Vietnam 2009

Little to report on the final day in Saigon, a final walk through the city, some shopping and marshalling of the troops for the trip home.

Everyone bar FC flew home to Melbourne and my final day was spent in Singapore where the nature and order of the place form a very stark contrast to the past couple of weeks.

I particularly like the urinals in the airport where the image of a blowfly has been embedded to provide a target for those that have difficulty with their aim. The idea is that if the strategically placed fly is “hit” the subsequent splash will be minimised and hey presto - cleaner urinals. A strategy we have previously employed at home by substituting the fly with a C'Wood log.

Overall a valuable trip that was physically demanding but mentally stimulating. A country where you walk on the road to avoid the traffic on the footpath can’t help not being stimulating.

I’d recommend travel to Vietnam for anyone considering an OS trip. With just a little bit of research up front it can prove to be a very rewarding experience. One of the things that I liked (and yet find quite disturbing) is that it is safer to walk the streets there, than it is here in Australia now.

And I don’t want to see another spring roll for at least a week ....

Took the hydrofoil about 2 hours south of Saigon to Vung Tau a quite pleasant coastal town with a touristy feel to it. Spent the day on the beach drinking beer and eating fresh crab.

Overlooking Vung Tau is Vietnam's version of Rio de Janeiro's "Cristo Redentor" this one however is not quite so impressive nor large but makes for an interesting sight at it looks out over the South China Sea. There are many Catholics living in the South, so such Christian artifacts are not uncommon here.

Around 4:00pm the weather started to close in and a thunderstorm hit the beach which was rather pleasant after a very hot day. The thunderstorms and rain are particularly enjoyable here. Once upon a time we'd complain about the rain in Melbourne, now we'd do anything for some. We tend to forget what it is like when we live in dessicated old Victoria, (the dead-garden state.)

Decided to hire a minibus to travel back to Saigon (just to be different) and to our dismay it took over three hours, the last 1.5 in heavy traffic entering Saigon. Take the hydrofoil both ways.

Last order of the day was to look at a few art galleries and select a couple of oil paintings for the home. After some hard bartering from Loanne (with me feigning disinterest) we picked up a couple and had them rolled up for the trip back. Nana and the boys took the night off and stayed in the hotel room watching the French Open tennis and playing Nintendo DS.

Speaking of the French and seeing all of the old colonial style buildings, the Saigon Opera house being one case in point, one can only speculate as to the degree they must have pissed off the people here to have been so inextricably booted out.

Back in Saigon after a hectic two weeks of travel. I recall one of the comments I made in an earlier post was how the traffic just seemed to work despite the chaotic nature. Sometimes (I suspect often) however it does not.

In Nha Trang our taxi driver knocked a bike rider off his bike (he survived but the bike I suspect is in intensive care,) and on the bus ride into Saigon we saw another bike rider sprawled in a very awkward position, head facing backward having obviously just recently joined his honorable ancestors in the great heavenly host.

The past day and a bit has been a bit more relaxing with forays on foot into the city’s nether regions just to explore and see what there is to see. The overall quality of the food here in Saigon is superior to other parts and the service is also correspondingly better. It has not been unusual in other parts to wait for up to 40 minutes for a simple meal, even when you’re the only people in the eatery.

Lots of tourists here. Saigon's District One is crawling with them although beyond the central tourist district you see very few. Lots of young females traveling together which is a reasonable indicator of the degree of safety here. There are also many middle aged and up French, Aussie etc males, a percentage of which I fear may be doing the "Gary Glitter tour."

Off down the coast on the hydrofoil to Vung Tau tomorrow.

Jumped on the sleeper bus in Hoi An around 6:00pm for the 12 hr trip to Nha Trang. Very pleased to jump on the air conditioned bus given the sweltering humidity at the time. The thinking was that we’d spend the night sleeping on the bus and in doing so not waste any daylight hours.

Enter, “Nguyen’s Law” (If it can bugger up - it go bugger up.) The bus started sounding very sick and slowing to snails pace around an hour and a half out of Nha Trang. About a hour out we were off-loaded and waited in the heat for a replacement bus. After an hour or so they announced it would take an hour for the replacement bus to arrive, which we took to be be two plus hours here, and resigned ourselves to a lengthy wait in the heat. to Enter Truong’s law, and the bus turned up in about 20 minutes.

It's here we must concede there's something we do not like about being here and its the Vietnamese males who seem to be eternally compelled smoke their filthy fags and share the bounty of their carcinogenic exhalations with those around them. It's not that they are not pleasant people, it's just a cultural thing that thankfully we are growing out of here in Australia.

Arrived Nha Trang about two hours late and booked into a hotel on the beach. Nha Trang is something of a resort town with lots of tourists. Lots of beaches, islands and things to do here.

Starting to tire of the constant travel and movement so the aim was to relax a bit here. Didn't quite pan out that way though. Made a visit to Monkey Island to see the monkeys and resident elephant which we were assured was there, only to find out upon arrival that the elephant had been moved to another Isle 45 minutes away by boat.

Lots and lots of seafood here. Out and about last night had a three course meal of Bamboo Snails (that looked disturbingly like dog's lipstick but tasted quite OK) Some huge mussel like creatures that are reputed to be good for overall health and lobster in butter and garlic for mains. The best seafood places here lie a few kilometers out of town which helps you to avoid the backpackers (singing Waltzing Matilda & Khe Sanh!) and it is a bit cheaper than the prices on the main strip.

Tomorrow is an 11 hour sleeper bus trip back to Saigon .....

Hoi An is certainly far more peaceful than other places to date. Not only is the town somewhat smaller than Hue there are far fewer vehicles on the road, which is a pleasant change. The touts are also less insistent here so you are afforded something of a break in this area too.

Staying at the Vinh Hahn 2 Hotel which is is quite good. Before hitting the streets we decided to book our hotel next in the next destination (Nha Trang) and asked if the hotel clerks had any suggestions. Much to our amusement they pulled out a Lonely Planet guide to Vietnam and started working their way through that.

An interesting thing occurred on the way in on the bus. The streets here are none too wide and one particular motorbike with two passengers would not give way for the bus to pass. Eventually when the bus finally got alongside the offending bike, the driver's assistant, applying some innovative thinking Vietnamese style, opened the passenger door (while mobile) and struck the driver of the bike over the head with an iron bar. Fortunately he was wearing a helmet!

The bike then understandably stopped (with a thud) and the assistant jumped out and ran back to make his point (as if it wasn't already made.) By this time the rider had bolted (can't blame him) and the passenger was berated for not giving way. I'm reliably informed that the tirade included the words "You're lucky there are tourists on the bus, otherwise you'd really be in trouble!"

Thought we'd take the boys to do some traditional fishing on the local Thu Bon River here and while sitting on a chair, booking a session with some locals the chair collapsed. Clearly designed for less rotund non-western rear ends. I fear with all of the food being eaten here I'm not going to fit into the suits I was measured up for in Saigon.

Hoi An is a very attractive town and one of the must see places here. 300 years ago it was a major international trading port known as Faifo and has a very rich and interesting history. Our fishing trip up the river was singularly unsuccessful, largely we're informed because of the timing with the river being at such a low ebb. It was an interesting trip nonetheless and provided some interesting insights into life along the river.

While motoring up the river I couldn't help but think of the river trip in "Apocalypse Now" and the tremendous contrast between the current peaceful landscape and the carnage the war wrought here.

Off to Nha Trang tomorrow on the sleeper bus.

Right now we are completely temple & tombed out.

Hue is full of great old historic sites with many tombs, temples and palaces of the former rulers of Vietnam. As we are only spending one day here it has been a very hectic schedule to get around and see as much as possible.

To avoid the angst associated with selecting from an array of hotels we simply booked our Hanoi hotel's affiliate in Hue which turned out to be a pretty good choice. Arrived to hotel rooms strewn with red roses and rose petals and very friendly staff.

I won't try to name all the things we saw in Hue as I'd need to spend a while sorting through my notes but suffice to say there were plenty and after a while we weren't sure if we were looking at the tomb, temple or palace of Emperor Ming, Mong, Mung or Meng. (they all look the same to us westerners!) I do remember however that one of them had a family of 300, 150 children and 150 wives.

While traveling down to Hue we passed through what is referred to the DMZ (demilitarized zone) which once marked the boundary between Nth and Sth Vietnam. The zone which extends 5 miles either side of the Ben Hai River and the surrounding areas saw a tremendous amount of fighting during the war. The areas just south of the DMZ include many places we've come to know through history and popular culture. Names such as Da Nang, China Beach, Hamburger Hill and Khe Sanh.

We avoided Khe Sanh like the plague for fear of coming across a "Kangaroo Bar" full of Aussie back-packers doing Jimmy Barnes impersonations.

On route also we've also discovered another unspoken law here to add to "Nguyen's law." For lack of a better name, I call it Truong's law, which roughly translates to "If you expect something to be black here it's probably going to be white, unless you pre-emptively expect it to be white, in which case it will probably end up being black."[i]

Tomorrow it's onto the sleeper bus for the 4 hour trip to Hoi An where we'll spend a couple of days, hopefully relaxing after this hectic stop.

Having participated in a few spirited discussions with other tourists on the relative merits of the train here, I thought it was worth a quick revisit before moving on.

As previously indicated it’s no luxury jaunt, however it has a great deal of it’s own peculiar charm that makes it well worth doing.

Some of the complaints I’ve heard have been:
It’s too cold on the sleeper cabins and you can’t turn the Air Con off.
Personally I found it OK, but then, I’m from Melbourne. Anyway better cold than hot when trying to sleep. The best way around this is to grab yourself one of the silk sleeping bags that you can get anywhere here in Vietnam and use that - this will keep you warm without overheating you. They cost anywhere between $7 & $12.

The linen, pillow and blankets are not properly cleaned so you don’t know what you’ve been lying on.
Grab yourself one of the silk sleeping bags and this problem is solved.

There are cockroaches in the cabin.
Bit harder to counter this one, I saw two in our cabin but they minded their business and I minded mine. (Actually in the first five minutes a big one crawled on Loanne’s foot and she screamed very loudly in panic. I managed to convince her however that it was the strap on her sandle that touched her ankle, not a huge disgusting, disease transmitting cockroach. Luckily she only felt it and did not see it!)

Security is a problem.
Not if you lock your door as per instructions.

The food served on-board is none too flash.
Some of it is quite OK, and if you don’t like it the train stops many times where local vendors will sell you a range of things that are great to eat.

It keeps stopping and starting all of the time at train stations.
Get over it, it’s a train.

Overall, it was a good experience and I must concede I slept really well and didn’t wake until morning. The rocking and vibration of the train makes it very easy to doze off. So if your up this way, give it a try - even if it’s just to say you did it. In other parts of the world there are a lot worse train trips you can take. I can remember one night on the Glen Waverley line ....

Booked the train for the commencement of the trip back to the South. As much as we’ve enjoyed Hanoi we’re pleased to be moving on as the friendliness levels are certainly nowhere near what they are in Saigon. Of course we met some very nice people there, but overall ......

I was always sceptical about the anecdotes I’ve heard from Southern Vietnamese about the “Northern ways” and always put this down to their parochialism, but based on our limited experience, cannot now disagree.

This train is no Orient Express, but a not to be missed Vietnam experience nonetheless. We have our own four berth cabin and as I type, we are rolling past an endless expanse of rice paddies populated by farmers and their oxen working the fields.

We stopped temporarily at Dong Hoi where we jumped off and grabbed some freshly baked bread, bananas and mangos for breakfast. We also had some Ginger Chicken and rice which you can order on the train for the equivalent of just $2.

We boarded the train at 11:00pm last night and expect to arrive in Hue, on Vietnam’s central coast in about two hours which will be 11:00am or so, I add “or so”, having now had some experience with Vietnamese timetables. The capacity to hold ones breath for long periods is a bonus for using the toilets on board, otherwise it’s all good. The odd cockroach in the cabin seems to agree also.

Hue is situated on the Perfume River and is the former capital of the Nguyen Emperors and has a great many historic buildings to see. (“Nguyen” strange name for a Vietnamese that.)

Again, like the tours of Ha Long Bay, it’s best to wait until you get here and buy your train ticket here, it’s usually much cheaper. Just ensure you book at least a day ahead to ensure you get a sleeper.

An early start today for the 160 km bus trip from Hanoi to Ha Long Bay. Once there, it was straight onto our junk for the two day cruise of the famous bay in the Gulf of Tonkin.

The bay area covers over 700 square kilometers and consists of 2000 limestone islands in all shapes and forms. Ha Long translates to “Where the dragon descends into the sea.” They’re real big on dragons, tortoises, the Phoenix, lions and such things here.

Our junk had about fifteen passengers that were waited on hand and foot by the seven crew members. Upon arrival we had a seafood lunch and within the hour the tour had started.

Apart from touring the many islands there was also a stop off at one with massive cave formations within. One of the caverns must have been the size of the Docklands stadium and very impressive. The waters of the bay are an emerald green, which you’ll see in a number of the photos included in the blog.

We spent part of the afternoon at a local floating fishing village were we took some kayaks out onto the bay and also purchased a couple of kilos of live mantis shrimps which I had the chef on the junk cook up for dinner. Half steamed in beer and the other half as Salt & Pepper Shrimp. Over-nighting on the water, eating fresh shrimp, drinking tiger beer and listening to “the king” with the ipod - doesn’t get too much better.

Had to resort to the ipod as the crews taste in music came from an area devoid of the light giving rays of the sun. I didn’t fancy hearing music from “Titanic” in such a setting and “Fernando’s Hideaway” was great (back in the 1940’s.)

Some squid fishing after dinner and had a relatively early and peaceful night. Peaceful in the sense that it is so quiet out on the water and the Tiger beer played a not insignificant role in dulling the senses.

An 8:00am start to complete the tour with a 12:00pm return to Ha Long City for a final repast before a hair-raising 4 hour bus trip back to Hanoi. I’m no going to dwell on the near head on collisions because they are routine here, we did however run out of fuel half an hour before reaching our destination and had to wait for a replacement bus - running out of fuel is a disturbing emergent pattern this trip.

It’s worth noting that some of the literature on Vietnam suggest booking your Ha Long tours online prior to arrival so you don’t end up with some shonky operator, and there are a great of them in Hanoi (all about as shifty as a C’Wood supporter who has blown their dole cheque.)

All prices quoted online however are above the odds and should be avoided. We booked through our hotel in Hanoi and got the same tour for 35% of the online price. Do however, book your hotel in advance on line though. This bay tour is highly recommended.

May 26 was a quite one with a tour of some of the key sites around Hanoi before an evening departure on the “Reunification Express” back south as far as Hue on the central coast. Stops today included the Army museum, the museum of Ethnology and the Ho Chi Minh Museum where we were fortunate enough to see old Ho’s chest expander and his thongs (the variety worn on the foot.)

Not having a great deal of faith in the traffic here we got the the airport about two hours before the flight to Hanoi - just in case. We are finding on this trip so far that Nguyen's law applies - If anything can go bugger up - it go bugger up.

The flight to Hanoi from Saigon was uneventful and was followed by a half hour taxi ride into the city. Hanoi, literally means "in the river" as it is a city of lakes and built on the Red River. Not so called because of the Communistic leanings but rather the reddish brown colour of the water which never changes.

The vista flying into Hanoi was very different to that of Saigon. The question the boys immediately asked was "Why are the houses all squashed up?" A strange but accurate observation given that rather than sprawling laterally, they tend to build upward.

Many houses can have up to 4 or 5 floors with each level only occupying a small fraction of what we'd be used to. The result is many high but "skinny" houses. There are a great many quite ornate dwellings many of which could be straight from the pages of a fairy tale. I imagine with a population of 83 million in such a relatively small coastal strip, with so much land given over to agriculture, land must be at a premium hence the need to go up.

By about 3:00pm we are walking the streets of Hanoi. A very attractive city in many ways the streets are much smaller than in Saigon and often tree lined which adds to the rustic and chaotic feel. Motorbikes, mopeds and cyclos again dominate with cars and buses moving slowly through the traffic and adding to the confusion. Confusion for us that is, the locals have no dramas at all.

Again there are traders in every nook and cranny and a sea of colour and movement everywhere you look, and you need to keep a look out as there is quite a bit of petty crime on offer. The people here seem to be more circumspect and less friendly than those in Saigon, this is only an initial observation though - will confirm in a few days time.

We walked down the the local Hoan Kiem lake and in and around the central district area which has whole streets dedicated to specific trades and products. The boys suddenly became very animated as we stumbled upon a street full of toy shops and very quickly arrowed in on the Pokemon toys.

The Hoan Kiem Lake (Lake of the restored sword) got its name in the 15th century when heaven sent the then Emperor a magical sword to smite the Chinese from Vietnam. It's said that a giant tortoise rose from the lake once the task was accomplished and and took the sword back to heaven. A 250kg tortoise was caught in the lake many years ago and remains stuffed and displayed at the local temple but there is some debate as to whether or not there are any left in the lake. Makes a good story anyway, one worthy of Monkey, Pigsy, Sandy and Tripitaka.

On the way back to the hotel we got very lost and ended up walking the streets far longer than expected. Fortunately the additional exploration brought us across a great video shop where I found 100's and 100's episodes of the "Benny Hill Show" all for the equivalent of Aud$12.00. Of course we checked to ensure they were originals and not pirate copies and the shop keeper assured us they were 'dinky dinky", so it's all good. 100's of hours of Benny Hill viewing to look forward to, Ernie the fastest milkman in the west and tiddles the wonder cat with his one eye - can't wait!

Currently uploading this in the hotel room where the wifi is provided free of charge, unlike the greed ridden and rapacious hotels in Australia that charge an arm and a leg for internet access.

Started the first full day here with a breakfast of tropical fruit including, mango, pineapple, rambutan, dragon fruit and a couple of unidentifiable others that tasted pretty good.

Based on my novice observations the city appears pretty safe given the number of parents and kids, locals and tourists, wandering around late at night without too much bother. The literature seems to support this. Saigon is a real ramshackle, yet attractive city with many different architectural styles that I can’t even begin to describe. Suffice to say that the old French colonial and the more contemporary styles make for a very attractive tropical mixture.

Off exploring on foot post breakfast. Preferring not to follow any prescribed route we just started walking and seeing what we could see. Our pampered Western children were of course unimpressed with the idea of walking all day but a quick explanation that “you can’t spend your life playing video games” and a clip across the ears soon fixed this (temporarily at least.)

Crossing the road
A word of warning for those who are faint of heart. Crossing the road here can be a very interesting experience. You cross by simply keeping your eye on the oncoming traffic (usually coming at you from multiple directions) and maintaining steady pace as you go. Don't slow down, don't speed up and certainly don't stop. This allows the drivers and riders to judge your speed and trajectory and adjust appropriately. The drivers here, male and female, have excellent spacial awareness and it is awesome to see how they navigate through the traffic. If you're thinking bugger that I'll just use the traffic lights - forget it, on the rare occasion you do find some the same thing happens there!

Life teems around you here, if it’s not the bikes streaming past there’s people on foot everywhere, street traders plying their trade and small businesses that have occupied every single available shop space possible. Touts are constantly at you trying to flog everything from pirated books and DVDs to all manner of food items. Capitalism is alive and well here in this communist country.

The back streets of Saigon, particularly once you’re out in the suburbs, is again very reminiscent of Havana, except there are heaps on neon lights here everywhere you look. It is a very attractive city in many ways.

First order of the day was to buy some tickets to fly to Hanoi and after a rather bureaucratic hour doing so in a local travel agent we are booked to fly at 11:30am tomorrow on Vietnam Airlines.

Amongst the sites we saw were the Notre Dame Cathedral, big, but singularly unimpressive structure dating back to 1880 and the “War Remnants Museum” and the "Reunification Palace." Whereas the cathedral did little for the boys the war museum really got them fired up. Lots of guns, helicopters, planes and lots of gory pictures of atrocities perpetrated here by the imperialist war-mongers during the "American" war.

Following the war museum we all went on Cyclo rides down to one of the large markets for lunch and shopping. The cyclo is Vietnam's version of the Rickshaw, a cycle driven vehicle with a single passenger seat. They are currently being phased out of operation here so it was a good opportunity to see part of the city this way. We hired four of 'em and had a hair-raising ride through the traffic chaos to the Ben Thanh Market. Word of warning here: when I extracted a 500,000 Dong note (equivalent to $50.00) to pay the riders one unsuccessfully tried to relieve me of it assuming we would be unfamiliar with the local currency.

The Ben Thanh Market (or Ben Ten as the boys put it - it’s funny how they make sense of these things through popular culture. Even some of the attractive and ancient pagodas here are “houses out of Kung Fu Panda.”)

The market sells almost anything you’d care to name with literally 1000’s of stalls with very eager young ladies keen for your business. I was physically enticed, grabbed and pulled into their stalls on numerous occasions and if Loanne was not there I’m sure I’d still be in there (Damn!)

Ended up buying cashmere material to make a suit from which we have subsequently dropped off to a local tailor where I underwent a fitting, I expect to look pretty sharp in this given my current suits are $99.00 specials from “Roger David”. The boys brought bumbags each and these have been around their waists since - even in bed. We ended our market session with bowls of hot Pho, which is a noodle soup type dish and very popular here in Vietnam.

The day ended visiting in-laws in the back streets of Saigon, knee deep in water and soaked in a tropical thunderstorm. A very novel experience given we haven’t had this type of rain in Melbourne for so long. I paid little attention to the strange floating objects in the water at the time, and still trying not to think about them now. The heavy downpour made the traffic a correspondingly more interesting prospect as well.

Last order of the day was watching Footscray vs Geelong on the cable TV in the hotel before packing to fly out to Hanoi in the morning. Had Johnson heard the instructions I was giving him from Vietnam on that last game defining kick, Footscray would have won!

Exhausted!

Given the midnight departure from Melb and the catch up with the in-laws at the Saigon end, it's been close to 40 hours since we have had any decent sleep. Worse still, the tickle in my throat that the good Dr in Melb assured me was nothing, has now developed into a raging chainsawing infection and I've lost my voice. Fortunately eating is not proving beyond me and the food thus far has been very nice.

Melb - Saigon
The Singapore Airlines flight from Melb abruptly turned the cabin lights on and started descending 5 hours into the 7 hour flight and shortly after the Capt announced that there was a fuel leak and that one of the engines had been shut down. As a result we were diverted to Bali while they inspected the plane. A replacement plane was found, but by that stage we had missed the connecting flight in Singapore and had to wait another four hours there where it was Curry Laska all round for breakfast served by a woman as mad as a cut snake in the Chen Fu Ji noodle house at Changi airport.

At Changi the boys spent much of the time running up and down the lengthy travellators in the wrong direction much to the dismay of a few Changi Airport staff. I explained to one that, after a long period of inaction on board they needed the exercise, they didn't seem to understand however that a responsible adult might also need such an outlet.

The customs in Saigon very much reminded me of Havana, staffed by uniformed, officious and none too friendly staff. You gotta love those communists.

We were met at the airport by about a doz of the in-laws, all very friendly and no doubt wondering about this Western Barbarian and offspring they've been hearing about for the past 10 years. All very nice people, which I've discovered the past couple of days appears to be a trait very common to the Southern Vietnamese. They all love Francis and James, normally it's you as the tourist who needs to ask permission of the locals to take photos but here they're coming and asking for photos with the boys.

Of course the first thing the boys did once through customs here was pull out their Nintendo DS's and resumed some form of wifi battle. I've said to them to leave them alone and take in the wonders of a new country and culture, but Space Invaders (or whatever they're playing these days) takes precedence.

Saigon Roads
Grabbed a taxi from the airport into the city, a real eye opener! This truly is the city of the motorbike with literally millions of the things flying all over the place in what I could only describe at the time as CFC. Rather than spelling out the acronym I'll simply say the first word stands for Complete, and you'll work out the rest.

Could not help but think of this being a classic complex adaptive system. All of the agents (and there are a lot of 'em) cars, buses, motorbikes, cyclos, etc acting independently and yet somehow in concert with all other agents around them. Road rules as we know them are out the window. There is just this crazy seething mass of vehicles that somehow avoid collisions and get from A to B via means beyond the understanding of the western mind. Of course there are some rules of thumb, one of which is to "beep your horn repeatedly" to let those around you know where you are and "anything goes" seems to be another.

Experiencing this, I was reminded of Dave Snowden's description of traffic, when you are in and part of it there seems to be no discernible pattern and what you have to do is look down upon it from a distance to see patterns emerge. (Well, I've also looked down on this traffic from a 9th floor window and no patterns have become apparent yet - CFC.)

Even now as I type on the 9th floor of a hotel, the dominating sound is the cacophony of horns coming from below.

This is me working my way through the features of half a doz different travel blogs. Most seem to work pretty well so I'm not really sure which I'll go with.

As I've run out of time to choose, finally decided to use the scientific method of decision making and chose travellerspoint.com (because I liked the look of this template.)