Reality Check

So, before I left for Vietnam, I received an interesting mix of reactions from people when I told them that I was coming here for vacation. On one end of the range of those reactions where those who expressed surprise - as in, why would I go to Vietnam for VACATION???

Sure, it's not the place that invokes images of relaxation, and it dosn't have the same kind of draw that a beach resort or mountain lodge might have, and maybe the word "vacation" is a poor label for it. Sometimes I just need to have a travel experience that is so far away from what I usually experience that it has a grounding effect: It brings me back to earth.

This is what I was looking for here. Not to mention, I hadn't seen Lisa in a while and it's always more fun for me to travel somewhere whre I know someone. But I really felt the need to get far far away and ground myself. Regain perspective, in a way.

So here's the gritty reality of my vacation:

I'm hot. I'm really hot. And sweaty and smelly. Be careful what you ask for. I kept saying I wanted to go somewhere hot to escape DC winter. (And what a wimp I felt like about that when we met Bev from Ottawa who escapes her hometown every winter when the temps dip around -30C. But anyway...) And A.C. seems to not always be a guarantee anywhere, even on buses that say "A.C."

I've had this rash on the backs of my hands since Cambodia. It seems to be going away finally, but something similar popped up in a few other locations, which is annoying, but I assume related to what I said above about being hot and sweaty.

In addition to the rash, the place we stayed in last night may have had bedbugs, because my face looks like I might have a mild case of the measles.

Enough about me and my complaints.

When we were in Dalat, there was a motorbike wreck outside of our hotel. I heard the screech and crunch of metal, and when I came to the window, there was a crowd forming. Lisa pointed out that of the three bikes involved, two got up and drove away, but the third guy appeared trapped UNDER his bike. It was hard to see because it was dark an there was a crowd, but I saw someone trying to drag the guy out from under his bike, and he seemed to be struggling with the task. I saw at least one woman go running away from the scene after looking, with her hand over her mouth, implying that what she saw was pretty grim. A cab pulled up, and the guy, finally freed from his bike, was carried by three other guys, unconscious, and loaded into the cab. Asuming that medical care here isn't stellar, I felt a bit haunted thinking about what might have ultimately happened to that guy.

Also in Dalat, we were at a house and looking off of a balcony. I noticed Lisa looking down, and followed her gaze. There were two men holding a dog down, but I didn't know what else was going on. When we left the house, I saw the dog, lying on it's side on the side porch of the house next to where we had been, twitching with seizures. Lisa said that a vet had been one of the people with the dog, and she assumed that either they had injected the dog with either medicine, or with something to put the dog to sleep. Who knows what made the dog sick, but Lisa seems to have had past experiences here with questionable vets anyway. It's just a weird image - just laving the dog lying there with no one around it, regardless of whether it was just sick and being treated or dying. But I guess that's life.

More on general issues here, Lisa works with street youth here as part of her job. She tells me that there are a number of reasons why youth end up on the streets. They may have been kicked out of the house when a parent remarries. It often happens that a second spouse doesn't want to have anything to do with the children from the first marriage, so they get kicked out. Sometimes they get kicked out because they are "difficult" behaviorally. There doesn't seem to be much time to deal with parenting challenges, and if the kid isn't perfect, they're done. Or sometimes it's poverty, plain and simple. It's a sad situation because there are often no places for the youth to go once they have been kicked out, so they end up living incity parks and are driven into drugs or sex work to survive. Vietnam seems to frown on non-conformity and lack of discipline. Thanks Confucius!

In both Cambodia and Vietnam, I have seen many people who are missing limbs. Most of the people we encountered in Cambodia were victims of land-mines, and it appears that many of the Vietnamese have experienced the same thing. Over 40,000 Vietnamese had been killed or maimed by unexploded ordnance since 1975, as of the last Lonely Planet publishing in 2007. There are several NGOs working to help these people with job skills, but not nearly the structure that might exist in the US. Many seem to be on the street begging for money and food because there's nothing else they can do.

There are not many Americans here. There are lots of tourists, but I haven't encountered an American yet. Lots of French, Canadians, Australians, and Brits, but not Americans. Somehow just that fact is sort of sobering. I guess Americans don't view Vietnam as a desirable destination quite yet.

This is my grounding experience. This is the kind of place where you realize how good you have it, and also how much damage humans can cause others, even when we don't really mean to. I guess I'm still thinking about these issues and the historical context in order to define my "place" in the grand scheme of things. But these are some of my reflections on the experience so far.

It just occurred to me that my description of this blog involves occasional social commentary, and I didn't want to disappoint anyone by not doing that.

Anyway, busy day tomorrow, so I'm off to bed. Ready to storm the Citadel in the morning.

Shop Til We Drop in Hoi An

We are on Lisa's last stop of our travel, and couldn't have found a better place to land.

But first...

The journey was not easy.

We started yesterday afternoon at about 3:30pm in Dalat on an overnight bus to Danang. This bus (remember - we STARTED at 3:30pm) would get us to Danang at 6:00am this morning. That's a long time to be on a bus. They did not serve us Bibimbap. On the contrary, they handed us each a stack of plastic bags, which I was to find out later was for motion sickness. I was not afflicted by this issue, but as our bus catapulted around mountainous corner after corner from Dalat to Nha Trang, I became quite intimately aware of my co-passengers and their inability to hold onto their lunches. Awesome.

Lisa and I did quite well on this, even braving the weeds during a side-of-the-road "rest stop". We got to Danang right around 6am.

We hopped in a cab from there and got to Hoi An around 7am, just in time for shopping to begin.

Hoi An is known for its silk markets and its tailors, and admittedly, that's the main reason why Lisa and I spent 14 plus hours on a bus (okay - in hindsight, it seems like we should have thought about that a little more carefully). Between the two of us, I believe we purchased 4 skirts, 3 dresses, 1 shirt, 1 pair of pants and 3 pairs of shoes, all tailor-made to fit us with materials that we picked out. It's a very dangerous place here. There are many vendors in the market who have the foresight to sell big duffel bags for all of us who are carting home all of these products.

After a long day of shopping and trying things on, we had dinner. Now that it is dark, the town takes on new flavor, and all of the vendors selling paper lanterns are all lit up in every color imaginable.

Beyond the shopping, it's a beautiful town too. It is categorized as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, so there are no cars allowed on certain "old town" streets, and a lot of restoration work has been done. The trademark colonial French yellow buildings with terra cotta tile roofs are still intact, or have at least been cleaned up, and are now museums, restaurants and storefronts. It's quite lovely to walk around here, though overwhelming with the marketing, but I guess we are contributing to that just as much as anyone else is.

Tomorrow Lisa will go back to Hanoi, and I will take the bus to Hue, just overnight to hit another historical spot. This time just 4 hours in bus, which seems a whole lot more reasonable. And then I will fly back to Hanoi. I may have another overnight trip next week before my final one coming home, and I want to save my strength for that.

Nice Ride!

I spent the day on the back of a motorcycle. Not a likely place to be, but as I have mentioned, and as will be clear when I finally post pictures, there's no way to travel in Vietnam without it. In Dalat, the Easy Riders are a group of motorcycle guides who do countryside tours. So Lisa and I arrived in Dalat yesterday and Truong and "Ted' (easier to say than "Thiet") found us at the hotel. We got on the road this morning at 8:30am.

First stop was Tuyen Lam Lake, a madmade lake outside of Dalat surrounded by pine forests. It's a beautiful setting for what else than elephant riding!

???

Okay, yes, I admit, I had some mixed feelings about this activity. All sorts of "don't elephants belong in the wild with the other elephants, and are we participating in an exploitative activity, and I wonder if they at least treat the elephant well, and how does the elephant feel having two western women (one of whom - moi - could stand to lose a few pounds) and a smallish Vietnamese man riding around on it's back?" But ultimately, I had to push those thoughts out of my mind and enjoy the experience of seeing the lake and forest the way emperors did and admiring the sheer strength of this amazing animal. I've always thought that elephants are wise looking old souls. This guy was no different. And he liked sugar cane. A lot.

So we rode the elephant, which wasn't nearly as cool as just being up close to the elephant, I will admit, because we couldn't exactly SEE the elephant when we were sitting on top of him. But it was still pretty cool.

After elephant riding, we had a variety of stops with the Easy Riders, but only a few really worth mentioning. First there was the Truc Lam Meditation center, which is a Zen Buddhist monastery outside of Dalat. It's a beautiful place and most buildings are open to the public except where the real meditation work happens. The campus (my term) is filled with gardens and pagoda buildings and just a general peacefulness that came from hearing a monk bang a gong while devotees presented incense and said their prayers.

The next stop was to the Linh Phuoc Pagoda, also known as the Dragon Pagoda for obvious reasons. And thank god for Flickr, because my memory stick seems to be acting up, but I have to be clear that I cannot take credit for the photo I lifted from there and have posted here. Another beautiful, spiritual place. This one had added spiritual significance because on the ground on a particular side of the tallest tower was a constant crowd of people looking upward and pointing their cellphones in the same place.

So apparently there is something about the way the sun is these days that, when it hits a certain spot over the temple and when you take a picture with just the right exposure, it looks like a halo is circling the top of the temple. Yes, I got caught up in trying this, and no I did not succeed. And I admit, I was annoyed that my nice camera was not able to capture what - apparently - many other Vietnamese people were able to capture on their stupid cell phones.

We saw a good deal of the Dalat countryside. It's beautiful and the weather is perfect. Cool and dry, since we are in the mountains. We will have most of the day tomorrow to explore some more, and for me to figure out what the heck to do about my memorystick issue. Then we will board a ridiculously long bus to Hoi An, almost exclusively for silk shopping. :-) Nah, we'll probably find more to do than just that.

Technical Difficulties and Some Stuff About the Finer Things in Life (Food and Beach)

I'm having some issues getting the past few computers to cooperate with my camera, so I will be without images for a while, apparently.

Lisa and I arrived in Dalat this afternoon after a few days of "real" vacation, meaning, we went to the beach.

But I should start before that.

After we got back to Saigon, Lisa needed some down time. So she sent me to cooking school. :-) I spent a half day in a Vietnamese Cooking class on Sunday morning. I met our teacher, Chef Bao, and his translator/assistant, Jasmine, in Ben Thanh Market. Matt and Katie from San Francisco followed close behind. It was just the three of us. We started the class by taking a spin through the food section of the market, learning more than I needed to about the delicacies of Vietnamese cuisine. Luckily, the menu plan did not include any organ meats, frogs, or eels. We finished the market orientation and headed for the Vietnamese Cookery Center, which sounds so much better in French (Centre Culinaire du Vietnam).

At the Cookery Center, we started off with a small snack (We didn't make it. Just ate/drank it) of tea and candied ginger. Tea is a coomon starter in most restaurants. I think it's generally a pretty weak jasmine or green tea, and can be hot or cold. After tea we moved to our work stations.

The first course was Vietnamese Spring Rolls (Cha gio). We were instructed on the ingredients to mix (including pork, taro root, spring onion, shallot, and a few other things), and then we were instructed on how to roll it in the netting rice paper. Netting rice paper gives the spring roll a kind of cool consistency - almost like you have rolled it in really thin noodles. We deep fried the rolls, and made a dipping sauce, which included one of THE most important ingredients in Vietnamese Cooking: Fish sauce (Nuoc mam). If you have a Vietnamese meal in which fish sauce does not figure prominently, then it isn't Vietnamese.

Course two: Caramel pork in clay pot. I have also seen this dish using shrimp. The thing that makes southern Vietnamese cuisine different from northern Vietnamese cuisine is that it tends to be sweeter - thus the caramel use, as well as liberal use of sugar in most of the dishes. We were to work for a balance between sweet (sugar or coconut juice), salty (fish sauce) and sour (lime juice) in several of the dishes, including the spring roll dipping sauce. We did not make the rice that went with it, but Chef Bao showed us the proper amount of coconut juice (not coconut milk) to add to steam the rice. He had a seriously bad-ass rice cooker too.

Course three: Sour clam soup with dill. Seafood is very common, and dill is used constantly, with seafood as well as other things. I wasn't sure I'd like this dish, because, I mean, come on - sour clam soup? Does that really sound appealing? But it was surprisingly tasty.

We did not make dessert, but we were served sauteed bananas in coconut milk, sprinkled with sesame seeds.

After class, Katie, Matt and I hopped in a cab back to the market. I HAD to get some of that netting rice paper to bring home to try this out. After securing three bags of the stuff, I met Lisa, and we got on the road to the beach.

Ahhhh the beach. You can't *not* relax at Mui Ne Beach. That is, after you have reached your final destination. The 2km walk from where the buss dropped us off to get to our hotel while carrying a heavy, overstuffed frame-pack, in flip flops while you need to pee after a 4 hour buss ride was NOT very relaxing (mental note: Lonely Planet Guide does not use the same scale on all of their maps, so objects may appear closer than they actually are).

But once we got there, it was reeelaaaaxing. We went to bed early, we woke up when our internal alarms told us too, we ate good breakfasts, we relaxed by the pool with books, occasionally hopping into the cool blue water when we got hot. I did finally get in the South China Sea on Day 2. It was lovely. We ate pizza for dinner and went to bed ridiculously early again.

It just doesn't get much better than that.

Now we are in Dalat. It is significantly different. They call it City of Eternal Spring for a reason. It's cool out and we are surrounded by mountains and pine forests as opposed to beach and palm trees. It's lovely too, just in a different way. And both options are better for me than being at home in cold Washington DC.

More on Dalat tomorrow after our tour with the "Easy Riders."

Boating the Mighty Mekong

The Mekong Delta takes up the southern tip of Vietnam, and thanks to it's lushness, it has helped make Vietnam the world's second largest rice exporter, according to Lonely Planet.

Lisa and I decided to get there by group tour. It was cheap and made things easy. It was a two day/one night tour and advertised stops in a few towns and floating markets along the way. Floating markets are made up of boats anchored in the middle of the river selling wholesale produce to buyers. It's a pretty cool sight, but the best action is seen really early in the morning.

Our tour yesterday did what tourist-tours do: We stopped at a bunch of places to buy crap and to see some educational things, like how to make coconut candy (I can just hear Dave gagging as he reads this), rice paper, and puffed rice treats (they only look like Rice Krispy treats, which was a disappointment to me). We went to the Cai Be floating market, but it was late afternoon so everything good was pretty much over.

Today was going to prove to be much of the same, so we decided to ditch our tour and do it on our own. The group stopped in Can Tho last night and we had some free time. We arranged for a nice lady to take us in her boat to the Cai Rang floating market this morning at 6am. We spent the night in a hotel arranged by the tour. I swear it sounded like we were sleeping on the side of the road. I'm convinced that the roof was just corrugated plastic with nothing insulating the noise from outside, and we were right on a main road. I think I got a few good hours of sleep there, but not much!

The departure was early and slightly painful, but worth it. The river was teeming with boats, and because we took a small motor boat instead of the larger tour group boats, we were able to maneuver right in there with everyone else.

After we returned to land, with the help of a local colleague of Lisa's, we took a "non-tourism" bus back to Saigon. It was the best air-conditioning I have encountered on a Vietnamese bus yet.

I left Lisa alone this afternoon to take a nap and walked around Saigon a bit. I went to visit the War Remnants Museum. Interesting but VERY one-sided (not surprisingly). I think the most interesting/sad part of it was seeing a special exhibit on US Vietnam War correspondents. There was a room full of photos with the stories of what they depicted as well as who took them. It was an homage to the fallen of the press corps, and therefore many of the pictures were labeled as the last photo taken before the particular photographer was killed, sometimes immediately after the photo was taken. It was an emotional exhibit.

There were some pretty graphic photos and stories of other events, usually involving the bloody torture and murder of civilian women and children, and the aftermath suffered by victims of dioxin (Agent Orange) exposure. But of course the Viet Cong soldiers were nowhere to be found in any of the horrors of war. There was lots left unsaid. Not to say that what WAS shown wasn't horrible of course. And much of it can never be justified. But I do know it wasn't always that one-sided. As Lisa put it on another occasion, we have a lot left to learn.

In between all of this, I DO plan to relax some. :-) Tomorrow we plan to go to the beach for a few days. After my morning cooking class, of course!

World Religions and World History

First full day in Saigon, aka Ho Chi Minh City, depending on who you talk to. We took a bus tour to two interesting destinations: To the Cao Dai Temple at Tay Ninh and to the Cu Chi tunnels north of the city.

I had been fascinated with what I read about Cao Daism (a true "world" religion) in a book I got for Christmas: A Dragon Apparent: Travels in Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam by Norman Lewis. He wrote of his introduction to Cao Daism in 1949 that he encountered:

"...a cathedral that looked like a fantasy from the brain of Disney, and all the faiths of the world had been ransacked to create the pompous ritual, which had been grafted on an organization copied from the Catholic Church."

The inside is about the most colorful place I've ever seen, with dragons swirling around pink pillars, blue cloudy skies painted on the ceiling, and a large orb with a big eye in the middle of it over the "altar." Apparently past consultations have been held via seance with the likes of Victor Hugo (who happens to be one of the patron saints), Joan of Arc and William Shakespeare.

Odd doesn't even begin to cover it.


Next we changed gears COMPLETELY and went to see the Cu Chi tunnels, which was a network of 125 miles worth of underground tunnels dug by peasant guerrillas and Viet Cong during the war. The network had three tiers and in some places went down to 30 feet underground. Approximately 18,000 people were living in these tunnels during the war, and they included kitchens, dining rooms, hospital rooms...basically anything you might need to live underground for an indeterminate amount of time.

There were two particularly hard things about seeing the tunnels. First it was the claustrophobia. We were allowed down into one. We could make the choice to circle out at the second tier down or continue to a third tier. These tunnels are small. You have to crawl through them in places. I opted out after tier 2. That was enough for me to see.

The second difficult part was seeing the intro video that was filmed as part of Vietnamese propaganda in 1967. It was a little over the top, even for me. I may have my own conflicted feelings about the US involvement in Vietnam, but it's still hard to hear about peasant guerrillas being awarded as "American killer heroes." Our tour guide himself had been conscripted into the Viet Cong for 3 years.

Vietnam still hasn't healed it's own wounds from the war. Those who fought for the South Vietnam Army (and sided with the US) and actually stayed in Vietnam (instead of fleeing after the fall of Saigon) still face discrimination and persecution. It's pretty sad to see the aftermath from this side of the world. It's clear that there really were no winners of the war, no matter what the Vietnamese government thinks.

Tomorrow we are off to the Mekong Delta.

Day 2 : Temple Hopping

We didn't know how great the weather was yesterday until the sun came out today. It gets hot when the sun comes out. Lisa and I wanted to hit a few of the temples that we didn't make it to yesterday. It's a good thing there weren't that many. We were done about 2 hours in.

But we did get to see some impressive stonework. First we went to Preah Khan, which is one of the larger temple complexes. The Lonely Planet Encounter guide sums it up best:" "Preah Khan is a genuine fusion temple."Many - if not all - of the temples have a mix of Buddhist symbolism and Hindu sympolism that went back and forth over time, but this building had the most interesting combination. In each area, you see combinations of the religions. The picture I have posted shows the most interesting example. At the base of the picture is a "linga stand,"which originally housed a linga, which is a phallic symbol associated with Hindu worship of Shiva. You can see a slight protrusion at the left of the picture (most of the lingas themselves have actually been stolen). Sitting on top of the linga stand is a Buddha statue, which is - obviously - associated with Buddhism. But as you will notice, the Buddha head has been cut off, a casualty to the Hindu worshipers at some point over the centuries.

Finally everyone seems to be living in harmony. At least in stone form.

We are going to get some Mexican food for lunch (they have good margaritas, and I have to admit I haven't been too impressed by Khmer cuisine - even if the temples are awesome and the people are really nice!), and then heading to the airport, bound for Saigon. Then I will be happy to not be on a plane again for a while. :-)

Siem Reap and Ankor, Cambodia

I was going to say something cheesy involving Laura Croft or Angelina Jolie, but I thought I'd spare everyone the obscure movie/video game reference, although it was seeing that movie years ago that introduced me to Angkor Wat as a place anyway. So Lisa and I arrived in Siem Reap yesterday afternoon and spent all day today temple-hopping with our guide, "Tim." I don't have time to go into a lot of details about this amazing complex, but it is worth mentioning the fact that it has seen a lot of history since construction began in the 10th century, and seems to have experienced back-and-forth identity crises (Is it Hindu? Is it Buddhist? Is it both?) ever since. We hit several temple complexes, including Angkor Thom and the Bayon, Ta Keo, Ta Prohm (where parts of Laura Croft: Tomb Raider"" was filmed), and Angkor Wat.

What is also clear is that the Cambodian people have a huge amount of pride in this complex, which is important, because after the intense and horrifying history they saw under Pol Pot, these people deserve to have something to have pride in. They have built up a heck of a tourist industry around this town and these historic structures. Normally I would be averse to over-touristy areas, but I'm glad I didn't avoid this one.

Tomorrow we will check out some smaller temples in the morning, and then in the afternoon we will fly to Saigon/Ho Chi Minh City to check out the Mekong Delta for a day or two. It's nice to have some warm weather. :-)

While you were sleeping...

It's Monday morning for me, but back home, it is Sunday night. At least so far, my body seems to be adjusting. The fact that I was able to slep for most of the night here unaided is pretty impressive. I'm glad I wasn't interested in "sleeping in" though, because everywhere is loud outside in the daytime.

I got here about mid-afternoon yesterday and was able to walk around with Lisa for a while, before we met our friend Karin for dinner. It has been unexpectedly warm recently and was sunny yesterday, but it appears likely to rain today.

In about an hour I will becollected by Tu, a friend of Lisa's who is going to play tour guide for me this morning. Then will meet Lisa for lunch before Lisa and I hop on a plane again (goody) to Cambodia.

Having not seen much of Hanoi so far, I have limited observations and not much new knowledge. I think I am close to mastering the art of crossing the street which requirs more trust in your fellow man than I ever imagined. With hoards of motorbikes and bicycles bearing down on you from every direction, you have to keep from looking at the big picture and instead take is row by row. You step out and get past the first row and then look for your next opening, trusting (at least hoping!) the whole time that the drivers will ultimately stop for you if needed (they don't move too fast, which helps!

The sidewalk of every street is filled with open shopfronts, spilling out with a wie array of products, and each street is known for what it primarily sells. For example, last night we walked down (among others) candy street, toy street, "offerings" street, and maternity clothes street.

A few additional odd things I learned:

• The Ho Chi Min mausoleum is open for viewing from Dec-Sept. After that, rumor has it that he sent back to Russia for re-embalming.
• home/shop owners are taxed based on what square footag of space touches the street. As a result, many placs look narrow, but they go far back, or have many stories.
• You have to be selected or appointed to be a member of the Communist Party, which makes it a very elite group. This seems very strange and extremely counterintuitive to me. Isn't teh whole point of communism about the "collective" and equality of everyone? I'm going to have to find out more.

I happened to luck out and I have free internet in my hotel room (I can't imagine that's standard!), but I'll be checking out shortly. Hope to get a hold of a connetion in Cambodia!

Quality Airport Time

I knew when I planned this trip to visit my friend Lisa in Vietnam that the worst part about it would be getting there. My Orbitz itinerary kindly pointed out that the total duration of my travel would be 29 hrs and 32 min. This included a 4 hour late night layover at JFK and a 5 hour early morning layover in Seoul. The thing that sucks about both of these scenarios is that nothing is open in airports really late and really early.

For my first layover at JFK, awesome Dave came to the rescue by supplying me with snooty chocolates and wine money, so I was fortunate to find a sport at JFK that was selling half bottles of wine (all of the actual bars were closed by then). I can't tell you how the pairing of the airport Cabernet Sauvignon really worked, but it didn't much matter. It was a lovely way to spend time in a fairly crappy airport.


We started boarding the 747 bound for Seoul at about 12:30am. It's no picnic spending 14 hours on a place through the night and across multiple timezones, but the Korean Air flight attendants made it as nice as they could. I was extremely psyched about the dinner (I guess? At 2am, it didn't really fit into a "meal framework.") which arrived complete with an instructional sheet (in English and two other southeast Asia languages) with "Directions on How to Make Bibimbap." This includes adding the steamed rice, as much hot pepper paste as you'd like, and sesame oil. Then you mix it all together.

It was probably the best damn in-flight meal I have ever had. Way to go Korean Air!

I arrived at Seoul airport at 5am, and had to basically kill time until anything opened. I'm still waiting to be able to get my boarding pass (I am told that this will happen in about 15 minutes), and I still have about 2 hours til my flight leaves. But the airport is excruciatingly clean, lots of comfortable seating and lounge areas, a free internet cafe, and...there's a Dunkin Donuts right across the hallway. The airport experience doesn't get any better. Seoul is now my new favorite airport. :-)

I'm looking forward to getting on the ground in Hanoi though. I need a shower pretty badly at this point.

Then the real adventures will begin.