I'm not writing a travel guide here, but we stayed in a pretty nice little guest house in Ho Chi Minh City. "Giang and Son Guesthouse" was inexpensive, and we got a small but impeccably clean room with a window over the backstreet, an air conditioner (much appreciated when making the transition from -10c Vancouver to 35c Ho Chi Minh City), and a simple breakfast. It is located just steps from the bustle of Pham Ngu Lao, but on a backstreet that isolates you from the constant noise. To top it off, the customer service was just phenomenal - helpful, friendly, ready to book you a taxi or a trip, but never trying to sell you on anything.
So, yeah, review over: It's a good place, I'd stay again.
After a couple of days of acclimation, we are catching a quick flight up to Hanoi, which is at the other end of the country. At least we thought it would be a quick flight, but keep in mind Vietnam is a long country, and it takes two hours on a 777 to connect the commercial capitol to the government Capitol (not including quality time spent in a bar-less domestic terminal). Like I said earlier, Vietnam is not a poor country, so mid-day domestic service between the two major cities is on wide-body airliner, although the one we were on was a little thread worn, from the broken seats to the excitingly oil-stained flight surfaces.
All's well that ends well.
We were whisked by taxi into Hanoi along new and expanded freeways, everywhere we looked there seemed to be a construction boom, from an expansive new airport terminal to a gigantic new multi-span cable-stayed roadway bridge crossing the Red River. Then we are dropped into the Old Quarter of Hanoi, where the streets are tight, the people are close, the bustle is more intimate. This is, after all, a 1000-year-old City
One interesting and recognizable aspect of Vietnamese urban form is a result of (of course) the tax regime. Rumour has it (and how would I confirm this?) that property taxes are based on not the size of your lot, but by the length of your frontage. The apparent result of this is long, thin lots, covered with long, thin buildings. I have no idea how airspace or massing works here, but It is remarkably common to see a 7-story building so narrow that you might touch both outside walls with outstretched hands.
Our hotel in Hanoi is a less-extreme example of the kind. we are staying on the top floor (6th in the European sense, in that the 1st is above the ground floor), and our room takes up the entire width of the building... all of about 12 feet. With a 4- foot square staircase, there's s clearly no room for an elevator, so we walked the 7 stories. Not sure what happens in case of fire...
Tonight we ate pho.
...and I got to sample beers good:
... and not so good:
Live and learn. Has there ever been a good beer served in green glass?
Day 2 we decided to hit the road, and still being newbies in the country, we decided to take a one-day tour set up by our guest house. We are headed north into the jungle to see some temples, and some more historic sites around the War of American Aggression.
Sitting in the front of a medium-sized bus, one gets an entirely different view of the chaos that is Ho Chi Minh CIty traffic. Our bus driver yields his horn as a weapon, his thumbs having worn a permanent groove in the centre of the steering wheel. There's an admirable flow to the traffic, everyone just seems to find a way through, avoiding each other by inches, while never giving anyone else and inch, and never looking like the terrifying near misses were anything but planned.
It seems both chaotic and ordered, safe and horribly dangerous, yet (according to our driver) only 30 people a day are killed in traffic in Vietnam, and he is quick to note alcohol is the primary cause of most deaths. back-of-the-envelope stats suggest it is 3x more dangerous driving a car in the USA than it is riding a motor scooter in Vietnam. Except maybe for your lungs.
As we head north out of Ho Chi Minh City, we continue to "leave town" for a long, long time.The City stretches endlessly into the rural north, and is growing spectacularly. There were 400,000 people in Saigon at the end of the American War, and by the time the Soviet Union collapsed in 1989, taking its financial support with it, the city had swelled to about 4 Million. current estimates put the population at 11 Million, a with growth forecast to 16 Million in the decades to come.
The results of this remarkable growth, and the 7 million motorbikes that keep the City buzzing? Horrendous air quality. It becomes more apparent as we the "suburbs" spread out and the view horizon expands. The high humidity and particulates assure we could never see more than 1km in the distance until we were more than 100km north of the City, amongst the rubber plantations and rice paddies.
At the end of the road, after skirting along the Cambodian border for several kilometres, we dropped by the Great Temple of the Cao Dai, the global headquarters of the religion that is based on Daoism, but tries to marry the Buddhist traditions with that of the western mono-theist faiths. Their three "Saints" (who were all dead in the ground long before the founding of this particular faith - so their conversion was definitively post-mortem) are the great Vietnamese poet and philosopher Nguyen Binh Khiem, Chinese revolutionary and Vancouver gardener of note Dr. Sun Yat-sen, and French author Victor Hugo.
Would I make something like that up?
Regardless, the temple grounds were beautiful, and we attended noon prayers with the other tourist gawkers.
After this, we once again dropped in to the history of the American War and visited the Cu Chi area, which was the centre of the guerrilla war effort that connected communist Cambodia with the South Vietnam capital of Saigon - the south end of the Ho Chi Minh Road. This is where the use of tunnels, traps, and dogged perseverance wore down the American-led efforts in Vietnam.
The highlight of the area for tourists is the complex system of tunnels and bunkers, which were basically invisible on the surface, but from which a decade-long guerrilla war was successfully fought against the might of the most powerful military force ever assembled. More bombs were dropped by the USA in this area during early 1970's carpet bombing than in all of world war two, and the craters still remain. but so does the tunnel complex, which once stretched hundreds of kilometers. There is about 100m accessible at Cu Chi, they were even "expended" a bit to increase the height for the comfort (?) of tourists - from 80cm to 120cm high. The immediate claustrophobia kept us from exploring the full length.
So after touring some spider holes, we head back to town to once again enjoy the traveling carnival show of rush hour traffic and eat various grilled foods, some with tentacles, washed down with 50-cent beers. As our lungs blacken, we are starting to get the feel of the place.
After a few years of random jumping off to strange places, we have learned a few tricks. One of them is how to deal with Day 1.
This is the day to schedule nothing, but to be spent getting your footing. Dealing with culture shock, jet lag, and general apprehension of entering the unknown: there is a lot on your plate without setting expectations or trying to fit schedules.
So today we took a walk-about, found a bank machine to get us some Dong, found some coffee (at what appears to be the Starbucks of Vietnam in its ubiquity), sampled the local food (pho and various mystery dumplings), but mostly just looked around and got acclimated. This is time to create first impressions, however false they may be, as you will have weeks to test them.
Ho Chi Minh City is a bustling, prosperous city. Colonial French buildings, some beautifully maintained, some completely decrepit, are blended with the modern, post-modern and futuristic architecture of Big Commerce. Traffic is chaotic and boisterous, tempered in scale slightly because most of it is all mopeds or motor-scooters, although the flatulent single-cylinder buzz-bombs make up for their small size with abundant noise and exhaust.
Aye Carumba, are these little motorcycles ubiquitous. They fill every space on the roads, and on the sidewalks. Huge space on sidewalks are dominated by their parking needs. You spend you entire day stepping around them, be they parked or moving. Helmets are mandatory in Vietnam (at least for adults, kids on laps or handlebars seem to be exempt), but the dust masks are optional.
At first glance, Vietnam is not a poor country. The trappings of commerce are everywhere, as are high-end consumer goods, at least here in the heart of the commercial centre of the country. There are lots of people in shirt and tie, and lots of groups of young professionals doing lunch with iPhones and Blackberries in hand. The few cars that can find space between the motor scooters are newer Toyotas and Hyundais.
Alas, Ho Chi Minh City was so named after various waves of imperialists were finally driven off in 1975, and the old name "Saigon" fell out of favour with the new boss. So the scars of the French War and the American War are both present in this City.
The War Remnants Museum stands testament to the atrocities of that era. Outdoor areas are littered with discarded supersonic aircraft, horribly beweaponed helicopters, and various pieces of field artillery, all left behind by the Americans as they were leaving in rather a hurry. The interior displays photographs and other documents of the historic atrocities suffered in Vietnam, brutal and unflinching, from dismembered corpses to children deformed by Agent Orange, to smiling pictures of Nixon and Kissinger. Why the hell is Kissinger not in some very dark prison right now?
The museum is only surprising in not telling more about the heroes of the war from the Vietnam side. There is nary a mention of heroic leaders or the actions of Vietnam defenders. This despite a large hall dedicated to the people from various nations that marched to protest the American actions in Southeast Asia, and the heroism of U.S. draft resistors. Perhaps this is a result of the War being, for lack of a better term, a proxy civil war, and heroes of the north might ot be as appreciated down here in the south where they were fighting the "Puppet South Vietnamese Army".
Although, as I started out saying, I'm pretty sure every first impression I developed above is wrong. Especially as I am now sitting in a streetfront pub, 5 feet from a constant flow of motorcycles, listening to 80's pop (currently, and I kid you not, "Footloose") and drinking my nth Bia Saigon Lager (served in a bottle with a neoprene cozy) and avoiding mercantile stares from the very pleasant young ladIes sitting at the next table while waiting for Tig to get back from her massage...
So I may not be of clearest mind, and it is, after all, Day 1.
UGh. That feeling when you have spent 12 hours in the air but are only part way there.
China Eastern (despite a few horror stories) was no worse than any other discount carrier. The plane was ok (A330-200), the food terrible, seats just that tiny bit too small, and a non-functional entertainment system. But flying was never supposed to be about glorious adventure, was it?
Up the west coast we were racing another plane, and I'm not aviation expert, but it seems strange to be cruising at 38,000' this close to another plane...
The flight tracked south of the Aleutians, not much land visible until Japan, and even that a little cloudy. However, crossing the East China Sea I knew we were approaching Shanghai when the clouds went for fair-weather cumulus to thick haze with a distinct yellow tinge.
We passed through Shanghai during one of their air quality emergencies -
The few glimpses we see of the City are newer developments (evidenced by the wide, empty roads builds to sudden dead ends), and big ships in the Harbour.
However, nothing prepared us for the bigness of the Terminal building, or
I should say one of the terminal buildings at the gargantuan Shanghai airport. A single, long, cavernous space that disappeared to a vanishing point like a backdrop canvas from an epic 50 Holywood film. movie. It seems the building was built not to contain today's needs, but to house future expansions, as much of the space is completely empty.
So we caught the spirit, emptied some beers and waited.
With all that big terminal space and empty gates, it was surprising when we went through "boarding" and got on a bus hat drove us a few miles across the Tarmac, between taxiing planes, past the parked A-340s and A-380s and 747-400s to the cheap back lot where they kept the old A-320s. Boarding a jet from a staircase car, like Kennedy did it!
The flight to Ho Chi Minh City was uneventful, dark, and at this point we realized packaged Chinese foods are full of interesting surprises. Onion flavours where you expect ice cream, vanilla where you expect onions. A quick taxi ride through mostly abandoned streets (we arrived at 2:00am local time) and found our secluded back alley guest house. Check in, settle down -hit the hay almost exactly 24 hours after we ordered our pre-flight beers at YVR. Through the magic of the international date line, we left at noon on Saturday, travelled 24 hours, and it is 3am on Monday. sleep.
It's on!
The Itinerary: We get on a plane to Shanghai tomorrow, and if the smog allows them to find the ground, we will change planes and get to Ho Chi Minh City a few hours later. Three days in the old Saigon, then a quick hop up to Hanoi. We will then spend about three weeks working our way back to Ho Chi Minh by whatever means available (hopefully involving longshore drift, if you sedimentology types get my meaning!) Quick two days in Shanghai on the way home, and that's a trip.
Not sure what the social media or Wifi situation is in Vietnam, so this might be another trip-blog failure like Cuba. Otherwise, check back with us and I will try to update every couple of days.
This has been a test of the Tig'n'Pat on the Road blogging interface system. please return to regular web browsing.
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