First Week In Vietnam

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Happy New Year! It is New Year’s Day here in Vietnam. Usually there are a dozen or so round boats tending the nets on the sea in front of us here in Mui Ne (mooee nay) on the South China Sea. This little slice of paradise is a ten km long, south-facing crescent beach - so we see a stunning sunrise and sunset is every day. It is very calm at night and in the morning before the east wind whips up a heavy swell. Today is the Tet, the Vietamese lunar new year, is the most important holiday of the year - so no fishing. We were advised by a fellow traveller that a sign of respect is to place new bills in red envelopes and give them as presents. This is ‘lucky money’ and, we understand, is saved - not spent.

The other guests here are from all corners of the world...a couple of Americans who have been teaching in Bejing for five years, a psychologist from Switzerland who comes every year to kite-bord, a handsome Chinese couple who look more like hippies from the west, a Quebecois couple from near Mont Tremblant, an Aussie gent travelling on his own and a number of other nationalities we have yet to meet.

On New Year’s Eve we slipped out of our little resort to one of the many restaurants lining the shore road. We ordered a shrimp salad with chunks of mango and apple buried in a load of fresh mint with a delicious pink (maybe watermelon) dressing. We also ordered Vietnamese spring rolls, fried eggplant and deep-fried cauliflower. With those four dishes plus three beers the bill came to slightly under $13. We were shooed out of the restaurant at 8:00pm as they were closing for the night...never mind business when there are traditions to uphold and they take New Years very seriously here. Many people go home to family for up to a month. It’s a time for renewal. The staff at our resort spent the day cleaning and raking so there would be less work to do on New Year’s Day.

The night before New Year’s Eve we and the other guests were invited to the New Year’s staff party. A long table was set in the open-air lobby/restaurant with duck curry soup/stew with potatoes and carrots, shrimp and the lovely fresh baguette buns that are so prevalent. Many, many beers were placed in front of us. There was a lot of toasting and cheering of the new year by the staff and we heartily joined in. They entertained us merrily with guitar solos and a little one-act play.

The staff/guest solitudes have now been blurred forever. We were already feeling pretty good about our choice of accommodation here at the Mai An Guest House. Darla booked early here and was able to reserve one of only two rooms facing the water. The other rooms face inward onto a palm-shaded courtyard. There is a refreshingly positive attitude on the part of the staff. They smile, they sing, they treat the guests as friends. The place is spotlessly clean. The ‘director’, as she calls herself, is a stunningly beautiful 29 year-old MBA student from HCM named Hoa (Whah). She has set the tone here with her constant smiles and laughter. The manager is Tam, a lanky, forty-something, true gentleman with many talents. The women who serve the tables and clean the rooms are all early twenties and are devoted to Hoa who is more the older sister than the boss.

We spent three nights in Ho Chi Minh city (HCM) which, of course, was formerly Saigon. Teeming with traffic - rivers of scooters and motorbikes, the streets in HCM were decorated with beautiful overhead lighting in floral patterns. The new year is the year of the dragon so many of the decorations are in that form. We sort of dragged ourselves around for the two days in HCM as we recovered from our 40 hour voyage through eleven time zones. One of the highlights of HCM was to have dinner with some friends of friends who were born and live in HCM but actually have Canadian jobs. Tuy (Tooey) is Canada’s Trade Commissioner to Vietnam and his wife, Anh, works for the Port of Halifax thanks to her expertise in the world of freight-forwarding. Seems they and their three daughters will soon be emigrating to Canada and settling in Moncton. We felt it prudent to mention the (Atlantic Canada) weather but they insisted it would not be an issue for them...we didn’t want it to be a surprise.

Tonight is our sixth night here at the Mai Am Guest House. Tomorrow we hop on the bus back to HCM where we catch a plane to Siem Reap to see the ruins at Angkor Wat. We will stay there four nights, then fly back to HCM and return to this guest house for a couple more weeks. There is a lot to do here in Vietnam but we have decided to hang here as long as we can.

...afternote...this entry was delayed a few days as we assembled our list of contacts (shoulda done this at home before we left). At the moment we are in Cambodia and will get the second blog off soon.

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