Vietnam

Trip Start Nov 22, 2006

Trip End Jul 26, 2007

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Flag of Vietnam Ho Chi Minh and Hanoi, Vietnam
Wednesday, June 13, 2007

Our first day in Ho Chi Minh we just spent wandering around and trying to stay alive crossing the roads - really cool city! The next day we went to Cu Chi Tunnels! It turned out to be the most irritating tour - we went an hour and a half past the tunnels to go a temple called the Caodai Great Temple. It was really colourful and looked kind of cartoon like! There was some ceremony going on while we were there and was a mix of 3 religions - Buddhism, Islam and Christianity! It was a waste of time as there were about a million tourists inside the temple and we stayed there for about 15 minutes - very unimpressed, a waste of 3 hours of our life! Finally, we reached the Cu Chi Tunnels! We watched some propoganda film made in the 60s when we first arrived - lots of bad mouthing of Americans! We walked around the whole Cu Chi area and saw the entrances to the tunnels, fake entrances, traps, rooms and model soldiers! The actual entrance to the tunnels was so tiny and the traps were so gruesome

Amazing Halong Bay

! It's amazing that the Vietnamese won using such basic, guerrilla warface, while the Americans had all the technology. There was a huge hole in the ground where the Americans had dropped a B52 bomb! We had the chance to walk through one of the tunnels, it was so narrow and dark, we got a bit in, but claustrophobia struck and we got out fast!! God knows how they spent such long periods of time underground in the tunnels - they even gave birth down there! Such an interesting day!
We decided we were quite pushed for time as we had to travel at Will and Caroline's pace as they were leaving on 24th June, so we flew to Hanoi! We spent the evening checking out Hanoi, which is so crazy, but really cool! Bangkok seems like a little village compared to Hanoi! The next day we had our suits fitted at the tailors - very snazzy! We had a very interesting meal that night - the translation on the menu was so bad that no one knew what they were ordering, so we each picked something from the menu and hoped for the best! The next day we were picked up early to go to Halong Bay! Drove to a city called Haiphong, which is the 3rd biggest city in Vietnam. We got on our boat and went to an amazing cave - it was enormous and had loads of sculptures inside! After that we sailed around the islands for a bit - there are 1,169 altogether and they are stunning and so dramatic! We got dropped off on Cat Ba Island which is the only island you can stay on - we planned to spend a couple of days here for some chilled out beach time

Bit more like my size!

! The drive from the port to the town was so pretty and showed how green and lush the island actually is, but the town itself - oh my god! It looks like Southend - very tacky, loads of rude people everywhere, murky, dirty water - I actually think Southend is nicer! We had a really fun day at the beach though playing in the sea, except me and Caroline got scratched by being dragged along the sea bed because the sea was so rough! The final straw was when Caroline got peed on by a little boy - we decided one day on Cat Ba was plenty and decided to head back to Hanoi - we left the next morning and sailed back to Hanoi through the islands - it started to rain which made the islands look so eery - awesome! We miraculously arrived back in Hanoi after the worst driver ever tried his hardest to kill us at every opportunity! We stayed in the Old Quarter again and went out for some drinks! We went to a bar called Le Pub for "a couple of drinks", but everyone from our Halong Bay trip drifted in and we ended up being there for ages and having such a fun night! We loved Vietnam! The countryside is beautiful and the cities are crazy - exactlty the balance that a country should have!!

Hanoi hotels Slideshow