It's another fairly long bus journey from Phnom Penn to Ho Chi Min City, our first stop on our exploration of Vietnam. On arrival, we're immediately scammed by a taxi driver. I try to be stoic and get over it, but as I write this weeks after the fact, I'm still pissed as hell. Like in Phnom Penn, our hostel is on the main backpacker street, but with fewer prostitutes. On our first full day we go into town and go on a free walking tour. This is not like free walking tours in Australia and Europe - these are run by students trying to improve their English and as a result do not expect a tip from you. We are taken around the sprawling metropolis of Ho Chi Min city, which is much more developed than Cambodian cities, not to mention a lot easier to walk around. We are taken to the central government building, the Notre-Dame cathedral, the Opera house and the post office. Most of these are examples of French colonial architecture, and are very pretty. On the tour we meet Brendon and Annalisa, a couple from Edinburgh. They've also just come from Cambodia, so we swap a few stories along the way. The tour ends at the War Remnants Museum. This is a particular sombre collection of photographs and artifacts from the war, chronicling it's history. Outside are American tanks and choppers captured during that time. Some of the wording inside the museum has been described as 'one sided' but I guess it's understandable when a foreign country deploys over 100,000 troops and drops 4.6 million tonnes of bombs in your country, whatever the reason.
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| City Hall |
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| Notre-Dame Cathedral |
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| American Chopper |
After the tour, we all decide to go find some lunch. We eventually wonder close to our hostels, which is where a large street food market is. I have a fried rice pancake with pork and shrimp, and a bit of chicken as well. We agree to all meet for dinner. When we return to the hostel to cool off, however, the rain begins. The rain turns into a storm. We watch the storm with our roommate Mat like little kids out of the window, and watch the road get wetter and wetter. The power on the street goes out. We play a round of the card game Monopoly Go. We get very hungry. We go downstairs and now the street is flooded, with the water about a foot deep. The staff at the hostel are eating takeaway, so brave the storm and wade out to the same takeaway a few dwellings down. They are, understandably, inundated with orders. "Now all we need is some beer", I joke, but Mat takes this seriously and goes out on a beer run. With the water rising, we fear we might not see him again. Luckily, he does return and, accompanied by more guests of the hostel, we play another round of Monopoly Go. When the lights turn back on it's somehow less fun, but it was still a pretty awesome experience.
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| Bright lights, wet city |
The following morning we decide to check out the Ho Chi Min City Museum. This is just O.K, the most interesting bit is the history of the struggle for Independence against the French colonists in 1945. We fly out in the evening to Nha Trang, which is a beach resort. It rains the whole time so we don't really do much and decide to leave a day earlier than planned. We spend our one day trying to find a pagoda with a giant Buddha statue. It takes us a long while, but eventually we get there, have an explore and I climb to the top.
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| The buddha and the bastard |
It's from Nha Trang we get our first experience with the sleeper bus. As I understand it this is a staple of low-budget travel around Asia and I'm quite excited. To some, spending 10 hours on a reclining seat on a bus might sound like hell but to be honest, I was fairly indifferent to it. The worst part was I opted to wear long trousers and so got super hot, which affected my sleep, but apart from that it was fine. We were lucky enough on this outing to get the backseats which allow us to spread out a little (although, I imagine these are the worst seats during high season as you would be cwtched up next to total strangers.) As we roll into Hoi An, Heidi spots our hostel - it's a 2 minute walk from where the bus stops.
Hoi an is a very beautiful spot to walk around. The old town consists of French Colonial buildings and have been kept pristine. At night the streets are lit up with an array of multi-coloured lanterns and smaller ones which have been put to float out onto the river. Boat trips are so popular the river looks crowded and therefore uninviting, so we just wander around the markets and soak up the atmosphere.
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| Hoi an by night |
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| Pretty lights |
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| Pretty people |
We opt for a half-day trip to the nearby My Son ruins. Our guide takes us round the ancient ruins, which are similar in structure to Angkor Wat in that the materials seem to be planted on top of each other with no adhesive. "How did they build it?" our tour guide asks, "...no-one knows!" The ruins are quite amazing, though have seen their share of damage. Heads from some statues were removed by some French Colonialists, and it was bombed during the Vietnam war due to the site being used as a Vietcong hideout. There are still large craters here from these bombings.
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| My Son ruins |
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| Bomb crater |
Hoi An to Hue is only 4 hours by bus, a doddle compared to our recent transport adventures. It's on a sleeper bus, and we head straight to the back once again. We're getting more and more organised as we go with this trip, and so the first thing we do is book our bus out of Hue. Then we head over to a massage parlour to receive a massage by a blind person. That's right, this is a set-up which gives blind people the opportunity to train and work as masseuses. The massage is an hour long and is fairly intense (not to mention hard to explain in words" I feel noticeably "lighter" afterwards. The next day we go 'tomb raiding'. Hue used to be the capital back way back when, and as such a number of ancient kings are buried nearby in elaborate tombs. We have a tour that takes us to the three main tombs, as well as a few other stops. These are all beautiful in their own way, and I decide a tomb is something I will need in the future.
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| Getting some inspiration |
In the afternoon we visit a rather lacklustre garden house and another pagoda before heading back to the centre via dragon boat. The boat is cool, but the afternoon doesn't quite match the morning. The next day we plan to go to the citadel, but it pours down and we decide it would be pretty miserable so we holeout in a cafe.
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| Dragon boat |
Next time: Hanoi and Luang Prabang!
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