The Chronicles Of…

Shipping out to Nam tomorrow after 4 weeks of boot camp in Tigerland, a viewing of “good morning Vietnam”, and routinely playing “The fortunate Son” by Clearance Clearwater to prepare the mind for combat.

It is exciting yet some what mysterious… I have really no idea what to expect, except heat, rain, traffic, and dissentry…

It’s going to be fun.

WE have no set itinerary, so we’ll make it up as we go. I’m interested in seeing the Viet-cong tunnels (a bit nervous about crawling inside them – a bit claustrophobic…), that’s probably the only thing that I’ve set in my mind to see, the rest will be a suprise!

I’m going to try and do the whole blog thing while we’re away, but I don’t know what the availability of internet will be there, or whether I’ll be bothered to make time for it. We’ll see how we go.

I’ve got the ipod charged up, the tunes all organised, and I’m set.

Fi and I are still practicing the Vietnamese phrase for “Stop. Don’t shoot. Those drugs aren’t mine.” Having some cable ties on the back pack will hopefully stop us from having to use that phrase!

Well here is just a taste of some of the pictures we took in Vietnam…

And these were just in the first 24hrs!!

I’ll get around to putting the others up at some stage.

We’re back in Aus!!

Good flight from HCM City to Sydney. Got 3 1/2 hrs sleep (not bad…).

I must say the weather is slightly cooler here, and Nathan and laura didn’t meet us at the airport in disguises…

Now for the photos, the stories, and of course… back to college tomorrow.

I may even have some more blogs of Vietnam in retrospection, and there’ll definatley be photos in the gallery!

Good to be back.

We flew in from the lovely Hoian this morning, saying farewell to the lovely hotel pool, the beaches, the tailor shops, and more relaxed atmosphere to say hello to the crazy, busy, filthy, HCM City…

Well maybe HCM City’s not that bad, but Hoian is definately the best destination we have had the privilege to spend time at on this holiday. Second would have to be Ha Long bay…

We fly back to Sydney tomorrow night at 10pm and arrive in Sydney 8:30am. I think the jey lag will be a killer. We’re 3 hours behind over here and we’ve been going to bed at midnight, which is really 3am EST Australia.

It’ll be good to get home and tell the stories and show the photos, but really we’ve probably only seen 1% of what this great country has to offer.

I think we’ll be coming back here again, especially if Jetstar keeps the low fares, it’s very do-able.

We went to a cafe for lunch today called Sozo (Greek meaning: salvation, restoration). It’s a cafe run by some Christians to help, train, and equip street kids and people with disabilities to break the cycle of poverty. They train them in skills to setup, run, and sustain their own business.

I think tonight we’re about to go to one of their projects called “the english corner” where westerners meet up with Vietnamese students wanting to practice their English. We’ll see how that goes.

That reminds me, we also went to the Hoian Orphanage for an hour and a half yesterday. We basically just hung out with the kids and played games with them. I was the walking jungle gym for 3 kids with Cerebal Pausy, they dribbled all over me, but we had a ball.

A couple of things I’ve observed about Vietnam traffic…

Firstly, there’s lots and lots of motor bikes in Vietnam… LOTS!

Ho Chi Minh City alone has 4,000,000!

This obviously gives the traffic a very different flavour than that of Sydney.

Imagine if everyone in Sydney rode around on posty bikes… now imagine 90% of Sydney streets were as tight as newtown, and the number of people walking the streets was like that of the Sydney Olympics… That’s a pretty good picture of what it’s kinda like.

This also means that everyone drives slower (most people anyway) because of the crowds. And they don’t cahnge gears like we do…

They change into 4th gear when they’re only travelling at 30kph which sounds terrible for the engine…

I’ve heard there is a 175cc limit for the engine size of motorbikes, though I have seen a couple of 250cc bikes and only one brand new Honda 1000 CBRR street bike in Hanoi – I don’t know where you would use bike like that around here with that kind of horse power!

Secondly, the traffic infrastructure is alot different.

They have traffic lights at different hights – one set down low for motor bikes and one set up high.

They do traffic announcements over loudspeakers that are placed roughly on every corner, because Bikes don’t have radios for trffic reports (very smart, though annoying for public noise).

There is lots of motorbike parkin (this I like very much after my frustrations with trying to park in Sydney with a bike). Motorbikes can park virtually anywhere, it’s even OK to park your bike inside the shop! Couls you imagine jumping on your posty bike with no helmet, just shorts T-shirt and thongs, ride down to the corner store, ride your bike up to the fridge, get your 2lt bottle of milk, and pay your money to the cashier as you ride past on your way out? What a world!!

Thirdly, the Vietnamese are very creative with their bikes.

One Vietnamese guy commented over here that “The world has not yet made anything that the Vietnames cannot carry on a motorbike.” and I’d believe him!

I’ve seen a live cow on the back of a scooter (!), a bath tub, 2 pigs, 6.5m long lengths of Steel tube, at least a dozen boxes of fruit and veg stacked above the rider, and many more marvellous things…

One day I’m sure we’ll see a motorbike carrying a bus…

One might also say the Vietnamese are “creative” with road rules… They’re more like guidlines rather than rules, I think is the general interpretation…

It seems fine to drive on the wrong side of the road if it suits you, to drive on th footpath, and to drive down the middle of the 1m wide walking lanes in the undercover markets which are packed full of people.

Apparently it’s the law to wear helmets, ride on the right side of the road, and obey traffic lights, but what’s a law without any consequences? Nothing happens if you don’t follow the law, except you may die if you have a stack… a minor consequence really…

Fourthly, the car and bike horn is a completely different language in Vietnam…

In Australia, when someone beeps their horn it means “What the hell do you think you’re doing you #@%*head!!”… and if it’s not for that meaning, one might do 2 short beeps to say goodbye as you leave a friend’s house.

But over here theyuse the horn frequently – I mean ALL THE TIME, every 2 meters travelled.

And I think that’s because beeping your horn over here means something more like “Excuse me. For your own safety I just want to let you know that I’m passing by you and you should look out. Thankyou.”

The horn is the automotive language of love, not a device which is an accompaniment for flipping the bird…

My ears are still adjusting to this new meaning, so that every horn I hear is “I love you” rather than my automatic response to the horn of hatred and disdain.

This is true traffic zen and enlightenment.

Have we Westerners taken the pure and true meaning of the horn and bastardised it into something sinster?

One does wonder…

Very rarely have I seen any death stares from drivers to other drivers.

There is a kind of tolerant passiveness in their driving amid what looks to Western eyes like chaos.

There is darkness that lies beneath.

Under the surface they’re waiting to crack…

When we were driving to Ha Long Bay we drove past a recent car accident.

I can only guess what happened, but there was one injured man laying on the ground and another man (who I assume was the other driver) just beating the tripe out of this guy as he lay on the road!

Alls well driving in Vietnam until you crash into someone…

It’s got to be better to release some road rage more frequently rather than wait for an explosion of violence…

I was just writing a blog for this about an hour ago when the power went out and I lost all of it, so here is just a quick up date to say I’m in Hoian at the moment (Vietnam south central coast), and it’ sgreat!

A lot less crowded than Hanoi!

You can see where we are staying at here

It’s very nice. Swimming pool, close to town… $18.00 USD a night twin share!

I here the temp in Sydney is about 8c at the moment… mmmm, sounds cold…
I think it’s been about 35c everyday here…

So where were we? Ahhhh yes…

Welcome to Hanoi!

Well we hadn’t booked a Hotel in Hanoi but had a recommendation from some other travellers that the Camillia hotel II was a good one to go to (there are 6 Camellia hotels!), so we caught a taxi from the airport asking to go to Camellia hotel II and showed him the business card (being forewarned by others that unless you specifically point out where you wnt to go, they just take you to whatever hotel their \mates own so they get kick-backs), and that’s what happened to us…

We forgot to negotiate a price with the taxi driver before we hopped in and he wouldn’t use the meter, so we kind of argued while we drove and in the end we got a normal price. He asked if we spoke Viatnamese, and we said no, and then he laughed (bad sign) and started making calls on his mobile… I obviously don’t speak Vietnamese, but I think the translation of what he said on the phone was something like “Hey mate, do you have rooms at your hotel? I’ve got some beef head tourists here that have cheesed me off arguing over my taxi fare, they want to go to the Camellia hotel. You run down the street and grab a camellia hotel business card and I’ll drop ‘em off outside your hotel and they’ll think they’re at the Camellia. OK?”

I think it went something like that…

So he took us to a different hotel where his mate was waiting for us with a very battered and old camellia hotel card (I think they’ve done this before…) but we had seen a picture of the hotel and they weren’t going to fool these travellers, Ha!

He asked if we had a booking at Camellia, we said no, but then we said our friends were going to book for us and meet us there. And after about 5 minutes of confused conversation, lots of habd charades, and a lot of “Is this Camellia? We want to go to Camellia.” he finally dropped us off at the right hotel. Phew.

First impressions of hanoi?

Well, it was less crowded than HCM City and on the drive from the airport I could have sworn we were driving through a life sized version of the board game Carcassonne. Lots of green rice pattys and then clusters of astle like villiages.

The old quater of Hanoi (where we are staying) is quite congested and dirty. The streets are very tight, but it’s a very interesting place.

Seeing as Hanoi is the place for markets and shopping, I was prepared to be hounded and harrassed by every shop keeper, hawker, and peddler at every turn. To my suprise and intitial disappointment… no one tried to sell me anything!
I was walking into shops, picking stuff up, showing a little bit of interest and… nothing… no sales pitch, no “you like”, no “3 for 100 000 dong”, nothing.

What’s a man got to do to get a sales pitch around here?

I think it was lunch time when we arrived and I don’t think they’re that keen to make sales during their lunch break (and who could blame them) but that afternoon and ever since, the sales pitches have been coming thick and fast! “hey mister, motor bike” (accompanied by the international charade for motorbike: hand throttle movement), “Hello. You sit in cyclo mister. 1 hour wery goo”. (Cyclo is the 3 wheel push bike with comfy seat in the front and personal tour guide/push bike rider at the back).

We succumbed to the pressure (and sore feet) and Fi, myself and Tracey did a 1 hour cyclo tour around the old quarter that lasted 45 minutes, and cost 50,000 dong (about $3.50 AUD) – not too bad.

I noticed the street names of the old quarter would provide plenty of fodder for good ol’ english puns. Things like: Hang Manh, Hang Bac, Hang Ong, Hang Ha Liek… The 12th man could have a field day!

We were only in hanoi one night before we left the next morning to go on an overnight tour to Ha long bay.

despite the name, we stayed on a quality boat called called “An Am Junk”.

The scenery of halong is just briliant!

We ate too much food, we kayaked, we went swimming (though the water was a bit warm), I jumped off the top of the boat (I reckon about 5-6 metres) and fi’s mum Christine did too!!!! And we went to “suprise Cave” which is spectacular.

The time on board has been the most relaxing part of the trip so far. Time to read, and sleep, listen to music, and have a bit more space from the crowds (though there was at least another 50-60 boats also cruising around us, and thousands of tourists also).

And now we’re back in hanoi ready to fly to Hoi An this evening. I think we’ll mosy round a bit, have some more banana shakes, hopefully see the water puppet theatre, and score some bargains.

I managed to by a leather wallet at the markets last night for 50,000 dong, which I’m happy about. I needed a new wallet.

Alright, time to go.

Just a quick blog on the fly in Vietnam…
The flight from Sydney to HCM City was excellent. Jetstar is great. I don’t know what all the fuss was about on A Current Affair… (could it be that A Current Affair had mad up the story? Noooo, I couldn’t believe that… mmmm…)

We arrived HCM City to a suprise greeting from Nathan and Laura Murphy disguised under those pointy cone shapped hats the Vietnamese wear, It was great to have them meet us, and it just makes arriving in a foriegn place that much more comforting when you see familiar faces. The second suprise was that they were also staying in the same hotel as us – wery, wery goo!

We went for a walk at midnight, and had my first banana shake and pineapple shake – also wery, wery goo!

We had a good nights sleep at 12:30am Vietnam time (which is 3:30am Aus time!) and then woke up every half hour from 5:00am – 7:00am Vietnam time (wonder why…?)

We had booked a tour the night before to go to Cu Chi tunnels 60kms Nth West of HCM City which took about 2 hrs to get to (the traffic is chaos over here, but it has a kind of placid feel to it even amongst the random mess of cars and 4 million scooters… quite wierd…)

The Cu Chi network of tunnels was first dug when the Vietnamese were at war with the french and then used and expanded by the viet cong during the “American war” (not Vietnam war alright, American war. It’s good to hear the story from the other side.), The tunnels we went in were 3-6 metres under ground and we only went along 90m of the 250km (!) network of tunnels. The tunnels were 80cm wide by 120cm tall but they had widened the entrance to the tunnels so that fat westerners like myself could fit down there. The original camoflage opennings to the tunnels were only about 40cm by 30cm wide, and they had kept at least one of the original entrances there to try out if you had a waist of 34″ or less… That was me out.

Now, I’m not afraid of too many things… I good with heights, I’ll jump off a bridge, I’ll go for a run in Ben’s speed boat, but… enclosed spaces… not so good.

So I was a bit tentative about going in the tunnel, but I always say to Fi that you’ve got to face your fears and just get on with it. So I had to take my own advice. Luckily for me they don’t take you done the really skinny tunnels (60x80cm), I don’t think I would’ve handled that (although I wouldn’t have fit for starters!), but these tunnels were fine, I felt good about the whole thing. Bit squashy, but no problem. I think the Viet Cong would have had super quad muscles, it’s a hell of a work out, I’m a bit sore in the quads today even…

Put it this way: if you chopped off the top half of my body at the hips, my legs would still have to bend to walk through the tunnels without touching the ceiling.

The tunnels were a great experience and the history of the whole place was quite solemn and reflective as well, despite the tour groups.

As you walk through the jungle where you know people had walked in fear and desperation before, and men and women had lived and died, and the boobie traps you saw, and the wreckage of a tank that had been blown up by a make shift VC land mine, and the gun shots in the background from the shooting range there… you just get a sense, a tiny snippet into the tiniest bit of the American War.

After the tunnels I had a killer headache, I was very tired and needed food. The food in Vietnam is great everywhere I’ve been told, I after my 42 hrs experience i reckon they’re probably right. ALl the food I’ve eaten has been good; and no yogurt poos…

I had a rest in the hotel for about 4hrs which helped the headache problem a bit, then we went out for a fancy dinner with Nathan & Laura, Christine, Tracey, Mick & Pam, for Pam’s birthday.

Once again the food was great, and then we wandered the streets and ate Ice cream. In bed by 11:30pm.

We said farewell to Nath & Laura this morning and we’ve headed up Nth to hanoi while they’ve gone to some swish resort at Mui Ne for a few days.

Hanoi is pretty goof so far, but it feels ditier than HCM City for some reson (and it’s supposed to be the other way around?).

We’re staying in the old quarter of the city with all the markets and stuff. We did a 1hr cyclo tour around the od quarter this arvo which was relaxing (and disorientating) and now kicking back in the hotel waiting for the others to arrive from HCMC.

We’ve booked a 2 day tour to Halong Bay from tomorrow morning and reckon that’ll be a highlight!

That’s all I have time for, I’ll get some pics up on here when we get home.

bye.

P.S. I haven’t been able to find Le Tour on TV here… I need Le Tour!!