Saigon, Ketchup, Propaganda and WIFI

My friend and I decided, last minute, to meet up in Vietnam for a weekend trip. Last year, I spent a week in the North of the country and visited Hanoi and Halong Bay. I had heard that the South of the country was very different and boy was it!

Hanoi is the capital of Vietnam and seems a very quiet town, despite having millions of motorbikes all over the place. All bars close at midnight and there really isn’t much of a party scene. Also, it seemed to be one of the only places in the world (the other being New Zealand) where Heinz ketchup could not be found. For those of you who have had dinner with me, you will know that I’m a ketchup fiend and if it’s not Heinz, it is it worth eating.

Ho Chi Minh City, or as most people still refer to it – Saigon, is in the South of the country. Before the American-Vietnam war, South Vietnam was a separate democratic country. You can almost feel a whiff of freedom as you walk around the streets. Kids play in the street, women wear less and everyone just walks around with their heads held a little higher. Hanoi on the other hand, felt like every one was a little weary and worried about something.

We arrived on Thursday late at night and went out to a restaurant. No problem finding one that is open here at 11pm. We then sat outside a fairly large bar, drank some beers and watched the world go by. We expected the bar to close at midnight, like the rest of the country but our waiter enthusiastic informed us that they never close. This lead to many more beers and around 4am we started getting hungry.

When we asked the waiter if there was a 24 hour store to buy food, he laughed and brought us the food menu – yes the kitchen never closes either. Beers cost about 80p (just over $1). And a “strong” long island iced tea was $2. Our 3 star hotel room with balcony, sat tv and fridge was $35 per night in total – though we could have gone for many similar $20 per night rooms.

To signify Saigon’s more international approach to tourism, every tourist restaurant we went to served Heinz ketchup (although one or two still pulled the old trick of giving you the cheap stuff in a Heinz bottle). While this certainly did make Saigon feel less unique than Hanoi was, it did please my taste buds tremendously.

Another great thing about Vietnam’s cities is that almost every WIFI network is unsecured. It’s actually easier to get online in Saigon than it is in Singapore (where Singapore has a free WIFI network over the whole city, but registering is complicated).

The propaganda in Hanoi at the museums was beyond comical. In Saigon, it was still evident but to a lesser degree. At the army museum in Hanoi, a description of a tank might talk about how it was used to shoot at schools and hospitals. In Saigon, it would simply talk about how far it could shoot. Don’t get me wrong, the word “Americans” was still changed to “Imperialist Americans” everywhere and the Vietnamese never tortured a single prisoner, according to the slates. This is ridiculous, but it’s how their government wants to portray the story to their own people I guess.

My favourite part of the trip was watching the World Cup matches. The atmosphere in the sports bar for the Germany vs Argentina match was amazing. The Netherlands vs Brazil match was totally different as we were taken to a TV room upstairs in another bar. It was the strangest place to watch a football match as it appeared to be a nightclub, complete with 21 disco balls, smoke machines and instead of commentary at half time we got to listen to hardcore techno music.

How very odd that was. To me that is Vietnam in a nutshell though, a country that is not really sure what is wants to be and where it wants to go. It is a mish mash of repression and freedom that just sort of works so long as nobody questions the system. I will certainly be back there in future to visit the beautiful island of Phu Quoc and perhaps have a suit or two tailored.