David's Big Adventure in China

I arrived in Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) on Friday, February 1 after flying from Kunming to Hong Kong then on to Saigon. In Hong Kong they didn’t want me to get on the plane since I didn’t have a return ticket. They tried to make me buy a return ticket which would be refundable (minus a service fee of course). I showed them my documents that I would be traveling to Hanoi and then return to China by bus from there. I finally got them to relent but only if I agreed to sign a document taking responsibility if they would not allow me entry into the country. Then when I arrived and tried to go through immigration they said my visa was invalid since it was in an expired passport (I got a new passport after I got my visa so the visa was in the old one). So I had to go to a different window and get a new visa for which they charged me $10 (the amount seemed to be arbitrarily determined). I had booked a 2 week tour with Intrepid Travel and they call it their “Basic” level tour which means the price includes hotels, a guide and transportation and that’s about it. Everything else is a la carte and the hotels (with room sharing) and transport are basic economy. Our group included 6 guys and 8 ladies, 7 Australians, 5 Brits, 1 Canadian and me. All but 3 were young 20’s with the rest of us being in our 50’s or 60’s. I’m amazed that so many young people find a way to have the time and money to travel like this and most of them were traveling for 60 to 120 days.

I have found the Vietnamese people to be a bit kinder and gentler than the Chinese. I have seen a lot less begging and aggressive selling here. I have been amazed at how many foreign tourists there are here. The only western food chain I have seen is KFC but there is western food everywhere. The roads aren’t very good, even the main north south roads. The main form of transport here is the motorbike and you can see entire families on them. I haven’t seen too many local buses (lots of tourist buses though) or trucks for delivering goods. The infrastructure in general seems to be in need of much improvement. There is trash and pollution most everywhere and I saw many people washing their clothes in the river with water that doesn’t look very clean to me. The currency in Viet Nam is called dong and the conversion rate is about 15,500 to $1 so when I exchanged $100 I became an instant millionaire there. About the lowest price you see for anything is 1000 dong. U.S. dollars are happily accepted everywhere.

On Saturday we went to visit the Cu Chi tunnels about a 90 minute drive from central Saigon. These tunnels were used quite effectively against the Americans during the war. They started building them in the 1940’s during the war with France and when completed over 20 years later consisted of over 120 miles of tunnels and included rooms for living, meetings, etc. The tunnel portions were only about 3 feet tall and were quite a challenge to walk through (see pic). The presentation talked with pride about some of the soldiers’ skill in killing Americans and how many they had killed. They apparently were quite adept at gathering unexploded bombs and using them against the Americans. They also displayed several kinds of traps that soldiers would fall into and be killed if not careful. The Vietnamese people remember the war for its devastation to their country but it is just one of many wars they have experienced including a war with China after the war with America. Later in the day we took a Mekong River tour starting on a good sized motorboat then switching later to small canoes (see pics). Then we visited a coconut candy factory which would never pass western food safety criteria with the dog running around and the 10 year old girl working on the wrapping (she was on school break). The factory was an open air factory. The cost of this 7 hour long tour which included a nice lunch was $25. Sunday we got on the bus for a long ride to Nha Trang. On Monday we took a boat trip to a small village and we used “basket boats” (see pic) to ferry us to shore. Tuesday was for relaxing with most of the day spent under an umbrella at the beach reading a book and studying my Chinese. Tuesday late afternoon we boarded a bus for an overnight ride to Hoi An. It was not a sleeper bus so it was a long ride with fitful sleep.

After our early morning arrival in Hoi An we spent some time exploring the old town and some of the group had some clothes tailored as it is quite cheap here. While walking around the city I ran into one of the other teachers at my school……quite a coincidence! In the evening we had a New Year’s Eve (Chinese New Year which is also celebrated here in a big way and called Tet) banquet at a restaurant by the river which consisted of barbequed fish, squid, shrimp, beef, pork and assorted vegetables. Later some of us went to watch the singing and dancing performances and then the fireworks. Thursday we went to visit My Son (Cham towers which was the center of a local kingdom with buildings built from the 9th to the 13th centuries using a construction method that is still not understood today. This area was mostly destroyed by U.S. bombs during the war. On Friday I rented a bicycle ($1.30 for all day) and rode to the beach and then around the surrounding countryside. On Saturday we took a bus to Hue and went through Da Nang on the way and could see an old U.S. army base not far off the road. That evening we enjoyed a nice dinner with some local musicians providing the atmosphere.

On Sunday we jumped on the back of motorbikes for a tour that lasted about 7 hours and cost $10 excluding lunch. We visited a small local market in the countryside, the Royal Tombs for the Emperors that lived here, a temple, and had a nice vegetarian lunch at a nunnery. We also visited a stadium where they used to train elephants to fight in war by pitting them against tigers (see pic). In the evening we went to a restaurant for a “Royal Dinner” where we dressed in royal garb, were entertained by a 6 piece band in a private room and had a delicious dinner for $11 to $14 depending on how much you had to drink. On Monday morning I visited the Citadel which is where the Kings from the Nguyen dynasty lived until the French took over in the 1940’s. It is similar to the Forbidden City in Beijing in size and scope but it was mostly destroyed in the American war and has not been very well maintained or restored.

We arrived in Hanoi early morning Tuesday after an all night train ride. We had sleeper cabins so it wasn’t too bad although the train was not as nice as the trains in China. Our first site to visit was the Ho Chi Minh museum where we saw his body carefully preserved and very well protected by the many guards. It would be impossible to tell if that was really his body or a wax figure since it has been preserved since 1969. The Vietnamese people really love and revere him. In the afternoon we went to a minority culture museum to view displays on many of the roughly 56 minorities that live in Viet Nam. In the evening we went to a water puppet show that was very entertaining. Wednesday and Thursday were spent in and around Halong Bay/Cat Ba Island and getting back and forth to Hanoi. The bay has many small mountains (karst formations) that pop up out of the bay making for some great scenery. It was cold and gray and out of season when we were there so it was pretty quiet. While there I saw a couple of big caves one of which served as a hospital during wartime. I also did a strenuous hike to one of the mountain tops.

On Friday morning I boarded a bus back to China. It took less than 4 hours to get to the border with most of the road being 2 lanes and in need of some repair. The immigration building on the Viet Nam side was old and small. When I walked over to the China side the immigration building was new and large and very nice. I then boarded a bus that was much nicer than the bus from Hanoi and rode 3 hours on a nice 4 lane road with little traffic to Nanning. I spent a few days relaxing in Nanning before taking an overnight train back to Kunming. I’m now back in Kunming for a few days before going to visit some places here in Yunnan Province.