Southern Vietnam

There was a time when I thought that coming to Vietnam was a bad idea from the start; the everlasting rain, the incredibly pushy hawkers, and the constant sound of mopeds was driving me mad, and I was ready to skip most of the country and move on. I'm glad we didn't though, because the last couple of weeks in Vietnam were absolutely lovely; we had glorious sunshine, the hawkers seemed to give up on us, and even the mopeds didn't seem too bad anymore.

Maybe it was just the weather that was getting us down before, or maybe we had just got a bit tired of moving about all the time for the last three months. Whatever it was, the curse was lifted by a tour of the countryside around Dalat in the "Highlands" of Vietnam, five days on the beach in Mui Ne, the buzzing chaos that is Saigon (officially Ho Chi Minh City), and finally a boat trip in the Mekong Delta.

In Dalat we took a tour out to the countryside and saw a coffee plantation, silk factory, rice wine making, and a lot of gardens and fields of flowers and veg. It was pretty nice change from hanging out in the bars and waiting for the rain to stop. And, of course, we sampled some of Dalat's famous(?) red wine.

Mui Ne was like a holiday from a holiday. We spent five days doing absolutely nothing. Swimming, eating, and some more Dalat wine filled the days quite nicely. The only touristy thing we did was a walk up the Fairy Stream to see some waterfalls. The waterfalls actually turned out to be a little trickle of muddy water but the walk along - and in - the river was nice.



After charging our batteries in Mui Ne we headed off to Saigon, which turned out to be another big surprise. I had imagined not to like the city at all after what I had heard from other travellers, but Saigon turned out to be quite charming in a slightly decadent way. If you can ignore the old fat western guys and their young local "girlfriends" the city is really nice and I wish we had a little more time to explore.



From Saigon we went to the Mekong Delta to take a boat trip around the delta and then on to Cambodia. The trip was fantastic! We saw some beautiful jungle scenery, waved to about a million little kids on the shores, screaming in joy at seeing strange western people. Of course there was also some crocodile feeding (what kind of a tour would not have it in the itinerary?), local music and singing (sorry, but that sounded like cats being strangled) and snake wine tasting. After all this fun we found ourselves at the most laid-back border crossing we have experienced so far. It was literally just a bloke by a fence, glancing at our passports as we walked past with beers in our hands. Nice!



We are now in Phnom Penh in Cambodia, but due to some vicious drinking games last night we haven't really done much sightseeing yet. Well, we have time, we're on holiday!