Today we are leaving Vietnam heading off to London.

Here is out itinerary:
3.30pm Drive from hotel to Da Nang City Airport(40mins)
5.20pm Fly from Da Nang to HCMC Airport (1.10mins)
11.00pm Fly from HCMC to Paris (11-12 hours)
7am Fly from Paris to London (1.5 Hours)

Our short stop in Vietnam has been great, it would have been better if we had more time. 3 nights at each stop is too little you need to stay about 4-5 nights.

When I have some more time I will put up some more photos...

Today we were up at 5.30 for our day trip to Mỹ Sơn. It is possible to leave later but a local recommended that we head in early to miss the crouds and heat. It gets very touristy.

Read here for some information regarding Mỹ Sơn. It is pronounced Mi Son, meaning Beautiful Mountains.

We are not huge history people but this place turned our heads. Because we arrived before all the tourists we could really grasp the history without annoying groups of tourists.

What really annoyed us was the american's destroyed most of the temples during their war with the soviet union. Red Neck's hey... "lets just shoot each other in schools and blow up history, no need to worry we still have maccas, thats got some history". There is only three temple's left from about 60.

Two of the three temples left after the war.

Ancient Champa carving that have yet to be translated.

Beautiful Mountains

A temple after the American's.

This morning Alexis and I went for a cooking class. We started out walking in the market with our guide who taught us about the local fruit, seafood and vege. We then took a nice boat trip down the river to an isolated hideaway.

We walked around the herb garden smelling the local herbs and learning about what dishes they are used in. 

In our cooking class the chef first demonstrated how to cook, then we had a go. I(michael) was pretty bad, the helper had to take a spatuler from me because I couldnt cook the pancake.

The menu included:
Warm Squid Salad in half a pineapple(chicken for me)
Vietnamese Eggplant in Clay Pot
Fresh Rice Paper Rolls of Shrimp (chicken for me)
Hoi An savoury Pancakes (rice batter, bean shoots, spring onion.)

Then we sat down for a good meal and ate all the food we cooked. On the boat ride back some locals demontstrated how they catch fish (picture above.)

We arrived in Hoi An on tuesday. This place is beautiful, the people are beautiful and our resort is beautiful. It is so quiet and peaceful here. The streets are full of history.  

When we arrived we drove around looking at some places to stay and found one that is perfect. It is Ancient House Resort, it has heaps of character and the style fits in with Hoi An in general. The staff are really helpful and are good with service. We have a nice pool, free bikes and free internet. Yesterday we were drinking pina colada's by the pool.

We like Hoi An so much we decided to stay another night, so we changed our flights. The guest services at our resort did everything for us, they had to drive into the city for us.

The best way to get around Hoi An is by bicycle the streets are small and skinny.

Last night we both spent the night in Nha Trang hospital, Yes the hospital!! Michael wasn't feeling the best as we had a night out on the town as you can see from the last blog, but it wasn't just a hang over. 

In the afternoon he felt abit better so we went for a stroll along the beach and enjoyed a drink, garlic bread and swim at the lovely Louisian. We heard about this great Indian restaurant from our pommy friends called Omars so we went there for dinner. While ordering Michael began to feel increasingly ill but we had already ordered all our food so we thought we would just go straight home to the hotel after dinner or stop by a chemist to get cream for his rash.

Within 5 minutes he was feeling so out of sorts and freaking out we told the indian people we need to get take away as he is sick. They were really nice and helpful and could speak good english so the owner offered to drive Michael on his motorbike to the medical clinic to get cream. While on the motorbike Michael became so weak and started to shrivle up into a ball (muscles were contracting.) He could hardly hold onto the indian guy on the motorbike when he arrived at the hospital. He couldn't walk and had to get carried into the emergency room and put on a drip. I was at the Indian restaurant waiting and hear from a phone call from the Indian guy that i needed to catch a cab to the emergency ward.

We were freaking out most of the night as they were pumping liquid into him and taking samples of blood but couldn't communicate effectively to explain what was wrong or what they were doing. The  Diagnosis (written on the invoice the next morning): Allergic reaction to seafood. He gets abit of an allergy from seafood sometimes (asma etc) but the're must have been something really wrong in the food to make him react in this way. We had to sleep in the hospital over night, luckily we got put in a room by ourselves.

It was a surreal experience as things aren't cordened off like in Australia.We were witnessing people being stretchered in half dead from motorbike accidents trying to be saved.

Above: Lunch at Nha Trang Sailing Club. Run by aussies, expensive.

We met these two nice pommies on the boat - Loz and Kevin. So last night we met up at the sailing club and had some food and drink there. They have really nice food from Vietnamese to Australian. Every night from 8 they crank the music up and it goes off.

Entry is 35 000 Dong (3AUD) and that includes a drink (if you ask for vodka you get a bucket haha.) It is one of the more expensive places in town, where a nice meal (chicken tortilla or Yellow Seafood curry is 10AUS.) Just as we were leaving the power went down for about 10 minutes as they use so much power with lights/fans etc everywhere it is a usual occurance. We also went to Guava Bar and the Red Apple bar just down the road.

We hopped on a cyclo to get home (3 wheeled bilke with a seat at the front.) It was about a 5 minute cruise down the road and when I gave him 1US he started yelling at me so i pulled out 500Dong ($0.50AUS) and gave that, he was still yelling and so were we but then we just walked away as we weren't ripping him off (you can get a half day cyclo ride in Ho Chi Minh City for 5US.

The day started out sunny but as the boat went further out to sea the clouds soon came with fog surrounding the mountainous islands. The first stop was for snorkelling at Mun Island. I didn't see any coral or fish as we were getting eaten alive by little stingers we coudln't even see. After about 5-10 minutes we swam back to the boat and were given ice to aleviate the itching/stinging.

The next stop was at Mot Island where we had lunch on the boat.

The best stop would have to be the floating bar (a guy floating with bottles of potent wine. ) They insist on getting you drunk, the wine is free and flowing. They yell out "don't be lazy be crazy". The tiger beers are endless and at 1AUS the're hard to resist.

So because the rain wasn't going away we pretty much kept drinking, hardly bothered to get off the boat at the islands, cranked up the music and they also performed for us (rolling stones/Nirvana.) So it ended up being a good trip despite the weather ( it's the start of the rainy season. ) It was pretty good value (6US per person. ) which includes transportation, boat, guide, snorkelling equipment, lunch, potent wine and tropical fruit.

Here is a movie of the local singer(right click-save as)
Here is a movie of us dancing(right click-save as)