Merry Christmas from Vietnam

We are about 6 days into our tour of Vietnam and so far so good. Saigon is amazingly busy with 8 milliion people and about 10 million motorcycles but we still quite enjoyed the city. We travelled up to Dalat for 2 days which is up in the mountains so a little bit cooler, only 20 maybe. The last 2 days we have been in Nha Trang, right on the coast and the weather here is perfect, 24-25.
Very nice beaches and not that busy, today we went on a boat trip for some swimming and snorkeling, excellent, except Marlyn would not go swimming. Tomorrow we head up tp Hoi An.
We are having a gift exchange on the train between Hue and Hanoi on Christmas night with the other 10 members of our tour. Our price limit is 20,000d.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year
Don & Marlyn

Siem Reap & Angor Wat

We arrived in Siem Reap on Monday and found some cheap rooms @ Green Town guest house for $18.00/night. the next morning we hired a couple of moto's with drivers and spent the day touring the temples of Angor Wat. The whole area is huge and very impressive, with numerous temples to visit and wander through. It rivals the temples of Egypt although not quite as old but the setting in the forest is very nice. Next day we hired a tuk-tuk and drove up to Banetay Srie to veiw another temple and saw a lot more of the country and local villages. We also saw the floating village on the river leading into the lake, which are mostly Vietnamese fisherman. It was not all that impressive as the living conditions are pretty sad. Just another way for them to charge tourists money. We rented bicycle's and rode back out to Angor yesterday and went back to a couple of the temples liked. We should have just rented bike's in the first place but they do not want you to know that. Siem Reap is quite inexpensive for eating and drinking and everything is in US dollars. Beer or rum & coke are usually $1.50 each. The city itself is quite busy but relativly clean and loads of tourists, especially Chinese. The people are extremely helpful and freindly but they all want to sell you something especially the kids and they are persistent.

Singapore, the new city.

The flight from Cape Town to Singapore was 11 hours and one of these days I will actually sleep on a plane. I don't think Don got much sleep either but they have movies on demand so we got to watch a lot of fairly new stuff. We arrived in Singapore at 5 am and hopped a train to the city, into an area called Little India where we were staying. Singapore is 5 million people in a fairly small area so no matter where you go it is busy but amazingly clean. Public transport was a breeze so we saw quite a bit f the city and also did a tour one day. You have never seen so many shopping centers in your life though and I am sure that shopping is the number one pasttime. Despite all the concrete the city is still fairly green as they dedicate space to parks, all the building just keeps going higher and higher. Not the cheapest place to be though, food is inexpensive but beer is not, or are rooms. 4 days was more than enough, we have flights booked to Siem Reap in Cambodia, then to Vietnam for a 17 day tour, 1 week in Malaysia and then off to Australia.

Cape Town South Africa

Cape Town (actually South Africa as a whole) is an experience out of Africa. Cape Town is very much like Vancouver, but also very European with large high rise condos and loads of bars and restaurants on the water front. Plus streets that have clubs, more restaurants and bars, and lots of shopping(my favor, yea right ). The differences being that you cannot just walk into these areas at night but must take a taxi (safety issues) and the wind blows all the time. Tons of tourists, mostly from Europe.
We did all the tourist things in Cape Town and did enjoy most of it. We took the cable car up Table Mountain which stand behind the city. From there you have a view of two oceans - Atlantic and Indian, plus all of the city and harbours. We did a tour of the wine country, had some very nice wines and did the tour to the Cape of Hope and surrounding areas incuding the Kirstenbosch Gardens which was really fantastic. We also went to Robbin Island which is just in the bay off Cape Town. It has quite the history from leper colony to prison. This is where Mandela ans a lot of the current government officials spent many years of there life. We were in Cape Town for a week and did see a lot of the City. Off to Singapore now.