Well now, here we are in sweaty Saigon Airport (it may technically be Ho Chi Minh, but we old timers still call it Saigon and so do most of the locals). Arrived here on the Vietnam Airlines, A320 from Singapore, where I had my usual night of luxury chez Raffles. They even sent the maroon stretch BMW to find me, so I had a chauffeur in a peaked cap and had to resist waving to the masses from my acres of room in the back. Oh boy, I can be bought! I had come up there from Darwin on the Qantas, just a 4 hour hop. Very ancient 747, one of their originals and a fairly similar vintage crew too, but they were good and even managed to do the meal service at the right time! Changi airport is still working miracles, though I should have a whinge and say that I had to wait at least 4 mins for the bags to come up and mine was only number 7, so seems like things are slipping a bit.
Anyway, Saigon is of course great for the likes of me. The immigration form to get in has a few pearls of wisdom on the back – many instructions as to what is permitted to bring in, so along with the standard ban on narcotics and ammunition (good thing I had left mine at home), you should be warned that also the import of “subversive materials, children’s toys having negative effects on personality development, social order and security” are also going to get you into deep dudu, so just watch out when traveling with kids in case you end up in an immigration holding pen here (which would probably not be very nice). You should also leave behind all “toxic chemicals and species of wild animals” – so much to remember already you might just never leave home. Anyone walking off the aircraft with a tiger on whose back are strapped a dozen hand grenades, will not be warmly welcomed.
The crew on the aircraft were very sweet, the girls in their traditional au dai – flowing very thin material pants, tight at the top and bell bottom as they go down and then the high necked, long sleeved, skin tight top, which divides into two long floating panels front and back.
In SGN (see they haven’t even changed the three letter code to HCM) I was met by me ole mate Huy, who is a very switched on 30 year old local guide, who seems to find me the funniest thing on two legs. Whatever I say to him, has him totally creased up. We once spent a week together and he was still laughing at the end, so he gets a medal for hanging in there. I had thought he was coming to Danang with me (I am just in transit today) but he has to stay here and another poor soul will be waiting for me there. We went over the road of a beer, in a very very sweaty airport restaurant – amazingly non a/c, which I wudda thought was impossible around here, so we drank beer and dripped it out simultaneously, as it was pouring outside and the sweat was just running down my legs.
I am now perched in the domestic deps. area, along with what seems to be most of the population of SGN. Hard to believe that Vietnam Airlines uses prerecorded departure announcements and the English tape is done by a perfect sounding English female voice who could get a job at the BBC, so carefully enunciated is her delivery. Good thing too, so that I am not trying to listen out for a fractured Vietnamese voice, which is unable to pronounce any consonants. Those p.a’s done by someone with nothing but vowels to offer, can be total mysteries and you have to keep going and hunting someone down to interpret them. And the flight is one hour late too, so plenty more time to observe the scene.
Now there is a huge thunderstorm raging – sort of thing that would close JFK for hours, but here it is so normal that the flights are still operating – not a place for the faint hearted flyer around here!
We finally staggered off the ground and the storm must be going the other way, as its quite smooth. Fortunately most people who were originally booked on this delayed flight moved to another one which was leaving a whole 10 mins earlier – I played a hunch and thought that a full 767 would NOT go when they said and that an empty ATR would, so stayed put and won, as the 767 was still there when we leaped into the luft. Stick with moi and I shall get you there first.
So anyway, I’m here in Danang and have been running around like a soul possessed. S000per deluxe hotel like something out of Bali, with vast areas of open sided polished hardwood floors, but full right now with an Australian incentive group – they are all successful supermarket owners, so somewhat far removed from my type of client – in fact the very opposite end of the spectrum – brings out the worst snob in me I know and I just want Hyacinthe Bucket to arrive and give them a few clue on social behaviour. The luxurious Furama Resort hotel, is good and on miles of white sand beach (the celebrated China Beach, which now seems to extend half way up and down Viet Nam’s very long coastline). The beach is literally raked every morning by teams of women, to the degree it seems wicked to disturb the lines. The Japanese must love it.
timothyvalentinestravels 