Category: Vietnam

M*A*S*H

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(Okay, yes, I know this show is in the wrong setting, and that it is probably rude to bring up war, but I like the show, and the title worked for me.)

Sarah was still not feeling well this morning. I convinced her to go down to breakfast, and at least have some soup. While there, the staff of the hotel came over to make sure everything was okay, and Sarah said she was feeling sick. They asked if we wanted to have them call a doctor to the room or a taxi to take her to the hospital, and she decided that it was time to do so. We decided to take a taxi there, and one of the five hotel staff who was there disappeared. Before we even finished planning, our tour guide showed up. There was hardly time to stand up before she had a taxi there, and we were off to the hospital. It wasn’t until we were almost done at the hospital that I realized that I hadn’t paid the taxi driver. It turns out our tour guide got that as well.

 Unfortunately, we are in a country that has Socialized medicine, so everything was a lot worse than in the US. We walked into the emergency room, and they immediately put us in an examination room. There was one other family in the room with us. A nurse came right over, and before she finished getting all of our information down, a doctor was there for the examination. They took blood and about 40 minutes later pronounced that it was nothing serious. There were no viruses in her blood, but she was low in some nutrients, probably from not eating in the last couple of days. They prescribed some vitamin C and some pills, and we were left to pay our bill as uninsured foreigners. The total came to 150,000 dong for the examination, and another 27,000 dong for the medicine. Having no more money, we left the hospital and had to hitchhike back to the–wait. 150,000 dong is only $15! The entire visit with medicine and blood draw cost only about $18.50. Damn socialized medicine. I’m sure glad that we don’t have to put up with low prices and no waiting for emergency room service in the US.

We got back to our room and shortly after David and Anita came back from today’s tour. There was more talk about returning early, so our ultimate route today is up in the air. We may be continuing on to Siam Reap, or we may be flying home.

UPDATE

The decision was made to move on to Siam Reap. We took the long drive to the airport, and then had a 5 hour wait before our plane took off. This seemed like a waste of time, and I think it would have been better if we had used it doing something for our last day in Vietnam. I wonder if our guide was ready to get rid of us because of all the trouble we were. I suppose I wouldn’t blame her.

Waterfront property in Vietnam.
The rest stop where we stopped for our eight-course lunch.
Police randomly point at cars to pull them over. It has nothing to do with speeding, but with how much money you look like you have. To get under way again, you need to pay a bribe. They were everywhere today.
Good evening, Vietnam! Flying out of Ho Chi Minh City.

We arrived in Siam Reap, and because David was in a wheelchair, we flew through customs. Unfortunately, when we got to the hotel, we found that we were on the third floor, and there is no elevator. For tonight, we are staying here, but I believe that we are looking for a different hotel since David is not able to make it up and down the stairs easily.

My first impression of Siam Reap is much more modern and touristy than anywhere we visited in Vietnam. It seems we are back to a tipping culture as well. The person who showed us to our room–as if we couldn’t find it ourselves–all but held his hand out for a tip. We didn’t have any money outside of dongs left from Vietnam, so had to stand there embarrassed, and wait him out. I did manage to find a dollar for the person who brought the luggage up.

Sick Day

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We all felt a little under the weather today, some more than others. For a while it was uncertain whether we would complete the tour, but we decided to go on. Sarah has caught some bug, and is planning on sleeping the next 18 hours. If she is feeling better, she will join us for the tour tomorrow, but if not, she will continue to rest.

Our tour today was on the Mekong Delta. We took a boat tour, making four stops. The first was a honey bee demonstration. We didn’t learn much about making honey, but I did hold a hive, and we had some very sweet tea. The second stop we experienced cultural singing and music, while drinking more tea and eating fruit. On the third stop, we saw how the islanders made coconut candy. The last stop was lunch; another multi-course touristy meal, which none of us were hungry enough to enjoy. On the way back, I got a coconut milk fresh in the coconut.

The tour we are on feels a little strange. There were all of these boats loaded with people going to each of these different places, and then there were us four on the same sized boat, with a tour guide. I felt like everyone must have been looking at us and thinking either that we were rich or that we chose the tour boat that nobody else wanted. Our rooms are pretty spectacular as well. We are staying on the 9th of 10 floors of one of the taller buildings in town in a pretty nice room with floor to ceiling windows. Despite my sniffles, I am having a great time.

Our own private boat, with recliners.
Oh, bee-hive.
Mixing coconut candy.
Each piece gets two wrappers… a rice-paper wrapper that you can eat, and a regular wrapper.
Fish of the day…
Gratuitous selfie with a coconut milk.
Pretty amazing hotel room.
Night view from our room.

The American War

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Today was the first time I felt unwelcome in Vietnam. We went to the Cu Chi tunnels, which the Viet Cong used during the war to hide from the Americans. We then went to the War Remnants museum and the former Presidential Palace. The tunnels were pretty nifty. Six hundred people lived in these cramped tunnels. They had made them bigger to accommodate tourists, but they were still cramped. We also saw several traps that the Viet Cong had used. It was uncomfortable being there.

The war museum was worse. Although there was certainly propaganda–they talked about the South Vietnamese American puppets–it also showed the death and destruction done to the people by the war. I know some feel the war was justified and some do not, and I am not going to get into that. It really did make me feel embarrassed to be here. I asked our guide what percentage of Vietnamese people still hate the US, and she said that the culture has become much more westernized, and people accept us. To understand it, I think of how we view Japan or Germany. They are a valued part of our culture now, and very few people hold a grudge.

Nevertheless, the day left me exhausted emotionally, and the heat left me exhausted physically. I am ready to collapse and sleep for a week, and it is only 5:00. Rather than changing my views on war, I think today helped strengthen and define them. I feel that there is almost always a better solution than war. I am talking more generally than just the Vietnam war. I think that our not-a-war with the Muslim country of the day. Every time we go in and fight, we just make things worse. If we say we want to help the people, we should help them by giving them options other than the repression they are living in. Perhaps my statement will make people angry, and they will want to argue the point. I’m sure they can, because this is an idea, not a comprehensive plan, and I’m not nearly bright enough to make it into one. However, if we want to say that we are creating a safe place for people to live, then we should not be killing these people.

I debated removing the last paragraph, and I may still do so. However, for now I will leave it in, and leave you with a few pictures that I took before becoming embarrassed and depressed.

View from our hotel room. Look at the edge of the roof in the full sized image.

Woman making rice paper.

The Viet Cong made sandals out of old tires. They started wearing them backwards so they would leave tracks in the opposite direction from where they were going.

Sarah in the exit of one of the tunnels. Remember, they made these larger to accommodate tourists.

We saw these strange chickens on the drive back to Saigon. I think they look like Velociraptors.

A man taking his flat screen TV out for some fresh air on the scooter.

The former presidential palace reception room.

Merry Christmas, I guess

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Merry Christmas! I have gone through most of the day without really remembering that it is Christmas. It is not the weather, because in Hawaii we most certainly celebrate Christmas. Here, it was just like any other day on tour except we had a day of rest rather than a day of running around. Well, rest and a flight, but I’m getting ahead of myself.

We started the day off with breakfast as usual, but the dishes looked suspiciously like leftovers from yesterday’s dinner. After breakfast, we had until 1:30 to do what we wanted, but this time was used for packing all of the things we had purchased in Hoi An or reading and relaxing. I sat out by the pool and read, despite the rain. There was an umbrella over my chair, so only my feet were getting wet.

At 1:30, we took off for the airport, and an hour flight later arrived in Ho Chi Mhin City, otherwise known as Saigon. Exiting the plane we were hit with a wall of liquid air. The heat and humidity reminded me of Malaysia, although I’m sure that it wasn’t quite as bad. So far the temperatures have been almost perfect; it is amazing how much the climate can change in an hour long flight.

I had thought that the traffic elsewhere was bad, but here it was amazing. We went through one intersection where bumper to bumper cars were going one way were almost brushing against the hundreds of scooters and cars crossing the other way. Our hotel here is one of the fancy ones where there is an amazing lobby and a small room. However, we have a good view of some very nicely lit up buildings.

Sarah and I went to the night marked, but I was feeling a little claustrophobic there were so many people. I don’t do good in crowds. Sarah said that the people population was denser than in New York. We were also warned to keep close track of our money as pick-pocketing is common here.

The view from the top of our hotel.

Asian buildings are always so pretty.

Christmas Eve Fishing and Gala Dinner

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This morning we started out with a fishing trip where we got to try our hand at net casting. I did pathetically, but I’ve never been much of a fisherman anyway. We also took a ride through a jungle of fronds in what can only be described as a half-a-coconut-boat. I did much better at operating this. By the end, I was able to do it like the guides, although I wasn’t as fast and my arm got very sore. After this, we took a tour of a farming village.

Net fishing with the locals.
For even more excitement, here is the video.

Sarah and I got dropped off in town where we picked up our tailor made clothing, and bought a bunch more. I did pretty good with bargaining until the last impulse purchase, where I was taken pretty bad because of an error in my conversion. Oh, well; you win some, you lose some.

That evening, we went to a Christmas Eve Gala at the hotel, where Sarah wore her new dress and I wore my new slacks. The music was a bit loud inside, and it was hot, so Sarah and I went outside and danced. We even got a group of people who gathered to watch us and take our picture. There were some pretty good dancing troupes and a magician from Vietnam’s Got Talent that was fun to watch. Now we just need to await the arrival of Santa.

Traditional Vietnamese dance.

I caught the second part of the dance on video. The first 30 seconds are the best, though.

Lets Get Cooking

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After breakfast I took a short walk down the beach while Sarah took care of some things in the room. I found it humorous that the locals were all bundled up in coats and hats, and some even had gloves, while I walked in shorts without a coat through the crashing waves. I lost track of time, and delayed our tour departure a bit. However, since the first part was a tour of the market, everyone else delayed it even more as souvenirs were purchased. Sarah and I got a set of chopsticks in a nice case, some tea cups for Sarah’s tea parties, and cinnamon containers–containers made of cinnamon–for holding tea.

We then went to a cooking class where we learned to cook some Vietnamese dishes, and then ate them. This was a lot of fun, and I have some great recipes I’ll have to try when we get back. After lunch, we went back to town where Sarah ordered a dress, and we tried on clothes that we had ordered yesterday. I also requested two more shirts. Hopefully everything will be done tomorrow, and we will have time to go down for a final fitting.

I assisted the chef with this in front of the entire class.

This evening, I believe we will just relax at the resort. Having an evening to take it easy will be nice.

The Emperor’s New Clothes

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Today was another one of those stressful ones. We traveled from Hue to Hoi An, and the stress started with new clothes. Hoi An is the place to go in Vietnam to purchase new clothes. However, all of the travel guides warn not to take recommendations from the locals, as they are all getting kick-backs for sending business their way, which drives up the price and makes the recommendation useless. Our driver not only recommended a shop that belonged to his brother, but set it as one of the stops on the tour. We had managed to get this information out of him early on in the trip, and I refused to go until I could check the shop’s ratings on Trip Advisor. Our guide was rather forceful that we should purchase our clothing from there because everyone else was going to take advantage of us.

We moved off the subject because it wouldn’t do any good arguing about it until we made our stop. This did not reduce the stress of our drive, however. Someone asked the question of how gays were viewed in Vietnam, and we had to spend the next half an hour listening to him tell us that being gay was a disease, and you could catch it if you hung around gays. He was extremely homophobic, and I found his diatribe annoying. We tried several times to change the topic before finally getting him off on a music tangent where he sang to us for the next several miles. It was better than his rant.

We did go to his brother’s shop, and found the prices to be awfully high. However, when we got to the hotel and looked it up on Trip Advisor, it had a 100% rating with over 50 reviews. If I could have had this information to begin with, we may have purchased from him. Instead, we took a bus into town and spent about three hours wandering through first tailor’s that I had researched, and then ones that looked like they had a good selection of fabrics. We finally settled on one that had decent stitching, an okay selection of fabrics, and good prices. After ordering some new shirts and slacks, we went out for a good local meal.

I am physically and emotionally exhausted from this day, and am looking forward to going to bed right after posting. We have a busy day tomorrow.

There is, however, one last thing that we did. We were scheduled to stop at Marble Mountain to view a marble shop–another one of those things with kickbacks to the guide. The shop had beautiful pieces, and if I were rich, I would have loved to purchase a few. Better than that, though, was a pagoda up on the mountain that we were not scheduled to go to, but we took the time anyway. We had to take an elevator up to it, and it was amazing, nestled against towering vertical cliffs. Behind the pagoda was a cave with a couple shrines, and a 20 foot tall carved Buddha. Also, exiting one of the buildings we were surprised by another enormous Buddha. This was the best pagoda yet.

I wanted this, but I couldn’t come up with the $11,000 (usd) asking price.

Thinking of modifying the roof of our house to resemble this.

This temple is inside a cave with natural lighting coming from holes in the ceiling 25 to 30 feet up.
This was a pretty amazing Buddha, nestled in a back chamber of the cave.


Hue

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Once again, we started the day with a wonderful breakfast. When we entered the lobby on our way to the dining room, we had three people greet us and show us the way. This is not a Vegas Casino hotel; we just needed to turn left and there it was, but everyone stopped what they were doing to greet us. Entering the dining room, the staff stopped what they were doing and stood at attention, greeting us with good mornings and welcomes. It made me feel a little dirty, like a plantation owner with a large staff. 

The family Christmas photo.

After breakfast, we took a boat ride down the Perfume River, and then toured a sprawling pagoda. Hue is home to two palaces of the Nguyen dynasty. The first we visited was a kind of vacation home, and where the first king of the Nguyen dynasty is buried. The exact location is unknown to keep enemies from desiccating the grave. After lunch, we went to the main palace, which was a walled city within a walled city, also known as the forbidden citadel. Within this was the purple district, which is where the emperor lived. Much of this was destroyed in the Vietnam war, which the Vietnamese refer to as the American war, but the buildings that were left had beautiful architecture and detailing. It is the rainy season in Hue, and the weather ranged from mist to drizzle to rain. It reminded me of Seattle.

This sculpture had real hair for his beard.

A monk was ringing the bell in this pagoda.

The family in front of the entrance to the king’s home away from home.

I admit, my photos started getting artsy today, but I really like this one.

For lunch, we had works of art that tasted delicious.

Even the dessert was coming out roses.

After such royal treatment, we started to feel the part.

Like those old west photos, except this one was actually in the forbidden citadel.

We ended the day with a trip to the market. One thing is for certain: on tour days, we remain very busy.

Halong Bay to Hue

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We woke up today and enjoyed a sunrise Tai Chi lesson amidst the spectacular backdrop of Halong Bay. The funny thing was, I figured that I had taken more than enough pictures yesterday, and thus wouldn’t need my camera before breakfast. Fortunately, Sarah was smart enough to bring hers because the pollution mixed with the spectacular scenery made for an amazing orange-red sunrise.

We actually went through that gap!

After another delicious breakfast, we explored Surprise Cave. It is called this because it has three chambers, and each one is larger than the last and provides more amazing surprises. In the largest chamber, the roof of the cavern must have been at least 70 feet high, and most likely much higher. Thus, after taking nearly a hundred pictures yesterday, I made an attempt to get the same number today. I made the decision to add this cruise to the top three most amazing trips I have ever taken. The other two are a hike through the bamboo forest at the Seven Sacred Pools near Hana, Maui, and the other  a tour of Putrajaia, a planned city, after it was mostly finished but before anyone had moved in to it. I would love to take a much longer cruise that would get us away from the convoy of boats that we traveled in.

Mai, David and Anita in the first chamber.

Sarah and I in the entrance to the second chamber.

Anita and Sarah after more than a half an hour underground.

The third chamber was enormous.

David resting before climbing out of the cave.

After the cave, you have to pass through the merchants.

After brunch, we disembarked and started our four hour drive back to Hanoi Airport. Along the way, we stopped in a small town that specialized in clay pottery. We got to watch families spinning large pots, creating ornate burial boxes, and making clay murals. It was a fascinating process, and they did an amazing job. 

The Vietnamese bury their dead for three years in a public graveyard, and then dig them up at midnight and place their remains in a burial box, and move them to a private location, like the family graveyard or farm. The second time the relatives are buried, a grave marker is erected. These are second burial boxes.

 


While walking down the street of the town children would shout out “Hi” to us. We had this happen when visiting Ho Chi Min’s tomb, as well. The kids would say “Hello,” and wave. Some reached out and touched us. Since there were hundreds of young children there on a field trip, it made us feel like rock stars. It wasn’t just the kids, either. One couple stopped Sarah, asking if they could get their picture with her. We were all laughing at this. Ken, I don’t think she looked like Colonel Sanders. We were told by our guide that the children were probably from a remote province and had never seen a white person before.

After arriving at the airport, our guide took Sarah and I through customs and where we were finally able to retrieve our luggage. We are both looking forward to the first change of clothes we will have since Monday. (I did purchase a new shirt and underwear so I could wash one pair and wear the other. I’m also looking forward to shaving. My head and face are beginning to look like a Chia pet. Unfortunately, I only had the luggage for about 30 minutes before I had to check it in for our next flight to Hue. We have just started our descent now, and I am really hoping that our bags made it on board.

UPDATE: Our luggage arrived in Hue, and our room was spectacular. If this is a 3 star hotel room, I wonder what a 5 star would look like.

Those are real flower pedals.

Halong Bay

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We woke up this morning to another wonderful breakfast at the Golden Silk Hotel in Hanoi. They have a full spread of food in their complimentary breakfast buffet, ranging from bacon and omelets, to pho. To top it off, they have freshly squeezed watermelon, orange, and passion-fruit juice. We know it is fresh squeezed from the flavor, and because Sarah ordered some watermelon juice with dinner yesterday, and shortly after, we saw the staff walk in with a watermelon in a bag. There was the sound of the juicer, and she was then delivered a tall daiquiri of juice. After breakfast we checked out of the hotel, and took the four hour drive to Halong Bay, where we got on a cruise.

The buildings in Hanoi are very narrow. This is three different buildings.

The boat was relatively small, with 16 cabins and holding 32 people. The cruise so far has been the highlight of the trip so far. We have had two gourmet meals, a cooking class, and a tour of a fishing village, all with the most amazing backdrop I have ever seen. Tall spires of rock jut out of the water creating steep cliffed islands which can reach more than 300 feet high. The fishing village was a bunch of floating houses tied together in a cove formed from several of these rock islands. I must have taken fifty or more pictures, but none of them capture the beauty and awe of this place.

I know this is a picture overload, but there is no real way to describe how spectacular the scenery was here.

They showered us with rose pedals as we boarded.

The boat felt classic, like the Titanic without the sinking.

The Vietnam flag.

We took a raft ride around the fisherman’s floating village. The entire village was in a circular cove with a tall spire in the middle.

Seth and Mai.

Our rowboat’s captain.

David and Anita, with the arch as a backdrop.

Sarah’s mom enjoying herself.

This boy is rowing the boat with his feet.

Our quarters were tight but luxurious.

The small intimate setting of the boat, the exotic location, and the attentiveness of the crew combine to make me feel like a multi-millionaire on vacation. I guess that is true because I did take out a little more than 5,000,000 dong the other day to pay for whatever expenses I accrue, and any frivolous purchases Sarah and I may desire.