SAIGON Jnaurary 2011

On Friday the 28th of January we boarded the hotel bus and were taken to Danang Airport to fly to Ho Chi Min City. We checked into a hotel just across the street from the Ben Thanh Market in central Saigon. It was small, no window, awful breakfast and quite expensive so we moved up the road to Ha My Hotel. 120 LyTu Trong Street, District 1, Tel +84 8 38233981. Email; hamyhotel@hcm.fpt.vn  www.hamyhotel.com.vn. It was a very good clean hotel and we had nice rooms on the front overlooking the street and good breakfast all for $US34 per night including in room computer and internet and air-conditioning. This was the norm for hotels throughout Vietnam in this price range.. There were plenty of wireless hot spots every where we traveled.

The flower sellers were packed into every vacant median strip.

TET or the Vietnamese equivalent of Chinese New Year was about to start so the streets were swarming with a mind boggling mass of produce and stuff!. Everything was on a motorbike or a street cart. The flower sellers are endemic at this time of year and numerous bikes with really large potted cumquats were very common. The huge main street islands were a mass of flowers of every colour and description from dragon fruit display to orchids and sunflowers. Chrysanthemum was very common and the overall effect mind blowing!

Our first tourist destination was the War Remnants Museum, which I suppose every tourist to Saigon visits. It is high impact macabre and graphic! You certainly don’t leave there in any doubt as to the extent of damage to human bodies and appalling and grotesque nature and carnage of war!

Lovely shop fronts abound.

Next was the visit to the Cu Chi Tunnel complex several hours out of town by bus. I suppose one must do it. However get a car and driver and do a few detours. Its packed in those busses and very uncomfortable!  There must be thousands go through the tunnel complex daily. Interesting but more of a boy tour!. They got to fire off a few rounds too!

Vern and Jo hired a motorbike in Ho Chi Min city centre and had a bit of a play with the traffic. VERY BRAVE! Vern insisted it wasn’t any more difficult than mustering freshly shorn sheep in long grass in a stony paddock! We walked

The streets and shops were lavishly decorated for TET.

We only spent 4 days in Saigon. There was plenty more to see but we decided to head to northern Thailand to the hill tribes and elephants in lieu of Sapa. You always need to leave something to come back for.

More Photos of Saigon

HOI AN `VIETNAM Janurary 2011

Vern and Jo on their Rental Bike.

Delightful! There is something for everyone in Hoi An. We spent 5 days here in the end. We stayed in Phuc An Hotel in the town. (Phuc An Hotel Ph +84 510916757, 39 Tran Cao Van St. www.phuocanhotelhoian.com) (Not riverside, which is a long way out.) Including breakfast it was $US 30 per night. Good helpful staff and transport service. Across the road is Sunshine Café. Hoi and her daughter run the show there and the food and company is delightful.

It was so lovely and such a great “holiday”. It is very touristy but we loved the hustle and bustle, great food and architecture. Hoi An is a heritage listed city and as a result of an agreement between North and South it was only slightly damaged the during War. 

The old French Colonial architecture is gorgeous. The pale yellow ochre, which is the traditional paint color of Vietnam, comes alive when contrasted with the old timbers, ornate tiles and doorways, cobbled streets and lovely riverside waterfront. The temperature was mild around 22c during the day so most of the woollies were put out to pasture and we strolled in shirtsleeves.

All in a days work

Unfortunately, a family crisis saw us bid farewell to Magics who had to fly back to Australia so we were down to 4. Vern and Jo hired a motor bike and on the second day managed to convince me to ride behind David on one!! I don’t think I will ever be comfortable on a motorbike but it was a good way to see things around Hoi An. We saw the beautiful flower and vegetable village, serene and iconic rice paddies complete with water buffalo being ridden by their keepers. We were able to wander in and out of all sorts of narrow lanes and interesting areas. 

Typical of the Hoi An streetscape

 One thing we all noticed is that the overall standard of living in Vietnam seems to be higher than almost anywhere else we have travelled in Asia. There are neat, tidy, clean, freestanding homes, often several levels, throughout all the areas we visited. The array of foods available including fruits vegetables dairy, grains and meats is truly enormous. Meal sizes and meat portions seem to be generally more generous than the rest of Asia. Yes of course there are the poor and disabled, many of whom with injuries as a result of the conflict in the 60’s and the ongoing legacy of the land mines.

Hoi An Water front has lovely old Colonial Buildings now converted into shops and restaurants.

Old Japanese Bridge

More Photos of Hoi An

HUE and DANANG Janurary 2011

Our intention was to journey north to Sapa and the hill tribe area. How ever the temperatures there were in the minus range at the time so we elected to start south to Hue on the Perfume River. This entailed a flight from Hanoi and a short bus trip into town where our bus driver located a very reasonable hotel with extremely friendly capable staff. 

We dropped our bags in our rooms at the Thai Binh Hotel (one of the nicest hotels we stayed in during our travels in Vietnam, about US35 per night with in room computer, air-con and breakfast. www thaibinhhotel-hue.com)  Their staff organised a half-day tour of the historic sites around the area. The six of us boarded a small private coach and set off to visit the Thombs of,Tu Duc and Khai Dinh, Thien Mu Pagoda and the century old Citadel. There is so much to see here that we feel our tour was rather fleeting but given that several of us had contracted some flue like lurgy, our capacity for too many more staircases and temples was being stretched. I have resolved that should I return to Vietnam I will spend more time in this area.

The following day we did a private mini bus trip to Hoi An via Danang. This was a fairly hair raising drive with a combination of poor road and very erratic and sometimes very fast driving by our driver! We stopped on a mountain pass for refreshments and were immediately pounced upon by touts selling all manner of trinkets! They are good, and relieved us all of some VD, a practice which we came to call “de-donging”! 

This particular de-donging was something of  record, with all of us purchasing a lot of stuff none of us wanted but which we all laughed about for some time. Next stop was China Beach, famous as the location for “Good Morning Vietnam” and a site for R and R of American Troops during the Vietnam conflict in the 60’s. Danang is a thriving port and business centre and not really a tourist stop. It is gearing up though and in another 10 years there will be plenty of very big beach resorts all along this coast. They are already in the construction stages.

More Photos of Hue and Danang

HANOI VIETNAM Janurary 2011

The air quality was pretty awful when we were in Hanoi

On the morning of the 18th Jan we flew from Kuala Lumper to Hanoi in northern Vietnam to meet Vern, my brother, and Jo for a few weeks of traveling together. We met at the airport as planned and in spite of all the warnings about taxi scams we still got caught. Our “taxi” (not a taxi) quoted us VD400,000 for the trip but when we arrived he said he wanted that amount for each passenger! We didn’t pay him and when David went into our hotel to get them to come and sort it he quickly accepted the agreed amount and fled!. We discovered we had paid twice the going rate! Advice… don’t get a taxi that is not a taxi, ie. Not marked. Red ones and blue ones are OK apparently.

The streets get pretty busy

We checked into our hotel, Nam Hai (more on that one in a separate post) in the old quarter, and set off to explore. The old quarter is extensive for the walker and the traffic is pretty lively but very easy to negotiate. You just shuffle into the traffic and keep walking slowly. It miraculously just separates around you! I wouldn’t try that in Perth. So having become acquainted with the road rules and the traffic we ventured up many interesting lanes and alleys. Our first brief was to get some warm clothes. We’d all arrived dressed for summer and with no fall back position. The unseasonably cold weather caught many travelers by surprise and the heat was on to get into some woollies! (Temperatures are usually around 12c to 20c but plummeted to 5c to 12c.)

One of may lovely facades.

The dealers in coats, particularly North Face copies were doing a roaring trade and our group alone bought 10 coats from him. Vern and Jo had some other Australian friends flying in next day as did our sailing friends Chris and Daun from SV More Magic. Coats alone weren’t enough for those of us used to the perpetual summer of the lower latitudes so it was onward for tights, scarves, gloves, shoes, socks and beanies! Now very nicely attired, and warm, the real agenda could be pursued, that being eating, stooging in assorted interesting shops and of course galleries and Museums.

Vern and Jo and their friends went off to Halong Bay to do the boat thing but being yachties, ourselves and Magics decided to stay in Hanoi. David and Christo spent hours walking the streets checking out the casket of dead Ho and the war and ethnology museums. Daun and I virtual shopped. That’s to say we didn’t buy anything but at the end of the day would decide what we would have bought if we had…(a) somewhere to put it. (b) enough room in the luggage now that it was full to capacity with woolies. (c) the need or the budget for it! It was all extremely good fun.

All decked out in our new woolies.

We did purchase some very good coffee called Civet coffee. Producers use a technique to select the best beans which involves the participation of Civets. Apparently these creatures are coffee connoisseurs and this penchant is employed by growers who harvest the dung of the coffee eating weasels, clean it and roast it for sale as Civet coffee. Its defiantly the best coffee I have ever tasted! 

There are an exhaustive number of galleries and clothing shops of a very high standard scattered around the area. It wasn’t difficult to explore just within the Old Town for 3 days. There was still plenty to see.

A visit to the Ethnology Museum was a must do for Daun and myself, however it was very cold inside and although the displays were good we only spent a couple of hours there. Getting there back on the local bus was the biggest adventure because we got lost. Finally we found a severely overcrowded bus going our way.

Eating is always an adventure in a new place and Hanoi had plenty of choices. Our favorite Vietnamese food was Ban Me. A really delicious bread roll, better than any Ozie bread, filled with spicy pork, lettuce, green stuff, coriander relish and something pretty hot. They varied from seller to seller but we usually at them for lunch. There was a delicious restaurant called La Restaurant near our hotel which had terrific food at great price. Vietnams legacy of the French occupation is very obvious in architecture and food and very much to the benefit of the western traveler who occasionally likes to eat familiar cuisine.

Bridge over Hoan Kiem Lake

Vietnamese people are very friendly without harassing you. We found that English is reasonably widely used and we had very little difficulty communicating.

More Photos of Hanoi

NAM HAI HOTEL SCAM!

55 Duong Thann St Kiem District. In the Old Town area.

We should have been warned when the prearranged driver meeting us all at the airport didn't show up. We got de-donged the first time and only time getting from the airport to this hotel. Magics arrived after us and only stayed one night; we should have taken a leaf out of their book then too. Over the few days we stayed various little things bugged us like the lift being very inconsistent and mostly not  working. It matters when you are on the 5th  floor! The rooms were freezing and the reverse cycle air-conditioning was hopeless. Bathrooms were, in hindsight again, the worst ones we stayed in. But this was our first hotel experience in Vietnam. When we went to check out at about 10pm on the last evening it all went pear shaped. The US dollars we put on the counter mysteriously disappeared while the desk clerk was arguing the US dollar rate with us and trying to charge VAT which we had been quoted as "included" (and which Magics were not asked to pay). Eventually we went up to bed and set them to work looking for the missing money. There were 3 guys hanging about the desk while the transaction was taking place. At 5 am we caught a taxi pre ordered by the hotel. We fare welled the staff assuming the money had been located and the bill sorted. NO! 5 minutes later as the 6 of us  were on our way to the airport the taxi phone rang and he was instructed to return us to the hotel. At this point we had no option but to pay the hotel again or miss 6 flights arguing! There is not doubt that someone pocketed the money at the desk. We only had a very limited  UD$'s on us so there could be no mistake. Give Nam Hai Hotel a big miss!

Magics moved to ROSE HOTEL, was excellent. . Tel. +84 438286779. Mob. +84903442180. In front of the HanDa Market and beside the Hong Ha Theater and next door but one or two from Nam Hai.