Gooood Morning Vietnam..

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Well, good morning southern Vietnam at least for the moment anyway. After Siem Reap I headed directly over to Vietnam and into Ho Chi Mien City (that’s HCMC for us locals ) or Saigon for all you older folk out there.

It’s interesting you know, when your there the only people who seem to refer to it as HCMC is government officials and airports.. to everyone else its still seems to be known as good old Saigon.

Now Saigon is a really interesting city and big contrast from Cambodia.. for a start you have about 4 million motorbikes in a city with about 8 million people in it.. spend five minutes down at any main intersection and you’ll see about half of them racing past. In fact I highly recommend a five minute ride on the back of one of them in peak hour… its crazy and better than any theme park ride you’ll ever do.. just close your eyes and hope for the best.

Secondly it’s busy and I mean busy. It kind of reminded me a little of New York, you know the 24/7 mentality and a city that never sleeps. And thirdly I found the people (especially the younger ones) really nice and friendly. Give them half a chance and they’ll sit themselves down next to you for a free English lesson. I got cornered by this young guy one night (he was my waiter) for nearly two hours.. he was going to ‘english’ school and needed help with his grammar! Ha, who would have thought me teaching grammar to someone in Vietnam, my old English teacher would have a heart attack. Anyway it was fun and I enjoyed the experience..

Also I need to send a quick thank you to the Australian Government and our Consulate in Vietnam. As you all know I lost all my credit cards and ID in Cambodia and needed a place to forward new ones onto a couple of weeks later. Being a backpacker this isn’t exactly the easiest thing to do as you never know where you staying next. I took a punt when I was in Cambodia and got everything sent to the Australian consulate in Saigon. Anyway long story short after three trips to the consulate on the same day, a flash of a postal receipt, a photo copy of the parcel and a lots of begging they magically found the parcel for me downstairs and I was cashed up again.. whew.. I was pretty much out of money so I was very lucky and my persistence paid off. All it cost me was a five minute lecture from the head of the embassy on how ‘the consulate is NOT a post office’, remember that everyone… the consulate is not a post office!!!! He he.

The other thing I had to do in town was wait 5 working days for a new visa. Mine was due to run out the day after I got into town so I had to get a new quickly. I’m pretty sure I got ripped off ( US$50 ) but its better than deportation right! So that gave me a few days to do some exploring and settle into the real Saigon. I did all the usually stuff including a quick trip out to the Cu Chi tunnels which was interesting to see Vietnams side of the story for a change. If you ever get there be prepared for the gun fire… its load and you can’t escape the gun crazy tourists down at the shooting range dropping US$1 per bullet…

So after leaving Saigon I headed straight for Nha Trang which I was expecting big things from. Unfortunately I was disappointed. It’s a fairly famous beach town that all the tourists are meant to go to. From my point of the view the beach was average, there wasn’t much to do and it was very resort like. Whilst the night life was good (it had to be, everyone was drinking so much cos there was nothing else to do in town!) and I met some really cool people there, I won’t be racing back there in a hurry. I did do some more scuba diving which was fun but I noticed the coral was pretty much all dead. I think I was a bit spoilt with my foray into diving on Phi Phi Island in Thailand, I can see its going to be a real challenge to beat that. I’ve attached a few pics as you’ll see.

In summary Southern Vietnam is a nice place to visit but 10 days would pull it up. Next time I’m going to visit Phu Cok island too.. I heard from a few other travellers it was beautiful so it’s a shame I missed it.

And in case anyone is wondering, yes I did buy a copy of the film ‘Good Morning Vietnam’ (AUD$1) with Robin Williams and loved watching every moment of it in my room with a can of Siagon beer in hand! Stop it!

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