Good Morning Vietnam

Well, we have now arrived safely in Vietnam after three full days in Japan - we narrowly averted missing our plane due to currency difficulties, supposedly foreign cards other than Citibank are not accepted and if you want to withdraw cash you need to go to a post office not a bank (more of a story here is that we were only 100 yen short of the cost of the train ticket to the airport, which is less than the cost of a bottle of water and i was keen to beg but emily thought we should get it out from a bank. Probaly the safer option. Without this hicup we would have survived 3 days in japan on $300 including accommodation- JM). Anyway, we got our Yen and made like mad dogs to the airport to catch our flight - if you want to hear about Jez' bath house experiences you'll need to email him to hear about it further as its too risque for gmail

YUMMMMMM Whale Bugger

We arrived Monday night to a hot and humid Hanoi that at 11 pm was still bustling with activity. We arrived at our hotel totally exhahusted to find that our reservation had gone missing - supposedly the hotel was fully booked and we were not able to stay at the hotel. We were advised that they had a room available for the night but not for the next couple of days and we would have to hand over our passports???. Alarm bells were ringing so we agreed to hand over our passports - supposedly for official reasons but would come back in the next 20 mins to pick them up. Jez and I headed to our rooms to discuss our accomodation options for tomorrow and to give the clerk some time to fill out the official paperwork- Jez and I were annoyed as we had fully paid for our accomodation online and knew if we left there was no way we'd get our money back. 20 minutes later Jez headed downstairs to retrieve our passports - the clerk had shut up shop and gone home. We had an uneasy sleep but the next morning a new clerk was on call she had our passports and accomodation reservation and all was right with the world.

We headed out to explore the town before our tour started on the Thursday - we visited the 'Hanoi Hilton'- made famous for housing prisioners of war during the American war- and John McCain's flight suit and we visited the Ho Chi Minh museum and caught a show - vietnamese water puppetry. It was suprisingly entertaining even without being able to follow the dialogue!

So far we have tried to taste local delicacies such as Hanoi Pancake, Egg Coffee and Pork with Orange sauce but have drawn the line at dog - for those pet lovers out there - dogs are sometimes raised for consumption. We saw two being roasted, they are pretty wild and caged and fattened up until its time to meet the guillotine!

Our tour began on the Thursday and we are now in Hue - having caught the train from Hanoi. It was very basic (read Emily did not go to the bathroom) but we got there in one piece. Jez improvised with a sort of personal alarm lock for the door as we were both freaked out by stories of robbery on the overnight train - men dress up in uniforms (trying to look official) grab your bag as if to put it into the train or take it off for you but then either run off with your bag or hold it to ransom for a hefty fee.

Today we are visiting the Citadel and tomorrow we will be doing a tour of the surronding areas on motorbike - the prefered mode of travel in Vietnam. Hope you are all doing well.

Em and Jez