Hello!
You have Stacey back writing for you now so it will be much better!! He He!

Anyway we are currently in Hanoi which is very pretty especially the old quarter where we are staying. It’s filled with lots of shops and over hanging trees and is quite charming. So far we have wandered around the old quarter, been to the lake to see the giant embalmed turtle and looked round the French quarter (mainly a posh hotel and Louis Vuitton). Tomorrow we are off on a tour round the perfume pagoda and the day after we are doing a luxury cruise on a junk around Halong bay which we are really excited about – assuming there are no more tropical storm and it gets cancelled (which would obv be just our luck i.e. Christ the redeemer covered in scaffolding).

Back to the last time we wrote now then. I think Sam told you some of the stuff about Mui Ne including the lovely hotel we stayed in. Most importantly that it had a hammock to enjoy a G & T in and watch the sea. We also did a sunrise trip (4.30am!!!) to the white sand dunes which was lovely (if you ignored the japanese tour group that kept trying to get us to take group pictures for them). Then on to the red sand dunes (not as pretty) and the fishing village. To be honest I wasn’t expecting much form the fishing village but it was amazing. You saw all the men coming in on the little round boats (can’t remember what they are called) and just the vast array of what they had caught and all the groups of women carefully sorting them, weighing them and calculating how much they could get. There was one stall filled with giant star fish which were the most beautiful colours (shame they were being killed). We also went to the fairy stream. I thought this would be a lovely experience, apart from when we got there our guide told us we had to take off our shoes and wade up the stream. This was my worst nightmare as I hate fish – however luckily all we saw was one tiny dead crab. Phew.

We then got the bus to Nha Trang to stay in Vicky’s Guesthouse. It really was like staying in someone’s house. You had to leave your shoes outside and all the family lived downstairs and it was down some alleys off the beaten track. The family were really lovely too. In Nha Trang we went to see the giant Buddha, big lying down Buddha and loads of monks. We went for dinner at the Pho King Great Restaurant (say it to yourselves) which had the campest guy ever serving us telling me how wonderful all his vegetables were. We had a bit of beach time and then the next day we took a 8 hour trip to Hoi An. We booked a sleeper carriage and managed to get the last 2 spots in the same cabin. They were the top of 3 tier bunks which meant little or no room! Quite claustrophobic! Luckily someone was in my bed so I got the middle bunk which had slightly more space but poor Sam did not look comfy. The whole train smelled like pickled onions which was horrendous – and I’ve even worked in a pickle factory and it was worse than that! Also in our cabin we had a woman with some sicky disease that meant we got quite load spew noises every so often (didn’t stop her eating though – idiot). Opposite me there was a mum and her little boy and instead of taking him to the toilet she just dropped his pants and let him pee into a bottle. All in all a delightful trip!

The horrid trip was made up for by how lovely Hoi An was. It really is romantic and we can understand why it’s a world heritage site. There’s full fusion of Vietnamese, Chinese and Japanese influences so that at night it is all lit up by lanterns. We spent a day looking around all the heritage sites and looked at the market. The market was made for short people though! They had cloth hanging everywhere to keep out the sun but unfortunately this meant you were nearly garroted if you forgot to bend your head, this coupled with the big trenches that had been dug and the guys on the mopeds still insisting on coming down it was actually quite treacherous! We took a day trip to the My Son temple which is apparently a must see. However, when we got there our guide asked who had been to see Angkor Wat (we were the only ones) and he said we’d be disappointed! Great! Unfortunately he wasn’t wrong! It was pretty rubbish. We did have a nice boat trip back to town though – well apart from the annoying French girl who barely had any clothes insisting on sunbathing at the front of the boat and chain smoking. We hired bikes and cycled to Cua Di beach which is were we both got really sunburnt (bloody clouds!) and we’re still recovering now – hopefully it will be gone before the junk! OOO nearly forgot that we also did a cookery course which was good and meant we got a lovely 5 course dinner too.

Next another stupidly early bus to Hue which meant when we got there we dragged ourselves around the citadel and forbidden purple city before having an early night. Anyway that brings us back to Hanoi.

S & S