Blowing the cobwebs off!

Hey All,

This is just a short entry as a way of apology. Sorry we haven't been very communicative as of late, we've been back in sunny England now for about 12 weeks and as you could imagine we've been trying to re-establish ourselves with jobs and a home and the like. We've managed that now and once BT have pulled their collective heads out of their huge butt then we can reply to you all.
In the mean time here's a picture of my Uncle David, he loves a good party!

My lordy lord

Having seen the latest photo's of Richard I have only just stopped the tears rolling down my face, my god man what is going on with that hair ?? Seriously it's worse than that mullet you used to sport all those years ago !!! The woman in the photo looks actually upset by it all !!

http://i19.photobucket.com/albums/b168/Chardly/Vietnam/100_5761.jpg

In all seriousness, will be good to see ya mate, enjoy the rest of it, see ya soon :-)

Hoi An to Hue to Hanoi.....

We arrived at Hoi An early in the morning and had 2 full days there. Hoi An is famous for it's tailors and they are everywhere, you can get anything made really cheaply. I had myself 2 dresses, some trousers and a pair of shoes made and Rich had 2 pairs of shoes and a hat made. He had to have a hat made as he couldn't find one big enough to go over his crazy hair! Our shoes were a little disappointing as the quality was not as good as those on display. Rich was pleased with his hat (even though he looks like a tit in it, tee hee!) and was pleased with my clothes, until Rich pointed out that my beige shirt dress with orange stitching makes me look like I work in Sainsburys!!! And he was right, bugger! Maybe it's a sign!!

We spent a lot of time just wandering around the city, we visited a few museums and some ruins! It's a really quaint little place, with narrow streets and not much traffic. It was so hot and humid though, probably the most humid it's been so far, it was such an effort just to walk around! There's a big market, loads of tailors and lots of nice restaurants and at one of these restuarants we had ourselves a little cooking course. We learnt how to make various spring rolls (Vietnamese spring rolls are soo good), green papaya salad and and a fish dish, and then we ate it....yummy!



A 3 hour bus ride and we were in Hue. We had a day and a half here and in that time we had a tour around the citadel in the city which was very impressive and a boat trip to visit a pagoda and the kings tomb, which was also pretty impressive. Our guide was really good and we learnt a lot about the places we visited, it was also nice to be out on a boat getting a breeze as it was very hot n' shitty again.



And after Hue, we took another overnight train to Hanoi, our last stop in Vietnam. We had about 5 days there before our flight to Hong Kong on the 2nd September. Our first day was spent wandering around the city, it's just as hectic as Saigon in the motorbike front. While we've become used to crossing the road in a suicidal manner, I'll be glad when we don't have to, it's just so stressful! That evening we visited water puppet show, which was interesting! At dinner that night Rich didn't eat anything and we went home early as he was feeling ill, Bob and Angie hadn't gone out to dinner as Angie had been sick earlier...irk! Rich was feeling bad all night and was sick every couple of hours throughout the night. Not good.

The following day we were supposed to be going on a day trip to Halong Bay but Rich was still feeling ill and so didn't go. I stayed behind with him too just in case he needed any sort of medical attention. We pretty much didnt' do anything all day, apart from watch a couple of films on TV, It was raining really hard all day so I didn't bother going out! Halang Bay was really nice by all accounts, Angie went but was sick while she was there!

The day after we were due to go to Coc Phuong National Park. Rich was still feeling bad so didn't go, he was feeling a bit better and was managing to eat and so I did go. It was a really nice day, even though it took 3 hours to get there! We visited a rescue centre for endangered primates, a prehistoric cave and then spent a few hours trekking through the jungle, which was hard work in the heat, but really nice to be away from the city into the peace of the jungle!

Rich was feeling much better by the evening and so we went out for our farewell dinner with the gang. The tour through Vietnam was really good and we enjoyed the group of people we were with and had a lot of fun with them, it was pretty hectic but we crammed a lot in and saw as much as we could. I like Vietnam a lot and would definitely go back there, the people are friendly and the food is good, the weather is hot n' shitty but you get used to it, just like you get used to crossing the road and being hassled to buy stuff every 5 minutes!!



We did a bit of shopping with everyone the following day and had lunch before saying farewell :-( to Bob and Angie, and Ben and Jane as they were flying home.

We spent our last night with Jady and met up with Jean also, we sat drinking local beer at 2000 dong (about 5p) a glass on a street corner, great stuff, can't believe our guide didn't tell us about this! Forget to tell you about the currenty, the Vietnamese Dong, there are 15,800 VND to the US$, brilliant, we were millionnaires!! After the outdoor bar we went to a club and had a boogie and got ourselves a motorbike taxie home, luckily at 2 am there's barely any traffic about!!

So Vietnam all over with, we said au revoir to Jady who had a few more days there and left for the airport, with a bit of a curly head!!

The fun of floating bars at Nha Trang

Our overnight train from Saigon was pretty good, better than the ones in Thailand as you get 4 bed cabins and so a bit of privacy.

We had a couple of days in Nha Trang which is on the coast, it has very british feel to it though, at first glance it could have been any british seaside!

We spent our first day relaxing on the beach on our nice sun loungers, I say relaxing, we only managed to relax for about 3 minutes at a time as we were constantly pestered by people selling us everything from massages to seafood, it was really annoying, and they were so persistant. Rich and I ended up having massages and pedicures just so everyone else would leave us alone for a bit!!!! Apart from that though it was a lovely beach, the sun was shining and the sea was warm. Despite being under an umbrella all day and wearing factor 60, Rich and I still got sunburnt....it is bloody hot in Vietnam.....hot n'shitty!

On our second day Rich and I had booked to go on an island tour, it was only $6. The bus picked us up and took us to the boat and it was absolutely heaving, loads of people on the tour, we were a bit disappointed at this, but the guides told us what the itenery for the day was and he seemed like he wanted to make it fun. The first stop was to snorkel, there were about 3 other tour boats there plus a dive boat and so that meant there were about 100 snorkelers and a hand full of divers all in the same area, not good, we had a little snorkel but gave up as there were too many people and the coral was shit too. So, so far we weren't particularly happy. Back on the boat and we moved to a different spot and had some lunch up on the top deck of the boat. Lunch was really good, we were impressed with that, we got chatting to some Aussies, a canadian girl and an english fella and they became our 'gang' for the rest of the day! After lunch our guide told us it was happy hour at the floating bar but we couldn't go in the water until our food had gone down and so he and the crew set about entertaining us with their 'band'. And entertaining it was, they were very funny and got everyone us dancing on the tables, Cheesy stuff but it put us all in a good mood. And then the floating bar opened. We all jumped in the water and were given rubber rings and made our way to the bar where we were given a plastic cup of mulberry wine. Now, when he said happy hour, he meant an hour, the mulberry wine just kept on coming for an hour, and it was free so everyone had plenty. The barman was even pouring it straight into peoples mouths, especially the aussies, they got very pissed!! We did take plenty of pictures but on our waterproof camera and we've not had chance to put them onto a disc to upload to here, so you'll have to check them out in a couple of weeks (maybe!)

When we all wobbled back to the boat pretty much everyone was steaming. We stopped a bit later on at an island resort and we spent our time sat with the aussies drinking beer, it was much fun.

That evening we got on another overnight train to Hoi An, Rich and I met up with the rest of the group in a very wobbly state which they found very amusing!

Mekong Delta

We left Saigon and travelled by bus for a few hours to the Mekong Delta. We met up with our guide, Fu and got on a boat. Fu was a great guide, very funny and always chuckling at something! We were taken on a little tour of the Mekong Delta area which is where the Mekong River meets the sea and there are little islands dotted about and everyone travels by boat and everything is transported by boat. It's a really lovely place. The people are very self sufficient and there are no restaurants or hotels or anything like that, just people living their lives and making a living the best way they can. Of course they get tourists like us, but we didn't see any others and that just made it nicer. We visited all manner of 'workshops' and 'factories', things being made in a simple / traditional way, bricks, roofs, rice paper, coconut toffee, tools, it was all very interesting to see. We stopped for lunch at the home of Mr Baa, who gave us all some rice ouzo (very strong stuff) and fed us a fantastic meal of fish, spring rolls, rice, noodles, and other tasty stuff.

We went to this one bonsai farm (like japanese bonsai except the trees are much bigger) and they had a python there, I had a go at holding him, he was very heavy and strong but i liked him! We were also treated (I say treated, it didn't feel like a treat!!) to some snake wine. The foulest tasting stuff on earth. It is what it says it is, wine made out of snakes.......yuk. Apparantly it's really good for you. They can keep it, that's what I say!

We arrived at our guest house for the night. A local family's home. They had made an upstairs room into a big dorm and we all slept in there, was like being on a school trip!!

That evening we took a walk along the river before dinner which was so nice. It was like being back in Fiji, not a tourist in sight, no souvenir shops just people doing there thing and all saying hello to us, many of them stopping Rich to touch his hair and then giggle!!

Dinner was pretty much the same as lunch but we didn't care because it was equally as delicious. We spent the night all playing cards and drinking beer.

On the way back to Saigon the following day we passed through the floating market where the locals come to buy and sell their wares, mainly foodstuffs. The boats stick a sample of their products to the top of a bamboo pole so that everyone can see from a distance what they are selling! It was all very hectic there and we didn't stop to shop as no-one wanted to buy pineapple or sweet potato!

So back to Saigon where we hung around for a few hours before getting an overnight train to Nha Trang.

Saigon

We had about a 6 hour bus journey out of Phnom Penh, accross the border and into Saigon. We got off the bus and were greeted by pure hecticness!! There are motorbikes everywhere, not many cars, lots of cyclos (big cycles with seats on the front for passengers) and cycles and a few buses. Jeez, thought Bangkok was bad, then Phnom Penh but this just tops it, and then some!! And the noise!!! All over SE Asia, vehicles beep to say 'here I am, please don't crash into me' Here, they are still used for the same thing but every vehicle is doing it constantly, if baffles me how anyone works out what horn belongs to what bike ???



The tour officially ends here and Rich and I had booked into a different hotel for a few days while the rest are all in the same hotel as most are leaving the following day. Exceptions are Bob and Angie who are on the same tour up through Vietnam and Jean who is doing the same tour but with a different company, and Graahame and Lorinda are having a couple of weeks travelling on their own through Vietnam. So no doubt we'll see them and Jean along the way. We also found out that Sophie would be our tour guide.....oh joy!

We found our hotel and had a bit of a kip before meeting everyone else for a farewell dinner. We walked to the restaurant as it wasn't far but that was a scary walk. As I'd said, the traffic is hectic there shuold be order to it, there just isn't. The way to drive is pretty much I'll go where I like, you go around me. And that's how you have to cross the road , it's really not a pleasant experience but if you don't then you'll never get across the road. So basically you just have to step out and walk slowly but purposefully in a straight line across and everything will move around you. It's easier if you just look straight ahead and not at the million motorbikes heading your way, but it's hard to do that!

We went to a local restaurant that had some 'interesting' things on the menu. Good old favourites like, goats breast, beef penis, rat and some other crazy stuff that I can't remember (check out the menu!). Bob, who will eat anything and want's to try everything went for the beef penis. Rich and I tried a bit and it was quite nice, fortunately it did come in slices so you'd never know what it was. They didn't serve dog in here gladly but it is something the Vietnamese eat a lot of, in fact I learned later on that dogs are bred especially for it like cows :-( But they do also keep dogs as pets, the intelligent ones, it's the stupid ones that get eaten......Ruth, never take Alfie to Veitnam!!!



We had a couple of days before the tour started and so Rich and I spent our time, emailing people and sitting at a bar watching Saigon, it's a very interesting city and just watching the traffic is fascinating! We did also meet up with Jean an took a cyclo tour around the city, visiting some temples and stopping at chinatown another market!
The cyclo tour was quite hairy, they're not very fast and as you're sittng at the front you feel very vulnerable! The cyclo would turn a corner into a million oncoming bikes and somehow manage to slip into a space and round the next corner, there were many near misses along the journey but I didn't see so much as a raised eyebrow. Fascinating!! My driver was called Mr Kim and he was very funny. He Spoke some english and as we were going through chinatown kept hitting me on the shoulder and saying 'chinatown, many chinese people live here' He must've done it about 10 times! He used to be a policeman before the vietnam war but now he's an illegal citizen in Saigon and as such cannot own a property or business and as such can never marry. it's quite sad but most of the cyclo drivers are like that, eeking out a living giving cyclo rides, they have no homes either, they just sleep in their cyclos. I don't really understand the Vietnam war and why these previously respectable people have no place in Saigon anymore. (Note from Rich: I know why, during the war all intellectuals and people in high ranking jobs tended to sympathies with the Americans, so after the war these people were rounded up and sent to re-education centres then after their re-education they were dropped back into society as 'non-people' with no rights what so ever. Sad, but true!) And they are the lucky ones, a lot of people don't even have a cyclo to earn money to eat. We were talking to a fella about our age and he had nothing, he tries to make money by taking newly arrived backpackers to hotels in order to get comission from the hotel for finding them custom. He doesn't earn very much so he doesn't eat very much, and as he has no cyclo he has nowhere to sleep, he's constantly moved on by the police if he sleeps in the streets and so doesn't always get much sleep. Makes you realise just how lucky we are.



When the tour started, we met our new group for Vietnam, which was Rich and I, Bob and Angie, a couple (who we later discovered were only friends!) Ben and Jane and a girl on her own, Jady.....and that was it. A small group and we knew half of them already!!

The first day of the tour was to the Chu Chi tunnels. These are tunnels that the Vietnamese lived in during the war to hide from the Americans, and there was a whole 'city' down there with a huge network of tunnels and rooms at different depths. Now, I can't tell you much more because our guide was shocking. He started off by shouting at us the whole of the way there saying that tourists come to vietnam without knowing anything about the war or having incorrect knowledge (ie Americas version) and we are ignorant. Tis true, but a lot of us hope to learn something while we're there. He called us all fat assed westerners countless times and pretty much made us all feel like naughty school children. He was very anti-american (even though he fought for america and has and american girlfriend and lived there for ages ?????) and in your face with his opinions. Nobody liked him. When we arrived we were shown a film about the Vietnamese war. Now, he complained of our incorrect knowledge but I'm not sure the film gave us the correct knowledge as it started out by showing Chu Chi village, a quaint, peaceful little village full of nice people and then said that all of a sudden the Americans decided to Bomb this quaint little village and kill all it's nice people. Now, I don't know much about war, politics or history but I'm pretty sure that's not what did or would have happened! There was so much propaganda it was unreal, and like Angkor Wat it was teeming with people. Blimey, I'm winging again!

The actual tunnels were cool. A section of them (about 90metres) are used to demonstrate to tourists, and had been widened to allow for our fat western asses. But even so, it was still a small space to be crawling through with no light and all manner of insects and rats and the like eeeek (there werent' insects and rats when we were there......I don't think!)

So, that was Saigon!



(Ask Alan what sort of tank it is I don't have a clue!)