Hanoi PD shut down the Par-T! (Well, they tried anyway)

We arrived in Hanoi at 5am, and when we got to our hostel a sleepy receptionist came to the door in his pants to let us in. Once he had cleared away his mattress from the floor of reception he cooked breakfast for the boys on a little stove behind the reception desk!

After breakfast we basically crashed out for the day, Amy was out for the count after being sick all morning, but the boys did venture out to get their hair cut. In the evening we went to meet Katie, Charlotte and Jess from our G Adventures tour for dinner. The food was lovely but just as we asked for the bill we heard some rats (which sounded HUGE) running around and fighting inside the benches we were sitting on! After that we made a pretty speedy exit!

The next day we met up with the girls again to go and see Ho Chi Minh's mausoleum, where he had been embalmed and you could file through and see his body. This is taken very seriously by the locals, there are signs up saying 'no laughter' and lots of guards with guns. After that we went through the buildings where Ho Chi Minh lived and worked, before getting a taxi back to the town centre, (who unfortunately had a dodgy meter and ripped us off royally). That afternoon, after a speedy KFC, we went to see a water puppet show, which was made up of a series of traditional stories which were explained in English on a screen before they began, so the foreigners knew what was going on. The stage was basically a swimming pool, and the puppets were made to dance on the water to tell the story.. It was much better than we thought it would be, but unfortunately Steven and Amy still couldn't quite stay awake for the whole show..

That night we decided to have a night out, as it would be the last time we would be seeing the girls from our tour. We had already been told that the bars and pubs all close at 11, but that if you stuck around after then you could go to some secret clubs which stayed open later. 

So we went to a couple of bars, until at 11 the Hanoi PD shut down the Par-T! Sure enough, there was an Australian man who said he knew where we could go for drinks, so everyone in the bar followed him like a drunk Jesus, and after the police had gone we went to his club. 

You couldn't hear the music from outside, and the only sign there was anything going on were some lights coming from a tiny window upstairs. So we all went upstairs to the little secret club! After a couple of hours the place started emptying, so we decided to see if we could find another club we had been told about by some people who had been there last night. However the only directions we had were to go over the highway and then through a hole in a wall, and then you would be there. 

After a while, we realized that we would never actually find the club, and as the streets were pretty much deserted we decided to get some beers from a shop (that was somehow still open) and go back to the hotel. We eventually got to bed about 5am! The next morning we went to say a final goodbye to the girls.. we were all feeling a bit worse for wear, and as soon as we finished saying our goodbyes and stepped out of the hotel, poor Marc was sick on the street - what a disgrace.

On our final day in Hanoi, we took a boat trip on Halong Bay. It took about 4 hours each way on a bus, and then we had another 4 hours on the boat. The bay was really impressive, and after having a seafood buffet for lunch while being taken round on the boat, the four of us got onto a bamboo boat, rowed by a local woman, who took us round a floating village, where people lived in houses which were anchored down and basically floated on polystyrene blocks! After that we went and explored some caves, and then the boat took us back to shore. That evening we went for our final meal in Vietnam, and then the next day we had to catch our flight across the border to Laos!

Hue: The name says it all

Between Hoi An and Hue, the next stop on our Vietnam tour, there is a highway called the Hai Van Pass, a route of roads and train track that hug the green mountains and the South China sea. If you've seen the Top Gear Vietnam special episode (where they ride motorbikes up Vietnam and turn them into boats in Halong Bay) you'll have seen bits of it.

We decided that a day train was the best way to travel, but due to the rain we couldn't see a whole lot out of the window.

The rain followed us to Hue and cursed us for most of our stay there, which was a shame because rain tends to make places seem worse than they are.

After loving Hoi An, Hue didn't really tickle our collective pickle so we were glad to only be staying one night.

We had booked another night train for when we left Hue, but there were no beds left so we had to settle for seats for a journey that would start at 5.30pm and finish at 6am, but more on that later.

On our second day we thought we should probably do something cultural, so we booked ourselves onto a day tour around the city. First stop was the Imperial City, then a Pagoda (Vietnamese temple) and we also went to a house made out of wood with natural air conditioning, which our tour guide seemed pretty impressed with. 

After lunch we got back on the bus only to be informed that we had to pay more money in entrance fees ontop of the extra we paid earlier. We were having none of it, so decided for the next three temples we would walk around outside them and take photos and save ourselves some Dong. We had to stick with the tour because they were giving us a lift to the train station!

Amy taking pictures of the temple through a gap in the door

So the time came for the dreaded night train with no bed. We arrived at the station and Marc and Gareth headed off to find somewhere that sold food and drink, and returned with a bag full of beer cans and a block of ice which the man guaranteed would keep the beer chilled until 8pm.

As expected, the train journey was pretty shocking. We only got a few hours sleep and poor Amy got some sort of stomach bug and ended up making regular trips to the toilet to be sick!

Hoi An: The best place in Vietnam!

In Nha Trang we booked our very first overnight sleeper train, which we had heard can be a bit of an experience. We had a 4 person berth to ourselves, which consisted of 4 bunk beds and a window with bars on. The room itself was actually alright, and we had an entertaining train conductor who couldn't speak a word of English so acted out 'please don't smoke' to us, at least that's what we thought he was doing.

                   

 



We slept pretty well and arrived at around 7am and headed for Hoi An, a place given UNESCO world heritage status for it's Old Town. Our hotel was minutes away from the town centre so we met up with Jess, Charlotte and Katie and hired bikes ($1 for the whole day!) to cycle around the town, the perfect way to see the sights.

After a while we decided to try and find the beach, only to get lost and ended up seeing a lot more of Hoi An than we originally planned! After getting the most exercise we'd done in ages, we headed back for a well earned nap before (you guessed it) another night out.

Hoi An is full of lots of beautiful restaurants and bars so we were spoilt for choice, but eventually settled on a nice little restaurant by the river and then headed out for some drinks. We finished the night in one of the most popular backpacker bars, which let you choose the music on YouTube rather than employing a DJ. Seems like a good idea, but when you share the bar with European's with dodgy music tastes it's always going to end in arguments! It was a fun night though.

On the Sunday night the old town was completely pedestrianised  for the monthly traditional lantern festival, where they release lantern candles down the river and perform traditional dances. Unfortunately for us, it wouldn't stop raining so we couldn't see the true effect!

Everyone in ponchos!

Hoi An was definitely one of our favourite places in SE Asia so far.

Nha Trang: bombs, mud and Russians.

Next stop: Nha Trang, Vietnam's main (and possibly only) seaside-resort town. It's a big hit with Russian's apparently and we were surprised to see Russian written everywhere just as much as English!

We met up with the G Adventure girls for a cheeky night out and headed to a few bars. One bar had a crazy little Vietnamese lady who persuaded us into ordering a large round of Jagerbombs by shouting BOMB BOMB BOMB at us until we ordered them. We ended the night in a cool little place called Why Not? Bar. Once it shut we left for our beds, only to get completely lost and ending up back at the same Why Not? Bar 45 minutes later and find that our hotel was actually practically opposite the bar! Fail.

Matching outfits. Awkward...

 The next morning Marc and Steven headed off to meet the girls to go to Thap Ba Hot springs and mud bath, leaving a very hungover Amy and Gareth in bed.

The bath was pretty bizarre, you sit in a tub whilst it fills up with liquid mud, and then pour it over yourself with buckets, surrounded by loads of other people (mainly Russian) doing the same. It was supposed to have healing properties, which was perfect for our hangovers! After covering ourselves in mud we showered off and moved to a 35 degrees Celsius mineral water bath which was much more relaxing, and then headed to the swimming pools.

By the end of our pampering we thought our hangovers had gone, but they returned pretty much as soon as we got back on the bus.

In the evening we met up with Amy and Gareth and found a little Vietnamese restaurant by following the smell of BBQ'd meat. Feeling adventurous, we ordered snake spring rolls, ostrich steak, swordfish, grilled crocodile, frogs legs, and a side of chips. The ostrich steak was good, as was the swordfish. The frogs legs were okay and the crocodile was a bit chewy. We probably would give the snake spring rolls a miss next time though!

Mekong Delta Homestay & Saigon

We left Sianoukville in the morning, and started the long journey to the Vietnamese border. We arrived at lunchtime, and luckily we could just give our passports to our tour leader, Bank, who sorted everything out for us while we had lunch. Another 4 hour journey and we arrived at the town of Can Tho. We would be staying at a homestay, spending the night with a family who owned a farm just outside the town. We arrived at the homestay and once we had chosen our rooms we were taken on a tour of the farm. We were shown around the fields where all the different crops were grown, and at the end of the tour we arrived at a bridge which was regularly used by the locals, but to us looked like a few thin branches stretching over the river! We were given a demonstration of how to cross the bridge, and then told that it was our turn to go over it! We definitely weren't as graceful as the locals but luckily none of us fell in!

When we got back to the farm, we were shown how to make traditional Vietnamese rice pancakes, and then we were served a delicious, and massive meal that the family had cooked for us. After dinner, a boy of about 10, dressed in a Man U shirt, came over and asked us if we wanted to play a Vietnamese version of Monopoly! We all played and the boy (named Hy) was the banker, giving out money and translating the cards into English for us. As Marc said, it was strange playing monopoly in a communist country! Hy said that he came to the farm every other weekend, to stay with his uncle, so that he can practice his English with the Western tourists. He was very cute and his English was really impressive!

The next morning, we were taken to another floating market, however this one was more for the locals, selling wholesale fruits and vegetables. To pass the time on the boat, the tour guide decided it would be a great idea to sing each other songs from each of our home countries! They're obsessed with Kareoke over here!

That evening we arrived in Ho Chi Minh City (aka Saigon), for our last night with our G Adventures tour group. It's a manic city, full of mopeds and scooters that don't pay much attention to road laws! Bank gave us some advice to help us cross the roads: "Don't wait, don't stop, don't run, keep walking!"

We went for some farewell drinks with the group, starting in some big, pretty expensive bars, but then there was a power cut which lasted for about an hour, so eventually we decided to venture out onto the street where there seemed to be more lights, and ended up sitting on plastic chairs on the street, drinking beers which cost 12,000 dong (about 30p)!

We got in at about 4am, and we had booked a tour of the Cu Chi tunnels the next morning, which was where fighters from North Vietnam (called Cu Chi guerrillas) would hide out to escape American bomb attacks. So after about 3 hours sleep we ventured down to get onto the tour bus. Our tour guide said that we could call him Slim Jim, and told us that he had fought on the side of South Vietnam in the Vietnam war. He took us around the jungle showing us traps that the Cu Chi guerrillas would set for American soldiers, and then at the end of the tour, and with us feeling pretty fragile from the night before, we got to go down some of the tunnels that the Cu Chi guerrillas used to use. As you can see, they were pretty cramped, and these ones had been widened to twice their original size to fit Westerners in them!

On our final night in Saigon we went for drinks with a Norwegian couple from our tour group, Simen & Froya, on a rooftop bar with great views of the city, and free shots of banana liquor! The next day we headed to the airport to catch a flight to our next stop in Vietnam - the coastal town of Nha Trang.

Sihanoukville - Unexpected Party Town of Cambodia

We arrived at Sihanoukville, which we knew was going to be a beach town, but it wasn't what we expected at all for a place in Cambodia.  The beach was full of westerners and within half an hour of sitting on the beach, Jess, Katie and Charlotte from our group were getting roped into taking part in a Cilla Black Blind Date style game show at one of the beach bars.  They resisted the temptations, but we all decided to go watch - it was Valentines Day after all.

That evening, Steven and Marc had dinner on the beach with the rest of the group (with some amazing barbecued seafood!) and Gareth and Amy went off for a romantic Valentines Day meal!

After the meal, we stayed on the beach for drinks.  

We moved from the restaurant to a bar a few hundred yards up the beach.  After we'd been there a while, the sky decided to put on a lightning show for us!  It was strange though, because there was no thunder, no rain just lightning.  We all pulled up plastic chairs on the shore and sat watching the sky.  After we got bored, we headed back inside the bar, and almost immediately, the thunder and the rain caught up with the lightening and there was a torrential downpour.  Apparently it was the first time the locals had seen rain in months!  The bar obviously wasn't set up for the rain, as we were ankle deep in water!  As we were getting wet anyway, we moved the party outside!

 

At the end of the night, we headed off to find a tuk tuk to take us back to the hotel.  When we couldn't find one, we took the only other option - motorbike taxis!  These were soo much fun, but Steven lost his flip flops on the journey!

  

When we arrived back at the hotel, we had to wake up about six of the hotel staff who were sleeping on the floor in reception.  Very strange.

The next morning, we had to get up at 8am for a boat trip to some islands.  We were all quite hungover.  Steven started leaving the hotel room barefoot, and was like 'oh, I haven't got my flip flops on... wait, I HAVEN'T GOT ANY FLIP FLOPS!!' so spent the rest of the day barefoot.  Lucky we were just on a boat trip.

We did a bit of snorkeling, then headed to an island to relax on the beach and eat some more barbecue food.