New Year in Vietnam

“I suppose things could be worse” was the thought that went through my head as I saw out the remaining hours of 2012 with Soma. The fact that these remaining hours were being spent on the deck of a small  ship cruising the Mekong Delta, watching the stars, whilst digesting some quite excellent lobster thermidor clearly played a part in this assessment.

Sitting back at home in Jakarta, Soma and I both agree on this short cruise as the high point of our holiday. The boys beg to differ, citing the easy access to Cartoon Network in our hotel rooms in Saigon as far more important! However, out holiday was not limited solely to sitting on boats and watching cartoons!

We arrived in Ho Chi Minh City early evening on the last Saturday of 2012. In fact, my curiosity had been aroused about an hour earlier, on the Air Asia flight- a small niggling issue but one that needed an answer. The name of our destination was Ho Chi Minh City, a city named after the respected leader of the Vietnamese through much of their struggle for independence, first from the French and then from the Americans. The name appeared on our tickets and in many other places. However, both the cabin crew and a number of other people at the airport seemed to persist with the older name of Saigon. According to Nguyen our guide, HCM is reserved for official use only- most people still fondly refer to the place as Saigon. Consistent with past family practice with regards to Bombay, Calcutta and Madras (whoever heard of a “Lamb Chennai” anyway), I’ll stick to Saigon.

Basically, Saigon was to be our base for the whole holiday. We headed out for a few days at a time, but always came back to the same place- the boys favourite hotel on account of its excellent buffet breakfast and reliable access to cartoons- the Novotel.

The Water Puppet Theatre in Saigon

Upon arriving in Saigon, our guide warned us that the traffic was especially bad. I guess Jakarta must be truly shocking as there was never a time when we found ourselves irretrievably stuck- just the usual crowded streets of a ten million population city. Saigon is the largest city in Vietnam, though not the capital- the price I guess for being on the losing side of the war. The city is pretty large and crowded but also quite green. The four or five days we spent there were largely spent either working our way through the markets, looking for fabrics for Soma, going to our first ever water puppet theatre show- still unsure exactly how they do it and visiting some long lost friends. Actually, in catching up with some good friends from our Cairo days, we managed to make a rather positive point to the boys. While losing friends all the time is a definite downside to expat life, one upside is that sometimes you find them again in odd places. Sure enough, the kids played together as if the six years apart had never happened.

The second town we visited was about three hours drive south of Saigon. Can Tho is the largest town on the Mekong Delta and a busy centre of commerce. The Mekong area is largely flat and covered by rice padis. Our guide told us that this area was one of the top five rice producing areas in the world and that, despite its modest population,  Vietnam was the seventh largest consumer of rice. You can see why too. Rice is everywhere- steamed or fried, as an ingredient for the omnipresent noodles and as paper to surround the delicious spring rolls. The guide told us a Vietnamese folk tale about how rice had originally fallen from the skies, with the people only needing to set out a properly arranged dish to capture it. Apparently one group of people got a bit lazy, failed to set out the dishes properly, annoyed the gods and ended up having to plant the stuff instead. As you can imagine, with stories such as this, and several conversations between the guide and Soma over various words for rice (apparently Vietnamese and Hindi are similar in having different words for planted rice, raw rice and cooked rice), the hours just flew by.

Our home for New Years 2012- the Bassac

At Can Tho, we stepped off our bus and onto the Bassac, a beautiful, six cabin boat that was to be our home for the next 24 hours. Having bade farewell for 2012 to our guide, we stepped aboard. The boat was stunning- made entirely of wood. We had adjoining cabins- one for us, one for the boys. A little cramped but such is life on a boat! After settling in, we sat down to lunch. Soma will agree with me that all three meals on this boat were exceptional. I’d be thrilled at food like this anywhere, but to prepare it on a boat- wow! After the obligatory stop off at a traditional village to see how they make rugs, we boarded the Bassac again, enjoyed dinner and took to the top deck to spend a memorable New Year’s Eve under the stars.

 Similar to how we greeted 2009 on a deserted Andaman beach, I decided to so something similar this time. Kieran and I duly found ourselves back on the same deck shortly before six, coffee in hand to watch the first rays of 2013 come up over the river- not a bad start to a year!

The first sunrise of 2013 over the Mekong

The floating market at Can Tho

That morning we left the Bassac on a smaller boat to visit the largest floating market on the Mekong. The market was pretty enough but disappointingly small. Had the same epidemic of closures we saw in Wolverhampton last time we visited found its way here? Apparently not- the market finished at 8.30am- around the time we arrived- perhaps an earlier start might have made more sense but then there was breakfast to be had!

   All in all we enjoyed our time in Can Tho. The night on the Bassac and another night in a hotel on land was enough though- next up, we were heading north.  After a quick overnight in Saigon we found ourselves on a plane headed to Danang- a medium sized, modern city in the central region. This served as the base for three days exploring the towns of Hoi An and Hue. Which was nicer? Well on this, my wife and I disagree.

Hoi An is the old capital of Vietnam and is almost a caricature of an old Asian town. It is full of small artisan shops and had an old Japanese covered bridge- built by the Japanese community to connect the mercantile quarter to the residential areas where their customers lived. Halfway across was a small shrine, built perhaps to ensure later generations thought twice before destroying it. Soma loved this town because it was pretty and had lots of shopping.

The covered Japanese Bridge at Hoi An

For sure it was pretty, and the picture we bought there will hang proudly here in Jakarta, but I came away feeling it was little contrived. Any town centre requiring a ticket to enter seems a bit odd. Added to this, where were the real shops? Surely a proper town centre would have food shops too- you can’t live off lacquer ware after all!

In contrast, I loved Hue. Hue was the imperial capital of the Nguyen dynasty until 1945 and is found about three hours drive north of Hoi An, a drive which took us over a high mountain pass, and past some old Japanese war bunkers. Hue is much larger, situated on a river. We settled into a very pretty town centre hotel and had the evenings to ourselves. We headed out to explore the place. We soon found ourselves on the riverside inspecting a rather natty bridge, whose lights changed colour in phenomenally kitsch fashion. Having truly invoked the spirit of Austin Powers, we headed off in search of food. Unlike Hoi An, we soon found a street of restaurants. Ok, so having Italian wasn’t quite in the spirit of things and the service was a little patchy, but this was a city centre you could walk around and feel you weren’t in a model village. With this and, for the first time since Christmas 2011, the sensation of feeling cold, I was very happy here.

Statues guarding the mausoleum at Hue

There seemed to be much more to do here. In our day spent exploring the place, we saw a mausoleum dedicated to the penultimate emperor, saw the old imperial palace- something practically the size of Angkor Wat and, to the delight of the boys, took cycle rickshaws around the city centre- though the ensuing visit to a market was greeted more enthusiastically by Soma than by her offspring! Sooner than we'd have liked, we found ourselves at the tiny Hue airport, waiting for our flight back to Saigon.

Kieran and Soma on a cycle rickshaw in Hue

   So, having explored south and central Vietnam, what of it? Well there is one thing I’ve barely mentioned yet- the war. When you visit Vietnam, you get the sense that, faced with the choice of airbrushing it completely from their history and obsessing on every last detail of it, the Vietnamese have chosen a middle way. The war had a fundamental impact on society and everyone is able to tell you a tragic family tale from those troubled times. When offered the chance of visiting the war museum, we followed the advice of our friends and kept the children away- I went alone. Good decision- the place was harrowing. From seeing pictures nobody should see to watching Americans walking around in tears, this gave a very much unedited view of those times.

A temple in the Chinese quarter of Saigon- traditional offering ceremony 

However, in stark contrast to the Africa we left in 2010, this is a country that refuses to dwell on past pains- one with its eye firmly on the future. Saigon may have beautiful old fashioned architecture but it also has brash, bold new buildings. Not as nice as Singapore perhaps, but this is definitely a city that can hold its head high in such company.

We left Vietnam after ten days, having thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. The people were pleasant, the surroundings beautiful, the food fantastic- oh and the coffee was great too!