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Published: September 10th 2006
Dune Sliding - Mui Ne
Flying down the Red Dunes at sunset.Our arrival into Vietnam was a fairly painless affair. After a straight-forward border crossing, we got on a Vietnamese bus to Ho Chi Minh City (formerly Saigon) run by the tour company "Happy Tours". You couldn't ever forget they were called Happy Tours, as the $5 bus ticket included a quick lesson in Vietnamese and endless information on what Happy Tours could do for you, all provided by a smiling, singing Happy Tours employee. The bus dropped us off in the backpacker area, Pham Ngu Lao, where we had already arranged a hotel.
We spent the next few days wandering around the area, and checking out some HCM sights such as the post office, the Notre Dame cathedral, the War Remnants Museum and the massively intimidating Ben Thanh Market. It was not for the faint-hearted, having a nice browse wasn't an option, as stallholders physically dragged you into their stalls to look at clothes, shoes, jewellery and all sorts of junk. One seller followed us for about 5 minutes trying to flog us knock off Oakleys and bargained himself down to $7 even though were weren't even looking at him or giving him any indication of interest. We fled the
Dune Sliding - Mui Ne
Cat, John and James heading off for some dune sliding on the White Dunes with some local kids. market, had a quick haggle over some chopsticks on the way out and risked life and limb trying to cross about 60 lanes of motorbikes in an attempt to get back to our hotel.
The next day Patrick elected to make the trip to the Cu Chi Tunnels 15km outside the city. They were a network of about 200km of tunnels used during the Vietnam war, but nowadays there is just a reconstructed section of them open to tourists. His tour guide, a Vietnamese vet who had fought for the Americans showed the group around the tunnels and told them some frightening stories of life underground. I stayed behind as the prospect of clambering through hot little tunnels and posing next to an army tank didn't appeal!
After a few days in Ho Chi Minh, we took an open tour bus to the beach side town of Mui Ne, 3 hours north of the city. Open tour buses are the favoured mode of transport for backpackers, as they are incredibly cheap and there are frequent departures. The only snag is that they drop you off at specific restaurants along the way where you are forced to cough up
exorbitant amounts for relatively dull food and then dump you among a gaggle of motorcycle touts who will try and get you to stay in certain guesthouses so they receive a hefty commission. We managed to find a nice place to stay on the beach and met some great people who we hung out with for the next few days. Mui Ne is a nice town and the beaches are pretty clean. Ourselves and James from Barcelona and John from Perth spent three relaxing days checking out the beaches, the local seafood and plenty of Saigon beer. We also spent one afternoon checking out some great sights such as the wonderful white and red sand dunes and a fishing village where fish sauce is made. The hard shoulder along the road in and out of the village was strewn with piles and piles of strong smelling drying shrimp, urgh!
After a few days of relaxation we headed to Dalat, a mountain town another 5 hours north west of Mui Ne. We had planned to meet John on the bus but ended up getting another company's bus so we didn't manage to hook up with him in Dalat. The city
Patrick stop embarassing me you idiot!
Patrick dons his rain gear as the heavens open. Bloody Monsoon! was packed full of people as it was National Day weekend. All the Vietnamese head to Dalat for the cool mountain air, at 1475m above sea level, it provided a cool change from Saigon and Mui Ne. Dalat is a very touristy town and the shops were packed full of souvenirs, hats, scarves and jackets. It seems that the Vietnamese get very little chances to wear woolly hats, so they were all excitedly sporting their winter woollies even though it was about 20 degrees! Some of them even kept them on for the journey back down to Nha Trang, our next destination, even though the temps back down on the coast hit a sweltering 35 degrees once we had left the cool mountain plateau. Dalat was a nice escape from the heat but nothing too exciting so after two days, we moved on. Nha Trang, along the southern coast is something not too far removed from Malaga or any other sunny European resort. The beaches were packed with fashionable resorts and there were very few local people around. We did bump into our pal John here though and spent the day on the beach with him and a lovely German
Ho Chi Minh City
View from our room. girl. We decided not to stay though and managed to secure the last two seats on an overnight sleeper train bound for Danang, half way up the coast.
On arrival in Danang we elected to stay in the city instead of in the nearby tourist town of Hoi An. We decided to allow ourselves a little luxury after the long overnight train journey and checked into a $25 a night hotel with a pool. The Bach Dang Riverside hotel was an old colonial style hotel and it's cool tiled rooms and shuttered windows where like a scene from Green's "A Quiet American". The staff, clad in traditional Vietnamese costume of long silk trousers and a long silk top were lovely and we spent a few days pottering around the town, walking along the river and visiting the local museum which housed some interesting relics from the Cham civilisation.
We took a day trip to Hoi An, which the Lonely Liar (I mean Planet) describes as "Like walking into a museum piece, Hoi An enchants with its beauty and accessible history". The old town is a UNESCO Heritage Site and you have to pay a fee into the town
which is supposed to go towards conservation of the historic buildings and architecture. Sadly we didn't think much of the town as the "museums" were more like souvenir shops with pushy "guides" attempting to sell us embroidery at every opportunity and the streets were full of touts selling everything from bamboo boats to postcards and other junk. Every corner required a series of emphatic 'no thank you's' and everyone seemed to be out to get a piece of the tourist dollar. The one enjoyable part of the day was sampling some local food which we found in a small restaurant called Cafe Bobo. The local specialities are white rose, a small dumpling stuffed with shrimp, lightly fried wontons and cao lau, flat noodles mixed with croutons, meat, bean sprouts, mint leaves and a tasty broth. They were all delicious and after a long lunch we hopped on some motos back to the local bus, where the driver attempted to charge us approximately 10 times the local price to get back to Danang. After some intense haggling, we got him down to a dollar each, which is still twice what we should have paid but once we got back to our
Central Post Office - Ho Chi Minh City
Ho Chi keeps an eye on what you are posting in the South, you capitalist pigs! oasis of calm in the Bach Dang we quickly forgot about our top rip off day and got down to deciding our next move.
The next day we took a scenic coastal train trip a little further north to a town called Hue, famed for its tombs of the Nguyen emperors and its old crumbling Citadel. Despite being heavily bombed by the Americans, the Citadel didn't disappoint and we also took a leisurely trip along the Perfume River to visit the old tombs and the Thien Mu pagoda.
We had planned to go further north to visit Hanoi and Halong Bay but the heat, the overcharging, the corruption and the hassle of Vietnam began to take its toll and we decided to cut our losses and head west for the border crossing into Laos. Vietnam, with its past history of invasions, destruction by bombing, and soil contamination by the lethal chemical Agent Orange sprayed by the Americans onto the land in an attempt to deforest the countryside, can be forgiven for being a struggling country. The people are tough and have a much harder exterior than any other South East Asians we had met so far. While they
Sugar Cane Man - Ho Chi Minh City
Delivering the sugar cane the old fashioned way through the business district. are polite to most tourists they are often bitter if you refuse a service and insist on trying to charge outrageous prices to hapless tourists. Perhaps it's because of the Communist leadership but you can sense that change is slow to come about here and corruption is running rife. Our experiences found it to be so bad that we wouldn't be surprised if it slows down tourism.
Word travels and the Lonely Planet can preach about wonderful old historic towns and lively beach scenes but the real experiences are always passed back to other travellers. A lack of regulations over pricing and transport mean that tourists are constantly fighting a losing battle to pay a fair price. Environmental consciousness is also very low here and plastic bottles, bags and debris are washed up on many of their beautiful beaches. Rubbish is left on street corners and rats scurry under your feet after dark. Child prostitution is also a big problem in Ho Chi Minh City, an issue which the government are attempting to crack down on, but the money made by the Mafia on the streets from selling children is said to be high. In her book 'Mama Tina',
War Remnants Museum - Ho Chi Minh City
Looks like the Americans left pretty quickly in the end as this place is chock full of killing machines. Irish-born Christina Noble (
http://www.cncf.org/ ) gives a disturbing and often emotional account of the lives of many of Vietnam's street children. Spurred on by her own horrific childhood she chose Vietnam as the location for a refuge for children and has campaigned successfully to raise money for various extremely worthy causes to help children and their parents in slum areas of Ho Chi Minh City. Unfortunately we did not get a chance to visit her school but I think it would be an eye opening chance to see the reality of the hardships of the city and get off the South East Asian tourist merry-go-round.
All in all, Vietnam has been an interesting visit but not a place that we plan on coming back to in a hurry. Next stop Laos, another country which has experienced devastation, invasion and some of the worst bombings of all time by American forces. Stay tuned and we'll fill you in on our experiences soon.
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JP
non-member comment
Did you meet Charlie? I hear everyone was looking for him there?