Hoi An, Hue

It's hard to escape Hoi An without getting anything tailored. Apparently the town (which is only small) has over 500 tailor shops. The proprietors accost you mercilessly as you walk down the street past their shopfronts. It is so hard to choose one - they all look much the same but you live in fear of choosing one that's going to give you dodgy seams and polyester instead of silk.

In the end, I visited about 4 places. The first place quoted me US$80 for each dress that I wanted. I enđed up getting all three dơne for that price. Hoi An is like a shopping paradise - I could easily have gotten so much more made. One thing I found though is that it is much easier to get something copied than get something made from a picture. The items that I had copied turned out exactly as I wanted - the one that I had made from a picture also turned out well but not exactly how I had in mind (I guess I shouldn't expect them to be mind readers!).

All in all I was really happy with how everything turned out - I only wish that I could have afforded to get so much more made! Paul showed extreme resistance to temptation and only bought a couple of silk ties. Debbie ended up getting a suit and some business shirts made along with a traditional Vietnamese outfit.

Hoi An itself is a very lovely atmospheric town. There are heaps of old buildings and narrow cobbled streets. Along the waterfront you can sit upstairs in any one of these old houses and eat and drink under the fans while you watch the river glide by. While we were there there was some festival being held (Buddha's birthday perhaps?) and on the Friday evening there was a lantern parade through the town. All the shops and restaurants turned off their lights and the lanterns and floats which were lit up from inside paraded through the darkened cobbled streets. We ate by candlelight at a cheap food stall near the market and watched the parade pass by. They also set adrift heaps of lanterns on the river which was very pretty (if environmentally insensitive).

There is actually a fair bit to do in Hoi An but it was hard to get to it all between fittings at the tailor! One of the most memorable things though is the food. We made sure to fit in tonnes of the local specialties such as banh xeo (a type of pancake served with rice paper and salad that you roll up and dip into a sauce), cao lau (a type of fresh noodles served with pork and fresh salad) and white rose (steamed shrimp in rice paper).

After Hoi An, we all headed to Hue on the bus. The bus ride to Hue was beautiful. We passed by pretty beaches and then away from the coast and past lakes surrounded by rice fields and bamboo huts. All around there were mountains rising up from nowhere. The lakes were so clear and the sky was cool and overcast. I felt like shouting to the bus driver "Let me off, I'm sure I can find a spare bamboo hut that I can live in so I must never ever leave this place!"

Paul and I arrived in Hue in the afternoon (Angus and Debbie having arived in the morning as they had only one day before they had to catch a flight back to HCM City). As it was their last night with us we went out to one of the degustation type meals for which Hue is famous. It was interesting, with all the garnishes elaborately carved and the dessert cake shaped and coloured to resemble fruit. The only downside to our arrival in Hue was when Paul stumbled getting out of the bus and strained his ankle, which promptly puffed up to half it's size âgain and meant that he has had to limp everywhere for a few days now.

The next morning Angus and Debbie were supposed to leave early to catch their Jetstar flight back to HCM City. Imagine our surprise when Angus woke us up knocking on our door at 10.00am saying that their flight had been cancelled! They had arrived at the airport to find their flight cancelled without warning and had to come back to the hotel. Angus đeciđed to stay one more night as his flight back to Australia đid not leave from HCM City until 3.00pm the next day and he could get on a Vietnam Airlines flight from Hue to HCM City first thing in the morning.

On the other hand, Debbie's flight from HCM City to Perth left at about 8.00am the next morning. She had returned to the hotel where the helpful lady on the counter had jumped onto her motorbike and raced down to the train station to buy a ticket from Hue to HCM City on the overnight train leaving at 10.00am (all 24 hours of it!). Poor Debbie - we hope she made her flight. We haven't heard anything to the contrary so we can only hope she got there in time!

As for us, we are starting to run out of time on our 30 day visa. Paul has headed off today on a 12 hour tour of the DMZ (de-militarised zone) while I am trying to save money and make up for my extravagence in Hoi An by having a quite day in town. We will have to suffer through another 12 hour bus ride tomorrow as we head to Hanoi.

Hoi An

Am currently very tired after a hellish overnight bus ride from Nha Trang to Hoi An. There are "sleeper buses" here which basically have two storeys of beds in them. They are really cramped though and don't make for a good night's sleep. Paul and I are both exhausted at the moment but Angus and Debbie are still going strong!

We only spent one day in Nha Trang in the end and it rained pretty much the whole time. The beach was only mediocre anyway. Paul and the others went for a boat ride to some of the nearby islands but I thought I would spend my one day in town hitting the beach (until I woke up to the rain that is). Apparently the boat trip was less about snorkelling and more about dancing on the tables in the boat so I wasn't too upset that I didn't go.

Nothing else new to report - we will probably spend a few days here catching up on sleep and checking out the historic sights before moving on.

Mui Ne, Dalat

Well, we made it to Mui Ne after a very long bus ride. The roads out of HCM City were jam packed as it was the start of the public holiday and the bus just crawled along for a couple of hours before we escaped the city. Luckily we had booked accommodation at Mui Ne as we din't arrive there until nearly 1.00am - otherwise we would have been sleeping on the beach.

We only spend one day in Mui Ne as Debbie and Angus want to make it to Hue before the end of their two week trip so we needed to keep moving. It was a nice place though and I could have stayed longer. The hostel where we stayed was right on the beach. What was left of the beach was clean and pretty (it seems to be gradually washing away). The atmosphere was very laid back and there was hardly anyone hassling us to buy things on the beach or go for tours which made a nice change. We didn't end up going to see anything around Mui Ne as we just didn't have time but apparently there is some coloured sand there which is quite interesting to see.

The next day we headed to Dalat. We had decided to save time and money by going in a minibus. When the minibus rocked up to our hostel to pick us up there was barely enough room for one of our backpacks in the luggage compartment. There were a bunch of other backpackers getting on at the same time and it didn't look as if we could all fit in the bus! That was before we realised that there were extra seats which folded out into the aisle. As for the bags - they were piled up to the roof behind the driver. I think one unfortunate Vietnamse passenger had to sit on them. Sandwiched in like that there was no way that the door of the bus could even open - too bad if we needed the toilet! When we stopped to pick up another passenger, he had to get in the front seat and then climb over the bags to get into the back.

Stuck like sardines we bounced up some roads that were all washed out - pretty sure that wasn't the main highway. This is probably why the minibus gets there so much faster. When we reached Dalat we ended up in the courtyard of some hotel instead of the bus stop. Luckily Angus pretty soon figured out that we weren't that far away from the place we had booked - Dreams Hotel. Dreams was the ninth hostel that we rang in Dalat - all the others were full. Lucky we booked something though - another group on the minibus didn't have anything booked and Dalat is pretty hilly to be wandering around finding a hostel with your backpack.

On our first full day in Dalat we decided to take a tour around some of the local attractions. Although Dalat is famous for motorcycle tour guides we decided to opt for a tour in a minivan as there were four of us. Although not as exciting as getting around with an Easyrider, it turned out to be an inspired decision as it drizzled pretty much all day. We opted for the tour program that took us further away from town - being the holidays Dalat city was crawling with Vietnamese tourists. The tour took us to a silk factory, some waterfalls, some pagodas, to see rice wine being made, to see mushroom farming and to see coffee being grown. Most of the sights were pretty interesting but the sights closer to town were overrun with crowds of tourists.

Today, after checking out the market, we decided to hire tandam bikes and take a ride around the lake. Luckily the traffic around the lake was not so heavy and we caused no major traffic incidents. We stopped at the flower gardens on the way around the lake. After returning our bikes we headed back to the market for pho. As I write, Paul has headed off on the back of a moto to take a ride on a cable car near Dalat city.