Good Morning Vietnam

Apologies for the delay. I think I mentioned in my last post that Jo was arriving the next day - well she did, safely at that, and left this morning, heading back to London after traveling a good chunk of Vietnam. To summarise, the last two weeks have been a montage of traveling related ailments and mishaps, with such little time to catch my breath in between, that I only now have found the time to write this post. I will do my best to make this brief and to the point with highlights characterised as best my memory can serve.

The first two days were spent in and seeing Hanoi, the capital of Vietnam since its reunification in the late '70s. The non-touristy parts of the city has the drab greyness of a British sky, that accompanies the standard Communist architecture, especially the more recent monuments. However there is a sprinkle of European and Far-Eastern spirits here and there due to the century of French colonisation and a strong Chinese influence that comes out in the older buildings (e.g. temples, assembly halls, pagodas, etc...) due to their millennium of Vietnamese occupation. The Old Quarter is particularly charming with generally little organised street lighting, but an orchestra of coloured lights coming mostly from shops that spill out onto the streets, overhanging Chinese lanterns and the stream of motorbike headlights that are in perpetual migration.

Compared to India, it's a sanctuary where I find peace and quiet, for Jo, it was a surreal chaos of sound, light, smell....and especially shopping. We made full use of the local shops, buying trinkets galore for relatives and friends back home, DVDs of questionable origin (that after viewing a few, have a tendency to switch between Russian and English as well as having a music that is so distorted and out of tune, it could be the soundtrack to a circus horror film), a miniature guitar (to keep my skills up), etc...Jo was quickly inducted into the world of street negotiation.

On the third day we did an organised tour to a national park called Tam Coc, South-West of Hanoi where we cycled a short distance in the rain between its odd but incredible geological protrusions (similar to those of Halong Bay, Tam Coc is known as the Halong Bay on land), boated through caves, saw two Chinese influenced temples/assembly halls for consecutive Emperors, that, in a story not dissimilar to Shakeapeare's Macbeth, involved a general killing the Emperor (and all other heirs) and taking his wife.

The fourth and fifth days were spent at Halong Bay - you haven't been to Vietnam if you haven't been to Halong Bay. The same rocky protrusions, rounded and covered in tropical greenery, but rising hundreds of metres from the water, are both intimidatingly imposing, but altogether make a very serene and calm setting. The water is incredibly calm on which sits fog that melds into the sky - especially because it was a cold grey English day when we went (after being forgotten at the hostel even though we were ready on time and waiting, the weather put a damper on our two day trip). We got to see an impressive cave only recently discovered, kayak on the water, enjoy several meals and sleep all on this large dhow. Unfortunately, Vietnamese food did not seem to agree with Jo, which meant the time on the boat was spent resting and avoiding the cold, rather than enjoying all the activities. We made the most of it nonetheless.

That night we took our first overnight bus journey in Vietnam from Hanoi to Hue, the old capital of South Vietnam after it was freed from the Chinese by Nguyen Hue. Jo's bad luck managed to get a last minute ticket on the bus, as she found herself being rudely awaken by an old American hippie dressed like a fisherman who decided that the best way to get to the toilet in the middle of the night was to climb over her rather than walk around the aisles.

We spent the day in Hue enjoying the Imperial City which, though not quite worth the trip there, was still good to tick off.

The next day we were on another bus to Hoi An where we spent two full days and nights. The capital of the cloth industry, Hoi An is known for its tailored suits and dresses. I regret not having enough time to sit down, pick out a suit and have it made from scratch, especially given how cheap it is (hopefully I can in China). The city is a quaint river side town with plenty of European and Chinese charm and thus attracts a lot of tourists. However for every tourist, there is a tout; the women running the market are as relentless as the Indian autorickshaw drivers. This began to grate our irritability with the locals. Nonetheless, we found a really nice restaurant that we enjoyed so much we went back the second night.

From Hoi An, we flew to Ho Chi Minh City to avoid another overnight bus. It was especially useful given than Jo was only here for two weeks - two more nights spent on a bus would have been two nights of holiday wasted. Another serving of bad luck meant that Jo had had a cold for a few days before the flight. Apart from the perpetual runny nose, drowsiness and general feeling of illness, this badly affected her sinuses which gave her an excruciating pain upon landing. Somehow we pulled through.

After checking in to a decent, but not special hotel, we wondered down the road to see the local area and perhaps organise a tour - we were particularly interested in finding a beach trip. A fortuitous encounter with James Heller and Laura Smith, a couple we know well from College of Law (in fact, James, Jo and I are signed up to the same firm and were in the same class together). They had been traveling China and Cambodia previously and had been joined in Vietnam by Laura's parents. They were headed to Mui Ne, a beach town four hours away, the next day. As such, we leaped at the opportunity - not only could we get to a beach and get back in time, but we could join our friends too.

Mui Ne was a sleepy resort town with a lot less traffic. We found a nice hotel with bungalows amidst a mini jungle and a buffet breakfast to feed an army. The next day, the sun shone brightly enough to break through the clouds and sunburn those not wearing any sunscreen (I learned my lesson in Goa). Jo's only piece of fortuitous genetic inheritance is her ability to turn any burn into suntan, so though red as lobster on day 1, she was golden brown by the time she got on her flight this morning. We rented scooters for an afternoon and wizzed around town to see the neighbouring fishing village and sunset behind it; Jo drove because my lack of coordination and sudden jerky movements aren't made for the delicate wrist action required for accelerating a scooter carefully and avoiding oncoming traffic. She really enjoyed it, so that worked out really well. That night I ate a small garlic baked shark, it was incredibly delicious. And on our last morning we went to see the sand dunes where we had a stalled attempt at sandboarding...or sandsledging to be more precise.

Overall Mui Ne was a great sunny end to our two week tumultuous cruise through Vietnam and for that, I thank James, Laura and her parents, who were gracious enough to invite us along, but above all else were great company.

Jo left this morning and I made a day trip to learn more about what we call the Vietnam war, but they call the American war, understandably. I first went to the Cu Chi tunnels, an hour and a half outside of Saigon (the old name of HCMC and also name of the inner part of HCMC), it was slightly shocking to see how the Viet Cong (the South Vietnamese Communists who were fighting the other South Vietnamese, Americans and other forces) laid gruesome booby-traps of rotating floors revealing bamboo spikes on which the victim would be impailed....especially since the background of the display had painted pictures of Americans stuck in the traps, bleeding and presumably screaming. Unphased by this, the remnants of an American tank or the crater left by a B52 bomber, most of the younger crowd felt the need to try the AK47s and M16s available at the on site shooting range. Now I realise my righteous indignation has a tendency to obviate fun, but I'm surprised that tourists would shamelessly fire the same guns that killed the people who died on that very spot (it's like joyriding a tank through the Somme). It's disgraceful that embracing open markets means allowing the locals and tourists to shame their own ancestry in what they believe to be a harmless mutually beneficial trade.

The tunnels nonetheless were scary. To think people lived and moved around down there is a testament to their will for survival.

Later in the day I was dropped off at the War Remnants Museum, a harrowing and obviously very biased account of the French Indochina war and American war. The pictures of the effects of Agent Orange (a chemical used to kill forestry, but had grave consequences for all life forms for generations to come) are too gruesome for even me to describe.

Overall it was a great holiday and I think, regardless of the stream of almost infinite bad luck Jo has while traveling, she still enjoyed the major sites...and especially shopping and beach. Above all else, I'm amazed at the resilience of my immune system. Not only did not get ill once in India, I didn't catch anything from Jo even though she had every ailment under the sun one after the other.

Tomorrow I take a 12 hour bus to Siem Reap in Cambodia...on with the journey.