December 13

Holy Cow it is almost Christmas. Where does the time go. So I write to you for the next 20 mins or so from an internet cafe in Kanchanaburi, Thailand. Its claim to fame is the Bridge over the River Kwai among other things. We arrived yesterday from Cambodia. We were supposed to stop in Bangkok but at the last minute decided that we could not handle a big city so we took a taxi from the airport to the bus station and then hopped on a bus to hear. We stayed last night at the Bamboo Guesthouse but decided this morning to move to the Sugar Cane Guesthouse....last night's place was nice but we had to kill a lot of bugs on our bed before we went to sleep and we had a big family of ants in our bathroom...oh and no hot water...but who needs hot water when you are in the tropics right! Some how at least a warm shower in the morning is a nice thing even when it is hot outside. So we have now taken up residence in a room that is on a floating raft on the river...it rocks when the longtail boats going up the river go by but these do not operate at night evidently....we'll see. All this for less than $20 a night!

So I am so far behind on the details of our trip and photos continue to be a problem. I may be able to get some up here in the next day or so but I do apologize we have some great ones and will put there out there at some point. So our experiences in Vietnam were great. We had a wonderful time with the Nelson's in Hanoi. They are friends of Bonnie and Keith Greer and really were so good to us in Hanoi. We did get a dose of rainy season in Vietnam as the remenents of a typhoon swept over the center of the country and flooded out many towns. This rainfall prevented us from seeing the Phang Nha caves in Dong Hoi...which was too bad but we made the best of our night there even in the pouring rain. Hue while still damp was great. We rode bicycles around there for a few days and enjoyed seeing the sights of this ancient capital city. We stayed at a great place there for $5 a night! What a deal - the room was enormous and clean - we loved it and to offset it splurged on a river-side dinner our last night for $9.40! and that was with beer at one of the most expensive places in town! Yahoo.

After Hue we bussed down to Hoi An - a lovely town near Danang - this town has preserved a lot of old achitecture and is really geared to the tourists coming into the country. It is a shoppers paradise for those taking notes for future trips - lots of places to get beautiful clothes made. I had a silk outfit made while we were there - it was fun picking fabrics and deciding on style, etc. They tried to convince Tom to get something but he wouldn't bite and he would sweat right through something silk anyway! They would make anything though as we talked to one guy that was having a tux made for $40 - pretty good deal. We biked around Hoi An a bit too and went down to the beach on the one really sunny day there - it was pretty windy but we enjoyed the ride/walk and lunch on the beach and we even saw an elephant lumbering down the beach - what a sight....we did not expect that. It turned out one of the beach resorts kept it and gave its guests rides as requested.

From Hoi An it was on to Saigon where the prices for rooms jumped up and we paid $30 for the pleasure of staying at the King Star Hotel....we could have gone down to the backpackers area but when we wandered around down there we were happy to be where we were! We visited the Chu Chi tunnels one day - not the best tour for those in Saigon...not sure I would recommend it...some of it was interesting but it is a bit a bit Disneyfied along with an opportunity to shoot guns at a firing range! We also visited the Reunification Palace. This was more interesting and worth while. We also had fun doing some Christmas shopping for our families at the main market in Saigon...we shipped these to the appropriate people the morning before we left. Saigon was the first place that we saw a lot of signs of Christmas. Our first day there when we were walking around there were about 6 Santas dancing around in front of the post office to Xmas carols - we are not sure what the purpose was but it was a nice reminder about the season and the carols were fun. Another big event on while we were in Saigon was the Tiger Cup Asean football matches and one night we watched Singapore and Vietnam come to a tie 1 - 1 at a local BBQ place where the crowd was going nuts and the waiters were beating drums to get the crowd going. It was a lot of fun...and good food as well.

So on Dec 8 we went from Saigon to Siem Reap in Cambodia.....oh our two hours is up and we need to go chat to a travel agent as we need to figure out what we are going to do next! More on Cambodia later.....

Cheers for now!

Pam