CENTRAL VIETNAM COAST 25/4/09

The Cham Empire ruins at My Son

Busy making 'antiques' in Hoi An

Crowd seeking the shade at Danang football stadium

Hoi An high street

Poor week for Western, as one of his guides thought he was 57. Ell also took a bit of a bodyblow, when someone called her Harry Potter (thats the 2nd time on this trip, and the 3rd overall - the first being 2 outside Upton park when she accidentally held up the queue for burgers).

After the initial frustrations over bus transport in Vietnams Mekong Delta, (see breaking point entry) we have very much landed back on the tourist trail. The coastal route is a well trodden path and various private bus companies pick you up at your hotel and drop you at their sister hotel next town north or south. It makes for very comfortable and easy travel and should be appreciated before we start to loosen things up a bit later in the trip. Notable highlights have been the 19th and 20th century Emporers' Citadel and tombs in Hue, the beautifully preserved trading port of Hoi An - where Fanny and Heston did another day at cookery school and our first live football game of the trip - top of the table Danang versus a Saigon-based side. 1-0 to Danang with the winner in the 93rd minute. A well-natured crowd of 15,000 spent much of the game laughing at the ineptitude of their attackers as gilt-edged chances were discarded a la Zamora. Needless to say, no crowd segregation or stewards just police in riot gear. We treated ouurselves to top seats which cost $1.25. The cheapest were those behind the goal in the full sun at 60cents.

Cookery school was very good. Fresh rice paper rolls, vietnamese pancakes, aubergine clay-pot and fnally some over fussy tomato peeling decoration - it should have looked like a rose, but Western's more resembled a pile of discarded tomato skin. At the moment, we are in Na Trang, Vietnam's premier dive location - we opted for a snorkelling trip instead which provided us with great visibility and a healthy siting of tropical favourites, such a trigger fish, angel fish, parrott fish, clown fish, butterfly fish, and puffer fish.

Big day tomorrow, we have hired 2 of the infamous 'Easy Rider' bikers to take us up into the central highlands on a 3 day spectacular. We have met that many travellers who have said its the best thing they have done here that we feel compelled to don the leathers and take this trip.

El has just realised that all of the statues we have been seeing around the country are not Col. Sanders but Uncle Ho (Chin Min).

GREETINGS FROM HUE 16/04/09

Home delivery

Mr Lin, motorcycle guide, took us to the DMZ, north of Hue, an area again where you need to stay on the path, due to the volume of unexploded ordnance

Viet cong tombs in the 'De Militarized Zone'

The tomb of Khai Dinh - Nguyen emperor, complete with his armies for the afterlife

The tomb of Minh Mang

Tomb of Tu Duc

Considering how much time we are spending together, there have been very few arguments, however yesterday words were exchanged. Western commented that the style of one of the royal tombs was reminiscent of older european buildings, which Kiss found absurd. "B****cks Ell, you cant tell me thats not rococco"... I think it must have been the heat - architectural styles dont normally get to me.

FROM THE LAND OF THE DONG 9-12/04/09

The Reunification Palace - Ho Chi Minh City

I will never again complain about BT wiring

One of the many striking pagodas in Cholon district - HCMC

The general on a cyclo

The young jockeys of Saigon

Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon), sprawling, international and on the move. We visited the strikingly handsome Reunification Palace, which has pretty much been left in the same state as it was when North Vietnamese tanks crashed through the main gates in April '75. As per usual on arriving in a city, Western and Kiss have done a fair bit of walking, but occassionally we would hop onto a cyclo - a great mode of transport , a reclining seat fixed to the front of a bicycle.

We won some dong at the races last sunday, enough to pay at least for our bus journey up to the racecourse and back. The horses are small, but the stakes are huge, and the jockeys are barely out of nappies.

Food was great, feasted on snake - served up rather ammusingly with onions - tasted a bit like chicken, and we found a top Italian place which served up the best pasta we have had since we left. The restaurant was unimaginatively called 'Good Morning Vietnam'. We are still desperately trying to find a couple called Fi & Stan to hang out with! There has been less dog on the menu than we'd anticipated - but we are on the look out for a 'quarterhounder' and a 'spaghetti poochanesca', anyone with any other suggestions?!

Last month in Phnom Penh, we had sorted out our Vietnam visa in a day, so we were a tad disappointed to find out that in HCMC, a straightforward extension would take 4 days, and that it would cost $25, eventhough its true price is$10. Its a complete rip off, with immigration officers refusing to process your claim directly, insisting you go through one of their designated travel agents, between the 2 parties, they take $15. Thieves.

BREAKING POINT! 09/04/09

Floating markets in the Mekong delta

Delicious jackfruit

Everybody has one? Mine revealed itself in a bus station outside Ho Chi Minh City, rain hammering down, with Western running around desperately trying to find the right bus to get us the final 10 kms into town. Boarded about 7 of them, all wrong eventhough I was assured that they were all ok.... finally I was instructed that bus number 2 was the one we needed.....except there was no driver and the doors were closed - I turned my back for what must have been 10 seconds and in that time the driver had gotten on board with about 10 customers and was driving out of the station, I chased him down banging on the side of the bus, but the bugger kept going. I'm not going to tell you what I said, because you can probably guess but I reached a volume never attained before as I stood there saturated and with my luminous, green 'waterproof' backpack cover, like a fuming kermit the frog. This little incident followed a rather forgettable 133km journey that involved 3 different buses - all of them crap for different reasons. This has come early into our Vietnamese travels and judging by how comfortable most tourists feel Vietnam is, I can only guess that on this particular day, getting out of the Mekong Delta was not the norm. I found one person who I could converse with - all be it, in a rather laboured fashion ('dont you speak any English AT ALL?'). We have now mastered numbers 1 to 10 and some rudimentary phrases such as "Which chuffing bus do we need to get?"

The previous few days had been excellent, we travelled through the Mekong Delta and after just under 3 months from first seeing the Mekong in the Laotion capital Vientianne, we finally said goodbye to this beauty in Vinh Long, Vietnam - one of the world's greats. The delta is so fertile it provides Vietnam with all its rice plus a fair surplus and the fruit and veg markets are wonderfully rich. Mangoes, papayas, rambutan, durian, jack fruit, plums, pineapple, dragon fruit, avocados, oranges, clementine and fish, fish, fish, fresh or dried. Mangoes 75c per kilo, our bodies as we speak are made up of about 50% mango and we have taken on an orange hue.

A HOLIDAY FROM A HOLIDAY

Well we have finally hauled our lazy backsides off Phu Quoc Island, after 2 intense weeks of eating seafood and wallowing in the warm shallow waters. I know you dont believe us, but these 'holidays from a holiday' are essential on an extended trip! The island will develop rapidly, and an international airport is being lined up, so we feel pretty fortunate to have seen it now. The beaches don't compare with the Indian ocean, and the water is not the blue of the Caribbean, but its a very chilled place to spend a few days.

DAY 10 IN 'NAM

Coracle fishing boats on Phu Quoc - Southern Vietnam

Turtle island - an excellent dive site (weather permitting)

Phu Quoc market, home to arguably South east Asia's finest fish sauce

Doughnuts

Ao dai - old style dress

A 3 mango day

A+E department

Long beach on Phu Quoc

Ell finds day after day with Western just a touch too trying!

Squid fishing - the one that got away

The one that the boat owner caught

We haven't exactly been pushing ourselves here, as we have found a great island just inside the Vietnamese border called Phu Quoc - very relaxing, with excellent seafood and cheap beer. I can seee our 1 month visa disappearing here.

We went squid fishing - not a sausage! - and have a couple of days diving under our belt - where we saw cuttlefish, baby shark, scorpion fish and some truly beautiful hard coral formations - Oh yes, and a really fat grouper squeezed into a sponge coral, quite a sight.

75p buys us a pint of Saigon Beer, and $5 purchases a large snapper, $3 equals 4 large prawns and $1.25 gets us a wonderful bowl of beef noodle soup. The toughest decision of the day is whether to take 2 or 3 mangoes from the beach-seller. My brain is fast turning to pate. Its very laid back, the only tension arising when the massage ladies tussle over who gets to work on Western.