Thunder cats Hoooooo Chi Min

Hi,

To start with I've got some really bad news about Garlen; After losing a bet to me I took possesion of his soul, but not knowing what to do with it I threw it in a dolphin shaped used item recepticle (that's bin in Chinglish). So, unfortunatley the dolphin bin now posseses all of Garlen's personality and I'm left travelling around with a walking carcuss. To be honest though I barley notice the difference, if anything he's actually slightly more fun now; the way he dribbles all the time and his vacant stare can be quite entertaining. But if you do want to visit the dolphin and speak to garlen I can tell you where to find him.

Apart from that we've been having a great time in Vietnam. In Hanoi we went to a bizarre water puppet show (it was so wierd and confusing I couldn't even start to explain it to you) saw a French prison, went on a boat cruise to Halong Bay, It's a bit like Yangshou in China (see my last post) but at sea. We actually went twice, but the first time it got cancelled after we got to the port because of bad weather, so we basically spent 7 hours on a bus. We also went to a Jazz Club in the French Quater of Hanoi (How cool does that sentance sound, well it did until I added these brackets to explain how cool it sounded, now it's a bit long winded, but I felt in neccesary to explain just how cool we are, but now we aren't... because of the brackets. I'll stop now). We also watched England crash out of the World Cup, but it's just too painful to talk about. Oh Oh, we also saw another dead dictator... yay, that takes our total to two. This time it was Ho Chi Min the man who freed Vietnam from French Colonialists and then kicked out the U.S... well I think he died before the end of the war and probably wasn't really in control of the country at that point...more of a figure head, but an impressive C.V non the less. His body was very Orange just like Mao's, but he was sporting an impressive beard, most pointy.

We then headed to a place called Hue where we went on a river cruise and saw a few temples, they were alright, actually we only saw one because we've seen too many. We also took a guided tour of the area around the 17th parrallel, pay attention now class as there will be questions... it was the border between North and South Vietnam during the war. On the tour we also got to go into some tunnels used by the Vietcong and a few destroyed U.S military bases (They didn't even let us out the bus for one of them).
We're now in a place called Hoi An, which is quite relaxing really. It's unusally quiet though, for the last 5 months it's been non stop noise, but to suddenly go somewhere which is quiet is really worrying. Here we've wandered the streets admiring the mould covered french colonial old town and also had two tailor made suits done for a bargin price of 35 quid. Brilliant. Garlen is currently picking up a waistcoat as well.

Anyway we're off to Saigon now to 'go to a saigon disco' (If anyone can name the song that line is from I will truely be impressed)

Take care damo