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Published: February 24th 2006
Vietnam really has to grow on one. I have come to appreciate it a lot more during my second 2 weeks around.
There is still a lot of harassing (you buy!, 'moto', cyclo,marihuana,...) but I haven't been bothered by it that much lately. I didn't get ripped off that much either... Maybe it's less of a game here or maybe they play it more subtle. I know that I have been a bit more paranoid and have been able to avoid some trouble. I saw two angry Dutch ladies that thought they were overcharged (well they were) on food during a boat trip and refused to pay for their drinks, because "they had paid enough". They left with a whole gang of Vietnamese people shouting "You pay beer!"... I had brought my own sandwiches...
The people seem to be more relaxed the more you go south and of course the weather is better... which made sure that after an airways infection, I now suffer from sunburn : )
Here are some things that struck me cruising through Vietnam:
-Garbage collection cars use the same tunes that Ice cream vendors use in Belgium.
-There are few cars
in Vietnam. So if people travel long distances they put their motorbike on the bus. You can't imagine how many bikes they are able to pile on the roof of a bus.
-A lot of stand alone houses have a palace like facade but the rest of the house is just a grey concrete box without any windows.
Hue
Getting off the bus in Hue I got swarmed once more by touts and motor drivers. But once I was able to break through their lines I noticed quickly that I was going to like this town.
It took some time to convince the motor and cyclo drivers that after 15 hrs in a bus I wanted to walk for a while (even with my big pack).
Hue is a nice town with a lot of history. So you might understand why I like this town. It used to be an imperial capital. The old town is a walled citadel which has a smaller walled imperial city inside. A lot of this part was destroyed by Us bombings during the Tet offensive. It's has been partly restored already and restoration (of the Forbidden City) will continue. Should
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Detail on the Emperors library.be really beautiful when it's finished.
Another big attraction in Hue is the pagodas and royal tombs. Most of these are next to the river so I took a cheap small boat (I know!) down the Perfume river (don't know where they got that name from) to have a look at them.
I found the Thien Mu pagoda really interesting. This is where the monk Thich Quang Duc used to live. Some of you probably remember the terrible pictures/images of this Buddhist monk burning in the streets of Saigon. He had put himself on fire to protest against the (Us backed) South Vietnamese dictator Diem. (People of my age probably know him as the guy on the cover of the first Rage against the machine album).
In the pagoda they still have the Austin Martin car he used to drive to Saigon. The pagoda was to be a source of political protest a couple times more in the history of Vietnam.
The royal tombs were really beautiful as well. These tombs consist of a line of 4 to 5 buildings with some lotus ponds in between. The first building (stele pavilion) always had a sort of a
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The library. stone CV of the dead emperor, which I thought was cool. In one of the tombs there was no actual burial place for the king/emperor. He had been buried with a big treasure on a secret location to protect it against grave robbers. All of the 100 servants that helped in the burial were beheaded afterwards...
DMZ
Vietnam, for me and a lot of people, is still especially known for the war in the 60s and 70s. Here they call it 'the American war' because "We have had so many wars"
Hue is not so far from the Demilitarised Zone (DMZ), so I joined a tour to have a look at the sites where some of the fiercest fighting took place. The DMZ was the line that was introduced in '54 and was supposed to divide North and South Vietnam for 2 years before there would be elections to unify the country. The elections never happened and the DMZ soon became one of the most militarised zones in the world. A lot of the famous Ho Chi Minh trails ran through this zone. These trails were used by the Viet Cong to provide the Southern communist guerrillas
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Temple entrance in the emperial city with arms and supplies. There was about 60,000 km of trails through Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia (the longest North-south distance in VN is only 1600 km).
To stop these supplies the US has heavily bombed this zone with Napalm, Agent Orange and other nice bombs. The results can still be seen today. The whole region used to be rainforest and now I could only see a couple of patches of rainforest here and there.
A lot of people were disappointed with the tour but I liked it. The guide was really good; she had an answer to all my annoying questions. It was a strange feeling to be standing in places that you have heard about or seen in movies so many times. Khe Sahn was such a place. Around this former US airbase the Viet Cong build up a lot of fire power. The US army fearing a second Dien Bien Phu (where the French were defeated) focused all its attention on this site. The fighting only lasted a couple of weeks but claimed more than 500 US lives and over 10,000 Viet Cong. It became clear that this attack had only been a diversionary effort to draw
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Temple for the empire and his wife. away attention from the Tet offensive that was being prepared in several South Vietnamese cities. A couple of weeks later the Us army left the base, as it was no longer considered relevant!
The visit to the Vinh Monh tunnels was the last part of the tour. These tunnels are only a small part of a many hundreds of kms network that used to exist. We visited three levels going underground as deep as 28m. These tunnels that were connected to the Ho Chi Minh trails were used as bombing shelters, routes to supply the frontlines. They also were used to do the 'hit and run' actions by the guerrilla troops. It explains why the US army was attacked so often by 'ghosts' that seemed to go up in smoke after an attack.
It was a bit claustrophobic at times. It is amazing that whole villages lived in here for up to 10 days to take shelter from the US bombing. There is even a club in Vietnam of people who were born in the tunnels. They still have reunions.
The whole region we drove through is still full of bomb craters, one next to the other. It all
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Thien Mu Pagoda looked a bit like my face when I was 16 years old.
I've been reading a couple of good books on the war. 'The sorrow of war' by Bao Ninh is the war seen through the eyes of a North Vietnamese. It's rather depressing but interesting to see the war from the side we are not used to. The other one 'In retrospect' by R. McNamara is more for the International Politics freaks. McNamara was secretary of defence of the US during the beginning of the war to 68 and gives a good insider account of the war. He is honest enough to admit that a lot of major mistakes have been made. Interesting but heavy reading material.
On the way back I was under the impression that our driver was trying to break the record for the slowest bus ride in the history of Vietnam (some bicycles over took us!). It turned out that the driver, unlike most of his colleagues, was being paid by the hour...
Hoian
Now this really is the Vietnam I was expecting to find. This town is amazing and really laid back.
The arrival was a bit chaotic
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Ming Mang royal tomb: the series of buildings as apparently a lot of street names had been changed and I was actually wondering if was in the right town.
The old quarter is so beautiful; I could not stop taking pictures. Unlike the old quarter in Hanoi there has been a good conservation effort here and it pays off. Walking the little streets and the docks is like taking a journey back into time. I managed to get there on the 14th day of the lunar month when the town is made traffic free and there are only paper lanterns all over town... pure magic.
The town also has a really cool program where you buy a ticket that allows you to visit 5 different sites/museums. I especially loved the Tan ky 'old house'. The really friendly inhabitants gave me a free tour (in perfect French) of their house.
Hoian is considered as the shopping paradise of Vietnam. At least half the travellers seem to leave with a tailor made suit here...ahum so did I... I spend some time shopping around and managed to bargain down a tailor made suit (pants, jacket and shirt) to either 35 or 55 euro. I chose for the better quality
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Ming Mang royal tomb. tissue/shop and ended up buying the 55 euro suit. They were measuring me for about 20 minutes and we went through all the style characteristics (I had instructions from home!) and the next morning I could pick it up. It cost me another 40 euros to send it home, but who cares about that huh.
I also bought a little painting I had fallen in love with. Unfortunately the vendor noticed my crush so I could forget about a good price. I was bargaining for 3 days and actually bought it half an hour before my bus left. We had a lot of fun ("Are you there again?") and I got a pretty good price anyway.
I also checked out some nearby 3-12th century Cham ruines at My Son. They were nice but not really that spectacular, partly due to the fact that the US bombed some of the most impressive structures to hell. A good warming up for Angkor...
Nha Thrang
Another night bus took me to Nha Thrang, a beach town in the South of Vietnam. It has some nice beaches and I was planning on relaxing and reading.
The reading (McNamara) was
DMZ 1
Khe Sanh airbase so captivating that I did not realize I was getting sunburned (despite factor 25 protection applied every 40 minutes). Damn!
My last week in Vietnam I hung out a lot with some Norwegians ("No not Denmark, but they burn our embassies anyway") and Swedes. I was glad to notice that my Swedish is still intact and I even understood most of what the Norwegian guys were saying.
Btw it seems that half of Sweden (pop +/- 9 million) is here. I've seen/heard/met over 50 Swedish people the last month. I've only met 3 Belgians (pop +/- 11 million) since I left 1.5 month ago!!!???!!!!
Anyway after a night out with the Scandinavian crew, I went for an early morning run on the beach. It felt great and I was cheered at by a lot of locals that were exercising also. After my run and stretching, I decided to try to remember some of my karate katas... ahum it didn't go that well... but than, out of nowhere jumps a Vietnamese guy ("Kanku dai???") and helps me back on track. We did about 5 katas together. Conversation was a bit difficult as his English/French was very limited and my
DMZ 2
Posing in the Ving Mong tunnels. This was actually a part where there was a lot of space Vietnamese is non existent. We talked a mix of French, English and Japanese. Very cool experience!
I was supposed to go on Island tour/snorkelling trip but my skin was not really up for more exposure to the sun, so I passed on that and hung out at the beach bar drinking fruit shakes (Dragon fruit is my new favourite) and playing some beach volley.
Mui Ne
Mui Ne, another beach town or better a string of hotels/resorts along some really nice piece of coast. I arrived with the Norwegians and we went looking for a hotel with some motorbike guys (oh no my worst nightmare). Driving kms with a heavy pack on my back. It was weekend and the place was packed. Apparently half Saigon comes over for the weekend.
We finally found a nice/cheap (for me) place. Two of the Norwegians rented motorbikes and asked if I wanted to join them, so we ended up cruising the coastline which was pretty nice.
My second day in Mui Ne, I went to check out the sand dunes they have here. They are called the 'Sahara of Vietnam'. Though I found the real Sahara a bit
Hoian 1
Charming old town more spectacular, it was pretty nice. I also tried the 'sand sledding'. It was fun! I got the guy, renting the sleds (?), to show me how to do it and challenged him for a race. Which I lost of course. We had a lot of fun. But after we finished he started complaining that I broke the sled and he wanted money. It's a scam, I was warned about. Too bad we could have been friends 😊
On the ride to Saigon our driver seemed to have suicidal tendencies again.
Saigon
I had heard a lot of horror stories about Saigon from travellers going north, so I was planning to do a 'hit and run' mission. But guess what: I like Saigon.
It started pretty bad. I arrived late and everything was full. But than a little guy brought me to his mom's guesthouse where I got a nice and cheap room with friendly people.
There is some really interesting museum around Saigon. I went on a museum mission and hit three targets. The war museum was one of the best. It used to be called 'Chinese/US war crimes' museum, but some people got
Hoian 2
more old town pissed off by that. It had some terrible pictures on some of the atrocities committed by the US and French armies. Also the pictures and movies on the deformed children (see the mass use of Agent Orange, DDT and other chemicals) who were born after/during the war were disturbing. I actually saw one of the girls in the movie, while she was visiting the museum. Other great museums were the Reunification palace and the Ho Chi Minh City (official name of Saigon, but no one uses it) museum.
Oh and I found another great veggie restaurant. This place is heavenly. It has the best breakfast, lunch and dinner I ever ate. I've been going down the menu for three days now and I'll be there for breakfast again tomorrow... and maybe I'll have them make a packed lunch for the road...
Final thoughts
For me the central and south part of Vietnam were a lot more interesting than the North, but that's just my opinion.
I feel like the people in the South are more open, laid back and a bit less 'in your face' than the people in the North. Maybe it's because I've gotten
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Japanese bridge used to a lot of stuff (constant noise, begging/selling, traffic, overcharging).
I wonder if my views on the North and its people were not too much distorted by me being ill. I know that I have hardly met travellers who were happy with their stay in the North of Vietnam. Some of them even turned their travel plans upside down and fled into Laos and Cambodia.
I think I can recommend flying into Saigon and travelling North for people wanting to visit Vietnam.
Tomorrow I'm leaving for Cambodia and I leave with mixed feelings. I have come to like the place but still feel a bit disappointed. But hey that's travelling for you.
You can't blame these people to not be as 'happy joy joy' about travellers as people in for example Thailand are. You got to remember they have had some 'travellers' coming to visit them with some less good intentions here for centuries. The Chinese for over a thousand years, the French, Japanese and Americans. And they managed to stand their ground at all time...you have got to admire them...
Btw thanks for all your messages, mails... It really feels good to hear your comments
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Old town and stories. I'll try to get back to you sometime but for now I have been in this internet place for far too long...
Greetings from Saigon!
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andy & lena
non-member comment
Vietnam
Hoi Jan, We zijn ontzettend verheugd om opnieuw iets te vernemen van uw avonturen in het verre Vietnam. Blijkbaar slaag je er toch in om te overleven op de ene of andere manier. En je blijft zelfs gemotiveerd om te sporten: beachlopen + après cocktaildrinks, ... Maar één zaak heeft ons toch een heel klein beetje misnoegd. Je kent blijkbaar de 'clubkata' niet meer. En dat slechts na anderhalve maand weg te zijn van de dojo. Wat mogen we dan wel verwachten binnen een jaar? Daarom deze gouden tip: mocht je ergens een exemplaar van een boek over shotokan karate vinden, dan moet je dit 'onmiddellijk' aanschaffen en vanaf dat ogenblik als Bijbel beschouwen ... Groeten, Andy & Lena