HANOI

Monday, February 15, 2010

Day two of doing a whole fat lotta nothing in Hanoi!

Today I slept in, had breakfast, read half a book, showered, walked to a restaurant for a yummy Pho Bo lunch, went to an upscale coffee shop and settled into a comfy couch to drink lattes and eat really good black forest cake, I read the other half of my book, walked back to the hotel where I am now surfing the net, I will venture off for dinner soon then bed.... Sooo exciting! HA HA.... It's weird to just exist in a foreign city without sight seeing and doing the tourist stuff. I feel unproductive. It was a little warmer today and the drizzle of yesterday stopped...a few more places are open but still all quite deserted. I know when I come back next week I won't recognise the place.

Tomorrow morning I leave for a 3 day/2 night cruise through Ha Long Bay...it is supposed to be stunningly beautiful and I am really excited! There will be no Internet there so you will not hear from me for a few days. I get back to Hanoi in the late afternoon of Feb 18 and then leave a few hours later for a trek in Sapa. I take the night train north into the town of Loa Cai were a bus will take me into the mountains of Sapa. I will most likely have wifi at the hotel there so will do a post on Feb 18th or 19th... if no wifi there then you'll hear from me on Feb 22nd when I return for a final day in Hanoi.

CHUC MUNG NAM MOI!!!

Sunday, February 14, 2010

Chuc Mung Nam Moi means Happy New Year in Vietnamese!

Today is Tet, which is the Vietnamese New Year, and welcomes in the year of the tiger. It is the lunar new year and marks the first day of spring. Tet is celebrated for 3 days and is the most celebrated holiday in Vietnam. It's like Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year's and birthdays all rolled into one huge holiday. It came from China and has many similarity's to the Chinese new year. Tet takes place every year sometime between January 21 and February 19 on the first night of the first moon after the sun enters Aquarius. The celebration begins a couple weeks before when people paint and deep clean their houses as well as buy new clothes to get rid of any bad fortune from the previous year. This was really obvious in Hoi An where I saw people out everyday repainting houses and gates all over the city and stores were seen taking displays apart and deep cleaning everything. It is also custom to pay back any debts and try to resolve any differences. People return to their families to celebrate and also visit graves of loved ones to invite their spirit to the home for Tet. Children are given money by their elders. They believe that what they do and how they act on new year's day will determine their luck and fortune for the year to come. People decorate their homes with flowers, miniature orange trees or peach trees and branches with yellow flowers....cards and lights are hung on them like Christmas trees. Everyone visits friends and family and it is believed at the first visitor of the new year can bring either good luck or bad luck with them...you never show up uninvited to someone's home on new years day and first guests are chosen carefully.

Last night in Hue things started to shut down...stores and restaurants closed and there was a huge fireworks show at midnight by the river. I flew to Hanoi this morning and this normally crazy city of 7 million people was a ghost town... hardly anyone on the roads and all the shops and restaurants were closed up tight! My hotel scared me a little by telling me that everything would be closed for 3 days and no restaurants would be open at all. I knew I would be here during Tet but kinda assumed that it was a one day shut down, like our Christmas, and everything would be business as usual tomorrow...I planned for 3 days here to see all the sights and take a day tour out of town but it turns out I now have 3 days in a closed down city. All the tourist sights are closed and no tours will run until the day I leave. Poor planning on my part...and unfortunately, being in Northern Vietnam, the weather is way cooler with average daytime temperatures only in the mid-teens...I can't even sun myself. Hindsight being 20/20 I should have planned to spend Tet in Hoi An. Anyway, after watching 2 movies on HBO my growling stomach and low blood sugar finally forced me to venture out from the hotel this afternoon to forage for anything at all to eat and I discovered it isn't as bad as I was told. Most things are closed, but quite a few people were out and about. Lots of family's are out taking photos by the lake and I'm estimating about 5% of everything is open, which isn't lots, but enough to find a handful of good restaurants and cafes to eat and hang out in...I was so relieved! I am staying in the old historic center of town that surrounds a really beautiful lake. It's nice to enjoy it at it's least chaotic! There was definitely a festive atmosphere in the air today with people selling balloons, popcorn and cotton candy and little kids running around in their Sunday best with their family's by the lake. I am predicting more and more things will open over the next couple days, probably not any of the sights, but I still have a full day here next week after my Sapa trek so I can pack them in then. I will take it as forced relaxation! I found a movie theatre nearby that shows current Hollywood movies so I will try to catch a flick tomorrow I think...they have the 3D Avatar that I hear is so good.

PRETTY VIEWS OF HOAN KIEM LAKE

I had a good last day in Hue yesterday. I went on a tour of the Demilitarized zone with my guide Bill! He is a Vietnam war veteran and worked as a translator with the US military from 1966-1973. He was right out of university, in his early 20's and lucky enough to very well educated so wasn't sent to the front lines to be killed...he said that involved lots of convincing on his part as well to convince the US military that he was of benefit to them and it would be a waste to send him into the fighting. He was very funny and full of stories. It was great to hear first hand accounts from someone who lived it. He took me all over the area showing me everything from cemeteries to bombed out churches with shells still cemented in the ground. He even stopped at a cafe along the way and insisted we do a shot of whiskey in celebration of the new year...at 9am....ha ha, funny though. We went to another set of underground tunnels called the Vinh Moc tunnels and they were far superior to the Cu Chi ones...these were WAY less touristy, in fact, we were the only one's there and all of the tunnels are still intact and quite extensive. You are free to roam them freely. Bill brought a flashlight, thank god, and we spent about 15 minutes exploring them...some went 3 stories down and 30 meters deep! There were lots of rooms, water wells, and stairs....they were larger than the Cu Chi tunnels, so not as claustrophobic, and lots of fun. During the war 60 families lived here and 17 babies were born during their use...they did their job as not a single villager lost their lives and the only bomb that hit the tunnels didn't kill anyone and ended up making for an excellent ventilation shaft!

ME AND BILL

HUE

Friday, February 12, 2010



Hue is pronounced like "way" and lies right in the middle of Vietnam near the coast and is spread along each side of the Perfume river. Hue was the place of a vicious battle during the Tet Offensive in January 1968...it was the only city in the south to be held by the communists for more than a few days. Hue was controlled and occupied by the North Vietnamese and the Viet Cong for a month and during that time they massacred 1000's of ARVN soldiers, wealthy merchants, government workers, anyone foreign, monks, priests and intellectuals in Hue to remove the "uncooperative elements". There were executions and mass killings...dozens of mass graves were found afterward containing 2800-6000 body's of bound, tortured and in many cases buried alive victims. When the South Vietnamese army was unable to free the city the USA was sent in and in the process they levelled whole neighbourhoods, napalmed the imperial palace, and there was brutal hand to hand fighting. A quote from an American solder was " we had to destroy the city in order to save it".
10 000 people died here...400 South Vietnamese and 150 US marines but the rest, and the majority of the victims, were civilian's.

I took a somewhat painful bus ride from Hoi An to Hue yesterday that ended up being over an hour late...this caused me to miss my free bus station pickup from the hotel and I had to make my own way. No huge deal though as I found a taxi quickly and it only cost a couple bucks. My hotel even upgraded me to a fancy room because they felt bad they missed my bus pickup(even though it totally wasn't there fault). I have really nice room out of it though with a king size bed and a desk with a computer on it! They even have DVD players in each room with a huge DVD library of all the latest movies, all bootlegged of course, and give free fruit and pastries every day :)


BEAUTIFUL AREA AT TU DUC'S TOMB

STONE MANDARIN'S GUARDING KHAI DINH'S TOMB

JUST THOUGHT THIS GUY HAD A NICE SMILE.

Today I went on a day trip to see the main sights Hue has to offer...most of them UNESCO World Heritage Sights and some of the few left older pre-communist buildings. Hue was the Capital of Southern Vietnam under the Nguyen Dynasty which ruled from 1802 to 1945. The area has a large collection of stunningly beautiful tombs, pagodas, temples and palaces. The first places I saw were 3 stunning Tombs and their huge complexes. The money, time and resources the King's spent to build a place to be buried in baffles me. The tombs and their grounds and buildings are extraordinary though and so beautiful with huge calm ponds and serene landscaping. Too bad the dead emperor couldn't enjoy them.

I hit the Citadel next...a lot of it badly damaged by bombs during the French war and then again with the American(Vietnam to us) war...only 20 of it's 148 buildings survived. They are in the process of rebuilding and restoring it but today a lot of it lies in ruins.

Then we ended things off with a boat trip down the Perfume river.

BEAUTIFUL HUE COUNTRYSIDE FROM THE RIVER

Tomorrow I am taking a tour on Vietnam's DMZ( demilitarized zone) which was the area around the former border between North and South Vietnam during the war. I actually paid a bit more and booked a private tour by car through a company where your tour guide is a Vietnam War Veteran...who better to be my guide! I just couldn't take another big bus tour with 30 other people...I'm doing the same thing in 6 hours less time and I don't have to be shuttled into a million tourist places on the way there and back where we have to see how they make things and "oh, look! now you can buy the thing you just saw them make!" So painful...Over the last few weeks I've been to an incense factory, rice paper factory, rice noodle factory, coconut candy factory, conical hat factory, disabled artists factory...I'm probably leaving a few out...but no more!

I'm out to forage for food then off to bed. The food is really good here and I notice it changing quite a bit as I head north through the country with each city having a new specialty. It's funny how different the food is here from what you can order from a Vietnamese menu at home... the staple of rice vermicelli that everyone always orders doesn't not exist here in any form...it must be an entirely Americanized dish. Kind of like butter chicken...it's what everyone thinks of when they think of Indian food and yet it does not exist in India. Or like ginger beef! My favorite thing to order at home...stir fried seafood and veggies on crispy noodles I'm pleased to say does indeed exist here...and still yummy but a little different than the ones at home...if fact, no matter what you order it is totally different coming from different restaurants...you never quite know what you'll get. My noodles last night had giant tentacles in the seafood...they were yummy though! I think maybe they were squid. Tonight, I'm going in search of another new favourite food I have a hankering for...this is a middle Vietnam dish called Banh Zeo. It's a kinda crepe thing with bean sprouts, shrimp and veggies cooked hot and crispy then you break off pieces and wrap them in lettuce leaves and fresh herbs like basil, mint, cilantro, banana flowers and dip it in a peanut sauce...really yummy contrast between the hot crispy crepe and the cold lettuce and herbs.

Then I'm off to bed, I'm so exhausted by the long day in the heat, it's 35C here...NOT complaining. I am sticky though...yuck. Goodnight.

HOI AN

Wednesday, February 10, 2010

I'm so in love with Hoi An. It's such a quaint, beautiful, quiet town. Great restaurants, a beautiful palm tree lined river running through it's center, rice paddy's and palm trees framing the 200 year old houses and only 4 Km to a beautiful white sand beach. I don't want to leave tomorrow! I changed my booking I had on the 8am bus to Hue tomorrow to the 2pm bus so I can enjoy Hoi An a bit longer.


WATERFRONT MARKET

RIVERFRONT STREETS

VIEW ACROSS THE RIVER FROM MY RESTAURANT TONIGHT...PAPER LANTERNS GLOWING IN THE DISTANCE.

STREETS DECORATED FOR TET, BANNERS EVERYWHERE SAYING HAPPY NEW YEAR AND THOUSAND OF FLOWERS LINING THE STREETS. SO MANY PEOPLE BUSTLING AROUND GETTING READY FOR THE HOLIDAY.

Yesterday I had all my second fittings for the clothing I had made here. I picked up all the clothes today and they are so cute and fit me like a glove. Tomorrow to find a post office to ship them home.

MY NEW TAILOR MADE CLOTHES

Today I rented a bicycle....the cool old kind with banana seats and a basket! I must have a basket installed on my bike at home immediately, so handy. I rode 4Km to the beach and had the best afternoon stretched out in a sun chair on this beautiful white sand beach reading and snacking on Vietnamese food from the beach side restaurants. Cua Dia beach is part of a 30km stretch of pristine white sand beaches on Vietnam's coast, part of it being China beach where GI's where sent for rest and relaxation during the Vietnam War. The bike ride was so serene with palm lined rivers, cute old houses and rice paddy's as far as the eye can see...it was a really rejuvenating day.

VIEW OF THE RICE PADDY'S FROM MY BICYCLE DURING MY RIDE TO THE BEACH

ROAD TO THE BEACH

Tomorrow afternoon I tear myself away from Hoi An and head north to Hue on a 3.5hour bus ride. I have read that this stretch of road between Hoi An and Hue is the most beautiful scenic stretches of roads in Vietnam.

Off to bed! Sunning yourself can be exhausting....

HOI AN

Monday, February 8, 2010

My last day in Ho Chi Minh City was spent shopping and sight seeing.

My shopping included getting new glasses! They have lots of optometrists here with an equivalent selection of frames to anything at home at a fraction of the price. I got a brand new pair of glasses complete with eye exam and new prescription along with 5 hour service for about $40. So much more value for money here.

I went to the Reunification Palace next...this place was so trippy. It has literally been left as is since April 30, 1975 when the communist tanks crashed through the front gates in their tanks, unfurled their VC flag on the roof and took power over from the South Vietnamese government. The rooms are exactly the way they were left and so 70's! Mustard yellow carpets, awful avocado green blinds, retro furniture and even the old phone and electronic equipment. It's a little eerie wondering about. Even the maps and ancient telecommunication equipment are still on the walls of the war rooms in the basement. So much happened in this building.

My next stop was the war remnants museum. It's a huge, really impressive museum that I spent a good 2 hours at(which is a lot for me at a museum). It's extremely anti-American and is pretty much entirely dedicated to showing American war crimes and atrocity's committed during the Vietnam war(or the American war a they call it here) and the huge amounts of damage done to the Vietnam ecosystem. While, granted, it is completely and totally one-sided and littered with communist propaganda it would not be possible to walk through this museum and not be totally horrified at the atrocity's that were committed throughout the war by the USA...complete with explicit photographs( lot of the from US war photographers and journalists) along with first hand accounts from witnesses.
It was as disturbing and sad as seeing the genocide museum in Phnom Pehn. Wall after wall of pictures and stories of the US troops massacring innocent civilians and destroying towns and hamlets...the most famous being My Lai which is heartbreaking and so disturbing as it was all document by a photographer who was with Charlie company that day. Very sad graphic photos. It made your heart hurt for those scared people as they were massacred.
There are rooms dedicated to showing the horrible damage and destruction caused by the USA's chemical war on Southern Vietnam. In their supposed attempt to "save" the Vietnamese people from communist they completely destroyed everything they could to "deny the enemy cover"... 72 Million liters of agent orange, a deadly defoliant and herbicide, were dropped over 20% of Vietnam's forests over a 9 year period. It contains Dioxin which is one of the most toxic man-made substances on earth...it causes cancer, major health problems and severe birth defects. 4.8million Vietnamese civilians were exposed and their crops/land/drinking water poisoned leading to 400000 deaths and disability's and 500 000 children born with horrible birth defects. (Not to mention all the US soldiers exposed ) It still continues to cause problems...areas where it was stored on old bases have huge levels on dioxin in the soil. Although 180million has been given as aid to American veterans who suffered ill effects of agent orange exposure nothing has been paid to the Vietnamese. They also used Napalm bombs( a jellied fuel the burned trough skin and jungle) phosphorus bombs( explodes when it hits oxygen at 5000F and can burn through steel and bone) and poisonous gasses sent into the Vietcong underground tunnel system.

I was a little sad to be leaving Saigon the next day....after 5 days here (despite it's craziness) I was just starting to figure out where the best restaurants were, I found a place that bakes fresh cream puffs and injects the whip cream as you order( oh yeah... and they're the size of baseballs and 25cents..my idea of heaven) I found the best frozen yogurt place and plotted the fastest route to the lady who makes crepes in her stand on a street corner... Lots to offer me here!!!

But I must move on and I flew to Da Nang today and took a taxi into Hoi An.

I had to book a business class seat as everything else was full due to the New Years Tet Celebration here( Tet is Feb14 and the Asian version of Xmas and New Years all rolled together...it's the equivalent of the week before xmas here...decorations everywhere, flowers, gift baskets..everyone's excitement is palpable) I enjoyed the wonderfulness that is the first class lounge...I ate fruit salad and had hot Vietnamese coffee in my comfy couch while waiting to board and the plane seats were really big and cushy...they gave us fresh squeezed juice to drink during boarding and then a lovely meal enroute of fruit salad and smoked salmon(with table cloths on our trays and real cutlery). We even got our own exit door from the plane and a private van to take us into the terminal...and then my luggage came out first! I was out of that airport before the masses pulled up in their big buses! I was born to travel in business....too bad I'm poor and cheap....it was fun through!

Hoi An in in central Vietnam on the coast of the South China Sea...2km from the beach! Its a very small town and was declared a UNESCO world heritage site because it is a remarkably preserved example of a Southeast Asian trading port from the 15th to 19th century's with very old buildings displaying both local and foreign influences.

Its a lovely city and so peaceful and pretty after the chaos of Saigon...the old town is so quaint with hundreds of colourful paper lanterns covering everything...it is so beautiful. Especially right by the water with the little bridges.

The big thing to do here is to have tailors make you clothes!!! There are 100's of them. You need a couple days for fittings but they can make anything...even just bring a picture from a magazine. I ordered a bunch of clothes today! I'm always having trouble finding cute dresses, as they are always too big for me, so I ordered 6 really pretty dresses I found in a magazine. I picked my fabric and everything. I also ordered 2 coats one wool and one corduroy, a cool shirt and 2 new pair of cargo shorts to replace the ones I brought that are just way too big on me! All made to fit for under $300US! I am going to ship everything home. You can even have any shoe or boot made here with just a picture.... If I only had more money and time! So much to choose from. I got my stuff done between 3 different tailors...I didn't want to commit it all to one in case the quality isn't good and all my first fittings are tomorrow afternoon! I hope I like everything!

Tomorrow I'm going to rent a bicycle and check out the beach and the countryside...it's very peaceful and pretty here....sad it's only for 3 days.

CU CHI TUNNELS AND THE MEKONG DELTA

Saturday, February 6, 2010

INSIDE THE CU CHI TUNNEL...JUST MY SIZE!

What a crazy 3 days! I arrived in Ho Chi Minh city, or Saigon as the locals call it( I think only the government and maps call it Ho Chi Minh City) on Wednesday. It used to be a French Colony from 1887, after almost 30 years of war (hence the wonderful bakery's and baguettes everywhere), until the 1950's when Ho Chi Minh and his communist forces defeated them and took control of the North. Following that was years and years of war with the United states on the side of South Vietnam vs the Communist North Vietnam. The US withdrew in 1973 and the North finally won in 1975. Saigon was then renamed Ho Chi Minh city in his honor.

It's Vietnam's largest city and overflowing with 9 million people so is extremely crowded and the traffic is insane. Most people here travel by motorcycles and scooters...there are 4 million motorbikes in the city and they are going in every direction all the time, they crowd every square inch of sidewalk to park.

VERY NARROW HOUSES!

The skyline is really interesting as well...they pay property taxes here based on the width of the front of their building....so all the businesses/hotels/apartments/houses etc. are super narrow(between 6-10 feet) and go up crazy high with winding staircases at the back...it's so bizarre looking. How does one place furniture in a 6 feet by 20 foot room????

The food is also great, I love Vietnamese food. Oh! and Vietnamese coffees! So good, I've been very caffeinated here!

I headed out Thursday morning to see the Cu Chi tunnels. These underground tunnels were constructed over 25 years starting in the 1940's and run over 250km. Cu Chi is the name of the village under which they were dug. They allowed the Viet Cong to control huge amounts of rural land as well as access/ egress to the Ho Chi Minh Train which brought crucial supplies from North to South. They go 3 stories deep and housed 10 000 people who lived underground for years. The US knew about the tunnels...they allowed surprise attacks, even with in the perimeters of US bases, as well as guerrilla communication. As a result, the area above the tunnels became the most bombed, shelled, gassed, defoliated and destroyed area in all of Vietnam.

Most of the tunnels have been destroyed as the trees grew back the roots collapsed them but a select few have been maintained and are now a tourist attraction.

There is a 100 meter stretch that has been widened 25 cm for tourists for you can crawl through...Only 5 people out of our group had the guts to go through them. I'm proud to be one of them and it was actually rather terrifying. Even in their widened state I was crouched over as far as I could go. The roof scraped against my back and there was not enough room for two people to pass. It was HOT and pitch black except for an occasional floor light. It started 10 feet deep and kept going deeper and deeper as I went. It was so claustrophobic and I had a constant mental fight against my head telling me to get the hell out...I had to suppress the panic that was trying to get out! At one point I had to lay down on my stomach and squeeze through a sloping tunnel. It was so scary because I had no idea how long it was until it would come out outside and how narrow it would get or how deep it would go. It was hot and stuffy and it felt like I was running out of oxygen. There were tunnels branching out along the length of it that went into rooms they used for meetings, cooking, hospitals etc. but I was too scared to deviate from my path out of there!!

When we got though they said there was another stretch we could do that was 18" shorter and we were all like"no way!" I can't believe people actually lived under there...and these were the one's they enlarged! There's no way I could have gone through them half that size. I guess you do amazing things when bombs are falling on you. They really show the incredible resiliency and resourcefulness of the Vietnamese people.

MEKONG DELTA

Then on Friday morning I headed off for a 2 day one night trip to the Mekong Delta. It's located in southwestern Vietnam and is where the Mekong river empties out into the sea through a bunch of tributaries. We visited the city of My Tho and stayed the night in a city called Can Tho. This is a huge rice growing area and is largest world's supplier of rice after Thailand.

Most of the villages and cities are only accessible via the river and people live their lives on and around the river. We had to take a boat to get into Can Tho. The most interesting thing to see here is the floating markets and we got up mighty early this morning to visit the largest of them outside of Can Tho. Tons of boats were selling everything you could want! The boats had really tall bamboo posts like flagpoles sticking out the back with whatever they were selling tied to it...like the signs in the aisles of the supermarket.

It was a nice 2 days and I really enjoyed being out on the river, very peaceful easy going way of living they have. I went out to dinner in Can Tho with 3 girls from the tour and we found this great little restaurant on the waterfront and ate a yummy dinner while watching the boats go by and fishermen fishing off the shore. The menu's here are very extensive. For lunch I had the option to order fried rat, snake, and frog! They even had cages containing all these creatures not unlike Red Lobster's tanks where you can choose your own lobster.

PEACEFUL ROW BOAT TRIP AROUND ONE OF THE ISLANDS.

STILT HOUSES SEEN ALL OVER THE MEKONG...THEY ALL LOOK ON THE VERGE OF COLLAPSE.

MORNING FLOATING MARKET

LADY ROWING HER FLOATING FLORAL SHOP

I got back into Saigon tonight at 5:30pm and am looking forward sleeping in tomorrow(for the first day in a while). Tomorrow, I'm going to do some shopping, see a few of the museums and sights in the city( If I survive my life and death game of Frogger crossing the streets) and get another massage at night before bed. My last one involved a 5' tall 90lb Vietnamese girl walking on my back....ha,ha yes...but it felt good and she had strong hands!!

For now, I'm curling into bed to let the honking lull me into a restful sleep.

HO CHI MINH CITY

Thrursday, February 4, 2010

I'm going to bed early, I have to be up at 6am tomorrow for my 2 day trip into the Mekong Delta. There may or may not be wifi...if you don't hear from me I will do a big posting once I return to Saigon.