It’s Boxing Day in the UK, its cold outside but I’m heading to Heathrow airport for a flight to Hong Kong. I’m going to Hong Kong as it’s cheaper than flying direct to Saigon but at this moment in time I am wishing I was not such a tight-wad with a total travel time that is going to be somewhere in the region of eighteen plus hours, but the dye is already cut as they say and I am now stuck with it come hell or high water, it’s eighteen hours like it or lump it!
Hong Kong Airport comes and goes in a flash but I manage to grab a quick drink at Starbucks to keep me going. Many many hours later fabled Saigon eventually begins to loom below me as we rapidly start our descent towards the hot tarmac runway in this land that was once known as Indochina.
After the usual airport chaos of baggage retrieval and customs checks next up on the agenda is our first taste of Saigon’s infamous traffic, a million mopeds and bikes jostle us for position on the road, even though we are in the relatively safe confines of a taxi cab it’s a heart-rending and scary journey to be sure. Tonight we are staying in The Blue Diamond Hotel near to District 1 the popular ex-colonial part of town and thankfully not too far by cab. The hotel is a mix of garish south east asia styling and concrete communism architecture, I am glad we are only staying here for a couple of nights.
Unpacked and ready to explore we venture outside onto the city streets to experience Vietnam for the first time. It’s hot, damn hot, to quote Robin Williams, as hot in fact as you see it in the Hollywood films all about Vietnam. Mopeds beep incessantly at us and the pavements are almost unnavigable, packed as they are with parked bikes & mopeds, part built oily engine stacks, street kitchens, over-flowing bars and street corner games of mahjong being played out under street lamps, we end up walking in the road more than we do on the pavements (a dangerous occupation). It’s pretty mind-blowing after twenty odd hours of travel and such an extreme climate change!
We eventually emanate as most do towards the vast covered Ben Thanh Market that also has a smaller night market operating around its walls. The madness continues as the vendors try to flog us everything under the sun played out to a background cacophony of ice-cream vendors pedalling around on bikes with binary 8-bit sounding music tracks thumping out from their outdated 1980′s looking tape players stuck with gaffer tape to the handlebars. We settle for a Tiger beer at one of the markets outdoor eateries and people watch as the madness plays out all around us. It’s a crazy introduction to Vietnam! Tomorrow though we plan to explore Saigon for real, jet-lagged or not and even though we probably will have had a few too many Tiger Beers before the night is through.
See more photos from my Indochina Adventure on Fluidr by clicking on this link: FLUIDR
