I Love the Smell of Palmolive in the Morning

STATS: Day count=202; theft count=0; rip-off count=1; tourist screw-up count=4; Chris’ photo count=1873; Emma’s photo count=76; touch-typing char/min=234 (still still still trying!); Poi skills mastered since last post: None

I bet you’re all wondering what the most pointless job in Saigon is. Well, I can tell you – it’s the task of painting the zebra crossing lines on the road. Useless.

It seems that the entire Asian world thinks that all English people are like Del Boy from Only Fools & Horses. Whenever we tell anyone where we are from, the reaction is almost always a smile, followed by “Lovely Jubbly”. Plonkers, the lot of ‘em.

We’re now in Vietnam, having taken a boat down the Mekong from Cambodia into the Vietnamese border town of Chau Doc. We had got mixed reports of Vietnam, the worst of which were the descriptions of overcrowded cities, money-grabbing unsmiling people and horrendous travelling conditions. In fact, if you heeded all the warnings of scams, pickpockets, con-men and robbers given in the Rough Guide you would think you were entering some kind of anarchistic, lawless state. Luckily our experience so far of the country has been a lot better than that. The people are friendly – maybe not so much as Cambodia or Thailand, but then they are high bars to measure against. The country is clean, looked after and interesting. And the food is very edible – at least the veggie food is, I’m less sure about the various animal body parts floating around in some dodgy looking dish water that passes for noodle soup round here. I was tempted to try the dish labelled as “ethnic pig fried as fox” if only to find out what an ethnic pig was, and how foxes get fried, but my vegetarian principles held out.

Chau Doc was a decent enough introduction to the country – a small town with an obligatory market which did a better job of keeping the pungent smells from the abattoir section away from the mountains of fresh fruit and veg than we encountered in Cambodia. Even basic accommodation here includes an en-suite bathroom, fridge and TV so we are feeling pretty spoilt.

Chau Doc is on the edge of the Mekong Delta – the myriad of  waterways that marks where the mighty Mekong meets the South China Sea. Fertile land means (relatively) prosperous people and colourful fruit. And bridges. Chau Doc wasn’t all that interesting, so we headed to another Mekong Delta town of Can Tho. The towns all seem to merge together here and the trip from Chau Doc to Can Tho seemed to pass through one continuous town for a couple of hours. The minivan driver seemed to be be trying to hit as many motorcyclists as possible – luckily they were all fast and aware enough to get out of his way.

Can Tho has nice cafes and restaurants and a pleasant stroll along the river. Pleasant in the dry, but unfortunately it rained quite regularly for the few days we were there. Temperatures are getting a lot more bearable now – in the mid-30s usually, which makes for warm rain – less annoying being caught out in a downpour. We have concluded that our appreciation of a country relies only on 3 things: the friendliness of the people towards us, the availability of nice food and the presence of somewhere to sit in relative peace and calm. All other things are superfluous. India had none of these, mostly (the food was nice, but the added bacteria a little off-putting), Thailand and Cambodia had all of them and Vietnam, like Malaysia, we are finding is pretty good on all three counts so far.

The Vietnamese language uses the Latin alphabet, which makes it a lot easier for us Westerners to attempt to read and pronounce the words, and to recognise various words – like “rice” (com), “vegetarian” (chay) and “death to all Americans” (ok, I made that one up – more of the anti-USA feeling later…). The biggest shock is the lack of tuk-tuks here. From being overrun with them in Thailand to a complete absence in Vietnam, it feels like something is now missing in our lives. To make up for it, there are even more motorbikes here than in all the other countries put together. We didn’t think it possible, but the thousands of scooters sitting at traffic lights (yep, they even obey the few traffic laws here!) in Saigon in the rush hour is an impressive sight.

Shops are long, tall and thin here. Apparently they used to be taxed based on the width of the building presented to the market area, so they built them thin and tall. Luckily my ‘Indian diet’ weight loss programme means I have no problem fitting in the front doors, though climbing up 10 flights of stairs with a heavy rucksack is something I’d happily miss out on.

After doing very little in the Mekong Delta towns, other than ‘get a feel for the country’ and watch the busy boat traffic on the waterways, we headed for Ho Chi Minh city, formally Saigon. A large, modern city with a busy, but we felt welcoming, feel – we liked the place. After arriving in torrential rain and having to wade across a flooded (not quite up to our knees, but not far off!) bus station to catch a bus into town, we stayed in the backpacker area, which meant laid back restaurants, cheap cafes and bars, and a plethora of hotels to choose from. It was here we really mastered the crossing the road tactic of just walking without bothering to avoid anything, and hope that everyone else will avoid you. They generally do. Luckily.

A visit to the “War Remnants Museum” reminded us that the Americans (and south Vietnamese) lost the war in the 1970s, and the Communists, originally from north Vietnam, are still in charge of the unified country. The museum was apparently originally called the “Museum of American War Crimes” which gives you an indication of the general feel of the contents of the museum. Neither myself nor Emma were in any way supporters of the American involvement in Vietnam (we didn’t really know enough about it to be any judge, though USA foreign policy often seems to involve heavy weaponry) but the heavy bias of the museum was surprising. Very little mention of the losses of the Americans, French or south Vietnamese, and a lot of focus on the brave, patriotic, unifying forces of the (north) Vietnamese army, torture methods of the ‘rebel’ south Vietnamese (and USA) soldiers, and the use of napalm and agent orange etc. Good to see the ‘other side’ of the argument, but the bias bordered on indoctrination. An interesting museum, nonetheless, with some moving and impressive photographs from the war. Walking back through town we suddenly found ourselves in an area surrounded by shops called “Gucci”, “Louis Vatton” and “Yves Sain Laurent”. We felt very out of place and hurried back to the comfort of the backpacker area. In actual fact, it was me that felt out of place. Worryingly, Emma wanted to go shopping.

I’m starting to warm to the French somewhat. Former British colonies adopted cricket and an arrogant class system, the former French colonies gained a love of french bread and pastries. It makes a nice change from fried rice and noodle soup.

A tourist trip out to a temple of the Cao Dai religion, a crowd- pleasing mixture of Christianity, Buddhism and Confucianism, with a bit of Hinduism and Islam thrown in for good measure, was ok – colourful buildings and costumes and pointless rules about where you can and can’t stand during the prayer ceremony. My view on religion is unchanged. In fact, I am getting even more cynical about it, helped (or not helped, depending on your point of view) I suspect by the fact that I am currently reading Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion. Still, it helps keep the masses in check (yep, that was supposed to sound patronising and sarcastic!).

The tour moved on to the Cu Chi tunnels – a vast network of man-made tunnels and underground bunkers near Saigon and used by the ‘heroic and victorious unification army’ (their words, not mine) to avoid the ‘cruel and indiscriminate American bombing’ (ditto) and to exercise the guerrilla warfare on US army bases and divisions in the area. Again, a very biased account of some gruesome practices on both sides - the irony of telling us about the sadistic American tactics just before showing us the various man-traps used by the Viet Cong to disable and dismember the American and south Vietnamese soldiers seemed lost on our guide. The tunnels were narrow and very claustrophobic – we crawled through a very short length of one – enough to give us a sense of how little fun it was, though the fact that I am pretty claustrophobic and Emma isn’t all that keen on dark places probably meant we weren’t ideal candidates to live in the tunnels. An interesting visit to once again see and hear the other side of the story, although not all that impressive a trip otherwise.

Back in Saigon, a trip to a pagoda across town as we needed to extend the “war and religion” theme of this whole journey, followed by some light relief in the local zoo, which was a lot better than I expected on the humane front, though some areas still left a lot of room for improvement.

After a very nice 4 days in and around Ho Chi Minh city, we are heading north to Nha Trang, on the coast. Vietnam is a big country and distances between the main towns are quite large – the trip is destined to take 10 hours on a bus that we originally booked as a standard air-con seating bus, but seemed to have been ‘upgraded’ to a sleeper bus which has some pretty cool beds in place of seats – very comfortable!