After about 10 days of constant rain, we have finally had a day of sweltering heat - fantastic! Post typhoon, Vietnam is actually very beautiful and it was almost (but not quite) worth it to see the rice paddies and rivers in a hazy mist sitting in a cafe in Hoi An with a mango daquiri! We only managed to get one day at the beach in Hoi An which was a bit of a shame because it is a lovely beach but we did get a whole load of shopping done. We managed to see My Son in only light rain but having seen Angkor, it's really not anything worth writing home about so I wont!
We spent a couple of days in Hue which was very hectic. On our first day we got caught in shorts and T-shirts in a typhoon - wet T-shirt competition ahoy - Dene won of course. Second day we took a tour of the demilitarised zone which was very interesting but a round trip of 6 hours in a rickety old bus that nearly broke down on the way back but the driver decided it was safe enough to keep going notwithstanding that the wheels were make a delightful screaming noise! We went to the Vinh Moc tunnels which are slightly wider than the Cu Chi tunnels so we walked down 23 metres in depth and for a good 100 metres or so which wouldn't have been possible at Cu Chi. The DMZ itself is still just a big area of....well....grass! But we went over the Ben Hai river which divided north and south vietnam until after the war, went to a museum where we saw lots more photographs with captions describing the triumph of Vietnam over America - interesting stuff. Our last day in Hue we did a dragon boat tour on the Perfume River, visited tombs and citadels - the thing to do in Hue which was okay but our tour guide didn't give me enough time to take photographs which made me unhappy!
We took the overnight sleeper bus last night to Hanoi - left Hue at 5.30pm and arrived Hanoi this morning at 7.30am. It was actually quite cool and even Dene and I had enough length to stretch our legs completely. Once they had stopped playing DVDs of some horrendous 80's UK pop band that we didn't even recognise we managed to get some sleep. We even stopped at a "restaurant" (aka shack in the street) to get some "food" and got reiki massages from some wee kids for about 20p!
Hanoi is absolutely wonderful. We've spent today wandering the streets in the Old Quarter which are just bustling with people, scooters and cyclos and loads of little quaint old shops selling silks and people cooking on the street - it's brilliant. It's what I imagined Vietnam to be like. We've booked a 3 day tour on Halong Bay on a "luxury" boat and will be doing kayaking for a day in the caves and the bays, swimming and having lunch on the beach and dinner on the boat watching the sunset - ahhh! Can't wait! Then we fly to Luang Prabang in Laos on Friday.
Hope everyone is good - let us know the news from Scotland!
Nic x
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