Penultimate country in our world marathon. We’re meeting friends here who have been setting up a Kayak business for the last few months. We’ll travel around together then end up at their place and hopefully check out the Kayaks ourselves.
Itinary: Phenom Pen (killing fields, S21, city madness, Royal Palace and Silver Pagoda) – Kratie (river dolphins and countryside villages) – Siem Reap (Angkor Wat, Massage, Ed’s Birthday) – Bhatambang (Kayaking) – Thailand
The end of our Vietnam trip in Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) and we thought we wouldn’t be able fit in a visit to the Viet Cong tunnels at Cu Chi. It was our last day and all the organised tours had gone in the morning. Private tours were stupidly expensive. The site is only 30km from Saigon so we asked a taxi driver. No problem, we hired him to take us there, wait and bring us back for a fraction of the price of a “tour”. We were whisked through the countryside to the banging sounds of Euro Disco which I guess he thought we’d like. I did quite like it even on the second play on the way back.
Parts of the Viet Cong tunnels have been preserved here including a typical entrance hatch here…
and tunnels below… best not to be too (or even slightly) claustrophobic here!
mock ups of some of the improvised traps and weapons are on display too
along with other buildings all studded with eary B52 bomb craters
Then you can fire a gun. It’s not big and it’s not clever, all right! We went for the AK47 of course.
A. 25 Million, which is apparently 10,000 flights accross Austraila or if you rack up points via credit card you’d have to spend 2.2 million pounds. Alternatively you can buy a ticket £141,000 quid.
Amazing what you learn from in-flight magazines.
Ps. It is 61 miles or 100km from sea level to the beginning of space (if you’re talking about Earth anyway).
Get ‘em while they’re hot. Latest pics from travels have been stuck up here http://picasaweb.google.com/tim.minter.pics
*Disclaimer: I can’t claim to have any real knowledge of Vietnamese politics so if anything is incorrect just ignore it please! I believe the boss man is also high up in the communist party which may or may not make the country currently communist. The Lonely Planet is also about as sure as I am by the looks of it. “Capitalism is the ideology of choice and action. There are rules, and then there is the national pastime of getting around them”, “Vietnam is speeding towards the future with its politics and desires in a delicate balance”
Saigon is quite a lot different to Hanoi. I think you can really tell the difference between the originally communist North (Hanoi) and the originally capitalist South (Ho Chi Minh\Saigon). The South is still that little bit fancier, the streets are that bit wider, the buildings are that bit straighter and the overhead power and telephone lines are still that bit more orderly. Apparently when the ordinary people of the communist North flooded down to the South after the communists won the war they were shocked to find order and prosperity and that the people were actually educated, civilised and healthy, such was the propaganda leveled at the people of the north by their own government. Questions must surely have been asked. I’m definitely no expert but now I really couldn’t identify anything communist about either the North or the South. Just like when we left Cuba and Hong Kong I’ve got more questions than answers!
Look, helmets! The traffic is just not quite as insane as Hanoi.
French influences here and there including our guest house…
Bridges of Death and a Haunted Theme Park, good food and exercise. What else could you want?
Dalat is full of trekking, canyoning and mountain biking and we signed up for a full day trek with Groovy Gecko slightly up the road from the Peace Hotel where we were staying… the hotel is a favorite with backpackers apparently and hangout for “Easy Riders”. After the luxury of the smoking ban in the UK I find I can’t quite get my head around people still being allowed to smoke inside in some countries. Don’t they know it’s just soo uncool. It gets pretty smoky in the cafe so if you don’t like that, stay away.
Pretty much low season so not many people around and it ended up being the two of us and our guide. A few suspension bridges, this one below might have been the worst….
(at least we didn’t have to ride a motor bike over this one like we did in Cambodia)
a huge picnic and some local sights later…
we arrived at an abandoned (probably haunted) theme park. Nobody knows what happened here! Probably something to do with ghosts.
Complete with strangely abandoned cafe. Spooky.
If you go to the “Original” Peace Cafe in Dalat you might see us in the menu or maybe just some of my food photography work! Great food, crazy lady.
Weather or not this is the “Original” Peace cafe I have no idea. It’s up the road from what is probably the original Peace Hotel which has a Peace Cafe on the ground floor though, that much I know. Quite randomly, whilst waiting for our food she thrust a camera into my hand and proceeded to bring out various unrelated plates of food which she wanted me to take photos of. Then she took a picture of us. Hmmm
Our Easy Riders didn’t want to take us here. I think they thought it was a bit naff. How wrong they were! Gotta go here just for the shear “not like anything elseness” of it. It is a theme park for sure. There’s definitely a theme though defining it is quite a bit more difficult than I thought it would be. It’s called the Valley of Love and it’s in a valley for sure. Err, there are giant concrete strawberries and pointed hat people on massive toad stalls. Errr, giant intertwined swans and Brighton pier style stick your head through photo opportunities. There are some strange little fairground rides, a lake and horses and carriages. Some Vespa scooters and an American army jeep to sit on and pose with. Yup, good enough description I think.
We (well I – for some reason they weren’t interested in Kath) also got accosted by teenagers on the way out too. For some reason they all wanted their picture taken with me. Now I know what it’s like to be famous. Not too bad. I don’t know what Britney fusses about!
Love these fallorn fair ground rides. If I was going to publish a book it would probably be one of pictures of the strange and run down rides you occasionally find in towns of faded seaside glamour
brilliant…
Not kitsch enough for you? How about a pink combined alpine and native American shallet?
Well no one said I couldn’t!
One more…
