Viet Nam, part 1

Traveling in Viet Nam in the early 1990's just after they allowed independent travel 

Transcript

Episode 7: Viet Nam, part 1

Hey everybody and welcome back to Goin’ down the road with Randy. Tonight in my 7th episode, we are finally going to Viet Nam. I know, I know, it’s been a while, what can I say – I lost my muse – and I’m not entirely certain that I’ve yet found it, but here goes. I have been both dreading and looking forward to the prospect of describing Viet Nam. By the time we decided to go we were seasoned travelers with almost 18 continuous months of being on the road under our boots. Viet Nam would be our 7th country, we had owned vehicles in 2 of them. But travel in Viet Nam, at least in early 1991 for us low budget travelers, is challenging and hard. Which means it is also rewarding. We have been lulled by the easy traveling in Thailand and it is time to get back on the hard road, but not without trepidation.

We have spent weeks, it seems, arranging tickets to Viet Nam. One factor is the increased demand due to the recent opening of the country to independent travel – a first since the end of the war. Another is that we want to fly on Thai Airways, not Air Viet Nam, also known as “Scare Viet Nam” by those in the know. We want to maximize the 30 days that we will be allowed in the country. We intend to fly into Ho Chi Minh City – Saigon – and travel through both South and North Viet Nam to exit in Hanoi, a distance of over a thousand miles if we go the most direct route. (Of course, the geographical differentiation is no longer necessary, it is all just Viet Nam.) We rarely follow a direct route. Our traveling party consists of me and Greta, AJ and Canadian Dave – the same one with the van that we first met in Airlie Beach in Australia. He is travelling solo now – actually I’m pretty sure he had a thing for Greta, but then that’s just a feeling I had.

Remember when I said in episode 3 that “we had to get back to Bangkok to sort out loose ends before we fly to Viet Nam in less than 3 days”?  Yeah, we had more like a day. We get to Bangkok at about noon on the 6th and our flight to Viet Nam leaves on the morning of the 8th. We have film to drop off, go to AMEX for mail and money, pick up our Viet Nam visas and travel permit, and go for final fittings on our tailor made suits, plus we needed to shop for last minute essential items. Somehow we manage to do all of that and meet AJ and Dave and Trish, the new, hot item, for dinner but then make it an early night because there is more to do tomorrow.

The next day we find that we cannot make calls from the Kao San post office and we have to go to the G.P.O. – general post office – and use the USA direct line. I make calls to Mom and Dad and tell them we will be off the radar for the next month in Viet Nam. Due to the US trade sanctions there is no direct communication allowed between the US and Viet Nam.

Then it’s off to the Lao Airways office to purchase our Hanoi, Viet Nam to Vientiene, Laos return plane tickets. We also stop at our travel agent, Tabtim, and make preliminary inquiries about flights to India for when we come back to Thailand. We also pick up film but can’t mail it back so we’ll have to rent a locker here at the Green Guest House for a month.

We get it all sorted out and packed and we meet Michael, the Israeli guy after dinner for tons of last-minute information on Viet Nam – he just got back 2 days ago. That’s how it was before the internet made access to collective knowledge easy and available – you had to go find people who could get you the information you needed. We consume our weight in Singha beer and crash.

Saturday, February 8th, 1991

Payment must be made today. We are packed up and ready when the taxi arrives at 7:30 to take us to the airport. I am severely hungover and I'm not the only one. Our traveling party is green around the gills this morning. The taxi driver is a true-blue maniac and weaves in and out of traffic somehow delivering us, unscathed, in front of the international terminal at 8 am. Inside the airport pandemonium reigns. People everywhere! Where in the hell are they all going? 

We find our line and wait in it to check in and pay the 200 baht exit fee. After waiting in that line we go to passport control to contend with another longer and even slower-moving line. Soon, we emerge from this Purgatory into the departure area’s heaven. We get some much-needed Bloody Mary's and a snack while we sort out last minute messages and postcards until it is time to board. One last security check and we board the plane - an Airbus 300 and it is very plush indeed. 

We take off only about 10 minutes late. I'm still very hungover and the ascent angle coming out of Bangkok is so steep and I need water. My needs are soon met by the friendly hostesses. They serve up a delicious fish and rice lunch complete with savory asparagus and bread rolls. I have a glass of chilled white wine as well which they keep full. I have another Bloody Mary and an ice cold water. I knew I was in heaven when the steward comes down the aisle with a bottle of Remy Martin cognac. I feel the plane begin its descent, my prayers for a stiff headwind unanswered. I love Thai Airlines! All this luxury on a less than 2-hour flight! I felt like I was flying I first class.

I look down and saw my first glimpse of Viet Nam. It looks very flat and mostly green, but with irregular patches of brown earth tossed in - bomb craters, or areas sprayed with ancient Agent Orange? Who knows? 

I am a child of the 60’s with Walter Cronkite at our nightly dinner table providing us the latest body counts. I remember the names of the cities. I wonder what this strange new world will be like – will the people hate us, as Americans? 

We glide into Tan Son Nhut International Airport and as we taxi to a spot on the tarmac I look back and see a Malaysian Airlines flight landing right behind us and another Vietnam Air flight behind that. Ancient buses of indeterminate make lumber up to the plane and greet us at the bottom of the ladder. I soon learn that most of the busses in Viet Nam are 1950’s era Renault’s. 

The busses take us to the terminal where it becomes apparent that the complex entry-exit cards and customs declaration forms that we were given on the plane are outdated and so we spend lots of time filling out more forms. When they check our passports they refuse to actually stamp inside it, only stamping our visas and exit cards. We also have to show our travel permit, or be part of an organized tour group. Our travel permit requires us to list ten places where we will be allowed to sleep during our 30 day stay. We list, Ho Chi Minh City (formerly known as Saigon), Cantho, Da Lat, Nha Trang, Qui Nhom, Da Nang, Hue, Hai Phong, and Hanoi. We couldn’t come up with a tenth one and weren’t sure that we would even get to all nine that we did list.

We wait and wait until our bags finally appear, then we get to negotiate Customs and everything goes through their ancient, powerful, and not-safe-for-film x-ray machines. You must remember this was the early 1990’s and back then if you wanted to take a picture you had to first have a camera and load it with film. Film came in various sizes for various cameras but we were using 35 millimeter color slide film which had 36 exposures on a roll. Once you took a picture you advanced the film to take the next shot. You had 36 shots and a roll of film was not inexpensive to either buy or develop. Oh, and you had to wait for the film to be developed before you could see how your picture turned out. Airport baggage x-ray machines degraded photographic film. We hope ours would be ok.

We all meet outside where we run the gauntlet and check on a taxi into town. All the drivers say $10 US, a few go down to 8 but we've been told the going rate is 4. We sit down and wait. Same old deal. It drives the drivers crazy if you just sit and wait. We finally go to walk out of the airport and get a cab outside and we get a guy who offers to take us to the Vien Dong Hotel on Pham Ngu Lao Street for only $5 US - 1 extra because it's New Years.

A 20 minute drive thru the crumbling city which looks like a war zone. All the old stuff is crumbling. The infrastructure has not been maintained. The city has a lost feel to it. We are deposited in front of the hotel where rooms here are $7 US. We still haven't got any dong yet but the rate at the airport was 10,700 dong to the dollar. We get a room for the four of us for $10 a day. It's a huge space with chairs, tables, drawers, etc - very comfy. We settle in and then go up to the roof of the eight-story building to check out the view and take some photos. We go down to the room again and crash out. By 5 we are up again and go down the street to the Prince restaurant to change money. The rate here is 11,500 dong to the dollar. As an aside, the biggest banknote in the country is 5,000 dong which is less than 50 cents’ worth. You can imagine the size of the stack you get when you change even 20 bucks. Also a half liter bottle of Stolichnaya vodka costs 20,000 dong, so a buck 65. The other thing to be aware of is you don't want to go to the market or the villages with 5000 dong notes – they will not have change (even if they do have change!). You want small money, small bills, and sometimes small money is hard to find. We eat dinner and have the first of many Huda beers which the label claims is brewed in Hue “with Danish technology”. We get a meal and a beer for about a dollar or so. 

We head back to the hotel and meet Dom, the cyclo driver, who wants to take us to the Apocalypse Now bar where we've been told to find Ali and he will sell us joints for 10 cents each. So we haggle with the cyclo drivers until we finally get one to take us for 3,000 dong - the first offer was 10000. You can see why we always haggle heavily when bargaining for transportation - that's less than a third of the original asking price! Oh, and never, ever, ever get on any transportation without first agreeing on a price, or you will be sorry.

We alight at the Apocalypse Now bar but nothing is happening. We do find Ali and buy 10 joints for 20,000 dong - apparently the prices gone up, but still not bad. The beers are 9000 dong for “333” beer which is too much so we wander down the street and buy large bottles of Saigon beer for 7000. Unfortunately it tastes like piss but we sit at the curbside cafe stall opposite the Saigon Hotel and drink it anyway.

AJ and I want to smoke a doobie so we go back to the bar while Greta and Dave check things out. By the time they get back we've already had one beer and two mind-blowing joints. The place begins to fill up and the music starts rocking. We meet the three people we talked to in Kanchanaburi, the two Aussies and John the American. We start drinking fairly heavily. We are most completely sold a Roman Candle that we absolutely do not need for 6000 dong by a seven-year-old salesman. He was awesome!

The bar is very strange – it seems to host a healthy mix of tourists, whores, expats and other assorted weirdos. Lots of beggars, most of them little kids. An old, Russian-looking dude appears to be bargaining with some of the kids and it does not look good. The five of us leave at about 1 am. We argue with cyclo drivers and finally agree on a price. Halfway home one decides to change his mind so AJ and Dave get off and walk. This is not uncommon and the only thing for it is to get off and the driver gets nothing. Finally, we also get off and join them. We walk all the way back to the hotel through deserted streets. At one point we are accosted by a group of young kids, like 8 years old, who surround us and then expand a large map in our faces and ask if we want to buy a map. While we are dealing with this the others go around behind us and steal a tripod attached to AJ’s backpack. Why does AJ have a tripod attached to his backpack, that I do not know. We yell at them and they scurry off only to reappear at the corner of the next block and this time they are offering to sell us a tripod. We grab the tripod from them and chase them down the street. I think they were truly afraid of the four drunk foreigners running after them! We go back to the hotel and fire up a doob to settle down before bed.

Sunday February 9th

Good morning Vietnam! Hungover again. We sleep until 11 and then order up coffee and tea at the little street stall outside the hotel. We sit on tiny little stools sipping coffee and drinking in the early afternoon bustle. Coffee here is delicious and is served with the grounds in a metal cup with a screen on top of a glass with the water dripping through it. Really excellent! We get a fresh baguette filled with eggs and veggies for 4000 dong, 33 cents! Coffee is 1500 dong. We're out and about by one, so not too bad.

We have the usual hassle with the cyclo drivers but get a ride out to Le Van Duyet Temple where the General of that name and his wife are buried. We make our way past the lines of cripples and beggars and enter the smoke-filled interior of the temple where people are burning vast amounts of incense and their eyes are watering. We try our fortunes by shaking a can filled with sticks with numbers written on them. You shake the can until a stick falls out and then you get the number and go to the place where there are pigeonholes filled with sheets and you get the sheet with your number. A man there translated mine for me. It wasn't so good. It said, this year I will be sick, and I won't have any money but that I have a good boss who takes care of me. So, I got that goin for me – only I do not actually have a boss, good or otherwise, so I hope I don’t get sick. We seem to have attracted some kids who walk with us.

 We walk all the way to the Emperor of Jade Pagoda which turns out to be smoke-filled as well and also full of these very big and threatening statues of Chinese gods. There's a separate section for hell. We take some pictures and then set off to find the military museum across from the zoo. And we do! There is a Russian T 54 tank and a US F4A Phantom jet. There are artillery pieces, rockets and associated instruments of destruction and that's just the outside. Inside are all the smaller instruments of destruction and photos etc all presided over by a giant white bust of Ho Chi Minh. 

Our next destination is a couple of blocks down - the former US Embassy where on April 30th,1975 the US evacuated their personnel. It is now deserted and crumbling. We take a few photos but are distracted by dragons dancing in the street across the way. We wander over to watch the New Year's celebration for a while.

A guy shimmies up a bamboo pole and does some amazing acrobatics on top. The finale is a huge string of firecrackers. We stop for another cup of that wonderful coffee before continuing down and turning right onto Le Loi Boulevard behind the National Theater. We come out with the Hotel Continental on the right and The Caravelle on our left. 

The traffic consists of few cars but thousands of bikes and motorcycles and cyclos. This is supposed to be the block where you can buy good maps. I can't get a price I like so I'll wait. We buy Laughing Cow cheese and baguettes and we'll get an avocado later. 

We find Kathy in the number 6 kiosk on Nguyen Hue Street. She changes money for us $12,000 dong for 50 or 100 dollar bills, 11,900 for 20’s or less. We change 50 and talk to Kathy and her sister (who is visiting from the States) about getting travel permits and renting cars etc. When we left it was getting dark and we crossed over to the Rex Hotel because they had a sign for a souvenir shop and we wanted to buy an embroidered Vietnamese flag patch. Well they didn't have any patches but they had beautiful lacquerware for very cheap prices. Boxes for 3 dollars and vases for 25. Dave likes a lacquerware flute for 26. There are four part murals for 50 bucks that are mind-blowing and these are hotel prices. We got to go. We cruise on down Le Loi to the big circle and then head down our street. We stop and buy some cold beers, good old Huda for 5500, from Prince then go up to the room for beers, joints and sandwiches of cheese and avocado on fresh baguettes. Then a nice hot shower and relax, nap and go eat at Prince. When we get back we relax with a couple of joints before bedtime.

 Our first full day in Ho Chi Minh City / Saigon. There were some incredibly hostile stares as well as the most friendly, smiling faces. As we walked people, especially older ones, asked us to sit with them and have coffee or shots of some indeterminate firewater. All in all, it was a positive experience. 

Monday February 10th

 We get up early like before 7 so we can catch some of the New Year’s ceremony. We have the usual hassle with the cyclo drivers but find that by the time we get there the ceremony will not begin for a while. So we wait around for a while and the ceremony starts at about 8:30 - good thing we got up so early! Most of it is incomprehensible to me but the rituals and costumes are interesting. There is supposed to be a popular opera which begins at 11 but we haven't had anything to eat yet today so we go get a pate and baguette on the street and stop at another place and get some coffee and we're just about right.

We walk to the Museum of American War Crimes but it just closed for lunch and will open again at 1:30. We know that the Immigration Police office is also closed for lunch, so we go shopping. It is, by the way, quite common for government and commercial offices to close for an hour for lunch and if you look through the windows you will often see the workers with their heads down on their desks, napping.

We take a cyclo to Nyguen Hue Street and change money and then go up Le Loi Street buying things like old Vietnam War Zippo lighters with engravings on them for 3 bucks while keeping an eye out for flag patches. We take a walk through the Central Market where during the war executions took place and make our way to the Immigration Police arriving just as they open their doors. Unfortunately the man there can't help us as our visas were issued in conjunction with Peace Tours so we have to go and get our registration stamp from them. It's not far away so we hoof it over there and find out that it costs $8 and need two passport photos and a day to accomplish. We deal with the bureaucratic bullshit then walk down the street to the War Crimes Museum only about a hundred meters away.

It cost 5,000 to get in. In the front yard are a couple of tanks and helicopters some big field artillery and large bombs each with a grandiose plaque with a propaganda explanation. Inside we go down to the nitty-gritty. pictures of US G.I.’s with severed heads and body pieces. Pictures of pushing a suspected VC out of a helicopter. Dragging one behind a truck and more. Another building showed effects of chemical warfare and torture techniques. There are deformed fetus’ in bottles and lots of gory pictures. All in all not a pretty picture but then very little about that war was pretty.

We walk back to the hotel with a load of bread and cheese that we bought along the way. At one intersection we see cages with dogs, monkeys and snakes for sale - to eat! We feast on bread and cheese sandwiches and beer and relax before going out to eat. We also buy a bottle of that dollar sixty-five Stolichnaya. Needless to say we go out a little late, have dinner at Prince and then come back to play Yahtzee and drink vodka.

Thursday February 11th

Unfortunately, we must get up early again today because we've arranged to go on a trip to see the Cao Dai Temple and the tunnels of Cu Chi. So we are out by 8:30 to get our travel permits from Peace Tour which makes us official to travel outside the city. We have a baguette and egg breakfast and several coffees before getting aboard the minivan. The drive through the countryside takes about 2 and 1/2 hours to the Cao Dai Temple. Located in Tay Ninh Province it is the Vatican of the Cao Dai religion. On the way we pass the ghost-town-like outskirts of Saigon and enter extensive rice paddies.

The buses we pass are jam packed and have an ingenious gravity-feed cooling system whereby water from a 55 gallon barrel on the roof flows down through a spigot located by the driver who controls the flow of cooling water into the engine which is then squirted out on the road below. When the barrel is empty it is refilled from roadside reservoirs similar to the old locomotive watering stations in the old west. No radiator is needed, and that is good because they all rusted out decades ago.

We enter the compound at Tay Ninh and see tons of people all dressed in white robes resembling the traditional Vietnamese Ao Dai dress. They pray at 6 a.m., noon, 6 p.m. and midnight. So we are just in time to see the noon service. We have a few minutes to walk around and take photos and talk to the monks before we slip off our shoes and are led to the balcony to view the ceremony.

The small orchestra starts up and the congregation files in and they soon begin a rhythmic and haunting chant. As near as I can tell this is the service and it continues for the next 20 minutes. Cao Dai is a wild religion, it has a combines elements of Taoism, Christianity, Buddhism and Islam which may explain its popularity as that covers all the bases here. Cao Dai is also in touch with the spirit world and it's saints include Sun Yat-sen, Victor Hugo, along with Bhudda and Confucious among others. Their symbol is the eye in a pyramid and looks remarkably similar to the one on the back of the American dollar bill. We get a good recording of the chanting and we take our photos and then we off to the tunnels of Cu Chi.

In CuChi we are given an a short lecture then we visit some of the tunnels. The lecture tells us that this area in a bend of the Saigon River was a VC stronghold and command center during the war. The extensive tunnel network was begun in the 1940s for use against the Japanese, and then, the French. After the French were defeated the US came in and established a big base here unknowingly placing it directly over part of the tunnel network. They never got the VC out of this area. The VC had command centers, hospitals, kitchens and they all lived underground. Walking around the area which is littered with huge bomb craters I feel sympathy for the US soldiers who had to defend this area and admiration for the VC who fought to keep it.

In the tunnels we looked at some of the meeting rooms and then drop down the hatch to the second of the three levels. It was dark and small and there's a line of us following a scurrying, seldom-seen guide. After about 10 or 15 minutes of this we popped up out of another hatch into the cool breeze. I've been told that these tunnels have been enlarged to accommodate fat western tourists and yet they were still plenty small enough for me. They offer to take us deeper into the tunnels if we want to go but I have had quite enough of small dark spaces so they offer to let us shoot some AK-47’s. It is an outrageous US dollar for a ten-round magazine. I spend twenty bucks and it is worth it. I tore up some dirt piles and banana leaves, I can tell you that!

We drive back to Saigon passing the packed buses along the way and get back at around dusk. AJ and I get dropped off at Nguyen Hue Street to exchange money at Kathy's and buy some weed from Ali. Unfortunately Ali isn't there but Dom is and he says he'll get us some for 7000 a bag so we order two. Then we walk back to the hotel buying beers at Prince on the way.

After showering and getting ready for dinner we all go out looking for that place on Le Loi Street but all we found is a big hole where they are constructing a major new hotel. We continue into the city center and find a place near the Palace Hotel. Not very good but it fills us up. We walk back through the dark strange streets of Saigon and to smoke joints and play Yahtzee in our hotel.

Wednesday February 12th

 Today we do what we should have done a long time ago. We rented bikes for 5000 per day from Prince. After breakfast we all pedal down to the Lao Embassy to apply for visas. AJ and Dave don't have plane tickets so they can't get one. We pay $5 extra to have them ready by 5 today. We ride back through the maelstrom of Saigon's mostly two wheeled traffic to change into shorts and t-shirts and see some more of the city.

We ride west deep into the heart of Cholon looking for the war surplus market but we never found it. We visit a couple of pagodas then realize the market is not in Cholon at all but only a few blocks from our hotel. Once we find the market after several wrong turns and cycling along the seedy waterfront turns out to be a big disappointment - only clothes, no hardware or lighters. We wander through but don't buy anything. 

On the way back to the hotel I stop along Le Loi Street and buy a vintage Zippo for less than $3 with the inscription “Freedom isn’t Free”. Then we go down and pick up our visas with no hassle and return to the Vinh Dong with beers – Huda from the Prince, of course.!

AJ and Dave have already eaten so Greta and I go to eat at Prince still the best deal we have found and we come back to pack up. We've arranged a taxi to take us to the bus station at Muen Tay at the ungodly hour of 3:30 a.m. for the outrageous price of 10 US dollars!

Thursday February 13th

The taxi that awaits us has to be one of the smallest cars that I've ever seen. Somehow we all manage to get in with our backpacks and the machine creeps along the deserted streets of a sleeping Saigon. No one is sleeping at the bus station however and we create quite a stir when we tumble out of the taxi like clowns from a clown car. Eager people point us to the window to buy tickets for the bus to Cantho in the Mekong Delta which cost about 10,500 – less than half the price of the daggone taxi ride! We find the bus and claim our seats and eat baguettes and drink tea waiting for the bus to go. It's supposed to leave at 4:30 but we inch out of the station at about 5:30. We begin freezing in the pre-dawn chill as the bus lumbers down the road. We're soon warmed up however as the bus stops dead. We've come less than 20 km before we broke down. Looks like it's going to be a long, strange trip, as per usual.

We hang out waiting while they disassemble the engine bit by bit. It seems to be a fuel problem of some sort. Another bus going to Cantho stops and like rats deserting a sinking ship we give up our seats to sit in the aisle on a little stool on the other bus. At least it's moving. The weird part is that we can see nothing of the countryside as we go because the stools are so small we cannot see out of the windows.

Two women sitting next to us start eating what appears to be a hard-boiled egg but we can soon see that there are tiny birds inside and they suck and crunch down two of them in quick succession. I almost vomit on the floorboard but I can't because the floor is covered with people. We reached the first ferry crossing and without seeing anything of the Mekong delta we are spirited across to continue the grueling ride.

It's not long before we reach the second ferry crossing on the other side of which is Cantho. At the bus depot there we get a motorcycle cyclo to take us into town for 5,000 dong and he drops us at the Hoa Bien Hotel. Their rooms cost too much so they recommend another place the Cuu Long Hotel on Quang Tri Street. It's a little hard to find as it is tucked well off the road but they give us a decent room with bath for 20,000 dong - our cheapest yet. 

We relax and blow a joint. We didn't like the stuff from Dom and last night AJ and I rode down to see Ali and bought his entire stock of 9. We will get 20 more later. The joints send us reeling and we real out into the streets of Canto.

Maybe it's the paranoia from the weed but I feel as if we were painted fluorescent green. Everyone stares of us. Some smile but mostly they just stare. We tried to buy water at a few places and finally are successful. 

We're also hungry so we stop at a restaurant but cannot understand the menu at all. It's so frustrating. We wander around and change money at a jewelry shop and then go to see the old Khmer pagoda in the Main Street. The monk there lets us in and and shows us around. Books with ancient Khmer writing and depictions of Angkor Wat are on the walls. We walk back to hotel stopping at a roadside stall for noodles on the way. They're not bad either but have some strange bits in them that I don’t really want to know about. We’re now very tired but have to go searching for water. The hotel sells 333 beer at the front desk for 7000 dong. We got lots of those and I go out for baguettes. We come back and get more beer and realize that this hotel is a brothel as many seem to be here in Viet Nam. The Vien Dong is too. We spend the evening drinking beers and playing Yahtzee and Cosmic wimp-out. Dave and AJ met a young Vietnamese couple while they were out. They are students learning to be English teachers and want to meet us tomorrow to show us around town and talk to us and practice their English.

Friday February 14th

You would have known it is Valentine's Day by the action in this hotel last night. There was a brisk trade going on. In the middle of the night someone was banging on our door and yelling in Vietnamese. Greta said, “Answer the door.” and I got up and crossed the room before I thought to ask, “Who is it?” No one answered but they knocked again and yelled more Vietnamese. I asked again who was it, more sharply this time. They went away.

We woke kind of groggy we went to meet the two teachers at 9 am. They are Sun and Thao. Their English was fantastic, and they go with us for coffee it took us to the market. The market is right by the river and sells everything. I noticed that these people have a penchant for eating very small birds. Unfortunately, we have decided that we must return to Ho Chi Minh city today instead of following our original plan and going to Cau Doc. We simply don't have enough time to do it all. We will go back to Saigon today and then go north to the mountain town of Da Lat tomorrow. 

Son and Thao escort us back to the hotel where we quickly pack. We exchange addresses and I promise to send them English textbooks. They help us barter for a motorcycle with a small trailer attached and get all four of us on it with packs and all - a heavy load for 5,000 dong. We precariously negotiate the road directly to the ferry terminal and as we stop by a bus the bike falls over and we all spill into the street. We pick ourselves off the pavement and try to right the bike but find that the yoke which joins it to the trailer is bent. We feel bad and give the driver an extra 5,000 to fix it. 

We board a Dodge van circa 1974 for the trip to Saigon for 12,000 dong. There is a woman on the bus who is Vietnamese and lives in Denver. She is visiting relatives here for the first time in 16 years. She proves to be very helpful translating during the journey. It is typical Vietnamese transport crushed in the back of the van which it seems is never full because every time you turn around there's a new face pushing in. We repeat the two ferry crossings and drive northwards through limitless expanses of rice fields to reach Saigon at about 5:30. We pile into two motorcycles to go to town and after a wild ride through rush-hour traffic with a demonic driver we are once again deposited into two rooms at the Vien Dong hotel. We call and get reservations at Maxim's at 9 and settle in with some cold Hudas and a doobie.

Maxim’s is over-priced and over-rated but we kinda knew that going in. Like getting a Singapore Sling at Raffles in Singapore - it’s what you do when you are there. In addition to the food they encourage patrons to leave with a girl. We just ate and left.

 Saturday February 15th

We're up early and zooming away to the northern bus station. We pass people training for tomorrow's marathon and all the peasants doing early business. A man pushes a cart steaming with fresh ice. We haggle at the station and get a minibus to Da Lat for 400,000 dong ~ 35 bucks or so - not too bad for 4 people and there's no way that we can deal with getting a public bus today. 

So we all pile in luxury and we each get a bench seat Dave promptly crashes out and doesn't wake up for the whole journey. Greta sleeps a lot as well. I lay down but can't sleep I keep feeling like I'm going to miss something. The countryside we pass is typical Vietnam - rural, green, and beautiful. As the day winds on we get higher and higher in the mountains and just before we get to Da Lat at about 1 p.m. the jungle thins out and we're driving through pine forest studded with the occasional opulent villa. I wonder who owns them now?

We pull into the Mimosa hotel which has been recommended to us by Michael and Kim but they want $7 so we go down the street and find a room for $5 and get all settled in before they come up to say, “No!”, we're Americans so we aren’t allowed stay there. We've been told that this might be the case so we trot to back to the assholes at the Mimosa and get a couple of rooms there. God this place is loud. We settle in and then Dave & AJ go out and check out Da Lat. I've got the shits again and I'm very tired and worn out so I hang back and read a nap.

The boys come back with lots of strawberry wine and jam and we drink all day and night. This hotel is so fucking loud. We don't even go out for dinner we just get baguettes on the street and eat them while we play Yahtzee.

Sunday February 16th

We sleep in, sad, but true. We leave this shitty hotel at around noon they actually bang on AJ and Dave's room at 8 a.m. to ask for their blanket. Unfortunately, we have to stay here tonight as well so we take a walk around the town. We try to buy drugs at the pharmacy and take photos and have tacos on the steps by the market and change money, 11800 to the dollar. 

After tacos and a couple bottles of the ubiquitous strawberry wine we wander down to the lake and seeing the pedal-powered swans we decide to go out and blow a bone. It's quite fun except that everyone on the lake keeps following us so we don't have any privacy anywhere. We are well lit by the time we “swan” back to the dock and it looks like rain. We have to take shelter in an abandoned gas station, Caltex I think, on the way home. Once again we are on a baguette diet but tonight at least we are the ones who make the noise.

We start playing poker for small bills, 100 and 200 dong notes. Ho Chi Minh is featured prominently on the bills and as we get drunk we are screaming, “I see your Ho and I raise you two Ho’s!” Not quite politically correct but we figured we fit right in noise-wise and they probably didn’t understand what we were screaming, we hoped.

Monday February 17th

 We sleep in a little and get to the bus station at around 9:15 a.m. where they tell us that the last bus to Nha Trang leaves at 10. We find a seat on a van but a guy says it's not going to Nha Trang but then person selling the tickets says it is and charges us 18,000 dong, an exorbitant rate - it should be 12,000 max. We get on anyway because we don't want to spend any more time in Da Lat. We bump and grind slowly down to Phan Rang on this bus. The scenery is gorgeous coming down the mountain but the road is realty bumpy. It turns out that this bus does not go to Nha Trang and it leaves us at Phan Rang and transfers us to a vintage circa 1940’s Renault which is supposed to be leaving soon for Nha Trang. The driver speaks a little English and we get some decent seats up front, but this old bus is soooo slow. 

We stop every 200 meters all the way to Nha Trang. If it's not the pick someone up it's to let someone off, or to fill up with water, or some other goddamn thing. 

We finally make it to Nha Trang at about 5 p.m. 7 hours for a five-hour journey - not bad for Viet Nam. Actually, it's kind of great. Some of the kids at the places we stop are so happy to find out that we are American. No more Lien Xo! (Lien Xo means Russian in Vietnamese and people usually assumed that we were Russian. Russian were the only white foreigners they’ve seen for 20 years and there is no love lost for Russians in Viet Nam.) The one thing I learned to say in Vietnamese was, “I am an American.” (Toi la nguoy My!) I feel like a movie star in this country sometimes.

We all get our own personal cyclos in Nha Trang from the bus station to the hotel. An ostentatious display, but we are tired. We are all in a line going thru the streets of Nha Trang. We go to the Nga Nghi Hotel on Nguyen Binh Kiem Street where we get a beautiful suite for the four of us for $10 each. We get a room with air conditioning and a balcony connected to AJ and Dave's room which has a sofa and chairs and a fridge. The bathroom has hot water and we are psyched to settle in here for a while.

There's four Brits next door and we chat with them awhile before going out to the very excellent Lac Canh Restaurant which has the best shrimp rolls and grilled tuna to be had anywhere. It is a more than a little diosconcerting as there are a line of beggars patiently waiting for any leftover food outside of the restaurant and I couldn’t help thinking of them outside while we gorged ourselves on delicious food inside. We ordered an extra noodle and fried rice to give them on our way out. We fill up and get beers to go back to our room and we begin playing poker for dong - 200 bet, 400 limit. It's great! We can play all night and lose and still not lose any real money so we do! We find bottles of mulberry wine - nasty stuff - that we had brought down from Da Lat because our beer isn't getting very cold. Graham from next door takes some of our money but we don't care and we go to bed drunk, stoned and happy.

Tuesday February 8th

We get up before noon just and go down and eat baguettes and eggs and drink coffee and then go wandering around town. We meet this shy old guy on a bicycle who speaks good English. It soon comes out that he's shy because he worked with the Americans at Cam Ranh Bay from 1967 to 1975 and was left behind when the US pulled out. His spent two years in a re-education camp and he has been persecuted, he can't find a job, etc. He doesn't even want to be seen talking to us on the street but he shows us to the beach. 

The beach is epically gorgeous, lined with coconuts and stretching for miles. The old guy shows us a place to change money where they're very rude so we go to another place and get 11800 for a hundred bucks. On the way back to the beach we pass little stand selling all sorts of medical supplies from hemostats to bone chisels. We buy some condoms and Russian thermometers. Then we go on a mission looking for a dive shop. We find the tourist bureau but they offer no help. While Dave & AJ check out the ship chandler company, we check out the beach.

The sand is wide and soft and the water clear and warm. We have a swim then meet the phenomenon of Nha Trang, the crab woman. There are two women who go up and down the beach with crabs on one side and a little cooker on the other slung on the ends of a pole carried over their shoulder. They can cook you shrimp or squid or cockles or snails or get you a crab for 3000 dong. They even crack it open and lay it out for you and prepare a dipping sauce made from lime juice and pepper and salt pepper. Most excellent! You can order beers for 8,000 dong from the beachfront cafe and have a feast. So, we do. 

Eventually the sun goes down, as it is wont to do at the end of the day in these latitudes and we say goodbye to Miss Move-Your-Ass, as the crab lady likes to be called. What a classic place! I love it here. We wander back along the beach to our hotel collecting beer along the way. Today we found the ultimate alcoholic buy a 500 ml bottle of Stoli for 5,000. We buy two bottles, a full liter for 10,000 or about 85 cents. Ouch my head!

We shower and go to dinner at Khan and then come back to spend the rest of the night playing poker and drinking beer and Stoli. Will we ever learn, I doubt it. Tomorrow we're going to rent bicycles and cruise around and check out the sights around Nha Trang. 

Wednesday February 19th

We don't wake up too early and Greta is not feeling well at all - according to my new Russian thermometer she's got a fever of 38 degrees Celsius – over a hundred. We go down to meet Jimmy for breakfast. He is a former Vietnamese “boat person” who now lives in Utah. We met him on the beach yesterday. Greta goes running back to the room. So, she takes the day off while Dave, AJ and I go out on the bikes. We pedal up to the Cham Towers just north of town where a rude woman waves an M16 and yells at us because we don't want to pay 3,000 dong to park our bicycles with her. Luckily the gun isn't loaded. The Chams were an ethnic group of Austronesian origin who populated Champa, a contiguous territory of independent principalities in central and southern Vietnam from the 2nd to the mid-15th century. We pass the usual gauntlet of cripples and check out the towers. The large one has a representation of Shiva but it is surrounded by many Chinese temple items. The braziers and burning incense are, of course, spewing smoke. Devout people in this country, of any religion, must have really bad lungs.

A few obligatory photos and we're off a little way northward up a hill where the promontory of Hon Chung shelters a gorgeous and picturesque bay with a great view of Fairy Mountain. We drink a coconut here and relax in the shade in a reclining deck chair before continuing our journey back to and through Nha Trang heading to Cau Da the port town to try to arrange a boat for tomorrow and find out about the availability of dive gear. 

It's a long pedal down to Cau Da and we pass the huge old airport with very little apparent airport activity. it's guarded by abandoned old pill boxes. We also pass numerous abandoned beachfront Villas. This town is a developer's dream. I wonder what it'll be like 20 years from now. The boat bargaining was a bit of a joke really. There are plenty of boats to be chartered but we had some difficulty conveying the idea that we wanted to book them for tomorrow morning, not go right now. No dice on dive gear to be bought or rented, in fact, these folks make their own masks from a section of tire inner tube and a piece of glass! Truly incredible. The people in Viet Nam are not dumb, or lazy, they’re just poor. Too bad the government here is Communist because they'd make some vicious capitalists here - probably could teach the Japanese a few tricks if given the chance. 

We flow back up the stream of two-wheeled traffic with the continual turned heads, smiles, shouts and stares and went back to find Miss Move-Your-Ass on the beach. Warner, the dude from Oregon and Jimmy are there and we feast on crabs. They crab ladies make us a huge fresh shrimp salad. At one point I've got this woman literally feeding me cockles while another pops shrimp in my mouth. They must think I'm a walking (and rich) eating machine. The more food they can get into me the more money they get. I love it! By the time I leave I am stuffed and I don't even want to go out for dinner tonight. We start playing cards early and drinking Armenian Brandy and Vietnamese vodka. Warner comes over and we all get baguettes and cheese for dinner.

Thursday February 20th

We're supposed to meet Jimmy for breakfast today but I got especially shit-faced last night and couldn't deal with getting up. I spend the whole day lying around and reading Saigon. Greta is still ill too so I looked after her. We have breakfast downstairs and lunch too.

AJ and Dave come back at about 3 and apparently they had an excellent lunch at Jimmy's relatives house. I've clipped my toenails, done a few bits of laundry and even washed my hat. AJ is motivated and goes down to see Miss Move-Your-Ass for crabs and meet the others to work on the boat trip for tomorrow. I can't say that we do much of anything, really a wasted day but it feels good to relax a little.

We can't even motivate for dinner so we do the usual and grab a baguette or two with cheese. I'm not sure but I don't think we even play any poker tonight just a mellow evening of quiet relaxation and reading. That's good because we got to get up early tomorrow to go out Bamboo Island and Miss Move-Your-Ass is catering!

Friday February 21st

 We get up early and have a quick breakfast and rent bikes for the trip to Cau Da. We meet everybody and Miss Move-Your-Ass at the Hai Yen Hotel at 8. She has all the stuff - two cases of beer and all the food we could ask for. We all go down to the docks and after reassembling there we hop on the rather large boat which ferries us to Bamboo Island. 

We go around the point to the opposite side where there is a large curving bay. Then the trouble, endemic for foreigners in Vietnam, starts. The locals who come out to ferry our stuff from the boat to shore see that we are Westerner's and are forced to overcharge us. They want like 30,000 dong for each trip to shore. We tell them to piss off, we’re happy to swim, and it still cost us 10,000 dong to get the food ashore. Once we have everything on the beach they want to charge us for sitting on their mats which we don't need and for water we use to cook our food. It's really ridiculous. We tell Miss Move-Your-Ass that we will charge them for listening to our music and per eye for staring at us.

We go to lay on the beach and they sit around us in a semicircle staring. We all bake in the sun, read, swim, etc. They stare. We have our beach time then Miss Move-Your-Ass says the food is ready and we eat it. It's awful. I feel so guilty. We gorge ourselves on squid, grilled tuna, the ever present baguettes, prawn salad and crab. I am so stuffed and I feel I can't move and there's more. And the whole time these people are watching us intently and trying to steal some beer. It goes on like that until we decide to leave late in the afternoon.

The wind has picked up and the sea is pretty choppy. We decide to walk 5 or 10 minutes to the calmer, leeward side of the island and meet the boat over there instead of swimming to the boat. We get back to the mainland right around dark. We collect our bicycles and our belongings and pedal back towards the hotel.

Everyone goes on ahead but AJ, Warner and I help Miss Move-Your-Ass carry stuff to her house. She invites us in. I sense some sort of psychic bond between her and AJ. He and she don't want to separate but I've got to go and I'm riding AJ back to the hotel on the rear of the bike. We say our goodbyes and head back on low tires. (On a side note, years later I heard from friends in Taiwan who visited Nha Trang that Miss Move-Your-Ass had opened a very successful restaurant.) Anyway, no need for us to worry about dinner tonight a few baguettes and we're set. Warner comes over to play cards and we have one last party night in Nha Trang.

 Saturday February 22nd

Up when it's still dark always hurts. It's unnatural. (I read this in my journal 30 years later and it elicits a wry smile – I am going on my 21st year at a job that requires a pre-dawn start.) We have breakfast and settle our room bill and say goodbye to Jimmy. We have hired a minivan to Da Nang split between 10 - us four plus Graham, Paul, Darren, Matt, Anita and Lydia. If we leave by 6 we should get there by 8 p.m. The cost is 110,000 dong or about $100 US, not bad for 10 bucks each. We're all set to leave for Da Nang but the driver of our minivan isn't here. He finally shows up at 7:30 and we decide to deduct fifty thousand for his tardiness. He makes up for his tardiness with his slowness - no wonder the guy was an hour and a half late. He seems incapable of exceeding 30 kilometers an hour. 

We inch our way inexorably towards Da Nang. The redeeming quality of the drive is the beauty of the countryside. We are rewarded with ocean views, green mountain landscapes and all sorts of unique perspectives around the bends in the bumpy road. We even get to blow a few doobies in the van. Classic.

We stop for lunch in Binh Dinh and get mobbed. I'm almost adopted by this guy who has a brother (I think) in Boston running a Kung Fu Academy. I get chicken fried rice at his restaurant. The toilet in this place is down a cliff-like set of stairs and over to a hole in the back porch overhanging the rice patties. Typical. One of these days I’m going to write a book about toilets I have seen.

We hop back in the van and change seats then resume putt-putting through the countryside. I start to doze as it gets dark. We reach Da Nang at about 9:30 and guide our supposedly native driver to our hotel. He is truly hopeless. This hotel is full but we have the desk clerk direct our driver to another that has rooms and he is somehow unable to comprehend. This guy must have one brain cell or something. Finally we get dropped off at the Danang Hotel where a double room for 6 bucks though they try for 7. We quickly settle in and grab a dinner at the restaurant before they close. A chateaubriand which receives mixed reviews and a surprisingly delicious plate of shrimp fritters. We feel lucky to get anything at 10:30 p.m. We repair to the room for a nightcap and some doobies and give AJ a shit about his portrait. (Once again, this unreliable narrator is at a loss as to why we gave AJ shit about his portrait or where AJ even got his portrait.)

 Sunday February 23rd

 We sleep in until after 11 then go to the café across the street for a leisurely breakfast. Our French-speaking host is forgetful, but kind and the coffee is good. Afterwards we ask to switch our rooms to get a fridge and a light which does not buzz and then the four of us go out on the town.

We walk down the riverside looking for the old US Consulate building which is supposed to house the American War Crimes Museum but doesn't. It is a looted, bombed-out mess which should be condemned but is instead home to scores of people. We go to the market and buy a set of those funny little coffee filters and then we visit the Cham Museum.

This is excellent. The sculpture is beautifully restored and tastefully arranged, too bad they're so harsh about photos. The art gallery in the rear has a painting we like called “A corner of old Hanoi town” by Nuoc Minh. They want a million and a half dong for it. We'll see, maybe they'll take a Visa card. Anyway it's late and believe it or not we're tired and are slowly making their way back to the room saying hello to all the friendly people such a change from Da Lat and Saigon and Cantho. So many of these people clearly remember the Americans and like them and want them to come back. Often older people approach us and utter and the first words of English they've spoken in 17 years. Wild. Most of the people have lived through hell for these 17 years too. Why on earth do we have a trade embargo against these people? 

We came back to the hotel. I try out my new coffee making method we all have a shower and then we emerge feeling refreshed and able to battle the cyclo drivers. No, guess again. They want 10,000 dong to take us to the Tu Do restaurant. Eventually they go down to 3,000 for there and back but this is actually after we have already walked halfway there literally with them following us. We walk. Screw them. One day they’ll realize it is better to just take us for a fair price. The food is great and the Swedish guys are a riot (I wish I could tell you why) but we are very tired for some reason. We cyclo back to the room for 4,000 dong and relax. The boys party until 3 AM.

That’s all for this episode. Part 2 is also uploaded, so you can continue listening to that. We’ll catch you next time, goin’ down the road.