2 October in Nha Trang

We started the day with a scooter ride out to a Pagoda with a huge Buddha, where monks who self-immolated are venerated. This was in protest against a Catholic President who was put into his position by the French and who discriminated against Buddhists. Next to an orphanage run by Buddhist nuns. This time the children seemed malnourished and it seems that most were destined to become monks and nuns so they are fed only vegetarian food. Our guide was upset about this and said he had often suggested the children should get meat. He recommended that we should not give a monetary gift as it would be spent on buildings and not on the children. These children were not all orphans, some were abandoned children. There was an obvious deficiency in their motor skills especially as compared with the children we saw in the orphanage in Hue.

Called into an eating house on the river and had a fish soup which I enjoyed but I wasn't all that keen on the grilled shrimps in skins - it too crunchy for me.

We were taken to a house where two women demonstrated sleeping mat weaving using a warp of hemp and a weft of rushes. The weft was dyed before weaving. The shuttle was a long stick which one woman wrapped a length of rushes around and then poked it though the warp before being beaten by the weaver. Team work. They make about 6 mats a day, about 1.5m long by 1m wide.


Next, to a home where the BBQ burners are made. The clay is bought in and then moulded with ashes in the mould to prevent sticking. The next stage involves patting the outside of the pots with a flat paddle and cutting out the air hole and the trivet legs for the grill to stand on.

The firing happened in the garden with each kiln holding 1000 pots. The fuel used is rice husks which takes longer to fire, or coconut husks and there was also wood stacked in piles.

The bikes then took us to a site where some of the group (those who did not have broken skin Grrr!) had a hot mud bath followed by mineral water massages and a mineral pool for healing. I minded the bags - grr again. Here I lost my sunglasses.
Csfes with seats and hammocks were seen here for the first time and they are everywhere.

Meryl and I dropped into a bar where they were showing Rugby World Cup games and then walked to the Post Office to lighten our load. For the 45 minutes it took to post our parcels, it was heaving it down but stopped just in time for us to walk back to the hotel, stopping in a French style Patisserie on the way as a form of celebration.

Later we walked to the beach and got our feet wet in the warm sea. On the way we bought some sunnies: I got Chanel and Meryl got Dior (possible knock-offs but very flash).

In the evening we caught the Reunification Express for the last time - this time for an overnight ride to Sai Gon. We all froze in the air-conditioning. To get to the train one always has to cross the tracks (sometimes more than one) and walk some distance. Each time we have ridden on the train our carriage has run out of water. Once, the water rained through the roof onto one of our group in her sleeper.

We stayed at the Saigon Hotel.

1 October in Nha Trang

Nha Trang is slowly developing as a beach resort. Those who've been to Bali said it had a similar feel. We went out on a cruise and anchored off an island in protected waters close to the South China Sea. The weather was very sunny and many got the lobster look. Those who hadn't fallen off a bike the day before swam and some snorkelled. Lunch of freshly caught fish was served on the boat and then we got back into the port just before the storms hit at about 2:30. Meryl and I had a manicure and pedicure done and had the hairs on our legs threaded - another first time experience. Meryl even had her eyebrows threaded with obvious results.

This day we saw floating fishing villages and coracles used for fishing.


That night we went for a BBQ dinner. Small cooking pots fired with coal were put on each table and we were given strips of calamari, marinated beef, super-sized prawns, tuna chunks and vegetables including okra, eggplant and potatoes to cook. I definitely had my fill.

30 September to Nha Trang

In the morning we boarded a bus and were driven to My Son, a Champa temple complex which was begun in the 11th century around about the time of the Battle of Hastings. On the way we stopped at a wholesale fish market that was still buzzing with activity: men and women trading very quietly for the freshly caught fish.


We met three funerals coming the other way with the mourners dressed in white and with white bands around their heads. The procession was made up bikes and trucks and the flower of mourning, the white lily, decorated most of the vehicles. There was an official dressed like a general whose job it was to chase away the evil spirits. This man is hired by the family to conduct the service.

We learned that in the south they get two crops of rice a year. One crop takes 100 days and the harvest takes 7 days with all hands on deck. If it is not harvested quickly, it collapses so if rain interrupts, they often tie the rice up in bundles to keep it upright.

Back to My Son. It is a huge complex which the French were meticulously restoring but many of the temples were destroyed b y American bombs in the war. The Champa people came overland from India and settled in the south of Vietnam. The God worshipped here was Shiva and Uma his wife. They also worshipped Parvati as this society operated under a matriarchal system with the property owned by the women and being handed down to the youngest daughter. There was no caste system in the Champa culture. The Champa society was finished in the 16th century when a Winh (?) lord took over.


Through the villages the sides of the roads are covered in rice. The farmers dry the rice on the bitumen. The traffic just drives around it but sometimes tyre marks are seen straight through the middle. People doing DIY jobs also mix their concrete on the road.

In the afternoon we caught the bus again and drove to Danang to catch the Reunification Express. The American airport in Danang is still contaminated with Agent Orange but the Americans are helping to fund the clean up. The train left at about 4pm and arrived at about 10pm. During the train ride, Cuong showed us a documentary of the Tet Offensive, 1968, which showed many of the places we had visited under attack by both the Viet Cong and the Americans/South Vietnamese and their allies.

29 September Hoi An

Today I lined up to ride a pushbike out of town. We were all quite anxious about the lack of traffic rules and in addition I was anxious because I haven't ridden a bike except in a gym since about 1996-ish. Some of us were practising in a small space in front of the hotel and trying to get the seats at the right height when I discovered my bike's handle bars were much stiffer than expected and then calamity struck or to put it another way, I struck a concrete garden edge, grazing my ankle and knee and bruising both badly. So I had a forced rest. Meryl was the one with the brains as she had opted out.

I iced my wounds until about 12 and then we went out to find the Mango Rooms restaurant on the river where Mick Jagger used to like to eat. This is a very colourful place that serves great salads. There were the usual sales people dropping in and an elderly woman sitting in a long row boat just outside the door, trying to attract tourists to take a photo of her for money. One particular girl about 14 came in with some trinkets and having established that we were Aussies started her speil: "You want to buy some. It's happy hour, buy one get one free"
and in a mundane voice she continued: "C'mon mate, c'mon darling, c'mon sweetheart...... There was a man outside on a scooter waiting for her to sell.




After lunch we went window shopping and made it back to the hotel at about 6pm for dinner but then I remembered I had left a pendant at a jewellers for repair and was supposed to pick it up at 6. Consequently we had a shower and took a taxi back to the old town at a cost of 15000 dong. On our way back we bargained with a cyclo driver, knocking him down from 150000 each to 100000 for both of us and then he put in an extra piece of wood at the back of the seat space and Meryl sat with me between her legs. We felt sorry for him pushing so much of the proverbial up hill so we gave him a tip of 20000 and he was very happy.


One of the interesting buildings we found had about 20 men sitting on the floor cleaning swallow nests for swallow nest soup.

As it was getting near to dusk we came across the Japanese Bridge which is quite old and has shrines with dogs as statues. I'm too tired to find out more about this bridge just now, so watch this space.


Believe it or not, back at the hotel when we were ordering our meals, Meryl spotted a non-alcoholic drink called Pussers Pain Killer. By this time my foot and knee were extremely swollen but I resisted the drink and opted for a jasmine tea.


We went back to Danang by bus and then caught the Reunification Express train at about 4, arriving in Nha Trang at about 10pm.

28 September Hue to Hoi An

We were talking to our guide, Cuong, about the two child policy that the Vietnamese government has imposed and the potential for problems in the future as has happened in China. He said that Vietnam is already an aging country but the most shocking thing he said was that girls are being kidnapped and sold in China to provide wives for the men who have no potential for marriage. Parents now wait outside school gates to pick up their children: something that was never even thought of before kidnapping became a real fear.

Most of us chose to go up the Perfume River to the Thien Mu pagoda which is one of the oldest pagodas in Hue built in 1601, and then taxis to the Citadel.


The Citadel covered an area 10kms square and the inner Forbidden Purple City was inhabited by the Nguyen dynasty emperors and their mandarins and concubines. Constructtion of this moated Citadel began in 1804. At this time Hue was the Imperial City of Vietnam. The area was heavily bombed by the Americans in the Tet Offensive in 1968 when the Viet Cong took up positions in the complex. Signs of opulence are everywhere in the buildings and gardens. Luckily the French photographed life in the Citadel and there is a display of these photos as well as the family crockery, teapots, etc. The photographs appear to be mostly from the 1930s and show a very young emperor with his advisors and servants. The boat provided an opportunity for shopping with several sellers on board. We saw our first elephant in this place but sadly it was tied by the back leg. There was a lot of wood stacked around where he was so I assume he was a working elephant.




Once back in Hue Meryl and I walked to the Mandarin cafe which is owned by Mr Cu, a man whose hobby is photography. He has galleries in Italy, France, and Germany. His photos capture traditional life in Vietnam as well as landscapes. He gave us all an autographed postcard.

We were puzzled to be told we would have to take our shoes off on the afternoon bus to Hoi An ??? but when we lined up to board we could see that instead of seats there were bunks which we soon discovered were not built for Western bodies. It was a four hour bus ride which was broken by a 20 minute stop at a beach half way there.
The journey took us over quite a high pass where the mountains seem to go right down to the sea. The highest pass has now been replaced with a tunnel through the mountain. Through Danang which is a very long city and not very pretty. Greg Norman and many others are building resorts here.

That night in Hoi An Cuong took us to the Bale Well where we were taught to roll spring rolls. It became hilarious when one of the waitresses took a fancy to Russell and kept feeding him and holding his drink up to his mouth. Mot, hai, bah yo!!! the toast for drinking.

Hoi An is a UNESCO listed Heritage Site and has an old city which is blocked off to cars and motorbikes. In this old city were many tailors who make clothes and shoes to measure. We went into a couple of these places and it was nothing short of overwhelming - fabrics to pick, styles to decide and measurements to be taken and people everywhere. This is a delightful place with a population of only 30 000.

27 September in Hue

Arrived on the overnight train at 10 am-ish. There was a concern that floods could have cut the train line and we would have been stuck in the middle of nowhere so we had stocked up a little on tucker. All went well however, and once at the Duy Tan Hotel, we had an overdue shower and then met up out the front where I was surprised to see a line up of scooters and riders waiting for us. I knew we were going on a bike ride but wasn't aware it would be straight out of the starting gates.

So now we were to experience first hand the ducking and weaving that is traffic Rafferty Rules in Vietnam. Several of us including me had raised anxiety levels while sitting on the back waiting for the off. Then the bikes all started up and the excitement began. We rode out of town in convoy and then via some quite narrow back streets to an orphanage where we played with the children and left them a donation of food. These children have been mostly abandoned by unmarried mothers due to shame and loss of family honour. They are often left under a tree at the entrance to the orphanage. The youngest baby was 7 days old and the oldest children are doing university courses. The babies were wrapped up in more like winter woollies on such a hot day but I believe this stems from the belief that the baby must be as warm as the mother's milk.


The orphanage is run by Buddhist nuns and no babies are ever moved from this centre. Apparently there is more trust in this orphanage than one run by the government in the centre of Hue from where babies are adopted out. To add to the huge task these nuns and helpers have, there are also disabled children amongst the orphans and severe behaviour problems to be dealt with. One room had a jail like cage in which one boy was sitting hidden behind an upturned bed for detention – the door was open. From there we went to a Pagoda for a vegetarian lunch prepared and served by nuns and then a bit of off-road riding to the top of a hill with a terrific view of the Perfume River, followed by a visit to paddy fields. This is when things got “interesting”. The flood waters were receding but everything was still soggy and there was water across the road in many places. Many houses seemed to have water surrounding them and the paddy fields were filled. My driver lifted his feet up when we were going through water so as to keep his jeans dry but I copped the lot where I was sitting. In the end, after an argument between one scooter and a woman on a pushbike, we had to walk through knee-high flood waters for the last 100 metres to an ancient bridge built in 1776. This bridge was a “humpy” bridge built with seating platforms up one side. At this stop we bought a cold drink before our return walk back to the bikes.



We had only just got started again on our trip back to the hotel when the back tyre on my bike popped. More delay while the driver went back to get it repaired and then we set off again. There was one particularly hairy bit when we traversed red slippery mud between two bitumen roads to take off on a side road. It felt a bit like I was walking on my bum for a while and then when he hit the tarmac, we did a sideways skid – exhilerating in retrospect if a tad scary at the time.


There were fishing frames hanging over the river with either nets or a line hanging from the top of the frame and quite a few people fishing. I guess the rice harvest was lost for this year in this area and because of the wet, they were catching up on odd jobs that needed doing. The most astoundng thing to me was the number of cemeteries we passed on this ride – all with very large plots, some with sarcophagi and some with round burial plots.


It was great to see ducks muddling around in water and mud within sight of the pole and flag which took the place of a shepherd.

In the afternoon we visited the tomb of Emperor Tu Duc (1847-1883) which was constructed during his lifetime. It was used more as a pleasure garden and as his second residence. Apparently he used to write poetry and was a bit of a dreamer. Not sure how his government functioned while he was sitting by the lotus pond.

The ride cost us 300,000 dong ($15) which seems ridiculously cheap for 7 hours. That night we walked down town and ended up eating at a restaurant called “Hot Tuna” so Meryl and I had the house speciality of seared tuna on mashed potatoes – yum.