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Published: October 17th 2005
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Welcome to Vietnam
Cruising down the Mekong Welcome to Vietnam! Leaving Cambodia was a little hard to do, but I've read so much and heard so many great things about Vietnam I was excited to get started on that portion of my trip. Spent a couple of days in Phnom Penh seeing the last few things I wanted to, but mostly getting the logistics arranged for getting to Vietnam. There's essentially two ways to get into the country; either take a long bus trip straight to HCMC/Saigon, or meander your way through the Mekong Delta. Considering I'd spent five hours on a very bumpy road in a mini-van stuffed to the gills with 23 (!!!) other people getting to Phnom Penh from Kampot, I was eager to avoid the bus necessity of option 1, so the Mekong Delta it was. Marlo, an Aussie I'd met on the way to Kampot, and I decided to go for a three-day, two-night tour of the delta that would take us from Phnom Penh, through the border, and to Saigon.
The Mekong Delta is exquisite. A fertile landscape spiderwebbed with tiny canals and bigger rivers, with rice paddies and jungle views on either side of the waterways. The weather wasn't the
Had to Get One with the Hat!
Seconds before I (almost) fell off the bridge greatest, but cruising along the river in a boat, checking out the scenery and the gorgeous stilt houses was a great way to enter the country. There were loads of activities planned with the tour, so we got to see a fish farm (most of the floating houses in the delta keep large enclosures under their homes where they can breed and raise fish to sell), a noodle factory, a Cham minority village (felt a little guilty enjoying the pastries everywhere in Vietnam in a Muslim area during Ramadan, oops), and floating markets (absolutely incredible - innumerable amounts of fresh produce (we got rambutans, I'm addicted), bread, fish, meat, and ready-to-eat food and drink being bought and sold from boats of all sizes), but the real highlights were just staring at the beautiful countryside, and, most especially, the home and family we stayed at for the 'homestay' portion of the trip we'd signed up for.
I'm always a little apprehensive about homestays, mostly because sometimes when I'm traveling, especially in poorer countries, I feel as if the local people would really rather I (well, all travelers) just went home and left them alone. It was a needless worry in
this case though, as the family was incredibly welcoming. It was a traditional rice farming family located in a small village attached to the delta town of Can Tho, and we were lucky enough to spend a day and a night surrounded by a lovely, warm family of four generations. There were two three-year-olds who tended to steal the spotlight, but also cousins, aunties and uncles, and a great-grandmother. Four generations who, although not all living in the house we stayed at, had stuck together in the same area... Most of the family lived right next door! Although only two of the dozen+ family members around spoke english, they spoke it well enough to facilitate our communication with everyone, and we were really made to feel at home. We were shown around the village, introduced to other members of the community, and had incredible food. It turned out that there was an especial sense of festivity because in a couple of days it would be the "death anniversary" of the grandfather, the patriarch of the family, and so everyone gathered to make special rice cakes which they would consume in a celebration for all the family and the community in
Hard at Work
Making the cakes a couple of days. It was a shame we wouldn't be around for the celebration itself, but seeing them all come together to prepare and attempting to help was quite lovely! It was so nice to be able to partake in something as normal as that, though it did make me miss my own family (*sniff*).
Reluctantly, we left the family the next day and made out way to Ho Chi Minh City... What a difference. The tranquility of the delta was replaced by the hustling and bustling vitality of Saigon, characterized by the absolutely ridiculous numbers of motobikes on its streets! An intersection with six lanes of traffic in all directions would be packed with motobikes - thousands of them - burdened with all types, from businessmen to the young and hip to entire families, toddlers and all. We found a great, cheap hotel, and spent the next few days exploring the city. The vitality is contagious, and I quickly fell in love. It's a city of expectation and promise, of neon lights and thumping nightclubs, a very easy city to be in. The daytrip to the Cu Chi tunnels proved a little more taxing, as my claustrophobia
Bustling Marketplace
Anything you could possibly need came out in full force and I was reduced to panicky tears in the very first tunnel. Oh well, it was still interesting to see the ingenuity of the VietCong who had built and lived in this city of tiny tunnels during the war (which I can already tell is an omnipresent shadow in this country). The afternoon was just as emotionally-trying, since the War Remnants Museum (aka the American War Crimes Museum) featured very explicit exhibits of the atrocities of war. I made it through the historical facts, and was interested by the tanks and fighter planes on display, but didn't feel the need to continue a close inspection of the photographs of torture, or the effects of Agent Orange on fetuses as evidenced by said fetuses in bottles. I'm sometimes forced to question the merit of exhibits like this... Of course it's important to remember past atrocities and thereby be less likely to repeat them, but the extravagance of this exhibit served more to incite hate against Americans and create a sense of morbit titillation. It did put the nastiness of the war into perspective, but I left with an acute need to be physically ill, rather than
Remnants of War
The more aesthetic side in a state of mind conducive to sombre reflection of mistakes of the past.
Leaving Saigon was hard, especially after a raucous night spent drinking and dancing with the Irish (I love the Irish), but there's so much to see and do... Must keep keeping on!
- Robin.
{for those who are interested in my plans and really have no idea what I'm up to, here's the - very tentative - itinerary. I'll be in Vietnam until the 11th, from there I'm flying to India for a whirlwind tour of Rajasthan, then up to Nepal for some trekking, rafting, and meditation. From Nepal back to Thailand through Delhi, checking out some things I missed in Northern Thailand, looping down through Laos, then more time on the coast of Thailand until hitting Malaysia and looping the peninsula... then back to Bangkok. I think.}
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