Last Post from Vietnam

I arrived in Mui Ne after escaping Nha Trang three days behind schedule, and after a quick look around, realized I had landed in yet another beach town. The dunes here are beautiful, but nothing compared to Sleeping Bear or the Israeli desert. So I headed back to the bus station and hopped back into the bus onward to Saigon.

In my head, I envisioned Saigon to be a mysterious, old city with cobblestoned streets and the smell of incense burning in a pagoda around the corner. In reality, the Saigon of today is nothing like what most Americans refer to when they think of the Vietnam war era. After Northern Vietnam took control of the city in 1975, it was renamed Ho Chi Minh City. Virtually everyone in Vietnam still refers to it as Saigon, but the city itself has changed immensely in the past 35 years. Each of the surrounding provinces was absorbed into the city proper, making Saigon one sprawling mess. It takes two hours to drive to the edge of what is now known as the "city," even though the furthest outlying districts are the epitome of countryside--farms, cattle, dirt roads and thatched roof huts.

The REAL Saigon, which now is called City Center and includes the five innermost districts, isn't ancient at all. It's a modern, Westernized, money-minded city with all the modern amenities--supermarkets, wide asphalt streets, fast food joints, high rise apartments and ritzy hotels.
Still, even among the modernity, there's still the taste of old Vietnam. Most lower middle class locals still prefer to sit at makeshift streetside cafes to drink their morning coffee, and they'd rather a plate of Cơm tấm served up on the sidewalk than inside a fancy restaurant. Motorcycles here are just as prevalent as in Hanoi, but the wider streets mean traffic moves faster and in a more organized manner (it's still insane compared to US road rules).

My first day here, I tooled around the city to get a sense of my bearings, then went to a travel agency to find out how much the bus to Cambodia would cost. A woman at one of the agencies told me I could get the Cu Chi Tunnels tour for free if I volunteered at a local English language school for a few hours. With no plans for the evening and very few dong in my pocket, I took her up on the offer, hopping on the back of a motorbike and zipping my way through the crowded rush hour traffic to the tiny back-alley building near Chinatown. Teaching there was a trip! So much so that I agreed to come back and do it a second and third time. About 200 kids between the ages of four and 12 attend the school for two hours each evening.

The school's director, Mr. Lee, is the friendliest old man with more energy than I've ever seen in someone his age. On my second visit, I found out he's also the founder of the Dollar Tree chain of stores. He spends seven months each year in Saigon, then one month in China making purchases for his stores, then four months in the US, where he has a house in Minnessota. He runs the school free of charge, paying teachers out of pocket and only asking parents to volunteer a tiny amount (max $10 per month) to run the building's electricity. When the students get older, he helps them find placement in American universities.

The philosophy at the school is that learning should be fun, and the students are a blast to be around. They're loud and obnoxious at times and I'm definitely glad I don't have to teach eight hours a day, but its been cool getting to be a part of their education for a couple of days. My final day there, Mr. Lee surprised me with some traditional Vietnamese coffee filters and some locally-grown cashews after I told him how much I love their method of making coffee. The kids sent me off with smiles and hugs, and some great memories of HCMC.

My second day in the city, I cashed in on my free tour and headed to an outlying district to visit the tunnel system that residents of the Cu Chi Village built underground during the French occupation, then expanded during the Vietnam War to fight off US troops. The tunnels were pretty impressive--the portion they've opened to visitors has been widened to accomodate "fat-assed westerners," but it's still a crouching, tight fit even for me. The tunnel area really sheds light on the amount of horror that went on during the war. Americans knew the tunnels existed, but were unable to get inside. The villagers of Cu Chi spent much of the day underground avoiding American air raids and at night, they came above ground to collect bomb shells to form their own explosives and set traps to kill and capture enemy soldiers. Much like the unnecessary glorification of war in America, many of the Cu Chi villagers were awarded the "Medal for Killing Americans."

I spent my final day in South Vietnam on a lackluster tour of the Mekong Delta. I'd spent too much time already in the country and need to pick up my pace, so I opted for a one day trip rather than the two day slow boat that takes you all the way across the border to Phnom Penh. In hindsight, I wish I'd taken that option--the one day tour barely touched the northern tip of the delta and many of its most pristene areas were left unvisited. Still, there were some interesting sights as I trawled beneath the river's palm-shaded tributaries, and some interesting conversation with my fellow tourists--a Malaysian family, a Vietnamese expat to Australia and a Columbian. The day ended with relaxation on a riverside hammock, listening to "Hotel California" on the Aussie-Vietnamese's cell phone.

I wish I had another day to soak in the city, but I've got to get moving. I'm due in Bangkok by March 28, which leaves me only a month for both Cambodia and Laos. So the next morning, I boarded yet another bus and made the 15 hour trip to Siem Reap.


Other thoughts on HCMC and Vietnam:

-My attempt to meet and eat with the infamous "Saigon Soup Lady" (any Anthony Bourdain fans out there?) failed. I got to the market where she sets up her stand at about 2 p.m., only to find that she''d already sold out and left for the day. Looks like I'll have to make it back to Saigon to check that one off my bucket list.

-I'm a sucker for markets. Even though my backpacker's budget means I rarely buy anything, I can't visit a town without making at least one visit to the local market. There's something about it that says so much about a local culture, and it's one of the few places where tourists and locals share the same space and interact in the same way. Plus, it's great people watching.

-I am growing increasingly annoyed with the hordes of high-budget tourists who book their trip through some all-inclusive, no hassle tour agency and then prceed to make their way through the country via air con bus and fancy corporate hotels, never actually interacting with the people or touching the streets, save to stop at an ornate rest area created especially for them or to be herded from the bus to their next "attraction" or white tablecloth restaurant run by Westerners.
First off, they're cheating themselves out of a real experience. It's like watching Vietnam through a windowpane rather than actually delving into the country. Second, they're touring (especially in Cambodia) a developing country where the economic stratification is huge, and the majority of people are on the losing end. But instead of helping the situation by purchasing from local people, they're giving all of their money to rich Western companies. A bit of a rant, but you'd be furious, too, if you saw a man reject a child begging him to buy baby formula for its younger sibling, then walk into the Ho Chi Minh Sheridan Hotel, where rooms run far into the triple digits.

-I got caught in a lie the other day. When I checked into the spare room in the house where I've been staying the past couple of days, I told the owner I was Canadian. It's not that I'm ashamed of being American, but it's just easier not to touch the subject in Vietnam. The people here won't directly express the lingering anti-American sentiments that the Vietnam War created, but you can see it in the expression on their face when your answer to "Where you from, miss?" is "USA." The few Vietnamese whom I've asked about their opinion of the US have been hesitant to offend me, but the general response still wasn't great. Usually I got a smile and a shake of the head or a shrug, followed by an attempt to avoid the question. The general sentiment, though, is that we're lazy, too rich for our own good, and a little stupid. Plus there's that whole war thing to top it off. Anyway, the hotel owner later discovered I was American, and we had a good laugh over my fib.

-Long bus rides can be brutal, but they also produce some of the most amuzing situations when you're traveling alone. People watching on the bus has become a hobby. It's hilarious to see travelers who haven't yet experienced the open tour bus system complain about the crate of chicken eggs blocking the aisle or the extra passengers hitching a ride on the floor. My favorite spotting: A group of four British retirees who, because the bus was filling up, were told to sit in the back row, top level sleeper seats. I couldn't hold in the laugh as I watched the overweight husband's feet dangle from the ladder near my head as he huffed and puffed to get situated while murmering "They put the biggest bloody people in the back of the bloody bus and expect us to fit?"
It's sightings like these that break up the monotony of 12 hours over hazardous roads with karaoke music blaring from the speakers and the horn honking an average of ten times per minute.


The most annoying type of tourist in a rare sighting emerging from their aircon coach (this is not ageism, these people just happen to be old).

Gettin' my teach on.

Mr. Lee, director of the Long Say English School, and me.

Struggling through the Cu Chi Tunnels. This is only the first level, which is the largest and has been widened even more for tourists. The third and lowest level is so small it must be done crawling on the belly.

A Cu Chi villager making rice paper.

A bamboo spike animal trap which doubled as a means of capturing enemy soldiers at Cu Chi.

Emerging from the entrance to one of the Cu Chi tunnels.

A street in central Ho Chi Minh City.

Ever seen the "Soup Nazi"episode of Sienfeld? This is HCMC's very own version. Met him in the market, and he was not happy with my indecisiveness.

The motherload of candy! HCMC= my version of heaven.

Not a bad way to pass the afternoon.

Rowing down the Mekong River.