Ho Chi Minh

Ho Chi Minh city is the type of city where you check your change carefully after paying the bill. It's loud, it's busy and there is always a price to barter for. We stayed for a couple of nights and explored a few different city districts and a couple of museums.

The morning we were leaving we were eating some breakfast in a cafe and began talking to an American guy on a different table. He had been living in Vietnam for ten years and could speak the language. He told us two things of interest.

1. Locals in Vietnam do not trust the banks because they lost money in the Vietnam war. All significant transactions are subsequently organized through suitcases full of gold and black bin liners stuffed with US Dollars. He told a story of buying a house with his wife and meeting the family at the door, handing over a suitcase full of gold and only then did the family leave and hand over the keys.
   
2. If you take motorbikes using the highways that connect the cities you are risking your life. And will likely see a fair few deadly crashes along the way.

The first information was amusing. The second was priceless as we had just been discussing taking a motorbike from Ho Chi Minh to our next destination. We quickly decided to take the bus instead.

We ran into a slight problem leaving the city when the guy operating the bus tried to charge us five times more than the ticket price. He got threatening and was not letting us off when we said we would not pay that much. Eventually all was resolved and he later pushed a local girl and made her cry, so it seemed he was a tosser to everyone, not just tourists.

Our first destination was My Tho, two hours south of Ho Chi Minh city. I seriously needed some proof that all people in Vietnam were not like the bus operator and was still a little frustrated at our experience. We eventually checked into a hotel that might have once been quite grand and impressive but now looked like it had taken a holiday in Baghdad. It was the view across the river that sold it to me though.

The owner of the hotel did not speak any English but an elderly Vietnamese friend he was with at the time did. It was this old man who turned out to be the start of my proof that Vietnam is not full of con artists.



The man was called Lee and he could speak English and French. French because as a child France controlled Vietnam, English because he said he studied it at school. Lee was a Cyclo driver which means he bikes people around town on a pedal bike whilst they sit in a chair on the front. He mentioned that he does tours around town and that we can pay him whatever we feel the tour is worth at the end of the day. He was not pushy or trying to make a strong sales pitch which was nice. We decided to take him up on his offer.

It took Lee some time to warm up to us and disclose that he was good at English because he worked as an interpreter for the Americans during the Vietnam war for three years. He was full of too many incredible stories to write down here, his bunker was bombed with him inside once, another time he took a helicopter with the American troops just to go swimming for a day. As he was telling us these stories it was clear he was acutely aware of anyone in the surrounding area being able to hear him speaking such fluent English. There has not been enough time since the Vietnam war for him to feel totally secure in speaking about his past occupation.

The tour that we went on was incredible and we got to see the countryside and meet people going about their daily lives that we would not have been able to otherwise. With Lee as our interpreter we even got invited to have lunch with a local priest! but unfortunatley time was against us.

Later that same day we were sad to say goodbye to Lee after he made sure that we got on the right bus and were given the local rate. Our next stop was the nearby town of Ben Tre, another small town that sits near the end of the Mekong river, the same river that we used to cross the border between Thailand and Laos earlier on our trip. I leave you with a picture of me and Mr Ho Chi Minh. ( I'm having some picture uploading issues at the moment and the two on this post are the only ones that worked)

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