Just arrived in Ho Chi Minh city today... back to civilisation... just kidding! It's much much busier here than in Hanoi, motorbikes flying everywhere, felt like we were going to have a couple òf head on collisions in the bús on the road down this morning with the bus pulling out to overtake with another bus oncoming ánd barely missing us . So... Nha Trang, we spent around 3 dáys there. The same day we arrived, we went on a city tour visiting the Oceanographic museum , visited a cathedral, the pagoda with a HUGE sitting buddha on top and we were going to visit the market but decided we were too tired after the bus journey down from Hoi An. The Oceanographic wasn't much, few turtles in dirty pools, few fish that would live in the coral reefs and then a rôom full of pickled sea creatures... lovely! That night we literally went next door and ate Vietnamese food, Charlotte having spring rolls and me eating traditional Pho.
The next day we decided to venture to the beach, being extremely keen , we headed down at about 9am to bag our beach beds for the day, paying around 35,000 dong ( ảround 75p) for the day. BAAAD move. We sat on the beach , dipping in and out of the sea for 5 hours! and... as it was quite cloudy at some points òf the day we did not put on ás much sun cream as we maybe should of, resulting in ús both looking like lobsters!! :( We made our way back to the hotel and ate dinner dơwn at the sailing club, bit more expensive than some places however , when converted into pounds, not expensive at all for us and had a lovely table right on the beach front.
The next morning we caught the bús to Mui Ne, a 5 hour journey to a popular surfer resort, also famous for it's white and red sand dunes. On arrival at the backpackers, we weren't greeted in the móst friendliest manner compared to what we've bêen used to with Vietnamese hospitality. The manager was English, not the móst authentic for a Vietnamese backpacker rẻsort, and after the usual handing over passports etc. simply handed ús our key and pointed us in the general direction of our room... hmmm thanks!... cut a long story short, he wasn't the friendliest of people we've met along the way and the Vietnamese staff working there we found to be much mỏre helpful..... Maybe that's a lesson us British could learn from these guys, being nice and helpful to everyone can get you a long way. We figured out this morning(whilst waiting for the bus) that thís manager guy was a bit òf an idiot after a mĩx up with róoms, and started shouting at one of the local staff members in front of us, not very professional and i was ready for getting up and having a right go at him. argh! i really don't like people that treat others like something on the bottom òf their shoe, especially when thís pổor guy was doing the bést he could. Anyway, Mui Ne, we found to be very small, and unless you are into water sports, there ís not much else to do. Yesterday, we booked a tour for 8 dollars ( i guess you get what you pay for), we got picked up by a Vietnamese guy in a old US jeep and started going along the one road in Mui Ne. A guy stopped him and our driver suddenly swung round and started heading back the way we had just come. Both Charlotte and i were looking at each other rather confused but turned out we had to pick up two mỏre people.. then of we went off again!. Before long he stopped again at the entrance to a alleyway and opened all the doors, indicating us all to get out. He pointed at the small sign saying "Fairy Spring" and pointed up the alley way which looked like the road to nowhere and said "40 minutes", rather confused we (4 òf ús nơw) headed up thís alley before being beckoned by some gúys saying thís way and we'll look after your shoes!... we wondered why they wanted our shoes until we saw that in order to get to the fairy spring (which ís water that springs out òf the sand dunes somehow) we had to walk up a stream,.... yep that's right, barefoot up a river. I'm so glad it hadn't been raining heavily. We got up to an area where we were surounded by red sand in a sort òf canyon which was cool but did not venture up to the waterfall as some passers-by informed ús it wasn't much this time of year. After this adventure, we made our way back to the car and we were taken to a local fishing village where thẻ fishermen fish in these little basket boats,. Then we were taken to the white sand dunes which were amazing!. Walking up them felt like we were in the Sahara desert , with nothing but sand around us. We then visited the red sand dunes, seemed like the "Blackpool" òf the area , lóts òf locals sitting , ỏr flying kites...
So that pretty much takes ús up to now, i'm sitting in the hotel lobby in Ho Chih Minh City. Tomorrow we are going around the sites in the city, next day we are going to the Cho Chi tunnels, then we have 2 dáys and overnight stay in the Mekong Delta before our trip to Phu Quoc (Paradise) on the 2nd. So búsy few dáys ahead.
Apologies for the funny characters, computer is set to Vietnamese language so hard getting it to recognise english words sometimes.
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