The review guides say 'If you can afford it fly' and from our experience I'd say they were right.
We left Hanoi on a rainy Valentine's Day desparately needing the sun back and had booked onto a ''hop on hop off bus''. Worst marketing ever as this is precisely what it was not. It was pretty much just all your tickets bought at once and although we were sold it as a ticket which allowed you to jump on a bus by booking 24 hours in advance this was actually at least 72 hours. To cut the rant short we had to wait in our first destination, Hoi An, longer than planned. Think it's more designed for those taking their time.
Hoi An
So our first sleeper bus experience from Hanoi direct to Hoi An via Hue started off quite nice, great seats, plenty of space and we seemed to sleep pretty well. We arrived in Hue to drop the first load off around 9am and 8 of us had to wait an hour for the next lot to arrive. Then jumped on Mr $%@ of the year, a young Vietnamese jobsworth who demanded that we got off the bus as there weren't enough seats. We of course all argued against this but then he began shouting, threatening us and threw our bags off. Liam was relatively calm, I was not and Angry Alix was in full swing, literally the rudest man I've ever come across. I refused to move. Eventually we had no choice and while laughing in our faces he said we either left the bus or sat on the floor for the remainder of our journey to Hoi An (5 hours). We had no choice. As in turns out he had put on some Vietnamese free of charge and they had our seats. So with all my anger I did a Liam and ''wrote a letter''.
We arrived in Hoi An, an ancient, quiet, beach town famous for it's many tailoring shops. Almost every building in the main part of Hoi An that isnt a resturaunt is either selling clothes, crafts, jewellery or shoes. It's heaven! With shopping in my mind we headed out the next day to browse the tailor shops and see what kind of deal we could get. Thirty or so shops later we finally decided on a tailor to go into and they were onto us like a rash. Throwing books of dresses, suits, jackets, shorts and all sorts our way. I had decided to go for a dress for Chloe and Antony's wedding in October (organised I know) and Liam went for a casual jacket. We found the designs we liked, we added some alterations, picked the fabric and got ourselves measured. Simples!
I still cannot get over how quickly they were both made as the next morning we went for our first fitting and only minor alterations were needed. And to make things even better they only cost around 30 pounds each. I'm lucky we didnt have space for much more otherwise our budget would be severely dented.
Nha Trang
The next day we headed for Nha Trang, the party beach town of Vietnam and it didnt disappoint. After another less than average sleeper bus we arrived at 5am and hopped on motorbike taxis to our hostel. There isn't much in the way of culture in Nha Trang, just a gorgeous beach and lots of fun bars. We'd met two lads in Hanoi, who actually lived 10 minutes from Liam and pretty much followed them down to Nha Trang so the next day we met up with a big group of people from their hostel and went to Vinpearl - a 5* island resort with a water park, theme park, arcade room and aquarium. As it was across the water the first ride was the longest over water cable car. Now the rides in this place don't exactly scream Alton Towers...I think they got fun fear confused with "Actually I think I may die today" fear. They were terrifying and for all the wrong reasons...all except one, a rollercoaster/bumper car which took you to the top of a mountain and gave you control. All you had to do was pull back to break and pull forward to speed up...it's the only one we felt safe on and that's saying something.
Saigon (Ho Chi Minh)
The following morning it was back on the sleeper bus for our final stop, Saigon. Each stop down Vietnam has given us something different, Hanoi gave us culture, Hoi An gave us shopping, Nha Trang gave us fun and at Saigon it was time for history. Firstly the motorbikes here are even more crazy than Hanoi. There are 6 million in the city and like swarms of bees it's impossible to cross the road without either dodging round them or just running across. Most of the time we just follow the locals as they seems to know what to do.
On our first day we visited the War Remnants Museum, a real eye-opener especially as we didn't know an awful lot about it beforehand. Of course it was very biased but some of the photos shown in there are hard to swallow and I was unable to look at most of them. Still it taught us about the war and we were excited to head to the Chu Chi Tunnels the next day to learn abit more.
The Chu Chi Tunnels are an amazing network of underground tunnels under the Chu Chi Battlefield made by the Vietnamese soldiers during the Vietnam War to hide the Viet Cong and Military during combat. They were also used as hospitals, communication to the government, living quarters and food supply. People lived in these for 20 years. We had a great tour guide who gave us a great run down on the journey there and throughout the day and we all got to experience what it must have been like in the tunnels. They were cramped enough as it was, but to fit tourists in, they made them bigger so got knows how small they must have been orginially.
It may have been a quick trip but we'll be leaving Vietnam feeling satified that we got as much as we could out of it in the amount of time we had. It's a great country and it's a shame we couldn't have stayed longer but time's a ticking and Cambodia awaits.
Oh and in case you're wondering what happened with our complaint letter to the bus company....we got a full refund!!! 120 quid...dinner is looking exciting for the next month!!!
xx