Refrigerated Leaders, Frogger and Corkage

Asia » Vietnam
July 9th 2008

Published: July 23rd 2008

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Couchies

Honey... I'm Just Taking The Canoe To The Store

Hundreds of people would arrive at the Hoi An market every morning from upriver

Easy Peasy

Arriving in Vietnam was as easy as pie. We'd been expecting the worst after our horrible arrival in Cambodia but exiting the country was simple and the road to Ho Chi Minh City was lovely. Our bus company even dropped us off right at the end of the road where all the budget hotels are located, which meant no tricky taxi negotiations on arrival - fabulous.
HCMC is hectic. There is no other word for it, especially when it comes to the traffic. There are thousands of motorbikes and scooters everywhere you look and everyone riding them wears face masks because of the smog. Unlike in Cambodia they do wear helmets and there seems to be a limit of only 2 adults per bike, but no end to the number of bags, animals, children and other miscellaneous items that can be carried or tied to the sides. Add in to the road mix an assortment of push bikes, busses, lorries and the odd car and you have a never ending, never pausing, noisy, stinky metal-river gushing through the city 24-7. There are traffic lights, but they don't mean much. There is a designated side of the road to

No Fatties In Here

Thin little houses in Ho Chi Minh City

drive on, but it doesn't mean anything. There are pedestrian crossings...but...they don't count for much either. Crossing the road is like playing Frogger and the best technique is to take a deep breath and just start walking very, very slowly out in to the oncoming traffic in the hope it will avoid you. Miraculously this works.

City Living

HCMC was a bit of a shock to the system. There were a lot of tourists and everything seemed to be set up to serve us. There was no easy way of finding a local bus anywhere, instead there were tours to just about any location you could dream of and a squadron of eagle-eyed tuk-tuk and moto drivers ready to pounce the moment it looked like your feet might be taking you more than 5 paces.

In HCMC we walked around a lot, visited the War Remnants Museum, the historic Post Office and the lovely park in the centre of the city which give a tiny respite from smog and loud blasting horns. The museum was average. There's quite an impressive collection of tanks, planes and bombs outside and an horrific section on the effects of Agent Orange

Lethal Killing Machines...

... AND Dave.

and the torture carried out by American troops. The best part is an exhibition of photographs, but the room was so hot it was almost unbearable to be in there too long.

The buildings in HCMC are quite interesting because there used to be a tax on shop frontage, so instead of building out, people built up and back. As a result there are buildings 5,6,7 storeys high and 20m deep, but just 2m wide. They look like they might fall over in the wind, though in most places so many are sandwiched together that they all support each other.

Unfortunately David suffered another bout of Delhi Belly just after we arrived, rendering it impossible for him to go out and, therefore, for us to go on the trip we had booked to the Cu Chi Tunnels. These are the tunnels dug by the Viet Cong during the war to avoid the Americans. They are tiny and even though they have been widened to cater for western tourists they are still incredibly claustrophobic. Tracey made 5 attempts through the day to get our money back from the company we'd booked tickets with, to no avail. Instead we watched

Another Day.. Another Machine of Death

This guillotine in Ho Chi Minh City was used before the American War started to muder South Vietnamese citizens who opposed the pro-American Government

movies on our scratchy hotel TV and got takeaway!

Horizontal Travel...Nearly!

In HCMC we also discovered sleeper busses. They are the same size as a regular coach, but somehow someone has managed to re-design the seats so that there are two levels. Below, you sit with your bottom at floor level, legs stretched out in front and up above it's like bunk beds. The bottom level people can just about sit upright without bashing their heads and when it's time to sleep the back of the seats drop down to almost flat. They are the perfect way to travel overnight...if you are under 5 foot 3! Poor Dave. Imagine trying to squash a marshmallow through a keyhole - that is how he looked trying to get his legs into the flat section and his body to fit on the seat bit. Oh how we envied the tiny Vietnamese woman curled up in blissful sleep beside us! Still, somehow we both managed to get some sleep and arrived in Hoi An feeling almost refreshed.

During this bus ride we also had two interesting stopping points. The first was in the middle of Dragon Fruit country. We had been

Dragon Hunting

People were buying up bags of this fruit at the side of the road

driving through fields of the plants which look like droopy multi-fingered cacti when we suddenly pulled over at the side of the road. People were buying up sack loads of the fruit, which is a beautiful oval shaped pink colour with spiky bits. Much to the amusement of the bus driver we bought a couple too. Then a few hours later we stopped at what looked like an airplane hanger. It was actually a wine warehouse. Yes, watch out France and the New World wineries, it turns out Vietnam also produces the odd drop. And odd it was. Most people seemed to be buying small plastic bottles of the stuff and drinking it there and then. Not wanting to pass up the opportunity of potential alcohol poisoning we bought a bottle too, but opted for the more civilized option of a glass bottle we could open later.

After a brief delay while the bus company employees did their best to get us to stay at their expensive, out-of-town hotel we arrived in the centre of Hoi An and eventually managed to find a cheap place to stay, though it was a struggle.

Horn Free

Hoi An is

Tracey Gets A Fright When The Lampshade Moves

Fresh fish shopping in the central market in Hoi An

beautiful. It somehow avoided being razed during the war and is now full of lovely little streets with original wooden houses from the 17th century. Because of its position on the river, close to the coast it was a major trade port and as a result there is a huge immigrant Chinese population there. They set up beautiful merchant houses with a shop at the front and living quarters behind and above. The 'above' section becomes very important in the rainy season when everything is moved upstairs and the river regularly floods around 2m of water into all the buildings. One year the water level almost reached the second storey. There is a buzzing fish and fresh produce market in the centre of the old town where just about everyone that walks past is wearing a typical conical hat and many women carry huge loads on either end of a bamboo stick balanced on one shoulder.

As well as being famous for its quaintness and beautiful beach Hoi An has become something of a shoppers' paradise. The streets are lined with rows of shops displaying beautiful outfits. Inside they all have overwhelming selections of materials to chose from and

Upper Class Backpacking

Getting fitted for a new suit in Hoi An. Do you think it will crease in a backpack?

can whip you up just about anything, made-to-measure in a couple of hours. There are shoe and bag shops that can do the same. Despite her best intentions not to succumb to their charms Tracey found herself ordering a coat. Not to be outdone, David measured up for a suit.

The other wonderful thing about Hoi An was the lack of traffic. The streets are very small so there aren't many cars and because it has been designated a World Heritage Site motorbikes are banned from the three oldest streets on 4 days of the week. Signs banning anything except 'pedestrians and primitive forms of transport' pop up all over the place. It was bliss.

So, with the coat and suit (following several minor adjustments) safely packed in a box at the post office we grabbed a quick meal in the market before setting off for Hanoi. Here's where we encountered our first of what was to become many experiences of the 'Great Vietnamese Tourist Rip Off'. Having told us a meal was 10,000 dong we were about to sit down at one woman's food stall when Tracey spotted her taking 10,000 from a local and slipping him

We're Not Leaving 'til The Keg is Empty

You have to drink this keg within 24 hours or it goes off. Sounds like a fair challenge we thought.

a sneaky 5,000 back under the table. When Tracey said we would only pay 5,000 as well, the woman refused to serve us. It seems she would rather lose the money than accept the true fee. At several other counters we watched while people debated how much they would charge us before plucking a 'tourist price' out of their hats. Eventually we found a lovely little stall where we sat on stools so low our bottoms were almost on the ground and enjoyed a very tasty meal of noodle soup. The lady kept giving us little bits of other dishes to try while her green grocer neighbour sold us various bits of decently priced fruit. Sadly this was the only pleasant experience we had with local people in the whole of Vietnam.

We did enjoy a lovely meal along the river front in the evening and David sampled the local beer which is freshly brewed every few days and kept in pressurised barrels at the side of the road. It is so popular that the best places sell out by about 8pm each night. We also drank the wine, which despite being 'red' we had chilled...luckily! It was more

A Forest of Incense

Inside a Chinese Temple in Hoi An. These were all burning at once and had been for months

of a sweet wine or a kind of port, but slipped down quite nicely at the end of a hot day's shopping and walking.

Back on a bus we headed for Hanoi - another 24 hour journey. We passed some beautiful coastline and got caught up in the opening celebrations for Miss Universe 2008 which, randomly, was being held in a town called Nha Trang. It meant an hour and a half spent circling the city in our bus while police refused to let us down the street we needed. Eventually the driver pulled over and we had to walk about 1500m through dense crowds with our backpacks to get to the sleeper bus for the second part of the journey. We had better seats on this bus than the first sleeper and David was marginally less squashed so we got to Hanoi in reasonably good shape. (If you are buying a sleeper bus ticket ask the staff to tell you which beds are bigger than others. They are not all the same size.)

Water and Magic in Ha Long

Hanoi is much like HCMC. It is smaller, but the bike and car horns seem

It's Not Quite The QE2

Our three story wooden boat for a cruise through the World Heritage Site of Ha Long Bay

much, much louder. We were getting a bit tired of cities at this point so we headed up to Ha Long Bay in the north on a three day package trip. Not used to doing organised tours, the whole thing was an interesting and amusing experience. We had heard it was slightly chaotic...and it was. This is how we think it works, though parts of the co-ordination are clearly magic. Up to 100 tour companies, hotels and booths in Hanoi sell trips to Ha Long Bay. The description of the trips varies, as does the price. You can also do a 1,2 or 3 day option. Everyone is picked up at around the same time on one of about 15-20 minibuses and coaches. All the transport stops...at the same time...at a side of the road ceramic shop with criminally priced food and drinks. Around 40 minutes later all the busses pull off again...at the same time. Everyone arrives in Ha Long city...at the same time, gets off, is led to the port and told to wait. And here's the first magic part. Tickets start appearing for certain people to get on to certain boats while the passports of those sleeping

The Not So Amazing Caves

How to ruin a natural beauty

on the boat are demanded by the captains. Others, including us, were told we would sleep the first night on an island and the second night on the boat. We climbed aboard our vessel with about 20 others and all the ships pulled out of the port...at the same time. We were going with the flow, but it was clear many people were not getting what they had expected and tour operators had simply said whatever it took to sell their tickets, even if it wasn't true.

Ha Long Bay is famous because of its limestone karsts and islands. It is a World Heritage Site and it is easy to see why. It is beautiful. Imagine very still, greeny blue waters interrupted by spikes of rock in all kinds of shapes and sizes. Some very small, some covered in plant life and some big enough to count as islands. On some of these islands are amazing cave formations. The whole area is incredibly peaceful, especially coming from Hanoi. There are remarkably few speed boats. Instead the waters are full of wooden junks which move fairly quietly through the water despite running on motors not sails.

Having eaten an

A Pretty Quiet Neighbourhood

Families live on these waters and fish for a living. Children go to a floating school.

average lunch we arrived at what is called "The Amazing Cave' and guess what? All the other boats arrived...at the same time. God knows what the government thought it was doing when it made this cave 'more accessible to tourists'. It has been totally ruined. You arrive to a Disney-esque announcement with cheesy music and inside the caves, not only have they paved the floor with some kind of bathroom tiles, but they have lit up certain areas with multi coloured lights. To make things worse, two false fountains have been built inside. One uses water that really does leak naturally in to the cave, but has been deliberately re-directed to form a 'lucky pond'. Heaven only knows where the water is coming from for the other one. We have no idea what these changes must be doing to the natural systems inside the caves that have existed for centuries. The sheer volume of people inside at one time can also not be helping things. The caves ticked off the list (this is what it felt like) we sailed through more beautiful scenery to arrive at Cat Ba Island. Here we were ushered off the boat and told we would

Can It Eat My Face?

Spiders as big as your hand were a regular treat on Cat Ba Island in Ha Long Bay

be picked up the next day. With that our guide disappeared with the remaining people on the boat and our receipt, leaving us and a few others to wander, slightly lost down the jetty. Magic part 2. A bus was waiting. It was full of locals and a few other tourists who had been hustled off a different boat. After a drive to the other side of the island we were ushered off the bus and miraculously there were hotel rooms available for everyone and instructions on where to eat. The rooms were very nice with hot water and TV and the food was as average as the rest of the meals so far. The following day we set off in the rain on our trek of Cat Ba Island and found ourselves alternating between ankle deep mud and jagged, shoe slicing rocks. Several people had come along in flip flops - they and their toes did not enjoy the day. We did. The rain stopped and the clouds meant we only got very hot instead of impossibly hot as we climbed to the summit of a little peak. By the end we were climbing with both hands up quite

Depth Charges

An eight metre drop actually made this quite painful (but didn't stop us doing it more than once)

a steep drop but the view from the top was amazing. David also discovered another disadvantage to being tall - he was forever going headfirst into spiders' webs as we walked. Not such a bad thing until you see the photo we took of one of the spiders. They were HUGE.

That afternoon we got back on a different boat and...magic part 3...that captain somehow had our passports. We sailed to a beautiful cove where all the other boats had also moored and finally had time for a bit of swimming. The water was beautiful and as the sun went down it was actually warmer to be in than out. We had to jump off the top of the boat, of course, but that little game stopped when a few jelly fish appeared and we decided it was time for a medicinal bevy instead. Oh Yes - the boat charges what we guess they would call 'corkage' if they catch anyone bringing their own drink on board. Everyone brings their own drink because the prices on board are so ridiculous. So what happens is all through the evening you have people sneaking off like 15 year-olds on school trips

Water Puppet Theatre

This show was our highlight of Hanoi

to fill up soft drink cans in their rooms. Unfortunately our room seemed to be above the generator, which ran half the night, but Kayaking at 6.30am the next day blew away the drink cobwebs and with that we were on our way back to Ha Long City.

"He's Dead Jim..."

Back in Hanoi we visited Ho Chi Minh's mausoleum. He's been embalmed which is apparently the way all Communist leaders are honoured. It is a very strange sensation to line up with the mostly Vietnamese crowd and slowly file past Uncle Ho. We don't want to be disrespectful but all we can say is that he's been tastefully lit and could, to all intents and purposes be a wax work - who are we to know! The accompanying museum was very well laid out IF you already know all about HO Chi Minh, his history and the history of Vietnam. For us though, hoping to learn a little more about all those things, it was far too confusing to take much away.

We did really enjoy a water puppet show. The puppets were invented by farmers working in the rice paddies and are operated by puppeteers

The War Might Be Over...

... but the scars still remain. The rear end of a B52 bomber in a pond in central Hanoi. This is one of many memorials of the 'American War'

standing waist deep in water behind a bamboo curtain. They can see out, but we can't see in. From under the bamboo appear various characters and animals. They are accompanied by live music and voices from the orchestra playing typical Vietnamese instruments. The show was only an hour long but highlights for us include the ducks versus the fox, the dragon dance and the mating birds.

Postcript

We are leaving Vietnam tomorrow and it has to be said we can't wait. Some of the sights and things to do here have been, and are wonderful, but unfortunately, on the whole, the people are not. It is a shame to generalise about a whole nation, so perhaps we should limit the criticism to anyone who has any kinds of dealing what so ever with tourists. No one smiles, even when you try to speak some Vietnamese. Everyone tries to rip you off and will charge far too much for everything they possibly can. No one will help you if you ask a question. Most people lie to you to further their own end. You feel like it is an inconvenience for anyone to be serving you or selling you

Dave and the Dragon

Even his mouth isn't big enough to eat a slice in one bite!

a ticket to something, even though you are providing them with a living. No where else in 9 months of travel have we experienced anything like this. It is a real shame because the country is lovely.

Another traveller summed it up nicely as we told them we were going to Laos. He said "You know that scene in "Who Framed Roger Rabbit?" when they are being chased by police in the rain...then they go over the hill into Toon Town and everything turns sunny and happy...that is like going from Vietnam to Laos" Oh how we hope he is right.

Additional photos below

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