Saigon - The last time I had a haircut was in Nepal so it was time to have my curly and very handsome locks shorn. I avoided the upmarket and shiny unisex establishments and was attracted to a fairly small and seedy barber’s by a petite lady who hollered at me above the sound of the traffic.  In no time I was seated in the middle seat of three.  A young guy with a moonscape face to remind him of his acne years indicated the cut would cost 40000 dong(£1.20).  Without waiting for my instructions he proceeded to give me a 1940’s short back and sides and on completion enquired if I would like a shave.  As he spoke no English and I was somewhat intimidated by the open razor he was waving I nodded in agreement. The chair was lowered so that I assumed the horizontal. The shave included all skin from shoulders to hairline including forehead and front and backs of ears. I was certainly a smooth dude.

By this time I am totally relaxed and when the barber suggested he complete the job by cleaning the inside of my ears I agreed.  He sat on a low stool and shone a searchlight into my lug and working gradually deeper into my ear he plucked each hair and placed it ceremoniously on my bare forearm. Ok so far.  I then felt him working rather gently on my eardrum, it tickled! Using a pair of long tweezers he extracted a piece of wax, held it up proudly for my inspection and placed it with hairs on my forearm.  He continued until he was satisfied I was wax free then used a fluffy ended tool rather like the rod for cleaning rifle barrels to buff my audio canal and eardrum.  When he had completed my second and thankfully last ear he returned me to a sitting position. He informed the amount payable was now 90000 dong. I was not sure of the etiquette so I nonchalantly brushed the hair and wax from my arms onto the already full floor, paid and tipped with a flourish and left to cries of “comeback soon.”

My ears were very clear and I swear my hearing had improved.  This was borne out when Bev fired the AK47 the next day my unprotected ears nearly imploded.  I have never had so much fun for less than £3.00!

A Tale from Vietnam.

In the beginning of time –

Man lived for twenty years, did no work and was happy for his whole life.

Water Buffalo lived for one hundred years and worked very hard all of his life.

Monkey lived for forty years, did no work but was bad tempered, argumentative and had no friends.

The three went to talk with God.

Man said my life is wonderful and I am very happy I would like to live a longer life.

Buffalo said I have to work too much and would like to live shorter life.

Monkey said my life is not happy and I would like to live a shorter life.

God listened.

He reduced the Buffalo’s life to fifty years.

He reduced the Monkey’s life to twenty years.

He increased the Man’s life to ninety years.

This explains why Man is happy for the first twenty years and does no work, then works like a Buffalo for fifty years, and then becomes increasingly bad tempered, argumentative and unhappy for the next twenty.

It occurs to me that I am about two years from my grumpy monkey period, Beware

As usual when moving on I get about three seconds to write my blog whilst herself is in the shower so just two final thoughts.  

Bev was nervous about water on her face in the shower just three years ago.  I was very proud of her when she completed six dives in Na Trang.  By the final dive she looked cool and with buoyancy well under control was enjoying the experience.

Vietnam is my favourite so far with Saigon my top city.  When you consider this small countries recent history the resurgence is a credit to their resilience and work ethic.  They are honest and smiley with a very sharply honed humour which is a joy.

Bye for now    

Parish Notices – Some of you may have wondered what an ‘oxymorone’ was in a previous blog. Obviously it’s an Italian oxymoron. Simples! Just carry on forgiving the typos, misuse of words, etc. Sometimes I am typing at a fair old lick and even the MS Word wiggly red line gets missed!

Our friend Rosemarie back in Stewkley dropped us a line to say we’d been mentioned on the Sarah Kennedy show (I think that’s early in the morning on Radio Two). I’ve emailed Rosemarie to ask what this was about, but she is a busy lady and may not have time to get back to us before I explode with curiosity. Anyone else know about this?

25^th February – We set off to Halong Bay, which is not far from Hanoi, but takes three and a half hours to reach by bus due to the state of the road and the traffic. Alan and I went to the back seat, me at the window and Alan next. An Israeli gentleman, Uzi, took up the window seat on the other side, leaving just a pair of seats directly in front of Alan and me or a single seat between Alan and Uzi. Our final pick-up in Hanoi was two Vietnamese ‘ladies of a certain age’ (wow, that’s me)...two Vietnamese ladies of around fifty. They leapt onboard, one of them taking her place in front of me, but the other made a beeline straight for the seat between Alan and Uzi.  Judging by the laughter and thumbs-up signals between them and our Vietnamese tour guide, Tran, this lady was very pleased at having landed a man either side. I smiled.

Within five seconds all my worst fears were realised – they talked incessantly at the tops of their voices and there were so many mobile phone calls being made and taken, it was the call centre scenario all over again. Unusually, I was about to get grumpy, but Alan did his usual soothing noises and I calmed down again. We soon learned that the ladies spoke no English apart from ‘Numbah One’ and so on, and of course we just know thank you in Vietnamese. But we exchanged names, theirs were Dao and Cuc, Alan became Number One and Uzi became Number Two and I became redundant. Bumpy roads, however, are a great leveller (ha, ha, ha!) and soon they learned the word ‘bumpy’ and we learned ‘lac lu’. Every time we hit a big bump (which was frequently), they were shouting ‘bumpy, bumpy’ and we were shouting ‘lac lu, lac lu’, and laughing hysterically.

After a break in the journey, Alan and I exchanged seats. Of course Uzi read lots into this, but I wasn’t jealous of Cuc’s size ten figure at all. No, the simple fact is that Alan was weary with trying to have a conversation using a card of common words provided by a young American girl. So I took my place in the hot seat and drew out my trusty notebook and pen. By drawing stick figures in a family tree, I explained roughly our families back home. Then I pointed at Cuc and gave her the pen and paper. We learned that she has two grown-up children and one little afterthought. Her eldest daughter is deaf and dumb and married to a deaf and dumb man. They have a little boy who, fortunately, is not disabled in any way and is quite clever. This was a nice diversion from bumpy and lac lu, but these soon took over once more from any attempt at intelligent communication.

The harbour at Halong City is Spaghetti Junction on water. There are dozens, maybe even hundreds of large, sleep-aboard junks and their associated tenders. The beautiful limestone karsts that were the main reason for our visit are quite far offshore, but this added to the excitement as we gradually approached. I hope the photos do some justice to this wonderful landscape, therefore I will concentrate more on people and events.

Our hearts sank when we were issued our cabin key for our one night sleep aboard. It was 101! For those not familiar with George Orwell’s 1984, 101 was a punishment room where people were tortured according to their worst fears. I fully expected it to be full of cockroaches. Alan dreaded a cellar full of empty wine bottles! There was nothing to fear in this lovely cabin, except the fact that we were only staying for one night. Even the fact that the drain in the bathroom was uphill from the shower and caused a minor tidal wave in our cabin at one stage did not dampen our enthusiasm.

After an hour or so we were amidst the spectacular outcrops of rock and the tender whisked us off to visit the ‘Amazing Cave’. It was indeed amazing. Then we went kayaking. That was not such a good idea. It brought us up close and personal with what was floating in the water, which was both revolting and plentiful. But we did see a big jellyfish, too. The highlight was bumping into Kristina and Olla from Sweden once again. We met them on the boat at Hue and have seen them again on the journey since, but sadly I think this will be the last sighting. Then back to the boat for a short sail to our spot for the night, shower, and dinner.

We sat at a table with Uzi and three Israeli girls who were as miserable as sin (sorry Cynthia). They hardly ate any of the food and complained a lot. Thankfully after dinner we were able to mix with the other folks we’d travelled with in the bus – the lovely Louisa and Mark from near Bournemouth, a great German couple, Ollie and Chrissie, fascinating Bob the 70-year-old New Zealander and his guide, and two vivacious young American girls, Jessica and Colleen and, last but not least, Pascale the French girl who lives and works in Paris.

Alan and I had been facing the evening with some trepidation. Here, as in Thailand, karaoke is very popular and Tran had been saying on the way down in the bus that we all had to perform something that evening to entertain each other.  After dinner, the many other boats in the area were showing subdued lighting in their restaurants and the only sounds were lapping water and night birds.

Not for long. Our restaurant was blazing like a New Year beacon and when the karaoke machine went on, they must have heard it back in Hanoi. We were definitely the party boat. In these situations you either get grumpy or jump in with both feet. Aided and abetted by a surprisingly good bottle of red wine, we did the latter. Very reluctantly at first, but with increasing relish. What I am trying to say here is: “Alan and I did karaoke”. Not only did we sing ‘You are My Sunshine’ as a duet, we then went on to do solo performances. Alan did ‘Great Balls of Fire’ with the all-American backing group, Jessica and Colleen. Then I did ‘You to Me Are Everything’ complete with croaky sinusitis voice and some cool moves a la Doobie Brothers. Alan then really struck gold with a solo performance of ‘If You Go Away’ by Jacques Brell.  I saw at least one young lady with tears in her eyes – I could do the obvious and be nasty here, but that would take away from a moment that Alan deserves credit for. All you folks back home whom he has convinced that he can’t sing – think again!

26^th February – Vietnam seems to have more strictly controlled borders between provinces than the Americans have with Mexico. The same applies at sea. This morning, after a beautiful sunrise and a good breakfast (which the Israeli girls sadly did not enjoy) five of us doing the three-day, two-night trip (Mark and Louisa, Pascale and us) transferred to a different boat for our journey to Cat Ba National Park. We stopped at a very beautiful island and took some incredibly dodgy mountain bikes into a valley carpeted with rice paddies. Passing through a village, Tran pointed out a heap of breeze blocks waiting to be built into a house. She then showed us a pile of rocks and explained that the local people make their own blocks by breaking these up because materials are so expensive to bring from the mainland.

We left our bikes for a while to trek up to a cave in the jungle. It was just so lovely to be able to walk with only the sounds of wildlife and footsteps rather than honking horns. On the way back to the boat, Alan swapped bikes with me as mine was stuck in a high gear, making it very hard work. The one I took from Alan was stuck in a lower gear, but the trade-off was next-to-no breaks. When Alan’s hat blew over his eyes whizzing down a hill and he had to jamb on the anchors, we almost had a prang. I had to shout at him to keep right, which he did like a good boy and I scraped by on the left.

After a rather pointless visit to Monkey Island (the only highlight of which was that Tran wove a little fish on the end of a fishing line from a banana leaf and gave it to me), which we had to swim ashore to reach due to the tides, we reached the main island of Cat Ba and a surprisingly good hotel. The sunset was beautiful, I have shown remarkable restraint with the number of photographs.  No karaoke tonight, the team was a bit weary after trekking, swimming, biking – oh, and the late night.

27^th February – Today was about doing the whole transfer thing in reverse. It’s amazing how they juggle people from boat to boat, some of them doing two days one night, some three days like us...it seems like chaos, but it always works itself out, like I have said before. The journey back was unremarkable, except for the chance to meet some more really lovely people – sometimes on these trips the mix is not good, but we have been most fortunate this time. Marta and Ciara from Italy and Chi Chi and Ahmed from Turkey. Chi Chi and Ahmed are the first Turkish people we have met travelling. They tell us that not many from their country do this kind of thing, but they have been travelling from time to time for years. Before we parted, they gave us each a little ‘Nazar’, a special Turkish token to ward off the evil eye.

Must dash – packing for a really early start as we are flying back to Thailand tomorrow morning. This time we are going down south to the islands and some diving, hopefully.

Hope you are all enjoying some better weather, wherever you are.

Photos

Results of Fish Photo Competition - Thank you to everyone who kindly bothered to vote in our daft competition. It was not a close run thing and it is the winning, not the taking part that counts. I WON, I WON, I WON! I have to admit the cuttlefish swung it for me, I think some of the ladies wanted his phone number, he was so cute! Alan has taken his failure very well indeed and I, of course, am being gracious in victory

22nd February - I forgot to mention in my last blog that we are moving on again, by dreaded sleeper bus to Hanoi. This time we really did go out on a limb, accepting a booking with no allocated seat number! So when the bus turned up I dashed with sharpened elbows to the front of the queue and managed to secure a couple of 'good' seats for us on the top row. We settled into our seats and watched the floor for cockroaches. Not a one in sight. Typical! Still, it was going to be a pleasant journey you might think, having chosen good seats and all that?

Not a hope! The layout of this bus was different to the others we had been on and I had not spotted that the seat I had by now settled into and built an extension on the end of was right next to the loo. How could this be, they had always been at the middle down the other side before? Very soon I noticed the disadvantage suffered by everyone at the back of the bus - the smell from this particular facility was so toxic, it would have stripped paint. And that was with the door closed. Only a few souls braved its interior and, when they opened the door, everyone groaned and said to hurry up and close it again. That discouraged anyone else who might have been thinking of using it.

23^rd February - 'Sleeper bus' really is an oxymorone - it is impossible to sleep properly whilst being bounced up and down, rolled side to side, and occasionally compressed into six inches of space when the driver brakes suddenly. So we arrived in Hanoi with the usual bleary eyes and muzzy head.  It didn't help that we were all tossed out at a petrol station beside a busy junction and told that the agency was sending a minibus to ferry us into the middle of the city. There were young taxi drivers hovering around like vultures, all laughing and saying things to the effect that there would be no minibus coming. We were confident it would, because for one thing there were two agency people still hanging around with us. One of them, admittedly, had joined the crowd of local folk at a cafe across the road, who clearly came here to watch this pantomime every day.

When tea-drinking agency man disappeared, I said to Alan that we needed to watch the other one carefully. I asked this straggler when the bus would be coming. He fiddled with his mobile phone and said, "Ten minutes". Then of course all of us - Brits, Aussies, Yanks… - all got back to chatting again, just about 20 of us sitting around on our rucksacks chilling out. Suddenly the cry went up – “Where is he?” Second agency man had managed to slip away unnoticed and the smiles on the faces in the cafe across the road seemed to be even wider. Having waited for an hour and a half, we all gave in and shared taxis into the centre. None of the vultures got our business, including the one that was enterprising enough to go off and come back with a bigger car.

Despite the temptation to go to bed and get some proper sleep once we had checked into a hotel, we went off instead in pursuit of our main aim in Hanoi – to get Alan’s 3-monthly check for skin cancer. A couple we had met in Hoi An had recommended a private clinic, SOS International, so we set off to find it and were amazed to be able to get an appointment later in the day with a consultant dermatologist and skin cancer specialist.

When we went back later, we met the lovely Vietnamese doctor who had trained in France. His English was very good and, more importantly, his examination of Alan was very thorough indeed. Most important of all, he gave Alan a clean bill of health and we can continue our travels without concern, but of course with continuing due regard to sun protection.

Having walked around Hanoi a fair bit now, we have decided it is no worse than Saigon for its motorbikes and traffic generally. We had been warned that it is almost impossible to cross the road, but so far so good. We booked up for the city tour tomorrow – a lazy way of travelling, but we are both feeling a bit shattered. Also, we have realised that our visas run out on 28^th, which is not far away now. So we have to compress everything into a shorter time, being unwilling to pay for an extension just to do one other thing, which was trekking in Sapa. We are hoping we can make up for this with some good trekking in Thailand. What we are not going to miss out on, however, is a trip to Halong Bay, a magical place that I saw in a James Bond film once and have wanted to visit ever since.

24^th – We went on the city tour and I feel I have gone beyond ‘templed out’ to ‘temple fatigue’, which sees the sufferer dreaming of nice cups of coffee and some other place while the guide rabbits on about some hundreds of years old building. A school founded by Confucius or maybe just by someone who believed in his philosophy, was quite nice. The embroidery shop and the ceramic shop were just unnecessary time fillers, however. But we did see Ho Chi Minh’s tomb, which was of interest. His body lies there, preserved for the past forty-odd years, for people to come and visit – he was looking remarkably well when we dropped by. We then saw the simple house on stilts, in the grounds of the presidential palace, where Uncle Ho used to live.

This evening we went to see the water puppet theatre. Alan described it as “endearing and rural”. Later he added “boring”. I would say “Craggy Island”, which all fans of Father Ted would understand. Back after supper to pack for our three-day, two-night trip to Halong Bay, starting at 8am tomorrow.

From the Mekong Delta, where we didn’t visit a bonsai farm because someone had suddenly opened a new restaurant and bought all the trees, through Hue where a taxi driver ‘forgot’ to do half of our tour, to Hanoi where a travel company abandoned us on the edge of the city and we did not visit a major museum on our city tour because it was closed, Vietnam sometimes delivers less than it promises (i.e. than you have paid for). But most people have been warm and friendly and beautiful to look at. Of all the countries we have visited so far, Vietnam is one that I would definitely like to visit again.

We will let you know about Halong Bay when we get back in a few days. Our flights to Bangkok are booked for 28^th.

Photos

19^th February – Our driver turned up a little early this morning, but this time we were waiting for him. And it was not our Marble Mountain Man, Foo. So we set off in good order for Da Nang station, where we would catch the train to Hue. On the way we passed by China Beach, which will soon be a different place altogether. Massive developments of hotels and villas are already under way. On the other side of the road are two golf courses, one sporting the name, ‘Montgomerie [sic] Links’. The other has connections with Greg Norman, according to the massive billboard.

The Tet holiday lingers for 10 days after the lunar New Year, so the station was teeming with Vietnamese people either travelling home or going to see more relatives. We were shown into the waiting room by a stern lady in a navy trouser suit and managed to get two seats right at the front. This was actually quite an honour, as we realised that most local people were kept in an outer waiting room until about ten minutes before their train was due, when they then crowded through the doors just in front of us. Passengers are not allowed on to the platform before the train arrives, so this results in a seething mass that would eclipse any easyJet queue.

Our train was delayed by two hours, so we had plenty of time to make new best friends. Some of the people spoke no English, but just smiled at us or looked at our rucksacks and made noises of the ‘cor, those are big bags’ kind. Others did the usual list of English football teams. We, of course, had no response in their language except for ‘cam o’n’, which means thank you and does not serve well in every situation. One thing we learnt was that Alan should not offer his seat, even to an elderly lady. He tried and was almost rebuked for his politeness. I think they would find it unacceptable to have a visitor to their country standing while one of them sat. I find it quirky that these same people will slip into a two-inch gap in front of you in a queue!

We amused ourselves for two hours just watching people come and go. Several trains arrived and departed. Two arrived and just sat – they were still sitting there, packed with people, when we left. This is due to the railway system being mainly single track and you simply have to wait your turn. The people on board these trains all appeared to be eating from polystyrene containers. When finished with, the containers, empty bags, and leftover bits of food, were all fed through the windows to fall on to the tracks.

When our train arrived we joined the throng flooding on to the platform. Reaching the train is an interesting experience. Passengers first have to negotiate the rather lengthy step down from platform to rails. Then the rails are crossed to reach the train, upon which a lengthy step up demands a great deal of support from upper body strength to haul passenger and luggage on board. Despite the vast number of people getting on to our train, we found ourselves in an almost deserted soft seat, air conditioned carriage. The only others in it were a bored teenage girl with her feet up on the headrest of the seat in front (she had probably sneaked in from the hard seat class) and a young couple with a lovely little six-month-old boy. Our seat numbers decided that we would be sitting directly behind them. These days I am trying to do the ‘getting involved’ thing instead of harrumphing when I see kids. They are everywhere here and there is no escaping them. So we peek-a-booed and talked baby talk until both sides were utterly bored and started admiring the view instead.

Unfortunately the weather continues to be cloudy, windy and cool. The windows of the train were filthy, too. These factors combined to make photography a messy business, as the gallery will show. It didn’t help that, later, we found out the windows could be opened. We didn’t even try, as there was no clear means of opening them plus this was an a/c carriage. Hey ho. The weather did make for some dramatic seas on the rocky shores we saw. It was indeed a very scenic and enjoyable rail journey, worth making if you are ever in Vietnam.

Hue is about halfway up Vietnam, sitting on the coastal side of a narrow waist of land between sea and Laos. The scenery around the city is very lush, with low mountains on the inland side. It was raining lightly when we arrived and we were glad to get to our hotel, which turned out to have a room the size of two normal bedrooms, with two double beds, loads of furniture, a bathroom with a proper bath, and – amazingly – a computer with free internet access!

20^th February – My cold is now doing its worst, so we indulged in an extra long lie-in. Then we set off to visit one of the city’s most notable landmarks, a 19^th Century citadel. Sadly, most of the buildings were destroyed in a fire in 1947, but restoration work is under way. To get to the citadel from our hotel, we walked over one of the bridges crossing the Perfume River, a wide and clean-looking river that divides Hue. Our first task was to find brunch, so our target was a cafe, the Lac Thien, which is recommended in all the guides as having great food and being run by a charming deaf family. The signature dish is a small rice pancake with bean sprouts, salad and peanut sauce. Our guide book warns against being tricked by other cafe owners, who have adopted the same name and advertise this same speciality. The only way to identify the One True Lac Thien is to go by the building number, which in this case is six.

So we were not surprised when we were accosted by a couple at the corner of the street, standing outside a cafe called Lac Thien and indicating a board advertising a pancake speciality. We ignored their siren song and were ploughing on, but then I grabbed Alan and pointed out that this cafe had a number six on its name board. Alan, however, was firmly strapped to the mast and, a few paces later, we found the actual number six by checking the building numbers either side. Talk about a cheek! But you have to admire the use of market intelligence by the fake Lac Thien – the couple knew that the number six was going to be used by everyone who read the guidebooks. 

 The older man of the family at the One True Lac Thien could not have made us feel more welcome. As to the food, however, we tried the signature dish, a small rice pancake with bean sprouts, salad and peanut sauce, and found it very ordinary indeed. The other dish was also nice, but will not stand out in memory. But that is just our opinion and the testimonies written on the walls would indicate that other people have had a wonderful experience here.

Our visit to the citadel was somewhat marred by the crowds of Vietnamese people still on holiday for Tet. Alan would disagree, he finds it all charming. Don’t get me wrong, I think when it comes to the things that really matter, the Vietnamese people have not been found wanting. But it is the little everyday culture clashes that really grate on me, especially when you heap together a muggy day, a head and chest cold, and a few hot flushes for good measure. As I mentioned earlier, most of the buildings in the citadel were destroyed by fire. Of those remaining, the Royal Reading Pavilion is the most beautiful and I had my eye on it for some serious photography on the return leg of our circuit of the 2 kilometre square site.

I have mentioned before that the Japanese attitude to visiting sites of historic interest or outstanding natural beauty seems to be one that demands the collection of photographs with someone posing in every one – oh, and don’t forget the obligatory V sign. Vietnamese people take this a stage further. Every boy seems to think his girlfriend is a supermodel and every girlfriend seems to buy into this myth. By the time we had worked our way around the citadel and returned to the Reading Pavilion, a misguided foursome had taken possession of this very beautiful and fragile old wooden building with the little rocky island of bonsai trees and other plants in a pond in front. Access to the building and the island was clearly forbidden, but this did not stop our two wannabees climbing over the fence and crossing one of the little stone bridges to the island. Once there, they primped and preened and posed for their gabbling, overexcited boyfriends who clicked away oblivious to the volcano that was about to erupt behind them. The only way I would have wanted their ugly mugs in my shot was if I had been holding an AK47 instead of an Olympus. At one point, one of the females actually leaned on a beautiful old bonsai tree that had probably taken a hundred years to grow and I heard splintering of wood. I shouted something to the effect of oh, for goodness sake, and left before I became violent.

I found my safety valve around the corner and spouted out all the bad words I could think of to describe these people (I can feel myself getting agitated just at the memory of them) and he took my camera from me and said he would get my photograph for me. As we went back round the corner to the front of the building, things got worse. A whole family of kids and adults arrived and, seeing the great example of the supermodels, the brats all piled over the fence and on to the island, too. Even worse – I decided I did not want a photograph of the Pavilion now, because it would only bring back bad memories. But Alan would not give up the camera and we ended up in a brief but unseemly struggle for possession. This attracted amused attention from the offending party, which made me even more furious. I just walked away and turned my back on the whole sorry scene.

You think it can’t get worse? It did. Alan became new best friends with the party and they made way of sorts while he took his photograph. When I viewed it on the camera, there, preserved for posterity like a spider in a pot of jam, was one of the brats in the bottom right hand corner.

In the evening we booked up for Folk Music on the Perfume River. We were to be collected at our hotel, so imagine our bemusement when our man turned up on a pushbike. It turned out we had to follow him through the streets to the boat dock. Sometimes he rode while we struggled to keep up. I told Alan to console himself with the fact that people usually pay much more than 12 dollars for a personal trainer. The boat is like two hulls joined together by a deck in between. Each hull has a tall dragon head at the front. A young lady greeted us and asked us if we would like a drink. We asked for tea and she said coffee. We said no, tea. Ahh, she said and dashed off up the bank to a nearby stall. She came back clutching two bags of crisps. Once again we fail to make ourselves understood, our fault, not theirs. We settled for a can of coke.

The folk music was charming, but sadly the meaning was lost on us. At the halfway stage, little candles were lit inside paper lanterns. As we were the only white people on board, we just stayed back as each of the local folk launched one of these. Soon the lady who was the organiser on the boat came and found Alan to say that there were candles for him and for me. She led us down the steps at the front of the boat and held our arm while we launched our little lanterns and made a wish. A man said to Alan, I hope your wish will come true. He, being Mr Cool, said, “It already has” and gave me a kiss. This was a real crowd-pleaser!

21^st February – Today we took a tour with some other folks. The first part saw us back on one of the ‘dragon boats’ and taking a good long journey up the Perfume River, which turns into a very beautiful and scenic stretch of water just outside the city. We met some lovely folks on board, including Glen from Folkestone, who was a Lionel Jeffries lookalike. There was also the now-familiar Vietnamese Posing Couple – a very smartly dressed and lovely young couple who ensure she was sitting just so, with her head at just the right angle before he took the shot. As the day unfolded there was no ancient building or beautiful scene photographed without her posing in it. And I am not exaggerating.

Our visits along the way were mainly to pagodas (temples) and to mausoleums. One of the pagodas, Thien Mu, was home to the Buddhist monk who very famously burnt himself to death in central Saigon in 1963 to protest at religious repression. You may have seen the image of this man, Thich Quang Duc, sitting quietly in the lotus position while the flames rose around him. The photograph was published across the world and the little powder blue Austin car which he drove from Hue to Saigon on that day is housed at the pagoda. I feel I have to mention that eight other Buddhist monks, two of them female, also burnt themselves to death at that time due to the continued repression of religion by the communist regime.

Once again a baffling aspect of the religious scene here – a big urn of sand containing incense sticks as offerings. Some of which had cigarette butts jammed on the end. We witnessed, at the same place, local people throwing food, clothes, flowers, books, money, all sorts of stuff on to a fire. The smoke apparently sends these earthly comforts to those in the afterlife. Some of whom still enjoy a puff on a fag, allegedly.

The mausoleums were the ultimate in self-indulgence. The three we visited were built in the 19^th and 20^th Centuries by Kings of Vietnam so that they could ensure their bodies were interred in a suitably dramatic setting. Each mausoleum had a very different character. Minh Mang had a series of Chinese-style buildings laid out to represent the shape of a body, all set in beautifully-landscaped grounds. Khai Dinh went for European Baroque, creepy on the outside and highly ornate on the inside, with lots of gold and mosaics. Tu Duc, who apparently was weak on the King bit, but a great poet, chose a romantic location with lakes and an island and simple wooden structures housing paintings featuring his poetry. He used it as his country palace during the latter years of his life.

The amazing thing is that only Khai Dinh is actually buried in his mausoleum. Buddhists believe that there has to be a body for reincarnation to take place, so enemies of dynasties would dig up the bodies of dead kings and chop them in pieces, scattering these abroad. Therefore Kings would have their relics interred at the mausoleum, but would be buried in secret at another location. The people used to carry out the burials were either deaf and dumb, or convicts. The latter were beheaded as soon as the task was completed. Khai Dinh is 18 metres below ground, therefore they felt that there was no need to move his body to a secret hiding place.

I was pleased to have something explained to us by our guide, Bing. Throughout South East Asia, people keep spouting the phrase, “Same, same, but different”. We have been wanting to know the origins of this for ages and Bing tells us it is to do with the architecture, especially in North Vietnam. It does look exactly like Chinese to untrained eyes, but apparently it is more harmonious with nature, therefore it is ‘same, same, but different’.

At one of the sites someone found a snake eating a frog. Apparently both were poisonous. Alan took some photos. There was no sign of Mr Camera and Mrs Pose, but this was probably an oversight on their part – I’m sure if he worked as a Scenes of Crimes photographer, he would have to take her along to pose with the bloodied corpse.

On the way back to Hue we stopped to watch incense stick and conical hat making. For me, the former is very much like one of the features you might watch on ‘How Do They Do That’. One of those everyday things people use with no idea how it is made. A lady rolled a stick in a mixture of wax and the chosen scent – in this case, cinnamon powder. Once coated, it is laid out to dry for several days before use.

You may have noticed that Alan has crept back into the scene. He managed to track down me and my old man from Hoi An (hey, I’m a poet), probably just to flaunt his new girlfriend in my face. There are a couple of photos of her at the end of the gallery. The old man of Hoi An took a fancy to the girlfriend, however, and they disappeared together in her boat. I suppose Alan and I will just have to team up once more! He hasn’t changed a bit – the photos will show that he a) persuaded the boatman to let him drive the boat and b) just had to model what he called a ‘comical hat’.

Photos – sorry, many of these are blurred. Like an idiot, I had not adapted to the changed conditions from sunny to overcast. Woops!

16^th February – Today, being a moving-on day, was spent mostly time wasting. Oh, and eating. The effects of my month and a half long Delhi Diet have now been well and truly counteracted! We actually spent an hour having a nice massage, lying side by side being slapped and pummelled by two tiny Vietnamese girls. Amazing how much strength can be packed into one small frame. At the end, as seems usual in these places, they asked straight out for a tip. We are still struggling with the number of zeros at the end of the notes. When both little faces formed into a pout, we knew we had drastically under-tipped. A quick Extraordinary General Meeting of the Finance Committee later, and the two girls were in possession of probably the biggest tip ever given in South East Asia. Our reward was lots of hugging, smiling, jumping up and down and squealing. And that was just us!

We hopped on board our night bus and then spent the next hour driving in circles around the streets picking up other passengers at their hotels. Our hotel went past three times. Surely it would have been more efficient to tell everyone to be at a certain place? We still can’t work that one out, especially as everyone on board is carrying a rucksack and clearly capable of walking a few yards. Anyway, our lower-level sleeper pods were not too bad, in fact, less claustrophobic than being on the top layer where the ceiling is closer. Also, everyone has a window to look out of. All set for a good night’s sleep then. NOT.

The first thing we noticed was that the wretched bus was infested with cockroaches. When you are just a couple of inches above floor level, it is hard to ignore them running about. Then one ran along the window ledge beside me. I flicked it forward towards the young Vietnamese girl who had been getting on my nerves. I saw another one (cockroach, not annoying girl) attempting to climb a ladder to the top level. It almost made it, then fell backwards towards the floor. And survived. I got out the mosquito repellent and created an exclusion zone around my bed and Alan’s. Like they paid any attention to it! I then armed myself with one of my flip flops, but the force with which you have to hit a cockroach in order to kill it is enough to wake the dead and I desisted when I realised half the bus was staring round at me. I decided to go nuclear...no I didn’t, I curled into a foetal position and stayed that way for most of the night.

The lights had remained on while we did our Groundhog Day around Nha Trang, so Alan and I kept our seats upright so that we could read and look out more easily. This turned into a fairly major league mistake. Just outside the town we stopped and picked up a Vietnamese family of four, clearly travelling back home following Tet. There were no seats for them and they had no tickets, just the usual bung for the driver. Before you could say ‘bugger off’, I’m blowed if the mother and older son hadn’t slipped into the little wedge of space left behind Alan’s seat and mine respectively. This meant that we could not recline our seats for sleeping. The father and younger son sat on the steps leading down to the toilet.

17^th February - Around 1am the bus stopped for a rest break. I took the opportunity to lower my seat and feigned sleep when the boy returned. He joined his brother on the floor. Alan is too much of a gentleman to make a woman sleep on the floor, even though it was her own fault she found herself in the situation, and he continued in the sitting up position until, at last around 4am, the family finally got off the bus.

Hoi An is a lovely change after the hustle and bustle of Saigon and Nha Trang. There are no high-rise buildings, just old houses lining a river and some low-rise developments further back. We dumped our bags at a hotel and set off to find breakfast at a cafe on the river front, stopping at one run by a lady called Thu. When it was time to pay, Alan did one of his sillies and pretended that the breakfast had cleaned him out of money completely. Thu handed him back 50,000 dong and said, “You come back later, you can pay me then.” She seemed to enjoy it when I clouted Alan around the head.

As we walked down the street we were approached by one of the many nut-selling ladies who seem to abound. We bought a couple of sesame- and peanut-based products and when it came to paying and Alan was dickering about price, probably being hysterical from lack of sleep, I said the sweets were free and pretended to run away. The girl picked out a packet of banana chips and handed it to me, saying, “These free, make good luck for you and good luck for me”. Another random act of kindness in Vietnam.

The town is a world heritage site and has several ornate Chinese meeting houses and merchant houses, as well as a very old Japanese covered bridge. Visitors can buy a ticket that allows entry to five of the sites, but of course we didn’t do this – not out of a desire to break the rules, but out of sheer ignorance. We wandered unchallenged over the Japanese bridge, then went to one of the merchant houses. As we passed through, we thought it strange that no one was asking for money. Then we came across two girls who asked for our tickets. I think we looked suitably mortified, as one of the girls said that, if we bought a Chinese birth sign necklace each, she would not say anything about the ticket. So we have ended up with a horse medallion (Alan) and a rat (that would be me).

In the end we bought tickets anyway as we wanted to go into one of the Chinese meeting houses and it was well guarded. We were not disappointed. The architecture was very typically Chinese-of-a-certain-era and highly ornate. Little fish ponds and bonsai abounded, as well as long, long incense sticks curled into cone shapes and hanging from every available bit of ceiling. Each one of these cones was lit and the smell was a bit overpowering. Alan decided he would not like the job of Incense Cone Lighter and Puter-Outer.

Food is never far from my thoughts, so we followed Alan’s instincts down a narrow alleyway and into a little restaurant that seemed popular with the locals. We ordered two of the set menus and thoroughly enjoyed them. The most remarkable two out of the eight different dishes we had in total was the ‘White Rose’, a little snowy-white wonton filled with shrimp and folded up into the rose shape. The other was less elegant, but even tastier. Cou Lau was a meat-based broth with noodles and vegetables and, on top, a heap of wonderful herbs, some of which I didn’t recognise, but the main one was mint. A truly divine dish.

Today was cloudy and I actually ended up feeling cold, so I wore my fleece for the first time in many weeks when we went out in the evening. Perhaps this also could be down to the fact that I am now embarking on my second cold of the trip.

18^th February – Today we were supposed to have a two-destination car trip, which we booked with a travel agent yesterday. First of all, the driver turned up half an hour early, when we were away having breakfast. He had left by the time we got back five minutes before the time on the ticket and the girl at the hotel had to ring the travel agent to get him back. He drove like a demon – thankfully there were seatbelts in the back and we made use of them.

Marble Mountain, our first stop, was that usual odd (to me) combination of commerce and religion. At the bottom of the ‘mountain’ (a steep but quite small rocky hill, really) was a shop selling all forms of marble carvings and sculptures, from Buddha statues to earrings. At the top of the hill were pagodas and shops and caves. Some of the caves contained shrines with extremely beautiful carved images. But (again, to me) this all seemed a bit Disney-meets-Buddha.

Reunited with our driver, we were due to stop next at China Beach, the place where US soldiers went on R&R during the Vietnam War. We were looking forward to walking along the sand, maybe having a paddle, then doing lunch (sorry, that seems to be all we do these days!) in one of the seafood restaurants we had read about. When we turned inland, I was a bit unsettled, but didn’t say anything as sometimes the lie of the land results in beaches in opposite directions. As we entered a built-up area I even commented to Alan that this seemed like a nice little place, thinking maybe the beach had an attached town. Gradually the buildings started to seem a bit familiar, then we pulled into the drive of our hotel back in Hoi An.

Well, long story short. Us – not happy. Driver – not happy, shouting down phone at travel agent. Us – fed up of driver who is clearly not going to drive back out to China Beach, which we now know is next to Marble Mountain. Us – walking direct to travel agency. Alan – not happy when girl offers us a refund of about three dollars when we had paid 25 dollars, thinking we would have almost a full day out. Alan and girl – standoff, raised voices. Bev –  “But...”. Girl – more money placed on table. Alan – accepted. Girl – very upset and now talking to us, telling us the driver had told her he had ‘forgotten’ to go to the beach and he now had to get home to his family for the rest of Tet. Bev – you shouldn’t give him any more work, he cheated us and he cheated you. Girl – not that easy, this is Vietnam. All – consoling each other, parting friends.

But I did make sure I left the office with the tickets that were to have been brought along by the driver tomorrow, when he takes us to Da Nang to catch a train to Hue. And if you are ever in Hoi An and your taxi driver turns out to be called something that sounds like ‘Foo’, just walk. Oh, and give him a punch in the gob from me.

We went and had a fruit shake with Thu. I had an idea my day was not going to get any better when my pineapple shake tasted a bit oniony. Hey ho, I thought, someone didn’t clean the knife properly. At the bottom of a fruit shake it is common to find little lumps that need an extra hard suck on the straw to raise. I had nothing left in the glass but this one little lump. When it eventually shot into my mouth and I started to chew, the reason for the oniony flavour became clear to me. It was a piece of onion. We kept it for Thu, she smelt it, she apologised, we all laughed, we paid (no discount!), we left.

Two steps across the road, a lovely girl asked, “You want boat ride?” It was only the equivalent of about three quid for half an hour, so we agreed to go. We are such suckers for the lovely smiles over here! The little trip was charming and we ended up in a small huddle of boats surrounding one of the rowing boats that are usually manned/womanned by one or two fisherpersons. This one was clearly about catching something, but not fish. The enterprising couple were just chucking the net for us to get photos, then hauling the net straight in and chucking again. Great! They are such survivors in Vietnam, they would make money in a black hole. On the way back to the harbour this entrepreneurial spirit emerged again as our lovely lady brought out some hand-painted silk cards. Yes, OK, so we bought these, too. Some days you just have to roll with the punches and make the most of small pleasures.

Back in Hoi An we sought out a place for lunch and found a balcony seat in a quiet place over the bridge on the island that overlooks the river and the town. First we ordered our drinks. My Diet Coke arrived, but Alan’s iced tea order became so confusing that he ended up having iced coffee (don’t ask)! Then the young lady took our food order and I was not filled with confidence when she wrote this on her hand rather than in the more usual notepad.

We ordered three dishes, one of which was the vegetables to go with Alan’s wonton and with my fish with sweet chilli sauce. The vegetables and wonton turned up and we waited a few minutes to see if the fish would arrive. When it was not forthcoming, we carried on and ate. Having finished sharing the two dishes, we chatted a while and amused ourselves watching the Vietnamese kids still on Tet holiday posing for each other’s photographs without any trace of inhibition. And laughing at their dreadful fashion sense (me!).

After what seemed like a very long time with no sign of our fish or the young girl, we decided that she must have wiped her nose on the part of her hand containing our fish order, thus consigning it to never-never land. So we gathered our stuff together, intending to pay without mentioning the fish, providing it hadn’t made it as far as our bill.

At the bottom of the stairs we were met by our young lady carrying a platter that would have served her as a boat. The fish it contained was almost as big. Much confusion, then laughter, then us running back upstairs to take our seats before she got to our table. I have to say, the fish was worth waiting for, really delicious. And no wonder it took so long to cook, it was a beast!

All during lunch we had been admiring the resourcefulness of an old man we had been watching on the river, yesterday as well. He goes along the edge in his little old rowing boat, conical hat perched above one of the most lived-in faces we have ever seen. Every tourist that sees him just has to take a photograph. Then, of course, they give him some money. Talk about making best use of your assets! I decided that it was high time Alan went back out to work, so I bought him a conical hat, knocked out a few of his teeth, stuck on a false beard and plonked him in the old man’s boat. You can see a photo of him in the gallery. The old man? We’re off travelling together.

We have spent the rest of the day checking emails, reading, and packing for our journey tomorrow. Providing a car turns up (and is not driven by someone called something that sounds like ‘Foo’) we will take the train from Da Nang to Hue, an old town known for its wonderful architecture and – you guessed it – food! But the train journey is the part we are really looking forward to. Apparently it is the most scenic in Vietnam, following the coastline closely and passing by some dramatic scenery inland. Fingers crossed, no cockroaches! But having spent around 12 hours on a bus with them, I think I can manage three hours on a train.

Photos

14^th February – Last night’s fireworks were quite spectacular. In the run-up to midnight there had been various acts on a large stage. The vast plaza in front of it was packed with motorcycles and scooters, some with whole families sitting or standing on the seat or frame. As the hour drew closer, what looked like two car ferries lashed together appeared out of the darkness offshore and shone bright lights into the seething mass of people on the beach and promenade. At last the moment arrived and we were amused that it was the ubiquitous Abba ‘Happy New Year’ song that accompanied the display. The most lasting image for me was of the men on board the boats. They were surrounded by smoke so dense when the display got under way that I worried they would suffocate. The crowd was well-behaved and the young people were drinking cokes or green tea. Families had picnicked on the beach, buying large flat breads and dips or sliced green mango with chilli and salt from vendors who set up shop with little more than a few large carrier bags and a tiny stool. At times the sheer volume of people almost overwhelmed me, but looking up at the open sky and the stars helped me recover.

Today we felt quite tired after our late night at the fireworks, so we decided to hire ourselves two of the cyclos, the tricycle affairs that are common here. I think there are a couple of blurred photos already in the gallery of us on these contraptions, but the setup is that the ‘driver’ sits on a tall seat behind the passenger/s. Around six Vietnamese can fit into these things, but only one white person. We agreed we would go out to the interesting-looking bridge at the other end of the bay and have a race to make it more fun.

Well, Alan’s driver was about eighty. Advantage Beverley, you may think. Wrong! My driver appeared to be his Dad. We set off, Alan already drawing in front with his man. Just past the souvenir shop we can see from our hotel bedroom window, and my man was breathing heavily. I could see and hear a lot of team bonding going on up ahead and Alan’s whip-cracking actions were being rewarded with gales of laughter from his unfairly-healthy octogenarian. I decided very quickly that I did not want to have my man’s death on my conscience, even though he was well overdue. So I sat quietly and ignored the fact that Alan and Vietnam’s answer to Sir Jimmy Saville were pulling even further ahead, Alan all the while doing mock fist-shaking at anyone or anything that cut them up.

The bridge starts with a long and shallow incline on the side from which we approached. The other side drops more steeply over a shorter distance, giving a certain grace to a bridge that would otherwise be just another stark concrete arch. On the left as one approaches, there was a little fishing village and shanty town, on the right the open sea – the purpose of the asymmetric shape was to allow fishing boats to pass through in the deep channel. As we started up the incline, I could hear some very distressing noises from behind. I was just about to turn around and suggest we stop so that I could dismount when I heard my man gasp, “Walking, walking”. I needed no second invitation and almost offered to push the cyclo up the hill. Meanwhile Alan and Mr Smug had stopped at the bridge’s apex to admire the view of the defeated walking to the finish line.

Just over the bridge was a lovely little restaurant with shady tables overlooking the bay, so we made use of one of these to have lunch. We both chose rice dishes and I must have been looking particularly hungry as they seem to have served me an entire paddy field’s worth. Thankfully Alan stopped crowing about his victory (honestly, you would have thought it was the Melbourne Cup!) while he was eating. I insisted we share a more conventional taxi back home.

15^th February – Our final diving day of three. The diving part of these days starts at 7am and finishes at lunchtime. I am conscious that this mustn’t become a dive log, but I want Alan’s granddaughter, Laura, to know that she played a very big part in something so good – her signature is forever on my PADI card as the instructor with whom I gained my Open Water qualification. Today saw a massive breakthrough as I clocked up dives 12 and 13. Quite apart from the joy of seeing some amazing creatures, including a fairly large octopus, I felt completely relaxed for the first time. This included the jumping in bit, where previously I worried that I would lose my mask/lose my weight belt/break my teeth on the regulator/plummet to the bottom of the ocean. Today I thought, “yee hah”. Or something like that. I can now control my buoyancy much better at shallower depths and find I can kick down quite easily to look at stuff below me. Apologies to non-divers, I will stop now. Oh, just one more thing – Alan said I really looked like a diver today and he should know, with all his diving experience.

After two dives, each lasting for an hour, we were glad to just stay in our room during the heat of the day and read or doze. Having existed on a diet of mainly rice, noodles, fish and vegetables for the past week, we decided to have a blow-out steak dinner. We had chosen an Italian-run restaurant and were not disappointed. The bruschetta we started with were a delight, with chopped capers, black olives and a hint of anchovy and herbs accompanying the chopped tomato and onion that many places stop at. Our rare steaks arrived, cooked to perfection, with a row of little pots of different sauces to try with them. Unfortunately a friendly Canadian at the next table talked to us right the way through our special meal. Poor Alan found himself mostly twisted sideways to listen politely.

Nha Trang will definitely go down as one of our favourite places, maybe because we had diving and beautiful surroundings to do it in. Our hotel room, on the ninth floor, had a clear view of the main (and only, I think) runway of the airport. I was so excited about this until the planes just didn’t show and then we learnt that it was closed down through lack of use. Just my luck!

The food in Nha Trang has not been great generally speaking, but we read and hear that our next two stops, Hoi An and Hue, are known for some great cuisine.

We have booked our 600 kilometre onward journey to Hoi An tomorrow night – another night sleeper bus. We can tell from the seat numbers that we are on the lower layer, so it will be an ‘interesting’ experience. Anyone know where I can buy a nosegay?

Photos – see previous blog for the Grand Underwater Photography Competition!

If you dare, you can take part in our fish photo competition, just for a bit of fun. Alan and I are both beginners at the old underwater photography, so don't worry, you won't offend either of us! We've selected six of each of our photos and coded them Blue 1 - 6 and Red 1 - 6. All you need to do to vote is send a comment to this blog giving the code of your favourite photograph. We'll let it run for a week (we'll all have moved on by then!) and let you know who the winner is. The prize is just over nine months' travelling in SE Asia, NZ and Australia, so lots up for grabs here, folks!

Fishy Fotos

Way back in India, in Bikaner to be precise, we bought our faithful little Frendz Forever kettle that also doubled as a teapot. We used it lots throughout our journey in India and again in Nepal. Since coming to South East Asia lots of things are different, probably including our attitudes to water and hygiene, and we have not used our kettle teapot at all. It has been travelling around, taking up a lot of space in Alan's bag and, as several of you know, we haven't got room for passengers! So we are leaving our good friend in our room when we check out, in the hopes it will find a good home with some of the cleaning staff.

Farewell, little Kettle Teapot, you looked after us well when we needed you!

[Hello Annie B – welcome aboard! Hope we haven’t turned you off India completely, we’ve met some people who loved it. Mind you, they mostly visited the central and southern parts, so maybe that would be a better introduction, should you ever change your mind. Great to hear from you.]

8^th February – Today was mostly about killing time until the night sleeper bus to Nha Trang. For those who have not been on one before (and we hadn’t), the sleeper bus is an odd and slightly claustrophobic experience. There are 38 ‘pods’ where you can either sit up with feet outstretched or recline almost horizontally. The wedge-shaped footwell of one bed is also the back and head rest of the bed in front.

In theory, this sounds like a good thing and, granted, it is better than spending hours on end in a seated position, but this bus’s suspension had seen better days. Although I have no proof of this, I think we actually took a direct route to Nha Trang, driving over mysteriously hard-frozen ploughed fields. Frequently we had to swerve to avoid herds of water buffalo, an event that was accompanied by much loud blasting on the bus’s horn. The buffalo blew their horns, too. Then from time to time the driver saw the buffalo too late and actually drove over them, causing all the passengers to be tossed in the air like stir fry in a wok. No wonder each sleeper was provided with a seat belt.

Photos

9^th February – Dawn broke as we approached Nha Trang. The landscape is very different to that of the Mekong Delta. Here, the Spring-green paddy fields are backed by handsome lines of trees and blue-grey hills dominate the horizon. Very beautiful.

We were glad to arrive in Nha Trang, and even more glad to see the sea once more. If you ignore the fact that the town has been developed for tourists and that the building of high rise hotels along the sea front continues apace, the view out to the sea and the islands beyond is breath-taking. The nearby island is not such a joy. I think I only need to tell you that it is a privately-owned resort called ‘Vinpearl Land’ that has Vinpearl written in large Hollywood style letters that light up at night. But the main attraction of this place, and the reason why we are going to visit, is the two-mile-long cable car ride that is taken to reach it. This is, allegedly, the longest over-water cable car journey ever.

We found one of the hotels recommended by the Guide Book, but unfortunately it is fully booked during the period of Tet, the lunar new year that is celebrated here and in China. We had been warned that accommodation can be hard to find and to accept that prices will double during that time. We booked in for one night and set out to find another hotel that can take us right up to 19^th February. The reasons we want to stay in one place for so long are twofold: first and foremost, booking transport from place to place can be a nightmare during Tet, with services either reduced or being used by locals to travel around visiting friends and family. Secondly, Nha Trang is a great centre for diving in Vietnam. In an amazing twist of fate, the man who was in the pod beside Alan’s on the sleeper bus was an English chap, Max, returning from an extended Christmas back home. He has been living in Nha Trang for over a year, learning to dive and taking follow-on qualifications since being made redundant from the railways. Max is just about to become a qualified Dive Master and will be a fully-qualified instructor by June. He has been doing his courses with an organisation called Rainbow Divers that is in our guidebook and our intended first port of call!

10^th February – This morning we moved to our new home for the next week and a half, the Golden Hotel. It is not as cheap or full of character as the places we usually stay in, but it is available from now until 19^th. This gets us through Tet on 14^th February and through the five or six days after, which will see the celebrations continuing.

Just a little bit about Tet – I haven’t researched it, but this year sees the start of the Year of the Tiger in the Chinese calendar. Don’t quote me on this as I am no expert, but I think that, during Tet, the spirits of the dead rise up and there is lots of symbolism to do with this. Also, it is tradition to fill the house with light at all times and to surround homes and businesses with yellow flowers to bring luck in the new year. It was lovely driving through towns and villages in the dark the other night. It reminded me of Christmas back home where some people clearly don’t bother with lights or decorations, or maybe just hadn’t got around to putting them up yet. Others had gone totally over the top, with glitter balls hanging outside as well as mostly red candle lights hanging on the interior walls. I even saw some fields of crops not far from Nha Trang with lights all around them and through them. Not sure if this had an agricultural purpose, or was just for Tet!

We paid Rainbow Divers a visit and booked up for three days’ diving, with two dives on each excursion. They have a good-looking boat with a platform on the back and take up to 20 people on each trip. Clive, the Londoner who runs the organisation, is going to try and make sure it’s just Alan and me with an instructor for the first couple of dives at least, just so that I can start to work on becoming a better diver. Diving strikes me a bit like driving. While learning, you go through the drills, but you can only become good at it when these drills become instinctive and serve as a means to an end – such as seeing some great fish! I’ve got the fish identification cards already and haven’t been able to match a single one with the photos of the fish that I saw off Koh Ta Kiev – apart from the cuttlefish, which I knew anyway.

When most of the heat had disappeared from the sun (around 16:30) we headed to the beach for a swim. Crossing the road on the way back, I found myself suddenly swept off my feet and looking up at two Vietnamese people on a motorcycle. They seemed as surprised as I was! My first thought was to get Alan under control (he already had his hand on the guy’s shoulder) and, once I was sure no blood was going to be spilled, I got up and dusted myself down. Apart from some grazes that sting a bit, I am no worse for wear. What had happened was, I had done the usual walking out in front of traffic thing and safely negotiated the bit where you check left. I was already a third of the way across the bit where you check right (one or two bikes had already passed safely behind me) when I was hit from the left. The guy who hit me had been coming out of the road junction doing the usual ‘driving on the wrong side of the road until an opportunity arises to move to the right side of the road’ and of course was looking over his shoulder. Thankfully this meant that he was not going fast when he hit me and it was just a glancing blow that took my feet from under me. No harm done and no new wars with Vietnam started!

11^th February – Today we had our first dives of the journey. The boat had the usual mix of nationalities and individual objectives on board. It was impressive how many instructors there were to students – around 1:2. The organisation was very slick and I found myself in the water before I could worry too much about it! Thankfully [Laura, you will be pleased to hear] it all went very well and, once they had accepted that fat floats on water and yes I did need more weights to get down under, it went extremely well. Loads of fish including a large Moray Eel and a great encounter with a Scorpion Fish, that ambled along shaking its sticky-up bits at us.

On the second dive we went a bit shallower to test out the camera (maximum 10 metres depth). Alan took charge as I am still working on keeping my buoyancy more consistent and so on. Fish are very challenging to photograph, as my snorkelling photos proved, so we have decided to have a little competition involving you, the reader (!) to decide who took the best photo or selection of photos. That’s why I’m not going to publish any of Alan’s photos just yet. My turn will come in a couple of days – we have planned two more sets of dives on 13^th and 15^th February.

I’m pleased to report that the camera behaved very well – I would commend the Olympus Tough 8,000 to anyone who wants a good quality workhorse that can go under water or get dropped on a regular basis. Apart from a tiny bit of moisture I noticed under the USB cable door, there was no water ingress at all. And I think the moisture was more about condensation than water seepage.

Alan and the instructor who accompanied us as a guide, Khai, both thought that I did very well for my first full dives since the one I had just after I qualified with Laura. I still find buoyancy control difficult when hanging about between three and nine metres, but it’s starting to come together. I loved seeing the fish and can’t wait to feel so comfortable that I am no longer thinking about diving, but just admiring the view. Alan, of course, was straight back into it like the old pro he is!

12^th February – we went to Vinpearl Land today. The cable car trip was excellent, taking about nine and a half minutes. Unfortunately the island itself was almost deserted – I don’t like crowds, but it is sad to see any enterprise with so little business. The entry fee, around £12 per person, entitles ticket holder to the return cable car ride, access to a water park, access to a massive indoor amusement arcade, and so on. The single most impressive feature, however, was the aquarium. Alan and I both agreed that this was the best we had ever seen. Visitors could opt to walk around the tunnel or to use a travelator to move around the aquarium. The fish were viewed from the side and from below. I’m afraid the photo galleries are currently full of fish and the ones from Vinpearl Land can be viewed at the link below. I have to confess that, after seeing all this wonderful sea life, we then went and ate a lovely big grouper at one of the seafood restaurants.

After lunch we went into the indoor amusements to try out the ‘four-dimensional’ cinema, which wasn’t great. We then went on to try out some of the other attractions, including video games involving plastic motorcycles and horses, etc. We laughed...

Photos (Sorry, a lot of fish photos to digest!)

13^th February -  Today was our second dive day of three that we’ve booked up for. Max, the English trainee dive master, accompanied Alan, Khai and me. I took the camera this time, so my photos will be published later along with Alan’s and details of how you can be the judges in our underwater photography competition. (We still do ‘longest chip’ at every meal involving chips!)

[Laura – you will be pleased to hear that I am starting to feel a lot more confident in the water. We are wearing 3mm wetsuits here, so I don’t have any problem with floaty feet. My problem now is keeping stability when stopping to look at things – I worry that if I kick off I will damage some coral that has taken 100 years to grow! Khai tells me just to put a bit of extra air in my BCD.]

We saw a pair of cuttlefish just as big as the ones we saw on Koh Ta Kiev, plus loads of other fish. The second dive was different to anything I’d done before. We swam amongst massive boulders, rather like flying between mountains. Then we went through several tunnels made by the rocks, one of which went down then up – a bit like I imagine pot holing. I had every confidence in the company I was with, so I had no problem doing this, but the thrill and sense of achievement was immense. These places are also havens for all sorts of fish.

Photos

Tonight is the official start of Tet, so we will join lots of Vietnamese people and fellow travellers on the seafront to watch the fireworks at midnight.

Ray and Di, Alec and Suzie - we don't have your email addresses. PLease can you email us? Alec, it's the same old same old. Ray, it was so good to hear from you. Are you still in France? If you don't have the email address, the golf club will have it.