Vietnam

Bangkok and Hanoi (Carly), Sun 08/10/2006 4:41 PM

Hi again people!

Its been ages and so I'm afraid I have a lot to say!!

Hanoi

Our plan was to stay 7 nights in Hanoi and the 7 in HoChi Minh City. But when we arrived here at the Hanoi Guesthouse the friendly girl behind the desk worked out a two week itinery for us. So now we have had 2 nights in Hanoi, tomorrow we go on a 2 day boat trip to Ha Long Bay (sleeping on the Chinese junk), then Tues night overnight train to Hue, three nights there then a 4 hour bus to Hoi An, three nights there then a plane back to Hanoi to connect with our flight to Ho Chi Minh City. Not only has she bought all of the tickets for us and arranged the boat tour but she also moved our flight to Ho Chi Minh City from the 14th to the 17th of October! It means that we will see everything we wanted to in Vietnam and much more! Also prob means I wont have time to write again for a while! It'll be tiring but after that we have a week on the beach in Thailand to chill out!

Yesterday afternoon we went for a walk around Hanoi's Old town. We were shocked at the traffic which seems even worse than Bangkok though here they all whizz around on motorbikes! Crossing the road is mission impossible as even when the pedestrian lights are green there are bikes turning or jumping the lights which don't seem concerned if they knock you over! We went to Ho Lam Kien Lake, the home of the tortoise-god who gave Le Loi (a Vietnamese hero) the magic sword. Le Loi then used the sword to drive out the Chinese invaders. Sadly though we did not manage to see the tortoise! The water puppet theatre was sold out so we bought tickets for this morning.

Like Bangkok it gets dark by 6pm so we had a dark adventure through the little streets where the pavements are covered by stalls, seats for food places or parked motorbikes leaving the road as the only option so we had to watch out for the whizzing motorcyclists some of whom do not appear to like using their lights! We had dinner in a restaurant that serves one meal - grilled fish! It was lots of fun as they bought a small burner with a pan on top with the fish in. The stir fry vegys were then added and we put white noodles and some for the bubbling mixture into small bowls and handled our chopsticks like pros! Delicious!

Then we walked around the weekend market which was setup down the middle of a long street! We got a bit lost on the way back as their are loads of tiny roads and lots of roads keep changing names along their length and our map did not show this very well! When we got back we watched a film (the island) so all in all a great start to Vietnam!

Today we have seen a water puppet show, been to Ho Chi Minh's Mausoleum (like Lenin his wishes were disregarded and his body has been turned into a tourist attraction - though we couldn't go in as they are refurbishing the mausoleum), seen Ho Chi Minh's house on stilts, been to the Ho Chi Minh museum (very interesting for us as we both studied Vietnam in A level history), the temple of literature which was the first university in Vietnam, seen the French prison 'maison centrale' nicknamed the 'Hanoi Hilton' by the yanks imprisoned there during the Vietnam War, and seen the French-built opera house which was dubbed the most impressive European building in Indochina. We also fitted in some shopping, had lunch on a boat restaurant on the edge of a huge lake and had dinner in a traditional Vietnamese restaurant (under 2 pounds each for a 3 course meal!). It's even cheaper here than in Thailand!

Needless to say we are loving Vietnam and I especially cannot wait for our boat trip tomorrow as Ha Long Bay looks beautiful!

Wow I think this email is now far too long! Sorry if you got bored half way through!

Love to all!

Carly xxx

Bangkok and my "first tour in 'Nam" (Adam), Sun 08/10/2006 5:06 PM

Hey Everyone,

Right now we are in Vietnam. Flew to Hanoi yesterday afternoon and we are both loving it here already. We bought flights in Bangkok so that we would have a week in Hanoi then fly to Ho Chi Minh City (formerly called Saigon) for a week then back to Bangkok. However when we arrived at out hotel here in Hanoi the very friendly lady at reception completely reorganised our lives so now we are going to see a lot more of Vietnam in the same 2 week slot. She said we only need two days to see Hanoi and we have done it yesterday and today. Tomorrow we are going on a two-day tour of Ha Long Bay, with an overnight stay on a luxury Chinese Junk. Then we come back to Hanoi to catch a train to Hue and stay there 3 days. Then it's a bus to Hoi An for 3 days then a bus to Da Nang to fly back to Hanoi. From there we will catch our next flight a few hours later to Ho Chi Minh City and stay there 4 days. All the buses and trains have been booked for us and they also recommended hotels in each place so everything is sorted. Unbelievably all this only cost us 80 pounds each (the overnight boat tour, overnight train, two buses and one flight)!! I love Vietnam.

Although Hanoi is relatively small (4 million people) and doesn't have that much to see, we have had a really good two days here. Yesterday we went for a walk around the lake in which a legendary magical tortoise supposedly resides. We ate dinner in a traditional Vietnamese restaurant: there is no menu, we were just given a card saying the only meal they serve is grilled fish! They bring the fish in a frying pan on a tiny coal-burning stove and then pile a bunch of green vegetables on top, a bowl of noodles and hey presto its ur meal. It turned out to be really really good. After that we took a walk through the night market, it opens from 6-12 most nights. As there are nowhere near as many tourists here as Bangkok the market is a lot more traditional and sells far less tourist tat so it was pretty interesting.

Today we saw a water puppet show. This is unique to Vietnam, it's a play performed with puppets but instead of a stage there is a pool of green water. The puppets are manouvred by poles under the water which u can't see and the puppeteers stand in waist high water behind the stage the whole time. The highlight of the show was the dragons that breathed fire, they had fireworks inside their mouths which shot out red sparks as they swam around.

Next we went to the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum, unfortunately it's currently closed for renovation but its the same deal as the Lenin one, Uncle Ho is embalmed in eerie communist fashion inside. On a cheerier note we went to see Ho's house, he lived for many years in a big yellow French style mansion but for the last ten years of his life he relocated to a tiny hut on stilts about 100 yards away. For those of u who don't know Uncle Ho, he was the leader of the Vietnamese Communist Party and lead the Vietnamese people in their struggle for freedom against the French and the war with America (Carly and I both studied the Vietnam war for A-level History so we are both really excited about seeing so many historical things here that we have read about). The Ho Chi Minh Museum was also pretty interesting, it has a replica of the house where Ho was born and lived as a child, it is a tiny one-room bamboo hut, amazing that he rose from such humble beginnings to lead his country successfully against two world superpowers.

Right almost there i promise, u don't have to read all this at once, feel free to take a breather and come back to it... The Van Mieu Temple of Literature is a Chinese-style Confucian temple but also Vietnam's first ever university. It has been an important centre for education for hundreds of years and educated the king's advisors back in the good old days (before Chinese, French and American occupations). We also saw what is left of Maison Centrale, the prison the French built to hold many hundreds of Vietnamese suspected of plotting a revolution. Ironically it was later used in the second Vietnam war against the USA to hold American POW's whereby it earned the name 'the Hanoi Hilton.'

Finally we just got back from dinner in another Vietnamese restaurant (well I say just but actually I've been tapping away at this for a good hour and a half now). The food was excellent, I had Vietnamese style spring rolls and noodles with pork. The dessert was pretty iffy tho, we ordered 'floating cakes' and 'glutinous cakes with honey'. Strangely enough the glutinous cakes tasted a little too much like boiled eggs but a bit more chewy and the floating cakes can only be described as Carly put it: "it's some kind of dumpling filled with.... grass?" Ok so obviously the Vietnamese are not so big on dessert... Although I bought some lychees from a street vendor yesterday and they were really tasty.

Hanoi is a weird and wonderful place, it has less than half the people of Bangkok but somehow seems just as busy. Where Bangkok is just clogged with never-ending queues of crawling taxis, buses and tuk-tuks (sometimes tuk-tuks whizz through the back streets which is exciting but more than a little unnerving), Hanoi has very few cars but about 4 million mopeds darting here, there and everywhere. Crossing the road is a bit like being Indiana Jones, u know when he dodges through the poison darts, u have to time each step perfectly, stopping in the gaps between mopeds. Most of them are actually motorbike taxis, they propel passengers through the busy streets with no concern for the safety of themselves, their passengers or anyone else. In the taxi here from the airport we nearly hit about 30 of them altogether and in turn we were almost run off the road by a bus. It seems that the rules of the road are a little more lax here than most places, subsequently it is hard to hear urself think above the cacophony of horns. Although this sounds awful it somehow adds to the charm of this crazy little city and it's definitely nice to be able to walk places after spending hours sitting in taxis in the sprawling metropolis that is Bangkok.

Anyway I think I better get to bed coz the bus is picking us up at 8 in the morning to take us to board our luxury junk. Its now almost 11 and we haven't had a lot of sleep this past week. We took the cheap option in Bangkok, rented a room with a ceiling fan rather than air-con, its a little like trying to sleep in a helicopter... I kept having nightmares and waking up thinking i was "in 'Nam" already! No seriously tho it was quite noisy. Hope everything is going well for all of u back home. Thanks to those of u who wrote back, its nice to hear some news and know ur doing ok back there.

Take it easy

Adam

STA travel docs (Carly), Tue 10/10/2006 10:16 AM

Hi Dad

Thanks so much for sorting that out!

We have just got back from our 2 day boat trip round ha long bay!

It was really beautiful. We swam in the sea off of the boat, explored a huge cave full of stalagmites and stalagtites, cruised around some of the 3000 islands and went kayaking in 2 people kayakas this morning!

Catching overnight train to Hue in a while!

Love Carly xxx

quick reply, longer one tomorrow (Adam), Tue 10/10/2006 10:34 AM

Hey Mum and Dad,

We are having such a fantastic time here in Vietnam. Just got back from Ha Long Bay and the tour there is one of the best things i have ever done. We got a tour of a large cave system on one of the islands, swam in the sea, went kayaking into Cat Ba National Park and I slept on the top deck of the boat for the night (no one else took up this offer so i was completely alone in almost total silence). It is the most beautiful place on earth, the only trace of civilisation is the five or six tiny floating villages where all the fishermen live. We swam near an oyster farm in the middle of a huge bay. There are over 2000 islands there and they are pretty much covered in forest so it looks amazing. The guides were excellent as well, really friendly and informative. We spent a lot of time talking to some australians and one of the guides called Hai (which translates as 'number 2'). He told us a lot about Vietnamese culture, especially in the rural villages. It is normal there for girls to marry at 13 and if they are not married by the time they're 17 they are over the hill!

The people here are so helpful, we are back in the hotel in Hanoi and the lady here has sorted out a hotel for us in Hue. When we get there they will ring and book us a room in Hoi An and get us a taxi to the bus station for free! This makes everything so much easier, no riding on public transport and spending ages staring at a map.

Anyway i will try to send some photos now maybe it will work who knows?

Speak to u soon

Love Adam xxx

Boat trip (Carly), Tues 10 October 2006 11:18

Hi Mum

Ntlworld strikes again so this is my second attempt at this email!

Its funny you mention the history teachers as I was saying to Adam the other day that we should email Mrs Green (now Mrs De Groot) to thank her. I think its best to wait until we leave Vietnam and then send a thank you email with a link to the website in case she is interested! Adam didn't think she'd remember him but I said as he got 100% in that module I'm sure she will!

Adam is sending photos now, we're back in Hanoi hostel waiting for the train and they are letting us use the computers showers etc for free!

Dad is such a star for sorting out STA for us and the website is looking great!

We think we will try to post our suits home, but if its really expensive do you think we should buy a hold-all to check them on the planes? Guess we can check it out in Singapore, do you think I should get more then?

We met some people who have been living in San Fran for 6 years and they said if we have time it is well worth driving into Yosemite park and out again on the roads that are open if we have time as its really beautiful even in winter. They said it would be a real shame to miss it!

The boat trip was absolutely amazing, Adam thinks its probably the best thing we have done so far on our travels! Ha Long Bay means dragon bay because the Vietnamese thought that the island-mountains look like a dragon sticking out of the water. They were formed by two earthquakes 8 million and 5 million years ago and are covered in green vegetation. The water was a beautiful green colour and we swam off the boat yesterday and this morning between 6 and 7am! The water was really salty so it was very buoyant and easy to float in! We met a couple from Rickmansworth who took a pic of us together and said they'll email it to you when they get home in 3 weeks (gave your ntl address).

Today we went kayaking which was lots of fun, we were in a double canoe and got pretty good for beginners! We paddled through some cave/tunnels in the mountains and didn't hit the sides too much!

Guess that will do, gotta get something to eat and our taxi will take us to train station in 45min. Overnight train to Hue for 3 nights, the girl hear booked us into a hotel "our friends" and they will pick us up at the train station which is a result! Apparently they like to pick you up here as there is so much competition and otherwise lots of customers get poached!

Lots of love Carly xxxxxxxxxxx

Quick reply (Carly), Wed 11 October 2006 13:38

The food here is mostly pretty good! They make good sandwiches - because of the French influence, and we found a boulangerie this morning and had pastries for breakfast. The only bad bit has been the chicken, it can be a bit stringy/fatty but i guess that's what you'd expect! The food on the boat trip was great, seafood and meat mostly but very good quality as they deal mostly with western tourists.

So no cat, dog or snake meat! They also eat eggs with half formed ducks inside and put snakes, porcupines and monkeys in bottles of rice wine for a year and then drink for medicinal purposes! Another remedy is hot snake blood, they cut the end of the tail off of a live snake and suck the blood out of it! Apparently its good for the back!

Ads had a moan about cereal today! He says he likes a "proper breakfast", the food this morning was apparently ok but in Bangkok we were having raisin bread for breakfast and apparently that is not filling enough for him!

Cxxx

Ha Long Bay (Adam) Fri, 13 Oct 2006

Hey Everybody!

Hope everything is cool at home and u r all enjoying yourselves.

Carly and I are having a great time in Vietnam. I think it has definitely overtaken Russia and even Germany as the best place we have been so far. There is so much to do and see here that I think two weeks is not really enough. Maybe I'll have to come back and see the rest in the future.

If I remember correctly I sent an email from back in Hanoi. Dad put that one that I sent just to him and mum on the website and I wrote a little about Ha Long Bay in it. I'll say a bit more about it in this one coz it really was the most beautiful place and we had such an enjoyable time there.

We took a bus from Hanoi at 8 in the morning for a 3 hour ride to Ha Long Bay. Our tour guide Ngoan (pronounced Wan) tells us a lot about Vietnamese rural life on the way to the harbour. There are many weird and wonderful customs here, not the least of which is the way they bury their dead. At first it's a straightforward coffin-in-the-ground job but after 3 years they are dug up and re-buried somewhere else. The bones are cleaned so that they don't have to put up with the smell of decay for eternity. If however the body is not completely decomposed in 3 years they bury it for another 3. If most of it is gone but say one arm remains they have to cut the flesh off the arm and clean the bones before re-burial. Pretty grim, these days they have a professional that does this but before it was down to the eldest son. Vietnamese religion has Buddhist influences but they only worship their ancestors so it is really important that their parents etc are buried properly and they build elaborate stone tombs for them.

The Vietnamese have their own version of Red Bull but theirs is centuries old. They kill a cobra and put it in a big jar of rice wine and leave it there for a year. After this they drink the wine and it supposedly gives them a big energy boost. They do the same with dogs, tiger cubs and even porcupines. Cobra blood is also considered to have healing powers so if someone is sick in the rural areas they may cut the tail from a cobra and drink the warm blood that drips out! Oh yeah and they do also eat dogs... and cats... but I haven't tried either of them... at least I don't think I have.

Anyway moving on. The boat was brilliant, the cabins have air-con and en-suite bathrooms and it's seafood all the way. The first day we took a trip into the so-called 'Amazing Cave' where a Vietnamese hero and General hid with his troops so that they could attack the Chinese invaders hundreds of years ago. The cave is big and filled with stalagtites and stalagmites. There are several rocks which vaguely resemble things e.g. a woman sitting down, a tiger... The tortoise one is pretty good tho but as it's the only one on the floor of the cave I suspect it may not be entirely natural.

Swimming off the boat was fantastic. The water there is perfectly still, warm and very salty so it's easy to float. I swam all the way to one of the islands and sat in the shallow water enjoying the silence. Getting into the water was not so peaceful tho, we jumped off the top deck of the boat (about 6m). It seems a lot higher from the top than the bottom but it was good fun and there's a lot of water to break the fall.

We spent the night chatting to the other passengers and one of the guides, Hai. He was even smaller than the average Vietnamese but he reckons that in Vietnam it's lucky to be short. He told us a lot about village life and marriage customs. It is usual for village girls to be married at 13 here and start having kids straight away. Also the marriages are normally arranged to unite two villages. Hai also told us that he has climbed the highest mountain in the country, Fansipan, no less than four times. The recommended time to get to the summit is 4 days but he has done it in 3!

We were given the option to sleep upstairs on deck under the stars but I was the only one that took it up. It was so quiet up there that I slept really easily and the view first thing in the morning was amazing. I sat in perfect tranquility for half an hour before ruining it by jumping off the deck again at about 6am. Later on we went kayaking into Cat Ba National Park. We went through a few caves to get into a lagoon completely enclosed by cliffs. Apparently there is a species of monkey here that lives nowhere else on earth but we only saw a few jellyfish. Ngoan told me that there were thousands more jellyfish a few months ago but "Now is not season for make jellyfish family." I am pretty glad of this when she tells me they are deadly and the nearest hospital is too far away for even a chance of survival. One French lady falls out of her kayak when we r almost back at the boat so she has to swim the rest of the way. It's very dangerous to fall out coz u can't get back in and might have to swim a long way.

Ok so that will do for now, finally I managed to write a (relatively) short one. I'll write another one for Hue separately so u lot don't have to read it all at once.

Hope everything is well

Adam

Hey from Hue (Adam), Fri, 13 Oct 2006 15:54

Me again,

We have spent the last 3 days in Hue, a small city roughly in the middle of Vietnam. It used to be the capital in the time of the great Nguyen Emperors. We have a great hotel room here with a computer hence all the emails. First day here we took a walk to the Citadel on the other side of the Perfume River. When Hue was the imperial capital most of the city was contained inside the walls of the citadel. The walls are 20m thick and 10km long altogether. There are several gates but the main one was made famous in 1968 during the Tet Offensive. Hue was occupied by the Americans but the Viet Minh Army launched coordinated attacks in all the major cities during the New Year's Eve cease-fire. They captured the citadel from the Americans and raised their flag above the main gate where it stayed for 25 days despite the best efforts of the world's biggest superpower. Much of the damage from the American bombardment is still sadly evident inside the citadel but there is an ongoing restoration project bringing it back to its former glory.

The main gate has 5 entrances, a central one for the Emperor is flanked by 2 gates for mandarins (court officials) and 2 larger ones for elephants. Carly and I managed to cross the Bridge over Golden Waters which according to our guidebook only emperors could cross, therefore we must now be emperors I spose... Inside the Outer Wall is the Inner Wall (makes sense I guess). Inside the inner wall is the Forbidden Purple City. The only people allowed inside here were the Emperor, his wife, his concubines and the eunuchs (men without bits) that served them. The reason for the eunuchs is to ensure that the emperor's women were never unfaithful and thus all his children were definitely his.

The Forbidden Purple City must have been breathtaking back in the day but now there are only 6 or 7 buildings really intact where previously there were over 60. The theatre is the most impressive of the lot, it is mostly red with gold dragons on the columns and walls. Unfortunately there were not enough people there to merit a performance of traditional music and dancing so we missed out there. Aside from this there is the Temple of the Generations which is dedicated to the worship of 9 Nguyen Emperors.

Yesterday we took a boat trip on the Perfume River. The water there is very calm but the boat was very noisy so it wasn't all that relaxing. We had a bunch of stops along the river to see various temples and a select few of the Nguyen tombs. The Thien Mu (Perfume) Pagoda is a 7 storey pagoda with a bell that can supposedly be heard 6 miles away. The most impressive of the tombs was the Tomb of Khai Dinh. It combines Vietnamese traditional architecture with French influences as it was built in the 20th century under French occupation. Some of the rooms are decorated in sombre grey marble while others are covered in colourful porcelain mosaics of dragons. The other notable tomb is that of Emperor Minh Mang. It is the biggest of the lot and has the most picturesque surroundings. On either side of it are large lakes filled with lotus flowers.

And now today. We took a bus tour of Quang Tri Province, the area around the 17th parallel which was supposed to be a demilitarised zone during the 2 year period of separation before the French left Vietnam. In order to stop the hostilities the French army retreated to the South where they had installed a puppet president (Diem) in Saigon and the Viet Minh Army moved into the North.

So many Vietnamese men had to leave their wives and children behind in the South. When the French left the Americans stepped in to back Diem because they didn't want the communist Viet Minh taking over the country. US troops later burned a lot of villages in Quang Tri Province and in the South because they were suspected of hiding the Viet Minh soldiers who crossed the 17th parallel to fight.

The next stop was the Vinh Moc tunnel network. This network has 2km of tunnels in which 100-200 people lived between 1966 and 1972. They had everything down there including meeting rooms, kitchens and maternity rooms. 17 children were born in this particular underground village and lived their first years underground in the dark. The only time anyone left the tunnels was to get supplies or to go on missions against the Americans. Above ground they only walked in trenches because the American air force constantly dropped bombs in the area trying to destroy the tunnels.

Elsewhere in the country there were much larger networks: the Cu Chi network near Saigon was exclusively for fighting and was in use for 20 years, men popped out of the ground to attack and disappeared again before the enemy knew what was going on. The Vinh Moc tunnels are very narrow and low but they are well ventilated due to the lower tunnels having clever entrances facing the sea so that a breeze constantly blows through.

Khe Sanh Combat Base was considered important by the Americans during the war although it held no tactical significance. They stationed a lot of troops there as they believed it would make or break the war for them. As a result the Viet Minh attacked them doggedly there and kept vanishing into the surrounding jungle. Many American soldiers described Khe Sanh as 'Hell on Earth.' Eventually the attacks became so bad that the Americans withdrew and soon after that the war ended.

We also saw a bit of the Ho Chi Minh Trail, a network of dirt paths which the Vietnamese used to smuggle supplies from China and Laos by bicycle. Despite endless attempts to destroy it by bombing the Americans couldn't beat the Vietnamese here either as they always repaired the trail and changed the routes. This lead to the use of 'Agent Orange' a chemical compound dropped by US planes to kill off the vegetation and expose the Viet Minh. It was supposed to be harmless to humans but many Vietnamese children are still born deformed or develop cancer in areas where contamination was bad. There are also still areas where nothing grows because the chemical is still in the soil.

For a people that have been through so much tragedy it is incredible to see how accepting and friendly the Vietnamese are to foreign visitors (even Americans). They have moved on from the war and now have the freedom they fought to get for hundreds of years against the Chinese, French and US. They are really remarkable for this ability to forgive and forget.

Anyway this is getting a little too profound and I am tired so I'll leave u all here.

Take it easy

Adam

Our adventures continue in Vietnam! (Carly), Mon 16/10/2006 12:27 PM

Hello again!

Its only been a few days but I have so much to tell you all about!

Firstly our boat trip to Ha Long Bay. It is the most beautiful place that I have ever seen in my life! We had a really friendly guide who told us lots of interesting things about Vietnam. For instance they eat cat, dog and snake here! They make 'rice wine' which despite the name is like a spirit and often a cobra, a porcupine or a baby monkey is bottled in rice wine for a year before being used as medicine. Another popular remedy for back ache is to drink hot snake blood. This is done by cutting the end of the snake's tail off and sucking out the blood! Luckily neither of us has been sick!!! We had a really friendly group on the boat, including as couple from Rickmansworth - small world! We visited a huge cave with stalagmites and stalagtites and were told about the legend of the cave by another guide, Mr Hai. Hai was really funny especially when he was telling us about the bamboo prince who lived in the cave while he was fighting the Chinese and then rose to the heavens once they had fled. This gave the cave its name "the heavens". Poor Hai had such a difficult accent that most people did not understand him at first. We had to sympathise with him after all legend does look like it would be said "leg end"! After the cave we went swimming off of the boat in a really calm bay. Adam jumped from the third floor of the boat, but I (more sensibly) jumped in from the first level! The water was lovely. It was really warm and bouyant so it was hardly any effort to swim around! Adam and an Australian guy, Anthony, swam off towards one of the mountains.

The guide shouted after them be careful the rocks are sharp. They thought she said be careful of the sharks, assumed she was joking and carried on anyway! On the second day we went kayaking around Cat Ba National Park in 2man kayaks. Neither of us had done it before but we soon got the hang of it! It was great fun especially when we were paddling through caves and small tunnels! We went through one very small passage into a lagoon where we saw a poisonous jelly fish, and tried to look out for the rare monkeys with yellow and white heads which only live in this national park. Our guide said there are only 70 of them left, we didnt see any and wondered whether she was winding us up as Anthony told us the day before that him and Adam had seen purple monkeys on the island they swam to! Our trip was over all too soon and we really wished we had opted for the two night version, with a night on the beach resort. Still something to do when we return to Vietnam!

The overnight train to Hue was fine, not as good as the one in Russia but quite comfortable and we both slept well. Our hotel in Hue was amazing, by far the most luxurious place we've stayed in, we had our own computer with free internet in the room! Now you're probably wondering why I didnt write from there.... truth is we were just too busy! The old citadel in Hue used to be the main residence of the Emperors during French occupation. Unfortunately much of it was destroyed by a fire in 1947 and the Tet offensive in 1968. The government has realised its potential for tourism and have started a huge restoration project. The bits we saw were beautiful and it will be lovely when its finished! We took a dragon boat tour along the perfume river where we saw the Perfume pagoda, a small temple and the tomb complexes of three emperors. The tombs were huge with lots of temples, shrines, ponds, lakes and pagodas inside. They were often built during the emperor's life time and they used to go there to relax. In Emperor Ming Mang's tomb the actual location of his body was such a big secret that the 200 peasants who helped to bury him were later beheaded!

The best day in Hue was when we went on the DMZ tour. They took us out to the Vinh Moc tunnels where 100-200 people lived for 6 years underground! We got to climb through the tunnels (which were a little small for us!) and saw the tiny family rooms which were about 1m high, 1m wide and 2m deep. I could not imagine sleeping down there, it must have been awful! Outside the whole area was covered with bomb craters so I guess they had no other option! Amazingly none of the 13 entrances to the tunnels were ever hit, though we did see some very near misses! The Ho Chi Minh trail was a little disappointing as its been turned into a motorway! There's lots more we could have done in Hue so we'll have to return one day!

We are now in Hoi An which is a much smaller town. The old part is beautiful especially the Assembly hall which had huge dragon fountains, red columns covered with dragons, shrines and a lovely garden out the back. The food here is probably the best we have had in Vietnam (except on the boat). We have tried all of the local specialities, white rose (shrimp dumplings), fried wontons and cau lao (noodles, meat and fresh mint).

Yesterday we went on a complimentary tour of My Son, an ancient Champa temple complex. The Champa people traded with India and so built Hindu temples. The temples were based at My Son from the 4th-13th centuries. The original temples were wooden and in the 7th century these were replaced with brick and sand stone ones. Many of the temples we saw were from the 7th, 10th or 13th centuries. They were remarkable as no mortar is visablke between the bricks. there have been a number of theories as to how the temples were built and at the moment the most popular one is that they used tar. Once again our tour guide was a funny guy! He tried to frighten us on the way by telling us that the driver had a very good licence as it was very expensive! In the afternoon we decided to walk to the beach. Probably a mistake as it was further than we thought and took us an hour to get there! Still it was worth the walk, beautiful white sand and blue sea. The Vietnamese made us laugh as they were all going in fully clothed, even the ones wearing jeans!

A fruit seller called Sun-Sun (who was very keen on Adam) told us that they did this to wash their clothes! Today we went out to Marble Mountain which is covered with pagodas and Buddhist temples. The caves in the mountain were used by the VC as a hospital during the war and the Buddhas carved in the stone walls were spectacular. We really enjoyed the mountain, even though it was way too hot to be clambering about! When we went down our taxi driver kept trying to get us to go into the marble shops. At one point I thought he was going to refuse to leave until we bought something but we held firm.

Our next stop was nearby China Beach which was even more beautiful than the one in Hoi An. Unfortunately our cheeky driver had dropped 2 other people there earlier and only let us stay for 20 mins! We were pretty annoyed especially as most of our time was wasted trying to get rid of the people from a marble shop who were very persistent! Back at the hotel he even had the cheek to ask us for a tip! We complained about him and so have not been charged the extra to go to the beach but we would have rather paid and been able to stay longer!

Now I'd best finish as there is a festival in the old town tonight and we're going to check it out!

Love Carly xxx

Hey everyone! (Adam), Wed 01/11/2006 8:12 AM

Hey boys and girls,

Hope everything is going well for all of you.

It's been a while since the last email all the way back in Hue. Now we are in Singapore so I'll try to fill u in on the past few weeks i guess. From Hue we went further South to the small fishing village of Hoi An. It used to be a thriving port so the culture there is more diverse than other parts of Vietnam and has a lot of Japanese influence. We enjoyed our stay there a lot. The main things to see in the village are traditional houses which u can take a tour of and there are a few temples as well. Most impressive was the Fujian Assembly Hall which had these big fountains with dragons winding around each other squirting water from their mouths.

From Hoi An we took a few day trips to nearby attractions. First was My Son, a bunch of temples from the Champa kingdom (what is now South Vietnam). The Champa people did a lot of trade with India so many of them were Hindu and the temples are in the Hindu style. They date back as far as the 7th century and are still intact despite being built with bricks stuck together with tar rather than cement!

We walked to the beach at Hoi An for one afternoon. Bit of a mistake as it turned out to be a lot further and we had to walk back too as there were no taxis there! I went for a swim but the tide was pretty strong. Before we left we witnessed the Vietnamese doing their laundry - apparently it is customary to run into the sea fully-clothed after work to clean ur clothes! Personally i wore swimming shorts.

We spent an afternoon visiting Marble Mountain and China Beach just outside Hoi An. Marble Mountain is one of five huge rock formations sticking out of the otherwise flat plain between Hoi An and Da Nang. It has a network of caves inside where originally Champa and then Buddhist Temples were carved. There are Buddhist statues hidden in little caves all over the mountain. During the war with America it was used as a Viet Minh hospital so many wounded soldiers were dragged up the mountain to be treated. Unfortunately the Americans found it in April 1968 and many men were killed on both sides as they fought in the caves, there are lots of bullet holes still visible today.

There are also a number of temples built on the outside of the mountain, some of which are pretty big. The highlight of the trip was climbing to the summit, I had to go alone because getting to the top requires squeezing through a tiny hole in the top of one of the caves and then climbing a steep rocky path outside. Reaching the top was almost as surreal as the Lenin Mausoleum - first thing i saw was a monk sitting cross-legged in meditation on a rock right on the edge of the cliff, then when i looked round i saw another monk taking a picture of him with a camera phone! How bizarre. After the mountain we stopped at China Beach but only for half an hour as our driver already agreed to take some other people back to Hoi An so he could make some extra money - that didn't work out for him though as we refused to pay. We got the same driver next day to take us to the airport and he asked us for the money again which was pretty cheeky.

Next stop was Saigon (now called Ho Chi Minh City, although no one uses that name). I never thought i would say this but this city is even more busy than Bangkok. There is an insane number of mopeds here and it is impossible to get away from the noise and smoke. Thankfully we sorted out a few day trips out of the city coz i think staying there for 4 days would drive anyone to insanity.

First trip out is to the Cao Dai Temple and Cu Chi Tunnel Network. We have a stop in the morning as the coach journey is pretty long, they take us to a handicrafts centre where disabled people carve these amazing ornaments and pictures out of wood and seashells. It is a government initiative to give employment to the people who are still born deformed today as a result of America's supposedly safe 'agent orange' (the chemical the Americans dropped over the jungles of Vietnam to kill off the vegetation so the Viet Minh would have nowhere to hide.) Next stop was the Cao Dai Holy See, headquarters of the weirdest religion in the world. Cao Dai is a mixed religion meaning they worship the gods and prophets of every other religion u can think of. Their main temple is a crazy, colourful building covered in cartoonish dragons and statues of Jesus, Buddha, Mohammed etc. The weirdest thing is their choice of saints: a Vietnamese revolutionary; the Chinese statesman Sun-Yat-Sen; and the French author Victor Hugo! Another very surreal place to visit.

If u remember i wrote about the Vinh Moc tunnels in my last email i think. They were pretty narrow and low, very claustrophobic. The Vinh Moc tunnels were like an underground village and their inhabitants mostly used them to hide from bombs, ground troops were very rarely in that area. Cu Chi on the other hand is in the South of Vietnam near Saigon. It was surrounded by American soldiers during the war and patrols went through every day. The villagers there refused to give themselves up and continued farming when there were no enemy soldiers around. When the Americans came they hid in the tunnels, taking shots at them through tiny holes and leaving booby traps for them in the rainforest. Our guide at Cu Chi showed us an entrance to the tunnel system there and gave us the opportunity to try it out, i could just about squeeze into the hole but there wasn't enough space for me to straighten out and crawl into the tunnel below. The entrance is covered by a piece of wood and leaves so there is no way anyone could find it unless they know exactly where to look. Further on we saw some of the traps used against American troops; one particularly brutal one was a trapdoor in the ground with bamboo spikes below it. Other traps were designed to wound the Americans and slow them down so the retreating Viet Minh could come back and kill them one at a time. We entered the tunnels through an enlarged entrance and crawled through 40metres of the first level. At first i could get through in a crouch but further on i had to crawl on my hands and knees. There are no lights like in Vinh Moc so i couldn't even see Carly in front of me. There are 3 levels of tunnels at Cu Chi, the second level is too small for westerners and the third is so small that most Vietnamese cannot get through there now. During the war they survived on Tapioca roots and rice alone so they were small and thin enough to crawl through the smallest tunnels. The Vietnamese army are still trained in sections of the Cu Chi tunnels today and 200 km of tunnels are still intact in the area.

Our second trip out of Saigon was into the Mekong River Delta. Any of u who have seen Apocalypse Now have seen the Mekong River and trust me it is just as beautiful in real life as in the movie (actually prob more so as there are no bombs flying around these days). The Delta is at the most Southern tip of Vietnam and the Mekong River is the longest in Asia as it goes North through Cambodia. We make a few stops in the Delta to see examples of rural life here. First is a small factory where rice paper and coconut candy are made by hand. After that they showed us how to make pop-rice and combine it with sugar cane to make Vietnamese rice crispy squares. Back on the boat we were taken to a village for lunch which was elephant-ear fish in rice paper pancakes, very good indeed. After lunch we were allowed to take a bike and explore the village in our own time. There wasn't a lot going on really but it was pretty cool to see how simple their lives are. Our guide said that people there are happy and content because they all have jobs and earn enough to keep their families.

Across the river we got a tour of the brick factory where Vietnamese women make clay bricks in big kilns. Then we were taken to Vinh Long market which was a pretty disturbing experience. They have all kinds of exotic foods there and local people go there and buy them just like at any other market, however there's one big difference: most of the food is still alive! There are tanks full of shrimps, snails, frogs, terrapins, eels and snakes all still very much alive. I saw a woman go up to one of the stalls, jabber away in Vietnamese, the stallholder took a handful of snakes, bunged them in a plastic bag, weighed it and handed it over. The satisfied customer hands over the cash and stuffs the snakes into her handbag, still wriggling.

Carly wasn't feeling too well that night so i went out by myself to get some dinner and took a walk around Saigon. Its just as crazy at night as it is during the day and i got hassled by the usual motorbike-taxi drivers lining the pavement. At every restaurant i walked past the waiters tried to coax me in and every rickshaw driver that saw me followed me for at least 100ft constantly asking where i am goin and trying to get me to take a ride. All of this is perfectly normal in Vietnam and Thailand but what i didn't expect was to be offered marijuana by a shady looking Vietnamese guy standing on the only quiet street i saw in Saigon. And i definitely didn't expect the Vietnamese woman who followed me down the next street saying: "Hey mister u want wife?" over and over again. I have seen hundreds of western guys (normally old) with young Vietnamese women since we arrived here and i often wondered how they meet, now i know.

Anyway that is all i have to say about Saigon. I'll write another email in a minute to cover Ko Chang and the few extra days we spent in Bangkok then i'll be pretty much up to date.

Take it easy

Adam

The next installment! (sorry about the length!) (Carly) Wed 01/11/2006 9:25 AM

Hi everyone!

Last time I wrote we were still in Vietnam so I'm afraid as usual I have quite a lot to say!

Vietnam

Our last night in Hoi An was good although the tourism festival was a bit of a let down. We thought as tourists we'd be allowed in but unfortunately it was for APEC delegates only! Still we found a bar on the opposite side of the river and had a good view of the stage where there was lots of traditional dancing (including a few Chinese dragons).

From Hoi An we flew down to Ho Chi Minh City. We were staying in a very touristy area in Saigon which was handy for the day trips! We only had three days there so we spent one day in the city. We saw the Harbour, the reunification palace and the Notre Dame Cathedral. The traffic in Saigon is the worst of anywhere we have been. There are cars, buses and thousands of motorbikes all struggling to get through and once again the rules of the road (if they have any in Vietnam) are interpreted flexibly! Crossing the road can be a bit of an adventure there too! We found the Hotel Continental which is one of the settings in a book set in Saigon called "The Quiet American". Adam bought a copy from one of the street sellers. There is not really much to do in Saigon itself and Adam was disappointed to find that it is very similar to other cities all over the world. Before arriving in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam had been the first place in the world where we had not seen a Pizza Hut, KFC, Citibank or Deutche Bank, but we saw them all in HCMC. We didn't spot a McDonalds but I'm sure there was at least one! It was a shame to find Saigon so Americanized but I guess that was inevitable after the Americans were there for so long!

On our second day we went on a tour to the Main Coa Dai Temple and the tunnels at Cu Chi. Cao Dai is a very strange religion which draws on Buddhism, Hinduism, Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Taoism and Confucianism. They have a Pope, female priests and worship a hoard of saints including Buddha, Christ, Vishnu, Moses, Mohammad,Shiva, Confucius, Sun-Yat-Sen (Chinese hero) and Victor Hugo. The Temple was beautiful inside and out. Its really colourful; yellow, red and blue represent Buddhism, Taoism and Confucianism respectively and robes of those colours are worn by monks who have served over 30, 20 or 10 years. God is represented by an eye in a pyramid and the pillars inside the temple are encircled by colourful dragons. After the temple we went to Cu Chi were we crawled through the tiny tunnels which the Viet Minh used to hide from or ambush the Americans. We saw a vast array of different traps made from bamboo or the metal shrapnel from US bombs and I was very glad that there were no more hidden in the ground for us to fall into! There were three levels of tunnels those nearest the ground were high enough for the Vietnamese to run through bent over. The second tier were lower so they had to squat down and hop along or crawl on their hands and knees and the third level was so tiny that they had to crawl along on their tummies. We were only allowed to go into the first level as westerners cannot fit in the lower ones! Even up there we found that at some points we had to crawl very low on our hands and knees! It was very dark in the tunnels with only an occasional lamp and much more extreme than the tunnels near Hue. Outside again we tried some tapioca - boiled roots of trees, which the Vietnamese had to eat because they could not get enough rice for all of the fighters at Cu Chi.

Our final day in Vietnam was spent on the Mekong Delta. It is really beautiful and looks just like the films you see of the Vietnam war. We went on a boat ride to a place where they make sweets from coconut milk and "pop-rice" (rice crispy cakes). Unfortunately I wasn't feeling to good so had to turn down the offer of rice wine! It was a shame as I had been dying to try some, but probably for the best as it was a bit early to start drinking. We had lunch in a village of little islands and were given rickety old bikes to go cycling on after. It was much too hot to go far and the breaks were a bit suspect but it was good fun! On the way back we stopped at a brick making factory where we were told the average wage was a pound a day. Our guide assured us that this was plenty as the workers only need about 50p for their 3 meals, but it didn't look like much fun. We also went to the Vihn Loc Market which was pretty disgusting. They sell frogs, snakes, terrapins, shrimps, lobsters and snails all live! It looked really cruel too, the frogs where all piled on top of each other and tied down by their legs so they couldn't hop away.

(......continued on Thailand page.....)

Love Carly xxx

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