Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam and Laos

YOU'll have to bear with me if much of this blog doesn't make sense as I have had no sleep in almost 36 hours and have a 17-hour bus journey ahead of me tonight to go to Laos so I'm pretty shattered and finding it pretty difficult to remember what I've been doing over the past couple of weeks.

I think I last left you in Ho Chi Minh City which was our first destination in Vietnam. We only stayed a couple of nights which is more than enough as the sight seeing only takes about a day and once you've done that there isn't really much else to do other than shop and drink! It is very much like London only a lot busier!

It's a miracle if you don't get run over crossing the road - you literally have to dodge traffic as they won't stop for you! Not my cup of tea at all really. Having said that, the shopping in Ho Chi Minh looked great but unfortunately I was unable to indulge in that side of things due to lack of funds.

Like London, one end of the city is quite rough and run down whereas the other side is very rich! Some of the shops included Marc Jacobs, Chloe, Gucci, and Prada. It took a lot of effort for me not to go in and have a nosey but I decided that would be too torturous and even harder to tear myself away!

Instead, Sarah and I stumbled across a French Connection and bought ourselves a couple of nice tops with a 70% discount...... slightly cheaper than Gucci!

We then got the night train to Nha-Trang which is on the coast and has a beach.... we were both ready to get back to the beach after a week of sightseeing in Cambodia and Ho Chi Minh City.

We came across a lovely family run hotel by the beach, which has turned out to be one of the best hotels we've stayed in....and very cheap. We felt like part of the family by the time we left!

Unfortunately, we both went a bit mad with the sunbathing on our first day, got a little bit burnt and had to spend the whole of the next day in bed...... that could have had something to do with the previous nights drinking too though!

We also booked to go diving in Nha-Trang as we hadn't been able to do any for a few weeks and was missing it so much. We had fun and had a couple of good dives but the diving in Vietnam is so much colder than in Thailand, and there wasn't really a great deal to see that we haven't seen before.... no sharks this time! I imagine our next dives will be in Australia where i'm sure we won't be disappointed.

We spent six days in Nha-Trang then headed to Hoi An by night bus. It took 12 hours to get there and was a horrible journey, I really hate buses! It was supposed to be a sleeper bus but the supposed 'beds' were absolutely tiny. God knows what people do if they're tall as I only just managed to fit in one! Very uncomfortable.

Anyway, once in Hoi An we loved it and definitely our favourite place in Vietnam. It is exactly what I imagined Vietnam to be like - a small town with lots of cobbled streets, locals on their long tailed boats in the river and dozens of lovely hand made craft shops. The food we had there was so delicious, the restaurants were amazing and such friendly people, although many of them can't speak very good English so it can be pretty hard communicating with them.

We spent the first day wandering around the old town, visiting the Japanese Bridge, the Chinese Assembly Hall and the Tran Family Chapel. You have to pay to see these but to be honest the best things about Hoi An old town are the shops and the restaurants.
We went out one night and met a group of Canadian guys who were really nice and showed us around the best bars which we were grateful for as we would have never have found them had we been on our own. Unfortunately though (or not) it turned out to be yet another heavy one so I'm now on a bit of a detox for a while until we get to Laos and go tubing!

Our final day there we went to Marble Mountain, which consists of lots of caves, pagoda's and temples. Our last visit to a temple in Krabi we had to climb 1,237 steps to get to it so I was grateful Marble Mountain wasn't quite like that, although we certainly got our fair share of exercise for the day!

Our next stop in Vietnam was Hue, which is only 4 hours away from Hoi An so we got there by bus.

We only stayed there for one night as we decided we could do the sight seeing in a day and there really isn't very much to do other than that. It's a very small place. The main place to see is the Citadel, which is a huge, ancient complex, housing different tower blocks and ten different access gates. It looks across the perfume river and is home to the Capital Citadel, the Royal Citadel, and the Forbidden Citadel. It costs 55,000 dong (just over two pounds) to go inside but it is definitely worth a visit.

It opens for about 10 hours a day, but you really only need a couple of hours to look round the whole place.

That evening we took a night train to Hanoi, which is where i'm writing this blog from, and is part of the reason why I am so shattered! We arrived in the city at 4.30am this morning, and having found a place to stay easily enough. I was so looking forward to going to sleep for a few hours only to be told our room would not be ready till 7.30. Our plan was to stay here for the night then head to Laos tomorrow but there are no buses tomorrow so we have to go this evening at 5pm.

It is so cold here too, I can't believe the difference in weather from Hue. For the first time since my travels I'm now wrapped up warm in my combats and a jacket! I have been eaten alive by mosquitos though so it's probably a good thing i'm covering myself up for a day or two!

Although I am really not looking forward to another sleepless night and 17 hours on a bus, had we been staying in Hanoi another day I really don't know what we would've done as we got through the sight seeing in a couple of hours this morning. It really isn't all that great a place to be honest, nothing special at all.

We wanted to go to the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum where Ho Chi Minh was buried but it was closed so that was a waste of time. So we headed to the One Pillar Pagoda which really wasn't anything special, then the Ngoc Son Temple which is built on a lake.

And this is where I'm at now. Very excited to go to Laos for a few days, by all accounts tubing is a lot of fun and very sociable, if you're lucky enough to remember it! I hear it can get pretty messy, so the detox will no doubt go out the window by then! After Laos we head back into Thailand to Chang Mai for elephant trekking, then leave for Australia on March 20th.

Will let you know if tubing lives up to its reputation before I arrive in Australia!