I must admit that after the first week here, I got a bit enough of the Asian fusion. Luckily, we were (are) most of the time in the touristic destinations so there are sometimes even such options as french fries or pizza. I try to combine the local cuisine with these gems and hope for my taste slowly changing into rice, noodles and chilli only. Otherwise I don’t know what I will do. Ordering is another piece of fun, especially it was so in Can Tho and Saigon, where we visited many restaurants for locals and there was not a single word in English on the menu. We were always in tension about what we had actually asked for. Strangely enough, it always ended up nicely. Maybe they don’t have bad food here. Day before yesterday, on the contrary, we were in “our” restaurant (went there once and then till the end of our stay for every meal) in Hoi An and they had menu both in Vietnamese and English. However, I managed to order fried tofu (not my cup of tea – it doesn’t have any taste, why would anybody eat it?) instead of aubergine because I was practicing ordering in Vietnamese and didn’t realise I was reading a wrong line. At least the waitress praised my pronunciation.

About the touristic destinations; it seems Vietnam is in fact a Russian Riviera, especially Mui Ne and Nha Trang. They own many diving centres, farmacies, shops and most probably also hotels… nearly like in Carlsbad. I wouldn’t be surprised if some separatists claimed Mui Ne a part of Russian federation. Attention – a joke! Well…

I also feel a bit nervous about our quite touristic style of travelling here. We travel by buses (and once by train – an awesome experience!) instead of hitch hiking, we sleep in hotels, eat in restaurants and the only possibility how to get to nature are, because of unexploded bombs, business talent of Vietnamese people or the absence of our own boat, organised tours. That’s why we agreed with Mr. Black that we will speed up and after Halong Bay we will head to Laos already. The de-mining has gone a bit further than here there and we hope to be able to go to the jungle for several days without encountering civilisation. Today we will yet join one organised tour – it is faster and we hope not too much more expensive – to the karst area where was discovered the largest cave in the world in 2009. This one is not our plan as to visit it, we would have to pay several thousands of dollars, but luckily there are an other 300 or so caves. In the evening we head to Hanoi, Halong Bay for the next days and then Tra Da (auto-joke). Our turistic way of travelling is ballancing the fact that we are ALL THE TIME sweaty, stinky and dirty. Thank God. Like the old times in Spain.

In Hoi An, we have met 4 more Czech guys and together we enjoyed the delight of draught beer, one glass for three Czech crowns. Guys went ahead as we are slow and they need to be faster as their holiday here will finish soon, but we hope to meet them in Halong Bay once again. Hurray! First accomplices!