Rich & Petra Finding Paradise

One final night in Phnom Penh, we bought our bus tickets to Ho Chi Minh city (HCMC) Vietnam and sent a few postcards we were meant to have sent from Bangkok. Then came the dreaded food posioning...the night before a 6:45am bus journey all the way to Vietnam and from eating local Cambodian curry which surely they should know how to cook properly!! The next morning I made it onto the bus with my stomach feeling like it was hosting a doubles Squash match inside! By some unknown miracle I wasnt sick but also could eat for about 24hours much to my disappointment! Anyway it was time to say "Good Morning Vietnam" and again "Happy New Year" (Its the Chinese New Year, which is officially the worst time to travel in S.E Asia, buses are full and 4times the price along with Hotels.. GREAT!). Having slightly had enough of S.E Asia's polluted and dirty cities we did a bit of sight seeing, including a trip on the scariest road system whilst sat on a bicycle and then we wanted out of here! The initial plans were to buy and open tour bus ticket from HCMC to Hanoi for usually US$20....thanks to "Happy New Year" most were full and now US$70-US$85 (during the NY Vietnamese people arrive home from all over the world and clog up the transport system as they try and travel home...resulting in the bus companies raising prices). We were left with no choice but to do each leg of the trip from south to north one step at a time, hoping we could buy onward bus tickets from each town we stopped in. We managed to blag the last 2 seats on the next bus the following day, just to ease us into our hopeful journey north we had a 10hour overnight bus journey to Nha Trang...no comfy seats and no sleep awaited us!

Nha Trang is regarded as a gem on the Vietnamese coast, maybe we have just been spoilt with beautiful beaches and towns but this didnt really impress! We hired another motorbike for the day and explored the nearby fishing villages which gave us a better taste of the 'real' Vietnam! Again we opted for another overnight trip on a seating bus (why why why?!!) and we were sat practically behind the driver who in true Vietnamese tradition used the unnecessarily loud horn more than he did the wheel or brakes. On the positive side we got to spend all night awake thinking of the beauties of Hoi An that awaited us, Hoi An is a french style old town seemingly stuck in a time warp. It was how I imagined Vietnam to look like, they even use the huge old war plane spot lights to light up the sky at night. At this point of our travels we realised time again wasnt on our side and Vietnam is a huge country to travel up from south to north, we made the decision to push on as we wanted and needed more time in Hanoi to get visas and visit Sapa and Halong Bay. With only one nights rest in Hoi An we gave in a paid the price for a sleeping bus aka the backpackers/flashpackers bus, its the only way of getting a few hours sleep and consists of a bus packed full of bunkbeds!! We ended up with a company called Camel Travel who rudely herded everyone on and then removed a few unsuspecting backpackers who had lost their tickets since entering the bus, nice! So we left Hoi An at 2pm and arrived somewhere outside of Hanoi at 5:30am the next day, from here we were about to start really enjoying and experiencing the beauty that is Vietnam.