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Published: April 8th 2011
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Date of Travel: 7-10 December, 2007
Duration of Travel: 4 Days
Major Cities Visited: Ho Chi Minh City, Cu Chi, Mekong Delta
We continued on the journey from Hanoi into Ho Chin Minh city and as expected, HCMC was certainly more modern and organized. After checking into the hotel, took a walk down the main shopping street in district 1 and surprisingly, the roads were significantly less crowded than what we expected in the narrow lanes of Hanoi. Things sold in HCMC are virtually identical to what we saw in Hanoi but the prices in HCMC were at least 30-40% more expensive for the same identical products. I guess this is somewhat unsurprisingly given the larger presence of foreigners within HCMC as compared to Hanoi which is more local.
We took a river cruise for the night where we had dinner on board. After the cruise, we decided to be exciting and so we hopped on to the local cyclos (this is like a trishaw but with a bicycle) for a night tour within the HCMC city. This was where a major fiasco all begin. We initially agreed for a price of about $4usd per person per cyclo. It
all seem fine when during the tour as the guy on the bicycle was certainly very informative and started cracking jokes about his own city. However, things started to get bad when we noticed that towards the end of the ride, he kept cycling into a really dark alley which kind of seemed out of the city. This was when we knew that something was just not right. And sure enough it wasn't. He dropped us off at a really dark alley which I had no idea where the hell we were. And then he said that the ride costs $50usd per person because he waited for us for the river cruise to end. Like seriously? Apparently this is the norm in Vietnam where they usually try to do such things to extort $ from you. But having no experience what so ever, we refused to pay and told him that the max we were willing to give was $10 per person. He didn't accept and that was when he started to threaten us by walking around with a stick in his hand and playing the good cop bad cop scenario. And so we didn't really know what to do
and just so happen near by there was a French man hooking up with a Vietnamese prostitute and so we approached him for help. And kindly enough he did. He tried to mediate with the him of his Vietnamese lady, of course, but maybe it was a bad idea on hindsight as it actually made the cyclo people even more aggressive where they kept swearing and showing their resentment at the white people. Now why didn't we think of that. Clearly Saigon under went hell during the Vietnam War and we should have been sharper in who we sought for help. But I guess at that point in time there was nothing really left that we could do. And running didn't seem like an option .... just yet. Things got even nastier when they tried to make a huge scene by calling even more locals and ranting certain rubbish which I have no clue about. We tried to hop into a taxi but the taxi man would not go because he was afraid of his life if he drove us off this time round. Moreover, the cyclos were extremely fast in placing their cyclos right in front of the taxi
so that it could not leave. In essence yes we were trapped. The situation got even worse when the verbal threats really started to get nasty where they came right up to our faces and started to try talk us down. We still refused to barge from out position. By then it was over half an hour already and with the huge crowd gathering around 3 foreigners, it kind of seem like the newscasters should have been there too. Then all of a sudden, 2 people on a motorbike suddenly drove into the crowd and one of them took out a pistol and aimed it at the guy threatening us. This guy was not in any police uniform or what so ever but the moment we saw the guy, we knew were were going to get ourselves wet in blood in whatever form and by instinct we knew we had to run. just run at all costs. and so we did. we really just ran across the roads wout even watching for traffic as far as we could and thankfully sheraton towers was just nearby and we hid in there for an hour. After which we creeped back to our
original hotel and were kind of worried considering that we had actually told this cyclos our actual hotel because we wanted to be dropped off there. Stupid us.
We got kinda of worried the hotel that we stayed at considering that it had no security guards and by 9pm the receptionist was gone and the hotel was virtually free for all. And so the next morning, and not knowing what the situation would be like, the paranoid us decided to check into a hotel with at least security services and we moved right into HCMC's premier hotel, the Caravelle. This was arguably Saigon's finest hotel which clearly set big holes in our wallets but suddenly, our South Vietnam trip was back on! haha.
We were still unsure if the streets were necessarily save considering especially that these cyclos ploughed the streets day and night in search of tourists to extort $ from. So we decided to take 2 day trips from HCMC. the first was the trip out to the city of Cu Chi to see the famous Cu Chi tunnels. It was an interesting experience especially crawling inside those narrow and dark tunnels trying to imagine how
this was the means which the Vietnamese rebel fights moved around during the Vietnam War. Interestingly enough, we met a group of fellow Singaporeans and so we decided to go on a private tour together on the Mekong Delta. The Mekong Delta was pretty decent but it did get kind of boring after an hr on the boat as everything started to seem the same. The last day we did some city sightseeing of HCMC. Particularly impressive was the Reunification Palace and the Cathedral. Apart from that, we didn't really travel around nor walk the city much and missed out on the all famous Ben Tahn Market which was supposed to have widest and cheapest range of Vietnamese products.
HCMC was really an experience, wouldnt it?While it certainly has made me more cynical and alert for future travels, I am equally tempted to pay Vietnam another visit.
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