Well we are a week in and despite what everyone
predicted there have been no major dramas.
We arrived in Saigon tired and overwhelmed
on Monday morning and mistakenly took the first taxi we saw. We thought he said
it would be 50,000 dong (about $5) but he meant 500,000 ($50) – our first rip
off.
The traffic on the way in was chaos.
Motorbikes and scooters darted infront of the taxi and wove their way around
other cars and taxis. Bikes carrying huge loads of food, plastic containers or
people appeared out of nowhere. When there was no room they just rode up onto
the pavement. I was sure we would die several times on the way, or kill a
scooter rider.
But we made it to the hostel in one piece.
From there we spent the day exploring by
foot. We found a map and managed to find our way around the city. We found the
markets, Reunification Palace and a bunch of nice parks before settling in for
an evening of water puppetry.
We also pretty much mastered crossing the
roads, it doesn't sound like much of a chalenge but when you realise there are
no real road rules and every scooter driver has a death wish it is pretty
challenging. We learnt to just walk in front of them and hope they don't hit
us.
Our first dinner was an interesting
experience and we both expected to wake up in the night with severe food
poisoning, luckily we didn't. Despite everyone saying there was food everywhere
in Saigon we struggled to find any other than one man serving bits of meat and
rice. We weren't exactly sure what the meat was or how long it had been there
for, but it tasted good and we were starving having skipped lunch and spent the
day walking. So we risked it.
Meals have since become easier and we are
learning to be more adventurous.
Day 2 we headed to the Cu Chi Tunnels where
the Viet Cong lived during the war, pretty much the only way to get there is to
go on a tour but our guide was really good so Im glad we did. He explained a
bit more of the history of the war and showed us around the bunkers and
tunnels. We headed down into one tunnel that has been widened for us fat lazy
westeners but it was still pretty small, we could get through bending over. It
ran for 100 metres but Louisa and i both decided to take the first exit at 20
metres. It was hot and sweaty and smelly underneath.
It was a great experience but kinda
glorified the war. Great fighters were given the “American Killing Award”.
After this we jumped out at the War
Remnants Museum, which was pretty gory. There were actual deformed foetuses in
alcohol in one display as well as pictures of deformitiies from Agent Orange.
But again it was interesting to read aobut the history of the Vietnamese, my
memory from studying the war in college is very hazy.
We spent the next 3 days on a Mekong Delta
tour. It was really relaxing after the hustle and bustle of Saigon and crossing
roads was just that little bit easier.
We did a lot of boat trips, which were
great, but a tad repetitive. All tours seem to include lots of side trips to
people making rice paper, coconut candy and just about anything you could
imagine. We were restrained and didnt by anything!
