A legend turns thirty...

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And so to current affairs: you may be aware that this last weekend saw the 30'th birthday of a world class sportsman - one of the best looking and glamourous men on earth, and a style icon to millions
Yes - I turned 30!!! (and so did David Beckham, apparently)

anyway, more about that later..

But first to South Vietnam - and the ancient trading port of Hoi An. This charming city was founded on the cloth and silk trade, and has influences from Chinese merchant associations, the Japanese, and more recently, the French. As a result, the crumbling yellow paint peels off splendid old houses, the streets are narrow and the fish market sat on the river gives an authentic taste (and smell!) of rural life here.

But even with the chinese temples, the pretty Japanese covered bridge, and the numerous pagodas scattered over town, there is only one real attraction for tourists here - Clothes Shopping.
Apparently, this is one of THE places in Asia to stock up your wardrobe - and dont the Vietnamese know it! At the last count, there were over 400 tailors in this small city. The streets are awash with the bright colours silk dresses, and elegant suits on display in the shopfronts.

Once established in a hotel, we set about our task. With my return to the rat race only a couple of months away, I needed kitting out with some new clobber - and Rachael apparently needed loads of new clothes as well (though she couldnt give a practicable reason WHY!). We had been recommended a tailor, and went for our first meeting. Well, basically, it took 3 days and a few fittings, but we ended up with around 18 kilos of gear. Suits, shirts, trousers, dresses, etc etc.. all made to measure. I even bought a couple of pairs of hand made shoes to go with it all... and the price was a fraction of what I'd pay in London for the same amount.. I even got shirts made with a rather unusual button down double cuff, which I had only ever seen James Bond wear in Goldfinger - but this was no challenge for Van, the lovely lady who made our gear - the cuffs were perfect.
We eventually shipped all our stuff, on from Saigon, and I can only pray that the Vietnamese postal service doesnt lose my precious suits!

Aside from retail therapy, Hoi An has a load of charming colonial style bars and restaurants, to help shopaholics unwind after a long day - and in one of these, we celebrated Rach's 26'th birthday with a decent meal and some cocktails.

Needing to get out of Hoi An before the credit cards melted, we decided on some beach based down-time. We took a bus and stopped in the coastal resort city of Na Trang - lovely beach, but a town based around a military air base, karaoke, and sex tourism. We moved on after a day to the much quieter and laid back beach of Muine - a weekend getaway for Saigon's rich. Kind of like a Vietnamese Byron Bay, basically. The beach did fill up at the weekend, mainly because it was a special 4 day holiday for the 30'th Anniversary of Re-unification.

Anyway, with time ticking on, we jumped on a bus, and exactly 30 years and 1 day after the North Vietnamese Army, I too arrived in Saigon (or Ho Chi Minh City, as the government, and only the government calls it).

Saigon - Vietnam's largest city, and loudest, and noisiest, and has twice as many motorbikes as Hanoi (4 million Hondas!!) - and they're all ridden just as badly. (15,000 Vietnamese a year die as a result of bike crashes). Amongst the neon and the noise, it has some nice touches - some good museums, lovely old colonial hotels, and decent nightlife as well. It's not as seedy as when it relied solely on the input of dollars from American GI's on leave, but it still has a vibrant energy to the place.

With only a couple of days, we quickly went around the city, soaking up the Re-unification Anniversary Spirit. There were open air concerts, the odd march past, and millions of Vietnamese flags, and some brilliant propaganda posters. I love these posters (I've bought a couple) - they are off the communist school - and invariably feature a strong jawed soldier/peasant, a woman working cheerfully in the fields, and the figures of Lenin and or Ho Chi Minh looking down benevolently on their utopian society. There are so many posters of "Uncle Ho" surrounded by cute children and white doves, it starts to get a bit, well, funny. I am NOT accusing the father of the nation of anything untoward, (in case the secret police are reading this!) but the poster designers might want to tone down the cute kid content - in these paranoid times it would be very easy for people to read too much into all these posters, and next thing you know - Ho Chi Minh has become the Michael Jackson of politial ideology.

Anyway, we visited the Presidential Palace (now the Reunification Palace) where the communist tanks broke in on April 30, 1975. It stands as a temple to the corrupt government which the US ended up having to prop up, and to the awful kitch furnishings of the 60's and 70s. The hilariously one sided documentary video is worth a look as well.
On a more sombre note, we also visited the war museum (only recently it was still known as the "American War Crimes Museum") and it was really harrowing - the photos of the conflict, and especially the deforming effects of Agent Orange and other defoliants on newborn children were really hard hitting.

After taking refuge from the baking sun for a few hours, we then headed out, and bought around 100 dvds, cds and computer software - for use in our upcoming Sydney apartment. They literally can copy anything for you, and the quality isnt too bad - and you cant complain when you get the greatest hits of Clearance Clearwater Revival for only 60p!

And so to my birthday

Turning thirty is a haunting experience. You're suddenly aware of your mortality, and the realisation that your boyhood dreams just wont come true. And I went through this realisation in a pokey hotel room thousands of miles from home. Waking up, I felt like Martin Sheen in the opening scene of Apocalypse Now - unable to clear my head of the horror of what I'd become.. and the Doors echoed around my mind - "This is the Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeend."

Still, I was still alive, so we set out on a tour of the Cu Chi tunnels - a vast complex of combat tunnels used by the Vietcong only 40km from Saigon throughout the war. Despite colossal bombing from the Americans, and the use of sniffer dogs and "tunnel rats" combat teams, the tunnels remained in use all the way through the war. The tunnels themselves were deep, hot, and very very cramped. I only just managed to squeeze into the tunnel entrance, (they were built for the skinny Vietnamese, not rugby players in their 30s!) and once inside, was on hands and knees most of the way. It wasnt very pleasant down there, and must have been terrifying when the Amercan patrols were on the surface. As well as the tunnels, we saw how the VC crafted shoes from old car tires, and how they built simple, but horribly effective booby traps to kill Americans.

The other attraction at the Cu Chi tunnels is the firing range, the oppurtunity to fire old American and Vietnamese weapons. Now I consider myself a non-violent man - and having seen the war museum, and the tunnels, I was really not comfortable with the idea of handling weapons that had inflicted so much misery on the world. But thankfully the 11 year old boy in my head took charge, saying "it's my birthday, and I wanna fire some guns!!"
So I fired 10 deafening rounds from an AK-47, and a short, magically exhilarating burst on an M-30 machine gun. The warriour/ hunter gatherer in me was stirred, and I must admit I thoroughly enjoyed it!! Back in Saigon, Rach treated me to a posh sushi meal, and by the time the day was over, I was nearer to coming to terms with the big fat 3 that sits at the front of my age!

The next day, we left Saigon for a 3 day trip to the Mekong Delta, and over to Cambodia. We could have done this journey independently, but sheer lazyness meant we booked it through a travel agent - and it turned out to be very very dull. The Mekong delta is a vast alluvial plain criss crossed with rivers, canals, waterways, and paddy fields. It's quite scenic, but nothing more. There is the occassional floating market, where farmers sell their crops from their battered old boats - we visited a couple of these, and they were pretty interesting actually - but the "on the bus, off the bus" nature of the tour made it completely sterile. And when we had a visit to a coconut candy factory, followed by a crap meal of burnt spring rolls, and a staged presentation of "traditional Vietnamese singing" (it was absolutely terrible) - we realised we needed to get off the beaten track again.

Our Mekong trip was in many ways a microcosm of our whole visit to Vietnam. As a result of it being very long and very thin, Vietnam has a well established tourist trail - and it's pretty difficult to get off it. You could do so, but you'll not find too much to see or do. As a result, along the length of the country, you have a network of cafes, hotels, tour agents etc.. that despite your best efforts to be independent, you find yourself shuttled between.

The success that Vietnam has had in attracting tourists to it's shores means that despite our 3 weeks here, we still feel a bit detached from the "real" Vietnam. We have met some wonderfully warm and friendly people, but unfortunately some more who just see Western tourists as a walking walllet. But I guess that with only a day or 2 in each town, we see the latter rather than the former - I guess, with hindsight, that we've seen Vietnam a bit too quickly..

Very glad I've come here, though..

anyway, enough philosophical musings.. (hey, I'm all grown up now, I'm allowed the odd ramble!) we're off to Cambodia!!

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