Life is not measured ....

Vietnam

I expected Ho Chi Minh City to be much the same as Bangkok but it is quite different. It is still hot and roads busy and fast moving but there is a definite charm and character about the place which we warm to straight away.

The local currency is the Dong ($1NZ = 10000 Dong and £1 = 30000 Dong) so for a short time we can enjoy being millionaires!

We are staying in the Grand Hotel which is built in French colonial style architecture like many other buildings in the city and it is within a couple of minutes walk from the Saigon river.

Our first full day is spent investigating the city. We see the Notre Dame Cathedral and then visit the Reunification Hall which was formerly the Presidential Palace. Communist tanks crashed through the palace gates in 1975, marking the end of the Vietnam War. Louise and Daniel are fascinated by the tanks and fighter aircraft in the grounds so we tell them a bit about the war and then we go inside the main building and down to the basement there are the radio rooms and war control rooms. After a brief ice cream stop, we wander down the wide open streets until we get to the Ben Thanh market. It is packed with stalls selling everything you can imagine, it is buzzing and we pick up a tapestry picture and some more silk. Everywhere we go, people are fascinated by the kids, they are taking it all in their stride.

Yesterday we took a two hour drive out of the city to the Mekong Delta. On the way we passed paddy fields and stopped to watch local Vietnamese people in their familiar “light shade” bonnets harvesting the rice. At the Mekong Delta we take a boat across the river to see local life along the tributaries. A huge variety of tropical fruit is grown here, we get to try some whilst listening to some local music (the instruments are interesting but the singing is warbled at best!), we also see coconut candy making and Ben bravely pokes his finger into a beehive to taste the honey. We then get into a sampan (a small open canoe type boat), sitting carefully to keep it balanced, and we row through some of the canals.

There are great restaurants here: on our first night we ate traditional Vietnamese at a place called the Lemongrass; the following day we had a Vietnamese BBQ – cooking on a hot plate in the middle of the table and yesterday we went to the Underground where they do great Mexican. The food is fantastic and very cheap.

On our last full day we took a tour out the Cu Chi tunnels – about 250km of underground tunnels and rooms built by the Viet Con during the war. Our guide, Chou was fantastic, bringing the whole experience to life for Louise and Daniel. We were not subjected to the propaganda videos you hear about but we did get to see the many traps that were setup with their vicious spikes, examples of the camouflage used and the some of the rooms (like the weapons room and kitchen) built into the network of tunnels. The kids scramble and we crawl through about 100m of the tunnels – they are dark and stifling with different levels and routes – it is difficult to imagine how the soldiers lived and fought a war from here for 20 years.

Vietnam photos

Vietnam is definitely a place we’d like to explore more of sometime …

posted by Sharon, Ben, Louise and Daniel @ 5:03 am 0 comments

Bangkok

We arrive into Bangkok late at night, the heat hits as we get off the plane and the whole place is bustling with people and cars. It is very different to anywhere else we have ever visited.

The first morning we got in a tuk-tuk and travelled across the city, it was quite an experience!! A tuk-tuk is basically a moped with a covered trailer at the back – we squeezed in and then the driver took to the streets – it was scary stuff, these guys weave in and out of the traffic and because it is all open, you also get quite close to everything that is whizzing past. We discovered first hand why this form of transport is so cheap – not only do you risk life and limb but we also had various shop stops en route where the driver gets some sort of backhander for taking unsuspecting tourists in the hope that they will buy the suits, gems or whatever else is on sale. We found it all quite an eye opener but as there was the four of us at least we could have a laugh about it all. It could easily have felt quite intimidating. From there we took a boat trip down some of the canals off the river, the water was very mirky but it was really interesting to see where locals live right on the river – a real contrast to the high tech shops of downtown Bangkok. In the evening at the hotel we had a Thai meal with a show afterwards, it didn’t disappoint, the costumes were amazing, beautiful silk and very colourful.

We survived the heat, luckily the hotel had a good swimming pool so we were able to cool off each afternoon. We went to the Grand Palace which had temples galore and was full of gold statues and the odd Buddha. Everyone seemed to be fascinated by the kids – I think it must be good luck in Thailand to have one of each as lots of people oohed and aaghed about the fact that we had a boy and a girl. Daniel got used to people just wanting to touch him and Louise even had her photo taken with some Asian tourists.

You can’t visit Bangkok without a bit of shopping and we certainly did our bit. Ben had a casual suit tailor made, Louise bought a purple kimono and Daniel found a dragon paper light. We got into the whole haggling business and had quite a lot of fun, although I’m not sure we bagged any “real” bargains!

Bangkok photos

posted by Sharon, Ben, Louise and Daniel @ 4:38 am 0 comments