The final stop in our brief tour of Vietnam was Ho Chi Minh City. If you were confused as to whether you’re in Saigon or Ho Chi Minh City, then the towering propogana posters around town would soon set you straight. This is Ho Chi Minh’s town now, despite most people still calling it Saigon…actually I’m still very confused.

We started with a pretty rough landing, after sitting in a cloud-high holding pattern for some time, we bounced back to a few thousand feet after first touch down, leaving skid marks in places other than the runway. Then we weren’t taken by the city straight away, much bigger, slower, ex-patty, far more expensive (we would have spent more in 2 nights here than the entire rest of our trip) and in general people seemed a little more complacent and lazy than in the North (maybe an influence of their longer interaction with the West…). But as we explored more, we once again fell in love with another part of this amazing country.

Lea’s braving of the traffic and her first time on a “motorbike” helped us see much more of Saigon than we would have on foot or in taxis and showed us some of the best seafood we’ve had (anywhere) on the back of vintage Vespas. We walked 12km’s in 35C that feels like 45C weather and had the only meal in my life where I walked out weighing less than when I walked in, having excreted a significant part of my body weight through my pores (and other orifices) over our final Pho. (Pho-nal?? Sorry, that’s perhaps a bridge too… Pho...) We thought about getting something different, but ended up both just getting the same soup…homo-phos? (Ok that’s it, but you can see the reason pho the original…banh. Ok that’s really it.)

We saved a small photune (sorry) by drinking our now infamous special “waters” by the rooftop pool, looking out over the Reunification Palace, had a wonderful final dinner and, Lea, perhaps delusional from not having visited a single wine region or sick of drinking 20c beers in the gutter, suggested we visit a couple of micro-breweries…James reluctantly followed.

Cảm ơn Vietnam. Thank you for everything. It really was truly was unphogettable. However, Mum told me to tell you, “maybe it’s about time to put up your prices”.

We thoroughly enjoyed our time in the North and feel like we left a little piece of us behind…perhaps a little piece of our behinds behind at least after the final northern Pho liquidising all of James’ internals in the hours before boarding our first flight to Hué.

Hué is the former capital of Vietnam, the home to the last imperial family and what remains of the Citadel that was heavily bombed over two wars with the West. We only had one night in Hué, but we loved touring the Citadel, Pho-bidden city (see addendum) and ventured out to see the Pagoda after our first Asian Uber drive!

We didn’t realise at the time, but apparently there was only one Uber driver in Hué and trying to find someone to get us back turned out to be a little tricky. Luckily by now we were expert barterers so when approached by the many boat operators who could have taken us on a leisurely ride back to our hotel, we knew what to do (knowing that an Uber would be about 60,000…but not yet knowing we wouldn’t be able to get one). The lady approached and offered us a ride for 200,000 each!! This is where calm heads really kick in. As a reaction to this exorbitant opening bid (just over $10 per person…) we yelled back, “ok…how about ZERO…take that!!”, panicked and walked away. The price came some way down to maybe 100,000 per person but by this stage we were committed and had already started our fruitless attempts at getting an Uber, so we kept walking as a sign of power in all negotiations…7km’s later we made it back to our hotel.

Along the…Hué…James was able to put his know well honed skills to the test. After getting a great price on street beers, 15,000 (about 80c) each at the 2km mark of our other negotiation, the 3km beer people were in for it. Having regularly being paying 20,000, there was to be none of that today. I walked in and DEMANDED beers for 15,000!! To which the lovely man replied, 10,000!!! SOLD!! I’ll take 2! I then handed him 30,000 by accident. He smiled and gave 10,000 back. That’ll learn him.

From Hué we drove to Hoi An, stopping at an incredible lagoon, the Hai Van pass over the mountains (which cars can also use) and explored the marble mountains near Da Nang. Along the way you couldn’t help but notice how utterly horrifying it must have been to fight so much of the war in this jungle and mountain laced terrain and that the bravest thing I’d done here was eat a Pho in a white T-shirt. And that I most certainly wasn’t brave enough to test out the white undies.

It wasn’t great timing, but as we reached the trickiest bit of the drive (which was like the great ocean road, but raised hundreds of metres…and in Vietnam), I think I realised why our driver wasn’t wearing a seatbelt despite the clear and present dangers that faced us. So as we climbed and descended the mountains all I could think about was it better to crash without a seatbelt or with one and wait hopelessly for help that would never arrive…good times. Lucky you can drink beers in the car.

Hoi An was a very different experience for us, throngs of tourists (Chinese, Korean, Japanese) descend on the town at ~5pm every day to see the town lit up with glorious lanterns on the buildings and in the river, to pay small fortunes for items that may well come from their own countries and to ride through the lanterns on a boat. Not for us, as we were still boat shy and besides that mixture of wooden boats and burning lanterns didn’t sit too well…we hadn’t felt that uneasy since getting in our lift in Hué and seeing a pot of burning oil in the corner.

Despite the tourists (we’re well aware that’s what we are), Hoi An was a great place to see a bit of the best and worst that Vietnam has to offer. We did an awesome cooking class, spent a day by our rooftop pool (drinking “water” from the hotel water bottles that were totally not filled with G&T’s made from cheap street hooch to avoid paying poolside prices), drank more “fresh” beer, bought some silk scarves (putting those haggling skills back on show) and generally had an awesome time. However, while on the Japanese bridge (which it looked like they’d returned to claim) someone on a bike actually rode into Lea and bruised her arm in almost the exact place as New Zealand. It was a little bit of a surprise as everywhere in town people seemed to know and love Lea as they came running down the street waving at her, yelling “lady, lady, lady!”…ok…maybe they don’t know her that well.

We called Mum from Hoi An to show her the sights and tell her what the future of Vietnam would be like, which Mum said she’d predicted years ago in a statement that took me back to my childhood. We would always go out for Vietnamese food, Mum would fall in love with the people running the restaurants and eventually tell them to put their prices up, then they would and we’d boycott them for the restaurant down the road.

The highlight of the trip and maybe our lives happened while drinking beer next to the river. One of the street food sales lady people managed to hook onto an American couple and explained how everything she had was home made from scratch, to which the nice young man replied, shocked, “you make….peanuts??“, in a way that you hope he was being cynical, but in another, far more hysterical way, you hope he wasn’t.

Addendum

Due to popular demand the pun moratorium has been lifted, and by popular I mean one nameless person wanted more. I’m not saying who requested it, but I’ll give a cryptic clue (because he likes cryptics). Q: He who passes wind on hidden explosives in Germany. Too cryptic?? A: Mein Vater. Still don’t get it? Let’s just call him…”Dad”.

Anyway, here are some sure to be classics that didn’t make the last post…no pun intended that time.

• Courtesy of “Dad” during his request, I’ve adjusted it slightly: I hear that during the war some were forced into cannibalism. It must have been difficult to tell who was friend or Pho…
• When we were in Hanoi, our tour guide was explaining to us the 3 different meanings of the word Pho and the different accents used to give different pronunciations. I guess it was a lesson in Pho-netics…
• What do you call a fake noodle soup? A faux-Pho?
• How do you ask if you have a faux-Pho? Is this Pho real?? Pho sure?? (NB: This was also adapted from “Dad” request)
• What do you call a noodle soup you’re not allowed to eat? Pho-bidden
• What do you call it when you ate a noodle soup that was phobidden? A Pho-pas
• What’s the name of the soup that’s won best noodle soup 10 years running? Pho-middable.
• What do you call it when you take a selfie with a noodle soup? A Pho-to.
• What do you call an Italian guy eating noodle soup? Pho-nzie…

Ok I think we can all agree that’s enough.

Welcome to Vietnam!! A land where:

• Honking your horn replaces: using your indicator; changing your mind after accidentally using your indicator; saying you’ve stopped in the middle of the road to text; or haven’t stopped to text so watch out; or to just let the world you exist and have a way to let everyone else know about it;
• The strange people are the ones not in a spontaneous dance competition;
• You wish you had more vices to indulge apart from street drinking;
• Zebra crossings are used ironically to give tourists a false sense of security;
• Dogs are unbearably cute…probably because the know they have to be. It’s better to be cute than tasty;
• The alarm clock is redundant thanks to constant construction (or reconstruction) and destruction, honking horns (see above), street roosters and babies crying (I think their tears are used to give their Phos what their colonial rulers would have called their ‘I don’t know what’…);
• The healthy diet is offset by the addition of condensed milk to coffee…and almost everything else;
• There would be need to constantly fear electrocution as most of the exposed wires are overhead…except that overhead in Vietnam is about 5’4″;
• Cafe Melbourne coffee is at Melbourne prices, but here (unlike Perth) that doesn’t mean it’s cheap;
• Cafe Bong isn’t what you’d think it is, but neither was Cafe Tit, and that’s ok because you’re happy not everything is literal, otherwise handing over a bunch of Dong for a night on a Junk boat could have been a very different experience;
• There are way too many other puns that can be made but are best left alone, after Lea commented how she found the wait at the airport very…Hanoi-ing, but was later moved enough to comment “Hanoice is Hanoi…” and we then moved to a Hlong to Ha Long bay competition that made us both sick, thus kickstarting the great pun embargo;
• You are somehow instant friends with all other Caucasions even if they’re degenerates drinking beer in a gutter…next to you;
• The first Aussie you meet in the gutter is shaking more than you and the five 20c beers you both knock back does a lot more for your shakes than his as he might need something a tad stronger…like coffee with an egg and condensed milk;
• A healthy fear of chairs (when pushing towards the best part of 100kg) turns to acceptance as your arse drops 4 feet to plonk on tiny plastic chairs designed for…Vietnamese;
• Shoe shiners work two jobs as the spare sets of thongs they carry to lend to customers appear double up as mushroom farms;
• The police’s most important job is to take vendor’s chairs off the footpaths, put them in their trucks and then sell them back…repeat;
• A beer with free chips isn’t as it seems… the chips come in the glass (that was Lea again…I thought we said no more puns!);
• The fakes are so well done they’re almost indistinguishable apart from the name, but ‘Moet and Chamdon’ is too clever not to buy;
• You get the chance to choose hotel rooms by weighing up a room with a balcony or one with ability to flush toilet paper #thirdworldproblems;
• Pho is pronounced more like ‘fur’ and with beef it’s like ‘fur ball’…which is fine, but slightly uncomfortbale because you’re sure some menu items really do come with fur balls…
• English sarcasm fails to translate;
• Remembering how to say ‘thank you’ sounds like “come on” can get you into trouble as actually saying ‘come on’ might sound like shut up so it’s a fine line between being polite and offensive #theJamesStewartStory
• You’re not sure why they keep lighting fires in the street…until you think of every time you’ve lit a match in the toilet…
• Our tour guide to Ha Long bay could have been right at home giving relationship advice with my Father in Law at our wedding as he talked of his only adventure sport being arguing with his wife and how the bay is like a lady as it’s beauty changes with it’s moods…
• A five dollar upgrade got us a room on our boat 5 times as big as the others, including a toilet you could flush paper in after having had a poo with a view;
• After worrying about every little thing that probably won’t happen back in Australia, because something will clearly go awry here you somehow stop worrying (acceptance: just like the fat tourist breaking chair acceptance);
• If you made it to day 4 before your first uncontrollable bowel movements you’ve done well…I did well!

It was difficult arranging these random thoughts into a coherent story of our time in the North (I assume, I certainly didn’t try). But all ‘jokes’ aside, we loved our 3 nights in Hanoi, a mind blowing amalgam of 8 million locals and god knows how many tourists, and were so lucky to have a perfect night in Halong Bay. The people work so hard and are fiercely patriotic in a way you only see back home in conjunction with radical racism. But here they are so friendly to us despite the fact our faces must remind some of them of those that caused them to lose their place in the world in less than a century only a short time ago.