Entering Cambodia

Early in the morning of November 14, my adventure in Vietnam came to an end as we boarded a bus in Ho Chi Mihn City on our way to Phnom Penh. The bus was a full public bus, but it was a pretty pleasant ride and fairly comfortable. We rode for about two hours to the border, went through the border formalities, which were pretty painless because the bus company did most of the work, had lunch at a local shop and then continued through Cambodia. From the border, we rode another two hours to Phnom Penh.

After arriving in Phnom Penh, we took some time to clean up and then we went on a short walking tour in the area around our hotel. Phnom Penh has about 1.7 million people, so it’s a pretty big city, but our little tour was limited to the area around the Mekong River. The area around our hotel was pretty touristy, so that was a bit of a disappointment.

The group went to a bar to drink before dinner, but the place was a little upscale and not to my liking, so I ditched the group and went across the street to a bar that had much more of a dive feel to it. I was glad I did. It was happy hour, so the Angkor draft beers were only sixty cents a piece. (Money Note: Everybody uses U.S. currency here. The only time you see Cambodian currency is when people have to make change. About 1000 Cambodian Riel equals 1 U.S. quarter.) After having a few beers, I met back up with the group for dinner. I had prawns cooked in butter sauce. It was good, albeit a lot of work taking the heads and shells off of the prawns, and that was the opening day in Cambodia.

We got up early the next day for the touristy part of our first stop in Phnom Penh. We started off by visiting Ek Tuol Sleng, a.k.a. Security Prison 21, in which approximately 17,000 prisoners were held and tortured prior to being executed during the regime of Pol Pot from 1975 to 1979. Now, it is the site of the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum. The buildings are a converted high school that were transformed into a prison for political enemies of Pol Pot, as well as various other enemies of the state, such as intellectuals. According to the stories we heard, wearing glasses was enough to qualify you for imprisonment during this period.

We visited cells where people were held and executed. In some of the cells, there were pictures of bodies that were found there when the Vietnamese liberated the prison in 1979. You could almost feel the ghosts of the victims in the cells.

Inside other rooms were pictures of the guards and hundreds of the victims because the atrocities at the site were extremely well memorialized. In addition, there were paintings by an artist that was one of the seven people still alive at the prison at the time of liberation. The paintings depict the tortures and executions that took place at the prison. Of course, most of the executions didn’t take place at the prison, but rather were held in the Killing Fields. Since I think I have enough evil for one posting, I think I’ll save the Killing Fields story for the next entry. Sleep well.

Some More Passing Thoughts From Vietnam

At the moment, I am on the road somewhere in Cambodia heading from a little village to Sihanoukville, where I will get to spend some more time on the beaches. I am two or three days out of Vietnam, so I thought I’d get in some more passing thoughts before I’m too far away.

White Coffee: I should start this by saying that Vietnamese coffee has been one of my favorite coffees in the world. It’s strong and sweet and it doesn’t take much to give you your caffeine fix. In Vietnam, you can get Café Den (Black Coffee) or Café Sua (White Coffee). The White Coffee, which in most places is coffee with fresh milk, is coffee with condensed milk in Vietnam. It is very sweet and if you are not expecting it, and you add sugar before tasting it, you can be in for a very teeth-rotting experience. Again, the coffee in Vietnam is excellent, but if you don’t ask for it black, it’s likely to be very sweet.

Traffic: It’s not like anything that I have ever seen. Anywhere. There are thousands of motorbikes on the streets at all times. The farther south you go in Vietnam, the more cars you see, but there are always thousands of motorbikes. This, along with a lack of traffic lights, makes crossing the street a harrowing experience at all times. Thankfully, the Vietnamese drivers are used to this and are good at avoiding pedestrians as long as they don’t stop and/or back up. I’ve taken to closing my eyes and crossing, singing “Onward Christian Soldier” and surviving on blind faith. In all seriousness, though, I have seen a few accidents and I’ve heard that on average, there are about 35 traffic deaths per day in Vietnam. From the traffic that I saw, though, that number is amazingly low.

Westernization: As I sat in a KFC in Hanoi, I had to ask myself, “who won the war?” It is true that as you move further south, the more Western it gets, but Vietnam is still the most unique country that I have ever visited. The tourist spots are very Western, especially restaurants and bars and stuff like that, but the cities have a feel of being barely touched by Western influences, though the French colonialism period has left an obvious impact.

Soft Drinks: Like in China, I found a favorite soft drink in Vietnam. It’s 0 degrees, Khong Do. It is a lemon green tea that kicks ass. Fortunately, I can still find it in Cambodia.

Natural Beauty: The natural beauty that I saw in Vietnam is something that I haven’t experienced since I was in Jordan in January. There are beautiful bays and beaches as well as the greenest mountains that I have ever seen. We’ve travelled from north to south throughout the country and the views from the trains and busses have been phenomenal.

Weather: In the northern part of the country, we actually experiences some cool temperatures, especially in Sapa which is in the mountains, but since about Hue, which is midway down the country, we have hit the tropics during the wet season. The temperatures have been in the upper 80s during the day and the low 70s at night, with either rain or the threat of rain occurring almost every day. I can’t complain, though, since they call it the wet season for a reason and I chose to come here in the midst of it.

That’s it for here. I may have some more Vietnam stuff later, but I think we’ll cross the border into Cambodia for the next entry.

Goodnight, Saigon.

We returned to Saigon from the Mekong Delta at around 3:00 pm. If you recall, on the previous day, I had gone out drinking early in the afternoon. Because of this I hadn’t had a chance to see many of the sights in Saigon, like the Reunification Palace or the War Atrocities Museum. I thought I’d take advantage of our final afternoon in Saigon and do that.

Well, you know what they say about the best laid schemes of mice and men. When we returned to Ho Chi Minh City, a couple of guys decided that on such a beautiful afternoon, it would be a good idea to go to an outdoor café and have a few beers. I couldn’t really find anything wrong with that idea, so I decided to join them. Knowing that we had things to do in the evening, this meant that my sightseeing opportunities in Ho Chi Minh City had come to an unfruitful end. (Because of this, I’m including some random photos of Saigon that somebody else took. Hope you enjoy them because I have no better photos to add for this entry.)

After some drinks, we met with the people in our group that is going on the final leg of the group tour that I’m doing. Other than two departures and two new folks, the group is completely identical as the Hanoi to Ho Chi Minh City group. We went through the formalities of insurance and visas and then we went on to dinner.

Sadly, my final meal in Vietnam turned out to be a Western meal because that was the nature of the restaurant where we ate. That wasn’t a problem, though, because I’m pretty sure that I had had enough rice noodles to feel that I hadn’t wasted my opportunity to try the local cuisine in Vietnam. The most interesting part of dinner was the various people who came over to try and sell us things, particularly books. One woman was selling a bunch of Lonely Planet travel books. The guy sitting across from me bought one for Cambodia, bargaining the price down from US$15 to US$3. It was really interesting to see how the market was set because other people in the group also wanted to buy some travel books. The seller had lost of lot of her negotiating ability because she had already set the price at US$3, so when I tried to buy two books for six dollars and she started by asking for twelve, all I had to do was point at the guy in front of me and say, “he only paid three for his, so that’s all I’m going to pay, “ and then refuse to budge from that price. Needless to say, I bought my two books for six dollars.

That pretty much was it for my trip to Ho Chi Minh City. I sincerely regret not taking an opportunity to get around the city more and seeing some of the museums and governmental buildings. As was the case in Shanghai and Hong Kong, I think another day or two in Saigon would have been beneficial. When I start planning my next trip to Southeast Asia, another visit to Saigon definitely will be high on my list of places to go.

Touring The Mekong Delta

Our second day in Ho Chi Minh City, actually our only full day in Ho Chi Minh City, wasn’t really spent in Ho Chi Minh City for the most part. Instead, we left early in the morning to do a brief tour of the Mekong Delta.

According to our tour guide, the Mekong River is the fifth-longest river in the world, starting in China and traveling through Nepal, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia and emptying out into the Pacific Ocean in Vietnam. All I really knew about the Mekong Delta is that it is often mentioned in Vietnam shows and movies. As beautiful as it was, it didn’t look like it would be a pleasant place to fight a war.

The trip started with a two-hour bus ride to a little town that serves as an entrance to the delta for tourists. There were souvenir shops everywhere as well as boats for hire to venture into the area. We already had a boat rented, so we went directly there and started on our journey through the delta.

We stopped at one of the largest islands in the area, which has been converted into a tourist stop. The star attraction on the island is the ability to watch the villagers make coconut candy (there were coconut palms everywhere on the island), from husking the coconut to the final stages. There also was a chance to sample some of the local wines and I had banana wine, coconut wine and snake wine. For the record, the snake wine was the best. The highlight of the island for me, though, was being able to hold an eight-foot python and to get my picture taken with the big dude.

From this island, it was time to head to the rowboats, though we didn’t do the actual rowing. We took about a 20-minute rowboat cruise down the river to a second island. The trip was hot and sticky and all I could think of the entire time was Apocalypse Now. I kept an eye out for Charlie, but I’m pretty sure I was safe the entire time. On the second island, we had lunch, which included fish egg rolls, soup and a few other items. We finished it off with a shot of honey wine, which I found to be a little too sweet, albeit tasty.

After lunch, we went on a little tour of the island in a cart seating six people that was hooked to the back of a motorbike. We had helmets, but the ride did seem a bit treacherous as we were going down narrow roads at a moderate speed and had to constantly be on the lookout for low hanging palm tree branches and electrical wires. We didn’t see a hell of a lot and I’m not sure what the purpose of it was except to demonstrate how the safety laws in everybody’s native country were inconsistent with those of Cambodia. Whatever, though. It was a fun-enough way to kill an hour or so.

We hopped back on the boat and returned to the little tourist town from which we started the trip. From there, it was a three-hour return by bus to Saigon – longer on the return trip because of the traffic. I think that I may have about 600 words left to say about Ho Chi Minh City, so I’ll try to finish it up in my next post.

Take Me Down To The Ho Chi Minh City

Okay, where was I. When I last posted, I was just arriving in Saigon at around six in the morning. From there, we went to the hotel in which we were staying but, because it was so early, we could not yet check in. Instead, we just dropped our bags off at the hotel and went to the Cu Chi Tunnels.

The Cu Chi Tunnels are the system of underground tunnels dug by the Viet Cong underneath the heavy clay in the Cu Chi area to the west of the Mekong Delta. It took a couple of hours to bus there. Once we got to the area, there were a couple of opportunities to go inside some tunnels, including crawling about 100 meters across and ten meters down into a tunnel. Personally, I can’t even sit in a window seat of an airplane because of my claustrophobia – and from the expressions that I saw on the faces of those who actually made the crawl, I think I made the right decision. It is absolutely amazing, though, that these tunnels could be built and that thousands of people actually could live in them during the Vietnam War.

Another display at the Cu Chi Tunnels demonstrated various booby traps that the Vietnamese set for the Americans during the Vietnam War. Many of them involved bamboo or steel spikes and were of the kind that you could see if you watched the Green Berets or various other Vietnam War movies. (I only mention Green Berets because I think it may be the worst war movie ever made.) There also was a firing range in which some people were firing off M-16s and AK-47s. At $1.25 per round, I decided to opt out of that particular experience, but those who did it enjoyed it.

We came back to the hotel and then I got a call from a friend of a friend who lives in Ho Chi Minh City and wanted to meet up. We walked around Saigon for a little while, including a trip to another memorial set up for a monk who cremated himself on the sidewalk in Saigon in 1963. Afterwards, we went to a little roadside bar that I liked because there were no other white folks in it. We had some beer and he taught me a little about Vietnam and we had some conversations with folks at other tables. Things started to get a little awkward when my new friend’s 18-year old boy toy showed up, but it was still fun. Around 9:00, I headed back to my hotel looking for dinner and a nightcap.

As I was walking on the sidewalk, up the street from my hotel, I felt somebody rubbing my arm. I was startled and first and turned around. It was a woman on a motorbike. On the sidewalk. She asked me if I wanted a massage and if I had a room. I politely declined her proposition, even though she was gorgeous, and went into a restaurant for dinner.

As I entered the restaurant, there were two couples dining and so I went to the third table in the restaurant. I ordered a beer and some dinner and around the time the beer arrived, the couples finished their meals and left. The waitress asked if I would mind moving up a few tables, so I did. At this point, I was the only person eating in the restaurant and I had four waitresses standing a few feet from my table because they had nothing else to do and no other customers to serve. It made me eat a little faster and stop after the second beer.

I left the restaurant to return to my hotel. As I got to the street on which my hotel was located, I felt – you guessed it – somebody rubbing my right forearm. Less startled this time, I turned around. It was yet another woman, more beautiful than the last, on another motorbike on the same street who was inquiring about my desire for a good massage. I politely declined once again and decided that I had better get to my hotel soon, while I still had the willpower to decline these invitations.

That was my first day in Saigon. I only had two, so we’ll get to the other one in the next post.

Another Day in Nha Trang

I still had another 24-hours in Nha Trang and I didn’t know what else I was going to do. I had gone to the beach, but the water turned me off of that. I had gone to some temples, but didn’t know if there were more that I needed to see.

On the final night in Nha Trang, we were going to a group dinner. Before that, however, a friend and I decided to have a few drinks. (I’ve really developed a taste for Bia Ha Noi.) We stopped at this little spot on the street that runs parallel to the beach and had some drinks. As an appetizer, we had “Crispy Onions.” As you can probably guess, those turned out to be onion rings. In a little unexpected twist, though, the onion rings came out with soy sauce and chili sauce. As it turned out, the onion rings with chili sauce may have been the best onion rings I’ve ever had.

Later, we went out for a meal at a restaurant set up in somebody’s home. (I may be off a day here and there. We were in Nha Trang for three days and all of them really did run together.) Later on, there was some drinking at a disco-type bar, which was fun.

We had to get ready for another overnight train, the last of the trip, but we had most of the day in Nha Trang while we waited for that. As I said, I already was running out of things to do, but at least the weather was nice. I spent a lot of time people watching on the beach. I also went from café to café getting a little bit of food here and a little bit of coffee there, trying to fill up both my day and my stomach.

Sometime around five, we all got together and there was time to grab dinner before heading to the overnight train. As Nha Trang is a tourist town, most of the food places are Western or mixed Western/Vietnamese. Three or four doors down from our hotel was a Spanish tapas restaurant that a couple of the girls wanted to try. It sounded good enough for me, so I went over there too. We had a ton of stuff – Patatas Bravas, Tortilla Española, Jamon Serrano, etc. It brought me back briefly to my summer in Madrid. The food wasn’t as good as it was in Spain, but it was pretty good and did the job.

After dinner, we met back up with everybody to go to the train station for what would be my seventh and final overnight train ride in Southeast Asia. This one was only about eleven hours, so we weren’t expecting much trouble. I got on the train at around seven; read for a couple hours; took some Advil PM and slept from around 10 pm until the train folks woke us up a 6 am to tell everybody that we had reached Saigon. Yes, I know it’s official name is Ho Chi Minh City, but almost everybody here still calls it Saigon.

Anyway, getting off the train in Saigon is where I’ll pick up the next entry.

Another Vietnamese Beach Resort Town

After Hoi An, it was time for another touristy beach resort town – Nha Trang. Nha Trang is known as the driest town in Vietnam and is also known for its beautiful beaches.

The trip to Nha Trang began with a bus ride from Hoi An to Da Nang. Once in Da Nang, we realized that the train was running a couple hours late, so we had a little time to run around and get some coffee and some last minute stuff. Unlike most of our other train rides, this was not an overnight train, but still it was a nine-hour trek. That was a bit of a pain, but after all of the 20-plus hour overnight trains we had in China, we could do a nine-hour ride standing on one foot. I laid down anyway.

We arrived in Nha Trang pretty late and took taxis to the hotel. Many of us were hungry, so we went to a little restaurant down the street for a quick bite and that was the first day in Nha Trang.

On the morning of the second day, we did a little tour of Nha Trang. We went to a Buddhist temple that is dedicated to five monks who set themselves on fire to protest South Vietnam’s policies against Buddhism in the mid-1960s. At this site, there was another giant Buddha. It wasn’t as big as the one in Hong Kong, but it was giant enough and I did get some better pictures of this one. Another thing that we saw a lot of at the temple is swastikas. The swastika, going in the opposite direction of the Nazi swastika, is a Buddhist symbol of reincarnation/circle-of-life and what have you. Still, it’s pretty weird when you run across unexpected swastikas.

Later in the day, I decided that it was time to take to the beaches. It was still cloudy, but the temperature was warm and the humidity was high, so I figured a little time in the water would be good. I went down to the beach and indeed, the beaches were beautiful. I took off my sandals and started walking in the tide. The water felt good, but it was a little nasty. Since Nha Trang is at the delta of a river, the water is naturally full of silt, which is okay. The real problem, though, is that there was a lot of garbage in the water. I saw clothes, boxes, bottles, bags, bodies, okay no bodies but all of the other stuff. It was harmless enough for me to walk in the tide at the beach, but I decided that I wasn’t going to go swimming in it.

Before leaving, however, I did manage to pollute the water just a little bit more. Just before I was planning to leave, I decided to put on my sandals when the Pacific Ocean (technically, it may have been the Sea of China) decided to come onto land and steal one of them. I waited for a while to see if the tide would bring it back, but it just wanted to tease me. I could see the sandal slowly floating out to the Philippines. Ultimately, I decided that my other sandal should have the same opportunity for freedom and sent it on its way to be reunited with its life partner. Since I was on the beach, I didn’t bring any money, so I couldn’t replace the sandals. Rather, I had to walk about ten minutes to the hotel across busy streets with no shoes. As I was walking people stopped me to try and sell me cigarettes and sodas. Nobody tried to sell me shoes. I guess Vietnam is still trying to get its hands around this whole capitalism thing.

All I Have To Say About Hoi An

From Hue, we went to Hoi An, which was about a five-hour bus ride away. We were in Hoi An for three days, but I may have only this entry to memorialize it because it wasn’t that exciting. I had a good time, mind you, but there’s not that much to write about. Anyway, that should help catch up the blog.

Hoi An is an ancient port city that thrived as the center of the Silk Road hundreds of years ago, but disappeared from maps and everywhere else until the past twenty years, when it was revived for tourism. At this point, I’d have to say that it is now one of the biggest tourist traps that I’ve ever seen. One of them. Don’t worry, Vegas, you still have the title.

The big thing to do in Hoi An is shop. There are tons of places to go to get custom made suits, dresses, shoes, rings and various other items that you may want to have made. These items aren’t necessarily cheap, but they are extremely inexpensive when compared to Western standards. The problem, for me, is that I’m not really a shopper. I’m a non-practicing lawyer. I have eight suits and no job. The last thing I need right now is another suit.

That is not to say that I didn’t buy anything in Hoi An. The stuff is so inexpensive, that I couldn’t help but buy some stuff. I got a couple pairs of shorts, some touristy t-shirts, some sandals, a sleeping bag and some souvenirs. As an example, the touristy t-shirts were $2 each, and could be bargained down to a quarter of that if you had the time or the interest in doing so.

There is also what is probably a nice beach in Hoi An. From our hotel, the beach is a 4 km walk, so I went down to check it out. It wasn’t bad – sandy instead of rocky and the water was nice. The problem, however, was that I happen to be in southern Vietnam during the wet season and the wet season in southern Vietnam is pretty freaking wet. It rained the entire time we were in Hoi An, so at the beach, I mainly just walked around and imagined how beautiful it might be in beautiful weather.

The food in Hoi An was fair to good, depending on where we went. Like other tourist cities, all of the restaurants offer “authentic” local foods as well as pizza, hamburgers and anything else that the restaurants think will bring in Western customers. I did have a delicious sautéed noodles dish at Café 96, though. That and a Vietnamese iced tea cost me 53,000 Vietnamese dong – or less than three dollars American. If you’re in town, I recommend it.

In addition, several of us participated in a cooking class. It wasn’t nearly as fun or interesting as the cooking class I took in Yangshuo because we weren’t actually cooking our individual dishes. We learned some recipes and ate what we “cooked” – though that basically meant we ate what we chopped and somebody else cooked. All the “cooking” we did was turning some spring rolls in a frying pan. It was fun enough, I guess, and I did think seeing the geckos crawling around the wall of the class was pretty cool.

The hotel that we stayed in was nice enough, with free wifi. It had a buffet breakfast which was passable, especially at $1.50 for all-you-can-eat. There was a café a few doors down with coffee and beer and across the street from that is a karaoke bar, where we were able to drink some Tiger beer and belt out some English-language songs.

Like I said in the beginning, Hoi An is a nice town and I certainly had a good time. There’s just not a lot worth writing about it other than about the markets, the beach and the restaurants and not a lot more about those than I’ve already said. In several hours, I will be in Nha Trang, which is another touristy beach area, so we’ll see if that is much different than Ha Noi. Don’t worry; I’ll let you know.

Passing Thoughts: Vietnam Edition

Currently, I’m on a train between Da Nang and Nha Trang. I’ve been in Vietnam now for roughly two weeks and it seems to me that it’s about time for me to do another Passing Thoughts entry, so here is my first one for Vietnam.

Food: As always, this is an important topic for me and, of course, this can be broken into several categories. Generally, however, I’ll write a little about the food. I have had very little western food since I’ve been here. What I have had is a lot of rice noodles.Whether it be in Pho or Bun or sautéed or fried, I have had rice noodles galore. In Vietnam, it’s not uncommon for people to eat them three meals a day. I’ve enjoyed them, though I have to say that the food here hasn’t been nearly as spicy as it was in southern China and I do miss the heat. You can get chili paste, though, and there’s some delicious chili sauces with garlic and onion that add quite a bit of flavor to the dishes.

Food, Part II: The other food of which I’ve had quite a bit since I’ve been in Vietnam is spring rolls. I’ve had them steamed, fried, I’ve rolled them myself, I’ve even fried them myself. I’ve had vegetable spring rolls, chicken spring rolls, pork spring rolls – okay, I’m beginning to sound like Bubba. I’ll just say that there are a lot of spring rolls here and most of them have been outstanding, especially if the sauce is good.

Food, Part III: Another thing that I’ve noticed here is that the bread in Vietnam is particularly good. It’s pretty easy to find baguettes and they are crisp on the outside and soft in the middle.I have to assume that it’s because of the French influence in Vietnam.

People: I have to say that, as a group, the people in Vietnam may be the friendliest that I’ve ever met. I’ve had meals by myself in restaurants and more often than not, somebody will come over to me while I’m eating and start talking to me about Vietnam or the United States or any other topic. And, on top of this, I’d have to rank Vietnam with Argentina and Italy as far as the places that I have visited that have had the most beautiful women. (And, no, I still have not visited Brazil.)

Vietnam War: As you can imagine, the topic is still very fresh here. The Vietnamese lost 3 million people during the war, and that’s just the official count. I have heard that there are still another 300,000 people still considered “missing.” Here, the war is known as the American War. (Makes sense, since every war here is a “Vietnam war.”) I guess that the level of bias that you hear here depends upon the story teller and his/her own story, but I have heard a lot about the atrocities of war since I’ve been here and it has altered the way I view the war, both from the perspective of an American and from the Vietnamese perspective. Most of all, though, I think that it has inspired me to learn much more about this period of American/Vietnamese history.

United States: Both here and in China, there’s been an odd phenomenon involving the following conversation. Local Person (“LP”): Where are you from? Me (“Me”): The United States. LP:Where? Me: The United States. LP: (Perplexed look of person who has no idea what I’m talking about.) Me: America? LP: OOOHHH. America. It seems that, despite the desires of nearly every South American I’ve ever met, the United States is better known as America here rather than the United States.

Okay, I guess that’s enough for my passing thoughts at the moment. I’m sure I’ll rip off another Passing Thoughts entry before I enter Cambodia. Later.

Hue Cool

Coming into my trip to Southeast Asia, Hue was one of the places to which I was most looking forward. It used to be the capital of Vietnam, has a rich history, and also has a significant recent history with the battle that took place there following the Tet Offensive in the Vietnam War. With the exception of the weather, I wasn’t disappointed in Hue.

After arriving in Hue and having lunch, we had a little walking tour of the city. The weather was horrible but we still went on for a little while. We started off by going to the Citadel and the Imperial City, the seat of power for the Nguyen Dynasty. The Citadel was also the finishing point for the Battle of Hue in 1968. Like many of the places that we have seen in Vietnam, the Citadel and Imperial City show damage that occurred not only during the Vietnam War (or American War as it is known here) but also during occupations and wars by/with China, Japan and France.

In the evening, the group went to a dinner in which they dressed like Vietnamese kings and were fed the meals of the Vietnamese kings. I imagine that meant cheese because I couldn’t imagine a cheesier event. I’m sure they had fun, but I decided to skip out on that event and foraged for food on my own.

The next day was one of the highlights of the entire Southeast Asia trip for me so far. We took a six-hour sightseeing tour of Hue by motorbike. In the rain. I’m not sure if my insurance would have covered anything that had gone wrong, but it was worth the risk. Going through the busy streets of Hue on a motorbike gave me a completely different perspective on the traffic that I had seen throughout Vietnam and on the city that I had seen. You might think that riding on the back of a motorbike in the rain would be pretty miserable, but after having walked around in the streets the night before in the rain, riding on the motorbike was actually pretty pleasant.

During the tour, we made several stops. We stopped at one point to view one of three covered bridges in Vietnam. (Or so it was described.) There was also a little market at the site. A few minutes later, we stopped to watch a Vietnamese Kung Fu show. It was very touristy, but entertaining nonetheless. We moved on to a place where we watched a woman making incense, and then to a former French, then American army base where small and large battles had taken place throughout the post-World War II era. Our guide for this part was seven during the Tet Offensive and was able to tell very interesting stories about that time in Hue history.

Later, we went on to a Buddhist orphanage. We had a fantastic lunch and then went inside to play with some of the children. We kicked the ball around and laughed with the children for a while. One of the little boys rubbed my belly and called me Buddha, but otherwise I had a great time.

After the motorcycle trip, we went on a boat tour of the Perfume River and visited a pagoda on the river bank. At the temple of the pagoda, there was a Buddhist prayer ceremony taking place. It was interesting to see, but I always felt intrusive when watching something like that, so I was a tad bit uncomfortable.

Sadly, we weren’t in Hue for very long and that was about all of the time that we had for sightseeing. I felt like I took advantage of what was available and was able to fit a lot into the short period of time in which I was there, but I think it would have been nice to have spent a little more time there.

Hanoi to Hue

On November 3, we were back in Hanoi and we had another day to catch up on anything in Hanoi that we had missed. The main thing that I figured that I had missed was a chance to see Uncle Ho. It turns out that the people at Lonely Planet are lying sacks of crap and that Ho Chi Minh was not in Russia, but had been in Hanoi all along.

We put together a group and went to see Uncle Ho. I’ve learned that the mausoleum of Ho Chi Minh is one of the holiest places in all of Vietnam. For this reason, I will refrain from being disrespectful. I will say this, though. When I’m gone, please make sure that I’m not put on display for anybody and everybody who wants to come by and gawk at me. In his will, Ho Chi Minh requested that his body be cremated and his ashes be spread out over three different areas of Vietnam. I think that was a wise choice.

After visiting the mausoleum, we hopped into a cab and went into the Old Quarter and walked around the markets for a while. I had done this a few days prior, but I didn’t really have much to do, so I went along and did it again. Afterwards, I walked around the city some more – without getting lost for a change – and stopped by a few cafes and restaurants for coffee and to play on the internet while I waited for the group to get together again for yet another overnight train from Hanoi to Hue.

Early in the evening, we all met and walked to the train station, which was pretty close by. We boarded the train with no problems. For the first time in the entire trip, the train cabin in which I stayed had four beds instead of six, so there were none of the storage problems on the Vietnamese train that we had on our trip to Hanoi. About an hour into the train ride, the Chilean member of the group broke out a bottle of Pisco – a Chilean, grape-distilled liquor – and the drinking started. It was all fun and games until some drunken jerk broke the empty bottle of pisco in one of the cabins. Okay, that was me, but we had probably had enough to drink at that point anyway.

Because of heavy rains in the middle and south of Vietnam, the train to Hue was delayed about three hours. The hangover made for a long morning, but it ended soon enough and we transferred to the hotel, which like the hotel in Hanoi, was called Victory Hotel.

After arrival, we went to lunch at a restaurant owned by a deaf mute man, who also took our orders and served us. The food was excellent, including chicken spring rolls that we rolled ourselves, but the highlight probably was watching the owner open five bottles of beer at once with sticks, bolts and a little kung fu. Come to think of it, maybe the highlight was the spring rolls because they were pretty damn good. In any event, after lunch, we went on a little walking tour of Hue. That seems like a pretty good place to start the next post.

Where The Hell Are All The Monkeys?

On the first of November, we left our humble abode in Hanoi and hopped on a four-hour bus to Halong Bay. I had never heard of Halong Bay, so I didn’t know what to expect. It was a pretty great place, though.

We arrived shortly after noon and went to our rooms and shower and get ready to leave again. At around noon, we hopped on a boat for a cruise of the bay on the northern Vietnam coast. I believe that I was told that at the moment, it still is the biggest port in Vietnam. Anyway, there are thousands of islands in and around the bay and the boat cruise exposed us to many of them. Onboard, we had a lunch with various seafood and vegetarian dishes. The highlight of this was the fish that was staring at me. More specifically, the highlight was the fish’s eyeball because I finally got the nerve to eat a fish eyeball. It tasted optically. (Note: At the time I wrote this, I forgot to mention that we also visited some caves. Shows you how much I enjoyed them. I was able to take some pretty decent pictures of them, though.)

After the boat cruise, we returned to our hotel. We had some time to kill before dinner, so my roommate and I had a couple drinks before dinner. For dinner, I had pho ga and spring rolls. The restaurant was close to the hotel and the food was delicious. Afterwards, we went to a nearby bar and drank until they shut off the lights not only of the bar, but the entire freaking town. It was only 11 pm, but what the hell. We probably had had enough anyway.

The next day, we got up early to go back to the bay for a little kayaking. This was my first experience kayaking and I’m sure I did a sucky job, but it was a lot of fun and we got to see a lot of the bay from a different perspective than we had on the boat. At some point during the kayaking trip, we stopped at a little beach for some swimming. The beach didn’t have sand but, rather, had tons of seashells all over the place. It was very pretty, but a little hard on the footsies. Still, it was fun.

After swimming, we kayaked back to the boat where we had another thanksgiving dinner that couldn’t be beat. (Obviously, it wasn’t Thanksgiving, but I believe in quoting Arlo Guthrie whenever possible.) More seafood and more deliciousness.

We also boated to Monkey Island. I don’t think that “Monkey Island” is the actual name of the island, but we were promised lots of monkeys on the island. We were bamboozled! Hoodwinked! Run amok! We didn’t land on Monkey Island, Monkey Island landed on us! (I also believe in (mis)quoting Spike Lee movies whenever possible.) Due to recent construction on Monkey Island, the monkeys have taken to the hills, so there were no monkeys for us on “Monkey” Island.

After the boat trip, we hopped onto another bus for yet another trip to Hanoi. We hit Hanoi just in time for rush hour so it took several hours to get back to the hotel. We went out for dinner as a group again – this was becoming a habit in this new group and I wasn’t sure how I felt about it. We went to a restaurant called Little Hanoi (there were three restaurants by this name on the street on which we ate) and then went to a little outside bar for a few local beers. (I love me some Bia Ha Noi.) We stopped at one establishment called the Funky Buddha to use the toiletical facilities. The place was all about the funk and didn’t seem to be about the Buddha at all. No problem, though. I came, I peed, I left.

The next day, we were to have one more day of sightseeing in Hanoi, this time with a guide, before hopping a train out of town. I’ll tell you about that next time.

Changing Groups in Hanoi

We reached the final night of the Hong Kong to Hanoi leg of our trip. I missed the final dinner, as had become my habit recently, but the whole group got together in my room later in the evening for a farewell party of sorts. We bought a case of German beer and drank until it was gone. The night lasted until around 1:30 am and a drunk time was had by most.

I got up relatively early the next morning and decided to walk around Hanoi for a little bit. As I had done the day before, I got lost as all get-out in Hanoi. It just turned out to be a difficult city for me to become oriented in. At one point, I walked around for about an hour, including down one street in which I hardly ever saw a car, let alone a cab. I was getting close to checkout time at the hotel and I was getting nervous that I was going to be late. Then, when the street ended and I finally returned to civilization, I looked to my left and saw my hotel. Thank you, Buddha!!!

After getting back to the hotel and checking out, I decided that it was time to go see Uncle Ho. Actually, I wasn’t planning on seeing Uncle Ho because another traveler’s Lonely Planet said that Uncle Ho would be in Russia being renovated in November. I went to Ho’s complex, though, and walked around and took some pictures. The area is sort of a mini-Tiananmen Square in Hanoi.

Close to Ho Chi Minh Land is Chua Mot Cot, also known as the one-pillar pagoda. I don’t really know much about it except that I knew it was the landmark that was on the Hanoi magnet that I had bought earlier in the day, so I had to go see it.

I walked around town for a little longer and then came back to the hotel and met my new roommate. He’s a young guy and he’s from Chile. Looks like I’ll get to practice a little Spanish for the rest of the trip.

Early in the evening, I met the rest of the group that is travelling to Ho Chi Minh City. Unlike my other groups, this is a very young group. There are fifteen people and only three are over forty, with several people in their twenties. This looked like the party crowd that the Chinese portion of the trip was not. But this is a travel blog, not a people blog, so enough about them for now.

I’m pretty sure that we went out for dinner as a group that night. At the time I’m writing this, that night was five nights ago and I just don’t remember. (In retrospect, I now remember having dinner that night. We went to a nice restaurant and I had Bun and Ha Noi beer.) Whatever we did, we weren’t out but so long because we had to check out of the hotel early the next morning for a bus ride to Halong Bay. That seems like it’ll be a good spot to start the next entry, so I’ll go ahead and stop this one here. Later!!

Marching Into The Hanoi Hilton

In an uncommon turn of events, I think it’s been a week since I’ve written anything. That’s just because it’s been a busy week. New group; lots of moving around; lots of things to do and things to see. Let’s start with the train ride from Sapa. After almost two days away from the group, we met back up to take a bus to Lao Cai. From that point, we took an overnight train from Lao Cai to Hanoi.

The overnight train to Hanoi wasn’t too bad. I brought four cans of beer with me and downed those pretty quickly after we got on board. They helped me go to sleep, but they also woke me up early. I slept in the middle cot and it was so tiny that I literally felt like I was sleeping in a coffin that was missing the side panel. (The Vietnamese trains are significantly different from the Chinese trains, but I’ll write more than that in a “passing thoughts” post.) We were awoken by a woman knocking on the doors at 5:30 am telling us that we had reached Hanoi. It was pretty surprising since it was the first time that one of our trains actually arrived early – about 90 minutes early, in fact. We got to the hotel around 6:00 am and we were ready to check into the hotel early. This was great because I was exhausted.

At the hotel, I slept for a couple hours and then the group got together and we went to a place called Koto for lunch. Koto stands for “Know One, Teach One.” It’s an interesting restaurant. The employees were poor children who were pulled together and trained to work in the tourist industry. After a few years of training, they start working at Koto for experience. After gaining experience, they go on to work at other restaurants and hotels in Vietnam. Added to the good work, the food and coffee both are excellent. If you’re ever in Hanoi, I highly recommend Koto.

Afterwards, a few of us like-minded people walked over to the Old Quarter. The first place on the agenda was Hoa Lo prison. The Hoa Lo prison is better known to the world as the Hanoi Hilton. It was a place for Vietnamese political prisoners to be held during the time when France controlled Vietnam. Of course, people from my side of the pond know it as the place where American pilot prisoners of war were held during the Vietnam War. Also, it is known as a former home of John McCain.

The Hanoi Hilton was very interesting. Not much of the original facility is left. Much of what is left focuses on the time when it was used to house Vietnamese political prisoners. With respect to its history as an American POW camp, all you see is propaganda about how well the American POWs were treated. After watching the film, seeing the pictures, and reading the information boards, I became convinced that the American pilots weren’t captured – it was much more likely that they ditched their planes on purpose because the quality of life at the Hanoi Hilton was so fantastical that they wanted to live there at any cost. In any event, that’s how the Vietnamese portray it.

After leaving the Hanoi Hilton, we walked to the lake in the middle of the Hanoi Old Quarter. I don’t remember the name of the lake, but it was pretty and it was involved in an Arthuresque story about an emperor and a sword and a turtle. Okay, the turtle part was new to me, but the rest was pretty familiar.

We also walked around the markets in the Hanoi Old Quarter. They were pretty typical for city markets, with each street seeming to focus on a different item. We walked around for a while and then went to a bad restaurant for some bad Vietnamese food while we watched the traffic below. The traffic is fun to watch in Vietnam, but that’s also a story for a different time. For now, however, it’s time to move on to another entry.

Sapa - I Vant To Be Alone

On what was supposed to be our only full day in Sapa, I just tried to spend as much of the day alone as I could. Having felt suffocated a little bit by the group with which I was traveling, I got up, went to a buffet breakfast restaurant and then to a coffee shop. (The same coffee shop that I’m in now.) The following day, we were scheduled to go on a seven-hour hike to visit nearby villages and then spend the night in a Vietnamese homestay. While this would have appealed to me if I were doing it solo (Is the subjunctive correct here? I don’t really care.), the idea of spending all that time with everybody was not so appealing. I ended up running into the tour leader in a Sapa street (it really is a small town) and telling her that I was going to cut off from the group and remain in Sapa, where I would meet the group when they returned to pick up their belongings, before heading to Hanoi. From that point, actually from dinner the night before, I was on my own and that’s pretty much how I needed it to be at the time.

Now, truth be told, even by myself, there isn’t a bunch to report about Sapa. In the town, I walked around a lot; ate at a bunch of different cafes; and went to the local market. I have eaten a lot of stir-fried noodles with chicken in Sapa and I have developed a taste for it. As touristy as this town is, I don’t expect any of the Vietnamese meals that I’ve had are “authentic” but I guess they will provide a good basis for me to judge other meals since I will be in Vietnam for another two weeks plus.

I did buy some goods from one of the local women who was hawking stuff on the street. I bumped into her on my first day and we talked for about ten minutes because she was very nice and her English was excellent. The next day, I bumped into her again and I agreed to buy some stuff from her and her partner, whom I had also met the previous day. The transaction was sort of surreal. We went into an alley, not a scary alley but for a little shelter from the motorcycles and cars cruising down the streets, and she pulled out her basket and started showing me goods. Unfortunately, about a half-dozen other local sellers saw us go into the alley and they followed us. All of a sudden, I was surrounded by eight little Vietnamese women pulling out various local hand-made goods and saying, “buy from me.” I ended up just buying from the two that I had met the day before, but I felt like I was running a gauntlet through the alley to escape.

Even though I spent what amounts to about three days in Sapa, there really isn’t much else to report. Since the weather was so craptastic, and because I needed to start booking flights, trains and accommodations for my post-Bangkok trip, I spent a lot of time indoors at the hotel or in restaurants and cafes. In a few hours, the group will return to Sapa and later this afternoon, we will board an overnight train to Hanoi. Having had an opportunity to spend significant time alone over the past few days, I should be ready to return to the group without feeling claustrophobic. When we get to Hanoi, one person leaves the group and another eight to twelve will join. Hopefully, I will find the changed dynamic refreshing. In any event, I’m caught up now and I’ll write a little more after some time in Hanoi.