The day before the wedding, August 16th, we joined Jim and Mary Jo along with Andy's other friends to go to Bien Hoa, Phuong's hometown. Bien Hoa is about an hour outside the city. Once there, we all went to an excellent local Pho (pronounced phu) restaurant for lunch. Pho is Viet Nam's famous noodle soup dish. You can get chicken, beef, pork, o...

About a thousand years ago rice farmers, in what is now northern Vietnam and southern China, came up with the idea of water puppet shows using flooded rice paddies as their stages. That tradition continues today, and my last night in Hanoi I caught one of the shows. The simple theatre had a section of water in place of a stage with a curtain at ...

We had the biggest ordeal getting down to Ho Chi Minh City you can imagine. A massive ammount of scams and cons to try and part us from our dong (thats the currency here) We bought from our hotel, ok i know we should have gone to a travel agent, but they were really friendly and we didn't know where any were, a ticket to Ho Chi Minh City, we had...

Finally arrived in Ho Chi Minh or Saigon as many still call it. Land of 11 million people and 5 million motor scooters. We thought we were committing suicide the first time we crossed the street on foot but quickly realized that it is actually rather simple and the chaos is very controlled. There are two rules to crossing the street on foot: Do...

As usual the bus was late, this time it was a mini-bus taking us to the main collection point. Predictably we sat on the bus for ages waiting for everyone to be collected/show up, and this time we were particularly lucky that some Raymondo forgot something from his hotel and had to go back for it, delaying us by a further 30 minutes... Eventuall...

Too much relaxing by the sea leaves you extremely run down. Thats the only reason i can think of why i got a cold. We booked a scuba diving trip in nha trang, with an extremly well run and well organised company called 'rainbow divers'. We went out on the boat and i got half way through my dive when i asked to come to the top, cos when trying to...

JP: Wow - where to start!!!! We arrived in Ho Chi Minh City ("HCMC", AKA - Saigon) on the 12th. After standing in a very painful line at Viet Customs for 45 minutes, we were free to negotiate a taxi - 60,000 dong (teehee) according to the Lonely Planet to our hotel ( $CAD1 is ~15,000D). So we enter into the fray of the Lady Lady Mr. Mr. taxi thr...

Flowers everywhere in the city. Everyone happy and trying to make everything sparkling brand new. No arguments. Desperately trying to download photos and update blog. So many things happening w/ friends as well!!! Might be off line a few days. Need to escape the constant marriage proposals and attention (yes, I'm actually NOT wanting to be the c...

Goooooood MOoorning Vietnam !!! Our time-keeper AT wake us up at 7am, Mr. Constan-Diin reported missing since 6am, he was running from street to street with his 2 Bazoookas (Nikon Digital SLR), chasing interesting objects, one of them being Vietnamese Damsels in Traditional Dress(chinese cheong sam with long pants) cycling to work. The restauran...

...in which this pacifistic passenger hits the highlands and the beach, and reflects on War... DOWN THE NORTHERN COAST Just south of the DMZ, the royal city of Hue brims with tourists viewing remains of the royal palace (the scene of the American War's most bitter battles in 1968 and 1975, and also the place where the Northern Vietnamese mercile...