(pictures to follow soon, wi-fi goes veeeeery slow here, hope you enjoy it for now!)
11.30am: we head off to the airport and have a lovely soup
while waiting to board. It is amazing how something so simple can taste so
good. I also order local iced coffee. It is amazing how something so simple can
taste so... differently. And so strong. It is caffeine straight into your
system; I take only two sips.
02.30pm: welcome to the madness of Saigon traffic. There are
scooters EVERYWHERE. It is literally mental. Our taxi makes its way to the
hotel in the centre of town and all I can see is a river of scooters from right
to left, left to right, up and down.
04.30pm: we set off to discover the city on foot. First
challenge: to cross the street. It is similar to go across a slope on a busy
piste in the middle of the Alps on a Saturday morning. Only that here it is
faster and more dangerous. And people come both ways. The trick is to walk head
on straight into it, walking at a steady and slow pace, do not hesitate, do not
run, just walk and see what’s coming. They will see you and avoid you
naturally. And it simply does. Beautiful. It is amazing how something so simple
can be so exciting.
6.00pm: we have a lovely soup in a small place in the local
market. They have small stools where you sit and eat it as people walk around
you. Markets are markets everywhere: the combination of smells, noise, people,
stock and heat is universal.
7.00pm: David reckons he’ll go to bed before midnight, to
make the most of Sunday.
9.00pm: we have been looking for a bar for a while and find
a karaoke one near the hotel. It is a good venue. Unfortunately the singing is
not particularly good. It seems we picked the night where all the hopeless perform.
I think I may try too as I would not do too bad in comparison. But I don’t. The
bar has wi-fi –every pub in Vietnam so far has free wi-fi- and we look for
other pubs to head to.
10.00pm: at another pub we meet a Dutch guy, Kai, 22, who is
doing an internship in Saigon. He is with a couple of English expats too. We
jump on the back of their scooters and they take us to a nice, trendy club.
THIS IS MORE LIKE IT.
11.45pm: Police arrive and the lights go up, but no-one
leaves. We hang out. Kai explains to us that this happens very often. After
half hour we go somewhere else. In a private booth, three police officers
discuss paperwork with the club’s manager. We are told they are discussing the
compensation.
Sunday 25 March – Ho
Chi Minh City
01.30am: THIS IS MORE LIKE IT. We are at the famous
‘Apocalypse Now’ club. It looks as good as any club in London, New York or Rio
as far as I can tell. “And I was going to be in bed by midnight!” remembers
David. Tom, the young English expat, 20, is all good heart and very funny,
making these flamenco-like moves in my honour. I set off clapping. Tonight is
gonna be a good night...
03.30am: We are in this big club somewhere else. The expats
have left us. We dance with the locals, they are funny. I am a little too tal
for them, they just laugh, a lot. My best Chris Brown moves are definitely
nailing it, or so I say to myself.
05.00am: We are having a noodles soup opposite the club. The
noodles are not so good. But we are hungry. A man with five teeth comes round
and offers his services, including any substance or woman we may fancy. Another
woman is also having her soup. She gets on a taxi with a friend and wait for
us. We are confused and tell her ‘no thanks’, they leave.
06.00am: We finally call it a day. We have a tour guide
booked for 10.00am to go to Cu-Chi tunnels.
12.00pm: After sleeping for most of the 90min ride, we
arrive to the tunnels. The scenery is like in the movies, green and wild. We
can hear gunfire in the background. Mr Boa, our tour guide, shows us around. I
try to fit into one of the hidden entries to the tunnels. It is a very, very
small hole in the ground. I can only fit up until my shoulders and there is no
way I can physically get in fully. The tunnels span more than 200 km.
01.00pm: We complete a 50 metres tunnel walk in a few
minutes. It is not claustrophobic, if you don’t think about it. The local
officer walks very fast through it. We follow more sitting on our backside than
lunged forward as he does. It is hot too. You can just imagine what was like
just forty years before, when they were fighting.
01.15pm: We have had a bit of the food the guerrilla had:
tapioca, peanuts and tea. It is not very exciting. They ate only that, morning,
day and night for more than ten years.
01.30pm: We fire five bullets each on a AK-47. It is a
mighty fire arm. And the noise is incredible. I am rubbish at hitting the
target, but the adrenaline rush is surprising. People fire these things to kill
or hurt one another. One simple bullet and it is over. I ask myself: why do we
invent these things? Why do we need them? We later find out, there were at
least more than 25,000,000,000 bullets fired during the Indochina Wars.
03.00pm: Back in town we decide to visit the War Remembrance
Museum. There is always three sides to a story: one side, the other side, and
the truth. We enter the museum knowing this is only one side of the story.
However there some universal truths about the brutalities of a war, the long
term consequences on health and about the most horrible behaviours of the human
kind, whoever they fight for, whatever they fight for. Why do we need these
things?
05.00pm: We walk to the hotel. People hang out on the
streets, on the little parks. There are lots of street food places where the
chef has a few big pots and small bowls with ingredients and people sit around
having their food in peace. For all the madness of the traffic, people are very
quiet. We haven’t heard many loud laughs or loud shouting. It is all relaxed,
in a way.
11:30pm: After a nice dinner I feel like walking back to the
hotel while David takes a taxi. The same market where we had soup the day
before is still busy, people buying, people selling. There is a lot of trading.
It is a nice walk to the hotel and my body is finally adapting to the local
time. What a week that was.
Monday 26 March –
Saigon to Phu Quoc
09.45am: I go for
a cardio workout at the very basic hotel gym. Views of the city are nice too.
Saigon has been very good to us and it’s time to see something else.
12.45pm: As I
walk through the Saigon airport departures terminal, once past the security
control, I find a mini supermarket. Nothing out of the ordinary if it wasn’t
because they sell frozen food... I mean, FROZEN FOOD AT THE AIRPORT for you to
carry on the plane??? That has must surely to be a first! I decide I will pass
on it, thanks.
2.00pm: We arrive
to the Long Beach hotel in Phu Quoc and it really looks something special, with
all these little bungalows and wooden work. Great choice. I wonder how much
would they charge for a hotel like this in the Mediterranean.
5.30pm: We have a
few beers by the hotel beach, which is just a small section of the 22km-long beach
called “Long Beach” – original name too.
It is beautiful, peaceful and calm. I can like this place, pretty easily. There
are also very few guests in the hotel.
8.30pm: Spraying
anti-mosquitoes before going for dinner over my arms I manage to get some into
my left eye, but it only reacts a little later. While we are at dinner it
really burns, my eye has popped as if I had been in a fight and it is not fun.
Thankfully lots of water over it and a GREAT DINNER at the Night Market for
just the equivalent of £10 (for the 2 of us) makes a difference. It can be very
cheap to live in this country.
10.30pm: We walk
around town looking for a bar to have a drink. We find two. One empty and the
other one emptier. We settle for the emptier one. This is going to be a quiet
week. Have a few cocktails and call it a day around midnight. David is glad
because he wants to be up early to go talk to the Divers centre.
Tuesday 27 March –
Around Phu Quoc
09.15am: I wake
up after a great night sleep. Cannot miss breakfast, whatever they have in
store. David is still asleep.
1.30pm: After a
couple of hours on the hotel beach we set off to discover the south of the
island with a hired driver. Four hours, for £18 or USD25 in total, and two
bottles of water. In London a taxi from Piccadilly Circus to Wimbledon costs me
£30 or more. You know what I mean.
First stop is a pearl factory: we see how they take the
pearls out of the oysters, interesting yet so simple. We can see hundreds of
pearl-jewellery. I cannot yet really see the real value in them but for some
reason women love them. It is one of those things that differentiate men from
women, we like watches, women like pearls, and diamonds, sort of. Yet one can
appreciate they have something intriguing about them. Fascinating too is the
price range from 500,000 Vietnam Dong (about £15) to 150,000,000 VD (£4,500)
for two very similar necklaces.
2.30pm: We arrive
to the lovely and quietly impressive Sao Beach, in the south tip of the island.
It is simply beautiful. Other than an eight-room eco friendly hotel, there is
not much built. Water is crystal clear and the white sand is so thin it is
almost ticklish. Unfortunately the bar we sat at loves loud Vietnamese dance,
hardcore music. It gives it a different touch I think. A walk along the beach
reveals a truly gorgeous beach. So simple, so good.
4.00pm: The roads
this side of the island are mostly half-started. It seems they have big plans
to build some sort of highway, but there are very few workers and machinery and
equipment seems abandoned at times. It makes for fun 4x4 driving though.
Coincidentally we see only a handful of scooters and motorbikes around. We also
see how many families and villages are basically built with huts, made of
covers and metal, but not particularly solid. I wonder how they must be in the
wet season.
4.30pm: We visit
an old fishermen village. It is a great combination of chaos, food, trade,
energy, peace and old and young generations. There are road works, there are
building works, there are kids coming out of school, and bikes of course up and
down. There are tens of boats and houses living just off the sea. Time seems to
have frozen in some parts. And people are lovely and smiley. You can smell the
fish too. They keep it cool in these pots with water, from crabs to fish or
squid and sea horses. We see too they eat dried sea horses. We do not try them.
5.30pm: Walking
up the famous water falls in the middle of the island we cannot see much water
falling. It is the dry season after all, but this jungle-like trek is quite
fun. And humid, and sweaty. It reminds me of some parks back home, minus the
humidity. I love it. Is this were Rambo hung out back in the day?
6.00pm: Back at
the hotel I go for a manicure and pedicure. It is not as good as it has been in
other places, which disappoints me, but it is still ok. If only all problems
were like this.
9.00pm: We have
dinner back in the Night Market. We choose a different spot and again it is all
outstanding. It is a little pricier than yesterday, we also had crab and a
couple more beers: it goes up to £15 for the two of us. Madness.
11.30pm: Back at the hotel after a nice relaxed evening.
Wednesday 28 March –
around Phu Quoc, and our beach party
12.00pm: I arrive
to the hotel beach while David left early in the morning for his day diving
north off the island. The sun is out and it is hot, which always is anyway. I
am ready for relaxing day on the beach, as I have not had a “lazy” day yet in
these holidays.
4.00pm: I go for
a 45 minutes full body massage on the beach, just a couple of metres from the
water, for an astonishing £2.50. This is so good it cannot be real. BUT IT IS.
7.00pm: David and
I have been making the most of the “happy hour” at the hotel’s beach bar and we
feel like having some more beers, dinner can wait. The day diving was so-so as
there was not much visibility apparently, but still is good to discover that
side of the island. Whilst another outstanding sunset takes place in the
background a woman is video conferencing on his mobile phone with someone in
what seems is Japanese language. Global world, hello. Ten years ago that was simply not possible, let’s see where we are in
another ten.
8.00pm: We
continue at the bar, or more like we have taken temporary possession of the bar.
We have talked to the daily band of one lead guitarist, Mr Dyung, and three
singers, Abee, Camila and Vanessa – or something like that, sorry I cannot
remember all the names. They are all from the Philippines and have been
contracted for two years to perform every night, except Sundays if it is not
busy, for 4 hours. They are paid USD500 a month, which is a very good salary
for Vietnam. The audience the first night was about eight people, including us
two for an hour or so, pretty much the same story the night before. And I
assume pretty much every night now that it is the end of the high season.
8.30pm: We start
to request songs and more songs. From Lady Gaga to Michael Jackson, from
Rihanna to Adelle or Madonna. They cannot quite deliver the notes, but I cannot
fault their enthusiasm. Their dance choreographies are fun too. The scene
includes David and I dancing on the sand in front of the stage. Two couples and
one single man having dinner. Noone else.
9.30pm: Two
German girls from the resort next door who were walking on the beach join us.
We have now a full private party going on. Our attempts to mirror their choreographies
will not win us any dancing awards, but we don’t care, they love it and laugh;
this is our beach and we love it.
11.00pm: It is
the end of the performance from the Philippines
Golden Four – I cannot remember their band name but that will do just fine.
They have sung virtually everything we requested, apart from sometimes when
they put strange faces with requests for David Guetta or Chris Brown tunes. We
try to plug our iPods and iPhones to the sound system, but fail miserably. The
hotel staff is starting to close the bar and we order a few more beers.
Thursday 29 March –
Around Phu Quoc, snorkling and more
12.35am: Swimming
in the sea at this time is always special. If you are in a stunning beach, by
your hotel, after a private party for four, staring at a starred sky with very
little artificial light contamination... then it is something at another level
altogether. That was some evening.
08.35am: We join
a group of tourists for a day boat trip including three stops to go snorkling and one at Sao
Beach. They also throw in an unannounced stop at a pearl shop... Dude, you
cannot get enough of the things. They love it.
10.30am: We
arrive to the port of Phu Quoc. It is being redeveloped and in the next two
years it will become an international port, tells us our tour guide, provided
they are able to make all this chaos come together at some point. There are
cranes, trucks, workers, fishermen, fishing boats, fish loads, women working
the fish everywhere. There is also noise, fish smell, heat, bikes. It is ALIVE.
His English is limited but the tour guide is a lovely chap in
his early 20s who always starts his indications by saying “Everybody...”
Example: “Everybody, listen. Now we will arrive to the port.
It is very important, very important, that you follow me. You have to follow me
to the right boat. Because it is very easy, very easy, to go to wrong boat.
Everybody understand? Ok, follow me”
11.45am: We
arrive to the first stop for snorkling of the day. A beautiful small island
somewhere south off the main island.
“Everybody listen to me. We arrive to first stop for
snorkling. Now I am going to give you your equipment. It is very important,
very important, that you look after it well. It is very expensive to replace so
be careful. This is the first coral stop. It is very beautiful. You have forty
five minutes, four five”
I have not seen corals live before so I am quite excited
about it. However it turns out to be not as exciting as I thought it would. It
seems to me most of the coral is dead or worn over. I cannot see any bright
red, pink, yellow or green corals the like you see on the BBC or National
Geographic documentaries. It is mostly a general dark orange-yellow aggregation
of many shapes and surfaces. It seems these shores have seen their better years
a while ago. It is a shame.
Thankfully though there are still fish, plenty of them. Of
many shapes and colours, playing between them, picking on each other. Not
always the big one wins. It is very funny; and it makes you realise how much
live there is under water.
We are 3/4s of water
in this planet. We only can live on 1/4 of the surface of the Earth and we are
nowhere near to have presence on every corner of land. And look at what we are
doing to the planet. Where do we stop? And, more importantly, will we stop?
1.00pm: “Everybody this is the second stop for snorkling. You have
thirty minutes, half hour, thirty minutes, half hour”
This is pretty similar to the first one. I focus more on the
fish than the coral. I have given up finding stunning corals. Fish are fun and
crazy. There is one in particular who seems to want to play with me – that, or
he/she is protecting something. I guess I will never find out.
1.30pm: We are
having lunch, all 20 of us, around the table in the lower level of the boat. We
try some local shell food thing, which is interesting, a bit like a sponge –
minus the Fairy. The rest of the meal is good enough. I remind myself I have
only paid USD17 for a full day
including transport, equipment, boat, food and sightseeing along these islands.
That is not too bad in my experience.
One of the guys is with his wife, children and
parents-in-law. He is English and runs a school in Saigon. They moved three
years ago and love it. Children on this side of the world are so respectful and
polite, willing to learn and study. Western children should learn from them.
3.45pm: After one
final stop on the water, we arrive by bus to Sao Beach, which remains as
spectacular as two days before. We wonder whether it will be the same in five
years time. We are enjoying ourselves the moment so much that we decide to skip
the bus back and stay on the beach until the sunset. On the boat we have met
Lisa, a world traveller, currently living and teaching English in a small town
south of Saigon. She stays with us on the beach and tells us some of her
stories in Vietnam. We also see the two German girls we met the night before. It is a
small island after all.
6.00pm: The
sunset is again spectacular. It is our last sunset in Vietnam and I cannot have
too much of it. The local kids play on the beach with jet skis they hire to
tourists during the day. Or play with a football, or run around chasing each
other, and laughing loud. In that aspect, they are more similar to Western
children when it comes to play. There is
still hope.
7.15pm: We are
back at the hotel after a taxi ride. It was the first dark night ride and the
roads are at times even scarier. But the driver never hesitated once. Life in
the villages we drive through at night is quieter, but everyone has the TV on.
Hut, friends, and satellite TV. Simple life, like it.
9.00pm: We join
our favourite Golden Four on the beach. We don’t have as much energy as the
night before but we will have a good time.
10.00pm: We are
dancing again after a decent dinner. Lisa and the two German girls have joined
too. A German father and son also join us. We are having fun. One last night in
Vietnam, dancing to live music, on the beach, with a starred sky... It cannot
get much better than this.
11.00pm: It is
the end the show but it is “David’s Cube”
show time. It is a mental game David has mastered over the years which implies
visualizing a number of objects that he tells you, and based on that, he will
tell you things about your personality, your friends and even love life. It is
a great game and everyone loves it. I played it once already and despite
knowing what was coming I still pictured the same things again in pretty much
the same shape, colours, size and positions. The human mind can be an amazing
machine.
It turns out most of us gave, more or less, very popular
answers and descriptions. Elmar and his father however both came up with two
things Mr Cube had not heard before, which is interesting. We are all different
after all.
Everyone has a good time with the game and we order the
final round of beers.
Friday 30 March – Bye
bye Vietnam, hello Cambodia
12.30am: The
Germans are gone and the three of us sit on a sun bed by the water with a final
couple of beers. It is a great ending to what has been a fantastic week in
Vietnam. I knew very little of the country until now, and I leave with a great
sense of respect for their people, their will and their commitment to succeed
upon adversity. I will remember their smiles, their motorbikes and their
organised chaos apart from the natural beauty of the place.
In the very few occasions that we tried to talk about
politics with the locals, invisible clouds came up and their English become
less confident. It is not for us to judge what happens in reality.
As far as I can see, this country is going forward. Despite
the obvious poverty we see of people living in this simple and volatile huts
off the roads, the dirt everywhere or the lack of proper roads, it seems people
get on with life everyday with excitement and passion. It may not be as
sophisticated and big as developed economies, but they have the same 24 hours
of each day and they live them to the full. I hope they can protect their
natural resources and continue smiling every day.
07.35am: We jump
on the shuttle bus to the airport. The roads are already busy with traffic. Food
places are open and people are having their breakfasts or just hanging around, some are taking naps too - madness.
It is 32 degrees too and it will be another hot day in Phuo Quoc. We will not
know what is going to be like, but we have a pretty good idea. And if I am
right, it will be another great day in the little island. Cheers to that.
12.30pm: I am
having some outstanding noodles at Saigon Airport. These ones are a Singapore recipe and
for all I know they are delicious. So simple, so good. We board shortly to
Cambodia, to Siem Reap. Ten days in that country await, let’s see what they have. For now
though THANK YOU VERY MUCH VIETNAM, GOOD LUCK AND
KEEP IN TOUCH.
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