Stylish Saigon and the Mighty Mekong

Saturday 17th October 2009 - Monday 26th October 2009

Time was running out on my time in Vietnam, with my visa due to expire on 27th October, but before I left I decided I wanted a bit more of hill station goodness, (and a bit less humidity) so altered my original itinerary to fit in Dalat in the central highlands. The 'city of eternal spring', it is the honeymoon capital of Vietnam, and thus full of places with names like 'the Valley of Love' and other such kitch offers. It promised to be amusing, if nothing else. However, it was a bloody nightmare to get to. The bus which was meant to take 5 hours and arrive at 1pm actually arrived at 6pm, due to a 2 hour stop in the middle of nowhere because they'd mixed up their bus schedules, the appalling condition of the road, and finally, because our bus got a flat tyre at the last hurdle. I was not a happy bunny. The most infuriating thing was that the bus drivers don't even have the courtesy to apologise or explain what the problem is, let alone considering offering any compensation for their terrible service. And when you try and enquire as to what is going on, the drivers either just snapped at all or actually blanked you completely and pretended that you weren't there at all. By the end of the trip I was seriously considering whether it would be worth possibly getting arrested for the pleasure of kicking the driver in the balls when we finally arrived. Oh yes, and I also discovered during this trip (with a merry trill of slightly hysterical laughter) that I had been charged double the actual price of the bus by an unscrupulous tour company in Nha Trang. Fun times.

Don't worry though, this isn't going to be a moany blog. Having finally arrived and found myself a hotel room in Dalat which in its huge size and chilly atmosphere reminded me of Shimla in northern India, and thus made me feel instantly happier, I gave up, buried under a pile of blankets, and (I think for the first time this trip) turned on my TV, only to find 'Notting Hill' was just starting. Two hours later I was once again restored to perfect inner harmony and peace, ready to like Dalat, and the bus journey already forgotten. It is comforting to know that I am the sort of person who can be perked up simply by bad British rom coms and snuggling in a warm bed, although it somewhat casts a shadow over both my taste and my intellect. As a cure though, I think it not a bad one.

The next morning I arose bright and early and eager to see Dalat's sights. Of which, admittedly, are few and somewhat inferior. Not to be deterred however, I visited the nightmarish 'Crazy House' designed by an architect with a fetish for concrete and oversized animals with red glowing eyes in the bedrooms (I just know if I was ever foolish enough to take LSD that house would come along and eat me, possibly in concert with the water puppets from Hanoi), and the last emperor of Vietnam's summer palace, one of the most repulsively designed buildings I have ever come across. Man, the 1930s have a lot to answer for - the 'palace' looked like a block of post-war council flats. When the pictures eventually go up you'll see what I mean. From there I traversed the large lake around which Dalat is situated, and wandered round the uninspiring botanical gardens before making my way back to the towns. Despite the general unattractiveness of the place however, I actually really liked Dalat, and it was one of my favourite destinations in Vietnam. Firstly it was much cooler, which was a real bonus. Secondly it had bakeries. But thirdly I just really like the atmosphere of hill stations - more relaxed than their plains counterparts, fresher air and scenery, fewer people and quieter traffic. The city even had a mock imitiation Eiffel Tower over their post office. You gotta admire that, if nothing else. Oh, and I found a restaurant that sold locally made Dalat wine for about 50p a glass. It was god-awful wine to be sure, but it was wine all the same.

On my second full day however, I discovered the really nice parts of Dalat. Walking a few kilometres out of town, I took the 2.3km cable car to Tuyen Lam Lake, surrounded by beautiful scenery and pretty much deserted by both Westerners and domestic honeymooners alike. To be sure, there was nothing to actually SEE at the lake, but that was fine with me. I put the old ipod on and just went walking, admiring the views as I went. After this pleasant surprise of a day, I wished I could have had a little more time in Dalat to visit some more of the outlying areas. However, time was a-ticking and my bus to Saigon was due to leave the following morning.

Saigon was a surprise to me in many ways, but a good one. For some reason, whereas ''Hanoi'' to me conjured up an image of crumbling colonialism, and bustling markets and street-traders in conical hats, "Ho Chi Minh City'', to give the metropolis its official name, evokes a souless communist city of cement and drudgery. Of course, this was completely unfounded, Saigon retaining far more of the atmosphere of its colonial past and American occupation during the 60s and 70s than its northern counterpart, which had been independant since the 50s. Hence, I tend (like the majority of its inhabitants) to refer to the capital as 'Saigon' rather than the formal designation, as I think it describes it much more fittingly, in as much as a name can describe anything.

In any case, Saigon was suitably swish, with not only wonderful gateau-like buildings such as the Hotel de Ville and the amazing old post-office, but imposing neo-classical hotels and branches of Louis Vuitton and Gucci. There was even a Sheraton Saigon, whose 23rd floor bar I ventured up to to get a view of the lit city at night, but which I had to venture straight back down again after I discovered the cheapest thing they sold was a coke for 4 pound 50. The waiter gave me a suitably aristocratic look of contempt; it's a good job Coop wasn't there as she would have died of shame. Managed to sneak a couple of photos on the way out though! In contrast to my surroundings, I managed to find a supremely cheapo place to stay, in the bedroom of some sweet old lady's house down some back alley. A one up one down kinda place, the bottom floor was divided in two by a thin partition behind which her husband and her slept on a mattress whilst I was there; I had to ascend to my room by what was basically a ladder up the wall. She was a real cutie though and had a plate of some kind of fresh fruit waiting for me every evening when I got back.

I arrived in the late afternoon on Tuesday 20th, and explored the posh part of the city as dusk fell, doing the rounds more throughally the following morning with a walking tour of 'District 1'. This took me at mid-morning to the War Remnants Museum (formerly known as the War Crimes Museum), which I had been particularly, well, not exactly looking forward to, but interested in seeing. Unlike its counterpart in Hanoi, it focused less on the history of the war and more on the atrocities committed within it and the effects of chemical warfare on Vietnam's population. It was less propogandist too (apart from a few particularly ironic excerpts from the American Declaration of Independence about freedom and the rights of man that were prominantly displayed in key locations) but mostly let the photography and eyewitness reports speak for themselves. I thought it was actually done very well, although I'll admit I only lasted an hour and a half in there, having realised that I was likely to vomit if I saw one more picture of a baby so deformed it didn't even look human due to the effects of Agent Orange. War crimes indeed.

Having recovered slightly over a cup of strong coffee, I headed to the Reunification Palace after lunch, the seat of Vietnamese government and the location of the famous photo whereby two North Vietnamese tanks crashed through the gates on April 30th 1975, ending the Vietnamese War. The poor prime minister sat at his desk with his officers when the soldiers marched in, simply saying "I have been waiting to transfer power to you all morning". The soldier replied "There is no question of transferring power. You cannot transfer what you don't have". What a line huh? I bet I wouldn't have been able to come up with that on the fly. I probably would have said something entirely immature, like Nelson's "hur hur" from the Simpsons. This is why I'm not a politician.

Anyway, the Palace still stands as the seat of the current government, and you can take tours around its interior, complete with ballroom, helipad and bomb shelter basement. And who should I bump into on the way there but the Scousers, possibly experiencing their largest dose of daylight since the start of their trip. We took the tour together and then they headed back to bed whilst I continued tramping the pavements of Saigon down by the river. We met up that evening for drinks (thankfully this time with a lot more dignity on my part, though not on the part of a poor Geordie lad who had never played '21s' before) and arranged to see each other the following morning at the Chu Chi Tunnels, which we had independently arranged visits to.

The Chu Chi Tunnels are part of an immense network of underground tunnels near the capital that were dug by villagers to escape from American bombing. They became an essential part of the guerrila war, extending into American camps and used as a means of transporting supplies as well as hiding combatants. Massive in scope, they include kitchens (with smoke vents hundreds of metres away from the actual sites to avoid detection) meeting rooms and lethal, lethal booby traps with trapdoors that swing open to deliver the victim onto rows of fire-hardened and cruelly sharp bamboo spikes, often tipped with poison. To make up for the lack of propaganda in the War Remnants Museum, they had it a-plenty here, with a showng of a 1967 Vietnamese film glorifying the efforts of the villagers and crowning heroes as "champion American killers" etc. I wonder how it must feel for those American vets and their children who visit these places and have had parents or friends killed by booby traps and guerillas, many believing that they were there helping the grateful South Vietnamese against oppression? I'm glad I'm not one of them. Then we were given a chance to travel through a 100m length of the tunnels, which have been enlarged to about 1 metre in height. I knew I wasn't going to enjoy it, but given that I've been so good at conquering my claustrophobia lately I decided to give it a go. Well these tunnels are just over shoulder size in width, pitch black, about 6 metres underground, very hot, and you have to go through them in a kind of crouch. I lasted about 15 metres. Then I saw a ray of light coming down from a side exit and dove for it like a drowning man for oxygen. Nearer the end of the 100m course the tunnels get to about 12m underground and reduce to their original height of half a metre. You have to crawl on your hands and knees to get through them. And the villagers lived in these things for 10 YEARS, only coming out at night! I think I would have just let the Americans take me.

After this nightmare-inducing experience, we arrived back in Saigon in the afternoon, where I did some shopping in the nearby markets before accidentally passing out on my bed at 6pm and not waking til 6am the following morning. I am clearly getting pathetic in my old age. Either that or my 15m in the tunnels that morning had deprived me of oxygen.... Due to this sadly did not get to partake of a goodbye beverage with the Scousers, as their visa expired that day, which was a shame. Instead I spent my final day visiting a market purveying second hand combat gear supposedly nabbed from GIs during the war (in actual fact t-shirts with "US Army" legends hastily ironed on them) and getting a massage from a local community project that trains the blind in massage skills. Only about 2 quid and excellent too - the girl was flipping rough! In the evening I gave in to the need for a bit of Western comfort and went to the cinema. The following day I was off southwards to the Mekong Delta.

The Delta is the final third in the triumvirate of Vietnam (the very distinct north, central and south), and it's most recently occupied. Originally part of the now absorbed Hindu/Islamic kingdom of Champa, with its far west once forming part of Cambodia, it was conquered by the Vietnamese from the north in the 17th century, and still counts significant numbers of Cham communities amongst its 20 million inhabitants. A vast plain interrupted by the two great arms of the Mekong, as well as innumerable smaller channels, life in the Delta is dominated in every facet by the river, which provides food, water for humans and livestock, irrigation from crops, and a means of transport.

Not being a particularly organised-tourey kind of person, I had planned to see the Delta independently, but having come across a 3 day tour itinerary of the Sinh Cafe in Saigon that ended in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, I realised that not only would I see a lot more of the Delta by going with a guide, it would also probably work out a hell of a lot cheaper. Even more convincingly, it would (hopefully) get me over the border and into Cambodia without all the hassle of acquiring a visa and probably being overcharged for it that would occur if I had attempted it independently. Thus convinced, I surrended myself to what I expected would be crowds of tourists and a rushed inauthentic experience of the Mekong... for convenience and cost. I'm so ashamed.

As it happened though, I enjoyed the trip a lot, and in hindsight realise it was by far the better decision. We set off by coach on Saturday 24th to Cai Be, where we boarded a small boat that chugged us around the floating market there. Every family in the Mekong owns a boat in preference to a car, and thus traders of wholesale goods such as turnips, bananas and even petrol simply moor their boats in the middle of the river, hoisting an example of their wares on the top of a bamboo stick so that everyone can see what is being sold, and then allow the smaller family-owed boats to come to them. We then puttered on further down the Mekong to visit local workshops where they demonstrated how famous Vietnamese goods like coconut candy was made, rice processed, and so on, before we drifted through the islands, stopping for lunch on one of them, and then transferring back to the coach at Ving Long to travel onwards to Can Tho. Admittedly the workshops were like sideshow attractions for tourists, but they provide a good way for local people to make a little extra income, so I couldn't begrudge them too harshly. Also, you got free samples of the sweets and shots of snake wine, so I wasn't going to complain. Snake wine, by the way, is a famous Vietnamese brew reported to increase male strength and fertility, whereby a live snake or scorpion is caught and drowned in a bottle of liquor, so that the wine absorbs its venom. You then drink the wine whilst the snake lies suspended in the liquid staring at you with evil red eyes. I can confirm that it tastes like, well... petrol. Can't say I felt particularly fertile either, though I don't suspect my testoserone levels need upping any further.

Despite the relatively small size of the Delta, journeying within it is a lengthly process, as where bridges have not yet been built, ferries must be used to transport cars and lorries across the countless rivers. As each ferry can fit about 2 lorries on it, the traffic queues for these would make a priest cuss his maker. At least on a tour we had a guide who spoke English to explain what the delay was to us and how long it would take; I know if I had been on my own on a public bus I would have worked myself up into an absolute fury with everyone and everything at what the hold-up was. In any case we arrived in Can Tho, the premier town of the Delta, about 5pm, so I was able to take a wander around the darkening and surprisingly bustling city, and get myself some food and a couple of beers on the riverfront.

The next morning we were up early to head by boat to Cang Rai floating market near Can Tho, which was smaller but more busy than Cai Be, with lots of smaller boats buzzing around and providing glimpses of massive piles of melons or coconuts being loaded and unloaded. We then set off on a lesuirely trip through the backwater canals around Can Tho, which was supremely relaxing and reminded me a lot of a similar boat ride I had taken in Kerela, southern India. It was all palm trees and tropical greenery and fishing boats, so it felt very Apocolypse Now, the most it had done in all Vietnam. I put a little of the Doors on my ipod to fully appreciate the moment... All the kids here were running out of their houses to wave and shout hello to us, which made me feel a little like the Pope dispensing my regal largress to the people, but I found myself wondering just what is it these people really think of boatloads of tourists like us. Are they happy that people want to come to Vietnam, and grateful for the economic opportunities that tourism brings, or do they see it as a defeat of everything they fought for for half a century? Like our tour guide at the Chu Chi tunnels, whose father and grandfather had been VC, I wanted to ask them whether they were proud to show off the exploits of the previous generation, or whether they considered themselves sellouts to capitalism and Americanism, betrayers of the efforts of their fathers. Of course, there was no way I *could* ask people that, but the tour guides explanations that the tourism authorities are desperate to emulate Thailand's success as a holiday destination suggests that the government at least don't see it as a problem.

We did a little more craft seeing before lunch, then I and an older (very sweet) French couple left the rest of the group and joined a new bus that would take us to Chau Doc on the Cambodia border. This was another long journey with multiple ferry crossings, so we didn't make it to Chau Doc before dark and didn't get to see a lot of it, but thankfully this group was smaller, and fun and mostly English-speaking, unlike the mostly domestic tourist contingent that had formed the majority of the earlier part of the tour. We all went out to dinner together to celebrare our last night in Vietnam - I had Mekong eel hotpot - then took a short walk around the town centre before turning in. I was bunking up with an Irish lad named Kevin, but I think he regretted it after I slept-walked in the middle of the night and told him it was 6am and we had to get up when really it was only midnight. Poor lad. He'd only just dropped off. Anyway, come the real 6am and we were off again. It was a shame in that Chau Doc sounded nice and I would have liked to have explored a bit more of it and its surrounds, but I had already seen a lot more of the Delta than I would have done travelling on my own. Plus I didn't have to go throw the whole demoralising experience of bargaining for a boat everywhere I went, never fun. Our final morning we took rowboats out to nearby floating villages, where the houses are built out in the middle of the river with big cages underneath where they rear fish, and then onto a Cham weaving village. Very relaxing and a lot quieter than the cities, though less fun, I imagine, when there was a storm on the river. Even now, right at the end of the wet season in the Mekong, we had violent rain and lightning storms every afternoon that lasted for hours. Nice seen from the windows of a coach as dusk falls and the lightning illuminates the clouds, but less fun when your bed is tipping as if you've drunk a bottle of vodka, I imagine. From there we started out on our long, LONG boat trip up the Mekong to the Cambodian border and onto Phnom Penh, where we would arrive late that night.

So that was Vietnam, another month over of my trip, and with only 12 days left before I was due to fly home. It's an intriguing country in many ways, particularly in its attitudes towards its past and its present: the commie propoganda of the war museums compared with the KFC's in its city centres; its hatred of occupation, yet its self-identity as a conquering nation that had triumphed over its Cham and Cambodian neighbours; its welcome of Western tourists, yet its official tirade against the imperialist and genocidal Americans. I found this fittingly embodied by the small boy who was helping his father try and sell us cold drinks during our trip around Cang Rai floating market, who to win our affection and try and get us to make a purchase, stood up and gave us an American military salute. The horrors of the past as a money making ploy for the present? Perhaps the biggest shame about Vietnam was the fact that this was not something I was able to ask people their opinions about....

Oh, p.s. I'm sure there are HUNDREDS of spelling mistakes in here, but this computer aint sophisticated enough to use Travelblog's spellchecker, and I got better things to do, alright? :o)

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Part of trip: Japan and Vietnam

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