Vietnam

Often over the past month, we have looked back to the power cut at Toddington Services, and rued the missed chance of having a decent breakfast! Finally, today, we got one! And it was well worth the wait!

Having eaten extremely well, we walked to the War Remnants Museum. Heading through a park to get there, we were interviewed by a group of university students. They asked us lots of questions about our perceptions of Vietnam, both before we came and now, and one of the questions they asked us was how we were finding the food. The taste of expertly prepared bacon still on our lips (and the few pieces that were probably hiding in my beard at the time!), we confirmed that the food was to our liking! Probably not the type of food they were on about, but hey ho!

We reached the War Museum at 11:55 am, to be told that it was closing at 12pm and wouldn’t open again for another hour an a half. By this stage, we were melting in the heat and getting quite dehydrated, so we retired to a café we’d passed on the way. There were three things to note about the café. Firstly it was cool! Secondly, it had the loudest sound system outside a rock concert, which proceeded to pump out hi-nrg versions of popular tunes at “aircraft taking off” sound levels. Thirdly, we managed to stretch one coke-float drink out for an hour an a half!

Leaving the comfort of the café, the first stages of permanent tinnitus taking hold, we finally got into the War Museum. The first thing you see going inside is the planes, helicopters and tanks that were captured from the USA at the end of the Vietnam War.

After this, there were lots of pictures detailing the war, including pretty gruesome photos of the injuries people had received and the malformations still occurring in new born children today from chemicals such as Agent Orange. Quite sobering viewing.

After leaving the museum, we were too tired to walk back to the hotel so decided to finally succumb to one of the myriad of trickshaw operators. The ride was both scary (turning into a stream of thousands of scooters and cars in little more than a glorified tricycle is an experience!) and exhilarating at the same time.

We got back to the hotel just in time to miss another torrential downpour. If we had walked, instead of using the trickshaw, we would have been caught in it and been able to swim back to the hotel!

Today we reached country number three on our travels, Vietnam (I’m classing Hong Kong as a separate country as we surrendered our Chinese visas in Shanghai!). As we flew into Ho Chi Minh City aka Saigon, the clouds cleared and we could see the miles and miles of jungle beneath us. It was just like every Vietnam film there’s ever been.

We had arranged to pick our entry visa up in the airport, rather than sort it in the UK. This meant that on leaving the plane, it took an hour before we were even ready to go through passport control. It was made worse by the heat and humidity in the airport, the knowledge that our packs were either travelling around the carousel by themselves or had found new owners, and that we had a pre-arranged taxi waiting for us outside! Luckily, the visas were issued, the packs were waiting, and the taxi driver got a couple of dollars tip and a bit more of a tan!

Our first impression of Vietnam was the complete manicness of the road system. There are thousands of motorbikes and scooters flying around. It’s hard to even tell which side of the road they are driving on, as the general rule seems to be drive where you want, when you want, in any direction!

We felt complete and utter disorientation on entering the hotel room. We could see we were in Vietnam through the window, and feel we were in Vietnam through the heat and humidity. To add to the experience, we turned on the TV to check out Vietnamese television and were confronted by……….. Rotherham! Not only Rotherham, but just down the road from where we used to live in Rotherham! It was the Jamie Oliver “Northerners are thick and I can make money off them” programme that was being shown, and was quite a surreal moment.

We popped to a local bar/ restaurant and the feeling of disorientation was completed by finding “chip butty” on the menu. So again, we were sat watching the local Vietnamese go by, sheltering from the sun

(and then an almighty deluge which dropped over ten mm of rain in five minutes and then just as abruptly stopped!)

whilst having a beer and a chip butty!

Bizarre.

We then went back to the hotel, and spent the rest of the day catching up on essentials such as writing the blog and trying to catch up on lost sleep from Hong Kong.