Viet Nam from Saigon to Hanoi

First night in Sai Gon

Well, we finally left Thailand and arrived in Saigon in Vietnam. I managed to get Lynne to travel light and I have to say I was very impressed that we were both able to travel with just a backpack each, plus of course the camera and the laptop.

A long and winding road

We arrived in Saigon and were met at the airport and taken to our hotel. We had met a girl on the flight from Siam Reap to Bangkok who gave us a recommendation and that was where we had booked in.

Our room at Bi Saigon was far above the madding crowd….five floors above it to be exact and no elevator! It’s a fairly small room with two single beds (Boo!) but has great A/C and a decent shower. (But really short – built for Asians not Westerners – Lynne)

We spent the night in the bar looking at tours and decided to book a day tour of Saigon the following day and then to take three day two night trip to the Mekong Delta.

So it was of to bed as we had to get up fairly early and our last night in Thailand had been another late one (another Thailand story). We cranked up the A/C which worked really well, in fact we woke up freezing at 3:30am!

Ho Chi Minh City – or as the local calls it – Sai Gon

After breakfast, which was quite good with really good coffee, we headed over to Sinh Café.

What a zoo!! There had to be at least 250 people all waiting to get on any one of a dozen buses all too different locations. One guy had a radio microphone and was telling people where each bus was going as it pulled up. We had been told to get there at 8:15, our bus didn’t leave until 9:00am.

So of we went, our guide spoke OK English, he actually had a good vocabulary but only got the pronunciation right about 30% of the time which made trying to understand him a little difficult. Lynne, who normally has such a good ear for this sort of thing barely got one word in ten!

I’ll let Lynne describe the places we saw.

Okay, so first we went to the Giac Lam Pagoda, then the Binh Tay Market, Thien Hau temple, then in the afternoon, we visited the War Remnants Museum, Reunification Hall, Notre Dame and General Post Office. Here is my version of this day. We visited two pagodas, neither of which was particularly impressive by comparison to others we have seen. We took this tour to be able to quickly get a snapshot of what HCMC is all about, but unfortunately, I don’t think this tour helped.

Then we were off to the Binh Tay Market, where we bought my niece Charlotte (one year old) a beautiful Vietnamese traditional outfit. This market reminded us of the underground market in Delhi. Oh my goodness, Asia is beginning to look the same! Our final stop was at a factory – yep, we were still in Asia. We almost purchased an eggshell painting, but the shipping would have been exhorbitant, so we ended up not getting it. Then we were dropped back at the Sinh Café for lunch and popped into a great place called Allez Boo for lunch (and a glass of wine of course). Then back to the hotel to plug in the camera and get some air conditioning! It is REALLY hot here. After lunch we rejoined the bus for a trip to the War Memorial. Neither John nor I were that into the whole Vietnam War historical bit, so we just checked out the tanks and guns but not the actual exhibits.

Just a quick point here, the Vietnam War was not my war and I don’t profess to know too much about it, however, I found the whole exhibit to be extremely biased; all about American war crimes. I know that history is written by the victors, but this was way over the top. Very reminiscent of the old Soviet Union, the matter how outrageous the claim, just keep up the rhetoric and sooner or later people will begin to believe. No one was blameless in that war. The tiger cages were pretty interesting, and I took a few pictures. Then off to the Reunification Palace, which John and I both gave a miss and instead, sat in the park and chilled for 45 minutes. We met a ten year old girl who sold us a Vietnamese phrase book and helped us with our pronunciation. John was tricked into having a shoeshine for his sandals!

After this we headed over to the Notre Dame Cathedral which is a small copy of the original in Paris. But it was right next to the old Post Office (great building) so we ran over and posted Charlottes outfit. Then back to the tour offices…..well not quite. John and I decided to get off a little early and walk back. Once back at our hotel, we managed to log on and then book our next stop at Mui Ne. Off to bed now – see you tomorrow….

Mekong Delta

Another early start, when will we learn? This time up at 6am, a quick breakfast of banana pancakes (Lynne’s bit: which were delicious by the way) with tea and coffee. We had arranged to leave one of our backpacks and some laundry at the Bi Saigon hotel so we were traveling really light now!

Then it was back to the zoo of Sinh Café. We had some idea of what to expect now and were more prepared, I also think they were a little less busy as it was Monday. Maybe….

Anyway, we now had a plan. Lynne would get on first and secure the seats while I took care of the luggage. In Asia with no personal space and everyone just pushing and shoving to get to the front or on first, we needed this so that we were stuck at the back of the bus or over the wheel well.

Luggage stowed and decent seats and we were of…on yet another bus trip.

Our guide informed us as we started out that this was Reunification Day. The official end of the war between the North and the South was at 11:30 on April 30^th, 1975. For me it did kind of bring up images of choppers lifting off the roof of the US Embassy.

Our first visit was to the Cai Be floating market. We boarded long motorized boats; they had inboard engines very unlike the long tailed boats we had been in previously.  Apparently there used to be crocodiles in the Mekong River, so the fisherman painted eyes on the front of all the boats to frighten them away.  I guess it worked - we didn't see one at all!

The market was very different from the one we had visited in Bangkok. This was not aimed at tourists but at the people who live on the river with the market selling fresh fruit and vegetables. (Lynne’s bit: what John has forgotten is that on each boat on the Mekong River, there was a long pole, and hanging on that pole was the item that was sold on the boat. For example, if you sold watermelon, then you would hang half a watermelon from the top of the pole, so that everyone on the river could see that you were the watermelon seller – clever huh?)

We really did not stop at any of the boats and headed onto a coconut farm. Here, they produced coconut candy and the rice paper in which to wrap it. We tried some and it was very good. They also had ginger which I love. We ended up buying coconut candy, ginger and some rice paper pancakes (Lynne’s bit: little did we know at the time, but these rice pancakes were to sustain us through many more long bus trips).

Then it was time for lunch which was very good. (Lynne’s bit: we also were subjected to local music – and I say “subjected” because it reminded me very much of Gagaku in Japan, not quite paint drying, but just as painful). We sat and spoke with a gentleman from Germany called Tomas. He had made the trip we had planned, only in reverse going from Hanoi to Saigon. He gave us some good tips and we may now try to fly from Hue to Hanoi to save some time. (Lynne’s bit: Vietnamese countryside is beginning to look “same same” [great Thai saying] – much like a lot of Asia that we have seen. Maybe if this was the first Asian country we had visited we wouldn’t be quite so jaded. So, at this point, if it’s not going to be beaches, then I’m happy to fly, plus it will save us 15 hours on – you guessed it – another bus).

Back onto the boats which took us back to the bus. Our guide then said we had 4 hours to our hotel. We were sure we had misheard him and just settled in with our books.

Wrong!

It did take us four hours to get to the hotel about two of them over some pretty awful roads. The hotel turned out to be a Sinh Café Hotel (Lynne’s bit: for this read “backpacker’s hotel”). It was OK. Clean and had a decent shower. For this sort of trip that’s all we need. The pampering will come later! (Lynne’s bit: when?)

We were directed to a restaurant called Bay Bong (pronounced Bi Bon). We made our way through a market with constant directions from a young guy who desperately wanted us to ride his cyclo (cycle rickshaw), and found the place fairly easily. The place was packed with Vietnamese people which boded well. Bad restaurants are never full!

They put up a table, and I do mean they put up a table for us on the pavement and provided stools. (Lynne’s bit: ambience abounds!)

The menu looked pretty good and they had wine both red and white! I ordered fried rice with seafood; Lynne had steamed rice with chicken. We ordered a bottle of red wine and some spring roll starters.

The wine was a local wine from Da Lat and was okay, nice and light. The fried rice with seafood was excellent and we ordered another plateful straight away. The chicken was also very tasty. The spring rolls were a no show, but that was okay. The rest was really good. The whole lot was $12. Pretty good value we thought.

We strolled back taking a different route home. We found a stall in the market selling the same wine and bought another bottle. We paid 70,000 Vietnamese Dong (VDN) for it in the restaurant, here it was 35,000 VDN. So we had paid a little over $4.50 at the restaurant and here is was about $2.10. Works for our budget.

The next trick was to find a corkscrew. With only carry on luggage we could not bring one with us. We found a general store and through some sign language explained what we wanted. The man behind the counter and the woman (his wife?) out front dismissed us pretty much straight away, however there was a young lad who kept working on it and came out with a two inch screw. I managed to screw this into the cork and then he appeared with a pair of pliers. It worked like a treat!

We then found an internet café where we checked up on the e-mail. We did send a quick Happy Birthday to Amanda and a note to the kids telling them that we may be out of touch for a while. No wireless and no phone service.

Back to the hotel for a glass of wine and 20 minutes with the books before bed. Another early day tomorrow.

Up again at the crack of double dawn! After breakfast, (John says: don’t let this term fool you, I had a cup of coffee and three small chipolata sausages, 2in long ¼ in wide, just them, on a small plate! Breakfast it wasn’t!) John assures me that we walked down to the dock (I must have been sleepwalking) and then we got on a rowing boat. I do remember that. This was a canoe (John says: like a gondola without all the fancy bits. Ours was basic wood looking a bit green) with a woman at the back (who was older than God) rowing standing up with two very long oars. (John says: I wanted to try rowing but never did get the chance) We took several (probably about a dozen) of these boats and their oarsmen down the river. In between houses we traveled, watching the routine events of the day begin. Kids bathing in the river, mothers washing clothes and dishes in the river, fathers and sons casting nets out to catch fish right outside their doors. Breakfast was also being cooked on the boats which were traveling from boat to boat and being sold (or shared).

The river is brown, muddy actually. There was all kinds of flotsam and jetsam floating downstream. One of the most common sights is what we mistook for lotus, but is the water hyacinth. It is everywhere. We managed to take a shot of the flower, but it was a little far away.

Our first stop on the river was on a floating fish farm. They had two types of fish they were breeding, catfish and carp. The mechanics of the farm were pretty clever, and our guide took great delight in telling us that this was a private venture and not government run. Then off to a Moslem village and a Cham tribe. This particular tribe gets its name from the fruit Cham that everyone eats. It will stain your teeth if you eat too much. While we were there, we saw them weaving and some of the products that they make, but the most amazing thing to me was a pillar on one of the houses (all of which are on stilts by the way). This pillar showed the flood line each year. In 2000 the flood line was eight feet high. There were a lot of people killed that year due to flooding. Our guide told us that there are hundreds of children killed each year by the river. The parents go out to fish, or farm every morning and the older children are left to tend to the younger ones. The river is very fast flowing, and when it rains, is faster still. Unfortunately, the small children sometimes fall in, and the older ones may not be watching or unable to save them. It is very sad. Apparently, the children of the river are taught to swim at the age of 3, but they don’t always make it that far.

Then back on the bus for a visit to Lady Chua Xu temple and Tay An Pagoda. To be honest, I had to copy the names of these two things from the brochure because the legends behind them were so much more interesting than the actual places themselves. The Lady Chua story is about a general who invaded this area of Vietnam in the mid-1800s and went to the top of Mount Sam and saw this statue of a lady. He liked it so much he ordered 100 of his strongest men to go up to the mountain and bring it down to the village so he could be closer to it. So the men set off in earnest to bring the statue to the general. They tried and they tried, but they could not budge it. Then one night the general’s wife had a dream. In this dream she was told how to move the statue. The next day, she told her husband that he should find 9 virgins and send them up the mountain and they will bring the statue down. What rot, the general cried. But, he sent the women anyway, and what do you know – they managed without too much effort to move the statue. (Women’s liberation movement was alive and kicking even back then!) As they began to bring the statue down the mountain, it began to get heavier and heavier, until, in the end, they could not longer move it. This, they felt, was a sign from the Gods that the statue should remain there, which it did, from that day onwards. Sounds magnificent doesn’t it? Well the statue itself (not that we could get close because, as we mentioned it was a holiday and the whole of Vietnam had also decided to come and worship the statue that day too), is not what we expected. The first thing you notice is the neon (yes, neon) halo and flashing lights around her head! She also has this huge structure built around her now, which is incredibly ornate and contains other statues and loads and loads of tables which is where you put your offerings of food and incense. The place is very very smoky with all the incense burning. No pictures allowed. (John says: again after all the places we had seen in China, this did not hold our attention for long)

Then across the street to a pagoda which was built by the same guy (I think). He wanted to cover all his bases, so there are Buddha, gods, goddesses of every possible religion in this building. Again with the incense!

Whew, it was almost a relief to get back on the bus (just kidding). Then off to a crocodile farm – yep, a crocodile farm in Vietnam. Where do you think the handbags come from? John and I skipped the actual tour and instead had a cup of coffee in the café on the street in front. (John says: I really cannot say enough about the coffee here. They serve it with the ground up beans in a small round container that sits on a saucer with holes in it. This in turn sits on top of the glass, no coffee mugs here. The whole thing has a small lid. They pour boiling water into the small container and it filters through the beans and drips into the glass. It does take a few minutes for it to filter through. You then top up the glass with more boiling water. Very good though I fear not fast enough for it to catch on in the states) Then we headed to Chan Tho for a free afternoon – yippee.

Our hotel was yet another backpacker hotel, but this time with rowdy neighbors! We did manage to find a great place for late lunch/early dinner though. It was a five story building and at the top was a terrific view over the promenade. To be honest, it looked very western, with manicured grass and red tiled buildings. We sat for a couple of hours just watching the world get on and off boats of all kinds, ferries, speedboats, rowing boats, everything pretty much that floats. Then back to the hotel – we get to sleep a little later tomorrow, up and out by 7:30 instead of 7:00!

Viet, our guide was actually a few minutes late today because he was at a birthday party for his niece last night and we think he was a little hungover. Off to the docks to take a three hour boat trip through the Cai Rang floating market. This is one of the largest floating markets on the river and quite busy. We didn’t get on the river until 8 am and I would venture to say that a lot of business had already been done by then. We headed over to a rice husking mill and learned the various stages of growing and harvesting rice. The machinery they use looked like Dr. Seuss or Willy Wonka could have made it. Then we headed over to the orchard. Hmmm, I should probably let John tell you about this, as while I was out taking photos of the various fruits and flowers he was lounging in a hammock by the river sipping a cold beer. John says: Hammocks seem to be an essential part of the Vietnamese way of life. Even the small restaurants we see along the side of the road have an area with five or ten hammocks slung between trees. It seems that once you have had your meal you are entitled to a short snooze in the shade in a hammock to help digest your meal. As we arrived at the fruit farm, and I have to say I had no idea it was a fruit farm until Lynne told me much later, there were a dozen hammocks slung in the shade. I just had to try one and I can tell you I wasn’t alone! If you have never been in a hammock, I recommend you give it a try, it really is very comfortable and once I was situated all it needed was a cold beer. I mentioned this to Lynne more as a joke than anything serious, after all it was 9:30 in the morning, but hammocks and cold beer just go together! I closed my eyes and just drifted of and a few minutes later there was Lynne with a cold beer! God I love this woman! To those of you who have ever been in a hammock this will all make sense; to those of you who haven’t……what are you waiting for? You’re in for a treat!

Then back on the boat and bus and lunch in Can Tho. We did stop at this market called Vinh Long Market which was huge and had fruit, vegetables, flowers as well as live pigs, snakes, frogs and fish. On a hot day (which they all seem to be) the smells assaulted our delicate European senses, and, you guessed we had to go for a beer and cup of tea. Then, back to Saigon.

John says: This was another 4 hour bus trip. We have decided that everything is four hours away in Viet Nam (for Joan and Ed, it’s about an hour!). Once we arrived back at the Sinh Café office we decided to book our bus ticket to Mui Ne. We actually booked a ticket all the way through to Nha Trang knowing that we would break the journey at Mui Ne.

We went back to Bi Saigon hotel where we had left one of our backpacks and some laundry. They had thoughtfully put us back in the same room; 44…back on the 5^th Floor. How sweet of them….it really was nice of them but those stairs were getting a little old in this heat!

Just before we left Sai Gon Lynne had ordered a Vietnamese dress called an Au Dai. They had measured her and said it would be ready for us today. Now we had been burned by two tailors in Thailand and were a little wary but they had promised us it would be ready and in fact we gave them an extra day as we would be in the Mekong Delta. True to their word it was ready and what’s more as soon as Lynne out it on they said “Oh, we’ll have to adjust that a little here and here” with no prompting. We said we would be leaving early tomorrow, no problem they said, we’ll have it ready in two hours and so it was and it looks fabulous.

We decided to just stay put and have dinner here. I had a hot pot of Duck which was excellent! Lynne had chicken and fried rice. The food here has been really good.  Off to Mui Ne tomorrow.