From out of nowhere

Saturday, 27/10/2012 – 135 A.D.

GOOOOOOD MORNING, VIETNAAAAAM!!!

Oh come on, you knew I’d have to use that at least once, didn’t you! And once and once alone it shall be. In fact, neither myself nor Grayboy #2 felt much like yelling anything out this morning. Timbo is still feeling pretty yucky-crap-rundown-whatever, and I myself am not a million miles behind him. I guess we’re both suffering slightly from four months continuously on the road but, although we should slow down here and there, I know it’s nothing serious, despite the croaky voice and bunged-up nostrils first thing in the morning. It’s nothing that a couple of mugs of Morrisons’ Max Flu Strength won’t fix.

But we had more important things to worry about than namby-pamby ailments. After returning to our room from an okay-ish breakfast, we packed a few things up in advance of the maid coming in to clean the room. Nowadays we don’t leave anything behind that isn’t locked away. Suddenly Tim yelled and jumped back a few feet. No, he did not cry, “Good morning, Vietnnam!” I forget his exact remark, but he followed it up with, “Take a look at what’s under my pillow!” It was this:

Yep, the second cockroach attack of the trip! Back in Townsville, Australia, we’d dealt with one scuttling across the floor, but this one was sitting there and doing very little apart from twitching its tentacles. The scary thing is we had no idea when it crept behind Tim’s pillow – since we’d gone to breakfast? Sometime in the night? Before we’d even arrived in the hotel? However long the blighter had been there, it had taken the chance to crap all over the sheet. This would never have happened if they’d given us a superior twin room, rather than a standard!

In a breathtaking movement, Tim threw away the pillow and trapped Roachy under the small bin that came with the room. Then he went and told reception, who sent up Miss Maid to play the role of exterminator. She laughed, picked up the bin with Roachy still inside, and took it somewhere. Yeah. It’s not that we are afraid of killing a cockroach, we were more trying to make a statement that it should not have been there in the first place! Reception said that the room had been fumigated before we arrived, so that might explain why the thing wasn’t moving very fast. At the last place it was ants on the wall, here it’s a cockroach under the pillow, so what’s next – a praying mantis under the toilet seat???

[Just like at the Travelodge.]

We went outside. The weather was pleasantly warm, mainly due to the grey clouds above, but anything other than scorching is fine by us. Our first order of business was to book ourselves onto a couple of sleeper trains that will get us across this long, thin country – the first from Saigon to Da Nang, the second from Da Nang to Hanoi. The entire journey from Saigon to Hanoi takes at least 30 hours and the trains have the reputation for being the slowest in the world. Therefore our intention to stop halfway along at Da Nang had originally been to break up the journey, but the more we thought about it, the more we liked the idea of staying there. But that comes later and for now we headed down to a small shop to the west of the Central District. This place acted as an official ticket agent for the national railways, saving us the hassle of going all of the way to the station. The woman-without-smile revealed that there were a couple of bottom sleeper berths available on the trains we wanted, but we would have to pay in cash. That meant a trip to the nearby ATM to each withdraw 2 million dong. That’s about 60 quid.  

Not yet ready for lunch, we went to walk along the river…which was pretty rubbish, at least the part we found ourselves at. It was also very full of rubbish, and Tim was able to pick out the corpses of a rat and a small dog. There was also a guy in a tiny boat cruising along and picking out any bottles he found floating by, presumably for some kind of recycling payment. I suppose the grey clouds overhead didn’t help make the view any more pleasant, but it was clear that the standard of living over the other side of the river was considerably lower than the side we were on, but that usually seems to be the case when it comes to rivers running through cities.

The Vietnamese take their lunchtime very seriously and pretty much everything stops for at least an hour in the middle of the day. I like that. Come 13:00 the Reunification Palace was open for business again, though it was gone half past by the time we found it. Strange really, given that it’s such a massive structure surrounded by extensive grounds slapbang in the middle of the city, but we are technically under the weather here.

Previously known as the Independence Palace (and curiously still named that way on the map the hotel gave us), the building is a classic symbol of the Republic of Vietnam, i.e. the south, before the North unified the two countries into the Socialist Republic that exists to this day. It interested me that once the North arrived and took power they pretty much forgave everyone who had previously been a supporter of the South and they all lived happily ever after. Such a contrast with the Cambodians next door! Anyway, let’s not go there again. When the North did arrive it was in the form of a couple tanks crashing through a side gate into the palace. And here’s a replica of the first to arrive (the James pictured is the genuine article and not a replica):

The Reunification Palace is a great example of 1960s architecture, commissioned by the former despised dictator who died before it was completed in 1966. Virtually all of the rooms have been left as they were discovered by the North Vietnamese after the previous occupants had exited by helicopter, and there's a eerie, timewarp feel to the place. A bit like going to your grandparents house...if your grandparents happened to be high ranking government officials. 

On the various floors of the building were rooms that mostly seemed to be used for important meetings, or to, errr, store telephones. On the very top floor was a dancefloor, bar and casino, but this wasn't obscene luxury. The only entertainment in the bar area appeared to be a set of dominoes! Outside was a replica of the helicopter in which the last occupants of the building abandoned ship house...

...and down in the basement there was lots of ancient equipment and maps that were used to direct the war effort. It was also a place to stay safe in case bombs were dropped and, given that there was the odd bed dotted about here and there, have a kip if constantly tapping out Morse code became too tiring.

Despite being an excellent example of 1960s architecture, the building had been abandoned before aircon was invented, so it was pretty hot, which didn't do much for our mildly unwell conditions. We had considered taking in a museum before the evening arrived, but instead we decided to crawl back to the hotel to rest up. Tonight would definitely be a dry night. Oh, and speaking of the word "crawl", we were keen to check that Roachy's mates hadn't come looking for him...