Wednesday 17th Dec
The weather is really disappointing here; just like a regular damp summer at home! Still, it's not too hot and not too cold, so that's something. The light has a strange quality, rather like looking through a dirty filter. After breakfast with the girls we'd planned to take a motorbike ride to the beach, which I've heard is the best in VN. I went back to my hotel to don swimming things just in case I was tempted into the sea, but now it's raining again, so there's nothing to do but sit in a cafe or surf the net.
Hoi An is renowned for making quality clothes at high speed, (above: that's just one of the many tailoring shops) so the girls ordered smart business suits and shirts to take home. However, in the picture Maria isn't too happy with those trousers, so they made her another pair to go with her skirt and jacket the evening before they were due to leave!
I've been having trouble with my camera and the new 2 Gb memory stick says it's full, even though I've deleted everything after downloading to my portable hard drive, which is brilliant! So now it's at a local Photography shop being reformatted. Hope it works! There's always someone who can fix things, but I don't know if it's just VN; if anything can go wrong with technical stuff, it does!
Tomorrow I take the bus to Hue, which was the ancient capital of VN, then after a day and a half of sightseeing I'll be on the train back to Bien Hoa. I've managed to book a seat but not a sleeper and it takes 20 hours, arriving on Sunday morning. These are not fast trains, but have to be better than the bus! I'd downloaded information from the Railway website, which must be a year out of date. Some trains no longer run and other trains run in their place. At the Travel Agents Office I was first told that no trains go to Bien Hoa as their is no train station there and if I hadn't known betterI'd have had to book to Saigon. At my insistence that not only is there a station, but that I've used it to travel to Saigon, lo and behold, they discovered that one train does stop there!
The prices have also increased by 50%, so my soft seat costs the same as the sleeper I'd budgetted for. The global recession is now hitting the tourist industry here and prices seem to be rising everywhere to compensate.
Tomorrow I take the bus to Hue, which was the ancient capital of VN, then after a day and a half of sightseeing I'll be on the train back to Bien Hoa. I've managed to book a seat but not a sleeper and it takes 20 hours, arriving on Sunday morning. These are not fast trains, but have to be better than the bus! I'd downloaded information from the Railway website, which must be a year out of date. Some trains no longer run and other trains run in their place. At the Travel Agents Office I was first told that no trains go to Bien Hoa as their is no train station there and if I hadn't known betterI'd have had to book to Saigon. At my insistence that not only is there a station, but that I've used it to travel to Saigon, lo and behold, they discovered that one train does stop there!
The prices have also increased by 50%, so my soft seat costs the same as the sleeper I'd budgetted for. The global recession is now hitting the tourist industry here and prices seem to be rising everywhere to compensate.
I don't know if I'll get online again before I return to using my own laptop. Love to everyone and thanks for your comments, which let me know I'm not talking to myself!
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