Cruising up the coast of Vietnam

In Saigon we purchased the infamous "open bus tour" tickets which basically gets you on a hop on hop off bus system to specific locations in Vietnam. The beauty of these tickets is that you can pay a little extra and get overnight sleeper buses (save on a nights' accommodation...at the expense of a decent nights sleep mind you), and you have a month to travel along the stops you designated. However, the reason these tickets are so cheap is that they are partly funded by kickbacks that the company gets from dropping you at remote and over-priced meal stops and accommodation.

Our first overnighter was the bus from Saigon to Nha Trang which took about 12 hours. Despite the fact that these buses are almost exclusively used by tourists, the bus was clearly designed using the measurements of Vietnamese people because neither of us could actually get our knees or legs into the "beds" on the bus. It was an interesting night...

Nha Trang, which is one of the big beach stops in Vietnam, was a nice mix of beach vibe and Vietnamese city. The only snag was that rainy season came a little earlier than we hoped and so we spent a lot of time running around in raincoats and not as much time sunbaking! Another of Nha Trang's major attractions is Vinpearl, which is a huge multimillion dollar resort and water park on Bamboo Island (just off the coast of Nha Trang). The powers to be decided that rather than a traditional boat crossing, a multi-million dollar cable car was required to take guests between the island and the mainland (it is apparently the longest cable car over water in the world, being 3.3km long). Although it is a cute (but expensive) gimmick, I think it is a bit of an eye-sore and kind of ruins the otherwise beautiful island vista.

Although we didn't make it to Vinpearl, we did go on a "snorkelling" tour of 4 islands just off the coast of Nha Trang. It was a "snorkelling" tour because of the 4 stops we made, only one turned out to be for snorkelling and you had to share the water with a billion trillion million jelly fish. As luck would have it, we found this out only after jumping excitedly into the water. I currently look like I am recovering from a dose of chicken pox with red dots from head to toe. The saving grace of the trip was the floating bar (check out photo) and the quirky boat crew who put on a hilarious concert on the boat (check out the photo of the drum kit - it is made from kitchen pots and the cymbal could be from the dark ages).

In an effort to escape the rain, we quickly headed north again to Hoi An. Although we were greeted with a city that was flooding after 48 hours of straight rain, the sun came out on our second day and we had a great time losing ourselves in Hoi An's old city streets. We really liked the feel of this place. In some ways it feels like you have stepped back in time, with narrow rickety lanes and loads of bicycles and rickshaws. However, there is also quite a cool cafe and foodie scene if you scratch below the over-touristy scene. In fact, Hoi An managed to restore my faith in Vietnamese food. We tried some great local dishes such as Cau Lao (doughy flat noodles mixed with croutons, bean sprouts, greens, pork slices and served in a savoury broth), White Rose (small dumplings stuffed with shrimp), fried wontons and Hoi An pancakes (hard to describe so check out the photo).

Yesterday we left Hoi An, heading another 4 hours north to Hue. We will probably be here for another couple of days before we tackle the 13 hour bus trip to Hanoi.

Enough for now. Hope you are all well and until next time....

//Kate