travel diary — day 123

In buddhism, travel on 3 July 2009 tagged american troops, annika, backpacker, band, beer, bike, blind, border, breakfast, buddhism, bullet, cambodia, cao dai great temple, ceremony, china, church, city hall, coffee, confucianism, cu chi tunnels, cult, dinner, embassy, eva, german girls, handicapped workshop, hawkers, helmet, hindu temple, ho chi minh city, incense, lightning, lonely planet, massage, minsk, motorbike, motorcycle, music, north vietnam, notre dame, opera house, palace, practice, prayer, rain, rifles, riverfront, saigon, scam, souvenir, spectacle, storm, tanks, taoism, taxi, temple, thunder, tour, traffic, tunnel tour, tunnels, underground, vendors, viet cong, vietnam, vietnam war, weather, wifi with 1 comment

day 121 — my room had wifi, so i did some stuff online, includ­ing chat­ting with friends. i had break­fast and wandered down to have another crack at find­ing a bike. i spoke to a motor­bike taxi guy and he spoke really good eng­lish. when i told him what i wanted, he poin­ted straight at the tour­ist office behind me. “they’ve got one” he said.

what??? a minsk? now? available?

sure enough, the owner had a minsk for sale. the going price was $230. i told him i’d take it if i could see the bike. he brought it round from stor­age and star­ted it up. the minsk was a big, blue, noisy, smoke blow­ing machine.

i bought it …

i paid a deposit and while i was talk­ing to him, coin­cid­ent­ally, eva and annika walked by. i told the tour guy that i’d pick up the bike later. i went with eva and annika, we booked a tun­nel tour and did a walk­ing tour (by ourselves) of greater saigon.

dur­ing the walk, we went past a few embassies, includ­ing the amer­ican embassy (eva tried to go inside and, obvi­ously, was told no). we also went to a hindu temple. out­side the girls got ripped off by some vendors who’d given them incense to burn in the temple. they ended up giv­ing the street hawkers $15, even though i kept tak­ing the money off the hawkers and yelling at them. we even­tu­ally got away and kept walking.

we then walked past saigon’s notre dame church. which was nice, and to the palace which was invaded when sai­gon fell dur­ing the viet­nam war. when sai­gon was cap­tured by the north viet­namese, tanks drove down the street and through the palace gate. in the yard there are tanks as part of the memorial. the palace is now a sym­bol of friend­ship and the grounds are quite nice.

as we headed towards the river­front it star­ted rain­ing quite heav­ily. we ducked into a café after dodging our way across the streets and through zoom­ing motor­bikes. we drank cof­fee and waited for the storm to pass … then walked through saigon’s ritzy part of town, includ­ing the opera house and city hall. it was quite a nice area

it was get­ting late,  and we made our way back to the back­packer street. we agreed to meet for a mas­sage, so i went back to my hotel to shower and change. we wanted to go to a spe­cial mas­sage cen­ter recom­men­ded by lonely planet. the cen­ter is for the blind and mas­sage is a good way for them to earn an income. how­ever, we arrived too late and weren’t able to get mas­sages. we walked back through town and got a mas­sage near our hotel. it was ok, but they tried to make the mas­sage longer and over­charge us for it. then pre­ten­ded not to real­ise their “mis­take” … another scam!!

we had din­ner and some beers, then called it a night … it had been a very long day!

day 122 — today we had a full day tour. i’d booked a tun­nel tour with the girls the day before. in the morn­ing we vis­ited a han­di­capped work­shop. the work­shop was great and the people were very friendly … how­ever i star­ted to feel like it was going to be a full day of souvenir shop tour­ing, just like china. but for­tu­nately it wasn’t like that.

after the work­shop, we went to a huge temple called cao dai great temple. this place is beau­ti­ful but truly bizarre. it’s a fusion of con­fucian­ism, buddhism, tao­ism and a few other beliefs. the ‘new’ reli­gion is really a cult, and has earned the scorn of almost every other reli­gion on the planet … includ­ing numer­ous reli­gious experts.

while we were there the temple con­duc­ted one of their daily pray­ers, in which a band played music and the mem­bers all bowed, chanted and clapped at the appro­pri­ate moment. des­pite being a strange com­munity, it was an inter­est­ing (and col­our­ful) spectacle.

we had lunch fur­ther down the road and finally got to the high­light of the tour — the cu chi tun­nels. these tun­nels were used by north viet­namese (viet cong) troops dur­ing the war. see­ing the tun­nels was pretty cool. we watched a viet cong pro­pa­ganda video, then walked around the facility.

it’s very impress­ive what they achieved — sur­roun­ded by amer­ican troops, the vc man­aged to build over 200kms of under­ground tun­nels, from the cen­ter of sai­gon to the bor­der with cam­bodia. they had liv­ing quar­ters, kit­chens, and even had ways to hide cook­ing smoke. i crawled through some of the tun­nels, which had been expan­ded for for­eign tour­ists, and even then it was really cramped and hot. i walked through about 50 meters of tun­nel, before crawl­ing to the sur­face for sweet fresh air.

after­wards i had a chance to shoot one of the rifles. of course, there’s a fee (about $2 per bul­let) and i declined. the shoot­ing range was very close though and the sound of the rifles was incred­ibly loud.

we finally boarded the bus, hot and sweaty, for the run back to town. i fin­ished book­ing fur­ther travels and had din­ner with the ger­man girls.

day 123 - a false start …

today was the day i planned to start my epic motor­cycle trip through viet­nam. in the morn­ing i had a good break­fast and walked down to the tour­ist office where my bike was stored. we took the bike out and i got a hel­met. since i hadn’t rid­den a bike in a few years, so we went to a nearby bus park­ing lot which had plenty of space and no other traffic. it gave me an oppor­tun­ity to get used to the bike’s hand­ling (espe­cially gear changes). i was pleased with how fast it all came back to me and i was rid­ing around the lot eas­ily. i took the bike back to the main street and went to my hotel to pack.

while pack­ing it star­ted to rain, heav­ily. light­ing and thun­der streaked the sky and i real­ised that i wasn’t going any­where. i had planned to start my ride to mui né at 1pm. it was now 11am and pour­ing rain … i walked back to the tour­ist office and told them to hold the bike for me until tomor­row. i told my hotel recep­tion that i was stay­ing another night.

i grabbed an umbrella and headed into town for lunch. i went to the café where i’d agreed to meet annika and eva. i had a drink and they showed up for lunch. we talked for a while and then said our good­byes. they were fly­ing to danang and i wouldn’t see them again (most likely) for the rest of the trip.

after lunch i decided to stay in my room for the remainder of the even­ing. i didn’t want to spend any more money and the weather was foul. i updated my blog, checked email, chat­ted and messed around online.

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