Vietnam du Sud

---

We arrived in Nha Trang at the glorious hour of 6am. You just have to love the timetabling guys over here. Dan, our friend from Koh Tao, had already given us his hotel name so we found it easily enough, checked in to a double room with ac and a fridge for only $9 then crashed for another few hours. When we felt a little more recharged we found the dive shop where Dan was taking his Divemaster course and signed up for our EFR (Emergency First Response) and Rescue Diver courses. The shop was Rainbow Divers and they have a few branches around Vietnam, although Nha Trang is the biggest and where the owner operates out of. The courses lasted 5 days altogether and involved watching DVDs, writing exams, completing knowledge reviews, pool sessions (in the local navy pool) and exercises on the boat and in the open water. Some of the scenarios were quite realistic and at one point a random snorkeler, who happened to also be a qualified doctor, came over and offered his services thinking we were actually resuscitating Dan! Another time two Divemaster trainees hopped off the top of the large boat (50+ people capacity) and we had to get the captain to stop, turn around and dive in after them. Then we towed them to the boat in high waves and strong current due to the tail end of one of the passing tornados. Great practice! The visibility was very poor for the same reason while we dove here with distances varying from 2 to 5 meters. We did go through our first swim-throughs though which were pretty amazing. It took Ash a few moments to swim into a cave with loads of fish just hanging out though! Fish we spotted were lionfish, scorpionfish, differently coloured nudibranches (sea slugs) and our first juvenile harlequin sweetlips. These little fish are fantastic, google them. We passed our exams with flying colours you’ll be delighted to hear and celebrated with a few pints in the rainbow Divers bar with the guys and our instructor, Sean. If anyone is looking for a food instructor and will be in Vietnam we highly recommend requesting Sean at Rainbow Divers, he’s excellent, and the dive shop is very professional. It also has a bar and restaurant where they serve pie, fish fingers and Heinz beans! We had more than our fair share of pig outs over the week.

Nha Trang is marketed as the beach resort of Vietnam with its long sandy beach (6km apparently), plenty of bars and trendy restaurants. We stayed at Doung Phuong on D Nguyen Thien Thuat (name of the road) which runs parallel to the beach but back two blocks and luckily most of the restaurants were on this road, or very near to us. Our favourites were; Omars Indian which had fabulous food, chai and lassies, really friendly staff and great meal deals, Cyclo Cafe which served traditional Vietnamese fair as well as great pizzas and Guava for its delicious chilli con carne. One thing we found strange was how the hawkers were allowed to come in to the restaurants and ask people to buy their wares while eating dinner.

On our second to last day in Nha Trang we took the cable car across to the Vinpearl amusement park on an island nearby. It was only open 10 months before we got there in October and looked all brand new. We had heard some scare stories about 2 cars falling off the cable but apparently the government was covering it up and nobody died. Rumour had it that the whole park was a Ukrainian mafia money laundering scheme also but where this info comes from we’ve no idea. We do know for a fact that the cable car system was built by the French but is maintained by the Vietnamese. The place was deserted. It was embarrassing getting off the car to a group of people dressed up as cartoon characters smiling and waving at us. We walked past rides that were switched off but operators stood close by in case anyone wanted them turned on. It felt like walking through a Scooby doo episode at the abandoned fun fair. The shopping plaza was empty and we’re not even sure if half of the shops were open but they seemed to be stocked. Finally we reached the water park and here was the only place we didn’t mind there being no other people; no queues! On our little adventure were Ash, Ade and Dan and it just so happened that there were individual rings, doubles and triples so we went for option number 3 when we could. On one ride we were in the air so many times we were convinced we were done for. The first ride we sampled was quite high with lots of twists and became very steep close to the end before ejecting people into a bowl to zoom around and drop into a little pool out of the bottom. Poor Ade whacked his head when launched in to the bowl and later burst open his toe and finally got smacked in the jaw by his mat on the last ride. On the way back we took the speed boat which was great fun although the water was flat so we didn’t get to ramp off any waves.

While we were in Nha Trang we finally got skype working and spoke to our parents using the webcam. It was brilliant even if the line wasn’t great and we had to call back twenty times per call. Now we’ll be on to the rest of you to get sorted out with an account.

After a week in Nha Trang we had 2 days to spend in Ho Chi Minh city, more commonly known to locals as Saigon, before we flew to Manila. We arrived at the usual unsightly hour of 5.30am although this time it worked in our favour. We had time to eat breakfast, find a room (most expensive yet @ $14 in Yellow House Guesthouse) and book ourselves on to a day trip to the Cao Dai cathedral and Chu Chi tunnels before 8am. Our guide was great, he used to be a teacher in the country for years although he was a child soldier during the war. He cracked jokes that didn’t seem too formulaic and didn’t talk continuously like some others tend too. First stop was at the cathedral which was very surreal. It was built between 1933 and 1955 and the religion was invented by a man from the island of Phu Quoc. It’s a hybrid of Taoism (Confucius), Buddhism and Christianity and the priests wear the colours red, blue and yellow to represent these 3 religions while the rest of the church goers wear pure white. We noticed that there were no young people at the service but apparently that was because they were all at work. This may or may not have been the case though as one thing we noticed about Saigon was the amount of young people sitting in restaurants or hanging out on street corners or in parks at all times of the day. It would seem a tad unreasonable to believe that every young member of this church had work hours at the same time, but who are we to comment. One of the saints of Caodaism is Victor Hugo and there’s a statue of him carved on display there.

We stopped for lunch next where seemingly chaotic waiting skills managed to get all 50 of us fed and paid up in just over half an hour! It was very cheap and quite tasty too. The main attraction on the tour was to visit the Chu Chi tunnels which are famous for their role in the 1960s for facilitating the Viet Cong just 30km outside of Saigon. At one time the tunnels reached from Saigon to the Cambodian border and stretched over 200km of tunnels. Parts of these tunnels have been reconstructed and widened to allow western tourists to fit through. The first thing we did at the Chu Chi tunnels was watch a propaganda video from the 1960s depicting individual members of the guerrilla force. It concentrated on little children women as most men were in the armies. They each explained their lives and why they fought and then a voice over came on at the end saying ‘..and this is why she has been awarded the title Brave Exterminator of American Soldiers’ or ‘American Killer Hero’. There were other displays in the forest including; weapons construction, clothes and shoe manufacturing, a tank on display, various trap demonstrations and a firing range. Ade bought a round of AK47 bullets and finally got some off after the first 4 wouldn’t shoot. It is unbelievable how loud those things are.

The following day we strolled through Cong Vien Van Hoa Park to visit the famous War Remnants Museum. This has to be one of the most well laid out and informative museums we have ever been to. It is also heartbreakingly sad. The displays showing pictures of people suffering after the Agent Orange and other chemical attacks were ghastly, as were the pictures of children born to those who lived in the vicinity. Facts on bombs dropped and people killed were horrendous. The museum was very fair in its portrayal of the Americans concentrating at the start on the war in Vietnam itself displaying casualties on both sides but in later displays showing the peace rallies and the campaigns that went on in the states to bring it to an end. The display of the South Vietnamese Tiger cages was horrific and we didn’t spend too much time there. Outside in the grounds surrounding the museum are tanks and jets from the war all cleaned up, polished and labelled. The museum is a must see in Vietnam.

Other sights we visited or just walked past were the Hotel Continental, famous from the book and film The Quiet American, the Palace, the Notre Dame Cathedral and the Hotel Caravella. We ate a delicious meal at Skewers D Thai Van lung and attempted to go to the casino at the Hotel Caravella but it only had roulette and slot machines so we gave it a miss. Other things we spotted in town were western lads giving the cyclo (bicycle taxis) a lift around, motorbikes skipping lights by driving up on the footpaths and then once there driving the whole way down the block up there beeping at pedestrians to move aside. Outside the War Remnants Museum we were escorted across the street by tourist Security in case we weren’t able to manage the lights ourselves. Plenty of ladies in the traditional conical hats and dress carrying two baskets tied to the ends of a pole carried across her shoulders selling anything from fruit and veg to nick naks. Vietnam is a beautiful country where everyone is genuinely friendly and interested and there didn’t seem to be any ill feeling to the west at all. We’ll definitely be coming back!

---

Photos

Nha Trang Street
view from hotel

Vinpearl
Monkey foreground

Cao Dai Temple
Side profile