We travelled to Vietnam by train and arrived in the capital, Hanoi, in the early hours of the morning. We were all a bit confused to why it was so quiet and taxis were so expensive before we cottoned on that we were pretty far out from the city centre. After much waiting around we made our way to a busy backpacker hostel, spending just one night before making a trip to Ha Long Bay. There wasn't a lot to see in Hanoi which really appealed to us.
Ha Long Bay turned out to be great fun. We began by taking a small boat out to a pirate ship, which was to be our place of residence for the night. Everyone had lots of fun diving and flipping into the water from the top deck (i just pencil-jumped) before we got into canoes and paddled to a cave in one of the many karst peaks. I was partnered with a retarded Ukrainian girl who had the cheek to keep telling me i wasn't working hard enough, i may have stopped for a few beer breaks but i was definitely doing all the work! The caves were fun, we had to duck down pretty low at some points, particularly hard for Jay who is 6'6" tall. At the end of the cave we emerged at a beautiful enclosed lake where we had a mud fight. Once back at the pirate ship we had a mass game of Ring of Fire which our tour guides' sole aim was to get us very drunk and very naked. Probably would have been more fun if there wasn't four fellas to every female, but a good game none the less.
Our next destination was Hoi An, where we stayed a few days to celebrate James' 21st birthday. James seemed to have a nice day, the hotel even supplied him with a cake... which Neal smashed his head into. The next five nights there we carried on celebrating and hardly left the hotel (it had a pool and free cocktails!), apart from to go on a fishing trip and for a couple of nights out. Hoi An seemed a nice town though.
Nha Trang was nice next on the agenda, a beach town where we managed to get our first sun tans for what seemed like months. We had good intentions to have a bit of a detox, but Nha Trang turned out to be the party town of Vietnam so that one kind of went to shit. The organised bar crawls kept us busy at night, and during the day we would have fun on jet-skis and banana boats and having fun bartering with the many sales people on the beach.
We got our much deserved detox having arrived in Mui Ne. Again, another beach town, but due to poor weather we didn't spend any time on the beach. The highlight was when we hired out motorbikes and ventured to the red and white sand dunes which were pretty impressive. We had plans to spend the day tobogganing, but after one attempt it seemed the dunes were too wet and it wasn't all that fun. On the way home though we noticed a five-a-side tournament going on, so we stopped to check it out. Before we knew it we were handed a kit and we were up against a team of Vietnamese. After going 4-0 down after a matter of minutes we realised our opponents were super fit, and with the crowd jeering us we thought it was going to be an embarrassment. We got it back to 6-6 and played the rest of the game out to penalties as we were completely knackered. It turned out to just be half time and we had another half hour to go! Luckily we pulled out our A game and conquered 16-12. What a game! We got back to our hotel for James to find out they washed all his clothes pink. He was not a happy bunny...
Last stop in Vietnam was the busy city of Saigon. The highlight here was first running into friends from Ha Long Bay and visiting the Cu Chi Tunnels. The tunnels were really interesting, we got a taste of how the Vietnamese army lived during the war and how they kicked the crap out of the yanks. The tunnels spread out miles and we had a chance to crawl hands and knees through them, another struggle for Jay, James too as he's claustrophobic. The rest of our time in Saigon was mainly spent in our room watching DVDs, we got threw about five series of entourage.
Vietnam was really good, perhaps some regrets for not getting off the beaten track, but to be honest we like the beaten track. Everywhere we stopped we had a great time, more than what could be said about China. Next stop is Cambodia!
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