Hoi An – what a quaint little place to spend a few days. The boys were most excited to discover that our hotel for the next 3 nights had a pool right outside our room. Their first priority upon arrival was to swim and refresh after our Marble Mountain walk and car journey. 

Then it was time to walk the streets of Hoi An. First stop, a tailor shop recommended by the hotel...

We arrived in Danang at about 6 pm so promptly got a taxi to our hotel. We stayed at the Hoa Viet Hotel and got a triple room – 3 double beds! What a great treat. Harris and Patrick each had a huge bed which left Steve and I with a bed to ourselves.  The funniest thing about the room was that the porter proudly put on all the lights in the room turned into a blue light...

The road to Dalat started out ok and then became rough, winding, riddled with potholes and piles of gravel too high to drive over to fill the potholes; roadwork machinery that we drove around and under; little in the way of line markings, crazy traffic and our even crazier bus driver who barely slowed down to take the many hairpin turns! Better to have my head down writing...

Nha Trang beach in Vietnam.

We made it to Nha Trang, the beach capital of Vietnam and extremely popular with Russian tourists!  At the airport we paid for a taxi voucher, 320,000 VND to get us to Nha Trang. The airport is 30 km out of town so we weren’t really sure whether it was better to get a voucher or go for a metered taxi but decided to go with a voucher.  The drive...

In a park in Ho Chi Minh City close to our hotel.

We arrived in HCMC on the bus about 2 pm. Grabbed the first Vinasun taxi we could see to get to the hotel as these taxis were recommended to us. Arrived at the hotel without a hitch and were shown to our ‘family room’ on the 10^th floor; a huge room with two queen size beds, 2 desks, fridge, cable tv and bathroom with large...

When we were in Nha Trang, Vietnam Dad and I went parasailing.  The tandem parasail for Dad and I cost 600,000 VND ($30). 

Here I am waiting to parasail. I felt a bit scared.

First the staff put your harness on.

I'm ready to parasail.

This is when they connect you to the parachute and the speed boat.

It took about 5 seconds to get into the air and I was up there for about 3...

Cu Chi Tunnels are a complex of tunnels, over 200 km long and like a spiderweb; that the Viet Cong used in the Vietnam War to fight the US Army. I went there on a bus with my Dad and Patrick. The bus ride was about 1 1/2 hours long to get to Cu Chi Tunnels from Ho Chi Minh City.

This is a diagram of the safest parts of the Cu Chi Tunnels.

This is a marker that the Viet Cong...

We flew from Phu Quoc Island to Can Tho on the mainland of Vietnam because $25 for a 1/2 hour flight each was way more appealing than a whole day of travel by taxi, ferry and bus!  The bonus which I hadn’t considered was that we got a bird’s eye view of the Mekong Delta region – the mass of rice paddy fields, orchards, streams and little villages was fantastic to see from...