Hi everyone! Harry and I have spent a month travelling around Vietnam, and are now in Hanoi, planning to leave for Laos in a few days. However, as Vietnam is so big and full of activity, I'm going to split it into two posts.
It took us two days to arrive in Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) from Phnom Penh, as we arrived via boat through the Mekong Delta, with visits to a town called Chau Doc and a nearby fishing village. We stayed in a nice little guesthouse which was unfortunately craftily concealed in an alley off an alley in the backpacker district of town, and thus took a while to find.
Ho Chi Minh City is crazy. The traffic was mad; I’ve never seen so many motorcycles in one place and, as with Cambodia, there weren’t any rules at all. Crossing the road is a daunting experience, and in fact we saw tourist police helping deer-in-the-headlights tourists across a busy intersection.
The touts are in overdrive in HCMC as well; worse than Thailand. We also had one very unpleasant experience where we went for a short rickshaw ride from the War Remnants Museum back to our guesthouse, only for the drivers to demand D700,000 (US$35!!) for the privelege. Of course, we said no, as this was obscene, and they became very unpleasant. We ended up giving them $8. Which was still a total rip-off (it was not a long ride), but at least they didn’t pull a knife on us, which apparently is known to happen.
The War Remnants Musuem was an interesting visit. The yard outside it was full of old tanks, fighter planes, helicopters and bombs, and inside was a huge amount of information about the Vietnamese side of the war – definitely the most informative museum we’ve visited so far in Asia. Unfortunately, we arrived too late in the day and the museum closed before we could see it all.
We also took a day trip to visit the Cu Chi tunnels just outside the city. The tunnels were so cramped that we had to crawl along, and the entrances were TINY. The site was rather propaganda-heavy, but it was a fascinating place.
We stayed in HCMC for several days, eating delicious food (with the exception of Harry’s dreadful quesadilla) and exploring the big market near where we were staying (pickled cobras, anyone? What about a pickled cobra and a pickled scorpion in the same jar?) before catching a bus up to Mui Ne.
Mui Ne is a beach town about six hours north of HCMC, famous for its huge golden sand dunes. Unfortunately the wet season was in full swing there, so we spent a lot of time not actually doing very much. We went swimming, wandered around town a little and lazed around a lot, but the highlight of the stay was definitely our motorbike excursions (enumerated below by Harry). It was difficult to tear ourselves away from Mui Ne; it's the sort of place where you could just kick back and spend a month. Eventually, though, we headed back to HCMC to catch a train north to Danang.
The train ride was fun, and we had a sleeper compartment to ourselves for most of the trip. However, we were on the train for about seven hours longer than we were expecting due to an inexplicable stop for most of the night. The large amounts of flooding to be seen from the train window made me think the tracks might have been underwater, but who knows? Anyway we arrived in Danang and managed to find a rather magnificent palace-like hotel to stay in without too much difficulty. Not much to be said about Danang, just a small city like any small city, rather wet. But we were only really stopping over there on our way to Hoi An.
Hoi An is a small town that used to be an important sea trade port in the 1700s, and is now World Heritage listed on account of being filled with beautiful old buildings from the era. We spent a couple of days there, wandering around doing a little shopping and checking out the town, but again THE RAIN impeded our activities somewhat. It was surprisingly cold, too. Hoping Laos, which is further north, isn't any colder, because I didn't bring anything warm at all.
I would have loved to have stayed longer in Hoi An, but unfortunately we were pressed for time. Our month in Vietnam seems to have gone incredibly fast, in contrast to the month we spent in Thailand. I'll fill you all in on our trip to Hanoi and our upcoming sojourn in Halong Bay in the next update!
"The Perspective", with Harry
Rat meat spring rolls = non-delicious.
Quesadilla = non-delicious (at least, those you get in Saigon)
Crappy microwave cheeseburger = non-delicious
Lasagne = delicious
Grilled prawns = delicious
Rice Porridge with Beef = delicious
Lauren and I rented a motorbike/scooter thing in Mui Ne for two days and all was well (except for the bit when Lauren crashed into a bush). We rented it with the pretense of driving to the sand dunes, but in reality just scootering about was the more enjoyable part. The roads in Vietnam are fairly lawless though, and while there wasn't a lot of traffic in Mui Ne, driving here requires a completely different level of concentration to Melbourne.
Lauren wisely chose only to drive on the comparatively deserted, straight bits of highway, leaving me to negotiate the town and the dark, but she did very well considering it was her first time.
Overall I'm not enjoying Vietnam as much as the other places we have visited on this trip, mainly because people seem far more willing to rip you off in dishonest ways.
Naturally when you travel you can expect people to try and gouge as much money out of you as possible, but in Vietnam you can be quoted one price only to be asked for a completely different price later on. The other day we took a metered taxi that ticked up 1km every 50m or so!
This seems in stark contrast to Cambodia and Thailand, where you always negotiate a fee first and after that it is set. And if you manage to convince a taxi driver to use a meter, you can be fairly confident that it will be fair.
This could of course all be based on luck, but that's my impression thus far.
On a more pleasant note I had a truly excellent Aussie burger in Mui Ne - beetroot and all!
