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SAIGON
It was a long journey across; I set off from Sihanouk Ville at around 07:30am and arrived to a hostel in Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) at about 21:00. First was a 6-hour journey all the way back to Phnom Pehn (I didn't think I'd be seeing that city again), a half hour changeover and then 7 hours to Saigon including the border crossing. Needless to say I was fairly exhausted by the time I arrived and I just wanted to get a hostel ASAP. The bus conveniently stopped right on Phan Ngu Lao street which is smack bang in the middle of the backpacker district of the city. I went looking for "Yellow House" hostel from the guide book only to find that it no longer exists so instead settled on Saigon Backpackers Hostel which I'd walked by a few minutes before. 7USD a night got me a comfortable and clean dorm room with a decent free breakfast thrown in. I stayed for a total of 5 nights.
I was surprised at how small Saigon was. I think I was expecting a more spread out city a la Phnom Pehn but the centre
of town and the main sights were all in easy walking distance from the hostel and from each other. I spent a couple of days chilling out and another couple visiting the attractions, starting out at the Ben Thanh Market and then swinging by the town hall, central post office (more interesting than it sounds!) and the Duc Ba (Notre Dam) Cathedral before taking a look at the Re-unification Palace where the Vietnam War ended in 1975 when a North Vietnamese Army tank crashed through its gates, and finally the War Remnants Museum which houses various graphic displays from the American phase of the Vietnam War. Some of the images were pretty full on and it's not a place for the faint-hearted, especially the three jars of preserved human fetuses deformed by exposure to dioxin. Both the Re-unification Palace and War Remnants Museum were well worth a visit although it has to be said that both present hugely one-sided accounts of the War with little (or no) mention of the atrocities carried out by the Viet Cong.
On my last day in Saigon I took an excursion to the Cu Chi Tunnels about 70km Northwest
of town which also included a visit to the Cao Dai Temple. The Temple was
OK although not really worth the 3-hour coach journey it took to get there! We were given just a swift half an hour there to get some pics of the temple and observe part of a ceremony taking place before being called back to the bus and taken off to the tunnels at Ben Dinh. The tour started with a short (and predictably one-sided) video about how the tunnels were constructed and the different activities they were used for. Our guide was very good and explained bit by bit how people lived for weeks on end in the tunnels during the war. The tour ended with the opportunity to crawl through 100 metres of tunnel - albeit one especially constructed for (slightly fatter) tourists. Every 15 metres or so there was an escape shaft for those who couldn't make it the whole way. It was hard to believe that this tunnel was in fact slightly wider and higher than the real things; it was cramped as hell, dark and insanely hot inside. I went through crouched for as far as I could manage but then
the ceiling got so low that I literally had to crawl along on hands and knees to make progress eventually squeezing out the other end drenched in sweat, and my thighs killed me for the next two days... after only 100 metres of tunnel! I can't even imagine how people spent weeks underground, carrying out daily tasks without going completely insane!
I left Saigon on Thursday 3rd and flew with Jet Star up to Hoi An. The flight was only 60USD compared to around 30USD by bus but if there was ever a statistic that shows how slow bus travel can be in Southeast Asia it's this one - my flight lasted
less than one hour. We took off, I got comfortable, listened to a few songs, we landed! The same journey by bus would've taken 22 hours. For the sake of my sanity I paid the extra and didn't regret it for a second!
HOI AN
The flight actually arrived to Danang, one hour north of Hoi An, so I had to jump into a taxi at the airport to the bus station (5USD) and then take one of
the big old yellow buses (15,000 VND, about 45 Pence) to Hoi An. From the station in Hoi An I hopped onto a moto-taxi to Hoi Pho Hotel (1USD) where I got my own private air con room for 15USD a night and I stayed here for 4 nights leaving on Monday 7th.
Hoi An was a cosy place to be for a few days especially after chaotic Saigon and its insane traffic, but in truth there's not too much to do here. It's really just a place to relax, enjoy the food and maybe buy some local art or tailor made suits and pairs of shoes. The streets and building are all very picturesque and the whole town lines the Thu Bon River where in the evening cute little candle-lit paper boats float downstream. Strolling through town during the day is pleasant but at nighttime it really comes to life when entire families sit outside on the pavement for dinner, rice paper lanterns illuminate the streets and narrow alleyways and the smell of incense fills the air. It's touristy as hell, but it still manages to retain its authenticity.
In between sampling different restaurants and visiting the town's main sights - Tan Ky House, the Japanese-Covered Bridge, Museum of Trading Ceramics - I took a morning tour to the nearby Cham "My Son" ruins meaning "beautiful mountain" in Vietnamese and nothing to do with family members! The ruins are the most important remains of the Cham Empire. The site itself wasn't so impressive although I sensed that that was maybe due to the fact that I was there not too long after seeing the Temples of Angkor and anything after that was always going to pale in comparison. The setting was very beautiful though.
Monday came along pretty quickly and I took a bus at 2pm (around 25USD) from Hoi An. This was going to be my longest coach journey of the trip so far - a full 17 hours. My destination - Hanoi.
Suerte
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