Greetings from Saigon!

A city that the hits you straight into the side of the head with a sledgehammer blow of stimuli, Thors Hammer would have a hard time matching this place! A dazzling variety of smells, ranging from the wonderfully fragrant to the eye-wateringly pugent. Sounds that can delight one moment and irritate the next. Sights from the intoxicatingly spell binding to harrowingly sad – thankfully we have had far more of the former that the latter, but in a country as poor and with such a history as Vietnam it’s hard to avoid the latter.

We arrived after a guelling 22 hour journey late on Saturday night (as is my custom I managed to be seated in front of the wench from Hell who didn’t like me reclining my seat! I may have snarled a little!). We were greeted at Ho Chi Minh (the locals still prefer to refer to it as Saigon, so I will follow their custom) by Katherines friend Dave, a tall 6 foot 4inch Aussie dressed as Darth Maul from Star Wars! The locals were as bemused and perplexed as we were, but it certainly made for an entertaining introduction to the country!

Saturday night entailed an introduction to our hotel which was not quite what we were hoping for. We went for a couple of beers in the backpackers district (were our hotel was) and were kept entertained by the street hawkers trying to sell us chewing gum, sun glasses, lighters, cigarettes, weed, ecstasy, cocaine and heroin (the sales pitch starts at cigarettes and ends at heroin!)… Unlike other parts of the world I’ve travelled (India springs to mind here), the street hawkers here are polite and generally leave after the second “no thank you”! However, the little children use a harder selling technique. They are at an obvious advantage as they are generally adorable little things with their wide smiles and large eyes. They are very tactile and curious, so no generally doesn’t cut the mustard. However, after a while they too leave you to enjoy you tasty and cheap beverage! Saturday night we slept like logs!

Having moved to another hotel (the Rex, I highly recommend it), Sunday was spent wandering around Saigon, enjoying more of the life of the city. Walking around here is a mixture of wonderment and near death experiences! The main form of transport is a dazzling array of motorised bikes, from the old and held together with a prayer to the modern scooter. The law of the road is that might is right and you just watch what’s going on in front of you, which somehow manages to work! Crossing the road is an terrifying experience at first, but after a while you get used to it! It’s been really great having Dave as a guide. He knows the city really well (having lived in Vietnam, teaching, for almost 2 years) and is showing us the heart of the city!

Getting around the city can either be done in a taxi or on the back of a bike. The first time you are actually in the middle of this madness you do feel like your life insurance is going to be cashed in earlier than anyone expected. It’s a peculiar form of chaos, but after a while you get used to it. Hair raising at first it left me clinging on with a death grip to the bar at the back of the bike – now we take pictures and look around! It’s amazing what you can get used to!

Monday we looked around some of the sites of Siagon. The former Presidential Palace and the War Remnants Museum. The former is interesting but forgettable, the latter depressing but not one to be missed. Monday night, like Sunday night we went out for dinner with Dave and one of his many female Veitnamese ‘friends’! He has a black phone with lots of names and numbers! Mickey taking aside, it’s really great as we meet local people that we wouldn’t have met had Dave not been here.

Tuesday we travelled out of the city to visit the Cao Dai temple. A huge place of worship for the 80 year old Cao Dai religion. Here’s a clever religion if ever there was one. It’s a little like spread betting and making sure you are playing the odds. Cao Dai has been influenced by Christianity, Buddhism and Hinduism, and they worship deities from all 3 major religious groups! I like this approach! As a Christian I believe in God, but by also giving praise to the Buddha and the various Hindu Gods (as well as some famous names like Victor Hugo!!) they are really ensuring that they reach the afterlife! Well done them.

After this we travelled to the Cu Chi tunnels, the old Viet Cong tunnels that they used during the war. There is a large amount of spin in the video, but once our guide (who, ironically, fought for the loosing South Vietnamese Army during the war) took us into the forest the tour really got going! We saw the original tunnels and bolt holes, which are small, really really small. I managed to squeeze through a small hole in the ground and pull the lid over me, but I couldn’t move in there. Katherine fitted in too, but Dave never got past his waist!

After that we saw the booby traps the Viet Cong devised – an impressive array of basic but effective traps to spike, skewer and maim the enemy. Next came the thing that I was really looking forward to: the shooting range! Now, I have never fired a gun in my life and I really wanted to (please keep all stereotypical comments to yourselves!), so I was eager to get on with it. Having purchased my different bullets down I went! First I tried the AK47, when you absolutely, positively have to kill every last motherfecker in the room, accept no substitute. The raw power that you feel when you shoot a round from this weapon in incredible. Films can never convey this. The sound is deafening (even through the sony earphones that I was given as ear protectors!!) and the adrenaline rush left my nerves tingling and me feeling very edgy!

Having fired all my AK47 rounds and not hitting the target (I got close!!) I moved on to the M60 heavy machine gun (they were and still are used by the US on the sides of helicopters). Pulling the trigger on this weapon was like unleashing almighty hell. The AK47 felt super powerful, but this felt like I was shooting cars at a million miles an hour through the front of the barrel. Not only this, but it gets through your bullets quickly. BOOM-BOOM-BOOM-BOOM-BOOM, 3 seconds later and the 5 hand length bullets had made mincemeat of the hill, yet the target still stood there unmolested. Jeering me, taunting me – laughing at my incompetence.

Never one to be laughed at by a bit of cardboard with an animal drawn on it, I purchased some more bullets to gain revenge on my papery nemesis. This time I would reign triumphant, this time it would feel the efficacy of my wrath (with a little help from my trusty AK47). Again the same feeling of power, an intoxicating elation that I had in my hands the abilty to rule the world – and I have to tell you I loved it. Firing with now practiced ease I once again unleashed bullet after bullet of torment against my foe, that smug tiger drawn on cardboard. Having emptied my cartridge, as it were, I looked up with a feeling of victory. I was sure that I had won, that I was victorious, that I had ruled the day. Looking over my smoking barrel down were the chaos that I had created on the hill was settling, through the dust I saw that damned animal still on it’s cardboard intact – still laughing, still taunting, still bloody there! Nevertheless, I had fired not just any old gun, but an AK47 and a bloody big machine gun. With my ears ringing from the gunshots, I felt great! I may not have hit the target, but I really shot the crap out of that hill!!

When we got back to our hotel we decided to take advantage of out complimentary massage. Up we went, Katherine into her room and me into mine. I relaxed and the girl got on with her massage. The massage was progressing nicely and she moved onto my legs. I didn’t quite expect her to go that far up my legs though, she was certainly leaving no skin unmassaged! She’s being thorough I thought! Then she hopped onto the table and proceeded to walk on me and use her feet to massage me. Cool, if a little unexpected!

Then she asked me to turn over. As she was doing my feet she asked me if I had had a massage before in Vietnam. No I said, this was my first. Then she said that in Thailand they have a sexy massage. Ok, I thought. Unusual choice of conversation, but ok. Then she asked if I would like one! No, says I, but thanks for the offer. So, there you go, there IS such a thing as the house special! Katherine was less than impressed when I told her!

Tuesday night was another lovely meal with another one of Daves lovely ‘friends’ (sorry Dave!). Then lots and lots of drinks in Q Bar. A really trendy Saigon bar. It was a late night (2:30am) so we may have overslept a little today! Tonight Katherine and I are going out for a few drinks and a meal to get us in the mood for our massages, facials, manicures and spa treatments in a place in Saigon tomorrow – this is to get us in the mood for our spa break in Nha Trang on the eastern coast of the country next week.

Friday we leave for a couple of days on the Mekong Delta which should be fantastic. So, the next installment of our travel highlights will be after that.

Until then, be good!

Alex

PS: Apologies for spelling, grammatical and sanity errors in this email! Written in a hurry…

Hi All,

It’s been an interesting few days since I last wrote! From crawling through the narrow Cu Chi tunnels to relaxing in the pool on the roof of our hotel, Vietnam is certainly a country of extremes – and the past few days has not been any different.

Since I last wrote myself and Katherine went for a romantic evening on the town. We started some drinks on the roof of a very tall hotel here in Saigon (the Caravelle) and the view certainly was amazing, as was the vista of the city at night from the bar (please try not to vomit on your keyboards!). We followed this with a sumptuous buffet meal, there was seafood falling of the buffet tables and needless to say that I was only too happy to help by eating my way through the overflow.

Thursday morning we had booked ourselves into a local spa complex. We were collected in a vintage Mercedes Benz and driven to a beautiful colonial building, protected from the hustle and bustle of the streets outside by lucious trees which somehow managed to also absorb the continuous Siagon background noise of hooting cars and bikes. The spa looked superb from its exterior and once inside it did not dissapoint. Cool and instantly relaxing with marble floors and clean white walls, this place instantly made you feel relaxed and at ease. We were asked to sit by the staff and remove our shoes and put on some white slippers, as if to rid ourselves of any weight of the outside world and embrace this place of pure serenity and tranquility. We were given some herbal tea and asked which oils we would like to use for our treatments.

We were then led upstairs and sat in incredibly comfortable armchairs, wrapped in towels and our feet placed in bowls of warm, scented water. We were then given a foot massage, which was the first I had ever had. It was one hour of bliss, total, compete and unadulterated relaxation! Both Katherine and I slept for much of it and I have to say that I didn’t want it to end. But it did and then it was on to the facial and massage. I would like to say more about this, but I slept for most of it – with the occasional snore, according to Katherine! It was then a spot of healthy lunch by the pool, relax and then back to the insanity of the Saigon streets!

We left for the Mekong Delta very early Friday morning. I was expecting the Mekong to be largely uninhabited and full of luch green vegetation and water – however, there are 20million people living in the Mekong, so there was not a huge amount of that to be seen as we drove through it. It was only when we started to visit the islands did you really feel that you were isolated and (as a group) alone in the vegetation. We were brought on small boats though narrow streams, surrounded on both sides by the lush vegetation that I had expected, with the sounds of people and animals occasionally to be heard. We stopped at numerous villages for tea and had an interesting encounter with one villages local python, which we naturally all held and posed for photos with – much to the bemusement of the locals and the sleepy acquisence of the snake itself!

We were then herded, and I use that word accurately, on to an already crowded bus. Seats appeared in the middle of the aisle that reclined, not by design but be fault, like dentists chairs. The back of the bus was held together with sticky tape and the suspension had been replaced by concrete blocks. 3 hours later, battered, bruised and broken we arrived at the hotel in Can Tho. We had booked into a bungalow, so we were told that a ‘car’ would take us to our bungalow. Now, it was dark and raining harder than the hardest rain that has ever been recorded. It was not so much raining cats and dogs but elephants and rhinos! Our car was a motorbike with a pram attached to the back and some form of makeshift roof. In the three of us squeezed and were brought on a mystery journey down pitch black tracks and barely standing bridges. There was some fear for our lives, but we decided to concentrate on the adventure part of it!

We arrived at our bungalow not expecting a lot, but actually getting a decent room in a nice resort typr complex. The next day we were driven back in out motorbike-pram hybrid and dropped in the middle of the city! No tour, no tour guide and no bloody clue! Eventually Dave rang the place we booked through and we were told that the tour had continued to the floating markets without us and that a boat had been dispatched to reunite us with the tour! When we made contact the tour guide try to continue as if nothing had happened, but we were intent on making out point. I’m not going to go into the details but both myself and Dave were quite angry and let it be known! A scary sight I’d say, expecially the not so vertically challenged Dave! Thankfully the journey back was in a big bus with lots of space and we passed the time playing trivial pursuits on my phone with a couple of our fellow travellers.

Safely back in Saigon we washed away all traces of the harrowing journey into the Mekong and proceeded to get very very drunk! Mmmmm, beer! Tomorrow we fly to Nha Trang on the eastern coast for a few days of rest and relaxation on the beach, being pampered and tended to! So, you can expect no more emails from me until I get back to Saigon or London! Thanks for reading and see you in the next cartoon!

Alex