Summer 2012 - 6th Stop: Luang Prabang

Before we set off on our travels, this was one of the places we were expecting great things from. Everyone we had spoken to, and everything we had read, gave rave reviews about Luang Prabang, and don’t get me wrong, it was a lovely place, really lovely, and we have a lot of very fond memories from here, but I think it may have suffered a small bit from being built up too much. It really is a great place, just go there expecting it to be rubbish…

Luang Prabang is Laos’ biggest tourist hotspot but, similar to Ubud in Bali, even though there were a lot of tourists around, it never felt in the least bit touristy or crowded. There’s just a pleasant vibe around the place, the kind of town to wander about at your own pace, rather than rushing from A to B. It’s got a nice set up too, adding to this sleepy ambiance – a pocket-sized town centre with a river on each side, scatterings of charming temples here and there, quaint waterside cafes and restaurants, and a small hill overlooking it all.

Our own high expectations may have hindered Luang Prabang a tiny bit, but the biggest obstacle, for our first two days here anyway, was the weather. Luckily we had given ourselves plenty of time, so it didn’t affect our plans too much. It did mean that our first day in town was a complete write off though, but we did get some ground work done for the rest of our stay, booking an elephant trek for two days later, and our bus tickets out to Phonsavan.

The next morning wasn’t much better weather-wise, but not knowing whether or not it would clear up during our stay here, we had no choice but to brave the elements and see what the place had to offer. As I mentioned earlier, the town itself is quite small, so we were well able to see everything on foot with little effort, although we had to enjoy everything through the downpour.

We were still able to appreciate the beauty of the place despite the rain, the highlights being Haw Pha Bang and Wat Xieng Thong, some of the most beautifully designed temples we've seen anywhere on our travels.

Now, most temples you'd see around these parts would maybe have a lion or a dragon at the entrance, to "ward off intruders", but to be honest, they're wasting their time. They should all get one of these guys, they're terrifying! I was even half frightened to walk past it!

With the weather halting our progress, we instead turned our attentions to hunting. Hunting what, you ask? Why, the deadliest prey of all, monks. The town was absolutely littered with them, so whenever a bunch (a flock? a gaggle…?) walked by, we’d spring into action, trying to get a sneaky pic without them noticing. It got to the stage where we’d even stealthily follow them down the street for a block or two, just to get a good picture.

Hopefully they didn't notice...

The clouds had cleared somewhat by the afternoon, so we climbed up Mount Phousi in the centre of town. I say "Mount" Phousi but it’s really only a small hill. There were some nice views though of the town itself and the surrounding area.

As we came back down, the main street had been transformed into a night market, with lines of stalls all the way along, selling the usual – scarves, bracelets, artwork etc. We already had a bagful of souvenirs from Hoi An though, so we had to put the blinkers on and plough straight through, trying not to catch a glimpse of anything along the way.

The next day, we thankfully woke up to blue skies and enjoyed the highlight of the trip for us so far, as we packed our trunks and set off on a morning of elephant trekking!

We were taken by minibus to the forests outside Luang Prabang, and then downstream by boat to the All Lao Elephant Camp where we hopped aboard our four-legged friend for the day. The first hour we spent trekking through the jungle, myself and Ais seated on a little bench on the elephant’s back, with the mahout (elephant driver) seated in front. Halfway through, he asked if I wanted to “take the wheel”, so to speak. And I did! Riding an elephant, some laugh!

I had cleverly camouflaged myself for the occasion too…

Now, I don’t know if it was down to my mahout-ing skills, or if we just had a particularly stubborn elephant, but he was out of control! He kept going off course, crashing into bushes, stopping for lunch breaks and generally acting the maggot! If he didn’t weight 10,000 pounds, there’d have been some trouble, let me tell ya…!

The trekking was great fun, but the highlight of the day was definitely going bathing with the elephants, clinging onto their backs as they waded into the river and gave themselves (and you!) a good soaking. And even though we were bombarded with trunkful after trunkful of water, it was a refreshing way to cool off under the hot sun.

After leaving the elephants behind, we had a nice riverside lunch, before heading on to the Kuang Si Waterfall / Bear Sanctuary (an odd mix, I know), where we had another refreshing dip in equally spectacular surroundings (although, the water here perhaps looked a bit more appetising...). We spent about two hours there, lounging around, cooling off, and there was even a rope swing into the water, if you were willing to take the plunge.

The next day and our last in Luang Prabang, was spent re-walking the town, this time with a lot more sun, and a lot more fun! I know I say it all the time, but you can't beat a bit of blue sky! And even better with a few fluffy white clouds in there to seal the deal! 

It really makes those drab, grey pictures from two days earlier pretty redundant!

So, we had another stroll around the town, back through all of the temples and halfway up Mount Phousi where we made another video diary!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ER3QJQ0rafU&feature=youtu.be

We also went into the Royal Palace, which is now a museum, but not a very interesting one. The best thing about the palace grounds is Haw Pha Bang, pictured above, but you can go into that for free, and see it from the roadside too, so there's no need to waste your money.

And on that cheery note, I'll sign off! The next morning we got a 7 hour bus to Phonsavan, our last stop in Laos!

Summer 2012 - 5th Stop: Vientiane

So, with Savannakhet out of the way, we were finally in Laos proper! We arrived in Vientiane at 5:30am, well rested and raring to go, and as the two Adams hadn't booked any accommodation, they came with us to our hotel, Vayakorn House. Unfortunately, our rooms wouldn't be available til 12 o’clock, so it was off to Joma Bakery for a 6 hour breakfast! (It was delicious though and they had branches in Luang Prabang and Hanoi too!). After 4 hours of stuffing ourselves with hot chocolate and cinnamon rolls, we chanced our arms back at the hotel and luckily the rooms were ready to go early. So, we rested up, showered down and headed out on our first day in Vientiane!

Ok, that sounded like a big build up to something, but we actually didn’t do much at all. It’s a nice enough city, but nothing to get too excited over. We say it time and time again but rarely listen to our own advice – capital cities are usually not that great. On our first day, we just walked around to a few nearby temples – Wat Si Saket, Haw Pha Kaeo and Wat Si Muang – which were all reasonably nice, but nothing we hadn’t seen before, and then went to the COPE visitor centre, which was probably the most interesting thing we did that day (and it was free!).

The centre contains lots of information and videos about the bombing of Laos during the American war in Vietnam. Shockingly, Laos (which was wholly neutral during the war) is the most heavily bombed country per capita in history, with over 580,000 bombing missions conducted over the country. And unfortunately this atrocity can't just be swept into the past, as 30% of the bombs dropped failed to detonate on impact, leaving approximately 80 million pieces of unexploded ordinance (UXO) scattered all over the countryside, making this a very real problem for present-day Laos. Even now, many Laotians are killed every year by UXOs, either by accidentally triggering these bombs, or from trying to collect them for scrap metal.

The COPE centre was very interesting, especially watching the testimonies of families who have lost children to these UXOs. They also do some great work manufacturing prosthetic limbs for some of the victims of these bombs. Certainly a place I'd recommend.

The next day (which was also our two year anniversary, swit swoo!) was a bit more eventful, not a lot more, but a bit. We rented out bikes and spent most of the day cycling around the place. Despite it being a capital city, it’s not very big and traffic is very manageable, so we didn’t have too much hassle getting to see everything we wanted. The main attraction around town is Pha That Luang, which is like the national symbol of Laos, but it really wasn’t that great at all. It was just a poor man’s Shwedagon Pagoda.

And while Shwedagon Pagoda was like a flawless, golden spire, this just seemed shabby and plastic. That was the thing about Vientiane, not only did it have very little that we hadn’t seen before, but we had seen much better versions of all these things elsewhere!

Pha That Luang (Laos)

Shwedagon Pagoda (Myanmar)

Afterwards, we finished off our cycling tour, taking in a few more smaller temples along the way, passed by Patuxay (which was just like a Laotian Arc de Triomphe), and then to treat ourselves, we went off to the jungle for a nice traditional massage in a stilted wooden hut. A far cry from Hoi An, where we got our own personal masseuses sent up to our fancy hotel room!

And that night, for our special anniversary dinner, we celebrated in style with a nice romantic dinner at Pizza Company! I know it sounds quite underwhelming and unspectacular, but we were delighted. It’s our favourite restaurant in South East Asia! We’ve been to a few of them around Thailand and Cambodia, but we didn’t know there was one in Laos until we spotted it randomly during our cycle tour. And it turned out to be just around the corner from us all along! Who knew?!

The next day, and our last in Vientiane, we had planned to have an early start, with the Buddha Park and a nearby waterpark on our agenda for the day. Unfortunately, as we got up, the rain came down, scuppering our plans. The waterpark had to be written off completely, but luckily the rain eased up a bit in the afternoon, giving us a small window to travel out to Vientiane’s Buddha Park.

I know I said that Vientiane had nothing that we hadn’t seen before, but the Buddha Park was the one exception to that rule. It was surprisingly good fun! It’s basically, as the name suggests, a big park filled with Buddha statues – big ones, small ones, sitting, standing, reclining, multiple heads and arms – every type of Buddha you could imagine!

I have no idea what this guy is meant to be...

So, we just chilled out there for an hour or so, taking pics, hanging with the Buddhas, and we made a rather rushed video diary too!

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VeTq11LR1qs

And that was it for Vientiane! We got our fill of Pizza Company once more that afternoon, and that set us up nicely for our classy night bus to Luang Prabang.

And that's where I'll pick things up next time!

Summer 2012 - 4th Stop: Savannakhet

As I finished up last time around, we were saying our goodbyes, or rather our 'see you soon's to Vietnam, ready for a new challenge and a new country, Laos - not to be confused with Laois (I don't think there's a direct bus from Vietnam to County Laois...). This entry will be quite brief as Savannakhet was just an interim stop for us. Our next real destination was the country's capital, Vientiane, but going from Hué would have been an uncomfortable 15 hour bus ride, so we decided to split up the journey and spend a day in this completely nondescript Laotian town. (Wow, I just looked it up and it's actually the second biggest city in Laos! It was tiny!)

But let's back up a second, there was drama before we even left Hué...

On the morning of the 27th, we were dropped off at the station, shown to our bus and were told by the driver to leave our bags in a pile by the luggage compartment and take our seats on board. So we put down our things and walked around to the doorway. As we reached the front of the bus we thought, maybe we should wait until the bags are safely packed away before getting on, just in case, so we turned around and went back to the luggage pile. Everything seemed untouched, except for my rucksack, which was gone! There was momentary panic as I checked if it had been loaded up already, it hadn't. I went around to the luggage compartment on the other side, not there either. My momentary panic turned into a more serious one. It was nowhere to be found, and with people and motorbikes coming and going the whole time, someone had probably just picked it up and done a runner while our backs were turned. Bye bye rucksack, we hardly knew ye...

But wait, hold the eulogy! It's not over yet! It was found about 10 minutes later tucked away in a different compartment on the other side of the bus! How it got from the pile to there in the time it took us to turn our backs, I'll never know, but at that stage I didn't care, it was safe! (In fact, I just took that photo right now for the purpose of this story).

I'd like to say that after that initial scare, the bus journey itself was a dream, but it wasn't. We were tucked away in the back corner of the bus, with coal-sized bags of rice under our feet, taking up all of our leg room. A ten hour ride on an overcrowded Vietnamese bus isn't a delightful experience at the best of times, never mind when your knees are up to your chin! And to make matters worse, a local guy came over to us after about half an hour, saying that we were in his seat. In fairness, his ticket did say seat 47, which is where we were sitting, but we were never actually assigned seat numbers and the driver put us here himself. (I wouldn't be surprised if he just wrote down number 47 on the ticket himself to trick us into moving!). Getting up meant standing for the next ten hours, or else sitting in the already crowded aisles, so we stood our ground (or rather, sat our ground), and refused to move. Thankfully he had no English, so he couldn't really argue with us too much, apart from pointing and grunting, which we ignored. Ireland 1, Vietnam 0.

At the border crossing, it was a mad dash to get our stamps, get our Laos visa and get back on the bus before this guy could swoop in and take our seats. We were at the border for a good 45 mins I'd say, waiting anxiously as the guards went through all of the passports one by one, and handed them out to the crowd in no particular order. Finally, we saw our little maroon booklets come to the top of the pile, we grabbed them and jumped back onto the bus, regaining our seats just as our rival climbed aboard. Ireland 2, Vietnam 0!

For the rest of the trip, we survived on a packet of shortbread biscuits and made sure to keep an eye on our friend at any rest stop. We may have had crappy seats, but they were OUR crappy seats!

We finally arrived in Savannakhet and got a tuk-tuk to our guesthouse with two English guys and a Dutch girl that we made friends with along the way. We didn't do much for the rest of the evening besides hanging out and going for dinner. In fact, we didn't do much the next day either! There's just not a lot to do here! We hired a couple of bikes alright and had a nice time just cycling to nowhere in particular, along the riverside, around a few small temples, to the dinosaur museum, down by the... wait what, I hear you say! Yes, Savannakhet has a dinosaur museum!

I mean, who doesn't like dinosaurs?! Apparently the place is a real paleonthological hotspot! It was the thing I was most looking forward to seeing here (well, it didn't really have much competition), and even though I knew Savannakhet was just a nothing town, and the museum would most likely follow suit, part of me was still holding out hope that it would be incredible, with life-size models, interactive features and all that jazz! It wasn't...

This was really as good as it got! (T-rex not to scale)

The "museum" consisted of two small rooms with a few boxes of bones, which actually looked more like rocks (they weren't even bone-shaped!) and some small exhibits that were in Vietnamese and French. And that was it! We had a laugh though! It was only like 50c to get in, and in a way, it was so bad that it was kinda good!

And that was it for Savannakhet. The fact that I spent more time talking about our journey there, than the town itself tells you all you need to know about the place. We had a nice day there, but won't be going back anytime soon. That night we got a sleeper bus (a really good one actually!) up to Vientiane with the two lads from Birmingham (Adam and Adam) and so that's where I'll pick things up next time.

Oh, video diary too!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2HL4qJzl5Uc&feature=youtu.be

I hope you like the sound of wind!

Summer 2012 - 3rd Stop: Hué

First there was Ho Chi Minh City, then there was Hoi An, and now, continuing the Vietnamese trend of “H” cities, is Hué (and we still have Hanoi and Halong Bay to come!). To sum up our stay here, I’d say it was “quite nice”, and that’s about it. Hué was just a short two day stop for us, and it didn’t let us down by any means – great weather,  lovely sights, excellent accommodation, I don’t actually have anything negative to say about the place – yet for some reason, it just seemed to be lacking that certain something that I can’t quite place. Maybe it suffered for being the stop after Hoi An, maybe I just overlooked its appeal, either way, it was a solid, 7 out of 10 town for me, and nothing more. (Aisling thought it was really nice).

We arrived in Hué on the afternoon of the 25^th and, very conveniently, the bus-stop just so happened to be across the road from our accommodation, the Hong Thien 1 Hotel. We couldn’t have picked a better place to stay either, it was the business! And our room in particular. It was probably bigger than our whole apartment in Hong Kong! We had booked a double room, which in our minds, meant a room with a double bed, but to them, it meant a room with TWO double beds! We didn’t know what to do with ourselves! We had regular fancy hotel things too like a TV, fridge, bathroom, but also a breakfast table, a desktop computer and two air conditioners! We could easily live there!

After a quick lunch nearby, we grabbed some bikes at the hotel and cycled out to Thien Mu Pagoda.

It was a lovely 4km journey across the bridge and along the banks of the Perfume River to the pagoda. The nicest part though was probably the courtyard at the back. A little gateway led through to a small temple where some monks were praying, there was nice greenery, incense burning, and of course, the blue skies helped too.

That evening, we had dinner and then just walked along the riverside, where there were various market stalls set up. Nothing to report about that. There's actually very little of interest on the south side of the river, anything of note is across the water, inside the walled city, which is where we spent the next day. We got breakfast in the hotel, hired some bikes once again, and then set off to the citadel. 

As walled cities go, this one looks pretty tough to conquer - you've got the Perfume River in front, with a series of canals surrounding the square-shaped citadel on all sides. Inside this first layer of protection, you have a short strip of land before a 30m wide moat separates you from the 2m thick, 10km long perimeter walls. And that's just to get into the city, there's another citadel inside that citadel protecting the imperial enclosure!

Just like a much more badass version of Eastenders...

We entered the citadel (the outer one) on the south side, through the Ngan Gate, and then took a leisurely cycle around the walls of the imperial enclosure (the inner one). It was a really beautiful day and quite quiet too, so we could take our time and enjoy the views, without much traffic or tourists in our way. After we looped around the imperial enclosure, we had to park up our bikes, and do the rest on foot, entering at the front again, through the Ngo Mon Gate.

There's certainly enough inside to keep you entertained for a few hours, from palaces and temples, to statues and cannons. I won't go through everything we saw, but our favourite spot was probably the To Mieu Temple Complex, with its stunning pavilion, courtyard and nine dynastic urns.

We made our video diary there too!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v8dKzCHMWU8&feature=youtu.be

As the afternoon drew to a close, we picked up our bikes and rejoined the hustle and bustle of Hué traffic. It was nice to cycle along with the locals, weaving in and out of lanes and over bridges, something we'd never do in Ho Chi Minh City!

And that was our time in Hué (and Vietnam, for now). We're very impressed with the country so far, and hopefully the best is yet to come with Hanoi, Sapa and Halong Bay still on the agenda in a few weeks time. The next morning, we headed off to the bus station, ready for our Laos adventures to begin, but not before a hiccup or two along the way...

Summer 2012 - 2nd Stop: Hoi An

Unexpected maybe, as it doesn't really have many 'sights' to speak of, but Hoi An has emerged as a real dark horse and firmly staked its claim for this summer's top spot! A classy riverside town with antique buildings, ambient lanterns and tranquil surroundings, and the latest place to be added to our "must return someday" list.

As we left the action, we were boarding our night train to Hoi An (well, technically Danang, as Hoi An doesn't have a station itself). We got two hard sleeper beds in a six berth cabin filled with locals (and I mean filled!) - a man and woman, quietly above us, and then a family of 6 crammed into the two beds below! A very cosy 16 hours for everyone involved…

And our travels weren't over yet, as we still had to get an hour long bus from Danang to Hoi An. We had read that the bus station was nearby, but we didn't know in what direction. The taxi drivers outside obviously weren't much help either, chiming in with "the bus station is too far to walk" or "no no, it's too late, no more buses today". Each story ended with us having to get a taxi instead, funny that... We finally pieced together directions from people along the way and miraculously spotted a Hoi An bus stop at the side of the road, so we were finally good to go after travelling for the best part of a day.

But Hoi An was certainly worth the wait! And our accommodation, Phuoc An Hotel, only added to the experience - nice room, TV, balcony, swimming pool (that we actually only paddled in once), breakfast, the list goes on. We didn't want to leave!

Hoi An is also the tailoring capital of South East Asia, with practically every second shop ready to measure you up for some new garments. Handily enough, our hotel had a tailor shop of its own in town (one recommended in the Lonely Planet too), and as guests we were entitled to a 20% discount, so... when in Rome! I got a suit made up and Aisling a dress, (although, I've got a feeling they might have bumped up the price after we told them we had a discount) - Tip of the day: announce you have a discount, after they give you the price. Still, a tailor made, three piece suit for €80 isn't too shabby. There were other places in town with lower prices, but I wouldn't really put much faith in a €20 suit. With most things in life, you get what you pay for. I would put up pics of us in our new purchases but they're all packed away at the moment. We even had to buy another bag to hold all of our souvenirs, mostly just lanterns...

In fact, all lanterns.

Our first night in Hoi An was spent just walking around the old town, which is a UNESCO heritage site. It's an incredibly beautiful place, and because it's a protected area, there are strict laws about future development, so no building of massive office blocks or luxury apartments, no tacky shop-fronts or sleazy neon lights, and no cars or motorbikes are even allowed in the old town area. It's good to know that these streets won't lose their unique charm any time soon.

The next morning (after getting ourselves fitted for our new rigouts), we went on another Lonely Planet inspired walking tour of the town. You're meant to buy an Old Town Ticket if you want to go inside any of the temples or old houses, but nobody ever asked us, so we just kept going from place to place without one! In our defence, we did try to buy one at one stage, but there was nobody at the ticket booth, so we took it as a sign for a free day of sightseeing! I wouldn't even call it sightseeing because, as I mentioned earlier, there are no real sights here, just a few small Chinese temples or old houses or bridges. Hoi An itself is the sight.

The town isn't even that big but we had to stop off a couple of times for drinks because it was so hot. And this is meant to be the rainy season! It was quite easy to be tempted though by the many riverside cafes, and we gladly accepted, enjoying the shade and watching the world go by outside. Aisling even had to whip out her Circle K umbrella (Hong Kong's finest) to act as a makeshift parasol for the day.

And to round off our afternoon, we went back to our hotel, ordered some food up to the room, and a couple of traditional massages too for good measure. Why not, we're on holidays!

The next morning, we took a half day tour 55km up the road to the temple ruins of My Son. We were gone for 5 hours, from 8am - 1pm, and even though only an hour and a half of that was spent actually walking around the ruins, it was still a bargain at $4 each. Unfortunately, My Son was a real disappointment and pales in comparison to many others we've seen elsewhere in Asia. (Now there's a sentence I hope I won't have to say in a different context in the future!) Seriously though, it wasn't that good. It may have been mildly interesting if this was our first time seeing something of this kind, but having previously been to places like Bagan, Ayutthaya and Angkor Wat, this wasn't even in the same league. 

That was as good as it got...

I would have said it wasn't worth the trip if it hadn't been for these two Japanese guys we met, and one of them in particular. He was your stereotypical, broken English, extremely polite, over-enthusiastic (but in a lovable way) Japanese tourist. He was a hoot! Our first interaction with him was when he asked to take a picture with us (why, I don't know...) and when we gladly obliged, we were bombarded with "Thank yuuuuuu!" and bowing, like we had just saved his life! And whenever we'd walk past him after that, he'd happily wave or give us another "Thank yuuuu".

Later on in the day, we saw that he was asking his friend for a tissue, so Aisling gave him a pack of her own. ...you've never seen someone so grateful, "All for me?!?! Whaaaa?! THANK YUUUUU!!!" He even got his friend to take a picture of Aisling giving him the pack of tissues! We, of course, had to get a picture with them too.

We bumped into them again later that evening when we were collecting our clothes from the tailor, and it absolutely made our night! And his! His face lit up when he saw us! We were the first people from Ireland they had ever met, so we hope we made a good impression. He certainly made a good impression on us anyway! We just hope that when we go to Japan, everyone is like him!

If you'd like to learn more about our travels in Hoi An and Ho Chi Minh City, watch this video diary:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BcY7S3-f14U&feature=youtu.be

The next morning, we got a bus to Hué, a sleeper bus in fact. (I don't know why it was a sleeper bus, seeing as it was only four hours away, and during the day...) It was a nice comfortable journey though, landing us in Hué just in time for lunch. More coming soon!

Summer 2012 - 1st Stop: Ho Chi Minh City

Here we go again, 10 more weeks of travelling! This time around we’ll be in Vietnam, Laos, China and Japan, so three new countries for us there, a serious haul, and our first new country since The Philippines at Christmas (a whole six months ago, poor us, I know…). We were working in HK right up to the last minute and on top of that, we've just moved out of our apartment, so it was a very hectic few days, getting everything moved out, packing our things and finalising everything for the holiday itself, but we’re here now, at our first destination, Ho Chi Minh City.

GOOOOD MOOORNING VIET--- nah, I can’t do it... 

So, here we are in Ho Chi Minh City, formerly known as Saigon. We flew out from HK to HCMC, via KL, on the morning of June 19th (a ridiculous number of initialisms in that sentence!). We changed our money at the airport into a mixture of US Dollars (which seem to be a secondary currency in most countries around here) and Vietnamese Dong. But seeing as €1 gets you 25,000 Dong, we were left with a serious wad of cash, I could barely fit it all in my wallet. First world problem, I know.

It made me quite self-conscious though, my Dong was making a serious bulge in my pants!

On the flight over, we met a lovely local who gave us some tips for our stay. He also told us that we’d really like Laos because the people are lovely, but the Vietnamese, not so much… I don’t know if he was being modest or honest, although a few other local people so far have told us the same thing. As of now, we’ve no complaints, they’ve all been very nice and friendly to us, but I suppose like any country in the world, you’ve still got to keep your wits about you.

We arrived at our hostel late that evening, so it was straight to bed and then up the next morning for a leisurely walk around the city, as recommended by the Lonely Planet. Our first stop was Ben Thanh Market, which we just walked straight in and out of - once you've seen one traditional market over here, (unless you're looking for something in particular) you've pretty much seen them all. Next, a couple of nice buildings, the Hotel de Ville and the Municipal Theatre, and onto the 70's styled Reunification Palace.

It was a nice enough place, a couple of tanks outside, a few important looking meeting rooms but that seemed to be all. We had read that the basement was the most interesting part but when we went down there, it just seemed to be a set of eerie corridors that led to nowhere. We thought we must've been in the wrong place but as we delved a little deeper the eeriness became all the more eerier (I don't know if either of those are real words...). The corridors became scattered with doorways that led to random, Kafka-esque rooms, with maybe a single desk and a telephone or a machine that looked like it did something really important but impossible to tell what.

This one had TWO telephones!

We finally made our way out of the underground passages, stopped for a milkshake, and then headed to the War Remnants Museum, formerly (and more accurately) known as the Museum of Chinese and American War Crimes. It was one of the most interesting museums I've been to, but not one for the faint-hearted, or if you're a proud American.

It basically documents some of the atrocities of the Vietnam War, and drives the point home with pictures of mutilated bodies, bombed towns and, probably the most horrific of all - the survivors, many of them maimed or disfigured, or the children born with deformities from chemical weapons. I won't put up pictures from here. As I said, not one for patriotic Americans, unless you take pride in seeing pictures of an American GI posing with the corpse of the child he just shot dead. A really interesting museum though, a must-see if you're in the city.

We finished off our tour with, the thoroughly out-of-place, Notre Dame Cathedral (as seen below), and the thoroughly disappointing and hard to find, Jade Emperor Pagoda (as never to be seen again).

The next day, we went on a little day trip to the surrounding areas of HCMC to see the Cao Dai temple in Tay Ninh, and the Cu Chi Tunnels. One thing we've learned over the course of our travels is that you never really see much of note in the big cities, it's always in the small towns or in the countryside where you find the real gems, and today was no different, with two very different, but very enjoyable excursions.

First to the town of Tay Ninh, which is kind of the Vatican City of the Cao Dai faith - a 20th century religion which takes elements from the teachings of Taoism, Buddhism and Confucianism, pretty standard stuff. They also have a few saints, you know the usual suspects, Jesus, Buddha, Mohammed... Shakespeare... Napoleon... Joan of Arc... as well as around 70 other "Holy Spirits" such as Winston Churchill, Lenin and Louis Pasteur! Well, if you're going to make up a new religion, then why not bring in the big guns?!

The temple itself was actually really unique and beautiful though, and we even stayed for the 12 o'clock service. Have a look at 54 seconds of it here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W2VK3cvRbzU&feature=youtu.be

You might as well, seeing as we forgot to make a video diary...

After Tay Ninh, and a stop off for lunch, we went to the Cu Chi Tunnels - an intricate, underground tunnel network built by the local Vietnamese and used by the Viet Cong in their fight against American troops. We first watched a documentary and then the tour guide showed us around, telling us of the ingenious ways the locals fought back - from home-made booby traps, to clever little back-to-front sandals, and of course the tunnels themselves.

At some points, as you can see above, the entrances were little bigger than a shoe box, but underground they widened out and were equipped with ventilation, bomb shelters and booby traps for anyone brave enough, or stupid enough, to follow them in. We crawled our way through one section of the cave alright, but that was more than enough to experience how dark and cramped things were down there.

And that was that for our stay in Ho Chi Minh City. We got the bus back from the tunnels, had dinner and then embarked upon a 16 hour train ride up to Hoi An, sharing a 6 berth cabin with 8 other people - fun times ahead!