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Mekong Delta
One place that looks just like you'd expect it to "Cigarette" "no thanks", "cyclo" "no thanks", "fruit" "no thanks", "sunglasses" "no thanks", "moto" "no thanks" "marijuana" "no thanks", "boom boom" "no thanks"...it seems as soon as you have shaken one hawker off another one is on you. But everyone in Vietnam wants to talk to you whether it is to sell you somthing, to practice their English or simply to have a Westerner say hello...
I don't know why but when we touched down in a monsoon-soaked Ho Chi Minh airport on the last day of May I hadn't expected much. How wrong I was! What a great country! Its got everything, manic cities, stunning scenery, beautiful beaches, delicious food and most of all people who are bursting with energy and friendliness.
One of the nice things about travelling is meeting up with people from home along the way for a night or two. You can catch up on the gossip, give them an idea of what we get up to on the road and if nothing else give us a break from each other and someone else to talk to!! So it proved in our last night out in Bangkok with the Chiang Mai boys and Rachel and
Eh, are the fire brigade handy?
Squeezing into one of the famous holes of the Chuchi tunnels also when we met kiwi Catherine in Saigon next day..
Saigon (the name was changed to Ho Chi Minh in 1975 when the Viet Cong conquered the city) turned out to be a little gem, and at the end we felt we were leaving without seeing all it had to offer. But I'm not too worried, I'll definitely be back...
Without a doubt the most terrifying experience of all is crossing the road. We'd be warned but I don't think I'll ever get used to it! Wait for a gap maybe? In a city with 3 million motorcycles there are no gaps ... you just walk out and hope for the best. And you know what somehow they always manage to avoid you as long as you hold your breath and don't change your trajectory or speed you'll be fine.... still you brick it everytime...
The backerpacker hangouts always seem to be where the best buzz is and Saigon was no different. Vietnamese food kicks ass and there is a bewildering choice of restaraunts, owners outside beckoning you in. The busiest spots though are the little "bia hoi" stalls on the pavements with fresh local draught beer
(no choice here) and tiny children's plastic seats. It was here that we had the 'misfortune' of bumping into the two Kerry boozebags we'd met in Vang Vieng. I wouldn't mind but we were sensibly on the way home from an early night ahead of our trip next morning. Instead we found ourselves crawling up the stairs at 3am with that familiar feeling of dread you get after a night out knowing the alarm is going for work in 3 hours time!
Luckily Catherine was waiting for us or I don't think we would have made that trip. When a man a great as Brian Lynch recommends the Mekong Delta tour as the highlight of his trip to SE Asia, then who am I to argue....But I was beginning to question the wisdom of this as I sat in the backseat of an AC deprived minibus, sweating for 2 hours on the bumpiest motorway in God's kingdom....
In the end we would have been sorry to miss this one. The Mekong Delta is Vietnam's garden and supplies most of the country's rice and veggies thanks to the silt the Mekong dumps there on its way out to sea,
millions of people living near or on it rely on it for their livelihood.
We sailed around the delta in a couple of boats visited locals, scoffed cocunut toffee, ate local food, listened to local music and at the end of the night shunned the hotel to stay with a family for the night. It was all pretty tame to be honest, electricity, cold beers, a few drinking games and luckily an English-speaking neighbour that saved us using hand signals all night and looked like a little Buddha...! But the matresses were a thick as a copy of the Times and the bed below was mad from marble so not much sleep that night..
I don't throw this phrase around lightly but the ChuChi tunnels are a "must see"! ChuChi is a little village only 30km from Saigon and was a Viet Cong stronghold of American south Vietnam. The Americans did their damndest to smoke, burn, blast and hunt them out and failed spectacularly. It is a testament to their resilience when you see the tiny tunnels they lived in for 10 years, the bits we were in have been widened to allow fat westerners like us sweat it
out down there for 100m... when some poor Americans finally managed to stumble
across one of the hidden entrances and enter the tunnels, it was almost certainly to their death. They just were not small enough or familar enough with the booby traps and ambush holes and easy pickings for the wee VC's. Fired an AK47 out there too, but didn't hear anything else the guide said after that so can't tell you anymore!
The pictures in the War Museum are pretty harrowing. The pictures of the devastation caused by the Americans spraying chemicals over the country make you feel weak. You wouldn't blame any of these people for hating the Americans after visiting here but that's not the case, they realise to move on they need to forgive and forget and all are welcome..
We hadn't seen the sea for weeks so when we rolled in on the overnight sleeper to Nha Trang with its long golden sandy beach and blue sea to us it looked like heaven....
To be honest we did feck all in Nha Trang just lounged around, ate and drank well...waking up with sore head after night out in the Sailing club makes
you less keen for the 7am starts! But the 4 days we were here NT was ideal. Before we left there was those who doubted whether or not I would be able to slum it with the rest of the spotty teenagers. Well all I can say to you is, you were right! Massages on the beach while you have a lobster cooked next to your sun lounger.....magic! The beach is NT comes alive in the evenings, Vietnamese stay out of the sun during the day. Women wear long gloves and masks in the 40 deg heat as white skin is a sign of beauty...But at 5 every day the place bursts into life and this was a great time to sit around after all the foreigners had gone and soak up the atmosphere. Even got shown up in a few games of football, thought I might have at been able to find a country where I could hold my own...No!
We did take a boat trip one day which involved visiting a few islands, swimming, snorkelling and jumping off the roof of the boat. At lunchtime Vietnam's answer to Westlife cranked up and had a slightly self-conscious group
up on the dinner table dancing to Hotel California.. a few cold beers and a few glasses of free rancid red wine later and there was no stopping us!
Despite the abuse I've received for taking a cookery course in Chiang Mai, I decided I may as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb and headed down to the mineral mud baths for a soaking yesterday. Definitely a fist we were truely happy as pigs in shit, I have no idea what good it does you but surely a half an hour wallowing in muck followed by a dip in boiling hot spring water can't be any harm..!
Sitting in Hoi An as I type now...halfway up the country and have decided definitely no more buses on this trip...last night was hell. The combination of a driver who drove like a 4-year old, constant beeping, bone-shattering bumps, an aisle seat and two feckin' Israelis who insisted on reclining the seat in front of them at every opportunity despite me jamming my knee up against it. Eventually I gave them a glare that would have stopped a charging elephant and they stopped! I am a contrary as
Lights out on the Mekong
Sunsets just lagging behind waterfalls by a whisker bag of cats now after 30 mins sleep last night so am off for a kip..
Talk soon from Hanoi...
Enda
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