Had a final breakfast in Dalat (seriously, the breakfast in Dreams is excellent – as much as you can eat, lots of fruit and great coffee).

Met up with Loc and Hung. They didn’t took at all worried by the amount and size of our bags…. which was a relief. Indeed I think Mhairi and I felt pretty comfortable about travelling for 5 days with these guys.

This will all be slightly out of order… but hey, you weren’t there so you’ll never know! But one of the first things we visited was a coffee plantation. Vietnam has excellent coffee, everywhere, and cheap!

Hong took us down and showed us around, talked about when they pick them and roast them etc… We also had a quick look under the house.. where we saw slightly different production – that of rice wine. So at about 11am had a shot of some fairly potent rice-wine. Definitely stronger than the stuff we were given in the Mekong.

We visited a silk factory – much more industrial than the one we saw outside of Siem Reap. The machine in the pic was kinda cool – it had long strips of paper-punched cards, and depending on how they were punched different threads would be used / not to make the particular pattern they wanted. Quite clever!

So, after the rice wine it was time to try the next drug of the day (quite appropriate for Vietnam seeing as 30% or something, probably more, of the soldiers were addicted to drugs!). Anyway, this time it was a water-pipe. Tobacco in a valve-thing on one side, and away you go. Quite strong.. (very?!). Loc had a good chuckle anyway!

We passed through some indiganous villages. Blatant bribery through offered candy brought the kids out for the standard photo opportunity!

We also saw chopsticks being made – mostly for export. Looked like fairly dangerous work actually… the blades which sliced the bamboo looked sharp, and it’s all done by hand of course!

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Loc and Hung broke the day up really nicely – we travelled about 140km or something the first day, but they seemed pretty psychic (or maybe they’ve done trips for the last 11 years and are attuned!) but either way, just as my bum was verging on the point where I really needed to get off and walk for a bit – they’d have a stop – either to look at something or just to let us stretch legs.

I kinda like their petrol pumps… oh and there’s also a waterfall we went to see… it may or may not have been called elephant falls!

Next morning it was a 7 hour bus ride to Dalat. Our bus made periodic stops, sometimes just bathroom breaks, and sometimes so that our driver could tighten the nuts on the wheel.

Seriously.

Dalat is great. It’s cool up here in the mountains. Even need to wear long sleeves at night. I love it. And it’s just got a great feel to it.. after stocking up with another 2 million dong at the ATM, and a nice dinner in the V Cafe the long bus rides just melted away.

Today we hired bikes from our (Excellent) hostel (Dreams), and headed out to the Lake of Sighs. Dalat is the honeymoon capital of Vietnam, and it certainly has some pretty cheesy sights… at the Lake you can hire paddle boats in the shape of swans. Yes, we would have been so up for that, but seeing as it’s low season there was no one about to open up. *sigh* ;)

After that we cycled back into town to check out the gardens, made it in before being ushered out ‘not open, not open’.. looks like their still working on it.. and then headed to the Crazy House (that’s its name). Run by the daughter of the successor to Ho Chi Minh, the place would *never* be allowed in Vietnam, let alone Dalat, except that she’s the daughter..

I actually really liked it. It’s gross, totally over the top concrete sculptures.

You can hire rooms (kangaroo room, gourd room, tiger room, ant room…) here for about $50 per night. If you want to.. :) Seriously though, it’s worth a look.

Then a quick trip to the Stop and Go Cafe. I actually went here for Artichoke Tea (surprisingly good) yesterday, but went back again with Mhairi (she’d been doing laps of the lake!). This time however the proprietor was about. A guy called Duy Viat. He used to be the mayor of Dalat, now a self proclaimed intellectual and zen kidna guy. He writes nice calligraphy poems though. And makes a mean cup of cherry tea… strums nicely on the guitar, and grows many orchids. I reckon he’s chosen a great place to retire!

So, after the war remnants we caught a night bus to Nha Trang. Beachy place.. We decided not to stay for more than a day, but did hire a motorbike. Death on a stick you might think (I did) but it was fine (did let Mhairi drive though!!) I’m such a wuss sometimes, did have a wee go though.. and will do more I’m sure.

So we drove 40km out to Doc Let Beach. Nice place, until it started pissing rain. Serious thunder storm really. The place was *slightly* spoiled by the vendors trying to sell crab and shrimp. However, thankfully, we gave in eventually, and did buy some. And it was delicious.

I did kinda loose it slightly at one point. And pointed out to the lovely (but overly persistent..) lady selling shrimp, that we’d just taken a 10 hour night bus from Saigon, that I’d had about 3 hours sleep, that we’d just biked 40km, my bum was sore, and that I just wanted to be left in peace for a few minutes on the beach… but that we *would* come and find her and buy some shrimp later (thank you very much) She was pretty cool about it really and did leave us be… I think the desperation was showing!! :)

Actually, one of the reasons I only got 3 hours sleep was that I was busily finishing (simply could not put it down) Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince. Cannot wait for the last one now..

Shortly after lunch it started raining. Now when I say raining I mean the ‘I’ve been outside for .5 secs and now am soaked to the bone’ kinda rain. Comical.

We got *slightly* lost on the way back into town.. well, actually quite lost.. Mhairi was *amazing* driving.. really, we were going through flooded roads ‘n everyfink. Fairing quite well for our first foray on a motorbike I think.

Once we made it back into town.. we hired a cyclo driver – to cycle slowly along in front of us and guide us back to our hotel (our maps were (totally soaked) and lacked the detail needed to get back to where we needed to be)

Dinner and beer never tasted so good!

There are some pretty disturbing images here, apologies – skip if you want to.

Today started off nicely – up early and took a moto to the UK Consolate, where I showed them my neatly wripped passport. I was told there was nothing they could do (expected) and they could give me a form to write for a new one to Kuala Lumpa but that was it. She questioned whether I had had any problems with it so far – I said no… But anyway, I guess I’ll just go on and hope that I can get into Laos and Thailand (and home) without too many issues – hopefully I can get a new one when I am back in Dublin.. hopefully (and yes, I will remember to transfer my NZ residency visa!)

So after that I headed on to the History Museum. Mainly becuase I got disorientated and thought I was heading towards the Reunification Palace.

The museum was interesting, though I kinda lost track of the invasions and uprisings. For pretty much the last 2000 years someone or other has been trying to take control of this country.. mostly without success! Even the Mongols got repelled 3 times.

This pic is of a mummified vietnamese woman that was discovered in Ho Chi Minh a few years ago (she’s 80 odd and was born in the 1800s I think it was)

There was a lovely water-puppet show though, that was worth seeing. Apparently it takes 3 years to learn the art of doing it.

After that I took a moto back to the reunification palace (but it was closed until 1pm) wandered about (again taking the wrong turning – walked a good km around the block!) before settling down over lunch to read Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince. Mhairi very kindly swapped two of our old books for a $3 photocopy of the book.. and she’s not seen very much of me since to be honest!

Then we met up and went to the war remnants museum. It was, even more so I feel than the killing fields, a horrible exhibition of the utter futility and devasation of war. You *really* won’t understand until you come to this place and see for yourself. At one point (and you’ll see the pics if you want to) I was just standing in the room, and everywhere I looked it was just another picture of something horrible, something that shouldn’t ever be done to anyone. Some pics I didn’t take, mostly the ones of the burns (to they face, the eyes the body) – from phosphor and napalm.

We saw the deformities that a generation of children (Esp of VC fighters) were born with.

There was an exhibition (and tribute really) to the corageous photographers who tried to capture and bring back images of the war – so many of them died.

The two pics above are of a South Vietnamese soldier fleeing from his tank that the VC blew up with a mine. The second picture is a second explosion from another mine. There’s no third picture..

There were so many pictures which dealt with the torture that was performed on the enemy. I’m quite sure the VC did awful things too, but I guess you’d hope that our beackon of civilisation wouldn’t do things like dragging people behind their tank until they died – or looking quite the way this guy does picking up a bombed body.

Mind you, what with Guantanamo, and this practice of rendition? I think that’s what it’s called when you take someone away and hold them secretly in a country – and one that allows torture.. well, I wonder if we’ve learned from our mistakes. And it makes me kinda angry that it seems there’s so little we can do about it.

Sorry to ramble, it’s been a fairly shocking kinda day.

There was also a section on the propoganda, and the protests that went on around the world, and helped to bring about the end of the war. One of them showing that it was big military oriented corporations that were making billions from the war, and wanting it to continue (not that that happens any more of course… Iraq was never about the oil).

Sheesh, sorry, this is supposed to be a travelogue not a political diary!

Well, finally there’s a pic of me beside a tank. Big old things.

I would reccommed this museum very very highly if you ever make it to Ho Chi Minh. It made me feel like I ought to try and do something a little more useful – or devote some of my time to doing something good.. we’ll see.

Actually, on that note, mum and dad have been making wonderful progress in Uganda on the university. Even have students being taught at the moment. I know it’s pretty uncool to be super proud of your parents – but to build a university from scratch and have the first batch of students – all within 2 years.. well, maybe good things can be done.. (dad also takes a pretty good picture!) Can’t wait to see family again in a little under 2 months time.

Up at 7:30 and off on our tour. First it was to the Cao Dai HQ. Cao Dai is pretty much a Vietnamese only religion, don’t think it’s made it out of there really. Though there are a few million of them practicing it. Basically it’s a fusion of Catholosism, Buddhism and Taoism.

It is also, as you can see, a very colourful religion. The followes wear different colours depending on how far they have progressed in the religion. At least that’s what my book says. Red is for catholocism, Yellow Buddhism and Blue for Taoism.

Our excellent tour guide (nicknamed Jacky by the Americans – who he worked for as translator – and served 3 years in prison for as he was a second leutenant), was a mine (bo boom) of information about the tunnels that the VC used (Viet Cong by the way is a play on Vietnamese Communist)

They had 250km (staggering) of tunnels around this place – 80km or so outside of Saigon. It was the staging area for many georilla attacks. 250km, unbelieveable.

I’ve left that map quite large if you click on it – the dark lines are the tunnels. The red area was an American free fire zone. Basically they bombed the area relentlessly, as often as they wanted, anytime of the day or night. The pink areas show the areas that supported the VC (gave them food etc), as obviously, what was once a lush productive area was reduced to worse than ashes. Worse.. so much agent orange and napalm, the injuries were horrific, utterly, and the birth defects afterwards – just awful. One really hopes that when they were doing this they had no idea that babies would be born in the way they were. Hardly bares thinking of (but we should, I think)

There are so many awful things we learned, it’s a must see if you come here, I’ve heard there are better tunnel systems up in the DMZ (Demilitarised Zone) up by Hue, that we will probably check out up there, but it was an interesting tour – Jacky was excellent.

Mhairi was small enough that she was allowed into the tunnels (which you could not see when it was closed – perfectly fitted entrances – never flooded!)

We saw many of the really nasty traps that were made.. trapdoors with spikes of bamboo to impail yourself on, holes to fall into and have spikes chop your legs of.. traps so that when you open a door a plank of nails (cleverly hinged so that it swings into you if you try to block it) falls down heavily and probably disembowels you..

These guys really knew how to fight. Don’t get me wrong – I’m not glorifying war in any way shape or form – but it’d be close to suicide to have entered their tunnels.. they did ingenious things with very basic materials.

Jacky was saying that they faught – suicide even – because they believed totally in what they were fighting for. Iraq must be the same – I would agree with our guide – that it is impossible to beat an enemy like that – on their own soil with popular support. If there is popular support that is. Looks like the latest constitution vote came through well.. I hope they can know peace and begin to put things back together.. but you can certainly see similarities..