The quickest and easiest way to get around was by moto. The riders line the pavements and even have a helmet for you. I learned quickly to not just agree the price before but write it on a piece of paper so there was no confusion later. It was a total buzz being in the thick of it cutting through oncoming traffic. I was lucky not to be in an accident, some people I spoke to were less fortunate.
Except for the scooters, the city is caught in a time warp. Imagine 1950's street markets and shop houses selling just about anything you wanted. It has a hard edged feel which only a communist regime could give. The people are not so friendly, verging on aggressive when they want your money, nobody smiles. Never the less an amazing place to visit, after a couple of days I'd acclimatised. Yeah it was cold too. The History Museum and the Revolutionary Museum gave a good if biased story of the countries turbulent past, especially about the French colonialists, American imperialists and puppet governments and troops. Through out the past the Vietnamese have fiercely defended their country. Expelling Genghis Khan and the Mongols, the Chinese the French. Did the USA seriously think they could win a war here. When you see pictures of the Vietnamese woman working in the paddy fields planting rice while cradling her baby and with an AK 47 over her shoulder you kind of realize this is one tough nation of people.
Their toughness has certainly not diminished when it comes to rip offs, overcharging and scams. Wow, worse than when I was in China, got to be on your guard all the time and when dealing with anyone involved in tourism trust no one. It was hard work at times, it seems they want as much money they can get with scant regard of anything else. However, the people I met who weren't involved in tourism seemed nice and friendly.
Uncle Ho's (Prisidant Ho Chi Minh) body is preserved in the huge Mausoleum in the city. It's a major tourist attraction if slightly gruesome sight. The remains of a B-52 bomber shot down during the war are in a small lake nearby.The overnight train journey to Hue (pronounced whey) I share the compartment wit ha group of railway engineers. We share our food and beers and have a good time. I meet a tour group on this train that I seem to follow south for a while.
I liked Hue, not many of my fellow travellers did. Much quieter than Hanoi I even pluck up the courage to hire a bicycle for an afternoon. The rules of the road are don't look behind or to the side and give way only to vehicles in front of you. It's pretty scary but seemed to work.
The people seemed friendlier with even the odd smile here and there. The surrounding area was nice with temples and amazing mausoleums for the old emperors. The citadel in the old town had been heavily bombed in the war, many local people had lost their lives. Only some old American military equipment their now as a reminder and the heavily damaged citadel of course.
The train journey from Hue to Da Nang is one of the best. Along the coast, tracks clifftop, high above the crashing ocean. Here you can see the evidence of bombing, small areas of trees and vast areas of scrub land only just recovering now.
Hung over and tired I arrived in Da Nang. It was the nearest stop to Hoi An where I really wanted to go to. In the train station I meet Chienn. He offers me a moto ride to Hoi An for $4. I'm immediately suspicious and yes this was a sweetener for a bike trip into the central highlands he wanted to sell me. The Easy Riders they call them selves. Ride pillion for a few days and see the real Vietnam. He seemed okay (big mistake Neil, remember trust no one!!!!!) and agree to a 3 day tour starting in a couple of days. Got to get yourself out there to get the experiences.
Zipping along the road to Hoi An watching the waves crashing onto China Beach. Wartime US troops came here for their r+r. There was a big airbase here, some of the hangers have survived although not for much longer, the developers have arrived to build hotels in their place. I thought I heard the thud thud thud of helicopters overhead, it certainly wasn't from the exhaust of the little Honda Dream, Whoops Apocalypse (now).
Hoi An was good. It seemed the further south I went the friendlier the people became. The town is old and slightly decaying, many old french style shop houses. About 200 taylor's in town. I should have got a suit made, but for what reason..... The Cham temples at nearby My Son were amazing. A UNESCO heritage site. Not in so good condition though as the Viet Cong holed up here during the war and one or two bombs were dropped to flush them out. A memorable sight in the rain, the jungle surrounded temples and mist covered mountains behind.
So any way may bike tour. From Hoi An into the Central Highlands and along Ho Chi Minh trail to Kahm Duc and Kom Tun. The Ho Chi Minh trail was used as a supply line by the North during the war and was the scene of much fighting and bombing. For most of the way I wished I'd just hired a scooter myself but it was still good to see the places I did.
Even my guide was trying to rip me off along the way. He was a lying toe rag as well. He'd claimed the train I'd wanted was full because people were returning home after Tet (Vietnamese New Year). Now I'm not stupid, some may disagree, but that was a month before I say. He just wanted to get back early and get me on an earlier train. Let just say we didn't part on good terms. And yes what a train..... cockroach infested and even saw a rat run across the floor of the compartment. He'd also lied about when the train arrived, but I was aware of this before I got on the train. It would arrive at 2am and not 6am like he said. Arriving in a small town at 2am was pushing it a bit I thought. Now who to trust.... A woman in my compartment with small child tells me: yes no problem sleep in the station, it's really safe (?), or there's a station car that will take you to the next town for 3 dollars and not to worry. I wasn't worrying but jumped the train at 12.30am at Nha Trang hedging my bets on a bigger city. As luck would have it there there was a moto rider waiting at the station to take me to a guest house that was still open.
Nha Trang was cool, and everything is relative. This was the first modern feeling city I'd been in for a long time. A very long palm tree lined beach, attractive fishing village at the river mouth with brightly painted blue fishing boats and old Cham temples on the hill behind. Seedy too, hookers and thieves, I survived but my friend got pick pocketed by two 'taxi' girls.
I go to Dalat, big mistake. What can I say, the North and South agreed not to bomb the town during the war. I really don't know why not, they could have destroyed what was there and started again. Dreary concrete jungle masquerading as an attractive hill station. I leave the next day bumping into my Scots journalist friends Paul and Maureen on the bus to Ho Chi Minh City, I'll call it Saigon if you don't mind.
Saigon almost manages the developed city feel but not just quite. It's really how I thought Bangkok would be. Fast, hectic, seedy and a feeling that danger was just round the corner. The back packer area was on the go 24/7. Bar tables on the pavements, street bars with little plastic seats so you can watch the world go buy. Yeah this was hooker central. The scooter park seemed to be controlled by the pimps, phones to ears, with a steady flow of girls coming and going.
The Museum of War Relics provided an unbiased (for Vietnam) view on the war. Amongst the many photos were one of a family desperately trying to cross a river fear in their eyes another of a GI holding the remains of another with only the head and shoulders remaining. Many photos of the results of spraying chemical defoliants including Agent Orange on the land and people. Horribly scarred people and children being born with terrible deformities. 2 jars contain aborted hideously deformed foetuses. 77 million litres of chemical defoliants were used during the war. Whoever thought this kind of warfare was acceptable had surely lost their senses. The museum brings awareness of land mines not just in Vietnam but in Cambodia and Laos as well. The clearing work continues as do the casualties and deaths. The museum is a sobering place and what was achieved by this war? 3 million dead and the Communists still rule the country.
Continuing on the war note we go on a trip to the Cu Chi tunnels. A network of tunnels used by the Viet Cong to live in and fight from. One has been opened up to twice the size and it is possible to crawl along it for 100m going through several levels. It was still really small and I was dripping with sweat when I came out the other end. There were some horrible looking man traps, huge bomb craters and an old bombed out US tank. I get to fire a Kalashnikov AK-47 assault rifle. This was very cool indeed, really had to take this chance in a life time. Don't get to do that sort of thing in the nanny state of the UK. The gun must have been really old because it kept jamming, but it was an quite an experience, even for a pacifist like myself.
Across the border to Cambodia. I remember scenes on the television, when I was a child, of emaciated figures walking across the dry planes. I was here now and it was easy to visualise this. The country has only really been safe to travel in for the last few years, the Khmer Rouge bandits having completely surrendered. I was amazed at how developed Phnom Penh was, although poverty was all too evident, with many beggars, amputees and some horrifically deformed people. When Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge marched into town on 17th April 1975 the population was about 2 million. When the Vietnamese came to rescue the country, in 1979, it was less than 25,000. There are now around 1 million people living there again.
I visited the The Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum which was once a school. The Khmer Rouge turned it into the Security Prison 21 (S-21). Out of the maybe 17,000 people that passed through the prison only 12 survived. A place of torture, interrogation and extermination, it's a truly harrowing place to visit, with many photos of the victims, blood still on some of the walls and the torture equipment. The Vietnamese soldiers found the prison by the smell of the rotting corpses.
In the afternoon a short tuk tuk ride out of the city to visit the Killing Fields. A pleasant journey now compared with being taken from S-21 for execution. A memorial there is filled with the skulls of 8,000 of the 17,000 people who were executed there. Some of the mass graves have been excavated, there is a vast area where bodies still lay. It's a strangely peaceful area now however when I look at my photos of the mass graves it makes me feel sick. Communism gone horribly wrong, maybe as many as 3 million killed.
It's not all horror though the Royal Palace is quite amazing, the history museum reminded me of something out of an Indiana Jones movie, filled with incredible Pre-Angkor and Angkor period stone carvings. My guest house was beside the lake in the city with a deck to watch the sun go down while having a beer.
There's many Irish bars around the world but Scottish bars are almost non-existent. We're way to cool to need a Scottish theme bar. The Mosquito Bar in Phnom Pehn run by a Scots man was cool. There must have been 7 of us Scots there, the biggest group of Scots I'd been in since I'd left home. Paul, Maureen & Sean all from Glasgow who I'd met at various times though SE Asia were there. The night turned to whisky, I missed the boat in the morning. Oops.
So it was the bus for me to Seim Reap and the Temples of Angkor. I spent three days looking around the many temples in scorching temperatures of 40 deg C. They are incredible and leave a lasting impression. Two weeks later, I'm still dreaming of them at night. I could go on and on but I'll just show some photos instead. The stone carvings of the women were my favourite though.
Alas I had just 8 days in Cambodia, hardly time to do the country justice but I had to get back to Bangkok. I could have taken the tourist bus from Seim Reap to Bangkok. I take the bus to the Thai border. It was only 145 Km but took almost 6 hours. It's the worst road in the world. Due to be completed (again) in 2009 (maybe). Allegedly something about the airlines not wanting the road completed so they can encourage people to fly.
A night in the border town of Aranyaprathet and I take the early train to Bangkok. This has to be the worst journey of my trip so far. 3rd class, cramped, hard seat, so busy people standing in the aisle, hot, windows open farmers burning off last years crops in the fields, soot in the carriage. It was fun for an hour, after 3 unbearable, after 6 I was so happy being in the air conditioned taxi to my guesthouse. It was my choice of transport and I got to travel how the locals do. I didn't see any other travellers doing this route....
So my journey round SE Asia was finished, I'd managed to do everything I'd set out to do and more. It was an incredible experience, I've seen so much, learnt so much and met many friendly people both local and travelers. I didn't want to leave.
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