When I arrived to Vietnam I was scared. I was alone and did not know how to speak anything in Vietnamese except for "phô", a delicious noodle dish. Arrivng at the international terminal of Ho Chi Minh City (aka: Saigon / HCMC) I had no dong (Vietnamese currency) nor US dollars. Being that I needed to pay for my visa, I wasn't sure what would result since there was no ATM in immigration area. Upon being called up for my visa, I mentioned to the stern looking man behind the thick glass window and he said they would gladly accept bhat. Safe!
I shared a cab with another American guy (Joe) from the bay area of California into town as I was trying to make an 11pm train to Danang and by this time it was about 1015 pm. I arrived at Ga Sai Gon (train station) with 10 minutes to spare. It was just my luck though as Tet was in full effect and Vietnamese nationals were ALL traveling too! There were no seats for me (even after a woman attempted to scam me by purchasing a local train ticket and trying to pay off the train agents to let me on and give them their cut too) Not knowing where i was in town since I had not looked Into a travel guide book of Vietnam much, I found myself seeking some sort of comfort. This is when my Vietnamese habit started... cigarettes. Everyone was smoking. I felt like I was smoking by way of second hand smoke, so I bought a pack, sat down outside the train station and lit up a cigarette.
That night I found my way to a small hotel nearby the train station where I accessed the internet and downloaded vietnamese language apps, read the wikitravel guide for HCMC and reaearched where i would go the next day. Because of so much travel going on, the sounds of the millions of motorbikes in Saigon were ever present. Then it was off to sleep.
I cab to the backpacker area in the morning and find a travel agency that books my trip to Phu Quoc, an island off the south coast of Vietnam but closer to the Camvodia coastline. Apparently a point of contention between the countries. Afterall I absolutely wanted to go to another beach while in Asia! This trip would result in a 16 hour commute including a 6 hour bus ride where the music was non- stop in celebration of tet, a few hours sleep at a small guest house and a couple hour boat ride, until finally I arrive on the lovely island of Phu Quoc.
About the commute to the island- due to the Chinese new year celebration the entire country is in gift giving mode. Every person, motorbike, taxi, bus, boat, etc was loaded with gifts. This included roosters in straw bags, 6' trees, oversized stuffed animals, sweets, food and really anything else you can think of. Imagine this: 2 adults riding a motorbike in the busy busy streets of Saigon. The driver maneuvering the traffic (which I chaos, yet organized) the passenger holding on to a box about 3'x3'x3 and a small tree strapped to the back of the motorbike. Impressive how they do it.
Anyway- once settled in I book a night fishing trip in hopes of catching some squid and some fish for dinner: whatever we catch we grill and eat. I connected with Juliane from Austria on the boat ride over to the island (lovely girl who was also traveling alone) and she also joined the adventure out to sea. After an hour at sea the group of 5 on the fishing trip had caught a handful of small red snapper. I proudly contributed one fish about 6" long.... Never been lucky with the fishing energy. Next was squid... NO ONE caught any. Must have been a bad day for the critters or the lights on our boat were not bright enough?
The next day it was motorbike time to enable an exploring of the island. Juliane shared a motorbike with me and we joined a French couple: Sophie and Benoit who were both absolutely friendly- and I got to listen to some French every now and again. After grabbing a few bhan mi we take off, but don't get too far. Given our location in the central part o the island, and trying to get to the north, we have to cross the "busy" area of town which has a few confusing roads. After a couple wrong turns we end up on a dirt road and are greeted by about 5 boys between 7-12 who were all on 2 bikes. They ask where we are going and assure us they know the way: it's just 1 km away. After about 20 minutes of following theae boys and continued reassurance that it was just "1km away", (to the point we ended up on a small dirt road about 3 feet wide winding through thicker and thicker foliage) we stop and ask another man who wasn't very convincing (by the smirk on his face when telling us that the kids were correct). Since my motorbike was pretty close to empty, we decided that this was a good place to turn around and retrace our steps.
After filling up with "sang" (gas) we asked around and were on our way to the northern part of the island, about a 45 minute ride. Once on the main road it was a beautiful ride: road paved, lush greenery, roadside stands selling fresh fruits. Then a turn off. This was a dirt road that would lead us to Dao beach, our final destination which was meant to have white sand beaches, calm water no deeper than 5 feet and a serene environment. Just before reaching Dao, the road got rocky and a bit more holly, which is also where the motorbike gave way and Juliane and I were thrown off the bike to find ourselves with wounds on the left side of our bodies. Being the only road leading to this part of the island, many many people stopped to ask if we needed help: foreigners and locals alike. A young man 18 years old called () and his uncle Nim who were on way back from market in the central part of the island remained with us on the road until finally they offered to drive each of us to the hospital. Juliane rode with Nim and I rode with (). We were greeted at rhe clinic by many local Vietnamese, including our 19 year old translator who had all heard of our accident. After getting cleaned up by the doctor on duty, about 20 years old we were invited over to their home while a taxi was called. The four of us foreigners were very impressed by the sincere empathy displayed by this entire community as they would not take a monetary token of appreciation. By this point it was just after noon and Benoit and I drove the motorbikes home whilet the girls took the cab back to Long Beach. The rest of the trip on the island was a little more tame since I could not go swimming due to the small hole in my left elbow and gash on my left foot.
The night before I left I was en route to my bungalow and stopped into the local market to get a bottle of water and a beer. This is where I met Robinson, a local fisherman about 55 years old who was excited about "how easy it was to understand my English" and was eager to show me some photos he had taken. After 15 minutes of conversation he invites me to sit with their group (Thuy- a woman about 50 and the store owner and Dudu a guy from Madagascar on the backpacker circuit) to continue enjoying beers and conversation- so I did. 2-3 hours later our conversation, in French English and Vietnamese, went from "where are you from" to "leading life with an open heart" multiple beers and a nice connections who were complete strangers when I first got there.
The next morning it was back to Saigon for a couple more days to indulge in tet. Arriving in the city again, it was even more dressed up than it was before. Yellow flowers everywhere. Signage stating "chuc mung nam moi" all over town. Families on one motorbike getting all of their presents. This new year celebration on Jan 23rd was sure to be an exciting opportunity.
I shared a hotel with Juliane right in district 1 behind the main backpacker road. Left and right offerings for any drug imaginable, perhaps more so than bangkok's Khao San Road. The first night we went to the backpacker road called () and there are many spots where you sit on the street on 2 foot stools (felt like the chairs from my preschool days) and beers at 10.000 dong ($.48) for a .75L beer. We had a few beers and met loads of people from all over the world. Carlos and Gema from Barcelona, Henrick from Switzerland, and Manuel from Germany but living in Hanoi all if us say, people watched, shared stories and agreed to meet at the same spot the next night to celebrate new years, and we did, but with even more people and more beer. That is only how new years celebration started. The highlight will have to be watching the traffic in their return from watching the fire works on the Saigom river. Pretty much the city shuts down and all the locals go to the organized events throughout the city. Stages in parks with music and performance, food booths all over town. Fireworks that lasted forever. Imagine New York City traffic, but all motorbikes (as I has described before). <<>> Usually annoying. In tho case it was like a show. We stood on the street corner of a major intersection and watched for nearly an hour. It was a-mazing that there were no accidents while we watched. I would never drive in Saigon. Earlier in the day I had bought some envelopes for "lucky money". Probably about 10 of them. I filled each of them with some dong and handed them out to vietnamese people that were of help through the day. My favorite was a little boy about 3 who was watching fireworks in front of us and was SUPER excited. Each time he would clap and jump and laugh and you could see his high positive energy glaring through. Once I gave him his envelope he became extremely shy- bit his mother convinced him to take a photo with me. Cute kid.
One thing I forgot- I was really lucky to have met Juliane as she is a nurse in Austria and assisted me with cleaning the battle wounds from Phu Quoc. something I would not get once I was in Myanmar.
Traveler recommendations: eat the street food. The Phô and spring rolls. Spring street hotel in district 1 was perfect. Very nice rooms, cebtrally located and split between 2 people ended up at $15 each night.
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