Advertisement
Published: April 4th 2008
Edit Blog Post
Freaky Rabbit
Sights like this appeared all over Dalat. (Catherine)
Before we arrived in Vietnam, we'd heard that it was difficult to get off the tourist trail and this proved to be true. At first, we travelled on local buses but we soon discovered it was actually cheaper (as well as being quicker and a lot more comfortable) to use tourist buses. For just a few dollars a journey, tourist buses will pick you up at your hotel and drop you in the centre of town at your destination. Every hotel and guesthouse also arranges really cheap tours to all the major sights and attractions (inevitably stopping at some handicraft factory along the way!) - if you want to do them on your own you end up paying at least four times as much.
Although our bank balance benefitted, Vietnam didn't feel like independent travel at all. One person we met described it as being herded through the country and at times, that's exactly how it felt!
It wasn't the experience we'd been hoping for, but Vietnam was full of surprises. As we headed south, things seemed to get more and more surreal...
Hoi An This World Heritage site has a lovely old town and a
really pretty riverside with lots of restaurants serving the best Vietnamese food we've had. Its main industry is tailoring and there are streets and streets lined with shops that will make made-to-measure clothes in 24-hours. Because competition is so fierce, everywhere you go you hear cries of, "Hello, come into my shop",'"Hello, you want skirt?"and, my personal favourite, "Hello, you spend your dollars!"
The highlight of our stay was a trip to the nearby Cham ruins of My Son. We opted to go on a tour for $4 each rather than paying $25 to make our own way there. There were about 50 of us and the guide even held up a brightly coloured flag so we wouldn't lose him - very embarrassing for independent travellers like ourselves!
My Son is an ancient holy city and was a very atmospheric place, although we had to be very clever with our camera angles to make it look like we were the only ones there!
Da Lat I think this has to be the craziest place in the whole of Vietnam! The town itself is nothing special - very busy with motorbikes everywhere - but the kitsch sculptural architecture
that seems to be everywhere makes it a great place to spend a surreal few days.
The photos sum it up better than words can, but as a quick overview: we visited a waterfall with huge plastic jungle animals and men dressed up as cowboys; met a crazy monk who has spent the last 47 years living on his own in a pagoda painting thousands of pictures; drank in a labyrinthine of a bar that could have been straight out of Alice in Wonderland, and stayed a night in the Crazy House hotel where you can climb inside a giant giraffe!
Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) Although it's not the capital city, more people live here than in Hanoi. The sheer number of motorbikes means you have to keep your wits about you wherever you are - they ride the wrong way down streets, mount pavements and pull out in front of you without warning. I swear they also speed up to scare you when you're crossing the road!
Fed up of organised tours, we bought a map and explored the city on foot. We also went on a trip to the Cu Chi tunnels, a vast
My Son
You'd never guess there were four coach parties wandering around the ruins! network of tunnels used by the Viet Cong during the war. At its height, the tunnel system stretched from Saigon to the Cambodian border. The narrow tunnels in Cu Chi covered more than 200km and incorporated kitchens, control rooms and artillary rooms.
We had the opportunity to climb into one of the secret entrances and crawl through a small section of the tunnels. Inside it was really hot and pitch black and we had to feel our way through. Matt felt something fly past his head and we later found out that bats live in there - I'm so glad I wasn't told that before we went in! There is also a longer section of the tunnel which has been widened for tourists (although it's still a bit of a squeeze!) and includes a scary downhill bit. There are a few exits along the way for people who have had enough and want to get out but we both managed to make it to the end.
We also saw examples of some of the traps that the Viet Cong used to snare American soldiers - very gruesome - and Matt fired a round on an AK47 at the
shooting range.
On our last day in HCMC we caught a local bus to Dam Sen Park to see some ice sculptures. We'd expected it to be a normal park with grass and trees but it was actually a theme park with a roller coaster, boating lake, dodgems, ferris wheel, haunted house and loads of over exciting things! It was a bit like visiting Blackpool Pleasure Beach out of season as there weren't many people there at all. The ice sculptures are kept in a huge freezer room and were really impressive. The theme was monuments from around the world and sculptures included a pyramid, Chitchen Itza in Mexico, the Colosseum and Petra in Jordan. Inside the ice were brightly coloured neon lights which made everything glow. It was a fascinating place and we stayed until our fingers and toes went numb!
Goodbye Vietnam We've had some interesting experiences in Vietnam and have notched up a few more travelling firsts - first time on a sleeper bus (great fun for an hour, then just uncomfortable!), first time on the back of a motorbike (not fun at all!) and first thunder storm (luckily we were inside). It was very
different to neighbouring Laos and while we're pleased we spent some time here, we're equally pleased to be moving on!
Advertisement
Tot: 0.306s; Tpl: 0.014s; cc: 7; qc: 45; dbt: 0.1782s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
Georgie
non-member comment
Crazy crazy house
Oh my god I can't believe you stayed in the crazy house. We visited there and I loved it and wanted to stay there (instead we were in an identikit Viet hotel). And I never knew about the crazy bar either. The neon ice sculptures look cool too.