Blogs from Ho Chi Minh City, Southeast, Vietnam, Asia - page 221

Welcome to the most capitlistic place on the earth. Upon arriving in vietnam, from sleepy friendly, and wonderfully easy Cambodia, Vietnam was a slap in the face that I can still feel. We calculated that out of all of our experiences with the Vietnemese people, 75% were resulting in conflict. Cambodia was full of laid-back, chill english speaking sweathearts. We had a street vendor women who accidently gave us an extra dollar back in Siem Reap. After we figured it out, we could tell that they too realized it , but were not going to say anything. We gave it back and they were so grateful.....now welcome to vietnam. Once we got across the border, we could tell everything had sped up and money, especially getting the most money from you became a top priority. We ... read more

I've been here about a day and half now. As I drifted to sleep last night, I imagined a thread to tie together everything I might share here, but in the meantime I've been flooded with a million more images and I'm feeling overwhelmed. So, some random sharing . . . -When you walk out of the airport here, there's a stange sensation of being a star on stage. The waiting area is outdoors, and the people waiting are kept back behind police barricades. At 11 p.m., there were a few thousand people there in a big semi circle staring at the door. When you emerge, it's just you with all those people looking anxiously to see if you're the one they're waiting for. It's incredibly noisy. Pretty soon, I hear Ilene calling my name from ... read more

Also known as Saigon, Ho Chi Min City may be my favorite city I have visited during my time in Asia. While there, I spent several days playing the role of tourist, but also managed to mingle with the locals when the opportunities arose. I went on a tour of the city. I went on a tour of the Mekong Delta. And, I went on a tour of the Cu Chi tunnels. The tour of the city was mediocre, excluding the very disturbing and graphic War Museum. Here the story of the Vietnam War was told from a different perspective. Machines of destruction; tanks, planes, helicopters, bombs, were striking sights as I entered the courtyard, while inside the mueseum many more profound aspects of the war were revealed. Some of the pictures were extremely grotesque, displaying ... read more

Hi all, it's Ilene in HCMC-- Robert is on his way--well, at least his flight to Chicago is--I just logged onto United's website and saw it was en route and his flight to Hong Kong is on time still. So hopefully I'll be fetching him at the airport in about 24 hours. I was reading a self-help book recently where there was a lot of talk about recognizing two choice dilemmas in your life, which seemed to boil down to recognizing both options suck but to construct them in a more empowering way and choose one. So. Some recent dilemmas: Situation #1 Moved to a bigger room today to make better accomodations for Robert. But it boiled down to this: we could have two of the following three things: a. a large enough room, b. a ... read more

Where should I begin? Perhaps where I'd left off last time... SO. After we left the internet cafe where I updated my last blog entry, we found a post officed and mailed out our Cambodian postcards (yes, we maild Cambodian postcards in Vietnam, so bite me). And then we decided to motorbike to a remote beach on the island. It was around 3:00PM at the time. At around 3:30PM, "dude, whi1ch way is north," Amit asked over his shoulder. I used my sun-sets-west trick, and looked down for the shadow. "Please tell me you know where you're going," I said, remembering back to the Killing Fields trip. "Dude, I got it, I looked at the map." Of course he did. By around 4:00PM, we'd passed by the airport twice, and the sun had been to our ... read more