Claire & Melanie's Global Trek

Day 20: Another crazy Vietnamese city with a crazy airport! We were once again exposed to the agressive and persistant taxi drivers once our foot stepped outside the airport! The Canadian girls we met in Hoi An shared a taxi with us and we went into the city to our "recommended" Lonely Planet accomodation- that didn't exist! It wasn't there but we managed to find one located centrally and up 3 flights of stairs! Room needed a make-over paint job but other than that, it was fine!
Booked the Cu Chi tunnels for tomorrow morning and went for something to eat. Found a really nice bar/restaurant called Allez Boo. The waiter must have been learning English because he kept returning to our table with grammer questions! He was very appreciative for the lessons though all the same!

Day 21: Early rising for the mini-van, the journey was 45 mins to the Cu Chi Tunnel. En route we stopped off at a handicapped crafts factory where we saw the production line from start to finish. They hand-made beautiful pictures, artwork, shoes, household goods and many other crafts and used crushed egg shells as part of the covering. Very fine detail and time went into these crafts. I would have bought hand-made clog flip-flops covered with beautiful gems but the back-pack is heavy enough and the largest size they had was a 4!
We had a guide walking around with us in Cu Chi and the first stop on the tour was one of the tunnel entrances! See below! I can barely fit into it!

There were numerous other muddy entrances on the way to the tunnels that were not as cut out as the above picture...
Next, we viewed the various traps built and set by the Vietnamese during the war. They built these awful traps out of the shells and remains of the american weapons!
This is a Vietnamese sticking trap
Clipping armpit trap
Souvenir Trap - This looks to be the most horrific of all the traps. The enemy steps into the trap to discover that his foot can not be removed-hence making it a souvenir!
Vietnamese Door trap.
During the war, the Vietnamese also had a workshop hideout where they built all their "traps" of destruction...

Next on the tour we were told we could fire one of the following:
Which one would you choose??
Here is where a B52 bomb was dropped...

Next on our tour was going into the tunnels. This was an amazing network of tunnels built by the Vietnamese but in the pictures the tunnels are slightly widened for us Westeners!! We had to squat down and nearly crawl through them so if you are clausterphobic, I would not recommend entering!!

The next tunnel was an underground bedroom/kitchen! It was nearly pitch black in there so I had to use my flash, but the picture still manages to bring you back in time!

After the tunnels, we saw mannequins dressed up in Vietnamese army clothing. We also saw various US armoury, prisoner cells, and a french guillotine. (See pics under "Melanie")
After the Cu Chi tunnels, we traveled to the War Museum. This was a large museum that contained photos of war victims, Agent Orange victims, and excerpts. Quite depressing really.
Went out for dinner to Allez Boo and met with the Canadian girls and a few others joined us. Claire and I ended up playing pool against our new friends and of course won!!!
Early flight the next day to Phnom Penh!!

After our short night's sleep at the "Happy" Inn hotel, we promptly went looking for another hostel!! But with bag on back walking around the streets, we were a prime target for the touts.. "You come here", "you come to our nice hotel"... I gotta say it gets pretty damn annoying after a while!!!! We settled on the Sunview hotel, which was actually fab and very central to all the main bars and restaurants. We spent the rest of the day on the beach. Again, the beach was full of merchants selling bracelets, thai food, postcards... Check out the pic - he is carrying a boiling pot over a bed of coals!! Wonder what tasty treats are in there ....! :-)

It's dubbed as Vietnam's beach resort, but I have to say Hoi An was a much nicer beach. We chilled out in the hotel afterward, watched a bit of TV and nearly fell over laughing at the Vietnamese version of Who Wants to be a Millionaire!!

That night we headed to the Sailing Club, a bar right on the beach, with deck chairs on the sand if you fancy having your margarita's on the beach!! Happy hour consisted of half price vodka buckets where the bar man apologised to me if it was too strong... ehh..... I'll survive!!! ;-D Bumped into the Canadian girls we met briefly in Hoi An, Lyndsey and Amy. Iceland guys Runar and Kristinn joined us then and a drink or two later, we headed to a nightclub. Home late, pretty good night!

The next day was a late starter!! Bumped into the Spanish guys that we met on Junk in Halong Bay! Everyone seems to be doing the same route, just keep seeing the same faces pop up in different places along our trip!! We headed down to another place recommended to us called La Louisane, with it's own pool, bar and restaurant right on the beach. Chilled out there for a while and later that evening back to the Sailing Club.

Day 19 - Late again down to the beach, this time not attributed to alcohol or lack of sleep, we were just lazy buggers!!! Caught a few rays, but not much, we are still a couple of whiteys compared to other beach goers so really annoyed when it clouded over!!! :-( Out later again to..... somewhere different I hear you ask?! .... eh no, Sailing Club again! - It's actually a cool spot! Met up with Canadians and Iceland guys again and had a few, nothing too mad as we had booked an early morning flight to Ho Chi Minh - up at 05:30 for taxi pickup!! Exchanged email addresses and we are all to meet up again in the Full Moon Party!! Found out the Canadian girls were the same flight as us the next day..

A well deserved day of rest today- on Cua Dei beach that is! What a beautiful beach it was too! We took a moto to the beach, where he also tried to get us to pay for a return journey and he would bring us back! And was so persistant! I had to shout at him no! But don't trust any of them! Anyway, sat on the beach and went for a swim in The China Sea. Water was quite warm and fine white sand. Exactly what we needed! Although, the only complaint I do have is that the locals are constantly bombarding you with their baskets of things to buy! You do not have any peace, so we are learning that the key is to not make any eye contact!
Took a moto back to our hotel, showered, and went back to our local Tam Tam cafe! They have the best pizza!!
Went for a walk around Hoi An. A lovely little town with numerous cloth & silk stores where you get your tailored made clothes! Looking forward to that!

Day 14, 15 & 16: We spent both days shopping and getting our silk and cloth tailor made! They are very persuasive- I only wanted to buy a suit and a shirt, but due to the fact that our bus was full later that day and had to postpone until the next day, we ended up going back and buying more! I bought 2 shirts, a silk skirt, and silk tube top, brown linen pants, and a red linen dress! All at a bargain of course! Impressions Boutiques was the name of the shop and they sure did make an impression on us!
On our last day, our "sleeper" bus (again!) was at 3:30 to Nha Trang, and we had to go back to the clothes shop, collect our clothes, and rush down to the post office to ship all our purchases! We were very pleased, money well spent!
Got a "taxi" to the bus stop which was out of Hoi An and began our 10hr journey to Nha Trang! Bus journey was spent reading and snoozing on our bunk bed with stops in small towns for dinner!

Our Vietnamese friends at our table found it quite amusing trying to teach us to use the chopsticks and putting various foods in our bowl. I am convinced one of the bowls were eyeballs!
Arrived at 3am in Nha Trang where we had booked the Happy House Hotel online the previous day. As they said they have 24hr welcomes!
Got 2 motos to the end of the road where the hotel was, I ran down to check-in and at that late time in the morning, the shutter was down and the security guard was snoozing by the door. I knocked repeatedly and he finally opened. I told him I wanted to check-in and he kept saying no room! He didn't speak a word of English and was most unhelpful and unfriendly! After 30 mins of arguing, I finally got my room, I paid him the balance of the bill- which was $12 and he spent 5mins staring at the $10 bill! Perhaps he had never seen one before! I was not a happy guest at the Happy House and will have harsh words with the staff in the morning! Moral of the story- do not stay in the Happy House Hotel in Nha Trang!

I have never heard of bus with bunk bends before, so we were a bit dubious that it was a scam to get us to buy a 14 hour bus trip to Hoi An! Sure enough though, the bus was decked with three isles of bunkbeds and after clambering into the fairly cramped space, it was quite comfy!! The Bus was called Hoang Long, sort of the Bus Eireann on Vietnam. It's not a tourist bus so there weren't many Westeners on it. Left the previous night at 9:00, I slept through the night until the bus driver woke us all up for breakfast at 6:00am!! Melanie however didn't sleep so good between the driver beeping the horn at every single vehicle and moto he drove by and the teeth chattering speed bumps every so often along the road!!- but hey what can i say, i was out for the count!! :-) "Breakfast" if you could call it that, consisted of a runny soup with stringy noodles and green stuff-- eh at 6 in the morning, both of us decided to pass on this gourmet meal!!! ;-p. Stopped off again at Hue for lunch, by this time hunger took over and we both ate the rice and tried a few other bits and pieces-- (haven't a clue what they were!! - but stomach stayed intact so it's all good!!)

Arrived at Danang later in the afternoon and had to get a taxi to Hoi An. No taxis in sight a vietnamese family that were travelling on the bus took pity on us and and offered to share their pre-booked taxi, which we thought was fairly decent of them. An hour later, we arrived at Hop Yen Hotel, and were warmly welcomed by the two owners. The room wasn't ready for us, so they set out a platter of fruit while we waited. (For their hospitality throughout our stay, we have already recommended this hostel to fellow travellers). After the Vietnamese food from the restaurant/shacks situated in the middle of nowhere, we decided a nice western feed was well in order! Tam Tam cafe in Hoi An's old quarter provided us with just that and would become our local for the rest of the stay!!

Early start this morning! Arrived by bus to the port where there were probably about 50 tour boats- our boat was called the "Junk"!

On board we sat down to lunch which was seafood- but fortunately they were able to make us an alternative lunch! Although we did try some of the local catch which was quite tasty!
Set sail for Halong Bay which took about 2 hrs. After lunch we went on deck to relax and take in some Sea Air! On arrival- there are about 3,000 limestone "stacks"! Very beautiful!
We went to the "Amazing Cave" where saw numerous stalagmites and stalactites.

After the cave we went to a little village on the sea where the locals lived and went kayaking! That was a lot more strenuous then we thought! So we always seemed to be behind everyone! After kayaking the locals pestered us to buy various goods and one girl earned her montly wage from us after we purchased 2 bottles of "Hanoi Vodka" and few other beers and goodies! We were in for a treat with the vodka! We were a mixed bag of nationalities, Australian's, Spanish, Irish and Finnish! Going to be a fun night!

We all went for a swim and then dinner was served- again seafood, but this time we had no dinner prepared for us so that was a bit of hassle, but we managed in the end to get noodles and rice! Which we think now was their own dinner!
After dinner we started on the Hanoi Vodka and beers and of course..... the next morning at 7am we all had hangovers!
But a good night had by all! We were a lively boat- even a guest from another boat decided to swim over to ours at 12am to see what all the noise was about!!
Vietnamese breakfast was not what our stomach's wanted! Claire managed to talk the chef into making her toast and butter!
En route back to land, we snoozed on the deck chairs and then said our goodbye's to our new friend's. Arrived back at our guesthouse in Hanoi where we had to rush to get the "sleeper bus" to our next destination- Hoi An, which is 14 hrs long! This will be interesting!