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Roger with Communist Decorations
The cities were decorated for Liberation Day on April 30.Note: During our first few days in Vietnam, we had a recurring argument over whether to write Vietnam as “Vietnam” (as Amy wanted to do) or Viet Nam (as Roger wanted to do). After much discussion, we agreed to look at five websites (US State Department,
Expedia, Western Union, Britannica and Amnesty International) to determine how they wrote Vietnam and the best of five would win. Amy is happy to announce that all websites which use Vietnam (Amnesty International has no reference to Vietnam) write it “Vietnam” and so that is how we will be referring to it in our blog entries. Please feel free to write in and mock Roger for wanting to spell it “Viet Nam” (as the Mekong locals do).
We know we have gotten really behind with our blog entries. We have been having so much fun and learning so much in Vietnam that we have not been able to find the time to write. This entry is the first chunk of our visit, next will be our time in Saigon, then Mui Ne (beach time), Da Lat, our 5 day motorcycle trip through the Central Highlands and then Hoi An (which is where we are
now).
Tuesday, April 18, 2006 Mr. Kong, the tuk tuk driver who had driven us around Phnom Penh, met us early Tuesday morning to take us to the dock where we would catch our speed boat to Vietnam. Mr. Kong seemed entirely unconcerned with the fare, saying and apparently sincerely so, that the fare was “up to you.” In a rare expression (for the area) of business foresight and planning he also offered us his email address and said that he was getting a new tuk tuk soon and that he’d appreciate referrals.
After sitting at the dock for thirty minutes we departed Phnom Penh for Chau Doc, Vietnam at 9am down the Mekong River. Most visitors opt to take a bus, but the opportunity to cross the border on water was too appealing to resist. There appear to be a variety of services moving people from the Cambodian capital into Vietnam, and after considerable searching we are still not clear as to how one can make a distinction between them, but we ended up using the company offered by our hotel (Bright Lotus 1).
The view of the Phnom Penh side of the river was
Bus Ride to Ha Tien
This is where our feet "rested". very attractive. You can see the palace and a few other old buildings, as well as the new Parliament building under construction right next to an enormous hotel and casino. As you drift further out of town the river bank becomes dominated by small villages (each corrugated rooftop adorning a television antenna) and grazing cows.
Shortly after 11am we made the first of two stops to clear immigration. On the Cambodian side you make a quick run up the bank of the river to a series of windows where your passport is stamped. We also picked up a smiling man in a yellow shirt who boarded the boat with us. His English was not great, but he enthusiastically asked for our passports and explained that he was here to help. Aside from his smile and his bright yellow shirt the only sign of credibility was his brown leather briefcase. Leery of schemes and always zealously protective of our passports we nonetheless handed them to the smiling man in the yellow shirt. What was he going to do, swim away?
Our boat advanced about 100 yards down river at the base of a steep river bank under the gold
starred red flag of communist Vietnam. The man in the yellow shirt leapt out and scampered up the river bank as we pulled away and docked another 100 yards down river. Curious, and somewhat unsettled, we made our way up the river bank as well, though we could see no sign of the man in the yellow shirt. It is here, near the dirt pathway between Vietnam and Cambodia, looking down at our boat and up at the dusty courtyard of Vietnamese immigration buildings, that we had our first interaction with the children of Vietnam.
We were surrounded by a half dozen kids, ages 8 to 13, trying to sell various trinkets. Most of the kids stuck around even after we rebuffed their sales pitches and they were absolutely charming. One of the kids spied a piece of gum in the outer pocket of Roger’s backpack and a brief frenzy began, often with a kid taking a piece of gum, running around behind Roger, sticking an empty hand out again, and then showing Roger that they had fooled their way to two pieces (we both knew what they were doing - once again proving our intellectual superiority to eight
year olds) and were more concerned with making sure each kid got the same amount of gum. Amy continued to chat with the kids when Roger went to try and find the man in the yellow shirt, only to find him in an office and to be told, with a smile, that the paperwork was almost finished.
Another ten minutes passed as we talked with the kids. They were completely taken in by Roger’s height and his paunch (which is shrinking, just not yet to Vietnamese proportions). The kids, like many of the people we have encountered, have a completely different standard for personal physical space and Roger would often turn around to find small hands gripping his belly or a kid standing straight as a board and measuring where his head reached on him.
Having wrestled with how and when to give money to kids we are very pleased with our decision to buy a bunch of individually wrapped pieces of gum. We determined that a few minutes of joy with the gum, transient though it may be, was a gift we could give directly to the kids (money from purchases or begging goes to the parents
who deployed the kids to work). The gum has proven to be a big hit and does not preclude us from other giving should the circumstances warrant it.
Again the smiling man in the yellow short boarded the boat with us and we shoved off, now in the muddy Mekong waters of Vietnam and 40 kilometers away from our destination. There were no major changes to the scenery - riverside villages, livestock, and small boats dotted the landscape - until we approached Chau Doc. After several hours of muddy water and small riverside villages the dense, pastel colored town was stunning in the heat of the day. We landed at a riverside restaurant and hotel. Before we could even figure out whether and how to tip the man in the yellow shirt who had handled every aspect of our paperwork in crossing in to Vietnam he sprang off the boat and disappeared. Somewhat surprised we turned to see the boat driver waiving good bye and suddenly we were alone in Chau Doc, Vietnam.
The river bank where we docked is steep with structures, a hive of activity so dense it obscures the area where the land meets the
water. We made our way out of the restaurant, weaving through narrow and dark walkways, emerging on to a bright sunny street and a dozen touts eager to sell us their services and recommend a hotel. We headed off toward the center of town and an ATM for new currency. We were followed each step of the way by a very persistent boy pedaling a bicycle cab. The boy, who did not care that we refused his every offer of assistance and service, peddled slowly alongside (usually on the wrong side of the street) as we made our way through town, and even directed us toward an ATM (where he was waiting when we finished). From the ATM we searched out some food, and again the boy followed and attempted to direct us to a restaurant where he promised us good food. Amy, completely annoyed and eager to avoid the young man, marched defiantly into the neighboring restaurant and sat down to eat (this is how our first meal in Vietnam turned out to be vegetarian). The food was good and was consumed under the watchful eye of the boy sitting outside on his bike.
Having proven his worth
to us, albeit through a tactic we found unappealing, we began to talk to the boy about transportation out of Chau Doc. We were prepared to pay a minor amount for him to haul our backpacks (the heat, as in every other spot we have visited in Southeast Asia, was miserable) to the bus station while we walked alongside. He told us, and it matched with information we had, that the public bus to our next destination, Ha Tien, had departed for the day, but that private mini-buses would be available. And wouldn’t you know it one was right around the corner….
After several minutes trying to negotiate the bus route we wanted we realized that the woman in the small, unsigned shop the boy led us to was simply reselling seats on the public bus (at a considerable mark up). We thanked the boy for his help, offered him a very small amount of money as a gratuity, and followed the map in our guidebook to a recommended local hotel.
Chau Doc, being our first destination in Vietnam, couldn’t help but offer a revelation around every corner. We walked through the market, an aromatic stew of pig
guts, vegetables cooking in the sun, and other un-alluring smells, and down along the river. The town is bustling and pretty. As the national holiday recognizing the liberation of Vietnam and the fall of Saigon, “30 April” was approaching the town’s every street light and post was decked in communist symbols - the bright red flag of Vietnam, red banners featuring the familiar yellow Soviet hammer and sickle, and occasional large signs depicting Ho Chi Minh, Lenin, and Marx. Seeing the hammer and sickle was stunning to Roger (the Soviet flag flew over the torture and murder of more people than Hitler’s swastika).
We walked toward the bus station and again met up with the bicycle cab boy who again peddled beside us hoping for some work. He stopped as we left the “city center,” about the same time that the stares of locals increased in intensity (we were quite a novelty). The walk to the bus station was longer walk than expected and loaded with stares and friendly hellos (mostly from children). We managed to obtain fare and departure information at the bus station thanks to a helpful stranger. The woman behind the counter, who appeared to hold
a job that demanded the actual sale of tickets to customers, did not look in our direction once other than to say that we could not buy tickets in advance but in the morning, at 8:30 am, when the bus departed. Knowing the rate and the schedule, we opted to buy our ticket (including a ride to the bus station the next morning) at the Nguyen Hotel which was across from our hotel.
Locals seem to enjoy us (and why wouldn’t they?). Walking around town, particularly outside the city center, we really stood out. As a whole the people of Chau Doc appeared to be about the shortest people we have encountered, making Roger look and feel more like Andre the Giant than the slightly taller than average guy he is. The height, and, regrettably, the paunch, is clearly something of a novelty in Chau Doc. Kids are often eager to see us and shout hello or run up to us as if to make contact on a dare before running back to their friends, and parents with small babies will waive their children’s arms at us as we pass by. One group of men, sitting in a circle
on the sidewalk drinking, even offered us a taste of their rice wine as if to see the look on our faces when we tasted the local brew. To demonstrate the safety of the wine one man took a sip and passed it to Roger, who has grown to like the taste (which is similar to Bactine, pillow stuffing and rubbing alcohol). The locals often appear to get a great kick out of interacting with us and we had a stimulating walk back to town. We stopped for a few minutes at the Victoria Hotel’s riverside pool and bar for some Vietnamese iced coffee, a treat made of freshly brewed dark coffee, condensed milk, and ice, and then paid a visit to the slowest internet café on the planet.
Our walk back to our hotel took us through the market again, this time as the market was closing. There were piles of fruit and vegetable remnants, puddles of liquid waste, and even leftover pieces of fat from butcher stands. It smelled horribly. The vendors apparently sweep all refuse into the center of the walkway to be collected over night making the street a mine field. We saw more than
a few kids picking through the garbage looking for bottles.
We shared a plate of food back at our hotel before turning in. The most notable part of the meal was our first sampling of the fish sauce served with just about everything in Vietnam. Our guidebook says it takes 15 samplings before one enjoys the taste. It took Amy two. Roger has yet to come around.
Wednesday, April 19, 2006 We awoke on Wednesday and had a light breakfast before heading to the hotel across the street for our ride to the bus station. While we had not envisioned our ride being a pink Cadillac we had not prepared ourselves for the possibility that the ride would be a pair of motor scooters. The look on Amy’s face was scary than Tom Cruise on Oprah but we composed ourselves and hopped on board. Since entering Thailand we have seen numerous and surprising uses for the scooter. Not only are they the primary mode of transport for people, but they can carry half a dozen people, numerous kids, tires, lumber, signs, dead pigs, live pigs, dead chickens and bales of vegetation so large as to almost obscure
Rambutan
Lemony Fruit We Tried the driver completely. The apparent competence of the drivers, and the lack of options, made us more comfortable than we’d expected, and the bikes were surprisingly comfortable. As we had seen from the sidewalks, motos tends to ease through the hectic traffic, and even with our huge bags (one driver had our computer bag between his knees, Roger on his back and Roger’s huge backpack on his bike) it was an almost effortless journey.
When we arrived at the bus we were placed in seats across the back of the public bus, both we believe, to keep us out of the way and to provide the entire passenger load with a good clean view of us (which they took advantage of the whole trip). There were at least 40 passengers for 30 seats and those without seats were given short plastic stools to use in the center aisle. As we pulled out of town toward Ha Tien we made several stops, cramming more people and packages in to the bus and under our feet. The undercarriage was full when we arrived at the station and our bags, a leaking styrofoam box, ducklings, bikes, feathered bamboo poles, numerous boxes and
utilities were on top of the bus, leaving only the bus floor for giant bags of fish food, laundry and rice piled at our feet and throughout the little space left in the bus. At the beginning of the trip, we often looked out the back window expecting to see our bags fly off the roof of the bus but eventually relaxed and figured they were hopefully wedged in pretty tightly. There was no air conditioning, but the windows managed to keep the air moving pretty well. People were smoking, eating and spitting and casually tossing all of their debris on the floor at their feet. Nothing says comfort like a three hour bus ride with your own quail egg shells at your feet.
In addition to the bus driver the bus is staffed by an attendant at the front door who hops on and off to collect new passengers and deliveries. Once the passenger or package is loaded the bus starts moving with or without him. The road was bumpy and the stares were unchanging but the scenery of the delta region was beautiful - low, flat plains, irrigated fields, and palm trees.
In each village where
the bus would stop a swarm of cab drivers was waiting. They would waste no time, barking into the windows of the still moving bus in an effort to obtain a fare. The station in Ha Tien was no exception, and even though we did not know where we were going we managed to push through the crowd to the open road and the floating bridge into the town center.
Ha Tien is a small village at the southernmost tip of Vietnam and had been recommended to Amy by the owner of the nail salon where she gets manicures and pedicures. It sits seven kilometers from the Cambodian border, which is open only for locals (though next year that will change and foreign tourists will be able to pour into Ha Tien to begin a more natural circuit tour of Vietnam from the most southern tip to the north rather than entering closer to the center of the south and backtracking). The town is very clean and colorful with wide streets and a long waterfront on one side and the Gulf of Thailand on the other. The floating bridge, which is closed to most automobiles, connects the town center
to the bus station and outlying areas.
After walking across the floating bridge from the bus station to Ha Tien’s center, a large market, we wandered around a little before stumbling on to the tidy and quiet Hoang Du hotel. Our room featured pink Disney sheets, blue walls, checker floors, an Asian fantasy landscape scroll, and gold curtains. Me-owww. As it so happens the hotel is run by the sister of one of the touts we had met in the market, a young-ish man who provides moto tours of the Ha Tien area with a partner. Not being too crazy about the idea of zipping around the countryside on motorcycles we politely refused his offer. One ride on the bus in the Mekong and the perils of moto travel - the barreling buses themselves, the road ruling trucks, and then the numerous bikes, chickens, cows, dogs, goats, and water buffalo - are all too apparent.
According to our guidebook the main tourist office and other helpful things for planning a stay in Ha Tien could be found at the Dong Ho hotel. As the town is very small and the guidebook very brief in discussing Ha Tien we
immediately sought out the hotel. We walked around town looking for Dong Ho and eventually stopped for a break for iced coffee (and more stares) and finally discovering the secret to mixing it properly (It seems obvious now - after the coffee drips in to the condensed milk? Stir it. Much easier than pouring the separated ingredients into the ice and then stirring).
Everywhere we went there were kids eager to yell whatever English they knew. Usually it was a loud “Hello!” that served as much as a declaration that they knew a word than as a greeting. Often they would ask our name or where we were from, only to reply with shy blank stares when we returned an answer and the same question. Our wandering took us well away from the town center. We’d hoped to make a loop around only to find ourselves on a muddy waterfront under construction.
We made it back to the city center stunned not to have found the Dong Ho. We encountered the moto tour man again, this time with his partner, Mr. Trinh. When we asked if they knew the Dong Ho they pointed to the large and obviously
closed yellow building behind us (the very first thing you see as you cross the floating bridge). Without a map or tourist information of any sort and tired of the stares that came with being the only foreigners in town, we considered leaving Ha Tien the next day and returned to the bus station for schedule information. After a nice lunch featuring our first pho (a popular noodle soup with fresh greens and beef) we had all but determined it was time to leave Ha Tien.
As the sun set we stopped for iced coffee (quickly becoming an obsession) and bumped in to Mr. Trinh again. We had a long and pleasant conversation with Mr. Trinh about life in the Mekong in his lifetime. The splitting of families at the end of the war, the impact of communist rule, the blackballing of southern soldiers or those with family that had been evacuated to the US, thriving Vietnamese communities in the US, and the immense flow of money into Vietnam from expatriates living in America. Mr. Trinh was a big fan of the US, in fact, and was pleased his daughter would be marrying an American and moving to Texas
Scene from Boat Trip in Can Tho
The man is getting mud from the water to use in construction. later this year. He spoke very openly about the financial benefits of having relatives in the US (essentially a retirement plan).
For dinner we popped into a shop in the front of a family home. There was no English spoken and no menu and we ordered by pointing at a large vat of soup (which appeared to be the only option). After failing to understand our miserable attempt at asking for a drink our hostess ran to the cleaners next door where a lady who took English 30 years ago managed to order us some water. The soup was tasty, though it featured several unidentifiable meats or animal parts that were not terribly pleasing.
We returned to the hotel and tried explaining that we would need to check out very early to catch the 5am bus out of town. Unable to understand, the hotel clerk made a quick phone call that resulted in the appearance of her brother, the tour guide, showing up a minute later on his bike, barefoot as if he rose from the couch to come right over. He gave us a last sales pitch for a tour, this time detailing the sites of the
Ha Tien area and assuring us vehemently that moto was a safe way (the only way, actually) to see the area.
We had a strange change of heart that evening as we packed and decided that we would stay another day because we should not leave Ha Tien without seeing any of its sights and so we arranged for the tour with Mr. Trinh and the hotelier’s brother.
Thursday, April 20, 2006 We went for pho for breakfast before meeting up with our two guides at 9 am. Considering our first ever moto ride was a mere day earlier we strapped on our helmets with some trepidation. We were both nervous as we pulled out of the hotel drive, Roger with Mr. Trinh and Amy with the younger man (who we will call Ricky for the sake of simplicity). We zipped through town and over the larger, elevated counterpart to the floating bridge and into the countryside.
The mostly flat landscape of the delta is periodically broken by large stone deposits that stand out like islands on the sea. The first stop on our tour was a pair of caves beneath some of these giant rocks.
The first, a low and limited series of caves, had served as shelter to soldiers during the war. There were numerous signs of human visitation, including offerings to deceased soldiers, lists of names of those who had died, and litter from less historical recent happenings. The second cave we visited was much more extensive and quite large. The rooms with high ceilings rang with the squeals of bats high above us and smelt of the little critters droppings and stale air. We paid the locals $2 (each cave had a small family residence / café outside of it), a small fee to power up the strand of crudely constructed lights throughout the cave so that we could explore. The cave went deep into the earth, was very wet, slippery, and in places a little smothering, so we did not go too far. When the wooden pathway ended our footing was on bare, partially submerged, rock or on sandbags that had been placed to mark the way. The furthermost chamber we visited was marked by relatively large stalactites and stalagmites, one of which Mr. Trinh tore down so that he could get a good look at it in the light. Following
Mekong River Stop Urinal
Note the blue pipe which empties into the Mekong our walk we stopped for a quick coffee and made our way back to the road.
Our next stop was a Buddhist temple set inside a cave and a popular destination for Vietnamese tourists. The area near the entrance of the temple is surrounded by vendors selling fruit and various trinkets with strictly local appeal - dried bats, snake wine, and other herbal remedies. The open area within the walls of the complex and immediately outside the temple abutting the hillside is decorated with gaudy statues of Buddha and mythological figures. The combination of the volume and the bright coloring of the statues evoked more of a Disneyland feel than of anything too holy. The temple itself is set in a series of caves that open up on the seashore and is equally garish in its appearance (the Buddha, for example, wears a halo of blinking neon lights). The shore features a gorgeous view of the bay and of several rock formations in the water and another opportunity for vendors to hawk their wares. We bought some small, spiked lemony fruits from some kids before heading back to the bikes.
We stopped for lunch at one of the
many restaurants boasting fresh seafood along the shore. The meal was very good but the mood took a definite turn when Mr. Trinh appeared to begin talking about Ricky’s deceased father. Ricky had previously told us his father was living in America, orphaning Ricky as he fled with the American Army. Again, we had heard of tour guides playing to their audience to gain favor (and increased tips) and we were frustrated to feel we could not trust our guides. After lunch Roger quizzed Mr. Trinh, who said only that despite his working with Ricky for three years he had only met his sister and mother and had no idea where Ricky’s father may be - “Whatever he says” Mr. Trinh concluded. The events at lunch made Amy eager to end the day with our tour guides.
Our tour took us back toward Ha Tien and into the hills marking the Vietnamese-Cambodian border. We visited another cave (Thach Dong) and temple before heading back to Ha Tien by 4:30pm. We ended the day about 1.5 hour early because we had determined that the sights did not hold much interest for us (and many appear to be added just to
extend the length of our tour) and that the best part of the tour had been the moto bike experience and the talking with our tour guides (which we lost interest in during lunch).
Knowing we had a 4:30 am wake up to make the next day’s bus to Can Tho we kept the evening short - another visit to a painfully slow internet café, dinner at the same place where we ate breakfast, and a few episodes of Scrubs on our computer.
Friday, April 21, 2006 Most of the small hotels in Vietnam close up their doors around 11 pm and leave a staff person asleep in the lobby to unlock the gate should someone need to get in or out. When we checked out at 5 am we found the young woman working at the hotel asleep on a wooden bench in her pajamas. She cheerfully checked us out and we walked through the already bustling market to the floating bridge and bus station. People wake up very early here.
The 5:30 am bus to Can Tho - which our guidebook says takes 4 hours - took 6 hours. The ride was noteworthy for
two things: the constant blaring air horn of the bus that made everyone on and around the bus a little more deaf (and gave Amy a huge headache) and Chris, the young English student we met. We had a pleasant enough talk with Chris about his studies at Oxford (he has completed one year) and his experience teaching English in Can Tho, but when he and Roger realized they had similar tastes in comic books and movies Amy decided to move a few rows back and escape the overwhelming smell of geek. From her seat toward the back of the bus Amy encountered a man who repeatedly offered her peanuts and even demonstrated how to open and eat them as if they were newly arrived from Venus. Her polite refusals were mostly unheeded and she finally had to eat some and just be grateful that she did not have a nut allergy. The woman sitting next to her stared at her without blinking -from eight inches away - for several hours.
We arrived in Can Tho at 11:30 am and split a moto bike rickshaw to the central accommodation area with Chris. We found a dirty little hotel for
$8 before heading to Hop Pho’s café to indulge in their free wireless internet. Between the good food, wide variety of drinks, and free internet we spent over 4 hours there. We returned to our hotel to find one of the tour guide touts, Mr. Triet Quang Huynh (according to his business card), we had encountered earlier in the day. We intended to take a long cruise of the Mekong in this area and the man was pushing a 400,000 dong ($26 USD) package from before sun up to 4:30 pm. Based on what we had learned from Chris as well as our guidebook, we determined this was far too much to pay and his price reduced to 300,000 dong before we walked away. No more than five minutes later, he called to accept Amy’s price of 200,000 dong and we went back downstairs to book the tour of several floating markets, agricultural areas, and other sites with an English speaking guide - him - and breakfast on the longtail boat. We should have known the whole thing was a little fishy when he wanted all of the money up front, but we booked the tour with half down and retired for the evening.
Saturday, April 22, 2006 We were met in the lobby of our hotel at 5:30 am by a different guide who spoke no English. While setting out on the Mekong in the misty pre-dawn light was lovely, it was not long before we realized that there would be no breakfast either and that our 8 hour tour was off to a sour start. Our longtail boat, a small, narrow craft named for the propeller that extends some six or eight feet behind the boat, made its way up the river slowly but surely towards the early morning floating markets. About an hour into our voyage we spotted the first of the two markets we were scheduled to visit. The series of boats in varying shapes and sizes that make up the floating market are all loaded with various goods, mostly fruits and vegetables. Boats tie up and do a little business before shoving off in search of another transaction. Most boats fly tall poles with their particular sale items hanging high for all perspective buyers to see and melons, roots, or other items dot the skyline among the bobbing boats. We passed meekly through the congestion only occasionally earning glares suggesting this was not a place for gawkers. The second floating market was very much like the first, though for some reason we saw more tourists than we did at the larger, earlier market that was closer to Can Tho.
In addition to the boats selling food items we saw a few specialty “shops.” One longtail looked like a tiny 7-11 with everything from toothpaste to candy bars in its small hold. Some boats were jammed with fixings for sandwiches or noodles - floating food carts - weaving in and out of the commerce dispensing breakfast to the business people. We did business with a floating drink cart, buying two cups of coffee in dirty glasses (how the glasses made their way back to the vendor we don’t know). Our coffee was milky and served complete with a splash of river water as it was passed to our boat. Like all of the coffee we sampled in the Mekong it was rich, aromatic, and creamy. The various organisms no doubt along for the ride made it less than delectable and most of the coffee went back to the river.
The river, as the center of life here, is used for virtually everything. Aside from the obvious shipping and transport, we saw people drawing mud from the bottom for construction, washing themselves, their clothes, and their dishes, and dumping their trash. The river banks are lined with all manner of business from farms to coffee shops to furniture stores. Before exiting the main channel of the river for the more narrow and shallow passages of the afternoon we stopped at a coffee shop that emptied its toilets right in to the water in front of the shop (essentially four feet of pipe from the toilet to the river bank). The shop also boasted a new litter of puppies and some adorable little girls (neither puppy nor child knew how close it came to being abducted and taken back to America by Amy).
As we wound through the secondary and tertiary channels of the river the water grew more shallow and polluted. Frequently the engine of our boat would sputter and jam as rice sacks or other debris wound around the propeller. Defying common sense our boat driver (and other drivers that we witnessed) would lift the propeller into the boat and work to remove the debris for several minutes before dropping the garbage right back into the river - in front of his propeller and conceivably in a place where it could immediately wind around his own propeller again. This grew increasingly frustrating to watch, particularly in the most shallow and narrow areas. If each boat removed the debris and disposed of it (rather than back into the water) it would be a start toward improving the conditions of the water.
Early in the afternoon we pulled into a fruit orchard where we were welcomed in and seated for lunch among the trees. Our hostess, without asking, began massaging Amy’s neck and shoulders. Amy tried to stop her but when she didn’t stop Amy decided it was ok because the cost would be low. After less than five minutes of untrained massage, she finished, tried to start massaging Roger (which was luckily stopped) and showed us a 50,000 dong bill (more than $3) indicating that is what we owed her. We told her that was too much at which point she asked for 20,000. We eventually gave her 15,000 (way too much) and watched with some giddiness as she targeted another pair of suckers, successfully separating them from 100,000 dong. Clearly her little scam works because some people are too embarrassed to say no to her requests even if they never wanted to be massaged in the first place.
Following lunch we motored through the mangrove swamps and worked our way back to Can Tho, a pleasant trip that was probably a little too long. We later tried to email Triet to complain about the boat trip we were sold but our email bounced back. If anyone reading this is looking for a boat trip in Can Tho, we strongly urge you to avoid Triet Quang Huynh who we met (and then never saw again) while staying at Khach San 27.
After a late lunch and a rest we met up with Chris for a very entertaining dinner at a restaurant unaccustomed to serving non-locals. Chris’ broken Vietnamese and bravado secured us an excellent squid dish, a so-so plate of snake, and a seafood hotpot that was loaded with several kinds of land and sea creature, fresh veggies, and pineapple. Over the course of the meal we got to know Chris a little better. An extraordinarily independent and intelligent 19 years old, the geek in Chris began to drive away any Oxford mystique he may have had (the thirty minute oration on the making of the movie Serenity, for example). He was good company, though, and was game to show off his dance moves at one of the local hotels known for ritual “dance offs.” Amy was a little too curious not to commit to the late night show and we headed to the club at the Golf Hotel, one of the city’s more ritzy accommodations.
Like most dance clubs the club at the Golf Hotel was loud and dark and full of young people. The novelty of having three westerners was certainly profound, however, and we drew attention everywhere we went (including the bathroom, where one of the attendants put his hands on both sides of Roger’s stomach to - to what?!?! - has no one seen a man who doesn’t do sit ups before?!?!). We made our way to the center of the dance floor where Amy and Roger bopped to the music and had many locals come and join them. Chris became a whirling display of any and all cheesy dance moves one could imagine, drawing the competitive attention of one of the local men. After a circle had formed, one of the local men began challenging Chris and, as you would imagine (but not be lucky enough to see in person), involved each of them taking turns showing off their best moves, including such hits as the sprinkler, the robot and big box/little box (a cross between miming and vogueing). It eventually ended with Chris pronounced the winner (by Chris) and Amy with tears down her face from laughing so hard. If you’ve ever seen the SNL skit where Britney Spears and Justin Timberlake have a dance-off, you can partially imagine what this was like. Amy feels blessed to have witnessed such an experience in person and highly recommends getting yourself into a dance-off if you ever find yourself in a dance club in Vietnam.
Sunday, April 23, 2006 The long and eventful Saturday left us tired and a little hung over on Sunday. As it was to be our last day in Can Tho we didn’t do too much more than visit the restaurant with free wireless internet again, test out the swimming pool at the Golf Hotel, and join Chris for dinner at an Italian eatery for pizza.
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Nikola Simon
Nikola & Simon
Great Journal!!
I don't know either of you but but feel like I do already!! Your journal is great and makes me look forward to our trip to VN in December even more. Have a great time. Nikola