Part 11: Vietnam - days 67-74
DAY67: we left Phnom Penh this morning for Vietnam. We crossed into the country via boat. It was a four hour trip and I found it a bit of a waste of a day. We could have gotten a bus directly from Phnom Pehn to HCMC in 5 or 6 hours, but instead we took the boat to Chau Doc for the night and then had to get a 6 hour bus from there to HCMC the next morning. So stupid. But a few people In my group thought the hot, uncomfortable, sticky boat ride was "fantastic", so I guess that's why they do it that way; to see more of the country. Maybe I'm just travel weary, but I thought it was a huge waste of time.
Anyway, we arrived in Chau Doc in the late afternoon. Not a touristy place in any way. Very "authentic" I guess. We did a trip on "motorbikes" up the "mountain" for sun set. It was more like a scooter ride up a large hill, but it was still good fun. We had drivers for the scooters so we just had to sit on the back. Traffic was a little nuts in the town, but once out of town it was a divided road and not too busy. The view was ok, but it was the scooter ride which was more fun. On the way back we got caught in the pouring rain. Fun!
We had a crap dinner. I'm getting sick of being told that the food I've ordered is "all done," and that I have to order something else. My first meal choice is always "finished" and I end up getting something i don't really want.
DAY68: because of the horrible itinerary discussed above, this day was another long day of travel. We spent all day on the bus. The horrible Brit on my tour, is a complete drunk and sat in the back of the bus drinking a bottle of whisky. By lunch he was out of it; talking to himself. My roommate, kelly, was sitting across from him at the back of the bus. After lunch, she moved up to the front. Turns out she saw he he had a bottle with urine colored liquid in it, and she thought maybe he peed in the bottle. She said she later saw him drinking whatever it was, so presumably (hopefully) it was just yellow juice or booze or something.
We got to the hotel in HCMC (Saigon) and found none if the rooms had windows. Fantastic. LOL. Thankfully there was not a fire while we were there.
HCMC is a fairly unexciting place. Its like any other Asian city; if you didn't know it was in Vietnam, you could think you were anywhere else. The most interesting part of the city is the traffic. It's the city of scooters. It's insane. I've never seen anything like it. Scooters everywhere, weaving in and out of traffic, running red lights, dodging cyclos..... meyhem. Apparently there are 21 million scooters in Vietnam.
Our tour is a combination trip; two tours put together. 10 of us are doing the whole 18 days, but for the Brits and our Cambodian guide this was their last day. THANK GOD the drunk is gone. We had a "final" dinner and it was a fun night. We went out for drinks after at a bar/club. They played 70s/80s music. They played Bruce Springsteen "born in the USA," which is of course a Vietnamese war protest song. Not what I was expecting to hear in a club in Vietnam, but I guess it's evidence that people here are over the war and have been able to move on.
DAY69: we had a free day, which was nice to be able to get away from everyone for a bit. I went with a few people to try to do some shopping, but we didn't have much luck. All the margaritas from the previous night were not really agreeing with me either, so we took it easy. It seems like half the tour group (but not me), has mild food poisoning as well, so everyone kind of wanted a quiet day.
We met our "new group" for dinner. We added two other brits in replace of the old ones and they are a great improvement. A really fun couple. We also have a new guide..... The jury is still out on whether I like him or not. He is much more serious than the last guide, but he is also better and giving us free time.
We went for dinner at the most ghetto revolving restaurant I have ever seen. The top dining area rotated for city views, but it wasn't the building that rotated.....it was just the dining room floor area, kind of like a carousel. And it was super jerky.
DAY70: this day started with a pretty interesting trip to the cu chi tunnels.
During the war VC guerillas hid out and planned their attack in a series of tunnels 250km long in a region called Cu Chi. These tunnels had 3 levels, the first one being 4 or 5 meters below the surface. They had kitchens, bomb shelters, medical rooms, etc. The people lived I'm these tunnels by day, and came out at night. They devised cleaver air ventilation systems for fresh air. The entrances were hidden and the tunnels were deep enough that a tank could drive over the surface without any damage to the tunnels. The guerillas also booby trapped the area with really horrible bamboo traps. The idea was just to injure the americans, because an injured person uses up a lot more resources than a dead one. Some if the traps were seriously horrible looking.
The tour we did around the area was good. They showed us the original tunnel entrances. I was able to climb in (just) but most people don't fit. The vietnamese are a small bunch of people. We also got to go in a tunnel section that had been widened a bit for tourists. I don't know how they lived in those narrow narrow tunnels. The widened ones were still so narrow that the bigger people in my group struggled.
The best part of the tour though had to be the black and white propaganda video (circa 1976) that was played as a historic background. First it started by explaining that Cu Chi was a wonderful happy peaceful place, until the Americans came and ruined everything. It then went on to talk about how fantastic the tunnel system was and how brave the VC solider were. An example from the video:
"This is Li Jung. She was just 15 years old when the Americans killed her father. Now to revenge his death, she must fight for the VC at Ch Chi. During her first encounter with Americans she killed 6 Americans and damaged one tank. For her bravery she received medals for being "American killing hero," "tank damaging hero" and "American suffering hero." She is an example of the brave people of Cu Chi."
I'm the afternoon we went to the war remnants museum; once again, more anti American propaganda. Now, I am in no way condoning the US' role and actions during the Vietnam war (they made a lot of bad decisions and did a lot of horrible stuff) however this museum was completely one sided; as if the Vietnamese didn't do anything wrong themselves.
It was an OK museum. I found the most interesting part to be a tribute to the photographers killed during the war. Two fellow photojournalists comprised a collection of war photos taken by 72 photojournalist killed as they were working on a story. The pictures chosen were very good and make you realize how these people risked their lives to document the war. I'm currently reading a book about photojournalists in Vietnam during the war, and it turns out a few of the characters are based on some of the more prominent photographers featured in this gallery. Kind of cool to be able to put actual faces and photos to the characters.
Over the last 2000 years, Vietnam has not seen many periods of peace, so now that it is peaceful, the people here are not hung up on the past. They are not hostile or angry or bitter about the war. They have moved on and have no problem with the US or Americans. It's not like Cambodia where the country is still in pieces after the war. Vietnam has moved on. The two Americans in our group, however, have not. They are an older couple and they keep making a big production about how they are American and 'should they expect people to be mad at them'? The woman keeps apologizing to people for random horrible things that the Americans did 40 years ago. Shut up. No one is still angry. No one is hostile towards you. Stop making a big production of it.
We got cyclos back to the hotel via some of the sights in the city. Terrifying experience. A cyclo is a rickshaw with a peddle bike attached. So you can imagine that weaving in and out of chaotic traffic on the front of a push bike peddled by a 60 year old man is not a relaxing experience. A few times we cut across 4 lanes of traffic (buses, trucks, scooters, etc) doing a steady 1km/h. At least I survived.
We had the evening free so we had dinner as a small group and then went to the Sheraton for drinks at the roof top bar with city views. I spent $18 on a glass of wine. Worth every penny for the first good glass i've had in 10 weeks.
DAY71: we got a morning flight out of HCMC to Hoi An. I was quiet excited to be getting out of the big city and back into the country. Unfortunately, the weather has turned quite wet on us, which sucks.
Hoi An is fabulous. Aside from the fact that it is very pretty old town (think yellow colonial buildings and lanterns), it is a shopping Mecca!!! There are over 400 tailors in the town eagerly waiting to make you custom clothes, shoes, handbags, etc, for ridiculously cheap prices.
I spent the afternoon at a well regarded tailor having a new wardrobe made. It's tougher than I thought to design clothes; you pick a picture from a magazine and then choice the fabric and specify any modifications. It's really hard to know if the fabric you chose will look good with the style and your body type. None the less I had a suit, 2 blouses, a pencil skirt, a work dress, a silk dress and a jacket made (for under $300!). They need 24 hours to turn the items around and you have to go back for a few fittings.
We stopped at a wine bar before dinner and I had some OK wine and we had dinner as a group.
DAY72: there was an optional tour to see some temple this morning. I am completely templed out, so i took a bike and rode 5k to the beach. It was a nice enough beach, but the weather has not been great so it wasnt really swimming weather. I spent the afternoon going to fittings at the tailor and having my hair trimmed.
A bit of a funny story at the tailor. I was sitting waiting for my clothes and decided to French braid my hair to get it out of my face. I can French braid very quickly and I don't need a mirror, so I was just sitting there looking at the floor, minding my own business. When I was finished braiding I looked up and 4 Vietnamese women working there were gathered around staring right at me with HUGE smiles on their faces. Turns out the French braiding impressed them greatly. They came and looked at my hair, and asked me numerous questions ("you hair stylist at home?"), and then discussed it amongst themselves by twisting and braiding the ends of their hair. Funny.
For dinner we did a cooking class as a group. It was awesome. Not as educational as the class I did in Thailand because it was a big group, but the leader was excellent. She was hilarious and so entertaining; we were laughing none stop the entire time. She came up for nicknames for everyone. I was "no onion girl", one of the guys who ordered a Tiger beer was "Tiger", Paul was "paulie" etc. She really liked Tiger. She would smile and wink at him and make him very uncomfortable (all in good fun of course). The food was awesome too and she insisted we needed wine to cook, so it was a really fun night. A few of the recipes we did I would definitely try at home.
DAY73: we took a 4 hour bus ride north to Hue I'm the morning. I'm getting so sick of planes, trains and automobiles. Especially automobiles.
Hue is the old imperial capital city. It was the home of the Ngyuen dynasty kings. After we arrived we had lunch as a group and it was awful. After that it was the citadel. It was a pretty big and interesting place, but it was pouring rain. After an hour Kelly, myself and the Swiss boys went back to the hotel early; we couldn't take any more of the rain, or the American couple's ridiculous questions.
We had a pretty decent dinner and then Kelly and I and the Swiss went out for drinks.
DAY74: I believe day 74 marks the last day of visiting temples in Asia. We took a one hour boat ride up the river to a kings tomb. The boat we were on can best be described as a floating patio with dragon decorations.
The kings tomb was interesting enough. One thing I found interesting was that no one knows where in the 5k complex the king is actually buried. They kept it a secret, to prevent tomb raiders.
After we took the boat to a temple and pagoda. This particular temple is famous for the actions of it's head monk during the war. He set himself on fire to publicly protest Diem's anti Buddhist beliefs. The image of him ablaze is very famous.
Otherwise, today the temple is a practicing school for young monks. I feel horrible for these kids and I think the whole process is nonsense. These kids join to be monks at the age of 7. You can't tell me that at 7 you are equip to decide the direction of the rest of your life. Monks can't eat meat or garlic and they can't have sex.
In the late afternoon we went to the train station and caught an overnight train to Hanoi. I was expecting the train to be better than china, because we were in a higher class car and I had heard the Vietnamese trains were better. That was wrong. Maybe we were just on a bad train but it was filthy. Overall, the trains we took in china were a much more pleasant experience.
My next post will likely be my last
Cheers
Siobhan
Anyway, we arrived in Chau Doc in the late afternoon. Not a touristy place in any way. Very "authentic" I guess. We did a trip on "motorbikes" up the "mountain" for sun set. It was more like a scooter ride up a large hill, but it was still good fun. We had drivers for the scooters so we just had to sit on the back. Traffic was a little nuts in the town, but once out of town it was a divided road and not too busy. The view was ok, but it was the scooter ride which was more fun. On the way back we got caught in the pouring rain. Fun!
We had a crap dinner. I'm getting sick of being told that the food I've ordered is "all done," and that I have to order something else. My first meal choice is always "finished" and I end up getting something i don't really want.
DAY68: because of the horrible itinerary discussed above, this day was another long day of travel. We spent all day on the bus. The horrible Brit on my tour, is a complete drunk and sat in the back of the bus drinking a bottle of whisky. By lunch he was out of it; talking to himself. My roommate, kelly, was sitting across from him at the back of the bus. After lunch, she moved up to the front. Turns out she saw he he had a bottle with urine colored liquid in it, and she thought maybe he peed in the bottle. She said she later saw him drinking whatever it was, so presumably (hopefully) it was just yellow juice or booze or something.
We got to the hotel in HCMC (Saigon) and found none if the rooms had windows. Fantastic. LOL. Thankfully there was not a fire while we were there.
HCMC is a fairly unexciting place. Its like any other Asian city; if you didn't know it was in Vietnam, you could think you were anywhere else. The most interesting part of the city is the traffic. It's the city of scooters. It's insane. I've never seen anything like it. Scooters everywhere, weaving in and out of traffic, running red lights, dodging cyclos..... meyhem. Apparently there are 21 million scooters in Vietnam.
Our tour is a combination trip; two tours put together. 10 of us are doing the whole 18 days, but for the Brits and our Cambodian guide this was their last day. THANK GOD the drunk is gone. We had a "final" dinner and it was a fun night. We went out for drinks after at a bar/club. They played 70s/80s music. They played Bruce Springsteen "born in the USA," which is of course a Vietnamese war protest song. Not what I was expecting to hear in a club in Vietnam, but I guess it's evidence that people here are over the war and have been able to move on.
DAY69: we had a free day, which was nice to be able to get away from everyone for a bit. I went with a few people to try to do some shopping, but we didn't have much luck. All the margaritas from the previous night were not really agreeing with me either, so we took it easy. It seems like half the tour group (but not me), has mild food poisoning as well, so everyone kind of wanted a quiet day.
We met our "new group" for dinner. We added two other brits in replace of the old ones and they are a great improvement. A really fun couple. We also have a new guide..... The jury is still out on whether I like him or not. He is much more serious than the last guide, but he is also better and giving us free time.
We went for dinner at the most ghetto revolving restaurant I have ever seen. The top dining area rotated for city views, but it wasn't the building that rotated.....it was just the dining room floor area, kind of like a carousel. And it was super jerky.
DAY70: this day started with a pretty interesting trip to the cu chi tunnels.
During the war VC guerillas hid out and planned their attack in a series of tunnels 250km long in a region called Cu Chi. These tunnels had 3 levels, the first one being 4 or 5 meters below the surface. They had kitchens, bomb shelters, medical rooms, etc. The people lived I'm these tunnels by day, and came out at night. They devised cleaver air ventilation systems for fresh air. The entrances were hidden and the tunnels were deep enough that a tank could drive over the surface without any damage to the tunnels. The guerillas also booby trapped the area with really horrible bamboo traps. The idea was just to injure the americans, because an injured person uses up a lot more resources than a dead one. Some if the traps were seriously horrible looking.
The tour we did around the area was good. They showed us the original tunnel entrances. I was able to climb in (just) but most people don't fit. The vietnamese are a small bunch of people. We also got to go in a tunnel section that had been widened a bit for tourists. I don't know how they lived in those narrow narrow tunnels. The widened ones were still so narrow that the bigger people in my group struggled.
The best part of the tour though had to be the black and white propaganda video (circa 1976) that was played as a historic background. First it started by explaining that Cu Chi was a wonderful happy peaceful place, until the Americans came and ruined everything. It then went on to talk about how fantastic the tunnel system was and how brave the VC solider were. An example from the video:
"This is Li Jung. She was just 15 years old when the Americans killed her father. Now to revenge his death, she must fight for the VC at Ch Chi. During her first encounter with Americans she killed 6 Americans and damaged one tank. For her bravery she received medals for being "American killing hero," "tank damaging hero" and "American suffering hero." She is an example of the brave people of Cu Chi."
I'm the afternoon we went to the war remnants museum; once again, more anti American propaganda. Now, I am in no way condoning the US' role and actions during the Vietnam war (they made a lot of bad decisions and did a lot of horrible stuff) however this museum was completely one sided; as if the Vietnamese didn't do anything wrong themselves.
It was an OK museum. I found the most interesting part to be a tribute to the photographers killed during the war. Two fellow photojournalists comprised a collection of war photos taken by 72 photojournalist killed as they were working on a story. The pictures chosen were very good and make you realize how these people risked their lives to document the war. I'm currently reading a book about photojournalists in Vietnam during the war, and it turns out a few of the characters are based on some of the more prominent photographers featured in this gallery. Kind of cool to be able to put actual faces and photos to the characters.
Over the last 2000 years, Vietnam has not seen many periods of peace, so now that it is peaceful, the people here are not hung up on the past. They are not hostile or angry or bitter about the war. They have moved on and have no problem with the US or Americans. It's not like Cambodia where the country is still in pieces after the war. Vietnam has moved on. The two Americans in our group, however, have not. They are an older couple and they keep making a big production about how they are American and 'should they expect people to be mad at them'? The woman keeps apologizing to people for random horrible things that the Americans did 40 years ago. Shut up. No one is still angry. No one is hostile towards you. Stop making a big production of it.
We got cyclos back to the hotel via some of the sights in the city. Terrifying experience. A cyclo is a rickshaw with a peddle bike attached. So you can imagine that weaving in and out of chaotic traffic on the front of a push bike peddled by a 60 year old man is not a relaxing experience. A few times we cut across 4 lanes of traffic (buses, trucks, scooters, etc) doing a steady 1km/h. At least I survived.
We had the evening free so we had dinner as a small group and then went to the Sheraton for drinks at the roof top bar with city views. I spent $18 on a glass of wine. Worth every penny for the first good glass i've had in 10 weeks.
DAY71: we got a morning flight out of HCMC to Hoi An. I was quiet excited to be getting out of the big city and back into the country. Unfortunately, the weather has turned quite wet on us, which sucks.
Hoi An is fabulous. Aside from the fact that it is very pretty old town (think yellow colonial buildings and lanterns), it is a shopping Mecca!!! There are over 400 tailors in the town eagerly waiting to make you custom clothes, shoes, handbags, etc, for ridiculously cheap prices.
I spent the afternoon at a well regarded tailor having a new wardrobe made. It's tougher than I thought to design clothes; you pick a picture from a magazine and then choice the fabric and specify any modifications. It's really hard to know if the fabric you chose will look good with the style and your body type. None the less I had a suit, 2 blouses, a pencil skirt, a work dress, a silk dress and a jacket made (for under $300!). They need 24 hours to turn the items around and you have to go back for a few fittings.
We stopped at a wine bar before dinner and I had some OK wine and we had dinner as a group.
DAY72: there was an optional tour to see some temple this morning. I am completely templed out, so i took a bike and rode 5k to the beach. It was a nice enough beach, but the weather has not been great so it wasnt really swimming weather. I spent the afternoon going to fittings at the tailor and having my hair trimmed.
A bit of a funny story at the tailor. I was sitting waiting for my clothes and decided to French braid my hair to get it out of my face. I can French braid very quickly and I don't need a mirror, so I was just sitting there looking at the floor, minding my own business. When I was finished braiding I looked up and 4 Vietnamese women working there were gathered around staring right at me with HUGE smiles on their faces. Turns out the French braiding impressed them greatly. They came and looked at my hair, and asked me numerous questions ("you hair stylist at home?"), and then discussed it amongst themselves by twisting and braiding the ends of their hair. Funny.
For dinner we did a cooking class as a group. It was awesome. Not as educational as the class I did in Thailand because it was a big group, but the leader was excellent. She was hilarious and so entertaining; we were laughing none stop the entire time. She came up for nicknames for everyone. I was "no onion girl", one of the guys who ordered a Tiger beer was "Tiger", Paul was "paulie" etc. She really liked Tiger. She would smile and wink at him and make him very uncomfortable (all in good fun of course). The food was awesome too and she insisted we needed wine to cook, so it was a really fun night. A few of the recipes we did I would definitely try at home.
DAY73: we took a 4 hour bus ride north to Hue I'm the morning. I'm getting so sick of planes, trains and automobiles. Especially automobiles.
Hue is the old imperial capital city. It was the home of the Ngyuen dynasty kings. After we arrived we had lunch as a group and it was awful. After that it was the citadel. It was a pretty big and interesting place, but it was pouring rain. After an hour Kelly, myself and the Swiss boys went back to the hotel early; we couldn't take any more of the rain, or the American couple's ridiculous questions.
We had a pretty decent dinner and then Kelly and I and the Swiss went out for drinks.
DAY74: I believe day 74 marks the last day of visiting temples in Asia. We took a one hour boat ride up the river to a kings tomb. The boat we were on can best be described as a floating patio with dragon decorations.
The kings tomb was interesting enough. One thing I found interesting was that no one knows where in the 5k complex the king is actually buried. They kept it a secret, to prevent tomb raiders.
After we took the boat to a temple and pagoda. This particular temple is famous for the actions of it's head monk during the war. He set himself on fire to publicly protest Diem's anti Buddhist beliefs. The image of him ablaze is very famous.
Otherwise, today the temple is a practicing school for young monks. I feel horrible for these kids and I think the whole process is nonsense. These kids join to be monks at the age of 7. You can't tell me that at 7 you are equip to decide the direction of the rest of your life. Monks can't eat meat or garlic and they can't have sex.
In the late afternoon we went to the train station and caught an overnight train to Hanoi. I was expecting the train to be better than china, because we were in a higher class car and I had heard the Vietnamese trains were better. That was wrong. Maybe we were just on a bad train but it was filthy. Overall, the trains we took in china were a much more pleasant experience.
My next post will likely be my last
Cheers
Siobhan
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