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We arrived by bus from Phnom Penh into Ho Chi Minh City, the largest, but not capital city, of Vietnam which everybody still referred to as Saigon. As seems to be the way in Asia, we got dropped at a nondescript street corner. Once we had found in our Lonely Planet where the main backpacker area was, a taxi driver approached; we were initially dubious after Thailand where taxi drivers had absolutely refused to use their meters and insisted on agreeing a price before hand (which presumably is higher than it would be on a meter) but this taxi driver said straight away, that the fare would be on the meter. What could possibly go wrong? Having been in the taxi about 5 minutes we noticed the meter kept jumping up rather than going up slowly like you would expect. This made us very suspicious and we consulted our book to try and find out how many Vietnamese Dong there are to the English Pound and how much the journey was really costing us. What we found out was that the 5 minute journey, had so far cost us about 16 English pounds. We quickly got the driver to stop and
got out; it turned out to be about a 10 minute walk from where we wanted to go anyway. We now were in a slight quandary, did we pay the taxi driver what his meter said, which was quite obviously a complete rip off, or did we argue with him? Basically being the cowards we are, we reluctantly paid what it said on the meter, all in all about 380,000 Dong, then muttered nasty words about him under our breath as we walked away.
The incident with the taxi driver had left us with a slightly sour taste in our mouths, with time we came to the conclusion that it’s only 16 pounds and hasn’t exactly bankrupted us for the rest of our trip. Still, it was annoying though, especially as the taxi driver is prying on people who have just entered Vietnam and don’t have the best grasp of the currency, even more annoying that we fell for it then didn’t have the bottle to argue over how much the taxi ride should have been. Either way; we have been extremely paranoid about taxis since and we both sit rigidly, eyes fixed on the meter, not daring to
blink for the duration of any taxi ride. Never the less we quickly found a nice cheap guesthouse and after probing the owner for about ten minutes, trying to figure out if there was any way that he could be planning to con us, and failing, we settled down for the night.
Our first day in Saigon was pretty quiet, we booked ourselves onto a tour to the Cu Chi Tunnels for the next day, sorted out a hop on-hop off bus ticket for the rest of our time in Vietnam and I decided to get a haircut. I went into the barbers, asked for a haircut and sat down expecting to be asked what kind of hair cut I wanted. Unfortunately such a request was not forthcoming, and I got a extremely short back and sides with far, far too much hair left on top, which the lady then proceeded to puff up to further elongate my face, this is basically the standard hair cut that about 90% of the people in Vietnam seem to be sporting and was met with a fit of giggles from Rachel upon returning to our room. Luckily with some flattening down on
top and roughing up at the sides the result could be mostly disguised as a slightly quirky, rather than ridiculous, haircut.
The next day we went on a 2hr bus ride to see the Cu Chi tunnels outside Saigon, this tunnel network was used in the Vietnam war by the Vietcong and the size of it is staggering, especially as it was so close to the South Vietnamese capital of the time. The Cu chi tunnel network consisted of about 120kms of tunnels and the entrances to them were almost impossible to discover as we found out when we first arrived and our guide pointed an entrance out; it was so small, I’m sure that I would have got stuck trying to go down, Rachel however did manage to squeeze down (see pics.) After this we saw some rather fiendish booby traps set by the Vietcong on the South Vietnamese and American soldiers, they mostly resulted in someone getting speared with a sharp bits of bamboo and looked mighty painful. We also saw where some American bombs had landed and had left enormous craters and destroyed an American tank which subsequently, people are allowed to crawl all over and
pose for pictures, not much respect for America in these parts!
The morning ended with the chance to down and walk along one of the tunnels, which had been ‘Westernised’ in size, I still however had to go hands and knees most of the day and Rachel had a minor panic when we couldn’t find the exit and lost everyone. It turned out the exit was right next to us and we had just been extremely unobservant, we did however wonder whether people with less awareness than ourselves would get completely lost in the 120km of tunnels.
Finally before we left everyone was pulled together to watch a video explaining the history of the Viet Cong war and Cu Chi tunnels, the video, judging by the quality, must have been rather old, most likely from just after the war had finished. It was the most blatant propaganda I think I have ever seen, the Cu Chi tunnels were hardly mentioned, Americans were referred to as things like the naughty American Devils and the whole video was really about how great Communism and Vietnam are. Everybody in the room found it rather amusing, judging by the barely muffled laughter,
but it was defiantly very interesting to see, blatant communist propaganda and Vietnam's account of the war isn’t something I’ve come across back home, it certainly shows there are two sides to every story!
We arrived back from the Cu Chi tunnels reasonably early and after a bit of persuasion I went with Rachel to the Vietnamese Water Puppet Show that evening. It turned out to be surprisingly good even though we had no idea what was going on as the dialogue all in Vietnamese. I think it was something to do with a famer and a dragon who had stolen the famer’s wife, but I could be way off. The way the puppets were controlled with people under the water was excellent as was the wide array of strange instruments the band used, on the whole a surprisingly cultural end to our visit in Saigon.
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Paul
non-member comment
Taxi in Vietnam
Sorry to hear your bad experience with a crooked taxi driver. It seemed like you hadn't done enough homework and not read carefully instructions in the guidebook. In the future if you encounter another crooked one, just pay the reasonable estimate fee, perhaps add 10 or 20 thousands more and then walk away. It's also good idea to write down all the information about the driver and taxi number before handling the money. Have a good trip! Paul