Some countries have unfortunate positionings regarding the travelling circuit and Vietnam to me is one of them. Huge numbers of travellers arrive into Hanoi from either lazy Laos or rural southern China and this is always going to colour their initial impression of the place. Touted as brash, overbearing and hectic despite it’s beautiful old town, I have to go against the convention and extend my general love of cities to the Vietnamese capital. The one truth I found was the excessive tourism industry, something which carries throughout all of Vietnam. Whilst almost all of SE Asia is developed on the tourism front (as was said to me it is often possible to life a comfortable western life whilst being in a nice tropical country), in Vietnam it is possibly the most noticeable because everyone is following the same almost inescapable route down the coast. As a result despite loving Hanoi I skipped much of the north in a bit of a mood and headed straight down through Danang to Hoi An to meet Kyla, the Canadian from Laos.
Anyone ever reading anything about Vietnam will have heard ravings about the traffic yet on arrival I found it slightly underwhelming. In terms of how heavy it can be and the noise of exhausts and horns, other places-India jumps to mind-are far worse. However, after a while I realised that what is exhausting is just how constant it is. Waiting for any sort of break is an exercise in futility, which makes crossing the road an interesting experience. As far as I can see there are two methods for this; firstly is to acknowledge that the vehicles are supremely aware of pedestrians and simply step out, walk at a slow but, crucially, steady pace whilst traffic ducks and dodges around you. Particularly at first this can take the serenity of a monk but it grew on me as I realised that I just couldn’t control the situation and the responsibility for my physical wellbeaing no longer lay in my hands. The second option is to find a local near where you wish to cross and latch onto the back of them for dear life.
Hoi An, once you dodge all the rip-off tailors ( you can get stuff tailored anywhere in SE Asia people!), turned out to be a pretty place not unlike a bigger more developed Luang Prabang. Did very little for a couple of days before following a day behind Kyla, who was to become my most constant travelling companion, and others down the coast to Nha Trang on a bus with myself, 3 other travellers and 2 monks who kindly shared their food-benefit of choosing not to use the open bus-ticket system.
Nha Trang is one of Vietnam’s principal tourist destinations and has a seedy Club Med feel to it accompanied by plenty of petty theft. That said it is proof that people can be more important than place as I spent a fun few days here and went to the Sailing Club’s Hallowe’en party which somehow resulted in pogoing on the dancefloor with numerous Vietnamese girls for a portion of the night. A sidenote though is that the curry house here also comes a firm bottom on Kyla and Jenny’s Indian Food Tour of SE Asia.
Kyla and I left Nha Trang, dashed through Dalat (weird) and Mui Ne (ok, but nothing that spectacular) to arrive in Ho Chi Minh City, or as all the South vietnamese still call it, Saigon. Just so as not to break a theme I also enjoyed HCMC. Surprisingly, considering this is Vietnam and my interest in history it was the first place I really got to grips with the ‘American War’, although admittedly I had skipped most of the DMZ area. The War Remnants Museum was fantastic although it’s former name as anyone will tell you is the Exhibition House of American War Crimes which gives a good indication of how biased it is. It is excellent for providing a good visual of American atrocities, the destruction of Agent Orange and an alternative to the western take on events (even if these themselves are negative towards the US invasion). The Cu Chi tunnels are also interesting if slightly marred by the idiotic guide-note to self, never get these tours even if it does simplify life significantly.
Another part of vietnamese culture that suddenly became very apparent was the sex industry. This started with overhearing conversations amongst expats about where to get the best blowjob and culminated with my atendance at Apocalypse Now a reasonably famous club that turned out to be little more than a brothel bar.
A brief trip down to the Mekong Delta, which is well worth it to get that real Apocalypse now feeling of floating through a foreign jungle alone with everything a little off the rails, and then I was on my way to Cambodia. There was a small altercation at the border where I started a revolution against paying the bus driver $5 to hand my passport over for me (the worst part is that there seemed to be genuine surprise upon seeing I was capable of doing it for myself). Fairly annoyed at seeing a few hundred dollars walk across the border, the bus driver tried to strand half the bus in no-mans land but luckily was ‘persuaded’ to pick everyone up and got to Phnom Penh without any other hassles.
