I don’t normally travel for a week. I have always looked
down on people who think it’s worthwhile to go to another country for a mere
few days. I snobbishly presumed that if you can tell people you have been to
another country, one should spend AT LEAST a month to be able to say you were really
there, and probably more. These were the kind of thoughts I had when I was a
student with 3 months holidays in the summer and a further 6 weeks in the
winter and when I was a vagabond traveling from country to country, just earning
enough money to get by. And then I got a
real job. Well kind of, my hours can be a little ridiculous to be called “a
real job” but be that as it may, from Monday to Friday I have to be at least
somewhere near Pohang and I have only 2 weeks in this long 14 months for
gallivanting besides my weekends. 
My first holiday finally appeared and a friend and
myself bought tickets to Vietnam at a bit of a whim. I wanted to go somewhere
in SE Asia and the price seemed right. After looking at a few things on the
internet as to “what to see” and “what to do” in Vietnam, I felt overwhelmed
and stressed by all the information so rather, to alleviate stress, we went
ahead with no plan and presumed we would figure out what do when we arrived. 
There is this wonderful site called Couchsurfing where
travelers can get into contact with other people all over the world and ask
them to stay at their house for free. The idea of couchsurfing is very much on
a pay it forward basis. I give a couch to you to sleep on and hopefully down
the line you will give a couch to someone else. This obviously is not always
the case, some people are definitely more givers and others do a bunch more
taking but in general my couch surfing experiences have turned out quite
wonderfully. In saying this I have done a bunch more hosting than surfing,
finding that getting in touch with someone and organizing a place to stay
before I go to a place would entail that I know where I’m going to be on what
day which is not really how my life works. But for once I was assured I was
going to be in city for at least on night so I organized a place to stay for Tiffany
and I, hoping to glean some information about the country.
Well things turned out easier than we expected, we were
fetched from the airport by a driver who took us and our new couch surfing
friend to the heart of Ho Chi Minh’s nightlife at 1 in the morning. Wewere escorted
into a mad scene after a day of travel and began to dance the night out. A few
hours later we went on to an apartment that looked like a holiday resort and a
big double bed to share and a try in a real racing car seat attached to a video
game. We woke the next day to greet the city with our appetites and had my first
yummy breakfast in a restaurant for a looooong time. When you wake up in Korea
before 10am on a weekend you won’t find even coffee shops open and only if you
are near a Dunkin Donuts will you get anything resembling breakfast (you can
get a rather gross bacon and egg bagel from dunkin donuts but it’s not exactly
the things of dreams.) Here there were eggs done in all sort of styles and
baguettes (bread! I LOVE bread!) and omelettes and such supreme yumminess and
the best thing was, at this fancy resort/ apartment restaurant- it was so
cheap. As Tiffany and I continued our journey through the country in our
precious days we found that almost no matter what restaurant we went to and
what we ordered, it was delicious and between us would come to the grand total
of 3 dollars (tiny exaggeration but pretty much true). 
We then went on to drink coconut milk out of huge coconuts
on the side of the street and went to a large colourful market full of all
those colourful Asian things that you see everyone coming home from holiday
with. Then onwards to the “must see” War Museum. It was basically a big
building full of different pictures of different people doing different
atrocities to each other. I really didn’t know much about the war and I didn’t
find out much about the war in the museum, just that it was terrible and a lot of people
were affected by it. In fact, because of the Agent Orange chemical that a lot
of people came into contact with many people are still suffering today as it
still affects generations later where babies are built with arms and wit other
strange deformities. One of the craziest photos I saw was of Siamese twins
being born with one body and a head at each end. So that was rather harrowing
and not too informative because it was mostly about the atrocities that befell
Vietnam in the war and was really one sided and I’m sure there must have been 2
sides to the story. 
We headed back to our couchsurfing friend’s house and
started making plans for the next day. There was the Mekong Delta which is a
pretty touristy thing to do but we figured we would go along. A friend of our host
showed us a picture of the brown river and said “and you want to go THERE?” I
don’t know what she expected us to do in Vietnam for 1 week but apparently she
thought it sounded like a terrible idea to spend a day tripping around a delta.
Not too deterred by her patronizing of a place she’d never been to, we booked a
tour which included a bus ride for 2 hours in the morning and back in the
evening, boat trips and honey tasting,
coconut candy eating, a massive lunch and bike riding all for the exorbitant
price of 10 dollars. I’ve never been one for tours but time was short and we
hopped on the bus and had the most wonderful of days. The brown water was not
made from dirt after all and Vietnamese people rowed us through beautiful tributaries
linking to delta side villages, coconut upon coconut piled upon each other and
I cycled to through these tiny lanes and found a woman under a shelter with a
huge knife slicing coconut after coconut and pouring it into huge vats to make
coconut candy. What I loved about this tour really was the variety of people on
it. Living in the city that I do the only foreigners and thus English speakers,
are students in their 20s and English teachers also in their 20s. When I see a
western child or an older western person I gape like the Koreans are constantly
gaping at us, they are such a strange sight! On the tour was an old Polish
scientist, a Spanish family, another American also teaching in Korea, a Korean
couple, a Swiss couple, a Dutch girl and a few Vietnamese and some other languages
I didn’t know kept popping up. 
We made our way that night on a rickety and incredibly slow
train to the beach town of Nha Trang. Well, I say rickety yet it’s not Africa,
people are quiet and respectful, everyone has a designated seat to themselves
and besides the aircon which was ridiculously cold and woke me up several times
to rearrange my blanket it was quite a pleasant journey. We arrived at 6 in the
morning and made our way directly to the beach. In the morning light we saw the
beach was filled with Vietnamese- playing volleyball, swimming, laughing like
it was the afternoon yet it was only 6’o clock. We saw islands stretch before us
in the bay and the water was sweet to swim in. Simply gorgeous. After finding
some internet and backpackers to stay in we decided to talk to a travel agent
about how to get to Halong Bay which was the one thing that had stuck in my
mind from all my fruitless searching. After discussing how we would probably
need to fly to Hanoi if we wanted to get to Halong Bay (Vietnam being the
incredible long thin country it is) she asked me what I wanted to do with my
day. I replied that I wanted something exciting to do and she said “well there’s
a boat where you can spend the day snorkeling and exploring islands, sing
karaoke and get free lunch and a bus ride for 7 dollars” I replied in the
affirmative and asked her when it was. She replied “Now” and thus I grabbed
Tiffany out of the shower and we grabbed a towel and a camera and got on the
bus to spend another day on a boat. This one was a little different and
definitely geared towards the party spirit of young travels and the day was
raucous to say the least. We met some VERY loud Canadian friends who were also
teaching in Korea and spent the day dancing and singing on a boat. Stopping at
various islands to see some thing or other and went snorkeling in a beautiful
coral reef with such colourful fishes! Then at some point they brought out
their very own drag queen who sang us a bunch of bouncy Vietnamese songs and a
Vietnamese band. And the most EXQUISITE lunch that no one could finish.
We arrived back in the evening after a fun filled day to go
shopping for fun Vietnamese things like a new bikini (yay) and cheese sticks (battered
cheese- the best thing in the world) and spent the evening continuing the party
in more little restaurants and clubs.
So the next day, after beach lounging and eating some
ridiculously fancy food for not much money by a tropical pool (it felt so un-Mary
but also so great to just lie around and eat food all day) I decided it was
time to take my scooter skills to the road. I hired a bike for the ridiculous
price of 2.5 dollars and went exploring the pretty town of Nha Trang. I sailed
to the outskirts and made my way up a dirt track over a mountain and descended
into another world. I finally felt like I’d hit a moment of real Vietnam. Over
the mountain was no more tourist shops just a dirty street filled with all
sorts of people doing their thing, eating, talking, selling things, old women walking
hand in hand in their Vietnamese hats, children playing games and smiling. I
wanted to carry on driving ‘til I found a good field to sleep in and keep on
driving but we had a plane to catch so I headed back to the hostel and soon I
was sitting in a tiny airport waiting to go to Hanoi.
Hanoi greated us with a wave of wet sticky humid air. Oh it
was hot. Going further north in some countries does not mean it gets colder by
any means and we realized this as we walked out of the airport. There was no
happy face to greet us this time and we got royally ripped off by some taxi guy
(when we paid a sixth of the price on the way back) but one way or another we
got to the hustle bustle city of Hanoi and to a backpackers that in terrible
English told us there was no room. The next place also had no room and we
wandered sadly down the street till we asked a travel guy where another
backpackers was. “Ah!” he said. “But WE are a hotel, stay here” “How much” I
asked. 15 dollars for 2 which was cheaper than the hostel for a private room
and bathroom and workable aircon. We exhaustedly fell into bed and woke the
next morning to find some breakfast and the street we were meeting ANOTHER tour
bus that was taking us for an overnight trip on Halong Bay. We found a little
café on the street and after much confusion whether they would actually bring
us food or had food to give us they showed up with 3 eggs each and a yummy
baguette and Vietnamese iced coffee with condensed milk inside. Oh yummy
happiness! We then found the tour place and the bus arrived on time and we made
our way another 3 hours or so to Halong Bay. 
A rather cramped and pretty bumpy bus ride later, (although,
yet again, this is not Africa and unless I have someone else’s child on my lap
and there are 2 lanes fairly clean of potholes to be driven on I cannot find
reason to complain) we arrived at this most coveted Halong Bay. I couldn’t help
but really want to see this place, the pictures online are exquisite and it has
recently become one of the new seven wonders in the world. It is a huge bay
packed with island upon island which are more like huge rocks rising out of the
water. The water looked clean in photos and I wanted to kayak through the
caves.
So we boarded a little boat that brought us to a big boat
with lots and lots of plants on it. We had our own fancy cabin and a deck to
lounge on and a lovely dining room. Apparently we had paid less than the other
people on the boat and we got bumped up for some reason on some sort of fancy
tour. However, unlike our other ridiculous tour guides, with lots of silly
jokes and dodgy innuendos this tour guide was a very serious. The timetable was
strict, and unlike everywhere else we had been the drinks (which we had to pay
for) were expensive. Nonetheless we
found ourselves kayaking around some rocky islands later and eating delicious
food for lunch and then for dinner. We also stopped at a “beach” that we were
meant to swim in but the water was pretty dirty and unappetizing so I joined
some Vietnamese in a volleyball game. The next day we went to walk around a
giant cave where our rather dour tour guide pointed out lots of supposed animal
shapes in the rocks. I enjoyed seeing the animal shapes in the rocks but he
didn’t tell us any more about the cave so I poached some other people’s tours
(a skill I have learned from my father)and learnt a bunch of things I promptly
forgot but enjoyed at the moment.
The Halong Bay experience, which I had been most interested
in seeing and which is why we ended up flying up and down the country within
one short week, honestly turned into maybe the most disappointing thing about
the trip. I mean, it was absolutely exquisite but the tourist industry has just
killed the water and even though pictures show clear blue water the reality is
that tour boats and rubbish have littered the water to the point where I just
didn’t want to touch it and I’m sure it has killed a lot of the life there.
However, after all these sad feelings that I had seeing such an insanely
beautiful place getting destroyed simply because it is so beautiful I read in
the Vietnamese newspaper that efforts are being made to clean up along Halong
Bay and monitor the fishing and preserving the wildlife and they hope to get
the program fully working by 2013 so all is not lost. (I hope). 
We arrived back in
hot hot hot Hanoi and found a very lively, clean and air conditioned back
packers to spend our last night in. We spent the evening on the street on tiny
stools where a Vietnamese man was selling his keg of beer for R3 for 50
American cents a cup. The next day was hot. Just so hot. I spent my morning
roaming the tourist stores and then headed back to the hostel because all I
really wanted to do in the heat was lie under a fan and read a book. Which is
exactly what I started doing till I overheard a conversation about a waterpark
and invited myself along. Well, this was no Korea. The waterpark was big, with
lots of slides and no lines. And no rules it seemed. I saw 2 life jackets on
children, only had the whistle blown at me a few times but for the most part I
just saw life guards playing with their phones, not really watching people. So
happy after the stringent and boring Korean water park experience to go to a
park that was super cheap and lots of fun. I made my way back to the
backpackers, got tiffany, headed to a taxi tat shot us a ridiculous deal of 5
dollars to get back to the airport for both of us, ate my last yummy as yummy
street noodle Vietnamese soup and headed to the airport. 
What I really liked in Vietnam was the energy of the place.
Maybe it’s a bit much really, streets absolutely bursting with motorbike after
motorbike but I like that people wake up in the morning and do things. I was
never begged from once, people only sell to you. Everyone is working hard to
make ends meet and I didn’t see many people who seemed to be above the normal
price bracket. I liked all the incredible food coming from everywhere, street
food so cheap and so delicious. After living in a country where to me most
things are inedible, being able to eat almost everything that was offered was
such a relief. (Besides the restaurant
which served every animal under the sun on their menu- dog, snake, rabbit-
anything, you can get it).
