First stop is Ho Chi Minh City. Interestingly, the locals I spoke to still refer to it as Saigon so I quickly follow suit. There's an odd sequence of events before we get to customs at the airport where a number of visitors queue up to hand over passports and visa paperwork but we're given nothing in receipt. I sit there looking as nervous as everyone else for about twenty minutes until something which sounds a little bit like my name gets yapped out and I jump up and retrieve my little red book of dreams with one less blank page. I'm in.
The taxi driver takes me to a main road in District One where he stops, grunts and gestures towards a dodgy looking side alley. I'm not so sure about this but I get out anyway and wander around until I see a friendly looking face. Another backpacker has the same dilemma so we tackle this together. Sure enough, this is the right place. A narrow street lined on both sides with identikit budget hotels looking like they're about to cave in on each other. Matey finds the one he's looking for but they don't have space for me and send me over the road to The Red Sun Hotel who only have some big family room available so they do me a deal and it's mine for the night. I'll get to move to a smaller room later on.
Time to relax, get online and update my status. Oi! Hang on a minute, no Facebook? That can't be right, can it? Sure enough, a quick browse online reveals the awful truth. The ruling powers in Vietnam say, "Facebook is bad, m'kay?". Now, I like to think I know a thing or two about technology given that it's had a virtual monopoly on the spare time since I was about six years old. Two hours later I crack it, jump straight on FB and let rip with the kind of vitriol I save for truly offensive people. The government’s efforts to block FB seem to me to be massively counterproductive. If you want to lock up your people (metaphorically speaking, of course) then you had better make a really good job of it or you serve only to enrage their curiousity, and for what purpose? Right now, people around the world are fighting and dying for the right to free speech. Hungry people don't stay hungry for long.
So, why did the chicken cross the road in Saigon at rush hour? Well, in this case I'm feeling a bit peckish (groan!) and KFC's on the other side. I'm the chicken because it takes me a full twenty minutes to get across the six-lane hyperdrive maelstrom of mostly scooter headlights. I think road-crossing might be Saigon's contribution to the world of extreme sports. It's absolute mayhem out there and when I finally make it across I can't help but smile a bit. Over the next few days it gets easier but my advice, when it gets too crazy out there, wait for a local dude, stand on the safe side of him as he crosses then quickly scoot round the back of him when you're half way across so he'll always get hit first. Simple. The fact is, this rarely ever happens because, unlikely as it seems, the pedestrian is king of the road here. I'm later told by a local guy that if you hit a pedestrian you're in big trouble and that's usually enough to keep everyone safe. Back at the hotel I try to make plans for the rest of my stay before kicking back.
The next day, badly printed street map in hand, I decide to go walkabout. I arrive at The War Remnants Museum to discover it's only open in the morning and re-opens later in the afternoon. Again, I wonder where this worldwide tradition of midday laziness came from? Who do I complain to and will they even be awake at this most godly of hours?
I press on in the heat via the Notre Dame Basilica up to the Botanical Gardens and Zoo. The gardens are nothing special but the zoo itself is pretty appalling. It provides all the ammunition an animal rights activist could ever need. All of which I would have known if I had bothered to read up about it beforehand like most tourists do. Spot the lost white guy ... oh yeah, it's me!
I'm real keen on checking out The War Remnants Museum today so I head back there. They've got a bunch of rusty US aircraft, tanks and guns on display outside, a neat reconstruction of the jails dating back to the French occupation and a bunch of translated stories about individuals involved and the atrocities committed. The real heartbreakers are the photos, some of which are way too graphic to ever receive wide publication back home but they're shown here. Two photos in particular will haunt me forever. I think many will share my opinion that we shouldn't always judge the individuals who fight in wars, only the politicians who pull the strings and create monsters out of patriots. One such "monster" donated his entire collection of military medals mounted, framed and inscribed with the words, "I'm sorry, I was wrong." That kinda summed up the experience for me.
The only downside (apart from getting chucked out at 5pm before I get to see it all) is that the museum takes it's own patriotism a little too far for my liking. Why we can't just be given the facts and left to draw our own conclusions is beyond me. Words like "glorious victory", "motherland", "barbaric", "infidels" and "invaders" do nothing but reaffirm any suspicions that this is most definitely not a country supportive of free thinkers. Nonetheless, if you're ever in town you must check this place out. I kill the evening reflecting on my day in a cool sports bar named Phatties watching footy and cricket.
After breakfast, I meet a pair of cousins from London with Vietnamese roots who introduce themselves as Bao and Porky (I guess that was his nickname). They help me out with a few ideas and we arrange to hook up later. I spend the day checking out some local temples and take a walk off the beaten track up through District Three and grab some kind of soup-based lunch. I've no idea what it was. I just went in some random place shielded from the dirty traffic, looked around at what people were eating, saw something edible and gestured towards their table. Sometimes that's all you can do unless you want to survive on Pringles and Coca Cola.
Back in District One, I head through a park a sit down transfixed on these lads expertly kicking around these things which look a bit like badminton shuttlecocks. It's called Jianzi. In doing so I get confronted first by a young lad who wants to speak to me just to practice his English which is kinda sweet if a little bit unusual. Next, I get collared by a older lady who's English appears to need no help whatsoever. Turns out she was an over-the-hill hooker so I guess she's had a lot of practice making small talk with foreigners.
Back at base, I hook up with the Londoners who ask me if I'd like to hit the streets to join them for some "special egg". Shame I've got my "yes" head on today. Long story short, an hour later I'm sat in the darkened street outside a vendor stall on a six-inch chair tucking into a delicious 19 day old fertilised egg - the notorious Balut - check out this link too! Don't ask me why, it just seemed like a good idea at the time. I finished it all, and it wasn't bad but I don't think I'll do it again. A couple of days later I read that it's reported to be an aphrodisiac. That explains, well, EVERYTHING! They certainly like their food a bit "exotic" here. While I'm out tonight I notice that I hardly see any dogs on the street here compared to most places. Perhaps it's the same reason you don't see chickens roaming the streets in Brixton.
The next day I'm booked on a bus tour to the legendary Cu Chi Tunnels used by country dwellers during the years of occupation. Crammed into a tiny minibus not designed for our oversized butts, we get bounced along dodgy roads and dirt tracks (via some huge temple full of praying monks) for about six hours until we arrive feeling all battered and bruised. We get escorted to a bamboo TV room to endure more unnecessary nationalist propaganda. From here we get ushered out for a demonstration of large spiky man-traps used to catch unwanted "visitors" before heading down into the tunnels themselves. They're red hot, claustrophobic, devoid of air and incredibly small. The stretch of tunnels which is open to us has been made fourty percent larger to accommodate us fatties. Pity they couldn't do the same for the minibus. All good fun but I wanted to make the day really worthwhile so I couldn't turn down the opportunity to fire off ten rounds with an AK-47 at the firing range. These guns are renowned for their durability so a passing thought occurred to me. If this gun could talk, I wonder what stories it might have? Along the way today I meet this super-cool Aussie girl, Sarah, who becomes my sidekick and drinking buddy for the next couple of days. It's Oscar weekend, so after a disappointing meal at Allez Boo Bar (a huge menu is almost always a bad sign) we spend the evening drinking at Le Pub and failing miserably at a movie-based pub quiz.
The final chapters of the Vietnam war were played out at Reunification Palace and it's now open to the public. The following day Sarah and I decide to check it out. It architectural marmite, showcasing all that's questionable about 1960's decor but I love it nonetheless. The meeting rooms, stairwells, conference halls and telephones with dials all reek of their time in history but the war rooms in the basement seem to hark back to a another era altogether. I could understand some younger visitors not being too impressed by all this but I was a alive when this place was stormed by tanks during the final days of the war and the aftermath has echoed around our media ever since. I sense a selfish, nostalgic connection with my infancy right now that will stick around for a while.
In the evening, we're thinking food and a decent massage are in order. We find a place that's offering a free wine with their meals. Deal. Hmmm, Argentinian Malbec this ain't. It should have come as no surprise to find the meals weren't much cop either. We lose track of time chin-wagging and don't get our massage until way after 10pm. Still, it was cheap and well worth waiting for. Oi, stop it! What kind of pervert do you take me for?
OK, so what else do I do here in Vietnam? My enquiries lead me to Gap Adventures who run a tour named Roam Vietnam but they're fully booked for the next few days. Much later I speak to someone who did this trip and was sorely disappointed and financially bum-raped for the privilege. These lucky escapes of mine must happen for a reason. So what else? Hanoi and Halong Bay sound like essential additions but they're right at the other end of the country. I picked up on some horror stories about Nha Trang and I'm genuinely not that fussed about sand and sunscreen - I can count the beaches I've visited thus far on one hand. In my eagerness to get moving again I also neglect to check out Hoi An which might have been a mistake. Sarah and I head to the airport together and finally go our separate ways. She's hitting Bangkok and I'm flying northbound direct to Hue, and all for about thirty quid.
Now, my usual trick for locating my bed in a country with few English speaker goes a bit like this. Book a recommended guesthouse using the Hostelworld iPhone app, wait for the email confirmation (which always has the address on) and get my boots on. When I arrive I can jump in a taxi, flash the driver the email and ba-da-bing, Roberta's your Mother's transsexual brother. All fine, unless you don't receive the email before you depart, your destination airport has no WiFi and you've left your brain in a bar in Saigon.
In a fit of desperation I approach a German girl in Hue airport just minding her own business and ask for a recommendation in town. She passes me a pamphlet, assures me I won't go far wrong and I'm outta there. When I get to her place, I blag my way on to their WiFi and, sure enough, the place I'm actually looking for is just around the corner where I land this big-ass double bed in a dorm. Result. Hue Backpackers is looking like the place to be and it's a quarter past beer o'clock already.
I've absolutely no shame in admitting it. Apart for taking a breif stroll around town in completely the wrong direction (and getting really strange looks off the street kids there) I don't leave the hostel for the next two days whilst I catch up on the blog and take care of a few business matters back home. The staff here are probably starting to think I'm a bit of a weirdo ... I must be, hanging round here. Surely no-one wants to eat or drink in a place where the cook's got the mother of all chest infections and is barphing up big lung chunks. Back home, she'd be sent to her bed, but not here. Every thirty seconds, morning, noon and night. "Hhrruughhhagh! Who ordered the Green Curry?" I put my earphones in and try not to let it bother me. About this time, the manager cracks open some bubbly to celebrate being awarded the title of best hostel in Vietnam by Hostelworld or whatever. Sure, it's not a bad place, but with about four competitors nationwide in a relatively untapped market it's a hollow victory.
When I finally surface, I book a trip to the Phong Nha cave and a northbound train ticket to get me out of here and up to Hanoi. Newly armed with an exit strategy I get the kickstart I need. Over breakfast, some guy passes me a walking tour booklet and I venture out, this time in the right direction. Hue's centrepiece is the gigantic Imperial City, a beautiful walled citadel of temples and parkland ring-fenced by a moat and teaming with tourists. Wandering around, melting in the heat, I meet a Canadian guy named Braden and we team up with a young Dutch lad named Tom for the rest of the day to take pictures and wander around the huge Dong Ba Market until the prospect of a cool beer becomes too much to fend off. We throw in our collective towel, retreat to the hostel for the evening and finish off with a few games of pool in the DMZ bar. Nothing too crazy, I've got a 6:30am pickup.
So, straight from the off, I'm getting bad vibes about this Phong Nha caves trip. I get picked up with a bunch of, well, I've actually no idea what nationality they were. Suffice to say I'm the only English speaker on the bus. The tour guide's grasp of English is enough to work out which football team I support and he beckons me by barking it at me for the rest of the day and smiling politely. "Hey, Liverpool!" Once again, my trusty iPod comes to the rescue.
The bus journey is a never-ending discomfort. After stopping off at some vile plasticky Christian monument adorned with fairytale mushrooms and a tasteless lunch at a roadside shithole crawling with kids trying to flog us tat in the rain, we finally arrive ... almost. We're bundled onto a long-boat with tiny chairs and a leaky roof before slowly chugging down-river for another thirty minutes to a gaping hole in the side of a vertical rock face. I'm not gonna deny, it's really beautiful in here and my camera does not do it justice at all (google is your friend) but had I known before what I know now, I simply would not have gone. To annoy me even more the road we just travelled here on runs north-south alongside the exact same railway I'll now be taking to Hanoi. Major fail, lesson learnt, waste of time, early night, lots of sleep.
Once again, I'm virtually the only foreigner on my first ever night-train, so I occupy my time with a couple of movies and miraculously manage to get some sleep. In my four-berth sleeper cabin I'm supposedly travelling in style but it's pretty grim. I'll think twice about complaining about the hygiene on trains back home now. The train station in Hanoi gives me a taste of what's to come. The taxi drivers want your cash so bad here they're literally blocking the doors so you can't get out and then follow you around hassling you. I was ready to knock out this one dude who started forcibly twisting me around to talk to him. Not pleasant when you've just been woken up at 5am, it's still dark, you're in a strange place and you've got twenty kilos hanging off your shoulders.
All this constant pestering was starting to get on my tits so it was around this point I began playing little games with anyone trying to sell me stuff I didn't need, just for my own amusement:
"You want tuk tuk?"
"No thanks, I'm walking."
"Tuk tuk, good price."
"I said no, twice now. I don't need anything, thank you"
"Nice comfortable seat for you"
"No. THREE! You really are shit at this game"
"Tell me how much you pay me then?"
"No. FOUR! Are you going for the record? This dude in Saigon with a broken nose almost got to six. Try me. I double-dare you!"
... and so on, you get the picture. I don't want Tuk Tuks. I don't want DVDs. I don't want plastic bracelets. I don't want Lonely Planet guides. I don't want drugs. I don't want prostitutes. In fact the only thing I want from you is a happy ending ... the kind where you shut the fuck up and leave me alone. I am not a morning person.
Once the pandemonium subsides I settle on a fixed price taxi (sure, he's got a meter, he just laughs and refuses to use it because he can make more money being racist), check into the Hanoi Backpackers hostel (the old one, there's two of them) and get a couple of extra hours sleep. From there I take a wander around the lake and get generally better acquainted with the city.
One peculiarity I noticed on the streets of Hanoi (also in Saigon) is the tendency for similar businesses to gather on particular street. It's sort of akin to Tottenham Court Road or Jermyn Street (those being home to electronics and shirtmakers respectively). Apparently local businesses have a long tradition of doing this here ... but seriously, streets full of shops selling only security safes or ladders made from bamboo? I swear, a whole street of shops which seem to sell only one item? WTF! "Come to Bamboo Ladder Street, for all your essential Bamboo Ladder needs! We've got big ones, small ones and even ones in the middle!" I even found a shop that sold only remote controls for DVD players and the like. Maybe one day you'll be pleased such places exist, but until then, ridiculous situation.
Like Saigon, Hanoi has a Le Pub too so I crash in here for a couple of hours before head back to the hostel for a rooftop BBQ. Rumour has it the new hostel is better so I go to check it out. Rumour is right. Obviously it's more modern but it's so much more sociable. I've booked a trip to Halong Bay tomorrow but upon return I'll be switching. It's worth mentioning, the streets round here are unnervingly dark and foreboding at night. Maybe it's safe, but it doesn't always feel like it and I certainly didn't enjoy walking about alone at after 1am.
The Halong Bay trip starts with a uncomfortable five hour minibus ride before we switch from land to water. There's at least thirty of us from the hostel on board today as we slowly drift out onto the bay on our own charming wooden boat with live-in staff who will cook all our meals. The familiar "schuuuck!" sound of beers being opened on the not-so-sunny sun deck of The Jolly Roger is swiftly followed by Rick, the ringmaster, implementing Buffalo - the left hand drinking rule - which will remain in place for as long as we're on the boat. Oh no, I'm shit at this one. I run down to my room and tape together two fingers on my right hand in the vain hope this might preserve my sobriety a little bit longer. This is gonna be a seriously tough night.
The afternoon is spent Kayaking around a couple of the hundreds of islets in the bay which rise sharply out of the water all around us. We park up at the beach-like mouth of a cave and head in to explore before returning to the boat to hit our self destruct buttons.
The chaos begins shortly after dinner when all the tables are put together in the middle and we're instructed by Rick to get three drinks each from the bar and sit down at our new table. We get of to a flyer with the Roxanne drinking game. The rest of the night is spent playing some variation of Ring Of Fire. Highlights include: guys being forced to suck tequila from each others belly buttons, guys instructing girls to remove their tops and then (due to some awful twist of luck with the "God" cards), guys losing their tops and their trousers before the final insult of being made to sit on each others laps. The games ends abruptly when this American guy picks the Kings Cup card and gets to down-in-one a concoction of the dregs of every remaining drink on the table which he swiftly projectile vomits back all over the table. Who would imagine that drunk people would consider disposing their cigarettes in empty beers cans? Whoops! Tables cleared to reveal the dancefloor and we party on until way after 4am. Crazy, stupid, reckless, painful? Yes, but it was night to remember followed by a morning to forget.
Most of the crowd head straight back to Hanoi in the morning but eight or nine of us move on to the perfectly named Castaway Island, a bean-shaped Islet in the bay with towering rock formations surrounding an idyllic beach. There's only one way onto the tiny beach and it requires a boat. Some Irish dude here named Tom is working for the hostel back in Hanoi and spends weeks at a time stuck out here with only the locals who cook our meals and whichever reprobates the hostel throws at him for company. We are all now completely cut off from the world but we've got everything we need. Our beer fridge is powered by a generator and our speedboat is equipped with a stack of wakeboarding kit. Drinking beer I can do but I'm utterly useless at wakeboarding. Maybe I'll have to go back and do this all again. We get to sleep for just one night in low-slung beach huts without walls just yards from the water. OK, so we get a mobile phone signal here which means we find out about all the shit that's going down in Japan whilst you do but the illusion of isolation is nice even if the reality of life is just a button-click away. Incredible couple of days, Halong Bay is the highlight of Vietnam.
It's an equally nasty journey back to Hanoi where I check into the new hostel. Some of us head over to the old hostel for their games night on the roof terrace before moving on to a bar named Hair Of The Dog. I'm pretty tired but nonetheless I power through to the seriously early hours, paying the penalty the next day which has evaporated by the time I surface. Given my fragile state today I'm pleasantly surprised to see a friendly face and spend a relaxed evening watching movies in the company of this wonderful Dutch girl I met a few days before while the others head off to the nearby snake village.
The thought of drinking snakes blood and devouring their still beating hearts didn't exactly float my boat. When my roommate returned having visited said gore-fest he was utterly smashed on rice wine and I knew I called this one right. He struggled to find his top-bunk bed and collapsed in a heap. About an hour later, while I'm casually surfing the net from my bed, I hear a splashing noise and thought someone had spilled a bottle of water. Then someone goes, "What the fuck is that smell?" Amar appeared to have puked his snake filled guts onto the floor from six feet up without even waking up. "Is he alright?" "I don't give a shit right now dude, just open the window or I'm contributing my pizza!" Bloody amateurs!
Vietnam done and dusted. Another day, another airport. Next stop Cambodia.
Choon of the day: Rage Against The Machine - Vietnow
The War Remnants Museam, Saigon
The War Remnants Museam, Saigon
Cao Dai Temple, en-route to Cu Chi Tunnels
Cu Chi Tunnels
Cu Chi Tunnels
"Give us your best dance moves, bitch!"
Reunification Palace, Saigon
War Rooms, Reunification Palace, Saigon
"Miss Brook, can you kindly ask them Americans to go away now. Thanks"
Scooter mayhem, Saigon
I have no idea. Answers on a postcard please.
Imperial City Gates, Hue
Imperial City, Hue
The flag tower, Imperial City, Hue
Imperial City, Hue
Imperial City, Hue
Imperial City, Hue
Hue
"Oi barman, does this arse smell a bit off to you?"
Dong Ba Market, Hue
Phong Nha Cave
Phong Nha Cave
Phong Nha Cave
Hanoi
Hanoi
Hanoi
Ngoc Son Temple, Hanoi
Halong Bay
Halong Bay
"Can I get a Snickers and a Sprite please love. I'll pay you later, OK?"
Halong Bay
The view from my room on The Jolly Roger, Halong Bay
The Ring Of Fire in full swing. Body shots!!!!
Castaway Island, Halong Bay
Castaway Island, Halong Bay
Our beds for the night, Castaway Island, Halong Bay
Castaway Island, Halong Bay
The return trip, Halong Bay
The sun-deck on The Jolly Roger. Party's over ...
