A Little Bit of Everything!

Sorry, I've been quite busy lately moving around through the last bit of Vietnam.  The country is very diverse, although on a smaller scale than NZ, and the trip through the South saw a bit of it all!

33 foot cliff jump near Da Lat

From Hoi An, I went to Nha Trang just for one night where I had a day on the beach.  It's a strange place as it's a big Russian holiday-resort town.  Other than that, it was nothing special and the beach was not as nice as the one in Hoi An.

The following morning, I was on another bus down to Da Lat. Da Lat is up in the mountains, which meant it was significantly cooler than the rest of the country.  It was amazing.  I walked 7km around the lake without sweating!  Usually I can't walk 7 inches without becoming drenched.  The town itself was nothing special, although it had a big night market.  It was odd though, that the entire market was full of stalls selling the exact same things--dried fruit and veggies.  Anyway, the main attractions are the waterfalls and mountains.  I met a group of people who'd been travelling together, so I joined in with them and we rode out to Pongor Waterfall, which was really pretty and easy to climb up and around!  The next day I went "canyoning" despite the lack of a canyon.  Basically we hiked to a river then followed it downstream by means of cliff jumping, sliding, and rappelling down two waterfalls.  Of course, I was in my element, and thought this was good fun!  Da Lat was also full of amazing food!  Apparently Vietnam has quite a bit more than just noodle soup.  I also got bed bugs somewhere along the road, but luckily washed all of my clothes and equipment and aside from one miserable night, I survived.

Rappelling through a waterfall!

From Da Lat, it was down to Saigon (or Ho Chi Minh City).  HCM is the largest city in Vietnam, but isn't full of attractions.  Other than walking around and going up to a skybar for rooftop views, the only other real attraction in the city was the War Museum.  That was an eye-opening experience.  It is extremely graphic with pictures and descriptions and is very clearly anti-American propaganda.  Many people in the building were in tears as it described how terribly Americans treated the "innocent" Vietnamese. As with anything, I'm sure the truth lies somewhere between what we're taught in American school and what the museum portrayed. Outside of the city are the Cu Chi Tunnels, which were used as an underground bomb shelter during the war.  They were designed to be small enough that Vietnamese could fit through, but not Americans and it was a struggle for me to wiggle through bits of it.  While it's cleared now, it was amazing to see how well disguised the entrances were and how they built traps to guard them.  There were over 200km of tunnels that could fit 12,000 people, in three tiers (3m, 6m, and 9m under ground) all dug by little hand shovels!

The lights of Saigon

From Saigon, my last stop in Vietnam was Bien Hoa.  This is merely a suburb of HCM, but a (American) friend who I'd lived next to while studying in New Zealand now teaches English there, so I thought it'd be nice to catch up and get off the backpacker trail a bit.  Despite being only 15 miles from the city, the public bus took nearly 2 hours!  I was the only white person in a bus with no AC that was loaded with boxes (apparently buses make deliveries) and shoulder to shoulder with people.  I tried to give my seat up to older people or women with little children, but was constantly pushed back into my seat as they yelled something in Vietnamese at me.  It got even more interesting when a fight broke out--of course I have no idea what over!  Anyway, once I made it, it was great.  Just getting back into doing "normal" things that you'd do at home was great.  We spent one day laying by the pool.  We went to an amusement park one day.  We went to a BBQ at a friends house one night.  We played soccer for 2 hours with some of the teachers and students.  Doing those kinds of things was a great breath of fresh air from the backpacker life.  It was also interesting as the town is obviously not designed for tourists and white people (only us) often got stared at and people spoke little to no English, nor were menus or signs in English.

I barely fit in the Cu Chi Tunnel

Anyway, this morning I took the bus out of Vietnam and entered Phnom Penh, Cambodia. Tomorrow I'm off to Kampot then headed north through Cambodia for a week and a half or so.  From there it's back to Thailand before my flight to Nepal on September 15!  Sorry I haven't been keeping in touch as regularly, but I love and miss you all!