Hong Vy Hotel Ho Chi Minh City

... traps employed by the Viet Cong. Billy took delight in prodding them with a stick to demonstrate how they were triggered; they were mostly variations on concealed boards that when stood upon would spin round and stick sharp bamboo spikes into the victim. Nasty. Afterwards there was some more touristy ****: a firing range has been set up where you can buy bullets for a variety of weaponry like M-16s and AK-47s and shoot at targets. It was overpriced, and I hadn't brought enough ...

... I also met An, another CS member, who is a reporter/freelance writer, and then her sister, Van and a few more others, all freelances – writers, translators or photographers working in newspapers, website, or write scriptures for movies and TV shows. Unlike Dung, they are vocal and westernized (they are too liberal for Dung. I brought him along and he didn’t really like the experience) and eager to talk about anything I brought up, including politics in Vietnam. Since they ...

... trip is priced from approx 2000USD per person based on a twin share basis. This price includes hotel-to-ship transfers at the start and end of voyage, seven nights' accommodations in luxury, air-conditioned en-suite cabins with twin or double beds ...

... over by street vendors and parked motorbikes. We grabbed a snack and stumbled upon a Dutch guy that we met on the bus, who was sitting at a Beer Hoi stand with a Vietnamese man. We joined them for a couple beers, but it was difficult for me to enjoy the scenery as my eyes were starting to throb and I found it difficult to stand the bright lights and smoke wafting from Tom's cigarettes (although it was nice to have someone to travel with, I could do without Tom's chain smoking). I ...

... with these from Hanoi, so were wary in Saigon -- but still got snagged. Eventually, we made the driver stop so we could walk the rest of the way because the meter had climbed to such an outrageous price. I tried to tell him (in Vietnamese, nonetheless) that the price was not fair and that we weren't going to pay the full "fare" -- this is something that works sometimes in Hanoi, because the drivers know they aren't legit. Unfortunately, our driver wasn't ...

... in the fire in the bag as well. Damo needed a pee at the bus station in Vientiene, and decided to not waste money going in the ones in the station and went behind a bush, however, the next minute he had two policemen next to him who tried to arrest him, but after a bit of persuasion went away with the contents of his pockets instead. By this time we were pretty glad to leave Laos, although the border crossing wasn't easy either with hour long queues to get stamped, and fees ...

... a cinema to kill some time before our sleeper bus to the coast. We watched a pretty poor quality showing of the new Terminator film in a cockroach infested auditorium. As we left we spotted one of the little critters in our empty popcorn tub. Thank goodness we hadn't put it down on the floor before we'd finished, I'm still having nightmares at the thought of accidentally shoveling a handful of 'poproach' into my mouth! We then caught our nightbus, next stop, Nha Trang...<br>

... old (the only person I saw under the age of about 30 was a girl in the choir (who looked thoroughly bored!)) which makes you worry a little about the religion's future! The followers all wore floor length robes - mostly in white (one woman's outfit even had whiffs of the Ku Klux Klan about it) but a few in yellow (Buddhist), blue (Hinduism) and red (Catholicism) to represent the major religions. They all faced the giant sphere and sat on the level corresponding to their seniority ...

... just in time for midday prayers. After watching the people pray in traditional garb, we said our barach's and left.<br><br>Lunch was pretty funny as we got to speak to a couple of the other people on the trip (an American frat boy from Miami and some idiot from....Leamington Spa). The two told us of their 'triple happy' pizzas (I'll let you work that one out) in Cambodia, where apparently, no joke, you can fire a bazooka at a cow for $40.<br><br ...

... is much bigger, Hanoi seemed to me to have more to see and do and just a better vibe about it. Saigon is probably a 'nicer' place to live though - it even has parks!<br><br>The War Remnants Museum was pretty horrific, as I was warned to expect. With all the movies about it, it's easy for the war to take on some kind of romantic or heroic connotations and this really reminded me how horrific and terrible the reality was for both sides. The things ...