Off the beaten track..

So life in Vietnam couldn't be more fine and dandy if we tried! Having been here for near enough three weeks now it hasn't taken much for us to fall in love with this incredible country! Every place doesn't fail to offer us a completely different experience and the contrasts between where we have been before are becoming ever more evident.

Having spent 5 days in Nha Trang, a coastal city with hoards of Russian tourists, nothing to be excited by, we are afraid to say they are rather rude and take far too much pride in themselves to give a smile or any manners at all, but hey oh, each to their own! After two 12 hour+ journey's in less than 5 days we found ourselves in desperate need of a bit of rest and recuperation, this was soon sorted with a pj day when the weather took a turn for the worst! A night out on St Paddy's day, the Irish all came out for the woodworks for sure, soon got us back in to the swing of things however and we had a fantastic night out with April whilst meeting many fellow travellers from Sweden and the likes. However bed at 6am meant that we were back to square one with the lack of energy! Other than this though, a trip to the local mud baths and a few days spent on the beach was all we got up to in Nha Trang. Yet again the mud baths were swarmed with Russians, there is honestly only so much you can take! Despite this though it was definitely one to add to the list of interesting experiences, sitting in a pool of cold, clay mud wasn't something either of us expecting to be doing, but the hot spring baths and pools soon made up for the oddities of the experience. 

 

 

 

Another 12 hour journey overnight along the coast took us to Hoi An, where we are unfortunately leaving tomorrow. For anyone planning a trip to Vietnam, this is a must visit! The Old Town is nothing like we have seen before, with quaint little streets and French architecture everywhere, this riverside town is incredibly laid back and easy to spend millions of dong in! Renowned for both it's lanterns and the hundreds of tailor shops that line the streets, we soon found ourselves designing dresses and jumpsuits and being measured up from every single angle. 24 hours later and we went back for our fitting, expecting a rough idea of what we were to get with pins and tacking stitch everywhere we were incredibly mistaken. Instead, we were met by nearly finished garments with only a few alterations to be made, impressed didn't even describe it!

 

After spending the rest of the day checking out some of the smaller sights including a Japanese bridge, common houses and their equivalent of temples, 2 day found us back on our bicycles. With the intention of doing our own version of a countryside tour we were pleasantly surprised when the sun decided to make a show, however that soon changed when we found the ridiculous sun glasses tan/burn lines on return to our hotel!! The day was a success though, starting off with breakfast on the beach after picking up cakes from the local bakery, and noodles for lunch, the food in Vietnam is to die for, with every possible taste you can imagine. There's some incredible flavours we have thrown ourselves well into it and said good bye to the pasta and pizza we found ourselves living on at the end of our stay in Cambodia. With 17km under our belts, the nap on the beach after lunch we felt was much deserved! 

 

 

 

 

 

Despite these last few days being brilliant, the best was yet to come in today. We found ourselves fortunate enough to be invited to lunch at a local famiy's house, 15km outside of Hoi An. Aftercoming across this chance by sheer luck thanks to our choice of restaurant! Mr Phong, a waiter by evening along the riverfront, invites restaurant customers into his house during the day, offering an incredible insight into day to day life of the local Vietnamese. We were collected at 9am by Mr Phong and his friend and taken for a beautiful countryside ride on the back of peds to his house to be met by his wife and daughters-in-law, all of whom were incredibly welcoming and generous. Two hours later and Mr Phong had given us a history lesson like none other, a survivor of the Vietnam war, he was able to offer us incredibly in depth experiences of living and fighting during the war, as well as teaching us about the politics and events behind it. Furthermore he continued to explain how this all impacted on the current political situation, traditions and culture, as well as religion. After a tour around his village which is home to around 10,000 people, of which it seemed like he took us into every one of his neighbours houses where we saw how tobacco is harvested and dried, how rice wine is made and fermented, and finally we found ourselves welcomed into a local tradition which is that of celebrating the deaths of ancestors. Rather than celebrating birthdays as we do, the deaths of relatives are celebrated the day before the anniversary with huge family get together with ridiculous amounts of food and booze. With two plastic stools drawn up and glasses of beer thrust towards us we found ourselves in the middle of the celebration, something we won't forget in a hurry! The day ended with some of Mr Phong's wife's cooking, an incredible spread of noodle soup, morning glory, pork stir fry and mounds of spring rolls, stuffed doesn't even begin to explain how we felt afterwards!!

 

 

 

 

 

And so tomorrow we head on to the next stop on our journey, Hue, thankfully only a short few hours journey! A quick stopover compared to our recent stops, before heading to Hanoi and Halong Bay for the final 5 days of Vietnam! 

The longest blog to date..

 It seems that after a ridiculous amount of time we finally owe you an update, apologies in the delay- various messages from our parents have informed us that we aren't keeping up with demand at all! 

After killing nearly two weeks in Cambodia before our Vietnam visas were valid, we are finally back on track and heading slowly north through Vietnam! It is safe to say that there is definitely a difference between the two countries, we have been in Vietnam for nearly 5 days now and it has been somewhat of a shock to the system and taken some getting used too. I think we had both got a bit complacent with feeling like we knew Cambodia like the back of our hands! Overall we have noticed that economically Vietnam is thriving in comparison, more high rise buildings and generally a greater feeling of wealth in the cities compared to Cambodia, however this isn't something we are complaining about - yet - as we were both craving somewhere that felt a bit more like home. However it must be said the Vietnamese are white business-like, as opposed to the friendly Cambodians. Two months in and we have found that our minds tend to wander when doing not a lot to things to do with home, to be expected now and again I'm sure! 

 So what's new? 

- We said goodbye to the orphanage on the morning of Friday 28th February, and set off with the other four volunteers to the seaside town of Sihanoukville. We had spent the precious evening throwing a big party for all the children, which was very fun. Lots of coca cola was drank, sweets eaten, and dance moves busted. We had such a fun time, being taught some Khmer dancing (which involved slow hand movements and delicate footwork) in exchange for us teaching them some of our moves - most received with giggles and laughter! We received a lovely present from two boys in our class - a bunch of lotus flowers each and letters thanking for being such 'great' and 'beautiful' teachers - we were chuffed to say the least! In all seriousness it was a big turning point as the boys didn't often attend class, and after doing the weekly test and both boys achieving high scores, we felt like we had made an impact to their future and learning. The orphanage was overall a great experience! 

-Sihanoukville gave us much needed time to relax and get our tan on. We spent a great couple of days on the beach, with our shakes again, needless to say we were well and truly happy. Mair had a much needed manicure on the beach (the last one had chipped) and Rach enjoyed soaking up some rays again. The weekend unfortunately turned a little sour however, as Mel one of our fellow volunteers got her passport, money and cards stolen from the beach! We spent some time searching for some children, who we detected from the loitering, were the suspects, but no luck was had. (After a very stressful week or so, darting to and fro from Phnom Penh to gather a police report, which we didn't think to get her when she was at the beach, she has luckily got herself sorted and has now flown home)

 

- That Sunday we said our goodbyes to Beth, Mel and Alex, a sad occasion after spending four weeks together! However we are looking forward to being reunited hopefully with Alex in Laos and Mel in her home country of Oz. We moved along the coast to a small place called Ream beach, the two of us and April. Mair very unfortunately picked up a cold, which lingered, and in the heat seemed highly unjust! It was made no better by the constant tut tutting of Marco, the strange tempered Italian man who owned the hostel we were staying, every time Mair used a tissue!! He did however cook the best pasta, and after getting rather bored of Cambodian food (not very flavoursome) some carbonara and bolognese was warmly welcomed.

 

-We enjoyed a boat ride from Ream beach, which took us along the river with mangrove trees either side, and some wildlife - jumping fish and birds, to the sea. We stopped off for a few hours to catch some rays in a deserted beach, which give it 10 years will sadly be bustling as the Chinese have just bought it and intend to turn it into a major resort. We were lucky to enjoy its beauty though, and were treated after to a little jungle walk by the Cambodian tour guide. It was very unexpected, and despite Rach in flip flops and Mair choosing to go bare footed, we thoroughly enjoyed the walk!

 

 

 

 

-Our stay at Ream beach promptly came to an end, despite loving the tranquility of the place we were ready to say goodbye to Marco and his bad temper and hello to a little bit of hustle and bustle. This saw us to Kampot, a small town only an hours drive from Sihanoukville but situated along the river, surrounded by Bokor National Park with its mountains. We were fortunate to have found ourselves staying at a guesthouse called Kampot Pie and Ice Cream a Parlour, much to Mair's delight- she has the biggest sweet tooth around... Thanks be to her Grandad for that one! The lemon meringue pie was what it was renowned for and boy did it go down well, Mair can now proudly say that she experience her first, and many more, lemon meringue in Cambodia, not a first that any of us would have expected! And Rach found herself incredibly satisfied with the banana cream pie. Despite not having much to offer other than a chilled out atmosphere, Kampot did us nicely in terms of killing time before our visas were valid. We did however head of on a tour around to local countryside thanks to a rather crazy tuk tuk driver, finding ourselves being shown everything that we never would have seen in any other case; salt fields, a fishing village, an elephant cave, secret lakes and pepper plantations! 

 

 

 

 

-After 3 days in Kampot it was time to find ourselves another beach to chill on and so we headed just down the road to Kep, a very small seaside town that is gradually being taken over by the French and will no doubt soon be overdeveloped with no character! A day on the beach and a bike ride around the headlands, was followed by a freezing cold boat ride to a local island known as Rabbit island where we settled ourselves for another day of tanning - we can't complain ey. Then our final day was spent by a voluntary hike around the local national park... Yes you heard us parents, a VOLUNTARY hike, I'm sure you never thought you would hear the day that would happen! And yes, we did enjoy ourselves, despite the heat, sweat, muscle burning hills and mozzies, the satisfaction at the end was very much worth it and the views, although it was cloudy, were something we hadn't seen before! 

 

 

 

 

-Finally following 3 days in Kep, we had hit the 12th of March and our Vietnam visas were valid! A crazy long 12 and a half hours our journey from door to door found us arriving in the madness that is Ho Chi Minh City, that's Saigon to you older lot, at 11pm! Glad to see a familiar face in April, one of our fellow volunteers who we thought we had got rid of in Kampot, we headed out for some much needed dinner and a midnight pizza, yum yum! Back to the thrills of dorm rooms, a fear for which Mair had developed thanks to the awful homesickness that she experience whilst in a dorm in Bangkok, we konked out for the night! The following day we pulled ourselves out of bed and headed off to a high rise to collect the long awaited parcel containing much needed chocolate provisions, tea bags and marmite, alongside replacement things from Mair mugging- thank you very much mum, dad and Martin if you're reading this for sorting that all out, you have no idea how much we appreciated it! Much of the rest of the day was spent recuperating and chilling out after the madness of the journey. We headed off to the Zoo and Botanical Gardens that Ho Chi has to offer which was an experience in itself, they managed to have every big animal possible, from giraffes, elephants, rhinos and hippos, to tigers, lions, bears and reptiles. 

 

 

 

 

 

-Friday, 14th of March, (we are nearly up-to-date) and we trotted off to do some sightseeing. Mair successfully managed to drown her camera in her bag about 13 minutes into the days, Yep that's 2 camera in 2 months and a big dent in the travel budget- brilliant! But we got ourselves around Central Post Office and it's rather splendid architecture, followed by Notre Dame Cathedral, Independence Palace, rather ugly in comparison to the palaces of Cambodia, and the War Remnants Museum where we brushed up on the horrors they had to off of the history of the Vietnam War. Something that feels like it could have happened many many years ago but actually was relatively recent and many are still suffering from thanks to the Americans use of chemical weapons. We finished off the day with a trip to the cinema, apart from the constant talking Vietnamese, which we were not impressed with, it was like being at time! Not everyday you can say you did that, it's the simple things that count. 

 

 

-And so, we are currently in Nha Trang, a coastal city a lovely 11 hour busy journey from Ho Chi Minh! The scenery however made up for the intense length of the journey, offering us vast expanses of vibrant green paddy fields, alongside gorgeous coastlines and the contrast of towering mountains. Unfortunately however that's all we can offer you on what we have seen so far.. We have officially had our first ever duvet day, not of this trip but EVER! After waking up around 11 and getting our heads stuck into our books, before long we realised it was 6pm and actually we had better go and find some food. Thanks to a recommendation from a friend who has recently travelled South East Asia, we have enjoyed a fantastic Italian...We promise we will get stuck in the the Vietnamese cuisine... At some point soon! 

 

Anyhow, we are off to the beach tomorrow, yes, again, I know, that's pretty much all we have done on and off for the last however long but we have to make the most of it, although we hear that home has been offering suitable sunbathing weather so no, you cannot complain to us about it!  

We will be sure to keep you up to date more regularly, we have realised ourselves that leaving it so long to fill everyone in makes it much harder for ourselves, several hours later and this blog is complete, another to add to the collection! 

Much love from Vietnam until next time!

Good night x