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Published: October 5th 2007
Cu Chi Tunnel Entrance
Sadly...this is the sole picture I took with this camera. I had taken loads of cool ones inside the tunnels with my smaller camera...but those pics were lost with the camera.With Ko Tao in my wake it was off to Vietnam. The original plan was to meet up with my buddy Tim in Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City) on the 5th. Unfortunately, he hadn't gotten his visa sorted out in time and we had to alter the plans. Now he's going to meet me in Hanoi on the 15th.
My route from Tao took me to Bangkok for a day before I caught a flight to Phnom Penh...where I was to catch a bus to Saigon. I think I've reached my limit for how much time I need in Bangkok, as I couldn't wait to be on my way. Though I did get myself in the Vietnam mindset by spending the afternoon watching "We Were Soldiers" in one of the cafes. I had forgotten how brutal that flick is in how it portrays the harsh aspects of war - from both sides and on the home front. So between not wanting to be in BKK and emotionally torn by the film, I was sufficiently depressed and ready to be on my way.
The arrival back in Phnom Penh instantly lifted my spirits. Again...I have no idea what it is
Sunset Over the Mekong
Taken from the ferry with a Vietnamese kiddo looking out the window at the sunset. about Cambodia, but I love it there. Unfortunately, my flight was delayed and I wasn't able to get my visa that day & was stuck in PP until the 6th. But since I no longer had to meet Tim on the 5th...no worries.
I thought that the traffic in Phnom Penh set the standard for crazy traffic in South East Asia. I turns out that Saigon might be the front runner in this area. I took some great videos and photos showing the insanity…but for reasons explained further down the entry…you’ll never see those. In addition to the incessant honking and general chaotic nature of cars/motos/busses/bicycles intermingling in any direction at any point…the fascinating aspect of the traffic here is the mixture of people involved in it. At any given time, I’ll see motorbikes driven by an average dressed guy…next to a guy in a suit…next to a woman in a dress wearing high heels and holding an umbrella…next to a family of four…etc. I suppose this is to be expected…all types need to get around. But for some reason it’s entertaining to see the mix of folks trying to get around this bustling urban hub of southern Vietnam.
The Light At the End of the Tunnel First off was the Cu Chi Tunnels. This is a network of 250km of tunnels near Saigon that were used by the Viet Cong in the American War. Yes, that’s what it’s called here. I thought it strange at first…but I suppose it makes sense for them to not call it the Vietnam War, eh?
The tour started out with a video about the tunnels and the war - which is easily the least objective thing I’ve ever seen. Often I feel that people hurt their cause by being overly sensational about things. This is one of those cases. They could have easily just told an unbiased story and had a good story to tell…the tunnels were clever…horrible things happen in war…etc. But I’m not sure there was a single sentence that didn’t include something to the effect of “so and so was awarded a medal for killing x-amount of Americans”…”the American devils did such and such horrible things”…”the Vietnamese are the most clever people on the planet…oh, and they killed many Americans”. Again, just simply telling the story would have been potent enough, but it went to such
extremes that I actually laughed a couple of times due to ridiculous nature of the narration. But the best part of this America-bashing film was that when it ended, the TV display showed “California Electronics, USA.” I’m not sure the clever Vietnamese pick up on the irony of the fact that in order to show their film, they are using all American technology…but it humored me.
If you’ve seen We Were Soldiers, they show the VC running around in tunnels…yeah…those aren’t real. Crawling only in the real deal. I descended into the first tunnel and was quickly surrounded by complete darkness and I made my way forward on my hands and knees. I had my small camera out, so I cheated and kept taking photos so the flash would show me where to go. As I crawled along, I thought I felt something flutter past my head. A couple quick snaps of the camera revealed that this particular tunnel was home to countless small bats…some hanging from the ceiling in front of me and some flying back and forth past my head. This combined with the darkness and cramped quarters made for a rather strange experience. As I crawled
ahead through various left and right turns, I eventually came to a point where the tunnel just stopped. Dripping with sweat, feeling cramped, and freaked out by the bats, I started to get a bit uneasy. Beam me up, please. I started yelling back to the Argentine behind me and he indicated that he found a turn I had missed which led to the way out. Carefully turning around I made my way out and happily rejoined the rest of the group on the surface.
The rest of the tour included a display of brutal booby traps (I can’t imagine the pain some of these caused people), more tunnels (bumping my head several times…I’m rather large compared to the average Vietnamese soldier), bomb craters, and a firing range where one can fire AK47s, M16, M60, and about 5 other types of weapons. My apprehension about firing 30+ year old weapons in Vietnam was confirmed when a guy tried to shoot one of the fully automatic guns and it jammed after the first round. Yup…top notch equipment. No thanks.
Back in Saigon, we were hit with an afternoon monsoon storm that was quite impressive. Trees literally were coming down
Elephant Falls Near Dalat
I was basically soaking wet by the time I took this photo. The falls generated the equivalent of a rain storm here...so the pics are a bit weak as I was fearing for my camera's life. all around the mini-bus and the streets turned to rivers. I got dropped off at the War Remnants (formerly the War Crimes) Museum and took in a bit more Anti-American propaganda. Happy subjects like Agent Orange, the Mai Lai Massacre, etc. were some of the topics. My favorite display was the one that honored war time photographers - many who lost their lives in the war. As one who wasn’t around at the time, I was amazed to see the stories and images these people brought to the world. Great stuff.
The Mekong Delta Next up was a 2 day tour to the Mekong Delta. Something just sounds cool to me about heading to the Mekong Delta…but I wasn’t overly impressed. It might be because organized tours often don’t excite me much…or maybe I’ve already seen some of what they showed us. More coconut farms, rice paper making, floating markets, etc. But in general, it was just a couple of lazy days for me to just relax and not have to pay attention much to what was going on.
What’s the weather like here? In the words of Adrian Cronauer….”It’s hot. Damn hot!” I really don’t know
how GIs fought a war in this. I would have gone mad.
So to get away from the heat, I headed up to the hills to a town called Dalat.
Vietnamese Easy Riders There’s a bit of a motorbike guide mafia up here called The Easy Riders. They’re quite famous, actually, and have jackets, certification cards, etc. I told my hotel to hook me up with an easy rider…but I think the guy they gave me wasn’t official. In any case, Yang was a good guide and took me around to see the countryside. It’s quite beautiful up there and quite frankly, I was just glad to be somewhere that required a long sleeve shirt at night.
My second day I rented a motorbike and cruised around to a reservoir and some waterfalls. Yet another day where I was happy as a clam to be out on my own driving around on a motorbike in the hills of Vietnam.
Dalat was rather untouched by the war. Lucky higher-ranking officials from both the north and south would use it as a retreat from the heat and apparently agreed to not kill each other while there.
Happy Buddha
I think this guy makes my top 5 Buddhas list. ”If you go out tonight, you will get robbed” Next up was a beach town called Nha Trang. I got off the bus from Dalat and was nearly knocked over by the heat and humidity of the lowlands. I don’t know if I expected the cool weather of the hills would stay with me…but it was brutal to be back in the heat.
My only plans for Nha Trang were to sit on the beach and do nothing for 2 days before catching my flight to Hanoi on the 14th. I cruised to the beach, rented a chair under an umbrella and kicked off my plan in fine style. Shortly thereafter, the other chair under this umbrella was occupied by a German guy who turned out to be a grad student working on his PhD in mechanical engineering. Before telling him what I did for a living, I freaked him out by asking him detailed questions about his thesis (he basically does finite element analysis on shape memory alloys).
Anyway…a lady walked past selling fruit and we ended up splitting a pineapple. Then a lady walked by with fresh lobsters and a grill…we split one of those
Reservoir Near Dalat
Rented a motorbike for the afternoon and cruised out to a few places. This lake was very relaxed and serene. Nice place to chill out for a bit. too. The massage lady was bugging us all day and finally came by again saying she hadn’t had any business all day. I negotiated a deal and then we both got massages. Add a couple of beers into the mix and it was a great afternoon at the beach…all for $10. Nice.
We had been chatting to some other folks nearby all day and made plans to meet them out that night for dinner and some drinks. One of them, an Aussie named Adrian, warned us that if we went out that night, we would get robbed for sure. Apparently the nice people of Nha Trang have discovered that after leaving the bars, backpackers aren’t on the top of their game for detecting being pick-pocketed. For robbing men, the standard scam is that a woman will approach the man offering…well…"services"…all the while groping the man all over as a distraction.
With this knowledge, I took some cash out of my wallet and securely locked it up in my room. Stupidly I decided to take my small camera and planned to keep it in a pocket in my shorts that both zippers and velcros shut. Good plan…unfortunately my execution
wasn’t so hot. After dinner, a few drinks, and playing pool for a while, I had taken some photos but simply put the camera in one of the normal pockets. When I got a block away from my place some crazy woman latched herself onto me and started offering her services. I told her to buzz off and noticed that a motorbike was driving along side us. As I kept trying to get her to leave me alone, I kept looking at the bike wondering who that was. As it turned out, that was the getaway driver…crazy lady suddenly ran off and hopped on the bike. The scam had worked. My senses not being at their highest…I was too slow to realize she managed to extract my camera and cash.
So…the pictures of the tunnels, Delta, Dalat, and Nha Trang are few and far between as I had mostly used this camera rather than my SLR. I’ll survive, but am really bummed that I won’t have some of these photos. Moral of the story…when someone tells you that you will get robbed…believe it and stay on your toes.
(Over the next couple of weeks, just about everyone I
talked to who had been to Nha Trang had also been robbed. When I ran into a girl from my tour in the Delta I mentioned I was robbed there and her response was “Didn’t everyone?”)
”When you go to Vietnam, you shouldn’t say you’re American” I think I’ve mentioned before that the blatant anti-Americanism has been minimal so far in my travels. The only place that I had any concern about was Vietnam. Someone even had warned me that I should claim I’m from Canada because they don’t like Americans in Vietnam. Without going into any long speeches…I love America and am not inclined to deny the fact I’m from there. And after 10 days in Vietnam and having conversations with many folks here…I haven’t found one trace of anti-American sentiment (except for the Cu Chi Tunnel video). One of my guides told me that the older generation teaches the younger generation to let the past go and to focus on the future. So far…it looks like they’ve taken that advice to heart. Granted…I’ve only been in the south thus far. Perhaps it’s different in the north.
A couple other random Vietnam comments:
- One of
Nha Trang Beach
The pre-crime scene where I spent $10 that day...which got me - 1/2 pineapple, 1/2 fresh lobster grilled right there at my beach chair, a beach chair, a 40 minute massage, and a couple of beers. A good afternoon in all. my guides on the Delta tour (who was possibly the shortest man I’ve ever encountered) told me that he had been an interpreter for an American intelligence unit during the war. I’m hoping that his English has regressed over the years…otherwise I think I understand why the military intelligence was sometimes flawed. It was quite a chore to understand this guy. He also talked about how he tried to get out of Vietnam with his family 4 times over the years. He got ripped off a couple of times. Once the boat broke down and they drifted for 3 days before getting picked up by fishermen…one of whom was an undercover cop. 4 months in prison was the result of that one.
- Where’s the communism? Since some changes in 1986, they have to pay for school and medical care…there’s no social security…and they have land rights. For a communist country…they don’t seem to be all that communist in practice.
More Than Just Fun and Games So far in my blogs I've pretty much been sharing all the fun, adventures, and experiences that I've had. But in order to give a more complete account of what a
Scene of the Crime
The street where my camera and cash were liberated from my pocket. Nuts. trip like this is, I'll share a bit of the hard parts of travel as well.
I've pretty much hit a wall at this stage. The wear and tear of the road is setting in. Though I've taken my breaks and tried to vary my pace and experiences...I've been away from home, friends (except Danielle for 10 days), family (except the p's for a week), normality, etc. for 5 months now. The longest friendships I've had since April 2nd have been 2 weeks with the folks in Queenstown and 3 weeks with Anna on the North Island of NZ. Other than that...it's basically a few hours or a few days. The longest I've slept in one bed (the Mazda doesn't count) is 10 days...but it's usually more like 1-3 days. It all takes its toll.
I've been pretty lazy so far in Vietnam. It's been almost all tours. I typically don't like doing tours, but at this point, I'm happy to mindlessly get on a bus and have someone tell me when to get off, point at some things, and tell me to get back on. Unfortunately, this ends up with me basically going through the motions and
not fully appreciating what I'm seeing or doing. It's not the case all the time - the Cu Chi tunnels were brilliant. I don’t know if it’s the constant heat and humidity of this region…being constantly on the move…a need for a change of scenery… a combination of all these factors…or maybe I’m still just tired from the Full Moon Party. But I have indeed reached a point where it’s harder to muster the energy and excitement and avoid being lazy.
So there you have it. There’s more to this gig than all the cool, crazy, and interesting experiences I’ve written about so far. I’ll choose it every time over a 10hr day at the office, but it can be hard work at times. I know that’s hard to believe after I just wrote about a day spent at the beach with pineapple, lobster, beers, and a massage. But trust me…
But now I’m off to Hanoi where I’m excited to see what kind of stupidity Timothy and I can conjure up together. This is one of those things that brings back the energy and excitement. Hanoi, here I come!
Marc
PS - Honestly…I try to
keep these short, but they keep getting longer and longer. No wonder I’m 2 countries behind in my entries at this point.
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Cameron
non-member comment
Glad you're safe-n-sound
Sorry to hear about the heist. I guess I'm actually surprised that's all you've lost so far - based on all the unfamiliar places you've been. At least they mugged you nicely :-) You could have been hit over the head with a baseball bat or something. As far as 'hitting the wall' goes, I wondered if all the constant traveling would get 'old' after a while. There's definitely something to be said for staying put once in a while. Have fun with Tim!