Welcome to the South, cowboy!

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Dear reader,

I am finally back in Sydney after five fantastic weeks in Southeast Asia. I still have to write about our last part of the trip in Vietnam, during which we visited the Mekong Delta, Mui Ne, Nha Trang, Hoi An, the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ), Hanoi, and Halong Bay. Due to uni work, I may not make any further updates until April.

I can also tell you that I have posted a video of a bungy we tried in Singapore. The updated journal entry is found here: A quick taste of Singapore and Malaysia.

Ho Chi Minh City
We landed at the airport of Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC) late in the afternoon on 28 February. We waited a little while for Anne-Line, Remi's friend from Bergen, Norway, to land and then we cleverly caught a local bus to the city centre. Cleverly, because the taxi drivers were charging big money and even told us that there weren't any buses available! Refusing to believe this, we found buses going every 15 minutes to the city just a hundred metres' walk from the exit.

In the city, we simply jumped off at District 1. HCMC has 16 districts. District 1 corresponds to Saigon proper, although most people still refer to the entire city as Saigon. In this area there is plenty of budget accomodation and you are close to most things. We simply walked across the street from the bus stop and into the first hotel we saw, namely the Duna Hotel. They charged us USD 15 for three people in a room as well as organising our trip to the Mekong Delta the next day and the bus trip to Mui Ne the day after that.

Packing out our stuff in the hotel room, we saw two pairs of thongs (slippers for you Norwegians) on the floor in the colours of the American flag. We thought this was pretty ironic considering their country was bombed back to the stone age by the US, although, of course, the South fought on the US' side during the war. I wondered what'd be next: A South Cross confederacy flag up on the wall and "a band playing Dixie double four time?!" Welcome to the South, cowboy!

The Mekong Delta
The Mekong Delta is the southernmost part of Vietnam. The delta is formed by the Mekong River, which has its origin some 4500 kilometers away in the Tibetan highlands. Running through China, Myanmar (Burma), Laos, and Cambodia, the river ends up in South Vietnam and the South China Sea. Because the land is completely flat in the delta, it is easy to divert water through canals and hence, the area has become one giant rice field. Seeing a boost in rice production during the 90s, rice now is the major contributor to the Vietnamese economy, which also is the second-fastest growing economy after China.

On our way to My Tho, the main town in the delta, we stopped at a handycrafts' shop were they sold the usual things like snakes-on-liquor, art made from Carlsberg beer cans, woven cloths, paintings etc. And as usual, we didn't buy anything.

In My Tho we jumped into a boat that took us across the river where we changed into a smaller boat that took us through a maze of canals to a caramel factory! Coconuts were grinded and then boiled with sugarcane juice into a kind of syrup. The syrup was then rolled out and cut into suitable pieces that were wrapped by incredibly fast hands. We bought a set of caramels and they tasted alright.

Later we had lunch and local performers did a few traditional songs. Unfortunately, the experience was a little perturbed by some of the other tourists in our group. Two guys decided it was a good idea to sit and laugh loudly while the artists were performing. I agree the music was different from what my ears are used to, however, to laugh in someone's face when they are performing traditional songs that may well mean a lot to them, well, that is disrespectful. I also wasn't too impressed when a woman approached our table and asked if we had finished our fruit tray, because her table had finished theirs and they were still hungry! We told them that we were still eating... A little later, I was having a break from eating when a Swedish girl at our table collected all the fruit and walked over to the other table with it! Thank you, I guess they deserve it more than us... Oh well, I guess she felt sorry for them, since they clearly couldn't afford to buy anything outside of the "free" lunch that came with the tour.

We finished off the trip by being paddled back by locals instead of catching the motor-driven boats we used to get there. It was very pleasant to slowly and quietly float through the jungle and just listen to all the sounds. We then crossed the river back to My Tho and caught the bus back to HCMC from there.

Prioritising, we decided to leave to Mui Ne the next day and get some sand under our feet and sun on our bodies instead of seeing more of HCMC. A bit of a shame, but with limited time we had to make a pick.

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