Seoul

Our 12 hour layover was great! We slept in the super quiet arrivals area, just splayed out on nice benches.

After a few hours I woke up and realized that we had forgotten our two bottles of vodka on the first plane. They found them for us but since they had been transferred out of the arrivals area they wouldn't let us bring them back in. So they offered to package them up and put them on as another luggage item for us. Hopefully they make it!

We took a subway to the downtown area, almost one hour for $4 each. We checked out the Gyeongbokgung palace and museum.

After we walked down the little river Cheonggyecheon that runs through Seoul.

We ate an intensely spicy seafood soup, it was great but WOW it was hot.

Now we're sitting on the plane, waiting to take off and see Vancouver again!

Goodbye Vietnam!

That's it! We spent our last day in Vietnam shopping for souvenirs, wandering markets, and eating street food.

We ended up going for Indian again because it was so good, it was good to really fill up on some nice curries.

Now Leah and I are sitting in the airport in Seoul, about to catch some sleep before our Seoul excursion during our 12 hour layover.

Connecting in Saigon

So Leah's brother Chris and I have been scheming. He was in Singapore on business, and we were working on a plan to have him surprise Leah in Vietnam.

It was all going to plan, until they wouldn't let Chris board the plane without a Vietnamese visa. That set him back a day, but on Friday morning he emailed me and we prepared for the surprise!

He was staying at the same hotel, so I told him to knock on our room 304. Chris emails, there is no room 304.  Uh oh.

I tell him to meet me in the lobby. We're both there, but neither of us are there. Go figure there is more than one Ngoc Minh hotel in Saigon.

So I figure I have to bust the surprise to Leah, and we rode a scooter out to meet Chris. After a breakfast reunion, we rented another scooter and the three of us headed out into the rain to visit the Chinatown markets.

That night we had a delicious Indian dinner, and then rented a private karaoke room for a few hours. That was fun!

Cu Chi tunnels!

According to our guide Mr B, the longest tunnel system in the world.

Mr B gave us a history of Vietnam starting with French occupation in the 1800s, which meant pretty much constant war until after the Vietnam war with the USA. It is a long and sad history.

But hey the tunnels were neat, we crouched through over 100m of constricted, hot, humid and very dark spaces. We were with a huge group so even though Mr B was a very knowledgeable and charismatic guide, it was tough struggling to see what he was talking about through the throngs of tourists following him.

The tunnels were a major strategic element for the VC so the history is interesting, but it is not really that interesting to see, I think the tunnels in Turkey were better. But if you've never been in a tunnel so short you had to crawl through 100m of it, then it would be something to see.

Tonight is party night as we don't have anything planned for tomorrow, besides museums and shopping.

We're in Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon)

We spent the last day in Nha Trang playing on water toys and lounging on the beach.

In the evening we caught a hard sleeper train to HCMC. The hard sleeper is a 6 person berth (3 on each side) with a 2cm mattress for each bed. A family had sneakily moved into our beds (probably from Hanoi or somewhere else up the line) so we had to kick them out. We felt bad for the kids but we had nowhere else to go either.

We arrived in HCMC around 5:30 in the morning and just checked into the hotel and slept.

We walked around the city here and sweated buckets. Either I'm getting accustomed to the heat or just getting smarter about managing it, but I think that despite it being hotter than Hanoi it isn't so bad.

Vinpearl water slide park

Holy waterslides batman!

This place was a lot of fun.  We could see the island from our part of the beach and we knew they had waterslides there.  There's something about the lure of waterslides and carnival rides that we all found pretty much irresistible.

We started off on the first ride, which could be aptly named "The Eyeball Popper" or "The Brain Aneurysm" or "The Big Forehead Vein Buster".  It was kinda bad.  We were mounted facing outwards on a big ring, and that ring would rotate upwards and even upside down.  It was actually fun when we were perpendicular to the ground but the operator left us hanging upside down for a long time.  I had so much blood in my head it hurt my eyeballs, and it hurt even more to laugh!  I am clearly not destined to be a fighter pilot.

Leah didn't even go on that one because her stomach wouldn't handle it.  But a weird thing happened.  Because I had applied sunscreen I had taken off my travel ring (a steel substitute for the real wedding ring)

We went on a tiny roller-coaster, which was okay.  But then we found the Alpine Bob Coaster which was totally awesome.  You're in a 1 person (or 1 big person 1 little person) car, and you can control the brakes as you fly downhill.  It was totally wild because after I realized that the cars can't fly off the rails I went pretty fast. Even Leah went on this one, because being able to control the speed she was able to keep from barfing.

After a tiny lunch we wanted to go on the water slides but we were totally heat exhausted so we went into the aquarium to see the fish, and hang out in the air conditioning.

Finally the fun stuff began! Our first water slide could be called the Nasal Hydration Device, we laid on our stomach on top of a toboggan-like foam mat down a slide with six tracks in parallel.

The second slide we went down on our backs, but the spray from my heels totally covered me and went into my eyes. Fun?

The third slide was called the Tsunami (its actual name) and we rode in a tube down a slope, down and up and down and up. It was great fun, we did it again and again!

There was a ride that dumped us out into a huge bowl vortex. One was called the family slide, which meant that the tube could hold a family of six, but the ride was REALLY crazy, we were flipped up on the sides and everyone pretty much fell on top of each other. It was really fun!

We ate a nice dinner, rode the Alpine coaster again and caught the gondola back.

So we rode down a mountain

I'm a few days late!  Gotta hurry!

On Sunday we enlisted in a tour to shuttle us to the top of a mountain pass so we could coast down the winding mountain road on bicycles.  It was pretty great because it was a cool day and the wind was nice as we rolled down.

It was a pretty easy ride, and about half-way down the mountain they packed up the bicycles and threw us into inflatable kayaks and we paddled down the river.  There were only a few sections of white-water so it was mostly pretty easy flat water but we had fun.

They made us a fantastic lunch of pork skewers, rice paper rolls, prawns, beef and chicken - and a huge bunch of fresh fruit.  We were all so full the rest of the way home.

On the van ride back to the hotel we were all super tired; Leah, Holly and I all passed out in the van!  We had a short nap in the hotel and then we headed out for our big night out in Nha Trang.

A big night out in Nha Trang pretty much consists of bar-hopping from place to place accepting their offers of free drinks and then leaving immediately afterwards.  I think we went to four bars before we got too drunk to move anymore and just stuck in one place eating fries and mayonnaise.

Moar diving plz!

Last night we wanted to see a movie so we hunted down a theater, but it didn't have anything running that looked good, so we walked to a 3d cafe and we were pleasantly surprised.

They were showing Captain America in 3d on a projector, we wore glasses and it worked great! It was just a fabric screen in a room with soft seats. They let us bring in our beer and snacks, and it only cost $2 per person.

Today everybody was on the dive boat, Ryan and I did two dives, Leah did a fun-dive and snorkled with Holly in the afternoon. We saw lots of scorpion fish, only a few nudibranches, and some tiny little box fish. Of course there was tons of corals, star fish, sea urchins and other stuff.

So now we're nearly done our afternoon rest (during the hottest part of the day) and it got really stormy so that was good timing!

It sounds like the storm is all done so we'll head out again soon.

Nha Trang is for diving

So we took the evening train from Hoi An to Nha Trang. We asked for (and paid for) soft seats with air conditioning, but when we collected our tickets three were entirely in Vietnamese, and one said soft seat air con, and that one ticket was in a different car. We were a little nervous until I translated one of the phrases into "air conditioning".

That said, trains are great but sitting in a chair for 8+ hours is no fun. We napped, sat in the dining car for a while but the general concensus was that a sleeper would have been worth the extra money even though we weren't on the train overnight.

We got into Nha Trang an hour and a half late (at midnight) so I went right to sleep and woke up for a 7am scuba trip.

Nobody else was so motivated so I was the only one of our group, and as it turns out I was the only tourist recreational diver on the boat too. There were about 10 instructors in training though so I just chatted them up.

The diving was great, I saw a bunch of nudibranches, pipe fish, vertical swimming coral fish, various types of scorpion fish including a white fin scorpion fish. BTW do not touch the scorpion fish or you'll have a bad time. Not as many star fish but still lots of clown fish.

So now we're chilling on the beach, Leah is sleeping on a mat beside me and Ryan and Holly have gone off for lunch.

Leaving Hoi An

Scuba was great, Ryan and I did two dives and Leah did two fun dives.

I saw loads of starfish, mostly puffy blue ones but there were a couple big ones too: one had blue markings and the other had about ten legs and each leg had little squirmy tentacles on top, not to mention the little ones for grabbing on the bottom.

There were lion fish, box fish, yellow piper fish, little clown fish in little anemones, and big clown fish in big anemones.  I saw one huge lobster, I only noticed him from his huge antenna poking out from under a rock.
I only saw two little nudibranches, but maybe we'll see more next time.

The boat took about an hour to get out there, and our dive master took Ryan, me and a third guy (Lars) under before everyone else, and we we're last out of the water for both dives too.  It was good times.

We had a delicious Indian dinner last night, and today was a superbly lazy day at the beach. We've got a train booked from Danang to Nha Trang for tomorrow afternoon, and hopefully we'll do more scuba there too!

I'm going for a ride...

I'm going riding on a bus!

We rode the hot bus from Hue to Hoi An; $4 for 4 hours of bumpy road and barely working AC.

Around 1pm we arrived in Hoi An and were immediately overwhelmed with touts trying to get us to go to their hotel. Strangely one held a sign that said "Mr Ryan Klann" and another said" Mr Paul W". Surprised? We were, but I guess our non-committal response to a hotel recommendation from the last hotel was taken as a reservation. Oops!

We politely told them no and hired a cab for the hotel we wanted. But $25 for a room for one night? Scandalous, so we went across the street for $12. It is a nice place too!

After lunch we rented two scooters and made scuba reservations for tomorrow, had lunch and I picked up some beer for tonight around the pool.

Tomorrow we go scuba. Ryan and I are both certified divers so we will do two dives, Leah will do a fun dive (less than 10m) and Holly will snorkel as she can't do scuba. It's going to be fun!

Failure is always an option

Ok so we didn't make it to Vin Moc to see the tunnels in the DMZ. Travel by scooter here just takes so long, even a 120km journey would have taken 6 hours.

Part of it is the bikes, as scooters are only permitted to travel at 50km/h Max.

Part of it is the route we chose, off the highway and instead through small country villages. So we were avoiding many obstacles; small one man hay balers, hay bales, cows, water buffalo, bicycles, scooters, big trucks and little trucks. Also a few cars, and strange mechanical beasts somewhere between tractor, truck and just a motor strapped to a couple wheels.

Part of our inability to travel quickly is that we're four people, and everyone needs to drink water, make water, eat food, stop to do something like adjust helmets or clothing. All those stops take time and it adds up.

But I think the number one reason is that it is so dang hot. We have to keep stopping to drink water or we get dehydrated very quickly. My main symptom or dehydration is crankiness, and I get it bad. But knowing your own limits helps!

So instead of tunnels we went to the beach via an unmarked road and it was fantastic! We ate some delicious squid and noodles soup and shared a small boiled crab. Yummy!

We also went to a festival the equivalent of a county fair. They even had potato sack racing! Boat races too and we ate some pho and got floppy hats.

The way home to Hue was a little stressful because we were all tired, hot and thirsty. But we made it!

Hue we're in Hue!

It's been a few days.

Ryan and I rode our great little dirt bikes to Sa Pa in the hopes of meeting up with Leah and Holly. No such luck though as their trek didn't finish early enough for us to get our bikes to the Lao Cai train station.

But we were able to get on the same sleeper car back to Hanoi so that was fun. We had a day in Hanoi before another sleeper train to Hue so we wandered around, had iced coffee, ice cream and pho bo. Ryan and Holly wanted to look for rings (newly engaged!) so Leah and I hunted for a theater that was showing the Avengers. After walking for 3km we found one and it was AMAZING!

Our night train was very hot so our plans of beer, wine, bread and cheese were foiled when we all passed out early.

At around 8am we got off the train in Hue and just got going. After showering we rented bicycles and rode around town, this was so much fun I want to do it everywhere we go.

Tomorrow we're renting 4 scooters and driving out to see some tunnels in the DMZ area. Hopefully we don't find any land mines.

We made it to Sa Pa!

It was our shortest day, but rain and cold slowed us down a bit.

It felt strange that we were looking for hot drinks today, after so many days of seeking shade and water.  The roads were good today, I'm very happy we didn't need to contend with the rough terrain from yesterday coupled with rain and mud.

We had lots of great views, and the kids love waving and yelling as we go by.

Now we're in a beautiful hotel suite in Sa Pa, for $20 including breakfast. The clouds are all around us, we can see the mist floating everywhere. It isn't exactly raining, but we were soaked when we got here.

Tomorrow we ride to Lau Cai and put the bikes on a train for Hanoi.

The Great Vietnam Motorcycle Adventure Continues

We've just finished day 3 of our self guided motorcycle tour.

It is awesome! We're in Than Uyen in a guest house. With air con.

I'll write more later but we need beer now.
#

---
Sent from my mobile device.

On the winding road

Ryan and I split up from Leah and Holly today. The girls are going to Sapa by train, and we're following a circuitous path by motorcycle.

We rode for 4 hours and travelled about 100km.  Just for the record that is pretty slow. The maximum speed limit in Vietnam is 60kmph, slower in the villages.

It was intensely hot, and we're both pretty worn out from the heat and the stress of riding, not to mention my butt really hurts from the hard saddle.

Cows? Yes.
Snakes? Yes.
Bricks? Yes.
Dogs? Yes.
Huge trucks barreling right at me? Yes.
Bicycles? Yes.
Lumber? Yes.
Potholes? Yes.
Losing several litres of water through sweat? Definitely yes.

We had wanted to get to Mai Chau today but time wasn't on our side, and Ryan's headlight isn't working so we didn't want to get stuck in the dark...so we're staying in Hoa Binh. We have to make up the lost 100km tomorrow or our schedule will be all screwed up for the rest of the trip, that might be a little painful. But after that it will be beautiful!

---
Sent from my mobile device.

Good morning Vietnam!

We had a very restful sleep after 16 hours of travelling.

Now to breakfast!

Vietnam 2012 begins!

One more night and we'll be in Vietnam.

We're just doing last minute packing and then we leave tomorrow at 2.30pm.