Saigon and the Mekong Delta

Saigon will not make our list of top ten favourite cities.  For a start, it is very noisy and congested – makes London seem like a quiet backwater!  As in Hanoi, motor bikes comprise 90% of the traffic, but in Saigon there are even more of them.  On busy main roads, there can be ten streams heading in each direction, and crossing roads on foot is a nightmare.

You have to forget everything you have learned from childhood: look right, left, right again, and only cross when the road is clear.  If you did that in Saigon, you would still be waiting, because the road is never clear.  (Zebra crossings without lights are completely ignored; at zebra crossings with lights, some traffic streams may stop.)  There is only one possible technique.  You take a deep breath and walk straight out into the road, with scores of motor bikes hurtling towards you, and pray that they will swerve to avoid you.  It sounds scary, and in practice it is absolutely terrifying, but it does work – at least, we survived to write this blog.

Motorbikes in Saigon

Even dogs ride motorbikes

The other problem is that Saigon is much bigger than Hanoi, and places of interest are further apart.  We walked miles (and crossed many roads!) in order to visit Chinatown, the Reunification Palace and the Jade Emperor Pagoda. Chinatown wasn’t that interesting – there were a couple of temples, which were similar to others we’ve seen in Vietnam. The Jade Emperor Pagoda contained a number of interesting and even scary statues, as well as a pond full of terrapins who mill around, feeding on the bread thrown in by devotees.

Statue in a Chinatown temple

Worshipper at the Jade Emperor Pagoda

Rush hour in the terrapin pond

Detail of a Hindu temple in Saigon

The Reunification Palace used to be the residence of the President of South Vietnam. The North Vietnamese tanks that burst through the gates in 1976 are still sitting on the lawn. We had a tour of the palace, and saw the bomb shelters in the basement and the president’s helicopter on the roof – shades of Miss Saigon.

Reunification Palace

Schoolchildren conducting a visitor survey at the palace

Ready for a quick getaway when needed

Cao Dai and Cu Chi

 We did a day tour out of town to the northwest. Our first stop was at the main temple of the Cao Dai religion, a huge ornate confection like Mormon Temple meets Disneyworld. Inside is also elaborate; there are pink pillars entwined with green dragons, and giant eyes of God everywhere. We were disappointed because there was a service in progress when we arrived later than scheduled, and we were whisked away again before we were able to get a proper look inside.  We were not even allowed to take decent photos of the front of the temple, as adherents prevent you walking past the front when a service is in progress.

Cao Dai main temple

A service in progress

Detail of the pillars

God is watching you

The other stop was at the Cu Chi tunnels, a kind of theme park based on the Viet Cong resistance to the Americans. We were marched through the jungle to see B52 bomb craters and displays of homemade weapons manufacture. The centrepiece is a set of tunnels you can crawl through to experience what it was like hiding underground. Even though they had been specially widened to accommodate large Europeans, we declined to participate.

The Mekong delta

 We left Saigon on 15^th November, and took a 3-day tour of the Mekong Delta, ending up across the border in Cambodia. The tour involved a number of excursions, using a variety of means of transport: buses, motor boats, rowing boats and even horse-drawn carts.  It was a fascinating trip – we saw all the life along different branches of the Mekong, including all kinds of boats, stilt villages, floating markets, and ordinary people going about their business on the water.  We also visited a fish farm, some orchards and a few small factories.

Paddling along a narrow canal in the Mekong delta

The floating market at Cai Rang

Preparing a pineapple at the floating market

Living on a side stream of the Mekong

On the second day we visited a pagoda on Sam Mountain, which rises above the flat lands of the delta close to the Cambodian border. The pagoda was interestingly laid out, including a dark cave leading to a mirror hall filled with buddhas!

The pagoda on Sam Mountain

Finally, on the third day, we went with nine other tourists and a guide in a ‘slow’ boat to the border crossing.  The journey took nearly three hours, and it was pleasant and relaxing to cruise along in the sun, taking photos and waving to people on the river banks.

Mekong river boats

Everyone lives on stilts because of flooding

Cattle on the riverbank

On a slow boat to Cambodia

Across the border a minibus waited to take us to Phnom Penh. After travelling through Vietnam for more than three weeks, we had another new country to explore!

Vietnam: from north to south

On 3^rd November we left Hanoi and began the long journey south, heading for Saigon (now officially Ho Chi Minh City, but in practice still called Saigon), travelling by bus.   We became accustomed to long-distance bus travel while in South America, but found the Vietnamese buses quite different.

In South America, the seats were like very comfortable armchairs, and tilted back (some almost flat) for sleeping.  In Vietnam, ‘sleeping buses’ have three rows of two-tier bunks, with narrow aisles in between.  You have to take your shoes off when you board, and are given a plastic bag to put them in.

On board a ‘sleeping’ bus

You do not have specific seats (or bunks) allocated, so finding places is a free-for-all, and you cannot guarantee being close to your travelling companion.  We found the bunks not bad for sleeping, but very uncomfortable for day journeys, when you want to sit up.

Are we nearly there yet?

The journey from Hanoi to Saigon is well over 1000 miles, and almost 40 hours of bus travel.  We did it in 9 days, with four stops en route.

Ninh Binh

Our first stop going south was Ninh Binh, in order to take the scenic boat ride through Tam Coc, a river that flows between towering limestone rocks, and through three caves on the way.

Rowing into Tam Coc

Boat people at Tam Coc often row with their feet

Rock formations at Tam Coc

Rowing through a cave

We combined this with a visit to Hoa Lu, site of the tenth century capital of an early Vietnamese dynasty.

Landscape near Ninh Binh

Temple at Hoa Lu

Hue

We passed two pleasant days in the city of Hue, which sits astride the Perfume River.   In addition to exploring the citadel (on foot), we took a bus tour of the mausoleums of three former emperors – may not sound very exciting, but they were all interesting in different ways, and one in particular was in a very picturesque setting.

Ian and friend at the mausoleum of Minh Mang

Part of the mausoleum of Minh Mang

Minh Mang mausoleum

Detail of ceramic decoration at the mausoleum of Khai Dinh

Pavilion at the mausoleum of Tu Duc

Entrance to the citadel of Hue

Part of Hue citadel – badly damaged by wars and fire

Detail of a building in Hue citadel

We returned from our mausoleum tour in one of the ‘dragon boats’ that are very common on the river.  The next afternoon, we chartered our very own dragon boat (at amazingly low cost!) in order to visit a temple and a pagoda further upriver.  Sailing along with the sun on our faces was a very relaxing and enjoyable experience.

Dragon boats lined up on the riverside at Hue

On board our private dragon boat

Thien Mu pagoda

We were back on the river that evening, for a folksong performance in one of the bigger (catamaran style) dragon boats.

A multicoloured group of folk singers

The floating restaurant at Hue, illuminated

Hoi An

Hoi An is an incredibly picturesque town, with old buildings (yellow ochre, Ian says) lining a narrow river.  The reflections, and the lights at night, are really beautiful, and we were happy to spend time wandering around.

Hoi An waterfront

A bizarre sculpture in a temple at Hoi An – dragon orgy?

Lampshades R Us

The bridge at Hoi An, lit by lanterns

A folk song and dance performance at Hoi An (Santa and his helpers?)

Boy selling paper lanterns

Paper lanterns on the river

Hoi An reflections

From Hoi An we did a tour to My Son, to see the ruins of the sanctuaries where kings from the Cham dynasty were buried. They are in an atmospheric jungle setting, although our challenge was to take photos which were not spoilt by the large number of tourists there!   My Son was used as a base by Vietcong soldiers, and was therefore bombed by the Americans in 1969.  Some of the temples were destroyed, and we saw bomb craters as well as the remaining temple ruins.

Cham ruins at My Son

Temple dancer at My Son

Mui Ne

Our final stop was the town of Mui Ne, which has become a major holiday resort – a kind of Great Yarmouth-on-the-South China Sea.  Its main attraction – and the reason for our visit – is the sand dunes (red, yellow and white) just outside the town.  We took a sunset jeep tour, which unfortunately was somewhat spoilt by the lack of sun that afternoon!  The highlight was probably a walk up the ‘Fairy Stream’, splashing through shallow water with weirdly-shaped sandstone formations on either side.

The ‘fairy stream’ at Mui Ne

Rock formations by the ‘fairy stream’

Sand dunes

On the beach at Mui Ne

And so to Saigon – ready for the next stage of our adventure.

Hanoi and North Vietnam

After a happy year based in Ghana, we decided it was time to do more travelling.  (As the song says, there’s such a lot of world to see.)  Vietnam and Cambodia had been high on our list of ‘must see’ places for some time, so we decided to undertake a two-month tour of SE Asia.

On 24^th October we flew to Hanoi via Singapore. We flew to Singapore in an A380, which gave us a taste of Claire’s working environment. On our way from Hanoi airport to the city, we noticed a characteristic feature of Vietnamese architecture: houses and other buildings tend to be very tall and thin.  While based in Hanoi we did a number of separate trips – to Ha Long Bay, the Sa Pa area, and the Perfume Pagoda.

Skinny Vietnamese buildings

Hanoi

Hanoi is a beautiful city, with picturesque lakes, old streets and interesting temples and pagodas. The main problem is the traffic, especially the 4 million motorbikes which rush everywhere regardless of pedestrians and make crossing the road a near-death experience. Walking on the pavements is impossible, because of all the parked motor bikes and the goods on sale, spilling out from the shops. We noticed that, unlike in Ghana where people carry loads on their heads, in Vietnam they tend to carry them in two large baskets suspended from a long pole on their shoulder.

New and old in Hanoi

We did a couple of long walks through the city, seeing the central lake (Hoan Kiem) and a number of temples and pagodas, as well as Ho Chi Minh’s home and a big new museum dedicated to him. We also saw an incredibly long wall of mosaics (longest in the world, apparently) and took out a pedalo on the large WestLake.

Entrance gates to temple on Hoan Kiem Lake

Big gong at the Temple of Literature

There’s miles of mosaics like these!

Swan boats and a dragon boat on West Lake

Pagoda on West Lake

We went to a couple of performances, including the water puppet show – unique to Vietnam – where the operators stand in water behind a screen. The other was a recital of Ca Tru music in a restored historic house – it was interesting, but the music itself is unlikely to appeal strongly to western ears.

The Water Puppet Theatre

Ca Tru music recital

Ha Long Bay

One of the excursions we took from Hanoi was to the famous scenery of Ha Long Bay. It was supposed to be a 2-day trip, staying overnight on a boat, but was cut down to one day due to an approaching typhoon. The weather was quite grey, which slightly reduced the impact of the amazing rock formations standing out of the water, but they were still well worth seeing. We also visited a cave on one of the islands, which was well lit with coloured lights but fairly crowded.

Ha Long Bay

Inside ‘Heaven’ cave in Ha Long Bay

Sa Pa trekking

We went by overnight train to SaPa, north-west of Hanoi and close to the border with China. This has impressive mountain scenery, and is visited by many tourists to hike through the hills and local villages. We did a one-day hike, followed by a two-day excursion, staying overnight in a village ‘homestay’ (a fairly basic hostel with a communal sleeping area upstairs). We were with a good multinational group on this trek, and we got on well together.

Looking towards Cat Cat village near Sa Pa

For our kiwi friends – getting your ducks in a row

Rice fields and mountains

Our group of intrepid trekkers

We had a few problems. One day the ‘footpath’ was virtually non-existent, and we had to scramble down some extremely steep and muddy slopes, with a constant fear of slipping. For much of the time our group was dogged by a bunch of local women who were trying to sell us stuff, and they were constantly watching us or getting in the way. But on the whole we thoroughly enjoyed the trekking experience. The scenery was magnificent, with tall hills and terraces of rice fields – quite unlike anything we’ve seen before.

Local women hot on our heels

View of the hills from Sa Pa in the evening

Perfume Pagoda

Another day trip from Hanoi involved a minibus ride and then one hour being rowed in a sampan up a river fringed by pink water lilies between towering limestone hills. This was extremely picturesque, and a unique experience. At the end we took a cablecar up a hill to visit a cave filled with Buddhist altars, which was supposed to represent Hell. We walked back down the hill, past a large number of closed-up gift stalls (the main pilgrim season is apparently spring) to reach another temple complex representing Heaven. From there we had another idyllic river cruise back to the bus.

Setting off on the river trip

Water lilies lining the banks

On the river

View from the top, close to the entrance to Hell

Heaven temple

Having seen the highlights of Hanoi, we will travel south by bus through Vietnam.

Moonrise over the temple in the lake at Hanoi – last night