Saigon

We had about a 6 hour bus journey out of Phnom Penh, accross the border and into Saigon. We got off the bus and were greeted by pure hecticness!! There are motorbikes everywhere, not many cars, lots of cyclos (big cycles with seats on the front for passengers) and cycles and a few buses. Jeez, thought Bangkok was bad, then Phnom Penh but this just tops it, and then some!! And the noise!!! All over SE Asia, vehicles beep to say 'here I am, please don't crash into me' Here, they are still used for the same thing but every vehicle is doing it constantly, if baffles me how anyone works out what horn belongs to what bike ???



The tour officially ends here and Rich and I had booked into a different hotel for a few days while the rest are all in the same hotel as most are leaving the following day. Exceptions are Bob and Angie who are on the same tour up through Vietnam and Jean who is doing the same tour but with a different company, and Graahame and Lorinda are having a couple of weeks travelling on their own through Vietnam. So no doubt we'll see them and Jean along the way. We also found out that Sophie would be our tour guide.....oh joy!

We found our hotel and had a bit of a kip before meeting everyone else for a farewell dinner. We walked to the restaurant as it wasn't far but that was a scary walk. As I'd said, the traffic is hectic there shuold be order to it, there just isn't. The way to drive is pretty much I'll go where I like, you go around me. And that's how you have to cross the road , it's really not a pleasant experience but if you don't then you'll never get across the road. So basically you just have to step out and walk slowly but purposefully in a straight line across and everything will move around you. It's easier if you just look straight ahead and not at the million motorbikes heading your way, but it's hard to do that!

We went to a local restaurant that had some 'interesting' things on the menu. Good old favourites like, goats breast, beef penis, rat and some other crazy stuff that I can't remember (check out the menu!). Bob, who will eat anything and want's to try everything went for the beef penis. Rich and I tried a bit and it was quite nice, fortunately it did come in slices so you'd never know what it was. They didn't serve dog in here gladly but it is something the Vietnamese eat a lot of, in fact I learned later on that dogs are bred especially for it like cows :-( But they do also keep dogs as pets, the intelligent ones, it's the stupid ones that get eaten......Ruth, never take Alfie to Veitnam!!!



We had a couple of days before the tour started and so Rich and I spent our time, emailing people and sitting at a bar watching Saigon, it's a very interesting city and just watching the traffic is fascinating! We did also meet up with Jean an took a cyclo tour around the city, visiting some temples and stopping at chinatown another market!
The cyclo tour was quite hairy, they're not very fast and as you're sittng at the front you feel very vulnerable! The cyclo would turn a corner into a million oncoming bikes and somehow manage to slip into a space and round the next corner, there were many near misses along the journey but I didn't see so much as a raised eyebrow. Fascinating!! My driver was called Mr Kim and he was very funny. He Spoke some english and as we were going through chinatown kept hitting me on the shoulder and saying 'chinatown, many chinese people live here' He must've done it about 10 times! He used to be a policeman before the vietnam war but now he's an illegal citizen in Saigon and as such cannot own a property or business and as such can never marry. it's quite sad but most of the cyclo drivers are like that, eeking out a living giving cyclo rides, they have no homes either, they just sleep in their cyclos. I don't really understand the Vietnam war and why these previously respectable people have no place in Saigon anymore. (Note from Rich: I know why, during the war all intellectuals and people in high ranking jobs tended to sympathies with the Americans, so after the war these people were rounded up and sent to re-education centres then after their re-education they were dropped back into society as 'non-people' with no rights what so ever. Sad, but true!) And they are the lucky ones, a lot of people don't even have a cyclo to earn money to eat. We were talking to a fella about our age and he had nothing, he tries to make money by taking newly arrived backpackers to hotels in order to get comission from the hotel for finding them custom. He doesn't earn very much so he doesn't eat very much, and as he has no cyclo he has nowhere to sleep, he's constantly moved on by the police if he sleeps in the streets and so doesn't always get much sleep. Makes you realise just how lucky we are.



When the tour started, we met our new group for Vietnam, which was Rich and I, Bob and Angie, a couple (who we later discovered were only friends!) Ben and Jane and a girl on her own, Jady.....and that was it. A small group and we knew half of them already!!

The first day of the tour was to the Chu Chi tunnels. These are tunnels that the Vietnamese lived in during the war to hide from the Americans, and there was a whole 'city' down there with a huge network of tunnels and rooms at different depths. Now, I can't tell you much more because our guide was shocking. He started off by shouting at us the whole of the way there saying that tourists come to vietnam without knowing anything about the war or having incorrect knowledge (ie Americas version) and we are ignorant. Tis true, but a lot of us hope to learn something while we're there. He called us all fat assed westerners countless times and pretty much made us all feel like naughty school children. He was very anti-american (even though he fought for america and has and american girlfriend and lived there for ages ?????) and in your face with his opinions. Nobody liked him. When we arrived we were shown a film about the Vietnamese war. Now, he complained of our incorrect knowledge but I'm not sure the film gave us the correct knowledge as it started out by showing Chu Chi village, a quaint, peaceful little village full of nice people and then said that all of a sudden the Americans decided to Bomb this quaint little village and kill all it's nice people. Now, I don't know much about war, politics or history but I'm pretty sure that's not what did or would have happened! There was so much propaganda it was unreal, and like Angkor Wat it was teeming with people. Blimey, I'm winging again!

The actual tunnels were cool. A section of them (about 90metres) are used to demonstrate to tourists, and had been widened to allow for our fat western asses. But even so, it was still a small space to be crawling through with no light and all manner of insects and rats and the like eeeek (there werent' insects and rats when we were there......I don't think!)

So, that was Saigon!



(Ask Alan what sort of tank it is I don't have a clue!)