We meet the rest of our tour group last night, there are 12 of us in total. 5 couple and 2 girls. 3 of the couples are in their late 50's and the other couple is around the same age as us. The 2 girls are in their 20's and we are all Aussies. Our tour guide is Vietnamese and is called Tan. He seems fabulous! I think he will make this tour really fantastic. He took us to a local restaurant for dinner last night, we had a 4 course meal including beer and it only cost $6 AU. It's crazy how cheap it is to eat over here. Everyone on our tour said that they would prefer to eat in local restaurants over western food (not that you have to stick with the group) but that made us both really happy. And with Tan leading the way I should come home at least 20kgs heavier!
The only people that seem slightly annoying are the 2 young girls, blow-up barbie (I have affectionately named one of them) who only left Au for the first time 48hours ago, decided she would let me know how the barter system worked, what type of ice to drink etc..... So I had to punch her in the head - only joking. I only thought about punching her in the head. It might come to that after 3 weeks.
Ian seems to have found a couple of drinking buddies and no one has heard of Dt Coke in this country so I have given up trying. Haven't found any chocolate yet, but if there is any to be found I will sniff it out!
Today we went on a cyclo tour of the city (seat with a bike on the back), it was heaps of fun - except for the poor guy that had to peddle me. We were out for about 2 hours and it was fantastic. After this we left the group and went our own way. Myself and Ian stuck with the other couple that are around the our age (Lucy and Damien) and went and explored some more of the city. We saw war museums, pagoda, monks, famous buildings and eventually ended back at the Ben Than Markets. Here we went from stall to stall sampling the local food. The locals kept laughing at us as the boys didn't fit on the tiny seats and I can't use chopsticks. I still managed to shovel it into my mouth though.... I have no idea what we ate, we just kept moving around pointing to different things on carts, it all tasted amazing and was sooooo cheap.
The only people that seem slightly annoying are the 2 young girls, blow-up barbie (I have affectionately named one of them) who only left Au for the first time 48hours ago, decided she would let me know how the barter system worked, what type of ice to drink etc..... So I had to punch her in the head - only joking. I only thought about punching her in the head. It might come to that after 3 weeks.
Ian seems to have found a couple of drinking buddies and no one has heard of Dt Coke in this country so I have given up trying. Haven't found any chocolate yet, but if there is any to be found I will sniff it out!
We spent another hour or so exploring the markets and getting hassled, we then returned to our hotel. Tonight we are heading to another local restaurant so we will be leaving soon to go and check it out. The rain came again about 4pm this arvo (seems like the norm) but we were better prepared today and had our rain jackets ready to go this time.
