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Ok, so despite being a nervous flyer I managed to get a flight for September 11th and made my way to Vietnam, with my long awaited visa in hand. I was looking forward to communism and a new way of social living. The immigration people were very nice to me though and not at all like I'd imagined they would be (very strict and in a bad mood). The first thing I noticed on the way to my hostel was the endless paddy fields, with little old ladies in them tending their rice crops....just like in the movies. I have to admit, I knew nothing of Vietnam before I went, other than they had a couple of wars with the Frogs and the Yanks.
Hanoi was madness though, and I thought Koreans were bad drivers?! At any given time there were literally hundreds of motorbikes on the road I was trying to cross, all weaving in and out from each other. The trick here to crossing a road is to walk out, regardless of whats hurtling towards you, and just keep walking slowly....somehow everything manages to avoid you...but if you run, you'll get hit. The hostel I was in was great for meeting people, so I always had somebody to pal about with. I went to see the famous water puppetry, of which I understood nothing about. I also went to the war museum, which was pretty crap compared to other museums I'd been to around the world....the explanations an history of thing just didn't exist. But the captions to various artifacts and pictures were amusing. All Vietnamese museums seem to love pointing out the failures of the French and American forces. In truth, I had no idea that Vietnam were such an unfortunate country. What the French, and more so what the Americans did to them, for no reason whatsoever, makes me realise just how special these people are.
The place to go in the North though is Halong Bay, and so I booked an overnight trip to there. Thats where I met Pat and Nick, an English couple that I was ages with. The three of us mucked around together for the best part of the next week and it was good to have some regular company again. Halong bay was stunning though. It's a World Heritage Site, and not hard to see why. Our boat was luxury and we did kayaking and swimming and my favourite pastime, sunburning. The surprise caves were incredible to see....absolutely massive. In the evening we were treated to a monsoon storm where the thunder was louder than I've ever heard before. I was kind of wanting the boat to be in a bit of danger, rocking about a little or something, just to spice things up a bit.
After Halong Bay pat and I went to the mosuleum where Ho Chi Minh's body is kept in a crypt. It was extremely well guarded and everybody is just filed through the crypt in silence, looking at some guy who died in 1969. Imagine William Wallace doing what he did in the 50s and 60s, and that is how Ho Chi Minh is percieved in Vietnam. There are pictures of him everywhere. After that I was ready to leave Hanoi, so me, Pat and Nick made our way to Hue where we met Matt and Blake, the Canadian guys we were talking to at Halong Bay. The five of us hung out in Hue for a couple of days where we hired motorbikes and toured around for a day. A lot of fun, until I ran out of petrol in the middle of nowhere. Still....somebody came back and went to get me some more, so off we went to the beach for a wee swim. Driving these bikes are great fun....very dangerous, but a lot of fun. Horn honking is a must if you are to survive. You must let other people know that you are on the road so they don't step out or serve into your path. Hue is also the closest big town to the DMZ area which split North and South Vietnam during the war. there is a cool tunnel network there which the NVA (North Vietnamese Army) used to use when they were being bombed by the Americans. We all took a trip to visit them an got to walk around in the tunnels.....again, very strange. I couldn't imagine having to spend days at a time living in little earth tunnels in the pitch black. But these people did it, and that's basically how they managed to defeat the Americans.
Anyways, after Hue we went to Hoi An, which I think would be my favourite place in 'Nam if I had stayed. Because I was rushing things a little to catch up with Baz and Chris, I decided in advance that I wouldn't stay here and would just get a connecting bus a few hours later on...big mistake. Hoi An had the vibe that I was looking for. I loved sitting at the riversidehaving a drink with one of the locals who wanted to talk to me. The whole atmosphere of the town was great...really laid back...but somehow extremely busy at the same time. But I had said my cheerios to Nick and Pat and had booked my bus out of town....so I had to go. Still...at least I met some friends I'd made in Hanoi on the bus, so I joined up with them and had a great couple of days in Nah Trang....which is a bit of a 'party on the beach' type of place. One of the guys was having his birthday...so we all got completley trollied....the first time for me in a couple of months.
I then left for Dalat in the Central Highlands....where malaria is at it's worse in Vietnam....so i thought I'd better strart taking my malaria tablets at that point. Dalat was rubbish though......however, in fairness, I didn't really have the time to explore it properly and the scenery was very different to the lowlands. But my bum was hurting from all the long bus journeys now and I just wanted to rest for a few days. So them I went to Ho Chi Minh City (formerly known as Saigon) and spent a couple of days there exploring. It's around here that there is 200km of underground tunnels which the Viet Cong (communist south vietnamese guerillas) used to elude the Americans. the yanks even managed to build their main military base over this tunnel network, which resulted in hundreds of deaths and injuries when the VC snuck out at night in surprise attacks. I took another tour of this place which I thought was much better than the DMZ tunnels. These ones were tiny...you had to crawl on hands and knees to get through them and the heat was unbearable. What the VC had to put up with down here was incredible, and I don't know how they survived down there, sometimes days at a time waiting for the Americans to leave the area so they could let in fresh air or eat some food. But without these tunnels, the Vietnamese may not have won the war. One of my favourite moments though was getting the chance to fire some weapons myself. I splashed out 25 dollars on 10 bullets each for an M16 and an AK47. The noise was deafening, but the guns were so powerful. I had to do it though....when else will I get the chance to fire off some rounds from those types of guns? It's just a shame I didn't have a better target to aim at....like George Bush.
So after a couple of days in HCMC I left for Cambodia, on another long journey, on another rubbish bus, on another rubbish road, great....just what my bum was needing.
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