Our last open-tour bus ticket was really a large van that left at 7am instead of an overnight. It was a good 7-hour trip, and an overnight would have been much more ideal. Amy and I split from the pack and headed down to Saigon on our own.
Saigon was hot and humid and that traffic was unbelievable - and I thought LA was bad. It's just that rather than cars, the streets were flooded with motorbikes.
Bikes come at you from every direction. I exercised extreme caution while crossing, and Amy and I often held hands running across the streets, dodging motorbikes. I felt like I was ten again. Finally, we dropped our bags at a guesthouse and wandered around the city. We checked out the night market and enjoyed some pho.
The next day, we went to the Cu Chi Tunnels, shot some AK-47s and went to the War Remnants Museum - formerly known as the American War Museum. A lot of war-related sights for one day. in the morning, we checked out of our hotel and headed towards the Cambodian border.
We were a few hours into our first bus ride when we realized that our hotel didn't return our passports in exchange for the room key - 50% our own stupidity and 50% the hotel staff's. We scurried to the front of the bus and got the guide to work on sorting out the situation for us. We went on with our day, saw some floating markets went on a long boat ride up the Mekong, checked out a crocodile farm, a candy factory and spent a night on a floating hotel on the Mekong.
In the morning, we took a boat up to some village along the river - this is where, by some miracle, our passports showed up and we were finally reunited with them.
We continued on the boat to the Cambodian border where we saw Joyce for the first time since Hoi An. We wouldn't let her go again.
The Americans, the Brits and Amy and I arranged for a guide and five motorbikes for the eight of us. Amy and I rode as passengers as neither of us was prepared to drive for six hours on the hilly, curvy road to Da Lat. We stopped along the way to check out a waterfall, a local coffee shop and for some bike repairs. The British boys got a little overconfident in their driving and touched wheels and spun out a bit. Luckily, the bike was fixable by our guide, and Sam suffered only some bloody scratches.
I heard Da Lat was fabulous and famous for strawberries and wineries. It wasn't exactly what I had expected upon arrival. Again, we didn't have great weather. The town was small and wasn't full of activities or many tourists, or strawberries! We went for a stroll through the market where I tried many unfamiliar fruits and also witnessed the slaughtering of a duck.
When I finally found strawberries, they were small and bruised and went bad within an hour of buying them. Bummer! Later, we checked out the Da Lat "Crazy House" which I didn't find too crazy.
We also went to a waterfall and took a little "roller-coaster" ride down to the water and then shot a few bow and arrows.
Da Lat was alright, but we probably should have gone to the beach town of Minue instead. Next time.
After a sleepless 12-hour overnight bus to Nha Trang, we arrived at the Backpacker's House at 6:30am, tired and droopy-eyed.
Luckily, we are almost always able to check in at any guesthouse as early as we arrive, none of this 3pm check-in that we are accustomed to in America. This was the first dorm we stayed at. It wasn't bad at all, there were five bunk-beds, one bathroom and an internet-connected computer in the room. Lena was staying there and would overlap our stay for one night. Ryan and Dillon, along with a group of Brits they had met along their way also stayed there. Everyone kind of mobbed around town to restaurants and bars together. We had a blast in Nha Trang.
The next day, we got everyone to agree on a $7 boat tour of a few nearby islands.
It also included lunch, fruit, "happy hour" in the water, snorkeling and live entertainment, which was truly entertaining to say the least. We stopped in the clear blue waters for our happy hour and a few rounds of jumping off the top level of the boat. Some people got creative with their jumps!
We returned to the hostel for showers before enjoying another fun-filled night on the town.
The following morning, Amy and I rented bicycles and went all over the city to the big, white Buddha, and much further than that to an old temple that looked quite Aztec-like to me.
We came back to the town to soak up the last few hours of sunlight by the pool and gorgeous beach of Louisianne Brewhouse.
Rather than taking our next bus to Da Lat, we got the group to agree on a motorbike ride down there, which would commence the following morning.
In Hanoi, we bought an open-tour bus ticket, which gave us five stops in different cities down the country. We chose Hanoi > Hue > Hoi An > Nha Trang > Da Lat > Saigon. Our first bus was my first of several overnight sleeper buses. It had about 30 "beds" that were about 5'10" so I fit comfortably, but the other foreigners definitely struggled. It wasn't too bad of a ride with the exception of the Vietnamese music blaring through the bus speakers by the inconsiderate driver, not to mention the incessant honking!
We also had bad weather upon our arrival in Hue and only did minimal sightseeing - mostly just the citadel.
The rainy weather brought us to a fancy restaurant where we opted for a cooking course. We made a delicious 4-course meal that took around three hours to make and stuffed our stomachs beyond a comfortable limit. We even took some leftovers to go!
In the evening, we found the backpacker district and had a drink and did some shopping. It didn't seem like there was loads to do there, and we were happy to take our next bus to Hoi An in the morning.
We wobbled around Hoi An with our increasingly-heavy packs until we found Nhi Trung Guesthouse that our friend, Lena, had stayed at a few nights prior. There were plenty of other backpackers there, including Ryan and Dillon - fellow Californians - that we would later do some traveling with. We also met the fabulous Joyce from Canada that I would spend a lot of time with later as well.
Amy and I loved Hoi An! Our first day was a little rainy when we did some sightseeing with our $1 per day bicycles. We also rode 5km out to the beach, which was beautiful! We were hit with a huge rainstorm there one day but got nicely sunburnt the next.
Hoi An is also famous for beautifully custom-tailored clothing. Although we had no intentions of having anything made, I left Hoi An with two dresses, one skirt and an incredible blazer; these might be my favorite pieces in my entire wardrobe - note just in my backpack. I would go back to Vietnam just to have more clothes made here! We also rented a motorbike for a day, and Amy drove the two of us around town as I wasn't too stellar as a motorbike driver.
A bunch of us backpackers were all heading to Nha Trang at the same time, and we made plans to meet up at the backpacker hostel there as we all set off on our next sleeper buses.
