Crazy & Wonderful Vietnam

11th to the 25th of June

Weather: has reached 44 and rarely below 30, even at 3am (welcome to the ‘hot season’)

25, 000 Vietnamese Dong to £1: the pound doesn’t go quite a far here but it’s still fairly cheap with rooms around £8 and beers £1


11th June: Phnom Penh to Ho Chi Mihn
Early rise for the 7.30am bus but it’s an easy 5 hours (practically just round the corner!) and it means we get in with plenty of time to seek out some decent rooms. Claire and Joel sit together and I sit across with a Vietnamese lady who is travelling with a bag full of bread and an empty bucket. We say hi and then the language barrier limits us to smiles but she’s watching the crazy movie (involving a midget and a drag queen with microphones - apparently hilarious) and I’m more than happy for some quality iPod time. Arrive in Ho Chi Mihn City (Saigon to you and me) and are met with the usual rabble of hostel, tuk tuk and motorbike owners: quick random choice, to escape more than anything, and we’re off through a maze of little backstreet lanes to a surprisingly nice hostel, which is also a family home. Unfortunately, after accepting the price, we’re left to close the door and discover the room stinks of possibly chemicals, which ensures a full laundry service at the next stop but we go with it all the same and venture out to explore.

So… how would I describe Saigon? Well, the first page of the Lonely Planet says South East Asia is loud and wow, they got that right. This place is completely and 100% insane. Nobody drives more than a few metres without using the horn at least twice and there are apparently 6 million motorbikes in this city, I’m estimating that they’re all on the road at the same time too. The best past is that there are no crossings: it seems to go on size – bus, car, motorbike, pushbike and then lowly pedestrian and I’m not even sure which side they drive on because people weave constantly. So crossing is a simple matter of pick a spot, head up and launch yourself into the flow. Don’t stop or swerve, just walk and try not to die. Easy.

Despite our numerous successful road crossings and our ability to find a café and sample the local beers without being guilted into buying more than one fake Chanel wallet (which I actually really like and got at a 1/3 of the starting price), I’m feeling a little bit low. Saigon doesn’t do it for me, it’s complete chaos and although I’m slightly amused that kids use the street as a toilet and this is fine, I’m mostly just a bit disgusted. I think we’ve spent a bit much time inland in this heat and tolerance is shot so we decide to get ourselves an open sleeper bus ticket to take us all the way to Hanoi at the North (£25) and get a bed out of Saigon for the next night.

Feeling a little bit more upbeat, we retreat to the chemical hostel after some Skype time and then at breakfast we meet a funny little Vietnamese guy in a café where we agree to go with 3 of them on a tour of the city. This is conducted on a pushbike with huge wheels and a chair at the front for us and it puts us one step up in the vehicle ranking and is a lot of fun, if not particularly safe. We zip through the traffic to the pier, the Vietnamese version of Notredame on Paris Street, an Art gallery (where Joel gets on TV), the Antique streets, a shopping centre (not sure about this one but it was air conditioned so why not) and the notorious War Crime Museum. It’s actually no longer called that but it should be and it’s completely uncensored, horrific and heartbreaking and full of shamed Americans (there by choice, not in cages or anything). By this point, it’s mid afternoon and about 3 million degrees so we head back and pay our drivers, they all ask for 25% extra but I didn’t have it so it was unlucky for him and let’s face it, a little bit rude.

Next stop is the sleeper bus to the beach and I’ve never been more ready!


12th to the 15th June: Nha Trang
Firstly, sleeper buses are an experience and a half! Basically, first impressions are great - it’s on time and it’s a nice bus with bunk beds instead of seats (bit short but this is ok) but then you add a crazy driver with a horn and a scenic route full of crashed buses along the way. Sort of budget travel for thrill seekers and people who were mislead into thinking the name of the bus meant it involved sleeping. We somehow make it to Nha Trang and crawl into the nearest hotel (I crawl out again the next day after and upgrade myself to a sea view room in a cool place we spotted the night before) and we spend the next few days lazing on the beach (ok, burning), checking out the town and the diving (Joel), relaxing in an amazing hot spring and mud spa and admiring a bar called the Sailing Club, which might actually be the most perfect bar in the world. It has sun loungers under bamboo parasols on white sands, wooden swings at the bar, chill out music all day long, bargain cocktails and a dance floor on the sand for when things kick off at midnight. It makes chemical rooms and sleeper buses seem like a bad dream.


16th to the 19th June: Hoi ‘an
Moved on reluctantly and arrive in Hoi’ an at 7am after a midnight dinner of noodles and possibly road kill and another adventure trip on the night bus before once again, falling into the commissioned hotel outside. We overlook the unfriendly staff and get to settle into the best room after our minor effort of giving the impression we were going elsewhere. Then we head into town to have a banana pancake breakfast with a Canadian called Nick and an American called Troy (other nightbus victims) and we get to meet some of the charismatic locals: Randy, an American, who owns ‘the best bookstore in Vietnam’ and Steve, a Kiwi, who runs ‘the good bastards’ bar. After breakfast and spending lots of money on silk dresses and suits in a nearby tailors (Hoi’an’s specialty) we head off to visit Randy and instead of buying books we just sit for hours, talk nonsense, get a tour of his great house and share a few beers before heading off to watch the second State of Origin game (Aussie Rules Football). We even rounded up some extras en route, convinced them the game was on and headed off to the ‘Good Bastards’ where sarcasm is free and served often. But after half an hour of Animal Planet, not the usual pre-match programming, it becomes clear that the game is on in approximately 2 hours and 7 days and our new recruits leave in the huff. We all stay for a few before hitting the old town to support one of their mates who sings in a bar (sorry, I should say wails in a bar) and that’s about the end of that day!

Day 2 involves much more shopping and fitting sessions of yesterday’s orders and the boys look hilarious and stunning at the same time when the ditch their travelling clothes for tailored suits. But by 2pm, I’m exhausted but Nick and Troy have clearly not had enough punishment and decide on the 17 hour journey to Hanoi - we agree to follow a day later, Joel heads to the beach and Claire and I head to the room. The night is once again spent with the boys at the good bastards and their Vietnamese bar girl ‘knuckle’ who randomly started working there one night and has never left and I’m offered a job and a room if I should come back to Vietnam. We leave the next morning but not before they pick us up for a real market experience – buying meat, eggs, vegetables and breakfast and getting them down from Tourist to Vietnamese prices with plenty of abuse and the occasional smile. There are lots of laughs and we even fit in a 3rd visit to the pub to exchange emails and share a few more cold ones before we set off at 1. I love this town and I think I’ll be back.


20th to the 25th June: Hanoi / Ha Long Bay
Well the night bus surpassed all previous journeys with the comfiest beds and the craziest driver and now we’re in Hanoi. Much like Saigon, the city is dense with the heat and heaving - countless lanes of haphazard traffic fill the roads, stalls and parked bikes fill the pavements, wet markets fill the lanes and the endless calls for ‘taxi?’ and ‘hotel?’ fill your head. It is literally buzzing and I am literally desperate to close a door on it all. Fortunately, the most famous attraction is a tour out of the city to the National Park of Ha Long Bay, 3 hours north and that’s where we’re headed. After visiting a few of the many places eager to book you on what looks suspiciously like the same tour for hugely varied prices, we go with the good old lonely planet and pay $58 for a night on a boat, a night on an island and 3 days of touring the sea. Basically, we’ve paid for all inclusive crap food, decent accommodation provided you can sleep in a sauna and a great group of likeminded travelers with low expectations out for a good laugh. As there are 3 of us, I need to bunk in with another traveler for the twin rooms but am assured it will be a girl and am quite happy, even after our tour guide introduces us at pick up the following morning and his name is Ben.

Day 1 – the boat is superb, authentic, old and wooden with an upper deck for sun bathing, mid deck for eating and the lower deck for sleeping. There is no ladder so climbing on and off is quite literal and the decks are so hot that standing still isn’t an option but it’s an adventure and everyone is in the right frame of mind and smiling. The group consists mainly of couples from all over Europe who met in Japan (turns out one of the Swedish boys recently lived across the road from Claire and Joel in London), an Australian couple, 3 English guys, a Southern Californian guy and me and the day goes beautifully, although it is a little regimented in time, and by 5pm we don some lifejackets, hop off the boat and into some kayaks. And then it gets interesting.

By this point in the trip, we’re meant to be wiser, asking the right questions, inspecting rental equipment and not making assumptions, all pretty basic right? But this tour is all inclusive so when they give you a life jacket, say don’t lose the paddles, help you climb in and then set you off, you just don’t think about the possibility of losing the entire kayak, or at least we didn’t. 10 mins in and we’re racing each other through the sea, 20 mins in and we’re sitting in quite a lot of water, Brandon says something and leans over, I turn around to answer and suddenly we’re under the kayak. 25 mins in and the kayak is 15m down and we’re getting hauled, still laughing at this point, onto a local fishing boat. 30 mins in and Anna, our tour guide, is on a boat beside us and someone is saying something about $700. This is the point where you get the budget care you paid for and no one is laughing now. Anna hasn’t got a clue how to deal with problems and is terrified of me, there’s talk of several hundred dollars or us going down to get it (them) and police and embassies (us). Needless to say, this is exactly why you check and ask. But you live and learn, in the end we paid about £30 each and the agency paid the rest and we laughed a lot, aided by an evening of cheap beers and smuggled vodka on the top deck.

Day 2 and 3 of the tour include a visit to some ‘natural’ caves, which are lit up with fluorescent coloured lights, packed with tourists and involve a ‘natural’ spring that closely resembles a jet of water from a hidden hose. We also visit Monkey Island, which is a white beach and famous for monkeys (no assumptions based on names, pregnant lady island is not full of pregnant ladies) where we swim in the sea and watch everyone get far too close (resulting in blood) to the sleepy male leader, his lead crazy female and the rest of the pack who alternate from cute and timid to tree shaking and screaming and who take breaks from being insane just long enough to steal things. Then we’re back on the boat on our way back to Hanoi.

All in all, the tour was great fun. Budget means budget but we all know that and the rest you put down to experience. We met some great people and have one more night in Vietnam before a 6am rise for our airport goodbye and flights to Kuala Lumpur (me) and Bangkok (Claire and Joel).

And then there was one...