My Travels in Vietnam - Part One

So before I start I guess I should explain that the following blog posts are a summary of my activities abroad in Vietnam travelling with a friend. A lot of what we did is fairly standard amongst travellers but some elements were entirely by accident and were a welcome and exciting deviation from the norm. I’ll try and cover our whole journey with the bits we found useful along the way, keeping it as readable as possible. I hope you enjoy it.
So Why Vietnam?

I REALLY needed a holiday and so I, along with a mate of mine who had just finished his last finance exams, decided to head off somewhere.
My mate in this case was Matt, a long-suffering school friend, and both he and I had previously decided that a fortnight on an anonymous Mediterranean beach sitting alongside sweaty, beery Brits sounded like less fun than going skinny dipping in Llandudno – at Christmas. On this basis two weeks in Magaluf wasn’t really going to cut it. We decided to go somewhere a tad more adventurous.

Together sitting around tables in our local The Queen Adelaide, we hashed together a rough shortlist of potential destinations:

• The Inca Trail
• Windsurfing in Margherita
• Trekking to Everest Base Camp
• Vietnam
Vietnam was finally chosen as a winner; less because of its incredible scenery, relevance to current US foreign policy or the incredible spring rolls on offer but because it was the only trip not to require any physical training beforehand. So with Lonely Planets in hand we organised a very rough schedule and organised visas, plane tickets and all the other dull crap needed to get to Vietnam these days.

The Start
On Friday, 11th September at the very impolite hour of 7:30am I strolled over to Matt’s with my 65 litre Osprey rucksack, drawing the rude glances of commuters as they headed off to their grey jobs in the City. On arrival I proceeded to pack and repack my rucksack all over Matt’s lounge floor, checking nothing had been left and pondering if I was taking too much – as I invariably was.

Rule 1 of the novice’s guide to travelling – If you take nothing but a toothbrush, a towel and bar of soap you’ll probably have over packed. It’s possible to beg, steal and borrow (or even purchase) anything you’ve forgotten or thought about not bringing but decided you should “just in case”. If in doubt, don’t take it.
We zipped through Heathrow and after 16 hours of sleepless flight-time travelling via Hong Kong, Matt and I landed in Ho Chi Minh City (henceforth referred to as Saigon).

Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon)
Upon picking up luggage from the conveyor you’ll very quickly feel the warm clammy air of Saigon surround you in an over-familiar embrace. As the automatic doors of the airport open and close, little clouds of moisture move through the arrivals hall like the heavy breath of a drunk on the tube.

Once out into Saigon proper however it’s far more pleasant. Matt and I were by this stage totally underprepared and had our noses deep in our guidebooks trying to find out both where the sodding hotel was and also how much we should haggle for a taxi.
Our concentration was regularly broken by the daisy chain of cabbies surrounding us. We were evidently the ‘fresh meat’ and they took great pleasure in prodding us and trying to drag our luggage in a variety of directions whilst filling our hands with business cards and leaflets. They bloody love their business cards!

Once we had found the relevant paragraphs in our guides and safe in the knowledge that a ride to central Saigon should cost no more than $10, we began the process of securing a lift. In the act of trying to get ourselves a reasonable fare we learnt the first rule of negotiation: don’t do it in public.
Normally when trying to barter you’ve got a little leverage because the seller’s competitors will drive costs down as they jockey for your money but in this case the taxi drivers seem to have some kind of union operating. Once our first port of call audibly named his price it became ‘the price’ and no one would be taken down below it. Matt and I, having been awake for 30 odd hours by this stage and weary of expending any extra effort did what would become an all too familiar action by the end of the trip, looked at each other muttered, “ah bugger it”, and paid double the recommended price for the journey. An auspicious start!

Luckily Matt had booked an absolute winner of a hotel, which was a little on the pricey side at $40 a night but the perfect place to grab a couple of uninterrupted hours as we lay on our double bed with a wall of pillows down the centre that made the Maginot Line look penetrable (perhaps a bad choice of simile there?).
To be honest the pillows were only deemed necessary after Matt mentioned that when he was in bed with someone he tends to act on habit. Intending to make sure that I wasn’t mistaken for Matt’s girlfriend fortifications were necessary, hence the pillows.

Anyway after a short nap, Matt and I untangled from one another and decided to go for a wander around the backpacker district where we were holed up. I was disappointed. Far from the hedonistic scene I had envisioned with open copulation on the streets and the inane giggling of pre-uni folk off their heads on substances, it was a really pleasant little grid of side streets with little cafés and bars dotted about. Even a few tourist shops selling tat in all its colours and shapes. A little like many of the nice streets just off Soho in London, just with fewer sex shops.
We settled for a quick beer and then headed off into Saigon proper and the thing that struck me first is that every street is a veritable boulevard, with four lane roads the norm and the motorists on each road showing a healthy disrespect for any kind of traffic regulation. Crossing points are widely ignored, as are traffic lights and speed limits. Horns sound out continuously, not in anger or annoyance but because when you’re about to undertake someone or run a red light you need to alert others to it or you’ll die. In amongst all of this chaos is a traffic system that works and one that has remarkably few accidents considering the congestion on the roads.

With traffic refusing to slow or stop for anything or anyone how does anyone cross a road we pondered? Well, this is the beauty, you just start walking. Saigon natives pick a moment when, say, only 17 motorcyclists are bearing down on them and slowly step into the road. Then at a tortoise like crawl they slowly traverse the road. The motorcyclists don’t stop, or even attempt to, but knowing that there’s someone in the road and being able to judge where they’ll be when the bike is within crashing distance allows a last minute swerve around the pedestrian and an interrupted flow of traffic.
Matt and I were unconvinced that we’d survive our first crossing on our own and so chose to walk across using an ancient Vietnamese chap with a zimmer as our human body shield.

That first crossing was one of the most invigorating experiences of my life, as the breeze from passing traffic rushed by me, messing my hair and tickling the back of my throat I felt like a god. That last comment probably says more about my inflated ego than anything else, but it was a wonderful moment to feel that you were taking your life in your own hands. I trust all other visitors feel the same. After that initial rush of adrenaline I had an overwhelming temptation to spend all afternoon crossing back and forth at junctions. We couldn’t however as we had only two days in the city and so we went over to The War Remnants museum.
This place is legendary amongst tourists for its explicit portrayal of the atrocities committed against the Vietnamese by a long list of aggressors that includes the Japanese, Chinese, French and Americans. The photography from the Vietnam War of GIs shooting women and children, dismembered heads and re-countings of incidents is utterly stomach churning. Just in case visitors want to try to contextualise the images as something a long time resolved and now no longer of relevance, the museum has also curated a gallery of Agent Orange victims.

Agent Orange was the deforestation chemical dropped over the Vietnamese jungles to clear the hideouts of Viet Cong troops. It also had the side-effect of producing horrific birth defects. The gallery portrays children with huge tumours, Thalidomide type disabilities and all number of horrific injuries. This is of course in a country with no wealth for drugs and without a national health service. The impact of this one chemical, this one tactic, will be felt for generations, a disgusting and inexcusable legacy of an unnecessary conflict.
And yet, amongst all of this disgust that seemed to eke out of my every pore, waves of cynicism occasionally broke. I still can’t make up in my own mind how I feel about the museum. It undoubtedly raises awareness of the horrific and sickening impact of war, not least through use of the huge arsenal of US planes, tanks and cannons outside in the car park, but it’s also a huge propaganda machine. Either way I’m glad we went, it put into context so much of what we would see over the next 15 days.