dining carriage - fancy train back from sapa.

that third eye lisa's got is from our guide's wife giving her some tiger balm treatment for a cold. it totally worked.

colour and more colour at sapa markets.

plus loads more "you buy from me".

waterfall and things.

we sow the seed.

we were there once the rice harvest had happenened. ie, only brown stuff to look at, but still we thought it was totally, like, cool.

the "trek" wasn't all bridges and easy paths, honest.

the most facinating people, don't you think?

"you buy from me?"

we heard that a lot. this shot is on the road to three different ethnic monirity villages, as we did our trekking thing. these chicks are h'mong, and they dye their cloth using indigo.

jord on the crap train to sapa - lock your doors...

...people steal your stuff. and lisa snored all night. with two other people to share a berth with, she became acutely aware just how far she had come as a social misfit.

and just around the corner was a bigger buddha

previously at nha trang - chicks do BIG buddha

we met some kids who stung us big time for fairly crap postcards - but hey, it was in the name of edu-ma-ca-tion.

We're in SAPA! And having a ball:)

We've arrived in the North Vietnam mountain town of SAPA.Its by far the best location we've visited so far. After an overnight train ride, we checked into our luxury mountain lodge. The weather is much cooler here, thank goodness. Yesterday we did a day trekking in the mountains, scenery and local minority people were amazing. Decided to extend our stay here another night, cause we're enjoying it so much. Will try to upload some more pics in a few days, the computer connections are too slow here. Love to all. J & L xx

They BBQ the food right at your table.

$5 lunch

This pic is taken from inside a typical street-side restaurant in Nha Trang, we had 3 mains and 2 beers for $5 each!!!

We saw lots of beautiful fish and coral ...

Day on a boat snorkelling

We hired a lovely wooden boat with a driver and guide, and went out for a day of snorkelling. Blanky got sea sick and had to "take care of herself" over the side of the boat ...which was a bit of a bummer. But none the less we had a good day and it was the first time both of us had done snorkelling! woo.

View from the bridge

Blanky stopped on the bridge, on our way back from Cham Towers to take this shot of the fishing boats.

Cham towers

One day we cycled to the Cham Towers, a series of stone remains of shrines set on a hill in Nha Trang - from the 7th century.

Tops resort

Just one of the many beautiful scenes from our resort.

Yummy Pho!

Blanky enjoying another yummy pho bo - ie beef soup. The food in this country is soooooo amazing!

Lis just back from a swim

This is on our first full day in Nha Trang .. was a wee bit cloudy, which is pretty normal for the tropical weather they get here. They have amazing, kinda hazy & glassy days with really hot weather (around 30 degrees all the time) with quite high levels of humidity.

The rains are a comin!

So, there's a typhoon just about to hit on the coast at Da Nang, which is exactly where we were heading today. Luckily we were on the case (no thanks to the staff here) and cancelled our flight and accomodation in Hoi An.

So we've decided to stay put in Nha Trang 'till the storm hopefully settles. 4 more days in paradise is pretty tough to handle ... but somehow we'll manage. So now we're gonna head up to Hanoi on Wednesday morning and continue our journey to Sapa and Halong Bay.

Having trouble loading pics to the blog here, so hope you guys can see the pics we loaded last time. Will upload some more some time down the track ... bye for now. L & J x

Nice "Asian" shot by Jord.

Two thin women paddled four western chicks.

And boy did they work it, baby. But it was amazing, even though Lisa got poo on her hand. Which was yucky.

We stopped off for bees and honey, which tasted like butter-honey liquer, and also hung out with some dudes playing guitar. We ate fish that quite frankly looked like a pirahna, but just blew us away. Let's hope it wasn't endangered.

Mekong Delta, man.

And so, Margee, Tracey and Lisa in resort-wear white, and jord in Communist red, head into their very own heart of darkness. A good time was had by all.

Lisa is proud of this shot

She's gonna send it to the dudes at lonely planet.

In search of STUFF

We bought two unstrung tennis rackets, blankie bought a Nike rip-off watch (and no it's not the same as yours Shelley), butter roasted coffee, fans cos it was barking hot and other things etc.

Vietnamese people cook in the street everywhere, and it seems there's just one profession over here, and that's having a shop where you sell, make or fix something.

The plot thickens - Saigon

And so we met up with Margee and Trace (who you can see in this pic - if it uploaded - this blog is sh*t!). Had a corker of a meal on our first night in a huge warehouse eatery. The ceiling was covered in bamboo kinda stuff and retracted like the roof at the Melbourne Tennis centre. Come awnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn!

Singapore girl, you're a great way to fly

The aeroporto was tres chic. The smoking room stank.

Eating on the plane!

There was a lot of eating. Two breakfasts, an offer of two lunches (but we refused the second) and of course starbursts and other treats brought from home.

Vietnam here we come!

we're off to Vietnam on our first O/S adventure together ... check this space for pics and words from our travels ...