Lee and Clare, The road home

Merry Christmas from Saigon

19^th December 2003

MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYBODY!! Wherever you are in the world!! Hope you have a great holiday. Sorry we don't have much time to send personal emails but be sure that we'll be thinking of friends all over the world. We can't believe we are now spending our 4th Christmas away from home!!

We've been in Vietnam for over 2 weeks now and have travelled the length of the country (almost) and are now in Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon). Things have kept very hectic with lots of early starts and full on days and we're feeling pretty stuffed! Most things are done by way of mini-tours here and they all seem to leave at the crack of dawn. We miss our days in Russia and China when we rarely surfaced before 9am and did things completely at our own pace. But that's South East Asia for you! So many tourists catered for by so many tour companies. And tours to everywhere, which makes so much easier but so much less exciting than finding your own way with local transport. We never thought we'd say that we miss getting lost on dodgy local buses.

First things first - we really love Vietnamese food! It really is the scrummiest cuisine we've come across in our travels. Yum yum. We also really like the Vietnamese people, they always seem to be laughing and joking - so hospitable and friendly.

We are also very happy to see so many women here running businesses and little girls out playing. In most of the 3rd world countries we've visited you would rarely see a women running a hotel or the like. In Africa and the Middle East we saw plenty of little boys out playing in the streets but very rarely any girls. In one small town in China, on seeing a boys school we asked after the girls' school and were told that there wasn't one! So YAY the women in Vietnam.

Our first experiences of this was when we went up to Sapa in Northern Vietnam to some villages of the local Hill Tribe Minorities. On turning up for a guided walk we'd booked we found our guide to be a 15 year old girl (who stood 4'8" and looked like she was 10) from the local Black H'mong minority. Black H'mong women wear indigo blue outfits with sandals and blue material around their lower legs and big hoop earings. When we asked her how many languages she spoke she said "only 5", although we doubt she can read and write although she was obviously extremely smart. We had fun inching very slowly along the edge of terraced rice paddies which were only just wide enough for one foot and very slippery. We had visions of falling 5 feet down into the rice paddy below and being waist deep in mud. We walked through a few villages where very poor people live off the land. The gorgeous children ran out to say hello to us. Although very dirty they seemed happy enough but probably were pretty deprived.

The Sapa market was a little bit of a tourist circus but there were also plenty of the local hill tribe women there going about their business. As well as the H'mong people we also came across the Red D'zao who wore amazing headresses made of red wool.

Perhaps the most memorable thing about our time in Sapa was a sight we saw at the market. Now we've all heard these stories about people eating dogs in these countries but we've never actually seen the evidence till now. The front half of a smoked dog complete with head, bared teeth and tongue hanging out the side. Grose.

Next was on to Halong Bay for a 3 day trip in which we hung out on a boat and ate lots of yummy seafood and had our first touch of the ocean from this trip when we jumped off the side of the boat. Not that the weather was that great, but we were tough. We visited "Monkey Island" where Lee was all but savaged by some rabid monkeys when he opened his bag to get the video camera bringing the bananas he had in there into full view. Lucky he was saved by a ranger with a big bamboo stick!

And so we moved on to Hue where it peesed with rain and I managed to get my passport wet and the ink to run. Grrrr. Fun to see all the locals out on their motorbikes with big poncho raincoats. We got absolutely saturated going to the citadel. We spent one day doing a tour out to the Demilitarized Zone for a taste of some history. This was the area around the former border between North and South Vietnam. Our tour guide was not the best and we didn't learn as much as we'd hoped but we did visit the Vinh Moc Tunnels where locals had lived to escape the bombing and fighting. Also visited the Khe San Combat Base where the biggest battle of the war had taken place. Oh and the Ho Chi Minh trail via which supplies were smuggled from North to South Vietnam - not much to see of that nowadays though.

Headed to Hoi'an which is famous for its tailors and all 3 of us succumbed to getting tailor made clothes made. It really is so cheap - I got a 3 piece suit (for when I eventually have to get a job!) made to measure in silk cashmere for only $30US. Now that's crazy. Lee had his 26th birthday here, he didn't get as drunk as the previous 2 years but we did have a fabulous dinner with some kiwi girls we met - we splashed out and spent $13 US - that's between 5 of us! Including drinks! Also got him a fully iced birthday cake complete with "Happy Birthday Lee" written in Vietnamese and lots of candles. On the way back to our hotel he drunkenly chased all the rats that were running about the dark streets, now that'll be a birthday to remember!

And now we're here in Saigon where we are experiencing the first really hot weather of our trip.

We've been beset by rain since our arrival in Vietnam and we didn't even think it was the rainy season! We're going to Mui Ne beach tomorrow so fingers crossed the sunshine holds out!

Today we had a history day, visiting first the Cu Chi tunnels. Viet Cong built over 250km of fighting tunnels over 20 years. They were pretty small ones too! Lee squeezed into one and from the ground you have to put your hands above your head and squeeze through a tiny hole. Crawled through some tunnels on our hands and knees, we could've gone a hundred metres but got a bit hot and claustraphobic after 30 so took the nearest exit. This afternoon we went to a war museum which truly had some horrific stuff in it but stuff that needs to be seen and acknowledged.

We're going into Cambodia for Christmas via a boat up the Mekong Delta. We'll be celebrating the big day in the capital Phnom Penh. Who knows what ways we'll find to celebrate! But with the 3 of us I'm sure we'll come up with something. I want a Christmas tree in our hotel room!

That's the main part of our news for now apart from us almost booking our tickets home from Singapore. If all goes to plan we'll be home in exactly 2 months today. How exciting is that!!?

Once again MERRY CHRISTMAS wherever you may be!

Lots of Christmas cheer, love and good wishes
Clare and Lee