Advertisement
Published: November 28th 2010
Hey guys, sorry in advance, but this has to be kind of a quick and dirty entry. I only have a few minutes to throw together my thoughts on Vietnam as I'm heading off to Thailand tomorrow, and I don't want to fall too far behind in my log. So, with that said, I'll just get into a couple of the quick highlights:
1. I've discovered that the reading books I travel with really are my greatest form of adventure. Every time I sit down to have a quiet hour of reading, something bizarre inevitably happens. In the most recent incident of this, I sat down under a tree in a small village to kill some time, and 5 minutes after pulling out the book a man of about 30 came out and sat next to me. He then grabbed my book and flipped through it for a bit. And then he grabbed my backpack and started looking through everything I had. I really wasn't sure what was going on, but I was worried that he was mad that I was on his property or something because he wasn'[t much of a smiler. After a few minutes of trying to
communicate - three kids came out to join him. After some hand waving, I managed to figure out that they were his, and I'm guessing he came out first to make sure I was safe before they came out to wash the clothes. When they came out, the two youngest did just as their dad had done and started riffling through my bag. They found some funny postcards I had bought and nearly fell over laughing at one of a guy on a motorbike with three pigs strapped to the back. When I pulled out my camera to show them some pictures of themselves, the middle daughter fell in LOVE with my camera and kept grabbing for it until I showed her how to use it. Once I felt safe (sort of) that she wasn't going to break it, I let her snap a few. And then she proceeded to become some crazy photo shoot director and spent the next hour (and 2 camera batteries) taking pictures of me and her brother and sister (some choice highlights in the photos below). It turned out to be one of the best days of the trip so far, though I was worried
that I was not going to be able to pry my camera out of her hands at the end of the day!
Now, in a general observation, I just have to say that Vietnamese children are INCREDIBLY outgoing relative to Chinese children, at least with foreigners. I've had more than a handful of kids just walk up and grab my hand when I'm walking around, and they are always waving and saying hello.
2. In one of the more frightening / surreal moments of the trip, I was actually left behind on one of our tours when our guide miscounted and thought everyone had returned to the bus. The bus left 5 minutes early (an unheard of thing in Vietnam as most things run 30-60 minutes late), and I walked out of the temple to see a parking lot with no bus. After looking up and down the road for 10 mins, I was pretty sure that I had been left, so I sat down to debate my options. I was about 15km from town, so it wouldn't be expensive to get back in a cab, but I wasn't sure how to call one. As I was about
Ha Long Bay (3)
A bit terrifying. This tower was rusted through in a LOT of places!to ask for a ride back from one of the small groups that was there visiting as well, a Vietnamese man (who I think realized I was in distress) walked over and grabbed my arm and paraded around with me as though I was the belle of the ball. He didn't speak any English, and neither did anyone else in his group, so I'm not exactly sure what was going on, but I think they'd decided to rescue me by taking me on as a member / mascot of their group. So I then re-toured the temple with them and got the full Vietnamese tour / lecture and was put front and center of all of the group pictures. Then, just as we were about get on their bus and leave, my original guide came running up breathless and completely apologetic. I was actually tempted to keep going with my new adopted group, but I actually had no idea where they were going so I figured it was probably a good time to play it safe and head back with my guide.
* If you look at the photos, my adopters are the man and woman in the bright
Ha Long Bay (4)
Not a bad place to spend the night! red shirts.
3. Apparently I now have an 18-year-old, Vietnamese fiance in a small town located just north of the former DMZ. While taking a tour of the area, my guide told one of the ladies that we came across that I'm not married, and she immediately dragged out her single daughter to introduce her (girl in the yellow shirt who looks like she's both terrified and giggling). I told her that I had a girlfriend back in America, but she laughingly said that I should "have a Vietnamese wife too." Now, I'll say it was about 65% in jest, but I'm thinking she would have been pretty happy to have an American son-in-law. To get out of the somewhat dicey / comedic situation, I said that I'd come back in 5 years and see. At this news the girl looked relieved but the mom looked rather hopeful / excited, so I'm hoping my guide explained that I was kidding.
4. Also relating to my future Vietnamese mother-in-law, when the guide and I were talking to here (we were there to buy some fish sauce that the village is famous for) she offered me something to try. It
was a white nut and a green leaf covered in some white paste. They said I should chew it but not swallow. When they saw the cringe on my face (it tasted pretty awful) and the confusion as I really didn't know what to do with it, they both broke out in a fit of giggles. Well, with some perseverance, I managed to chew it for about 5 minutes and got to the point where it didn't taste terrible (still didn't taste good). When I finally spit it out, I discovered that my mouth had turned bright red / orange (see pic below), and this was terribly confusing because, as I mentioned, the things I was chewing on were white, white, and green. Anyway, as I toured around the area over the next couple of hours, I noticed that all of the old ladies had the same stained mouths that I did, and I got a number of proud looks of approval for my stained smile 😊
All right, that's all I have time for now. I'm off to grab some dinner before crashing. The next time I check the internet I should be somewhere outside of Bangkok.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.154s; Tpl: 0.014s; cc: 8; qc: 46; dbt: 0.0841s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
mart
non-member comment
Which hotel is this?
Hi, enjoying reading your blog. Heading of to Vietnam next month. Which hotel / island is this? It looks great. Thanks Mart