Hoi An, Vietnam
So I've been in Hoi An about two days now and I'm really enjoying it, not sure when i'll leave. The town itself is really laid-back and seems extremely safe walking around. Lots of Chinese architecture to see. You don't have as many people trying to sell you stuff like in Nha Trang and Saigon. Lots of sidewalk and corner cafes and restaurants. The shopping here is also incredible, more about that later..
Beer here is extremely cheap like most places i've been but even moreso here. Most places sell their own draft beer which they simply call "fresh beer" (bia hoi) and it's about 3000 dong a glass, or 19cents USD. It's an extremely lite and low alcohol content beer so it can usually be drank anytime. An incredible value. People seem to drink it like tea here. The locals sit on the side of the road here and drink it with breakfast, lunch, diner or anytime night; they never miss an opportunity to drink beer.
The beaches here are also nice if not better than Nha Trang, they're certainly less crowded. I spent the last two days walking around the main town, looking at all the shops, the central market and just exploring some of the sights along the river. It's much easier to walk around here than other places, the people here seem be very friendly and there is much less bicycle traffic; No problems at all. The only major problem is some areas around here are under major construction. They seem to be digging up parts of the road along town putting in new pipes/water lines which only leads me to believe that Hoi An will one day become very similiar to Nha Trang, a full blown beach resort destination.
The thing I like most about Hoi An is the fact that you can have any piece of clothing copied/made here for a fraction of the price that it would cost to buy at home. Tailoring is huge here. I guess Hong Kong, Bangkok and Nha Trang are the tailoring capitals of Southeast Asia. There are literally thousands of tailor shops that can make anything you want, custom designer suits, designer shirts, polos, pairs of jeans, winter jackets, handbags, sneakers, shoes. Anything that can be made with fabric or leather, can be made entirely from scratch here or elegantly reproduced from a magazine or replicated from a piece of clothing already in your possession. The best part is that this ready the next day (often less than 24 hours), give or take a few hours for alterations and adjustments. You can generally pick any tailoring shop because the majority of them farm the work out to the same large factory, only some of the larger tailoring shops actually do the tailoring in house.
As a result, I'm having a field day over here designing an entire new wardrobe. The hotel i'm staying at (along several other people) recommended a place called Kim Huong. I ended up having a entire suit made with Italian cashmere wool with a real silk lining (I verified this) with pants and a shirt for $85 USD. I was a bit worried at first because most of the places I reviewed on the Internet never mentioned this place and I'm almost positive they just farm the work out to a factory somewhere else. Nevertheless, It came out extremely well and i've very happy with the design. I'm having them do a few more minor alterations and it should be ready tomorrow morning. The process was painless. Once I picked out the style and fabric I wanted they precisely took all my measurements checking them again several times to make sure they were correct. I basically already had an idea what I wanted and they filled in the rest. If you have no idea, you can just browse through magazines and catalogs, point to what you want and they'll reproduce it almost perfectly. I tried to be extremely picky about stuff I wanted them to fix and they seemed to have no problem making adjustments. I'll admit I know next to nothing about suits but it looks good to me. Everything is double stitched, the seams are tight and straight with everything aligned perfectly. Nothing is uneven, buttons are sewn on tightly and more importantly, everything fits perfectly because it was tailored for me. I guess the hardest part about me buying clothing is that i'm short so everything is usually too long on me or too wide. Having proper fitting clothing is a first for me. I guess I can finally take the smug satisfaction if someone asks me "Where did you buy that shirt/suit?" I can reply "Oh this old thing..it's just a little something my tailor designed for me....oh sorry? You don't have a tailor? Such a shame I say.."
I also went to another shop called A Dong Silk to have them design some new shirts for me. I used one of my favorite Topmann shirts as a template and then I had two identical shirts with different color fabric produced. The shirt originally cost me around $50 USD, A Dong Silk charged me $14 USD/each. I picked these up today and they came out fantastic. I can't wait to wear them. I can't get over how well they copied the design; all that's missing is an exuberant price tag.
Lastly, I was fascinated by the number of places here that can make or reproduce designer jeans. Because my favorite pair of jeans were ripped/destroyed in Nha Trang I knew I wanted to have a couple knew pairs made for New Zealand. I ended up walking around town and found a shop called CQ Jeans which seems to specialize as you might have guessed only in jeans. I looked at some of their sample work and the quality looked very nice so I commissioned them to copy my pair of Desiel jeans that originally cost me about $150. After they measured me, I picked out the fabric/style that I wanted and left my jeans there for them to copy. According to them, they should be ready around 2PM tomorrow. At $30 a pair, if they come out good, I told her I would have them make one more.
So far I've already had 1 suit made, 5 shirts, and 2 pairs of jeans in progress. Basically an entire new wardrobe for about $185 USD. Just my diesiel jeans alone cost $150. Amazing and i'm sure I could have gotten everything a bit cheaper too if I haggled a bit better though I figured I wouldn't try to nickle and dime and hope for quality. I'll update here tomorrow and report on how everything else came out when I come pick my stuff up. I'm debating on whether or not I should have a second suit made now too.
Nha Trang, Vietnam
Currently writing this from Nha Trang, Vietnam. Nha Trang is sort of the beach resort area of Vietnam. It has very nice and clean white sand beaches along with some really fancy hotels and spas. It almost has a Miami-like feel to it; the entire beach runs parallel to the main street where all the major hotels are directly across the road. Extremely easy to navigate and walk around here.
I've been here for 5 days and my bus to Hoi An leaves tonight in about 2 hours. I've had a very interesting time so far. I ended up meeting an English guy named Shawn and we went out on the piss and drank excessively for 2 nights in a row since it was his last few nights in Vietnam and it was my upcoming birthday. Beer here is a bit more expensive than Saigon especially at some of the nicer clubs/bars but it's still quite cheap.
The hotel I am staying at is 12USD/night but I ended up splitting it with the English guy Shawn so it only cost us 6USD/night. For the price, this is probably the nicest place i've stayed in so far. It has AC, two large double beds, satelite TV, closets, and an extremely nice bathroom complete with a bathtub.
For my first night here I sort of went on a pub crawl, drinking at about about 5-6 places in this area. The nightlife here is decent, lots of travelers and locals. Went to a really nice and small place called The Shamrock Pub (nothing is more Irish than Shamrocks) for a little while where the owner had a fanastic selection of MP3s on his computer and a good selection of beer.
There is another place here called Crazy Kim's Bar which is run by a former Vietnamese refugee from Canada aptly named Kim. Seems like it was made quite popular by Lonely Planet, nevertheless it's still a decent place. Her bar is somewhat famous too because she runs a volunteer English school to teach the local kids. Some of the proceeds in her bar go to helping feed the street kids and she is an extremely strong advocate against pedophilia.
Every pub crawl on the island invariably ends up at the Sailing Club. When every other place shuts down at around midnight or 1AM, this place stays open well into the hours of the morning. Infact, I don't remember it closing. It's essentially quite a fancy club that's located right on the beach. At around 1:30AM, the entire dance floor/bar is jam-packed and depending on your idea of nightlife, this can be great fun. Me, Shawn, two Kiwis girls, two English girls and a couple Irish guys ending up staying there until about 5AM in the morning. They actually stayed later than me to watch the sunrise but by that time I was too tired and had already left for the night. All and all, a good place to hang out and it's pretty much your only option after everything else closes.
The previous day we had booked a boat trip at a place called Mama Linh's boat tours for 4 USD which was pretty much gone the entire day and included an excellent lunch with fresh fruit. Rumor has it that it was something of a booze cruise but to be honest I wasn't sure what to expect. The next morning even though I was extremely hung over, I still managed to make it on the boat tour. Everything I had heard about it was completely true, the entire boat tour was one large party with music, a live band with drums, and large amounts of alcohol. I actually feel a little bad because there were a couple familes on the boat with kids while the rest of the groups were travelers just looking for a good time.
As the boats went from island to island, we were followed by a caravan of about 5 other boats all going in the same direction. Once we reached where we wanted to go, every boat would dock next to each other allowing people from other boats to move freely between the boats. At first it was just music and beer then out of nowhere, some sort of Vietnamese cover band made up entirely of members of the crew started singing cover songs. They were suprisingly good too.
After that we ended up moving to a different island for snorkeling. After snorkeling we were thrown tubes and handed bottles of wine for what they called a "floating bar". This consisted entirely of everyone from each boat floating around the water in a tube, drinking beer and wine.
At our last stop, some of the people from the other boats were so hammered they ended up dancing on the roof of one of the boats. I have an extremely funny video of it from my camera that I will end up posting on here in a couple days. Anyway, Mama Linh's boat tour was well worth it and I can highly recommend it to anybody that goes to Nha Trang. I had a fanastic time.
The next few days I ended up getting a couple massages at a really fancy hotel and spa for 6USD. I'm not really a big massage person but these were well worth it. The last massage I had was in Thailand on the beach and it was almost 2.5 months ago. These ones were on an entirely different level. For 6USD, you got to use the steam room, sauna, jacuzzi, and a pool. The massage itself was 60 minutes long. Absolutely worth it. Anyway, since my birthday was on August 17th, that was my birthday present to myself. I also had another massage this morning just for the hell of it. For 6 bucks, you can't go wrong.
Anyway, Nha Trang has been quite fun. I've had a great time and met another group of interesting people. Even though I had fun, I also had my first negative encounter in almost 3 months of traveling. I've been to a lot of dodgy and shady places in Cambodia, Malaysia and Thailand but i've NEVER had anything stolen from me at all until Nha Trang. When me and Shawn (the English guy I met) were walking back to our hotel we ended up getting surrounded by a group of motorbikes. Basically these gangs consist of a bunch of girls on motorbikes who come up to you trying to sell you stuff or asking if you want to go with them. Obviously, they're looking to prey on drunk people. By the time, we had pushed them off us, Shawn had his camera stolen from his pocket and my pair of jeans were razorbladed and I ended up losing almost 40USD. They're fucking pros, I didn't even feel it happen. You get warned about this stuff but you never expect it to happen to you. Though it hasn't really jaded my experience of Vietnam yet but it has made me a bit more aware. Obviously, this could have happened in any big city like New York or London as well. I later learned when talking to other travelers that this is quite a common occurence in Nha Trang. The gangs aren't looking for a fight but generally an easy grab and go. Once they have your wallet or camera, they drive off on their bikes not to be seen again. If anyone causes trouble, just drive away.
That's my Nha Trang story. Don't let the robbing fool you, this is still a fanastic place. Vietnamese people except for a few bad apples and the folks trying to sell you stuff are still wonderfully friendly people. Hell, even the people trying to sell you stuff generally have a sense of humor about it. I'm heading on a night bus to Hoi An and should arrive sometime tomorrow morning. While i'm there I plan to have a couple professionaly tailored suits since they're rumored to be extremely cheap there.
Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon), Vietnam
So I'm currently in Ho Chi Minh City (formerly Saigon which was the capital of South Vietnam until 1975) in Vietnam. As you may or may not know, Saigon was renamed to Ho Chi Minh City after the North Vietnamese army captured Saigon. Though, Ho Chi Minh City is the politically correct name of the city used by government officials, everyone else here still calls it Saigon unless they're from North Vietnam. Every bus, restaurant or business here still uses Saigon in its name. Officially though, Saigon only refers to District 1 of Ho Chi Minh City. The city itself has a population of about 7 million people (not counting the people who live here illegally) and is spread out over approximately 14 districts; it's absolutely massive.
The bus ride from Phnom Penh, Cambodia to HCMC took five hours and for the most part was uneventful. Custom and immigration took approximately 20 minutes, almost all of which involved queuing in line. Since I had previously gotten my 30-day Vietnamese visa in Sihanoukville, Cambodia my passport was quickly stamped and I was on my way. On the bus ride, I happened to meet a former South Vietnamese soldier who now lives in San Jose, California as a math teacher. We talked a bit about Vietnam and what he thinks of his former country; having been formally educated by the U.S. government his English as you might have guessed was excellent. In his mind, he considers himself an American now. He has a family in the U.S. and of course has a U.S. Passport, that pretty much makes him Americanized. He's been living in the United States now for 20 years and this is his second trip back to Vietnam. He says that he can hardly recognize Saigon anymore since lots of the streets have been renamed and buildings torn down. His opinion is that most Vietnamese share no hard feelings towards the war (maybe in the North, a little bit) and they like most foreigners (especially Americans) because they bring lots of money to the country. This seems especially true when you consider that like Cambodia, the U.S. dollar is still one of the de facto currencies accepted though it's not as extreme as is the case in Cambodia where everything works in U.S. dollars.
Once the bus arrived in Saigon, I managed to follow him because he knew of a good hotel and he helped me bargain a room down to 5USD/night. Something I'd probably have little luck doing since I don't speak a word of Vietnamese. The hotel is close to a street called Pham Ngu Lao which is where the majority of the budget hotels and travel agencies are located in Ho Chi Minh City. There are also quite a few good bars and small little restaurants/cafes in the area. In most spheres it's considered the backpacker ghetto of Vietnam, similar to Bangkok's Khao San Road but decidedly much cleaner and a bit more upscale in my opinion.
I've spent the majority of my time here sitting down in cafes on the street drinking beer watching people and talking to other tourists and local Vietnamese. Beer here is accordingly cheap. There are about 5 or 6 different national beers. Most cost about .65 cents USD for a large bottle of beer. Draft beer is even cheaper than that. So far my favorite has been Saigon Beer, it cost about 10,000 dong (.62 cents USD).
Since Vietnam was once occupied by the French before the Americans, it still retains a lot of French culture. For example, a good portion of older Vietnamese population speak French fluently while the younger generation tends to speak more English. Walking around Ho Chi Minh City can be compared to walking around Paris in a way. There are thousands of small little personal cafes where you can sit on the roadside and drink beer or coffee. In additional to the menus being written in Vietnamese, they're also written in French at most places. Lots of buildings here, especially in the Saigon district are distinctly French in architecture. Just sitting at a cafe here it seems you're most likely to encounter a group of tourists speaking French rather than English. Apparently Vietnam has become a popular place for French to go on holiday.
Yesterday, I spend the day walking around District 1 touring the Reunification Palace (Formerly South Vietnam's Presidential Palace), the War Remnants Museum (Also called Exhibition House of American War Crimes), Municipal theater, Ben Thanh Market, and Notre Dame Cathedral, a French-built Catholic cathedral in the city centre.
The Reunification Palace was pretty interesting though a bit boring. The palace itself was fully restored to the 1960s era prior to the invasion of Saigon. Most of the rooms are roped off only allowing you to look inside, though all of the five floors are accessible. In the basement, you can see all the 1960s-era electronic equipment such as radios, typewriters, and phones supposedly preserved in time. Lastly, parked outside the palace is tank 843 which crashed through the palace gates on April 30th, 1975.
The War Remnants Museum was slightly more disturbing. Outside the museum itself were American-made tanks, American jets and "Huey" helicopters stationed out front. The museum itself was mostly made up of gruesome photographs which depicted all the violence American soldiers committed in the war towards the Vietnamese. Pictures of mass graves, American soldiers holding the remains of dead Vietnamese while smiling and smoking cigarettes. There is also an entire exhibit decided to Agent Orange and the millions of deformities caused by the chemical. Though most of the signs are in French and Vietnamese, it's easy to understand what they mean just by looking at the picture. There is also a small section decided to the American Anti-War movement, copies of magazines and pictures showing anti-war demonstrations explaining that it was the American government, not the people that were largely responsible.
That's pretty much it. The rest of the sights are just buildings. Not much to explain about that, pictures are enough of a description. Notre Dame Cathedral was just a big church and the Ben Thanh Market was just a big market. It doesn't get any simpler.
A couple other things about Ho Chi Minh City. The traffic and congestion here is horrible. It seems the entire city population is dependent upon motorscooters. It's an interesting sight seeing thousands of motoscooters weave in and out of traffic, narrowly missing cars, bikes and anything in their path. The driving here is madness, even more chaotic than Bangkok or Phnom Penh. The difference is the roads seem to be much better and cleaner. The rules? There doesn't really seem to be any traffic rules, it's every man for themselves. The amount of people trying to sell you stuff here is also maddening. Anywhere you go, as soon as you sit down at a restaurant or walk down a street there will be people trying to sell you things. Newspapers, photocopied books, zippo lights, fake designer sunglasses, Gucci wallets, anything and everything. It starts to get extremely annoying, when a simple "no" doesn't work after 3 or 4 times you just need to learn not to make eye contact until they walk away or ignore you. To be honest, I found it much worse in Cambodia but a lot of people think it's worse in Vietnam. The difference here is people speak English better so it tends to seem more aggressive.
Anyway, I have night bus to catch at 8:00PM to Nha Trang which takes approximately 10 hours. Nha Trang is the beach resort area of Vietnam and is supposed to have some very nice beaches. Depending on how I like it, I may spend my birthday there since it's coming up on August 17th. Otherwise, i'll continue heading north to Hanoi stopping in Hoi An and Hue along the way.
