Advertisement
Published: June 29th 2016
Edit Blog Post
Our next destination - and final stop in South-East Asia - was Vietnam. We flew into Saigon, and started by lingering there for a full week, soaking up the sights, the sounds, the beer, and of course the food. Ah, the food! Vietnamese food is one of my favourite cuisines, and Saigon did not disappoint. The noodle soups are hard to beat - Pho, of course, and the spicier and richer Bun bo Hue are the two tussling for top spot in my favourites - but every meal was fantastic; Banh mi (delicious fresh-baked baguettes with all kinds of fillings, normally spicy pork with herbs or something similar) wins as the favourite snack, while street barbecues serving a huge array of fresh shellfish were a definite evening meal highlight. Perhaps even better was the chance to spend every evening sat on tiny little stools on the street drinking the delicious Vietnamese beer - beer in Vietnam is always freshly brewed, tasty, a cornerstone of the culture and cheaper than anywhere else in South-East Asia; and the beer only got better the further north we got through the country. This all adds up to a place that we're going to like a
lot...
We lucked out on arrival as a little old lady saw us and told us she had a room for rent - we were somewhat dubious as we followed her further and further through narrow winding alleyways, but were delighted to find a perfect little home away from home waiting for us. Our host, Wa, was utterly lovely, and insisted on plying us with tea, cakes and fruit, directing us around the city, and generally mothering us in every way she could. Entertainment was provided by her ridiculous little dog, named Babong (the Vietnamese like to own tiny dogs; less of it to eat, so less likely to be stolen and cooked...) - some kind of chihuahua mix that she hugely over-fed, resulting in a tiny and rather daft head with popping out eyes and a tongue hanging out, on top of a perfectly cylindrical fat body with in-turned legs and knobbly knees.
Wa's family sadly also provided a heart-wrenching reminder of the terrible recent past the Vietnamese have lived through. Her husband had recently died, and she started taking in tourists as a way to scrape by, as she can't ever leave the house for more
than an hour or so because she's a full-time carer for her son. Now in his early 40s, he has never been able to speak or walk due to birth defects caused by the widespread American use of Agent Orange during the Vietnam War; just one of the huge number of Vietnamese people - estimates range from thousands up to a full 15% of the population - who have some kind of disability as a result of Agent Orange usage. (Like everything else to do with the Vietnam War it's hard to get the true picture - Vietnamese publications grossly exaggerate these kind of figures, while American sources significantly downplay them. It's probably safe to assume the real number is somewhere in the middle). Whatever the actual figure, there's no doubt it was, and remains, a human tragedy on an enormous scale.
Enough of the grim stuff, anyway - that'll be my only mention of the Vietnam War. After Saigon we headed down to Vinh Long on the Mekong delta, for our last few days on the river that's been almost our constant companion through Laos, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam. We were keen to visit one of the colourful
floating markets that are the quintessential image of the Mekong delta, but unfortunately this is one of those areas that's been spoilt by too many tourists visiting - our boat quickly whisked us through a very underwhelming floating market before taking us through a succession of opportunities to have our money taken from us - a honey farm, a rice-candy factory, a bonsai plantation... Not quite what we were hoping for, but never mind. The next day was much better, as we rented motorbikes and headed off to explore the delta on our own. It took only minutes to get off the beaten track, and then we had a whole glorious day to ourselves; biking through the fantastic scenery, verdant green rice paddies on all sides, water buffalo hard at work ploughing the fields, supervised by farmers in traditional conical bamboo hats; taking shortcuts through bustling local markets and being surrounded by kids running up to shout 'hello!' at us; getting caught in a good old-fashioned Vietnamese monsoon shower on the way home and becoming thoroughly drenched within seconds. Exactly the day that we were hoping for this time!
South Vietnam had been blazingly hot up to this point
- 40-plus every day with high humidity to exacerbate it - so we headed up to Dalat, a hill station to the north of Saigon. We've been to a number of British hill stations across India and South-East Asia up to now, but this was our first French one - and the French definitely win. Dalat is a charming little town, full of attractive French architecture without losing the Vietnamese feel of the place. We had a lovely few days there doing nothing much, just wandering around, eating well and enjoying the cooler weather, watching the crowds of Vietnamese honeymooners who flock to Dalat, and generally feeling pretty happy with life before dragging ourselves onwards.
We jumped on a series of overnight buses - pushed a little for time, we skipped central Vietnam other than a brief and uneventful stop in Danang: next to the north, to explore Hanoi and Sapa.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.06s; Tpl: 0.013s; cc: 7; qc: 24; dbt: 0.0388s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb