Vietnam

Hue is an ugly, grimey place. We ate lunch today at 'Mandarin', a very cheap backpaper restaurant where the owner displays his photography allover the walls and the house cat 'Mew' sits on your lap and licks your leg.
...but why does every restaurant in Vietnam have their own house cat rubbing itself up against your legs while your eating and why do they all have to have oversized goldfish jammed into tiny tanks for, apparently, your viewing pleasure???

Local 'Pho' restaurant. Pho is a traditional Vietnamese beef noodle soup, mainly eaten at breakfast.

Yesterday was HOT! Not as hot as in Cambodia, but up there. Today I´m walking around with my coat I had made in Hoi An, jeans and a scarf. It rained the entire day but that didnt stop us, we hired 2 motos with drivers and went to visit their gorgeous Royal Mausoleum. We put on our silly plastic raincoats and wondered around for about an hour. I dont really know the history of the place but it was beautiful inside. Lots of little lakes with floating lillies and pretty wooden buildings, stone paths with moss growing in the cracks and up over the walls.

Our moto driver is quite a character and tells us he is a black belt in karate and eagerly shows off some of his moves. On the way home we visited a Pagoda and the local markets. The markets where not that exciting and they stunk, but the coffee beans where A1.

Tonight dinner was just delish. We ventured out to a small resturant called Ngoc Anh. Sam was absolutely fasinated with the pop-up toothpick holder. They had an interesting menu:

Deer Tendon Soup, Frogs Legs and Smoked Eel and fried Vericelli 'FucKien' style

What tha ?????

We odered crab served in the carapace with cheese and lime and stewed duck with to die for Vietnamese mushrooms. Frogs legs in garlic with yummy chunks of fat onions and tastey sauce. IT WAS ALL SO GOOD AND YOU ALL SHOULD BE JEALOUS...

Sam found football on the Australian channel today. Very exciting. Manly V Parramatta his favourite team. It was a close game, so close that it was 20 all and overtime was about to kick in..... but the network didnt take that into consideration and another program started.

5 minutes on.......

Sam is still perched on the edge of the bed wide-eyed and open-jawed. I suspect he is in a state of shock or something of the sort as he is frantically flicking at the remote over and over again and swearing profusely. Sometimes his eyes gaze over and his face goes blank and occasionally he leers at me with pleading eyes looking for emotional support.
Gosh, I hope he's ok.
So I dont know what we are going to do now. Throwing the telle out of the window isnt an option because then we'd have to pay for it. I really dont think he will ever fully recover, he was already in a sorry state of depression from missing the whole season and now this has damaged his fagile soul even more. Poor thing. He'll just have to pull through.

Today it is stinking hot, I went for a walk to the Japanese Bridge to take some photos and then joined the back of a French tour group into a Chinese Assembly Hall. They were speaking to me French, explaining the details of the architecture, all I could do was nod and occasionally acknowledge them with a 'bien bien'. They started staring at me, I think I blew my cover, I turned beetroot and hightailed it out of there! 'Merci beaucoup¡', 'Au revoir'! I couldn't understand a word of it anyhow!

In the hot stinking afternoon Sam and I ended up taking motos to a beach bar to cool off. We found a place called Zero Seamile, I saw the flyer on the table at a bar I was having a drink at last night. They have an awesome infinity pool and long lazy sunbeds with pull out drink trays that the staff always keep full. Thats the life. They have the sharpest pool table in Vietnam and Sam was cleaning up which meant I was loosing. Tonight they are putting on a bonfire but dont think we will stay, its not that cheap here and they are really stingy with the food. And I mean really stingy.

The beach is pretty in Hoi An, lots and lots of umbrellas and restuarants along the sand. There are ladies walking up and down the beach with baskets of fresh fruit, a girl named 'Song' told me to only by from her, not the others. I didnt see her again.

After travelling for 14 hours on a very very shit bus we are not in the mood for bartering. $9 is fine, we are staying in a cute little guesthouse close to the old quarter in Hoi An.

Its stinking hot and I´m still on my quest to find the pork steamed bum man, I love those things. I´ve been looking for him since Cambodia. I see little flashes of him every now and then. He rides past playing his pixie music when I have no money on me, or I see him through the window when I'm trapped inside a bus or he is within reaching distance when I am stuffed full of noodles.

Hoi An is a beautiful little town, especially at night, the whole town lights up with lanterns of all different colours over looking the river. Most people go to Hoi An to have clothes and shoes taylor made for a miniscule prices and the skinny little streets are just littered with taylors, one after the other.

We had dinner at a cute little restaurant along the river. Sam ordered the most beautiful duck soup, probably the best soup we have ever tasted. Lots of garlic, broken down rice, duck stock, onion and corriander. I had squid in claypot, they love their claypots over here. So do I.

In Hoi An they have their own traditional local dishes such as 'White rose', its shrimp and pork steamed in rice paper folded into a rose shape then lightly sprinkled with chives and fried shallots and sits in a sweet vinegary sauce. Mmmm

Wish I could add lot more photos but I've used my month quota!

We loved Nha Trang, it was perfect, we finally had Sam's hair saved off and spent the most of our time lazing at the Lousianna resort soaking up the sun and drinking their fantastic home brewed quality beers.

The highlight in Nha Trang was deffinately the snorkelling, seeing all the little Nemos, it wasn´t even cold, and you just have to visit the mudbaths and spend a few hours there being pampered in a completely bizzare way.

Shell soaking in the mud bath.

Sam being sprayed by high pressure natural spring water.