JBR Late Saigon

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#69682 - 01/16/08 02:13 AM

JBR Late Saigon

shwaygwailo
Member

Registered: 12/03/05
Posts: 255
Loc: OZ

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More Journal than JBR.
Hope it's useful

Wednesday 31st October continued

Now in Saigon.
Like anywhere else in a big Asian city the traffic is nuts.
Hotel looks good and go to my room on the eighth floor, it’s undergoing renovations. A bit of a whoops so now moved down to level five.
Open window, they love their horns here too. TOOT, TOOT.
Off to lunch in a little back alley and have a chat to the staff, cannot believe how many Farang are here. Sorry, don’t know the word for foreigner in Vietnamese yet.
In Lao I couldn’t buy a pair of sunglasses to replace my then one armed pair and now a tout walks past me with a variety on a board.
Tease.
Next is a cigarette tout with a tray straight out of a movie set “cigarettes?” “No” “Marijuana?” under his cigarette packets. Next one has Marijuana in an empty cigarette packet. Very tricky. Walk the block and find Allez Boo, looks good.
A girl runs through the traffic at me risking life and death around here only to ask “You want boom boom, one hour?”
Buy water instead and back to Hotel.

Dinner off to Allez Boo, the steak is crap, met a guy called Ian playing the local shark. I play the shark and even under the floating local rules win. Advised that this will not make me popular as I’m staying locally I call it a day.

Thursday 1st November

Brekky at “Cappuccino” the food is good but the staff are surly. Eggs, toast, tea and a freshly squeezed pineapple juice are about $2 US. Bargain.
Buy the Sydney morning herald from my now favourite newspaper tout for $1.80 US, again a bargain.
Think I’ll just make up my own tour of Saigon today and hit the tunnels tomorrow.
Ask a taxi driver to take me to the “war museum” He gets me there 20 minutes before they close for lunch so no entry.
It’s closed 12.00 to 13.30 so I sit and have chat to an old lady moto driver.
So off to the Ho Chi Minh museum, bizarre, they should move the war stuff to this place. Did you know sandal sticks helped win the war with their silent rubber sandals?

Lots of wedding photo groups here. In for one hour while the while the next group gets their make up done at the entrance.
The sign to the toilets is correct but leaves out that that this is the way to the natural history section.
Did you know that Vietnamese deer have Boar tusks?
Back to the war museum with my moto driver so have a coke on the corner waiting for open time and a chat to the locals.
It’s now open and Agent Orange has left a terrible legacy with birth defects.
Back to the hotel by motto, what is it with me and buses, China, Singapore and now Saigon have all tried to do me in.
Bump into two travellers from the pub last night who offer up that the pool rules are a bit dodgy.

So now I am having a late lunch outside usual tourist hours on De Tham street at “Cappuccino” where the food is hot but the service is slow. Go figure. Well, the next thing I hear is “Hello Luang Prabang” It’s Fred the Dutchman! I met him in Lao. I invite him for a drink and ask him how his stomach is. He is better after 10 days of antibiotics and has been recuperating on Phuoc Son. I think. He gives me the good oil on a Vietnam phone card. Have super cheap beer at a Bier Hoi.
Just so you understand how cheap, it’s 2000 Dong a glass and 10,000 dong is about 70 cents AUD.
Met Ian from the land of Robin Hood who is now an Aussie but expating in Saigon.
Fred and I go to “Go to drink, Go to eat, Go to sleep” so named because they offer all three. The music is crap so head off in search of a pool table.
Find an empty bar with the “waitress/hostesses” sitting out the front.
Every now and then a different western man with a red face and a smile arrives from out the back while another hostess takes the next one for a “tour” out the back.
These girls are very friendly.
Pool table okay.

Friday 2nd November

Bit of a late brekky after last night, yesterday I got the Sydney Morning Herald, today the Melbourne Herald Sun, of course it’s yesterdays but it comes in earlier than the Bangkok Post.
Grab a taxi to the reunification palace and the driver has no idea, he gets out of the cab outside my hotel to see if he can see it from here, with the map I have given him that has a picture of the palace in it’s rightful place. No joke. Off we go. No, wait, he stops to ask the tourist police who are conveniently located at the end of my street. Now we are off and 30.000 Dong or $2.15 AUD we are there.
It’s the one where the tanks drove through the gates on the newsreels, in the struggle at great sacrifice against imperialism by the US and puppets.
It also has a spare radio station.
A mobile phone section, meeting rooms and giant woks.
Got a photo of me and Uncle Ho, elephant feet umbrella stands, home theatre, pool room, in house casino and a helipad. So modern for 1966.

On exit there is a moto and somehow convince myself 40,000 dong is cheap compared to an air conditioned steel shell with four wheels that is only 30,000 dong.
I get back fast and then kick myself in the a$se.
Lunch and confirm flights.
Off to book Cu Chi tunnels, try to organise both Ben Duoc (70km) with the recreation of the liberated area and Ben Dinh (60km) where the buses go with TNK travel downstairs but as usual my requirements are not straight out of the pamphlet.
Get driver and an English speaking guide $70 USD for the day. Much better than bus, very expensive by Vietnamese standards, but I didn’t come all this way to listen to yappy tourists doing bus karaoke.
Go to foreign exchange and become an instant millionaire, 2,000,000 Dong for about $140 AUD.
Dinner at go to eat, food okay, staff are hopeless.
Back at the hotel discover the star movies channel is having Steven Segal month.

Saturday 3rd November

Mr Hai was a South Vietnamese soldier during the American war as they call it over here, he will be my guide today to the Cu Chi tunnels first we go to the Ben Duoc (70km) with the recreation of the liberated area. You should see the brochure.
On the way he tells me that “Australian soldiers had very good discipline and not have babies with Vietnamese lady. They treat local Vietnamese people and prisoner very good. That why Australia allowed to have memorial, no other country.”
Maybe he says that to all the boys, but it sounded good to me.
The recreation village is a p!sser complete with hardworking socialist animated mannequins. Very industrious, those robots. The VC are very sneaky, even the rubbish bins are disguised inside concrete formed tree stumps. Very wily.
What I didn’t know is that the workers of Cu Chi normal dress is what the west describes as “black pyjamas”. So when the leaders from the north came down they dressed in them too to blend in. Take that Francois Vidocq. (French detective master of disguise).
Anyway off to the tunnels now with a group of 7 Vietnamese nationals, the local tour guide cuts me loose, so now it’s just my guide, another local guide and me in the jungle for a private tour away from the rest. That’s the way I like it.
They had to replant and cultivate this jungle because by wars end there wasn’t even a blade of grass in this area. That agent orange really is insidious stuff but the jungle is better for the tourists as it gives a movie sneaky guerrilla feel, and that’s what the VC called themselves. Viet Cong means silly Vietnamese and was given to them by the southern government.
This tunnel complex is great, but small even for me and my five foot nothing guide.
They have underground meeting rooms so get Mr. Hai to take a picture of me addressing the local cadres.
Some of the traps are very ingenious.
Go to the war memorial of the fallen comrades, 40,000 plus died in Cu Chi region alone between the French and American wars.
My guide asked me “how you know these tunnels here?”
I tell him “I am smart man.” Modest to the last, that’s me.
Off to the more touristy version at Ben Dinh, it’s after 13.00 and all the buses have gone because the tour they run to here runs exit Saigon 08.00 to get back at 14.30 and Saigon is one and a half hours away.
Guide says don’t pay because it is same same, just tell them you want to shoot the gun. I say “Cannot” So he does in Vietnamese. So free entry with my ticket from Ben Duoc. Join a tour trying to find my way around, but same same as my guide said and I don’t like the Pom with his Australian son with their two bookend Vietnamese professional ladies of the daytime as it happens.
Don’t they melt in sunlight? The Thai ones seem to.
Dads girl is about his sons age (30ish). Sons, well, quite a bit younger.
Ditch them at shoot the gun which is about half way through I think and they have to stop here. This could hold up a large group for some time and all before any real tunnel work.
Had enough I try to go back to the exit reversing the way I came, hmmm? Took a bit longer than expected. Okay, I got lost, but it’s designed that way. No, really, it is.
As I write this back in Saigon a woman has just been arrested out side the café I’m sitting in and half of Saigon has turned out either to witness the parade or join in, every cyclo is giving their version to the locals that missed it.
A sea of blue uniforms and it’s only 17.30.
Back to pack, Hoi An is calling.

Edited by shwaygwailo (01/16/08 03:06 AM)
Edit Reason: Back to pack not pack to pack

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"I ought not to let my mind wander, as it's too small to go off by itself"

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#69698 - 01/16/08 07:33 PM

Re: JBR Late Saigon [Re: shwaygwailo]

pommie
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Registered: 10/05/05
Posts: 72
Loc: Perth, WA

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Yet another great read I have really enoyed them, keep them coming $\:\)$

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#69699 - 01/16/08 08:43 PM

Re: JBR Late Saigon [Re: pommie]

shwaygwailo
Member

Registered: 12/03/05
Posts: 255
Loc: OZ

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Thanks Pommie, Hoi An, Hue and Hanoi to come. My fingers are getting numb.
shway

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"I ought not to let my mind wander, as it's too small to go off by itself"

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#69706 - 01/17/08 06:43 AM

Re: JBR Late Saigon [Re: shwaygwailo]

CathyP
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Registered: 11/15/04
Posts: 643
Loc: Australia

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Oh no - only 3 more left, I hope you are going on another holiday soon. Another enjoyable read Shway.
Cathy

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#69724 - 01/18/08 01:32 AM

Re: JBR Late Saigon [Re: CathyP]

shwaygwailo
Member

Registered: 12/03/05
Posts: 255
Loc: OZ

Offline

Hi Cathy, have started on Hoi An, this typing business is taking longer than the holiday. Maybe I do need another holiday after this. But then there would be more typing. Oh, what a vicious circle this has become.

Shway

_________________________
"I ought not to let my mind wander, as it's too small to go off by itself"

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