Nick & Sarah's Big Adventure

We arrived in Saigon from Nha Trang by train. In typical Nick and Sarah style the only seats we could get were comfy beds for the daytime journey!

We stayed in District One, the main touristy, central area and which reminded us instantly of Bangkok (in a good way!). The streets were hustling with people selling all kinds of books and souvenirs! We enjoyed beer at one of the many streetside bars that are literally plastic seats on the edge of the road with beer stored in huge ice-boxes!

As a history graduate and a bit of a geek I was very keen to check out the War Remnants Museum, which provided a very interesting, if a little biased, account of the atrocities committed by the US forces during the war in Vietnam. It's incredible to think that most of the people in Vietnam today, people we saw on the streets everyday, were probably directly affected in someway by the war.

Our visit to Saigon/HCMC was fleeting, as Vietnam is such a huge country and we needed to press on, but it was fun and very thought provoking!

Moving on to Can Tho and a very confusing departure from Saigon....

I haven't written a blog entry for quite a while, been so busy travelling! We have now finished our Asian adventure and are in Perth, Australia! Not sure if anyone even reads these entries (well, except maybe my Mum!) but felt like I should finish the story of our trip....

So we left Hoi An on the back of a motorbike, heading to the bus station to catch the night bus to Nha Trang. The night bus was the by far the worst mode of transport we have used so far! The bus is made up of three rows of bunkbeds, except at the back where 5 beds are side by side, of course our seats/beds were right at the back! There is absolutely no leg room, which makes it hard to lie back and get comfy, plus the journey took us down some very bumpy, windy roads at breakneck speed. We did not feel totally safe and were relieved to arrive at Nha Trang in one piece, albeit at 5am!!

We had booked somewhere to stay, but as it was so early the hotel wasn't open, so we waited till a more reasonable hour to ring the bell! Because we arrived early and our room wasn't available yet we were upgraded to the family suite, a huge room with an amazing shower. Just what we needed! Every cloud...

So Nha Trang is supposed to be the "number one" beach destination in Vietnam so we got our gear together and took a walk to check it out. Bit of a disappointment really. The city ran right upto the sand so you had to lie in the shadow of the high-rise office blocks and hotels, plus like alot of beaches in Vietnam, there was alot of litter on the sand and in the sea. Maybe our expectations were too high, especially after our last stop in Hoi An but we weren't keen on Nha Trang!

On the plus side, we did sample a delicious Vietnamese delicacy. (You know how we like our food!) Banh Mi is a sandwich made in a baguette, they use pate, salad, chilli, dairylea cheese...anything they got and it tastes amazing!

Next stop Saigon...

Hoi An, one of my favourite places so far! It was such a lovely town, pretty buildings and streets. Lots of shops, restaurants and bars, really touristy but there's a good reason why.

We had an amazing few days in Hoi An, wandering round town, eating good food and relaxing on the beach.

The best thing we did in Hoi An was hire bicycles and cycle out to the beach, the roads were flat and it was a nice ride along the river and through paddy fields to the beach. The beach was quite busy but it was good to have a swim in the sea and cool off!

Our second night was the monthly Legendary Night, which is a little festival every full moon. The whole town seems to take to the streets, which are lit by lanterns. There's a real party atmosphere, we played a traditional game where you are blindfolded and have to try smash a clay pot suspended in the air, we failed miserably but it was good fun and we saw a few people win!

We had really yummy ice-cream, passionfruit mojitos, beer for 12pence and amazing pork kebabs in rice paper rolls!

Hoi An is famous for it's tailoring, hundreds of shops line the streets where you can get cheap tailor-made clothing. Unfortunately, we couldn't buy a suit for Nick, didn't think we could carry it around for the next 8 months! Seemed a shame though.

Had a lovely few days in Hoi An and we were really sad to leave. But, we had to move on sometime, so we took a sleeper bus to Nha Trang, which was quite an experience...

Hue was a quick pitstop in our journey through Vietnam North to South. We had planned on staying longer in North Vietnam and travelling out to Halong Bay but we decided that it wasn't going to be worth it. The weather was poor and it would take up a few days so we decided to press on South.

We arrived in Hue, which was warm and sunny. It is a much smaller town, with less traffic and we instantly felt better about Vietnam! The hotel we stayed in was luxury, but still really cheap (which we found everywhere we stayed in Vietnam!). We only stayed 2 nights in Hue so to make the most of our time we booked ourselves on a City Tour. We usually like to explore the sights ourselves but with only one full day the tour allowed us to see all the sights, including the old Citadel, a couple of Pagodas and the tombs of the emperors, which were really good. Finished off the day with a boat trip down the Perfume River.

A short but sweet trip to Hue. We caught the bus to Hoi An...

I haven't blogged in ages, we are now actually in Siem Reap, Cambodia, which means that the blog is about a month behind! Vietnam is a huge country, we did alot of travelling and saw many places, so it here it goes, the third country on our journey...

We decided to fly to Hanoi from Luang Prabang to save ourselves alot of time (the bus journey would have been in excess of 26 hours!). However, the start to our Vietnam trip was not simple, first of all the plane was delayed, which meant we arrived in Hanoi when it was dark, not ideal in an unfamiliar big city. Then we tried to get a taxi from the airport to the hostel we had prebooked, but we had heard a few bad stories of taxi scams and travellers getting ripped off so we were very cautious and nervous. We got in a taxi, which seemed to be at an official rank, but quickly realised we had picked the wrong one! The driver turned out to be drunk, his driving was all over the place! We were going down the middle of the road, being overtaken on both sides, almost shunted from behind by huge lorries, it was scary! The taxi driver pulled over to go to the toilet, back in the car he took a swig of water but quickly sprayed it over the dashboard and windscreen and kept groaning, holding his head. He finally stopped and tried to get us to go with another taxi driver but feeling very shaken up we grabbed our bags and ran across the motorway to a hotel/apartment block we could see. Luckily, the security guards helped us out! Even though they spoke no English they phoned us a taxi and understood where we wanted to go! The second taxi driver was lovely, spoke good English and liked to chat, so we arrived at our hotel safe and sound. To top it all off it was cold and rainy in Hanoi, not a good start - but we found comfort at KFC!

Despite the shaky start, Hanoi was a real shock to the system. It was cold, damp, polluted and busy. We were used to small towns and sun! Didn't really enjoy our time there, but there were a few positives...

The Temple of Literature, which was the first University in Vietnam was a beautiful building.

The Mausoleum of Ho Chi Minh. We queued up to see the embalmed body of the late Ho Chi Minh like a ride at Disneyland. It was really surreal but the museum was interesting.

Hoam Kiem Lake. In the centre of the city, the lake is famous for the story about a turtle who gave a magical sword to the emperor! Turtles are considered a magical creature in Hanoi and there are statues of them everywhere!

Tried Pho for the first time, it's a noodle soup - Vietnamese specialty.

After three days we were pleased to be moving on and escaping the crazy traffic in Hanoi. We caught the night train to Hue, the train was really good, we had a ''hard sleeper'', so a proper bed in a compartment with 6 people including us, met some really friendly Vietnamese people who liked to chat and share their treats and sweets with us!