Uncle Ho, Weasel poo and Millionaires!

Gooooooddddd Morning Vietnam! Ok, not very original, but it had to be done!

We arrived in Saigon aka Ho Chi Minh city (HCMC) having spent 6 hours on a luxury coach that was blaring out some weird Vietnamese sketch show on the TV the whole way. As we had got up early for the bus, it made catching up on any sleep impossible!

We got a taxi in to the city with a couple of Europeans that were on our bus and got our first taste of Vietnam city life. There are more mopeds/scooters here then we had imagined (or had been told about) - at several points on the journey we had to navigate through seas of them. Of the 10million people in HCMC, apparently half of them own one, and there are 10,000 deaths as a result of traffic accidents a year - its not hard to see why - if there's a gap in traffic, it disappears very quickly!

After checking in to our hotel and having our passports taken from us again, we had a couple of very cheap (30p) Saigon beers sitting at a cafe on small plastic chairs on the pavement. Our hotel was in the main backpacker area, so it wasn't long before we got speaking to some other Westerners, the ice breaker being a picture one of them (a Newton Faulkner lookalike) had taken of a very well endowed pig!

Our excuse for leaving that particular conversation was to get a little comfort and see the film The Avengers with dinner at a local bar. It wasn't the last we were to see of Newton though, he kept on popping up at various points over the next couple of days, thankfully no more dodgy photos.

I had been looking forward to coming to Vietnam, to learn more about the war in the 60s/70s. So our first day in Saigon was one big history lesson. Having up until now tried to avoid it, on the way to the War Remnants museum we got ripped off by the taxi driver with a dodgy 'rigged' meter. Not a great start but I suppose it was only a matter of time!

The museum made up for it with an awesome photo exhibit plus the token military vehicles in the forecourt. It was good to get the Vietnamese perspective, especially reading harrowing accounts of victims of Agent Orange and Napalm. Our guided visit to the Reunification Palace - built by the first president of the Republic in the 60s - helped to give some of the back story before the American war and also to re-affirm that Uncle Ho (Ho Chi Minh) is/was a very popular figure in modern Vietnam - as with Chairman Mao his preserved corpse is on display for the public. The austin-powers like open terrace and James bond-esque control centre in the basement were highlights! But in general there did seem to be inconsistencies in some of the accounts of the war, so we couldn't help to feel a bit confused by the finer details. Dinner was a fairly pleasant traditional rice soup for me and fried tofu for Fiz but at local restaurants it's easy to get hold of other local 'delicacies'!

We visited the Cu Chi tunnels on Sunday, about 50km NW of Saigon; this was where the Vietnamese dug a network of over 200km tunnels underground to live, hide and fight in during the wars. The tunnels we crawled through were just big enough for me to squat in, but apparently these had been widened for tourists - the actual tunnels were impossibly small and cramped.

On our way back to town, we stopped at the Bien Thanh market - a huge rabbit warren full to the brim of almost every kind of stall - jewellery, clothes, silk, sunglasses, toys, food (pho - noodle soup is a popular local dish), coffee (including weasel coffee - yes, made from excrement!) - where we had a bit of a shopping spree as part of a wedding gift. And while people-watching in a park, we got talking to a couple of Vietnamese stoods who wanted to practice their English.

Now that we've been here a couple of days we've warmed to Vietnam and the people, despite the usual tourist pitfalls, though there is a very noticeable difference between here and Cambodia. Of course, the usual caveat applies - on the whole the people we encounter are part of the service industry in some shape or form. So we will struggle to get under the surface without living here amongst them, but we're doing our best to stick around and get to know the people we meet.

Whilst Cambodia seemed in general to be a poorer country, our experience of the people on the whole, is that they have the best intentions to make things better. Almost everyone we came across had a genuine warmth and we quickly learned that a smile goes a long way. Our experience of Vietnam, is similar actually to China, but with a distinctly European (specifically French) influence: croissants and Banh Mai (baguette filled with Pâté of sorts, pickled gherkin and chilli sauce - very nice) are sold alongside dried squid and an array of exotic fruit; don't expect everyone or every sign to speak/be in English (or a smile to always work!); some of the architecture is French colonial-era; the transport is built for the locals (not Westerners over 6ft); and the government's influence is similarly evident in the media and family lives of locals. There do seem to be some charitable organisations, such as the workshop we stopped at on the way to the tunnels and the Sozo cafe we had pudding at in the city - these support victims (1st or 2nd generation) of the war or disadvantaged Vietnamese people.

And anyone who watched the Top Gear Vietnam Special will know that getting enough of the currency (Vietnamese Dong) is the easiest way to become a millionaire; unfortunately though, 1 million Dong is roughly the equivalent of 30 quid! At least it makes paying a bill interesting!

Today (Monday) we head 4 hours up the coast to Mui Ne.

Happy Bank Holiday weekend to everyone back home!