Over Christmas, while the rest of the western world was doing something fun and family-oriented, Andy and I were working.  After a couple of days of it, I had to start making progress towards our next vacation.  Since everyone else was playing, I at least needed a vision of playing in the future to keep me going.  Ever since some friends had been to Vietnam on a vacation and told us about the wonderful time they had there, I had it in my mind that Vietnam was a must on our list of places to see.  What seemed like an easy task of planning a vacation, turned pretty daunting when we decided to add various cities in Vietnam to our itinerary and then Cambodia and Singapore.  I spent countless hours over probably two months figuring out a way to pack it all in, in less than 10 days, about the max we could be away from work.   Our typical (ideal) vacation finds us at one location relaxing for a week or so at a time and although this trip wasn’t typical, it was wonderful because we were able to experience so much of south-east Asia in a short amount of time.  Our first stop was Vietnam…

Hanoi -

Andy and I had been looking forward to the hot sun of Vietnam to warm us up after two weeks of freezing weather in Shanghai.  The China Eastern flight from Shanghai to Hong Kong was no help because it was just as cold as the city.  After trying to warm up in the Hong Kong airport we boarded our Vietnam Airlines flight to Hanoi.  We were immediately impressed with Vietnam Airlines as the plane was brand new and the service was outstanding.  Andy even had extra leg-room and his knees were not crammed into the seat in front of him for once.

When we arrived in Hanoi, we arrived in what we thought was the visa processing line, but it was actually the immigration line.  Somehow we missed the sign pointing us to the visa office and didn’t realize we were in the wrong place until we were at the front of the line.  A travel agency in Shanghai had preprocessed our visas but there was still some work for the Vietnamese visa office to do and additional money for us to pay.  We were surprised that the office preferred to take US dollars for their $25 processing fee.  After waiting for less than an hour, we had our visas, went through immigration, picked up our luggage and were on our way to the taxi line.

We asked the price to the old town and a taxi driver told us “20” and we agreed but then immediately started asking each other which “20” we had agreed to.  Vietnamese money is something like 16,000 VND (Vietnam Dong) to $1 USD, so I thought we had agreed to 20,000 VND (a little more than a dollar).  Andy was suspecting that we had agreed to $20 USD and the fact that the taxi driver wouldn’t answer our question for clarification made me think that Andy was probably right.  After a pretty long trip to the Rising Dragon Hotel in the old town of Hanoi, we found out that Andy was right and that we didn’t have enough Vietnamese or USD to pay the driver.  Reluctantly, probably since he knew he was ripping us off, he accepted some Chinese RMB and took our word as to what the currency was worth.  We checked into our hotel as I was vowing to never get into a non-metered taxi that we did not understand the price of the trip again.  (Come to find out on the return trip, he really didn’t rip us off that much.)

The Rising Dragon hotel choice was made when I was still following a “stay cheap” motto for our trip.  Later, as the trip planning progressed and I realized there was malaria in some of the sites we were visiting,  most of the hotels were upgraded.  The Rising Dragon was rated really high on TripAdviser.com, so we stayed with it and were glad we did because it was a nice, cheap hotel.  I think we paid about $40 USD per night.  The amenities were fewer than other hotels and we had to carry our bags up five flights of stairs, but it really was all we needed.

For dinner that night, the hotel recommended a restaurant called “Little Hanoi” since we wanted to try authentic Vietnamese food.  We walked through the “old town” and found the restaurant and enjoyed our fabulous first meal in Vietnam.  The chai gao was as good as Andy remembered (from his favorite Vietnamese restaurant in Boise that has since closed.)  The streets of the old town in Hanoi were filled with quite a few tourists, most of whom did not seem to be American.  There were a lot of small shops selling nice handicrafts and art.  We immediately began to recognize that the Vietnamese people were very nice and hospitable.  That night, we found out that $40 a night does not ensure that the heater in the room works.  Unfortunately, it was cold and Hanoi and our break from being chilled had not yet materialized.

Day Two started with a wonderful complimentary breakfast at the Rising Dragon.  The “big” western breakfast consisted of eggs, cold bacon and this fluffy, Vietnamese-style bread.  It was tasty.  We were planning to spend this day on a city tour of Hanoi and were picked up by the tour company promptly at 8 am.  The first stop on the tour was “visiting Ho” as these two hilarious Australian guys also on the tour  called going to the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum.  A brief history on Ho.  His real name was Nguyen Tat Thanh and he was the Vietnamese Communist leader and principal force behind the Vietnamese struggle against the French.  Before he became the leader, he actually traveled around the world quite a bit before coming back and leading the Communist rebellion in the country.   He changed his names many times and had many pseudonyms before settling on “Ho Chi Minh” which means “with the will of light.”  The Australian guys thought that was an auspicious name and were trying to come up with English versions of it to change their names to.  Ho’s mausoleum is actually kind of ironic because his stated last wish before dying in 1969 was to be cremated and that his ashes be buried in the hills in the north, center and south of Vietnam, uniting the country.  The country ignored his wish and placed him in a mausoleum like a good Communist leader (Mao’s is in Beijing.)  It was actually pretty interesting to see his body laying there and he really just looked like he was asleep.

The next stop was to see Ho’s homes which were located close to the mausoleum.  Despite having the choice to live in a nice, large mansion, Ho choose to spend his years in Hanoi in two different simple, modest homes.  Both of them basically had three rooms, a bedroom, an office and a small kitchen.  The furnishings were very simple as well and did not even match each other.  In addition, they looked quite uncomfortable.  We were impressed that the Communist leader lived as he preached, unlike other leaders of his time (Mao.)

The rest of the day was spent touring other notable locations in Hanoi including a temple on the lake, a temple for Confucius teachings (the oldest in Hanoi) and the Museum of Ethnology where we learned about how all of the different Vietnamese ethnic groups throughout the country live.  After the tour, we were exhausted and took a nap before we began the evenings’ activities.

That evening we were transported in a rickshaw to a nice Vietnamese restaurant that was open air and therefore cold, but had wonderful food.  The waiter showed us how to make rice wraps while Andy tried to warm up with beer and I chose hot tea.  Before I forget, I have to mention the amazing fruit shakes that exist in Vietnam.  Especially since Asian wine is not, how shall I put this, good, I needed to find a new drink of choice with meals.  I ordered mango juice our first meal in Vietnam and became completely hooked on it.  It was even better when made into a shake with milk and ice.  After I had ordered it a few times, I realized that I should probably be more careful with the shakes since I did not know if the water in the ice was purified, but I figured that I had not gotten sick yet so maybe it was okay.

After dinner, we walked through some art galleries since one of my goals of coming to Hanoi was to find a nice piece of art.  We quickly realized that there were pretty much two prices: cheap and expensive and that all of the cheap art looked the same.  I desperately hoped we would find a unique, medium-range piece before we left Hanoi the next afternoon but was losing hope in the search. The evening was finished up with the uniquely north Vietnamese tradition of water puppets.

The baskets used in this fishing scene are authentic to how we saw people fishing throughout Vietnam and Cambodia.

Our final morning in Hanoi, Andy agreed to follow me on a self-guided Hanoi tour around the lake that I had printed out of the New York Times travel section.  I do not even think we found the first site on the tour as the street names were really hard to find and follow so we just ended up walking around the lake.  As luck would have it, the dreary weather was quickly brightened up by a very colorful New Years parade that had everything from people dressed up in traditional Vietnamese costumes to the elusive dragon that I had been dying to see in China since we moved there. This video shows the dragon portion of the parade.

After the parade, we headed back to our hotel following a different route and found some new art stores to peruse.  In the second shop that we walked through, we found a piece of art that both Andy and I liked and was unique and in our price range.  We agreed to purchase the art and about ten minutes later a guy showed up on a scooter and spent about twenty minutes removing the art from its frame and rolling it up into a hard plastic tube that we would carry with us through the rest of our vacation.  Soon after, we returned to the hotel, grabbed our things and headed to the airport to catch a plane to Nha Trang, Vietnam.

Nha Trang -

We arrived in Nha Trang and immediately found the warm weather we had been seeking.  Nha Trang is much further south in Vietnam and its change in temperature from Hanoi made us realize how big Vietnam is north to south.  Actually, I must admit we realized this before because our original plans had us traveling by train from north to south in Vietnam.  Luckily we put some effort into figuring out the train schedule before we left China because we realized that the train ride from Hanoi to Nha Trang was two days long.  We had to scramble to get two additional plane tickets between Hanoi and Nha Trang and Nha Trang and Ho Chi Minh City.

Sunrise Beach Resort was our home in Nha Trang.  It was a very nice hotel run by the Melia group.  Our first night, we enjoyed an all-you-can-eat-and-drink seafood buffet that had all sorts of fresh seafood that they cooked after you had chosen it from the array of food.  Andy and I enjoyed a nice long meal before settling into our room to watch “Walk the Line.”  We agree that it was random to be watching a movie about an American country singer legend while in a beach town in Vietnam.

The next morning, I went for a run along the boardwalk and then met Andy for breakfast.  After the breakfast buffet, Andy and I headed down to the beach and claimed two of the hotels’ beach chairs.  We laid in the sun for awhile before the tide came in and then we went up to the hotel pool.  The food and drinks at the pool were VERY expensive so we decided to go downtown to try out the Louisiane Brewery which Andy had read had good reviews in the Lonely Planet.  We hung out there that afternoon as they had good food and drinks at reasonable prices.  They also had a pool and beach chairs for rent.  Later that evening, back at the hotel, I realized that I had somehow managed to fry my leg-pits and a few other random places on the front part of my body while laying in the sun earlier in the day.  We had forgot our normal sunscreen and were trying out another kind, which apparently has different application rules than I am used to.  As always, Andy (the smart one) stayed out of the sun and didn’t get burned.  We ordered dinner in the room and hung out since I was feeling that sunburnt, not quite healthy feeling when your body is using all of its energy to repair its skin damage.

I talked Andy into joining me for a walk the next morning on the beach.  We enjoyed the walk except for the parts that smelled like urine.  For some reason, a lot of the locals use the wall dividing the ocean from the boardwalk as their own personal toilet.  Since we had had such a nice experience at Louisiane the previous day, we headed back down there and spent the entire day using their facilities.  Our final night’s dinner was again spent at the seafood buffet.  We had designated Nha Trang as our non-adventurous, relaxing part of our journey so we didn’t feel pressure to do sightseeing or adventurous eating.  We had accomplished our goal and left on a plane to Saigon the next day relaxed and ready for more culture.

Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) -

Ho Chi Minh City, at one time called Saigon can most accurately be described as a city full of scooters.  We thought there were a lot of scooters in Hanoi, but there were even more in HCMC.  After arriving, we checked into the Park Hyatt, enjoyed lunch at a tapas restaurant across the street from the hotel and then signed ourselves up for a scooter tour of the city at rush hour.  Wow, was that ever exciting.

This video will give you an idea of the number of scooters whizzing around us at any given moment.  We were very glad that helmets appeared to be the law and that the scooter drivers had helmets for us to borrow.  The crazy thing though was that while we held onto the back of the scooters we were riding on for dear life, the other people on scooters who were riding in the same traffic were barely paying attention to what they were doing and we saw more than one person writing a text message on their cell phone while they navigated their scooter through traffic.  Also, a majority of the scooters had more than one person on them.  It was amazing to me that in the US we cannot even get more than one person to ride in a car, but in Vietnam, more than one person rode on a single scooter.  I guess economic differences do drastically change one’s transportation habits.

Speaking of economic conditions, throughout our entire time in Vietnam, especially in the big cities, there was an almost tangible feeling of a country on the rise.  It seems like people described China a few years ago and probably still describe certain cities and regions in China.  You could really feel that people’s economic means and in turn lives were improving dramatically and quickly due to increased foreign investment in Vietnam.  One example of this came from our tour guide to the Cu Chi tunnels who said it is very difficult for him to want to stay in his current job since there are so many other ones available on any given day.  But I am getting ahead of myself.

After an hour on the back of scooters, we booked our tour for the next day and asked the concierge for a recommendation for dinner.  He suggested a restaurant called “Pho 24” just down the road.  Come to find out, it was a Vietnamese version of a fast food chain, serving Vietnamese food, but was really good.  They also had the ubiquitous tasty mango shakes.  After dinner, we walked around the block and stumbled on a nice Italian restaurant where we stopped for a glass of wine.  We were surprised that the clientele of the restaurant felt a lot like a trendy expat restaurant in Shanghai and it was clearly frequented by area expats.  We supposed that this was yet another piece of evidence of the increased foreign investment in the country.

Our last day in Vietnam was spent on a tour to the Cu Chi tunnels about an hour and a half drive outside of the heart of HCMC.  After we arrived in Cu Chi, we were shuffled into a makeshift theatre to watch a propaganda video about Vietnam defeating the “foreign imperialists” in the “War Against America.”  It really felt strange to hear our country talked about in that way, but at the same time, the rhetoric was eerily familiar as it was used in similar American-made movies about Communism.  The movie was quite out-dated, as was the anti-American sentiment (from what we could tell.)

After the movie was over and the various maps and model of the multi-level tunnel system had been explained, we began following our guide on the tour of the tunnels.  The tour started with a small hole in the ground that we were encouraged to drop down into to take pictures.  Only about half of us in the group could even fit into the hole without getting stuck and nearly everyone had to be heaved out of the hole by other people.  It was amazing to us to think that the Viet Cong could exit and enter the tunnels with such ease and speed.  Later during the tour, we were able to crawl in actual tunnels that had been “widened for tourists.”  Many people quickly found out that they were claustrophobic.  I didn’t have a problem with the size so much, but the fact that many tourists were crawling through them at the same time in serial made me nervous because if one person panicked and stopped moving, dozens of others would be stuck behind them in a very narrow, almost pitch black tunnel.  This concern caused me to take the first “bail out” tunnel while others including Andy continued on and crawled an entire 50 meters through the tunnel system.  There was another tunnel that was supposedly not widened for tourists that Andy didn’t feel he could fit in it comfortably.  The tunnels were really so small.

Before I continue on with a description of the remainder of our tour, let me take a step back and explain what the tunnels of Cu Chi supposedly are.  Andy was very aware of them, but I had not heard of them.  Basically the tunnel system was reportedly used by the Viet Cong to house 16,000 people at one time or another during the Vietnam War.  Since the area is near Saigon and relatively close to the Ho Chi Minh Trail through Laos and Cambodia, the tunnels were dug in order to hide from the French originally and then the later the Americans and South Vietnamese military.  The trail system was multiple levels deep and housed everything from strategic war rooms to kitchens to places where weapons could be manufactured (actually remanufactured taking the left-over shells from the Americans.)  As a side note, the reason I say “supposedly” is because the guide mentioned they are really not sure if these are the tunnels used by the Viet Cong or if the government dug them for tourist reasons.  It is conceivable that they are real, but nobody knew the whole system, only small parts of it, so nobody will avouched for their authenticity.

Back to the tour…we were shown example traps that were used to trap both animals and enemy soldiers;  models set up of how the weapons were remanufactured; example sewing rooms where clothes from the Americans were used and modified to be used by the Viet Cong; and even an example kitchen where they demonstrated how they covered the hole of the vent to the kitchen with leaves so the smoke slowly oozed out in multiple small holes through the leaves in order to avoid being seen by the American planes (and then subsequently bombed).  We learned how the Viet Cong avoided their air holes from being detected by dogs; saw a (probably American) tank that was destroyed in 1970 and a B-52 crater.  We ate raw tapioca which was the mainstay of the Viet Cong for years at a time.  While it did not taste bad, I would certainly not want to eat it for one entire meal, let along a year of meals.  We saw a rubber tree nursery and how the sap produces silicon.  It was explained to us that the Viet Cong could tell their own people by the way they tied their scarves and finally, the highlight for Andy was getting to fire a real AK-47.  Unfortunately our memory stick on our camera started malfunctioning at this precise moment so we do not have a picture of it.  Andy reports that “it was easy to shoot” even with bullets from the 1960s.  It was a very interesting tour and I was glad Andy talked me into going on it.  I now know one thing for certain, I NEVER want to fight in a war nor have anyone who does not want to fight in a war have to fight in a war.  What a horrible thing!

After our tour, we returned to HCMC and I did a bit of shopping before it was time to drive to the airport yet again, this time headed to Siem Reap, Cambodia.  Our time in Vietnam was very well-spent learning about the culture and history of the country and enjoying the hospitality of some wonderful people.

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