To continue... Lisa was sick in Bangkok so she got to see almost none of it. She was sick all day, but made it out in the evening for a drink at Sky Bar on the 64th floor of the building down the street. I got her some prescriptionless anti-nausea and anti-biotics in the grocery store in our basement for $4. When the superbug plague starts, it's going to start here. In general, that kind of thinking has been one of the "things" about being here. In some ways, the environmental impact of the people here seems smaller; motorbikes instead of cars, reusable stuff, communal cooking and eating. But in other ways, it makes me think that it doesn't really matter what I or what Canadians do, in the grand scheme of things. In all the countries we have visited, bottled water is what everyone drinks, vehicle emission standards either do not exist or are ignored, and I haven't seen a real recycling bin yet. It hurts several times a day when I scrunch up a water bottle and put it in the regular garbage. Vietnam has 90 million people, but that is a drop in the Asia bucket when we are talking about China, Indonesia, etc etc. The next N years are going to be interesting over here.
I got to see some of Bangkok! When Lisa was day sleeping, I took a little route on the river ferry, then walked a bit, then took a canal ferry, then took a sky train home. Then had a nap. I guess we will just have to go back someday.
Maybe it is just a coincidence, but we felt better when we got back to Vietnam! On Saturday, we flew to Saigon, which they call Ho Chi Minh City since the north won the civil war. What s relief to not feel sick. Maybe we can last another week here after all!
We, meaning I, got ripped off by a taxi into town, and paid about $4 more than I needed to. Grrrr! But we got to our hotel and immediately found the rooftop pool and patio. Yay Saigon!! We fixed ourselves up, and went wandering. We got caffeine for the walk. Its too bad Lisa doesn't like it because they have delicious coffee here. Eventually we found a nice restaurant to eat at. It was a little too late for dinner, and we were the only people there except for the staff. Eventually they stood around awkwardly while we finished eating so that we would leave and they could go home or out partying. Who knows. We wandered to a bar that is in the travel book called Apocalypse Now and we went in. We had the fun! There was dancing and music we knew. And we got to play "does she work for the bar or is she a hooker or is she just a girl out with her friends? How offensive of us. Or maybe not.
We went back to the hotel and went to sleep. I blame it on that ferocious evening café den, but I woke up at 3:30 (am), and I was UP. So I watched Apocalypse Now, which neither of us had actually seen before. Random and a good but very weird movie.
Somehow I was not super tired the next day, and we had a big day of doing the sightseeing. We went to the War Remnants Museum. It documents the French and especially the American war here. While the story is clearly told from the perspective of the Vietnamese Communists, it is pretty sad and terrible what happened to the country and its people during the war. Lisa and I had to leave the agent orange photo room because it is not nice to look at. Not nice!
They do have American tanks, airplanes, and helicopters parked out front, so that was also neato. Most of the Vietnamese people we have interacted with on this trip have been of our generation, so not the generation that actually fought in the war. However, we still find it remarkable how friendly and warm and happy the people here are, given the past 100 years of their history. We still find it a little awkward though when they talk about the colonists leaving, when we are the colonists in Canada.
And then
We went to the Independence Palace. I think that's what it was called. History time, overdue. The French showed up in Vietnam in the 1800s and said we run this now. Then WWII happened and Japan took over for a year, so the French left. Then WWII ended and the Japanese left. Great, right? Wrong! The French came back immediately and looked to have the same setup ad before. Except this time, communism was big, the soviets were supportive of Vietnam being communist, and a French-educated revolutionary named Ho Chi Minh led the revolt. That was the French War. In 1954, Geneva convention split the country into North and South Vietnam. But the north communist Vietnamese wanted the country united, and the French wanted their colony and puppet government. America, proteccting it's interests in resources and ideology, funded the French and then eventually sent lots of soldiers in a war effort that lasted about 17 years. Finally, pressure from home and elsewhere and the futility of their effort led the Americans to leave in 1973. The north kept pushing and the glorious (for some) reunification happened in 1975. A tank drove through the gate of the Palace and symbolically the war was over. The Palace constructín was started by the American sponsored leader/dictator around 1960. Some of his own troops killed him because he wasn't the best, so he did not get to see it completed. Anyway, it is sooo 1960s architecture. Lisa found it to be ugly: "who thought it was a good idea to build ornaments out of concrete?" After five years at University of Waterloo, I found the palace to be quite comfortable, airy, repetitive, and functional. Hmm.
Saigon really comes alive at night, like a lot of the cities here and in Europe. People come out of their medium density apartments and fill the streets and parks. We have commented about how we have felt perfectly safe with all of our night walking here. We think it is partially due to a lack of thugs,partislly due to most of the inebriated people being tourists, and mostly due to the streets being so busy all the tine. We are concerned about being scammed for 20 bucks, but we aren't really scared of being raped or murdered or mugged. Maybe we are being naïve. Anyways, people come out and sit around and they play soccer in barefeet on concrete, or they play weird badminton-soccer with limbs that should not bend like that.
This has also happened enough to not be a random event: Cafe's and restaurants in Saigon and Dalat both like to play love ballads, with or without their English lyrics. I've heard more Celine Dion in the last week than I have in the last year. We have seen posters for Valentine's Day still up. I don't think they know that on Feb 15 you put up decorations for the next holiday. That's just how it works, right?
We had a late flight yesterday from Saigon to Dalat, so we decided to go to take s half day tour of the Cu Chi tunnels outside of town. We went there on a boat! Up the Saigon river! The tunnels are how the Viet Cong hid and moved people and stuff around during the wars. A lot of it is pretty ingenious. They used their small stature and flexible limbs in their favour, building these tunnels that the American soldiers couldn't fit inside. Once they started getting bombed to hell, they just dug deeper and deeper, with tunnel levels at 3, 6, and 9m underground - deeper than a B52 bomb crater can reach. They had secret entrances too big for American shoulders to fit through. They built chimneys up to 100m long, horizontally, so that smoke from kitchen fires would lead the bombers to the wrong place. Both sides did terrible stuff to people, but I respect the tenacity of these soldiers and communities.
We were pretty late and stressed going to the airport because after the tour we went for ice cream and a rooftop drink - so entirely our fault - but we made our flight to Dalat. Today we finalized our Canyoning excursion about 19 minutes before they picked us up at our hotel, but we are happy it worked out. It was really fun to rappel down rocks into the river below, and then repel through waterfalls and float down the river. It was NOT fun to hike back up the mountain at the end, but maybe that's just us getting soft after three weeks of vacation and easy living.
This afternoon we visited the Dalat Flower Park. It is a wonderful place with cheesy shrubs and topiary, nice flowers, and people taking ridiculous photos and selfies everywhere. We got to be idiots for an hour before finally getting too tired and abandoning the dragon hedge for the safety of our hotel.
And I guess that brings me to now. We fly to Hoi An tomorrow, which is really our last stop. I can and can't believe it has been almost four weeks, if you know what I mean. I will add a couple of picks now but hopefully more later. Also, its not impossible that this is the last post of the trip, so steel yourselves for the end. It will be harder for me than it is for you, I am certain.
1) Lisa is about to rappel down that waterfall! She did it nice.
2) Lisa starts down "The Washing Machine" - this one got really crazy at the bottom. Lisa is the best wife ever!
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