Just a few days to go…

It’s all flown by far too quickly.  I now only have two full days left in Vietnam before I begin flying home on Thursday (I won’t actually arrive till Friday morning).  Not much has happened since I last wrote.  We survived our last night train experience largely by being too tired to be concerned about dirt and rodents.  Everyone has been doing their last minute shopping and we’ve had quite a few good byes already.  After about 8pm tonight, I’ll be on my own in Hanoi.  I wouldn’t mind but our hotel is not in a touristy area which means it’s severely lacking in dinner opportunities.  I’m trying to decide if I want to eat at the dodgy place next door which offers local specialties like fried turtle (and more usual things like fried rice) or venture further afield. 

Tomorrow I’ve booked a day tour to another province just to the south of Hanoi.  I’ll get to see some local villages and a few pagodas and caves of varying importance.  Hanoi is not as busy as Saigon, so although I enjoy being able to cross the street most of the time, I do miss their better markets and abundance of restaurants close to the hotel.  I’ll shop for last minute things and wander around again on Wednesday, then it’s nearly home time.

Happy Teacher’s Day!

Hi! Today was our day trip to the Cu Chi tunnels but in Vietnam it was also Teacher’s Day.  All the schools seemed to have displays, balloons and flags on show.  Lots of small children running about in their uniforms or in some very fancy frilly dresses (for the girls). 

The visit to the Cu Chi tunnels was very interesting although it was quite a warm day.  We were able to watch an excellent introductory video about the history of the tunnels. It was entirely from the guerilla fighters point of view which had at least one older American man in the audience muttering under his breath about propaganda.  It explained how the people of Cu Chi were very peaceful but then the crafty American devils came to wage war, many thousands of miles from their own country.  We even saw pictures of a few local heroes who won medals for being outstanding American killer heroes.  The tunnels themselves were very small but the one we crawled through had evidently been made a bit larger for fat westerners, although there were clearly some westerners there who were never going to fit.  It was pitch black in parts of the tunnel and was small enough that we had to crawl along for a while.  The area around the tunnels is very well set up and has a number of displays showing how the guerilla fighters lived, worked, cooked, and tended their injured.

Tomorrow we take a very long (8 or 9 hours) public bus ride to the Central Highlands town of Da Lat. I’m really looking forward to going there, and to being somewhere else as I’ll have been in Saigon a week tomorrow.

Back in Saigon

So I’ve returned from my Mekong Delta boat trip and will be in Saigon for another two nights.  The boat trip was great.  It’s so relaxing being on board and you get a really good look at a different part of Vietnam.  Our group drove to the town of Cai Be which is on the water and from there we took the boat through the delta.  On the way to the homestay we stopped at a few places such as a rice paddy (to get a real close up look), a Cao Dai temple, a rice paper factory (they were making the rice paper used for spring rolls – mmmm), a coconut candy factory (even more yum – candy made with coconut juice and sugar), a popped rice factory (the kind of popped rice from rice cakes), we had lunch at My Kiep’s historic home (lovely old house and garden), we had a sampan ride (we were rowed down some very small channels the other boat couldn’t fit down), we saw the remnants of that day’s floating market, visited a brick factory (nothing like proper manual labour to make you feel incredibly lazy), and lastly before our homestay we visited a river garden (a plant nursery with lots of tropical/local fruits). 

The homestay was not as basic as we had been led to believe by our itinerary.  We stayed on canvas foldout beds on the first floor of house that was very nice and obviously gets a few tour groups for lunches every now and then.  The garden was beautiful and while we waited for dinner time the five of us lazed about in hammocks.  It’s a hard life ; )  Dinner was a multi-course deal whose focal point were the two deliciously prepared local fish but there was also soup, rice, beef, pork, spring rolls and fruit afterwards.  Far more food than we could eat.  Sharon – you’ll be glad to know there was beer.  Tiger brand which I thought was Thai but it was clearly made in Vietnam- so who knows but it went very well with the fish.  No star ratings yet, I need to sample more product.  We all headed off to sleep early because it was a long day, which was just as well because the day starts early in Vietnam.

Today we rose early (very little choice after the rooster and turkeys started making noise), had breakfast at the homestay and went for a walk in the local village.  We had a wander through the market and along the river bank, before rejoining our boat for the trip back to Cai Be.  From Cai Be we returned to Saigon once again.  Tonight we meet the other eight people on the tour and tomorrow we head off to visit the Cu Chi tunnels.

Mekong Delta boat trip

Today we leave for an overnight trip to the Mekong Delta which will include a homestay in a village.  Here’s hoping the the rains there have eased.  Met some of my tour group last night.  Geckos often joins a couple of tours together (it’s sort of modular).  So there are only five people doing the whole 22 days but after our Mekong Delta trip we will return to Saigon and meet up with another eight people who are just doing the Saigon to Hanoi part of the trip.  So for most of the tour there will be thirteen of us.  After we leave Hanoi in the north we will have two more people (making seven total) join us just for the Ha Long Bay and Sapa part of the trip.  The tour group is overwhelmingly Australian and female which is a big change from Imaginative Traveller last year.  We had about fourteen people on that trip from about five or six countries and fairly equally divided between men and women.  I am excited to be seeing some more of Vietnam though.

Beep Beep

So I’ve finally arrived in Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon for those playing at home).  It’s good to back in a country where the constatnt beep beep of car horns isn’t aggressive.  I’ve  already seen a family of five on one motorbike and witnessed my taxi driver cross a lane of traffic consisting of six rows of motorbikes just by beeping and slowing down.

HCMC is full of neon and from the sky it looks better for it.  Sometimes when you fly over cities they have generic white/yellow lights, but here is multicoloured all over.  It’s much more interesting. 

So, it’s 8.30pm here which means it’s 11.30pm in Australia and I’ve been awake since 4am your time.  I’m feeling a bit tired and my eyes are bloodshot and I’m feeling less than fresh, so I’m going to find something to eat and drink (snacks mostly) and then retire to my room.