Vietnam Trip

Ok I know this is a looong awaited post which I just havent had the time to pen properly. After much inspiration from my friend, who is penning her Cambodia trip..I thought I should do some justice to what was probably one of my best trips ever.

Before we get to the trip details, a little on how it all started. The initial idea was for P, V and myself to head to Cambodia in May/June 2006..this was discussed in 2005. But at that time I was shuttling around too much to decide soemthing so far off. Towards the end of 2005, the Cambodia idea was given up for Vietnam instead. Logic being that Vietnam is less 'touristy' and plus I only get a week off, so we can only do one country. That sounded ok to me..I din care where we went, as long as I got to go with those two. At that time, we had been friends for 8 years but the last trip we had taken together was our JC india trip, which was 8 years back.

Of course there was much convincing to be done at home. My dad found it amusing that I would want to go to Vietnam. He goes there very often on business, and din think it was safe for 3 girls to go by themselves. As usual, my mom seconds my dad on this. They never thought the plan will actually materialise.

We planned and planned and replanned the dates and finally booked the tickets for June after 2 months of debating leave dates. Only to realise two of us cant make it on those dates...So we replanned and rebooked the tickets for end July. Good thing was..that was all we actually planned. I got so busy with work, I left the other two to draw out the itinerary to give home. One thing about living with your parents is that they do expect to be kept in the loop. Anyways, you can imagine my father's expression when I told him, "Er..we havent booked any hotel...we will go there and then search for a good backpackers." The roof din fall but the utensils he was cleaning did. He just simply said "You arnt going!" My dad is usually really cool and I always manage to get his support for all my so-called adventures. Apparently during his last trip to Hanoi, some women tried to kidnap him. I just burst out laughing (if you see the size of most Vietnamese women and my father, you will know why). Of course nothing happened to him, he was just giving an example of the "dangers" we may be faced with.

One thing I know I can do is persuade my parents. I have done it so many times, that I managed to convince them that we wud be alrite and nothing wud happen. We reach in daytime and we have a lonely planet guide (the book) with us. I wasnt gonna miss the trip anyways :)

So the night before I borrowed my cousin's backpack and got ready for 8 days of fun. The last 8 days of my vacation before college started and classes resumed. Before the madness of subjects and assignments and exams started.