To travel through Vietnam we decided to take over night buses to save time....what an experience. The first bus we caught pulled over on the side of the street, we dodged traffic to get to it, threw our packs in the luggage compartment and got on...after we were given a plastic bag and told to take our shoes off? The bus was designed with three rows of bunk bed like seats and no washroom, so there were many stops along the way. We were given a questionable pillow and a suspect blanket to make our ride as enjoyable as possible (I hope I didn't get bed bugs.) Surprisingly enough I managed to fall asleep, despite the excessive use of air conditioning, and woke up in Nha Trang. Our plan was to spend the day in Nha Trang and catch the next overnight bus that same night....if we could find our bus company. We were given a receipt, but no ticket so no one knew what company we had actually paid for. We found this a lot in Vietnam...you never really know what you're paying for. So we walked in circles around Nha Trang with our packs and scortching sunlight. We were given directions from A to C to D, a hand drawn map to E, and then directions back to A where we needed to be in the first place. The bus was full so we had to spend the night and a day more then we wanted to. We got picked up for a tour of the city, (our guides name was Blue) and went to see the sights of My Son Pagoda and a Big Buddha on top of a hill, then we were dropped off at a mineral mud spa. We rinsed off in mineral water then got in a tub of mineral mud, this was followed by a circuit of sun bathing, more mineral water rinsing, and mineral water bathing. My skin felt pretty good after the traumatic body scrub and this, but nothing will compare to that first shower back home! We had heard Nha Trang had a lot of crime but didn't think it would be as bad as our guide and hostel owner made it out to sound. We were told to only carry a certain amount of money on us and to never walk alone, it was nice that they cared but also kind of nerve racking that we needed to be so cautious. Of course we still went out at night....
We caught another overnight bus to Hoi An, a city I had been looking forward to because of the numerous tailors to make custom clothing. We got in to town, and of course were dropped off away from where we needed to be, were given wrong directions, walked with our packs in scorching sunlight and finally gave in and got a taxi. Hoi An is such a cute little city on the water and everything you imagine when you think Vietnam can be found here. Rice hats, lanterns, and AMAZING FOOD. Some of the best food I have ever eaten, in life, was in Hoi An...besides my moms cooking of course. We spent a few days here to see some sights and get some clothes made. The weirdest thing we encountered here was on TV. Victoria's Secret 2006 fashion show played, on repeat with no commercials, on the only English channel on TV, for 3 days straight. I still don't get it. The city was gorgeous and the people the most friendly we encountered in all of Vietnam. I really wanted to stay another day, but we needed to make our way to Halong Bay!
Hue was another city we stopped at before getting to Hanoi in the North of Vietnam. We had 2 days here and the first one was a bust. I really wanted to see the Citadel so we grabbed the Lonely Planet map and went for it. After we spent hours walking in circles looking for it, walking so far we ended up in some village, we asked a taxi driver and he said it closes in 15 minutes...we wasted too much time on foot. I compared the map in the Lonely Planet we took to the map in the other Lonely Planet we have....and of course the Citadel is in a different location than the map we took, at least we got our exercise. The next day was spent on a Perfume River boat tour. Sketchy boat and sketchy tour. A few of the sites required entrance fees and our guide recommended we not bother...made me wonder why we bothered with the tour. We saw a few Royal Tombs and got a nice scenic bus ride through the mountains. The Royal Tombs were super intricate and huge! A lot of this day tour was spent waiting for the rest of the group to make it back to the bus/boat, or not bothering to see some of the sights at all. What's a better way to pass time than to befriend the 25 year old Australian guy reading Memoirs of a Geisha? Sure made the day interesting.
We were late getting back to the hostel, so of course we missed our bus pick up time and had to be driven to the bus station....all the while being blamed for being late after we were told "oh you don't worry....the tours good for you, you make it back in time." We finally got on this bus we supposedly missed and saw that there were NO tourists. It was a locals bus and no one spoke English....I didn't even know who to ask to find out if we were even headed to Hanoi. So I just closed my eyes and hoped to wake up in the right city.
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