Parts of the Viet Cong tunnels have been preserved here including a typical entrance hatch here…

and tunnels below… best not to be too (or even slightly) claustrophobic here!

mock ups of some of the improvised traps and weapons are on display too

along with other buildings all studded with eary B52 bomb craters

Then you can fire a gun. It’s not big and it’s not clever, all right! We went for the AK47 of course.

Saigon is quite a lot different to Hanoi. I think you can really tell the difference between the originally communist North (Hanoi) and the originally capitalist South (Ho Chi Minh\Saigon). The South is still that little bit fancier, the streets are that bit wider, the buildings are that bit straighter and the overhead power and telephone lines are still that bit more orderly. Apparently when the ordinary people of the communist North flooded down to the South after the communists won the war they were shocked to find order and prosperity and that the people were actually educated, civilised and healthy, such was the propaganda leveled at the people of the north by their own government. Questions must surely have been asked. I’m definitely no expert but now I really couldn’t identify anything communist about either the North or the South. Just like when we left Cuba and Hong Kong I’ve got more questions than answers!

Look, helmets! The traffic is just not quite as insane as Hanoi.

French influences here and there including our guest house…

Dalat is full of trekking, canyoning and mountain biking and we signed up for a full day trek with Groovy Gecko slightly up the road from the Peace Hotel where we were staying… the hotel is a favorite with backpackers apparently and hangout for “Easy Riders”. After the luxury of the smoking ban in the UK I find I can’t quite get my head around people still being allowed to smoke inside in some countries. Don’t they know it’s just soo uncool. It gets pretty smoky in the cafe so if you don’t like that, stay away.

Pretty much low season so not many people around and it ended up being the two of us and our guide. A few suspension bridges, this one below might have been the worst….

(at least we didn’t have to ride a motor bike over this one like we did in Cambodia)

a huge picnic and some local sights later…

we arrived at an abandoned (probably haunted) theme park. Nobody knows what happened here! Probably something to do with ghosts.

Complete with strangely abandoned cafe. Spooky.

Weather or not this is the “Original” Peace cafe I have no idea. It’s up the road from what is probably the original Peace Hotel which has a Peace Cafe on the ground floor though, that much I know. Quite randomly, whilst waiting for our food she thrust a camera into my hand and proceeded to bring out various unrelated plates of food which she wanted me to take photos of. Then she took a picture of us. Hmmm

We (well I – for some reason they weren’t interested in Kath) also got accosted by teenagers on the way out too. For some reason they all wanted their picture taken with me. Now I know what it’s like to be famous. Not too bad. I don’t know what Britney fusses about!

Love these fallorn fair ground rides. If I was going to publish a book it would probably be one of pictures of the strange and run down rides you occasionally find in towns of faded seaside glamour

brilliant…

Not kitsch enough for you? How about a pink combined alpine and native American shallet?

Well no one said I couldn’t!

One more…

The new town is almost completely dedicated to tailoring. Clothes, shoes, pretty much anything all ready by the next day! Kath, it could be said, was quite excited about this after we met a couple of girls on our Ha Long Bay trip who’d managed to fill their rucksacs and two extra bags each brimming with all manner of clothes and shoes. We did spend most of our time here in taylor shops I have to say.

The market is huge and I even managed to buy the bits needed to coble together a main adapter for my ipod speakers.

Down by the river the floor was litterally covered in tiny shells. I’ve not seen these anywhere else and wondered what on earth it was all about. All was revealed a couple of stall along. A fishy snack. You could buy a bag and cocktail stick and fish the little creatures out. They’re tiny and I guess bag would last quite some time. I wasn’t that adventourous even after my recent raw street squid experience pased without incident but the shells are pretty cool. I collected a load from the beach later. I’m hoping they will stop stinking shortly.

Oh yes, snakes and scorpions seem to love this stuff, there’s at least one of each in almost every bottle. It must be good.

The beach just outside Hoi An which is worth hiring bikes and going to if only for the ride out there. There are some pretty swanky resorts out here too which was a bit unexpected. Walking along the beach we were deluged by people trying to get us to sit at their little plastic tables for drinks. Fine if you want a drink which we did and quite interesting to watch the turf wars between them. A mini world war III broke out while we were sitting there with people drawing lines in the sand and everything! It was a quiet day the hawkers are most persistent I’ve ever seen.

Some wobbly bits!

These guys have chosen now to pull an ancient encrusted peddleo (no idea how you spell that) up off the lake bed. Behind me, while taking this picture was a spangly horse and carriage and probably a selection of brightly colours concrete animals.

Floating peddle powered swan anyone?

No? Perhaps a dolphin with a wind screen and door instead?

Down at the market, famous for its jellied fruit sweets (what else for the kitsch capital of the east?). Free samples too.

Just find a nice spot on the street and you can pretty much see anything go by, maybe not quite on the bizarre scale of Hanoi but hey!

Anyway Easy Riders are everywhere in Dalat at least and they will, at the drop of a hat take you on either a city or countryside tour for which they all have printed itineraries you can peruse. You can of course ask them to quote you for a trip to the places of your choice which is what we tried to do. Easier said than done is all I’ll say to that! We were more than happy with what we got though. They will also take you anywhere in Vietnam which could be great fun. Apparently people often become good friends with their easy rider and stay in contact etc.

With ours we went to…

See a big dragon in a Pagoda

some crazy freaky extreme kitsch “Love in” at the Valley of Love (More later)

A minority hill village

with these guys you can stop when you want too which is great for photographing local life…

A nice lake

A really big pagoda!

and the Crazy House. Quite literally crazy, yup, that’s a giraffe in the middle there. More on that later

Oh yeh and we tacked on the Post Office at the end so send our postcards.

Kath’s Easy Rider

I have to say this wasn’t quite what I was expecting but all in all it was still great. The guidebook kind of described a tranquil, lounge around on a traditional Junk being wined and dined while taking in the amazing island scenery (there are something like 990 islands in the bay), floating villages and general interesting stuff. This is actually pure mass tourism done as cheaply as possible but in an amazing location that, for me anyway worked out pretty well. Some other people we met weren’t so lucky and had to basically mutiny to get the guide and crew to take them where their itinerary said they should have gone. Thankfully we didn’t have that. The apparent complete lack of organization could be a bit frustrating. There was an awful lot of waiting around while busses turned up and boats met other boats. A huge endless dance of boats, busses, punters, passports* and guides that must surely regularly end in disaster was strangely fascinating to watch. In between all that, a great time was had by all, in some amazing settings. We had a great mixed bunch on our boat and there was much rejoicing into the early hours even if the captain did at one point come screaming out to drag a couple of particularly happy teenage girls from the glowing phosphorescent night waters.

There’s quite a jam at the various stop off points. If you were looking for quiet leisurely secluded sailing this probably isn’t the place.

================================================

The 3 day 2 night budget trips offered by agents are all exactly the same, ultimately going with the same boat operators in the end by the looks of it. They all offer one night on the boat and one night in a hotel. The prices we heard people paying on our very boat ranged from US$90 down to US$30 for basically exactly the same thing. Some people who chose the luxury version did go off to a “better” hotel for the night they spent on shore but from what people said it was pretty much like our “budget” hotel, they even had to pay extra for butter for their toast in the morning

If it is possible to do this trip in luxury I’m not sure how. These junks we saw below look a bit more like the picture postcard versions. Not sure who runs them though.

The well respected Kangaroo Cafe (make sure you find the real one by the lake not one of the many many others all with “Lonely Planet Recommended” in the windows) charges about US$125 I think. That might be it but I cant say as it was too expensive for us.

[More Vietnam Pictures]

*Oh yes, if your passport is precious to you, you will probably want to close your eyes and forget about that when on this trip. Some crazy “law” says you have to surrender your passport when going to sea and the location of it for most people on our boat was entirely unknown most of the time. Some people got pretty upset about this, one Israeli flatly refused to surrender it so couldn’t go. Everyone did get theirs back bang on time when we arrived back, how that happened I have no idea.