In the night I discovered the cost of a wonderful evening sat by the shore and watching thunderstorms and stars; my feet are once again cursed with mosquito bites, so irritating that they wake me up. I'll not go on about them like I did the last time and leave it at that. Rachelle says it's best to try not to think about them. She doesn't like my complaining. She says I'm not the only one with mosquito bites.
It's an early start to catch the bus to Ho Chi Minh City, otherwise known as Saigon, or abbreviated to HCMC. We didn't get up in time for breakfast, so we buy cookies at the shop along the way. The journey takes about 5 hours and the bus is comfortable enough. Rachelle got a little travel sick, which was solved by swapping seats with me so that she had the window seat, but then I felt a little ill. We arrived around two in the afternoon and much to our surprise, the bus drops us off on the exact road we want to be. This is strange given that we are used to being dropped off far out of the city at times.
We need a cheap place to stay. Beach town hotels have been a little over-budget. A man in the street says he has a guesthouse and we agree to follow him to view the rooms. He takes us down a tight alley way, making me nervous. His guesthouse is fine, adequate I suppose, but I've been made to feel uncomfortable by its alley location. We made the excuse of wanting cheaper accommodation and he insists on taking us further into the alleyway to his friend's guesthouse. It's near where the alleyway opens up again to an adjacent street. It has metal, sliding shutter doors and the family's living area is in the first room - bed, television, fridge, all there. A woman greets us with a friendly smile and shows us the room. Again, it's fine. It's nowhere near the quality we've had of late, but Rachelle reminds we've been living too luxuriously recently, and we need to go back to living in simple accommodation. This guesthouse is certainly very simple accommodation. It costs $8 per night.
The War Remnants Museum closes at 5PM and we want to fit it in today. We jump on the back of mopeds - we have become used to the idea since using them to get to Mui Ne from the train station - and get there for 3PM. It's a Museum all about the Vietnam war. The ground floor is dedicated to posters from around the world that are printed with anti-war propaganda messages saying America should stop the invasion. In addition, and the thing that intrigued me most, was a collection of medals from an American sergeant, William Brown, and a small metal plaque with the words "To the people of a united Vietnam. I was wrong. I am sorry." The next floor up was dedicated to war crimes committed by America. It showed lots of photographs, very graphic in nature, and descriptions of what the Americans and their allies did to the Vietnamese. It was saddening and even made me feel a little bit sick. I studied the photos enough to remember how horrible they were, but not long enough to commit the images to memory: They weren't ones I'd want in my head. The last floor of the Museum was a collection of photographs taken by official war photographers from around the world. Some of these were also very graphic.
After the Museum we wanted to find the Dragon Water Puppets theatre. Water Puppetry is a Vietnamese folk tradition, and so before we leave, I insist we see one. The problem is that we can't find the puppet theatre. When we finally do find it, we've arrived five minutes late. Instead, we decided to try to walk back to the main street near our hotel. Unfortunately, the photocopied Lonely Planet we have lets us down in HCMC, because the map for it is very hard to make out - a bad photocopy. We get lost and go in the complete opposite direction to our destination. We saw a lot of HCMC, unintentionally and without really wanting to. It is a large, developed metropolis. After a couple of hours we gave in and got into a taxi. The driver didn't speak good English and he said it would be 10,000 Dong to our street. This is far too small an amount for a taxi so I wanted to check, and after holding ten fingers up and him nodding, we got in anyways. Of course, we get to our road and after trying to pay the 10,000, he says no and shows us a 100,000 Dong note. To avoid another long argument with someone who can't speak English (like in Danang) we simply pay in order not to waste more time.
At dinner a small boy trying to sell bracelets approached us and after rejecting his offer, he played the practical joke on me where you point at someone's chest to make them look down and then flick their nose. I fell for it. A man started massaging me without being asked and it hurt. He also massaged my eyebrows, which, by the way, is not relaxing. He then did the same to Rachelle before demanding money. We've realised the Vietnamese are good at scamming money from tourists. I'll claim it was all part of the experience, but really I'm annoyed at falling for them.
No comments:
Post a Comment