Hue, Hoi An, Nha Trang!

Just realised it's been about a week since my last post so I thought I should probably update!
After Hanoi, we arrived in Hue via a sleeper train and spent a night there. Hue was the imperial capital of Vietnam at one point, so we spent the morning visiting some of the monuments, mainly the Citadel. The architecture is a lot more 'oriental' here. We found the Citadel a bit underwhelming; most of it had been demolished, demolished and rebuilt at some point in history, or was currently being rebuilt. Inside the Citadel was a forbidden city where the Emperor spent his personal life (and which housed the Emperors' concubines; consequently only male servants who were eunuchs were allowed to enter - which we found amusing). We thought the Emperor's Reading Room was nice, but we were disappointed to find that you couldn't actually enter the building. We snuck a peak inside and saw a few shoes, clothing etc.. it looked like one of the employees were living there!

Next we took a fairly short bus ride (only about 4 hours) to Hoi An. Most beautiful town we've visited so far.. AND home to hundreds of tailors and cobblers! AND a gooorgeous quiet beach. Perfection! The lovely old buildings around Hoi An have been beautifully preserved and refurbished and it just creates such a great atmosphere. The streets were decorated with colourful paper lanterns ready for the Tet (New Year) celebrations, and there are countless little restaurants and bars overlooking the river. Ah I just can't describe well enough how amazing it is! On the first day I went a bit crazy with getting clothes and shoes made (Steve was off exploring Hoi An by bike hehe).. but hey, it would cost at least 3x the price in Aus AND everything fits perfectly (except for 1 pair of shoes but that's a long story!). We took the lovely 4km bike ride to the beach, which is a gorgeous wide stretch of sand with hundreds of palm trees and enjoyed a fresh coconut.. ahhh the sererenity :) I love palm trees. We were sad to leave Hoi An but we were running out of time and had to get back on the road.

After a rather (thankfully) uneventful sleeper bus journey (on which we actually got some sleep!!!) we arrived early yesterday morning in Nha Trang, a the beach city of Vietnam. We spent the morning catching up on some sleep (even though we slept on the bus, the many times we woke up during the night tends to reduce the quality of the sleep!), and then did some sight-seeing. The highlight of our stay here is definitely our visit to the Thap Ba Hot Springs; we had so much fun there! For $5 each we went through a huge process of various treatments. First, a hot mineral spring shower before soaking in a mineral mud path for several minutes. We both agree that the mud bath was definitely the most fun.. and you could float on the mud so easily! Next we had to lie in the sun for a few minutes (for all the muddy goodness to absorb into our skin??) before taking another hot mineral spring shower to rinse off. We then had some hot spring 'hydrotherapy' which involved walking through a 'hallway' of high pressure water jets. Not sure what that was supposed to accomplish really. Then we got into a hot mineral spring water bath.. it was so hot we felt like lobsters. After we couldn't stand the heat any longer, we had a shower under the mini waterfall. I could see a group of Asian men watching us and giggling amongst themselves. Steve jumped into the hot spring pool while I spent a bit longer in the waterfall, at which point I was approached by one of the giggling Asian men (the spokesman??).

Spokesman: "Your boyfriend is very handsome!"
Me: "Uh.. yes he is.. you like him??"
Spokesman: "We all like him!"

Looks like I've got some competition here! Steve couldn't work out why I was giggling so much when I joined him in the pool! Hehe.

Today we visited an amusement park called Vinpearl Land on an island off-shore. They've built 'Vinpearl' in giant white letters on the top of the island (Hollywood-style) that can be seen clearly from the mainland. Very subtle. The cable-car ride over to the island was very scenic.. it's supposedly the longest cross-sea cable-car? We got to Vinpearl Land at about 11am and practically had the place to ourselves! We spent the first hour-ish in the Indoor Games area.. a giant arcade where all the games were free! There were some super-ridiculous arcade games! There was one that was a racing game, but instead of pressing buttons like normal.. you had to scream into a microphone to make your player accelerate.. although I found that hysterical laughter works just as well as yelling! We rode fake horses, threw coloured balls at a game-screen (it was part of the game!), went on a '4D' virtual rollercoaster ride, and got zapped by dodgy pistols in a shooter-game. Having developed square eyes, we took a stroll down to the water park section. It looked just like an Australian water-park.. except there is no way in hell that some of the slides would be approved in Australia! Most of the slides that you went on without tubes acted a bit like a grater, taking skin off your back! And a lot of the slides dumped you into a kiddy pool at the end, rather than one that is actually deep enough! My favourite was a slide called the 'Tsunami' in which you were dumped (in a double tube) into a half pipe (so steep that we actually 'got air' at a point!) and then slid up and down the sides until you lost momentum and were dumped (literally) into a kiddy pool... except we didn't lose momentum quite as quickly as we were supposed to (thanks to Steve pushing us off the sides!) and we slammed into the side, narrowly avoiding concussion. I think the fear of death definitely added to the thrill of the rides... because although part of you knows that the rides are fine.. another part says.. "well.. this is Asia....... what if...".

Unfortunately we have to leave tomorrow morning to spend a couple of nights in Mui Ne. This whole 'limited time' thing sucks. We're definitely coming back! Seriously.

Goodnight!!
Amiee x