Cochin-China

Our stay in sunny and UNESCO-listed Vietnam is drawing to a close. Our last few days here in the South have mainly been occupied by biking, scams and booze.

It seems hard to talk about Vietnam or visit any museum without reference to the various wars fought by the Vietnamese against most of the rest of the world in order, right from the Mongols to the French and Americans, so after leaving Hue we stopped off at China Beach, which is where the Americans first landed and enjoyed their rec leave during the war. It is now a minor resort town.

We then spent 3 days in Hoi An, a town first founded by the Dutch East India Company in around 1650, currently a seaside town and now fast turning into Surfers Paradise but with particularly lax development laws. Most shops in the town are tailors or food stores selling remarkably cheap noodles and booze.

Everybody is keen to sell you something. These old ladies are racing across the river to offer us a ride back the other way for a very cheap price. We made the mistake of standing still for more than 3 seconds. There is a bridge just out of shot, so the marketing pitch needed to be pretty ambitious.


This lady is selling ceramic whistles, a must for the sophisticated traveller.

This little girl is part of an elaborate scam. Her big sister (around 12, and speaking unbelievably good English with an Australian accent) is talking to Penny, explaining what a drunk her mum is and asking for foreign coins, which are then sold back to other foreigners for a profit.

We initially resisted the urge to frequent the numerous tailor shops. Here suits can be made for the price of a tie back home, and custom made cocktail dresses and winter coats are $50. We held out for a little while. Some time was spent with Matt getting a haircut, including cut-throat razor, on the outskirts of town. The architecture was again Stalinist.

The next day we got up early and went to a half day cooking school. It began with a bike ride around an island accompanied by some very informative visits to local rice paper makers, fisher-folk, and farmers. We also learned a great deal of information about local customs. As in many cultures it seems, it is beyond the realm of comprehension that a man could the sterile, so the absence of a baby is always the woman's fault. The rural Vietnamese would give brides 12 months to fall pregnant. If they failed, they were sent away for herbal medicine treatment. If that failed, they were put in a wooden cage and thrown into the river as soon as the family had found a new wife. The more you think about that the worse it seems. The last reported case of that tradition being exercised on the island we were standing on was 25 years ago. The king we mentioned in the last post who died of sexual exhaustion did not produce any children, and not even the wisest mandarins in the kingdom were able to explain to him why every wife and concubine he took was infertile.

We then went shopping in the local market. Animals are butchered on the spot, and all manner of fruit and veg can be found. Matt was regularly felt up by little old ladies who were struck by his height and plumpness of fetlock. He would often look down to see three teeth smiling up at him while an accompanying hand grabbed his calf.

Next was the cooking school proper. Just before this photo was taken we had wedged a remarkable amount of spiced pork stuffing into a small, rather victimised looking squid. It tasted divine, though.

The greatest revelation in Hoi An, however, was the price of drinks. Beers were to be had for 35 cents, and rum and coconut milkshakes for the same price as a coconut lassi, $1.35. Several were consumed over three days. It is quite dangerous having such well-priced drinks so close to one hundred tailor's shops. After the first milkshake binge, we were both taken by some striking winter coats, which we had fitted and bought later that night - a must for people from sub-tropical cities travelling in the tropics. Penny's Mum must not be told of this reckless spending ...

Next we flew to Saigon / Ho Chi Minh City. 8 million registered inhabitants, 6 million "illegal" ones and about 5 million motorbikes.

Our first afternoon was spent on a cyclo - a three wheeled bike which breaches all possible traffic laws and is driven by old men. We were told that some of them were probably lawyers and doctors under the South Vietnamese government, who have since been systematically persecuted and barred from holding any better job. We have also learned that there was a formula for that persecution - for each year you worked with the South Vietnamese government, the victorious North Vietnamese would put you in jail for a year. We have seen plenty of jails while in this part of the world, and they were no holiday camp.

It rained, but the cyclo driver offered Penny some protection.

Today we drove out to the Cu Chi tunnel complex, the site of intense fighting and bombardment during the war. There are 200km of three-level tunnels, concealing networks of hospitals, armouries and kitchens. The tunnels were dug out by hand over 20 years by the Viet Cong.

It was a very good tourist attraction. They had tunnels you could crawl through (which we did) and examples of the many and hideous booby-traps used by the VC. In return, it was bombed to hell and back by the USAF. This photo of a B52 bomb crater is mere metres from the tunnels we crawled through.

Tomorrow we are off to Cambodia. We are expecting poverty and a lot less people.