Vietnam Part1: Up through the Central Highlands

After meeting up with Jonny in Kuala Lumpur who we will be travelling Asia with for the next few months, we flew into Ho Chi Minh City - the city which prior to the unification of Vietnam after the American war was known as Saigon. Many of the locals still actually refer to the city as Saigon, so we will too for the purpose of this posting.

The first thing that hits you (hopefully not literally) when you get into Saigon is the traffic. In particular the mopeds & scooters - thousands of them fill every street in the city, seamlessly weaving in & out of one another, around pedestrians, cars & buses without collision like fish flowing down a fast moving river. The surprising thing is that nearly all the riders now wear helmets, the Vietnamese government having made it law a few years ago. However, there are no regulations in place as to the quality of the helmets, & many are bought for as little as $1, shipped in from China - unlikely to offer much in the way of protection in the event of an accident. This lack of regulation has been jumped on by the fashion conscious and ‘helmets’ are made to look like wide brimmed women’s sun hats, baseball caps, head scarves or anything else the people want, all with just some form of hard plastic shell under their outer disguise.

Our arrival in Vietnam coincided with the run up to the Chinese New Year celebrations, known as Tet - which Vietnam also share as their new year, the actual date this year being February 14th, (it changes each year) though the celebrations start a week or so before that & go on for as long as a whole month past the ‘New Years Day’ date. As such everywhere is elaborately decorated with fresh flowers, potted trees, lanterns & banners which all very nice, the down side of it however is that all prices get specially inflated & getting a seat on buses or trains becomes very difficult, as the entire population appears to be travelling from one place to another to visit family & friends.

Anyway, we managed to get ourselves into a really nice family run guesthouse in central Saigon & had a few days exploring the city. First port of call was food, & we went to a local place recommended to us by our hostel that only served one dish - a beef soup known as ‘Pho Bo’, which proved to be one of the tastiest soups we had ever had, basically just a meat stock with fresh spring onions in, slices of lightly cooked meat & a plate of fresh salad & herbs to garnish with - fantastic.

Vietnam also does a great trade in black market books - while we were sitting at a roadside bar enjoying the first of the many £0.30 beers we got stuck into while here, a girl came over to us with a stack of about 20 books in her arms, photo copied versions of all the Lonely Planet guides for Vietnam, China & the other South East Asian countries, as well as all the classic Vietnam war literature & numerous other perennial traveller favourites. So we haggled our way into buying a copy of the Vietnam Lonely Planet - a perfect photo copy complete with colour photos which we paid just under £2 for, rather than the official price of about £17.

Armed with our pirate copy of the Lonely Planet & a less than original pair of Ray Ban sunglasses purchased from another street entrepreneur for around £2 as well, we made our way out to one of the main sites that people now visit from the American war (all references to what we in the West commonly know as the Vietnam war are made using the term The American War here) - the Cu Chi Tunnels. Located about 25kms north of Saigon in what was once forest, before the Napalm bombs used by the Americans laid waste to any trees or crops in the area, this network of underground tunnels were effectively used as the last line of defence of Saigon from invaders coming from the North. When shown on a model, the tunnel network resemble an ant colony inside a glass case. Multi tiered layers of tunnels providing everything from kitchens, living quarters, hospitals, arms storage, defensive fighting posts & traps. Some of the traps & handmade weapons used by the Vietnamese now on display were particularly brutal, hidden trap doors on the jungle floor which flip round & throw the unsuspecting victim into a pit about 10 ft deep with a mass of upstanding spears made from bamboo waiting to impale the victims as they fall in, & all manner of horrific devices set to trigger which trap & maim the victim via a series of spears, spikes & blades.

War tourism is nothing to be ashamed of apparently in Vietnam - at Cu Chi they offer you the opportunity to fire AK47’s, M16’s among others from their post war collection - only stopping at allowing hand grenades to be thrown & bazooka’s to be fired…though apparently over the border in Cambodia you can do both of those things as well.

Deciding not to take the opportunity to fire any of the weapons, we made our way to the other essential war related site around the Saigon area, the War Remnants Museum, in central Saigon. Until fairly recently this museum was somewhat more controversially named ‘The Chinese, French & American War Crimes Museum.’ Both Claire & Jonny had been to Vietnam around 10-12 years ago, & visited this museum when it was under the old name. As you can imagine from the name, it was a fiercely one sided account of the history of war atrocities in Vietnam. Now clearly with a more international relations conscious government in place, the museum does a very good job of laying out the actual facts of the various conflicts, with the majority of the focus placed on the American War of the ‘60’s & ‘70’s.

The most horrific sections are those with the information & pictures of the severe genetic deformities that chemical weapons such as Agent Orange caused both the people at that time, & in particular subsequent generations, not to mention the utter devastation of the Vietnamese landscape that was caused by the Napalm bombs & carpet bombing of entire sections of the Central Highlands by the Americans, a large amount which happened after the war had officially been declared over.

Considering the fact that the American War was only concluded around 1975 & many families are still dealing with it’s aftermath, the Vietnamese people are incredibly friendly & welcoming to Westerners. English is now so widely spoken throughout Vietnam that it is pretty much considered their second language, many Vietnamese people approach Westerners just to say hello & practice what English they know. If you respond to them with any Vietnamese however, as we did with the few basic words we picked up, they become unbelievably excited at the fact Westerners would want to learn any of their language & are incredibly grateful.

Deciding to take the road less travelled route on our way north from Saigon, we opted to head into the mountains of the Central Highlands as oppose to taking the coastal route up the country. Our first stop after Saigon was the mountain town of Dalat and Vietnam being an ex-French colony, the town is complete with numerous large French style villas dotting the Alpine landscape. Another legacy of the French that has remained in Vietnam are fresh baked baguettes every morning & good quality coffee - although the coffee is served slightly differently than in Europe, as the espresso is served over condensed milk, making it incredibly sweet - but strangely tasty at the same time.

From Dalat we moved onto Buon Ma Thuot, coffee capital of Vietnam, where we started really feeling the pinch of the unavailability of transport due to the Tet celebrations. We finally managed to squeeze ourselves into the back of a mini van that travelled the 8 hours around the seriously pot holed but beautifully scenic, winding mountain roads. We had the seats at the back of the bus (as always), the worst place possible for being bounced around all over the place and we were bouncing around out of the seat so violently, we managed to crack our heads on the roof of the van at some points. It probably ranks as one of the most uncomfortable journeys of our entire travels…unfortunately though this was not to be the last of this sort of torture we were subjected to during our journey north…

Finding something open in Buon Ma Thuot was difficult and something that would be a common theme throughout the Tet celebtations, but we manage to locate an open restaurant serving 'diy spring rolls' and armed with a bowl of salad, a plate of rice paper wraps, some 'meat' and some crispy batter stuff, a local shows us the way they are done in the mountains... washed down with some cold beers and a number of stares from passing locals, they were really very tastly. A great meal, until about 4 hours later when we were all ill... we really should know better after all this time travelling that washed salad or 'unknown meat products' are something to generally stay clear of of you want to avoid getting ill!

It is only in the last few years that tourists have been allowed to travel this route, as the Central Highlands was one of the worst hit places during the war & as such it has taken all this time to clear most of the unexploded bombs & landmines that littered the area. Whilst the roads & main walkways have now been cleared, it is still off limits to stray off into the open fields & hillsides - as on an annual basis still many local people are killed or maimed by these legacies of war. The hillsides still openly wear the scars of war, huge areas devoid of any living things, compounded in many places by deforestation of what trees were left & slash and burn agricultural practices not helping the environmental recovery.

We travelled further north via another hellishly uncomfortable & overcrowded bus journey along roads/tracks that have seemingly never been made flat after the destruction caused by the large scale bombings, to the town of Kontum. There are a number of highland communities here and the plan was to visit some with guide but again, it was Tet New Years Eve when we arrived (Feb 13th), & at complete odds with the way things are in Western countries on New Years Eve, we could not find a single restaurant or bar that was open to serve us any food, or even a shop where we could buy anything other than biscuits & crackers as everyone was getting ready for the big family celebrations of Tet, let alone find a guide and attempt any tour of the area. Just when we thought we were going to have to go without food for the next two days, a Vietnamese girl who had been studying English in Hanoi & had come home to her family for Tet, came to our rescue & invited us into her home to share some of the food they had prepared for their family celebrations. After some minor arm twisting we decided to take her up on her offer & she served us up some Tet culinary specialities, & all she wanted in return was to sit & talk English with us for a while - another display of the warm Vietnamese hospitality.

Tet New Years Eve involved huge firework displays going on at both ends of this relatively small town which we enjoyed from the comfort of our room balconies. New Years Day was as suspected, not a single thing open in town, thankfully our hostel served us a good breakfast & had a really nice garden area & a fully stocked beer fridge, which we spent the day working our way through sitting out in the garden playing guitars & enjoying Tet new year in our own way.
The following afternoon we managed to squeeze ourselves onto another packed mini bus & proceeded to head off around some more mountain roads with our driver who clearly had aspirations to Formula One. Being the first day of the new year celebrations where friends were really getting together (NYD being a family affair), the roads were even more crazy than usual. The mandatory helmet law was being pretty much entirely ignored, along with other unnecessary things - such as headlights whilst on streets with no lighting.

The only form of order that we could decipher with the way the traffic system works in Vietnam is that it is expected that you give way to anything in front. What this actually means is that mopeds, bikes, cars & buses just pull out onto any road without even looking what is coming, deeming it the responsibility of the oncoming traffic to anticipate this manoeuvre & then successfully negotiate their way around them - usually by swerving into the path of the oncoming traffic, weaving around that & filtering back into the correct lane again. Road rage doesn’t appear to exist here - which is pretty amazing considering the madness, people don’t blast their horns to complain about someone else’s driving as we do at home, merely as a sort of ’I’m coming ready or not’ warning - which just turns into a constant stream of everyone blasting their horns the entire time & subsequently everyone ignoring each others warnings…

Arriving in Danang somewhat shaken & stirred after our journey, we checked into a hostel for the night that was straight out of 1970’s France, complete with chintzy curtains & carpets, swiftly followed by our first proper meal in a couple of days, from a street stall serving up great seafood noodle dishes, another couple of £0.30 beers & we retired to our little city Chateau for the night - ready for the onward journey to our ultimate destination of Hoi An the following morning.

Not so bright & breezily we jumped on a local bus down to the ancient coastal town of Hoi An, one of the only places in Vietnam to escape any significant war damage & maintain the old historical buildings that date back hundreds of years. Thankfully Hoi An proved to be something of a haven of relative tranquillity, the old town set on the banks of a river is full of traditional Chinese and french style architecture & has been preserved as a no-car zone which came as a welcome relief.

While here we decided to try our hands at a spot of Vietnamese cooking & signed up for a one day cooking class. The day started with a tour around the local food markets familiarising ourselves with the sort of ingredients used & tasting a variety of strange looking fruits & vegetables, before heading back to the kitchen where we all cooked up some shrimp spring rolls, squid stuffed with a pork & chilli, a chicken & lemongrass clay pot curry, & river spinach with garlic. Now all we need to be able to do is recreate it when we get home…!