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Xin chao, which means hello in Vietnamese (it's like learning new stuff at the same time as reading this garbage!!). Hope you are all well?
I'm in Ho Chi Minh City, or Saigon for all the old school people. It's the second biggest city in Vietnam, and my final destination in vietnam, before I move to Cambodia in the next few days. I'm both happy and sad to be leaving, happy as I'm looking forward to seeing a new country, but sad as I really love Vietnam, the people are amazing and it's easily my favourite country I've visited so far.
I was in Hoi An when I last posted, and after the reaction to the snake killing, many of you will probably not enjoy the following story, so it's maybe best to skip the next paragraph.... This time it was an accident though and not my fault.
I was riding on my motorbike at night, when all of a sudden a rat the size of a small cat ran in front of my headlights. I hit the brakes and thought I may have ran over it's tail at worst, but from the cheer from Mike and Ross on the bikes behind, I knew it was probably worse than just the tail. Apparently the rat went under my back wheel and had flipped a number of times before landing of the road. The state of the rat is up to now still unknown, but in my defence I did try not to hit it, and also it's a rat and no one likes rats!!
From Hoi An I got the night sleeper bus to Nha Trang, I've got used to the long journeys on a bus, the cramped beds not designed for anyone over 5 and a half foot, and the tiny feet compartments where you have to jam your feet in, so comfortable!! It's the first time I was on the bottom bunk, and the bus had decided to pick up a load of locals, who had no where to sit so they slept along the aisle. The man next to me decided he wanted to have a conversation, but he spoke no English, so we chatted for 10 mins with him talking in Vietnamese, and me in English. It's one of my better conversations, and when he stopped talking and went to sleep I realised I had learnt nothing new!
I arrived in Nha Trang, and was convinced to do the PADI open water diving course by Mike and Ross. When I signed up I realised there was a swim test. Now most people know my swimming isn't the best, and that's putting it mildly. We decided to go the beach after lunch so I could practice as I had to swim for 200m non-stop, and float or tread water for 10 mins. However at lunch the heavens opened up and the street we were on flooded, and I mean knee deep flooded. We were walking back to our hotel and the locals, who were under shelter kept telling us to swim, so Ross started to do front crawl, and the locals loved it. Ross hasn't had his cholera vaccine so we're worried he might have cholera from the water.
The next day was the day of the swim test. I was really worried at this point, how embarrassing would it be to fail at the first hurdle. Somehow I did the swim using backstroke, and thanks to Emily, who had taught me how to float on my back in the Thai islands, I passed the swim test. The diving was great, I had loads of fun and I saw some amazing stuff under the water. We had to learn how to cope without the air under water for a few seconds, and what to do if we lost our mask, but after the initial fear of drowning, it was pretty simple. I'm really glad I did it and now I can go diving in other exotic areas. I still need to work on my water entry though. I gave the crew a few laughs when I tried a forward somersault entry and ended up diving in head first and hitting my leg. My normal jump in entry wasn't much better!
After the diving in Nha Trang, I went to Mui Ne, which is literally a street on the beach with hotels, resorts and restaurants. After more time on the beach, we went to the sand dunes, which looked just like Tatooine from Star Wars, the Star Wars fans will know what I'm talking about. You can go sand surfing there, but it's such a let down and wasn't worth it as walking up the sand dunes to get to the top was a killer on the legs.
I spent 2 nights in Mui Ne, and after being bitten to shreds by the mosquitos, who by the way are my worst enemies, and my goal in life is to see them extinct, I decided to get the bus to Ho Chi Minh City. My first impressions straight away were that it wasn't as nice as Hanoi, which is my favourite place I've been to. There's too many cars on the road which make crossing the road impossible at times. Also everything seems to be a lot more expensive here than everywhere else.
Yesterday I did a tour to the Cu Chi tunnels, where the Viet Cong made tunnels to fight in against the Americans. It was crazy to see how narrow the tunnels actually were, and some of the traps they made were vicious. We had the chance to walk, or crawl even, through a tunnel that had been widened for westerners, and even this was quite tight. If you're claustrophobic I wouldn't recommend travelling right the way throught the tunnels.
I'm off to do the walking tour of HCMC today, which includes the War Museum, which is meant to be very good, and some markets. Then in a couple of days I'm catching a bus to Phnom Penh in Cambodia. Some bad news though, there's floods in Cambodia, especially around Siem Reap. I was supposed to visit the child that my mum sponsors, but I don't think I will be able to now, which is a shame. I was really looking forward to it. I'm not sure whether to go to Sihanoukville now or just spend even less time in Cambodia and spend longer in malaysia and Indonesia, any advice??
Right that's my latest update, I'm quite excited as I'm hopefully getting some new music put o my iPod today. Has anyone heard the new Kings of Leon album, and is it any good? I'm getting that, the new Arcade Fire and Gorillaz albums too!
Until next week, take care guys, and I'll put even more photos in the next week or so.
Sanj
- comments
anakin aka raich You should have ate the rat! Riding round the hills of vietnam sounds like good fun lovin the whole diving and swimming test story. Don't doubt yourself with swimming dude there's a reason why your a fish! Plastic beach is a good album and I'm getting KOL album next week. Unitl your next account remember to keep yourself safe! X
Aman Go to the Phillipines...the Islands are amazing and the people are sooo nice...keep up the stories I love them...makes me want to get back on the road...
Suki Hey, glad to see your having fun. The holiday sounds amazing. Apparently the islands around Malaysia are great, not that i've been. Really impressed with your swimming abilities. Shame you can't meet that kid. Be safe xxx
Soph Johal was this an actual large rat, or was this like the small pigeon incident in Prague???!! ;p x