The last few days have been brilliant. The Mekong Delta tour was a bit of a disappointment as it rained heavily and for a boat trip we seemed to spend a lot of it on buses! It was still enjoyable though. We finished up in Saigon which was brilliant. It was a flying visit but we had time to visit the Cu Chi tunnels where the people lived/hid during the American bombing in the Vietnam war. The holes that the people climbed down were tinchy - the width was the size of my foot and the length wasn't much bigger. One of the tunnels has been widened up and out for tourists and it was still too claustropobic for me to go through. We also went to the War Remenants museum which was horrific. There were photo exhibitions of people born deformed as a result of agent orange. They also had reconstructed jails and old fighter jets. Really interesting albeit a bit morbid.
After Saigon we got a night train to Nha Trang where we went snorkelling for day. I ended up quite burnt despite reapplying my sun cream three times in a space of about five hours but it was amazing. The visibility was really good and we saw some brilliant coral.
That night another train, this time to Hoi An, which a lovely city with quite a French influence but also quite a strong Chinese influence. It was a pity we couldn't stay more than a day/night here as it was lovely and the surrounding highlands are meant to be amazing. The city is quite famous for its tailors - I got a bit carried away and got a coat, dress and sandals made. The next morning we hired motor bikes (with drivers obviously! - "Easy Riders") and went through the mountain, stopping off at Marble Mountain and American base lookouts. We then drove to the next city where we were catching our next bus. We had time to see the citadel (where the Emporer used to live). We weren't allowed to take photographs inside but it was amazing. After that it was straight to the bus station to get the night bus to Hanoi so we finally made it to the north of Vietnam. It took three out of four nights travelling throughout the night but we did lol.
Plan for the next few days is tomorrow see Hanoi a bit. We had planned to move on tomorrow but it is nationalist day to celebrate the anniversary of the introduction of Communism so we are going to stay in the city to see what happens. On Thursday we are heading to Halong Bay for two days, one night (sleeping on the boat) then straight to Sapa Mountains for three days, two nights to do a bit of hiking and see some hill tribes.
