Vietnam
Trip Start
Nov 23, 2006
1
9
16
Trip End
May 29, 2007
Ho Chi Ming City, Vietnam
Wednesday, January 24, 2007
The next day we woke up and wondered round the city, its a complete contrast to Phnom Phen, instead of shanty steel huts and dirty tents, there's D&G, Louis Vuitton and Clarins, HCMC is on the up and it now has a cosmopolitan shopping district. Short on cash, having no income, we decided not to purchase a new suit and Josh decided against a new handbag. Instead we went bowling, it was Round 2. Dan had managed to refine his techinque and was hitting strike after strike, Josh was feeling the pressure and produced a poor performance. I was perfoming ok, the game finished and Dan had won, I was second, Josh was last. We played another game, this time I won, Dan was second, again Josh was last. But he still had 2 wins to his name.
The following day, we ventured into town again, this time we visted the War Remnants Museum. Similar to the Killing fields in Cambodia, it was another graphic history lesson, we got to see the fighter planes, helicopters and tanks used during the War in Vietnam. We also got to look round an old Vietnamese tourture prison. Inside the museum, there were gruesome photos of the war aswell as the victims, worst of all was 2 Jars containing 2 baby fetus' deformed by the chemicals used by the U.S. Not nice!
Later that evening we went out on the town, to a few bars and eventually ending up at 'Apocolypse Now' a club in the centre of the city. The drinks were the most expensive we've encountered in Asia and the club was'nt great, mostly full of old men looking for future wives.
On the monday we decided to travel down to the coast of Vietnam to Mui Ne. It was a four hour journey, and we checked into a hotel. The hotel was right on the beach, our room was luxury compared to everywhere else we've been (except the D&D Bangkok) we even had a balcony that overlooked the pool and the beach! We had arrived at around 1pm, only having a couple of days we decided to rent out some bikes, not motorbikes, Cycles. We headed towards Mui Ne's famous Red Sand Dunes, we didnt realise that it was 16km away but we got there evetually. Dozens of kids holding plastic matts surounded us asking us if we wanted to go sand sledding. Of course we did!! It was'nt as good as it sounds but it was still fun, the red sand dunes were amazing it was like being in the middle of a desert.
Waking up with sore arses from the cycling we could hardly walk, so we decide to rent scooters this time. Unlike the automatic scooters in Koh Samui these had gears and were brand new, mine had about 3000 miles on it, and they went some. We burned round the coast, our first stop was the Red Canyons. Due to the amount of sand and high winds on the coast, sand canyons are created making a mini grand canyon, it was pretty cool. (See Dans Travlepod) We skidded off towards the White Sand Dunes of Mui Ne, these were much better than the red dunes, it was like something out of Starwars, Josh and I ran around like Ewoks and made stupid noise's while jumping in the sand. Josh lost a flip-flop and had to struggle with one for the rest of the day.
Later in the day we rode over to the waterfall, which was also good fun, we had to walk up the stream for about twenty minutes until we finally got to the waterfall. I was quite hyper and ran most of the way, climbing up the sand banks and jumping into the red sand puddles, we're only here once though eh?!!
