After deciding I’d stayed long enough in Phnom Penh, I finally went and got my Vietnamese visa, which was faster and cheaper to get through a travel agent than through the embassy. The way I choose to get to Vietnam was a bus down to the docs and from there a boat across the border to Chau Doc. It was a pleasant cruise down the Mekong, but there seems to be a lot more red tape on the Vietnamese side of the border than on the Cambodian side. I stayed a couple of nights in Chau Doc, an ugly old French town, whose only attraction is a hill dotted with Buddhist temples called Sam Mountain. Later that night I met the pedicab driver who took me there. Telling me that I was his only customer that I day I bought him a drink. He then went on to tell me how he used to work in an office but had to go to be admitted to a mental institute after, from what I could tell, killing one of his co-workers. Thankfully the café closed soon after this and I said goodbye looking behind me to make sure he wasn’t following.

The next day I got the bus to Saigon, or Ho Chi Minh City as the government calls it. It was all going well until we came to the ferry across the Mekong and I decided to get out for some fresh air. When I got off the ferry on the other side I couldn’t find any sign of the bus or any of the people who were on it. I asked around a few official looking people pointing at my ticket and saying HCMC, they all pointed me towards another ferry that was that was about to leave. When I got on the ferry I was still worried, going from one ferry straight onto another seems a bit laborious even for Vietnam. That’s when one of the officials on the boat realized his mistake and called me up to the bridge, when he told me they would take me back in a few minutes and offered me some of his dinner. I was surely going to miss the bus now wherever it was. I was surprised at how calmly I was taking it. Most of my luggage was on the bus, but nothing essential and I still had the ticket with the phone number of the bus company. If the worst came to the worst I was actually looking forward to doing some shopping once I eventually got to Saigon.

When I got back to the correct side of the river, there was still no sign of the bus. I asked a few motto drivers who were hanging around and they indicated that, as I though, it had left already. One of the drivers then said that he could catch up with the bus for an extortionate price, with time being important I agreed to a slightly less extortionate price. He drove as fast as he could, but no faster it seemed than any other motto I had been on. Just as we were about to give up we caught the bus about to pull out of a rest stop. Everybody had a good laugh at my expense, except for the two people who had been sold my seat they just looked worried. I couldn’t understand what they were saying but must have been along the lines of “Must be American”.

Han I finally got to Saigon and checked into a guesthouse I went to look around. Just crossing the road seemed such a hassle, I’ve never seen so many scooters in all my life and coming from all directions. I spent a couple of days going around the sight of Saigon, most of the museums just seemed to be used for communist propaganda. Later I went on a tour of the Caodai Holy See and the Chu-Chi Tunnels, just outside Saigon. The Caodai Temple was interesting, what with Saint Victor Hugo and all, but the Chu-Chi tunnels was just like a circus to me, complete with its own firing range. I was naively hoping to get some history of the American war in the area

After Saigon headed north to the mountainous, agricultural area of Dalat, a town where the French elite used to hang out but now occupied by the communist top brass. I got a motorcycle tour of the surrounding area for a day. My guide was well informed about the sights and was one of the only people I met who was willing to openly criticize the government. He told me that he would occasionally get visits from police officials asking where he had taken tourists and what they had talked about, especially with American tourists.

The next stop on my open bus ticket was Nha Trang but decided to give this a skip as I heard it was just a beach resort town. I spent a few long hours waiting here to catch the next bus onto Hoi An, an old fort town with a heavy French influence and now a UNESO world heritage site. I didn’t find it that interesting and the ticketing system was complicated and over-priced. Comparatively a half-day tour to the near-by Cham temples was interesting and cheap. While I was in Hoi An the weather took a turn for the worse, by the time I left it was cloudy most of the time with the sun only peeking in for a couple of hours a day.

By the time I got north to Hue it was much worse, completely overcast with a damp feeling in the air. The main attraction of the old capitals citadel is a copy of the Forbidden City called the Purple Forbidden City, but very run down and without the Rodger Moore soundtrack. To see the other sights I rented a bicycle rather than go with one of the organized tours, this was I was able to avoid most of the crowds.

I hoped that the weather would pick up by the time I got Hanoi, but when the bus pulled in the touts were hunched against the cold and rain. Once I checked into a guesthouse I went to look around some of the city and immediately bumped into a Canadian couple I had met first in Cambodia. Later on I arranged to meet them by the corpse or Uncle Ho as the Vietnamese affectionately call him. His mausoleum is housed in the middle of a huge museum complex. To get to see Ho Chi Minh, you have to join a long queue of impatient Vietnamese, the little old lady who was shoving me from behind seemed in a particular hurry. I’m sure if the armed guards weren’t there it would have been the usual free for all that I had seen in the rest of Vietnam. After about forty minutes of this we were quickly hustled past the display case, I wanted to say he looked well for his age but don’t think it would have gone down well.

One of the highlights for me in Vietnam has to be the two-day boat trip I took to Halong bay. As the boat approached the rock formations, they slowly emerged form the mist, shooting dramatically out of the ocean. The terrible weather may have actually added to the experience this time. Our first stop was a giant cave where some leaders of the Viet Cong had bravely hidden out from the dreaded oppressive Americans and their puppet South Vietnamese government. Later we stopped at a small island with a temple on a hill. Our options were to either trek up to the temple of go kayaking. Having already seen enough temples to last me a few lifetimes I took the second option. Together with an English guy who lid about being and experienced kayaker, we followed our guides directions through a short cave to emerge in a lake completely surrounded by rock, apart from the cave we had just paddled through.