Advertisement
Published: March 14th 2009
Stop Following Me
I flew to Vietnam feeling quite apprehensive. If you spend a couple of hours with the guidebook you'll get the impression you're going to get scammed and ripped off at every corner. There are stories about drivers that take you to their family's guest-house rather than the one you already booked, then getting shirty when you refuse and ask to be taken where you wanted in the first place; tales about collections at temples where the money doesn't get to the monks. A guy in KL the other week warned me about an aggressive street vendor who chased him across the road, shouting, after he refused to buy a book or something. I don't want to approach this place with the demeanor that they're all out to get me, but the stories are so numerous.
Just walk along the pavement and you'll contiually get "
Hello!" from a guy sitting on a motorbike or pedallling a cyclo, or "
Where are you going?" because they want to sell you a ride somewhere. If you're carrying luggage it'll be: "
You need hotel?" Just once a guy crossed over the border into outright pestering and got quite full-on
Thích Quảng Đức Memorial
Crazy rigging overhead, all over Vietnam it's like this. This is the intersection where Thích Quảng Đức set himself alight and burned to death to protest the South Vietnamese policies against Buddhists in 1963. about his hotel, following me for a good hundred yards trying to persuade me to go there, around lamp-posts, food-stands and any other obstruction I tried to weave him through. Un-interruptible, he was. And a cyclo pedaller in Huế wouldn't accept the money we'd agreed after he dropped me off; I'd bargained him down by 10,000 Dong and he wanted to make it back. It's pennies, but it's disappointing. But I have to remember that I'm in the Far East so I need to turn people down so nobody loses face.
The Vietnamese frown like nobody else. They had years of warfare at the hands of the the Chinese, French and Americans; followed by economic sanctions and the austerity of life under communism. Though they have an endless capacity to get by, I guess they're not obliged to do it smiling. The best 'wounded' expression I got was when I turned down the 6th pimp in an hour to stop her scooter and offer me
massage and boom-boom. This one was a middle-aged woman, and the girl sitting behind her was by far the prettiest of them all, even with a scooter-helmet on. When I made it clear I
wasn't interested she looked genuinely distressed. Are times that hard? Does somebody not eat tonight if I don't go with this girl? I'd just arrived, dumped my bags in the room and gone for a walk to get my bearings and I had to cut it short, I couldn't walk down the street without getting approached.
I have been scammed, successfully. I'll tell you about one I spotted happening to me, though there must have been a few where I wasn't aware of anything. Most of it is simply being over-charged for something I couldn't guess the right price for. For example: getting the taxi from the hotel to the airport, the reception desk booked the taxi with the $15 I gave them. Too late, I realised I should have given it to the driver directly - whilst I fiddled with my rucksack the receptionist walked past me with folded notes hidden in his hand and pressed them into the driver's hand. Getting into the taxi the driver put them in a slot and I saw they were Dong, not the dollars I'd handed over. Got to be one of the oldest ones and I fell for it by
Saigon War Remnants Museum
The War Remnants Museum is a little bit of an intense experience. This is a list of news photographers killed during the war. being too slow. But then, I don't know how much the correct fare to the airport is so I could have got ripped off by the driver, so one way or another it's going to happen. A more obvious one is the cafes the tour buses stop at. They all charge prices that are not just expensive for Vietnam, they're more expensive than in the UK. A large flat bar of quality chocolate like the ones you see in the supermarket: how much you think? Try US$5/£3.50.
But before I got too far with these stories, I have to make something clear: the overwhelming impressions I've taken away are good ones and I don't want you to get the wrong idea from these first few paragraphs. Almost everybody I spoke to in Vietnam had a basic level of English. Everywhere I went, one schoolkid would yell out "Hello!", then giggle when I answered back. Then their mates would want a go too, and I'd end up
hello-ing backwards and forwards with a gang of them, who are collapsing into laughter because it was working.
The native food is fantastic and they also know how to do bread and
coffee because of the French influence. Market stalls had fresh vegetables that were locally harvested and didn't look like clones of each other.
And the bike rides: once you accept an offer to go somewhere, it's great fun, if a little mad. I've never seen so many scooters and I've shot lots of video of several of the rides I took around Saigon. In just 2 weeks I have made up for years going nowhere near a bike and am now an experienced pillion passenger. There's so many scooters about, the first night I got here I couldn't figure out how I was going to cross the road, there were no gaps -
no gaps - in the traffic (Hint: step slowly into the road and watch what happens).
People wear
nón lá conical hats for real, not just for the tourists. And the traditional dress, the
Áo Dài worn by women is the most graceful thing, consisting of a tight-fitted top with long skirt-like panels, slit to the waist over long trousers. My Japanese entries talked about the wide obi, the belt, that women wear around their kimono. Mayumi had explained it was to remove the waist
as their idea of feminine beauty was a straight-up-and-down shape. In Vietnam it's different: the
Áo Dài shows every contour from the waist up and flows like water from the waist down. Together with the hats, it's 10 out of 10 around here for getting a crick in my neck for swivelling-around looking at the women.
We Still Call it 'Saigon'
The Communist government in Hanoi re-named it Ho Chi Minh City after liberating it from the Americans in 1975, but almost everybody that lives there still calls it Saigon. I flew in with about $400US in my pocket as some things are easier to pay for that way: the odd taxi and some hotel rooms. But everyone was happy for Vietnamese Dong if I preferred. Vietnam is not rich. The Dong is so deflated that it costs 100,000 VND (£4.00) for a simple plate of noodles, a glass of beer and a fruit juice. I kept meticulously counting change for the first few days to make sure I wasn't getting slipped a 1,000VND note instead of a 10,000 but it never happened. Shame on me instead: I repeatedly insulted waitresses by mis-reading the number of digits
on the bill and underpaying. They smiled and wait for me to get it right.
Outside the Reunification Palace in Saigon I got into a conversation with Trần Qứy Vỉinh, one of the dozen or so motorbike drivers sitting on his saddle looking for a chance to make some money. He wanted to drive me to Chinatown to see the Jade temple, but I'd seen rather a lot of temples lately and wasn't in the right mood for another just yet. I declined, smiled and waved a 'thank-you' and continued walking. I wanted to see the Reunification Palace, though I wasn't sure exactly what it was and why it was significant. I hadn't quite reached the gate, and Vỉinh must have pootled after me because he re-appeared in my peripheral vision, said it was closed today and again offered to drive me around Chinatown. I declined again, though to be gracious I stopped to chat for a few seconds before smiling and turning away. Not 20 yards further on he reappeared once more. The thing was: he was keen, he was local knowledge and I did actually need a lift somewhere, so I asked about getting to Trang Bang.
He pulled a face: long way - he'd expected me to name some hotel nearby. But he didn't give up on the idea and we agreed on US$30 for the round trip the next day, which was probably going to take up to 6 hours.
At 9am next morning Vỉinh was there outside the hotel with a spare helmet. He was gentle with me for the first hour of the 110km drive to Trang Bang. The second hour was by rattling public bus because he got pulled over by the police for speeding and they impounded his bike for 10 days and a fine it was going to take him a month to pay. I felt bad as he'd only been doing his best to get me to a place and back. But I hadn't instructed him to go that fast and looking over his shoulder I could see his speedo was broken anyway. We caught the bus back into Saigon and he took me back to his house to pick up his second bike. I met his family and young 2-year old, and I got to see his wedding photos. Western white dresses are popular here. When he
dropped me back at my hotel later on, he didn't ask me for a thing to help with the fine. I gave him $50 on top of the expenses I'd paid for (the food and bus fares) during the day.
Photo-journalists
Like most people my only knowledge of Vietnam is what I've seen in a bunch of war films, usually American ones, always told from the US soldier's point of view. Even WWII has been covered by a few good movies made from the other side: 'Cross of Iron' and 'Das Boot' spring to mind straight away, but I have seen no equivalents for the Viet Cong side of the war. Anyone know any? But until now I'd always associated Vietnam with pictures of cowering villagers in
nón lá with M-16 gun muzzles pushed into their faces.
I was able to track down locations for two of the more famous Vietnam war photographs. Please excuse me because the next few paragraphs get a little depressing, and Vietnam has so much more to offer than horror tourism.
The reason I wanted to go to Trang Bang was because of
Nick Út's photograph of 9-year old Phan Thị Kim
Phúc running from a napalm attack on her village by the South Vietnamese Army (not the Americans). She'd taken a hit on the back, arm and neck and torn off her own clothes in panic, yelling "
Nong qua! Nong qua!" (Too Hot! Too Hot!). Try and read her biography "The Girl in the Picture" without tissues. Nick's picture won the Pulitzer Prize and when it was published it was cropped at the right-hand side, but the full negative shows a photographer to the right reloading his camera. It's horrific enough with Phuc's presence, but Nick managed to click the shutter just as her brother's mouth was in that awful shape. Trang Bang is a large town now, and it wasn't possible for me to find the exact site where the shot was taken, there are buildings where once there weren't and we didn't have long enough to spend.
I also found the intersection of Nguyễn Đình Chiểu and Cách Mạng Tháng Tám streets in central Saigon. They used to be called Phan Dinh Phung Boulevard and Le Van Duyet Street but some street names were changed after liberation as well. It's where the Cambodian Embassy used to be, and
"Hello"
[i]Always[/i] take your camera with you. I have missed so many pictures because I was lazy and wanted to leave the camera behind before now. But the best photos normally come when you don't have a camera on you. So I'm having breakfast and this little face appears. Vietnamese children aren't fazed by foreigners like the Japanese are, and are happy to shout out "Hello!" if I smile, or sometimes they shout it out to me first. in 1963, a buddhist monk named Thích Quảng Đức burned himself to death here to protest against the South's policies against buddhists.
Malcolm Browne's photograph won the Pulitzer Prize also. A memorial to Thích Quảng Đức stands on the corner now and the car, the Austin Westimster in the background of the photo; you can see that in Huế.
And a final note on the war, visit the War Remnants Museum in Saigon. The notes alongside each exhibit get a little strident, but then we've been the victims of propaganda too in the US and UK just recently. Even without the words, the photographs are real and those of the disfigured victims of agent orange proved too much for one woman whom I overhead outside later on.
Okay, I'm finished on the war now, onto the happier stuff. Further out from Trang Bang is the town of Tây Ninh where the Cao Đài religion is established. The cathedral they have there is spectacular and a mish-mash of several styles. Some features appear to be borrowed from the Christian church, including its name - they call it the Holy See. The religion is not Christian however, the French novelist Victor Hugo
is one of their saints. Let's just say it was an illuminating trip to witness a very colourful ceremony, and hear some beautiful music.
Nha Trang and Hoi An
In Nha Trang it's called "
massage and yum-yum" but there's only one of them on the bike so I can't see who I'm buying.
You can see Vietnam very well with Open Tour bus tickets. It's called 'Open' because you can get off and on the bus spending as long in each stopover as you like, booking your seat for the next leg the day before you want to move on. For about US$30 you can get from Saigon to Hanoi by coach but it's got seats and some of the legs are 12-hour journeys. I paid US$70 for a sleeper ticket and got reclining seats. The hotel in Saigon booked my ticket with the Hahn Cafe who provided good buses until the Hue to Hanoi leg, where they contracted in another coach company with seats that didn't recline and were of course sized for shorter people, so I didn't sleep at all with a large hump underneath my shoulder blades where my head would have been
if Vietnamese. The tickets are cheap mainly because the bus normally departs from outside one hotel and drops you off at another - the hotels pay a commission to the coach company for this. If you don't like the hotel you've been dropped at, there is no obligation and you can move on. I didn't book accommodation in advance anywhere in Vietnam because every time we got dropped off, there was a small bunch of guys to meet it, representing different hotels, all pitching rooms at me, so I was never going to be homeless.
Nha Trang is a beach resort and I spent a day keeping the sun-tan in shape. Nha Trang also seems to be place for your PADI open-water course and I might just return to do mine here.
Long Thanh is worth a mention as he shoots real, that is: analogue black & white photographs which are a better picture of life in Vietnam than I will ever capture. And if you're stuck for something to do for a few hours, check out Crazy Kim's bar. Kim is socially active campaigning against sex-tourism, which I didn't know was a problem here. The bar sells "Hands
Huế Citadel I (Thai Hoa Palace)
Huế's Imperial City was modelled after the Forbidden City of Chinese Emperor in Beijing. This photo shows a pillar outside the Palace of Supreme Harmony, which is the first building you come to just inside the Main (South) Gate. off the Kids" T-shirts and she runs English classes in the back which anybody is welcome to join. I had a few hours until my coach, so I volunteered and got my hand bitten-off. I took two classes of 20-year olds and had great fun speaking about Scotland, Haggis and Kilts.
The next stop was Hoi An, which appears to be the place to get clothes made-to-measure. I might return with an empty suitcase too, though there are so many shops I'd want to do some research to find out which are the good ones. There's no way to tell just by looking at them.
Huế's Citadel and the Imperial City
You pronounce it "h-way" and the H is largely silent. For 143 years it was the capital until the fall of the Nguyễn Dynasty in 1945 and the transfer of power to the Democratic Republic of Vietnam. Vietnam is now called the Socialist Republic of Vietnam and - some world traveller, me - I'd forgotten the country was communist until I looked at my visa stamp in KL. Anyway, until 1945 the Vietnamese Emperor reigned from here and many sites in the city are protected
Hue Citadel II (The Reading Pavilion)
One of the better-kept buildings inside the Citadel, with a decent pond and garden out front. as UNESCO World Heritage Sites.
North of the river is a huge walled city: the Citadel, which is 10km all the way around the walls. Inside it's an quieter extension of the city with streets and houses. But also inside is the Imperial City of the Nguyễn dynasty. And within that is the Purple Forbidden City which is far to small to be considered a city, but its where the emperor himself lived with his concubines and eunuchs were the only men allowed. Huế saw ferocious fighting in 1968 and the walls are maked with shell and bullet damage. Many buildings within the Imperial City are also in a considerable state of delapidation. Work is underway to restore much of it, though it will take them decades to do the whole thing. Just walking around the Imperial City I spent 3 hours, but you could easily spend longer.
One of the symbols of Huế is the Thien Mu temple. It was the home of the monk Thích Quảng Đức whom I have already mentioned. Also, the longest reigning Nguyễn Emperor Tự Đức's tomb is a few kilometres outside the city and worth a scooter-ride to spend a couple
Hue Citadel III
It wasn't all in such good repair though; much of the citadel had been allowed to crumble, with moss between stones and delapidated walls or buildings... there must be some great black and white photos you could take of it all. of peaceful hours wandering the ruins.
Thu at the Cafe on Thu Wheels organises brilliant scooter tours for a half or full-day. She deserves the recommendation in the travel guidebook, as does Mr. Cu who runs the Mandarin Cafe on Tran Cao Van Street, both for his food and his photography.
Hanoi and Halong Bay
Spending as much time as I do on the Travelblog site, I get to checking out other people's entries, sometimes to research where I'm going next. One such I'd been keeping an eye on was
Hanoi Girl, to whom I sent a message. She does not post under her real name so of course it's not my place to reveal it. She emailed back offering to meet up once I was in town and out of nothing more than the goodness of her own heart, spend 3 evenings and a full-day with me to help me out and show me places.
She writes a lot of entries about travelling within her own country and her blogs are great information on what to see and do if you come here. She's written an entry about our day out which took in Phù
Hanoi Pavement
Wierd thing, I saw this in every town I went to: playing cards left on the ground. People play cards all over the world, but you don't find them scattered on the pavement like you do here. I have no explanation for it. Lãng and Sài Đồng villages, showed me around Hanoi old town and took me to some great restaurants including the very popular Quan An Ngon restaurant on Phan Boi Chau Street, and also La Vong restaurant on Cha Ca street to eat fried fish (Cha Ca La Vong) - the dish is so famous the street was named after it. She even has a full page of photos of
Áo Dài which you should check out. ODC Travel in Hang Bac Street organised my Ha Long Bay tour - there are others you can trust but select carefully as the better ones sometimes have their names stolen by other outfits.
I went to visit Uncle Ho Chi Minh's mausoleum where he lies in state, and the Ho Chi Minh Museum to his life just around the back. Like other Vietnamese cities, Hanoi too had a museum of captured and abandoned American and French guns, tanks and planes.
Unfortunately Hanoi was overcast the whole time I was there. It's over a thousand kilometres North of Saigon, so whilst I'd been sweating down South in heat and humidity rather like that in Malaysia, Hanoi was refreshingly chilly and I had
Hanoi War Museum
Every town had one: a museum featuring captured and destroyed hardware from occupying forces. The one in Hanoi contained this sculpture of downed French and American planes. to break out the fleece for the first time in over 2 months. People told me they have 4 seasons in the North, but just 2 seasons in the South: Wet and Dry. I might have that the wrong way around, somebody correct me please. Anyway, my photos don't do Hanoi justice and the overcast continued all the way through my trip to Ha-Long Bay and until I left the country. I was a little disappointed because I'd got cloud and rain on my ferry in Alaska too, but these things can't be helped I suppose. Ha-Long Bay means "Descending Dragon" and there is an entertaining story about how it was created and got that name. It is another UNESCO World Heritage Site and still spectacular even in cloud.
Finally: having had a pop at them in my last entry, I found some Americans. There's loads of them here. Overheard (from 30ft away!)whilst on the beach at Nha Trang:
Him: "Did you see the War Remnants Museum in Saigon?"
Her: "Yeah, we took a walk that way and-"
Him: "It was too much wasn't it? I mean, having seen it now, I can totally see things from their side!"
Phù Lãng ceramic village I
Phu Lang is about 70km outside Hanoi, and the whole village appears to make pottery urns, vases and caskets. All over the village is stacked wood to fuel the kilns which fire batches of pottery for 48 hours at a time. Her: "Mmm; yeah, some of the-"
Him: "I mean, what on earth were they doing so far away from home, interfering in someone else's country so far away..."
Advertisement
Tot: 0.202s; Tpl: 0.017s; cc: 8; qc: 54; dbt: 0.1018s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb
Paul-and-Emma
non-member comment
Me and the Mrs visited all the places in this blog last july and your round up is pretty close to our own. Although I have to say I'll never visit Vietnam again, asia has so many other destinations far superior for its places people and culture. Happy travels