Nha Trang - Saigon or HCMC

It's all a mysterious surprise trying to organise things when you don't speak the language. Viet airline office told us where to catch the shuttle bus - $3 each for the 35 km journey. Hotel lady said about $18 for taxi. So we head to where the bus is supposed to be, just down the road, but no obvious depot/office. Several people pointed us in the same direction, down a side street, where we were grabbed by a TAXI driver. No no said Ian, bus. Yes yes said taxi man, airport. Ian showed him the $3 each and he bundled us into his cab, with another lady. Who knows what that was all about, but he took us to the airport and only charged the $6. It was a beautiful drive down the coast, undeveloped apart from the occasional resort - no villages. Guess the road to the new airport (with its direct flights to Russia) has opened it up and there's lots of huge development happening. Would be a great place for a holiday ....
We fly home tomorrow night after the last minute shopping and a serious pampering session I hope - massage, facial, pedi... One brochure I picked up promised that and more for about $25 - 3 hours worth.

Nha Trang

Yesterday we looked at fish through goggles, today through glass in the vinpearl aquarium. Mr. Vinpearl is one clever man. Apparently he started off selling noodles in the Ukraine, married a Russian lady, made his fortune then set up resorts and an amusement park in Vietnam. I'm guessing he's also the reason there's a direct flight from Russia, and all menus in this tourist area are printed in Vietnamese, English and Russian, very weird! Anyway we had fun on the alpine roller coaster and the lazy river ride and lots more. There was a great musical fountain show, and the ride there and back to the mainland on the longest sea-crossing cable car in the world was spectacular.

Nha Trang

We're making the most of our last few days. Breakfast was at a quick and easy street stall, where we were thoroughly ripped off ($2, huge amount) - travel tip no. 2 always ask the price before you eat! Anyway... The mornings excitement was a boat trip to some nearby islands, for snorkelling. Not the best we've ever seen, but still very good, and with only 8 passengers relaxing too. The cook served up a great lunch, and we were back by 1pm. Them to the beach for a bit, then a nanna nap, then for a massage. Wow, what a bargain, $4.50 each for 90 minutes!!! It was done by blind people and away from the tourist strip, and very good too. The extravagance continued with dinner - Kay's chicken noodle soup (pho) was $1, as was the mango smoothie.
There's been a few of these trikes here, operated by pushing and pulling the lever, very simple and clever.

Da Lat - Nha Trang

It's a 3.5 hour $7 SLOW bus ride down and up and around amazingly beautiful mountains. People are throwing up all over the place, but we are fine. Kay forgets the earphones so straps the music machine to her ears with a scarf. Always travel with a cotton scarf and a sarong.....
Aah, Nha Trang, this is the bit of Vietnam we have been waiting for. Like beach resorts the world over - cheap hotels with mainly young or young at heart guests, $2 beach beds with umbrellas, ladies selling cut up fruit, trinkets and massages and the most wonderful stretch of clean sand and warm blue water. Our 4th floor room with huge balcony has a view of the beach (just up the lane and across the road) for the princely sum of $14, and is perfectly fine, even though we have to ring reception when we want a hot shower! Why do we only have 3 nights here?!
And how do they get tots as young as this to wee on demand when they're held out under a tree?

Da Lat

We decide on a bus tour today, with 8 others from a variety of countries. Up into the countryside we go. First stop is a huge flower farm, which mainly grows roses and daisies for the local and international market. There are enormous greenhouses heading down the hillside, initially set up by a Dutch company; the plastic protects from heavy rain, hot sun and frost. The roses are indeed beautiful, but unfortunately have no scent. A minority tribe village is next: dry, dusty with wooden shacks for living and a vicious monkey chained to a pole. Very depressing, especially as tourists are bussed in to stand and gawk. I'd thought there may be handcrafts for sale there, but not where we stop. Then there's a cricket farm, bred to eat, they too are housed in nice warm plastic sheds. Yes we all try one, dipped in chilli sauce, really just a bit of deep fried crispy stuff, and apparently a good protein source. An enormous smiling white Buddha at a pagoda is a nicer place, and a waterfall and a stall demonstrating and selling woven goods from a minority group. A silk factory is amazing with some cocoons being hand spun and some whizzing around on big machines. We're more than ready for our coffee farm stop, where we see the white flowering bushes on the hill sides, and can taste several varieties. It's also another shopping opportunity for a variety of handcrafts. Finally it's lunchtime, the driver and guide have done a remarkable job of sticking to the schedule. There's one more stop after lunch at the old railway station, set up by the French in 1890, then we are dropped back at the hotel.
Later we wander back into town past lots of women, squatting by their baskets, selling all kinds of veggies and meat for people to cook for dinner. It's Saturday night so the market is in full swing. The tandem bike hirers are doing a roaring trade, and the food smells delicious. We eat hotpot at a popular stall, our food bubbles away in front of us as we watch the passing parade.

Da Lat

This is a longtime Vietnamese holiday spot, high in the hills, bigger and busier than expected but nice and cool. We stay 2km out of town so can hear kids laughing as they play rather than non-stop traffic. It's only $26 a night for our big room under the eaves, so we can easily afford the $2.50 taxi fare to the centre. We walk in this morning, then along the lake to our destination - after iced coffee - of a flower farm. There are roses, hydrangea, flowering cacti, strelitzia, agapanthus, azalea,petunia, salvia, asiatic lily, hellebore, cyclamen, clivia, orchid, callistomen ... Most are for sale, but no good for us. There are topiary teapots and dragons, statues of Snow White and the seven dwarfs, lakes and fountains.
We jump a taxi to the Crazy House, a 20 year old work in progress by a Vietnamese man who studied architecture in Moscow. It's all stairs and curves and whimsy, with cute rooms available for rent. Lunch is next and we brave the market. A lady grabs us and rubs her tummy to indicate how good her food is. She studies Kay's GF translation and brings us a $4 feast of rice paper, pork, noodles, bean shoots and sauces. We figure our systems must be a bit acclimatised by now and tuck into it. Very good.
We walk around town a bit, up and down lots of steps, then head back to the hotel for a rest.
Back into town again for dinner, we look at the night market but opt for a real restaurant with a glass of $2 local wine to accompany our delicious $3 meals.

Day 14 Saigon-Da Lat

It's the end of the tour today, and 6 of us finish up with a cooking class. First is a market visit, where we see an amazing array of fresh fruit and veg, most of which is flown in daily from Da Lat (Kay and Ian's next destination). Also pigs and cows in all sorts of pieces - udder anyone? - and lots of fish, shrimp, snails, frogs etc. Men run around delivering 45kg blocks of ice to keep it all fresh. It's a short taxi ride to the Vietnamese Cooking School where individual cooking stations are set up, with most of the ingredients ready prepped for us. We make banana flower salad, caramelised chicken, coconut rice and savoury pancakes: yum yum. Easy enough to prepare with the help of many staff who whisk away our dirty dishes. A sweet mung bean and coconut soup is our sort-of delicious dessert!
Kay and Ian leave on a 5pm flight, the others visit the museums,markets, parks and shops before flying out at 10. So where's the next Probus trip to, Gail?!

Day 13. Ho Chi Minh - Mekong Delta - Ho Chi Minh

Our 8am departure gives us plenty of time for adventure and food.
Mekong Delta is almost 2 hours by bus, but again Chung had lots of info to impart. There's a happy room and coffee stop on the way, in a beautifully made building full of tourists. A big boat is next, where we are treated to a freshly opened coconut and a bit of a singalong. Down decreasingly narrow waterways and off the boat, and to farm that serves us a tea/honey/cumquat drink, accompanied by sugar-coated nuts and coconut. Yum. 5 minutes walk takes us to our next form of transport, a horse and cart, which goes to a pavilion for more tea, a variety of fruit, and some Vietnamese music - the instruments are great but the singing a bit of an acquired taste. Then we step onto small rowboats, carefully keeping to the middle, and float down a narrow coconut palm-covered canal till we come back to the boat. It takes us to another farm which processes coconuts into candy, and we try shots of rice liqueur. Mot, hai, ba, yoooh! After that Dutch courage, most take advantage of the python-round-the-neck photo op. It's only a baby we're told, but a very heavy one. On the boat again, across the river and its lunchtime. As usual we (now 2) special needs eaters are capably looked after: "no no madam I bring you another".
The boat takes us back to the bus and its nanna-nap time. Of course there's been numerous shopping opportunities, and a last stop at the Chinese market provides another for some.
Our final dinner is beautiful, with a choice of Vietnamese or Western to keep everyone happy, and another singalong starring Herc and Chung on the guitar and mouth organ. A great last night.

Day 12. Cu Chi Tunnels, Saigon.

It was a draining day today: a l-o-n-g drive to the Cu Chi tunnels, where Viet Cong hid during the war. It was a quiet little village before that, but a US army base nearby meant lots of fighting. It was horrible, with its now opened tunnels giving some idea of the conditions. We stopped off at a lacquerware factory set up by the government, where handicapped people are employed. Exquisite (and deservedly expensive) goods were for sale.
A late lunch gave us enough energy to tour Saigon city - the Reunification Palace (with the tanks that smashed through the gates and bunkers deep underground), cathedral (where i saw my first beggar, a young man presumably with agent orange affected arms) and ornate post office. Some ventured to the casino later and some had an early night.
It's fascinating just wandering the streets and just looking at all the motorbikes, and the different street sellers, with everything from a cup of coffee or sugar cane juice to to all kinds of fruit and vegetable in their baskets.
Chung tells us later that handicapped people are fed and looked after by the government, but that some still choose to beg.

DayDay 11: Hoi An - Da Nang - Ho Chi Minh

We're getting very blasé now about
the bus/plane/bus combo, wandering through security and boarding the plane at the last minute. Our new guide is Chong and he likes to joke, so we'll get on well after Trung's seriousness.
Saigon is HOT, big and busy, and there are lots of motorbikes to negotiate when crossing the road.
We have a couple of hours free to wander the brand name and fake stores, and get lost. There are lots of tall buildings, a bustling market, and surprisingly little pollution compared to other big Asian cities. We are bussed to a huge restaurant for our now customary 8 course meal. There's a wedding in progress outside, and our Hershey Kisses "good luck" gifts are delicious. A woman on the street is doing a roaring business in polo shirts, and she follows on her motorbike to our hotel so she can sell some more.
A nightcap at a nearby middle eastern bar completes the night.

Day 10: Hoi An

There's lots to choose from on our day off: a drive into the hills to see old monuments, a village tour and boat ride, a shuttle bus to the nearby beach, picking up tailored clothes and made-to-order specs, more shopping and of course lots of relaxing by the pool. We all love Hoi An!
Later 3 of us go on a bike and boat tour with a 24 year old man. Tuan tells us all about everyday life in rural Vietnam. Government workers get fired if they have more than 2 children. Old people still chew betel nut but its use is decreasing rapidly. Bomb craters are now used as fish farms.
A boat is waiting after our 1 1/2 ride through the countryside, so we putter back, stopping for a BBQ dinner on a small island while we watch the sun set.
There was some concern pre-departure about how the locals would respond to out presence, but it seems that as Buddhists they are able to forgive and forget, and in fact are delighted that we are here to visit their country, and even more so at our pathetic attempts to speak a few words of Vietnamese. There's been no begging and only half-hearted hassling to buy things. Maybe Saigon will be more confronting?

Day 9: Hoi An

Ah, Hotel Hoi An , beautiful and luxurious, certainly there's no complaints here (unless its the glass bathroom doors!) If this is only 3.5 star it's plenty good enough. After maybe the best breakfast yet, Trung meets us for a morning's wander round town, and Bob gives strict instructions that we are to stay together and NO SHOPPING. So where do we go? A tailor, a handcraft workshop, an old merchants house and all seem to have goods for us to buy... We see silk worms munching away on mulberry leaves and are amazed by how much they produce (300-900 metres from each cocoon) and women hand embroidering pictures. Then it's onto a bus to a lantern workshop where we show our crafty skills and make a lampshade each to take home.
We are free for the rest of the day, and Bob has recommended some tailors, so there's lots of made-to-measure happening, mainly of the silk variety. And shopping and swimming and relaxing. Happy hour, dinner and a wander around the traffic-free and brightly lit streets completes the day. There's a suggestion that this would be a great place for a return girls week.....