Endless hordes of scooters, cool highlands and hot beaches.

Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC, or Saigon) resembles a huge ant nest of people and seems to have about as many scooters as inhabitants (in fact, four million scooters for seven million people). Crossing a street is an interesting experience, the horde of scooters (or "motos" as they call them) parting around you like a school of fish. At the busiest intersections there are traffic lights, or even better, a team of officials dressed up in green (called " tourist security") who will guide you cross the street!

The helpful road-crossing team in front of the many scooters.

Note the ubiquitous propaganda posters in the background.

HCMC had a lot of historically interesting sights to see: the Reunification Palace (previously the Presidential Palace of South Vietnam), the War Remnants Museum with numerous photos illuminating the horrors of war, and the Cu Chi tunnels used as a Viet Cong base during the war. Together these sights gave a good picture of the recent Vietnamese history and the painful experiences that the nation has gone through. The most touching was the photos at the War Remnants Museum of villagers that were dead within five minutes of taking the photos and the malformations in newborns caused by the Agent Orange defoliant dumped into Vietnamese nature.

In HCMC we also visited a few pagodas (temples) to see how Buddhism is practiced in Vietnam. In one of the temples we learned about the Goddess of Traffic who protects you from accidents, but only if you remember her whilst driving. A good solution to avert an impending accident would be to close your eyes and think about her. No wonder the traffic is quite mad over here and people seem to rely on everyone else making way for them!

Other big religions in Vietnam include Catholicism and, more interestingly, Cao Dai, a newer religion originating in South Vietnam which is a mishmash of world religions rolled into one. We've observed a few Catholic churches and Cathedrals from outside, but we went to see the Holy See of Cao Dai in Tây Ninh, 90 km away northwest of HCMC. This cathedral was somewhat improbable and it was very interesting to see symbols of different religions happily combined together.

Cao Dai Cathedral.

Cao Dai religious service, women sitting on the left, men on the right.

From HCMC we took yet another brilliant Phu'o'ng Trang bus to Dalat in Central Highlands and spent a couple of days there in the pleasant coolness of the mountains. During the French colonial times Dalat was created to be a resort for the French to escape the heat, and it still has a feel of Alpine village with thousands of charming villas. Dalat is nowadays known for its flowers and as the honeymoon capital of Vietnam.

Views over Dalat with its thousands of lovely villas.

In Dalat we did two very different day tours. The first one was in a minivan with 20 or so Vietnamese tourists, and we rushed from sight to sight with our guide continuously reminding us about the time we had for each place. The tour was slightly stressful, but successfully covered a lot of interesting sights in the area, including a cabin lift ride to Truc Lam Temple with stunning gardens, as well as kitschy Valley of Love with plasticy statues and flower beds against which couples and girls liked to pose for photos. Another stop worth mentioning was a dried fruit shop where we sampled about two dozen dried fruits that I had never seen or tried - delicious!

A bit of peaceful garden at the Truc Lam Temple.

Valley of Love and the Vietnamese girls who like to pose.

The second day tour in Dalat was on motorbikes. We each had our own driver, and they took us up to the hills to see the stunning views, waterfalls, flower and coffee plantations, and a rice wine factory with also weasel coffee production. As the tour was just for two of us, we could decide the pace and we were never hurried to the next stop. The lunch was in a local restaurant in the countryside, where we were served half a dozen delicious dishes for 2.50 USD per head - bargain! Both of the guides spoke good English and we had a good laugh with them over the lunch. The Vietnamese humour appears quite naughty though! Touring the countryside gave us much better picture of the area, and being able to ask questions and talk about a variety of the topics with the guides was great. The tour ended in Dalat at the Hang Nga Crazy House, a delightfully bizarre guesthouse with organic shapes and a maze of surprising pathways.

  View from the pine-covered hilltop.

 Hang Nga Crazy House is crazy!

From Dalat we moved on to Nha Trang, once again by the brilliant Phu'o'ng trang bus. The road was brand new and ran through stunning views: higher up, it was plantations of all sorts (coffee, vegetables) and pine-forest-covered mountains and waterfalls, changing lower down into jungle-covered mountains. In Nha Trang we had six days of rest with occasional scooter-trip to the sights. We ate huge tiger prawns, drank delicious passion fruit beer, enjoyed the long sandy beach, had a spa afternoon, and just took it easy.

Nha Trang beach was long and wide, and offered all kinds of risky-looking water sports.

The Cai River estuary with its pretty blue fishing boats. The fresh seafood was delicious!

One day our hotel, Star Fish, organised a day-trip to secluded (but well equipped) Dai Lanh beach 60 km up north. All seven of us westerners staying in the hotel went with the hotel owner Mr Liem, his wife and a few of their friends, and we had the greatest beach day ever. Not only the beach was clean, white and empty (only a wedding lunch going on in the pavilion next door), we had really good group of people and probably the best Vietnamese food I've eaten so far! We had barbequed fish with chives and lemongrass, we had freshly rolled spring rolls by Mrs Liem, chicken, spicy beef skewers, fresh fruit,... and some beers too. I wish every visit to the beach would be like that!

Dai Lanh beach was an ideal location for a relaxed picnic.

In the final day of Nha Trang we managed to squeeze in some sightseeing before catching our train to Danang. We saw the Cham tower temple where there was a team from the Amazing Race Vietnam filming their latest episode. We also found a perfect spot to sit by the sea:

(c) all photos Boyfriend.