Good Morning Vietnam...

We bused it again from Cambodia and into our 7^th country of our travels, Vietnam.

Our first stop was Saigon in the south of the lanky country. Except it’s not called Saigon anymore, it’s now called Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC) after the bloke on all the money. Oh by the way the money here is ridiculous; one squid is 33,000 Dong. Not only is that a hilarious exchange rate but the word Dong never, ever, ever gets unfunny! The issue is however that the notes vary from 500 Dong to 500,000 Dong, this means that you end up with a shit heap of notes worth nothing. For example this is £2.50.

So on our first day we thought we would head out see the sights, this includes The American War Museum, some shit palace thing and a typical South-East Asia stinky market. The Museum is pretty good actually, lots of good pictures and old guns and tanks and that.

I will say that it’s very biased but I guess you would expect that but by the end it felt like anti-American propaganda almost. In one instance they had a pistol on a wall (Colt .45 for enthusiasts) and it had a little blurb underneath saying “this is a Colt .45, Americans used this to kill thousands of Vietnamese women and children. Vietnamese people used it for self-defense and occasionally in the police force”.

We moved onto the Palace, I won’t go too deep into this one but just imagine a big house with 600 living rooms and tons of those old fashion dial around telephones. Highlight: this tree, no jokes.

The market was stinky as previously mention and when we walked past it at night we must have seen 400 billion rats kotchin’. Our reaction was to sprint away from it like a couple of really hard hardnuts.

On our return to the hotel after our day of looking at things we hit rush hour. This meant that our pavement became a road. I was perplexed at the thought of navigating our way through this mess.

The next excursion was to go and look at some jungle warfare tunnels where 16 thousand Vietnamese people lived in during the war and rinsed bare Americans in. These tunnels were proper small. You could go through them for about 60 meters with a chance to get out every 20m. I was like 20m is nothing, I could jump that far. But when your down there its proper dark, sweaty, stinky and cramo so I think I did 40m and felt like I had done enough.

Our tour guide was a Vietnamese geezer who fought for the Americans and killed his countrymen, quite the insight. The edge was only slight taken off by the fact that we had to call him Mr Bean. A favourite of his was saying "M16, very bullshit gun." he said this over 100 times and ended every sentence with "you know, you understand".

After Saigon the next stop was Da Lat, a mountain town 1500m above sea level and a welcome cool climate.

Our hotel ran a “secret tour”. I still don’t know why they called it the secret tour because it was fairly heavily advertised but anyhow it was decent. It would involve driving in convoy on mopeds through the hills to visit various points of interest for 12 (!) hours.

Before we left, a hotel staff person asked a pertinent question; “have you driven a motorbike before?”

Jack said yes, and I naively said no, then looked at JB whilst he stared at me angrily. “I mean yes but, ages ago”

When I referred to ages a was talking about the adventure holiday week thing that me and Pat did back when we were about 12 I think. This was your typical PGL or outward bound sort thing but revolving around riding motorbikes and quads as well as the usual rock climbing and whatever. I’m not sure if any of the following is true but hopefully Pat will verify it; I remember staying in a dorm with about 6 other lads, and one them had an obsession with throwing rubbish out of the 3^rd story window, including a full pipe of Jaffa cakes. Also I’m pretty sure on the last night we all shaved of this one kids eye brow (just the one) as a team; and in the morning no one said anything and he even went to the toilet and didn’t say anything – surely he would have noticed a missing eyebrow. I do however definitely remember getting a wedgey so high that my nob popped out the bottom of my shorts and I was given the nickname “Pecker” for the rest the week.

Nether the less we boarded our mopeds and the our guide for the day told us to have a little spin around the street to practice. I nearly crashed right there and the guide asks “are you sure you have driven one these?”, “yeah ‘course… just need to remember, its just like riding a bike!” she didn’t get it.

I can’t remember her name so I’ll call her Pauline. Pauline was fucking mental, just shouting shit like “lap lap la” all the time a laughing incessantly for absolutely no reason at all. Our first stop was at a cricket farm… yeah a cricket farm! It stank and Pauline was grabbing them and being mad. She then brought out a plate of cooked crickets and started gobbling them like they were going out of fashion. I made the huge mistake of trying one; the overwhelming taste of lemongrass was unbareable. This is the perfect spot to point out to you if you weren’t already aware that lemongrass is awful and tastes like a hand towel that you mind receive after a curry, or actually a shredded KFC “freshen up” wipe!

Next was a waterfall, very lovely and watery but insanely dangerous to get to; I would be surprised if Pauline told me that no one had died clambering down slippery rock steps to see it. My concerns were realised when I fell over round the back of the waterfall and really hurt myself. I hurt myself a second time by falling over trying to get up from the previous fall, this made climbing out with a limp incredibly difficult and painful. But knowing me and my unwavering resolve and dedication to not complain, I just got on with it like a champ! This is the moment just before it happened. Pauline laughed for about 10 minutes without helping. Cow.

Silk factory was next. Little Asian birds messing around with worms. Pauline ate one, of course.

The trapse around the local market was an eye opener. Basically Pauline showed us some typical veg that they eat, weird potatoes and manky cabbage. I didn’t have the heart to tell her that I already knew was a broccoli was.

After we left the meat section I had to ask Pauline a burning question,

“Where were the steaks then?”

“They were there” she said, “on the table”

“oh right… between the bowl of intestines and the cows nose?”

“yes of course… lap lap la!”

Here’s a picture of a heart in a bowl, why not.

Our final stop was for lunch in the hills cooked by an authentic Buddhist monk woman, I guess that makes her a nun but she had all the gear, shaved head, she looked the bollocks! Food was lovely also. We had a look around some village full of old ladies making shit and had chat to them through Pauline who made them try and speak English saying stuff like “darling… you want to come live with me?” but unfortunately there family did have enough buffalos to pay for me, that isn’t even a joke, its completely true.

Here's another summary video. If you weren't aware you can't watch these on a smart phone :(

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