Extra Dali Photos
A couple of extra photos from our last day in China, which in all fairness was the best, a really nice relaxing day!

The Border Crossing
After a few hours on the worst bus ever built we arrived at the Chinese border town all set to get out as soon as possible, unfortunately the Chinese Immigration Workers thought it would be fun to keep all the tourists there as long as possible, looking at the passports from every angle, taking them into little rooms and staring at them and then just simply looking through the previous countries stamps – obviously very interesting… Finally we were allowed to get out of China and into Vietnam, getting into Vietnam took about 2 minutes!

Sapa
Our first destination in one of the countries we were most looking forward to and it didn’t disappoint. We slept most of the first day in an attempt to recover from the border crossing but the second day was pretty full.

After the usual guidebook session we decided on a walk down to a place called Cat Cat Village, a typical local hill village in Northern Vietnam. The best part for us was getting to the bottom of the village to find a great waterfall and river, prime for a little paddling in the midday heat! After a few hours of walking we decided the walk back up the hill was a bit too much so hopped on a motorbike and got a lift back to the top!

Unfortunately we had underestimated costs and had nowhere near enough money, and there are no ATMs in Sapa and the one in Lao Cai didn’t work… It worked out that we had around £3 to live on for 2 days – luckily we had paid for the accommodation and train to Hanoi already, but £3 is still a rather small amount for 2 people for 2 days – we lived off bread and laughing cow cheese for breakfast, lunch and dinner and drank mainly water – now that’s what we call budget travelling! We did manage a couple of beers, or Bia Hoi as it is known, probably the cheapest beer anywhere costing a whopping 6p per large glass!

Next came the Sapa Saturday Market – the main day for all of the various minorities to come into Sapa town to sell their goods and pose for photographs, and having no money didn’t seem to bother us as we just wandered around for hours observing the locals attempting to get every last penny off the tourists, quite a funny experience! Our train was leaving that evening and so once again we packed up our bags and set off to the Train Station…

Hanoi
One word of advice, if anyone ever comes to Vietnam, NEVER get ‘seat class’ on the overnight trains. We wrongly assumed that Soft Seat would be bearable – nope, horrendous is the only word to describe it – hard, sticky, tiny seats where it seems only locals can reach the bliss of sleep! Luckily it was only an 8 hour train, but even that seemed like an eternity, and we arrived in Hanoi at 5am.

We spent most of our time wandering around the Old Quarter watching the world go by, drinking beer and taking it all in. We did attempt the walking tour that the guidebook suggests but after about half way through we realised that it was just plain boring so set off to explore ourselves! As all good tourists do we walked around the lake to the Huc Bridge, not entirely sure why we were doing this, just following the crowds of people. We did manage to watch some locals playing an odd looking board game though, so that made it a little more worthwhile!

We booked ourselves onto a deluxe tour of Halong Bay which cut Hanoi into two parts, the last picture below was from the second part after we had returned from the trip, just makes sense to put it in the Hanoi bit with the others! We assume this is what happens to tourists if you argue too much about the fare!

Halong Bay
The tour of Halong Bay was absolutely beautiful, we had opted for the more expensive boat and so there were only 7 people on it in total, very nice and relaxed compared to the next one down with about 30 people on. We sailed around for a few hours and watched the strange limestone karsts that rose out of the green water, watched the local sampans going about their day on their tiny little house boats and sat back and relaxed on the sun deck.

We also went kayaking for about an hour which took us into an enclosed lagoon which was pretty cool, spotting the jellyfish was also quite good fun, if not a little nerve wrecking considering we were going swimming in it later! The water was completely flat in the Bay and so paddling was much easier than the last time we attempted it (in the Daintree Rainforest last year on Honeymoon, extreme kayaking the tour guide called it!), and with that in mind, poor Jon did most of the paddling while I stretched my legs and admired the scenery – bless him!

The day seemed to be over quite quickly and before we knew it everyone else had gone to bed and it was just me and Jon gazing up at the stars. We got to talking about shooting stars and I was quite disappointed that I had never seen one, and as if by magic, a shooting star flew past overhead – the timing was no less than perfect. That was our night plan sorted, sit and wait to see if any more flew by. By about 11.30pm we had seen a grand total of 13 shooting stars, and considering we didn’t expect to see any, that was quite enough and we went to bed for some well needed sleep!

Our last day on the boat flew by, we managed to get some swimming in (if you can call it that, I basically dangled off some ropes and Jon messed around near the back of the boat, we got wet though so technically swimming!) before our last seafood lunch was served. And in no time at all we had arrived back at the Harbour and were being hurried off the boat. A fantastic trip though, plus we had amazing weather considering it had rained for 2 weeks beforehand and we later found out all trips the following day had to be cancelled due to a storm – how lucky were we?

Ninh Binh
After getting back into Hanoi we booked ourselves onto an ‘Open Bus’ Tour which would take us right down through Vietnam, allowing us stops along the way, the first one being Ninh Binh. For once the guidebook was right, there is absolutely nothing to do in Ninh Binh but the surrounding countryside has a lot to offer.

Firstly, these ‘Open Tours’ are not what they tell you they are, we arrived in Ninh Binh 2 hours late and instead of dropping us off where they said they would, they took us about 1km out of town and dumped us next to a river with only one hotel near by magically (bear in mind it had ‘massage’ written down the side of it in neon – not the sort of hotel we like, ahem…) at 11.15pm at night. Luckily there were 4 of us and so we told them where they could shove the hotel and started the walk back into town. Luckily for us the hotel that we had booked had waited for us all that time and when we reached the spot where we were meant to be dropped off they came running over to save the day.

We booked onto a motorcycle tour of Kenh Ga Floating Village and Tam Coc through the hotel and away we flew the following morning. The floating village was more like a town that had a river running through it, so a little disappointing, but when we were walking to the caves we ran into a few little kids who kept us entertained for about 20 minutes. They were absolutely fascinated by my camera and kept making me take photos so that they could see themselves. After we dragged ourselves away from the cute kids we made it to the caves which were really interesting as they hadn’t been altered to suit the tourist crowds – you needed a torch to see the path and the formations, and as luck would have it (…) there was a guy at the entrance renting torches!

Next on the itinerary was Tam Coc, getting here was probably the best part of the trip as the scenery was absolutely stunning, probably the best we have seen since we left home, and riding through it all on the back of a bike was fantastic. We stopped off for a quick drink and an ice-cream and then had to set off again as it started to rain. Fearing the storm the drivers bought raincoats, only for the clouds to suddenly disappear and the sun to come back out!

Tam Coc is simply three caves with a river running through them, the boat trip takes about 2 hours and is a great way to relax – that is until the boat women start to get their embroidery out and try to sell it to you, but we were expecting that so it didn’t bother us too much! We passed yet more spectacular scenery and as time went on I managed to get more and more burnt, oops…

We were planning on leaving that evening but considering that I had turned into a lobster we thought it best to stay another night and try and reduce the damage! The majority of the next day it poured down, so for once it seems the weather is in our favour, how long can that last?!

Hue
After another horrible ‘Open Bus’ journey we reached Hue and booked ourselves into a room in the budget end of town. We only had one full day planned for Hue and as most of the tours on offer cover everything you’d want to see in about 8 hours, we booked on one!

The motorbike tour we chose included a visit to the Thanh Toan Bridge, a Buddhist Monastery, the Tombs of Emperor Tu Duc, Thieu Tri, Khai Dinh and Minh Mang, the Thien Mu Pagoda and finally the Dong Ba Market.

The trip was fantastic and we saw some amazing things, most of which you had to be there to appreciate and so I won’t even try to explain them. Probably the best part of the day was when the weather decided that monsoon style rain was needed, so naturally most people were running for cover and luckily we had just sat down for dinner so had escaped the mad dash, but the little boy who lived behind the restaurant thought the weather was fantastic, and so off he ran, sliding around the road, playing floating games with his flip-flops and then finally running back inside to get the showergel! Absolutely hilarious…

Danang – China Beach
China Beach is supposedly where the Americans did their R&R during the war so we figured it would be ‘one of those places you cant miss in Nam’, and to all extents and purposes it was pretty cool. We stayed with a crazy guy called Hoa whose American-English mainly consisted of ‘F****** A, take it easy, and no bull****, very strange… There isn’t much else to say other than we sat on the beach and attempted to build our tans back up, although one of the nights justifies a paragraph all of its own as it was one of those perfect unplanned evenings.

The night started out with the communal dinner and progressed into 50p bottles of rum drinking, which after a while didn’t actually taste too bad! We all decided to move the gathering to the beach (as we got kicked out of the restaurant as it was the owner’s bed time…) which was the best idea of the evening. Within 15 minutes there was a good size bonfire going and we were all sitting around drinking rum until the wee hours of the morning. It was in these wee hours that swimming popped its head up as a good idea, and so a few of us de-clothed partially, e.g. me, Jon and a few others remained under-weared, and the others were stark b’ naked, which made for funny photos the next morning so we hear! All in all a fantastic night was had by all, but unfortunately there are no piccies for you guys to see, I didn’t take my camera but I might be able to get some from the other guys.

Hoi An
Although we were there for 5 days, it can be summed up in a couple of sentences, so that’s what I’ll do. We spent 5 days having clothes tailor-made at ridiculously cheap prices. We spent £300 on clothes that would have cost us more than £2000 at home; needless to say we sent a big parcel home!

Nha Trang
The reason behind going to Nha Trang was the beach and the night-life. The beach was OK but not as nice as China Beach and the night-life was nowhere to be found – never mind! I did get a great manicure and nail-polish for a whopping 33p which is always nice, and Jon had his first ever pedicure, again for 33p, which saved me trying to cut through those inch thick toenails!

After a day of burning we decided to try and save our skin by going for a mineral mud bath, it was quite an experience sat in an oversized bath-tub with 2 locals, pouring mud all over each other. The only bad part was the shower you had to have before and after the mud, it was the hottest shower we’ve had since leaving home and when you’re quite burnt it doesn’t feel all that good! Our skin after the mud soak did however feel fantastic and was worth every penny!

Saigon
Saigon was our last big city in Vietnam before we headed off to explore the Mekong Delta, our route into Cambodia. Apart from the usual wandering around aimlessly for hours we actually managed to squeeze in some big tourist attractions, some good and some not so good!

The War Remnants Museum was our first stop and by far the most interesting museum we have ever been to! It covers Vietnam War (there’s a surprise…) with some really powerful action photographs and some not so nice videos of people who were affected by Agent Orange. They also had a fair amount of bombs, aircraft, tanks, guns and the usual war equipment dotted around the place which was quite surreal, well worth the 50p entrance fee!

Apocalypse Now is Saigon’s answer to a ‘super club’, that, it was certainly not. For those of you reading this that have ever frequented Brooks, imagine that about 10 times worse, no joke, it’s really that bad. For those of you who haven’t been to Brooks, just imagine the worst club possible and you’ll be half way there!!! We had to go but if any of you ever come to Saigon, don’t bother, get a bottle of 50p rum (actually spelt Rhum out here, hmm…) and sit in your room!

On our last day we had planned on going to Saigon Water Park, as it has a loop-the-loop water slide, but after walking to the bus station we discovered that it was shut, and so we had to settle for the next on the list, Dam’sen Water Park. For a cloudy afternoon it was quite good fun, apart from me nearly knocking myself unconscious on a ride that should not be open for safety reasons, ouch… Coming out with only a few bruises, cuts and scrapes we feel quite lucky, it could have been much worse, the slides are meant to be smooth as you would imagine, not here, who needs all those excess layers of skin anyway! Joking aside, it was quite good fun, especially the rapids (note, these were not rapid, perhaps they should rename them to slowpids, bad joke I know…) which we spent quite a long time floating around trying to drown each other, really!

Our short stint in Saigon was over and the Mekong Delta was next on our plan for 3 days of boating around, and our entry into Cambodia! Sorry for the lack of pictures, we got lazy!

The Mekong Delta

Our first day on the Mekong Delta mainly consisted of being sat on a bus! We did eventually manage to get onto the river for a while which was quite nice, especially on the smaller boats that take you through some of the canals. To be honest most of the day was a little rushed and a bit disappointing as we had no time to just sit and appreciate the surroundings. Once the tour was over for the first day, it got much better! We had paid a little extra to stay in a bungalow on the riverside, rather than the crummy hotel in the centre of a not so appealing town, and the journey to our home for the night was the best part of the day.

We started off sitting in what can only be described as a motorbike chariot and were then sailed down the Mekong just in time for an amazing sunset which included a distant thunderstorm with the obligatory pretty flashes! The bungalows themselves were quite nice, that was until we went back into ours after dinner to find the bed covered in fleas, so as you would, we lifted the quilts up to shake the bugs off only to find a big black lizard living under them – nice! Luckily we saw the funny side but still slept in our sleeping bags quite aware of all the buzzing and scratching around us!

The second day of our trip took us to a couple of floating markets and a crocodile farm, oh, and a noodle workshop but as you can imagine how interesting that was I won’t mention it again! The floating markets had all but finished by the time we got there unfortunately but it was still nice to watch the world go by on our boat for a few hours before the bus whisked us off to the next stop. The crocodile farm was one way of spending 15 minutes of our time, there must have been hundreds of them in various sized cages, or cages according to what they were being made into perhaps, most of them snapping at you if you dared to go near them. Strangely the best part of the day was when we decided not to follow the tour group to a ‘mountain’ and stayed back in a small village and had some coffee, just us, no annoying tour guide, very relaxing!

The final day in Vietnam was probably one of the best. We spent the whole day sailing down the Mekong in peace and quiet, sailing past minority villages and waving at the local fishermen, thankfully there were no workshops to visit and no tour guide yelling out useless bits of information, a perfect day to end our time in Vietnam.