Vietnam Day 14,15 & 16 - Saigon

We woke up the next morning and had absolutely no motivation whatsoever to stay in Dalat another night. There was still a couple of things that interested us out of town – but they were about 40km away, so we didn’t fancy scooting that far – especially after having seen the crazy bastards on the mountain roads the day before. Plus it would mean another night in Dalat – and it had only taken us two hours to see the best of it already, so told our guesthouse to cancel our second night and second day scooter hire – booked a bus to Saigon for 1pm and waited around for the pickup.

At this point we discovered possibly the best thing to eat in Vietnam! We’d seen loads of street baguette vendors since arriving in Vietnam (pretty much one on every city street), but had generally discounted them for fear of getting something weird. This time though, we had little choice before our bus arrived so took the plunge, and it turned out it was really easy – like a small Vietnamese Subway! They tasted amazing – which was fortunate as it helped forget the near-death-experience that was our shuttle mini-bus ride to the larger bus… no matter how often you get a crazy driver, it never quite prepares you for it!

We got on the big bus – and were two of only four whiteys on board. There was a welcome speech and details of the itinerary given at the start – at least I think that was what happened, but it was exclusively in Vietnamese so we had no idea! We headed out of town and into the windy mountain roads again – stopping a couple of times for more passengers or food, each time having to guess how long the stop was meant to be! What was meant to be a 6 hour journey ended up taking the best part of 10 (mainly thanks to a roadworks stop which lasted over an hour and resulted in them playing BAD VIETNAMESE TV on the big screen REALLY LOUDLY.)

We arrived in Saigon in the heart of the backpacker district, scraped our bags off the pavement and set off in search of our hotel. Despite now being almost 10pm, it was fucking unbearable out there – especially compared to the chilled mountain air in Dalat – and far worse than we’d had in Hanoi. After a few heated discussions with each other on the walk there (fairly standard now whenever we have to walk anywhere with our full gear on) we found the backalley it was located on, checked in and (after raiding the minibar) went straight to sleep!

So much for our first night in Saigon.

The next day we were determined to make a better go of it – first we met a jolly nice couple from Blighty at breakfast who were having an eerily similar holiday to us and had also been living in Australia and were heading back. We had loads in common and traded a few war stories, before coming to the conclusion that we wanted to catch the same bus the next day to Phnom Penh.

Next we hit the streets. First stop was the central indoor markets – they were pretty large, and pretty sweaty. We wandered around in a bit of a daze not really knowing what we were looking for and soon escaped – into a rain shower. It felt just like Brisbane on a Saturday in mid-February – sunny, hot, sunny, rain, sunny, hot…repeat throughout the day.

We strolled past a few of the landmarks on our tour-map, the Opera House, Cathedral, Royal Palace – without actually going to any, the heat was sapping any enthusiasm we had for culture! We had to kill some time before heading to the War Remnants museum (poor choice of words there) so went for a mediocre lunch followed by a rather surprisingly expensive ice cream in the park. (Lisa: It was Haagen Daas! I wasn’t surprised…)

The Museum was the main thing we had planned for the day so we got there with a couple of hours left before closing time. As you enter, the outside is littered with old US Forces planes, helicopters and tanks left behind after the war. Inside the museum is broken into a few different sections – the ground floor was (without being titled) propaganda central. Just in case you were in any doubt about how they were going to be portraying the Vietnam War here – it is soon clarified. The walls were covered in a combination of images from anti-war rallies and marches held globally at the time, and also pro-Vietnam posters made by different governments.

Upstairs is where the heavy stuff started – fortunately we had been warned it was pretty graphic and shocking in places so we were semi-prepared. First we saw the war crimes room – detailing some of the many massacres that took place during the war, perpetrated by US soldiers (many of which have now been confirmed by both sides) against the Vietnamese, with the focus being on those having nothing to do with the Viet Cong. It was pretty tough, a lot of powerful images and stories many of which are difficult to imagine happening – especially as it was only 40 years ago.

Next was the section I found most interesting – chronicling the stories of some of the hundreds of press war photographers who had been there, and died in the battlefield. The photography was incredible – especially given the circumstances, and was made even more poignant by the fact that 5 or 6 of the guys featured died in the same helicopter crash over Laos.

The next level up went through the details of the use of Agent Orange and other various chemical weaponry to effectively starve the Vietnamese resistance into defeat by poisoning vast areas of arable land. Unfortunately for everyone involved – on both sides – it has a rather drastic effect on humans as well. Again, more harrowing images mainly of children and young adults born in the affected areas years later – mainly Vietnamese but also a few American children whose fathers had handled the chemicals during the war. By this point, we were both a little bit traumatised by it all (but at least we weren’t American!) but the last room we saw was a photographic display of the rebuilding work that has taken place since the war which was a bit of a high note in an otherwise very sobering experience.

Outside – I took some pictures of tanks and helicopters, before we decided to retreat back to have a shower and make the most of our one night in Saigon. And make the most of it we did! We pulled our glad rags up from the crinkled depths of our backpacks, hailed a reliable taxi and headed for the Sheraton Towers which has a bar on the 23^rd floor overlooking the posh part of the city. We strolled into the lobby, trying to act like we knew what we were doing – it was fairly fancy, but we were probably the fanciest people there (loads of world-tour pensioners and khaki).

We made it up to the bar, secured ourselves a seat at the balcony and it was a pretty good view. The cocktails & snacks cost more than our hotel room for two nights – but it was worth it!

View from the Sheraton

Afterwards – we were not content with one rooftop bar, so went to the Grand Café on top of another hotel. This time we strolled in with even more confidence (for some reason we always think they will rumble us for being riff raff and not let us inside!), headed straight for the elevator and hit 12. The bar however was on 13, and you can’t access 12 without a hotel access card, so after being in the lift for 30 seconds panicking the doors opened again and we looked up to see the receptionist and two porters laughing at us. “13!” one of them called out, laughing as he said it… We sheepishly made our way up, having completely lost all of our cool points – but as luck would have it this bar was half the price with more comfortable chairs, and a view over the river.

Living the high life!

The next morning we again had breakfast with the English kids – Chris and Holly, and it turned out we’d all booked onto the same bus. We were all kind of relieved as we were a bit daunted by the prospect of the border crossing over to Cambodia that afternoon – having read many blog posts about people being overcharged by gun-wielding police for no real reason other than they can.

We were with a pretty reputable bus company though – and as it turned out it was a breeze! They drop you off at Vietnamese customs to get stamped out, then back on the bus to the Cambodian office where we queued for about 20 minutes – got our e-visas confirmed and in our passports and were through and back on the bus within the hour! The whole journey took about 7 hours and we got into Phnom Penh about 8pm. We bargained a Tuk Tuk driver to take all four of us to our separate hotels – theirs looked pretty swish from the lobby, ours was a backpackers but had really good reviews on tripadvisor.

It soon turned sour though – we checked in to the room, which was in a part of the hotel they were renovating and so absolutely reeked of paint. Also, the wifi signal didn’t reach into the room, the bathroom looked one step up from a prison-cell bucket and there were mosquitos EVERYWHERE from the doors and windows being left open on account of the paint. Ah the joys of blindly booking ahead!

We had some (surprisingly nice) food downstairs, and some cocktails at the rooftop bar whilst using the wifi to book the same hotel Chris and Holly were at after we’d sent them a message asking for the lowdown.