We've arrived in Vietnam!

FINALLY, we're in Vietnam! However we first had to make sure to get to the airport in Manila, the last day and a half in the Philippines. We book our first dorm, and to be completely honest, it's not the end of the world. The hostel is about 5 miles from the airport and has a pool, so we'll manage:) Monday morning 04:00, its time to catch our ride organized by the hostel (one of the crew is driving us) but as to be expected, it takes him about 30 min to get ready as he was still a sleep, gotta love the Philippines.

Our flight has a layover in Kuala Lumpur, and from there its onto Ho Chi Minh (Saigon) in about 2 hours, this all works out nicely, and before we knew it we're in a taxi to our hostel. Our hostel is modern, has a roof top bar, and decent espresso, loving Vietnam already. Grab a quick bite to eat in the city, fresh spring rolls, and some pho. Funny thing about Saigon is.. the traffic..it's crazy, basically it boils down to this, there are no rules.. about 75 million scooters and cars so when you need to cross the street, just start walking in a steady pace and semi-close your eyes. The traffic well honk, beep, shout but will form it's way around you. Haha the first time it's quite thrilling, we found this terrace on 1 of the busiest intersections and just sat there, watching all the westerners gather up enough courage to make it across. Fun times we've had.

Tuesday, we pay a visit to one of the highlights in Saigon, the War Remembrance Museum, basically explaining the horrors of the Vietcong war, between you guessed it the US and Vietnam, it's shockingly powerful with images that would haunt us for several days. Mainly the reason for the US invading Vietnam was that they wanted to be Communists after breaking free from France, 17 years later 3 million people had died of which 2 million civilians. The aftermath of the chemical weapons used by the US is still known to the current generation. We leave and head to a nearby park to relax for a bit, whilst seated the "Shoepolish mafia" finds us, I was wearing my white nikes, and after telling them No thank you for about 4 times, he gently wipes my shoe, and Wow, its actually working. I suggest he cleans my shoes, while mobster 1 is busy, mobster 2 arrives to take off Nadine's nike, followed by mobster 3 joining the scene trying to re-sole all our shoes... Haha we politely thank them for the re-soling and then we ask the price... 16 USD, which in this country is a lot of money for 2 min work, after they explain to us that the washing stuff the use is imported from Italy..hahahaha... we settle on 5 bucks, at least we've got clean shoes;)

In the evening we splurge out, going to what's know as the favorite restaurant from Brangelina, a true colonial house with awesome Vietnamese food, soft shell crab some fresh prawns and authentic spring rolls, truly amazing. Their homemade yogurt was so good we ordered it twice.

Wednesday morning we venture into Ben Thanh market, basically a massive market with clothes, watches and food, all of it fake off course, besides the food;) We buy some t-shirts, comfy trousers and some other stuff... then it begins... the haggling.. haha awesome, we turn out to be quite good at it, paying about 25% of the initial asking price, took us about 15 min.. and being sworn at by the Vietnamese sellers, we eventually even get called "mafia" but hey, guess it worked. After that it's time for a nice clean cut shave at a local spa.. Nadine tries something different, the cleaning of the ears, something very popular amongst the Vietnamese, they have about 6 utensils they use, its quite scary looking but according to Nadine also quite nice, check the pictures out.

Thursday, moving day, at midnight we took the "sleeper bus" to Dalat a small mountain town on the way to Hoi An, but not before we both get sick again, must be food poisoning or something. At 00:00 we get thrown on a bus that will take us in 7-8 hours to Dalat, and we have hostel booked there, they call them sleeper buses, because you guessed it you can sleep on them, in reality when you're 6'3 this is'nt the case. After a little while the lights come back on and we get told, you're here! It's only 4:45 am... and we're in some hillside village far from civilization without a cab in sight... haha awesome. We get into anther small van which drops us 1km from our hostel and we walk the rest, luckily we're able to wake someone up at the hostel and we check in... 8 hours to early... finally sleep!

Dalat is cool, literally, as it's 1500 meters high,which is a nice change from the heat that we've experienced the last 8 weeks. However we're still both sick so we barely leave the room the first days, once we get better we do all the Dalat highlights in a day, cable carts, amazing temple, crazy house, awesome. After the bus fiasco we decide on buying some lat minute plane tickets to Da Nang, instead of the 18 hours by bus, which turned out to be a great decision. We fly into Da Nang, grab a local Uber, (called Grab) to Hoi An, in 30 min, Boom! In Hoi An we can't believe our luck, we pre-booked this boutique Hotel, and it's absolutely amazing, great pool, room, breakfast, all of it stunning, get this for 21 euros a night, we've paid more for hostels in the Philippines, winning.

As stated currently in Hoi An, which is really pretty, massive French influences, wine, cheese, decent bread. Great food all around, what a pleasant surprise!! More on Hoi an the next time, the pool is waiting.

Hope you enjoyed the blog, speak soon!

Nadine and Bas