Ho Chi Minh

Air Asia to the rescue again! Either 20 odd hours of overland travel by bus or 1.5 hours for £25 by plane – sign of getting old and less adventurous but no contest really – comfort and speed wins easily. If India is all about the sheer number of people and Thailand the number of westerners then Vietnam is about one thing, the moped! It is estimated that there are around 20 to 25 million of them in the country, that’s almost one bike for every other person in England or a small Indian town (that’s not me commenting on the number of Indians in England by the way!!). The streets are alive with them, every minute of the day 1000’s of them swarm the roads like an ant colony scurring around chaotically in every direction.
The name Ho Chi Minh doesn’t quite conjure up the same images as Saigon, it’s previous name when it was the once capital of Vietnam, but the city does have a charm about it. Previously owned by the French, liberated by Northern Communists having seen off the yanks and renamed in honour of the country’s favourite Uncle Ho (leader of the Commie party!). HCMC is as manic a city as you are likely to see, bikes, people, noise and general mayhem envelope the city in a way only Asian cities can – but add to this french bread being sold on street corners that have a french ring to the name and a cathedral named Notre Dame, albeit not quite as impressive, and the signs of French rule still linger… but instead of garlic and berets its conical hats and pyjamas! We spent a few days in town just checking out the streets and TET (new year) preparations taking place before heading down to the Mekong but returned a week later to meet 2 friends from England. They had decided that they missed us that much they were prepared to spend 2 weeks in our company travelling north! We headed out to the airport to greet Matt and Adele who had left a snowy and cold England behind around 19 hours ago. In true English style got straight into town and headed for a bar to catch up, was really cool to see people from home but a little bizarre it being somewhere so different. The following day was TET eve (new years eve), the main day of celebration before a long public holiday, so we checked out the main street where 1000’s of flowers in all guises were on display plus a huge flower market then headed over to Chinatown where we happened to stumble across a Chinese dragon dance at a small temple. In the evening we braved the streets… I say braved because it seemed the whole of HCMC were out in force on their mopeds, millions of them lined the streets. Having slowly made our way down to the main focal area of celebrations we quickly decided to get away from the mayhem and headed back to a park where lots of locals had gathered to watch the fireworks – we sat with a bunch of highly energic and excitable teenagers who took a shine to Adele and waited for the big finale. Once all the fireworks had lit up the sky the streets slowly became deserted, all those millions of mopeds slowly went home, no drunken fighting on the streets, no people being sick on street curbs, no police sirens, just a quick chorus of Auld Lang Syne in Vietnamese and home.