Archive for the 'Vietnam' Category
Early the next morning I got on a bus to do a two-day tour of the Mekong Delta, ending in the capital of Cambodia, Phnom Penh. A few hours on the bus got us to the docks and onto a tour boat. We visited a floating market, essentially a group of small boats selling different fruits an d vegetables, with a sample sticking up on a bamboo pole at the back of the boat. Following this we visited a factory where locals made a number of different rice products, such as candies and paper. The whole day felt like a rushed tour and I wasn’t too enthralled, especially with the knowledge that there was yet another day to go before it was over. Before I knew it we were back on a bus, heading to our stop for the night, Chau Doc.
Chau Doc is a port town so fortunately we could just get straight onto a boat in the morning. We were split into pairs and each boarded small boats to tour a floating village. Piloted by a Vietnamese woman standing in the back, and powered by nothing more than two large oars, she expertly guided us through the narrow channels meandering between the small huts floating on empty oil barrels or the bottom half of an old boat. This part of the tour was more like what I was hoping for, and the morning spent slowly floating through the villages was excellent.
Around 9:00 am we stopped at a village built on solid group to await the slow boat that would take us into Cambodia. It arrived about 45 minutes later, and we were off. This boat was still fairly small, thin and wooden with two rows of folding lawn chairs for seats, and a tarp hung over the top in case of rain. The pace again was slow and I had a great time kicking back and watching the river banks drift by. It took about 3 hours to reach the border, and there we had to stop, get our passports stamped, and wait for the Cambodian boat to pick us up. “Conveniently”, there was a restaurant there so we could have lunch while we waited. Then, once again very conveniently, right as we finished our food, didn’t want anything else, and paid our bill, the boat showed up and was ready to go.
The boat from the border into Cambodia wasn’t quite as nice of an experience, mostly because the afternoon rain was particularly strong that day, and the waves and wind were strongly rocking the boat from side to side. The mostly missing windows meant that rain was blowing in everywhere. This boat was much bigger and made of metal, however, and one of the Cambodians on board told me it was good it was so large, as a smaller vessel would have to pull to the side and wait for the storm to calm down instead of pushing through it as we were. After a long day, I had to agree, as I was ready for a bed and a shower.
We had one final bus journey from the docks into central Phnom Penh, which took another couple hours. One of the girls in the group and I, an American from northern California in fact, split a tuk-tuk (the larger form of transport in Southeast Asia, a moto with a covered trailer attached containing two bench seats) out to the lakeside area and found a room to split. The area is very backpacker, and all the accommodation is quite basic (no A/C, no hot water) but it’s hard to turn down splitting a room for $2 each. What the rooms lack the rest of the guest house makes up for, as each place has a floating terrace out on the lake with couches set up everywhere and a TV with DVD player showing the latest movies. It always strikes me as funny, the contrast of worlds you constantly see in the backpacker circuit in Southeast Asia.
I arrived in Saigon (aka Ho Chi Minh City) exhausted from a long night before and a 12 hour bus ride all day. The tour company’s office at which the bus stopped was located on what seemed like a miniature version of Khao San Road called De Tham. There were bars and guesthouses all around, and I felt overwhelmed by it all, in the state I was in. Fortunately, I ran into an English girl who was one of the many people I’d been constantly running in to along the way down the coast, and she had a room with an extra bed, in which she was staying in another night, but the girl she was sharing with had left that morning, and offered the space to me. We went down a little alley into a woman’s home that was renting out the top floor. The room was pretty basic but clean and I dropped off my stuff and had a shower. I went and met her and another girl for dinner and then immediately returned to the room to crash for the night, exhausted.
Deciding it was finally time to see a little bit of war related tourism (it’s a big industry in Vietnam), I booked a tour of the Cu Chi tunnels the next morning. Used by the north during the war, the tunnels in the Cu Chi area were the main hiding area and route into the south, being only a few dozen kilometers from Saigon. It’s definitely interesting to see a bit of perspective of the war from the other side (here called the “American War”).
The tunnels themselves are incredibly small, big enough for me just barely stand with my knees completely bent and bent over as far as possible, while just a bit wider than my shoulders. I’m not usually claustrophobic, but walking through the short 100 meters of tunnel they have open to the public I definitely felt anxious to see daylight again.
Following the tunnels, our guide walked the group around the surrounding area. We stopped to see a demonstration of the various traps the North Vietnamese had developed to ensnare the enemy, at an exposed section of tunnels with a large room that was used as a weapons workshop, and finally an American tank that had been disabled by a mine.
The tour got us back to Saigon a little after mid-day, and I used the rest of the afternoon to do some shopping and prepare for the trip into Cambodia I’d be making over the following two days.
The sleep you get on the overnight bus probably comes to a total of 3 or 4 hours in a 12 hour journey. There are only seats, no beds, and the bus is constantly swerving around traffic, as well as stopping for a break every few hours (nice sometimes, but dinner at 2 am? No thanks). Ironically I spoke with someone who took the day bus, and they had beds on that one, even calling it the “sleeper bus”. Not sure how they mixed that one up but sometimes in Asia you just have to accept that things are a little backwards.
We arrived nice and early though, and I got a room, and found a place to do my PADI Open Water diving certification, which was my main reason for coming to Nha Trang. The only problem was that the diving wouldn’t start until two days later, which means I’d spend one more day than planned in Nha Trang as well. When you’re traveling to so many places, an extra day in one place means a day less somewhere else, and now with two days spent not as planned, and my visa not lasting as long as I had expected, my time in Vietnam was going to become very limited.
Nha Trang isn’t a terrible place to get stuck however. It’s a beach town, though more in the spirit of a place like Miami than Malibu. Large hotel and other buildings provide most of the background to the sand, and the water isn’t exactly clean. There are a number of spots with lounge chairs and umbrellas set up however, and grabbing one for about $1.50 for the day and alternating between sitting in the sun and shade is a nice way to pass the time. There’s also a large ex-pat/traveler bar scene in Nha Trang, and having run into most of my friends from Hoi An/Hanoi again, I had a couple good nights checking it out before the dive class started.
I had a great time doing the class, and I think I’ve found a new love in diving. The first couple days were just in the classroom and pool, but once we got out to the open ocean, even in the sandbar where there weren’t many fish or things to see I had a blast. Eilidh came down and did the class with me while her sister and Mairi went to another part of the country for a few days. Having someone I already knew in class just made it even better, and we made friends with the other people as well. By the end I had even more people to see the wonderful Nha Trang bars with (though we kept things pretty tame until the last night; diving hung-over is no fun).
The day after the class finished I caught an all day bus to my final stop in Vietnam, Ho Chi Minh City, also known as Saigon.
The bus arrived in the late afternoon and I found a guest house. Many people had advised me that this was the place in Asia to come for cheap clothes, particularly suits and similar items. There are an overwhelming number of tailor shops in the city, and fortunately a number of people I had met in various places over the past few months had given me business cards of shops they recommended. After visiting a few I found one that felt right for whatever reason (they all seemed basically the same) and got measured for a suit and a couple shirts. Now I never wear suits, but at about $75 a piece for nice material and good tailoring, it seemed silly not to get one or two. In fact when I came back for my fitting and saw how well he’d done, I asked the man for a second and two more shirts.
In the mean time I had a look around Hoi An. The city itself is small and a preserved ancient city, somewhat in the same vein as Yangshuo or Pingyao in China (which means of course it’s also completely a tourist trap). There are a number of sites to visit in town on a single ticket, so I bought it and walked around to each of them, though there wasn’t much to see at any of them. By far it was more enjoyable to just walk around the city and along the river that ran through town. The midday heat here was about as high as anywhere I’ve felt, so by about 12:00 or 1:00 pm I usually went back to my room for the day or found somewhere cool to hang out until later.
Hoi An was also where Vietnam began to become a bit of a blur. Not overwhelmingly so, but I ran into a number of people here I had met in Hanoi, and spent a couple nights on the town/days just hanging out with them. With a few exceptions I’ve been pretty resolved on the trip not to see countries from the inside of it’s bars, but this is also the first place I’ve been where I’ve just been constantly meeting loads of laid back, pleasant travelers from all over the world, and it’s been a great experience getting to talk to people and hear perspectives from all over the world. And get drunk with them.
The suits were done in two days, and would have been done in one if I had remembered to tell the guy no shoulder padding, which meant a refitting of the shoulders. The shoes were a different story, they kept using a competely different color leather than I asked for, and eventually after much arguing I settled for giving them half of what they’d asked to cover the materials and taking the second pair they made for me. I wouldn’t have made a big deal, but the whole reason I asked for the color I did was that it matched both the suits I got, and the ones I ended up with don’t match either one.
The group of Scottish girls showed up the second to last day I was there, but we had a tough time getting a hold of each other and meeting up. Not having a cell phone makes getting a hold of people hard, and I have to make due with email, which requires some good timing to make it work. I eventually caught an overnight bus to Nha Trang, though because of the shoe debacle I’d stayed a day longer than I wanted.
The flight into Hué didn’t exactly go as planned. It’s monsoon season right now, which means frequent torrential rains. About 20 minutes after I got to the Hanoi airport, the rain started and quickly picked up. I watched as flights became delayed, and soon mine was among them. The scheduled departure was around 8 pm, and at about 9:30, an announcement came over the loudspeaker saying the flight was cancelled, but that Vietnam airlines would put all the passengers on the first flight the following day. After issuing new boarding passes and feeding us, all the passengers were then bussed all the way back to Hanoi (about an hour journey) to stay for maybe 4 hours in a very nice hotel. At 3 am, we got a wake-up call and had to be back at the airport by 4:30.
Since the reason I had flown in the first place was to save time, I was a little annoyed with having spent the extra money for nothing. But since there was nothing I could do to change it, I got to seeing Hué as quickly as I could. Mostly what I was interested in seeing was the Citadel and Imperial City, which was a fairly large area, so I rented a bicycle from my hotel and set off across the river.
The Citadel was a large walled area built on an island near Hué about 300 years ago. Being very near the DMZ, Hué became a large battle zone, and most of the area was leveled. The remnants of the large wall that had once stood are now broken and crumbling, but there is a restoration effort going on beginning in the Imperial City.
Walking around the Imperial City (it’s a fairly compact area), it was interesting to see the mix of restored buildings and charred ruins left over from the war. The area immediately inside the entrance has been fairly well restored, but as soon as you go further in, blackened archways and walls are everywhere, and rubble covers most of the ground. Eventually, the entire place will be restored to it’s former glory, but for now it’s still a reminder of the recent past.
After lunch I spent the rest of the day biking around Hué city, taking in the market and passing a large interesting church. There wasn’t too much of note, just an interesting Vietnamese city. Riding a bike here is an experience, as the primary form of transport for most people is a small motorbike, and hoards of them move through the busy streets seemingly with no order. On a bicycle you just kind of try and stick to the side and hope no one hits you, but deal with the occasional bump and try not to fall over.
After spending more time in Nepal than I had planned, my Vietnamese visa only had about 3 weeks on it by the time I netered the country, so one day in Hué was all I could afford. The next day I caught a bus in the morning down to my next stop, Hoi An.
Photos
Hué, Vietnam
Landing in Hanoi Airport was the most harrowing experience I’ve ever had on an airplane. We were arriving around 10 pm, and the monsoon rains were in full force. As I looked out the window, I could see lightning flashing all around the plane while wind and rain pelted the cabin. My stomach felt like it was constantly going between my throat and my feet as we continuously hit some of the strongest turbulence I’ve ever felt. I suddenly had a feeling that taking the discount Malaysian airline may have not been the best idea after all. Eventually we did make it safely to the ground though, and I cleared customs, found the car the hostel had sent for me, and got to Hanoi city proper.
In the morning I was having breakfast in the hostel, when one of the owners came in and asked if anyone wanted to do a Ha Long Bay tour that was leaving in about an hour. Now I was planning on doing this trip anyway, so I thought it over for a bit and decided to put my Hanoi sightseeing on hold and head out to the bay right off. What a great decision.
Ha Long Bay, and more importantly Paradise Island, the private island owned by the tour company was an amazing way to start Vietnam. A few hours on a bus and we were at the docks, boarding a small tourist boat for the 5 hour journey to the island, through the famous bay. Our progress was slow and relaxed as we passed amongst the massive limestone formations, similar to what I had seen in Guilin and Yangshuo in China, but now surrounded by deep blue ocean rather than bright green rice farms. We stopped a few times en route, to swim in a small cove, then explore an interesting cave formation and change boats, but finally around sunset we arrived at the island.
Being that it was dark when we arrived, seeing the reality of how spectacular the island on which were staying was didn’t fully sink in until the next day. The area consisted of a small private beach enclosed on both sides by high cliff-walls, which had six huts for living quarters and one main house for the restaurant/bar/chill-out area. We even had indoor plumbing and electricity in the huts, though both of these were on and off frequently.
The activities for the day were pretty basic. Most of the morning was spent laying on a chair under and umbrella on the beach, a little before lunch some of us decided to go kayaking in the bay. At first things went great, we paddled well out into the bay and around the side of one of the smaller islands. One of the girls and another guy who were in the group found a cave, and the three of us paddled our boats into it. There was a way up to an opening at the top, so we climbed up and had a great view over the whole bay. Getting out, however, proved to be much more difficult.
In the hour or so that we had spent climbing and hanging out, the ocean had suddenly gotten much rougher and the wind had picked up quite a bit. On the way out, one of the kayaks flipped as we were pushing it and we had to drag it back out and empty it of water before proceeding. Finally we got all three of us out of the cave and started the long paddle back to the beach. I was in front as we cleared the edge of the small island we had been on and got back into the bay, and as soon as I was around that, a huge swell came up and a wave suddenly went up and over the top of me, flipping the whole kayak and knocking me out of it. I got to the surface and another huge wave crashed down so I went under to avoid being thrown around too much more, and when I came up the boat had gotten a good distance away from me. I should probably also mention I didn’t have a life jacket on, as that kind of thing isn’t really as enforced in Southeast Asia. I’m a pretty decent swimmer though, so I did manage to finally make my way back over to the boat and flip it over, but it had taken on a lot of water, and there was no way I could get myself back in without flipping it again. I looked around and realized that I was in the middle of the ocean clinging to the side of a kayak, and I could be in real trouble if no one came along to help. Fortunately, we had been gone for so long that the tour guides on the island had gotten worried and sent a boat out to look for us, so it wasn’t too long before that found me, and got me back to shore.
After that adventure, I spent most of the rest of my stay on the island on land, sipping beers and napping under a palm-frawn umbrella. The following day we took the slow boat and what felt like an even slower bus back to the mainland and Hanoi respectively. On the boat ride back we had to change vessels once, and amongst the outgoing tour group that switched with us were 3 Scottish girls I had met in China (Kirsten & Eilidh, sisters, and their friend Mairi), who are doing a similar tour of Asia to me. They were coming back to Hanoi in a few days, and hopefully we could meet up again.
I spent the next day in Hanoi just running a bunch of errands that I had meant to do the first day, until I got sidetracked by a few days at the beach. Following that, I just had a walk around town to get to know the place. Hanoi, at least the center near the lakes, has a very small town feel to it, despite being the capital. The French influence is also strong, with dozens of little café’s lining the streets. That night I also got an introduction to another of Vietnam and Hanoi’s institutions: the Bia Hoi. Entainling nothing more than a person’s house with a bunch of small plastic tables and chairs, with a few kegs of locally brewed beer inside, it’s a good place to come and mingle with the locals over glasses of beer for $0.12 a pop. The quality varies drastically from place to place, so the group I was with wandered between a few before we settled on a decent one.
The large West Lake was my first stop on the following day. There wasn’t as much here to see as I had hoped, spent some time walking through a small pagoda complex and then had a coffee at a cafe built in a non-functioning boat. On my way to a small temple near by, I stopped and saw the small memorial that had been built to commemorate the anti-aircraft gunners who shot down John McCain, who had parachuted into this lake. Following the temple I spent some time at the larger Temple of Literature, which had been constructed to resemble the birthplace of Confucius, and reminded me all too much of the many, many temples I’d seen in China before.
The morning of the next day I caught a ride over to the Ho Chi Minh mausoleum to see the man himself. Communist countries seem to like to preserve their founders and put them on display for the public, and since I hadn’t been able to see Mao I wanted to at least see “Uncle Ho” as the locals call him. I rounded up a few other people who were up that early, and we grabbed a few moto’s over to the mausoleum.
Just a note about what a moto is, they don’t really have taxi’s in Vietnam/Cambodia/Laos as I understand it. The main form of transportation is the moto, which is exactly what it sounds like, a small motorcycle you hop on the back of and pay around $0.50-1.00 to get to where you want to go. It can be a daunting experience at first, and of course it’s probably extremely unsafe (even though most of the bikes probably couldn’t top 25mph), but there aren’t really any other options, so you just try not to think about it and go with it.
We arrived at the mausoleum fairly early and there was already a small line of mostly locals formed and slowly marching into the compound. The whole process was very orderly and monitored by quite a few soldiers. After depositing our camera’s and valuables at the front station, we followed the line down the long street that led to the building itself. Once inside, we entered a dimly lit chamber with 4 guards in their dress whites flanking a small glass case, containing Ho Chi Minh’s preserved corpse. He was a small, diminutive looking man, and looked more like a wax figure than a person. You could feel the sense of reverence and awe the locals felt, however, and the experience was much more interesting as a foreigner in that respect.
After seeing the man, we followed the crowd on to a walking tour of his former residence. The house was a simple but refined example of the same traditional Vietnamese architecture I’d seen in the countryside. The grounds were also home to some more grand government buildings and a large number of jack-fruit trees. I caught a moto back to the hostel after that, leaving the group I had gone with as they were heading to the same temple’s I’d visited the previous day.
When I got back, I ran into the Scottish girls again and spent the afternoon hanging out with them before I heading to the airport for my flight to Hué. We had lunch and then went to an art museum to see what amounted to a good collection of Vietnamese art throughout history. The modern art was particularly interesting, as was a blend of different styles such as impressionism or cubism, but all from the same time period and obviously interpretations of the styles rather than an innovation. The popular use of the French impressionistic style in particular again shows what a strong influence they’ve had on the country. After the museum I bid the girls farewell and since they were heading to the same place as me on a train later that night, told them to keep in touch so we could try and meet up again.
Photos
Ha Long Bay & Paradise Island, Vietnam
Hanoi, Vietnam