Clark's Crazy Adventures

Monay, November 8, 2010

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.

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.

Tomorrow we head to the Mekong Delta and our first 'home stay'. We have been told not to bring to much with us (we are leaving our bags in Ho Chi Minh as we are coming back here) as we have limited bathroom facilities, no hot water, no bed rooms.... Tan said bring mossie repellent and ear plugs, sounds interesting......

Saturday, November 6, 2010

After a 2.5 hour train journey, 3 hour wait at Sydney airport, 5 hour flight to Darwin, another 2 hour wait there, then another 5 hour flight we finally arrived at our destination - Ho Chi Minh City, thank god!!!! I had forgotten how crazy the roads are in Asia, thus the taxi ride from the airport was very interesting. After realizing that I probably wasn't going to die I was able to point out to Ian all the beautiful hotels that we wouldn't be staying in. The taxi eventually pulled up outside some dodgy lane way and the driver pointed out the equally dodgy looking hotel that was located down it. Yep, that would be us..... Our room was clean, as the Internet had stated, however if failed to mention that water was leaking down one wall, Ian fixed that by placing bath towels down one side of the bed. Then there was the light that wouldn't turn off, Ian fixed that by unscrewing the bulb, the window we couldn't close, Ian used a pen on that one, and the trusty ear plugs blocked the noise from the night markets located outside..... Oh! How funny it is this morning.... .

Hello Asia....Oh how I had forgotten how crazy you are......

Anyway moving onto our first full day.... We were both awake and bored by 5am (because of the time difference) eventually the sun rose and we meet our chef outside the Ben Than Markets as we had a cooking class booked for today. The markets were amazing, so much wonderful fresh food. Didn't like the meat section though - they tend to eat everything over here. The seafood section was fantastic. Live eels, crabs, tiger prawns, snails, frogs anything that lives in fresh or salt water. After shopping for all our ingredients we went back to the restaurant and cooked a 3 course meal. Yum Yum Yum the food was unreal and there was so much that I couldn't finish it all, I know, totally unlike me! I can finally make rice paper spring rolls, of course Ian's were better than mine. After lunch we headed out to explore the streets, we struggled crossing the road (you would think we would know how to by now) and sometimes just gave up trying and went another way, ha ha ha.... We saw some interesting temples and locals then checked out the Reunification Palace - very interesting.

After leaving the Palace (about 4pm) we got caught in a tropical downpour and guess who forgot to put the rain jackets (that mum kindly lent me) into the back pack. So after walking 2kms in the rain my beautiful shoes (again that mum lent me) are soooo wet that I probably wont be able to wear them for days. I currently have on lovely blue thongs that the hotel provides it guests. I'm a stunner!! And to go with my blue shoes I have blond frizzy afro hair....

We join our tour in an hour, meet and greet dinner, so here's hoping the other people travelling with us are normal, relatively speaking. Ian just informed me that the air conditioner in our room is now broken - at least we still have a bed.......