Hold On To Your Dong!

Sorry for the title of our blog post but I couldn't resist any longer. The Vietnamese currency is the Dong so Dong jokes run rampant such as "Do you want to see my Dong?" or "Can you hang on to my Dong for me?". Funny enough but they don't get old either! One dollar is about 20,000 dong which makes for a lot of math when bartering. Also, its a bit of a pain that you can only take 2 million Dong from most ATMs which roughly equates to $100.

With our dollar being so strong it does have its advantages. Hotels, meals and knock-off name brand items are quite inexpensive but we find we are becoming quite cheap. If we eat supper for more than $15 we confide that we have splurged and we must find a cheaper place at our next meal. We could choose to eat much cheaper and be like the locals who sit at Fisher-Price style tables and chairs at food stalls but I really doubt the menu would satisfy all four of us, however we do eat well and cheap and there is no fear of any of us wasting away. Also, if a beer is more than a dollar I don't get one...tough choices sometimes need to be made.

As you can tell we survived our motorbike rentals. To be honest that is what they call them but they were mopeds. We took to the traffic fairly quickly but you won't see us driving in the chaos of Saigon anytime soon. We rode the bikes to the two beaches in Hoi An which are both very impressive and made the most of our last day in this beautiful town.

We next arrived in the Imperial City of Hue. This was a very limited sight seeing stop as both kids came down with the flu. We did manage to dope them up and drag them out to see a few sights though such as the Citadel. The Citadel was very impressive and was basically a fortified city complete with moats which housed the Emperor up until 1945. It is sad that historical places like this were severely damaged or eliminated during the bombing campaigns of the French and US Vietnam Wars. It is amazing to us that Vietnam has overcome so much with their long history of revolutions and war including the Chinese, French, Khmer and American wars. With such a violent history, the people here are so friendly and outgoing and do not seem to hold any ill will towards their previous combatants. They also incorporate the influences from their previous colonists in their food and architecture.

From Hue we needed to move north to Hanoi which is about 650kms away. We had three choices to make as our mode of travel; bus, train or plane. Since highway traffic is limited to a maximum of 50 kms/hr we would have been on the bus for 14 hours but on the special bus made for comfort...the sleeper bus. The sleeper bus is basically as it sounds, it is a bus with two levels of individual beds. The idea of it is really neat but it is designed for the Asian frame. I am not a big guy but when we previously took it I felt very confined with my knees bent up to my chin, laying on my back and jealous of my next bed neighbor, the Vietnamese lady all stretched out with room to spare for her bags of snacks and personal items. Therefore, I did not vote for this mode of travel. The next option was getting on the Saigon to Hanoi train in our own sleeper cabin. Although it takes as long as the bus you are able to move around and sleep when required...sounds good right? Yes, if you catch it in Saigon. We learnt the last time that the train gets cleaned before the start of each full journey and since this is the last leg of the trek it would be nasty. We previously took this train at the halfway leg and a mattress in our cabin had been urinated on and the smell of the train car is as you can imagine in 35 degree heat. Therefore, we all voted on flying; saving our sanity and not wasting a day on the ground travel options. Off to Hanoi to visit Sapa and Halong Bay.

Bye for now!