Vietnam 2010

So, I've been meaning to get this up here for a while. I'm a bit worried I've waited too long and the memories have gone a bit hazy, but here goes anyways:

Day one: Saturday morning, get up early and head for the LOOOOONG train ride into Narita. It's 2 hours by bullet train, a.k.a The shinkansen, or just "the Shink" followed by another hour on the Narita Express. We've given ourselves lots of time, as heaven forbid we should hit some kind of delay and miss our flight. Our flight is at 6:30. We leave around noon. Luckily there are no delays, so we roll into Narita around 4ish after a couple of stops for "refreshments" along the way. Lots of time to sit and stew in the airport while we wait for our flight. T and I are not good fliers, so we drink beer and smoke and try not to think about being thousand of feet in the air.
We get on the plane and get our seats. We've both opted for aisle seats across from one another. I sit next to what may the the oldest Vietnamese man on earth. I have visions of having to let him out for bathroom breaks every 15 minutes, but actually he goes right to sleep and doesn't get up for the whole flight. At some point I start hoping he'll wake up when we arrive (he does though, so no worries). T, on the other hand, get's seated next to some crazy ojisan (that's middle aged Japanese guy, in English) who, also nervous and bonding with us over our drink-to-combat-nervousness technique, decides to open his bottle of duty-free whisky in-flight and feed us shorts of it for the next 5 hours.
We arrive in Ho Chi Minh in one piece, though a little the worse for wear. Now it's time to visit immigration. We wait for an our in our whisky-induced fog in order to pick up our visa-on-arrival stamps that we have applied for about a month before our trip. The immigration officer tells T he smells like beer. They still let us into the country though. Phew!
Thankfully, we had the forsight to arrange a hotel pick-up, especially since we've arrived around midnight and we've been at immi for an hour. Our friendly driver takes us through the very noisy and congested streets of Saigon to our hotel.
Seems like a good time to call it and night and rest up for the next day, right? Ha! Our hotel is right smack in the middle of the backpackers district, across the street from several patio bars playing loud music and advertising cheap drinks. We decide to venture out and mingle.
We end up across the street haggling with street kids for cigarettes. I am heartbroken to see kids as young as 5 or 6 out peddling gum and tissues, the older ones marching around with wooden cases filled with smokes, trying to get us to pay 5 times the price as you'd pay at a convenience store, if we had known where to find one. There is also a bit of an altercation with a recent acquaintace from Vancouver. At some point T makes the mistake of forgetting she told us she was from Canada, and asks her what part of the states she is from. She decides this is the most offensive thing anyone has ever said to her and yells at T. Her friend tells us she is very drunk and to ignore her, at which point I buy her and drink and assure her we meant no offence, and we talk about what a scumbag she is behind her back. We stick around for 2 drinks, at which point T suddenly can't remember where the hotel is. I reassure him that it's across the street, and we stumble back and settle in for the night.



The Crazy Buffalo!

Day 2: Bikini wax time! For those of you who don't know, the Japanese are apparently anti-grooming, at least when it comes to your intimate places, so the first stop for me on our beach vacation is a salon, to get swimsuit ready. Unfortunately, because of the crazy (mis)adventure getting here, it's a slow start morning. We manage to get to the salon, and in my fragile hungover state it is one of the most embarrassing moments of my trip. Lying in a table sweating, having your private parts worked on by 2 people who are speaking a language you can only say "thank you" in is a bit disconcerting to say the least.

With that taken care of, the only thing on our agenda for the day is Ben Thanh Market. We decide now is a good time (after a bit of hair of the dog) to try out a cyclo ride. A cyclo is like a rickshaw, only propelled by a bicycle, and the driver is behind you , not in front. What we didn't really take into account is that the traffic in Saigon is ABSOLUTELY INSANE! Traffic lights are few and far between and from what I can gather, whoever gets there first, in any traffic situation, has the right of way. You can see the video on Facebook for yourself, though it doesn't really do it justice.



T on the cyclo

We arrive, thankfully in one piece, at Ben Thanh Market. Not much to report about it except it was a big market, and you have to bargain like you mean it or you'll get completely hosed. I pick up a souvenir for my boss though, wondering if I've paid more than twice what it's worth (though later at the airport I will see the same thing for 4 times the price I paid and feel reassured).

As we leave the market, we get a taste of the rainy season as it starts torentially pouring rain. Street urchins are still coming up to us asking us to buy their tissues and gum while we hide under awnings waiting for the rain to stop. I have a big sob over that as it's my first experience in a developing country and I wasn't prepared for the kids. We hop in a taxi and get back to the hotel to warm up and dry off as we've got a long train ride the next day.

Day 3: Off to Nha Trang

We show up at the train station entirely too early and sit around at a cafe at the station for what seems like ages while we wait for the train to board. We realise pretty quickly that "first class a/c" does not have the same meaning in Vietnam as it does in Canada or Japan. I'll not go into much detail about it however we do meet a nice couple from Manchester on the train and spend a lot of the 7 hour train ride in the dining car with them having a few beers. I wonder why we didn't decide to fly for one hour instead of being trapped in this horrible train for 7, however we make it there, me not much the worse for wear, T unfortunately feeling less than fresh...he decided to make friends with some old guys on the train who, in a gesture of friendship, offered him some of their homebrew, which T refers to as "fish juice", which he of course, to be polite, decides to drink. This will prove to be a horrible mistake as he will suffer with a stomachache for the next 3 days.

We arrive in Nha Trang and are ushered into a taxi by a friendly-seeming man at the station. We quickly realise that we've fallen into a taxi scam. The driver, arriving at our hotel, advises us the fare is 100000 dong (about 5 bucks) however, it was a 5 minute taxi ride. The hotel staff advises us that the fare should be about 20000 dong. The driver has "forgotten" to turn on the meter. An argument ensues, mostly between the driver and the hotel security. The security man tells up to give the driver what we feel is fair and then go inside, as he will not follow us in. We give him 40000 dong, twice the recommendation of the hotel staff, and go inside. Travellers beware, this is apparently a pretty common scam. To his credit, the hotel guy seems very much unamused.

Upon entering our room, we find that we have a lovely view. After about an hour, we also find that we have some uninvited guests. As we head out for dinner, we ask the cleaning staff to please spray our room as there are 3 or 4 cockroaches under our TV. She apologizes profusefly. We go out for a lovely dinner, and return home to find there is now a cockroach on the bed and some on the chair as well. We call downstairs and are immediately relocated to a new room, this one cockroach free. Day 3 was not the best day.



View from cockroachland


Day 4: R & R in the hotel and at the beach, complete with pedicure.

Day 5: off to Nha Trang hotel # 2- Diamond Bay Resort

After cheking out, we head to a beachside restaurant for a lovely lunch of spring rolls and sesame pork, with mango smoothies, and of course, Heineken. Diamond Bay is about 15 km from the main beach area, so we get a taxi there and check in. We spend this part of the vacation basically eating and drinking and playing in the lovely GIANT pool and the private beach. The beach is accessible by tuk-tuk, which will come and pick you up and drop you off at designated times. We enjoy many tropical cocktails poolside, as well and a buffet dinner and breakfast, and finish off the night with an amazing night's sleep. In the morning it's more pool time, and time to check out and head back in to the city for our last night at the beach.



Yummy food at the beachside restaurant




The Diamond Bay pool

Day 6: Novotel

We've saved the best hotel for the last day. We check in and are advised we've been upgraded and will now be getting a superior room, which has it's own balcony and if you lie on the bed, it looks like you are floating on the ocean. Bliss.

We head our for a pizza lunch at a local restaurant called "the Sailing Club" which boasts a poll inside the restaurant. We don't swim in it though as it is filled with little kids (probably full of pee, ew!).

We decide to make it an early night but do head out for a couple of drinks at a local bar, Guava, where there is techno music and drink specials on vodka and redbull. Knowing it's another long say on the train the next day, we call it a night around midnight and top off the night with a caesar salad from room service and another amazing sleep.



On the balcony at the Novotel



The view



The private terrace :)




Day 7: Back to Saigon

Dreading this day, I am in the worst possible mood for train travel. I would have liked to have cancelled the tickets and just take the flight back, however the decision is made that since we already have train tickets, we ought to use them. We arrive at the station to find that, to add insult to injury, the train is 2 hours late. It's a very long day getting back to Saigon.

Once there, we check back into the same hotel, The Beautiful Saigon, which I highly recommend. Ms. Y and Mr. Phee are awesome and make us feel very much at home. After checking in and freshening up, we head out for one last night on the town, at a rooftop bar across the street. The highlight of the evening in that a giant rat was apparently hanging out in a planter next on the balcony and it decides to mosy across the bar while we're enjoying our cocktails. Thankfully, it doesn't decide to return.



Ms. Y was the best!


Day 8: Lasto!

Seeing as how we didn't do much sightseeing the first 2 days, we decide to get everything done on the last day. We head out to Ben Thanh again to do our last minute souvenir shopping, again traveling my cyclo. We decide to double this time, in hindsight not the best idea, but still manage to make it there unscathed.

Once we've spent most of our dong, we head over to the War Remnants Museum. This is the second time I'll have a big cry as it was very graphic but something that I felt it was important to see. We spend about and hour and a half but still don't see half of what there is to see. You'd need half a day to see it all.

By this time it's pouring rain again. We has intended to go to Reunification Palace however as the weather was not cooperating, we decide to call it a day. We head back to the hotel, complete our check out, and leave our bags in the lobby so we can head out for lunch. The water level has risen an alarming amount and we start to worry about our plane being able to leave that night. Eventually, the rain tapers off though. We head back and pick up our stuff and head to Hard Rock for our last meal in Saigon.

We meet our second Canadian of the trip. The manager of the Hard Rock happens to be from Montreal and a pretty cool guy. He buys us a drink and we enjoy a great dinner and some pretty cool entertainment in the form of a band from the Phillipines. We also chance into dry duds, and then get ready for the trip back.

The trip back is uneventful though the turbulence is constant, which means neither of us sleep a wink. We get off the plane, a couple of Zombies, and are barely able to make it to the Shink before dozing off for an hour or so on the way back. I've never been so happy to be on a Japanese train before. Ahh, bathrooms with seats...and tp...and soap!

It's good to be back...and yet...I can't wait for the next adventure..