Miss Saigon? More than I Thought I Would

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November 27th 2006

Published: November 29th 2006

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Goths on Holiday

Mui Ne

The beach in Mui Ne and one of the local boats

i'd been so excited about having my birthday in a foreign country and we'd planned lots of cool things to do to celebrate...well, me! we forgot that it was MY birthday though - and the inevitable ' bad thing ' that would happen. i've had some crap birthdays in the past, but catching gastroenteritis from a viscious bastard crab definately made this one the most memorable and worst! boo hoo. anyway the kind doctor gave me some super strong antibiotics (for a mere 20 english pounds) and i was fine...a week later. i still felt slightly dodgy when we got to mui nei so i slept for a couple of days while hannah explored. i'm reliably informed that the beach outside the posh resort is used by the local people as a toilet. in fact hannah saw a women ' squatting ' by the shore, reading a book. it's amazing how certain 'customs' occur in all cultures - everyone loves having something to read in the bathroom! the sea was lovely though, i had a paddle though i was quite worried about sharks and had to keep spinning around to check nothing was creeping up behind me.

I am just

Mui Ne

Sunrise in Mui Ne

going to invade sam's blog and add a few little things I got up to whilst sam recovered.

On the first morning we were in Mui Ne myself and Michelle got up at 5.30am to take a stroll, it was about 3 miles, along the beach to watch the sun rise and visit the fishing village and see what treats they had caught that night. It was beautiful and fresh and the sunrise was gorgeous. Along the way we chatted to lots of locals and watched their everyday life. It was really cool and i am glad i some how managed to get my arse out of bed at that time. (helped a little by michelle tickling my feet!)

(sam again)

while we were in mui nei we went on a tour which took us to a gorge and sand sledging, which was not as good as i'd been led to believe it would be - we got to slowly slide about, ooh, 10 feet. exhilarating! the two boys who looked after us were really sweet though. the initial conversation with the little urchins who look after you on tours goes usually goes something like this....

Mui Ne

People fishing in the morning

kid: 'where you from?'

sam: 'england'

kid: 'football! manchester united!!'

sam: 'i don't really like football...'

kid: 'beckham! david beckham!'

sam: 'ummmmm...yeah...'

kid: 'rooney! ROONEY!' (roars with laughter)

sam: 'just stop it now'

they were really funny and it's sad to think that they will probably end up in some crappy job having never left their village because they can't afford an education. though vietnam is a communist country it's pretty obvious that wealth is not divided equally - there are some amazing massive houses along the roadside, but if you turn a corner you'll see a shanty village where people live in what looks like a bamboo frame with tarpaulin tied to it.

the day after our tour we caught the bus to dalat which is up in the mountains. on the way we saw an elephant being taken somewhere on a trailer. an elephant! it looked quite happy stuffing its face with leaves, i couldn't help but wonder where it was going. maybe to elephant jail (like in 'dumbo'.) anyway..... dalat is 'the' honeymoon destinatation in vietnam - the only way i could tell was by the hundreds of

Mui Ne

The boats at the shore

wedding dress shops. (surely you would need the dress before the honeymoon...?) it was quite a lot cooler tha the lowlands which was nice for us - all the locals were wrapped up in winter coats and wearing bobble hats - they looked at us like we were mental with our extremities hanging out of our skimpy clothes.

we decided to go on another tour there and so we visited a village about 30k from dalat. we were given a talk by a gorgeous little old man, he had a lovely twinkle in his eye and a very cool hat. he could speak english, french and vietnamese (as well as the dialect of his village) and had been a nurse in saigon during the war (north vietnamese call it ho chi minh city, south vietnamese call it saigon). he was absolutely facinating, played us some songs on some kind of coconut bagpipe (seriously!) and let us try some rice wine. which is so vile i could taste it for about three days after. like mouldy rice and sawdust, and it looks like phlem. moonshine is never good but neither us have gone blind yet at least. after looking

Mui Ne

local children playing on the beach

round the obligatory souvenir shop we drove to a waterfall which was accessible only by clambering over little steps carved into sheer rock faces, interlinked by little stone bridges. it was a bit un-nerving because i'm scared of everything (particularly falling to my bloody death) but i made it there and back unscathed and it wasn't even worth it, the waterfall sucked because of all the rubbish that had been chucked over it. though it was quite tall. though it's well known that size isn't everything.

next on our itinerary was a 'crazy house' which is a series of rooms built inside two concrete sculptures of trees - the rooms have different themes such as kangaroo and tiger. and anteater - it was pretty bizarre but fun to look around, and our guide pointed out the women who designed it - she was walking around looking very proud of herself. actaully she's the daughter of the second president of vietnam and she studied architecture in russia for 9 or 14 years (depending on who you talk to) in which case i think she could have done a better job. (the beds are very uncomfortable according to our guide, and

Mui Ne

Sunset

the kangaroo would give me nightmares for weeks.)

we stayed in dalat for a couple more days then got the bus to saigon - i was really worried as i'd heard horror stories about the roads and how you have to step out into the traffic and walk really slowly across so the motos can steer around you. actually that is how you have to cross the roads but it's not so bad when you're doing it (the adrenaline helps).

talking of motorbikes, here come the numbers - saigon has over 6 million motorcycles on its roads, and apparently in the first seven months of this year there were 35,000 traffic accidents and 1700 deaths. very reassuring! the traffic is utterly insane, it's very hard to explain what it's like to see so many mororcysles, some with three or four people on them, and carring the craziest things - i saw one man with a refridgerator on the back of his bike.

another unexpected thing about saigon is that it's pretty - there are lots of tall trees and green spaces. we took a cyclo ride yesterday ( a cycle is like a bicycle with a basket

Mui Ne

Sam and i enjoying the sunset - i watched it every day with a nice cold beer

on the front which you sit in and then a guy pushes you round the city for a dollar an hour) it was a really fun way to see the city. my cyclo driver had fought in cambodia 30 years ago when the kymer rouge was in power and a lot of the older people here have stories about the vietnam war - it doesn't even seem real to me but these people were alive when it happened. we went to the chu chi tunnel today which were a network of tunnels southern vietnamese fighters (i think - don't quote me on any of this) hid in to avoid leaving the area (about 60km from saigon). we were given the opportunity to go into some tunnels but as they are only 80cms wide i politely declined.

(hannah)

I the other hand happened to think it was a fun idea and jumped straight in. Im not sure what i was expecting considering asian people are so much smaller than me. The tunnels were tiny and pitch black. You had to scramble along on your knees and my back and sides were rubbing against the sides of the tunnel as

Mui Ne

Sam and I in the red sand canyon

they were so small. There were tiny lights in the tunnels but not all they way through so at one point it went pitch black luckily the girls in front had their cameras and lit the way slightly. At one point i did have to stop and take a breath as i was quite scared it felt like it was never ending. You could hear the guns being fired overhead which made it more surreal, but finally we found our way to the next exit and fresh air. It was really interesting to experience it but i felt like a mole and dont think i could have lived down them like they did for so long.

going to the chu chi tunnels was a very sobering experince. i wouldn't presume to take sides (particularly in a conflict which ended 30 years ago), i did overhear some people muttering about 'propaganda'and such - like. actually i though considering vietnam is a communist country america didn't come off too badly....it was strange being in the south (who the americans supported) and hearing about the conflict as though it was vietnam v usa: the grudge match. in fact the communist north and

Mui Ne

cows being herded along the beach

the capitalist south were in the throes of civil war when the usa waded in - they wanted to halt the spread of communism as it was believed that the surrounding countries would easily be taken over by communist countries. in fact the whys and wherefores seemed slightly irrelevant when we were stood at the site where battles were fought.(the rattle of people firing ak-47s for 1 dollar a bullet making it all the more eerie) i felt so much pity for the poor americans who had been sent out with little idea of what they were fighting for, and to die in that alien, sweaty jungle, so far from home seemed absolutely horrifying. at the small museum were walls of photos showing vietnamese fighters being tortured by american soldiers, but then the vietnamese set tiger traps (metal spike lined holes hidden by leaves) which killed indiscriminately. who can you say is right or wrong when these sorts of atrocities were commited by both sides? i really felt sorry for everyone involved. we also went to the war remnants museum but to describe the horrors there feels almost voyeristic and quite nasty. our tour guide min best desçribed the 'war

Mui Ne

The sand dunes

as 'very tragic, very tragic'. and the poor man knew what he was talking about as he was a translator for the americans and saw action.

Here's Hannah to change the subject to happier things - cupping!

I just wanted to tell you about my amazing massage that i had. Myself and some guys i had met in Hoi An were having a drink in Saigon when this guy came across and was giving massages which involved cupping. Cupping is that weird thing Gweneth Paltrow was recently reported to as having. We thought what the heck lets give it a go even though it looked pretty damn painful. The guy first of all massages your back with tiger balm oil and then lights little glass jars which he covers your back in. They suck in your skin and flesh and make your back really tight. They supposdly extract the toxins out of your skin. He then massages you whilst these cups are on your back. He clicks yours knuckles like you did as a kid at school and does the same to your neck, arms and ears. I never even imagined that you could do this sort of

Mui Ne

Sam getting ready for sand sledging

thing to your ears but i found it certainly is possible. He then removed the cups which feels so weird and gives you a really hard drum beat massage on your back using his fists. The massage was only 30000 dong which is 1 quid and was absolutly amazing, cupping is well worth trying even if you are left with weird alien red rings on your back for days after.

(sam again)

at first i hated vietnam for repeatedly trying to kill me, but now we're leaving i regret not having seen more of this beautiful place. still as contrary as ever!

i'm writing this in cambodia and hanah will post a blog shortly. in the meantime i'm having a belated birthday party tonight. hope i don't spend all my money on gin (this may be a forlorn hope.)

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