“HELLO,WHERE YOU COME FROM?”
By Jason Bickley

Wings bucking like a bronco, our aeroplane descended upon Ho Chi Minh. For a brief moment I thought we were in a little trouble. Our Thai Airways Airbus fought against the crosswinds and inevitably touched it's tyres to Vietnamese tarmac with a screech, a thud, and a lingering shudder. I felt a rush of excitement as I contemplated the experiences that were awaiting me outside the airtight doors during the next two weeks in such an 'exotic' country.

From the airport, we took a taxi our hotel had arranged for us. During this twenty minute ordeal, I realised that we were driving on the wrong side of the road (not the "left" side of the road). I had never been to a country where traffic flows on the right side, and the driver didn't make this first experience less traumatic, weaving and lurching in, out and around all manners of traffic. It was during this time that I was acquainted with Vietnam's national pastime: honking the horn. Also during this time of automotive angst, I became aware of a writing system that I could read but meant absolutely nothing to me no matter how hard or long I stared at it. Plastered everywhere were shop names, warnings, advertisements all written in 'English' yet totally undecipherable. Half an hour in the country and already the feeling of "culture shock" was starting to creep in.

For our first night, almost as if to celebrate, I ordered spicey frog legs to be charcoal-grilled on the table. Exquisite. It would've been over ten years since I last ate frog (in Thailand), but as expected they still tasted just as great as I remembered them. We would stay in Ho Chi Minh City for a few days, walking and observing, as well as buying material and ordering clothing that would be made while we traversed the rest of the country.

The same guys that took us touring around Ho Chi Minh City on the back of their motorbikes were waiting for us at 6:30 a.m. sharp one morning. Loaded with packs, we made a crisp journey to the airport, where we had time to sit down for a little breakfast. The Vietnamese, I noticed, prefer their drinks and in fact most of their food too, super-sweet. The hot chocolate I ordered was more a case of chocolate-flavoured sugar-milk.

We had come to an agreement that a detailed look at half of Vietnam would make more sense than a rushed trip around the whole country. Thus we would fly to Hué, halfway up the coast, and come back down by bus. Save the north for another day. As we boarded the propeller driven plane, that perhaps seated no more than thirty, three beautiful stewardesses greeted us. They wore scarlet aodai, the traditional attire.

The Citadel,Hué

I saw majestic mountains down below, and chuckled to myself as I snapped some photos of their craggy peaks, recollecting the fact that aerial photography used to be prohibited in Vietnam, for reasons of national security.

We finally landed at a very wet Hué Airport. Climbing down the stairs to the tarmac we saw a large bus waiting to carry us to the terminal, which was (I am not joking) 20 metres away. After our five-second bus ride, I went to collect our bags, and my friend went to buy some bus tickets into town. Two tickets at 25,000 dong miraculously added up to 57,000 dong, and we had to 'bargain' the price down to a more acceptable D50,000.

The ride into Hué was wrought with the honking of horns: each sounding drove a cold nail into my skull. By the end of the two weeks, I was attempting telepathy: trying to mentally persuade the other motorists out of the way of our buses just to avoid hearing the dreaded horn.

The girl asked us which hotel we were staying in, we told her "Hoa Hong Hotel". Sure enough, the bus pulled up outside the hotel.. which wasn't the one we were hoping for, yet it still had the same name! Our guidebooks had prepared us for a twelve-dollar hotel but this one was charging an optimistic forty dollars! We told the receptionist it was too expensive and we were on our way, but he stopped us and asked us to at least look at the twenty-dollar rooms. We did, and said that though they were very nice, it was still more than what we wanted to spend. He finally gave up and asked us how much we wanted to pay for the room, leaving the ball in our court, so to speak. Startled that he was bargaining with us, we stood our ground, and said between 12-15 dollars, and he said ok, he would take us to a 12-15 dollar hotel.

Leading us out the back end of the Hoa Hong, we arrived at the Phuong Hoang. 15 dollars with breakfast, or 12 dollars without. Done. We dropped our packs, and lay down to rest. Next day, we changed hotels: the bathroom door was broken, the hot water cut out after five minutes, and the room was freezing cold.

The Vietnamese love to touch your stuff. One case involved a restaurant, where I had been led into almost against my will. I only wanted a coconut, and I was promised one so we sat down and waited. Within five minutes our proprietor returned with a large sesame-seed cracker, 25 cm across, with accompanying dishes containing a mixture of herbs and miniature shellfish. Stunned that all this food, which hadn't been ordered, suddenly appeared we didn't know what to do. The shop keeper soon showed us what to do: he bent down and broke a corner off the cracker, scooped up some of the side dish and popped it into his mouth, smacking his lips with approval.

In Hué we had our first cyclo experience (pronounced "see-klo"). For those that don't know, they are a three-wheeled form of human-powered taxi. The customers sit in a seat on the front between two large wheels, and the driver pedals away behind them. One drizzly evening we were persuaded to go for a cyclo tour of the sights of Hué. Fitting my 195 cm frame and my friend into the seat was fine, for the first ten minutes, but 2 hours later, soaked from the rain and losing feeling in our toes, we had had enough (no doubt the driver, who was pushing 150 kg worth of human luggage was relieved too). And all the sights he had promised to show us? We never went near them. In the failing light, we managed to see some walls, some trees, and a large rat.

Bullet holes in Hué

Hué gave us one day's worth of fine weather before we departed, where we were able to go on an impromptu cycle tour of the city's ruins. The biggest attractions by far here are the Citadel and old Imperial City. During the "Tet Offensive", Hué was the site of one of the bloodiest battles, and even today, bullet holes and war-scars abound in walls and monuments.

Another delight in Hué was a French/Italian restaurant called La Carrambole. The waitresses there spoke a variety of languages, in particular our waitress had a bubbly personality and was quite fluent in English, apart from when she tried to pronounce the dish I ordered: "Fried Fish with Five Spicey Sauces". It was a cozy restaurant, with a great atmosphere, so I was a little disappointed when my "Fried Fish with Five Shpaishee Shauces", as she pronounced it, had only one flavour I could distinguish: pepper.

It was with mixed feelings that we departed this town, to continue on the rest of our journey of Southern Vietnam.