SOUTH VIETNAM

I can think of worse places to spend a few January days

WHERE: Phu Quoc island and Saigon

WHERE (less detailed): South Vietnam

DAYS: 138-147

PEOPLE ARE: decades of war may have created deep-seated political and cultural differences between the residents of North and South Vietnam but the people remain united in their fearless interpretation of the Highway Code and their determination to fleece Westerners tourists. Our newest favourite being the taxi meter that jumped from 20,000d to 260,000d in the space of a street. In fairness the cab driver didn’t seem that offended when we refused to pay the full amount and seemed relatively pleased with the 60,000 (£2) we paid him.

CURRENCY IS: the most confusing yet. 30,000 Dong = £1, with the smallest note being the 3p 1,000 Dong note. And you thought a pocketful of £1 coins was a pain.

okay, now you want to cut the red wire, nothing else or she'll blow

FOOD IS: Not quite as great as Hoi An but thanks to a Julie N’Gygen tip we enjoyed a fantastic three course meal in a beautiful old colonial restaurant in Saigon for less than £20. Pho Bo noodles are surprisingly tasty despite the 30-something degree temperature outside. The Yorkshire pudding-esque breadsticks that come with the noodles are an interesting take on an old classic.

did we stumble into a Quadraphenia convention?

HIGHLIGHTS/LOWLIGHTS: Our first sighting of sand and sun since day 6 in Kerala… we take the pace down a notch leaving “which £2 masseur should I visit today?” being the toughest choice Rhaani’s day… Rhaani finds her inner easy rider, “My speedometer broke, how fast was I going? Pretty fast right?” “about 20kmph….

she feels the need, the need for speed

...discovering the most troublesome sand to walk on… the only other downside is the sub-par food on offer on the island, Paul is particularly disappointed in the mint-choc chip milkshake which was decidedly more ice than cream….feels like the end of a holiday as we leave the beach and head for Ho Chi Minh… and we thought we’d seen crazy traffic in Hanoi. Thanks to wider streets you now have four to six lanes of thick motorbike traffic to negotiate, the trick is to slowly walk and pick spots to stop at and let the traffic pass around you….the fantastically farcical surplus telephone wires that hang at almost every street corner….rushing around the disappointing Unification Palace (a 1970’s monstrosity that was erected after the South Vietnamese bombed it in an assassination attempt on their own president (he was the guy the US were backing)…hiding from the mid-day sun by catching a matinee performances of The Tourist, at £2, actually good value for money….the War Remnants Museum - not the place to be if you hail from the US of A. Particularly gruesome was the Agent Orange Aftermath Exhibition with pictures or deformed children and fetus’ everywhere you look. Especially unsettling was the unborn baby with three faces including 6 eyes, two noses and three mouths…. while a certain home-team, anti-American sentiment is to be expected it’s pretty hard not to feel  the sentiment is justified when you see pictures of entire Vietnamese villages blown to pieces and American troops standing over the bodies of women and children….the most touristy city we’ve been to so far and the least open to bartering… the interesting book tower vendours. Books are stacked 20 high and held together with a strap as vendors walk from open front restaurant to bar…. Foolishly deciding that we couldn’t be bothered with the Mekong Delta and all yet another floating village then meeting up with our San Franciscan friend Brian who informed us it was one of his trip’s highlights.

a slightly pensive looking Rhaani steels herself to cross a Saigon road

UP NEXT: undisputed holder of the “my country’s had a far more traic past than yours” title: Cambodia

CENTRAL VIETNAM

who needs an umbrella

WHERE: Hue and Hoi An

WHERE (less detailed): central Vietnam

DAYS: 132-137

PEOPLE ARE: ready for all weather. We arrived in Hue (pronounced “Way”, we learned from a snooty fellow traveler. To be honest I thought the “Who-ee” pronounceation we had been using was perfectly fine.

FOOD IS: the most consistently delicious we’ve experienced on the trip. In tailor-dominated Hoi An restaurants and cafes next door, opposite or even across town from Lonely Planet’s top pick were still awesome. Food not only tasty and fresh but also cheap – Paul’s dream tri-fecta.

Hoi An, the place to be if you're hungry and need a new suit

HIGHLIGHTS/LOWLIGHTS: For Paul the DMZ trip was the undoubted highlight. Originally pitched as a Vietnam war history tour, including the Hoi Chi Minh trail, the War Museum and some tunnels whose name eludes me….the tour took on a whole new lease of life thanks to a German couple who sat behind us on the bus. It was obvious from the start that the trip wasn’t going to be up to much. Our tour guide’s poor English wasn’t helped by a microphone that frequently cut out, returning to life just in time for him to tap and blow on it. But things really picked up when we reboarded the bus after stopping at a bridge that hadn’t been built when the war was raging. The bus started to pull away and then stopped as the German couple arrived late. Paul noticed that the woman was crying. Paul ventured that perhaps a local had tried to rob her or grabbed hold of her. Rhaani suggested she was upset because she thought she’d missed the bus, Paul doubted it since she wasn’t a six-year-old child. The pair sat and spoke for a while before the boyfriend strode to the front of the bus and took hold of the microphone. Then in German he started addressing the bus. Paul was sure he was warning other travelers to be wary of the frisky Vietnamese. As only Europeans can do, the boyfriend then seamlessly and without prompting kindly translated his original tale into English for the dumb uni-language understanding Australian, American and English travelers. Revealing that both Paul and Rhaani were wrong, he announced that he had just asked his girlfriend to marry him. A big cheer went around the bus apart from Paul who, with a look of shock on his face, suggested a girlfriend sobbing at the back of the bus wasn’t typical behavior for a happy answer. “I’m more shocked he proposed on a bridge at the DMZ tour!” said Rhaani, “In which possibly way is that romantic? Plus where the hell is her engagement bling?” While trying not to make it obvious that we were oblivious to the rest of the tour and enraptured by the German couple we continued on the trip. We then stopped for lunch and noticed we weren’t alone in changing the focus of our attention and like a high school dining hall all eyes were on the couple. Events took a new twist when then pair, with the girl still in tears, asked the tour guide to organize a taxi to take them the 100miles back to their hotel. As soon as they were gone the Dutch couple who sat next to them and of course were fluent in German and English became the gossip providers. Turns out that the guy comes from a family of psychotics and he was having his first ever psychotic episode. The proposal came completely out of the blue - and during a DMZ tour, rhaani added - and he was very agitated when he made it. Paul thought it funnier that this guy proposing was seen as a sign of madness yet hundreds of other guys do it every year and no-one steps in the help them. The couple were going to return to Hue and fly back to Germany to take the dude to hospital….

finally, at 5ft 10 1/4 I'm a giant amongst men

also on the tour were the tunnels which were actually quite interesting, principally because they were about 4ft high and an entire village hid here for 4-years during the US bombing (another interesting fact is that over 4tonnes of bombs per villager was dropped by the Americans during the war). The plaque at the entrance to the tunnels spoke of the villagers’ “bravery” in hiding from the US army. Paul wondered if such an adjective would have been attributed to him when he used similar tactics to avoid lunch-money stealing bullies in High School….Hue, an entire city dons waterproofs….Hoi An, if ever you need a suit…. Best fresh spring rolls ever (and by fresh we don’t mean freshly fried, these were non-fried soft rice paper wrapped rolls)….Rhaani enjoys her first ever mojitto bucket…it took five months and countless miles but we eventually found bed bugs, considering some of the salubrious establishments we stayed it this was quite a record…our hopes of a new room were dashed by an old man with a can of bug-spray and a few new bedsheets….

A palace fit for a....

UP NEXT: after Rhaani declares “I need some sun now!” we fly to Phu Quoc Island. Also Saigon.