Off the Couch and On the Road

The following morning we flew to Saigon or Ho Chi Minh City. The city with two names. Like I need any more confusion about where I actually am at the moment. Anyway, the flight wasn’t too bad, and after we grabbed lunch (pasta and fries, no MSG for me!) we took a cyclo ride around the city.

Unfortunately, our local guide only wanted to point out the hotels where Brad Pitt has stayed. Yes, I think he’s hot too, but isn’t there an important statue or something around here somewhere?

Saigon is similar to Hanoi in that it’s quite modern, but the traffic is 30 bikes deep instead of 5, which makes crossing the road that much more interesting (the rule of thumb, stare down each bike as it’s about to hit you, walk slowly and don’t stop).

I crashed as soon as our tour was over and slept until morning, where another shit Vietnamese guide took us to the Cu Chi Tunnels built by the Viet Cong during the war. He took us through so fast it was like he was on Vietnamese speed, and a whole bunch of families started following us around which pissed us off because we paid for this guide, and let’s face it, annoying kids are bad enough when you aren’t on holidays. Oh, but we aren’t spoilt.

Near the exit, there is a shooting range where you can shoot an AK-47 into a field, with each tour guide getting a commission from each bullet. Because that’s just what you want to do after hearing about how many people died where we were standing isn’t it, just start shooting away.

“The only people that would do something that insane are the fucking Americans,” someone said, although I am not sure how accurate that was. But very insane, especially hearing gunshots while crawling through black tunnels underground.

That afternoon we visited the War Remnants Museum – which depicted the war and it’s Agent Orange victims generations later in photographs, letters and media coverage.

Some things are truly too horrible to describe, so I won’t even try, but we all came out quiet, slightly shaken and glad our stomachs were empty.

-Sarah

A discovery. My terrible heartburn (which I have never had in my life but has been plaguing me for days) and asthma has been caused by the MSG in all the food we have been eating. Or maybe I am just blaming the Vietnamese for getting sick. But totally plausible, yes?

In any case, in my final day in Hoi An I lazed by the pool, not having the will or energy to do much else. Everybody else went to the beach, I decided the beaches were better at home. I ended up eating lunch down the road from the hotel at a street stall owned by a little Vietnamese woman who used to live in Gymea. She reminised about life in the shire, which I found incrediby amusing, sitting on a plastic stool drinking soup in an alleyway in the middle of Vietnam. She agreed Cronulla was the better beach.

Ater another swim, the British kids came back red-raw (they just get so excited about that sun, don’t they) and we decided to head off to a Vietnamese cooking class in town run by a woman named Vi who pretty much owns half of Hoi An (a tailor owns the other half). It was really interesting to learn all about the spices and greens, and how each dish should contain a range of textures, flavours and colours.

Unfortunately I felt like shit, and obviously looked it, beacause the wait staff made me a lime tea to make me feel better and forced me to eat the lime pieces whole, which actually did make me feel better, and I kind of stumbled home, loaded myself up on drugs (vegetables can only go so far) and slept.

I actually missed out on eating the chargrilled fish in banana leaves that I made in class, but if anyone asks, let’s just say it was a culinary masterpiece, ok?

-Sarah

Because it was a late night (see: previous mention re buckets), it was a late morning, and I didn’t head off to the beach to meet the others until after midday. On arrival, hundreds of tourists and locals were standing along the shoreline watching the sea and boat loads of fisherman hauling nets through the water.

Apparently a few moments earlier three 17-year old Vietnamese girls were pulled under with the current – a westerner managed to grab two of the girls but couldn’t find the other. Everyone kept their eyes peeled and were directing the fisherman as they slowly swept the ocean for any sight of the girl.

It made us all realise how lucky we are to have lifeguards, helicopters and almost immediate access to ambulance and hospitals. But there wasn’t any of those available, and so the fisherman kept trawling. To their credit they kept going for a good two hours before the girls’ body was finally, and unfortunately, dragged onto the beach.

Her body was covered and family and friends gathered around to pay their last respects before she was taken away to be buried (most likely on the family property as they were farmers).

We provided some money to the family and head back to the hotel for a quiet afternoon by the pool before dinner and an early night.

-Sarah

Our final morning was spent at the Forbidden City, which was beautiful but hot and long, and by the time we jumped on the bus to Hoi An we were soaking in our own personal puddles of sweat. Not a good look really. But our hotel had a pool, and we kind of flew past reception and into it pretty much immediately on arrival.

Hoi An is one of the most touristy parts of Vietnam – wtith nothing but beaches and tailors. Not having a need for clothes in this whole unemployed travelling thing, you can guess what was planned for the next two days.

The evening included divine spring rolls, Caprioska cocktails in buckets (buckets people! Buckets!) and a bunch of Irish tourists who loved Home and Away and Alf Stewart. Some things just shouldn’t be exported.

-Sarah

This part of the trip was unofficially called Hue (pronounced Hway) in a day. After an overnight train from Hanoi to Hue, we dumped our stuff at the hotel and hired motorbikes, each with our own personal driver for the day. And can I say how much cooler we looked on our bikes passing all those tourists on their 56 seater coaches. That’s right lads, we have bikes, what do you have? Oh, a bus. Right. That looks like fun.

It was so awesome and probably the busiest day we have had so far – the city is smaller and more suburban and Hanoi, but we rode right out into the countryside and saw rice fields and local villages, visited an amazing woman who has one arm and makes beautiful conical hats with intricate designs you can only see when the hat is held up to the light, and saw the kings tomb and temple.

We were served lunch by monks at a monastery, viewed spectacular mountain scenery, and had a try at making insence sticks from scratch. Which was fun, but my extensive talents obviously don’t extend to insence making, so I didn’t take it with me, mostly for everyone else’s safety.

We saw an old colluseum where elephants and tigers used to fight (The elephant always won. Why did you even ask?) and travelled by boat down the river to a pegoda temple worshipped by monks and nuns in Hue.

By the time we flew home on our bikes with the wind in our hair (sorry, had to add that in, it was too tempting) we were utterly exhausted and yet so elated we had seen such beautiful landscapes and the very best of Hue in a day.

That is, until it came time to tip our driver, and I had no change so had to give him a 80,000 tip. 80,000 man – that’s like 8 beers. Which hurt, it really did. The guy probably went home and enrolled all his kids in tertiary education. But it couldn’t be helped. So it was a quiet night.

-Sarah