3 weeks in Vietnam

I'm getting better at this blogging thing, in that I am still actually in Vietnam, but only for a couple more days. We flew from Bangkok to Hanoi, North Vietnam, 3 weeks ago and have been working our way down the country with the help of the ridiculously cheap open bus ticket. It's a flexible ticket you can use any time, and takes you to set destinations going either north or south. For the princely sum of US$20 we have spent about 40 hours on buses in the last 3 weeks (more if you count the sitting about waiting for them to actually go anywhere).

I'll try to keep this to highlights I think, otherwise I'll be here all night, and I'm hungry.

Our first stop, Hanoi, was a pleasant surprise. The old quarter surrounding a lake is the backpacker ghetto of the city, but is really quite beautiful. It's a dead busy place, but manages to retain a laid-back sort of atmosphere. It's pretty good for evening wanders and people watching. One highlight of Hanoi was a trip to the Ho Chi Minh Complex, which was really informative and quite beautiful. The socialist touches were evident too, frog-marching soldiers guarding the mausoleum, huge, angular, unadorned buildings and the like. Seeing the ex-president's embalmed body was a little strange, but I'd have gone in again just to get some more of the industrial strangth air-con they had inside! Another nice bit was visiting the first university in Vietnam, which was full of ancient Chinese-style courtyards, ornaments and bonsai trees.

We spent a couple of days floating about in Halong Bay, which has beautiful, clear waters and enormous limestone rocks jutting out of the sea. We got amazing weather and a really nice group of people to go with, so it remains a favourite with us. The downside was the touristy-ness of it all, in Vietnam everyone seems to do the same route in a similar timescale, which is nice in a way as you meet up with the same people in different places and get to exchange stories, but also means that a lot of the bits we've seen don't seem too authentic anymore. Halong Bay has some enormous caves in the rocks which are pretty spectacular in themselves, but the neon lighting and crap made-up myths about them don't really do them any favours.

After heading back to Hanoi, we made for Ninh Binh, a small town famous for it's surrounding hills, paddy fields, fishing villages and an enormous national park. We spent a day there exploring by motorbike and seeing some incredible countryside. It's a pretty small place, so we were safe from the hoardes of tourists for a short while. We got an overnight bus after spending a while in the guesthouse drinking beer and munching noodles, and made friends with some English girls who we'd end up spending the next week or so with. From there we went to Hue, another smaller place, on the tourist map for it's heavily bombed citadel and being the closest port of call to the De-militarized Zone. Feeling a bit woozy after a 12-hour bus ride, we decided to take it easy, and rented a car and driver for the day, costing 6 quid each, and the 4 of us drove up to a brilliant waterfall, with big, warm lagoons to float in, rope swings over the water and enormous flat rocks to lie on in the sun. We deposited ourselves there for most of the day, and headed back to the town when we were too hungry to want to swim anymore. The following morning Peet and I hired a cyclo- a rickshaw which is steered from the back by the driver, with the passengers sitting in a chair-like contraption on the front. It's a bit of a tight squeeze to be honest, and somewhat uncomfy to cram two people onto, limbs akimbo, although we seemed to be an endless source of amusement to Vietnamese onlookers. (Amused Vietnamese people seem to be a bit of a theme actually, I don't blame them though, if you compare their elegance and size with that of the average backpacker!)

After another bus ride, we arrived in Hoi An, a small town on a river, full of amaz tailors and silk merchants. The streets were lined with clothes shops with beautiful dresses, suits and coats which could be whipped up to measure in a mere 12 hours, and we were a tad disappointed we couldn't really justify investing in some new clothes to replace our quickly fading travel wardrobes. We mainly chilled out in Hoi An, found some nice bars to play pool and chat to folk, and rented bikes to ride around the old quarter, which is full of pagodas and beautiful old Chinese and Vietnamese architecture.

After such a nice few days, arriving in Nha Trang was a bit of a shock to the system. It's pretty Costa Del Sol like (I'd imagine) and the main activity is the mass booze cruises which leave daily from the harbour. We went on what we thought was a perfectly respectable day trip to 3 islands with a bit of snorkelling thrown in, but were pretty disappointed by the reality of 'international karaoke' (which in my opinion is not acceptable ever under any circumstances) and a floating bar serving up red wine that tasted like tartare sauce. The massively redeeming feature of our trip there was dinner on the beach, where we had a lobster, 3 baby lobster and 8 tiger prawns the size of your hand barbequed in front of us, about a metre from the sea. Add garlic bread and salad from a nearby bar bumping the price up to 4 quid between us, and we had a pretty nice dinner.

Wow, I've just realised this is an epic. Anyway, we headed to the hills the next day, to the kitchy town of Dalat, and - get this - we had to wear jackets and proper shoes! It was like Scotland! Nice for a day or two but I'm happy to be hot again now. We took a trip around Dalat with the 'Easy Riders', a group of motorbike guides who are pretty well known and well regarded for their local knowledge and excellent English. We explored the countryside for the day, keeping away from the horribly touristy waterfalls, and learned loads from the guides about Vietnamese culture, the Socialist regime, the war, modern politics, the police, Vietnamese healthcare... All fascinating and great to be able to get an insiders view and being able to properly communicate questions and responses. I did feel pretty inadequate with my odd hellos, thankyous and goodbyes in Vietnamese when these guys were probably fluent in about 3 languages other than their own.

Mui Ne next. Rainy, dull and disappointing it was, but you can hardly enjoy the highlights of a town famed for it's beaches and enormous sand dunes in the torrential rain, so we won't hold grudges. The best bit was the bus ride out, and not just in a sarcastic way, but there had been so much rain the next town was completely flooded, up to about 3 feet in some places, although the people seemed to largely be going about their business as usual. We marvelled at the cheery passers by in the knowledge that floods like that would grind whole towns to a halt at home, but here they're just part of everyday life. Getting our backpacks out of the hold wiped the smiles off our faces though, as they'd been submerged in the flood water and were soaking wet.

And that was our arrival in Saigon 2 days ago, and I think this may be my favourite city so far. It's big and imposing, but seems to be a nice place to walk around. I keep getting wee ideas about coming back here to get a job teaching English at some stage, but I guess I should focus on the next year and a bit of travelling before I make any more plans.

We've vistited the War Remnants Museum and the Cu Chi tunnels near Saigon (built and lived in by Communist guerrillas in the Vietnam War) and the sombre bit of the trip will continue in a few days with the Killing Fields and Khmer Rouge Security Prison in Phnom Penh. I'm not expecting to enjoy these bits much but I reckon they have to be done on a trip to Cambodia.

So I think I've also learned my lesson about frequent blog-updatery, what with my aching fingers (if only I could type with more than 2 of them) so I'll expand soon on where the adventuring's taking us next.

Take care and keep the emails coming.

Love Juliet x