Winning over the West
Grabbing some precious time together, Phil Taylor and family are charmed by the laidback exoticism of Vietnam
We went at the tail end of July, the beginning of the monsoon. Vietnam was moist, sticky, lush, kaleidoscopic, dense, sparse, crazy, wonderful. Maybe we were lucky — it rained just twice in 10 days, each time in buckets.
We visited the south, the north, the middle — a sampler trip, you might say.
Ours was a family thing, a special journey because who knows how much longer our teens will want to travel with their parents?
We wanted to mix adventure in a foreign culture with chill time.
Vietnam was always on our agenda because it seemed exotic and we’d heard only good things from those who’d been. Our heads were briefly turned by the allure of Cuba (the son, Flynn, 18, was keen. Fidel has “swag”, he said) but it fell behind on the priority list due to comparative cost and difficulty.
We bought a Vietnam package that gave us two nights in the Sofitel in Saigon (Ho Chi Minh, but we were told most locals still call it Saigon and that’s good enough for me) and a week in the Angsana Lang Co resort in the middle of the country. Our rooms had a pool of their own. Nice!
From the resort we made day trips to Hoi An, an ancient city of tailors also famous for its restaurants.
We went to Yaly Couture, where Jeremy Clarkson, of Top Gear fame, bought his glad rags. We all got bespoke clothes, using the money we saved flying budget with Asia Air. Measured one day, back for a fitting the next and in another 24 hours the items were ready. I got a kick seeing Flynn resplendent in his first suit.
In between Saigon and the resort we organised a few days in Hanoi where we based ourselves in the narrow lanes of the old city, comfortably ensconced in the Hanoi Guest House Royal, where we paid just $80 a night for two flash rooms.
Expect culture shock, we warned the kids on the plane. They took it in their stride, the 37C, the 10 million people in Saigon with their eight million scooters and 2.5 million cars, most of which seemed to be on the road all at once. It was a mad buzz that had its own patterns and rules. Red lights were optional for scooters but we were told they get in big trouble if they hit something important, such as pedestrians.
The lore for crossing the road: walk smoothly into the sea of wheels and it shall part. The trick is not to make any sudden moves — and don’t mind all the beeping. The Vietnamese do a lot of beeping but it’s more to say, hey, I’m here on your inside rather than Auckland-style beeping which is to say, how dare you get in my way!
We waved at a woman scooterist with four children aboard and got smiles in return. Five people is the legal limit, we were told, but it was eight in war time. When the bombs fall you get away any way you can.
We drank the strong sweet Vietnamese coffee (mixed with condensed milk), reread Graham Greene’s The Quiet American and walked Rue Catinat (now called Dong Khoi) where it was set. We ate bahn mi from street vendors and relished the fusion of French and Asian cuisines. We slurped pho (noodle soup) while sat on little plastic GETTING THERE airasia.com seats as the world whooshed by metres away. We made a half-day trip to the Cu Chi tunnels an hour from Saigon where we scrambled through a tiny bit of the 200km network dug by the Viet Cong during The American War (as they call it here) and winced at the devilishly clever booby traps on display. The crack of gunfire from a range somewhere off in the thick bush added a certain edge. We followed the sound and my son and I paid to fire off a few rounds using automatic weapons from the war. In Hanoi, we covered the standard attractions in a guided day trip that included filing past the embalmed body of Ho Chi Minh and checking out the “Hanoi Hilton” — irony for those held in the prison. One formerly incarcerated there was US senator John McCain, who ditched his shot-up bomber in the lake in the middle of the city. We recalled Donald Trump’s insult about McCain — he preferred war heroes who didn’t get caught, Trump said. That from the fella who dodged the draft because he was studying and then because he had bad feet.
We had fun in Hanoi exploring the night market and the back street — such as the one that just sold shoes — buying propaganda posters, getting lost and found again in the French quarter, and generally watching life.
Little things linger: the waiter at a hole-inthe-wall cafe who pursued us down a crowded lane convinced the tip we left was done in error. How he skipped joyfully back to his workplace when we explained that, no, it was for him.
It’s funny-strange that in a one-party state, a place of socialist ideology there is no welfare system. Did you see the paper collectors? a local asked. They collect recyclables. “You can make a [US] dollar a day doing that and you can live on a dollar a day.”
An edginess may exist between south and north. A couple of people in the south told us they hadn’t visited the north because their southern accents would give them away and they didn’t think they would be well treated.
In the south, we were warned to be wary of pickpockets in the north. In the north they said the people in the south weren’t as friendly.
Well, if that was so, it didn’t apply to travelling Kiwis.