We’re up early for the bus. Not sure why, we know almost for sure our transfer will be late – which, of course, he is. We head out into the Phnom Penh rush hour, then realise that it’s no different from the regular traffic – do they ever actually have a rush hour?! We realise that we’re actually properly late when our final pickup is after our bus to Saigon is scheduled to leave, then suddenly our driver is in a rush. Understand: the drivers may seem rash and crazy but actually there’s a laissez faire attitude to driving; we’ll get there whatever happens. Our driver was suddenly in a rush and this added a new – and genuinely terrifying – element to the trip – he was rushing through the traffic without the right attitude and it was white-knuckle-ride crazy. Ask us about it later! I’d made the assumption that the bus would wait for us – after all, there’s a full list of paying passengers, we’re on it, and we’re on the official pickup for the bus. But no – we realise this as we start to head out of PP at breakneck speed, and we finally get our bus down to Saigon – not at a bus station, but at a petrol station, some 30 minutes after it left PP! Still, we got it...
Here’s a travel tip: if you need to bus anywhere across southeast Asia, and you have the option then use Mekong Express. They cost a couple of dollars more than the competition but are head and shoulders the best bus company out here (and you’ll probably end up spending the couple of dollars on beers while you wait for your broken-down-bus to be fixed with A.N.Other!) After we boarded the trip was excellent – onboard water and food for free, but most importantly the staff onboard deal with your border transfer which makes things a whole heap easier. Don’t get me wrong, we still had to disembark and proceed through Cambodia exit then Vietnam entry, but the onboard staff dealt with all the passports and paperwork for you, making it all trivially easy – unlike the border crossing from Thailand to Cambodia!
We finally arrived in Saigon around 14.45 or so. For the purists, officially we’re in Ho Chi Minh City, but district 1 – the downtown part in which we’re staying – is still called Saigon, and the locals still refer to the city as Saigon, so we will too! The first obvious difference from PP is that it’s much more westernised – more Bangkok than PP – but also that there are utterly stupid numbers of people on mopeds – numbers that make even PP seem sane! Fortunately there seems to be some vague order and control to the roads in Saigon which means that things run, well, vaguely smoothly, but it’s still a challenging place to cross the road! In fact, even the pavements didn’t seem to be safe – a number of folks on ‘bikes seem to use them as shortcuts!
Our hotel is well downtown – in fact, compared to the last few places we’ve stayed this is bang in the middle of everything, right in the heart if the backpacker area. The hotel is not bad – it’s actually completely booked which is normally a good sign, and we’ve got it for a decent price. The room is OK – it’s nothing compared to the previous hotels and is overlooking the street, but the soundproofing is good and it’s a decent size, it seems fine. We wander out to get our bearings and to see what’s round us and we realise it’s a million miles away from PP (metaphorically). It’s fairly westernized, but still has that distinctive southeast Asian city vibe which keeps things real – things are ALWAYS real when you’re dodging traffic in the streets! I quite like it. The juxtaposition with PP is monumental, but that’s how it should be – it’s nice when things change, it marks progress. We’ve now been away for almost 2 weeks, but in that time we’ve hit 4 locations in 3 different countries. It feels like we’ve been here forever, yet we’re still only 2 weeks in – 8 weeks to go!
We’re up early for our first full day in Saigon, as we’re on a trip to the Cu Chi tunnels further north – this is the largest surviving Viet Cong tunnel complex in Vietnam, some 250km long. Most trips from Saigon go by minibus and it takes a couple of hours or so but we’ve decided to push the boat out (no pun intended) and go by speedboat. Sadly, the boat is a bit more full that expected (“10 max, current average is 6” – we had 15) and mostly people on the boat are here in Saigon on business and looking for a day out, but the trip up the river is nice and affords better views than you’d get from a minibus.
The tunnels – or rather, the tunnel complex we see – are fascinating. The level of ingenuity and planning that went into building them – 3 different vertical levels, multiple redundancy in the routes used in the tunnels, everything from kitchens to workshops and hospital facilities - is amazing. The walls are rock hard, almost like concrete and very straight. Consideration had to be given to things like cooking (which generates smoke that needs to be dealt with) and how to deal with the possibility of discovery by the enemy or by their sniffer dogs – all of which were dealt with using simple but ingenious solutions. Additionally, the VC created a very large range of traps, most of which were incredibly simple but gruesome – it’s a wonder any Americans returned home at all! The actual tunnels themselves are very cramped and claustrophobic – we crawl through a short section and it’s amazing how little space there is – until we’re told that this section has been widened for western tourists, the real sections are quite a bit smaller. No wonder the Americans didn’t like to enter them and resorted to dropping grenades and other ordinance down there.
However, Cu Chi itself again highlights more of the differences between Vietnam and Cambodia – it’s a good place to see, and the tunnels are fascinating, but it’s all a bit sterile, as you’re led through almost on a conveyor belt from one section to the next. Don’t get me wrong, well worth doing, but compared to Cambodia, where you’re just dropped in a place with information provided and then they leave you to explore and use your imagination – well, that’s better than 4th rate animatronics. We’re then treated to an excellent lunch before heading back and chilling out. The day finishes with dinner which involves quite a few beers and some excellent noodle soup (and some less than excellent tempura), all for less than $10 in total.
