Friday, July 30, 2004
Vietnam part 2
I've been travelling around quite a bit since Hoi An. I spent a few days in Hue and met a couple of nice people. Dung (not pronounced like that) is a medical student who came to chat to me one day as I was cycling around. A couple of days later he took me on a tour around the countryside near Hue and we stopped for lunch and a snooze at his house. His house is in a really nice spot by the river and I guess typically Vietnamese. The kitchen is outside on a kind of porch and the garden is full of pineapple and grapefruit trees. I wish I'd taken a picture of his grandma; I reckon she spends so much time smiling that her face has got stuck in a permanent grin! From Hue I caught an overnight train up to Hanoi; really plush and air conditioned.
Hanoi is quite different from Saigon, it's got a much more towny feel. The main area for hotels is much more spread out and mixed in with local shops and markets. I've been to a few good museums, including Hoa Lo prison. It was used by the French to imprison troublemakers and during the American war it was used for US POWs who nicknamed it the Hanoi Hilton. Yesterday I got back from a tour of Halong Bay. There were 16 people on the tour, mostly 20 something couples and a few single blokes, including Steve - another medical student who I've kept bumping into since Hue. Halong bay is a collection of thousands of mini limestone islands, some of them with caves. The best part was waking up with the sun on the deck of our boat after a day of messing about on the water and under it.
I've just received a couple of emails from fellow travellers with some photos. Thanks to Julie and John who I met diving in Na Trang and Dominik and Sylvia who I met in India.
My heart is sinking as I write this because I'll soon go from being traveller to unemployed person living in Perth. So, probably not too many more photos from now on; in any case I'm running out of web space. Does anyone have a spare 3 or 400MB with .NET capability they can offer me? Cheeky I know, but worth a shot!
Hanoi is quite different from Saigon, it's got a much more towny feel. The main area for hotels is much more spread out and mixed in with local shops and markets. I've been to a few good museums, including Hoa Lo prison. It was used by the French to imprison troublemakers and during the American war it was used for US POWs who nicknamed it the Hanoi Hilton. Yesterday I got back from a tour of Halong Bay. There were 16 people on the tour, mostly 20 something couples and a few single blokes, including Steve - another medical student who I've kept bumping into since Hue. Halong bay is a collection of thousands of mini limestone islands, some of them with caves. The best part was waking up with the sun on the deck of our boat after a day of messing about on the water and under it.
I've just received a couple of emails from fellow travellers with some photos. Thanks to Julie and John who I met diving in Na Trang and Dominik and Sylvia who I met in India.
My heart is sinking as I write this because I'll soon go from being traveller to unemployed person living in Perth. So, probably not too many more photos from now on; in any case I'm running out of web space. Does anyone have a spare 3 or 400MB with .NET capability they can offer me? Cheeky I know, but worth a shot!
# posted by Dominic @ 9:04 PM 
