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Just a quick entry to round off events in Vietnam as we headed to Nha Trang. Its really a beach town in a good location, surrounded by many of Vietnams ancient relics, but we headed mainly for the coastline, beach and watersports. We got there about 6 am, looking pretty dishevelled and we headed straight for a long day on the beach as we had spent a week in Vietnam without turning at all red yet. Nha Trang has a reputation of being perhaps Vietnams dodgiest town, resplendent with drug dealers, pickpockets and prostitutes aplenty, but we managed to avoid any trouble for our time there and the locals were always on hand to help us out and make sure we were never without a Saigon Beer. Witnessing a couple of late night brawls outside the Sailing Club at 2 am did have us pining for London however. Nha Trang was a good retreat for a couple of days and while there we also checked out the Po Nagar Cham Towers, which were very impressive, if not massively different to the My Son ruins and the huge hilltop White Buddha, which is the largest OUTDOOR Buddha in Vietnam!
Next stop was Mui Ne, a few hours further down the coast and a town with seemingly little about it at all, save for it being conveniently positioned between Nha Trang and Ho Chi Minh City. We had a quiet day there drinking and watching Chelsea play Arsenal in an english pub, really taking full advantage of where we were in the world. Unfortunately this day was marred by my paranoia at walking round after being told by two Vietnamese pharamacists that my leg was about to drop off and i needed to find a hospital for my earlier motorbike burn! Fortunately this was not the case and i have been back causing havoc on the roads of Southeast Asia since. We spent just the one night in Mui Ne and moved on to Ho Chi Minh City in a big rush to see all the war museums, the HCMC museum anf the reunification palace in time. Thanks to a legfendary tuk tuk driver we did all this in one day in the wettest weather possible. Our best day in Vietnam however was reserved for our trip to the Cu Chi tunnels, a base for Vietcong during the war. The tunnels have since been widened to allow for more ample Western posteriors but is still a very claustrophobic, not to mention sweaty experience to be submerged in them. But a really interesting piece of history to see first hand. Our trip also took in the Cao Dai Holy See and Cathedral, home to the Cao Dai religion of Vietnam and we were able to see a Cao Dai noon service. Which was nice. After a couple of nights out in HCMC and meeting up with the germans and dutch from the rest of Vietnam we were disappointed at having to leave Vietnam, a country of such incredible history and culture. and seafood...
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