Long Distance Clara

Facebook Photos: click here

Having had our fill of the big Vietnamese tourist excursions, Mika and I decided that there was no amount of money that would induce us to take a 30-person trip into the Mekong Delta. So we decided to go to the bus station, hop on a minibus and see what happened and for good measure, and so someone could laugh at his quotes from ‘The Rock,’ we took Rob with us for the ride. It was a good decision, although to be fair we may have missed the floating markets, the popcorn making factory and the traditional Vietnamese dancing, I almost felt like I was scratching the surface of the country for the first time and actually getting a feel for the life here which is surprisingly difficult in Vietnam. We took a tiny minibus down to the town of Vinh Long on the banks of one of the widest sections of river and managed to get a wooden boat with a propeller out the back to take us up the river, at sunset, to a little guest house on the edge of one of the canals owned by ex-VC soliders. We had two tiny wooden bungalows set in a garden of green trees, flowers, giant butterflies and hammocks. Despite a lack on English on their part and a total absence of Vietnamese on our part we got some dinner and some beers and then set up the speakers by the hammocks near the edge of the water and drank in the hammocks listening to the sounds of the night boats motor past. Every so often the owner would come up to see how we were, sit down for a while chuckling to himself before patting Rob on the shoulder and wandering off again!

The next morning after breakfast we walked down the path running alongside the canal past wooden houses and boats hemmed in by floating weeds. The local dogs growled at us on the way past and lots of locals laughed at us, presumably because we were walking about in the near midday heat when every other sensible person was napping in a hammock. An hour later we were back in the hammocks waiting for the boat to take us into town. From Vinh Long it was a 10km motorbike ride to a random bus stop, a two hour extended afternoon snack and chat with the local friendly security guys before we got a minibus up what may loosely be described as a road to Chau Doc. Sadly the driver had cranked up some local pop music through the loud speakers at ipod defying volume. I think I may have dis-associated for part of the trip in an attempt to keep myself sane. Amazingly it was 10pm by the time we arrived, very hot, very sweaty and dying for some food. The hotel we found had an enormous room, three huge double beds and after some excellent rice and beef washed down with Saigon beer from the street vendors, and luke-cold showers we slept like princes. Chau Doc is a really relaxed riverside town with a kind of French meets Asian communism feel to it. There are endless numbers of girls cycling around in their immaculate white traditional dresses with perfect posture and the usual ridiculous thousand and one things being ferried around on the back of motorbikes. The main street runs along the side of the river where the Mekong fans out into sections of floating houses on huge barrels, tug boats, clumps of weed and rowing boats. We are currently seeking refuge from the heat which has landed us in the only luxurious hotel in the town where we are drinking overpriced beers by the pool and eating all their free peanuts. Tomorrow we are off to Cambodia!

We finally had to leave the idyllic beaches of Phu Quoc and head back to the big bad city of Saigon. Mary had to get moving into Cambodia so Mika and I met up with an English guy, Rob, and some of the guys he was travelling with and with the influence of that many Brits together in a city, the next two days involved many, many beers, a thoroughly strange pub quiz, games of pool, hanging out in the Guns ‘n’ Roses bar and a visit to a terrible club called Apocalypse Now. Well actually the club was quite funny but it was full of aged white-haired men dancing to cheesy pop music with tiny Vietnamese prostitutes…nice!

We did manage to make it out to the Cu Chi tunnels outside the city which are fascinating but the tour bus we went on was the final straw for both of us. By the time the guide had introduced himself with a patter of terrible jokes, told us all we could call him John Wayne and put stickers on each of us, we decided this was the very last organised tour we were taking in the country. The tunnels themselves are interesting though; the were first constructed by the Vietnamese in resistance to the French rule in Vietnam and then during the war they were extended to cover about 250km underground, three levels, ranging from 80cm to 70cm in width and 1.2 metres high. They enabled the Viet Cong to hide, move supplies and people from the Ho Chi Minh trails in Cambodia and throughout the south of Vietnam. We got to crawl and scramble through about 100 metres of original tunnel which was very dark and very cramped. Clearly a career in subterranean communism is not for me. The strangest thing was the propaganda video that we watched afterwards, which did it’s best to glamorise the VC resistance showing them tirelessly working in the fields, digging more tunnels and enjoying relaxed games of cards. The commentator proudly announced that whatever happened they were always coming up with new ways to kill American soldiers. Military spin, it seems, never made it as far as SE Asia.

Finally arrived in the far south of Vietnam to Ho Chi Minh City, practically everyone still calls it Saigon and it is not the large, polluted, overwhelming Asian mayhem that everyone makes it out to be. Or maybe that’s me coming from a post Mumbai/Delhi/Kolkata perspective. Still the tourist area is a collection of small, easily navigable streets with plenty of cute street side cafes, bars, travel agents and guest houses and a million shops selling photocopied Lonely Planets, Nick Hornby novels, fake DVDs and Good Morning Vietnam t-shirts. For our last day together before he headed to Cambodia I dragged James into town to see the Reunification Palace and the War Remnants Museum.

Once we got into the centre of the city the traffic did get noticeably crazier, there are just so many motorbikes, it is as if the whole place moves, breathes and pulses on two wheels and they carry anything and everything on the back of those wheels. James decided it was time for some comedy photos in front of the rows of waiting cyclists at the traffic lights. Comedy photo but it did very nearly end in tears!

Reunification Palace is like stepping back in time. It was built in the 1960s and was home and administration centre for the somewhat short-lived presidents of the Southern Republic of Vietnam before in 1975 the Communist troops from the North famously rode down the gates in two tanks and took control of the country. Now the rooms are immaculately preserved (and still sometimes used for visiting dignitaries) in a kind of 1970s time warp with their retro furniture, old fashioned bars, conference rooms and banquet halls. There are also two floors of bunkers beneath the palace with the old maps showing the allied and VC unit positions during the Vietnam war and rows of round dialed beige plastic telephones.

The War Remnants Museum is interesting but harrowing in places. It basically portrays a heavily Vietnamese sided account (obviously) of the Vietnam War in photographs and war relics, but mainly told through the pictures and interestingly most of the pictures were taken by American War Photographers. It definitely manages to show a no holds barred, warts-and-all portrayal of war, from the pictures of the American soldiers crawling through mud in the torrential rain, pictures of women screaming as rifle butts are pressed up against their cheeks, a solider holding up the remains of a farmer who has stood on a mine; his head, shoulder and arm hanging down while the rest of his body lies in parts around the ground. I sometimes think that anyone who ever comes into a position where they have huge political or military power should have to sit through photos like these to understand the possible ramification of their decisions.

This evening we met up with Mika and Mary who were on our Halong Bay trip and who James was hanging out with in Nha Trang. Tomorrow James heads to Phnom Pehn and the three of us are going to try and get ourselves across to Phu Quoc island by local transport, a something they try very hard to keep you away from in Vietnam, could be interesting!

The overnight bus from Hoi An to Hanoi was something of a curiosity. From the front looking in you can see three narrow rows of wooden ended bunk beds, slightly slanted and very narrow and built for skinny people about 5ft tall, not the most comfortable way to travel. And of course the ubiquitous terrible Asian pop music that cranked up at 6am in the morning so loud that the bass was seriously distorted. The Vietnamese bus drivers are real sadists! By 8am we had caught a taxi and arrived at a beautiful old French colonial house just outisde the old part of Hanoi where my friend from uni, Kate was living. It was so nice to arrive in a house, she made us coffee in her huge kitchen before heading off for work and the two of us crashed out for the rest of the morning.

Hanoi is a bustling, motorcycle-ridden fascination of charming houses, insane electrical wiring, suicidal traffic and a lovely central lake. Everywhere you go smiling women carrying balanced bowls of fruit blackmail you into buying delicious bags of pineapple after taking their photos. We spent our two days booking trips and place tickets and getting happily lost in the back streets. On one street we discovered what the death rattles of dying frogs sound like. A lady was squatting down on the side of the pavement with a bag of wriggling fat green frogs. She pulled each one out, held it forceably down on a wooden block and with one swipe of a machete took off it’s head as it emitted a final sad high pitched croak before consigning it to the growing pile of headless animals. Yum! In the afternoon we found a small junction in the centre of the old town with a tiny Bia Hoi cafe on each corner. You sit on the pavement on tiny plastic chairs and drink rather good and incredibly cheap local draught beer for about 10p a glass while you watch the world go past. In the evening Kate took us to a wonderful open air restaurant that serves all the varieties of street food in Vietnam. We had squid, pork balls noodle soup and swan which was rather good. Having seen the dark side of swans on many punting trips in Oxford I have to admit eating mine with a slightly savage relish, no Queen to protect the evil white beauties in Vietnam!

I also went to visit Ho Chi Minh, affectionately known as Uncle Ho and one of the most beloved figures of Vietnam. His mausoleum is a huge grey columned square that attracts throngs of school children and Vietnamese every morning along with a sprinkling of western tourists. You cannot take cameras or bags inside and your every move is scrutinised by guards dressed all in white or pea green carrying intimidating bayonets. As the longline filters inside the building Uncle Ho is laid out in a glass coffin with an eery oranged light bathing his waxy face and hands. Around him sunken down in the floor stand four guards and behind is two huge marble backdrops displaying the twin signs of Vietnam and Communism. Very bizarre indeed.

On Thursday morning we set out on a two day trip to Halong Bay and had a bus load of really chatty, really friendly travellers. Everyone was talking away before we even got into the minivan for the three hour trip and we also had a comedy three stooges (our guide, a trainee guide and another random suited Vietnamese guy) telling stories and cracking jokes the whole way.

At Halong Bay City we boarded a beautiful wooden junk and motored out towards the bay. The weather was grey and overcast which added an ethereal air of mystery, shrouding the huge limestone karsts as we approached the bay and obscuring the line of the horizon so that the small fishing boats appeared to by floating in a sea of grey. The bay is stunning, even in the clouds although not the best conditions for taking photographs. We visited an really beautiful but hugely touristy cave complete with a large penis shaped rocks thoughtfully lit with a red light (that provoked a good 15 minutes of taking comedy photos) before taking kayaks out into a hidden bay under an overhang. The water is a really incredible dark shade of turquoise green against the sharp grey black rocks and lush green vegetation of the karsts.

That night we moored up among the other tourist boats and as night fell all the lights surrounding the area looked like a floating village on the water. Our two boats got together and ended up having a huge Karoke and beer fest until midnight which was highly amusing although I think watching my brother perform Phil Collins is an experience I probably don’t want to live through twice. The next day we were all vegged out on the deck watching the scenery roll past as we made our way through the rest of the bay and past the symbol of Halong Bay, the fighting cock island at the gateway, before heading back to land.