The heat is on in Saigon

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Entering Vietnam

The journey into the land of Nam was by far the easiest yet! The bus journey went fairly quickly and we soon arrived at the border where we stopped for lunch and I chatted with a friendly South African couple before the bus company we were travelling with pretty much sorted out all our papers for crossing over and thus we were through in a flash. The only bad point about the whole scenario was that I looked at my visa properly for the first time whilst going through border control and realised that the slightly idiotic lady in the travelshop in Phnom Phen had given me a "special" two week visa when the normal process is to give a 30-day one. As a result I was rather miffed! We soon arrived into Saigon (though I should really call it Ho Chi Minh City now) and with my backpack in toe, I headed off to the hotel I had found via the internet. Naturally though, I go there only to find it is the wrong address, though the hotel that is there is part of the same branch so I decided to stay anyway. I fell in love with the room straight away as it was set out like a normal bedroom and felt instantly like home and it didn't hurt that it was only $5 a night too! Only drawback being that it was on the fifth floor with no stairs so I got a good dose of daily exercise!!

I had very little time to settle in as at the forefront of my mind was changing my Vietnam Visa to a 30-day one before I was due to leave Saigon. So the hotel staff (who spoke little english) put me onto the back of a motorbike and off across town I went to the immigration office where upon arrival, I was told that I had to apply for a new visa from a travel agent! So back to the hotel I went and to a travel agent, who then told me it would cost $50 to get a brand new 30-day express visa!! So all in all it was to cost me $90 to get a Vietnamese visa! Major rip-off!

That evening, after the afternoons palavas, I decided to go out and rent a dvd player for the night, buy some movies, get a take-away pizza and snuggle up in bed for the night!! However, one night turned into several as I was starting to feel a bit run down but after a third night of eating pizza, I decided enough was enough and went out and saw some of the city!

Motorbikes and Mototaxis

I've been feeling for a while now that I need to dedicate an entire section to the South-east Asia motorbike phenomenon. The first thing I have noticed is that it is slowly but surely getting worse as I travel from west to east across this continent. I believe the reason for this is that, especially in Cambodia and Vietnam, there are very few rules of the road. They 'generally' drive on the right-hand side but that is only a rough rule and most are quite happy to drive through oncoming traffic on the wrong side of the road to get to their destination. The basic rule thus is if you are there first then it's your right of way! Crazy but weirdly seems to work. Same idea with how "The Lonely Planet" tells people to cross the road here: walk slowly but continuously so that the traffic can see you and go around you. If you walk too fast or run then they won't see you in time to avoid you and if you walk too slowly or wait for them to stop you will never cross the road. Forget about them stopping!! Next thing to notice is the sheer volume of these bikes. If you are unlucky enough to have a car in these places then one seriously needs to watch constantly around for bikes swerving in and out.

My first experience of riding one of these infamous mototaxis was actually in Battambang, Cambodia but that was for all of about two minutes. My first major experience was when I reached this great city of Saigon. As I said, I needed to sort out my Vietnam visa when I arrived, so my hotel staff shoved me onto the back of a mototaxi, told the guy where to go and off we went. Now, at least with the majority of mototaxis in Vietnam they give you a helmet (which they did not appear to do in Cambodia) but I am still completely baffled as to how the locals do it. They can sit up to three adults plus children on these things, and some women in skirts even go side-sandle and I can't recall ever seeing any of them holding on. Now I love the adventurous things in life but the scariest thing about being on the back of a motorbike is that it is not in your contro, esepcially as the spped you are going at. Next thing I discovered is that to get through the trip without screaming or biting your nails, lift your eyes to the buildings on either sid of the road and you will miss the bike skimming past your left knee or the car that is honking you as you swerve infront of it!!

All in all it is an exciting and exhilarating way to get around the city. And pretty much the only way. In Thailand it was all tuk-tuks. In Cambodia, it was a mixture. However, in Saigon I have not seen a single tuk-tuk. Though there are taxis in Saigon, however with the inflated tourist prices that they quote it is not really a viable option for the backpackers, whereas these delightful mototaxis only cost $1 or below for a single journey.

Seeing the sights

of HCMC

The first day I ventured out into this grand city, I decided not to travel too far, so down I went towards the Ban Thinh market and to a shopping complex nearby to see if I could get a music player device of some sort. Alas, no luck. So I then headed around the corner to the Art Museum which was interesting enough but more of a way to waste time! The following day, I headed over to the Saigon centre, an upper class shopping mall where I again found nothing I could afford to buy!! Afterwards, I headed next door to the Notre Dam church, supposedly a beautiful example of a french colonial building but naturally for me, it was shut!! Luckily, I still had an hour until my mototaxi was to pick me up and so I headed down the road to the Independence Palace, which is the opposite to the church and is a horrible example of communist 70's architecture though with a beautiful water fountain out the front! And so, in I went, up the front stairs and I started following the signs, looking around the various rooms of the palace including such rooms as the meeting rooms and conference rooms on the ground floor all the way up to the personal quarters of the president on the 3rd floor. By this point, we had reached the top floor and some would think that this was the end of the tour but no, once you reach the top it is then time to go all the way back down to the bottom and to the basement which contained the wartime rooms such as the map room. By the time I finished the tour it was pouring it down outside so I thus had to leave the palace and walk back to my mototaxi driver and ride back to the hotel in the rain.

I did one more day of sightseeing whilst I was in Saigon on my own before my tour started, as I very much wanted to see the War Remnants Museum. However, the day did not go according to plan! I got a mototaxi over to the museum as usual, but this mean guy severely tried to rip me off once I got off the bike (he changed his mind to the price) and usually I would have argued but he started getting quite agressive so I thought it better to pay him and just walk off! He was supposed to be my driver for the day but naturally when I got out of the museum he was no longer there! It was probably for the better but I was still annoyed! The museum itself was very interesting, a place my dad would definatley have loved and the outside was filled with the tanks, guns, planes and helicopters that the Americans used during the Vietnam War. One of the exhibts however left me feeling rather ill and it showed real life pictures of the affects of substances such as Napalm and worst of all Agent Orange, on both people it directly hit and those, such as children, who have dealt with the consequence. Some of the pictures I could not even look at they were that disturbing. There were also deformed babies preserved in formalin on display and other gory relics. After this exhibt, the next section showed a real size model of some cells of concentration camps, which after seeing those in Phnom Phen, I was ready for.

And so, I left the War Remnants museum feeling slightly shocked and a little ill and, as I mentioned, deserted by my mototaxi driver. So a friendly old man who sold me a drink at the side of the road gave me a lift on his cyclo to the notre dame church just around the corner as by this point it would be opening after lunch time break. I arrived, in one piece and had to wait for several minutes for it to open when a bird decided that I needed to be pooed on! Great. Had a quick look around the church and then hoped on the first thing that moved back to the hotel.

Saigon nightlife

Now, this title is quite misleading as I never really experienced the Saigon nightlife for the week I was there alone as I was on my own!!! One night I did leave the comfort of my room to meet up with Toby, another friend from South America who happened to be in Vietnam at the same time, for a few drinks which was fun. The rest of the time however, I watched an incredible amount of DVDs and TV. I was able to buy DVDs from my local for 14p each and ended up with: Atonement, The Departed, the Emperors New Groove, Enchanted, 300, 10,000BC, the last King of Scotland and Hot Fuzz and managed to buy the entire "Band of Brothers" boxset for 90,000 dong equalling to 2.81 pounds!!! And as it is 10 episodes it amounted to a lot of watching time (I know, sad but there was nothing else to do)!

Geckos Adventures: Vietnam at a Glance

On the Tuesday a week after I arrived in Vietnam, I checked out of the Anh Phuong II hotel and moved two doors down to the starting hotel for my Geckos Adventure tour (it just happened to be that way) and spent the day doing my chores before having the 'welcome' meeting at 6pm. When the time came, downstairs I went and met the six other people who would be starting the tour with me (six people who we would be joining had already started the tour four days early). There were: two Canadian guys in their mid-20's, a kiwi called Guy, an Australian called Maurice and a elderly Australian couple. After the meeting, Guy, Maurice, the Canadians and myself went out for a meal and spent the rest of the night in an Irish bar chatting!

The following day we had a fairly early start as we were heading out of Saigon to see the Cu-chi tunnels. We all pilled onto the bus along with the six other people who had already started the tour but we hadn't been introduced to yet and off we set for the hour long journey out of Saigon. We soon arrived at the site of a 75-mile-long underground maze where thousands of Vietcong fighters and villagers could hide during the Vietnam War. We walked around the site for several hours, seeing all the various (and horrific) traps that the Vietcong would set before we were able to descend into the maze to walk through a 1km section. Now, these tunnels were going to be small anyway as the Vietnamese people are generally smaller than westerners, but some of the men could not even fit in the opening!! In the end, there was only four of us (including myself) and the guide who made it through the whole 1km section! It was incredibly claustropobic but luckily we moved quickly!! We then had a quick ice-cream break where we all introduced ourselves to each other, though we were right by the loudest shooting range ever so it was not the best atmosphere!! Afterwards, we drove back to Saigon and I chilled out for the rest of the day and packed before heading out to have dinner and some drinks with the group!

The following morning it was finally time for me to leave Saigon after over a week there!! We were on our bus and heading off for a horrendously long bus journey of 8-hours for a measly 300km road distance. Why did it take this long? Because Dalat, the town we were heading to, is 1500-2000m above Saigon and if there is one thing that all the buses in South-East Asia can't do, it is drive up hills. And I thought my car was bad. It would also turn out to be an uncomfortable journey too as, when going up hills, the driver tended to turn the air-conditioning off!! Fun fun fun

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Photos

A Tight Squeeze
James' foot next to an entrance hole to the Cu Chi Tunnel system