Visiting Vietnam

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Vietnam

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Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon)
November 10th- November 12th


Wow how different Saigon is than Cambodia. I still get offered the usual by Tuk Tuk drivers but even after being here 5 minutes I could already feel the difference.

The border crossing itself was pretty weird in its own right as I never once touched my passport and apparently my name is Mathew (they thought my middle name was my name). So when I had to sign a card I had to sign it as Mathew. Anyway I eventually got into Saigon and got my bearings and headed down to the backpackers area to find a place to sleep. Just when it looked as though I was going to have to stay somewhere for a lot more than I had hoped, I found an internet cafe with a dorm in the back offering rooms for 3 bucks. Hey it might not be 5 stars but it works just fine for me. When I walked into the cafe though I nodded at a guy who nodded back at me. After which we stared at each other for a good 30 seconds before we remembered where we had met. We both did rock climbing in Laos together. This was a sign of the times to come for me in Vietnam as I continually met people I had already met along the way. I hit the hay to rest up for a day of exploring the town tomorrow.

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After sleeping in for the first time in a long time (thanks to my ear plugs) I set off to get myself organized and then explore the town. After booking an open bus for the rest of my trip through Vietnam I was off to explore. (basically I bought a bus ticket that allows me to get off in all the major stops along the way and get on another bus whenever I want within the next month). Before I headed off I grabbed a pasta buffet lunch as I was a) dying for a lot of food as Cambodian portions where a bit small for me and b) I was dying for pasta!

This town is crazy! Motorcycles and traffic are everywhere. Crossing the street is like diving into a bee hive as motorcycles are weaving in every direction. Basically to cross the road you just walk and let them move around you which at the best of times can make you sweat. But truth be told its actually kind of fun. The city though does have some really beautiful buildings left over from the french days and in fact are probably some of the best ones I've seen in South East Asia. I also had a tuk tuk diver asked if I needed help to which I said no. Not liking my answer he said he thinks I do and that I couldn't get around on my own. After laughing right in his face and walking off I don't think I left him in that happy of a mood.

I stopped at the War Remnants Museum as well which along with having some left over vehicles from the war gave a good background of the war itself. There where so many photos from the front lines that really drive home what was happening. Again like in Cambodia or in Hiroshima it really makes me sick what people are capable of doing to each other. Nerve gases that have affected generations and napalm. It makes me sick. You can still see the genetic defects cause by the chemical warfare with the people you see begging on the streets. I just don't get how there is still war. As I read on a lighter today "Fighting for peace is like fucking for virginity".

I also saw the reunification palace which was the last stronghold to fall during the war. The tour was really cool as we got taken underneath the palace itself and shown the war room and everything else built deep beneath the palace. The building itself isn't much but the stories and history of it add to it. They even still have the 2 tanks that broke through the gate on display in the "Front yard" as a tribute to what happened. Pretty cool.

Also today while walking aorund I saw some familiar fast food chains that I hadn't seen in a while. KFC, Pizza hut and even a Lotteria. I also saw some strange meats being sold in a market. I saw what I think was the back end of a huge snake, some kind of brains and what I think was a skinned dog being cooked by a blowtorch. (sketchy). The markets here are pretty similar to China as the people selling things try really hard to get you to buy from them. They'll block your path and even go as far as to grab your arm. The laugh when you deek them out though.

After grabbing some Pho for dinner I headed back to the hostel and had a few beers on our little balcony with some of the other people in my room. Now people have raved about Pho but it didn't really do a whole lot for me. It might be the fact that it is soup and well I hate soup but I've heard its better in the north so I'm going to give it another show when I head up a bit more. All for today!

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Today I am heading to the Cu Chi Tunnels. Now every other place in the area I am staying at offers tours there but I ave heard that you often feel like you are being pushed through a conveyor belt while seeing them. I asked around and got the info on the public buses needed to get out there so I'm doing it all on my own today instead. Beside the public buses are usually more fun anyway. I found the first bus no problem but when I needed to change over I couldn't find my next bus. To add to this I was getting hounded by moto drivers telling me there was no 79 bus and I needed to take a moto. Some literally followed me around for about 5 minutes telling me this. When the bus finally pulled in I looked at all of them and laughed. I'm a tourist not and idiot thank you.

I finally arrived and after checking out a monument I arrived at the tunnels and joined it with a small group who also just arrived. Luckily they where there as one was a Vietnamese guy who lives in England and he ended up doing all the translating for me and another guy who couldn't speak a lick of Vietnamese. These tunnels where actually pretty well set up. The had kitchens and meeting rooms and sleeping areas. They where pretty much like a village underground so that they could hide from the American soldiers. They even had booby traps set up in them and trap doors so that they couldn't be flooded. Where their air holes where they even built mounds of mud around to hide them and covered them with pepper or American soldier's clothing so that the US's dog's couldn't smell them. Pretty smart. They were intense to go through too as I am a bit bigger than a Vietnamese guy from 40 years ago. Even with the tunnels being widened for tourists I still had to turn sideways to fit through at some spots. Really amazing to think there are 250 km of tunnels. Amazing.

Happy remembrance day and happy birthday to my dad. Also happy peppero day to all those still back in Korea!

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Today I'll be heading out to Mui Ne but not until the afternoon. To fill up my morning I headed out to see the last few sights in Saigon that I haven't seen yet. The first place I went to was History Museum which wasn't really anything great. This probably had to do with the fact that most of the place was under construction and left me mostly confused as to where to go. Still not too bad and gave me a little bit of the history of Vietnam, which was good.

After wards I headed to the Jade Emperor Pagoda. Now this wasn't really much of a pagoda but was more a temple. This temple was really cool and was completely different then any temple I have every been to. It was more like someones house and was very wooden and dark unlike many of the other temples. Also instead of being one big room it consisted of a bunch of tinier rooms each with different shrines to worship. Lastly the place was jammed packed with people which gave it a cool feel as well.

Afterward I headed back to the main part of town and caught my bus to Mui Ne (MN). Something I haven't mentioned yet is the strange motorcycle helmets they wear here. Apparently it is a newer law here that everyone must wear a helmet but what makes it weird is that most of them are super stylish. In fact the look more like a hard hat you'd wear at a construction sight, or they look more like a stylish hip hop baseball hat/women's styled sun hat. Really quite different. Anyway off to my next stop in Vietnam. Saigon was really cool to see and was quite a contrast from the places I have been lately which was really cool.

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Mui Ne
November 13th- November 14th


After sorting myself out with a room last night I didn't do a whole lot before getting to bed. Today was much of the same as most of my day was spent in or near the water which is the main draw card of MN. After walking the length of the beach I found a place that rented body boards and quickly jumped into the water. The large waves coming, combined with the fact I wasn't really sure what I was doing, in made it really hard to get out far enough to do enough but after sitting back and studying the surfers I quickly got the hang of it. After lunch I spent most of my time either swimming or reading with swimming being more of me letting the waves throw me around which was actually quite fun. Not a super busy day but a really nice day as it wasn't an overly busy beach here so you could easily find your own little area.

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Today started bright and early with a start of 4:30 to see the sunrise at some nearby dunes. After about an hour ride I arrived at the dunes but unfortunately due to some clouds there wasn't any sunrise so basically I just watched the day go form being dark to being light. The white dunes where still pretty cool to see as it was like sitting in the middle of the desert. Another fun thing here was the sledding you can do down them on a crazy carpet. It was kind of like tobogganing except the sand was a lot harder. Still fun though. Afterward I hoped back onto the motorcycle and headed to some more sand dunes but this time of the red variety. Again cool to see. While I was here it slowly started to rain. Not enough to call everything off but just enough to make things a little wet.

After stopping off at some "canyons" and a small but very pretty stream that cuts through the dunes I stopped off to see a fishing village when all the boats where coming back in. I have never seen so many boats all together at the same time like this and it was really cool to see. By this time though it was starting to rain a lot harder so I headed back to my hotel to sleep until I had to catch my bus later in the day that would take me up to Nha Thrang. But man didn't it every start to rain and the thing that seems to happen in Vietnam and well Laos and Cambodia too is that when it rains it seems like the water has no where to go as the streets and fields really flood over. I saw so many motorcycles fish tail and then fall over later in the day it wasn't even funny. MN was pretty cool to see although super touristy it was good to have a few days to lay back and catch my breath.

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Nha Thrang
November 15th- November 16th


On the bus ride to Nha Thrang I met a girl from England who is living in Saigon right now and working at an orphanage. When we got into town and found ourselves a place to sleep we met up for dinner and headed out to see the town. Our first stop was a bar that was full of people and a guy walked in who looked super familiar and I soon realized it was a guy who waved at me back in Saigon but a guy who I didn't remember. HE came up to me and said that I looked really familiar to him which made things really weird. Even his friend traveling with him thought that I looked familiar. After comparing dates and countries we pieced it together that we must have met in Laos although none of us where sure where. Still pretty cool and random. Something else random is tha my David Grohl look-a-likeness must have been in full force as I got told that I looked like him about 3 times by different people tonight...also weird. Finally while telling someone how cool it is that you constantly meet people you've already met while traveling I saw one of the Isreali guys I hung around with in Loas. I knew I'd bump into him sometime as he is here roughly the same time as me but is heading North to South where as I'm heading north.

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My first full day in NT started out pretty bad as it was still pouring down rain. Unfortunately it si the worst month of the year for rain here so I expected it to be pretty bad weather here but not as bad as I thought. At lunch though the sky cleared and the sun came out and the day became absolutely beautiful. The town itself, while touristy yet again is actually really nice. Dotted along the water are many different islands. The big touristy thing to do here is a boat tour of the islands but because of the weather I decided not to book one and will probably cut my time here short by a day as 2 days should be enough.

Something really cool happened to me as I was walking around. As normal a Motorcycle driver came up to me and before he could speak I said no (which is what you usually have to do) he replied that he wasn't going to ask if I needed a ride but instead wanted to know if he could eat lunch with me to practice his English. I decided to one the condition that he takes me to his favorite Vietnamese spot that is not in the touristy area. After about a 15 minute ride we where at a small back alley hole in the wall spot eating a super cheap and delicious lunch and drinking big glasses of cheap "fresh beer" with each glass of beer containing a huge chunk of ice. Before long Son's friend was driving by and joined us for lunch. They taught me some Vietnamese and a lot of stuff about the country. It was such a random and awesome afternoon which yet again I couldn't have even begun to have planned. I keep waiting for the screw job or catch to come up but luckily it never did.

After having a dinner of Pho, which I liked this time (I threw in a helping of rice to make it less soupy) I just chilled out with some reading before crashing for the night.

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Today I had tentatively booked an easy rider trip around the city and country side and after waking up to a cloudy and clear day I decided to go ahead with my plan as the rain seemed to be far off. I hoped on the back of "Funny Thanh's" (his nickname is funny) motorbike and we headed off to see the sites in NT. The sights themselves in the town weren't exactly mind blowing although he huge white sitting and laying Buddha where pretty cool. The town itself and the scenery though outside of the touristy area where quite beautiful. He showed me the small fishing area again packed with boats which was cool and there was even fish bones and meat drying out in the sun (some of the bones where huge!).

He then asked me what I was going to eat for lunch as the tour was over to which I replied that I had no clue. He then asked if I minded if he took me to his wife's food stall that was a bit out of the way and ate lunch with him. I jumped on the chance and had an awesome and delicious lunch of rice with just about every meat you could imagine (well of the main stream variety. There was even egg and tofu!). While eating he showed me a video of him playing the guitar with some over tourist while he took them on a three day tour of the country side between towns. I asked him if we could go out for a few beers after lunch and if he could grab his guitar before hand. After a quick stop at his place to grab his guitar we arrived at his "puck around" (the name of my local bar in Sarnia) and he was playing me his favorite Beatles tunes. Out of all the songs he sang, videos included he only sang one song that wasn't the Beatles. Funny was a really cool tour guide and told me a lot about the history of Vietnam, including the war which was cool. After having a few glasses of "fresh beer" he even took me to an awesome view point. I have his info so anyone going to NT, Saigon or Hoi An let me know and I'll pass his info on.

That night I caught an overnight bus to Hoi An but not before having dinner with the 2 familiar faced people (Siobhan and Matthew), their friend Allie, and Hannah (the girl I met on the bus from MN). Everyone except for Hannah was on the same bus as me so we decided to look for a place together once we arrived in Hoi An. Our time frames are all roughly the same too so we might travel together while we can as well which will be cool. While we were eating dinner I talked to a couple who I had met at the dunes in MN and found out they where heading to Hoi An as well although they where flying up instead of taking the bus.

Something I heard about Vietnam was that people get more and more pushy the further north you go and hand and hand with this the people trying to sell you stuff become more abundant. This is really true so far at least as even while you are eating people will try and sell you stuff. Hopefully this doesn't get any worse and it really wears you out very quickly and it becomes hard to say "no thanks" 40 times a day instead of being rude to them.

Although the weather hampered things a bit here it was still really cool as I met some really cool local people and got a very good glimpse of life in Vietnam. Its also starting to set in that my time is almost done here. I'm sitting at about 2 weeks and a few days before I'll be back home and back to western culture. Although it will be a hard transition I am definitely looking forward to being home, even though I don't want to stop traveling and don't want this adventure to end. I know it wont be the last one though!

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