Advertisement
Published: December 10th 2010
Edit Blog Post
Even though I slept under a mosquito net and wore 100% DEET, I managed to get bit a bit too many times. Within 48 hours, I have discovered 8 bites in total. There is a girl on my trip from Colorado. She simply said, gee, I hope you don’t get malaria. If she wasn’t so sweet, I would probably tell her she is a schmuck. Luckily, this great Aussie gal told her she is an idiot for saying it, so I didn’t have to say anything. Half the people on my trip are taking Malaria pills; yet there is no indication it is necessary or common in Vietnam… My African roommate thinks it’s hilarious and actually ridiculous.
On with the tour, we take a small boat (3/boat) on a ride back to the bigger boat in the morning from our guest house in Mekong Delta. It was nice and relaxing and the sun was shining. Upon arrival, we took a 30 minute motor boat ride back to the main island where we embarked on a 3 hour drive back to Ho Chi Minh City. On the way there, we stopped at a touristy rest stop and I turn around and
my friend Elan is standing right in front of me. He told me he was coming to Asia months ago (I have no memory of this). Then there is Brian, another friend from college. I am like a million miles away from home and I see Elosh and Shlosher! OYE. What a trip that was. As we were both with groups we had about 5 minutes to catch up.
A very local lunch followed by the Cu Chi tunnels. WOW. This was a huge wake up call. The Vietnamese lived in these tunnels for over 20 years during the Vietnam War (until the mid 70’s which was practically yesterday). I couldn’t even fit in some of the entrances to the tunnels if I tried. We saw all the weapons and traps the Vietnamese created to kill American soldiers. YES. In Vietnam, we learned that awards were given to the American Killers! This award was given to people who captured and/or just killed massive numbers of Americans. I felt a tad awkward as I am an American. Do the people of Vietnam still have ill will towards us? I took a photo of a photo that had American soldiers running…
it said ‘Running for dear life before the drastic counter-offensive of the Cu Chi guerillas’. This was from 1966. All I could wonder were these men fathers? Husbands? Sons? Brothers? This was very hard to think about.
Then we were given the opportunity to go to the shooting range. I originally wanted to shoot the machine gun, but was told the bullets run out super duper quick, so I went for the AK47 and the M16. OUCH. This was loud, the M16 hurt my arm like hell, but it was AWESOME! The targets were so far away, so we didn’t have a chance to see how we did, but either way it was better than the only gun range in NYC where you can shoot a boring rifle.
As soon as we get back to Ho Chi Minh City, Marley and I head to the indoor market as it closes at 7pm. We did some shopping and then we met our NEW additions to our group at an outdoor restaurant. Interested group! There are 2 American girls that met on a previous Contiki tour. There are about 4 couples and a bunch of drunken Aussies (I will explain
in a bit).
Our group is complete. We wake up to start our day in Ho Chi Minh City at the sites. Basically, this is the palace, the post office and the War Remnants Museum. The Vietnam War museum was hard to stomach. Some of the pictures and stories are too unbelievable to watch. I almost started crying a few times. I need to read up some before making an opinion of the Vietnam War and whether the United States was right or wrong. I pretty much failed history growing up so I don’t remember as much as I should! People started asking me and malaria girl what our thoughts were. Our only defense was it was before I was born (as I really didn’t know enough to answer anything).
We were supposed to head to Nha Trang following Ho Chi Minh City to chill out on the beach for a day, but unfortunately Mother Nature didn’t allow this. Literally, there were land slides from all of the rain in Nha Trang. Instead, we flew directly to Danang. This is when we discovered the alcoholic aussies. We watched about 6 of them consume about 6-8 beers each while we waited to leave the hotel for the airport and at the airport (we had time while Contiki made all the arrangements). As we had 2 unexpected nights, out tour guide, Dean had no idea what to do with us! Contiki had to book us all on a flight and find accommodations for almost 30 people… They found us a place right near the beach; however it is raining and windy here as well. We still have our free day so we hope to make it to the beach. If not, we will have yet another spa day. Marley and I decided to stay at the hotel for dinner as the town is practically flooded and it was about to pour. We order shrimp toast, fried rice and chicken with cashews. Our lady shows up with a beef dish. Oops. We showed her what we ordered on the menu. She then shows up with our chicken which is lovely. She then shows up with another chicken which we had to send back. Then 2 other waiters ask us to show them what we ordered – we then got our rice and shrimp toast. We were 2 of 4 people in the entire restaurant!
So besides the waitress who pretended to understand English, I have been having some major brain farts of my own. After traveling for 3 months, I am yet to lose anything or leave anything in a hotel. Maybe I am distracted by my African roommate (as I call her the white African girl who is causing me to lose my mind) – but I literally lost my compression bag of all my panties! Yes, I left my bag of panties in a hotel room! Luckily after thinking I had to go panty shopping in Vietnam, we returned to the same hotel after the Mekong Delta. They of course had my bag of underwear. That night I went to charge my camera to discover – I had no idea where my camera charger is. OYE. Of course the hotel had that too. I asked them to check that they didn’t find anything else in the room from a few nights earlier as I was flying out that day! Super strange behavior from the type A freak (that is me of course).
Advertisement
Tot: 0.207s; Tpl: 0.01s; cc: 17; qc: 61; dbt: 0.1077s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb