Indo-China 4

After a fruitless search for veggie, Heather has to settle for something with prawns in which she has to pick out of her dinner.   Overnight I have what we all call a ‘tummy upset’ and a temperature so I lay under the air-conditioning fan all night soaking my head every hour or so with cold water.   It gets the temperature down quite well.  

At 6.30 we wait for our hotel pick up which comes in the guise of two motorbikes which whip us along to the bus station where the bus is less luxury that we thought and looks suspiciously ‘local’, although we are assured that it is the right bus.  I am feeling a little jaded at this point and we enjoy an 8, not a 5 hour trip, stopping regularly and for most of the time being the only westerners aboard.   It fills, and continues to fill, smoking is allowed.   When the bloke sitting in the aisle next to me lights up I bring all the experience gained listening to those Marcel Marceau LP’s into play and I mime.  I point to the cigarette, point to my nose and demonstrate the ‘being violently sick’ gambit.  The ciggie is extinguished immediately.  I claim a victory.   At one stop for fuel, a coach across from us is being filled and 4 feet or so above the open filler cap a passenger is leaning out of the window smoking.

Down here in the Mekong Delta is the richest part of Vietnam producing a huge proportion of the rice crop and it looks really heavily populated.   Almost the whole of our route is through built up areas until we realise that it’s all only one building deep.  It’s a 200 mile long one street town crisscrossed by canals and rivers.   We’re headed for Ben Tre in the middle of the delta and only recently accessible by bridge.  It means we are about the only westerners in town and get the completely unthreatening look of a population spotting two freaks in town.  No-one speaks English, not even hotel reception.    Heather’s not hungry, I’ve felt better and we give up on food.   In the morning the breakfast menu at the hotel has only one thing for us, bread and butter.

During the afternoon and unknown to me, I turn yellow.  This of course is not good luck in the sense of lucky yellow chrysanths.    We check symptoms on NHS Direct, a very useful website and I seem to have a dose of Hepatitis A.  Joy.   I phone my doctor (isn’t Skype great) and the receptionist checks my file and tells me that my booster has been out of date since 2009.  This despite checking in December, last year before Argentina, before India etc…   Good news is that it turns out to be a mild dose and if it is indeed Hep A, I now have immunity.    We transfer to a hotel run by a New Zealander where mid- morning on Monday I have my first food apart from a bread roll since Thursday evening.  It’s the most delicious breakfast I have ever had, a bowl of cornflakes with cold milk.

Now up and running we have a delta boat trip with just the two of us, guide and boatman.  Not the best start with the engine failing and the current bashing us into a bridge but after that plain sailing, or at least plain motoring.    We did a few touristy things including local music which sounded very reminiscent of Bluegrass rather than what might be expected in a delta, just straight blues.   The visit to the brickworks could not be missed.  We’d been disconcerted the previous evening when our waitress hung around while we ate, even leaning on the back of my chair at one point.   Remember there were no westerners around and we thought it was just curiosityi.  At our lunch stop on the boat ride, we were served a huge spread of vegetarian and our waitress again stood next to our table.  Each time we ate something she replenished our bowls with her own chopsticks from the array in front of us.  Clearly this was what was supposed to have happened the previous night and was unlike anything we’d experienced before.  There were just two of us with food for about ten.   

 We were treated like family at the hotel and when we asked them to arrange a transfer to Saigon, Ken the N. Zealander owner said he was going to the airport and we could go with him.  We tipped the driver of the minibus the $5 Ken suggested because he’d taken us right to the door of our hotel.  So, about 100kms in a little over an hour direct to our hotel in a luxury minibus.  I could get used to that.

Saigon, officially Ho Chi Minh City, usually shortened to a more manageable HCMC which makes it sound like a bank or a fried chicken joint but  everyone calls it Saigon anyway.   Our arrival was a wonderfully, serendipitously accident of timing.  New Year celebrations were in full swing.   We’d seen some lovely central gardens with imitation paddy field s and flower displaysabout 50 yards wide leading some 600 yards or so from the river to the Hotel de Ville.  At night it was a riot of colour, noise and people.  Very impressive two-man dragon dancing took place on a series of 10 foot high poles with platforms the size of a small tea tray on top of each.  The dancers in a costume like a pantomime horse in that they were both inside one costume, jumped, performed acrobatics and ran about on the poles.  It was seriously impressive.     We weren’t in a big touristy area and were again two of very few westerners.   Lots of ‘hellos’ and ’where are you from’, from the kids who are obviously learning English, with some very young ones pushed up by their parents for their bit too.  Several ‘lubbley-jubbleys thrown in too.  We were photographed, asked if we would be photographed with locals, dragged into whole family group shots.   All fantastically friendly and happy.    One family group of about 20 saw me photograph them and they all cheered.    Overall, I’d say the evening was the highlight of the trip.  When we walked to it the next morning we were amazed to find it all gone and traffic roaring along.  The whole garden had been built for New Year and completely cleared overnight.   All that was left were some trees in the gaps between carriageways.

Here in Saigon there are lots of designer shops around and lots of designer fakes, some quite amusing.  An England football shirt for instance with a hugely oversized Ralph Lauren logo on the front.  The best one though had to be the t-shirt with the rather poorly done Union Jack and New York, New York written underneath it.

In card games on street corners and in cafes, playing cards seem to be dealt anti-clockwise and cards being laid are always slapped down really hard on the table.   Streets are swept and cleaned almost obsessively with one hotel staff member vacuuming in the gutter outside the hotel.   Outside a big Sony building was a display/sculpture with ‘make believe’ across it.  It was the place to be photographed with lots of posing and that V sign that’s so common in photos these days.  H noticed those older men photographing their young girlfriends in front of the ‘make believe’ sign.  Was that ironic or just them being oblivious to the irony.  I’m voting for oblivious.

Seeing this so claimed communist country which seems to be more like a centrally organised capitalist set-up is very odd.  The country appears to be booming and in the grip of a consumer spending spree.   It couldn’t seem more capitalist if the Americans had won.  I wonder what ex Vietcong or visiting ex GIs think of it apart from probably wondering what on earth all the fighting and sacrifice was about. 

Trauma No.1 being me turning into one of the Simpson’s  

Trauma No.2  was losing my wallet in Saigon.  Just bought air tickets on the credit card, walked to 

the Reunification Palace to discover wallet gone and pocket zip undone.  It was about 8.00 in the morning, no one about and I’m certain that it wasn’t  lifted by anyone.  I’m as sure as I can be what happened and that was me giving the tickets to H and sitting down without zipping up my wallet pocket.  The chair tipped and I’m sure that’s when I lost it. Black wallet on black chair.  Naturally, no-one had seen it when we got back to the travel agent.

Money, credit and debit card.  All cancelled within 30 minutes via Skype and no problem, just bloody irritating.  I do keep most of the money in a money belt and I still had that.

After the last bus ride, we’d decided that a flight for the 950kms to Da Nang was acceptable.

It still didn’t take the shine off Saigon.