3rd May 2010 We began our morning with a breakfast of eggs overlooking the beach and watching the local vilagers collect seaweed on the incoming tide. It was then back on the bikes for the next leg of our trip. We started through similar scenery to yesterday, rice paddies on all sides, busy with the harvest followed by forested areas and rubber plantations. ...
4th May 2010 Today was to be our longest day on the bikes, some 240kms along the west Ho Chi Minh Trail. The Ho Chi Minh trail was a logistical system that ran from North Vietnam to South Vietnam. The system provided support, in the form of manpower and material to the Vietcong, and the North Vietnamese Army, during the war. The trail was not a single route, but rather a complex maze of truck routes, paths for foot and bicycle traffic, and river transportation systems. It started out as mud trails but was later paved. ...
6th May 2010 We left P’rau this morning after another wonderful local meal and early night. The road from P’rau to Da Nang was quite narrow and lined with more ethnic minority villages. Again I felt like royalty as we passed many groups of schoolchildren on the way to school, shouting hello and waving. Unfortunately, since this was the main road into Da Nang from the mountains, we did encounter lorries and a lot more traffic as we drove down the steep incline back down to sea level. ...
2nd May 2010 The best and perhaps only way to get off the tourist trail and see the real Vietnam is by motorbike. This morning we met up with Quy and Tam, our Hue Riders who quickly secured our big packs to the backs of their bikes. We took the “Horrible Highway 1” from Hue to a place called Quang Tri. Quite a lot of the roadside here is just scrub, nothing really growing. This area was heavily bombed during the war and some of the most fierce battles occured here. As a result there are still quite a few areas with unexploded bombs and landmines. ...
1st May 2010 Today was our last day in Hue before our five day motorbike tour into the mountains tomorrow, so we decided to take it easy, especially because the humidity was very high. We started the day by walking around the Citadel, but due to the high humidity this was a very hot undertaking. We passed an interestingly named clothes shop before heading back towards the flag tower where we found a display of Reunification hardware which we hadn’t seen the other day. The Imperial Enclosure which we had visited two days ago was heaving with Vietnamese and there were people everywhere so we soon headed back to the hotel for some peace and quiet and lovely air conditioning. ...
30th April 2010 Reunification Day is a public holiday in Vietnam that marks the occasion the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese troops captured Saigon on April 30, 1975. This signalled the end of the Vietnam War and was the start of the transition period toward reunification, which occurred on July 2, 1976. Also, tomorrow, 1st May is Labour Day so the Vietnamese have a rare long weekend. Consequently, today the city and its sights were really busy with Vietnamese tourists. ...
29th April 2010 Our first job today was to contact Hue Riders. These are the local version of the Easy Riders we used in Dalat a few weeks ago to do a day tour into the countryside. This time we’re keen to travel down the coast but this time going over the Hai Van pass that we came under in the tunnel yesterday. Viewers of Top Gear may recall this pass from the Top Gear in Vietnam episode they did a couple of years ago. We were also interested in continuing our journey by bike on down to Nha Trang, but we didn’t really know how long it would take or what our options are. A quick phone call to a helpful Australian lady resulted in a Hue Rider arriving at our hotel some ten minutes later. ...
28th April 2010 We had a bus booked to Hue this afternoon, but that didn’t leave until 1pm, so we had a fairly quiet morning, a lot of which was packing our bags up ready to move on. This was a bit like trying to fit a square peg into a round hole - what with the coats we bought in Sapa, and new clothes we’ve had made in Hoi An, our bags are becoming rather stretched to capacity. It looks like we might have to post some more stuff home once we get back to Saigon. ...
27th April 2010 In contrast to yesterday’s relaxed pace, this morning we were up before the sun. We had booked an early morning tour to see the Cham Temples at My Son (pronounced Me Sun). My Son is sometimes known as Vietnam’s Angkor Wat, but in actual matter of fact contains far fewer temples which are much more ruined over a vastly smaller area than those in Cambodia. However, it is the most extensive of Vietnam’s Cham remains. ...
24th April 2010 The train journey from Lao Cai to Ha Noi last night was a nightmare and neither of us slept a great deal. Luckily we shared a cabin with an Australian couple who were really nice and we chatted with them for a while before turning in, but once the lights were out, the lurching movement of the train and the smells of smoke coming from the toilet didn’t help with sleeping. We arrived in Ha Noi pretty tired. ...
25th April 2010 Our first proper day in Hoi An. Hoi An has been a UNESCO world heritage site since 1999 as a well-preserved example of a Southeast Asian trading port of the 15th to 19th centuries, with buildings that display a unique blend of local and foreign influences. Its pride and joy is the distinctive architecture of the Old Town with its well preserved houses and narrow, wonderfully car-free streets. Hoi An is also famous for its tailors with shop after shop displaying examples of their work in materials ranging from silk to linen and wool. There are anywhere between 300 and 500 tailors in a town about the size of Basingstoke, so competition for customers is quite fierce with people calling out to you as you walk down the street. ...
26th April 2010 The cultural sites of Hoi An can quite easily be covered in a day, after which there seems to be little else to do here except relax, shop and eat. It is certainly a lovely town to wander around, as long as you don’t mind the road works. So this what we did today, purchasing a few bits and pieces and picking up two pairs of linen trousers for me from the tailors. ...
23rd April 2010 It turned out to be a good job that we had bought our North Face coats yesterday, this morning we awoke to torrential rain and a thunderstorm. We were lucky to have done our trek yesterday and that we were going back to Ha Noi later this evening. With such dreadful weather, there was no rush to go out, so we spent a good part of the morning chatting with our Israeli friends Batya and Nir in reception. They have given us some great information and recommendations for Cambodia, Laos and Japan all of which they have visited recently. ...
21st April 2010 Sapa was established as a hill station by the French. The overnight train took us as far as the border town of Lao Cai, right on the Chinese border. We arrived into Lao Cai at 5am. Luckily we had our minibus already booked and were able to push our way through the throngs of drivers offering us rides to Sapa. Once we were on the minibus we had to wait for the next train to arrive and in the meantime fend off the ladies selling Sapa maps and sexy “boom boom” torches amongst other things. ...
22nd April 2010 This morning we’d arranged to go on a guided trek to a couple of hill tribe villages with the Israeli couple we’d met yesterday, who were also staying at our hotel. We had read good things about the trek which the hotel ran, so they had booked the trek for us. At 9am our guide Chi was there ready to take us out. Chi is from the Black H’mong tribe and lives in one of the local villages. She has been giving guided treks for the hotel for about five years and despite never having attended school had an excellent level of English. ...
18th April 2010 We awoke this morning to find the karsts of Ha long Bay shrouded in fog, giving it a mysterious, other-worldy air. We had been hoping to witness it in sunshine, but failing this, to see the ghost like forms rising from the sea was the next best thing. We transferred to Cat Ba Island. This was used as an army base during the war and the Vietnamese army actually made one of the island’s caves into a 16 bed hospital, protecting it from American bombs. ...
19th April 2010 Typically, today was the first day of sunshine on our Halong Bay trip. We awoke on our island paradise and don’t get me wrong, it was a paradise setting, even if we were woken up at 6.45am with the builders starting work for the day. We weren’t even allowed a peaceful breakfast, with drills and saw benches going. The boat to transfer us back to Cat Ba island arrived around 9am, so we all loaded our kit back onto the boat and made the short crossing back to Cat Ba Island. We were met by the minibus which took us back across the island to where we boarded a bigger junk which would take us back to Ha Long City. ...
20th April 2010 The main event for today was to catch the train to Sapa, a small town way up in the mountains in the North of Vietnam. However the train wasn’t until 8:30 this evening, so we had most of the day for getting in some more sight-seeing in Ha Noi. Despite having had a number of days here last week, we still hadn’t made it to Ho Chi Minh’s Mausoleum whilst it was open - it is only open in the mornings, and not every day of the week. As this was something we wanted to do, we made a point of getting up early this morning and heading straight over there after a quick breakfast. ...
17th April 2010 Ha Long Bay is one of Vietnam’s most famous natural tourist attractions. A UNESCO World Heritage Site, there are literally hundreds of boats visiting it everyday and there are a myriad of tours available from Hanoi. Karen had recommended the trip which we booked two and a half weeks ago in Saigon. As we’ve become accustomed to, we had very little information about the tour’s itinerary besides it being three days and two nights. One night would be spent about a boat in Halong Bay and one night in a beach hut on Monkey Island. However, we weren’t worried since Karen had already done this trip with her parents, and enjoyed it. ...
16th April 2010 This morning we visited the ‘posh’ end of town. We had discovered this whole new area yesterday when we were dropping people off after our Perfume Pagoda tour. We were also searching for a supermarket where we could buy some peppermint tea bags, which happened to be in the same vicinity. We walked past the Hanoi Opera House, an imposing building with a French style facade, not far from the Hilton and Metropole hotels. The cyclo drivers were lined up ready to pounce on unsuspecting tourists coming out of these big hotels. We managed to have a quick look around the foyer of the Opera House before being shown the door, but it looked quite impressive. ...