Hue, Hoi An and Nha Trang

From Hanoi we took an old rickety overnight bus to Hue.  We just stopped overnight there as we wanted to move on rather quickly to Hoi An.  However we had a full day and night there.  There was 8 of us that were hanging out together, much to Stephen's delight, 6 girls, myself and him.  We took a boat trip and saw the floating villages which was very picturesque.  Hue is also home the old citadel, Kinh Thanh, which was built in 1804, on the banks of the Song Huong river.  It is surrounded by a huge moat and 6m high wall which is 2.5km long.

Hoi An is a very beautiful and old international trading port dating back to the 17th Century.  It is now a UNESCO World Heritage site.  It has Chinese, Japanese and European influences in the architecture, with a lovely Japanese bridge crossing over the river.  The buildings are so ornate and dirty with age which really adds to the splendour of the quaint streets and alleyways.  Lining most of the roads are these wonderful yellow buildings, housing souvenir shops, jewellry shops and what Hoi An is most famous for, the tailor shops.  The town has a river running through it and although rather brown completes the scene perfectly.

We were with Veronica and Maxi, whom we'd met in Hanoi and then Gavin whom the other two had met in Laos.  From then on in Vietnam the 5 of us were pretty much inseperable and had the best time ever together.  We all decided to get something made in the tailors shops as it is good quality and cheap and made to measure obviously. I got a suit and dress made and Gavin ended up with about 3 suits I think, even though he had no job to go back to on his return to Wales and no real need for them!

Every night from our favourite bar, at 1am they ran free minibuses to the beach where you could party until dawn and some of us even ended up swimming in the sea at 4am in the morning.  It was so much fun though.  The time spent in Hoi An consisted mainly of us drinking in our bar, called Before and Now, we even had our own favourite table.  I blame Veronica.

We managed to get to the beach one day though where unfortunately we were hassled constantly by people selling food, cigarettes, drinks and jewellry.  At all times it seemed to be 'Happy Hour' which in fact didn't actually mean anything for us whatsoever.

From here we took a sleeper bus down to Nha Trang.  It was actually a newer one than the previous but I found it to be much more uncomfortable.  Vietnamese people are generally much shorter and much smaller in every way than us so it was pretty hard to get comfortable.   I'm not entirely sure why they are called 'sleeper' buses, since every 5 seconds the horn is beeped about 5 times so sleeping is a bit of an issue.

Nha Trang is mainly famous for its beaches.  There are miles and miles of sea and sand and lots of people go there for the snorkelling and diving, although we heard it wasn't actually all that great.  We stayed in our most expensive hotel so far.  Cable TV, AirCon and a rooftop pool all for the grand sum of $12 USD per night with 2 double beds.  You can't complain for about 4GBP a night.

We found a couple of good restaurant/bars and had a great few nights there too.  Also we found a great micro-brewery called Louisiana's which is where we had to spend a whole afternoon sampling the beers after getting rained in.  We took a trip on the world's longest cable car over water!  This connects the mainland with a theme park on an island.  Unfortunately it rained as soon as we got there so no rides were open and we ended spending the afternoon playing on free arcade games and watching a 4D movie.  Stephen and I even battled it out on a dance mat - I won of course!

From here we organised our 2 day motorbike trip inland to Da Lat with Papa Hahn Easy Riders.