Halong Bay and Hanoi

We had another long overnight bus trip to Hanoi from Hue. It was quite an exciting one, though, as the bus' rear window shattered at about 1am and covered Paul in glass! I think it must have been a very big stone that did it. The bus guy tried to solve the problem by drawing the curtains and our journey was accompanied by the tinkle of falling glass until they stopped an hour later and covered the hole with tarpaulin!

We like Hanoi. It is big and bustling and there is lots of bia hoi. We've also seen some beautiful pagodas and Ho Chi Minh's mausaleum (didn't go in though!). I think Paul and Ben got a bit sick of pagodas, but cheered themselves up with some KFC!

We did a 3 day, 2 night trip to Halong Bay. It was really beautiful and really peaceful sailing around the islands and rocks in our junk. We visited a huge, beautiful cave and Cat Ba island National Park, where we saw tiny frogs! My favourite thing was kayaking in the rain. We kayaked to a really beautiful lagoon and managed not to capsize, either. Karaoke seems to be a pretty big thing here still and Paul and Ben did a couple of beautiful duets in the evening!

We're back in Hanoi now and are getting an overnight train to Sapa, in the mountains, in a couple of hours. We've spent the day buying toiletries and supplies for China. Ben's headed off to Laos, so its just the two of us again - I'm sure it'll be fine!

Made to Measure

We've had a great week - diving and shopping!

We went to Nha Trang, on the beach, and Ben perusaded us to go on a diving trip. Kate went snorkelling, and I did an 'introduction to scuba diving' - which meant that another guy pushed me around underwater, all I had to do was breathe! Really enjoyed it, so decided to do the four day PADI diving course: 2 days in the classroom and pool, and 2 days diving. First day in Nha Trang and the rest further up the coast in Hoi An.

A long overnight bus journey to get there, but we had a bed-bus so managed to get a bit of sleep. Arrived at 8am, the next day of my course started at 10. The diving wasn't quite as good in Hoi An, colder and less fish, but I'm now a certified scuba diver! Looking forward to Australia and the Cook Islands... if I wasn't already.

The main attraction of Hoi An, however, is shopping... so we shopped! The town is full of tailor shops, and having clothes made to measure is very addictive. We've bought some great suits, coats and dresses, just better not put any weight on before we get home.

In Hue now, off to see some tunnels from the Vietnam War tomorrow, before getting another bed-bus to Hanoi and Halong Bay. Hopefully we'll get a lie in at some point - it's another 6am start tomorrow.

Good Morning Vietnam

Sorry... I couldn't resist the title. It was too cheesy not to. We've been in Vietnam for 5 days now and are still travelling with Ben, which is great. We seem to be watching lots of football, now, though....

We started off in Ho Chi Minh City (most people seem to still call it Saigon!). It is a really big bustling city and we got a hotel room with actual hot water and air conditioning - It was wonderful! We had heard that there was a really great waterpark there, so on our first day decided to head there after a cultural morning seeing some pagodas. The pagodas were very beautiful, with lots of dragons and incence. Unfortunately, the water park didn't exist. Even worse, the taxi driver didn't realise this until we got to the site where it was (before it was demolished!) and charged us for driving us there and back! That evening, we managed to cheer ourselves up with our discovery of bia hoi. It is a locally brewed beer and costs 4,500 dong per litre - about 15p!! It also actually tastes really nice!

We headed out for some serious sightseeing on our second day. We saw the cities major sights, including the Re-Unification Palace and the War Remnants museum. The Re-Unification Palace is the one that the Northern Vietnam communists smashed down the gates of with a tank at the end of the war. The museum was really interesting, but sad and awful too. It didn't really cast the US army as particularly good or decent.

We headed up to Dalat yesterday. It is really high in the hills and is much cooler than it is in Saigon. Both Paul and I are currently wearing trousers and long sleeve tops. The French colonnials really liked it up here, because it reminded them of the Alps and you can really see why! There are big lakes and pine forests and many of the buildings look like ski chalets. We thought we were in Europe until we ordered white coffees and they came ridiculously strong and with condensed milk (we had added more sugar before we realised, too - yuk!).

We met up with a Swiss girl called Nora and have spent most of our time here so far with her and Ben. Ben supports Middlesborough, so we managed to find a bar with the 'Borough - Cardiff game last night... We tried to cheer him up this morning by climbing a mountiain. Not sure how effective it was, but the views were great. Not so peaceful, though as there were a big group of Vietnamese Christians chanting at the top! Tomorrow we're off to find a waterfall with a mini-rollercoaster and a cable car. Then it's back to the beach...

Battambang, Phnom Penh and Sihanoukville

Once we had got over the bus and van journey, we had a great time in Battambang. We did a Cambodian cooking course, which involved us going to the market to buy the food and then cooking it. The market was really interesting. The fish were live and bashed over the head in front of you and I saw a woman selling live, but skinned frogs!! There were also selections of honey roasted insects!! Luckily for us, our cooking course stuck to chicken, beef and fish. It was great fun, although Paul nearly chopped his finger off!!

That afternoon, we went for a bit of a tour of the surrounding countryside, which was so beautiful. Cambodia is really flat and the countryside goes on for miles. We stopped to visit a temple and some caves where the Khmer Rouge killed local people during the massacres here. The temple was beautiful and serence, but the caves felt so awful and sad. On the way back, we rode on the bamaboo train - it's basically a bamboo platform, powered by a motorbike engine on some very rickety train tracks - great fun.

After Battambang, we went to Phnom Penh. Here, we met up with Paul's friend Ben and some Canadian girls he knows. It was really nice to spend time with other people! We spent a day learning about the Khmer Rouge and the genocide they carried out in the 1970s. We went to a memorial in some of the killing fields and then to Tuol Sleng, which was a prison where people were tortured before being sent to the the killing fields. We learnt a lot about the brutal ways in which people were killed. It was really hard to get your head around why and how something like that could happen. It is really wierd to think that everyone here over the age of 30 lived through it. Our driver told us that he does not know any family that did not lose people to the Khmer Rouge. What is amazing is that the Cambodian people we have met have seemed so friendly and welcoming and lovely. Cambodia seems to have already come an awfully long way in a very short time and people have got on with their lives. It seems incredible that people can go on after something so terrible.

After Phnom Penh, we went to Sihanoukville, met up with BEn, again, and spent a couple of days on the beach, which was really nice. Happy Hour beers were 25p, so we had a really good time. No more blue cocktails for me, though! Right now, we are back in Phnom Penh and will be heading to Vietnam tomorrow. We have really loved Cambodia. We spent 3 great days at Angkor and have loved the countryside, the beaches and the people. Time for Vietman, though!