SE Asia Travelog

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This is my first ever blog and I wanted to share my most recent travel adventure. I wrote this journal as I traveled. I hope you enjoy it




ThTravel Journal - Sept 2012



Hong Kong-

Having never traveled in eastern Asia, I didn’t really know what to expect in Hong Kong. I had heard stories from many people who had been there but nothing remarkable. The first thing that impressed me is its size. It’s a city of about ten million people, all crammed onto an island built for half that many people. But it is impressive. Tall buildings and light that no doubt can be seen from outer space greeted us. I was traveling with my son, Jimmy, for this part of my journey. We were whipped after 25 hours of traveling so when we finally arrived at our hotel (L’Hotel) we could only think of rest. Our first day was a free day so we did some sight seeing on our own. We first visited the Aberdeen Fish Market which comprises I don’t know how many acres of live, chilled, and frozen fish products. We saw species of fish we had never seen before. Many fish that we do not keep when fishing, the Chinese call food. They eat a lot of squid, which I do not. They eat parrot fish and dozens of species of lobster and crabs. People moved here and there bustling around. Trucks backed in and loaded up for local and far away restaurants. The fish came into the quay by boat and truck and left the same ways.



By the time we had visited the fish market we had the impression that the Chinese were hard working and agreeable people. At least the ones we met in Hong Kong were. I don’t know about the people in the rest of the country. We took a taxi to a summit from which we could see all of Hong Kong. It was very impressive. Those millions of residents live in highrise buildings, some as high as 50 stories with 2,000 living units. There’s money in Hong Kong, so there are luxury buildings and then there is the rough equivalent of pubic housing, no frills, just basic highrise construction. We saw not one single-family residence in Hong Kong during our entire visit.



We attended the Asia Seafood Expo at a very modern convention center. We were thinking this would be a very big deal with hundreds of exhibitors, and a place where we would want to spend three or four days. It turned out to be much smaller than expected and information we received from one of the vendors convinced us that this was not something we needed to spend time on. We decided to use the time to do some traveling.



With half a day left after we departed the Expo, I swam in the hotel pool. It might have been the cleanest pool I have ever used. It was beautiful and spotless. It was covered in tile and was perfect for swimming laps. Because my plans called for me to visit Thailand after Hong Kong, and because the Expo was cut short for us, Jimmy decided to go with me. We booked flights for the following day to arrive in Phuket that evening.



On our last evening in Hong Kong we decided to look around the city. We had seen intense neon lights from a distance and decided to take a cab to see what it was all about. The area was somewhat like Times Square; very busy with people bustling around. We wandered into a dive bar and were immediately surrounded by a crowd of hookers. I knew it was a mistake but curiosity got the best of me. It resulted in Jimmy and me buying drinks for about four hookers and their Mamasan. It cost over a hundred dollars but it was fun.



We had a lot of time to kill the next day before our flight to Thailand so we staged our suitcases at the airport and looked for a nearby attraction. That turned out good because we ended up at the Big Buda. This was a statue of Buda that had been erected atop a mountain very close to the airport. It could be seen for many miles. We took a tram up to the site and walked through the village and up the stairs to the statue. We also visited a monastery in the same place. It was a beautiful temple with bright fresh flowers, incense pots many monks in attendance.



Thailand –



From all I have heard, Bangkok is a city that can be skipped. I have traveled through Thailand for about a week and spoken to many travelers along the way. There is so much to see and do in Thailand that to expose yourself to the frenetic pace and hassles of this huge, trashy city is to waste energy that could be better used in much more productive ways. I read an article on the airplane that said Bangkok is rated the best destination in Asia by Travel and Leisure readers. It cannot be denied that Bangkok has some of the finest hotels in the world but its reputation among the travelers I met was consistently not good.



Phuket is just about the favored destination for foreign vacation travelers. It is an island easily accessible from hundreds of locations. We flew in directly from Hong Kong. Phuket is known for its resorts, particularly beach resorts. Bottom line, if you’re going to Phuket, you’ll probably end up in or near Patong Beach or wish you did. That’s where the fun is in Phuket.



The resorts are crowded, the streets are scary busy, but there are still plenty of places to go to clear your head and get away from it all. We spent our first night in the seaside resort of Le Meridien Phuket Beach Resort. It was a spectacular facility, one of the most beautiful resorts in all of Thailand. The double room cost less than $200 per night and included breakfast. The resort has as much swimming pool area as any hotel I’ve seen anywhere. The service was amazing; it was a real first class experience. A nice thing about this resort is that it is only a few kilometers from Patong, perhaps a $5 taxi ride.



Patong offers the famous, or infamous, Bang La Road. This is where Phuket gets its reputation as a wild place. Walking down Bank La, which is perhaps 500 meters long, you will be stopped or accosted dozens of times by various agents. I use the word to describe barkers, pimps and hookers, hawking every kind of service imaginable. The street in lined with shops, bars, restaurants, massage parlors and tour offices. It is closed to traffic in the evening so pedestrians have the run of the entire street. The first impression is sensory overload with loud music, a crowded thoroughfare and people hassling you every step of the way. It is really too much to take in with one quick stroll down the street. I only became comfortable with Bang La after three or four passes down the road.



The bars are full of girls offering whatever is your pleasure. A word of caution, just in case there is an interest in these services, not all of those beautiful women are actually women. There are what is called “lady-boys” which describes men who dress as women, wear heavy makeup and sexy clothing. Some have had breast augmentation; some have sexual reassignment. A word to the wise might be if you are visiting Thailand because of its reputation for sexual permissiveness, unless you are ok with the idea of having an encounter with a man pretending to be a woman, ask before you commit. Another caution is that the country has a real STD problem, so don’t venture into the sex arena without knowing what you’re doing. Also, the massage parlors offer a variety of services, including foot reflexology, back, neck and shoulder massage, or full body massage. In the resorts the massages are straight up therapeutic massage facilities. The parlors along the streets are looser.



If staying in Phuket for a few days there are quite a number of activities. There are many beaches to enjoy if that’s your pleasure. You can dine on authentic Thai food, ride elephants, or take a boat tour to James Bond Island. I recommend a speedboat ride as they zip around and visit a number of different islands. The islands are most unusual as years of sea erosion have created up side down pyramids and amazing caves.



You can rent a car for about $35 per day and do your own tour. You’ll have to get comfortable driving on the left side, and on very narrow streets. But you can see more on your own this way and, because there are considerable distances between attractions, taxi fares would cost a multiple of the rental rate for your own car.



Do not be tempted to stay in Phuket Town or near the airport. Patong is where you will end up everyday, and it is forty-five minutes from the airport. People who stayed near the airport told us they were spending a lot of time and money everyday to get to Patong. Phuket City is no tourist destination. It is a dirty, bustling, hardscrabble town. There are no beaches in the town and it is a confusing mass of roads and motorbikes. It is the commercial center of Phuket and it is where the water taxis to the other islands leave from, but other than that, there’s not much reason to visit.



Younger tourists will enjoy the island of Phi Phi, called Koh Phi Phi. You must take a water taxi from Krabi or Phuket to get to Phi Phi. This island has no cars, only carts and very narrow streets. The town is a walking destination, so when booking a room, make sure it is in the town. There are several first class resorts on Phi Phi but most are not in town, so the decision to stay in one of these places means you will be staying in the resort for your whole visit. There are nice villas and hotels right in the town and for the back packers there are hostels that rent rooms for as little as $15 per night. Phi Phi is an authentic party destination that looks like spring break all year round. It is not the best destination for older travelers and families. There are hundreds of shops and restaurants and bars, all within an area perhaps one-kilometer square. The streets go this way and that without much of a grid. But it’s difficult to get too lost because all roads lead to the beach.



In this small shopping area there are twenty or thirty dive shops. Phi Phi is a very serious dive destination with some of the most beautiful reefs in the world. The diving is easy, generally in less than fifty feet of water, with little or no current, and usually excellent visibility. On my dives I saw many things I had never seen in previous dives. I saw clown fish, which do not appear in the Atlantic or Caribbean. I also saw my first leopard shark in the wild. There are giant clams, beautiful anemone, turtles, and healthy corals of many types. Also I want to mention that the dive operation I used, Island Divers, is first class. All the dive masters are English-speaking, either Australian, British or American. Language was no barrier at all which, when doing something as serious as scuba diving, has to be communicated precisely. They believe in safety first. There were never more than five divers per dive master and the preparation talks for the dives were excellent. These dives are even appropriate for resort divers of which there were many. I took a two-tank dive that had a two-hour surface interval for lunch and a visit to Ma Ya Beach, where the movie The Beach was filmed. When we returned to the dive shop at the conclusion of our dives there was a debriefing where the dive master gave a talk to his clients giving them the statistics for their dives for their dive logs. I had never seen this done and the divers who kept logs embraced it enthusiastically.



A word about Krabi – Krabi is only a transfer point. While it is a large island with a modern airport and water taxi terminal, it is not the place to go for vacation. There are many better places within the island archipelago to visit such as Koh Samoi and Koh Pengyan .



Vietnam –

On my dives I met several people I enjoyed talking with. Two young girls from Colombia, one named Maria was a newly graduated attorney doing a resort dive. The other, Anna, was a Ph.D candidate in math, and a certified dive master. Mark is a banker from New Zealand who joined up with us. I mention this because the four of us spent hours talking. While we discussed manythings, traveling was our main topic. My purpose for mentioning them is because they all had extensive travel experience in Vietnam and they referred to it as their favorite travel destination in the world. They told stories of beautiful landscapes, wonderful people, and a culture that is ancient and remarkable. Knowing this would be my next destination I was already psyched even before



My Vietnam experience actually started in the Bangkok Airport. While waiting to board my plane I was surrounded by a dozen or so Vietnamese young girls, perhaps university students. They were very curious about me, being what to them must have appeared to be large, strange-looking wizened man who looked much more like Confucius or Ho Chi Ming than any of their own countrymen. They tried, with little knowledge of English, to engage me in conversation and it seemed they all wanted their picture taken with me. They were having great fun with me, laughing and joking. I wonder what they were saying.



Upon arriving at Hanoi airport things went quite well. My bags arrived with me and clearing through customs and immigration was breeze. I had a visa in my passport already so I had no problems. I gave the address of my hotel, Conifer, to the taxi driver and we were off for the ride of my life. I had always believed that the drivers in Guatemala were the craziest, but I was wrong. Traffic moved in every direction with no apparent order. There were no stop signs and few light controlled intersections. My driver rode his horn, flashing his high beams and weaving in and out of traffic the whole time. I asked him to slow down but I think he thought I said speed up. It was the forty-minute ride from hell. All the streets and intersections in Hanoi are like that. Curiously, when I asked some travelers how to cross the street, their advice was just walk and the traffic will go around you. I saw people doing that but it looked too risky for me. I did cross streets, but not at intersections. It was the craziest traffic I had ever seen (I heard that Delhi, India, has it beat by a mile).



The Conifer Hotel was an excellent choice, one I would recommend. First of all, Hanoi is big, eight million people and it spreads out for miles. Where to stay? For my money the best spot is near the old part of the city. Conifer is smack in the middle. It is surrounded by the high priced boutiques like Hermes, Luis Vuiton, and Boss. The opera house is there, as is the Hanoi stock exchange. There’s a Hilton and a Metropole that look very expensive. Conifer was $75 per night. The room was clean and spacious. It had good air conditioning, WiFi, and cable TV and free breakfast. But more important was that it had the friendliest staff I have ever encountered. They did everything for me, booked tours, called taxis, airline tickets and full of useful information. Their eagerness to please was epic. I learned later that this kind of service is common among most of the hotels in Vietnam.



I took a city tour of Hanoi my first day. We visited an ancient university dating back to the 11^th century. It was good to get that sense of culture in that the Vietnamese are very proud of their ancestry. The tour took us out of town to a ceramics factory where we watched the artists carve and paint ceramic figurines. The town was built on its ceramics industry and was quite wealthy by Vietnamese standards. The tour then visited a beautiful park in the center of town where there are stories of warriors who left from that point to drive back the Chinese who had been at war with Vietnam for a thousand years.



Across from the park is the entrance to the Water Puppet Show. Sounds silly but it was where the bus left me off and I had seen advertisements for it and read about it in the tourist guidebooks, so I went in. And I was glad I did. The show is a World Heritage attraction and something very interesting to see. The music is live, played on instruments I had never seen. The show was a reenactment of the history of the country; very interesting and lively and well worth the price of admission ($5).



Halong Harbor is another World Heritage sight and is called one of the new seven wonders of the world. I booked a two-day, one night tour. I had seen the place in pictures and always wanted to visit. It was a most rewarding use of my time. Of course the place is covered over in tour boats and other kinds of junks and whatnot, but the islands rising high out of the bay are amazing. The sea life appears to be healthy as I saw plenty of baitfish, a sign of a well-protected environment. The only commercial fishing I saw was artisanal in nature, having very little environmental impact.



These tours book same language passengers so on this particular tour there were two couples from Britain and one from the U.S. The guides, Sonny and Mike, spoke English so their guests could understand what they said. We were pretty much all on this cruise with each other, but we had good chemistry and all got along great. It was interesting to share stories and particularly to learn from each others’ travel experiences. At Halong I saw the largest cave I had ever seen in my life. It was thousands of years old, carved out by the sea and beautifully protected.



The downside to a Halong adventure is that the bus ride is three hours each way. But looking back, I will remember the Halong experience and I’m sure I will eventually forget the long bus ride. But one memorable thing did happen on the ride back to Hanoi. Throughout the tour Mike had taken an interest in me and wanted to learn anything I could teach him. We spent hours talking and he taught me a lot about the history and culture of the country. The subject of the war came up. Being only 24, for Mike that subject was only something he had learned about in history class. He knew very few people who even had experienced it or remembered any of it. I told him I felt contrite for America’s role in that war. Although I did not fight in that war I was a Marine during hat period and many of my friends did fight in it. I was struggling trying to express how unfair I believed that war was and how sorry I was. With true empathy for me Mike patted my leg and said, “It’s all right.” I needed a few moments to recover from that. I was touched hearing that from someone whose life has been affected by the war in ways he doesn’t even know.



Again, the staff at Conifer. When I returned for my last night in Hanoi, they acted like they were genuinely happy to see me. Big broad smiles greeted me like an old friend. They were so curious; how was my trip? What did I see? How do I feel? Do I need anything? It felt better than coming home; these people were genuinely happy for my return. They couldn’t wait to let me know that my arrangements for my flight the following day had been made and were eager to help me book my tour in DaLat. They smiled so sincerely that I wanted to take them all home with me.



I had a near panic attack when I arrived at the airport in Hanoi. When I got into the terminal I discovered that I had dropped my cell phone in the taxi. I had to wrack my brain to figure out what might be the best possible way to ever see it again. I figured my best shot would be to call back to the Conifer, which had booked my taxi, and ask them to call the cab company to see if the driver would return with the phone. The nice lady at the Mekong Air ticket counter placed the call for me and spoke with the hotel manager. She put me on the phone with him and I told him of the problems. Our communication was somewhat hit and miss because English is not his first language, but we hung up with me thinking he understood my problem. A few minutes later the phone at the Makong counter rang. It was the hotel manager to tell me the phone would arrive in five minutes. That was a pretty big deal, because having a cell phone while traveling almost anywhere is very important. Just as promised, five minutes later the taxi driver arrived with my phone. It was just one example among millions that happen everyday in Vietnam where things go right. I hear stories from everyone I know who travels in Vietnam that the people and the country are as tourist-friendly as any in the world. I place my name on that list of fans.



My two-hour flight from Hanoi dropped me off in the town of Dalat in the southern part of Vietnam. This city of about 40,000 people is quite modern and shows much of the influence of the French occupation in its architecture. It’s a very pretty spot if you don’t include the center of the town, which bustles and doesn’t smell so good. But Dalat is built on mountains and has enough green areas, lakes and parks to make it charming. Dalat is where I was to pick up my Easy Rider tour. That is a motorbike ride through the central highlands of what was South Vietnam.



Tuon was my tour guide. He picked me up at the airport to transport me to my hotel. This is where the adventure stated getting interesting. He had picked me up on his 125 cc motorbike. Me, all my bags, and Tuon on this little bike weaving through traffic not much better than what I had seen in Hanoi. I felt completely out of control, but I just had to have faith that Tuon could get the job done. He had years of experience driving his motorbike and he was expert in the local traffic. By the time my heart settled down we were at the hotel. It was a modern, beautiful hotel with great service and a fairly large and clean room and free breakfast, $50 per night.



I spent the evening by myself on a walking tour of the city. It was an interesting mixture of very old Vietnam culture and very modern lifestyles. Most of the construction, housing, hotels, parks, looked new. But it still had the usual fish markets and street vendors squatting on the sidewalks. I was fortunate enough to be starting my trek about town when the local schools let out. Here I saw the future of Vietnam bubbling with excitement, having great fun with their friends and serious about the fact that they were students. I have been in many countries and seen many kids leaving schools, but nowhere did I see such bright looking kids in their neatly-pressed and colorful uniforms. At six feet tall and looking very out of place, everywhere I went the children called out big ‘hello’s. Their smiles were bright and they were very curious about me. They wanted me to say ‘hello’ back and some looked for high fives. My impression was that these kids reacted much like friendly and shy American kids would react if they saw someone who looked like Confucius walking down the street. While I may have been a bit freakish looking, I felt the reaction to me was more of curiosity than fear. It was great fun.



The following morning Tuon came by for me as scheduled. He brought me my own motorbike to drive. It was a Bonus 125 cc. While I knew the traffic and roads would be a challenge, at least I’m an experienced motorcyclist so getting familiar with the bike was no problem. It was a little under-powered, but I was thankful for that because there were times when Tuon would want to drive too fast for comfort and I didn’t. The bikes limited our ability to do that.



Actually the first day on the bikes was the worst. Some of the roads were just dirt tracks, others had pot holes deep enough to sink into, and some were mud paths. It rained, so we had that to deal with and after it stopped raining, it got dark. I didn’t like driving in the rain but I liked driving at night less. If we were going to hit pot holes and seams in the pavement or stretches of slippery mud, I wanted to at least be able to see it before we came to it. That part was pretty scary but it lasted only about an hour and then we arrived at our hotel in the town of Lak.



Actually I’m not sure Lak was a town, more like an area or place. There was no central area; everything was spread out. Our $11 per night hotel sat directly across the street from a beautiful park and lake. The area surrounding Lak is beautiful and pristine once you get off the main road. This night Manchester United was playing Liverpool so we set up camp in a nearby restaurant for locals and hooked up to the Internet. Tuon connected his laptop and we ate dinner and watched the game. Tuon has friends everywhere so it wasn’t long before our table attracted a small crowd. A beautiful orange cat parked by my foot and let me pet it for a while. It was really a memorable evening. Only thing, after ten hours of riding I was beginning to doubt I would be good for another two days. My body was aching from having to muscle the bike. But Tuon assured me that tomorrow we had a lot of things to see and our trip would only be about 60 kilometers.



When we awoke the next morning I could see what I had missed in the darkness the night before. The hotel sat on the side of a rough stretch of road, but the park and lake across the street were beautiful. Before hitting the open road we drove around the area. We visited an authentic Vietnamese village. Its road was rough and lined with long houses on stilts. Roosters, cats, dogs, water buffalos, and lots of mother and baby pigs were everywhere. We walked around the village taking in the sights and learning about how the people lived off fishing and drying rice and corn. On this day we visited a silk factory, a worm farm where silk starts, a weasel farm where the animals are used to ingest coffee beans and then crap them out to make a special brew of coffee. We rode to Elephant Waterfalls, which is a beautiful and wet place, very dangerous and slippery for climbing. This ride is also where we went to the Happy Buda temple and I bought silk scarves for the women. The ride seemed pretty long for what I was expecting so I asked Tuon about it. He informed me that we were taking the long way around so we could avoid driving in a city. Our 65 k turned into double that. But the scenery was amazing and the weather was perfect. The only downside was the roads were awful, but at the end of the day we had experienced some real fun and exciting things. We pulled into a city to spend the night. I never got the name of the city but it was pretty big and probably had a population in excess of 50,000. I treated myself to a massage, which was pure agony. My arms and hands had gotten badly sunburned on the ride and this masseuse not only didn’t respect that fact, but she also didn’t use oil or lotion. In her defense she did work out my sore muscles. It rained a deluge that night but later on Tuon and I were able to walk down the street to a restaurant. We grilled bar b q at the table and watched young teenagers celebrate birthdays. It was a very fun spot and those people were having a blast.



On our final day of the ride we took our time even though we had 200 k to travel. We stopped to visit a girlfriend of Tuon what wanted to marry an American very badly. But she was cute and fun and took us to meet her friend and parents. We stopped by a rubber plantation where we saw the drip cups, and a herdsman walking his bulls through the woods. We picked up another friend of Tuon’s to give her a ride into Nha Trang. The rest of the ride was great. The road was pretty empty and the last twenty or so miles was super highway. Nha Trang is a big city, a resort destination. It’s very built up and modern. The traffic when we arrived in the city itself was heavy but manageable. We pulled into the Hav An Hotel about 4:00 PM and I dismounted the bike for the last time.



I explored Nha Trang by myself that evening and stopped by a real hot dog stand go have a taste of home. It was authentic tasting but what it was actually made of is still a bit of a mystery. The staff at the hotel was excellent, friendly and helpful. They arranged my flight to Ho Chi Ming City and my hotel, and pick up to go to the airport, and pick up at HCMC. I think the room rate was $18 including breakfast, and they had high speed internet and the room was very nice.



Tuon came back to the hotel the next morning and brought me about a dozen DVDs on the Vietnam War. We hung out together for about an hour and he had to leave to head back to Dalat. I wandered around the shops and went for a walk on the beach. It was too hot to even walk around so I returned to the hotel to rest. Later I visited a spa for a nice 80-minute massage ($35).



The following day I flew to Ho Chi Ming City. I had been warned by several people who have been around Vietnam that Saigon isn’t that great. My initial impression was the same. It’s a huge city of 9 million people. Everywhere I went people were hustling me. Every time I turned around somebody was trying to get me to buy something. After awhile it gets exhausting and I fear I might lose my temper.



I went to the War Remnant Museum, which is established as a memorial to the US/Vietnam War. I’ve heard several people talk about the one-sided, anti-American attitude of the museum, but I don’t see the problem with painting that war as a huge mistake that the US should never have gotten into. I learned that Eisenhauer got us into that war. At the time the area was called Indochina and comprised Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam. With the threat of all of Indochina turning communist and perhaps cutting trade with the US, Ike’s main concern was what would happen to America’s supplier of tin and tungsten. So it was very early on that our involvement in Vietnam was about assuring our supplies of these metals. Then resolutions were passed and according to the Vietnamese, we made up the story of the Tonkin Gulf, which gave us an excuse to send troops (advisors). That was about 1954 and our involvement lasted 20 years. Before us the French had been at war with Vietnam for a hundred years, and China had been at it for a thousand years. The Vietnamese still have no use for the Chinese and you don’t see the hoards of Chinese tourists in Vietnam like you do in Thailand and other countries.



One event spoiled my first day and put me in a bad mood about the city. I let a motorbike driver take me to the War Museum. I figured I’d pay him a couple of dollars and let that be that. He said he wanted to wait for me to take me somewhere else after I visited the museum. I told him not to do that but he insisted. So when I got out of the museum he was there and told me he wanted to take me to another museum. I said if he was to take me anywhere it should be back to the hotel. We started back and he stopped about a mile from the hotel. He said he would go no further because it was raining and I should catch a cab. I thought that was weird, but OK. I told him I’d pay for the ride so far. How much? One and a half million dong, about $70; a half million for each half hour. The average Vietnamese makes $4000 per year so I figure a motorbike driver who sits on his ass all day might make half that. So maybe $5-10 per day, not $22 per hour. We got in a huge argument and I really bitched him out, told him he’s a disgrace to the people of Vietnam and a few other choice things. In the end I walked down the street to the ATM and gave him 500,000 about $23. But I was pissed off cause it left me feeling like it would unfairly color my view of the city. What really bothered me was that this person is one of those kind who give the city its questionable reputation while so many others have to work hard to overcome it. I shook it off and decided it would just be an episode in my journal. I’ve been ripped off much bigger than that before so move on. But I do get tired of being hassled and hustled. It really does not let up in Saigon and it can be annoying. I hate being rude to people but sometimes I either just ignore them or, if they won’t leave me alone after I reject them, I might say something nasty to make them go away. That’s no fun. It didn’t happen in Hanoi or anywhere in Thailand or Hong Kong.



The Cu Chi tunnels are an interesting tourist attraction. These are the famous tunnels the Vietnamese used to hide in and work in while fighting the Americans. While they’re centered in the area of Cu Chi, they actually extend for 250 kilometers. The Vietnamese did everything in these tunnels including living, cooking, making weapons and transporting materials. The tunnels have an opening on the Saigon river so materials traveling up and down the country were easily sent to their intended locations. The Cu Chi tour gives a lot of insight into how the Vietnamese fought and the weapons they used. Here is where a visitor can see those gruesome bamboo stake pits they constructed and a variety of other nasty traps for the American soldiers. Having been in the military during the time of the Vietnam War, but not actually in the war, I heard many stories from veterans about some of the ways the Vietnamese warriors caused injury to the American troops. Having heard these stories first hand from returning soldiers, I’m a bit skeptical about some of the devices that were on display in Cu Chi. I never heard of many of them and I think I would have had they been for real. But to someone like me, having heard all the stories but never having experienced it firsthand, Cu Chi is an interesting tour.



On my last day in Saigon I walked the streets, visited dozens of shops and shooed away many street hustlers. A visit to the Reunification Palace was quite interesting. This was the headquarters and living facility of President Thieu, the president of South Vietnam during the war. Thieu is described as a puppet of the United States in some Vietnam tours, and as I remember, this was one way he was described even back in those days forty years ago. Prior to the end of the war, he escaped to the U.S. to live. There is a noticeable distaste for this man among the Vietnamese. The Palace functions kind of like the White House as the president worked there, and he and his family also lived there. It’s quite palatial and worth the 90 cent admission and one hour out of your life.



Oasis Massage – Every time I stepped out of my hotel I was stopped by street people hawking massages. Literally within one hundred yards of the hotel I would be accosted four times. It’s not that my hotel was in any particular part of the city that would make that understandable; it’s everywhere. Having just come from Thailand my thoughts turned to cheap sex for sale. And I think in many of these establishments that might be true. The Oasis was right next door to my hotel and I had been putting these girls off for three days. I collected brochures from five different houses, as it was easier to take one when offered than to ignore them. Their menus all looked pretty legitimate. No body-to-body or happy ending offerings, just massage, facials, and other spa treatments. With time to kill before my taxi would pick me up I decided to see what this was all about and what a foot massage would be like. I had never had one and I’d been telling the girl in the street for three days tomorrow, tomorrow. The experience was a pleasant surprise. I was escorted down an alley and up a flight of stairs into the parlor. The place was clean and welcoming. I was introduced to a girl whose name might be something like Mu or Nu, and she was quite pleasant and spoke some English. During my time there I saw what goes on in this kind of place. While I was being treated two new customers came in, a Japanese woman and another woman from England. My feet and lower legs were getting rubbed and slapped and it was a relaxing experience. I decided to text my wife at a certain moment and I looked over to see that the Japanese woman was on her phone texting someone, and the Brit was on two phones texting two people. So that’s how we relax. But it was nice and I did not get ripped off. I was expecting to pay $12 and that’s what I was charged. And the entire staff was friendly and thanked me profusely for my business. The girl outside on the street smiled at me and, for a change, did not ask me if I wanted a massage. It was a good spa experience, no hustle and no disappointment. My feet felt squishy with the oil the girl used but I have to admit it was a relaxing experience.



One thing that was not a hustle was my departure from the hotel and ride to the airport. I asked for a cab at 9:00 PM and he was there at 9:00 PM. He said he’d drive me to the airport a half hour away for about $8, and that’s what he charged me. His English was good and he made the trip to the airport a pleasant one. By the time we headed out it was dark and it appeared as one might expect the old Saigon on a Saturday night. It was jumping, neon lights flashing and people going every which way. It was crazy and probably the kind of action a younger man would have loved. For me, I was glad to be escaping.



Our plane touched down at Inchon Airport, Seoul South Korea at just about sunrise. We gained two hours but, following the flight, I tried to get by the following day on one hour of sleep. My butt was dragging but I had a nine-hour layover and I didn’t want to miss this chance at seeing some of Seoul. Right at the airport was a tourist desk that could help me. They had a five-hour city tour leaving in less than an hour. I booked it, and I was glad I did.



Seoul is more impressive than I can explain. Having just left the chaos of Vietnam and Thailand it was what could almost be called culture shock to be in South Korea where the streets are wide, paved and well-maintained. The cars stayed in their lanes and there were light controlled intersections. The driving was courteous and professional.



Seoul reminded me of a cleaner, better-organized Hong Kong. It has a population of about ten million. They must be doing something right because everything appeared clean and modern. The Han River runs through Seoul. It is quite wide, perhaps a half mile or mile wide at some points. Twenty-seven bridges cross the Han, carrying traffic out of the city very efficiently. Seoul is a gem of a city, a place where a person could think about expatriating to. The level of English spoken is fairly high and Koreans seem to be proud of their past and present, and with good reason.



We visited a museum of Korean culture and the palace temple of one of the kings from long ago. After that we had lunch in a local eatery and spent the rest of our hour shopping on a narrow strip for tourists. But I liked it. No one hustled me even though there were plenty of street vendors prepared to bargain and deal. It was never uncomfortable and I walked away very impressed with Seoul.



The airport is in Inchon where the Marines landed during the Korean War. It is one of the most modern airports in the world and has won awards seven years running for its efficiency and traveler-friendly culture.





Looking back on the experience many things impressed me. Of the countries I visited I would say Vietnam was my favorite. I liked it most not only because of the bike ride and all those memories I will have, but also because it has such natural beauty and the people are so great. It’s easy to make friends in Vietnam and an American traveler can always feel comfortable knowing he will be welcome as a visitor or even as an expat. The pace in the cities is frenetic, but that adds to the diversity, and the countryside is quite a bit slower but as beautiful as anywhere I have ever traveled.

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