Central Vietnam and the Mekong Delta

It's kind of hard to keep up with what has been going on the last few days. It has certainly given us a taste of the good, the bad and the ugly of the Vietnamese public transport system. The last time we left you we got up at 5am to get on possibly Vietnam's bumpiest bus journey to the city of Danang. We had joked the night before that it was going to be some kind of party bus, but alas it was definitely not very party and arriving in the Danang bus station we were (for the first time really on this trip) swamped by moto taxi drivers before being 'rescued' (or so we thought) by a kind bus conductor of the bus to Hoi An which was our destination for the day. Seems he was not so kindly after all and after scamming us out of far too many Dong, we eventually arrived in Hoi An. I tried to trip him up on my exit of Bus but sadly failed. That said, it was quite intriguing seeing the contempt he showed for all the bus users throwing young folk and old ladies off the moving bus like some kind of human sized game of lemmings - one can only assume he has a miserable home life!

Hoi An is a lovely town, very pretty with pleasant piped music being played on the semi pedestrianised streets. Had a very European feel to it really, but this came with the baggage of lots of tourists which rather took the sheen off the place. It was just a day time stopover and finding the local English school was very helpful in finding a place to stow our bags for the day and they seemed genuinely pleased to help - we even got given a room to use above the local ladies fashion shop! Had a fun bit of banter in a suit shop, and bought some great paintings which was a really sweet moment - when we asked who painted these fabulous works of art the lady simply replied "my Son" - hard to say no after that! Even more so when she said a £20 painting took him around 2-3 weeks to complete. Lovely family and an honest way to make a living and was great to support them.

Another night train later, which involved me both attacking and protecting Jaryn in my sleep due to some humorous sleep mask induced confusion, we arrived in the Russian outpost of Na Trang. Quite a nice city with a fabulous beach but was rather disconcerting to see menus in Vietnamese and Russian. We decided that we needed to escape to some of the local islands for the day. Was a glorious day out with snorkelling and swimming in the sea with a hilarious guide topped off with a fabulous meal in an isolated fishing village, where we actually chose the fish we wanted and they cooked it for us. I don't think either of us has actually seen a squid before and it was kind of sad watching it accept it's fate with a last desperate squeak and squirt of ink all over itself - delicious it was tho and a great experience. An all around good day!

There was a great sense of anticipation about going to our next destination which was the mountain town of Dalat "a town dotted with French colonial villas, the Vietnamese Petit Paris" according to the guidebook (more on this later!). First tho we had to endure another bus journey. Seems the bus company decided that an appropriate bus to use for 20 passengers on a steep and windy mountain road (where we eventually gained around 1500 metes in altitude) was a ridiculously huge sleeper bus with an engine borrowed from a scooter with a knackered clutch. The journey should have been fabulous as we gained height in glorious mountain and jungle scenery, but taking 6 hours to do a 90 mile journey (often at a snails pace when there was more than a 0.5 degree incline) the novelty soon wore off. Being dumped rather unceremoniously outside the bus drivers friends hotel which was "very nice, nice breakfast, you must enjoy your stay" was greeted with the muted response it deserved by our fellow passengers. Luckily a rather charming hotelier called Thi, and her easy rider drivers Tin Tin and Mr Hung, rescued us and two French girls called Eloise and Alix and we ended up staying at her hotel. Thi was also hilarious and the way she shouted at, and occasionally hit, her selection of slightly lazy male staff was quite funny to watch, but they clearly knew who was the boss - mind you it seemed they spent most of their lives playing poker and smoking so she clearly has her work cut out there!

Turns out Dalat was just another busy, chaotic Vietnamese town so decided to escape as soon as humanly possible and had a fun afternoon climbing Lang Bian mountain (2167m) which was about the only hike in the country where you actually get a view from the top rather than just 20 foot high trees! Seems the locals like to set fire to the forest to 'protect' it which was intriguing, they also had some horses which had been painted to look like Zebra's - we figured best not to ask! On the way down we could hear some kind of dance music going on with a huge sounding crowd. Seems the small village at the foot of the mountain was the location for about 2000 school leavers to have their end of school party and we were treated to a feast of random fire dancing and singing from the Vietnamese equivalent of Tom Jones. Was good fun but we had a taxi waiting for us....or so we thought. Turns out he had given up on us as it was now dark, so some comedic interaction with a few locals we got a new taxi ordered and seems a couple of the local elders took a bit of a shine to our French friends (and in Jaryn!) and we all had a lot of fun laughing, without really knowing what each other was saying. The new taxi turned up and turns out this taxi driver fancied himself as a bit of a cheesy disco DJ and we had a great journey listening to hits such as Boys Boys Boys and Daddy Cool on the way back to Dalat. Brilliant stuff! On arrival in the town somehow the other taxi driver found us and started hurling some mild abuse in our direction - we were glad to know he cared about our well being during our mountain climb!

Seems Dalat has the least lively nightlife in Asia and only one restaurant open after 9. It did however do pizza which was good, and think we were all too knackered to care anyway. 

The next day we once again hired scooters and decided would be fun to be out in the countryside again. A planned drive to the delightful a Elephant Falls took us through the most insane set of roadworks ever, not great on the bikes but the journey was worth it. Thanks to the slightly random road signs and maps we also took in a delightful landfill site en route - was very funny when we turned the corner expecting to see a waterfall instead seeing huge piles of rubbish! Our first nightbus journey awaited later that night and a scheduled 8 hour journey or so we thought....it turned out it was actually only a 5 hour journey which ended rather abruptly at 4.30am in some god knows where corner of Saigon. At which point the tourists were all bundled off the bus whilst the locals presumably were taken to the bus station. Seems bus companies don't like tourists much around here!

We decided to just crack on and head to the Mekong Delta to a town called Vinh Long. We had a glorious boat tour around the delta and some of its islands where we ate coconut candy, drank rice wine (but not the one with the fermented snake in it!), ate like kings, had music played to us, got to wear silly Vietnamese hats and got rowed by a smiley man with no teeth. It was nice to finally relax and enjoy the sublime sights of this glorious, massive and important river. The local bar had Karaoke on this evening at ear popping volumes and seems that everyone likes to sing the same song over and over again - it kind of goes like this - la de da da, la de da de, la de da da de da de da...and repeat. I doubt I will ever get it out of my head!

Faith in Vietnam (and indeed humanity) restored we will be spending our last night in Vietnam in Saigon (with hopefully a good send off!) before flying to Siem Reap in Cambodia and to Angkor Wat - what should be one of the highlights of our trip...!