| Vietnam We get the plane to Hanoi, Vietnam and enter a whole new world. Hanoi was VERY different to sleepy Laos. Since the 2nd Century BC, Vietnam was dominated by China for 10 centuries. The Chinese influence is very apparent and Vietnam feels much more Chinese than Asian. There are no more Buddhist monks wondering around everywhere, lots of beautiful green rice paddies and people wearing conical bamboo hats. The temple architecture appears to be very Chinese too - as oppose to the Thai temples we have seen in Thailand and Laos. (Temple fatigue has set in quite heavily). There were motorbikes everywhere. 90% of the traffic is scooters and it never stops. You just have to walk into the road and they all drive round you! Takes a bit of getting used to. There are lots of very narrow tall buildings everywhere because the government used to tax houses according to their width on the street. Unlike Laos, Vietnam was opened up to capitalist ventures and tourism is now pretty well established. People speak English, and there are plenty of good cheap hotels. The Vietnamese are friendly, even to Americans. It’s on the streets where the real culture shock occurs. There are lots of beggars & postcard sellers (who also sell photocopied lonely planet guides), shoe shine boys, motorbike taxi drivers, cyclo drivers (a bit like a rickshaw) and shop keepers all vying for your attention. And then there’s the traffic. The roads are filled with so many motorbikes, all beeping incessantly. Crossing the roads is an interesting experience – you just go for it, walking at a steady pace, letting the bikes weave their way around you. The noise and the intensity of it all really gets to you, and we regularly have to try and find a quiet café or something to hydrate, and get out of the noise. List time – Interesting things being transported on ikkle motorbikes: 4 people at a time, a pane of glass, live pigs in a crate, plumbing pipes 3 times the length of the bike, a massive television set, huge bags carrying any manner of things, live chickens dangling off the handlebars. Actually, our first experience of Hanoi was a scam. We asked our taxi at the airport to take us to a hotel, and he knows where we mean. On the drive there he’s on the mobile phone to a few people – which we don’t really think about. We get to a hotel, the hoteliers grab our bags and take them inside, meanwhile Jo is distracted by the Taxi driver demanding double the fare we agreed on, and I get a little boy beggar in my face (I never see him again). By the time we realise it isn’t the hotel we asked for, it’s a little late. In any case the hotel has decent, cheap rooms, so we’re not too fussed & stay there. Good scam they’ve got going though. We stay in Hanoi’s Old Quarter (which is supposedly over 1000 yrs old) and explore it a lot. It is famous for it’s 36 streets that each specializes in certain things – gravestones, herbs, shoes and so on. There are a lot of lovely things being sold here, and it’s all so tempting. We try and limit ourselves, as we can’t go lugging masses on our backs & post is pretty expensive. We do however, buy some lovely “Gucci” glasses for a steal and stock up on plenty of CDs and DVDs (including a lot of very recent ones like Chicago). We visit Hoa Lo Prison, which was affectionately known by the American prisoners of war as “the Hanoi Hilton”, and also the Temple of Literature. Hoa Lao Prison which was built by the French to house Vietnamese patriots and insurgents during the colonial period. There were guillotines and exhibits about French cruelty and repression. Then after the Vietnamese communist resistance gained independence from the French, it was used as an American POW camp during what they call the ‘American War’ (not Vietnam war). In the evening we see the water puppet show (basically punch and judy in a pool). It’s Hanoi’s most famous cultural item, and is very cool, these puppets perform on top of a pool of water. 11 puppeteers stand in waist deep water behind a bamboo screen and operate the puppets. The art form is about 1000 years old and was started by rice farmers in flooded fields. The puppets look like they are walking on water. There are fire breathing dragons with fireworks, and a little fisherman sat on his boat smoking an opium bong with real smoke! The way the puppets come to life is amazing. Ho Chi Minh is the theme of one day’s touring – we go to the Ho Chi Minh’s mausoleum, where he is kept, embalmed, for people to see. It’s closed (it being a Friday), and so we miss out on that, but I wasn’t too keen on seeing that morbid spectacle anyway. We have a look at Uncle Ho’s Stilt House and the nearby One Pillar Pagoda. It was built in 1049, and destroyed as a last spiteful act by the departing French in 1954 (it has since been rebuilt). Most museums etc have a long 2 hour lunch break, and we get to the Ho Chi Minh museum as it is about to close. Our poor guide gives us a high speed tour. He really has to work to fit it all in, and the pace, and his difficulty with English leaves him a sweaty stressed out wreck at the end. It was good value though, and give him a 2$ donation “to the museum”. They also eat some weird stuff here. This includes; snakes wine (there is a whole village north of Hanoi that specializes in it), dragonflies, dog (it is auspicious to eat the dog at certain times of the month, and is very popular – in one part of Hanoi there is a long stretch of road devoted to dog restaurants), cats (now illegal, but this has driven up the price, meaning that many farmers sell their cats for the money and then have to catch the rats in their fields themselves), rats (see previous), tortoise, pigeon. Halong bay is an UNESCO world heritage site, and meant to be one of the most spectacular sights in Vietnam, so we go on a 2 day tour in a small group. Halong Bay is one of the natural wonders of Vietnam and is famous for its 3000 limestone formations, caves and grottos rising from the emerald waters of the Gulf of Tonkin. Halong Bay covers an area of 1500 sq. km and is comparable to Milford sound in NZ but on a larger scale. Our ride out there is an experience in itself, seeing the amazingly green rice paddies, the workers in their conical hats (yes they DO wear them), the water buffalos etc. We see the Amazing/Surprising cave, with lovely limestone formations, beautifully lit up. The most surprising thing about the cave for me was the jarring sight of rubbish bins shaped like penguins that were placed at 10 meter intervals. I mean, it’s nice they want to keep it tidy – but just how much rubbish can you accumulate in an isolated limestone cave? It boat cruise is lovely and relaxing after Hectic Hanoi (the ceaseless noise can be really Hanoying). We see lots of beautiful fishing boats, Junks and Kamikaze kids in tiny boats that career into the touring boats, and then try and sell their goods. We pass the biggest floating village that has 700 people in 90 houses, and even has a floating school. Peculiarly, many of these floating houses have TVs and dogs (maybe for a snack?) Next up we travel to Hue. Hue to go! We got the overnight train, sleeping in a cabin with 6 people. We were on the lower bunks and the poor Vietnamese in our cabin had to clamber up to the heavens to get into their bunks above us. We were worried that the “hard sleeper” train experience would be a nightmare, but it was ok. We even had a guy touting his hotel to us, and offering a free minibus service there. The hotel was in the Bible (lonely planet) so we thought it sounded ok. He wanted a name, so he could have it written on a board when we got to Hue & Jo thoughtfully said that her name was “Maggie Thatcher”. When our train rolled into Hue and we got out to the exit, there were hoards of taxi drivers trying to get our attention & a policeman was beating them back with a truncheon. Sure enough, in the crowd was a sign saying “Maggie Thatcher”. Our hotel still hasn’t asked for any id from us, so if we were to leave without paying, I wonder if a certain Iron Lady would be welcome in Hue. Maggie Thatcher and I visit the Kinh Thanh moated citadel and its forbidden purple city, which was almost entirely destroyed during the Tet Offensive in the war. The following day we take a boat trip down the perfume river to see some of the Royal Tombs; 1. Thein Mu Pagoda, a famous 21 metre octagonal tower, 2. Take a scary motorbike ride down a dirt path to the Tomb of tu Duc, an amazing complex which was never even used as a tomb, 3. Tomb of Minh Mang – up and own lots of steps in this serene complex. Pop fact: I read about a lady who had hired a driver for the day. She said to him “Ok, I’m going for lunch now, so you can take a break now, but be back at 1pm to take me to the Tomb of Tu Duc.” He looks back at her, not understanding, so she clarifies: ‘1pm. Tu Duc”. She goes to have lunch, then at 1pm, her driver comes back, presenting her with 2 live ducks. We continue on minibus to Hoi An, up the scary Hai Van pass, where the sheer cliffs don’t deter the drivers from continuing to overtake around blind corners. Driving here can really be a hair raising experience. We are sucked into staying in lovely Hoi An for several days. It is a clothes shopping mecca – in this tiny town of 65000 people, there are over 200 tailors who can nock you up a suit within a few hours for 20 – 30 dollars. Jo goes shopping mad, and I get in the mood as well, getting a couple of nice tailored suits (and the rest). The tailors all have Next catalogues for you to browse thru and look for styles that you like the look of. The town in some ways is like some bizarre tailored next shop- the catalogues themselves are traded for almost $100! When we leave we post back a massive box of clothes back (18 kilos) – the postage cost is a lot, but worth it. We do some half hearted ‘tourism’ in Hoi An, in between shopping bouts – we check out the famous Japanese Covered Bridge, Quan Cong’s temple and pretty Phuc Kien Fujian assembly hall. We also visit the ruined temples of Myson, but I think “ruins fatigue” has already begun to set in. It is “women’s day” in Vietnam on this day, so lots of hatted women are wandering about, looking at the ruins, while the men do all the work. Getting to Nha Trang involves a long 14 hour bus journey. The city itself isn’t much – a bit like a dirty version of Surfers Paradise. It’s dirty, with lots of beggars and touts on the beach. We see on guy with no arms or legs hobbling along the beach begging. One place that we ate at had rats running freely around the place. Jo comments to me that maybe that’s why my pizza had such an interesting flavour. Lovely. The colder climate in the mountainous Dalat makes a pleasant change. We hired an old Russian army jeep and driver for the day and take in a packed day tour of the town, taking in the Truc Lam meditation Centre, Prenn Waterfalls (with infamous “Dalat Cowboys” – Vietnamese dressed up as cowboys, who give tourists rides on their horses), Linh Phoc Pagoda (with a giant dragon made out of beer bottles, a funny monk in a woolly hat that followed us, and a Buddha statue with a crayzy neon halo), Dalat Flower Garden, the peculiarly kitch “Valley of Love” , the countercultural “Cray Guest House” with rooms in very bizarre shapes”, and Emperor Bao Dai’s summer palace. The very sad thing about Dalt, however, is that almost all of these attractions had their own mini- zoos with a motley collection of wild animals in pathetically small bare cages. Particularly sad was a Malayan sun bear that we saw. He had a bare concrete enclosure, with metal bars reaching up to the roof. He did the most amazing thing, climbing up the walls, across the wire mesh roof, and then sliding down the pole in the middle, fireman style. Jo was particularly taken with him, and as the poor thing reached out to us in desperation through the bars, Jo stroked its paw. We continued our bus trek on to Ho Chi Minh City, the centre of which is still called Saigon by most. I didn’t know what to expect here, hearing stories of a really hectic city, with pickpockets etc – but at no time did I feel unsafe. Though in some parts of the city, the amount of motorcycle traffic is to be seen to be believed. There are 3 million bikes, I believe, with road accidents claiming many lives a week. We take a cyclo to the War Remnants Museum (formerly American & Chinese war crimes museum), which is not for the faint hearted. I was surprised by the (relative) lack of anti-American bias considering. More than anything the museum showed the suffering that can result from war. However, some of the specifics of the war; the My Lai Massacre, the use of Agent orange biological weapons, daisy cutter bombs etc was just terrible. The worst thing was probably seeing the mutated babies that were in jars. Jo describes it: This has to be the most shocking museum I have ever visited, even worse than the concentration camp in Germany. There was the usual display of tanks and bombs. But then there were pictures of US soldiers dragging people along behind their tanks til their death; carrying out Chinese water torture; dropping people out of helicopters after they'd refused to cooperate. Then there were pictures showing the devastating affects of Agent Orange. (The Americans sprayed 70 million tonnes on Vietnam and this defoliant contains a highly carcinogenic and mutagenic chemical which is still found in the food chain today). Picture after picture of mutilated children and adults. Some just looked like aliens. Two jars containing deformed babies, and pictures of maternity wards with shelves full of jars of deformed babies. What wasn’t bombed or poisoned was bulldozed - cemeteries, villages, rice paddies. There were also pictures of the My Lai Massacre. Here, the US decided to 'teach the villagers a lesson' for cooperating with the Viet Cong (communist forces). There were severe consequences for not doing so. In one day, 3 companies of American infantry massacred 500 fleeing and unarmed civilians. They met no resistance at any time. The only American injured, shot himself in the foot to get let off. Villagers were herded into a ditch and mowed down by machine guns. Women were gang raped and pregnant women, newborn babies and old people were not spared. There were also pictures illustrating how the war had sent some people over the edge: GIs smiling to have their photo taken while holding dead heads in their hands; another GI looking satisfied carrying the tattered remains of a head and shoulders in one hand. It showed the four US students that got shot while protesting against the war in the 1960s. And also 4 people (3 US, 1 Japanese) who burnt themselves to death in front of the US embassy. The Reunification palace is famous as the place where NVA tanks crashed through the gates in 1975, before raining their flag, showing finally that Saigon had fallen. The brilliantly preserved building is, with bomb shelters etc is fascinating. Our guide wears an Ao Dai, which is the national Vietnamese dress for women, and are very popular amongst school students & non-agricultural workers & they really are the most graceful piece of clothing. We also visit the hectic Chinese “cholon” district of the city to see the Thien Hau Pagoda, which was very active and we almost chocked on the massive amounts of incense being burnt. We have a day trip to the Cu Chi tunnels, a quite unique structure: - a 250km network of underground tunnels built in the hard earth of the jungle, from where the VC fought an intense guerrilla campaign – and was the scene of some of the most intense fighting/bombing/poisoning in the war, as the strategic position was just a little outside Saigon. It was amazing, we were walking through the forest and suddenly this guy would pull up a tiny trap door in the floor and jump down it and expect us to follow!! The tunnels had been made bigger for foreigners, but I was still bent over double and then squatting down shuffling along on my feet in some parts. It was really hot and dark and there were bats down there too! The tunnels were amazing, what looked like termite mounds above the ground disguised air holes for breathing. They were three storeys deep in some places and even had a hospital and a weapons factory. As a claustrophobic, I was a little anxious about venturing down the underground tunnels, but I was able to go through some. I backed out of going through one tunnel that stretches for 120 metres, and you have to crawl through, but managed the rest. On the same day, we visit the Cao Dai Holy See, the centre of a peculiar religion with 3 million Vietnamese followers. It is based on incorporating most of the main religions, with its own “crossing over” style twist, where séances are regularly held, the result of which means that French Writer is one of their main figureheads. Caodaism is a new religion which combines Buddhism, Confucianism, Taoism, native Vietnamese spiritualism, Christianity and Islam! We see the midday service, with lots of bowing and chanting. The next day we are woken early to the big band sound of a funeral procession outside our hotel, but we needed an early start for our 3 day trip to the Mekong Delta anyway. Our tour starts with a tour of some of the islands in the Mekong River – we stop at Mekong River where we see coconut toffees being made, taste local fruits and hear traditional song. We take a rowing boat thru the jungle, alongside lots of mudskippers. Fortunately seeing no snakes, but we do see a dead dog floating buy us at one stage. We see a bee keeping village and have honey tea. Our boat arrives at Can Tho as the sun sets, passing the most amazing scenery, with lots of local villagers waving at us, with kids everywhere we looked, doing backflips to impress us and having their evening baths in the river with their clothes on. The following morning we cruise to Cai Rang floating market, the biggest in the lower river. They sell their produce on large boats, with a bamboo pole with the fruit dangling down signalling what they are selling. Vendors in smaller boats try and sell us drinks, one of which is a bootleg version of Redbull called “Cow Butt”. I kid not. We see rice noodles being made and stop to climb a monkey bridge (a precarious bamboo bridge made by locals to cross the river – these are dying out as they are being replaced by concrete bridges). We go for a walk to see the Thot Not Sork Sanctuary, and are followed by lots of local children, that grab our hands, and make jewellery out of leaves, in the hope that we will buy them a coke. We finish the day at Chau Doc and climb Sam Mountain in time to see the sunset across the landscape of the Cavern Pagoda, over the paddy fields to the Cambodian border. After another early start we see a floating village and fish farm and Cham village, where encounter some more kiddies begging “one pen! One pen! We leave the tour and begin our boat journey to Cambodia. We get stamped out of Vietnam, and continue on to the Cambodian border post, where we get stamped in (13 stamps). |