Vietnam continued

We have now completed our 17 day tour and in the words of our fellow travelers...we have eaten our way through Vietnam.

The trip was very educational, we now have the history from the Chinese in the 10th century,the French occupation, the Japanese invasion through to the American Vietnam war. We now know more about the Buddhist than most Viet people.

It was a great trip taking us from the rice growing areas on the flood plains near Ho Chi Min City to the mountain areas of De Lat where they grow flowers for export. Then to the beaches on the coast near Nha Trang and a day in the historical city of Hue. We arrived in Hanoi after a 12 hour train ride on Christmas night, where we had a secret santa gift exchange with our group. Hanoi is certainly not the most beautiful city, very grimy and congested with tons of traffic, just walking down the street was challenging in the shopping districts. We spent one night on a boat in Halong Bay which is a beautiful location, unfortunately they have these floating cities and the woman paddle out and and hound you relentlessly to buy something. Many of the the places we visited are World Heritage sites,they were beautiful and a once in a life time site seeing adventure.

Our fellow traveler were great and we had many laughs and will visit some again when we get to Australia. On our last night in Hanoi we went to a specialty restaurant and had some fried crickets for dinner, not that bad, and then went out to a karaoke bar which fortunatley is in a private room so no one else hears us. It was a fun way to wrap up our trip.