Our last night in Hanoi was uneventful, as there was nothing special we wanted to see or do. We went for dinner at a busy restaurant we found just down the road from our hotel. The restaurant was called NewDay, and it seemed to be constantly busy day and night, there was not a table free when we arrived, and so we agreed to share a table with another waiting couple as soon as one became available. The couple were both English but had been living in Australia for the last year working on the production team of the TV show 'I'm a celebrity get me out of here!'. They were now on their way back to live in the UK, doing a reverse of the trip we were taking.
Our flight the next day was with Jetstar, an Australian airline, but it was a scarier flight than either of the Lao airlines flights we had taken, partly because it was a much older plane, partly because none of the local passenger seemed to think the warning to turn their mobile phone off applied to them and partly because landing at Ho Chi Minh city airport feels like you are landing right in the middle of the city. Ridding in the taxi from the airport it became clear that HCMC was a much more organised and modernised city than Hanoi. This said, the traffic wasn't much better, there was still a haze of pollution in the air and any visable waterway was jet black.
We had booked two different hotels for our time in HCMC because we originaly only planned to stay a couple of nights in the city itself, hoping to go off on an overnight tour somewhere. However due to our lack of organisation we ended up not booking anything so ended up finding another hotel in HCMC for the remaining nights. There seems to be less to see in HCMC than Hanoi, so we booked ourselves onto a couple of day tours to entertain ourselves.
On Christmas day we went to a Cao Dai temple and the Cu Chi tunnels, very festive I agree. The Cao Dai are effectivly a cult that has formed in Vietnam where they have decided that having just one religion isn't enough, so have combined them all and worship a wide variety of 'saints' including the French Poet Victor Hugo. The Cu Chi tunnels were where the Cu Chi geurillas hid out during the Vietnam war. Although most of the original tunnel system has since collapsed, they have several examples of traps used by the geurillas and a replica tunnel, built to western proportions, although it is still a dark and narrow crawl to get through.
The other tour we went on was to the Mekong delta. We took a bus to Mytho where we boarded a boatthat took us into the upper Mekong with stops on Phenix and Unicorn islands, mainly to sample local produce such as coconut candy and honey. Obviously the main aim of these stops was to encourage purchase of the sampled products. The highlight of the tour for me was rowing down the small canals lined with coconut trees and watching the mud-skippers play on the banks.
Even these excursions were not enough to change B's opinion of Vietnam, and so when the time arrived for us to leave he was only too happy to go. Our last day in HCMC did drag a little as our flight wasn't until 8pm. With nothing left in Vietnam that I could entice B to see, we stayed in our hotel room until we had to check out, then found a nice little restaurant in which we had a slow, 4 hour lunch. Not that we wasted this time, we managed to send out multiple emails, some personal corespondance, but also sorting out our banking in Australia, and arranging property viewings. We don't know if the credit crunch has finally caught up with Australia but rental prices seem to have dropped significantly since the last time we looked, opening up a new range of areas we can afford to live in.
Eventually we made it to the airport, and unfortunatly our lucky streak with our baggage allowance came to an end. The man at the check in desk must have been having a bad day for he made us remove about 3kg from our suitcase or pay a hefty fine. The 3 hour flight was turbulant but otherwise uneventful. We arrived at Jakarta airports newest terminal, terminal 3. Despite flying to Jakarta on numerous occasions in the past this was the first time we had ever landed in terminal 3, and we were shocked to see how clean and modern it looked (the rest of Jakarta airport looks like a 70's bus station). We were picked up by B's sister and taken back to her house, where we would be spending our first few nights in Indonesia.
Adam
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