We took a bus into Vietnam it was a comfy trip with a hostess on the bus who spoke good English, she was able to guide us through the border crossing. Leaving Cambodia was easy but entry to Vietnam was totally different to what we expected. I was expecting rigid checks of everyone and everything but actually it was pretty much a walk straight through, the longest bit was waiting for our passports to be processed. There's one guy at a desk processing every passport that comes through needless to say there are stacks of passports in front of him all the time. Generally the bus drivers collect all the passports and give them in, in one go then wait to see how long it takes the guy behind the desk. If he's taking too long they throw him a few quid across the counter which he quickly stuffs in his pocket and funnily he speeds up a little with that particular batch of passports. It took a while but finally we were all back on the bus heading for Ho Chi Minh City. On our arrival our hostess pointed us in the direction of our hotel and off we went. It didn't take us long to find our hotel and happily on arrival reception told us we had an upgrade as our allocated room wasn't free until the next day......nice! We spent the evening wandering the immediate area and had a lovely local dish for dinner called Pho - its basically chicken noodle broth with veg. It costs about 1 euro for a big bowl then you get a platter on the side of veg greens, mint, bean sprouts, lime wedges and chilli. You add the extras to your taste it sounds so simple but it's really tasty. A lot if advertising still refers to HCMC as Saigon, I'm not entirely sure of the reasoning for changing the name from the old one(actually Rob has just told me the reasoning for it - Ho Chi Minh freed the city way back when.... I suppose thats worthy of a name change), it seems to sit better with this little old world place of hussle and bussle. We only had a short few days in HCMC but our first full day in HCMC we decided to go to the war memorial museum. It took us ages to find it but wondering up and down the city streets was fun. Navigating the roads has taken a little time to get use to but we think we may now have cracked it. We were talking about how we could explain the roads and the traffic here and basically it comes down to if you can see a piece of road and get your wheels on it then it's yours! They don't tend to stick to the left side and the right side of the road so much, which makes crossing a nightmare, also the few traffic lights don't really mean anything so you tend to spend a hair raising few mins ducking and dodging through cars and mopeds every time you want to cross the road. We arrived to the war museum late in the afternoon and again sadly we already knew what would greet us when we made our way inside. The garden grounds have been given over to examples of machinery used during the war, flame throwers, chinooks, fighter planes. Inside the museum it is split into floors the first dedicated to speeches given by Vietnamese government and American government and pictures drawn by local kids affected by the war crimes, the second and third floors walk you through some of the horrific acts carried out by the American and French troops that made there way through the Vietnamese land. There is a room dedicated to the effects of agent orange and the truly sad thing is that many people still bear the scars of this in Vietnam today. It's common to see people with deformed limbs, with abnormal body shapes and sizes as the effect of agent orange makes its way into the DNA and can skip generations before reappearing again- it was a truly heartbreaking museum.
The remainder of our time in the city was spent walking the different streets, checking out the markets, people watching and trying local foods.
From HCMC we made our way north to Nha Thrang. This is a little seaside resort which has a lovely beach but little else on offer it's the closest we've seen to a Spain beach resort since we've been away, streets of bars and hotels leading to the beach but little else. The beach was picture postcard though and well worth a visit.
After two days in Nha Thrang we set off for Hoi An. We were both really looking forward to this bit of the trip as we really wanted to get some clothes made. On the advise of our hotel we made our way to a little store called "Peace", they had some lovely materials and so we decided to go ahead and place an order. Rob went for a suit and I went for two dresses (yes I know shock horror!!) and a blazer. We had to check back in a couple of times for fittings but everything we ordered turned out quite well.
Hoi An was a lovely treat for us we had expected this busy city but found a lovely relaxed pace of life. There are 1300 tailors in total and several shoe makers all vying for your business but other that that there's a lovely sleepy pace that gives you time to walk by the river and take in its sights. We spent our evenings chilling with other travellers in the hotel bar and met some cool people there funnily enough most of them Irish and one guy who works in Dun-Laoire (small world)!
We left Hoi An on an over night bus and made our way to Hanoi. It had been raining heavily in the evenings and did the same the night we were on the bus. We were supposed to make it to Hanoi by 8am the following morning but at 8am we were sitting in the middle of a flooded road going nowhere fast. Traffic wasn't moving in either direction and things stayed like that until about 10am. After what seemed like forever our little ninja bus made it to the city centre (5 and a half hours later than planned). It hadn't dawned on us before then but as I put by bag on my back I quickly realised that the rain had fallen so heavily the water from the flooded roads had made its way into the baggage hold the entire bottom half of my rucksack was not just wet but drenched so much so that inside a minute the ass and waist of my trousers was soaked. Robs bag had been lucky and was almost fully dry, I was starting to have a mini freak out about what was in my bag that would be wet specifically the clothes we had just got made. On arriving at our hotel everything was pulled out of my bag and as luck would have it the tailored clothes were fine and only one or two bits were a little patchy from soakage. We spent our last few days in Vietnam taking in the sights finding little hidden markets and making the tasty discovery of wait for it ......an omelette roll called Bhang Mi Thang. Don't knock it sooo tasty with hot chilli sauce.
We had been very weary of Vietnam as we'd heard so many mixed stories but we had found really nice people there we were glad it had been such a nice surprise when we had been expecting the worst.
We set off from Hanoi on our last ninja bus ride (30 hrs) enroute to our last new country before heading home we were Laos bound!
Taste Sensations: Chicken Pho, Bhang Mi Thang, Papaya Salad, 10c beer, noodle and chicken dishes that have titles we cant even attempt to spell. Music: not even worth mentioning - it was all rubbish!