Vietnam

A few thoughts on Vietnam

Firstly, it took us quite a while to get there. Good old frequent flyer points meant Melbourne, Adelaide, Darwin, Ho Chi Minh.... and bad weather plus inexplicable delays meant Melbourne, lots of hours sitting in Adelaide, quick run through the back alleys of Darwin airport, 5 hours in a hotel in Singapore and arrival 9AM the next day to Ho Chi Minh! In the end Mum and Dad, who flew in from Ireland beat us there, but at least we all arrived safely, with our luggage. Oh, except Mum. haha.

Our hotel was the grand old Hotel Continental, and it was easy to imagine Thomas Fowler sitting back sipping his coffee or g+t, although no bombs, while we were there anyway.

The first thing that I imagine everyone notices about Vietnam is the traffic. It is mental. There are millions of motorbikes, which seem to abide by their own unwritten road rules. Crossing the roads was an exercise in faith, although I did discover that the key to crossing was to pretend you weren't watching the oncoming traffic and just walk (while utilising your peripheral vision just in case). If the bikes knew you saw them they would expect you to stop for them, otherwise they would have to go around you. It's quite an art form. After awhile I realised that they weren't actually driving that fast (compared to the country anyway) it was just a never ending stream of bikes on every single road you contemplated crossing.

Meekong delta:

Steamy, fruity, coconut candy, snake wine, actual snakes, boats, hats, good fooooood, friendly people.

This poor kid: he tried to put the snake on us, and we're all backing away going, "no... thank you anyway!" It's not personal, we're Australian. Don't like snakes.

Hanoi

We flew to Hanoi, seeing as how it's 30 hours by train or something silly like that, and had our first attempted scam pulled on us. Upon getting a taxi from the airport, the driver agrees to take us to Hotel Serenity, which we had booked, pulls up somewhere random and a man comes to the door of the taxi, big smile in place: "Welcome to Hotel Serenity! Actually hotel serenity is closed/out of electricity/ fully booked but come to the -insert hotel of choice- instead" At which point you're supposed to get out and say, oh what a nice man, lets go to his hotel and see what methods he's got to part us with our money. But luckily we had read about this scam in the lonely planet and just forcefully told the driver to take us to hotel serenity. now. Which turned out to be quite lovely in the end. Again, very nice people who went out of their way to help us enjoy our stay.

If I had thought Saigon was busy, the old quarter of Hanoi was something else entirely. Very narrow streets, people communally eating on the footpath, shops bursting at the seams with stuff, markets, cyclos, motorbikes, torrential rain... not easy to capture with a camera.

The next couple of days were spent at Halong Bay, one of the natural wonders of the world up there with the Great Barrier Reef. I have to say, I was more impressed with the mountains of Sapa in terms of natural beauty, but Halong had it's own charms. The most amazing thing was the floating villages... and the thought that there are children out there who have never stepped on dry land.

Also very impressive was the food that our hosts managed to produce on a junk (boat). This masterpiece involves prawns, carrots and potato.

Ho Chi Minh's mausoleum in Hanoi deserves a mention, if only to marvel at the thousands of people who come every day to file past an embalmed corpse in a glass sarcophagus who has been there since 1975. Uncle Ho is credited with saving Vietnam from Colonialism, and many Vietnamese have an almost god-like respect for him. Apparently he said this: "All my life, I have served the Homeland, the revolution and the people with all my heart and strength. If I should now depart from this world, I would have nothing to regret, except not being able to serve longer and more. When I am gone, a grand funeral should be avoided in order not to waste the people's time and money." (http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/hochi.htm) Now I don't know what his funeral was like, but the mausoleum erected in his honour would surely make him turn in his grave. Or sarcophagus.

The three days two night spent in the mountain town of Sapa were probably my favourite of the whole trip. It is hard to do justice to the views in photos, but I took plenty anyway :) There were many cool things about Sapa... The minority group the black H'mong who use indigo to dye their traditional clothes, dogs that looked like dingos, rice paddies, VERY steep mountains and Buffalo (one that tried to eat Dad's pants, and one that left a massive hole full of poo for Jemma to stand in - funniest thing I'd seen in a awhile).
An unfortunate result of the Vietnamese penchant to eat anything that moves: The train to and from Sapa was an overnight trip, and remarkably way more exciting on the way than the way home. But that was nothing compared to the buses, as I will explain shortly.

Buses. After our last day in Hanoi, we split, with Mum and Dad flying to Hoi An, and Jemma and I getting the overnight bus to Hue. Firstly, the guy who was supposed to pick us up in a minibus to take us to the real deal was about 2 hours late, which meant we were the last people on. The buses have two aisles, and bunks the length of the bus, on a slight angle so that the person behind can fit their legs under your head. They were not wide. They had a very small rounded handle at about hip height to stop you falling out. The roof was about 60cm from our heads... in Jemma's case the air conditioning unit was about 60 cm from her face. There were local people sleeping on the floor. There was a very loud soundtrack to some Vietnamese movie involving dolphins and martial arts blaring loudly, and whenever the driver hit his horn, the poor girl next to me nearly levitated. And lets not mention the toilet. 12 or something hours later we arrived in Hue! It was an experience, and the second overnight bus we did was waaaaay better. I think we actually slept then.
Hue

Really hot. No beach.... lots of ancient history though, with the forbidden city and such. Quite a popular destination for Vietnamese tourists. First Vietnamese hostel experience... run by an Australian, surprise surprise. But it was good, we met some interesting people from various parts of the world.

Hoi An is famous for tailor made clothes, so we just had to do the done thing and get some too! It is quite a beautiful little city on a river, feels very French... what with all the bicycles around and no cars along the riverside.

This little old lady was selling whistles, she just sat quietly on the side of the road and blew her whistles surreptitiously whenever a tourist walked past. I was happy to buy a pig whistle from her, and she was happy to let me take her photo. All of the elderly people in Vietnam are industrious. Sometimes you feel like they shouldn't be doing the hard labour, but some of them don't seem to mind peddling their wares; they get to sit around and watch the world go by from their little spot on the road.

From Hoi An we took a day trip to My Son (pronounced me sun) ruins. They are of a similar vintage to Angkor Wat in Cambodia, but discovered a lot earlier, and therefore not as well preserved. But interesting non the less. It is a bit hard to get your head around the age involved...well, for me anyway. Occupied from the 4th to the 13th century. ie 400BC to 1300AD (History is not my strong point. I hope I've got that right)
After picking up our clothes and hanging out at the beach a bit, off we headed to our real rest stop, Nha Trang. The party/beach capital. Very popular with locals and internationals alike, Nha Trang is kind of like the Gold Coast... without the theme parks. Highlights: a mud bath with locals who thought we were hilarious (sorry, no photos), getting a pedicure, watching Jemma having her hair cut and changing my mind, having a local rave about Top Gear Vietnam and insisting on forwarding through the episode to show me where he appeared in the background, a snorkeling trip with a floating bar and very cheap cocktails on the beach! Our final day in Saigon involved last minute shopping and getting utterly utterly drenched as a result of a typhoon halfway up Vietnam. I have never seen so much rain in all my life. The locals knew better than us, they all just packed up shop and watched it come down.

And there ends a thoroughly relaxing, eye opening and beautiful three weeks in Vietnam! (Aside from the not-so-cute customs dogs at the airport... but that's another story)