Saigon - The city of 5 million scooters!

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Day 26 – Friday 12th November
The soles of my feet are absolutely black and I can’t seem to get them clean! So far in Vietnam, every hotel has a bath with shower attachment over and a hot water tank that only seems to give you enough hot water to fill the bath to about 3 inches deep. Little ladies keep following me around the town asking me if I want “a pelicure? Only US$1” but I am too embarrassed to take my shoes off!

We are due to fly to Saigon today, so after breakfast and packing our bags again (this part does get quite tedious as time goes on) we are on our way to Da Nang airport, about 20 kms away. Da Nang is an old US airbase and the hangars and buildings have been left just the way they were. It looks like an episode from MASH (you will have to be old to appreciate that comparison). There are amazing beaches here, and all along the beachfront, huge resorts are being constructed, including two golf courses built by Colin Montgomerie and Greg “The great white shark” Norman. It looks as though in 5 years time this will be the place to come for an exotic holiday. No doubt it will be full of Aussies!

We take our flight to Saigon, which of course, leaves bang on time and then take a taxi to our hotel. If you buy a taxi ticket at the airport desk you pay a flat rate - $8 – in our case which is much better than being on a meter. The traffic is a nightmare and scooters are order of the day again. There are apparently 5 million scooters here in Saigon and you can believe it! They are everywhere! Our hotel is right in the centre, near the market and is the tallest and thinnest hotel on the street. The Vietnamese love their buildings tall – very, very tall! Our hotels are getting progressively cheaper as we go along. This one has cost us only £17 per night including breakfast!

We check in and then go out to find a nice cup of coffee and something to eat. After booking our tour to the Cu Chi Tunnels tomorrow we decide to just walk around and try and find a nice bar to have a beer and watch the world go by. We don’t really have much luck, but then as a last resort go into a bar called the “Seventeen Saloon”. There are Vietnamese men dressed as cowboys “rounding up” the punters outside, country music playing and the barmaids are dressed in uniforms bearing stars and stripes. Of course it goes without saying that they are all small, thin and utterly gorgeous. If you ask me, they all need a good dinner!

It’s happy hour so it’s buy one beer, get one free. Great. Nice cheap beer! It is quite surreal sitting here. There are many men, western and local who are being chatted up by beautiful Vietnamese women. I am certainly the only western woman in the entire bar which feels very odd. Let’s put it this way – this is a pick-up joint plain and simple! But it’s incredible. After a couple of beers the entertainment comes on. It’s a live band from the Phillipines who are fantastic. The lead singer has long hair and wears leather gear covered in buckles and plays the air guitar as he sings. But he is actually really talented! I think that he would go down a storm on the X Factor! We are having such a good laugh that we order more beer. Let’s face it, yesterday we paid 3,000 dong (that’s 10p remember) a glass in Hoi An! We seem to have our very own “cowgirl” barmaid looking after us – plying us with free, very salty, popcorn – obviously this is to make us drink more beer, which we obligingly do!

When we finally decide that we can’t drink anymore, we get the bill and it’s 500,000 dong! That’s £16! How did we manage to spend that much? Oh well never mind. We had a great time. So we then have to find our way back to our hotel, ( I knew that I should have paid more attention) and dodge the millions of scooters who seem intent on running us over!

Day 27 – Saturday 13th November

We have to be up quite early this morning as we have booked ourselves on a tour to visit the Cu Chi tunnels just outside Saigon. I must admit that I am feeling decidedly worse for wear. Could it have been something I ate? No. It was definitely the beer!

We walk around the corner to meet the tour bus and our guide for the day, Le, is waiting for us. He is a great guide and extremely funny, but he has a stutter which makes him a little difficult to understand sometimes. It’s very hot and humid today and the bus is uncomfortably full.

We have the obligatory stop at a handicraft centre on the way. This time it is a guilt trip too as all the handicrafts are made by people who are handicapped due to the use of Agent Orange by the USA during the Vietnam war. The whole thing makes me feel quite uncomfortable. Anyway, we admire their wares and some of the tourists come out with packages – obviously they felt more guilty than I did because the stuff in the shop was ghastly!

When we reach the Cu Chi tunnels, we are taken into a room to watch a very strange video about the Vietcong guerrilla fighters during the war. It was these Vietcong who built the underground tunnel system that helped them to beat the Americans in the war. Whilst the Americans were busy bombing everything out of existence, and killing all vegetation with their deadly Agent Orange and Napalm, the Vietcong were busy killing the American soldiers in all sorts of grisly ways! What a terrible war it was – and still is for many 2nd and 3rd generation Vietnamese suffering the genetic effects of the dioxins used by the US.

Finally the highlight of the tour. It was our turn to crawl through the tiny tunnels! Only they have increased the size of them by 100% for us “larger” tourists! But they are still so tiny and claustrophobic. They only measure 120 cms high and 80cms wide at their maximum. It is very uncomfortable, very, very dark, and extremely hot. Once you have made your choice to go in, there is no turning back. There are exits along the tunnel so that you can get out if you need too – and I need too! I manage 40 metres and then have to call it a day. But Stuart goes all the way along the 100 metres. He is much braver than I am!

On the way home we stop at the War Museum which is really just full of horrifying photos and information about how the US conducted the war. To be honest it made me ashamed to be a human being. The US has alot to answer for. I shall say no more.

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