by Bob Sparrow
Our first port of call in Vietnam is Saigon, or Ho Chi Minh City. I asked if it mattered which name I called it. I mistakenly assumed that people from South Vietnam called it Saigon and those from north Vietnam called it Ho Chi Minh City – not so. Our guide for the day, from the north, called it Saigon. I learned you don’t insult anyone by calling it either name. But Saigon is not a ‘port city’, so we had to take a van from the port to the city center, which was about an hour-and-a-half drive. We scheduled a private jeep tour of some key highlights of the city, so Linda and I toured the city in an old Army jeep, with a driver and a guide, Hoa (Who-ah). I’ve often said, ‘Your guide makes or breaks your tour’ – Hoa made it! He was about five feet tall and looked to be in his thirties – he was 57 and hilarious!
We first visited the requisite Buddhist temple and learned the importance of incents – the smoke takes your prayers to Buddha. We then visited Independence Palace, which is the president’s residence, like our White House. We passed by Ho Chi Minh Square and the Opera House as well as the Saigon’s Notre Dame – we see a lot of the French influence in the architecture here. Our most memorable stop was at the War Remnants Museum, which was quite graphic in its depiction of the devastating effects of the Vietnam War. I have to say that walking through that museum was very gut-wrenching. We finish our full day tour with a great meal at a downtown Saigon restaurant – delicious! No, I don’t know what I had, I just pointed to a photo that looked good – and it was!
Our next port was DaNang, and again we had about an hour and a half drive from the boat dock to the city, and while we drove through the big city of DaNang, we continued on to a smaller town called Hoi An. We spent time visiting all the ‘tourist shops’ looking for bargains – Linda found some and I was able to purchase another mask for my back-bar collection. I have to say, for a communist country there sure are a lot of entrepreneurial capitalists trying to sell us stuff!
Back on the boat and heading north to Hanoi, where we will arrive, through Ha Long Bay, the next morning. We are in the harbor at Ha Long Bay for two days and we decide to take the tour of the bay to see the amazing islands that are formed and a spectacular cave where we hike up to the entrance and entered – spectacular!!!
For our second day in Hanoi, we looked at the tours to go into the city and perhaps visit the ‘Hanoi Hilton’, but we discovered that the tours were 10-11 hours in length and that the ride into Hanoi from the harbor took three-and-a-half hours each way! That’s 7 hours on a bus for a 3-4 hour tour, so we passed and did a fascinating tour of Ha Long City.
What made Ha Long City so fascinating is that it’s a city right on the water with awesome beaches, five-star hotels, and lots of high-end condos . . . but, everything was empty, not just no people in the buildings, but no furniture, just empty beautiful buildings. We asked our golf cart driver what was going on in this Vietnam ‘ghost town’ and because he spoke very little, we didn’t get much of an answer. So, I Googled it and discovered that a Vietnamese lady investor, basically bilked billions of dollars out of the government to build up the city, but she did it all on false promises and is now in prison and may be sentenced to death.
We get back to our boat that pulls out of port that evening heads for Hong Kong, our last stop of this awesome trip!
Thursday: Hong Kong and a ‘Photo Phinish’
