Vietnam

Thursday 16^th to Sunday 26^th February 2012

Saigon. The name of this city is etched on our teenage years in half remembered bloody newsreels, of a war that it seemed would never end. Then, of course, it did and we all grew up and apparently forgot about it all, until it came to planning this trip. The word Vietnam cropped up and we looked at each other, shook our heads and said “Not sure about going there”. Anyway, we warmed to the idea after many conversations with other travellers along the way and arrived.

Let's get this straight right now: nothing, nothing, nothing prepares you for the traffic in this city. It is a living stream of motorcycles that fills both sides of the road and it never stops moving. Interspersed are some taxis and cars and then, now and again, a bus roars through at speed, the driver's hand on the very loudest of horns at all times. The noise of the motors would deafen anyone but add the horns and you get the picture.

So, crossing the road is where you enter a zen-like state, find a local who looks like they are going to cross, stand slightly behind and upstream to the side of their shoulder and follow closely. Never stop moving for what seems like an age and suddenly you are on the other side of the road. It's the same principle as avoiding dogs when you are driving – don't try and go round them, just keep going steadily and they will avoid you. Anyway, it's a good cardio-vascular work out!

There is a glitzy, thoroughly modern down town area with fine dining, 5 star hotels and gleaming office blocks. Right next to it, and sometimes in-between the blocks, are tiny Chinese warren-like markets. They are filthy dirty and sell all manner of food and goods, overlaid with a pungent and indescribable odour. 

The people are really friendly in these places and welcoming and it is fascinating. Celia bought a beautifully made straw fan for about 30p. Can't begin to tell you how many Vietnam Dong that would be – the money is incomprehensible to us as we have so recently been in Laos and Cambodia and it has all blurred into one, money-wise.

There is a big park in the centre of town and we watched young men playing a form of badminton with a shuttlecock. There are two players on each team and they play within a marked rectangle. There is no net, just a line and instead of rackets they flick the shuttle using the outside of their foot. It is highly athletic, very skilful and fun to watch.

John got his shoes shined in a bar across the road from the park. They took his shoes off and took them away – John looking slightly anxiously after them. They were returned in good nick and very shiny and they definitely needed cleaning. He gave the guy a good tip because they were so dirty!

There are still traditional tri-shaws available for transport but only tourists use them for a tour round. They are all pedalled by older men and you can see that this form of transport is not going to survive long with the advent of the motorcycle as a universal form of transport. Old Saigon, what there is of it, is rapidly fading away.

The only people you see walking here, pretty much, are other tourists, because why walk when you can use your scooter or motorbike for everything? Sometimes you see an old lady bearing a yoke with baskets of dried fish walking between office blocks as traffic swirls round her. The old and the new really collide here, overlaid with the government view of life and how it should be lived and you can see that just gets lip service and no more.

An example of this is the Ho Chi Minh Revolutionary Museum. It is housed in an old French colonial building and was used during the American War as government offices. It is empty of atmosphere and is only maintained in aspic, as are the exhibits, that are very interesting but old and laden with government-speak. 

The most attractive feature is the central curving staircase. Although devoid of decoration or ornament, it is elegant and Saturday morning brought several newly married couples to have their pictures taken, both on the stairs and in the vintage car outside.
 

The staff are listless and slightly scruffy like the building and there is a general air of decay – because no one seems to care. The exhibits have Uncle Ho's radio and other small artefacts from his life plus the story of the struggle for freedom from the 1940s onwards, including some great posters and souvenir publications. Outside there are planes, tanks and helicopters all taken from the Americans and used against them. They are all in the same state they were in when they were put out of use – so it makes interesting viewing.

We came out of the museum and we were very hot as there were no fans inside, and went into the attached, and brand new, coffee bar and restaurant. Here it is all air con, swish seating, latte and ice creams. Young and glamorous Vietnamese are serving equally sophisticated customers and no one in here has visited the museum lately.

One French legacy that is retained is the excellent bread and pastries. Also the coffee is fantastic. The food here is very fresh and clean tasting, mostly using a hot broth and then you add what you like from an array of fresh vegetables and herbs, noodles and meat. This is eaten at any meal, just the ingredients offered change throughout the day. John absolutely loves it, Celia is not so keen “There's something about one of the herbs or spices used that I can't quite take, plus there is a gloopy quality ….....” Celia's attempt to describe her aversion trails off into uncertainty and she orders a simple rice and vegetable dish and is quite happy. Nothing is wasted here and every part of every animal is available on the menu, cooked in any manner of ways. The eateries are noisy and bright – the Vietnamese do not have volume control on their voices.

Every premises and home has a small shrine in the entrance hall, usually lit up, containing a Buddah-like statue and sometimes a goddess of good fortune, incense sticks and small offerings. They have a form of Taoist/Confucian/Buddhist way of life that is unique to Vietnam, but there are also many Roman Catholics here. We went to one of the temples and they are painted with bright colours and demons and gods adorn the walls and the doors are like hobbit house entrances. You can see the Chinese influence is very strong all the centuries after the Chinese left.

We visit the austere and huge Notre Dame cathedral, sitting in it's own space near the Continental Hotel that is too posh for us and anyway the famous Continental Shelf Bar, that was one of the war correspondents watering holes, is no more. 

However the venerable Rex Hotel still has it's equally famous roof top bar and we repair there for our much needed, and now obligatory, cocktail (Mohitos this time). We sit and look at this rapidly changing city and imagine how it must have been in the last days of the South Vietnamese government. 
 

Suitably invigorated, we decided to have a further cocktail at the Caravelle Hotel bar as well. Not as characterful and the Mohito was not as good, although less expensive.

Detail of the Day: Back on the street, walking back to our hotel, we pass a small motorcycle repair shop. There are a couple of bikes being repaired and 5 or 6 men of differing ages sitting around on stools or perching on motorcycles. One young man is sitting on a motorcycle seat that has been placed on the ground. As we pass by he leaned back and toppled over on to the ground. In a UK bike shop this would have been a source of great amusement and endless ribbing. Not here. No one registered any emotion of any kind. Everyone just kept talking as if nothing had happened. The young man got up and sat back on his seat and that was it. It was incredible to us but reading up on Vietnamese society later on, it became clear that not 'losing face' is very, very important. This means not inflicting it on anyone and not having it happen to you either. So this incident just didn't happen. Even John bit his lip, even though at the time he didn't know why he did this, instinctively he knew it would not have been appropriate.

The down side of this approach to life is that when you ask for directions, you will always be given some, even when the person you asked has no knowledge of where you want to go, usually involving vague arm waving in a general direction, but there won't be any “turn left” type of hints.
 

We visited the Saigon Skydeck on the 49^th floor of a brand new tower, soaring 68 floors above the city, giving a fantastic vista in all directions, as nothing comes near it for height. The lift was scary as it only took 35 seconds to reach our floor.

The next day we found our way to the Saigon Railway Tourist Office and bought 2 return tickets for the following day to Phan Thiet, up the coast to the north, to visit a place called Mui Ne.

Monday 20^th February - Up early on to catch the 6.50 train. There are no platforms as such, you just walk across the lines to get to your train. You climb up very steep steps to get on board. It is a broad gauge line and the train is clean and runs on time. Coming out through the city we are struck by how the tracks run through the houses and shacks, because there is no fence and the houses can be reached out and touched from the windows and you can see in to all the dwellings. At each crossing, there are the inevitable swarms of motorcycles waiting to cross.

John went in search of food down the train and found the “buffet car”, where loads of men were playing cards, smoking and drinking. On his way back with cartons of food and tea, he encountered some young Australians who addressed him as 'Sir' and asked him where the smoking carriage was. John made their day by telling them that not only was there a smoking buffet car, it also sold beer and liquor. Their faces lit up and thanked him profusely “Cheers mate”, and set off for a new experience to brighten their journey.

The conductor is gruff but does tell us when to get off around midday. A short taxi ride brings us to Mui Ne and we settle into our modern, well run, and incredibly cheap, hotel, called Thao Ha. We have a swimming pool and restaurant attached – hardly know ourselves.

We cross the road and sit by the South China Sea watching scores of wind surfers and kite surfers as they perform acrobatics for our entertainment. There is a very narrow beach here and the hotels come almost down to the surf. The reason our hotel is so cheap is that it is just across the road from the beach but we don't mind.

This is a very long beach with a long strip of hotels running along a big stretch. There are some resort type places and then small establishments like ours. There are loads of Russians here, who seem very serious about enjoying their holiday.

We pitch up at Joe's Bar and hotel, run by a laid back Canadian who is married to a Vietnamese lady and has been here about 7 years. They have a resident singer and guitarist called Lud, who is from the Philippines and has the sweetest voice and can sing in English, French, Russian, Spanish and German, as well as Vietnamese. It is an open mike and anyone is invited to play and John is the only one to volunteer, so he has a great time entertaining the crowd and they loved him. We returned every night we were there and now it can go on his gig list T-shirt that is gradually building quite an eclectic list of exotic destinations.

We booked a day trip to see the local sights so we were off and out at 7 am. As the earlier the better here because it is so very hot. First, we stopped at a fishing village and enjoyed the sight of gaily painted fishing boats of a design we have not seen before. The locals go out in small coracles to collect fish and shell fish from the boats and then come back to the beach to sort the catch into different baskets for market. The variety is incredible. All manner of small fish destined to be made into fish paste and every type of clams, cockles and many unknown to us.

The beach is crowded but incredibly quiet. There is none of the banter that you associate with markets anywhere else. Everyone is very serious and they talk quietly sitting around sorting into baskets. Making money is a serious business in Vietnam.

Men load fish into enormous baskets that are strapped to each side of small motorcycles that are dwarfed by the baskets. They then set off up the steep concrete slip-way to the top of the beach. An incredible feat of balance and skill. Athough whilst loading up, one of the men slipped up and the fish all fell out of the baskets, but no one laughed. He just re-loaded and set off.

We visited the white sand dunes that have a beautiful lake in the middle of them, then the red dunes later in the morning by which time it was very, very hot. 


Finally we went to the 'Fairy Stream' . You wander ankle deep up a stream that cuts through a weird landscape of water-cut rock, that makes a fascinating landscape. 

There was very little bird life to observe as they eat everything here and so the wildlife is very shy. We passed by a village that was cooking up the fish paste that is used in nearly all the food here and it was incredibly smelly. 
 
By the end of this walk we were so hot it was all we could do to go back to the hotel and sit in the air-con for the afternoon and re-hydrate, while we planned the next part of our trip, making bookings for flights, trains and hotels in southern Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore.

Saturday 25^th February - We caught the lunch time train back to Saigon and arrived early evening and booked into The Pearl Hotel near the airport ready for our flight the next morning to Bangkok.

So Vietnam was a bit of a whistle-stop tour but we got a flavour of a country that we found hard to categorise. The people have a serious demeanour, although they thaw when you engage with them but they are definitely reserved and do not display curiosity about outsiders in any way. It would take a lot of time to get a feel for the place, however it was an interesting trip.

So, it was off to the airport and a flight back to Bangkok and our journey to southern Thailand. We feel very comfortable about going back to Bangkok for a second time, now that we know how to get around and how everything works and feel quite like old hands at this travelling lark.

"Are you the Sheik?"

Farey Stream

White Dunes & Lily Lake

Bad Hat

Cambodia - Siem Reap, Angkor Wat

Thursday 9^th- 16th February, 2012

We left Luang Prabang reluctantly as we had such an amazing time there but the early morning plane to see the temples of Angkor was a pretty tempting prospect.

The first sight of the temple complex is dazzling and beautiful. It's outrageous! How did they build it? Who made the plan? How can this be? Everything is on a ridiculously huge scale. As you approach the stone walkway, that takes you across the moat surrounding the main Angkor Wat, the people look like ants as they walk along it.

When we arrived at this walkway there were two Cambodian bridal parties having their photos taken. They were wearing traditional dress and looked wonderful. They allowed us to take pictures too and were very friendly. The style of dress they had on was reflected in the ancient carved friezes on the walls inside the wat.

Huge stone Naga (hooded cobra statues) sit on the entrance ways and along the balustrades as you approach the wat. Then you look up and see this beautiful temple, enter through the wall and you are in the complex. The pictures are going to mostly have to tell the story of our visit because words cannot convey the visuals.

However, we can describe the feeling you get from Cambodia and it is one of great loss and a certain sadness in the people - for all their wonderful smiles and kindness, there is a dark history that still pervades. For instance, as you drive through the park to reach the site, both sides of the road have areas with danger signs for unexploded ordinance and if you want to see the story of the Khmer Rouge there are museums you can visit. We remember what happened and didn't want to revisit, but if you are young, and don't know what happened here, then go and see.

Siem Reap sits in a vast, incredibly flat, and absolutely boiling hot, plain. The landscape is scrubby and dry. The only hills are the man-made ones that the temples of Angkor sit upon in the massive archaeological site.

The Cambodians have it all completely geared for visitors to the ancient site near to the city. There's a range of hotels to suit every pocket and, as we are Glam-Packers, our hotel sits neatly in the mid range bracket. This gives us a large AC room at the Wooden Angkor Hotel in a road full of similar accommodation. Two roads over is all 5 star and down in town, 10 minutes walk from us, around the area called Pub Street, is the budget end.

Detail of the Day: It is at this point Celia realises that she is travelling with someone called 'Mr John', because Pendlington and Celia are just too difficult to say. So it's “Hello Mr John, how are you Mrs John?”, from now on. Celia also gets called Madam a great deal as well, which she secretly really likes.

The auto-rickshaws here are just the most fun and the most comfortable so far on our trip. It is a motorcycle tri-shaw and is a bit like sitting in a floating armchair. You hire one of these at a set rate for the day and they take you off to the site a few kilometers away, taking you from temple to temple. They also supply you with water and, goodness knows, you need it as the heat is intense and unforgiving. You need a hat, sunscreen and the desire to see it all!

Our first day we decided to visit the museum before the temples so that we had more of a clue what we would be looking at and we were really glad we did. It is well curated, particularly the hall of 1,000 Buddah's that contains the most exquisite statues from every period in history. We came away with a better understanding of the chronology and how the layers of building work happened over centuries. Some temples were Buddhist, then were converted to Hindu temples and then back to Buddhist again over time and you can see how the two belief systems sometimes overlapped.

In the evening we went to Pub Street. It's full of restaurants, road side eateries and bars, pumping out music and noise to add to the busy traffic hum. We ate at Molly Mallone's, run by an Irish girl and joined in the pub quiz, teamed up with a Dane called Lars and came 4^th. No prizes, but it was fun.

The next day we started our visits to the temples at the largest site, Angkor Wat. We rode the autorickshaw through dry brown countryside and then through forest until we reached the main entrance to the complex - a wide bridge over a river with a ballistrade either side made of two armies of stone warriors each holding a gigantic serpent and guarding the approach to a large arch beneath the face of the Bhudda.

Angkor Wat is a vast square complex of temples and colonnades surrounded by a Thames-wide moat and accessed by a long causeway. The colonnades surround the temples and are completely covered in relief friezes depicting the Ramaynana, classic Hindu epic stories. Inside this huge square are the temples, rising higher and higher beyond the eye, reached by very steep, vertiginous steps which are even harder to climb and descend as the day heats ever up.

There seems to be an unending procession of carvings, windows, small colonnades, statues, Buddas, incense, and courtyards . . . and then more levels, until you are lost and mind boggled, and just follow others like you until you stand at the causeway once again, exhausted and satiated, searching for shade and drink.

Nearby (relatively) Angkor Thom is the remains of the ancient city and here you have gigantic structures with four faces of the Buddha facing out. They are serene and magnificent. Inside there are little shrines and some have offerings and also money donations that pilgrims have left, as these are still holy places and you have to be dressed modestly to enter – shoulders covered and no short shorts.  

There are lots of 'staff' around, some of whom are genuine and quite a few who are not and we noticed one of them pretending to pray at a shrine and then looking round to see no one was looking and then taking money out of a contribution basket and pocketing it.

A wall of carved elephants parades into the distance. Each one is different and captured at war, work and play, with and without riders, in battle or ceremonial apparel and all completely fabulous. This was the outer wall to a large wat complex. Inside was a steep climb to the top but the view was rewarding. As you climb you marvel at the engineering skills and artistic brilliance of the creators of these structures.

One of the things that strike you is what John calls “The silence and the hordes”. To explain; the two of us enter a fabulous carved courtyard. It is deserted and silent. We start to explore and get our cameras out. Suddenly, a swirling mass of chattering Japanese, or other, tourists appear, led by a loud and commanding guide giving detailed information. 

 Almost as quickly, they disappear and we are left in peace again. This is a defining part of a visit to Angkor and we rather like it as it gives us endless opportunities for one of our favourite games: observing people, their clothes and behaviour and then inventing lives for them.

Breakfast at our hotel was pretty dismal so we decided to look elsewhere and noticed the Sala Bai just down the road and went in. It is a hotel school where they offer accommodation, funded by a French NGO. They teach all the skills needed for the hotel trade from front of house to cooking, housekeeping and administration. They are open for breakfast and lunch and the food was delicious. We talked with the Communications Director, a French lady of about our age who was working there for two years.

She told us that they have a 6 month selection process to take 20 young underprivileged people, 75% of which are girls. This is because they are the most deprived sector of society here. She said it was wonderful working here because the trainees are so keen to learn and really enjoy and comprehend the opportunity they have being on this 18 month programme.

There are a set of temples about 30 kilometres away and we set off early one morning in our floating armchair. The roads are pretty bad and the car drivers are scary and fast. However, it was a fascinating trip out of the city and into the countryside. The villages are small and all the houses are made of wood on raised platforms, with a ladder up to the one large room that is for sleeping.

The rest of life is pretty much lived outside. We stopped and watched them making palm sugar sweets, boiled up in huge cauldrons, and bought some. It is a delicious fudge. The ovens are made of local earth and not like anything else we have seen.

We reached the temples and they were entirely Hindu in style with intricate carving and unlike anything at Angkor and of course very beautiful. They sit in the jungle and only part of the site has been uncovered. It was fantastic wandering along the tracks shaded by great big trees hung with creepers. Also, the jungle is intricately blended with the buildings and trees grow through them at crazy angles. 

It is unimaginably hot out there and by the time we got back to our hotel we were exhausted and tired from being bumped around in our rickshaw. Later we called James in London and he said it was snowing – can't quite believe it in comparison to here as it is 40 degrees!

It would have been interesting to have seen more of Cambodia but the roads are not good and the heat was just a bit too much, so it was time to move on and catch a flight to Saigon, Vietnam.

* We couldn't fit all the photos in, so here below is a selection of more:

Indistinct Head of Reclining Buddha

Leper King Terrace Carvings

Serpent Carrying Warriors

 Causeway to Jungle Temple