Vietnam

Vietnam, then. It's quite a country. The first country I've gone too in Asia and, based on my experiences there, hopefully not the last. We started by arriving in the capital, Hanoi, in the north of the country; a frenetic, hustle and bustle type of place where crossing the road is a genuinely exciting endeavour. The older part of the city is full of narrow, twisting streets where if a bar runs out of room to seat it's guests it simply starts putting them out in the road, even if that means restricting flow to one lane - not that vehicles stick to any given lane.

One of Hanoi's more open and less busy streets

From Hanoi we moved on to Ha Long Bay, a place I had wanted to visit for many years. Sadly it was cloudy nearly the whole time we were there but I still enjoyed seeing this most unusual of seascapes. Vast outcrops of limestone soar out of the sea in a seemingly random manner; carpeted in trees and without any apparent flat areas they take on an ethereal aspect, especially in the early morning haze.

From Ha Long bay we moved on to Hue (pronounced Hway, possibly. See below) which is famed for it's Imperial City. Formerly a capital of it's country, I'm afraid to say that by the time we got this far I had all but given up on trying to learn Vietnamese. I normally pride myself on learning, at the very least, how to say hello, goodbye, please and thank you in any given language but, like many oriental languages, Vietnamese is tonal. This means that even if you figure out how the word should be pronounced, which is hard enough, the tone in which you say it can completely change it's meaning. For example, the word ba, I had looked it up as it is the word for Mrs/Madam. Can't be too complicated, can it? Two letters, and both of them pronounced how you might expect. However, each vowel in Vietnamese can be said with up to 6 different tones; mid-level, low falling, high rising, and so on. Each of these tones confers a different meaning to the word. Ba, then, depending on what tone you say it in can indeed mean Mrs, or it can mean three, grandmother, aunt, any, waste or poisoned food. Interact at your peril. Most people looked at me with a puzzled look, some with amusement and some mercifully came to my rescue with vastly superior English. I found Arabic easier than this; Vietnamese totally defeated me.

Statue and pagoda in Hue's Imperial City

Hue gave way to Hoi An, probably the most traditionally picturesque town we stayed in. Hoi An is renowned for it's tailoring industry; every third or fourth shop is a tailors and their rates are invariably very good. Walk into their shop and they will offer you a range of everyday western catalogues like the Next Directory, all you have to do is pick out what you want and they will make it to measure; in less than 24 hours. My wife got shirts, skirts and a jacket for about seventy pounds. Bargain. Furthermore, they'll hold onto your details for you so, so long as you don't change shape too much, you can e-mail in an order at a later date and have them ship it over to you; all of which is far cheaper than the high street.

They were quite keen on lanterns in Hoi An

Based out of Hoi An we went on a trip to the My Son temple complex. Closely related to the larger and more well known complex of Ankor Wat in Cambodia, the My Son site was constantly occupied for 1,000 years. It was also home to a Viet Cong base during the war and therefore had holy hell pounded out of it by American B-52s; it is also recommended that you do not stray from the footpaths as the area is not yet fully cleared of land mines. Despite this, there is still lots left to inspire the imagination, as I suspect the designers of the Uncharted series may know.

An overnight train and a long bus ride brought us to our first stop in the south of the country, Da Lat. At 2,000m above sea level it had a very different feel to the rest of the country and the temperatures were mercifully lower.

The view en route to the Elephant waterfalls

Another hop skip and a jump brought us to Ho Chi Minh City, formerly known as Saigon but renamed in honour of their revolutionary leader. Ho Chi Minh City is actually larger than the capital, Hanoi, and, as it was mostly held by the Americans during the war, is generally more intact.

The moped - the workhorse of Vietnam

From there it is easy enough to go on an extended trip into the Mekong river delta. Here, the Mekong river sprawls out into a huge fan shape criss-crossing hundreds of miles with meandering water ways. Known as the rice bowl of Vietnam, it is the harnessing of this region that changed the country from a net importer of rice to the world's 4th largest exporter in just ten years.

Sue took this photo of the delta. It goes on like this for quite a long time.

This is just a taster of what I saw over the trip and I intend to write more detailed posts about each of these places and to tell the stories of some of the people I met over the coming months. I would just like to say thank you to all the people that helped make it run so smoothly and, of course, my travelling companions Sue and Eleanor for making it such a great trip.