I put this in the wrong place originally which is why it seems a bit out of whack – time wise.

A few years ago the child bride and I visited Vietnam. I have previously reported, via the Mekong Muster, a trip through Cambodia and Southern Vietnam. What I’m about to report here occurred a couple of years before that.

Why, you ask, is it now coming to light. The answer is that I am sitting in Hong Kong airport contemplating Day Zero of the about to happen Rheinube River Ramble and associated activities in Europe. A day’s stopover in Honkers was an unexpected (at the time of booking) bonus, hence the “Day Zero”. So I go into Notes in my iPad to jot down a few thoughts on the activities of the past 24 hours and there it is. Long forgotten and totally unblogged. On reading it again, it absolutely deserves to be blogged so here it is. I suspect it is buried in Facebook somewhere but I couldn’t be bothered scrolling back because it’s here. Enjoy (or no, as the case maybe).

Generally when one goes on a holiday, the expectation is of no stress and maximum relaxation, unless you get your jollies climbing mountains or bungee jumping. You don’t expect to have to learn a new set of life skills. And so we thought when we arrived in Saigon. As we were driven to our hotel, a feeling of unease started to develop as we contemplated the next day’s walking tour of the city and wondered whether this involved actually crossing any roads. By foot.

This issue was put temporarily on the back burner when we met our fellow tourists, a couple from the Hunter Valley in NSW, a couple of ladies from Adelaide and a couple from Chester who turned out to be our drinking buddies on the trip. Actually, they would probably claim that we were their drinking buddies as they were much more proactive in seeking out the best imbibing spots where one could indulge a few Vietnamese sherbets.

Anyway, back to the walking tour. If you’ve ever observed a column of ants, you’d have noted that they generally head in the same direction but tend to bounce around the designated track like pin-balls. If they were all on scooters and there were 100 times as many of them, you would get an impression of the average city street in Saigon (and Hanoi). Miraculously the scooters rarely collide with each other or pedestrians but we didn’t know that on that first morning. Needless to say we all needed a stiff scotch by about 10.00am. The trick when crossing roads (and you can forget about traffic lights) is to assume (ha ha ha) that they will avoid you if you walk at a predictable speed in a predictable direction. I’ve seen pedestrians do this in India but with cars to negotiate. India’s road toll is horrendous. Anyway, none of us were maimed so the holiday was a resounding success thus far.

While on the topic of roads and life skills, I’ll jump forward to Hanoi or the road to Halong Bay to be precise. You can look up Halong Bay yourselves (it’s breathtaking) so I won’t get into details. What you won’t read about (apart from here) is the trip from Hanoi to Halong Bay. It’s about 3 hours on average, 5 hours if it’s one of us driving or 2 hours with our driver. I’ve never been in a NASCAR race, nor do I want to but I have an inkling of what it would be like. Imagine you are in a bus in a NASCAR race but the track is only half finished. Now imagine that half the field is travelling in the opposite direction without lights at night time. Now imagine that your driver is Keith Moon. The feeling is as close to helpless as it’s possible to get.