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Published: December 16th 2008
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Marcel and I messing around on Cat Ba IslandBack in mozzie country!! Yes that's right, after a nice 2 or so weeks of cool breezes and itch-less limbs we now sit in the great 'Kingdom of Cambodia' awaiting the next bite with the enthusiasm of a child attending a good mass!
After our mammoth mountaintop cross country journey we were spewed onto the streets of Hanoi at an ungodly hour. After shacking up with friends we had made the journey with, we all decided to explore the city and see what the famous Hanoi had to offer. The city itself can be compared to Bangkok in its intensity of vehicles, people, street food and noise. First thing one notices upon deployment in this mecca is the multitude of mopeds, the noise and the cancerous pollution left by them. I heard a fact that there are more than 6 million mopeds on the streets of Hanoi. This makes for some interesting road crossing experiments. Forget what you learned with the 'Safe Cross Code' in primary school. In Hanoi its every pedestrian for themselves. You look at the onslaught of roaring Honda's, close your eyes and step confidently across the street. And sure enough like something from a Indiana Jones
Sunest
Sunest over Cat Ba Town movie, you are able to cross the seemingly impassible path. Bikes literally dodge you rather than vice verse! Whole family's at times on one bike looking on at the silly westerners taking so long to cross a "normal" road. Hanoi has much to offer in the way of museums (Many of which are dedicated to the revered Ho Chi Minh) we visited these along with the old "Hanoi Hilton'', a prison in the city centre with a named coined by American POW's (including John McCain). Much more can be said about the capital of Vietnam, but with your attention to keep I must move swiftly on to Cat Ba island.
Set south of the world heritage site of Halong Bay, Cat Ba island is one of the only populated of these limestone marvels. Along with our friends from Hanoi we booked into a friendly guesthouse in the main town of this island. After a rip-off boat journey and yours truly nearly being robbed of all cash (story is too long for this blog) we were elated to have a safe place to lay our heads for a night or two. We hired mopeds (yet again) on the island and
Hoi An
A shop selling homemade lanterns in Hoi An explored the area over a bright sunny day. After spending another day lounging about on a rented Junk boat exploring the many karst giants of Halong Bay, we decided to keep our eyes on the prize and make our way further south. For time was running out and an 'Open Water' Scuba Diving course had to be fit in before we left Nam!
Vietnam is a country left architecturally and culturally barren, its history having being eroded from numerous wars. However no place has be left more untouched that Hoi An. I read that it is a miracle some 170 old French Colonial houses still stand proud in this picturesque riverside town, since the Americans obliterated so many other towns with bombing runs in the seventies. One of the main drawers of lonely-planet-toting-tourists is the abundance of tailors scattered around the town. Here the Vietnamese boast they can copy anything, from shirts to pants, shoes to hats. Anything you physically give them or point out in a designer magazine they can make. So Marcel and I tried and tested the locals and got two shirts made each. Very good workmanship i must say. We cautiously spent $30, much to
Dive Team!!
Diving with English friends Steph and Adam in Nha Trang the dismay of the the brash tailors and left Hoi An that afternoon (Note the Australian Girls before us in the tailor spent $400 each).
Nha Trang is nothing but a beach town in the south of Vietnam, primarily a getaway for middle class and wealthy Vietnamese to holiday. We may have over looked this tourist trap only for it offered the cheapest diving courses in nearly all of SE Asia. On arrival we only found out that it was off season in Nha Trang, so overcast skies and dull beach days were to be expected. Luckily we had a 3 day 'Open Water' diving course to do, so wouldn't be seeing much sand.
An Open Water diving course is the introduction course to diving. It teaches you the skills to dive to a depth of 18m with a DiveMaster and saves you money when booking group dive trips (as you don't need instruction). The first day involves classroom instructional videos which go on for over 3 long hours, followed by an afternoon in the pool doing 'confined' water dives. The second and third days you are thrown into 'open' water doing proper dives and practicing emergency procedures. In
Saigon Streets
Saigons bustling night time streets one of these you have to practice your air running out, a scary exchange of regulators ensues while the two of you make your way slowly to the surface.
This could get quite hairy at 20 or 30 meters deep when the only air you have is your friends leftover air. One therefore wouldn't want to stray too far from your 'buddy' 30 meters from the surface!! However scary the prospects of losing air so far below the surface, diving has to be one of the most addictive activities there is. Navigating through rough coral teaming with aquatic life is a truly rewarding experience and one for all ages as we found out. Marcel and I are now hooked and are looking into doing an 'Advanced Water' course. This guides you through different scenario dives (E.g. Wreck Diving) and allows you to go the the max Scuba depth of 30 Meters.
After our diving adventure we checked our calendar and realised we were quite off our original timeline to get to the south of Thailand, so we boarded the overnight train and made haste for Saigon (Renamed 'Ho Chi Minh City' after the fall of the south to the north at the end of the Vietnam war). Saigon is just as bustling as Hanoi with regards street traffic but the people seem to have more of a laid back lifestyle than their counterparts in the north. It is said that the south Vietnamese think the north are too busy and aggressive, while the north think the south are too passive and lazy.
An example of the south's laid back attitude can be seen in their street naming convention. Many streets here are simply named street 1, street 2 and so on. I read in a local paper that new names had to created (to come in line with Hanoi of course). The process involves the street naming council drawing up a list of celebrity names, which are then passed to the History Council for verification, these are passed to the Peoples council for revisions and onto the Minister of tourism for final approval. To me this seems like something straight out of Monty Python, but i'm sure in Vietnam its all taken very seriously.In Saigon we did the usual tourist sights, the harrowing war remnants museum, the reunification palace and suffocated our bellies with food and drink in the thriving backpacker bar scene.
Leaving Vietnam on another long bus journey it gave me time to reflect on our time there and the country as a whole. I suppose coming from Laos, Vietnamese people seem a world apart. They live a fast paced life, working long hours and value money more than anything, even health and happiness. This is evident when you see the hawkers in the street heckling you; "You wan sam-ting?? You wan book?? Hey! Hey!...Where you go mister...where you go??". One thing you realise upon leaving, is that the Vietnamese see foreigners as different people altogether, sometimes we are treated like aliens. As you pass through their towns, prices, service and the locals general attitude to you is different. This is a stark contrast to Thailand, where you are always greeted with a smile and always feel welcome. Even the Thai hawkers, after you politely say no to their propositions, do they instantly leave you alone (sometimes with a smile). I believe the character and personality of the Vietnamese national comes from years of being at war (French, Chinese, Japanese) so their determination to make money and treat foreigners so differently should probably be taken with a pinch of salt.
Example of how far the Vietnamese can push for money: We boated and bussed from Cat Ba Island back to the mainland: haiphong, and from there scurried down to the less touristy town of Nimh Binh, quite a ''back arse'' town if i must tell it as it is. So with nothing to do but drink and eat healthily, we stopped in a cafe with the same friends from Hanoi and watched movies on the in-house projector. It was only when the weighty bill came that our friend Adam noted there was a stray 20,000 dong, after question time it turned out that ''Electricity is expensive in Vietnam, so you pay for computer....YOU PAY!!!". This is literally the mindset of so many Vietnamese when tourists are around: How can i make money from these suckers! Of course being upstanding tourists we obliged and ran before we were charged for toilet paper and air consumption. Anyway, my hands are getting weary of this foreign keyboard and the fact that I constantly miss the undersized 'delete' button is starting to get on my nerves. So we crossed the border from Vietnam into Pnom Penh in Cambodia and saw the famous S-21 Prison used by the Kymer Rouge to slaughter on average 100 cambodians a day during their reign. The mood of this prison is unsettling and there's not much need to discuss it here. We made our way north the next day to Siem Reap and Angkor Wat. The famous temples of Angkor are an amazing architectural achievement and a must see for an visit to Cambodia. Cambodia as a country seems to be interesting enough. There is much more poverty here than in Vietnam and Thailand and it can get quite disturbing with children as young as six begging with babies in their arms **shudder**.
So on a brighter note, we make our way to Bangkok tomorrow, then on to the paradise that is the south islands. Most of all i'm looking forward to the Thai smiles and superb food. Until then...
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Laquanda
I heard about Laquanda....Eck bit of a stinger. Well thats what insurance is for. Keep the blogs comming as i gots loads of time off now and need a good'Aul story everynow and then. Pros from a very wet and cold nothern hemisphere