good morning vietnam

well in fact it was afternoon by the time i got there on the 5th, but it felt like the morning rush hour. but then again, i think it is rush hour 24 hours a day in Ho chi minh city (HCMC).

its amazing that my taxi to pham ngu lao, the back packers district, didnt crash into anything. in fact i only saw one accident the whole time i was there. the traffic is like organised chaos. people and ducking and swerving all over the place, they toot their horn, not to tell people to move, but more to say i am here!

just crossing the road is a trial. but i figured out the best way to do it is just step out and hope for the best. they bikes go around you, its only the busses you need to worry about. there are not that many cars at all.

i checked into my hotel. only $12 a night! with breakfast! and set off to explore the town by night. the area i was staying in was full to the brim of foriengers. i think half of australia was in HCMC that week too.

some things i noticed:

you can carry the following things on a motorbike
- 4 people
- 5 slabs of beer
- 6 mattresses
- a pot plant
- soup
- two computers

you can buy the following things from people in the street who come up to you while you are sitting at a resturant
- gum
- books
- tiger balm
- hammocks
- sunglasses

there is no such thing as refrigeration at a market. meat just sits out on the table

it is legitimate to have your 2 y.o. son out at 11pm if it helps you sell on of the above items

the vietnamese food in australia is better than the vietnamese food in vietnam

people try to steal your bags when they ride past you on a bike

the drive on the other side of the road (most of the time)

there are no road rules

beer is extremely cheap here

the list could go on..

on my first full day i spent the day exploring HCMC. I went to the market, the war museum, the reunification palace, the notre dam cathederal, the post office etc. all the big sights in HCMC. by the end of the day my feet were falling off.

in the evening i went to a bar to try and make friends. it is actually pretty hard to do this i found. most people on holdiay were either their with their partners or close friends. its hard to be on the outside of a group. i finally found another 2 women from australia who were travelling by themselves and we partied the night away

on the next day i set off for a 3 day trip of the mekong delta. the prices here for tours are uneblievable. $26 USD for 3 days, all busses, boats and accom. all we had to pay for was food.

i dont know if i can remember all the places we visited along the way, but we spent a lot of time on boats cruising along the mekong river and its canals.

the river is huge. i think he said 3km at its widest point. but i found it more interesting along the narrower cannals where we could see the banks and the lives of the people along the way.

the tour showed us lots of the industry along the canals. mainly rice related, but some fruit and construction. we say how to make rice paper, coconut candy, vermicilli noodles, bricks, fish farming, insence, weaving, bonsai trees, floating markets, boat builing etc

it was really interesting and we also got a lot of time to wander through the villages and interact with the people there. its amazing how poor they are, yet how happy they are. it really brings you back to earth and shows you that you dont need all the things that we think we do. ipods, computers, fancy cars etc. they live with so little, their houses are so small and unstable, but they have the biggest smiles i have ever seen.

the tour brought us back to HCMC in the evening of the 9th and i was able to catch up with some of the JETs from Ibaraki who were also travelling in Vietnam at the same time.

My last day i visited the Cu Chi Tunnels on a tour which cost all of $4. It is another amazing place. we were able to crawl through the real tunnels to see what it was like for the people who built them during the war. I only went through 30 metres of it but i could have gone for 90 metres. The tunnels are only 1.2m high and 70 cm wide. it is very very tight in there and i didnt have a torch. after 30 metres i knew what it felt like and decided it wasnt worth doing another 60...

Our tour guide was a veteran from the South Vietnamese side and had lots of stories to tell. It is a must see for anyone visiting HCMC.

There was a very sad thing that we found out on the tour however. 5 days earlier a korean man had commited suicide at the shooting range next to the tunnels. normally on this tour you get to go to the range to shoot real machine guns and he turned one on himself. so naturally the raneg was closed until investigations could be completed. i didnt want to go there anyway, but it is very sad that this kind of thing could happen.

at the end of my last day i went back to the market to ofload all the vietnamese dong and USD i had left in my wallet. i am not a very good bargainer so i went through it pretty quickly. but i am happy with my purchases. i always feel too sorry for the people trying to sell me things and i dont push them to lower their prices. but what i bought i would have bought in japan anyway and it was still cheaper.

i came out with some winter coats, some beads, new sunnies, some t-shirts for tom, some vietnamese coffee, some pants for me and a t-shirt for me. i am pretty happy with them all.

i got back to japan at 7am on wednesday and i was stuffed. my flight hadnt left HCMC till midnight so i had to kill a lot of hours between going to the market and the airport. i spent it at the pub reading a book and till a found some people to talk to. my taxi driver to the airport was hilarious. he loved karaoke and he even had a list of the songs he wanted to sing with him to share. i sang a few to fill in the 30 min drive with him.

now i am back at work and have lots to do to get my australian movie seminar off the ground. i have spent the day trawling through copyright laws to find out if i can even show these movies. i think i can get away with it under the heading of education. anyways i am going to try.

i will put up some photos of the vietnam trip in the next few days so keep you eyes peeled.