Hi from Hoi An!

So my vietnam adventure has begun, infact its pretty much in full swing now! so far so good but im sure you are after slightly more detail than that, sooo

When i arrived on Saturday, I found out there was just me and one other girl (Tessa) joining the tour - everyone else had been on it since Cambodia! We had our little meeting with Cacada, our new tour leader, and signed on the dotted line etc etc and then it was off to dinner to say goodbye to a lovely couple who were leaving the tour the next day. it was an absolutly lovely restaurant, with an incredible spag bol unlike any i have sampled since my own dear mothers :P tres good start to vietnam in my opinion! plus the cocktails on 3 for 2 offer helped! At dinner i got to know the group a bit more and i have to say i have obviously been stupidly lucky because this group was brilliant, again! everyone seems really nice and after about 10 minutes it was like i had been there all along! The funny thing is people are starting to remind me of other people from other tours, kind of like how Alice reminded me of Louise from Africa, well there was this couple - Holly and Chris, and their friend Ian who were almost exact duplicates of Lucy, Hugo and Toby from thailand! infact Ian and Toby are scarily alike! they even wear the same Chang t-shirts! So yeah, we all got on great which is always a good start to things and then decided to bond further through the magical art of Kareoke!! I can now go home the proud owner of a 5 minute video of a load of guys attempting Bohemian Rhapsody after a few drinks...and yes i will be putting it on facebook when i get back!

The next morning was Easter sunday!! The first Easter EVER that i didnt have any chocolate to speak of :( I will definitly be expecting a nice little pile of eggs when i get home...hint hint mother... but anyway, i spent the day with Jacq - my room mate for the moment, just chilling out, having a bit of lunch, the usual - ho chi minh city is actually a lot like Bangkok in many ways so i kind of felt that I had done it all before, but it was still nice to explore a bit before we headed off in the evening on the sleeper train. Not another sleeper train i hear you say! well, yes i was prepared for it this time though, and i was even nice enough to prepare everyone else for the horrors that were about to appear to them in the form of the sleeper train...however as it turned out, Cacada was a lot better at organising transport that Tui (thailand guide incase you forgot :P) and we were taking a first class train all the way to Nha Trang, which meant actual cabins - with doors!, nice proper beds with nice proper duvets and pillows, and even a TV!! it was bloody luxury i tell you! The journey went fairly quickly with numurous conversations between me, tessa and ian involving everything from smurf porn to the true meaning of hippopotimus in Norwegian (look it up...its not for parents eyes :P) - so basically it was a pretty good journey! and of course there was the half an hour me and Espen spent trying to figure out how we knew each other....i hate it when that happenes, we never did figure it out!

By 7am the next morning we had arrived at our hotel in Nha Trang, and very nice it was too :) by this point i was rooming with Tessa so it was nice to have someone else new to the group to hang out with! There was one optional activity that day of which most of us decided very early on to partake in...a beach party! basically it was the Livingstone Booze Cruise version 2.0 in that we were taken to a private beach, paid a set amount of money (the equivilant of about 12 pounds i think it was) and were fed rum, beer, vodka, chicken, rice, beef, noodles and bbq'ed clams all day...not too shabby! plus its always fun to play in the sea after beer and rum :P That took up most of the day and by the time we got back we had to go for dinner! So really it was a pretty chilled start to things! plus it kind of set the tone for the rest of the trip i feel - drinking at 11am on a beach - however will i keep up! :P

Tuesday required a massive buffet breakfast to compensate for the spectacular sunburn i managed to aquired around my erm bikini line the day before - how does a breakfast compensate for such pain? trust me, this breakfast did. it made me very happy. and there were pancakes. we all knew we were getting the night train again in the evening and we also knew it wouldnt be as ncie as the last one, just because when asked about the quality of the train, Cacada's response was "well one nice train is better than none right?" - not very reasuring. So we spent the day lounging by the pool and discovering the local restaurant riht on the beach - the most amazing chicken and chips i have had in a long time! and i know, first spag bol then chicken and chips - my exploration into vietnamese food is extensive i know! Oh i got a new nickname today, J-Goat. Now let me explain, Chris and Ian said that i reminded them of someone from their school who was kind of like a bloke (not a good start) so they started chanting 'Jenni!!! Shes a bloke!!' over and over again...quite entertaining but i insisted on something original, tailored especially for me in the nickname department - so they turned to J-Dog - its been done. By Ryan from back home in fact - so this escalated quickly into J-Goat and thus a new chant was born 'When I say J-Goat you say Bleet, J-Goat - bleet, J-Goat - Bleet!'...we'll see how long it lasts :P

There was one afternoon activity however - a trip to the local hot springs and mud baths. now you may think this is quite girly but Chris and Ian were surprisingly looking forward to it....hmmmm.....anyway, we got there and basically had a communal bath together - in mud. clean mud though (if there is such a thing?!) obviousy it ended up with a big mud fight and everyone got mud everywhere...to be expected no? now this place wasnt just a big muddy pool, it was like a proper spa and there was a trail you had to follow, first there was the mud bath, the you washed off, then a bath in a REALLY hot mineral spring, then a cold mineral shower, then a waterfall, then a swim and then you're done! funnily enough we all felt rather clean afterwards - perfect preperation for the dirty ass night train that was to follow! now that train was more like what i was used to! A few bugs here and there, some leftover bits of food, some bad smells...ahhh its just how i remembered it :)

After a not so relaxing journey we arrived in Hoi An early morning and made our way to the hotel - again a really nice hotel! today was all about tailor made clothes...hence why we took a group outing to some tailors in town! most people got suit made, some of the girls got nice little dresses and then i decided to get a really nice little black dress made at the more upmarket tailors further down the road - i gave them my idea and chose the fabri and stuff and hopefully it will turn out really nice! i say hopefully because at the time of writing this i still havnt collected it! Afterwards me and Tessa went for a walk around old town and discovered a nice little art gallery district where we could spend a couple hours before the evening, after all the tailory fun had finsihed for everyone else, when we headed down to a little restaurant for a nice group meal and then off to a bar for some vietnamese merriment! Once again i got the chance to show off my lovely pool skills in some nice doubles teamwork with ian - we actually beat Cacada, something that apparently up until now had been just a dream! obviously i dont take all the credit...ian chalked the cue after all :P unfortuantly the evening finished rather abruptly for me as i started to feel quite ill....

and that leads me to today - i woke up feeling crap, i went to the beach feeling crap, i had a crap lunch feeling crap and then i had a dress fitting and collected my dress where i actually started to feel better! I topped it off with a georgous meal at a lovely italian place where the chef came out personally and showed us all his ingrediants and took our orders etc - my god can that man make ravioli! and cake, wow he can make good cake! and after a little fashion show for tessa and a couple more games of pool (one of which Steena and Espen were playing this random couple of guys and she got to pissed off with one fo them she shouted 'get your fat head out of my shot!' - best quote of the night!) we wondered home back to the hotel...which leads me to now, so hopefully the crapness has left my system and all will be well with the world :)

see you in a few days!

xxx