Saigon (Ho Chi Min City)

To be honest at the start of the trip, Lee and I were going to give Saigon a miss. Turns out though that Andrew Lloyd Webber already did it 30 years ago. Thangyouverymuch, I'm here 'til Thursday.

Due to our extra time in Hanoi waiting on our trip to Halong Bay, we had to miss out a few of the delights that lie on Vietnam's coastline and we decided to fly south to Saigon straight from Hanoi. Given everything we know now, we would have headed straight to Saigon instead of going to the North first but 20/20 hindsight is indeed a rare commodity.

Saigon is a great wee place and also has plenty more to do than Hanoi. It's just as manic traffic-wise, but it has the wider streets that make it even more dangerous to cross as you have further to cross before you ended up posted on the front of boy's vespa. We only had three or four days in Saigon though so we wanted to make the most of it and Saigon is home to the War Remnants Museum, which isn't a particularly nice or uplifting places to go but they are definitely worth a visit if you want to get a sense of the hardships that this country has been through over the years.

Once we had found a nice enough hotel to stay at and gotten settled in, we headed off to catch up on some internet time (Lee si currently going through therapy to wean her off Facebook, I'm doing my best but Chloe, Rosie and Claire are not helping her beat the habit) and we'd also remembered that it was game 3 of the State of Origin Rugby series back in Australia so we tried and managed to find an Aussie Bar that was showing the game much to our surprise so we headed off to the pub on our first night in Saigon. Unbelievably, we had indeed found a genuine Aussie bar that was completely packed to the rafters for the game and had a 100% Aussie jukebox to go along with things as well so we could get our wee Oz-fix after all. We ended up leaving at closing time and rolling out of the pub with a half-gassed Aussie golf professional shouting at a taxi driver in Vietnamese and making sure that we didn't get ripped off for our cab ride home. The day after this night was spent in the hotel doing nothing of cultural interest in the slightest.

Hangovers gone, we headed off for a bit of sightseeing which included going to the War Remnants Museum and stopping off at Notre Dame cathedral on the way. There is a huge French influence in Vietnam and they have even gone as far as to name the Cathedral after the famous Parisienne monument. Thing is though, it looks nothing like the real thing and was, in fact, closed on this particular day so we had to make do with the War Museum. Thanks to films such as Platoon, Full Metal Jacket and Apocalypse Now, everyone's experience of the Vietnam War (or American War, as it is known here) has been from a uniquely American perspective. The Saigon War Remnants Museum is a pretty harrowing reminder that Vietnam also lost a few soldiers (1 million from the South and the same again from the North) during the conflict and in similarly gruesome ways. It''s a really worthwhile visit and the best thing that can be said about it is that it has not been built to condemn or vilify the Americans, it serves only to put their story across and it does it extremely well. Some of the pictures that are displayed in the museum are simply too graphic to put on here and you will need a strong stomach but it is one of those things that everyone should see, if only to make sure it doesn't happen again. There is also an amazing memorial to the hundreds of war photographers who lost their lives in the war and part of the display is is the photos that they shot in the moments before their deaths and some even show the photographers being administered the last rites and is extremely moving. Every picture has a story attached and you can spend hours in this one part of the museum alone.

Heading home to our hotel, the heavens decided that they were full up with water and dumped about 3 inches of rain on us in about 15 minutes and we were 30 yards from the shelter of an office building but what happens in these situations apparently is that all rules of the road are completely discarded and all the mopeds and bikes just mount the kerb and head for dry ground the same as you so you have to spring for shelter being overtaken by loads of bikes who can clearly travel faster than you can. It's no fair !! 2 dollars later we were appropriately attired in yellow poncho and walking home and decided that we should grab a bowl of Pho. Pho is an authentic Vietnamese soup that is served with beef, lime leaves, lemongrass and assorted veggies and greens and is quite frankly, spectacular. Dad if you're reading this, then I expect you to be fully versed in the preparation and cooking of good Pho by the time we get home. We'll do the tamarind fish and spring rolls and you can do the pho, it's a deal.

The next thing to do in Saigon is take a trip on the mighty Mekong River, and we decided to combine this trip with our next destination and travel up the Mekong and cross the border in Cambodia on water, a new border-crossing experience for us. We booked the trip through the travel desk at our hotel and were joined by an English couple who also were traveling the world without flying and had so far made it to Vietnam by taking a bus from London to Latvia and then taking the Trans Siberian Railway across Russia and through Mongolia and had thus far anded up in Vietnam catching a boat with us to Cambodia. Our trip advertised two days and one night on the Mekong River including a temple tour at My Tho and then a horse drawn carriage ride through an old village on the banks of the river followed by comfortable and interesting passage to Phnom Penh. So the next morning we are on the bus heading to our first port of call and the wee Vietnamese lady is up front and reading off the day itinerary and the four of us are looking at each other as it bears no resemblance to the trip that we had booked. A quick look around the bus told us that were not the only people in this situation so the tour guide was quickly summoned for an explanation. Turns out that the company that we had booked through did not have enough names booked to justify running their tour so what they did was they "sold" us to another tour company to boost the numbers on their tour. It would appear that this is common practice in these parts but it did take us some time to come to terms with the idea that we were now commodities to be traded in rather than valued customers.

After this startling information, the trip quickly descended into complete farce, and we soon found out that the "comfortable passage" part of the advert was a total myth as well. In the course of getting to Cambodia over two days, we were on no less than 5 buses and the same number of boats as well. We were told that we were headed to a floating fish farm on the river and this turned out to be a trapdoor in someones decking that held loads of fish in it and we were encouraged to throw fish food in and watch the fish thrash themselves into an early grave. We were also treated to a trip to a coconut candy factory which was at least informative if not rush-inducing. After these wonderous excursions, we were then herded onto a boat that consisted of two wooden benches running the length of the boat and we were then floated three bum-numbing hours west to the Vietnamese side of the border to have our passports examined and departure cards marked and then walked across the border to another boat and taken to the Cambodian side of the border to have our entry visas stamped and our passports examined. I think a few of the party were suicidal by this point and bearing in mind that the majority of the group were travellers who might have expected this kind of treatment, 5 of our group were a family of 2 grandparents, one parent and two older children who were on their holidays and must have been wondering if it was all worth it. It all king of boiled over at the border when the parent, who was Indonesian, was told that he would have to pay $25 to enter Cambodia, a charge that he hotly disputed as Cambodian's were not charged for entering Indonesia and this agreement was apparently reciprocal. Our guide told him that the rest of the group were fed up waiting and he and his family would be left behind if they did not pay so the guy brilliantly calls his bluff and comes and asks us if we were fed up. Everyone replied that they were more than happy to wait and futhermore that we were 100% behind his fight for justice for his family. This little incident was resolved when the boss of the border post, clearly annoyed that he had been disturbed from his TV watching, agreed to allow one of the kids to enter for free and we were back on our way, heading to Phnom Penh.

The contrast between Vietnam and Cambodia couldn't have been more marked. It may have had something to do with the fact that a huge cloud of cynicism had descended on our group due to the fact that the tour was nothing more than a rip-off and we had also been ditched by our tour guide at the border and sent up stream on our own. Everyone felt that all the people in Vietnam were out to relieve you of your cash at every opportunity and byt he end of the day we were all fairly glad to see the back of the place. Vietnam is a beautiful place by the way and the people and the food are lovely, but choose your trips carefully or you will be left with a slightly bitter taste when it's all over.

Making our way up river into Cambodia was a bit of a revelation, the riverside shanty towns were replaced by green fields and farmers washing their cattle in the river and kids running about in the scud racing down to the river to wave at us as we went past and it sounds daft but little things like this cheered everyone up no end. We just cruised up the rest of the river with our legs dangling over the edge, waving at kids and watching cows getting their daily dip after a hard days ploughing the fields.

The final leg of our journey into Cambodia was a bus journey to the centre of Phnom Penh and the reason for our many changes of vehicle became evident. We arrived at our destination around half six in the evening, battered and bruised and ready for some sleep and instead of dropping us off at the bus station, we are literally driven into the front yard of the drivers brother's cousin's wife's oldest son and surrounded by guys asking us if we want to be shown to our rooms even though we haven't booked one. The idea among these tours is to have you so uncomfortable by the end of your journey that you will be in no mood to go looking for a room and you will just make do with their accomodation. Lee and I plus Laura and Kate, two English girls who we'd been chatting to for the trip got ourselves out of the hotel and headed to a more lively and central location in Phnom Penh for some well earned sleep.

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