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Published: April 8th 2007
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Apparently there are 6 million mopeds in Saigon, and we hate every single one of them. Its the most congested, and thanks to the constant tooting of horns, the nosiest city we've been too so far. The word chaos doesn't do it justice. Crossing the road is a living nightmare. Nobody stops at lights or zebra crossings so you're confronted with a constant stream of traffic that might be 10 mopeds deep all whizzing past at different speeds. Its like that classic computer game, frogger.
We stayed in an area of the city called Pham Ngu Lao which seems to be where most of the backpackers hang out. We were warned about the agressive selling tactics of the Vietnamese, and sure enough, from the moment we climbed out of the taxi we were being hounded by people trying to get us to stay at their guesthouses or to eat at their restaurant. When asked, Paul made the mistake of telling one of them his name....big mistake. Luckily we'd already booked a place to stay, the Yellow House Guesthouse. This is nice and quiet, had a very friendly women at the desk and even had air con and a TV.
Ben Thanh Market
Enter at your own risk Of course after checking in and re-emerging in the outside world, the inevitable cries of 'Paul, my friend...' were heard from across the street. A friend for life.
We had a couple of days in Saigon. The first day we played dodge the moped and took a walk around the city. Ben Thanh is a market in the centre of the city and this was our first stop. Here we witnessed the Vietnamese in full on sales mode. The worse bit was our walk through the designer clothes section where we had many many scarey women trying to grab us (literally) and get us to buy something from their stall. We walked through there very quickly but unfortunately Vicki had spotted something of interest which required another visit into the lion's den. On arrival at the prospective stall, we were quickly ushered inside and other women quickly blocked our escape by standing in the door way. Vicki's choosen garment arrived in about 80 different colours and she tried some on, the women showering her with compliments. Garment chosen we got down to the nitty gritty - a price. The women starts at 350,000 dong. Much too much. Paul offers
150,000 dong. Women laughs. Women offers 250,000 dong. Vicki starts to stress and decides she doesn't want the top that much anyway. Sensing this, the women packs the top into a bag and thrusts it into Vicki's hand demanding 200,000 dong. Dropping the bag, we leg it, to shouts of "100,000 dong...special price for you!". Nightmare. (NB: We later when on to buy said top in a shop on the coast for 85,000 dong!)
Saigon and Vietnam is infamous for the war in our minds, but we have to admit to knowing very little about it. We decided that we should go to the war musuem, which was harrowing, but very informative. Vietnam's past is very messy and very complicated but thankfully the country finally seems to be at peace after many many years of war.
Continuing our education, we took a trip to the Cu Chi Tunnels the next day, which are just outside Saigon. Our tour was led by a guy called 'Mr Bean' (I'm sure its not spelt that way though!), a Vietnamese native who joined the American army before the war and ended up fighting with the American's in Vietnam. He was an excellent
guide with many interesting stories. There are about 200km of tunnels in all, stretching as far as the Cambodian border, and during the war they helped the Vietnamese miltary forces (Viet Cong) maintain control of the rural areas surroundng Saigon. The tunnels are tiny - there's no way a westerner could fit inside. Which probably explains why the American's decided the bomb the hell out of the place, as hand to hand combat was wholly ineffective. The craters are still visible all around. Its possible to climb inside a small section of the tunnels, which Paul did, but these have been greatly enlarged for tourists. It was still very clastrophobic down there though!
The food in Vietnam is amazing. Its not as hot as Thai or Laos food, but its delicious. They love their noodles. One of the nicest dishes we're had so far is a noodle soup called PHO. They eat it for breakfast, lunch or dinner. Its simple but very tasty.
We are heading north now for a 1 week tour of southern Vietnam, and hopefully to escape the chaos of Saigon!
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Best opening line to a blog.....EVER