A Little Different To Oz

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Saigon. Shit. I'm still in Saigon...

Sorry.

Anyway, it's all been a bit of culture shock for me. This place is very full on, very hot, very humid and extremely hard to navigate and by the end of my first full day I wanted to curl up in my room and avoid all of it. I've been told by some people that I've met that this is actually a 'good warm up town'. I really do need some warming up since I've made loads of mistakes overpaying for my room, rides around town and some goods, navigation, language barriers etc. However, I'm getting used to it and it's loads more fun and interesting than my other travel so far and I'mn starting to gain a large measure of affection for Saigon. I still despise haggling though.

First day I took a bicycle tour around town with one of the tonnes of guides hanging around the tourist areas armed with a book of glowing comments from previous clients. At first it was pretty fun being driven around on the front of the cyclo, getting driven around on the front of the cyclo having things pointed out and explained in broken English, questions answered etc, with drop offs at convenient destinations such as the one sided but still enlightening War Remnants Museum (formerly the War Atrocities Museum), Ben Tanh market and Beautiful Chinese temples but it really got tiring when he dropped me off at the same sorts of places over and over, the pressure to buy stuff at dropoffs and even unwanted dropoffs got greater, so I got him to leave me at my hotel and he insisted that I paid more for estra stuff not included in the agreed price. Grr.

On the second day I took a half day tour to the Cu Chi Guerilla tunnels outside the city. This large tunnel complex was a Viet Cong stronghold during the war that was built when the forests were razed in order to destroy hiding places and were occupied by Vietcong right up until the end of the war. The guide was this crazy bloke who was a translator for the Americans during the war and was able to give some good insight into Vietnam at that time. The tunnels themselves were a mixture of entertaining communist propaganda (the Americans were "a batch of crazed devils" according to the 70s made black and white intro video), exhibits on tunnel life and enterprise (Fire an AK47? Dollar a bullet!). The tour included going through the tunnels which were very cramped (though apparently widened for tourists): I couldn't imagine spending years in there.

My last couple of days have been spending floating around the Mekong Delta. It's pretty cool with lots of floating markets and scenery but what struck me was how dirty the river was. Also the endless drop offs at places where you are encouraged to buy stuff is rather tiring. Apparently this is how tours make their money over here: every purchase includes a monetary kickback for the tour operator. It also kind of wreck the sense of adventure so I think I'm going to skip tours where possible from now on despite the convenience.

I've also decided to try and go through Laos since everybody seems to love it. That'll be nice. So, um, bye.

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Comments

[jonathan]

Scams
Good to see that you are falling for EVERY scam out there!