Vietnam

Sup. Much has cranked since we travelled south-east down the Mekong river out of Cambodia and into southern Vietnam. Everyday is loaded with seemingly endless buzzyness, so much so that it's difficult to keep track. Vietnam - more so than Cambodia or Thailand, the latter especially, filled with Western advertising hoardings and exploitative taxi driver and store owners ready to milk you dry of your reasources - exists in its own private universe. Communist flags and massive paintings and billboards of the oh so sly Ho Chi Minh (1890-1969 as my t-shirt tells me. He's pretty much their Lennon) fly at every street corner and the civillian population has a limited (at best) knowledge of English. The locals are still uber-friendly and pretty much in love with us though. The callaber of fellow travellers too, for the most part, seems to increase the further away we get from Thailand. Ah. Premium ice-creams for one dollar too. mmmm. ye.

As of now we're in Hue, the old imperial capital in central Vietnam. This area was the most brutalised by American bombs in the war (something like three bombs for every square metre of land were dropped here), yet it remains the most beautiful area we've travelled to slash through. We'd planned to head to Hanoi last night but Ants had a motorbike collission late in the day. We'd been crusing around rural Hue and headed back into the city to get amoungst the raucous traffic for some "intense driving" when we managed to find ourselves on the wrong side of a one way bridge. Bad buzz. Somehow I managed to slick it back onto the right side of the road, as I exhaled with relief I heard a massive CRACK behind me. I swivelled my head to see Ants, on the ground surrounded by hoards of Vietnamese. They were stroking him, rubbing him, mauling him (one man even began fondling his face and hair) and I managed to get him inside away from the aroused locals. He's fine now though, no broken bones, only some scratches and grazes and a truly savage bruse on the inside of his thigh. Little Ants. Andrew crused back to the hotel to sort out the repairs on the bike (garry) while I stayed with Ants and fed him chocolate bars and panadol. Anyway, time for the picture buzz I've got plenty.

Our trip down the Mekong to Vietnam was generally serene.

Cranking the Mekong river scene.

Our boat was SO narrow. If you so much as got out of your seat and moved to the other side its precarious balance was upset to a worrying degree.

These sweet Danish chicks taughts us how to play 'Yahtzee' though, so 'twas all goods. We got off our boat in a little river town called Chow Dok and jumped on a 'bus' to Saigon. Easily the worst bus ride of my life. We were packed into this little mimi-van, all twenty of us (there were about fifteen seats) and proceeded across the bumpiest, semi-paved 'road' to Vietnam's largest city. The driver kept stopping to pick up people along the way to score himself a fw extra dollars. When we finally arrived at around one in the morning we jumped on the back of three motorbikes to take us to our guesthouse. My driver was a sack however and quickly lost Ants and Andrew on the hectic streats (Saigon's streets are bustling with roughly four million motorbikes). He could only speak a few words of English and was blessed with even less initiative - and seemed to have absolutely no idea where we were going - so instead of finding my trusty companions he just crused the streets of Saigon whilst I clung helplessly to his undernourished and slighly sweaty torso. I took a picture of this buzzy hobo man making a fire on the side of the street though so no worries. Then I began to get frustrated and bored and started taking pictures of my lost self. We fortuitously stumbled across one of his 'buddies' who took us to the guest house. I got to assess the night life from a position of relative comfort, so thinking about it now it was kind of sweet. Addidas. Hmmm, I took copious amonts of photos trying to capture the chaos - and believe me, it's chaos on a grand scale - of the streets. Motorbikes are slicking it around everywhere. The interesections are a trip.

We spent two days there, but like Bangkok, it's hectic, loud, filthy and scummy. City folk just aren't very friendly. In Ants' words "Saigon was kind of shit". We headed out to the Cu Chi region to check out the elaborate tunnel system that the Viet Kong used during the war which was pretty sweet. The American's couldn't 'eradicate' the Viet Kong by fighting them on the ground, so they tried to bomb them out of existance, so they built tunnels, lots of tunnels. What was immediately striking about the tunnels was how small they were.

This is a typical entrance. Tiny huh? The tunnels we saw had been 'widened'. I could barely get down this one. Inside it's ridiculously stuffy and claustrophobic, crawling space only. Freakin. These tunnels streched all across the Cu Chi region to Saigon river. The Viet Kong and their posse would crawl from up to five kilometers at a time to evade American's, ambush American's, hide near American camps and listen to their music and genererally snoop around. Ridiculous. They were fighting for their homeland though, fair enough. They made some pretty mean traps for the American's too, all concealed slyly under foliage. Bad buzz if you got caught in this one. It'd probably take about a day to bleed to death after being empaled by these crude spikes. Chur.
We decided to take Lonely Planet's advice and "get out of the congested urban areas and explore the rural areas to discover Vietnam's natural beauty". Instead of heading to Nha Trang, the most obvious coastal destination twelve hours out of Saigon, we took a bus to beautiful Mui Ne, a relatively isolated fishing village seven hours south of Nha Trang. A slick Danish guy called August (he was pretty much the Scandenavian version of swiss Sam in terms of his demeanor, mannerisms and appearance) who I met in Cambodia couldn't say enough about it. I can see why. After over a week of hectic travelling and 6am starts we needed some of this.
Me and Ants headed out for a run accompanied by a serene sunset along the beach front. It was all very merry untill we got chased by this spastic mongrel sea dog, freaky as. I was sketching so bad when it was chasing us that I fell into a little river. But we evaded that mongrel and manged to get back for some more hard earned chilling.After a few days of chilliaxing it was time to get out to Mui Ne's famous sand dunes, we jumped on some motorbikes (they cost around $8 to rent for a day, you don't need s liscence or anything, we didn't even know how to drive them, it's pretty simple).

Half an hour out of Mui Ne near the dunes the roads were pretty isolated. The dunes were pretty sweet too. Ahhhhhhh it was SO hot on the sand. Supple viewa.

Getting spiritual. We paid some local kids a few dollars and they hooked us up with a piece of plastic to slick it down the dunes, as well as taking us to the premium spots. It takes about eight seconds to get down.

And several greuling minutes to get back up.

We headed back to our guest house to jump on a sleeper bus for the 15 hour ride to Hoi An. Mui Ne's fishing boat posse was out in full force. Supple.

The sleeper bus turned out to be quite sweet. Leaving Mui Ne was a bad buzz, it was easily the most beautiful spot we'd been to at that point. Little did we know that Hoi An was going to be just as amazing. We jumped in the back and owned, schoolboy styles. We were all well tired.

Half way through some 45 + Vietnamese guys jumped in the back with us and went to sleep immediately. It was all good for Andrew and Ants as they were not in contact with them in any way. I however, was right up against these chums, they fell asleep, their arms began to drape over mine, they fondled my feet in their sleep, my feet were dangling over the end of the tiny bed and we still had 10 hours to go, 'twas a bad buzz. They jumped off ther bus at some point when I was half alseep and left me three beds to luxuriate on while my trusty companions battled on . Karma.

Hoi An is such a charmer. Despite it's tiny population, It's the culinary and fashion capital of Vietnam. It's little lanes are to narrow for cars, so the atmosphere in the streets - filled with cyclists - is friendly and pleasant.

The town is littered with French colonial builldings, giving it a rustic charm. We popped into a tailor (every second store seems to be one) and got measured up for our suits. Ye. The next day we picked them up. Mmmmmmm, can't wait to whip them out at 21sts, cocktail parties and other various civilised occassions back home. No pictures of the yet, you'll have to wait to ee the in the flesh. Fiends!

The night life in Hoi An is pretty raging too. This slick moto-driver slash party guru called Moon (by 1am I was hugging him on the dance floor) started the party up at his bar by buying FIFTEEN free buckets of spirits. His bar - I can't even remeber its name - ws going off, filled predominantly with Aussies, Brits, French and a smattering of other European slicks we had a cranking night out while our suits were made for us. I'm not quite sure what this is a photo of, but it's quite buzzy. I think it was a boat floating up the river that rus through town.

Hoi An's rustic charm, it's food, it's suits and it's night life was all oh so amazing, but not te highlight. Both afternoons we headed out to the outskirsts of town where we stumbled on a group of young kids playing beach football. We jumped in with them, made two teams and played untill the sun went down. We only wipped out the camera as an afterthought, we were all consumed by the good times, at least these give you a general idea.See that little guy in goal, he was the an. He made countless saves, and he must ony be five or six (most of the kids were eleven or twelve). Ahhhh sweet suppleneess. They got uber-excited on the second night when we came back to play again, there was even a little crowd of locals watching, probably just to check out the white boy novelty factor.

We played untill the sun went down, then got a team photo. Chur. Oh man, look how sweaty we are! Playing beach football with these kids was the high point of the entire trip for me personally.

That about raps things up for now. We're heading on a SEVENTEEN hour bus ride to Hanoi in an hour, then a two day boat ride through Ha Long bay, one of the seven (or eight?) wondors of the natural world.

Talk to you soon

- Tim othy James Parker.