Vietnam

Vietnam

You Buy Something!! 

It is at this point in the adventure that I feel it is important to point out to any of you who don’t know, that Erin will pet any dog. Any dog. No really.  In addition to this she can find a dog to pet almost anywhere.  This was exemplified extremely clearly by the Cambodia Vietnam border. While waiting on the Vietnam side of the boarder for our passports to come back to us and for the border officials to finish doing whatever mojo they do. Erin disappeared for a few minutes and re-emerged holding a puppy. Erin! Where did the puppy come from? Obviously it came from that sketchy ledge by the stairs over there. Look there are 6 more. So she spent the next half an hour playing with random puppyies and trying not to get her pants or her sandals too chewed on.

The first large city we stopped in was Saigon.  Here we witnessed a wealth of motorbikes not seen in other parts of the world. It was in this place that we learned once again how to cross the road…. Make sure there are not too many buses coming. Then just walk. Look at the drivers and keep a steady pace. Don’t run. Don’t go back. They will swerve around you. Wait. What? Yeah. Really. This was the standard road crossing procedure. Or as Erin and I like to call it. “Lets go follow a local time”. It is very useful to cross the street using a local. Especially if they are old. Then you can assume they have done this successfully many times before and you have a good chance of making it across if you just follow close behind them.  I would like to take this opportunity to state that these people will carry anything on the back of a motorbike.   It never ceases to amaze me how many people, bags, items of furniture, livestock ,bikes or all of the above people can carry on a single motorcycle.

In Saigon we went to the Cu Chi tunnels. It was here that we witnessed the greatest display of anti-American propaganda ever, in the form of a war education video.  It was hilarious in the political incorrectness of it.  Complete with sayings like. This simple farm girl who defeated 18 American tanks was given the American killer award. Or the Americans descended like demons upon the simple farmer folk. Oh yeah. It was good stuff. After the video we went to see the tiny trap door style tunnel entrances and then the large hole style tunnel entrances. Then… we went into the tunnels. Erin and I got as far as the first level. And decided there was no freaking way. So we went back out and stayed above ground. Bats were encountered in the tunnel. I have no regrets. Following the tunnels we went to the war remnants museum. The pictures and stories of the agent orange victims was enough to make you cry. The whole thing needed to be taken with a grain of salt or maybe a spoon full given that it was also heavily anti American but it was interesting to get their side of the story.

Following Saigon we got to have our first of 2 overnight train adventures.  We had a 17 hour train ride from Saigon to Hoi An. It was a very long night. Well it was less bad then say a 17 hour plane ride in many ways… well more in just one way. In that you had a bed and could lay down and sleep. The food was in a train car 11 cars away from us. It was a bit strange to walk all that way. When I got there I was glad to have packed food and just got the bottle of water I came for. I noticed a few things about trains at this point. The blue cars smell way worse then the yellow cars… for no reason at all. There was also the strange occurrence of people sleeping in what I can only consider storage closets with their bodies half in the closet and half in the hall way.  I’m sure they pay extra for that. By the end of the trip we had managed to sleep a few hours and were really ready to be getting off the train in favor of sitting in a car so we could finally get to Hoi An.

Hoi An was a neat city. We stayed near the “Ancient town” and had a good time wandering through the old streets and shops. We took some time in Hoi An to visit the tailor shops they are famous for and got some new clothing.  It was here that we spent new years eve. After a long and fairly expensive meal we walked down to the river. I floated some lanterns and we went back to our hotel room in time to panic over missing the new year and then have the last few sips of amarula.

After leaving Hoi An it was once again time for really long train adventures. After we got off this train we got on a van that took us to halong bay so we could spend the night on a Junk boat. Yes they really call them Junk boats. Even in the advertisements. Come spend some time on the Imperial junk boat…. Yeah… I don’t know why they call it that either. The islands were amazing and it was very beautiful to just watch them pass by on the boat. The cruse also came with some other activities. First we stopped to go climb around in some caves. The cave was really big and was fun to wander through. The next stop was for kayaking. This was also fun but there was quite the fear that we would tip into the water. It was not particularly warm out. In fact it was a bit drizzly and damp anyhow. So we didn’t really want to go in the water. After kayaking I did end up going into the water anyhow because. Hey why not. It was very cold and I got out very quickly.

Later that evening we spent some time singing karaoke and squid fishing. I suspect however we were not so much squid fishing as playing with sticks and string. But it was amusing.  It is at this point that I would like to make a comment about Vietnam and a strange phenomenon we discovered there. In Vietnam there is a woman with a cart or a store or a boat who is always trying to sell you something… the siren call that she gives to entice you into her shop is always the same “You Buy Something!” screeched at a level unfit for human ears. She is relentless. She is everywhere. No seriously. Everywhere. We encountered this woman on the street, in the caves, on the kayak dock.  Even in the middle of the night while you are out at sea trying to go squid fishing .  she is there in a boat staring up at you hopefully on the off chance you want some pringles. In this particular case I did want a chocolate bar. Unfortunately for both of us she did not have a kit kat.

After our boat adventure we set on out back to Hanoi and prepared for a long and daunting journey back across the ocean to Honduras.