Day 128 - Hoi An, Vietnam

Arriving in Jakarta turned out to be nightmare because of the problems we had getting a taxi from the bus station to the city centre. The bus station is about 20Km from the city centre and the local buses are just too daunting after an already long journey so a taxi was the best option. However, trying to get a reliable taxi that would use their meter proved arduous to put it mildly, simply because the whole outfit is run by one bully controller that tries to get you to agree a price upfront and pay in advance. We were having none of that and after about thirty minutes or arguing, shouting and hand gestures we managed to install ourselves into a taxi that looked at least half roadworthy.

Fifty minutes and numerous toll booths later we were in the hotel and ready for a quick snack before exploring the city. I opted for a pancake with bolognese sauce and a cappuccino as it had been a good couple weeks since having a decent cup of coffee after all the 'sludge' that is usually served. The pancake was actually quite pleasant and the coffee had enough cream on top to line my arteries for a good few years to come. Lovely.

On our first full day in Jakarta we took the train to Bogor which again was a chore. First off, the train was cancelled without any announcement or notice so we had to wait over an hour for the next one. Once on this so-called Ekspress we crawled towards our destination, stopping at every station and it took three times longer than the scheduled time. We arrived in an absolute downpour and both marched towards The Botanical Gardens with our umbrellas held aloft looking very much the undeterred Brit abroad. Great orchid collection but not much else. Getting the train back to Jakarta was twice as bad as the journey out and only made bearable by a young woman that took pity on our utter confusion and explained which train we should take.

We both needed a drink after that and headed straight to a little restaurant that did British food. We indulged in Shepherd's Pie and Fish & Chips. Just what the doctor ordered after all that rice and noodles!

The next day we took a little auto-rickshaw to the other end of the town and walked back via couple of museums, the old Dutch quarter and the enormous monument that dominates the central part of the city. On the top of the monument I was approached by another tourist with that "Would you mind?" look in his eyes while waggling his camera at me. I assumed that he and his wife wanted their picture taken against the Jakarta city backdrop but no, after I'd agreed to do it he came marching over to me, put his arm around me and ordered his wife to take a picture of the two of us. This is friendly, I thought to myself. I stood there a little bemused and the bloke took the camera from his wife and started to take a picture of me again. This time I was joined by his wife and another miniature woman that could barely reach my armpit. "This is my grandmother" said the man while she looked up at me, smiled toothily and blinked through a huge pair of specs. This is what it must be like to be famous. The wife looked as bemused as I felt.


The alarm woke us at 2.30am the next morning as we had flight to catch shortly after 6am to Ho Chi Minh city. The hotel arranged a pick up for us and it was nice to get into a decent car with working seatbelts. The driver found it amusing as soon as we 'clunk-clicked' though and told us they weren't necessary. We were going to be the judges of that though and they proved essential as I've never seen such heavy traffic and chaotic driving as this place. It's just staggering. Trying to cross the roads in the city was like watching one of those nature programs where a grasshopper (us) is trying to cross past a swarm of army ants (mopeds). The best policy was to do it slowly, deliberately and with lots of eye contact with the moped riders.

I've mentioned before about people trying to sell us stuff all the time but it reached new heights in Ho Chi Minh. We'd be just sitting there, eating our noodles or chicken porridge for breakfast
(seriously!) and they would shuffle up to us and try selling books, sunglasses, fake Zippo lighters, cannabis or hashish! At one point I got really angry at being offered drugs while tucking into my brekkie and I whispered back to him "Shall I call the police? Isn't selling drugs illegal?". He just replied, in a not so subtle voice, "No man, heroin illegal, hashish OK". I beg to differ...

We took a day trip out to the Viet Cong tunnels which were extremely claustrophobic despite them being made twice as big for the tourists. As part of the same trip we were taken to the Cao Dai temple which is a sort of church thing, painted in the most excruciating colours and used for ceremonies where the religion believes just about everything and includes elements of Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism and Confucism and anything else that a very doubtful agnostic might need to try to protect themselves when they finally shuffle off their mortal coil. Talk about hedge your bets!

We left HCMC yesterday morning at 8am and arrived here in Hoi An this morning at just after 7am. That's nearly 24 hours on buses. It was made worse by the fact that the office where we booked our ticket screwed up and didn't reserve a sleeper bus for the second half of the journey, i.e. the overnight part! We shouted, pleaded and screamed blue-murder at the bus station to the manager but the best he could do was to offer us two seats each on the seated bus. We thought that would be OK, but they were sticky, vinyl covered seats on a packed bus with most of the padding worn down as thin as a sheet of toilet paper so we hardly got any sleep at all. Hoi An is really nice though and a real contrast to HCMC. It's much quieter, the buildings are lovely old low-rise jobs and feels a lot more laid back and relaxed. It's a shame we're only here for two nights really.

There are two entries in the beer index this time round. The first one is the average price we were paying in HCMC and the second is for the fresh beer or 'Bia Hoi' which is a local brew and non-branded that we found in Hoi An:

HCMC = £1.58 per litre.
Hoi An = £0.49 per litre (bargain!!)