Vietnam & Cambodia  :  10^th – 24^th January 2018

Part 1  :  Vietnam  :  10^th – 16^th January

Day 1

Wed. 10th January 2018

National Express phones at 0550 to say breakdown delay. Take Wessex Cars to airport, costs £75. Good Italian breakfast at Heathrow.  Plane leaves on time at 1100. Lunch - or supper served after one hour. Smooth flight – 12 hours to Saigon.

 

Day 2

Thurs. 11th January 2018

Plane arrives 15 minutes early and we clear the airport rapidly. Met by guide Thuy and driver Vu, who take us to the Liberty Central Citypoint hotel. We are in our hotel room less than 90 minutes from landing.

Have large breakfast - international buffet with additional cooked Vietnamese dishes and good coffee. Excellent display and variety. Then collapse in our room on the 11th floor until noon.

Go for brief walk past the City Museum (poor reports on Trip Adviser). Hot and stuffy outside with the streets packed with motor scooters. Have lunch at the Ben Thanh Street Food Market. There are masses of stalls selling all varieties of cooked dishes with seating on benches around wooden tables at both the front and back. One orders, pays and then takes a flag to a table and is quickly served. Two spring rolls, two big bowls of Phur soup with noodles and prawns and meat plus two beers for 250000 dong or about £9. Good but SMB not clever with slippery noodles and chopsticks! Decide we need further rest so stagger back to the hotel via the huge Ban Thanh market. Interestingly almost all the market stall holders are women.

We are collected at 1800 by guide Vu and set up on the back of two Vespas for a city and restaurant tour. Vu comes on a separate bike and there is a third Vespa rider in case one breaks down! Vu is well educated and both speaks and understands English very well. The first stop is by the French bridge, designed by Eiffel, for a drink and view of the town. The drive through the streets, both main and side streets is amazing. A mass of traffic, mainly scooters, moving in all directions but somehow managing not to collide and with consideration for others.

SMB on Vespa

An excellent fish meal at Juan Hai San of razor clams in water spinach, small scallops with peanuts and clams in broth is followed by another rapid winding ride through back streets to the Hoang Tam restaurant. Here we eat noodles, mushrooms, greens and slices of beef all cooked in a rich creamy broth, the cooking being done by Vu at our table.

Cooking with Vu

Not yet done with the evening we then ride on to a bar with a singer and accompanists to drink coconut juice and listen to the music with crackling amplification. However, quite soon exhaustion starts to set in so we ride the scooters back to the Liberty Central, arriving around 2145.

A final nightcap is taken on the 19th floor looking out over the city.

 

Day 3

Fri. 12th January 2018

A good night’s sleep is followed by a large and excellent breakfast. At 0900 we meet guide Thuy to start our city tour. First stop is the French cathedral built c.1870 but at present closed for renovation. Thence to the huge Post Office just across the road, built at a similar time by the French in style reminiscent of Paris railways stations.

Saigon Post Office

 A visit to the Royal Palace follows. This is a new building of 1966, replacing the previous, and was used as a residence by the presidents of the south and as a control centre with bunker during the war. Nowadays it is still used for some state ceremonies.

Leaving the Palace we stop briefly for coffee before visiting the war museum. There is one floor with good historic information of the liberation struggles against the French and thereafter, another floor of photographs of the war and a third, rather horrendous, floor showing the wartime atrocities of bombings, torture and Agent Orange damage to people and vegetation.

Lunch is Phur, involving much slurping and sucking of noodles. Amazingly cheap, including a drink, for the three of us 160,000 dong or around £6. Then a drive along the French boulevard to Chinatown, inhabited by one million Chinese. This is a drive-through tour with a stop to visit a Confucian Temple where huge quantities of incense are being burnt.

We get back to the hotel just after 1500 having had a fascinating six hour tour. We will not see Thuy again as tomorrow we will be collected at 0700 for our river trip to the tunnels by a guide from the river trip company. However on Sunday an Audley driver will take us to join the Mekong River cruise.

After a siesta we walk across the street to the Rex hotel where we have a drink on the 5th floor roof garden. Not a high rise hotel but old and traditional. This is where Simon used to drink and write letters home.

Rex Hotel Rooftop Bar

Eat supper at Quan an Ngon restaurant recommended by Audley. A big place, full of locals, but with space. Order a mixed plate but not a success with SMB who finds it difficult to roll up dry rice papers into a roll with veg and meat and then even more difficult to chew these. The fried chicken’s feet are also rather gristly. There was a massive menu and we would have done better selecting several individual dishes.

 

Day 4

Sat. 13th January 2018

Set early alarm to have breakfast before being picked up by minibus at 7am to drive to starting point for river trip up Saigon River to Cu Chi tunnels. Speed boat carrying a dozen tourists takes about an hour (about 50km), arriving at Cu Chi about 8.30. On the river much local traffic and our boat has to weave a course through rafts of floating water hyacinths. On the way see a lot of birds subsequently identified as Javan Pond Herons. Guide leads us in small group on half-hour jungle walk, stopping at places to give info on construction and use of tunnels (huge network of about 250 km were built), VC organisation, grisly body traps, etc., all very informative. AMB (but not SMB!) has brief claustrophobic and dusty crawl through enlarged part of tunnel. Then good early lunch at Cu Chi landing stage before trip back to Saigon.

Vietcong Models

After siesta walk to visit Ho Chi Minh statue, Opera House and river bank, reached by crossing major road and taking life in both legs. Return to hotel for rest before supper.

Decide to go back again to Quan An Ngon restaurant as we enjoyed the ambience last night even if we chose badly. This time choose more selectively from the huge menu and thoroughly enjoy a meal of buttered clams, deep fried octopus, water spinach and rice with crab. With a couple of beers each and a decent tip the cost is 650,000 dong or about £22. Stagger back feeling very well fed.

Quan An Ngon Restaurant

 

Day 5

Sun. 14th January 2018

Large breakfast before checking out. Met by guide Ti and his driver who drive us out of Saigon to the Mekong delta where cruise ship Tonle Pandaw is moored. Ti is a superb guide, giving us detailed information on the way on the customs of the Mekong delta people, farming methods in paddy fields, etc. After a drive of 90 minutes we are the first to arrive at the boat - the gangway not yet rigged. Shown to our very comfortable cabin, we unpack, then make our way up to the top deck for a drink. A safety briefing is followed by lunch and the opportunity to meet some of the 40 or so other passengers.

Tonle Pandaw cabin

At about 1500 the Tonle Pandaw slips her mooring and we set off. We sit on deck looking across at panorama of jungle banks as we motor upriver towards Cai Be (about 30 miles). There are a lot of cargo ships moving up and down the river, mostly sand and gravel carriers, very heavily laden and low in the water. Weather unfortunately very cloudy and murky today. We anchor near Cai Be for the night.

Tonle Pandaw

Drinks on sun deck at 6pm, followed by performance by amateur band of four local farmer-musicians, who arrive by sampan and play sundry Vietnamese instruments, together with three singers who do comedy folk song act. Musicians and their instruments introduced and explained by Pandaw guide. Then supper and coffee/conversation with some of our fellow passengers.

 

Day 6

Mon. 15th January 2018

Up early for a cup of tea on the sundeck, then a substantial cooked breakfast with omelettes. At 0830 we get into large motorised sampans and are transferred near the shore to 3-person sampans propelled by oars or punts. Travel up narrow tributaries, still tidal, past a few houses.

SMB in Sampan

Then transfer back to the motor sampans for a trip around the floating market at Cai Be. This is a wholesale market with each vessel displaying its particular wares by tying a sample to a pole. Before lunch we have an illustrated lecture on some of the history of Vietnam.

After a large and good 3 course lunch we are able to relax for an hour before two more motorised sampans arrive to take us ashore to visit a market on the land at Sa Dec. Masses of fruit, veg, herbs and spices, but also big variety of meat and fish. Among the more unusual produce on display are three kinds of rats, which are fed either on pineapple, coconut or rice, and apparently taste of their diet! Also toads, live, as well as chicks, ducklings, hens feet etc!

 

 

Rats for Sale

 

Then another short ride in the sampans to visit the ‘Lover house’, where the hero of Marguerite Duras’ book ‘Indochine’ lived. Thence return at about 1600 to the Tonle Pandaw, which shortly thereafter ups anchor and we set off up river again to anchor in late evening.

 

Mekong River Boat

 

Day 7

Tues. 16th January 2018

After usual large breakfast, we are picked up by fast bumboats to visit tilapia floating fish farm and Cham minority village of Chau Doc. Trip ashore is fast, takes 50 minutes, about 15-20 miles. Many fish farms and much shipping. At fish farm told about finances of fish farming and farming process. Fish live in water under floating houses. Farmer stocks 120,000 fish, fish take 9 months to grow, ending with 100 tonnes of fish, farmer makes profit of $25,000, so has good living with his family.

Chan Doc Fish Farm

Back on board bumboats to visit Cham village - Muslim enclave. Ashore by raised footpath, houses on stilts because of flooding, although floods much less common now because Chinese building dams upriver. The villagers, who were Hindu before they went to Java in about 15th century, had to become Muslim there. They came to Vietnam in 17th century. Women wear hijab, but religion not a strict as some other countries. Vietnamese government gives them free education, but also communist propaganda. Visit mosque.

Cham Village Weaver

Back on board Tonle Pandaw for lunch, then at 1500 there is a tour of the galley, engine room and wheelhouse. We only join in to see the last. Radar, GPS with a basic plot, rotatable twin screws, no echo sounder.

At 1530 set off up river having had to stop to clear customs and immigration at border with Cambodia. The river is now noticeably emptier with no dredging or gravel boats and few other craft. Equally there are now only very few houses on the banks. The chef gives a demonstration of fruit carving and making rice paper spring rolls. SMB buys a dressing gown made by disabled Cambodians.

Cheerful after-supper chat on sundeck. Cambodian barman very forthcoming about his family and his life, - intelligent and charming young guy with excellent English. He is son of poor fisherman’s family on Tonle Sap, only one to have left the lake and gone to the city where he managed to train as a waiter and barman. Now with a good job, sends all his wages home to support his parents and younger siblings.

We arrive near Phnom Penh at about 2230 to anchor off the city for the night, ready to move in to the landing stage the next morning.