This is The End...

Our trip to Hue introduced Ilona and I to a couple of new things. First were the sleeper buses operating in Vietnam. Generally, if you take an overnight bus anywhere in Vietnam, you will go on a sleeper bus, which instead of two rows of two seats, has three rows and two levels of fully reclineable seat backs on a platform, all squeezed into the space of a normal sized bus. If you’re 5’6” or taller, this means you will have your knees into your chest the whole way unless you’re lucky enough to have a seat with nobody in front of you. Thankfully, this was only a 4 hour trip, so the discomfort was only short lived.

The second thing we were introduced to was the awkward situation of someone going to the toilet in full view of the entire bus. A woman had been constantly going up to the driver, getting increasingly agitated, when she finally decided that since the driver wouldn’t stop, she would do her business in a plastic bag on the bus. This was both incredibly shocking and hilarious at the same time and will definitely be one of the more memorable moments of our trip.

Once in Hue and its stifling heat and humidity, we checked out the Imperial Citadel that it’s famous for. Hue was once the capital of Empirical Vietnam and its old city is laid out like Beijing’s Forbidden City. We expected grandiose archways, large concrete courtyards and tranquil ponds with threes, but in reality much of the old city is still in ruins from bombing raids in the Vietnam War. There are large expanses of grass and weed ridden ruins, bullet holes in a lot of the walls and patches here and there of restored or semi-restored structures.

One of the Great Gateways in Hue's Imperial Citadel

 Day 2 in Hue consisted of long taxi rides out to some of the Emperors’ extravagant tombs that are situated on the perfume river. The temperature reached 38C that day, with over 80% humidity and Ilona, Jenny and I suffered. We cherished each moment we spent in an air conditioned taxi going from place to place. The tombs themselves were pretty amazing, with stone sculpted warriors, dragons and flamboyant mausoleums adorning each site.

The Entrance to one of the Emperor's tombs.

That night the five of us boarded a train to Hanoi in what were sold to us as ‘soft sleeper beds’ but were actually some of the hardest beds I had ever lay down on. We were all split across 3 cabins, and in Jenny’s cabin, one of the other westerners was facing a problem, as the bed he had a ticket for was occupied by a Vietnamese woman and her 3 children, claiming that the bed was theirs. She had a ticket for the bed, but for a train 4 days away. When she refused to move, a guard was called in and she casually slipped him a 500,000 Dong note, bribing her way out. The guard would have nothing of any complaint directed at him and just laughed at anyone who would make a fuss about it. None of the other guards were of any help either, but eventually persistence won out, and the family were turfed out, eventually settling on sleeping on the ground in the hallway.

We made it to Hanoi early, and immediately sought out a taxi to take us to our hotel where the five of us were staying together, which I knew to be 1.7km away. With all our bags on us, we opted for a taxi. The thing about every transport hub in Vietnam; be it bus, boat or train station is that there are no shortage of taxi drivers climbing over each other to nab a fare. As soon as we stepped out of the station we were practically jumped on, so we started asking how much it would cost for them to take us to our hotel. Most were quoting us 300,000 Dong on an un-metered fare, which I knew to be a complete scam. Unfortunately, many of the other westerners around us just accepted it. We ended up walking 10 metres down the road and hailed a taxi off the street who would take us on a metered charge, which ended up only being 30,000 Dong; 10% of our original quoted price.

Our first job in Hanoi was to organise a suitable tour company to take us on a Ha Long Bay tour. We don’t usually do packaged tours, but unfortunately if we wanted to do Ha Long Bay, it would have to be a necessary evil as guides are needed to navigate the literally thousands of islands that populate the bay. We had heard many dos and don’ts about getting a tour, as many of the cheap ones often cut corners, may not have life jackets, have poor environmental responsibilities and so on. We settled on one that seemed to have a good reputation and were also recommended to us by a friend of Jenny’s.

We went to visit Ho Chi Minh’s Mausoleum the next day, bright and early as it closes to the public before midday. We got a little lost finding it, but once we did, we saw it as one of the more bizarre things of our trip. Ho Chi Minh was noted as being a man of simple needs and means. His original wish for when he died was to be cremated and scattered across all of Vietnam, so that he could always be amongst his people. By contrast, his final resting place is a staunchly communist looking stone building that looks more like a courthouse than a tomb. Sharply dressed guards parade around it and visitors are lined up and shuffled in to the tomb in the most orderly fashion Ilona and I had seen in all of Vietnam.

Ho Chi Minh's Mausoleum.

That day we were all wearing shorts and were denied entry, which was very frustrating as it had taken us a while to walk there and find the official entrance. We went and got coffee instead and rearranged our day’s plans.

The next day was Monday and we were picked up early for our tour to Ha Long Bay. We drove east out of Hanoi for four hours until we reached Ha Long City and the harbour where all of the tour boats disembark from. It was very busy there, with tour operators ushering their respective groups along to where they needed to be, ship crews rushing about with supplies, buses honking their horns and aggressively driving in and out of the loading bay. Our tour seemed to be one of the more organised ones and we were quickly shown onto a small boat that took us to our larger boat we would be sailing the bay on.

Our cabins were quite plush and spacious, with nice soft beds for once! We had lunch as we sailed to a cove and then explored a cave that had tunnelled into the side of a cliff. Both were very majestic and despite the bad weather, left us in awe. We also had the opportunity to kayak around the cove for a while, taking in the scenery from another angle. This was quite treacherous, as many more ships had started to arrive and we had to quickly paddle out of the way if we saw one.

Shennanigans on board.

The cove eventually got very full, with ships pouring rather ugly plumes of black smoke into the air and the general tranquillity of the place was ruined. We then headed to another secluded island where we could get out and have a swim on the beach. The weather was quite cold, but the water was rather warm, which made our swim very pleasant.

We anchored just outside of the cove for the night, where we ate, drank and sang a little karaoke. A lot of the people on our tour were very tired, so it was an early night for some, but for Scott, Ashley and I, we stayed up for a while and eventually had some whisky with the ship’s captain!

The next morning we headed off to Cat Ba Island, which is the largest island in Ha Long Bay. After docking, we jumped on a bus for half an hour and ended up at the entrance to Cat Ba National Park, where our tour guide Lucky told us we would be going on a ‘short trek’. This trek ended up being up a very steep mountain, on which halfway up, the path disappeared and we had to clamber up wet rocks to get to the top. Once at the top, after climbing up a rusted ladder and rock face, there was a viewing platform perched on top of a tall, rusted tower. Of course, I just had to climb it, so I did and was rewarded with a very nice view of the mountain range that spanned the island. There was no way that this tower would be open to the public if it was in Britain or New Zealand, as there was so much rust and so many holes in the floor, it was any wonder that it was still standing.

30 metres up with no solid floor...

Later in the afternoon, after lunch, we were taken by boat through a floating village to Monkey Island, where we actually saw some monkeys! We were all very skeptical about whether or not there would be any to see, but as it turned out, as soon as we landed on the beach, the monkeys started coming out of the trees to investigate us humans. We were told not to get too close as they could get quite aggressive, but of course, one woman thought it would be a good idea to taunt them and throw things, so she ended up getting bitten on the leg. She didn’t seem all too fussed about it, despite the loud shriek she made when it bit her.

Our accommodation for the night was in Cat Ba town and in a very ugly hotel. The town itself was completely deserted and had nothing at all going for it, which made us deeply regret not spending a little more money and opting to stay on either the boat for a second night or in the bungalows on another island.

Morning came and we were woken far too early for our liking, the tour so far hadn’t been very tranquil and relaxing as we had imagined it would be, considering the surroundings. We had our breakfast and were soon after on a bus heading towards the harbour to catch our boat again. Once on the boat it was just a slow trundle back to Ha Long City, while we played bananagrams to pass the time. There was no sightseeing to be done that day, just lunch at about 11am while we were berthed in the busy harbour and then ushered off and into a busy roadside cafe where we waited an hour or so for our bus to arrive and take us back to Hanoi.

It was a rather disappointing end to our tour, we got into Hanoi at about 5pm, just long enough to check back into our hotel and find some dinner before crashing our, tired from a day spent travelling from place to place.

Ilona and I attempted the Mausoleum trip again on Thursday morning, this time coming more prepared and knowing the best route to take there. It was oddly regimented in the way you had to declare all your belongings, go through two security scanners and x-rays and then check in your camera as we were not allowed to take photos while in the tomb. We were lined up in an orderly fashion by the immaculately dressed guards and then filed in through the entrance of a massive stone cube, around multiple hallways, up stairs and then into a dimly lit chamber with four more guards standing around a big glass case that held a waxy looking Ho Chi Minh, lying there very serene and dressed in a crisp green uniform. Everybody shuffled around the casket at a steady pace, then all of a sudden we were out of the chamber saying to ourselves, “oh, so that’s it huh?”. It was a very grand affair for what was essentially 20 seconds worth of walking past a dead guy in a glass case.

One of the Colonial style buildings in the Ho Chi Minh memorial grounds.

 The rest of that day we ran round town a bit more, picking up a few snacks for our plane journey the next day that nearly everyone didn’t know we were taking. We had originally told everyone that we would be arriving home on the 5^th of December; two days after my Mum’s 50^th birthday, but in reality we would be arriving back in Auckland on the evening of the 1^st, surprising first Ilona’s Mum and Dad, then my Mum and Dad on my mum’s birthday on the 3^rd.

Our last evening in Vietnam was spent with our travelling buddies going out to a good Indian restaurant and laying into some seriously good food, spending the last of our millions in true Mike and Ilona fashion. I was a really nice way to finish it all off, by then we were a little sick of Vietnamese food, so something we all enjoyed a lot was definitely the way to go.

Our flights the next morning began at 12:50 Vietnam time, so we woke up and had a slow start, picked up one or two more snacks and then headed to the airport, where we checked in and began our long slog back home. It consisted of a 1 and a half hour flight to Guangzhou in south China, a 6 hour layover there where we found a free plug and watched videos on our laptop for most of the time. Our flight got delayed for half an hour, so at 10pm, we boarded our plane and sat on the tarmac for an hour, finally taking off at 11. The middle leg to Brisbane was nearly 9 hours and an overnight flight, so we both got a little bit of sleep and before we knew it, it was 9am and we were in Brisbane airport, relishing the fact that we were beginning to enter more familiar surroundings.

Ilona had a shower in the airport and I wandered around duty free, doing my best not to buy anything. We were on our flight by 11 and the excitement began to kick in. It was only fitting that for our flight into Auckland, we were with Air New Zealand, but unfortunately we were in the middle aisle with no view out the window to watch Auckland come into view. We had a celebratory glass of bubbles just before we landed, which was ok because it was after 4pm New Zealand time!

Ilona’s friend Dee was the only person in New Zealand who knew that we would be arriving home early, and so she met us at the airport after we managed to breeze through customs in around 20 minutes; about a third of the time we had anticipated due to New Zealand’s extremely tight customs screenings. We were dropped off to an empty house at Ilona’s Dad’s, where we would be staying for the foreseeable future, wrote him a quick note and walked around the corner to surprise Ilona’s Mum.

She got a huge shock and gave us big hugs when we arrived, before we moved off to the Grey Lynn RSA to see more people, as there was a small Christmas party going on that coincided with a family friend’s 60^th.

We were incredibly tired after nearly 23 hours of travel, so got home for an early night. The next day, neither of us could venture far as we were still yet to surprise my Mum, so we did a little unpacking, sorted a couple of our boxes of stuff we had left behind and went to the shops for a few things we needed.

My Mum’s birthday came and we drove over, letting ourselves into the empty house and waited for them to 

come home. We had a cake and candles waiting so as soon as we heard the door open, we started singing happy birthday, only to see Dad’s shocked face spewing expletives. Mum was still at the car, so Dad had to act natural while we reset the scene for my Mum, who entered and started blubbering as soon as she saw us.

One by one, my sisters both came home and lots of hugs were shared. Mum had a work Christmas function that night, but we came around the next day to see my Nana and Granddad and stayed for dinner.

 

This drew our overseas adventures to an end, we’ve caught up with most of our family members and friends over the summer holidays and are slowly getting used to the New Zealand way of life again. We’ve had one hell of an amazing time over the past two years. There have been so many highs and some lows, but we have been extremely grateful for the experience and all the people we have met, bonded with, befriended and shared with. We feel like we have returned as two different people and are really looking forward to our next year in New Zealand, future traveling both nationally and internationally and whatever else just happens to pop up. Who knows when or where our next blog will come from!

Vietnam Pt. 2

The bus journey to Da Lat

Our bus ride to Da Lat was through some stunning scenery, however it was also incredibly windy and our driver wasn’t forgiving with the speed he took the bends at. We had one stop, thankfully well timed as I felt like if we’d continued on any further, my stomach would have joined us in experiencing the mountains. We arrived in Da Lat and were at once relieved to feel the cooler air and lack of humidity. Our hostel wasn’t far away, so we ladened ourselves up with our packs on our backs and little backpacks on our fronts and set off. We shortly became a little confused as to where we were at, however a local soon jumped to our rescue and we continued on our way. 50m from our hostel’s door the combination of broken footpaths, packs on my back and front and weariness resulted in me on the ground with my ankle twisted and my knee which I had cut open in Croatia reopened.  Mike convinced me that lying on the ground having a bit of a cry wasn’t the best idea and begrudgingly I got up and hobbled the remaining few meters.

The next morning with my ankle somewhat rested and reducing in size we decided to hit the sights of Da Lat. First off was the “Crazy House” which really is crazy. Hang Nga, who designed and owned it was the daughter of the former president Truong Chinh, and as a result did not have to comply with any planning regulations. The outcome is a labyrinth of staircases, wooden animals and buildings which mix Vietnamese architecture with a style similar to Gaudi. It’s really a house that has to be seen.

Crazy House

We continued up the road to the summer palace of Vietnam's last emperor, Bao Dai. In our eyes the “palace” was a very drab Art Deco house which looked as though it hadn’t been touched or dusted since the 60s. Feeling a little down about travelling, we figured we’d go and check out the flower gardens as Da Lat is known as the flower city. Unfortunately these were not quite what we’d hoped for and apart from some impressive hedge dragons and deer there wasn’t much else to see.

We made our way back to our hostel rather disheartened. Our day did pick up though when I checked my emails and had one congratulating me on being accepted into the Post Grad Teaching Diploma at Auckland University, all the stress of organising references, doing assignments and having interviews while travelling with temperamental internet had paid off.

The following morning we walked along one of the canals running off the lake to see a waterfall. Unfortunately it was another disappointment as instead of a waterfall, we were met with some smelly, dirty water trickling over some rocks and with a lot of fibreglass animals on the banks. Interesting tourist attraction...

Some of the many things we've seen on the back of motorbikes

On our way back into town I lost my footing and ended up twisting my ankle again, this time worse than the first. Once back at our hostel Mike went on an ice and chocolate mission, returning with some frozen peas, New Zealand ones in fact, that cost over £2 and were as hard icy block. After a lot of bashing we had an icy block and a few mushy peas, though nonetheless it was cold. We rested up for the afternoon and caught a bus to Nha Trang the next morning, hoping for our disappointment to fade. The trip through the mountains down to the coast was rather sketchy as we were diving through thick mist and one point came round a corner and stopped just in time to miss colliding with a broken down truck.

We arrived in Nha Trang, a beach town, just as the rain was starting – I had only the previous day commented on the fact that we hadn’t needed our raincoats... The rain didn’t look like it was going to give up so we donned our coats and went for a wander. We got as far as the cathedral, which was closed, before deciding to give up, escape the rain and rest my ankle.

By the time we went out for dinner our road was beginning to resemble a river and it was still raining. Throughout our meal people were constantly having to move to avoid the drips, and just as we were finishing eating a loud creak and a crack were heard. Suddenly the staff were moving everyone out of the main eating area which had a tarp-like retractable roof, to under the permanent one. It became apparent that the cracking had come from the wall brace which was being pulled off the wall by the weight of the water pooling on the roof. One of the chefs climbed on to a table and stabbed a knife into the material, resulting in a torrent of water descending over him and into the restaurant.  Certainly not your everyday eating experience. Walking back to our hostel we waded though ankle deep water wondering what we’d wake up to.

The beginning of the flooding.

The next morning we’d organised to meet up with Jenny, who Mike went to school with, and Ash and Scott, a UK couple she was travelling with.  Making our way to meet them was interesting as it had continued raining through the night and in parts the water was over my knees. We had an enjoyable morning camped out in a cafe watching the eccentric owner abuse anyone who was driving down the flooded road sending waves of water into the shops and houses.

Knee deep!

The rain was on and off at this point so Mike and I figured that although we wouldn’t be chilling on the beach we’d still try and see the sights of Nha Trang. We walked/hobbled along the beach for 4km and visited some beautiful Cham towers that sat on a hill at one end of the beach. The rain started up again and feeling hot, sticky and a bit deflated we returned to our hostel. We met up with the others for tea and ended up at a bar with free and very cheap drinks. Unsurprisingly this resulted in a rather big, yet cheap night out.

Cham towers Nha Trang

Feeling rather sorry for ourselves we had a quiet following morning. Myself and Mike checked out a large Buddha in the early afternoon and then met up with Jen and Ash and headed to the mud baths on the outskirts of town. The whole experience was rather odd but good fun. We were first shepherded to some very powerful showers and the taken to a large bath which filled with warmish watery mud and we were left to enjoy it. After a while we were told to have another shower and then walk along a pathway with water shooting out of both sides, massaging us. Following this we had a warm pool of water to lie in and then moved on to the swimming pools. The whole experience was supposed to leave you with soft skin, I’m not sure if it did but it was a great way to spend an afternoon.

Our new look post mud bath

Buddha above a Pagoda.

 At 5.30am the next morning the five of us were aboard a train heading up the coast to Da Nang. Nine hours later, after passing though some amazing landscapes and attempting to get some sleep we arrived in a wet Da Nang. From here we still had a 30min journey to Hoi An and spent it hoping that perhaps the rain would subside. Unfortunately it increased and just as we arrived in Hoi An the heaviest rain I have ever seen was coming down. Thankfully just next door to our hostel was one of the many small eateries selling the local fresh beer which only lasts 24hrs and as a result is sold for 9p/18c.

The following morning, equipped with a to do list, myself and Mike went exploring Hoi An. First up was finding a tailor to make Mike a suit and copy a few of my favourite tops that are now falling apart. Although every second shop is a tailor we were determined to find one which had good quality workmanship and also didn’t charge though the roof. Thankfully, with some help from trip advisor, the second tailor we visited seemed to fit the bill. We were each pulled in 101 different directions; Mike had to choose the style of suit, material and lining and what colour shirt he’d like. At the same time I was on the back of a motorbike being taken to a fabric shop inorder to find some material for one of my tops. Once back at the shop we were both measured and told to come back at 3pm the following day. Hoping we’d chosen well we set off to complete task number two, booking a cooking class for the next morning, something we’d both been looking forward to for the whole trip. 

Tailors.

We hired bikes for the rest of the day, cycling around town and catching a ferry to a local island. Intermittent rain put a bit of a damper on our spirits so we headed back for a bit of a rest. I ended up having a quiet night in but Mike went out with the others and even ended up in a Vietnamese club called Golden Dragon, complete with a man dancing in a fully sequined suit.

Fresh herbs at the market.

We woke early the next morning and headed down to the restaurant eager to begin our cooking class and learn how to make some of the food we have both fallen in love with.  We started off being broken into small groups and taken on a tour of the local market. Here our guide explained the different types of rice noodles, we tasted local fruits and were told about the medicinal properties of the different herbs, a very rewarding hour. Over the following three hours we were taught, cooked and ate a cabbage soup with shrimp dumplings, some fresh spring rolls, a Vietnamese pancake, marinated chicken skewers and a green mango salad. This food was some of the best I’ve eaten since being here and thankfully we have the recipes so will be able to enjoy the dishes again. Although stuffed from all our cooking we just had to try some of the lemongrass icecream from across the road and we weren’t disappointed. 

Making fresh spring rolls.

We had our first fitting at the tailors at 3pm so filled the time in between doing some of our Christmas shopping and picking up a few bits for ourselves. At 3pm we nervously headed to the tailors, fingers crossed that we’d chosen well. Both of us needed our clothes taken in here and there but we were pleased with the results and were informed that if we came back at 10am the next day they’d be ready. At our next fitting my tops fitted perfectly and Mike only needed his trousers shortened slightly. After a few more visits, and an extra shirt, we were very pleased with our clothes, fingers crossed we’ll still be in a year.

Looking dapper.

 With the sun finally shining we thought we’d finally get round to seeing the historical side of Hoi An. For a few thousand dong we bought a ticket which gave us entrance to five sites, ranging from merchants houses to museums and pagodas. We were once again rather disappointed as the Museum of Trade Ceramics consisted of only a few broken plates and very little information and the merchants’ house was more of a tourist shop. Hot and sticky and for a few seconds actually wishing for some rain we got ourselves a beer down by the river and chilled out. 

Hoi An's water front

That night we had dinner, and the best food I’ve had since being here, at a little place across the road from where we are staying. We then headed down to the historical part of town to admire the lanterns. Hoi An is very pretty at night as it is the one place where local authorities demand shops and businesses have lanterns on their facades, resulting in some very pretty little streets.

Today the sun was shining once again and myself and Mike rented a scooter and went to check out some of the sights a little further out of town. First up was the local beach where we had a lovely refreshing swim and then sat under the palm trees drying off and watching the world go by. We then took our little bike a little further afield to the base of some mountains and My Son, a Cham settlement. Unfortunately My Son was bombed during the war and restoration work has only slowly been happening in the last 20 years. We were both however extremely impressed by the beauty of it.

On the beach in Hoi An.

The Cham towers at My Son.

Tomorrow we’re sadly leaving Hoi An to continue up the coast, weighed down with a significant amount more. Not long now!

Vietnam Pt. 1

Getting from Egypt to Vietnam was a pretty epic journey. Beginning on Tuesday afternoon, we took an hour long taxi from Dahab to Sharm el Sheikh, an hour long flight to Alexandria in the north where we had a three hour stopover. Unfortunately, none of our flights would connect, so we had to pick up our luggage, go through passport control and check in again at each place we got to, which ate into valuable stopover time.  From Alexandria, we had a 3 hour flight into Dubai, on which we got a couple of hours sleep. 

In Dubai, we had to change terminals which we thought would be pretty straightforward, but due to the size of the airport, we had to take a taxi there which took us almost half an hour. I was very happy however because I got to see the Burj Khalifa; the tallest building in the world which stands at a whopping 829m tall. I’m a bit of a geek for large scale engineering.

We got to our flight on time for our final leg of the trip into Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC), where we flew with Emirates on a big Boeing 777, replete with huge screens in the back of every seat, a library of 100s of movies and TV shows and most importantly for me; lots of leg room! This was a very welcome change to all the budget flights we had been getting used to.

6 hours and a few movies later, we touched down in HCMC, sorted our visas and haggled down the price of a taxi to our hostel. Our first impressions of HCMC were very overwhelming. There were a million and one motorbikes clogging the streets, horns constantly blaring, music thundering out of every shop and what seemed like every LED and neon sign known to man were flashing in our faces. It also happened to be Halloween night, so there were lots of costumed people on the backs of motorbikes to look at. We checked into our hostel, grabbed some dinner and fell into bed, absolutely spent.

An example of a relatively tame intersection in Ho Chi Minh City

One big difference between Egypt and Vietnam was the humidity. It was pretty much the same temperature in both places, but in Vietnam it is much more humid, so we were both sweating buckets by midday. We were both suffering from a little bit of jetlag, so had a slow day. We went for a walk and took in the Reunification Palace, which was the scene of some pretty important events in the history of Vietnam, hence its name, however it was incredibly boring and had no architectural flair whatsoever.  We also had a quick look in Ben Thanh market, which is the city’s main marketplace where I bought some of the almost obligatory Vietnam beer singlets.

Over the following days in HCMC we ate lots of pho (rice noodle soup) and drunk lots of Vietnamese iced coffee (a nutty flavoured coffee sweetened with a bit of condensed milk) which is quite nice and very welcome on such hot days. We also dabbled in a bit of the local beers, which works out at about 30p/60c per bottle.

One of the downstairs displays in the War Remnants Museum

We visited the War Remnants museum on our second day, which, in parts, was very grisly. Photos depicted the shocking massacres of the Vietnam War, forms of torture, misplaced children & families and the brutal effects of Agent Orange. There were even preserved foetuses that had been deformed through their parents’ exposure to defoliants. We left the museum a bit shaken up.

The next day we took a trip out to Tay Ninh, where we visited the most important Cao Dai temple of Vietnam. Cao Dai is an interesting religion which borrows facets from Catholicism, Hinduism and Buddhism, using all sorts of familiar and contrasting iconography. The temple has a vibrant, almost psychedelic colour scheme and is filled with the smell of incense. We watched the beginning of their midday prayers and then headed off towards the Cu Chi tunnels; a site where one of the most extensive tunnel networks of the Vietnam War were once buried. Now it’s mostly just mock-ups that remain and we were shown round by our very camp and enthusiastic guide Kong.

The bizarre Cao Dai temple in Tay Ninh

After HCMC we travelled south to the Mekong Delta and its largest town Can Tho. There are lots of well-known floating markets on the Mekong and our hotel offered some very cheap private tours. We got up at the crack of dawn and were whisked away by motorbike to the river and our waiting guide. We jumped in a little boat that had a scooter engine with a propeller attached to it hanging off the back and off we went. The markets were quite a way down the river, so while our guide drove the boat, she also made us some amazing little trinkets out of reeds. Throughout the trip we received a diorama with a rose, two little crickets and a big heart in it, 2 big crickets, 3 bracelets, a ring each and some earrings for Ilona.

The markets themselves were quite cool. Dozens of boats of all sized anchor around each other, selling their wares, examples of which are displayed on the ends of long bamboo poles. Our driver picked us up a pineapple, which Ilona ate despite her allergies (she felt rude to refuse it) and proclaimed it to be the best pineapple she had ever tasted! Our tour also took us to a rice paper factory, which was very interesting, some small delta villages and some rice fields. Tired and sunburnt, we made it back to our hostel just after midday, convinced that it was mid-afternoon.

Our chill river cruise.

We didn’t stay in Can Tho or the Mekong for very long, instead we headed back up to HCMC for a couple of days to see some things we didn’t get round to seeing the first time round. On our first night back, we were at a roadside cafe having a beer when I saw a familiar face walking down the street towards us with a very shocked expression. The face belonged to Jenny, a high school friend of mine. What a small world! She had been travelling throughout south-east Asia and happened to be staying just around the corner from us. We briefly chatted and planned to catch up the next night over dinner and beers, where we learned that she and her two friends Scott and Ashley were heading north to Hanoi along nearly the same route and in pretty much the same time frame as us, so we may have found some travelling buddies!

On our last day back in HCMC we visited a couple of interesting pagodas, getting there by both cyclo (a bike rickshaw) and xe om (motorbike) which was a fun, but in parts frustrating experience, as our drivers took us to the wrong place twice and we had to walk for ages to try and find the last pagoda.

Driving Miss Daisy 2.

After HCMC we headed north to the beachside town of Mui Ne. Mui Ne basically consists of one road following a 12km stretch of beach, with hotels and resorts on the beach side of the road and restaurants and shops on the other. Our hotel was near one end, so to tackle this we hired a motorbike and spent the next couple of days riding up and down the beach, visiting centuries old Cham towers, sneaking into a resort’s private beach via a half-hidden bush track down a side road, exploring some of the surrounding fishing villages and the huge red sand dunes down one end of the beach. We saw some pretty amazing stuff that we never would have been able to see without the motorbike, which was one hell of a lot of fun to ride. 

One of the little petrol pumps for motorbikes on the main road.

On the day we left, we walked up what was called the ‘Fairy Stream’, just up from our hotel. It was a shallow sand based stream that went past some pretty cool rock formations, forest, sand dunes and hidden cafes. After that we headed back to our hotel and got picked up by a little cramped bus for a very bumpy trip into the highlands and the town of Da Lat, where we planned on spending the next few days.