The Never Ending Journey

The flight to DaNang was short and sweet, just over an hour, with almost half of that sitting on the taxiway waiting for planes ahead of us.  It took little or no time for our luggage to arrive and we spotted our driver almost immediately. He even had my name spelled correctly on his paper sign.  The trip to Hoi An took less than half an hour and we were checked in, showered, changed and enjoying lunch by 1:30pm.     Even though it was a toasty 29 degrees it was still a lot more comfortable than HCMC.   We took a slow walk to the town centre and discovered that Old Town was an amazing blend of old Chinese buildings and architecture. Officially one pays an admission charge to enter Old Town (Consider it a donation for upkeep that also includes access to 5 buildings of your choice.(We did enter the Cantonese Assembly Hall with a large dragon in front. An open courtyard lead to a large alter at the back which was dedicated to  Quan Cong, apparently an este...

The alarm went off at 5 and we met our driver at 6:02am. We then waited at the next hotel as the group from there took 20 minutes to drag their asses on board.  This same group seemed to require a coffee break and or a pee break every 20 minutes.  The trip to Cai Bei took just over 90 minutes and after driving through the largely none descript town for a short while we parked near the water.  A short walk took us to the dock where we boarded a tourist boat that seemed seaworthy enough to trust for an hour or two. Our “trip” to the floating market was a bit of a letdown as the floating market consisted of one boat selling a variety of fruits and drinks. Actually there were a couple of other boats but they seemed to be offering clothing and items that required the purchase of multiple units. Zing all honesty the guide from the previous day already warned us that the market varied in size depending on the time of day. He also stated that it seemed to be a slowly dying in...

Breakfast at the hotel on day 2 offered some interesting choices- spaghetti Bolognese , fried rice and pho. There was, apparently also toast and cheese, but somebody got to it before me.  After breakfast we took a walk to the local market, about the size of a small town shopping mall. Mostly clothing and crafts, it seemed to be laid out by groupings- all the t-shirts in one area etc. Based on the back and forth between merchants I suspected that they are probably all selling stuff from one central vendor. Any colour or style they didn’t have seemed to be just a yell away and someone would come to supply it. Priced did not change much either. After checking out of our hotel we cabbed it to Hotel Elios, our home for the next 3 days. We arrived at 11:30 am and were allowed to check in immediately, even though check in time was 1:30.  The first order of business was getting a SIM card set up for one of our phones. A data plan for a month- 4Gb of data cost just over $7.50 US. ...

Just a quick note to anyone reading this blog  It appears that Amish terrorists have taken over the Net and reduced download speed to that of a buggy with square wheels.  Seriously, internet speeds at this and the previous Vietnamese hotel are not even 1/15th the speeds we were getting in Cambodia so there is little chance of me posting updates until we change hotels on Tuesday when we move to Hue.I’m using our cellphone to create a hotspot, otherwise this message probably wouldn’t get sent PERIOD      Stay tuned!!!!

The flight to Ho Chi Minh City aka Saigon and here after abbreviated to HCMC was less than an hour in length. Far better than the 6 hour bus ride with an added 2 hours to secure a Visa and clear customs. That part was almost the same length. I had never seen such as slow process in all my years of travelling. That it was topped off by the cashier ripping us off only added to the pain. Instrad of giving us $50 in change from our hundred she gave us two twenties and a 200,000 VND note. The latter is worth about $8.50US and not the $10 she insisted it replaced. It wasn’t the amount but the principle. “ Welcome to Vietnam, you’ve just been had by a government official. Bitch!  In spite of the almost two hour delay, our pre-arranged ride was still waiting for us. The airport to downtown drive is probably scarey even at the best of times but at 5pm it looked like someone had kicked over an ant nest. Except, instead of ants the scurrying insects were several thousand commuters on bikes ...

Having been emotionally drained by our visit to the Genocide Musem yesterday, I decided that I didn’t want to spend a bone shaking hour in a tuk tuk to visit the Killing Fields. Instead we decided on a visit to the Royal Palace. It is a fairly massive complex with about 25 significant buildings or monuments. It is more or less divided into 2 separate areas. Entering first into the eastern section, the Throne Hall is the most significant building and features ornate roof lines typical of the Khmer style of architecture. Many of the other buildings were off limits- apparently in preparation for  some official ceremonies scheduled more tomorrow.Moving into the western section, the main focal point was the Silver Pagoda, also known as the Temple of the Emerald Buddha. The main feature of the building was a life size solid gold Buddha adorned with over 2000 diamonds.  Other things of note in the same area were a giant mural covering the inner surface of the outer wall. As well as...

It is now 11pm on Sunday 17th. We spent most of last night and this morning suffering the consequences of probably some contaminated ice in a very highly rated restaurant. A diet of PeptoBismol shooters, and Ramen soup noodles helped replenish enough electrolytes to allow us to venture out around 2pm.  A tuk tuk ride across town brought us to the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum, also known as S-21. A school converted by the Khmer Rouge into a secret prison in the heart of the city, it was one of 200 scattered around the country and served.as a torture unit where prisoners were kept alive long enough to provide forced confessions of their “crimes” against the State. These crimes could be for things as simple as wearing glasses, a sign of an intellectual. Artists, the better educated and those with skills like physicians were fair game.  The original school consisted of 4 blocks of  3 story classrooms which were converted into torture rooms and prison cells. Internal walls of ...