Saigon? or Ho Chi Minh City?

Well we are finally up to date with the blog! We have made it to Ho Chi Minh City after 2 and half weeks in Vietnam.

Yesterday we explored District 1 and 3 and visited some of the colonial buildings as well as Ben Thanh Market. So far we haven't been that successful at bargaining. Fortunately our only purchase at the market (some earrings) had a fixed price - our excuse anyway!

We ended the afternoon at the War Remnants Museum, which had some very upsetting displays. Painful but thought provoking.

With only 3 days here we arranged to do a tour of the Cu Chi Tunnels - a complex underground tunnel system built by the Vietnamese during the war, and apparently a must see. It was definitely an experience and not one for the claustrophobic. It was unbelievable to think that people spent the day down there - just travelling 100m in the ''5* tunnel'' - as our tour guide called it - which has been enlarged in places for tourists, was very scary and uncomfortable.

We've booked a tour on the Mekong Delta for tomorrow. Looking forward to it!!

Chillax!! And SCUBA

After what seemed like lots of culture, we decided that Nha Trang would be our 'Holiday'.

After some trepidation (we thought it could be a costa del vietnam experience) our fears were laid to rest by the uncrowded beaches and great weather!

It had been a vague aim of mine (Jon) to learn how to SCUBA dive and Nha Trang seemed a great place to try. I enrolled on the SCUBA course (one step away from an open water certification) and the day after some classrom lessons and swimming pool practice the time came for an open water dive! The boat left at around 7.30am and made its way to some great dive sites.

After a bit of ear pain on the way down and a little dizziness on the way up, I had my instructor, Ricardo's words running through my mind "Unfortunately, once you try this, it will cost you alot of money....you will love it!" - He was not wrong, I'm already planning on doing the next stage.

The rest of the time was spent having good food, cheap drinks and sunbathing.....it really was as hard as it sounds!!

Foodie Heaven (and a bit of shopping too!!)

Another bus took us to Hoi An, although this time fortunately the journey was only just over 5 hours!

We arranged to do a cookery course while in Hoi An - something that was on our list of things to do while travelling. The course we chose was excellent. The day started with a trip to an organic farm and a local market, where we bought ingredients for our dishes. The markets in Vietnam are really interesting places full of fantastic colours, sounds and very peculiar smells.

We learnt to make some typical Vietamese dishes - including the national dish of Pho (complete with homemade rice noodles!!) Hopefully we can recreate all of the flavours when we get home - although not sure whether our local supermarket stocks banana leaves! Have to say the food in Vietnam has been delicious and so fresh - the Vietnamese obviously love their food because the ''Golden Arches'' are nowhere to be seen! The day was really well organised and we met some fellow foodies from London which made the day (and evening drinks!) even better!

Hoi An is famous for its tailors so it would have been rude not to use their talents!! Steph got a pair of trousers and a dress made (but wishes there was room in the suitcase and pennies in the purse to get more things made!) there are already plans for a return trip to complete the custom wardrobe!!

Hoi An and Halong Bay have been our favourite places in Vietnam so far.

Hello! Motorbike?

We decided to get an open bus ticket to get us from Hanoi all the way to Ho Chi Minh City (with a few stops along the way). Our first experience of the night sleeper bus was not great (14 hours from Hanoi to Hue travelling on Vietnam's roads in a very small bed was not comfortable - particularly not for people over 5ft 4 e.g. Jon!!).

We arrived in Hue (pronounced ''Hway'') very tired so we had already decided not to do a lot, just maybe walk to the Citadel and then go back to the hotel and relax. The motorbike drivers of Hue obviously had other ideas and managed to persuade us to do a city tour - the sound of ''Hello! Motorbike?'' a common sound in Vietnam! We agreed a price per person up front and then had a lovely, if very hot, half day tour. We visited the Tomb of Khai Dinh, the Tomb of Tu Duc and the Thien Mu Pagoda, as well a place where women were making conical hats. Our tour ended at the Citadel.


Here came the first real scam attempt!! The very quiet driver suddenly came to life when we said ''140,000VND per person, so 280,000VND in total?"'. ''No, No 140,000VND per person for each place you visit - so 840,000VND in total''. He thought we were stupid obviously! A few raised voices followed and we walked away paying 400,000VND! Won't let that happen again!

During our 3 days in Hue we also arranged a private dragon boat tour down the Perfume River. A bit of a strange experience because the boat seemed to be somebody's house - but the views of life on and along the river were amazing.

Into Viet nam - Hanoi & Halong Bay

We finally arrived in Hanoi after our mamouth 2 night journey from Hong Kong via Guangzhou & Nanning, a little tired but looking forward to the next chapter of our adventure!

Even though Hanoi is hectic is seemed to flow in a good way, after a few Bia Hoi's (draught beer) at the aptly named Bia Hoi junction, costing a whopping 12p each, we found a great place to eat. After sitting down we were brought a feast!

After a few days in Hanoi we joined a tour to the amazing Halong Bay. It was truely magical!

We spent the first night on Junk, I (jon) tried catching some squid but only ended up getting ink on Stephs trousers! The second day we kayaked for a couple of hours in Lan Ha Bay. It felt like we had the place to ourselves as it was a little off the main tourist route. Lucky Us!!

Had a fantastic experience. Our guide Canh was really helpful, the food was great and the scenery was even better!!

All the tea in China!

China was definitely a different experience to Japan!! We arrived into Shanghai late at night and were greeted with very muggy and smoggy conditions. Amazingly we met a group of chinese girls who were studying English at university and after stopping and asking us where we were from, their next question was ''is it smoggy in London?'' (their view of London seemed to be like something out of Dickens!!)

The girls were absolutely lovely though and made our first full day in China memorable - they invited us to go to a tea tasting with them - which was very expensive but worth it (Aside from Steph: Mum you'd be amazed at all of the different types of tea I've been drinking!!!).

We decided to visit the Expo seeing as though we were in Shanghai - we were not sure what to expect and but we definitely didn't anticipate the amount of people we encountered!! Queues for some of the pavillions were more than 2 hours (Rich you would have hated it!!). The buildings themselves were impressive though.

A lasting memory from Shanghai will be the Nanxiang steamed buns - yummy!!

Apparently the proverb goes that 'in heaven there is paradise, on earth Suzhou and Hangzhou'- which were our next destinations in China. Suzhou is a lovely watertown with numerous beautiful gardens. Hangzhou is dominated by the West Lake, which was gorgeous and probably our favourite place in China proper (excluding Hong Kong!!). We met Lawrence, a nice chap from America, in our hostel and on our last night we all ended up in a bar listening to fantastic live music from a groups of expats.

Our last stop in China was Hong Kong which felt a bit more like the UK - unsurprisingly!! Managed to visit a few of the sites as well as have some down time which was good.

We left China behind and travelled on two overnight sleeper trains to Vietnam - an experience - particularly the border crossings - but Man in Seat 61 was an excellent resource!

The rest of Japan

Finally have a chance to update the blog!!

We were fortunate enough to spend our last few days in Japan staying with some university friends. They were so generous with their time and helped us to understand more about the Japanese culture (although Mio may have challenged us a bit too much by getting us to eat some interesting yakitori!!)

We visited Hiroshima with them. It was an amazing place and really opened our eyes to exactly how much damage was done.

On the same day we made an early evening trip to Miyajima, a beautiful island with a temple in the sea and this huge Torii gate to bring luck to sailors/fishermen.

Ryogi bought us some mochi (traditional Japanese cake) as a gift (Claire this one is for you - the Japanese and also the Chinese eat a lot of bean paste in their cakes - it takes a bit of getting used to and the texture is slightly strange, but not completely unpleasant!!)

After a lovely few days staying with Mio we made our way back to Tokyo for one last night, before catching our flight to Shanghai. We thought we would miss the Sumo but managed to get tickets. Some of the 'aprons' that these guys were wearing cost about £250,000!! You don't get much for your money do you!! Definitely one of our 'unforgettable memories'!