We started our journey in Ho Chi Minh (formally Saigon) which is a more expensive and upmarket version of Hanoi. It’s full of young people with new found wealth from the tech industry and the very poor who came to make it in the big city and just didn’t.

We had booked 10 days on the Mekong and had no idea who the other people on our boat would be. We hoped they weren’t Loudees but knew we would be with the group for a while so we put on a smile and a good attitude and went to meet up with them.

As it turned out, the ship holds 44 and there were only nineteen of us in total. Yep two kiwis, one 81 year old American and sixteen French. And what that meant was that we had our own English speaking guide for just the three of us for the whole trip.

We went to the ship and the Cambodian staff (Vietnamese Captain) were so damn happy to see us as we were the first group on the ship for two years post Covid. The entire time in Vietnam was children staring and older people being very curious as to where we were from as they hadn’t seen any tourists for two years. They were so welcoming and happy to see us.

The Communist Vietnamese approach to Covid in March 2020 was to close the border and expel all the tourists immediately.  The police would arrest any westerners they found and dump them either in 21 day quarantine or at the airport.

Our tour director who is French and married to a Vietnamese woman found himself on a cruise ship like ours at the Cambodian border in March 2020 where Cambodia said you can’t come in and Vietnam said you can’t come back! So all the tourist ships (there were four) remained in no man’s land for five days while everyone worked out what to do.  They had to bribe the nearby fishing boats to bring food to the boat to feed the tourists and basically made do with what they had. That’s an event managers nightmare right there. 

It’s an incredible and probably the worst Covid story I’ve heard. It involves the military and police coming to his home ,10 months separation from his wife, a 21 day stay in an old prison for quarantine with a bucket and no running water and having food and water delivered by his father in law as the government provided nothing in quarantine.  “We did have wifi though” he says “so I caught up on a lot of movies”. 

Our ship was awesome and we quickly fell into the routine. Breakfast at 6.45, ready to go do something really interesting at 8am. Back to the boat and then either cruising or doing something else interesting in the afternoon. What we struggled with is how late French people want to eat and so by the time we’d had an 8pm dinner we were ready for bed. The French though would stay at dinner for hours.

Our Vietnamese guide and translator!

I’m not going to name him for a number of reasons that will become clear but our guy was an incredibly knowledgeable and honest guide. We developed quite a lovely relationship with him where he spoke about his family and his upbringing and how he had got to where he was now.

Self taught in English and now teaches English to the Vietnamese. Grew up with one shirt one pair of pants in the midland highlands of Vietnam. His mother would say “go and get an education and you will have better than this”. Years later when he took his mother to a five star hotel she complained there was nothing to eat at the breakfast buffet. “Where is the rice and the fish and the turtle?” She said. Each night at dinner our guide would send her photos of the fairly western food on the boat to her and she would come back with “what the hell are you eating”. She was worried he didn’t have any fish sauce.

Our first excursion off the boat was to the Cu Chi Tunnels which we had visited the last time. An incredibly interesting piece of history that shows how the Viet Cong defeated the Americans by using hundreds of kilometres of tunnels. They could trap the Americans, they could ambush the Americans and basically do everything they could to kill the Americans spirit.

Our guide explained the feelings of the Viet Cong to us like this. “When the Americans came to help us fight for democracy and freedom from the communists we asked the question. Can we eat democracy? Can we clothe our children in freedom? So why are you here? Go back to your own country and deal with your own problems”.

We also took the opportunity to fire off some rounds on an AK47 which left me with a bruise on my shoulder.  Done it now don’t need to do it again.

What the French and Americans failed to realise about the Vietnamese is that they have been fighting and winning for centuries. Multiple invasions from China and Thailand and Cambodia and the French and finally the Americans!  Each time over thousands of years the Vietnamese were able to defend their little price of incredibly fertile land. 

Our guide would tell us anything we asked about the communist government, the Vietnam war, the local beliefs and the local opinions but not when we were on the street. It’s still a communist country and so (as he kept reminding us) these opinions have consequences if anyone hears. Was so interesting to get the Vietnamese perspective on how their communist state has actually become fairly capitalist over time which is interesting.  

He also knew the English name of every fruit, fish, meat and by product there was in the market so made it a special guessing game. “What’s this”? “Grapefruit”! I would say. “No… Pomelo! Different”. “What’s this”? “Guinea pig”? I would say. “No… River rat! Different”! Most of the time I had no idea what it was and had to ask if it was an animal, vegetable or mineral. 

At one point he took us to the part of the market that specialised in live skinned frogs. The lady would sit with the frogs up and while it hopped in her hand she would strip it’s skin off and add it to a tied up group of pre skinned frogs ready to be sold fresh and ready to cook.  We found out later that the French speaking guide had actively avoided the live skinned frogs area as the French would be offended! And they are the ones who eat frog!!!!

We had an amazing Sampan ride down a small canal back to the boat one day with the cutest little Vietnamese woman who paddled at the front. She kept looking back at us with the biggest smile. We found out again we were the first tourists they had since Covid and it made her so very happy. 

We saw fish farms and pottery factories and tasted native fruits and honey. We had a Vietnamese singing show while they served us exotic fruit and tea. If you’re interested classical Vietnamese music is a mixture of tuning up a metal guitar with a slightly country theme.  Beautiful nevertheless. 

We wandered through markets and saw floating markets and the reality of how Vietnamese people live on the Mekong. 

It makes you incredibly grateful for what you have and admiring of what the people do with what they have. The very thing that we had loved about Vietnam the first time we were there.