Here Today, Sai Gon Tomorrow

The journey to Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC) took over two days and went like this:

• From Siem Reap, we got a bus to Phnom Penh at 12.30 (good road) and arrived at 19.00.
  We booked into a cheap (ie $3) 'lakeside' guesthouse, and decided that the piddling fan that failed to blow through our mosquito net, coupled with lack of air con, meant that we wouldn't sleep in the heat, so drank beer in hammocks until 03.00.
• At 07.00 we took a minibus to a boat on the Mekong (poor road), which arrived at 10.00.
  
• The boat arrived at the border into Vietnam at 12.30, where we alighted, had our passports stamped, hastily scoffed down to some noodle soup and were underway on a different boat (four deckchairs on a long flat hull, covered by a makeshift awning) by 13.00.
  
• We were dropped off at Chau Doc by 15.30 and were on another minibus to HCMC (crap road followed by appalling road followed by inexplicably bad dual carriageway into HCMC) by 16.00, which arrived at 22.00.
  
• We found a delightful guesthouse run by giggling Vietnamese girls and were grateful to crawl into a comfortable bed, cooled by a roaring a/c.
  

A quick explanation: Ho Chi Minh City (pop. 6,063,000) is the name for a gigantic urban sprawl, which is divided into numbered districts. The former name, Sai Gon, corresponds roughly to District 1, and is how most older Vietnamese still refer to this city.

I think perhaps Deirdre and I shared a romantic impression of what Saigon would be like. The books describe it as a bustling city where worlds collide, where old and new compete for turf in this dynamic city of ancient temples, colonial quarters and soaring skyscrapers. In fact, it is a very busy city which has the disturbing quality of have no central place of reference, no nucleus around which the city rotates. It's a little disconcerting. Also, if 90% of the traffic in Phnom Penh was motorbikes, they make up 95% here. It creeps up to 99% in Nha Trang if you exclude taxis.

We spent the first day walking about the city, seeing the sights. There are a few really good war museums and the nightlife in the backpacker area was lively, but that's about all I have to say about it. It's really just another big city.

The next day we went took a wee trip back towards Cambodian border. We visited the Cao Dai Holy See - the major temple for the Cao Dai religion. If you've never heard of them, all you need to know is that they combine Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism and Christianity to form the weirdest religion ever created. Also, they never decided on a way to elect a new religious leader, so when their pope and the other upper hierarchy died they left a set of empty chairs on the alter. What's more, they have saints like Shakepeare and Victor Hugo, with whom they communicate via séances. We got stay for some of their noon ceremony, which was mostly playing and singing and bowing and gongs.

Later that day we went to the Cu Chi tunnels - the Viet Cong's underground tunnels between Sai Gon and the Cambodian border. They were built in the late 1940s and were used at first to attack the French. They were extended in the 1960s when the American War (as they solipsistically refer to it) started. I was fascinated how they managed to defeat the American and Australian troops, who has new-fangled weaponry and thebenefitt of numbers, using homemade weapons and ingenuity. The conditions were nightmarish - the tunnels were typically 80cmX60cm in cross-sectional area. By the end of the war, the area over the tunnels was considered a free-fire zone, so that any remaining defoliant, napalm or unspent bombs were dropped here on the way back to base. 16,000 Viet Cong started the fighting here, 6,000 survived. But they killed more than 15,000 American troops using hand-made mines and bombs, and booby-traps whose simplicity of design could have dated back 2,000 years. Being quite the pacifist, I don't relish the idea of anyone losing their lives in war, but this was not a war where the Americans acquitted themselves honourably. It is no surprise that civilians were driven to these extremes and it was impressive to see how they routed the superior force using patience and intelligence in the face of such ruthless barbarity.

That day we hopped on a night train to Nha Trang, a beach resort, for a bit of a holiday before heading off again for more arduous travelling. We went scuba diving yesterday, and I did two half-hour dives. Twas blue in blue.

We leave tonight. We overnight on the train again and arrive in Hoi An late tomorrow morning.