Elentok's Blog

Since I couldn't post this yesterday (wi-fi problems) I'm posting this on day 16, so just read this as if it was yesterday...

Last night we landed in Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City) and today we took a bus to Da-Lat (8~9 hours ride... but it was quite a comfortable ride and time passed a lot faster than I thought).

Da-Lat is an amazing place, it looks a little like a European ski town (except for all of the vietnamese people and the thousands of motorbikes....)

Hi everyone,

This morning (instead of yesterday afternoon because it was way too hot) we went on a tour of the city, we saw the Phuc Kien Assembly Hall (according to the guide the Phuc Kien are a community of Chinese people who live in Vietnam), you can the see in this photo:

It took me like an hour to upload this post, the internet connection in this hotel really sucks (half an hour to download IrfanView so I can resize the photos to upload them).

Today we went to see MySon, a Hindu temple complex about 30km from Hoi-An.

It was the site of religious ceremony of kings of the Champa dynasty, and was also a burial place of Champa royals and national heroes.

Hi everyone,

We went shopping until noon, and then came back to the hotel for a refreshing dip in the pool. While swimming one of the screws in my eyeglasses got loose and my lens fell off, so I went to the reception and told them (there was a swimming class in the hotel pool at the same time and I didn't want anyone to get cut by it), they went to the pool and ask the swimming instructors to dive and search for it, and they found it!

We're now in Hoi-An, the fashion city of Vietnam, it's full of tailors and clothes shop.

I bought a 100% silk tie for less than 3$ (I don't know what I'll do with a tie, I don't even know how to put on a tie, but it comes in a cool box with cuff lings...).

I also order a custom-made jacket for just 20$ (they measured me and everything), it will be ready tomorrow (well since I'm actually writing this post on day 12, it will be ready today...).

Today we visited the Hue Citadel, very beautiful place, see some photos:

The palace of supreme harmony:

We're now in Hanoi, we just ate breakfast.

The night bus from Hanoi to Hue was one of the most uncomfortable vehicles I ever been in, I think I could have gotten better sleep on a normal bus.

First of all, it's designed for small people, now, I'm 1.73 meters high (not that tall, but taller than the average vietnamese guy) and I barely had any room for my feet, I woke up every hour or so to rearrange my legs in a different position.

At the first and last couple of hours (when we were inside cities) you couldn't sleep because the damn driver kept honking like every five seconds, these guys honk every time they see a motorbike to tell it to get the hell out of theur way.

We're sitting in a nice luttle café in Hanoi waiting for our lunch to come. For some reason the Wifi in the hotel doesn't work at all hours (and I think I hijacked wifi from houses around the hotel...) so I only now managed to upload all of the photos for days 5,6,7 and 8. I updated their posts with the new photos so check them out.

It's been raining like hell over here for about an hour, and it appears to have stopped now (crazy weather here).

There's a gang of iPhone+laptop armed vietnamese people in a table next to us and I think they're trying to use Excel to calculate the bill...

I want a laptop too... :-(

Some photos:

One of the best things I ate here is garlic french fries, it's basically regular french fries with chopped garlic (after the french fires are done, put them in a bowl and mix with some chopped garlic).

Today we went on a three hour cruise around the islands (which I'm glad to say I survived without taking motion-sickness pills), we saw Tortoise Island and Monkey Island, we collected some cool shells on some island, and saw how the local people grow big-ass fish and all sorts of sea shells and stuff.

After the cruise we took a fast ferry back to the coast, and from there we took a car back to Hanoi, and now I'm lying on the bed, watching Friends on StarWorld and writing this blog post.