My native country is beautiful; Vietnam is simply the highlight of my around-the-world trip so far. Since arriving in Vietnam in April both Gen and I have been up to so much which explains the long wait before this article – my apologies.
Gen & I arrived in Vietnam by boat on April 10th. I felt like I completed the loop around the world, a loop that started thirty one years ago when I left Vietnam by boat and headed East in the South China Sea. Now I come back from the west side of the country on a modest slow boat on the Mekong River. It was a nice and pleasant trip. There’s a photo of me sitting at the front of the boat waiting to set foot on my native land as the boat gently enter the Mekong Delta towards Chau Doc. I was not overwhelmed with emotions but I couldn’t help imagining how different my life would had been had I stayed in Vietnam and never left. If I’d stayed, would I have become a fisherman and fished the water of the Mekong? Or would my family moved to this splendid region and live in one of the many floating houses? Questions I would never have answers to. I also felt sad and guilty for leaving; there were remorse and feelings of betrayal for not sticking around during the harder times... I sat there having mix feelings about being a happy and proud Canadian but at the same time I had feelings of sadness for leaving Vietnam behind. I have great life in Canada and I love it but I had to trade away a life in my native country where I would have gotten a chance to get to know my relatives a lot better and grow with them. I felt the remorse but did not feel any regrets. I love everything about Canada and appreciate my Canadian life. I am happy that my parents made the difficult decision to leave. This whole trip back on a boat was a unique experience.
Once we arrived in Chau Doc, we quickly arranged for a bus ticket to get to Ho Chi Minh City (aka Saigon). I say “quickly” because I can speak the language here, I can ask for what I want and be certain that I will get it in less than five minutes. In Thailand, Laos and Cambodia, I always had to point, mime, say key English words (not sentences), and say key local words to order something or to buy something. Here, I can just say what I want. It’s definitely a nice change!
We got to Saigon late and right away I had a taste of the local taxi driver scam, but I got out of there paying only what was fair. Finding a guesthouse was quite painless, I bargained in Vietnamese for the first time and got a great deal out of it too! For $11/night, we were getting a private room, with A/C, our own bathroom and free internet! This is quite a luxurious deal for us. Before that, we were accustomed to none of that for almost the same amount of money. The first week in Saigon was quite fun. Gen & I wondered the streets and spent time absorbing the culture. We were mainly killing time waiting for my mom and sister to join us the following week. We met up with my cousin Tan, she was wonderful. She spoke perfect English and that was really nice because it allowed us three to discuss and fully understand each other. Tan showed us around and spent a lot of time with us, we had so much fun with her. She had us discovering new flavours and fruit, it was awesome. Her brother, my other cousin, also met with us and took us out to great restaurants. My goodness real Vietnamese food is delicious! It is in Saigon that Gen & I had our first scooter rides. Between markets and restaurants, my cousins drove us around the crazy traffic madness of Saigon, it was sweet :o)
Saigon is superb with its mixed culture of modern nightlife and modern crowd combined with very traditional living style. The city is vibrant with hundreds of people working out in the parks or just meeting there for a social game of hacky sack, well sort of, they used a big shuttlecock instead of a hacky. They were super agile with their feet to kick this feather shuttlecock back and forth. The traffic here is CRAZY! For some tourists simply crossing the street represents the biggest accomplishment and highlights of their trip because it is a very tricky task when you are not used to it. We were roaming the streets one day and saw three ladies hesitating back and forth about trying to cross an eight-lane street, it was a pretty funny sight. After a while I went over to offer my help: I walked them to the other side :o) The architecture is very French: colonial buildings and monuments, big street roundabouts... I like the food stalls on the streets where you can enjoy a bowl of anything while sitting on a mini plastic stool. For us that was a very local way of trying cheap traditional food. I rediscovered fresh sugar cane juice, it is the most delicious drink in the world! Gen discovered the “banh bao”: steamed dumplings the size of your fist. She also realized she loves fried fish and rice for breakfast!
I was so happy to be eating my favourite food every day. For me it was more of a re-acquaintance with the Vietnamese food rather than discovering it because my mom cooked traditional dishes everyday when I used to live at home. For Gen it was a pleasant discovery every time she ate something, it was priceless to see her eyes widened at a first bite of something new. We were both also very happy get re-acquainted with Vietnamese coffee, Gen likes is hot while I like it on ice. You can order this in Canada as well but for six times the price :o)
A week later Gen, myself and my aunt-9 (the Vietnamese call their relatives by their ranks starting with number two for the oldest of siblings)went to the airport to greet my mom and sister coming from Montreal. It was an emotional reunion. Gen and I have been on the road for five months and this was our first time seeing familiar faces from home. This was also the first time my mom and aunt-9 saw each other in thirty one years. Look through the Saigon photo album and you’ll see what their reactions were; lots of tears.
We were so happy to have traveling companions for the following three weeks. It wasn’t always easy to coordinate everything because Gen & I were so used to being by ourselves and we were used to the shoestringers standards of travelling but nothing can beat visiting your native country with your family.
We visited the Cu Chi Tunnel where the Vietnamese army lived for 20 years while fighting mainly the Americans between 1964 and 1975. The tunnel was widened to accommodate the bigger built Western tourists but I thought it was still pretty darn small. The underground network of tunnels (200km long) was the work of a genius. The Vietnamese had a self sustainable living environment down there and also had very well thought out defensive protocols to counter any attacks to the tunnel. I was just amazed of the complexity of the whole thing. There are many photos of the visit to Cu Chi Tunnel in the Saigon photo album.
Next we did a tour of the Mekong Delta and it was nice to learn how they make rice noodles and rice cakes. The Mekong Delta is really nice and peaceful. It is worth a visit if you ever come to Vietnam.
It is too difficult to give you the play-by-play of our seven-week stay in Vietnam. We did so many awesome things and met a lot of very nice people. All I can say is that Vietnam is truly a beautiful country and it has so much to offer to anyone visiting it. After seven weeks of travelling through this country Gen and I still feel like we only skimmed parts of the country, there are still so many places to visit. Every place I go becomes my new “favourite place in Vietnam”.
One of my favourite places is Nha Trang. The beaches are spectacular and the laid back attitude is awesome! We met two really nice girls from Quebec and did a lot with them. The most fun thing we did was going to a mud spa. My skin was silky smooth after the 45 minutes session! I was also in bed with food poisoning for three straight days but what’s a little story to write home about :o)
If you ever visit Vietnam, you’ll probably appreciate the city of “Eternal Spring”, Dalat. The year round mid-twenty degrees climate is refreshing and is a perfect getaway from the standard high 30 degrees of Vietnam. The landscape is really beautiful and many mountainous parts in this region remind me of the green mountains of Kananaskis in Alberta.
But I think the most best kept secret of Vietnam is Ninh Binh. Just nine kilometres outside of town, you will find the inland version of Halong Bay. Travelling on the water of Tam Coc onboard a small rowing boat, we were in the middle of a stunning scenery of rock formations, caves and rice paddies. The people there smile from ear to ear and can row with their feet to save their arms from getting sore! Even more impressive, the ladies use their feet to row the boat while their hands are busy peeling and cutting fruit for sale. How about that for multi-tasking?!
Of course, one must go to Halong Bay when visiting Vietnam. Yes it’s cliché and touristy but your eyes will be forever grateful for the treat. We spent a day aboard a boat taking us around the Bay and I have no words to describe it. You just gotta go. We stayed on Cat Ba Island, it was a really good looking town of 13 000 people. We worked up the courage to rent a scooter and rode around the island, it was such an exciting day; Gen and I are finally real Vietnamese, we rode a scooter in Vietnam! Next step would be to ride one in the heavy traffic of Saigon or Hanoi, or, Gen riding side saddle in the back seat :o)
We met a very nice Scottish couple in Ninh Binh; Amy & Stewart. It’s amazing how we meet so many friendly people on this trip but Steward and Amy are the best! It’s also creepy how they have almost the exact same itinerary as us from Australia to Asia but we only met them here. We are alike on a lot of levels and that makes it very pleasant to find such good travel companions and friends. We end up spending two weeks travelling with them. A fun experience was taking the night train to go to Sapa. The four of us shared a cabin, it was nice to be able to share a cabin and let your guards down – we heard of so many theft stories aboard a train... Gen and I had one of the best sleeps aboard this train...
Sapa is in the middle of endless mountain peaks and is so high up from the sea level that we are practically walking on clouds, most of the time this town is swimming in the clouds or thick fog. The locals can smile all day and they are very nice.
Hanoi was our last stop in Vietnam. We visited my cousin and his family. Lucky us my cousin and his wife are English teachers so communication was very easy. They took us out to a fantastic restaurant where they served traditional Hué food. My mom is from Hué, so the food at the restaurant reminded me of what my mom used to make for us. Yummy! It was a short visit but a really fun and pleasant visit all the same. It was unfortunate that we couldn’t meet again after that night because they have kids and are too busy with work: Vietnamese people just work too hard. As for the sightseeing, we totally mismanaged it. We saved the Monday to do the main attractions before we leave Vietnam the next morning but we didn’t know most attractions close on Mondays... So we didn’t see much of Hanoi :o( I’m glad we got to see my cousin at least.
Right now, I’m back in Thailand. We parted from Amy & Stewart at the Hanoi airport, they were heading to Malaysia. Gen & I were very sad to leave Vietnam, we had so much fun here. We loved visiting and meeting my family, we loved spending time with Tan, we loved the shopping here and the beaches. We will miss the relatives and the tasteful cuisine, and most of all we will miss the Vietnamese coffee. The coffee here is sooooooo good! I will miss how easy things were in Vietnam when you speak the language. I will miss the Vietnamese higher accommodation standards: private bathroom, A/C, clean rooms and mini-fridge but one must move forward.
We plan to be in Southern Thailand for two weeks before we wrap up the Indochina chapter of our trip. Although I think it will be very hard to beat the high I had in Vietnam, I know the rest of the world will be unbelievable as well. Of course, my comments on Vietnam is very biased but perhaps you would agree with me when you come here for a visit :o)
Hope everyone is enjoying the warm (!?) Spring in Canada. Did you hear us cheer for the Habs when they were still in?
