Viva Vietnam!

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glad to be back

As soon as I got off the plane the atmosphere smelt and felt different, a different kind of heat and just something in the air that told me I was back in South East Asia and I love it, this is the sort of place I really love travelling in. I was picked up in a cab by my hotel and driving through the streets of Ho Chi Minh city reminded me of arriving in Delhi last year, but about 100 times less chaotic and without most of the bizarre sights I witnessed back then. Even though I new what to expect it was still a shock after spending so much time in America, New Zealand and Australia, the traffic and continual horns beeping, the little streets and bustling activity everywhere even though everyone seems to be completely relaxed and doing everything without any sign of urgency or stress. My hotel is in the backpacker area amongst hundreds of little shops and coffee shops and cafes on everycorner with locals just sitting out on the tiny plastic chairs, relaxing, drinking coffee and eating noodle soup. I was exhausted from lack of sleep the night before due to my brain being in overdrive and from the long flight and I felt a bit overwhelmed by it all, I'd forgotten how different it all feels, but the girls in my hotel are all so lovely and helpful and made me feel so welcome that I was soon feeling relaxed and excited about being here. I have a fanastic big clean room with air con, hot water a fridge and satalitte tv for $12, I could've got something cheaper but after all the dormitory's and sharing I decided to treat myself for the first few nights. I got to my room and fell straight asleep, I did mean to get up later on and head out for a drink but I ended up just snoozing on and off until 7am the next morning, feeling much much better and ready to explore.

After breakfast I set of to look around the streets and found myself at Ben Than market after just about managing to negotiate the roads where there doesn't seem to be any system for pedestrians to get across at all, you just have to walk with determination and hope all of the motorbikes and cars and buses drive around you. It seems like every single person living in the city must own a motorbike, they are everywhere, hundreds and hundreds of them on the roads, parked by the cafes, in shop entrances and every step you take you hear a cry of 'you want a bike? you want a ride?', being taxied around on bikes is the usual mode of transport here although there are still some traditional cyclo's as well. The market was full of everything that I wanted to buy but I'm trying to be good and waiting until I get to Hanoi before I splash out. It's such a refreshing change to be somewhere where I can actually afford to buy a few things after being broke for 5 months. The food section of the market is not quite so appealing, huge chunks of meat being chopped up, fish being gutted and huge tubs filled with indescribable bits of fish and various creatures.

war remanents museum

I set off in the direction of the War Remanants Museum, opting for the slower cyclo as transport, it gave me a chance to take in the view as we went through the streets and the park. The museum was shut for lunch so another driver offered to take me round for an hour, showing me some temples and a few sights of the city. We went by Notre Dame Cathederal and stopped off at the Jade Emporer Pagoda place of worship with beautiful carvings and statues and a pool filled to the brim with tortoise, they were literaly crawling over each other in a big heap to try and get out of the water. Back at the museum and we were let in, I wasn't sure what to expect but I found myself captivated by photo after photo of soliders and the mess left behind after the war. Some of the American bombs, tanks and aeroplanes are on display in the courtyard but it's the pictures and accompanying words that are the really interesting bit, some of them I could barely look at and some were hard to tear your eyes away from and I began to get very upset by it all. At the end there's a room with a photo showing country after country all across the world having demonstrations , trying to put a stop to the war. I'm really glad I got to see that before I left as it left you with a bit of feeling of hope about the human spirit, otherwise it was a very harrowing experience. One man I met the next day said that he'd only managed to spend 5 minutes in there and had to leave as he couldn't bear to see it all and just sat outside and cried.

I got a cyclo back to the other side of town and had a sit down to try and get my head back to feeling normal, I had dinner at my hotel, noodle soup and spring rolls (something I've been eating an awful lot of since arriving here.....) and then went out for a few drinks at a local bar. There's a few bars in this area catering for the backpackers and tourists, there was a band playing covers of a few classic pop tunes and I sat on the balcony watching the world go by below, everything stays busy well into the night and it's perfect for people watching. I got chatting to a a guy, a professional basketball player from Singapore no less, who liked to talk a lot about his favourite subject - himself, I managed to get about 2 words in in 2 hours, very unusual for me! I ended up playing pool downstairs with some locals in the end, so far everyone has been really friendly and lovely and very funny. A few people I'd spoken to hadn't like Vietnam very much, finding the people very pushy and not as friendly as some other Asian countries but so far I've found everyone to be really nice and although there is a lot of emphasis on trying to get you to buy things they haven't been over the top about it.

staying above ground

I had to be up early the next morning to go on a trip to the Cu Chi Tunnels, a couple of hours drive away. I went with a small tour group led by our guide, Hi, he was really funny and really interesting, having fought in the war himself. The first tunnels were made in 1945 but the majority of them were dug out during the war and used by the Viet Minh as a way of keeping a safe hold near the city of Saigon, they were mainly used for fighting and for hiding from the opposition, in the end they had built about 250 kilometres of tunnels and tiny rooms to live in underground cris-crossing underneath the Cu Chi area. At the start of the tour they showed us a video, Hi warned us before hand that it was very very anti-American as there was a girl with us from New York but I haven't come across any bad feeling or hostiliy towards the Americans from anybody here now. We were taken around and shown bomb craters and various inginuative and stomach churning traps the Viet Minh came up with, they told us a lot about the lives of the soliders and the locals and then we were taken to a small section of tunnel. They've had to widen it in order for westerners to be able to fit inside, but it still looks tiny, you have to crouch down or crawl to move through them and they are very narrow. I went down into the entrance and waited for everyone else to go first and then set off, I got about 1 metre in and turned a corner and saw the tunnel leading off into the dark geting smaller and smaller and all the breath just left my body and I had to back out straight away and go up for air, there was no way I could stay down there and carry on. I didn't think I'd be able to do it so I'm glad I'd waited for everyone to go first so I didn't back up and step on anyones hands! You can crawl through 100 metres of tunnel, although there are exits every 30 metres along and every single person in my group who went down came up at the first exit. No one could manage to go any further as they were feeling so claustrophbic and hot and it felt like they'd been crawling for much longer. How on earth people had spend so much time in them for years and years is amazing. The intricate network of tunnels, rooms, airholes and smoke holes that they managed to build without any machinary is really incredible.

annie get your gun?

What I found very strange was that after being told about the terrible effects of the war at the end of the trip you are invited to buy some bullets and have a go with a rifle or machine gun on the firing range. Even just standing nearby the noise was so loud I jumped every time a shot rang out. Quite a few people from my group had a go, buying a handful of bullets, but I hope to go through my life never having to shoot a gun so I decided not to, also I was a bit worried I might shoot my foot due to my incurable clumsiness. Afterwards they were talking about it and I did feel that maybe it was an experience I should have had a go at, but I think really I'm glad I didn't.

a sting in the tale

After the tour we walked through a couple of market stalls selling souveniers, one of which was selling bottles of snake wine, it's a very strong wine that has a snake and various other creatures such as scorpions pickling in it, it's meant to be good for virility or something. A couple of us decided to give it a try and I managed to knock back a small glass - very quickly to avoid thinking about it too much. It tasted more like a spirit than wine but wasn't too bad, although having read a little more about it, it seems the way to make the wine involves mixing actual snakes blood with rice wine and then putting in another snake to pickle afterwards.....I suddenly don't feel too well..... That night I bumped into Cara, the girl from New York from the tour and a couple of guys who were on the tour as well and we sat drinking and chatting into the night, although I stuck to beer and stayed away from any wine with reptiles in it. It's hard to get normal wine out here and its very expensive if you do come across it, I am so looking forward to a nice bottle of wine when I get home after all this beer!

a river runs through it

After a bit of a late night in the bar it was a struggle to get up at 6am again ready for another trip, this time to the Mekong Delta for three days. There was quite a few of us on the bus, some people go for just one night, others for two and some people carry on into Cambodia rather than returning to Saigon. We travelled for a few hours down to My Tho area, everyone piled off the bus and onto two boats on the Mekong River on the Bao Dinh canal, we putted around for a while getting a chance to see the houses all built on stilts sitting at the edge of the river and then we got dropped off at to have a wander through a street side market. The guide reccomended trying the banana covered in sticky rice, cooked in a banana leaf and then covered in coconut milk and it was delicious. Back on the boats and we sailed around to Tortoise Island and went for a walk through the orchards and then sat down to some lunch in the gardens, noodles and veg and some fruit. In the afternoon we got into some smaller boats and headed off the main river into the smaller canals surrounded by coconut palms. It was so peaceful floating along, occasionaly there would be someone stood on the bank, children cycling past or women doing their washing in the river and everyone grinned at us and waved and said hello. I can't imagine everyone being that friendly back home if you were in your back garden and a whole load of tourists went by waving and staring and taking pictures.....

a closssssssssssssse encounter

In the afternoon we went to a little village where they make coconut candy, which tasted like caramel and was delicious and then sat down for tea and to listen to some traditional music and singing which was interesting but not the most tuneful thing I've ever heard. BUt the best bit of the afternoon was the Python, he was lying on the floor by the tree when we sat down for our tea and our guide, Mr Bihn picked him up and put him round his neck. He was a big fat thing and very long but I managed to summon up the courage to put him round my neck too, it felt very very strange and I couldn't relax at all, I do have photographic evidence of this but it's a terrible picture so I won't be putting it on here, but I did it! Its skin felt very strange around my neck, quiet rough when it moved and it was very heavy as well, I held his head away frmme as much possible but he kept trying to loop round which I didn't like very much..... I got my revenge though, that evening we stayed in Can Tho city and five of us went out for dinner and I had yet another snake encounter. James and Guy had snake stir-fry made with Cobra and I tried a bit of it, it tasted fine and had the consitancy of duck or something similar, but I couldn't stop thinking about what it was I was eating and it put me off, plus they had tanks with a load of snakes in and I felt a bit guilty.

markets and mountains

The next day we sailed through Cai Rang floating market where all the boats have a pole on top with whatever produce they have on board srtuck on the top of it, such as a pineapple or a banana, and they trade with each other, hopping from boat to boat. It seems to be mostly the women who are involved with all this, most of the people working the markets are women and a lot of the people rowing the smaller boats are women. I noticed in Saigon too that you see a lot of men sitting around chatting while the women were working, including building and road work. We had another lovely lazy boat trip around the small canals, stopping off here and there to look at various things such as how they make rice noodles, but it was just nice to sit back in the boat and take it all in, it also was a chance to cool down, it was very hot and humid all around the Mekong Delta area. In the afternoon we went to a crocodile farm for a quick stop, I hadn't really thought about there being any in the river but obviously there are. Then we drove on to Chau Doc and befoe checking in to the hotel we climbed up Mount Sam to watch the sun set over the paddy fields and look out to the Cambodian border. Its a very flat area all around the delat and then all of a sudden there's this mountain, it's not very high but looks pretty imposing because its the only bit of land that isn't completely flat. A lot of people were doing a shorter trip so there was only about 10 of us left by this point and it was great to just sit and chat as the sun went down, although the guide got us off the mountain pretty quickly afterwards so we could still see and before the snakes came out to play.

naked in the rain....

We all met up to go out for dinner in the evening and just as we were setting off to find somewhere to eat the heavens opened and it absolutley poured down. We waited for a while to see if it might pass but we were all too hungry so we got our waterproofs on and started walking, it had only been raining for about 20 minutes but it was already ankle deep in some places and coming down in sheets so we just ran into the first place we saw. My waterproof only comes down to my waist and I'd made the foolish decision to wear my white trousers so by he time we sat down to eat I just looked naked from the waist down, not a good look.

On the last day we sailed to see a floating fish farm and then went to a Cham minority village where they make the most beautiful silk cloth. They have a post by the rivers edge and there are marks on it to show how hight the water comes in each year, a lot of them were well over my head and so all of the walkways have to be raised up to cope with it each year. Most of the day was spent on the bus getting back to Saigon, by this time everyone was pretty tired as its early mornings and lots of moving around and hot and sticky but well worth it. Back in Saigon I went out for drinks with Aaron from the trip and then just had a lazy day the next day wanderng round the streets. In the evening I bumped in Aaron again and we decided to get the bus up to Mui Ne together the next day as we were both heading that way anyway, so that's my next stop.

I didn't really get to explore that much of Saigon, there are lots of museums and places to go but it was just nice to walk the streets and markets and get a feel of it all, although there was more I could do I was quite glad to be leaving and going up the coast to smaller and quieter places, out of the city. Originaly I planned to go to Dalat in the moutains but then I read about all the snow and the cold back in England and I decided to stick to the warmer coastal areas like mui Ne and try and keep warm for as long as possible before heading home!

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Photos

The entrance way down into the tunnels
I didn't get too much further....

Comments

[Mia]

almost home...
dear anna, both of us are almost home - though my experiences have been far less exotic than yours, the wilds of texas certainly have their moments ;) i can't wait to see you. but i am really going to miss reading your blogs - i have loved looking at your photos and being able to picture you in all these places. doesn't it make england seem small and cozy? i'll see you very soon. safe journey home. love mia xxx