The first three days of 2019 see us in a ceaseless monsoonal downpour.  It rains, cats, dogs, elephants, you name it.  We take a series of "Long lunches".  Sprinting between downpours or grabcabbing when it refuses to stop at all, we make our way to the Sailing club or the Louisiane Brewery for comfort food in what is still 27 degree heat and watch the huge rollers crash on the sand.  On one occassion it just rains too hard too long and we belt down to a local restaurant and order steak in an effort to stave off some homesickness.  It's clearly horse but we chew our way through a couple of rib eyes and watch the endless flow of traffice down Nha Trangs high street.

 

Watching the traffic brings to mind a queation that has vexed us much over the last few weeks. The flow of traffic is constant, there's no apparent ebb and flow of a rush hour.  This begs the question, where the f*ck are the little buggers going?

 

It seems as if the entire population takes to a moped and rides around all day. Mopeds cluttered with entire extended families, all but the driver laughing uproariously, pointing and waving at passers by. The driver is normally far to busy on their smart phone to even look up! Mopeds clutter almost every inch of pavement, forcing you out into the traffic where, in truth you are safer as if the road is blocked, as it is 50 minutes out of every 60, the riders simply take to the footpaths.

 

As a Brit this is of course extremly vexing.  Having, as we do, an inbuilt sense of fair play, it only seems right that the bastards should keep to the road leaving the sidewalk to pedestrians.  Strolling up the sidewalk as rider after rider swerves around you from behind or simply mounts the pavement and rides at you in order to force you to one side, initially has me wanting to pull the little gits off their bikes and give them a damn good thrashing. After a while however, we learn the futility of it and start to laugh it off, we take every opportunity to sneak up behind them and scream BiiiiiiiB!! at the top of our voices.  The vietnamese are very fond of the hooter and in general they get the joke and have a chuckle. 

 

So if the rain won't leave us, we'll leave the rain. It's "Time to head South, try and start a new life, Lord alone knows there ain't nothing to stop us now" to quote some song or other.

 

We've booked a coupl of seats on a 2nd class aircon carriage from Nha Trang to Saigon, just the 7 hours!  Still the photos on the viet rail website promise fairly plush seating and beautiful bright surroundings as we roll through some wonderful rural Vietnamese landscapes.

 

We're on the station, it's the usual scrum.  For thoses used to rail travel in the west the tracks are alarmingly close to where we stand.  There's no appreciable drop from the platform to the tracks. The layout of the station is platform, then 2 tracks, then another platform, another 2 tracks, then a final platform.  So each track is served by an albeit shallow platform. 

 

We're all huddled on platform 1.  By all, I mean, chickens, dogs, bales of hay, sacks of rice and 50 to 60 people, mostly vietnamese

 

Of course the train arrives on platform 2! which means everyone has to scramble down onto the track and try to climb up onto the train from ground level.  Of course passengers who are now disembarking with their horses, sofas, wardrobes etc are also trying to bundle out.  Predictably it's pandemonium.  Lots of whistle blowing and shouting through megaphones, what, with a bit of organisation could have taken 3 minutes takes about 20.

 

We enter our "Plush, 2nd class air con carriage" Jesus! it's carnage.  It stinks, the ripped "leatherette" seats hang at all angles, boxes of eggs, glasses cans and bags of god knows what all litter every available space.  We shuffle into a couple of seats as the guy behind us starts hawking the contents of his chest and nostrils onto the floor.  It's ok, it's just 7 hours!

 

Getting out of Nha Trang we could shake hands with the occupants of the houses on each side of the track, and that's not an exageration! Lord knows how these people sleep.  Eventually we're out into the Vietnamese countryside and it is very beautiful indeed.  It's a very lush country.  Bright green rice paddys stretch away with the breeze rippling through them, setting up waves which we can track almost to the horizon, everywhere dotted with snow white egrets.  The odd farmer steers bullock teams through knee deep water and mud, churning the fields, it looks as if nothing much has changed here in hundreds of years.

 

The vietnamese eat constantly.  Not a lot, they almost exclusively share a physique resembling a peice of string containing two knots, but they snack pretty much on the quarter hour, every quarter hour.  A constant stream of food vendors make their way through the train selling everything from bits of chicken and sausages to fried insects, nuts, something or other wrapped in leaves, fruits of all sorts, something that looked like popcorn but which smelt like something that had been dead for some significant time.  A pot noodle vendor does big business, you can mix it from a huge vat of boiling water kept at the end of the carriage. (I can imagine that going down well with H&S at home!)

 

After 38 hours our 7 hour trip is over. 7 hours south has seen the rain disapear and leaves us standing, blinking in blinding sun and 38 degree heat on Saigon station.  Saigon, metropolis of the East! Centre of the Vietnamese world, historical jewel of the orient. We again leap down onto the tracks at a station about the size of the one at Rowlands Castle, troop to the front of the train and have to walk across the tracks between the front of the engine and uniformed guards who shout, whistle and wave flags at us until they disapear from view behind us.

The "Taxi mafia" at Saigon station are legendary.  However with the advent of "Grab" you've got to think their days are numbered.  We huddle over the smart phone until we have a cab at about a quarter of what the guys outside want to charge and pretty soon we are emersed in the endless flowing, damming, choking, rushing, roaring river that is the traffic of central Saigon.  It's fairly ludicrous and pretty unbelievable that we can arrive anywhere without inflicting or suffering casualties. Drivers use the same technique when crossing traffic as do pedestrians in that you just leap out into it and keep going at a uniform pace.  Secure in a car, drivers are significantly more reckless and careless of life and limb. Moped traffic swerves all around us as, devoid of signals of any sort, the cab negoitiates cross roads, round abouts and 6 way junctions, apparently careless of injury or fatality dealt out around us.

 

The Cititel Central Hotel is what it says on the tin, Central.  At a junction that smells as if it houses a slaughter house somewhere and sounds like the start of a grand prix, our 10 storey home for the next few days is an oasis of airconditioned calm, were it not for the street party that starts, complete with guitars and bongo players at around 3am.

 

We meet up again with Dave and Robyn from Aus and spend the night drinking craft beers (Me) and Girly water (Dave) and end up sitting over a "Roady".  Not someone who lugs around marshall amps, but a Jack daniels or 3 as this is goodbye to our new pals who are off back to Bali the next day.  We hope to see them there in the spring all things being equal.

 

We'd very much like to spend some time on the mekong, it being the centre of life here.  After a few days we admit defeat in that all the tours seem pretty much the same as we did last time we came this way. Rather than get carted around coconut paper makers and snake oil factories we've booked some local ferry tickets to Vung Tau, from where we'll bus and boat our way to the Cambodian border and then on to Phnom Penh via a return through Saigon.

 

My sister Jan and Brother in law Pete are to technology, what sprouts are to air freshners.  It's taken their long suffering children decades to get them to connect to the national grid such that they don't need to pedal in order to generate energy in order to continue watching Playschool. 

 

Pete prefers to use an abacus having learnt that the 25P batteries you put in calculaters only last a decade.  Kim and I have harped on endlessly about getting a smartphone or some such so that we can keep in touch. 

 

At christmas they snuck into one of the great grandchildrens bedrooms on christmas eve and substituted his or her new tablet from santa's stocking with a sugar mouse (From which they'd already sucked the icing sugar) Even now my great neice is wondering why her childs' teeth are falling as fast as her IT grades.

 

Now they appear, ghost like, on our screens at all bloody hours.  Bathed in guttering candle light, they hunch over the screen....

 

"Can you hear us?" ..."is there anybody there?"  they intone...... like a couple of Dickensian mediums summoning the dead.

 

Seriously though, you two......  Anytime is great to see and hear from you XXXXXX

 

Vung Tau is a town clustered on a headland at the tail of the Mekong where it discharges into the Ocean.  The trip there from Saigon is around 2 and a quarter hours in express boat.  It's staggeringly hot and we're standing on the ferry dock, as instructed, dead on 15 minutes before the scheduled  departure at noon.  Dead on 20 minutes late the boat shows up.  This is surprising as there's already a boat tied up here. In true Vietnam fashion, sure enough, we have to scramble across one boat, baggage and all and onto the next one via very rickety plank.

 

The trip down river starts in typical city docks fashion, rows

of huge cargo ships tied off in midstream.  Soon longtail boats and smaller produce carrying craft take over.  We pass under a huge bridge construction that, when finished, will decimate the trade opportunties for these small boat owners, further reducing the importance of this river which has supported local lively hoods for centuries, progress?

 

Further down stream and jungle encroaches on the river and palms and undergrowth punctuated with the odd peir and some habitations are all we can see until we're fired, like a cork from a bottle, from the delta lands into the estuary.

 

Another short and victorious battle with the local taxi mafia sees us at our "pad" for the next couple of days.  Vung Tau enjoys a huge, apparently endless flat beach stretching away in both directions upon which rank after rank of waves are crashing driven by a remorseless howling wind in 35 degree heat. 

 

The local Government has obviously spent, and is spending, big to turn this place into a "destination".  Development is going on everywhere, there's a conference centre (brand new) rows of tall hotels are underway.  The beach is lined with a lovely promenade, all floodlit at night, and an endless run of beach cafes not one of which has a customer, which is handy, because they're all shut.

 

We get a cab across the peninsular into town proper to find some nightlife and something to eat.  The Yummy Yummy bar proves to have some great food, you just need to kick the staff awake anytime you need something.  As usual the food is great and ridiculously cheap. We can sit on a first floor balcony and watch night life, Vung Taun style, roll by.  Below us and to the left a huge food court is running Kareoke.  It's exclusively chinese, and it sounds as if they're mincing cats alive down there.

 

Breakfast at "The Green Hotel and Buffet" is the mix we've gotten used to.  Lots and lots of choice for westerners as long as its an egg.....  Otherwise it's Baby Oyster Porridge!? or Beef Pate Curry.  The coffee is very, very thick, it has the consistency of wall paper paste, it's served luke warm, I've never drunk turps but I'd guess that if I ever do, the flavour will hold no mystery for me.

 

Kim has gone into battle over our room.  In fairness it was a lovely room, but the matress was about the same thickness of an after eight mint.....only harder.  The hotel have kindly upgraded us to a magnificent suite, we have a huge lounge with picture windows overlooking the ocean it's cost us $46 for 2 nights!  We spend the morning luxuriating in the room while organising a boat back to saigon, a bus to Can Tho on the mekong, accomodation in Can Tho, transport to the Cambodian border, a border town hotel plus boat to Phnom Penh.  A very busy morning so we treat ourselves''......

 

The French influence is big in Vietnam.  Kim has searched out a restaurant with a French chef which gets sparkling reviews, a long lunch is in order.  We set out on the trek to find Don Quixote in a feirce coastal wind and mid thirties temperatures.  On the way we find a lovely lakeside cafe/bar and stop for a cold beer and some shade while watching swallows dipping their breasts in the water and kingfishers diving from the piers supporting the buildings out over the water.  Emerald and saphire in colour, they throw themselves into the water at the fish and surfacing, flap, shaking sparkling water drops from their feathers and sit on a wire trying to swallow their catch.

 

Don Quixote is a real find (and hard to f*cking find at that!!) tucked away in a tiny shop front unit off a busy road shared with a number of coffin makers. We pass the tiny place 3 or 4 times staring at the navi page on our phones.....

 

"It says it's here!!"

 

Eventually we ask a vietnamese from a lakeside restaurant who kindly walks us up the street and shows us into the place.  As we walk into the back it gets cooler, the walls a lovely mediterranean cream punctuated with wall hangings, at the end an open kichen.  "Bonjour" smiles a chef.

 

Some lovely olives, good beers, a nice bottle of French White, some Octopus salad, shrimp and mango salad and a shared home made sausage, creme brule, Pastis and a jack daniels and an eye watering bill of $45!? later and we want to marry the guy.

 

We decide to pop back to the vietnamese place for a beer as much to thank him for his time as anything else. 

 

It's pretty dark by now and from a bamboo pole a wire is strung to a nearby, beautiful, spreading plane tree.  Every meter or so another wire hangs vertically to a lamp, each casting a circular glow onto the sand and gravel surface and sparkles onto the lake behind. The tree seems to be stretching its branches and leaves to warm them in the light. The lamps are blowing back and forth in the hot wind.  One lamp obviously has a short,  it flickers and stutters as the night wind buffets it back and forth, freezing the vista as if in photographs, flash....pose.....flash...   

 

It's strobe effect means that the very large rats which chase each other under and around our table have a kind of stop-go motion. 

 

We pull our feet up onto the bamboo struts of the table as rats run down either wall and across the restaurant, no one else seems to care, albeit there's only us and the staff who are all clustered around a table hunched over bowls of noodles....... We're glad we ate french.

 

We make short work of the tiger beers and head back to our room.

 

Vung Tau in general appears to be a kind of Pataya in waiting.  Lots of "Hostesses" outside bars in ridiculously short dresses, hobble about in very tall shoes trying to encourage you into bars for "Happy hour".  In fact Gary Glitter had a luxury villa here and it's here he was charged with sleeping with under age girls.

 

The clientle appears firmly "ex-pat", and any number of western men of my age (50+ .....ahem!) sit across a table from a water sipping nubile.  Crazily cheap cost of living, loads of sunshine, accomodation, even in good hotels at around $100 per week (inc breakfast of oyster porridge) an endless beach, beer at $1 a pint, sex with women less half your age, what on earth do they see in the place....

 

I wake up in the back of a taxi, Kim is just taking off my handcuffs while slapping me round the face .....an empty bottle of horse tranquilizer is rolling around on the cab floor as we swerve, slaloming through a river of mopeds.

 

Kim mouths endearment which, for a while cannot penetrate the cotton wool which seems to envelope my senses.....

 

"You stupid old bastard etc etc"

 

The cuffs have bitten into my wrists, blood starts flowing back into my hands, it burns it's way into my fingers.  My head feels as if a horse is galloping around inside my skull, my newly aquired "Ping Pong love you long time" tattoo is inflamed, and a receipt for a down payment on a small fishing shack on the outskirts of Vung tau appears to have been stuffed into my mouth..........

 

could have been worse!

 

We're back in noisy dusty exhilerating Saigon.  We need US$ to pay for our Cambodian border crossing.  Go to a bank I hear you say. 

 

We enter Vietbank, in reception the girls says .....

 

"Dollar US?"

 

"Yes please" we say

 

"2nd floor"

 

"Thank you"

 

on the 2nd floor

 

"Dollar US?" the teller says....

 

"Yes please" we answer.

 

"How many do you have"

 

"No, we want some"

 

"Oh no! we no have" .....Behind her half a dozen employees stare out from behind stacks of dollar bills

 

"But you have them" we point.

 

"Not for sale" she replies.

 

Back down in the elevator .......in reception.

 

"Oh you want to buy dollars....you need the 4th floor"

 

On the 4th floor....

 

"Dollar US?"

 

"Yes, how many do you have?"

 

"No, we want to buy some"

 

A general discussion around the floor, much laughter and pointing.

 

"Oh..... you need the 2nd floor"

 

"We've just been there, they sent us here"

 

We are led down the stairs and left at a counter....on the 2nd floor...

 

"We want to buy dollar US"

 

"Buy??" as if she's never heard the word before.

 

"Yes, we need to buy dollar"

 

She has an open conversation with row after row of bank employees, all of whom seem to be counting great stacks of dollar bills.

 

"Try 4th floor we don't sell dollar....only buy"

 

"So I f*cking see"...... 

 

I'm trying to grab a fire extinguisher as Kim ushers me into the elevator.

 

So you can't buy foreign currency in a vietnamese bank!  Good news for the somewhat greasy money changer we find ourselves facing in a back street market stall in Ben Thanh.....

 

With sufficient $US to cover our boat to phnom Penh and payment for the cambodian visa including the neccesary "tea money" (bribe) for the border guards plumping up our wallets we make our way to the street food market.

 

Street food markets are wonderful things.  Rows of benches backed by rows of street food vendors and a couple of beer outlets.  The communal seating at the bench tables is great for a general gas with other travelers.  Tonite we meet a couple of swedes, two folk from Croatia, and an american with his thai wife while we munch our barbequed chicken and pork ribs all washed down with tiger and saigon beers for a total cost of around $5-6 US. There are 60 kitchens here  (We counted) crammed into a space about a quarter the area of a football pitch, serving pretty much anything you want.

 

So here we are. Kim is next to me in the Aem Hotel coffee bar on the corner of Ben Thanh market watching the crazy vietnamese world roll by.  We're looking for a Phnom Penh hotel and I'm catching up with this blasted blog. We've grabbed a seat right next to a 4 foot tall aircon unit which seems to be on heat such is the temperature today.  It is flaming, f*cking, stinking, hot!

 

We're thinking about a brief lesson in speaking vietnamese we've had.  We always try to pick up the odd phrase (as those of you who have stuck with the blog may know) if nothing else it gives the locals a smile.  For a while now we've been asking

 

"Can we have ice please"  

 

"Toi co the co nuoc da?" studiously learned from a gogle sight.

 

Most often this has been met with a mixture of furrowed brow confusion, conversation with fellow bar staff and sheer bemusement. 

 

Obviously, if you've been with us since Japan, this leads to all kinds of fears but I checked, and the phrase that gets the waitress unpopping her blouse and calling for he fairey liquid is a very helpful....

 

"Toi co the co mot tin dung tit soapy" so, no confusion there.

 

Apparently the confusion comes from "tones" employed in vietnamese.

 

"Toi co the conuoc daaaaaaa" with the Daaaaa rising in tone indeed asks for Ice.

 

The way we have been saying it in a flat tone means

 

is it snowing outside yet!

 

The sooner they all learn english the bloody better!

We met a viet guy with good english

 

This morning Kim sat me in the shower tied to a chair and cut my hair for the first time in a couple of months.  It's funny how rolling along from place to place changes your attitude on everything.  Given we only have "carry on" sized luggage for pretty much 2 years, we find we've long ago given up on caring too much about whether we are "starched and pressed" and we've noticed how we try to avoid catching our reflections in shop windows.....Vampire like, we cover the mirrors in our hotel rooms to retain some semblance of belief that we still look vaguely normal....

 

Tomorrow we have a 5 hour bus trip into the mekong delta....I'll let you know how we get on!

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