Saturday I wore one of my new dresses that I had made in Vietnam for the first time. I think it's pretty cute although I am worried it makes me look a bit huge and like I lack a waist. I can't complain too much for something that was about $20 though. It was fun to dress up and pretend I was Audrey Hepburn for a day.
I hadn't heard of the Cao Dai religion before but it's pretty unique. You can read indepth about it if you follow the link but I'll give you a brief overview. These churches are found almost solely in Vietnam (there are some elsewhere but usually the congregation is Vietnamese immigrants) and it was formed in 1926. It is monotheistic but it combines Catholicism, Buddhism and Taosism and therefore you can see imagery from all of these faiths in the church. They also include other Eastern/Chinese philosophies and have three patron saints- one of whom is Victor Hugo. Random!
Everything is bright and colorful and they kindly let us watch their service. Certain higher officials wear different colored robes but the average follower dresses completely in white. The crest is really interesting too, as it appears to combine a fan, a sword and a mop. Religions can be so absurd.
We went to a small restaurant for lunch and then continued on to the Cu Chi Tunnels. These are the tunnels that the Viet Cong (VC) or Cu Chi people used during the Vietnam war to fight the Americans. In case your knowledge of this war is shaky, South Vietnam was mainly capitalist sympathsizers and the North followed communism. What made the VC unusual is that they are from the south but supported the north, hence why they were fighting the Americans.
We got to look inside some of the actual tunnels and there was the option to crawl through a "king-sized" version that they expanded for tourists. I'm not claustrophobic but I don't like the idea of getting stuck somewhere inconvenient to retrieve me. I don't want to be Vietnam's baby Jessica. I saw the movie! Terrifying. Matt was brave and went through it though.
There was a firing range but since it was the day before we were leaving Vietnam we didn't have much dong to spare. It was about a dollar/bullet. Some people gave it a shot (pun intended) and we just posed by the guns like losers. It was a fun day and we were lucky to finish up and make it into the van just as it started to pour. Here's some more pictures!
As I've mentioned, there are vendors situated on every square inch of Vietnam. I found Nha Trang and Saigon to be particularly bad for this, but it's possible I was just fed up at that point since they were the last two destinations in Vietnam. It's a hard life being a vendor- look at the heavy and cumbersome things you have to carry around. Plus they aren't that innovative so EVERYONE and their dog is selling the exact same copied books, sunglasses, postcards, etc. The exact same. Seriously. I guess I would be happy to see them if I had lost all my books, sunglasses, postcards at the same time in a freak accident.
Here are the rules from our guesthouse in Saigon. They are pretty standard, however, number 5 is probably my all time favorite. I wonder what kind of special cases would be allowed???
The Reunification Palace is pretty interesting and the best part about it is that they provide you with a free guide. Matt and I were getting a bit jaded since you go to lots of places and someone asks you if you want a guide but then they want a lot of money for it. So when they asked us my first reaction was "NO". Matt wasn't as grumpy and found out it was free so we sat down and waited until enough people had gathered and then we had a free one hour tour of the palace.
The palace is huge and is still used for meetings so there are places that they don't allow you to access. You can see lots of the rooms which are ornately decorated and we were allowed to go to the top where they have a dance hall and a helicopter landing pad. They also took us into the basement (there are 2 of them) where they have their bomb shelters. I couldn't help but take a picture of the elephant feet "gifts". Poor elephants! I recommend checking out this place and the next place we went to- you can walk there easily and they are both in the same neighborhood. Be sure to buy water before you go since it's ridiculously overpriced around the palace and museum.
One section of this museum is dedicated to the many journalists who braved war zones in order to report about the war. Many of them perished in the process. The most memorable section was the one about chemical warfare. Now that is truly scary shit. You hear about napalm and agent orange, but do you actually know what it does to a person? or a fetus? or an area of land? It's shocking and disgusting. The pictures of the people affected by these chemicals and the generations of people with birth defects were astounding. They even had some babies on display that had died when they were born because of their deformities.
They do try to end the museum on a bit of a hopeful note. They have a lot of art from Vietnamese children promoting peace and goodwill. There are also some statues and posters from other countries supporting Vietnam. It's a heavy place to visit but a must see. Go here to see the other pictures from the day.
It's no secret that we blew our budget in Hoi An so we made a decision to lay low in Nha Trang and to unfortunately cut out Dalat and the Easy Rider trip that we wanted to do. It was a hard decision but maybe someday we'll return to Vietnam (with more money, Easy Riders are expensive!) and we can do those things then. We arrived early in the morning and wandered around a lot until we found a decently priced hotel. Then we collapsed and slept for 3 hours. The next few days were spent relaxing on the lovely beach, trying to avoid people selling things (very annoying) and doing a little bit of sightseeing.
Probably one of the strangest things we've seen on this trip was this place in Nha Trang. After going inside and looking around we realized that they sell really elaborate embroidery there. It's hard to tell from the signs on the outside of the building though. See what I mean? I have to say though, the embroidery was fantastic.
We managed to see a couple places in Nha Trang (none of the islands though- we figure we'll see better ones when we get back to Thailand anyway) including the cathedral and the Long Son Pagoda. We walked there and the roads were full of construction so that kind of sucked. You can see the rest of the pictures we took over here.
So we took an overnight sleeping bus from Hanoi to Hoi An. This was quite the experience. Now, I have a knack for sleeping while traveling. Put me in the backseat of a car and after 10 minutes I'll already be nodding off. So I thought a sleeping bus would be perfect! Unfortunately I ended up on the top level and I was super freaked out about the possibility of falling down to have a good sleep. Plus they drive fast, jerky and frequently use the horn here so that didn't help matters. Poor Matt was a bit too tall for the seat so he ended up sleeping in awkward positions. It was still kind of fun and when we took our second sleeping bus (from Hoi An to Nha Trang) we were smart and got the better seats in the back.
Hoi An is a really lovely town and we managed to haggle a decent price on a room with cable and a private bathroom at one of the hotels. There are a lot of cultural things to see in and around Hoi An but we didn't really see any of them. We were much too busy shopping! Things are reasonably priced (considering they are making them to fit you) but you still need to haggle. It gets a bit tiring walking down the street and having everyone call out to you "Hello! Buy Something?" but you get used to it.
We bought lots of things and everything turned out nicely. We've shipped it off to Matt's Mom's place in Thailand so that we could save some money and have it with us when we returned to Canada. I hope it shows up there soon! I'm a little nervous! I mean, look at everything that it contains! You can see a few pictures of us in some of the items if you look in the above link to my Photobucket.
Okay, Uncle Ho has been dead since 1969 but if you travel to Hanoi, get up really early, go through security and wait in line for a really long time then you can see him in his mausoleum! We did just this and I have to say, it was pretty interesting. I'm not totally convinced that it was his original preserved body (you can't take pictures inside so that's why there are none)- can you preserve someone for that long and that lifelike? I know they claim that Lenin is preserved still but surely they must have replaced him with wax by now?
After visiting with Ho Chi Minh we stopped over at his Presidential Palace to check out the house on stilts. It was a beautiful area and I'd love to live there but it was ridiculously crowded and so we didn't stay that long. We also stopped by to see the One Pillar Pagoda. Then we meandered back to our guesthouse, played with their adorable dog for awhile and got ready to head to Hoi An on the overnight sleeping bus! If you look over here you can see all the pictures from our wanderings in Hanoi.
We decided to book an overnight trip while we were in Hanoi to go see Ha Long Bay. It was supposed to be breathtakingly beautiful and there was the option of sleeping on a boat! I've never slept on a boat before so that was something I wanted to try. We left bright and early in the morning and slowly the minivan filled up with different people on the trip. Everyone was pretty tired and quiet and then we picked up our last two group members...
Being abroad the last few years has given me the skill of identifying certain nationalities pretty quickly. Especially American. As soon as these member opened their mouths I knew they were American. (This isn't necessarily a bad thing.) They were a perfect addition to the group (which also had people from Malaysia, Vietnam, Japan, Finland, Iceland and Denmark in it) because as soon as they climbed into the bus they got everyone talking and socializing. It was like someone turned a light switch on. Oh and did I mention, these two Americans were the feistiest senior citizens I've ever met! Linda was 64 and informed everyone that she is severely claustrophobic but it doesn't stop her from traveling and Dee was 74 (!) and said that her doctor told her 4 days before the trip that she needs to get a hip replacement when she returns. They were hilarious and have traveled all over the world (over 60 countries). It was really inspiring to talk to them and see them climbing in and out of vans, boats and caves without blinking an eye. The rest of our group was also really cool, especially the Icelandic couple that we met. They had great stories, similar interests and knew a million card games. I think that this random group really helped make the trip.
They took us to the two famous caves and basically our tour guide dropped us off and let us fend for ourselves. I mean, we did take one of the cheaper tours but I just didn't like the guide in general. He was pretty rude and had a bad attitude. That was the thing I didn't like about the trip but you can't really predict that sort of thing. The caves were interesting and afterward we got back on the boat. At this point it starting to rain a little bit.
We stopped over at a floating fishing village. It was really interesting how they had built a dock with netted areas where they could store their fresh, live catch. Matt was amazed at the giant horseshoe crabs and I had a chuckle at the kids rowing around trying to get cash from the tourists.
We had the option to go kayaking around the bay but since it was raining, I wussed out. Matt went on his own and had a lovely time. I learned a few new card games and chatted with Inga and Ace (our Icelandic friends). After dinner we spent a long time playing various card games with then, Eija and Sandra. We taught them how to play Spoons but since we didn't have any spoons at our disposal we had to improvise with keys, pens and other random objects. All was going well until part of the keyring caught onto poor Eija's hand and left her with a nasty cut. It was at that point we decided to call it a night.
Sleeping on the boat was okay, especially after they turned off the noisy motor. Our room was on the main level so it meant we were woken up bright and early by the staff. The rest of day two was spent hanging out with our new friends, bullshitting and playing cards. It was a great trip! The tour company delivered us back to Hanoi and we made plans to have dinner with Ace and Inga that night. To see all the pictures from Ha Long Bay- go here!
