"You like, good price, Happy Hour"
Trip Start
Oct 04, 2004
1
101
102
Trip End
Ongoing
Ho Chi Ming City,
Vietnam
Thursday, December 13, 2007
For me, i see my time here not just an extended holiday, but as a new a way of life. Because of this i'm going to stop doing entries about Australia
Sleeping on the plane
. With the popularity of Facebook at an all time high, its just easier and quicker to upload images onto that and more people will get to see them anyway. I have decided to try and carry on doing the entries for any overseas travel though, as much for all of you at home, that take time to read these blogs, as well as a keep safe for me. I hope they are still interesting.
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It was one night in May last year, after watching a holiday show on tv, that i got the taste of travel again! Jo didn't need much persuasion to go away, so it was just the decision on where to go and when! Christmas sounded like the perfect time, with Christmas day and Boxing day falling mid week, we didn't have to use many days of our holiday entitlement to have a nice 20 day break! Now all that was needed was a destination.
At first India sounded promising, but after some thought, 20 days wouldn't be enough to cover a country the size of America
Being woken up by an annoying girlfriend
! Another idea was Burma, but that was too wet and expensive to get to. Eventually we decided on Vietnam. 10 years ago, you wouldn't even think of travelling here, but tourism is now a major part of the of their country and with cheap airline Jetstar doing flights for as little as $1000 return (400 GBP), its was hard to find a reason not to go!
We landed in Ho Chi Ming City (Saigon) around 9pm and made our way through customs to the taxi line queue. With not even one foot out of the exit we were pounced upon by 20 eager drivers, all vying for the chance to be the lucky chosen one! It didn't take long for the crowd to disperse when i said we'd only take a taxi with a meter. Another chance to rip off the un suspecting tourist going to waste! Its a shame we couldn't be as clever throughout the holiday though as we would end up getting ripped off on a near daily basis!
Driving to the hotel was an adventure in itself. With 4 million bikes alone in HCMC, we were amazed we got there without killing 2-3 people along the way. Cars definitely have right of way here, using their horn's frequently to make their presence known. I was impressed by the skills of the motorbike riders weaving in and out of the cars like snakes moving along the ground
Ah the luxury of legroom!
. There must be a few bad riders though as we were later to find out 30 people a day die on these roads!One thing i noticed whilst driving to the hotel was a long, thin park by the side of a road. Not that this was unusual, but it looked like this was the place young couples would ride to to 'enjoy' each others company. We would have seen about 50 couples parked up, both sitting on the bike' seat playing tonsil tennis! I take it privacy wasn't a problem!
The hotel wasn't anything special, but it was clean, cheap, and had a full mini bar, which doesn't hurt its cause!
Not really wanting to stay in we headed out to explore. It was here that we really experienced the madness of the motorbikes. They are every where. Just crossing the road from our hotel took us 10 minutes, whilst we patiently waited at the zebra crossing for someone to stop. We quickly realised this wasn't going to happen so stepped out into the road taking our life into our hands. We later read that this is the way to do it. Pick a spot the other side of the road, step out, keep walking and the bikes will go round you. All well and good, but when you have 100 bikes riding straight towards you, its easier said than done
Inside a cool temple
. A bit further down the road i managed to cross but Jo got left behind. Whilst waiting for her to get the courage up, a women (with an Adam's apple - you work it out) approached on a bike and offered a '1hr massage,' beckoning me to jump on the back of the bike with her. I tried to explain Jo was over the other side of the road, but it fell on deaf ears. A Vietnamese bloke came to my rescue telling her i had a girlfriend on the other side of the road. She quickly rode off with an embarrassed look on her face!
It was whilst walking around we noticed Vietnam's obsession with Christmas. Coming from Australia, where you wouldn't even know its Christmas, to a country that has decorations up in every shop, was a bit of a shock, the sound of Jingle Bells pumping out loud on their stereos. We found out this is because Christmas only started being celebrated 20 years ago. With more and more Vietnamese turning to Christianity, it gets bigger each year.
We called it a night at around 1am after eating at a random restaurant. Telling them to bring out what ever they recommended, Jo had a little shock to see the shrimps in the tank next to her she had just been admiring, been fished out for her dinner
One of the gods
. Well it doesn't get fresher than that! Day 2
The following morning we ventured out to explore the city in the daylight. Although we had arrived in their winter, it was still a very humid 30 degrees. First on the agenda was to get myself a haircut. Walking along the side of a road, we got asked, which we would be asked a lot over here, "ello, where you from?". An old man had pulled alongside us on his bike and followed at snail pace whilst we walked down the road. After getting the formality's over with he started with the big sell, telling us of his amazing bike tour around the city. We used the excuses - "there was 2 us and only one bike" and "I need a haircut" but he just said he'll get a friend to ride another bike, and then dragged us along to hairdresser! In no time, without realising, we had agreed to a full day tour of the city!
Walking into the hairdresser, it was a relief to discover it was a relatively new shop, and not a street-side cutter. The look of amazement on their faces when 2 white people walked in was a picture. The first thing we noticed, as we noticed throughout the country, was that for a relatively small shop, there was so many people working there. It was like for every hairdresser in the shop, there would be 2 assistants, another to sweep the hair as it fell and another to make the drinks!
Seeing it was 'a white man' who needed his haircut (who obviously had a lot of money) the head stylist was quickly summoned and i was escorted to my chair
More gods!
. With 2 juniors at his side watching intently he began. Now although the guy tried his hardest, the extent of his English was "David Beckham" and "very cool", so even though i tried to explain i wanted a little off the sides and to thin it out a bit, i succumbed to a 'very cool David Beckham' look!To be honest it wasn't the worst haircut i'd ever had, but i did walk out with a a massive duck peak, (if you can imagine what that looks like) and had to get the scissors to sort it out myself later. Having my hair washed after was an experience though. I didn't realise the inside of my ears and also my eyes were so dirty as she rubbed away on them like nobody's business! I felt a little violated to say the least!
Leaving the hairdresser's, we were stupid to think our friend from earlier would have got bored waiting... we were wrong; there he was, with his promised friend, waiting to take us around. It was hard to say no, so with much trepidation we jumped on a bike each and were on our way.
Now here was our first problem, we didn't agree a price. Now i tried to tell him we would only pay 100,000 Dong each (about 7AUD/ 2.5GBP) for the day (what the guidebook recommended) but he just nodded and said don't worry, we have him all day - we are the boss
More gods!
. Now apparently this isn't a water tight contract! Something we would find out, to our peril later on in the day.To be fair i had a great time on the bikes, we rode around the city, dodging other bikes and cars, stopping at various temples and the War Remnants Museum along the way, but Jo on the other hand hated it. Mentally scarred from a bike accident in Thailand a few years back, i'm surprised she agreed to it in the first place, but after a few near misses that day, she had enough and decided to call it a day. Refusing to go any further we agreed to finish the tour with the drivers, much to their disgust. It was now they decided to tell us we owed them 700,000 Dong each for their services - all 2 hours of it!.
Now if any of you know Ho Chi Ming City well, we were stranded in District 11, miles from our hotel with 2 drivers screaming at us to pay them their money. A bit difficult when we only had about 350,000 Dong and $5AUD on us. After much deliberating we told them this was all they were getting, and legged it into another temple to find out where we were.
It was our first day, We had been truly done over by 2 riders, we were penniless and completely lost
Inside a cool restaurant we found.
. What a welcome to Vietnam!After trying in vain with many people, we finally found someone that could string 2 words of English together and show us on our tourist map, where we actually were! Unfortunately we were a long way from home, and with no money, we had no choice but to walk back in the mid day heat!
About an hour and a half later we finally made it back to our hotel, swearing to ourselves we would never be ripped off again!
Day 3
Sitting in the café below our hotel the following morning, we looked out to the street in astonishment. For some reason, every bike rider was now wearing a helmet. Thinking it must be a weekend thing, we were to find out that this day was the start of a new law making it a legal requirement to wear one. We couldn't believe that in the space of 12 hours, it can go from one extreme - no one wearing a helmet, to the other - everyone wearing one. With 4 million bikes on the road, there would be some rich helmet sellers out there!
We spent the rest of the day on foot, taking in all the usual tourist sights
All the food is cooked outside
. Ho Chi Ming City Museum - which we were to find out was a very popular place to have wedding photographs done (we counted 6 in the hour we were there) and Reunification Palace - bit like Vietnam's Buckingham Palace, famous for having a tank driven through its gates at the end of the war. After getting lost a few times we stumbled on a huge market. Among one of the weird and wonderful sights here was a women cutting the legs of live frogs with a pair of kitchen scissors, before finally cutting its throat - surely the humane way would be top cut its throat first?!We couldn't hang about in HCMC for ever though, we had a lot more of the country to see and only 18 days left to do it, so with internal flights booked, we made our way to the airport to fly up to Hanoi.
