Posted by: travelra on: September 24, 2009
In Han Oi there was a heap of traffic everywhere you go. There were so much tooting horns and people yelling out their windows. We thought it was fairly funny until they started to yell at us in Vietnamese. Our taxi driver took us to from the border of Vietnam to our hotel called Holidays hotel in central Han Oi. The people in Han Oi were very polite and friendly. All the young kids would follow us around saying hello, hello. We would say hello back and they would have a huge smile on their face.
When we stopped in the markets the teenage girls touched our hair and skin. Everyone seemed very fascinated and amazed when we just wandered past them. We thought they would have seen many tourists with blonde hair but they weren’t interested in anyone else but my sister and I. All through the markets were fake Gucci, Dolce & Gabana, Calvin Clein and so on. We bought quite a bit of clothing; mostly knee length pants because a lot of the temples and traditional places we were going to you needed to wear knee length pants and cover your shoulders. Which I thought was fine.
We had three days in Han Oi until we left for Halong Bay. However we did manage to fit in Ho Chi Minh’s Body and Museum, we saw the body B52 plane that crash landed in the Vietnam War and the water puppets. Also we rode on Cyclos for 2 hours around a bit of Han Oi.
The second night we went to the Water Puppets and markets. The Water Puppets were a little show that a lot of tourists went to. It was a traditional show with a band playing Chinese instruments and an extremely small water filled stage. There were 5 people behind a curtain using wooden poles to move the wooden puppets of people, animals, dragons and plants on the ends of the poles. The show went for about 1 hour. After we’d finished watching the water puppets we left back to the hotel because tomorrow we were catching a mini bus to Halong Bay.
Halong Bay is made up of over 600 islands. Each area had a specific name and each island belonged to one of those names; example, Cat Ba Island is made up of over 300 small islands. We stayed close by to Halong Bay City. Our island was called Tuan Chau. Tuan Chau Island had a massive resort, hotel and pool. The view was impressive; there were many palm trees, it was beach front and we could see lots of Halong Bay’s Islands.
We had the whole pool, resort, beach and staff all to ourselves because luckily enough it wasn’t holiday season. Next to Tuan Chau resort was a water amusement park with a dolphin, seal, beluga show, a circus, a crocodile show and a few pools. But we didn’t go to the shows that day because we arrived fairly late and swam in pools.
The dolphin show was a definite to do. But we also got to see seals before the dolphins came out. The seals would follow their trainer around and do as they were told. We got to watch the seals run, play, break dance, eat, swim and spin rings on their noses. My favourite was the break dancing; the smaller seal would do handstands while the larger seals would spin on one fin. I thought it was awesome.
My sister absolutely loves dolphins ever since she swam with them at Quins Beach. She was so hoping she’d get picked out from the crowd to swim with the dolphins. But we thought the show was rigged. The hosts chose a young girl from the crowd and once she had got to the bottom of the ramp, the hosts told her to go back to her seat and they chose a different girl. I felt so bad for her because I would have loved to swim with the dolphins too.
The show had finished and we’d had a great time. The pool and beach was calling our names. When we got back the ground was boiling so we just jumped in the pool. Later on we took a water ferry to Cat Ba Island; except we didn’t end up getting into the city…
Every time one of the ferry’s come in there’s a bus waiting to drop everyone off at Cat Ba city. But we didn’t know that and the bus went without us. So we hoped back on the ferry and left to Tuan Chau. The next day we were heading back to Han Oi to catch the train to Hue.
For another experience we took the soft seats on the train. That train trip was great because there was barley anyone in our carriage. Also you could recline the seats back so you could sleep easily. We already had a hotel in Hue booked and they were coming to pick us up from Hue train station. It was about a 10 minute drive to Holiday Hotel Hue. The Holiday Hotel in Han Oi owned the same one in Hue.
When we arrived at the hotel we dropped off all our gear into the rooms, had showers and went out for a walk. While we were walking we found an Aussie backpackers hostel and restaurant. We ate dinner there around 6pm. We stayed there for quite a long time because we were watching Collingwood and Hawthorn play on the T.V. A lot of Australians were sitting at the bar and watching it to.
On the second day we were in Hue we did the DMZ tour. The DMZ stands for de militarized zone. When the Vietnam War started the Americans made a long line through the middle of South and North Vietnam to say that there was to be no War between these lines. There were a few people on our tour coming with us. We saw a lot of American bases, aeroplanes, helicopters and bombs. Also driving through the DMZ we went through little towns with people living in huts and living off their own crops.
The next adventure we were having was bussing it to Hoi An. After a very long day at the DMZ we were all so tired; when we got back to Holiday Hotel we went to the Aussie backpacker’s one last for dinner. I went to sleep straight away because I knew the bus trip was going to be about a 3 hour journey.
Arriving in Hoi An wasn’t all that pleasant. The streets were terribly dirty, there was rubbish everywhere and the worst part was that there was a lot of tourists coming in to see the beautiful Hoi An but it wasn’t very beautiful. The only thing that was amazing was the beach; extremely tropical, alluring water and lots of little tiki bars across the whole beach line.
Our hotel was only 3 km to the beach so we hired some bikes for the day and rode around town and then down to the beach. We swam in the water for ages then sat on some of the deck chairs and ate lunch. While we were in the water and mum was sitting down and watching the bags she met 3 young girls from England travelling South East Asia. Their names were Zoe, Chelsea and Anna. We were talking for a while with them before we left we asked if they wanted to come out to dinner with us.
We all ended up having a lovely dinner by the river. Everything was Vietnamese food; I had fried rice with chicken. So far in China and Vietnam we had to eat with chopsticks. I use to never be able to eat with chopsticks but it had been one month of only using chopsticks and I got the hang of it finally. Everyone had a ball but we were leaving the next morning so we had to go back and get some rest.
The reason we were going to Nah Trang was because of Vin Pearl Amusement Park. Vin Pearl is an island with a beautiful resort and famous water park. To get to the Vin Pearl you either crossed by boat or went on the longest and highest cable car in Asia. On the 62 metre high cable car you could see the whole of Nah Trang. It was a long way down but the view was terrific.
When we arrived at the cable car stopping station on Vin Pearl Island we hoped off and had a walk around the Amusement Park. There were rollercoaster’s, thrill rides, a circus, free arcade games and plenty more to come. But that was only the Amusement Park; that day was extremely hot so we all wanted to go to the water park.
After we sat down and put our bags down we went on the water rides. The whole park was very spread out; they would have only a few slides together and then all the rest were elsewhere. Some of the water slides we didn’t go on because they weren’t open to ride on. My favourite was the Tsunami; a big blue water ride meant for 2 people.
There were heaps of things to do in Saigon like tours, museums and visit the city. We only had three days in Saigon so we could only do a few things. Plus the first day was a lazy day because we had just come of the bus from Nah Trang early in the morning. The whole ride from Nah Trang to Saigon was very bumpy so we dinting get much sleep. Once we’d got all of our things into our hotel rooms we all had a sleep for about 4 hours. Mum and Dad went out to go and book a tour to the Mekong Delta.
The Mekong Delta was a humongous river flowing through out many countries. On the tour we took a bus to a few factories along the Mekong Delta, we saw the floating markets and slept at a home stay house. At the home stay you slept in a little hut with one double bed. For dinner we had fresh fish from the Mekong, rice, lettuce, bread rolls, spring rolls and rice paper to wrap everything together. It was all very delicious but after a very exhausting day I went to sleep fairly early. Lots of the adults stayed up and drank rice wine; a foul wine that no one likes to drink even the Vietnamese people.
On the last day of being in Saigon we had a look around the city. We went to the Ben Thang markets, the war remnants museum and we also found a Gloria Jean’s Coffee shop. After 6 months of not having Gloria Jean’s it was very tempting to have one. We only had 12 more days left until we went back to Australia. The 12 days we had left were in Phuket.
