Sunday, October 1st, Singapore. Baptiste, Erik, Omar, and I got back from Saigon (aka Ho Chi Minh City, HCMC) yesterday afternoon. As promised, I will try to give you a full insight in our week in wonderful Vietnam, day by day. Just before starting this long story, I want to tell you that this trip was one of the best in my life, we enjoyed it so much, and we are all looking forward to returning to this very special country. Hope you enjoy!
Saturday, September 23rd, Day 1Our Tiger Airways flight from Changi airport in S'pore to Ho Chi Minh City was scheduled at 6.40am, so we decided to take the last train to the airport on Friday night, to save about 50 sing$, and wait several hours in the airport. Changi airport is definitely are very comfortable airport with all the facilities you can wish for. However, our flight, being with the budget Tiger Airways, was departing from the budget terminal, meaning of course budget conditions to spend the night. We still managed to set ourselves more or less comfortably on the floor or on the benches, and patiently waited for our check-in time. I just managed to exchange a couple of Euros into Vietnamese Dong, at a pretty bad rate, but just in case we needed any immediately on arrival. 1€ is equivalent to 20,000VND. Tiger Airways is a standard budget airline, safe enough in my opinion, and with just the service you expect, meaning some kind of flying bus. We arrived in HCMC around 7.50am, because strangely enough, Vietnam is one hour behind Singapore, despite being further east. First vision of Vietnam, of course, the airport. HCMC airport was at first sight some kind of old and decrepit airport, which seemed to be just as those you could expect in communist countries in the 80s. Just the time to pass immigration, add a stamp to my passport, collect our luggage, we were immediately thrown into the wild life of Saigon. Because we were 5 with a fair amount of luggage and had plenty time, we decided to take the bus to the centre instead of a taxi (we managed to resist the very pressing local taxi drivers), after having checked that it was possible to get to the hotel we had found on the internet. The bus ride took about 20 minutes, and cost us each 4,000dong (0.2€), instead of the normal 2,000, because of the size of our bags. Still, it was affordable enough. This first striking thing for Westerners like us was the incredible number of motorbikes in the streets. They were simply everywhere. In front, behind, left
, right, on the pavement, moving in all directions, hooting coming from all around us, but everyone seeming to be in control of their movements.
We eventually got off at the stop indicated by the ticket seller on the bus, and walked a couple of meters to find the Yellow House Hotel, located at Bui Vien, 31, District 1, Ho Chi Minh City. We hadn't booked any hotel before arriving, so we could be free to see if liked it or not before choosing. This one seemed to be exactly the type of place we were looking for, had enough free beds, and the streets around busy enough for us, so we settled ourselves in a 5-bedded room, originally for 4 beds, and went for a local breakfast while waiting for the previous people to check out. We walked down the Bui Vien Street and chose a not too hardcore local place for our first Vietnamese meal. Of course, I had to order some spring rolls (or nem or cha gio in viet), and we all had a little sample of Vietnamese cuisine for this first meal. The other guys being tired, we then returned to the hotel, took a shower, they had a little nap, and I thought I might just go for a little walk around the hotel, and buy myself a belt-type purse to keep all my money and passport safely under my pants. Before going out, I met a French-speaking Vietnamese who had spent many years in France, had a chat with him, exchange some more money, and just walked round the block, found the type of purse I was looking for 30,000dong (1.5€), and returned to the hotel. Baptiste having woken up, we went together for another walk, and then when we were all finally operational, we decided to go touring round Saigon. To the advice of the hotel manager, we started off in direction of the "famous" Benh-Tanh Market, about 15 minutes away from our hotel. All along the way, we were offered various bicycle or motorbike taxi services, many books (or photocopies of books) such as Lonely Planet guides, cigarettes, sunglasses, postcards, fans, etc, by street vendors. We then had a little around this big market, each bought our yellow-starred red t-shirt (the Vietnamese flag) for 1 or 2 dollars (most places take indifferently USD or VND), decided to come back to this place at the end of our trip so we wouldn't have to carry around all our souvenirs. Vendors in this market, and especially in the textile part, are probably the most aggressive vendors you can come across, almost suffocating when you walk through the very tight alleys of T-shirts, shirts, jeans, local clothes. Coming out of the market, Andrew, as a perfect tourist, started to show some interest in a lighter offered by a guy in the street, and very rapidly, all the people who had something to sell gathered around him seeing he could be interested. It took us a long 15 mins to get clear of these never giving-up vendors.
Next direction, towards the Saigon River, maybe there would be a nice river walk, but it turned out that the place was not really as we see the river banks in Paris or other places, so not so attractive. Our attention was however drawn to a cross-river ferry landing and loading point, which every so often poured out hundreds of motorbikes and scooters on either side of the river. It was already getting towards the end of the afternoon, so we decided to find a way to call Thang, a Vietnamese whom I had had an email contact with thanks to another Vietnamese guy I met in NTU. We found a street phone (a lady with 3 phones in the street selling phone call minutes), and agreed to meet Thang around 9pm at the hotel. Walking along the streets, Andrew was once again stopped by someone selling something, except that this time, it was a girl or lady (she looked very young but must have been around 20) advertising for massages in a salon nearby. Because of our interest in a massage and two Australian tourists who told us their massages were very good, we told the girl we would go and get some food and
be back in an hour to go enjoy relaxation. We ate a Vietnamese Pho (noodle soup), and returned to this girl who was still waiting for us at the exact same point. She led us to her place, and we chose the 90 minutes long full-body massage with oils and stuff. It was the first time I ever had a "professional" massage, and I can only recommend it to all of you. The massage girl really took care of all decent parts of my body, including my head, walked on my back (which almost made me scream when she made my spine crack), did some type of reflexology in my feet, etc, etc. You simply feel so good after that. I must get another one before I leave Asia.
By the time the massage was finished, it was already past 9 so we had to hurry to get back to the hotel, and decided to use this motorbike taxi to get back. As our first experience in the local traffic, we were a bit scared but in the end, because the traffic is quite slow (rarely over 40 km/h), you do not feel so much in danger. But of course, almost no one wears a helmet when driving, including us as taxi passengers. We each had our driver, and I have a nice video of that ride, I will see if i can find a way to upload it somewhere. When we arrived, Thang was waiting for us, and we decided to go a club called Apocalypse Now (...), we had read about in the Lonely Planet. So the 5 of us, Thang and another German guy I met earlier in the hotel took a "normal" big taxi to this club, and spent the rest of the night there. In Saigon, according to the law, clubs and pubs should all close at midnight, but some special places (in the tourist area) have permission to stay open later, 2am for this club. A very awkward thing about clubs there is that you see policeman inside, checking people do not kiss, have a "decent" behaviour, and in the Apocalypse Now, there must have been at least ten cops. The funniest one had the duty to stand on the stage just above the dancefloor, spending all night just next to the speakers and looking down into the crowded dancefloor. You could clearly see he was also moving in rhythm with the music, and sometimes even singing, when local songs came up. Very funny. It is normally also forbidden to take pictures in the club, but at the end of the night, I got a picture with this guy. Hehe. About girls in the club (and in all the places we saw in Vietnam), it is simply crazy to see how many beautiful girls there are, we were all stunned. They are all so pretty, and they seem to like Westerners, so they really come dancing with you very easily. For a first day in Vietnam, we can say it was exciting.
Sunday, September 24th, Day 2Waking up at a reasonable time, we tasted the breakfast at the hotel, made up of a banana, scrambled eggs, tea, and toasts, pretty standard, but good for starting a new day. Andrew and I had agreed with two girls in the club the previous night to meet in the lobby at 12 to go visiting Saigon. When they got there, the other 3 guys were still sleeping, so we decided to go just the 2 of us with An and Anh (different pronunciation). They had come together on one motorbike, and since they both seemed to be experienced local drivers we rented a second bike for the day, around 8us$, and hoped on the back of both bikes ready for a very long ride around Saigon. We stayed on the bike all day long, and never managed to come out of the city, it must be so big. We saw many different places, but we don't really know what it is we saw. It was simply a more local point of view of Saigon, very interesting. They didn't really know what they wanted to show us so it was just going around without any plan. I like not having any plans. Around 2pm, it started to rain, a kind o
f rain you never experience in Europe, so hard, with enormous drops, but it was still so warm. I don't know how these two girls still managed to drive under this rain. I was sitting behind and could hardly keep my eyes open, but they didn't really seem to be bothered by these conditions, and calmly continued their way through the drenched streets, until we finally stopped in a 100% local food place. I had not even had to finish taking of my poncho bought on the side of the road when it started raining for 3,000dong, when dishes were already arriving at our table. The girls must have said a couple of words to the waiter, wanting to make us try typical stuff. Anyway some kind of rice porridge, boiled duck, and coagulated duck blood (not much taste but with local spices it was very nice) were displayed in front of us and we filled our stomachs before going back to our motorbike trip. Throughout the day, I really realised how big this city was, how busy it was everywhere, and was amazed by the number of mini-shops all over the place. It is very simple to describe: each house or each entrance with a road access is a shop, selling clothes, fruit, mooncakes, motorbikes, repairing motorbikes, music, or anything else you can think of. The only "shop" you won't find is Mcdonalds, because it doesn't exist in Vietnam, but anyway, I hope you won't go there to eat that stuff. Around 5pm, feeling a bit tired of driving, they suggested we went bowling, so bowling we went, had a couple of games (it was around 10US$ for the four of us for two games), and then headed back to our beloved Yellow House Hotel, once again under the pouring rain, but this time it being almost dark. Still, no accident, no feeling of danger, the hundreds of bikes all seeming to move along in chaotic harmony.
Nothing special about that evening, just taking it easy, going to a restaurant for dinner, a couple of beers, and back to bed.
Monday, September 25th, Day 3It was this day we had chosen to do our first real tourist visit: the Cu Chi tunnels, remnants of the Vietnam War, used by the VCs (Vietcong) against the Americans, but also previously against the French colonial power. So we woke up very early at about 7am and left with our guide and fellow travel mates in a minibus. According to himself, the guide served under American commandment during the war as a boat and helicopter driver, but I cannot remember all the details of his speech. He was a very entertaining guide who really seemed to know what he was talking about, and really mean it. On the way, he refreshed our memories on the Vietnam warS, which do not only include the one against the Americans, but also the previous ones against the French and others, and the following one against China, which ended in 1980. He explained us how the Vietnamese population had risen from about 30 million after WWII to 84 million nowadays, and that the government was now encouraging families to limit themselves to 2 children. He also showed us the loud speakers you find in most streets through which the government speaks to its population every morning (Good morning Vietnam), giving them the local news, as other types of information. Going to the tunnels, the bus stopped at a handicapped factory, where people, who didn't seem so handicapped were making decorations painting eggshells. This was the way used by the government to take all the very poor and handicapped people out of the streets of Saigon after the wars so that they wouldn't bother tourists. After this not very interesting stop, we arrived at the Cu Chi tunnels location, where we were firs
t shown a video on how bad Americans were to the brave local population. It is true that after this trip, you can wonder why Americans went to Vietnam in the first place. Anyway we were there to visit, so they showed us how the Vietcong had built three levels of tunnels, one for everyday life (kitchens, factories, dormitories), one for communication, and one for emergency escape, about 10 meters deep underground. The total lengths of the tunnels is over 200km, and they reached right under the nearby American base, because that is the place where they had the least chances of being bombed, very clever people. We then walked around the area, seeing various holes made by B52 bombs, we learned that they Americans, using napalm over the tunnels only made them stronger, because all the ground at that place is clay. We saw all the different type of traps set by the VCs (most of them originally being hunters) in the jungle, you wouldn't want to fall in any of them. We arrived at a shooting range where we could shoot most American original guns and a AK-47 Kalachnikov for 1.6$ per bullet. Andrew, Baptiste and I decided to have a try at the famous AK-47. It really does make a tremendous noise. I wouldn't ever want to be caught in gunfight. Just the sound of the guns would make me run away. Finally, we got to the most important part of the vi
sit, entering the tunnels. The part we went through was 100m long, it was totally dark inside, except for the few electric lights they put in for tourists, and you can only crawl or walk crouching in them. By the time got out, we were totally drenched because it was so hot inside. That was the end of the visit of the Cu Chi tun
nels.
We got back to our hotel in Saigon around 2pm, and wanted to go get some lunch, but it took us at least 1 hour to find a "real" restaurant (as opposed to the little hawkers on the sides of the streets which didn't appeal to all of us), where we ate, again, some fried spring rolls and other Vietnamese soups. We thought about visiting a couple of museums after our meal, but by then, they were already closed (Revolutionary Museum, Reunification Palace), so we just had another walk across the town, went to the Notre-Dame cathedral, visited the central post-office, bought a couple of stamps I didn't use (I hope none of you are expecting post cards from Vietnam), and headed back to the hotel, nothing special about that evening.
Tuesday, September 26th, Day 4, Departure to the Mekong DeltaThe previous day, we had finally discussed the terms of our trip in the Mekong Delta with the little travel agency in our hotel, had agreed on a 3-day travel, spending 2 nights in "homestays". We also thought it would be better to have a private tour to have more flexibility, for a little extra charge. The only thing the manager told us was that we would have an Australian couple as travelmates for the first day, not a big deal. So early that morning, we boarded our Mercedes minibus with the driver, Lee our guide, Kelly and Luke,
the Australians.
First destination, a place with the lovely name My Tho. A quick boat ride to cross one of the numerous parts of the splitting Mekong, and get on an island, which seemed quite well designed only for tourists. We first watched some people hand
-making coconut candy, but a couple of these very sweet delights, then moved towards some kind of fruit bar where ate....fruit. Many types of local fruits (most of which you can also find in Singapore) including pineapple, papaya, rambutan, local bananas, and others which I cannot remember the name, all these served with a cup of tea. While we were enjoying these fruit, two men sat beside our table, one bearing a guitar and the other a local one-stringed kind of violin. They started playing some typical Vietnamese music, and three women sang us some songs. Very nice to listen to but maybe a little too exaggerated. We then moved on in the island to another hut where tasted some more tea with homemade honey and a random local alcohol, took a couple of pictures with some honeybees and a big snake. Then we got into a canoe and cruised along narrow rivers, to finally join again our first boat. It took us around other rivers, all boarded by many banana trees and palm trees and other types of tall plants. For lunch, we stopped on another island, and decided all together to order 2 elephant-ear fish, a very big fish which is said to have an elephant-ear shape when it swims. One of them was fried and t
he other boiled, but both of them were used to make our own fresh rolls with rice paper, spring onion, cucumber, rice noodles, and mint leaves. Delicious. Of course, we had a waiter who spent all the meal with us to show us how to make these rolls, otherwise we would never have managed to do it with our clumsy Westerners' hands.
After having filled all these 7 stomachs, we took the boat again to go back where the minibus had left us, and then moved towards Can Tho, where we going to spend our first homestay night. Can Tho is quite a big city in Southern Vietnam, it has a university, and I'm sure, many other interesting things to see. But we were to take another long boat to go to the actual house for the night, and along the boat trip, we saw all the Vietnamese houses built along the mighty Mekong, people bathing, washing their dishes and clothes in it, and you really feel what is meant by developing country when you see all these houses. Anyway the house where we stayed was a solid one, very big in comparison to the other ones around it, and we went for a short walk along the road just before having dinner. It was at that moment that we first experienced the real hospitality and kindness of the Vietnamese people. All the children were coming out of the houses to waive to us and say hello, the parents were showing the babies how to waive to u
s, one man invited us to have a cup of cold tea, and we took some pictures with a group of lovely kids. The dinner that night was coincidently very similar to the lunch we had, more elephant-ear fish, more rice paper, more rice noodles, but this time we also had some very good tofu and a local beer. Before going to bed, I had a little chat with the owner who showed me a Vietnamese humour magazine, with many jokes about foreigners, which you can recognise with their big noses. I asked him there were any jokes about the government, and he told me no, government is not a good topic of discussion for Vietnamese people. I can understand. Finally, after having sprayed anti-mosquito stuff all over my body, I snuggled into bed, right beside Omar... Most of the night, I watched a firefly which had got inside our mosquito net, and eventually fell asleep.
Wednesday, September 27th, Day 5Originally, the plan was to wake up at 4am to go see the people preparing the floating markets. I remember an alarm clock ringing around that time, and Omar going to turn it off, but I also remember the noise made by the rain at the same time, so we all went back to sleep without a word, knowing we were not going to go out in such conditions. We finally woke between 6 and 7, had breakfast, almost ate ant-filled jam, packed our stuff and took the boat to the floating markets. The floating markets are actually groups of boats, each one selling various kinds of fruit, vegetables. I don't think you will go to these places for the sales, or look for your next TV set there, it's just traditional markets, for locals. I was also wandering what the advantage was of having such a system compared to a normal land market. I forgot to ask the Lee (the guide, remember?), but after having thought about it, maybe it’s because there are very few bridges over the Mekong so it makes it much more difficult and much less cost efficient (business student), or maybe people don't have any ways of transporting their products apart from their boats. I'll ask them next time I go, promise. The boat ride through the floating markets lasted quite a long time, maybe 2 hours, the sun was shining, and to
be honest, most of us were enjoying the sun on the boat and almost sleeping. After that, back to the bus, and we grabbed a quick lunch in a bakery, four or five buns with meat for about 0.5€. I asked the guide if on the way to Long Xuyen and the Tiger Island, where we were going to spend the 2nd night, we could stop by the crocodile farm I heard about. So at the crocodile farm we stopped (advantage of being on a private tour). As you may have already guessed, we saw many crocodiles and baby crocodiles in ponds, just chillin', mouth wide open to let the heat out of their thick bodies, hundreds of them. The point of the farm is I think to get crocodile meat, but I am not totally sure, I never saw any crocodile dishes in restaurants. Andrew, following the steps of his regretted idol Steve Irwin, the crocodile hunter, tried to open a crocodile cage, almost got inside but a sudden movement of the hungry reptiles made him quickly step back out. This short animal break being finished, we hit the road again, stopped in Long Xuyen, took some bicycles, and rode to the ferry "terminal" (embarkation spot would be more correct) under the rain, and took the ferry to the Tiger Island. My memory is not very clear but I think the island is named like that because it has the shape of a tiger's head. There are no actual tigers on the island. The house where we left our stuff for the second night was much smaller than the previous one, only one room for guests, we were all on Indiana Jones type beds (sorry I cannot find a better word to describe them). Afterwards, we went riding around the island on our bikes, saw how life was in very traditional Vietnam, were again saluted by all the children on the sides of the roads (even the ones in houses ten meters away from the road were on their doorstep shouting hello to us with their little voices), stopped at a small "store" where women were making incense for worshipping Buddha, visited a small Pagoda, had a quick explanation on what Buddhism was about, the circle of life and everything. We saw farmers struggling to get an enormous pig into the back of a lorry, the pig making the most terrible noise, bought some freshly picked bananas, passed in front of a school and children came running to the gate to say .... hello (so sweet), and had a fried and boiled tofu break on the side of the road. On our way out we had spotted a volleyball pitch and when
we came back, locals were having a game, and we asked Lee if he could ask them if we could join, and of course, these people being so nice welcomed us into a game with them. Being lousy volleyball players and the locals being very well trained, the game was pretty short, but we had a great time, experiencing local life. We were sweaty and muddy after the game, but the house where we were staying didn't have a real shower (only a water tank from where you could splash some water on yourself), so we found a more interesting and entertaining way of washing: there was a guy washing motorbikes along the road with a high pressure water pipe, so we thought we (Lee) could ask him if we could be borrow it for a couple of minutes to wash our dirty bodies. Naturally the answer was yes (Lee gave him a couple thousand dongs at the end), so there we were, standing in the middle of a street on Tiger Island, showering each other. People it bars around were enjoying the show, and we were also having fun. Finally we went home, changed our clothes had a rest, had dinner (can't remember the food), and went to have a couple games of French billiards with local youths. When we go the place, the four tables were fully occupied by locals, but the manager seemed to chase a group a guys away so we could play. Feeling embarrassed about this situation, we said we could wait, it was no need to kick them out, but them seemed to accepted and smiled to us. So we started playing, not really knowing the rules, and they tried to explain us as they could, none of them speaking Eng
lish. Baptiste and I had a game against 2 locals, but once again, we didn't stand a chance against these guys who could almost be playing at world class level.
Thursday, September 28th, Day 6
In the morning, we had a quick visit of a floating fish farm, crossed the former Vice-Presidents park, and then went back for lunch, took again the ferry to Long Xuyen, and finally headed back towards Ho Chi Minh City, got back to the hotel around 7pm. Sorry, not much to tal
k about that day. Maybe also I am getting tired of writing, skipping the details. The pictures will help you appreciate all this.
Friday, September 29th, Day 7, last whole dayWe had decided to make Friday our shopping day, to get all the souvenirs we had wanted to buy but didn't want to keep during one week. It was time to get presents for all our friends and family for the next 3 years (including birthdays and Christmas) without spending too much. We are such nice people. You are all wondering if you will be among the lucky ones who will receive a lovely present from Vietnam, but I can already tell you that you won't be one of them. I'm sorry. Anyway, to do this shopping we chose to go to the main market in Chinatown (we hadn't been to Chinatown yet), but in the end, it was not really a tourist market, so you could mainly find kitchen utensils, normal clothes, travelling bags, and other football caps. So after this quick shopping and meeting Andrew again who had gone to the TigerAirways office to postpone his return flight to the next Monday, we returned to our hotel and went to the real tourist market, the Benh Tanh market, and each one of us went in his own direction to find the best bargains. On the way home, we took a picture with a lady's carrying stick (you know the traditional Vietnamese thing with 2 buckets on either side) and of course bought some fruit off her (2 kgs actually), we saw some guys playing some sort football with something like a badminton shuttlecock asked one of the guys if he had an extra one, bought it from him, and started playing this game, bear foot on a square in Central Saigon. In order to finish our trip as well as it had started, we returned that night to the same Apocalypse Now club, found the same policemen, encourage the one on the stage to sing and dance, applauded him when he did so, and enjoyed our last night in Saigon.
Saturday, September 30th, final morning
The only interesting fact about this last morning in Vietnam was a big electric whole area around our hotel. When you look at the amount of cables attached to each post,breakdown in the due to the number of people who used to add their own wire to suck up electricity,
you wonder how they will manage to fix the problem. However, while I was walking around the block to buy a couple CDs of Vietnamese music, I saw that the local repairmen didn't seem to mind and you can see how the guy was working in easy conditions. After that, nothing else about Vietnam, that's it, back to not as exciting Singapore, great...
So as may have understood in this trip, we didn't much of the real tourist stuff, no museums, only a couple of small pagodas, no palaces, and so on. The main tourist attraction we attended was the Cu Chi tunnels, and it was worth it. Since we hadn't planned anything specific for the trip, we just wanted to take it easy, enjoy Vietnamese life, local life, have fun, and not do a photo holiday. This kind of holiday is in my opinion, the most interesting type, and we really felt the true hospitality of these people, my only wish now is to return to this fantastic country.
Hope you enjoyed it.
And don't forget, more pictures
here.
