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April 27, 2026
Arthur is 65, retired, and spending three months travelling solo (with company when he wants it!) through Laos, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam. These are his diary entries - an honest view from the first ever DECADES trip, written for anyone wondering whether to make the leap themselves.
Ho Chi Minh City, formerly Saigon, is home to about 10 million people and about the same number of motorbikes it would seem. It's a bit of a hotch potch of old and new, lots of French influence and a truly busy city. The people are lovely, very kind, unless they're riding or driving, then they grow horns! I was 3 days late getting here following the passport / visa fiasco, but in truth, the time I've had here is probably enough, for me at least.
I spent a couple of days just wandering around the city and visiting some of the major buildings such as the Opera House, Post Office, Notre Dame Cathedral and The Independence Palace. There's a lot of history to the place and the focus is quite heavily on the major conflicts it's suffered over the years, largely at the hands of the French and the US. But it was the War Remnants Museum that shocked me most of all. Yes, it's a one-sided version of events and the exhibits support that. But there's just so much evidence of torture and other war crimes, it made me think that the way the US is behaving in the Middle East today is not that different to how they were here 60 years ago.
And on a lighter note, I'm pleased to report that I found a couple of good craft beer bars not too far away.
Our group, now grown from 4 to 6, spent the weekend in the Mekong Delta which was a revelation.
Most of what we saw was around everyday life in the south west of the country where the Mekong splits into 9 major tributaries as it heads to the sea. There is a massive network of smaller rivers and canals built by the French that link it all together - in the dry season at least. Come the wet season, much of the land is under water for a few months.
We stayed on an island called Tra On in the middle of one the rivers in a homestead come farm.
A cycle round the island revealed so many amazing fruits growing freely as well as being cultivated. And of course we had to visit the markets, including the largest surviving floating market in the region. Always full of surprises, one stall was selling rat meat. I eventually got round to trying small tasters of frog and snake. Probably need a larger portion to form a view . . .
I used my last full day in the city to visit the Cu Chi tunnels about 70km north of the city. Given the sheer density of traffic, I opted to get there via speedboat rather than the 2+ hrs by road.
Again, a localised perspective of events, but it was mind-boggling to see the guerrilla warfare tactics that the Viet Cong developed and adopted, with surprising success. Equally impressive was the network of tunnels that they excavated by hand to move around the area covertly, some of these systems were three layers deep and went down as much as 6m. Whilst I managed to crawl through a reconstructed tunnel, there's no way on this earth I could get in and out of some of the shafts - a problem for the Americans too apparently!
It's moving day today (Tuesday) and we're taking the overnight sleeper train through to Da Nang and then onto Hoi An arriving there Wednesday lunchtime. Home for the next 8 nights.
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