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Published: April 28th 2010
It's a hard life
I wish I could sleep like thatWe arrived in Ho Chi Minh City mid-afternoon and as soon as we got off the bus we were attacked by taxi drivers. We needed a ride to our hotel about 1.2km from the bus stop so asked how much. “Meter taxi” the driver advised us, so we thought, that should be okay. How wrong we were! The taxi ride was less than 2km using his “quick route” through the city traffic and reference to a map showed that he obviously had the “knowledge” to take us that little bit further than needed to hoick the fare up without it being too obvious. I only had US dollars, but he advised he would only take dong, so he kindly pulled up outside the bank for me to change money. Luckily I ran into the bank and quickly used the cash machine, but still I noticed the meter was spinning at an uncontrollable rate. We shortly arrived at our hotel with a fare of 284,000 dong (about $16, which is a lot for here). I gave him a 500,000 dong note freshly acquired from the ATM and he gave me change of 36,000 dong, made up of a 20,000d note and the
Our ride awaits
They actually float rather well! remainder as small notes. He quickly jumped back into his taxi hoping for a quick getaway, but I grabbed his door and asked where the rest of my change was. “Oh so solly” he said as a security policeman strolls over and loiters close to us. The taxi driver promptly opened his wallet and pulled out 2 x 100,000 dong notes and passes them to me all smiles. He actually diddled himself out of 20,000 dong trying to pull a fast one, but hey, he actually made ten times the fare, so he shouldn’t be complaining.
The Continental hotel is a medium sized colonial looking building that reminded us of the Hotel Bolivar in Lima, without the ‘shining’ corridors (remember Jack Nicholson running around with the axe shouting “little pigs”). It is well located in the smart part of the city close to the river and several fancy restaurants. Feeling peckish we walked to the river and found a restaurant for dinner. It was what can only be described as the Red Rooster of Vietnam but serving pho (pronounced fur) and spring rolls, rather than chicken. Pho is a very tasty noodle soup that is unlike anything I have
Is that Charlie?
Gliding down the Mekong Delta being hassled by rowers going the other way had before. Indeed it was too tasty and I realised from later observations in local shops that MSG is sold by the kilo here. No wonder it all tastes so good!
Ho Chi Minh City, or Saigon as the southern Vietnamese still call it, is a busy place with what appears to be no road rules. Crossing the road takes a certain “leap of faith” that is uncommon to us westerners. As you step off the footpath, you just walk at a constant speed across the road and the motorbikes will flow around you. It is important that you keep moving as one stop will make the whole system collapse around you! Oh, and don’t think that you are safe to walk on the footpath as they ride on anything they can here and not always in the direction that you expect! Quite oddly, even though I have made a career out of commanding order over movement, the disorganised chaos here works and I actually quite like it. I like that I can just walk across a road when I want to and not be told by a little red man that the lack of traffic still makes it
a punishable offence to cross the road. I like the throb of all the people working together to use the road network in what is perhaps a far more efficient manner that at home. And I like the way that they just smile like crazed demons when you look them in the eye as they swerve around you. Saigon… just roll the dice of life and take your chances in your search for that next bargain.
We ventured into the Mekong Delta on an organised 2 day trip for the princely sum of US$22, which included accommodation in Can Tho overnight. We were expecting that the trip would consist of visiting cousins’ shops and additional costs would be mounting up at every turn. Surprisingly this was not the case and the trip turned out to be a bit of a bargain. We sailed down the murky brown Mekong River to visit a few islands on our first day and this included a stop at a bee hive where we were provided with tea and the chance to buy honey (not a real surprise there!). The woman brought her wares to our table and told us the price of each
and then walked away. We were stunned, what no hard sell? We actually bought peanut brittle and had difficulty finding someone to take our money. This was most unexpected. Things did become a little more familiar when we were transported down river back to our boat by old women in canoes. All the locals coming the opposite way hounded us “tip for your driver”. It was relentless all the way, but given the woman rowing our canoe was about 90 and on her last legs the $1 tip she got would probably only benefit her children. As the tour consisted of mostly backpackers we realised we were the only people who gave her a tip!
Travelling on our afternoon bus to the overnight stop were a German family with a small child, which they passed back and forth over the seats for most of the afternoon. It was about 5pm when the child finally threw up, thankfully two seats away from us. However, it did manage to throw up over the luggage that didn’t fit under the bus. The kid only threw up water so it didn’t smell the bus out or make a huge mess, but the Germans
did nothing to clean the mess up. An American woman then said “Hey that’s my bag” referring to a bag looking a little damp. It is odd really because she was complaining earlier in the day that the tour company had lost her bag and was carrying on like a spoilt child about it.
Later that evening whilst we were sitting in a hotel lobby waiting for an English couple we had arranged to have dinner with, the American woman walked past. She stopped and asked where our guide was. I replied that he was in our hotel across the road 10 minutes ago, but didn’t know if he would still be there. She got humpy and proceeded to tell us that she wanted to cut her dreadful trip short. Not only had they lost her bags today, luckily found under a pile of vomit, but the day before she had had fish sauce thrown over her bag. “Fish sauce” I enquired “how? and has it stained your clothes?” “Well” she replied, “my bag was under the bus and when I got it out it was all wet”. On further questioning it turns out that someone was transporting live
Bananas?
He was so cute how could anyone resist? fish in a box which leaked water over her bag. So her bag would not have smelt as bad as she was making out. She told us “when I pointed it out to the driver he just laughed, so I complained to the guide and he just said it was not his fault” she was making this into a sob-sob poor old me story, which just made Leanny and I laugh. Cruel I know, but we just couldn’t help it.
Early next morning at 7:15 we were led to the waterfront to catch a boat to see the floating market. I was expecting a market similar to that in Bangkok with small boats plying up and down the river. Not so, the Can Tho water market consists of large barges that could be considered as floating corner shops. Small boats came and went as we sat on top of our boat watching the comings and goings, taking numerous photographs. The remainder of the day was spent on a bus to Saigon, such fun!
It was hot and sweaty in Saigon so we were looking forward to our next destination, Dalat, which is located in the highlands 300km to
Tesco sur mer
A local "shop> owner at the Mekong floating market the north. It is stated in our guide to be a pretty place with a French influence to its architecture, but I must have missed that bit as 1960’s concrete panelling was more obvious. It has a nice atmosphere but it is not somewhere that you just want to chill out with a coffee and watch the world go around. Getting off the bus we were approached by two motorbike riders claiming to be Easyriders - they are a local tourist motorbike group that provide excursions around the highlands. The bus company provided transport to our hotel and the Easyriders followed us there. It appears that they select you and will stalk you into submission. As we were keen to venture out of the town, we perused their list of “sights” and asked to remove the basket weaving stop, the Chinese temple and the rice wine plant and asked if we could go to the cable car instead. Having agreed a price we arranged to meet at 9am the following morning. Now Easyrider does conjure up a rather romantic notion of jumping on the back of a Harley Davidson motorcycle with Jack Nicholson, but don’t be fooled. Vietnamese people could
never look like Jack and Harley Davidsons are just far too expensive (sadly none were left behind by the Americans when they invaded). Leanny was on the back of a 125cc Honda and I upon a 150cc Lifan, which had a bit of chrome and retro styling. Not quite the Harley Davidson experience, but it did remind me of the Yamaha FS1E that a local lad had where I grew up. Not being content with the styling Yamaha had intended for the bike, he put chopper handle bars and extended front forks on it. Sadly he was never asked to join a motorcycle gang. Even though I was on the back of the bigger Lifan bike, the Honda was still faster even with all that extra weight!
At 9am we greeted our drivers Hùng, pronounced Hung and Hựng pronounced Hume (it confuses me still!). Our excursion started with a visit to the Chinese temple, a rather gaudy piece of architecture with a 120 metre concrete dragon in the front garden. It is not an historic building and only worth visiting if you are going there for prayer. We realised that whilst we may have asked to remove items from
Elephant Falls
Not as impressive as the photo indicates their set tour, we would still get their set tour. With that in mind we were not surprised to be taken to the flower nursery as our next stop to be shown where local flowers are grown for sale in the market. Before our next exciting visit, our guides stopped and asked if we would like to take a walk through the forest. “Yes” we replied. They promptly dropped us off at the bottom of a rather large hill and told us to walk over it, marvellous! The view from the top was quite nice and gave us the opportunity to take in the hilly terrain, rice paddies and forests of the area.
Back on the bikes we saw the waterfall, silk factory, basket weaving and finally the rice wine plant. Our guide took us through the process of making rice wine (rocket fuel is a better description) which involves fermenting the rice. Now this creates a lot of cooked rice (alcoholic too) which they feed to their pig, kept in a small cage, to make him fat. The pig eats the rice and gets drunk and falls asleep, when he wakes up he is hungry and hung-over so
Crazy House
Standing outside a local tourist attraction, believe it or not! he is fed more rice and the whole process starts again. The pig was asleep when we arrived and woke up making a hell of a commotion as we left, he looked drunk too!
Talking with Hume, he was complaining that whilst he and Hung were original Easyriders, there were many others who were not Easyriders but pretended to be (I don’t mean they grew handle bar moustaches!). He was a little incensed that the ‘pretenders’ had even copied the Easyrider jackets so they looked the same. He acted as though copying of their jackets was a major crime and an infringement of their copyright. I suggested that perhaps that is how Calvin Klein feels, but I think he missed the point and continued with his grumbling.
We considered using the Easyrider guys to ride us down to Nha Trang on the coast about 4 hours away, but they would only take us via the highlands on a two day trip. In hindsight it was just as well we caught the bus. Whilst the mountain road was new and offered some spectacular scenery across the mountains, the unmade road in the valley would have choked us on the
Easty riders
Hung and Hung posing like Jack back of a bike! As some children at the back of the bus had opened the window, we got a taste of how much dust there was. The conductor was none too happy with them and told them off, but it was all smiles and jovial, so not really a telling off. By mid-afternoon we reached Nha Trang which is like 1970s Benidorm (in Spain) with newish but cheaply constructed buildings housing souvenir shops and restaurants. It is a very vibrant place and I am sure many backpackers have appropriated large hangovers here.
Nha Trang has islands offshore that are a bit of a day-trippers’ magnet, so we joined a boat tour and set sail, well chugged out actually. The first stop was the aquarium, a concrete boat shaped structure plastered onto the beachfront. They had turtles in a large pond that looked like they longed to jump the wall and head out to sea. Two Aussie girls on our trip decided to feed the fish with food sold at the aquarium (I am sure it is the only food they get). The turtles were obviously hungry as one bit the girl’s finger. Luckily a Frenchman offered medical assistance
Quoy Nohn
Lea in a cockleshell boat and a bandage. The turtles in Finding Nemo don’t look quite so friendly now! The rest of the trip was uneventful but the sun was sort of out so it was a nice day to be on the water.
Time was quickly passing on our trip so we only spent one day in Nha Trang. The following day we were on the bus to Quoy Nhon, another 4 hours up the coast. It was overcast and started to rain when we got there and we wandered around what we thought was the central area of the town at the fishing port. It was busy but grotty and not as we expected. Allowing for a day here we booked our passage to Hoi An for the day after. We were hoping to catch the train to Hoi An, but local tour operators always tell you not to go by train, so we were booked on a bus. It turns out that the train would have taken most of the day as Quoy Nhon is on a spur line. We would need to catch a train up to the main line, change and catch a train to Danang. From Danang we
Local Scene
The glossy brochures are true! would then need to catch a bus back down the coast, so the bus was actually a better option.
With our exit planned, we rented bicycles the following day to explore more of the town as we found out that we hadn’t actually been to the town centre, which is about a kilometre from the port. The town was quite large and very un-touristy which was nice. There are Cham towers to the east of the town which we visited. They were built as temples in the 14th century, but actually look like funeral towers. Our ride back to the hotel was amusing with the local school kids on their bicycles rushing past us and shouting “Hello” which inspired me to race them. With Quoy Nhon ticked off the list we were picked up at 6:30am the following morning to catch the 7:30 bus to Hoi An and more adventures.
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laura
non-member comment
Sounds like you guys are having in awesome time in Vietnam. Brings back lots of memories of our amazing trip there. GLad you are both still safe and well. Where to next?????