Uncle Ho's Place
Trip Start
May 01, 2007
1
44
45
Trip End
Apr 29, 2008
Ho Chi Minh City,
Vietnam
Tuesday, March 4, 2008
Getting into Ho Chi Minh City (or, as the mostly non-communist South refers to it, Saigon) was quite the culture shock. HCMC is BIG and bustling. Something like 9 million people live there. They apparently have 4 million scooters in that city alone. The traffic is unbelievable. Walking around is a bit of an art - crossing the street involves forgetting every self-preservation instinct one possesses: you just take a step out into traffic and make eye contact with the drivers - they don't slow down or stop, they just steer around you - a scary thing to experience at first
01 Saigon City Hall
. The people are very enterprising, and are out at all hours, everywhere, trying to sell whatever they can to make a living. The funny thing is, since Vietnam's economy was opened pretty recently, most people are still really bad at sales. We're used to honeyed compliments from Moroccans trying to sell us rugs, but in HCMC you get shouts of "YOU BUY SOMETHING!" from every person running a stall on the side of the road. It was a constant source of amusement.We did a few tours in the area - out to the Cu Chi tunnels and the Cao Dai Holy See was a day trip for us. Cao Dai is a new-ish Vietnamese religion that reveres a whole grab bag of people and gods (Victor Hugo???). We saw their main temple and watched a mass. Cu Chi was our stop after lunch. Cu Chi was an important battleground during the Vietnam war, where NVA built extensive tunnels to attack and defend against American troops. We saw a whole mess of horrid VC booby traps, crawled through a tunnel and fired an AK-47 assault rifle. Good times. Next thing we did was take a 3 day tour through the Mekong Delta, which is the main bread, er, rice basket for Vietnam. The highlight of that trip was visiting a floating market in Can Tho, where farmers on boats laden with produce sell their wares to locals running through in smaller boats.
After the Mekong Delta, we connected to Phu Quoc Island by taking a ferry called the "Superdong"
02 Cao Dai Holy See
. All aboard! Phu Quoc Island is a small bit of paradise, nearly untouched by tourism (for the moment). There really isn't much to do, except enjoy the water and rent a scooter to explore. We spent three days there, but didn't really get up to very much. Jetting around on the scooter was good fun, and we got totally caked in red dust from the roads.We also got stung by jelly fish while swimming in the ocean. Having come from Australia where jelly fish are, at best, horribly painful and disfiguring, and at worst, fatal, we were pretty freaked out. Thankfully, the Vietnamese variety are pretty tame in comparison. The time to visit Phu Quoc is now, as it is apparently slated to be massively developed with big western style hotels. We figure that would totally ruin the authentic experience of eating 25000 dong pho at a road side stand and finding sand in the bottom of it.We made the mistake of booking an open bus tour north from HCMC on the usual tourist route. We got screwed with a really really crappy uncomfortable bus service, but for $30 each, we really couldn't complain. Mui Ne was the first stop, a strip of over priced hotels and restaurants along the beach. We visited a restaurant 3 times (it was great), but between lunch and dinner one day the prices went up by 25%. Nothing like a 9000% yearly inflation rate on food prices to put a dent in the budget. Mui Ne is famous for it's beach - kite surfing is huge there, since the wind is always whipping along the beach
03 Cao Dai Mass
. Dalat was stop number two on our second-rate tour. Dalat is inland and has a pretty high elevation - gave us a nice break from the sweltering temperatures we'd experienced up until then. Dalat is famous for it's "Easy Riders", a group of motorcyclist tour guides. We met Rot (pronounced like "wrote") as he is the nephew of the proprietress of our hotel. An Easy Rider with lots of good reviews to his name, he took us on a really cool day tour of the area - we went to a silk making factory, checked out a beautiful waterfall, saw some traditional farming techniques, and his mom even made us lunch. Anyone thinking of visiting Dalat - you can look Rot up at the Pink House Hotel - you won't be disappointed.
It was around this time that we realized we were quite pressed for time. We had to fly out of Hanoi on the 29th, so had to compress things slightly. Reading up in our book, we figured that Nha Trang was easily skippable, so we spent just one night there, then did an epic overnight bus journey to Hoi An. Hoi An was one of the highlights of our trip to Vietnam. Hoi An is the place to visit to have any item of clothing hand made for you for next to nothing. We visited "Safety Happiness Cloth Shop" and blew a bunch of money. I had two full suits made, and Terri had her wedding dress made as well
04 Very Lady Like
. 24 hour turn around, including fitting, and they can make anything you want (just pick something out of a magazine). Cloth choices run the gamut from cheap junk to beautiful cashmere. We also got custom fitted shoes, and our wedding rings made. Being in Hoi An really made us feel rich - like we could afford anything we wanted - it was a pretty cool experience.Our last stop was Hanoi. We hated the over night bus trip to Hoi An so much that we decided to fly up to Hanoi rather than experience another one. Hanoi was...disappointing...We didn't really see much, just sort of wandered around. Our hotel had mold in the bathroom that was so horrible, had it been worse I'm sure it would have crawled out of the bathroom in the middle of the night, and eaten us. It made us quite ill, which put a damper on things for us there too. The only redeeming quality of Hanoi that we found was the Water Puppet Theater. Water puppetry is an ancient art in Vietnam - think Muppets in a swimming pool and you'll get a good idea of what it was all about.
Vietnam was a great experience. The time to visit is now, since prices are still so low there. Things are changing and expanding at a phenomenal rate, and in a few years, it may not be as charming a destination as it is now.
Next stop: Bangkok, Thailand...stay tuned...
