…a little late since we’re now in Cambodia, but I’ve started so I’ll finish, and then get up to date! Sorry folks….

We decided on to travel south on an Open Bus - the service travels from Hanoi to Saigon, stopping at every tourist destination along the way. You can decide where you want to get off on the way, stay at each stop for as long as you like and simply jump on the next bus when you’re ready to move on. The buses have rows of beds instead of seats so you almost lie flat and in the more modern buses the seats move so you can also sit up. Although unfortunately we didn’t get them on every hop. The buses are not as comfortable as the trains around China by a long shot, but it takes the same amount of time as the trains here, travels the same route, and is about 1/3 of the price.

Hue

First stop about 12 hours after leaving Hanoi was the old walled city of Hue; Vietnam’s capital from 1687 until the French colonised in the 19th Century, and then the site of a lot of bloody action during the Vietnam/America war; captured by the North Vietnamese Army during the Tet Offensive of 1968 and eventually back again by the Americans. The citadel was heavily bombed and although the walls are still standing much of the town and the Forbidden Purple Palace inside was flattened. That said, there was plenty left to see what it must have all looked like in its hay day.

As we’d only given ourselves a couple of days in Hue we decided to take motorcycle taxis the first afternoon to see the main sights in and around the town.  The bikes were almost as cool as the sights themselves!! Tishy made much fun of me giggling and going Wheeee! all the way to each site! Anyway, we saw a church (Notre Dame), from the outside mainly as a service was on a going and we received slightly disapproving looks from the old ladies for just peering in, so wandering round was out; the Purple Pagoda… Pagodas in this country seem to be attached to Buddhist Temples, though I’ve yet to work out why? The Pagoda was pretty, and the Temple behind it lovely; a very green very chilled place. The Temple was incredibly similar in layout, building design, statues present etc to all the ones we saw in China, but somehow had a more lived in and friendly feeling. We both really enjoyed wandering around the buildings and ground for quite a while. Our last visit was the Forbidden Purple City, which again had remarkable similarities to Beijing’s Forbidden City, but again seemed less severe, more green and more friendly. It seemed less about a symbol of power for everyone to kowtow to and more just a wonderful series of buildings and spaces for the Emperor to live in, enjoy and conduct ceremonies from. We both really enjoyed this place too… though the elephants definitely helped the first impression, but not sure they were authentic, or to scale by normal elephantine standards!?!

The other trip we had to do was Vietnamese/American war related. Hue was just south of the dividing line between North and South Vietnam, so the Americans set up bases all along the south side of the Demilitarised Zone.  The Ho Chi Min trail later started from near by once the North Vietnamese army had captured the DMZ.  Travelling down Vietnam - 2nd Instalment; there were clear signs of Agent Orange use (the kill-all-vegetation pesticide that was used to eradicate vast swathes of jungle from the coast line to the Lao border, because the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese army used it for very effect cover to travel under and fight from); Plus there was the opportunity to visit tunnels built by villagers very near the border, which they lived in when the Americans rained down bombs.

There is only one military base left to see; the others just have monuments in their places now. The one we visited had been turned in to a sort of museum with an exhibition telling the story of the base, mostly in pictures, plus a bunker, helicopter, shells etc to look at. Although the telling was completely written by the victors I got an enormous sense of loss on both sides. They were all so young on both sides: American teenagers and illiterate peasants, drafted in to fight.

The thing on the tour that most captured my, and I think everyone else’s, imagination were the tunnels. Each village in the area had their own set  but these are the only ones still standing: As the Americans thought the villagers were helping a Viet Minh(?) base on an island just offshore, all the tunnels in the area were bombed furiously and many collapsed killing all the villagers inside.

The tunnel system we saw was built with tunnels going down very deep, and were lucky in escaping direct hit from the drilling bombs. Off the main tunnels, they were built for extended occupation, were little rooms for each family, a larger area for meetings/schooling/watching films, a wash room, a kitchen, and even a maternity room - apparently 17 babies were born underground here! The tunnels had no supporting beams or floor as you can see, they were just dug out of the pure clay soil. The steps down were very steep and a little slippery, and we were there on a dry day; they must have been horrible in the wet in a panic.

Another thing that made this tour very interesting, was that our tour guide was born south of the border, and his family moved further south as the war progressed (he was 12 years old when the war started). He had a different view point from the official story we’d seen described, not only by the official Vietnamese museums, but also in guide books etc. He was sad and bitter that they had been promised much by the Americans which was never delivered, and so many had died in the process. The more you understand about the war, the more confused the ’sides’ become. The tour was well worth doing.

In general, Hue didn’t really grab me in the same way that Hanoi did. That said, it is a lovely place, I just loved the buzz of Hanoi, and subsequently the simple beauty of Hoi An. Hue is steeped in history and we didn’t really give ourselves enough ‘just wandering’ time which I think it probably deserves. The other 2 towns excited or charmed immediately, whereas I think we needed more time here for it to really get under my skin…

…I’ve not got a chance to write for ages and need to sum up the rest of our tour down Vietnam a rather quicker… so, briefly…

 

Hoi An…

…was just lovely! A beautiful little laid back town on a river. It used to be a bustling port used heavily by the Japanese and has much French influence from colonial days. But the river has since silted up to prohibit large vessels coming up stream, so it has all the wonderful merchants’ houses and other trappings of old wealth, but none of the industry anymore. It reminded me a lot of little French towns on rivers or canals that I’ve visited (what’s the one just up from La Trinite Mum/Dad/Alex?!) and it seems to swallow time from every traveller who passes through: It has a knack of turning ‘travelling through’ to ‘might leave in 3/4 days’, or ‘maybe just a couple more’ with everyone we talked to, and then ourselves!

The reasons for this: Scrumtious food everywhere you try, and many more lovely looking places to eat than you have time to try; lots of lanes full of wonderful wooden buildings and pretty shops containing lots of local art and crafts - lovely to explore or just wander past admiring the colourful displays I wish I could have bought a million paintings and all sorts, I spent too much money here as it was! Tailors making any sort of fitted clothes coming out of your ears (more money spent!); A lovely beach with white sand and palm trees 4 km out of town, so an easy little motorbike ride (we hired one here, so much fun!); and lots of friendly people and festivals happening every couple of days it seems!

We struck lucky with our hotel which also helped. The staff couldn’t have been more friendly and helpful (they even gave us a box of cookies when we left! awww!), and it was a really good place to meet fellow travellers, which we did, lots of them

We mostly relaxed here, I’m not sure where the days went to be honest! The one big trip we did was out to the ancient Cham ruins, My Son (pronounced Me Son). They are in ruins mostly because the Viet Cong used it as a base so it was heavily bombed. It is now a daily job of men with strimmers to keep the jungle from claiming it back! The bike trip was much fun and, as it was 45km out of Hoi An, a real sense of achievement The roads were really pretty but the way out was a little stressful as, even though we were aiming for dawn at My Son, kids were already on their way to school on their bikes. They rode in groups of at least 4 or 5, spreading across the road and paying little attention to the other traffic beeping at them! Most traffic in this country follows the ‘bigger gets right of way’ rule (the might is right) and moves aside, but school kids clearly don’t care about this. So trying to overtake them with a juggernaut beeping behind you and a coach playing chicken overtaking a car in the opposite direction, was about the status quo! With no school kids out and the roads much clearer in general, the way back was lovely and the scenery beautiful.

 

Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City - only called so officially it seems) and the Mekong Delta

We didn’t spend that long in Saigon, due to the amount of time spent in Hoi An really. We did a bit of wandering round and saw most of the main sights: the War Memorial Museum - really upsetting; the Continental Hotel, for anyone who’s read The Quiet American; And more tunnels, this time built but the Viet Cong for their own use, and fascinating. They were tiny for a start, built in to the clay again, but designed for the very short slight people that they were, and deliberately so that Americans would find it hard to get inside. The VC also had lots more measures to ensure the same, including many vicious traps which we were shown. Apparently the US very quickly stopped sending men down and changed to dogs, but many dogs were lost to the tunnels - apparently they made a good food source for the VC! There were 3 levels of tunnels: The first were just bunkers sunk in to the ground, which they used when it was quiet to make ammunition/traps/clothes/shoes etc; the second level, about 6 meters down, were used for communication and linked many different sights, with miles of tunnels underground; the next, at 10 meters, were used for occupation - hundreds of people lived underground most of the time; the last level, at 18 meters, were used for everyone to escape to when they were being bombed, as the tunnelling bombs, grenades/napalm/poisonous gas the Americans put down there would not reach that far. If all this failed and they had to make a proper escape there were tunnels in to the river from just below this level, though this involved diving at high tide. An ingenious system that foiled the Americans for years. There were many ironies to the American’s tactics in trying to attack the tunnels. My favourite was the fact that the napalming only made the tunnels stronger, as the heat it created baked the clay they were made from!

Aside from the sites we found some great evening entertainment in Saigon: A mini cinema (travellers refer to them as "briefcase cinema" as normally involves an ex-pat turning up with a projector in a brief case and a collection of DVDs from Hong Kong of dubious origin) upstairs in a cafe a couple of doors down from our Hotel. There were about 6 rows of sofas for 2/3 with a table in front of each and an isle down the middle so you could be brought popcorn, cake, burgers, anything you wanted really during the film They were showing great silly films all day every day and it was a brilliant place to meet fellow travellers, which we did. Much fun. And if any of you haven’t seen Semi Pro, go get it out now!

Mekong Delta

We had decided to spend a couple of days seeing the Mekong Delta ("the rice field of Vietnam" 80% of rice production comes from here) and then cross into Cambodia and travel to Phnom Penh by boat, and found a tour which did just that, with a lot less hassle we thought, so decided to take it. It turned out to be a great way of meeting a few people, but unfortunately not quite the trip we had expected.

For a start, although these guys had been doing these trips daily for years, they seemed completely inept at explaining where we were going when, answering any of our confused questions, explaining at all logically where our luggage was supposed to be when, or generally deal with fairly basic practicalities! We seemed to be always rushed through a sight or spending ages waiting for the next connection, which never turned up when they said it would; going the most roundabout routes which didn’t seem logical for fitting as much in in a timely manner as possible; and guides would frequently walk off without explanation and expect us to realise we had to follow - how people didn’t get lost I have no idea! We didn’t see things we were told we would and leaflets were incredibly misleadingly written, and direct questions glossed over with the skill of a politician!

That said, we did see a lot of interesting things, it’s just a pity the tour operators put a bit of a sour taste in our mouths.

The floating markets were interesting to see, boats laden with goods surrounded by smaller boats doing their daily shopping. We stopped at one to eat fresh pineapples and drink fresh coconut whilst watching the world go by then took a  small boat trip around in between all the boats.

We saw rice being made into rice-paper and noodles and a rice factory, a couple of local villages and took trips down some of the smaller canals, and just spent a lot of time aboard boats on the vast river taking in the views and life on the river. It was a relaxing few days. One night was spent aboard a boat while it chugged slowly upstream and the sunset was beautiful. This was also the sun setting on our last day in Vietnam, it’s sad to leave as it is a beautiful country. I wish we’d had so much more time here and hope I come back some time.

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 5th, 2008 at 12:22 pm From The Trenches, Vietnam. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.