Onto Vietnam

Location: Hoi An
Weather: Warm and sunny

I left Cambodia by early morning bus and headed for Vietnam. Our bus did break down on the way to the border, but this was because they drive until the tyres burst in Cambodia and I am used to this now, we just had to wait for the driver to change the tyre and off we went again. Despite hearing numerous horror stories and the Rubbish Guide saying that it would take 2-4 hours to cross the border, we were over in about 10 minutes. Saying that we did get held up for an hour, but only because some Israeli girl had a problem with her passport. Vietnam was almost an immediate change you could see it is much more developed than Cambodia and getting into Ho Chi Minh City AKA Saigon was a total change. This was a true city, millions of people, millions of motorbikes, things happening all the time and a city type atmosphere. I enjoyed Saigon very much, spent almost a week there, in a large room with a balcony, which was good even if I did get a 6am wakeup every day from the hundreds of passing motorbikes outside. Went to see the Reunification Palace - where the government live, went on a trip down the Mekong River, a bit like Martin Sheen did in Apocalypse Now, but the village we stopped at was a bit nicer. It didn't have Marlon Brando there for a start and we tried some very nice exotic fruits and coconut candy instead.
Probably the highlight though was going to see the Cu Chi Tunnels. These are located "25 miles north-west of Saigon"(as mentioned in a quote from the hit 80's song '19' - N-N-N-NINETEEN if anybody remembers that...I did cos I purposely listened to it at the Cu Chi tunnels!).
Cu Chi is where Vietcong villagers dug tunnels underground to escape the carpet bombing of the Americans. We got to see and crawl down the tunnels, no claustrophobics allowed, saw the improvised weapons and man-traps they made for the Americans and got to fire an AK47 again (only 3 bullets this time, but without ear muffs, so I was deaf for an hour afterwards). Our guide was a translater for the Americans during the war and made the whole thing even more excellent.

I left Saigon and went to Mui Ne. This was 4 hours south west and was meant to have an amazing beach and sand dunes, I wasn't impressed with either and decided to go back to Saigon on a packed night bus (had about 2 hours sleep in 48 hours thanks to that) and see the Cao Dai Holy See or central church. The Cao Dai religion is a combination of 6 religions - including Catholicism and Buddhism. The temple was only built in the 30's, but is mentioned in Graeme Greene's "The Quiet American" which I happen to be reading now. It was well worth visiting, as it looks far older than it really is, it is strikingly ornate inside and out and we got to see the robed members chanting and praying at noon. They used to have a Pope, but apparently they fought on the side of the Americans during the war and so the government removed him.



Leaving Saigon the next day I went to Da Lat - which is 6 or 7 hours west, I stayed in a very nice hotel and cycled round the town in the afternoon. It was pretty nice there and cold, since it is up in the mountains, but there's not much to do once you've seen the lake, also I wanted to get on to Nhatrang on the coast. Nhatrang is fabeled by the guidebooks and traveller legend as a wonderous beach, the best in Vietnam blahblahblah, BUT having got there I wasn't impressed at all. I should've known, everybody I'd met who'd actually been there didn't say anything about it. Basically it's just a big beach, with a large town behind it, but not much else and it hasn't got much character either. I think it must be low season, because the place was pretty dead. I did get to see the excellent Alexander Yersin museum, a highly interesting French Swiss who discovered the plague bacillus whilst living in Hong Kong, but mainly lived in Nhatrang, but this was the highlight of the town. It does come a bit more alive at night, but I don't rate Nhatrang at all.

By JamesReed on 12.04.05 @ 04:53 PM GMT