Sorry everyone but we've got a few days' worth of updating for ya.
Back on the 20th we were in Saigon taking the Mekong delta tour. After a two hour trip we caught our first boat at My Tho and headed up a small canal to try coconut candy and see how it was made. There was an opportunity to put a python around our necks but we decided to keep well away. Back on the boat we went to Turtle island for a Vietnamese style meal. Fortunately for Mark the food was not particularly spicy and he was able to eat most of it. We then cruised on to another island to try some honey tea and some tourist friendly 30% abv rice wine. This was bad enough, we wouldn't fancy trying the normal 70% version! The final stop on this day's tour involved watching a folk music group with some awfully out of tune singers. To get back to our main boat we were taken down a stream in a four person boat rowed by some of the locals. Our tour guide for the day, Khanh, was a 26 year old with a smile on his face all day. As well as that, he made the tour interesting using his expert local knowledge.
On Friday it was back on a bus for a trip to a Cao Dai temple and the Cu Chi tunnels. On the way the stop off was at a lacquer factory. This is where disabled and under privileged people make lacquer pictures using duck eggs and mother of pearl. It's a shame we can't carry them easily else we would have been tempted to buy one.
It turned out that we found the lacquer factory more interesting than the temple. Cao Dai is a newish religion that merged Taoism, Buddhism and Christianity into one and one of the saints they give praise to is Victor Hugo, very strange! Seems like they might be edging their bets a bit to us! The temple is quite pretty and we were able to see the noon service. This basically meant 40 minutes of listening to some strange singing and bowing twice a minute to an eye in the middle of a sphere. When the oddness was over it was a 90 minute trip to the Cu Chi tunnels.
At Cu Chi there are a series of tunnels used by the Viet Cong (VC) during the USA-Vietnam War to hide out from US attacks and co-ordinate attacks of their own. We were shown a propaganda style video before seeing the tunnels, mainly about how awful the Americans were during the war and the solidarity shown by the locals. In the jungle we were shown a few bomb craters, hiding place, ingenious traps and, of course, the tunnels themselves. We had the opportunity to try out some 'tourist sized' tunnels. Theresa was a little concerned about having to crawl but Mark went through 30m of warm, stuffy, narrow tunnels. He could have gone a whole 100m but the first stretch was enough. God knows how the VC managed in 60x80cm tunnels.
We were back in the air on Saturday, flying from Saigon to Hanoi. We managed to get a free bus most of the way into town and then a motorbike taximan tried to pay us off to ride on his bike when all we wanted was a proper taxi! We found a cheap hotel which we originally thought seemed quite nice only to realise later the room was really quite grotty. The highlight of the day was finding a fantastic restaurant that serves all the food we love so much!!
On our first full day in Hanoi we decided to have a well deserved lie in followed by the best brekkie so far at the Kangaroo Cafe and a trip to Ho Chi Minh's Mausoleum. We didn't realise that it is only open in the morning so we missed our dose of morbidity for the day. Instead we visited the Ho Chi Minh museum and saw where he lived and worked in the final 15 years of his life.
Monday was supposed to be the first day of our three day tour of Halong Bay. However, the tropical depression Francisco (crapload of rain) cut it down to just a one day tour. According to our tour company, we were able to claim $27 back out of the fifty we initially paid.
We went round Halong on a junk boat (a large wooden boat) which we were initially supposed to be staying on. We were able to walk round some caves there, and see some of the islands, but overall it was disappointing considering how much we had both been looking forward to it.
When we got off the boat it was pouring with rain, and we all ran to the bus. The tour company had only laid on one bus despite there being about 30 people and the bus seating 16! There were loads of rucksacks, no room at all, people sat five to three seats...it was awful! Often people were standing because they were so squashed. All this for the three hour journey on bumpy roads.
When we got back to Hanoi, we decided to cheer ourselves up by booking in to a nicer hotel. We are now staying in a 10 pound a night hotel which, although doesn't sound much, is expensive to us...but it has hot water and a computer in the room as well as a hair dryer!!
This morning we went straight to the travel agency to get our refund, we managed to moan enough about the bus on the way back that we ended up with $30 each refunded. The extra money appeared to come from the woman's own purse which made us feel bad...but that was probably the idea!!
Tomorrow we are flying to Luang Prabang in Laos. There is only one cash point machine in the whole of Laos so we are having to get some cash out before we go which is a bit of a pain as knowing how much we will need when we aren't sure how long we will be staying is difficult to work out.
Luang Prabang is supposed to be a very interesting place, so I think we are both looking forward to getting somewhere new again.
Love Mark and Theresa xx
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