Drug Smuggling and Marriage Proposals in Việt Nam

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Don't you just love the blog titles you get from traveling Asia?! For all you impatient types, I'm afraid you'll have to read through a lot of text about Saigon and the Vietnam war before getting to the part about drug smuggling, sorry 😉.

I arrived in Saigon at somepoint in the evening, and got a taxi into the centre with a couple I met at the airport. Once there we spent a while finding a hostel, and then went out to get dinner at a nearby restaurant. The prices here are crazy-cheap - at first glance they seem about comparable to prices in Indo: about 20,000 for a meal, then you realise that you get 30,000 Dong for the pound, compared with only 15,000 Rupiah. So, already feeling good about the money-situation here, we went out for a couple of beers before bed, which ended up costing 30p each.

I spent the next day exploring Saigon, which is in itself a terrifying experience, simply because crossing the road involves walking out into a thick, continual stream of motorbikes, scattered with the occasional taxi or bus. They do generally pay pretty good attention and swerve to avoid you, but roughly 1 inch seems to be the accepted distance to leave between you and certain death. Apparently there are 4.5 million scooters in Saigon alone, with a saying that goes "no scooter, no girlfriend" - I can totally believe it. So, crossing as few roads as possible, my first stop was the Reunification Palace. The upper levels of this were fairly standard, with a map room, a presidential reception room, a meeting room, etc etc. The interesting part was in the basement, which at first glance just looked like one room (a command room), but once you went inside you noticed a little passageway off in one corner, which opened out into a labyrinth of passages and little rooms, full of old radio equipment and maps, left exactly how it was when a tank smashed through the palace gates on the last day of the war. After this, I got an expensive meal (one whole pound) at a fancy restaurant recommended by Lonely Planet (Quan An Ngan), then headed over to the War Remnants museum. This was pretty interesting, though very propagandised. The bottom floor was hundreds of propaganda posters from all over the world declaring the Vietnam war to be immoral and calling America to stop the fighting. The next floor up was full of pictures from the war, and photos of the atrocities commited by Americans - lots of images of innocents being killed and dead woman and children. John Kerry (the US Senator) got a whole display to himself - not something to boast about in this particular museum. Also on this floor was a display about Agent Orange and the chemical weapons used by the US were the cause of seriously nasty injuries and death back then, and which have after-effects even today in term of birth defects in the afflicteds' descendents. Other displays in the museum included tiger cages used by the South Vietnamese to house prisoners, a display on the My Lai massacre, a French guillotine used to execute prisioners up until 1960, and 3 jars of preserved human fetuses deformed by exposure to dioxin. Interestingly, there was not much in displays about the war, just about how evil America was, and there was barely a mention of Communism or the Vietcong guerilla warfare - points that would've no doubt dominated in an American-run display.

I came out of museum just in time to see go to the Golden Dragon theatre to watch a Water Puppet show, that was very good, though made absolutely no sense, as all the dialogue was in Vietnamese. It bascially consisted of a stage at the front which was full of water, with a band of singers on stands either side, and a curtain, behind which the puppets vanished, and, presumably, the puppeteers were hiding waist deep in water. It ended up being about 50 minutes long, and consisting of lots of short stories, including: a couple of guys fishing, some fairies dancing about, a boat race, and the most spectacular, 2 dragons playing together with a ball and then fighting, complete with fireworks spurting from their mouths, and splashing about so violently that they got us, being in the front row, wet.

The next day, I was up early to head out to Cao Dai temple and the Cu Chi Tunnels. It was a full day trip and looked quite interesting for 8usd. However, the tour agency neglected to mention the fact that although the Cu Chi tunnels were near to Saigon, the temple was a 4 hour drive away. Not cool. When we finally got there, we had to admit that the temple was cool. It's unlike any other temple in that it's massive, segregates men and women, and people that worship at Cao Dai are a combination of Buddhists, Taoists, Confucianists, Christians, Muslims and Vietnamese Spiritualists - not what you expect as religious places are normally dedicated to just the one god.

After watching the noon mass, we headed over to the Cu Chi Tunnels, a 250km long network of tunnels dug out by the Vietnamese during the French occupation, and used by the VietCong against the "American Aggressors". They stretch right the way from Ho Chi Minh to the Cambodian border, and were constructed so as to be too small for you average American, with corners from 60 to 120 degrees, meaning that there is not straight line to fire along, and any bombs thrown in were deflected. Also, slow down any skinny Americans that did get into the tunnels, there were "bottle necks" where the tunnel got even narrower, and all sorts of traps involving pointed bamboo spikes.

The first thing we did upon arrival was watch a propaganda film from the Vietnamese point of view. Similarly to the War Remnants Museum, there wasn't a single mention of communism, and according to the Vietnamese, the Americans only killed innocent children and women, schools and hospitals. Also mentioned were several brave Vietcong who had been awarded the American-Killer Award, for killing over 10 Americans, and a 12 year old girl who had blown up a tank, and was shot by the Heartless Americans (though the morality of sending a 12 year old to blow up a tank wasn't analysed). After this most of us took it in turns to go down a Vietcong tunnel (though as it was only 60 by 80cm wide, a significant part of our group didn't fit), which was very cool for about 2 minutes, but not somewhere you'd want to live. After this we were shown loads of pit traps that were designed for catching animals, but which were swiftly adapted to accommodate Americans in 1955. Gaining mention due to their viciousness include a pit trap about chest deep with bamboo spikes and the bottom and 2 square frames covered in metal spikes, all covered over with grass, meaning that when you trod in the middle, it gave way and the sides of the frames snapped up to come to close on your chest, whilst you lower half was impaled on bamboo, and a wooden contraption about human sized, which swung down from behind the door when opened. And I quote our guide: "The really clever thing about this is that there is a hinge half way down, so when the Americans put their hand out to stop it hitting them, the bottom half keeps on going and takes away their ability to have kids". Niice. Also noted was his use of the present tense - we were rather wary of any closed doors after that!

To finish our time at the tunnels we tried some of the boiled Tapioca that the Vietcong lived off during the war, which was much nicer than any English rations I've ever tried, and then we went down into some tunnels that had been enlarged for tourists, but were still small enough that we had to bend almost double to walk along. This, plus the high humidity meant that most of the tourists went up after 20m, and me and the 2 guys that did the full 100, were incredibly sweaty, and covered in dirt from where we had to crawl through the bottleneck. Then it was back onto the blessedly air conditioned bus, and back to Saigon.

The following day, I booked onto a tour up to the Mekong Delta, that cost something crazy like 30USD for 3 days, and was therefore pretty much worth it just for the accommodation. We started off with the typical bus ride down to My Tho, stopping off briefly at a workshop for Vietnamese people disabled by the Americans' chemical bombs. However, once there the tour became unique in that we didn't get on the bus again until late that afternoon. Instead we spent the day getting on and off boats that took us around the Mekong. Our first stop was on the main part of the delta, and was basically just a place to chill out whilst eating tropical fruits. Next was Pheonix island, where we saw a honey bee farm and had honey tea, and finally a little factory where they made candy from coconut milk. Then we had a late lunch, which was pretty small, but ok considering it was free, and headed back to the mainland. From there it was onto Can Tho for the night, where I was given a double bed to share with a girl called Gabriel who I had met about 2 hours earlier.

Once in Can Tho, we dossed for a bit, and then met up with some others from the tour to get dinner. In the end, me, Gabriel, Nicco, Vito, Bobby, Alex, Laura and Chris went out to a little place serving food just down the road. It was a street restaurant, which meant we all had to perch on tiny plastic chairs, and the waiter didn't speak English, but after some time of repeating the words "rice" "meat" "chicken" "vegetables" and pointing enthusiastically at the live prawns in a tank next to us, we managed to get it understood that we wanted food, and he went off to get us something. Meanwhile, we ordered a round of beers for 10,000 dong each (the main reason we like street stalls) and generally chilled out and swapped travel stories - the winner of which was Nicco, who had managed to get so far involved in a card-game scam that he was meant to turn up the next day at a house in Saigon with 10,000 USD, at which point their game of 21, which he was guaranteed to win having got 21 in his hand, would come to a close and he would win 63,000 USD. At some point along the process of trying to borrow 10,000 dollars however, some clever person had pointed out the alternative situation where he turned up with the cash, had a gun put to his head, and lost everything, and so he was now avoiding the situation by travelling the Mekong for a bit. After a while the waiter turned up again with a massive bowl of cockles, which were delicious, followed by a couple of plates of fried chicken, and 2 plates of noodles with vegetables and shrimps. After finishing it all off and ordering more of everything as it was delicious, and probably all nearly as fresh as the shrimps (which he fished out the tank beside us), we had several more rounds, paid the eqivalent of about 5 pounds each, and got a taxi to a "disco" as the waiter didn't understand the word "club".

The "disco" ended up being an Asian nightclub, with very Asian techno music and not a single white person. The bonus of this was, although the music was terrible, the entrance was free, and within about 5 minutes a group of Japanese students had kidnapped me and Nicco, and were giving us glass after glass of what we think was rum and coke (judging by the 4 empty Hennessys bottles on the table). After a bit, we ended up joining in the dancing, which was also very Asian, and very jerky due to the high-strung music and rapid flashing strobe light that was going all night. It ended up being an epic night, and we didn't get back until about 4 in the morning, when we got a taxi back to the hotel - luckily Nicco had remembered to pick up a business card or we'd have been screwed. Then we got about 2 hours sleep, before getting up at around 6 the next day to continue the tour, still more than a little bit drunk.

The second day of the tour started with us getting a boat out to Cai Rang & Phong Dien floating market, which was a massive contrast to the one near Bangkok, as it was a completely local market, with people trading in wholesale batches of rice and pineapples, rather than traditional tourist tack. There was one boat going round the tourists with a little boy and his dad selling drinks, but otherwise it was all just watching the locals. From there we went upriver to a little village, where we got a horse and carriage to a rice noodle shop. We all complained about this, and asked to walk, as the horse was about 4foot high and expected to carry 6 tourists plus driver, bus we were assured it was too far. About 500m later we stopped, and went inside to watch them make rice paper and rice noodles, then we were given about an hour to walk around a little fruit farm, eat some of the fruit, and generally relax, before having lunch and going back to Can Tho.

As there weren't many people on the 3 day tour, so we joined forces with another group, changed guides and headed off to Chau Doc. On the bus ride there, I met up with one of the coolest people I've met so far - Paul (you'd better be reading this) - and a couple doing almost the same itinerary as me - Magda? and Mike. The bus ride was meant to be a short-ish ride to a Caved Pagoda and Lady Chua Xu temple, then we were meant to climb up Sam Mountain to watch the sunset. In reality the bus ride took a while longer than expected, and we made several unplanned stops. Included in these was a brief stop for a random Vietnamese girl who'd joined us for unknown reasons to pick up a newspaper, and a couple of minutes later she was counting out a lot of cash that had appeared seemingly from nowhere. Next we didn't actually stop, but we slowed down enough for the girl to grab a bag from someone standing nonchalently at the side of the street, and pull it in through the window. Then we stopped off to pick up a random guy and a small boy, and finally made a stop at a crocodile farm that was on noones itinerary. We had a very funny guy who took us round, and laughed at everything - for example: "What do you do with all the baby crocodiles?" "We electricute them and make handbags... and shoes! Hehehe" "What do you feed them?" "Hehe yes, we feed them sometimes, hehehe". When we got back to the bus, the strange girl, child, backpack and cash were gone, and we continued on to the Caved Pagoda, hoping we wouldn't be stopped in Customs when we flew out, having all left our bags on the bus.

The Caved Pagoda turned out to be pretty cool - it was basically a big Buddhist temple with a cave that you could go into to worship, with a pool of (probably holy) water, a few Buddhas and a room with 4 walls of mirrors and a few golden Buddhas, so you felt completely surrounded. It lost a bit of it's charm when we realised the walls were warmer than they should be, and Paul looked outside to see it was completely manmade, but still. Then we went straight on to Chau Doc, not having time for the other temple or mountain - presumably due to all the stops on the way up. On the way there the guide had to arrange a homestay for Gabriel who had been meant to do it the day before, but the guides had got mixed up, and despite telling her about 30 times "so you want to stay in hotel yes?" "But hotel is much better - yes?", the guide managed to find her somewhere to stay. This meant that me and Paul were the only 2 single travellers left, so we were put in a room together, and typical to Vietnamese organisation, we got a double bed whilst Mike and Magda (who were married) got a twin room. We ended up switching in the end - which worked out well for us as their room was way bigger and even had a balcony 😉.

That evening we all got noodle soup at the local market for dinner as well as some of the obligatory 30p beers, before heading back to the hotel to continue drinking. Once there we switched to wine as Magda was couldn't have yeast, and optimistically ordered just the one bottle of red. This appeared to confuse the waitress no end, and we eventually figured out why when she had to run down the street to buy the bottle, which was white, but we didn't have the heart to send her back - obviously not a common choice here, and probably why it was such a good price! 3 bottles later, a rather annoyed waitress (having had to go down the street for us 4 times - the last time to discover they had no white, and therefore had to go again when we said red was okay) closed up the place, and we were left to our own devices - namely trying to get the guide drunk enough to tell us what was going on with the bus and the crocodile farm, to no avail. At about 11 we all went off to bed, where me and Paul lay awake until about 3 in the morning talking about everything from drug smuggling to travelling to sailing the Atlantic. We're going to sail to France sometime in September - anyone interested? :D.

The final day of the tour consisted of a brief trip through a floating village to a fish farm, where they raised the fish under the floors of their houses - pretty cool - then we went for a walk around the "Cham Islamic minority village" next to the river, stopping at a Cham silk-weaving shop and a mosque. They we took the boat back to Chau Doc and got the bus back to Can Tho. We think that this was a public bus service, as quite a few Vietnamese people got on and off, including the girl from the day before. Also, although we didn't go to the insense stick workshop mentioned on the itinerary, we did stop off at the crocodile farm, where the guide disappeared inside for a while with the Vietnamese girl, before we continued. The final stop was to let off a random guy in the middle of nowhere, who gave the girl a nod and then ran off down some alley. Reassuring stuff.

Then we were back in Can Tho, where we stopped for lunch, and I and a couple of other travellers got chatting to a random street seller who kept putting some sort of bottled smelling oil up his nose and then trying to sell it to us. In the end we bought something from him just for effort, and just before we swapped onto another minibus to get to My Tho, he told me I was very pretty and he wanted to marry him - all very well apart from he was at least 50! Finally, we ended up on a big bus back to Saigon, where me and Paul checked into a cheap hostel, and went out for dinner at a really nice Asian place - another Lonely Planet choice - which served all types of Asian dishes, as well as European, Italian and Australian food - it seems either they or we need to update our geography. Then we hung out at a very Westernised bar for a few drinks before chilling in the hostel and sleeping around midnight.

The next morning I was up early to (in theory) get the bus up to Hoi An. Thi plan never came to fruition however, as I luckily checked my emails before I left to discover there was a problem with my flight to Bangkok. To cut a long story short, after a long time on the phone, it emerged that if I wanted to be in Bangkok in time for my flight home, I'd have to get on a flight that morning, so I spent my remaining money on the bus out to the airport, and ended up in Thailand later that day.

It's worth noting that throughout my time in Bangkok I and various travellers I've met have been playing "How much can you get on a scooter?" This is an awesome way to pass the time in a restaurant or on the bus, and after a week or so, I have the top five from my trip. Fifth place goes to a rider I saw just before leaving who had what seemed to be an entire haystack balanced on the back. In fourth position is a family of 5: father, mother, with baby under one arm, teenage boy, and 6-7 year old child, all on one bike, without a single helmet. Third place goes to 2 guys and a fridge. Not a minibar, a full-on, family of four, fridge. This came to attention and got added to the list when it fell off in the middle of the road. In second place: 2 motorbikes, who had lashed together several 8ft long wooden poles, and tied one end to the back of the first scooter, and the other end the the scooter behind - a great idea right up until you have to turn, or swerve to avoid the fridge, or brake, or do anything other than go straight at a constant speed. And at number 1: 3 guys and a cow. A baby one admittedly but very alive, and very much a cow.

And with that, on to Thailand (again). Once in Bangkok I had about 5 nights with nothing to do - any trip within that time would've cost too much - so I dossed in the dodgy Korean dormitory for a couple of nights, before scoring a single room at Bella Bella (very cheap) for the rest of my time there. I didn't have much to do - mostly just playing about with photos and writing this on the computer, buying things I couldn't afford last time I was on Khao San, eating lots of street food and drinking cheap beer with some cool people from the hostel. To give you an idea of just how dull 5 days in Bangkok is I'll mention this - I actually did some sewing (I know, right). It's not quite as crazy as it sounds as I've managed to collect sew-on flag-badges from most places I've been (and for places where I couldn't/forgot I bought them on Khao San - they sell everything here), so I finally got round to sewing them onto a pillowcase borrowed from the hostel. Finally, however I came to the end of my time in Bangkok - which has been good only in that it makes me actually want to to go home - and got a bus out to the airport, and a flight back to England.

And so, 7 months and around 39,279.06 miles later, I arrived home for the toughest challenge yet - living at home for 4 weeks!

(Nb I'm not actually home yet, but I want to finish writing this!)

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Photos

Boat Racing
Water Puppet Theatre

Fairies
Water Puppet Theatre

The Guys
From Left: Chris, Laura, Nicco, Vito, Bobby, Alex, Gabriel

Kid trading bananas
Mekong Delta

My potential husband
Sexy - right? :/

Sunrise
Mekong Delta

Fish Farm
Mekong Delta

Courting a farm girl
Water Puppet Theatre

Lonely guy
Water Puppet Theatre

Fishing
Water Puppet Theatre

Parade
Water Puppet Theatre

Worshipping the king
Water Puppet Theatre

Boat race
Water Puppet Theatre

Fairies
Water Puppet Theatre

Comments

[GDM]

.....and the terrors of darkest Surrey await! Sorry I'll miss you but am flying out of Manchester in about 8 hours time. Welcome home! ...even if you are not quite there yet! xx GDM

[KatieHedgecock]

Haha thanks - turns out I was premature in ending my blog - I may going to a red shirt protest in Bangkok tomorrow- potential update on the way (assuming Im not shot by the army officials) ;)