Vietnam

Hi everyone! I’ve been in Vietnam for about 10 days now and really want to spend longer traveling around. As I said in my last blog, we didn’t get off to a very good start but have settled into the way of things now. From Hanoi we took a flight down to Da Nang in order to get to Hoi An, it was quite cheap since we had flown with them earlier. We only spent about 10 minutes here, but it was an eventful 10 minutes! When we arrived we discovered that there was infact no bus that took us to Hoi An from the airport, instead we would have to go to the bus station. This turned into a bus chase in the taxi we got as the last local bus left Da Nang at 5pm. I just thought the taxi driver was trying to bump up his meter a bit at first! Before we knew it our bags were thrown on this bus and it started to drive away without us on it. All very eventful but it got us to Hoi An in the end. We had planned to stay just 1 night here but it had such a nice feel about it that we thought we stay for another. It was a very quiet town full of tailoring shops and markets, again not so good for me to be around as I can’t buy anything. I would love to go back some day with an empty rucksack…

From there we got a “sleeper bus” down to Nha Trang during the night. It wasn’t anywhere near as comfy as our night train in Thailand. They did have good beds but it would help if they had somewhere to put our bags as I had to sleep on top of mine. Colin also bought a guitar in Hanoi, it nearly had to have its own bed at one point. This was a 12 hour journey altogether. We arrived in Nha Trang at 6am in the rain, having had no sleep. Instantly we were disappointed as it was a big city and looked like a holiday resort. We made an on the spot decision just to get on another bus for 6 hours and go down the coast a bit more to Mui Ne. Really glad we did as this was a lot quieter and had nice weather the whole time we were there. We stayed in a bamboo hut practically on the beach which was great. Getting so used to the early starts all the time, we decided to do a sunrise tour there to see the sand dunes. Got picked up at 5am in our jeep but since the driver stopped to get petrol and went to the furthest away dunes first, we missed the sunrise! I am still glad we went early though as it was already really hot. The sand dunes were amazing, tried sand boarding for the first time.

Now we are in Ho Chi Minh City, or Saigon as it is known here. It’s even busier than Hanoi but luckily we are now experienced road crossers…today we went to see the Cu Chi tunnels, one of the best things we have done yet I think. Our tour guide was great, his name was Justa but preferred to be called Justaminute. We got to walk through one of the tunnels which was obviously quite difficult for me given my height compared to the Vietnamese! It was completely dark and very claustrophobic so I don’t know how people spent so long living in them. Tomorrow we sadly have to leave Vietnam but are heading into Cambodia. Let's hope they don't have any motorbikes.