Arrived 14/11/19
Ho Chi Minh City
I took the 8.30 am bus from Phnom Penh and sat at the back where I could stretch my legs out comfortably. We travelled uneventfully across Cambodia to the Vietnam border, where there must have been some sort of a system but it was hard to tell what it was; perhaps whoever slips the official the best ‘tip’ gets seen first. If that was the case, it wasn’t our group. Our courier had taken all our passports and visas away to get checked and stamped while we stood and waited in line with our luggage for an hour. Eventually he returned with the necessary documentation and we were through.
In the waiting area was a large collecting box for agent orange victims; the Vietnam War is still causing suffering even today, 44 years after the US pulled out, and not just here either. At one of our rest stops I chatted with an American from our bus; he was visiting with his wife, the 22nd time that he has been back to the country after serving there as an 18 year old soldier. On his return to the US he was a mess for 20 years, jumping up at sudden sounds, aggressive and taking to drink to hide his fears. He eventually found salvation through religion and now does charity work in Vietnam. He told me that many other veterans are still full of hate for the Vietnamese, and have never properly readjusted to civilian life. 58,000 Americans died in Vietnam; a staggering 150,000 veterans have since committed suicide.
By yet another brilliant piece of planning my hotel was just two minutes walk from the where the bus dropped us off – and I booked the hotel before I even knew where the bus stop was. Amazing! Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon as was) has 24 districts; I had read that most of the sights were to be found in district 1, so that is where I am staying, in a quiet side street lined with little hotels and bars. A few yards away the busy main streets are thronged with traffic, cars, buses and thousands upon thousands of motor bikes, who will not hesitate to use the pavements if the road is jammed. Little businesses compete to sell tours, beers and massages; street vendors try to sell cigarettes, cheap jewellery and fans; people are very friendly and there is a good vibe.
My hotel is interesting. The small lobby doubles as the dining room and kitchen and also houses a laundrette. In my Phnom Penh hotel there were only three rooms on each floor; here there is only one. Each floor consists of one room, stairs and a lift. Many of the buildings here are very narrow; I guess they were built up on the site of a small original dwelling. It’s only £15 a night for my ensuite room with a kitchenette and sofa, including a good breakfast; given its quiet location in the centre it is perfect, except for two things: there is no hot water to the wash basin and no shower screen. For some reason almost no hotel in this part of the world thinks to provide these – not hotels in my price bracket, anyway.
On arrival I was given a photocopied map of the area and the receptionist (boss?) explained where to go to see the sights and eat. He also gave me a brochure with various tours; I was going to book a couple until I realised I could get the same things for half the price at an agency a couple of minutes away. I booked to visit the Cu Chi tunnels and decided if that tour was good I would book a tour to the Mekong delta as well. It was and I did.
On the way to the tunnels we stopped at a workshop where victims of agent orange create some of the most beautiful artwork I have seen anywhere, utilising mother of pearl and eggshells before painting and varnishing to make exquisite boards, vases and bowls. I very much wanted to buy a wonderful large bowl – until I found it would cost $200 to ship it home.
The tunnels themselves are quite extraordinary. Begun in 1948 when the Vietnamese were fighting for independence from France, development continued through the war with America until 1970, by which time there were 250 km of them. Fighters lived in the tunnels, whose entrances, air vents and chimneys were all camouflaged; they emerged at night to fight, hiding during the day. We were able to experience a short stretch of tunnel; although enlarged to accommodate western tourists, it is still so small that you have to bend double in the narrow, airless passageways. American GIs were too big to get in, so when they found an entrance they would send in Thais or Koreans who worked for them. This dubious privilege resulted in many being killed by booby trapped mines. The Americans relentlessly bombed the area and defoliated it with agent orange but never defeated the men hiding below ground, who even tunnelled into the local US base. I did not know who I had most sympathy for: the brave Vietnamese living a terrible life underground or the GIs above ground, many of whom were caught in the awful booby traps laid for them; a variety of these were demonstrated, all involving hidden holes with spikes designed to impale different parts of the body.
My trip the next day to the Mekong delta was far less gruesome. Again, our bus had a stop on the way, this time at a temple. Buddhism here has its own flavour; the temple featured numerous statues of both male and female Buddhas, all riding on some sort of animal, some real and some mythical. Outside were three enormous Buddha statues, one standing, one laying down and my favourite, the squatting and very jolly looking smiling Buddha.
Once at the river we took a boat to an island where we transferred to smaller, 10-seater boats that travelled up a narrow channel whose muddy banks were thickly covered with some kind of palm-like tree. After a good lunch we inspected a pit of crocodiles; our guide was proud to tell us that Vietnamese rivers are free of crocodiles, unlike Cambodia. He also told us that Vietnam has better coconuts, but perhaps he was not an impartial judge. It was a long and quite a packed day; we were also treated to honey tasting and coconut candy making, a plate of fruit while we listened to traditional singers, and a ride in 4-seater boats skilfully paddled in a congested, narrow channel by two locals, one at the bow and one at the stern. Not bad for £7 all inclusive.
I could not leave HCMC without exploring some of the city itself. My first stop was the Ben Thanh market; while not quite as exotic as the bazaar in Istanbul, it was nevertheless a cut above your average market, with packed little stalls crowded together selling all manner of goods, their owners very keen to get you interested. Despite their slightly over-zealous attempts to draw one in, it was enjoyable to look at the items on display, unlike Egyptian markets where one felt constantly harassed.
As I approached my next point of interest it began to rain and I ducked inside just before it bucketed down. Yes, with an unerring instinct I had come to the Saigon Skydeck in HCMC’s highest building, the Bitexco Financial Tower, when the weather was restricting visibility to just a mile or so. I consoled myself with the thought that at least I was inside looking out at the rain rather than outside getting drenched – and the views were still pretty good.
HCMC still has some rather fine buildings from the French colonial days, including the opera house, the post office and the Notre Dame Cathedral.
The Reunification or Independence Palace stands on the site where the French built their governor’s residence before they moved the seat of government to Hanoi. The original was damaged by bombing and pulled down to make way for the new building, designed to incorporate Vietnamese and western architectural motifs. It is quite grand without being particularly beautiful and was used by the South Vietnamese government until the fall of Saigon in 1975.
My final call of the day was the War Museum. This was both shocking and disturbing. In photos, exhibits and matter of fact text the story of the war is recounted here. One of the two most awful sections dealt with the political prison of the repressive South Vietnam government; the frightful conditions in which thousands of prisoners were held and the barbaric tortures they were subjected to were very upsetting. American advisers helped devise all this.
The other awful section dealt with agent orange. There were numerous photos of victims and their terribly deformed children; the genetic defects are carried from generation to generation. The US companies that produced the chemicals have apparently compensated the US personnel who suffered from the effects, but no such payment has been made to the millions of Vietnamese victims.
Other sections were hardly light relief. The US policy was to bomb the north back to the Stone Age and to this end they dropped 14.3 million tons of bombs (nearly three times what was dropped in WW2), destroying all the power plants, 1500 irrigation works, most bridges and sewage systems, 2923 schools and much of the rest of the infrastructure. It is incredible that the Vietcong kept fighting and eventually sent the Americans home. Clearly this history is written by the victors and makes no mention of any repression and atrocities at the hands off the communists. Nevertheless it makes clear what a shameful episode in US history this was. And yet they never seem to learn, causing more destruction and creating enemies in Afghanistan and Iraq.
I had brought an old phone with me from home with the intention of using a local SIM card to get data and setting up a mobile hot spot so I could use the internet from my main phone without losing my UK number, on which I was paying £10 a month to make or receive 60 minutes of calls globally but did not have the exorbitantly priced international data plan. I decided it was time to put this into action so bought a £7 4G SIM card from a kiosk in the street; it promised to give me unlimited data for a month. I put it in my old phone and I got a signal but no data connection. I then googled the phone and found it did not support 4G! Doh! I tried the card in my usual phone and it did not work there either. I went back to the kiosk and after some faffing around tried another card which worked immediately. So now I have data but not my UK number.
The same evening I also managed to goof up the flight booking to my next destination in two days time. I made the reservation, the basic cost of which was £6, with £16 of taxes and surcharges on top, and then tried to check in on-line. I was surprised to find that I could not check in for another 30 days: I had booked for the 18th December instead of 18th November! A flight change and another £12 later and I was back on track.
I planned to get the bus to the airport; the bus station was 5 minutes walk from my hotel and the cost was just 70p. The journey should take 45 minutes with buses every 30 minutes. My host suggested I leave at 9.30 am to catch the 11.40 flight but that seemed a little tight to me; what if there were traffic jams and a long queue at security? I resolved to leave at 8.45 and set the alarm for 7.00 so I would not have to rush. I slept well and woke up without the alarm, checked my watch and found it was already 8.00! I had not heard the alarm (both ears are a little blocked with wax at the moment). I skipped showering and shaving, ran around packing, rushed breakfast, made my way to the bus station and just caught a bus at 9.00 as it was pulling out. Phew. I should be in good time after all. Relaxing, I opened my phone and checked the overnight emails to find that at 2.00 am the airline had informed me that my flight was now delayed until 13.20! After all that rushing around I would now have 3.5 hours at the airport!
That was a little frustrating, but on the plus side I would have plenty of time to catch up on my blog writing, which I had not found time for since arriving in HCMC. I looked for somewhere quiet to sit and drink a coffee while I wrote and found the wonderfully named Phuc Long café. I had one of their beverages but will have to wait until Corriene joins me to find out if it has had the promised effect.
Hoi An
Hoi An
My hotel room in Hoi An was notable for two remarkable things: hot water in the basin and a partial shower screen. Things were looking up, and only £12.50 a night, breakfast included, of course. It was also just 10 minutes walk from the old town, which was fortunate to escape bombing in the war and has many attractive buildings. It reminded me a little of Lijiang: pleasant streets of old houses devoted to feeding and selling goods to tourists, but the Chinese town is much larger and more atmospheric and remains my favourite.
At nighttime elderly ladies sell tiny candle-lit containers to float on the river, joining the many colourful lanterns lighting the boats silently paddled for romantic couples.
The town also hosts a water puppet theatre. This uniquely Vietnamese (as far as I know) tradition features an array of characters including fishermen, fish, dragons and fairies, all cleverly manipulated to paint scenes and tell stories as they move about on the water.
The traffic here being much lighter than in HCMC, I decided to hire a bicycle for the day. The brakes were a little iffy and there were no gears, but it had a basket and moved when I peddled so I was satisfied with the £1 cost. I cycled out of town, visiting a village surrounded by market gardens providing vegetables for the hungry Hoi An tourists. There must be money in greens if some of the new houses are anything to go by.
Further on I came to the beach. It was pleasant enough but a stiff on-shore wind meant few people were tempted by the water. I had some lunch and cycled back to town for a rest before wandering the old streets one last time in the evening.
Hue
140 km north of Hoi An is the city of Hue, the capital of Vietnam during the dynasty of the Nguyen emperors which lasted from 1802 to 1945, although the second half of this was under French control. I took the bus and, for just a little more than the cost of a direct ride, we stopped at a number of attractions en route.
The first was one of the marble mountains, of which there are five, each named after one of the Chinese elements: earth, fire, metal, wood and our one, water. They rise precipitously from the coastal plain, offering views from the top that were, unfortunately, somewhat hazy. The mountain was strewn with a maze of pathways, steps and caves, most with a shrine inside. Of course, I had to explore everywhere and was soon running with sweat as I climbed ever higher and then hurried back down to catch the bus.
After negotiating the city of Da Nang the road rose through sweeping turns high above the beautiful coast below, eventually reaching the Hai Van Pass where we stopped to take in the views.
Down the other side we stopped at what appeared to be a deserted resort and took a short walk to the definitely deserted and somewhat desolate Lang Co beach, where signs prohibited swimming and no one looked disappointed.
Our final stop was just outside Hue at the attractive 18th century Thanh Toan Tiles covered bridge, built by a lady who is honoured by a shrine inside.
Accommodation has got cheaper as I head north. My Hue hotel room is en suite with air con and breakfast for just £8.30 a night; it also has hot water to the basin but sadly no shower screen.
The Imperial City within the Citadel near the Perfume River has echoes of the Forbidden City in Beijing. 2 km square and surrounded by a large moat, the 160 buildings must once have been a wonderful sight. Unfortunately some of it was destroyed in fighting with the French in 1947 and most of the rest was bombed by the Americans in the Tet Offensive in 1968. However, what remains is still very impressive.
It seems the emperors had two main tasks: to govern the country and to build a magnificent tomb for themselves. They would spend years searching for a suitable site outside the city and then years on construction, if necessary hiking taxes to pay for it all. I visited three of them on a tour. Two were beautiful, peaceful places where moats and lakes surrounded a succession of rising terraces and temples finally leading to the tomb itself. The third dispensed with the lakes and instead covered the walls with elaborate porcelain bas reliefs to great effect.
The tour also took in a kung fu show where young men whirled swords, staged exciting mock fights and, for the finale, featured a man bending a spear by pressing against the point with his throat. Obviously I would have liked to give it a go myself but as I am on antibiotics for an ear and throat infection I sadly had to give it a miss.
These tours like to give you your money’s worth. In a packed day we also had a boat ride up the Perfume River, sampled some local foods at lunchtime (edible, but no match for a crispy bacon sandwich), visited an old house and a pagoda, and tried our hand at rolling incense, where I discovered that I was unlikely to make a good living from joss sticks.
Tam coc
I was considering traveling to my next destination at Tam Coc by bus until I read reviews with titles like ‘Avoid Hoang Long bus at all costs’ and ‘I would rather die than travel with Hoang Long!’. My hotel recommended another bus company; they did have 3 ‘Excellent’ reviews, but sadly this good news was somewhat eclipsed by the 234 ‘Terrible’ ones. I decided to travel by train and, given that the journey of only 360 miles was scheduled to take almost 12 hours, booked a premium soft seat rather than a cheaper hard seat on the 5.00 am through train from HCMC to Hanoi.
The train departed bang on time and I munched into the baguette and cheese that I had acquired outside the station from an enterprising early street vendor. It didn’t quite fill me up so when a lady came down the aisle selling hot food I grabbed one of her offerings. I’m not sure even now what it was – a sort of white doughy dumpling with some kind of meat-like substance inside around a very small hard boiled egg yolk; perhaps the local equivalent of a Cornish pasty, but I suspect more the Ginster’s version than the real thing; at least I hope that was the case.
With the aid of my trusty inflatable neck pillow I was comfortable enough to doze occasionally in between writing, reading and surveying the landscape. I can inform you that Vietnam has only two types of topography which, to use technical terms, I will call dead flat and dead steep. The former is given over to towns, villages and agriculture, almost all of which is rice, while the hills are thickly forested. Now and then we trundled over a large river and about once an hour we stopped at a station. I don’t know about the rest of the train but until the least couple of hours there were always plenty of spare seats in my carriage; I was never asked to move even though I avoided my allocated seat the whole journey because the flaps on the air con vent were missing so that a cold gale blew through.
I took a taxi from the station at Ninh Binh and after a little haggling agreed on a price to take me the few miles to my home stay at Tam Coc. Almost all the ‘homestays’ are actually little hotels with rooms either in a main building or in little bungalows. I threw caution to the wind and upgraded to one of the bungalows for the princely sum of £9 a night.
The attraction here is the rugged limestone karst landscape littered with hundreds of cliffs rising sheer from the paddy fields below. Added to that are temples and history: the area held the capital Hoa Lu in the 10th and 11th centuries. I set out on a bicycle to explore, stopping first at Bich Dong Pagoda, which looked amazing in photos but was a little disappointing in reality. I think that the rather grey weather did not help, but it did not seem that special.
I pedalled my way along narrow tracks through rice fields, found my way back to the road and headed to Thai Vy, an ancient temple that was quite pleasant. However, the best view was nearby on a bend in the river where I watched the little boats carrying tourists, interesting for two things: they row facing forwards, pushing the oars, and many of them row with their feet. Yes, really. Some push both oars at the same time and others use a bicycle style. I saw one woman ‘cycling’ her boat while using her hands to fan her face.
The next day I wanted to head further afield and needed more than pedal power so rented a motor bike. My experience in Bali had taught me that the automatic bikes are easy to handle but road and traffic conditions make the journey difficult, and somewhat dangerous. In much of Vietnam, particularly the cities, the roads are very busy, to put it mildly ,and I think that motor cycles are only for the brave. Here, though, the roads were quiet and the surface generally good so I felt a lot more comfortable.
My first stop was also the most energetic: a climb of 500 steps to the top of one of the peaks at Hang Mua, or to be precise a climb of a couple of hundred more steps because there were two peaks, both with great views. Down below there was a wide, low cave that led right through one of the hills.
Hill climbing challenge completed, I got back on the motor bike to drive to Hoa Lu, the ancient capital. Other than some little temples there was not a great deal to see here but just outside the gates was a pagoda that sounded interesting. The trouble was that no matter how hard I scoured the pagoda grounds I could not find the actual pagoda. In fact the closest thing I found were the bonsai trees, which I have to say were probably the best I have seen outside Japan.
At my final stop I realised I had saved the best for last. At Trang An I joined a French couple on one of the little boats for a two hour trip on the waterways that was one of the highlights of my whole trip so far. The scenery here is really quite extraordinary; a maze of tranquil rivers and lakes intersecting the precipitous limestone cliffs, the waterside reeds with pampas-like flowers growing 10 feet tall. It is no wonder that this was chosen as the location for a recent King Kong film; it feels like a lost world. Well, apart that is from the hundreds of sightseeing boats, but filter those out and you could easily expect giant apes to live here. The ride got quite exciting as we approached cave entrances half hidden by bushes, ducking our heads low to avoid the stalactites and eventually emerging on the far side of the hills. Nor was this all. Hidden amongst the mountains and only accessible by boat are several beautiful temples. We were lucky enough to have the first one all to ourselves; it was the most peaceful and spiritual temple I have been in since Karakoram in Mongolia and I would have liked to linger but our boatman was hastening us back. He was an old man but certainly fit; rowing the boat all day is hard work, although with helpful passengers like us lending a paddle we were almost the fastest boat on the river. My only disappointment was that he didn’t row with his feet.
Back on land I rewarded my labours with an ice cream before driving safely back to the guest house just before dark.
Rob's Roads 