We’re leaving on a jet plane…….

10 March 2007

Ho Chi Minh City is commonly referred to as Saigon (its former name) by both locals and tourists alike. In 1975 the former capital of the Southern republic was named after Ho Chi Minh. Ho Chi Minh, or ‘Uncle Ho’ as the Vietnamese affectionally call him is recognised throughout Vietnam as the founder of Vietnamese communism and the central figure who fought to free Vietnam from the shackles of colonialism.

The Vietnamese are very proud of Uncle Ho and his plight against the french colonists, and later against the US army. It is for this reason that Ho Chi Minh’s face can be seen all across Vietnam; be it replicated in a statue or on the face of a wall clock or calendar.

If we were asked to sum up the City in one word it would have to be….motorbikes! They are everywhere. It is estimated that one in every 6 of the population of Vietnam owns a motorbike. I recall we said we had seen some peculiar things on the back of a motornike in Cambodia but in HCMC we saw some guy on the back of his mates bike holding a sheet of glas that was about 3m by 2m! How on earth the glass reached its destination intact is beyond both Chris and I.

Crossing the road is a skill one quickly learns in HCMC. The skill is broadly base on a leap of faith! You start crossing and don’t stop or go backwards …you simply keep moving slowly but with obvious steps in the same direction and by some miracle each and every moped/ motorbike/cyclo/ and the occasional bus manages to steer around you, albeit sometimes leaving a fraction of a hairs breadth space of air between you and the vehicle.

Whilst in HCMC we headed straight to the ‘War Remnants Museum’ which until recently had been called “The American and Chinese War Crimes Memorial”. We can only imagine the name change is due to the number of western tourist now visiting the museum or who knows maybe a mark of forgiveness?

The tone of the museum is very much from the Vietnamese communist viewpoint. In short the Vietnamese felt the US had no right to intereferin the country’s internal affairs! The museum is graphic…at times stomach-wrenchingly graphic with the exhibits holding no punches as to the effect of Agent Orange, Napalm or the atrocities that were inflicted on the Vietnamese people be it women, children, old or young! The museum is silent not by order but simply from visitors respect. Whilst making our way around the museum I saw many a people wiping tears from their eyes as the museum brought home the reality of war (incidently the US never actually declared war on Vietnam!).

The museum is split into different sections and includes models of the tiger cages that prisoners were kept in and a guillotine that was used along with graphic details of method of torture. The museum also houses a section in memory to photographers who bravely ventured to the frontline to bring the rest of the world footage of the war and in many cases ended up losing their lives in the process.

Also on our agenda whilst in HCMC was the reunification palace. Built in the 1960’s the reunification palace was invaded in 1975 by communist tanks (supplied by China and Russia) which crashed down the palace gates before the men entered the palace to raise a Viet Cong flag from the top of the building.

We took a tour of the palace where parliament meet every Wednesday and were able to visit the ‘receiving rooms’, the cinema, the casino and the tunnels underneath the building that were built to withstand bombing. All the room are preserved in the 1970’s style of the time of the reunification.

The rest of our time in HCMC was spent doing some of the things we love best ….eating, drinking and shopping! Having pretty much abstained from shopping for nearly 2 years now (whilst saving for this trip and whilst travelling….OK 2 years may be slightly stretching the truth!) we have finally decided it is time to buy a few souvenirs as we can just about put up with having to carry the new purchases for the remainder of the trip. So we headed to the Ben Thanh market which sells lots of touristy type souvenirs and spent a very happy couple of hours browsing and picking up the odd purchase! After someone tried to pick-pocket Chris (unsucessfully) we decided we had had our fill and headed to Pho 2000.

Pho 2000 sells the best Pho we have sampled so far. Pho is a Vietnamese speciality dish which is a noodle broth made from chilli, lemongrass, ginger, basil etc etc not disimmilar to a ramen dish at Wagamammas back home. The Pho was so good we even managed to squeeze a second visit in duringour short stay in HCMC.

Postscript: Mum and Jane: We are currently compiling a wish list of our favourite and much missed foods for when we return -the list will be winging itself to you very shortly to allow sufficient preparation time for our return 😉

9th March 2007

We returned to Phnom Penh for our final night in Cambodia and checked into a hostel on the edge of Boeng Kok lake. The hostel bar had a rickety wooden terrace that stretched out over the lake, providing a great spot to watch our final Cambodian sunset. We enjoyed a cold beer or two whilst comparing bruises from the elephant / truck rides and reflected on what has been a great 16 days in this fantastic country.

We were soon brought back down to earth however, as returning to our room to try to remove some of the layers of dust that we were coated in (Cambodia is the dustiest place on Earth – official), we found we had an uninvited guest! Our room mate was either a big mouse, or a small rat, but either way, after seeing it scamper behind the bed, we decided that the only way we would get any sleep that night was to request a change of rooms, and a skinful of cheap Cambodian beer at Mosquito bar!

So it was with a slightly blurry head that we boarded our bus at 7am the next morning to start our long journey to Vietnam. Having experienced enough of Cambodia’s roads to last a life time, we opted to cross the boarder to Vietnam by boat. Although a longer journey, this option would allow us to spend some time taking in the Mekong delta region of Southern Vietnam, before heading onto Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC), formerly Saigon.

We had a short bus journey to take us to the boat, before cruising at a lazy pace along the scenic Mekong for 3 hours or so to the border. Having arranged our visa in advance, the border itself was very easy to negotiate, with only a 1,000 dong (what a great name for a currency!) additional payment to make, presumably to keep the border officials in cigarettes! At 30,000 dong to the pound (god bless sterling!) this seemed like a reasonable payment for a hassle free passage into the country.

We continued on our journey towards our first Vietnamese destination, Chao Doc. The Mekong river is the life blood of this region, and on our journey we saw lots of fisherman, rice warehouses and floating houses (with attached underwater fish farms). In the fields around the river were hundreds of workers, going about the manually intensive rice cultivation, wearing their distinctive pointy hats (very much like light shades!). We cruised into Chao Doc in the early evening, and spent a relaxing night being greeted by the locals (we had been warned to expect people in Vietnam to be less friendly than Cambodia, but our first impression could not have been better, we felt like Mick ‘crocodile’ Dundee in New York walking down the street with everyone stopping to say hello!).

Next morning, it was another early start as we set off on another long day traveling to HCMC. As we approach the end of our trip we don’t want to waste a minute, so again we combined the journey with some sight seeing action en route. We first headed up Sam mountain in Chao Doc, for a view back across the border to Cambodia and the surrounding paddy fields. Whilst here we also got to visit our 3 billionth pagoda, this time with some interesting Lion statues. After this we headed off down the river in a local canoe, visiting a fish farm (which the locals keep under their floating houses to take the hassle out of fishing) and a ‘minority’ village of Muslim Cham people. We then transferred to a bigger boat for another couple of hours of Mekong cruising, before finally transferring to minibus for the remaining 3 hours to HCMC.

Much to our relief, the roads in Vietnam appear to be light years ahead of Cambodia!

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