(I will not ) Miss Saigon!

Hello All from Vietnam!!!

First of all, I must apologize to the country of Cambodia - they are NOT the only nation of nosepickers.

I have the benefit of writing this after two weeks here -and can contrast and see the different parts and dynamics of Vietnam with hindsight. Its a very interesting country - not the least of which is how it combines a legacy of communism with an economy now that is staggering in its capitalistic bent. Here is a little cutie decked out for New Years right across the alley from our hotel entrance.

We've been in Vietnam about 2.5 weeks - its a huge country, stretching over a 1,000 miles from Ho Chi Minh City (formerly Saigon) in the south to Hanoi in the north. The train linking the two cities, the Reunification Express, takes over 40 hours on a normal train to connect the two cities, and 30 hours for a speed train direct.

We arrived in HCMC's backpacker area the day after Tet (Lunar New Years) - but , of course, didn't avoid the ongoing increased cost and service charges for "New Years". The skank element in HCMC was much lower in the backpacker area than Bangkok, we were happy to discover. We walked around a bit looking for a hotel recommended by a couple we met in Siem Reap - and a little lady in green ran over , took us by the arm and helped us find our hotel, and another one with available rooms when our first choice was booked. She hung around a bit - don't know if she expected a tip or not. Here is a shot of a typical street near our hotel in HCMC. Lots of motorbikes - HCMC has 5.5 million people and 3 million motorbikes.

One thing that consistently delighted me was how many of the restaurants are organized. We stayed at a hotel on an alley with many restaurants nearby. The restaurant's seating area would be on one side of the alley and their kitchen would be across the alley - and the extensive menus (usually Vietnamese selections along with Italian, American and other choices for travellers) would be prepared in a room like the one below - not alot bigger than my kitchen, which is teeny, and with a gazillion options covered in the way of supplies. The next pic is from our balcony. We had a 5th floor room so 6 stories up. Vietnamese buildings tend to be very tall and skinny- there are 85 million people and limited land near the coast and cities to build on (the rest is water ,rivers or mountains). These red flags are everywhere.

We probably didn't do HCMC justice and only got out of our hotel area to head out to the Cu Chi tunnels 50 KM northwest of town. This complex have over 200 km of tunnels linked together, along with connected meeting rooms, hospitals, cooking areas and manufacturing areas for weapons and clothing. Though so close to the American occupied Saigon during the "American War", the Vietcong using these tunnels inflicted major damage to local American troops ; they could steal out in the night for covert ops against US troops, then drop into multiple tunnel entrances when pursued. In fact, US troops would throw grenades into the tunnel holes when they saw a Vietcong soldier drop in, but by the time the grenade went off, the north vietnamese would be long gone to another part of the connected tunnels. Before touring the area, we saw a brief movie on them. I have to say, I was quite moved to be hearing the Vietnamese side of the war and to hear the Americans described as American Imperialists. And to top it off, I have the benefit of comparing it to "my war", the Iraq war - and its spooky, frankly. For example, it was chilling to see the various bamboo booby traps that were laid to kill and injure US soldiers - holes in the ground with a variety of sharpened bamboo sticks and metal spikes that US soldiers would fall into or walk into. Ingenious, simple and brutal. I couldn't help but think of how surprised we were in Iraq when we started to lose soldiers in ways outside Rummy's plana - to explosive devices hidden in holes in the road, or dead animals, by the Iraq insurgents. Ingenious, simple and brutal.

The tunnels themselves have been expanded - so its an amazing effort to walk them . I went about 100 yards underground, bent over at the waist and crouching the whole way, with an occasional crawl or butt slide. Its pitch black in them between exits, and hotter than hell as well as small. Aileen walked them above ground and said that every 20 yards or so there would be an exit stairway ,and people from our group would stagger out, sweaty and green-faced. She said that I was one of the few women to walk the whole way through.

There was an American tank parked in the area - and some folks, including young US backpackers, climbed on it for a grinning picture - kinda made me sick since I realized that some US soldiers probably died so that that tank was abandoned. An interesting fact was that most of the Vietcong that used these tunnels were actually women from the local village - most of the men would be more mobile and would be fighting in tactical battles or engagements in a broader geo-area - but the women needed to be closer to home to take care of family. Also - the Vietcong wore specific black rubber sandals so that they could identify each other - and they killed any villagers that wore the same sandals that were not official Vietcong - I supposed to protect them from infiltrators. Here is a guy showing how they would enter a typical tunnel entrance and then cover it up. Teeny tiny.

Walking hunched over in the tunnelsl- here is the guy in front of me (I took random pictures in the darkness since I couldn't see) as he drops a level in the tunnel through a hole... you always wondered how high the drop was but it was usually no more than 2-3 feet - amazing that people running quickly through didn't snap ankles.

We popped out in the hospital room - a half buried room with very rudimentary medical capabilities.

Afterwards, we stopped at the War Remnants Museum - it focuses on both the wars against the French and the Americans. Again, you are seeing the other side of what you have heard about for 30 years. There was a very moving exhibit on the 30 or more journalists and photographers that were killed in Vietnam and Cambodia. Also , there was information on how the US worked with the French before the French punted the war to the US - and how the US assisted the South Vietnamese government as it fought the North Vietnamese army under Ho. Don't get me wrong, I feel very patriotic as an American and was off kilter hearing the propaganda against the US - but why is it (in hindsight) we so often pick a side that either turns against us or inflicts intolerable cruelty. Simple answer is it all indirectly benefits the US interests - but when you read that the South Vietnamese government imprisoned, tortured and killed 50,000 of its own people that they accused of aiding the communist insurgents, you gotta wonder what to believe.

The final rooms were pictures and stories of the collateral damage done to Vietnamese citizens - death and disfigurement from napalm, Agent Orange, carpet bombing. Very moving, very humbling, very depressing. I remember thinking," There will be a museum like this in Bagdad in 20 years, I wish that I could drag Bush, Cheney, Rummey, Wolfie, Condi and the rest of the team here to see what a mis-executed war results in." It didn't help that I was reading "Bushworld" by the NY Times writer Maureen Dowd at the same time - Aileen thought I was talking to her when really I was swearing about what I read our current government did leading up to the Iraq invasion and afterwards.

So, glad to have witnessed these things - and really glad to get the hell out of there!

We took a night sleeper bus to Nha Trang (see above), a beach town about 10 hours drive. Its a new concept here - instead of taking a night sleeper train with beds (impossible to get with Lunar New Years tying everything up), or instead of taking a bus with situp seats, these buses carry fewer people but each person has a sleeping pod - a reclined seat/bed. The first bus beds were vinyl, came with a vinyl pillow and a blanket washed sometime in the last year. And, to make it really fun, the driver .... kind of a sadist. I think he thought if he had to be up, we all would be! So he had Vietnamese TV playing really loud in speakers all over the bus until at least 10pm. He then played music till almost 11. I finally went up to ask he turn the music off and he at first shook me off and said "No". I was dumbfounded! He finally turned it down and off at 11 - must have been the official rule. We pulled over a few times for people to get off or potty stops. At 2:30 am, we pulled over, 1/2 the people got out to use the pit toilets and then got back on the bus - and watched the bus crew order and eat a small meal. Now its okay to give the guy a break to keep him chipper, but tell us so we can also be eating soup at 2:30 am.

We got dropped in downtown Nha Trang at 6am - it was a little after sunrise, and I gotta tell you, its trippy to be walking around a town with a few hundred other backpackers looking for a room. The good thing is that these towns know that there are buses arriving, and hotels and restaurants are open. Plus - the Vietnamese are up really really early.

So Aileen and I walked to the beach area hoping to score a hotel on the beach strip - the guy who directed us there said that there were no hotel rooms in town, that 4,000 people slept on the beach the night before. A slight exaggeration. We stopped in a few nicer looking places and found them booked. A guy with a bicyle rickshaw asked us if he could drive us to hotels - we looked at the single rickshaw seat, our two butts and luggage, and his typical skinny thighs, and said "huh?". He whipped out this wooden seat that allowed us both to cram on the seat , I held my suitcase and he had Aileen's backpack in the back. It was quite the sight of us slow-mow'ing along the road - hoping to avoid red lights since starting up. At one point around 7am, the national anthemn played. What was odd was that in Bangkok when that happened in a bus station, people stopped in their tracks out of respect. In Vietnam, it didn't even cause people to pause , which surprised me given they are still a socialist centrally controlled country.

Nha Trang.... not so nice. Its a cheesy beach town that in the gray weather we had, didn't offer alot of charm. There were a few things - like this barber on the sidewalk. And on the beach there were several seafood stations where you could get lobster or shrimp. I did two morning dives on the sunniest of the days - I am glad that I went but it was very sad - even though we were diving in a national maritime park, there were very few fish, it was mostly coral. The highlight was a huge cuttlefish - about 18 inches long. George went diving, too.

After a few days, we took another night sleeper bus to Hoi An to rejoin Aileen's son, John. This bus was MUCH better - had real sheets and pillows on the bed. At one of the stops, a guy from the vinyl type of bus (smells like feet) stepped into our bus and said he would buy any of our beds for a kidney!

Hoi An is a charming city halfway up the coast - and Hoi An'ners would be pissed to know that I am lumping them in with South Vietnam. It is a Unesco World Heritage site for its mixed French/Chinese/Vietnamese architecture. Its pretty crumbly, which surprised me, but also a shoppers dream. Here is a shot of the old town from across the river. Most of the classic buildings are painted yellow. This was a few days after Tet so many lanterns were still up - plus there are many shops selling these pretty silk lanterns. Lots of dogs, including one taking a breather in one of those mini-chairs.
Oh, the food in Hoi An. The food so far in Vietnam was pretty mediocre - in part due to us being in HCMC and NhaTrang near touristy spots - most choices that weren't European were fried noodle or fried rice. But Hoi On has a few specialities that were terrific - here are the White Rose Dumplings, which are rice noodle dumplings filled with shrimp in a garlicy light fish sauce. We went back twice in 3 days!

Took a cooking class at the Red Bridge cooking school - very nice!~ First thing was to wander the market with a guide. This market was possibly the best I have been in - it was fresh food (veg, fruit, spice, meat, fish)and clothes and trinkets and flowers. Here is a lady selling fresh French Baguettes (all over the place as a legacy of France colonizing Indochina) out of the back of her motorbike.

Then we got on boats and went upriver about 20 minutes to the school. Had about 90 minutes of watching our teacher cook and then we tried a few things at our own cooking stations. I was in a mood - tried three times to burn down the cooking hut , which thankfully was right on the river if things got out of control. Haven't caught a towel on fire in many a year using it as a pot holder on a gas stove!

Various shots around town. Lots of bikers. Also we made a point of ducking into the many alleys to see how the non-touristy areas looked, and sometimes walked into deadends that were the front doors of peoples houses.

Hoi An is also known for making clothing on demand. You see about 200 of these shops below - out front they have all these clothes and inside racks of silk and cotton and books of fashion, including western style. They will make you anything, to your specific measurements, overnight. We laughed since it got progressively colder as we were there and they started putting out jacket examples right in front,and it sure worked. They also make shoes. So, I had no intention of buying clothes. Aileen wanted to check it out and maybe get a special dress made for an upcoming wedding - so $130 later we both had several outfits/tops in silk. Very beautiful and fun to do - hope I wear them. When we were walking in the alleys, we stumbled upon some of the shops actually doing the sewing. I assumed that there were factories on the edge of town, which there probably are - but there are also small shops, (shall we say sweat shops?) in these alleys where people are hand sewing or sewing on foot pedal sewing machines (ie. not electric). We asked if they worked all night and they said no - I am guessing that since they take orders at night and have you come in after lunch, that they get up early and start working at 5am.

k
Hoi An was definitely an improvement over southern Vietnam . We decided to save time and fly to Hanoi.