Viet Cong Tunnels

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.

Saigon

*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…

Vietnam Trekking

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.

Never eat somewhere with pictures on the menu

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

Cheesetastic at the Valley of Love

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…

Suit You

The old town part of Hoi An in Vietnam is an Unesco World Heritage site and I was looking forward to this for ages. The guidebook says Hoi An old town now charges an entrance fee which is a bit misleading I think. You can certainly walk around the old town for free but there are a handful of buildings you can’t go in unless you have the ticket. We didn’t bother with the ticket to be honest as walking around the town was good enough for me anyway. It says you can imagine the streets and shops haven’t changed in 150 years and that’s probably true. Very picturesque place for sure.

The new town is almost completely dedicated to tailoring. Clothes, shoes, pretty much anything all ready by the next day! Kath, it could be said, was quite excited about this after we met a couple of girls on our Ha Long Bay trip who’d managed to fill their rucksacs and two extra bags each brimming with all manner of clothes and shoes. We did spend most of our time here in taylor shops I have to say.

The market is huge and I even managed to buy the bits needed to coble together a main adapter for my ipod speakers.

Down by the river the floor was litterally covered in tiny shells. I’ve not seen these anywhere else and wondered what on earth it was all about. All was revealed a couple of stall along. A fishy snack. You could buy a bag and cocktail stick and fish the little creatures out. They’re tiny and I guess bag would last quite some time. I wasn’t that adventourous even after my recent raw street squid experience pased without incident but the shells are pretty cool. I collected a load from the beach later. I’m hoping they will stop stinking shortly.

Oh yes, snakes and scorpions seem to love this stuff, there’s at least one of each in almost every bottle. It must be good.

The beach just outside Hoi An which is worth hiring bikes and going to if only for the ride out there. There are some pretty swanky resorts out here too which was a bit unexpected. Walking along the beach we were deluged by people trying to get us to sit at their little plastic tables for drinks. Fine if you want a drink which we did and quite interesting to watch the turf wars between them. A mini world war III broke out while we were sitting there with people drawing lines in the sand and everything! It was a quiet day the hawkers are most persistent I’ve ever seen.

Crazy House

Pretty crazy, the brainchild of the architect daughter of a high ranking communist party member. She moved to Dalat and created this amazing place. It used to be the family house and hotel and hotel rooms, all wonderfully themed and called things like the Honey Room, Bear Room (or similar). No longer rented out as a hotel I’d imagine it makes a small fortunte from visitors. I’ve never seen anything like it. Imagination gone wild in the form of reinforced concrete, amazing carved wood, plaster and chicken wire. There’s a limit to what reinforced concrete can do though, I think and some bits are particularly wobbly. Don’t think it would pass any building regs in the UK! Kind of makes it all the more amazing. The threat of danger in an unregulated world!

Some wobbly bits!

Dalat

“Honey Mooners and Kitsch Seekers love Dalat” says the Lonely Planet. That has to arouse curiosity surely? It’s true. It’s a brilliant description! Not even sure how else it could be described. Right on your way in you realise there’s something different about this place. It could be the manicured public lawns, the round about monuments made out of hundreds of flowery pot plans or the concrete animals all over the place. It’s also lovely and cool being quite high up for Vietnam which seems to make a massive difference. The locals seem to all be wearing coats most of the time but that, frankly is ridiculous.

These guys have chosen now to pull an ancient encrusted peddleo (no idea how you spell that) up off the lake bed. Behind me, while taking this picture was a spangly horse and carriage and probably a selection of brightly colours concrete animals.

Floating peddle powered swan anyone?

No? Perhaps a dolphin with a wind screen and door instead?

Down at the market, famous for its jellied fruit sweets (what else for the kitsch capital of the east?). Free samples too.

Just find a nice spot on the street and you can pretty much see anything go by, maybe not quite on the bizarre scale of Hanoi but hey!

Easy Riders – Vietnam Style

Wondering why you are greeted with the fairly unexpected “Easy Rider?” shout at every corner or when coming out of any doorway must be quite a common thought in Dalat, Vietnam. Not, as one might think, a question more suited to the seedier night bound alleyways but actually a business proposition by someone owning a two wheeled motorised conveyance or “Motor bike” and perhaps traditionally a large beard, although that kind of facial hair is a strange and rare luxury for most in this part of the world.

Anyway Easy Riders are everywhere in Dalat at least and they will, at the drop of a hat take you on either a city or countryside tour for which they all have printed itineraries you can peruse. You can of course ask them to quote you for a trip to the places of your choice which is what we tried to do. Easier said than done is all I’ll say to that! We were more than happy with what we got though. They will also take you anywhere in Vietnam which could be great fun. Apparently people often become good friends with their easy rider and stay in contact etc.

With ours we went to…

See a big dragon in a Pagoda

some crazy freaky extreme kitsch “Love in” at the Valley of Love (More later)

A minority hill village

with these guys you can stop when you want too which is great for photographing local life…

A nice lake

A really big pagoda!

and the Crazy House. Quite literally crazy, yup, that’s a giraffe in the middle there. More on that later

Oh yeh and we tacked on the Post Office at the end so send our postcards.

Kath’s Easy Rider

Ha Long Bay Junk Trip

We went budget on this. I’m definitely not complaining because this was so cheap it’s not really possible to complain. If I can offer any advice at all then it’s at the bottom of this post. Anywhere (from your hotel to the laundry maid) in Hanoi will offer you this trip around Ha Long bay on a Junk. They’re for 2 or 3 days, with one night on the boat and one in a hotel if you go on the 3 day one, which the one we chose.

I have to say this wasn’t quite what I was expecting but all in all it was still great. The guidebook kind of described a tranquil, lounge around on a traditional Junk being wined and dined while taking in the amazing island scenery (there are something like 990 islands in the bay), floating villages and general interesting stuff. This is actually pure mass tourism done as cheaply as possible but in an amazing location that, for me anyway worked out pretty well. Some other people we met weren’t so lucky and had to basically mutiny to get the guide and crew to take them where their itinerary said they should have gone. Thankfully we didn’t have that. The apparent complete lack of organization could be a bit frustrating. There was an awful lot of waiting around while busses turned up and boats met other boats. A huge endless dance of boats, busses, punters, passports* and guides that must surely regularly end in disaster was strangely fascinating to watch. In between all that, a great time was had by all, in some amazing settings. We had a great mixed bunch on our boat and there was much rejoicing into the early hours even if the captain did at one point come screaming out to drag a couple of particularly happy teenage girls from the glowing phosphorescent night waters.

There’s quite a jam at the various stop off points. If you were looking for quiet leisurely secluded sailing this probably isn’t the place.

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The 3 day 2 night budget trips offered by agents are all exactly the same, ultimately going with the same boat operators in the end by the looks of it. They all offer one night on the boat and one night in a hotel. The prices we heard people paying on our very boat ranged from US$90 down to US$30 for basically exactly the same thing. Some people who chose the luxury version did go off to a “better” hotel for the night they spent on shore but from what people said it was pretty much like our “budget” hotel, they even had to pay extra for butter for their toast in the morning

If it is possible to do this trip in luxury I’m not sure how. These junks we saw below look a bit more like the picture postcard versions. Not sure who runs them though.

The well respected Kangaroo Cafe (make sure you find the real one by the lake not one of the many many others all with “Lonely Planet Recommended” in the windows) charges about US$125 I think. That might be it but I cant say as it was too expensive for us.

[More Vietnam Pictures]

*Oh yes, if your passport is precious to you, you will probably want to close your eyes and forget about that when on this trip. Some crazy “law” says you have to surrender your passport when going to sea and the location of it for most people on our boat was entirely unknown most of the time. Some people got pretty upset about this, one Israeli flatly refused to surrender it so couldn’t go. Everyone did get theirs back bang on time when we arrived back, how that happened I have no idea.