Travelling by public transport in Vietnam is certainly an experience. For the last leg of our Vietnam trip we took the overnight sleeper bus from Nha Trang to Ho Chi Minh City, or Saigon as it's still known. Sleeper buses in Vietnam have bunk beds, a fact that excited quite a few of us. Bags stored underneath the bus, we took off our shoes and were handed plastic bags to store them in then climbed on board and settled down for the night.
Sleep, like the driving, was a little erratic. Next morning as we were getting off the bus, we discovered that during the journey the driver had been texting while driving and had also fallen asleep at the wheel. One of our group had shouted to him wake up and had spent the remainder of the journey sitting bolt upright, watching him like a hawk. About an hour outside Saigon the bus was involved with a minor collision with a truck. Thankfully no-one was injured.
We arrived in Saigon tired and dishevelled. After checking into our hotel, taking a much needed shower and having a couple of hours rest we took off on our excursion to the Cu Chi Tunnels, a couple of hours outside Saigon.
The Cu Chi tunnels are a series of underground tunnels built by the Vietnamese and used during the War to mount a counter-attack against the Americans. Thousands of men and women hid out in these tunnels and fought a ground war against the US. We learned what everyday life was like for these people, how roles and responsibilities were divided up by gender and saw the elaborate and quite ingenious ways the Vietnamese built traps to ensnare any unsuspecting US ground forces.
We also got to go into the tunnels, that got progressively narrowerer and more claustrophic and marvel at how people were actually able to live underground in such cramped conditions for months, sometimes years on end and remain undetected for so long.
One of our group is a former soldier in the Australian army who, as a nineteen year old, took part in the War in Vietnam. He tells the story of how it was his platoon that first discovered the tunnels and how the tunnels were subsequently carpet-bombed by the Americans. He is also something of a conspiracy theorist who questions the authenticity of some of the accounts about the War and the tunnels, but we'll leave that for another day.
One of the optional extras at Cu Chi is to have a go at firing either an M60 or AK47 gun. I opted for the AK47. I'm not a big fan of guns but did enjoy the experience of firing a real weapon. To be honest it wasn't so much different to the firing range at the fair except it was much louder and had more kickback. Plus there was no goldfish in a bag handed out at the end.
After looking at a few more of the exhibits we concluded our tour of the Tunnels and headed back to Saigon. Our driver had clearly been to the same school of driving as our previous driver. We endured a white-knuckle ride as he swerved in and out of the lanes of traffic, overtaking wherever there was a gap, beeping his horn and generally intimidating other drivers to move over. The inevitable accident waiting to happen happened as we reached the rush hour outskirts of Saigon and our minibus was involved in a collision with a scooter, knocking the young girl off. Thankfully she was unhurt. The driver seemed more annoyed that he'd had to stop and get out than the fact that his reckless driving had caused the accident in the first place. We were never more glad to get off that bus!
After two weeks in Vietnam you get to understand how the traffic works. It's basically a free for all. If there's a gap and you can fit in it, go for it. If you're bigger than a motorbike and want to overtake, beep your horn in an intimidating fashion until the motorcyclist or cyclist moves over. At junctions and roundabouts there's no point waiting for another driver or motorbike to pass as he won't extend you the same courtesy. You can transport pretty much anything on a motorbike. Whole families, including babies and toddlers ride on the bike, often without helmets, and usually up front. The most people I saw on a motorbike was four. I've seen freezers, chairs, pots and pans, bottles of beer, dogs riding shotgun, live chickens, dead pigs, you name it it's probably been transported by motorbike.
Saigon has three million people and around two million motorbikes, which is more than Hanoi. It's also the largest city in Vietnam. Where Hanoi, particularly in the Old Quarter, felt cramped and frenetic with bikes and rickshaws, Saigon felt that little bit airier. The roads are wider and the streets seem to be laid out better but the driving is still as crazy as ever as our experience proved.
Our time in Vietnam was drawing to a close. For our last trip we were heading into the Mekong Delta to stay on a traditional homestay. It would turn out to be an incredible experience in more ways than one.