The bus to Vietnam was quite comfy and straightforward. The only wierd bit was at the border where, instead of going through the usual passport control by ourselves and one-by-one, the conductor took everyone's passports and took them to the immigrations officer then, when they were all stamped, took them back and called our names out as we all stood there in a big mob. The big flaw in this was obviously that he had difficulty pronouncing most of our names. Quite a few of the tourists were laughing about this and one American bloke, who must have lived around here, said, “Imagine how bad this is when 4 or 5 buses arrive at the same time!”. We stood, straining to hear something like our names, and were pretty much the last people through, then back on the bus to take us to Ho Chi Minh City, formerly known as Saigon. We got dropped off in the tourist backpacker area and Bindya said that she thought she knew where our hotel was so we ignored the taxi touts and headed off. It wasn't quite as straightforward as we'd thought but after about 20 mins walk and asking directions a few times, we arrived at Huang Chuang Hotel. Most of the buildings in Saigon have very small fronts so are long and tall instead. Our hotel was one room wide, two long and about eleven high. We were on the seventh floor. We had T.V., fridge, aircon and a big bed. I jumped on the bed as soon as I'd dropped my bag and discovered the hard way that the Vietnamese like their beds firm. Firm to the point of being a foam mattress about half an inch thick on wooden slats. Ow.
After a quick chill we headed out to see the city, in particular the backpacker area of the city and even more particularly to find an Indian restaurant we'd heard of. Crossing the road here was very similar to in Cambodia except even more confusing. Some roads had one-way traffic but only for cars.
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| Saigon from our hotel room |
This meant that there would be three lanes, the one in the middle for cars and buses etc. and two either side, going in each direction, for mopeds and bikes. Add to this pedestrian crossing lights that would be green when it was also OK for the buses to drive through and the fact that everybody ignored these rules anyway and our short walk to find somewhere to eat was suitable terrifying. We found the street we were looking for by randomly going down a tiny alley and were immediately handed a leaflet for an Indian restaurant with thalis for 40,000 dong (it was pretty tough at first handling 30,000 dong to the pound but we got used to it). We wandered up the road and decided to go for a drink as it was just hitting sunset so were enticed over the road by a man running over, grabbing us and saying, 'Come to my rooftop bar – cheap drinks!'. We crossed the road to where the bar was and decided to sit on the ground floor section, where there were seats on the pavement. Despite the fact that the downstairs and upstairs were all part of the same place, the rooftop bloke started arguing with the downstairs bloke about where we would go. We just sat downstairs, much to Rooftop's annoyance. Beers were pretty expensive, at 60 thousand each, but we sampled the local 'Hanoi' brew and watched everyone go by. It was pretty busy, lots of street vendors, women in cone hats carrying yokes (I think that's what you call them – sticks carried on the shoulders with pots hanging off each end), tourists and mopeds. We spotted a tour agents that looked pretty popular so decided to go there later. We'd already planned on splashing out on a posh speedboat tour of the Mekong Delta that Bindya had spotted on Tripadvisor – everybody had raved about it and even though it was quite costly it was going to be one of our wedding presents from people but we also wanted to see the Cu Chi tunnels. We walked up the street trying to find the place we'd been given the leaflet for but the bottom end of the street suddently got hit with a blackout so we couldn't find it, instead going to a little Indian place we found off a tiny alley. It was possibly the smallest restaurant I've ever been to (with three tables in it) but the food was OK and not too expensive. After that we headed of home to relax on our wooden plank.
When we got to the hotel, the receptionist asked us what we wanted for breakfast and at what time we would like it. We told her 9 a.m. And, as there was only room for two seats in the reception area, assumed we were getting it brought to our room. The next morning, Bindya was feeling ill so I abandoned our plans for the day but still had to get up and dressed for nine, waiting for our breakfast. Nothing came. No breakfast in bed after all. We just stayed in the hotel that day. I went out a couple of times to get some food and snacks for Bindya and we watched various episodes of Americas Next Top Model, Glee and American Idol on 'Star World'. Woohoo.
We booked the Mekong Delta tour online for the next day and, thankfully, Bindya was feeling better so we got picked up bright and early from the hotel by our tour guide in a taxi. It turned out that we were the only people on the trip today – again! We got to our boat, which was not exactly luxury but had a very big engine and had warm bacon and egg croissants waiting for us.
I had to eat Bindya's as well as she still wasn't 100% and we had unlimited soft drinks available to us. I had some sort of green tea, ginger and honey thing which was well nice. We sped off doen the river, through the heart of Saigon. The river was big and very, very dirty. The smell coming of it at some points was pretty disgusting and made me want to puke. The driver had to stop every now and again to reverse the propeller because some bit of plastic or water hyacinth was stuck in it. After about 20-30 mins though we were out of the city and into the countryside, which was a lot better, mile after mile of waterways, all linked up and crossing each other. Everywhere we went there were these absolutely enormous barges – empty going down the river and, up river, full to sinking point with sand. They were literally every 50 m or so. Later on our guide showed us a smaller vessel that had a big vacuum cleaner on it that sucked all the river sand off the bottom and filled up the barges, the sand being taken to the city to use in construction. Our first stop was some small town to see the market there, called Cho Gau, which meant 'rice market'.
It was a small market that sold everything from fruit and veg to fish and chickens and offerings made from paper, in various forms, such as a car or mobile phone, which locals used at the temple to ask for things. We attracted quite a few stares from the locals as we walked around. In particular, we had discovered that the Vietnamese were not shy in commenting about my height. When we got in the lift at our hotel on the first day, there were two women who had found it very funny. One could not bear to even look at me and was staring, red-faced, at the floor, desperately trying not to laugh (or cry maybe...), the other one just pointed at me and laughed openly, saying, 'Two meters?'. I tried not to take it personally, which was good as it got a lot worse later on.
Our next stop was a small temple dedicated to some fringe religion we hadn't heard of. It was kind of buddhism, as it had loads of buddha statues, including one of 'The Female Buddha', but also had a lot of Chinese influence, including a statue of a Shaolin monk. The main statue outside, was also of a woman, but I forget the details.
Back on our boat, our guide cut us up some Rose Apples which were small and shaped like peppers but had a really light, delicate taste to them – very nice. We headed to a local village to see things there. It was nice, mainly based around palm trees and coconuts, women weaving roof flats from the leaves, blokes de-husking the coconuts etc. It wasn't totally basic, all the houses we saw had electricity and a fair bit of land A lot of the plots had family graves on them, our guide explained that this meant that future generations couldn't sell the land as no-one would buy land with graves on it. There were quite a few decent sized houses as well, made from concrete, multilevel, nice design etc. I asked him if most people were farmers around here then how could they afford all this. He told us that these people would have relatives who lived and worked abroad and sent money home, especially from Australia.
Back on the boat, we headed for lunch at a large and posh looking floating restaurant. Our experience of Vietnamese food had not been great so far, starting in Australia where we went for a couple of Vietnamese meals and were left pretty unimpressed. Unfortunately this was no better. We felt bad because it was clearly a good restaurant and the food was prepared and delivered beautifully, we just didn't like it. Personally it was something to do with the textures of stuff I didn't like. The soup was all gloopy (like mucus), the fish was kind of soapy (like soap) and the spring rolls are sort of tough and chewy (like human skin). Between us, we spent most of our time re-arranging the food to make it look as though we had eaten some of it. After about an hour of this, our guide came to take us back home on the boat. He had explained earlier that we would be joined by some other tourists as well for the journey back. It was a family of Germans – two adults and two kids – who had been on a cycling trip. We found them quite odd because from getting on the boat to getting off, not once did they speak to us, say 'Hi' or even look in our direction. Our love for other tourists, especially of the continental type, and even more especially, the Teutonic type, grows smaller every day.
We got back home without much to mention and overall were not bowled over by the trip. It was nice but we maybe expected a little more from all the reviews (and 'luxury pricetag').
That night we found the cheap Indian place which was busy downstairs so we went upstairs to a little room. Again, it was about 3 tables big. The waiter apologised to the other two tourists sitting there and asked if he could put the aircon on, and close the window. It was extremely hot. They agreed but the older woman was clearly unhappy about this. Over the next 10 minutes or so she kept tutting, looking at us, huddling into her cardigan, rubbing her arms and, obviously, complaining to her partner (husband? Son?) in German. We politely ignored them until the bloke asked if we could swap tables so that we got the benefit of the aircon and they could sit further away from it. We happily agreed and, minutes later, they went downstairs. We ate our food in peace after that, only occasionally interupted by a small girl who had snuck downstairs. She was obviously meant to be in bed as she put her fingers to her lips to ask us not to tell anyone she was up. We finished our meal, of which there was loads and I had to go to the toilet which was just by the stairs. There was no lock on the door so I asked Bindya to keep an eye out while I was struck with some quite violent, and extremely noisy, toilet needs. The door handle kept rattling as the little girl kept trying to get in to see what I was doing. Bindya told her not to and she went and ate all the leftovers we had on our plates (the little girl, not Bindya). We swiftly paid and left as I reckon nobody was going to be eating upstairs for a while after that.
The next day we had booked a more basic trip to see the Cu Chi tunnels. We got picked up around 8 in the morning and had the last couple of seats on a small coach. It took about 3 hours to get there, with one small stop at some sort of craft shop warehouse thing. When we arrived, we were shown to a hut where we watched the second half of some sort of film about the tunnels. It was quite funny in the way they talked about the American invaders. We were then taken around a series of outside exhibits showing original tunnel entrances, fox holes, traps etc. At the fox hole our guide let people try it out.
One bloke got stuck when he was trying to get out. We all stood around and laughed and took photos. Neither of us wanted to have a go. It was all very interesting, especially as I had just thought that they were a Vietnam-America war thing but they had actually been around from the 50's and the French occupation. Thousands of people lived in these tunnels for years and years without ever coming out. The traps were all pretty nasty looking. They were mainly designed to inconvienience the invading forces rather than kill them, the idea being that it would take three or four soldiers to help one who had lost a leg.
Towards the end of our trip we visited the shooting range where we bought 20 AK bullets and took turns firing them off. You could also buy M-16 bullets but they were a bit expensive. Bindya really enjoyed this bit – I definitely know what to get her for Christmas now...
After this we went through the 'tourist' tunnels which were about twice the size of the original tunnels. I still had to get on all fours in order to make it through and only managed about ten metres before getting out at the first opportunity. It was so hot down there and claustrophobic, I couldn't imagine how they did it.
Big THANK YOU to Justin and Jamie for their wedding gift that we used to pay for this (including the shooting range). All stereotyping of Americans loving guns intended...
That afternoon we went to the reunification palace, where the North Vietnamese tanks rolled throught the gates in 1975. We were expecting some grand palace but it was just some 60s building. It turns out that it was bombed by some rebelling air force pilots in 1962 so was totally rebuilt. It was still pretty grand and we got to see most of it, like the helipad on the roof next to the cinema and bar etc.
After that was the War Remnants Museum. This place was full of photos from the American war years. It also had some big machinery outside, some planes and tanks etc. There was a section about Phu Quoc which was an island used by the Saigon government (with American collusion) to detain and torture prisoners during the war. This was where we saw some American tourists storming out in disgust at the 'lies' being told. It had originally been a French prison as well and had a big guillotine. We had also read a lot of negative reviews about this place by Americans, saying that it was all propaganda etc. As it turned out, the majority of photographs in the museum were by American journalists, detailing some of the worst atrocities during the war. There was a couple of sections devoted to the effects of Agent Orange and the lasting damage caused by the use of defoliants etc. All quite disturbing stuff.
The next day we flew up to Hanoi – it would have taken us a few days if we were to travel by bus or train. We landed, jumped in a taxi and went straight to the Indian Embassy where we put in our visa applications (the main reason we were in Hanoi). It was incredibly easy and we had been worried that Bindya only had one photo instead of two but the bloke said we could bring it when we pick up the passports. That done, we headed off to our hotel in the old town. We went for a wander and found 'Le Pub', where we had a beer and some western food. The Old Town was really nice, noisy, crowded, hectic but very 'characterful'. We treated ourselves to a KFC takeout that night. The next day we organised our trips for the week – first to the Perfumed Pagoda and then a 2 night tour to Ha Long Bay.
The Perfumed Pagoda was a load of temples up in the hills and only reacheable by rowing boat. After a drive up to the river we got in this metal canoe with 3 French people and I was convinced it was going to sink. The water was about a centimetre from the rim. Our rower was a woman (like most of them) and she took us past all the hundreds of other metal canoes, up the river, to the pagodas. This took a good hour of hard rowing and on the way we passed lots of other boats full of Vietnames Buddhists going to pay their respects. They were all particularly interested to see foreigners around and would wave at us and point and laugh – bit disconcerting after a while. We arrived and walked up the road past all these restaurants with the most bizare animals hanging outside, half butchered. We asked our guide and he pointed out some wild dogs and cats alongside the usual meats.The Pagodas were nice, full of people who had come to pray. As we wandered around it became obvious that a lot of the locals were actually far more interested in us than in the temples. I realised that lots of people were sneakily taking pictures of us with their mobile phones. I tried my best to ignore this but it was difficult, especially when some girl came up and asked to take a picture of me. Bindya kindly offered to do it for her... After a while I just started posing or waving when I saw someone trying to sneak a photo.
After the temples we had the choice of walking up the mountain or getting a cable car to see the main temple, built in a cave, at the top. We went with the cable car. It had some very nice view across the hills. The French people took the steps up and were very dissapointed when they got to the top as the entire path is lined with shacks selling stuff so you don't get to see any of the view at all. The cave was impressive – very big and atmospheric. Again very full of people, again more interested in us than the temple. We went and waited for the cable car to take us back – there had been some sort of problem and all the cars were stopped so we had to wait for a while and we both were starting to get a little irritated by grown adults trying to sneak a photo of one of us on their phones – fame can get a little tiring...
We took out boat back down the river and tipped our rower – we'd read that they were quite persistent about collecting tips and this had really annoyed some people but frankly, giving a dollar each for two hours of rowing was not something we were going to quibble about.
Thanks to Jesi for the wedding gift that we used for our Perfune Pagoda trip!
Thanks to Jamie and Justin for the Cu Chi tunnels and shooting!
Thanks to Matt and Katherine for the Mekong Delta tour!
Check the links below for loads more photos...
Mekong Delta
Tunnels, Palace and Museum
Perfume Pagoda
