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| January 17, 2006 |
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| More to come... |
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| GOOD MORNING VIETNAM!!!!
Hanoi is CRAZY!!! Or so we thought until 3 weeks later we arrived in Saigon? The traffic is mad and seems to run on disorganized Chaos! Without a horn you cannot drive in Vietnam and crossing the streets should be a stunt on Fear Factor ? Whew!! A new day in Vietnam, and a new chance to warm up to the locals (it hadn�t happened the first day as we traversed to Hanoi from Laos). A new outlook and some great travelling companions and the place are warming up to us. We went to the Hanoi Hilton for a tour and to the crash site of the 1st B-52 bomber to be shot down. The food and the city were fantastic but it was time to head on to Halong Bay. Wow! Is all I can say, we boated to Cat Ba Island for an overnight stay then back to Hanoi. (Too short a stop but all we had time for) From Hanoi we headed to Hue on the overnight bus (which others seemed to be complaining about but to those of us left from the Laos adventure this seemed like Heaven. A quick tour Of Hue and we were off again through Danang and the DMZ (de-militarized zone) to Hoi An where we had planned to splurge and stay in a fantastic hotel for Christmas (the hotel was fantastic and we ended forking out a lot more for the stay ? 12 whole Us dollars a night). Hoi An was amazing, We took a cooking course (which I will be duplicating for as many of you as possible this summer ? promise) and we decided this was the place we would shop for Christmas goodies and our own desires as well ? and did we ever!!! Our bags overflowing we marched off again to Nha Trang for some well deserved beach time and New Years in the clubs with the Irish lads from our travels!!! Hi Conor, Martin, Red and Mike!! With our time running out at a rapid rate because of a screw up by the Vietnamese Immigration department (we lost a week of our one month VISA) Kita and I opted to skip the town of Dalat (the honeymoon capital of Vietnam) and head straight to the hustle and bustle of Ho Chi Min City - we'll call it Saigon from here on in... Unfortunately our arrival in Saigon was marred first by the rest stop thast fed us dog meat at an unbelievably high price and then a 5 am arrival just after New Years so no rooms were available. After wandering for a couple hours we settled for a crappy little place with very little for walls to keep out the noise of drunken patrons and construction which started EARLY!!! One night was enough for us and we were back on the bus to spend the last couple of days left on our visa in Vung Tau. Too hell with Saigon - yuck!! Vung Tau unfortunately was a downer the first night as our guest house was miles from ANYTHING! - or so we thought. On a whim the next day we rented a motorbike to get around and a whole new world opened up to us!! Vunng Tau (which is normally packed on weekends ) was a quiet oasis for us to discover! We had a great time and spent an extra few days there instead of Saigon. But all good things must come to an end and we headed back to Saigon, with all it's noise and smells! Lucky for us we saw the Irish lads again and they wisked us off to King Kong to occupy our night. We finished our stay in Vietnam with a day boat tour through the Mekong and into Cambodia for some eye opeing history on genocide that shocked the world!! |