Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon)
What a breath of fresh air it was to arrive at the airport and step outside – instead of the usual hassle that you get at most airports we were met by our driver with a big smile and set off through the half-deserted streets of HCMC to our hotel. Even though it was the middle of the night we could tell that we were going to enjoy ourselves much more in Vietnam, everything just seemed more interesting to us. We didn’t really get to experience much as were only in the city for a day but we managed to re-acquaint ourselves with the backpacker area and get some sandwiches and beers before heading down to the Mekong Delta. One thing of particular interest was when we decided to try and find the guesthouse we stayed in 2 years ago and luckily for us we remembered exactly where it was and were greeted by the extremely friendly owners who (believe it or not) actually recognised us! We sat down with them for a chat and were treated to their excellent lemon iced tea and told them we would back in the city in a few days and reserved a room for our return!

My Tho
Our first stop in the Mekong Delta turned out to be a little bit of a disappointment and a major pain to get to – it really should have been quite simple but we were given the wrong information on where to catch a bus and it kind of spiralled out of control from there! Once we arrived we tried to arrange to go on a customised trip around the river and canals but it was just impossible to get away from the generic tour that they take every tourist on – we didn’t really enjoy the tour 2 years ago so we doubted we’d enjoy it this time round! We also had a really hard time trying to find something to eat that wasn’t just noodle soup, not bad in itself but it all had mountains of coriander in it which we both hate!  Instead of going on a tour we decided to just head to another place so we cut our visit short and set off to Can Tho.

Can Tho
Apart from getting ripped off on the minibus (paying over double what we should have!) the journey to Can Tho went smoothly and we arrived at our guesthouse and immediately booked onto a tour for the following day. We really should have looked around at other tours and prices as we ended up paying quite a lot for our tour but it seemed to be exactly what we wanted so waited to see how it went before judging ourselves too harshly!

The following morning we managed to drag ourselves out of bed for 5am to start on our tour of the local floating markets and canals. It was really good to get out so early as it was still nice and cool and the sunrise was quite spectacular from the river, plus it was going to take us over an hour and a half to get to Phong Dien floating market! On the way to the market we passed another smaller floating market, Cai Rang., which we passed quickly as we decided to go back later on in the day. We had organised for a guide to accompany us on the trip which really helped when we got to the Phong Dien market as we could talk to the local traders, via our guide of course and had a nice break by the side of a coconut trader’s boat. They invited us both onto their boat so Kim managed to clamber over and sat with them for a while, but I chickened out as I really didn’t want to fall into the river. We had some fresh coconut juice and just sat and watched the market traders go about their business, however as this market starts around 2am it wasn’t quite as busy as we would have liked, but it was still a good experience.

After Phong Dien market we pulled up to a jetty and our guide asked us if we would like to take a walk somewhere, as it was still early we decided it would be nice to spend a bit of time exploring and set off on our walk. We ended up walking along a track that ran alongside the river and passed by some great old wooden houses. After a while we were being greeted and waved at by a lot of the locals and then found out from our guide that we were the first tourists that they had ever seen! We couldn’t quite believe that no other tourist had ever walked along this little road but judging by the terrible tour of the Mekong that we went on the last time we were in Vietnam it kind of makes sense. We were invited to sit down at someone’s house and were given some local fruit and amused by tiny puppies and a month old baby before we had to set off back towards our boat. Just before we got back to our boat our guide suggested that Kim should purchase a hat (due to her ever-reddening skin) so we went to a local hat shop to buy a traditional conical hat!

The rest of the day was spent travelling around all the small canals and waving to all the local children – that was all fine until we got to the noodle workshop. Kim was in the middle of taking photographs when all of a sudden there was an odd clunking noise from within the camera and an error message – upon the removal of the lens we found the mirror had fallen out! This probably means very little to most of your reading this but it meant that we now had to get the camera to the nearest specialist repair centre – not something you really expect to find in the middle of the Mekong Delta! It was a shame to cut the tour short as it had been a thoroughly enjoyable day but we were close to the end anyway so we didn’t really miss out on too much – now it was just a case of finding some way to fix Kim’s camera (or as it’s more commonly known “Baby”) – amazingly Kim remained very calm throughout the whole ordeal, I think I was in more of a panic about it! Once back at our guesthouse we arranged to return to Saigon on a minibus the following morning, all set with the phone number and address of the Canon office!

Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon)
We arrived back in Saigon around lunchtime and after a really expensive taxi ride headed to over to our friendly guesthouse from two years ago. The owners were really helpful and spoke to someone at the Canon offices who gave the address of the official service and repair centre, which amazingly was only a 10 minute walk from where we were! Once we dropped the camera off we just had to wait 2 days for it to be fixed and returned – all good except that we couldn’t really do any sightseeing without the camera, well we could but we’d just have to go back once the camera came back! We used the next 2 days to do some research for our travel plans and also for me to finish off some of my freelance work.

We headed back to the Canon office and picked up the newly repaired camera two days later and decided to treat ourselves to a delicious street-side meal (not really a treat as it was much cheaper than anywhere else, but it was still delicious!). For the rest of the afternoon we wandered around our local area and made plans for the next two days over some iced coffees. We had met a really friendly cyclo driver while the camera was being repaired and had decided that it would be nice for us to get driven around the city by a pedal-driven cyclo instead of a minibus or motorbike. So the following day we met up and got into the cyclo (single seat so it was very cosy!) and headed off to enjoy the sights of the city. To cut a long tour short we went to the Jade Emperor Pagoda, Reunification Palace, Notre Dame Cathedral and the Post Office. It was a really nice way to spend the afternoon and we had a wonderful time, even though we managed to get two flat tyres and ended up being pushed back home by a motorbike! We had planned on visiting quite a few pagodas the following day but unfortunately for us the weather decided that our sight-seeing was over as it rained all afternoon! Our time in Saigon had come to an end as we were booked on a bus the following morning to our next destination, Mui Ne.

Mui Ne
The only way that we could find to get to Mui Ne was with an Open Tour bus which we found horrible last time we were in Vietnam, however this time we decided to pay a little more money and go with the most reputable company we could find. This certainly seemed to have paid off as the bus was really nice, lots of leg room and fully working air-con. The journey was supposed to just take 4 hours but for some reason we had to take a detour and ended up arriving 3 hours late! The only reason we had come back to Mui Ne was to visit the sand dunes as we’d missed out of them last time so we booked onto a private jeep tour for the following afternoon.

We set off on our tour and our first stop was to the fishing villages, not particularly interesting in themselves but I got to handle some fresh squid and hold them up by their tentacles which was pretty entertaining, if a little stinky! After the fishing village we went to the red canyon, sounds more impressive than it actually was but it was still quite cool. Then we headed about 30km further out to the white sand dunes, which looked pretty surreal as we approached them from the road. The dunes were really impressive and made for some great photos, luckily we were ahead of another couple of jeep tours so got onto the dunes before anyone else could get footprints all over our photographs! After 30 minutes or so on the dunes we were getting a little thirsty so headed back for a well-needed drink. The final stop of the tour was to the red sand dunes which we were really looking forward to seeing, however once you get there it really makes you wonder where the hell they took the photo that you saw when you booked onto the tour! Instead of the beautifully carved, pristine dunes that you see on all the tour photographs they were covered (pretty much entirely) in footprints and the odd smattering of rubbish. We sat down for 5 minutes and decided it really wasn’t worth staying any longer and headed back to the guesthouse for a sunset beer instead!

Hoi An
We arrived in Hoi An early in the morning after a night bus from Mui Ne via Nha Trang and headed straight into the old town on a couple of motorcycles. We already knew where we wanted to stay as it sounded really nice from the description in our guide book. The guesthouse was actually an old (over 100 years) family home that’s been converted into a guesthouse and didn’t disappoint when we saw our room. As it was still so early we were pretty tired so we just crashed out for the rest of the morning after a nice iced coffee by the river.

The next couple of days were spent wandering around the old town, taking photographs, drinking coffee and beer and visiting a few of the tourist attractions. It was a shame that practically all the roads in the old town had been dug up in preparation for a new road surface as it spoilt the feel of the place a little, and we’re pretty sure that they were doing the same thing 2 years ago! One of our highlights was meeting a really nice woman who owned a lantern shop down by the river, she was very friendly and we ended up sitting down and chatting (more miming as we didn’t speak each other’s language very well) and showing photographs. Unlike most other people in Hoi An she never once tried to make us buy anything off her, so it made a nice relaxing stop on our walks around the town!

The only other thing we did was to take a boat trip one afternoon just before sunset; it was a spur of the moment thing as we didn’t really have anything else to do. It was a nice way to spend an hour with our feet up riding up and down the river on our own private little boat. Before we knew it our time was up and we had to head off to Hanoi – stupidly we didn’t go with the company we’d already used and ended having a bit of a nightmare trip to Hanoi – that’ll teach us!

Hanoi
Despite all the hassle we had with the bus it actually turned out to be surprisingly comfortable and we arrived in Hanoi a lot more rested than we expected, however we were dropped off about 4km from where we wanted to be! The guys from the bus then told us that everyone could have a free taxi to take us into the Old Quarter, we were of course dubious about this but got into a taxi anyway and were then taken to a brand new hotel in the old quarter and no mention of paying for the taxi. Luckily we managed to get out of their little scam and found a nice cheap room just down the road after a little bit of a fuss from the taxi driver.

Last time we were in Hanoi we had a really nice time wandering around the Old Quarter, however this time it just seemed to have a completely different feel and didn’t seem as nice. We still managed to find some really good road-side coffee spots, walked around the lake a few times and had a couple of beers at Bia Hoi Junction along with a tasty kebab! We also visited a few places that we’d missed out on last time; St Joseph’s Cathedral and The Temple of Literature. St Joseph’s Cathedral isn’t really very much to look at from the outside but the interior is amazing, mainly for the ceiling which has a great paint job too! The Temple of Literature is a big complex of temples, tombs and the odd museum piece and was a good way to spend a few hours wandering through the grounds; I think the photos do these sights more justice than my vague ramblings!

After a couple of days we’d done all that we wanted to do in Hanoi so booked our train tickets to Lao Cai, after our awful train journey last time from Lao Cai to Hanoi we decided to treat ourselves to a very luxurious 4 berth soft sleeper cabin – check out the photo below!

Bac Ha
We arrived in Lao Cai at about 5.15am after having a very pleasant journey on the train and headed out to find a bus to our next destination of Bac Ha, there didn’t appear to be any buses outside of the station so we went and had a coffee and asked a few people what time and where we could get the bus. After getting 3 completely different answers a bus magically turns up right next to where we were drinking our coffee and the guy jumps out to usher us onboard. Before getting on we asked how much it cost and he says $10 per person – now this was pretty unbelievable considering that the price in our guide book was roughly $2 each, and it wasn’t even like it was a luxurious bus, far from it in fact! We couldn’t believe what he’d said and just laughed and turned around, then magically the price halved to $5 each – we didn’t really have much choice as we had no idea how often these buses left so decided it was just too early in the morning for this kind of hassle and just got on the bus and begrudgingly paid over twice the regular fare!

For such a shoddy looking bus it was surprisingly comfortable and we made very few stops along the way which helped us arrive nice and early in Bac Ha – it took us a few minutes to get our bearings and headed off to find a room for the next few nights. Through some rather lucky negotiations we managed to get a really fancy room for just $5 a night and proceeded to test out the comfort of the bed for a short nap before heading out to see what the town had to offer. Not very much as it turned out, the town of Bac Ha is pretty desolate but we were only really there for the market so it didn’t matter too much.

We ended up hiring a jeep with a couple of Dutch girls to go to Can Cau market the following morning, it was a little expensive but we were told that no local buses went that way so didn’t have much choice. Once we arrived at the market it was quite a feast for the eyes, all the local hill-tribes were there and just a small handful of tourists which makes it quite a unique thing in Vietnam. We spent a couple of hours wandering around, taking photos, talking to some of the locals and attempting to avoid the women selling bags! We also spotted quite a few public buses that had come through from Bac Ha so were a little miffed that everyone had lied to us about it! The photos below should give a better impression of the market than my basic description.

The following day was the Bac Ha market so we headed out early to see how it compared to Can Cau from the day before. The first thing you notice is the massive increase in tourist numbers which in turn has changed a lot of the market into something that’s entirely set up for the tourist dollar. However, if you manage to get past those bits without being too harassed by the people trying to sell you bags you make it to the area for the locals. This was far more interesting so we hung around those areas for as long as possible observing the locals and taking photos. There were plenty of food stalls set up and they all seemed very popular with the locals but from the selection of food we saw decided it wasn’t really in the best interest of our stomachs to eat there. That is of course unless you enjoy eating stomach, intestine, rectum and who knows what other varieties of offal they had!

Sapa
We arrived in Sapa after a relatively stress free trip from Bac Ha via Lao Cai and were looking forward to having a good couple of days wandering through the surrounding countryside and visiting some of the minority villages, however the weather was awful! For the entire three days it was covered in fog and rained pretty much the entire time, I don’t think the visibility was more than 300 metres at any point!

The one redeeming point of Sapa was the coffee, we visited a coffee shop last time that served amazing Vietnamese drip coffee (Trung Nguyen) so headed back to try and pick up our spirits. The coffee shop served nine different types of coffee with the lowest quality being number 1 and the best being number 9 – as a treat we decided to splash out on a number 9 as opposed to our normal (still delicious) number 3’s. If you’re a coffee lover you would have seriously appreciated it but it’s really difficult for me to explain just how good it was in words! We were slowly running out of time so after a rather disappointing three days of seeing nothing we got on a bus to Dien Bien Phu.

Dien Bien Phu
After a long and bumpy bus trip we arrived in Dien Bien Phu and quickly arranged our transport across the border into Laos for the following morning – as it was just for a night there’s nothing more to say! We’ll leave the actual border crossing story for the next instalment – quite a story indeed!!