We have been traveling through Vietnam from the South now for about 10 days. The border crossing into Vietnam went much smoother than we were expecting!
Our first stop in Vietnam was Saigon (Ho Chi Min City) but due to costs and wanting a beach we moved quickly on to the quiet "honeymoon resort" of Mui Ne. It has 13km of beautiful sandy white beaches and nice big fancy hotels. We were obviously a few stops down the road in the guest house part!
2 Days later we set off for the busier resort of Nha Trang -- backpackers paradise -- full of guest houses bars and cheap places to eat. We spent 4 days beaching and going out (cocktail buckets for a pound - you can't go wrong). Also there are islands about 5 miles out to sea - one of which (VinPearl) has an amusement and water park on, which was slightly random. We went late one afternoon and found a completley empty water park, an imported sandy waveless beach and a few random rides - all in all quite a fun day!
After 4 fun days in Nha Trang we headed even further north on a sleeper bus (a bus with very uncomfy short beds which you get stuck on for about 14 hours at a time) up to Hoi An. This was a very sweet place, it seemed still very old with a dock that was lined with unusual quirky old houses. We arrived at 5:30am in the morning so got to see the sun rising and all the commuters coming across the river on packed flat boats holding on to their motorcycles - a very bizare sight to say the least. Also Hoi An is famous for it's streets of tailors so I couldn't leave the place without getting a tailor made suit. It's amazing the service you receive there, a 3 piece suit made in 12 hours and readjusted to fit perfectly in the 3 hours after.
After 2 short days we left Hoi An and headed on to Hue hoping to discover BachMa national park - apparantly the place has it's own weather system of sort but it was closed so instead we moved on up quickly to hanoi which is where I'm writing from right now.
Hanoi -- i don't want to comment on just yet as we've had a very bad first day so will update soon!
