wow... i sure have been useless with this blog thing haven't i?!

i don't think i've written since i even arrived in saigon so i will try and write as much as possible to fill you in! the computer just took over an hour to upload all my photos so that's my sorry excuse if it's not too detailed!

I'm in Nha Trang at the moment, which is a gorgeous little beach town on the coast of Vietnam,.

After leaving Phnom Penh we headed into Saigon. My visa had the wrong date on it, but with a trusty bribe of $10 USD i managed to get through the border with the rest of the tour group.. otherwise i was just going to stay an additional night at phnom penh and head through the following day...

it was so relieving (as horrible as that sounds) to get into saigon... Cambodia is amazing but it is very desolate and poverty striken. When we saw the big lights of Saigon the first thing we did was head to a fancy coffee shop (the closest thing we could find to starbucks) which was quite reasonably priced, and was in there most days filling ourselves full of decent caffeine!

the first afternoon i headed around the backpacker district to find a decent hostel to stay at as the hotel the tour was at was $25 per night and was well above my budget. I found a place on hostelbookers.com and discovered it was an awesome little place full and buzzing with other friendly backpackers. I stayed in a dorm with 5 other girls (mainly australian) for $6.50 a night which included an awesome brekkie- i was stoked! The first day i met up with the girls from the tour again and we wandered around the Ben Than Market which was filled with crappy souvenier delights.. none of which i bought. I tell you what tho; it would be awesome if you'd just bought a place to come over and buy up big for household goods- lots of great little bowl sets and awesome replica paintings for cheap!

We went around the food part and there were plenty of live seafood to be had... not quite as smelly as sihanoukville markets with their skinned frogs thank god, but there were crabs all lined up.. wondering how they kept them sitting so placidly while still alive we asked and discovered- ah... they've broken their legs.. lovely!

I said goodbye to the tour at that point and headed for a day trip up to Cu chi tunnels and a half day tour around saigon which included the reunification palace, the war remants museum, notredame catherdral (which was closed...) and the post office (built in colonial french time). I had a go at going through the little tunnels and found it ok- i could just do it still standing up and not crawling on my knees.. but only just! i met a kiwi couple on the tour and have since run into them in nha trang yesterday and hung out for lunch!

it seems to be the way it goes- lots of people are either doing hanoi to ho chi minh or vice versa.. seeing lots of familiar faces along the way so far!

the following day i headed on the mekong dalta trip down south of saigon. it was a nice tour but fairly exhausting. Most of the tour group were french but i met a nice australian couple that i had dinner and lunch with, a couple of japanese girls and three malaysian women who chatted to me and gave me lots of travelling tips for heading up the coast. we went to a few floating markets and had the horrible experience of waiting for the ferry to cross the river at vinh long... 2-3 hours wait both times. we had to get off the bus and were standing in the waiting area which was constantly filled with hundreds of scooters and their fumes... we found a place with as much fresh air as possible and sat tight.. they are building a bridge but construction was halted because of an accident which killed about 50 people.. they had allowed people without any engineering experience to build a bridge that would have hundreds and hundreds of cars/buses and scooter crossing it everyday... it collapsed. moral- get experienced people to build them! the floating markets were nice- lots of little kiddies would run out of their houses to yell out 'hello hello' and wave. we had lunch at a little island and watched them throw all our finished cans and water bottles directly into the river, where they also wash, do fishing and their business most likely! it was a lovely shade of brown- he he!

i headed up to nha trang on a day bus which was a 12 hour journey, however the scenery along the way was worthwhile. we stopped at mui ne, the other beach town and i was mightly glad i chose to head straight to nha trang instead. the beach wasn't very nice (however it was a windy day which wouldn't have helped the surf looking pretty brown and bringing in rubbish) but the town was very spread out. you would have to stay at an expensive resort and would need a motorbike to get around. We saw the yellow sand dunes on the bus and the mountainess ranges were lovely.

I arrived at Nha Trang at about 6.30pm.. i didn't know what to expect as i'd heard people say it wasn't worth staying and others saying it was lovely... well; i can safely reassure it is a gorgreous beach town. I also had been told i could expect to pay $30-60 per night for a basic room as it is a resort town... and miss universe is being held here today so there are swarms of vietnamese tourists here to see the bikini contest i am sure! ha ha...

there were a couple of vietnamese guys with scooters holding up signs for accomodation. i jumped on the back of a scooter with them with my big backpack on the front and we went to about 10 different hotels until we found one.. it was $13 a night and it's about 100m from the beach, right in the town- jackpot!

I decided to head out around the streets and find a bite to eat. I sat down across from an australian guy who i ended up talking to and having a few drinks. he was meeting up with 4 other aussies he'd met a few days earlier and invited me along... a fair few shots later and many drinks over about 3 bars we ended up at a beach rave on the stage dancing until 2.30am when it closed... then i thought- s***; i have to get back into the hotel at this time- no worries- randomly enough out of the 100 hotels there are here, we were all staying at the same one! we woke the porter up and headed up to the balcony and had a couple more beers before deciding to go parasailing in the morning..

a greasy breakfast later, we all had a go! i went third and went straight up in the air, but they couldn't get me down- i'm serious! it was an awesome experience, but at the end, the boat kept moving forward (about the time i'm meant to start dropping) and the wind would pick up again and i was back straight up on a complete vertical.. i was sorta yelling- am i meant to pull something? what the hell? sort of freaking out a bit while i'd been enjoying it until then.. but they got me down- and i got double my moneys worth really because i had more time up there admiring the beach and town!

the guys flew out that afternoon but gave me the tip to try scuba diving. they didn't have their license but you can do i dive with someone else that goes down with you.. I headed on the trip today... the dive was surreal- really beautiful coral and fishes.. absolutely gorgeous... but geezuz i was scared.. there wasn't any practice in a pool or anything.. just straight in with someone holding onto you; doing the ok signal to make sure you're fine every 5 minutes.. At the second island i went snorkelling just to get off the boat as i was feeling sooooo sea sick and got stung by a jelly fish on the lip- pretty much the only place i could get stung outside of my hands as we were in full wetsuits as the water was retty cold. it seems everyone got stung- i wasn't sure if i had so i just went back on the boat and didn't say anything and tried to not think about the stinging, but when everyone else got back on they mentioned it... so there you go- i've had my first jellyfish sting! apparently at the second dive there were massive, massive jelly fish about 10-15 metres down... i am SO annoyed i get sea sick- i really wanted to go on another boat trip tomorrow but have bailed as i just get too nauseous and they don't stop at islands so i don't get too much relief. I wanted to organise to stay on a boat in halong bay too but i am now reconsidering it as the medication just doesn't kick it- i feel shocking and it sucks!

so here i am, chilling out- reading books and relaxing for 2 more nights before heading up to hoi an.. I have already go through Amy Tans The kitchen God and Bill Brysons Neither here nor there- travels through europe (which is bloody awesome- perfect book to read while travelling!) and have about another 3 that i've bought from vendours for about $3.. they are all photocopied so i read them then leave them for someone else to pick up!

I hope everyone is doing well back home. I'm going to try and upload the videos from parasailing now and hope they work as this computers fairly slow!

xo