Vietnam-Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon), Good Morning Vietnam (Bia Saigon Green Label)

It was kind of a strange route to Vietnam and not very direct. From Sihanoukville we travelled north five hours before having to change buses in Phnom Penh, finally at 2am we boarded the bus for the night journey arriving at the Cambodian / Vietnam border at around 7am.  We had to exit the bus to get our passports stamped. We then became a little worried when we saw the bus driving away from the border towards Vietnam with everybody else and our rucksacks on board, surely they couldn’t forget about us? We took off after the bus on foot walking through no man’s land where after a pretty long walk we thankfully caught the bus. The drivers didn’t seem to care that they had left us behind as fellow passengers said they had tried to get them to stop when they realised we were missing.  At this point we dragged our rucksacks off the bus before going through immigration to get our bags scanned. For once everything seemed out of our control as we had to hand our passports to a random guy for him to organise the immigration protocols (we never give our passports to anyone). Finally in Vietnam and on the bus we could forget about the long walk ahead if the bus had left us for real and we headed towards the Vietnamese capital of Ho Chi Minh city (Saigon) where our 16 hour night bus journey ended. 

Pretty excited to be in Vietnam we ignored all the taxi drivers who told us we needed taxis to get to any hotels and instead followed a friendly local guy on foot to check out his hotel.  Mai Guest House ended up being a lovely friendly family run place and we checked in no problem for $10 a night. Initially we thought this was a little steep but it was apparently a pretty good price for the city and it was really clean and had free Wi-Fi.  It was a good place to keep our new tattoos clean.  After what had happened at the border we had to hand over our passports again at the hotel, this is protocol in Vietnam as the police carry out checks. It looks like we will have to get used to not having our passports on us at all times afterall. 

The narrow alley where we found Mai Guest House

Small but Clean...

The most narrow buildings. A vertical view down the staircase. Climbing up with a Rucksack can be a slight problem!

Kate had picked up a cold in Cambodia and still wasn’t feeling too well, luckily not malaria so we spent a couple of lazy days wandering the amazing streets and taking in the busy bustling place with a lot of people watching.  Ho Chi Minh City or Saigon as it was once known had a great energy which we hadn’t seen since Bangkok many months ago.  It felt good to be backpacking again and we were looking forward to making our way north for the next month of our adventure.

The Hussle & Bustle of the Old Quarter

The Cyclo a new means of local transport

The Crazy things you see for sale

We were excited about the Vietnamese food and had been told to eat lots of Pho which is one of the national dishes, like a noodle soup. Over the coming days we had some great street food in the city including fried noodles, pork buns, rice cakes, fresh spring rolls and yes more Pho.  If we kept going like this for the next month we might start to look like Pho.

A bowl of Pho at Pho 24

Street Food. What we thought were fried potatoes turned out to be rice cakes. Nice though!

Another classy street eat joint. Top hygeine awards

The New Diet

With being huge fans of visiting cities around the world it was back to pounding the streets absorbing what the place had to offer.  We walked through lovely gardens as well as the  famous Ben Thanh indoor market which had probably the most persistent sellers we have come across.  There isn’t usually physical contact but as we walked into the market we were grabbed, tapped, pushed and pulled into various stalls being told to buy something or just anything.  Unfortunately we didn’t need or want to dress like we were in ABBA. 

Crossing the roads was like a game of Russian Roulette

Exploring the hypnotic charming streets of HMC

Culture as Sculpture in Cong Vien Van Hoa Park

About to be physically attacked in the Market

Weasel Coffee for Sale. Made from Poo. A delicacy!

While in the city we also saw the Reunification Palace, which was built in 1966 to serve as South Vietnam's Presidential Palace before Saigon surrended to the North in 1975. Next was a  wander down to see the Saigon River past the Notre Dame Cathedral and the Old Post Office building along the way seeing how today the old Saigon and new Saigon stood side by side inter-twined.  With Vietnam obviously having a lot of history, in particular for the American/Vietnam War a must visit was the War Remnants Museum. 

Notre Damn Cathedral

Historic Post Office Building

The Reunification Palace

The Saigon River

The Museum was opened on September 4^th 1975 and specialises in research, collecting, preserving and exhibiting the remnant proofs of Vietnam War crimes and their consequences.  The museum is a fascinating place with 8 exhibitions that give you a real insight into life during the war.  They even have old US tanks, helicopter and planes there.  Some of the photography was amazing but incredibly moving and upsetting.  Not knowing too many finer details about the war our time in South Vietnam was going to be a real education. 

The War Remnants Museum

U.S. Tanks & Artillery used in the Vietnam War

Bomb Casings Dropped on Vietnam from the B52's

Propaganda Poster

American War Photography Exhibition

Detention Cells for Prisoners of War in the Ground

Tiny Cages used to hold Prisoners

More Choppers & Tanks

U.S. Fighter Jet

We booked a half day trip which turned out to be a full day trip to visit the Cu Chi Tunnels.  Up at the crack of dawn we piled onto a packed tourist bus which we don’t usually do, the only thing missing was a flag for everyone to follow.  The day turned out to be great and doing a tour was probably the best way to do it. Our guide John Wayne as he asked to be called gave us a great insight into Cu Chi and how the tunnels were used as a battle ground for many years during the Vietnam War. Cu Chi was the stuff of legend during the 1960's for the role in facilitating Viet Cong control of a rural area 30km outside Saigon at it is said that the tunnel network stretched to the Cambodian border and for a total of 200km.  On top of the tour we paid at 80 000 Dong entrance fee.  The in depth information and sights were amazing from being shown actual video footage to B52 bomb craters, booby trap displays, maps of the tunnels and how they functioned and all this while walking through the jungle which had an authenticity with being able to hear the gunshots from the firing range in the background where tourists could pay $15 to shoot any gun you could think of from M16’s to AK47’s. 

Inside a Viet Cong Bunker. The genious of the Cu Chi Tunnels is explained

Nasty Booby Trap you would not want to come across

The Jungle Environment

Viet Cong would appear from the ground at a number of shooting holes & then vanish without sight...

More Hellish Traps. Gruesome & Deadly

What Gun would you like to fire today?

Before the end of the tour you could also crawl through the actual tunnels.  For 100 m with exit points every 20 m the tunnel network was built of 3 levels which included living quarters & kitchens. You could not help but admire the ingenuity of the whole design. I had a crack at climbing through the tunnels and lasted about 40 m, it was extremely hot, there wasn’t much air and my body could only just fit inside if on my knees. It was a very strange feeling, I was in there maybe 5 – 10 minutes and it made you think how difficult it must have been for people to live in these tunnel networks for years. 

Time to experience the Cu Chi Tunnel network for myself

I'll follow you if I can fit

Inside the tunnel. Remarkable & Very Scary. Not designed for anybody over 5ft tall or thats how it feels

It was a truly insightful day and one of the most interesting trips we have been on.  Before heading back to Saigon we were able to try potato rice with tea, the ration food for troops that lived inside the tunnels which was tasty but you wouldn’t want it every day.

Potato Rice & Tea

With only one month in Vietnam and plenty of places to visit we organised our bus ticket from Sinh Tourist (formally well known as Sinh Cafe) with the country being full of copy cat cafes. Finding the real one we managed to book an open ended ticket for $46 with will take us to Hanoi with 8 stops along the way. Really well organised and well priced to travel the whole length of the country at your leisure. You just need to book a bus seat a day before you want to travel.  We were travelling in holiday season so may have paid a bit more and prices seemed to change by the day but it was roughly this amount. 

Still getting our minds back into backpacker mode it was time to head to Mui Ne but not before eating more great street food and sampling our first Vietnamese Beer, Saigon Green Label.

This is very needed after today's exploits

BIA SAIGON (GREEN LABEL), PALE LAGER, VIETNAM, 4.3% ABV

The Saigon (Green Label) is brewed by Saigon Beer Company, which is linked to SABECO a Spanish supermarket chain that was formed in Zaragoza in 1960. Pretty difficult to find out much information but there you go. Not too sure when the Saigon beers were first brewed either. Will have to keep digging and if anybody knows please leave a comment with the information. I hate leaving a job half done...

Served in a large 450ml bottle it’s nice to share and pours a light, clear golden straw colour and developed a decent frothy head even though it didn’t stick around too long. Not much lacing on the glass and as the 4.3% ABV would predict everything about it was very light.

The aroma was weak with a faint hint of grain and grassy hops. The flavour was predictable from the aroma, slight toasted grains and a little biscuity, but not much character from the bitter hops.

The beer has a light carbonation with a crisp finish but not a bad grass roots lager beer. Being quite weak left it pretty transparent so nothing impressive, but not necessarily off putting. You could easily drink a gallon of it without noticing. A great beer while people watching and taking in the hectic sights of Ho Chi Minh City, while discovering the local Pho dish.

Bia Saigon-Green Label

www.sabeco.co.vn

With Kate still not better but definitely on the mend now, we were loaded up with cough syrup and antibiotics from over the counter because you can pretty much buy anything you want. It was an early 6am rise for our first Sinh Tourist bus.  We checked out of Mai Guest House with a free brew and goodbyes to the lovely family as well as the cute little girl even though she was stroppy most mornings.  The Sinh Tourist office was mayhem with the staff trying to organise a number of different coaches all going to different places. We just chilled sat on our bags with a fried egg baguette from a street vendor till it was time to board our bus.

 

Outside the real Sinh Tourist Office (HMC)

Mayhem. So may buses so many people. Sit back and watch the fun commence

Our nice new looking coach was full and we got thrown onto a crammed mini bus where the rucksacks were piled up inside. It was ok though and we headed through rush hour traffic but then every minute in Ho Chi Minh seemed to be rush hour.  It turned out to be a bumpy, horn honking, high speed 5 hour pursuit to Mui Ne. I think the Vietnamese drivers fall under the same bracket as all the other South East Asian Bus drivers so far.  You arrive at your destination safely you’re just not quite sure how.