Last Day.

Sleep in today as we've got nowhere to go.  Finally realised that fried eggs were available at breakfast, you just had to ask for them. Everyone had eaten breakfast by the time Kyra had hauled herself out of bed and got to the restaurant.

Angela was packed and ready to go, but Kyra wanted to repack all our bags so only one would get searched by customs. Callum's, in fact.

After everything was packed, there was an expedition to the day markets. Christopher got yet another pair of shoes in shoe street, before entering the day markets. I lasted about 30 mins there before I had to leave. I was over the constant "you wanna buy xxx?" badgering from my "mates" after a sale with their "ozzy, ozzy, ozzies" sales banter. That and the fact it was very warm and humid. Kyra bought a new purse and a Budda statue. Ron also got a Budda as well so he can set up a shrine in the living room and get in touch with his spirituality.

Popped down the road for a vietnamese coffee and some macaroons, dumping the kids at the hotel for some movie time - we'd arranged to keep the Banning's room an extra couple of hours, so we didn't have to vacate it until 2pm.

For lunch we went back to Mon Hue as it was of known quality and we didn't want our last meal to be the foul one from last night. As before the food was excellent. One minor hiccup was Callum having a huey at the end of the meal.  Hopefully nothing major as we're getting on the plane soon. Managed to spin the meal out until 4pm when we needed to catch taxis to the airport.

We went around the table for our top highs and lows of the trip:

Kyra
Low: Thinking she was going to die at the side of the road to Sapa
High: Countryside and people

Ruby
Low: Getting food poisoning
High: Meeting the people

Callum
Low: Nha Trang hotel
High: The guns.

Christopher
Low: Perfumed pagoda
High: The whole of halong bay

Angela
Low: Disappointment with Nha trang.
High: Serenity of halong bay

Ron
Low: Nha Trang in all its aspects
High: Getting a better understanding of vietnamese culture and history

Jonah
Low: Russians at the mud baths
High: Kyaking in halong bay

Me
Low: The War Remnants Museum
High: The War Remnants Museum

For me the mud baths came a close second for a low.

Callum had a change of clothes when we got back to the hotel and we called for two taxis for a final blast through Saigon rush hour traffic to the airport.

There was a minor panic from the Williams's when it was confirmed that empty bullet shells were not allowed in your checked luggage. These were duly removed and disposed of.

Whilst everyone waited in front of a very noisy football game on the TV in the departure lounge, Angela and Kyra ran off for a final dong based shopping spree. Turns out you can't take duty free bought here through Singapore, which put a bit of a downer on things as the booze is extremely cheap here.

Set to board in 20 minutes, so here's a big goodbye to Vietnam and thanks for a fantastic holiday.

Next stop Singapore where we board a midnight flight back to Brisbane.

...

We had a frantic rush through Changi airport to get to our transfer terminal, which was about 2.5 km from our arrival gate. I love they way they subject you to the maximum possible opportunity to shop between gates. On this occasion Angela failed, but she did at least try.

There was much hilarity at Kyra and Ron's, wobbly, Kath and Kim style power walking to keep up with the sensible people on the travelators. We got to the gate with minutes to spare. Angela forgot to pick her backpack up after having it scanned and had to backtrack before boarding.

Another seven hours and we'll be back in sunny Brisbane.
...
I had a really peaceful night and managed to doze a couple of times. Apparently Callum was sick again on the floor of the toilet, which only goes to show the importance of a window seat, because I was unaware of that. Of course the down side is a cranky Kyra for the rest of the day, because she didn't get any sleep.

Once the plane started to awaken, which was about 7am Brisbane time, there was a whole new bout of vomiting from all of the kids. Even Jonah was feeling poorly, but he didn't actually chunder.

30 minutes now to landing and the official end of our holiday.

What a great adventure we've had and after everything the Williams and Banning families are still on friendly terms!

We now just have to remember that:
a) You can't just cross the street at any time and expect the traffic to go around you
b) You cannot bargain the price down in Woolworths
c) You can drink the tap water
d) You can safely eat lettuce
e) You will have to make your own dinner
f) You say thankyou not gha man
g) 20,000 is a lot of money
h) I don't have to be up to midnight blogging every night
i) drive on the left and remember your lane discipline
j) remember to use your seat belts

Looks a bit cloudy in Brisbane - we would have been able to see our house if it hadn't been so cloudy.

The holiday is officially over at 9.35 am. Boo!

Bicycles and paddy fields

Another early start for our last big day in Vietnam. Hanh (sorry, spelt her name wrong before) picked us up at 8 am to take us off to the Mekong delta.

It was an 80km drive to the harbour where we boarded a motor boat to take us down the river. That's about an hour and a half's drive

Hanh entertained us with more snippets of information.

There's not enough schools in Vietnam, so children have two school shifts. The first shift is 7am to 11.30am. They then have lunch and in the afternoon have additional tutoring if the family can afford it. At night they do about two hours homework.  During the holidays and at weekends they do part time work selling at markets or to tourists, or helping out in the family business in order to earn money to pay for their education. Are you listening kids?

We were regaling our experience with the drunk Russian the other night; apparently Russian tourists quite often don't pay for their booze bill at their hotel because they run out of money. They can't even afford a taxi to the airport. They also have a habit of ignoring the tour guides when they go out on tours and return back to the bus later than they should. In these cases the guides are quite within their rights to abandon them in middle of nowhere if they don't meet the bus!

Chinese tourists are up there with Russians when it comes to bad behaviour. Apparently they are excessively noisy late at night.  The tour organisers make sure they are quartered in China town where they are much more at home and can be as noisy as they like to all hours of the night. Sleep is very important to the Vietnamese because they get so little of it. The average Vietnamese day goes from 5am to 11pm, including children. They have a siesta at lunch, which begins at 11am. There's an old Vietnamese saying they use for bad tourists - "A monkey with a crown it's still a monkey". I guess "you can't polish a turd" doesn't translate.

On a sadder note she was telling us of the times after the reunification. She was from the hills of Dalat about 300km from Saigon. Her family had a large house and were quite wealthy farmers with a lot of land. All of their land was confiscated and their house taken over for visiting northerners. Her father and uncles were sent to re-education camps where they died being "re-educated", or tortured as end call it in the west. All of the children from their village were taken away to a new village some distance away from the old one to be re-educated without the corrupting influence of their parents.  Her family managed to recover her back to the mountains where she lived with relatives. Whilst this was good, she got persecuted by her school teacher who was not as smart as her. Teaching qualifications in the north are much easier to come by - she had actually been to school for longer than her teacher.

Part of the grand communist plan was to make sure that there was even distribution of rice. The effect of this was that there was no incentive for farmers to grow any more rice than they needed to live. Any that they grew beyond what they needed for themselves was taken away to be distributed. This resulted in lack of food for everyone and people resorted to eating sweet potato and other root vegetables. In 1986 they changed the rules so farmers we're able to keep any excess and sell it. Within two years Vietnam was exporting rice again.

We got to the harbour where we donned our conical grass peasant hats and boarded our boat. This was a canopied motor boat with a row of garden chairs down each side and a couple of banana chairs at the back. Quite sophisticated really. We had a coconut juice drink just after boarding. Ruby had a competition with herself over who could get the most waves from passing boats.

Our first stop was at a brick makers. Whilst that sounds pretty boring, it was actually quite interesting. They make the bricks the old fashioned way in massive brick kilns.  The clay for the bricks comes from the rice paddies and each brick is hand made using a very basic clay squeezing machine - a bit like play dough. The only fuel they have available is rice husks which they feed slowly into a furnace at the base of the kiln. The ash from the husks is sold back to the rice farmers for fertiliser.

Next stop after turning off the main river was a coconut processor. The side rivers were more like the type you see in an Oliver Stone movie, lined with water coconut palms (those are different from normal coconut palms). Callum was first off the boat and slid straight into a pile of gunk, dirtying his new Arsenal shirt. The nice man got him to strip off his shirt so he could wash it off. Callum's florescent body garnered much attention from the workers, most of whom were from the same family. Coconut processing is hard manual labour with each person performing a vital piece of the production chain with some extremely sharp instruments. None of the coconut is wasted. The husks are used for fuel and coconut matting.

Finally we arrived at a rest stop where we had refreshing fruit for morning tea. They had a python there that they we're showing off to the tourists (they keep it for keeping down the rats). Ron and Angela tried on the snake for photos.  At the same place were some women making coconut candy. Again another labour intensive process where the candy is manually cut up and wrapped into small packets. We had to buy some because it tasted so good.

After this we mounted push bikes for a tour of the village. Unfortunately Ruby was a bit too small to ride the bikes that were available, so she doubled up behind Jonah, Ron or Kyra, depending on who was feeling most confident at the time.  I'm happy to say the proverb is true. Riding a bike really is like riding a bike. I haven't ridden any distance for many years and I managed to stay upright. I don't remember them being so wobbly though; I don't think that was me but it's hard to tell. There was one minor panic point where my hat fell in front of my face and I had to stop blindly.

We pushed on through the village cutting through paddies and back yards down a narrow path used by other scooters and native cyclists. At one point we startled some feral scooters feeding of the desiccated corpses of some abandoned Russians.

We stopped for a breather at a small house where they were weaving various mats. Angela and Kyra bought a rather nice picnic rug made of woven grass. Don't know whether we'll get that through customs but it's worth a try.

The stakes were raised at the next stage of the route because we had muddy water on both sides of the path; there was no room for error going around the 90° corners. It had to happen eventually and it was Jonah, with Ruby on the back that ran off the path and narrowly missed going head first into the water.

Shortly after that Callum's hat fell over his face and he shot off the side of the path into the bushes - fortunately there was no water at that point and his pride was hurt more than anything.

We finally dismounted at our lunch spot and had a beautiful lunch of spring rolls and lemongrass chicken before heading back to port. The trip finished just in time because the heavens opened for a torrential rain storm as we were driving back to the hotel.

After a short break Kyra, Angela and Ron went back to Ginkgo again to get even more tees (yes we really do like their gear).

On their way back they found a cheap restaurant a few doors up from the hotel that we went to for dinner. Unfortunately that was a complete disaster. The food was shocking. And they tried to give us warm beer. Nobody could understand a word of english and all of the kids were complaining that their food was horrible. After much discussion with the waitress we thought she said she would settle for 10k dong a head, so we dropped the money on the table and left, only to be chased down the road by a pack of anxious waiters demanding more money. We got one of them to go back to our hotel where we asked the receptionist to explain that we didn't want to pay because the food was so bad. Unfortunately there's no such thing as consumer rights in Vietnam. We had to fork out for the $30 bill.

It's a real shame that after three weeks of fabulous food we were let down on our last night. We had to go back to the markets to get the kids a pork baguette each as they were still hungry.

On the plus side, Jonah finally found a shirt he liked in the markets!

It's our last day tomorrow as we're off to the airport and back to Brisbane at about 4pm.

I think there's more shopping planned for tomorrow and a longer look around the day markets.

Feeling hot, hot, hot!

Thursday

Late breakfast and late start today. The plan today was to visit the Ho Chi Min City Museum and the Reunification Palace, which is where the North-South war ended when the north's tanks barged down the gates of the presidential palace effectively turning Vietnam into a single nation.

A soon a we stepped out of the cool hotel atrium, we knew it was going to be a long hot day. It was about 36C and 90% humid. Angela wasn't feeling to good to start with (another dose of food poisoning), but as we set off through the city she was feeling a lot worse.

First off the agenda, was a visit to the memorial of the self immolating buddhist monk, who's main claim to fame in the west was that he was on the cover of a Rage Against The Machine album.
He was protesting about the massacre and imprisonment of buddhist monks by the new communist government from the north. He chose the busiest intersection in Saigon and sat in the middle meditating while a second monk doused him in fuel and set light to him.
It was such a horrific thing to do that it propelled the nation into stopping the persecution of religious sects.

It was a reasonable walk through hot noisy streets to get there and we were followed all the way by a cute girl, probably Callum's age. We couldn't decide whether she was just curious, or whether she was looking for a pocket to pick, but she realised we were taking notice of her and she disappeared after that.

The memorial was pretty impressive, and was on the intersection where the act took place. It was hardly a peaceful place to have a memorial with the traffic roaring away in the background, but it did seem fitting considering. Apparently the monk's remains were cremated (a little ironic) after his heart had been removed to a local temple. This apparently assures him everlasting life.

Next stop was the Reunification Palace, but on arrival we found it was closed for lunch. Lunch seems to begin at 11am here and runs until 1.30 pm for most government run museums etc.  Sounds just like government departments at home.

Instead, we trudged on to the HCM museum which didn't close for lunch for some mysterious reason. We had real trouble explaining to the ticket woman that there were only five people in the Williams family, so we ended up paying for Christopher as well; it was just easier to sort it out between us than explain.

Museums, apparently, are THE place to get married. The building was quite nice albeit a little tatty around the edges. For the puposes of the wedding, they had wheeled a beautiful old citroen out from under the cover at the back of the building, so the happy couple could have their photos taken in front of it. It was a bit tatty on the inside and could have done with a polish, but I'm sure they can photoshop that in.

The other thing you do at museums, is have fashion shoots. There were two gorgeous but vacant looking girls posing against the architecture. Apparently purple ugg boots, black mini skirts with zips down the sides and puffy yellow blouses with wide brimmed floppy hats are the next big thing in Vietnam.

What you don't have in museums in Vietnam is a lot of interesting old stuff. It seemed to be a collection of slightly related things that someone had decided probably shouldn't be thrown away or sold on at the night markets. 
There were four large rooms over two levels containing left over stuff from factories, temples and a closed down craft centre. Oh and more left over stuff from the various wars. Oh and a room full of old money.

If I was a school kid in Vietnam, I would be dreading the visit to the HCM museum, knowing full well that it would be impossible to come up with an interesting trip report.

What I didn't understand was why there were massive 3" thick steel doors between all of the rooms. I'm of the opinion that if someone in authority thought it was only worth showing in a museum, then it's very unlikely that someone else would ever consider it worth stealing.

By this time Angela had hit the wall and needed the support of an air conditioned toilet. We went back to the hotel, which was fortunately quite close to have a half hour's AC comfort before heading out to lunch, which Angela skipped.

We decided to give the Reunification Palace a miss, fearing another museum cop out.

On our way out in the morning we had passed the first pie shop we've seen in Vietnam. This particular pie shop is either a tentative foot in the asian market for Brumbies, or it's a knock off copy (called Crumbs). Either way, the kids were all desperate for an Australian beef pie and they weren't disappointed.
We went to the day markets for adult lunch where Kyra and Ron opted for the pho. I wasn't really hungry - the heat has that effect on me. I did manage to get a cool beer in though.

We then went off shoe shopping (again), which was partially successful.  Kyra and I then went off to hunt for the Saigon Ginkgo outlet, while the others went back to AC comfort. We were out to buy some more tees and shorts which were a bargain compared to home. It started raining on the way there which cooled things down a little, but just like Brisbane ten minutes after it stopped raining things were twice as unpleasant as before. We snuck in a coffee before heading back to the hotel.

Back to the night markets for dinner and we were a lot more restrained this time, with the total cost being about $5 a head.

Looking forward to our Mekong delta tour tomorrow, but are dreading the heat. Angela's feeling a lot better this evening, so hopefully all should be good for our final big adventure off the beaten track.

Cu Chi reprise

This is by way of an addendum to yesterday's post, where I was tired and left a bunch of stuff out that I forgot and I really think you should know. That and the fact that my fellow travellers are getting really picky if I miss stuff out.

1. Ho Chi Min city is only called that by the Northerners (who apparently speak with a funny accent just like in good old blighty. It all just sounds foreign to me. I certainly haven't noticed any Vietnamese with yorkshire accents). The Southerners have always called it Saigon, so I was correct to use that in my posts, all thanks to lazy swyping.

2. On the way to Cu Chi you pass through hundreds of acres of rubber tree plantations. These are relatively new, about 20-30 years old. The reason they are no longer growing rice is that the ground is so polluted with agent orange that they cannot safely do so. Rubber trees are one plant that seems resistant to dioxins and of course you don't eat it, you turn it into tyres.  Each morning, usually before sunrise, they visit every tree in the plantation and cut the trunk in two places to harvest two small cups of rubber sap a day from each tree. Massively labour intensive, but still economically viable, which goes to show just how cheap labour is over here.

3. One of the other sights we had at Cu Chi was the manufacturing of rice paper. Apparently they did a lot if this in the tunnels because it was an easy portable form of food that doesn't go off.  They would eat it like we do biscuits.  The rice is ground into rice flour then mixed with water and ladelled onto a waffle plate type of thing for a few seconds. And you know that pattern you get on the dried rice paper circles? That's because the cake of rice is then turned out onto woven bamboo screens so they can be sun dried. Now you know.

4. One of the other fun things we got to do was to fire off a few rounds of AK 47 ammo.  Callum, Christopher and Ruby were really looking forward to this, but they weren't allowed to take part.  It was a surprisingly noisy affair and everyone had ear defenders on. Jonah had his CoD moment firing a real gun for the first time.  They used to allow hand guns as well, but a Korean tourist committed suicide one year, so they had to stop doing that. The rifles and machine guns they had here were strapped loosely to a wooden frame, which reduced the kickback somewhat.
One side effect of the firing range was that while we wandered around the site of the tunnels, you had this constant chatter of gun fire in the background. It certainly added to the atmosphere of the place with the sound of gun fire resounding through the jungle.

5. Last, but not least, a blog post wouldn't be complete without another dig at the Russians.  This time it was a horrendously drunk young guy dressed in tight yellow shorts and singlet.  He wasn't as fat as his presumed father who could obviously take his drink better. He was just dozing off as his wife went through the market stalls. The son fell off a stool he was sitting on somehow managing to lose a thong, which probably flew into the air onto the top of a nearby stall.
We were then treated to the scene of the father trying to drag his lump of a son off the floor and make him stand still, which was nigh impossible. He staggered around looking for his lost thong before (we presume), his father sent him back to the hotel for another drink to calm his nerves. Lopsided wearing one thong and clutching a small plastic bag containing some trinket he'd bought from a vendor somewhere, he staggered off back through the night markets.
The kids of course, thought all if this was fascinating and almost lost interest in the fake soccer strips we were trying to buy.

There endeth the addendum. Now all I've got to do is today's, which was a little slower.

Cu Chi

Woohoo, bacon for breakfast! It was wrapped in little parcels, however, so it wasn't real bacon.

Another early start to catch the bus to Cu Chi where the Viet Cong had their headquarters in the underground tunnels around Saigon.

We turned up at the front desk promptly at 8am to catch the bus only to find that the receptionist had not actually booked the trip for us. A quick exchange of dong later and we were booked in and waiting for the bus to arrive.

Our fantastic tour guide, Han, had excellent English and filled us in on much that we had been questioning during the trip our of the city to Cu Chi.

To our delight, she agreed with our conclusions about Russians - the Vietnamese think they are rude, fat, arrogant and smelly. There was an enclave north of Saigon that they had set side for them, but someone started flying them from Moscow to Nha Trang, which is traditionally a Vietnamese holiday spot.

The Vietnamese are born to ride scooters. Their first scooter trip is as a three day old baby clutched to the chest of the mother as she rides home from the hospital. The top 3% of the population are the wealthiest and are the ones who own cars. It's very hard to break into that top 3% because there's a lot of corruption in government and you have to know the right people to get the well paid jobs.

As a tour guide, she pays $150 per month for renting a room in the city (no kitchen and a shared bathroom).That's half her salary. If you're single, you have just a coffee for breakfast and eat dinner from street vendors for about $3.

It's very hard to buy houses; mortgages are hard to get without security. Most people live with three generations in one house. Only younger people from outside the city rent rooms. To buy a house you need gold. They buy piles of $2,000 gold ingots from the banks to exchange the money.

The tour around the Cu Chi tunnels was fascinating. The ingenuity of the tunnelers to hide their presence from the US soldiers was amazing. As well as the hidden entrances above ground, they had numerous tunnels opening under water in the Mekong river that were used as entrances and a means of disposing of the soil dug out. In other places soil would be disposed of in the numerous bomb craters. Air breather tubes were made from bamboo and hidden in tree stumps. These you could hardly see. They made fake ones that were far more obvious and some were mined to kill the troops who examined them. In all the tunnels stretch from the Cambodian border to Saigon, total length is about 250 km. 

The tunnels themselves were tiny. They were dug out of the clay by hand using small hoes. None of them go in straight lines, they meander to offer protection from bombs and make invasion more difficult.  Only the kids went down them, we didn't fit. And these tunnels had been widened by 50% for the tourists. The photo of Jonah in the hidden exit gives you some idea of the size, but again this exit has been enlarged.  These hidden trap doors were about 25 cm x 15 cm.  They were deliberately small to prevent access by the broad shouldered Americans. The entrance tunnels were about 30 cm wide, quite often with smaller choke points where any invading soldiers could be ambushed.
There were also many different and vicious traps laid down both in the tunnels and above ground. These mostly consisted of barbed nails of various designs whose intent was to impale and maim, not to kill. The American troops would then attempt to help their stricken comrade and get ambushed by the VC. Interesting to note that there was nothing in the museum yesterday that mentioned these brutal inhumane traps.

There were generally three levels of tunnels. The top level was where most of the living was done, but these were the least safe. The tunnels had trap doors to the lower levels that could be closed to prevent chemical weapon attacks. They even had special bomb shelters with triangular roofs accessed from the lowest level.

It must have been a horrible place to eke out an existence, but that's exactly what 16,000 people did during the war. The fact is, there was no choice. You lived this way or you died.

Han was such a good guide that we booked her for our trip to the Mekong delta on Friday. The hotel apparently gets a 40% cut of the tour fee, which is a little excessive; booking direct costs us less and we get a much more interesting tour off the beaten track.

Went into the night markets for dinner. The night markets don't start setting up until 6.30 pm. It takes less than half an hour to set up a fully functioning kitchen complete with wood fired barbecues and a dining room with tablecloths and cutlery. We had far too much food to eat and surprisingly it was more expensive than the restaurant the previous night.

Off to see some more museums tomorrow - completing the walking tour we started yesterday. And I think there's even more shopping planned.

S-S-S-S-S-Saigon, Saigon, S-S-S-S-S-Saigon, Saigon

Tuesday

Where would we be without Paul Hardcastle.

Breakfast in Saigon was a little disappointing. So far I've managed to keep my bowels mostly in check with a good old fried egg and bacon baguette every morning.  The Lavender Hotel in Saigon only has omelettes for eggs and no bacon.  Yes, I know it's not very adventurous, but after 46 years I know what works for me.  Don't get me wrong, it was still very nice, but in my book, you only eat fried rice in the morning when you have a bad hangover. And even then it's warmed up, not cooked fresh.

So we headed of for a city walking tour at 9.30 much to the disgust of Jonah who insisted he was still in bed at 9am (when he was in fact tucking into pancakes). Go teenage late nights. "I couldn't sleep", well no kidding, if you're sitting on your gayPod until 11.30 at might you won't be able to go to sleep!

And I'm pleased to say within 50m of the hotel was a man stacking far too many glass jars onto the back of his scooter. Our faith in the optimism of the Vietnamese scooterati has been restored.

First stop was the art museum. As you know, art museums are very careful about how they present their art and protect it, with low UV lighting and climate controlled air conditioning. Let me go on the record now, that's a load of bollocks. The Fine Art Museum of Ho Chi Min city is in a fine old solid building with wide open doors and windows and where the lights were working, they weren't low UV.  It was quite cool and dark on the South side (mainly due to a power outage thanks to renovations) and flash photography made up for the lack of light (like that can ever really harm a painting).  But on the sunny North side where the sun was streaming through the doors and windows, the pictures were quite clear to see.
It was quite pleasant to stand in the humid roar of traffic and contemplate the beauty of the years presented before us.

Outside the builders were carefully working on the scaffolding re-rendering the building, wearing helmets, safety boots and harnesses. Bollocks to that too. They were bare foot, hanging off the rails like it was some big climbing frame in the schoolyard (but 10m in the air), in t-shirts and shorts, waving at the gaping tourists below.

From there we went to grab a drink and ice cream from Xcream, where they had Larue export beer and New Zealand ice cream. And a price for the cool freshener towels that we all thought were complimentary. Hey ho, we won't fall go that one again!

We carried on with the tour which headed towards the hotel where Angela's rellos were staying so we dropped in to say goodbye. We came out of that with a chocolate cake beating mouldy fruit, but it was still edible, apparently (an unwanted 40th birthday present).

Ruby ceremoniously picked up the cake with a glint in her eye and we headed off for some lunch, which was just a couple of blocks away. 

Blocks in Saigon, however, are much bigger than others we've come across in Vietnam. Several hours later we rocked up to Thai Express. Yes, we were still in Vietnam, but we fancied a change and it was the first reasonable looking place we came across. Not only that, but they had some beautifully chilled towels to freshen up with. And yes, we are slow learners, because we had to end up paying for those too.
Lunch was a little more than we wanted to pay, but it was good food and still way cheaper than home. The chocolate cake was tried, but was deemed to be an unhealthy option. We left it on the table for the staff to dispose of which confused them no end. Maybe they thought it was a tip. That'll teach them to charge us for towels.

After lunch we cut our walk short and took a taxi to the War Remnants Museum, which we figured may be a little more interesting for the kids to see than yet more streets.

What a fascinatingly horrific place to visit. It told of the war crimes and brutality committed by the American soldiers in the Vietnam war with no holds barred. There were parts we couldn't let the kids in to see, they were so photographically graphic. The terror and plain viciousness reigned down on the Vietnamese people by the US was both unbridled and excessive. Vietnam is still paying for it today with unexploded ordinance and birth defects due to dioxins left over from the chemical warfare and deforestation. 
This was, however, a very one sided view of the Vietnam war.  There's no mention of the brutal acts of the Viet Cong against US personnel, nor of the wholesale slaughter of South Vietnamese citizens who didn't fit in with the communist ideals, after the war.

I guess we really expect better from the most powerful nation in the world, which purports to uphold freedom and democracy for all, and are more forgiving of a third world country that really "doesn't know any better". 
In the end, of course, there are no winners; just innocent families on both sides paying the price for a bad shake of the dice in an all too real game of Risk.

We spent a good two hours looking around the museum before heading back to the hotel, humbled, teary and feeling a little bit dirty.

We assembled at the Bannings for pre-dinner drinks, which we decided would continue until the kids knocked on the door. Finally the knock came and we shouted "Go Away!" as all good parents would. There came a second knock and Ron checked through the spyhole. He assumed it was Ruby because he couldn't see anyone and he put on the door chain and opened the door a couple of inches to make fun of her. Much to his embarrassment it was the maid providing a torch for tomorrow's trip to the Cu Chu tunnels and asking if he needed more towels. Why four people should need protecting from a tiny maid bearing a torch and some towels, is a question likely to confuse her for weeks.

We went back to Mon Hue again for dinner, this time with the Bannings. All the kids went for the beef noodle soup - we truly have an iPho generation. Food was excellent again.

Off to see the Cu Chu tunnels tomorrow morning, which were built to hide the Vietnamese from the US bombing during the war.

Nha Trangski to Saigon

Monday

Another transit day. Got to kill a few hours before heading back down the winding coast road to Cam Ranh airport and off to Ho Chi Min city (which from hereon in is referred to as Saigon, because it's easier to type).

Ron and Angela took Christopher off on a trip to The Big Budda That Is Visible From The Hotel.  Being later risers and far less organised, the Williams's stayed behind to pack bags and go to the supermarket for lunch to eat at the airport. I stayed out of that because I was suffering from Sheraton belly. All down, fortunately. 

The hotel couldn't believe that we wanted only one taxi to the airport, but we knew we could fit everything in, and indeed we did, albeit with a little less comfort. Fortunately the driver was not as suicidal as our previous one and it was almost a pleasant ride.

We sat on the floor under the stairs to the departure gates and ate lunch. This was so we could still keep our water to drink.

Managed to play Confuse a Hostie to great effect when boarding. She asked Callum and Ruby where they were from and how old they were; as I went past I said "and I'm from Australia too and I'm 46!" She looked at me with a worried grin on her face.

We had commented at breakfast on the total absence of Russians (we even had proper muzak instead of Russian muzak), but never fear they appeared on the plane just in front of us in a cloud of cigarette stench, backward baseball caps and too short shorts. Interestingly, there was a new variation of badly bleached blonde bimbo with real eye brows.

So we arrived at Saigon after a very short flight. The taxi boss lady took one look at us demanding an eight seater taxi and then walked off to talk to someone she could help. We ended up with two taxis; Callum went with the Bannings and we left them in a cloud of dust, trying to squeeze their baggage into the taxi.

Saigon has twice as many scooters as Hanoi. Here, however, the streets (and pavements) are wider and they seem to have a mostly cars lane and a mostly scooters lane. Buses just go down the middle with their horns blaring. To complicate things, school had just finished spilling thousands of scooter riding kids onto the roads. Somehow the Bannings made it to the hotel before we did.

Scooter riders don't seem to have the same blatant disregard for maximum laden weight on the scooters here. It could be that the cops apply the rules more diligently, but we shall see, time will tell.

The hotel is quite pleasant and unlike Hanoi, this hotel has a fire escape. It's very lavendery (the hotel that is, not the fire escape). Very. It's everywhere. Bathrooms, paintings decals, bedrooms, not the toilet paper though. I've checked that already.

I was a bit insulted when I was the last one in the lift and it complained the lift was overloaded, but I'm guessing it's built for Vietnamese (11 people / 750kg). Lucky there's no Russians here.

The Bannings went out for a night on the town with Angela's cousin who happens to be in town at the same time as us. I know not what they do.

The Williams's ventured out to find a restaurant recommended by the hotel receptionist, but we got about a block away before finding Mon Hue where the food looked colourful and was certainly cheap; what's more it was full of locals.

It turned out to be one of the best meals we've had in Vietnam (see photos). It was kind of like Vietnamese tapas. Hue style rice with babies claims had me a bit worried at first, but it all turned out good in the end. They had lots of small dishes a well as a few mains. There seems to be quite a few of the same restaurant around, so it could well be a franchise, but nothing like the quality we'd get at home from franchise food outlets. Callum had an enormous bowl of beef and noodle soup which had a beautiful flavour and he managed to eat practically all of it, hardly complaining at all.

Total cost was $30 including drinks, which is an absolute bargain given the quality.

Tomorrow we're doing the Lonely Planet walking tour of Saigon, so a nice close restaurant for dinner would go down well...hmmn let me think...

Mud baths, this time for real

Experienced the foulest of table manners from a Russian couple at breakfast. When I say couple, this was more like a welders union association. The man (complete with Lech Walensa moustache), had his left elbow on the table holding a chunk of bread at head height. The right elbow was on the table at just the right angle so he could scoop food off his plate straight into his mouth (about an inch away), occasionally popping up for a snatch of bread.

The wife fetched all the food. She would tuck into a piece of water melon with juice dribbling down her pock marked triple chin, wiping it away with the back of her hand, then spitting the pips out on the table.

I thought that was gross until we got to the mud baths. [disclaimer here; these are my opinions unless otherwise stated. Some people actually enjoyed the communal bathing experience.] This was possibly the most disgusting thing I've ever been made to do in the name of entertainment and for the love of my family.  To start with, the mud bath was like gritty vomit and a similar colour; I've included a photo of a free photo, but Ron requested to be cut out because he looked too Russian. This photo is faked by the way. Whilst it looks like we're sitting in a jungle paradise, in reality we are surrounded by concrete pipes, walls, drains and sluices for moving around the gunk. We then had a mineral water shower to wash off the vomitus and moved to a mineral water bath that was nice and warm, but was soon cloudy from the crotch mud that hadn't been removed in the shower.

Finally there was the swimming pool, which sat at a warm 39c, just the right temperature for bacterial cultivation.

Throughout this whole experience we were treated to the most unpleasant parade of Russian flesh wallowing in mud and mineral water. The men stank of BO after getting out of the water and I just don't understand who would think wearing a size 98 bikini is flattering. They then stand in front of the water jets in the swimming pool for a pummeling massage. The water disappears for a few seconds before re-emerging from the flaccid folds of pasty white flesh.

Kyra said she felt like Elle McPherson in comparison, but of course, she looks that way to me all the time...

Had a quick beer there, but it was dangerously close to being regurgitated unless you just stayed looking at the beer.

Stopped off at at temple on the way back and dusted off the cameras for some photos. Had some crispy squid pancakes opposite the temple in a roadside eatery. Looking at the cleanliness, I can't help but feel this was a mistake, but we can always blame the buffet at the Sheraton tonight if we get sick.

Angela is getting excited about the extravagant smorgasbord at the Sheraton. Ron and I feel that we should be supporting the locals with another cheap meal down the night markets, but we'll probably end up supporting American corporate excess.

...

Well everyone is suitably buffeted, bloated and tired.

We've a 2pm flight to Ho Chi Min City tomorrow for our last leg of our journey. Hopefully we'll not get the same taxi driver to Nha Trang Airport.  I don't think we'll miss Nha Trangski, but it was an experience all the same.

Slow Mo

Woken to the gentle hoots, chirps and hums of the Nha Trangski rush hour, after another night sleeping in the gentle breeze from the AC.

The sun actually came out after breakfast so we headed over the beach for a swim. At least the kids had a swim; the adults stayed on the sand and fended off the hawkers. We escaped lightly with a couple of pairs of new sunglasses (same same but different).

Headed north to see some very poor markets before heading back towards the hotel for some Ho Chi Min Fried Chicken for lunch (see photo below).

Went back to the t-shirt shop from yesterday to stock up on cool tees.  We'll have to continue that in Ho Chi Min City where they have another outlet, because they were out of our size.

Angela had a $3.50 manicure in the arvo; Ron chickened out of a foot massage because the bar next door was full of hairy arsed divers. We chose to join them in a couple of beers.

Had dinner at the night markets - great value for money at a small family run restaurant. Such a difference to yesterday, although Ron did have to help keep the roof on when the wind picked up.

We didn't end up at the mud baths today, aiming to do that tomorrow now. Early night tonight, but having to listen to the creaking of the massive sign on the roof above our heads.  Wind is scary strong, but I'm sure the sign has had to put up with worse...

Nha Trangski

Bit of a slow day today. Had a late breakfast; this is obviously a bit of a businessman's hotel, because there's a lot more native food available for breakfast.

We waited for the rain to ease off before heading out for a walk down the beach. Jonah elected to stay in the hotel and do teenage things. We bought some ponchos from a tour booking place - one for everybody. They're a bit fragile but hopefully they'll last more than a day.

Stopped in at The Sailing Club for an espresso while the boys expended some energy kicking a ball about. The prices there are pretty steep but cheaper than home. It's a bit of a walk, but we might start using their toilets instead of the hotel's - they have voice activated flushes that even understand Australian. Bit of a contrast to the cardboard walled huts in Sapa (where apparently it's snowing now).

Headed back to the main drag for lunch, which was our cheapest yet. $3.50 for pork rolls and some sticky rice for five from a street side stall.

One oddity is the number of shops and hotels bearing poorly faked snow. We can't work out whether this is for Christmas, or to make the Russians feel at home. There are heaps of Russians here, puffing their smoky way around the streets; unfortunately a lot of the Russian women insist on wearing bikinis.
Most restaurants have Russian and English versions of their menus. I guess this must be some hang over from the time when the USSR was one of the only countries left supporting the communist regime.

One benefit of that communist regime is that there are obviously not a lot of lawyers here. The pavements around here are dotted with pot holes and ankle twisting angles that would bankrupt an Australian council through public injury claims.

The girls went out in the arvo for a $3 pedicure. Ruby was cured for nothing and still managed to have flowers painted on her big toes.

The kids jumped in the pool later after another kick around on the beach. The pool was freezing and had waves on it from the wind.

Went out for dinner to Salina Restaurant. Bit of a long walk in the rain but it looked promising when we passed it in the morning.  Unfortunately it didn't live up to the promise. The service was pretty bad and they messed our order up and tried to charge us for things we didn't have. All worked out well in the end. We figured it must be a money laundering front for the russian mafia. 

Stopped off for some Italian ice cream on the way back to the hotel and found a really cool t-shirt shop with excellent quality shirts: Ginkgo.

Apparently there's a mid season sale on from tomorrow, so we're going back to buy then.

Heading off for some mud baths in the morning, which should be fun; hopefully we won't be sharing a tub with a bunch of Russians.

Cannonball Runs

Shocking night's sleep. Too warm and humid, but the AC wouldn't go above 18C, which is too cold to sleep by.  Also it's the closest I've come to Hanoi belly so far, but in realty I think it's just too much food and my body is saying "no".  Loudly and fruitily. I could have got up to the second floor without using the stairs.

We were woken to the gentle hiss of the ocean waves, the whispering of the sea breeze though the palms and the timid chattering of camera shutters. A coach load of Japanese tourists had arrived over night and would be joining us for breakfast.

Breakfast was a bit rushed because we had to be packed and out front for the taxi by 8.15am for the trip back to the airport and off to Nha Trang.

Angela and Kyra decided they wanted to go back to the shoe shop on the way (which wasn't) to try and get the $50 back for Jonah's shoes, both pairs of which now didn't fit thanks to a lack of communication.  Pointless of course, but there's nothing the girls like better than a heated argument with a native first thing in thing morning. We waited in the taxi outside in a no parking zone with a fretful driver, while they were quietly and studiously ignored by the store owners. Givit now have a donation of two pairs of size 13 NikAdas trainers.

The taxi driver pulled out all the stops to get us to the airport in time. The roundabouts were taken with a single long horn blast all the way around. Hollywood would have been proud of some of the stunts he pulled to get us through the rush hour traffic (which is much less severe than Hanoi, but hectic nevertheless.)

Kyra vented her anger at the shoe shop by giving them a poor review on Trip Advisor before leaving the airport.

Big surprise at the airport because we were flying on a turbo prop, not a jet. Mixed feelings about this because the last jet we boarded to go to Hoi An was stifling inside before we took off. It's always comforting to be told after take off that the auxillary engine is broken. Both engines we were quite definitely working on the turbo prop; quite the conversation killer.

Got to Nha Trang and the taxi rep squeezed us all and our luggage into a seven seater taxi.  We then went on one of the most scary rides so far. Up until now, our taxi rides have been like rollercoasters. Pretty scary, but ultimately you know you are going to be safe because you know you are bigger than everything else. This was an overloaded suzuki on a twisty ocean cliff road going way too fast.  He used the full width of the dual carriageway road to take corners, not because he was Michael Schumacher, but because the car was severely under steering at the speed he was going.  No amount of protest would slow him down. The roundabouts were particularly frightening.

We arrived at the hotel in the rain. Fortunately it had only just started raining, because it I don't think we would have made it down the cliff road in the rain. The hotel was not really what we were expecting.  The Nha Trang Beach Lodge sounds so beachy, wooden and friendly.

We're on the 12th floor in small rooms where they've squeezed in extra beds for Christopher and Ruby. The sea has gone brown from the rain. There does seem to be a cafe over the other side of the main road on the beach.
It's a bit Camp Granada at the moment; chucking down with rain and apparently nothing to do. The hotel rummaged up a couple of spare umbrellas from lost property and we headed out to lunch.  We found a small cafe called Flavours which served surprisingly good food at a very good price.

We decided that we need to buy ponchos on the way back to the hotel.  Your feet are going to get wet regardless and the umbrellas won't do as good a job as the ponchos. But as it turned out the rain cleared up. Maybe later.

The girls went into paroxysms as we spotted a "Super Market" called Amart.  I reckon these would go down well at home.  Everything you need under one roof. Our dinner is now going to be a dig in tea of cheese, bread, ham etc. The girls were delighted with their $6 gin purchase. The boys ended up getting a 2L thermos flask of non-specific beer from a local bar for a couple of dollars.

Came across my favourite shop combo so far on the way back to the hotel: Beauty salon and laundry.  That perfect sweet and sour combination you also see in vietnamese cooking.

From market to plate

Wednesday.

Early start again today so we can get out in time for the White Lotus man who's coming to pick us up at 8.45. Ron managed to scare a breakfast waitress by trying to desperately grab at a plate as she removed it. Turns out Ron thought Callum had knocked it off the table. The waitresses avoided our table after that.

We had a green papaya salad, crispy pancakes and lemongrass chicken to hunt down at the markets and cook.

Arrived at White Lotus and headed off to the markets with Christina and Simon from Austria and Ty from the restaurant.  The markets were total mayhem, with wrinkly old ladies elbowing their way through the stalls as we attempted to follow Ty and listen to what he said. Ron and I kind of gave up trying and went into photo frenzy mode.

Fortunately Ty gets his meat from the supermarket. The meat market looked pretty gross. Why have an expensive and hygienic stainless steel workbench when an old cardboard box balanced on a bucket of bilious goo can do the same job.

We moved onto the fish market which seemed a little cleaner somehow, before boarding a boat back to the restaurant. We managed to pick up some 4 in 1 grater things that Kyra said would be an invaluable aid to the kitchen.  About a dollar each. No doubt it'll be in the bottom drawer in a few weeks time.

Got back to the restaurant where the main room had been split in two, with an eating table down one side and a work table down the other. We donned our smurf hats to get on with the cooking. Mine was particularly tight.  I don't have a Vietnamese size head or blue blood, obviously. The kids loved julienning the veggies, while we watched on anxiously, fully expecting a beautiful, thinly sliced finger nail. But aside from a few oil burns the kids survived unscathed.

A special award goes to myself for creating the best tomato rose to sit on top of the papaya salad. Even Ty was impressed and Christina thought I must be a chef. Yay me! I now have to get out of having to cook dinner every weekend when we get home.

Everyone enjoyed the whole exercise-it was great value for money. All the profits from White Lotus go to a charity called Project Indo China which is run out of Melbourne. Kyra's looking to sign them up to Givit. They seem to be doing some fantastic work fighting the abject poverty that exists outside the tourist strips. Go communism.

After we left the restaurant, we went to pick up all of the forged shoes and jewelery ordered yesterday. The girls were pleased with their jewellery, but we had mixed results with the shoes. Ron's Jesus boots were a bit too Jesusy and Jonah was disappointed; claims he now has a pair of size 11 lawn bowls shoes - they have a Nike swish with Adidas sole. Nobody is allowed to wear the shoes for a few days so the glue has time to dry.  Angela had to try three times before her sandals actually fitted.

We left Angela and Kyra in town waiting for the shoes to be changed and headed back to the hotel. Ron spotted a cock fight from the taxi on the way (i.e. chicken cocks.) A small reminder that we're still in Vietnam. Hoi An is far more civilised than Hanoi and we were forgetting that we were still in a third world country.

Had a couple of hours down time at the hotel, the boys spent most of it in the chilly pool in the rain.

The kids decided they didn't want to go back into town for dinner, so we got them some takeaway from across the road. We left Jonah to supervise and caught the shuttle bus into town for another feast at Morning Glory.

I was tempted to go for the Muc nhoi tom thit (stuffed squid), but it would have just annoyed me. Instead I went for the tom carry, which is prawn curry. Ron had the tom thit, Angela crispy pancakes and Kyra stuffed egg plant.
Ron managed to use the restaurant wi-fi to load his Vietnam Got Talent video, of a local nutter singing us his ozzie song. If you are not a friend of Ron's on FB you will miss out on this golden moment.  It will eventually get loaded onto you-tube, where I've no doubt it will go viral. You heard it here second...

Had an hour to kill before catching the shuttle back to the hotel, so we had a short walk down by the river where there was some kind of improvised karaoke thing happening. Very strange, but it was pulling a big local crowd.

Ended up at The Cargo Club for a flat white and some white chocolate kahula cheese cake.  It was a bit sickly but I managed to eat it all.

The other major event of the day was that Kyra got the direction wrong going back to the bus. We think it's a first, but we probably don't know otherwise.

Tomorrow we have another early start to catch the plane to Nha Trang for our chill out stop for a few days. Probably won't be much to blog about because it's a resort stay, but I'll try my best to come up with something for all our fans out there.

Copy that HQ

Tuesday. Warm and muggy. Woken to the gentle splashing of the gardener watering the sand.  With a hose. So much for five days of rain. First full day in Hoi An. Nobody was affected by last night's salad. Kyra's dress ordered last night is nearly finished.

Caught the shuttle bus into town to do the walking tour in the Lonely Planet (diligently copied).  Managed to get past two shops before going on another shoe frenzy. Even Ron joined in for a pair of Jesus boots. Everything is hand made in a day.

Unfortunately they've never heard of safety shoes here so I couldn't get a pair of leather motorbike boots made up as I wanted steel toecaps. You can just about get a copy of anything else, however. Shirts. Suits. Dresses. Shoes. Jewellery. Small children.

Stopped at the White Lotus restaurant where we've booked a cooking lesson for tomorrow. They pick us up, take us to the market to buy the ingredients, take a short boat trip back to the restaurant, then show us how to cook the food we bought and we then eat it for lunch. All for $84 for the whole family.

Went to a place called Morning Glory for lunch (snigger). The food was outstanding (double snigger). I wouldn't normally bother doing this but here's the meal:

Me: Crispy pancakes and Cinnamon beef stew, Biere Larue x 2
Ron: Chicken rice with stir fried morning glory,  Biere Larue x 2
Kyra: Crispy pancakes and caramelised pork belly with coconut rice
Jonah: Crispy pancakes and crispy crepes with sticky pork
Angela: Stuffed squid with pork and prawn
Christopher: White rice dumplings and Vietnamese meatball baguette
Ruby: Spring rolls with pork and Vietnamese meatball baguette
Callum: Spring rolls with pork and Won ton noodle soup with boiled crab and noodles

$48!!

Bought some gongs for new door bells before heading back to the hotel for a swim and try to cool off. Ron bought a dong ding, we just bought a big doing. The pool was cool, probably about 26C, but did the job.

The girls had intended to go back into town for some dresses while Ron and I headed in later on the shuttle with a copy of the kids. As it turned out, we found a happy hour over the road where the girls ended up with eight G&T's for $6 (four G&T's copied) and the beers were 14k dong apiece.  By the 6pm shuttle deadline we couldn't be bothered to go into town, so we retrieved the kids from the hotel and the bar cooked us up some dinner, which was surprisingly good. They sent out a scooter for ingredients. We also did them a favour by persuading some euros to get food there as well. The bar matron was peeing her pants to have so many patrons on an out of season Tuesday night.

Jonah was peeing his pants because we bought a leather ball for $5 from the balls on a trolly man going past the bar.  He's cuddling it in bed.

Including drinks, it turned out to be a reasonably cheap night (about $50 all up). Kyra and Angela don't agree, they'd rather spend their money on clothes than having a fun time. Ron and I will have to fight that fight later on.

On leaving the bar, we were serenaded by a complete nutter who sang us his song containing all the stereotypical Australian sayings you can think of, most of which were sourced from Crocodile Dundee movies and bad Olympic coverage.

Looking forward to a day of cooking lessons tomorrow.  We plan to go back to Morning Glory for dinner after our cooking lesson.

Sayonara Hanoi

Monday.

Last day in Hanoi. Had a bit of a lie in and got down late for breakfast. The waitress at the hotel now knows everything we have, she just double checks before toddling off to the kitchen.

Angela wants to steal her so she can be her slave, sorry, house help at home.  We could possibly squeeze her into Callum's luggage.

We found out today that the girl behind the front desk has a 7 month old daughter who lives with her mother in law an hour from Hanoi.  She gets to see her daughter three times a month and works in two hotels night and day whilst studying for an accountancy qualification. But on a plus note, at least she won't have a Hecs debt to pay off.

Before the taxi arrived at 11.30am and because we simply don't have enough of them yet, we went shoe shopping for more Converse trainers. We now have about 14 pairs of Converse's between the eight of us.

Ron almost shed a tear as we said goodbye to the staff at Paradise 1 (he's so european). It's like saying goodbye to your family said Kyra. 

They certainly were a helpful and friendly bunch; our next hotel in De Nang is a lot larger (80 rooms), so it will be interesting to see if the Aussies can charm the socks off the staff at this one.

Got to the airport having had a stop at a servo for diesel (20k dong a litre) and the girls all excitedly rushed off to use the drop toilet.  Ruby's feeling a lot better today, but the bus trip was leaving her a little queasy.

Nothing exciting happened at check in, Jonah is the current winner of the lightest bag award.

Callum had a dummy spit waiting for the gate to open, because he wasn't allowed a big packet of Pringles instead of the local knock off called Slide. Good to see the abject poverty of the hill tribes has had such a dramatic influence on Callum's attitude.

It was a pretty short flight to Da Nang, but what a totally different atmosphere. Glad we booked a bus, because there wasn't much in the way of taxis waiting at the entrance.

Big wide roads, much less traffic. Apparently it's going to be raining for the next five days.  That will be a big challenge to win our hearts.

The hotel room at Hoi An is quite swish, but it's looking a bit uncared for - chips in the furniture etc.  It's clean and has a good view and a happy hour from 5 till 7.  Girly cocktails for the boys as the beers in the hotel are twice the street price.

Kyra and Angela went into town to get some forged jewelery, while Ron and I looked after the children again. Fortunately we could do this from the comfort of the Little Pub, which is the name of the hotel bar that serves the half price cocktails. The kids frolicked in the pool in the rain as we supervised from the bar.  And before anyone gets too upset about pool safety, we could get to it easily from the bar because there's no pool fence. 

We established from the waiter that we were the only patrons present in the hotel, before realising that there was obviously a misunderstanding.  We were the only patrons in the bar. We could see at least two other bedrooms with lights on. 

The girls eventually got back from town with the glint of silver and gold in their eyes, and we headed off across the road to an eaterie for dinner.

We found a small family run place across the road from the hotel entrance where they had at least heard of a Vietnamese crispy pancake and she promised 10k dong local beers, which won us over. The pancakes came with salad, so either we'll all be toilet bound tomorrow, or the local water is far more reliable here.

The woman running the eaterie just happened to own the dress shop next door. It turns out she can copy the dress Kyra wants within a day, so she has disappeared with Angela to go through material.

Tomorrow is a stroll about town day. Should be nice and quiet.

Smelly Temples (continued)

...so blah blah blah...nits.  Ok.

[Read the previous post before this one.]

The guide then informed us we had 15 mins free time to look at another pagoda. Whoopy do. But it turned out to be the secret squirrel one mentioned in the last post. This time it was the real deal. Curvy rooves, big statues, clouds of incense and monks running amok.

We made the most of our few minutes for photo ops.

Kyra had opted out of this one and had accompanied Ruby back to the boat. We traipsed down the hill after them and reboarded the boats to take the long slow trip back to the bus.

But who should we met half way? "remember me? You buy beer?". This time she was in a boat and we said no and were accompanied all the way back, but to her credit she eventually stopped asking for us to buy things.

We had also been asked by the guide to tip the women rowing the boats. After paying $30 a head and having a pretty disappointing time we tipped minimally and one of the women then started grabbing and pushing Kyra because she hadn't tipped enough.

Everyone, including the nomads was feeling ripped off soundly and we got back on the bus and headed back to Hanoi.

To cap it all, we got thrown off the highway thanks to a big accident and had a tortuously slow ride home.
Good old Ruby vommed on the floor again, but we left it there this time.

Got back to the hotel for our last night in Hanoi. Finished off by grabbing pork baguettes (like a kebab), steamed pork buns and a few beers and eating in the hotel room.

Looking forward to flying out tomorrow for places new.

Smelly Temples

Sunday.

Well what can I say. A beautiful day for a gentle cruise down the river to see the Perfumed Pagoda. 

Doesn't that conjure images of a serene eastern scene with beautiful flowers pumping scent into the mountain air surrounding a majestic towering templey edifice shrouded with clouds of incense and buddhist mysticism.

The reality is just a little different, but I'll get to that later.

Everyone woke bright and early looking forward to an exciting day of adventure with river boats, cable cars and mystical mountain temples. Ruby felt a bit crook and skipped breakfast. We nabbed one of the fresh and crusty Vietnamese baguettes for her to gnaw on later.

This was an expensive trip, $30 a head, but we were assured it was a not to be missed experience.
We saved money by sharing a guide (i.e. a person, not a pamphlet) with some other people intent on the same experience; an American couple who had sold their house in the Colorado mountains and are doing the grey nomad thing around the world, and a Vietnamese couple who were on a pilgrimage to the temple.

We jumped on the bus at 8.30am and headed of through the busy rush hour traffic.  Yes, Hanoi has a Sunday rush hour. The bus trip out to the country was going to be a couple of hours long.

Ruby vomited after about half an hour, with no warning.  We had to pull over and the guide diligently watched as the driver washed the vom from the floor. Noodles and, of course, carrots, but shredded rather than diced. Strangely, that was not the last meal Ruby has eaten, so maybe noodles are the Vietnamese equivalent of carrots.

A small plastic vom bag, was found by Kyra and we got back in to resume our adventure.

One interesting fact divulged by our guide, is that there is a 400% government tax on new cars. Please don't let Julia Gillard and her greens hear about that one. This explains the plethora of Scooters. These are all Japanese because the much cheaper Chinese scooters only last two years.  Japanese last 10-20!

So by now it was time for Ruby to fill the vom bag. A new one was kindly donated by the pilgrims.

A long and fairly boring bus ride ensued. We went through the shoe village, where everything shoe related was ahappening. It was interesting to see some more out of the way places, but there was nothing where communism was bringing Vietnam into the 21st century.

To bring a bit of excitement and tension into the proceedings, Ruby filled the second vom bag; the reason for the tension was that we had run out of waterproof plastic bags. We had to make it to our destination before another gastric event occurred.

Fortunately we made it and were treated to a quick freshen up in the drop toilets before heading down to the river for our sedate cruise to the temple. It would be unkind to say the effluent made it to the river before us; it was mostly cleanish.

There was some concern expressed when the guide tried to squeeze all eight of us into a boat with six seats. We split up with Jonah and I sitting in with the nomads and pilgrims.
Whilst all this was happening a local was trying to make us buy beer from her. "Too early" we said, "you remember me, you buy later" says she.

We were then rowed 4km down the languid river by sturdy peasant women who apparently have nothing better to do because their husbands are out working in the paddies. This was a bit strange because I've seen about eight people working in paddy fields since we came to Vietnam. That's what they tell their wives I guess.

Ruby seemed to perk up a bit on the boat trip which was good news.

We arrived at the dropping off point and disembarked. Apparently in high season this place receives 50k pilgrims, a, day. That would explain the cattle pen style railings around the corner, but we were dropped outside a seedy looking cafe, presumably to try and make us buy drinks, which were notably absent compared with other trips we've paid for where they were provided gratis.

So we followed our guide around past the pilgrim pens and up the hill towards the cable car.

Both sides of this path were lined with market stalls. Most of them were closed because this was an out of season Sunday, but the hassle factor was still very evident and they even set up temporary fences to channel the visitors closer to the stalls that were open.  I never met the guy, but I don't think Budda would be particularly proud of the rank commercialism going on in his name.
Jonah even got charged 2000 dong for using a drop hole toilet. We told him to pee in the bushes in future.

On the way up there was an interesting looking temple which we were forbidden to go near by the guide. Exciting! Secret forbidden temples, thought I.

So we got to the cable car place where Ruby promptly vomited again thanks to the exertion of the climb.
To say it was a little run down and in need of a spruce up and a lick of paint would be an understatement. It was dirty as well (for a start, there was a small puddle of vomit on the floor) and with a guy in the corner smoking a bong, it didn't give the impression that this was going to be a comforting place to stay. There were huge impressive adverts for mopeds, however. Very religiously inspiring. Budda on a bike. Probably not the first time that's happened in Vietnam though.

After an inordinate amount of time, we went upstairs to board the cable cars. Angela was starting to get feisty now with impatience. We had been wondering which european ski resort the cable cars would be from; as it turned out they were Austrian, but they did actually look reasonably new, which was reassuring.

This was the most exciting part of the trip as we were catapulted up the cable towards the Perfumed Pagoda. There was a panicked rush to leave the car as it didn't stop and we had to get out before the car went past another pilgrim cage designed to force 50k pilgrims back down the hill.

More stairs now and a sneaking suspicion that something wasn't quite right. There were no obvious signs of a pagoda, and the perfume wasn't the kind I was mentally associating with temples, but we pilgrimmed on towards the big reveal. We turned a corner and there was an ancient looking gateway with a long set of uneven granite steps, polished by the feet of countless pilgrims through the ages, leading down toward the cliff face.

Hang on, cliff face? Down?  Ah, so there's a cool tunnel we have to go through and on the other side is a pagoda, perched on the edge of a precipice overlooking the breathtaking countryside? Lead on McDuff! I've got my camera at the ready!

We got to the bottom of the stairway where the guide told us of the life of dedication that the monks of the pagoda have to follow, never ever leaving the pagoda. And he told us of the history and why it existed (there's another Perfumed Pagoda, but it was too far away and the king didn't want to take three months to go on a pilgrimage every year, so he got this one set up closer to Hanoi. Smart man).

We then descended into the clammy depths of the cave mouth. WTF? Are you kidding me? This. is. it? At the bottom of a short stairway are a couple of very tacky looking shrines to poor old Budda. No fancy building. No precipices. And definitely no perfume.   And some poor monk has to live here for the rest of his life? Sucked in big time dude.

Talk about a huge anticlimax. Angela was spewing (but not in the same way as Ruby.) She was ready to start punching! But the guide was about half her height and had already done a runner back up the stairs.

Ruby at this point was totally buggered poor thing. Jonah stepped up as the good big brother and piggy backed her back up the steps. They were big steps too.

We had already decided to take the cable car back down rather than walk because of Ruby's condition, which, of course cost more money. This was probably the cheaper option, because the route down was lined with more market stalls.

The nomads left on the path down while we waited for the cable car to restart to take us down for lunch. And we waited.  And we waited some more.  Angela was practically steaming at this point and was on the verge of breaking down the operators door and flicking the on switch herself, when they announced they were ready to go.

Everyone piled in and we zipped back down to the bottom, soundly beaten by the nomads, who were wondering where we had got to.

On the way to the lunch stop who should we meet? "remember me? You buy beer?" Indeed we did, but I did need that beer.

Lunch was pretty ordinary and I skipped outside with Ruby who was feeling sick at the smell of the food. There was a chair outside which I sat her on, only to be gesticulated at by a woman with wild unleashed hair. I indicated that Ruby was sick and she huffed and went back in to get another chair. Seems she was having her nits picked out in the one I had chosen.

...to be continued...my phone won't let me write any more in this post!

Zombie time

Friday addendum.

A last minute shopping frenzy in Sapa. I think I'm now the only person who doesn't have a pair of converse trainers on this trip.

After a terrifying drive down from Sapa back to Lao Cai to catch the train back to Hanoi (twisty roads in the dark, overtaking on blind corners etc), we had a horrible but functional dinner at Le Bordeaux in Lao Cai. Too many dodgy stomachs for viet food and a long train trip.

We were actually quite relieved to get to the train because we'd been on our feet all day, but as expected, the train trip was dreadful.  I'm pretty sure I got no sleep at all - I lost all confidence in the driver when I headbutted the wall at one particularly violent breaking manouever; Kyra only dozed, Angela got no sleep, I think everyone else slept like babies.  The train was actually less shakey, but the noise was horrendous.

Saturday

Back at Hanoi by 5.30 am we all crammed into a taxi for seven and headed back to Paradise 1, which was closed up tight. Everyone was looking forward to a couple of hours catchup sleep before breakfast and it looked like we were going to be out of luck.

Ron at this point, jokingly rattled the doors and shouted "hello anybody there!" through the crack, which gave the two porters a very rude awakening as they apparently sleep in the lobby at night.

So after a few apologies, we retired to our rooms for a short kip before breakfast. Everyone bar me actually got some sleep it would seem.

Headed off after breakfast to see Ho Chi Min's (hcm from hereon in) mausoleum. It closes at 11am so we had to rush out and grab a taxi. In our jeans because you can't get in in shorts. Bit warm for jeans but hey. We had every intention of "doing the mausoleum" then shooting back to the hotel so kyra could go to the hospital for the checkup recommended by the insurance company and Angela was going to hit the markets with the kids and Ron. Kyra and I decided to travel light-no cameras, bags water etc. It was quite a liberating experience.

We drummed into the kids the importance of being respectful because the Vietnamese treat this guy like a god. No hands in pockets no mucking around. No talking. No questions. We'll get thrown out of the country if you muck around. 

With the kids suitably forewarned, we got to the hcm mausoleum and were quite surprised to see hoards of schoolchildren and tourists running about and taking photos. This wasn't quite what we were lead to believe would be happening.
After double checking the pamphlets we'd been given, it turns out we're in the hcm museum, not the hcm mausoleum.  So leaving all the Banning's backpacks at the hcm museum we hightailed it over to the hcm mausoleum a few blocks away.

This was more like it. For a start it looked like a mausoleum not a museum. Secondly, there were swanky white uniformed guards at every corner.

We had our second body scan done for the day then had to line up two abreast to march sedately down the boulevard heading toward the entrance, under the beady eyed supervision of the guards all the way. I think this is when the kids started to take what we'd said earlier seriously and we switched to one adult per child.
Once inside where it was cinema quality lighting I was effectively blinded, because my glasses hadn't had time to adjust to the shade. I could just about make out Angela ahead of me and followed with a hand on Callum's shoulder for a guide. Round just a couple more corners we entered the holy of holies. There was little hcm lying in state, guarded by eight guards. It was at this point that Angela nearly got us all shot for walking with her hands behind her back, but she made a good recovery and we all got out in one piece.

We headed back to the hcm museum before it closed for a looksee around the exhibits.  This is a very strange museum. I'm going to have to check up on my history now because I can't believe some of the blatant communist propaganda exhibited here. If it's to be believed, then I'm thoroughly behind what hcm and his party achieved in controlling their own country, but there were such blatant lies about the success of communism to modernise and industrialise Vietnam, that it throws all of the story of the struggle for freedom from repression into doubt.

On a lighter note, I was mugged by some tourists outside the hcm museum to have my photo taken with them. I like to think that those photos will bring a smile to the faces of a japanese family as they thumb eagerly though their holiday snaps - "hey do you remember that guy, he looked like a tall fat Ho Chi Min!"

After the hcm experience we hopped on board some pedalos for a quick trip to the Temple of Literature.  And we were ripped off for 50k by the one who pedalled Kyra and Angela. I guess he thought he'd earned his money's worth.  He was remarkably fast high tailing it out of there with our cash.

Once again, at the Temple I was asked to pose for photos; I must be looking good today despite the bags under my eyes. By comparison Ron only got asked once. HA! Pwned! Christopher doesn't count because he's short, cute and blonde. If they had mantelpieces in japan, he would be sitting on hundreds.

For lunch we went round the corner to Koto. Koto is a restaurant run on the same lines as Jamie Oliver's 15 (only Koto came first). It's run through a charity in Melbourne. They take in street kids and teach them how to run restaurants.  The food was superb and not overly pricy - a great way to spend your twelfth wedding anniversary lunchtime. If there's any Givit girls reading this, see if you can get them signed up before Kyra gets back!

Finally we headed back to the hotel so Kyra could go to the hospital and Angela could hit the markets with Rubester. Christopher tagged along and Ron was pack mule.

The hospital visit went well - all clear (and what's more excellent wireless), but we're still going to check with our own doctor when we get back to Brisbane.

Kyra and I got back to the hotel to find Callum doing some face-time with his "she's not my girlfriend" friend. Quite cute really, but it demonstrates the gulf of difference between western and vietnamese children.

Everyone's gone out for food and more shopping. I gave kyra the last of the 4 mil I got out yesterday. It's been an expensive couple of days. I elected to stay at the hotel to finish blogging and maybe get to bed early-the three vietnamese coffees I had this morning have definitely worn off. Just about 24 hours without sleep now.

Tomorrow we're off for a guided tour to the Perfumed Pagoda. I'm not sure what that's all about yet, but I'm sure they'll be plenty more opportunities for Ron and I to fight over who gets the first photo of the wrinkly old ladies.

Hill tribes

Friday. Our $100 tour proved to be fascinating.  The guide used to live in one of the villages and we were accompanied by her mother in law all the way around (and she was a real nag all the way around like any good mother in law).  Kyra (who's feeling far better today) was mugged for goodies and Ruby was giving stickers out to all the cute kids.

I now have about 200 photos of paddy fields.

There are three standard questions asked by the tribes:
1. Where do you come from
2. What it's your name
3. Are these your children

Most of the time these were answered honestly, but there's one confused old lady who believes there's a robocop from latvia who has a 42 year old daughter called anne. 

Got back to Sapa and after much umming and ahing, went back to Gerberas for another excellent lunch.

After lunch we trawled through the markets for cheap tee shirts.  We encountered a ravenous hoard of tribes women in the town square, feasting from the body of a hapless tourist. All that was left of him was a small pile of embroidered nick nacks.

Had a decent coffee at Baguette and Chocolat having fought off several more tribes women and only succumbing to one scarf.

Got to kill a couple of hours before getting the bus back to Lao Cai and another night of first class sleep deprivation on the train back to Hanoi.

Looking forward to a romantic wedding anniversary tomorrow, starting on the train and finishing at the hospital. Not.

Good end to the day

Ended up having a fantastic meal at Gerberas, a cosy and what's more warm restaurant just up near the markets. Friendly staff and the food was probably the best we've had since being here. The food on the junk was excellent, but wasn't really authentic vietnamese. Kyra managed to eat some steamed rice takeaway.

We'll probably go back to Gerbera's tomorrow as well.

Time for a crisis

Ran into so bit of a medical drama on the way to Sapa.  Kyra's stomach bug turned into full muscle spasms and we had to divert to Sapa hospital for a doctor.

She's currently on a drip and oxygen and is feeling tired but otherwise fine. They have to get another bottle of drip into her before we can leave, so she's catching up on some much needed sleep.

Angela went into full nurse mode checking out the medical goings on and also called the insurance and travel people-fantastic job thanks Angela. The local travel company rep came around to help us translate, which was unexpected. 

The hospital is a bit of an eye opener. The heart monitor looks like something out of carry on nursing, with a paper trace printed out from it. No machines that go ping here.
Angela wasn't impressed by the facilities, but I guess this is a third world country with little money to spend on a rural hospital that caters for a few hill tribes.

The doctors looked to be about 20, but it's hard to tell. They seem to know what to do with the equipment they have available. They take not smoking in the wards with a pinch of salt though.

Kyra's turned into a bit of a sightseeing exhibit; the hill tribes seem to be a bit fascinated by the red head whitey in their hospital. I should really be asking for photos in return for a free look at the sleeping Australian.  They don't like you taking photos, but they're all dressed in traditional costumes and look fantastic.

Apparently the accountants are at lunch so I can't find out how much this is going to cost. The fact that accountants are involved has me a little concerned, but I guess that's why we have travel insurance. God knows they need the money here for some new equipment anyway.

I think we're down to the gardener now - a man in wellies just popped his head around the door for a looksee. Kyra's started to snore now, so that should scare the punters away.

A girl in wellies with a toothpick hanging out of her mouth has just unhooked the drip bottle to taken away the old drip bottle. I think she must be the cleaner. I guess they let the cleaners clean up the spare medical detritus themselves.

Kyra's awake again now and looks ten years younger thanks to the super hydration and needs to pee, but the medical staff have disappeared. Just a bunch of locals wandering around. If you're not in traditional costume, it seems wellies and scooter helmets are the go.

Got out of the hospital by 2 pm, $82 worse off, which is not too bad all things considered.  They didn't really know what the problem was so when we get back to hanoi the insurance company wants Kyra to go a hospital for a few more checks.
She's more tucked up in bed with a packet of pringles now.

Turns out the hospital is actually going to be converted to a five star hotel and a new hospital built down the road. Hopefully for them it will be a little less basic.

We left kyra in bed at the Bamboo Sapa hotel and had a wet wander about town, grabbing a so-so espresso.

The town is a lot more like what I was expecting from vietnam. The markets seem a lot more genuine, none of the tacky plastic crap we saw in Hanoi.

We'll be going to one of the restaurants in town tonight all of which seen to have the same menu catering for western tastes.  I guess that's catering for the tourists, but everyone's gone off the idea of vietnamese food today.

Booked a guided tour for tomorrow morning to two hill tribe villages. Probably a bit exy at $100, but it's with the travel rep's company and he seemed pretty genuine. He's trying to train the locals to do their own tours, which is a good thing I think. Hopefully the weather will clear up because the views from the hotel are stunning. The villages we are going to see are in one of the most scenic valleys around here apparently.

Here's hoping for a more successful day tomorrow.