Vietnam part one

I can confirm we have arrived at the worst place on our travels so far. It’s my fault. Polly’s been Head of Planning so far and the one time I’ve made a decision it’s not turned out well.

It’s also the fault of Can Tho Waterpark with its enticing waterslides, tide pool and hot dogs, which is more temptation than I can handle. Can Toh’s towards the very south of Vietnam and is the capital of the region, which must explain why the Japanese came and built an incredible toll bridge here. I would have taken a photo from the bus but the camera was jammed between my legs and a pile of bags. Plus I didn’t want to make any sudden movements in case I made the fighting cock trying to break its way out of someone’s bag, or the chicken that was just hanging out on the bus, angry.

We arrived and had a relatively pleasant negotiation with some blokes with motorbikes and set off for the guesthouse. It turned out to be a short journey, which is always a bonus when you’re carrying a backpack weighing about eight stone. I didn’t have any change to pay them so went to buy a bottle of water from a stall and checked with the woman that she had change for the note I’d given her. She smiled and went off to get change, then came back a second later waving a completely different note and telling me I had to give her more. I presently experienced the following range of emotions: confusion, disbelief, rage.

The woman had taken my money and was pretending I’d only given her a few pence. I tried to reason with her but she wasn’t having it, so I went behind her counter to root through her draw but my note wasn’t there and she started getting shirty. We then wasted about a minute while I told her she’d taken my money but she was still demanding more off me, and we had a decent crowd round now. Some guy that spoke English stepped in and explained her story to me and I explained to him that she was full of shit. The problem here is that with half the street around and the thought of wasting our whole water park day getting the police involved over £3 (it’s not a lot, but it’s still daylight robbery), and other people saying she was right, I had to give up.

Stewing over a suitable revenge, we set off for the waterpark, the whole reason we (I) stopped over here. It’s hot and we thought we’d walk to work up a bit of a sweat so the reward would be all the sweeter, but as we got closer we could see the slides were either being used by incredibly small people or they were shut. But surely not? On a weekend? The website looked good so we thought it must be ok.

As we rounded the final corner it all made sense; the whole thing was closed down and had been for a year, as we later found out. As far as we could tell though, the park will be re-opening at 6:30 this evening – in Malaysia. We’ll be getting the first bus out of here tomorrow.

Vietnam hasn’t been all bad though, we’ve just come from a couple of nights staying in Vinh Longh, a busy little city on the bank of the Mekong. We had a nice room overlooking the river and the local karaoke bar. I can’t tell you who was singing or what, but it might have been auditions for Rex Factor from what we could hear. Woof.

We got up at the crack of dawn and went on a cruise round the nearby waterways and islands on our way to the local floating market. We really enjoyed it, the market was a sight to see and was something of a mix between Mad Max and Waterworld, just with less fighting and more root vegetables.

We also saw some new wildlife to tick off our list, including a few kingfishers and baby crocodiles that were being farmed for food and handbags.

Oh, and a horse.

The Mekong made a nice change from Saigon, Ho Chi Min city, where I think the traffic is more incredible than either Bangkok or Shanghai. It’s a big place and there’s no public transport to speak of so everyone has a motorbike. The sheer volume of bikes makes being a pedestrian hard enough, but when you throw into the mix the fact that traffic lights are meaningless and that, despite there being two lanes for traffic to flow as normal, it seems perfectly legitimate to ride the wrong way up a road or round a roundabout. Too much traffic on the road? Not a problem, just ride on the pavement!

We found a way to beat all the chaos by escaping to the top of the tallest building we could find for a drink.

Saigon gave us our first taste of poorly conceived but sometimes effective robbery techniques. One of the postcard sellers at the zoo was explaining how much he wanted for his postcards while I had my wallet out. Not feeling worried I let him touch my wallet and he took out a note. Here we go through my stock emotional response to robbery: confusion, disbelief, rage. He then tried to explain that I needed to pay with another note, presumably thinking we both hadn’t seen him taking the last one. A short attempt to reason with him later and Polly took matters into her own hands and managed to snatch the note back. Five out of five for effort, zero out of five for ingenuity, Mr Postcard.

Otherwise all was well, we had a delicious meal at a restaurant where all the waiters are kids from the city’s poorest areas and went out for some proper drinking at Apocolypse Now, a nightclub where there were more security guards than punters when we arrived.

It’s all a far cry from Raffles. Now that’s holiday-making.