Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam

Ho Chi Minh City / Sai Gon - we arrive early morning at 6:30am and check-in to the hotel but annoyingly we cant use our room until 14:00, bloody rules! 

The first impressions of the city are tons of moppets... Apparently there are 8 mln Motorbikes for 10 mln people and that looks like a constant flow of flies or other insects that just never stop!

Despite that the traffic lights are not respected all goes smooth...

Its green - you can go

Its yellow - you can go

Its red - you still can go!

So the traffic moves based on the feeling and looking into each other eyes and somehow there are no accidents and the flow is smooth!

There is a saying in Polish language: "what a Saigon" meaning what a traffic/mess ;)

The most dizzying, booming and high commerce city of Vietnam.

War Remnants Museum

The museum shows the brutal history from communist perspective of American-Vietnam war. They explain and present very brutal facts about the tortures and treatment of captivated VC (Viet Cong/ Vietnamese Communist).

It was very sad to see the tiger cages, and all the tortures tecnics of using hammer nails, unsupportable sun exposure, starving or not providing water to people. 





The brutal methods are sadly used on the wars. 

Quite a big section was dedicated to all the toxic gases used by Americans and spread over the land causing horrible damages by burning and exterminating all life. So many people got affected especially by Agent Orange that affects the DNA of the unborn babies and those are born with horrible defects. The photos were absolutely heartbreaking. 

There was a good collection of war vehicles like : helicopters, planes and tanks.

Reunification Palace

The palace was a headquarter of the South Vietnam President that was cooperating with the Americans trying to fight against the North communist government. 

 
The rooms were nicely design and visited by many ambassadors of capitalist countries. The palace was built in 1960's and upto todays stayed unchanged. 

Ben Thanh Market

This is a central located market where one can get anything you want from the cheap crap to more fancy product. It is all fake but bear in mind that it can be a poorly made fake or a very good one.

Weronika bought a few pieces of fabrics of silk that one day will be converted into a fancy dress. Having a mum that is a fashion designer is a treasure! 

Weronika was also trying to get a good fake of digital Casio watch having lost hers in Pacific. But after a closer scrunity process by Francois we were worried that it will soon stop working  ;(

Nightlife

We met a few nice people on our Cu Chi trip to tunnels and we met up for the night. The evening started with sitting on the floor in the backpacker district and playing the drinking game. The beers were embarrasingly cheap: 8000 dong, which represents about 25p of a GBP.

After a few rounds of game: "Never have I ever" you start to know very intimate details about the people. Funnily Weronika and Francois got to know a few intimate things too... ;)

Cu Chi

Cu Chi is 60km from HCMC and takes 2 hours to get there! Bloody traffic!

It became a legend for sovietic Viet Cong people that spent long months or years living in underground tunnels. The tunnels link Saigon with Cambodia border and are spread for about 200km.

The tunnels of Cu Chi was the holy revolutionary base of Military Region Committee Saigon-Gia Dinh during the anti-American resistance time.

We educated ourselves even more about the communist north and capitalist south of Vietnam that cooperated with Americans supported by the French. 

The Viet Cong (communists) were hiding from Americans and digged the tunnels in the ground during the period 1946-64. The tunnels were very small, even claustrophobic, as the Vietnamese were tiny weighting about 40-50kg due to lack of access to food and very poor living conditions.

The history claims that about 16,000 VC (vietnamese communists) were living in the tunnels. There was  not enough clean air as ventilation pipes were rare for not transmiting the noise to the ground level and not to be heard by Americans browsing the bush in the lookout for VC.

We had a chance to walk through the tunnels, we did walk/crawl 100m tunnel. It was very hot so everyone got sweat! In hot season these tunnels got up to 40'C. It was a bit scary, that people lived years without day light, fresh air and enough food. 

The communist government shows the VC tunnel people as national heroes. The war museum in HCMC where the Americans and anti-communist government were tortured VC is yet another propaganda element to support the current sovietic only party in the state. 

Weronika is from ex-communistic country and Francois born capitalist are strongly against communism...that makes us even more intersted to educate ourselves in all this historical political mess. 

M-16 shooting

Mega exciting experience! We got to shoot the gun we wanted in the wood. We have chosen M-16 and each had 5 bullets. The target were some photos of animals not political figures ;) or little red bottles and were in about 100m distance. 

WOW! Weronika hit the bottle! 

The VC soldier, that was supervising us, said that Weronika has better eye so we decided that she will become a sniper once needed :)

Coach Ho Chi Minh City - Phnom Penh 290km in 7 hrs

Mui Ne, Vietnam

The only reason why we headed to Mui Ne bay is for kitesurfing / windsurfing. So we did. We arrived at 1:30 am to Mui Ne and were very glad we could go to bed, so nice to sleep in bed!

No sufficient wind to learn kitesurf resulted in an entire focus on windsurfing. At 15$ / hour full gear rental, it is clearly an affordable option. 

 

   

Only drawback is the unstable weather (that is the wind) blowing every 30s/1min side-shore then off-shore, and eventually back side-shore. Our kite surf instructor Lucy from Cairns insisted on the rule: never go kiting when wind is offshore! Well we went windsurfing ;)

The Jibe's watersport club is friendly and Eddie the Manager is very honest about the weather and does not send us at sea just to generate income. We did four days of windsurfing with about 2 full hours on the water. A few times Weronika had to be rescued by the beach boys as she was drifted with the strong wind and waves and could not tack back to the club, not very Pro yet but working on it ;)
 

So the first day we sat the whole day in the next door restaurant watching the pissing down rain and stormy sea while eating and drinking very well for bargain price. The cost was so little that we tolerated the rubbish service ;)

Straight after the storm we had a bikini jog on the beach mixed with swim in the sea. Francois will remember the swim especially as he cut his skin on the tummy by swimming too close to the boyes and tearing his skin, buuu!

The jog was followed by long yoga / streching session! Keeping fit ;)

Weeven got rented the Stand Up Paddle as a wokring out session one day, and got confirmed that its not for us. We find it boring!

We met a Ukrainian-Chinease couple living in Canada (Alex) and in China (Lyn) and sat together at the same table during the four days. Alex and Lyn were a pleasant couple to spend time and joke about our skills.

 fancy restaurant, not Lamb Tong :)

 

We had lots of fun with the staff in the Lamb Tong restaurant. The food was really good and cheap but the service was so offensive and their body language so brutal that could just laugh at it. Anyway we kept coming back every day :)

With a 4.5 sq.m sail for Weronika and a 5.5 sq.m one for Francois, we had enough room to play and enjoy. Ths brutail true is that we could not get onto a decent size of a board. Shame to say but we used 275l board! In NZ we used 180-205l but in these club there were no such option. Any smaller was 161l and that was way to small for our level in those wavy conditions. 

We had 2 sessions on boards: 161l for Francois and 151l for Weronika and although we could sail fair bit the tack and jibe's were in pathetic style ;)
 

Anecdote: we checked out 4 times in a row (every morning) thereby each time postponing our bus to Saigon. We wanted to practice so much that we did not want to leave the place, especially as we got to know that there were not many windy spots in South-East Asia at the time of our trip, that is in June :-(

Anecdote: The heat and humidity makes Weronika weak and feeling sick... Every morning before breakfast, it is the same cycle: feeling weak, heavy, headache and not well... No Weronika is not pregnant, we even bought the test.. ;-)

Coach Mui Ne - Ho Chi Min City 200km in 6 hrs

Nha Trang, Vietnam

Getting to Nha Trang

I should start the blur of this town telling the mode of transport we took. We got a coach that was leaving at 5:30-6:00 pm and was more than an hour late, that's acceptable although we thought that we D[got screwed over and noone will collect us from the hotel. 

Once collected by mini bus we got dropped literally in the middle of the road and waited about three quarters of an hour for the big coach. Finally in the coach but no Wi-Fi and that was meant to be in the bus ;( big dissapointment on all travellers faces! The bus is double level with reclining to sleeping mode seats, not normal seating is possible. That was quite cool! 

But as soon as we started the people near the toilet said is smells shit, oups. The toilet water went up and the air was unpleasant.

About 30 min in the journey time the coach stopped as something broke down...the air-conditioning! So if outside temperature at night is about 30'C then inside (with about 40 people) it soon reaches 40'C just imagine the smell and overall heat.... Quite horrible! Everyones t-shirt was sweat, faces were red and shiny from heat... Yuk! 

And finally after 15 hours of travelling and 380 km we made it to Nha Trang! That gives the speed average about 30km/hr! I can cycle that fast!

 

Party rocks at nights

Nha Trang is the Vietnamise beach capital hence plenty of hotel resorts. This place rocks at nights, people play late and that is primarily driven by the number of Russians that are here. Of course most people in shops and bars talk to me -Weronika in russian...hmmm... I can bearly understand but I respond in polish ;) 

We agreed to meet with our Irish group of girl friends that we met in Hoi An. Very funny 20 year old girls, full of energy and really rocking the dance floor! We had a great night drinking the "why not bucket" which was about half a litre of: vodka, rum, orange & pineapple juice and topeed up with some redbull. We got a bit (or more than a bit) drunk ;)

Our favourite restaurant was... Mockba which is Moscow in russian, the town was full of russians, like an invasion and as mentioned before most people talk to me in russian, hehe, I tried to pretend I am one, hehe!

 

Beach: Catamaran & volleyball

We were a bit bored slash dissapointed with the "no wind" situation. That's because we are here in Monsoon season which has more rain and light wind as opposite to dry season with very strong winds perfect for kite surfing and wind surfing. 

There were some seldom kites but it was very unprofessional to fly a kite by students with five meters from the people swimming or tanning on the beach. We aborted the idea to even try in these weak wind.

 

Francois wanted to have a go on the Catamaran, we rented a Hobit for one hour. That was a challange for Weronika as she never sail on one. Francois had to properly brief on the go which line to pull, when to block etc...as Weronika was clueless!

Once done with catamaran we got called by a group of Irish guys to join them in the beach volleyball. They said they didn't know the rules...in fact they were completely blank in how to make points. The sand was sooo hot that we had problems with standing on it...;) we had one set and the Irish guys gave up for the second set...of course me and Francois wanted to continue buuuu

 

Whereever we went the restaurants and bars were full of Russians :) Below we are in the beach resort chilling out in the heat and hidding from the sun!

 

 

We take an evening bus 8pm to Mui Ne, arrival time at 00:30am.

Coach Nha Trang - Mui Ne 240km, 5hrs

 

Hoi An, Vietnam

Graceful and historic town with Unesco heritage for its Old Town.
 

We had a go into a night life and crossed a river on a private cute boat to an island. The party was just waiting for us. Straight on the way out we got nicely invited by a bunch of Irish gurls to join them at the table. And before we knew we were in the middle of the drinking game ;)

Use cards and apply according to the number pulled out by each participant in order:

2 fuck you - you drink

3 fuck me - I drink

4 touch the floor

5

6 group category of something

7 reach heaven

8 

9

10 waterfall drinking

Jack

Queen - ask people Qn & if they answer they drink

King 

Tailor made suit shopping

We heard that Hoi An is a tailor suit mecca, that means shopping timeeee! 

Francois wanted to get some suits, so we have a go in a few shops. We soon go to Kimmy which is more expensive than other but has opinion of best quality, so we target to get his stuff there, if you wear a suit it has to look perfect! 

And imagine that Francois goes crazy with his order ;)

The outcome: 4 days spent to choose, match the suit fabric with lining and try again and again; the damage is as follows:

- 7 suits ordered of which 2 linen suits and 5 formal work suits,

- each suit ordered with 2 set of trousers and a waistcoats,

- 1 casual jacket,

- 6 linen shirts, half with short sleeve

Anecdote: Weronika did not buy anything, so unexpected but true! She is loyal to her fashion designer mum Lidia that runs company Elida!

Anecdote: Weronika gave a hard time to the staff working at Kimmie, the tailor-made suit store. She checked symetry, measured distances of all clothes made; indeed there was lots of adjustments to do due to unequal cuts. Independtly from this, the quality of the fabrics as well as the finished product is amazing, especially given the price paid. Big thank you for Weronika for her patience as we went through 2 up to 3 trials a day, each of them was lasting between 2 and 3 hours... Exhausting...

Between the trials we had lazy walks and tons of vietnameese food and coffees ;) we better go for a jog to loose those calories but the f***g heat is impossible to fight!

Anecdote: Francois was close to refuse eating a banana split desert ordered that was served without whipped cream! And he wanted to throw it away on the street, what a drama queen!  

 

Beach

Nothing particular for the beach side of Hoi An, as restaurants were overpriced and not really pleasant, that could be managed but the food that we got served was crap!

The good side of it is that we rented bicycles though and had fun riding in the country side with rice fields to access it.

Anecdote: Francois fighting with a grilled crab ordered that he nearly throwed away as it was so difficult to extract meat from it. So unsophisticated man... Just give his 300gr of steak and he will manage ;)

Coach Hoi An - Nha Trang 555km, 14hrs

 

Hue, Vietnam

We arrive to Hue (Vietnam former imperial capital) in the morning after about 14-15 hours in a night train. It was all right to sleep on the berth bed with some 2 Vietnamese woman with a kid on the bottom bed and us on the top. 

We got to the hotel which Weronika didn't like, so we had to move, oups, :)

Next hotel was much better but we kept the price of $12 from the previous one.

We have a tourist plan to visit what is to see in this hell hot town, OMG I thing we are going to die here...melting...min 38'C

Citadel & museum

The Citadel and the Imperial City has been constructed from 1804 and lies on the Perfume river, named after abundant amount of flowers growing at the surface.

Unfortunately, the  Citadel has been victim of war bombings from USA and is being slowly renovated by Vietnamese government.


Sadly many buildings were damaged but one could see the old glory of golden decorations for deserted gardens, palaces and halls etc. Impressive overgrown gardens, massive fortifications and lakes.

Inside is holy of the holy: purple forbbiden city for the emperor, with all the servants being eunuchs and its concubines ;) Apparently he could have up to 500 woman and over hundred wife's! 

Anecdote: we did not spot the entry of the citadel 50m from us (f...k blind or what?) and we walked all around its walls under terrible heat, like 3km for nothing...grrrr

Vietnam war tanks, planes and helicopter

We chicky spotted some fancy MIG-21 airplane, UH-1 helicopter, and various tanks. Francois got very excited about that ;) - especially after a few hours visiting the Imperial City within the Citadel.

 

Scooter tour: Pagodas, Royal Tombs, Bunker

We got quite fascinated by an exceptional guide who approached us while looking at old vehicles left after Vietnam war. Actually the guide is a reconverted monk but still practicing in his leisure time. He showed us his pagoda (equivalent to a monaster in buddhism culture) where he spent 11 years studying buddhism.

He was able to tell us key personality features from both of us, as well as some weaknesses we need to pay attention at. He was extremely empathic and could guess our emotions and somehow relate them to our childhood past. We sat together in his pagoda and he read the lines of Weronika's hands and told us very interesting comments without having any knowledge of our lifes. It was a bit scary that he was very good in reading our past experiences and emotions... He wrote a note for each of us with some good hints. 

The most impactful was for Francois: beware of any accidents, especially in the car, motorbike or in the street and also avoid swimming in open water when he is 49 years old. Especially the date of 23 of March before turning 50 is meant to be bad for Francois. Suprisingly our guide monk predicted this date which is one day before Francois' birthday... Very mysterious... As he did not have any hints about Francois' birthday.

The monks singing 7 praying before the meal. It took good 10 minutes for them to thank to Buddha for the food and the good life. We enjoyued thatr we could witness it.

Suprisingly, a lot of Vietnamese people DO wear those hats...

We also went to see royal tombs where some emperors with their families were living. So we visited Tu Duc Tomb, one of the main ones.

Our guide did not recommend us to visit more tombs as he said that they look like the same and each time we have to pay the same 4$ entrance fee.

Later on our guide took us to see some USA bunkers on the river corner on top of the hill, very well positioned. 

We had very intense 36 hours stay in Hue and then moved on to catch an afternoon sleeper bus to Hoi An for planned 4 hours trip.

Coach Hue - Nha Trang 138km, 4 hrs