To finishe with Saigon...HO Chi Minh City...named after their revered communist leader...looks like a combo of Colonel Sanders and Mr. Miagi, is quite the famour guy here. Funnily, KFC is the only 'western' food chain allowed in Vietnam.
Saigon...it was hot and humid, filled with pollution of all kinds (dust, noise, garbage, fumes, population, etc.)...a constant metallic blue haze covering the city (as with Bangkok)...we needed a rest on our first day there from all of that...and so headed (again, the only whites on a local bus) to the Saigon water park. Luckily, it was a weekday, so the ENTIRE park was occupied by at most 50-100 poeple. I bet they'd normally admit about 20,000 on a good day. We had the waterslides, wave pool, lazy river, etc. all to ourselves! We slid some cool rides...me catching air on a few of the faster ones, Julia straining her neck and almost losing her bikini bottoms at the end of a few too. We did a double tube ride on a slide that was completely dark too. Julia's child-like screaming made a few of the 'life guards' laugh. Anyway...a well needed and refreshing day. We met a very forward, but friendly Vietnamese girl on the way home named Hong. Actually, she met me at the park first while sliding alone...making me carry her sliding mat for her as I am a man and she a woman. We were invited to her restaurant that night...but didn't go as we dined elsewhere with Rory and Shona...then went out for some local 'fresh beer'. For only 50 cents a jug...we sat on lilliputian chairs (the kindergardener ones) and drank for some time...feeling no effects of the very light beer but the need to pee in their VERY shady toilets where girls had to pee on the floor, and I had to duck to get inside. Sure is different than home...but that's what makes it all so interesting I guess! At night too...it seems that dozens of well dressed men would ride around with a small briefcase on the back of their bikes, ringing bells, but saying nothing. We found out that they are available to give you some kind of suction cup treatment...alternative medicine that leaves you with huge red hickies all over the place...not sure what it's for.
The following day, Julia and I headed out to see the famous Cu Chi tunnels. These are the tiny tunnels, dug one basket of dirt at a time, that the VietCong used during the war as a way to infiltrate villages, Saigon, etc... enemy territory right under the Americans' feet! In this location alone...a strategically important one because of it's proximity to Saigon (headquarters)...had over 250km of tunnels...some stretching into Cambodia, and ALL over the region. Along the way, we stopped to see our first rubber tree plantation, french owned and said to be 'slave drivers' towards the local workers. The tour guide for the day...about 4 feet tall and maybe 80 pounds...was a real Viet Cong lover...a real communist, and a seeming dislike for westerners...although he was nice enough to those on the tour which paid his wages. Anyway, the tunnels were a touristy place...but very interesting! We started off in an underground classroom with a real-life military general spewing propaganda at us...bragging about all the americans the VC so cleverly killed...all the medals awarded to those who killed the most, and the resilience of the VC in this battle. It was our first real taste of the left-over hatred for the western nations, particularly americans, and the communist/fashist/whatever the Vietnamese now are. I say whatever because truly...they are a capitalist country...everyone out to make a buck. Our society is probably MORE communist than theirs...taxing everyone to make sure that we at least ALL have a higher general level of living (roads, health, school, etc.)...but...what the BLEEP do I know?
I digress...after our lesson in american-bashing, we headed out to see the tunnels, the fox-holes, the bunkers, etc. All very interesting...but better when we got to crawl through a few hundred meters of them. Pitch black except for the occaisional chirstmas light-lighting our way, dank, hot, humid, choking stale earthy air...being underground 20 feet or so, it was hard to breathe. It was a real insight into how these guys would have travelled, on their hands and knees in tunnels MUCH smaller than the ones we were crawling through which had been widened for fat tourists (or just larger builds!). They were quite pleased with their tunnels, but even more pleased with all the boobie traps they made. Brutal ways to kill or maim people and dogs...involving metal or bamboo spikes for the most part, but many sorts of traps, made in large part by the women and children of the VC forces. Suffice to say, we realized even more after this, how STUPID and brutal the war must have been. Until I know more about world politics, I don't understand WHY americans metal in other countries' affairs so much.
We visited a firing range after that...more for effect than anything, with AK47 firing in the background (by tourists) for 1$/bullet. We didn't feel the need to spend about 500$/minute (exageration), and so watched the ladies make rice-paper, and looked again at their bottles of snake wine (rice wine with cobra snake corpses, scorpions, etc. fermenting in them) and other trinkets. We went to eat the VC ration of tapiocca root and tea, then headed home followed by another night out with our friends and some drinks on our balcony of a gorgeous room (beer tried is '333', tiger, Larue, Saigon, Huda, and some others...mostly tasting the same). What has surprised me a good deal here is to discover that Saskatoon is probably the place that, in my opinion, serves the BEST example of many vietnamese dishes that I have sampled here!! Way to go Norm and the Nutana Cafe noodle bowls and spring rolls...nothing better here!!
Our last day in Saigon was spent walking around and seeing a few more sights. We went to the used military supplies market, TONS of old US war stuff available, saw the mediocre Notre Dame Cathedral, walked around the streets, Julia was treated to a foot massage, I ate a frozen bean treat we thought was lime (YUCK), a little haggling in the market again...then off to get our bus to Nha Trang.
Nha Trang...named after a restaurant in Saskatoon that serves Eddie Quan's favorite soup...it is the holiday beach retreat place in Vietnam. We had planned to spend only 2 days here...but after our first few hours on the beach, we figured we could use one more day of R&R. The ocean was nice, and we found some beach chairs to rent at 60 cents a piece. In the afternoon of our first day, we visited a mud-spa a few kilometers away. We arrived to HOARDS of local mud-bathers (being a sunday) filling pools of RANK smelling mud. We were a little disgusted by the whole thing initially...communal mineral water shower, followed by a bath in what looked like diarhea and smelled like a urinal. To our relief, however, they cleaned the tubs between each bath, and filled it up with fresh, smelly mud. Being white...we were given a tub to ourselves, no one wanting to bath in our filth (haha). One thing that almost made me puke was when I discovered a LONG curly black hair caught in my chest hair. As their head hair is almost ALWAYS straight, and no pube could have been that long, my conclusion was that it was one of the mole hairs that the men like to grow. That's right...out of every facial mole, the men let the disgusting little hairs grow to max lengths!! I still need to find out WHY they do this...but it's not uncommon to find 4 inches of 10 curly hairs growing out of a huge mole. WIERD! Anyway...the mud treatment was followed by another hot shower, then a 45 minute soak in very hot mineral water, followed by a beer at poolside as we sat in our newly exfoliated and mineralized skin! Kind of fun! We needed a day of rest, SURELY, after that...so spent another day reading on the beach, with a nice dinner (however small) and the other bad massage I've previously described. Our last day in Nha Trang we took a boat tour around some of the islands here. Having already snorkelled in some of the finest reefs, this time didn't stand out. The boat crew, however, were nice and funny...and after a large lunch (for about 40 people) they pulled out some instruments and the 'TM Brothers' boys band' (complete with an old man wearing leather boobs) played some fun tunes and livened the mood on the boat getting everyone up dancing on the tables and singing along. This was followed by a 'floating' bar...the host floating on a ring, serving bad mulberry wine to the rest of us floating on more rings in the ocean. Good times. We met a nice Australian named Andrew and lay on the beach with him for a while watching people parasail and jetski. A quick stop at a fishing village (more touristy trap things) and we returned home in time for a quick meal and shower before our bus came to take us to Hoi An.
