Vietnam Vacation

02/08/2015     Marvelous Marvin, the tour promoter who caters to the BYU CTP teachers came on this one with us and even brought his wife and daughter.  Vietnam was actually done in two trips with Cambodia between the two cities of Hanoi and Ho Chi Min City (Saigon).  We landed in Hanoi.  It took quite a while to get through the visa process.  We were all told to have extra pictures of us on our person when we arrived at the airport.  And you have to get the visa before you can pick up your luggage.  One couple forgot and left their pictures in their suitcase.  Luckily someone else had duplicates of themselves.  Marvin collected all the pictures in a pile (including the duplicates) and handed them over to the authorities.  I guess they didn't look at them closely, just counted to see if the number matched the number in our group, and let us through.   Our hotel was on a busy street corner.  There are lots of regular motorcycles here, rather than the quiet e-bikes we are used to in China.  I went out to exchange some money and came back with about two million in Vietnamese Dong (still under $100 USD).  WooHoo – I’m a Millionaire!!

OK hotel, OK breakfast.  Our first stop was the famous “Hanoi Hilton” (Hoa Lo Prison) where American POW’s were held during the Vietnam war.  Long before that the French built and ran it and put the Vietnamese rebels in there.  According to them, the French were very cruel and I suppose they were.  The walls in the rooms were painted black with tiny windows at the top.  No a/c or heating of course.  Prisoners were shackled to wooden platforms.  They even had a real guillotine on display that the French used on the rebels.  It was interesting to see their spin on the US/Vietnam war.  We were the imperialists trying to force our will on them - they were just trying to live their lives peacefully.  They had Senator John McCain’s flight suit on display from when they captured him.  One wall showed pictures of how they took such good care of the POWs and how happy the prisoners were.  Not.

We are millionaries!

Prison Cell Block

French Guillotine

Skinny Houses

The bus took us on a drive a couple of hours northeast of Hanoi.  We passed fields of rice in various stages of maturity.  We saw people with their conical straw hats, water buffalo, and family graves right in the middle of the fields.  The graves were elevated since they flood the rice fields.  They said if you bury your ancestors on your land, no one else will want to take your property from you.  We saw cows walking around on the streets unescorted.  Vietnam mostly exports rice and clothing.  Like China they are a communist government and the same religious restrictions apply.

The new detached houses that we saw were brightly painted (think pastel pink, blue, green) and ornamented on the front side and plain grey concrete on the sides.  They were tall and skinny, some three or more stories but only 12 feet wide at the most. They would have a shop on the bottom floor, the old parents lived on the first floor up, and the younger couple lived above that.  They might have a covered porch type living space on the very top.  Multi-generational housing!  We were given a pit stop half way to our destination.  It was at a place where people with handicaps make goods to sell to tourists and we bought some earrings.  We also stopped at a fresh water pearl farm but didn't buy anything from them.

We had a wonderful lunch on a boat (shrimp with the heads on, fried calamari, spring rolls, etc.) while we cruised around Ha Long Bay, another UNESCO World Heritage site.  Afterwards we stopped at a cave called the Thien Cung grotto (probably a little larger and prettier than Timpanogos cave in Utah) on an island and walked around inside.  Then we spent a couple of relaxing hours on the deck of the boat traveling slowly in and out of the green islets (there are over 5,000 of them of all shapes and sizes) jutting up out of the water and taking way too many pictures.  But it was beautiful – it has to be experienced to appreciate everything we saw!  We could imagine pirates knowing their way around and hiding when they needed to.  You could live out here and never be found!

This is the life!

Into the mists

An underwater mountain range!

From here we were taken to a decent hotel near Ha Long Bay – the internet worked.  WooHoo!  We went to a nice restaurant for a Vietnamese dinner of shrimp and spring rolls again, plus sweet and sour fish and watermelon for dessert.  We had a lot of watermelon for dessert throughout these countries.  Some of the teachers went out later for a foot massage and we walked to their night market.  They were very aggressive here and it was annoying so we didn't stay long.  We were tired and slept well.

02/10/2015     We were allowed to sleep in this morning.  The hotel served a lot of Asian foods (rice, noodles, and veggies for breakfast) but I had an omelet and watermelon.  We had a long bus ride back to the airport in Hanoi for our trip to Siam Reap, Cambodia (which I already wrote about so will move on the Ho Chi Min City).  On the way we watched a police chase from the bus.  Some guy tried to escape on a motorcycle.  He was riding a motorcycle the wrong way on the other side of the divided highway trying to get away from the cops.  He jumped off, crossed into our lanes, and tried to hop onto the back of another motorcyclist.  That didn't work so he ran into the bushes where the police caught him and started kicking and beating the heck out of him.  A teacher sitting on the front of the bus got the whole thing on video. 

02/14/2015     We were now in South Vietnam in Ho Chi Min City (formerly called Saigon) in a wonderful hotel, the Bong Sen – definitely a four star at least.  It served crisp bacon and real cheese at the breakfast buffet.  The country is trying to emerge but is still a third world country in some ways.  They don’t have all the high rise buildings like China does.   The same type of raised tombs on the family farms were here.  They don’t have public graveyards and don’t believe in cremation so they bury their dead on their own property – keeps it in the family.  The body is buried underground but the tomb is built over them to keep people from walking on their graves – bad karma. 

We were driven a ways out of the city, put on a boat, (there were 27 of us including Marvin’s family), given a coconut drink, and taken on a part of the Mekong Delta to an island village, My Tho, where they process coconut and honey bee products.  A large python was brought out in case anyone wanted to hold it, so Anne went first.  Next we were put in donkey carts for a tour around the island and finally on a Vietnamese rowing boats for a trip up a small murky green canal.  It was kind of like the River Cruise at Disneyland except the shacks, people and animals were real.

Donkey cart ride with the Hadds

Anne holding a python

Our boat rower on the Delta

We ate a nice lunch somewhere but I can’t remember since our vacation was all running together at this point.  But dinner was memorable.  It was after dark on a small cruise ship that went up and down the Saigon River.  There was a little bit of entertainment in the form of a one stringed instrument called a Dan Bau and some dancing.  The weather was lovely, and there was a nice breeze on deck – very peaceful.  A great Valentines Day activity! 

And then we went to their night market.  I've never seen anything so crazy.   It’s right off a traffic circle that has about 8 different streets coming into it with no traffic lights.  It was the beginning of the Chinese New Year celebrations and everyone and their relative must have been in town.  They would put four or five people, babies included,  on a motorcycle and drive around to see and be seen crowding all the streets.  Imagine those videos of army ants on the move, multiply that by 1000, and you might get the picture.  The night market was off one of the streets and motorcycles were riding up and down it between the stalls and shoppers.  We felt like we were taking our life in our hands trying to cross all those streets and walk back to our hotel.  

Dinner cruise on the Saigon River

Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) at night

02/15/2015     It was Sunday and we went to church only it was at the Catholic Notre-Dame Cathedral (a strong French influence is still here.)  All the building materials came from France.  We participated in their song practice before the worship service.  There were sure a lot more people in there than we've ever seen in a European cathedral.  Across the street was the old Post Office painted bright yellow with white trim built in the French architecture style.  Inside it now was a bank, some shops, and it still had working telephone booths.  Down the street was the building (“secret” CIA headquarters) where the US helicoptered people out from the roof top when Saigon fell in the Vietnam war. 

Catholic Church

Old Post Office

CIA Building of air lift fame - 1975

Now in 2015

Next stop was the War Remnants Museum.  On the outside they had a collection of equipment that the US left behind when they fled the country:  tanks, planes, hueys, etc.  The inside was dedicated to exhibits of war crimes committed by foreign (read U.S.) countries, "correcting" historical truths, effects of Agent Orange, and international protests against the war.  Most of the men in our tour group were of draft age during the Vietnam War and one of them was here at that time.  It was interesting reading about the war from someone else’s point of view, although I know there are always atrocities committed on both sides of a war.  Outside was also a mock up of a prison environment with a “tiger cage” imprisonment device and another guillotine. 

Some things we left behind

Tiger Cages for prisoners

Example of a child safety seat - plus air masks

We were all given a choice of where to be dropped off for lunch.  The  majority had their fill of really good, but Asian, food so we ate at Burger King – it tasted so good!  We were given the afternoon off and we walked around the Saigon Square shopping plaza.  Maybe it is just for the Asian New Year (Tet) celebration but many of the women were wearing colorful traditional Vietnamese outfits:  silk pants covered by long sleeved, high necked tight dresses, slit up to the waist.  Our guide said a famous saying is that their clothing “covers everything but hides nothing”.  We ate pizza for dinner and met back at our hotel for the evening’s activity. 

It was the last night of our vacation and thank goodness it was a lot of fun!  First we were taken to a unique art form called the Vietnamese Water Puppet Show.  It was held in a small theater with a large water feature (pool) in front of the curtain of a stage.  Six musicians, three on each side, played traditional musical instruments while also voicing the parts of the puppets in high, sing-song voices.  You could not see the puppeteers because they were behind the curtain, but also in the water.  The puppets of animals, dragons, people and boats were about two feet tall and were mounted on long underwater poles.  The puppets were pushed through the curtains and moved around in the pool while the story was told, all in Vietnamese, but we got the idea.  It lasted about an hour and was really different and certainly entertaining.  You can see videos on line.

As we exited the theater our guide told us to walk across the street where we were put on our Cyclos.  These are three-wheeled bikes with two in the front and one in the back.  The driver sits in the back and cycles and you sit up front in a chair.  They had one for each of us and we took off in a group for a one hour tour around the city at night.  I have some video of it because you just can’t imagine it.  The city is full of visitors and decorated to the n-th degree with lights and flowers.  Picture traffic of all kinds on the streets including cars, buses, trucks, motorcycles, taxis…and us, all blending together, with no traffic control.  Talk about having your life flash before your eyes!  It was the best $10 spent ever.  It was more dangerous, more fun and lasted longer than any ride in an amusement park.  A motorcycle crashed into the side of one of the teachers in our group.  They had to disentangle things.  No one was hurt, it just added to the excitement.  The lights and the flowers were beautiful, there was a nice breeze, so except for the life threatening parts, it was quite peaceful.  A great way to end the trip.  And that, dear readers, is what we did for our winter vacation.

Water puppet show

Clyde on a "Cyclo"

All kinds of traffic - plus us!

02/16/2015     Monday we all flew back to Guangzhou and from there to our separate cities.  We spent all day traveling by one means or another and returned to our humble apartment that evening.  The school had been making changes to our electrical usage reporting system for our apartments while we were away.  The power had been turned off and all the food in our fridge/freezer ruined.  We spent the next day throwing everything out, scrubbing out the mold, and buying new food.  With the new system, the school will now pay a little each month towards our power usage and we need to pay for anything over.  That will sure be a problem for me with the A/C in the summer.

 

A synopsis of our trip:  Including the time we were staying in the Mitchell’s high-rise apartment in Raffle’s City, to landing back in China, we have been away from our school apartment for about two months.  Anne hadn't seen a squat potty or had to provide her own toilet paper that entire time.  We loved HK – a mix of old world European, South Sea Island and modern high society.  I've haven’t seen so many fancy cars in one location.  Not just Mercedes and Porsche but Rolls Royce and Lamborghini.  And of course it had a “real” temple.

I'd hate to be an electrician and need to trace a line!

Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam kind of all roll into one.  They are beautiful looking people, kind of a blend from India and China.  Those we saw were all small in stature and slender, no one was over weight.  I know we were mostly in the tourist spots but many spoke English.  They each have a history of thousands of years of wars and bad rulers. Their countries are trying to modernize but still have a long way to go.  In each place we saw draped across the streets bundles of electrical wires tied in knots.  Opening their countries up to foreign tourists’ dollars is a good way to go.  We had good weather everywhere we went, mostly because this is the dry season.  I loved seeing some clear skies and the moon and stars at night.  We rarely see that at all in China. 

We loved traveling with our fellow BYU CTP teachers.  We shared stories, good and bad, of how we have it here.  They are really great people and we have become good friends with several of them.  Some have heavier teaching schedules, some have maids.  Some are treated very well by their administration and some………….you can fill in that blank.  And isn’t it nice to be with people you know won’t light up a cigarette or get drunk?  We lived out of our suitcases for three weeks.  They got heavier with each country we passed through with the items we bought, and we finally had to purchase another backpack.  We did laundry in our hotel sinks when we could and only sent out the laundry in HK.  While it was great fun to travel it was also tiring.  We’d get up early and stay out late.  Internet service and/or time to use it was hard to find.  We are so fortunate to be able to have had these eye opening travels, to see beautiful and mysterious parts of this world and its people.  And now that this little adventure is over, our one great big adventure will come to pass all the sooner.