Boy band on a boat

Today we’re off on Mama Hanh’s Green Hat boat trip – a tourist boat tour of almost cult-status to four local islands including lunch and some drinking experiences. Mama Hanh is apparently legendary for her ability to party hard six days a week. Our day is only slightly marred by the fact that somehow we’ve been booked onto a competitor’s boat trip – TM Brothers and there is no mad green-hatted crone in sight. It does have exactly the same itinerary though and the advantage of its very own on-board boy band made up of members of the crew. Luckily once over the initial disappointment we have a whale of a time.
Island One: snorkelling and swimming in floating rubber rings.
Island Two: break for a fantastic lunch prepared on board including rice, BBQ pork, tofu, chips, noodles, prawns, spring rolls, tuna steaks, vegetables, sauces and bananas to finish. This is served up all over the top deck and we all dig in. The rest of the group are all Westerners and seem pretty friendly. The boy-band, four guys with a guitar, triangle and washing up bowl drums, play some remarkably well executed covers of great songs which have everyone laughing and clapping. Vietnamese love this karaoke-esque extrovertism. Pam gets to do the twist with the captain. Later we’re all in the water for the “floating bar” where we get to drink free mulberry wine from plastic cups. It’s random but fantastic.
Island Three: a beach resort where we swim and rest in the shade for a while.
Island Four: a fishing village where there are basket boats and we spend some time jumping from the top of the boat into the water.

Up at 7am to go diving. Breakfast is French bread, eggs, fruit and tea in the hotel. Lovely. Our dive boat (with Coco dive school) is well equipped and the instructors good fun. The coral here is not as nice as in Honduras but it’s still fun to be diving again. It comes back slowly but by the second dive feels very comfortable. Pam enjoys her first diving experience – a couple of “try” dives.
Later we hire another bike and head out by darkness to Thap Ba a recently built resort in the expensive end of town that utilises natural hot mud springs for a range of relaxing treatments. By night it is nearly deserted but we secure a hot spring bath for two in an outside tub for an hour. It’s quite an experience as the photos show.
For dinner we enjoy a simple but delicious noodle soup at Hong Giang, near the hotel. It has chicken, chilli, fresh noodles, basil and lime leaves and garlic and tastes very good.

All smiles after some practice

Our plan is now to take the bike out to Ba Ho falls which is slightly ambitious since it is about a 50km round trip and this is still my first day on a motorbike. Our first accessory purchase – a pair of cotton face masks – proves invaluable especially on highway one which is full of road works and dusty trucks. The driving is exhilarating and nerve-wracking at all times – piling over bumpy potholes at 45km/h.
Finally we find a tiny track off to the left which leads to Ba Ho via various villages. At Ba Ho we are led up the hills and over numerous rocks by a pair of impromptu guides who are later disappointed when we give them a more than reasonable tip.
The waterfalls themselves are nice enough – number 3 provides us with a refreshing shower – but soon sunset is on its way and we’ve got some driving to do. The journey home is even more exhilarating than the one here – at least an hour’s solid riding in the dusty darkness. Back at the hotel, I need an eyebath and a lie down to recover. Afterwards we bike out to a nearby restaurant and after a beer my biking skills have improved significantly. As to the decision to drive after drinking – it doesn’t seem like any driving rules are followed here so it seemed rather hypocritical to observe only this one.

First time on a motorbike?

With only taxi-drivers in Vietnam owning cars, mopeds are definitely the de facto method of transport. In fact mopeds here what we would call 125cc motorbikes back home and provide enough transport for a family of 5 – and yes they do all fit on at once. In the streets, a few seconds sampling the traffic flying by will easily give the spectator an ample opportunity to view at least: a man balancing a huge pane of glass behind him with one hand whilst riding with the other, a couple holding a large pot-plant between them, a girl with a huge hat stand, a family of five squeezed on with a year old baby hanging off its mother’s lap and so on. None of these people will wear any kind of helmet and there will be five or six bikes abreast on a single lane road. Overtaking in the oncoming lane is normal, even where there is plenty of traffic, oh and the red traffic light doesn’t mean stop, it just means look before going.
Not wishing to miss out on the wonderful richness of this dangerous means of transport and finding ourselves lacking independence by going on organised tours, we decide to go and hire a motor bike – best thing we ever did. The hotel hires bikes out at $4 a day – an absolute bargain and the petrol costs 30p per litre at roadside stalls from lemonade bottles. Taking my first ride on a motorbike in one of the craziest countries for bike driving is perhaps a foolish idea but I more than prove that I am foolish (and make the day of every Vietnamese person on the street) with that attempt. After heeding the advice of the hotel owner, I pull back too hard on the throttle in 1st gear and career off across the street, up a kerb and nearly collide with a snoozing cyclo driver before I arrest the beast. Luckily, I’m a quick learner and after a second attempt and an unsteady ride around the block, I’m ready for my passenger: Pam.
Pam is brave indeed to jump on the back of such an obviously incompetent steed, particularly after such a poor display of skill but is rewarded for her courage when he unveils himself to be a Vietnamese Knight in shining Armour and actually quite good at biking too.

Sunrise over Nha Trang

The sleeper train leaves perfectly on schedule at 18.40. We’re in a soft-sleeper compartment with just one other quiet man and very few tourists in sight. Pam is excited as this is her first experience on a sleeper train. We enjoy beers and some pork dumplings while we pass through the suburbs of Saigon, so closely that you could almost reach through everyone’s windows. We see families sitting down on the floor to their evening meal together, women sewing silk dresses, barbers shops, busy kitchens, a sea of mopeds waiting at the railway crossings, an entire cross section of Vietnamese life, in the dark or by candlelight, cut through by this sleepy giant of a train rumbling northwards. It is magical to see.
Wake at 5am to speaker music and a cool dawn. Sky is beautiful as we trundle into Nha Trang where, despite it being so early, the station is packed with early rising taxi drivers, cyclos and peddlers. We jump into a cab and take it to the Yen My hotel which like the rest of Nha Trang is sleepily open and taking on guests. We get a lovely cool room on the third floor and enjoy a nice shower. By 8.30am we’re ready to face the world again.

Up at 7.20am for a day trip to Cu Chi, a nearby area where key parts of the Vietnam War were fought on (and under) the ground. The minibus is freezing cold but outside it’s baking – the dichotomy of tropical living. The chaotic streets are full of amazing sights.
At Cu Chi we get the first glimpse of what war here was really like – from the Vietnamese perspective at least. The first thing one notices is how different that perspective is from the American or accepted Western one. I profess to not having known much about the war before I came but the difference is even clear from the name we all give it. The Vietnamese call it the American war, everyone else calls it the Vietnam War.
The whole experience must be quite “in your face” for the American tourists here as the official line is very definitely “American Imperialists bombed and maimed Vietnamese citizens”. Whoever was ultimately to blame (and its probably both sides), it was a very bloody and horrific war. What is most horrible and most evident here is how much more the Vietnamese people suffered than the Americans did even though technically the North Vietnamese won.
The latter’s tunnels are intricate and interesting. There are 250km of them in this area and they certainly make you realise how the Viet Cong so successfully evaded the Americans in their own territory despite the heavy arsenal of bombs and chemical weapons. We see amazing bamboo traps and kitchens with underground chimneys leading smoke – incriminating evidence – away from the scene.

Tunnel spits out westerner

Finally, in a chance to explore the tunnels myself, I get to crawl 100m or so along one of them, up and down levels and round many corners. I have to crouch painfully to even get through and find it exceptionally sweaty and unpleasant. Although the VC were obviously smaller than me they still must have had some determination to stay down here for months at a time with only a few minutes per day out in the open.
Back in Saigon, we continue the war theme with a cyclo ride out to the “War Remnants” museum which houses some impressive weapons, tanks and planes – all looking rather eerily dated now – and a startling photo exhibition made by photo-journalists from both sides during the period. Most of the photographers died in action but all of whom can be thanked for bringing the atrocities of ‘Nam to world media attention. It is probably fair to say that this, more than anything else, swelled the anti-war feeling in America which eventually brought the war to a close. It is claimed the Americans dropped three or four times as many bombs on Vietnam as they dropped during the entire of WWII and all apparently because they were scared of Communism forming a threat to their security.
It all seems rather illogical with hindsight. I’m sure that at the time the motives were sound but a whole lot of people suffered horrible ends unnecessarily and most of them were innocent Vietnamese. The Americans, in the end, showed themselves to be just as guilty of their own form of ethnic cleansing (this time attempting to rid the country of Communists) as any of the military dictators of the 20th century Europe. There are some truly moving photos of human suffering and it provides a window onto a troubled time for a relatively small and apparently, as it stands now anyway, innocent country.

After arranging a day trip for tomorrow and two sleeper tickets out of here tomorrow night, we head off on an impromptu walking tour of the city, avoiding pesky cyclo drivers (who can’t believe we want to walk anywhere) at every turn. As it turns out they’re probably right – none of the natives would walk anywhere, it’s just too hot, especially at 1pm.
We meet a man “Yun” sitting in the gardens of the Reunification Palace. He comes to introduce himself and claims to be a bricklayer “striving” to learn English. He wants to practice with us. As in all previous experiences where people have asked to do this, already his English puts any of my foreign languages to shame. We have some interesting conversations where I discover he also knows more about the Northern Irish troubles than I do. Pam drafts a mental note to the NI tourist board in concern over the image our media must be projecting even this far round the globe. When our audience of “starers” has grown to several quite odd looking men – they stare at us quite unselfconsciously – we decide to say goodbye. It was a genuine and pleasant experience.
We move on to a nice cafe principally for their air conditioning although the cakes are also good and then walk down to the riverside to take some air and some photos. We get pedalled at by some peddlers – toothy salt-of-the-earth’s who grin at us to persuade us to buy coconuts, prawn crackers in huge wafers, chewing gum, cigarettes or shoeshines. This time I can resist even the shoeshine and only a couple of them are persistent beyond the first “No”. I take some hopefully gritty black and white street scenes of mopeds, people and bicycles.

Villages on stilts, Saigon

When enough is enough we wander down to the river front – certainly the dodgiest part of town – watching our bags and get persuaded to enjoy a river trip with a boat-lady and her daughter. It proves to be a great idea. Their rickety old boat with its long propeller takes us across the Saigon river and into a narrow channel where people live in houses on stilts. The water is filthy but it is amazing to see how these people, so close to the main city and yet almost rural, separated by the wide water, live their lives. The houses might be only made of wood, plastic sheets, iron or reeds but the lifestyle is simple and the views idyllic.
We stop off at a huge reed house by some man-made pools where lotus flowers, fish and shrimp are farmed. The large lotus flowers are sold, and their seeds eaten or used to make tea. The house is teeming with dogs and children who provide some great photos (to be returned one day, they request). The flower people get paid for our visit and for a few seedpods to eat on the way home. Interesting to see rural life so close to such a big city.
Back on the main river we pass huge boats “in port”, their crews being provided for by arrays of smaller boats selling clothes, material and food. It’s a big working port and we’re right in the middle of it all as dusk falls. The twinkling lights on the boats and the shore are beautiful.
We head up to a restaurant famed for its Vietnamese food – the Mandarine – but settle instead for its sister restaurant the Hoi An. Evidently the Mandarine is so famous you have to book well in advance. Service is almost 5-star here and I feel distinctly under dressed in shorts and a sweaty shirt. The classy place even has personal fluffy white hand towels in the bathroom.
During the meal it rains very heavily – so much so that the taxi home drives through ankle-deep water in the street we’re staying in. Amazingly this flood is all gone by morning, although Pam believes all night that the water humming in the air con unit is actually the waters lapping at our door.