Posts From Vietnam

We left Sydney yesterday afternoon (Feb 20th, 15:15) and arrived in Hanoi after midnight Sydney time 22:00+ local time. The flight was uneventful. The passengers were predominantly Vietnamese with a significant number of young families with children and infants.

After our self guided explorations of yesterday we were keen to get going today with a guide and more information.

This morning was a 3 hour car ride to the city of Ha Long Bay where we were to join an over night boat cruise to visit and see the limestone pinacles for which this area is famous; Ha Long Bay

This morning we were up by 6:00 in the hope of seeing the sunrise, but alas, the sky was covered in cloud and the sun did not shine through.

Tam Cőc Garden Resort is a nice peaceful place so we decided last night that we would give more of today over to just lounging around the resort and exploring the local village of Tam Cőc.

The objective today was a late afternoon flight to Hue, which required a 3+ hour drive from Tam Cőc back to Hanoi's domestic airport. But along the way there was some exploration to do. Starting with a brief explanation of the process of rice growing. The gentleman in the first photo and his wife were planting young rice plants in one of the patches of land their family owns (they own 2 sq km in total). Our guide pointed out that it is somewhat unusual for the husband to be working in the rice fields as they are usually in the city working to make cash. In the case of this family that task is being undertaken by the families adult children.

Hue is a small city with a population of well under 1 million people. We were surprised to hear that its primary industry is education, with almost half the population being students at one of the cities 16 universities and 3 colleges.

Our agenda today started with a visit to The Garden House of Princess Ngoc Son. This house and surrounds was built for a daughter of King Dong Khanh (and sister of King Khai Dinh) as her residence. It seems that the princess married a senior mandarin of Dong Khanh's administration and that same family owns the property. This last point is some what unusual as many families of wealth with royal ties had their property and wealth confiscated when the communists took over Vietnam after "The American War".

Today we drove south to the tourist town of Hoi An. A rest stop at Phu Loc on the Cau Hai Lagoon gave us an opportunity to photograph some interesting fishing nets.

As you can see from the photographs we started the day with a bit of exploration around the hotel and beach front which included spending some time watching a local fisherman with his strange circular boat.

It was really a rest day. We spent some time at the pool getting sunburnt, some time walking the area around the resort, just taking in the scenery and local way of life and in the evening we took a taxi into the center of town to have dinner and do some people watching. It was noticeably crowded as the night descended.

Today looked like being just a travel day, but there were two surprises.

The main reason tourists come to Can Tho is to visit the Floating Market which, according to our guide, is the biggest in Vietnam. This was our main activity today and required a somewhat early start (6:00 am). Fortunately there was no driving involved as one travels to the market by boat, and our boat started the journey about 200 meters down the street.

Our morning was an interesting drive from Can Tho to Saigon, which is by far the largest city in Vietnam with an estimated population of 14 million. It was an interesting drive and gave us a general view of the country side and villages which line the road the entire way. In addition as we got closer to Saigon we saw many rice fields that had just recently been harvested (they are brown) or ones ready for harvest (they are yellow). About a quarter of the way along the drive we crossed the Mekong River on the first modern bridge built over this mighty river. It was built in 2000 with financial and technical assistance from Australia. Just before this bridge we had a "rest stop" at the most amazing "travel plaza", the restaraunt was huge, like an open sided 747 hanger and it had a collection of giant fish easily a meter long.

Our first stop today was the building once known as Presidential Palace during the days of South Vietnam. It sits on the site of a previous French Colonial building, called the Norodom Palace, that was completed in 1871 and served as the Governor Generals residents during French colonial times. Following the French it was the Palace for the South Vietnamese President until damaged by bombing in 1962. Thereafter the construction of the new Presidential Palace was commissioned. After the war ended in 1975 the building was renamed the "Reunification Palace". It was again renamed to "Independence Palace" - I have not been able to find a date for this final renaming, but probably after or in anticipation of, normalization of relations with the USA around 1995.