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Published: March 13th 2008
Happy New Year!
One of the sights in Hue was decorated with a banner for Chinese New YearJust when we thought it couldn't get any worse after the bus ride from Hell... We arrived in Vinh and we're dropped of at a random street somewhere. As our guidebook didn't say anything about the place, we didn't have a clue of where we were and where we should be going and we didn't have any Vietnamese currency, only a few US dollars. A small comfort was the fact that we weren't the only ones with this problem. We were accompanied by two malaysian guys we met on the bus who didn't have a guidebook nor a map. We started walking and it was cold and humid.
We arrived to Vietnam on the last day of the Chinese New Year celebration which meant that almost everything in the country was shut down and had been so for the last week. The whole city was like a ghost town: there were hardly any people in the streets and all the shops were closed. Luckily enough it didn't take more than 15 minutes or so before we ran into a cheap hotel. We were extremely relieved: now we just had to find an ATM! So we started walking in the direction
Messed up 1
After sitting on a Vietnamese buss for the whole night, this is what you look like! the guy at the hotel pointed out.
We walked for a while and started getting suspicious, maybe we missed the ATM? So we stopped to ask for directions at a shop that looked open. Well it wasn't just a shop, it was a Chinese New Years celebration and we were invited to join! The people had apparently been drinking for a while and we were offered some brandy and red wine too. Now when you read this you have to remember we hadn't eaten much for the last 12 hours, but it would have been impolite to say no. The people didn't speak too much English, but to our surprise a few of them knew some German from school( but why?). We tried to communicate, but the level of discussion wasn't too high. It was an absurd situation to be in. After a while we decided it was time to finally find that ATM and said goodbye and thank you to our newfound friends.
After a couple of minutes of walking we finally found the ATM. I felt relieved, finally! But oh no, the ATM wasn't working! There was another ATM across the street so we crossed the
Messed up 2
Same, same, but different! street and tried that one: no money. I started getting desperate. What if all the ATM's were empty after the banks being closed for a week? Where could we find another ATM that would work? We didn't have any money and we needed to eat and to pay for our room. We decided that me and one of the Malaysian guys would take a scooter taxi and drive around to all the ATM's in town. Easier said than done, because apparently very few people in the city speak any English. After getting two scooter taxis and then standing at the corner of a crossing and gesturing wildly in the air and repeating words like ATM, money, card, without getting our message through there was a girl on a scooter who was kind enough to stop and ask if we needed any help. She translated for us. The sccoter took us to another ATM. My hopes got up again, but no, still no money. One more ATM, still not working. We decided to go back to the hotel, maybe we could pay in dollars and survive 'til the next day? The scooter swished past our hotel. I shouted stop and pointed
The only way to travel
We took the rickshaw in My Tho at the hotel. The driver nodded, but continued. I realised he had to make a U-turn to get to the hotel. And there it was, one more ATM, just a few hundred meters from our hotel. I pushed my credit card into the slot, no money. I decided to try my other credit card, this was our last hope. And then I heard the familiar sound of the ATM counting the bills and the the money came out. I took the money in my hand, turned around to my Malaysian friend and the two drivers and jumped up and down in the air and shouted! I've never been so happy to get money out of an ATM before!
We went back to the hotel to pay for our room and then went for some food. This was the first proper meal we had in 12 hours! In the evening we decided to have our own New Years party with some fishy looking cookies, beer and a bottle of Vietnamese "champagne" that cost us only 1 euro. We were sitting at the hotel room with our blankets around us and drinking beer to keep us warm. The worst thing about
Making new friends
Me and Helena with our new friend Tony the weather being so cold was that it was the same temperature outdoors as indoors. Since it was so ridiculously cold indoors as well we just couldn't bring ourselves to take a shower even if we hadn't had one for a while.
The next morning we got up at 5.30 am to catch our train to Hue. Our seats were in a sleeping cabin where we had to share one bed with 3 other people. Not too comfortable, considering we had a 7 hour ride in front of us. There was an upper bed in the cabin as well and it was empty so we sneaked up to it and shared the narrow bed and managed to sleep for a while before the man who's bed it was turned up. When we got to Hue we were exhausted from all the travelling so we just got ourselves some lunch, had a shower (first shower in 60 hours!) and then tucked ourselves into bed.
Next stop in Vietnam was Hoi An, a bit futher down the coastline from Hue. Hoi An had a very nice old town full with tailor shops and nice restaurants. We couldn't resist the tailor
Trip to Floating Market
Helena, our guide and our boat driver. shops and spent most of our time in the town visiting the different tailor shops. It was so cheap and it was silk! We celebrated Valentines day together with a 3 course meal and exchanged gifts.
The night bus from Hoi An was horrible and uncomfortable too. When we got to Muine my both legs were swollen like I had a deep vein thrombosis on both sides and my neck was aching. Muine had a nice beach and we did a pathetic try one day of getting a tan. We didn't, but instead meanwhile someone had stolen Helena's phone from our hotel room! The hotel management said no one had been to our room and suggested we should look for it once more. WIn the end we went to the police station to file a report. Helena had to answer questions like: what time did your phone get stolen? What did the phone look like? Why do you have your phone with you if your sim card isn't working in Vietnam? Of course the police didn't speak a word of English so the hotel receptionist translated. The police took the matter very seriously and came to see the scene
of the crime and questioned the staff at the hotel. At the time of writing we're still waiting for Helena's phone to be found.
Because of this bad experience we decided to leave Muine earlier than planned and took the night bus to Saigon and from there we continued to a city called My Tho in the Mekong Delta. The city is definitely off the beaten track and we didn't see one single tourist during our stay there. Hardly no one speaks english. That's why we were very surprised when during our lunch a man from the table behind us turned around and asked us in fluent english: Where are you from? We started talking and in the end he, Tony, invited us to join him and his friends in the evening. And so in the evening we found ourselves in a place, which was a mix of karaoke, the Sweden ferry and "lavatanssit". People seemed to want to get to know us and talk to us, but again we bumped into the same problem: the language barrier.
Next stop was Cantho were we went to see the floating market and a rice noodle factory accompanied by a
Making a mess
This is what the area between our beds looked like in our dorm in Saigon... Somewhere underneath are our backpacks. boat driver and our personal guide, a sweet young girl who was studying to become a tourisy guide.
After being off the beaten track for a couple of days it feelt good to arrive to Saigon where the familiar looking tourist shops and restaurants greeted us. Despite the fact, that Saigon is a huge city of millions of inhabitants it still didn't feel too big. It had a lot of nice narrow alleys and the buildings were pretty low in general. We did a one day excursion to see the Cu Chi Tunnels where the Vietcong stayed for 20 years during the war. We got to try the tunnels ourselves, crammed and spooky! Helenas mum told her she had to go to the tailor shop and get herself a new long dress and of course I had to get something tailored too. It would have been unfair otherwise!
The impression I have of Vietnam is, that it's very chaotic, the traffic is mad and there's a stressful atmosphere in the cities. There's a lot of rip offs too, so you have to be on guard all the time, which is very tiring in the long run. The biggest
problem for us however was the language barrier. I guess that's part of why everything seemed so chaotic, because no one could explain to us what was happening. Instead people just shouted something (maybe in Vietnamese, I don't know) and waved their hands frenetically. The food in Vietnam was addictive! Possibly the best food in Southeast Asia. On this trip we missed out on northern Vietnam( lack of time to go there and besides we would have frozen to death) so I'll definitely have to return to the north and see if I can make any more sense out of this country!
After seeing so many new things during the past months we decided to make a change of plans and return to our favourite parts of the trip. Read my next blog entry to learn more...
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pika
non-member comment
the most beautiful photo is the mess up 2 hahahaa