Advertisement
Published: March 2nd 2008
Conical hat brigade
Floating down the Mekong riverSaigon - Local Beer : Saigon beer (very original)
Well, Gooooooood Mooooooorning from Vietnam!
We finally arrived in Ho Chi Minh City (formerly ‘Saigon’) after a mad dash over the border from Cambodia. We endured a 6 hour coach ride on the bumpiest, squeakiest bus in the fleet and just our luck, me and my intrepid traveling companion (the wife) were allocated seats on the back row of the bus, sandwiched between 2 hot and sweaty Israeli dudes who’d forgotten to wear deodorant and an old Vietnamese guy who looked like Mr. Mayagi from Karate kid! If Kelly was writing this blog she’d probably continue by saying something like “Oooh, Franks face was a picture. He had steam coming out of his ears and I thought he was going to kill someone!” She wouldn't be far wrong. It was only for 6 hours! I calmed myself down although I could feel the rest of the passengers in front of us secretly laughing hysterically at us five squashed together as they lounged around smugly in their separate air conditioned reclining seats! For a change the actual border crossing and immigration was surprisingly hassle free so that was a bonus. So
Kelly and one of the street kids
i think we actually bought a packet over overpriced chewing gum from this cheeky little kid. into Vietnam, through the sea of locals all wearing the traditional conical hats and on to Saigon.
Once in Saigon we headed for the big backpacker area and chose a pretty good hotel which was 8 pounds a night with ensuite, cable TV and fridge, happy days.
All sorted we ventured out onto the streets of Saigon. The first thing that hits you is the amount of motorbikes on the road (and on the pavements, riding out of shops, everywhere). Vietnam’s got a population of 90 million people and it would seem that every single one of them got a motorbike for Christmas! The air is filled with the constant drone of honking and beeping horns. And they don’t stop at zebra crossings either. How do you cross the road? Well, we were told that whilst they’re speeding in front of you from all directions, you just step out into their oncoming path! Walk slowly and try to catch the eye of every bike coming your way so that they can dodge round you at speed! So, after a full day of not daring to cross the road for fear of being smashed to bits, we plucked up
Cu Chi tunnels
Just lowering myself into the underground tunnel the courage and just went for it. Kelly actually video’d me ‘playing chicken’ with the Yamaha army (video attached). After a while though, like everything else you just get used to it and it becomes pretty funny. After a week in Saigon we wondered what all the fuss was about! Especially after Kelly spotted a blind man with a white stick navigate his way across the road, seriously we couldn’t believe our eyes!
We only had about 10 days in Vietnam as we needed to get back to Thailand to get our visa’s for India which take 10 days to process (pain in the arse) and we also wanted to see some of the Northern Thailand jungles.
Trying to cram in as much as we could, we booked a day trip for the next day to the Cu Chi Tunnels. These are the underground tunnels used by the Vietnamese resistance army in the Vietnam war against the Americans. However, we had a few too many beers that night and slept in the next morning. Not to worry, the trip only cost us 3 pounds each which was a small price to pay for a much needed lie in!
Yamaha Army
you've never seen so many motorbikes in your life! We just booked it for the next day instead.
We finally made it to the tunnels and it’s fair to say they are pretty amazing. The Vietnamese army that were fighting against the Yanks used this cobweb-like underground tunnel complex to hide from the Yanks and launch attacks. The tunnels weave around for over 200 kilometres and were home to 16000 Vietnamese at any one time!
We were invited to go underground and crawl through a section of the tunnel which was about 150 metres long. We were told that the tunnels had been widened slightly to accommodate us big fat westerners but I knew that at 6 foot 3 inches it was going to be a struggle. “Go forth and be strong” I told Kelly, trying to convince her to give it a go. No chance. She gets ‘claustrophobic’ apparently so I was all on my own. I followed a group of 6 other people down into the tunnels all without a light! I was at the back and kept falling behind. I had to keep using my camera flash to see where I was going! To be fair, Kelly would have shat her pants down there. There
Hard day at the office
Local family making up Valentines bouquets at the side of the road as the Yamaha army charge past. was little air to breath, tunnels that led off in other directions, some which dropped downwards, things scurrying around the floor, and in places I was on my hands and knees scraping myself along the walls! There was an emergency exit half way through which I did consider but carried on to the end as I would have kicked myself for not completing it. Climbing out the other side, drenched with sweat and covered in dirt I was glad to be out and have that little box ticked. Next it was off to the shooting range where I fired 10 bullets from an M60 Machine gun. Again Kelly didn’t want to risk the gun backfiring and spreading her brains all over the disused U.S tanks behind us! Aah, she’s a worrier.
The Cu Chi Tunnels were class and I’d recommend anyone traveling to Saigon to check them out. They give you a real idea of what the Vietnamese went through before the Americans finally pulled out, realizing that they were never going to anywhere against these crafty Asian foes. I take my hat off to Vietnamese. Very clever.
Most nights in Saigon (or Ho Chi Minh, whatever you want
Valentines day
Kelly with her 'Happy Valentines' coffee and love heart biscuit. Who said romance was dead? to call it) were spent chilling around the street bars and the GoGo bar. Surrounded all night by street vendors selling anything from books to lighters/cigarettes to chewing gum to an array of illegal drugs. Someone was even selling cooked rat skins with dipping sauces (which we thought were fish and were comtemplating trying some! Photo attached). Local gangs of African dudes hung around street corners and beauty salons/brothels looking shifty. And street kids as young as 3 years old were tugging at our shirts asking for a dollar, even at 1am when we were heading back to our hotel. Again Kelly melted once or twice, befriending a few of them and parting with a couple of quid.
One night we were sat outside one of our favourite little bars just watching the madness of all the traffic, keeping an eye on our feet so as not to get our toes bitten by a couple of renegade rats that kept flying past us. We met an old American guy sat next to us called Randy from Wyoming. I asked him if he’d been to Saigon before and he replied “Not since the early 70’s when I was dropping bombs
Yummy. Dried rat skins!
We thought they were dried fish at first. Look at the tails hanging down. You can eat these, warmed up with your choice of dip. all over it. But it’s changed a lot since then!” I bet it has changed a lot seeing as you left it as a big pile of rubble Randy my old pal! He was a U.S helicopter pilot during the Vietnam war and was actually a pretty nice guy.
Funnily enough. The next night we were sat at a different bar and Kelly started talking to an old Vietnamese guy who had been a Major in the Vietnam Navy during the war. It was pretty cool listening to stories from both sides. But the Vietnamese dude got slightly drunk and after a while stopped making sense so we made like a shepherd…. And got the flock outta there.
Rest of the time in Vietnam was spent trawling around the markets refraining from spending all our budget on the dodgy fake Diesel and Armani jeans.
We took a day out to cruise down the Mekong river which was a major battle zone during the war. Infact it felt like we were in one of the old war films as we sailed down it, pretty cool (except at one point we were all given the conical hats to wear and looked
like a right bunch of plantpots!). We took a bike ride through a local village, had lunch, and seriously annoyed a load of cobra’s in a cage.
All in all, Vietnam has been a very worthwhile stop on our Asia circuit and we’re gutted we didn’t get the chance to see more of it (Thanks STA travel for messing up all our Visa’s and costing us a fortune!) as there is a huge amount more to see. But it wasn’t to be so we boarded a flight out of Ho Chi Minh airport bound for Bangkok (again!). We still had 10 days left before the flight from Singapore to India so we decided to head to the far North of Thailand near the border with Burma and do some jungle trekking. Have we got any hiking boots? No. Should be fun…….
Advertisement
Tot: 0.089s; Tpl: 0.02s; cc: 9; qc: 57; dbt: 0.0535s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 2;
; mem: 1.2mb
MAM
non-member comment
laugh
watched the vid of you crossing road 3 times, what a laff, it all looks really interesting, you 2 should av tried the rats tails, they look very tasty ha ha x keep it up x