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its been so long since i last wrote ive nearly forgotten all the things we did in vietnam. firstly i remember being quite happy to leave Cambodia, but with hindsight i dont think it was that bad a stay there afterall! we reached vietnam and the first thing i noticed was that as you reach Ho Chi Minh city all the buildings, shops and houses are painted in various bright colours and are really unusal in shape, it was so pretty and ive not seen anything like it before. The centre of Ho Chi Minh is a standard south-east asian city and as we knew we didnt have long to travel the length of Vietnam we did a one day city tour which took us to all the main attractions; the central post office, The reunifiication palace, a temple, and the war remnant museum. Ben and I were particularly interested in the war museum as we would get to see the Vietnam war through the Vietnamese' eyes. It was a pretty horrific museum as it explained the full repurcussions of agent orange, the acid bombs that were used during the war by the Americans. Today the victims of the bombings are still horrifically burnt and now their children that were born after the vietnam war are severly disabled. The musuem displays pictures of the victims and even includes two jars with (real) babies inside that were still-born as a resul of the acid bombings. It was quite upsetting and for years having known how lethal the Vietnamese were in the war we learnt that the americans were just as ruthless.
The next day Ben and I visted the Cu Chi tunnels just outside of Ho Chi Minh, these were incredibly interesting as we were taken on a tour around the site you learn that during the war the Vietnamese dugs kilomteres of underground trenches where they ate, slept and generally hid from the Americans. The holes have been enlarged to allow for us larger Europeans to fit in but I have no idea how a normal vietnamese person fit in them orgiinally as they are so tiny. As an example i think if Little Chloe could crawl she'd be quite comfortable but how a vietnamese adult fit is beyond me! so knowing that they have been made bigger ben and i decided we'd give them a go, one metre in and i bottle it and have to crawl past 30 people waiting to go in behind me!! I never thought i had claustraphobia, but that experience had taught me otherwise! The holes were just so small and stuffy i felt trapped! good on ben for going the whole 100 feet in it, the other 30 people came out incredibly hot and sweaty tho!!
The next week was spent travelling up the east coast to Nha Trang and Hoi An, both are beach resorts and we had a nice rest, spending our days sunbathing, exploring the town and eating lots. Hoi An is a particularly nice town, very old with cobbled streets and lots of tailors to make all your clothes for a stupidly small price!
The next day we endured a 16 hour bus ride that was not in the slightest bit fun as it was full of vietnamese people who have absolutely no concept of queuing and stood on ben and my feet and literally pushed us out fo the way so they could have a seat first! we have come to realise this is a general east-asian characteristic and one that i wont miss in the slightest! We reached the capital city of Hanoi with 4 days to spare before our flight back to Bangkok so we spent a day exploring and then took an amazing 3 day boat trip in Halong Bay. We spent the 3 days with a group of Asutralians and a couple form New Zealand, we all got on really well which made the trip that bit more special. We cruised around Halong Bay, literally lots of little rocky islands in the middle of the sea, and after visiting a cave and swimming and kayaking to a lagoon we spent the night on the boat. The next day we got in our kayaks to head for monkey beach. After paddling 30 metres we heard screaming from the Ozzies only to discover that they had kayaked past a boat and it was releasing water and all the contents from its toilet into the sea where they were kayaking! not pleasant and we all avoided that area on the way back! I have to say we werent suprised by this as on our journey in asia we have constantly seen rubbish of all sorts thrown into the lakes, seas and rivers with absoutely no regard for what it is doing to their environment. On our journey up the coast in vietnam, fields would be covered with rubbish which locals had just thrown on them. Im not quite sure where they think it will go but alot of the backpackers we met all mentioned how stunned they were with some east-asian peoples behaviour towards the place they live!
Unfortunately, the next day we had to leave Halong Bay and we headed back to Hanoi and spent the day wondering around and packing our bags for our flight back to Bangkok, woohoo!
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