Vietnam – Part One

Saigon

I have been traveling the coast of Vietnam for four weeks now from south to north and back again.  With two more weeks of the same before heading further west towards Cambodia and Thailand, I’m finally finding a moment to jot down some observations and thoughts about this 1,700 km long nation.  I’ll start in the south, in Ho Chi Minh City, or Saigon as it is most commonly called locally.  I am enthralled by this city.  During our last stop there, and with a few hours to myself, I climbed onto the back of a motorbike taxi to experience the city from the vantage point of those who daily weave in and out of the frenetic traffic.  The most astounding aspect of the traffic to my western eyes is that nobody looks.  If a driver pulls out into traffic or makes a turn – whether on a bicycle, peddle cab, motorbike, car, van or giant truck – then it is the problem of the people driving behind.  They are the ones who are responsible for avoiding the newcomer to the traffic flow.  After trying to figure out how to straddle the back seat of the bike in my skirt (many of the women ride side-saddle when they are wearing skirts and dresses, but I wasn’t ready for that level of risk) I gripped the railing around the seat behind me and relaxed into the madness.  It was incredible.  The city flew by, all around me, and overhead, in a blur.  I felt like a red blood cell pulsing through an artery while randomly avoiding other cells that coursed and flowed in front, behind, beside and above.  I absolutely loved the experience.  It made me feel like a living, breathing part of this huge, energetic city. 

Typical intersection in Saigon

Saigon has a population of roughly 8 million people is alive with an estimated 4 million motorbikes.  I’ve finally gotten the knack of crossing the road here.  Again, you just go.  Waiting for a break in the traffic is like anticipating the lull in a set of waves, and when you see the gap in oncoming movement, you just go.  Walk slowly and purposefully across the street and the vehicles and bikes will go around you.  It truly takes an element of faith.  My first night spent in Saigon at a hotel I was so freaked out to cross the road that I kept walking around and around the same couple of blocks to avoid crossing the road.   Three weeks later and I feel like a pro. 

With our tours I’ve hit some of the highlights of Saigon including the Imperial or Reunification Palace built on the grounds of the original Norodom Palace, which was the home and workplace of the president of South Vietnam during the Vietnam War.  This was the site of the end of the war on April 30, 1975 when a North Vietnamese tank crashed through the front gate.  We walked around two of the tanks involved in this historic moment that are now housed on the grounds.  The rooftop of the building was used as a helicopter-landing site to evacuate staff as Saigon was ready to fall.  Moving inside the Palace, we admired the art deco banquet room and conference chambers.  In the basement of the building we wandered through a maze of fortified hallways and stark offices that was a South Vietnamese command bunker complete with old radio equipment and strategy maps.

I also enjoyed seeing the Saigon Central Post Office in the heart of downtown near the Saigon Notre-Dame Basilica, the city’s main church.  The Post Office was build when Vietnam was part of French Indochina in the early 20^th Century.  With its Gothic architecture, the building has become a popular stop for tourists, but with good reason as it is gorgeous.  The Notre-Dame Basilica was built in 1863 to 1880 and has two large bell towers that reach almost 60 meters into the air.  The formidable, but austere cathedral was established by the Roman Catholic Church to provide religious services for French colonists. 

Saigon Post Office

The mix of French architect and typical third world concrete square-box construction is apparent everywhere.  The Ho Chi Minh City Hall or the People’s Committee Hall was built in 1908 in gorgeous French elaborate fashion and is illuminated at night.  The building was designed by a famous and is a working government building, but it was nice to take photographs outside of the large of statue of Ho Chi Minh and a small girl while enjoying the manicured gardens in front of the building.  The Rex Hotel is another European inspired building from 1927 during French colonial rule, originally as a two-story Citroen dealership.  The first hotel guests arrived almost 50 years ago in December of 1961, and they were 400 US Army soldiers; the first companies to reach Saigon.  The soldiers were forced to cook using field gear on the roof of the hotel.  The rooftop bar was a well-known hang out for international journalists and army officers throughout the war.   The Quiet American, by Graham Greene (an antiwar novel that was made into a movie with Michael Cane) was written as Graham sipped martinis in the bar of the Rex.

My favourite experience in Saigon took place on a Sunday when I had a little free time and went into the city center to check out a photography exhibit highlighting drug use and victims of addition in Vietnam.  I was frankly startled to find this outdoor exhibit in the middle of the city.  It seems such a progressive statement and admission of a deeply critical issue by the Vietnamese government.  I applaud the openness.  So, as I was reading the captions, and becoming completely engrossed in the images of heroin and crank addicts in their daily lives, about a dozen gorgeous young Vietnamese university students suddenly surrounded me.  They were a team in some kind of citywide scavenger hunt -- “Great Race” style -- and one of their tasks was to teach a foreigner three lines of a quaint little patriotic song about Vietnam.  They kept asking, “Are you free?  Are you free?”  I wasn’t sure what they were up to, but once they explained, I was happy to help and they ushered me over to a park bench and proceeded to coach me, line-by-line, through this Vietnamese song.  I was cracking up.  It was a beautiful exchange.  They were so happy I was helping them and all twelve of them were singing along with me and laughing at my pronunciations.  I filmed them all singing the song and then the big test came.  I had to sing the song, by myself, into a cell phone to their “boss” who I’m guessing was a university professor.  Anyway, I struggled through and they were so happy I helped.  One young woman kept saying, “I love you, I love you, we win now, we win.”  It was great and left me in a daze to be back on my own without my friends.  In hindsight I should have gone with them to see what the next task was on the list.  It would have made for a great day. 

Me and my new friends

As it was, I met another young university student a little later as I was reading in a gorgeous big park.  She was practising her English by chatting with foreigners and we ended up walking together back towards the ship because I had to go back to work.  She introduced me to some local baked goods that I bought from street vendors on her recommendation.  One was a delicious coconut bread sort of like a croissant.  Yummy.  She was very sweet and asked all kinds of questions about how to study in the US, Canada or Australia.  Those are the places that Vietnamese people I talk to always seem to want to get to.  Can’t blame them I suppose.

Hopefully I’ve provided here a little insight into this bright, energetic city.  There is so much I could write, like about the bundles of power lines branching off every corner that are bound together in a mass thicker than an elephant’s leg.  Or I could write about Cho Lon, the largest Chinese neighbourhood in Vietnam, which lies along the Saigon River and is home to a large population of Chinese/Vietnamese residents.  The name itself means “large market.”  We visited the Quan Am Pagoda, a Chinese-style Buddhist pagoda founded in the 19^th Century that is dedicated to the veneration of the female Bodhisattva.  Coils of smoking incense hung from the ceiling and large sand-filled urns held smouldering sticks of incense.  The main alter is dedicated to Thien Hau the lady of the sea.  She stands out in multi-coloured robes and a crown amid bright pink sheets of paper stuck to the walls in rows of carefully painted in calligraphy with family names and prayers in traditional Chinese characters on each sheet.  I could write about the caged birds outside the pagoda, scores of them squashed into each cage, and the people who buy a bird to release it and with it, their prayer.  We witnessed a local woman buy a whole cage of them to release.  No doubt, she had something serious to hope for.   But if I keep writing about Saigon, I’ll never make it up the rest of the coast with you.  So I soldier on…

Leaving the heavily industrial Saigon wharf with massive container cranes and cargo ships anchored in a row, we entered the Mekong River Delta of southwest Vietnam.   This nearly 40,000 km²  area drains lands from China all the way south to the South China Sea.  Ho Chi Minh City lies on the Saigon River, a tributary of the Mekong River and part of this massive delta.   The delta is hugely important for rice production and is a main reason that Vietnam is second only to Thailand globally as the main rice-producing nation.  Historically, this river would have been rich with mangrove forests and the plethora of wildlife that comes with that habitat type.  Presently, the mangrove areas have been heavily overfished and in places removed for development, both commercial and residential.   The ship traveled the 60 kilometres from Saigon to the South China Sea passing nipa palms, red mangroves, and swiftlet condominiums built to harvest their nests for bird nest soup.  We passed small local fishing boats both anchored and actively fishing and large cargo vessels on a mission to reach their destination in the massive Saigon harbor. 

Nha Trang

Nha Trang is the beach capital of Vietnam and has a laidback charm that attracts visitors from all over the world.  Towering behind the city and the long, sweeping beaches are high, green mountains.  The ship anchors out in the bay near the world’s longest cable car that spans the harbour from end to end.  From there, our zodiac landing site is on Bao Dai Beach, a small sandy beach backed by a relaxed restaurant with tables under a shaded canopy.  I would love to write more about this area and the tour that our guests do once they climb on coaches and leave Bao Dai Beach, but my responsibility all three times I’ve been to this site has been to help the guests climb in and out of the zodiacs and then to stay put and keep an eye on our stuff while they are out and about.  I want to be clear here that I’m not complaining.  Sitting by the beach and reading my book while enjoying dirt-cheap, delicious Vietnamese coffees in the shade, is not a bad way to spend the day.  I’ve also gotten to watch local fisherman string small nets across the beach using their traditional coracles to navigate amongst the moored boats.  Some of them set the nets by swimming and using ancient masks with oval glass windows and black rubber sides.  The swimmers then smash the surface of the water with hollow bamboo poles, or just their arms and legs, in an attempt to scare small fish into the gill nets.  I watched a group of these guys going through the net, coming up with the only fish of that session – one solitary small reef fish without enough meat on it to fit on a Ritz cracker.  Thankfully, they let me release it. 

I did also get to snorkel near here on the last stop and it was surprisingly good.  The water was colder and cloudier than I’d anticipated, but the fish were fairly abundant and the corals were healthy despite the army of divers being dragged around the reef on introductory dives with an instructor, and the fleet of glass-bottom coracles barging around.  We cruised through a floating village on the way back to Boa Dai, which was very cool thanks to the rooftop perspective of the tall wooden Vietnamese dive boat.

Cu Mong Estuary

Most of our days in Vietnam involved long rides on motor coaches listening to good and not-so-good guides drone on in Vietnamese English, so when we have a chance to get out and zodiac cruise we all look forward to it.  This is the case in the Cu Mong Estuary where I took a boatload of people from the open sea into the sheltered, shallow estuary.  The mouth of the estuary is framed by high, rocky headlands that have been smoothed over time by breaking waves.  The beach behind this headland is fringed by a graveyard with brightly painted and well-tended shrines to the family and ancestry.  I suspect the graves are located near the mouth of the bay so that the dead can help protect the living in the bay.  In essence, the graves are probably standing sentinels.   Behind the beach stand tall dunes peppered with hardy vegetation, although unfortunately, non-native Australian pine trees have been planted all over in an effort to reduce erosion and they are now rapidly spreading with their ugly, shaggy profiles dominating the ridgelines.  

Further into the bay huge fish and shrimp ponds have been built from stone.  They line every inch of the shore where undoubtedly before there used to be mangroves.   The ponds are used to raise marine species in a massive aquaculture operation.  Juvenile wild stocks are caught and then raised in the pens until big enough to bring in a good profit.  The most distinct feature of the lagoon is the large hanging nets that accentuate the landscape and picturesquely billow in the wind.  At night these nets are lowered down into the water, by hand-cranked windlass, to collect fish and invertebrates like juvenile lobsters and crabs for harvest and farming in enclosures.  Each morning, the nets are cranked up by hand and fishermen sieve through the contents with a careful eye. 



Hanging yellow nets and one of our zodiacs in the Cu Mong Estuary

The zodiacs also wove through an anchorage of fishing boats and many of the fishermen were out on deck waving and smiling to us as they cleaned their nets and the fish they had caught the night before.  It is an incredible opportunity to see firsthand the way these fishermen live on their wooden vessels, many of which are painted bright blues, reds, greens and yellows.  Passing over a shallow seagrass bed, we made our way further up into the estuary and cruised under a small motorbike bridge.  A few of the travellers passing overhead stopped in amazement to see us and waved as we made our way under the rickety wooden bridge.

Motorbike bridge over the Cu Mong Estuary

From Cu Mong Estuary the ship heads north to Danang; the site of the famous China Beach.  We spend two full days in Danang to visit a couple of inland cities.  I’ll write more about these spots in the next blog and more about Northern Vietnam as well.  I have definitely noted a difference between North and South.  It’s in the central coast around Danang that I start to see red flags with the yellow hammer and sickle emblem accompanying the ubiquitous Vietnamese flag; a red background and bright yellow star.  They are almost always seen together as you head north from here.  The culture seems more conservative as you head north as well.  I couldn’t find a single woman wearing shorts in Hanoi, where as in Saigon, short-shorts are super popular.  I don’t know if this is because the north is so much cooler, or if it’s cultural, but I plan to keep my eyes wide open as we head north from here in the coming days for these little differences.  They are subtle, but all-pervading. 

Women in the fish market

Pho noodles from a street vendor in Saigon - cost about $1

Odds and ends for sale for tourists