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Xin Chau Bloggees!
There's no denying that from the first hour of arriving in Vietnam we knew that it was going to be exactly what we needed after the somewhat disappointment and frustration of Cambodia. Apart from a brief transition in Singapore, Vietnam brings us to the end of our Asian adventure and marks the end of our lazy days before the - eek!- working life of Fruit-pickers begins Down Under.
Six weeks and counting....
We began our travels in Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon), south Vietnam after what turned out to be a rather long and hellish 14-hour bus ride over the border (incidentally, one of the most ridiculous and pointless border crossing check points ever as no security checked our bags and stamped our passports without even looking at us). Within one hour of arrival we had managed to find a nice room, track down a little street stall for a bowl of Pho (traditional Vietnamese soup) and relax with a bottle of 30pence Saigon beer. Definitely off to a good start. During our beef noodle soup we were 'head-hunted' via the power of 'gaydar' and kindly invited to join a group of girls for drinks. Little
Chud's welcome party!
Blow up balloon
Henna tattoo
Casio watch
Two pictures of his cats - so he felt at homedid we realise that when all stood together we resembled some sort of lesbian army as all six of us stood sporting matching uniforms of knee-length shorts and t-shirts. Bugger.
Our first two days in 'nam were spent wondering around the markets and gardens sipping ice-coffees and people watching. One of the most striking contrasts was just how friendly the Vietnamese people are: we were accosted in the park by locals ranging from ex-soldiers to students all eager to chat and practice their English only for us to realise that two hours had passed and we were still surrounded by nine people! We know we're not exactly busy but this is actually very tiring work.
In addition to these taxing activities, we were glued to the BBC weather report; more specifically, panicking that the Icelandic ash cloud would keep the airports closed and prevent Nikki's brother Chud from flying out to meet us. (FYI - for those of you unfamiliar with the name Chud, it's short for Richard. It’s a childhood thing...). Luckily, this didn't happen and armed with inflatable aeroplane balloon, henna covered arms and massive smiles he put us through a nerve-wracking hour and half wait
before finally strutting through the arrival doors and popping on his new Casio. Welcome to the club, Chud.
Unfortunately, his entry into Vietnam wasn't quite as smooth as ours and began with a taxi driver locking his bag in the boot for 20 minutes as we refused to pay the inflated fare price. This was followed on by the lesbians stealing his cheap room! Note to self: never gloat at how cheap your room is. The good news was the rest of the night was spent throwing a little welcome party with the aforementioned army. This involved the most attention-seeking member of the army body-popping and having a real-life dance off in a club. She managed to piss Nikki off by asking in an American drone, 'Why don't ya dance? Don't you ever dance? Do you not like dancing?' (repeat until annoying).
Now that the Gotts were finally reunited, it meant that our sightseeing of HCMC could finally commence. We spent our first day recovering from hangovers by visiting the War Remnants Museum which aims to describe the American war tactics and aftermath in a nice little package of propaganda. One of the most shocking sections displayed photographs
of Agent Orange victims who had suffered severe bodily deformities as an effect of the chemical. This included two deformed real-life preserved foetuses. Shocking and sad to say the least. The mood lightened outside the building when we encountered all the planes and tanks used in the war effort. This is classed as 'man fun'. Grr...
In an attempt to find out more about the war we signed up to a tour of the Chu Chi Tunnels. The tunnels are just north of HCMC and were used by the Vietnam army to hide from their attackers. In total they cover about 200km and vary in height and width from about 50cm to 80cm. Throughout the tour none of the guides seemed particularly convinced about how the tunnels were actually used: some say they were just for hiding; others for living and eating; others say the oxygen will run out after 5 minutes! The tour turned out to be really padded out with other crap... including examples of man traps and also the opportunity to fire a real gun at the shooting range! Proudly, Chud rose to the challenge and fired a real big gun (AK-Big Gun) whilst we hid
behind the wall covering our ears. When we did eventually reach the tunnel section that had been widened for fatty Westerners to crawl through, there was a moment of confusion. Chud refused to go through due to claustrophobia, Nikki had a look then decided against it and Gail thought she had to go in it for 50 minutes! Turns out it was 50 meters and so we both clambered through dripping in sweat, covered in dust and a little disappointed.
Further sightseeing in HCMC led us to the Reunification Palace, formally Independence Palace. To be honest, this was a little dull and the heat exhaustion was killing all our spirits! So much so, it took us ten minutes to find the giant helicopter on the roof which was located just behind our heads. This was followed by a jolly sightseeing walk though the central district past the Cathedral and the Opera House.
Our first few evenings with Chud were spent introducing him to the joys of 30p beer. We also tried our damned hardest to introduce him to haggling and bartering at the central market. Sadly, even after two weeks of persistence, we failed at the latter mission;
however, he did have a fabulous shoe shine that only cost him SEVEN WHOLE ENGLISH POUNDS!! (Sorry Chud, it is a little funny). Despite our constant mockery of Chud's lavish spending, it didn't take much persuading for us to join in and we were quickly into air-conditioned rooms and Western food. Basically, we had a holiday...from our holiday. Needless to say, we are now financially crippled and a little fatter.
After a pleasant few days in HCMC it was time to embark on our South Vietnam experience and head off to the Mekong Delta. This area is known as the 'rice bowl' of ‘nam, although we didn't seem to see any paddy fields. The area is famous for floating markets, islands and boat tours. Once we had recovered from the bus's pumping Vietnamese party tunes - yes, this must be an Asian bus thing - we decided to indulge ourselves by having a massage. We found a place recommended in The Lonely Planet which trains and employs blind people so we went there. Within minutes, we were settled nicely onto the bed awaiting pure relaxation. It suddenly became apparent that unlike Nikki, Gail's masseur wasn't going to provide her
with a towel to cover her modesty. But, since they were blind Gail thought this somehow made it less embarrassing so lay there with her exposed breasts smiling. Five minutes later, still naked with Nikki giggling, there was a sudden flutter of conversation between the women and much to Gail's horror it turned out that only one of them was actually blind! Kindly, after waiting rather a long time, the visually impaired masseur instructed the blind lady to pass Gail a towel. A few hours after the massages, Chud's bruises began to emerge and stayed with him for the following two weeks.
Throwing ourselves into the Delta experience, we signed up for a four-hour boat ride starting at 5am to take us upstream to the floating market where all the locals gather to buy and sell produce. It started enthusiastically yet quickly became rather embarrassing as our 'cheap' tour actually meant a crap boat which made our arses numb after three hours. We were constantly overtaken by bigger and better boats whilst receiving looks of pity from their passengers. Someone even took a photograph of us! Luckily, we didn't sign up for the eight hour tour. The floating market
was interesting and mainly wholesale fruit-sellers with more pineapples than we had ever seen. The remaining few hours were spent tediously watching the boat driver pick plastic bags off her rudder and throwing them back into the dirty river. She must repeat the same exercise every day...
From here we headed to Vinh Long for what now seems an utterly pointless reason. The main reason to come here is for the island tours. We picked a bigger and better boat but the trip wasn't really any better! We think we may have been cursed with bad boat rides. The boat owner dropped us at a random island with no clue on what to do. After wondering around aimlessly, we headed back to the boat. After getting half way down the river, Gail finally ascertained from the none-English speaking man that mountain biking was available on the islands and so we headed back and got the bikes. We have never sweated so much in our lives (see pictures). After foolishly thinking cycling around the island would actually take forty-minutes like they said, we became lost and then chased by a bunch of kids resembling a scene from 'Lord of The
Flies'!
Due to two national holidays celebrating Ho Chi Minh's birthday (the man who reunited North and South Vietnam/national hero) we were rather restricted in where we could go as the whole nation flocks to the beach leaving very little or very expensive accommodation. So, we happily headed back to the fun, busy, modern world of HCM city for a couple of days. We didn't actually achieve much this time due to severe hangovers and severe poorly botty (Nikki's-again!). It was lucky that this cleared up naturally as we discovered after arriving at the GP's that a consultation would cost $140! We did, however, manage to play a few games of ten pin bowling and visit another (depressing) zoo.
Escaping the 35 degree heat, we headed up the mountains to Dalat. This is a town of cooler temperatures and even some rain! Our few days here were super fun and included a mountain biking failure and a great sightseeing trip. The most fun however was had by Gail’s hair in the hotel room. As her hair was multi-coloured from the sun, she decided to take the opportunity to dye it a nice consistent shade of light brown... After
twenty minutes of the hair dye being on her head, Nikki commented 'it looks a wee bit ginger…'. It turns out that, you guessed it, it was bright orange! We have concluded that Asian hair dye must be made especially for Asian black hair. Or at least that’s what Gail is telling herself. The ginger look spawned such games as 'name as many ginger people as you can and call Gail these names consistently for four days'. It took a trip to the hair dressers (4 days later) and another 3 failed attempts at rectifying the situation. Much to Gail’s disappointment, she is now sporting black hair (yes, this does make her look whiter).
Back to Dalat. Chud became even more manly following a day's sightseeing on the back of a really big motorbike. These guys are all over Vietnam and call themselves Easy Riders. If you've got the money, you can pretty much tour the whole of the country on the back of one of these bikes - which would be amazing. Next time eh... We followed behind on a scooter looking rather feminine in comparison. Mr Happy (they're all called Mr Happy) took us to two brand
Chud riding a dinosaur
A real-life one at the zoo. This prompted repeated humming of the Jurrasic Park theme tune new pagodas - The Linh Phuoc Pagodas. They are decorated solely in broken crockery and glass. We must have seen hundreds of temples/places of worship and this place was one of the coolest and most beautiful buildings we have seen.
Under our instruction, Mr Happy then headed to Datanla Falls. To be honest we had zero interest in the waterfalls but a burning desire to have a go on the rollercoaster ride in the style of a Bobsled that take you down to the bottom of the mountain. It lived up to the hype! After a Pringle and Pepsi stop, told you we'd gone crazy with the money, we headed to a big lake for a quick look then onto an attraction called the Crazy House. This is in the Lonely Planet’s top 15 sights to see in the country… it looks nothing like the picture in the book. It really needs a good lick of paint and a tidy up. As you can probably guess by the name, it is indeed a Crazy House built and designed by a lady architect in the style of a giant tree house. Following our adventures with Mr Happy, we had a
coffee in a cafe with orange umbrellas. These really complemented Gail's new hair.
Day number two was misspent on mountain bikes. Somehow, we seemed to have forgotten that for the past five months we have been sunning ourselves, wining-and-dining and generally trotting around places. So, the idea that we could just sign-up to a six and a half hour 'medium to difficult' mountain bike tour was a little arrogant. Needless to say, we turned up prepared with water, shorts, suncream and smiling faces. We couldn't believe our luck when they brought our brand new mountain bikes and we all hopped on ready to explore the pine-forests of Dalat. It went something like this...
Ten minutes: happily riding downhill
Twently minutes: slowly riding uphill
Thirty minutes: sweating and resting
Forty minutes: heavy breathing on the rocky terrain
Fifty minutes: Gail pulling bike out of heavy mud in the forest
Fifty-five minutes: our guide gives us some advice - 'You should cycle to enjoy, not cycle to die!'
One hour: guide informs us, 'You won't be able to complete the course.' Turns to Chud, 'You probably could.'
One hour five minutes in: sat in a coffee shop panting and sweating.
I before E....
Gail educating plastic models at the Chu Chi Tunnels One hour six minutes in: Tour over 😞
Two hours in: we were very pleased that despite not actually seeing much of the forest, we did cycle to The Valley of Love for some comedy posing in the park of romance where honeymoon couples come to do some kissing.
Four hours in: we were back where we belonged with a well-deserved pint in hand.
The final chapter of Chud's adventure in Vietnam led us to Nha Trang beach, the number one beach spot in 'nam, don't you know. This is a great place to come for all things beach-activity related but unfortunately, we were more taken by the night-life. It's a sad moment when you realise that despite only being mid-twenties, that you feel really bloody old in a bar. The bars in Nha Trang are absolutely overflowing with posh, drunken eighteen year old English people squandering daddy's money (not sure if we're bitter or jealous...).
Our time in Nha Trang was relatively quiet yet filled with card games, vodka, hair-related jokes and preparing for sunburnt Chud's departure. It was quite comforting to know that after 17 days even he felt bored with the effort involved
in hotel hunting, food hunting and clothes hunting. Incidentally, we have both been severely embarrassed by trying on clothes that are labelled XL only to find that we can't get them past our thighs. Vietnamese women are about the size of a 15 year old girl. Nikki has also been publicly laughed at for asking for a 32/34 size jeans.
Chud left us on the 10th of May and we are slowly making our way back into our strange two-person, introverted lives. Thanks to Chud, we are very happy to announce that we are bored of budgeting and now spending freely; It's much more fun!
Next step - to conquer the North of 'nam...
(P.S - Sorry to naturally ginger blog fans)
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Sue
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Hi GAIL AND NICKY SOUNDS AS IF YOU ARE HAVING AN ABSOLUTELY FANTASTIC TIME AND ARE GETTIENG LOADS O BRILLIANT EXPERIENCES WHICH YOU CAN TREASURE FOR A LIFETIME. HOPE THE FRUIT PICKING ISN'T TOO BAD. ALL IS OKAY HERE AND I AM COUNTING THE DAYS TO RETIREMENT 26 left. TAKE CARE OF YOURSELVES BEST WISHED SUE