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Published: April 13th 2011
(M) After four indulgent days in Hoi An we reluctantly caught a bus down to Da Lat, famed in backpacking circles not so much for its scenery as for it being the home of the Easy Riders, a group of war veterans who do tours of the country on the back of their motorcycles, and whom we were seeking out for the next leg of our Vietnamese adventure. After the debacle of our cross-border bus journey into Vietnam, we were pleasantly surprised that the bus that pulled up to take us on the 16-hour overnight journey actually was the sleeper bus that we had paid for. Amazing. And having managed to secure two adjacent seats at the back of the bus, having had rock bottom expectations the bus journey in the end could even be described as pleasant... especially the daytime leg from Da Nang to Da Lat through some lush jungle-covered hills, which we managed to admire intermittently between spells of sleeping off the effects of the Zopiclone we’d taken the night before to get us through the journey.
Besides guaranteeing you get a decent night’s kip, the advantage of travelling overnight under the spell of sleeping tablets is
that you don’t have to witness the treacherous driving, oblivious to the continuous bouts of Russian Roulette the drivers play with oncoming traffic. Vietnam has a population of 90 million and an area of 330,000 square kilometres, roughly a third more people than Thailand and two thirds its size – and everyone seems to be trying to get somewhere at the same time. Geographically, it stretches in a long, thin line from the Chinese border in the north to the southern-most point of the South China Sea, so there’s basically only one road that everyone takes between north and south, much of which is single-laned. Fortunately, it’s also mostly flat, so the gravel gap between the tar road and endless line of shop-fronts is more often than not used for avoiding hitting oncoming overtaking trucks and buses in the wrong lane. But somehow the trucks, buses, minivans, cars, tractors, donkey carts, motorbikes, bicycles and millions of mopeds manage to make their way (mostly) unscathed to their destinations. Orderly chaos is the only way to describe it, really. And if you have any kind of heart condition, it’s best not to look!
So how do they do it? The answer
is simple – hooters. If you’re overtaking anything, you hoot. If you want to make sure the oncoming traffic is aware you’re there, you hoot. If you want the traffic in front to hurry up, you hoot. And if you’re just happy, you hoot! Besides the constant noise, after several hours of sitting in the same uncomfortable seat you can also feel every beat of your heart in your backside, and Vietnamese people tend not to travel well so inevitably there’s the noise and stagnant smell of someone vomiting into a plastic bag to contend with. So it’s basically complete and utter sensory overload. But it gets you from A to B, and it’s cheap. So moan we could not, and in the end it’s all part of the adventure. At least it’s not the bloody London Underground!
We arrived in Da Lat in the middle of the day and after finding a place to crash for the night we had the unenviable task of finding some genuine Easy Riders to take us on our trip the next day. The problem is that these guys are such an institution that everyone under the sun with a motorbike and a
map imitates them and tries to persuade you that they’re the real deal. Fortunately, pretty soon after we had freshened up and sat down for some food to get our strength up for the task, two Vietnamese guys in their sixties sporting the signature blue Easy Rider jackets approached us at our table. Their names were Mr Chung and Mr Young. They immediately made a great impression and after we asked them a few questions about the route and their backgrounds, we agreed to meet them later at the registered Easy Rider office to check that they were for real. They were there and everything was legit so we payed our deposit and set off to explore a bit of Da Lat. Given it was already quite late, we only had time to visit the impressive Crazy House, an Alice in Wonderland-like, completely off-the-wall guest house desigend by an eccentric female architect, Hang Nga. There seemed to be little else of interest in the city, so after a couple of early beers at the market were pretty excited about setting off the next day.
Mr Chung was in the infantry for the south Vietnamese during the war for four
years, after which he became a coffee farmer before joining the Easy Riders 14 years ago when it was in its infancy. Mr Young served in the south Vietnamese airforce for seven years doing communications, and was also a 14-year long Easy Rider. So they were both extremely experienced riders and incredibly knowledgeable about the war and the country. With our backpacks strapped to the back of their Honda motorbikes, we set off through the Central Highlands for what was to be one of the most memorable three days of our travels. There’s something quite exhilirating about touring the coutryside on the back of a motorbike. You constantly have a 360 degree view and the wind blowing in your face, mixed with a cocophony of smells really enhances the experience. The best part though, is that they take you well and truly off the beaten track, where no bus journey ever would. For the first time we felt like we were seeing the real Vietnam. The people were incredibly friendly, the ethnic minority villages we visited were anything but ruined by tourism and the landscape was in parts quite breathtaking. At one point we stopped on a bridge above a
floating fishing village and bought a couple of kilos of freshwater fish which the locals barbequed for us that evening. We also got to sample some truly amazing Vietnamese cuisine that we would never have known or had the courage to order had we been on our own... although you probably won’t catch us ordering barbequed goat’s udder again! Apart from the great food, we learned a lot on our little adventure – like how to grow and harvest coffee, make rice noodles, extract silk from silkworms, farm mushrooms, manufacture bricks and even make chopsticks – all skills which will no doubt come in super handy in later life! We even poked at deadly scorpions and Nina got to play with a three-meter long python... not mine of course.
One of the absolute highlights was visiting some waterfalls on the second day, swimming below them in pristine water in an amazing jungle setting, with noone else around. Later that day, we got up close and personal with the locals – a little too up close and personal for my liking! We decided to push on rather than spend the night in one of the bigger towns we were passing.
The sun was just setting so we pulled over a little out of town to take some pictures. Next thing we knew Nina was being dragged by the hand by some guy into a nearby hut, and soon afterwards two little girls had me by both hands to follow suit. Inside there was a group of about ten men sitting around a feast of different food layed out on the floor. It was their new year celebration, and judging by the empty cases of beer against the wall and the enthusiasm of our hosts, it was clearly already in full swing. Not wanting to offend anyone, we accepted their invitation to join the party. Our glasses were filled and we soon learned the custom of drinking half glasses of beer at a time every time someone made a toast, which seemed to happen with alarming regularity. The two men who sat next to us were clearly also very excited to have us there, and when the camera came out, took it upon themselves to show us exactly how excited... with his arm around my shoulders, I politely smiled while I donned a kiss on the cheek from my overfriendly host,
while Nina was being chopstick-fed unidentifiable meat by hers. I’m not sure who was more perturbed at that stage, but I definitely got the raw end of the deal in the end... as we were about to get up to leave, my pursuer once again grabbed me around the shoulder and came in for another show of affection. Except this time, politely offering him my cheek didn’t cut it, and he turned my head around at the last second to land a sloppy, wet one right on my lips! For some reason I seemed to be the only one in the room who didn’t find this hilarious, and with all the God-given grace I could muster I delicately extricated myself from his grasp while suppressing the urge to violently projectile vomit... Nevertheless, once the shock of my close encounter had faded, we looked back on it as one of the loveliest encounters with the Vietnamese people we’d had. Despite not being able to converse very much their warmth and generosity was quite moving. We may have left with a bit more than we bargained for, but it will remain a fabulous memory!
Our trip ended a couple of hundred
kilometers from Ho Chi Minh City (formerly Saigon), our next destination, so after bidding a sad farewell to our new best friends we caught a bus the rest of the way. The journey was long and uneventful but it was soon all bright lights, big city and we got into the swing of things in no time. Having not had many positive reports from fellow travellers, we were actually really impressed by Saigon. Everything happens at a frenetic pace, yes, but like Hanoi it’s more of a charming kind of chaos. Virtually everyone also owns a scooter, except there are twice as many of them so it made Hanoi look like kindergarden. We had enough nouse not to take on the traffic on our own, although we did venture into the throng a couple of times on the back of moped taxis called xe oms at rush hour... It’s not just the sheer volume of two-wheeled traffic that is so daunting, as Nina described it’s also the chaotic way they drive, often with two or three people per moped. It’s quite poetic really, and being in the middle of all it is a hell of a lot of fun. In
fact it should feature as one of Saigon’s top tourist activities in all major guide books!
Saigon is in parts also super-trendy and it’s not difficult to tell you’re in the wealthiest part of the country, by some distance it would seem. More remarkable than the number of urban 4x4s cruising the streets is the number of hip, hairstyled fashion conscious teenagers tapped into the latest iphones and crowding the upmarket shopping malls. The back-to-back late night bars spilling out onto the pavements are lit up by bright neon billboards and in parts you’d be forgiven for thinking you were in Las Vegas. It has a real buzz about it, and it’s infectious. As we wondered the streets in the evenings, sat and soaked up the atmosphere in the road-side bia hois or gorged on some great cuisine, more than once we found excuses to stick around rather than move on. It’s just that kind of place.
There are also a couple of interesting day trips one can do from the city, one of which is a tour to the Cu Chi tunnels, a labyrinth of underground tunnels that a group of resistance fighters dug to defend their
Crouching down in the Cu Chi tunnels
These tunnels have been doubled in size to accommodate tourists (not this one especially!)land during the war. In the end their guerilla methods proved successful which has lent them a legendary status. The tour was expectantly super-touristy but we had a highly entertaining guide who made the experience bearable and even enjoyable. But one of the highlights was stopping en-route to visit a project where victims of the biological warfare used by the Americans make the most exquisitely crafted crockery and earthenware out of mostly natural materials. This was such a moving experience, to see these in some cases severely debilitated people working away with such enthusiasm and with such incredible skill. If we had the budget and the space we would have bought everything there, but practicality had to prevail!
After Saigon, the lure of the beach was overwhelming and we bought a cheap plane ticket to Phu Quoc, the main island off the coast from the Mekong Delta, near the Cambodian border. After nearly three hectic weeks of travel (the hustle of Vietnam can also be quite draining) we decided to skip the delta and spend three days in the company of white sand and palm trees doing, well, very little. We stayed on the main beach which lines the
Bai Sao
Phu Quoc island middle of the west side of the island, but on the southern end where the budget accommodation is to be found. We managed to get a reasonably priced room in one of the beach-front resorts and spent the next three days exploring the island on a scooter, swimming, suntanning and eating amazing fresh seafood in reataurants on the beach and at the local market. We discovered two things worth mentioning – firstly a beach called Bai Sao on the south eastern end of the island, which despite a bit of rubbish in parts could give some of the beaches in the Seychelles a run for their money, and secondly salt & pepper and lime. This is the accompanyment that is served with the fresh barbequed Red Snapper that we ate nearly every night. It’s the amazing locally grown pepper that makes it, and it’s now Nina’s new favourite thing. We even carry around a jar of salt & pepper mix in our bag – heaven help anyone who tries to steal it!
Some down time on the island was exactly what we needed to round off what was a magnificent Vietnamese experience. Never mind the constant hounding by touts
and xe om drivers, never mind the constant rip-offs and the lies, never mind the taxing bus journeys... Vietnam is a bustling, thriving country with amazing beauty, a lot of energy and a huge amount of heart. You just have to know where to find it. It’s the kind of place you leave thinking “phew, that was hectic”, but with a warm fuzzy feeling inside. And you sure as hell are glad that you did it. So it was all smiles when we landed at Ha Tien port, and from there it was a quick, straightforward border crossing into Cambodia.
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olivia
non-member comment
kiss kiss
kiss kiss - ha ha hilarious cousin mathew!