Southern Vietnam

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Our slow boat put-putted its way down the Mekong river. Along the river banks daily life went on. Boat builders and fish farmers smiled and waved as they saw us. We felt welcome even before we had set foot on dry land.


Chau Doc is the first Vietnamese town along the river.

We could tell from the wide eyes and open mouths that they are not used to Westerners wandering around.

Nearly all of the ladies were wearing their traditional dress of a conical hat and matching tunic and trousers. It is very fetching, but in decline throughout the rest of the country as westernisation takes hold.

A brand new ATM solved my money worries and put some Dong in my pocket.

I took a motorbike to the top of Sam Mountain and looked back across the patchwork of paddy fields towards Cambodia.

I was not alone, this is a major Vietnamese tourist destination.

By the time I had walked down to the base of the mountain my knees had jellified but I managed to squash in to see the Buddhist pagodas amongst several thousand worshippers and holidaymakers without another white man to be seen.


We took a 3 day tour around the Mekong Delta. It was ridiculously cheap - probably a third of the cost for us to do it ourselves.

We spent the days on boats of varying sizes being transported to fish farms, floating markets (both wholesale and retail) and fruit growing islands.

As always with these trips we were also taken to a local weaver, toffee maker and noodle factory. (Linda resolved not to eat any more noodles. The pig pens under the eaves would have damned any hygiene inspection).

Catfish farming is done in nets beneath a floating family home. This used to be a very lucrative export market until the U.S. introduced import tariffs in a fit of protectionism.

The evenings were spent in regional towns. In each case we were surprised how pleasant and spacious the town was, in contrast with the cheapo hotel rooms that came with the tour.

At the end of the tour we were dropped off in the tourist area of Saigon, these days officially called Ho Chi Minh City although everyone still seems to use Saigon in conversation.


Saigon is another bustling Asian city dominated by an overpopulation of 125cc motorbikes.

Most of the things to see are within walking distance of the tourist enclave and we spent a few pleasant days wandering around.

The most interesting place was the War Remnants Museum, formerly called the War Crimes Museum, which documents the atrocities of the American War (as it is called here) and French colonial rule. The original guillotine is still in place. Quite a lengthy section is devoted to the aftereffects of American chemical warfare using napalm and Agent Orange.
An unpleasant video shows the range of birth defects which are still taking place to this day.

Despite this, Vietnam is a country looking forward and the American War is ancient history as far as most people are concerned.

We also found an excellent restaurant across from the tourist market where Bill Clinton stopped for a noodle soup during his visit in 2000. He was well advised.


Mui Ne boasts a long sandy beach and a clear sea.

It also has the potential for gale force winds which makes it the perfect location for a couple of kite surfing schools.

The structure of the beach itself is quite interesting.

Rather than sloping to the water the beach is flat, about 18 inches above the level of the sea. The waves erode the edge of the beach to produce a vertical drop in which different layers of sand, about 1 inch thick, can be clearly seen. These layers must be deposited on the 1 or 2 times each year when the sea is rough enough to come up on to the beach.

About 15 inches down in the layers is a strand of oil. I asked a local when there was a pollution incident and, sure enough, it was about 15 years ago. Clearly it was never cleaned up and the result now is that it is continually leeching back into the sea as the beach is eroded.

One of the posh resorts employs locals with teaspoons to collect the oil in their area, but it is a fruitless task.

After a week of sunbaking in Mui Ne we headed for the cool highlands around the town of Dalat.

The highlands are on a plateau above the lowlands, so the 6 hour bus journey snaked backwards and forwards above itself as the road crept up the escarpment.

Dalat is both charming and pretty and in the midst of the construction boom which is evident throughout the whole country. It is the tourist destination in Vietnam as Vietnamese from the hot and sticky plains would rather holiday in the cool highlands than the hot seaside.

There were plenty of things to do, from simply walking around the lake to visiting an emperors summer palace.

At the far end of the lake we noticed a sign which read 'Nuclear reactor 0.5km'.

A few days later, while taking a coffee in an outlying area a little man hopped off his moped and we struck up a conversation. He turned out to be the the principal (only?) nuclear physicist, director of the nuclear research centre, meeting his wife for lunch. His English was about as developed as my nuclear physics, so the conversation soon reached an impasse.

We made a memorable visit to an ethnic minority village where we were introduced to the head man.

He was very excited to see us and told the history and customs of his people with great enthusiasm in mixed French and English.

He played an unusual musical instrument which involved him wrapping his mouth around an entire gourd and then invited us to drink rice wine which was fermented in large earthen jars.

Several people were to drink from one communal jar at once, sucking up through a long piece of bamboo. We were too polite to ask who the last suckers were. The wine had quite a kick, but the real surprise was the mouthful of sawdust that came with it.

The best thing about Dalat, though, was the atmosphere. It was full of Vietnamese on holiday and intent on enjoying themselves.

Sitting on a cafe balcony above the main road we watched them riding around on tandems and carrying their stuffed quilts, which seemed to be the obligatory purchase.

We would have stayed longer but after 6 days we were asked to leave the hotel as they were fully booked with tours from Saigon.


We left the highlands the same way we had come up but it only took half the time.

By now the World Cup was under way so I wanted a room in Nha Trang with satellite TV. No problem, so did everybody else. We were blessed with Supersports 3, a South African channel showing every match live.

As well as an excellent beach with loungers from 15p per day, Nha Trang had a couple of book exchanges and more restaurants than we could manage.
Our days were set up.
A leisurely breakfast of egg and bacon, 4 or 5 hours on the beach followed by a fruit salad and possibly a movie on HBO.
Dinner, then back to the room in time for kick off (usually 9 or 10 pm).

We carried on like this for the best part of a month until World Cup Final day, when Supersports 3 mysteriously disappeared. I watched the match on a Vietnamese channel and could hardly tell the difference.

Continuing up the coast in a northerly direction we took an overnight bus to the ancient town of Hoi An.

This was the principal trading post with the outside world during the 16th and 17th centuries and a small patch of the original town still survives.

This area is only 3 streets wide and about 600 metres long so after an hour you find yourselves ambling along the same streets as before.

Most of the original merchants houses have been converted into cafes and ceramics shops.

Just outside this area is a plethora of tailors shops making made-to-measure anything you want.

Tourism here was largely of the western package variety and most of these were carrying bags and bags of new clothes.

The rush for development is very evident in Hoi An and new hotels are being thrown up at a startling rate. This is obviously stretching resources as one of the main memories of our stay is the frequency of power cuts. As we happened to be in a (very nice) room without a window this was somewhat irksome.


A very scenic bus journey through a high mountain pass brought us to Hue, which was the imperial capital of Vietnam in the 19th century.

There were lots of royal mausoleums and the emperors citadel to take in but the city will mainly be remembered as the location of our new world record for the purchase of cheap cigarettes - exactly £1 for 200.

We stuffed our bags and prayed that the zips would hold.

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