March 2009 Archives

Wake up at an unreasonably early hour to take a boat trip out to the floating markets.  After intense negotiation with multiple boat owners, I arrange for a big boat at 130kD (half the official tour price). As we’re about to depart, an Aussie couple in a small boat approach us, say they’re being ripped off and want to join me so we pay 200k total. My boat driver does not accept (he wants 300k), so they take off in their little boat.

The boat driver decides he wants to take some more passengers from the official tour desk, and tells me to wait an hour. I have better things to do so I’m back to negotiating a boat, this time I manage to get it for 70kD for myself, and 100kD for an American guy.

This is Clifton hopping back on the SS Solo (our guide’s name is Han). We tour the floating market and here I try the fine flavours of a Vietnamese coffee (far better than 99% of Sydney coffees, and only AUD 40c).

After we tour the markets, we make a stop off to a little garden/zoo to look at various flowers, fruits and animals. I thoroughly enjoy feeding a banana to a cheeky monkey. The boy who brings us a fruit salad decides to show us something that he is laughing at.

SURPRISE!

We arrive in Can Tho city and are dropped off at a local servo. The vultures are already here offering moto (rides on motorbikes to hotel), however my new found sense for getting ripped off has me avoid them. I pick a random direction and start walking.

A group of Vietnamese boys say hello, I respond with Xin Chao. They are hooked, they decide that they will follow me to the ends of the Earth (when all I want to do is find a cheap hotel). I dub them the three stooges due to their great cardboard slapstick humour and take a couple of photos.

Meet Larry, Curly and Moe.

We approach a fountain at a roundabout  with a LOT of traffic, they suggest taking photos and proceed to effortlessly cross the road. Imagine kids behaving like that back home. Another group of people is taking photos at the fountain, and are very excited to be in our photo.

The new group is very excited to practice their English (except for the random drunk old man on a bike), so we start walking and sharing stories. Hoang Phung, Van and Nu Thi Minh Lan (Lan for short) are all studying at college. Lan is very enthusiastic and says she will be a tour guide soon. Her enthusiasm and friendliness reminds me of a friend back home – maybe they’re related?

I tell them I’m hungry and they take me to a good cheap restaurant and order a fish soup with rice for 20kD. I eat while they look at photos of Sydney with bewilderment.

We walk down to the Mekong river and they help me find a hotel. I don’t see the point in trying to find a cheaper hotel and accept the first one we visit. They’re in the middle of goodbyes when I tell them to wait in my room. I take a quick shower and we go outside to their bikes. With much amusement, they offer that I ride one (with Hoang riding on the back).

Little do they know, I used to ride 100km a week on mountain bike and take off with blistering speed on the small bike, Hoang is petrified. The girls take some time to catch up and are impressed. We continue the cycling tour of Can Tho city, stopping for jelly/pudding at a park.

Left to right: Hoang (20?), myself, Van (21), Lan (19).

Lan meets another Aussie and is very excited to introduce him. He’s here to teach English at a school and is very excited to be here. Lan asks him to join us for a walk, which he accepts. I’m a little uneasy about him as he seems a little too keen talking to Lan, always hugging her and sitting next to her. I don’t like this. I hope it’s jealousy, and that he isn’t a teacher for certain malicious reasons, although my gut tells me it’s the case.

It approaches midnight, and I’m ready to call it a night. They drop me off at the hotel and give me their contact details. Lan also writes a note:

Hi!

IVAN! You very friendly! Funny! … I love you!

I’m starting to fall in love with the country and the people, I do hope to see them again.

Slept in and walked to the bus stop I’d found out about earlier. With no real plan of where to go, I bump into the most amazing fellow. Vincent Nguyen is a self taught (CDs & Books) English speaking hairdresser with family near Bankstown. He tells me I’m at the wrong bus stop, and walks me to the best tour agency he knows,  sharing stories on the way.

I decide to go to Can Tho (forgoing My Tho and Vinh Long), thank him for the help and feeling adventurous, ignore his advice, find out where the long distance bus stop is and make my way there via metered taxi.

It’s apparent that I don’t belong here as soon as I arrive. However I buy a ticket from one of the dozens of windows for Can Tho and proceed to sit down and wait at the wrong place for the bus.

Being a foreigner at a locals bus stop, I ask the fellow sitting next to me for when my bus arrives, he points to a location and as I am about to leave, an official approaches me, I show her the ticket, she summons the senior official. The senior official escorts me to the window where I booked the ticket, exchanges some Vietnamese, and directs me to the back of the ticket office.

The way long distance buses work is, you buy a ticket and sit at the back of the office. When enough tickets are sold, you hop on the bus and go to your destination. Twenty minutes later our bus is sold out and an official, realising my “special” status escorts me to the bus (else I’d end up in Nha Trang or Da Lat).

As we’re waiting for the driver to arrive, several hawkers approach the bus, offering bread, newspapers and drinks.

An angry looking old Vietnamese woman hocks up and spits the equivalent of half a lung out the door. This must have been the signal we were waiting for as the driver decides to take off, stopping by the cafe to get everyone a bottle of water and face towel. Service with a smile :)

For comparisons sake, the taxi ride to the bus stop from the travel agent is 85kD, the 4 hour bus trip ticket is 75kD. If I find a reasonably cheap room in Can Tho, this will be my first cheap day in Vietnam.

No point dwelling over money spent and lessons learned, it’s time to learn Saigon Survival 101. I have 48kD (4.5AUD) left in my wallet and decide that I can make a night out of it.

Walking past the closer restaurants due to the meal prices, I somehow stumble into the area I was looking for, Saigon’s backpacker district, a mere 500m from my hotel, where beds can be found for 15% of what I paid.

Empowered by this discovery, I decide to make the Pho trifecta for the day: Bo (beef) morning, Ga (chicken) lunch and Hai San(seafood) dinner. I decided against booking a tour to the Mekong Delta, instead opting to wing it by asking the locals.

For dinner, I meet an amazing expat couple. Working in American style schools (tieonline.com – qualified Aussie teachers accepted), they are travelling around the world, working for six-12 month blocks in different locations (Malawi is apparently a great place to visit). We laugh at how much I spent on a taxi and a guide, share some stories and I get directions to the bus stop for the trip tomorrow. Dinner price 30kD (2.5AUD).

Walking back from dinner, I stop by a cheap “pub” (collection of plastic chairs and tables on the footpath) for a beer. I meet more expats, couple of Philippinos, a Vietnamese man and a Romanian. From the conversations, I learn the following: motorbikes can fit six people, two people and a 42” TV or one person and a fridge. The driver can be making a call, playing video games, watching TV or drunk and still not crash. On the rare occasion that they do crash, hilarity ensues as it becomes a 10 bike pileup. Licenses are required but foreigners’ are never inspected. Most expats can live in country for 5+ years and still not have a license. Best place to pick up working girls is in clubs; If you get robbed while showering, you can return to the club the following day and get your things back. If you are robbed of valuables, visit the police, a 10% bribe can get you your item back.

Two beers is 10kD (0.90 AUD), change remaining, 8kD, mission accomplished :D. On the way home, an especially confident working girl decides to stroke my cheek as she rides off. Dede!

Sin Chao (Hello). Today, I decide I haven’t learned my lesson from last night about getting hustled and will find out at the end of the day just how much it sets me back.

Hong, my guide for the day takes me out for a Pho breakfast.

After breakfast, he uses his superb negotiation skills to be my guide for the day. He doesn’t know much English but makes up for it with his enthusiasm. We take a trip out to the Cu Chi Tunnels (from where the VC waged war against the Yanks to capture Saigon).

Riding bitch on a Vietnamese motorbike is a very interesting experience, everything is a road and more will be revealed later.

The guide is a former VC and has plenty of tales to share about booby traps, suicide bombers and how the women were superior to the men; they would work by day and kill by night, the men would just chill during the day and kill at night.

Climbing through the tunnels is an interesting experience, to replicate the action at home, squat on your legs as if playing leap frog, now waddle forward every few metres, have some one scratch you to simulate rubbing into the walls. For bonus points, do it in the dark and throw in some random slopes.

After the tunnels, we pop into a couple of temples, see the Notre Dame (Vietnam has one too), spot the inconspicuous Australian embassy and have a look at the very dirty Saigon river.

I’ve forgotten all about the sanitiser, sun screen and not drinking anything with ice in it. Karma decides that I’ve spent enough to bribe away the traveller’s sickness god.

Having a pudding in coffee syrup on little stools along the side of some random street. The girl in the photo had the hugest crush on me but was far too shy to pose for the photo. Her little sister ran away at the prospect of a photo.

Tomorrow, I will try and organise a Mekong Delta day and try to pay a lot less than I did today.

Stepped out of customs in Saigon and realised I’d left my wits behind me. I changed a couple of hundred AUD at the airport at their exorbitant rates (1 AUD = 11,083 DONG) and am now a millionaire at 21.

Elated with my entry into the millionaire club, I exit the airport and am offered a taxi to the city for 500k, I negotiate to 350k and hop in the taxi feeling like a master negotiator. Some Vietnamese is exchanged between driver (with no English) and agent (marginal English, though exceptional negotiation skills), I may not know much, but I can tell when someone calls me a sucker in another language.

On some roads, there is a lane for cars and a lane for bikes, on the way in to Saigon, a scooter was in the car lane approaching a red light, a traffic cop spotted him and much hilarity ensued as he chastised him in Vietnamese and hit him with his baton, repeatedly.

The “hostel” I’m driven to is a hotel that charges 35USD a night, the taxi driver insists it is the cheapest and best quality in Saigon. I get a room next door for 12USD (204kDONG) and still feel like I came out ripped off in this negotiation.

I drop my things, and, feeling rather peckish, I walk outside, turn right and start looking for food. Five steps later, I’m offered a Vietnamese girl by a man with missing teeth and holes in his shirt, tempting offer I tell him, but I’ll pass.

Date night in Vietnam consists of taking the girl to the nearest park (with concrete), sitting on the motorbike with her, and looking at a mound of dirt. This is very popular, one couple every 10m for a kilometre.

With no particular plan, except to walk around absorbing the atmosphere, I manage to eventually get lost. Even when lost, I am offered (in no particular order): cigarettes, beautiful girls, massa (Vietnamese broken English for massage), the ever humorous sucky sucky cheap ten dorrah, want it the white girl?, a couple of hits of heroin, motor bike rides and my favourite of all the “give you the special big sucky boom special real good one”.

I take a mental note to hire English speaking sales men/women of Vietnamese descent as they know how to steer each and every conversation to a sale. No thanks means try again, not interested means how much, no means, stand really close to me and tell me the offer again, I don’t want it means follow me and show me videos on your mobile phone of “the best one”.

Since I’m lost in a big city, where every street looks the same, I decide to ask random non-English speaking locals where the Canadian hotel is and show them the key. No one seems to know where it is except taxi drivers who wanted money for what would amount to 500m fare. At least they all knew where to get me a cheap special one massa just for you.

It wasn’t all bad though, one of the girls approached me offering some variant of sucky/massa/boom/special one. Thinking that her clientele would lead her to know where it was, I give her the key, asking her if she knows the location. She gives splendid directions, and even offers me a lift on her bike to the hotel. I thank her for the offer but decline, choosing to walk the couple of streets instead. Not finished at one good deed for the day, she decides on another and offers me half price on one hour massa. I laugh at the absurdity of the situation, thank her for the directions and walk towards the hotel.

The city also smells, a lot, and the weather is incredibly humid. All in all, a very interesting first night on my journey.

9.5 kilos, that’s my life’s possessions for the next few months, doesn’t seem like a lot, yet I’m already thinking it’s a little too much and am looking to cull items in the next couple of days.

In typical Ivan fashion, I printed my boarding ticket, but left it at home. That started the check-in dramas. Initially, the Jet Star girl (Ana) wanted me to walk past the security check, find somewhere with internet access to print off the ticket, however changed her mind when I flashed her a smile, ah pity.

Second drama, I had no visa for Vietnam, this did not please Ana, I tried to explain that I was travelling on two passports, and that Russian nationals can travel visa free for up to 15 days in Vietnam. Ana does not believe me.

Third drama, Ana wanted proof of onward travel (return ticket or another ticket out of the country), I wanted to tell her I haven’t even organised the first night’s accommodation but decided against it. A quick call to the Vietnamese consulate put her concerns at rest and she was ready to let me through.

Fourth drama, my name is spelt differently on both passports, Ana gave a token objection but decided three dramas was enough, weighed my bag and gave me the boarding pass.

After passing the security checkpoint, (mum was disarmed of her nail file, I was fine) the goodbye process began, namely getting some cash out, taking some photos, sipping a latte, questioning whether this was the right move or not, followed by a teary goodbye and a hundred SMS messages.

Fifth drama, I reach my seat and find the worst possible travel companion, a fourteen month old boy called Jake. Forecast for the flight, lots of tears.

Prediction, wrong, Jake and his mother Yen were delightful, and now I have some tips for where to find hostels, exchange currency, how to bargain with shopkeepers (offer half their price) and most importantly, the best places for Pho.

Top speed 845km/h, altitude 12,278m.

About to take off.

Meet Jake.

So it’s at this time that I should be flying out today. Not much sleep, 9.5kgs of luggage and not much of a plan of what I’m going to do when I rock up.

I have no accommodation, but I have plenty of Dettol. She’ll be right.