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Published: January 26th 2009
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Guidebooks don't prepare you for everything. Sometimes you wake up in a Vietnamese guesthouse, go to the bathroom and find yourself locked in the bathroom. Said scenario turned reality for me this morning. I have all of my pills and medications, my vaccinations are up to date, I know how to contact the embassy in case I am out and about and need assistance but I didn't bring a locksmith with me to the bathroom. Shameful prep work on my part.
Having never been locked inside a bathroom, I found the whole scenario quite amusing yet a little troublesome. I was on thetop floor and had no clue how I was going to get anyone's attention. After playing with the lock, doing the old credit card movie trick, taking out the vent and trying to open the door from the outside and trying to pop the hinges (I don't recommend toothbrushes and floss as tools), I finally did yelled for a little assistance.
When the owner arrived, she started laughing at the situation and then tried several keys. The bilingual diplomatic discussions on how to get me out of the bathroom will go down as legendary world talks. Within
Wishes at the Temple
Hopes and desires for the new year line the temple walls. 30 minutes I was free to go and feeling might confident in my foreign language skills. If Barack hears of this incident, I will surely be summoned to be a foreign relations advisor for his staff.
Sometimes you just don't feel as if you are getting anywhere. New Year's Eve in Sydney seemed so real yet I sit in Ho Chi Minh and prepare for the Vietnamese New Year (Tet - January 26th). Apparently I haven't gotten very far in the past month.
So another New Year's celebration will be had, but this one will have it's own unique variations. Ho Chi Minh (which is stilled called Saigon by everyone here) is the quietest it has been all week. Gone are the constant peppering of horns from the street, the cyclo drivers aren't harassing me into taking a ride, I have crossed the street casually all day without the slightest fear of getting run over. The Vietnamese tend to return home to their families for the three day holiday.
I am staying at the generous Loan families house in Ho Chi Minh. They went out of their way to invite me to New Year's lunch. It was
a rather impressive array of foods that I couldn't tell by site or name besides the noodles and spring rolls. Upon further discussions with the family, it appears that I was fed an assortment of candied fruits, bamboo and conglomerated pig parts (cheeks, eyes, foot etc) sealed together in some magic brick. Rather generous of the Loan's to not only give me a cheap and decent place to stay but to feed me as well. That generosity seems very typical around here.
So it is a sleepy Ho Chi Minh that now sits before me. A week of fighting traffic, being offered anything from motorcycle rides, massages (legitimate) and women (non-legitimate) is now passed. Strange how quickly a city can change.
The city itself is rather different than most large cities. There is no real skyline demarking the center of the city. There is the former palace of South Vietnam and the city hall but that is about it. It is one sprawling area of markets with housing strewn about.
Tourism is still catching on in Vietnam. It has only been open to visitors from the states since the mid 90's. It is fun to see tourism
develop but it also makes for some bizarre experiences.
Went down to the Mekong Delta on a bus trip (all public buses were packed to the fullest as everyone was returning home). It appears that all of the tourist cafes work together yet separate. Most poeple on the bus had booked from a different place, with a slightly different itinerary and at different rate. They would load you on one bus, then separate people based upon the number of days they had and from their you were shuttled off down another alley to a different tour guide. I had three guides for a 36 hour trip and managed to go on a completely different itinerary than the one I had read about.
The floating markets here aren't commercialized yet and therefore were much less dressed up. Basically people would pull up to a boat and haggle a little for whatever the boat was selling. Impressive entrepreneurs placed a large pole sticking atop of their boat with the fruit or vegetable hanging off of it to tell buyers what they were selling. A floating market billboard if you will.
The tour was all rather interesting as they showed
us the ways to make coconut candy, rice paper and how to harvest rice. What was odd was that they took us to these places and they were all closed for the New Year. So we went and visited a lot of closed places, were led inside (nothing was locked) and then given a rough summation of how it all worked and left. The real highlight came when we stopped at a restaurant on the way home not to eat but to pick up 8 other tourists that were coming back from Cambodia. Not sure why they were left in the middle of nowhere. It was strange and pleasant rolled into one, much like toiling down the Mekong Delta in a slow boat for the day.
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Connie
non-member comment
Love it!
Terrific post! I think you have to start bringing your camera to the bathroom with you though.