A Man Called Ho

To most Vietnamese, “Uncle Ho” is the Grand Daddy of modern Vietnam. He is their Gandhi, their Ataturk and their Mao, all rolled in to one. His portrait is everywhere, and it’d be most unwise to mouth a bad word about the great man in the presence of locals.

I could not help though but make physical comparisons to another great man of our generation. A man who built an empire, and who took on a megalomaniacal clown with big red shoes and an evil smile. I am, of course, referring to “The Colonel”;

I may be on to something here as well, because although there are zero McDonalds restaurants in Vietnam, there are dozens of KFC outlets. Could the Vietnamese people have been duped in to thinking this was some sort of Uncle Ho chicken? Perhaps.

In any case, the city named after the man is quite a metropolis. It lacks the old town charm of its northern rival (Hanoi), but Saigon (as it’s known to all but the most loyal officials) has an identity of its own.

Lise had read that for the eight million inhabitants of the city, there were six million motorcycles. These figures reverberated through my thoughts as negotiated the chaotic streets; “Six million motorcycles. Six million motorcycles. Six million motorcycles...”

Saigon offered something that is truly a rare thing in this part of the world – decent museums. One that sticks out is the War Remnants Museum – a kind of smaller and more Vietnam specific version of the Imperial War Museum in London (which is my favourite museum in the whole wide world!). There were several excellent photographic exhibitions on show, really driving home the horrors of war. Unfortunately, the text accompanying the photos seemed to have been written by the Vietnamese Propaganda Ministry, and this took the gloss off an otherwise very thought-provoking museum.

The museum had offered some respite from my photographing escapades – a pleasure not lost on Lise. She had lovingly compared us to the tortoise and the hare, something I thought was all too true. Me, the hare, would walk as briskly as possible, stopping every now and then for photos, oblivious to the world outside of the viewfinder. Lise, on the other hand, would stroll at a tortoise like pace, passing me every time I stopped, only to see me zoom by minutes later in pursuit of my next photo. I thank her endlessly for her patience.

Unusually for this time of year, we experienced a couple of quite wet days, and it had the locals all in a fuss. We didn’t mind though – the rain offered a bit of shelter from the beating sun. To escape the drowned streets, we went to see the overhyped blockbuster Avatar at a local cinema. Basically it was about giant smurfs running amok in Hollywood.

The Mekong Delta

The Mekong Delta is a water-world of densely populated villages, thick jungle and sprawling rice paddies. With the wind in your face and a 125cc semi-automatic motorbike between your legs, there aren’t many better pleasures to be had in Vietnam.

There is of course though, one other means of transport in the Mekong that supersedes the “motos”. Boats.

On the morning of the third day, in Vinh Long, we headed out with our chirpy boat driver to a floating market called Cai Ba, famous for the large church that looms over the river.

It was an absolute pleasure of a morning, consisting of Pho (soup) for breakfast in a family home, and cruises through small, very quiet (no tourists!) canals running between the main rivers.

Our boat driver, although very good at driving the boat, obviously had dreams of a career change. At every chance he’d grab our camera from our hands and point to a spot, “Photo, photo!”. If you ever need a wedding photographer in Vinh Long Province, he’s your man;

We duly tipped the multi-talented “Vinh Longen” at the end of our journey.

Being such a wet region, the Mekong is flooded with the only creature on Earth I have no hesitation in killing – mosquitos. I’ve always been a bit of a nature man, trying to avoid killing any living thing if I can, however small (Lise thinks my refusal to kill ants is “cute”). But mosquitos are a different altogether. I’m not sure why exactly they were put on this Earth, but if I had to guess, it was to give people malaria and to buzz in their ears whilst they try to sleep. Not exactly a respectable creature in this case.

My dislike for our blood-sucking friends pales in comparison though to someone I now call “Lise the Terrible”. Her deep-seeded hate for them knows no bounds, and I’ve often found myself staring in horror at her once she takes up the pursuit of a mosquito in her vicinity. She practically tears the room apart in search of it, resembling a ruthless killer not born of this world. She’ll clap and wave frantically and won’t stop until she sees the body, after which I half expect her to light up a cigarette. It’s moments like these I’m glad I’m not a mosquito.

Tra Vinh had less mosquitos than normal, but this is not what charmed us so much about the place. It was well and truly off the tourist trail for the endless tour groups traversing around the Mekong, and we loved that.

I think nothing less than Buddha himself walking down the street would have provoked a more inquisitive reaction from the locals as we passed. Rock stars. World leaders. Vietnamese Soap Stars. You name it – we felt like it. We saw more smiles and got more “hellos” in 20 minutes than you’d get in a lifetime in the West. Children followed us as we walked like groupies, eventually posing for photos like the one to the right.

In addition to that, our hotel probably takes the prize for the best value room of our entire trip. More like a large studio flat, it only served to add to the “King and Queen” type atmosphere we felt in this town.

Discovering the green countryside and mingling with Khmer monks at a near-by temple topped it all off, and we left Tra Vinh in great moods.

The mood was soured though on our bus journey from Tra Vinh to Can Tho. Lise was sleeping, and I was listening to some music whilst admiring the world go by outside my window, when up ahead on the road, there was a gathering. As soon as I realised what it was, I woke Lise up, and told her not to look (just in case she had woken up at the wrong moment). She duly covered her eyes, whilst I inspected scene as we drive past. What I saw will haunted me for days after, and I doubt I’ll ever forget the image. There’d been a collision of motorcycles, and one man had paid the ultimate price. Skip over the next small paragraph if you’re at all squeamish.

The man lay there, face up, blood gushing from his head and face (the latter slightly disfigured), motionless. Dead. It had obviously only happened minutes before, as there was no sight of an ambulance or any police. My stomach turned, and my mood for the remaining 2 hours of the journey was down.

In a small way, seeing what I saw probably wasn’t a bad thing. It certainly altered by attitude the next time I hopped on a motorbike, which was only a couple of days later, in Phu Quoc Island.

Clichéd as it may sound, on an Island like Phu Quoc, you can forget all of the troubles life gives you. It’s nothing short of paradise, but an under-developed, quieter, less expensive sort of paradise. In some ways, the paradise of paradises for cheap, back-packing types.

You can pretty much experience something close to a perfect day here; Wake up early and head across the street for vegemite on toast (yes, they had it here!) and a fresh fruit platter. Head to the beach, where the sun is still low, and the heat is bearable. Read your book in your beach chair metres from the sea, every 20 minutes or so heading in to the crystal clear waters for a dip to cool off. Eventually get some lovely fresh seafood soup (or similar) at the beach bar just behind you, and spend the middle of the day cooling off in the shade in a hammock and riding around town on the motorbike with the wind in your face. Head back out when the sun gets low again and watch the sun go down with a cold beer in your hand and the sand between your toes. Head back in to town when dark for some more fresh seafood, or a cheap BBQ at one of the local food-stalls. Have another beer or two close to home, and then retreat back to the air-conditioned room to relax and ready yourself for more of the same the next day.

It was like this for a whole week! Have pity on me.