Sin chao from Vietnam (2)

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Good day all,

now my trip in Vietnam is coming to an end, next is Cambodia.

After l left Hanoi I went straight to Hoi An, which is in central Vietnam. Hoi An is a little, but charming town....many old buildings, there is a big (bit smelly) market and the roads are full of holes. There is not a lot to do in the city, but there is something about it that I liked. Hoi An used to be an important trading harbour from ca. 1500 to 1900 but never grew into a big city. The place has only about 100.000 people and is visited by most tourists travelling through Vietnam. The riverfront is filled with dozens of bars and restaurants. Many small family-runned restaurants can be found all over town, as well as many craft shops selling local produced handicraft. Hoi An is famous for it’s tailors. Here you can get good quality suits, dresses etc. made for a very good price. One morning I went to the My Son ruins (pronounced as “mee son”), which are about 30km outside Hoi An. The whole complex was built between years 600 and 1300, when the Champa (a Polynesian & Malay Kingdom) was ruling central Vietnam. The Americans, during the Vietnam War, destroyed most of My Son. Only about 25 of the 70 buildings survived the bombings. The Americans suspected that there were people hiding in the buildings and it was true. Today you can still see some craters left from the US bombs. The site is on the Unesco World Heritage list.

In the bus heading to Hoi An I met with Gidi from Israel, who surprisingly enough knew where Curaçao was it wasn’t necessary to pull out my little map. He met a guy from Curacao while travelling in Mexico and a girl from Aruba in Costa Rica, that’s why he knew already about the islands. We shared a hotel room together and spent time in the town. When travelling alone you always meet people which are travelling alone as well and you easily make contact. Double hotel rooms, with air-condition and own bathroom cost around US$ 10 per night, same price for single rooms. That means that if you have someone to share a double room with, you pay only $5 per person. Of course I wouldn’t look for someone to share a room with all the time, it depends who/how the person is. You can’t get to know a person in a few hours, but when talking to someone in the bus at least you get an impression of how the person is and if it’s someone you’d share a room with or not.

After spending two days in Hoi An I moved on to Nha Trang, which is the probably the most touristy part of Vietnam. It’s a city with just over 300.000 people and borders a 3 km sandy beach. The beach itself is not very nice but off the coast there are some islands which have beautiful beaches and where you can dive and snorkel. I didn’t visit the islands due to the weather. The place is not very Vietnamese because it's touristy. There are many more hotels being built and in a few years the place will become very busy. It was the end of the low season with high season starting soon, so Nha Trang was not very busy. The Miss Universe Beauty show was held earlier this year in Vietnam and the finals were in Nha Trang; you can still see taxi’s driving around with Miss Universe stickers on the front. Venezuela won the title. Unfortunately during my stay in Nha Trang the weather was very bad, I was told about this since I was in Hanoi by other travellers who were travelling northbound. I stayed only one night here, although the weather showed signs of improvement it remained cloudy so I decided to leave to Ho Chi Minh City the next day.

Ho Chi Mihn City (HCMC), for most locals still called Saigon, is the largest city of Vietnam. The name of the city was changed from Saigon to HCMC back in 1976, after the reunification of North-and South Vietnam. About 8 million people live here and it's far more modern compared to Hanoi. The traffic is as bad as Hanoi though; millions of scooters all over the place but the air pollution seem a little bit less here...it “seem”, but maybe that’s just my idea. There is a huge project going on: the HCMC metro, the first line is due to finish in 2014 to give the city a modern public transport system and to ease the traffic jams in the city (scooter jams 😉 ). There are far more parks and green areas here in HCMC and many more posh, class hotels, shops etc. for those locals and foreigners who have a thicker wallet than we do. The Ben Thanh Market is the place to be for people with a thin, skinny wallet like I do. It’s big and you’ll find everything here. Even if you don’t need to buy anything, it’s always great to walk through the markets. Like in Hanoi and all other parts of Vietnam I’ve been to, people try to sell you stuff all the time. Many of them sell the same stuff. Another thing is that there is a lot of begging in HCMC, much more that in Hanoi....I can’t remember that I’ve been asked for money in Hanoi at all. There are many little kids as well, asking money or wanting to sell you chewing gum or tissue papers. Even late at night, at 11pm, a little girl came to me and after a little boy. You’d easily think: “Shouldn’t they be in bed already?” But maybe they don’t have one. Today I saw a mother sleeping on a piece of cartboard and her child next to her. The scooter drivers here always ask you if you need a ride to somewhere, always, the whole time. When you're walking around, within 5 minutes at least 10 of them will ask you: “Hello, motorbike”? Or they say “hello my friend, where are you from”? in an attempt to ask you where you’re going and saying that they can bring you for very cheap. I’ve done it a couple of times when I really wanted a ride, but you just need to make sure that you negotiate the price before getting on the scooter otherwise they'll charge you prices which are too expensive for Vietnamese standards. Basically you'll sit behind the driver, you get a helmet as well and he drives you to your destination through the crazy traffic in town. Also very common in Vietnam, like in Thailand, are drivers that come to you, especially during the evening and saying: “hello, you want lady tonight, massage, boom-boom”? There is a lot of prostitution in these countries and they have a reputation for sex-tourism. Apparently in Cambodia it’s even worse. It’s very common to see fat, white men together with a 20 year old local girl walking around, holding hands. The bad thing is that there is a lot of child prostitution too....although I’ve never seen anything because I guess it obviously doesn’t happen openly. It’s disgusting.

In the bus to HCMC I met with Marcial and Juan from Chile. They have been working & travelling in New Zealand for a couple of months and saved some money...now they’re travelling around Asia for a while too but are going back to New Zealand after. They had the same kind of visa that I had for Australia, which allows them to travel and work in NZ for 12 months. They’re both from Santiago and recently graduated: Marcial is a civil engineer and Juan is a physical education teacher. We stayed at the same hotel and spend time in the city together, especially looking all around for some nightlife which of course was hard to find during the week. We stopped at three different bars and had some local beer, played some pool etc.
We also visited the Cu Chi Tunnels together. These tunnels are located in the Cu Chi area, about 70 km northwest of HCMC. They first tunnels were built in late 1940's for the members of the national liberation movement to hide from the French air and ground attacks; and later they were the base of the former leadership and Party Committee of Cu Chi District for their accommodation and meetings. The tunnels resisted against the enemy (the Americans). It’s a unique and huge system of connecting tunnels, deeply underground, with several floors and a total of 200km of tunnels. Many people "lived" in those tunnels. Bedrooms and kitchens were made and most things needed to built and maintain the tunnels were stolen from US bases or troops. Life in the tunnel wasn't easy of course, many died due to malaria. The locals made a lot of weapons against the Americans, and also a lot of deadly traps which I found very clever. I was impressed by the traps, a lot of US soldiers have either died or got seriously injured by these traps. Locals also shot and threw grenades at many Americans and killing them, and putting mines too which again killed many Americans and destroyed some tanks. The entrances to the tunnels were very small and narrow, and covered with a lid with grass attached to it. Americans did notice the tunnels and tried several times to destroy the tunnel system. The Cu Chi area was bombed with US Airforce aircrafts, then they tried to flush water and gas into the tunnels, then they used "tunnel rats" which were small, skinny people to fit in the tunnels. None of these things worked, as the tunnels had a very good air filtration system and many many traps that killed or injured the Americans. Then the Americans made a much stronger bombardment of the area and this exposed some parts of the tunnel system and other parts collapsed. But still most of it was still standing because the Americans had no clue of how big and deep the whole tunnel system actually was.
At the Cu Chi Tunnels they had a shooting field as well, where you could buy 10 bullets to shot with a gun. Marcial, Juan and I shared 10 bullets and we all shot....the sound is incredibly loud. It was a AK47.

Another place I visited was the War Remnants Museum. There are mostly pictures here and the museum wasn't very big. All kinds of stories and pictures during the war were shown here and it was “very, very sad”. Two million innocent Vietnamese were killed, another two million injured. Some of the pictures and stories were a bit shocking....the saddest to me was a picture with some women, all with very terrified faces and holding their children....and the text under the picture, quoting the photographer, says: “Guys were about to shoot these people. I yelled “Hold it” and shot my picture’. As I walked away, I heard M16’s (guns) open up. From the corner of my eyes I saw bodies falling, but I didn’t turn to look”. I thought “Why? Why did they shoot them? What did they do? Come on. There were also many pictures of US aircrafts spraying chemicals over large areas of Vietnam; extremely toxic chemicals which killed huge amounts of nature areas and also killed tens of thousands of Vietnamese people....and others were born with serious diseases or handicapped because of those chemicals. Other pictures showed people affected and burned by biological bombs dropped by the US: napalm and phosphorus bombs. In another section of the museum they displayed pictures of huge anti-war protests from all over the world...pictures of protests in nearly all European countries were shown, many African and Asian countries too and some Latin American countries. “Yanki’s FUERA de Vietnam” was written on a banner in Venezuela and “Vrede in Vietnam” in Amsterdam. This all happened more than 30 years ago, but I felt a lot of anger when in the museum. The Vietnam War didn’t make sense at all, there’s absolutely no way that USA can ever justify what they’ve done in Vietnam and to the Vietnamese people...it’s a shame! WTF were they thinking? USA should have mind their own business and leave Vietnam alone.
The good thing is that Vietnam is living in peace today, after suffering a lot from all kinds of wars and torture....starting with French imperialists who left the country in 1954, then the Americans for ten years from 1963 to 1973 and then the Chinese decided to attack in 1979.


Anyway, tomorrow I’m catching the early bus to Cambodia and it will take 6 hours to get to the capital of that country. Take care all and be all right.


Have a nice day,
Elton

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