On the bumpy road to Saigon

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Hectic Hanoi
After a whirlwind 12h in Kuala Lumpur where we had a stop over in between our excellent and very cheap Air Asia flights we touched down in Hanoi in Northern Vietnam. Although I have been to a few Asian cities I must admit Hanoi is by far the least Westernised of the lot. The city seems to be a maze of tiny roads where thousands of motorbike criss cross and tut along in what seems to be organised chaos. We walked the streets for hours not seeing any other Westerners and saying our last prayers every time we had to cross the road. Of course there are no zebra crossings so whenever you want to cross, you just hold your breath and step onto the road and magically the thousands of motorbikes seem to be part around you like some divine experience. The trick however is not to hesitate or change your speed but that's easier said than done when you are looking at a sea of fast approaching motorbikes. We heard several stories of tourists getting run over but somehow we managed to escape.

You learn many interesting things when you travel, not just about the country you are in but also about your own country and culture. One of the things I love the most about travelling is when you have an epiphany, when you go 'aha' I didnt realise that we do this or this particular trait or habit is a cultural and not a natural human instinct. I had one of those moments in Hanoi. In Vietnam they have no copy right laws so when a business is successful it is common for someone else to open a business of the same name a few doors down. That way confused customers may end up in the fake shop thinking it's the real one. No where else is this more apparent than in the tourism trade in Hanoi. There are more than 10 copy cats of the same travel shop called Singh Cafe which are by far the best travel operators in Hanoi. However, if you are not careful you might walk into the wrong shop which may be just two doors down and look exactly the same. It may not sound that grave to end up in another travel shop but if you end up booking a 14h night bus that is old and cranky with no aircon and no sleeper seats, you will be paying for your mistake for days to come. The same goes for hotels in Hanoi. Many copy cat hotels pay taxi and tuk tuk drivers to take unsuspecting tourists to their hotels. As a tourist you wouldnt know the difference until you end up in an average hotel and wonder why Lonely Planet raved about this hotel so much. So my epiphany was realising how blindly we trust each other and businesses in the Western world. You jump into a cab in Auckland and pretty much know that he will use the meter and take you to your location (well most of them anyway). However, in Hanoi a cab driver will NOT take you to your location AND put the meter on the tourist speed which means it goes three times faster than normal. This made me think is ‘trust’ a human condition or a cultural condition? Your thougths please!

The best thing about Hanoi was meeting up with my Finish friend Salka who I had met 8 years earlier in NZ. Salka works for an NGO in Hanoi teaching rice farmers the joys of manufacturing to enable them to survive in the future. I really admire her work, it must be so difficult working in such a different culture and not being able to speak the language. Salka took us to a fantastic local restaurant where we indulged in the local specialties which unfortunately I had no idea what were!

One of the Wonders of the World
Halong Bay is a UNESCO world heritage site that comprises nearly 1,500 square kilometres of sea and nearly 2,000 small islands. Majestic limestone cliffs rise from the green waters creating an eerie yet divine scene. We boarded our old junk which was a beautiful old timber boat and headed out to the bay along with the other hundreds of boats. I was a bit worried at first thinking the bay was going to be crowded with people but a few hours later we turned into a quiet bay where the limestone cliffs reflected in the calm waters and I struggled to grasp the sheer beauty of this place. Once again I cursed my old compact camera which struggled to capture even a fraction of the natural wonder that surrounded us. The next morning we jumped in the kayaks and got close to the limestone cliffs before heading to a secluded beach for a swim. I had unfortunately failed to see that the tour of the bay also included a three our hike so I had not brought any proper shoes only my flip flops. However, I thought that I could easy do a little walk in my flip flops, how hard could it be? Little did I know that the hike actually involved a lot of climbing over sharp rocks and a lot of crawling as well. But I am not a kiwidane for nothing so I crawled and climbed in my new found Havaiana hiking flip flops! A shower and a few well-earned Tigers later, we were to spend the night on Cat Ba island. Cat Ba is partly a nature reserve but the township looks mostly like a communist version of Mallorca (which it is). Lots of big box hotels built into the cliffs and hardly any people. A very interesting place which I struggle to describe properly. Perhaps had there been more people it would have had quite a different feel.

Before heading back by boat we visited some of the fishing villages in the bay. These are like little houses built on the water but not like house boats as they dont move. The residents farm fish in cages attached to the houses. It was quite an experience seeing how they survive living on the sea. I for one would have no chance of surviving as I struggled to balance on the small planks that are the only walkways between the houses. One time I was very close to ending up in a monk fish cage and the fish did not look pleasant. The monk fish visit marked the end of our Halong Bay journey which definitely has been added as one of the most beautiful places on earth I have visited. A must visit before you die!

Hoi An - teleported back in time
Back in Hanoi we boarded our first night train. In Vietnam they have four train classes. Hard seat, soft seat, hard sleeper and soft sleeper. Apparently any other class than soft sleeper is very uncomfortable. We were lucky to get tickets to soft sleeper and boarded the train which looked like something out of a World War II movie. Chances are it probably did take part in World War II. Our so called first class cabin contained four bunk beds and we shared it with a French guy and an older Vietnamese guy he did not speak a word of English but nevertheless communicated to us in Vietnamese. Very friendly guy. The 16 hour journey passed at snails pace. We seemed to stop every half an hour for no reason at all. We decided that it was time to get the deck of cards out as we were hoping to pass the next few hours playing cards and laughing. However that idea was shelved when we realised that none of us knew a single card game. Except solitaire. And I call myself a traveller!

Around 11am the next morning we arrived pretty battered in Danang which is about half way between Hanoi and Saigon. Our destination was Hoi An but as there are no train station in Hoi An we had to take a taxi to our final destination. After the usual crowds of taxi and moto drivers yelling and competing for our business we found a driver who took us to Hoi An. A German couple had recommended a hotel for us and the Hotel An Hoi turned out not only to be a fantastic hotel in a great hotel but they also had rooms available.

Hoi An is also a UNESCO world heritage site. It used to be one of the key trading ports in SE Asia back in the 7th and 10th century. Many of the amazing old houses a well preserved and walking the streets feels like being teleported back in time. There is a fantastic chilled and easy going atmosphere that you rarely find as a traveller. Tom and I rented a couple of old bikes one day and went around town - a great way to see the sights but also quite nice to get a bit of wind in my hair as the heat was unbearable.
We caught up with a few other travellers who all recommended we take the night bus instead of the train to our next destination of Nha Trang. So we took their advice and travelled with Singh Cafe who by far have the best buses and service.

Survival of the fittest in Nha Trang
Luckily it was only a 10h bus ride to Nha Trang. The bus was very high tech with reclining seats that almost came down to horisontal position. However, being stuck in a seat for that long on a very bumpy road is not comfortable at all. Give me a 14h plane any day.
Slightly lethargic and confused we arrived at 6am in the beach town Nha Trang. Because it was the weekend we had been told that most hotels were booked out and I was slightly worried that we may end up sleeping on the beach. It is amazing how important finding a bed becomes when you have not slept all night. So my survival instinct kicked in and adrenalin replaced my tiredness. I knew that there were about 50 people on the bus who would probably also be travelling with the Lonely Planet and hence would be headed to the same hotels as us. I told Tom to go get our bags and the minute the bus stopped I literally ran out the bus and into the hordes of touts and aggressive hotel scouts who all wanted to take me to their hotel. They had not calculated with the fact that I was a woman deprived of sleep and very much on a mission. I elbowed my way through the crowd and started walking in my best Olympic walk-a-thon style. I looked back over my shoulder. Yes I was the first person of the bus and headed down towards the hotel recommended by LP. However, I had a crowd of touts follow me. Some on foot and a couple on motor bikes riding next to me whilst yelling and showing photos of their dodgy hotels. I turned a corner and there it was: the Jasmine Hotel. I think I am here first. I walked into reception and there to my horror stood another two backpackers waiting. How could that be? How could they have passed me especially considering they were wearing their backpacks and I wasnt. OK let's apply the "we are all buddies" technique.
"Good Morning" I said applying the biggest smile. "Where have you come from?"
I then realised that they both looked extremely tired with baggy eyes and sweaty t-shirts.
"We got here 1h ago (5am) from Saigon" they said. Ah that explains it I thought. But still they were ahead of me.
"We booked a night bus with the wrong Singh Cafe and it was a bus trip from hell. They dropped us off 1 hours walk outside town at 4am so we had to walk all the way here".
"How terrible", I said trying to sound compassionate. At this moment the hotel receptionist appeared. The couple asked if he had any rooms and he said yes, only one room. They asked how much and he said $25.
"That's a bit much" the couple replied "Dont you have anything cheaper?" The receptionist gave them a funny look and said he had to check. As he walked past me I said "I'll take it" he looked at me and in best Vietnam style gave me the key and walked back into the office. No check-in procedure, just a key in hand.
OK. I took hold of the situation. Hotel room, check. Key in hand, check. Pissed off fellow travellers looking angrily at me, check.
I wonder if any schools teach you how to conduct yourself in a situation like that. But then I thought of Darwin and the animal kingdom and realised that sleep is a basic need and without it we cannot survive. So this was a case of survival of the fittest backpacker. And I had won. Won the key.
So I turned around and walked back to the bus smiling triumphantly to all the touts waiting outside fully expecting me not to get a hotel room at the Jasmine. I held my key up high and they all looked at it with defeat.
Needless to say we had a fantastic sleep.

After our successful snorkelling trip in Lombok, Tom was quite keen to give it another go. So we booked a full day snorkelling trip the next day. We boarded a small boat along with 30 other people. There was quite an interesting mix of people onboard - Koreans, Singaporeans, a lady from Cambodia, a couple from Hong Kong and quite a few locals. We were the only pale people onboard. The board trip was great fun and the snorkelling very good too. However, the best part about the trip was definitely the impromptu karaoke that happened after lunch. Somehow the crew onboard was actually a wanna-be-boy band. At lunch time they pulled out the mics, a guitar and a DIY drum kit which included a plastic bucket as a drum. They sang a few songs and everyone onboard went crazy and started singing along and dancing. It then turned into a big karaoke party with everyone onboard queuing up to sing. We had songs from all over Asia which was just brilliant. Not just the songs but the effort that went into these songs. A guy from Hong Kong closed his eyes and went down on his knees whilst singing some local song on the wrong note (see video). But everyone loved it. I managed to sneak a little film of the Hong Kong man in his speedos singing another song from the bottom of his heart. Priceless.

Luxury & Guns in Saigon
Despite our not so pleasant experience on the night bus to Nha Trang, we decided to tempt fate again with a 10h trip to Saigon. Bad choice. This time around we got seats that were at the far back of the bus and underneath a row of other seats with only about 50cm of space btw the seat and the seat above. It felt like you were being placed in a coffin. A coffin that was moving at dangerous speeds on the bumpiest of all roads. Needless to say we got no sleep at all and arrived at Saigon in a foul mood. Luckily we were going to stay with our friends Jacqui and Leon who are expats in Saigon. We were quietly looking forward to staying with friends and not sleeping in a dodgy guest house for once. I was also hoping that they might have a nice apartment considering they were expats. However nothing could have prepared me for the mansion they lived in. A six bedroom, three story mansion with a huge garden, their own driver, cleaner and gardener. The house overlooking their big pool and a river. Just stunning. Did we feel out of place in our shorts and t-shirts carrying our backpacks or what? However, Jacs and Leon were so welcoming and lovely. They had even bought grainy bread just for us as I had mentioned living on white rice twice a day was starting to take its toll.

So we had a fantastic sleep in our meg-sized bedroom with ensuite and real duvets on the bed. Afterwards their driver took us on a sightseeing tour of Saigon. How good did it feel to have a driver? We went to the War Museum which was one of the highlights of the tour. The photos of the war were absolutely amazing and devastating at the same time. In particular touching were the last photos taken by war photographers. There is something incredibly moving in looking at a photo of soldiers fighting for their lives with the inscription: "This was the last photo taken by xxx, seconds after he was hit by a grenade and died of blood loss". But even more devastating were the photos of the victims of Agent Orange. In particular photos of kids born after the war where the parents oblivious to the fact that they were eating crops of the land that had been sprayed with Agent Orange had given birth to innocent kids with missing limbs and major birth defects. They estimate that over 400,000 Vietnamese people died of Agent Orange exposure and more than half a million kids have been born with birth defects since the war. Whilst American war veterans affected by Agent Orange have been given symbolic compensation, the US has not given ANY compensation to the Vietnamese yet. I dont know about you, but I think it is one of the most horrific war stories ever. To spray huge areas of land with a toxic chemical that kills not only innocent women and children but also all animals, insects, trees, plants and soil, so that no crops can grow for years, who can do such a thing?

I had just finished reading "The girl in the picture" the true story of Kim Phuc, the naked little girl badly burnt by napalm in the famous picture from the Vietnam War. Her story was absolutely heart-wrenching. Not just her years of pain living with the napalm burns but also growing up extremely poor in communist Vietnam. It was with her story in mind that I spent two hours reliving the war at the War Museum, so you can probably understand that when her picture was the last photo I got to in the exhibition hall, that I actually cried. Looking into her screaming eyes and knowing the pain that not just that moment in time caused her but an entire life of pain and suffering was just too much to bear. Needless to say the people around me thought I was a weirdo and quickly walked away from me whispering amongst themselves. On a happy note, Kim Phuc managed to flee to Canada and today has two children and is a UNESCO goodwill ambassador. I wish I had just half the bravery she possesses.

Fascinated and sadened by the war and how massively the people of Vietnam are still affected by it, we headed to the Cu Chi Tunnels just out of Saigon. The huge network of tunnels were used by the Viet Cong during the war to hide from the American soldiers and also to launch offensives from. Life in the tunnels was extremely tough. Many people died from Malaria and other disease and it is was difficult to get enough water and air into the tunnels. The Americans campaigned heavily against the tunnels. They bombed them, sent in sniffer dogs, filled holes with water or explosives, but the Viet Cong outsmarted them in every way. They placed pepper around the entrances to the tunnels so the sniffer dogs would not detect them, they placed thousands of bamboo traps in the jungle and because they knew the tunnel systems so well the so called 'tunnel rats' (American soldiers sent into the tunnels to kill the VC) were more often than not killed.
At the tunnels, we had the opportunity to crawl through 100m of one of the tunnels. Being seriously scared of confined spaces I was very hesitant to crawl into the tunnel. I only managed to get to the beginning of the tunnel as when I looked into the small dark space my phobia kicked in and whilst attempting not to scream and make a scene I shuffled passed the people behind me and back into the lovely sunlight. No thanks. I am not crawling 100m through those tunnels even if they have been made bigger to accommodate fat Westerners. The thought of people living in these tunnels and fighting a war at the same time. What can you say?

Luckily I had a chance to redeem myself and shake off my ‘chicken’ appearance when we got to the shooting range. As we approached I noticed how loud the shooting sounded and I asked myself do dummy bullets really make that much noise? At the counter we could choose our preferred weapon; AK47, M16, M60 light machine gun and a thing that looked like a bazooka. At this point I was still not panicking thinking we would use dummy bullets and get proper training. Again my blondeness proved me wrong. Here are your bullets and there is the gun, the guy at the counter said. Live bullets and no training? With 10 other stupid tourists standing next to you with bazookas and what have you not firing away? Tom immediately loaded his AK47 and began firing and I just stood there completely terrified thinking this was bound to be my last moment. Surely someone would go crazy Columbine style. Tom handed me the gun and I just stood there with no idea even how to hold it. A friendly Vietnamese guy loaded my gun and pointed at some paper rabbit 50m away. I was so scared that I just closed my eyes and pulled the trigger. The noise was horrendously loud and the kick pushed me back. I have no idea what I hit all I know is that it wasnt the paper rabbit and that the leaves of the tree a few meters away suspiciously moved when I shot. Shaking I handed over my AK47 and headed for a seat in a shaded area. I realised then that I will never be good in war although I might not have needed to fire an AK47 to find that out. Somehow you probably know if you are built for war or not. I prefer just to carry my backpack as my weapon!

The Cu Chi Tunnels marked the end of our Vietnam tour. Another fantastic country to visit as a backpacker - we only saw a fraction of what the country has to offer but I can highly recommend it. Stunning landscapes, great beaches, lots of historic buildings and of course an amazing people who have endured more than you think possible. Let's get the backpacks on and head out on the next adventure; Cambodia....

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Photos

Dragons
The dragon is one of five sacred animals in Vietnam. This scuplture was outside an old meeting hall in Hoi An

Salka & I
Reunion in Hanoi

Junks at Halong Bay
Ready to hit the tourist trail

Village on the sea
Fishing village just outside Cat Ba

Japanese Bridge
Hoi An

Old Town
Hoi An

Creative photography
Im not very good with photos but I was impressed with this dragon mirrored in the river, Hoi An

I love turtles
This time we didnt swim with them but they are cute regardless. The turtle is also a sacred animal in Vietnam representing wisdom and long life

Lobsters al fresco
Why pay US$200 for a lobster in NY when you can pay US$4 and have it cooked in front of you on the beach

Guess where I am
Saigon War Museum

Comments

[Steve Clark]

Thank you!
....for taking me from the drudgery of the office to the adventures to be had when you are on the road with a backpack, a Lonely Planet and a love for life! I just love your blog Viki, it reminds me of all the fun Carro and I had on our travels....there's nothing compares to getting off a bus,train or plane in a strange land knowing that the next few days will leave you with memories to last a lifetime....oh how i miss travelling! Keep those blogs coming, they are priceless! Enjoy London and all it has to offer....you can never be bored in London, but in time you'll yearn for the unstructured freedom of life on the road with someone you love and the constant surprises that those untouched corners of the world dish up! Take care and try not to smile too much or you'll end up with a face like a wrinkly old elephant!! x