Miss (and Mr) Saigon.

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WELL

Hi again,

Can't believe it's been 7 days since we last updated!
So much has happened, it feels like it's been 10 years....be prepared for a long one:

Phu Quoc Island

When last we typed, we were in the middle of our 3 day stay on Phu Quoc Island. We spent pretty much the entire time there with Ireny and Andy, which was so much fun. Although Vietnam at that point was proving much more expensive than Cambodia, but that could have been because we were on an island. Our room was a beautiful villa-type room about 25m from the beach. The bathroom had air vents to the outside, which proved a slight hitch in our plan to avoid malaria, but Megan (genius) filled all the holes with towels (clearly Trevors' daughter) and we were right to go (the cleaners weren't as impressed with this plan).
The next night, we ate dinner local-style at the night market, where our fresh seafood was cooked in front of us. Megan and Ireny attempted to eat crab (at $5 a kilo), but ended up just squirting juices everywhere. Fun times. We then found an open bar and played pool, cards and drank cocktails until the early morning, getting back right before the heavens opened and poured down for about 8 hours! Although we were told that it's not monsoon as we're in the dry season...but if that wasn't , we'd hate to see what a monsoon looked like!

On our second full day there we all hired motos again and decided that (as proper, well rounded travellers) we should see more of the island than the beach we were staying on. We took an afternoon to drive around the south of the island, which was beautiful. Good news for the parents - Vietnam strictly enforces an "all people on the bike wear a helmet" law! We drove to An Thoi, the south port of Phu Quoc, which was...a port. Still nice though. Then to Sao Beach, the most picturesque beach on the island. Very similar to Whitehaven Beach, but with more palmtrees and randomly...dogs. As a side note, we must have hit Vietnam right after mating season- there are puppies and kittens everywhere, and every dog has teats down the the ground (not an exaggeration!) (maybe slightly).
The island was stunning, and gave us our first taste of the Vietnamese jungle - which is so distinct! It looks exactly as it does in the movies.

That night we went on a hunt for sunscreen as we'd run out and locals evidently don't wear it...poor Lewis has been hit hard by the "may cause skin sensitivity to the sun" side effect of our malaria tablets - if he's in the sun for more than 10 mins without sunscreen, he gets burnt red raw. Worse for someone who never ever tanned in the first place! Andy and Ireny (both doctors) said it happens more for people with fair skin or red hair. Haha. Shouldn't laugh....:P

Anyway, we searched high and low and eventually found two types - either SPF 90 (yes, 90) or SPF 8. So 90 it is, and now it takes us about 15 mins to rub in this sunscreen that more resembles toothpaste.
That night we said goodbye to Andy and Ireny, which was sad after spending about 5 days with them! They extended an invitation for us to stay with them if we ever go to London, and we did the same (sorry parents! haha). They travel quite a lot though, so we're sure we'll see them again sometime.

Ho Chi Minh ity (Saigon)

The nexy day (Tuesday I believe) we caught a plane to HoChiMinh. All went well on that front, Vietnam Air uses some oldschool planes, but we arrived alive which is the point. (side note**Vietnam Air domestic flights have more leg room than AirAsia!)

We'd booked a hotel (yes, hotel - luxury) the day before, and luckily too - it was amazing, our first experience with hot water and aircon in 3 weeks. Ahhhh was heavenly.
The guy who ran it had the most hilarious Asian-American accent, every time we left we'd get a "Seeeee Youuu Laterrrrr" (in an American accent).
On arrival to HoChiMinh (which we'll call Saigon from now on, because it's easier to type), we were expecting something along the lines of Phnom Penh (the capital of Cambodia, for those playing along at home) - dirty and smelly and crowded. We were actually pleasantly suprised to see it was nowhere near as dirty as we'd expected. Crowded yes, the traffic was completely incomprehensible. What else can you expect in a city with 7 million people and 5 million motorbikes?? But the streets were wide, and the city is full of gardens and big intersections (thanks to the French) - it was nice to walk around in, and even with all the motorbikes, there was hardly any pollution.

After a blatant rip-off attempt by the taxi driver from the airport we checked in and walked to the Binh Thay market, where Lewis bought some REAL Calvin Klein undies (he left 4 pairs and his boardshorts with the laundry lady in Kampot), and Megan bought another watch (which fell apart in approx. 42 hours).
So now we can't tell what the time is again!

That first night was the beginning of our first sick experience of the trip. Megan went first, and Lewis about 15 hours later. We're not sure if it was food or not, because we both had temperatures somewhere in there, but it really wasn't fun. We were so lucky to have been in a room with aircon and a tv with cable! The entire next day was a complete write off, we left the room at about 5pm to see how it went and we walked for about 10 mins before we had to go back to the room. The hotel was so good though, we'd had to cancel a tour that morning, so he organised it for us, gave us some bread and bananas to try to eat and called up every now and then to see if we needed anything. We really appreciated it, Bich Duyen Hotel!

So that wasn't particularly fun, but the next day we thought we'd be ok to go on the CuChi tunnels tour, like we were supposed to the day before. Both not feeling 100%!,(MISSING) we were horrified to find out once we'd gotten on the bus that the trip was 2 hours each way! How did we miss that one??We somehow survived though.

CuChi Tunnels

The CuChi Tunnels are a network of tunnels that were used by the VietCong during the war. They extend over 250kms, and over the 20 years they were used, 16,000 people lived in them. They also had tunnels going into most of the US Bases to gather intelligence and steal things. Apparently it took one division about 4 months to figure out why they were getting shot at inside their tents at night.....Americans.
We arrived to see a video about the tunnels and the CuChi area that can only be described as...propaganda. Essentially, the whole things talked about the "devil" "evil" Americans and how they came to CuChi because they only wanted to destroy the peacefulness there.
The VietCong had awards for the best "American Killer Hero" and "American Tank Bomber".

Being there and an American tourist would have been very very hard. If they were talking about Australians like that, we'd probably have walked out! Extremely one-sided, but then what can you really expect?

We got taken to some tunnel entrances, and were shown some of the traps that the VietCong would use to trap the US soldiers and their dogs. The traps were essentially torture chambers, as none of them killed the soldiers, just trapped them with bamboo spikes or nails made from old US bombshells and they died slow, painful deaths.
This point of the tour began to really emphasise that real people, some Australians, died and were trapped in these horrible devices. The cunning genius of the VietCong was marveled at by the guides, but we had trouble separating it from what it really was - torturing people our age, from where we're from, who didn't want to be there either.
Interestingly, no one ever mentioned the Australian or New Zealand soldiers who fought with the Americans. It was just "the enemy" or "the American soliders". Maybe it was because the entire tour was pretty much made up of Aussies (as per usual), but everyone who'se ever mentioned the war to us has only ever talked about the Americans. We don't particularly want to bring it up anyway!
The whole day in the end (aside from the horrible war stuff) made us just laugh at the propaganda - they government has obviously checked over all the information provided, which is essentially that the US only came to kill innocent Vietnamese. It was mentioned once that they worked in collaboration with the South Vietnamese Government, but this fact was conveniently forgotten when talking about the American "devils"! Ah well.

We were given an opportunity to fire guns while we were there - an AK-47 or an M16, some of which were left behind by the US. We thought (although we were apparently the only ones) that this was possibly the most insensitive thing you could possibly do after seeing the torture equipment and stories we'd just seen. Plus you had to pay.
After that we walked (crawled/squatted) through 20m of the tunnel ourselves (widened for tourists of course, and thank god!). It was NOT fun - tiny and cramped and exhausting...we have no idea how people lived down there all the time! Although we are about double the size of the average Vietnamese.

The tour ended there, and we made it back to the hotel with no stomach upsets! We watched the Vietnam vs. Malaysia soccer match in the SEA Cup along with the entire city. Every near goal or miss, you could hear all the bars and people in their houses screaming out - it was an awesome atmosphere. We decided to stay the next day because we felt like we'd seen none of Ho Chi Minh properly. The hotel was booked out the next night, so we were hoping for a cancellation but no such luck - we had to change hotels the next morning. After an exhausting search, we moved across the road.

We then caught cyclos (bikes with seats in front of them) to the electronics market, which wasn't that cheap, apart from some DVD's. Lewis bought some new ipod headphones and Megan an iPod cover and we were on our way again - next to the War Remnants Museum. It was full of war remnants...
The propaganda in this place was intense! Much more than the CuChi Tunnels, but essentially the same message. Despite this, the pictures of the hundreds of dead civilians were horrifying and extremely graphic, and that part of the war was undebatable. People were in tears just looking at the pictures. Not fun. Although at least this museum acknowledged that there were Australians and other countries involved!

We then stocked up on hand sanitizer and other things we couldn't be bothered having to find in the countryside, and booked our bus tickets to Dalat the next day. That night we went for a few drinks and got an early night (Vietnam has made us super cool).

We caught a sleeper bus to Dalat - AMAZING invention, essentially a comfy hospital chair on a bus. Best idea ever. The ride was 8 hours so it was well worth the extra $2. We'll talk about Dalat in the next blog I think, as this one is WAY too long already!

Tomorrow we leave on a 2 night 3 day tour of the Central Highlands, stopping along the way to look at the real Vietnamese way of life, away from the tour buses and sealed roads -very exciting!

Hope everyone's Christmas preparations are going well - we'll update again before Christmas!


You wanna soda?
Megan and Lewis
xxx

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Comments

[Jan]

Could you tell me the name of the company who has a sleeper bus from Ho Chi Minh City to Dalat. I plan to go in October. Thank you.