vietnam 1

our point of arrival in vietnam was a land border crossing...easily the least efficient crossing we've done...as we were on a bus, it was annoying...get off the bus at the cambodian exit, hand our passports to an official...as he called off our names, get back on the bus...ride to the vietnamese immigration side (during which time i guess our passports received the exit stamps from cambodia)...get off the bus, grab all our stuff, go inside the arrivals hall and wait...there were railings set up as if to guide lines, but there were no lines...we just stood around with our stuff and waited until our name was called and we were handed back our passport with the new vietnamese stamp...not all countries need a visa to enter vietnam...japan, and norway are among them...one of the travelers on our bus was from iceland...he was traveling with a norweigan...while in norway (i think they both lived in oslo) the icelandic guy went to the vietnamese embassy to ask if he needed a visa, and they said no...so he didn't get one...well, according to the guys at the border, he did need one...they turned him back and said he had to go back to phnom penh (or sihanoukville) and get a visa!! how awful is that? all of us had been wondering what happens if you show up w/out a visa, and i guess we got our answer...i wonder if he decided it was worth it or not...
anywho, our first city was saigon...the former capital of the republic of south vietnam...(which ceased to exist 30 april 1973)...a crazy city...the largest city in vietnam, with 12 million people...many residents of the city aren't legal, as they don't have proper residence permits...at the end of the war, the new government sent them out into the sticks, but they snuck back and have stayed...but not having the proper permits means they can't own businesses...traffic in saigon is crazy...probably the craziest i've ever seen, and i've seen traffic in a lot of places...it never stops...if you wait for traffic to stop before crossing a street, you'll never get to cross...(on a side note, i did see a chicken cross, without being hit!!)...there are gbillions of motorbikes, usually with more than one person on each bike...
we saw the notre dame cathedral (which has no stained glass windows since they were blown out during the war, the post office (it's huge, and for some odd reason, on a bunch of postcards,) and the war remnants museum...the museum has a few planes and tanks left over from the war, but what is most interesting are all the photos on display...quite a few from photojournalists during the war...of the people involved, the action each day, etc...some are really disturbing...and some just make you stop and stare...there are also photos of victims of toxic chemical poisoning...it's never been proven conclusively that all the toxic chemicals the US dumped on the country during the war have caused the abnormalities, but i'd say the statistics are pretty hard to deny...again, some of the pictures are horrifying, but at the same time, it's hard to look away...
as a city, saigon isn't all that pretty, and there isn't a whole lot to see, but it's great to walk around and soak up the atmosphere...it's the commercial capital of the country...
one day we took a day tour out to see a cao dai temple in tay ninh...cao daism is only followed in southern vietnam, by about 3 million people...it's a combination of confucionism, buddhism, taoism, christianity, and a bit of animism...the temple we saw is the HQ for the religion overall...it's really really colourful...the worshippers are dressed in one of four colours, i'm assuming they are based on rank, though i don't know anything about the religion...most people in white, but also some men in red, blue, or yellow...they have services 4 times a day, we were able to observe some of the noon service...the other half of our day tour was to the tunnels at cu chi...during the war, the villages in the south were often bombed a LOT...so they built tunnels for survival...the viet cong used these tunnels for fighting as well...not too far from saigon, the tunnel network is over 200km long!!...well, it was...in 1968 the US found out about the tunnels (they had wondered why their own soldiers were being shot in their tents in their bases...it turned out that several of the secret entrances were in the bases themselves) and ended up bombing them to smithereens...there is very little left of the original network...there are a few entrances left though, and they're tiny...most foreigners don't fit!! cu chi was one of the hamlets where people lived in the tunnels as well...we got a chance to see some of the booby traps, as well as the chance to go through 50-100m of a rebuilt (and slightly enlarged, though still not big by anyone's definition) tunnel...
after saigon, our destination was mui ne...it's a beach town about 5 hours north of saigon...it's having problems with coastal erosion though...at high tide, the beach doesn't exist anymore in several places...it's set up oddly, at least in comparison to other beach towns...the whole thing is set along one road...which means you end up walking quite a ways to get anywhere...but that's fine...we didn't really go to mui ne to see the beach though...i had read about sand dunes that weren't too far out of town...so one day we hired a motorbike and drove out to see them...the first dunes were red...before we even turned off and parked the bike we were approached by kids wanting us to hire sleds from them...sliding down sand dunes is a lot of fun...fortunately, i had asked what the price should be while back in town, because the first price offered was eight times higher!!! i stuck to my price, and ended up hiring from the girl...she was a sweetheart too...for each slide down, she got me started, and then ran down with me...and dragged me back up the dune for another ride down...very sweet...our second set of dunes were white...much the same, though we didn't slide down these...beautiful, nonetheless...on the way back from the dunes, we got caught in a downpour...we expected it, but still...layna had a poncho, i didn't...ooops...she drove for a while, then i drove...of course, the worst of the rain happened while i was driving...at one point visibility was so bad that i had to pull over to wait it out...i was completely soaked at that point...after it lightened up a bit, i started off again, but between the continued rain and wind, i got cold...very cold...i started shivering, and figured that wasn't a safe thing...so layna and i traded and she drove the rest of the way back...despite being soaked, the day was totally awesome...
that particular day was the first of two holidays in a row in vietnam...that was national liberation day, the day the north vietnamese tanks rolled into saigon, and the south vietnamese government surrendered...as a national holiday, that meant that mui ne was full...we ended up being kicked out of our hotel, and had to find another...we were lucky to find one that wasn't super expensive...it seemed everywhere had at least tripled their prices...our second hotel turned out to be waaaaaaay better than the first though...
after moving hotels, we went for a walk through the fairy stream...it's a regular creek, but along one side of it you can see where all the rains have eroded the rock/sand...beautiful...and being that it was a holiday, there were tons of people out walking with us...we ended up walking with a group of young'uns from phan thiet, a nearby town...they were friendly, and loved taking pictures as much as layna and i do...yay!!!