Apologies for the length of this entry, but read on if you would like to know how we fared against the hard core tourist rip off.

It had to happen, we have been dreading it but finally we hit scam central and the Vietnam that we hoped did not exist. It was a day trip by so called ‘dragon boat’ to the numerous tombs of the 18-19 century emperors located along the Perfume River.

This was the morning of TET, and as we set off from the hotel we were told by the hotel staff that moto taxi’s would not be included in the trip and that at a couple of  sites we would have to walk, but walking was possible. No problem we thought. We were also told that as it was a public holiday admission fees would be waived.

As the boat sailed our beaming tour guide plied us with home made “fruit brandy” to celebrate the New Year. Then he told us that moto taxi’s were available but at a special TET price. Here we go we thought!!

Next the girl came around with the menu card that contained food at highly inflated prices. “But lunch is included in the price?”. The reply came, “Ah, it’s TET, you have rice cake only so order more food’.  We continued to protest, and the guide got involved, ‘Market shut, only rice cake, so order more food’.  We refused and decided to see what would happen at lunchtime.

First stop, the Thien Mu Pagoda, one of the symbols of Hue and home of the monk who burned himself in protest of the actions of the South Vietnamese Government during the war. See pics

Arrived at the boat stop for the first tomb which required a short walk from boat to the site.  Guide told us ‘need moto to save time, only 90,000 Dong! (approx 4 GBP), and as you no pay admission fees today the money you save  go to the moto driver‘.  We refused to pay, and in protest along with half the boat set off for the site on foot.  A 10 min walk later and on arrival at the site, of course, we had to pay to go in!!

Cheryl decided to tell the guide what she thought of the situation, and following her ‘rant’ he sulked, and all ‘guiding’ came to a halt from then on,  Neil joked with a fellow traveller, ‘I love it when my little rottweiller gets going!’

The tomb was spectacular and serene, see pics. The whole site was like a country park and we could easily have spent half a day there. The king, Tu Doc was only 153cm tall and suffered from short man syndrome as he had the honour guard of stone mandarins made shorter than himself (see pic with Neil standing alongside)

Much confusion when we got back to the boat, as the guide had not bothered to tell  everyone what time to get back and  he had to go and find two Scottish girls who got lost (his fault as he didn’t bother to check the walkers knew where to go).

On the boat, the table had been set for lunch so we took a place and looked at the unappetising fried rice cakes and a plastic cup of goo which turned out to be pumpkin.  Several dishes were placed in front of those who ordered from the menu.  We asked the guide for assistance – what is supposed to be included? He babbled on about Tet, rice cakes and order from menu, we stood our ground and asked what can we eat without charge?.  Things got heated, the guide said market shut, market shut!  We said so where did all the ordered food come from? Oh that’s the boat family’s own food, he said. Finally he lost his temper and stormed off, I no talk to you no more!  Neil chased after him – and bellowed ‘you are the guide, do you job and explain what’s going on’.  The boat owner lady finally pointed to a dish of pork & prawns and one of noodles and said that was ours, no charge.  The two Scottish girls sat quietly, did not complain and got nothing.

We didn’t enjoy the conflict, or the meal as it was pretty ropey, but were really disappointed in our fellow travellers who didn’t protest, not even on behalf of the Scottish girls who would not say “boo to a goose“.  I guess that’s why the scammers keep doing it

In the absence of any guiding we reverted to Lonely Planet , and Cheryl took on a mini tour guide role for some of the other travellers who were interested in the sites.  There was another spectacular tomb, Minh Mang, who didn’t appear to be vertically challenged like Tu Doc.

Last stop was for a tomb built in the 1920’s which didn’t get a great write up in LP and looked to be approx 2km from the boat landing point.  After the fuss at the first stop we were running very late as we arrived at the docking point.  The guide leapt to his feet. ‘This tomb is 4 km walk and there are no motos here.  I don’t go here. You can have 40 minutes.  The trip back to town will take 1 hour 45 mins’  He didn’t want to bother with the stop and was trying to persuade us to just head back!  Of course we spotted the ruse so decided we were getting off and going………for a sneaky coffee in the village!  A few other people got off the boat and did pretty much the same thing, waste 40 minutes just to annoy the tour guide.

Overall, the trip was very good and the sites were really fascinating. It’s just a pity that the guide chose to be an arse when he grew up.

That’s pretty much all of our travels in Hue. We’ve since met up with Frankie, a lady from Oz who gave us lots of tips for Hanoi and Laos. In addition, as TET continues for some time after “the day” we’ve had a number of attempted scams by quite a lot more arses!

“It’s TET, Government say all tourists must pay double fare for bus!. Yeah!!

“It’s TET, your meal cost 50,000VND each not 40,000VND as in menu”. Yeah!

“It’s old menu, wine not 50,000VND it 90,000VND”. Yeah!

“Water cost 20,000VND”. Yeah! (Actual cost 50mts up the road with our nice man was 8,000VND!).

Every time you buy something, if it’s not priced as it is in HCMC, you can see them looking at you and working out how much they can fleece you for. 

TET is the most important festival in the Vietnamese calendar. In the days leading up to it there are flower markets everywhere and in the same way that every household in the UK buys a Christmas Tree households buy TET trees, Bonsai, Kum Quat trees and Chrysanthemum flowers.

Our guest house gave us the traditional TET rice cake, (see previous entry), and households produce a TET table to celebrate the new year with the Spirits of the Hearth.

New Years Eve we went to the area just outside the Citadel set out for the celebrations. It seemed like the entire population of the motor bike world was arriving (see video). We watched a couple of Asian Pop bands and decided that viewing the fireworks would be best outside the Citadel or we would be there all night!!

Bizarrely enough, and to kid you not, the top tune for new year is ABBA’s Happy New Year from their 1980 Album Super Trouper!! It’s played day & night everywhere, shops, buses, taxi’s, yup everywhere. At midnight we were about 1km+ away from the Citadel Festivities over the Perfume River. At midnight the fireworks started accompanied by ABBA…….15 minutes later the spectacular show finally ended but ABBA continued, probably until dawn!!

Back to the guesthouse and we were greeted by our hosts with more TET treats, candied fruits, nuts and hot beef, plus a glass of “stuff”.

Next morning we were going on a trip and waiting in reception for our bus. Some of the owners friends arrived, dressed to the 9’s, and they cracked open a bottle of Johnny Walker at 8 a.m. Neil was invited to imbibe and, feeling obliged, he joined in!!

Happy New Year …. Chuc Mung Nam Moi.

We are now in Hue which is about 180km further north from Hoi An. It has  proved to be a much more enjoyable place to stay with less of the pushy sales stuff that we had to endure in Hoi An.

We had booked a hotel on-line and they threw in a free pick up from the bus station.  This turned out to be a very nice man waiting with our names on a sign and his motorbike!  One at a time we arrived at the hotel which proved to be very good but on a major road. As Vietnamese drivers can’t even park at the side of the road without pressing their horn it proved to be a noisy and early morning!! However, we discovered on our quest for dinner that there were lots of hotels in quieter streets just around the corner costing 10USD (less than £7) rather than the 20USD we were paying. Needless to say we moved next day and now have a room with satellite TV, high speed wifi, bathroom, fridge, A/C and a little balcony to sit on whilst drinking our aperitifs (how posh are we!??).  The young woman in charge seems genuinely pleased we are staying for Tet, and even brought us hot soup (yum) and a special Tet cake thing (yuck – glutinous rice, salty stuff, no idea what else and wrapped in a strong smelling banana leaf), when we got back wet and cold from our day trip.

The trip was to the Demilitarised Zone (DMZ), this included Vinh Moc Tunnels, the 17th Parallel and Khe Sanh American Air force base.  Apart from the shitty weather – constant cool breeze and rain, and the poor tour guide, it was an interesting experience, the one that Neil really wanted to do.

The DMZ was 5 kilometres either side of the river that formed the 17th parallel. It was originally set up at the end of the second world war and the whole episode was reinforced when  the French formally partitioned the country. It became one of the focal points of the war between the North and the South in the 1960’s conflict. The whole area is now paddy fields with any bomb craters now used as fish farms.

The Vinh Moc tunnels are unbelievable. They are similar to those of Cu Chi outside HCMC but are more spectacular and genuine, with more of the original tunnels open to visitors. After the US destroyed the village of Vinh Moc the people went underground in a maze of tunnels, over 3 levels, and up to 30 meters deep. Some of the people lived underground for more than 6 years, 17 children were born there and lived their early years underground. The tunnels are more accessible as they range from 1.6m to 1.9m high.  Just as with Cu Chi, the US found it almost impossible to find them and lost many soldiers to the “guerrillas” from the underground popping up, destroying and killing, then disappearing into nowhere.

Khe Sanh was the scene of one of the bloodiest battles of the war, a 75 day siege. It was another wartime example of some “big nob” in the military making a snap decision that the airbase was to be secured at all cost. 500 US troops were sent home in body bags and 10,000 VC were killed. General Westmoreland‘s, tour of duty ended and within a week the whole idea of defending Khe Sanh was abandoned.

A marine officer had expressed this opinion months before the decision to defend: “You’re not really anywhere. You could lose it and you really haven’t lost a damned thing”.  Westmoreland was obsessed by Khe Sanh as he thought that the TET offensive was a decoy for Khe Sanh. As it turned out, the TET Offensive in the south proved to be one of the final nails in the US coffin as Khe Sanh was the decoy. Hell, it was an airbase on the top of a plateau with nothing but jungle as far as the eye could see. Why could anyone think this was so important?

We’re now in Hoi An which is about half way up from HCMC in the south and Hanoi in the north. It’s a Unesco World Heritage Site with buildings going back to the 17th century. Dutch, Portuguese, Chinese, Japanese and other traders would have come here as they did to Melaka where we visited in Malaysia. One thing we have noticed is that it is much cooler in the evenings and people here are wearing more clothing, puffer jackets, anoraks and woolly hats.  We have a pool at the hotel and even after a full days sun it was freezing!!

It’s great that the buildings are not “prettified” and you can see them “raw”. It’s also interesting to see a slightly, and we mean slightly, quieter city. There is one disappointment, we have seen our first glimpse of the one thing we feared in Vietnam. Pushy traders wanting you to “visit my shop, just lookie and see”. We’ve also experienced the first instance of “how much can I rip off the tourist” syndrome. Unlike HCMC nothing in the shops is labelled. Instead, when you ask how much something is the price is dependant on what they think you can afford. Twice the price of HCMC is not unusual and when you laugh and walk away suddenly the price miraculously falls. Neil refuses to do business this way. He doesn’t mind doing “deals” in a market but if a shop tries to con him he tells them so and walks away despite the fact that the price is now reasonable.

Note the picture of the two dogs. They were tethered so that they could not leave the chairs. A guy with a very posh camera and a huge lens tried to take a picture of them very close up. The dog on the right turned around to bear his backside which made us and a family of locals burst out laughing. I took this pic to see if I was to get the same treatment.…no, he must have liked me.

Today we went on yet another tourist trip (we’re getting to be quite the little tour guides pet!!), to My Son, another World Heritage Site going back around 1200 years. It’s the most important site of the ancient kingdom of Champa, and is a collection of ruins, some in fairly good condition and others obliterated by US bombing, stretched across a small valley surrounded by jungle and mountains.

We were surprised to find that the tour company had used a ‘sleeper’ bus for the trip, so we had a relaxed trip on our fully flat beds at the back! Pity it was only an hours journey……We also chose the option to go back to Hoi An by boat and didn’t realise that lunch was included, so all round a great day out for $7 each!

No words needed here – the pics say it all.

Today we went on yet another trip!! This time to the Mighty Mekong Delta.

There’s probably not much that we can say that the pictures won’t say so much better. It really is a “mighty” river and it brings so much to the local population that is generally very poor. It brings work on the river, food, transport, renewed fertility to the soil every year and, of course, tourists and their tourist $.

However, there is one story to tell. Neil had a zip break in one of his pockets in his shorts quite some time ago. As he’s already lost one wallet it did make sense to get it repaired. Finally today we managed it. During our trip, we had stopped for lunch and some free time to explore Ben Tre, one of the many islands in the delta. Neil spotted a lady with a sewing machine at the side of the road and decided that this might be a good time to effect the repair. Great fun was in store for all concerned as we had no Vietnamese and she had no English. Through a series of signs, pointing at watches and showing money it was agreed that it would take just a few minutes to replace the zip and cost 15000D (£0.60).

One small problem, the lady needed his shorts and he had no others to wear, and as usual was not wearing any pants!! “No problem” said Neil as he disappeared to the back of the shop and a few minutes later he reappeared shorts in hand and wearing his polo shirt as a pair of shorts. Everyone burst out laughing, the lady, her husband, her mum and her son. The lady then disappeared on her bike to buy a zip and returned shortly afterwards as did a long line of locals to look at this crazy tourist sat at the side of the road wearing his shirt for shorts.

It was very funny, lots of laughs and hopefully a tourist has given some locals some revenue and a story to tell for a long time to come.

We joined an organised trip and before we went to the tunnels we visited a handicraft centre. Yes you might be thinking, this sounds like a typical “rip off “the tourist opportunity. Well, not this time. It is a centre that has been established for those people that have been born suffering from the effects of Agent Orange, to gain employment.. After more than 30 years people are still being born with defects caused by the effects of AO on the genetic structure of their grandparents and parents. Horrid deformities that, once again, make you realise just how futile and barbaric war really is.

It was very low key. They were making beautiful ornaments, plaques, bowls, vases, etc using mother of pearl and so on. What really “floated our boat” was the ingenious way that they used broken egg shells to make some fabulous stuff. Take a look at the pics which, sadly, don’t do them justice.

AO was used to defoliate millions of acres of forest so that the VC couldn’t hide or grow food. The US used Vietnam as a giant laboratory because they really didn’t know the effects of using such huge amounts of AO and other chemicals, most of which contained huge amounts of dioxins. Some of the bases used by the US to store and load these chemicals into the planes are still contaminated and waiting to be cleansed…..over 30 years after the war finished!

The tunnels of Cu Chi are about 30kms outside HCMC. Whilst some of what we saw were reconstructions for the tourist, our guide, an ex South Vietnamese working for the US, confirmed that everything had been done in keeping with how it really was when he finally saw and understood what he had been fighting against all those years ago. We did get to try a real tunnel, 1.3m high and 0.80m wide. It was very hard work, very dark in places and was a little mind blowing when you think that people lived, died, married and had children down there for months on end. I did 30m of the tunnel, to get a feel for it, then decided that my back was more important. Cheryl, being a VC in waiting, managed to go 60m.

When the VC finally sent the US home they had built around 250kms of tunnels around Cu Chi. In fact, the Americans built a huge base right on top of them not knowing they were there. It was months before they understood why they kept getting shot at night without being able to trace the VC. The ingenuity of the VC was quite outstanding:

By night, via the tunnels, they would rob the bases of the US whilst they slept. By day and night they would use what they had stolen to kill the “enemy”.

By night, they collected anything including scrap metal from bombs to recycle into there own bombs. Even going as far as collecting any UXO to recycle into their own ordinance.

When the US finally twigged what was going on they brought in dogs to sniff the VC out. What did the VC do? Collect US debris from the battle field, old clothes, cigarette packets, poo, in fact anything that smelt western. Then they laid this around the air vents and entrances into their tunnels to prevent the dogs picking up anything but friendly US scent. They also started washing with US soap that they had stolen in the dead of night so that the dogs would be put off the scent.

Sandals made of US tyres for the whole family with a nice tread in the sole to prevent slipping. But there was more, when they were returning to the tunnels after a night of guerrilla warfare they would put the sandals on back to front so the tread made the US think they had gone a different way.

This ingenious list goes on and on and it makes you realise why the US did lose the war. They thought that fire power alone would win the war. Read some of the quotes from the US Generals who probably now wish they had never opened their mouths.

Sure, this was a one sided story but it makes you realise that if your cause means so much to you then you will find a way to survive and even prosper. The Spirit of the Blitz and all that!!

An excellent day out and well worth our tourist $.

Neil writes – This for me is a boyhood dream come true. I have wanted to visit Vietnam for as long as I can remember. Maybe it was that year in geography that I studied Vietnam or, more likely, it was that my informative teenage years were blasted on the news by the Vietnam War. Whatever, today a boyhood dream came true after around 40 years.

I am so much more excited than I really expected to be, and it’s exactly as I envisaged it, manic, motorcycles everywhere, on the road, off the road, on the pavement and up your bum if you weren’t careful.

Checked into our room at Luan Vu Guesthouse. No view, no window, but then there’s no noise, a bonus in this crazy city, and no mozzies either, so all in all, ‘tis all OK. It’s very clean and pleasantly presented not as “cell Like” as you might think.

We have lots of US$ which is welcome here but you also need local currency, the Dong. So, off we trotted to the ATM and Cheryl became a millionaire in seconds, 1MD and she’s on a roll, “give me more, more, I need more millions” she kept saying. That was until I reminded her that 1MD is worth around £40!! So now she said “I want 1 billllllionnnn Dong” in that crazed Dr Evil styleeeee! 

First evening wonderful and I am still wowed by this place but Cheryl is just a little overwhelmed by it all as she has never experienced such teaming masses and constant noise since the madness of Mumbai.

Second day was spent trying to get ourselves oriented and planning a couple of trips. It’s plain that to go to the places that we want to see it’s much easier to go by organised trips and, surprisingly, they are quite cheap……. bit like the beer here, 10000 Dong (£0.45) buys you 450ml of ice cold Saigon Beer.

We also seem to have mastered the art of crossing the roads, check for a small break in the traffic, look confident, ignore the fact the traffic never stops, walk at a constant speed and keep your eyes open for the maverick motor-cyclist. That’s it, easy! Maybe a change of underwear in your bag might be a good idea!

Also today we saw 2 guys on a motor bike, one driving and one pillion. The pillion guy was actually holding a pane of glass about 4ft x 3ft in heavy trafffic……barking!

We now also possess headphones and mic so that we can seriously use Skype if anyone wants to speak to us, you can get us at… cheryl..neil ….and remember we are 7hrs ahead.

Tuesday 13^th was the anniversary of taking that call in Mumbai when Donna told me that Steve had died suddenly. We did as last year, curry and beers and a large cigar. Thoughts last night were with Donna, Zoe and Matthew who were probably going through some dreadful emotions. I think Steve would have appreciated the evenings agenda, well, apart from the cigar.

Next day we went sightseeing around HCMC. First stop was the central post office, a magnificent building constructed in the late 1800’s. There is a huge picture of ‘Uncle Ho’ beaming down on the people as they buy their stamps. Cheryl continued her obsession with cash – now she’s a multi millionaire following another visit to the cash point.

Took a look around the Reunification Palace, the former seat of government, President’s home and now a museum. Built in the 1960’s it’s the building featured in all the TV & photos taken when the south was surrendered to the tanks of the Vietcong (VC) in 1975. Somehow Neil managed to get into most of the photos I took – see if you can spot him!

Next stop was the War Remnants Museum – full of harrowing pictures and artefacts from the war and the continuing aftermath as still more children continue to suffer birth defects from the effects of Agent Orange. A sobering place and a chilling reminder of man’s inhumanity to his fellow man, under the banner of ‘war’.