to the palace. The palace is
the 1966-built home of the South Vietnamese president which was finally captured in 1975 by the North Vietnamese – a Communist tank crashing through the palace gates to symbolise the end of the war and the reunification of Vietnam. The building is now called the Reunification Palace and it is preserved EXACTLY as it was on that day in 1975. Well it might have been tidied up a bit but all the rooms, furniture and even cutlery and crockery in the dining room remain the same. It’s a fabulously designed building, 1960s style with lots of polished granite walkways and balconies and open air spaces inside the building. The furniture is wonderfully ‘Austin Powers’ and there is a helipad, private cinema and in the basement a war room and network of safety tunnels. We all enjoyed it in our different ways. George (the space junkie) loved the gardens and had a good run around. Ruby found some blossoms to collect in her hat, Alex pounced on some superb photo opportunities whilst I was lost in thoughts of the glamorous 60s lifestyle lived here but also the ‘denial’ that they must have all had to practice quite strenuously. That evening we
went to a famous HCMC restaurant which specialises in ‘street food’ although the setting was rather ‘un-street’; it was all white with dark wood furniture, silk curtains, giant vases of lilies, balconies and a courtyard. The food was super tasty – even the snails which Alex tried and I decided against as they were enormous!
Today (Sunday) we set off to Chau Doc in the Mekong Delta in preparation for our boat trip tomorrow to Pnom Penh. We drove 6 hours from HCMC but the scenery and activity was so interesting that it felt like fewer. We saw rivers, irrigation canals, boats of all descriptions – some with space for a family to live on whilst it was journeying to the city to sell flowers, fish, rice and even sand to the people there. We saw the wooden stilt houses which are built from a tropical hardwood; it lasts 20 years in the water without rotting, we were told. We also stopped at a crocodile farm and Alex couldn’t resist sampling their wares for lunch. He said crocodile tasted quite delicious; similar to beef steak. So here we are, holed up in Chau Doc, catching up on bits and pieces
and looking forward to our next Mekong boat trip.
Before I sign off I thought you might be interested to hear whether we’re sticking to our planned budget? Of course you are! Well, we had a tentative budget of £400 per week for the whole six months as spending money – that excluded most accommodation and some transport as we’d pre-paid for most of that. In India it was, as you can imagine, easy to underspend (although there were plenty of opportunities to splurge if you wanted to, cf Taj Mahal Palace Hotel). Alex was worried about Indochina as we have stayed in mid-range hotels without any self-catering facilities. Our strategy has been 1) Never use the hotel laundry service (which has worked and Al has found $1 per kilo services almost everywhere we’ve been) 2) Share dishes at lunch and dinner, portions are usually too big anyway 3) Have one meal out and one meal ‘picnicked’ per day (we haven’t always done this but quite often) 4) Drink local wine and beer – especially for me this one, for example a bottle of Chilean white is £6 in a supermarket whereas Dalat the local Vietnamese white wine, which is
absolutely fine, is £2. So Bob’s Your Uncle there! 5) Bargain for all local transport (Al is good at this) and finally 6) Eat a hearty breakfast at the hotel. So far it seems to be working as we’re doing well and have saved money in Asia, it sounds like we’ll need it for Australia and New Zealand though so it’s a good thing.
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Kim Brosnan
non-member comment
Tummy trouble
Sorry to hear about the tummy trouble sounds like poor George got the worst of it. Otherwise sounds like you are having a fantastic time. You'll also have all your memories from the blog to look back at and remind yourselves of your great adventure. We had a fab time in Jordon, camel rides, camping in desert, floating in dead sea and visiting awesome Petra. Sadly our trip was only a week not 6 months. Love to all. Kim